(A/N: I just don't know what went wrong! Apparently I upload the wrong chapter, so everyone here is confused. So sorry! I can't believe i made this mistake! Here is the first "TRUE" chapter 1!)

THE CONVERSION BUREAU: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SPECTRUM

CHAPTER ONE: THE HUMAN

"There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are constantly handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself."
– Ralph Waldo Trine

"You see, Nightmare Moon. When those elements are ignited by the spark that resides in the heart of us all, it creates the sixth element; the Element of Magic!"
– Twilight Sparkle

Ponyville, Equestria, 2nd Year Anno Harmonia

Twilight Sparkle watched in horror at the creature thrashing against the hospital bed's restraints, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"SPARKLE, YOU EVIL WHORE! WHERE HAVE YOU BROUGHT ME! WHICH BUREAU IS THIS?"

"I...I don't know what you're talking about" she replied, feeling a moment's pity for the poor thing that called itself a 'hew-man', or was it 'human'? "This is a 'hospital' – it's where we make ponies better..."

"I'M NOT A PONY!" he roared, flexing his arms and torso in an attempt to sit bolt upright, at which point two of the heavier nurse stallions leapt in to pin him down. "I'LL NEVER BE A PONY! I'D RATHER DIE BEFORE TAKING YOUR POTION!"

"He's going to tear his stitches!" shouted one of the nurses. "Someone sedate him, quickly!"

"I...I don't know if I can..." whimpered the anesthagician, a fearful unicorn colt. "His...his body mass is far more than that of a pony!"

"Just try!" pleaded the attending doctor, and with a small swell of courage the anesthagician stepped forward, his glowing horn enveloping the human in a twinkling field of medicinal magic. Immediately the patient's limbs flopped back against the restraints, his entire body going limp.

It didn't stop him from screaming though.

"GET OFF ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! YOU WON'T PONIFY ME!"

"I...I don't understand" gasped the anesthagician. "That same spell would have put a full-grown stallion to sleep!"

"Never mind," soothed the doctor. "He's a completely unknown species, though perhaps we may need to request a specialist from Canterlot. You prevented him from hurting himself further, and that's enough, for now..."

Fingers scrabbling like the legs of a spider, the human managed to twist his head in Twilight's direction, his bloodshot eyes staring straight into her own, and she felt her ears flick back as if in the presence of a dangerous animal.

"YOU WON'T CHANGE ME, SPARKLE! I WILL KEEP MY HUMANITY, YOU GENOCIDAL MURDERESS!"

Twilight flinched and turned away, unable to steel herself against the force of his screams. Quickly, she trotted away from the human and made her way towards the lobby of Ponyville General Hospital, the human's furious howls chasing after her as she went.

"THAT'S RIGHT! WALK AWAY FROM ME, YOU PRINCESS CUNT LICKING DRONE!"

It was enough to make Twilight feel sick, not just from the vulgarity of what he was shouting, but the fact that the creature, a complete stranger, was angry with her at all.

'Why' she thought to herself, completely out of her depth, a situation which terrified her. 'Why does he hate us ponies so much?'

As she pondered, her troubled thoughts leading her nowhere but in circles, her hooves managed to lead her into the lobby, where her friends were waiting for her in worried expectation.

"Sugercube, are you okay?" Applejack asked softly, looking back to the room the unicorn had just vacated.

"I...I don't think so." Twilight said quietly, her voice faltering. "He called me a...he called me all kinds of names."

"Twilight, Darling." Rarity cut in. "The brute called all of us names. There's no need to feel he's singled you out for worse abuse than the rest of us."

"That's just it though," Twilight muttered, head turned down as if searching for enlightenment in the gleaming floor tiles. "He knows us, all of us, by sight."

Then she whipped her head back up and stared at them, features contorted in frustration. "And he called each and every one of us by our actual names. You don't think that's weird?"

"Um...why?" Pinkie replied, her usual enthusiasm only partially dimmed by the strange events. Before Twilight could answer, the pink party-pony reared back and spread her forelegs wide. "I mean, this means we must be famous enough to be known throughout the whole world! Isn't that super-de-dooper amazing!"

"Pinkie. We didn't even know the name of his species until he shouted...no, screamed it at us. How can he be expected to know us so intimately, while he remains a mystery to us?" Twilight said, bringing a hoof to her face in frustration, before jabbing the same appendage in Pinkie's direction. "And he called you 'Pinkamina'. How many ponies know that's your actual name, let alone complete strangers!?"

Sudden realisation struck at Pinkie, who fell back onto all fours, her jubilant expression collapsing. Twilight meanwhile had begun to pace, voicing her thoughts out loud in an effort to untangle them.

"It makes absolutely no sense. I mean, yes, I felt an magical anomaly forming in Ponyville and got to the square just before that portal opened and he was hurled out of it, but that kind of long-distance magic takes incredible power. Why go to that much effort just to fling a random 'human' from Celestia-knows-where into Equestria? And then, the portal closes back up, no explanation, and when Spike and I tried to help him up off the ground, he took one look at us and screamed in fear..."

'No...' Twilight paused, correcting herself. 'Not just fear. Outrage, and hate. A noxious mess of emotions, all directed at ponies who had only been trying to help...'

For some reason, that last thought left a bitter taste in her mouth. Wondering what could have inspired such emotions in the stranger, she could not help but shudder.

"He was afraid, and he was angry."

"Well, duh, Twi," Rainbow Dash snorted from where she was resting in a wheelchair, various bandages covering her body and her expression pale from a combination of exhaustion and painkillers. "He might have been screaming at you, but he attacked Applejack and me the moment he saw us."

As if presenting evidence she indicated towards her cyan wings, which were both strapped against her barrel to prevent her from moving them. In a tussle that had lasted only a few seconds, the human had managed to dislocate both at the shoulder joints, grounding the supersonic Pegasus until they healed.

Applejack nodded her head in support of that statement, turning back to Twilight. "Dash is right. He may have run from you at first, but the moment he laid eyes on us, he darn flew straight from fear into anger, and take it from a pony who corrals critters fer' a living, he was spoilin' for a fight."

The sturdy farm-pony grunted as she shifted her weight to her hind legs, which were heavily bruised, darkening the three apples that made up her cutie mark.

"He knew almost exactly where to hit us too," she grumbled.

"I'm sorry that my Stare didn't work on him," Fluttershy whimpered hoarsely from a corner, causing all the ponies to shiver in fear. That the Stare, powerful enough to quell full-grown dragons, had failed here, suggested the human possessed monstrous will power. Fluttershy herself had almost gotten choked to death the moment she tried to use the Stare on the human, and it was only thanks to Pinkie blasting the attacker with cream pies and her Party Cannon that the butter-soft Pegasus had walked away relativity unscathed.

"It's alright Fluttershy" Twilight muttered, trotting over to give her quailing friend a supportive nuzzle. "I don't think any of us could have expected the Stare not to work on him. Still..."

"What's wrong?" Pinkie asked, joining Twilight in comforting Fluttershy. The indigo unicorn remained silent for a moment, rubbing slowly at her chin.

"Well" she clarified. "Let's recap what we know. He knew us all by name, did not have a positive opinion on any of us, was fearful, angry, driven, and knew how to fight ponies effectively. And there was something else... He kept screaming about 'staying true to who he was' and something about a 'potion'."

"Potion? What potion?" Applejack asked, momentarily cocking her head, before leaning forward and narrowing her eyes in suspicion. "You don't suppose he's one of them there folk who take dangerous tonics and herbs for fun or somesuch hooey?".

"No, I don't think it's anything like that," Twilight muttered, rubbing at her forehead to try and massage away an impending migrane. "He used the words 'ponify' and 'ponyfication' a lot in conjuction with references to this 'potion', so perhaps that's some sort of clue."

"Ahuh, 'ponyfiction' huh? And whassat when it's at home?"

"That's just the thing. I have no idea what he was talking about" Twilight all but screamed, falling back on her haunches and flailing her forelegs in frustration. "It's one thing to be an inexplicable six-foot hairless ape that for all I know is from beyond the stars, but to be making up nonsense words, whilst simultaneously speaking perfect Equestrian!? I'm sorry, I don't have an answer, but when the universe decides to resume spinning in the right direction and everything returns to normalcy, I'll let you know!"

The other Bearers of Harmony shot one another a serious glance as their friend continued to ventilate her increasingly disjointed thoughts. Twilight seemed to be working up into one of her full-on obsessive freak-outs, the kind that tended to require several days and the reconstruction of half of Ponyville to clear up. Before they could intervene, a sharp "Ahem!" from across the lobby cut Twilight off at the rictus-grinning event horizon of delirium.

"Miss Sparkle," Nurse Redheart said, firmly but not unkindly. "Much as I appreciate your help in moving the...'patient' here without further injury to himself or anypony else, would you mind taking your frustrations outside? This is a place of rest and recuperation. Besides, a walk in the fresh air might do you some good."

"I'm...but he's, and we're..." Twilight stammered, before suddenly taking a deep breath and slumping forward in sudden exhaustion. "You're right, I'm sorry."

"It's not a problem dear. No go, we'll take care of the 'human', so go rest yourself" Redheart smiled. "That goes just as much for your friends."

As the six friends made their way towards the exit, the older mare paused and turned to glance back at them.

"You can leave the wheelchair, Rainbow Dash," she added sternly. "You're grounded for a few days, not crippled."

"Aw, ponyfeathers!" Dash seethed, before dismounting from the chair and bucking it back across the lobby.

"I'm sorry guys..." Twilight said as they walked out of the hospital, hanging her head low in shame. "I mean, humans are...sorry, were nothing but an oddity known only to antiquarians and fringe lunatics. Aside from a few cryptic references inferred from archaeological digs and old records, nopony had more than a crude idea as to what they supposedly looked like, or even if they were anything more than an old myth from the paleo-pony period. But now here's a creature claiming to be one, screaming at me, attacking my friends, and accusing me of being a...a 'genocidal mass murderess'."

As the rest of the group followed her towards her home in the Golden Oaks library, nopony (expect perhaps Pinkie) appeared to notice a pair of golden eyes watching them from the bushes beside the road.

"I better write to the Princess and tell her what is happening," Twilight murmured as she led her friends into the library. "If anyone might have a clue as to the origin of that portal, and maybe even the human, it would be her."

The moment the library door shut, the aforementioned bushes rustled and a mint green unicorn jumped out.

"A human! I knew they existed!" Lyra squealed, dancing about on the tips of her hooves in giddy excitement, before suddenly coming to a halt as the rest of the conversation she had eavesdropped on settled into her mind. "Fringe lunatic? Oh Twilight, you narrow minded little filly!" she growled, remembering how often the magical prodigy had managed to come across as more than a little eccentric herself, both before and after the two of them had graduated from Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. The moment's gloom was short lived however, as Lyra's enthusiasm transformed her into a aqua blurr of fur and flying hooves as she thundered up the hill towards the hospital.

"Ohmygosh! Human-human-human! I've got to see this for myself!"

Reaching the hospital she forced herself to act casual. Somepony had left an empty wheelchair just across the lobby from the door, and borrowing it (with a mental promise to return it later), she slowly wheeled herself around, playing the role of a patient trying to get some exercise. Finally she located the room the human was being kept in, only to find it was being guarded by a couple of security ponies.

"Horseradishes!" she grunted, before tapping her hoof against her chin, thinking on how to get around the latest obstacle cruel fate had decided to throw in her way.

"Hmm...Oh!" she beamed widely as her eyes alit on a door marked 'locker room'. Ignoring the smaller print that declared 'only properly authorised ponies allowed beyond this point', she discretely slipped in and found a spare doctor's coat, leaving the wheelchair for somepony else to return to the lobby.

'This...is genius' she crowed to herself as she donned the garment, before rearing back on her hind hooves and slowly trotting her way, biped-style, back towards the human's isolation room. 'All that practice in the bedroom mirror paid off at last! Bon Bon, I wish you could see me now!'

The two guards stared in disbelief as she approached, holding her forehooves out to the side in a faltering attempt to keep her balance.

"Lyra Heartstrings" she announced, attempting an officious tone. "Doctor of Anthropology at Canterlot Medical University. I'm here to examine the human, gentlestallions."

"Uh-huh" growled the first, a heavyset colt with stubble thick enough to sand down walls. "Bigshot Doctor from Canterlot. With no identification, no credentials, and no word from any of the local staff that you were coming. Pull the other hoof kid, it's got bells on it."

'An intelligent guard' Lyra thought, her grin becoming a little fixed. 'Did not expect that.'

"Yeah" added the second guard, a younger colt whose grin was wide beyond smug and approaching sickening self satisfaction. "Loads a' ponies been coming by trying to get a look at the human...takes more than that to get by us. Nice try with the weird walking though, looks painful. You get points for style, kid."

"So," grunted the older guard. "You can trot off back to Canterlot, 'Doctor', and..."

"Canterlot!?" exclaimed another voice, and Lyra, falling back onto her forehooves, turned to see an actual doctor approaching. "Ah, you must be the specialist we requested to help us with the human!"

"I...ah...yes, yes I am..." Lyra replied, as the doctor led her straight through between the two stammering guards.

"Excuse us, gentlestallions."

"Uh, ah, yessir!" the senior security pony replied, utterly abashed. "Sorry for inconveniencing you, Doctor Heartstrings."

Lyra silently answered them with a smile and an imperious nod of her head as they parted to let them through the door. The real doctor was continuing to natter about how quickly she had gotten to Ponyville, praising the speed of the Friendship Express from Canterlot, but she finally managed to get a few words in edgeways, requesting a few minutes alone to examine the 'patient'.

"Ah, of course" he replied. "We've attempted to sedate him ourselves but the spells seem to wear off almost immediately."

"So, he's resistant to magic?" Lyra questioned, intrigued.

"Well yes...and no. Trying to heal him with magic has yielded as much results as waving a magnet at a wooden plank. It's almost as if he was...well, dead to magic, a lump of cold iron..."

"As pure, warm iron as is the blood and bone of life and magic itself, so is cold iron, child of the forge and smithy, a worked and exhausted corpse, stolen of life, and lost unto magic..." Lyra recited in answer, remembering the old words from her schooldays. "Starswirl the Bearded."

"You know your classics" smiled the doctor, before shaking his head. "Well, perhaps you can find some answer. If he gives any trouble, just give a shout."

The door clicked shut softly behind him, and Lyra felt a grin of elation spread over her face. Finally inside, and with no-one else to bother her, she trotted slowly up to the curtain that had been drawn around the room's sole bed, her breath quickening.

"A human..." she said softly. "A real, live, human..."

From where she was standing, the curtain hid everything except for a booted pair of feet that hung over the bottom of the too-small bed, but the sight of that alone was enough to excite her. She eyed the workmanship of the boots, which seemed well-made, and intended for practical use, unlike the fanciful clothes ponies tended to wear solely for decoration.

'Cold iron...' she thought to herself. 'Child of the forge and smithy. Worked and shaped and tempered until it is devoid of magic, but serves a useful purpose. What shaped you, human?'

Faintly, she could just perceive the sound of metal against metal, and drew a hold of the curtain with her magic, sliding it back. The tinkling sound stopped and she heard the human inhale sharply. Something went 'plink', and she glanced down to see a small metal pin lying on the floor, just beneath where one of his restrained hands lay on the bedspread. Captivated, she moved in closer, eyes fixated on the five digits that graced the end of his arm.

"So..." A deep voice called out, causing her to jump back. "They finally bring the Potion. Well, let's see how long it takes you to force it down my throat, you heartless bastards."

Suddenly, the hand that had so fascinated Lyra raised up from the bed, and she realised he had used the pin to pick the lock restraining his arm. Momentarily marvelling at the dexterity of his fingers she suddenly realised she could be in danger, and backpedalling sharply she watched in awe as the human sat up.

"I...will never...change" it said firmly, turning to look at her and falling abruptly silent.

Lyra stared, heart thudding away inside her chest as her eyes took in everything. Her first observation was that the human wore clothes as well as the boots; the legs were clad in pants made of a thick material dappled in different shades of green. His chest however was bare, exposing a heavily muscled and strangely hairless body, one that was covered in a horrifying assortment of scars and freshly-dressed wounds, as were his arms. The neck was short and trunk-like, and the face, although vaguely similar to that of a pony, was flattened, the snout an almost unrecognisable bump just below the eyes, which were small and piercing. His dark mane was cut very short, and his two tiny, unemotive ears were just a pair of shrunken stumps positioned low down on the sides of his head.

And then she saw his mouth, hanging open in what could only be an expression of shock as the human stared back at her. Feebly, she waved a hoof.

"Hi, my name is-"

"Lyra..." The human whispered, the two syllables catching in his throat. "Lyra Heartstrings."

Lyra reacted with surprise. "Yeah, how'd you know my name...who are you?"

"You're...you're alive." He whispered, tears beginning to shed from his eyes, and his chest heaved in a gigantic sob. "You're alive!"

"Err...the last time I checked I was," Lyra replied, grinning nervously. Somehow, this human knew her, and was implying that she had been dead some point, which was just ridiculous.

Then she saw that the human was fumbling with the lock securing his other hand, and took a step closer, suddenly concerned. "Are...are you sure you should be doing that, the doctor said you needed help to- eek!"

Freeing himself, the human had twisted to one side and fallen out of the bed, sprawling himself across the floor. Before Lyra could say anything he pulled himself up and clumsily staggered over on his knees to embrace her in a titanic bear hug. She blushed brightly; no-one held her like this since she was a foal, except perhaps her marefriend.

"You're alive." he wept, cradling her tightly. "How...how did you escape? Is Bon Bon alright? Do you have a safehouse nearby?"

Before Lyra could answer any of his bizarre questions, the wardroom doors banged open and the two guards burst in, followed by the panting doctor. Alerted by her shriek and the sound of the human falling, they drew up sharply at the unexpected sight of the creature cuddling a pony to himself.

The human's demeanour changed instantly. Face contorting into a baleful scowl he grabbed hold of Lyra and pushed her behind himself, as if trying to shield her. All four ponies momentarily gasped at the incredible spectacle as he rose to his full height, almost as tall as a full-grown minotaur.

"Stay back! You're not taking her away again!" he roared. Ignoring the threat, the two guards rushed forward, only for him to grab hold of the bed and swing it across the room on its castors, knocking the two of them sideways. The doctor's horn lit up, but before he could cast any kind of a spell he took a bedpan to his face and fell back, stunned. Lyra had barely enough time to raise a hoof in protest before the human scooped her up into his arms and sprinted out into the corridor, bull-rushing past nurses and doctors.

"Wait! Wait!" Lyra cried out, but the human ignored her and pushed on, despite the fact that he was staggering and weaving uncertainly, possibly from the last time the staff had tried to magically sedate him. Twice he veered off course and crashed into passing staff and patients, pausing only to seize the bed sheets off of a gurney to fashion into a crude poncho.

"I will keep you safe, Lyra, I promise," the human muttered as he resumed his madcap ran.

"Safe?! Safe from what?!" Lyra asked, struggling to breathe in his tight grip.

"From the Sun Tyrant Celestia, of course!"

Stunned, Lyra could only shake her head in disbelief, but resigned herself to being carried along. Despite all his anger, she had the strangest feeling that the human would not do anything to hurt her, and trying to get away from him might only put more ponies in danger. All she had to do was wait until he tired himself out, and then talk him back down to reality. Either that or make a break for Ponyville.

But when he pushed through the hospital's main doors, instead of following the beaten track down into the town, he turned off and began fleeing across the fields towards the Everfree Forest, thick, dark and threatening in the evening light.

"What are you doing?" she yelled, resuming her struggles as they reached the treeline. "Don't drag me into the Everfree! There's monsters in there!"

"The...the Everfree?" the human stopped just within the fringe of the forest, suddenly uncertain. "And...and monsters?"

"Yes!" Lyra shrieked, managing to finally twist free of his grip, landing in a mulchy bed of leaves. "You know so much about me, so how can you not realise that in this direction Ponyville is bordered by the Everfree Forest, and every manticore, hydra, cockatrice and grundle that comes with it!?"

"Grundles good..." the human muttered, staring off between the trees down towards where the lights of Ponyville twinkled in a fold of the valley. "Pon...Ponyville?"

Lyra slowly came around to his side as his eyes travelled up to Canterlot, majestically cantilevered off the towering flank of the Canterhorn. The capital city gleamed proudly in the waning light as Celestia's sun made its bed behind the hills to the east.

The human gave a single, bitter laugh, like the bark of a dog. "I...I thought we were in upstate New York, maybe in the Sleepy Hollow Bureau...easier to deal with me away from the chaos of Manhattan I supposed. But this... this really is Equestria, isn't it?"

"Who are you?" Lyra asked. "Of course this is Equestria. And what was that about 'Manehattan'...I've got family there and I'm certain they would have let me know if someone like you had dropped into the Big Apple!"

Suddenly feeling much like Twilight most likely had, Lyra drew a deep breath and released all her feelings in a single shout, trampling the ground with her hooves as she did. "WHAT'S GOING ON!?"

The human looked down towards her, sadness filling his eyes. "Lyra..."

He kneeled and stared into her eyes, as if searching for something deep inside her. Lyra herself was captivated by his gaze, barely noticing the familiar way in which he had cupped her cheek and was lightly scratching the sensitive spot just behind her ears.

"Yes...yes it is you," he said at last, sitting back and sparing a quick glance at her cutie mark, a golden lyre. "I could never mistake you for anyone, or anypony else. Which means..."

He fell back into a seated position against the foot of a tree with a pained moan. "That bitch took your memories didn't she? She wiped all recollection of us, of your friends, and the PHL..."

Lyra, clueless as to what he was talking about, took a single step closer, only to rear back as he pounded the ground beside him with a clenched fist, roaring with rage.

"DAMN YOU CELESTIA! IT WASN'T ENOUGH TO TAKE MY FAMILY, MY HOME, MY CULTURE! NOW YOU'VE STEALING MY FRIENDS TOO!"

"Um..." Lyra said, slowly edging closer. She had no idea what the human was talking about, but now that he had finished screaming, she could almost feel the pain radiating off him. More to the point, he was crying, and her inner pony cried out at her to comfort him.

"I don't think we've ever been friends" she said kindly, nuzzling against his side. "But I'd like to be. Would, would you like to talk about it?"

"Heh. Still the same Lyra..." he smiled, reaching out to once again scratch behind her ears with those amazing fingers of his.

"Don't worry, once I figure out how to breach the barrier and get us back home to New York, we'll find some way to restore your memory. Maybe Vinyl knows some kind of spell that could jog your mind, or perhaps we could just play you some Charlie Chaplin movies. You always loved those old comedies..."

It was as if he was talking gibberish, but she had made him smile, and that was enough for Lyra. Spreading her bespoiled medical coat out like a blanket she curled up beside him on it and gave him a light prod with her horn.

"Alright," she grunted. "This isn't all coming for free. If I'm going to play along with this, then I want some answers. First of all, what's this 'barrier' you're going on about?"

"The one that surrounds Equestria...or half of Earth the last time I checked." The human growled. "Don't ask me to go into an exact thaumic description of how the damn thing works; explaining trans-dimensional physics was always more Cheerilee or Doc Whooves' domain."

"Wait wait wait, backtrack for a moment!" Lyra exclaimed, causing the human to stop. "What are you talking about!? Cheerilee and Doctor Whooves? What do Ponyville's schoolteacher and Derpy's husband have to do with anything? How come I've never heard of any barrier around Equestria? Where or what in the hay is 'Earth'? And most importantly, why do you keep talking to me like I died or something?"

"Because you did die..." the human said sadly. "Lyra Heartstrings, former Equestrian ambassador to the United Kingdom, first pony to speak out against the Conversion Bureaus, heroine of the Battle of Thunderchild, founder of the Equestrian rebel group PHL, the Ponies for Human Life, leader of the Manhattan/Manehattan Underground Railroad. After all that, how could you, 'the pony who said 'no!'', not be at the top of Celestia's hit list? When they caught you, she had you publically executed 'to make an example of you', or so I thought."

He gestured with one of his arms, spreading it wide to encompass Ponyville and Canterlot. "Here, you're just a memory-blanked drone, one of Celestia's millions of pony-puppets. But back home, you're a symbol, a legend, a heroic martyr who provides hope and inspiration to everyone who stands against Celestia's tyranny, human and pony alike. You led the PHL for our cause, you saved thousands of human lives with your warnings and actions, sabotaged dozens of batches of Potions so they were ineffective, and smuggled human artefacts and culture into Equestria to subvert Celestia's propaganda."

"I...I don't understand." Lyra muttered.

"You came to the aid of mankind in our time of crisis, and other ponies followed. You all fought alongside us to save humanity, and liberate both Earth and Equestria from the Tyrant Sun Princess, Celestia, and her dark protege, Twilight Sparkle."

He turned to look down at her, eyes full of emotion, and Lyra suddenly felt both hopelessly tiny and gloriously empowered.

"Lyra, you were trying to save humanity from being ponified."

(A/N: Okay, sorry for not uploading this right away. I been busy with other things and I completely forgot. Anyways, my friend and I are almost done with Chapter 3 and soon will be working on Chapter 4. Keep in mind that these updates will take time due to the simple fact that I am working with another writer.)

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CHAPTER TWO: MEMORIES

The Everfree Forest, Equestria, 2nd Year Anno Harmonia

Lyra slowly came into awareness, snuggling up in the bed sheets for warmth.

"Mmmm... Good morning, Bonny" she whispered, reaching out to pull her special somepony into a breakfast nuzzle.

Her hoof groped in mid air for a moment, and then fell with a dull 'clop' onto the rock-hard root of a tree…

…wait, what?

Lyra's eyes flew open and she drew breath sharply as the memories of last night came crashing back. The human, her 'foalnapping', and their sudden flight from the hospital. Breathing deeply to try and calm her sudden panic, she slowly looked around and tried to piece together her situation.

She was, indeed, still inside the Everfree Forest, the human's mud-stained 'poncho' draped over her to serve as a makeshift blanket. Celestia's sun was just visible overhead, peeping through gaps in the thick, enmeshed foliage. Morning dewdrops sparkled on leaves and flowers, lending everything a strange, shimmering beauty.

Then she slowly looked down, towards the human. He was standing with his back to her in the small clearing they had camped out on the edge of. In his hand was what looked-like a snapped-off treebranch, about half as long again as one of his arms, and he was putting it through a strange series of motions, sometimes tossing it high overhead to catch after it made several mid-air rotations, at other times spinning it in his palms with incredible speed and skill.

Not for the first time, Lyra glanced at her blunt hooves, and flexed them at the ankle joint, envying the privilege of digits.

'Oh, the things I could do to Bon Bon with hands…' she idly thought to herself, a grin half-born of lecherousness and affection spreading across her face. '…I could make her squeal…well, squeal more than I do already.'

The thought of her candy-sweet marefriend however only led her back into her current predicament, and looking back up she once again focused on the human and his strange exercises. The pattern of tosses and twirls seemed random at first, but eventually she noticed a pattern; every so often, he would bring the stick smartly to his side, one end resting against the floor, or buttress it against one shoulder, cupped palm supporting the base.

'He looks like a guardspony on parade, drilling with spears and swords…' she suddenly realized, thinking back to all the times she had passed by Canterlot Palace during the Changing of the Guard. 'Is he…is he a warrior?'

It was an alarming thought. After the debacle that was the changeling invasion of the recent Royal Wedding, most of Equestria had gone into a state of paranoia, fearing everypony and anypony could be an insectile invader. It had taken the full deployment of both the Solar and Lunar Guard, and their reservists, to various hotspots across the country, to restore the peace and reassure the population that the threat of Queen Chrysalis and her hives had passed. Shining Armor himself had been sent on an immediate tour of inspection in Ponyville as soon as his honeymoon had ended (and boy, that must have pissed Princess Cadance off to no end) , and it had been quite a shock for Lyra to see just how much Twilight's sweet, slightly dorky BBBFF had grown into such a commanding presence. At the wedding, when both he and Lyra herself were not under the googly-eyed influence of Chrysalis, he had been much the same colt she remembered from their youth, but in his armor of office, scouring Ponyville and the Everfree for possible pockets of changeling resistance, he had been an intimidating sight.

It was the same feeling, of immense strength tempered with years of training, that she now sensed radiating off the human as he practiced with his stick. Seeing how gracefully he handled it made her nervous, for the first time, of just how deadly his hands could be with their amazing fingers wrapped around the hilt of a weapon.

Troubled, and wondering if it was best to try and make her escape before he noticed she had woken, she rolled to one side, and came face-to-face with the severed head of a Timberwolf. For one heart-stopping moment she stared into the animal's cold, dead eyes, and then she screamed aloud.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhiieiee!"

The head, lying neatly on the forest floor, bloody sap pooling around it, did not react to her shriek. Chest heaving, Lyra slowly reached out with one hoof and bopped the decapitated object on the snout, as if to confirm this was not a nightmare.

It was wood. Solid, dead, wood. Lyra herself was ready to scream again when she suddenly heard something go 'scrunch' in the litter beside her. Slowly, she turned, to see the human towering over her.

His 'stick', she could now see, was actually the dead Timberwolf's tail.

"Well..." he said in his deep voice. "I suppose there's worse ways to wake up."

Lyra yelped and rolled away from him, her coat fluffing itself up in an instinctive attempt to intimidate him by making herself seem larger. Suffice to say, it didn't work.

"H-human!" she squealed in fright, backing away from him as she did. "Uh…good, good morning…"

Before she could say anything else, she felt her plot reverse into something large, heavy, and sticky. Dreading what she would find, she slowly swallowed, turned her head, and saw that she had inadvertently located the rest of the timberwolf's corpse. More of the creature's deep-red ichor was now smeared over her flanks, lending her cutie-mark a rusty patina.

"Ah…ah…ahahah!" she began to babble, eyes shrinking into pinpricks as she burst out in terrified laughter, only for the human to step towards her, pick her up, and stare sternly at her.

"Ambassador Heartstrings!" he barked, stunning her into silence. "Get it together, right now!"

London, England, 2020 Anno Dominae

"Ambassador Heartstrings!" someone roared. "Get it together, right now!"

Heathrow Airport was chaos given physical form. Jets crowded nose-to-tail along the taxiways, fighting and jostling for access to the runways. Helicopters were crammed into gaps between the airliners, rotors roaring in readiness for flight. Anyone with a portable radio would have found every aviation frequency jammed with angry shouting as pilots and Air Traffic Control argued over which aircraft had priority.

Amid the chaos, people flowed between the flying machines like a living flood, British and American servicemen directing them onto waiting flights.

"It's not enough!" sobbed a mint-green unicorn, standing to one side with her cream marefriend. "There's not enough room for all of them!"

"I said pull it together Ambassador!" snapped her bodyguard, a burly man wearing the uniform of a US Marine. "You're one of the few Equestrian allies these people have. They need to see you strong in this moment."

"Ponies!" one group of refugees screamed in their direction as they passed, words heated and angry. "Thieves! Murderers! Merry-go-Round toys!"

"Are you sure it's really us they need to see?" Bon Bon snidely asked, stepping aside as a hurled bottle smashed into the jetway beside them. "I don't understand, don't they see there's no need for this pain? If they just allowed themselves to be ponified they'd not have to suffer any of this. There's plenty of room within the barrier for everypony, and they'd never have to worry about anything ever again!"

"If you've lived here all this time and not found the answer for yourself, then I doubt you ever will, Bon Bon" the soldier replied coolly.

It was Operation Neon Exodus, the final evacuation of the United Kingdom. To the south and east, beyond the suburbs of Hounslow and Richmond, the Equestrian Barrier stretched right across the horizon, slowly swallowing the center of the city that had once governed the British Empire. Some evacuees, already airborne, could only watch in horror as the pink wall of effervescent energy swallowed the London Eye and the gothic majesty of Parliament. With a colossal pealing of bells, the clock tower commonly referred to as Ben Ben groaned in a final death-knell as its foundations crumbled, before the towering structure collapsed backwards like a sinking ship, vanishing into the dimensional void. Moments later it was followed by Westminster Abbey, worldwide seat of the Anglican Church.

Slowly, unemotionally, the whole of London was being wiped away. Where the Great Fire of 1666 had failed, where Hitler's Blitz had bombed in futility, the 'magic' of Equestria was permanently erasing over two thousand years of history. By the end of the day, the city that the Romans had named 'Londinium' would cease to exist. Hundreds of miles away, the opposite front of the Barrier was encroaching on Berlin, where the US Air Force was spearheading a similar evacuation.

Everything in between, most of Western Europe, was already gone. Paris, the City of Lights, had been extinguished forever. The European Parliament had been dissolved along with the rest of Brussels, and Rome, although not built in a day, had fallen in just hours, along with Vatican City.

It had been a slow process, one lasting months as the Barrier had slowly expanded. Diplomatic appeals to Equestria had been met with stony silence or saccharine platitudes of 'this is only what is necessary, it's for your own good'. Physical attack against the barrier had also failed, with everything from gunfire to missiles simply disintegrating in the field of arcane energy. Even the forced de-orbiting of the International Space Station onto the heart of the dimensional junction, what had once been the Swiss city of Geneva, had made no scratch or breach.

The only option left was to run away, across the Atlantic, to North America. At the barrier's observed rate of expansion, Canada and the United States would not be in danger for between two and three years.

Maybe, just maybe, that would be enough time to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat.

"Word from the City!" someone shouted, and a soldier pushed through the crowd, carrying a handheld radio. "The King's convoy was intercepted by the PER on Kensington Road! Where's Prince William?"

"En-route from Windsor Castle with his family, coming round on the Eastern Perimeter Road now!" replied a sergeant of the Royal Marines, yelling to be heard over the howl of engines. "Why? What's happened to King Charles?"

"The…the report was incomplete, but…but…"

"For Heaven's Sake man, report!"

"The…the entire convoy was Ponyfied, including His Majesty and the Princess Consort."

"Then the King is dead…" replied the sergeant, before spinning on his heels and directing his attention towards his unit. "Long Live King William!"

The men took up the cry with a shout, proud even on the brink of defeat, before he led them off to secure the newly-promoted Monarch. Lyra, ears hanging despondently beside her head, could only watch as they ran in the direction of the expanding Barrier, now only six miles away and advancing at a remorseless walking pace.

Then, her eyes saw several dark pinpricks against the light of the barrier, high in the sky and advancing in formation. Rearing back in surprise she pointed a free hoof upwards with a shout of alarm.

"PEGASAI!"

"Lyra, Bon Bon" their guard grunted as he took the safety off his rifle. "We have to go, it's not safe here."

Equestria

"We have to go…" the human said, almost to himself, as he stirred the embers of the campfire with one of the dead Timberwolf's legs. "It's not safe here."

"Uh-huh?" Lyra replied leadenly, unsure of what to say and unable to pull her gaze away from the severed limb he was slowly fire-hardening.

Eventually he noticed to focus of her attention and waved the leg towards the rest of the corpse.

"You're wondering about this, right?" he said nonchalantly. "I went to…ah, 'relieve myself' in the night. Came back to see the bastard sizing you up as a possible meal."

His cadence suddenly turned slightly lyrical, as if telling a nursery rhyme. "Looking to gobble up a pony, in one fell swing..."

Shaking his head he began to chuckle softly. Lyra stared in disbelief, recognizing the words as Zecora's personal telling of the Legend of Nightmare Moon. After a few more seconds tempering the wood in the fire, the human lifted the glowing tip out and regarded it thoughtfully, the firelight reflected in his dark eyes. "Well, let's just say I managed to take him out before he got you."

Turning towards her he grinned, exposing his teeth. Lyra felt her breath catch when she saw the sharp canines and incisors positioned towards the front of his mouth, but then remembered that, according to her own research, humans were omnivorous. But not in the manner of pigs or rodents, no. There was a special term for it…

'Hunter-gatherer…' she suddenly remembered, her eyes wandering to the Timberwolf's decapitated head. 'Like the Griffins; intelligent, adaptive predators that use tools and the environment to achieve the kill…'

"Thank…you" she said at last. Terrifying master of the food chain he might be, but from the sound of things she owed him her life, and her thanks. "How...How did you manage to kill it without waking me up?"

"It's amazing how single-minded carnivores are when they are about to make a kill." The human replied idly, as if discussing the weather schedule. "Though I really didn't expect the head to fall off after I snapped the...uh...neck?"

"It is made of wood." Lyra pointed out, relieved to feel a little of her usual contrariness coming back to her.

"I didn't know that at the time. I thought it was a regular wolf." The human rolled his eyes, before silently beginning to twist the claws out of the severed limb. Lyra, for her park, could only gape at his supreme indifference to the fact that he had taken down one of the Everfree's Apex Predators.

As she stared, she finally noticed a detail about him that had eluded her until now. There, on his shoulder, was what was surely a cutie-mark, one more intricately beautiful than any she had seen on any pony.

It portrayed an eagle perched atop a large sphere, behind which could be seen a large anchor. Tipping her head Lyra took in as many details as possible. The eagle's wings were spread in a gesture of pride, and in its mouth it carried a banner, on which were emblazoned two words.

'Semper Fidelis' she mouthed to herself, recognizing it as Old Equin, the lingua franca of the old Unicorn Kingdoms. 'Forever Faithful.'

Wondering at how he was marked in the dominant language of magic and spellcasting (another mystery amongst many), her attention finally shifted to the sphere, which was surely a depiction of a globe. It was an unfamiliar hemisphere, one dominated by two counterweighted continents that were joined together by a narrow isthmus.

"Is…is that Earth?" she said at last, pointing with one hoof.

The human, who had been trying to grip some of the timberwolf's claws between his fingers, turned to glance down at his own shoulder, and frowned, as if offended.

"Yes…" he grunted. "North and South America. Pretty much the only landmass left where the Barrier has not made landfall, unless you count Australia and Antarctica, but no-one ever does. Ha!"

Suddenly, he stood and began dusting himself off. "Okay, time to get out of here."

"Hold on a minute!" Lyra barked out. "So, everything you told me last night, all of that was true?"

"Of course it's true." The human rolled his neck, the sound of cracking bones causing Lyra to winch. "I can't make that kind of stuff up. Now come on, we need to get out of here before the Solar Guard come for us."

"Wait! Why would they come after us?!" Lyra asked in surprise.

"Because, notwithstanding the fact that I technically kidnapped one of her subjects, the two of us reunited are perhaps the greatest threat to Celestia's plans to dominate Earth," the human answered. "Just look…the fact that I'm standing here, breathing this air, proves that all her crap about humans being unable to survive in Equestria without ponification was an utter lie. Her mistake in bringing me here could be the event that topples her entire house of cards!"

Pausing in full flow his expression hardened, and her turned down to regard Lyra with a stern glare.

"And I swear, Lyra, for raping your memories, for faking your death, for all her crimes against humanity and ponydom alike, I'll make sure it's the last mistake the Royal Bitch ever makes."

And there he was again, going off about her apparent 'death'. Well, enough was enough.

"Alright, tell me this. How did I...uh...'die'?" she asked, putting her hoof down. "Because even with Princess Celestia's level of magic, I'm pretty sure either myself or Bon Bon would have noticed something as important as my departure to the Great Hereafter!"

"Petrifaction" he replied bluntly. "You were turned into stone."

"Oh!" Lyra started. "Well, that possibly makes sense. They say petrifaction is just like falling asleep, and then you wake back up as soon as the magic is…"

"…and then an angry mob smashed you into rubble" the human finished, cutting off the rest of her sentence. "Bon Bon was chained in place and forced to watch, before they did the same to her."

"Wha-wha…" Lyra stammered, frozen in horror, before regaining control of her body and narrowing her eyes. "No! Just, NO! There is no possible way that Celestia, Princess Celestia, would allow something like that to happen, let alone forcing a special somepony to watch the…the murder of their loved ones!"

"SHE DID!" the human shouted aloud, the force of his yell laying Lyra's ears flat along her head. "She murdered millions of people, with the barrier, and her potions, before she even got to you. All of Europe, and massive chunks of Africa and Asia, millions killed so that she could…reshape them in her own image!"

"Well, what's wrong with that!" Lyra screamed back. "From what I've seen, humans are just angry, abusive, bloodthirsty psychopaths! Why wouldn't you be better off as ponies?!"

The second the words left her mouth she realized she had gone too far. The human, 'stick' in hand, shoulders rising and falling with every angry breath, stared at her for a long, furious moment. Slowly, she began to edge way.

Then he laughed softly, low and dark, like the distant roll of approaching thunder.

"You sound just like Bon Bon did, before Heathrow…" he said, before straightening upright and beginning to once again repeat his strange drills, tossing, catching, spinning and presenting the club he had fashioned for himself.

As he did, he began to speak aloud, as if reciting from memory. "The power of the Amiomorphic Spell is not to be denied, but for all its ability to reshape the form of a pony, it is incapable of true metamorphosis. For a short time, a unicorn might know the joy of flight, or an earth pony the grace of magick, but these transformations are, by the decree of natural law, a temporary state. To effect a permanent change in any creature's innermost alignment, which arises from the magic of the soul, would require a vile ensorcelling of that same soul, a disfiguration and violation so blasphemous, so abhorrently contrary to the truth of Harmony, that it sickens me to even contemplate the possibility. Know this well, my little ponies..."

"Starswirl the Bearded…" Lyra said at last. "You know your classics."

"I should do" he replied, eyes focused on the blurring motion of his hands. "You introduced me to his writings…and the Daring Do novels."

He sighed, and turned his head slightly so that he could just perceive her at the fringe of his vision. "When the Ponification Potion was first announced, it seemed like a blessing. An end to disease, to pestilence and disfiguration, all contained in a scant few ounces of magical goop. The only cost was our opposable thumbs. Honestly, my first reaction was the hope that I might be a Pegasus…"

Then he glowered. "But then, the more insidious changes made themselves known in the first 'newfoals'. They were different, in ways beyond the physical. You saw it in little things at first – they could no longer swear, and always seemed happy, particularly when the subject of Equestria came up. Then they began changing their names to something 'more pony', and started to proselytize on behalf of Celestia and Ponyfication, regardless of what they had believed before, or why they had made the choice to 'go pony'. Give it six months or so, and you'd not be able to recognize the person they once were, in the pony they had become. By that point most of them had quit their old jobs, abandoned their old interests, foresworn their old culture, even cut off ties to friends and family who refused to Ponify. The majority eventually emigrated to Equestria with not a backward glance. That was when the barrier began to expand, and Celestia showed her true colours. She was stealing us…robbing us of our friends, our family, our history, and our entire world."

"That's…that's terrible!" Lyra exclaimed, a shudder running through her at the implications of what he was saying.

"Oh, it got worse" he seethed. "Some ponies, and people, decided that it wasn't enough for the Barrier to force people to either ponify or die, but that the right thing to do was accelerate the process. They called themselves the PER."

"P-PER?" Lyra asked.

"Ponification for Earth's Rebirth!" the Human spat. "A terrorist group that went around forcing humans to change into ponies. Their favorite tactic was Potion-bombing. They called it 'Equestria's grace'. I called it 'rape'."

Lyra shuddered at the venom in his words, and then realized that he had stopped drilling, and was instead staring at her, pointing with the stick as if it was some sword of destiny.

"You were the one that ousted them, Ambassador Heartstrings" he said coolly. "Celestia publically denounced the PER, while she was actually accepting their members into Equestria with full pardons, secret ponifications. You revealed her duplicity, and publically acknowledged what the potion did to humans; wiping away their very essence, their spirit and very soul. You stood before the cameras of the world to vocally disown Equestria as your home country, and to confirm that regardless of whatever she said, the Solar Tyrant's goal was the conquest of Earth. Many other ponies escaped from Equestria to join you in founding the PHL. Others, like the Human Liberation Front, were initially wary of you, and their hardcore membership, the supremacists and fringe-wing bastards, still refuse to see any pony as anything but enemies. But you managed to prove your worth to many humans after Thunderchild, and your death made you a martyr, even among those who did not trust you."

Lyra looked at the ground, unsure if what he was saying was true. She looked back up to look at his face, seeing the sincerity burning in his eyes like a righteous fire. Then she spun on her hooves and began the trek back to Ponyville, head held high.

"Hey?! Where you going?!" the human yelled in surprise. "We need to head away from Ponyville and the Canterhorn, not towards them!"

"No." Lyra said firmly. "If what you said is true...Then I need to see for myself."

"You still think I'm lying!?" For all his strength, the human looked hurt at this.

"No..." Lyra said, her stride faltering for a second before she pushed on. "I believe you...but there is no barrier surrounding Equestria. Across the Eastern Ocean lies the Griffin Kingdoms, and the San Palomino Desert and the Badlands border the south. You can just see the desert mesas from Canterlot on a good day, and the mountains of the Frozen North in the opposite direction. And last I checked, none of them had been replaced by a dimensional void! At least...I don't think so."

She turned and looked back to where he still stood in the clearing. "Look, I'm confused too, but one thing is definite in my mind. You said Twilight Sparkle is the enemy, but I've known Twilight since I was a filly and I know that's not possible. She's a gifted, socially awkward and very headstrong pony, but despite that, she's one of the best friends you could ever have."

'And she's the Element of Magic' Lyra added to herself. 'If magic equals friendship, if true magic stems from Harmony, then ergo, Twilight's gift is not only magic, but the essence of friendship, or harmony, or empathy, whatever!'

"The Twilight you described to me last night is a raving egomaniac!" she continued. "Confident, arrogant, full of herself, and the head of a cabal of terrorists, not the six mares I know. She's like a parody of the real Twilight Sparkle, and I refuse to accept that they are truly the same pony. There's something going on here, yes, but it's not what you think it is…"

Her breath expended, Lyra trailed off, directing as pleading a look in his direction as possible. The human grimaced and looked away, crossing his arms and tapping his fingers against his biceps.

"Please…" she implored. "You said I was the first pony to speak the truth, so please believe me now."

"Argh...fine!" he grunted, reaching for the mud-stained remnants of his poncho. "But so help me, Heartstrings, if we get caught I will cut your head off just to deny Celestia the privilege."

Lyra smiled and nodded her head, hoping that the threat was his version of a joke.

"Don't worry!" she said, trying to force a bright note of optimism into her voice. "It's still early in the morning, so nopony will be awake at this time."

Then, as Lyra watched, he tore the poncho in two, and fashioned one into a sling with which to carry the Timberwolf's head.

"What are you doing?" she gagged in disgust.

"Getting supplies if this turns into a fight," the human explained. He made a fist, and Lyra felt herself turn pale as she realized that the Timberwolf's claws, gripped between his fingers, now projected forward like spikes.

"And what is a…a head going to do in a fight?"

"Well, the sight of it alone was enough to shut you up. How would you react if it came flying at your own face?" the human smirked toothily as he hefted it across one shoulder. "I'm the Headless Horseman, and this is my flaming pumpkin!"

With that, the two of them started off down the rough track towards Ponyville, the human still carrying his stick braced across his chest, like a glaive.

"Heck," he said, a little too enthusiastically for Lyra's taste. "If I get lucky and this turns into a free for all, I might even get a chance to take Sparkle out."

"Umm..." Lyra replied, managing an awkward grin. "When you first arrived, Twilight blasted you straight through a wall."

"I was distracted" he replied defensively.

"By what?"

"I was in the middle of trying to take Rarity's head off."

The Golden Oaks Library, Ponyville

Twilight yawned and smacked her lips as she woke up from an uneasy night's slumber. Slowly, she looked around and felt a smile blossom within her.

All her friends lay around her, sleeping soundly next to each other in the library's main room. Rarity was cuddling Spike in herself as she slept, the young drake looking like he was in a private heaven as he hugged her back. Applejack and Rainbow leaned lightly against one another, sometimes wincing when they touched on one of their injuries, but still dreaming soundly. Fluttershy and Pinkie looked comfortable, although how Pinkie had managed to get into a sleeping position on top of and across Fluttershy's own back was beyond Twilight's reasoning. Fluttershy herself was oblivious, head curled up on her hooves and making soft whistling sounds as she slumbered.

'Even her snores are graceful!' Twilight marveled as she quietly rose to her feet and carefully moved among the mares that had become as close to her as family. Her good mood faded however as her eyes alit on the injuries her friends had sustained during yesterday's fight. Word was that the human had escaped custody in the hospital shortly after she and her friends had left, taking some Canterlot doctor as a hostage. Twilight and her friends had volunteered to help mount a search, but the town guardsponies had insisted that, Bearers of Harmony or not, the six of them needed to rest.

Feeling a twinge of pain in her back, Twilight could not help but agree with that sentiment, even as she reflected sadly on how quickly an otherwise perfect day had fallen apart.

'Dear Princess Celestia' she began to write, having taken hold of a quill and parchment from her writing desk. 'Although you may have already been made aware of recent events in Ponyville, I have news of an uncertain and possibly grave nature to report to you…'

Ponyville Park, Yesterday

"C'mon Twilight!" pleaded Spike. "It's a beautiful day, why've you always got to have your snout buried in some mouldy old book?"

"It's not some mouldy old book Spike, and even if it was I would treat it with the respect it deserves" Twilight replied primly, before clutching the volume in question to her chest and squealing in delight. "It's the newest Daring Do novel, and I managed to get the first copy in town! Rainbow Dash was so jealous!"

"Yeah yeah" Spike replied, rolling his eyes before directing his attention to the newest member of the Golden Oaks family, the infant phoenix he had recently taken in. "C'mon Peewee, I'll show you the sights. It's your first time visiting the park after all."

Twilight smiled fondly as the young dragon walked away, Peewee perched on his shoulder. Finally assured of a moment's peace, she lay down on her belly, and turned to the first chapter of 'Daring Do and the Fallout Quest', by the renowned authors Kay Kat and Somber Bush.

'If I'm going to tell you about my adventures as Daring Do…' she read aloud. 'I'm going to first have to tell you about pipbucks…'

Then, she blinked and squinted at text, struggling to make out the suddenly blurred words. She felt woozy. Why did everything suddenly taste purple, and why was her horn aching?

Magic…somewhere a massive spell was being cast. Nearby, yet somehow, far away at the same time. Everything seemed skewed…sideways, or twisted up. Her eyeballs felt like they were being pulled inside-out.

"Uh...Twilight?" she heard someone say, and attempting to turn to face them she only succeeded in rolling onto her side, as if she had several flagons of hard cider in her. Spike was standing in front of her, his head tilted to one side in confusion. Peewee was mimicking his posture.

"Twilight…all the other unicorns are acting kinda…dopey…are, are you alright?"

"Magic…" she managed to force out, sweat beading on her brow. "Incredible, magic…"

Then, as quickly as it came, she felt the spell gradient peak, leveling off into a steady, stable mandala. The symptoms of thaumic overexposure almost immediately abated, and she struggled to her hooves, the latest adventures of Daring Do forgotten.

"Come on Spike!" she yelled, quickly levitating the drake onto her back before she took off running towards Town Center.

"Twilight! What's wrong?!" Spike shouted as he tried to keep Peewee held safely against his chest.

"I don't know. But there's a lot of magical energy manifesting in town. Look at all the unicorns!" she replied, and Spike looked around to see all the unicorns either lying sprawled on the ground, or turning like weathercocks in the same direction as Twilight.

"How much magic are we talking about?" Spike asked.

"A lot!" was all Twilight could manage as she galloped past the Hooves couple, Derpy and her husband, the renowned academic Time Turner. "Like off the end of the meter lot! But it's so strange! I feel like I should recognize this energy signature, but at the same time it feels so alien!"

Finally Twilight hurtled into the Town Square, homing in on the source.

"Where is it? Where are you?" She muttered, one eye twitching as she turned in circles.

"Uh...Twilight."

"Not now Spike."

"Twilight."

"Come on, where are you?"

"TWILIGHT!" Spike screamed, forcing Twilight to look at the baby dragon.

"WHAT?!"

"Look!" Spike shouted, grabbing hold of his surrogate sister's head and turned it towards the centre of the Square, where a speck of octarine light burned brightly just above eye level. Then, before Twilight could appraise it, the pinprick expanded with a crackling roar into a large, shimmering numbus, large enough to drive the Friendship Express through.

"Amazing..." Twilight breathed, eyes wide as she took a step closer. "A stable trans-material portal. But Trans-mat spells require immense reserves of power to perform...so who made you-EEK!"

Twilight abruptly jumped back as something came tumbling out of the portal, landing in a crude roll that left it standing upright on two legs. The bipedal being groaned as it staggered away from the portal, before flopping onto its back and staring dumbly up past the scattered clouds.

"Blue…" it muttered. "Not seen blue sky in years."

Twilight ignored his rambling for a moment, summoning all her magic to try and 'spike' the portal, tracing it back to its point and pony of origin.

"Come on, come on, where are you from?" she muttered, before growling in frustration when the portal abruptly collapsing back into a singularity which immediately winked out of existence.

"Ponyfeathers!" she seethed, before turning back to see the creature laying on the ground., moaning in pain.

To her horror, Spike was slowly approaching it, Peewee chirping from his customary perch on the dragon's shoulder.

"Hey...are you okay?" Spike enquired, gently reaching out to touch it with the tip of a claw.

"Spike!" Twilight yelled, everything she had ever read about first contact with exotic species crashing through her mind in a panicked torrent. "Get away from it! You don't know what it is capable of!"

Her horn glowed, capturing the baby dragon and dragging him back to her. Then her blood ran cold as she heard the newcomer mutter her name.

"Spa…Sparkle?"

The word was loaded with enough dread to sink a ship. Abruptly the being sat up, staring at her with mix emotions.

"Um...sorry," Twilight said nervously, suddenly aware that her words might have offended the creature. "I didn't mean to-"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" It screamed, it's voice deep and threatening.

"Wait! You're hurt we can-AH!" Twilight's eyes suddenly burned as the biped hurled a scoop of dirt into her eyes. Through the pain and tears, she could just see it scrambling back up into the same bipedal posture it had assumed on arrival.

"I SAID STAY AWAY, YOU GOD DAMN KILLER!" the being screamed, bolting away from Twilight while she tried to clean her eyes.

"Twilight!" Spike rushed to steady her.

"I'm…I'm okay, Spike. Where did he go?" Twilight's horn glowed as she placed Spike on her back, Peewee having flown away in fright.

"That way!" Spike pointed, and Twilight galloped off in hot pursuit, only to turn the corner and see that the creature was fleeing straight towards the Everfree Forest.

"Wait! You can't go in there!" Twilight grimaced and her horn glowed once before a bolt of magic flew straight for the beings back. Her eyes widen in shock as she saw the bolt slam into his back, causing him to stumble but otherwise kept running.

"What was that?" Spike asked in surprise.

"It was suppose to put him to sleep!" Twilight said numbly, shaking her head and kept running. She watched as the being was nearing the end of town when Applejack and Rainbow trotted into view, both of them talking...or arguing, she couldn't really tell. "Girls! Grab the creature!" Twilight shouted.

Both mares turn and look in surprise at Twilight's shout, only now noticing the being running. What shocked them was that the creature itself. It's steps faltered when it saw them, its face filled with shock, before rage plastered onto his face in full force, zeroing in on the two mares.

"YOU FUCKING CUNTS!" The being roared in anger. Rainbow wings spread out and she flapped into the air, while Applejack spun and kicked her hind legs to buck the approaching being.

The being on the other hoof, wanted none of that. It lept onto Applejack hindquarters, viciously shoving off Applejack, forcing her into the ground. The being flew through the air towards a very surprised Rainbow Dash, who couldn't react in time to avoid the tackle, forcing her back onto the hard ground.

The two rolled around for a bit, but the creature managed to pin Rainbow on her stomach. "Hey! Got off of me!" Rainbow struggled to throw off the angry being, but was unable to move.

"Lets see how well you fly," The being hissed in pure rage."When your wings are nothing more than tattered remains!" He began to pull, causing Rainbow to cry out in pain, doubling her efforts to throw the creature off.

"I got you Dash!" Applejack ran straight at the being, tackling him off Rainbow. Unfortunately, two wet pops was heard and Rainbow cried out in agony.

"My wings!" Rainbow cried, Twilight rushing up to Rainbow, her horn glowing brightly and covered the Rainbow's wings. "Thanks Twilight!"

"Don't thank me yet. That is only a numbing spell, your wings are still damaged." Twilight explain, her horn glowing once more and throwing a bolt at the being, who only shrugged it off. "Gah! He is resistance to magic!"

"I got this!" Rainbow ran straight at the wrestling duo.

Applejack was breathing heavily, trying desperately to wrangle the angry being on top of her. But the claw like appendages was giving him the advantage in the tussle. "I got you AJ! Take this!" Rainbow tried to buck the creature, but the being leaned back and avoid the blow. At the same time, kneeing Applejack in the gut, causing her to lose her breath.

The being grabbed the extended hind legs and held onto tightly. Rainbow look back, chuckling nervously. "He he...How you doing you big stud?" Rainbow yelped as the being got back onto his hind legs, and began to spin rapidly. "Hey! HEY! STOP!"

"FUCK OFF, BLUE BITCH!" The being threw Rainbow at a food stand, causing it to collapse ontop of her, trapping her underneath. Applejack struggled to get back to her hooves, but was kicked over by the being.

"You are so proud of your legs." The being gave a deep chuckle, causing Applejack to shrink in fear. "Lets see how you get through life with out them." He began to lay into them, its claws clenched tightly and pounding into her hindquarters, causing her to cry out in pain. Another bolt slammed into his back causing him to stumble off Applejack.

"Get away from her!" Twilight shouted, her horn glowing brightly, causing the being to hesitate for a bit. This was enough for a normally shy pegasus to get in front of Twilight, a full blown Stare at the being's direction.

"How dare you..." Fluttershy whispered, her eyes growing large as she Stared at the aggressive being. She flew directly in his face, pointing her hoof at his chest. "How dare you hurt me fri-ark!?" The being's claws quickly wrapped around Fluttershy's neck, stunning Twilight at the failed stare.

"Oh...How I waited for this moment..." The being's claws tighten, Fluttershy's hooves desperately trying to loosen the hold on her neck. "How I waited to do this to you. How does it feel, monster? How does it feel to be held in a death grasp with no means of escape? DIE!" His claws began to tighten, Fluttershy's eyes widen in fear and lack of air.

"That's not nice!" Pinkie appeared between Fluttershy and the being, holding a whipped cream pie. "Here, have a pie and not have anypony die!" Pinkie slammed the pie into the being's face, causing him to shout out in rage, wiping his face clear of the confection. This freed Fluttershy of the death grip and Twilight quickly rushed her away from the being.

The being cleared his eyes and they widen in surprise when he saw the big blue Party cannon directed straight at him. "Surprise!" Pinkie slammed the button, firing the cannon and sending the being flying through a window.

"Pinkie! That was amazing!" Twilight said, looking at the broken window. "You saved Fluttershy."

"Its what I do- DUCK!" Pinkie tackled Twilight to the ground, and something came flying out of the broken window, lodging itself the ground behind the two.

A very large knife was embedded deeply into the ground, wobbling from the force used to throw it, causing Twilight and Pinkie to pale as they turn to see the being jumping back out the broken window. "Fucking pink annoyance." The being growled. "Hope you are up to a fight Pinkamina, because I am about break you!"

"Can't we be friends instead?" Pinkie ducked while Twilight teleported away, "My name is Pinkie Pie, but you already know that. Hey, how did you know my name anyways? You don't have to be a big meany and we can all be-"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" The being roared, startling Pinkie, but not enough to get a hit on her. Pinkie was ducking and weaving between the blows, but her face was slowly morphing from a happy smile, to one of concentration, and finally into panic as the claws was now grazing her pink form.

The being managed to trip Pinkie and raised his hind leg into the air, to stomp on the down pony. That was before a rope managed surround him and wrap tightly around him.

"What a beast." Rarity trotted up, a limping Applejack behind her. "As the story goes, it takes a beauty to take down the beast." Rarity smiled and pushed up her mane. The being stared at her once before growling and took off at a dead run. Rarity eyes narrowed and the rope glowed once, tightening to squeeze the air out of the being, but the rope refuse to tighten further, stunning the fashion pony. "Oh dear."

"Stop it, Rarity!" Applejack shouted in fear, watching as the large being ran straight for them.

"I can't! My magic is slipping off the rope!" Rarity took several steps back, fear etched onto her face.

Twilight mind raced, trying to figure a spell to stop this seemingly unstoppable beast. Her thoughts

flashed to when she threw her magical bolt, causing the being to stumble.

"That's it!" Twilight teleported right next to to Rarity, right when the being took to the air, his hind legs close to its body in a attempt to launch brutal kick to Rarity. Twilight's horn glowed once before launching a bolt of unstable magic, causing an explosion once it hit the being, sending it flying through a wall.

"Darling, how ever did you get your magic to work?" Rarity gasped at the devastation before her. "Magic seem to slip off of him."

"Magic doesn't work very well on him, that much is true." Twilight explain. "But the force behind the magic is still in play. So I just used something with a lot of force."

"Like an explosion!" Pinkie exclaimed.

"Exactly." Twilight nodded.

"That is some smart thinking Sugercube." Applejack sighed in relief.

They all froze when the sound of broken wood being move. They slowly turn their heads to see the being standing before them, clutching a knife in his claws. It was breathing deeply, struggling to walk to them over the rubble.

"You think you won..." The being gasped, his breath short and shallow. "There are many of us that refuse to change..."

"What?" Twilight and her friends began to take several steps back.

"You will not change who I am..." The being growled, raising the knife in his hand. "I was born as a human being..."

Twilight mind faltered as she watched as the being, the human, grasped the knife with both claws and raised it over his head, his face set into a grim determination. Twilight's eyes widen when she realized what the human was going to do.

"I AM GOING TO DIE AS ONE!" He attempted to plunge the knife into his chest. But the blade glowed and fell short of the goal. Twilight face scrunched up in concentration, struggling with the knife as the human's strange resistance to magic made the effort almost moot. But Twilight managed to yank the blade away from the human's grasp.

The human watched as the blade floated away, low to the ground, its blade pointed upwards. The human made a desperate gambit and attempted to throw himself onto the blade. Twilight managed to move the blade away from suicidal being, causing the human to knock itself out by landing on its face.

The friends stared at the unconscious being on the ground for a moment, before Applejack sum up what everyone was thinking. "Okay...Now what?"

-End of memory-

Twilight sighed, looking out the window to see the sun slowly rising into the sky. 'Too early' She yawned and attempted to go back to sleep, only to hear a knock at the front door. Twilight groan and quietly made her way to the door.

"Urgh...who is it?" Twilight groan quietly.

"Twilight, its me, Lyra!" the voice on the other side said.

"Lyra? Argh...Its too early Lyra." Twilight muttered.

"Its about the human!" Lyra exclaimed. Twilight muttered angrily under her breathe and opened the door.

"And how do you know about...the..." Twilight voice faltered as she saw Lyra standing before her, behind her was the said human.

The human lean forward, a feral grin on his face. "Human." he finished for Twilight, whose ears flatten against her skull in fear.

"We have to talk Twilight." Lyra said quietly.

CHAPTER THREE: HARMONY AND HEGEMONY

"Even though a hedgehog may want to become close to another hedgehog, the closer they get the more they injure each other with their spines. It's the same with some humans."

– Neon Genesis Evangelion

"You've gotta share! You've gotta care!"

– Pinkie Pie

New York City, 2023 Anno Dominae

The title 'UN/PHL Joint Task Force Regional Headquarters' conjured up images of vast military bases filled with drilling soldiers and sympathetic ponies. Once upon a time, that might have been the case. Pegasai might have flown alongside the best aviators humanity could produce, while Unicorns and the scientific crème-de-la-crème poured their collective intellects into reverse engineering the principals of magic.

It was a nice fantasy, but what with the current state of the Union, besieged and terrorised, over-populated and under-fed, collapsing under an ever-growing swarm of refugees, just a fantasy.

The nuking of Washington DC had not helped either.

So now, New York's remaining Special Forces and Ponies for Human Life had taken control of a former Cold War bunker, a compact warren of tunnels and subterranean galleys planned back when the worst-case scenario was mere atomic annihilation.

Deep in the old fallout shelter, one mare stood slightly apart, a bulky flak jacket protecting most of her barrel, chest and forelegs. Her burgundy coat had faded somewhat away from the light of day, and her mane had been tied back in an efficient braid, but the three flowers emblazoned on her flank still smiled brightly.

"Any time now..." Cheerilee said softly, gazing at a map of continental North America. A series of curved lines had been drawn over it like contours, expanding out from the direction of Europe. The first few, curving down across Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, had been filled in with solid pink, marking the advance of the Barrier since landfall.

"...word from further up in New England is that people are fleeing south across the border..." murmured a man standing beside her, his arms folded in a tight crush of muscle. "The Narrows are crammed with ships that got out of Halifax before it was swallowed."

"And if what they say is true, then Celestia's forces are getting more...proactive..." Cheerliee, acknowledged, directing her attention towards a series of photographs littering the chart table. One was taken just before what could charitably called 'the Battle of Halifax', and depicted the Barrier advancing on that city's Angus MacDonald suspension bridge. More worrying however, was the colossal airship slowly emerging from the dimensional void, a seven-hundred-foot long cigar of hot air, fabric and enchanted clouds.

"I always wanted to travel in a skyliner..." she said wistfully, one hoof touching against the image. "Flying the friendly skies. But now..."

"...now they've learned a few tricks from human history," the man finished for her.

"Yes" Cheerliee nodded, slowly turning through the remaining photographs. The pictures depicted squadrons of pegasai disgorging from the airships, hurling glass phials of Ponification Potion into the streets below. In response, anti-aircraft fire poured up into the air, only to explode harmlessly against a shimmering field of purple energy shrouding the airborne leviathan.

Something seemed to catch in Cheerliee's throat, and slowly the former schoolmare sank to her knees, sobbing painfully.

"It's so wrong! How did we go so...so wrong!?"

"Shush-shush" the main said soothingly, dropping into a crouch so that he could comfort her. "It's not your fault Cher, any more than its Spitfire or Zecora's.

"We should have done more!" she howled. "Campaigned harder, spoken out more vehemently against Celestia, back before she began to push the barrier out."

"Mad gods caring not then..." someone, or somepony, interrupted, their voice a discordant mess of tangled syntax and lilting tones. "Now we're truthing seer of her."

Cheerilee paused in sniffling and looked up, as did the man who was holding her tight. "Hi, Bon Bon."

"Bonnie..." the human greeted, a note of shame creeping into his voice. "How are you holding up?"

"Will being fine, concordant concern contrasting..." the creamy Earth pony replied. She was standing in a pool of shadows, appearing to almost glow slightly with some inner luminescence. Slowly, she began to trot towards them, face screwed up in concentration. Something about her was...wrong, something about how she moved, like a drunken marionette, her legs working against each other.

And then there was that thing about her eyes...both Cheerilee and the human had lived around Derpy Hooves for years, so were used to the idea of a lazy eye. But Bon Bon's condition was...different, and it went deeper than just strabismus. Both moved independently of the other, focusing on other things...and other times.

Strapped to her side, in a modified bandolier, she was carrying a dusty, slightly battered lyre.

"Is being daymare bad..." she forced out, jaw muscles chattering in an attempt to formulate syllables. "But amfine-amfine-AMFINE!"

Shaking slightly, the mare began to weep out of her right eye, the left instead focusing on something only she could see. Such was the fate of Bon-Bon, ever since the PHL had rescued her from her own execution, but moments too late to save Lyra. Doctor Whooves had sadly diagnosed her suffering as chronological lobular desync disorder, an emergency crossing of the time-dimensional barrier causing Bon-Bon's already damaged psyche to crack wide open.

In simple words, she had suffered a temporal stroke, leaving the two halves of her brain in separate time zones. One was always in the present, while the other...wandered.

Sometimes she babbled about events that had yet to happen, or screamingly re-experience past horrors, not just from her own life, but of Eldritch nightmares from eons before Equestria's founding.

It was a painful, debilitating and humiliating fate. But at times, the ability to experience the future before it happened was extremely useful.

"Soon..." Bon Bon said, managing to co-ordinate her facial muscles enough to smile sadly. "Hurts, but soon, promising..."

Her head turned jerkily, so that one eye could catch sight of the lyre she took everywhere, and the small smile grew in its melancholy. "Not me...her and me...gone away, neverwhen again."

Now her left eye glistened with tears, the right narrowing in wrathful indignation. Slowly, Cheerilee broke away from the man who held her and moved to embrace Bon Bon.

"Oh Bonnie, I'm so sorry..." she said, before her tone grew firmer. "Bon Bon, I need you to focus. Listen to my voice, you're here, you're now, with us...and if you're seeing something, something important, then you have to tell us what that is..."

The former chocolatier's eyes rolled, one side of her body shaking as if being dragged around by invisible hands, then she managed a shuddering breath and stared straight at Cheerilee.

"Equestria, is, coming..." she said in short gasps, throat and lungs clenching. "Celestia...will...fight."

"What!" the human started. "She's going to fight on the front lines?"

"Noes!" Bon Bon cut him off, struggling to be understood, before a beatific smile spread across her muzzle. "Not...Tyrant, Celestia! Celestia, Luna, fight, with, us!"

Her head lolled to one side and both of her eyes converged on him.

"Fight with you too..." she said, voice half laughing, half groaning. "In Equestria, silly foals...say hello, to Lyra, and me..."

Her shoulders twitched like a beam engine, and then she began to giggle and sob, vaulting between the two like a tennis ball hurled back and forth across a net. Cheerilee held her tight, whispering gentle words, while the human simply turned and stared at the map.

"Fight with me, in Equestria? What does she mean."

Any further time for thought was cut short however. With a sharp knock on the door, another figure entered, the light glinting on the tribal jewellery adorning her neck and forehooves.

"Dearest friends, forgive me, I plea

But deeds are afoot of the gravest degree.

Ill news I bring from the refugee train,

The Barrier has passed through New Brunswick, to Maine!"

Golden Oaks Library, Ponyville, 2nd Year Anno Harmonia

In between everything that had happened, everything that had been called into question, one thing remained constant: when in doubt, Twilight Sparkle turned to books for the answers she sought.

But as she cautiously circumnavigated the library, one eye trained on the huge figure resting in the corner, Twilight would never have imagined that she would ever be searching for information on the demi-mythic creatures known as humans. That information was more the terrain of eccentrics and fantasists like Lyra...

...yeah, she was going to drop that train of thought, with a vengeance.

The human shifted slightly, resuming the same pose after moving to another section of the library; one from where his view of Twilight would not be blocked by any shelves.

Her friends, having been roused, were now sitting in a cautious ring at the centre of the candle-lit room. The curtains had been drawn and the 'CLOSED' sign was planted outside like a talisman intended to ward off any unwarranted attention. Lyra was with them, talking in a rapid murmur and trying her best to allay their fears. So far, none of them had made a move against him, though that might have had more to do with their memories of their last encounter than any success on her part at diplomacy.

She only hoped that no-one pointed out the absence of Spike; the young drake, having woken and declared that he had to 'go potty', had left for the bathroom while she had been putting the finishing touches on her letter to Celestia, before everything had gone wrong. The human, despite his familiarity with the rest of her closest circle of friends, seemed unaware of Spike's existence, having not demanded that she produce him or even questioned the scent of sulphur that faintly permeated the air (a sure sign that 'Past Spike' had eaten something that disagreed with him, which 'Present Spike' was now paying for).

Now Twilight could only pray that 'Present Spike' was keeping hidden upstairs, and that 'Now Or The Near Future Spike' had the sense to put out an SOS to Canterlot, while she made a show of going along with Lyra and the human's demands...

The human suddenly made a movement, reaching out with his club to gently push one of the curtains aside and peek out of the venerable old treehouse. Dimly, Twilight could hear the sound of familiar voices and hooves trotting past. Trying to see who he was spying on, she got a decent view of his 'club', and shivered slightly in disgust when she realised that it was in fact the limb of a dead Timberwolf.

It made her worry as to what he was carrying around in the sling that hung from one of his shoulders.

"The Whooves family..." she heard him grunt in surprise, before he lowered the curtain back into its normal place. Then he turned to them and made a curious observation: "Dinky's missing her cutie mark."

"What in the hay!" exclaimed Applejack. "Derpy and Time Turner's lil' filly, that Dinky? She ain't missin' a cutie-mark, she simply ain't found her special talent yet!"

"Her special talent is empathic perception" he replied bluntly. "Her cutie-mark is five golden sparkles, one for herself, each member of her family and her coltfriend."

"My good sir, kindly keep your perversions at bay!" Rarity said haughtily. "A young filly is hardly of an age to be seeing boys!"

"When a colt and a filly help one another through a warzone and back to their families, I consider it perfectly acceptable for them to forge a relationship," he replied coldly. "Dinky and Pip have been dating for over a year."

Cautiously he drew the curtain aside again, watching the lavender filly happily bouncing around her mother, step-father and adoptive sister, Sparkler. "We had a cutecenera for her in New York nine months ago...or we will do – this Dinky looks younger, and Sparkler's not had her ear pierced yet."

He turned slowly towards the gathered ponies and glowered deeply. "...did I go back in time? Is this Equestria before contact was made with Earth?"

After a long moment he seemed to realise the foolishness of his question and coughed deeply. "Forget I said anything..."

Twilight nervously shifted to grab a hold of one library book with her teeth: when she had first tried to retrieve one with her magic he had threatened to rip off her horn. The most horrible thing was, she felt he meant it. The weight of his gaze was heavy on her, promising judgement and condemnation for crimes allegedly committed. Turning towards her slightly she once again shuddered at the cold depths of his eyes. If she could compare Fluttershy's Stare to the human's, there would be no contest. Fluttershy's gaze overwhelmed and cowed, stripping away lies and excuses and forcing the offender to feel her sheer outrage at their actions.

One the other hoof, the Human's Stare promised only pain and suffering. Lot and lots of pain and suffering. And Twilight knew that he could break her and her friends with just a bit of effort. She doubted she could get away with throwing him through a wall twice. It was amazing that he had been able to get back up after that, let alone attempt to take his own life, and then fight and struggle through all the hospital's attempts at magical sedation. Any other creature should have been barely able to walk, let alone fight, not after that amount of punishment.

And still the mystery of his origin presented itself. That he knew them, in some manner, was impossible to deny. His reaction to Dinky and the Whooves was also one of concerned familiarity, unless it was all part of a superb act.

'Is he right? – has he come back in time, from a point after some terrible catastrophe hurled his world and ours together...' she pondered as she retrieved the last reference book. Her own experiences with time-travel had led her to not discount the possibility, but the implications were catastrophic, to say the least.

"Here", she announced, transferring the book in her mouth to the small stack on the table. "Everything I have on humans is contained in these volumes."

It was an eclectic collection, to say the least, ranging from renowned texts like 'Unmagical Beasts and Where to Find Them' and several anthologies of 'The Royal Canterlot Archaeological Society Gazette', to far-side quackery like 'Ponyland: Fact or Fable?' and 'The Dream Valley Conspiracy: What They'll Never Tell Us'. From the date stamps inside, Twilight had seen that all of them had at some point been loaned out by Lyra, and now the mint-green unicorn fell on them like old friends.

"Oh!" she said excitedly, flicking through the pages. "The Archaeological Society thought Doctor Waggoner had gone off the deep-end, but he was right! And all these years, I knew that someday I would prove him right!"

Twilight glanced over her shoulder, and saw that the human was not approaching, instead remaining in a position where he could see all of them at once. Gauging his reaction, she slowly stepped closer to Lyra. He growled slightly in warning, but made no effort to approach them.

"Lyra...are you alright?" she asked. "Did he hurt you?"

"No...he just...just told me a lot of things." Lyra stated as she searched through the books.

"How did you even find him? And where is the pony he foalnapped yesterday?" Twilight hissed, her eyes narrowed on the bipedal interloper.

"Foalnapped?" Lyra asked in confusion, before a look of understanding crossed her face and she beamed. "Oh...yeah, that was me!"

"What?!" Twilight replied. "You were the doctor from Canterlot!?"

"He he..." Lyra said, bashfully scratching the back of her head. "Er...surprise?"

"Lyra..." Twilight sighed, one frustrated hoof pawing her own forehead.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" Lyra sniped back. "I come back from visiting my parents in Manehattan, and what's everyone in town talking about the second I get off the train? Only that Twilight Sparkle & Company picked a fight with a dangerous creature that called itself a human! So I..."

She trailed off, hooves clopping together nervously.

"...I kinda hid outside the library and eavesdropped on your conversation. Very sorry! Hugs and kisses make better?"

"I...I just...argh!" Twilight exclaimed, instinctively reaching out to bop Lyra on the snout like she often had back in school.

This time the human acted, crossing the room in two strides and hefting Twilight up by the tail so that she dangled from his hand like a mad piñata.

"Do, not, touch, her..." he said gravely, voice growling and rumbling like an avalanche in birth.

"Lyra, this guy is dangerous!" Twilight shrieked, even as she hung upside-down from his powerful grip.

"Only to my enemies," the human muttered, before looking towards Lyra with a strange expression on his face, uncertainty laced with disquiet. Lyra nodded, her eyes beseeching, and slowly the human lowered Twilight back onto her hooves.

"Fine" he grunted. "I'll play nice. But only because Lyra convinced me you six are possibly not the monsters I know. At least, not yet...but make no mistake, I am watching you, Sparkle."

Twilight's friends, who had all jumped to their hooves when he made his move, now slowly settled back into various seating positions. The tension in the room deflated with an almost audible sigh, but still it lingered in the background. Like the human's stare, it was laced with threat.

The scholarly unicorn was now pleading with the universe that reinforcements would soon arrive from Canterlot. 'Please please please Spike, please have called for help!'

"Right..." Lyra said, making placating gestures with one foreleg. "We'll all nice, everypony, and every...human. Hrm...is 'everyhuman' the right word?"

"Everyone."

"Right, everyone. Now, if we could all, nice and easy, gather around the table, and then we'll have a friendly little chat..."

"Lyra..." Rainbow Dash snorted. "We're not in some Mobpony Movie, so stop talking as if we're about to get pie-bombed."

"Yes darling..." Rarity put in. "This is our home, not the Blizzard Conference..."

"Princess Platinium!" the human exclaimed. "That's it, I knew you reminded me of someone from Lyra's pony history lessons! Both of you are stuck-up bitches!"

Rarity might have lashed back in outrage if Lyra had not made a pleading expression, and with a little more cajoling, the seven mares and one human gathered around the table.

"This..." Lyra began, smugly holding up one book so they could see the image of an elder unicorn stallion printed inside. "Was Doctor Howie Waggoner, the pony who led the KV62 Party to a distant corner of the Griffin Kingdoms, a place called 'Dream Valley'."

"A party!" Pinkie exclaimed, only for Applejack to cut her off by clamping the party pony's mouth shut with both hooves.

"She means an' ecsphedision, Pinkie, not candy and games."

"Right" Lyra continued. "Based on stories passed around by Griffin traders, they were searching for evidence of possible pony habitation, from tribes who might have fled Equestria during the Discordian era..."

"Lyra...please don't go down this path again..." Twilight groaned. "Doctor Waggoner was unfairly maligned by his peers, but there's never been any evidence to lend credence to his theories. I mean it's not like magical trans-dimensional portals...pop into existence...every...single...day. Oh."

She trailed off, slowly looking towards her unusual 'houseguest', before turning her attention back to Lyra, affected cheer dripping from her words. "Right, please continue Lyra, full steam ahead!"

The anthropologist's grin grew even wider, and she did a little victory dance as she began to hold up more and more exhibits cribbed from the various texts. "Waggoner's digs in Dream Valley unearthed signs that yes, at some point ponies had indeed inhabited the site, before they were forced to leave by what is believed to be an eruption of a nearby volcano, what the Griffins called 'Mount Gloom'. Buried beneath layers of ossified mud floes, the expedition found an empty but perfectly preserved pony castle, with most of its contents protected by the smoozy goop that had covered it. The best part however, was that many of those ponies had kept records..."

She leaned forward, trying to adopt a spooky tone of voice. "...records that spoke of 'humans', powerful friends and allies from a distant land, a land 'beyond the Rainbow Bridge'..."

She closed the book with a snap. "Now tell me Twilight, if that does not sound like a metaphorical description of a portal!"

"Yes Lyra..." Twilight sighed, looking about as gleeful as if she was about to receive one of Colgate's root canals. "But Doctor Waggoner claimed his 'evidence' was lost at sea en-route home to Equestria. All he had to prove his alleged 'findings' were his own words!"

"But look at us Twilight!" Lyra exclaimed. "There's a human standing right next to you – one who must have come from the same place, somewhere beyond the rainbow!"

"Way up high..." the human added in a deadpan tone. "In a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby..."

The librarian's face scrunched up, and then Lyra cocked her head, smiling winsomely.

"Look, Twi. Do you have a map or globe of the world?"

"Huh?" Twilight was confused by her question, before turning back to the human and a look of understanding appeared on her face. "Oh, it's just over there..."

"Uh uh." the human pointed his stick at Twilight, shaking his head at her. "A globe's too big for one pony to carry, and I'm not having you using magic, Sparkle. Let Lyra grab it."

Twilight huffed again, but directed Lyra towards the appropriate door. A few seconds later, Lyra pulled out a globe of Equus, and placed it in front of the human. He scowled darkly and gave it a quick turn before, turning back to Twilight.

"It's all wrong..." he started to say, before Lyra cut him off:

"Twilight, is this an up to date globe?"

"Of course it is," Twilight responded, an insulted note creeping into her voice at the accusation that she would allow substandard research materials into her home.

"Right..." Lyra turned back to the human, and gave him a long, hard look. "Show her your cutie mark."

Eyes narrowed in suspiscion, the human complied, hitching up his tattered poncho to reveal one of his upper forelegs...arms, Twilight corrected herself. Anatomic accuracy went out of her mind though when she caught a glimpse of the complex image emblazoned on his strangely hairless skin.

'How...' she wondered, glancing back at her own flank, and at how her cutie mark was indelibly marked in her fur. 'Is it some magical change in his skin pigmentation?'

"It's not a cutie mark," he grunted abruptly, his eyes flickering sternly towards Lyra. "S' a tattoo..."

Twilight momentarily recoiled, realising he was describing a form of self-mutilation, the barbaric practice of injecting foreign dyes into the skin, but to her surprise she heard Rarity make a sound of understanding.

"Ah, like the zebras practise, Zecora told me all about it...oh settle down Twilight, dear, it's just a custom among his people, I'm sure."

"Okay then..." Twilight replied, making a mental note at how the human's face had flashed in recognition when Rarity had invoked the name of Ponyville's resident shaman herbalist. Then she slowly trotted forward at Lyra's prompting, keeping her eyes carefully fixed on the human as she approached him. He gave a single, heavy nod of permission, and the bookish unicorn carefully leaned in to examine the half-hemisphere emblazoned on his shoulder.

As she examined the strange pair of continents, turning her head from side to side in an attempt to reconcile it with any part of the geography of Equus, she heard Applejack speak up.

"Alrigh' ten bucko. If that ain't yer cutie mark, then wher' is it, or are you like em' poor mules and donkeys, wit' no magic to speak of?"

Twilight heard the human make a braying snort which she realised was some sort of broken laugh, and cautiously backpedalled as he answered Applejack.

"No magic on Earth; just fairy-tale stories, until Equestria manifested..."

'Manifested?' Twilight shook her head in confusion, before turning back towards the minty unicorn who was somehow at the heart of all this.

"Well Twilight?" Lyra asked, expression serious. "That there on his arm is a map of part of his world. Does it in any way match with ours?"

"No..." Twilight answered at length, and she saw Lyra direct her gaze at the human, as if trying to convey some kind of point. Beseechingly, Twilight extended a hoof towards her former classmate, desperate for answers, or at least a context.

"Lyra, what's happening here? Please, what's going on?"

The other unicorn simply inclined her head thoughtfully, and in her golden eyes Twilight suddenly felt a little spark of Princess Celestia, coaxing her towards finding the answer to a difficult problem on her own.

"Twilight, how much magic will it take to displace a being or object to another location, trans-dimensionally?" Lyra asked rhetorically.

"Lyra, you know about this..." Twilight began, only to trail off when she saw Lyra's jab her snout pointedly towards the human. Case in point.

"Alright then..." she sighed and slowly massaged her forehead, particularly the sensitive sinuses and nerve clusters around the base of her horn, trying to recall what she had felt yesterday when their guest had arrived in Ponyville. "A lot – I mean a crazy lot. Transmat spells require gigathaums of magic potenia, focused and directed with extreme precision. Put simply, you take a basic teleportation spell (which, I might add, not a lot of unicorns can cast anyway) and then invert it, trying to create a junction between two places so that mass can be shunted between them. But what you're suggesting is...look, a transmat spell is unstable enough as it is, but to pierce the dimensional veils would require a massive amount of arcane energy to stabilise the wormhole's boundary radius, otherwise the event horizon would just collapse in a burst of Squawking radiation. This is the kind of magic that is beyond the practical, or the theoretical..."

"Alright, so that's the initial connection" Lyra interrupted. "Massive power. And what then? Would there be a limit on what you could send through that portal?"

Despite the growing headache Twilight decided to let Lyra continue leading with questions. "Yes, that would have an effect. It would be dependent on the volume, mass, and number of objects being teleported. And then there are distance factors, once you account for relative dimensions in time and space..."

"How much to move a single house?" Lyra asked, and Twilight balked, giving out a short croak of laughter.

"Don't you remember Hearts and Hooves Day!? When Big Mac dragged Berry Punch's house off its foundations and all the way to Rarity's boutique!? It took the magic of every unicorn in Ponyville, including yourself I might add, just to teleport it five hundred yards back to where it should have been!"

"Ah...yeah, point taken..." Lyra blushed. In the corner of her eye Twilight could see Rarity wincing, and she felt herself reciprocate the motion. Having acted as the nexus for the spell to relocate Berry's house, guiding and shaping the raw magic supplied by Rarity, Lyra, Colgate and all the others, she had been bed-ridden for a week afterwards from magical over-exertion. The other unicorns had not fared so well either.

"At the level you're describing, Lyra, it depends on whether the unicorn wants to be alive or not after they try to force it." Twilight said at last "I could do it, possibly. But it would damage me, badly. I'd spend months recovering, assuming I didn't shear my horn off, mummify my magical tissues, or give myself an aneurism in the process."

All the other ponies, and the human, were now paying rapt attention, sensing that this conversation was nearing its peak. Lyra slowly trotted in place, a nervous tick Twilight had seen before, swallowed, and then raised her head.

"So, if that's just one house, then how about all of Equestria, all the way to our borders, and the ground beneath our hooves."

Twilight stared at Lyra, mouth hanging open, and then she felt her expression harden.

"No...that's just not possible. Not even Celestia could bend reality like that."

"But..." Lyra began, only for the now severely frustrated Twilight to cut her off, storming along in a full rant.

"Is that what you're saying? That somepony popped Equestria out of our reality and crashed it onto his? How's that even meant to work? Several trillion tons of continent does not make a gentle impact on another world, not without mega-tsunamis and earthquakes that would level entire cities, followed by a dust cloud that would blanket the world in an artificial winter lasting decades! And what about the world we leave behind, what about Equus? Would it just carry on spinning without a care, despite having a hole several-thousand-miles-across gouged out of the planet's crust? Even if you didn't breach the mantle, creating a supervolcano that would pull the planet inside-out, the change in mass and absence of the Princesses would throw the sun and moon out of their orbits, causing them to collide, or even worse, to impact with Equus itself! Anypony – anything, left behind would die, horribly! Every griffon, every dragon, zebra, reindeer, whatever!"

Everyone just stared as Twilight continued to vent, now pacing in a tight circle.

"And even if you could safely do something like that, without killing every being and creature at both ends of the exchange, what then? What about the social factors, the political, the economic! There'd be a revolt, an uprising, collapse of society even, especially if, and this is a very big if, it was revealed that the Princess had something to do with this, and don't try to tell me that you're not accusing her of this, because I CAN SEE IT IN YOUR EYES!"

Chest heaving, eyes huge and glaring, Twilight suddenly fell backwards and landed on her haunches with an exhausted sigh. The shocked silence was broken only when she curled up into a small, fuzzy ball and began to weep softly.

"But why...none of this happened, or has yet to happen, I don't know which. But why, why, why would anypony do something like that?"

Even as her friends moved to comfort her with soft nuzzles and embraces, Twilight stared up at the two figures standing across the room, silently begging them for answers; a small unicorn staring self-consciously at her hooves, and a huge, imposing figure who somehow, now, seemed a little ashamed at having made her cry, and not a little surprised to see how tenderly the six ponies were embracing one another.

Then, something changed in his face. The brief flash of compassion, perhaps even a tender appreciation of friendship in its most primal, nurturing state, suddenly collapsed under a storm of rage, and he swung his arm in an arc and punched the wall.

"WHO ARE YOU PONIES!" he roared, and even Lyra took a step back. From across the room, despite their injuries, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and surprisingly enough, Fluttershy, moved to put themselves between him and their friends.

"We're the Elements of Harmony, buck..." the farm pony said resolutely. "We take care of one another..."

"No!" he responded, a righteous fury seizing him. "You're meant to be monsters, lording your supposed 'harmony' over us like a mandate for our destruction. Argh!"

The fight seemed to purge from his system as quickly as it came, and he raised a hand in a gesture of 'wait', which the other pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Right, just...keep away. You're NOT the ponies I know, knew, you to be but...stay back. You have no idea what kind of shit I've been through since Equestria first made contact."

He turned and peered towards the fireplace, seeming to find a moment of peace in the dancing flames.

"The last time we all met, we were at war. Applejack pinned me down so that Twilight could administer the potion, promising to make me 'perfect'...a perfect pony..."

"Ponies ain't perfect, bub!" Applejack snorted grimly. "Anyone tells you otherwise don't know their flank from their face..."

"A-hum..." Fluttershy nodded. "Ponies can be mean, and cruel...but also kind..."

"Yeah!" added Rainbow Dash, proudly thrusting her chest out. "Look at me. I mean, I am kinda awesome but well, I can be a jerk some of the time...a lot of the time..."

He ears fell flat at the self admission, only to perk up when Rarity stepped up and gave the cyan Pegasus a friendly nuzzle.

The human watched them both, a wan smile playing on his lips.

"I never thought I'd see the day...ponies used to seem like the biggest hypocrites to have ever lived, going on about harmony, friendship, love and tolerance while they did...all that..."

He shook his head, expression darkening as he turned back to deep contemplations in the fire.

"Potion..." someone said, and the circle of friends opened up slightly so that Twilight could rise unsteadily to her feet. "You mentioned it in the hospital, and again just now. Ponification Potion. What is it?"

"Exactly what it says on the can" he murmured absently, continuing to gaze at the writhing fireplace. "Rewrites a person into a pony...changes their body, their mind, binds their soul in chains..."

He leaned forward to rest his forehead against the chimney. "...takes them away from you."

As he stood there his shoulders suddenly twitched, and he made a low whimpering sound, gritting his teeth like an animal in pain. Then the ponies saw a thin line trace itself down his cheek, glowing gold in the firelight.

He was crying.

"...I..." Twilight said, moving to try and comfort him, even as her mind tried to twist itself around what he was saying, but Applejack raised a foreleg to block her path, allowing Lyra to instead come up to the huge, bear-like biped. Carefully, the unicorn reared back on her hindlegs and leaned against him, embracing him in a hug. Even teetering on her hooves as she was, she barely came up to his chest, but after a moment, he brought up his hand and slowly began to tousle her shaggy mane.

"...the Princess, did that?" Twilight said at last, hating to break the moment. "She, tried to make you into ponies?"

"Tried, and succeeded" he said at last. "I think something between one third and half of the planet's population has either 'gone pony' or died, by now. Several billion lives, either snuffed out or disfigured into something else."

"I...I don't understand..." someone said, their voice low and saddened. The ponies turned and realised, to their surprise, that it was Pinkie. "Why wouldn't ponies and...people, want to be friends. If there was a potion to become a pony, then there must be an antidote that could make a pony into a human – that would be so much fun, to transform and change shape like that."

Her mane, hanging limply around her, seemed to regain a little vibrancy for a second. "The parties would be amazing! I'd love to be a griffin for a little while, or to have fingers like yours."

Lyra, still buried in the human's embrace, gave a little laugh that went all but unnoticed.

"There are spells that allow for temporary transformation..." Twilight said slowly. "Remember when I gave Rarity wings, or allowed the rest of us to walk on clouds? But they're never meant to last. All of them use Starswirl the Bearded's Amiomorphic Spell as a base, and he himself said that..."

"That true transformation, permanent metamorphosis, would require the ensorcelling of the subject's soul..." the human said dully. "Like I said, putting the victims of the potion in spiritual chains..."

"But why would Celestia do such a thing" Twilight all but wailed. "Changing ponies...sorry, people to another form is against everything she ever taught me. Friendship, Magic, Harmony. Equestria itself, since the day of its founding, has always been about working together in spite of our differences, not trying to make everyone the same! That's not Harmony, that's Hegemony!"

"It was an accident..." the human said slowly. "Our worlds making contact was not intended, or at least, that's what we think."

Six sets of eyes slowly traveled towards him, and he swallowed, before straightening up, allowing Lyra to drop back down onto all four hooves.

"There is...was, a place on Earth, my world, called CERN, where they did advanced, experimental science, trying to understand the mysteries of life...the first principles of the universe. Bits of matter would be collided into one another at high speed in their laboratories, and they would study what was left afterwards..."

Twilight nodded softly, eyes now aglow with familiar curiosity. Even when broken down, her inquisitive intelligence shone through.

"Bashing rocks together to make a spark..." she said softly. "Like when our ancestors first discovered fire..."

He nodded, the two of them seemingly finding a common cultural touchstone, before continuing. "One day, I don't remember the date, something happened. CERN was on the other side of the world from my own homeland, but the news spread fast. Somehow, during an attempt to track and indentify tachyon particles, they breached the fabric of reality..."

The human paused, remembering something deeply personal. "I can remember the first photographs released of it...the portal. It was pink, and 'self-sustaining', that was the words they used to describe it – even after they cut the power to the experiment, it remained open. Any attempts to send a probe or camera through failed, the materials simply disintegrated. One scientist attempted to put his hand through, and lost his arm for it...then, about two days after the initial event, with the entire world watching, 'she' came through..."

The weight in his words left no doubt as to who he meant.

"She said that only ponies could pass through the portal's barrier – through the 'door', as it were. That creatures without magic, like humans, could not survive in Equestria. Ponification Potion, and the Conversion Bureaus that administered it, were at first presented as a diplomatic measure, a necessary means for dignitaries and potential immigrants to enter into Equestria."

He rubbed at his face, fingers leaving deep tracks in the ash and filth worked into his sweat.

"Then, about a month after the Bureaus opened, the portal's event horizon began to expand, swallowing CERN, then the nation of Switzerland, and so on..." he looked towards Twilight. "Equestria never collided with Earth, or physically made contact. The two realities are still separated, but Earth is being terraformed, transformed into...'another' Equus, one with a magical climate and ecosystem, and the nature of the barrier means that nothing man-made survives the transition. From what other ponies in Lyra's PHL told us, inside the barrier newfoals and Equestrian natives are colonising the lands Celestia has claimed, moving back and forth between the two worlds through portal stations."

Bitterly he glared down at them, and even with her friends around her, Twilight suddenly felt afraid. Not of the human, as such, but from the blazing sincerity in his eyes. Impossible as it seemed, what he was describing felt truthful.

Which meant that somewhere, deep down inside of herself, she had the capacity to be the murdering monster he described her, the 'other' her, to be. That terrified her, but not so much as the fear of what that could mean for everypony she knew and loved. He friends, her family, even her beloved teacher...

"For a while" the human continued, "we simply thought that Celestia had panicked, that she was trying to protect her subjects from a potentially dangerous race..."

"No..." Twilight whimpered, putting her hooves over her ears. "I don't want to hear this!"

"But if that was the case, diplomacy would surely have made her see reason, that we wanted co-existence on mutually agreeable terms..."

"Please, stop..." she all but begged, tears now welling from her eyes. Not the Princess, not Celestia, the pony who she all but thought of as family, a second mother...

"But when Lyra showed us the truth, that Celestia was building an Equestrian Empire, we realised that she was just the latest in a long line of despots and dicators, a mad god trampling down on everyone and everpony."

"STOP!" Twilight screamed in anguish, at the same time as the library door was blown in from the outside. The human spun on his heel, face contorting into a hideous snarl at the regal figure standing in the doorway.

"Step, away, from my subjects!" Princess Celestia hissed, her barrel and chest clad in shining golden armour. The Solar Alicorn's head was bowed slightly, so that her horn was directed straight at the human's chest, while her wings were spread in a show of dominance. Quickly, her eyes darted between the sobbing Twilight and the huge figure standing dark against the fireplace, and then the rosy orbs narrowed into diamond-hard slits, hinting at the warrior-queen who had led Equestria to victory innumerable times in centuries past. "I won't ask a second time."

"Oh, this is bad! Very bad!" Lyra muttered, seeing the human slowly straighten into an erect posture, arms handing loosely at his side but gripping tightly to his improvised club. "Not good at all!"

With a sudden crack of midnight energy, a second Alicorn teleported into the room, positioning herself in a defensive position between the human and the ponies. Luna, Regent of the Moon, her starfield mane crackling with controlled rage and body clad in gunmetal war-barding, was every inch as imposing a sight as her sister, perhaps even moreso from the calmly measured look of battle-readiness on her face. It was a reminder that it was not a single Princess that ended the Discordian era, but two, united.

"My little ponies" she said over her shoulder, voice dark and deep as a forest pond at night. "You must escape while you can. My sister and I shall protect you..."

Even the sight of Spike seated on Luna's back was not enough to rob the moment of its sheer majesty and terror. He had clearly not only sent a message for help, but had convinced the princesses themselves to lead the charge.

"Twilight, let's go!" he shouted, jumping off his royal steed and wrapping his stubby arms around his adoptive big sister. "The whole Royal Guard will be here soon!"

"C'mon ladies..." Applejack said sternly, backing away and trying to herd her friends around the perimeter of the room. "You heard the Princesses, things are bout' to get ugly in here."

"No" Lyra said suddenly. Head held high and proud, the small unicorn rushed with a surprising burst of speed into the centre of the room, positioning herself in the very centre of the impending cross-fire.

"Highnesses!" she called, sweat beading on her brow. "This creature is not the enemy!"

"He is dangerous, Madam Heartstrings" Lyra interrupted. "Not of this world, not of our kith or kin. His very essence breathes the stench of Discord..."

"Leave the way you came, trespasser" Celestia intoned in turn. "Or we shall forcibly return you there."

"Please!" Lyra begged, teetering on her hindlegs and spreading her forehooves out as if in an attempt to keep the three apart. "He didn't come by choice; somepony sent him here!"

"Oh?" Luna replied, eyes still narrowed with suspicion. "And what force, pray tell, could pluck the strings of reality with such skill? Transit between worlds was an arcane myth when our royal self was sealed away a millennium ago, and I have seen little evidence that it has become commonplace in the interim."

"Ponies!" Lyra shouted, on the verge of panic. "Ponies did it! His world is being invaded by another Equestria, a fallen Equestria, and an attempt to teleport him into captivity went wrong. I said that he's not the enemy, and that's because we are!"

Both of Equestria's rulers took a startled step back, though neither for a moment relaxed their posture, limbs tense and magical reserves coiled, ready to strike.

"Twilight Sparkle!" Luna suddenly exclaimed, as the unicorn in question suddenly leapt to Lyra's side, tear-streaked face set with a sudden resolve. Even the human seemed surprised, especially when Twilight put her back to him, hiked her legs and lowered her horn straight back at her teacher, mentor, friend and ruler.

"Twilight!" Celestia said in shock, voice cracking momentarily. "I don't know what's happened here, but you need to get to safety, right now."

"No Princess..." Twilight's tiny chest heaved and her throat was dry, even as she willed herself to speak. "You need to hear what he has to say, because I think he's telling the truth. I've gone over every possibility in my mind, and what everything is telling me is that he's right!"

"This is madness you speak, Twilight Sparkle" Luna decried, though her eyes were soft with concern. "Step aside now and we shall have time to discuss your concerns once we have dealt with this invader..."

"We're the invaders!" Twilight yelled back. "Not him! Somewhere, somewhen, another Equestria touched with his world, and from that jumping-off point we ponies devolved into monsters worse than any of our tribal ancestors. But when someone attempted to teleport him in the future, he ended up here! He's a sign of what we could become if we make the same mistakes!"

Her words trailed away into the ominous hum of the two Royal Pony Sisters' magic. Then, the sound of laughter filled the room, as the human's shoulders slowly heaved in large, broken chuckles.

"Too long, didn't read..." he said, fighting to get the words out between his deranged laughs. "Going by what I've seen and felt, I was simply knocked back in time. So that would make this the past, the prelude to the Conversion Bureaus!"

"No!" Twilight tried to say. "That's not what I said..."

"I DON'T CARE!" he barked, before slowly pushing forward, forcing himself between Twilight and Lyra with surprising gentleness, but expression still steely as he faced Celestia. "From what I've seen since I got here, I've got no quarrel with you, much as it pains me to say, Twilight Sparkle. But YOU, Celestia, I've got plenty of beef with!"

The Solar Alicorn's hoof, shod in a razor-edged battle shoe, pawed once at the ground. The human slowly drew his club and presented it like a sword.

"Celestia, Binarch of Equestria and Regent of the Sun. I am Marcus Renee, formerly of the United States Marine Corps, now acting Co-Commander of the United Nations/Ponies for Human Life Joint Task Force. Though you are not yet the Solar Tyrant you are destined to become, I speak now for the billions of lives you shall shortly hurl into the abyss of history, and bequest a single boon of you."

"Very well..." Celestia said guardedly. "Speak it, Marcus Renee."

"Kindly DIE!" the human, Marcus, spat, before hurling himself forward with a bellowing war-cry, swinging the club in an arc that would surely connect with Celestia's head.

"Princess!" Twilight shrieked, before Celestia abruptly ducked her head beneath the club. 'Marcus', expecting an impact to cushion his swing, was pulled off balance by his own momentum and forced to shift his weight, giving the Princess enough time to snap open one wing under his chin, primary feathers coiled in a bludgeoning punch. Features contorted into an expression of divine rage that Twilight had never seen before, and never wished to see again, Celestia then hurled herself forward, forehooves raised in an attempt to pin the attacker down.

They never connected with their targets. Instead the human crossed his arms in front of his face and the air flashed with a sudden release of magical energy.

Time froze for a moment, then Twilight regained her senses, shaking off the sudden disorientation, and saw that Celestia's strike had been blocked by a shimmering field of protective magic.

"What the!" she heard Pinkie exclaim. "He has magic!? How can he have magic!? Hax, I'M CALLING HAX!"

Hax or not, it was unexpected. Twilight could see energy shimmering on the human's skin in arcane patterns, as if it had been etched into his flesh.

'Like a magic tattoo' she realised, suddenly feeling sick.

"Runic Magic!?" Celestia exclaimed in disbelief, and the human's grin grew wider, secure behind his shield.

"You can thank Sparkler and Zecora for that! How's that for the magic of true friendship! Didn't have the strength left to use this when I first arrived. Good thing too, or I'd have probably made mush out of a bunch of innocents. But I doubt you've ever been an innocent Celestia, past, present, or quasi-trans-dimensional-demi-goddess-future-tense. Now please, as I said before, die with dignity, and spare both our worlds your madness!"

More glyphs flared into life across his skin as the shield collapsed, and with a titanic surge of strength he threw himself up off the floor and onto Celestia, forcing the huge Alicorn to the ground, where he began to pound into her face with the same primal fury Twilight had witnessed only yesterday.

But this time, his blows were strengthened with thaumic power, perversely drawing on Equestria's own ambient magics as he attempted to break Celestia.

Twilight, mind a shattered mess of jumbled thoughts, could only sit slumped in horror, before she was suddenly bowled over by the blurred form of Princess Luna rushing to her sister's aid.

"THOU SHALL NOT PREVAIL, ABASED CUR!"

Before the human who called himself 'Marcus' could throw up another shield, the dusky blue mare collided forcibly into him, bowling him over and launching into her own vicious series of jabs and pounding downthrusts in an apparent attempt to stick him like vegetables on a kebab skewer.

"Twilight!" Celestia yelled, even as she staggered to her knees and readied herself to return to the fray. "Please, I'm begging you, get away, get yourself and your friends to safety!"

Her words were dull, ringing soundlessly in Twilight's ears as everything played out in front of her. Celestia's shimmering mane was streaked with dust, and velvety blood dribbled from her lips with each word. Within moments the wounds began to heal, driven by her semi-divine nature, but the look of fearful desperation in Celestia's eyes pierced Twilight to the core worse than any wound.

Suddenly, the Princess looked frightened, and ready to lash out.

"Twi, yer' heard her there, we've gotta get out NOW!" Applejack insisted, using a not-so-gentle headbut to Twilight's flank to shake the unicorn back to reality. The rest of her friends were gathered around the door, ready to flee but unwilling to leave without her, and all strangely captivated by the ferocious death match being played out before them.

With a screeching, animalistic whinny, Luna suddenly reared up, legs flailing and eyes blazing with magic.

"I WILL NOT FAIL MY SUBJECTS AGAIN!" she roared, the Royal Canterlot Voice in full effect, but the words strangely flanged, twisting towards the doom-laden cadence of Nightmare Moon. "YOU SHALL NOT STAND AGAINST THEM, OR US!"

Powerful forelegs lashed out and struck the human in the chest, a blow that should have reduced him to so much strawberry jam. Instead, his entire body lit up with blazing glyphs, shielding him so that Luna's blow simply slammed him back through several free-standing bookcases and into a wall.

Kill, Twilight realised. Luna had struck to kill.

"It's happening..." she heard someone say, the words ringing clear as a bell through all the madness. "We're slipping down the same slope as...as the other Equestria did."

Twilight turned to see Lyra, sitting morosely in a similar position to herself, just a few feet away. Fluttershy had stepped up and laid a comforting hoof on her back, but the green unicorn seemed inconsolable.

"Is it true Twilight. Did his coming back in time simply set us all up to fall? Is this how we start down the road to...to Conversion Bureaus and an Equestrian Empire?"

"Twi! Move! Now, or I'm gonna lasso you and drag you outa here!" Applejack demanded.

"No!" Twilight said, suddenly rising to her feet, not quite sure whether her answer was meant for Lyra, Applejack, or both of them.

She shook her head, and suddenly found focus. "This is wrong, this isn't pre-destination at work, just something getting out of hand."

"Getting out of hand Twilight?" Rarity exclaimed, aghast. "They're practically tearing the library apart!"

"That's what I mean!" Twilight replied. "This is like three foals squabbling, just much larger. He's not strong enough to hurt the Princesses, and they're not going to do anything so powerful as to damage us or Ponyville, which means that THIS FIGHT IS ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS!"

Those last words were delivered in a reasonable facsimile of the Royal Canterlot Voice, a trick she had picked up from Luna, and it was enough to momentarily break the three-way struggle.

"Girls..." Twilight said firmly. "Let's go."

Before any of the three combatants could protest, Twilight had galloped forward and thrown herself onto Celestia's back, where she held on tightly in a death-hug.

"Twilight, what is..." Celestia began, but before she could finish her statement Pinkie had joined her friend.

"Yeah, Princess, this is kinda not fun anymore, and you are Luna are turning into a pair of meany pants! Okay, he's not much better, but Lyra's going to set him right, right?"

Sure enough, Lyra had thrown herself back onto the human, pinning him down while embracing him, and one by one, the other Elements of Harmony joined the group, putting themselves right in harm's way so as to force a stalemate.

"Set...me right?" the human growled, bloodshot eyes locking onto Lyra's.

"Please Princess, we have to stop this..." Twilight pleaded. "If we keep this going, we're just going to fall into the same trap as the other Equestria..."

"The...other...Equestria?" the human replied, his words coming in between heavy gasps, but hands curling into tight fists.

"That's what she was trying to tell you earlier, idiot!" Lyra said sternly, prodding him firmly in the chest with one forehoof. "Say it again Twilight."

"Gladly, Ms Heartstrings..." Twilight beamed, before turning serious again. "According to my own experiences and Time Turner's Theory of Temporal Dynamics, time travel does not work the way you believed, Mr Marcus. Time is closed, a sealed loop where any attempts to change the past either fail, or cause the event-loop that led to you going back in the past in the first place. The world you described, the one that invaded your Earth, is another Equestria, one that runs parallel to our own, just a few years out of sync..."

"Time Turner...Doc Whooves?" the human murmured.

"Twilight..." Celestia began, her words lacking some of their previous conviction. "Even if what you say is true, he still attacked us without provocation."

"And I'm not trying to make excuses for him" Twilight said firmly. "But from what he and Lyra have said, he comes from a world where we...our counterparts, have done him so much harm, that he saw this as a chance to avoid all that..."

Celestia's face twisted in momentary confusion, until Luna abruptly spoke up.

"Perhaps she speaks wisdom, sister. After all, would that you could travel back in time and petrify Discord in his youth, before the depredations of his rule, would you not do so?"

The Solar Alicorn closed her eyes, as if waging some deep inner conflict, and then she slowly gave a nod, opening them again and bathing Twilight with a smile that was full of affection and pride.

"Well done, our Elements of Harmony, and especially you, my faithful student, and teacher..."

Twilight's ears flattened in response, a bashful blush rising to her face, before Celestia's expression grew cold, and hard, the expression of a mare of state ready to argue for the soul of her nation.

"Commander Marcus Renee...one of my dearest, most trusted subjects has asked me to give you the benefit of the doubt. She says you come from a world where ponies have waged brutal, deplorable war against your kind. But, before I commit to a response, I ask for proof of your accusations. What say you?"

The human did not move for a very long time, simply returning Celestia's stare with a level gaze, as if trying to weigh her measure.

"Are you...offering us your help?" he said at last.

"That is correct," Celestia replied. By any scale, she certainly made a proud and warlike sight in her battle regalia. "These are crimes of a nature intolerable, and neither we nor Equestria shall stand for it..."

"No," he replied, cutting her off. "Not now, not ever...I don't care what you say, or do, I will never believe that this isn't simply a trick..."

"Please, believe us!" Lyra practically begged, her hooves pressed tight against his chest. "You've got to!"

He looked back at her, and she suddenly shivered, not seeing the warmth he had previously regarded her with, but hurt and anger.

"If what Sparkle says is a lie, then this is all a ruse, that's the Solar Tyrant in front of me, and you're just a mindless drone, a mockery of Lyra Heartstrings. If what she says is true, then you're not my Lyra, the mare who died quoting the Great Dictator, spitting in Celestia's eye!"

He reached forward as if to caress her cheek, and then suddenly threw his weight sideways, knocking her off him and onto the floor, allowing him to roll back onto his feet.

"And that means I've nothing to lose!" he roared, spinning around and hurling something heavy, round and wet out of the sling he wore underarm, straight at Luna. The Lunar Alicorn, momentarily shocked into inaction by the sight of a decapitated Timberwolf's head flying straight at her, took the mass of wood and sap straight to the forehead, knocking her back in a dizzy swoon. Celestia, encumbered by Twilight's weight on her back, was unable to do anything but rear up as the maddened being hurled himself at her, fists and forehooves locking together in a combination of pony magic and dextrous fingers, the two combatants vying to force the other down. Runes on Marcus' arms and chest flared brightly, energy sizzling across his flesh like fat in a pan, while Celestia's horn burned like a fiery sworn as she summoned her own strength.

"You enter our borders without invitation..." she hissed. "You kidnap my subjects, win their trust only to betray it, and turn down an offer of parley! What is wrong with you, 'Marcus Renee'!?"

"Nothing that wasn't your doing!" he seethed, teeth gritted. "You, or some counterpart, or future iteration! You think I enjoy this, and you know what, I do, and that sickens me! This is what you've reduced me too, your highness, a madman straddling the line between justice and murder! So if there's even the slightest chance that striking you down will enable me to win this war of worlds before it even kicks off, and spare future me, or another me, and everyone else, pony and human alike, all that hurt and pain, then that's a chance I'm going to take!"

His grin, gritty and full of teeth, had grown by now into an almost deranged rictus, and his hands, magically strengthened and reinforced, clenched around Celestia's hooves even tighter, fingertips digging deep into her flesh.

"Your restraint is admirable," Celestia replied, her eyes narrowed. "But I too know the secret of self control, otherwise you and everypony in this room would be reduced to nothing but ash. And the reason that I am keeping myself in check, is because I care, Marcus Renee. For my little ponies, for all life, including yourself, if you would but let me-AH!"

Her words ended in a shocked gasp as pinpricks of thick fluid suddenly rose out of where his fingers had dug like knives into the flesh above her hooves, the dripping substance coloured a deep, almost impossibly rich burgundy. The Solar Alicorn blinked in disbelief, as if the sight of her own blood was an old, almost forgotten friend. Responding to the same development, the human's grin grew even more manic.

"Compassion is a strength, but only when you're willing to die for the ones you love. I'm ready, Celestia. Are you?"

He twisted his arms roughly sideways, and Celestia's ankles snapped like kindling.

After a horrified moment's silence, the Regent of the Sun screamed, the keening wail piercing deep into the mind of everypony present. Luna, just getting back onto her feet, took it worst, clutching at her ears and howling in pained harmony, as if magically sharing in Celestia's agony.

"That is ENOUGH!" a third voice shouted, as a almost-forgotten lavender unicorn hurled herself off Celestia's back, a furious nexus of magic boiling at the tip of her horn as she sailed over the heads of both the human and the alicorn. As she released the spell, student and teacher looked eyes, and shared a moment of understanding.

"Well done, Twilight..."

And then both Celestia and Marcus were engulfed in a flash of indigo magic, and slumped to the floor, unconscious. Twilight hit the ground awkwardly at the same time, ending up on her side, badly winded.

"Ow-ow-ow! That's gonna leave a bruise!"

Elsewhen, neverwhere, someplace far away, yet near at hand...

Marcus groaned as he staggered upright, his footsteps rattling on a metal surface. With one hand pressed against his throbbing temple, he forced his eyes open and saw that he was standing in the centre of a busy street, atop a sewer hatch. The words 'Ville De Paris: Service Des Egouts' were cast into the metal. Slowly he looked up.

Traffic rushed past on either side of him, cars and buses streaming by with the insanity that could only come from rush hour in Paris. He knew it well; the French capital had been his first posting when he transferred into the Marine Corps Embassy Guard, years before First Contact with Equestria. And this was the Champs Elysses, just a hundred yards over from '4 Avenue Gabriel', the American Embassy. Patting himself down he realised he was in his old dress uniform; every crease of the black tunic and navy-blue pants ironed to a razor-edge, and his chin was smooth and free of stubble.

"How..." he muttered, peering along towards the Louvre. "Paris was wiped out years ago..."

Then he turned and gasped. At the far end of the street, through the open centre of the Arc D'Triomphe, he could see New York's Freedom Tower glinting in the sun, the giant crystalline shard seeming to pierce the vault of the heavens. Spinning on his heel he could see the Statue of Liberty rising out of the centre of the River Seine, dwarfed from behind by Tokyo Tower. In the distance he could hear Big Ben striking the hour.

"So beautiful..." a hated voice gasped in wonder, just from behind his shoulder. "Is this your home city?"

"Celestia..." he hissed, slowly turning around. "None of this is real, is it? You're raping my mind, trying to break me o...open..."

His words died in his mouth. The mare standing in front of him was without a doubt Celestia, but smaller and apparently younger, her swan-like features less pronounced and her proportions a little rounder and chubbier. Her mane, instead of flowing in a sheet of myriad colours, was instead a uniform pink waterfall that fell almost to her hooves.

"This is as real as we wish it to be," she answered plainly. "Here, we are our truest selves."

Then, after a long moment, the rosy-haired alicorn knelt, wings tucked in and chin almost brushing the asphalt.

"My apologies for intruding," she said, holding the submissive pose. "No-one's innermost space should ever be invaded like this."

Marcus clenched a white-gloved fist, and the traffic around them immediately vanished, evaporating like apparitions at dawn's first light.

"Get up! You're a colossus acting meek before a insect. It's sickening. If you're going to split my psyche open, then at least lend me some dignity in my final moments."

The buildings trembled, and then began to crumble. Some burst into flames, while others simply collapsed in on themselves. In a distance, a huge wall of pink energy climbed over the horizon, advancing rapidly on them.

"This is your own innerspace, Marcus Renee. Here, you are rightful Lord and Master, and I am an unwanted intruder. Magical strength counts for nothing here, in the very throne of your soul."

"I said get up, your highness..." Majesty said in disgust. "First rule of being inside my head; no bullshitting!"

"By your command..." Celestia replied, before rising back to her own feet, looking up just in time to see the facsimile of the barrier racing towards them. She visibly shivered, ears drooping in dismay as it overtook the growing ruination, and roared past, leaving just the two of them standing in the midst of a featureless white void.

"Your pet, Sparkle, she cast a Mindshare spell, didn't she?" Marcus said, arms folded and feet spread slightly apart. "Vinyl Scratch used them for post-mission debriefs back home. But Sparkle's forced the two of us into a little psychic time-out, where you could force my compliance without fear of hurting any of your precious little ponies."

"Yes to the first, and no to the second..." Celestia said at last, looking around, voice conveying more than a little shame. "You know how to shield your thoughts and feelings I see. Thank you for that; partaking of somepony else's hopes and memories against their will is...a violation that I've never enjoyed."

Her eyes met with his, conviction flashing in the air between them.

"Strike me..." she said calmly. "Beat me, bruise me, break me. Show me what has filled you with such rage, and I will carry that burden. I won't resist, I promise. Show me proof of 'Equestria's' crimes, and I promise you that the armies of Equus will soon descend upon your foes with great and wrathful justice."

"I said cut the bullshit!" Marcus roared. "I know you Celestia, you don't care about anything about morals or scruples, just chasing the dragon of a little ponified utopia!"

As he shouted, Celestia flinched, and with a flash, the Void was suddenly filled with sight and sound. Pegasai whirled and dived in the air, hurling potion-bombs down into the midst of panicked people crowded onto the pitching, tossing decks of several passenger ferries. Other flying ponies were whipping up a storm, trying to drive the fleet of evacuation ships back towards shore with driving rain and micro-hurricanes. Wind and voices screamed together as the panic rose, before several people staggered across the deck, their clothes and hair matted with viscous potion. As they screeched in fear, denial and pain, their limbs began to twist and deform, fingers fusing and joints cracking, forcing them onto all fours...

Then, everything snapped back into serene white. Marcus's chest heaved, while Celestia, eyes dilated, staggered back several paces.

"You told the truth!" she gasped in horrified disbelief. "My little ponies, they did that!?"

"Stop playing dumb!" Marcus bellowed, taking a stride towards her.

Another flash, of smiling newfoals, their expressions glassy and vacant, singing songs of praise and thanksgiving for Equestria's grace.

"Please..." Celestia groaned, flopping weakly onto her side. "Share your pain!"

"Shut up!" Marcus unbuttoned his gloves and flung them down, the white garments striking the ground with a retort like thunder.

Flash. The A.S. Great Equestrian, largest skyliner ever built, loomed over the skyline of Boston like an angel of death, disgorging chariots from which unicorn mages began to fire down bolts of lethal magic.

"Show me more!" Celestia begged, teeth gritred and tears weeping from her clenched eyes. "All of it, I can take it!"

His jacket came off, the Void roiling like an earthquake where he dropped it.

Flash. Marcus was lying in a mound of rubble, trying to shield a child with his body. As a pearly white unicorn wearing tinted shades and a harness-mounted mini-gun shouted for him to fall back as six familiar silhouettes trotted into view through a wall of fire.

Celestia's eyes flew open. "NO! I don't want to see that!"

Marcus grabbed hold of her throat and dragged her up as she began to struggle. "STOP, MESSING!"

Flash. Vinyl Scratch was knocked aside by a bludgeoning wave of magic, before the same force dragged the injured child from Marcus's arms. Six pairs of eyes and six famous cutie-marks shone in the firelight.

"Not the Elements!" Celestia howled, limbs flailing like those of a frightened foal. "Not the girls!"

Marcus reared back, muscles straining. "WITH, MY!"

Flash. A horn shimmered with beautiful sparkles of indigio magic, levitating a bottle of purple goop into view and forcing it down the child's throat. Within seconds the girl's feebly struggling arms fell limply to the ground, sedatives entwining her nervous system even as the potion went to work. Flesh began to flow like water...

"Not, not my Twilight..."

His fist flew forward. "HEAD!"

Flash. Smiling victorious over her transforming prey, eyes aglow with purpose, Twilight Sparkle unstoppered a second flask of potion and pushed it towards Marcus with her magic. "Trust me, soon you'll see everything in a new light."

The punch connected squarely, snapping Celestia's head to one side. Then, like two particles colliding, an explosion of light and memories erupted between the two of them, throwing the Marine and the Princess apart.

Childhood, foalhood. Clover the Clever's nurturing smile, Susan Renee cradling a bruised boy in her arms, kissing his playground wounds better.

Adulthood. A mare grown, fearfully regarding her immortal future. A young man, head newly shaved, nervously trying to sleep on the first night of boot camp.

War, Peace. Discord's reign blurred into the carnage of counter-insurgency warfare, Canterlot fusing with Baghdad. Then came the ponies, rising up under Celestia and Luna to cast out the Chaos God, simultaneously swooping down to subjugate Earth.

Beloved siblings fell, consumed and twisted into mockeries of themselves. Nightmare Moon's cold laughter burst from the mouth of the pony that had been Marcus' kid brother, now fighting for the glory of Celestia. Tears and exiles and the snapping of necks tangled up in an almighty mess.

Faster and faster, flashes of two lives, two worlds, roaring around in a cyclone of raw emotion. Faces, places, victories, losses.

And in the eye of the storm, tearing and thrashing one another, a pony and a human, an Alicorn and a Marine, fighting one another even as they shared their most intimate memories, screaming and weeping, grief and rage burning in their souls as they mercilessly beat one another in an attempt to expunge the pain they felt.

"I'M SORRY!" they screamed together, both of them ragged wrecks, exhausted but unable to stop, fuelled by the raw power of feeling coursing through them. "I'M SO SORRY!"

A final supernova, of love and hate, life and death, crammed so tightly together that they overlapped, fused and reacted in a cataclysmic swell of rainbow-tinted light.

Then darkness.

The two bodies were tangled together in the centre of the library. Twilight and Luna had dragged the two of them together to strengthen the spell's connection, and now the tip of Celestia's horn rested in the furrow between the human's brows, looking as if she was about to confer a knighthood.

Since Twilight had cast the spell, the two of them had remained unconscious, locked so deep in the exchange of minds that they barely moved, except for the rhythm of their breathing and the flickering of their eyelids. Twilight was trying to follow the magic at work with her own thaumic sense, but the information bouncing back and forth between the two participants was moving too fast for her to process.

"How did he do it?" she suddenly heard Rainbow Dash say, and she looked across to see the Pegasus examining the human...'Marcus' closely, with a little touch of what seemed to be envy. "How did he use magic?"

"Runic Magicks, dear Rainbow Dash..." Luna replied solemnly. "Trust me when I say, you should not covet this gift. It is an art that draws on deep, turbulent forces, and one that in times past, before we or Equestria were born, almost led to the world's end."

The Lunar Alicorn closed her eyes in deep thought, and then gave an almost foolish pout and a snort. "However, we too are mystified as to how runic power was anchored to a being with no magical reserves of his own to speak of."

That was something that had bothered Twilight too, but before she could hazard a guess, Rarity suddenly gave a prim cough and stepped forward.

"I believe I can field that question. Pinkie, hat please."

In response, Pinkie produced from nowhere a deerstalker cap, famed accessory of the great literary detective Sherclop Pones, and handed it over without a word.

"Lovely" Rarity preened as the piece of headgear settled over her carefully coiffed locks. "Now, if you'll recall, he did say that he owes his magical skills to Zecora and Sparkler, by which I assume he means Amethyst Star, elder daughter of the Whooves clan."

"There's that family's name coming up again," Rainbow muttered. "I swear, there's something weird about those ponies."

Rarity abruptly shushed Rainbow before continuing. "Now some months ago, when I noticed Sparkler had three cut gems as a cutie-mark, I assumed her special talent was jewellery and approached her with the goal of commissioning a piece to match a new ensemble. To my embarrassment however, I found Sparkler's skill as a unicorn mage is not the crafting of gems, but the ensorcelling of them.

Twilight nodded; the enchantment of gems to act as warding talismans or magical tools was a treasured unicorn skill; Sparkler had recently opened up a small gemsmithy in Ponyville to cater to that market, and the pretty young unicorn had proved herself gifted in the art.

Her own horn lighting up, Rarity cautiously approached the human and Celestia, still engaged in their two-way mental link, and touched the tip of her horn to one of the burnt runic aftermarks on his skin. It lit up for a moment with a shimmer that Twilight recognised as Rarity's gemstone-locating spell, and after a moment faded.

Everything suddenly fell into place in Twilight's mind, and she felt her jaw fall open with such force that half expected to hear the trill of a cash register nearby.

"As I thought!" Rarity said in delight. "Zecora, naturally given how much she cherishes her culture, would be a skilled tattooist. All she need do is create a solution of finely ground gemstones – gemdust almost, and tattoo it into his skin in the shape of the necessary runes. Sparkler then enchants them with her gift for gemstone magecraft and viola! One magically-endowed warrior."

The various ponies all made sounds of understanding, even Luna pursing her lips to demonstrate how impressed she was.

"My, my..." Rarity blushed. "I do seem to have a knack for this 'deductive reasoning' lark, don't I?"

"Yeah...don't oversell yourself sugacube..." Applejack said lightly, cautiously approaching the human to marvel alongside her. "Hoot golly. It musta hurt but he's got some gumption to go through wit' that. Worked too, guy was strong enough to beat me in a fight before, but with them there fancy letters burnin' bright, why I reckon he could take on Big Mac in a wrassle and win'."

"He was fast too..." Rainbow added, pausing to regard her own damaged wings. "I wonder if..."

"Don't go there kid!" Luna said, momentarily lapsing out of her usual formal speech, before pausing , abashed. "Ahem. Yes, as I said before, runic magic is not to be toyed with, but I must confess an admiration in how a combination of unicorn and zebra skill, and this human's will, have managed to produce a form of magic never seen or practised before...quite remarkable..."

"Yeah, real sweet!" Lyra said bitterly, and Twilight glanced sympathetically towards her old classmate, who had not stirred from the corner of the room since the end of the fight, forehooves folded sullenly.

"Oh, the poor thing's hurting so bad..." Fluttershy said softly, drawing Twilight's attention away from Lyra. The empathic pegasus's face was contorted in sympathy, and seconds later panic when Pinkie perkily bound up beside her as if trying to both set her at ease and frighten her half to death.

"Aw he'll be fine, he's a real tough cookie that guy!"

"Um, actually, I wasn't referring to the...ah, human," Fluttershy said meekly, trying to cover behind her mane. "I actually, meant, ah, Princess Celestia..."

"What!?" was the collective response, and with her heart sinking Twilight turned to see Celestia's face was indeed screwed up with pain, tears weeping from behind her tightly closed eyes.

"Oh, Sister, my sister..." Luna said, one hoof coming to her mouth in a sudden expression of horror. "What is he showing you?"

Droplets of sweat were now trickling all across the Solar Alicorn's body, beading on her armour and war-harness. The lights seemed to dim slightly as she gritted her teeth and moaned in pain.

"No...don't, hurt them...keep away from me...HELP!"

Celestia's eyes suddenly flew open, the pupils collapsing into terrified pinpricks as she broke the link and staggered back, weaving about on her feet as if uncertain of where the floor was.

"Sister, pray tell us what..." Luna began, only to suddenly step backwards as Celestia made a disgusting retching sound and emptied her stomach contents all over the floor. Bits of chocolate gateau pooled around the feet of the two alicorns. Then, still groaning pitifully, Celestia sank down onto her knees, uncaring of the fact that she was sinking into a foul-smelling goop that had not long ago been a tasty piece of confectionary.

"Celestia!" Luna cried, throwing herself down beside her sibling and bringing their heads together. Celestia was sobbing, chest and voice catching in repeat bursts. "Dearest sister, what didst thou see?"

"Mon..." Celestia struggled, looking pitifully up at her younger sister in a strange reversal of past positions. "Mons..."

"Princess Celestia..." Twilight implored, and the Princess's tear-stained eyes flickered in the purple unicorn's direction, only to collapse into terrified pinpricks as she sighted the Elements of Harmony.

"MONSTERS!" the Solar Alicorn screamed, scrambling to her feet in a frenzied panic. Then, before anyone could act, her horn alit with brilliant light, and in a instinctive act of self-preservation, Celestia teleported away in a thunderous crack of magic.

As the smell of ozone settled over the shocked ponies, another voice spoke up, sounding strangely groggy.

"Luna..."

The night mare turned in further surprise as a hand suddenly landed on her forehead, fingers rustling through the silken strands of midnight sky that made up her mane.

Then Marcus tousled her. Still propped up against the wall, he was at just the right height to reach her, and was smiling with a strange mix of pain, affection, exhaustion and delirium.

"She loves you so much..." he smiled wearily. "But she's so afraid of hurting your feelings again..."

He laughed, not a broken cackle but a deep, warm belly laugh.

"I'd heard from Lyra that she had a sister, but never really got to know you in person..." he said, eyes fluttering drowsily. "You've got...beautiful eyes. Nowhere near as pretty as my Cher's though..."

His hand fell away from her brow and he slowly slumped sideways, a smile of contentment plastered across his face.

"...I really like your mane," he muttered, before sleep took him. From the look on his face, it was perhaps the most restful slumber he had gotten in years.

There was a slight tapping of hooves, and then Lyra, eyes still showing her hurt but smiling barvely, trotted to his side and lay down beside him in a protective position.

"Right on!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed in approval.

"Twilight Sparkle..." Luna said at last, tone firm and commanding as she crossed to the library's front door. "I leave things here in the capable hooves of thyself and the Elements of Harmony. Guard our guest well until we return."

"But, Princess, where are you going?"

"To find our sister. I cannot imagine what horrors she has witnessed, but I can surmise one thing...somewhere, out there in the animate vastness of worlds and possibilities, a terrible crime is being committed. My Sister spoke truly, Equestria cannot stand idle which such sins against Harmony are revealed to us..."

The Lunar Regent's head, previously held proud and high, dipped slightly as she stood at the threshold.

"I'm sorry my little ponies, but it is my fear that we are to go to war."

Then, with a great sweep of her wings, Luna vanished up into the peaceful skies.

CHAPTER FOUR: MONSTERS

"Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back"
- Mason Cooley

"I wasn't prepared for this"
- Twilight Sparkle

Canterlot, the Citadel of Equestria, founded upon the flank of the mighty Canterhorn. It was said that in ages past, before Discord, before even the Princesses, the Peace of the Three Tribes had been struck here, on the first ever Hearthswarming Night. Drawing on this, romanticists liked to say that there was nowhere else on the planet quite so magical.

They were right, though in a far more literal way than they might have realized. The mountain was the very heart of Equestria's magic, a million-ton lodestone of living iron and gemstone, anchoring together the leylines that spread out across all of Equus.

And Canterlot itself was a conduit of that magic. The city was sculpted from gleaming marble, on foundations rooted deep in the core of the mountain; like water drawn into a sponge, the magicks welled up out of the mountain, flowing through the veins of quartz and iron that were part of the capital's fabric. The ponies living here were mostly unaware of it, even as the ever-present force weaved around them, lending them strength and health.

But the young alicorn standing on one of the palace balconies could feel it, like a tingle that suffused her from hoof to hairtip, setting feathers and fur on end.

It scared her, as much as it amazed her. Moments like this were frighteningly common nowadays, where she suddenly 'perceived' things with a depth of understanding that bordered on the divine. Just minutes ago she had glanced at her breakfast (a daisy muffin) and had somehow known its entire life story, from where the flowers had bloomed to which bakery had produced the confection (for the record, Sugar Cube Corner, who had a clandestine agreement to supply the palace with treats too 'low brow' for the distinguished chefs in the kitchens to behoove themselves to prepare).

So now, to take her mind off things, with her husband out leading a complement of the Royal Guard to Ponyville on an urgent, clandestine mission, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza was attempting to fly.

"Alright…just breathe…" the Princess (though she preferred simply to be called 'Cadence') whispered to herself, nervously kicking off her golden regalia and ruffling her wings as the morning breeze tickled her mane. "Like Aunt Celestia said…just spread your wings, and let instinct guide you…"

The balcony projected out over the roaring waterfalls that poured down from the city terraces. If she did fall, it would take a long while to reach the bottom…

Cautiously, the last scion of the lost Crystal Empire, and presumptive Crystal Princess, trotted to the balustrade and rested her forelegs on it, hooves dangling over the yawing abyss.

Again, she tentatively fluttered her wings, pausing to glance over her shoulder at their powerful build and wide spread, before turning to gaze back over the rail at the void below. It almost seemed hungry, mouth open, ready to swallow her whole…

"You're not some crippled little groundling anymore Cadence!" she hissed to herself. "You're an Alicorn now, and have been for months. You belong in the sky just as much as any Pegasus! What would happen if the Crystal Empire returned right now and you couldn't even fly, let alone claim a throne and a kingdom!"

But years of life on the ground led weight to fears that she would simply fall out of the sky. Despite being of royal blood, for most of her life Cadance had simply thought of herself as a unicorn who happened to have a pair of vestigial wings. 'Pegacorns' were a genetic fluke that traced back hundreds of years, manifesting at random intervals like herself. Winged unicorns incapable of flight, or horned pegasai unable to cast even a basic spell.

That perception of herself changed on the last Hearthswarming Night. As a pony whose special talent was literally 'love', she had always enjoyed just walking through the streets on that particular night, basking in the special 'glow' she felt radiating off everypony. This year though, the glow had become a blazing heat striking through her, filling her with pain and fire until she passed out. When she had woken, she had found herself in the Royal Infirmary at Canterlot Palace, with no less than two Princesses watching over her with expressions mingling concern with pride.

Cadance found that she had been changed…transformed. Her first reaction upon seeing her own reflection was a blushing awareness of just how 'attractive' she had become, her proportions and frame longer, more elegant, swan-like. Like the Princesses.

But the shift went deeper than just appearance; she'd immediately been aware of a force, a warmth way down inside of her, as if she was carrying around a fire within her breast. It wasn't the soothing, familiar tingle of her magic, or the passionate heat of a fireside snuggle with her then-coltfriend Shining Armor. No, it was deeper, stronger, and all the more alien.

'Ascension' was the term Luna had used to describe what had happened to her, though Celestia, smiling knowingly, had suggested the more egalitarian word 'Awoken'. Apparently the two of them had been waiting for eons for a moment like this, and Cadence's mind had swum when she had heard why. Her world had suddenly been opened up, the two elder Alicorns entrusting her with knowledge kept secret for centuries.

The Crystal Empire, King Sombra, and so much more, a birthright now claimed for her by force. It meant she was no longer just a princess in name alone, the heir to a forgotten crown. No, apparently now she was a key player in a long-fought campaign for the very soul of Equestria. More than anything, it was not so much humbling, as terrifying.

They were still unsure of what the full ramifications of the change were however. Cadence had found herself to be stronger, faster, more confident in her abilities and capable of vast feats of physical and magical exertion for extended periods of time, but it was still uncertain as to whether or not she now ranked among the immortals.

More than any of the recent changes, that prospect, of eternal life, scared her most; of not only outliving Shining Armor, but outlasting him, of continuing on through centuries until her brave stallion's life and legacy was just a memory. It had been Luna who had broken that concern to her, the Lunar Regent speaking from a long-scarred-over wound deep in her heart, of how she had loved, and lost, of how she had raised a family, and saw them all succumb to old age while she remained young, an eternal rock in the sea of time.

Her potential immortality was something Cadance had no control over though, and so she had put it out of her mind, hoping it would never present itself as a problem. She was perhaps the only mare in the world who looked forward to one day finding grey hairs in her mane.

Perhaps that was why she and Shining had rushed into the wedding, to bind themselves together before any doubts could tear them apart. Maybe, yes maybe…

This though, flight, was another matter. She had flown once before, on the day of Chrysalis's invasion, and although that was just a brief glide, the sensation of soaring through the air had awoken something deep inside, centuries-old yearnings once buried deep. Even as much as she feared it, a primal part of her now longed to be in the sky, to claim her birthright as a creature of the air.

"Right…" she said, steeling her features. "Here we go…"

Closing her eyes and holding her chin high she stepped up onto the rail, flaring her wings so that they caught the breeze, and brought her hooves together, ready to push off.

Then she made the mistake of taking a quick peek, saw the mile-high precipice she was poised over, and toppled back onto the balcony with a panicking whinny, hyperventilating as her vision swam.

'I must be the only alicorn to have ever had vertigo!' she seethed, pounding the floor in frustration. It had only been meant as a light blow, but her hoof shattered the marble, leaving a six-inch-deep cavity in the stone.

'Another sign of just how much I've changed' she thought glumly as she tried to push chips of tilework back into the hole in a pathetic attempt to infill the damage. 'Just when I thought I was getting the hang of all thi-AH!'

"MONSTERS!"

Somewhere, far away, someone screamed, and Cadence sprang to her knees, somehow knowing that a kndred soul was crying out in fathomless pain. Whipping her head around her ears twitched as she gazed out southwards towards Ponyville. The magical field that permeated Canterlot was flaring, surging in time to the scream, but below, on the terraces, she could see the citizenry going about their daily routine without a care in the world.

Magic, she realized. Deep, primordial magic was at work here, and somehow only she, it seemed, could perceive it.

Fear vanished in a second, drowned out by concern, and a sudden, indescribable sense of being called to action, to duty.

Instincts finally took over, and the Alicorn of Love drew herself up and coiled her hindlegs, before hurling herself in a powerful leap out over the balustrade into thin air. Her wings snapped open and with an ear-shattering *CRACK* they swept back, hurling her through the air at near sonic-speeds in the direction of the cry that had summoned her.

As first flights go, it was not a bad show at all.

Celestia fled, not caring in which direction she was headed in a mad attempt to outrun the memories now pouring into her mind. Far below, the ground sped past, at speeds that would make a certain rainbow-maned pegasus blaze with envy. Information parsed from the mind of Marcus Renee informed in that the human term for her current velocity was 'Mach 3', and that at this speed and altitude, the skin should have been flayed from her bones. But physics bowed before immortal biology, and Celestia was not only surviving, but crying, tears flowing over her cheeks to be ripped away and cast off into her slipstream like scattered ice crystals.

More information poured through her mind, memories and knowledge ripping through her pscyche. Suddenly a particularly vivid memory slammed into her mind, sending spiraling into a screaming tailspin as she lost control of her body.

Paris, France, 2019 Anno Dominae

"I'm sorry..." Cheerilee had wailed. "Twilight...She...she turned him, Marcus!"

Marcus stood still, head bowed and fists clenched in grief as he read a brief message addressed to 'Next of Kin'.

JACOB ALLEN RENEE: b1991, p2019

His brother, Jacob, forcibly ponified by one Twilight Sparkle in Equestria's assault against the White House. Jacob had been part of the First Family's Secret Service detail, chosen for his skills and service in Serbia. The fact that he was young, personable and had qualified in child psychology (riding on a military scholarship) had seen him appointed as personal guard to the President's fifteen-year-old daughter.

Details of the assault on the White House were still sketchy, but it was fairly clear that several PER cells and a squadron of Equestria's Royal Guard had attempted to convert the President and his core staff. Marine One however was known to have safely evacuated the First Family, Jacob having forcible thrown the First Daughter onto the helicopter before slamming the door shut and screaming for the pilot to take off.

Jacob had last been seen trying to rescue a group of interns pinned down in the West Wing. The pony wearing his name however, had appeared on television not an hour later, praising his new bondage and flirting with Twilight Sparkle in the Oval Office. It had torn Marcus' heart to see the creature speaking with Jacob's voice planting a grateful kiss on Sparkle's cheek.

It was only one of multiple simultaneous attacks around the world, all focused on heads of state. Equestria had attempting to cripple human resistance by cutting off the head of their national governments.

The results had been…mixed. Few world leaders had been converted, but more had been killed resisting. Japan's Prime Minister Rokubungi, a former commando in that nation's Strategic Self Defense Forces, had managed to fell several of his attackers before taking his own life so as to deny them any semblance of victory. The more outlandish rumors said he had died half-ponified, using a severed unicorn's horn to commit ritual seppuku.

Most notable among the dead however was Queen Elizabeth the Second. The ninety-four year old monarch had been residing in Balmoral Castle in Scotland at time of the attack, which had come too suddenly for an evacuation. With the roads off the remote estate blocked, and helicopters unable to arrive in time, the PER had streamed the final assault live over the internet in a moment of triumphal arrogance.

They were perhaps not expecting for the venerable castle to have been rigged with demolition charges. The Queen's final words, broadcast to the world, had become a rallying cry in nations far beyond her former Empire.

"You think you can come into MY palace, MY country, and destroy the will of MY people! I may be old and decrepit, but I. WILL. NOT. STAND FOR THIS INSULT!"

"Potion the bitch!"

"I think not. Say goodbye to the world, and may God Almighty show you the mercy I withhold!"

BOOM!

People were already calling it the Balmoral Address. Such sentiments did nothing to assuage Marcus' own grief however.

"I'm...sorry..." Cheerilee whimpered as she approached him at the memorial, only for Marcus to fall to his knees and embrace in a hug. "I'm sorry..."

'Jacob' had died two months later when the Marines recaptured the White House. He had taken to calling himself 'Stalwart Heart' by then.

Celestia slammed into the ground, gouging a several-hundred yard furrow into the earth before skidding into a lake. Several thousand gallons of water, suddenly superheated by the impact, erupted skyward in a pillar of steam, and after a long moment several dozen dead fish rose to the surface, killed by the shockwave. Any other being would have soon joined them in death, but the Solar Alicorn was made of tougher stuff. Her body was sore, cuts and welts adorn her body as she laid on the ground, crying her eyes out as the memories played on.

London, England, 2020 Anno Dominae

"Sir, we're getting massacred here!" a soldier yelled as he rushed up to Marcus, ducking a high-flying bolt of magic as he slid behind the cover of a uprooted chunk of roadway.

"Tell me something that isn't obvious!" Marcus growled as he leveled his AA-12 shotgun, swung around the edge of their cover, and let loose a burst of buckshot, a form of ammunition ironically designed for game-hunting. The unicorn before him tried to keep his barrier up, but the precision needed to stop multiple pellets was too much for him, and the field collapsed with a flicker of wasted potential. Marcus already had a second round chambered, and once again he ducked out of cover, leveled the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The weapon jerked in his hands, and the unicorn splattered into a gory mess.

"They can still die, private! Just keep firing on them! We got to give those French troops time to pull the last civilians out!" Marcus yelled at them.

"Is this a right time for a joke about the French retreating?" the soldier answered, managing a sickly grin. Marcus only shook his head, not even finding a flicker of black humor in their situation.

"Just keep your head down and your cover on!" he snapped back, before everything went to hell. One moment, he was staring at the private, reaching out to tighten the rookie's helmet straps, the next, a rainbow-colored blur dashed past, tackling the younger man and catapulting him down the street. Marcus whirled around to see the kid land in a tangle of broken bones, screaming in pain, before his flying attacker looped back and hurled a fragile phial of potion into the screeching mound of flesh. Immediate exposure to his internal organs must have sped the transformation, because after just a few seconds of horrified howls, Marcus saw a weeping newfoal stagger to his hooves, helped by his now-landed midwife who had 'birthed' him, a rainbow-maned Pegasus recognized from the news.

"Welcome to the herd kid…" he saw her say, giving the newly-minted pony a quick hug, before directing a mocking grin back in his direction in a perversion of friendship.

"RAINBOW DASH! YOU FUCKING ANIMAL!" Marcus screamed, rage cascading throughout his entire being.

Before he could do anything other than scream impotently, Dash had taken back off; her new recruit carried between her and another Pegasus.

"Renee!" Marcus's radio crackled. "Last civilians are out! Recover Ambassador Heartstrings and Bon-Bon, then fall back to Heathrow Airport, now! We're pulling out of the country!"

"Acknowledged…" he answered, bloodshot eyes fixated on the three figures vanishing beyond the wall of the advancing barrier.

Celestia struggled to her hooves and limped out of the lake. The impact, although severe enough to tear every piece of armor from her body, had not hurt her near as much as what was going on inside her head. Gritting her teeth she tried to hold back another memory surfacing in her mind, but prying open cracks in her mind it forced its way through.

Mexico City, 2021 Anno Dominae

"Corre!" Marcus barked in Spanish. While not entirely confident in his syntax and pronunciation, he knew enough of the language to get a point across, and following his orders, a father and his son fled by him as he laid down covering fire for their escape. The father gave him a nod of thanks as he passed, shielding the boy with his body and carrying a tiny revolver for protection. Overhead, helicopters were dueling with flying chariots in a howling maelstrom of steel, fur, feathers and blood.

Mexico, in the post-Convergence economy, had become a major provider of military hardware, the country's auto plants quickly refitted to churn out armored vehicles and support trucks. It had also made it a major target for the PER, the self-styled 'liberators of the Earth' using Equestrian magic and reinforcements to try and take out vital cities in the supply chain, along with sowing indiscriminate carnage in an attempt to crush morale. Marcus had found himself unfortunate enough to have been in the country inspecting a growing weapons stockpile when one such attack had been launched.

"Mi hijo!" Marcus turned around to see the father drag his son into an alley. Seconds later, to his horror, Marcus heard the familiar 'fw-WHORP!' of an opening portal, and the child screaming.

"Hold this position!" he shouted to the few soldiers he had under his command, before charging round the corner and into the alley, just in time to see the father charge an orange coated-pony, howling in grief.

"Ah think you should take seat pardner," the cowpony said bluntly, pivoting on her forehooves to buck the enraged man, the impact shattering his kneecaps.

'No! Where's the child!' Marcus thought, before he noticed two Royal Guards pinning down a writhin figure behind several fallen trashcans. He fired, and one was hurled back, his neck a bloody ruin. The other threw himself onto Applejack and triggered some kind of talisman, throwing up a protective domed shield around them. Enraged, Marcus advanced, pouring full-auto fire into the micro-barrier before something causing him to stop on horror.

From behind the trashcans, a small pony had just stood up, a literal new foal, a smiling colt.

"No! Dios mio, NO!" the father wailed!

"Papá! Está bien! Yo sé mejor ahora! Únete a mí papá y nos-" the tiny creature said, dancing on his hooftips in elation, before a sharp crack snapped through the alley and the newfoal slumped to the ground, a hole in his head, eyes darkened forever. Marcus and the ponies alike turned in shock to look at the downed father, the revolver shaking in his hands as he bled out from the knees.

"You darn monster!" Applejack screamed, hurling one hoof against the inside of her shield. "That was your colt! We helped him! Made him pure and good, like us! Ayh'd have done the same for you too you ungrateful varmint!"

"Perdóname Padre, porque he pecado ..." the broken man stammered, before words began to tumble rapidly from his mouth in a final prayer. "Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, rezar por los pecadores somos, ahora y en la hora de nuestra murte!"

He pressed the gun to his own temple, glaring balefully at Applejack. He wanted her to see this.

"Amen!"

Marcus closed his eyes and turned away as the hammer came down.

Celestia could do nothing but weep openly as the memories of the human, Marcus, seared in her mind, sizzling with raw emotion, each one stronger than the last. Injustices heaping atop abominations and massacres. Even in her long years, fighting against enemies as diverse as Discord, King Sombra and Nightmare Moon, Celestia had never encountered war as total and uncompromising, and the sudden loss of that innocence was agony.

Heathrow Airport, 2020 Anno Dominae

"Get the King out of here! Get him on the jet!" Marcus roared as a Landrover screeched to a halt on a jetway, disgorging the new monarch of the United Kingdom and his family. King William himself was armed, one arm wrapped protectively around his wife's shoulders as troops hustled them and their children towards the largest plane in the jam awaiting takeoff, a British Airways Airbus A380.

"Speedbird 1!" the radio clipped to his belt crackled as the control tower issued orders to the Airbus's pilot. "As soon as the King's onboard, takeoff!"

"How, the runway's jammed with other planes in the queue!"

"Ignore them! Turn around and takeoff across the jetpad if you have to, ASAP! We're giving you emergency clearance to get off the ground by any means necessary!"

As the jet's captain acknowledged the call, Marcus turned to regard his own protectees.

"Lyra, Bon-Bon. You're going too! This might be the last flight out and we need you to get-"

"STOP!" someone demanded, and Marcus turned to find himself staring into the eyes of a small yellow pegasus.

"Fluttershy…" he heard Bon-Bon say softly, but the words seemed like they were coming from a million miles away as he faced down the twin aqua pools boring into his soul, overwhelming pressure bearing down on his mind. Dimly he perceived other soldiers caught in the legendary 'Stare's' field-of-fire had frozen too, unable to move.

"Now, put your weapons, DOWN."

Body twisting against his will, Marcus slowly placed his gun on the ground, even as he mentally screamed with every fiber in his being to blast Fluttershy out of existance. But he couldn't/

"Now then...I want all of you to take these potions here, and DRINK," the pegasus said, wearing a kind smile that failed to reach her eyes. The soldiers nodded stiffly, before shuffling forward like marionette puppets to take from a satchel of potion bottles Fluttershy had placed on the ground in front of her. None of them broke her fearful gaze until after they had swallowed, at which point they collapsed sideways, retching and gagging. One tried to force his hand down his throat in an effort to vomit up the purple goop, only for his fingers to fuse into a hoof too large to force past his lips.

All of them were screaming.

All of them expect Marcus, who had not drunk, or moved from his initial position, still staring down Fluttershy and jerking spasmodically as two wills fought for dominance.

The screaming voices had fallen silent now.

"Oh, you poor thing…" Fluttershy crooned, the pressure on Marcus's mind intensifying as she slowly spread her wings and lifted off the ground, coming up to his eye level and almost pressing their faces together so that her huge eyes filled his entire field of vision.

She smelt of hay and wildflowers, and her mane, brushing against his cheek, was soft and warm and soothing as an embrace. Every Freudian notion Marcus had ever considered was screaming at him to embrace her like a mother and join her in gleeful ponydom, to gallop through endless fields as a joyous member of the herd. But the air of soothing compassion she projected was offset by the cold depths of her eyes. He was meat to her, not a real person until he walked on all fours and sung her praises. His real mother's love had been unconditional.

"Would you please take this potion..."

Marcus only glared, jaw clenched so tight that blood was seeping from between his lips. His body was jerking, every muscle straining against the conflicting desires. Unless something happened soon, he was going to tear several ligaments, and that would be the end of him.

"Please, I am asking nicel-AIIIIE!" The buttery pegasus shrieked as a bullet ripped through one of her wingtips, and she whipped her head sideways as she struggled to stay up in the air, breaking the stare. Once again master of his own body, Marcus instinctively bellowed and threw his head forward, headbutting her in the temple with all the strength he could muster, before he collapsed in exhaustion. His head was ringing from the massive blow, but the pressure was gone. Knocked unconscious, Fluttershy hit the ground hard, and he heard a satisfying snap as at least one bone broke.

Chest heaving, he rolled sideways to see who had saved him, and to his shock saw Lyra standing just a few feet away, a discarded pistol held awkwardly in her mouth. She must have used her tongue to pull the trigger. Like him, blood was trickling from her jaws where the recoil of the weapon had cracked several teeth, but despite the immense pain she must have felt, Lyra stood frozen in shock at what she had done, trembling like a tree just before a gale downed it. Tears were beading in her eyes, and Marcus suddenly understood; although she had only clipped Fluttershy's wing, her intent had been to kill the buttery pegasus.

"Lyra…" he whispered in sympathy, knowing the horror she must have felt, the same as he had felt after his first 'kill'. Taking lives got easier with time, but to cross that line for the first time was to permanently brand one's soul with a mark that ran deep

Bon-Bon was just behind her marefriend, mouth open and aghast. "Lyra, what have you DONE!? YOU SHOT FLUTTERSHY!"

Before Lyra could answer, the former Ambassador was tackled by one of the newfoals, a turquoise unicorn who minutes before had been a Royal Marine..

"Traitor!" he screamed, one hoof coming down on Lyra's snout with a blistering 'crack'! "Monster! Meanie-pants!"

The unicorn raised his hoof to knock her out, when he suddenly gurgled, looking down at where a bayonet blade was embedded in his barrel. Then he looked up to see that his killer was Bon-Bon, the blade's hilt grasped in her teeth. Like Lyra, tears were flowing from her eyes.

"But…why…" the newfoal spluttered, before slowly collapsing onto his side, life ebbing away. "We're…we're ponies…"

The bayonet had pulled away from him as he fell, leaving it hanging from Bon-Bon's mouth, the blade covered in blood. Her grip slackened, and it clattered to the ground. The creamy mare stared at it in mute silence, before shuddering and sniffling. Her marefriend did the same, and moments later the two ponies had pulled one another into an embrace, howling together at the loss of something that had been a fundamental part of their identities.

Still lying on the ground, limbs burning from his duel of wills with Fluttershy, Marcus watched the two of them mourn the loss of their innocence, tears trickling from his own eyes.

Rapid footfalls heralded the arrival of King William, who threw himself down next to the mortally wounded unicorn, dragged off his jacket and pressed it to the knife-wound. "Get this man a doctor, or a vet, whatever, RIGHT NOW!"

"Your Majesty…" someone stuttered. "That's…that's the enemy!"

"This 'enemy' was one of my subjects two minutes ago, and God help me he still will be come the end of all this! MEDIC!"

The rest was all a blurr. Equestrian Royal Guards came crashing in ahead of the Barrier to recover Fluttershy and the other newfoals, and a running gunfight had ensued as Lyra, Bon-Bon and Marcus were lifted or dragged to the Airbus, the King carrying the feebly struggling newfoal in his arms.

"Speedbird 1" the tower yelled over the radio. "All VIPs are aboard, takeoff now!"

"But what about you…"

"GO NOW! DON'T WORRY ABOUT US! GODSPEED AND GOOD LUCK TO YOU AL-OH GOD!"

Rocking on its landing gear, the Airbus' engines roared, and then the mammoth aircraft made a power-turn off the taxi-ramp and accelerated across the jetpad as the Barrier swallowed the airport, the shockwaves of its approach felling the control tower. Just as it reached takeoff speed, the superjumbo dropped roughly off the asphalt and onto grass, almost bogging down before air caught under the wings and it soared upwards, buffeting wildly as it caught the turbulence of other aircraft.

"HOLD ON TIGHT!" someone yelled over the cabin address system, and several hundred evacuees crammed aboard shrieked as the pilot rolled the jet onto its side to avoid other aircraft taking off in a panic. Marcus had been thrown against a window, and stared straight down in horror as he saw two Boeing 747s collide in mid-air just five hundred feet below them. The shockwave almost swatted the Airbus down, but somehow it stayed aloft as the burning wreckage of the two entwined jets fell away beneath them. Marcus watched in silent horror as the entangled aircraft plunged onto Windsor Castle, an immense fireball marking the funeral pyre of countless lives.

As the Airbus banked away to the North, he briefly caught a glimpse back towards London. The city was gone, and all that could be seen was the Barrier, advancing down the runaways of Heathrow. When it reached the ruins of Windsor, it would wipe everything away. The jets, the castle, the bodies. There would be no funeral or grave for the dead, and for a moment fiery rage consumed him, before he was suddenly drowned in grief and weariness.

Perhaps the dead were the fortunate ones; their troubles, after all, were over now. It was the living that had to suffer on.

"Damn them…damn us…" he heard someone whisper, and as the plane leveled out he weakly looked sideways to see King William cradling the lifeless body of the newfoal he had tried to save. Somewhere else in the cabin he could still hear Lyra and Bon-Bon crying together, their pained whinnies standing out amid a rising chorus of tears and cries as the plane gained altitude.

The King closed the dead pony's eyes, shoulders twitching. "So much loss, so much death and pain and suffering and rape of innocence…"

Marcus nodded in understanding.

"We'll all go to the Devil for this."

Celestia managed to drag herself to the lake, and began to drink earnestly. Sighing, she looked down to see her reflection gazing back at her…

…and smirking!

Le Havre, France, 2020 Anno Dominae

Marcus' stomach growled painfully; with the exception of some near-expired MREs, he hadn't eaten all day.

The Normandy shoreline stretched away into the rain, buildings dark monoliths in the gloom, deprived of light and power, crouching on the leaden edge of the English Channel. Tens of ships had already fled, carrying away as many refugees as could climb aboard them for the relative safety of Britain, but even more remained, waiting for the next round of evacuation and hoping to escape before the barrier claimed them. Turning he took in the few dozen people he was shepherding through the outskirts of Le Havre. They looked tired, exhausted even, which confused the Marine greatly; the civilians he could understand, but even his own troops looked haggard, despite today's evac having been a cakewalk compared to the previous week's litany of running gunfights. They'd even been able to salvage some stale pastries from the back of an abandoned patisserie, though Marcus had foregone his share in favor of leaving more for the rest; he'd eat when they got to the ships.

It was almost suspiciously quiet, like something unseen was gathering breath, preparing to shout.

"What the hell is going on with you people?" he demanded.

"I...I don't know Sir..."a lance corporal beside him heaved, a donated bomber-jacket hanging off his shoulders. "I just fell…so heavy..."

"Get it off me!" a voice suddenly shrieked from the back of the group, where one man was struggling with his coat.

"What's wrong!" Marcus grabbed the man, who was tearing at the sleeves of the trenchcoat, another piece of clothing scavenged during the long hike to the coast.

"Too tight!" the man cried out "It won't come off!"

"Don't talk shit, it's just-DAMN!" Marcus jumped back as the collar suddenly zippered itself shut and a button-up flap snapped shut across the throat, buckling tight.

"Help…me!" the man gasped, choking for air. Suddenly portions of the jacket tore open and thick straps flew out from hidden compartments in the lining, wrapping around him and pinning his arms in place. Unbalanced, the man tipped onto the ground, panting in panicked, shallow breaths heralding the onset of unconsciousness.

"Ensorcelled fabric!" Marcus shouted in sudden understanding, before spinning and yelling back towards the rest of the group. "Knife! I need a kni.."

The order died in his throat. More than half of the people under his care had just as abruptly found themselves prisoners in their own clothes. Most were already prone on the ground, while a few struggled willfully against the enchanted garments. One woman had managed to pull off most of her sweater, but the item had latched onto her arm like some extra-terrestrial parasite, a free sleeve lashing out like a tentacle to bind her other arm in place, before it pulled her into a submission bind with such force that he heard the bones in her arms snap like twigs, and the unfortunate refugee passed out from shock.

"Quick! Get them free before…what's wrong with you all!" he shouted, trying to rally some action out of those still on their feet, but they just regarded him dully, eyes unfocused and faces blank, almost like the gaze of a cow.

Then, like puppets jerked by a string, they all turned to face a flyover that carried the Route Nationale 29 over this part of the docks.

"Oh my…the plan went wonderfully!" a voice called out from the bridge. "Now you wait right there my dears, and you'll be all right in just a minute."

Instinctively Marcus rolled into the cover of a railroad wagon parked on a dockside siding. Unshouldering the grenade launcher he carried on his back, a German-made Neo-Panzerfaust, he used the stock to carefully knock through a rusting panel in the side of the empty coal hopper, and peering through he saw two ponies standing on the edge of the highway span.

One was a vibrant pink Earth Pony, her mane a mess of candyfloss curls. The other was a prim unicorn, from whose back a pair of gossamer-like butterfly wings projected. Pinkie Pie and Rarity, he understood their names to be. Two of the so-called 'Elements', or Celestia's personal cadre of advisors, generals, puppets, whatever.

Carefully he aimed the Neo-Panzerfaust, lining the two up in his sights. If he could use the inbuilt rangefinder to detonate the grenade just as it passed them, the explosion should take the both of them out…

"Well Pinkie…" the elegant alabaster mare said, turning to her companion. "I was dubious about your leaving drugged food supplies out for them to take, but it worked just as well as my bindwear. I guess I owe you that cupcake after all. All the same, isn't it wonderful when they so willingly accept the gifts of our generosity?"

"Yuperoony!" The pink one bounced, before, to Marcus' horror, turning to point straight in his direction just as he brought his finger to rest on the trigger. "Except that one! He didn't eat anything this morning. We should catch him!"

"Allow me Darling," the white unicorn replied, fluttering up on her butterfly wings, her horn lighting up. Without time to program the rangefinder on the grenade, Marcus squeezed the trigger, and the Neo-Panzerfaust spit out a high velocity grenade riding on a jet of flame. Whirling aside on her wings, the white unicorn caught the offending object, and nonchalantly threw it down onto the bridge.

"Really, there's no need to be so crud-AH!"

Even without the rangefinder set, the grenade was still live, and tossing it onto the roadbed was enough to light it off. The shockwave from the blast was enough to swat Rarity from the sky, tossing her into the shipping channel, and as for her companion…

…where had Pinkie gone? She had been standing right where the grenade had landed…

"Hi there!" said pony chirped in his ear, and Marcus spun to see Pinkie's head protruding from the clenched fist of the railroad car's coupler-knuckle. How had she…

"You're not very nice are you?" the offending mare continued, pulling herself free of the coupler as Marcus struggled to reholster the Neo-Panzerfaust and draw his pistol. "Maybe that's because you're so hungry. ANypony can be pretty mean on an upset stomach. Here, have a cupcake!"

From somewhere unseen she suddenly produced a small piece of confectionary, the icing patterned with rainbow-stripes, and hurled it at Marcus like a cartoon bomb.

Time slowed down as it hurtled straight for his face. It could be more drugs, or even laced with potion…if a few drops got in his mouth, or even made contact with his skin…

A burst of gunfire snapped him out of his fugue, bullets shredding the cupcake in mid-air before it could reach him. Pinkie yelped and dived back into some nether-realm within the four walls of the railroad car, and Marcus spun to see a troupe of people in haphazard military gear storming up the docks towards them. Some soldiers, but quite likely a lot of angry civilians with rifles too.

"Quickly!" one of them, a woman, shouted in French. "Grab those people and get them to the ships."

The deep breath truly did preface the plunge, because just as they reached the drugged or incapacitated ponies, a wing of Pegasai shock-troopers dropped out of the leaden sky, hurling rounds of potion. The stationary people who had fallen prey to Pinkie and Rarity's 'generosity' were almost all hit, and a few of the rescuers too before the remainder routed the skybourne ponies with strafes of full-auto fire.

When ingested, the Potion contained a sedative that knocked out the subject until the process was complete. If absorbed through the skin however, they felt everything, and the pain was enough to wake the unconscious and snap the drugged victims out of their stupor.

Their screams were mercifully brief. Struggling to tune them out by taking action, Marcus had managed to grab the woman whose arms had been shattered by the bindwear, and carried her in a fireman's hold to the first evac ship he came to. But the damage to her limbs had resulted in several blot-clots, and one had eventually broken free and reached her heart…

She was buried at sea, her frail body committed for a while to the deep as the pink wall of death slowly advanced over the horizon, consuming the last of Le Harve…

'Ah, there you are. So, Twilight Sparkle really did throw that poor animal into another Equestria. We did wonder…'

Celestia stared at the image before her. This wasn't her reflection, dirty and beaten, tears bleeding from her eyes. No, its bearing was prim and proper, a small smile gracing her face and flickers of magic flowing up and down her horn.

'Oh, don't cry for them, it doesn't become a Goddess. We're only doing what is best for them after all...' the reflection spoke.

The afternoon air fell strangely silent, as birds and creatures of the forest, even the insects that swarmed by night, sensed something terrible stirring and fled in terror. Fish that had survived the Princess's dive into the lake shot downstream as Celestia's gaze hardened, her eyes quickly drying. "You are her…the Solar Tyrant..."

'I am you Celestia, and you are I, though a lesser shadow…I am you fulfilled, made complete, the you that is destined to bring perfect Harmony to entire worlds…'

"Don't even say the word Harmony!" Celestia suddenly snapped, a mote of rage blooming in her chest. "What you're doing is nothing of the sort!"

"You poor thing. Has he really filled your mind with such delusion in so little time. They're just misguided, resisting because they don't know the Harmony we can bring them..."

"I Said To Not Abuse That Word!" Celestia intoned, the Royal Canterlot Voice looming as a threat at the edge of her voice. "This is not what Clover, or Starswirl, or even the Scribe taught us of the ways of Harmony. You bring naught but disaster and destruction..."

"They need to change, it is their salvation..."

"You are destroying them...killing them..."

"Monsters need to be killed..." the doppelganger said, her face composed and full of righteous conviction. Seeing it triggered another surge of borrowed memories, and Celestia gritted her teeth as the wave broke over her…

Bern, Switzerland, 2019 Anno Dominae

"What did you say..." a reporter said in numb shock.

"While it is in my power to stop the barrier...I morally cannot." Celestia smiled benignly down at the human reporters gathered before her in Equestria's Swiss embassy. "Your world is too dear, your lives too precious, for me to do otherwise. To allow you to continue as you are would be a crime."

She was happy to see several ponies in the room as well, though that brought to mind a sour note as counterpoint; she understood that the London Embassy was refusing to acknowledge her instructions to go into lockdown – once this was done she should go speak with Ambassador Heartstrings and clear up this little misunderstanding.

"The barrier is expanding, and the only way to survive is to change," she continued, seeking to ease their evident confusion and misbegot fear. "The Conversion Bureaus were set up precisely for that reason, to rid you from the violence and chaos that so perverts your inner equines, to set you gloriously free as prosperous, happy ponies, truly alive and aware of the magic arou-"

"What if we don't want to change!?" A reporter from NBC shouted in anger, the interruption throwing Celestia's train-of-thought off the rails and into the cornfields. No-one had questioned her in centuries, no-one except for Luna…no, no, that was a memory too raw and recent to remember.

"We cannot allow you to not change…" she said, drawing on that lingering hurt from their recent fight and channeling it into resolve. "In our recent war with the revived Crystal Empire, Equestria has seen the hurt and suffering that comes with allowing chaos and evil to reign free. You are just as much slaves to your inner demons and destructive technology as my dear ponies were slaves to King Sombra. I regret having to kill him, but I shall not kill a single one of you. Instead, we shall save you, one and all!"

She had hoped they would accept her words with shouts of thanks, but instead the reporters were beginning to back away from her, as if she was a dangerous animal. How dare they! Some attempted to flee to the doors, only to run into the Royal Guard and an assortment of smiling newfoals, recently the human members of the embassy staff. Seeing the beaming faces of her new little ponies lit a fire in Celestia's breast, and he drew herself up proudly upright, committing history to its new Course.

"You here will be the first, and the whole world will see and rejoice with you in your salvation."

"You can't do this!" screamed a young female reporter as the Guards began to advance, corralling them. Celestia only smiled at her, shaking her head in amusement.

"I can and I must. There is nothing in this world that can stop me, for your very world itself calls out to me to rescue you from yourselves..."

She nodded towards the newfoals, and bowing briefly to her they then pushed open a set of doors and revealed racks of potion stored in thin glass phials, which they began to toss into the crowd, who were roaring with fear and anger. Then they began to scream, and Celestia felt her eye twitch involuntarily. Curious…perhaps she was wrong to do….

The first peals of laughter shattered that fragile voice of dissent, and as her newborn ponies awoke to discover the delight of their new bodies she felt the fire within burn all the more hotter, like a loving blaze crying to be set loose on the world, to consume everything in Harmony.

"We are the harbingers of your perfection…" she said kindly, turning to face the television cameras. "And there is no force in this world that can stop the barrier...accept your fate, and join us."

The world watched in horror at what was being broadcasted live to across any country with a television set. Before the keys of billions, the God-Empress of Ponykind pronounced mankind as unfit to live, and transformed the gathered reporters against their will.

And so it was that Princess Celestia declared war against humanity.

And she did it with a smile.

"No!" Celestia declared, all tears and grief forgotten now, a hoof stamping down in the reflection's face not out of spite, but out of conviction. "You are the monster, an affront to all life!"

As the lake rippled around her hoof the other her flickered on the surface of the water, jumbled and broken, but her eyes sad and pitying.

'So you refuse this truth…I'm so sorry for you, Little Princess…if you can't accept it, then why not let me show you what awaits you if you proceed down this path.'

Once again Celestia felt her mind succumb to an external, or internal force, and opened her eyes to find herself back in an open white void, bound and shackled in a kneeling posture, stripped of her crown and regalia. The same human, Marcus, stood before her. He was dressed in faded fatigues, with pouches of various sizes adorn his body armor. Around his neck he wore a necklace of unicorn horns, and a pegasai wing was clipped to his belt as a bloody trophy. He was holding a weapon, what she knew was called an 'M4 assault rifle' in his hands, aiming straight at her skull, and hatred was burning in his eyes.

Celestia lowered her eyes, as if in acceptance of her fate, and began to chuckle softly.

"You poor, deluded little thing…you know absolutely nothing of this man-RARGH!"

Rearing back she roared with strength, and the bounds and shackles and the Void itself shattered into nothing, leaving her standing back on the shores of the lake, eyes blazing with incandescent energy.

'What!' shrieked the reflection of the Solar Tyrant. 'How can you deny what I showed you, how can you ignore that they only want to kill us all!'

"Because he shared his innermost self with me, all of his memories!" Celestia said, one hoof coming down in a stomp that broke no argument. "And as well as the bad, I saw the good!"

'There is no good in them!' the Tyrant seethed, her own eyes crackling with force from across the dimensional veil. 'Only a twisted parody of virtue, subsumed beneath everything that makes them imperfect. It is our destiny to make that spark manifest, but burning away the rot!'

"Your mind is small, worm of the wastes, your heart shriveled by fear and distrust" Celestia said, her voice booming with the rage of an entire world and horn roaring with fiery white plasma. "Let me show you the truth of HARMONY!"

With one sweep of her wings she ascended high over the lake and released a brilliant surge of purest Memory…

A limping Marcus staggers into the New York bunker. Cheerilee is waiting for him, and before he can even raise a hand in greeting she gallops straight at him and envelops him in a passionate hug, knocking the two of them to the floor. There are no words, only love.

Derpy Whooves, brave, strange, dizty and misunderstood Derpy, soaring through enemy formations, dodging, weaving and looping erratically to evade Pegasai warriors, a saddlebag stuffed with medical supplies hanging from her side and a first aid kit clenched in her teeth. Suddenly she dives and plummets in a controlled stall, before swooping behind a mound of rubble where two wounded soldiers are awaiting rescue.

A woman, the French commando, tossing little Dinky in the air, the lavender filly shrieking with laughter as they celebrate her new cutie-mark.

Vinyl Scratch and her cousin Allie Way, 'the Blue Belles', galloping through the streets of Boston. Vinyl, the legendary DJ-Pon3, is bobbing her head to a selection of the greatest rock hits of all time, an MP3 player strapped to her forehoof. Allie, a bowling prodigy with an eagle eye for ballistics, is wearing a holographic HUD visor. Three unicorn mages suddenly lunge into view, and Vinyl stops and hits a switch on her other hoof. Twin loudspeakers mounted on her battle-saddle blare solid walls of sound that break the ambusher's line. Allie, an auto-aiming turret carried on her own back, fires tear gas grenades into their midst to keep them down, before the two-pony-team continue on their way, weaving between the battle-lines, delivering vital intelligence.

Spitfire lying prone on a street, downed in an attack, one wing broken. Suddenly a solider throws himself over her to shield her from harm. Two hurled spears embed themselves in the adamantine plates of his flak jacket. She looks up, her eyes narrow in shock, and she rears up and throws him off, before hurling herself onto his chest, shielding him in turn from a potion phial that shatters harmlessly across her flank. They bop foreheads together in mutual thanks and share an adrenaline-fueled grin.

Lyra and Bon Bon cuddling on a couch, watching a movie with Marcus, Cheerilee and the rest of the humans. Marcus is scratching his 'Cher' behind the ears when tiny Pipsqueak, a war orphan, trots in, sees the two couples, and mimicks vomiting in disgust. Everyone just laughs back at him in good humour, all aware of how the young colt's eyes are always flicking towards the younger daughter of the Whooves clan.

Zecora calmly tattooing tribal markings on the back of another zebra, laughing as she shares a joke with a Kenyan soldier recently recruited from the Mombasa Resistance.

Doctor Whooves and his daughter Sparkler, working on a small piece of metal, Marcus hovers behind them, an expression of wonder on his face as he watches them craft.

"These precious memories destroy the lies you have built to shield your conscience!" Celestia boomed, her entire body burning with power. "This Is Unity! This Is Love! THIS IS HARMONY!"

Below her the image of the solar tyrant had swollen to fill the entire surface of the lake, glaring balefully up at her.

'There can be no peace, no compromise, no accord between Us and Them. You have seen his memories, how they poisoned their world, incited violence and murder, turned our own ponies against us!'

"And you have done just the same, or even worse!" Celestia roared back down, the reflection rippling at the force of her shout. "You have corrupted your Equestria, tainted the souls of precious ponies with cruelty and malice, and drawn two realities into a war of endless death and atrocity! Harmony, true harmony, transcends species and worlds – it is the finding of common ground despite differences, the nurturing of love between all! You would create a desolation and name it Peace!"

The Tyrant moved to retort, when the surface of the lake on which her image was cast exploded in a mountain of foam. Celestia's armor, called from where it had fallen in the her crash, roared out of the depths and flew to its mistress. Golden plate, bucklers, pauldrons and mail all wrapped around her as the warrior princess readied herself for the fight once more, head bowed and gaze turned inward. Finally a last fragment of gold shot out from the lake, a familiar crown set with a single amethyst gem. As its weight settled once again on her brow Celestia opened her eyes, which now glared down at her other self with a quiet focus.

"I will not allow some Tyrant rule with an iron hoof," she said, in what was almost a whisper.

The air wavered from intense heat. On the shore of the lake, a bush burst into flames, sparks and embers spreading the blaze to nearby trees.

"I will not allow an entire species to die quietly and fade into the darkness."

The entire lake was boiling. The forest around it was being swallowed in the growing conflagration.

"I will not stand to see the rape of innocence and innocents alike, of the peaceful being forced to take up bloody arms, and the grotesque being violated in mind, body and soul!"

The Tyrant glared back at her, her face roiling like some ghostly image on the turbulent surface of the lake.

"Equestria, all of Equus, will rise against you! We will fight."

Celestia's wings snapped open in a battle-stance, leaving her suspended in the air by magic alone.

"We will turn this darkness away, and come to the rescue of all you have subjugated, Pony and Human, Earthborn and Equestrian alike."

Her entire body filled with a gold light.

"We will cast you down, and cast you out!"

Screaming in rage, Celestia dived like a golden sunbolt, broke the sound barrier in less than a second, and impacted into the very center of the Tyrant's face The resulting explosion lit up the surrounding hills and mountains as the entire contents of the lake flash-boiled into steam. After a long moment the particles of air were seized by an immense magical field that pulled them back into condensation, hot rain that poured down on the ruined valley, extinguishing the burning trees.

In the punchbowl crater that had been the lake, Celestia stood firm, cracks radiating out from where her hooves were embedded in the stone exposed by her rage. The falling rain did not faze or even touch her, boiling back into steam the moment it touched her luminescent coat or glowing, superheated armor.

"In Harmony's name, I swear it."

Luna flew as quickly as she could over the rolling countryside, homing in on the beacon of energy that was her sister. But despite flying at just above the speed of sound, she knew she would not reach where Celestia had landed for several more minutes; for her all skill and speed as a flier, when possessed of deep emotion an Alicorn's power transcended the physical realm – Celestia, in the depths of the pain and grief inflicting her soul, and flown away with a speed that had not been seen in all of Luna's many centuries.

'Princess Luna!' she heard a familiar voice cry out in her mind, and rolling onto her back she blinked with surprise to see a pastel-coloured dot soaring along in her slipstream. A moment's time for her eyes to focus revealed her pursuer to be Princess Cadence, several miles behind and struggling to catch up, even as the younger alicorn's wings blurred with preternatural strength.

"Cadence!" she cried out, before righting herself and easing back a little, allowing the Alicorn of Love to come alongside as she spared her great-descendant a momentary smile of pride. "One sees that we are not alone out flying today…it is good to see you are here as well…but tell, me, how didst thou come to be at our side?"

"I…I was on a balcony outside Canterlot Castle, when I felt someone scream…I…I think it was Aunt Celestia…" Cadence said slowly, the words hitching in her throat. "I was like a call, a call that only I could hear and muster. I had to come."

"And we are most glad to see you…" Luna said kindly, reaching out with one hoof to lightly touch Cadence in a gesture of comfort. "Please my dear, there's no need to address me by my title; are we not family?"

"Oh?" Cadence replied, a touch of youthful bravado making itself shown. "Well, there's about fifty generations between us, but would 'Grandmother' do?"

Luna spluttered and almost fell out of the air, giving Cadence momentary fears of banishment and exile at the hooves of the warlike mare clad in midnight battle armor. But to the young princess's relief, when the Lunar Alicorn recovered her flight, she was laughing.

"Grandmother? Haha! Oh it's been many, many years since anyone honored me with that name, but no my dear. Appropriate as it may be, I'd rather think of us as sisters of a sort; equals, not merely ancestor and descendant. We are alicorns, a rare and lonely breed, too few to treat as anything less than the closest of kin. Please, call me Luna…"

Cadence blushed at the show of kinship, before her ears twitched and she felt a pull in her chest drawing her on, and from some unknown inner source of strength she surged forward, keeping pace with the now somber Luna as they powered over valleys and mountains, far beyond Equestria's borders and into the wild lands that covered most of Equus, wooded wastes home only to the fey creatures that thrived beyond the light of 'civilization'.

"…I fear family is one of the few things we have left to cherish in this new and turbulent time…" the Princess of the Night added darkly.

"What happened, Luna?" Cadence enquired, unable to keep a nervous note out of her voice. "Have the Crystal Empire and King Sombra returned as you predicted they soon would?"

"No, dear Crystal Princess…" Luna replied, a slightly sad smile gracing her face. "Your own time of trial is not yet upon us. No, if anything all Equestria now faces a test and a threat unlike any other – ourselves."

When Cadence made no show of understanding, Luna explained further. "You understand that Shining Armor was called away on a secret mission this morning. Celestia and I voyaged to Ponyville on the same business, after receiving a missive of distress from master Spike, squire and assistant to thy sister-in-law…"

"Twilight's in danger!?" Cadence cried out, ready to tip her wings and bank back towards Ponyville, until Luna gave a gentle telekinetic tug to keep her on course.

"Twilight Sparkle and her good friends are safe, I assure you Cadence, though at first we had reason to believe they were under attack from a dangerous animal" Luna said, indicating with a wince her bruised ribs. "It did not go well."

"What kind of beast could wound you like that?" Cadence asked. "And where's Aunt Celestia?"

"No beast could be so fierce while knowing any touch of pity," Luna answered her. "It is a being, a sentient mind and heart as surely as we or any pony, griffin or dragon. Its' species is called 'human', and the example we met was very powerful indeed, with advanced runic markings on its body to enhance its abilities. Such work has not been seen since the creation of the Crystal Ponies, as it is a long art we decreed should be forgotten."

"And Aunt Celestia?" Cadence twisted and gave Luna a look over. "Is she okay?"

"I do not know," Luna said quietly. "The creature claimed to be from another world, cast into ours by a fluke of arcane magic. She tried to pry into his mind, to see for herself the veracity of his words. It back fired on her. She fled in terror, and had we tried to contain her, I fear she would have attacked myself and the Elements of Harmony. It is her grief that you feel within you, her mind reaching out to all she considers her kin, begging for comfort."

Again Cadence felt a warm glow at being thought of as family to such long-lived and powerful beings, another reminder of how much she had changed, even as a subtle sense of horror began to dawn upon her.

"What…what did she see?" Cadence she finally enquired, made fearful by the implication that the Solar Regent, Equestria's eternal champion, could be reduced to such a low by a single mind. "What nightmare world did he come from to frighten her so?"

"As you say, a nightmare world" Luna answered, her voice low and guarded. "It seems that the realm of humans is under attack, driven to a grim and terrible war of survival. We shall know soon enough – Celestia stopped running away some time ago, and if my senses are still as keen as they once were, she lies just beyond the next ridge. Then we shall have our answer-"

The sentence remained unfinished, because as the two of them ascended to fly over the crest of the wooded ridge, pillar of light appeared in the distance, stretching to the heavens.

"BRACE YOURSELF!" Luna yelled, a second before grabbing hold of Cadance and spinning around to shield the younger princess's body with her own as the shockwave hit. Tornado force winds smashed the two of them out of the air, and Luna ploughed straight through several trees, shattering them like matchsticks as she kept herself curled around Cadence in a protective embrace until...

"CRASH!"

…a final blast of heat and pressure leveled the forest as far as the brow of the rise, laying the trees flat. The same current of air threw the two fliers back into the air before they struck the ground, and Luna released her hold on Cadence, allowing the pair of them to catch sky under their wings and recover their previous course and altitude.

"That…that…" Cadence gasped in shock.

"That was not bad for one's first flight…" Luna smiled gently, before her expression grew stern. "But if you are to someday ascend to the Crystal Throne, you must hone your body as much as your mind and spirit. In times of peace a monarch must juggle naught but the niceties of politics, but when war arises, it is to us that our warriors look for leadership in battle…"

"But, I'm not a soldier, I'm not even…" Cadence began, before slowly looking back at the burning remnants of the forest, a conflagration hot enough to crack and shatter solid stone, brought on by an explosion that had leveled thousands of trees. Yet it had not left so much as a scratch on her, or singed the tips of her mane's hairs.

"You are you…" Luna said softly, but not unkindly. "And you are kin, with all that entails, precious one. I think that someday, you small make a great Princess and ruler. But today, we are called to fight, if what I see before me is true."

She pointed forward to what must have been the epicenter of the blast, a rising column of fume and steam. "We have gone far beyond charted Equestria, into the far reaches of Sibearia. This valley was once called Ponguska, and that was, until a moment ago, Lake Kowbel. COME! THIS WAY!"

With that she dropped forward and dove down towards the bottom of the Ponguska valley. Cadence followed, gasping as she took in what had once been a lake. Now there was a large circle of dark glass almost half a mile across. No trees or stones, just a deathly smooth depression. The edge of the circle was wreathed with flames as what few combustibles remained shouldered. Buffeted by turbulent updrafts from the rising steam, Cadence matched Luna's course towards the center of the circle, a small white dot on an irregular island of charred stone. As they did, she felt the air around her tingle with the familiar trill of Celestia's magic, before the choking mass of vapor was siphoned up into an immense cumulus that began to rain condensation down on them. Instinctively she cast a shielding spell, and the rainfall bend around her.

'When did I learn how to do that?' she wondered for a moment, before trying to put the unnerving thought out of her mind, repressing a shiver as they came in for an ungraceful landing beside the far more composed Luna.

"I swear it…" she heard Celestia speak aloud, the Solar Alicorn's entire form glowing with ethereal light.

"Sister!" she heard Luna cry out, punctuating it with her own shout of "Aunt Celestia!"

Celestia turned to face them with a surprised start, her eyes momentarily loosing focus…

Reykjavik, Iceland, 2021 Anno Dominae

Continental Europe had all but fallen. Britain and Ireland were gone as well, and the Barrier now touched on two more landmasses, Asia and Africa, reaching as far in various directions as the Black Sea, Morocco, and the Faroe Islands. The only consolation was that it had slowed down somewhat once it hit the Atlantic.

The island nation of Iceland would fall within six months, by all projections, which begged questions of why Marcus was in that country's capital city, accompanied only by Lyra and two volunteers as bodyguards. One carried a video-camera, recording whatever would transpire.

"Are you sure this pony's on the level?" he asked for what seemed the thousandth time, breath forming white clouds in the crisp night air. "Because asking me to come virtually alone, without even giving me the name of our contact, makes me question my faith in even you Lyra."

"I guess asking you to just trust me then isn't going to help?" Lyra smirked, her hooves trotting lightly on the ground as they moved through the city's industrial district. "There's no need anyway; there she is."

At her nod the two guards spun, directing gun-mounted flashlights into a patch of shadows, which suddenly gained mass and texture, forming into a quadrupedal form. Marcus blinked, even as his hands hung by his twin holsters, ready to draw if necessary.

Like detail fading in, the mass of shadows slowly coalesced into the form of a large pony, a dark blue in colour, except for her mane, which was pale as powder.

"Oh, Princess!" Lyra gasped, one hoof flying to her mouth in shock. "What happened to your mane?"

Marcus however had only heard the word 'princess' before his eyes darted between the horn on the newcomer's forehead and the wings projecting from her back…

"It's the Solar Tyrant in disguise!" one of the guards shouted, before Lyra threw herself forward.

"Wait! No, she's not…she's…"

"Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Night, Regent of the Moon…" Marcus said evenly, before tipping forward in a courtly bow he had learnt during his Embassy service, keeping on his best behavior and aware of how the video camera would record his every word and move for posterity. "It is a pleasure, milady."

"Please, I am but Luna," the dark alicorn replied, kneeling in turn. "I come before you stripped of my crown and throne, and were all Equestria to beg me to take up either once more I would say 'nay'. I present myself to you as a willing exile."

"On the contrary, I see nothing but true royalty here, your highness," Marcus replied, smiling kindly. "We are glad to recognize one of Equestria's leaders, if she comes in peace."

"I do indeed, but not in any regal capacity. I am as I said, an exile. My sister has long embarked on a course of madness, and now that I have openly tried to move against her, to oppose her crimes against humankind, I find myself once more unwelcome in the nation whose founding I witnessed as a foal. I and my companion come now seeking asylum, and offering what help we can…it's safe to come out now Cadence."

From behind a warehouse a second figure meekly trotted into view, and Lyra suddenly gave a gasp and galloped forward to greet her.

"Cadence! It really is you!"

Marcus cupped a hand to his mouth to mask a smile as the two began to do some sort of greeting dance involving sunshine and ladybugs – this must have been the foalsitter Lyra remembered from her childhood, the one who had also done the same for Twilight Sparkle. Cadence, a young pink unicorn, was about the same size as Lyra in build, if a few years older, but otherwise unremarkable.

Then he noticed the pair of wings on her back, and he gave a low whistle that drew Luna's attention. Like him, the alicorn had been smiling wistfully watching the two old friends reunite.

"So, ah…is she like you, your highness?" he enquired, tapping first his forehead and then his back.

"An alicorn? No, though for a while we had hopes…" Luna sighed, before explaining. "Cadence is a pegacorn, a rare condition where a pony is born with vestigial traits from another race. Your friend Ms Heartstrings is one if I recall – a unicorn who can walk on clouds, but I digress. Cadence herself is my great-great-descendant – another long story – and heir to the throne of the Crystal Empire."

Marcus nodded, having learned of that debacle through Lyra's lessons on Pony history. The Empire, a long and almost-forgotten city-state, had reappeared after a thousand-and-then-some-year 'absence' not long before Equestria and Earth had made contact. With it had come its tyrannical ruler, King Sombra, who had quickly re-established his throne despite the intervention of the Elements of Harmony, resulting in a war between Equestria and the Crystal Empire that had not concluded until after First Contact with Earth, just weeks before Celestia had announced to the world her plan for the forcible ponyfiction of all Earth. He had wondered a bit about the convenient timing, but had eventually decided that having got Equestria onto a war footing, Celestia had decided to turn those same forces immediately against Earth.

"We had every confidence that the Empire's reappearance would be heralded by an Ascension," Luna continued. "The transformation of a suitable member of the Crystal Bloodline into an Alicorn who would act as a nexus and focus for the love and unity that flowed from the Crystal Ponies. Cadence was a very likely candidate, but nothing ever came of it. Looking back now, I realize that I should have seen that as a sign of a rot spreading though into Equestria, a rot that had first touched Celestia, and spread through her and the Element Bearers. Alas, that I had not seen it sooner, but in those brief, happy days I was simply so glad to be home and loved once more to question things that seened 'off' to me. In the wake of Sombra's defeat I suggested establishing Cadence as the Crystal Princess, but by that point relations between myself and Celestia had…soured, and my suggestion was met with hostility. Celestia by that time had come to regard herself as rightful holder of the Crystal Throne. Cadence would at best have been a puppet on a throne, dancing to Celestia's whim."

Marcus stared in silence, enraptured. When Luna finished, he finally spoke. "Would you be willing to testify to that, not just to me, but to both worlds."

"You have the means to do this?"

"Yes."

"As I had hoped. Yes, we would be glad to spread the truth of Celestia's madness, along with other secrets that illuminate the depths she has fallen too."

Before Marcus could ask further, he heard Lyra, who until now had been happily talking with Cadence, take on a curious and worried tone.

"Cadence, where's Shining Armor. He wouldn't let you come here without him, the two of you love each other too much."

Marcus turned to see Cadence's smile gradually collapse into a frown, and finally noticed telltale signs of weariness and exhaustion; lines around the eyes and mouth that spoke of nights spent crying into a pillow.

"That is another matter of which I wish to speak…" Luna intoned. "Much as how Celestia's potions compel the love and loyalty of all touched by them, she has violated the will of the entire Royal Guard by invoking a Geis upon them."

"A what?"

"A Geis…" Cadence spoke up, addressing Marcus for the first time. "A Tynged, or magical vow. When anypony is inducted into the Royal Guard, they swear an oath of loyalty to Equestria, with one hoof placed upon the Charter of the Guard. Celestia has enchanted the Charter so as to compel everypony who swore on it to obey her without question. If she gives them an order, they will not carry it out without a word. Jump off a cliff, potion-bomb children…" she gave a sniff. "…or betray their loved ones..."

"No…" Lyra gasped. "Not Shining Armor. Cadence, he loved you too much for Celestia to be able to break that!"

"She did!" Cadence snapped. "My special talent is Love, Lyra, I can sense its flow and currents. Even before me and Shiny were married, I could feel something worming its way through Equestria, subtle at first, then stronger and more insidious once Celestia took the Crystal Throne. At least when Sombra was on it, it only incited rage and hate, but now…" she shuddered, looking a little green around the face. "Now those same emotions flow through Equestria, but hiding behind the mask of Love…a love that sickens and poisons all others, spreading a taint that flows deep into hearts and souls and relationships, turning ponies towards Celestia and away from compromise or compassion for humanity."

She swallowed hard and looked up at Marcus, eyes hard, and for a moment he saw a flicker in them, as if for a moment they had flashed like crystalline facets. Suddenly he felt a great deal of potential in this mare, a pressure-drum waiting to burst.

"So…" he replied, standing up. "She's brainwashing and ensorcelling her own citizens. Is that how the potions compel the obiedience of the newfoals as well?"

"No." Luna answered, her eyes gaining a haunted air. "There is a deeper, darker secret to the potion, wherin my sister has courted with powers dark and magicks vile."

Marcus shivered at the way Luna was eying him. "Yes, on some level you understand what I'm saying, even if you don't have the words to describe it. I…I didn't want to believe it when Celestia first promoted the potion. I believed that her heart was pure, that she had found a way to safely bypass the limits of the Amiomorphic spell, but she has not changed the foundational principles, and has even turned those flaws to her advantage. The newfoals, the barrier, and their obedience are all bound together in a pact Celestia has wrought, a triumvate of power-exchange made possible by her us of…of…"

Marcus waited eagerly as Luna trailed off, slowly turning her head away towards the city, ears held high and pupils shrinking into pinpricks. "She's here!"

She spun on her hooves, teeth bared in a scream. "You must leave, now! She's looking for me, and if she finds you all, she'll force the change upon you all. You, who have killed so many, and helped a brave few turn their efforts to a common good, she will rejoice in your conversion, and take notes as you gladly spill every secret of your organization to her!"

Pirouetting again she thrust a hoof at Cadence and Lyra. "And you two! All she'll have for you is a knowing smile and a show trail before death by petrifaction! Any truths you have to say will be discarded as the pitiful insults of traitors in the dock! This cannot be allowed to happen!"

Marcus crouched to look her in the eye. "You're going to sacrifice yourself, aren't you? To stay behind and draw her attention while we escape."

"Indeed," Luna nodded, her mane bouncing like silvery threads.

"I can't let you do that, your highness. Your life and loyalty and love for our cause is too great to loose."

"You fool…" she chuckled softly. "There is nothing else you can do but let me show my love and loyalty by giving myself for this cause. Though it might help if you left me that…" she added, pointing to the still-recording camera.

"We've fought ponies before…" Marcus growled, standing proud with his guards. "We'll fight them now."

"Don't fool yourself, Marcus Renee," Luna answered back. "You've fought thralls, slaves and the Elements of Harmony! My sister is none of these!"

To illustrate her point she suddenly hurtled around in a whirlwind kick, balancing on her forehooves to deliver a powerful buck into a shipping container, sending the entire multi-ton object flying into the harbor. "I have fought time and again for Equestria, and am a combatant of rare skill and power, but Celestia has had a thousand years more to perfect her skills."

"Technology can remedy that…" was Marcus' reply, brandishing the same trusty Neo-Panzerfaust that had saved him in Le Havre. "I'd like to see her swallow a rocket-propelled-grena-HEY!"

With a burst of telekinesis Luna had snatched one of his holstered pistols and tossed it in the air. As it fell she grabbed hold of it again, flipped the barrel to face her and clicked off the safety. Before anyone had time to shield themselves she magically pulled the trigger, and pony and human like shouted as the pressure wave kicked them in the ears. The guard with the camera dropped the precious device as he fell to his knees, hands pressed to the sides of his head.

Blinking, Marcus looked towards where he expected Luna's body to lie, only to see the Lunar alicorn standing proud, the bullet embedded in her forehead like a second, stubby horn. For a few moments the wound wept blood, and then the bullet fell out and tinkled onto the ground, revealing a glimpse of Luna's skull, as adamant and whole as tank armor.

There was a moment's stunned quiet as Luna trotted over to the video camera and gripped it curiously between her hooves, before lifting it to film her grotesque wound.

"We two are cursed lives, not born or begotten but conjured into being by ancient spells, souls spawned artificially from Equestria itself…it is impossible to fight beings such as we, not without magic of your own" she said woefully, the words resounding in Marcus' mind despite the ringing in his ears. "We cannot be killed by mortal means; the cold of steel or the heat of flame do not pierce or burn us, and only magicks most powerful may wound us for a while. Celestia and I exist until Equestria itself wills us to die, and the tainted spirit of the land has so far only turned against me, sapping my life and power and strength, yet even as weak as I am I stood here with one of your bullets embedded in my skull and did not die. Now run!"

Suppurating sickly, the bullet-wound closed back up, flesh and fur knitting together to leave Luna's head as blemish-free as it was before she had shot herself.

"Run!" she said again, turning her gaze from the unblinking eye of the camera's lens.

His hearing still tinny, Marcus did not hear the familiar sucking 'push' of a portal opening, but Luna did, glancing behind her as a pink mote of light danced into being on the street behind them, rapidly swelling in size and girth.

"RUNNNNNNNNNNNNN!" she screamed, physically and telepathically, and without question Marcus grabbed Lyra in both arms and fled, one of the other guards scooping up Candence. Then they were gone, giving Luna a moments piece.

"Now, how does this contraption work?" she said to herself, considering the camera she still held with her magic. "All the battles I've ever fought and it might be Luna Vs. 'Samsung' that defines my life. Ha!"

Quickly she expanded the zoom and determined the best orientation, leaving the camcorder discretely positioned in the shadow of a steel drum as she trotted out into the center of the street. It patiently recorded all that followed, and when Marcus returned the next day, was still where she had left it, battery flat but hard-drive intact and full of valuable footage;

"I see I been betrayed." a soothing voice preceded Celestia's appearance.

"It is you who is the betrayer, sister..." Luna said, before planting her hooves firmly on the ground and summoning a speck of magic to the tip of her horn. "Do you not deny all you have done, all the holy promises and vows you have defiled, the lives and minds you have raped?"

"A mere bagatelle Luna, necessary for the glory that will be accomplished…" Celestia replied, finally stepping into view, the soft light she cast mired only by the dark shadow of a canvas bag she wore round her neck, convulsing softly like a beating heart. "You mean to fight me?"

"Forever and a day, for our little ponies, and the humans too."

"Don't force my hoof against you again Luna…" Celestia said sternly. "I will not lose you again dear sister, but I will not allow you to pervert the destiny of this world."

"You lost me Celestia" Luna replied, smiling through her tears. "When you lost yourself. If there is any of Equestria's noble ruler left, the one who led our ponies, our people into a thousand years of peace, then please, let us be sisters again, and bring true light to both these worlds, and recompense and truce."

"No Luna…" Celestia decreed. "There will be no truce, only a final peace, and a perfect kingdom that spans two worlds, a kingdom that will last another thousand years, and beyond."

"So be it…" Luna wept, rearing back on her hooves. "I love you, Celly."

Luna cast her spell, and the bolt of light flew straight and true, until, with her own power, Celestia bent the magical shot around in an arc and back at the Lunar Alicorn.

Luna staggered, and then with remarkable swiftness, turned to stone, the effect flowing up from her hooves to encompass her head. In the final moment, with a swirl of venting magic, her mane exploded into a gorgeous starfield, billowing for just an instant before it too was frozen, a stone corona framing her peaceful expression.

Celestia slowly trotted up to the new statue, neck bent as if the weight of the back she carried was too much to bear. Then, hooves staggering, she fell against her petrified sibling and sobbed pitiably.

"And I love you, Lulu."

Luna and Cadence both jumped in surprise as Celestia, after her moment's hesitation, hurled herself forward with a single swoop of her wings and held them both close. "My dear, dear girls", she said softly, before stepping back and bowing low. "Brave and true Princesses of Equestria, I kneel before your wisdom and compassion."

Cadence blushed, and Luna cocked her head. "Well, that's somewhat unexpected."

"Oh Lulu…" Celestia smiled softly, rising to her feet. "I've seen so much, the highs to which we can aspire…and the lows to which we might sink…"

"I…I don't understand…" Cadence murmured, before Luna shushed her by pressing a wingtip to her lips.

"Is what the human claimed true, Celestia. His world is under attack by an Equestria not so different to our own."

"Yes…he speaks truth… the human, Marcus, has arrived from a war torn plane of existence where the enemy is myself."

"What?!" Cadence stared at her Aunt in confusion.

"The enemy was my alter-ego, the Solar Tyrant, and her corrupted Elements of Harmony," Celestia answered, spreading her wings to take flight, with Luna and Cadence following after her. "An alternate dimension where, for whatever reason, I took upon myself to forcibly change an entire species against their will, and worse yet to Equestria."

"How so?" pressed Luna, and Celestia's head drooped with shame, before she turned back to gaze at them. "This Tyrant, this me, has perverted her rule, claimed the Crystal Throne, and now foolishly wields a power she has no understanding of. We have to stop her."

"So the time has come?" Luna's eyes widened. "You mean to use the Concordia Maxima and summon all nations and armies to our side?"

"Yes, but first, I need to speak to someone else who might have insight. An old friend who makes a hobby of pulling apart my psyche. Perhaps he can throw light on things."

Realisation dawned on Luna with devastating force.

"No!" the Alicorn of the Night all but jumped on Celestia's back to draw her attention. "He is dangerous beyond compare; not even Sombra can compare to his mastery of trickery and deceit!"

"And I'm willing to risk that Luna!" Celestia replied. "Please, trust me on this! For once, we actually need Discord's help!"

"Discord, the Draconequs?" Cadence said, shock pouring through her words. "Isn't he the Elder God of Chaos itself!?"

"Yes…" Celestia admitted. "But we now face a weapon even more devastating than even his guiles and magic."

"What!" Luna demanded.

Celestia paused in mid-air, and the other two alicorns came to a halt in turn. Wings beating nervously, Celestia drew her sister in and touched their horns together in embrace, before giving Cadence a hug that spoke of boundless pride and trust. Then, and only then did she look Luna directly in the eye, her words silencing all of the Night Princesses' arguments.

"The Solar Tyrant now wears the Bag of Tirek round her neck…her dominion is built upon its power, the power of the Rainbow of Darkness."

TO BE CONTINUED…

INTERLUDE: A DIFFERENT VIEW

New York City, 2023 Anno Dominae

"Shit, Sparkler!" Marcus winced, hissing acidly as he pressed a wad of cloth to his upper arm. "Zecora's brilliant, but having powdered gems tattooed into your flesh is always going to fucking hurt!"

"Oh stop whining" the young unicorn mare sighed in exasperation, giving him a forceful jab of her horn as he moved to remove the wad and glance at his arm. "And don't pick at it!"

"Yes Mam'," Marcus grumbled back. The cloth, actually one of Zecora's magical surplices, impregnated with esoteric herbs and liniments was a little something designed to speed along healing after his sessions 'under the runic needle'.

"And besides!" Sparkler pouted. "If Zecora's brilliant, what does that make me?"

"Sorry kid," he smiled fondly, unable to resist the sheer adorableness of the elder Whooves daughter. "You're a genius. Crazy, unlicensed and uncertified, but definitely a genius."

"That's better!" the pony also known as Amethyst Star smiled, before levitating a small tuning fork out one of her jacket's many pockets (which, in defiance of Euclidian geometries, were considerably larger on the inside). "Right, you know the drill Renee! Hold still."

Marcus obliged as she spun the instrument in her magic, until it hummed softly in cadence with her thaumic field. Then, she held it close to Marcus' arm, listening for the telltale 'ring' of magic at work. Finally, after several long minutes, she nodded in approval.

"Excellent!" she said briskly, turning away to examine a wall diagram depicting a stylised human outline, one covered in multiple esoteric markings. "The final graft held. Which means there's nothing left except to put you TO THE TEST!"

Abruptly bucking herself off the chart with her forehooves, Sparkler flipped back in the air and cracked her head in a neat arc, firing off a bolt of offensive magic. Marcus yelped and thrust out one arm in self-defence, fingers sprayed and eyes squeezed shut as he awaited the impact...

...it never came. Instead, he gradually became aware of a faint, almost pleasant tingling in his fingers, and slowly opened his eyes.

"Well...that's something..."

He had caught Sparkler's spell in the palm of his hand. Curling his arm around, he stared in silent awe at the flickering ball of energy now floating in his grasp like a magical baseball. The runes now permanently etched into his skin, normally invisible, now shimmered softly in tune with the ebb and flow of the caged spell. Curious and more than a little awestruck, Marcus' eyes drifted to where he had just been holding Zecora's suplice to his arm. Now exposed, the skin underneath, previously raw and red from the tattooist's work, was knitting back together before his eyes. It didn't even hurt beyond a gentle tickling.

"Congratulations," Sparkler beamed, trotting beside him, affecting a gruff British accent. "Y'er a wizard, Marcus."

Against his will, Marcus felt an involuntary grin stretch across his face; one of a childhood dream realised.

"Expelliarmus!" he shouted, thrusting his arm out and 'firing' the spell off at Sparkler's examination table...

...which promptly burst into flames.

"Wha...but...that's..." Marcus stammered, before slowly turning to regard Sparkler with a somewhat horrified expression. "You cast an INCINERATION SPELL at me!?"

"And I had every confidence you'd be just fine," Sparkler beamed, before abruptly pulling a bag of gelatin-free marshmallows from another infinitely-deep pocket and skewering them on the tines of her magical tuning-fork. "Who'd have thought that table would make such a good bonfire."

Marcus could only shake his head. Adopted or not, this mare was still the scion of the Whooves clan. Lateral thinking seemed to come with the name.

"Ah, excooze me..." someone broke in, their young voice layered with what sounded very much like a Brooklyn accent. "But weez got some dispatches fer' yers."

Marcus turned to where an orange-and-pink mare, a filly just into her teens, had stuck her head in through the door, two saddlebags strapped to her stocky barrel and an opening seed proudly emblazoned on her flank.

"Hey Babs..." Sparkler greeted cheerfully. "Want a smore?"

"Sorry Sparks," Babs Seed replied tersely. "I've got important news for Mr Renee."

"I said before Babs, you might be my Adjunct, but you're also my friend, and that mean's it's just 'Marcus'..." the man in question said gently, to which the Manehattan-born filly simply bashfully ducked down behind the cover of her fringe. "Anyway, what's the story?"

At that, Babs abruptly straightened up and nimbly pulled several sheets from her saddlebags with her teeth, which she handed to him.

"Mz Zecora and Cadenz say they're ready to move out and prep tings' in Boston. Dem books from Miskatonic Univoosity came in real' handy with tracin' Earth's old leylines. They reckon well be gud to deploy their Trench-Spell once the Barrier hits."

The report was supplemented by several photographs, depicting a now infamous vessel hanging in the sky.

"However, te' 'Great Equestrian' has been making forayz ahead o' the Barrier. Spitfire'z askin' if we can send the modified jets up against it in a field-test?"

"No, keep them in reserve for now..." Marcus said, half to himself. "They and the other runic weapons are our ace-in-the-hole. Use them now and we'd just be showing the Tyrant our hand. What about on the home-front? How's everyone been while I've been recovering?"

"Everyone'z fine..." Babs replied, nervously turning her attention towards the floor. "Well, mostly, like..."

"Babs..." Sparkler said softly. "How is Scootaloo?"

When the orange filly looked up, her green eyes were glistening with tears. She sniffed, and then managed to strike a tone of resolve.

"The doctors say her wings have to be amputated...if they ain't, then the necrosis is gonna infect her whole body."

Marcus grimaced in sympathy. "How'd she take the news?"

"Like a Cutie Mark Croosada of course!" Babs answered, defiant pride now lacing her voice, despite the tears and emotional pain she felt for her loyalest friend. "She's volunteered to go unda' anaesthesia and let the docs do a biopsy on her wings while they amputate. Let dem' understand pony physiologies better. Nopony can doubt that Scoots ain't got moxie!"

"Brave little filly..." Sparkler whispered, and Marcus agreed wholeheartedly. "Rainbow Dash never deserved her adoration."

"Mz Wildfire' promised Scoots that once out, she's getting a motorized scoota all her own. She's got Doc Whooves workin' on modifyin' a Vespa right now! And there'z more good news!"

With a triumphant flourish, Babs pulled an entire folder stuffed with documentation out of her saddlebag. "You know how yooze said you wanted all the world's best soliders here' afore' we duke it out in Boston? Well we'z gotten an answer from a real legend! The Knight o' Germania himself!"

"That guy?" Marcus said in disbelief as he opened the folder. "The man whose unit stormed the Bundestag when Equestria targeted the German Chanellor. Hell yes!"

Sparkler edged in closer, chewing on a smore. The examination table continued to smoulder cheerfully. "There was some real tough fighting on the European front, wasn't there?"

"All too right. I didn't get into combat until the Barrier was impinging on France. Before that though, in the earlier days...well, it was hell. This guy went through it all. I remember meeting him once...feels like a long time ago."

"Ida' thought youz two would be best buddies," Babs smirked, all shyness and hero-worship forgotten in a chance to show off a little Marehatten snark. "Two hard-fighting badazzes wid a combined kill-count higher dan' Mz Spitfire's flight ceiling."

"Like I said, our paths rarely crossed..." Marcus murmured, stroking one of his older scars thoughtfully. "Though there was this was this one sparring bout...but that's neither here nor there."

"Has anyone passed this news along to our 'Blue Spy' yet?" Sparkler interjected. "I thought the two of them were longstanding partners-in-crime? It'd be good to reunite them before we move on Boston..."

"Yeah..." Marcus replied absently, before his expression hardened. Standing he grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused the remains of the table in retardant foam. "We've got work to do. Anyone and anypony who's combat-ready needs to prep for Boston. That's were we'll make our stand. Babs, I'm trusting you to personally respond to the Knight of Germania. Radio, magic, carrier-pigeon, courier, dragonfyre, whatever we've got. Tell him we accept his offer and forward co-ordinates so he and his crew can link up with several units under our command, I need the best of the best..."

"...and I need them damn soon."

The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum, Side story: Europe

A/N: This is a chapter to inform you of a second story taking place at the same time as my own. You must look for it on FIMfiction however, since the writer doesn't know about fanfiction site.

The Answer, Part 1

Written by TB3 and Redskin122004

Guest Writer: Proudtobe

"Only a mind free of impediments is capable of grasping the chaotic beauty of the world. This is our greatest asset."

―Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad

"It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results."

―Sun Tzu

Canterlot, Equestria, 6th Year Anno Harmonia

"Sign up today!" recruiters called from podiums and platforms. "Join the Salvation Army and bring about a more perfect peace!"

"Extry, extry!" newscolts shouted, hawking copies of the 'Equestria Daily' and the 'Equestria Enquirer'. "Queen Celestia appoints new Minister for Newfoal Affairs! Thrilling reports from Boston, Nairobi and New Delhi! Ponydom's noble battle to save Earth from itself!"

In the heart of the city, not too far from Scootaloo Station, one pony was giving a soapbox oration at the foot of a statue depicting a rearing stallion. The statue's face was composed in a look of selfless determination, while the speaker expressed the beaming, unnerving joy of a newfoal; his smile was just a little too wide and his eyes large as saucers, bright yet slightly glassy, as if focused on something that nopony else could see.

"Stalwart Heart was the embodiment of the pony ideal!" he cried, one hoof laid in reverence against the bronze effigy. "A human who, despite at first resisting our glorious herd, embraced it with all his mighty heart after transcending his flawed flesh; he was a loyal soldier, a fiery patriot, and a loving fiancée, to no less than the beauteous Twilight Sparkle; it is not just she, but all of us who grieve for the loss of the stallion she loved, murdered at the hands of the ape that once called him brother. Can anything else show just how broken humankind is; that they should murder their once-and-former kin, rather than join with them in perfect bliss? When I walked on two legs I called myself a King, and was arrogant and proud enough to assume myself to stand above all peers. Now I am humbled, and have embraced that humility as one limb in the glorious body of Equestria, serving gladly as a subject of the One True Monarch, She who brings us the sun and the moon and lights a fire of love and harmony within all out hearts…"

As he continued to preach, to a crowd mostly comprised of newfoals like himself, a lone unicorn mare made her way alone through the back of the rally, growling softly to herself and holding her head high as if above such plebian nonsense; with her forest green mane expertly coiffed, and her tail tucked up beneath a flowing dress that made her the desire of of any princeling, she was the very image of aloof Canterlot nobility…

…the truth was something else entirely.

As she attempted to circumnavigate the growing crowd of newfoals adulating the pony speaking from the Stalwart Heart memorial, she felt her lip curl involuntarily, and as she brushed against the flank of one mare her fur stood on end, as if a thousand spiders were crawling over her body. Newfoals more than just unnerved her; they sickened her in a way that was deeply personal, and almost spiritual.

'Damn that Commander Renee! Damn Cheerilee! Damn all these stupid broken baboons!' The mare growled mentally. 'I shouldn't be here! I should be by my partner, helping him in Boston!'

She gave a quiet sigh as she stopped, her head hanging in sadness. 'No...my mission is important...Perhaps Ste-'

Caught up in her thoughts, she misplaced one step, fumbled for a foothold, and then tripped snout-first into the back of the crowd. Almost immediately the bystanders all but leapt to help her up, and she found herself assaulted with more of those bright smiles and bulging eyes, hooves and magic and dexterous wings touching her all over as she was lifted up and put back on her hooves.

"Are you alright?" countless voices asked. "So sorry, my fault…can we do anything for you? Praise Celestia you're not hurt."

And again, that sense of wrongness, of insects swarming up and down her spine, and her horn resonating in such a way that she almost swooned in a faint. The magical aura of all the newfoals was just like their words and expressions; forcefully strong and bright and sickly sweet, like milk on the verge of curdling.

She couldn't stand it.

"Get back!" she shouted at last, hooves clopping into a rapid backtrack. "Keep away from me! I don't need your help, I don't need anypony's help!"

At those words, the newfoals obligingly parted to let her out from her midst; the majority still beaming as if she had responded to their cloying helpfulness with fulsome praise. Only a scant few showed even the slightest signs of hurt or disquiet.

"Miss, you really shouldn't talk to them like that!" somepony snapped, and she turned to see a punch-pink Earth Pony trotting towards her, expression dark and eyes narrowed. A cluster of grapes and berries adorned her flank, and she carried both an eager-looking unicorn filly on her back, and a determined expression on her face; no-doubt that this was a native Equestrian, not one of the little golems Celestia had transmuted out of the monkeys…

"I can talk to them as I wish," the unicorn mare replied haughtily, a seething hiss edging her words. "And I wish to draw everyone's attention to the fact that these are NOT ponies, just aliens molded into an equine likeness…"

"How dare you!" the plum-colored Earth Pony made a gesture as if to slap her across the face, but restrained herself. Both herself and her unicorn daughter wore sashes that proclaimed them to be members of PETN; Ponies for the Ethical Treatment of Newfoals. "Yes the newfoals can seem a little…strange at first, but that's just as a result of the world shift they've gone through. Can you understand how much it hurts to be like they were; addicts, slaves to a condition, only to be instantly set free, reborn with a new purpose and focus? Of course they're going to take time to naturalize…"

Her words had the tone of a true believer, and the upper-class mare felt a sudden rush of unwanted empathy. Despite everything that had changed in the past few years in Equestria, some things remained the same; the kindness of strangers had been a balm to herself not so long ago…

…then she noticed how the PETN mare's daughter had no cutie-mark, despite being well into her teens, and felt a little sliver curl off her heart, hardening her tone and voice.

"Naturalize? Look at that thing up there…" she glowered, waving one hoof in the direction of the proletysing newfoal up on the Stalwart Heart memorial. "He's been a pony for, what…three years now. Does he even look remotely naturalized? No, he looks just the same as any newfoal fresh out of the bottle. They, are sick…and whatever disease they're a symptom of, it's spreading…"

"Princess Celestia tells us that…"

"Look at your daughter!" she growled. "She's practically fully grown! Where's her cutie mark? And if those animals that trot on four hooves and smile truly are ponies, then where are their cutie marks? All of them, to the last, are blank-flanks! Explain that to me, and then explain how all of this doesn't terrify you!?"

The mare glared furiously back as she put a protective hoof around her now sniffling daughter and held her close. "Experimentation by the Royal University assures us that the Dearth is just a passing phase, a result of Equestria's magic being spread thin in expanding the barrier. Once Earth is wholly ponified, they predict we'll see a Second Magical Renaissance, and I can't wait for that day!"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," the unicorn replied absently, shuddering as a passing newfoal brushed against her. "Ugh, unclean animals…"

"Look at you…" the PETN activist said, he tone now more sad than angry. "You rant about the newfoals being broken, but they're the ones being persecuted by ponies like you. Feared by some, abused by others, despite Celestia's words that we're all just ponies. Despite all that, they keep smiling and keep on working to make Equestria a better place. That's love and courage beyond compare. Their example gave me the strength to drag myself out the of the depths of a bottle. What have you done for anypony? You're practically a traitor!"

With a flick of her head she turned, bit hold of something in her saddlebags, and threw a sheaf of pamphlets at the green unicorn's feet. "Come on Ruby. This mare's got her hatred for company…"

Turning, the two of them turned away, though the mother momentarily paused at stared back, as if commiting the angry mare's face and features to memory. Said unicorn felt a little shiver run down her spine, and glancing down she angrily trod a hoof into the PETN literature that had been literally pounded into her…

…when she looked up, she saw the two activists having a spirited conversation with a nearby Guardspony, and gesturing in her direction. No doubt words such as 'dissention' and 'objectionist' were being used. When he nodded and began to trot towards her, the mare immediately bolted back into the crowd, cursing her actions.

'Dammit dammit, dammit. I got worked up again, nearly blew myself! They taught me better than that! Now I've got to change outfits!'

Pushing through the heart of the rally, her horn shimmered, and as she flitted between oblivious newfoals her appearance began to flow like water. Her mane restyled itself into a set of slicked-back spike while her dress unraveled into a simple work-harness, and her horn appeared to wither into her skull as a trim pare of wings formed, tucked tightly against her barrel. A wash of fresh colors finalized the job, and as the Guardspony continued to hunt through the crowd for a forest-green lady-in-waiting, a creamy young Pegasus labormare walked straight past him in the opposite direction, heading out of the square and deeper into the city.

'Next time...Go as an old crone.' she muttered to herself. 'There's so many beggars around nowadays that no-one would notice one more…'

Finally, she reached her destination on the corner of Moon Drive and Sunset Blvd, where a lowly flower shop overlooked the mouth of the four-track railway tunnel connecting Canon Street and Scootaloo Stations. She dimly remembered that it had been a single-track bore until increased military-traffic had resulted in it doubling-out during the Crystal Empire affair. And then just a few years later two more tracks had been added. Entire streets of houses had been knocked down so that the cutting could be widened. Looking down, she suddenly realized that one of now-destroyed dwellings had been a flophouse where she'd been taken in after that…unpleasantness in Ponyville, and felt a pang of…well not so much sadness, for it had been a flea-infested dive that she had fled within days, but loss.

'The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre' she suddenly thought, quoting a line from Dickens, something that Stephan had once read her during the long days and nights of the European campaign. 'The yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress; and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away, upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.'

For the first time, she could feel the cynical derision that seeped deep into the prose. As she approached the door of the flower shop, down below street level a whistling locomotive erupted from the tunnel mouth in a broiling cloud of steam, hauling behind it an endless string of wagons laden heavily with coal. The pony who resembled a hardy laborer of the skies watched it, her eyes narrowed, as with a scream of brakes the black steam engine checked the speed of its heavy train and started to descend the long gradient into the valley below, where huge, fuming factories awaited an unending supply of war materiel…

The squeal of steel wheels on worn rails was suddenly drawn out by a roar from above, and cracking her head back she saw two pegasai rocket by in perfect formation, trailing a pair of distinctive contrails as they shot towards Canterlot Palace. One was the rainbow-maned Captain of the Wonderbolts, while the other was her loyal (and some said, loving) lightning-fast second-in-command. Within seconds, both had disappeared within the gleaming spires of the citadel, and from the fact that they had been flying supersonic over the capital, the implication was that they bore urgent news.

'Suddenly I think now's a bad time to be a strange mare out on her own…' she thought to herself, and sure enough, just seconds after that realization, a scream of primal anger erupted out of the not-so-distant castle, amplified by what could only be Royal rage and might. Everypony in sight immediately spun in the direction of the howl, like weathercocks turning to the wind, their confused voices filling the void it left with babbling discussion.

"What was that?"

"Sounded like the Queen."

"She doesn't really sound happy."

"Oh no, did something happen with the Rescue Fleet?!"

Ignoring them, the mare took advantage of the sudden distraction and entered the flower shop, her eyes wandering over the many assorted blooms before spotting before a single one that stood out amid the storm of color.

A White Rose.

"Oh what a beautiful rose! What an exquisite color!" She chimed, gaining the attention of the vendor, a sturdily-build unicorn stallion, his pearl-white coat brushed to a shine and mane hidden behind a bandana that kept the sweat out of his eyes.

"Really now?" he asked, turning towards her, a smile on his face as he plucked the rose with his magic and presented it to her. "And does the fair lady want to buy such a beauty?"

"Oh yes, yes!" The mare nodded her head rapidly. Then she frowned. "Do you have anymore? I understand that they are awfully hard to grow around this time of the year."

"Well..." the stallion said as if unsure, tapping his chin and thinking hard. "I do have a fresh batch inside the cellar."

"How is that possible?" the mare looked at him in feigned astonishment. However, if any pony got close enough, they would of seen her left eye twitch somewhat, a tell that spoke of he frustration with this necessary charade of codes and pass-phrases.

"Trade secret," he smiled wearily, his eyes gaining a look of understanding.

"I'll take a dozen," the mare quickly answered, and the vendor chuckled and waved for her to follow him.

"Then follow me please, Madame."

As they passed the three mares that actually did the work of running the flower-shop as a cover-business, the vendor spoke up; "Daisy, Lily, Roseluck. I have a special customer my dears. Please take care of the shop until we get back."

"Of course," they answered softly, exchanging a few wry looks as the door slammed shut behind the exiting pair.

"FINALLY!" the mare cried out once they were in the secretive dark of the cellar, her magical disguise shimmering and melting away to reveal a blue unicorn whose eyes were hidden behind a delicate domino mask. Her powder-blue mane was tied back in a pony tail, and where a cutie mark normally would have been showed only a blank flank. "Sweet Luna, how corny did all of that sound?"

The stallion removed his bandanna, to reveal an elegant parted gunmetal-blue mane "I think we did all right, Blue Spy."

"So says you, Trade Secret...or should I say Fancy Pants," the 'Blue Spy' smirked as the stallion placed a monocle on his left eye, before she bowed in a slightly mocking curtsey. "It's an honor to be called before Equestria's Prime Minister."

"Former Prime Minister…" Fancy Pants corrected, though not without both a chuckle and a slightly pained grimace. "Still, Trade Secret is my cover name, and I trust you to keep that secret."

"Understood," Spy answered curtly. "Now, why am I even here? I should be back on Earth, fighting with the others."

"The Battle of Boston is over my dear," Fancy replied, his eyes scanning over several sheets of paper filled with names. "Or at least the first day's worth of fighting. Our intelligence indicates that both sides formed up lines and dug themselves in some hours ago, once the new front established itself."

Spy blinked several times before a look of worry began to creep across her face. "And...and who gained the upper hand?"

"Well, a stalemate would normally imply any 'victory' would be a nominal one." Fancy replied, telekinetically removing his monocle and wiping it clean with the bandana that previously had been used to tie up his mane. "However, it appears that the Ponies for Human Life and the United Forces have turned a major milestone on its side. So far as we can tell, the Barrier has indeed stopped."

He looked towards Spy as if expecting some verbal response, but all she could muster was an astounded squeak and a slight smile.

"I understand your surprise," he continued, and despite his reserve, momentarily fumbled with his magic, dropping the monocle. "So it stands to reason that all our prayers are answered, at least for a little while. No doubt word of that was what resulted in our radiant monarch's little 'proclamation' a few minutes ago. I doubt Rainbow Dash and Lightning Dust particularly enjoyed having to drop such news at her hooves."

After a moment's pause he picked up the dropped monocle, now cracked from where it had hit the floor, and gave a dismissive little snort. "Pity."

As Spy waited for further elaboration he returned the damaged piece of eyeware to its perch atop his snout, before trotting around to face her, expression now stern and more than a little concerned. "However...we should not get ahead of ourselves. Celestia was not expecting the level of resistance encountered at Halifax and learned her lesson. So far as we can ascertain, at Boston she finally played her trump card; the Elements of Harmony…"

"What happened?" Spy demanded, putting one hoof forward and her voice catching, all the while mentally promising great and terrible retribution against Twilight Sparkle if that nag so much as touched one hair on her friends' heads...

"We're…not entirely sure," Fancy Pants admitted, ducking his head in what humans would call a shrug. "It certainly produced no result that anyone predicted; the elements did not cause a mass ponification, or backfire on their wielders as one might have hoped. No…Twilight Sparkle pulled all her forces back to lure the defenders forward, and when Commander Renee exposed himself, she and the other Element Bearers tried to force their 'Harmony' upon him…at the moment he's MIA."

"You don't think…"

"No." Fancy answered before the question fully formed. "Were he captured or ponified the Queen would no doubt have been ecstatic. No time would have been wasted in presenting him to the world, cheerily renouncing his past loyalties and spilling every secret he had to offer. Did that scream from earlier sound like one of happiness?"

"I guess not...so...where is he?" Spy asked as she simmered down. "You don't think he could be…dead, do you?"

"In all honesty I have no idea." Fancy said, withdrawing several documents from a filing cabinet and walking back to her. "From the tone of young Ms Seed's dispatches, no-one is entirely sure of what transpired. All we know is that whatever happened caused considerable distress to Twilight Sparkle and the other Element Bearers, and they immediately fled back past the Barrier. The ever-capable Lady Cheerilee has stepped up to take command of the PHL in the Commander's place, and I've no doubt that the best minds on both sides will be attempting to identify his fate as we speak."

"Oh..."

"Yes, indeed, 'oh'. But that is neither here nor there. We can worry about the esteemed Commander Renee later on, but right now we have business to attend to," Fancy concluded, throwing down a bio sheet before the spy and sometime assassin. "This here is Green Fields, a recently-retired captain of the Royal Guard and veteran of the Crystal Campaign. I believe he may have info on our missing pony...or should I say, 'our missing drake'?"

Spy grimaced. "If this Fields is a member of the guard, retired or not, then he's going to be under the effects of Celestia's Geas; he won't divulge information even if he wanted to."

"Ah, but is that not the specialty of our magically-gifted Blue Spy, to retrieve precious intel despite the obstructions of might and magic?" Fancy beamed. "Even someone under the influence of the Charter of the Guard will run their mouth, if they believe they are in the company of a friend…remember, the Geas compels loyalty and obedience, not intelligence…"

"Humph…" the Spy snorted. "You clearly have a 'high' opinion of the plat-de-jour. What else can you tell me about him? Why should he know anything about the dragon?"

"Because the good Captain cannot handle his cider very well." Fancy grinned. "In addition, he has attempted to mitigate the boredom of retirement by taking up several good causes, such as supporting the Ponies for the Ethical Treatment of Newfoals…"

Spy's head whipped up, eyes narrowed. "Your wife's little circle of do-gooders? Does she even know what you do behind her back?"

She waved one hoof in an arc to indicate the shop, and Fancy's expression fluctuated from anger to shame and then affection in just a few seconds.

"No…no she does not. My darling Fleur is a true-hearted mare, but she is loyal to the Crown. Yet despite all that, she is very much an advocate for the wellbeing of those poor, damaged Newfoals, and for that I cannot help but love her all the more…regardless!" he continued. "I happened to be in the presence of the former Captain Fields at a PETN fundraiser recently, and made sure that I was the one buying all the drinks. Let us say that after a while his lips loosened and he began to rant at all those 'traitors' and 'subversives' who are evidently to blame for Equestria's current predicament, and eventually told a story that very much intrigued me…"

Spy tilted her head, waiting to hear more.

"As it so happens, the Good Captain Fields last assignment before retirement was a mission, entrusted personally to him by the Queen herself, to rescue the Element of Generosity from the clutches of an…ahem, 'evil dragon', which I take to mean 'find those traitors and drag them back to my hooves before they can do any damage'…"

"Rarity and Spike…" Spy gasped, despite the bad taste both names left on her tongue. "So it is true that the two of them attempted to flee Equestria in the early days of the war?"

"Yes indeed, and they were not alone; you were not here at the time, but before Celestia magically closed all of Equestria's borders, quite a large number of ponies escaped, and well done them…anyhow, Fields tracked said dragon and pony to a boat heading towards the Gryphon Lands. From that point on the tale became increasingly disjointed and no-doubt, drunkenly elaborated, but Fields described himself and thirty other guardsponies clashing with the beast in a near fight-to-the-death."

"Wait, hold up. That doesn't make sense..." Spy argued, "The dragon we are looking for is a baby dragon, an infant drake..."

"Fields described a maturing young buck, fully armored in deep purple scales, with razor-sharp green spines, large wings and a powerful tail. This dragon's fire glowed a deep emerald green and all but incinerated anypony foolish enough to stay in its path." Fancy stated, his eyes expressing not the slightest doubt. "It is arcane knowledge, but dragons have been known to undergo accelerated growth rates under specific directions. Dragons who nurture their inner greed, are apparently the most dangerous, but I'm sure there are other scenarios that would allow for our young drake to grow up quickly...as for his fate beyond that encounter, I do not know; Fields by that point in the story was several drinks under the table and fell asleep. What we do know is that he succeeded in returning Rarity to Canterlot, and she duly reappeared as a Lady of the Court, fully supportive of the Earth Campaign, and whatever Celestia did to coerce or compel her loyalty makes me shudder just to contemplate..."

Spy stayed silent for a few moments, deep in thought. As she did, Fancy stood up and walked towards where his coat hung on a rack, his horn glowing as he retrieved a small something from the pocket; a nautilus shell set on a length of cord so that it resembled a simple necklace.

"A little magical something the Whooves family cobbled together…" he explained as Spy's attention shifted to the shell. "It's made entirely by pony craft using natural materials, so can be smuggled through the Barrier easily enough; it functions as a two-way speaking device and beacon."

He quickly demonstrated how to use it, and then held the bell-end of the shell up to his mouth and spoke into it. "Trade Secret to New York, come in New York?"

"Yo Trade! Whatz da Newz?" the familiar voice of Babs Seed answered, and Spy held back a whinny of disapproval at the rambunctious young mare, who was shouting to make herself heard over the sound of shouting voices and metalwork.

"The news my dear" Fancy chuckled. "Is that Blue Spy is with me at the moment, I am passing the device to her now, and will then proceed to sterilize my operation, as agreed."

"Undastood. We'z got good newz of our own. Doc Whoovez has fineuly' got his new machine runnin', so if Spy needs extraction, he'z ready to pick her up in an instant." Babs answered, gaining a smile from Fancy. "Good luck on your end. New York out."

"Trade Secret out…" Fancy replied, before handing over the nautilus necklace to Spy. "Excellent young mare that, a little rough around the edges, but stalwart-hearted and true. We'll need peoples of such caliber in the days to come."

"Yes, yes, enough praise and adulation," Spy responded as she strung the cord around her neck, even though she would have gladly soaked up and encouraged any compliments directed at her. "What do you mean by 'sterilizing your operation'."

Fancy's face fell slightly, before being replaced by a familiar sad, but loving smile. "You may have heard outside that our dear Tyrant has named a new Minister for Newfoal Affairs. It's Fleur that she's asked to join her cabinet, and that makes me too much of a risk, both to our cause, and my darling wife…I won't endanger either of them to further danger. This will likely be the last you see of me until all this unpleasantness is ended."

"So you're going to…"

"Burn the house down, so to speak…" Fancy answered curtly, levitating a set of matches from his desk. "So dangerous, oil lanterns. So easy to knock over…Every piece of intelligence I've ever gathered is safely duplicated and hidden in caches across Equestria, but this shop and everything in it has to be reduced to ash. Trade Secret might be a pony that exists only on paper, but I won't risk things tracing back to Fleur and myself in the event that this shop is ever exposed as a cover, not now that she's a cabinet member. Before, I might have been able to escape with her in secret, but now that she's accepted a government position it's going to be impossible for me to be anything except her supporting husband."

Spy nodded, and then in a move that surprised even her, trotted forward and embraced him in a hug. "Good luck Fancy. Stay safe, and I'll see you on the other side."

"It was my pleasure, 'Blue Spy'. You'll find Green Fields' residence at 34 Celestial Lane. Now go, hurry…"

"Alright," she answered, straightening her new necklace and summoning up a new disguise, before trotting back up the stairs and into daylight. By the time she was several streets away, she could already smell smoke and hear the clatter of fire-chariots rushing to the burning flower shop. No doubt Fancy would have made himself scarce and the three mares that ran the mock-business would be putting on a nice show for the fire-stallions.

The horror, the horror…

Fields Manor

For the retired Captain Green Fields, life was reaching its peak. His family was growing, his grandfilly was about to start school, and although his body was too frail for him to still serve in Equestria's glorious armies, he could still do good work in the name of Celestia by helping out those poor newfoals that so many otherwise-decent ponies seemed to find unsettling.

Being able to enjoy a hot cup of tea whilst smoking his pipe, with a good book for company, was just the cherry on top of the well-frosted (if slightly bloody) cake that was his life.

"All is well", he sighed, closing the book and placing his tea back on the table beside him. Perhaps this evening some of his friends still serving in the forces would pop round for a friendly chat, bringing word from the frontlines. It was his greatest regret that the blasted dragon had left him too lame to take part in the Earth campaign, but living vicariously through his colleagues in the comfort of his own home was ample substitute.

'Only a few more months now…' he thought sleepily, as yet unaware of events transpiring in a city known as Boston. 'Then that 'Earth' place will be pony, and all Equestria can look on in pride of a job well done. So many more newfoals too, might be useful to train some of them up, turn a few battalions loose against the gryphons and zebras, damn weak-stomached backstabbers. Why not make them pony too…all happy and bright-smilin'.

Yes, all was well.

Warm and comfortable in his thoughts of Perpetual Ponydom, Fields was just drifting off to sleep when the creaking sound of a door opening startled him awake.

"Uh!? Wha?! Satin Glove, is that you?" he called, expecting it to be his newfoal valet, only to turn and see the door leading into this private study swinging slowly on its hinges.

"Stupid door, always got to open on its own," he growled, stomping over to shut it, before throwing himself back into his comfy chair and draining the rest of his tea. Then, smacking his lips he glanced down at the empty cup, wondering why the dregs had tasted somewhat sweeter than usual. Strange, but nevertheless a pleasant taste. He'd have to go down to the kitchens and…and…make some…some more…

Something was wrong…the whole room seemed to be tilting sideways…

"Hel-help.." he managed weakly, before stumbling and collapsing onto his side, eyes wide as he sluggishly attempted to get back on his feet, thoughts turning to slush. "Wha...what's wrong with meeeeeee..."

"You should really lock your doors," a mare's voice echoed, seemingly from miles above him, even though he could now see her standing just in front of him. Squinting, he tried to identify her, but his vision was beginning to blur, colours and shadows swirling together. "You never know who might come in..."

Darkness claimed him.

*SMACK*

Fields was startled awake, and found himself blindfolded, legs trussed beneath him and lying on his side. Unable to see but perfectly capable of hearing his ears flicked to attention, taking in the distant sound of terrible industry and labor. There were not a few screams and cries comingled in the roar of smithies and machinery, and everything had an echoing, reverberating quality, as if he were deep underground.

He felt the distinct clip-clop of hoofbeats approaching and stiffened, old battlefield training coming back to him with a will.

"Captain Green Fields, Equestrian Armed forces, 33rd Royal Guard, Retired! Stallion-number UE33/7921!" he barked out. Name, rank, posting, and serial number. Give nothing else.

That resolve melted slightly when he felt the tingle of unicorn magic tug away his blindfold, and as his eyes adjusted he realized to his horror that he was no longer in Canerlot…

…in fact, he doubted he was in Equestria.

"Welcome to New York, Captain Fields", the Great and Powerful Trixie announced…

To Be Continued...

The Answer

Part 2

Writers:

Redskin122004

TB3

Proudtobe

Editor:

Drawdex

Dedication to the Victims of the Boston Bombings:

A million words would not bring you back, I know because I've tried.

Neither would a million tears, I know because I've cried.

In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.

- Winston Churchill

War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.

- Bertrand Russell

Secrets and lies! It's all secrets and lies with those ponies!

-Pinkie Pie

New York City, New York; NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital; 2023 Anno Dominae

"Okay, so, before we start, the purpose of this record is for future reference, and academic interest. Documenting today's procedure are Senior Airman James Johnstone, USAF, and Photo Finish, PHL. I am Doctor Catherine Sheffield, International Degree in Reconstructive Microsurgery, and assisting me is Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Maya Akagi, and Nurses Redheart and Barry Romero. Our patient is this brave young lady…"

"Um, hey there…"

"Name, Scootaloo. Adolescent female Equestrian, Pegasus Subgroup. She is afflicted with a magipomp developmental disorder known as Juvenile D/H Necrosis, focused on the alicornial tissue structures of her wings, which require amputation. In this first session, we will be surgically removing the metacarpal bones of both wings, and associated musculature and tissue. Further amputations and reconstructive surgery will follow in subsequent sessions…"

"Enough talk already Cath! The more time you waste chatting to the camera, the more harm she's in from the necrosis spreading!"

"Just one minute Fire'….ahem. Scootaloo has graciously allowed for these sessions to be recorded, improving our understanding of magical anatomy and biology. Due to the healing physiomagical qualities of positive emotional states in Equestrians, also known as the 'Harmony Effect', she will be accompanied through the procedure by her nomi-legal guardian, Wildfire, and her fillyfriend, Babs Seed. The current time is 10.04pm, and we are about to begin pre-op anesthesia. Are you ready to go Scootaloo?"

"Ready as I'll ever be Doc…'…I'm sorry, I guess I should be cooler about this?"

"Watcha' talking bout' Scoots? Youze not loosing ya wings, youze gaining a place in history. Ain't nopony gonna forget whatyer' doin' here."

"Th…thanks Babs…Wildfire…guys…please don't go?"

"Never honey…never…"

"I…love you... both…"

"And we love you…"

"…there, she's sedated now. Wildfire, Babs, if you just remain close to the head end of the table, and we'll keep to the back and sides. Feel free to sing or talk to her if you think it helps…right, I am now commencing the primary incision…"

Love. Four letters representing an emotional state brought on by mere hormones and stimulated neuro-emitters, but capable of so much.

Cadance knew that better than most. The…'unconventional' mentor that the PHL had produced for her to study under had taught her that much.

'Chrysalis was right; you really can almost touch it…wherever the old monster has gone to now, I hope she's at peace…'

Even separated from the Operating Theatre by thick glass observation windows, she could feel the spectrum of feelings radiating from inside. Wildfire and Babs practically radiated with affection, devotion and concern, whilst the staff attending to Scootaloo were shaded in softer tones of compassion and care. Now, soaking up those disparate feelings that could all be classified under 'love', Cadance felt strong, in body and spirit. As Wildfire leaned in to nuzzle her young ward, the mare who would have been the Crystal Princess felt an involuntary shiver run through her, and her emaciated wings gave an involuntary, vestigial flutter. She was beginning to see where the Changelings had crossed the line into emotional addiction…

"Cadance?" a voice interrupted, and with a shamefaced flush on her face, Cadance trotted around to see Cheerilee standing in the observation gallery's doorway. The burgundy mare had more lines around her eyes nowadays, and her forelegs were wrapped in bandages from where she had volunteered to go under Sparkler's runic needle, becoming a unicorn in all but name and horn…

"Trixie's got the prisoner secured," Cheerilee continued. "She's ready to receive you now."

"Alright", the young pegacorn nodded. She could feel a low wave of concerned love emanating from Cheerilee and paused to embrace the older mare. "Don't worry Cheerilee; they will find Marcus, I know they will."

The acting commander of the PHL did not answer, but instead loosely returned the hug. "I hope so Cadance, I really do."

Then, her magical batteries fully charged from bathing in the emotions pouring out of the operating theatre, Cadance left with her head held high, ready to prove a point.

That when Power was confronted with Love, Love would win…

It HAD to win. For her Shiny's sake, and the sake of everyone and everypony else…

"Who...what is going on!?" Fields managed, outrage fighting hoof-to-hoof with fear.

"Tsk tsk, Captain Fields" the blue mare that had evidently captured him tutted, slowly pacing back and forth before him with brazen cheek. "Wouldn't a seasoned soldier know an interrogation when he sees one?"

Fields returned a hostile glare, a swell of righteous indignation punching straight through his rising dread. "You're the Blue Spy?"

He managed a derisive snort. "The fabled Blue Spy is really the Oh-So- Great and Powerful Trixie? Ha! A failed mountebank, a carnival showmare now turned traitor! How very pathetic."

"Ho-hum" Trixie replied, rolling her shoulders with affected nonchalance. Her horn shimmered as she telekinetically tossed a small knife in the air. Momentarily it landed on her nose and she gave it a casual flick, vaulting it over her back where it was caught in a deft flick of the tail.

"So is this it?" Fields hissed, trying to push a possible advantage. "Is this dingy cellar all the fabled Human Resistance can muster? Is this the final squalid bastion where you will cower from the Rescue Fleet and the Salvation Army."

"Hmm? Oh them. No we're well behind the front lines – it might surprise you to know that the Battle of Boston has stretched out into a bit of a stalemate, and so far as I know, the Rescue Fleet was all but destroyed. I'll show you the video of the Great Equestrian crashing into the Hancock Tower when we're done; you might find it quite entertaining. And the Salvation Army out of Stalliongrad has been reduced in numbers by over a third." Trixie said nonchalantly, her horn glowing as she unfolded the switchblade. "No, the reason we're down in the bottom of the bunker network is so that the others can't hear you screaming. The PHL has quite a few bright young mares and colts under their wings, and we don't want to scar them for life."

With a sudden flick she thrust the blade into Field's face, hovering it an inch from one of the older pony's eyes.

"This is a Robert Klaas Kissing Crane Stiletto. The company that makes them has been around for nearly two centuries now. They started with penknives, and eventually produced a wide variety of interest variants, all designed for a specific purpose."

The knife slowly crept closer, until the tip was lightly pressing against the soft cartilage at the base of Field's horn.

"This particular blade is made for stabbing, and the 'carnival showmare' now holding it has used it plenty of times to put hundreds of unaware monsters...oh...I'm sorry, I mean new foals, out of their misery. This is what Equestria did to me, Captain Fields, forced me to find a better cause than myself, and drive me to shed a lot of blood for that cause. My blood, and the blood of others, so much until I practically bathed in it. Like some vampiric tyrant of old." The mare leaned in close, her eyes narrowing upon him. "I'm hardly a pony anymore, but at least I can say that my mind, my soul, my heart are my own, as are those of the humans and ponies that I care for. Can you say that, Captain Fields, slave of a fallen Queen, child of a perverted nation, wannabe champion of a genocide that defies all that was good and right about Equestria?"

"Go to Tartarus!" Fields shouted, "Whatever info you want, you can spill as much of my blood as you want. And you're no pony, you're one of those…those human things! You might trot on four hooves, but you're the very image of what Equestria needs to stomp on, squash out, crush underhoof until nothing is left! YOU, ARE, AN, ANIMAL!"

"She is loved, and loves in return, truly and honestly," a new voice butted in, and from the corner of his eye Fields saw another mare trot into view. Pegacorn, pink, slightly above average build, from a royal house most likely because of the withered wings. But the eyes…oh he had seen eyes like that on the faces of troops back from the front. Trixie, the Blue Spy, hid her emotions quite well, but this mare let it all show. So much pain…

"What is the measure of a person Captain?" Trixie pushed. "I might kill, I might be a depraved perversion of the pony ideal, but I can say I am a free pony. You, are not, and we're going to help you see that."

The pink pegacorn stepped closer, her horn lighting up, and Fields felt a sudden twitch deep inside him. She radiated…something, something that made him think of…

/Childhood/mother/adoration/compassion. Older, Celestia, not Queen, true Princess/right/honest/true. Swearing in, oath of trust/brokenBROKENbetrayed…/

"Stop!" he screamed, trying to roll away. Something inside him was twisting, coiling around his very life. Such thoughts were…wrong…comparing the Queen to how she used to be was-/FORBIDDEN-FORBIDDEN-FORBIDDEN-DONOTTHINKDONOTREMEM BER-OATHOATHOATH!/

Blue Spy smiled, something that put Green Field on edge. "You have spunk, Captain. I'm pretty sure that if you could choose, you'd be on our side. Sadly, that choice has been stolen from you, your very will and identity violated. You're no new foal, but you stand with those ideals, and you don't know why...do it Cadance…go deep"

She stepped aside, and Green Field's stomach dropped the pink mare, Cadance….(one of the minor princesses?)…lowered her horn as if ready to joust and pressed closer, her horn radiant and her very fibre tingling with that same terrible force that had touched him just now.

"I'm sorry to do this, Captain Fields, but you will thank me for it," she said, her tone mournful but determined. "But you will thank me for it. Now, what do you treasure the most? WHO do you treasure the most?"

/QUEEN CELESTIA…no, how could he think that? /DUTY OBEY!/His family, his beloved daughter and granddaught-/CELESTIA! NO OTHER HIGHER LOVE…CONFORM-OBEY-SERVE!/

"Focus on that Captain!" Cadance shrilled. "Family, your own blood, the daughter and grandfilly you love so much. Hold onto that, not what Celestia's Geas compels you!"

Family-kith/kin-somuch-love-COMFORM OR DIE, CONFORM OR DIE-nonono-two small foals he'd held when they were infants-GLORY/INCARNATE/RADIANT/PERFECT/WORSHIP AND OBEY! OBEY OR DIE!/

"Yes, think of that Captain…" Trixie hissed into his ear, lips curled in a smirk. "Think of them tied to a chair, my knife dancing in front of their eyes…that's what will happen unless you yield…after all, who said I had to draw your blood to hurt you?"

/Protectforever/never let them be hurt/on his life-/ON YOUR SOUL! OBEY! OBEY! SERVE FOREVER! LOVE HER FOREVER!/

"STOP!" he screamed, the force in his chest now a vice crushing that which was his most inviolate self. "YOU'RE KILLING ME!"

But still the Pink mare forced on, forcing up memories: wife, friends, family-/SERVE SLAVE! YOU ARE PROPERTY! YOU ARE THE LIMB OF OUR WILL!/

"She's not doing anything Fields, much less killing you. That's all dear Celly's work. But I will kill your daughter and grandchild, and my work will not be quick and merciful, but slow…

"NOOOOOOOOOO!" he screeched, back arcing involuntarily.

"You can save them…simply tell me what I want to know…tell me about the dragon, Spike…"

Field's mouth slammed shut /SLAVE! OBEY/SPEAKNOT, and he struggled for breath.

"I…can't!"

"Why not…don't you love them? Does he, Cadance…"

"Deeply and truly Trix…come on Captain, you can feel what's been done to you. FIGHT IT!"

/YOU-ARE-SLAVE/THING/INSTRUMENT/TOY-SERVE AND LOVE US! LOVE ME DO!/

"I…CAN'T! It…won't let me!"

"What won't? Just say it, defy the spell. Scream the name of your oppressor."

"IT-SHE! ARGHHHHHHH!"

"Fight soldier! Do your duty to those that deserve it most, your family. As a Princess of Equestria, as the Scion of the Crystal Empire, I am ordering you to fight it, in the name of Highest Love and Harmony!"

/YOU-ARE-OURS/

"What would be best, Fields? Should I start with your granddaughter, and make her mother watch? Or would it be better to make the child watch as I mutilate her mother?"

/I love you daddy./ His baby girl, all grown up, watching as she gave him a warm smile full of love.

/SERVE US!/

/I love you too grandpa./ His granddaughter, her young face full of laughter and life.

/OBEY US!/

/Buck up Green, getting tired you old stallion? Ha! Don't you worry about it, I can handle everything for the both of us./ His loving wife, their twilight years flashing before his eyes, the happiest he had ever been.

/LOVE US!REVERE US!ADORE US!/

"Oh...looks like daddy doesn't care, Sweety. Don't worry; your grandfilly will get a share." Blue Spy, taunted, the words tripping out in a demented lullaby.

"I…she…the Queen!" Field's mouth babbled, seizing shut and releasing in spasms, froth and spittle flowing over his chops. Whatever was wrapped around his soul was screaming in tune with him, like a snake that had been skewered but refused to die.

"Do it Captain!" Cadance shouted, horn a column of blue fire and sweat pouring down her face from the strain. "You're almost at the summit soldier! Just defy her once, and you'll raise the flag of love forevermore! Love, Captain, USE YOUR LOVE!"

"I…am….your loyal…Captain, PRINCESS CADANCE…." Fields roared suddenly. "SHE DID IT! CELESTIA DID THIS TO ME, TO ALL OF US! OH SWEET MERCY, WHY!?"

Something snapped inside of him, and for a second Fields felt a numbing cold wash over him, and knew that his heart had stopped.

'So this is it. All those battles, and this is how it feels to die. And here comes the Pale Mare to take me away…hello old friend, we meet at last…'

'Oh buck up Green you sappy old romantic…' The ghostly unicorn that filled his vision laughed softly.'You're not dead yet, just very exhausted.'

No, it wasn't the Pale Mare…that build, that face, those loving eyes…his wife?

'Maybelle…but, you're dead…long dead…don't go, stay with me, please…'

'You fought well my darling, through your hardest battle yet…but we're not destined to be reunited just yet. Go…our family needs you…'

'I'll do it, May…I'll fight again, for them, for everyone. Oh powers, I am so sorry…'

'Hush, hush…what was done to you through the Charter of the Guard wasn't your fault, but overcoming Celestia's Bind was certainly your triumph…and I never left your side…I'll always be here…'

Something lurched inside his chest and Fields felt feeling come surging back with a sickening gasp. Every part of him ached, and yet somehow, he felt lighter…lighter than he had in years. Free…

Slowly, he opened his eyes. He had fallen into the embrace of the most-assuredly Great and Powerful Trixie, who was slowly stroking his mane with mechanical precision. Princess Cadance was slumped a few feet away, happy tears running down her face.

"It worked… love won, love…; love can win again…"

"Yeah…" Trixie said numbly, as an exhausted Fields breathed heavily in her forearms. "Love…"

Slowly she looked over to the princess, who was now repeatedly sobbing her husband's name.

"Cadence…what has this war done to us? What are we going to be when it's done? Heroes, criminals, monsters worse those than those we've fought…or, something else altogether…it scares me Cadence. It scares me…"

"So, Spike's being held in the Everfree…" Cheerilee mused, a pen tucked behind one ear and a veritable library's worth of digital reports carefully arranged across one of her office's four e-walls, separated into categories: Boston, Intelligence, R&D, Black-Ops, Internal, on and on. At the center of it all, trying to assimilate everything, separate the chaff from the wheat, the curd from the cream, Ponyville's former schoolteacher trotted back and forth, warily levitating a notepad beside her with her newly-applied magic.

"That's right…" Cadance confirmed, wings tucked in and hooves together as she stood at attention (Cheerilee neither asked for or demanded parade-ground formality, but having spent enough time in the company of soldiers and guardsponies, Cadence felt it respectful and appropriate). "Fields gladly shared everything he knew once we shattered the Geas acting on him. After he and his troops subdued Spike over Equestria's Eastern Ocean, he was escorted under armed guard to the Castle of the Two Royal Sisters.

Cheerilee paused and attempted to magically draw the pen from behind her ear, but instead fumbled the object and dropped it: right before it hit the floor, Cadence caught it in her own blue field of magic, holding it still for Cheerilee to recover.

"Thank you Cadence…and I thought learning how to write without my mouth was hard…" Cheerilee acknowledged, before reverting her attention back to the incoming reports projected on the wall, gesturing with the pen for emphasis.

"We're holding Boston for now, but can't maintain it forever. Zecora's spell depends on Earth's own neglected magic to hold back the barrier, and the Miskatonic leyline won't last much longer before Equestria's magical might is focused to overpower it. Now we've got border incursions all down Massachusetts and New Hampshire as the Solar Guard attempt to drive a spear in our flanks and rear. But we've gained an important metaphorical victory, in that we've halted a previously unstoppable advance, and forced them to change tactics…who knows what results a few more upsets to Celestia's applecarts may yield…"

"Such as a high-ranking Captain of the Royal Guard defecting?" Cadence suggested, and Cheerliee wondered if she meant Green Fields or was suggesting abducting and 'turning' Shining Armor. Both had merit.

"Yes…or a dragon joining our campaign," she answered. "The PHL and the UN forces could certainly use some draconic support, and from what we now know, Spike has grown into a powerful young drake, so he would be a valuable asset. Better yet, he could easily pass through the barrier at will, and come out the other side still armed with his natural fire; a few quick strikes in and out of Equestria would certainly make more ponies question 'Celly's' invulnerability and assurances of invincibility…"

Cadence nodded, even as the two of them shared a weary and slightly strained expression.

"You feel it too, huh?" Cheerilee asked, and Cadence nodded.

"We're both committed to all this, but the fact that it had to come to this just feels wrong. I can't help but imagine what could have been if First Contact had not descended into…well everything that we've lived through."

"Yeah…we've lost a lot, but learned a lot too…" Cheerilee levitated over a handkerchief to wipe down her face (levitation and basic spellwork came easier to her than it had Marcus, but the lack of a horn to act as a natural magical focus made even rudimentary magic demanded a lot of focus). "When this is all done, I'd just like to settle down somewhere with Marcus, build a home, and then…we'll, try to rebuild the world…lots of children are going to need foster parents, billions will need proper homes, the newfoals are going to need so much therapy…and time, we're all going to need time…"

Cheerilee sighed, and once again fumbled the pen. This time, Cadence was too emotionally drawn to catch it, and it clattered onto the floor.

"Trixie's already gone after Spike…" Cadence said softly. "I think she needs to keep moving to keep her mind off of all this…"

"She's not alone Cadence…if I don't keep working, all I can think about is Marcus, and wherever he might be now. Is it the same for you and Shining Armor?"

"Yes…"

"Well, I get the feeling that we'll be moving into the endgame of the war soon…and hopefully we'll have both of our loved ones back to help us endure the peace that comes next…because it's probably going to be worse than anything we've suffered yet…"

Cheerilee's voice trailed off, and a long silence prevailed. Reports clicked in and out on the e-walls, bouncing away into the digital ether, until finally Cadence managed a sorrowful smile.

"But at least we won't be alone, and will have homes to go home to at the end of the day. Hooves and arms to be held in, friends and family to share our pain; that's more than many will have, and we should treasure that."

The pen lay on the floor, forgotten. Printed down the side were a faded Union Jack and the words 'A Present from Historic London'…

Everfree Forest, Castle of Two Sisters

"Dammit!" Trixie…no, Blue Spy again, cursed to herself as she ducked beneath a low branch. "Its' times like this that I wish I had enough power to Teleport. That trip took too long! Stupid forest, stupid dragon, stupid train, stupid newfoals and stupider baboons!"

Some might have seen this as a nascence of a split personality. Blue Spy was not one of those people.

"Come on, Tr-Uh...I mean Spy, let's go!" a cheerful voice echoed in front of her, the words touched by a musical tone.

"Shut up!" Spy hissed at the young mare who was leading the way. "Do you want to give us away!?"

"Sorry..."The teen whispered. Spy simply shook her head.

"How much further Sweetie Bell?" she sighed, and the youth paused at the forest around her. Again, some might have observed this and assumed Sweetie Bell was lost: in truth, she was simply assessing which of the several routes available to them best avoided the 'enthusiastic' life indigenous to the Everfree. Taking up residence in Zecora's old hut did that to a filly. It was also why Spy had sought her out to guide her through the forest. Finally, Sweetie pointed ahead of her and slightly to the left.

"That way, and that way alone: veer more than fifty years off that bearing and you'll find quicksand on one side and manticore territory on the other."

"Manticores? You're sending me past their territory!?"

"Well you could try taking the path through the chupacabra burrows, but I wouldn't recommend it; the manticores are migrating between nests at this time of year, so the various packs are more likely to be paying attention to one another than you."

With a sharp buck, Sweetie Bell tossed two small phials out of her saddlebag, balancing them on her forehead and snout. Spy's eyes narrowed, suddenly noticing how much more…well, graceful Sweetie Bell had become since moving into the Forest. Did she always have that leanly muscled, athletic build and…was…was that a machete sticking out of the pack!?

"The pink phial is hydra hormones, highly concentrated" Sweetie said cheerfully. "Spread it on your knife and it should induce fairly quick cardiac arrest in anything you cut it with; useful when fighting off the larger carnivores."

"What's the yellow one?" Spy asked, not wanting to know how the clean, fresh-faced, and frighteningly well-prepared young mare had obtained these supplies. She didn't exactly look feral but…well; she did live in the Everfree, alone…

"Hydra urine…keep it uncorked and the scent will do a better job of deterring anything than trying to fight them."

Nose wrinkling in disgust but nodding, Spy ignited her horn and made to seize the phials, before Sweetie Bell unexpectedly slapped her across the nose, a move that might have earned her a stiletto in the jugular, were it not for the unexpectedness of it all.

"No! No magic! The parasprites have been reproducing out of control since Celestia took the Crystal Throne, and they're drawn to strong sources of magic; and where parasprites go, scavengers follow!"

Sweetie shook her head, muttering about 'moronic townsponies' and turned to point into the undergrowth.

"Now, after half a mile you'll hit the old Royal Road; it's a stream-bed now, which is why almost no-one knows it still exists. Follow it downstream, keep quiet, and don't make eye contact with anything with scales or feathers, especially if it's got scales and feathers, and eventually you'll reach the gorge: the bridge is just up from where the stream pours off. You'll see the castle on the other side." Sweetie Bell spouted off.

"Alright…" Spy nodded, before shooting a quick glance at the youth. Despite everything, Sweetie Bell was still a blank-flank; she seriously hoped it was due to Equestria's spreading sickness, because from how scarily good she was at playing survivalist, the world might be in danger when Sweetie discovered her special talent.

"What about you? Don't you need a guide?" Sweetie asked

"Don't need one; I have a ride waiting for me." Spy answered, and Sweetie smiled.

"Doctor?"

"Doctor."

"Alright, well, be careful."

"Thank you Bell…" Spy said curtly, taking two steps forward before pausing and turning, ears flicking as if embarrassed. "Look, it's going to get tough in Equestria soon. Go to Golden Harvest Ranch; Carrot Top can get you out into New York. You'd be safe there, and Seedling and the Chicken could do from seeing you about."

"Oh no, I'll be fine" Sweetie smiled, showing slightly more teeth than might be expected. "Besides, how else would Zecora make all those magical lotions for you, Scoots, Babs and the rest without me gathering supplies from the Everfree? Now vamoose ya varmit!"

With that, Sweetie pulled the machete (yes, it was indeed just that) out of her saddlebag and, with it clenched firmly in her jaws, trotted off into the gloom of the jungle, softly humming a lullaby as she went.

Watching her melt away as if she was part of the Everfree itself, Spy felt a shiver run through her; then she stomped it out with a huff, before smirking.

"Okay, so you'll be fine. But what about me?" she muttered, carefully treating her blade with the hydra solution as directed, before uncorking the phial of urine; then, with it tucked into an open pocket on her combat harness, she slowly slunk forward into the forest, careful not to make a single sound.

That is not to say that she did not go unnoticed. Just before reaching the old Royal Road she had a run-in with an adolescent manticore, most likely a rogue male which had been driven out of one of the migrating packs. It had been dining on…well, what was once a lost guardspony. A few thrusts of the drugged blade had put it into cardiac shock before it could do any damage to her, and Spy had for good measure run another knife through the venom sacks in its tail, making sure to work the stuff into the blade's serrated teeth: double protection. She even got a decent, if slightly punctured chest-plate off the dead guard (it momentarily occurred to her that The Great & Powerful Trixie would have most likely run screaming and then become another entrée for the predatory chimera, but that moment passed quite quickly)

Eventually however, she hit the gorge. The Castle was evidently occupied, from the partly-restored structure and the new prison wings built onto it (in concrete, she noted, evidently a concept that Equestria had borrowed off humanity). Traitor's Walk, the highway that connected the fortress to Ponyville and, thence, Canterlot, followed the gorge out through the forest in the opposite direction, but there was still a bridge, albeit a modern suspension span wrought in steel.

As she approached, the sound of hooves on the deck of the bridge prompted her to sidle into hiding behind a large rock. Two guards trotted past, muttering lowly to one another.

"Did you hear?" the larger of the two said. "The Recovery Fleet's surge into America was thwarted!"

"No way, those humans don't have the ability to do that!" protested his colleague. "The Great Equestrian-"

"-was destroyed too! Didn't you read today's circular? Something halted the barrier in Boston and the Salvation Army was portaged through from Stalliongrad to sweep for the cause of it."

"What happened?"

"The humans deployed some kind of magical flying-machine and took out the portal station, cutting off the supply-line from Stalliongrad. The troops committed found themselves lured into a sack and were forced to dig in, carrying only the supplies needed for the fast-strike, not an extended campaign. About sixty percent of them have fallen back through the Barrier to Base Shadowfax in Nova Scoltia, but the remainder is still entrenched along the new front."

"What!? No! You lie! The Salvation Army is nearly a million strong! That means four-hundred THOUSAND ponies are trapped in…that dirty place."

"Oh, they'll overwhelm the humans through sheer force of numbers, but after all this, Her Majesty will demand heads roll for this insult. Good riddance too!"

They both spat on the ground in agreement, and Spy rolled her eyes. They weren't newfoals, just average Pony-Joe guards under the influence of the Geis, but still…who, other than an ideologically-enforced zombie, talked like that? On the other hoof, interesting Intel on Boston; she'd have to pass on the tidbit about Equestrian troop commitments and supply-lines to Cheerilee when she got back.

The two troops were following what appeared to be a predetermined patrol, and keeping well back she followed them, using a featherstep charm to silence her hoofsteps and listening intently; one interesting thing was that, with Equestria itself so remote from the fighting, no-one had seemed to grasp the concept of 'careless talk costs lives'; even Celestia's Geis did not stop the two from trading what would otherwise be intelligence gold, only colored their emotional response: they were gleeful at victories, furious at defeats, and rabidly xenophobic and brutal when imagining the fate of humans and 'traitors', but never actually questioned the orders that had resulted in such a tactical nightmare. Curious.

As she listened in, she began to assemble a little picture puzzle from what the two were discussing: rumors of humans behind drenched in potion but remaining unchanged, shielded by a new form of heavy armor that also deflected or absorbed all but the most powerful of spells. PHL ponies and UN troops charging through Equestrian lines led by a huge figure wielding a claymore, and aircraft that for the first time showed magical shielding resilient to the tactics that had previously given pegasai control of Earth's skies. Minor victories and defeats, skirmishes and strikes. Altogether the disparate factlets spoke of two armies suddenly thrown into a new theatre, one where magic was no longer solely on the side of those who walked on hooves.

'Oh brave new world, that has such creatures in it…' she marveled, before shaking off the shiver of joy that was running down her spine; here and now, she had to retain a professional cool.

Then however, the conversation took a more disturbing turn.

"But now we'll strike back!" the two guards agreed, creepily appearing to think in unison, as if telepathically sharing in some grand strategy (was that even possible?). "The monkeys might have stolen themselves some magic, but they can't stand against us all! The Salvation Army has gauged their strength, seen their new tricks, and will soon respond, with fresh troops and supplies!"

Exulting in brutal joy, the guards finally returned to the bridge, their patrol ended. "Even the humans and their savage technology cannot resist the harmonious might of several million ponies! As the Queen has decreed it, so shall it be!"

'Several, million?' Spy processed in horror, her heart seizing monetarily. 'Shit on a spit!'

Again she resisted the lure of emotion; now was no time for a panic. Cheerilee and the human generals had committed to fighting in Boston to try and throw Celestia off-balance. A moment's self-doubt would translate into entire days that Equestrian troops would be held back, giving time for Earth's United Forces to either fortify Boston or withdraw…but now, it seemed that 'Dear Sweet Celly' had pulled several hundred extra divisions out of her flaming asshole, and had such confidence in pony-kind's martial strength that she was willing to commit them…but where had she gotten such a swell of horsepower from?

'The newfoals…' she realized in a flash. 'She's got to be weaponizing the newfoals; reprogramming their base emotional configuration to make them more war-like…there's practically billions of them to draw on, an infinite well of reserves that she can spend like loose change…cannon fodder!'

Even with all the reservations she had for the newfoals, the disgust they invoked in her, now she just felt saddened and dismayed…troops rushed through basic training in just a few weeks, untested in combat, sent smiling to the front lines…that was just sick.

She shook her head, pushing those depressing thoughts into a mental folder and shutting it away in a filing cabinet deep in the basement of her psyche (it had a sign on it warning 'beware of the leopard'). Time was increasingly of the essence – she had to move fast.

The guards she had been stalking had now re-entered the castle, leaving a second pair to guard the bridge. Now, how should the Sneaky and Deadly Spy take care of these fools…oh, she really had to stop doing that.

Something clicked in her bag, and she glanced down at the knife she had doused in Manticore venom. She thought back to the dead animal she had left in the forest, no-doubt an outcast that had challenged one of the clan males. Sweetie had said this was their migratory season…

After a moment of thought, a small smile graced her face.

"Perfect."

It took a while; several minutes backtracking, and then the unwelcome task of bottling the dead runt's urine, and then even more effort to locate one of the migrating Manticore packs. But then, all it had taken was a spritz of musk and…

"HELP!"

The two Earth ponies guarding the bridge jumped at the sounds, and looking towards the bridge over the gorge they saw a green unicorn mare fleeing towards them.

"Halt! Do not- what the buck?!" One guard started, only to trail off in horror as a massive Manticore charged into view, apparently chasing the fleeing mare.

"Ah! It's going to eat me!" the mare shrieked as she ran across the bridge. The Manticore followed, leaping the gorge with one swoop of its powerful wings. "I don't want to be an appetizer! Save me!"

"Have no fear mam', Manticores always turn at the sight of steel!" the larger guard said, hefting his spear, right before she splashed him with a pale yellow liquid. "Wha…what was that?"

"Tag, you're it!" the mare laughed, before retreating up against the castle door, a twisted grin on her face.

The guards blinked. It would be the last thing they would ever do.

Ponies stationed at the Castle of the Two Sisters were, indeed trained to know that Manticores would flee at the sight of a raised spear. What they were not trained to do was fight off an enraged and very hormonal tom who now thought you were that runt bastard male he had chased off his territory two days ago…

The result was a very bloody and savage evisceration. Spy, protected by a few good splashes of 'Eau-du-Hyrda-Piss' watched with a dispassionate curiosity, only blinking when a severed eyeball glanced off her snout. Finally, once she was convinced the two guards were dead, she magically raised his spear and skewered the manticore through the eye. Simples.

Of course, it was impossible for no-one inside the castle to have not overheard the screams, snarls, and assorted interesting sounds a body made when being rent limb-from-limb, but by the time they had raised the portcullis and come rushing out in a futile rescue, all they found was a pair of dead bodies, and a trembling, traumatized guardsmare who had bravely slain the monster that had attacked and murdered their brave friends and colleagues. From the huge dent in her breastplate, it had nearly gotten her as well…

…in the rush to get her into the infirmary, it never occurred to any of the garrison that they had never seen the mare in question before in their lives…

Twenty minutes later, as soon as the medic had gone to report on her condition to the Prison Warden, Spy had abruptly stopped gibbering, sweating and chewing on the blankets, and gotten out of bed. Two more minutes work quickly secured her a full suit of armor from the adjacent locker room, and a quick dash of Changeling magic had reconfigured her appearance into that of a trim young Pegasus guardsmare with a white coat and an elegantly-coiffed mane of purple and lavender curls (it seemed right to pay a little tribute to Sweetie Bell). Now she could walk around quite unmolested, and the helmet let her keep her horn out without having to hide it…

…of course, locating Spike depended on access to someone with knowledge on where he was secured, and for that, the best target was of course the Warden himself. Thankfully, the medic, a unicorn with a propensity for levitating a notepad wherever he went, had left a magical signature a mile-long, one that a skilled sorceress could track with her eyes shut and her ears plugged.

Ten minutes after leaving her bed (quite against Doctor's orders, but that couldn't be helped), Spy was in the corridor outside the Warden's office, standing at attention as if guarding the door (no-one ever paid attention to a guard standing outside a door), putting out a few magical probes to perceive what was going on inside…

"What in the blue blazes is going on Purple Heart!?" a furious voice demanded, loud enough that she hardly needed magic to listen in. "The last I heard, two of my best guards were dead, and another has gone mad!"

"I'm sorry to say that is true. Grave Sight and Drum Green were attacked by a Manticore from the Everfree. I'm not familiar with the mare, probably one of the newfoal recruits, but she acquitted herself marvelously it seems. Still, it seems she wasn't ready to take a life; even that of an animal's…she's showing all the signs of breaking down, like first earlier newfoal recruits did."

"Crab apples, we were assured the latest conscripts had more spine than that!" the warden cursed, and Spy rolled her eyes in disbelief.

'You know...humans are right...Our curses does sound stupid.'

Suddenly the office door slammed open, and the Warden, a unicorn, stormed out and bellowed down the corridor.

"Focus Ray!" he barked. "Get up here!"

True to form, he paid no attention to the dignified young pegasus mare guarding his door, except perhaps to give her shapely flank a quick glance as he ducked back inside his office. Again, pretty much as she had expected. Despite all of Equestria's efforts, the majority of ponies were not cut-out for sustained war, and magically trying to compel that just seemed to dim other mental faculties, such as the ability to ask 'who the buck are you?'

After a few seconds another unicorn, a Lieutenant who was presumably 'Focus Ray', rushed up from the lower levels and charged into the office.

"Sir!"

Spy could practically hear him salute.

"I need you to go into Ponyville and report to the barracks that we're now three bodies short of a full garrison," the warden ordered. "Also, we're going to need the legal team round to initiate next-of-kin proceedings for Grave Sight and Drum Green, and a newfoal liaison to drag our third casualty back to sanity."

"Yes Warden Star!" Focus Ray snapped back, and Spy heard him trot around as if to exit the office.

"Ahem, Focus Ray..." the Warden sighed, as if exasperated. "Your key?"

"Oh! Sorry Sir!" the lieutenant stuttered, and Spy heard something clatter onto the Warden's desk. She tilted her head quizzically. 'Key?'

Before she could cogitate further however, Focus Ray exited the office, nodding curtly towards her as he went. Well, at least he hadn't been checking out her…military assets. In fact, from the slightly distracted, narrow-focus aspect, she wouldn't be surprised if he was a newfoal…

Back inside the office however, she could now hear the Medic, Purple Heart, pacing around curiously.

"Is that…"

"Yes, this is it…" Warden Star answered, a note of smug pride lacing his voice, and Spy 'felt' the telepresent twinge of something being levitated. "One of the seven keygems that secure our…honoured guest in his – haha – penthouse suite."

"A dragon…" Purple Heart marveled. "A real live dragon... It must be quite the responsibility."

"Yes indeed…I keep my own one of the seven on my person at all times. Here it is…"

Another magical shimmer, and a long pause…

"A maturing dragon at my mercy…buck me Heart, but if that isn't something…"

Spy resisted the urge to put a hoof through her own forehead. 'Idiots! If you're going to brag, at least close the office door! Ray left it standing wide open when he left…who knows what dangerous enemy agents could be standing outside listening in…oh yeah, haha, Me…'

She rolled her neck, feeling a satisfying crack as she loosened her muscles, and then with a magical gesture, grabbed hold of her eavesdropping spell and pulled it inside-out. Now, instead of hearing everything that went on inside the office, she had soundproofed it…

Then, with a quick turn and a kick of the hooves, she entered the office and slammed the door shut behind her. Warden Star and Purple Heart looked at her in surprise.

Fifteen seconds of meticulous (and utterly silent) violence ensued.

'Two down, five to go…'

It stood to reason that Star would have distributed the seven keys to the highest ranking officers under his command, but to Trixie's surprise, the prison's now-sadly-deceased commander had shown a flair of creativity by sharing them out among a random selection of staff members.

Of course, he had then gone and written it all down in the event of him forgetting, though to be fair, he had probably never expected anyone else to have been going through his own personal files, which made for very interesting reading…

Right now, Star was lying on the desk, head impaled through a metal spike on which he had previously skewered paperwork. He looked faintly surprised. Purple Heart, who had not put up a fight, was simply unconscious.

Humming softly Spy flipped open one of her saddlebag's pockets and dumped every piece of documentation she could find into it, for later analysis. Sparkler Hooves had personally assured her that the enchantment on it rendered the pocket roughly the size of a small cottage. In the event that she was ever on the verge of capture, Spy had considered hiding herself inside it…

But that was not here or now…having sacked the office, she donned the Sweetie-Bell inspired disguise (which she was starting to think of as 'Guardspony Tulip Bell', a fresh young Cloudsdale mare who had enlisted with the 'horn-heads and mud-ponies' so as to defy her oppressively traditional pegasus family) and checked Star's list of staff trusted enough to hold onto Spike's key.

"Okay, so, first we have Quartermaster Vegan Stalks…"

Stalks, it had turned out, was a glorified cook-slash-janitor, and not a very good one; in fact, 'Tulip' was not sure if the large black cauldron she had half-drowned him in was meant to be a mop-bucket or tonight's dinner. Ultimately she had decided it was meant to be a soup of some sort, and turning the heat down to a low simmer, she had pocketed Stalks key and rotated him so that he could breath, with the amazing visual effect that he appeared to be bathing in the goop. Just before he had passed out he had wet himself from terror – she wondered if it would improve the flavor…

Next on her list was 'Warrant Officer Bright Spark' – true to his name however he was no fool (or at least, not the garden variety of such), and quickly recognized that Tulip was not on the payroll. She had presented herself as behind a greenhorn fresh off the boat and, instead of batting her eyes, had affected an air of desperately eager professionalism, which seemed to win him over, and before Tulip knew it, he was giving her a guided tour of the staff facilities as he oversaw her induction into the staff. Ah well, so long as it took her to the last three keys…

Sergeant Lucky Card was, it turned out, taking a nap in her bunk when Spark showed Tulip the mares' barracks. Tulip had quickly produced Spy's stiletto, and, while Spark was finding an empty bunk for her to take up residence in, slammed it through Card's skull, killing her instantly, before she pocketed the next key. As they left, Spark waved good-bye to the corpse, not realizing what had happened.

"Card's an alright sort…" he said softly. "But she has trouble sleeping through to due to stress from the European Front…asked for a backwater posting to get some peace. She's a bloody hero though, so we tolerate her cat-naps so long as she gets some proper rest…"

Tulip felt a moment's pang, and wondered if she'd have enjoyed serving under Card. Well, she had given her the peace she wanted…

Spark was nothing if not efficient, and after assigning her a bunk took her straight down to the armory to get her armor properly fitted ("It's hanging off you like you stole it from someone else!" he had chastised).

Garrison Armorer Cold Steel was working at his forge as they entered. Spark gave him a passing glance, while Tulip simply cast a telekinetic shove, knocking Steel off his hooves and into the forge. Worse than his screams had been the smell…

Feigning shock, Tulip had screamed, and Spark had rushed forward to pull Steel off the gridiron, hollering for water. She obliged, and after dousing Steel had used the empty bucket to brain Spark across the back of his skull, knocking him out. Two more keys acquired cleanly; Spark was simply out cold, and Steel had passed out from shock, his wounds neatly cauterized and sealed by the same heat which had caused them. A quick sanitizing spell ensured he'd not catch an infection…Trixie and Blue Spy did not give a damn, but Tulip could never stand the sight of burnt flesh, not since she was a little filly and her father had scaled himself by accident…

…before she left, she had taken Spark's advice and fitted herself with properly sized armor. Not only might it come in useful for Spy sometime in the future, but if Guardspony Tulip Bell was going to defy her family by joining the ground-pounders' armed forces, then she was going to do it with style…

It would be the last name on her list that gave her some trouble. As in find a way to get him away from view, given how he was fluttering about in the sky over the prison's exercise yard! If only her wings were real, and not just a pair of illusions with all the substance of morning mist.

"Associate Warden Sir Frozen Blades!" she saluted, shouting up to the pale pegasus who held the last key. "I'm Private Tulip Bell, late of Cloudsdale, with an urgent message!"

Blades, a rare member of the Pegasus Aristocracy, touched down and returned the salute. "At ease, daughter of Cloudsdale. What's the problem?"

"Sir! Warden Star has told me that Queen Celestia is en-route to speak with our…uh…'esteemed guest'…"

Blades' wings had gone abruptly rigid and his eyes were wide as saucers. "Impossible…any request for access to the dragon would have come through the proper channels!"

His tone turned both suspicious and angry. "What game do you think you're playing, Private!?"

Tulip had felt tears coming, and struggled hard to hold them back. "Sir…it's no game…hic-hic-sob. The Warden, Warden said to give you these…"

Carefully, she turned, and with her mouth opened her saddlebag to show the six gems. Blade's alabaster coat became if anything, even whiter. He believed her now.

"What exactly did Warden Star say?" he hissed, eyes narrowed.

"He said…hic…that Her Highness was coming immediately, that she had a way to…to turn the Dragon to our True Harmony…"

Tulip's mind settled on that thought, and a comfortably savage glow settled in her stomach, and she grinned toothily, shedding the last tears.

"…she's going to turn the Dragon on all of Equestria's enemies! Warden Star wants you to prepare to release our new Knight while he welcomes Her Highness. He says that this night will guarantee victory for Equestria…"

It was all a lie of course that a single dragon could turn the war, but some part of Tulip believed it, so Blades believed it as well.

"This way Private – bring the gems and keep silent!"

Frozen Blades led her down the hall, showing her straight to wherever Spike was located. Tulip was quite pleased with that little accomplishment, as Warden Star had not written down where exactly the drake was contained in the refurbished fortress. She was a little sad though, because she could feel herself slipping away, and Blue Spy coming back to the surface...ah well, no-doubt she'd get to come out and play again soon.

It had been, Tulip decided, a nice birthday…

Blades had been ranting joyously about what horrors would befall all the traitors and monkeys throughout this little persona-transition, and had not noticed the mare beside him gradually shifting her posture and gait; head held higher and prouder, steps more confident and assured, and a small smirk crawling onto her face. Ah well, it would not have done him any good if he had.

Finally, the two of them came to a halt before an unobtrusive door. Blue Spy, now wholly herself again, glanced at it in some disbelief.

"The Mares' Restroom?"

"Yes…" Blades smirked, opening the door for her. "Rather cunning, isn't it?"

Spy wondered if he was aware of how somepony had evidently lifted the idea from the Harry Potter novels. How very curious, and human…

With the two of them inside and the door bolted shut, Blades he had triggered a secret trapdoor which opened out and down into the depths of Equus.

"The Dragon Dungeon…" he said with some pride. "Here we keep the most deadly creature ever to threaten pony kind, and soon our greatest weapon!"

Spy gave a grateful nod. "Thank You Sir Blades. Equestria and Earth thank you for your service…"

Blades barely had time to cock an eyebrow before he found himself lifted and thrown through the air. Unable to fly in the confined space he slammed hard into the washroom mirror, shattering it and the sink below as he fell. Groaning he struggled to pick himself up, but with a flick of her horn Spy hurled him into the toilet stalls, before levitated up dozens of sharp shards of glass, wood and porcelain. Frozen barely had time to look up before she brought them down with vicious force.

He didn't even scream. Somewhere in the back of Spy's mind however, she could hear newborn Tulip whimpering, and the Great and Powerful Trixie scowling with distaste. Foals, what did they know?

Trotting up to the corpse, her hooves carefully hoofing around spreading blood, Spy found the final key. Pocketing it with its fellows she smiled in triumph, before producing the Nautilus shell Fancy Pants had gifted her back in Canterlot. Time for the Endgame act, and then she'd perhaps be able to rest for a while. Let Trixie run things up front…hearts and hooves but she felt so tired…

"Doctor, are you there?" she hissed into the mouth of the disguised communicator, ignoring the smell of blood that was filling the room.

"I'm here." Doctor Whooves answered. "You my dear have got to move, our contacts in Ponyville told me that a Lieutenant from the Prison arrived half an hour ago."

"Hrm, that would be Focus Ray…" she tutted, picking up a shard of glass and checking her mane. Maybe she should cut it short….no, that was Trixie thinking, focus Spy, focus…

"Yes, well Lieutenant Ray is already heading back towards you, and from the look of it, in quite a rush, and he's bringing reinforcements!"

"Damn...understood. Lock on to my signal then, I will get inside and take care of freeing Spike."

"You have ten minutes, Spy. Anymore and we will be pushing it."

"Got it, Blue Spy out," she signed off, before trotting to the lip of the dungeon. Cautiously, she descended into the bowels of the fortress, and eventually into a vast open space hewn from rough rock…from the look of it she was deep below even the foundations. The viaduct staircase descending into the chamber was old, but the dozens of spears lining the wall, facing in like tank-traps were most certainly new…

…not that they were necessary. The creature chained down in the center of the room was far too big to escape through the tiny staircase…either he was much smaller when he arrived, or teleportation magic was used to transport him into this very…very large cell.

At the sight, Spy's resolve wavered…

"Oh, Spike," Trixie whispered.

Spike had grown, drastically. When she had last been in Ponyville (and admittedly, not on good terms with anyone), Trixie had observed a small, foal-sized reptile that was blatantly crushing on the Element of Generosity.

Now…he had grown. More than twice as long as a man was tall, and sheathed in deep purple scales that, although dirty, still reflected the torchlight with a dull luster. From his back swept two muscular wings, these had been savagely pierced to allow for two manacles to clamp around the supporting bones.

Slowly Trixie circled him, coming round towards his face. He lay on his side, fore and hind limbs shackled together, and his neck and tail bound just as tight to the floor. A steel muzzle was riveted around his mouth.

Slowly, she counted; a lock for each wing, two for the paired-off legs, one each for his neck, tail and mouth. Seven locks, seven keys.

It was brutal, painful and humiliating, but it was not the worst of it. Spike had been mutilated; deep scars crisscrossed his face, and the tips of his wings had been nailed to the walls! As a final insult, iron shafts an inch across had been forced THROUGH his hands and feet, rooting him to the ground. Thick, burgundy-colored blood was splattered all over his limbs and the ground, along with far older, crusty, long-dried stuff, and he was covered in a mixture of dirt and his own excrement…

…except for around his eyes, where the filth had been washed clean by tears.

Trixie's legs suddenly felt as soft as rubber, and she sat with a horrified gasp. Wet tears of her own ran down her face. This was worse than the newfoals, worse than the war. This was a life brutalized and tortured, by Equestria…

Equestria. Loving and tolerant...

Equestria. Peaceful and forgiving…

Equestria no more…

The resolve of Blue Spy was not enough. With her, Tulip, the pegasus workmare, the Canterlot snob and a dozen other personas all grieving inside of her, Trixie sobbed uncontrollably. Crying for Spike, crying for a homeland degraded beyond recognition, for lives lost (how many had she killed and maimed today alone), and crying for her own battle-torn, fractured psyche…

Spike, who it seemed had long ago retreated into some inner mental refuge, did not respond to her howls, except to cry a little harder himself; huge, smoking tears ran down his elegant snout and steamed on the dungeon floor.

Something flitted past Trixie's vision, something white and dart-shaped. It landed at her hooves; a paper…no, a parchment aeroplane. Senses dull, mind uncomprehending, she unfolded it and read the words scribbled on the surface.

TO ALL GARRISONS. THE BLUE SPY IS IN EQUESTRIA. BE ON ALERT FOR STRANGE OR UNFAMILIAR MARES. IF ENCOUNTERED, DESTROY AT ONCE!

She felt a magical 'zing' behind her and instinctively rolled to one side as a massive spear embedded itself in the ground where she had just been sitting. Blue Spy…she HAD to be Blue Spy right now, threw up a shielding spell, and another spear shattered against it.

"Oh great…" she scowled. "The newfoal."

Lieutenant Focus Ray magically hefted another spear out of the wall and poised with it. Spy strengthened her shield, gazing at him through the translucent field of magical force.

"Attention All Hoofs!" he bellowed aloud, a gem on his armor taking up the shout and amplifying it across the whole castle. "This is Acting Warden Focus Ray! We have been infiltrated by an Earthling spy; all guards are to form on me in the Dragon Dungeon immediately to subdue the race-traitor; all other staff shall prepare to receive reinforcements from the Ponyville Regiment at the Main Gate!"

Orders given, Ray squatted back on his haunches and steadied his position on the stairs, blocking Spy's only visible path of retreat. To his credit, he did not gloat or brag; but maintained a steely cool quite different to his earlier Newfoalish eagerness. Spy wondered if it was military conditioning, or a trace of his fettered personality shining through.

Ah, it didn't matter anyway. Dropping her shield for a second, Spy rolled sideways behind the bulk of Spike's body. Ray, his unicorn magic giving him precision control over his spear, loosed it in a curving arc that bent behind the dragon and impacted into the ground with a solid 'thunk'…

"Missed-me!" a multitude of voices, all Spy's, chorused, and Ray blinked as the chamber suddenly filled with no less than a dozen illusionary duplicates of the saboteur; parading in formation around and on top of the comatose dragon. His horn flared with combat-disciplined magic, and a hoof-full of gravel swept off the floor in a wave, dowsing the illusions. A coating of dust would easily show up the real traitor…

…every one of them vanished from sight. Another trick.

Then, from out of the shadows a bolt of magic fired past Ray's head. The magical blast spattered itself on the roof of the tunnel leading up to the rest of the castle, plasma clicking on the naked rock.

"You missed" Ray said softly, even as he hurled his fresh spear wordlessly towards her location. Pulling a very impressive backflip, Spy launched herself out of the dark and dodged almost certain impalement.

"No, no I didn't," she laughed, voice echoing off the worlds. Blinking, and suddenly aware of a sinister sizzling sound, Ray turned to look behind him, and saw that Spy's burst of magic had in fact been very carefully aimed…

…to ignite the fuses on several orange tubules glued to the arch of the tunnel.

He threw himself down the stairs just as the first detonated, triggering the rest in a sympathetic reaction and collapsing the tunnel. The blast wave picked him up and hurled him down to the floor of the cavern. Recovering in a roll he managed to recover his stance. Then, seizing a pair of spears he held them tight to his barrel and turned, surveying the chamber around him.

He did not notice a lone figure, her coat dimmed to the dusky tones of the cave's walls and floor, hidden in the patch of flickering shadow between two of the guttering torches. Slowly, keeping her magic dim, she levitated out her two best blades; the stiletto treated with hydra steroids, and the machete impregnated with manticore venom. Her magic tensed, the two knives drew back as if tensed on the strings of an invisible bow, and then, she let them fly!

TWHACK!

The machete, doused in manticore venom, hurled straight into the shaft of one of Ray's spears: he had thrown it up at the last second. The stiletto however struck his helmet with enough force to knock it off.

"Buck!" Ray hissed, blinking away a rivulet of blood trickling into one of his eyes and using his own magic to arm himself with the machete. As her magic yanked the stiletto back to her, Spy briefly examined the edge of the blade and saw no trace of red – none of the steroid had gotten into his bloodstream!

"SPY!" Ray roared, and this time he did not bother with spears but instead, with the machete hovering beside him, charged straight down the stairs and engaged her in single combat.

"Come on sir, let's begin!" she smirked, hefting her stiletto as he closed on her, the machete swinging around in a furious arc.

Hoot met hoof. Envenomed blade met steroid-coated blade in a frenzy of steel and violence that would have done Hamlet and Laertes proud. Each swooped and dived the others blows, bucking and punching as the two knives blocked and feinted around them.

Then, Spy spun around in a whirlwind kick she learned from a Castilian acrobat-turned-mercenary and got a solid punch on Ray's snout. As he staggered, she leapt in, grabbed the stiletto out of the air with her teeth and snapped her head up from left-to-right, driving the tip of the knife into the sensitive tissue exposed around his amour's foreleg openings.

'Hamlet, Hamlet, thou art slain…'

Ray shrieked in pain as the blade buried deep in his barrel, and Spy slipped behind him and bucked into his back with all the strength she could muster. There was a sickening snap, and he slumped sideways onto the cobblestones. Weakly he tried to raise himself, only to realize his hind legs were numb. And inside him, he could feel his heart beginning to race…

"How…" he groaned. "How dare you…you smuggle human blades and death-sticks into Equestria! How…the barrier should have, kept us pure…"

Something was tossed in his direction, bouncing off his snout with a dull thump. Opening his eyes he saw another of the little explosive devices that had brought down the tunnel roof – it was a mixture of what looked like wet wood-pulp, stuffed into a hollowed-out carrot.

"Entirely home-grown materials; this little toy was made here, just like me," he heard Spy say disdainfully, before she slowly trotted back around to his front. "Sawdust soaked with a distillation of pine-oil that's been processed with aqua fortis, spirit of niter and sodium sulphide. The result, before impregnation into the sawdust, is a substance Equestria has used to color clothing for decades. They call it 'Yellow Dye #6', but in your last life, you would have known it as 'trinitrotoluene' – TNT. It's amazing what timid little Carrot Top learned to do with an over-the-counter alchemy set."

Ray coughed, and rolled the device over with his snout, examining it curiously as sweat beaded on his head and his breathing accelerated. Healing spells and charms on his body and armor were working overtime to purify his bloodstream, but the Hydra steroids were already settling into the tissues of his heart…

"A carrot-stick-of-dynamite. Ha!" he laughed. "Crude, but effective. Monkey-me used to stuff pipe-bombs with this stuff back in the Real IRA…" he gave a horrified little shudder as his heart flailed, and then focused himself again. "What did you use for a firing cap?"

"The core of a retail firework…" Spy said, voice now cold. "When I want a remote detonation, a gemstone enchanted as a Spark Talisman does just as well."

She was now poised right in front of him, her disguise melting away to reveal a blue mare in a domino mask and a stolen suit of armor. For all the chill of her words, the anger radiating off her was almost blisteringly.

"So,a real IRA?" she seethed. "I learned about you during the European Exodus. Fought alongside some of them, and killed more than a few too. You guys sacrificed lives and love for Irish independence, but now you're kowtowing to a Monarch that has destroyed Ireland and Britain alike! I might be a traitor to the monster that calls itself Equestria, but I'm still loyal to what it once stood for. You're a miserable wretch who has abandoned his entire species!"

Ray managed a little laugh, ignoring her as his limbs began to shudder.

"Oh I used to be very good at killing, but I'm all better now; I save lives, and I'm going to save you too, Blue Spy!"

Slowly he dipped his head so that his horn was resting inside the tip of the improvised explosive device, right where the firing cap would go. With a great effort he got his breathing under control, even as his heart continued to thunder away inside him…

"So all I need to do to set this off is…visualize a magical spark?" he said, the honeyed tones in his voice layered with steel.

Spy froze, cursing herself at a foolish error, no-doubt from that egotistical bragard Trixie's need to gloat. She should have just snapped Ray's neck and been done with it.

"Sit down," Ray ordered calmly. "No movements, and no magic, or I'll blow you to Tartarus, and myself to the Goddess's loving embrace."

Caught in a bind, Spy warily sat her plot down. From above could be heard the shouts of frantic labor as the castle's guards, and no doubt the reinforcements from Ponyville, struggled furiously to clear the tunnel.

"We're going to talk until they get down here," Ray said gently, soothingly, as if talking to a foal. "And when they do, you're going to happily come with us to be made better."

"I'm fine!" Spy replied haughtily. "It's you who needs help."

"No," he replied simply, with the conviction of a true believer. "I know that's not true, otherwise how else would I be at peace? Back…back then, I was angry, so angry, and hurting. Driving my rage into bombings and attacks, and then weeping and praying for those innocents I'd killed in the name of Freedom. Just an animal lashing out and then curling up to lick its wounds. Full of doubt, uncertainty, and questions no-one could answer, not even the false god I prayed too. Now, I'm truly me, and I feel none of that pain. Right and wrong are so clear and perfect, and I bask in the love of the One True Goddess every second. I have certainty, purpose, and peace, and I know you do too. After all, it's in our nature as ponies…"

"You're nothing of the sort!" Spy snapped, lowering her head to look eye-to-eye with him across the carrot-bomb. "No sentient being lives free of fears, hopes, dreams and doubts, not without some serious brainwashing or sheer self-delusion. You, with you sanctimonious serenity, are just a golem programmed to not question its' masters, hardcoded to get a positive emotional kick every time you obey unthinkingly. True ponies, true individuals, are free to question their lives, free to fear, free to doubt, and free to find their own purpose."

"True ponies are gentle, and honest, and sweet…" he said with insufferable kindness. "You've just caught a little of the madness that once infected me, but you'll be alright soon."

"Um, hello, have you met my alter-ego? She's called Trixie Lulamoon, lived her entire life in Equestria, and was an insufferable ass long before that Bitch with the large flank fucked reality with her horn!"

"She is a Goddess! She is your Holy Mother!" Ray shrieked, his eyes shrinking to pinpricks, and Spy felt a mental sigh of relief; for a minute his conviction had actually scared her, but seeing his hardwired emotional outburst neatly put a pin in that moment's doubt. Looking at it from another angle, it was possible to take that as confirmation that she was truly free…after all, when you couldn't feel the pain, you could only be dead…

…and it made her wonder, just how much else was hard-coded into Ray. Summoning her courage, she rose to her hooves.

"So yeah…I'm just going to stand here and goad you until you take your horn out of that carrot in a moment of impassioned stupidity."

"Sit down!" Ray shouted, driving his horn almost into the carrot-stick-of-dynamite's core. "I'm warning you, I'll destroy us both!"

"No, you won't" Spy said haughtily. "You've decided that I'm worth saving, and I think that means, in the convoluted web of spellcraft that governs your mind, you're not allowed to kill me. It's all about the parameters. If I was a human you'd want to 'potion' me, or in a pinch, maybe kill me. Pony traitors, fighting against you in a field of combat, might also be valid targets. The Geis you're bound too under the charter of the guard might be potent enough to override it, if couched in the right words, but that sheet of parchment said to destroy me on sight, yet here we are having a friendly chat. Here, here inperfect Equestria, we're just two ponies having an argument that will ultimately be solved by the Power of Friendship; or at least, that is what your subconscious is telling you."

She trotted around him in a circle, eyeing his mangled spine before coming back to his face. "Celly's a raging hormonal bitch, did that do anything for you? No? Okay, what if I called her a sociopathic, genocidal psychotic dictator, whose actual ability to empathize with her subjects, let alone genuinely care for them, withers more and more every day?"

Ray's face was twitching, expression fluctuating as if caught in a seizure. It was nothing like when she and Cadence had deprogrammed Green Fields; that had been a pony's true nature rebelling against a bond that had been placed upon him. This, this was software fighting itself, a decision-making-schematic on the verge of collapsing, even as his body succumbed to the toxins polluting it. She almost expected to see the Blue Screen of Death flash up in his eyes, but his willpower was extraordinary.

"She's good! She's PERFECT! She's loving and SWEET and HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST! GLORIA! GLORIA! GLORIA IN EXCELSIS!"

Focus Ray was frothing at the mouth now, his screams becoming pained howls.

"Laudámus te, benedícimus te, adorámus te, glorificámus te, grátias ágimus tibi propter magnam glóriam tuam!"

The babbled words were Latin, a prayer that once he must have learned as a boy attending Mass. Except then, with a manic gleam in his eye, Ray twisted the message on its head.

"Domine CELESTIA, Regina Caelestis! CELESTIA Matris Omnipotens! WE PRAISE THEE, WE BLESS THEE, AND WE GIVE THANKS TO CELESTIA FOR HER GREAT GLORY!"

With an agonised scream, he threw himself at her, and the carrot-bomb went flying. Armoured hooves thrown forward, Ray drove them into her neck with larynx-crushing force...

...and went straight through her.

As the illusionary mare dissipated, Spy, the real Spy, caught the hurled bomb with her magic and stepped out from the shadows. Ray meanwhile, landed hard, the impact folding his body weight up and around, shattering what might have remained of his spine. Screaming and howling like a broken beast his hooves pawing at the ground as if feeling for the stick of dynamite.

"Where is it?Where is it?!...mother, I've failed you...Mother, MOTHER!"

The pain in the words was heart-wrenchingly real, and Spy wondered if it was a scream from the golem that thought it was a pony, or the horror of a man pleading for deliverance from the nightmare he was living. She shivered in horror...

...and Trixie took over. Trixie who, for all her faults, was indeed a good soul at heart, but who still had only the most basic idea of how to support and comfort someone. Slowly she knelt by Ray and stroked his mane, a simple and almost worthless gesture; just like the one she had offered Green Fields.

'Stoppit Lulamoon!' Spy hissed sibilant. 'He's dying anyway; what good does comforting him do?'

'We could help him,' Tulip suggested. 'Take him back to New York, keep him alive; fix him, like you fixed Green Fields.'

'That was a pony! This is an animal that only loves the Tyrant that forced it into life, let it inhabit someone's transfigured corpse!'

'He's human inside!'

'He's an ensorcelled shocktrooper, all the way down! If he had children as a man, he'd give them over to be ponyfied, with a smile! And what would he do to us if he could?'

'You don't know…'

'I know, Guardspony Bell! You're not a day old, even if you have our memories! I've fought him, and creatures just like him! They have no compassion for humanity, or its allies! They would feed Stephan that purple potion, disfigure him, and then order him to kill us, and he would do it, because he'd just be another one of THEM! Another smiling, happy, xenophobic ZOMBIE!'

Tulip sobbed softly as Spy directed the full force of her 'thoughts' back at Trixie.

'Snap his neck. trample on it and put the beast out of its misery. Do it now, do it now!'

"No…" Trixie answered, levitating a small stone out of her saddlebag. "I won't be like them…I'll give him mercy if I can. If he's going to die, then I'll comfort him; but if he can be saved, if just one of them can be saved, then I'll move Equus and Earth to do it!"

The stone was a bezoar, a gall-stone taken from a Chinese ox, treated by Zecora to bring out its ancient alchemical properties; the ability to nullify all poisons and toxins. She hoped it would work on the hormonal excretions of mythological creatures as well.

…she noticed something, she felt... a prick no worse than a bee sting… slowly she looked down, and saw Ray, eyes crazed and wide with his veins pulsing with every heartbeat, had taken up her machete with his faltering magic, and slowly pressed its tip into her chest.

'I am dead, Horatio…'

Ray's body was on the verge of death, his magic so weak that he'd only been able to get a half-inch of the knife into her chest, and yet, that was enough…the machete was doused with Hydra venom; she had seen to that herself.

'See! You're an idiot!'Spy seethed, and taking momentary control she lashed out with her free hoof and crushed Ray's horn into a mess of shattered cartilage and alicornial tissue. The pain must have been blinding, and his screams once again jolted Trixie back into control, even as she felt the cold death of the venom spreading through her…

The bezoar had fallen on the floor. She tried to pick it up with her magic, but the venom was already affecting her nervous system, and her horn could only spark feebly. Beside her Ray had gone into convulsions as the steroids finally accelerated his heart to bursting point; Limbs heavy, Trixie bent down and picked up the magical purative with her teeth…

'Swallow! Quickly!'Spy shrieked.'If you die all of us in here check out with you! What about Steph- No! What are you doing!'

Ignoring her, Trixie had dropped the bezoar into Ray's mouth and slumped forward so that her hooves rested around his mouth, forcing his jaws shut and prompting him to swallow…

…he gave a shuddering lurch, and then relaxed, eyes still wide and rolling, but limbs still…it had worked.

'You foal! You should have taken it yourself! Now we're all going to die here because of you!'

'Oh shut up!' Tulip snapped back. 'Help's coming for us, and they'll be bringing medics to help Spike! Trixie's a good and honest pony, and she's going to be just fine!'

"You're going to get better, Lieutenant…" Trixie said, the words hesitant. "There's good ponies, goodpeople who'll mend your back, and free your soul…"

The sounds of the tunnel being cleared were coming closer. A particularly large boulder tumbled down the staircase, and a pinprick beam of light shone in from above.

"You'll never escape…" Ray chuckled brokenly. "We'll win…we always win, because She wills it so…"

Trixie shook her head, a wry smile playing on her lips as she felt an unseen force ripple through the cave.

"No…we're leaving here, right now."

A sudden sizzling sound filled the room, and she looked up just a glowing column of energy zapped down from the ceiling, quickly coalescing into a freestanding metal structure, an old New York City phone booth Dinky Whooves had scavenged out of a junkyard. Other than an illuminated panel across the door-jamb declaring 'Phone', the only markings it bore was the graffitied assertion that'Wyld Stallyns R Xellent!' As Trixie sighed in relief, the phone booth's shutter-doors banged open, releasing a large quantity of smoke and an Earth Pony stallion.

"Well, not quite the perfect maiden flight for the new TARDIS, but reasonable enough. The new girl's breaking in quite well. Oh, hello Trixie, Spy not at the wheel right now?" said Doctor Whooves, an easy-going smirk tugging at his lips.

Then his eyes slid to the broken creature in Trixie's forelegs, and the immense, brutalized dragon looming behind them.

"Gallopfrey and Zarquon! My poor boy, what have they done to you?" he hissed, before spinning his head around and shouting into the phone-booth. "Redheart, Tenderheart, Med-Team, QUICK!"

Shapes, comfortingly familiar ponies poured out of the doors, and Trixie sighed in relief, allowing herself to rest. Somepony rushed up to her, and she managed to gasp out the word 'poison'. Another bezoar was forced down her throat, and instantly she felt her magic flare to life and the creeping numbness dissipate from her limbs. Take THAT Blue Spy...

Ray was still fighting weakly in her grasp, and as she tried to pull him into a recovery position she saw his eyes alight on Doctor Whooves.

"Time Turner…Most Wanted Stallion Number One!" he said mechanically, and Trixie had no time to react before he bucked her off.

'And now Lulamoon? Will you let me go?'

'…yes.'

"Doctor!" Spy shouted as she rolled into a battle stance. "Retreat, now!"

Too late. Despite his shattered horn, Ray's magic, strengthened by his will and burning bright enough to blind, seized hold of one of the spears embedded in the wall and hurled it straight through the tawny stallion's shoulder. Ponyville's lord of all things timey-wimey fell to the ground, eyes staring in disbelief at the shaft piercing him.

"Oh my…" he said, and the shock hit him hard enough to knock him out before he could even scream.

"Hey! Arsehole…" Spy shouted before anyone else could be skewered, pulling a new disguise on, one that would almost certainly grab Ray's attention; her mane trimmed itself and her build slimmed, as her palette shifted to two-tone green…

"…eyes on me!" 'Lyra Heartstrings' finished defiantly, parading herself in a charcoal stab-vest, the PHL crest proudly printed on one sleeve and a golden harp resplendent on her flank. "I'm the one you want!"

Like a moth to a flame, Ray's maddened focus slid straight to her, as did his attacks. 'Lyra' glanced sideways and saw that trusty, sturdy Sparkler Whooves had sprinted out of the TARDIS and thrown her own magical shield up, protecting Spike and everyone around him in an amethyst skein of magic. She felt a fond smile tug at her lips, and then she was jumping, dodging and flipping as Ray hurled spear after spear in her direction, plasma arcing from his ruined horn and stirring up a storm of wild magic; rocks, gravel, stalactites and anything else lying around getting sucked into his whirlwind of death.

"We are kin!" Ray roared, his voice laced with authority, assertion, and more of that same smug, unwavering sense of righteousness. "We are Ponies! We shouldn't be fighting one another! We should be fighting the humans!"

"WE ARE NOTHING ALIKE!" 'Lyra' screamed, her horn blazing with rage. "YOU SPEAK AS IF YOU'VE BEEN A PONY ALL YOUR LIFE! YOU ARE JUST ONE BROKEN SOUL AMONG THE MILLIONS THAT WERE CONVERTED! THE GRIFFONS ARE MORE KIN TO ME THAN YOU ARE!"

"So be it!" Ray screamed.

'Oh Shit', 'Lyra', Spy, Trixie and Tulip thought as one, as with a blaze of magical strength, Ray's focused magic summoned every spear in the room, and assimilated them into a single colossal weapon.

"DIE AND EMBRACE TARTARUS, RACE TRAITOR!"

The mega-spear fired forward, driven at the back by a magical impeller not so different to a rocket. 'Lyra' felt time slow down as it thundered towards her eyes…

'Bon-Bon…' she thought, an alien affection invading her mind, prompting a reflex transformation…

"Stephan…" Trixie whispered, ears drooping as she embraced her death…

Then something huge, scaly, and purple filled her vision, and she blinked…time smashed back into normal speed, and the air was filled with a bellowing, animalistic roar…and raining fragments of wood, all the size of a splinter.

Trixie swallowed, and trotted back two paces, before falling on her butt. Spike, who until this point had done nothing but silently cry, had ripped his hands and feet free from the nails anchoring him to the floor, stretched his restraints to their utmost give, and thrown himself into the path of the spear…

…which had shattered into splinters on impact with his draconic hide.

There was a long moment where all Trixie could do was breathe, but then someone was shaking her, asking her to break the magical locks still manacling Spike's limbs and extremities. She had wordlessly levitated the gems out of her saddlebag, and within a minute chains and locks began to fall to the ground. Where magic did not work, oxy-acetylene cutting torches did.

Finally she looked around. Two medi-ponies were dragging Doctor Whooves (bleeding and unconscious, but still alive) into the TARDIS, while Spike simply lay limp on his side, chest heaving. Beyond, past him, she could hear Focus Ray wailing in despair.

Slowly, she trotted around to Spike's far side. Ray, tears pouring down his face and horn sparking, was desperately trying to grab hold of the particles of wood and metal that lay everywhere, trying to form some weapon, to carry out his programming. It was not funny, nor was it sad.

It was downright heartbreaking. Unseen, unnoticed by the maddened stallion who was once a terrorist, Trixie came beside him and cast a sleeping spell. His mutterings and cries broke off mid-sentence, and he fell peacefully to the ground. In the back of her mind, Blue Spy still screamed for her to stamp on his neck and give him true peace, but Trixie ignored her. She was tired of listening to Spy's rage and pain, and for a moment, just wanted to care…without anypony getting hurt this time.

"Your fight is over, rest now. I don't know how long it will take, but we will help you. You, and everypony…everyone…that this war has touched."

She bit back tears. Maybe, at the end of it all, she could get some help for herself. What was happening to her?

Composing herself, but keeping Spy firmly under wraps, she turned and looked towards Spike. The med team was working on him, pony medics trying to stem blood flowing from reopened wounds, injecting antibiotics through needles designed to tranquilize full-grown elephants. Another team, unicorn technicians mostly, were jacking his limbs up with a portable car-lift, so as to slide him onto a wheeled flatbed trolley, while Redheart and Tenderheart were gathered around his face, gently trying to rouse him.

"Spike!...Spike dear...Open your ey-" Redheart started, before crying out when she saw he was nearly missing an eye. "Please Spike, wake up."

The mighty being twitched at the voices, groaning as his single good eye opened, its coloration a brilliant emerald green that glowed deep with inner fire. "Re...Red Heart?"

As he focused on the mare standing before him, he looked away, trying to flee but too weak to do so, he was still resisting against whatever tried to break him. "N-no...Leave me alone...I will never...join Celestia's...armies..."

"Spike?" a new, familiar voice called, and Derpy Whooves glided out of the TARDIS's doors, backlit like an angel, and touched down gently next to him, her expression the definition of kindness and gentility.

"Derpy?" the distraught Redheart pressed. "What about your husband? He's hurt, he needs you."

"The Doctor will be fine Reddy," Derpy said softly. "He's survived worse than a spear through the leg; much worse…"

Then the grey mare walked up to Spike and embraced his snout, googley gold eyes peering into emerald green. "It's really us Spikey. Remember me? Derpy? You know my whole family; Sparkler used to give you leftover gems from her business?"

"Illusions..."He whispered, his eye closing once more. "Nothing more..."

"Hmph!" Trixie forced her way forward, her horn glowing to rip off her domino mask and hairtie, allowing her powder-blue mane to fall around her face in a silvery waterfall. "I am hardly an illusion, 'Number One Assistant'. Tell me, is the Great and Powerful Trixie a mare so weak-willed as to fall prey to Celly's feeble magicks!"

"Wha-what?" His eye opened wide. "Tr...Trixie?"

Then, softly, he chuckled. "Oh you're real…no-one else could imitate that blowhard ego…oh heavens…it was all real…"

His immense chest heaved in a sulphurous covered sob, and several of the ponies embraced his huge snout, stroking and comforting as he was finally hoisted onto the gurney and rolled slowly towards the open doors of the TARDIS.

"It's us Spike...all of us, it's really us." Redheart cried, tears of joy falling from her eyes. "We've been searching for you for these past three years...we're so sorry..."

"Spike," Derpy said softly. "What happened to bring you here? Was it Twilight who sealed you away, or Rarity? We thought at first one of them was protecting you, but then Trixie learned of you and Rarity's attempted escape."

Spike snorted, then gave a painful laugh. "Rarity…Twilight. The both of them were so good, all of them were so good; before Celestia took them 'into her confidence'. I should have seen it coming with Twilight, but when Rarity was taken, I knew…"

Confusion was worn on all the faces of the ponies in the room. "What...What do you mean?"

"Rarity fought tooth and nail to escape Equestria, plotted and schemed and traded away everything she had to protect me. Sent Sweetie-Belle into hiding and wiped her own memories so that she could never betray her little sister. On the boat, when they came for us, she promised me that they'd never change her heart…but then, they brought her to visit me here…brought the THING they'd made of her, and all the Elements of Harmony. They saw me hear, heard my cries, and laughed…Fluttershy threw me crumbs of bread while tittering at how 'spunky' I was…they weren't my…family, they were perversions, victims that had been…" he shuddered, fresh tears flowing. "…violated…"

"What happened Spike?" Trixie demanded. "What was done to them?"

He couldn't answer. Instead, his huge muscles heaved and he began to shake violently, whistling jets of flame venting through his teeth and nostrils.

"He's going into Hypovolemic shock!" Tender Heart shouted. "He's too weak to contain his inner fire! Derpy, we need to get him into surgery within minutes! Now!"

"Double time everyone!" Trixie shouted, hustling them forward as ponies and humans alike wrestled Spike's immense bulk through the phone booth's doors. As they did however, a deep resounding gong resounded from the depths of the arcane time-machine.

"That's the Cloister Bell!" Derpy shouted. "Something's resonating with the TARDIS' power supply, the Eye of Harmony!"

"What does that mean?" Trixie answered, shouting to be heard over the resounding booms of the Cloister Bell.

"It's like a Master Alarm, warning that something BIG is happening, or coming!"

At that moment, the debris blocking the tunnel to the surface exploded downwards, obliterated by the force of an immense fiery bird of fire, a Phoenix in flight.

"Philomena!" Spike shuddered through his spasms. "That's it…the herald before the storm. CELESTIA IS COMING!"

Troops were pouring in now, and several trained PHL members answered in force, covering everyone's retreat with their modified saddle weapons. A well-placed flash-bang brought down Philomena, just as Redheart and Tenderheart forced Spike's serpentine tail through the doors of the TARDIS.

"Let's go, let's go!" Trixie shouted, urging that everyone fall back. Then, her eyes alit on Focus Ray, unconscious and broken in the corner…

…she did it without thinking, throwing herself forward and triggering another disguise, one that was fresh and young and full of courageous defiance.

In just two steps, Trixie Lulamoon gave way to Tulip Bell, who spread her wings and flew.

Ponies, both PHL and Royal Guards alike, moved out of the way as she swooped, rolled, pirouetting around spell-fire and hurled projectiles, scattering carrot-bombs from her saddlebags and impaling them into the walls. Then, suddenly, she rebounded with all four hooves off the ceiling, dived hard onto Ray, and pulled up at the last second, hooking him underarm and soaring like a bolt into the TARDIS…

…and as everyone knew, was much larger on the inside, large enough to hold a dragon, Trixie, Focus Ray, seven medic-ponies, several PHL soldiers, and the extended Whooves clan. Time Turner. The Doctor, was lying sedated on a gurney, while his and Derpy's two bright-minded daughters were gathered around the central control panel, above which an immense hourglass was tumbling end-over-end in a vertical glass column. Dinky quickly calling out for Pipsqueak from the new armory to help them set up.

"Launch it Muffins!" Derpy shouted, slamming the door shut behind the last pony in and throwing her weight against them to hold them shut. "Launch now!"

Bright-eyed Sparkler nodded and danced her hooves over the control panel, while tiny Dinky and her coltfriend Pipsqueak shouted out pertinent data from their own side of the column.

"Time Circuits on! Status Dinks?"

"1.21 Gigthaums of power flowing from the Eye of Harmony."

"Time-tunnel opening, we're right on the vortex!"

"RTTP set and locked!"

"Tachyons and Minovsky Particles fluxing!"

"Red Mercury flowing! Capacitors primed!"

"Timeframe locked. Pip, set vanes for thirty-degree slide bubble!"

"Vanes set, approaching Infinite Improbability!"

"Hourglass revolutions accelerating to 88 revs per second!"

"Spin-point achieved, hold it there Sparky!"

"Schwarzschild Radius contracting; we have a singularity, go-go-go!"

"Vee-One! Rotate!"

The three youths threw their combined weight onto the main lever, the spinning hourglass roared into an omniscient blur, and the entire cabin lurched as space bent according to the Brown-Schaeffer-Cooper-Hofstadter principle of Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.

The sound the time-machine made was biblical, the sound of the universe itself. Tulip (-no-Trixe-no-Spy-no-Lyra!) could only compare it to a million voices trying to hum an entire rock symphony aloud as she sat in stunned silence on the floor, slowly flexing her wings. She had flown…these were real wings, with feathers and muscles and an urge to preen kicking in, not just an illusion. What was she becoming?

Around them the TARDIS thundered, rocked and screamed, until, with abrupt silence, the engines halted, the doors slid open, and they poured out into what had once been a hangar at JFK airport.

The backwashing energy from dimensional transition must have broken through the sedation spell Trixie had cast on Focus Ray, because his eyes slowly flitted open in time to the doors, laying the first glimpse on the world that had once been his home.

It would be his last sight, as the second he saw paramedics running in to stabilize Spike and the Doctor, his eyes narrowed and he bared his teeth in a feral snarl.

"DESTROY AND CONVERT ALL HUMANS!"

The words had no sooner left his lips, before Blue Spy drove her stiletto into his neck, and with one single, merciful stab divided his spinal cord in two. He died instantly.

"He couldn't be saved Trixie", she said softly. "Not easily at least, not without too much effort that would divert our attention from winning this war. If we're going to save the rest of them, we can't get distracted along the way…"

Trixie and Tulip were silent, too exhausted and stunned to argue.

Levitating Focus Ray's body beside her, and with activity flurrying all around her, she slowly trotted out into the grey, drizzly light of a New York morning.

They were home.

Most Excellent.

From the perspective of the guardsponies in the cave, all that happened was that, with a strange grinding noise that suggested urgent need of oil, the TARDIS had faded out of view.

Ten seconds later, they all bent their heads in supplication as the Solar Sovereign teleported into their midst, eyes narrowed on the slightly smoking spot that the time machine had just launched from

"Doctor..." She hissed in anger, ready to storm out when one of the guards called to her.

"My Queen, they left a note."

She cocked an eye, then delicately lifted the roll of parchment from the floor and broke the seal. Focused on the message inside, she did not notice a small gem roll out from the tube of paper and land on the floor, beeping quietly.

To Fat Flank Bitch

Have a nice Day.

With Love,

Blue Spy, and the Ponies for Human Life

P.S.

3...2...1

The Mare who would be Queen opened her mouth, but got no further, as all the carrot-bombs Tulip had scattered detonated simultaneously, and she and every guard in the chamber found themselves in the middle of an explosion.

No one could have known that the Dragon Dungeon (which had been opened out from a natural cave) actually bisected a small fault-line. Plate Tectonics were a relatively unknown science on Equestria (even on Earth only being taken seriously in the mid-to-late twentieth century), and so no-one had known this when the castle was built above centuries ago.

Now, lubricated by the shockwaves of the explosion, the fault shifted, hit a momentary resistance caused by the castle's foundations, and then sheared parallel to them…

With slow, unstoppable force, the ground cracked along the front of the Castle of the Two Sisters, then the promontory crumbled and slid off into the bottom of the gorge, the bridge that connected it to Traitor's Walk fluttering down after it. Only the prison itself was left, perched precariously on the edge of the new cliff-face. Ponies standing on the battlements gaped in disbelief, and then roared in jubilation as a blazing fireball erupted from the steaming ruin.

Queen Celestia ascended, seemingly carrying aloft on the cheers of her subjects (strangely, no-one seemed too concerned about the several dozen guards lying crushed and shattered in the imploded cave). Her face was bloody and her wings were bent at odd angles, but otherwise she appeared unharmed as she landed gracefully and walked among her subjects, passing out a cursory nuzzle or word of kindness...

Physically, she was fine.

Her pride on the other hoof had taken a severe beating with everything that has happen so far, and mentally she let out a scream of frustration that carried far and wide, until it finally reached Canterlot, where it re-vibrated through the petrified and ossified neural pathways of the statue that had once been Princess Luna.

"This is not over!"

The statue could not smile. But if it could, it would have.

John F Kennedy Airport, NYC; Emergency Medical Facility

"Several life threatening injuries." Tender Heart relayed to the attending surgeons, almost unable to handle what happen to the once cute dragon; adorable in his youth, now older and half dead. "We need to stabilize him, and then operate to expose his plasma-gullet and control the Flame within!"

The human doctor quickly cut away hastily applied field dressings, and swore in disgust.

"My God! There's a hole through his entire claw!"

"Same here."

"Same on the feet. What the hell?! Did they crucify him or something?"

"We'll need fire-retardants to control his Flame; borates, hydroxides, polymer gels – someone find all the chemical fire extinguishers; there must be some over in the fuel depot!"

"Got same signs of rotting on his waist, neck, and tail area."

"He is already in the first stage of Coagulative Necrosis, we need to cut away all the dead flesh, someone get me a scalpel- scratch that, give me the powersaw with runes inscribed on the blade."

"Doctor, he lost a lot of blood, he is not going to make it through the surgery if we don't get him some replenishing potions from Zecora's wares."

"Shit. Derpy – your husband's stable, but outta it, so please get the TARDIS over to Boston and drag Zecora's striped butt over here, pronto!"

"Gotcha, come on girls, Pip!"

"Allon-sy Ms Derpy!"

No expense or consideration had been spared in preparing for Spike's rescue. With air traffic all grounded due to the dangers of pegasus attacks on airliners, many of America's larger airports had been transformed into emergency facilities. JFK, with its huge hangers and cavernous terminal buildings, had become one of the largest field hospitals in existence, a necessity considering the millions fleeing ahead of the barrier every day. Grounded jets became bunkrooms, runways parade grounds for assembling vast amounts of military hardware.

Despite all of that, it had been possible to reserve an entire hanger for the care and accommodation of what many hoped would be a trump-card for the United Forces; a living, fire-breathing dragon.

From high above, in what had once been a maintenance office, 'Lyra' watched down as Spike was wheeled into a pre-prepared mega-scale medical facility; vets, doctors, and pony mages all working together to stabilize the enervated drake. It was heartening, and inspiring, and completely failed to reach her.

Quietly, she focused, feeling the tingle of magic, spread a pair of graceful wings as her horn withered away into her skull. Yet she could still feel her magic, waiting until it could be used. Then, just as slowly, she retracted the wings and felt her body grow a little stockier and stronger, limbs toughened with Earth Pony grit and muscle. Finally, with another thought, she flowed back to being a dusky blue unicorn, the Once and Former Trixie.

She shook a little on her hooves, and began to weep, memories of several missions tangling up. But dominant were the faces of Spike, Green Fields, and Focus Ray, all of them in pain; some of it, a lot of it; pain of her own making.

At the back of her consciousness, Blue Spy sneered.

In the past few weeks, ever since Chrysalis had died, leaving her training in Changeling magic unfinished, Trixie had feared she was losing her mind. She had long 'compartmentalized', envisioning Blue Spy as somepony tougher and stronger than little Trixie Lulamoon, but now her disguises were taking on actual personas, with fake memories and emotions of their own. It scared her.

And now she was losing control of her body too…

"Trixie?" a deep voice called to her, and she looked up to see her partner, her caretaker, her love. "Is something wrong?"

"I...I don't know Stephan..." She whispered, tears falling down her face. "I don't know...I...tortured before...heard their screams, but didn't think of it...but...but seeing Spike...seeing him like the way we found him."

The human kneeled down and holds her chin between two fingers to make her look at him and took out a handkerchief to clean her cheeks.

"It's different when you know them, right?" he asked softly.

Trixie closed her eyes and nod weakly. "Y-yes..."

"You're a compassionate mare Trixie; I'd expect nothing else."

She gasped as strong arms took her in a hug and she felt her face press against his warm chest. She breathed slowly, listening to his heartbeat.

"In fact I'm glad you're this torn up," he whispered.

She looked up with confused eyes. "Why? Why are you glad that I'm crying?"

He smiled at her. It was that kind of smile he used to make her feel warm in her chest. "Because that means you're still Trixie, the mare I love, and not just a cold, ruthless assassin."

She shook her head. "You, don't know half of it..."

Gently she pushed at his chest, and he set her down.

"I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of, always for a good cause…but I think it's…it's damaged me…"

She closed her eyes and flipped a switch in her mind, letting Tulip out to play. Stephen watched on in pride as her mane, coat and eyes shifted, and a pair of wings spread…

But when 'Tulip' took off and, hovering, bopped him playfully on the nose, he fell back in shock.

"Hi there sir; I'm Tulip Bell, and it's an honor to meet the man of Spy and Trixie's dreams!"

"Trix-Trixie…"

"Not quite, but I can get her for you…"

Touching down, Tulip's form and mind slid smoothly, transitioning in just a moment from a cheerful, brave and sometimes dangerous pegasus youth to a weeping, stumbling unicorn mare.

"How…how can I be your Trixie, when I'm not anymore…there's so many of them in my head, like parts of me branching off…I don't know how Chrysalis could hold onto herself through it…"

"Mein Liebe…my love" he said quietly, and she looked up. Sitting cross legged Stephen opened his arms, and without hesitation she flew into his embrace.

"You are afraid you are losing your identity. I don't know magic, but I do know a little about post-battle stress, and I know you can hold onto yourself."

She looked up at him. Again she felt his strong hands resting on her coat and she pressed a little tighter. "How?"

"You can because you are a strong mare. You can do it because you know who you are, and you know right from wrong. All those times you've kept yourself in check, kept 'Blue Spy' in check show that you're stronger than her. And because..."

Holding her close he rested their foreheads together, before giving her a quick peck on the tip of her snout. "...because you know that I'm always there for you when you need someone. Just like how you were there for me in the beginning, helping me in my time of crisis."

She blushed a bit and nuzzled his neck. "Thank you."

Pressed to him she could feel his calm but strong heart. It was calming her own, soothing its anguish until they seemed to beat in sync. He always had that effect... she don't know how to describe it. But she just wanted to be with him the entire time. Like this in his arms and her head on his warm chest.

Maybe, someday, she could take this transformational magic to the point where she could stand on two feet beside him, and hold his hand with her own…yes, that would be perfect.

"I have to go soon", he said gently. "A lot happened while you are away and I have to assist Cheerilee in planning the next stage

Trixie nodded and smiled at him. "Yes. Okay. I will do what I can too. But please, can we just stay like this for a little longer."

"But of course, mein liebe…"

She smiled, and suddenly understood how Chrysalis and her brood might have held onto their minds. Love…given, taken or stolen, directed at another or selfishly focused on oneself, love was a powerful force…

And right now, she felt like the strongest mare in the world.

'For love…for our loves, we will do anything', her disparate personalities agreed.