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.