THE MAGIX:CHAPTER 1: The Angels Will Guide You

Rainbow Dash sat, lethargic, at the desk in her room. She was staring blankly at the screen of her laptop. The screen was dormant, save for a few changes she managed to pull together the energy to make, which, obviously, was not very often. She was surrounded by infinite empty Dragonfire Energy cans, the result of yet another attempted all-nighter. The fact that she'd had flight practice early that morning didn't help much. Her addiction to staying up into the early morning made things even worse. Not that it mattered. She was far too tired to regret her habits now, anyway. The digital clock on a nearby wall read 12:52 am, way past midnight. Rainbow Dash's head bobbed, the only sign of activity for a long time. Her magenta eyes could hardly stay open even a slit, if at all. She could just barely hear the muted bleeps of her laptop, which busied itself with downloading and burning some pirated songs from Pmusic, the music shopping site she had hacked into some hours ago.
Rainbow's eyes fluttered. The tiredness was becoming too much to overcome. Then her head dropped and her eyes shut. This time, they stayed that way. Her laptop continued working as she drifted off. Suddenly, the download stopped and the screen flickered. Then it all went black.
"Wha-?" Rainbow Dash jolted awake. It took a minute for the sky-blue pegasus to come to her senses. She stretched her wings, yawned, and looked at her laptop to check her progress. She saw the black screen and screamed.
"What the hay?!" She yelled. "Come on!" She mashed the keyboard and dragged a hoof across the mousepad, agitated. Nothing happened. "Come on!" she repeated. "Are you kidding? I was working 6 freaking hours on that and... NOW? Seriously?" She dropped her head and growled. "Stupid computer." She stared at the darkened screen. How am I going to get all that back? she thought. I can't make Pinkie Pie wait any longer for her Partymix 23. I was supposed to get it to her three days ago. She'll hate me so much for this...
"I'll never procrastinate again," Dash groaned. "Well, that was a total waste of 6 hours." She reached out a hoof to shut her laptop down. But before she could, she noticed a bright green cursor blink on the otherwise solid black background. Rainbow Dash stared at it. Realization hit her. Her computer wasn't malfunctioning. Someone had hacked her!
I should have expected that, she thought. That was the risk of the life she lived, anyway. Everyone in Ponyville knew about her everyday athletic activities. But there was much more to her than that. Rainbow Dash was a hardcore computer hacker.
She wasn't exactly sure why she did it. If anything, it was only a hobby, save for the occasional song-heist or other undercover hacking job. After having been a hacker from the time she was 12, she had become a master. Dash was always careful to stay anonymous during her rounds of hacking. But sometimes, she wasn't sure how, the victim finds out who'd wronged them and hacked her back.
This just so happened to be one of those times. She was still deciding between anger, panic, or just plain annoyance when the cursor moved and her alias appeared in bright green on the blank background.
Rain.
Rainbow Dash stopped breathing. Whoever this was, they knew more about her than she would ever want them to. Only she knew her that alias belonged to her. It was the false name she had made for herself to hide her identity in the hacking world, and she had never used it. It was untraceable. Nopony was should have known it was her. This was not good. When she finally caught her breath, the cursor continued typing.
The Magix has you.
Magix? She felt as if she had heard that word somewhere before. Maybe it was just magics, but misspelled. The Magics has you? No, that didn't sound right. Meanwhile, the glowing green text disappeared and the cursor continued writing.
Answer the door. The angels will guide you. Goodbye.
The text lingered for a few seconds, then disappeared and the screen blinked back to life. The Pmusic page reloaded. It was not only restored to when Rainbow Dash was last using it. The download was complete. "Yes!" she said to herself. She pulled the CD out of her laptop's side and quickly closed the page and shut her computer down before she was caught. If anyone found out where she was getting Pinkie's music, she was dead.
Suddenly a loud, incessant knock sounded at the door. Dash put her laptop away and raced downstairs to open it. Before she could see outside, a pink, curly-maned, blue-eyed head shoved itself in her face. "Dashiiiiie!" it squealed.
Rainbow Dash laughed at her friend's antics. "Pinkie Pie, you are SO random!" she giggled, pushing her friend out of the doorway. Dash swung the door the rest of the way open. Twilight Sparkle's hot air balloon floated out front, just off her porch. All five of her friends stood outside the door, all dressed in partying outfits in a rainbow of blindingly bright colors.
"It's, like, 1 in the morning," Rainbow Dash said in a tired, gravelly voice. "What is this, New Year's? It's the middle of September."
Twilight Sparkle stepped forward in a dark silver dress that made her look like a sleek, charming storm cloud. "It's the fall Equinox tonight," she said, studying Rainbow's rumpled appearance. "Not only that, but it's also a full moon. This is an incredibly rare occurrence. It only happens about every 20 years, so-"
"It's really special!" Pinkie shouted, cutting Twilight off. Her frilly neon-orange party dress bounced around her as she jumped in place, overflowing with excitement. "And not only is it the Equinox and a full moon, but it's also FRIDAY!" Pinkie followed up with one of her classic overly-dramatic gasps. "You didn't forget our plans, did you, Dashie?"
"Plans?" Rainbow Dash mumbled, still collecting her thoughts. She didn't remember making any plans. She was drawing a complete blank as to what her overexcited friend was talking about.
"We were going midnight raving at Glitterati," Twilight explained. "Well, it was supposed to be midnight, but you didn't meet us at Sugarcube Corner to load up on coffee like we agreed. You weren't answering your phone, and we spent half an hour trying to call you. It was getting late and we'd thought maybe you'd forgotten, so we decided to come pick you up."
"Oh, yeah! Those plans. Of course I didn't forget," Rainbow said, though she had no idea when she'd agreed to all this. She simply decided to play along. Rarity pranced up to the doorway wearing an elegant purple minidress and practically dripping with sequins. She stopped and wrinkled her nose, taking notice of Rainbow Dash's messiness.
"Well, if you are coming, then you'd better freshen up. I wouldn't be caught dead looking like that in public."
"Yeah. Just a minute." Dash slipped back inside.
As Rainbow Dash hurriedly combed her tangled, unruly mane, she wondered about the mysterious message she had received. The angels will guide you? What could it possibly mean? Nothing made any sense anymore. She pulled on her favorite burnout tee and a few cheap plastic bangles before rushing back downstairs.
"What took ya so long, sugarcube? We was beginnin' to think you weren't comin'!" Applejack drawled as Rainbow Dash reappeared in the doorway. The orange farm-mare's ruby apple earrings glittered under her black-and-gold cowboy hat. She was wearing a classy modern-cowgirl ensemble, complete with her fancy western boots.
Rainbow shut and locked the door behind her. "No you weren't!" she joked. "Why would I ever back out on my- Fluttershy, seriously?"
"Um.. seriously what?" The shy, yellow pegasus had her long, melon-pink mane tied fashionably back and wore an uncharacteristically edgy blue tube dress. She must have been saving that for a while. Beside the fact that it didn't fit her timid personality, she looked good.
"Are you sure it was a good idea to bring Angel along?" Twilight asked. Rainbow Dash looked down at Fluttershy's little white rabbit. Angel. Dash's face stayed blank, but she had a mental gasp of shock. Is this what the mystery hacker meant? How did they know? All this was starting to scare her.
"I just thought he might like to go into town for a little while," Fluttershy answered, nodding toward Angel, who was fighting with his leash. "Besides, he's been asleep all day and didn't want to go to bed when I had to leave. I'll keep him outside so he won't get scared by the noise. Even if he wants to go in, he'll have me with him. He loves dancing, anyway!" The group of friends laughed. All except Rainbow Dash. She followed along with the others as they piled into Twilight's balloon and floated away from her cloud castle. The mysterious hacker's words still echoed in her mind. The angels will guide you.
As the mane 6 walked the darkened streets of Ponyville, Glitterati's neon signs and flashing strobe lights appeared in the distance. They could hear the club's earth-shaking techno music from a few blocks away. Pinkie pie bounced alongside Rainbow Dash, practically beside herself with excitement. "I don't know if I've ever been more excited in my entire LIFE!" she squealed, repeating the line she always said before big parties. "I mean, sure I've been to Glitterati at least a HUNDRED times, but still! EQUINOX! FULL MOON! FRIDAY! All in one night! It just feels so special. And you know for a fact that I've been to TONS of parties, but Glimmer Glitz, you know, Glitterati's owner, NOPONY, throws parties like her, not even me!" Rainbow Dash pretended to listen to her best friend's raving, but she just couldn't get that message out of her head. She felt so confused, maybe even a little... scared.
Scared? Dash thought, angry with herself for being so immature. That's stupid! It's probably just some nerd trying to get revenge for me hacking them. It could be anything. The message was probably nothing. Even though she was comfortable leaving it at that, something tugged at a corner of her mind, telling her she was wrong. This wasn't just a coincidence or a prank. Someone was out there, trying to tell her something, trying to warn her...
"Stop it!" Dash accidentally said out loud. Pinkie Pie immediately silenced and stopped dead in her tracks.
"W-what did I do wrong, Dashie?" She looked up at her friend with puppy dog eyes.
"I'm sorry, Pink," she apologized quickly, her cheeks blushing with embarrassment. "Just... worried about my... training! Yeah my training. I have to get up early tomorrow, and I was just thinking about how I really shouldn't be staying up like this. It wasn't you."
"Oh. Okay!" As usual, the hyper pink pony jumped directly back into her craze. "It's just SO amazing! I've never seen this happen before. Then again, the last time it happened I was three months old, so..."

Glitterati's flashing lights and loud, blasting music were two things that could make somepony forget almost anything. With such upbeat surroundings and an atmosphere of pure enjoyment, it was almost impossible to think about anything but having fun. Glowing rainbows of light spun and flashed in time to the trance music pouring from the dozens of large speakers positioned all around the club. Everypony there was having the time of their lives. But not Rainbow Dash. While her friends were dancing, talking, laughing, having a great time and not giving a care in the world, she was leaning against the wall, alone and silent. Since receiving that strange, unexplainable message, it had been all she could think about. She knew the message was probably nothing important, but she just couldn't shake the feeling that there was something wrong. She just couldn't figure out what. While she was contemplating this mystery, Rainbow didn't notice the young black stallion walking towards her.
"Hello, Rain."
Rainbow Dash whirled around to see a pegasus stallion had approached and was watching her intently. He was around her age, maybe a year or two older. His coat and wings were a velvety black and his messy, spiky mane was a mix of vibrant neon colors. A small white circle with multi colored bolts of electricity striking toward a thin white line encircling them embellished his flank. A plasma-ball cutie mark. He had the brightest green eyes she had ever seen. They practically glowed with a light of their own.
She eyed him suspiciously. "You know my alias," she responded.
"I know a lot of things about you. Maybe even more than your friends."
Dash gasped.
"You!" she shouted. "You sent me that creepy message!"
The stallion laughed. "Did I scare you?"
"What the hay was that for, you pervert?" she growled at him. "What are you, a stalker?"
He smiled. "No, I'm not a stalker. You're just kind of... famous where I'm from."
Dash sneered at the stallion, annoyed. "And where is that, exactly?"
"Does it really matter? When you think about it, nothing does."
"What are you talking about? You don't make any sense."
The stallion wasn't laughing anymore. His sly smile was gone, his face serious. "Enough small talk, Rain," he said. "That's not why I'm here. I've come to warn you. You are in serious danger."
Dash was shocked, but she still refused to trust this stranger. "Danger? Why?"
"I can't tell you. I've been sworn to secrecy," he told her. "This is all you need to know: They are watching you, Rain. They are hunting you. They want you dead."
Rainbow Dash was getting scared. "Hunting me? Who is?"
The stallion continued. "I can't say. You'll know them when you see them. They are impossibly fast, strong, and almost never alone. If you ever see even one of them, RUN. Understand?" Rainbow Dash nodded, too shocked and scared to respond. The stallion didn't speak, either. He simply stared into Rainbow's eyes. Suddenly there was a flicker in them, some emotion that she didn't quite catch, gone as soon as it had appeared.
"Why won't you say something?" Rainbow Dash asked. "I still don't understand. There has to be something else."
The stallion looked at her knowingly and gave a small smile. "Because you're going to wake up any second now."
Then, ever so slowly, the images around her began to blur and the throbbing music was replaced by the buzzing of an alarm clock.