Marceline

When I woke up, I felt fresh and rejuvenated. After the whole cockatrice experience, Spencer and I were ready to find the masks and get the hay out of the Forest. We packed up the tent, and sat down to plan our next move.

"Okay, think. Where might Discord be hiding?" I asked.

"I dunno, but I think I know how to find out." he said.

"While you do that, I'll be using the bathroom." I said, getting to my hooves. I rushed behind a tree about 5 yards away and went about my business. When I returned, my brother had three small birds on his left shoulder. At his feet were a fox, a snake and two lynxes.

"What in all of Equestria are you doing?" I asked.

"I told you that I might be able to find Discord. Well, that's what I'm doing." he said. The animals looked frightened of me, so they turned to run. "Don't worry, guys. That's my sister. Sure she's a brat at times, but she's friendly."

"Since when could you talk to animals?" I asked, sitting next to the snake. He looked at me in confusion and flitted his tongue at me. I stuck my tongue out at him, making us seem like the weirdest set of siblings ever.

"Since always. Remember when your slippers got chewed up by a wolf? Well, let that serve as a reminder never to touch my stuff again."

"You prick. I'll get you back for that." I said. "But that's neither here nor there, so let's just get on with it. What did they say?"

"Well, Mr. Wolf Snake didn't see anything, Mr and Mrs. Lynx heard some laughter, Senor Fox says he saw a bunch of trees completely upside down, and the Sparrow Triplets saw a weird animal that they've never seen before. Based off of what they said, Discord is still in the forest with no intention of leaving." he reported. He leaned over and whispered to his posse of woodland critters. Whatever he said made them all scurry off into the woods. "I told them to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. If Discord tries to leave, we'll know."

"Cool. Hey, can I see Celestial really quick?" I asked. He handed it to me, sheath and all. I reared my arm back and threw Dad's magic sword into the woods, as far as I could, until it disappeared from view.

"What the hell?!" he asked in anger.

"Calm down, Mister Potty Mouth, I'm just testing something." I said. "Concentrate on the sword." He closed his eyes and concentrated. An orange beam of light shot out of the woods, right where I threw the sword. The light travelled through the brush, eventually hitting Spencer's right hand. The light reformed itself into Celestial.

"So this is a thing we can do now, apparently." said Spencer, tilting the sword. "Out of curiosity, what would have happened if that didn't work?"

"Um… I'd try to weasel my way out of whatever punishment I would have received for losing a magic sword." I said, scratching my head. "Well, it didn't come to that, so let's just get going."

"Are you sure we have everything, Short-Sighted Sally? Want to throw anything else important?" he said sarcastically. I checked Lunar for damage, then holstered it.

"We're good." I said, slinging a bag over my shoulder. Spencer picked the other up and began to lead the way through the brush. Periodically a bird would drop down onto Spencer's shoulder, tweet and chirp something into his ear, then fly off again.

"Do you think you could teach me to talk to animals?" I asked, after about twenty minutes.

"Nah. You're too temperamental. Maybe when you confront these issues you have with Mom, you'll have a more relaxed nature and a better affinity with them." he said as another bird landed on his shoulder. This time, the bird chirped quickly and frantically, and flew off. Whatever it said caused Spencer to stop in his tracks.

"What did it say?" I asked.

"He said watch out for… the fire-ponies." said Spencer in confusion. "Fire ponies? I don't know what he was talking about, but that doesn't sound safe. We should be careful."

"Fire, huh? Sounds like Celestial will be more or less useless on this one." I said, pulling Lunar from it's holster one more time. I just couldn't believe I was holding such an amazing weapon.

"I don't see Lunar doing anything particularly useful." he said.

"True, true. So far all I've done is dislocate my shoulder." I said. I took a deep breath, nearly choking on the acrid smell.

"You smell it too." coughed Spencer. "Smells like… smoke."

"Yeah. Where do you think it's coming from?" I asked.

"I dunno. Probably there." he said, pointing towards a huge plume of smoke coming from about 5 meters ahead. "I don't know for sure what that is, but I think it might be what the birds were telling me about."

"What do we do?" I asked.

"I suppose we just keep walking. Oh, I have a bad feeling about this." he said. "I have to warn the critters."

"Whenever you have a bad feeling, that normally means something exciting is about to happen." I said as Spencer whistled a little four-note tune. A small sparrow flew in and landed on his left shoulder.

"Hi, buddy." whispered Spencer to the bird. "Listen, I can't talk for long. I need you to find all your friends and tell them to get out of the forest. It's not safe anymore. Go tell every animal you can find to get out, then tell them to spread the message." The bird tweeted sharply then flew off.

"Let's go." I said, pressing onward. We walked in silence towards the smoke for three minutes before Spencer put together what I said.

"What was that supposed to mean? Whenever I have a bad feeling, something exciting is gonna happen?" he said.

"I meant that you find fun things bad." I said. "Whenever something cool or exciting or fun happens, all I hear is 'this can't end well' or 'We shouldn't, what would Mom say?' or 'Marceline, get us down from here, you'll kill us both.'"

"Well, those are all perfectly reasonable things to say in each of their respective situations."

"You're so uptight. I remember having a lot of fun every time you said any of those lines."

"I'm not uptight. I just don't like getting put into stupid situations." he said grumpily. "Something you don't seem to have a problem with."

"Are you calling me stupid?" I asked.

"No, you just do very stupid things."

TSSSSS!

A blob of lava flew over my head, burning the ground behind me. Out from the brush jumped two stallion-like figures, 9-feet tall and completely made of molten rock. I looked at Spencer in excitement, then jumped backwards to avoid another blob of lava.

"Oh, we are not done with this discussion." he said, drawing his sword.

---

Spencer

Marceline shot me that crazy, evil, annoyingly excited look, the look that normally meant something bad was going to happen, then jumped back avoid the lava that flew at her.

"Oh, we are not done with this discussion." I said, pulling Celestial from it's sheath. A blob soared through the air and landed right in front of my hoof. I flew into the air as Marceline did the same. We rose to about 10-feet, then hovered, trying to figure out what to do.

"Lava ponies?" I said, circling around the ponies. "How do we fight them?"

"No clue. Isn't this exciting?" she said with a smile, diving down to attack.

"Marcy, no!" I called. How could she be so dumb? Just run at something made of lava, why don't you?

"Relax." she said, pulling up right before she hit one. "I'm testing their reaction times."

"That's unbelievably stupid!"

"I know!" she said, lowering down slightly. "Live dangerously!" One of the lava golems threw a blob of lava from his chest and hit Marcy in the left wing with it.

"No!" I cried, dropping to catch my sister, who began to drop. She screamed loudly as she flapped her burning wing, sending lava everywhere.

"They're faster than I thought." she said, crying with pain. She pulled out Lunar and pointed it past me, lightning fast, and pulled the trigger. The gun didn't make a normal gunshot BANG! noise, but instead a CRACK!, as though somepony had dropped a vase.

"What did you do?" I asked, whipping my head around to face the lava golems. The one on the left had froze completely solid, unmoving and covered in a coat of ice and frost. "Did you just freeze something made of lava?"

"Yeah!" she said, pointing it at the other golem. He jumped to the side, and chucked another hunk of molten rock at my head. Marceline shot at the blob, freezing it solid. Unfortunately, that didn't stop it's motion and it collided with the side of my head. I fell to the ground, my vision blurring and my eyes crossing.

"Thanks for that, sis." I said. "That's just what I needed: A blow to the head."

"Sorry, Spence." she said, aiming at the other golem. She pulled the trigger and froze it solid. "Are you okay?"

"Oh no, it only hurts when I get asked stupid questions!" I said, rubbing my head angrily. "We need to get out of here."

"What for?" she asked. "We stopped them, we can take a break."

"Really?" I asked. "How do I explain this? These are ponies made of lava. Lava is what?"

"Hot?" she tried.

"Very good. Lava is hot. We froze these lava ponies using…"

"Ice."

"You're two for two. Now, what happens when ice gets hot?"

"It… melts. Oh. They can thaw themselves out."

"Fantastic. Now, unless you have an idea on how to get rid of them permanently, I'm going to have to drag your flank through the woods."

"I have an idea!" she said. "Go into the bags! We have C4!"

"Oh no. This isn't going to end well." I said, digging into the bag. I pulled out 2 bricks of plastic explosives and placed one on the chest of each golem. I pulled Marceline back a yard or two and grabbed the detonator from the supplies.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Go." she said with a smile. I shielded her body and flicked the detonator.

BOOM!

The golems exploded into chips of ice, covering me and bouncing off of my back. I brushed the ice off of myself then pulled out a bundle of bandages for Marceline. I dressed and wrapped up her wing, then flicked her in the forehead.

"You are so dumb!" I shouted. "That lava could've killed you!"

"But it didn't." she said proudly, getting to her hooves. "It could've, but it didn't. Thanks, by the way. I don't know how to deal with burns."

"Neither do I. We should probably get you to an actual doctor as soon as possible." I said, flying into the air. I surveyed the area, checking for anomalies, oddities, and general Discord-esque chaos. I saw the inverted trees that Senor Fox told me about.

"Maybe I should call the critters back." I said to myself. "It is safer." I whistled the same little four-note tune and waited a beat. One of the Sparrow Triplets flew up and landed on my shoulder.

"We dealt with the fire-ponies. You guys can come back into the forest now." I said. He tweeted three times in rapid succession, which meant "Okay, thanks, I'll get right on it." I promised him some birdseed when this was all said and done, and he flew off to gather the others.

"Yo! Spencer!" called Marceline. "I think we have a problem!"

"What?" I asked, floating down.

"What day was it when we started this adventure?" she asked as my hooves hit the ground.

"Sunday. Why?"

"It's Saturday." she said.

"What?! How?! What makes you say that?" I asked panickedly.

"I can smell Pinkie's cake. She said she was throwing a party on Saturday and that there would be tons of cake. Don't you smell it?" Now that she brought it up, I did smell cake. Lots of it.

"That doesn't mean it's Saturday. Maybe she got the date wrong. Maybe she started early."

"That's why I didn't bring it up earlier, but a second ago, this newspaper flew into my face. Here." she said, handing me the paper in her hand that I hadn't noticed. I snatched it from her and read the date. Saturday, February 25, six days since we started.

"Yikes! How has it been six days?!" I exclaimed.

"I don't know for sure, but I'm betting it's Discord." said Marceline. "We have to shift into high gear and get those masks!"

"Sksam esoht teg dna reag hgih otni tfihs ot evah ew!" said a voice that sounded eerily similar to Marceline's. Out of the brush stepped a pegasus that looked exactly the same as my sister, except completely grey, from her eyes to her mane to her coat. Next to her stood me, also completely grey and undetailed. In the Marceline-Imposter's right hand was a gun that looked a lot like Lunar, and in the Wannabe-Spencer's left hand was a copy of Celestial. The Marcy-Impersonator pointed the fake Lunar at my sister and chambered a round.

"As soon as we take care of these clowns." said Marceline, loading the real Lunar.

"Snwolc eseht fo erac ekat ew sa noos sa." said Eni Lecram.

"It's always something." I said, pulling Celestial from it's sheath.

"Gnihtemos syawla s'ti." growled Recneps, drawing his sword.

"How funny is this?" laughed Discord, appearing out of thin air before the copies. "Look at how upset you are! You're… beside yourselves! Bwahahaha!"

"Really?" asked Marcy.

"Yllear?" mumbled Ycram.

"Come on!" said Discord angrily. "That was funny!"

"No it wasn't." I said, ignoring my clone, who would apparently say everything I said, but reserved.

"Fine! You don't appreciate my sense of humor? Eni Lecram! Recneps! Attack." said Discord, pointing his eagle claw at me and my sister.

"What are the odds that they'll get confused and fight each other?" asked Marceline as the evil-twins advanced.

"So unlikely that we shouldn't bet on it, but likely enough that we shouldn't abandon hope." I said, jumping back just in time to avoid the fake Celestial. "To think I might die fighting myself."

"Just imagine that epitaph." said Marceline.