Opposition, 8 AM

Fluttershy was very, very quiet as she fluttered in through the door to her house that wasn't her house, but she needn't have bothered. Not only was Fluttercruel not there, none of the animals were either. Angel had successfully gotten them all out. She mouthed a silent prayer for their safety as she set about trying to find where her alternate self might have stored anything she could use as a distraction.

The first thing she thought of was fire. The flammable chemicals were normally in the basement, but obviously if Fluttercruel had been keeping Discord imprisoned there, she had to be keeping them somewhere else. For a few moments, Fluttershy searched the kitchen, racking her brain for where she might have stored them if she couldn't put them in the basement. And then she remembered the time she'd given the space to a pregnant manticore who'd wanted a dark, quiet place to give birth, and who was too much of a predator for Fluttershy to be able to let her den anywhere near the other animals. She'd stored the chemicals in the bathroom, then. Maybe Fluttercruel had done the same.

As she'd hoped, there were flammable chemicals under the sink. Plus bleach and ammonia, which could be poured together into a building – such as Twilight's library, maybe? – to drive ponies out with noxious gas. And ether. That one was definitely useful. All she needed was to soak a few scarves in it – and store them in an airtight saddlebag, because otherwise the fumes could get to her – and she'd have a weapon she could safely use against anypony. Even to save Discord, Fluttershy didn't think she could kill... but she could most definitely wrap an ether-soaked scarf around a pony's muzzle until they passed out. All she needed was to get some scarves.

In the bedroom, she stopped, puzzled, at the dresser. A lot of the room was the same as her own – same furniture, only slightly rearranged – but the bowl of water on top of the dresser with what looked like a short rod sitting in it puzzled her. It didn't seem to be decorative. She pulled the rod out – and found to her surprise that something dangled from it, thin as a thread but glittering like a diamond. She might not even have been able to see it if parts of it weren't colored red or brown. Fluttershy pulled it up all the way – and discovered, when the thread got caught on the edge of the ceramic bowl and she tugged at it just slightly to pull it free, that it was horrifyingly sharp. The ceramic parted under the pull like skin under a cat's claw, the thread slicing it deeply and making the bowl leak. Hurriedly Fluttershy dropped the thing back into the bowl before she could accidentally cut herself with it, and backed away as water sloshed out of the slit the thread had cut into the bowl.

The existence of that bowl, or more precisely the inexplicable, impossibly sharp thread and its handle that were in the bowl, spooked Fluttershy. Even though she knew the dresser was probably where the scarves were, she opened the top drawer to the nightstand anyway. There might be scarves in there if she'd been using them as blankets for tiny animals that came to snuggle with her.

There weren't, but there was a photo album. Morbid curiosity about a life she'd never led, and the desire to understand more about her enemy, to understand where and how Fluttercruel differed from her and why, led her to pull the book out and start flipping through it. Her brows furrowed in puzzlement as she browsed. It was all pictures of Discord.

At first she feared this would be some sort of photographic record of the tortures Fluttercruel had inflicted on him – the first picture had him mugging for the camera, looking oh so cocky, healthy and free and eyes alight with mischief, and she shuddered as she turned the page, fearing she would start to see him break. Start, because she wasn't going to keep going if that was what this album detailed. But it didn't. The Discord in the pictures continued to be cocky and mischievous. In several of the pictures, he was embracing or standing next to Fluttershy's doppelganger, who generally looked angry, sad or both. In one picture, he was kissing her, holding her up with paws around her forelegs. Her eyes were closed, tightly, tensely, and Fluttershy could see tear streaks on her face.

This was the other Discord. Fluttershy's Discord had never behaved this way toward her, and she felt certain that he never would, not toward any iteration of her. Against her will some slight sympathy for Fluttercruel crept into her heart. Had the other Discord... raped her? Was that why she was taking sadistic revenge on Fluttershy's Discord, to turn the tables? Not that that would make it forgivable, or excusable, but it would be easier to understand why...

...but no. In some of the pictures, especially later in the album, Fluttercruel seemed to alternate between being affectionate with Discord, and trying to shrink away from him. On one of the pages, Discord sat on a throne made of turtles – living turtles, visibly straining under the weight – and Fluttershy's own hoofwriting spelled out "I love him. I hate him. I love him. I hate him," over and over, all over the page around the picture. In one picture, Discord was looking on, beaming with pride, as Fluttercruel, wearing a sadistic smile Fluttershy could not imagine on her own face, was grinding a Changeling's head into the dirt. Green ichor bled from several places.

Fluttercruel wouldn't keep a photo album of her interactions with her rapist right next to her bed. Maybe the other Discord had emotionally abused her – and turning her world to chaos, training her in cruelty and gloating over it, that was certainly emotional abuse even if Discord hadn't intended it as such – but she had loved him. And hated him. The last picture was of Discord's statue. Laughing again, but it didn't look like a frozen moment of carefree hilarity, the way he had in the first statue. If laughter could look bitter and anguished, but still be laughter, that was what the statue's expression seemed to convey.

Fluttershy put the album back, troubled. She had assumed Fluttercruel's feelings for Discord were pure lust, bound up with hatred and cruelty. If she'd loved the other Discord... it was hurting her head, and her heart, trying to understand her twisted counterpart. She opened the bottom drawer of the nightstand, and recoiled.

It was full of dildos. The male part of at least a dozen different animals had a replica in this drawer, along with some that bothered Fluttershy, a lot. She herself had a few of these in a drawer at home, the more normal ones – her shock wasn't due to the presence of dildos, but how horrible some of them looked. There was one that was so enormously big... well, Fluttershy couldn't imagine putting anything like that inside herself, no matter how experienced she might become someday. How would it even fit? And then there was the one that looked at first like a normal stallionhood, until she noticed the very, very sharp thin fins on the side. How could anypony take that without cutting themselves up inside?

There were also very tiny cuffs in multiple sizes. Mouse sized, raccoon sized, hamster sized... rabbit sized. When the implications of that sank in, Fluttershy backed away – or tried. She only got a step before her rump hit the bed. Turning to see what she'd hit, automatically, before her brain had a chance to logic things out and tell her it had to be the bed, brought her a full view of the bed for the first time since she'd come in the room. There were binders attached to it everywhere. Chains on the legs, ropes tied to the bedposts, harness points hanging out from under the mattress. Reflexively she jerked her head down so she wouldn't have to see, and came face to face with a bloodstain, soaked deep into the wood.

She knelt down, horror welling up inside her, because that bloodstain still had a smell. It was relatively fresh, from within the past few days or so. Fluttershy's sense of smell wasn't good enough to tell her what kind of creature had bled this blood... but she thought she knew.

There was a pile of debris that had been swept to just under the bed, with a sizeable quantity of blue pegasus feathers in it. Rainbow Dash, and a preening session? she thought to herself, desperately trying to believe... but the blue was too deep to be Rainbow's light, near-sky color. And when she tried to sift through the debris, she found several pieces of what she thought at first were leather... until she found a piece with a thin bit of wingbone attached.

Fluttershy screamed. And backed away from the bloodstain and the bed with the torture bindings and the torn, shattered pieces of indigo batpony wing almost before getting to her hooves, as if getting away from it could undo what it represented, as if she could deny the truth to herself. "Oh, Celestia," she moaned softly. "Discord, what has she done to you? Oh, please, please be alive, please..."

Bloodstained blue feathers and broken bits of wing, feathered blue wing and indigo batpony wing, leathery but still fresh, not dried out. This had been recent. Dear Celestia. The bloodstain was huge. Any slight sympathy she might have been starting to feel for Fluttercruel was driven out by her anguish. "What has she done to you?" she repeated, crouching on the ground with hooves pressed to eyes as if she could curl up into such a small ball that she wouldn't exist anymore and she wouldn't have to know that her friend had been maimed, plainly tortured to the point where if he hadn't bled out it was only because he was so much bigger than a pony and had commensurately more blood in him... recently. And possibly violated with some of those more horrible dildos, as well. They looked more like implements of torture than of pleasure. And these terrible things had been done to him by her. A pony who had once been her, who had a house just like hers and pets just like hers and who looked like her.

Fluttershy felt hatred boiling over, for the first time in her life. It made her physically nauseous, made her grind her teeth, made her vision swim and her ears ring and every muscle tense with the desire to buck that monstrous pony's face off. No, to tear at her with teeth, like an animal. No, to smash her forelegs into every bone in her alternate's body, crush her into blood and gristle. How could she? If she'd loved the other Discord, even if she'd hated him as well... oh, how could she do such things to somepony she simply hated, let alone one she felt love for as well? How could she even exist, being so evil?

How could she be Fluttershy?

How could someone who had been Fluttershy herself have become like this? Fluttershy remembered what it had felt like when Discord had made her cruel – oddly, at the time, she hadn't remembered at first, but it had come back to her within a few days, and haunted her nightmares now. She had been so angry, at everypony and everything, and making others feel bad had felt good. Righteous. They deserved it. But even then, she would never have done something like this. It would never have entered her mind to rape someone, or to beat them until they nearly bled to death (please only be "nearly", please). Didn't she know by now that the corruption had come from this world's original Discord – the one that she had loved, and hated? Why couldn't she fight it?

She'd never felt this way before. She'd felt hot rage like this at herself, guilt and shame for something she had done and a desire to sink into the ground and cease to exist, to curl herself up in a little ball and implode until there was nothing left. But she'd never felt this way toward somepony else, not even when she'd been corrupted by Discord, not even when the animals had refused to come to her, not even when she'd taken Iron Will's teachings to heart. She'd never felt so much anger that she wanted to kill something, wanted to hurt it and brutalize it and make it suffer. She didn't even feel that way toward the other alternates, the corrupted versions of her friends. Them, she could feel sympathy for. They'd been corrupted, they weren't in control of themselves. But Fluttercruel was herself, and Fluttershy had always been harder on herself than on anypony else in existence.

No. Murder was evil, no matter how evil the one you were murdering was. Breaking bones and biting throats was cruel, and would reduce her to Fluttercruel's level. She wouldn't do those things, as much as she wanted to. She'd continue with the plan. Save Discord, get him to uncorrupt the Elements, reharmonize the Tree, and turn Fluttercruel back into herself... and then let her do whatever she wanted to do to herself. Or stop her, because it might actually be a worse punishment to force her to live with the memory of what she'd done than to let her destroy herself. That was what she deserved...

...no. It wasn't enough. It was the right thing to do, the harmonious thing to do, the moral thing to do, but it didn't satisfy this burning need for revenge, the visceral desire to hurt Fluttercruel and punish her for being so evil. Fluttershy looked around herself. How dare Fluttercruel have Fluttershy's furniture? How dare she have her house? How dare she have anything that belonged to Fluttershy when she had spat on everything that Fluttershy was, rejected everything that Fluttershy had ever tried to be? How dare she be so weak that she could let herself be so deeply corrupted, and how could she possibly deserve to own anything nice, anything that was Fluttershy's?

Fluttershy went to the dresser drawer where the scarves ought to be, pulled several out and stuffed them in her saddlebag. Then coldly, she began pouring the lamp oil out all over the bedroom. All over the photo album that Fluttercruel obviously treasured. All over the bed she had perverted into an instrument of torture. On the furniture, on the floor.

She was crying, tears near-blinding her and soft sobs choking her, as she poured the accelerant potions she used to treat the wood that powered her stove and her furnace all over the balcony floor of her upstairs, and onto the stairs, and all over the living room. I'm sorry, tree, I'm so sorry, but you have to die. I can't let her have you, I can't. If you could run away like the animals did I would have you do that, but you can't, and I can't keep her from having you any other way, and she doesn't deserve you, she doesn't, she doesn't deserve to have anything, she should be alone and friendless and own nothing and have no safe retreat she can go to, so I have to kill you. I'm so sorry.

She dragged the ether out of the house, setting it aside near the brook. There weren't any fish left; they'd all swum away. Oh, I hope they'll be okay. I hope everyone makes it to safety. Please, Angel, I know you can do it. Please get them all to somewhere they'll be safe. Not that he could exactly help the fish, but then, it wasn't as if the fish had been free from predators here; Fluttershy herself had done the fish-catching for the raccoons and Harry and other creatures that needed meat, because she trusted herself to be able to do it equinely and with a minimum of suffering, but just because the fish she'd caught for her animals had died swiftly and without pain didn't mean they hadn't died. She shook her head to push the intrusive thoughts out, the guilt she felt about submitting to the darker needs of nature and causing death to some creatures that others might live. She couldn't handle feeling guilt right now, not when her insides were churning with her rage at Fluttercruel and the horrible shame she felt at the possibility that she herself might have those evil desires buried deep inside somewhere, or that she herself could ever be weak enough to give in to them.

The matches were by the stove, exactly where she expected they would be. Fluttershy opened all the cabinets and systematically pushed all the cups and dishes out, shoving them onto the floor, where they smashed to pieces. In the laundry room she poured accelerant all over the basket of dirty laundry waiting to be washed, and filled the laundering tub with firewood for the stove, then poured accelerant on that as well. The metal tub wouldn't burn, but the heat might warp it.

The first match, she dropped on the bed. WHOOOMP! The explosion of flame was so sudden she almost couldn't fly out of the way in time. The balcony and the downstairs were easier, safer, because the ceiling was much higher, giving her room to drop the match and flit away before it landed. Flame bloomed everywhere, racing along the lines of accelerant she'd poured. The lamp oil she'd used up on the upstairs burned even faster, her bedroom a roaring inferno before she'd even had a chance to set every room on the first floor ablaze.

Fire was a thing pegasi understood, a construct of air and heat energy like the weather they manipulated. Though she had never been formally trained in weather-working, Fluttershy had an instinct in the bones of her wings, telling her where the fire would go before it did. So she was able to leave the doorway for last. She flew through it backward, her body vertical, and tossed the final match through the doorway as she came clear of it. Then she flipped around and flew as fast as she could, to the other side of the brook, where she could watch the destruction in relative safety. There were a few clouds overhead, which was good, because she needed to be prepared to put out the flames if they spread beyond the property. She could go get more if she had to, but right now, she wanted the fire to be a blazing beacon, to tell the whole world that Fluttercruel was losing everything she owned.

Fluttershy wiped the tears on her face away and watched as the upper branches caught. Fire was terrifying, but strangely beautiful. She wanted to flee the destruction she'd wrought, but she felt like that was wrong. The tree wasn't her tree, but it was exactly like her tree, and it wasn't the tree's fault that Fluttercruel had become so evil. The tree deserved for someone who loved it to stand vigil over it as it died.

Besides, part of her, deep down, was hoping that Fluttercruel would arrive while she was still here, so that Fluttershy could see the look on her counterpart's face.

---

Opposition, 8 AM

The train ride to Canterlot was hellish. Spike was surrounded by changelings on all sides, all glowering down at him, eager to take advantage of just one misstep on his part to get revenge for the comrades he'd lamed. More than the ones surrounding him, though, he feared the ones surrounding the unconscious bodies of Twilight, Rarity, and their friends. A changeling with a horn, who looked like a cross between Chrysalis and one of the changeling grunts, kept recasting the sleep spell on the four ponies every time they stirred. Spike knew that if he did anything to try to escape or fight the changelings, they would kill Rarity.

What kind of a world was this, where changelings were working together with the alternates of Twilight and Rarity, where they were openly taking the train? Twilight had said a world couldn't truly be a mirror world, where the good had turned evil and the evil had turned good, because ponies were more complex than that, but this was sure looking like some kind of mirrorverse straight out of a comic book. Which meant that the Princess Celestia of this world would also be evil, at least as evil as the cold, vicious creature that looked like his Twilight. Spike felt nauseous, and had to keep swallowing repeatedly. His guts burned, as if his fire was trying to blaze up in response to the threat he felt, except that of course he was too small of a dragon to support full dragonflame, so it just hurt. After the last few years in Ponyville, Spike had been in enough life-threatening situations to know that the sensation would cause him no permanent harm; it just made him feel sick now.

At the Palace, the changelings handed them over to Royal Guards. Spike knew Royal Guards, having spent most of his childhood in the palace, so he tried to make small talk with them as they marched him, and carried his friends, toward the holding cells in the tower. "So, uh, you know we're not, like, weird magical doppelgangers or something, right? I really am Spike. These are really Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie Pie. I know your Twilight isn't an alicorn but trust me, this is really Twilight. We're from another universe." No response. "I mean, we're not enemies. We just came here to rescue somepony. We never wanted to fight any of you guys." Dead silence. "Maybe I could talk to Captain Shining Armor? Is he still captain in this universe? Hey, does the Crystal Empire even exist here?" Nothing. "Sheesh, you guys. Come on. I'm Spike! I used to go with Twilight to watch you guys drill under Shining. One time you all searched all over the palace to find me because I found a secret passage someone had made right into the treasury room, and I ate so many gems I could barely move but Princess Celestia said I deserved those gems as my reward for discovering that a thief had built a secret passage to steal from the treasury. Do any of you remember that?" Still nothing. "Wow, tough audience."

The guard in the lead unlocked the door to one of the cells in the middle of the tower – at least, Spike was guessing it was the middle, they hadn't gone up enough stairs for it to be the top yet – and gestured. "Get in there," he said.

"Wow! You can talk! I was starting to believe you guys take a vow of silence in this universe, or something."

He walked into the cell, knowing there was no point to fighting. There was no way he could bring himself to attack Royal Guards the way he'd attacked the changelings, and there were too many of them, and too many of them were unicorns. Against an earth pony or a pegasus Spike might have some chance, but without magic there was no way he could fight a combat-trained unicorn. The cell was large, for a holding cell, and there were four mattresses bolted to the floor. The unicorn guards who were levitating his friends laid Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie on mattresses, but did not deposit Twilight on the last one. The one carrying Twilight never even entered the cell. "Hey!" Spike said. "Hey, aren't you forgetting somepony? Where are you taking her? That's Twilight Sparkle! She's not an enemy!"

One of the guards finally deigned to speak to him, as the guards were all leaving the cell. "The alicorn prisoner will be housed in her own cell, due to her status," he said.

"But Twilight wouldn't want you to make a fuss over her status! She'd rather be with her friends!"

The door bolted shut with a clang. Spike clung to the bars in the small window in the door. "Hey! Don't take her away! She belongs here, with us! With me! Come on, guys! Please! Please leave Twilight with us..."

None of it did any good. Spike slumped as the guards passed out of the range where he could even hear them anymore. "Please be safe, Twilight," he mumbled.

There was a pitcher of water and four cups in the room. Spike poured himself one and drank it in a single gulp. "Mmm, hard water," he said, sighing. "I love the taste of the minerals in the palace pipes." Most water in the palace had to be magically filtered before ponies would really want to drink it, because the pipes under the palace were ancient and you could taste the minerals that leeched from them into the water that came out of the taps. Plainly they didn't bother doing that for prisoners, but that suited Spike just fine.

He peered outside the window, sniffing deeply, listening with his whole being. When he was convinced there were no guards lurking in the hallway, he let go of the window bars. "Time to call in the cavalry," he muttered to himself.

Dragons had pouches. He remembered Twilight, on discovering that, excitedly declaring that dragons must be marsupials, until Princess Celestia had pointed out that they lay eggs, don't have fur, and that Spike was a male dragon, whereas marsupials were furry creatures who laid eggs and only the females had pouches. This had left Twilight quite dejected. At the time, Spike hadn't understood why.

His personal theory, given that the positioning of the pouches would make them awkward to use if he was going on four legs like an adult dragon, was that it was for young dragons to hide away small amounts of hoard so the jerky teenagers wouldn't steal it. He, however, kept something no other dragon would ever have a use for – scrolls, quills, and a tiny ink bottle. His backpack had gotten lost in the fight, along with the others' saddlebags – or they'd been confiscated, he wasn't sure, but his was definitely lost – so most of his writing material was gone, but ponies didn't mostly even know that dragons had pouches, and apparently changelings didn't either. No one had searched him.

Spike sat down with his writing materials. "Dear Princess Celestia," he wrote. "The other Twilight beat our Twilight. She was really fast. They also had Changeling backup. So Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie and I have all been captured. Please send help. –Your loyal subject, Spike."

He picked up the scroll, summoned his flame from within, fixed on the image of Princess Celestia in his mind, and breathed out. The flame caught the paper and devoured it, leaving only the smallest wisp of ash.

Almost immediately he felt the tell-tale swell of a burp in his throat. He blew out, materializing a scroll. How had Princess Celestia responded so fast? He grabbed the scroll, excited – until he saw that the handwriting in the scroll was his own.

"Whatcha doin', Spike?"

Spike looked over. Pinkie was awake, looking much more bleary than she usually was on waking. "I just tried to send a letter to Princess Celestia, and it came back," he said, slumped in dejection.

"That's too bad," Pinkie agreed. "But hay, cheer up! Fluttershy and Dashie are still loose!"

"That's true," Spike said, nodding. Then it occurred to him. "Hey, how do you know that? You were asleep when we were taken captive."

"Elementary, my dear Spike!" Pinkie said, pulling a magnifying glass out of... somewhere. "Twilight was captured before I fell asleep, but she was too high-value a prisoner for me to assume that the reason she's not here is that she got away, 'cause they'd have put all their attention into making sure she didn't. It's much more likely that she was locked up separate from us because she's so smart and stuff. But even though Dashie's awesome and Fluttershy's great, they're not gonna scare bad ponies as bad as Twilight does, because seriously, if they're used to that creepy Twilight they have, I'd be scared of Twilight too! So they didn't have any reason not to put them in the same cell as us, and they're not here, so that means they weren't captured!"

Pinkie's argument was more full of holes than a cheese grater, but Spike wasn't going to argue with her, because as it happened she was right. At least, as far as he knew. "They were still loose when we got taken," he said. He looked at the floor glumly. "It was my fault."

"It was not," Rarity said hoarsely. She started to get to her hooves, apparently thought better of it, and simply rolled to a more dignified, sitting position on the bed. "You made a mistake anypony could make, in a situation you most certainly had not been trained for."

"Wanna fill me in?" Pinkie asked.

"I'd be happy to, darling, but I am in dire need of that water, and I'm so very dizzy—"

"No problem!" Spike rushed over, grabbed Rarity's cup, poured water into it, and carried it over to her. "Here you go!"

Once she'd drunk it, she related the events that had taken place between Pinkie getting hit with the sleep spell, and the same happening to herself and Applejack.  Applejack herself woke up before the end of it, so when Spike told them all about the train ride and being taken to Canterlot Palace, and the guards taking Twilight away, everyone heard.

"Well, it's a terrible shame that those guards couldn't be bothered to give you the time of day," Rarity huffed. "But I'd wager I could get some answers from them... oh, except that my saddlebags are gone! I must brush my mane if I'm to have any hope of swaying anypony to speak with us!"

"I don't think they're gonna care all that much about the state of your mane, sugarcube," Applejack said morosely. "We may be well and truly stuck in this one."

"You greatly underestimate the value of glamour in a situation like this," Rarity retorted. "Spike, I so hate to ask, but hooves simply cannot substitute for any sort of brush, and even if I were to attempt to use my magic to rearrange my coiffure, I have no mirror. I would most likely end up with a horrific travesty. Would you be willing to be a gentlecolt and help me?"

Would he be willing? Despite the dire situation, Spike's heart lurched into overdrive, suddenly pounding so hard with excitement that he felt sure the ponies would be able to hear it beating. "S-sure!" he exclaimed. "I'd be happy to!" Run his claws through Rarity's mane? Practically a dream come true!

She was very, very demanding, of course, but that wasn't anything new, and to be honest Spike liked it that way. When he was helping a pony who was demanding and precise, but actually asking him for something he knew how to do, unlike some of the times with Twilight, it made him feel useful, needed and loved. When Twilight had been a lot younger, she'd sometimes asked him to do things he had no idea how to do. Not so much lately, since he'd learned a lot working for her, but he still had occasional nightmares about incidents like the time younger Twilight had asked him to get books for her out of Canterlot Palace's library, where they had huge problems with books being misshelved or stored in obscure locations, and their organizing system was about 300 years older than Dew Drop Decimal. Combing Rarity's hair, on the other paw, was something he knew how to do.

He raked dead leaves, twigs and dirt out of her mane and tail (the further end of her tail, of course, it would be completely improper for a gentlecolt to touch a mare's tail anywhere near her body itself, and Spike was fairly certain he'd faint if he tried), and shaped them into her usual coiffure. Eventually, Applejack pronounced that as far as she could tell, Rarity looked just as fancy and frou-frou as she usually did, so Rarity went to the window.

There still wasn't anypony there. Rarity's horn lit up as she tried the door. "I'm sorry," she said after a few moments. "I was so hoping I might be able to pick the lock, but they have spells as well as a standard keyed lock on this door, and I cannot even begin to pick apart these spells."

"Stands to reason they wouldn't've left you the ability to use your horn if they thought you could use it to break out," Applejack said. "Ain't no reason to be ashamed of that, sugar. I'll bet you bits to biscuits that's part of the reason they locked Twilight up separate."

"Ah, well. It isn't as if I truly expected them to be that careless. Back to Plan A, I suppose." She levitated the dead leaves and twigs Spike had pulled out of her mane, and threw them through the bars of the window. The leaves made no sound as they drifted to the floor, but twigs and tiny stones clattered.

A moment later Rarity turned. "I hear a guard coming!" she whispered excitedly, and turned back to the window. "Yoo-hoo! Oh, sir guardspony! Might I have a word with you?"

The guard came over to the window. "I'm not supposed to talk to you prisoners," he said gruffly.

"Oh, but surely there's no harm in a small exception, is there?" Rarity asked, batting her eyelashes. Spike felt mixed pride and jealousy as he watched her turn on the charm. "Surely your captain is far too intelligent a pony to leave us here together if we presented any threat! And all I want is just the opportunity to speak to a pony in charge. I fear there may have been a terrible misunderstanding."

"I don't think so," the guard said. "Word I've been told is, you're in league with Discord." He almost spat the draconequus' name.

Rarity gasped. "Heavens, no! In league with that perfectly dreadful beast? Never! You see, this is exactly the sort of misunderstanding I was talking about. I'm sure you know my friend Applejack here, the Element of Honesty. Now Applejack, speaking honestly: are we working with Discord to spread chaos?"

"Of course not," Applejack said. "That'd be plumb crazy." Spike turned away so the guard couldn't see him grinning. Trust Rarity to know how to phrase the question in just the right way that Applejack could honestly say no.

"There," Rarity said. "The truth is, darling, we're here to support your Elements of Harmony and help them return to their true, harmonious selves. I'm sure you've heard they had a bit of a Discord problem themselves a few years back, and defeating him didn't solve it. Part of the corruption he placed on them makes them resistant to any effort to heal them, which is why we ended up fighting them and why they had us sent here when they won. But we're only here to help them."

"I don't know..."

"Of course I would never ask you to do anything to violate your oaths," Rarity said. "All I ask of you is an opportunity to speak to your captain, or some other pony in charge, so that I can relate the full details to them and they can make the decision as to what to do. It can't hurt to ask, can it?"

"I... guess not..."

"Thank you ever so much. You're a true gentlestallion, good sir. I eagerly await the opportunity to clear our names."

She turned back to the others as the guard left. "Now all we have to do is wait, and I'm sure we'll be able to get some answers at the least, perhaps even be let free."

"But just in case that doesn't work," Pinkie said, "I brought thingies."

"Thingies?" Applejack raised an eyebrow.

"Shh!" Pinkie said. "The walls could have ears!" In a very loud whisper she said, "The kind of thingies you need for getting doors open if maybe they might not be so very openable, if you know what I mean..."

"Right," Applejack said. "I got two of those thingies, myself." She kicked back with one leg, then the other. "My two good pals Bucky McGillicutty and Kicks McGee."

"There is a spell on the door," Rarity said. "And it's not one I can undo, I fear."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Applejack said. "Best to try your plan first."

---

Opposition, 9 AM

I'm... in a cell?

Twilight blinked as she looked around her. She was plainly in Canterlot Palace, judging from the material the walls were made of and the lighting, in a holding cell in one of the towers. There were several slitted windows with bars across them, letting plenty of light in and giving her a great view of Canterlot and the slopes of the mountain below it, once she struggled to her hooves. It was hard to move; there were four heavy iron cuffs on each leg, clamped just above her hooves, bands holding her wings to her sides, and something cool and metallic on her horn – a power binder, she guessed, because her magic wouldn't respond. When she tried to summon it, it would reach her horn and then fizzle.

Her friends weren't in her cell, which unnerved her. What had happened to them? Had they beaten their alternates? Given that she hadn't been there to help them against her own alternate, Twilight worried that they might not have been able to. If they had managed to defeat their alter egos, wouldn't they have come to rescue her? And what did it mean that the Changelings had been fighting on the same side as the alternates, and now she was here in Canterlot Palace? Were the Changelings allies of Equestria, or had they conquered it and the Bearers' evil alter egos had sided with them? But Discord's letter said he'd met Celestia, but what if that Celestia was really Chrysalis?

There was a pitcher of water and a cup in the room, and Twilight was thirsty – her head pounded, and she felt dehydrated and nauseous. But she couldn't take the risk that the water was drugged, not without her magic to scan it. She licked her lips. To distract herself, she made a circuit of the room, though she was fairly certain there was no way out besides the door. The narrow windows weren't large enough for her to fit her head through (or body), even if there hadn't been bars, which there were, strong enough that they didn't budge in the slightest when she bucked them with all her strength. Which felt like considerably less strength than she was used to being able to bring to bear, since she became an alicorn. Well, the cuffs were iron, and iron was a well-known magic disruptor. It had seemed like an unusual choice, to put cuffs on her that weren't linked to each other, leaving her full freedom of motion in her limbs – what would be the point to cuffs that didn't bind? Perhaps they did bind, but what they bound was earth pony magic, the physical strength she should have had. Twilight tried uselessly to scrape one of the cuffs off, but they were too tight. She didn't actually know how to pick locks and wouldn't have the dexterity of hoof to try; Pinkie could pick locks with her hooves, but Twilight didn't have earth pony dexterity. That was less a function of magic and more a matter of practice; being an alicorn didn't change the fact that Twilight had had a horn her whole life and hadn't had to rely on hooves to manipulate things since she was very little.

She continued her inspection. The chamber was tall enough for pegasus guards to maneuver above a prisoner, but not tall enough for an unbound pegasus prisoner to get any serious runway for a divebomb attack. Maybe ten heads tall, tall enough for Princess Celestia to rear up on her hind legs and still have plenty of clearance, but not tall enough for much else. The door was heavy and oaken, and when Twilight pressed her body against it she could feel protective spells wound through it, but without her horn she wasn't sensitive enough to be able to analyze the spells. There was a copper chamberpot bolted to the floor in one corner. Letting the hair of her tail dangle into the clean pot did nothing, but when she poured a bit of water in from the pitcher, the water vanished. Sanitation spells, either destroying or teleporting anything that was a unique object unconnected to another object. So it would keep itself perfectly clean, but it couldn't be used as a weapon.

There was a mattress on the floor, soft and surprisingly comfortable but with spells woven through it that she suspected would prevent it from tearing, and it was held down with rings that fastened to the stone floor. A hoof-operated switch on the floor seemed to make the mattress grow warm. So a prisoner could be kept in relative comfort without having to give them blankets to keep warm, it seemed. The pitcher and the cup were the only other things in the room, and the only things not bolted down, and Twilight couldn't see how to use them in an escape attempt. They were made of a light metal alloy, and wouldn't cause enough damage if thrown or slammed into a pony, and pouring the water on the floor wouldn't make the guards slip if they were pegasi. Knowing what she knew about the training Royal Guards got, they might not slip anyway.

So there was nothing she could do, except pace nervously, wondering what had become of her friends, and occasionally sit down because the cuffs on her legs made them heavy and exhausted her. It was while she was sitting that the door swung open. Twilight hastily got to her hooves. There were six guards, which seemed to her kind of overkill, given that her magic and wings were bound and her hooves were heavy enough that running would be difficult. Two unicorns entered first, one on each side, weapons held in their magical fields. Two pegasi flew in on top and took stations above the unicorns. And then two earth ponies, big stallions the size of Big Macintosh or bigger, came in behind, taking up the unicorns' places as the unicorns came forward. "If you will come with us, please?" one of them said.

"Where are we going?" Twilight asked, holding her ground.

"You don't need to know that," the guard who had spoken said. The second unicorn shook his head.

"Stead, this is a princess," the second unicorn said. "Even if she's been declared an enemy, she deserves some respect."

"If she's a princess, why does she look like a dead ringer for Lady Twilight?" Twilight actually recognized this guard now – the enchantments on the Royal Guard's armor made them all look incredibly similar, but from his voice and what the other had called him, this was Steadfast. He was one of Shining Armor's elite, in her world, a pony who'd been a candidate to take Shining's place as captain of the Guard, though in the end Shining had decided not to promote him because he was a little bit too rigid in his thinking. "I'd assumed she was a Changeling renegade."

"She wouldn't be bound like that unless she was at least a Changeling princess, if not an alicorn," the other unicorn said. "Princess, we've been instructed to bring you to Princess Celestia for a private discussion."

"Oh." Twilight brightened. This Princess Celestia might be colder to Discord than her own Celestia, but that didn't mean she was corrupted or evil – this Princess Celestia had had to lead the nation through a considerably longer period of Discord's chaos than in their own world, so naturally she would be much more antagonistic to him than their own Celestia was. But there was no reason to assume she was corrupted; sure, she couldn't be as kind and morally upright as Twilight's Celestia if she was willing to tolerate torture, but maybe she didn't even know. Maybe this Twilight had never told her because Princess Celestia would disapprove of torture. From what little Discord had been able to convey in his letter, there was no reason for Twilight to assume this Celestia couldn't be persuaded. If she could just explain that this Discord wasn't their Discord and that all they wanted was to take him home, that he wouldn't be any further threat to this Equestria and neither would Twilight or her friends, maybe this Celestia would just let them all go. "That sounds great! I'd love to talk to her." She trotted forward.

The guards rearranged themselves around her, Steadfast in front, the other unicorn in back, the earth ponies at her sides, and the pegasi above, as they entered the corridor. A very wide spiral ramp descended from the cell in the tower, circling around the tower's inside edge. They passed several more cells on the way down, and Twilight strained her ears as best she could, but could hear nothing from them to confirm or deny whether they held her friends.

"Do you know where my friends were taken?" she asked conversationally.

"I'm sorry, Princess, we aren't authorized to give you any such information," the unicorn behind her said. Apparently he was the sort of pony whose respect for princesses went beyond the norm. Steadfast wasn't impressed by her princesshood, which fit with what she knew of him, but this guard could possibly be worked on. The others were silent, letting the unicorns do all the talking.

"That's okay. I guess as long as Princess Celestia thinks we're enemies, that makes sense. But I'm betting this is all a silly misunderstanding and we can clear things up right away. You see, I am Twilight Sparkle, but I'm from a parallel timeline where I became a princess and where my friends and I defeated Discord the first time we fought him. So I'm sure once I explain things to Princess Celestia, she'll tell you all to let us go."

There was no response to this, not even from the respectful guard behind her. Twilight sighed. "I'm betting you probably don't believe me. I probably wouldn't either. But it's all right. I can fix all this once I see Princess Celestia."

They led her down to the main palace, to one of Celestia's receiving rooms. Funny, how the palace was laid out exactly like the palace at home, despite being under this Discord's control much longer. But then, turning their Discord to stone undid all the changes he had made, in their world. If this one had altered the palace with chaos magic, it would have reverted when they stoned him, so it should be laid out just like the one at home.

Celestia was waiting for her, with a tray of small pastries and another pitcher of water, and two cups already poured. "Welcome, Twilight. Sit down. We have a lot to talk about."

Twilight sat. "You know who I am?" she asked. "I mean, that I'm really Twilight Sparkle, not a changeling impersonator or something? I just come from a parallel timeline."

"I do know that," Celestia said, nodding. She was thinner than Twilight's Celestia, her coat subtly less glossy. If she had been any other pony Twilight might not have seen the differences, but she'd spent most of her life gazing at Princess Celestia. "Please, take some water, and one of these pastries. I can't eat them all; my Twilight would be outraged." She smiled.

Twilight's stomach rumbled. She shouldn't do this, but... it was Princess Celestia. With her own magic bound, Twilight couldn't stop Celestia from doing pretty much any spell she wanted on Twilight. There was no need to drug the food or water. "Thank you, Your Highness," she said, taking the water and drinking it. "I have a terrible headache, and I think this might help."

"I do apologize for that. Your headache is probably being caused by the binder on your horn. I imagine your legs and wings ache a bit as well?"

"Um, yes. Can I ask, why so many binders? I mean, isn't a horn binder usually enough?" She tried to flex her wings, to demonstrate how tightly they were held. "You have iron in the bands around my wings. Wouldn't just binding them be enough? Did you have to use magic binders? I can't fly with them tied, after all."

"I take it you are not very experienced with being an alicorn," Celestia said. She smiled wistfully, with a touch of sadness in it. "I remember when I had hopes that my Twilight would ascend. Your Princess Celestia must be very proud of you."

Twilight ducked her head slightly, blushing. "Thanks," she said. "But I'm sure your Twilight could do the same, if she'd just stop using that artifact that's focusing her magic, whatever it is. It's really done a number on her; she's amazingly fast and focused, but it seems like... well, like she has no moral center anymore. I know she has reason to hate Discord, but she knows the one she's holding captive is from my universe, not the one who corrupted her friends."

"He is still Discord, though," Celestia said.

"Well, yes, but... there's no excuse for torture. No matter what he's done. I certainly would have understood if you'd turned him to stone after the stunts he pulled when he came here. I can even understand why Spike killed the other one. But... torture's just indefensible."

"Even if that torture could lead to the salvation of all ponykind? To defending a weakened Equestria from threats on all borders? Possibly even to defeating death itself, for ordinary ponies?"

Twilight stared. "I... just don't see how torture could ever lead to those things."

Princess Celestia got to her hooves, smiling beatifically down at Twilight. "Of course not. That is a wonderful trait, Twilight; I wish to the heavens that my Twilight had been able to keep that innocence." She walked over to the large window, gazing out it. "I learned a very long time ago a harsh lesson, that my Twilight was unfortunately forced to learn much more recently. Sometimes, when all around you is chaos, harmony is not enough to survive. Sometimes you need order. And order, like chaos, has no morality. It does not concern itself with the well-being of any given pony, though of course, unlike chaos, it can concern itself with the well-being of all ponies. Harmony cannot kill, harmony cannot cause severe and prolonged pain – it can cause suffering, even long-lasting suffering, but not pain, per se, because that would be excessively cruel, and cruelty is antithetical to harmony. But order can embrace cruelty, if needed." She turned to look down at Twilight again. "I am given to understand that in your world, Discord was defeated, and some time after his defeat, your version of me ordered him to be released to be reformed."

"That's right."

"Is she aware that it didn't work?"

"It did work. Mostly," Twilight said. "The reformation's an ongoing process. He's... well, he's not good, but he's not evil anymore either, and he's trying. He was trying, anyway. And he slipped up and came here to cause chaos, so I totally understand why from your perspective it doesn't look like it worked. But he helped us deal with his plunder vines, and destroy them." This was possibly an overstatement of Discord's role in that, but under the circumstances Twilight felt like she really needed to defend Discord. Was this how Fluttershy felt all the time? "I saw that that didn't happen, here, and it caused a lot of damage to the Everfree. That's damage that didn't happen in our world because Discord is trying to reform. We don't expect ponies who are alcoholics to be able to give up drinking, forever, with no slip-ups, without magical assistance; we expect them to try, but we understand if they make a mistake and backslid. There's no spell assistance that can help Discord with his need for chaos, so the fact that he fell out of harness makes sense. But he didn't do anything worth being tortured for. Stone, maybe. Not diamond whips."

"When my sis—" Celestia's voice caught. Twilight frowned. Was the Princess's voice breaking? Celestia continued. "When P-Princess Luna transformed into Nightmare Moon and began her rebellion against me, intending to kill me and hide the sun forever... even as terrible a crime as that would have been had she succeeded, it still di- did not deserve a thousand years of isolation from all ponykind. Many – many responses to a being's actions may not b-be... excuse me." She picked up her water with her telekinesis and drank of it deeply, the same way she had taught Twilight to do when Twilight was crying hysterically and couldn't make herself stop.

"Is something wrong, Princess?"

"Yes," Celestia said, as she set down the glass. "But you may be able to help me set it right."

Yes! Twilight exulted inwardly. We're going to negotiate, I'll help the Princess out, and she'll order the other me to let Discord go, and we can solve everything! "I'd be happy to do anything I can to help!"

Celestia smiled in a way Twilight had never seen her smile, with a bitter twist to it that chilled Twilight. "I doubt you're thinking of the sort of help I will need, but I'm sure that in the end, you will help me." She knelt down. Even kneeling on the floor with all four legs underneath her, she still towered over Twilight, who was sitting upright on the floor. "I'm sure you think I am a monster for what I've allowed to happen. But if you knew what this world has suffered – what it is still suffering – or what my Twilight has endured, I think you will understand why I believed it was the only course of action we could take, and allowed her to take it. You may be able to give us an alternative. But I'll need to give you some of the history, first, so you can understand what drives us. You say that you and your friends sealed Discord again. How long did it take you?"

"It was hard to tell because he kept moving the sun and the moon, but I think it might have been the same day, or a day later," Twilight said. "You sent all my friendship letters back to Spike, and they inspired me and renewed my faith in friendship, so I went and found my friends and cast memory spells on them so they'd remember who they really were and remember our connection as friends."

"That happened in our world as well," Celestia said, nodding.

"And then we confronted Discord, and he didn't realize we had broken his spell – he thought the Elements wouldn't work, so he didn't even try to stop us until it was already too late."

"Ah."

"And, well, that was it. We beat him then and there, turned him to stone, and a little over a year later Princess Celestia asked Fluttershy to reform him—"

"I don't need those details," Celestia said. "I simply wanted to know how long you endured his chaos. Because my Twilight and her friends did the exact same thing you did... but it didn't work. Your Discord may not have seen it coming, but ours did. What the Elements were fired at turned out to be a balloon."

"A balloon?" Twilight asked incredulously.

"Discord had used his magic to animate it and make it move and speak like him, so they couldn't tell. In legend, the Elements cannot be evaded, once targeted; it's said that they can follow their target through teleportation or any level of speed, or even into Tartarus itself. But they need to be targeted correctly in the first place. They will not work on an enemy of ponies who is not an enemy of harmony, so they cannot be used offensively. And when they are used against an enemy of harmony, if they are pointed at the wrong target by their Bearers, they will misfire." She sighed. "They fired the Elements at the balloon replica of Discord, and could not recharge them quickly enough to use against the real Discord once he reappeared. And thus we were condemned to a year of chaos."

Twilight tried to imagine what it would have been like, if the one day of Discord's rule she'd suffered under had been multiplied out to a year. "That must have been awful," she said. "But our Discord didn't do any of those things. He doesn't deserve to be punished for something he didn't do."

"It isn't punishment, Twilight," Celestia said. "It is training."

"Training?" Twilight stared at Celestia in bewilderment. "For what?" In his letter, Discord had thought the torture was intended to break him and train him to obedience, but he'd had no idea what they wanted him for. This Celestia seemed... colder and sadder and more tired than her own, but not evil. Surely she didn't want him to conquer other dimensions like he'd speculated in the letter.

"To fix the world his counterpart broke," Celestia said. "Let me tell you what the other one did to us, and you'll understand why we need Discord's power, and why I would be able to do without it, with your aid."

---

Opposition, 8 AM

 "Give it up, dweeb!" Rainbow's counterpart shouted after her. "You're dealing with one of the Wonderbolts here!"

"Wow, their standards are low over here!" Rainbow retorted, shooting through the sky some gallops away from the Everfree. She cut wingpower and dropped into a steep dive, spiraling to make herself harder to hit.

"Or maybe you just suck!" Other Rainbow shouted, diving down at Rainbow hind hooves first, forcing Rainbow to rapidly shift trajectory and flap out of the way just in time.

She was fast, and she had some nice moves. Rainbow had to give her that. Getting into the Wonderbolts had plainly helped her technique. But Rainbow couldn't allow herself to consider the possibility of defeat. She had friends depending on her.

"Yeah? If the Wonderbolts over here are so awesome, how come they're not helping you?" She zipped out of the way as the other charged her with forehooves extended, and very, very narrowly missed being kicked in the face by the other's hind hooves as they passed.

"Like I need the help!" Other Rainbow flipped and dove at her again.

Rainbow accelerated upward at a steep angle. "Good for you, 'cause you're sure not gonna get any help from your so-called friends." A lone cloud floated some distance overhead. She aimed for it.

"Like I need any help from them either!" The other Rainbow pursued, grinning.

"Do you even have any real friends anymore?" Rainbow called out behind her.

"Who needs friends when you're awesome?"

"What's the point of being awesome if you haven't got friends?"

"Boy, you're stupid, aren't you?" Other Rainbow laughed, a short bark to save breath for flying. "Friends aren't even a real thing! Everypony's out for themselves."

"Sounds like the kind of crap Gilda used to say before I made friends with her," Rainbow said, and hit the cloud full speed. Instead of knifing through it and going onward, she cut speed immediately, hovering just above it.

She was hoping Other Rainbow would simply charge through the cloud after her, leaving herself open to a good swift buck to the face. But Other Rainbow was more savvy than that, apparently; she came up next to the cloud, allowing her to see Rainbow the moment Rainbow could see her and removing any element of surprise. "Lame! Didja really think you could ambush me that easy?"

"Well, you are too dumb to keep a friend," Rainbow retorted, lifting off and angling away as she picked up speed.

"You're so dumb you think they're really your friends!" Other Rainbow came charging after her. "Nopony really cares about anypony else! They'll give you stuff if there's something they want out of you, and if you're totally amazing then 'course they're gonna want stuff from you, so they're gonna act like they're your friends, but the moment you need anything, tough!"

Celestia, but that was sad. Part of Rainbow Dash halfway wanted to hug her counterpart and show her she was wrong. The rest of her, of course, had no intention of doing anything so uncool.

"Maybe it's just you. Maybe nopony wants to be friends with you 'cause you turned into a major league jerk!"

"You just keep telling yourself that!"

They'd turned around now and were speeding back toward the Everfree. Rainbow glanced behind her. She and her doppelganger were too evenly matched. She wasn't smarter than the other, wasn't faster than the other, wasn't tougher than the other. How could she get an edge? The only thing she had going for her that the other didn't was the strength she took from having friends, and her friends weren't here and couldn't help her with this fight even if they were.

What could she do? She'd tried taunting the other one, trying to make her mad by poking her in the obvious weak spot, her lack of true friendship. But the other seemed so set in her cynical delusion, she was comfortable with it. Somehow Rainbow had to take advantage of the other one's beliefs about friendship, because it was the only difference between them, but so far she didn't see how.

Then she had it. She grinned slowly as the plan took shape in her mind. This was gonna hurt, and it was going to be dangerous as all heck, but that just made up for the ways that the plan grated on her, the ways it would grate on the other one even worse.

Rainbow slowed. Not a lot, but it didn't need to be a lot. The other one taunted her. "Better run, slowpoke, I'm catching up!"

"Yeah, this is getting boring," Rainbow said flippantly. She put the brakes on and spun to face her opponent. "Bring it!"

"With pleasure!" The other one charged into her with a headbutt, plowing them both across the sky some distance before Rainbow managed to kick free. She bucked at her opponent's head, but the other Rainbow wasn't there.

Below them was one of the thickest, darkest points of the Everfree Forest. Even in this world, where the plunder vines seemed to have killed half the forest before dying off, this area seemed impenetrable and foreboding. A storm system swirled nearby, an Everfree storm that wouldn't respond to pegasus magic. Rainbow feinted toward the storm, just fractionally slower than she would normally have.

"Oh no you don't!" The other one, at full speed, cut her off. "If you think you can lure me into an Everfree storm, you've got another think coming!"

"Good thing I've got enough brain for all the extra thinks!" Rainbow taunted, and dove, plunging in the direction of the storm, sliding under the other Rainbow, who pursued.

As Rainbow expected, just before she reached the edge of the storm, the other one slammed into her back, dropping them both toward the sinister forest. It hurt, but Rainbow was already using her opponent's momentum to spin herself, twisting in midair so she could grapple with her opponent.

For several seconds both pegasi fell, punching and kicking and head-butting each other. They broke apart before they hit the tree cover, separating into different directions, Rainbow herself still heading toward the Everfree storm. The other Rainbow brought herself up, hovering for a moment before charging at Rainbow again. Within moments, they were both being battered by the untamed rain and winds of the storm, the wild magic interfering with their own flight magic.

Other Rainbow shouted something, but despite the fact that pegasi had a tremendous ability to hear pony voices over the roar of wind and storm, the Everfree storm was beyond that talent's limit. Rainbow could hear her but couldn't understand a thing she said. Which was fine, because this wasn't the time for taunting anymore. She let a gust of wind that she could sense but couldn't control grab her and throw her upwards, riding the storm rather than fighting it.  

Her counterpart pursued, charging through the storm with a look of grim determination on her face. Rainbow could feel the effort she was putting into staying her course, the tight grip she was holding on what little of the air currents she could control. Rainbow, who'd been practicing a lot with flying in Everfree storms ever since Discord had been reformed and released, because she hadn't trusted him even slightly and every pegasus knew that Everfree storms were formed by pure chaos, used very little wingpower to let the storm currents pull her this way and that, as her opponent exhausted herself trying to maintain her course through the storm. Rainbow hadn't expected that; she'd assumed that, after living under Discord's chaos for a year, the other one would be even more experienced than she was. But maybe she was. Maybe she was using her wingpower to try to control her flight because, after months under Discord, she actually knew how to do it reliably, and simply letting the storm take her wherever it willed hadn't been an option when its will had been Discord's will. It didn't matter; for whatever reason, she was burning herself out to stay on course, and Rainbow was barely using her wings at all.

That would probably make this next part easier to pull off.

The other one caught up with Rainbow and grappled with her again. Rainbow punched and blocked, letting the other's wings carry them both, until she saw her opportunity. The other Rainbow aimed for her gut, and Rainbow let the blow land, let it knock the wind out of her in a pained "oof!" Then the other followed up with a hard hoof to the face... and Rainbow let her head fall back, let her eyes roll up in her head and close, let her body go limp.

As she went deadweight, using no flight field at all to lighten herself, the other was dragged down for a moment before letting go, and Rainbow fell. With one eye cracked open, she watched as her duplicate got smaller and smaller, a dark spot against the clouds above – which were themselves pretty dark, so it was a matter of seconds before Rainbow couldn't see her anymore. Almost immediately after that, she crashed through the tree cover.

And snapped back to life, catching herself on a branch and clinging on for dear life, as soon as the leaves closed over her head and she could barely see the sky anymore. The first branch she caught broke under her momentum, and the second she tried to grab slipped out of her hooves, and several others smacked and battered her, before she finally managed to stop her fall.

Rainbow cared about winning. A lot. Losing a fight that she could have won was practically the most humiliating thing ever, and even now, the fact that her opponent thought that she was more awesome than Rainbow stung. But her friends were worth it. Looking like a chump in front of an enemy who was also herself, except her worst possible self? Awful, if she was the only one of concern in the equation, and she'd never, ever do it... except to save her friends, who were worth any sacrifice, including looking like a total loser.

The other one believed friendship wasn't even real. She would know and share Rainbow's flaws of arrogance and her desire to win at all costs; she wouldn't think for a moment that Rainbow threw that fight, because there was nothing whatsoever that would make it worth it to her to lose at hoof-to-hoof battle. And because she wouldn't imagine Rainbow could possibly bring herself to throw a fight, she wouldn't pursue her down to the ground, not in the middle of an Everfree storm over some of the darkest and most dangerous turf in the Everfree. She wasn't fighting out of loyalty, she was fighting to look like a winner, and she'd already accomplished that. She had no motivation to make sure Rainbow had really fallen to her death, because all that really mattered to her was looking awesome.

So now Rainbow was drenched, trapped deep in the Everfree in the heart of a storm she couldn't control, battered and bruised and cold – the same pegasus magic that would normally protect her from extremes of temperature in a storm was working only erratically because this was the Everfree, so the cold rain was biting through her coat and down to her bones in a way that a real storm never would. But she'd lost her opponent, and better yet, tricked her into thinking Rainbow was probably dead, or soon would be, as anypony unconscious with broken limbs in the Everfree would end up monster food real fast. And now she was free to go to her friends' aid.

She alternated between trotting and flying through the forest, depending on how thick the overgrowth was. The Everfree was large enough that a single storm system didn't necessarily cover the whole thing, and that particular storm was drifting south and west, away from Ponyville. It didn't take long before she was out of the rain, making a beeline back to where her friends had been fighting their doppelgangers.

When she got there, she looked around in dismay. Broken branches, smushed bushes, jewels scattered in the dirt... a broken knife, Applejack's saddlebag in a bush, Pinkie's inexplicably hanging from a tree branch... but no sign of her friends or their opponents. Either the fight had moved onward, and was still happening someplace in the forest, but with no way for Rainbow to easily figure out where... or they'd lost. Because if they'd won, they'd have reclaimed their saddlebags.

Then Rainbow smelled smoke.

Smoke in a forest was a bad, bad thing. Rainbow grabbed both lost sets of saddlebags with her teeth and ran, heading back the way they'd come to enter the forest because it was a route she knew and it would get her out quickly. The smell of the smoke got stronger, but even if she was heading toward fire, it'd be better to be near the fire but out of the Everfree, where she could grab a cloud and dump it on anything she found burning and where there was room for her to fly at full speed.

Once she was out of the forest, she gaped in surprise at the sight in front of her.

In the distance, a tree was blazing, its upper branches a torch lighting the sunny sky and pouring smoke into the air, a signal that could probably be seen all through Ponyville. Rainbow squinted. Was that Fluttershy's house?

Oh, horsefeathers.

Fluttershy had been told to find a way to double back and sneak into town, and get to the library. But what if she'd gone to her house first, and was trapped in that fire? That'd be just like Flutters anyway, to go check on the animals she'd told to evacuate. Rainbow couldn't go searching for the rest of the party until she was certain that Fluttershy was not, in fact, pinned into a burning house.

Rainbow put on a burst of speed, heading straight toward the fire.

---

Opposition, 8 AM

"Now what is it?" Applejack snorted. "We dealt with those gals who were us, shipped 'em off to Canterlot, what the hay else is there to do? I got trees to buck, Twilight! I can't be hangin' out here at the library all day!"

Twilight rubbed her forehead. She was so very tired. "Rainbow Dash hasn't returned, which makes it entirely possible that the other one may have won. If so she will be coming here to the library. All of us need to sleep, and there's safety in numbers—"

"I don't!" Pinkie chirped cheerily. "Spike gave me coffee!"

"Great, you can stand watch."

"I don't need to sleep, Twi, I need to get back to work. It ain't like you let me keep them hired hoofs."

Twilight sighed. "They weren't hired hoofs. The Flim Flam brothers were traitors who allied themselves with Discord, and you insisted that they should be forced to work for you as punishment."

"You were gonna feed 'em to Pinkie."

"I still wanna know if twins taste the same," Pinkie said plaintively.

Rarity made a face. "Ugh. Must you?"

"They weren't even twins, Pinkie. And they had apple cutie marks. Day I let you chop up a stallion with an apple cutie mark is the day I eat my own hat."

"Ooh! When you eat your hat can I try some?"

"We couldn't afford to leave them on your farm while you were engaged in training Discord, given their former allegiance," Twilight said, "and as it happens, they are of more value inventing weapons and other tools for Equestria's protection and recovery than they ever were as menial farm workers." Their "allegiance" to Discord had never been anything more than collaboration, throwing in with the apparent winner, and they had been promised that if their inventions were successful enough at helping Equestria recover from the devastation the year of chaos had brought, they would be freed. It was a lie, of course; Twilight was never going to allow collaborators with chaos to go free. But it was keeping them inspired to work hard and actually quality-test their products, in the prison in Canterlot she had had them sent to.

"So what you're sayin' is, I was right and you were wrong when you wanted to execute 'em and I said I could make better use of 'em than Pinkie could."

"Fine. You were right and I was wrong. Now can we please stay on topic?" Twilight rubbed her forehead again.

Spike interrupted with a pot of coffee and a tray of mugs. "Uh, does anypony want coffee? Because I have coffee, if anypony wants some..."

Everyone took a cup except for Rarity, who sniffed that a lady takes tea. Predictably, Spike ran off to make her some tea. When was the stupid little dragon going to figure out that his crush on Rarity was pointless to pursue? Twilight had thought he'd gotten over it, unlike the one she'd encountered today that had nearly de-horned her, but his behavior here suggested otherwise.

"I am willing to stay, if you insist," Rarity said, once she had her tea, "but only under the condition that you can secure compensation from the Crown for my lost day of productivity. I can neither sell nor make dresses if I'm trapped here in your library for the day, awaiting Rainbow Dash's return."

"Fine! Princess Celestia will pay you. This is important."

"If you need me to stay so all-fired bad, how about you get Princess Celestia to pay for me to hire some hoofs, then? It ain't like Discord has actually ever been useful."

Twilight smirked. "He is about to become considerably more useful."

Applejack raised her eyebrow. "Do tell."

She floated the scroll where she'd taken down the details of the ritual Discord had explained. "I've obtained information from him regarding a ritual that will allow us to generate sufficient power that we can end the domain of death itself over ponykind. Applejack, what would you do to allow Apple Bloom to never die?"

Applejack swallowed, eyes wide. "What's the catch?"

"As far as I've been able to determine, the 'catch' is simply that Discord has to be killed, with his magic intact. Without my spells binding him, that would ordinarily be impossible."

"Ooh, Fluttershy isn't going to like that," Pinkie said. "You should have seen how mean she got when she thought I'd killed him. Silly filly, like you can kill a draconequus just by cutting off his arms and legs and tail!"

"Fluttershy's opinion is irrelevant," Twilight said. "We all know she's been compromised."

"Seems to me like there still's gotta be a catch of some sort," Applejack said. "Why would Discord give you some sorta ritual that will kill him?"

"Because we've won." Her smirk got bigger. "He is suicidal. Apparently Fluttershy convinced him last night that our counterparts are not his friends, and are not coming to rescue him – which is true enough, given that I've sent them to Canterlot with recommendations that they be executed—"

"If Princess Celestia says yes, can I have the other me?" Pinkie asked. "Please? Pretty please with a cupcake on top?"

Rarity winced. "Pinkie, I have had far too little sleep to be able to endure how disgusting you are. Please refrain."

"I wonder if the other you tastes like a marshmallow? You look like a big marshmallow!"

"The point is," Twilight interrupted, "that he wants to die, and believes we will not permit him death unless it serves our purposes... which is also true enough. The ritual he gave me will allow extra-dimensional entities to consume all the disorder in Equestria, through him, leaving us with a state of perfect harmony, and near-infinite power. We can heal every pony in Equestria of any ailment they possess, and make them as immortal as alicorns."

Rarity's eyes were wide. "That would be astonishing. And wondrous!  Though I wonder if there is any ability to restrict it to worthy ponies. There are certainly some ruffians who do not deserve immortality."

"I'll have to see. It may be that we can retract immortality once it's granted. Otherwise... that's what Tartarus is for."

Pinkie frowned. "I don't get a good feeling about this, Twilight," she said.

Twilight rolled her eyes. Of course the pony who enjoyed murdering and eating other ponies would have a problem with immortality being granted to ponykind. "I'm sure you can get by on a diet of griffons and such. I recall you were quite pleased with our capture of Rainbow Dash's former friend."

"Oh, yeah, Gilda! She was dee-lish! But that's not why I get a bad feeling."

"Lemme guess, your something or other is twitchin'," Applejack said dryly.

"Noooo...." Pinkie seemed unusually pensive, hoof to chin. "Not really, no. It's just... it feels like a bad idea."

Rarity sniffed. "I'm sure the notion of a world without disorder is unpalatable to you."

That had to be it. Twilight nodded to herself. Of course Pinkie wouldn't want a world without chaos.

Pinkie confirmed it a moment later. "Oh yeah, that's right! If there wasn't any chaos then nothing would ever be funny! The world needs to have a little bit of chaos in it!"

"Given the choice between humor and death, or immortality and seriousness, I think most ponies would prefer not to die," Twilight said.

"Well, maybe, but that's because they're being dumb! If you were immortal and nothing was ever funny, that would be a fate worse than death! It would be the boringest, most un-fun immortality ever, and you couldn't even die to get away from it!"

"Twilight said the world would be in perfect harmony, though," Applejack said. "And Laughter's an element of Harmony, so it stands to reason the humor wouldn't be gone." She looked at Twilight, hard. "You did mean that, right? About the world in perfect harmony?"

"Of course! With entropy vastly decreased, what else could there be?"

"Well, then, I think laughter's safe."

"Oh, goodie!" Pinkie said. "But... I still don't get a good feeling."

"But this isn't your Pinkie Sense warning you of something." Twilight made it more of a statement than a question.

"I don't think so. Normally if it were my Pinkie Sense I'd be feeling a twitch or a twinge or something."

"Then we'll go through with the plan unless you have some more concrete reason for avoiding it." And probably they'd go through with the plan anyway, since Pinkie did have an obvious bias in favor of chaos and disorder. It was entirely possible that Pinkie didn't need to survive into the New World Order of immortality for all; once Discord was dying, his magic and his life force being consumed by the ritual, disrupting the Elements by removing one of the Bearers would be a practical possibility.

Rarity set down her tea. "If you wish us all to sleep here on the possibility of an attack by the other Rainbow Dash, I do hope you've made accommodations. The last time we all slept in a bed together was quite uncomfortable, and I have no desire to repeat the experience."

"There's a guest room you're welcome to use," Twilight snapped. "Applejack?"

"I'll just crash on your floor here. Ain't like I'm planning to do more than nap a bit. I guess I'll be more effective when I do get back to the farm today if I've gotten a little shut-eye."

"I'll keep watch!" Pinkie said. "Because if the Dashie that comes back is our Dashie then yay, and if the Dashie that comes back isn't our Dashie then I wanna know what she did with our Dashie and also if she's yummy!"

"Very well. I'm going to bed. Spike, assist Pinkie in keeping watch."

---

Opposition, 9 AM

Once Twilight and Rarity had both gone upstairs, Pinkie summoned Spike to the kitchen. He went with trepidation, claws at the ready in case she had truly gone over the bend this time and was targeting friends as well as foes. "Yeah, Pinkie? Did you need help baking something?"

"Nope. I made a Pinkie Promise to Fluttershy that I wouldn't be alone with Discord, but I need to ask him some questions, so you have to come with me."

Spike swallowed. He really, really didn't want to face Discord right now. The night that it had happened, he'd felt betrayed and angry, because Discord had misled him into thinking he was sending the letter to Princess Celestia, when it was really a call for help. So he had confessed everything to Twilight when she confronted him, and she'd confiscated all his gems, everything rocklike he owned except for his small collection of a certain very specific kind of stone he'd felt compelled to take, which he'd claimed to Twilight was a fossil collection. But at least she hadn't told him he couldn't be her assistant anymore and he had to find someplace else to live. He dreaded that more than anything else she could do.

Now, though, a new guilt weighed on him. Twilight had ordered the death of those alternates, alternates who were presumably just like the real versions had been before the other Discord had corrupted them. Twilight might hate them because they were trying to help Discord, but Spike was fairly certain that before Discord had corrupted them, and Twilight had corrupted herself for the power to defeat him, that all of the mares would have been horrified by what was being done to Discord. They weren't in league with chaos, they were trying to prevent someone from being tortured, and they didn't deserve to die for that. And the entire reason they had been captured was that he'd told Twilight what Discord had told him, so Twilight had known they were coming.

If they died, it was his fault. He had to ask Discord about them. He had to confirm if they were or weren't like the ways his friends had been when they'd been their real selves. Because if they were... he had no idea how he could save them, but he had to try something. But he couldn't ask with Pinkie around.

Discord was lying down, eyes closed, bound by the chain attached to his collar. His eyes snapped open as they entered, and immediately went wide with terror. He backed up as far as his chain would allow. "Y-you can't be here! Fluttershy said you promised you wouldn't go near me again! She promised!"

Pinkie giggled. "Relax, I'm not here to hurtcha. Mostly. If you answer my questions. Besides, I only Pinkie Promised not to be alone with you, and Spike's here! So I'm not alone."

"Spike... Spike, i-is Twilight allowing this? I don't think Twilight would allow this..."

Discord's terror made Spike feel much worse, guilt twisting in his guts. "Pinkie just wants to ask you some questions," he said, hoping he was telling the truth, hoping he wouldn't have to hold responsibility for stopping Pinkie from doing something awful.

"I—I'll answer questions. Don't hurt me. Please." Discord had curled himself into a ball at the end of his tether and was still visibly trembling as Pinkie bounced forward.

"Twilight says you gave her a spell that can make ponies immortal. Did you really?"

"It – the idea of the spell, it, uh, it's for power. Lots of power, more than my own. So, so Twilight would, she'd gain a lot of power, enough to reshape the world. If she wants to use it to make ponies immortal, well, that'd be her decision. I'll be dead, so I won't care."

"But why would you want to die?" Pinkie was suddenly grasping Discord's shoulders, her face pressed down against his muzzle. A thin, terrified whine escaped him. Spike felt sick. "Dying is no fun! Don't you want to have fun?"

"P-please... please, don't, please..."

"I want answers, mister!"

"Yes, I want to die!" Discord burst out, his voice cracking. "Partly because of you! I don't want to be tortured anymore! I don't... I don't want... please, please don't hurt me, please..." He let out a sob.

Pinkie released him. "Is it really going to remove all the chaos in the world when you die?" she demanded.

Discord shook his head rapidly. Tears welled in his eyes. "It, um, in the beginning it might be even more chaotic, for a while," he whimpered. "Nothing can get rid of all chaos except the heat death of the universe. Which, which I don't think Twilight w-would want. It'll be a-a lot more orderly than it's been, eventually, but there will still be some chaos, you can't get rid of it."

"Okay!" Pinkie turned and bounced away.

"Wait, that's it?" Spike asked.

"Yeppers! All I needed to know!" She shrugged. "I still don't get a good feeling, but at least I know it won't make it so nothing is funny ever again!"

Discord choked down another sob, covering his face with his paws. Pinkie turned her head back to look at him. "Oh, don't be such a big baby!" she said. "I told you I wasn't going to hurt you, and I didn't. Oh, but one more thing!" She spun around.

"Wh-what?" Discord lifted his head out of his arms trepidatiously, shining wet tracks down his muzzle.

"Once these extra-dimensional thingummies have done what they're supposed to do and Twilight has all this power and you're dead... will your body still be here, or will it be vaporized or something?" Pinkie licked her lips. "Because you were super-tasty the one time I got to try your meat! Like every bite was a new flavor! So if your body's still going to be there I definitely have to ask Twi if I can have it! I'd love to try your organs, I bet they've got a real kick!"

Discord's expression was a mixture of fear and disgust. "I don't know," he said. "I – I know what the final end result of the ritual is, and I know what kind of power it raises, but I don't know what happens immediately afterward. I don't think it'll vaporize me, because I saw my alternate's skeleton, but if it melts all the flesh off me I suppose that's no use to you." The last bit was thick with bitterness.

"Will it mess up the ritual if I take a little bit to nom on right before Twilight starts? Maybe just a piece of your tail!"

This time Discord broke down and started crying in earnest, making no real response. This seemed to annoy Pinkie. "Hey. Hey, mister chaos, I'm talking to you. I asked you a question!"

"I don't know," Discord sobbed. "I don't, I don't, please don't do it, please, this is going to hurt enough as it is, please don't eat me at least until I'm already dead, please..."

"Well, I don't know," Pinkie said. "I don't want to miss my chance, but I did Pinkie Promise Fluttershy, and there wasn't any clause in there about what if you're just about to die and your flesh might melt off before I get a chance, so probably I won't be able to do it. Probably. Maybe I can get Fluttershy to let me. She'll be really mad at you that you told Twilight how to get power by killing you, you know."

"I—I know."

"So maybe she'll give me permission!" Pinkie smiled widely and hopped out of the room. "Coming, Spike?"

"In – in a minute," Spike said. "I'm going to get him a bucket of water first."

"Good thinking! Wouldn't want the meat to get all dried out!" Pinkie giggled. "Okie dokie! I'll go back and do that thing that we're doing!"

That thing they were doing? Oh, right, Discord wasn't supposed to be told that his friends had really come through to save him. Which made it really, really stupid for him to have pulled this suicide stunt now. Why did he want to kill himself just after he sent a message for help?

Discord was crying hysterically, curled in on himself to the point where his head wasn't even visible within his coils. "Hey," Spike said. "Hey, listen. I don't think Twilight's gonna let her do it. The whole eating creatures who can talk thing grosses her out."

Discord's head appeared, pushing through two of the coils to glare up at Spike with tear-filled eyes. "Oh, wonderful," he said sarcastically, and then, as if Spike couldn't tell, added, "That was sarcasm, by the way. I am just thrilled to hear that a pony who's so eager to torture me to death you can hear the anticipation in her voice even when she's locked out all other emotions will protect me from a different pony who wants to torture me. Which is to say I'm not thrilled at all."

"I can hear the sarcasm, you know," Spike said. "You don't have to tell me about it."

"Yes, I do! Honesty spell, remember! I'm com-compelled..." Anything else he might have wanted to say was lost in more sobs.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot." Spike went and filled a bucket, the same as he'd done the night before. He brought it back to the crying, shaking draconequus. "I wasn't lying about the water. Here you go."

Once again, Discord dunked his head in the bucket and drank like he was dying of thirst. This time, he was strong enough to use his paws, grasping the bucket with them and tilting it toward himself slightly, then more. When he set it back down and sat up, uncoiling, there was less than a fourth of the water Spike had put in it left. "Why so altruistic?" he asked, no longer crying but the bitterness was even heavier than before. "Guilty conscience?"

"Why would I have a guilty conscience?" Spike asked, even though he did.

"You sold me out. You told Twilight everything I told you."

"Yeah, well, you were lying to me!"

"I can't lie, Spike."

"You didn't actually tell a lie, but you let me think something that wasn't true. I thought the letter was going to Princess Celestia!"

"I never said it was. Whatever conclusions you drew were your own fault. And what did you expect me to do? Never try to escape?" His voice cracked again. "If I'd known how useless it would be I wouldn't have bothered, but I thought I had friends who might come for me."

"You could have told me."

"And have you go tattle to Twilight that I'm trying to escape? You already killed me once, why would I think you would be willing to help me?"

Spike admitted to himself that Discord had a point, but he was still angry and upset. "Fine. But this ritual thing. Why did you decide to do it now? I don't really think..." He hesitated, the thought of being disloyal to Twilight at war with his common sense. Common sense won. "I don't think Twilight should have all of that kind of power. Not like she is now."

"Not my problem. I'll be dead."

"But why did you decide to do this now? Right after sending the letter?"

"Because Fluttershy made it more than adequately obvious to me that I don't have any friends and no one is coming to rescue me, so what's the point to survival? I don't want to be tortured anymore. I told Twilight this, I told Pinkie this. I want it to end, and if dying is the only way I can make it end, then fine. Kill me. I don't—" His voice caught on another suppressed sob. "I don't care anymore. I just want to die."

"But..." Spike hesitated again. Telling Discord this was probably a really, really bad idea. On the other hand, he had a really bad feeling about this ritual, the moreso because Pinkie, whose intuition hadn't been suppressed when she was corrupted, had a bad feeling about it. And when it came down to it, Spike felt like he couldn't trust Twilight. Not anymore. He loved her, he wanted to protect her, he'd do anything to help her return to her old self – but he couldn't trust this version of her.

"Either say something or go away. I want to sleep. Maybe I'll manage to have a dream of pleasant chaos before I die."

Spike drew a deep breath. "You're wrong," he said. "They came through. Last night."

Discord stared at him. "You're lying."

"I'm not. Twilight and the others went to fight them, and they beat them, except that the other Fluttershy and the other Rainbow Dash are still loose. And Twilight's been telling Princess Celestia that she should execute them, and I don't know what to do, because—"

Discord's harsh laughter interrupted Spike. "My Twilight is an alicorn, Spike. Even with Matrisse backing her up, this one shouldn't have been a match for her. So you're still lying. Not as if I couldn't tell. I know they couldn't care less about my suffering, so why would they come?"

"But they did come," Spike said, frustrated. "And Twilight's trying to talk Princess Celestia into killing them. Don't you care about that?"

"You hate me so much, it wasn't enough for you to kill me once? Now that you've learned I'm going to die and you're not going to get to be the one to do it, you have to construct this fiction of horrible lies to try to torment me with?" Discord hissed. "You know, the spells that bind me don't stop me from hurting you. You may be a dragon, but you're a very, very small one."

Spike backed up. "I'm not lying! I want your help! I don't want them to die, but I don't know what to do, and there's no one else I can ask!"

"Shut up!" Discord lunged at him, making Spike skitter back even further. "Yes, that's right, stay out of claw range, because if you're going to keep spouting these lies at me, I may very well avenge my alter ego's murder. You are a disgusting little excuse for a dragon, and I say this as someone who's killed more dragons than I can count, but every single one of them was more honorable and worthy of life than you."

"I'm not!" Spike said. "Look, I don't hate you. I don't have any reason to lie to you! I'm not that kind of dragon! Your other self never corrupted me—"

"Says the dragon who killed him," Discord sneered.

"I did that because I thought it was the only way to save my family and friends from him coming back someday! And I'm sorry, all right? I'm sorry! It was wrong, I shouldn't have done it and I'm really, really sorry, and I can't bring him back but I can try to help you get out of here and go back to your home! But you can't do that if you let Twilight perform this ritual, and you can't do that if your friends get executed in Canterlot!"

"Did you not hear me? I. Have. No. Friends." Discord was on all fours, fur bristling, tail spikes rigid. "Even if they did come through, which they didn't, it would just be because Twilight doesn't want me to be brainwashed into conquering her home dimension or something, and why would I even care what happens to them? They're not my friends, they don't care about me, and if they were here, and facing death, what good would it do to tell me or ask me for help? I can't help myself! How could I possibly do anything to save them?" His eyes welled with tears. "Why are you torturing me like this? What did I, personally, do to you?"

"I'm not trying to torture you—"

"Oh, shut up!" Discord snarled. "To think I actually felt sympathy for you, you little monster. You can go and die with the rest of them!"

Spike's blood ran cold. "What does that mean?"

"What do you mean what does that mean? I don't have to answer your questions. Go away and let me die in peace."

"I mean you said 'die with the rest of them.' Die with the rest of who? Who's dying? Because it's not the ponies who came to rescue you, because you don't even believe they're here and why would I be executed with them? What you said doesn't make sense."

"Haven't you heard by now? Where's the fun in making sense?" Discord sing-songed the last sentence, parodying himself.

"But who's supposed to die? Are ponies going to die because of this ritual?" He saw a flicker of something in Discord's eyes. "Oh, Celestia. They are, aren't they? Who's going to die? Tell me!"

Discord looked away. "I never said anypony was going to die, and I don't have to answer your questions or obey you," he muttered. "Aren't those some rather wild conclusions you're jumping to?"

"You tell me what you meant, or I will go wake up Twilight and tell her that you admitted to me that the ritual is going to kill ponies."

"I never said that!" Discord's voice sounded near-hysterical. "You're a liar! You lie to me about my friends and then you go lie to Twilight?"

"Then answer me. What did you mean?"

"Fine! I'll tell you!" Discord took a deep breath, visibly relaxing himself, standing down from the fight-or-flight position he'd been in. He grabbed the bucket and drank the rest of it. When he put it down, he said, "Do you sincerely believe Twilight is including you when she talks about granting immortality to ponies?"

"Uh, well, why would she need to? Dragons live a long time."

"Yes. But you're still mortal. In the natural course of events, dragons rarely live past two thousand years of age. You have the ability to die of old age, and you have the ability to die of any number of things before that. Twilight won't grant you immortality. Ponies will be spared old age, if she has her way, and possibly any sort of de—" He started coughing.

Spike sighed. "You want more water?"

"Yes... please..." Discord sounded almost like he was choking on something.

Spike filled and brought over another bucket of water, and Discord drank deeply. "The point is," he said when he was done, "she wants to give ponies immortality and she doesn't care about you, so you'll still be mortal just like every other creature on this planet that isn't a pony. So you'll die, just like all the other dragons, just like every other mortal creature on this world."

"Yeah, but I don't care. That's a long way off."

"Well, fine, if you're okay with the fact that your precious Twilight obviously can't stand you anymore."

Tears started to well up in Spike's own eyes. He fought them down. "You're a jerk, you know that? I tried to help you."

"Help me by lying to me that oh, my friends did come to save me, but oh no, they're all going to be murdered in Canterlot and I can't do anything about it? Oh, I can certainly see why you thought that would be helpful. Except that's sarcasm, because I can't." Discord laid his head down on the stone floor. "You're lying about all of it. They didn't come, because if they had they wouldn't have lost. And because they have no reason to come to save me because they all hate me as much as you do. And even if they did come it wouldn't be because they cared, so why should I?" He closed his eyes. "Go away and let me sleep. Please. Aren't you done getting your pound of flesh yet?"

Spike sighed. "I don't even know why I thought you might be able to help," he said. "Sorry to have bothered you."

He walked out of the cell, not bothering to lock it behind him – he'd have to bring Discord food later anyway, and since it was obvious that Discord couldn't break the chain that held him, what did it matter if the door was unlocked? He wasn't going anywhere.

Spike's claws twisted around themselves with anxiety. Four mares were going to die, if Princess Celestia listened to Twilight, and they didn't deserve it. But what could he do? He could try forging a letter from Twilight, but if he got caught doing that, he didn't even want to imagine the consequences, not now when he was already on such thin ice. He could write a letter from himself, but why would the Princess listen to him over Twilight?

I don't know what to do, he thought. Somepony, anypony, help me, please. I just don't know what to do.

---

Opposition, 9 AM

The first Fluttershy knew that her counterpart had arrived was when somepony landed, hard, on her back, driving her to her knees.

"You diamond bitch," a voice she had only ever heard on magical recordings hissed at her. "You whorse! What did you do? What did you do to my house?" Teeth gripped her mane, pulling painfully at her head. "Wht dd oo do?"

Normally, if Fluttershy was attacked by somepony this way, she'd lie in the dirt and whimper pitifully and beg for mercy, because the thought of hurting another pony, even a pony who was attacking her, by fighting back, horrified her. But this was the pony she wanted to hurt. This was the only pony in either universe she was willing to cause harm to – herself. So she slammed her head upward, smashing the hard upper portion of her skull into the other's jaw, then wrenching free with all her strength. It hurt, because the other's teeth were still in her mane, but the hundred brush strokes every day that she had to apply with the hardest, spikiest detangling brush she owned had left her head largely inured to the pain of a mane pull. "I set your house on fire," Fluttershy said, "because you don't deserve to have any nice things. Oh, and I talked Angel Bunny into taking all your animal friends and running for it, because they all hate you."

"You bitch!" The other screamed at her, and lunged forward, faster than Fluttershy would have ever expected herself to move. It was eerie and horrible, facing a mare who looked just like herself, except with expressions on her face that Fluttershy didn't think would ever appear on her own. She'd experienced it before, when she and her friends had fought the Changelings at Cadance's wedding, but in many ways this was worse, because Fluttershy knew this wasn't a Changeling.

Fluttershy eeped and ducked, letting the other one fly over her head. She ran several trots before it occurred to her that her other self was most likely as fast as she was, and she was on the ground, and flying was faster than galloping if she was properly motivated, which meant—

Fluttershy rolled to the side just in time as the other one slammed her hooves down on where she had been a moment ago, catching her mane again but missing her body. "What did you do to them?" the other one shouted. "You Stared them down, didn't you! You made them run away!" She reared and punched at Fluttershy, who dodged, barely.

"Oh, no," Fluttershy said, breathing hard. "I didn't need to do anything like that! They were eager to leave." Another punch. Dodge. She didn't know how long she could keep this up. The other one seemed to have much better idea of how to channel aggression than Fluttershy herself did; as much as Fluttershy wanted to hurt her, it was obvious that the other one was more proficient in hurting others. "When you make friends because you're kind and nice and you take care of them and you're loving, and then you turn into a cruel, psychotic monster, you really can't expect to keep your friends."

"I'm going to kill you," the other one said, facing Fluttershy with head lowered, ears back, hoof pawing at the ground in the universal gesture of barely contained pony rage, and eyes glaring. "I'm going to break every bone in your sniveling little body. And then I'm going to make Discord make me a new house, and then I'm going to find all my ungrateful little friends and punish them for running away. How will you like that?"

Fluttershy's eyes had gone wide at the other's vitriol. She had never heard any pony – never heard anyone, not even Chrysalis, say such vicious things. "You're certainly welcome to try, if that's really what you want," she said, and was proud of herself that her voice wasn't shaking. "But it won't change what a monster you are, or that no creature could possibly love—"

"Shut up!" Even knowing how far she was provoking her alter, even having seen how fast she was, Fluttershy was not expecting the other one to lunge as quickly as she did. The other's body slammed into hers. Teeth closed on Fluttershy's ear, making her squeal in pain. Panicked, Fluttershy lashed out with her hooves, full force, and managed to land a blow directly on the other's chest, pushing her off – at the expense of Fluttershy's ear, which tore.

"Owwww!"

"Oh, yes, cry about it. There's so much more coming to you where that came from," Fluttercruel hissed. Fluttershy hadn't quite been able to accept Discord's term for her other self into now, with blood running down Fluttercruel's chin and a tiny scrap of Fluttershy's ear caught in her teeth.

"Doesn't it ever bother you, what a monster you turned into?" Fluttershy asked, voice shaking now with the effort of holding back the pain, of not crying. Her ear hurt so much. "You know the other Discord corrupted you, you know this isn't who you're really supposed to be! Didn't it ever enter your head to fight it, or did you just decide to give up and be evil?"

Fluttercruel laughed harshly. "You stupid little bitch. I can't fight it. Every part of me that wants to love and be kind and cherish is all twisted up with the parts that want to cause pain. I'm actually glad you've done something so horrible as set my house on fire. I already wanted to kill you slowly and painfully. Now I can do it without any guilt at all!"

"That's what you say," Fluttershy said. "But I think deep down inside you're ashamed of yourself. What you are." She fixed Fluttercruel's eyes with her own, bearing down on her dark alter with all her will. "You can't think Grandma Flit would approve of you like this. You know Angel Bunny despises what you've become. You know your friends actually hate you. You know no one actually loves you or cares for you anymore, because you don't deserve it. You're a monster. You're weak. You let yourself fall." She took a step forward, and another, and another, as she spoke, feeling her opponent's resistance weaken, feeling the grief and self-hate under the other's hard outer shell as the shell cracked and gave. Fluttercruel's eyes glittered in the corners as tears started to well up. She took a step backward, a single sob escaping her as she ducked her head. Fluttershy continued to advance, holding the other's gaze in her own. "You're a terrible, terrible pony and you don't deserve any friends. Until and unless you find the strength to fight the corruption and try to restore yourself to who you used to be, you don't deserve anything you want."

Abruptly Fluttercruel threw her head back wildly, breaking the Stare, snarling "Shut up shut up shut up!" She charged at Fluttershy, who was thrown off balance. No creature had ever broken loose of the Stare before. Discord had never been held by it in the first place, and he was the only other one who'd ever resisted it. Fluttercruel was on her, punching and biting, before she could react, forcing Fluttershy to fight back like a wild animal herself. "The joke's on you, you wimp! You think you're better than me, but if you'd been in my place exactly the same thing would have happened to you, and you'd be exactly like me!"

"I wouldn't!" Fluttershy shrilled directly in the other's ear, right before biting hard into her mane and ripping as hard as she could.

Fluttercruel punched her in the face, rocking her back and forcing her to release Fluttercruel's mane from her teeth. "Oh yes you would. I fought in the beginning! I tried! I didn't want to be cruel! But Discord showed me who he'd made me, who I really was now, and I couldn't deny my destiny any more than I could have resisted staying on the ground with the animals, when I got my cutie mark!" She headbutted Fluttershy, rattling Fluttershy's teeth in her jaw. Fluttershy kicked with her hind legs, finally knocking her alter off of her.

"You should have tried harder!" Fluttershy shouted, picking up a blackened branch that had fallen nearby, a branch that had been burning that she'd kicked into the pond. "You needed to try harder! You were weak and pathetic and you betrayed your friends and all of Equestria! And yourself! And every creature you ever loved! You shouldn't have let yourself lose!"

She tried to bring the branch down on Fluttercruel, but a single kick from her alter shattered it into ash and broken bits too small to be a weapon. "It doesn't matter," Fluttercruel said, a savage grin on her face despite the tear streaks. "It doesn't matter, because I'm going to kill you. You're the weak one."

While Fluttershy backed away, looking for another weapon, Fluttercruel got to her hooves. "I'm going to kill you," she repeated. "And then I'm going to show Discord your dead body. And then I'm going to have sex with him on top of your corpse. And you can't do anything about it, because you're the one who's weak. Giving in to the corruption made me stronger than you everywhere else. You can't kill, and I can, and that's why you're going to die."

"You disgusting monster," Fluttershy half-whispered, horrified, still backing away. "How? How could you do such a thing?"

"How could I kill?" Fluttercruel licked her lips. "It got easier. And then it got fun."

"No." Fluttershy shook her head. "You're corrupted. I know how you can kill. I know a lot more about it than you think I do." She thought of the consuming rage she felt when Iron Will's teachings made her think she should stand up for herself, that she didn't deserve the treatment she got from the world, that everypony was taking advantage of her. It wouldn't have taken so very much to make her go from there, to a killer. "But how could you.. you rape somepony?"

Fluttercruel laughed. "Jealous?"

"I – no!"

"You can admit it," Fluttercruel said, still laughing. "Don't be shy. But it won't help. If you wanted him you should have gone after him while you had the chance. He's mine now."

Fluttershy was stunned by the vast irrelevance of Fluttercruel's response to her actual feelings. As if she cared in the slightest who Discord slept with, as if the entire problem here wasn't that Fluttercruel was raping him. "How can you say he's yours if he doesn't even want you?" she snapped. "If you didn't have him under a spell where he has to obey, he wouldn't give you a second glance! He hates you, because you're a cruel, vicious monster!"

"I can say he's mine," Fluttercruel said, staring directly back at Fluttershy with a nasty smile on her face, "because he has to obey me. Because no matter what he thinks he wants, he belongs to me, and he'll never get away. And after he sees your dead body, he'll know that's true, and he'll break finally and be mine completely."

Fluttershy didn't really think that was how it would work. "I'm so sorry that nopony will ever love you," she said with false concern. "It's so sad for you that you have to torture and brainwash any creature you want to love, and the moment they get the opportunity to escape you they'll take it, because no matter how much you brainwash them, in their hearts they remember what love felt like, because I showed it to them. You're just a broken mirror, a twisted shadow of me, and no matter how much you brutalize the ones you love, they'll always know it."

Fluttercruel yawned elaborately. "Don't you have any new material? That song is boring now." She kicked over a bag, knocking the contents out, and in a smooth motion bent down and snatched something up from the pile. Fluttershy stared for a moment – several of the items in the pile were things like dildos, lotions, and scarves like the one she'd wanted to cover with ether – before looking up. The item Fluttercruel had taken was a red and white hemp rope knotted through gems, sharp and shining and large enough that the rope could go through holes drilled through them. She swallowed, recognizing the torture device from Discord's description, in the letter.

Fluttercruel smiled viciously, cracking the whip. "Anything else you want to say to me about how evil I am and how much nopony will ever love me before I kill you horribly?"

"Um, yes," Fluttershy said, glancing up at the sky.

"Too bad." Fluttercruel lashed out with the whip.

Fluttershy was already in the air, dodging, but it smacked her in the flank and knocked her out of the air. She fell to the ground with a scream of pain. It felt like being hit with a thrown rock, sharp like a gem but heavier and more forceful than a gem would ordinarily be.

Grinning, Fluttercruel raised the whip over her head—

--and was almost immediately plowed into the dirt by Rainbow Dash's hind hooves smashing into her back. "Hay! Don't wave that thing around, somepony could get hurt!" Rainbow said.

Fluttershy had seen her coming out from the Everfree region, behind Fluttercruel, moments ago before Fluttercruel had attacked with the whip. "Rainbow! I'm so glad to see you!"

Fluttercruel struggled, but while she might be stronger than Fluttershy, or at least more experienced with violence, she still had Fluttershy's delicate, slender build and relatively weak flight field. Against Rainbow's compact, muscled body and incredibly powerful flight field, and with Rainbow standing on her back and her legs splayed across the dirt, she didn't have a chance. "I'll kill you!" she shouted. "I'll kill both of you! I'll make Discord kill you! One little order and your organs will be inside out and turned to cheese!"

"Sounds gross," Rainbow said. "Good thing it's totally not happening! Fluttershy, what do you want to do with her?"

Break her wings and legs and toss her into the flames. "I – I guess we should tie her up, and then go rescue Discord," Fluttershy said, pushing down her darker fantasies. "We could use this." She trotted forward and picked up the whip, which had been knocked loose from Fluttercruel's hooves when Rainbow had landed on her.

"Sounds like a plan. How come her house is on fire?"

"Because your diamond bitch of a friend set it on fire!" Fluttercruel shouted. "Who knows how many of my animals might have died in there?" She ducked her head and let out a sob.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. Fluttershy looked up at Rainbow earnestly. "I checked. All the animals were already gone."

"Yeah, I kinda guessed that," Rainbow said sardonically. "How you wanna do this?"

"Knock her out," Fluttershy said. "That'll make it easier to tie her up without hurting her." Even though Fluttershy really wanted to hurt her. But she was better than Fluttercruel. She didn't have to cause unnecessary pain.

A swift kick to the head rendered Fluttercruel stunned. She didn't appear to be truly unconscious; her eyelids fluttered and her head moved, as if she was struggling to wake herself back up. But she couldn't fight back, for the moment. Fluttershy positioned her counterpart's forelegs down across her torso and wrapped the diamond-studded rope around her wings and forelegs, tightening until she could see the diamonds digging into the other's yellow coat. Then she had Rainbow position her up against a tree, where she took the ends of the rope, tied them around the tree, pulled tight, then looped around the front, tying each one around the opposite hindleg. The result was that Fluttercruel was upright against the tree, hind legs crossed over each other, forelegs and wings bound to her torso, and torso and legs pulled against the tree by the rope looping behind it.

"Not like I'm complaining, but that looks awfully uncomfortable," Rainbow Dash said. "Did you mean to do it that way?"

Fluttershy looked Rainbow Dash straight in the eye. "This rope we just used? It's a whip. She's been using it on Discord. Hitting him with it."

Rainbow's gaze traveled over the sharp gems that were digging into Fluttercruel just hard enough to make it extremely uncomfortable for her to try to struggle, and then back to Fluttershy, eyes wide. "Okay, point taken. I guess some ponies can push even you to the point of wanting revenge, huh?"

"Let's go, Rainbow. I have an idea, but I need your help."

---

Once they were a good distance from Fluttercruel, and couldn't be overheard if the other mare woke up or was faking it, Fluttershy handed over her weapons to Rainbow – the ether, the scarves, the remainder of her matches and accelerant. "Discord's being held prisoner in Twilight's library. I need a distraction to lure every mobile pony out of the library," she said as she bandaged her ear, somewhat inefficiently because it was her own ear and awkward to get to. "And... and the alternate Spike, too, if we can."

Rainbow grinned, looking over the collection of tools for mayhem. "If their Spike's anything like ours, then I bet I've got the perfect idea." She looked Fluttershy in the face. "You burned down the other Fluttershy's place. What if we burn the other Rarity's boutique next?"

Fluttershy noted Rainbow's black eye, the bruises and bloody marks all over her body, the fact that she was not only soaking wet – not abnormal for a weather pegasus – but shivering, which was abnormal. "Did you beat your alter ego?"

"Not... exactly. I kinda sorta convinced her she'd won and I was dead, and got her to fly off and leave me alone." Rainbow shuddered. "She's... well, she's nowhere near as awesome as I am, but she's a Wonderbolt. She knows how to fight. And Fluttershy... I think our friends might've lost. I found Pinkie's saddlebag, and Applejack's."

Fluttershy sucked in a deep breath. "Our best hope is Discord. If we can rescue him, he can just use his magic to find the others and teleport them to us. Maybe even heal them if they're hurt."

"Can he even do healing stuff? I mean, when I hear chaos, I don't exactly think of bones getting unbroken."

"He explained it to me once." He'd explained it to her in a way that made her feel like he mistakenly thought her to be as smart as Twilight, and she'd struggled to understand, not wanting to look stupid even though she felt that she actually was, because he thought she was smart enough to get it and she wanted to live up to that. "He can... something to do with Time. He can sort of replace what you're like now with what you were like at a different point in time, and merge them together. It's not perfect, but it can heal things regular healing magic can't, like, um, missing body parts and things like that. Like if I lost a wing, he said he could put it back for me."

"Huh." Rainbow looked pensive. "If he can rescue Twilight, and fix her up if she's hurt, she's got lots of healing spells too. So yeah, I think you're probably right. I make a distraction, you rescue Discord, and we get everypony the hay outta here."

Fluttershy nodded. "We just need to make sure our friends aren't in Carousel Boutique before you set it on fire."

Rainbow grinned broadly. "Leave that to me, Fluttershy. You go get the jerk."

"He's not a jerk!" Fluttershy reddened. All right, technically, Discord could, frequently, be something of a jerk, but to call him that right now when he had suffered so much seemed cruel.

"Relax! I'm just jokin' with ya. Go get the big lug, and I'm gonna make sure Rarity's newest fashion trends get hot." Rainbow chuckled.

The two pegasi lifted into the air, Fluttershy still carrying a hoofful of ether-soaked scarved in her saddlebag, Rainbow Dash carrying the accelerant, the matches, and some more ether-soaked scarves, headed for Ponyville.