I must admit, there are times when I feel very ashamed of myself.

True, I had broken down several times in one day over something that was only marginally, peripherally my fault. And I had snapped at the well-meaning Doctor more than I really needed. And I acted like a wimp when I needed to be strong.

But the fact that my healing spells were only the lowest-level ones available is simply, utterly embarrassing. It’s positively inexcusable! All the knowledge I possess—all the documented sciences of magic and the arcane—and I still have trouble with soothing aches and minor scuffs. Spike tells me it’s due to my haste in learning a spell: the moment I think I’ve mastered the basics of the spell, I move onto the next one I have queued in my learning itinerary.

He’s right. And I cursed my haste as I tried and failed to heal both the Doctor and I. After failing for the third time, the Doctor meekly suggested we put up with our wounds.

“They’re not that deep,” he said. “I mean, I’ll live. You’ll live. Thank Celestia you hadn’t fallen that far.” He winced suddenly, and looked away from me, awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I didn’t mean to remind you…”

I sighed. I hadn’t forgotten your passing in this dimension, and it was still hard for me to take. “It’s all right,” I said. “If anything, what we’re trying to accomplish will avenge her. At least, this version of her.  All the more reason for us to succeed.”

After some silence between us, the Doctor smiled proudly.

“By the way, what happened between you and Bon-Bon?” I asked.

The Doctor told me about the Mare-Do-Well: after the elevator took off downstairs, she had tried to beat him up, only to be surprised when it turned out he knew how to fight too. After taking some good lumps to the face, she had escaped through the maintenance exit on the roof, explaining why it was open.

I laughed, suddenly.

“What’s so funny?” asked the Doctor.

“Before all this, you were knocked down so easily by Chris,” I chuckled. “Remember?”

The Doctor shared a smile. “Well, that was due to being caught off-guard by his bizarre appearance.” (I had forgotten the Doctor hadn’t already seen the “Tomgirl” version of the stranger at the time.) “Besides which, that previous version of me was more a thinker than a fighter anyway. I assume I’m such a scrapper thanks to this younger, spry body I have.” I found it odd that he was talking about himself as if he were separate people, but in retrospect it makes sense.

Kind of. I guess.

He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out various objects—a rubber ducky (“For baths”), a strange clam-shaped device with buttons and screens (“For when I’m bored”), and a shiny coin with a 10 imprinted on it (“Got this off a duck in a top hat”).

“What ARE you doing?”

“I’m looking for a few things. One of them's my sonic screwdriver—that blue wand thingy the history books claimed Chris had. He stole one when he likely found it in the TARDIS. I thought I had a spare or two in here, and I’ve been checking them every so often just to make sure I didn’t miss a spot.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why do you keep checking your pockets then? It’s not like they keep changing their contents or something.”

The Doctor looked at me and smiled. I merely sighed. Everything I learned about the Doctor, although fascinating, usually ended up becoming baffling or surreal. Sometimes it felt as if he were some whimsical cartoon character brought to life—I dreaded the thought of him and Pinkie Pie ever engaging in any sort of contest or debate.

"The other one's something the Mare-Do-Well dropped," he continued. "A diary of some kind... Ah! Here it is." He hoofed it to me. A simple, oil-black diary with yellowing pages  .

It was the Mare-Do-Well’s diary, and I don’t feel like writing everything it said into this document—much of it is elaborately written and schizophrenically paced . Later entries were made almost years apart, but the earlier ones were written in an obsessive way, some entries with only an hour between them. It was a disturbing look into the cunning mind behind the shadowy disguise.

The most important bit of information I got from it was that the Mare-Do-Well was torn by Lyra’s absence and often pined to see her again. She seemed rather possessive of Lyra (similar to the Bon-Bon in our reality), to the point where, when Lyra took up this reality's version of Featherweight as a journalism student and assistant, she became bitter about it. She started wearing this costume apparently to stalk her ex-friend until she witnessed her murder, and eventually caught her killer, who claimed the Mayor had put him up to it. (I’d rather not describe what happened after that, thank you.)

I included the diary in the supplementary material, but let me warn you before you read it. Besides the personal information and insight into the Mare’s character and state of mind—and I adopt this vulgar phrase only because I cannot think of any kinder, more succinct way of saying it—there is some scary shit in there. I know at your age and experience you might think you’ve seen it all, but if it was enough to give the Doctor shivers, I’m not sure how you would take it.

Perhaps what I found the most terrifying however, was the final page of the diary. It was a crude and childish drawing (In stark contrast to the flowery cursive writing) depicting Lyra and Bon-Bon on a hill under a tree. There was no reason to really be afraid of it, a simple drawing. But it was as if the picture itself was the last good memory the Mare-Do-Well possessed. So terrified was she of losing it, that she hastily scribbled it down in her last desperate attempt at remembering what it was like to be happy.

I slowly closed the diary and put it away. The Doctor and I shared shared worried looks. "Well," I said at last, "We should really get going."

“She's still out there, somewhere,” he said, cautiously looking out the elevator. He breathed hard, on edge. “If we can stay quiet, we can probably avoid her. But we should be prepared for anything.”

“Should I cast my Invisibility spell on us?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “She can see things that are invisible, remember?”

I sighed. “Detective Mode, right. So no other choices, huh?”

I cast a Light spell on my horn, casting light and blessed visibility all around me as we exited the elevator. It looked like we were in a warehouse: boxes piled high, moving equipment here and there. There was a wet and musty odor in the air, hanging thickly, accompanied by an uncomfortable chill. It was almost like breathing through a damp sock.

We ventured further into the complex maze of steel and pipes and wires and machinery. Like everything else in CWCville, it was sloppily designed and grotesquely misshapen, with walls and floors almost switching places sometimes; and after a while, it felt like we were in the congested internal organs of a monstrous metal animal. If it weren’t for Spider-Colt’s map, we would have been hopelessly lost—and even with it in our possession, navigation was tricky.

I began to wonder why there were no guards or Troll Busters around. I suppose it was possible that they had all been called upstairs to fight the insurgence being waged above, and because of the quintuple-threat of the PVCC, Magneighto, Shining Armor, Spider-Colt, and the unexpected addition of an Ursa Minor, there were none left to spare.

But the lonely emptiness of the place became thicker and thicker the further we ventured. Besides the quiet shuffling of our hooves, there was no other sound. Occasionally, I would stop (prompting the Doctor to do the same), and listen intently. My ears would only be greeted by this dark abyss around us, hissing a hopeless void of sound in my ear. It was not unlike my dream from much earlier in this adventure, the dream in which I would fall forever, into a yawning darkness. In retrospect, it feels prophetic now.

The thick and intense darkness around us made the experience worse. Even with my horn-lamp, there was very little visibility. Exploration and routing became even harder thanks to our inability to govern our direction. We went around in circles at least twice, much to our consternation; the Doctor withdrew a marker from his bottomless coat pockets and began to make landmarks to avoid this problem. “Something we should have done from the start,” he mumbled.

Then there was the additional disquieting element of being stalked by a mad-pony. I had witnessed her firsthoof, earlier, when she had quietly taken Dr. Chuckles’ hench-stallions into the darkness… it was like watching flies being unwittingly devoured by a spider. Would that happen also to us?

I thought about what had happened in the darkness where the Mare-Do-Well  took the hench-stallions. What hideous act had been performed on them there, under that gruesome curtain of darkness? I didn’t recall ever seeing them again after she dragged them away. She didn’t even tie them to the support beam like she did with Chuckles, Snips, and Snails. Was that because she didn’t expect them to get up, after she…?

Cold sweat began to bead my face. I noticed the tension in the Doctor as well, his growing panic as the anticipation killed him. We weren’t going to make it out of this alive, were we? The Mare-Do-Well was out there, along with only you may know what else. She was watching us the whole time, I felt it. Her dead glass eyes were observing our every move, invisible to us, concealed by a shadowy shutter. It was enough to chill me to my soul.

Suddenly, out from the darkness before me came the Mare-Do-Well, and she had a sharp, curved weapon tied to her hoof. She brought it up and then down, into my face before I could react—blood, more blood than I thought I had, coming out of me as she dragged that knife across my skull, killing my brain, the Doctor crying my name as I…

As I snapped back to reality, the Doctor whispered my name. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“I-I’m fine,” I lied. We walked more, into this silent prison of crooked architecture and wicked shadows, embraced by the possibility of death all around us.

You taught me long ago of a spell a unicorn can use to “feel” the immediate area: the Mind Find spell. I remember you taught it to me because I complained, as many young foals do, of monsters they think are hidden in their closet. Even the combined might of my big brother and my parents couldn’t chase away this irrational fear I had. But then you, in your most-infinite patience, taught me the Mind Find spell. Once I figured out how to use it, I discovered there was no monster in the dark of that closet, that it was all my imagination.

And here I was ironically in the dark again, being pursued by a creature I couldn’t see but certainly knew was there. I closed my eyes and focused, “feeling” the surrounding area and all its bizarre dimensions. Suddenly, there she was—behind us, silent as death.

I breathed deep and swallowed, still continuing to walk. The Doctor apparently sensed my unease, but dared not speak—he pieced together the why and where. After a while of feeling the Mare follow us deeper into this maze, I finally found enough courage to talk.

At first, I thought over what I might say and how to phrase it. I figured out at this point that she disliked being referred to as Bon-Bon (probably some kind of identity dissociation), and that she was very torn about Lyra—so much so that she devoted the rest of her life to this twisted interpretation of crime-fighting. She was no doubt a violent lunatic—but I didn’t think she was in the same camp as Dr. Chuckles, at the point where she’d be unreachable.

Then I had an idea. I remembered reading some time ago on the subject of dissociative identity disorders and demonic possessions: if the dominant personality is trying to communicate with you, never humor it. Instead, demand to speak to the original personality. But hadn’t I already done so? And didn’t it drive her berserk?

No, thinking on it a little closer now, it didn’t. The first time she exploded on me was when I had mentioned my involvement in creating this world in which poor Lyra ended up murdered. The second time, she assaulted the Doctor because he addressed his “This Is the Reason You Suck” speech to the Mare-Do-Well persona instead of Bon-Bon directly.

I cleared my throat.

“Bon-Bon, listen,” I began. The Doctor’s eyes widened, but he kept his head facing forward as we continued to walk. “The Doctor and I are doing this because we are trying to make right what went wrong. What’s going on here is much bigger than just you or us.”

I felt her soundless hoofsteps leave the ground. I breathed a bit, then exhaled as I felt her land on the rafters above us. “No, you’re wrong,” I heard her hiss. “What’s happening here. You and he are from another dimension, you created this one. You helped to create a world where everypony is unhappy. You’re my enemies, just like the Mayor.”

I breathed again, feeling my panic begin to rise. As I became more and more afraid, I felt colder, almost freezing. But I had to say it, and stand my ground. “I have nothing to say to you, Mare-Do-Well. I want to talk to Bon-Bon.”

Silence. “There IS no Bon-Bon. She died when Lyra did.”

“No, she didn’t,” I said, almost angrily. “She’s underneath that mask, and she is hurt, and she is scared, and she is all alone. You’re the one that’s hurting her. You push everypony away from her so that you can hurt her some more. So I have nothing to say to you.”

Although I had accidentally spoken to the “dominant persona”, my sharp comment seemed to hush her up.

“Bon-Bon, I used to be a lot like you—growing up, I was bullied a lot. So after I became an adult, I was lonely, almost afraid of making friends because I just thought I’d be giving them new ways to hurt me. But it’s only when you open up to others, let them into your life, that you can begin to heal and become a better pony.”

Suddenly, I felt something well up within me that I hadn’t felt in a while: courage. My fear, the chill up my spine, diminished as I delivered a final philosophical blow to the Mare-Do-Well.

“Friendship isn’t weakness, Bon-Bon. Friendship is magic. It gives you the strength to have faith, and keep going even when everything seems hopeless. Surely, you’ve felt this before, when you still had Lyra? That powerful feeling you had in your heart? That’s what it feels like when you have friends who’d do anything for you—but for you to have friends like that, you have to be ready to do anything for them, too.

“So where do you go from here, Bon-Bon? Do you want to hide behind that mask and let that monster control you for the rest of your life? Or do you want your life to be yours again? Do you want to have friends again?”

Silence continued as the Doctor and I walked. My Mind Find spell had worn off, and like the Feather Fall spell, it wore out faster than I had expected it to. Everything around us was pitch-black save for the soft glow from my horn.

Suddenly, we heard sounds. Soft hoofsteps closing in from in front of us. We stopped and held our breaths.

She walked close enough to us for us to see her. When she was right in front of us, she stopped and looked at me straight in the eye. Several seconds passed as we stared each other down. Maybe before I had been terrified of her, but now I could see her, totally, for who she was.

One half a psychotic blood knight. The other half, a lost and lonely little girl. I could tell, even behind those glass eyes, that I was looking at the latter.

Without saying a word, Bon-Bon walked by the two of us, into the light I cast, between us, and then out again. We listened intently, both of us speechless as her hoofsteps echoed into the abyss of darkness around us.

Next Chapter: 21. Hey, Wasn't Chris-Chan Supposed to Be in This Story? Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 51 Minutes