All I have to say: It's about time Celestia. It's about time.

(Pinkie) What's about time?

Nothing. Back in the closet with you!

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Celestia paced the floor restlessly. She had sent Luna out more than two hours ago. "Where is she," Celestia was worried, Luna was supposed to scan the destruction and come immediately back, "I swear if I have to save her one more time…"

Luna materialized next to her with a loud crackling noise. She was darker than usual and smelled of soot. She began coughing, her face straining to get the last of the smoke out of her lungs. A strong wind blew through the throne room, knocking the soot away from the princess.

"Well?" Celestia asked, rushing her sister, "what happened?"

Luna's voice was cracked from the heat and smoke. "I-I can't be certain. The entire forest is on fire by now. It seems to come from zone seventeen but, as usual, it's impossible to be sure."

Celestia looked at a nearby map. It showed Equestria and all the surrounding lands, but there were a series of red pins marking a rough circle around a point not too far from Ponyville. Each one had a small number inscribed on it that, if matched up to a hidden list the alicorn had compiled, would show where ponies had disappeared in mysteriously similar ways over the years. Each pin was now little more than a sliver of metal to fit all of them. Whenever Celestia tried investigating these disappearances, either the investigators disappeared or there was no trace of any clues.

"What could be happening there?" Celestia pondered the question. It had been weighing on her mind for nearly fifteen years and was even farther away from being answered than ever. "How could anything stay hidden for this long while killing so many creatures?" Hundreds of skeletons had turned up over the years, each one carefully scraped of all meat, some were even snapped in half, the marrow removed.

"Maybe we should look together," Luna thought that there was something familiar about the destruction. She couldn't check at the time because she was helping to put out the immense blaze that used to be a forest. "Surely nothing is strong enough to escape the two of us. And doesn't your student Twilight Sparkle live near there? Perhaps the elements of harmony could reveal something we cannot."

"I'm afraid not. Her friend Rainbow Dash, holder of the element of loyalty, disappeared a few weeks back."

"You mean-"

"Yes, it was exactly the same as the others."

"Have you told her yet? Surely she's asked if you can find anything out."

"I haven't told her. She would only worry more and a few of her friends might try to solve this on their own. I can't let them die needlessly."

"Maybe it's time to tell her. Everything. She surely noticed the fire, if nothing else. Maybe she can help, she certainly did when I left the moon, and when Discord returned."

"Maybe you're right." Celestia retrieved a pot of ink and a scroll and began dictating a letter, the ink flowing out and forming words.

To my most faithful student Twilight Sparkle,

There is something we must discuss. It involves you and your friends quite closely, especially the pegasus Rainbow Dash. Meet me at the library tomorrow at noon. I will answer all of your questions then. If you wish to survive until then, take all pains to avoid the area where the fire seemed to start at. Do not do anything rash.

Celestia

She signed the letter with an imprint of her hoof and let out a brief stream of magic. The letter vanished in a puff of green smoke. "Now sister, let's see if we can find a few of our old surprises."

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Spike was still looking for Fluttershy. He and Rarity waited all night, but she never came back after looking for Sweetie Belle and her friends. They couldn't find her or the fillies anywhere. "Where are you Fluttershy?" He still remembered every word he had overheard between Rarity and Fluttershy and he had wanted to talk to her about it, but then she didn't come back. He had wanted to find her while they were looking for the fillies, but she had gone too fast for him to follow.

Rarity came around a corner, "still no sign of her?"

"No. I checked her house and the parts of the forest she likes to visit sometimes but I didn't see her anywhere."

Rarity looked extremely worried, "I couldn't find her in Ponyville anywhere, I think she may have done something drastic."

"What do you mean?" the only drastic thing Spike could picture Fluttershy doing was not looking both ways before crossing the street.

"Well, when I was talking to her last night, something… personal came up." Spike knew what was coming, "we talked about… well, you."

"I know," Spike gave a long sigh, "I was listening."

"I thought you might have been. Then you know what's been wrong with her lately." Spike wished she could at least look angry at his eavesdropping, but she didn't seem to care at all.

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to her about it, but I couldn't catch up to her when we were outside and then she didn't come back."

"I do hope she's all right."

They spent the rest of the day searching in vain for Fluttershy. No one had seen her since Big Mac saw her flying around the orchards. They had decided to look there first, but couldn't find anypony, even the Cutie Mark Crusaders' tree house was empty, though Spike thought it looked like someone had been there recently.

"I'm sure she'll turn up," Spike said as they walked back through Ponyville on their way home. The sun was setting and streaks of color wove through the sky. Rarity only nodded. She was torn apart on the inside, knowing that her best friend was unhappy because of her.

They got back to the boutique and Spike set about making dinner, even though neither of them felt much like eating. As he set a large bowl of salad on the table, a huge quake shook the ground. Rarity jumped up and caught a vase that had fallen off a nearby shelf. Several more appeared to be about to fall, but she quickly took them down.

Spike and Rarity ran outside, trying to make sure nothing had been damaged when things fell. Everypony was all right except Cheerilee. She had been getting something from the schoolhouse and a stack of chairs fell on her. She had a minor sprain, but was okay otherwise. The townsponies had just finished cleaning the debris off the street when a huge shadow blocked out most of the moon.

Light exploded out from the shadow, turning the moon blood red. The light began shooting downwards, leaving huge circles of flames in the distance. Everypony began screaming and trying to make sure all of their things were safe from the horrible apparition.

A dark blue unicorn with a white horn stood on a barrel and yelled to get everyone's attention. "Everypony shut up!" The crowd looked at him, but then started running with renewed energy. He sighed and his horn began to glow with blue light and a cloud appeared overhead. Water poured out from it for a second before the cloud was released and allowed to return to the sky. Everypony was thoroughly drenched and stared at the unicorn in shock.

"Clearly something is happening that shouldn't be. Judging by the fact that the bookworm hasn't left her library to calm you all down, she's probably already there. It looks like it's pretty bad. We all need to go now and try to put the fire out before it can spread to the town. I'm sure that Mrs. Sparkle has already told the princess so help should be here soon, but we need to make sure." There was muttering in the crowd.

"Who is this pony? Where'd he come from? How he control the cloud, I thought only pegasi could do that." Everyone seemed confused by the strange unicorn.

'Ponies,' he thought, 'the only ones dumb enough to gossip while a flying monster burns an entire forest with lasers.' "Calm down," he yelled again, "it doesn't matter who I am or where I'm from. You all know what needs to be done: unicorns use your magic to carry water, pegasi, tornado time, up and out, ponies get the buckets. Let's roll!"

Everypony grabbed as much water as they could and hurried toward the bright orange glow of the fire. They all started throwing water, but most of it evaporated before reached the fire. Most of the pegasi formed together to create a huge tornado that would suck up huge amounts of water, but as they began rotating, the red beams of light were joined by pink ones that crackled with electricity. They began targeting the pegasi who quickly noticed this and landed. Several had already been struck and fell paralyzed, a pony shaped fireball.

"Dig a trench so the fire can't jump over," somepony yelled. There was a flurry of movement as everypony began lining up and pawing frantically at the ground. A long trench was quickly dug and the extra dirt was piled up on one side to help keep the fire from spreading. A few clever unicorns managed to connect the trench to the river and it rushed in, putting out the sticks that had fallen into the trench.

After a while, the shadow left the moon and landed with a loud crash, the ground shook and most of the crowd fell over. There came the sound of a deep voice laughing, somehow carrying over the popping of sap filled trees as they exploded. Huge points of black rock shot into the night air, seeming to move closer and closer together until a scream of pain could faintly be heard. A few seconds passed and nopony moved.

The rocks all fell away, seeming to transform as they crumbled. Much of the forest in the immediate area had already burned away entirely leaving black skeletal figures of burned trees. Ash fell in great piles everywhere and the air shimmered with the heat. Another shadow flew across the sky and the crowd began to turn and run.

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The flying chariot landed in front of the retreating ponies and Princess Luna climbed out. "What happened here?" her voice had taken on the deep resounding quality that was her 'Royal Voice'. The strange blue unicorn from earlier spoke into her ear, filling her in on what the ponies knew. "This does not bode well. Stayest thou here while I examine the scene." She spread her large black wings and flew into the cloud of ash.

She returned a short time later, visibly upset. "Still nothing!" she yelled in frustration. Everyone shot questioning looks at her but she ignored them. She returned to the unicorn who had spoken with her earlier, "you, why have you all stopped extinguishing this blaze?"

"Your majesty," he said, bowing his head low, "the fire was too hot for the water to reach and the pegasi were being struck by the energy that creature was releasing. We instead took precautions to keep Ponyville from burning."

"Very well. We should be able to do something about it now though." Luna flew in the air, her black horn glowed and the water from the river flowed into the air around her. She flew around, directing streams of water at the edges of the blaze, shrinking it into a more manageable size. The unicorns began helping as they could get close enough to the fire and soon everypony else was able to join in.

Many ponies were burned or suffered injuries from falling trees and limbs, but the fire was soon put out. "I think you can handle it from here," Luna said as she released the last of the water. "I must return to Canterlot and make my report." She vanished in a swirl of shadows and a flash of light.

They began the arduous task of cleaning up the debris from the earthquakes and fire. Ashes had found their way into everything, but the worst of it was washed away by a rainstorm the pegasi created. Aureon stood on a roof, directing more clouds with his magic. His cutie mark was a simple raincloud. His magic was more flexible than most unicorns. He could manipulate weather like a pegasus and could even walk on clouds. It seemed to come in rather handy when things got lit on fire, 'seems to be happening a lot lately,' he thought as he washed the soot off town hall.

Spike looked down at his scales. Every crack was filled with soft black powder and he had a dirty sheen. Rarity walked up and her horn glowed, the grime fell off of her and Spike and they surveyed the area, seeing the extent of the damage. Little had happened to the buildings themselves, by the entire sky had been blotted out by clouds of ash and the usual backdrop of the forest was completely wiped out.

Spike was about to say something when he felt his stomach bulge. He burped and a swirl of green flame flew out with a scroll. He opened it and read the note.

"Princess Celestia wants us to meet her at the library tomorrow. She says she has something important to say." He continued scanning the letter, "and she has news on Rainbow Dash!"

"Well at least something good can come of all this. Now if we only knew where everypony else was." Twilight had left for Pinkie's about a week ago and hadn't talked to anypony since. Applejack had been missing for almost as long and Fluttershy vanished the day before. 'Come to think of it,' Rarity thought, 'when was the last time anypony saw Pinkie?'

They wandered around for a while, asking if anypony had news of them, but nopony did. Three forms seemed to materialize out of the ashes on the ground.

"Spike, Rarity," they yelled running forward. The grim was washed away in streaks starting at their eyes and continuing down their cheeks.

"Oh girls, you're all right," Rarity swept them up in a huge hug, tears pouring down her face. Spike jumped in and everypony fell over, glad to be back together after so much had happened.

"I'm sorry I left sis," Sweetie Belle said, "I should've told you where we were."

"No, it's perfectly understandable. But you should've at least told us you were okay."

Applebloom cut in, "well didn't Fluttershy tell ya?"

"No, we haven't seen her since she flew off to look for you three."

"She found us at the tree house," Scootaloo said, "we made her Pinkie promise not to tell where we were, but to say we were okay."

"Wait, then where did she go," Spike was very confused, "And why are there burns on your manes?"

Rarity saw that there were indeed huge patches missing from their manes and tails, "what happened?"

"The fire spread to the orchards-"

"But we all managed to put it out just in time," Applebloom said, looking momentarily happy.

"Then we went to see if Zecora needed any help." The three fillies paused here and their eyes filled with tears again.

"Sh-she didn't make it out in time," Scootaloo said, looking downwards, "it looked like she'd been trapped in her house while it burned around her."

"Let's get you girls home," Rarity said, pulling them along, a stern look crossing her face, "we've all been through a lot and we'll talk about it in the morning."

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Everypony was too upset to sleep so they all huddled together in Rarity's huge bed until the sun started to come up. After a while, they all fell asleep. Their legs were kicking and they all cried out almost constantly in their sleep as they relived the last few days in their dreams.

They woke up feeling unrested and even worse than they had when they went to sleep. Several times in the night somepony had knocked on the door trying to find out who was missing and who was lost in the fire. Spike, managed to keep from waking everypony up as he answered the door, but, each time he left, whoever he'd been closest to began crying out a little louder until he came back.

Rarity sat everypony down around the table. Nopony could handle much more than water, but even that was a struggle because there was so much soot filling each mouthful, even after it went through the water purifiers Rarity had on her sink. They all began to discuss everything that had happened recently, from the girls' discovery of Spike and Rarity, to the fire and Zecora's death. They also talked about where everypony could be.

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Awww, I didn't want Zecora to be cooked alive. :( So, more of this chapter coming up next, I've got to get to sleep and I haven't published a chapter today. Otherwise this would be a good six or seven thousand words probably.

For those of you who care, the blue unicorn, Aureon Skyhorn, is my first attempt at making a pony (he's been replaced). His talent, as it said, is basically that his magic gives him the abilities of a pegasus. I felt like putting him in.

Review, review, review, review, make muffins, review, review, REVIEW! MAKE MORE MUFFINS!

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