"Uh, Sunset?" Snips's high-pitched, sniveling voice grated on her ears.

"What did you call me?" Sunset demanded.

"Uh, that is, Princess Sunset Shimmer, Your Majesty, uh, Ma'am!"

Sunset stared down at her servant through hooded eyes. "We'll work on it," she promised coolly. "Now what do you want?"

"Well, I think you oughta see this," Snips pointed out the window.

Sunset scoffed, but rose out of what remained of Principal Celestia's chair and floated over to see what he was pointing at. Her eyes widened.

"What?!" she roared, her hair and tail blazing up furiously around her. Snips cowered from her sudden fury. There were students out there doing... well, not what she had told them to! There were perhaps a dozen walking around, talking to the ones who still stood in their perfect rows. This was unacceptable. She would tear them all apart! She would—

Breathe, Sunset, she ordered herself. Blind rage wouldn't get her anywhere. There had to be an explanation for her magic's failure. She looked again, this time stretching out both her physical and magical senses. And there it is.

It was faint, but there was a green mist of some kind rising from those few students who were showing free will. Sunset folded her arms and frowned. She didn't recognize the spell, but it was definitely magic. How could that be? This pathetic world didn't have any magic.

Except, Sunset reminded herself, now it does. The physical embodiment of magic itself sat on her own head. Was someone else drawing on its power somehow? Sunset closed her eyes and turned her focus inward to examine the spell she'd cast.

Another force was gnawing at the edges of her spell. It was worming into the weakest points of her magic and chipping bits away to take for itself. It didn't feel like the power she was drawing from the Element of Magic, though; this was something else. Another being from Equestria, then, who had somehow kept his or her magic? Whoever it was, this newcomer didn't have nearly as much raw power as Sunset. However, she had to reluctantly admit that this other person was much more skilled with mind control.

Still, it was more of a curiosity than a threat. Dispelling such weak magic would be trivial. Sunset teleported outside to deal with it.

"Come on, wake up! Scootaloo shouted at yet another of her classmates, to no effect.

"That doesn't work," Sweetie Belle reminded her again. "You have to find someone who's already fighting it."

"They should all be fighting it!" Scootaloo cried. "Who would want to be that monster's slave?"

"Hey, ain't this Pinkie Pie's sister?" Apple Bloom called from a short distance away. "She's gotta be mad. Betcha we could break her out of it."

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo walked over to see.

"She doesn't look mad," Sweetie Belle said uncertainly.

"She doesn't look like much of anything," Scootaloo added.

Indeed, the gray-skinned girl's face held the same lack of expression as always.

"She's fightin' it," Apple Bloom insisted.

"How do you know?" Sweetie Belle demanded.

"She just is!" Apple Bloom shouted. "She's gotta be!"

"You don't know anything!" Scootaloo yelled back. "We've been doing this for an hour, and we're not getting anywhere!"

"Nuh-uh!" Apple Bloom retorted. "We snapped a buncha people out of it!"

"Nine people is not 'a bunch!'" Sweetie Belle snapped back. "There's hundreds of students here!"

Unseen by the arguing girls, a green mist rose up around them. Adagio noticed this, and walked over to soak up their negative energy with a satisfied smile.

"Step aside," she commanded once she'd finished her snack. Hardly noticing that they'd even been given an order, the three complied with it. Adagio stepped up to examine the blank-faced student they'd been arguing over. She held a finger under the girl's chin, turning her head this way and that. "Yes, she'll do," Adagio purred.

"Wait, so she is fighting it?" Sweetie Belle's voice squeaked in surprise.

"Ah told'ja so." Apple Bloom gloated.

"That's right," Adagio told them. "She's nearly broken the spell by herself." She was frankly shocked at the girl's mental strength, but her face remained smooth and confident with a hint of a smile. "Allow me."

Adagio began to sing. Her voice floated gently through the air; luring, tantalizing, promising everything to those who heard it even as it took away their freedom. The three younger girls were entranced, their eyes shining with the beauty of Adagio's song, their argument forgotten.

The gray-skinned girl blinked once.

"Hi," she said.

"Hello," Adagio answered. "Now what's got you so worked up, hmm?"

"Worked up?" Scootaloo whispered to the others. "She looks like she's watching paint dry."

"Hush," Adagio snapped. Scootaloo and her friends were instantly silent.

"Sunset Shimmer hurt Pinkie Pie," the girl replied, seemingly unaware of the interruption. Her tone suggested that she might have been discussing the weather. "I want to hurt Sunset Shimmer."

"Good," Adagio replied. "That's good. What's your name?"

The girl blinked again. "Maud."

"Well, Maud, I think we can make your wish come true. For now, you will join these girls in trying to break other people out of Sunset Shimmer's control."

Maud was silent for several long seconds, long enough that Adagio began to wonder if her magic was working.

"Okay."

"Good," Adagio smirked. "Now get back to work."

"This is as close as we can get, ma'am," the policeman driving Twilight informed her. They were perhaps half a mile from the police barricades, but the streets were clogged with bystanders and vehicles.

"Thank you," Twilight replied. Without another word she picked up her backpack from the floor of the passenger seat and stepped out of the squad car. Shading her eyes against the setting sun, she worked—and, when necessary, pushed—her way through the people gathered there. At least she didn't have to worry about Spike. Once she'd realized how long and complicated this was likely to become, she'd dropped him off at home for her parents to look after.

Well, she thought with a mixture of annoyance and excitement, it took much longer than I would have liked, but I've finally got a chance to study this. She reached the front of the crowd, where the police were working to hold back concerned family members, reporters, and rubberneckers. She found the nearest cop and held up the ID that Shining Armor had given her.

"Hello, Officer," she said with perhaps a hint of smugness. This wasn't the same person who had turned her away before, but it was still satisfying. "Your captain should have told you I'd be coming?"

The policeman nodded. "Yep, orders came down the grapevine. You'll be working with Sergeant Dare. Follow me." He raised the strip of caution tape to allow Twilight access. Other policemen quickly filled in the space he'd left.

"What do we know about this?" Twilight asked as they walked.

"Not much," the man replied. "Never seen anything like it. It's like they're all brainwashed or something."

"Brainwashing that many people would take a long time, and resources that shouldn't be available at a high school," Twilight pointed out.

The policeman shrugged. "Hey, you asked."

"I asked for information, not speculation," she retorted.

"Well, we don't know." His voice now held a bit of a bite. "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"Yes," Twilight answered. "Yes it is."

"Hey Sarge," he said to another officer, "got that consultant the Captain told us about."

Sergeant Dare turned away from the school to look at the officer and Twilight, who was walking beside him. "Thanks," he said. "You get back to the line."

"Yes, sir." The officer turned and strode back the way they'd come.

The sergeant was a tall, broad-shouldered man who was built a bit like Twilight's brother. He had a somewhat craggier face than Shining Armor, however, which was not helped by a day's worth of stubble. His dirty-blond hair was cropped close to his head.

"Sergeant Ivory Dare," he introduced himself. He held out a hand, which Twilight shook gently.

"Twilight Sparkle," she replied.

If the sergeant recognized her name, he didn't show it. "Well Ms. Sparkle," he said, clasping his hands behind his back and turning to face the school, "I hope you can shed some light on all of this."

"I've been monitoring this anomaly as best I could from a distance," Twilight told him, "but I haven't been able to see the effect on the students and faculty in the school. What can you tell me about that?"

"See for yourself." Ivory Dare gestured to the motionless ranks of students. "They've been standing like that since last night. No food, water, or sleep."

"Would you say it looks deliberate?" Twilight asked. It certainly looked that way to her, but she didn't have the sergeant's worldly experience.

"Absolutely," Ivory Dare responded. "They're lined up like soldiers, and we think we know who—or rather, what—is giving them orders."

"That would have been good to lead with," Twilight snapped. "So who is it?"

"These three." Ivory brought up a photo on his phone and showed it to Twilight, who raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"What am I looking at?" Twilight asked. The picture showed three creatures that couldn't possibly exist. They looked like demons straight out of Dante's Inferno, and each holding a student captive. Scaling off of the students, the largest of the three must have been over ten feet tall.

"I wish we knew," Ivory Dare answered. "We sent in a negotiator earlier today, and these three came out to speak with him. The one in the middle seems to be the leader. It—she—called herself Sunset Shimmer."

Twilight folded her arms and frowned at the picture. "Sergeant," she said, "just because of all the impossible things that are already happening here, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that picture is genuine." Her tone, however, said quite clearly that she doubted it. "What do we know about this so-called Sunset Shimmer?"

"There was a CHS student by that name," Dare replied. He didn't seem to blame Twilight for her skepticism. "A brilliant young lady by all accounts, top of every class. She had no criminal record and nothing in school either, not so much as a detention, though apparently she had a reputation among the students for being quite a bully."

"A high school bully?" Twilight asked. Her skepticism had not been assuaged. "Is there any reason to think this is the same person?"

"Sunset Shimmer isn't among the students outside," Dare added. "That plus the name makes it seem pretty likely that it's her."

Twilight folded her arms and frowned. A mysterious power that didn't match any known form of energy, which could control and, apparently, transform humans? What in the world are we dealing with here?

"Is there anything else?" Twilight asked.

"Two things, actually." Ivory Dare took his phone back and pocketed it. "A short while ago, a young man by the name of Flash Sentry escaped from the school. The students didn't do anything to stop him."

"They let him get away?" Twilight asked.

"That's right," Dare confirmed. "We suspect that he was let go on purpose, though we don't know why. A show of good faith, maybe—Sunset Shimmer insisted that she had no interest in us or this world."

"Is there a recording of the negotiations?" Twilight asked. "If I heard exactly what was said, I might be able to find a clue."

"I'll get you a copy," Dare promised.

"Good. And the other thing?"

"Some students seem to have broken free from whatever is controlling them," Dare explained. "Only a few so far, but from what we can tell they're trying to snap others out of it too."

"I see." Stranger and stranger. "So this so-called Sunset Shimmer is controlling the students, but one has been let go and a few have broken free themselves."

"Yes, but you have to realize that even the ones who broke free are still acting strangely. We would expect children in their circumstances to run away and get help, especially with so many police nearby. Instead, they're trying to fight back on their own."

Twilight adjusted her glasses and stared even more intently toward the school. She'd been hoping to get some idea of the nature of this energy by studying the effects it had on the students, but those effects were apparently widely varied and sometimes contradictory. She had a lot of work to do.

"Thank you for the information, Sergeant," she said. "I need to study this phenomenon more closely."

Ivory Dare nodded. "There are officers everywhere, but be careful. Don't go past the police lines, and if anything happens, call for help." They wouldn't let her past their barricades anyway, but it would be better for everyone if she didn't try.

"Understood," Twilight answered. She shouldered her backpack, which was weighed down with some of her more portable equipment, and set off to find someplace both close to the action and away from any onlookers.

Perhaps ten minutes later she found the perfect location, an alleyway near the edge of the police lines that gave her a clear view of the school. There was an officer standing guard nearby, but once Twilight had shown her consultant's ID he'd returned his attention to the school.

"Yes," she said out loud, "this should be perfect." She carefully set her backpack down and started rummaging around, only to be interrupted by the click of nails on asphalt. The faint smell of dog reached her nostrils.

"T... Twilight?"