“I’m not Silent Storm. "

The stallion stared at Shining Armor in confusion for several moments his eyes opened wide and a huge grin shot across his face "I won" he murmured. Before Rainbow could get an explanation the Stallion had began jumping around the group in wide circles, similar to Twilight's happy dance and cheering in a sing-song voice "I WON! I WON! I won; I won; I won; I won; I WON!"

"No need to gloat Wind Whacker" grumbled one of his companions sulkily.

"I don't get it" complained Rainbow, "What did you win?"

Wind Whacker spun around to face her, sporting a smile so big it looked like his face would break. "Why, Storm's money of course."

"What!?"

"Most Rangers who get lost alone in the deep forest die or go crazy within a month. Silent Storm's been living at the front lines of the war by himself for who knows how long and so everybody knows it's only a matter of time before one or the other happens to him; but noone knows when it will happen and so we all make bets! My wager was yesterday, that puts me the closest meaning I win! I'M RICH!"

"That's insane."

Wind Whacker pointed towards Shining Armor, "He thinks he's somepony else, and I just won ninety-three thousand bits. Who are you calling crazy?"

"Does Storm know the Rangers do this?"

"Duh, who do you think we all bet against? Storm has a diamond dog bookie in Uthraig who manages all the bets. At the start of each year any Ranger who want to play, picks a day for two hundred bits and then Storm matches the total with his own money. Whoever gets the closest to when he 'looses it' gets the money; but if Storm makes it through the year then he keeps it. He's been fleecing us for years because he's never gone crazy; until now that is!"

"So... how much money does Storm have?" asked Rainbow curiously.

Wind Whacker did some quick calculations in his head "Well, Storm's been serving at the front line, earning maximum pay non-stop since; forever.  He only spends money when he goes to civilization which is; never; and for the last few years he's been making heaps of bits by betting that he won't go crazy; so I'd say he has about... a zillion bits! Time to celebrate baby!" Wind Whacker stopped briefly and looked Rainbow up and down, "You look OK. Wanna come with me to Uthraig while I collect my prize and then go party?"

"No thanks."

The stallion's face fell slightly, but then a glint re-entered his eyes when he caught sight of Twilight, "What about you?" he offered sliding up until their noses almost touched, "Do you need a big, strong, rich stallion to show you around in this big, bad forest?"

Twilight began turning bright pink and took one hesitant step backwards, "Um, well.... that's very kind of you but... but..."

"Buttttt?" asked Wind Whacker, seeming to take great delight in the word.

"I think, what the mare is trying to tell you," said Shining Armor firmly, as he stepped into the narrow gap between Twilight and Wind Whacker, "Is that she does not intend to attend your 'party' and that goes doubly so because there's not going to be one. I really am Shining Armor, on Monday Storm and I preformed a body swap."

"That's just what you would say if you had gone crazy!"

"He's telling the truth" confirmed Twilight, still pink around the ears "I have a letter from Princess Celestia herself which proves it." Twilight retrieved the second letter the Princess had sent to her,  and presenting to Wind Whacker whose face fell as he read it over for the second time.

Given issues of; what happened next and a soldier acting so immature and I’m not sure how cannon I can take this, but the lottery is definitely real. Since Storm did think he was Shining Armor for a while, he did technically go crazy and lost the lottery, but he hadn’t bet all his money on it. By the end I’m thinking he roughly broke even for however much he won in previous lotteries, (but since he didn’t think he was Shining Armor for a couple days after this, it wasn’t Wind Whacker who won it, it someone sensible.)

“What in the world?“ Sure Shot pulled out his cross bow and cocked it; Twilight looked over the log to see Pinkie Pie, using her party cannon to shoot all the trees around her, humming merrily to herself.

“Wait!"

“There's no way that this is real,” said Sure Shot, “It’s one of the most basic tricks there is. Cute mare, lost and confused in the woods, you go up and try to help her and things turn ugly.” Sure Shot aimed to fire; but Twilight quickly stood up and fired one of her flares towards what looked like Pinkie

“OOOOO;" squealed Pinkie with delight; “Fire works!" Pinkie Pie bounced in-place, open mouthed, until the flare shot into her mouth, causing her to double back, gagging and eventually sneezing twin jets of fire out her nostrils. “Yuck!” protested Pinkie, spitting out an empty husk.

“Pinkie?”

“Twilight!” yelled Pinkie angrily, bounding over as if to attack her, face red, “Twilight how could you!?”

“How did you get out here?”

“How could you betray me like this? I have always invited you to my parties. Always! Why didn’t you invite me to your party? Do you not want to be friends anymore?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just now?”  asked Pinkie; “I was setting up decorations for your party, the one you didn’t invite me to.“

“What party?”

“The search party!”

Shining Armor dropped and barrel rolled to the side, bringing one of the swords down on his abandoned position, slicing clean through a timber wolf which vanished upon impact. Shining Armor regained his hooves and began scanning the glade; looking not just for what he could see but what he couldn't. If the terrormongers were amateurs there may be a section of the forest that he'd have trouble focusing on, and their own shrouds would have given away their locations. They weren’t amateurs.

There was a hiss. Shining Armor saw too late the cobra about to strike. He lifted his hoof as fast as possible, but the cobra shot out like lightning, bit his hoof and vanished into thin air. The flapping of scaled wings aimed for the back of his head caused him to buckle, rolling onto his back as he brought both swords to slice through a cockatrice, bit it too vanished on the impact.

Several minutes of this had Shining Armor nervous; the terrormongers weren’t trying to hurt him. Terrormongers almost never killed their prey outright, but fed on them as long as possible, sometimes days, but they always started by hurting a prey just enough that they were no longer considered a threat. They were treating him as someone they didn't think was dangerous meaning he was either against some very powerful necromancers, or they were trying to scare him with false confidence.

It didn’t matter; the fact that they intended to take their time on him gave Shining Armor hope. It meant they didn't know that within striking distance was a Canterlot princess and a body which would soon have monolithic strength, who were momentarily defenseless. There was a pause of a few seconds, and then, everything changed as a hurricane seemed to explode from within the glade, and dozens of forest creeps rushed him from all sides.

What had he done!?

“Pet him Dash, feel how soft he is.”

Rainbow reached forth and stroked him twice. “Nice.”

“Oh, that wasn’t enough Rainbow Dash! You need to really feel him.” Rarity lifted Frazzles in her telekinesis and began rubbing him up and down Rainbow’s neck and wing.

“Very nice.” Complimented Rainbow slowly, more than a little uncomfortable with the weirdness of the situation.

“But how can you say that when you haven’t felt any of the others!?” Protested Rarity vehemently, “We define our quality by comparing ourselves to others, and cat’s must be no different!” Rarity immediately grabbed the cats Rainbow assumed to be Turquoise and Sapphire and began rubbing one of them on her neck and wing opposite to Frazzles, and the other she rubbed up and down her belly, tickling her mercilessly, as the three cats meowed incessantly. “See how Sapphire’s coat is grainy and stringy, while Turquoises fur sticks together like it hasn’t been washed? Now feel Frazzles perfect hide. Fit for a princess!” Rarity levitated Frazzles in front of her face, rubbing his belly with her hoof as she continues to abrade Dash with her other tom cats who seemed as uncomfortable as Dash was feeling. “Why you have such a nice coat Mr. Frazzles; why, I could just rip it right off of you and make you into a coat. Yes I could. Yes I could.”

Frazzles lashed out with a claw against Rarity’s forehoof causing her to draw back in horror. “Mr. Frazzles! How dare you!” Rarity dropped him onto the floor but didn’t let him go from her telekinesis, “After all the kindness I’ve shown you- you… you deserve to be punished!” The cat looked up at her and hissed, “OK fine, you can run an errand for me instead.” Rarity levitated over a blank piece of paper and put in on the ground in front of Frazzles, “Take this message to the palace and deliver it personally to Princess Celestia, just tell the guards at the gates that you’re from me and they’ll let you in. Oh and if you see Valor Hunk there, scratch him for me! He hasn’t been returning my love letters.” Frazzles looked at her and cocked his head, “Alright, Alright, you win. You can deliver the message after your music lesson.”

Rarity released Frazzles who walked to a corner of the room and began licking himself. Rainbow Dash crept a little bit closer to the fasionista, “Rarity, how about you sit down and have a drink of water.”

“Oh there’s no time for that Rainbow Dash! No time at all! I’ve just received word that somepony has been spreading the insidious rumor that you’re resigning from the Wonderbolts! Can you imagine! Now I suspect Spitfire is behind this attempted coup since she has the most to benefit from you gone, but I’ll bet we can trap the little fem fatal in her plot and get rid of her for once and for all! I, my ponies and my cats are at your command. Just say the word and we’ll-”

            “Rarity.” Interrupted Dash, hoping to derail the freight train of verbiage before it went too far, “It’s true. I am resigning.”

            “Oh.” Said Rarity quietly, “I’m sorry, I must have overreacted. It seems so obvious now that-” Rarity grabbed a water jug that was on the bench and hurled its contents at Dash, “Take that changeling!” she yelled; picking up another cat in her telekinesis, and hoisting it high above her head like she was about to hurl the cat at her as a weapon, but then stopped short; “You… you didn’t melt. That means… you really are Rainbow Dash! Oh Darling can you ever forgive me for accusing you of being a changeling.”

            Dash decided not to tell Rarity that water didn’t make changelings melt; “It’s... alright.”

            “No! No! It’s not alright!” yelled Rarity vehemently, “I’ve accused you, and here in Canterlot, even if we can prove the claim is false the accusation alone can be enough to ruin your reputation! I’ve ruined you!”

            “Settle down Rarity, We’ll figure something out.”

            “Yes, we will!” agreed Rarity as she fell to the ground hyperventilating. “She did it!” Screamed Rarity hysterically pointing as accusing hoof at Topaz who seemed unfazed, “She’s the one who sought to slander your reputation; she’s working for Spitfire! Traitor!”

            “Rarity-”

            “We can’t take back her words now that they’ve been spoken, but was can sue her; sue her for everything she’s worth! We can make sure that the case goes to a judge is a nice, elderly, lonely stallion, who we can seduce to make sure that he rules in our favor! Then we can overthrow the Princesses, and live happily ever after!”

            “Rarity; we can’t file a law suit against your cat!”

            Rarity looked at her and blinked; “Traitor!” she screamed, “You can’t pull out now Rainbow Dash, not on the eve of our final victory! You have to stick with me on this!”

            “OK, OK fine! The cat did it!”

            Rarity visibly relaxed and slumped back, resting her head against one of her mannequins, breathing deeply, “Thank you, Rainbow Dash.”

            “You stay here,” Ordered Dash, “I’ll go to Hoofington and start using my mind control powers to gather an army of followers to overthrow the Princesses.”

            “Alright,” breathed Rarity dreamily, “That sounds like a good plan, oh I know that we will make such good Princesses. Tata for now.”

Silent Storm squatted in a narrow, freshly dug trench with five Rangers on either side of him, hidden under a camouflaged tarp that blotted out the full moon. It was two years since Silver had died; Storm had barely spoken a word to another Ranger since then, and not once had he left the forest. However, on his last stop at Uthraig to collect supplies, he had been approached by several officers asking for his help.

After a series of defeats, a terrormonger force of unidentified size was coming dangerously close to the edge of the forest and was encroaching on the outskirts of a hamlet named Ponyville. Unless they were stopped, the terrormongers would massacre the town, and after that, keeping the secret would be nearly impossible; and could cause a tsunami of supercharged terrormongers that destroyed Equestria.

They had to be stopped.

Storm and the other Ranger captains had the numbers to do it, but currently the location of the terrormonger force was unknown. To make things more... interesting, tonight was Nightmare Night, a festival to Princess Luna, a night dedicated to scaring ponies, if left to themselves the civilians in Ponyville would draw the terrormongers to their town before the night was through... unless; there was another well of fear to attract the terrormongers, already inside the forest.

Storm crouched down a little further as he heard the approaching voice of Zecora and a hundred hooves behind him, on their way to Luna’s statue, right on schedule. Holding his polished blade in front of him, Storm could see them in the distance. Zecora’s mohawk had been replaced by a flat cascade of mane, studded with spiders; (Storm wondered briefly if they were rubber or if she had petrified real spiders into her mane) but her gold jewelry was completely unchanged, as always.

"This is the worst plan ever." Whispered a young Ranger beside him, slightly too loudly, as he twisted his stupid head around to look at the civilians rather than keep his eyes where they should be, "Some of those kids can't be more than seven years old, and we're using them as bait!"

Storm resisted the urge to kick the air out of the new recruit and leaned over in an appropriately whispered growl, "Zecora's with them."

"There's at least two dozen civilians out there;" continued the new recruit, "If just one terrormonger gets past us, it would be a massacre!"

Why did Storm have to get a recruit who was deaf as well as stupid? Storm leaned over again and whispered a second time, slightly louder; "Zecora's with them."

Thankfully the recruit shut up after that and got back to watching and listening. A little over a minute into Zecora's presentation, a tree fell with a crack about fifty meters to the north, meaning one of the other strike teams had spotted the enemy. Storm drew his blades and has one hoof out of the trench when a bright light issued from somewhere above the tree line; Storm looked up just in time to see a hooded figure in a chariot drawn by two thestrals.

What the hay!?

Next Chapter: Extended Ending - Wrap Ups Estimated time remaining: 32 Minutes