“Okay, I got it,” gasped Sweetie Belle, nearly collapsing after pushing the heavy microwave oven up the clubhouse ramp. “But my mom’s gonna notice that it’s gone pretty quick, so I need to put it back pretty quick.”

“Here,” said Scootaloo, tossing Sweetie Belle a screwdriver. She checked her hastily drawn notes. “Take off the back, and connect the wires to the ‘magnetron’- -it should be square, with a little dingus on top of it.”

“Everything has a dingus on it!” whined Sweetie Belle.

“Just do it!” shouted Scootaloo suddenly, causing Sweetie Belle and Applejack to jump.

“Hey now,” said Applebloom, standing up from the pile of books and the various household jars around her containing various potions, many already linked by wires to the device they were assembling. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

“I’m…I’m sorry,” said Scootaloo, rubbing her hoof over her eyes. “I…I didn’t mean to.”

“How long has it been since you slept?”

“I can’t sleep,” said Scootaloo. “Every time I do, she- -she’s there.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” quipped Sweetie Belle, innocently.

“Until I wake up,” muttered Scootaloo. She turned her attention toward Applebloom. “How is it going with the formulas?”

“Well…” said Applebloom. “I get some of it, but honestly, I can’t make heads or tails of most of it. I mean, I know algebra, but this ‘linear algebra’ stuff ain’t at all like it- -and half is in some other language!”

“Then we just substitute values,” said Scootaloo. “What about the anchor?”

They three of them turned toward a large, rusted anchor that was weighting down one corner of the clubhouse, most of it wrapped in multicolored wire pulled from any junk appliance they could get their hoof on. Applebloom took out a hoof-drawn piece of paper covered in her own notes. “It didn’t look like that in Twilight’s book,” she said. “It was…small. Some kind of crystal, I think.”

“Twilight,” muttered Scootaloo, recognizing the name of the only pony taking Rainbow Dash’s death as hard as she was. Thinking about them both brought the pain back, though, and she went back to drawing the runes on the floor around the object in the center- -a circle made from wood nailed together and wrapped in tinfoil, connected to the parts of a radio and a television set.

“Are you sure this will work?” said Applebloom. At first, she had been treating it like a game, just another way to earn their cutie marks- -except that they had earned them years ago. Then she had realized Scootaloo’s obsession with the device, with the impossible plan, and now actually believed that it might possibly work.

“It has to,” said Scootaloo. She put down the set of potions she was using to draw the occult symbols, and watched as some of them ate their way into the wood. She had already tried a similar spell at home, but it had failed, having burned a hole in her floor and raised something resembling a clawed hummingbird from Tartarus. She had poured through the calculations, and thought she knew what was wrong.

“Do you have them?” she asked Sweetie Belle.

Sweetie Belle nodded, and handed Scootaloo a velvet jewelry box. Scootaloo opened it and found three black diamonds within- -the only stones, according to the writings, that could withstand the pressure. She pulled them out and lowered her visor over her soot and oil-covered face, and welded brackets over them, forcing them onto the metal superstructure of the portal eye.

“Careful with those!” cried Sweetie Belle. “If my sister finds out I took them, she’ll…I don’t even know what she’ll do, but it won’t be pretty!”

Scootaloo stepped back, checking to make sure that they were well attached. They were crooked, but she doubted that they needed to be very straight. They would be vaporized almost instantly when the device activated.

“Right,” she said, smiling. She could almost feel it- -she knew it would work this time. She stepped back and picked up a device she had constructed earlier, a colander with a hole cut into it and hundreds of wires and a pair of vacuum tubes attached to it. “Sweetie Belle?”

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” she asked. “I mean, the last time- -”

“This won’t be like the last time,” said Scootaloo, trying to stay calm. She stepped forward and put the colander on Sweetie Belle’s head, attaching the wires and chin strap and finally putting a large alligator clip on her horn.

“Ow! Tight!” she said, shifting on her legs as though she needed to use the bathroom.

“You can’t do that to her horn,” said Applebloom, folding her books and notes neatly and stepping over her potions. “Those things are sensitive!”

“No, no,” said Sweetie Belle, pausing. “It’s actually starting to…feel really good…”

“The potions,” said Scootaloo, hurriedly. “Hurry up!”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” said Applebloom, setting up the remaining potions and pouring them into the tubing system for their distribution, just as all the books suggested. She was perhaps the only one that realized what they were actually trying to do, and the consequences of what would happen if it actually worked- -and how that would only be half of Scootaloo’s plan.

“This will work,” said Scootaloo, picking up the controls, made mostly out of spare- -or stolen- -toy electronics. “It has to. It will work.”

“You’re making me nervous,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Don’t be. We’re going to bring her back.” She slammed the primary arming switch into place. The electronics and appliances began to hum to life, some of them whirring and beeping, and others moving in places where the motors had not been disconnected. Scootaloo had planned this for so many months, and seen this exact so many times in her head. She engaged the sequence, just as her test had shown.

“Sweetie Belle!” she called over the sound of the machines. “NOW!”

Sweetie Bell closed her eyes, and focused her magic into the portal, just as she had practiced. She did it just like she had been taught- -her mind focusing on three individual points, forming a triangle. It manifested in the center of the misshapen ring they had constructed, and the runes below seemed to vibrate.

Then, suddenly, a power crystal system burst into flames. Applebloom, who was standing near it, cried out and jumped back from the flames.

Scootaloo was not looking at the power core, though. She was focused firmly on portal, searching the static and bursts of light for exactly what Rainbow Dash had described to her- -endless forests of dark, fungoid trees, and a black sky that streaked with red lightning- -the last place where the only friend that could truly help Rainbow Dash hiding.

It never came. There was a sudden flash of light, and the portal exploded, sending splinters of wood and fragments of nails across the room, and throwing the Cutie Mark Crusaders backward. Scootaloo was momentarily rendered blind and deaf, but as she came too through the ringing and optical distortions, she was aware of several loud hisses, and saw Applebloom- -whose front leg had been burned- -putting out the flames with a fire extinguisher.

“What…it didn’t…”

Applebloom seemed to be angrily mouthing words, but Scootaloo could not hear them, at least not at first. Then she heard them distantly, as though she were underwater, and saw where Appebloom was pointing frantically.

“Sweetie Belle! Help Sweetie Belle!” she was saying.

Scootaloo looked over to the other side of the room, and saw Sweetie Belle lying on the floor- -perfectly still. Her legs were splayed out, and the makeshift helmet she had been wearing was smoldering. At that instant, Scootaloo froze- -and her mind saw something else entirely. She saw the sky filled with rainbows, a single streak powering forward at impossible speed, the universe itself seeming to bend around the almost invisible pony at the front of it. She saw the sudden burst of light, and the machinery tearing apart, flaming pieces of metal flying in all directions from the fireball. She heard the deafening thud as Rainbow Dash had been atomized, and she heard herself screaming.

In reality, she was silent, unable to move, her mouth hanging open, looking at Sweetie Belle, trying to force her mind to stop thinking the worst but finding herself unable to stop it. On the other side of her, Applebloom threw down the fire extinguisher and moved to their friend.

“Sweetie Belle!” she said, picking up her friend. “Sweetie Belle, wake up!”

Applebloom tore off the helmet and alligator clip, and though her horn was charred and smoking, Sweetie Belle’s eyes were open- -and she smiled. “Oh silly Button Mash,” she said. “That isn’t my horn…”

“What in tarnation?” said a different voice, from the edge door. Scootaloo turned to see Applejack and Big Macintosh- -as well as, oddly enough, as sheep. “What happened here- -Applebloom, you’re hurt!”

“It’s just a little singe,” said Applebloom, rubbing the spot on her arm and wincing.

“Just a singe? Sugarcube, that’s a second dehgree burn!”

“I’m fine.”

“Nope,” said Big Mac, picking her up and putting her over his back.

“Get her to Granny Smith,” said Applejack. “And Sweetie Behlle- -”

“Ahl help her,” said the sheep, who helped Sweetie Belle to her feet and stabilized her. Scootaloo was momentarily shocked- -she had forgotten that sheep could talk.

As they were taken out, Applejack approached Scootaloo. “What is ahl this?” she demanded, staring at the charred and smoldering wreckage of the portal. “What in the wide world of Equestria were yah tryin to do?!”

“It didn’t work,” said Scootaloo, blankly, falling back onto her flank. She had though- -known- -that it would, that she would be able to get Rainbow Dash back, to save her- -but the machine had failed. Of course it had failed, she thought- -it was cobbled together from scrap and magic on a level that even Twilight could not perform. Scootaloo somehow did not know how she would ever believe something built by a trio of teenagers would be able to do what it needed to anyway.

She felt the hot sensation in her nose that meant the tears were coming, and she covered her face so that Applejack would not see- -and began to cry.

Applejack, who had formerly been angry and confused, was taken aback by the sudden change in Scootaloo’s attitude. “What- -oh, sugarcube…” she sat down next to Scootaloo and put her foreleg around the small, flightless filly. Scootaloo buried her face in Applejack’s chest.

“It- -was supposed to- -work!” she sobbed. “It had - -to- -work!”

“Cahlm down,” said Applejack. “Just take ah minute- -and then start from the top, alraght?”

Scootaloo sobbed for a moment until she could control the weeping. She had found from experience that all she needed to do was to aboslutly refuse to think about Rainbow Dash- -but that was nearly impossible. A flash of color, the shadow of a Pegasus overhead- -all of it would send her into uncontrollable crying. Then the memories would come, and the fight to regain control would start all over again.

Eventually, though, she slowed down, and stood up, wiping her swollen eyes. “We were trying to…no. I was trying to build a portal. A portal to the Gloame.”

“The Gloame?” said Applejack, her eyes narrowing. “Why in the name of Celestia would yah want to go there?”

“Because he’s there,” said Scootaloo.

“Who?”

“D27.”

Applejack distantly recalled the name, and her eyes widened as the vision of a blue, hairless pony with triangle-pupiled eyes and a row of lumpy spikes running across the top of his head and neck came to mind. “D27…nopony’s seen it in years. We just assumed that ahfter the battle with Nil, it…” She did not finish the sentence. Applejack herself had not been a fan of the creature, but she had known that her sister and her friends had, for some reason, become at least somewhat close to it, so she did not tell Scootaloo that it was generally assumed that D27 had died shortly after the battle nearly five years earlier.

“No,” said Scootaloo, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t do that- -he just woudn’t! He just went…back home…”

“Ahm still confused,” said Applejack. “I know yah thought it was your friend and all, but doin all this- -”

Scootaloo quickly crossed over to the messy and charred pile of books and nots and rummaged through. After a moment, she drew out a poorly stapled mass of white paper and handed it to Appeljack.

Applejack looked at the paper. “Journal of Advances in Magic,” she read. “Title: The Potential for Resurrection of Sentient Life through Application of Entropy-Reversing Magic, Proposed Theory and Case Study. By Anhelios and Holy Armament.” Applejack looked up. “Where did yah get this?”

“Twilight had it,” admitted Scootaloo.

“Of course she did,” muttered Applejack. She understood what they had been doing, though, even if the magic involved was beyond her. “So y’all were trahyin to summon D27 so that he could use that ‘Order’ magic stuff to bring back…bring back Rainbow Dash?”

Scootaloo nodded, and Applejack saw the tears coming back. “I tried. I tried to help her but…” She suddenly lashed out, kicking over the books and spilling numerous potions. “I failed!”

“Hey hey!” said Applejack, grabbing Scootaloo’s hoof before she could throw a jar of something into the wall.

“I failed!” screamed Scootaloo, her anger collapsing into sadness. “If I had just been smarter, just tried harder, I could have brought her back!”

Applejack released her hoof. “Come outside with me,” she said.

Scootaloo looked up, confused, but followed Applejack out into the light of the sun and down the clubhouse ramp. They walked together through the orchard for several minutes beneath the glossy leaves of the trees and the seemingly endlessly ripe apples above.

“Ah understand how yah feel,” said Applejack at last, pausing beneath an especially large tree and looking out over the hills that contained her life’s work. “She was mah friend to. One of mah best friends, and she’s done left a hole in mah heart that can’t raghtly be filled.”

“But you still have your sister, and your brother, and Granny Smith…I have nothing.”

“Thah’s not true and you know it. Yah have Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, and yah have all the rest of us.”

“Am I being greedy?” said Scootaloo, sounding so very tired. “I know. I know you’re right…but every time I think about her…”

“Ah know.” Applejack sighed. “But yah can’t bring the dead back. Believe me on this.”

“But the paper said- -”

Applejack shook her head. “Ah’ve tried.”

“You…tried?”

“Has Applebloom ever talked abouht our parents?”

“N…no,” said Scootaloo.

“She whas young. She probably doesn’t even remember. But ah do. Ah watched them daih.”

“I- -I’m sorry.”

Applejack looked out at the distance, where the sun was starting to set. “Fahve years ago, ah had a conversation with a pony bah the name of Blackest Night. One ah can’t ever manage tah forget.”

“Blackest Night…I remember…she was that voice, that spoke to us all.”

“Yeah. Nightmare Moon…sort ahv. The thing that lives insahd Luna, waitin. She had the curse.”

“Curse?” asked Scootaloo, confused.

Applejack nodded solemnly. “Yeah. She could bring them back.”

Scootaloo’s eyes widened, and she smiled for the first time in a long time at that glimmer of hope. “So she could- -”

Applejack shook her head. “Thah’s what ah asked her. It doesn’t work that wah. There has to be a body, a fresh one, ahnd even then…”

“There were feathers,” said Scootaloo, desperately trying to hold onto that last glimmer of hope. “Will that work?”

“Sugarcube…no. But even if there was…yah need to let her rest.”

“How can you say that?!” screamed Scootaloo. “How can you call yourself her friend?!”

Scootaloo’s anger was diffused by Applejack’s lack of response.

“It took me a lohng time to understand that, but now…ah think ah get it. A pony’s tahm is her tahm. If yah take that away from her, well…it just ain’t within you’re raghts, even if yah are her friend. Becahse you’re only slowin down what’s gonna happen eventually. Bringin ‘em back isn’t right. That’s not what we do. We keep Dash here.” She put her hoof over her heart. “We remember her. Even if it makes us crah, we love her, as much as we did in lahfe.”

“But I miss her,” said Scootaloo. “I…I miss her so much. Who’s going to teach me how to fly? Who’s going to hang out with me, and talk to me? Oh Celestia, I miss her…”

“So do ah,” said Applejack. She looked down at the filly, and saw the young pony’s sadness. Insider her, she felt the same sadness- -but she also knew that she was lying. Applejack knew something that Scootaloo did not, and because of it, she could never understand her pain, at least not completely.

She sighed, unable to contain that piece of information within her any longer, not if it meant breaking Scootaloo’s heart any worse than it already was. “Scoots…” she said. “Ahm gonna tell you somethin, somethin ah thought I would take to mah grave. But first you have to promise me.”

“Promise what?”

“Nevehr tell it to anypony. Especially not Twahlight, because if she knew, it would kill her.”

“I promise.”

“Pinkie promise?”

Scootaloo nodded.

Applejack sighed once again, unable to believe that she was going to tell another pony what she had been told by the green-eyed alicorn on that dark night. “Blackest Night- -she had other powers too. Ones no pony’s meant to have. One of ‘em was to see the future.”

“She…she could see the future?”

“Yup. Not completely, but she knew things. She gave me a gift, a prophesy. She told me that of the Six of us- -Twalight and the others, ah mean- -one of us would dah before the others, but that the fihrst to go wouldn’t really be that fihrst.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ah don’t know. Ah don’t even know if she realleh could see the future- -but I lahke to think she could. It means that since Rainbow Dash was the fihrst to dah, she didn’t realleh dah.”

“You mean- -” Scootaloo’s jaw dropped.

“Yes. If it’s true, she’s alive…somehow, somewhere. Now, don’t go and get ahead of yahrself. There’s no way to know what state she’s in, and ahm pretty sure no matter what, yah can’t get her back.”

“But- -”

“Ahnd that’s whah yah can’t ever tell Twalight. Because she would spend her entire life trying to get Rainbow back, and ah don’t want to lose her lahke that. It isn’t wat Rainbow would have wanted. She would have wanted us tah move on, tah live our lives, and tell stories abouht her when we are able.”

Scootaloo looked out at the sunset, and the two stood in the orange light for a long time.

“Do you ever get over the pain?” she asked.

“No,” said Applejack. “But it gets tolerable.”

“I think you’re right.”

“’Bout what?”

“That it is what Rainbow Dash would have wanted me to do.”

“That’s good,” said Applejack, patting Scootaloo’s purple mane. “Now you go back to the house- -you can stay with us tonight. Yah look like would fall asleep in a pahl of potatoes if yah had half a chance.”

Scootaloo smiled, if weakly. “Thanks, Applejack,” she said.

Applejack continued to look at the sunset as Scootaloo followed the trail back to the farmhouse. She suddenly found herself breathing heavily. Thinking about the prophesy had reminded her of the second part, the part that she had not told Scootaloo. It was the part that sometimes made her bolt upright at night, covered in sweat, or fail to sleep at all.

One of them would only appear to die. That one had been Rainbow Dash. The first of them to truly fall, however, had already been selected- -and Applejack knew that it would be her. She did not know when it would be; she supposed that they could all live out long, happy lives- -but somehow, in her gut, she felt like her own time was far more limited.

That was only part of what frightened her. The idea of leaving her friends and her family was what kept her awake at night, but what truly frightened her was the ideas that would only come when the thoughts managed to sneak through when she was awake: that she would never again need to witness her friends die, but that they all would see her go. She was strong, and she would have taken it for them all- -to watch them all go, to bear that burden, but she simply could not. That was not in her fate.

The one who bore that terrible fate was the one who Appejack’s heart broke for. The one of them who was immortal, the one who had outlived one and would outlive all five by centuries and millennia. Applejack knew the pain of loss, and she felt tears running down her face, not for Rainbow Dash or even for herself, but for Twilight.