“What are you talking about?” Rainbow Dash demanded. The second agent extended his hoof in a silent offer to help her up, but she slapped it away and stood on her own. “Are you just telling me this so I’ll go back?”

“We don’t have much time to explain,” the first agent said. “But no, we can assure you that this has nothing to do with your mother.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you prove it,” Rainbow snorted, narrowing her gaze.

“We don’t have time for this,” said the second agent, turning to the first. They were both solidly built stallions, one a pegasus and the other a unicorn. Rainbow reasoned that she could outrun them for a while, maybe hide somewhere in the apple orchard if it came to that, but she had no idea how fast the pegasus was in flight or what mystical tricks the unicorn might use on her. “I can make this quick and easy.”

Rainbow Dash took a nervous step backwards, watching the unicorn’s horn begin to glow.

“That won’t be necessary,” said the other agent. “Not yet. Rainbow Dash, we understand your concern. We’ve both read your report and we know that Firefly was... Not what you had hoped for in a parent. We know she’s a drunk, we know she was occasionally physically violent, and we know that she squandered most of the support funds we mailed to your household for her own selfish needs.”

“Were you spying on us?” Rainbow asked, sounding disgusted. Her expression quickly turned to confusion, however. “Support funds?”

“Yes,” said the unicorn agent. “Spying is part of our job.”

“Where did you think Firefly acquired the funds to keep your home and support you both, as little as she did, when she never worked a job?” asked the pegasus agent.

“I thought it was Dad’s life insurance or something,” Rainbow admitted.

“That ran out years ago,” the pegasus continued. “Her Majesty’s Secret Service has been providing what help we can, as anonymously as we could. Under normal circumstances, you would have been placed in child protective services as soon as we saw how Firefly was raising you, or rather, how she was not. But the stakes were too high.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Rainbow said, stomping a hoof. “I’m not going with you. If Princess Celestia and your stupid agency cared so much, then why’d you leave me with Mom? What stakes would involve a crippled pegasus?”

“Sir, permission to pacify?” the unicorn agent asked, pawing the dusty carpet with his hoof as he glanced out the window. His horn sparkled once more.

“Permission denied,” the pegasus said. “Rainbow Dash, this would be hard to explain, even to adult ponies. This is a matter of national security, and we need you to come with us. Besides, do you really want to spend the rest of your life on the road? If you help us, the agency can guarantee you a generous thanks on behalf of Her Majesty herself. We could give you your own home, a monthly allowance for living expenses, almost anything, but only if we leave now.”

Rainbow eyed the agents warily. She opened her mouth, but thought better of it. They were right on one thing; she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life penniless and on the run. Some of the things they said did make sense, at least. They must be telling the truth if they knew so much about her, although she still couldn’t imagine why anyone, least of all the highest powers in the land, would care about one miserable, wayward young mare.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

“Excellent,” said the pegasus. “Please, follow us. You may address me as Agent Alpha. My partner is Agent Beta.”

Rainbow Dash made a show of rolling her eyes as she followed them outside, muttering “Real creative.”

The sun was still in its mid morning crawl. A gentle breeze alleviated some of the sweltering heat of the previous day, but it still promised to be quite hot. Rainbow wasn’t looking forward to another slog under the sun, and so she was quite relieved to see a surprisingly nondescript carriage resting in the Apple family’s dirt driveway.

“You will be riding with Agent Beta,” Alpha informed her. “I’ll be pulling the carriage back to Canterlot.”

Rainbow Dash nodded vaguely. Her mind was hard at work, puzzling why in the world the crown would want anything to do with her. Her eyes widened, though, when she realized she’d forgotten something rather important.

“Wait,” she said, stopping in her tracks. “My bat! Applejack probably still has it; wait right here, I need to get something before we leave.”

“There’s really no time,” Agent Alpha said. “We can send somepony back for your belongings later if absolutely necessary, but every moment we waste here is another moment our mission could be compromised.”

“It’ll just take a second—”

“Rainbow Dash,” Agent Alpha said sternly. “We need to leave, now. The reason we’re in such a hurry is because we believe you may be in danger.”

“You guys don’t understand,” she pleaded. “This was my dad’s bat. That and a picture are all I have to remember him by.”

“I’m detecting movement,” Agent Beta said. Rainbow followed his gaze into the depths of the apple orchard, where something was darting from tree to tree in an unnaturally fluid series of movements.

“Pacify the target,” Agent Alpha said. “We leave now.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened as Beta’s horn ignited, and the world seemed to melt, like the colors running on a painting. Something hard rose up to meet her, and she hit it and broke through into an all-consuming blackness.

. . .

Rainbow awoke to a face full of cold, sticky wetness. She spluttered, flailing wildly as the world slowly resumed its normal shapes and colors.

“Calm down there, partner,” Applejack chuckled.

Rainbow blinked her eyes, wiping the juice off her face. A little seeped into her mouth, revealing it to be apple cider. Applejack stood before her with a now-empty pitcher, her boots noticeably absent and her tree-like legs on full display.

“What happened?” Rainbow asked, looking around. She didn’t appear to have moved positions, but the sun was slightly higher in the sky, nearing noon. Upon hearing some muffled yet vaguely familiar voices, she looked up to see the agents wrapped hoof-to-mouth in vines, dangling from the nearest apple trees.

“The trees told me some fellas were kidnappin’ ya’, so Ah came as fast as Ah could,” Applejack said. “The unicorn tried blastin’ me with his fancy magic, but he didn’t expect the trees to turn on him. Who are these fellers, anyhow? Ya’ know ‘em?”

“Sort of,” Rainbow Dash said slowly, looking at the struggling agents with a mixture of empathetic pity, satisfaction, and a worry that the two of them were in for a world of trouble when the agents finally freed themselves. “They said they’re secret agents from Canterlot, and they wanted to take me to see Princess Celestia.”

Applejack cocked her head, eyes wide and blank for a split-moment, before she burst out laughing.

“Good one,” she cackled. “Next you’ll have me believin’ you’re some long lost princess yourself or some such tomfoolery.”

Rainbow looked thoughtful for a moment before shaking her head.

“That’s definitely not true,” she affirmed. “But I think these guys really are from the government...”

Applejack’s laughter slowly died down, petering out into a nervous chuckle.

“Come on, now,” she said, giving Rainbow a playful jab. Friendly or not, nothing would ever make Rainbow used to those wriggling root-like appendages. “Don’t scare me like that. If the government ever found out about us Apples, our cover’d be blown sky-high!”

Rainbow Dash smiled nervously, rubbing the back of her head.

“Oh, Celestia’s Mane,” Applejack cursed, glancing back at the writhing, bound agents. “What have Ah done...”

“Let’s just put them down nice and slow, and I’m sure we can explain this,” Rainbow suggested. “...Probably. And we might want to hurry. They said somepony might be after me. I don’t know who or why; maybe my Mom thought she could get child support back if she tracked me down with a second-rate bounty hunter or something.”

“Ah hope for both our sakes’ you’re right about this,” Applejack said, gulping. She looked back to the trees and they gently lowered and unwound their vines, dropping the agents on the ground. They both gasped for breath for a few moments, eyes darting every-which-way. Beta looked like he was ready to murder somepony.

“H-hey there, Mr. Alpha and Mr. Beta,” Rainbow Dash said tentatively. “So, funny story—”

Beta managed to stand up first, stretching with a remarkable hastiness. He proceeded to march over to Alpha and stood on his wings.

“Checkerboard, what in Celestia’s name are you doing?” Alpha grunted, only for Beta, or Checkerboard, or whatever his name was, to bash his head downwards, his horn smashing into the pegasus’ skull.

Rainbow and Applejack gasped. The trees shot out their vines, but Beta’s horn ignited, blasting a spew of fire over Alpha. The vines instantly jerked back as the pegasus screamed and writhed, trying to throw his partner off. The unicorn stood firm. The fire was burning into Alpha’s flesh, blackening and crackling his fur with a sickening series of pops and hisses, but Beta remained untouched. Out of the corner of her eye, Rainbow Dash could have sworn the smoke from the fire formed and unformed into what looked like moaning faces.

“We need to get out of here!” Rainbow said, about-facing and setting off at a gallop, checking to thankfully see Applejack right behind her.

A burst of fire shot past them both to strike an apple tree a few yards away, sending it up in flame unnaturally fast. Applejack cried out in pain.

“You’re not going anywhere, Loyalty,” Beta said. The two mares turned to see the unicorn stepping off of his immolated partner, now lying still. Blood still coated the unicorn’s horn from where it had bashed Alpha’s skull, and it looked the faintest bit cracked. Rainbow Dash didn’t know too much about unicorns, but she knew enough to realize that Alpha should be writhing in pain himself now from such a key injury. Instead, he walked calmly forward, his eyes having become blank and dull. “I’ve waited too long to find you. You hid from me for years in the mists of that Aberration around Ponyville, and you almost slipped past me when you fled. You almost got away again, but not this time.”

There was an uneasy reverberation beneath the unicorn’s voice, a subtle sonic disturbance that Rainbow wouldn’t have noticed unless it sounded familiar. It sent a tremor through her stomach, making her legs wobble. Dark visions flashed in her mind.

“W-who are you?” Rainbow demanded as she and Applejack backed away slowly. “What are you talking about? What do you want?”

“I had to put up with that stuffy pegasus and his pathetic values for far too long,” Beta continued, seemingly oblivious. “But he was the tracker, and I needed him. I had been planning to kill you in the carriage and then slip away when that solar scum wasn’t looking, pinning the blame on him. But you, pony-plant-abomination, you had to ruin everything!”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed as a glint of recognition flashed in her mind. Beta’s shadow... It wasn’t that of a unicorn. Flickering against the blaze of the tree behind the mares, Beta’s shadow stretched long across the grass, lacking any sort of horn. Instead, two large, bat-like wings were spread to either side.

“You’re a batpony,” Rainbow gasped. “But, how?!”

“I suppose I’ve put up with this disgusting body for long enough as well,” Beta snarled with an exaggerated, unnatural smile.

The shadow grew darker, far darker than the nearly midday sun should have allowed. It burbled and rose, peeling itself off the ground, flowing out to acquire and harden into dimension and mass. By the time the darkness had fully solidified, it had become a full batpony mare with a midnight-blue coat covered in scars. Its eyes were a milky white, almost entirely devoid of irises.

Beta shuddered and crumpled to the ground, coughing. Rainbow noted that his shadow had returned to normal.

“What... Where...” the unicorn wheezed, trying weakly to stand. The batpony placed a hoof on his head and forced it back down into the dirt. The only armor she seemed to be wearing were a set of bladed hoof-guards. They crackled with dark blue electricity. Beta, the real Beta, spasmed and lay still.

“No, no, no, no...” Rainbow Dash whimpered, still backing away slowly. She felt like she may vomit. “Get back! Stay away!”

“Not this time, Loyalty,” the batpony hissed, the harsh Lunar accent subtly coming out in her true voice. “I’ve waited too long.”

“She’s not a unicorn no more, she can’t make fire!” Applejack shouted.

The batpony quirked an eyebrow, only for a vine to shoot towards her from behind and wrap itself around her, raising her into the air.

“Run!” Applejack commanded, and Rainbow was only too happy to comply.

Applejack gasped, coughing as Rainbow heard another electrical discharge behind them.

“The trees ain’t gonna keep her busy fer long,” Applejack wheezed, sounding pained. “Them blades of hers is too sharp!”

“We have to hide, or get out of here, or something!” Rainbow said, nearly stumbling.

They were back.

After all these years, they had come for her again.

“She’d find us in the house eventually and Ah don’t wanna let her get close to mah family, especially Applebloom” Applejack said as they galloped past the farmhouse and into the part of the orchard on the other side. “Our best bet is to hide in the cornfields next door. She said she wasn’t a tracker, right?”

Rainbow Dash nodded, her breath more ragged than this sprinting should have made it.

A shadow fell across them both from above, a rapidly dwindling shadow with flapping, spiked wings. Rainbow Dash risked a glance up, just in time to see the batpony swooping down with her hoof-claws outstretched and sparking.

Rainbow ducked, making the batpony overshoot. She landed ungracefully in a skid of dirt on the grass, nearly crashing into a tree.

“You can’t escape me forever, Loyalty!” the batpony shouted.

“Stop calling me that!” Rainbow shouted back.

“In fact, why don’t we put that to the test?” the batpony said, once again seemingly oblivious to what Dash had said. “If you’re truly Loyalty, you’d never abandon somepony who risked her life to save you. Let’s see if you can resist stopping your friend from slitting her own throat!”

The batpony galloped forwards. Applejack and Rainbow jumped to the side, but the batpony veered towards Applejack, leaping at and then into her shadow.

Applejack froze as she looked at Rainbow Dash, terrified. Rainbow’s eyes widened.

“No, no!” Rainbow yelled, racing over to Applejack. “You’re the first nice pony I’ve ever met, I am not letting—”

Applejack shuddered, convulsing. Her tree-stump hoof rose to her neck, forming a series of sharp, hard wooden spikes... Only for Applejack to stomp them back down into the dirt.

“Get out of me!” Applejack shouted.

Her shadow shimmered, stretching and splitting off from her as it popped out to resume the form of the batpony, giving Applejack her own shadow back. The batpony rolled over a few times, shaking.

“She couldn’t possess you,” Rainbow breathed. “That’s amazing!”

Applejack looked over at the shaking form of the batpony, who seemed to be in what looked like some sort of seizure, making unintelligible sounds.

“Is she... Did we stop her?” Applejack queried.

The batpony’s mumbles raised in volume and pitch, until Rainbow could make them out as raucous laughter.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” the batpony chortled madly. “How lucky can a mare get?”

“Whatever she’s happy about, I doubt it’s good,” Rainbow said. “Come on, Applejack.”

“No, no, no,” the batpony said, standing up slowly. “This requires the big guns. I’m not letting Loyalty and Honesty slip me by.”

The batpony leapt into the air again, climbing high, but she didn’t dive down. Instead, she circled Applejack and Rainbow as they ran towards the cornfields. Even after they’d hopped into the cornfields, the batpony continued to circle them, but did not swoop down.

“We’re not losing her,” Rainbow hissed as the two mares crawled low through the corn, although she was beginning to wonder why they even bothered. The batpony hadn’t moved the slightest bit lower since she’d taken flight.

“Why is she callin’ you ‘Loyalty’?” Applejack asked, stopping and standing up. Rainbow was about to voice her protest, but Applejack merely said, “If we ain’t lost her by now, we ain’t gonna lose her. Might as well rest up while we try and figure out what she’s doin’.”

Rainbow couldn’t argue with that, and so she sat up and took a deep breath as well.

“I don’t know,” Rainbow admitted. “The batpony soldier who cut off my wing when I was a filly called me that too, but I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t think it meant anything, but now, I’m wondering if that pegasus agent could have brought me to somepony who did know what it means.”

“She called me ‘Honesty’, too,” Applejack mused, thinking aloud. “Ah don’t understand it. Ah suppose Ah try to be truthful, but Ah don’t see why that’d make her wanna kill me!”

Rainbow nodded, thankful in a strange way that at least somepony else was just as confused as she happened to be.

After about a quarter of an hour, Applejack stood up, stretched, and motioned for Rainbow to follow her as she trotted back in the direction of her orchard.

“If Ah’m gonna die, Ah wanna do it in a place Ah feel comfortable,” Applejack reasoned. “Besides, if we can’t lose her, I can fight better in the orchard than in a cornfield.”

Rainbow figured it was as good a logic as any.

As they passed back into the Apple farmstead, though, the sunlight wavered oddly, almost as if it was dimming. Rainbow looked up, expecting to see the batpony momentarily in front of the sun, or a passing cloud, but saw neither. Instead, what she saw made her quite involuntarily wet herself.

Something was indeed passing in front of the sun, but it was far larger than either a stray wisp of cloud or a pony. A dark speck, like a granule of sand held at eye level in front of the solar disc, was rapidly falling towards them both. As it passed out of the path of the sun, Rainbow could see it was forming a long streak of rock and fire and what looked like a steaming combination of the two.

It was far, far smaller than a starfall, being a single meteoric shard, but it was falling straight towards them all the same.

“Ah heard about this,” Applejack gulped, thankfully not so much as mentioning Rainbow Dash’s accident in an act that the pegasus supremely appreciated. “Ah read articles in the newspaper and books and such what said the ponies on the Moon have giant rocks floatin’ all around the world, like outpost islands away from a big continent. Ah read they use ‘em to spy on parts of the world where the Moon can’t see so good.

“Whatever Honesty and Loyalty mean,” Applejack continued. “They must be awful important for them Moon ponies to want to send down a lonely rock to kill us. On the bright side, Ah guess they can’t spy on this patch of farms until they find another rock floatin’ out there in the wild yonder. On the bad side...”

“We’re dead,” Rainbow Dash said quietly. She realized with a numb feeling that she would have said it whether or not Applejack had explained it to her.

Applejack nodded, punching Rainbow Dash playfully on the shoulder once more. The wriggling roots didn’t make her shudder quite like they had earlier.

“Well, we can’t fight no batallion of batpony soldiers,” Applejack said. “Ah reckon that by the time enough Royal Guard ponies get here from the neighboring towns, we’ll be long dead. Want to say goodbye to mah family with me?”

“I’d like that,” Rainbow said, tears welling in her eyes. “I’d like that a lot.”

This was not the end Rainbow had been expecting to her life. Even if in the scenarios she feared most, of wandering Equestria broken and homeless until she died starving and alone or, worse, trapped back at home with Firefly, she had always expected her life to last longer than her teenage years.

“What a crummy life,” Rainbow Dash spat sourly as she followed Applejack back to the circle of Apple trees behind the farmhouse. “The batponies kill the one good parent I had and took my wing when I was a filly, and I spend the rest of the time growing up with somepony who only keeps me around so she can splurge the child support money on booze.”

“Ah’m sorry, Rainbow Dash,” Applejack said. “Ah really am. For what it’s worse, it was nice to meet ya’.”

“It was nice to meet you, too,” Rainbow Dash said, smiling genuinely for the first time in a long while. “If this doesn’t sound weird, since I know we just met and all, I think you’re the first real friend I’ve ever had.”

“Same here, partner,” Applejack said, smiling in turn.

They reached the center of the circle of trees and sat down next to each other. Applejack whispered something to the tree she had addressed as Papa earlier, and it reached ones of its branches into a window in the back of the farmhouse. It pulled out a tiny yellow-and-red filly that Rainbow assumed must have been Applebloom, setting her gently next to Applejack. The filly was fast asleep, the relocation not having stirred her in the slightest. Applejack lay down next to her, holding her close. She didn’t seem to have the will to wake her, and Rainbow didn’t blame her.

Rainbow Dash was also happy to see her bat and sack in the circle of trees, and she scooped them up, holding them close. She pulled out the photograph of she and her father, showing it to Applejack.

“He looks like he cared about you a whole lot,” Applejack commented. In the photo, Rainbow’s father was indeed giving his filly daughter an affectionate noogie and looking down at her with a big, goofy, proud smile.

“He sure did,” Rainbow agreed. “He was awesome. I wish you could have met him.”

“It would have been an honor,” Applejack agreed.

Rainbow took one long, last look at the photograph and slid it back into the sack, tying it tightly on her bat and holding it close. She joined Applejack in looking up. The falling rock was breaking apart now in spurts of flame and dust, sending smaller fragments rocketing down in fiery spirals into nearby fields. There would doubtless be a few fields at least partially on fire by the time the Royal Guard arrived.

Specks even smaller than the broken fragments were shooting off of the rock now as well, spiralling out in long, lazy circles, trying their best to slow their descent rather than accelerate it. The batpony soldiers would likely be upon them in a few minutes.

I could think of worst places to die, Rainbow thought to herself. With the pleasant breeze and the gentle sway of the orchard trees, it was a beautiful place.

There was a momentary ripple in the air, like a wavering heat-haze as that beautiful place lit up with a flash of explosive force. Rainbow Dash was sent flying backwards, as was Applejack. Rainbow’s ears were ringing, and she opened her eyes to see she’d been blown into the large red tree that Applejack had addressed as her big brother. Rainbow felt numb all over, and was only vaguely surprised to see read streaks on her flesh. Her prosthetic wing had completely shattered, leaving only a badly bent frame of metal sticking out from her back, shards of hardened rainbow light littering the grass.

But what had struck them? The batpony soldiers were still a minute or two from touching down. In fact, looking up, Rainbow saw them diving down faster than she had expected, as if the batponies were trying to reach them in a hurry when before there had been none.

The world was eerily silent and seemed to almost move in a surreal slow motion. Blinking a few times more, Rainbow looked over to see Applejack picking herself up off the ground where she’d landed, sap oozing from cuts in her tree-legs. Back to the center of the tree circle, though, Rainbow Dash saw the last thing she’d ever expected to see.

A violet unicorn mare, about her own age, was standing in a circle of singed grass in a daze. She wobbled on her legs, nearly stumbling as she took a few steps to the left, and then to the right. The unicorn shook her head and looked up at Rainbow Dash and Applejack, shouting something at them, but though her mouth moved, Rainbow heard nothing. The word had gone mute.

The unicorn looked up once more, seeing the batpony soldiers that were almost upon them all. She looked back at Rainbow, mouthing something as her horn ignited, her eyes clenched shut as she concentrated with all her might. There was something odd about her horn, Rainbow realized, but in Rainbow’s own dazed state, she couldn’t quite make out what it was.

She read the unicorn’s lips as best she could as her magic grew brighter and brighter.

I’m sorry.

The world exploded in a wash of magic and light, only to wink out into darkness.