Angel and Starlight opened the respective door on both sides of the car and stepped out, shutting them and turning around to the trunk. Starlight flipped it open and retrieved a set of flashlights that she had decided to bring with her for the trip. Starlight prided herself on always being prepared regardless of the circumstance, and thus kept a set of flashlights, rope, duct tape, a fire blanket, jumper cables and even a spare gas can in the back of her car. Her friends often saw her as paranoid when they saw the snow pants though, wondering why she would need them in California. She always just reminded them you never know where you’d end up.

Angel didn’t nag her though, Angel was always cool with everything Starlight did, part of why she was glad to have her as a best friend. She was as agreeable as she was dependable, a true companion in any situation.

Snatching one of the flashlights, Starlight checked to make sure if it worked and nodded before passing it to Angel. She took one for herself and nodded before closing the trunk. Looking at her friend, she sighed. “Okay, so we dig around a bit, find anything we can and we get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps.”

Nodding in agreement, Angel clutched the flashlight close to her small chest. “I agree, something about this old ranch is kind of eerie…”

“To be fair, our apartment would look this creepy if we weren’t attending to it for a few years as well, wouldn’t it?” Starlight mused.

“Probably, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend any extra time here…” Angel frowned.

Starlight couldn’t argue with that sentiment and nodded once more as both girls approached the old ranch. It had only been abandoned for a few years now, but it was definitely showing signs of needing repairs after likely being buffeted by numerous harsh seasons. The snow hitting the area for the past few years likely did a number on it for sure.

They approached the gate and Starlight hoisted herself over it, offering her hand to Angel to assist her friend over as well. Angel took Starlight’s small hand and was pulled over the top. Angel was far from athletic, thus relying a lot on Starlight’s help when it came to physical activity.

Once they were on the other side, they approached the farmhouse, taking note of the fields that had old trees still growing fruit even after all these years. It was interesting to think that the farm continued long past the owners’ lives. The old man that owned the place probably would be proud to know his trees were still giving it 100% even after he wasn’t there to tend to them, though the quality of their fruit was likely questionable at this point.

“I’m not a farmer, but I’d say that’s a pretty good harvest right there.” Starlight pointed.

Angel just nodded as the two girls reached the entrance to the house. Rattling the door, Starlight cursed when it didn’t open. “Fuck.”

“I guess we should have anticipated it was locked…” Angel frowned.

Starlight turned to face her friend. “Should we knock it down?”

“Let’s look for a key first? Just because the owner passed away doesn’t mean we should go around breaking the place, right?” Angel proposed.

Starlight sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right…”

“Check under the mat maybe?” Angel suggested.

Snapping her fingers and giving her friend a smile, Starlight gave her an approving nod, appreciating her line of thinking. “Good idea.”

Stepping back to lift the mat, Starlight inspected it, and sadly there was no key to be found. “Damn…”

Angel peered across the ground, noting odd rock formations in the small dead garden in front of the door. Leaning down, she tried to move each large rock she found until one of them seemed rather light given its size. Lifting it up, she flipped it upside down and sure enough, there was a compartment on the bottom. The blue-haired girl snapped it open and retrieved a key marked “Farmhouse” on it.

She presented the key to her best friend with a grin.

“You’re awesome, know that? If we were a mystery solving duo, I’m sure you’d be Sherlock Holmes.” Starlight winked before taking the key.

“So long as I get to be British…” Angel giggled as Starlight opened the door, allowing the two women to enter.

Opening the door, they were met with a very dusty foyer. It wasn’t a particularly big house, but it was filled with furniture and tidy living arrangements. Whoever lived here, certainly didn’t keep a messy home. It was as if they all had just gone to bed that night and never woke up. The place was relatively pristine for being uncared for, despite the dust.

“Alright, I guess it’s time to start looking around…” Starlight suggested as she flicked on her light.

Angel did likewise and nodded.

Splitting up to explore the living room, Starlight wandered over to an old hutch. Dusting off the mantle, she examined an old photograph of a woman who appeared to be a teenager with vibrant orange curly hair. She was a pretty thing, pale as all could be, but she had a southern rustic kind of cuteness to her. Starlight imagined she was the kind of daughter that a father would need to keep his eye on. The kind of daughter that her father thought he had.

There was no mistaking it, however, this young teen was obviously Pear Butter, and this was definitely her home, they had found it.

Looking through the pictures available, Starlight opened the hutch to find an old photo album. “Jackpot…” She whispered to herself.

Opening the old book, she blew some of the dust off and began to scan through the photos. Fortunately for her, the album was organized and labeled, and an entire section was dedicated to Pear Butter, and it was evident from the said section that the girl’s father absolutely adored her; there were photos from the day she was born, documenting virtually every aspect of her life that her father witnessed. Her first birthday, her first time working the fields, her first lost tooth, everything.

Flipping through the album, however, Starlight noticed that after the girl’s sixteenth birthday, there wasn’t a thing left.

She thumbed through it again to make sure she wasn’t mistaken, and sure enough, she wasn’t. After age sixteen, everything on this girl in the album seemed to disappear.

Setting the book down, she retrieved her phone and pulled up the photo they had of her. Noting the age listed on the photo, she squinted. The photo clipped from a newspaper had her listed as being in her mid-twenties. Looking back at the album, Starlight thought this fact over, also noticing that nothing in the album suggested that her father had any photos of the woman’s daughter.

There was obviously some kind of family disconnect after Pear had turned sixteen or so, one that likely would require more investigation. A gut feeling in Starlight suggested that the answers were somewhere in the house.

Calling out to Angel, with the album tucked under her arm, Starlight shined her flashlight toward the other side of the house. “Angel? Where are you? Did you find anything?”

Angel blinked and turned her light toward her friend and smiled before covering her red-tinted eyes from the bright light. Her blue hair looking more vibrant than ever in the poor lighting. Apologizing, Starlight lowered her light letting the girl recover from the blinding effect. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright; what have you got there?” Angel pointed to the album tucked under Starlight’s arm.

Looking down at the album, Starlight offered it to Angel. “Take a look.”

Flipping through it casually, Angel tried to absorb as much of the photos as she could, trying to make sense of what was in the book. After a good eighty seconds or so of flipping through it, she looked back up at Starlight hoping for some explanation or clarity.

“This is definitely the right house,” Starlight stated.

Angel nodded, though the photos had made that quite obvious.

Starlight pointed to the book in Angel’s hands and voiced her further thoughts. “Something must have happened between the family that caused Pear Butter to leave when she was a teenager. There are no more photos of her past the age of sixteen, and I don’t see anything else here that suggests she was here past that age…”

Scanning over the photos, Angel noted how Pear’s father appeared to have been a very loving and doting father figure to his daughter. It would have taken something extreme to have changed that. “Some kind of fight in the family, I guess?”

“Maybe…” Starlight scratched her neck in thought.

Angel tilted her flashlight to the other side of the house. “I found something that leads to a cellar, I’m going to go check it out, okay?”

“Haven’t you seen horror movies? We’re not supposed to split up!” Starlight teased.

“I don’t watch that trash, and this isn’t a horror movie, Starlight, this is real life…” Angel rolled her eyes before turning to head toward the cellar. “Keep exploring up here,” Angel added.

“Yes, mother.” Starlight chuckled before wandering off once again to a staircase that brought her to the top floor.

The old stairs creaked and groaned as she ascended them, and met with a long hallway of eight doors; four on the left and four on the right. She sighed as she realized she would likely need to try them all.

The first door on the right seemed to open up to a bathroom. Poking her head and light inside, she rummaged around in the medicine cabinet, noting a distinct lack of feminine products, further proving her point that no woman had lived her in some time.

It didn’t take long before Starlight realized there was nothing she could learn from examining old toiletry and left, checking the next door on the right to find an old linen closet with dusty old sheets. She moved them around to find very little of interest, shy of a few dead spiders. She grimaced as she put the sheets back and shut the closet.

So far her search had been uneventful, but she remained hopeful she’d find something of value.

The third and fourth doors on the right were both locked, making it pointless to check them, and since she didn’t want to go around breaking down doors, she just told herself that there was likely nothing of value in any of them anyway.

As she stood at the end of the hallway in front of the last door, her eyes were drawn behind her to the left door directly across from it, the door that was furthest to the end of the hallway on the left side.

There was a sign hanging on the door that caught her attention.

Starlight crossed her fingers as she reached for the door and closed her eyes as she turned it. Success! The doorknob turned and the old door creaked open revealing a relatively modest-looking room. Pear Butter’s things hadn’t been touched since she left, and as Starlight stepped inside she took note of the red and white checkered bed sheets that remained perfectly in place, ready for a sleeper to enter them.

A few country acoustic guitars sat in a corner neatly, and two shelves worth of books lined the northern wall, showing that Pear was an avid reader. Browsing the titles, it appeared as though she was a big romance fan, books that Starlight herself could hardly get into if there wasn’t a lot of sex going on. She listened to herself and realized for a second that Angel may have been right about her being a horn dog.

Shaking her head to dismiss the thought, she wandered over to a drawer and tried to open it. It refused to budge for the young woman and instead rattled with the sound of denied entry.

“Fuck…” Starlight sighed.

“Going through others belongings is rather rude, you know?” A distorted voice echoed through the room, sending a tremor up Starlight's spine that caused her to flinch.

The voice was one that sounded robotic, non-human, almost like it was conjured by a machine.

The alien voice was accompanied by the sound of the door closing.

Quickly turning to face the owner of the voice, Starlight was surprised to see a taller slender womanly figure wearing a tight form fitting stealth suit, black in color. Her hands were covered with black leather gloves as well, matching her leather belted combat boots.

Her face, however, was covered completely by a gas mask with glowing red eyes. She stood with her hands at her sides, ready to make a quick movement if necessary.

“Who are you!?” Starlight asked, stepping backward. “We didn’t mean to trespass, honest!”

The figure chuckled before wandering over to the bookshelf, running a delicate finger along the books, wiping the dust off them, and examining her hand where the dust had migrated to. “Who? That is a rather meaningless question to me. I’m more of a what at this point.”

“Alright… What are you?” Starlight held her hand close to her chest as she kept her flashlight shining on the woman.

“What I am, is similar to everything in this room… A relic of the past, a monument of a time forgotten, a phantom. Who I was, well let’s just say you can refer to me as Ghost…” She nodded, placing a hand to her mask’s chin.

“You’re not making any sense…” Starlight shook her head.

Holding her palm open, the figure made sparks appear in her hand, causing Starlight to flinch. She opened her hand wider before closing it, causing the sparks to shoot down her arm and dissolve into the thin air by the time they hit her shoulder. She took a step forward with the same hand extended to Starlight. “I exist now only as a shade, a memory floating between minds, the only reason we can see each other now is because of your connection to the other you.”

“Other me?” Starlight blinked.

“I can only be seen by those who have come into contact with the ones who interacted with me when I was still alive. You’re a special case because the connection you share with the other you is why you can see me...” Ghost explained.

“So you’re...” Starlight tried to speak but Ghost finished her thought.

“Long gone. Just a memory now.”

“What do you mean by the other me though?” Starlight asked, her nerves still getting the better of her, causing her to grip her flashlight tightly.

“The first question of many on your path, yours is a unique journey, Starlight Glimmer... Sadly, I can not help you with information, as I’ve only come to do two things...” Ghost replied.

Starlight couldn’t deny that she was a bit annoyed at how cryptic this woman was being, even refusing to show her face.

“Which are?”

“The first is to tell you that your fate is intertwined with Angel’s. Her journey will be yours as well; see her safely to wherever she goes, or you may find yourself in quite a bind...” Ghost explained.

“That sounds like a threat...” Starlight frowned.

“Consider it a warning.” Ghost shrugged.

“What was the second thing then?” Starlight curiously asked.

Ghost stood up straight and her hand glowed red, she took a few steps forward only for Starlight to step back. Starlight continued to retreat backward until her back was to the wall. Gulping as Ghost closed the distance between the two carefully, her glowing hand approaching Starlight’s forehead, causing the girl to panic.

“To awaken the magic potential in you...” Ghost said.

“Magic... Potential?” Starlight blinked as the hand clasped her forehead and squeezed lightly.

A sharp pain ran through Starlight’s body before Ghost released her. She tumbled backward and landed on her rear, rubbing her forehead. When the woman opened her eyes, she could definitely feel something was different about her, new knowledge had been placed into her brain that wasn’t there before. Suddenly, the concept of magic seemed to make complete sense to her, and she knew how to conjure it if she wanted.

She gasped and looked down to her hands in shock, wondering how a person could simply go from not knowing to knowing something in a matter of seconds with no memory of having learned it.

“You’ve had your power awakened... Now...” Ghost stood back and adjusted her stance into a fighting one. Starlight only blinked as she helped herself up. “Let’s see you use it...”

“Huh?” Starlight asked.

Without getting an answer, Ghost took a swing at Starlight, her mighty fist connecting with the girl’s cheek, knocking her to the side. Starlight caught herself on the nightstand in the room and pulled herself back to a stand. Ghost took another swing, but this time, Starlight moved back just getting out of the way and swirling around the woman to get behind her.

Ghost responded quickly by turning around and throwing another punch which Starlight blocked with her hand. The strike on her palm caused her pain, but Ghost’s hands began to course electricity, shocking Starlight, and forcing her to let go of the blocked fist and step backward.

Chuckling, Ghost casually walked toward the door of the room as Starlight stood back, trying to go into defensive mode in her mind.

Opening the door, Ghost reached into the hall and retrieved a long object before shutting the door. That object appeared to be a shovel that she must have brought in from outside while Starlight was exploring the second floor. “You’ve got to be shitting me...” Starlight blinked as she saw the masked lady wield the shovel, balancing it over her shoulder.

Without warning, the woman swung the metal took at Starlight, who jumped out of the way. “You’re fucking crazy!” Starlight shouted.

“Come on, fight me!” Ghost commanded as she took another swing.

This time, Starlight saw nowhere to run, no time to stop the weapon from hitting her. She closed her eyes and held her breath, holding out her hands as she willed for it to stop. She could feel magic coursing through her entire body as her breath was held and sure enough, the shovel stopped.

Starlight opened her eyes with her breath still held, amazed at what she saw. Everything in the entire room had frozen, held perfectly still. She had done it! She had stopped time itself.

A few more seconds passed, however, and Starlight released her held breath, causing time to continue moving. Ghost’s mighty shovel came crashing down, hitting the floor. From Ghost’s perspective, Starlight would have appeared to have teleported from one spot in the room to another.

“Not bad, but I do have to know... Can you dig this!?” Ghost asked taking another swing at her.

Once again taking and holding a breath Starlight paused time to get out of the way before breathing again to resume time, and missing the shovel.

Ghost laughed as she swung once more toward her, and Starlight repeated the process. This time, though, once she had taken a breath again, Ghost was already coming right at her before she could take another breath. With her booted foot, she kicked Starlight in the chest, knocking her backward and onto the ground. She held up her shovel looking down at the girl with the bladed end pointing at Starlight. “You’ll never win a fight acting defensively.”

Starlight took in a breath and used the temporary pause to get out from under the potentially life-threatening attack and scramble to safety.

Noticing that her prey escaped, Ghost hoisted the shovel up and rested it over her shoulder. “To win, one must strike. Your power is limited, especially now.”

Ghost took another swipe with the shovel at Starlight, again she used her newfound power to avoid the attack, but was starting to notice a shortness of breath in herself, and a headache coming on.

“Eight seconds at a time is all you can manage to use to manipulate time... You also may have noticed it doesn’t work if you’re not holding your breath...” Ghost explained as she tried a downward slice with the shovel, Starlight repeating the same routine, and the tool instead came down hitting the bed in the room and bouncing back.

Ghost didn’t seem the slightest bit annoyed, nor did she seem upset over Starlight’s constant dodging, instead she chose to mock her. “At your novice level and such a potent power, you are not being very wise. The more you use your power, the more strain it puts on your mind and body, that’s why you’re getting a headache now.”

The woman was right, Starlight’s head was throbbing, and the pain only seemed to grow every time she used her power, but it was all she had to avoid becoming a mess on the floor.

Another swing of the shovel and Starlight paused time once more to get out of the way, but fell backward, gripping her head as she did.

“You’re not being smart about how you use your power. How is one supposed to win if they don’t strike? Waste all your time on the defensive and you’ll burn through your power before you have a chance to do anything,” Ghost lectured.

Starlight tried to fight through the pain, she peered around the room for anything she could use to help herself, anything at all. Her eyes landed on a screwdriver sitting on an old chair on the other side of the room. She would need to reposition herself, grab it and come at Ghost with one more time stop to deliver a killing blow.

Standing, though with a wobble at first, Starlight readied for another attack. This time when the shovel came at her, she jumped out of the way and rolled to the other side of the room. Snapping up the screwdriver in her right hand, she quickly held her breath and lunged forward, piercing the sharp end through Ghost’s abdomen. The weapon pushed through the soft flesh with ease, causing Starlight to release her breath and fall backward with an unspeakable headache.

Ghost looked down at the wound and gripped the screwdriver in her left hand. With a quick tug, she released herself from it, not a drop of blood on her. She laughed and nodded. “Not bad, though you can’t kill what’s not there, can you? Still, I admire your effort... Learn to use your power properly and you may live long enough to see what the journey that you and Angel are about to embark on has in store for you.”

Starlight panted as she sat there on the ground, her head aching more than it ever had in her entire life. “W-what is all of this for?” Starlight panted.

Ghost leaned down to the girl’s level, she placed a hand upon her shoulder. “Patience, kid. It’ll all make sense in the end, for now, you should get some rest... We’ll meet again, I’m sure.”

With those words, Starlight closed her eyes and drifted off, eager to recover from exerting herself too much. In the back of her mind, the only thought she had was hoping that Angel was alright.

We are approaching Act VI, which should kick off sometime after the final season of MLP airs.

There will be a few intermissions this time before Act VI starts though, as there's some set up before we get to the next part of this epic. Can you believe we're almost to the final act?