I was falling through the darkness when He grabbed me again. He always grabbed me. My tail was yanked taut and I was thrown upwards by it. I tumbled end-over-end and saw Him spiral after me. His snake-like back was lined with pumping pistons. Each piston was heavily-greased with black oil. Mismatched hood ornaments were bolted above the glowing red eyes that exposed the diesel engine burning inside. Black, sticky plumes of smoke trailed from exhaust ports.

When gravity caught back up with me I was right-side up again. Just in time to see His jaw lined with red-hot teeth stretch out beneath me. Fire bloomed from deep inside His combustion engine and I fell through the flames and inside of him.

My fur singed. I clipped spinning wheels and smashed into shifting gears in the suffocating darkness. I was scared but I knew this wasn’t the end. The fumes smothered my breath. Just as the teeth of tumbling blackness began sinking into me I fell out of the exhaust and back into the less cloying blackness. I passed through, beaten and scorched, like all the other times He swallowed me. His mass turned down and saw me falling again towards the black nothingness He denied me. His engines revved like overmodulated laughter.

“What’s wrong, My Little Pony™?” scraped the mechanical monster. He spiraled down after me in the darkness. ”Are you broken? Is it time to throw my toy away?”

It was pointless to give him an answer. It didn’t matter what I said. He was the one in control here. I was powerless. I had always been powerless. So instead I just watched Him fall after me. His red-hot iron face approached and I could feel the heat radiating off of Him. I saw through His eyes the engine revving inside again and the choking black smoke building. He would swallow me again and I would come out the other end again. An endless cycle of death and rebirth for amusement.

His mouth opened again and I saw the fire inside the beast. In the burning light I saw His insides were a forever changing kaleidoscope of pistons, blades and gears.

But as I was looking up at Him I saw another light in the ‘sky’ this time. It was soft, white and pocked with craters. Like a moon. There wasn’t supposed to be light here. I gazed at it, trying to understand until it spoke.

“How darest thou defile our domain!” it roared through the darkness. The serpent stopped chasing me mid-fall and His expression changed into confusion as He looked up at the moon.

As I fell away, I saw specks of distant light appear in the black. First just a few pin pricks around the moon and then they started fading in all around me. It was like a sun had set and all the stars had come out to play. I looked down at where I was falling and saw the arms to a spiral galaxy spread out in all directions. The stars were so densely packed together they looked like white sand on the edge of a black ocean.

I was startled by a thunderous, universe-ending bang and looked back up at the moon. The moon was gone and in its place a hole to a different, blue universe was blown through the fabric of space. From the puncture wound cracks spidered throughout the universe like it was made of glass.

“Thou thinkest thyself a conjurer of nightmares?! We shall show thee a NIGHTMARE!”

Something exploded like a blue sun right in front of my tormentor and pierced straight through His metal hide. He squirmed on that light like a worm impaled on a hook, but where that sun exploded was now a black hole, wearing the light of a moon and radiating two tears in the fabric of space. The beam of light coming from it radiated right past infinity.

“BEGONE STAIN! Thou hast no longer power here!” came the words from that force of nature. I saw the furnace inside the dragon extinguish from the light and the dragon shook violently before that black hole tore through it and swallowed everything around in another explosion that made the stars flicker and cracks in the universe spread further.

I sat up on an invisible ground, trying to find evidence above me of what just happened. I didn’t have to look far though, because another tear in the universe grew in front of me. It stretched up from my ‘ground’ past my sight. It flickered madly like the universe around us was a ripped flag caught in a hurricane. Through the tear I could see another universe bathed in a deep blue light.

While I watched the tear dance, I realized it was two. I looked at where the tears in space met at the ‘ground’ in front of me and realized there was an entity standing there. The rips in the fabric of space billowed out from her.

The tears in the fabric of the universe were her mane and her tail. Her finely-detailed battle armor, from her helmet past her chestplate and to her shoes, was polished silver that glowed like the aura to the moon. In contrast, the body underneath the armor wasn’t black as much as no light escaped it. I could only tell she had a long, black horn because it was visible against her embossed helmet and her cosmic mane whipping around it. Her black wings stretched out impossibly beyond the horizons and eclipsed the stars. She took one step towards me and immediately towered over me; she was incomprehensibly large.

I looked up at her and I couldn’t process her face; my mind wouldn’t let me. The only thing I was sure of was that she was looking right at me. Her smile revealed a mouth lined with teeth too sharp to be real. The eyes within her helmet were the most terrifying part of all though. They were the brightest things I had ever seen. Like twin supernovas burning straight through my vision. I couldn’t look away as much as once I saw them I couldn’t see anything else.

She was impossibly beautiful and utterly terrifying.

“We knew where thou wert and yet thou wert still a difficult mare to find! It is an honor for us to meet thee, Berryshine!” she boomed casually, her words echoing like we were in a great hall.

“Wha… ha?” I stuttered, terrified of her beyond comprehension. She was talking to me. I think she even said my name. She looked at me expectantly and then I saw the astronomic light to her eyes widen for a moment and then flicker.

“Pardon, Royal Canterlot Voice,” she apologized, sounding quieter and no longer echoing.

I stared up at her, an appreciable fear of something beyond me keeping me in place. After what felt like too long, there was a rumble and she started talking again like she just cleared her throat.

“That stain, your tormentor… has been dispelled! I shall be your only nightmare from now on!” she announced with a terrifying smile.

“You…” I found how to work my tongue again. “...you killed Discord.”

“No. That... was not Discord. That was a stain left behind by your curse after it expired. Normally when magic ends, it’s released harmlessly back into the world. When chaos magic runs its course however, its release infects the world …but you withdrew from the world many years ago, didn’t you? I recognized the expanse I crossed to reach you; this darkness... when Discord’s curse was undone it didn’t find the world. It found you alone, here,” she explained as she gestured to me and the blackness with a hoof that came too close for comfort. “Berryshine, just as the stars in the sky, we cannot shine alone in the darkness. Do you understand?”

I didn’t fully at the time but I was too scared to say so. My gaze couldn’t escape her. I was becoming aware though, that the cracks that formed from when she exploded and then she exploded again were growing larger. Shards of the starry sky were already raining down around us. She seemed either unfazed by them or didn’t notice. She seemed to take my silence as quiet contemplation.

“Be lost no more, Berryshine! It is time to return to your place in the sky. Even now, your friends come for you! I have removed the stain from you. It is time to heal!” she proclaimed, with some theatrical drama to her voice. After another silence she seemed to tilt her head. “...nod if you understand?”

I heard ‘nod’ and obeyed. She seemed satisfied with that and her expression changed into a more determined one.

“Very well then! Berryshine, you must listen carefully: when your friends come, you will be strong,” she commanded, not with force or threat but as if her words made it so. “And when they rescue you, you will be alert. So...” The supernovas that were her eyes grew closer. I began panicking; I thought my mind was going to burn from the light and power growing near me. Her wings, blacker than oblivion, swallowed me up as the sight was drowned out by those eyes as they spoke to me. “...wake up.”

My eyes jolted open.

I was in the back of a van still, like the last few times I woke up. A blanket was still thrown over my cage and kept me in twilight. I wasn’t sure what time it was. All I knew was night had happened and now it was daytime again. It felt like I had been drifting in and out of consciousness for a while now. Almost every time I dreamed it had been about that same monster.

Nightmare Moon was new though. She seemed real and terrifying; like my last memory of Equestria. I replayed the dream over in my head; she was the clearest and easiest part to remember. Her words were too good to be true. I didn’t understand how my friends were going to rescue me. Even I didn’t know where I was.

Instinctively I tried to sit up but my legs were still tied together. At least the choke collar was left back at the shed. I put my head back down and sighed. After a moment of silently just breathing I became aware of just how easy it was again. Either I grew so used to how the fuel and oil tasted I couldn’t taste it anymore or it was gone. I could breathe deeply again without coughing.

With it so much easier to breath now, I realized the way the old fuel burned and choked me was really similar to the way I felt when that diesel dragon kept swallowing me. That made that dragon seem a lot less intimidating.

Following that reasoning, I wondered if the way the monster’s insides knocked me around was just from the way the humans had handled me after they caught me again. Like my breathing, the bruises from that already seemed to be on their way out too. Those humans weren’t gentle either: they were furious that Carrot Top got away. A rebellious smirk formed under the restraint on my muzzle.

But that smirk slowly died when I reminded myself they used my phone to find the homestead and capture us in the first place. At least I was able to help Carrot Top get away. She was a good pony so I knew she would get back and find our friends. She would find Ruby. I just hoped they weren’t actually going to try to rescue me. I didn’t want my precious friends anywhere near these humans. A pony couldn’t ‘deserve’ to be rescued anyway, right, Carrot Top?

...admittedly, that wasn’t what she meant when she threw that word back at me. I did get it. She was saying it wasn’t about getting what we deserve or receiving things we don’t but giving what we have. Everything is a gift; gifts are given. By that logic, I used myself to ‘gift’ Carrot Top an escape. But, the bucked up part was I think subconsciously I didn’t want to get away anyway, like I was punishing myself or thinking I didn’t deserve to escape. I had a feeling if Carrot Top knew that she would have said I didn’t ‘deserve’ that kind of punishment either. ...probably after she pet my mane and called me a silly pony again.

I was a silly pony too. I was self-destructive. I was finally starting to see the consequence of that too. In the post-clarity of finally getting what I wanted, a noble sacrifice or an almost selfless ‘suicide’… it tasted bitter. It was sobering even.

Now that I finally didn’t see a real way out, I wanted one.

I thought about all the ways I could have avoided all this. If I hadn’t been drunk maybe Carrot and I could have both gotten away. Maybe if I wasn’t such an alcoholic when we were turning back into ponies things would have gone smoother. Maybe if I didn’t use Nathan one more time, my friends and I would still all be safe somewhere together. Maybe if I had been a better roommate I wouldn’t have had to leave. Maybe if I didn’t bring vices into ‘home’ I could have stayed with Ruby there. The alcohol wasn’t to blame either, of course. I wronged them. I could probably make a longer list of people I wronged if I went back further too. Maybe even before “Brian” and before my memory picks up.

Thinking of all the mistakes I had made made me feel terrible. And it hurt a little knowing my friends would forgive them too. They were good ponies, too good for me. Nathan was a good pony too. But just because they forgave me didn’t seem like enough. I didn’t see how I could ‘just forgive myself’. That seemed cheap. Does righting wrongs make them forgivable? Can all wrongs be righted? Is it just the attempt that’s important? I didn’t really know a lot about morality and sins and higher powers. Not like Carrot Top. She seemed so familiar with them she was sick of them.

If Carrot was right and the world was a dark and cold place... then I wished I could set it on fire. For my friends’ sake. For the harm I caused, if I could make everything right and give everything I had, whatever the right way to do that was, ...if I could metaphorically burn for just a little more warmth in the world... ...I wondered if that would make things seem right. I wondered if I could forgive myself then. I wondered if it was right to even ‘gift’ yourself something like that. Maybe I was just being a silly pony.

I had a long time to think riding in the back of the van. I thought about my friends a lot. My Ruby. I wondered about what would happen to me. I wondered if seeing Nightmare Moon in a dream meant Princess Luna was somewhere on Earth. I wondered if she got here the same way all of us did. I wondered if my friends were really coming to save me. I wondered why, if Princess Luna was so powerful and could find me in a dream, why she couldn’t rescue me herself.

My thoughts even drifted to my human mother. I thought about Mom and whether she ‘deserved’ what she got. Maybe not. She was insufferable and I didn’t like her. If everything was a gift like Carrot Top said, then I gifted her a terrible son. And as an added bonus I strained her relationship with her daughter. I even took her daughter, who was mine first. Mom had meant no harm though. Even if harm was what she ‘gifted’ me. If I ever saw her again though, I wished I could apologize to her for being so awful. Whether she would accept that ‘gift’ didn’t matter. Maybe Mom didn’t deserve it but I wanted to apologize anyway. Just like how I wanted to apologize to Nathan. I wouldn’t ask them to forgive me though. After all, I apparently couldn’t deserve it.

I noticed the van I was riding in slowed down and started making stops. I listened closely but I couldn’t ever hear anything. There were just a lot of stops and some turns. There wasn’t really a lot of noise beyond the drone of the van’s wheels.

Pretty soon I didn’t have to wonder where I was though. The vehicle started crunching slowly over gravel and rolled to a final stop before the engine was shut off. There was talking inside the van and then outside and finally they came around to open the back hatch. My covering was thrown off and I could see an overcast sky past the humans and I could smell fresh air again.

“...yeeaah, Marcus might want her. He’s not coming by today though,” came someone new above me. I didn’t even bother looking at this new human. If his face mattered I would be seeing it more.

“What? The fuck did I come up here so god damn early then?” came a more familiar one. That human was “Bill”.

“I don’t know. Why did you?” the new voice calmly questioned. “Didn’t you see Spectrum outbid Marcus for the pegasus?”

“No! When the hell was this?”

“...do you have one of these?” asked the new human.

“...a composition book?”

“Oh. So you don’t. Well, this is how the big guys are communicating,” the new person explained.

Curiosity got the best of me and I looked up at what was going on. The newer human, sporting a short trimmed beard and wearing a polo and jeans with a holstered gun on his side, was showing off an old school composition book with a black and white speckled cover. It looked worn and stained and the pages were dog-earred in several places.

“You’re... writing each other letters?”

“...Something like that. Don’t worry about it,” the guy with the book dismissed. “Tell you what...” he started what sounded like a deal. “...I’ll buy the pony off you right now and have Marcus come by later. I got the money in my car.” He patted Bill on the shoulder and led him away. “Buck, take her inside,” the guy making the deal called out.

Someone approached the back of the van with a height-adjustable dolly. The person, Buck apparently, pulled my cage onto it and wheeled me towards a metal-sided workshop. I was hog-tied up still, but I squirmed upright to still get a look around at my surroundings. All I could tell was that I was just in a different nowhere now. All I saw was trees, some fences and a house.

Once inside the workshop I took that in too. It was decorated with typical workshop and garage clutter. I eyed the canisters and bottles warily until my gaze fell on something far more interesting: a pegasus.

My cage was wheeled over next to hers. Her coat was pastel lavender and her mane and tail were amber and yellow. Her long wings restrained to her side flexed slightly under the sleeve they were pinned under. Her cutie mark was a sun behind a white cloud.

And there was something red in her mouth. ...a ball gag. We made eye contact with each other. Her irises were a bit like mine but cloudier. She gave me a good humored wink, probably because she saw that I was looking at the ball gag. I think she was trying to grin around the mouth restraint. She said something too but it was completely muffled by the ball.

Buck lowered my cage and slid it off next to hers. I think Buck went to put up the dolly. I didn’t pay attention to him; I was more interested in my fellow inmate. She was trying to talk normally but I couldn’t make out anything beyond how many syllables and how much drool she was making. She seemed either oblivious to our dire situation or extremely cocky because she seemed indifferent to her restraints.

My eyes drifted back over her wings. Even wrapped up like that, they looked impressive. They looked larger than in the show and I wondered just how large they were when open and if she could actually fly.

While I was looking at how her feathers met her coat a hoof waved in front of where I was looking. I followed the hoof back up to her face where she pointed it at her eyes. She raised an eyebrow at me, apparently amused that I was staring.

“Sorry,” I muffled an apology under my lesser restraint. I gestured at her wings, trying not to stare this time. “C’n you r’lly fly?”

She nodded proudly and sat down on her haunches. Then she started miming something out with her hooves: she pointed at herself with one hoof and held that out. Then she brought her other forehoof from afar and rested it next to the one already held out. She reasserted she had two forehooves and then the second forehoof seemed to fly away again. I took the signing to mean ‘there was another one of us but they flew away’. I silently nodded that I understood.

Encouraged by our communication, she then pointed at the side of her cutie mark, the cloud part. Then she stood back up and bucked out behind her. Then she pointed at herself. Apparently she could tell I didn’t understand this one because she repeated the gesture and pointed at herself rapidly. The whole time she was still talking around that gag.

“...your n’me?” I asked. She nodded quickly. “Oh! You’re... Cl’ud Kicker?” I didn’t have a ton of pony names in my head, but that one stuck out to me. I wasn’t sure where I had heard it before though.

She nodded, gave me a salute and said something more. Satisfied, she pointed at me now and cocked her head. She said something that ended like a question.

“I’m B’rry Punch,” I introduced myself. Cloud Kicker smiled and mouthed something else around her ball. I thought it was odd the human had used a literal sex toy to keep her quiet but I figured they had just used what they had to solve a problem. I wondered why she kept trying to talk if she knew I couldn’t understand her.

Cloud Kicker sat back down and started miming again: She pointed at herself and held out that hoof. Then the other hoof came flying in again, the other pegasus, I presumed. She put the hoof that was ‘her’ down and showed me the hoof that represented the other pegasus. She said something slowly and deliberately. It was three syllables but I shook my head.

“I c’n’t underst’nd you,” I admitted. She snorted and then tried miming it out. She did a gesture that looked like a slow explosion or something coming apart and then stomped her hoof four times. I shook my head and she did it a few more times, a little differently every time. “Boomst’mp? ‘xplos’on Hoof? ...B’rth F’r?” I wasn’t getting it. I understood it was a name but I really didn’t know a lot of pony names. “...F’rth ‘f July?”

The guy who had made a deal with my driver earlier walked into the shed, looked at us then turned to Buck, who was standing guard. “Are they playing charades?” he asked Buck. Buck looked up from his phone and shrugged.

After she noticed the dealer, Cloud Kicker abruptly ended whatever she was trying to tell me. Instead she jumped to banging on her cage and jabbing a hoof at the dealer. She looked at me, to make sure I was looking. I looked at the person she was reacting to.

Frankly, he only looked slightly more intimidating than a typical middle-aged dad. He gave Cloud Kicker an annoyed look before he walked over to his workbench and sat that composition book down. Cloud Kicker started kicking and gesturing more. She locked eyes with me and then pointed at that workbench. She continued to point and look at me. When she was sure I was looking at her again she sat back down onto her haunches and put her forehooves together. She hinged them away from each other so that the bottom of her hooves were facing her face. With the context I knew what she was signing: the book. With her eyes she asked me ‘Do you understand?’

I nodded. For some reason that notebook was important to her.

“Anyway, that’s taken care of,” the dealer said to Buck. “You ready to move ‘Kicks?”

Buck sighed before he spoke. “Yeeaah, I guess. Not looking forward to that drive.”

“It’s your turn,” the dealer replied with a shrug. “Go get the boys. Bill was saying this one’s trouble.” He gestured towards me.

“You’d think with how much they’re paying for her they’d just come and get her,” Buck complained but left anyway to apparently get the others. He headed towards the direction of the house.

“Yeah, well, you know what they say: don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” the dealer said as he chuckled to himself. I heard Buck groan as he went out of earshot. The guy in charge making dad jokes stepped right outside the roll-up door and lit up a cigarette. I could tell he stepped out to smoke because when the initial whiff of the butane flame burning the cigarette hit me I almost gagged. It reminded me too much of the fumes I had been tasting for over the past day. I really didn’t want a cigarette anymore.

Well okay, maybe if I used matches.

The cage next to mine rattled again. I turned to look back at Cloud Kicker. Her demeanor was more serious now. She pointed and I looked to see she was still pointing at the notebook on the workbench. I looked back at her. She pointed at me.

“How?” I asked, hog-tied in my own cage. I understood she wanted me to get it but my position was just as bad as hers.

She mimed sleeping on a hoof and then gestured out a large… something with her hooves. Then she saluted again, but not at me, but at the large something that wasn’t there. Any other day I wouldn’t have got it, but I couldn’t forget her size in my dream.

“...Pr’nc’ss Lun’? You s’w h’r?” I asked. She nodded, pointed at me and then mimed sleeping again. My guess was she wanted me to sleep and ask Princess Luna for help. I wondered if the princess could actually help us. I figured if Princess Luna could affect the waking world she would have already rescued us. Unfortunately, there was no way I could sleep right now anyway. I had been drifting in and out of sleep for days now and I was now more alert and sober than I had been for quite a while. “I‘m... not tired,” I explained.

The lavender pegasus let out a heavy, defeated sigh but nodded. She rested her head against her cage wall. Feeling guilty, I shifted my body over and over again until I managed to shift myself across my cage floor closer to her. All my commotion made her look back down at me. I looked up at her. I’d have offered a hoof but they were all tied together.

We were so close and yet we couldn’t help each other.

“....wh’t’s your fr’nd’s n’me ‘g’n?” I asked her. At first she didn’t move but then she lifted her head off the cage’s side and went through the gesturing again: One hoof to the ground… slowly moving up. And then… a slow explosion? An opening? A flower? She struck the ground four times.

“...Fl’w’rf’r? ...Clov’r?” I guessed. She smiled weakly, shrugged and nodded. She didn’t act like I got it though. She drooled some words that I couldn’t make out. There was a lull in our ‘conversation’ again so I decided it was my turn to share again. “M’ d’ght’r n’me ‘s Ruby P’nch.”

She smiled a little more easily and nodded. She said something around that ball that was two syllables. It had the cadence of ‘I know’. I thought maybe she was a brony as a human.

I heard the dealer mercifully stomp out the remains of his cigarette. I looked over to him to see Buck had come back with two other men.

“Alright, let’s load this bitch up!” one of the new guys cheered. He had a curly beard and short faded hair. He also had a fresh bandage on his nose.

“Already excited to get rid of your new girlfriend?” the other guy snarked. He had olive skin and slick, black hair.

“Fuck you, Ants,” the bandaged-nose man quipped back good-naturedly. “We’re getting paid today.”

The dealer began making a phone call while Buck backed up a red, expensive-looking SUV to the roll-up door. The most noteworthy thing about it to me was the Iowa license plate.

The other two men got the raisable dolly and came over for Cloud Kicker. We looked at each other while they loaded her onto it. They raised the dolley up and put my new pony acquaintance into the back of the vehicle. I watched helplessly as they strapped her cage in. Cloud Kicker gave me one last flirtatious wink as her cage disappeared under a camo sleeping bag and they shut the back hatch.

Then the vehicle drove off and I was alone with the remaining humans. The two new humans and the apparent boss discussed plans. They were saying something about guns and about someone coming to look at me. I hardly paid attention, already missing the pony I had just met. One of them got out rifles and loaded one with large metal darts he was pulling out of what looked like a tackle box.

“Hey, you hungry?” the guy in charge spoke near me. I looked up at him and saw he was talking to me. He had an air of confidence but otherwise he still seemed unremarkable. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had a wife and adult children. Hesitantly, I nodded to his question. I was pretty hungry.

“Vern, go get her some food and water,” he ordered one of his partners in crime before looking back at me. “If you’re a good girl we’ll take that rope off you too. It’s not like you’re getting away, I got enough tranqs to drop a whole herd.”

Vern had obediently wandered off in the direction of the house while “Ants” and the boss stayed in the shed and made idle chatter. Everyone was a few decades younger than the man in charge but unless they were adopted I didn’t think they were related. They didn’t even talk like each other.

Their conversation was just background noise to me though: I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to hear these humans talk over me like I was just an animal. I listened for anything else. Something outside to latch onto. Birds. Trees rustling.

While I was listening for anything else besides the humans talking, my ears swiveled to a distant sound: gravel was being crunched like a car was driving over it. At first I thought it was Buck coming back with Cloud Kicker but it was slower. I looked up at the humans who didn’t seem to notice the noise. I wondered just how good my ears were or just how involved they were in talking about hunting or whatever. Just as I was starting to think they would surely hear it, the sound stopped. My ears rotated and searched for where the sound went but it was gone. I started to wonder if I even heard it. I laid quietly in my cage for a little longer waiting for it to return.

Ants stepped outside and fidgeted with his pockets like he was searching for his smokes but stopped when he looked up and spotted something. Ants looked slightly spooked as he stepped back into the workshop and picked up one of the rifles.

“Hey, is, uh, is Marcus already here?” Ants asked.

“What? No. He’s an hour out,” the dealer said.

“A’ight. Well, uh, you know anybody who drives a Fusion?” Ants asked the dealer. The dealer was already unholstering the handgun from his side; he apparently didn’t.

But I did.

“Alright! Hands up!” shouted a beautiful, little voice.

We all turned to the tiny pink unicorn standing in the workshop’s bay door. Her little horn blazed that wonderful green color. It was unmistakable who it was. She was even wearing that pocketwatch around her neck still. But I couldn’t understand how she could be here. This was impossible.

“Ruby?” I asked the world if my eyes were deceiving me. I tried to stand up but forgot about the rope and fell flat on my face.

Ants raised his rifle at her but before he could do anything with it, it was yanked from his hands by a green aura and tossed behind my daughter like she was tearing off a band aid. Ruby learned magic?

“Woah there, little missy!” The dealer growled. His handgun was aimed at my daughter.

“I want my mom!” Ruby demanded with a slight voice crack. She stepped into the workshop. Ants, unarmed now, took a step back from my daughter. Her green magic was swirling around her horn like a tornado. I had never seen the glow around Comet’s or Minuette’s horn that violent-looking. It was so violent, I thought it was making the ends of my normally-dull hooves tingle. It was like I could sense the magic was doing something.

The dealer didn’t back down from this display though. He continued pointing his gun at her. “There aren’t tranqs in this gun; there’s bullets. I could drop you right now,” he warned my daughter.

“You bucking won’t!” I shouted as I tried to throw myself against my cage door. I couldn’t break out of course; it was double-locked and my hooves were literally tied.

The dealer nodded over to me. “Is that your Mom over there then? Tell you what: I’ll put you in there with her and sell you as a set. ‘cause she’s not going anywhere.”

“No. We are,” my brave little filly clarified. There was a slight tremor to her voice now but her green aura didn’t waver. Instead I saw a rifle float into the workshop in her magic.

The dealer still didn’t seem concerned. “Cute but that’s not going to work. There’s only tranquilizers in th- who are you?!” he demanded from someone else who had just stepped into view outside. The human stepped into the workshop.

“N’th’n!” I shouted in disbelief. My friend Nathan stepped in, another rifle in his hands, pointed vaguely at the dealer. He seemed to struggle to hold the gun completely upright, as one of his forearms was in a cast. Nathan looked at me and gave a hopeful smile before looking warily back at the armed man in front of him.

A tear slid down my face as I took in my beautiful friends. This was so surreal I worried I was dreaming, but this was real. Princess Luna said my friends were coming to save me, but of all the people I expected a rescue from, I didn’t imagine it would be these two. I was so happy it was though.

My incredible little filly stepped closer to the dealer. The rifle in her magical field floated next to her side. I saw Ants take several more steps back; he was clearly intimidated now.

As I took in the sight of my filly, I could make out something was off with her beautiful eyes: they looked bloodshot. Her hooves were dirty as well and I spotted a tremor to her legs. The tremor was either her badly hiding fear or she was as tired as she looked. It was an off-putting state for someone who looked her age. But she wasn’t her age. This was the person I grew up with as a human. The person who was as motivated and clever and beautiful. And she was still all those things, even in that body and especially in that moment.

“So you got Vern’s rifle too,” the dealer grumbled as he held his ground. “I’m guessing he’s knocked out though. Because there’s just tranqs in that rifle too. Like I was saying, all you have are tranqs! I’m the only one here with actual bullets!”

The gentleness I saw earlier in this man seemed to be boiling off. His expression was soured and agitated now. After some thought he raised his gun to point it at Nathan. Nathan froze like a deer in headlights.

“Now you’re getting it. Bad news, boy: I don’t need a human. And your friends don’t need a dead body to drag out of here,” he threatened. “Put down the rifles and give up or I put a bullet in you.”

“You can’t shoot him,” my daughter stated, oddly matter-of-factly, as her magic continued to swirl around her horn.

“Oh, I will. I have friends who can get rid of a body no problem. You got three seconds,” he warned.

“I didn’t say you would. I said you can’t,” my daughter clarified with a slightly smug smile.

The dealer stared Nathan down and rechecked his aim. The dealer’s arm then shook. Far more than three seconds passed but he didn’t fire. Sweat started to form on his brow and the man’s expression changed to confusion then anger. He stared daggers at my daughter. “What did you do to me?!” he snarled.

“My special talent is minerals,” Ruby explained. She tilted her head slightly forward to aim her horn more squarely at him. The way the glow of her horn reflected in her eyes made her look wild as she spoke. “Do you know what your bones are made of?”

The dealer’s anger abruptly cut to surprise as his arm bent and the barrel of his gun still in his hand lined up underneath his chin. His arm shook like it was fighting something.

“Wha-what the fuck??” the man being held hostage by himself shouted in confusion. I saw his other arm raise halfway up to help his first but suddenly freeze up. Ruby visibly jerked as his other arm was forced back to his side.

“You aren’t in control here,” Ruby informed the man pinned in place. The room suddenly felt a lot hotter. By the time the light bulbs above us were practically suns I realized they were growing brighter. The bulbs hummed loudly and that hum grew higher-pitched until it crescendoed with the light. I saw fear in the dealer’s eyes. There was a blinding bang as the bulbs above exploded. The workshop was thrown into shadows as glass pelted the floor.

Ants screamed and covered his head.

The only light now was coming from the overcast sky outside and Ruby’s magic. Her green magical aura still swirled around her horn. The same glow was on the rifle next to her. Now in the dark though, I could just make out a slight glow coming from inside the man’s bare arms as well. The dealer's eyes grew wide. He seemed to be shaking and sweating.

“I don’t need bullets,” my daughter pointed out needlessly.

There was a slight click and a thump as the rifle in Ruby’s grasp fired and hit the dealer square in the chest. The bolt slid back on her rifle then forward again. I heard another click and thump repeated. Two metal darts were now sticking out of the dealer’s chest. After several seconds I saw the man still being held at gunpoint with his own gun go dizzy. I saw Ruby visibly relax as she seemed to let his body just thud to the floor.

She approached the downed body cautiously and carefully unthreaded the gun from his hand with her magic. She then chucked it out into the grass outside before she turned her attention to the other human standing between her and me.

“Where are the keys to Mom’s cage?” she asked Ants, who was now cowering in fear at the back of the workshop from my little savior.

“I-in his pocket!” he exclaimed and pointed at his downed boss.

“Get Mom out,” she ordered. Ants didn’t have to be told twice. He clambered over to the dealer and fished a set of keys out of his pocket. He hurried over to me and started fumbling with the keys. With the pressure and fear still in him, he got the first padlock off and then the second one around the door hinge.

My cage came open and I let him reach around behind my head. I heard a click and the restraint around my muzzle slid off. I tested how wide my jaw could open again while Ants shakily undid the knot of rope around my legs. To my surprise when the rope finally went loose instead of letting me kick it off, he removed it and started pulling me out of the cage before I could even stand up.

“Nathan, shoot him in the torso,” my daughter ordered. Nathan, for his part, only hesitated slightly as he took aim and fired. Ants was startled but once the dart went in him he fell back and seemed to start rapidly losing interest in getting back up. I wasn’t interested in Ants though.

My daughters’ eyes met mine and in a heartbeat I closed the distance between us. I pulled her into my embrace and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to let her go. She was soft, warm and real. This was real. She did it. They did it. I was free.

I thought I was going to cry but a dam broke in my pink filly and she started crying into my chest first. My daughter shivered so I held her even tighter and nuzzled her mane. She smelled like... a muddy playground in a thunderstorm. Her smell and her warmth only calmed me.

It sounds inappropriate to say her crying made me feel better, but it did. When she was like this everything seemed simpler and more possible because then I had only one priority: I needed to hold her and I would be strong for her.

Wonder what's the story with Princess Luna?
If you're curious, the intent is that this is more or less the same Luna as the one found in Lunar Phases.

Please go read it if you're curious how her story begins!