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Heart of Loyalty

by PonyAmorous

Chapter 15: Chapter 14

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Chapter 14

Twilight stepped out into the endless field of stars, trying her best not to stare too hard into the naked face of infinity. Looking down was another action she tried to avoid. Despite the lack of anything resembling a surface to support her hooves, she was able to walk normally through the void as if she were simply strolling down a hallway. Concerned that the efficacy of this phenomenon was somehow inversely tied to how much she thought about it, she decided to leave well enough alone.

Instead, she turned her gaze forward, where she was immediately greeted by a rather plain looking door. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the different, but equally nondescript door she had just exited, though this one thrummed with the faint familiar feel of her own magic. To her right and left stretched an endless corridor of similar doors. She peeked around the edge of the one in front of her to see similar stretches of doors in the distance, forming an enormous grid that stretched out of sight in all directions.

Cautiously probing the door in front of her with her magic, Twilight gave a tentative sideways push. Multi-hued rectangles rapidly scrolled past her face like the books of her old tower library if somepony had given the wheeled ladder a firm kick with her still on it. Eventually the sliding stopped, revealing a set of entirely new doors surrounding her. She turned back behind her once again, and with a thought, the entrance back into her own dreams reappeared.

Good, at least I know I can get back easily enough. Now for the tricky part.

Finding the way back to her own dreams was a simple matter, but finding the dreams of a particular pony out of the entire sleeping population of Equestria? The proverbial needle and haystack seemed insufficient. It was like searching for an individual grain of sand on the beach. Fortunately, it helped immensely if she already had a general idea of where the pony in question was in the physical world.

Twilight focused on visualizing her observation post in the thicket where she had settled down to sleep. She imagined a spherical volume around herself with a quarter mile radius, too small to reach into Hoofington, but large enough to encompass any and all ponies in the underground bunker. Her horn tingled as she felt something push out from the tip.

If she had been able to see herself in the physical world, she would have marveled at the ethereal white threads that arced up before diving straight into the ground, passing through earth and solid walls to reach the slumbering ponies below, before fading from sight. Instead, she looked up to see a similar cluster of threads rapidly branching out into the endless dreamscape and attaching themselves to seemingly random doors. When the last of the threads had finally found its destination, Twilight gave a sharp tug with her head.

The multitude of threads grew taut and began reeling back in. Countless unmarked doors shuffled away into the distance to make room for a new set of doors, glowing a faint white and pulled by the rapidly shortening threads. Though a part of her was concerned about how awfully fast the rather solid looking cargo seemed to be approaching, they all came to a sudden stop a few paces in front of her when the threads detached and wound back into her horn. In all, 36 doors stood before her in a neat six by six grid, entrances to the dreams of some mixture of guards, maintenance and service staff, and the “medical expert VIPs” the changeling intelligence reports had mentioned

And somewhere in there is Dash.

Twilight approached the leftmost door in the front row. Now it was just a matter of systematically searching until she found the right one. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Twilight carefully opened the door and stepped inside.

There was a blinding flash of light and a feeling of vertigo. When her vision returned, she found herself standing inside what appeared to be a school classroom. She quickly took a seat at a nearby desk, seeking to blend into the background of the dream as much as possible. It was imperative that she cause as little disturbance as possible if she wanted to minimize the chance of being detected. Non-lucid dreamers tended to be rather inattentive to anything they weren’t directly focusing on, and there was no guarantee what they would actually remember when they woke up, but it was better safe than sorry.

Twilight’s eyes were drawn to a ludicrously oversized pendulum clock that took up the entire forward wall and filled the room with a loud ominous ticking. She looked around at the other ponies in the room. Their features were blurred and indistinct, a literally faceless crowd, with the exception of one pony. A bright pink earth pony mare with short blonde bangs sat hunched over her desk, scribbling furiously with the pencil between her teeth. Letters and numbers were constantly trying to float off the page, forcing her to exert a great deal of effort snatching them out of the air with her hooves and forcing them back down. Her desperate scribbling was further impeded by the occasional tooth falling out of her mouth, causing her to temporarily lose her grip on the pencil until she could pick up the wayward tooth and push it back into place. Another blurred figure, likely an instructor of some kind, approached and began spouting nonsense in a clearly annoyed tone.

“The petunias are orange on a monday!”

“I’m sorry!” The pink mare responded, ears lowering in shame.

“Lizards dance polka in the steam!” the teacher continued, apparently unsatisfied. The pink mare simply scribbled faster.

Whatever was going on here, this clearly wasn’t Rainbow Dash’s dream. Twilight searched for a seam to make her exit. A door to a utility closet in the back of the classroom pulsed faintly with a golden glow. Confirming that the eyeless gazes of everypony else in the room were focused elsewhere, Twilight stood up and made her way to the back of the room. She paused as she reached out to open the door, casting a sympathetic look back to the dreamer.

No! Absolutely not! Don’t even think about it.

But we can’t just leave her like that!

We absolutely can and will. We don’t have the time to stop and play sandmare to everypony we come across. That’s Luna’s responsibility anyway.

Well thanks to us, she’s a bit preoccupied at the moment. We should help.

Why? Why should we help the enemy? She’s works in the bunker where they’re holding Dash. There’s a good chance we’ll be fighting her a couple hours from now.

That doesn’t mean she deserves to suffer. I mean, I don’t know, maybe she’s an evil pony who kicks puppies for fun, but she could just be the technician or the lunch lady who happened to be assigned here and is just trying to do her job. I don’t have any personal grudge against her specifically, and nopony deserves a test dream.

I think you’re just a bit biased on the subject matter.

Probably, but still, I can’t just turn my back on a pony needlessly suffering right in front of me when there’s something I can do about it.

Arrg! Your bleeding heart is going to get us caught!

Pushing aside her doubts, Twilight aimed her horn at the enormous clock. The rapid swing of the pendulum began to slow, setting a much less frantic pace. A lavender tinted transparent bubble of silence formed around the pink mare, blocking out the harsh, unintelligible criticisms of the teacher. Finally, she projected her voice into the bubble as a light whisper.

“Don’t worry, you’ve got this. It’s exactly what you studied for.”

The pink pony shifted to a more relaxed posture as the tension began to visibly drain out of her. The writing grew less frantic, yet more determined, and the letters began to settle themselves back onto the page where they belonged. Twilight gave a satisfied nod to herself and opened the door, stepping back into the star filled dreamscape. It had been a while since she had last been able to help somepony with a problem, friendship related or otherwise. She had missed that feeling.

Well I hope that warm fuzzy feeling is worth risking the success of this entire operation. You’re here for Dash, not to soothe festering self-doubts as to whether you are still, in some abstract sense, a ‘good pony’.

Twilight shook her head clear and approached the second door. Recovering from the bright flash and accompanying dizziness a bit quicker this time, she found herself standing amongst another generic crowd of ponies. They were in some kind of observation booth, clustered around the glass wall that separated them from the large, circular arena down below. From what she could make out, it seemed to be an operating room. She pushed forward to get a better look and gasped.

There was Rainbow Dash, strapped to an operating table and thrashing about violently, her face a mixture of anger and fear. A brown unicorn stallion in a labcoat approached with an array of sinister looking surgical implements.

Twilight had almost finished her reflexive charging of a spell to blast the thick plate of glass to pieces and run in to rescue Dash, but aborted at the last second as her eye caught an important detail. There was a faint glowing outline around the unicorn doctor, like a thin film of golden dust, that was markedly absent from everypony else, including Rainbow Dash. This wasn’t Dash’s dream, it was the dream of the unicorn down below. Waiting for her fight response to calm down, she sat and watched what happened next, reminding herself that it wasn’t really Dash.

Oddly enough, the array of terrifying surgical instruments remained unused. The stallion simply walked around the table, placed two hooves on the top of Rainbow Dash’s head, twisted, and neatly popped the top half of her head off in one solid piece like a screw cap. Rainbow Dash didn’t show any signs of pain, but did begin a long tirade of ear singeing profanity.

The doctor reached into the open cavity with both hooves (rather deeper than strictly should have been possible) and pulled out an implausibly clean and bloodless brain. The removal didn’t seem to have much impact, as Dash’s string of insults continued even as he placed her brain on a nearby tray. The stallion quickly set to work with scalpel and forceps, peering through a large floating magnifying glass as he meticulously searched for something.

Whatever it was he was looking for, he was having very little success in finding it. The damage from frequent incisions was starting to pile up, the oozing lump not looking nearly as clean anymore. Murmurs of disapproval spread through the crowd of observers. A large winged and horned shadow fell over the area, though its source wasn’t visible. A bead of sweat trailed down his neck, and his grip on the tools began to shake slightly, resulting in sloppier cuts and occasional mistakes that only made the murmurs grow louder.

Twilight turned her attention away from the disturbing scene below and focused on searching for the nearest exit from the dream. She sent a quick pulse from her horn and looked around for the faint glow that would highlight where the dream was thinnest, frowning when she finally spotted it. Her exit was apparently in the gaping hollow head of the dream Rainbow Dash.

Gross.

Giving a resigned sigh, she took a brief look at the crowd around her. Her presence had gone unnoticed so far, but that might change if she entered the spotlight down below. It was also entirely possible that the rest of these ponies were just a part of the scenery and no more capable of noticing her than a cardboard cutout. Still, Twilight took a moment to summon a nurse uniform before teleporting to a far corner of the room, behind the preoccupied stallion.

Producing a clipboard to carry in front of her, Twilight began to circle around the room, making her way closer to the dream Rainbow Dash, who had started laughing uncontrollably at the doctor’s increasingly desperate efforts. By now, a third of the brain had been rendered into an unrecognizable gelatinous mess. Scalpel and forceps had been discarded in favor of a hammer gripped between his forehooves. Peeking around her clipboard, Twilight caught a glimpse of something in his eyes that betrayed a sincere desire to stop, yet the wild swings continued. Glancing up, Twilight could just make out a set of white and gold strings that ran from his hooves and horn, up into the blank darkness above that took the place of a proper ceiling.

Finally reaching her position behind dream Dash, Twilight stared into the vacant cranial cavity. About a body length into the dark tunnel was a faintly glowing door. Oddly enough, though not terribly surprising by this point, she found she could stick both her front hooves and her head inside without even touching the sides, despite the entrance appearing no larger than a typical pony’s head. She gave a quick look back at the doctor still hammering away at the pile of mush in front of him.

Ah, screw it.

Her horn flashed and the group of strings were severed. She didn’t stay to see the result, but as she crawled the rest of the way into the tunnel and opened the door, she heard a loud crashing noise, as if something heavy had been thrown at a large plate of glass.

Third time’s the charm?

Twilight wasted no time in proceeding to the third door. After another quick disorienting flash, she found herself sitting at a cafeteria table. She hardly had a moment to examine her surroundings when the faintly glowing white pegasus to her right turned and spoke.

“I don’t know, should I go talk to her? What do you think?”

Twilight gave only a noncommittal shrug as she tamped down on the sudden surprise at being spotted, doing her best to remain calm. The pegasus gave a quick look back to the subject of his inquiry, and Twilight took the opportunity to change her coat to a faded yellow. He didn’t appear to notice when he turned back.

“Yeah, you’re right. Who can tell with mares like that? Well, sorry to bother you...uh, actually I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. Are you a new transfer?”

Twilight seized the opportunity “Yep! New transfer, that’s me. Just arrived actually.”

“One of the new psychologists I’m guessing.”

“How’d you know?”

“You’ve just got that look that screams ‘academia’. It sticks out like a sore thumb here amongst the grunts. Most of the rest of the doctors think they’re too good to eat with the riff raff here. Though if the rumors about their private break room are true, I wouldn’t want to leave there either.”

Twilight gave a small chuckle. “Well I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll be sure to let you know if it lives up to the hype. And yeah, I guess they can be kinda stuck up like that.” An idea suddenly began to form in her mind. It carried risk, but the rewards could potentially be enormous. “Actually...they all seemed really busy, and I think they all thought somepony else would take care of getting the newbie settled, so I kinda didn’t get a proper orientation. Would you mind giving me the quick tour? Emergency exits, that sort of thing?”

“I’d be happy to miss…?”

“Dawn Twinkle.”

“Well miss Twinkle, there’s no time like the present.”

Twilight fell in line behind the helpful guard, following as he led her through the winding hallways. He pointed out the various administrative offices, the communications hub, and the power generator room. Being a dream, she was sure there were some scale issues. Some of the hallways seemed to stretch on unreasonably long, while other times the transition between notable rooms was skipped entirely, but some directed questions revealed crucial information such as number of floors and what could be found on each of them, as well as peak traffic areas throughout the day. Finally, they reached the area of greatest interest to her and her persona.

“And this is the door to the patient room. I’d be careful if I were you, she’s pretty feisty. She’s restrained most of the time, but I’ve heard she’s been known to try to bite if you get too close.”

“Thanks again for showing me around. Oh! I just remembered, I need to go meet somepony by the front entrance. What’s the quickest way from here to there again?”

The guard rattled off a quick list of directions and offered to lead her back. Twilight waved off the offer, thanked him again, and took off. Once out of sight, she quickly tracked down another glowing door to make her exit. Twilight made her way through five more sets of dreams, one doctor, one nurse, two more guards, and a maintenance technician. Each time, she repeated her gambit of posing as a new transfer and requesting a tour.

A workable mental map of the base’s layout started to come together in her mind. Correlation between the multiple models smoothed out some of the errors and inconsistencies regarding exact distances. One couldn’t be completely sure, but she was confident her mental map was at least 85% accurate.

Twilight trotted through the ninth door with practiced ease. When the light had faded, she was greeted with a most unexpected sight. The ruined remains of some ancient temple surrounded her. Vines and lichen overran the walls, a few fragments of colorful mosaics that hadn’t yet crumbled into rubble peeking through the gaps. In the center of the room, suspended over a pit of lava was . . . herself.

Twilight raised an eyebrow as she looked over her duplicate. Her forehooves were restrained above her head by the thick coils of vines that hung down from the ceiling and wrapped tightly around the rest of her body. A few beads of perspiration ran down her coat, likely due to the heat and/or mortal peril posed by the lava down below. Though nothing appeared wrong with her horn, she didn’t seem to consider any course of action other than wriggling and squirming within her bonds, accompanied by what Twilight considered to be a quite unnecessary chorus of gasps, grunts, and various vocalizations.

Okaaaay...that’s um...that’s something.

A warmth had begun to spread through Twilight’s face and ears that had little to do with the nearby pool of lava, when a single word snapped her to attention.

“DASH!” Twilight’s copy shouted, her eyes a mix of joy, relief, and horror. Twilight’s eyes followed to the doorway on the far side of the room where a rainbow maned pegasus with a faint gold outline hovered, wearing a cocky grin.

“Hey Twi, how’s it hanging?”

“Dash, no! It’s a trap!” Even as she shouted her warning, dark smoke began to pour out of cracks in the walls, rising up to form roughly pony shaped shadows with red glowing eyes.

“Well duh! Of course it’s a trap, that much was obvious.” Dash grinned as she looked over the roughly two dozen shadow ponies that now surrounded her. “Alright, who’s first?”

What followed was a flurry of action that Twilight had difficulty tracking amidst shadowy forms bursting like clouds under solid hoof strikes. As the last puff of smoke from a slain enemy dispersed, the victorious pegasus flew up to her cheering marefriend. With a single spinning kick, she severed the vine that held her prize, swooping down to catch her before she could fall.

The violet mare didn’t wait until they had landed to shake off the rest of her bonds and launch herself at her heroic rescuer, catching Dash in a deep and passionate kiss that added a bit more of an erratic wobbling to their descent. The make out session only grew more heated once they reached the ground.

The real Twilight continued to watch from her position behind a pile of rubble. With how fast everything had happened, it had taken a moment to sink in, but now an excited grin was spreading across her face. She had finally found what she was looking for.

The question of what to do next loomed in her mind. She had come here with a specific task in mind, but with Dash right in front of her after all this time apart, there was a growing compulsion to run to her and ask if she was okay, to tell her that she had been looking for her all this time, that she was coming to save her, and that they would be together for real very soon.

She wanted to do quite a few other things as well, but it seemed the other Twilight was currently beating her to it. The surrounding temple walls had already shimmered and faded, having been replaced by the oak walls of her library bedroom, and the two ponies had made their way to the sizeable bed. Twilight’s cheeks reddened as she got a rather unprecedented view of herself, trying to decide if she should interrupt, look away, keep watching, or possibly even join in. Surely she had the time to spare, and there were just so many...possibilities. Things she hadn’t considered before, but was now having a very difficult time NOT considering in lurid detail.

Unfortunately such investigations would have to wait for another time. The air began to ripple and the world began to grow paler, as if all colors were being drained from the environment. Chunks of the wooden walls began to dissolve.

Oh no! She’s waking up! No no no no no! It’s too early! Damnit Dash! Of all the times to start becoming an early riser!”

Twilight did her best to stabilize the dream while she searched for an exit. She had a job to do, but she could only do it so long as Dash was actually asleep. If she woke up first, then this whole mission was for nothing, and she doubted Luna would be nice enough to be politely incapacitated again for a second attempt the next night.

Ducking into a nearby closet, Twilight leapt back out into the dreamscape and whirled around. The door was still solid for the most part, but growing slightly transparent along the edges. She would have to work fast.

She placed a hoof on the door, focusing on attuning to its specific magical wavelengths as she worked to recall all she had read. A glow appeared around the knob and began to branch out across the surface, forming into thick chains with a heavy looking lock. This was of course no more a literal physical lock than the door was a literal physical door, but rather a complex system of spellwork abstracted into a metaphorical symbol easily interpreted by pony brains. Likewise, the ‘key’ to such a lock was closer to a thought or state of mind than anything physical. Twilight set the key as the combination of the first 20 digits of pi, the cyan color of Dash’s coat, the smell of pancakes, and the first few bars of an upbeat tune she made up on the spot.

While some might have considered that sufficient protection, for Twilight it was just the beginning. Luna could still find this door even if it was locked, and she wasn’t nearly arrogant enough to think that it would hold up indefinitely against an alicorn princess with dedication and an unlimited amount of time to work at the problem. Just because she had no idea how one could possibly break through such heavy protection didn’t mean it was impossible, or that Luna hadn’t learned and kept a few secrets over the millennia. Maybe it really was impossible to crack within at least 10 of her natural lifetimes, but now wasn’t the time for half-measures. Now was the time to be properly paranoid.

Twilight focused again on getting her magic in tune with the door. Then she began to, for lack of a better term, paint. The wooden browns of the door slowly took on dark blue and black hues, peppered with white pinpoints, until it began to resemble the surroundings of the star filled dreamscape. As she worked on the texturing of her visual camouflage, she also worked on the non-visible aspects. The natural low level magic emissions that radiated from the door were masked, scattered, and refracted until it matched a close approximation of the general background, with the excess redirected back behind the door and out of sight.

She would never consider herself an accomplished artist, and the time constraints were less than ideal, but before long, she had a camouflage that she was sure would fool at least a cursory glance. When she had struck a balance between her satisfaction and concern that her time was about to run out, she moved on to the final step.

Her horn glowed as she took hold of the frame and worked to dislodge it from the invisible ‘ground’ of the hallway. It was a surprisingly easier process than she had expected. The doors really weren’t attached to anything and only ordered themselves neatly in the same plane because ponies generally expected them to. Moving one was as simple as thinking it at a different orientation.

The locked and disguised door (now worryingly close to completely fading out as Dash woke up) rose up high. It pitched forward ninety degrees and moved over the center of the hallway, hovering in what would be the ceiling if one existed. Anypony who specifically searched for it from now on would find only a maddeningly empty gap where it had once been, unless they somehow knew to look straight up with an exacting eye to find the patch of sky that looked slightly off. Then they’d finally have the chance to start working on the quadruple lock.

Alright, I guess that’ll do.

Twilight turned and summoned her own door to repeat the process, taking her time with the painting now that there was no longer any rush. It was also significantly easier to manipulate what was essentially an extension of her own mind. Once she was satisfied that she had reached the limit of her artistic abilities, she moved the door to its new position but held off on activating the lock. There was one last thing she had to take care of first. Opening the door with her magic, she jumped straight up, back into her own dreams.

She was caught off guard by the wave of noise that assaulted her ears as soon as she entered, forcing her to cover them with her hooves as she winced. She looked to the source. Princess Luna was exactly where she had left her, standing motionless and staring blankly ahead as dark flames lapped at the corners of her eyes. She was also screaming, and at a rather astounding level of volume and duration that would be strictly impossible were rules regarding physical lung capacity in effect. Given the lack of wear and tear on any physical vocal chords, it didn’t seem as if she would be stopping anytime soon either.

Twilight conjured a pair of earplugs and approached, trying to decide how best to move the screaming alicorn. Usually, if you were inside somepony else’s dream when it ended, you would just be kicked back out to the dreamscape. However, she wasn’t sure exactly what would happen if she locked the door with Luna still inside her dream. There was no mention of such a situation in the Somnibus, and given how few ponies ever learned dreamwalking magic, it was entirely possible that such a scenario had never been tested before. For all she knew, Luna being inside the dream when it was locked might create some kind of backdoor route when she woke up. In the face of such uncertainty, it was best that Luna be on the other side of the door when it was locked.

A small cart appeared underneath Luna’s hooves, and Twilight gently pushed her towards the exit. She stood at the doorway, briefly wondering how the door’s new orientation might affect maneuvering through it. As it turned out, gravity and the “surface” one walked on really were just a matter of preferred orientation. Twilight pulled the cart after her as she walked forward, approaching the space between the two vertical pillars of doors on her right and left. Once she was between them, she took a step up and flipped her perspective so that she was once again standing in the long hallway.

Leaving the still screaming Luna behind, Twilight returned to her door and prepared to set the lock on a short time delay. Just enough to let her jump through. She gave one last uncomfortable glance over her shoulder.

She’ll be fine. She’ll shake out of it or it’ll wear off eventually...right?

Well...I don’t think that spell has a set duration. I got out of it because Spike was there.

No, she’ll definitely be fine. Somepony at the castle is bound to come looking for her sooner or later.

Twilight removed an earplug and confirmed that the screaming still hadn’t dropped in intensity.

Still, maybe I should-

No. A colder, more practical voice spoke up. The longer she is incapacitated, and possibly causing a distraction in Canterlot, the better odds of getting in and out of that bunker and far far away before an organized response can be made.

But we can’t just-

No. What we can’t do, if we want this plan to have any hope of succeeding, is throw away what few tactical benefits we can get. Dash is all that matters.

Her mind made up, she set a five second timer on the lock and jumped through the door. A loud click echoed through her dreams, and Twilight gave a sigh of relief. It had been a busy night, and it was going to be an even busier day.

Twilight focused, and like flipping a light switch, she was suddenly staring into the familiar darkness of the back of her eyelids. She opened them to see the night sky starting to lighten with the first few rays of the sunrise. Her eyes settled on the entrance to the underground bunker that she had spent so long trying to find. It was time to get her marefriend back.

***

Celestia stood on her private balcony, facing east as she raised the sun for another day. Once it had been helped over the horizon and set onto its mostly automatic course, she turned around and frowned as she saw the moon still clinging to the western horizon.

She considered simply reaching out and lowering it herself, but Luna was rather possessive of it and tended to get irritated if Celestia started touching her things without permission. Still, it wasn’t like Luna to be this sloppy or negligent. She was, if anything, extremely punctual about her duties.

Perhaps I should go check on her. After yesterday…

They still hadn’t been able to determine the purpose behind Twilight’s little stunt, other than making the rulers of Equestria and the entire Canterlot guard force look like utter fools. At that it had certainly succeeded. Celestia still had a headache from dealing with the fallout.

Naturally, ponies had been curious as to why every guard in the city had suddenly bolted for the castle at top speed. She had hoped to pass it off as a training exercise, but between the castle support staff and visiting members of the public, there were simply too many ponies present inside the castle when the illusions had started appearing. Within an hour, the city was flooded with at least thirty competing rumors. She had done her best to quash some of the more outlandish ones.

“No, there was no assassination attempt or any attempt to steal my or my sister’s ‘alicorn-hood’.”

“No, there is no clone army of Twilight Sparkles being grown in vats deep within Canterlot Mountain and this was not any kind of uprising or mass escape.”

“No this doesn’t involve humans, stop asking that.”

“Bunshinnowhat?”

Although the exhausting PR burden had fallen mostly on her own shoulders, Luna seemed to be taking the whole situation far worse. Falling for Twilight’s illusion, however briefly, had been embarrassing enough, but after spending hours sweeping the castle on high alert with nothing to show for it? Luna had been positively livid, as if Twilight were doing this just to mock her. Celestia’s recent concerns that she had been taking this entire investigation too personally had once again fallen on deaf ears. Returning her thoughts to the present, Celestia looked up to see that she had arrived at the door to Luna’s bedroom.

“Luna?”

She gave a tentative knock on the door, the vibrations damping instantly.

Of course.

She had returned to her rooms at around midday at Celestia’s insistence that she get some rest, though Celestia now had no doubt that Luna had been searching tirelessly for Twilight this entire time. She also had a habit of putting up silencing barriers around her room so as not to be disturbed or distracted when dream scrying, regardless of the inconvenience it caused when somepony actually needed to reach her for something important. Fortunately, Celestia had ample practice bypassing them. She punched a small hole in the field and projected her voice through it.

“Luna, it’s me. The moon is still up, is everything alright in there?” There was no response. “Luna?” Still nothing. “Luna, I’m coming in, okay?”

Celestia slowly pushed open the door, which made no noise thanks to the silencing field enveloping the hinges. She passed through the invisible barrier with a single step that instantly shifted to a gallop when the screaming filled her ears.

“LUNA!”

Her sister was curled up on the bed, forehooves gripping her head as she rocked slightly and let loose scream after scream that shook the interior of the room. Celestia rushed to her side and gripped her sister’s shoulders between her forehooves.

“Luna what is it?! What’s wrong?!”

She got her answer when she finally caught a look at her sister’s eyes. A sickly green tint sat beneath the solid bright white of her dream walking trance. Dark purple flames lapped at the corners where thin streams of tears leaked down her face as she continued her hysterical screaming.

“Luna! Luna I’m here! Wake up!” Celestia shouted as she gave several firm shakes. When Luna remained unresponsive, she attempted to purge the dark magic herself. There was a bright flash from her horn, but ultimately no effect.

What?! NO!

It seemed that Luna’s dream trance was blocking her from reaching the dark magic underneath. Worse, rousing her from the trance, no small effort under usual circumstances, was now next to impossible as long as her mind was locked into the underlying spell. Some unforeseen synergy between the two had ended up fusing them into a tangled magical knot that kept her trapped in whatever nightmare she was currently experiencing.

Celestia stared helplessly as she tried to figure out what to do. She could call for help, but who could really help her? Nopony else had anywhere near her magical ability, and she and Luna were the only ponies in Canterlot who had ever encountered this kind of magic before. Any doctors or mages she summoned would only get in the way. She was going to have to do this herself. A quill and parchment flew off a nearby desk and quickly scribbled out a two word message to her scheduling staff.

Cancel Everything.

The scroll vanished in a flash and Celestia got to work.

***

11 hours later

The sun was hanging low on the horizon, bathing the room in a golden orange glow. Celestia didn’t notice, keeping her eyes trained on her work. Sweat had matted the fur on her face and neck. Luna had at least stopped screaming several hours back, though that was likely just due to her vocal chords finally giving out. Now she simply gave the occasional whimper or strained gurgle as she stared blankly up at the ceiling.

Celestia continued her work, ignoring the multiple cramps that had started to arise from holding the same position all day without a break. Suddenly, she felt something give. The two spells finally began to disentangle and the white film on Luna’s eyes began to fade away.

Celestia jumped at the opening, quickly casting another dispel. The dark flames and sickly green tint dissolved in the overwhelming white light. Celestia waited as Luna’s unfocused eyes blinked several times.

“Luna?”

The dazed pair of eyes turned her direction, finally coming into focus as they settled on her. Recognition sparked in them, followed by a rapid blend of fear, grief, and rage. A bright blue bolt of magic shot out of Luna’s horn, clipping Celestia cheek and drawing a thin line of blood. Luna scrambled madly backward, becoming tangled in the sheets and falling out of the bed, her eyes darting around her surroundings in confusion as she tried to take a defensive stance. She tried to say something, but couldn’t speak through her raw throat.

“Luna stop, it’s me!” Celestia reassured, trying hard not to think about the fact that recognition had pretty clearly preceded that attack. “You’re in your room, you’re safe now. Wherever you were a moment ago it wasn’t real. Do you understand? It wasn’t real!”

Luna’s breathing gradually began to slow, her eyes ceasing their frantic darting as her wits began to return. Her eyes settled back on Celestia, causing her to raise a hoof to her mouth in a gasp as she spotted the thin line of red on her sister’s cheek.

Celestia followed her gaze and raised a hoof to her own face. “What, this? It’s nothing, don’t worry abou-”

She was interrupted by a pair of hooves being wrapped around her, and was knocked into a sitting position by the force of Luna’s face burying into her chest. The smaller alicorn’s body shook with silent sobs, throat still raw, and body too dehydrated to even form proper tears anymore. Celestia could feel her mouthing something into her chest over and over.

I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

“Luna. Luna, it’s alright!” Celestia tried to reassure her, but nothing would make her stop.

Please don’t send me away!

Her words seemingly having no effect, Celestia simply held Luna in silence until she finally grew still and passed out from exhaustion. One thought burned in her mind for the duration.

Somepony would pay for this.

***

11 hours earlier

Twilight looked up from her collection of notes and diagrams to give the bunker door another hard stare. Upon waking, she had immediately set to work on writing down every tidbit of information she had gleaned from exploring the dreams of the ponies that worked inside. Now she would at least have an idea of the general direction to start searching for Dash, just as soon as she worked out the details of how exactly she was going to get inside. She continued her thorough inspection of the door, approximately ten inches of solid steel, reinforced by top quality magical wards. Any bank vault would be jealous.

Despite the air of impenetrability, she could still think of at least a half-dozen ways to force her way through. Unfortunately, there was the problem of the two sentries she knew were stationed on the inside. While many of her initial ideas had the added benefit of incapacitating them, none did so in a way that was likely to be less than lethal. If it ever came down to it, she was certain she would cross any line for Rainbow Dash, but she much prefered that hypothetical situation stay strictly hypothetical. There were better options, she was sure of it.

As Twilight sat and pondered her predicament, she couldn’t help but remember an old fable she had heard as a filly.

There was once a bold adventuring pony who made her way to the top of a mountain, having heard rumors of a great treasure that could grant a single wish. Riches, power, enlightenment, eternal youth, anything one could imagine.

When she finally reached the summit, she found an ancient temple. Inside, the temple was little more than a single entrance hall that ended with a massive stone door, impossibly smooth save for three indentations in the base. Sitting in a chair in the corner, was a lone monk who, grateful for the company, invited her back to his shack for tea. It was his duty to tend the grounds and inform passing adventurers of the temple’s history.

It had been built by an ancient and powerful kingdom, the memory of which had been long lost to time, to house an artifact of immense power on the order of a paranoid and half-mad king who feared the kingdom would fall to ruin should the artifact ever fall into the wrong hooves. To keep it safe, they had constructed the great wonder known as the Door of Eons. Huge swaths of the countryside were quarried in search of the vast quantities of rare ores needed. One thousand of the most skilled masons and one thousand of the most talented mages worked day and night in its construction. The effort nearly emptied the kingdom’s treasury and drove the king further into madness, but at last it was finished.

The door would only open to one who could prove their worth by retrieving three relics. One was at the bottom of a lake, said to be so deep that light had never touched the bottom. Another was at the top of a volcanic peak, in the hoard of a fearsome dragon. The last was somewhere among the shifting sands of the desert, hidden among the nests of the giant scorpions. Many brave ponies had attempted to seek the relics, but none had ever returned.

The adventurer had listened in polite silence while she sipped at her tea. She asked the monk to repeat the part about the door’s construction, which he was happy to do, as he rather liked hearing himself give his speech. When he had finished, she finally asked her question.

“So what are the walls made of?”

The monk stared back blankly for a few moments. Nopony had ever asked him about the rest of the temple before. In all honesty, the entire temple was mostly just a housing for the grand Door of Eons. The simple stone and mortar was so dull and uninteresting next to the gleaming wonder of masonry and magic. When he told her such, she nodded politely, thanked him for the tea, and excused herself. The monk wished her well on her journey, certain that she was off to face the trials of the relics like so many before her.

Later that evening, as the monk was making his usual rounds, he came upon an unusual sight. A worn pickaxe lay discarded on the ground next to the pile of rubble where a section of the temple’s back wall had crumbled. Through the gaping hole could be seen an ornate chamber, and at the center of the chamber was a very large and very empty pedestal.

Unfortunately for Twilight, even if the bunker walls were less heavily warded than the door, they were still made out of reinforced concrete and buried under several meters of solid earth. She was going to need something substantially stronger than a pickaxe.

Hmm...well if I find a low traffic spot...theoretically I could….I’d need something dense though. Do I have any lead?

She began to rifle through her saddlebags in search of suitable material, briefly regretting having ignored one of her more extreme paranoid preparation ideas to pack a brick of tungsten in with her supplies, having dismissed it as ludicrously impractical and a sign that she was up too late… again. She stopped when her hoof brushed against the coin pouch which was still jingling with a respectable number of golden bits, even after paying off Trixie for her services.

Gold.

A smile curled up Twilight’s lips. With a density 1.7 times that of lead, gold was even better. This could work.

Twilight set to work building a small fire pit and scouring the surrounding area for kindling. Soon she had a small fire going, which she let burn for several minutes before putting it out. It wouldn’t burn hot enough for what she needed anyway. What she was really interested in was the ash.

Using her telekinesis and allotropic change spell, she shaped the hot carbon ash into a crude graphite crucible. Nestling her device in the center of the pit, she reached back into her bags and pulled out a small amount of baking soda and some borax from her cleaning supplies. After sprinkling a few pinches of each into the bottom of the crucible, she then filled it with the gold coins from her bag. Taking a step back, she lowered her horn at the pit and sprayed out the hottest flames she could manage.

Sweat poured down her face, as much from concentration as from the heat of the flames. Soon the mixture of baking soda and borax began to melt, lowering the melting point of the gold in contact with it and binding to any impurities. Before long, the rest of the coins had been reduced to a single molten mass of gold, capped with a floating layer of oxidized impurities. Ceasing her spray of flames, Twilight scraped the layer of slag off the top and began shaping the molten gold with telekinesis. After changing her mind several times about the exact width of the base, she finished her sculpting and allowed the gold to cool into a large, roughly cylindrical slug.

Well it’s certainly heavy, but gold is still a bit too soft, too easily dented.

The graphite crucible reverted back to carbon ash, then floated up in a glow of purple magic to spread itself in a fine coating over the newly formed slug. After another flash of purple, the ash changed once again into a thin diamond shell.

That’s a bit better. Should last a couple microseconds before deformation at least.

Satisfied with her work, Twilight turned back to her map and began searching for an appropriate entry point. It needed to be somewhere out of the way, somewhere nopony was likely to be at the time, but hopefully not so far away that she had to make her way through the entire base to reach the area most likely to contain Dash. She crossed off living quarters, offices, and dining halls, and focused her attention on utility closets and spare storage rooms. Most were too small to hit with any acceptable level of accuracy given the inherent uncertainty in her information regarding exact locations, but her eye was finally drawn to one room in particular.

The generator room.

Of course ‘generator’ was something of a popular misnomer for this type of system. While it did act as the source of arcane energy to power various systems and equipment, like most magically powered devices in Equestria, it ran on batteries. The ‘generator’ was hooked up to extremely high density magical fuel cells, charged at an actual Arcane Reactor Center (ARC for short, though certain ignorant ponies had taken to incorrectly referring to them as ‘ARC Reactors’, which caused Twilight to go into pedantic spasms). Such fuel cells were a common staple of supply shipments, and any important installation kept at least six months worth in supply at any time.

As fascinating as the technology was, three facts were of key importance at the moment. The first was that the power drawing stations where the fuel cells were used tended to run fairly hot and required significant ventilation and cooling systems to avoid melting important components. Though she had, until recently, been kicking around some drafts of ideas for miniaturization to run past Celestia, current designs still required enough space to guarantee a certain minimum cross-sectional area to any room that housed such a station.

The second was that the entire system and the fuel cells themselves had been designed with extreme fail-safety in mind. Destruction would result in tens of thousands of bits worth of property damage and some very angry ponies, but no massive explosions or dangerous radiation. The station itself would just stop working, as all the energy was stored in the cells, which contained a small programmed spell crystal at their core, held inactive by the closed circuit of the inner casing. The instant the casing was cracked, the crystal was set to burn up stored energy in a rapid series of harmless, but extremely demanding and inefficient spells.

The third was that such systems needed very little active attention from anypony. An occasional glance over by a technician to make sure everything was in order was all that was required in most cases. If this top secret bunker was run anything near to the regulation schedule at military facilities, that meant technical inspections at 0600, 1200, 1800, and 2400. She had heard her brother grumbling as a cadet about crappy duty listings enough to know that much. Glancing at the sky revealed that she still had a couple hours until the midday inspection, meaning the area should be completely uninhabited.

That’ll do.

Twilight grabbed her map and diamond coated gold slug in her magic and started walking, glancing frequently between the map and her surroundings. She had to beat her way through a few thicker patches of thorny vegetation, but she eventually found the spot she was looking for. She scratched an x into the ground with a nearby stick, clearing some branches from overhead to make sure there was a direct line of sight from the ground to the sky.

She held her gold slug over the x and surrounded it in a purple bubble. The bubble began to grow and stretch into a thin vertical tube until it was nearly 200 feet tall and just slightly wider around than the slug. Next she used a standard vacuum pump spell, turning the inside of the tube as close to airless as she could. Finally, when only a few molecules per cubic centimeter remained, she took a deep breath, magnified local gravity by a factor of five, exhaled, and teleported the slug to the top of the tube.

The heavy mass of gold began to fall rapidly in the nearly airless environment. Just before it reached the bottom, she teleported it again, and then again. With velocity and momentum preserved through every teleport, and no counteracting force from wind resistance, the large hunk of metal began to pick up frightening speed. With no chance of keeping visual track of the blur of motion, Twilight forced the endpoints of her teleport to hold open continuously as the projectile fell ever faster between them.

Steady….steady…!

While holding the tube in place and the teleport ends open, Twilight wrapped herself in the magic necessary for the setup of another teleport, ready to activate in an instant.

Almost….NOW!

She activated the second teleport and flung herself far away, severing her connection to the previous spells in the process, and finally closing the ends of the loop.

She had barely found her hooves after reappearing when the shockwave knocked her off them. When she had recovered once again, she looked up to see a large cloud of dust rising up from the center of a huge circle of flattened vegetation. Teleporting back to the edge of the circle, she summoned a strong gust of wind to blow the dust away and approached to examine the result of her work.

She had to raise a shield against the heat. Much of the area was still smouldering, and she could spot certain shiny section where the ground had been turned to glass. Finally, she reached the crater at the center, edges still glowing red. Laying down a few frost spells and reinforcing her heat shield, she approached and peeked over the edge. The crater ran deep into the ground, deep enough that she might not have been able to see the bottom if not for the glow of the walls. In the soft red light, she could make out a significant change in lithology part way down the pit. Rock and earth gave way to a section of concrete rubble and twisted metal. She smiled as she spotted a gap in the tunnel wall, leading into the rest of the room that had just had a hole blown through it.

Twilight cracked her neck twice, rolled her front shoulders, flexed her knees, and focused her sight on the gap down below.

And here, we, go!

There was a bright flash of purple light, and then she was gone

***

Rainbow Dash gave another awkward wrenching motion of her wing, turning the spoon handle and the flat-head bolt it was lodged into another few degrees. She rejoiced at yet another tiny step towards freedom. They were quickly adding up.

It had been painfully slow going at first, the handle frequently slipping out of the groove without budging the tight bolt in the slightest. It had taken nearly twenty minutes just to get the first full rotation, but she had kept at it. Soon her motions grew more practiced, and the bolts looser and less resistant to further turning. She had gone from frustration, to a calm trance of repetition, to tense excitement as her progress began to accelerate. Already, the bolts securing the bonds over her forelegs were loose enough for her to audibly rattle them.

Feeling a cramp start to work its way up her right wing, she switched the spoon off to her left and resumed working on the other bolt. She would need both free if she was to escape, and once she got one loose it wouldn’t be long until somepony noticed. She would need them both free at the same time.

That just left the question of how to get her rear legs free. She assumed the answer lay somewhere with the large gearbox next to the end of her bed. She already knew some of the levers controlled the incline of the bed, but there were too many for just that. She was willing to bet that some of them opened and closed the restraints around her limbs. Of course, there was always the chance that they were simply padlocked, but she hadn’t seen or felt any keyholes around the bands on her forelegs, and there didn’t seem to be a good reason to have drastically different designs between the front and back.

The sound of the door sliding open brought her attention back to the moment, and she quickly stashed the spoon back in its hiding place before the morning nurse had finished pushing her cart into the room.

Damn! I was so close! Probably not going to get another chance to work at it today. Tomorrow for sure though. I can definitely finish this up before breakfast tomorrow and have enough time to figure out how to get out of this room.

Admittedly, she wasn’t quite clear on how exactly she would get out of the room, but it was extremely unlikely that she would learn anything more by staying bound to this bed any longer. She would just have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

Breakfast and the routine morning checks proceeded as usual, though the knowledge that she just had to wait out one more day stoked a flame of excitement inside her. It also made everything feel unbearably slow. Perhaps it was a good thing there wasn’t a clock in the room, as she would probably be caught constantly staring at it.

“Hmm...heart rate is slightly elevated this morning,” one of the nurses commented. “Nervous? It’s perfectly understandable dear, but there’s nothing to be worried about.”

“No I-what? What would I be nervous about?”

“The change in your treatment plan?” Rainbow Dash only stared back with a confused look. “Oh, I guess they might not have told you yet. Well I’ll let the doctors explain it when they get here. They know all the details and should be here any minute now.”

As the nurse packed up her things, Rainbow Dash was left to ponder her words. New treatment? As much as she would welcome some variety as a reprieve from the monotonous daily routine of testing, something about those words caused her concern. For the past few weeks, she had seen plenty of testing, monitoring, and recording, but very little that matched her expected definition of ‘treatment’. There had been that spell they cast once, but as far as she could tell, it hadn’t actually done anything to her. Visions of hypnotic screens, electric shocks, and strange drugs swam unbidden into her mind. Now it was even more imperative that she make good on her escape as soon as possible.

Soon Resonance Image and two other doctors, one mare and one stallion, arrived and began to set up the equipment. There were a few additional items that Dash hadn’t seen before, and they were soon attached to some of the lesser used arms on the overhead assembly.

“Hey doc, word on the street is that you’re trying something new. Is it leeches? Homeopathy? Gonna call in a phrenologist for help?”

Rainbow Dash hadn’t the slightest clue what phrenology actually was, but given the general context of the rant she had once heard Twilight use it in, she assumed it was sufficiently insulting. The doctor gave only the slightest of frowns in response.

“Yes, we’ve finished our latest observation period and are moving forward with an aggressive new treatment plan.”

“Aggressive? Exactly how ‘aggressive’ are we talking here?” Rainbow Dash asked, a small note of concern rising in her voice.

“Just give me a moment to finish this last bit of setup and then I’ll answer any questions you may have.”

Considering there wasn’t much she could actually do to stop him, she nodded in agreement. After checking the connections on a few more wires, he held up what appeared to be a small metal cage, open on the bottom, with a large cone sticking out of the top. She lost sight of it when he passed behind her, but soon got another view when he began fitting it over her head.

“Alright, how’s that? Relatively comfortable? No pinching or prodding?”

“It’s okay I guess, kinda hard to move though.”

“That’s rather the point. I’m afraid absolute stillness is a must. An errant twitch would be...problematic. On that note, how is the rest of your body? In a comfortable position? You’re going to have to hold it for a while.”

“Eh, fine I guess. I mean, I’d rather be up and flying, but whatever.”

“Good.”

There was the sound of a switch being flicked, and Rainbow Dash felt a sudden shock, followed by all the muscles from her neck down suddenly falling dead and refusing to respond to her commands. A faint pink glow covered her body.

“What the shit?! I-I’m paralyzed!! What did you do?!”

“Relax Ms Dash, it’s only temporary. I assure you, you will regain full control of your body once the machine is turned off again after the procedure. I know it may be distressing, but I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that absolute stillness is called for. Such extreme measures are often necessary, even for more...enthusiastic patients”

Dash made use of the fact that her facial muscles remained uninhibited to throw a sneer his way. “And I notice you’re putting off explaining exactly what all this is for until after I’m already paralyzed. I’m guessing you don’t think I will be very ‘enthusiastic’ about whatever it is you’re planning to do. Don’t think I’ll approve?”

“No, I suspect your approval would be a dubious proposition at best.”

“Though that really hasn’t been an issue so far, has it? So why not just knock me out and do whatever you want while I’m asleep?”

“Unfortunately, it is vital that the patient remain awake, alert, and closely monitored when undergoing brain surgery.”

Rainbow Dash blinked twice in the brief pause.

“Okay, back up a bit. What was that last part? Cause it sounded an awful lot like you were going to start cutting holes in my head.”

“Oh no, nothing like that.”

“Well good, because-”

“This device here,” he tapped the large cone with a hoof, “allows us to directly focus telekinesis inside a pony’s skull for fine adjustments without any need for exterior incisions. No scalpels, bone saws, or blood to deal with, it’s all very clean. Of course it requires very precise aiming, hence the necessity for immobilization.”

“...”

“We also don’t need to shave-”

“THAT’S NOT THE PART I’M CONCERNED ABOUT! It’s the cutting inside my brain part that I’m really really REALLY not okay with!”

“Yes, you have made that very clear.”

“Have I? Because I really don’t think I can overstate how not onboard with this I am! The board and I are in completely different cities!”

“Indeed.” The doctor gave a resigned sigh before continuing. “Well I won’t tell you to try to relax as I know that would be a futile effort at this point, but we will be beginning in just a few minutes.”

“What?! W-W-Wait! Hold on a minute!” She fought a losing battle trying to keep a note of fear and desperation from starting to creep into her voice. “I-uh-I just ate! Aren’t you supposed to like, not eat for several hours before surgery?”

The doctor continued on with his fine tuning as he answered. “That’s mostly for the benefit of the anesthesiologists, as a full stomach can complicate the process of putting a patient under, and the fact that some patients experience nausea afterward. Since we need you fully awake for this, it doesn’t apply here.”

“Well-uh…” Rainbow Dash racked her brain for some way out, but came up blank. She couldn’t even flex a muscle below her neck, and was still bound even if she could. The only thing she could do was talk, and if there was any special combination of words that would somehow change her fate she couldn’t think of them. She felt her heart pounding in her ears as a cold, nauseating feeling spread through her blood. It was a feeling she had little experience with.

Though it might shock some ponies to learn, the daredevil pegasus, like any sane pony, was perfectly capable of feeling fear in dangerous situations. Thrill seeking hardly worked if the pony in question couldn’t comprehend the sense of danger after all, but the source of that fear had always been something she could face head on and do something about by focusing harder, dodging faster, and relying on her skills (and often those of her friends) to get through it. Fear was something she could harness to be even more awesome. Fear was fine. Helplessness was something else entirely, something that was transforming that familiar rush of adrenaline into a poison that bathed her mind in a terrified panic.

There isn’t a way out. This is going to happen. Any minute now, they’re going start cutting and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Then…

She wasn’t quite sure what would happen after that. There was certainly a wide variety of horrible possibilities, most involving them accidentally rendering her, if not a drooling vegetable, then blind, deaf, mute, partially or fully paralyzed, aphasic, or any combination of the above and hundreds of other possible results of brain damage.

She wasn’t even sure if the no mistakes ‘success’ scenario was better or worse. Their stated goal was to make her not love Twilight. Was that even a thing they could do? She didn’t know, but the idea scared her just as much as all the others. If they could somehow do that, then...then who would she be? It would be like somehow taking away her love of flying. Whatever came out the other end of that procedure, it wouldn’t be her.

“Alright, we’re just about ready to begin,” Resonance Image announced as he directed his horn at the large conical structure. The other doctors took their positions at two separate knob covered panels. “This won’t hurt, but it may feel...odd or disorienting.”

With the situation now far past the point of argument, and aware that pleading would get her nothing, Rainbow Dash fell back on the only thing she could think of and let loose a torrent of ear singeing profanity. For all she knew, it could be her last chance to form complete words, and the stream of consciousness generation of creative new insults did something to distract her mind from dwelling on the helplessness and terror.

Her tirade continued as a tingling itch appeared on her skull and began to sink in deeper. There was a slight sense of pressure, and an unfamiliar feeling she would have had difficulty describing if asked. It was as if somepony had strung a guitar string across the inside of her skull and plucked it, while simultaneously filling the space with chocolate pudding full of very confused bees.

Her stream of invective slowed noticeably as the strange buzzing in her head sapped more and more of her focus. The fount of anger that fueled her effort soon became muddied and polluted with a rush of other conflicting emotions, many completely inappropriate to the situation at hand. She had to suppress an errant giggle of sorrow as she struggled to finish an unflattering comment about somepony’s mother.

“Almost to the target,” a calm and detached voice called out. “Aaand...there.”

The chaotic mash of conflicting emotions faded, drowned out by the rising intensity of a new challenger. Images of Twilight rose and fizzed over her mind like champagne bubbles. Her smile, her scent, the sound of her laugh, those deep violet eyes, the giddy excitement when she found a new book. That unconscious little flick of her tail she would give to emphasize a point when lost in lecture mode, the cool and determined face she wore when fighting threats to Equestria, how a deep blush could still be pulled out of it with a quick kiss and the proper application of wing tips.

Some of the fragments clustered into specific memories. Their one month anniversary, where they had both gotten each other the same gift, a rare first edition copy of the fifth Daring Do book with the alternate ending, and spent the next ten minutes in uncontrollable laughter. The time she discovered the word that Twilight had been unknowingly mispronouncing for years, having only read it in books before, and was immediately sworn to secrecy with Twilight’s assurance that “they would never find the body” otherwise. The night Twilight had jolted awake from some nightmare and latched onto her, half hysterical, and refused to let go until she promised she wasn’t going to fly off and never come back.

Rainbow Dash’s blood burned with desire. She needed Twilight in her hooves this instant. The fact that Twilight was out there somewhere while she was stuck in here was a crime against nature. A profound wrong that had to be corrected at any cost. She had to find her. It was the single most important cause in the history of ponykind.

“Beginning termination process.”

Rainbow Dash barely had time to hear the words before the buzzing returned and overpowered her thoughts. While the bees had been floating about in confusion before, now they were focused and angry, swarming and stinging at her thoughts. Images and memories of Twilight continued to bubble up, but somehow less vibrant, less alive, and quickly overwhelmed by the angry buzzing.

BZZZZZZnoZZZZZZstopZZZZpleaseZZZZZZ!

While the buzzing continued to grow in intensity until it was a roar that drowned out all coherent thought, something inside of her began to break, placed under ever increasing strain like a fraying cable on a suspension bridge threatening to snap at any moment.

ZZZZZZNOZZZZZZZSTOPZZZZZZZZZ!

A deafening crash filled her mind and then everything went dark.



Angry and confused shouting filled the pitch black darkness.

“What the fuck was that?!”

“What happened to the lights?!”

“What was that noise?!”

Still dazed, It took Rainbow Dash a moment to realize that she hadn’t passed out, and a few more to grasp enough meaning behind the shouts to work out that she hadn’t suddenly been rendered blind.

“Damnit! I’ve got no signal on my earpiece. Crystal communication must be down. Somepony find the hardline on the wall and find out what in the bowels of Tartarus is going on out there!”

There were sounds of ponies stumbling and tripping through the kind of total darkness only achievable in a sealed room deep underground. After a few more moments, a victorious shout rang out from the far wall.

“Found it!”

There was the sound of a handle being lifted and a switch being thrown. Still trying to clear the fog from her mind, Rainbow Dash strained her ears to learn whatever she could of this strange new predicament.

“Hello? Anypony there?...Right, this is patient room 01. Can somepony kindly explain what is going on out there, because we just experienced a complete loss of power IN THE MIDDLE OF A NEUROSURGICAL PROCEDURE!...Well is there anything you DO know?!...And how long will that take?...Alright, well call me back the second you have anything more.” The sound of a handle being replaced a bit more violently than necessary echoed briefly through the darkness.

“Well?”

“No details yet, but it seems like something happened to the main generator. The whole base is blacked out at the moment, but the emergency power should be coming on any minute now, and we should at least have lights again.”

“Why isn’t it on already? Isn’t there supposed to be an automated transfer switch that activates the instant main power drops?”

“That’s what I thought, but I guess whatever broke the main generator broke that too?”

“But they’re not even on the same floor!”

“I don’t know. All they said is that somepony has to go hit the manual override in sector B. In the meantime, everypony just stand still. The last thing we need is for somepony to break a leg and several hundred thousand bits worth of equipment.

Finally approaching something resembling clarity, Rainbow Dash reviewed the admittedly little information she had gained. Some kind of freak blackout? For some reason or another, providence had seen fit to throw a small miracle her way. Then again, it was really only a delay at most. Once they got the power issue settled, they would be ready for round two, and she was still stuck here. Her wings gave a nervous fidgeting flap at the thought.

Wait…

She gave her wings another flap, this time intentional, then flexed the muscles in her legs. Whatever device that had been immobilizing her had stopped when the power went down. She could move again! Well, sort of. There was still the problem of her restraints.

She quietly rattled the bonds over her forehooves, feeling the slight give from the half loosened bolts as one last desperate shred of hope rose up. She absolutely had to act now. The power could come back any moment now, and then her last chance would be gone forever.

Rainbow Dash threw herself forward with all the strength she could summon. The bolts held. She pushed forward again, just as strong. The bolts still held, but gave a small squeal of protest.

“What was that?” one of the voices called out in the darkness.

“It wasn’t me,” another confused voice responded.

Rainbow Dash continued slamming herself against the restraints like a mare possessed. She pulled, twisted, and thrashed with an intensity that dwarfed even the efforts she made on the day of her arrival.

Faster Damnit! Come on! They’re gonna catch you any second! You have to get out NOW!

With another shriek of strained metal, she felt her right forehoof raise an inch above the bed before being stopped. The unprecedented accomplishment spurred her on as she continued her assault on the restraints, oblivious to the heavy bruising of her fetlocks. She could almost taste the fresh air and sunlight of freedom. At the same time, she could already feel the buzzing of those angry bees once again, the cost of failure, ready to swallow her up any second now.

“Seriously, what is that? It sounds like it’s coming from over-”

The voice was cut off by the sudden sounds of wrenching metal and one or more objects falling to the floor in a loud clatter. Mixed in with the cacophony were noises like hooves scrabbling, a lever being thrown, and gears turning, all in the span of a second.

“What in the-?!”

The emergency power finally activated, prompting everypony to reflexively raise a hoof to protect their dark adjusted eyes as their pupils shrank to pin pricks in the sudden flood of light. Dr Resonance Image was the first to regain his vision, but what he saw when he lowered his hoof from his eyes caused them to dilate once more.

The operating bed lay empty. Hovering several feet above it was Rainbow Dash, enjoying a supremely satisfying stretch and staring back at him with a very VERY large smile.

“Oh, Shit!”

That was as much as the doctor could get out before a blue blur kicked him across the room and into a set of metal cabinets. The two other doctors snapped into action and charged, hoping to end it quickly with their slight numerical advantage. Unfortunately for them, in addition to shattering every speed record at the Wonderbolts Academy, Rainbow Dash had also been at the top of her class in close quarters combat.

The mare, an earth pony, reached a hoof into her coat pocket and pulled out a syringe. Dash sidestepped the lunge and grabbed her extended foreleg, pulling her forward and off balance before slamming her head down on a nearby cart. At the same time, she twisted and slammed the foreleg down, shaking the syringe out of her grip before scooping it up and jamming it into the stunned mare’s flank.

She spun to face the other doctor, a unicorn who had decided to leap back and keep his distance after seeing how quickly his colleague had been dispatched, and dodged the telekinetic jab of another needle. Dash grabbed a pillow off the bed and swatted the floating needle out of the air before chucking it at her enemy’s head. In the moment it took him to catch it and throw it away, she closed the distance and delivered a quick left right punch combination to his face.

She frowned a bit as she saw him stumble but stay on his hooves. It looked like a few weeks of atrophy really had dropped the stopping power of her punches a bit. With a quick beat of her wings, she rose up and pulled back a few feet, then launched forward, giving another flap to turn into a tight twist. She lashed out with a back leg, using her angular momentum to turn it into a kind of biological flail that connected with the stallion’s head, sending him sprawling to the floor, and out of the fight. He was joined a moment later by the shambling mare who finally lost the fight against the sedative and slumped to the ground.

Rainbow Dash scanned the room and spotted Resonance Image limping his way along the wall to the hardline communication set. She flew over and dropped down in front of him. He took a step back, eyes still glancing past her to his goal just a few feet away

“What’s up Doc?” She shot him the same evil grin as before. “We got a lot of catching up to do you and I.”

He took a wild swing. She easily ducked, delivered a quick breath stealing hoof strike to his stomach, swept his legs out from under him, and finished up with a small kick to the head for good measure.

“Now now, none of that. Come on, I’m not done with you yet.”

Winded and seeing stars, he was in no shape to resist when she seized him by the tail and began to drag him across the room. On the way, she paused to grab the second syringe off the ground and give the other downed unicorn a quick jab to ensure he stayed out. When they reached the door, she released his tail and grabbed him by the coat collar, giving a quick slap across the face to make sure she had his attention before continuing in a calm and even tone.

“Now, during all this wonderful time we’ve had together these past weeks, I think you’ll recall me making certain...promises. Promises involving you and me in a set of circumstances very much like the ones we find ourselves in now, of certain activities that I would enjoy greatly, while you...well, let’s say ‘your approval would be a dubious proposition at best’. Do you follow so far?”

The stallion gave a terrified nod and a gulp.

“Good. Now, fortunately for you, after spending all that time in bed, what I really want to do more than anything, even beating your sorry flank to a pulp, is to go for a nice walk and a fly. Why, I might even get so distracted that I forget all about that long long list of promises.”

Without warning, she slammed his face up against the door and continued to press it in while bending his right foreleg at an angle pony limbs were most certainly not meant to bend.

“And here is where we run into a rather large problem. As you can see, this door is closed. I don’t think I need to point out any further why that is very bad for you. I suggest you get on that quick.” She applied an extra bit of pressure to his foreleg for emphasis.

“Ahh! I can’t! I can’t open it from this side!”

“Sure you can doc. I’ve seen you do it plenty of times. I can’t say this kind of negativity is going to do anything good for our relationship.” The pressure increased until she could feel the shoulder joint on the verge of dislocating.

“GAAAAAH! No! I mean because of the power outage! When the power dropped, the door went into emergency lockdown! It can’t be opened from this side! None of us can get out until somepony on the other side comes and unlocks it!”

“Well, isn’t that incredibly inconvenient? Now I know you wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Not after all we’ve been through together.”

“It’s the truth! Look at the top right!”

Rainbow Dash glanced up and frowned at the small flashing red light and the label below it that read Emergency Lockdown.

“I gotta say doc, that’s not good news. Not for me, and not for you. If there are any other details you’ve forgotten to mention, now would be a very good time to remember them.”

“Uhh...I….that is….” he frantically sputtered.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes in frustration. It was clear he didn’t know anything else and was just trying to find something she wanted to hear.

“Fine, nevermind. Where do you keep the rest of those syringes? The ones with the sedative.”

“What? Why-OWW!” She slammed his head into the door again.

“That wasn’t an invitation for questions, but if you must know, I need to render you unconscious for more than a few seconds, and while hitting you in the head really hard would be the fun way to do that, I’m not looking to inflict permanent brain damage, as awesomely ironic as that would be. I’m no neurologist, but they cover basic first aid at the academy, and I’ve got more than enough experience in both receiving and giving concussions to know that staying out for more than a few seconds is extremely dangerous. So, is it going to be the easy way, or the fun way?

“...Third drawer from the left on the back wall. The key is in my pocket.”

Dash reached into the coat pocket and retrieved a small brass key. Wrapping a hoof around him in a headlock, she flew them over to the drawer in question and unlocked it. She opened it, revealing several dozen ready to use syringes, all filled with a premeasured dose of sedative for an adult pony. She grabbed one, pulled the safety cap off the tip of the needle, gave the doctor another quick kick to the solar plexus for good measure, and jammed the needle into his leg.

Once he was out, she finally let herself grimace at the pain in her legs. All this sudden exertion after such long inactivity, without even any warm up, was giving her some massive cramps. She turned back to the drawer’s contents. They might be useful once she figured a way out of this room and had to sneak and fight her way out of the rest of the base. Of course, she couldn’t exactly carry them without some saddlebags, or at least pockets. After a moment’s deliberation, she decided to help herself to the doctor’s now somewhat bloodstained lab coat. After stuffing the pockets full of syringes, she turned back to the rest of the room. Now all she had to do was actually find a way out.

Okay, so the door is probably a no go. Think. How would Daring Do escape?

She scanned the room until her eyes caught on a small grate just below the ceiling.

Aha! Air ducts! Of course! Now I just have to...to…

She frowned with disappointment upon discovering that the vents were not, in fact, conveniently pony sized. The opening was barely large enough for her hoof to fit inside.

Okay, forget air ducts. Air ducts are stupid. Something else then.

She cast another quick glance around the room, full of cutting edge medical equipment and cabinets stocked with supplies whose use she could only guess at. No doubt Twilight would be able to use it to science a way out of here in no time. Then again, Twilight could probably just teleport or blow a hole through the door.

Come on Dash, you can do this. You’ve hung around Twilight enough that some of that eggheadedness has to have rubbed off on you. Okay, just...take inventory.

She began rifling through drawers and cabinets, looking for anything that might spark an idea. Cotton swabs, latex gloves, IV bags, nothing terribly useful there. A first aid kit with bandages and rubbing alcohol, useful to have in general, but not very helpful at the moment. One cabinet held a wrench and a few other assorted tools, probably for maintenance of all the machines scattered around. She wasn’t going to break down the door with a wrench, but she’d probably need it for something.

Finding nothing more of note in that section of the room, she moved on to examining the free standing equipment. She skimmed over unfamiliar abbreviations, symbols, and letter codes until something familiar caught her eye.

One of the machines required an active coolant system. Dash didn’t know anything about that, but she did recognize the attached tank of liquid nitrogen, having spent a fun filled afternoon with Twilight, freezing and smashing various objects and making flash frozen homemade ice cream.

Hmm….could that…? I guess it’s worth a shot.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to try and disentangle the tank from the system of hoses. A spare tank was sitting next to it, ready to be swapped in when the first ran dry by a technician who had more of an idea of what they were doing. She grabbed the tank and flew over to the door, pointing the spout straight ahead.

Alright, here goes nothing.

She braced herself, turned the valve, and was disappointed by the relatively tame stream that sprayed forth. She cranked the valve as far as it would go, but that only mildly improved the flow rate. It wasn’t enough. She didn’t have all day to stand around before somepony came by, and she needed this door cold fast. Closing the valve for the moment, she gently laid the tank down and went to retrieve the wrench. A few solid strikes greatly improved the situation, unleashing a torrent of liquid nitrogen which she directed over every inch of the door. When the tank finally ran dry, she tossed it aside and stepped back with a shiver. The whole area was covered in a layer of frost.

Rainbow Dash flew back and found one of the heavier looking carts, loaded it up with boxes of junk, and lined it up with the door. She gave her wings a few practice pumps, braced her hooves against her end of the cart,, and took a deep breath. Then she sprung forward with as much force as she could manage from a cold start, trying to pick up as much speed as possible over the distance of the room.

*Crash*

Boxes flew everywhere, the cart overturned, and the door stood firm while Rainbow Dash picked herself up, nursing a few new bruises.

Okay, so no. That’s not quite enough. Still, I think the freezing was a good start. I just gotta hit it harder.

She eyed a couple oxygen tanks in the back corner. Maybe she could use one of those to cause an explosion?

No, Twilight’s lecturing voice rang out in her head. Oxygen on its own isn’t explosive. It’s necessary for other things to combust, and they’ll more easily catch fire in an oxygen rich environment, but oxygen by itself won’t explode. Sometimes the tanks will burst when heated, but that’s just the pressurized gas expanding and rupturing the casing. So to answer your question, no, Daring Do could not have blown up that dragon like that. Also, your grammar is terrible and you-hey! Don’t give me that look! You’re the one who asked me to proofread this!

Something else then. She continued her search, paying close attention to the small warning symbols and looking for one that would indicate an explosive hazard. She finally found what she was looking for in a cabinet marked ‘anesthesia’. A small, orange, cylindrical tank with warnings to keep away from open flames. ‘Cyclopropane’.

She grabbed her new prize and carried it over to the door. Now she just needed some way to ignite it, preferably without blowing herself up in the process. What she really needed was something that could act like a fuse. After a few moments of thought, she returned to the cabinet with the first aid kit and pulled out the bottle of rubbing alcohol.

Before going any further, she gathered up the three unconscious ponies and piled them on the far side of the room at what she hoped could be considered a safe distance, overturning a few carts and piling up a couple loose boxes into a crude barrier.

Pouring liberally around the tank, she then left a trail of rubbing alcohol out to the edge of the barrier. There was only one thing left that she needed. She returned to the bed where she had spent so much time, reached a hoof into her secret hiding place, and pulled out the tuft of cloud she had been cultivating. Positioning it over the end of her alcohol trail, she returned to the tank and took a deep breath. She gave a large turn on the valve, then dashed over to her cloud and gave it a single swift kick.

A tiny jolt of electricity lashed out from the miniature cloud, barely more than a spark, but it was enough. She dove behind the barricade as the flames began to spread. For a few seconds, all she heard was her heartbeat and the distant hissing of the open tank. Then a massive kaboom and loose boxes raining down on her. Once she had determined that she was still all in one piece, she peeked up over the edge of what remained of her barricade.

Where once had stood an imposing door, now there was a scattered pile of scrap and a gaping hole leading out into the hallway beyond.

“Ha! Take that, door!” Rainbow Dash cheered in triumph.

Dusting herself off and patting at the syringe filled pockets of her blood spattered lab coat, Rainbow Dash made her way to the exit. She had spent plenty of time in this room already.

Time to meet the neighborhood. Alright, play this smart and stealthy and I just might be able to-

The air filled with the sudden wail of alarm sirens as she took her third step out of the room. She let out an aggravated sigh. A voice buzzed to life over the intercom.

“Attention all units! Red Alert! Breach detected in Section C! Intruder presence confirmed! Possible Code Violet!”

Wait...What?!

***

Twilight skulked through the darkened hallway, eager to put distance between herself and the wreckage of the generator room before ponies arrived to investigate the disruption. She walked as briskly as her sense of caution and her muffled hoofsteps spell would allow. A minimal glow emanated from her horn as she attempted to balance stealth with the necessity of seeing where she was walking. In the complete darkness of the bunker, even her faint light felt like a glaring beacon, revealing her location to anypony who might wander by. She could only hope that if she kept it dim enough, she could spot the light sources of any approaching ponies before they spotted hers. Of course, she was going to have to abandon stealth at some point; there was next to no chance of her making it through this entire ordeal without being discovered, but the further she could get before then, the better.

As if on cue, a set of overhead lights flicked on. Twilight shut her eyes against the searing light and reflexively raised a shield to protect herself while she was blind and vulnerable. After a few moments, her eyes readjusted and confirmed that she was still alone in her stretch of hallway.

Looks like they’ve got the backup power on.

She took a quick look around her now brighter surroundings. Without the blanket of darkness it was far too exposed, with nowhere to hide from sight if a pony suddenly turned the corner. She took off again at a quickened pace.

Doors and side corridors zipped past as she kept an eye out for a stairwell that would take her to the next floor down. Apart from one instance of ducking into a supply closet to avoid a pair of ponies hurrying in the opposite direction, she kept up a brisk canter until she caught sight of a large sign.

Communications

The large pair of double doors beneath the sign sat open, four ponies running frantically about within. Twilight ducked out of sight and slowly peeked around the edge of the doorframe. In the center of the room was an enormous crystal, ringed by a series of control panels. The four ponies were currently occupied dashing between the panels, flipping switches, and calling out readings and directions to each other in an attempt to get the system rebooted after the loss of power. Twilight licked her lips in contemplation. Sabotaging that effort would be a huge benefit to her mission, but how to accomplish that without drawing more attention to herself in the process?

She reached into her bag and pulled out another small crystal, enveloping it in a soft glow as she began to program it with her instructions. When finished, it would send commands directly to the central crystal, randomizing its broadcast frequency every five seconds. While bypassing the security restrictions to change the operating parameters of a central command crystal would normally be a significant challenge for any unicorn, being the primary designer of the system and underlying technology tended to give one an edge in exploiting what security holes remained. The only downside of her spell was the short range, meaning she would have to place it somewhere inside the room.

Twilight cautiously peeked around the corner once again. The ponies inside took no notice of her, still focused on the panels that were beginning to light up one by one in response to their efforts. She looked up to the rafters, searching for a suitable location to hide her tiny saboteur. Finally settling on the joint of a crossbeam that was both within signal range and suitably out of sight, Twilight affixed the crystal with a small bit of tape and returned her gaze to the four ponies. Once she was sure none of them were looking, the small glowing projectile zipped up through the air and stuck itself firmly into its hiding space. Her work done, she quietly retreated to the hallway to resume her mission.

A minute of further searching finally brought her to the desired stairwell, raising a small smile which fell when she spotted the guard standing attentively at the entrance. Twilight ducked back behind the corner before she was spotted and began weighing her options, trying to decide if there was a practical way to sneak past or if she was better off abandoning stealth and rushing in to subdue him. Her thoughts were interrupted by an alarm and the loudspeaker crackling to life.

“Attention all units! Red Alert! Breach detected in Section C! Intruder presence confirmed! Possible Code Violet!”

Her decision made for her, Twilight ignited her horn, rounded the corner, and fired. A purple bolt of light flew through the air and clipped the guard in the left shoulder. As he staggered back into the wall, Twilight teleported the remaining distance to deliver a close range electric shock. He fell to the floor, unconscious and sporadically twitching as she raced down the stairs three steps at a time.

Upon reaching the bottom floor, a flash of green in her peripheral vision caused her to duck just in time to avoid a magical attack. She looked up to see a terrified pink unicorn in a white lab coat hastily raising a defensive barrier as she attempted to shout over her shoulder without taking her eyes off Twilight.

“HERE! SOMEPONY GET OVER HERE RIGHT N-!”

Twilight’s attack tore through the barrier like tissue paper and slammed into the unfortunate pony like a freight train, sending her flying back several feet where she slumped to the floor to focus on forcing air back into her lungs.

A second unicorn rounded the corner, this one wearing guard armor and accompanied by two burly and even more heavily armored earth ponies. The trio charged forward in a wedge, the mage projecting a shimmering wall in front of them. In a few seconds the earth ponies would be close enough to engage her. Not liking her chances in melee combat in a confined space, Twilight opted to seek a safer position on the ceiling by altering her personal gravity and running up the wall.

The unicorn guard barely managed to reorient his shield upward in time to block as she unleashed a continuous beam from her new position. The shield held, but the signs of strain were apparent on his face and one of his forelegs bent enough to touch a knee to the ground. The flanks of the shield dimmed and vanished as he redirected more energy into the narrow area above them to hold off the onslaught. Twilight disappeared with a flash and reappeared directly behind them, unleashing a telekinetic blast that sent the trio flying through the air like confetti from a party cannon. As they clattered against the walls and the stairwell, she grabbed all three of them in her magic and flung them back the other direction to slam into the back wall next to the mare in the lab coat who was still trying to recover her breath as she watched in horror.

A metal panel, loosened slightly by the repeated heavy impacts of ponies being thrown against it, tore off the wall and began to twist and deform under a magenta glow. The same glow quickly bunched the four ponies together before the sheet of metal bent into a tight band around them. Two bright flashes fused the ends to the wall behind them. Her targets now clustered and immobilized, Twilight quickly rendered them unconscious and turned the corner to continue galloping down the hallways.

Next left. Second right. Come on come on, it should be around here somewhere. Aha!

She spotted a small sign with the words “Patient Room 01” and an arrow pointing left at the next junction. Her hooves slid across the cold hard floor of the hallway as she drifted around the corner. A bit of magic caused a small protrusion to thrust up from the floor, stopping the momentum of her hindquarters as she braced a back hoof against it and pushed off to launch herself at full gallop once again.

A flicker of motion up ahead caused her to reflexively raise a shield just in time to block a thrown syringe inches from her neck. She looked up to see a scrap of white lab coat disappearing behind the corner, the pony clearly deciding that they didn’t stand much of a chance in a direct confrontation once their sneak attack had failed. Twilight decided to let them go and turned to follow the next sign. She didn’t have time to chase down enemies who were retreating away from her target. It was time to find Dash and get out.

Almost there!

She could almost feel Dash’s wings wrapped around her at their joyful reunion. Could smell the sweet fragrance of her mane and taste her lips. That aching absence in her chest would be filled once more and she would finally be able to breathe again.

Don’t get too ahead of yourself. We still have to actually get OUT of here as well.

Twilight bounded around the final corner and came to a screeching halt, jaw agape. Where there should have been a door, there was instead a large hole accompanied by a pile of rubble and twisted metal. The smell of burning plastic hung in the air.

What?!

The scene inside looked like a warzone. Dark scorch marks were burned into the floor around the entrance, and the rest of the room was covered in a scattering of debris and overturned medical equipment. Her stomach sank as a she caught the sight of blood. Confusion was overtaken by the onset of panic and rage as she began to desperately look around for Dash, when a sound from the back of the room caught her attention.

Twilight advanced on the unusually dense wall of debris and looked over the edge to find three unmoving ponies. The brief fear that they had been killed in the apparent explosion was cut off by one of the ponies emitting a loud snore. It was then that she noticed the other two were visibly breathing as well. A quick medical scan spell revealed plenty of bruises, cuts, contusions, a few hairline fractures, and a high presence of sedatives, but no burns or internal bleeding.

The shape and size of their injuries were consistent with a bare hoof pummeling, and given the current physical absence of a certain martially inclined pegasus, it wasn’t hard to deduce their origin. It was a comforting thought, especially as she completed a quick circuit of the room and took note of the remains of what appeared to be a thaumatic neuroscope and some kind of overturned bed with metal restraints. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on a blood stained corner of the latter, dark flames of anger beginning to rise.

That had better have come from one of those three. If not, there’s going to be a whole lot more staining the walls.

No. There’s no time for that. Dash isn’t here. We have to find her and get out. The entryway was still warm from whatever explosion she caused to get out. We can’t have missed her by more than a couple minutes at most.

Her eyes darted back to the three unconscious ponies as she suddenly realized something peculiar. One of them was missing a lab coat. Her mind flashed back to the brief moment of spotting a white coat disappearing behind a corner. The pony wearing it had been running away from this area. Had there been the briefest flash of a cyan back hoof? Had it actually been hovering a few feet above the ground?

As Twilight’s eyes widened in realization, her hooves were already launching her back out into the hallway at full speed.

***

Rainbow Dash flew quickly but cautiously down the corridor as the alarm continued to blare from the loudspeakers.

This would be a whole lot easier if I had the slightest clue where the exit is. I mean, I guess up is a decent plan, but where am I supposed to find the stairs?

She came up on an intersection and took a right, keeping a tight grip on her next syringe. She had already had to use one on a pony she had practically collided with as they hastily exited a side office. Fortunately, Dash’s reflexes were a lot faster and a quick tackle and jab in the side had put the hapless nurse out before she could even recover from the surprise.

Rainbow Dash paused at the edge of the next corner and took a quick look. It was another straight section with a T intersection at the end, and she could hear the sound of rapid hoofsteps approaching from the right. She ducked back behind the corner, hoping they would simply run straight through to the left side so she could sneak by them. There was the squeaking sound of something sliding across the floor and then the hoofsteps growing much closer.

Crap!

Dash gripped her syringe like a dart and gave a blind throw around the corner. She didn’t wait to see if she hit her target, and immediately flew off to double back and try the previous left turn.

For several nerve wracking minutes she wandered blindly from corridor to corridor, heart in her throat as she did her best to avoid roaming guards and braced for a possible fight at every door and blind corner. By dumb luck and persistence she gradually made her way to higher floors. Meanwhile, the alarms continued to blare and the loudspeakers repeated a series of incomprehensible codes with reference to a breach in section C.

If breach means what I’m pretty sure it means, then that could be my ticket out of here. Probably a whole lot easier than trying to get the front door open at any rate. Now if I could just figure out how to GET there! Seriously, would it kill them to put some ‘you are here’ maps around?

She slowed down as she heard voices coming from behind a door up ahead marked ‘Intercom Station’. Peeking up over the bottom edge of the built in window, she spotted a pair of ponies frantically flipping switches and speaking into tethered headpieces much like the one in her room that one of the doctors had used when the lights were out.

She was about to move on when she spotted something of interest. Every few seconds one of the ponies would make a mark on a large sheet of parchment with a complicated series of lines on it. From her angle, she could just barely make out a big red circle around one portion and a bit of large print text that read ‘-tion C’.

A map! Finally!

Now she just needed to find a way to get that map for herself. She put her ear to the door and listened.

“What’s the status of the primary comm room?”

“They’ve got power restored, but the crystal comm system is still not operational.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“They can’t tell. Apparently the frequencies keep changing on their own?”

“Damnit, we need that online! Or at least more ponies here if we’re going to try to manage all these communications ourselves!”

“I know, but all available hooves are busy sweeping the lower levels and-hang on-mmhm...oh shit!”

“What?”

“Red team just reached patient room 01 and it looks like some kind of explosion went off. The door’s blown to pieces. The neurology team appears alive but unresponsive.”

“And the patient?”

“Gone.”

“Shit!”

“I know!”

“Celestia will have my ass if we don’t find her RIGHT NOW!”

Figuring she wouldn’t get a better invitation than that, Rainbow Dash burst through the door and launched herself at the source of the last voice. She crashed into a burly pegasus guard and slammed him into the wall, bringing the syringe in her right forehoof down for a quick strike at the exposed area between two of his armor plates. The needle snapped against steel as he twisted with lightning quick reflexes and turned a shoulder to block the vulnerable spot.

Uh oh.

Dash barely had time to process the thought as a split second later a pair of strong hooves grabbed her by the foreleg and threw her toward the wall. It was only her own sharpened reflexes that let her bring a hind leg up under her in time to brace against the wall and spring back off. Unfortunately, her foreleg remained in the tight grip and she quickly found herself being pulled down to the floor. As she plummeted downward, she managed to twist and grab her opponent’s head between her back legs. Using the momentum of her fall, some assistance from her wings, and what would most likely later turn out to be a pulled abdominal muscle, she managed to flip him head over hooves and slam him into the ground with her.

Her right forehoof still pinned, she quickly reached into her pocket to extract another syringe with her left, raised it, and promptly had it kicked out of her grasp by a back leg that quickly slammed down and pinned her left limb to the ground. Another back leg came down on the back of her neck and caught her head in a scissor lock with the first. Legs still weakened from weeks of inactivity, she knew her chances of winning a direct grappling match were poor at best.

Reaching her left wing into her pocket, she pulled out yet another syringe. The guard quickly raised his one wing that wasn’t pinned to the ground beneath him, but she blasted a sharp gust of air into his eyes, reached out to grab his wing with her right, and slammed the needle down on the space just above his wing joint.

He gave a howl of pain and his grip loosened for a brief moment. It was all Dash needed to twist free and get back on her hooves, giving her opponent a quick kick in the head in the process. He was up and on the offensive much quicker than she had expected, but his strikes were starting to slow and swing wide, allowing her to dodge each attack and land a series of vicious blows on his face. She finally managed to wrench his helmet off and slam it into the side of his head. He stumbled and collapsed against the wall, staying down as the sedative finally took him.

“C-Commander!”

Dash looked up to see a uniformed mare whose normally cream colored coat was blanching to ivory. She spared a quick glance down to the defeated guard and noticed the insignia and small cluster of medals on his chest.

Oh, I guess that was the guy in charge around here. Well good, I was worried I wasn’t going to get to thrash anypony important before I left.

She brought her gaze back to the mare in front of her. Everything about her screamed ‘desk job’. Her eyes remained locked on Dash as if her life hung in the balance. After two painfully long seconds of eye contact, she turned and lunged for the intercom microphone behind her. The indisposed commander’s helmet was transformed into a makeshift projectile, briefly stunning the unfortunate mare with a strike to the head before she was tackled to the floor. Dash reached for another syringe, but found one pocket empty and the contents of the other smashed by her earlier impact with the floor. She settled on a sleeper hold instead. She only needed the mare out for a minute anyway, enough to grab the map and be on her way.

When the kicking had finally stopped and she felt her victim go limp, Rainbow Dash stood up and looked around the room. In addition to the two unconscious ponies, a large portion of the floor was covered in soil from an overturned potted plant and a spreading puddle from a thoroughly destroyed water cooler, both victims of her dramatic entrance. Her eyes finally caught on her prize pinned to one of the walls with several tacks.

She quickly found Section C at the top of the map and traced a hoof over to a large red circle marked ‘breach’. Similar red circles marked a series of different diagrams which she soon realized represented separate floors.

Wait a minute...this...how big is this breach? It cuts through all the floors! I don’t even have to make it to the top, it’s a giant shaft straight to the surface from any floor!

She quickly set to finding her location so she could plan a route.

Intercom...Intercom...Come on! This is why Twilight always carried the map...aha! There we go! Let’s see...mhmm...got it!

She set about pulling the tacks out of the wall with her teeth. Though she had quickly memorized her planned route, it couldn’t hurt to take the map with her in case a collapsed hallway or a small army of guards forced her to change paths.

As she tucked the rolled up map underneath a foreleg, she gave one last glance to the microphone sitting on the control panel. True, the wise course of action would be to delay as little as possible and leave while the leaving was still good, but something nagged at her mind. Spending a couple months involuntarily bound to a bed, stuck using a bedpan while ponies debated how best to ‘cure’ you of loving your marefriend tended to make one a bit bitter, and with so few awesome accomplishments in recent months to fulfill her regular quota of bragging, there was no way she was going to walk away from a chance to sneak in a little victory gloating.

She walked up to the microphone and pressed the button.

***

Two more guards slumped to the floor after being thrown against the walls in a purple flash.

Damnit! Where is she?!

Twilight turned and disintegrated a pair of bolas midair before teleporting behind the guard who had thrown them, telekinetically pulling his legs out from under him, and hitting him with a small burst of lightning. She left him twitching and spasming on the floor as she continued her frantic gallop down the corridor.

The rescue was certainly not going according to plan. Sure she had done her best to brace for unexpected difficulties in either finding the room where Dash was held or getting the both of them back out again, but blindly chasing an escaped Rainbow Dash around the base had certainly not been on the list. Who knew how long they could be at this?

Well, either until I find her or she’s recaptured, at which case we pretty much revert to the original plan.

Her heart froze as she realized a possible third option.

Or she actually managed to escape. Like say, through that giant hole I conveniently made. She runs off, we miss each other completely, and then I spend who knows how many more months trying to find her again.

Twilight’s heart began to beat faster. Should she circle back to the breach? What if Dash was already gone by now? Her thoughts were interrupted by the loudspeakers blaring to life once again, highlighting the slightly longer than usual pause for which they had been silent.

“Attention eggheads, bucketheads, and other assorted tools. First of all, fuck you. Second-”

That’s Dash’s voice!

From that fact, three conclusions surfaced.

1: Dash was still in the base.

2: She was currently located in the intercom station.

3: Every conscious guard remaining was now aware of conclusion 2 and would likely be on their way there shortly.

“-so as much as I’d like to give each and every one of you the personalized ass kicking you deserve, I’m afraid I’ve got more important things to do and places to be. Don’t worry, I’ll be certain to come back sometime with my friends and really mess the place up. Rainbow Dash out, bitches.”

There was the screeching feedback of a microphone being dropped on the ground, followed by a control panel being smashed.

Wait, that sounded a lot like she had already found the way out. That means…

Twilight set off at top speed, teleporting herself down straightaways as she frantically tried to make her way back to her entry point before Dash did. After all she had gone through to get here, the thought of simply missing Dash in passing was too much to consider.

Several ponies tried to bar her way and were swept aside like dried leaves. She called up the her mental map of the base, potential routes racing across her mind.

All too slow.

Summoning a substantial amount of magic to her horn, Twilight let loose and blew a hole through the concrete wall and several feet of earth separating her from the hallway on the other side. She jumped through and continued her galloping, prepared to do the same to anything else threatening to keep her separated from the most important pony in the universe. The pony she had already fought and bled so much for.

The hallways began to look more familiar as she approached the remains of the reactor room once again. She rounded the last corner just in time to see a cyan and rainbow blur streaking up through the vertical shaft.

“DASH!”

But it was too late, she was already out and likely putting distance between herself and the base at a staggering rate. She had missed her.

NO!

Twilight prepared herself for a teleport. The safety feature for long range teleportation helped one avoid manifesting inside a tree or a wild animal that might be inhabiting the location by kicking them sideways a few feet, but it would do little to protect against a target location encased in several meters of dense earth. That was why teleporting into the base without precise knowledge of the layout would be suicidal. Teleporting back out was somewhat simpler, as long as one was willing to err heavily on the high side of one’s estimate of the distance.

There was a bright flash, followed by a rising feeling in her stomach as she reappeared several hundred feet above the ground and went into freefall. She scanned the horizon, spotting a rainbow contrail racing off in the distance. She focused on a spot in front of it and let off another flash of magic.

“DASH!”

“AAHH!”

That was all she could hear before plummeting away from her target. She turned her attention downward, focusing on how she was going to survive this fall. Options raced through her mind, although not quite as quickly as that ground seemed to be rushing up to meet her. This was probably going to hurt a bit.

***

WOOOOO! YEAH!

Rainbow Dash enjoyed the fresh air of freedom as she continued to put distance between her and her former prison. She had almost forgotten what open wind currents on her wings had felt like. But what to do now?

Time to find Twilight. Should I go back to Ponyville or-

A bright flash of purple appeared in her flight path, followed by a screaming pony.

“DASH!”

“AAHH!” Rainbow Dash let out a startled yelp as the suddenly appearing pony dropped away towards the ground.

Wait, was that Twilight?!

Thoughts about how that hadn’t taken long at all were superseded by the urgent fact that Twilight appeared to be once again plummeting towards certain death. Rainbow Dash turned into a tight dive and raced after her. A small glow had just begun around Twilight’s horn when Dash caught up and wrapped her legs around her, wings flaring out and braking hard. They finally touched down with only a slight skid to their landing at the edge of a treeline. When they came to a stop, she released Twilight and spoke.

“Twilight! What are you doing he-?”

She was cut off by a pair of purple lips thrusting themselves hungrily into her own as she was tackled to the ground. Twilight pressed into the kiss with the desperation of a drowning pony pressing against the surface for a mouthful of air. Rainbow Dash pushed back and felt...nothing.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. In place of the mind melting bliss she had come to expect there was simply emptiness. Her heart still raced with the leftover adrenaline from the escape and close rescue, but nothing else stirred it further. Twilight’s lips, once the divine ambrosia of the heavens themselves, were now simply plain lips.

What’s wrong with me?!

Whatever it was, it terrified her. Twilight finally broke the kiss, opened her eyes, and gave a look of concern as she noted the confusion and fear on Dash’s face.

“Dash? What’s wrong?”

“I...I…”

Rainbow Dash stared at the mare she shared so many precious memories with. She could remember the fun filled days and passionate nights, but for some reason she still felt nothing. The fire was simply gone.

She needed to go. Needed to fly away for a bit and get her head back on straight. Needed to make sense of all this before she could process anything else

“I gotta go!”

She sprung into the air and took off.

***

“D-Dash…?”

Twilight stood with her mouth hanging open as she watched the love of her life take flight and leave her behind. As she watched Dash quickly disappear into the distance, a single image burned into her mind. That look she had given her before she flew off had been of fear.

No…

She’s not coming back. She’s afraid of you. She hates you and can’t wait to get away.

No.

And why shouldn’t she? You’re a monster after all.

No!

And it’s exactly what you deserve.

NO!

The trees behind her cracked and splintered. The ground beneath her deformed into a small crater. Her mane whipped wildly in the magical wind that swirled around her, lifting small rocks that were subsequently crushed into dust.

Dash was gone. Dash hated her. It was all over. There was no point to anything anymore. The only thing standing between her and the bottomless black sea of despair those thoughts brought with them was the white hot inferno of undirected rage. Rage that called out for some kind of external target. Something or somepony she could burn, crush, eviscerate, and choke the life out of with her own hooves. Somepony she could punish for all her suffering.

A pair of faint popping sounds came from behind her, followed by a demanding voice in a familiar country twang.

“Hey, Twilight! What did you do with Rainbow Dash!”

That would do.

Twilight turned and fired.


Author's Note

New chapter finally posted. Merry Christmas to everyone still reading! Technically I missed the midnight deadline for a Christmas posting, but that's because I got pulled off to my sister's boyfriend's family's place and then had to deal with the import from Google Docs murdering the formatting as usual. Thanks to ViperBits for partial proofreading/editing work.

Sorry about the huge cliffhanger (not sorry). This is the end of what I had solidly planned out. From this point on it's all a bit hazy as I need to decide how I'm going to actually resolve all this.

Next Chapter: A Brief Interim Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 7 Minutes
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