When I was typing this, I thought this little D'n'B remix of Witchcraft described Twilights situation pretty well: Witchcraft - Netsky remix

They emerged from the tunnel into a small, stuffy supply closet, which in turn led out into the back of an all night laundrette. With its pale, lime green walls, sacks filled with dirty clothing and rumbling machines that churned away at a relentless pace, the laundrette was a humid, steam filled oasis, the lights blindingly bright in comparison to the dark and cramped confines of the tunnel from which they had just emerged.

Despite how late it was, two ponies were sat on the wooden bench that ran between the rows of machinery as they waited for their washing cycles to finish, both staring at the hypnotic vortex’s created by the machines as the coloured items within revolved around and around.

In that one moment, Twilight could have easily switched places with them. Choosing an ignominious life here in Canterlot rather than risk the uncertainty of what lay beyond the spirals base. In the great, wide open plains of Equestria.

Dash grunted by way of greeting to the two ponies as they past, but said nothing else. Pushing open the door to the establishment, they found themselves on the curb of a busy street towards the back of the ledge. During their time in the tunnel night had properly fallen, blanketing the city in its indigo gloom. It had also begun to rain heavily; fat drops of water smacking the pavement loudly.

Twilight scanned up and down the street with a studious eye, looking for any potential threats or assailants. However, she failed to spot anything out of the ordinary among the citizens of Canterlot, but she no idea if that meant that there was no immediate threat or if the enemy was too well hidden for her to spot.

“Word of advice, Cutter,” Dash said to her as they walked down the street towards one of the tram slots. “Try not to act like you’ve got a bull’s-eye painted on your head, it’ll help you blend in.”

They waited for one of the public transport trams for about ten minutes, thankfully shielded from the elements by a tin roof that had been placed over the stop, the rain deafeningly loud as it impacted with the thin sheet metal.

Once aboard, Dash slipped a few bits into the conductors hoof and took a seat towards the back of the vehicle, pulling her coat tightly around her. The slot-tram coughed out a cloud of black smoke as it lumbered into motion, proceeding on its course further down the spiral.

“How many rotations do we have to make?” Twilight asked, staring out of the window at the commuter traffic as it zoomed past in a flash of blue and red lights, rainbows dancing through the air as the headlights of the cars were refracted through the rain.

“Station’s about one and a half, maybe one and a third,” Dash said, pulling out a pocket watch from one of the pockets of her coat. “Neon Heights runs for another eight or so after that, way too long for me to walk you down.”

They lapsed into silence after that, Dash sat with her eyes closed and Twilight returning to watching traffic. Outside, the darkness of the night was kept at bay by the lights of the city, huge animated neon advertisement boards illuminating the streets. From one board that stretched across a whole tenement block, Vinyl Scratch, Neon Height’s greatest music prodigy to date, spun a set of vinyl records on a mixing deck whilst taking occasionally puffs from a cigarette, the brands golden logo pulsing in time to the beat of her music.

"Hey, Cutter?"

"Yes, Dash?"

"You see that mare up there?"

"You mean Vinyl Scratch, what about her?"

"I'd clop the shit outta that mare."

Twilight didn't really know what to say to that.

Slowly the amount of pedestrians out on the streets began to dissipate as the hour grew later and the rain became heavier, the few that remained protected by umbrellas or thick coats and wide brimmed hats. Twilight couldn’t help by feel conspicuous, worrying what kind of excuse she could give if anyone asked about her association to the scowling, illegally armed pegasus sitting next to her.

But despite her fears, no one in the passing slot-buses turned to stare at her, and the pedestrians couldn’t really seem to care any less as to what the unicorn mare was doing, being far more concerned with avoiding the puddles and potholes in the pavement rather than noticing what two ponies in a slot-tram were getting up to.

By the time the slot-tram arrived at the station it was approaching ten o’clock. Stepping off the tram, Twilight paused to adjust her saddlebags and look up at the golden cluster of clocks mounted over the stations entrance, huddling together like metallic pigeons over the arch.

“Are we going to make it?”

Dash nodded in reply, pointing with a hoof to one of the various all-night diners that squatted opposite the station on the other side of the road. “Wait in there, Cutter. I’m gonna go get us some tickets,”

“Shouldn’t we stick together?”

“Bad idea. If the alicorns want you as badly as Joe made out, they’ll have every station from Circuit City to Geartown scoped out. We shouldn’t be getting you into the station until the very last moment, reduces the amount of time they’ll have to spot you out. In and out like clockwork.”

“Understood.”

Twilight waited until Dash had vanished inside the train station before trotting across the road and entering the butter yellow glow of the diner, water dripping onto the floor from her sodden mane. Momentarily worried, she checked on the alicorn gun, knowing that there was no way she would get service if she walked in with a weapon. However, it seemed as if the weapon had retracted into itself, leaving behind nothing but a silver band of metal that looked vaguely like a fashion accessory.

A zinc-topped bar ran the length of the building, a trio of customers sat huddled together at the end, nursing their drinks and talking in low voices. None of them acknowledged the unicorn as she walked up to the bar and took a seat. Knowing that she should purchase something to blend in with the crowd, Twilight ordered a coffee and a donut from the bartender, who gave her a decidedly noncommittal look.

Reaching into one of her saddlebags, Twilight fished out a crumpled cigarette and lit it with a spark of magic, sighing slightly as she exhaled a cloud of smoke. Like alcohol, tobacco had no effect on an alicorn's physiology, but the sensation of it helped to remove some of the tightness in her lungs.

They were changing after all, just like the rest of her.

When the coffee arrived she downed half of it in her first sip, uncaring that the hot liquid scorched the inside of her mouth. Once the donut arrived she got it down with several dutiful mouthfuls, wiping away the sticky frosting residue from her lips with the back of her hoof whilst she studied the entrance to the station, waiting for Dash to return.

“Hello, Cutter,” a voice said by her side, causing Twilight to squeak slightly. Turning around, the mare found Rainbow Dash sat on the stool next to her with a cup of coffee in her hoof.

“How long have you been here?”

“About a minute.”

“How did it go?”

“Just finish your drink.”

They sat in brooding silence after that, like a pair of lovers after a public argument. Occasionally, Twilight would glance up towards the clock mounted on the wall behind the bar, or check her own watch, and even glance towards the time pieces mounted above the entrance to the station. The whole while Dash simply sat in silence, as if she had phased out of the world altogether.

Twilight checked the clock on the wall again. It was ten minutes past the hour, with only five minutes to go until the train was scheduled to pull away and begin its trip. It must already be in the station right now, waiting for the order to depart.

“Shouldn’t we get going?”

“If you want to do this on your own, Cutter, then be my guest.”

Twilight didn’t say a word, though it didn’t need to be said that she was worried about how fine Dash was cutting this whole operation. “Did you see anypony inside?”

“One or two. There was this guy who sold me tickets, he was kinda cute.”

“I mean did you see anypony who looked suspicious?” Twilight caught the bartender’s eye and pulled out a small pile of bits from her saddlebags before depositing them on the counter, waving away the need for any change. “Like they might be after me?”

“Well, there was that one group of alicorns with dicks that were two feet long who were waving a sign saying ‘die, Twilight Sparkle, die'.”

“Really?!”

“Fuck no! You really think they’d be that obvious?” Dash snorted and gave her a sidelong glance. “Trust me, Cutter. If these guys are a good as Joe hinted at then there is no way to tell who they are. Sorry to tell you this, but there’s no such thing a certainty when it comes to extraction. The only thing we’ve got arranged is Joe's contacts, for all the bits inbetween we’ve just gotta wing it.”

Twilight glanced up to the clock again. “Well then, looks like we can do nothing more than simply hope for the best.”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night.”

“Still, isn’t it time to leave?”

“Train ain’t leaving for another three minutes.”

“It’ll take us at least two minutes to make it to the platform.”

“Cutter, if I really wanted to I could clear that platform in ten seconds flat,” Dash said with fierce certainty. “We do it my way or not at all.”

They waited in silence for another half-minute before Dash stood up, nodded, and then they were moving again. Twilight could feel a prickling in the back of her neck, knowing full well that the bartender was watching her, as well as the other three patrons, with expert disinterest.

Crossing the street and entering the station, the two mares passed through the stone arch. Above them on the faces of the clocks, the minute hands paused on the hour, as if the mechanisms inside were holding their breath. Then the hands resumed their march across time and the minute hands all swung forwards, leaving less than a minute for the pair to reach their train.

Twilight followed after Rainbow Dash through the dim interior of the station with a quick step, the pair of them never quite breaking into a run. Taking a flight of blue-tiled stairs down onto the wooden platform, the smell of steam, oil, and ozone hung heavily in the air.

Dash had cut their departure down to the minutest fraction of a second, meaning that there were no crowds to hold them up at the boarding gates. Dash flashed her tickets at the clerk as they approached and he simply waved them through, closing the gate behind them and locking it with a thick metal padlock.

The platform was empty, the other passengers and luggage having already been loaded up onto the train. The only ponies left on the platform were the station staff. Guards in pillbox hats and with white gloves on their hooves stood with whistles at the ready, porters stood by their trolleys chatted amiably amongst themselves.

At the head of the train was an internal-combustion powered locomotive, painted in the fiery red of a transistor radio. On the opposite platform sat the large, black form of a steam engine wreathed in smoke, waiting to be relieved of its burden of freight cars having ascended all the war from the next zone down, Geartown. The engine was hissing and spitting, smoke pouring out of the funnel in its roof as if it were about to explode under its own internal pressure.

They boarded the red train, climbing into a vestibule at the end of one of the middle carriages. As Twilight hopped aboard, Dash hovered around the entrance until the very last second, warily looking up and down the length of the platform. One of the guards blew his whistle, and the locomotive answered with a roaring blast in return.

As the train began to inch forwards, Dash pulled the door shut.      

That was when Twilight saw the figure, not a moment after Dash had locked the door with a faint click. The stallion, so thin that he was little more than a walking silhouette, emerged from the dense white fog that was beginning to shroud the platform.

He wasn’t wearing a uniform to signify that he was a member of the stations staff, all he wore was a large hat that was tilted at an angle to hide his face, and a large brown coat the hung well down past all four of his knees. From the looks of him he could have just been a normal evening commuter, an earth pony waiting for the next train home. But as the train began to pick up speed, and the angle at which Twilight was watching him changed, something around the silhouettes hoof caught the light of a signal lamp, causing it to gleam a bloody scarlet.

“Shit... ” Dash said, experiencing the same horrible realisation at the same time as Twilight. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

Both of them couldn’t help but stare at the figure. What was he going to do? Was he going to attempt to board the train? Or was he going to wait until it had left the station, picking up speed as it hit the descending grade and began its journey down the spiral to Geartown?

That one moment seemed to stretch out for an eternity.

Twilight wanted to do something; she wanted to force herself to act and to seize the initiative before her opponent. But it had simply been too long since she had faced a similar crisis, and the certainty of reaction she had once relied on was no longer present.

She watched, her mind in a state of numb indecision as the stallion reached with a hoof, grabbed the passing hoofrail of one of the carriages further down the train and swung himself onboard before opening the door to let himself into the carriage and closing it again.

The sequence of movements would have been difficult to pull off, even for an expert. But the stallion had managed it with such weirdly alien elegance, as if he had been living in slow motion during the whole event. Twilights shocked mind was still mystified over how anypony could have completed such a difficult task when the realisation hit her.

They were onboard the same train as an agent from the Celestial Levels, and he was no further than five carriages away from them.

“We’re leaving, right now!” Dash said, pulling the door open again.

Twilight looked past Dash at the platform beyond the open portal, the wooden planks speeding by faster and faster with every moment she delayed. The train was already going fast enough that she had no guarantee of landing uninjured if she jumped.

“It... it’s going too fast!”

“Do it, Cutter!”

“I can’t!”

“Do it!”

She couldn’t, there was no way she could do it. Twilight was paralysed with fear and indecision, one part of her mind wanting to trust Dash completely and to simply jump, the other part unable to surrender itself so easily.

Dash grabbed her hoof, and for a moment Twilight had the dread image that she was going to launch herself out into the open space, pulling the unicorn with her. The train was rocketing past now, the front having already hit the descending gradient and beginning to pick up speed at an alarming rate. Twilight’s only instinct was to grip the hoof-rail next to her even tighter, refusing to move even so much as an inch.

“It’s too fast!” Twilight said, this time her voice trembling with fear. Dash made an aggravated growling sound, and looked as if she were about to jump, when suddenly the platform was gone from beneath them, leaving nothing more than empty space and a very long drop down to the next ledge.  

“You blew it,” Dash said, her voice quiet with disbelief. “Less than a minute into the extraction... and you fucking blew it!”

Twilight suddenly felt something deep within the core of her soul break, snapping like steel under pressure and fracturing into hundreds of pieces. With an animalistic roar, her horn glowed an iridescent purple and she seized Rainbow Dash with it, picking the pegasus up as if she weighed less than one of the feathers in her wings and hurling her into the far wall.

Dash yelped as she smacked muzzle first into the wooden panelling of the carriage, Twilights magic flipping her round so her back was to the wall were it held her there. Next thing she knew Twilights hooves were at her throat, constricting her trachea. Twilights eyes brimmed with barely suppressed violence, the unicorn herself surprised with the suddenness and ferocity she had just released.

“Now you listen, Rainbow Dash, and listen well,” she growled through gritted teeth, her chest heaving. “I may seem meek and mild to you, and maybe I really am. But let’s get one thing perfectly clear.” Twilights hooves pressed harder against her captives throat, their grip tightening with a savagery the unicorn hadn’t known she’d possessed. “I’m not some Faust damned, fucking package, understand? I’m a unicorn who has spent the last nine years alone; nine years surviving after I killed two of my colleagues because they killed the mare I loved!”

Twilight leaned in close, her teeth bared. Dash gasped for breath, her eyes widening as she felt a pounding begin to rise in her head.

“And when I say killed, Rainbow Dash, I mean that I tortured them until they were begging for death. Slowly, painfully, that was how I did it. I pumped drugs into their systems until they couldn't take it anymore. I burned them from the inside out until they were just lumps of flesh, mewling like newborns and begging for me to give them the sweet release of death. And do you know what, Rainbow Dash?” Twilight pressed harder, the pegasus kicking weakly beneath her.

“I didn’t give it to them. No, I didn’t give it to them at all. Have you ever heard of Tartrazine, Rainbow Dash? It’s a drug that fries the brain stem, leaving you paralysed from the neck down, and that’s not all it does. It triggers an inflammatory response in the pain receptors, causing them to swell until they burst. Do you know what that does to the body? It leaves you as nothing more than an empty shell. You can’t move, you can’t speak, and you can’t call for help. But you’re still alive, oh yes you certainly are, and your whole body is left in agony until you starve to death!”

Twilight growled. Up against the wall Rainbow Dash was beginning pale, her breaths becoming shallower. “I left them like that, Dash, and do you know what? I. Fucking. Enjoyed. It. That’s what happens when you get on the wrong side of me, you fucking pegasus. I’ve been here for nine years, amongst you stinking, ignorant, disgusting Pre-Equines, and all I’ve ever done is minded my own business until today, when my whole life got turned upside down. I’ve gone from having a simple life to running to save my very existence in the same time to takes a couple to pick a nice place to eat. I left work, and now – only a few hours later – I’m on the run from creatures I don’t even truly know. So I’m fucking sorry if I’m not adjusting to it all as quickly as you’d like me to. But do you know what? You’ll just have to fucking deal with it!”

Twilight gave the mare’s throat one last squeeze before she stepped back and released her magic. Rainbow Dash fell to the floor in a heap, gasping for breath and coughing as her deprived lungs sought the oxygen they so desperately needed. For a few moments the pegasus could do nothing but gulp down air, but presently she wiped her mouth with the back of a hoof and glared up at Twilight, her eyes narrowing.

“You all done, Cutter?”

“For now.”

Dash gave her a final glare before sighing and adjusting the collar of her coat were Twilight had pressed against her throat. “For something that looks like it crawled out of the dirt, you’ve got some strength in you, Cutter, I’ll give you that much. It felt good, didn’t it, getting all of that anger off your chest?”

“For the most part, but just remember what I said, Rainbow Dash. It’s a bad idea to get on the bad side of me, especially when I know which buttons to press.”

“So ... you were serious about that torture thing?”

Twilight closed her eyes, trying to block out the resurging images of the handiwork she had been forced to perform. On the peripheries of her mind she could still hear them, screaming like the souls of the damned.

“Yes ... yes I am.”

Twilight grabbed the still open door and slammed it shut, the air rushing past the train as it sped onwards grabbing it and doing most of the work for her. Outside, the tracks rattled as the train passed over them, snaking in and out across a junction yard before it reached one of the elevated lines.

“Well.” Dash began, picking herself up from the floor, the weapons in her coat clicking with metallic sounds as they banged against each other. “Looks like we’re stuck on the train whether we like it or not.”

“Apart from the one who got onboard, we have no idea how many could have been at the station,” Twilight said, pulling the window open and leaning out to look back across the length of the train. She couldn’t see anything ... yet. “For all we know some more of the things could have ambushed us when we landed on the platform. We could have been dead by now, there’s no guarantee that we would have made it.”

Dash looked down the long corridor running down the left hand side of the carriage, were it terminated in another vestibule at the other end. “True, but one thing’s certain and that’s there is an alicorn onboard this train.”

“We don’t know if he saw us or not. There is the chance that he simply got on the train in the off chance that we were onboard as well.”

“He saw us. He saw you at the very least.”

“Maybe we should head to the front of the train, up to the engine. Maybe he won’t have time to reach us before we hit Geartown.”

“The next stop’s twenty minutes away, at Trottingham Court, and when we get there we’ve got to switch engines to a lower grade machine so that we can get closer to the boundary. Trust me, Cutter; he’s got time to reach us.”

“But that doesn’t mean we should just sit here and wait for him to reach us.” Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself of all the excitement. “We’re not defenceless. You’ve got your weapons; I’ve got the alicorn gun. There’s two of us and only one of him.”

“Just the one we saw. It’s like you said, Cutter. For all we know there could be a hundred more alicorns onboard this train.”

Rainbow Dash leaned out again to look down the corridor. From their current position, they could see down the entire length of the carriage until the corridor jogged back to pass through the connection bellows that connected this carriage with the one coupled behind it. Four or five carriages down, Twilight knew, there was an agent of the Celestial Levels making his way towards them with the expressed purpose of ending her life. If they stayed put the first and only warning they’d get was when he came round that corner.

“So you wanna take this guy on?” Dash asked, glancing back at Twilight. “Well, after your little performance I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt on this one. You ready with that alicorn gun of yours?”

Twilight raised her hoof, the metal ring still in place. She swallowed and licked her lips. “Do you still work?”

The gun beeped. “Operational effectiveness is at sixty-three percent and falling,” Its voice quiet enough that it couldn’t be heard in the neighbouring compartments, almost as if it knew it had to keep its identity a secret. “I will become inoperable in energy-discharge mode in four hours and three minutes. My functionality will be severely compromised in two hours and twenty five minutes. If you like, I do have error margins available for these estimates.”    

Twilight briefly considered taking the machine up on its offer before deciding against it, lowering her hoof to avoid looking conspicuous. “Four hours ... four hours is good, isn’t it? Once we’ve lost this guy we’ll be ok, won’t we?”

“Yeah, we’ll be sitting pretty alright.” Dash pulled open her coat and briefly perused her selection of weapons before pulling out a bulky, utilitarian machine pistol, a long rectangular magazine protruding from the construct. The device itself was then hooked around her hoof with a thick strap of hemp, the firing mechanism attached to a pressure plate that was set against the mares hoof. Dash flicked the safety on and then fiddled momentarily with a hoof on a lever on the side of the weapon, switching it to its third setting. The pegasus gave Twilight a side on glance.

“Need any more assurance, Cutter?”

“No, I think I’ve had all the assurance I need.”

“Good, because I wasn’t going to give you some anyway.” Dash leaned out once again to look down the length of the corridor. “Ok, here’s the game plan. We can either camp it out here and wait for him to reach us, which he will sooner or later. Or, we take that risk and go find this guy ourselves.”

“I’m guessing you like the second option best.”

“Fuck yes I do!”

Dash pulled down the sleeve of her coat to conceal her weapon, the safety catch preventing the gun from discharging when her hoof touched the floor. “Stay behind me, keep your eyes and ears open, and for fucks sake don’t shot anyone until I’ve shot them first.” Twilight could do little more than nod in understanding and gulp.

They started down the corridor, the doors to each compartment on their right. The first two were completely empty, and the third contained a mare who didn’t even acknowledge their presence, continuing to stare out the window even as they left.

Beyond the glass portals of the windows, Neon Heights had become a rained smeared blur of colour, rushing past at an incredible pace. The successive rows of electrical advertisement boards, though each was coloured in their own unique way, were all washed together into a rush of electrical white as the train sped by.

The next compartment was empty, and in the one following it were two stallions who were both puffing happily at cigars, bellowing laughter erupting from them as Dash closed the door. The final compartment of the coach was empty, though someone had left the window open, letting the rain blow through and soaking the seats to the right.

Twilight could feel the descending grade now as the train began to wind in an anticlockwise direction down the gentle curving spiral that had been cut into the side of Canterlot, losing a league of altitude for every thirty leagues travelled along the tracks.

There was still a long way to go until they reached the ground, and Twilight didn’t want to think about how far that was.

Dash paused at the corner, revealing her gun and counting under her breath to three before she spun round the blind corner, weapon at the ready. Twilight waited with her eyes shut, dreading the sound of gunfire. But when Dash called the all clear, she followed after the mare readily. They crossed the connection between the two coaches easily enough, Dash once again swinging round the corner at the other end.

“All clear,” came her quiet whisper.

They continued with their inspection of the compartments, but most proved to be either empty or only partially occupied. The only one that came anywhere near to being full was the second one down, filled with five business-stallions with loose ties who were laughing amongst themselves, the smell of a hard nights drinking hanging thickly in the air.

The next compartment after that contained a mare and a filly, clearly mother and daughter. Both were sat bolt upright, the filly wearing a bonnet and the mare with a veil that covered the top half of her face, but left her muzzle exposed. Their elaborate and formal clothes marked them out as respectable citizens of Geartown, out on a costly excursion beyond the boundary to Neon Heights.

The mother sat with a large brown envelope on her lap, her grip on it tight as if it were the most precious artefact. The filly beside her was pale, and far thinner than a foal of her age had any business being. She trembled, as if constantly in the grip of a shivering tremor.

The family probably couldn’t have afforded the complex operation in Neon Heights, but were affluent enough to secure a set of X-rays to guide the hoof of a more affordable surgeon back in Geartown.

Twilight wanted to talk to them. She had the tools in her saddlebags to do a basic test of neurological function, and even if she couldn’t do anything for the filly, she would still be able to settle the mothers doubts and reassure her there was nothing more she could have done.

Dash nudged her to keep moving. But Twilight must have hesitated, because the filly turned to stare at her through the glass partition set into the door. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated to give them a witch-like look. The mother turned as well, her gaze looking with Twilights, though her eyes were unreadable behind the veil. Nothing past between the two of them, but the inexpressible sadness was plain to see, the mares hooves trembling as they gripped the envelope and its fearful cargo of truth.

‘I’m sorry,' Twilight mouthed through the glass.

As if it made any difference.

Suddenly, movement appeared around the corner at the top of the carriage, beyond Rainbow Dash. The pegasus twitched, ready at a moment’s notice to whip out her pistol and unleash a hail of lead-based death.

However, it was only a stallion. A railway worker clad in a navy blue waist coat with a cap on his head, metal ticket punch gripped between his teeth. He was much shorter than the silhouette they’d seen out on the platform, and much stockier too. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he called down to them, sliding open the compartment door at the top of the coach and disappearing inside. Dash kept moving regardless. There was no one in the fourth compartment, and the only occupant of the fifth was deep asleep, his snores audible over the clack of the rails outside.

The guard spoke to whoever was in the sixth compartment, punched their ticket, and then emerged back out into the corridor where he was met by Dash, her hoof lowered and weapon concealed. Behind her, Twilight hoped that the silver band around her hoof didn’t look too conspicuous.

“Tickets please,” the stallion said, looking at Dash expectantly. Dash dug into a coat pocket with her free hoof and pulled out the ticket stubs. The guard took them and squinted at them down the length of his muzzle, eyes narrowing. “I think you need to turn around. Looks like you two overshot your compartment back in the third coach. Have you come down here for the dining car?”

“Yes we have,” Dash lied, her voice smooth.

“Yeah, well everything behind me is first class, right up to the end of the coach.” he raised the stubs to his mouth and punched a hole through each before handing them back, beaming with the satisfaction of a job well done.

“We need to get past you,” Dash said plainly.

The pleasant demeanour cracked slightly. “I’m sorry, Miss, maybe you didn’t understand. These tickets of yours are for second class only, not first. I’m afraid you’ve got no business going into the first class section.”

“And you would know about our business... how?”

“Haha. Look, Miss, let’s not make an issue of this. All you’ve done it miscounted the number of coaches, it’s an easy mistake to make. You just need to turn around and–”

It all happened too quickly for Twilight to follow. One moment the guard was smiling weakly at Rainbow Dash, the next the pegasus had shoved the barrel of her gun under his muzzle, gripping his shoulder with her other hoof. The guard gasped, his ticket punch dropping to the floor with a clatter. Dash growled and shoved him back against the wall of the coach.

“You should have just shut the fuck up!” Dash said, nodding to Twilight, who promptly opened the door to the empty fifth compartment. Dash dragged the guard over to the opening before promptly spinning and bucking him in the face, sending him careening through the door to land heavily on one of the stained seats inside.

“D-Don’t shoot, please!” the guard mewled in a quivering voice.

“So you think I can trust you to sit there all nice and quietly whilst we go on our way?” Dash snorted loudly. “Bullshit, I know full well you’ll pull the emergency brakes on this coach the moment we’re out of sight!”

“I ... I wouldn’t!”

“Fuck off!” Keeping her pistol raised, Dash leaned against the door frame and dug into her coat with her free hoof, producing a silver plated device that looked somewhere between a miniature pistol and a needleless hypodermic. She tossed it to the stunned guard, who squeaked when it landed on his barrel. “Pick it up,” she said flatly, her pistols aim unwavering. The stallion fumbled for the contraption, failing to pick it up as it tumbled between his hindlegs.

That was when Twilight noticed the growing black stain on the bottom of his waist coat.

“What do you wha–”

“Shut up! You’ve got two choices, either pick that up and shot yourself in the neck with it, or a shoot you with my gun. So, what’s it going to be?”

“Wh-what?” the guard managed, his words almost unintelligible through his fear. “I don’t know what’s in it, it could kill me!”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

“I’d do it if I were you,” Twilight added from the back, praying that the device only contained some form of tranquilizer.

“Trigger-hoof’s getting itchy.” Dash said ominously.

That was when the guard must have realised that he didn’t really have much of a choice, as with shaking hooves he picked up the device and pressed it against the flesh of his neck. He whimpered one last time before squeezing his eyes shut and pressing down on the pressure trigger. The device jumped slightly, clicking and hissing as it delivered its chemical payload.

The effect was near instant.

The guard groaned as his eyes rolled back into his head, his tongue lolling out obscenely. He slumped back against the seat, a trail of drool running down his chin as the anaesthetic device fell off him onto the floor. Now, the only thing to distinguish him from another boozed up commuter was the uniform he was still wearing.

“Please tell me that telling him to use that thing was the right move.”

Dash didn’t respond, ducking down to retrieve the device and stow it away in one of her coat pockets. “Don’t worry, he’s just tranked. It’ll wear off in about half an hour, and he won’t remember any of this afterwards.”

“Are we just going to ... leave him? Shouldn’t we remove his uniform, make him look like one of the other passengers?”

“Yeah, you do that. Whilst the fucker on his way to kill you gets even closer.” Dash slid the partition door shut.

As she spoke the adjoining door opened, a stallion poking his head out through the gap. “Is something the matter here, ladies?” the earth pony asked in a low, threatening rasp. He had the thickset face of a born trouble maker, his beady eyes watching them questioningly. Clearly, this was the type of stallion who didn’t consider the night complete unless he’d punched at least three ponies teeth out.

“No, we’re fine,” Dash said in a half-flirty voice, a cute smile appearing on her face as she stowed her gun away. However, it seemed as if the cuteness tactic wasn’t going to work on this particular stallion, odds were he was too thick to even pick it up.

“Where’s the guard at? He was here a minute ago.”

“We didn’t see anyone, he must have turned back and gone the other way.” For a moment it seemed as if Dashs lie was going to work, the stallions features wavering slightly as his brain almost accepted the information. However, after a few moments his features darkened again.

“Wait a minute, if you didn’t see him... how’d you know which way he was going?” the stallion emerged fully, the features on his dim face deepening in a comical look of suspicion. Despite his slight height advantage, he couldn’t quite see over Dashs shoulder as he tried to see past her into the compartment behind her. “Who’s in there, what’ve you two been up to?”

“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Dash said, the flirty edge in her voice intensifying as she tried to distract the stallion. “Why don’t you just go back into your compartment?”

“Let me past.”

“I think you shoul–”

“Let me past!”

The stallion grabbed Dashs shoulder and made to shove her against the far wall, Dash didn’t even give him a chance. Quicker then Twilight could blink, she produced her pistol and whipped the stallion with it, causing him to shriek as she rammed it up under his muzzle.

“I told you it was nothing you needed to worry about, didn’t I?”

The stallion made a choking noise, the apple in his throat bobbing as he gulped.

“It would probably be a good idea to get back in your compartment.” Twilight told him, idly wondering to herself if Dash had enough tranquilizer to knock out everypony on the train if necessary. The stallion, though he had been itching for a fight only a few moments before, seemed to be bright enough to know that it wasn’t a smart idea to argue back if you had a gun pressed to your cheek.

Nodding in agreement with the unicorn, the stallion began to awkwardly shuffle backwards, his eyes straining to keep a bead on the pegasus before him as she used the gun to force his head up at an unnatural angle.

That was when a hatted figure appeared from around the corner at the top of the corridor. Twilight looked at him past Dash and the stallion she was holding at gunpoint, only taking a fraction of a second to recognise him as the silhouette from the platform.

In the dim light of a train station during the graveyard shift, he just about passed as normal, albeit somewhat skinny. But here in the brightness of the carriage, with its electrical lights burning with a suddenly unreal level of intensity, there was no way he could ever have passed for normal.

As Dash would have put, there was nothing fucking normal about him.

Twilight didn’t even have the sense that she was looking at another alicorn. Whatever medical procedures this alicorn had undergone before he had descended from the Celestial Levels, it had left him as nothing more than a sickly, gray coated ghoul.

He wasn’t an alicorn anymore; he was a walking corpse. Devoid of wings or a horn, he was nothing more than a sickening, mocking parody of life.

Dash didn’t so much as blink. Before either Twilight or the ghoul had reacted she pistol-whipped the stallion she had held at gunpoint, causing him to reflexively rear on his hind legs as he howled in pain. Spinning one hundred and eighty degrees, Rainbow Dash then delivered a devastating and eye wateringly powerful buck to the stallion’s testicles, making him shriek like a filly and sending him careening backwards into the ghoul.

“Crotch shot, Mother Fucker!”

The ghoul looked too thin to support his own weight, even under the thick padding of the brown coat he wore, but he seemed to have an unexpectedly high level of strength and balance. In what seemed to the two mares as slow motion, he raised his hoof towards them, the silver band around it seeming to unfold as it was brought to firing position. With the same slowness, Dash raised her machine pistol, the safety switch seeming to flick off of its own accord as she aimed it squarely at the alicorns chest.

The ghoul, however, was still hidden behind the main bulk of the stallion that had just been kicked towards him, Twilights eyes widened as she realised that the alicorn had him propped up as a improvised shield. Reacting without thinking, she began to raise the alicorn gun.

The ghoul was the first to fire. With what seemed like deafening volume, his weapon punching a red rimmed hole through his shields chest, propelling a thick lead slug towards the two mares. Some subconscious part of Twilights mind sighed in relief, at least they weren’t facing an opponent armed with celestial weaponry.

The unicorn flinched away as the splatter of gore displaced by the alicorns shot fell on her and Dash like a warm drizzle of rain. Blood, bone, muscle, and lung tissue erupted from the wound, staining her coat. The bullet literally whipping through her mane as she dodged it by the tiniest fraction, saved by her dislike of having bodily fluids sprayed on her face.

The ghoul had missed Twilight, but only by a slight margin. But as he lined up for another shot, Dash sprang into action with grim determination. For a long moment there was a pause as each party prepared to shoot, and then the moment was shattered as Dash fired, sending a torrent of bullets towards the ghoul.

The mouth of her weapon spat a tongue of blue fire, bullet casings flying wildly from a hole in the side of the firing chamber as the pegasus unleashed a full barrage, her hoof not leaving the pressure plate trigger until the magazine had emptied. The body of the captive stallion, who had died the moment the alicorn had opened fire, swiftly degenerated in red chaos, lumps of blood and flesh sent flying as the corpse seemed to dissolve under the withering hail of metal it was being subjected to.  

The alicorn let out some kind of piercing shriek as the bullets dash was firing began to break through the meat screen it had set up and impact directly with its body. The force of the blows sent him thudding into the wall at the end of the corridor.

For a few moments he was still, but as his head began to slowly rise the hat he was wearing came loose and fell to the floor, revealing a hideous smile underneath, the gums behind it lined with serrated jags of bone in the place of teeth and a long, serpentine tongue of black flesh, which lashed out at the two, as if the ghoul could taste them in the air itself.

“We’re coming, Twilight,” the... thing hissed at her, its voice like wind whispering through dead trees. “I am but one of many, you are only one.”

“Did you come alone?” Dash said with a surprisingly serious voice, her pistols empty magazine clattering to the floor as she swiftly replaced it with a new one.

“Of course I didn’t, Pre-Equine.”

“So where are your freaky friends at?”

“All around you, little pegasus. You cannot stop the Celestial Levels, Lord Sombra is not to be denied.” The creatures leering smile faltered slightly as it sunk to the floor, black blood as thick as treacle drooling down its chin. “There are hundreds of us, Twilight.” The creature turned its gaze to the unicorn, its eyes eerily devoid of any visible structures, leaving it a mass of poisonous green rimmed by a thin ring of ghost white. “We’re coming, Twilight, we’re coming.”

The alicorn seemed to slink forwards into a pouncing position, its body low to the floor of the coach as it watch, like a cobra ready to strike. Without warning the smile on its face suddenly became sickeningly exaggerated, as if the extremities were being pulled taught with hooks; the ghoul raising its voice into a piercing shriek. “We're coming! We're coming! We're coming!"”

The ghoul pounced; Twilight fired the alicorn gun.

Time seemed to slow as the weapon began to unfold, the alicorn left hanging in midair as the ring around Twilights hoof came to life. Two of the bonded segments unfurled, the deployment assembly seeming to bloom like some kind of origami construction as the focussing array assembled itself, slid out of the ring, and locked into place.

A flash, a beam of crimson light, the sound of an alien creature screaming in agony as the very blood in its veins boiled into steam. In the after-image left imprinted on her retina, Twilight watched as the beam reached out and enveloped the alicorn, turning half of its body to black char in no more than a second.

The smell hit her the instant afterwards.

The alicorn collapsed to the floor, its breath an audible wheezing noise and some kind of black slime began to excrete itself from the charred sections of his body. “I... impossib-” it managed to get out, a choking noise cutting it off as what appeared to be its larynx collapsed in on itself. “That... shouldn’t work... down... here... ”

Rainbow Dash stood over the alicorn and raised her machine pistol, a single bang ringing out as she fired a solid slug of metal into the creatures skull, sending a polluted spray of gray matter across the walls.  

“Believe it, Mother Fucker!”

Next Chapter: IV: Crossing the boundary. Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 35 Minutes