Eq Renaissance Part 15 (Ed)

Dark Plans

   The pilot thumbed the button and spoke into mic embedded in her air mask.  “Tower, this is EAF two-three-one.  Heading zero-one-zero.  Ascending to two-seven-five-zero-zero.”
   “Roger that, two-three-one,” replied the familiar voice from the control tower at the Equestria Air Force base.  She had never met him face to face, but felt like she knew him.  “Have a good flight.  And, uh, happy hunting.”
   She thumbed the button and genuinely laughed.  “Thanks.  I’ll bring you back a souvenir.  Over and out.”  She released the button again.  A little chatter was okay, but she didn’t want to over do it at a time like this.
   The pilot of EAF flight 231 settled in for a long twenty-plus hour flight.  It was a beautiful start.  Visibility was infinite.  Still climbing out of the airport, the sun was rising to her right, and it was illuminating Canterlot wonderfully.  She would be passing just west of the city, and its extraordinary cliff face, in just a couple of minutes.  Below her was the fertile Equestrian valley.  She had caught a glimpse of Ponyville far to the south before banking towards the north.  Her flight path would take her north around the Equestrian Mountains, then she’d turn east and head out overseas.
   She flipped a series of switches, then flinched when her whole aircraft shuddered.  “Shit,” she cursed, then physically turned her head to look out the back of the thick canopy.  Instinctively, she thumbed the button, but hesitated in speaking.  “Shit,” she simply said again.
   “EAF Tower,” came the familiar voice.  “Say again?”
   “EAF two-three-one.  Tower Control.  I have a flame out on engine two.”
   “Copy.”
   “I’m declaring an emergency.  Requesting a landing clearance.”
   “Roger that, two-three-one.  Evacuating now.  Turn to one-seven-five and begin descent.  We’ll be clear before you see us.”
   “Roger,” she said.  She pressed at her control stick, but the plane never turned.  Her eyes fell from her HUD to the multitudinous panels of dials and gauges.  She tapped on a gauge, just to make sure it was reading correctly.  “Controls not responding.  Hydraulic content at twenty.  Falling.”
   “Two-three-one, we understand you have normal power to engine one and hydraulic content at twenty percent?  Over.”
   “Affirmative, Tower.  I... Negative.  Repeat.  Negative.   Hydraulic content at zero.  I need assistance here.”
   “Copy, two-three-two.  We’re getting flight-ops now.”
   The pilot of 231 turned to look over her shoulder again.  “Oh god damn.  There’s a hole.  There’s a hole in my fuselage.  I’m venting hydraulic fluid.  Thought it was smoke.  Mayday.  Mayday.  Mayday.  I have no control.  No flaps.  No aileron.  Only engine power on one.”
   “Tower.  Two-three-one.  Can you turn to one-seven-five?”
   “Negative, tower.  I think I have to ditch.”  There was a brief pause in the chatter.  Everyone was professionally, and coolly, sizing up the situation.
   A new voice buzzed in her ear.  “EAF flight two-three-one.  Yeah, this is Canterlot International Airport.  We have you five-by-five.  We’ve gone and cleared all runways and traffic.  You can set yourself down here if you think you can make it.”
   The pilot barked laughter without betraying a bit of nervousness.  “Thank you, CCX.  I love you guys and appreciate the offer, but I don’t think I’ll make it that far either.”
   “Flightops,” came another voice.  This was a maintenance engineer, speaking from the same control tower back at the Air Force base.  “Dump your fuel.”
   “Already dumping,” 231 responded.  The plane had just taken-off for an intercontinental flight.  It was heavy with fuel.  It was now venting out of her plane, both lightening the load and, hypothetically, preventing it from exploding into a tremendous fireball if she landed hard.  “I’ve got two externals.  Can somebody tell me what’s underneath me?”
   “Charlie Charlie X-Ray,” said the voice of the civilian air traffic controller.  “It’s mostly empty fields.  I’d dump now if I were you.”
   231’s pilot flipped two more switches.  Two heavy metal drop tanks fell from her wings.  The jet seemed to rise higher into the air with its lighter load.  It was only an illusion, her plane was descending, and the nose just wasn’t coming back up.
   “Tower.  Two-three-one.  Can I get your glide path?”
   “Affirmative.  Heading zero-one-five.  Airspeed five-three-five.  Seven-four-zero-zero feet and dropping.  I... can I get wind.”
   “Charlie Charlie X-ray,” the civilian gave her information about the wind.  Her plane was drifting to the east, despite her lack of control.  “Zero-eight-nine.  Two-five.”
   “Tower,” the pilot said, adding what could have been just a hint of fear.  “I’m coming down into the city.  Five miles out.”
   “Say again?” the disbelieving voice of Tower Control asked.
   “I can see it with my own eyes, Tower.  Canterlot City.  I’m heading straight for it, and I can’t turn at all.”
   “Charlie Charlie X-ray.  I can confirm that, EAF Tower.  We have her on squawk.  She’s going to hit downtown Canterlot.”
   Her ear buzzed with the noise of a dozen different people trying to talk at once.
   “Two-three-one,” said the voice of Flightops.  “Lower your gears.  There may be fluid still left in the line.”
   “Copy.  Negative, Flightops.  They’re not coming down.  Stand by.”  She pulled a mechanical lever below her seat.  There was a thud as her three landing gears fell open by their own weight.  The plane started to slow.  “Flightops, I have no control.  Hydraulic content still at zero. Three miles out.”
   “Drop all power.”
   “Roger that,” 231 pulled back the throttle to her one functioning engine.  The aircraft started to slow further and she could see where the arc of her descent was taking her.  It wasn’t slowing fast enough.  She was still coming down into the city.  It was also coming up at her.  Perched high on the cliff, the city would meet her halfway.  “Can I get a glide path?”
   “Looks like you’ll miss downtown,” said the civilian voice that was tracking her on radar.  “Residential district.  Should be fewer souls this time of day.  Make the best of it, two-three-one.  One point eight miles.”
   “Bail out, two-three-one,” came the authoritative voice of Flightops.
   “Negative, Flightops.  There are people down there.”
   “You’ve done what you can.  Punch out.”
   “The hell I have,” she said.  She was seconds away from dying, and taking a lot of people with her.
   “Dammit, Griffon, punch out!” her superior officer ordered.
   “Fucking hell!” she screamed out, ignoring him.  The pilot shoved a lever forward, and her sole functioning engine blazed back into life.  She flipped a switch, and ignited the afterburner.  Somebody planted a boot in her chest and she was forced back into her seat.  With both working engines, her sleek jet fighter could punch through the upper atmosphere at over three times the speed of sound.  With one engine, she was just past Mach 1 in a few seconds.
   When she had been a mischievous child, she had daydreamed about flying a plane faster than sound over a populated area, just to raise hell.  Now she was doing it just over the top of Equestria’s capital and greatest city.  Hundreds of thousands of people heard her roar overhead.  Then they were battered by the enormous sonic boom.  Every window of every tower rattled in its frame.  The weaker windows shattered into a million pieces.  Car alarms all over the city blared.  Babies cried.  Dogs barked in a frenzy.  Several women went into labor.
   She wasn’t coming down in a residential district.  Downtown would likewise be spared.  By increasing air speed, the arc of her descent lengthened, and passed over the city.  Now she was heading for the vertical sheer face of the cliff that towered over the city.  No civilians would be killed.
   She  had seconds to think before her plane crashed into the stone at over eight hundred miles per hour.  She had to consider her horizontal speed.  The pilot of the doomed flight two-thirty-one reached up and wrapped her fingers around the two metal loops above her seat.  She pulled them as hard as she could.
   Some bastard swung a sledge hammer, and struck her right at the base of her spine.  Her world grew dark for a second as she blacked out, then she immediately woke up to a violent world of wind and tumbling vision.  A long second later, and the pyrotechnics on her ejection seat fired, and her parachute deployed.  It slowed her spinning descent just in time for her to watch her fighter jet streak away, then crash into the cliff in a brilliant orange fireball.
   Then she fell away.  The wind captured her.  It pushed her away from Canterlot City, and the precipice on which it was perched.  She had an amazing view of everything.  She could see the Palace itself.  Black smoke rolled up from the wreckage on the cliff.  Bright blue and red flashing lights of emergency vehicles were already on their way.  The towers of downtown came up at her, then passed above her as she drifted down towards the valley floor.  Few had ever enjoyed such a view.
   She had a few more seconds of thought as the farmland rose up to meet her.  She thought of the future.  She had just crashed a thirty million dollar war plane.  If there had been a flight recorder, she would have been court-martialed and done hard time in a military prison.  There would be no flight recorder at the crash site.  Her plane had been prepped for combat.  It was a security measure.  If the plane had been shot down over enemy territory, the enemy would get no intelligence out of it.
   That was lucky for her.  There would still be an investigation.  They’d comb through the wreckage.  They would pour over the blueprints back at the assembly plants.  They would inspect the assembly line. And where the parts of her plant had been made.  And where the tools that made her plane had been made.  They wouldn’t find anything.  That was because she had just faked the whole accident.  Hell, she had just “saved” countless lives.  Hundreds of thousands of people had just witnessed the whole thing, and they’d probably be grateful.  Chances were, breaking news was interrupting all of the TV shows, and they would be talking about this all week.  They’d probably call her a hero.  Maybe there would be awards and promotions, not that she didn’t have another reason for doing all of this.
   There was another insult to her spine when her seat hit the ground going too fast for comfort.  Then it tipped over, sending her into the dirt.  She undid the straps and slowly stood up.
   “God damn,” Gilda cursed to herself as she pulled off her mask and helmet.  She looked up at Canterlot, now safe and secure.  Over on the horizon was a long line of lights.  Ambulances and firetrucks and police cars, all coming to her rescue.  “You sure as hell better be worth it, Rainbow Dash, you pain in the ass.”

   Prince Blueblood woke up staring at the ceiling from beneath his silken sheets.  He stretched his arms, feeling wonderfully relaxed and refreshed.  As usual, he woke up with no thoughts in his mind, and a full erection.  Somebody must have noticed, because a hand reached over and grabbed his manhood through the sheets.
   “Oh,” he grinned, eyes still full of sleep.  “Hey.”
   “Good morning, my sweet prince,” Rarity said.  She had been up for hours.  She had showered, done her hair, put on her makeup, then crawled back in bed with him just so she could be at her most beautiful when he woke up and saw her.
   “So, uh.  You’re still here?” he asked.
   “I hope that’s OK.  I thought maybe you’d like some breakfast in bed.”  She stroked the meat of her palm up his shaft, then down again to cup his balls.
   He started to chuckle.  “Yeah, that’s real good.”  He waited for a moment, then started to wonder if she was using one of those double entendres.  “You mean food, right?  Cause I’m pretty hungry.”
   “Oh, of course, darling.  I thought we’d order some food.”
   “Cool.  Cool,” he nodded at the phone by his bed.  “Dial five for room service.”
   “You know, there’s actually a place I’ve discovered.  They’re new in town.  They simply make the best breakfasts.  Can I order out?  My treat.”
   “Sure, I guess.  Dial 9 for an outside line.  Oh, and dial 0 for the operator.  Tell her you’re placing the order, and she’ll call security and everything.  I always forget and it causes a big problem. Ha!”
   Rarity rolled over and placed the call.  Blueblood placed both hands behind his head and smiled.  He was hungry.  He was horny.  Soon both desires would be satisfied.  It was good to be him.
   There was a sudden, massive explosion, and Blueblood’s whole bedroom shook.  The boom was loud enough that it made his ears ring.  He grabbed at the mattress, terrified.  His first thought was that it was an earthquake, but he didn’t know if earthquakes were supposed to make so much noise.
   Blueblood jumped from the bed and ran to the window.  The shaking had stopped as soon as it started.  He threw open the blinds and swung open a pane.  The bulletproof glass was very thick and kept out most noise.  Now that it was open, he could hear all sorts alarms going off.  People below were shouting and pointing.  Blueblood looked up just in time to see the plane streak into the cliff face and erupt into an enormous orange fireball.
   “Holy shit!” Blueblood said, excited.  “You’ve got to see this!  Somebody just crashed into the mountain!  Wow, that’s one bad pilot.  Hey, um, you.  Come over here.  You gotta check this shit out.  It’s fucking awesome.”
   He started to turn his head, but only made it part way.  Rarity seized him by the forehead and jerked him backwards.  She dug the point of the knife into the skin of his neck.  “Hey!” he cried.
   “Don’t even try to move a muscle,” she commanded into his ear.
   Prince Blueblood tried to move.  The tip pierced his skin, and a trickle of blood poured down his neck.  “Ow!  Hey! That hurts!  Stop it!  What are you doing?”
   Rarity clamped her free hand over her mouth.  She kicked his left knee out from underneath him, and they both went tumbling over backwards.  She landed on top of him and hadn’t lost the knife at all.  “I’m going to tell you this one more time.  Don’t try to move again, or it’s going to hurt a whole lot worse.  Do you understand?”
   “Mmmfff!”
   “Nod your head if you understand.”
   He nodded.
   “Good.  Now, I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going to happen.  We’re both going to get up, very slowly.  We’re going to go over to your bathroom, where you’re going to clean yourself up.  You’re going to put on your bathrobe.  Maybe put a fresh towel around your neck.  Then the both of us are going to go downstairs and greet the breakfast as it comes in.  And we’re going to take the servants’ corridors because, hey, I’m not even supposed to be here.  Do you understand?”
   “Mmmfff!”
   “Nod your head if you understand.”
   He nodded
   “Fantastic.  Oh, and one more thing before I move my hand.  You can call for the guards, sure.  They’ll arrest me and throw me in prison for assaulting you.  But before they stop me I’ll cut you.  Oh, I won’t kill you, because then I’d be guilty of murder, not just assault.  But I’ll cut you up real bad.  So bad, the doctors won’t be able to stitch your pretty little face together again no matter how much money you throw at them.  Do you understand?”
   He didn’t nod his head, but she knew he understood.  Prince Blueblood started to cry.

   “Well, hiya, cutie!” Pinkie said out the open window of her van, as she pulled up to the huge metal gates of the palace.
   “Good morning, ma’am,” said the guard, as he came out of the booth near the entrance.  Among the equipment in the booth was a small personal radio.  It was tuned to the same news station Pinkie was listening to in the van.  They had live coverage of the recent plane crash.  “You’re with The Sugarcube Corner?”
   “Yeah, how’d you tell?  Was it the big sign on the van?” She hooked her thumb back at the big, clear sign.
   “Ha.  No.  We just got word here that you’ve been called.  You guys sure deliver fast.  Can I see some ID, please?”
   Pinkie handed him her card.  “We try to deliver fast, we wanna impress our customers.”  She also handed over Fluttershy’s card, who was sitting nervously in the passenger seat.  Fluttershy was perfectly happy to let Pinkie do all the talking.  They both wore uniform shirts reading “The Sugarcube Corner.”
   “This says here you’re both from Ponyville?”
   “Just moved.  We’ve opened a new location here in Canterlot.  We’re both really excited about it.  We’ve only been here a week, but we think we’ll be the talk of the town pretty soon.”
   “Well, congratulations,” he handed their ID cards back.  “Where are you located?”
   “Um, oh, over on the corner of Carrot and Cup.”
   “Carrot and...”
   “Hey, would you like beignet?  They’re still nice and warm!” She held up a dish of her pastries.
   “Ma’am, I’m not allowed to accept gifts.”
   “Oh, it’s not a gift, silly.  It’s just a free sample.  We’re giving them away to everybody.  We’d love some return business.”
   Pinkie watched the guard struggle with himself internally.  “Well, OK.  If everybody gets one.”  He took a beignet and began to eat one.  He ended up with powdered sugar all over his nose.  Pinkie smiled at him, and the guard smiled back.  With his mouth full, he said, “So what you’re going to want to do is...”

   Canterlot Palace was a busy place.  In addition to the residents, there was a constant flow of government officials, their secretaries, maids, butlers, cooks, and so on.  Hundreds of people worked here every day, and more visited.  There was a constant flow of supplies that had to be brought in.  Once the gate had been opened, Pinkie easily found her way around the back of the palace and to the truck bays.  Most deliveries were made before dawn, and Pinkie found a truck bay just to herself.  Besides, most of the people who weren’t particularly busy at the moment were around the front of the palace, looking up at the cliff where the wreckage still burned.
   Pinkie carefully backed her way in.  She had already put several scratches and dents in the Cakes’ van, and didn’t want to do any more damage than she absolutely had to.  Still, she ended up backing into the loading dock a little too hard, and made Fluttershy shriek.  They looked at each other, giggled, then got out and went around to the back.  When Pinkie opened the back of the van, several pairs of eyes looked out at her.
   “There’s one security camera,” Pinkie said.  “Up in the corner,” she shrugged her head in its direction.
   Goose bumps rose up on everybody’s arms when Zecora began to speak.  It was the same rhyming cadence they often heard her use, but it was in a language none of them understood.  All of them felt a strange presence moving through the aether, something that wasn’t supposed to be there.  Rarity would have recognized magic if she had been here; Twilight would have been able to duplicate it.  Nothing apparent happened to the video camera, but in a hidden room far away, a closed-circuit television began to flicker, and then dim.
   “Let’s go,” Zecora said, and they all started to unpack the van.  Pinkie hadn’t enough uniforms to go around, so the rest of them wore white coveralls, and they hoped people would think they were caterers.  They rolled out several carts.  Pastries were on top, and the rest was hidden with long, white tablecloths.
   “So where’s Rarity?” Dash asked.  No sooner had she asked then a door opened.  They all turned and saw Rarity stroll out onto the loading dock.  She had her arm in the prince’s arm.  They couldn’t see the knife she had sticking in his ribs, but they knew it was there.  The prince himself was ghost white, and looked like he was about to either throw up or pass out.
   “He any use?” Applejack asked.
   “No, he’s thoroughly useless,” Rarity said and let him go.  “He got us lost three times on the way down here.”
   “On purpose, or is he just as dumb as he looks?” AJ asked.
   “The latter.”
   “Hey, who you calling dumb, you hayseed?” Blueblood asked.  He was at the end of his rope.  “Who the hell are you people?  What are you doing here?  Is this some kind of joke?  If you don’t tell me what...”
   “Now you just listen here, hombre,” AJ pointed a finger at his nose.  “Ah want you to hold yer tongue and ah’ll-”
   “Ah want ya’ll ta hold yer tongue,” Prince Blueblood mocked her country accent.  “Flah’s in the buttermilk, by tarnation!  Ah done reckon ya’ll can...”
   Applejack punched him.  It wasn’t the delicate slap on the cheek that he was used to receiving from particularly bitchy women every now and then, but a hard fist that sent him staggering back several steps.  It hurt his ego almost as much as it hurt his face.  “You dumb bitch!” he cursed at her.  “You dumb, ignorant, inbred hayseed bitch!  I’m going to have all of you...”  He didn’t finish the sentence before a hand clamped down on his shoulder.  It was a big hand.  Manly.
   Prince Blueblood turned around to see who it was.  Then he looked upwards to see who it was.  He was certainly very tall.  Blueblood didn’t know him, but did manage to notice that he bore a striking family resemblance to the hayseed that he had just insulted.  That was the last thought in his mind before Big Mac slugged him.  He spun so fast he almost made it all of the way around, but his ankles twisted together, and he fell down hard on the cement loading dock.  Big Mac looked around at the women and, without thinking of anything important to say, picked up Blueblood by his ankles.  He dragged the unconscious man into the now empty van, left him there, and shut the doors behind him.  When Blueblood woke up some time later, he would find himself a little more stupid and with three of his teeth missing.  Thus, his royal highness, Prince Blueblood of Equestria.
   At the guard station, the malfunctioning camera did not go unnoticed.  One of the guards got up from his comfortable chair and smacked the television several times.  He turned it off, then on again, but the picture still did not come in.  They quickly checked a procedural manual, then one of them went off to investigate the truck bay, while the others stayed behind to conduct their business as usual.
   The guard walked down a series of familiar corridors, then opened the doors to the loading dock.  The catering van was still here; that was expected.  What wasn’t expected was the number of people.  There were supposed to be two caterers: the driver and the passenger.  Here were seven people, one a very large man, one an African woman.  This was all very suspicious.   The guard instinctively put one hand on the gun in his holster.  With his other hand, he thumbed the button on the radio on his shoulder and called for backup.
   The pink haired woman turned to him, and when she saw him she screamed.  This was beyond suspicious.  The guard drew his weapon and pointed it at them.  He told them in a loud, authoritative voice to put their hands into the air.  A couple of them actually listened to him, but not the African woman.  She was stepping through the small crowd, and in his direction.  The guard pointed the gun directly at her, and once again ordered her to put her hands in the air.  She wasn’t listening to him.  He ordered her again, but still she came forward.  The guard started to sweat.  No one had ever defied his orders before.  He had never in his career wanted to shoot anybody.  He ordered her one last time to stop, or he would have to use deadly force.  Zecora still approached him without a hint of worry.
   The guard fired.  Twice.  He felt the force of the gun’s recoil, but strangely he heard no noise.  Somehow, with the woman only twenty yards away, he had missed.  The woman was still getting closer.  The guard had already made the decision to use lethal force, and now he recommitted himself and unloaded the entire magazine.  There was no noise, but now he noticed that there were fifteen little nine millimeter slugs hovering in the air in a tight cluster, just in front of the end of the barrel.  They were stuck there, just as his invisible call for back-up had been stuck. He watched them fall to the ground in a clatter.  The woman was already at his side now.  She was whispering something into his ear.  He couldn’t exactly understand the words, but he could tell that they rhymed.
   The others watched from a distance as Zecora said something to the guard.  They watched his face contort.  It twisted into a terrible look of absolute misery.  He dropped his gun, then he himself fell onto his knees, then his side.  The man started to sob uncontrollably.
   “Come,” Zecora told the others and pointed towards the open door.  “We have to leave.  He won’t pursue, too much to grieve.”  Twilight’s friends started to push their catering carts across the loading dock and through the door.
   “What did you say to him,” Dash asked, as she passed by Zecora and the prostrate guard.
   “Nothing his mind did not already know,” she replied quizzically.  “But others will come.  We have to go.”
   Big Mac knelt down over the guard.  He took his handgun, then a couple of magazines out of the pouches on his belt.  “You won’t need that,” Zecora told him.  “It may be more trouble than it’s worth.”  Big Mac disagreed with her, but didn’t really want to argue.  He loaded another magazine, thumbed the safety back on, then stuck it in the pocket of his overalls. He pushed his cart through the door, and Zecora followed behind all of them.
   The line stopped while Big Mac made his way to the front, then they took off again down the twisting maze of servant corridors.  Applejack and Big Mac led the way.  They had become lost in these corridors before.  They had seen the mirror before.  They had actually been through it and had met those who had come from the other side, although they couldn’t remember the details.  The brother and sister were the best hope that the group had of finding the mirror again.  It was all too confusing.  They became lost.

   Cheerilee impatiently tapped her foot on the marble floor of the waiting room.  This was the third waiting room she had been in this morning.  The first had been the palace’s opulent lobby, then they had moved her to some clerical waiting room that looked like it could have been in some office building, then this place.  It felt like she had been waiting all morning.  She was starting to wonder if she would be seeing the princess at all.  It was all very rude.
   Cheerilee flipped open her cell phone to check the time.  She scowled, then started to read her old text messages, just to have something to read.  She wasn’t about to reread the magazines again.  On a whim, she started to flip through her photos.  Here was one of herself at a conference.  Here were several pics from a field trip to the fire station.  Here was a picture of Twilight Sparkle, enjoying a goofy cocktail at a bar.  Here was one of the class.  She had snapped it while the professional photographer had still been setting up.
   The whole class was still here, in this picture from several months ago.  She pressed a button and zoomed in on a kid in back.  It was Snails.  He was the tallest kid in class, and was naturally in the back row.  He had a big goofy smile on his face, almost as big and goofy as his ears.  In front of him was Twist.  Cheerilee hadn’t noticed it before, but he had his hand on her shoulder.  She had a mouth full of braces.
   This was too much.  Cheerilee snapped the phone shut and put it away.  She stood up and marched over to the desk where the obnoxious secretary was chewing her gum.  “Excuse me,” Cheerilee said, using the same voice she used in class when a trouble-making student would push her over the edge.  “But I’ve been waiting here all morning.  I had an appointment to speak with the princess herself over forty five minutes ago, and I’d like to know what’s going on.”
   “And your name again?” the secretary asked.
   Cheerilee could feel her blood pressure rise.  She had already given the secretary her name.  She was the only person in the waiting room.  “Cheerilee,” she said, then spelled it out for her.  “I’m a representative of the Concerned Teachers of Equestria.  We wish to submit a grievance over the practice of underage boys being enlisted in the Army.”
   The secretary’s long fingernails clacked as she entered the name into the computer.  “Well, there is a war on, you know,” the secretary told her.
   Cheerilee wanted to throttle her.  “That’s exactly the reason we’re protesting,” she said, mentally counting to ten before she exploded.
   “Ah, here we go,” the secretary said, looking at the monitor.  Cheerilee breathed a sigh of relief.  “Your appointment has been cancelled.”
   There was something inside of Cheerilee that broke.  “Cancelled?”
   “Uh huh.  These things happen.  Sorry.  There was a big plane crash that happened this morning.  Maybe that was it.  I don’t know.  Do you remember the way out?”
   “No,” Cheerilee said.  The secretary misunderstood her, and started pointing the way down the hall, towards the elevator.  Cheerilee wasn’t listening to the woman.  Her mouth was moving, but Cheerilee’s mind was somewhere else.  She could feel her face growing flushed with some kind of strange emotion, a mixture of embarrassment and anger and disbelief.  “Thank you,” she automatically said to the secretary, and turned around.
   She wasn’t really feeling herself walk down that hallway, it was almost like she was floating.  It was as if her mind was detached from her body.  She had come to the palace this morning half expecting to be disappointed, but she had never expected this sort of treatment.  It left Cheerilee feeling more stunned and hollow than she had ever felt in her whole life.  The elevator door at the end of the hallway seemed to recede, as if the hallway were getting longer.  Cheerilee had never felt such defeat before; she didn’t know what she wanted to do any more.
   Then a noise caught her ear.  She stopped in her tracks and turned to look.  There were people down a side hallway.  They looked like they were a part of the castle’s wait staff.  Maybe caterers.  Cheerilee simply stood there and watched them for a moment.  They were arguing, but she wasn’t sure why.  They were pointing in different directions, as if lost.  She couldn’t really make out much of what they were saying because they were all arguing with hushed breaths, like her students would sometimes do when they thought she wasn’t watching.
   It was all very odd.  Then she recognized one of them.  There was Apple Bloom’s older sister.  Applejack.  What was she doing here in the palace?  In Canterlot?  Disguised as a caterer?  And here was Fluttershy.  And Rainbow Dash.  And Pinkie Pie.  And Rarity, wearing not a uniform, but a stunning white dress as if she belonged at a nightclub.  These were all Twilight Sparkle’s friends.  And there was Apple Bloom’s cute beau of a big brother.  And there was that strange woman who lived in the forest, Zecora.  What was any of them doing here?  What was that they were whispering about Twilight?  And security?  And finding the mirror?
   Cheerilee didn’t know.  She did know that something big was going on.  She did know that Twilight had disappeared from Ponyville some time ago, back before everything had gone crazy, and that had upset her too.  If there was one thing Cheerilee was good at, it was figuring out when people were causing trouble, and the bigger the trouble was, the faster she picked up on it.  Twilight’s friends were breaking into the palace to find her, they were lost, and if Cheerilee didn’t do something fast, they were all about to get caught.
   Cheerilee spun around on her heels and marched back towards the secretary’s desk.  “Where is she?” she demanded to know.
   “Who?” the secretary asked.
   “The fucking princess, that’s who!  Where is she?  I’m going to really give her hell!”
   “Ma’am, if you don’t lower your voice and leave, I’m going to have to call...”
   “Fuck you, you dumb bitch!” Cheerilee shouted.  “Call the fucking guards.  I’ve been here all god damn morning!  It’ll take a dozen of them to drag me away!”  It took over a minute of Cheerilee verbally abusing the secretary before the first guard showed up.  He came running down the hallway and opened his mouth, intent on trying to calm down the angry woman.  Instead he got a face full of Cheerilee’s purse.  She swung it hard too.  She really put all her frustration into it.  It felt good to get it out of her system.  In the end, more than a dozen guards showed up.  They had to lift her up, kicking and screaming, before carrying her down the main hallway.  They didn’t notice her turn her head and glance down that side hallway.  Twilight’s friends were long gone.  For the first time this morning, Cheerilee felt happy about something.

   “What was that about?” Dash asked, referring to the yelling that had sent them back into the featureless service corridors.
   “I don’t know,” Applejack said.  “Let’s just get away from it as fast as possible.”  They returned to a large service elevator.  They hadn’t found any luck on this floor, and had almost run into trouble, so they all piled in.
   “Hey,” Pinkie said, looking at the vertical rows of buttons.  “Maybe its in the basement.”
   “Can’t be,” Applejack said.  “I remember there was windows.  A long hallway with windows on the side.  Then the room itself looked out over the garden.  At least I think.”
   “Isn’t the palace built on a slope?” Fluttershy asked.  They all turned to her, and she didn’t like the feeling of being at the center of attention.  “Um.  I’m just asking, because there are probably several floors with windows that might make you think you’re on the ground floor.”
   “That’s a good point,” Applejack said.
   Pinkie Pie’s finger hovered over the button labeled “B1.”  Then, on a whim, she pushed “B2.”
   There was long, painfully frustrating wait as the elevator descended.  They stood in silence.  It reached the correct floor, there was a chime, and the doors parted.  Before them stretched more hallways.  All were lit with fluorescent lights.  None had any windows.  They stepped out of the elevator to look down the side hallways.  “I don’t think this is it,” Applejack said.
   The elevator chimed again, and the doors closed shut behind them.  Somebody on an upper floor had summoned it.  “Well, I guess it couldn’t hurt to check this floor out.  Like Fluttershy said, maybe there’s windows somewhere.  It will probably be in the last place we look, right Big Macintosh?”
   “Eyup,” he said simply.  They pushed their carts down the main service hallway.  They looked vainly down other, smaller hallways, but saw nothing important.
   “Maybe we should split up,” Pinkie offered.
   “We’d all just get lost,” Dash said.
   “Not if we didn’t go too far away,” Rarity said.  “If we find a window, we find the group again and have Applejack or Big Macintosh take a look.”  They slowed to consider what sounded like a reasonable idea.  Rarity took off down a side corridor and disappeared around a corner without waiting for a decision.  Dash went down another.  The group kept moving down the main hallway, losing members as it went.  Zecora and Fluttershy were the last of the group, then Zecora shot Fluttershy an encouraging smile and left her too.
   “Oh dear,” Fluttershy whispered to herself, frightened to be alone.  She found an unexplored hallway, and started down it.  The hallway turned a sharp corner.  There, at the end of it, was a bit of warm light that didn’t exactly look like the same light coming from the ceiling.  “Hey!” Fluttershy quietly whispered back down the hallway, hoping to gain notice from her friends.  There was no response.  Fluttershy gulped, and kept walking forward.  She was almost at the end of it, where it intersected another hallway, when she caught a glimpse, just the edge, of a window.  “Oh my goodness!” she whispered to herself.  She left the cart at the intersection, and went running back to the main hall, where the group had all dispersed.
   Applejack was there, having explored her hallway and found nothing.  “Applejack!” Fluttershy whispered.  AJ turned to the voice.  “Applejack!”  Fluttershy waved her over.  “Come here.”  AJ followed Fluttershy down the hall and around the corner.  She almost broke into a run when she saw Fluttershy’s cart at the intersection, standing there reflecting warm sunlight.   The wheels of her own cart shook violently.  She skid to a halt and stared down this new hallway.
   Applejack shivered in a sensation of deja vu.  On the left side of this hallway, there were windows all the way down.  It looked out into some green space, a courtyard maybe, or perhaps the gardens.  She left her cart by Fluttershy’s and walked down the length of it, as if lost in a dream.  At the end was a T-junction where the hallway turned both left and right, but in front of her was a large wooden door.  She had seen this door before, but she needed to make sure.   Most of the doors they had found so far had been locked.  This door wasn’t just unlocked, but had been hanging ajar, as if it wanted to be found.  Applejack, and her friends, had been on many adventures before.  Sometimes it felt as if fate or destiny had guided them at points.  Applejack felt that now, as if she were destined to open this door.  She was the sort of woman who believed in that kind of thing.  She lifted her trembling fingers, pressed them against the door, and pushed.
   The door swung open silently and effortlessly.  Before her stood the mirror, tall and gleaming.  She saw her own surprised, happy face standing in the reflected doorway.  Over her shoulder was Fluttershy, way down the hall standing by the carts.  AJ turned around and hurried back to her.
   “This is it,” she told Fluttershy.
   “Are you sure?”
   “Positive.  We have to find the others.”
   They both saw Big Mac peek around the corner of the hallway they had come from.  They waved him over.  “We found it,” AJ told him.
   “You sure?” he asked.  Then he entered the sunlit hallway and saw for himself.  The door was still wide open and he could see the mirror easily.  “Eyup, that’s it alright.”
   “I’ll go find everybody else,” Fluttershy said, and took off.
   “I told you we’d find it,” AJ grinned at her brother.  “Boy, I’m glad to get out of these.”  She pulled the zipper down her coveralls and pulled them off.  She was wearing her usual underneath: checkered shirt and well-worn denim jeans.  She lifted up the tablecloth that was draped over her cart.  Below was her old backpack, the one with the big red apple stitched on the back.  AJ hefted it up on her back, then found her hat and put it on.
   Big Macintosh pulled down the zipper of his coveralls, but then remembered the gun he had in his pocket.  He kept them on, but pulled out his own backpack, with the big green apple half.  Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash came running down the hallway.  Fluttershy had found them, and was still looking for the others.
   “Did you really find it?” Pinkie asked.
   “Look for yourself,” AJ said.
   “Whoa,” Dash said.
   “C’mon, let’s go.”  AJ led them down towards the mirror.  Pinkie and Dash grabbed their own gear from beneath the carts and followed her.  Big Mac took up the rear, and heard footsteps approaching.
   “There she is,” AJ said as they entered the room with the mirror.  Huge windows towered behind it, and they looked out into the sloping gardens.  They marveled at it for a moment.
   “How do we go through it?” Pinkie asked.  “Does it open up or something?  Is there a magic word?”
   “Nope,” AJ said.  “It’s easy as pie.  Take a look.”  AJ walked towards it.  Pinkie and Dash instinctively reached out to stop her before she walked right into it, but instead of bumping her nose, she simply passed straight through the plain of the mirror.  There were tiny ripples in the surface, then it returned to looking like any ordinary, if particularly beautiful, mirror.
   Applejack looked at her surroundings.  They were what she had expected, the same as before.  She turned around and looked back out the mirror.  She chuckled to see the surprised expressions on her friend’s faces.  They couldn’t see her, but she could see them perfectly well.  Still, that didn’t give her enough time to move out of the way before Pinkie Pie came blundering through.
   Pinkie ran straight into AJ and they both went over onto the floor.  “Ow,” groaned AJ.
   “Wow,” Pinkie said as she got back up and looked around.  The place was dark.  It seemed one big room, open at one end.  The floors and walls and ceiling seemed to be made of some seamless black stone.  Still, there was some kind of diffuse, dull light that was making it good enough to see.  Pinkie turned in circles, but couldn’t figure out where the light was coming from.  “So this is the other side of the portal, huh?”
   “Not exactly,” AJ said, adjusting her hat.  “This here’s what Zecora called the ‘in-between place.’  Remember?  Somewhere in here there’s another portal like this one, but it leads to somewhere else.  That would be the other side.”
   “Oh yeah,” Pinkie said.  “And that’s where Twilight’s gone.  Right?”
   “That’s the idea,” AJ nodded.
   “Hey, here I come!” they heard the voice of Rainbow Dash say.  Turning, they saw her standing in front of the portal.  Her fists were clenched.  She had a look of nervous determination on her face, and she was trying to avoid looking at her own reflection.  She rushed forward, and she passed though the portal with ease.  “Whoa,” Dash breathed in wonder.
   “So this is the other side of...”
   “Yeah, yeah,” Pinkie said.  “It’s the in-between place.”  Then she stuck her head through the portal.  AJ and Dash saw her do it, but from Big Mac’s perspective, who was still in the palace, all he saw was the pink-haired head emerging from a mirror. “Hey, Big Mac,” she asked.  “Aren’t you coming in?”
   “In a moment,” he told her.  “I’m going to wait here and make sure everybody gets through.  Then I’ll follow.”
   “You’re such a gentleman,” she laughed, then her head disappeared again.
   Big Mac tried to ignore the strange sight he had just witnessed.  He impatiently waited for the others, and was relieved to see Rarity appear over by the abandoned carts.  Zecora and Fluttershy soon followed.  They grabbed their gear and hurried over towards Big Mac.  Rarity strained under her heavy load.  The only possession that Zecora had brought was her wooden walking stick.
   “Do we just walk through?” Rarity asked Big Mac as they approached the mirror.  Then she gave an alarmed shriek.
   “Hi!” Pinkie giggled, as she popped out of the mirror. “Yup, just walk right through.”
   Rarity glared at Pinkie, knowing that the foolish girl had just done that on purpose.  Then she walked through and disappeared into the mirror.
   “Your turn, Fluttershy,” Pinkie said.
   “I... um... well, I’m a little... frightened.”
   “Oh, don’t be worried, silly.  It doesn’t hurt.  Look!”  Pinkie stuck her head through and it vanished.  Her body was left behind.  She wiggled her butt.  If she was saying anything, they couldn’t hear.  It didn’t exactly fill Fluttershy with confidence.
   “Oh.  Um.  That’s...”
   “Hey!” Pinkie Pie shouted as she popped her head back out.  “Are we sure we have everybody?  Let’s see, we have Big Mac, Fluttershy, me, Zecora,” she counted to four with her fingers, then stuck her head into the mirror again.  They watched as she counted to seven on her fingers, then pulled her head back out.  “Rarity.  Dash.  Applejack.  Yup.  That’s seven.  We’re all here,” she lifted an eighth finger.  “And lady down the hall.  That makes... AHHH!” Pinkie screamed.
   Everybody jumped and looked down the hall where Pinkie was looking.  There was a woman down there, simply standing there.  She was watching.  No one knew how long she had been there.
   She was a fully grown woman, but had a small, almost girlish, frame.  Petite.  Her little white fists were balled up at her sides, arms straight.  She wore a beautiful scowl on her face.  None of the windows of the hallway were open.  Yet still her long, dark blue, starlit hair seemed to flow behind her.  There was invisible magic in motion all around the woman.
   Pinkie exhaled, then whispered, “Am I the only person who completely forgot about Princess Luna?”
   “Not I,” Zecora said.  She pushed her staff into Big Mac’s chest and he took it.  “Get everyone through the portal.  Quickly.  I’ll handle her.”  He nodded.  “She is the lesser sister.”  She took off down the hall
   Zecora started off at a walk.  She soon quickened.  Then she started to run.  Zecora had hoped they would make it through the mirror this morning without confronting Luna, whom Celestia had left behind to watch over Equestria.  Still, she thought of Golden.  There was a part of her soul that had wanted to enact a bloody revenge.  She wanted Celestia to grieve in the way that she herself had grieved.
   She wrapped her fingers into a fist and swung a punch with all of her might.  Any mortal would have been killed instantly.  Even Princess Celestia herself would have withered before the blow.  Yet when she swung it, Zecora’s fist passed through empty space where Luna’s face no longer existed.
   Surprised, Zecora swung again.  And again.  Luna just seemed to stand there, yet Zecora couldn’t land a blow.  Zecora reached back, and swung her arm wide in a sweeping motion.  It was impossible for Luna to dodge.
   Instead, Luna plucked Zecora’s fist straight out of the air.  Luna squeezed.  Zecora screamed out in pain.
   “Hey!” Big Mac bellowed down the hallway at Luna.  He almost picked Pinkie up and shoved her through the mirror.  Then he tried to grab the shaking Fluttershy.
   “Go!” Zecora screamed at them.  “Run!  Run away!” They were the only words that Zecora could manage.  Luna squeezed harder.  Zecora could barely manage to scream now.  Her legs buckled, and she fell to her knees.  Her hand was still in Luna’s grasp.  Zecora’s eyes were white and wide.  She looked up at Luna in terror.
   Luna’s scowl turned into a cocky smile.  “The lesser sister?” she asked.  “You didn’t actually think that, did you?  You uppity bitch.  There’s so much about me that you don’t understand.  It’s almost a pity that you never will.”
   “Hey!” Big Mac bellowed again.  “Let her go!”
   Luna did exactly that.  She let Zecora’s hand go at the exactly same moment her foot flew up.  Luna kicked Zecora, and she went flying down the hallway.  Zecora hit the carpeted floor once, and bounced, now spinning out of control.  Big Macintosh barely had enough time to duck out of the way before Zecora’s body went rocketing past him, and disappeared into the frame of the mirror.
   Big Mac let go of Fluttershy’s wrist.  He was enraged, and set off down the hallway himself, roaring as he went.  He had never, in his life, ever hit a woman.  Yet Luna was something else.  He was blind with fury for what she had done to Zecora, a woman that he cared for, and even considered family.  Big Mac swung his own punch.
   Luna didn’t even bother dodging this one.  Fluttershy, even the girls that were on the other side of the portal, could hear the snapping as the bones of his fingers broke into pieces.  Luna hadn’t even flinched.  Big Mac fell to the floor, crying in pain just as Zecora had done moments before.
   Luna grabbed him by the collar of his red t-shirt, and hauled him back up on his feet.  “You,” she told him.  “Yes, I remember you.  You were here before, with your sister.  I remember that now.  My sister led you both here for her own amusement.  You came, you went through, and you had your sick fun.  And now you’ve come back with all these other girls.  You’ve got heart, I’ll give you that much, you sick freak.”
   Luna placed her other hand over his face and shoved him.  She didn’t use as much force as she had with the sorceress, but he still flew backwards, tumbling end over end.  Big Mac ended up on his belly, laying on the floor just in front of the mirror.  He was slow to get back up.  He didn’t have the time to stop Fluttershy.
   Zecora emerged again from the mirror.  She was hurt.  She was bleeding, but she was still alive.  She wrapped her arms around Big Mac, and helped him in his struggle to get back to his feet.  She, too, was unable to stop Fluttershy from running down the hallway towards Princess Luna.
   Luna watched, amused, as the defenseless, mortal girl ran towards her.  There were tears running out of the girl’s eyes.  She must have been scared out of her mind.  Then Luna looked into those eyes themselves.  There was something peculiar about Fluttershy’s blue-green eyes.  They seemed so deep.  Infinite.  They made Luna feel something she had never really felt before.  They made her feel... ashamed?
   Luna was so preoccupied with pondering the odd emotion that she never even noticed Fluttershy swing, and deliver a stinging, open-palmed slap straight across her face.  Luna’s head snapped.  She looked back at Fluttershy, mouth opened in surprise.  There was a perfect red handprint on her otherwise flawless pale white cheek.
   Luna had never felt more insulted.  It was one thing to be assaulted by a powerful sorceress.  It was quite another to be slapped across the face by Fluttershy.  Big Mac and Zecora stood, paralyzed with shock.  The same went for the girls on the other side of the portal.  In a morning full of amazing sights, this sight was the most amazing.  It was certainly the bravest thing they had seen.
   “How dare you!” Fluttershy cried, and slapped Luna again.  Luna’s mouth grew even wider.  “You should be ashamed of yourself!”  Slap.  “We’ve never done anything to you!” Slap.  “What’s wrong with you, you bitch?” Slap.  “How dare you hurt my friends!” Slap.  Slap.  Slap.  Every one hurt Luna.  Each strike stung, and bruised her ego.  This shouldn’t be happening, but it was.
   Fluttershy never saw it coming.  Zecora, with her heightened reflexes, never saw Luna move.  The girls on the other side didn’t know what had happened.  One moment Fluttershy was standing there.  The next moment Luna had swung her arm, back-handed, and struck poor Fluttershy with all her might and anger.
   Fluttershy struck the wall, opposite the windows that lined the hallway.  There was a sickening crunch that even the girls on the other side could hear.  Fluttershy seemed to hang there for a second, then she collapsed down to the floor.  There was a patch of red blood on the wall, where Fluttershy’s head had struck.
   The girls on the other side screamed.  “NO!” Big Macintosh bellowed.  His vision turned red with blood lust.  He watched Luna calmly step over Fluttershy’s limp, crumpled body and approach them.  He reached vainly towards Luna, wanting to either kill her, or die in the process.  He couldn’t move.  The arms wrapped around him were too strong.  They were stronger than him.  They were stronger than steel.  With his one good hand, Big Mac reached into his pocket and pulled out the gun.  He aimed it at Luna and pulled the trigger.  Nothing happened.  He flicked of the safety.  He watched Luna approaching down the sight.  He pulled again.  Luna disappeared behind a muzzle flash, only to reappear a step closer.  Again and again he fired as he was being pulled backward.  The gun was as ineffective as it had been against Zecora.
   Big Mac felt himself falling backwards, and his head hit the ground.  When he looked up, he saw a high, black ceiling.  He was on the other side.  When he sat up, he saw Luna through the mirror.  She was in the mirror room.  She was getting closer.  Luna was going to follow them through the mirror and kill them all.
   Big Mac saw Zecora swing her staff.  It struck the window.  The mirror.  It shattered into a million pieces, and Luna vanished on the other side.  She had been stopped.
   Zecora, stunned at what had just happened, turned to the others.  They were sobbing.  They were panicked.  Zecora had just destroyed the one passage way back to their world.  They had no choice now.  They would have to find Twilight.  They would have to pass through to the other side, wherever that led them.

   Luna stopped in front of the broken mirror.  There was glass all around her tiny, bare feet.  The mirror itself was destroyed, and she was looking at the wooden backing.  She stuck out her lower lip.  Luna pouted.
   Then she heard the slow clapping of two hands.  Only now did she notice the smell that permeated the room.  It was an old smell.  Dead.  It was as if something had decayed, then mummified.  It might have been from an Egyptian tomb, a corpse that had been stuffed with exotic spices, and then left to rot in the dry heat for thousands of years.  She turned towards the clapping with a proud smile on her face.
   He was standing behind the door.  Of course he was.  That was one of the places that he loved to stand.  She had no idea how long he had been hiding there, probably from the beginning.  Now he was standing up to his full height.  He was over eight feet tall, if you didn’t count the two twisted horns.
   “Well done! Well done!  Well done!” he congratulated her.
   “You’re not supposed to be here,” she scolded him.
   “Oh, don’t worry,” Discord held his hands up innocently.  “I haven’t done a thing.  Just watched.”
   “Not a thing?” she asked, amused but skeptical.
   “Nothing, my dear.  Well, at least nothing here in Equestria.  As per our little agreement.  But you!  Oh!  You’ve been a busy little bee, haven’t you?”
   Luna gave a little bow and he started to clap his hands again.  “My gracious!  You’ve managed to get rid of Twilight Sparkle.  Celestia has run off, leaving her throne in your hands.  And now, oh my stars and garters, you’ve managed to get rid of the other Elements of Harmony, and that witch at the same time.  They won’t be coming back either.  And all without lifting a finger.”  He actually bent over the top of the door, and looked down the hallway.  “Well, except for that one.”  He hooked a thumb at Fluttershy’s lifeless body.
   Discord gave her a smirk.  “So what now?”
   “Now I enjoy myself a little.  Try out my new throne.” Luna left the mirror room.  She saw Fluttershy’s body, and the idea of stepping over it again struck her as some how distasteful.  She made a left and took an alternate route.
   “Are you even going to tell your sister?” Discord asked as he followed her.
   “Hmm,” Luna said.  “Nah.  I’ll let her figure it out on her own.  Let her rot in Africa for awhile.”
   Discord stopped in his tracks.  “My goodness.  You certainly are devious.”
   Princess Luna laughed.  “Are you really that surprised?  Now come on.  Let’s go have some fun.”