"That... wasn't fun" Pinkie remarked, looking carefully down below.
Beside her, the Discord-arm made no further comment.
Both of them were high up in the sky, watching the remains of the explosion that, seconds earlier, had nearly finished them off. Discord's timely snap of the fingers had made them change position, sheltering them in the air, where they now hovered suspended by means of an umbrella. There was no need to wonder how that last part was possible — it was clearly just another one of Discord's tricks.
Still watching, Pinkie frowned when she noticed the presence of the flying saucer that had attacked them earlier. She couldn't make it out directly because of the smoke filling the area, but the red and blue lights it cast every so often revealed its circular silhouette, circling the place the way a hungry shark would near the surface of the sea.
The Discord-arm was watching too, but not the explosion — instead, the other lights slowly approaching to support their companion.
Support? It scoffed at its own reasoning. Those entities didn't know the meaning of that word, nor did the master who controlled them.
Setting aside its own sarcasm, it shook off its earlier thoughts and refocused on its mission.
They had escaped by the narrowest of margins.
The initial advantage it had enjoyed until then was practically spent. It was time to stop playing around and start moving quickly.
Without waiting another second, it snapped its fingers again.
In the sky of the toy world, far above anyone's sight, the blurred silhouette of an umbrella vanished imperceptibly into the heavy morning cloud cover.
[---]
She had seen enough. She had heard enough.
The intense hum that had struck her a moment before still echoed in her eardrums. Racing back inside the shelter had dulled the sound a little — a negligible relief, given the desperation coursing through her entire body.
Rainbow Dash had no doubts. They were all completely done for.
She wanted to curse. She wanted to scream. She wanted to stop for a moment and whinny until she lost her voice before trying to think more clearly.
But something inside her, perhaps a primal instinct, pushed her to keep going and not look back.
If only they were all together... If only Twilight were there at that moment... Somehow, there would be a plan...
"Rainbow Dash?"
The pegasus startled, torn from her thoughts.
"Rainbow Dash? Are you all right? Is something happening outside?" Rarity asked again, her horn lit, still in the same spot where Rainbow had left her before, just like the others.
Rainbow Dash didn't answer. Agitated, she remained in the doorway of the dim room, watching the others, her body stretched across the entrance as though futilely trying to block the danger outside from getting in.
How long had she been standing there like a fool?
No, that wasn't the question.
What should she do now?
Yes, that was what she urgently needed to answer.
Silently, the pegasus went to the other available bed in the room. Without the slightest care, she grabbed the mattress and dragged it to the entrance. Then she piled on every bit of junk she could find nearby, forming a makeshift barricade.
Rarity asked no more questions. She sensed that something was wrong, so using her magic, she lifted the unconscious Applejack from the floor and set her down beside her to watch over her. Or rather, to protect her from whatever might be about to happen.
After a few brief seconds of agonizing uncertainty, Rainbow finished sealing off every entrance to the room — the main door as well as the upper windows.
With no strength and no ideas left, she collapsed to the floor, exhausted, beside Rarity.
"I'm afraid of the answer, but... how bad is the situation?" the unicorn asked in a trembling voice, watching her exhausted friend closely.
"Well..."
The pegasus hadn't finished speaking when a sudden glow caught their attention.
Wrapped in the gloom, the flashes had their source at the blocked entrance to the room.
One after another, beams of light shone through the gaps in the barricade they had just put up, as though some enormous light source were slowly moving on the other side.
Hypnotized by the blue, red, and yellow glimmers filtering through the cracks, both ponies fell silent. And they remained that way, until, at last...
"...we're in a terribly bad situation," Rainbow finally answered, swallowing hard.
[---]
"Primary objective located. Corrective actions executed. Results negative."
Messages went back and forth between the probes across their communication network.
"Secondary objectives located. Proceeding to containment."
A new message was sent out; a large number of probes headed toward the newly indicated coordinates.
The image attached to the message was that of the lookout cabin.
"Secondary objectives isolated. Awaiting orders."
[---]
"Did you say... flying saucers...? Seriously?" Rarity raised an eyebrow, somewhat skeptical after hearing her friend's latest revelation.
"It won't seem so funny when they're right over our heads!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, visibly rattled. "There are hundreds of them out there! Did I say hundreds? Maybe thousands! Ughhh!"
"I believe you... there are a lot of them, and they're hostile. Why...?"
"I've seen enough old cartoon tapes to know when I'm looking at an alien invasion! Obviously they're hostile!"
"So, you think they're dangerous based on some old foal movies."
Rainbow Dash didn't answer that last remark; without another word, she grabbed Rarity's head with a mechanical motion and turned it toward the entrance, where the multicolored lights kept flashing, accompanied by a persistent hum.
"Okay, I admit it, they have a very suspicious attitude... and those loud, old-fashioned colors definitely don't inspire confidence in me. But... we don't know anything else about them. Correct?"
"What else do you want to know about them?! Whether they like fashion shows?"
"I'm not trying to be impertinent with you, Rainbow, just objective about what we know... they could very well be the inhabitants of this place."
"Inhabitants?! You haven't listened to a single thing I've said!"
"Yes, I've listened to you, it's just that if they were as hostile as you say, shouldn't they have already attacked us instead of just standing around out there?"
Rainbow opened her mouth, then turned her head toward the entrance. Rarity had a point. They were moving, sure, but aside from lurking around the area, they weren't doing anything else. They weren't trying to get in, or force the other openings, nor were they firing laser beams like in the movies she remembered.
Had she let herself get carried away by panic?
Rainbow walked over to one of the windows she had covered, not giving Rarity a chance to add anything else, and carefully cracked it open to see how things looked outside...
She hadn't even finished sliding the board a few inches when she noticed a strange warmth on her forehead. She raised a hoof to that spot and then noticed a bright red dot lighting up the skin of her hoof.
"This is..." she asked, still not understanding what it was.
"A laser..." Rarity answered from behind her. Turning around, the pegasus couldn't help but shudder at the sight of an outrageous number of laser sights lighting up her friend, and the rest of the ponies in the room.
How in the world were the lasers passing through the walls of the room?
Rainbow Dash didn't want anything more to do with that. She closed the opening back up, and the laser sights vanished at once.
"Forget what I said before, they're hostile and they'll eliminate us if we try to escape," Rarity said, with no more will left to keep up her earlier skepticism. "Do you have a plan?" she asked as soon as Rainbow was back at her side.
"No," the pegasus replied, dejected.
"I see... I... don't have one either." Rarity lowered her head, equally downcast, her gaze fixed on Applejack, who lay in her lap, her mane now being stroked by the unicorn in an absent, mechanical way.
"So that's it, then..." Rainbow murmured.
"I don't know..." Rarity answered in a flat voice. "We could try one last stand, that much is certain, but... given the state I'm in, and how the rest of the girls are... besides losing in a pathetic display, I don't see how we'd convince our future captors that we're prisoners who deserve to be treated with dignity. That is... assuming they're even considering taking us prisoner..."
Rainbow's face twisted. The neon lights kept filtering into the dark interior of the room. That glow, so incongruous with the situation, glittered on the tears beginning to form on the face of the pegasus, who sat nearly collapsed on the floor.
"I wish I were smarter, or more magical, like you two..." she murmured.
"I'm sorry I'm not smarter or more magical right now," Rarity replied.
"I didn't mean you, I meant Applejack and Fluttershy... they've done so much for us... this whole time."
"Uhmmm." Rarity let out a restrained sigh. "Yes, that's true... Applejack leading and Fluttershy with her wonderful pearl... I... we haven't contributed much."
"Yeah... we've been nothing but dead weight..." Rainbow Dash added bitterly.
The atmosphere grew heavy; the hum outside simply carried on.
"If only one of us knew how to do something actually useful right now..."
"Don't take that out on me, Rainbow Dash!" Rarity exclaimed, feeling targeted. "I don't have mastery over teleportation, or invisibility, or any other magic that could get us out of this jam. But Rarity has unique qualities that keep her steady in difficult situations like this one."
"Sorry," Rainbow replied, uncomfortable with her friend's tone. "I didn't mean to bruise your pride, but since you brought it up, can you tell me one of those unique qualities that keep you so composed?"
"Hem... well... how about a magic that lets you clear your thoughts in situations of extreme tension!"
"Do you really have that?"
"I'm using it right now. It's very useful at fashion shows, darling. You wouldn't believe how nervous rookie mares get."
"..." Rainbow had no witty comeback for that revelation. Instead, another thought suddenly popped into her head, and instinctively, she seized it and blurted it out.
"Use it on me!"
"Huh?" Rarity let out, puzzled, not understanding what she'd just heard.
"Use it on me! Now!" Rainbow Dash urged, her eyes fixed on the unicorn.
[---]
"Secondary objectives isolated. Awaiting orders," it repeated.
The last message still hadn't received a response; it was taking quite a while.
The probe didn't insist on repeating it. The ADMIN MASTER — that is, its superior — did not tolerate that kind of behavior. This probe, like the rest still watching over the shelter where the secondary objectives had holed up, found itself in the middle of an unsettling wait.
They had the ability to force their way in, but the latest orders indicated the objectives posed no significant threat and that they should do nothing more. They only had to make sure nopony fled the place. If any of the objectives tried to flee, they were free to eliminate it without restriction.
Suddenly, a signal was received; at once, every probe understood what would happen next.
A glow, different from the neon light flooding the hallway, switched on.
Little by little, a figure of light began to take shape; at the same time, the probes had begun clearing away the obstacles blocking the entrance to the room where the secondary objectives were.
The ADMIN MASTER had decided to manifest in person. They had no clear information as to why this had to happen this way, but it didn't matter. Orders were orders.
The entrance was cleared. The ADMIN MASTER, with unusual haste and not yet fully materialized, began to take its first step into the room.
[---]
"Is something wrong, Rainbow Dash?"
"No... it's nothing... well... it is something..."
"Tell me, what is it?"
Rainbow Dash and Twilight flew at an easy pace over a sky flooded with white clouds; the ground was nowhere to be seen, nor was the sun. Still, the way the light filtered through the highest clouds suggested that sunset was not far off.
"I've been having a rough time lately..."
"You? Did Soarin ask you out again?"
"No! It's not about him. It's... I mean, I've been messing things up a lot lately, and that... has been making me feel like a loser."
"I see... a rough patch. Has it been that bad?"
"Well... yeah... honestly it has... and I don't know what to do now to fix things."
"Uhmmm... well, you have a friend right here beside you. If you tell me one of your problems, maybe I can give you an idea of how to solve it," Twilight finished, winking at the pegasus.
"That's it!" Rainbow Dash blurted out hopefully, doing a loop in the air. "Umm... I mean, thanks, Twilight."
"You don't have to thank me yet," Twilight replied with a smile. "Come on, tell me one of your problems."
"Okay, well... suppose you were in a colorful shelter, in a really weird place, and on top of that you were surrounded by a fleet of murderous flying saucers with all your other friends piled on top of you, injured or something. What would you do?"
"Uhm... that's very specific and unusual, is this a thought exercise? Honestly, I've never found myself in a situation like that before," Twilight replied thoughtfully. "I suppose the most natural thing would be to have a panic attack."
"Wh-what?" Rainbow Dash replied, choking on her own words. "You wouldn't have a plan!"
"Hmm... no, although your problem sounds urgent, and also very creative. I wouldn't have a plan to fall back on..."
"...then... we're really done for..." Rainbow Dash murmured, stunned, coming to a stop mid-flight.
"Huh?" Twilight also stopped flying and stared at her, puzzled. Her pegasus friend's gaze had dropped, her natural glow had faded, and she gave the impression that it might start raining over her at any moment.
"...there's no plan... there's no hope... we're done for... we're lost..." Rainbow Dash went on murmuring.
"We're not lost, we were going to—"
"You just don't get it! There's no plan! We did everything we could! We can't go anywhere now... we're completely finished!" Rainbow Dash finished shouting, covering her face with her hooves.
"Uhmm..." Twilight remained silent, watching; beside them, the clouds drifted along slowly, in no hurry to go anywhere, just like the conversation. Genuinely interested in helping her friend, Twilight decided to take the initiative. "Look, Rainbow, I'm not sure where the flying saucers came from, but... if you're asking me why I wouldn't have a plan, it wouldn't be because of them."
Rainbow, who had kept her face covered, let one eye peek through her hoof, reflecting sudden surprise. "It wouldn't?"
"No... If I don't have a plan, it's because I don't have enough information — that's the basic first step before analyzing any situation."
"Ahh... okay... you're starting to talk in a way I don't understand..."
"I'm pretty sure you do understand, Rainbow. I don't mean to pressure you, but earlier you said you'd all done everything you could, right?"
"Yeah... about that..."
"And what did you do?"
"Ahh... well, we woke up in a weird place, then we tried to settle in, but we got attacked by a giant ball of fur..."
"A giant ball of fur?"
"Yeah... it was more of a giant furball beast... but we defeated it, and after that we went through a horrible day of bad weather. And now we're being attacked by flying saucers..."
"Okay, that's enough. Uhmmm—" Twilight stopped the explanation and started thinking again. "Rainbow, you said you were attacked by a giant beast. How did you defeat it?"
"That... to be more exact, we didn't defeat it, it was more like Fluttershy who defeated it, I think that's how it went, although Pinkie said it was the candy."
"Candy? No, wait. Fluttershy fought, and you didn't?"
"No... I messed up... I didn't do anything..."
"That's fine... I mean, it's not fine, actually it's very strange — you're saying Fluttershy fought the beast. Wasn't that beast supposed to be so gigantic?"
"Ahh! That... she actually used a magic pearl to face it. The beast was HUGE! But with the pearl, Fluttershy became just as big. It was a really good move, you should have seen her, she looked..."
"That could be a very useful resource for a good plan. Don't you think?"
"Well yeah, I totally agree, it's just got one tiny little problem..."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"The pearl only responds to her, plus she doesn't know how it works, and now she's sleepwalking and not listening to anyone."
"That complicates things a lot..." Twilight said, settling back into a thoughtful posture.
"Yeah..." Rainbow Dash confirmed, already tired.
After remaining silent for several more seconds, Twilight shook her head and continued.
"I think I give up. The way you describe it, I don't see what I could do in a situation like that."
"I see..." Rainbow said, not too surprised by how the conversation was ending.
"On the other hand, if I were in your place, I think my only hope would be to suggest something to Fluttershy while she's asleep..."
Rainbow Dash froze on the spot.
What had the imaginary Twilight just said?
She blinked several times before reacting.
"If YOU were in my place! Why not you if you were there?!"
"Well... I don't know all the details, but I remember Rarity once told me Fluttershy had a very intense sleepwalking episode at her first sleepover. And to stop her, you all had to go through a very difficult situation, one where you failed several times trying to wake her up, which brings me to my point. Wasn't it you who finally managed it? Didn't you use some kind of unconscious suggestion to bring her back to herself?"
Rainbow's face looked exactly like it would if she'd just run headfirst into a concrete wall.
Or rather, into reality.
She raised a hoof to her head. How dense had she been lately? The answer had been buried deep in her thick skull the whole time...
"Are you all right, Rainbow?" The alicorn princess looked as though she had a question mark hovering over her head as she flapped her wings. "This whole mental exercise is being useful to you, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed happily, shaking her head in an attempt to sort out her thoughts. "You know, I just remembered I have a really urgent matter to deal with back in the real world — I mean, in my candy house, I mean, in... Urghhh! See you around!" She shot off toward the clouds.
"Oh... goodbye?"
Before Twilight could even wonder where her friend was flying off to in such a hurry, Rainbow doubled back and gave her a tight hug.
Both of them stayed hugging like that for a moment, while the clouds around them began to part, revealing a bright, blue sky in all its splendor.
In the midst of the brightness surrounding them, Twilight and Rainbow Dash pulled apart.
There were no words of farewell. No further gestures of friendship. Only looks of understanding.
The next instant, Rainbow Dash took off toward the horizon, leaving Twilight watching her with a faint smile that slowly faded as everything around her drifted away.
[---]
The sensation already felt familiar. Applejack had heard Rarity's voice off in the distance, but once her vision cleared enough, she realized she was lying in her lap.
"What in tarnation? What's going on...?" she said nervously, realizing she couldn't feel her hind legs.
"Shhh... don't interrupt, Rainbow's having a moment of brilliance," Rarity whispered to the newly awakened Applejack.
"But...?"
"Shhh..."
Still not understanding. It only took a small turn of her head to find Rainbow. The pegasus stood there with an odd expression on her face. Her lips were moving, as if she were saying something, but no words came out — if anything, she would swear Rainbow was talking to herself. Had she lost her mind?
An intense light fell across her eyes, making her blink. With confusion growing by the moment, she turned toward the source of the light.
The entrance to the room, which had been blocked for some reason she couldn't recall, was being unblocked by a luminous force.
Boxes, barrels, a pillow — one by one, objects that had been stacked across the doorway went flying off in the opposite direction at great speed, revealing the intense source of light on the other side.
Soon, the silhouette of a figure made of pure light began to emerge beyond the barricade, which was just finishing crumbling apart.
A pony made of light? That was the first thing that came to her mind as she watched the scene.
No, it wasn't a pony made of light... it was something more.
An intense shiver ran through Applejack's body as she felt the coldness radiating from the figure of light. An entity that looked nothing like a pony, but rather like...
"Ohh my stars! Girls!" Applejack shrieked, her voice high-pitched, sliding into panic.
"I'm seeing it too, Applejack," a surprisingly steady voice replied. Applejack turned and found a Rainbow Dash who had already stopped babbling and was now watching the unknown threat at the doorway with absolute confidence. "I know what to do, trust me," she finished, turning her gaze back to her friends.
The barricade, pushed by an invisible force, finished disappearing entirely.
A mattress went flying over the ponies' heads.
However, in the instant the figure of light lifted its foot to take its first step into the room, many things happened almost in slow motion.
Applejack was grabbed by the scruff of the neck.
So was Rarity, though from the opposite side.
Rainbow Dash, who in a single motion had swept her friends off the floor and set them down on her back, was charging at full speed toward Fluttershy, who still hung asleep, suspended in the air.
She caught her — or rather, it was the sleepwalking pegasus who, in a comical fashion, latched onto her the way a koala clings to its tree.
She wasn't surprised by that reaction. In fact, she'd been counting on it, since it was a vital part of the plan she had in mind.
She was betting everything on a single shot.
With Fluttershy on top of her (upside down), in the middle of an effort that pushed the limits of her back's endurance, Rainbow accelerated even further, mere inches from slamming into the wall of the room.
The blow to her head might knock her out. But that was fine. No one had stopped her so far. Despite the risks, her plan had gone perfectly, and only one last step remained.
"Hug..." Fluttershy had whispered in a broken voice.
With every emotion she had built up until then, putting her daring plan to the test, Rainbow answered almost right in her ear.
"I hate you."
A new glow, entirely different from the others filling the place, erupted, striking the wall. At the same instant, in front of that singular scene, the figure of light at the doorway finished taking its first step into the room.
[---]
The ADMIN MASTER turned its gaze to the new world it had just materialized into. Unable to deceive it, the world revealed itself exactly as it truly was...
[---]
She wasn't sure what was happening. But she was starting to suspect that the recent yank Rainbow Dash had given her tail had scrambled her senses more than she would have expected.
"Okay... I am very confused," Rarity muttered, drifting adrift inside a shining bubble, suspended in a dark void.
She felt strangely light, as though she'd just come out of a full spa session, but without the freshness she would have expected to find in her coat.
Coat?
Turning her attention to her limbs, she felt relief at recognizing the white color of her skin, that pearly tone so characteristic of her, though with an unusual polish that seemed a little out of place given her recent lack of grooming.
A dark thought crossed her mind. Could it possibly be... sweat?
Before the expression on her face could twist completely into a grimace of disgust, the waving of her limbs made her notice another oddity she hadn't caught before.
Why were her front legs so... elongated?
Her breathing began to quicken, along with her heartbeat.
"Stop it, Rarity! Don't let yourself get swept up in panic! The fact that you're floating inside a magic bubble in the vastness of the void is no excuse to lose your grip. You've been in worse situations before... just breathe... uhhh." She closed her eyes as she began to breathe slowly. "That's it... relax..."
Her self-suggestion took effect before long; after a few more seconds she found herself calm again. So far that day, her discipline as a dressmaker had proven more useful to her than her own magic — in fact, the spell she had cast on herself earlier to stay calm had already worn off.
Putting her thoughts in order, she could finally worry about what was truly urgent.
"Rainbow Dash!" she shouted, annoyed. "What did you do?!"
She had no one nearby to confront. After casting the relaxation and clarity spell on Rainbow, she had briefly hoped her friend would regain her boldness and somehow defend them against that unknown threat that had them cornered.
Her hopes didn't take long to fade: the next thing the pegasus did (after saying to trust her) was scoop them up onto her back like sacks of hay and charge, seemingly senselessly, straight into the wall of the shelter.
Rarity frowned.
Why were they drifting aimlessly through nothingness instead of being outside the shelter — or, in the worst case, still inside it, if their escape had failed?
Her head was starting to ache. Such inconsistencies in recent events fueled her anger, as did the utter lack of answers.
"Ahhhh! I demand an explanation this instant!" she shrieked in frustration, throwing a tantrum inside her bubble.
Still not used to the changes in her body, she kicked hard against the inner walls of her bubble; what followed was a bouncing reaction, similar to being trapped inside a giant gelatin mold. Amid the uncontrollable bounces, she ended up upside down, and eventually stayed put in that position.
"Ouhh, my horn... and my antennae?" Rarity blinked, noticing the newly discovered appendages on her forehead.
The surprises just kept coming; she could still manage it, but the fact that they had to do with her own body was testing her composure.
Sunk in thoughts threatening to spill over just like her mane, a new discovery interrupted her.
Beyond her tangled mane, and the translucent barrier surrounding her, three other bubbles seemed to be drifting in a line behind hers, lost in that void.
Carefully approaching the walls of her bubble, she tried to get a better look.
The first bubble she noticed, also the closest one, had a very familiar sky-blue hue...
"Rainbow Dash?" Rarity whispered, her eyes going wide, her heart in her throat. Indeed, it was the bubble holding the rainbow-maned pegasus, who from a distance was waving at her, pointing her forelegs at her own forehead. Rarity couldn't hear anything she was saying, but it was clearly something urgent. Still, it wasn't the urgency of Rainbow's gestures that filled her with astonishment in that instant, but the remarkable change she could see all over her friend's body...
Rainbow looked like... a Breezie.
The unicorn looked again at her own forelegs.
Was she... a Breezie too?
Her surprise turned into a delighted smile that lit up her face; she still didn't understand why it had happened, or just how spectacular she looked, but it was, without a doubt, the makeover she hadn't asked for but had definitely needed all along.
Still distracted by her shallow thoughts about her own figure, she remembered her friend Rainbow Dash, who was in the other bubble.
Looking again, she noticed the pegasus's growing desperation, who was pounding — or so she could make out — the walls of her capsule with her hooves.
Did she look farther away?
At last she understood what was happening: this was the danger Rainbow Dash had been warning her about for a while now.
Without wasting another second, she activated her horn's magic. Rainbow's bubble flickered and was pulled toward her, with more force than Rarity had expected; the two collided.
"Ahhh," Dash cried out, nearly falling on top of Rarity; the two bubbles had merged into one the moment they touched.
"Sorry, are you okay?"
"Ouchh! Am I okay...? Forget about me, help the others!" Rainbow scolded her, lying upside down on the floor of the capsule.
"Umph! A thank you would be enough..." Rarity frowned, keeping watch outside. "Got them!"
Still within her magic's reach, the other drifting bubbles were pulled in one by one, joining the main one; soon all four pony friends found themselves piled together inside a single bubble.
Four pony friends turned into Breezies...
"Why are we Breezies?" Applejack asked, trying to fix her mane, which had turned exaggeratedly fluffy and was covering her eyes.
"That's the question of the moment, darling... Rainbow Dash?" Rarity replied, helping Applejack wrangle her hair while keeping a hard stare fixed on the rainbow-maned pegasus.
Rainbow Dash, for her part, wasn't paying them any attention; she was tending to Fluttershy, who had curled up into a ball on the floor. Surprisingly, she was still asleep, but with a distressed expression on her face, as though something were hurting her.
After making sure her friend was all right, Rainbow turned toward the others, who had gone quiet at the sight.
Looking them in the eye, she answered without further ado:
"I don't know."
Applejack and Rarity looked at her, puzzled.
"You didn't know?" they both asked at the same time.
"No, well, yes, I wasn't sure what would actually happen, I just knew that if I pushed Fluttershy while she was asleep, she might do something with her pearl's magic to get us out of there," Rainbow replied, scratching her head. "It's not the most brilliant plan I've ever come up with, and I'm sorry I didn't explain it to you all because I was in a rush, but it was the best I could come up with after talking to the imaginary Twilight in my head."
"Imaginary... Twilight?" Applejack asked, utterly lost.
"Queen Novo's pearl!... I see..." Rarity murmured, taking in her friends' new bodies. "This is very surprising, and a change in our favor... I think. How long will it last?"
"No idea..." Rainbow Dash replied, looking away.
"Well then... I suppose it depends on her," Rarity remarked, glancing at the curled-up Fluttershy on the floor. "Are you sure she's okay?"
"Yeah... though I feel like I was pretty hard on her earlier. But I'm sure she'll get over it... like 'last time.'"
"Like last time?" Rarity paused, thoughtful. "Do you mean...?"
"Yeah, the sleepover..."
"I see... you did the same thing you did that time... oh, Fluttershy," Rarity concluded, mortified, moving closer to her friend and stroking her pink mane. Fluttershy remained asleep on the floor, still curled in a trembling posture that made her look like she was trying to hide from the world around her.
Watching both ponies comfort Fluttershy, Applejack was only just now finishing putting together what was going on.
"Bear with a hat... oh, tarnation..." she murmured, feeling old guilt she thought she'd buried rise up in her throat.
Many moons ago, back when that peculiar group of friends was just starting to form, Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie had held a welcome sleepover at the house of the recently moved-in Fluttershy, along with a reluctant Rainbow Dash. The gathering would have ended up being just a casual, unremarkable get-together, had it not been for an unusual string of mishaps that unfolded that very same night — events for which Applejack bore part of the blame, and whose personal debt would go on to become the foundation of the solid friendship she'd keep with them to this day.
Among those mishaps was Fluttershy's unusual case of sleepwalking, which very nearly did them in. Had it not been for the timely, and rather foolish, solution Rainbow Dash came up with back then (belting out heavy metal whinnies at her sleepwalking friend while the rest of them got pummeled), the memory of that night could easily have turned out far less cheerful and far more bitter.
Applejack let out an inward sigh.
Despite the terrible first impression she'd had of the pegasus (who would later become her best friend), Rainbow Dash had been the savior of that night, just as she had just been for them in the present.
Or had she?
Casting a glance outside the bewildering bubble they were in, a distant glow caught her attention.
She rubbed her eyes a couple of times before she was sure of what she was looking at.
"Hey, y'all! I know this might not be the best time to ask why we're in a bubble floatin' who-knows-where, but does anypony else see that thing over there...?" the farm pony said, pointing a hoof at a spot beyond the wall of the bubble.
Rarity and Rainbow Dash turned, moved closer, and, following their friend's line of sight, soon spotted what she had just noticed.
"Huh?" they both let out in unison.
Outside, whatever it was out there, it was getting closer. And fast.
[---]
One by one, and all at once, every one. Every fragment was observed without omission.
The 'how' of the way the ADMIN MASTER observed the world could be summed up in a few words, but not understood with the same ease.
There was an enigma wrapped around its actions, a mystery entwined with its thoughts that only grew with the next action it took...
"Fall in line!" it exclaimed with authority.
[---]
"Another flying saucer, Rainbow Dash?" Rarity asked, a little nervous.
"No. I think it's... a pillow?"
"Yeah, it sure looks like a pillow... And why is it flying? Actually — why in tarnation would it need to be a flying saucer?" Applejack asked, quite puzzled and with a hint of annoyance.
Her friends turned to look at her, but despite the farm pony's dissatisfied expression at the lack of answers, they didn't say anything more for the moment.
Applejack had been unconscious for most of the earlier crisis with the flying saucers, so there was a lot to fill her in on.
Now wasn't the time for that.
Everypony's attention turned back outside.
For a few minutes now, what had at first looked like a gray smudge emerging from the dark void had quickly turned into a white, rectangular object on a trajectory toward them. Within just a few more seconds of approach, it became clear just how misshapen it was — and, at the same time, how familiar, impossible not to recognize.
A pillow.
"Yep, definitely a pillow, and a mighty big one," Applejack confirmed, tilting her head to one side as she watched the giant pillow disappear back into the darkness.
"Is it very big? Or... are we very small?" Rarity asked aloud, emphasizing her latest suspicion.
The answer came along with the question itself. What happened next finished clearing away any doubt.
On the other side of the bubble, another object went sailing by, catching the ponies' attention.
This time it was a notepad, a little more than twice their current height.
Applejack blinked several times before speaking.
"Is that Pinkie's diary?" she exclaimed, surprised.
"Yes... that's the one," Rarity confirmed. "And considering its pages are now the size of a poster board, and that we're Breezies... I'm fairly certain we're still in our room back at the shelter. Just extremely shrunk down, and somewhere very dark that I don't recognize."
"Under Fluttershy's bed?" Rainbow Dash asked, scratching her head.
"Maybe... or maybe not," Rarity remarked. "You did take her bed apart earlier... uhmmm..." She paused, thoughtful.
Solid at first, Rarity's explanation dissolved into the undeniable mystery surrounding them. Lost among inconclusive answers, each of them sank into her own thoughts: Applejack wrestling with her questions as much as with her mane, Rarity brooding in silence while helping tame it, and Rainbow simply sizing up which way she could fly out of there.
It was in the middle of this silent stretch that another sign began to appear before them, though they didn't notice it at first.
"Is it just me... or is traffic picking up around here?"
"What traffic?" Rarity asked, snapping out of her thoughts. After looking around, Rainbow Dash's words started to make sense.
On either side of the bubble, two enormous objects sat positioned like vehicles traveling in the same direction as them. They turned out to be a teapot and a party hat, which, while not close enough to actually collide with them, were bulky enough to stir up a sense of danger, in spite of their ordinary appearance.
After several seconds of being watched by the ponies, it became clear the danger wasn't real. The moment of closest proximity gave way to a gradually widening gap.
Once far enough apart, the ponies let out relieved sighs. Especially Rarity, who now had genuine sweat beading near her horn.
"Well... setting aside all the near-death scares this place keeps giving us... it seems like everything is heading in the same direction. As though we were all flowing along in a..."
"In a river with a lighthouse," Applejack cut in.
"Yes! That's exactly what I was about to say, darling. Wait, where did you get the lighthouse from?"
"From over there!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, pointing with her hoof.
Beyond the walls of the bubble, past the silhouettes of the objects overtaking them, a hazy but steady vertical smudge was beginning to take shape in the distance ahead. Like a white chess piece emerging from the gloom, the apparent tower radiated an intense light from its peak, while spilling beams of brightness to its sides in a back-and-forth sweep that gave away a constant rotation.
That the ponies saw it as a lighthouse in that moment wasn't entirely wrong. The fog — or rather, the darkness surrounding them — didn't allow for any other interpretation.
An interpretation that only added more confusion to everything else.
"Are we at sea?... Uhmmm... Am I the only one who feels silly just thinking that?"
"You weren't the only one, Applejack," Rainbow Dash said, placing a hoof on her friend's shoulder.
"I don't think dwelling on this any further is going to be healthy..." Rarity said quietly, touching her head with an air of exhaustion. "How are you two feeling?" The unicorn's attention turned to her friends, who had just sat down, heads bowed, on the floor of the bubble.
"I'd feel a lot better if we were on solid ground," Applejack replied, eyeing the translucent floor.
"A clear sky would do it for me, plus a good cloud bed. A nice shower before a nap is the best thing you can do to feel good," Rainbow Dash stated confidently. "Wait... wasn't that the question? I mean, answer."
"Ahhh... I'd like a shower too..."
"Huh?" Rainbow raised an eyebrow.
The pegasus looked at her friend, puzzled. Rarity didn't seem to be paying attention.
Lost in a stretch of nostalgia, the unicorn's thoughts had drifted to memories of her own home, specifically her personal grooming sanctuary.
In other words, her bathroom and all the elements of perfection kept safe inside it.
The double-white marble tub, the shimmering golden shampoo, the sky-paradise-scented conditioner, the hair dryer with six air settings...
Settings? Her fantasy popped like a bubble, snapping her back to the 'bubble of reality' she was trapped inside.
"Emmm... (clears throat)... this might sound premature, but I think we should be fine. I mean, safe. Ummh... I think the new grand plan should be to calm down a little while we let the current carry us along," she concluded, trying to sound as convinced as possible.
"Sounds like a good plan to me, and to make good use of the time we can start figuring out what to do with these extra-long Breezie legs and antennae," Rainbow Dash remarked, grabbing Applejack's antennae as an example and wiggling them, making her mane puff up even more than it already had.
"That's a plan?" Applejack replied from beneath her puffed-up mane. "How about before any of that, you tell me what happened before I passed out? Or better yet — who's responsible for me passin' out in the first place?!"
Rarity gave a forced smile, and so did Rainbow Dash.
Both of their gazes drifted to the 'unconscious' Fluttershy on the floor.
There was no point in putting off that topic any longer, nor the other matters still waiting to be explained.
Distracted from what was happening outside, the ponies dove back into the conversation with intensity.
In the distance, the shape of the lighthouse kept growing, unhurried.
[---]
How much time had passed?
It was a question whose answer had grown harder and harder to pin down.
There were no clocks in that world. And although there were days and nights, their length wasn't the same each time. Every morning arrived with a slight difference from the one before. Pinkie was the first to notice it, chalking it up to her inner sense. Though the others took her claim as something "curious and yet to be confirmed," Applejack ended up confirming it shortly after, following her first attempt to measure time using homemade candles (an Apple family survival technique).
The farm pony's discovery only added a new layer of strangeness to the situation.
Based on these experiences, they could still count roughly five days and five nights up to the beast's attack, which was accurate. However, after that milestone, the count began to blur.
The damage to the toy world, the gradual loss of light, the darkening caused by the candy rain...
From the time they took shelter in the lookout cabin to the lunch with olive juice, the elapsed stretch could be summed up as a quick afternoon followed by an extraordinarily long night. Long enough that there had been time to expand the shelter, recover supplies, prepare an emergency dinner — plus an official dinner — and, at last, get some well-earned rest after their first major, near-fatal crisis.
After all these events, an uneventful dawn arrived, followed by a quiet morning, the same one the group of ponies could easily recall.
Still, all of that had already become too hard for Applejack's inner clock to keep track of. And after hearing her friends' explanation, now turned into Breezies inside a magic bubble, her confusion had only gotten worse.
"I want to sleep!" she protested inwardly. With a little more weakness in her she would have said it out loud, but instead all she managed, keeping a serious composure, was: "I understand..."
Meanwhile, the debate between Rainbow Dash and Rarity over the current situation kept raging on, and it was wearing her out. Earlier she had demanded explanations from them; now she just wanted them to be quiet.
Bored with a conversation she no longer felt part of, she gazed distractedly beyond the bubble, out at the dark world surrounding them.
If somepony told her they were sailing across open sea in the middle of the night, she'd have believed it, hook, line, and sinker.
"Why aren't there any stars?" she wondered under her breath.
She shook her head again. She wasn't thinking clearly. The damage from Fluttershy's earlier surprise attack had vanished after the transformation into a Breezie, but that hadn't fixed her existing fatigue and stress — worse yet, her physical strength seemed to have dwindled.
"You're not an apple out at sea, and you're not the captain of a ship — you'd need a hat for that... oh, my hat," she told herself sadly, feeling the bareness of her mane. "You just need to rest, like Rainbow said... or was it Rarity, uhh..."
With her eyes growing heavy, and a rising drowsiness taking hold of her, she caught sight of something else outside.
"That lighthouse looks really weird... uhh?!"
Her eyes shot wide open. A jolt of alarm snapped her fully awake; the debate behind her fell silent.
The lighthouse... wasn't a lighthouse.
Slowly, the silhouette of what they had mistaken for a lighthouse had begun to take on a more recognizable shape.
An intimidating, unexpected shape.
"Is that... a statue made of light?" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, surprised, behind her, now able to see more clearly what Applejack was looking at.
"I believe 'colossus' is the more fitting term here...," Rarity added, without either of the others paying her any attention.
One by one at first, then in pairs and more, points of faint light began appearing around the bubble.
"Flying saucers?" Applejack thought, echoing what her friends had told her.
But that wasn't what it was.
Caught in the invisible current dragging them helplessly along, the bubble carrying the ponies found itself surrounded by a growing number of objects. As they drew closer, they could make them out as more lost items from inside the shelter, similar to the ones they had seen before. These, just like the bubble itself, were picking up speed on their way toward the mysterious, light-drenched monument on the horizon.
Facing the sudden change in their surroundings, Applejack was the first to grasp the new danger.
"Is it okay that we're heading straight for a collision with whatever that thing is?" she exclaimed, alarmed.
If the vessel carrying them had had oars, they would have grabbed them that very instant to try to steer away from whatever was drawing them in. But since it didn't, all they could do was push against the walls of the bubble with their hooves, in an effort as desperate as it was nearly futile, trying to dodge the fate pulling them toward it.
And it was only *nearly* futile because, in the midst of the mounting panic overtaking them, they were too distracted to notice the other details of that mysterious structure.
Details that would have unsettled them even more.
As large as a mountain by pony scale, the colossus of light approaching them rose from a golden floor suspended in nothingness. From head to toe, its entire surface was wrapped in an intense glow, making it hard to look at directly. Even so, intricate lines of shadow could be made out running along specific parts of its body. At the joints of its legs and arms, these branched out into shadowy patterns reminiscent of the complex circuitry of something that might have been built purely to calculate.
That same precision carried through the rest of its form. Upright and motionless, it bore subtle draconic features, rendered with a care that disturbingly resembled that of an infant dragon. Its horns, its translucent wings, and its long tail tipped with a sharp point were more than recognizable.
Another feature, impossible to ignore, was the enormous circle embedded in its chest — a sort of centerpiece everything else might well depend upon.
A golden ridge ran along the piece's rim. From its center sprouted rods of different lengths, moving in erratic yet steady directions. If it had to be compared to some familiar object, the first choice would be a clock... one whose hours refused to align to mark the time of any single world.
And above that strange mechanism, resting on rigid shoulders, sat the colossus's enormous head.
A thick, unkempt mane of white hair sprang up between its horns and partly hid its ears. Its nose and mouth, perfectly defined, looked tiny next to its eyes: enormous, completely black, like empty sockets or powered-down sensors where neither light nor thought existed.
And it was exactly toward that soulless gaze that the ponies' bubble was hurtling at full speed.
When the distance between them grew slight, the colossus, which had remained motionless until that moment, stretched out one of its pudgy arms and caught the bubble in the void. It then drew it slowly closer, bringing it right up to its face, with the same gentleness a skillful child might use to catch a butterfly in mid-flight for a closer look.
In the midst of the panic overwhelming her, Applejack, now face to face with the entity, locked eyes with it, and almost instantly understood what was about to happen.
"It's gonna eat us!" she cried, letting out a whinny.
The other ponies' initial shock barely lasted, as the giant claw holding them moved again, this time roughly, and in a hurry to fulfill the farm pony's earlier warning.
An enormous horizontal crack opened across the colossus of light's face. Barely recognizable, lips that resembled tiny teeth spread wide open. And inside that enormous mouth, which looked more like a fissure in reality itself, an abyss of a swirling red cosmos greeted them from unimaginable depths, hungry for new victims.
The bubble holding the ponies began to fall.
"Ahhhhhh" — Applejack's scream mixed with those of the other ponies as they plunged together into that unknown abyss.
However, before they could cross the event horizon from which there would be no escape, a sudden glow fell over them from behind, a purple burst that, like an ocean wave, swept over them completely and pushed them onto a new shore.
That, at least, was how it felt to Applejack, as she reflexively held her breath and shut her eyes. The rest of her friends had no different impression of that moment.
Opening them again, and gasping in a deep breath of air, the sight that greeted her made everything before it feel like a dream.
They were back in the room of the shelter in the lookout cabin. Everything was in a complete jumble of scattered objects, under a thick gloom. But she was sure it was the same place she and Rainbow had walked into not too long before.
"What? What? What? What?" she repeated, trying to put her shock into words.
Her other friends were there too, no longer Breezies, but ponies again, just as wide awake as she was.
"PAWWW!" A crash rang out from behind her. Whirling around with a start, she found Rainbow, who had kicked open one of the blocked windows.
The pegasus's intention was to look outside right away.
But before anyone could warn her how dangerous that might be, along with the daylight, an object shot straight through the opening and flew over the ponies' heads.
Applejack's eyes went wide.
She had doubted what she'd been told earlier, but it really was a flying saucer, although...
The mysterious object circled above her, only to crash to the floor a moment later like a paper airplane out of momentum.
After flickering in what might have been its last breath, a flash of light enveloped it, and in the next instant, where a crashed flying saucer had been a moment before, there was now a blue piece of candy.
The room fell silent. A long silence. Nopony had anything clever to say about what they had just seen. If Pinkie had been there, she would have been the first to say something.
"Pinkie?" Applejack heard her own thought take shape out loud.
Poking her head out the window, Rainbow had just called out for their missing friend while staring high up into the sky.
Toward the ceiling of the toy world...
[---]
"Was somepony doing some extra-deep third-person narration a moment ago?" Pinkie Pie asked. She fussed a little with the curls of her tail, which had turned square-shaped a few minutes earlier.
Her companion, the Discord-arm, gestured with its fingers, signaling for her to keep quiet.
The pink pony nodded enthusiastically. But the very next second, she asked again.
"So... what does this switch I just pressed do? It looks really important," she went on with her rapid-fire chatter, pointing at the switch installed beside what looked like a gigantic lamp fixed to the ground.
The Discord-arm repeated its gesture, this time more insistently.
"Okay, okay, I'll be quiet," Pinkie whispered, crouching down to the Discord-arm's level on the ground. "But why do we even have to whisper so much? You told me earlier that the flying saucers couldn't hear us, thanks to this amazing magic bubble of yours." Pinkie made her point with all the expressiveness her back and mane could muster.
Her exaggerated gestures (paired with an unconvincing hushed voice) weren't nonsense. A pink bubble really did surround them.
Out of patience, the Discord-arm ran its index finger across the pony's mouth, turning it, on the spot, into a zipper.
Pinkie struggled, trying unsuccessfully to open it (it had been locked shut), and after a few seconds, began looking at the Discord-arm with pleading eyes, a clear sign of remorse.
But the Discord-arm paid her no mind; its full attention was fixed on the sky above the yellow plane they were on.
The danger was real. They had just made an important move: repairing that place's protective light would help buy them time. As for whether Pinkie's other friends were safe or not, that depended more on themselves than on anything it could do from here on out.
It could only trust that those ponies were as capable as it remembered them being.
After several seconds of waiting for the counterattack it had expected, it finally became convinced it wasn't coming.
Its opponent was likely recalculating its options. Which was very good news for it, since it really didn't have much to face it with at that moment.
More at ease now, it turned its attention back to the pink pony.
She already had tears welling up in her eyes; everything pointed to a flood of them about to break loose.
With its index finger, the Discord-arm freed Pinkie's lips.
A dry sound, like a vacuum cleaner powering back up, echoed inside the bubble.
Pinkie had just gotten her voice back. And, surprisingly, she did nothing more with it. Sitting on the bubble's translucent floor, she simply watched it attentively, like a diligent student watching her teacher before an exam.
"That's a nice change. Should I have silenced her from the very start?" the Discord-arm thought.
It didn't matter anymore. What mattered was moving on to the next phase of the improvised plan it had been assigned.
With a twist of its fingers, the pink bubble protecting them began sliding through the air, positioning itself above the gigantic lamp fixed to the ground.
What followed was a gradual descent toward that light.
Before the eyes of a startled Pinkie, the intense light emanating from the lamp vanished, and in an instant of temporary blindness, a familiar voice reached her ears.
"Pinkie..."
"Twilight?"
The voices of the two friends met. So did their eyes. Face to face... at the boundaries of the lands of sensitivity.