The Foals of Harmony: The One Free Stallion

by Rainy Meadows

Episode 1 Chapter 4 - Urban Flight

I lost count of how many minutes Twilight and Shining Armor sat there, wrapped in each other’s hooves, not wanting to release each other for fear of losing one another again.

“Shine, I can’t believe it’s really you!” cried Twilight. “I’d given up all hope of ever seeing you again!”

“I’ve been searching for you for years,” Shining Armor replied. “I swore I’d tear the Combine to shreds if it meant I could find you.”

While the two were tearfully embracing, Rainbow Dash galloped over to the door and looked through. Eyes widened in fear, she slammed it closed almost immediately.

“Guys, I hate to break up the reunion,” she said, and added “-no really, I do, but he’s right: there’s a whole mess of Overwatch headed our way and they do NOT look friendly!”

“Right,” said Shining Armor, instantly switching from Loving Brother to Stallion-In-Charge. “Twilight, I know you’re happy to see me again, but we’re going to have to split up for a moment.”

“What? No!” Twilight shouted in protest. “You can’t just-”

“Twiley, please,” said the stallion calmly. “I have to hold the tower for as long as possible. Maybe even destroy it. There’s no way the Combine are getting their hooves on this place again, and you have to get to safety as quickly as possible.”

He turned to the pegasus pair. Has he even noticed me yet?

“Soarin’, Rainbow Dash, get Twilight to the next safehouse,” he commanded. “Use the vent in the basement. And if one hair in her mane is out of place the next time I see her I’ll be holding one of you directly responsible…”

He raised an eyebrow and appeared close to smiling.

“…but I’m not going to tell you who.”

I think I’m gonna like this guy. He’s got Soarin’ and Dash looking terrified, although chances are it’s more to do with the fact that they just found out that the Blue Demon is Twilight Sparkle’s smegging brother. And the guy’s already got one heck of a reputation as the probable reason Twi and I didn’t encounter any Overwatch while we were walking through this city together…

He approached his sister and placed a hoof on her shoulder.

“I’m not saying goodbye, Twiley,” he said quietly, and kissed her on the forehead just beneath her horn. Maybe that’s why she did the same to me earlier – it was something she picked up from her brother. I dunno.

All I know is that Twilight gave him a longing look as she descended below the floor with the pegasus lovebirds, and I was left alone with one of the most impressive ponies I’ve ever seen.

And it was only then that he noticed me. With a double take.

“Oh, sorry!” He actually sounded genuinely apologetic too. “I didn’t notice you. Aren’t you the guy from the garden?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “You must be Shining Armor. It’s good to finally meet you in the flesh.”

There was an explosion outside, and it sounded really, really close. As in, right outside the smegging door kind of close. We took up positions next to each other, getting ready for the fight of our lives.

Sure enough, the doors burst open and Overwatch swarmed into the room.

“Do you have a name?” asked Shining Armor, casually zapping soldiers away from him.

“My name,” I said between gunshots, “is Haydon-” shot “-Arthur-” shot “-Baxter-” another shot “-but if that proves too much of a mouthful-” double shot “-just call me Hex.”

“Okay, Hex,” said Shining Armor, and I hit the floor as he blasted away the five or so soldiers that had come too close during our little conversation. “What exactly-” zap “-brings you-” zap “-to Canterlot?”

“Well,” I said, pausing in the shelter of his imposing form to reload, “don’t get annoyed or upset or anything, but I’m kinda… sorta…” I finished reloading and blew the brains out of a soldier who was about to do the same to the other stallion “-dating your sister.”

“HIT THE DECK!”

Not caring that he hadn’t responded yet, I curled up on the floor in obedience, watching the unfolding scene through a single eye – the other covered by my forelegs. Shining Armor stood over me and his horn flashed briefly, and suddenly we were both inside a force field of pure, deep pink magic.

“You’re ‘kinda sorta’ dating my sister?” he demanded with raised eyebrows.

“Well, if the world hadn’t gone to the dogs we would definitely be dating,” I confessed, “but seeing as this is an Equestria which has basically been completely and utterly annihilated, we aren’t officially dating.”

“But you two are still ‘together’ as it were?”

“Uh… yeah… pleasedon’thitme!”

I cowered on the ground, waiting for the elder stallion to rain down hell upon my worthless body.

I certainly didn’t expect him to start laughing.

“It’s about time!” he said. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told Twiley she should find herself a special somepony.”

He looked away from me at the shield encasing us. This baffles me somewhat: I thought there was a suppression field which took away the pegasus’ ability to fly and limited unicorn magic? Unless he’s developed his powers far beyond the need for a horn clip, in which case…

I really, really hope I don’t piss him off.

“That shield’s not going to hold for long,” he stated. “Like I said earlier; my powers are somewhat limited because of the suppression field – on any other day I could summon up a shield the size of Canterlot. Maybe even bigger.”

“So what kind of plan have you got up your sleeve?” I asked. “I ask in the hopes that you do in fact have a plan up your sleeve. I mean, we can’t keep fighting forever. Look at them all. There are loads! And look over there, there’s more coming in!”

Shining Armor stroked his chin, clearly deep in thought.

“Downstairs in the armoury,” he said after a moment, “there’re plenty of explosives, right?”

“Yeah, of course!” I exclaimed. “There’re grenades, hopper mines-”

“Then I want you to get as many of them as possible in a small area and see if you can’t fix a timer to them so that we have time to get out,” he instructed. “If we ever want to get out of here alive, we’re gonna have to blow this place sky high. And move fast: I can cover you up here, but not for long!”

Now, more than ever, he is scary.

Not wanting to end up a splat on the floor, I yanked open the trapdoor and set to work piling every explosive device I could find into a big heap in the centre of the room. No, tell a lie, it’ll cause a lot more structural damage if it were up against the wall. Then, using eighteen years of gathered technological knowhow, I cobbled together a basic timing device and wired it all up, setting the timer for 5 minutes so that we’d have long enough to get out, but not too long for the Overwatch to notice our departure.

“Okay,” I said as I emerged, and I was worried to see the elder stallion physically straining to hold the shield up. “I set it for five minutes. Is that enough?”

“More than enough,” said Shining Armor. “You see that lift over there?”

I looked around, and sure enough I saw a lift just behind us, in front of a door which was probably the entrance to some kind of vault. Right on the other side of the Overwatch hammering on the shield and trying to break through.

“Yep,” I answered.

“On three, I’m going to drop this shield and we’re going to run for it,” he told me. “Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Okay, one… two… three!”

In one swift movement, he brought down the shield and blasted a path clear through the swarming soldiers, and we ran pretty much undeterred towards the lift, only stopping to breathe once we were inside and on the way up.

“I want to try to lead as many troops as possible into this place,” he told me as we ascended. “That way it’ll have a bigger impact on the Combine than if it was just a few of them on the bottom floor.”

“Quick question,” I said (the timer must have been at about three minutes by now, if not two and a half) “but how are we supposed to get out?”

Shining Armor turned and looked at me with his piercing blue eyes.

“Do you trust me, Hex?” he asked.

“Um, you mean apart from being terrified that if I make the wrong move you’ll smite me?” I asked. “Yeah.”

Against all odds, he started sniggering.

“You really shouldn’t be so afraid of me!” he told me, apparently supposed to be reassuring me. “I’m not exactly the great big hero that everypony thinks I am.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, “All I ever wanted was a quiet life. It’s like the universe hates me or something.”

I don’t know why, but Shining Armor seemed a lot less scary when he was smiling and/or laughing. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that he seemed less like the Scourge of the Combine and a terrible force to be reckoned with and more like just another ordinary pony.

“But seriously,” he said, “do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then you’ll do exactly as I say,” he said, “because what we’re about to do is as crazy as it is dangerous.”

I nodded in agreement. I swear; if Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman aren’t waiting for me at the top of this tower, then I’m going to be severely disappointed and feel very misled.

They weren’t there. It was just more smegging consoles!

This didn’t appear to discourage Shining Armor. He positioned himself in the centre of the room, took careful aim and blasted a massive hole in the wall.

“Stay as close to me as possible!” he commanded.

He then galloped at full speed towards the hole, and I had tremendous difficulty keeping up with him.

Then he jumped.

At same moment, I took a leap of faith and dived out into the open air, and half a second later the tower exploded. In mid-air I curled up into a ball and waited to become the world’s largest Pony Pizza-

-so naturally I was confused to find myself hovering about a hundred feet above the ground.

I looked around, and saw Shining Armor smiling at me.

Apparently these shields act rather like soap bubbles, because both of us are floating in the middle of it.

Shards of metal, chunks of stone and various pieces of Overwatch showered down upon us as we drifted slowly towards the ground. Sometimes it’s not just me that laughs in the face of gravity, it would seem.

“Twilight told me she had a cool brother,” I said to him, “but she never told me you were the smegging Terminator! How in smeg’s name are you not tired?”

“I’ve been developing and strengthening my magical powers for seventeen years,” Shining Armor explained, ignoring the Overwatch mask which was now impaled on his horn. “There once was a time when I would pull a stunt like that almost every day.”

He reached up and pulled the mask off his horn, and it took all my self-control not to flinch as he raised his hoof.

“Why are you so frightened of me?” he asked.

“Look, I’ve heard things, alright?” I replied. “One of my friends told me all about the Blue Demon, the Scourge of the Combine, and how you pretty much destroyed all evidence of occupation wherever you went. So how would you feel if you found out he was your marefriend’s brother?”

He smiled in what I hoped was an understanding way.

“I suppose I’d be rather frightened too,” he said.

I sighed.

“Look, Shining Armor-”

“Just call me Shine.”

“-Shine, I’m worried that if you don’t like me you’re going to tear me to pieces. I’m terrified that I’ll annoy you or make you angry and the fact that you’re being so calm and collective right now definitely isn’t helping!”

There was a horrible silence, and I waited for the end to come.

It didn’t.

He started laughing. It wasn’t a cruel or evil laugh, though: it was the laughter of somepony who was finding something incredibly funny.

“I-I’m sorry,” he choked between chuckles, “but I have to admit: that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You really- you’re honestly that scared of me?”

I gulped.

“Yes,” I confessed. “Yes I am.”

Shining Arm- Shine stopped laughing and smiled in a friendly manner – again. He walked over to me and placed a hoof on my shoulder.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” he told me. “If I really hated you as much as you’re afraid I do, you’d either be seriously injured or dead by now. You seem like an okay guy. It’s only if you break my sister’s heart that you’ll have something to be afraid of.”

“I hate to disappoint you,” I said, “but I don’t think I’m gonna do that. Ever. I love Twilight more than I’ve ever loved anypony else.”

Shine nodded and started to walk back across what remained of the gardens, so I elected to follow in his wake.

“I know exactly how you feel,” he told me. “I was in love once.”

“Really?” I asked. “What was her name?”

“Cadence,” he told me.

Wait a second...

“Cadence as in the grave I saw back there?” I asked. “Princess Mi Amore Caden-”

“Cadenza, that’s the one,” said Shine. “She was my whole world. Everything about her was just… perfect. I was just a guard: I never even thought she’d notice me. Don’t tell Twiley, but… I had just asked her to marry me.”

“Did she say yes?”

He nodded.

“’Til death do us part,” he said, invoking the age old properties of irony. “It seems that death saw fit to part us prematurely.”

He wiped away a tear.

How the smeg do you respond to something like that? It’s not really like I can relate: Twilight’s the first girl I’ve ever truly loved in my whole life, and even though I was suspended for seventeen years I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t think or remember or do anything really so it wasn’t possible for me to miss anypony.

I put a hoof on his shoulder.

“That’s rough, buddy,” was all I managed to say.

Smeg, how awkward can you get?

“It’s not like I didn’t try to protect her,” said Shine. “When she found out about the invasion, Princess Celestia summoned every citizen in Canterlot to the palace to take shelter. It was the oldest structure in the city and by far the toughest. Didn’t seem to be as tough as the Combine though.”

He looked back at the towers of hideous metal.

“Cadence came with me for protection,” he continued. “I told her she should stay at the palace if that was what she wanted, but she told me it was for my protection. She told me I’d need help if I was going to get to my parents before the Combine. We were almost there – we were right outside the door – and she got shot in the lung.”

He averted his face – pointlessly, as it was rather obvious he was crying.

“I had to leave her,” he said. “I had to leave her body in the street like she was just another ordinary pony, but she wasn’t. She was… she was my everything. But still, I covered her up as best I could and tried to get Mom and Dad to safety. I’d only just got them out when Dad was shot. Right between the eyes, so at least he didn’t suffer. So I tried to get Mom away, but we’d barely got halfway down the street when an energy ball hit her on the horn. The dark energy combined with the magic in her body was- it was too much. She died before there was anything I could do.”

A couple more Overwatch troops tried to jump us, but a few quick rounds of gunfire and they were no more. Shine then continued with his story as if nothing had happened.

“It was about then that I realised my shields were useless. The Combine’s dark energy had weakened them and made them about as protective as a wet tissue. I took shelter in the house but I knew I’d have to leave sooner or later. When I looked outside it was like the gates of Tartarus had been thrown open. There were corpses everywhere of ponies who weren’t quite fast enough to get away, acting as stepping stones in the rivers of blood that had once been the streets. I wrote a letter to Twilight and I hid it where I knew she would find it if she ever returned to Canterlot, letting her know that I’d be okay, but just in case I wasn’t, her brother loved her.

“It was a good thing that I didn’t go to the palace because by the time I got there, everypony inside had already been more or less annihilated. Only a few stragglers remained in the rubble and I did my best to find them someplace to hide in the city where the Overwatch wouldn’t find them. Not all of them made it, though. By then I’d lost count of how many ponies I’d failed to protect. I found the Princess’ bodies and I buried them, side by side, where the sculpture garden used to be. They deserved better, but it was the best I could do.”

Wow. I thought I had it rough, but this guy must have nerves of solid titanium to have not gone insane after that. I mean, losing his fiancé, his parents and all his colleagues on the same smegging day? That had to have been some kind of hell!

“After that I tried to escape from Canterlot,” he continued, “but little did I know that there was a group of Commabies hanging around the gates with the express purpose of making sure nopony tried that. I was captured and tortured relentlessly for five whole years, at which point they decided they had done enough to impress the Combine and avoid death. They couldn’t have been more wrong if they tried. The Combine mowed them down and took out all twenty of them in less than a minute. I tried faking death, but they saw right threw my ruse and took me to be converted into a Stalker.

“They almost succeeded too – I was right there on the catwalk, being led into one of the machines which would burn my willpower and self-awareness out of my body entirely – but then everything stopped. The power had been completely cut off. That’s when I realised I didn’t have to do this: I didn’t have to just submit to the Combine and let them walk all over me. It was well within my capacity for me to fight back. So I fought off the soldiers, stole their armour, wrecked the facility and escaped.

“When I got out I had a chance to stop and think. I knew that as soon as they found out who I was, the Combine would come down on me like a tonne of stone, and if they knew where Twiley was they’d probably do the same to her or worse. I decided it would be in my favour to create a façade, a secret identity, something to go by instead of my real name.”

“The Blue Demon,” I stated.

Shine nodded.

“I didn’t mean to become a sensation,” he told me, “but Soarin’ and his family spread the word like wildfire. We didn’t exactly meet under usual circumstances: I was passing through the White Tail Woods (or as it’s known now, Forest 3) and I found a metal shack with smoke pouring out of the open door and a singed one-eyed pegasus coughing on the ground out the front. I would have just continued on my way since he seemed to be alright, but he ran up to me and told me his wife was inside and they had a young colt at home who’d never survive without his mother. So I did what anypony would do: I went in.

“The smoke was so thick I couldn’t see my own hoof in front of my face and the heat from the fires was overwhelming. I didn’t know what had happened down there and I didn’t really want to, because seeing as this was a Commabie outpost it must have been something horrible. It was more like a maze down there than anything else, but eventually I found a cave with a thick metal door with seven locks and the sounds of a mare banging on the other side and screaming. When I took the door off she collapsed into me, overwhelmed by the smoke, and I had to carry her out. She revived once I got her into clearer air, and as I walked away Soarin’ asked me who I was.”

“And you just said ‘the Blue Demon’?” I asked curiously.

“Not just like that,” said Shine. “I had to think about it for a moment. I knew I couldn’t say ‘Shining Armor’ because even after all that time I wasn’t the most obscure of ponies. I went through several names in the few seconds before I responded and Blue Demon seemed like the best. Looking back I wish I’d picked something a little less cheesy, but it kinda stuck, and after that I just wiped out all trace of the Combine wherever I found them.”

“Cheesy?” I asked. “I thought it was pretty cool. It definitely fits you, what with the armour and all, and you couldn’t go around calling yourself… I dunno, Stormageddon, could you? A name like that would scare everypony and the Combine would probably laugh at you.”

“Stormageddon?” said Shine. “Where in Equestria did you come up with a name like that?”

I just shrugged. I honestly have no idea where I picked up that name and I doubt I’ll ever remember.

That was quite a story he just told. I wouldn’t have thought he’d just conjure up the name on the spot, and neither would I have believed he saved Rainbow Dash’s life when as far as I know she’s always been out for herself. I suppose anypony would need help if they were locked in a cave. Underground. In a place which was on fire. Smeg, there’s no kill like overkill, is there?

What I’d like to know is how the smeg that place caught fire anyway. From what Shine’s told me, it was underground! How does an underground place catch fire?

I suppose it’s for the same reason evil villains always include a countdown with their plans. It’s far too hard to just fire the laser and destroy the Earth; they have to leave enough time to the erstwhile hero and his blonde bimbo of a badly characterised love interest to stop the clock with half a second to spare.

If you’re going to do that, why bother in the first place?

Suddenly, there was a distant boom and the ground shook beneath our hooves.

“What the smeg was that?” I swore.

Shine and I ran up to a particularly tall heap of rubble which must have been a café of some sort at one point, and when we looked to the west we saw a massive, huge globe of light expanding on the horizon, the shockwave ruffling our manes as it rushed past.

“What was that?” asked Shine.

“Probably City 17.”

Smeg, even I’m surprised by how matter-of-fact I sounded!

“What do you mean ‘probably City 17’?” Shine demanded. “The last I saw of that place it was doing fine.”

Uh… this could take a while.

I explained everything. I started from when I arrived in City 17 and proceeded through the details of everything from the past seventeen chapters (it’s been that much already? Smeg, I can barely believe it) making sure to stress that the trip through Trottingham was in no way voluntary.

I also explained about how Twilight and I put the Great and Powerful Trixie in her place – several thousand metres below the ground – but more than anything else I explained how the guards at the Citadel had been deliberately trying to blow the reactor core.

“You and Twiley did all that in a few days?” Naturally, he was stunned. “And I thought we were fighters! I’m finding it hard to believe you’re even standing in front of me.”

“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I am too.”

We stood together and watched as the globe of light faded away, revealing the widespread destruction which the Citadel’s self combustion had caused.

“I hope everypony got out safely,” I commented. “They were in the middle of evacuating the city when Twi and I left.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Shine, taking on a sudden air of awkward guilt, “about that... you’re probably wondering why the train derailed.”

Come to think of it, I was. It did seem rather a strange coincidence that the train would only come off the rails as it reached the city, and there was a small explosion before hand...

“Oh smegging hell,” I swore once I figured it out. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“I knew that the Overwatch would be bringing in a new batch of Stalkers,” he explained. “The three of us had done a considerable amount of damage and they wanted to rebuild everything without getting their hooves dirty.”

“So you blew up the tracks?”

“I planted a bomb with a motion detector under one of the sleepers so that it would go off as the engine passed over. I swear I had no idea you and Twiley were on board or I would have aborted the mission.”

As we watched a thin pillar of electric blue light shot up out of the ground in the centre of the rubble, piercing the clouds and expanding until it resembled the world’s largest thumbtack. The clouds started to swirl and glow and more energy poured out of the earth as the pillar became bent and stringy, like bad knitting.

“That’s the beginnings of a superportal,” I said to Shine. “I’ve seen it before. It’s bad news: if that thing becomes fully developed it’ll be like that Seven Hour War all over again, but this time nopony would last longer than seven minutes.”

“Well,” Shine responded, “if we succeed with what we’re doing in this city, that won’t be much of a- what’s that?”

He shielded his eyes and looked up at the cloud layer above, where a small shape was tumbling out of the sky.

As it drew closer, it became apparent that it was, in fact, a pony.

“You mean who is that?” I said. I turned around and ran back as far as I could without running into a wall.

“What’re you doing?” asked Shine. “You look as if you’ve gone insane.”

“Could you please be quiet?” I asked. “I’m trying to do some math here.”

Okay, let’s see; take into account the distance between the clouds and the ground, average rate of acceleration, not to mention the length of the area I have to run, the speed at which I run and the mass of the falling pony, allow for wind resistance and gravity’s influence...

I should start running... now.

I galloped as fast as I could towards the edge of the building, ignoring Shine’s confused objections, and jumped into the air. I sailed through the sky like a superhero (without the gay cape) and caught the falling pony before slamming into a building on the other side of the road and hanging onto a window ledge with him over my shoulder.

“You alright?” I asked the other guy. He was panting like he’d just run a quadruple marathon.

“Do I... sound... alright...?” he demanded.

Hang on- what?

“Lightning Strike?”

“The... very... same...!” Lightning responded.

I let go of him and levitated his body down to the road before doing the same for myself – he wasn’t wearing his armour anymore, so it was a lot easier since he was more lightweight. I was just helping him stand up when Shine came running out.

“Are you both okay?” he asked. “That was quite a fall.”

“You’re... telling... me...!” said Lightning. “Who... are you... any... way...?”

“Well,” said Shine, “my real name is Shining Armor, but chances are you’re more familiar with the Blue Demon.”

The expression on Lightning Strike’s face the moment Shine said those words was a mixture of epic and priceless – epicriceless. He ceased panting and stared at the tall white stallion for several seconds before his eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted.

“He’s a big fan,” I said by way of an explanation.

“I can tell,” said Shine, looking down at the unconscious colt. “Who is he? How did he get here?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m assuming that Soarin’ and Dash told you about their son, Lightning Strike. This is him.”

I levitated him onto my back.

“He’s younger than I expected,” Shine commented.

“He was born a month before the invasion,” I explained.

I wish I could have been a part of his life while he was growing up. I’m only just beginning to realise how much I missed during my absence. I wonder what it would have been like if Twilight and I had a foal.

“We should get him to the safehouse too,” said Shine. “He obviously needs medical attention.”

He looked up at the overcast sky.

“How did he even get up there?” he wondered.

“We’ll ask him that when we get to the safehouse,” I said, and I started walking away, but something stopped me.

“Where exactly is the safehouse?” I asked.

“Follow me,” said Shine, and led the way. “We made an agreement that if we had to leave Canterlot Tower we’d set up shop in the old Guard’s quarters. It’s a sturdy structure and we cleared it out for the purpose of shelter.”

“By cleared out you mean-”

“Eradicated all trace of the Combine, Overwatch or otherwise.”

And so we ran on through the streets of Canterlot. Here and there we encountered a Combine soldier who hadn’t quite got the message yet and ended his days facing a bullet coming at him at several thousand miles per hour. I tried my best, but it was difficult to focus when I was carrying an unconscious teenager on my back. Especially since that teenager was physically only a year younger than me.

“You look as if you’re having some trouble,” said Shine after a few minutes of fighting. “Do you want me to carry him?”

“Good idea,” I said, and I levitated the pegasus onto the elder unicorn’s back. Lightning twitched, but didn’t awaken.

“He must really be exhausted if he’s sleeping through all this,” said Shine.

“Let’s worry about that later,” I said, “because we have to keep him safe: he’s the only one of us with no armour and I doubt his parents will be very happy if he ends up dead.”

Shine’s horn glowed for a brief moment, and the pegasus was suddenly encased in a form-fitting deep pink force field.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I asked.

I found myself relying more on my ever-growing magical prowess than the assorted weaponry which I had grabbed from the armoury before the tower was blown up. It was easier to just wham a soldier to death with a solid burst of telekinesis than getting a gun out, lining up the sights, pulling the trigger and reloading once I had used up all the ammo.

Shine was also using this to his advantage. He still found the energy to keep Lightning shielded whilst cutting through the Combine like a light sabre through an amateur Jedi’s wrist. It really is incredible how powerful he is, or rather how powerful he’s become, since I never got a chance to see how powerful he was before the invasion. I guess extra powerful magic runs in the family – either that or Twi and Shine really are two of a kind.

We stopped in our tracks when a shot rang out and killed the last soldier, but neither of us had fired.

“Hey!”

Rainbow Dash was standing, waving, on the roof of a nearby (and rather heavily fortified) cuboid-shaped building.

“Been wondering when you guys would show up!” she yelled. “What took you so long?”

“We encountered a few obstacles!” Shine shouted back.

“Plus we were joined by somepony else!” I bellowed.

“What?” yelled Dash. “Who?”

“It would be best if we brought him in!” Shine replied.

“Are you crazy?!” asked Dash. “You can’t just grab anypony you meet on the street and bring them in! We got lucky since it was Hex today, but we can’t keep risking-”

“Believe us when we say,” I interjected, “you can DEFINITELY trust this guy.”

Dash looked thoughtful for a few seconds.

“If we die, I’ll kill you!” she told me, and disappeared back inside. Even from this distance I heard the door slam.

“Is she always like that?” I asked Shine.

“You have no idea,” he replied.

We didn’t encounter any more soldiers for the rest of the journey and found the safehouse with no problems at all.

But there was a bit of an issue when we entered. See, Soarin’ was waiting for us just inside the door.

“Why did you guys take so long getting here?” he asked. “It couldn’t have been too hard to blow up the-”

He froze when he saw Lightning.

“Shining Armor, is it?” he said to Shine.

“Yes,” said the unicorn.

“I am going to ask you a question,” said Soarin’ in a voice which was drowning in the most tranquil of fury, “and I want you to bear in mind that the answer to the question I am about to ask you may or may not determine whether or not you live to see another sunrise. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Shine nodded as he grew increasingly nervous.

“What,” said Soarin’. “Is my son. Doing. Unconscious. On your back?”

Oh smeg. How’re you going to get out of this one, Shine? Don’t tell me I’m going to have to come to your rescue after you’ve been doing so well so far!

“Um… well… see…”

Shame on you!

“We met him on our way through the city,” I explained while Shine mouthed a silent thank you. “He literally fell out of the sky and I had to catch him so that he didn’t become a pavement pizza. He was unhurt if a little out of breath and he fainted when he found out that this guy is the Blue Demon.”

Soarin’ didn’t say anything in response, but he seemed to accept my reasoning as legit. With care that only a worried father could possess, he pulled Lightning from Shine’s back and sat on the floor, tenderly cradling the sleeping colt in his forelegs. It would have looked rather sweet if Soarin’ hadn’t had the physical appearance of somepony only a few years older.

“Lightning?” he said quietly. “Lightning, wake up.”

Lightning’s muzzle twitched.

“C’mon, kid,” said his father, “it’s not hard to do. Wake up for your dad, how ‘bout that?”

Slowly, as if each eyelid weighed two tonnes, the colt opened his rose coloured eyes.

“Dad, is that you?” he asked.

“Yes!” Soarin’ cried joyfully, choking his son in a very tight hug. “Yes, it’s me! Lightning, I’m so glad you’re okay! Don’t you EVER scare me like that again, you hear? Never again!”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Lightning choked, “I’m not gonna be doing what I did again anytime soon.”

“Yeah,” I said, “would you mind telling us exactly what that was?”

“Well, I-”

“Lightning Strike?”

All heads turned to the staircase across the room from the entrance, where Twilight and Dash were observing the scene. I’ll never forget the wonderful way their faces lit up when they saw us all there.

Lightning smiled.

“Hi, Mom,” he said weakly.

“LIGHTNING!”

Everypony leapt back as Rainbow Dash zoomed forwards at neo-Rainboom speed and swept her son into a tight embrace before leaning back and glaring at him with the mixed expression of anger, fear and relief that only a mother could possess.

“Are you okay?” she jabbered. “Are you hurt? What are you doing in Canterlot? How did you even get here? Did the Combine do anything to you while we were gone? Why aren’t you wearing any armour?”

“I had to dump the armour because it was too heavy,” Lightning explained. “Once I heard the reactor core had been contained I went back to the Citadel, convinced Spike to chuck me in and climbed all the way up to the top. After that it was just a matter of jumping onto the lowest cloud and getting here. I ran all the way here from City 17 on clouds!”

There was a pause as this slightly brief explanation sank in.

“Lightning,” I said, “you’re barmy.”

“Maybe so, but I’m alive, aren’t I?” asked Lightning.

While Soarin’ and Dash fawned over their son, Twilight came up to me and Shine and pulled us both into a hug.

“It’s so good to see you’re both okay,” she said. “You didn’t fight, did you?”

“Of course not,” said Shine. “We got along like a house on fire.”

“You mean one of us is going to either completely destroy the other or at least cause devastating damage?” I asked. “No thanks, I’d rather we were just fighting.”

“Huh?” Twilight was adorably confused. “Hex, are you… scared of Shining Armor?”

“How could I not be?” I responded. “Twilight, I don’t know if you noticed, but-” I leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “-your brother is the Blue Demon!”

Shine sighed.

“Perhaps it would be best if I showed you both what we’re working for?” he asked.

“Good idea.”

He led the way up several flights of stairs to the roof, or more appropriately, to the top floor. The roof and one wall had been blasted away, giving a spectacular view of the city under the setting sun (sun setting already? I think the cycle of day and night has been thrown out of whack) and a telescope had been set up on a tripod on the edge.

I took the first look.

“What exactly am I looking for?” I asked, wiping the eyepiece first in case there was ink on it – Dash looked a little disappointed.

“Just find the sculpture garden and look towards the castle,” said Soarin’. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

It didn’t take me long to find the remains of the sculpture garden. I located the pedestal – now grave – of Discord and the burial plot of the three princesses before turning towards the castle-

-and I saw it. The metal-plated building was shaped a little like bottle: the squat kind of bottle, usually made of vibrantly coloured glass, which every stereotypical witch/wizard/potion maker/whatever has on a shelf, and almost certainly contains some kind of poison or the kind of potion which makes you float up into the air and your ears turn into figgins.

What is a figgin, anyway?

“You find it?” asked Dash.

“I think so,” I said. “The place shaped a bit like a potion bottle?”

“That’s the one,” said Shine, and I stepped away so that Twilight could have a look. “It’s the-”

“The Canterlot Archives!” cried Twilight. “Where some of the most valuable documents and powerful spells in the world are safely stored. The most secure centre of information in all of Equestria. I can’t believe it’s still standing after all this time!”

She let Lightning Strike have a look.

“It’s a bit ugly,” he commented.

“We’ve been trying to get to that place for months,” said Shine. “We think there may be something in there that can end the Combine’s occupation for good.”

“Really?” asked Twilight enthusiastically. “What?”

Rather than answering himself, Shine stood aside and let a pegasus take the stand.

“I never did explain what convinced me to grow a pair and go back to Rainbow, did I?” asked Soarin’.

Twilight and I shook our heads.

“I’d just had a particularly crap run in a derby,” he explained, “and I was heading home when I was mugged. It was no big deal, I think I scared the guy straight, but when I turned to leave there was this flash of light in the alley, and this really strong wind coming from everywhere. And then get this: I came out. Another version of me! And he told me that Rainbow needed me and that I had to go back to her.”

“So?” I asked. “It could have just been an alternative version of you. You’d be surprised how many-”

“You don’t think I considered that?” asked Soarin’ in an alarmingly hostile voice. “I would have believed it if the other me hadn’t quite plainly said he was from the future! And guess what? He looked just like me!”

“Well, duh,” said Lightning sarcastically. “Did you expect to look like a slice of Swiss cheese?”

“Hey, watch it, kid!” Soarin’ pointed a warning hoof at his son.

“He means he looked as he does right now,” Dash explained. “Right down to the bullets in his vest.”

“And this got me thinking,” Soarin’ continued, “how could this even be possible? How could I travel through time and talk to myself? There had to have been magic involved, and they wouldn’t just let anypony use such powerful magic-”

“-so you figured the most powerful magic would be kept in the most secure location and decided to come here!” I finished for him. “No wonder the Doctor was smegged off.”

“There’s just one problem,” said Soarin’, and he stood right on the edge. “Like I just said, the Archives are the most secure storage facility in Equestria, and we need to break in…”

“…but I have no idea how the buck we’re going to do it!”