My Little Rider: Friendship is Joker

by lilAngel

Episode 22 - I Hunt

A pony galloped across the countryside, faster than anyone would have thought possible. He left the ground crossing bridges, and travelled a hundred yards before his wheels hit the dirt roads again. Wheels, because this wasn’t just any pony. In his current form he was the Nascar Rider, body encased in jointed armour that allowed him to twist and move in ways that his skeleton should never have been able to accommodate. His legs ended in wheels, rather than hooves, and he looked like some kind of machine or carnival float, a larger than life horse constructed from burnished red metal.

There was something wrong, though. The armour was dented, and one wheel twisted out of shape. He struggled to follow a straight path across the countryside, and winced every time his speed caused him to leave the ground. He was glad he didn’t need to gallop, and could let the magic in the wheels do its thing. Because he wasn’t sure he would have been able to run at all. As he saw the signs for the farm, he breathed a sigh of relief, and just that loss of concentration was enough to make him stumble. The armour partially broke into pieces as it vanished, and the unprotected pony’s body tumbled end over end along the road, ending up half buried in a pile of shale.

“My love!” the nearest pony cried, running over to be by his side, “What happened?” He looked up into her eyes, and found that his injuries didn’t seem nearly so important any more. The connection between the two of them was still there, and that mattered more than anything else in his life. He was lucky to have found her, but she had always liked to watch the sunrise. None of the farm’s paid labourers would have been up so early, they didn’t have any dedication to the work and were mostly just passing through ponies who had to be taught how to use a shovel correctly.

A half-hour later, they were sitting around a massive applewood dining table, large enough to seat a family of dozens. There were only three ponies here now, though, including the visitor. At the head of the table sat the head of the family, a genius scientist who knew the properties of every gem and mineral on the planet, and soon to be ruler of the whole region. She was known for many things, but tolerating mistakes was not one of them.

“How did this happen?” the leader demanded. She wasn’t taking a full-on dopant form today, she didn’t want to kill anypony with the sheer force of her presence. But she had the Memory sitting in a slot on her collar, and midnight-blue smoke coiled around her. There could be no doubt that the visitor was speaking to Terror now, the leader of the Gaia Organisation, rather than a mere member of his extended family.

“The Champions of Harmony,” he sighed, “They’ve become more powerful. They can change forms so quickly now, fast enough to interrupt my attacks. And they can execute a Maximum Drive with less than a second of charging cycle. Their synchronisation rate with the Element Memories is astronomical now, my sensors showed up to eighty-six percent resonance.”

“That’s higher than I expected,” Terror murmured, “I suppose you were facing one of their Perfect Harmonies?”

“Two earth ponies,” the visitor nodded, struggling not to show any sign of pain. It was clearly taking its toll on him, but he knew he would have to complete the debriefing before he earned any kind of medical attention. But a younger mare was already rushing into the room, carrying a first aid kit that included several custom-made magical instruments.

“What are you doing?” Terror snapped, “I did not give you leave to treat his wounds yet. If he doesn’t suffer pain, he will not learn from his mistakes.”

“He’s learned enough,” the other mare answered, “And I don’t see why you get to give us orders. You aren’t my mother, you weren’t even here when Rose Quartz died, you were away on your stupid pilgrimage, so don’t try to make out that you’re the head of this family. Just because you’ve got the most powerful Gaia Memory doesn’t mean you can give us orders, not when it comes to family. And he is family to us, he was our third cousin even before he became my brother-in-law, and I say he’s hurt long enough.” Anger flashing in her eyes, the younger one produced a Gaia Memory, a simple sliver of grey-brown rock that gleamed in the morning light. She held it to her flank, where it fitted neatly into a metal and crystal tube mounted where a saddlebag would normally rest.

“CLAY·DOLL!” the memory barked. Terror didn’t hesitate, but hurled a stream of poisonous black magic across the dining room. As the young medic’s body grew giant and her coat became a texture like well-weathered clay, the magic was already slamming her back against the wall, and even the robust dopant body shattered into a cloud of dust.

“While I appreciate your desire to stand up for what you believe in,” Terror glared, “I would rather not see my family transforming at the breakfast table. It is unseemly. When you have regenerated, I expect you to continue to give first aid without further interrupting. Do you understand?”

Fragments of shattered clay rolled together like a tide of dust, climbing up and over each other to find the right place on the destroyed body. Before long there was a clay pony standing there, covered in cracks like a pot smashed and repaired. But after a few seconds later, a warm golden light shone out through the gaps in the structure, and the dopant was whole again. She didn’t say a word, but removed the ClayDoll Memory from her Gaia Driver and settled down to treat the stallion’s wounds.

“Yes, a Perfect Harmony combination,” he nodded, as if nothing had happened to interrupt the conversation. He glanced across at his wife as he said it, imagining how hard it must be for her to sit and watch her free-spirited sister be shattered into pieces for every little act of rebellion against the new head of the family. And for her to watch him suffer in pain like this. For her sake, he would try to answer every question clearly and concisely, and to end the debriefing quickly.

“You could have struck them down before their transformation completed,” Terror pointed out, “But of course you hesitated. Because…?” He didn’t have the words to answer, he simply nodded in shame. There were some things he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to accomplish.

“Well, I can hardly blame you for that. But I notice that the Engine Memory has not uploaded its logfiles to my instruments this morning. It was broken?” Another nod. “I have already started making another. And I will also upgrade the Nascar Memory, allowing you to participate in the first trial of an enhancement I have been working on. If you are even faster, then I hope you can tell me that this situation will not repeat itself. But don’t rely on it, because this will also take a heavier toll on your body. Do you understand?”

“Yes. They won’t catch me unawares again, and I promise you that the wintery dopant will pay for her crimes.”

---

It was a quiet morning in Ponyville. It was especially quiet in the basement of the Golden Oak Library, where Twilight Sparkle was conducting experiments. In this case, she was assisted by another unicorn, Rarity, who had more talent as a gemologist than many ponies would suspect, who only knew her as the owner of a fashionable boutique. On a stool in the corner, Pinkie Pie sat watching them in silence. The pink earth pony was just a little hyperactive at the best of times, and had consumed a whole tray of donuts this morning, so it was hard to predict how long she’d be able to watch without interfering. She’d been there nearly six minutes already, and the challenge of not leaping around and offering suggestions was already starting to show.

The subject on the lab bench today was a Gaia Memory. The Champions of Harmony had managed to recover several of these over the last year, all of them broken. But this one was somehow different, and Pinkie wanted to understand why.

“It’s not a Gaia Memory,” Twilight said, “The bits of wire and stuff are the same, but the crystal isn’t a crystal. I think it’s glass, poured in a mould. I think it partly runs on conventional magic, and partly channels the Gaia Energy from another Memory.”

“So he’s still got the other Memory, he can still use his dopant form?” Pinkie tried to reword the explanation in terms that made sense to her, “He can’t do a Maximum Drive without this one though, can he? So why do you sound so worried?”

“Because this is made from glass and metal, with a little bit of earth pony magic in the mix. Anypony could make one of these if they knew how, and that’s a real problem. This means someone is capable of mass-producing Gaia Memories, and I don’t need to tell you what that could lead to.”

“Yeah…” Pinkie’s normal optimism faltered for a second. They could defeat every dopant they had met so far, but taking on a whole city of the monsters would be a completely different matter. But she bounced back quickly enough, turning the focus to one thing they could deal with. “What about this winter dopant? Have you got any idea who it might be?”

“No. I was hoping to interrupt the attack last night, after I spotted a pattern in the locations. I think the dopant is circling round the outskirts of Ponyville, not making attacks close together, in the hope of stopping anypony from noticing. But there’s still a pattern there.”

“And you think there’s two dopants with ice-based powers?” Rarity added, “Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence?”

“Normally I’d say so, but the victims do fit into two neat patterns. The ones who had Gaia Memories, and the ones who seem to have been picked purely based on being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“So which one do we go after first?” Spike asked the obvious next question, “Or can we try to track down both?”

“I’m not sure we have anything we can use,” Twilight sighed, “For either of them. We don’t know their motives, we don’t know what’s driving them. We could try looking up the Memories of the victims, but I’m sure that the connection there is simply that they were all Memory users. I think… if what the red guy told us is true, then this is some kind of turf war, between different groups who want to take control of the supply of Gaia Memories. Maybe one selling the actual Gaia Memories, and somepony else entirely making these artificial ones. If that’s the case, then we have no way of knowing which group is the lesser of two evils. So I hate to say it, but maybe we should leave this to him. Focus on the one who’s targeting innocent ponies.”

“The same one our Champion of Justice was hoping to get revenge on last night,” Rarity pointed out, “He doesn’t think they’re different culprits.”

“But he was ready to kill at the Winter Wrap-Up as well,” Pinkie remembered, “Saying the wintery dopant was his enemy. Maybe he’s been so upset that he assumes any ice-based powers are the same one. Or anypony that uses an icy Gaia Memory deserves to die just in case they’re the one that hurt his wife.”

“That stallion needs to unwind a little. He’s going to get himself hurt if he carries on with this crusade of revenge. Or hurt somepony else. I can see a lot of chances for something to go wrong, innocent ponies caught in the feud between two Memory Distributors. And if this wintery one is targeting other dopants, they must be at least as strong as him.”

“I think it’s not two dopants,” Pinkie said, looking at the maps again, “Because even if you have dopant powers, there’s something you’d need before you go hunting other dopants.”

“And what’s that?” Twilight furrowed her brow. She knew she was missing something here, but she was really disappointed in herself if Pinkie had seen it first.

“Practice.”

Twilight stared at the maps for a minute before she understood, but when she did her mind was filled with dread. “We’ve got someone using a Gaia Memory to kill ponies, every other week, just to keep in practice, so maybe they can activate it a bit quicker, or be more powerful, or whatever, when they fight another dopant? That is terrible. She doesn’t gain anything from them, she doesn’t even care who they are.”

“How do we find her, though?” Spike asked, “If it even is a mare, remember that Justice is showing signs of obsession, so you can’t trust his opinion. It might not even be the same pony he’s after.”

“That’s what detectives are trained in, isn’t it?” Twilight suggested, “We should at least tell Gin Mixer about the pattern I’ve spotted, although if she’s smart enough to move around the city she’ll probably change pattern anyway if she saw us both waiting for her last night. And tell him that we’ve identified two groups of victims. Maybe he’ll have some resources, more hooves on the street at least, to ask the right questions.”

---

An hour later, they managed to find detective Gin Mixer sitting in a small coffee shop near the edge of Ponyville. Twilight carefully laid out that she thought some of the victims were the killer’s actual targets, while others were only practise. That was enough to raise some eyebrows; even psychotic killers usually had some reason to choose their victims.

“So these ‘real targets’,” Gin asked, “Do they have something in common? Is there some way we should have been able to tell them from the others? I’d hate to think I missed something so obvious.”

“They’re the ones with Gaia Memories,” Pinkie explained, “It’s okay, you couldn’t have known. But quite a few of the victims had one, maybe if you’d known what to look for you…” her voice trailed off, and Pinkie and Twilight met each other’s eyes. “Oh no.”

“We need to know what’s happened to the victims’ personal effects and property,” Twilight took over, “I expect their families will have it now, but they had Gaia Memories, and those things are dangerous. We don’t want some descendant to nearly destroy the town in a thousand years again. I need to gather all the Memories, analyse and destroy them.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Gin Mixer pulled out his files. He might not have special powers from the Elements of Harmony, but he was going to show that he was at least as good a detective as these amateurs. He could summon a dozen members of the Department, to help him track down every last one of the victims’ possessions. And three hours later, they knew what they needed to know.

“They’re not there,” Gin Mixer decided he had to tell Twilight in person, “None of the victims were carrying crystals that match your description. A couple of them, we thought they might have been connected to crime, so their homes were fully searched and inventoried too, and there was nothing like one of these crystals on any of the lists.”

“Somepony else took them, then.” Twilight concluded, “Because we know Evening Child was carrying it with her all the time. She was as scared as we were about some kid finding it and not being able to control the power.”

“I’ll let the stolen goods group know,” Gin said firmly, “I won’t say what they are, but you’re pretty sure those things are dangerous. So any time we search a suspect’s house, for any reason, my policehorses should be keeping their eyes open for these Gaia Memories. And if they find one, it goes straight to you.”

“Thank you,” Twilight smiled, knowing how much it must be costing his pride to admit that some crime was outside his remit. The police hadn’t been in Ponyville long, and they needed to carefully hoard every scrap of respect they could gather now.

The afternoon turned into evening, and the night came and went. Twilight looked at her maps again, and at all the papers at her disposal, but experienced no further epiphanies. The Ponyville Department of Police were looking for Gaia Memories now, but without knowing what they really were. The icy dopant might be getting ready for another attack, some kind of macabre practice, but now that her schedule had been broken there was no way they could predict it. All they could do was wait.

Another day passed. Gin Mixer came to the Golden Oak Library, and spoke to Twilight about a matter of some importance. Because, it seemed, somepony within the Department had seen something that looked very much like a Gaia Memory. It had been in a little box on Sweet Pickings’s mantelpiece, he was sure, because that was why he had decided her death must be an accident. Surely any criminal would have taken the jewelled trinket box, it was such a beautiful thing. And then when it came to make an inventory of the house, the officer in question hadn’t remembered well enough to note that the box was no longer there.

“It’s him,” Twilight sighed, “The Champion of Justice. He’s trying to protect innocents, I trust that much at least, but he’s also trying to gather every single Gaia Memory for himself. He stole it as soon as he was allowed on the scene, meaning that we can’t find out what the Memory was. If that would give a clue about why the dopant is freezing these ponies in particular, we haven’t got all the clues.”

“Next time I see him at a scene, I’m going to demand an explanation,” Gin Mixer was trying to sound brave, but it was obvious he didn’t relish the idea.

“He might be more willing to help if he thought we had a chance of catching the wintery dopant,” Twilight guessed, “But I don’t think he’ll be showing up for a while anyway. He’ll be licking his wounds. But thanks, I think you told me exactly what we need to know. I can find the dopant now, but it’ll be risky.”

The detective was worried about them, of course. But he had to accept that it was their responsibility to deal with those kinds of threats, and any support the police could give now would only be a hindrance. Then Twilight called on the others, and told them the plan. They weren’t happy with it, but none of them could come up with anything better, so they reluctantly agreed.

---

Applejack stood by the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables for dinner. It was a simple task, that she could do without having to think about moral shades of grey, or whether the vegetables deserved their fate. More and more lately, she was taking solace in the simple rituals of everyday life when the stresses of being a Champion of Harmony got too much.

“I think those potatoes are sliced thin enough, Applejack dear,” Granny Smith pointed out, “Something’s bothering you?”

“Oh, yeah,” she grunted. “Sorry, just sometimes it feels better to have something I can…”

“It’s fine,” Big Mac cut through the silence. He used few words, as always, but they came at exactly the right time. “When you got a problem you can’t do anything about, you want to attack something you can just kick, or slice, until it’s all gone.”

“‘S right,” Granny Smith agreed, “We all do it. But you cut those any thinner, there’s going to be nothing left for supper. Do you want to talk about it instead?”

Applejack thought for a while, and started chopping the next set of vegetables in silence. A few minutes passed, and then she spoke again. The other members of her family just carried on with their own part of preparing the meal, and listened.

“It’s this plan Twilight’s thunk up,” Applejack started, “We’re going to… Well, maybe it’s not the plan. There’s this stallion, calls himself the Champion of Justice. I used to think he wanted to help, I was hoping he wanted to keep everypony safe, the same as all of us. But now, we’re pretty sure he’s hurting the people who…” she paused, glanced across the table to where Apple Bloom was sitting. The rest of the family still didn’t know the whole story about the Bird Dopant, so she knew she should say as little as possible about the mechanics, in order to avoid dredging up bad memories and alienating her little sister. “… who got turned into monsters. They’re regular ponies, most of them, they can’t help what’s happened. But he wants to hurt them, and I can’t understand that.”

“I can see why that’d bother you,” Granny Smith said, but all she could offer to help was words now.

“Now, Twilight’s got a plan to find this wintery dopant. But the Justice stallion, he won’t like it. And I don’t know if I should be going along with a plan, if somepony that’s tried to save others will be hurting. If the monster hurt his family, he’s got reason to be angry. I know if you got hurt or something, then I’d be mad at anypony who told me I couldn’t help you. But it seems like everything has to be this moral choice. We have to decide, we’ve got to weigh up different things before we can decide if what he’s doing is right or wrong, and I just can’t understand all that. I don’t want to have to fight in secret, to avoid another Champion joining in. I don’t want us all to be in more danger because we’re actually choosing to stop this stallion helping us.”

“He’ll understand,” Apple Bloom answered, “I’m sure he’ll understand. He really wants everypony to be happy together, so you just go to fight this winter… monster. Maybe he won’t get his revenge, but as long as the bad guy is stopped, he’ll see that’s the important part. Right?”

“Yeah…” Big Mac drawled, “Keeping everypony safe is the important part. I don’t like you putting yourself in danger, though. You’re my sister, you should be safe. Maybe better to let this Justice stallion take care of things. He sounds pretty reliable.”

“No,” Applejack shook her head, “This is something we got to do for ourselves.” Then their dinner was ready, and she changed to less controversial topics of conversation. She kept on trying to analyse Apple Bloom’s responses, though. She still hadn’t told Granny Smith at all, and Big Mac didn’t know the details. Neither of them was aware that Apple Bloom knew the Gaia Memory distributor, but had sworn to keep his true identity a secret. Applejack didn’t want to cause her little sister any more stress, so she wasn’t going to push her, and she didn’t say any more over dinner.

Later in the evening, she headed out again. Big Mac tried to persuade her to stay home and be safe, but admitted that she knew what she was doing. After the conversation earlier, he seemed even more worried than usual about what she was getting involved in. But she told him in no uncertain terms that it was her duty to protect Ponyville now, and that she wasn’t prepared to leave this case unsolved.

---

Deep Crimson sat quietly by the side of the road, waiting. A little way out of Ponyville, on a dirt track that only led to a few farms. She might be considered suspect if she was seen here, but there was nopony likely to see, especially this late at night. She was stalking, hunting her prey. Not the prey that she had made it her life’s mission to defeat, but a mortal enemy just as important. She found herself shifting position, finding it hard to get comfortable as a newly implanted Gaia Memory shifted position within her flank. But that was something she didn’t need to be too worried about, she was getting used to that feeling now.

She was feeling restless because her last hunt had been interrupted. Not by a pony who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, she had dealt with that before. She would just have waited until the participants in a conversation separated, and then she would have a choice of battles on which to hone her skills. But when the interlopers included the enemy she had sworn vengeance on, she couldn’t be so careless. And he had allies too, another armoured warrior that she had heard about but hadn’t actually seen in the time since she came to Ponyville. She’d called off the hunt, and decided to wait until she had a better idea what was going on in this town.

Tonight would be the night she understood more. Deep Crimson watched the trail until she saw a pony in the distance walking closer. She had no doubt that she had seen them before they caught a glimpse of her; that was one of the permanent advantages of a certain Memory, it allowed her to see much farther than any other pony at night, even if she didn’t transform. But now, she wasn’t looking for a fight, so she ducked behind one of the trees that sheltered the path. She was just going to watch. She saw Applejack come past, looking around her nervously as if she expected to see someone waiting in ambush. Deep Crimson curled up tighter beside her tree, wondering why anypony would think to look for her in these circumstances. But then she realised the farm pony wasn’t looking for her. There was someone else following, a well-muscled stallion. He moved furtively, ducking from shadow to shadow, careful to vanish from sight any time his quarry looked around.

Crimson smiled to herself. She was sure that with the power she had now, she would be able to take out either of those two. Maybe not both together, but she wouldn’t even be stupid enough to attempt that. She was sure that Applejack was one of the masked Champions of Harmony, as she had discreetly followed them back to the Golden Oak Library the first time she had seen them, and she had stalked the orange earth pony back to her home after the last meeting of those six ponies. But somepony else was following the same target, and from the pattern of his movement, the careful steps, the exact poise, she was sure he was the same Champion of Justice she had only ever seen in his giant armour. Others might be too oblivious to notice, but to Deep Crimson’s analytical mind it was fairly obvious, and now she had everything she needed.

She wasn’t prepared to follow when two Champions were together. She didn’t gamble, she didn’t throw herself into a fight until she was absolutely sure she was going to win. But now, she wouldn’t need to, because she knew how to get both of these ponies obeying her every word.

---

“So, what do you think?” Twilight Sparkle asked as soon as Applejack rounded the corner, “Still don’t think my plan will work?”

“I never doubted your plan, I just said I don’t like it. It’s the kind of dishonest thing Champions shouldn’t be doing. I think it’s working, though.”

“Right, we’d better hurry up and meet the others.” Without exchanging another word, they trotted down the street together. Before long they were leaving the town behind, and moving in the direction of the Everfree Forest. Their secretive pursuer thought they might be going to pick up Fluttershy, and he started to get a little nervous. A larger group of ponies to follow meant there was more chance of one of them looking back, and more chance of them spotting that they were being followed. But he had to take the risk. It would be easier to remain hidden once they were in the forest, he was sure. They didn’t even seem to have the Double Driver with them, so they would really be in trouble if he left them now.

The forest was dark, and only got darker as they walked farther along the track. Before long, the track disappeared entirely, and there was no way you could find a way out unless you knew the place in some detail. Justice followed them as far behind as he dared, getting more and more nervous with every step. He’d been hoping they were going to challenge the wintery dopant, but there was no sign of unexpected ice here, and they seemed to be putting themselves in terrible danger for no reason. Why would they come here without their Driver, of all things?

They were in what seemed to be a narrow canyon now, getting narrower and deeper with every furlong they trotted. And just a short way behind, there was a rustling in the leaves, getting rapidly closer. That was when the Champion of Justice understood, just in time to grab his Gaia Memory and slam it into place.

“NASCAR!”

“KINDNESSᏔLOYALTY!” The voice of the Double Driver echoed behind him. There were enough trees to provide cover as he followed the two ponies in front of him, but there was no way he would be able to avoid detection if they turned around and searched the area between the canyon walls; and the Double pony behind him would prevent him simply retracing his steps. It was a trap.

“You were after me, and not that monster?” he roared in surprise. He couldn’t believe the supposed Champions of Harmony were being so devious.

“You betcha!” Applejack replied as she turned around, “I know Apple Bloom trusts you, I know you been talking. So she was bound to let on that we found a clue to the wintery dopant. I don’t blame her for keeping your secret, promises are important. And I got nothing against you, either, for talking to my sis. I know now you’re selling those Memories, and I can’t trust you because of that, but she says you’re trying to make sure that foals don’t get their hands on them, that’s more than some of your colleagues at any rate.”

“You talk about honesty, but you lied to get me here,” his voice was like the growl of an engine, and his words were short and to the point this time.

“No lie,” Twilight explained, “Though AJ was still uncomfortable with this plan. See, we have got a clue, or at least a part of one. But you’re getting in our way, and we need to get the facts from you so we can track down the dopant.”

“It’s not my colleagues,” he segued onto the previous topic for a moment, “But there are rival organisations. I think that the wintery dopant may be one of their leaders. But if you have questions?”

“Yeah. Some of the victims were killed for practice, I think. Maybe some for politics between your two groups. But several of them were Memory Users, we know that for sure, and the Ponyville Department of Police didn’t find any Memories in their saddlebags. Now, from the few things Princess Celestia has told us, we know that a Gaia Memory can’t stay in the body of a dead user. But we also know you stole at least one Memory from a crime scene. Maybe the reason they didn’t find Memories is because you have them all, or maybe the wintery dopant took some too. And if they have stolen Memories besides their own, there’s a chance we could trace them using the Gaia Resonance Meter. But we’d need to have some idea how many Memories they’ve taken, and maybe which ones.”

There was a long pause, while the Champion of Justice considered how to respond. They could practically see the debate going on in his head. He wanted the wintery dopant to be caught, but he also wanted to be the one to get his revenge.

“And we could do with knowing your name, too,” Applejack interrupted, “It takes forever saying ‘that Champion of Justice guy’ every time.”

“Call me Nascar,” he answered that one quickly, “Within the Farmers group, we kind of use the name of a pony’s Memory. Real names are for when you’re like, personally close. I still call my in-laws Clay and Terror.”

“I guess ponies have had stranger names,” Applejack admitted.

“And I think I can trust you. I have deactivated the Memories I recovered, so you won’t be able to trace me with your trinket. If you are tracking the energy they emit, that would only work for a short while after the death of the bearer, because an unowned Memory quickly becomes dormant. In any case, yes, the dopant has been stealing Gaia Memories. I do not know why. At this point, I think she has taken the Cider, Yesterday, Inferno, Porcupine, and Empty Memories. There’s one more, too, a victim who had a Memory Scar but I didn’t sell one to. I can’t tell you what that was, but the scar was a T with a zigzag line.”

“Thank you,” Twilight smiled, “And I hope that when we meet again, it is under better circumstances. We won’t fight you now, but the next time I find somepony suffering from one of your Gaia Memories, I can tell you we won’t be so lenient.”

---

“It isn’t picking up anything,” Twilight sighed. It was after lunch the following day, not that she’d eaten much, and adjusting the Gaia Resonance scanner to pick up the Gaia Energy signatures of multiple Memories stored together wasn’t making much progress.

“Why does it need to?” Pinkie Pie popped up right behind her, so suddenly that Twilight jumped in surprise and only just caught the table before she knocked its contents all over the floor. Pinkie could spring up quite unexpectedly at times, and the surprise was a little greater than average this time because Twilight hadn’t known she was in the library.

“Because we need to trace those Memories,” Twilight decided to give a straight answer rather than play into whatever fountain of randomness Pinkie was plugged into today, “We know which ones the culprit has taken, but we still need to find out where they are.”

“I can find anything with my Pinkie Sense!” Pinkie Pie struck a dramatic pose, which would have been a whole lot more impressive if Twilight hadn’t recognised both the pose and the boast as coming from the latest issue of a certain popular comic book.

“I think that actually sounds better than ‘Trifle Sense’,” Twilight mused, “But do you really have the supernatural ability to sense the location of small, lost items? Because that would be really useful, but I’ve never seen you use your Pinkie Sense that way before.”

“Well, uhh…” Pinkie started, then suddenly her bottomless well of confidence was back: “What about the Gaia Library? When a pony uses a Gaia Memory, it can change the title of their book. So we should be able to search for the name of a Memory, and get the pony’s book right away. Right?”

“I’m not…” Twilight started, but then she hesitated too. They didn’t have the name of the wintery dopant’s Gaia Memory, but they could surely search for a few words related to ice and see if there was a Memory for any of them. She was sure that the names of Memories the dopant had stolen wouldn’t provide such a strong lead, but they had never actually tried looking up a Memory after its owner was dead. She had no idea if the book of a deceased pony might tell who killed them or somesuch, and it would be worth looking into even if the idea were a little macabre. “Yeah, let’s try that.”

They went back upstairs to the main part of the library, where there was more space. Pinkie did tend to wave her legs around as she levitated the magical books that inhabited her dream, so it was best she wasn’t near anything breakable. Rainbow Dash was just arriving, and sat on the balcony watching. She didn’t ask what they were looking up, figuring that she’d get a quicker answer just by watching.

Pinkie Pie closed her eyes. A moment later, she saw herself surrounded by untold thousands of books, suspended in a blank void space where you could easily imagine invisible, intangible shelves between countless aisles.

“Keyword: Cider,” Twilight’s voice seemed to come out of empty space.

“Seven thousand, four hundred and eight matches,” Pinkie responded, no emotion in her voice.

“Cancel. Keyword: Cider Memory,” Twilight corrected.

“No matches.”

“Never mind,” Twilight shrugged, “We can still try the others. Maybe the more recent ones won’t have lost their power yet. Keyword: Yesterday Memory.”

“No matches.”

“I suppose it was too much to hope for,” Twilight sounded dejected.

“You’ve got to keep trying!” Rainbow Dash cut in, “Cancel. Keyword: Inferno Memory.”

“One Match.” Pinkie responded. She raised a hoof, and as all the other thousands of books sailed away into the distance, that one floated towards her. She could tell already that something was wrong, though. The book was larger than most, and barely looked book shaped. It was like someone had tried to fold the pages of a book into paper cranes, or some other complex shape, without separating the pages first. Or like somepony had tried to reorder the pages by cut and pasting, but didn’t have any scissors, so they’d just glued three or for different books together, twisting and stretching the pages to make them interleave. Or like somepony had tried to fold pages from two books together into some complex origami construction, but without separating them from the spines first, then had given up part way through and decided to make them into a balloon animal instead.

Pinkie smiled just a little as the metaphor crossed her mind; that was exactly what it looked like.

“No you don’t,” an angry voice snapped. Another pony was standing in the library, which was strange given that it was a part of Pinkie’s dream. And ‘pony’ was stretching the term to breaking point. She had the form of a muscular mare, but instead of amane she had a complex mass of snakes, tentacles, and protrusions that Pinkie wouldn’t even admit to knowing a word for. She had two faces, one on her throat, and the majority of her body was a translucent blob of red that seemed to glow in the darkness. She didn’t have a horn, but around her body was a cloud of what almost looked like telekinetic magic. She reached out with it to snatch the strangely shaped book from the air.

“You… who are you? What are you doing in my dream?”

“Your dream? That’s adorable,” her voice was at once seductive and cruel, every little thing she said dripping with insinuations that the mere words couldn’t convey, promising all kinds of forbidden delights but threatening punishment for the slightest disagreement. Pinkie knew right away that was a part of a dopant’s power, to convey emotions directly with their magic, and project thoughts or feelings into the minds of those around them. She’d have to keep reminding herself of that, and make sure not to trust this monster.

“No, this is the planet’s dream, the shared mind that includes all of Equestria,” the dopant continued, “We’re inside the Gaia Fountain, the source of all Memories. Maybe it seems like a library to you, that’s interesting. But all knowledge is here. In no way could this be called your dream. You were lucky to get a connection to the true memory without working at it. I had to sacrifice things to get in here.”

“Who are you?” Pinkie asked again, “And can I have that book back?”

“No. I need it. And… you really don’t know my name? Well, you should be able to sense it, with all this information at your disposal.”

Pinkie concentrated. The Index that she and Twilight had created appeared in front of her, and the pages turned so fast they were a blur. She knew how to do this, even if she didn’t know where that knowledge came from.

“Keyword:” she said hesitantly… was there a way to lookup the dopant in front of her, without needing a name? Of course there was, it was so obvious, she could do it purely by instinct. It was a shame this trick would only work within the Gaia Library, though. “Keyword: Taboo Memory.”

She looked up. A book came flying closer, bound in red leather just the same colour as the dopant’s gelatinous hide. But a second wisp of blue-black magic lashed out to snatch it from the air. A second later, the Taboo Dopant was standing heavily on two books.

“You found me,” she said, sounding interested, fascinated even. If she had a more normal appearance, she might have quirked an eyebrow at the discovery. “But you don’t recognise me without using the powers of this Gaia Library. I’m not sure which of those facts surprises me more. I’ve been watching you since you first found your connection, you’re such an enticing mystery. I want to know how much you know, how much you can do. But for now, I have to stand in your path. You cannot be allowed access to these books, they are…” she paused just a second, and treated Pinkie to two lewd smiles, “forbidden knowledge, you could say.”

Pinkie stumbled back, tripped, and her head hit the wooden floor. She knew right away that she was back in the real world. The floors in the Gaia Library weren’t made of wood, they were nothing but pure surface. They weren’t really there at all.

“What happened?” she asked, and then saw the circle of concerned faces around her. Applejack was there, and Twilight, and Rarity. Spike too, looking as concerned as he could manage from behind a cupcake.

“We should ask you,” said Twilight, “You said you found a book, and then you didn’t tell us what was in it. You just went quiet. And when I asked what’s wrong, you started doing your own Lookup. Where did the Taboo Memory come into it? That wasn’t on the list Nascar gave us. Is that the pony who’s been stealing the other Memories?”

“No, no,” Pinkie shook her head to clear it a little, “That was just a hunch, it didn’t come to anything. I tried to look up the Inferno Dopant, but the book was all messed up and twisted. Like somepony tried to make a book, and they’d heard some talk about books and some talk about scrolls, but they’d never seen one so they just tried to guess how it fits together. It was a mess. I couldn’t read it.”

She looked around at her friends. She had to look away quickly when Applejack met her gaze; her friend was the Champion of Honesty, so it felt especially bad to mislead her. She hadn’t actually lied, but that didn’t make it feel any better. She didn’t want to admit to the others that there was a strange dopant in her dreams again, because they might not trust her.

The statement that the library was actually within the Gaia Fountain, as well. That was worrying. It was tempting to believe, but then she would have to worry about how she had got connected to it. Pinkie Pie wanted to investigate for herself, ask Taboo some more questions before getting the others involved. She didn’t even know if that statement was true or not, and it would be a waste of time to get everypony chasing after a false lead. Even if it was true, that didn’t necessarily mean that she was connected to the Gaia Fountain. It was quite possible that the library in her dreamspace had been changed by Luna staying in there, or by Twilight using the Driver to enter her dreams. The Elements of Harmony were Gaia Memories, after all, so maybe using them to connect ponies together in an unusual way had somehow merged her mental library with the true Gaia Library that contained the memories of the planet.

It was a strange thought, but one that made sense. Pinkie was sure she would be able to find the truth, given time. She didn’t want to worry her friends with it yet.

“So what do we do now?” Twilight asked, “The Resonance Meter isn’t helping, and your Gaia Library didn’t have the answer. I’m kind of curious about that, really. Was it because the Memory User was dead that the book was deformed? Or has the wintery dopant done something with the Memory itself, to cause that?”

“I don’t know,” Pinkie mused. She hadn’t even thought of that, but now that she did it was yet another part of the big question that was building up in her mind. “But I think maybe I have an idea.”

“Why do I know I’m not going to like this?” Applejack asked.

“Well, we’ll need Nascar to help us,” Pinkie started, “Maybe you can–”

“I knew it.”

---

Later in the day, Applejack went to pick her sister up from school this time.

“What are you doing here?” Apple Bloom exclaimed, “I was going to the clubhouse for a few hours before heading home. Do you need something?”

“Yeah, but I won’t take time away from you and the Crusaders.” Applejack could still see the faint scar on Apple Bloom’s flank, almost recognisable as a letter ‘B’ where she had once been foolish enough to use a Gaia Memory. They were sure that it would disappear completely when she got her cutie mark, which was all the more reason for the Cutie Mark Crusaders to rush towards finding their talents. “I just want you to pass another message to the Champion of Justice. We don’t know anypony else that knows who he is.”

“Another message? You never asked me to do that before. You talk about him like he’s some kind of monster. If you just knew…”

“Wait, do your friends know too? The other crusaders?”

“Don’t go trying to get it out of them. They got no idea, and even if they did, we don’t go back on our word, right? And I still want to know what you mean with ‘another message’.”

“You told him I was talking about him, and that we had a plan to beat the wintery dopant.”

“I didn’t –” Apple Bloom started to yell indignantly.

“It’s okay,” Applejack interrupted, “We wanted him to know. We wanted him to follow us, but we couldn’t go out and ask when we’re kind of enemies. I know you told him, he followed me that evening when I went to meet Twilight. I think he was behind me before I even reached town, so he must’ve got the message pretty quick.”

“Really, I didn’t tell…” Apple Bloom protested, but then slowed down as she realised there was no way she could make her sister believe.

“It’s okay, sugarcube. You hear somepony talking behind your friend’s back, it’s only natural. I wouldn’t have said it in front of everyone if I didn’t want him to hear. But this time, we’re going to be clear and honest. I’ve got a letter for him, Twilight wrote it out with all kinds of fancy words, basically saying there’s no sense fighting, and maybe we can work together. We can argue what to do with the Memory User once the dopant is defeated.”

“Fine,” Apple Bloom took the letter, “But I won’t see him for a while now. And you two need to settle your differences right? You can’t keep on asking me to pass messages, it’s like when two friends in class won’t talk to each other and they’re both going ‘tell her this’ and ‘tell her that’, it’s gonna look really childish if you keep doing this. I’m too short for this. I can’t even look down on you and do the big sister speech, you know?”

“We’ll try,” Applejack smiled, “And thanks. You helped us a lot, and it means a lot that you’re smart enough to see the right thing to do. You grew up a heck of a lot faster than I did. I’m so proud of you, sugarcube.”

---

It was two days later that there was a knock on the door of the Apple family farm. Big Mac had gone out to help a neighbour with baling hay, Apple Bloom was out at school, and Granny Smith was in Ponyville doing whatever she did on her mysterious days out. So Applejack was home alone, taking a brief break from her own chores. She went to the door expecting it to be one of the neighbours, offering some leftover pickles from their harvest or asking to borrow a hammer.

Nascar stood there, his metal body gleaming in the afternoon light and one wheel turning lazily as he waved a hoof.

“I got your message,” he said, “I’m not going to give you my real name. I don’t want you to hate me just for giving ponies a chance to be better. But you said we can help each other…”

“Yeah. Because the ponies who lost Gaia Memories are all ones we didn’t catch when they were alive. They’re the ones who can use those powers carefully, be better at whatever they need, and not rampage. That’s what you’re hoping for, right, everypony being able to do that?”

“Yeah. Dopants doesn’t have to mean monsters.”

“I’m not so sure on that. But if they managed it, they shouldn’t have been hurt. Like Evening Child, she mastered her Gaia Memory, and used its own power against it to stop it poisoning her mind. So that’s what you wanted, right? You wanted to hurt her, and then this wintery dopant beat you too it.”

“No!” he exclaimed, the monotone behind the mechanical growl getting excited for once, “Maybe I was too harsh. But I got this pseudo-Memory. I did, anyway. The Engine Memory, it’s got all kinds of fancy enchantments in it, done by the best mineralogist in Equestria. If I’d done the Memory Break on the Yesterday Dopant, it would have scanned her Gaia Energy Signature, picked up everything about the trick she was using. Then the new Memories could have had that built in.”

“Oh…” Applejack half deflated, “Anyway! You’re here now. So are you going to help us?”

“Fine,” he grunted, and she could see how disappointed he was. He didn’t have the Memory to power up his sword, so against a monster that had killed other monsters he really couldn’t try on his own. “Like your letter said, even if it was kinda hard to read with those weird square letters, I been watching out for a Memory User who hasn’t caused any trouble going out of contact. And there’s one now, from a farm just round here. Harvestgold, grows corn mostly. He was always moaning about how he wished the sun and the Weather Committee would think more about struggling farmers, give him more days when he could plant seed without the first shoots being baked. So after I checked he knew how to keep his mouth shut, I gave him the Mist Memory. He found it so much easier to plant his crop with a little fog to keep the seeds cool on sunny days, I reckon he’s going to save his farm come harvest time. I wasn’t due to check on him until next week, but I saw he didn’t advertise for helpers. I went up to his farm to check. There’s frost on the irrigation ditches, and his window’s broken, looks like somepony threw a rock through, or an ice cube.”

“No sign of him?” Applejack asked. Nascar just nodded, and she continued: “About what we expected. The police reports say they’re always missing a day or two before the bodies turn up. The ones with Memory scars, anyhow.”

“So how can you find him?” Nascar was blunt, “You said you could, but I don’t see how. The Family has things like that Resonance Scanner Twilight Sparkle’s been working on, but they’ve had a hundred years to improve it. It’ll never pick up a Memory more than a furlong away, and there’s not time to search the whole town.”

She tapped the Honesty Memory into the collar around her throat, and the gems on it glowed faintly orange. The next time she spoke, she wasn’t addressing the monster in front of her. Her eyes were closed, and she was speaking to an empty space.

“Nascar just showed up. We’re going with– … … Yeah, that plan. Tell me when you’re ready.” A few moments passed. The Champion of Justice just waited. He’d got used to this kind of communication already, though not quite in this way. Then Applejack said three more words: “Keyword: Mist Memory.”

Then the Champion’s eyes went wide with surprise. He’d heard of the Gaia Library, of course, his fiancée had gone into some depth explaining what it was capable of, though he still had no idea how anypony could get there. He knew that Taboo could go there, with a lot of effort, and ClayDoll too, if she ever took a little more responsibility and applied herself. But the Lunar Memory was supposed to be lost forever, so there was absolutely no way the Champions of Harmony could access it. Now he had a new mission, and that was to work out who’d been lying to him, and how much of what he knew was true.

“Are you okay?” Applejack asked, “You’re awfully quiet, and snorting like that. I can’t tell you where he is, and you ain’t got that sword now anyhow, so it hardly matters. But Twilight and Pinkie are heading down there, and I might go join them if they need me. So you can be sure, the wintery monster will be beaten today.”

---

Double Dash was flying towards the Everfree Forest again. They didn’t know how long Pinkie would be able to keep them up to date on the location of Harvestgold, and in the absence of the Champion of Justice, they had selected the fastest Element combo in their arsenal to get to the scene of the crime. Twilight had already worked out that the magical ice was being dropped into lakes and streams to freeze ponies there, but that it only seemed to happen in places where the water was deep enough for the ice to be mostly submerged.

For the practice victims, maybe, it would be possible to pick a suitable body of water and wait there for an hour or two until a suitable victim came within reach. But if this was a restriction in the working of the strange icy power, then to target a specific other Memory User the wintery dopant would have to capture them or lure them out to a suitable site. It seemed a lot of effort, and that likely accounted for the day’s delay before the bodies were found. There was a good chance that it would be possible to rescue an intended victim in this time, and that was what they were ready to attempt now.

Rainbow Dash had been selected for this mission because she would likely be the fastest to reach the place Pinkie had located the Mist Dopant. Fluttershy was joining her because she was familiar with the habits of many of the Everfree creatures, and that could prove useful. That the two pegasi working together could have much greater speed and power was a bonus, enough to make the choice of the pair beyond question.

Near the south side of the forest was a large pool. After Pinkie had determined the approximate location of the Mist Memory and its user, it hadn’t been a great feat of deduction to work out where they would be. And just as they had expected, as they skimmed low over the treetops there was a large ball of ice bobbing in the water, only a small amount protruding over the surface.

“You’re the Champions?” a female voice came from somewhere behind the treeline as the double pony touched down on the shore, leaving rainbow magic trails in the air behind them. It wasn’t terrified bravado, this comment was almost a sneer of disdain. Fluttershy was instantly nervous, though Rainbow Dash’s ego quickly pushed that feeling to the back of their consciousness. “You’re too late already. Terror overestimates you.”

“He’s still alive,” Rainbow Dash yelled, hoping that hadn’t changed in the last minute since Pinkie Pie checked the victim’s book, “Not too late yet, and this is the last time you’ll get that far!”

“Shows how little you know,” the voice was just as unimpressed. The monster stepped out from the trees on the far side of the lake, dressed in a heavy robe that hid almost all her features. “I don’t need to kill them, I’d thaw them out and set them free if it wasn’t so much effort. If they’re hurt beyond the Gaia Memory’s ability to recover, the Memory will often partially dissociate from their body, in the hope it will survive the finishing blow and remain unnoticed for a thousand years until it can recover. If you actually studied them rather than just using them, you might actually have a chance of beating me.”

Rainbow Dash took over their body, flying straight up into the air. Fluttershy went along for the ride, assuming her friend knew what she was doing.

(“We don’t need to fight right now, we have to rescue Harvestgold!”)

(“Right! But if she does this to somepony else…”)

(“You know this forest better than most of the monsters, and together we’re the fastest pony who ever lived. She won’t get away.”)

At the apex of their climb, both pegasi reached a hoof to the Driver and tapped their two Elements a little lower in their slots. They spoke together, cheering the name of their attack as the Driver flashed and glowed. “Ultimate Rainboom Strike!”

“KINDNESSLOYALTY: Maximum Drive!”

(“Did we change the name of this attack? I’m sure it had ‘Stare’ in it before.”)

(“Yeah, but there’s no monster to stare at if we’re using it to crack an ice cube.”)

Fluttershy had to admit that was true. There wasn’t time to say anything else, as the two focused all their power into downward acceleration, rings of rainbow light bursting out from their wingtips. They pushed harder, getting every tiny scrap of speed they could, until they were travelling faster than any other pony had ever gone. Really, it was just the sonic rainboom that Rainbow Dash had been so proud of in her youth, executed even more precisely. They pushed their speed up higher and higher, but kept the rainbow energy wrapped around them, so that it only burst at the moment of impact. At the last second, Fluttershy curled her wings around and held them in front of their face, like a shield, while Rainbow Dash pushed her own wings to the limit, increasing their speed still further.

The Rainboom could be seen all across Ponyville, but only a few observers knew what it meant. Just as the shockwave of rainbow energy spread out, Fluttershy’s armoured wings slammed into the top of the giant block of ice. The shockwave even turned the pool rainbow coloured for a moment, and the giant block of ice split neatly in half.

The double-pegasus dived beneath the surface, and hauled Harvestgold to the bank. They weren’t surprised to see the letter ‘M’ burned into his haunch, obliterating his cutie mark on one side. It was a rough scar, more obvious than most, and they would surely have seen it long before if this particular farm stallion didn’t tend to wear huge saddlebags filled with his produce on every visit to town, ‘Just in case somepony got a craving for corn.’

They turned towards the monster again. She was standing on the far bank, holding up a Gaia Memory. Almost taunting them. They didn’t think, just turned and charged towards her. In this form they could run fast enough to skim across the pool’s surface like a stone, it would take them less than a second to reach their quarry. But she already had her Memory out, and they saw a sky-blue swirl of unicorn magic take it from her hoof to her flank, faster than any hoof could have pressed it in.

“ICEBERG!”

Double Dash’s minds moved even more quickly than their body. When they were at their peak, it was almost as if the rest of the world was moving in slow motion. They saw the white shape growing beneath the surface of the lake right in front of them, but they were moving too quickly to stop. Dash reacted most quickly, bringing her hooves up to the Driver, but she wasn’t quick enough and suddenly there was ice all around. It formed from the thin air, and the chilly bubble filled with water in an instant. Then its icy bulk was dragging them beneath the surface, while the water around their limbs froze from the outside in. It took a second, maybe two, before a block of solid ice held them firmly in place.

Deep Crimson shook her head, disappointed. She’d expected more from the Champions of Harmony. That they’d managed to thwart Terror for so long was even more proof that the old mare didn’t deserve to be in control of the Gaia Fountain. Still, it would be beneficial to play the role of the optimistic minion for a short while more, at least until she knew whether or not ClayDoll was secretly concealing the most valuable treasure inside the hollow ceramic of her dopant body.

She could wait for the connection between the Champion and their Elements to be weakened, and then steal the Memories before they became dormant. But she had no idea whether that would work or not, when they were Memories activated through a Driver. She had also observed that the Double Driver was almost completely different from the Control and Gaia Drivers, and she didn’t know how it would react. The other option was the safe one, then. She could flee the scene, and be safely away before the other Champions realised that one of their number was dead. It was a difficult choice to make, because Deep Crimson had always claimed that knowledge was worth any risk. But realistically, she knew that if she died, there would be nopony else in all of Equestria who could replicate her work, studying and tuning the Gaia Memories.

She glanced back at the iceberg, which must be completely solid by now. When their lungs couldn’t even move, that pegasus would drown in two minutes or less. Probably a lot less, given the speed she’d been running at. It couldn’t hurt to–

“LAUGHTERᏔLOYALTY!” The voice calling the names was like the peal of a bell, not the grating gears of every other Gaia Memory, but it was recognisable anyway.

“Wha–?” Deep Crimson was surprised just enough to respond out loud before she realised what she was doing and turned to run back between the trees. She’d already prepared a safe escape route, so there was no doubt she would be able to–

“LAUGHTERLOYALTY: Maximum Drive!”

“Party Rainboom Cannon!” A voice cheered, as the carefully crafted iceberg blew apart into shards, like an egg hatching at a thousand times its normal speed. Deep Crimson didn’t have time to react, as the forest around her was suddenly filled with masks and streamers, balloons and flying slices of cake. The cake had writing on the top, but no piece had more than a couple of letters, so it was impossible to make out the message. She was sure she’d seen that style and that colour of frosting before, but she didn’t have time to try to remember. Sometimes it was good to be able to analyse everything she saw, and to spot the patterns that everypony overlooked, but not when there was a sky-blue pegasus heading straight towards her, bursting from her iceberg-egg in a single lunge.

She caught sight of a couple of cake slices that looked like they might match up, and tried to envision what they would look like together. Even recognising them was a feeling of triumph, because she’d made progress on a difficult puzzle in the instant it took the pieces to fly past. She could remember when she was younger, the joy she’d got from solving puzzles. That was why she was here now, she knew. Not for the power of taking over the Memory Farm, not for the thrill of executing a plan perfectly, not even from fear of being caught and punished for her crimes.

Deep Crimson could remember what had set her on this path. She had wanted a Gaia Memory ever since she first saw that they existed, because she wanted to understand how they worked. She had found out where they were grown, and read between the texts in history books and old farm diaries to find out how. She had made herself attractive to the distributors as a test subject, worked out exactly what to do to gain their trust, and then she had gained it. The Memory had changed her, she saw in a sudden flash of clarity. She had thought about getting what she was owed, about being better, about taking control, about revenge. But all those dark emotions were just distractions from the joy of pure knowledge. She was determined now that the Iceberg Memory would not deceive her any more.

Turning her attention back to the real world outside her imagination, she realised that she was still in danger. All those thoughts, all that insight, has come in a flash that took a single moment, but when that moment was over there was still a pony hurtling towards her, only a few inches away now. Just time to direct a single, angry thought towards the Memory in her flank.

Rainbow Pie pulled herself out of the lake, and shook her mane to get all the water out. It seemed a bit unfair that after being fired out of a Party Cannon, she would still be in the lake where she’d started. But when it came to their combo attacks, it was never quite clear how much was real, how much was a magical illusion, or how much it really mattered. Trying to separate their memories of the event afterwards was too confusing to even attempt.

What they were sure of was that they’d been trapped inside a giant ball of ice when Pinkie swapped into the shared mind, and with one hoof above the Elements they’d only had to struggle and flex slightly to activate their attack. When they emerged from the ice, the Iceberg dopant was right before them, an unmistakable giant with frost-coated translucent skin, standing in the middle of a patch of winter where icicles hung from the previously warm trees. There had been no reason not to go through with the attack, even though they didn’t know that much about the Memory User yet.

The giant form shattered into a thousand shards, and the smaller pony body within bowled head over hooves into the undergrowth. There were sprays of blood, and even in the gloom under the trees they could be sure legs weren’t supposed to bend like that.

“What happened?” Rainbow Dash was worried enough to speak aloud as they looked for the Memory User, and for the Memory itself. Normally the full force of the attack was focused on the Gaia Memory, leaving the user with only trivial injuries. The only time they’d seen a pony hurt by their attack had been with three fillies, too young for the Memory to anchor properly.

“I won’t let you take the Memory away from me,” Deep Crimson snarled, glaring at them from the shadow of a tree, with madness visible in her eyes. “You don’t even know how your own powers work, do you?”

“You’re hurt!” Rainbow Dash ran forward to help, her first instinct being to save the injured pony like any hero should. But Pinkie was hesitant, she’d seen what her friend missed, and she held them back.

“The ‘heart’ half of your power shows a user the true nature of their bond, and allows them to separate from the Gaia Memory if they wish,” the injured pony could barely stand, and one of her hind legs was bent backwards. But still, she felt she was in a position to boast about her superior knowledge. “Then with the bond split, the ‘body’ half of the attack targets only the Memory. But I saw what I’d really known all along, that the Iceberg Memory was struggling to control me. I rejected its lies, but put myself in the path of your attack to shield the Memory. Now, it must bend to my will, it owes me and it will obey.”

“You can’t do that!” Pinkie’s voice came from the two-tone pony’s mouth this time. “You don’t know what Memories can do, they’ll always…”

“I know more that you. Your attack showed me the truth, remember? It showed me what I really want!” her magic flickered unsteadily, but her horn was chipped rather than broken. She held up the Gaia Memory, “And what I want is to master these powers!”

“You can’t do that with no lake around,” Rainbow Dash tried the other tack, “Even if you use the Memory again, we’ll have to do another Maximum Drive, you’ve got no iceberg to weaken it, and your body can’t take a –” but she was cut off as the Gaia Memory jabbed into the crazed mare’s flank, and too late they saw that the magic was holding two crystals, one on either side.

“INFERNO!”
“MIST!” Two voices spoke as one, clashing so that it was hard to make out either of the words. Two colours rushed across the red coat, almost like armies at war, fighting to take each other’s territory. The dopant that emerged was black and red, with occasional tides of blue-grey sweeping across its body as the two powers sought some kind of balance. Its hair was made of flame, that rushed up to ignite the trees all around, and in seconds she was surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke.

“Try following me now!” she crowed in triumph, two different Memories adding their own grating echoes to her voice. And she flew into the distance, buoyed up by a cloud of magical mist that seemed to have levitation powers as well as confusing the senses of those trying to follow her trail.

---

“So you didn’t catch her?” Applejack gasped in amazement as Pinkie Pie related the tale, “We promised Nascar. I promised him, I gave him my word.”

“We had other things to deal with,” Rainbow Dash grunted back, but in reality she was just as annoyed, “We were stuck in a burning forest. It takes time to gather enough rain clouds to put out a fire like that. And the mist doesn’t just hide her, it kind of erased all her tracks as well.”

“You’re not the only ones with two Gaia Memories now,” Spike pointed out, “This is going to be harder than anypony you’ve fought before.”

“How do they even do that?”

“I think I understand it,” Twilight called from her workbench, where she was running yet more tests on the broken Memory fragments they had managed to recover from their enemies so far. “A Gaia Memory forms a bond to its host’s special talent, as part of the initial scarring. That’s when it sets down the channels it can use to poison their heart. It can’t be used by anypony else, then. Now, we’ve heard that if the Memory User dies naturally, the Memory can become dormant again. I think that’s what the Champion of Justice said. And then it can bond to a new user. But I think that if a pony is right on the edge of death, the Memory might not be sure if it has a bond or not. The bond is still there, even with the user almost dead, but it’s too weak to prevent another pony forming a bond.”

“So what’s that mean?” Applejack asked, “Not all the guesses about how it works. Just what can they do, and what can’t they do?”

“I think,” Twilight was keen to emphasise the word, “That if a Memory User is dying but not dead yet, when they’re not in dopant form, another dopant could steal their Gaia Memory and use it. And if they use it once before the first user dies, the bond will transfer instead of fading. It will hurt her, but the Memories can’t all poison her mind. They haven’t created the channels into her heart, they’re having to share, so the effect will only be slightly more than a single Memory. And we’re pretty sure she has Yesterday, so she might be able to overcome the Gaia Memories completely, and use them like tools. There’s actually a chance she was right about that.”

“That’d be great,” Applejack still seemed dejected, “If she wasn’t crazy as a box full of bobcats before she got the Memory.”

“She said she knew what they did,” Rainbow Dash nodded, “And she still went looking for one.”

“We lost this time,” Rarity put on a brave face, “So we’ll have to get better, so we can beat her next time. I won’t let her harm one more innocent pony.”

“Talking about that,” Applejack produced a box that she’d brought with her, and opened it on the table, “Harvestgold asked me to pass on these donuts, a kind of thank you. He’s feeling better now, he says, and not feeling any cravings for the Mist Memory. So, we didn’t fail. We saved an innocent, and now we’re ready to make sure nopony can get away with something like this again. Next time, we will stop her. I’ll promise that to you all.”

The Champions of Harmony cheered. It might not be the best possible ending, but the dopant would need time to recover. It looked like tomorrow might just be a quiet, peaceful day in Ponyville.

Comments

[TheOldPonyFromScene24]

Marked read it later, as I haven't gotten to W yet. currently on agito, working my way through heisei. though I have seen everything from fourze to drive.

it's not that I think I won't enjoy it without seeing W, I just want to wait. unfortunately it may take a while as I am now going in order.

[lilAngel]

7578368 I started doing the same when I first started on Kamen Rider; though I started at Kiva (the current series when a friend introduced me to them). Unfortunately, I couldn't find a complete translation of Kuuga or Agito at that point, and somehow never got around to catching up after fansubbers went back to fill in the older series in their collections.

I was kind of dreading comments at this point, because the last chapter I posted makes a substantial deviation from W's arc plot.So it's nice to see a positive comment and a potential new reader ^_^