This… is… CHAPTER 3!

The trio of two pegasi and one… pixie thing… ascended a flight of stairs to a city that had yet to be assigned a name. Said city was by the sea and, according to Rainbow Dash, had stone versions of what she considered Cloudsdale-esque architecture. As they neared the entrance, she brushed up affectionately beside her companion, Cobalt Spikes. "Isn't it beautiful?"

The dark blue pegasus smiled and gave a low whistle. "Heck yeah."

The pixie creature noticed a sign up ahead. "Hey, it says this place is called 'Clopotos'." (I know how some of you think. It's not that word in that sense. By the way, most of these cities will have names with horse puns.)

"Where's that?" Cobalt asked, provoking Rainbow Dash to pull out a map of Equestria that she'd packed in her saddlebags. "Err, it says here that it's 5000 miles to the east of Ponyville."

"Ponyville?" the pixie thing asked. "Is that where you two are from?"

"Yeah." Cobalt answered. "Or, at least she is. I don't know where I'm from… I've got amnesia too."

"Most likely Cloudsdale." Rainbow butted in. "But I'm sure I'd have remembered you… and Fluttershy probably would've too. Hmm…"

"Let's stick with not from around Ponyville and surrounding areas until I get further knowledge." Cobalt summed up. His eyes narrowed. "Hey, you… pixie guy. Why don't you go scout ahead, see what's there?"

The pixie saluted. "You can count on me, Cobalt Spikes." He hovered away with his tiny bee wings.

As soon as he was gone, Cobalt turned toward Rainbow with a frown. "Okay, we've gotta talk about my memory."

"Specifically?"

"Why it didn't come back. I've been mulling it over for a while." Cobalt frowned. "I wasn't particularly thinking about it at the time, but we'd decided the emeralds would restore my memories… but it didn't." he let out a low growl of exasperation. "And to make things worse, I think it's coming back even slower now!"

Rainbow thought about it and suggested the worst possible case scenario, just to put it out there. "Maybe they just aren't ever going to be fully there."

Cobalt glared at her with hurt in his eyes. "Thanks for the optimism, Miss Sunshine."

"What? I'm just trying to think of everything!" Rainbow defended her words. "If you won't think of it, then I think I should!"

"Maybe you could be a little more helpful instead of depressing!"

Their raised voices and arguing had attracted some unwanted attention, and so they cut their dispute short. "Let's talk about this later." Rainbow muttered. "Right now we should catch up with him."

"Besides, we have bigger problems than my memory troubles." Cobalt said somewhat bitterly, ironically fishing the element of honesty out of his saddlebags to try and exemplify his point.

As they walked up the stairs to the raised cobblestone sidewalk, Rainbow murmured an apology. "Look… I'm sorry. I should've been more sensitive."

"I forgive you." Cobalt sighed. "And I'm the one who should be apologizing. I let my temper get the best of me. I'm sorry for that." He smiled slightly, tapping the side of his head. "It kinda comes with having your mind messed with a lot."

"So does being pessimistic." Rainbow added. "You think I'd normally be like that?"

"Yes."

They were both smiling at this point. "Why I…" she launched herself against his side and hugged his neck, half affectionately and half death-threatening. "You oughtta show more respect!"

Cobalt rolled his eyes, pushing her off his neck and catching her in his forelegs. "And you should remember that I'm stronger than I look."

She blushed and grinned, but then frowned as a polite but accented voice cleared its throat, and the stallion it belonged to asked, "Could you two take your… ahem, 'lovers' quarrel' elsewhere?"

Cobalt gulped, realizing that ponies were no longer poking fun at them, but genuinely meaning everything they said when they talked about the two being 'lovers'. "Uh, sure, sir." He set Rainbow back on her hooves. "Come on, Dashie."

"Er, yeah." The cyan pegasus said, awkwardly backing away with her boyfriend. A little ways away, she glared back at the guy who'd spoken. "Rude much?"

"Eh, give the guy a break." Cobalt pardoned the foreign pony. "Customs could be different here."

"Oh, fine." Rainbow muttered. "Hey, there's… him!" she pointed at a nearby ice cream stand where the pixie creature was ogling a massive ice cream cone.

Cobalt glanced at her. "Him needs a name."

"Yes, him does." She agreed.

They finally got to the ice cream stand, where the pixie thing was muttering about the ice cream cone being busily built by a short, stumpy, overweight, old stallion who was way past his prime. "Like it?" the old stallion asked as he placed two cones on top of the mound of ice cream and toppings. "This here is the pride of Clopotos, y'see! The Chocolate Sundae Supreme is what this here is called!"

"Chocolate… Sundae… Supreme…" the pixie drooled. "I'll take it! How much!?"

Cobalt glanced at Rainbow. "I suppose he doesn't realize that we're paying?"

"You have the money with you." She laughed. "You're paying."

JUST A LITTLE LATER

"So, if I'll help you with your elements of harmony, then you'll get my memory back?" the pixie creature summed up the proposition that had just been made, his speech punctuated by occasional licks of ice cream.

"Yeah, that's about it, Chip." Cobalt shrugged.

The newly named Chip looked up from his ice cream in surprise. "Chip?"

"We've gotta call you something, don't we?" the dark blue pegasus amended his previous saying.

"Oh I get it." Rainbow agreed, her eyes lighting up with realization. "Chocolate chips; Chip."

"Oh, that makes sense." Chip realized. "Chip… Chip… yeah, I like it!"

A little ways afterward, Rainbow Dash noticed that the sun was beginning to crest a little bit. "Come on, let's explore a little bit before the sun goes down. We might find something."

EXPLORATION TIME… JUST BEFORE EVENING

The city of Clopotos was fun to speed through, to say the least, but pretty soon the trio noticed something that really worried them… or at least, two of them. Yeah, there was an infestation of robots all over the city.

The first time they encountered them, Chip had split off from the group to try and get some information about how to find something to help the elements in their present condition, leaving the two speedsters to do their own thing. Cobalt was having lots of fun, feeling as if he'd done this many times before. Well, that was, until they saw the first robot.

It closely resembled those that they had fought on the spacecraft, but this time they were on the soil of Equestria itself. On their home turf. Needless to say, this really pulled on the pair's nerves. "What is that doing here?" Cobalt snarled, his anger pushing through. "I can't believe he has the nerve to–"

"Dude, calm down." Rainbow looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "You don't get this angry when you see any of his other robots. What's the problem this time?"

"I just feel… I just feel like…" Cobalt's eyes turned pure white, any traces of his usual emerald green. "He's done something like this before… worse though… much worse that just one robot. I remember very clearly. When he started doing this the first time, it led to… let to…" his face twitched and he took on a confused expression. "It led to… umm, I–I can't…" his pupils reappeared in their normal green again. He regained an ignorant smile. "What was I saying there?" he noticed Rainbow's dubious expression. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You… you just…" she stammered. "You… remembered."

"Remembered…?" Cobalt muttered. "Remembered what?"

"You're telling me that you don't remember… remembering?" Rainbow choked on her words.

"Eh, if I can't remember it, then it must not have been important." He shrugged. "Say, what's that beeping?"

She realized that he hadn't seen the robot yet, and gave him instructions in order to prevent what had happened before from happening again. "Uh, turn around and keep looking that way."

"Why?"

"Just do it." she pleaded.

Cobalt raised his forelegs in surrender. "Okay, fine." He turned away from his girlfriend and for extra emphasis he closed his eyes.

Rainbow took action immediately and smashed the robot into bits by flying it several feet into the sky and dropping it. She felt something scrape her cheek as she dropped it, and as she landed, blood dripped onto the cobbled ground. She carefully wiped it off with her wing as she trotted over to where Cobalt was sitting. "Problem solved."

He turned around with a smile. "Didn't get the problem in the first place, but okay then." His face morphed into a concerned expression. "Hey, you're bleeding."

She wiped her face off again, and realized that blood was still flowing. "Geez… I guess I over-bleed."

"No, let me." He murmured, tenderly wiping off the blood from her cheek. She started to blush, and when she started to feel him pulling her in with his other foreleg. They nuzzled each other for a few seconds before finally coming together in a passionate kiss. They closed their eyes, and thirty or so seconds later, they broke apart.

"That was awesome." Rainbow breathed. "Sorry for worrying you back there."

"It's fine." He smiled. "Hey, the sun's going down."

It was true, Celestia's sun had finished its journey and

The two felt the same itching feeling as before, exactly the same as when what seemed like days ago on the spaceship they'd been transformed into those monster creatures. Dark gas plumed from their chests, and the dark light that had made up that giant dark creature they'd seen from the spacecraft exploded from their hooves and faces. (Doctor Who reference there… hehe.)

When the light and gas cleared, as if it had been a magic trick, they were the monsters once more. Cobalt glanced down at himself, his eyes piercing the dark as clearly as if it had been day. "So when the sun goes down… we turn into… this?"

"Well that sucks." Rainbow summed up. "Wanna explore some more?"

"You know it!"

IN ONE AREA OF THE TOWN

Two young pegasi walked through Clopotos, one yellow and one orange. The pair consisted of none other than Scootaloo and her obvious crush and friend, Miles Unknown. They were having a very serious conversation.

"So, Scootaloo… I realize that I probably need to go to school at some point… and I was thinking that after this week off from your school's schedule I could maybe join your class?" he asked

"Sure." Scootaloo giggled in joy. Her crush was going to go to be in her class! "I can vouch for ya with Cheerilee."

"Thank you." Miles said with a nod and a smile. "And also, since I don't yet have my special mark for my talent…" he nodded toward his blank flank. "I hoped that I could join your and your friends' little group."

"Well, we haven't thought much about adding new members, but I guess we could let you into the club." She fluttered into the air a little bit in excitement, but then flopped onto her face due to her lack of ability to really fly. "Haha… um, whoops." She blushed, gulping in fear that she'd humiliated herself.

"Heh, if you wanted to fly, all you had to do was ask. I can take you anywhere you want." Miles began to blush too.

"You're so awesome…" she murmured, putting her forelegs around his shoulders. He returned the gesture. "So are you…"

You may be able to guess what was about to come next, as it has already happened once in this very chapter. But instead of what was in the obvious, the craziness happened just as it always does.

Several purple-black monsters surrounded them, seeming to pop up from the ground out of nowhere. The two immediately separated and got into fighting positions. "What are these things?" Miles asked quietly.

"I thought you would know!" Scootaloo whisper-yelled. "You're the one who lurks in the forest all the time!"

Just as the creatures were closing in, two monster ponies busted through the line of the more threatening monsters, using strength that would measure way more than one horsepower. Pretty soon, the monsters were lying on the ground knocked out, blue and red energy flowing into the two monster ponies that had knocked them out. "You two okay?" the blue monster growled.

"Quite fine, yes." Miles muttered in response, his pupils quite shrunken at this point. "Cobalt, is that… is that you?"

"Yep, long time no see, Miles." Cobalt smiled. "Sup, Scootaloo?"

"Not much?" the orange filly tried. "Getting attacked by giant monster thingies qualify?"

"Yeah, I guess it does." The rainbow maned monster agreed. "Been a while, squirt."

"Rainbow Dash!" Scootaloo exclaimed, and hugged her big sister, pushing away a second later. "What the heck happened to you guys, though?"

The wereponies glanced at each other and cracked slight smiles. "Long story." They said at the same time.

I'm really, horribly late. I know. I procrastinated for a week and couldn't write for this weekend, so I wrote nearly two thousand words today to make up for it. I'm really sorry, and any reviews I didn't cover this chapter will be covered in the next. I'm in a bit of a rush right now, so sorry if this is a little short. I guess my philosophy at the moment is something is better than nothing. I hope you can forgive me. I'm just finding it a little harder to write this stuff when I don't have a solid backbone for how I should separate chapters… I guess I'll leave the judging to you.