Time for another chapter, since I feel so bad about not posting in what felt like forever.

BACK IN EQUESTRIA

Luna frowned as she stared up at the night sky where she was about to raise the moon. She turned to her sister, who had decided to meditate on the same balcony where Luna was raising the moon. It was a coincidence, yes, but it seemed like something more than that to Luna's slightly paranoid mind. Not paranoid in the bad way, though, more in the way that allowed her to more easily read ponies. "Sister?" she asked.

Celestia opened one eye, which she used to look over at her sister. "Yes?"

"Dost thou…" Luna wasn't sure how to phrase her next question, knowing that she'd just get the automatic answer that made Celestia's emotions such an enigma. "Dost thou ever worry of our subjects' welfare?"

Celestia smiled. "Of course I do. All the time. I'm always concerned about their safety."

There it was. That answer that seemed like an involuntary reflex, not actually too honest. Sometimes Luna wondered how much the thousand years she'd been banished on the moon had affected her lonely sister's heart. She certainly didn't seem as friendly as she'd used to, a thousand years ago, more like the ruler who was just trying to hold things together, outside… and in. Maybe… maybe that was why she couldn't harness the power of the elements of harmony anymore.

"I mean, dost thou ever feel as if they are in some sort of danger… some sort of trouble that even we cannot conquer?" Luna rephrased her question, hoping for something more out of the answer this time.

Shockingly, she got it. "Luna…" Celestia sighed, losing the rigid, stoic stance she'd held and lowering her head and shoulders, as if something was actually weighing down on her back. She lost her smile and she closed her eyes as if she didn't have the energy to even keep them open. "I… I know I can't do everything. Neither of us can. That's why we need each other. We need to defend each other as well as our subjects. I didn't know that a thousand years ago. That's why I didn't know you were becoming so corrupted. I could've helped, or at least tried to. I'm sorry for that."

Luna raised an eyebrow. This was the first time her sister had actually brought up her banishment since she'd returned. Where was she going with this?

"What I mean to say," Celestia continued. "Is that I sense some impending doom upon not just our land, but the entire of Equestria. I cannot believe Cobalt Spikes with his claims of darkness coming. He is not to be trusted, but there is something that is approaching. I know that, and I feel you sense it as well."

Luna frowned, the affections she'd once felt for Cobalt stopping her from simply allowing her sister to make the blanket statement that he could not be trusted. "Why can we not trust him?" she pressed.

"Can you not sense it?" Celestia opened her eyes again. "He is corrupted. I sensed something unstable inside of him from the beginning, but now it is more apparent than ever. I simply have to trust that Twilight will be able to keep this in check for as long as possible."

"Unstable…" Luna murmured, her mind working rapidly, remembering what Cobalt had told her once about his memory loss. "D-does such a thing have to do with his amnesia?"

"I don't know." Celestia said flatly.

Luna inhaled slowly. When her sister didn't know something… that was really bad. Celestia always seemed to know more than any other pony, even understanding more than she should at times. So on the rare occasion she didn't know something… or made a mistake… well, history provided evidence for how catastrophically that could turn out. "So…" she began. "What… how dost thou reason to act under these circumstances?"

Her sister turned to her with a look on her face that could almost be taken as scared, and said in the most quavering tone Luna had ever heard her use, "I don't know."

ONE COLORS THEME LATER

Rainbow had been almost knocked unconscious by the pure force of the explosion, and now she stood up with blurry vision. She couldn't determine exactly what was going on because of her current vision impediment, and struggled to make sense of the mass of unintelligible orange and yellow and cream that her senses presented her with. In the distance (for her ears were ringing too), she heard an alarm going off, and what sounded like… a pirate shouting orders to somepony? No, that couldn't be it.

Desperately she pawed at an ear with her hoof, attempting to correct it. That succeeded, but the pirate's voice didn't go away, and then she felt the point of a blade at her throat.

"I wouldn't move, lass." The pirate's voice, now much closer, warned. Rainbow blinked rapidly a couple of times, and her vision corrected itself. She was now staring into the face of a rotund robot pirate that was leveling a long, deadly looking sword at her throat. "We know about ye. Me crew and myself were informed directly by Doctor Eggman all about ye."

"Eggman…" Rainbow gulped, knowing that the mad scientist would have data about all her strengths… and weaknesses. He would know how to… break her.

She shook her head and stood up straight. "That doesn't matter. I'm too unpredictable for data anyway."

"Unpredictable, eh?" the robot asked, pressing the point of his sword further forward, and Rainbow felt a trickle of blood stemming from where it was leveled. "I believe I've gotten ye in a death lock."

"I'm never in a death lock." Rainbow argued defiantly.

"Aren't ye?" the robot scoffed. "Now come quietly, lass, and maybe we'll give yer little boyfriend time to save ye before we kill ye."

Despite the situation, Rainbow felt her heart stop as the robot called Cobalt her boyfriend. It felt like the chasm in her core, which she'd managed to almost forget for a while, had reopened even wider and deeper than it had been before. She felt tears spring to her eyes. "S-stop it!" she pleaded. "D-don't–"

"Oh, am I jesting at scars?" the robot poked the scar that had formed over Rainbow's chest wound as it said this, causing her to gasp in pain. "Now surrender."

Eggman might have been a genius. Oh yes, left unopposed, he would easily conquer a world and force it into subservience under his oppression. But even with all his skills in science and knowledge of how to use data, he still failed to compensate one thing, and that is the unpredictability of a pony with free will, and especially one under emotional turmoil. And that was what his creation's downfall was now.

A sudden rage overtook Rainbow Dash's emotions, and she acted faster than anyone could've expected. Letting out a beastly shout of her fury, she quickly knocked away the blade threatening to stab her through the neck, pinned down the robot, punched a hole into it and ripped away at that hole with her teeth, tearing away wires and cracking the thin metal shell that made up its body by brute force alone.

By the time she'd come back to her senses, the ship was sinking in a fiery mess into the maple syrup lake, and the robot pirate lay dead at her hooves.

Narrowing her eyes, she flew over to the generator and kicked the 'off' switch so hard that it sparked yellow and the entire thing not only powered down, but shut off for good.

She snorted. "That'll teach him to mess with me."

Her ears pricked up as she heard muffled screaming from inside a nearby gingerbread house, and cautiously trotted over to it. She opened the door to see Pinkie Pie gagged and tied up in the dark room, like she'd been locked in here after a kidnapping. She'd been making the noise, seeing as it got louder. Her eyes were narrowed and she looked furious.

Rainbow frowned and untied the gag. Pinkie hadn't seen her yet, so when the gag fell away, she was still going on her tirade. The stream of profanity that came out of her mouth before she realized that she could make words again was so vulgar that I choose to omit it. When she did realize that she wasn't gagged anymore, she turned her head grinned sheepishly as she saw that it was Rainbow who'd rescued her. "Er, you didn't hear any of that, right?"

"I did." Rainbow's expression was set in that of a poker face, not showing any emotion. "Pinkie, even I don't know some of those. What does–"

"Not important, Dashie~" Pinkie dismissed in a hasty sounding, singsong voice. "Can you please untie me?"

"Right, right…" Rainbow muttered, shaking her head and going to work on the rope.

"Ooh, that's much better." Pinkie smiled happily, shaking out any cramps she'd gotten and stretching. "So, is Cobalt okay?"

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. "Like I care." She scoffed.

Pinkie's expression began to turn sad. "Come on, Dashie… you and I both know he's changed."

"Yeah, for the worse."

Pinkie's eyebrows knitted in worry. "He's so alone…"

"Alone? How?" Rainbow demanded, having felt the same very recently.

Pinkie sighed. "I know you wouldn't understand, but you've gotta think: he woke up with no memory, no friends, no past to turn to for guidance… On top of that, he's the only colt in a group of fillies… and, well, he's just sad and lonely all the time. Please tell me you've at least noticed that?"

Rainbow considered for a moment. She'd not seen any evidence of Cobalt ever being lonely, but she had seen that he was sad. That realization drilled into her heart, but she quickly dismissed the whole idea of it as Pinkie reading too far into things. But then again… what he'd said… that something around him could be close to him, but only if it would let itself… "Whatever." She rolled her eyes and crossed her forelegs, staring angrily in the opposite direction as her pink friend.

"I figured you wouldn't get it." Pinkie smiled sadly. "Oh well. Just so you know, Eggman decided to keep one of us in each little theme park of his. I'm going back to the resort to help that little alien buddy of yours with holding down the fort. See ya!"

"Okay…" Rainbow nodded. Suddenly she started in shock. "Wait, how do you know about Yacker?!"

"Doesn't matter~!" Pinkie chirped, her usual grin returning as she exited the gingerbread house. "Byesies!"

And that is that. Would you all believe I wrote this in two hours?

Radicool223 out!