Princess Celestia- or rather the android core she had projected herself into for the time being- was observing the battle down in Cloudsdale through the countless cameras installed into her drones and the helmets of the laboratory troopers.

"That's right, Twilight, my faithful student... dance for me."

She had to admit that Twilight Sparkle was displaying a certain talent for strategic warfare. Of course Celestia knew where most of the formations came from- the little unicorn pony did everything by the books.

So far, Celestia was merely watching, while illegally downloading a song about bananas from the internet - the android equivalent of drinking a milkshake. She was eager to see how far Twilight would get. The young pony and her friends were advancing through the city, though it was clear the numbers were against her in the long run.

Download complete.


"Twilight? What..."

That's when Pinkie Pie saw it. A tiny bullet, floating in the air just in front of her forehead.

"Wow, thanks, Twilight! You just saved my bacon!"

Twilight was pale, frozen in place.
"That was LUCK! You should have been dead by now! We need to take cover... NOW!"

Twilight was screaming, trying to get the other ponies' attention over the hellish din of the battle.

"They have SNIPERS! We need to evacuate the square! RETREAT! I say RETREAT!"

Applejack was turning her head to see what the commotion was all about. That was the only reason the next sniper bullet hit her metal shoulder plate instead of her right eyeball.


"We're trapped! What can we do now?"

"I have an idea! Help me out here!"

Twilight started pulling screws and metal pipes out of the structures around her.

"I don't think you can dig your way inside like this fast enough, Twilight..."

"We need the scrap parts! Applejack, try to buy us some time while we collect the metal!"

"Here is an idea", Rainbow Dash said, "Why don't we use Applejack herself, in her shiny armour?"

"NOT NOW, Rainbow."

"Okay. Later, then."

The unicorns were fusing the parts together with telekinesis. The result was a sphere, resembling a metal sea urchin.

"Rarity. You levitate, I rotate, you translate, I release when you give me the signal."

"Got it."

Twilight was gnashing her teeth as she made the sphere rotate at a mind-boggling speed. Rarity
transported the sphere right to the middle of the square. It happened too fast for the troopers to react.

"HIT IT! HIT IT NOW!"

And Twilight made the sphere explode. It was raining blood, screws and body parts.


"We still have to get rid of the snipers in the area. Rainbow, I want you to locate their positions..."

"...And DESTROY them? On it!"

"No. You are fast enough to prevent them from targeting you, but if you were to face them head on, your advantage would drop to zero. Right now, I need you to gather intelligence."

"I'm not sure about that, Twilight", Applejack objected, "Rainbow and 'intelligence'... That's not her strong side."

"WANNA SEE MY STRONG SIDE?"

"Actually, yes. Would be a nice change from your cheating and your Yogish side. I mean: from your Yogish side."

"I... I don't have time for this."

"That's right, Rainbow... fly off... fly like a godly wind..."

Rainbow made an impolite noise with her tongue.


A pink pony with a cotton candy -shaped mane appeared on the square. She was obviously trying to be sneaky, but the snipers had no problem targeting her vital organs.
In the same time, a blue pegasus was darting through the air, though there was no obvious system in the creature's maneuvers, other than to make targeting impossible. That was inconvenient, but the snipers had no choice but to sit this one out and wait for reinforcements equipped with more adequate weapons- such as heat-seaking rocket launchers.

Chock.

The first bullet hit the pavement. The pink pony looked startled, but perfectly unharmed. One sniper after the other was opening fire, but even though they applied all of their skill, no bullet hit the target. Or rather, it was as if the bullets went right through the pony.

Only after several other attempts did the snipers notice the strange texture of the pony, the way parts of her body looked semi-transparent. And then she vanished completely.


"I didn't know you were capable of producing holograms, Rarity."

"It is the first time I tried. I couldn't have done it without you, Twilight. And Pinkie Pie, of course."

"Pinkie Pie, the new rising star in holo-TV!"

"Rainbow?"

"Seven. There are seven of them. Chalk? Thank you."

She was drawing a rough map of the area on the pavement.


Applejack gulped.

The second she stepped outside the alley, a terrible dance had begun.
Towering behind her was Sam the golem, shielding her with his broad, metal back and arms, a valuable asset but not a guarantee for her survival. She would only survive if she was fast without missing her targets.

Back to back, they were spinning around in the middle of the square.
Applejack discovered the first embrasure. Time seemed to stretch as she aimed at the muzzle of the sniper's rifle the very moment he was aiming at her. She was now in position, and she pulled the trigger of the gun turret on her back. The next fraction of a second would tell whether the sniper had pulled the trigger of his weapon faster.

He had. It didn't do him any good, though, because he had somehow missed Applejack's forehead, only managing to put a tiny hole in the cartilage of her left ear.
The earth pony didn't even notice, not more than she noticed the demise of her first opponent. She had already forgotten about him as she repeated the same procedure with the second sniper, and the third. Round and round they went, without ever slowing down, the iron feet of the golem and the hoofs of the pony beating the platform like a hellish clockwork.

The bullet of the sixth sniper hit the helmet Rarity had made for her at an angle that didn't allow it to cause any damage. Applejack, on the other hoof, hadn't missed a single shot, and she didn't miss this one either.

Sniper number seven.

Applejack expected to see another embrasure. And she almost saw it, a hallucination caused by the experiences she had gathered during the last few seconds and the crude map Rainbow Dash had drawn.
But there really was none. The seventh sniper was not where he was supposed to be.
So he was somewhere else. Somewhere else, aiming at her right now.

Rainbow, Applejack thought, She did this on purpose. With the last sniper, I'm on my own. Why would she do this to me? Oh, who am I kidding. As if I didn't know.

Applejack prepared to die.


"THERE WERE ONLY SIX SNIPERS! I soiled myself while I was looking out for the last one! You LIED to us, Dash!"

Rainbow was hovering over the rest of the group, displaying a bored expression, pretending to be cleaning her front hoofs.

"Oops. I must have miscounted."

"MISCOUNTED! Is this some kind of a joke?"

"Oh, I dunno. Was tossing me into a meat grinder a joke to you?"

"I SAID I WAS SORRY!"

"That's what you said, not what you were. NOW you're sorry."

Twilight Sparkle and the others were just looking at another, shaking their heads. They had long given up on any attempts at mediation.

In the meantime, Vogelsinger was talking to the golem, petting his giant metal claw.

"Vogelsinger, how is Sam doing?"

The golem turned around, and Twilight saw that he was missing one eye. It was now merely an empty metal eye socket with pieces of glass in it.

"No worries", Vogelsinger said, "I have a spare in my bag."

She flapped her wings to get on the same level as his face and started the operation. Considering that she had neither magic nor thumbs, her speed and dexterity were mind-boggling.

"There. All done. Good as new."

"It's not the first time you do that, right?"

"I do most of the maintenance. That's why he's hanging out with me all the time! Ever since I was very little."


"Alright everypony", Twilight said, "There is more of them every minute. But we can all see where they're coming from. This means that somewhere up there, there is a way leading out of this place. We will not be able to survive by simply holding our position, so we have to find a way to either stop the flow of reinforcements or leave this city altogether. Rainbow, I want you and the other pegasi to investigate the ceiling, while the rest of us will cover you. I guess I don't have to tell you that you need to be careful. Most of all, don't just try to push through all by yourself. For all we know, there is a hostile fortress up there."


A pink flash, followed by pain. That was the very last thing many of the troopers experienced in their lives as they were gliding through the city on the sky lines, a complex network of metal pipes that connected the platforms and the ceiling like a giant roller coaster.

Pinky Pie loved the sky lines. It was as if they were made just for her. Up and down she went, hanging on to the little metal hook Rarity had made for her, sometimes jumping off and falling until she would manage to grab another pipe. She was able to accumulate considerable momentum this way. Her enthusiastic hollering filled the hearts of her enemies with terror.

Whenever she would encounter troopers on her way, she would either kick them off or use the skullbreaker, one of the experimental weapons she had developed together with Rarity. Skullbreakers were tiny bullets which would increase rapidly in volume and mass once "activated" by Pinkie's saliva and exposed to oxygen. In practice, that meant that Pinkie's
spitballs would turn into bowling balls by the time they hit their target.

It was when Twilight Sparkle watched one of Pinkie Pie's victims fall into the abyss, kicking and screaming, that the purple unicorn truly started to understand what they were doing here. But there was no turning back.

Finally, Pinkie got close enough to the ceiling to try something out. She casually threw a shrunken skullbreaker into her mouth, aimed and spat it right into one of the openings. Instead of passing through, however, it bounced off, as if it had hit a solid surface. As it reached its full size by falling down, it hit several unsuspecting laboratory troopers.

"Oops. Sorry! This one wasn't even on purpose! Oh... Oh... Ohhhhhh..."

Since the skylines were fueled mostly by gravity, it was only momentum which kept Pinkie Pie at this height. Now she was moving backwards and downwards at an impressive speed.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash got the occasion to try out her new weapon system as well. Since any kind of projectile weapon would have slowed her down, Rarity had instead equipped her suit with long-range tasers that she could fire off by clapping her front or her hind hoofs together.

Another screaming, roasted enemy was knocked off the sky line and falling into the abyss.
"Now that's what I call a wonderbolt... sucker!"


"NO, Rainbow Dash! Don't go in there!"

"Sorry, Twilight", Rainbow Dash whispered, "I can't hear you all the way up here."

She shocked the next trooper who dropped out of the hole, and then she dashed in.

Darkness and lightnings. When Rainbow opened her eyes again, she was falling. Her head hurt so very much.
It took her a few seconds to fully regain consciousness, and even then it was only thanks to her instincts that she managed to turn around and spread her wings before she hit the floor. Otherwise she would have suffered severe injuries- not that she didn't already hurt enough as it was.

"Rainbow? Are you okay?"

It was Applejack. So the pegasus wasn't on the other side. She was back where she had started. It was good to see Applejack, though... To hear her voice, once again soothing and caring...

"Girl, you plummeted out of the sky like a rotten apple. What happened? Missed the hole? You know, speed can be a disadvantage if you lack precision..."

So much about Applejack having returned to her old, non-jackass self.
Rainbow groaned and got back on her feet. Without paying any more attention to the armored earth pony, she took off once again, though her flight wasn't quite as steady as before.

This time, she decided to investigate the opening before trying to push through.
The troopers dropped out of these things quite smoothly, and you could see some sort of tunnel on the other side. But there was something off about these openings.
For one thing, it was impossible to determine their exact edges. Between the metal of the ceiling and the gaping hole, there was a narrow, blurry fringe that was glowing and rapidly changing colors.
Rainbow tried to push her front hooves into the opening. It didn't work. It was as if she was pushing against a glass plate.

Furious, she patrolled the sky, trying to cover as many entries as possible in order to roast a portion of the incoming troopers before they could even reach the city.
Finally, she gave up and returned to the ground. She had to talk to Twilight Sparkle.


Carried by two pegasus stallions, and covered from enemy attacks by Rainbow, Twilight used her powers to seal one portal after the other. It would have been preferable to reprogram them so that ponies could pass through, but they didn't have the time to study the inner workings of this technology.

Twilight simply disturbed the subtle order that was keeping these energy fields together, and they evaporated instantly. Some unfortunate troopers were cut in half in the process, with their legs and lower bodies raining down over the city.
Other pegasi would then remove the white plates onto which the portals had been projected, so that Celestia wouldn't be able to activate them once again. Twilight decided to retain these plates for further studies.

The troopers remaining in the city were either hunted down or surrendered. Those who were captured alive obviously had some questions to answer, but it turned out they had only been breed for "following orders" and knew otherwise very little - about anything.

The fact remained that there was no obvious way leading out of Cloudsdale. The ponies faced the very real possibility that the portals had been the only thing connecting this sector to the outside world.

But for now, the survivors decided to rest. Unable to penetrate most of the structures, they built a primitive camp on the streets of the city. The ponies from the temple didn't issue any official reaction to the recent events, but quite a few of them decided to sneak off and share food and medicine with the ponies outside.


And then, of course, there was one more thing that had to be taken care of.

"Hey, Rainbow..."

Rainbow Dash snorted and didn't even turn her head.
"Wattsup."

"I wanted to say I'm sorry. It was mean of me to call you a 'yog'. No one deserves to be insulted in such a way..."

"WHAT? THAT'S your apology? Why, you..."

"There we go again with the kvetching..."

"Oi weh..."

Rainbow Dash brought her front hooves to her mouth.

"See that? I'm starting to speak Yiggish! You're driving me CRAZY!"

"Oh no, Rainboi Weh, I have nothing to do with this. That's all you."

For a few moments, Rainbow Dash was paralyzed with anger. Finally, she said:
"What happened to you, Applejack? You used to be so kind once..."
Especially to me, she thought.

Applejack looked down.

"It's because you lost the Apple Farm, isn't it?"

"Back when I still had my land, I could afford kindness. I used to be faithful and strong back then. Now that it's gone, I... Without my roots, I don't know where my strength is supposed to come from.'"

Rainbow Dash wanted to say something else, but as hard as she tried, she didn't find anything in her heart. At least nothing she would have been able to wrap in words anypony could understand.
So she just flapped her wings and took off, leaving the workhorse behind.


Applejack watched Rainbow fly away and creep under a blanket near one of the makeshift ovens that were spread all over the camp to keep the survivors warm. Finally, without even turning around, she said:

"Pinkie Pie? Could you find me a banjo?"

"No problemo Applelemo!"

Later, they would hear Applejack play a song, and even though they kept a certain distance to offer Rainbow Dash and the earth pony some privacy, they couldn't help but overhear some of it.

It made Spike blow his nose with Twilight's tail.


(And here is the song: 'Old College Try' by the Mountain Goats, Applejack-and-Banjo version)

"From the housetops to the gutters
From the outside to the core
The warning signs have all been bright and garish
Far too great in number to ignore

From the cities to the swamplands
From the train tracks to the hills
Our love has never had a leg to stand on
From the plasmids to the rodeos to the / elevils
But I will walk / down to the end / with you
If you will fly / all the way down / with me

From the entrance to the exit
Is longer than it looks from where we stand
I want to say I'm sorry / for stuff I haven't done yet
Things will never go the way we planned
I can feel it in the rotten air tonight
In the tips of my hoofs
In the skin on my face
In the weak last gasp of this oven's dying light
In the way those eyes I've always loved / illuminate this place
Like a trashcan fire / in a prison cell
Like the searchlights / in the parking lots of hell
I will walk / down to the end / with you
If you will come / all the way down / with me."


"Say you're sorry for stuff you've already done."

"I am very sorry. I mean it. Whether you're willing to forgive me or not."

"That wasn't so difficult, now was it. Sheesh."