//------------------------------// // Epilogue // Story: [Redacted] // by McPoodle //------------------------------// [Redacted] - Epilogue - Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia awoke at the Everfree crash site, surrounded by the other Elements of Harmony with looks of horror on their faces regarding the prisoner who had just escaped from their custody. Celestia had higher priorities, though, first consulting a Spike-sent note that materialized beside her, and then teleporting the entire group to a warehouse near the heart of Canterlot. There they found the Emperor in a permanently catatonic state. He had been forced to relive the most terrifying moment of his life, when the flames of Faerie had consumed his mortal body, and the reminder had broken him utterly. The Emperor’s unwilling allies, Fire Engine and Eggplant Perturb, were found alive and well by Waking Terror, who had walked right up to them and lifted the spells that were both charming them and threatening them with death if either dragon or pony had approached them. Lucky for the Perturbs, Waking Terror was neither of these. Thanks to the magic that Twilight had stolen from the Emperor and passed to the Princess, Celestia was now stronger than she had been for thousands of years. She effortlessly healed herself and Twilight of all of the injuries they had sustained during the dream. After taking control of the Sun back from Luna, she retired back to the castle for some well-deserved rest. “I have a question,” Celestia asked Twilight a few days later from her bed after hearing her account of the dream. “How were you able to summon enough magic to transform yourself into an elder dragon?” Twilight laughed. “Oh that was a trick Pinkie Pie taught me once, Princess; it wasn’t even magic! After all, we were in a dream! Even if the dream was not my own, the dreamer of a dream trap spell is controlled by the same rules as any other dream. I followed the plot every dragon knows so well, and he had no choice but to see it through. I didn’t even know for sure what an elder dragon looked like--they are just shadows in the stained glass, and I’ve never seen them depicted elsewhere. It was Vasilyevich himself who did most of the work.” “That was very...manipulative of you, Twilight,” Celestia observed with a trace of unease. “You need to hang around me less and your Ponyville friends more in future.” Twilight nodded, a bit unsure of herself for a moment, then turned and opened the door to admit a stream of well-wishing ponies and a few Perturbs. Celestia thanked them all individually, spending a fraction of a second longer on Pinkie Pie’s name than on the others. Only the pink party pony caught this distinction, and she nodded calmly to herself. She’s that much closer to figuring me out, Pinkie thought. Which means I’m that much closer to my last party. I wonder if there’s a sale on jujubes? In a corner, Vinyl Scratch sat, the pair of headphones covering her ears plugged into the Equestria Accoustics Trottman she had built with her own hooves, playing DJ Pon-3’s signature tune in her ears. As far as she knew, she was the only blind pony who had ever lived. She had saved the life of the ruler and creator of all ponies using a gift, the Golden Horn Sight, which only a blind pony could possibly possess. And just now she had just saved her life again, this time by using the power of friendship, on a dragon. There was no possible way to top this. Vinyl Scratch had just fulfilled her reason for existing. Oh I dunno, replied the mental voice of DJ Pon-3. The Elements of Harmony thought they’d never be able to top beating Nightmare Moon, and then they found themselves face-to-face with Discord. Who? Vinyl Scratch replied to herself. The Chaos God! Surely you remember the way he turned Equestria upside down? Um...not exactly. Was this yet another mental block implanted by Celestia in the minds of her ponies? Ah come on! Everypony was crazy! Octavia was a circus clown, Pon-3 told her, and you were her... ...I remember! I remember! Please don’t say anything else! It occurred to Vinyl that this particular mental block served a very good purpose. The block to keep anypony from knowing Twilight and her friends had defeated Nightmare Moon acted to protect their privacy and their friendship. The block to keep anypony from remembering what Discord had done acted to protect the sanity of everypony who wasn’t Twilight or her friends. So what happens now? she asked herself. Here’s a suggestion, the mental voice of DJ Pon-3 replied, have you considered just winging it? After all, those six ponies behind you are the frickin’ Elements of Harmony, and they seem like well-adjusted members of Equestrian society to me! Vinyl chuckled to herself. All those ponies are crazy! she answered. ...says the pony with me in her head! You have a point, Vinyl reluctantly concluded. “So, when are we getting this party started?” she asked out loud, getting up on her hind legs. The others cheered in anticipation of another of DJ Pon-3’s epic musical sets. Vinyl reached down, and found the familiar table and twin record platters, supplemented by one of her company’s CD players. It hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. There was a time when this sort of thing made her nervous. But this was the magical land of Equestria, and weird stuff like this happened all the time. T H E E N D Author’s Notes: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is copyright Hasbro, with extra credit given to Lauren Faust for the specifics of the series. The characters of DJ Pon-3 (aka Vinyl Scratch), Twilight Sparkle, Princesses Celestia and Luna (and Nightmare Moon), Spike, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Lily, Pony Joe, Octavia and Discord, and the locations of Manehattan, Canterlot, Fillydelphia, Cloudsdale, Ponyville and the Everfree Forest (or what’s left of it) are taken from that source, although any fault with their interpretations lies with the present author. Stalliongrad and Trollestia are purely fan creations (so far). The characters of DJ AJ4X, Oars in Wells, the Princes Constant and Steadfast, Pr. Stein, Emperors Reznicek and Vasilyevich, Waking Terror and The Great Will, The Black King and White Queen, Double Echo, Uncle Philo and Rooky, the location of Fort Solaris, the Battle of Pelican Fields (obviously named after Tolkein’s Battle of the Pelennor Fields), the concepts of horn sight, the Telegraphy family, and the Etheric, and the company Equestria Acoustics are all my creations. “The Old Home Guard” is a song from the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). “Boogie Wonderland” is a 1979 song by Earth, Wind & Fire featuring The Emotions. Dib, GIP and the members of the Perturb family are pastiches of characters from the series Invader Zim, created by Jhonen Vasquez and property of Nickelodeon. (Why “Perturb”? Because “perturb” is a synonym of “irk”, that’s why.) Citizen Kravitz is of course inspired by Citizen Kane. If I’m going to have a character inspired by Orson Welles in this story, then of course I’m going to sneak both Citizen Kane and War of the Worlds in (plus The Third Man [the cuckoo clock] and ‘F’ for Fake [the trajectory of Oars’ career], but those were weak references, so they don’t really count). Postscript Oars in Wells stood in the basement of Castle by the Sea, looking into the impossible portal that linked it with the realm of magic. “Fae,” he addressed the teeming magnitudes circulating on the other side. “I’ve been speaking with your Great Will, and I got him to agree to name me as his successor. And so I stand, not so humbly, before you. Would you mind, terribly much, if I made a teensy little withdrawal?”