Rainbow Dash Finally Finds the Spy
Luna slammed a single hoof onto the floor and broke out the earbuster voice. “WE SHALL HAVE SILENCE FOR THIS MEETING OF THE WAR COUNCIL."
Sure enough, all the side conversations came to an abrupt halt. Gotta say, that voice of hers is pretty darn handy when you want to make everyone else shut up and pay attention. “Guards, see to it that all ponies other than our war council, Wizard Harry Dresden, and the Bearers of Harmony are removed, and the room sealed.”
Since the Princess’ War Council meeting was in her throne room, the guards had the usual assortment of petitioners and curious hangers-on to clear out. One of the advantages of having a proper palace instead of having to work out of an enlarged apple cellar was that it was a lot easier to keep the riff-raff out. Not to mention all the handy support staff that tended to go along with being royalty; going from princess to resistance leader had to be a pretty big step down.
As several armored guardponies set to efficiently clearing the room of everyone who didn’t belong, a single silver-maned blue unicorn abruptly stepped forward and bowed in front of Luna. “Princess Luna, my petition is far too important to wait until after the war council meets. Trixie demands that you see her now!”
“Thou demands, dost thou?” Luna fixed the offending unicorn with a very regal yet still very clearly annoyed look, but she did wave off the pair of guards that looked to be seconds away from just dragging Trixie out of the room by force. “Pray tell, what dids’t thou have to say that is of such great import that you feel the need to defy the command of thy princess, and make demands upon her?”
Trixie flinched at the rebuke, but within moment her ego overcame any nervousness she might be feeling, and the unicorn presented herself proudly. “Your Highness, surely the unicorns should be under the command of the most magical unicorn in all of Equestria, the Great and Powerful Trixie.” From the way she reared dramatically upon announcing herself, I’m pretty sure that Trixie still hadn’t gotten used to not having fireworks firing off every time she gave her name out.
Luna seemed less than impressed by Trixie’s introduction. “Pray tell then, what military experience dost thou have which qualifies you for command of the unicorn company?”
Trixie looked nervous for a moment, but quickly recovered. “Trixie has no formal military experience, but Trixie believes that –“
“Thou shalt cease wasting our time.” Luna cut the showpony off coldly. “Guards, remove her.”
“Wait!” Trixie protested as two rather burly unicorns herded her out the door. “Perhaps in light of her lack of formal military training, Trixie could content herself with being second-in-command!” The two guards unceremoniously shoved the unicorn out the door. “Maybe even just a platoon instead of the entire company! A squad, even!” Trixie desperately called out right before the door shut in her face.
With Trixie gone, the only ponies left in the room were me and the four healthy Element-bearers, Princess Luna, a couple guards, two ponies that looked like officers, a unicorn and pegasus who I could now confirm actually did have bat wings, and one of the Wonderbolts,
And Derpy Hooves. Nobody else in the room seemed to be objecting to her presence, so I guess that meant she belonged here. Luna had seemed fond enough of ‘Valiant Derpy Hooves’ yesterday, so I guess that meant Derpy got to sit in on council meetings.
Luna’s horn glowed midnight blue, and a few seconds later a round table with plenty of space and seats for everyone appeared in the middle of the throne room. Luna took her seat in a large, thronelike chair and then told the rest of us. “You have our permission to be seated.” I initially wound up sitting next to Pinkie Pie and Derpy, but within moments of sitting down Derpy’s chair fell apart underneath the pegasus. Derpy gave a sheepish grin and a nervous chuckle, then fluttered over to an unoccupied chair on Luna’s left-hoof side.
Luna turned to the burly bat-winged pegasus. “Captain Hardhooves, your report?”
“We stand ready to serve the throne in whatever capacity you desire, your highness.” The commander answered, bringing one of his forelegs up in a salute. “However, while it’s not critical yet, we do face an impending food shortage. Counting the auxiliaries we have almost a hundred fighting ponies, and just as many children, elderly, and refugees to feed. Keeping that many mouths fed will eventually become a problem. Once we exhaust what’s left of Sweet Apple Acres’ stockpiles, we’ll need to send out foraging parties, which will make staying undetected much more difficult.”
Applejack gave a slight flinch when the discussion turned to her own farm’s rapidly dwindling stockpiles. After all, that was her livelihood the resistance was eating. Luna took note of the farmpony’s concerns. “Fear not, Fair Applejack, we have already made arrangements to compensate thee for any materials our forces consume once we have successfully reclaimed Equestria and freed our sister.” That seemed to solve any worries the farmpony had. Sure, actually getting paid back for all the food she was losing was conditional upon Luna winning the battle for Equestria, but if we lost the economic viability of Sweet Apple Acres was going to be the least of our problems.
Seeing that Applejack’s worries had been addressed. Luna turned her attention to the Wonderbolt. “Captain Spitfire, are the pegasi prepared for war? How goes the training of the civilian auxiliaries?”
“They’re learning, Your Highness.” Spitfire answered. “They might not have much in the way of training or experience, but our volunteers have plenty of guts. Discipline’s a problem though.”
“How quickly canst thou have them prepared for battle?” The princess demanded.
“In a perfect world, I’d like a couple more weeks with them.” Spitfire let out a small sigh. “Guts are important, and we’ve got a couple volunteers who have real potential, but there’s a big difference between a gutsy amateur and a real soldier. If we need to use them soon though, my Wonderbolts should be able to handle running the auxiliaries, though I’d like it if we could get some of the royal guards to help out.” Spitfire let out a self-deprecating chuckle. “The Wonderbolts aren’t exactly soldiers, even if we are better trained than your average civilian.”
“We must make do with the materials we have available; thy performance thus far has been commendable, Captain Spitfire.” Luna turned to what I assumed was the last of her military advisors. “Captain Starshine, are there any problems to report with the Unicorn Guard?”
“No problems to report, Your Highness.” The guardpony confirmed. “Your forces stand ready to serve.”
“Valiant Derpy Hooves.” Luna turned to the wall-eyed mare, who gave the princess a friendly smile in response. “What canst thou tell us of the defenses in Canterlot?”
My first instinct was to be rather stunned that apparently Derpy Hooves was pulling off espionage missions. I didn’t know the pegasus all that well, but everything I’d seen of her indicated that she was a few feathers short of a full wing. Then again, most of the best spies out there are the last person you’d ever suspect of being a spy. Hay’s bells, maybe Derpy was some sort of brilliant super-spy and the whole loveable dim-witted goofball thing was just an elaborate act to throw everyone off.
“Celestia has a lot of guard ponies.” Derpy answered happily. When the princess looked at Derpy expectantly, clearly hoping the pegasus would elaborate, Derpy helpfully added. “Like, a whole bunch of guards!” Upon seeing that this answer still didn’t seem to satisfy the Princess, Derpy added, sounding slightly confused and worried. “Um … there’s a wall too.”
On the other hand, instead of Derpy being some sort brilliant deep-cover super-spy, perhaps it was just another case of Luna making do with what she had.
The princess let out a long-suffering sigh, and very patiently asked. “Hast thou been able to obtain any information regarding Twilight Sparkle’s location?”
“I don’t think she’s in the palace.” Derpy immediately responded. “I spent all day trying to find her and told everypony I could find that I needed to give her a letter, but she wasn’t anywhere I looked and nopony knew where she was, not even her brother or her parents. Celestia wouldn’t even take the letter when I told her I had a delivery for Twilight.”
Well, I suppose that wasn’t a big surprise; I’d tried out my tracking spell a couple more times since in arriving in Equestria, but it kept pointing in a very non-Canterlot direction. At least the fact that the spell still worked at all confirmed that Twilight was still alive.
“Didst thou learn anything else that might be of use to us, Valiant Derpy Hooves?”
“No.” Derpy looked crestfallenly down at the table. “Some of the guards were mean too. They said you’d turned back into Nightmare Moon, and when I told them that wasn’t true they didn’t believe me.”
“Interesting.” I didn’t even realize I’d said that out loud until I noticed everyone else was looking at me. “They’re spreading rumors about Luna. Means they care about PR, and need to justify the conflict between the two of you to the rest of the royal guards. If they’d all gotten Discorded, there wouldn’t be a point in doing that.” Guess Discord didn’t see any reason to bother mind-whammying every single frontline grunt; he’d just hit the leaders and called it a day.
“’Tis a curiosity.” Luna agreed. “’Twould be easily within Discord’s power to unleash his influence upon all of Canterlot. Mayhap his departure from Equestria forced him to weaken his hold over those he has compelled into his service.”
“Sounds likely.” Assuming Equestrian mental compulsions and the like had a reasonable amount of similarity to their real-world counterparts, mind control generally needs a fairly active hand. Most people will subconsciously fight against mind control after all; without constant reinforcement, anyone with a normal amount of willpower can eventually shake off all but the really subtle, sneaky mind-magic. Well, you can just brute-force your mind control to make it impossible to break, but then you end up with mind-thralls that have all free will and initiative burned out of them. Not really useful unless you want servants who are mindless automatons.
From what I’d seen of his work so far, Discord didn’t go for subtle mind magic, but did like to keep some form of twisted free will in play. The Element bearers had just been slapped with a fairly basic “good is bad, bad is good” morality reversal spell. The only pony who’d had a bit more subtlety in her mind whammy had been Rainbow Dash, and that was probably down to the fact that Nicky and Discord were savvy enough to figure out that if you turned Rainbow from super-loyal to super-backstabby, she’d backstab her new Denarian buddies just as quickly as her old pony friends. Nicodemus was smart enough to realize that minions who constantly try backstab aren’t an asset, so I guess that means he’s a smarter evil overlord than Megatron.
“Had we time to spare.” Luna declared. “’Tis possible we could persuade many ponies of the virtue of our cause.” Luna sighed, and pressed on. “However, time is a resource we can ill afford to waste. Discord’s departure no doubt signals the next phase in a greater scheme, and ‘twould be best if we acted to free Celestia from his control before she learns that the Bearers of Harmony have returned to Equestria.”
There was a brief silence, during which I dimly heard the sounds of an argument going on outside the room. I guess the Great and Powerful Trixie was still trying to talk their way past the guards.
Derpy suddenly leapt out of her chair and halfway onto the table “Oh yeah!” The pegasus started excitedly flapping her wings until she’d risen several feet up into the air. “I just remembered, when I went to deliver Twilight’s letter, there were some necklaces and a big crowny thing that were being kept in a display case in the throne room, right next to Celestia.”
“Thou knewest the location of the Elements of Harmony?” There was just a hint of reproach in Luna’s voice when she asked. “Why dids’t thou not mention this sooner?”
Derpy dropped back down into her chair, and promptly broke it. “I forgot.” The pegasus confessed, hanging her head in shame. “But I remembered now! So … so that makes it okay, right? Are we still friends?”
The princess of the night favored the simple pegasus with a smile. “Yea, Valiant Derpy Hooves. Thou recalled the information we required, and we shall not hold thy lapse against thee.” Derpy stared at the princess with a hopeful smile and a confused look on her face, until Luna sighed and stated, with considerably less decorum and archaic-ness. “Yes, Valiant Derpy Hooves, we are still friends.” Luna procured a new chair with her telekinesis, and lifted Derpy into it.
“Now then.” Luna returned her attention to the rest of the impromptu war council. “With the return of the Bearers of Harmony we believe that the time has come to reclaim Equestria and free our sister from Discor’d grasp. As soon as Rainbow Dash has recovered from her wounds –“
“Did somepony just call for the coolest pony in Equestria?”
All of us whirled around to see that Rainbow Dash had just made her dramatic entrance. A second later two of the royal guard pegasi moved up to flank her, slightly menacing the pegasus. “Our apologies, Your Highness, but we weren’t able to –“
“It is of no import.” Luna answered regally. “Had we known that Rainbow Dash was recovered, we would have instructed you to allow her admittance.” As the two guards withdrew, Luna turned her attention to Rainbow Dash. “Our doctor informed us that thou would require at least another full day of bedrest ‘ere thou coulds’t join us.”
“Yeah, well, your docs must’ve forgotten that I’m awesome.” The pegasus turned her attention to her friends, and gave them all a single casual wave. “Hey guys.”
“Dashie!” A pink blur shot forward to tackle-hug Rainbow Dash. For a while the pink pony was content to just cling to her friend, but then I spotted tears in her eyes as Pinkie started weakly clubbing Rainbow’s chest with one of her hooves. “You Pinkie Promised me Dashie! You Pinkie Promised that you wouldn’t get hurt!”
“Sorry Pinkie. But hey, I’m okay now, so it’s all good.”
The rest of whatever conversation the two ponies would’ve had suffered an abrupt interruption as the rest of Rainbow’s friends decided to join in on the hugging. Apparently the meeting of the War Council was going on hold for a couple minutes on account of a group hug. Only in the land of girly magical cartoon ponies.
I suppose I should just be grateful that none of them were dragging me into it. Luna and the rest of the ponies on her council seemed fine with giving the friends a few minutes, while Derpy seemed to be trying to work out whether or not she’d be allowed to join in on the group hug action. Eventually the grey pegasus made up her mind and dove right in, and seemed to be accepted readily enough.
Sadly for the ponies, group hug time couldn’t last forever, and eventually we had to get back to business. “As we were saying before Rainbow Dash joined us,” Luna resumed. “We believe that the return of the Bearers of Harmony represents an opportunity to rescue our sister and free Equestria from Discord’s influence. It should be within the power of the Elements to undo whatever witchcraft Discord has wrought upon our sister.”
“Beg pardon Princess,” Applejack cut in. “But how are we supposed to use the Elements of Harmony without Twilight?”
“Yeah, she’s the one who wears the big crowny thing.” Pinkie added. “That’s gotta be, like, the most super-duper important one of them all,”
“Twilight Sparkle’s absence is regrettable.” Luna agreed. “However, unless she can be located and freed within the next few hours, we shall simply have to proceed as best we can without her. In the first conflict with Discord, we wielded the power of Harmony alongside our sister to strike him down. In Twilight Sparkle’s absence, we shall take up the Element of Magic in her place.”
I had a feeling the Elements wouldn’t take a substitution like that very easily. None of the ponies really knew Luna all that well after all, which is a problem when you’re trying to hit the bad guys with weaponized friendship. Then again, Twilight had known her friends for all of a day when they used the Elements on Nightmare Moon, and since I wasn’t optimistic about getting Twilight back with Celestia on the loose, trying to break out the Rainbow of Befriending with Luna was probably our only shot at winning. An iffy long-shot is a hay of a lot better than nothing.
“So, we’ve got people who can make with the magical friendship. Shiny.” There was one little problem I needed to point out though. “We still need to snag the Elements themselves though, and that’s gonna be tricky when Celestia’s keeping them right next to her throne.” Seriously, what kind of cartoon villain keeps the one object that is their weakness in a place where they can keep a close eye on it. Everyone knows cartoon villains are supposed to keep the only thing that could defeat them hidden in a volcano, labyrinth, or catacomb, behind a series of overly elaborate yet easily bypassed deathtraps.
“We shall draw her out.” Luna declared. “If we take the field with our army, then our sister will have no choice but to confront us personally.” Guess it takes one goddess-princess to stand up to another. “Celestia would not risk bringing the Elements to her battle with me, lest they fall into my hooves.”
“So, we send a team to sneak into the castle and snatch the Elements while you’re playing distraction to Celestia.” I had a pretty good idea who that team was going to consist of too; why toss me into the middle of a pitched battle when I could go on a much dangerous infiltration mission instead? “One wrinkle though; if you’re keeping Celestia occupied, we’d have to get all the way back to you before we could actually use them. That’s going to take longer than I’d like, not to mention the risk that she’ll see us coming.”
“Aye, ‘tis a risky plan.” Luna solemnly agreed. “But our presence upon the field of battle is the only thing that would persuade our sister to allow the Elements out of her sight. Were we not present on the field, she would remain in Canterlot, and likely expect some manner of trickery.” Luna held a hoof to forestall any other objections I might have. “We shall do all that we can to delay an actual battle, to give our infiltration team time to complete its mission. Also, ponies have lived together in harmony for a thousand years; we would prefer not to break that harmony unless given no other option. T’would be far preferable if we could end this with merely the threat of war serving as a mask for our true intentions.”
So Luna’s army would just be a bluff to keep Celestia occupied and clear the way for us to grab the Elements. Let’s just hope she could delay things actually coming to blows long enough for us to get the job done; a lot of the standard tricks like drawn-out negotiations might not work on the Discord-ed version of Celestia. “Don’t suppose bluffing her with a fake Luna is an option?”
“Our sister is canny.” Luna confirmed. “And our powers and appearance are unique. We know of no illusions which could stand up to the full intensity of her scrutiny.”
“Super.” Snatching the Elements from out of the royal palace looked to be plenty difficult on its own. Having to cart them all the way back to wherever Luna had set up camp, all while avoiding any enemy patrols and hoping we could somehow stay ahead of the news of our theft, added a whole new level of complication. It really would’ve been nice if we had Twilight and her teleporting around. Heck, Twilight’s little dragon buddy could even help out. Speaking of … “What happened to Spike anyway? His whole message sending thing could be useful.”
“Last I heard he was with Twilight.” Derpy told us. “But he disappeared the same time she did.”
“Darn.” It would’ve saved us a lot of trouble if we could’ve brought Spike along, and just had him send Luna a ‘teleport us out of here’ message once we had the Elements. “So, I guess it’s just me and the five of us?” I waved a foreleg in the direction of the five ponies I’d journeyed across half the multiverse with to get to this point.
“Not quite.” Luna turned her attention to the wall-eyed grey pegasus sitting at her side. “We believe that Valiant Derpy Hooves should accompany your group on its task.”
“Wait, what?” Rainbow cut in. “You want us to take Derpy? We’re trying to sneak into the palace, not accidently wreck it! She’s gonna get us all caught!” Derpy looked heartbroken at that, and Rainbow flinched a bit, and then shot an apologetic look at her fellow pegasus before moderating her tone a bit. “I mean, Derpy’s cool and all. Fluttershy and I were friends with her back in Flight Camp after all, but she’s – well, she’s Derpy.”
“She is just a little accident prone.” Fluttershy timidly agreed. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” She hastily amended. “We like Derpy just the way she is. You’re not mad at me for saying you get into accidents, are you Derpy? Please don’t be mad at me!”
Derpy gave Fluttershy a quick hug to signal that all was forgiven. That’s when Luna spoke up. “THOU SHALT BE ACCOMPANIED BY VALIANT DERPY HOOVES. IT IS OUR WILL.” Sheesh, guess part of being a godlike princess is not taking it well when people tell you no. After taking a moment to lower the volume, Luna continued. “Valiant Derpy Hooves has proven herself to be a valued asset to us, and her family has a long and distinguished history of service to Equestria, dating all the way back to Daring Do herself. Her skills and contacts in Canterlot and infiltration skills will be an asset to your mission.”
“Sheesh, you make it sound like she’s a spy or something.” Rainbow groused. Rainbow turned her attention to the grey pegasus, and barely restrained laughter filled her voice as she asked. “Hey, Derpy! Are you a spy?”
“Uh-huh!” Derpy declared enthusiastically.
That answer dropped Rainbow down onto her haunches in shock. “I – but – what?” Despite her mind being temporarily broken, Rainbow Dash still looked like she wanted to object to Derpy signing up with the group, but the imperious expression on Luna’s face made it pretty clear that this wasn’t up for discussion. To be honest, I kind of agreed with Rainbow about a loveable clumsy goofball not really being the best choice for a stealth mission, but Luna had already laid down the law. Derpy was coming with us, end of discussion. One of the perks of being an absolute monarch was always being able to pull the royal authority card to win arguments.
“Are there any other matters that should be brought to our attention?” When several seconds of silence passed, the princess of the night declared. “Then we declare this meeting of the war council adjourned. Captains, begin assembling our forces, while our infiltration team makes their own preparations. I expect all to be in readiness within two hours’ time, we have much to do, and little time in which to accomplish it. You are dismissed.”
The lot of us got up and headed towards the door, when Luna made one last statement. “Wizard Harry Dresden.” Luna called out to me as I was about to leave with the rest of the ponies. “Tarry a moment, there is a final matter we would discuss with thee.”
Well, that doesn’t sound ominous at all. Pretty much all the ponies in the room shot me curious looks as they dutifully file out the door, until only Luna and I were left in the room. “There is a troubling matter which we believe thou should be made aware of. It would be best if the other ponies in our service remain unaware of this fact. We would have thy word that thou will keep our secrets”
Oh goody, some sort of dark secret. “We’ll see.” I offered reluctantly. “I don’t like operating in the dark, or making other people go around without the facts.”
“Even if thou wished to do so, ‘twould be difficult for thou to explain to our little ponies.” Luna hesitated for a moment, and finally confessed. “What Discord has wrought is beyond the scope of what we thought possible. ‘Tis likely that the intervention of thy Denarian foes is responsible. He not only unleashes chaos and disharmony upon our subjects; he seeks to warp the very fabric of Equestria itself.”
Well, that sounded ominous. “Care to elaborate a bit on that?”
“’tis possible that certain facts thou hast accepted as a fundamental part of Equestria’s nature may no longer be quite some immutable as they once were.”
Hell’s bells.
Waitaminute, I’d just gotten away with thinking a word that’d gotten censored before. Aw crap.
Make that double-crap. Sure, not having my very thought process tweaked to be a bit more kid-friendly was great, but it wasn’t going to end there. Rainbow Dash and Lash both might’ve wound up dead if not for Equestria’s ‘no good-guys allowed to die’ rules. Heck, Discord might’ve booked it out of Equestria to keep us from pulling out the ‘good guys always win card.’ Guess it figures that when the rules of Saturday morning cartoons are stacked against him, he’d find a way to change the rules.
“We believe thou dost understand now why we wish for thy discretion in this matter. If our little ponies were to learn of it, the effects upon the morale of our forces could be devastating.”
She had a point. If Discord had found some way to mess with Equestria’s rules, it wouldn’t be that hard to go from removing the ‘good guys always win’ rule to adding a ‘bad guys always win’ rule in its place. For all we know, he might have already done it, and we were pinning all of our hopes on a plan that simply could not succeed, no matter how hard we tried.
“Alright.” I took deep breath. “Thanks for warning me, but it doesn’t change anything. We still have to get the Elements back. If Discord’s stacking the deck against us, we’ll just have to do the best that we can despite it. Nothing else we can do but keep pushing on as hard as we can, fight for every last shred of hope, and keep hanging on until we win.”
“Thou art so certain of our victory?” Luna didn’t seem nearly so sure of herself. Maybe, now that it was just the two of us, it was a little harder for her to hold onto her queenly mask. I wasn’t talking to Luna, Princess of the Night. I was talking to Luna, the person – er – pony. “We confess, we are somewhat fearful things may go amiss.”
“It’s not that I’m sure we’ll win. It’s just…” I trailed off and gave an uncertain shrug, trying to find the right words. “Well, what else can we do but see this through to the end? We can’t run away, we can’t negotiate, and surrender’s not an option. Only way this ends is when we take them down or die trying.”
“Indeed.” Luna fell silent for a long moment, before finally stating in what qualified as a whisper for her. “’Tis not our death we fear, but the possibility that harm may come to those who have joined our cause. Had we not instigated this uprising against Discord, against our sister…”
Oh. Right. Considering her history, I couldn’t really blame Luna for getting a little angsty about starting up another rebellion against Celestia, no matter how good her reasons were. “It’s not the same, you know. Actually, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what happened last time.”
“We are aware of this fact.” Luna’s gaze fell to the floor. “And yet we find the parallels troubling regardless of the facts. And we cannot help but wonder. If we are troubled by the similarities to previous events, what of the ponies who have aligned themselves with our cause? Do I lead these ponies to a battle they cannot win for a cause many of them are uncertain of?”
The two of us just stood there for a minute as I tried to think of something I could say to calm her fears, but the words never came to me.
I caught up to the rest of ponies just in time to jump into the middle of a very awkward conversation.
“I already told you, it’s cool AJ.” Rainbow declared with just a slight hint of annoyance in her voice.
“No it ain’t.” The farmpony shot back. “I owe ya, an’ I mean to set things right.”
“But it’s stupid.” Rainbow snapped at her friend. “What’s letting me kick you supposed to prove?”
“Really now Applejack.” Rarity’s prim voice came in. “I have to agree with Rainbow; it’s just silly to insist on handling things in such an uncivilized way.”
“Fair’s fair, Rainbow. I hurt ya, so you gotta hit me back to make things square.” Oh, she was going for the classic method expressing forgiveness through mild physical violence; it was like watching male bonding, except this time with tomboys instead of actual males. From the looks of things, the farmpony had gotten her stubborn going again. “Only way to set things right. You’re mah friend, and I hurt ya real bad.”
The pegasus let out a scoff at that. “Oh come on, you didn’t hurt me that bad.” Looks like Rainbow’s ego hadn’t taken nearly as many bruises as her body. “Only reason I even lost was because I was already tired and you were cheating. If it’d been a fair fight, I’d have taken you down in ten seconds flat.”
“Rainbow, this ain’t no-“
“Ten. Seconds. Flat.” The pegasus repeated firmly, aggressively flying into Applejack’s personal space to emphasize her point.
“Well why don’t ya quit flappin’ your jaw an’ prove it?” Applejack returned. “’less you’re afraid of hittin’ me.” I caught an odd little gleam in the earth pony’s eye as she continued on. “That it? Don’t reckon I’d blame ya if you were; gal takes a beatin’ as bad as you did, it’d figure she’d be scared of the pony that got to her. Wouldn’t blame ya one bit if it scared you so bad you don’t even wanna admit it.”
Two seconds later Applejack was lying on the floor looking slightly dazed, while Pinkie Pie and Rarity were restraining a furious pegasus and Fluttershy looked like she was torn between wanting to check on Applejack, wanting to calm down Rainbow, and wanting to just curl up in a corner and hide from the scariness of her friends fighting each other. “How’s that for scared, you stupid apple farmer! Not as much fun when I can fight back, is it?”
Applejack rubbed a hoof along what was probably a rather sore jaw after the hit she’d just taken. Applejack shot a grin over at Rainbow, and quite calmly asked. “Feel better now, sugarcube?”
Rainbow was about to throw some more harsh language Applejack’s way and possibly worse if her friends hadn’t been holding her back, but Applejack’s words made her pause in thought for a moment. “You know,” Rainbow mused. “Actually, I do kinda feel better now.”
“Told ya it’d work.” Applejack declared, sounding way too pleased with herself for a pony who’d just taken a pretty nasty crack along the jaw.
“Oh honestly.” Rarity let out a cry of pure exasperation. “When will the two of your learn how to handle things like proper ladies?”
“We’re supposed to be proper ladies?” Applejack shot a confused look over at Rainbow. “Well shoot; nopony never told me ‘bout that. I don’t reckon I ever planned on bein’ a proper lady. What about you, RD?”
Rainbow gave dismissive wave of her hoof. “Nah, too busy being awesome.”
“Well there ya go Rarity.” Applejack answered matter-of-factly, though an experienced smartass like myself couldn’t miss the snark the farmpony was radiating. “Don’t look like Rainbow and I are ever gonna be proper ladies. Sorry to disappoint.”
Rarity heaved a melodramatic sigh. “You two are impossible.” The rest of us all had a chuckle at Rarity’s expense.
Once the fleeting moment of laughter passed, Fluttershy very nervously spoke up. “Um – as long as we’re apologizing, I need to tell Rainbow Dash I’m sorry too.” A second later Fluttershy let out a terrified squeak and hid her face behind her mane. “Um – not like that though.” The flighty pegasus shot a look Applejack’s way, and her voice rose to a substantially higher and more terrified pitch. “Although, I guess if it’s the only way you’ll forgive me, then it’s okay.” Fluttershy turned her cheek to Rainbow Dash, shut her eyes, and clenched her teeth, while her entire body trembled in barely suppressed terror.
Rainbow Dash took a single step towards Fluttershy, and the pegasus immediately flinched away and let out frightened little whimper. Rainbow immediately backpedaled, looking like she wasn’t sure whether she should feel guilty or offended. “I wasn’t gonna –“ Rainbow Dash applied hoof to face and let out a loud groan, and then set her fellow pegasus straight. “Sheesh, I’m not gonna hit you, Fluttershy.”
“Oh thank goodness.” The other pony gasped in relief.
“Besides, you don’t even have anything to apologize for.”
“Um – well, actually Rainbow Dash, I – that is – um…”
Applejack took mercy on the poor pegasus. “Fluttershy figured it out, Rainbow.”
“Figured what out?” A nervous flap of her wings and a shifty expression made it clear Rainbow knew exactly what Applejack was talking about, but it looked she intended to stick to her story.
“Um – how you got hurt, before…”
“Huh?” The way she kept looking around, refusing to meet Fluttershy’s eyes gave Rainbow Dash away, but she wasn’t going to let an inconvenient detail like her lie being utterly transparent stop her. “I told you, I just had a bad landing back before Harry and I rescued you. Isn’t that right, Harry?”
So much for my hopes of pulling a Switzerland and staying out of this. Trust me, there are some things a guy just doesn’t want to get involved in. When women start arguing, smart guys know that the only sane move is to lay low and wait for the storm to pass. The fact that these women were cartoon ponies instead of ordinary human females changed nothing.
Sadly, in my experience women rarely respect the concept of a neutral male bystander who didn’t want to get involved and risk drawing the wrath of one or both sides. Now I had to either back Rainbow up, or torpedo her story; just staying quiet wasn’t an option. After a moment’s consideration, I made my choice. “Sorry, Rainbow. I think you need to tell her the truth.”
Right after Rainbow and I gave Fluttershy her free will back, sparing Fluttershy from the knowledge that she’d done some nasty things while Discorded and Denarianed had seemed like the right choice, but now the jig was up. No point in trying to maintain a lie that was obviously falling apart. Even if I had backed up Rainbow Dash, it wouldn’t convince Fluttershy. She might say she believed us, but deep down she’d always wonder. Better for her to know the unpleasant truth and face up to it than to spend the rest of her life unsure.
“Oh.” Fluttershy’s voice sounded so small, so broken. Then the tears started, and suddenly all my thoughts about how the truth would ultimately be good for her sounded pretty damn hollow.
All the other ponies immediately started trying to comfort Fluttershy, though Rainbow was alternating her attention between telling Fluttershy everything was fine and glaring daggers at me. They say the truth is supposed to set you free, but so far all it had gotten me was one innocent pegasus reduced to tears, and another pegasus who probably hated my guts now.
I decided to clear out and give the ponies a bit of time to sort things out for themselves; I’d already done enough damage.
When we met back up at the exit of Applejack’s cellar a couple hours later it looked like Fluttershy’s friends had finally managed to calm her down, though the redness around her eyes still gave away the fact that there had been a lot of tears, and not that long ago.
Rainbow Dash shot a nasty glare at me, and then pointedly turned her head aside and refused to even look in my general direction. At least Rainbow seemed to be the only one bearing a grudge against me for upsetting Fluttershy; to be honest, I was still a bit mad at myself for that. Sure, lying to her wasn’t going to work anymore, but I should’ve come up with some way to solve things that didn’t involve breaking the heart of sweet innocent little pony.
Going into a risky mission with Rainbow mad at me could cause all kinds of trouble. After all, thanks to all my experience in dealing with Denarians and other life-or-death situations, I’d more-or-less fallen into the role of unofficial leader of our group. Normal Rainbow Dash wasn’t exactly a good little soldier; angry Rainbow Dash was likely to just outright ignore anything I told her to do, or do the exact opposite, out of pure spitefulness. That’s the kind of thing that would put her, me, and everyone else in danger.
“Look, Rainbow.” I walked up to speak to her face to face, or as best I could manage when she was making a point of ignoring me. “We need to talk, sort things out.”
“I got nothing to say to you, Harry Dresden.” Rainbow turned around, and left me talking to her tail. “And I don’t wanna hear anything you got to say. You’re lucky Fluttershy asked me not to teach you a lesson.” Dash turned her neck to shoot me one last dirty look over her shoulder and toss out one last barb. “Once she stopped crying.”
Okay, definitely getting the cold shoulder. “Look, what do you want from me Rainbow? I’m sorry about how things worked out, but –“ The rest of my apology disappeared when Rainbow gave a flick of her tail and I got smacked in the face with a bunch of rainbow hair. I tried again, and all I got for my trouble was more tail to the face.
Looks like negotiations were a bust. “I should go. We’ll talk later.” Wow, that sounded weak even to me.
I trotted over to the other end of the room to give Rainbow some space; the last thing we needed was for things to go from barely restrained hostility to an outright fight.
That’s when a little ball of pink fluffy sunshine bounced over to me. “Don’t worry about Dashie.” Pinkie tossed a companionable hoof across my shoulders. “Give her a little bit to calm down, and she’ll be fine. She just doesn’t like seeing Fluttershy cry.”
Before I could give Pinkie a proper response, a cross-eyed grey pegasus abruptly inserted herself into our conversation. “Hi guys.” Derpy announced herself cheerfully, though a second later the cheerful grin disappeared. “Why was Fluttershy crying?” Derpy dropped her head in shame. “Was it something I did?”
“Relax Derpy.” Rainbow spoke up. “It was Harry the jerkface’s fault.”
“Dashie doesn’t mean that.” Pinkie whispered in my defense. “She’s just mad because –“
“Yeah, Fluttershy.” Derpy answered, giving a little nod. The pegasus shot a nervous look over at her rainbow-maned counterpart, and pawed at the ground. “I think she’s mad at me though; she doesn’t want me coming along. I hope she’s still not mad about that time I messed up her weather schedule. It was only a little tornado, and I apologized right away, but...”
“Relax Derpy, Dashie’s not mad at you either.” Pinkie reassured the grey pegasus. “Dashie’s just … well, she’s not good at saying things sometimes, and she ends up not saying what she really means.” Pinkie let her gaze drift over to Rainbow for a long moment, before turning it back to Derpy. “She’s not mad at you, she’s worried you might get hurt. Dashie can’t just come out say it though because she’s not good at saying stuff like that, so she gets all twisty and mixed up. Dashie is a silly pony.”
Pinkie tapped a hoof under her chin, and added thoughtfully. “I should be mad at her though. Like, really super-duper mad. She broke a Pinkie Promise! I guess that since she’s okay now I can forgive her just this once, but if it ever happens again...”
Pinkie trailed off wistfully, staring at the chromatic pegasus who currently hated my guts. I decided to take the opportunity to get to know the latest addition to our odd little group; pretty much all I knew about Derpy was that she looked vaguely familiar, and from what I could tell she seemed to be a bit slow and clumsy, but Luna had confidence in her. “So, Derpy, don’t think we’ve been properly introduced to each other yet.” I offered her hoof, and was pleased when for once I actually managed to balance on three legs with no problems. “Harry Dresden, smartass, nerd, wizard, and part-time smiter of evil.”
Derpy bumped hooves with me. “Derpy Hooves. Mailpony, single mom, eater of muffins, and spy for Princess Luna.”
Yeah, that last one kind of stood out a bit. “How’d you go from mailpony to spy anyway?”
“Ponies are used to seeing me fly everywhere delivering mail.” Derpy answered with a harmless little smile. “Makes it easy to get messages to anypony, and nopony thinks it’s weird if I ask questions I shouldn’t ask or go places I shouldn’t be.”
I found myself once more wondering if Derpy really was a harmless little goofball, or if it was all an elaborate act to throw everyone off. Or maybe she was some sort of idiot savant or something; generally not all that bright, but with a talent for espionage.
“Princess Luna told me we would need supplies.” Derpy added. “So I packed my saddlebags full of muffins. When I showed her how many muffins I had she told me I needed to bring a broader variety of equipment, so now I’ve got blueberry muffins, banana nut muffins, cherry chocolate chip muffins, blackberry muffins…”
Or maybe Derpy just defied classification.
Before I could put any more time and effort into unraveling the enigma that was Derpy Hooves, Princess Luna arrived to see us off, along with a pair of unicorn guards who were telekinetically hauling an impressive assortment of everything from saddlebags to umbrellas.
“We took the liberty of having our quartermaster gather what equipment you would require for your journey.” Luna announced to the lot of us. “Our intelligence indicates that Celestia’s forces have erected a barrier over Canterlot, but we can cast a spell upon you that will allow you to pass through undetected. Our forces have cut the railroad lines from Canterlot some time ago to hamper Discord and Celestia’s control over Equestria, so you must journey to the capital on hoof.”
Oh super, that was going to be a long walk, out in the blazing never-setting sun. At least that explained the umbrellas; having something to keep us from having to deal with too much direct sunlight would be huge. I’d bet we had lots of water in those saddlebags too.
Rainbow Dash must’ve come to the same conclusion. “I can give us some cloud cover to help out too, maybe even throw in some rain to cool things down.”
“We would caution thou to be wary of using such measures.” Luna turned to face Rainbow Dash. “Celestia’s forces will be wary of any unusual activity. It would be best if your party did not draw undue attention.”
“I’m going to make a wild guess and say that taking the sun down for a couple hours is out of the question, right?” If Luna could’ve maintained the normal day/night cycle, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be dealing with super-scorcher weather in the first place.
“Indeed.” The Princess of the Night confirmed. “If we were to raise the moon, it would prompt confrontation with our sister. Such a direct challenge to her power would make it impossible to remain hidden from her sight.” A very slight smile graced the pricess’ face when she added. “It is how we shall announce our intention to begin the battle for Equestria. When the moon rises, it will be your signal to begin infiltrating the palace.”
Have to think, despite the threat to her principality and her people, there was probably a part of Luna that was enjoying this entire experience. After a thousand years of exile and being the legendary evil creature haunting the nightmares of children, now Luna got to be the hero. If we all made it out of this in one piece, ponies would be talking for years about how they fought alongside Luna to save Equestria, how the rising moon signaled the beginning of the liberation. I guess that’s one way to rehabilitate your reputation.
“Well, at least we won’t have any trouble seeing the signal.” I quipped. “How long do we have before the sun goes down?”
“We will lower the sun in twelve hours. That will give your party sufficient time to reach Canterlot and get in position, yes?”
I had no idea, so I looked to the Equestrian natives for guidance, and Applejack eventually answered for the group. “We oughta be able to make it just fine in that much time.”
“Well, yes, that should be enough time for us to make the journey.” Rarity agreed. “However, it is going to be a rather long walk, and it will be simply dreadful in all this heat. I don’t suppose we could adjust the time table to provide our group with a bit of time to recover from the journey before we attempt to sneak into the royal palace?”
“Some time to rest up would be good, but the bad guys aren’t going to take a break just because we’re tired.” Between Discord running back to Earth and Luna’s revelation that he was somehow messing with the basic rules of Equestria, I had a feeling we were on a tight schedule. I didn’t want to push the ponies to the point of being exhausted and strung out, but at the same time we had to be ready to push a bit harder than we’d like if that’s what it took to get things done.
“Fourteen hours then.” Luna conceded. Hopefully the extra two hours would be enough to get everyone rested up to functional. Now I just had to worry about how many victims Discord and Nicodemus would pick up in those two hours, and whether we might have been able to pull off a win with a bit less rest. Or maybe that extra bit of tiredness would be the difference between losing and winning, and pushing ourselves too hard would get everyone killed.
I miss the good old days, when all I had to worry about was psychotic dark wizards, vampires, and werewolves trying to kill me. Life was so much less complicated back then.
Listen to me, waxing nostalgic about the good old days; I must be getting old. The fact that my good old days involved half a dozen nasty folks trying to kill me on a monthly basis also says a lot about my life.
“If there is nothing else, we believe it is time for you to depart.” Luna announced to the lot of us.
“One last thing.” I cut in. “After we get the Elements, how do we find you?” The Elements of Harmony wouldn’t do us much good without someone to use the Element of Magic, after all.
We will engage our sister somewhere ‘tween Ponyville and Canterlot.” Luna answered. “Finding our battlefield should not prove difficult.”
Yeah, if Celestia’s throwdown with Discord was any indication, the place where Luna and Celestia were fighting it out would kind of stand out. Just keep an eye out for earth-shaking explosions and follow the trail of destruction, and we’d find them soon enough.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and find Twilight while retrieving the Elements.” Fluttershy added in hopefully. That would be nice, but I didn’t rate it as likely. Derpy hadn’t found out anything about where Twilight was, and if my current working theory about where Twilight was and why every time I tried a tracking spell on her it pointed straight down was right, rescuing Twilight wasn’t going to happen until after Celestia had been dealt with.
The lot us set to loading up our saddlebags and putting on the rather odd (as far as I was concerned) saddle-umbrellas, and then some light cloaks to keep us from being too easily identified. Sure, running around in feature-concealing cloaks would be all kinds of suspicious, but several of the ponies had rather distinctive features that would definitely stand out in the crowd. Hopefully, anyone who saw us in our suspicious little cloaks would just think we were thieves or something, instead of assuming we were there to take down Celestia.
Pinkie led the way, enthusiastically bouncing out of Applejack’s cellar, with the rest of us following along at a more sedate pace. As we made our way off the farm, I slowed down a bit until I was walking alongside Fluttershy. “Hey.” I said, sounding really awkward. “Just wanted to see how you were doing after the whole, well, finding out about what happened with Rainbow Dash thing.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me.” Fluttershy assured me, though I would’ve been more reassured if she’d actually answered the question directly. Fluttershy strikes me as the kind of pony who would tell someone not to worry about her no matter how much pain she was in.
“I’m actually more worried about you and Rainbow Dash.” Fluttershy continued deflecting my concerns. “She seems really mad at you.”
“We’ll work it out.” I reassured her. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine.”
I didn’t really believe her, but it’s not like I could just grab her by the shoulder and shake her back and forth, demanding that she discuss her traumatic experiences with me for whatever dubious therapeutic benefit I could offer. “You wanna talk about anything, I’m here.”
“Hey!” Pinkie suddenly cried out, putting an end to any further conversation between Fluttershy and I. “We should sing a travelling song while we walk!”
“I would prefer we didn’t, darling.”
“Nah.”
“Um, I’d rather not, if that’s okay.”
“Ugh. Pinkie Pie, you are so random.”
“Go for it.” I went against the crowd, just to be contrary.
“I like Pinkie’s songs.” Derpy agreed.
“Well, majority rules, so we’re gonna sing.” Pinkie chirped.
“Actually sugarcube, it was four votes to three against, and Harry don’t count ‘cause he was just bein’ smart and didn’t really mean it.”
“Details, details.” Pinkie Pie gave a dismissive wave of her hoof, then took a deep breath and launched into the first of many, many songs.
By the time we reached the outskirts of Canterlot, we were all thoroughly sick of listening to Pinkie Pie sing. Don’t get me wrong, I like Pinkie’s songs. They’re light-hearted, catchy, and just generally fun to listen to. I’d even tried singing along once or twice, though I butchered the melodies pretty badly. The songs really did help the journey along and provide a nice bit of diversion from the boredom of the road. They were great entertainment.
For the first couple hours.
Problem was, we spent a good ten hours walking from Ponyville to Canterlot, and Pinkie was singing the entire time. After hours upon hours of Pinkie songs, I was really starting to regret ever giving her any encouragement. It didn’t help that all the other ponies were shooting me occasional dirty looks, no doubt blaming me for everything. Well, Derpy had encouraged her too, but I guess the ponies all decided that Derpy got a pass, because she didn’t know any better.
The singing had also put paid to any hopes I’d been harboring of using the journey to work things out with Rainbow Dash. Kind of hard to have a serious heart-to-heart talk while Pinkie’s belting out a song about how much she loves making everyone around her smile (apparently it was a work in progress, which meant we got treated to it for about two hours straight while Pinkie repeated it over and over, with minor little tweaks and changes each time).
I did at least find something productive to do with the time, by finally figuring out how to pull off the telekinesis all the other unicorns used. Maybe my trip through Star Wars land had helped give the perspective I needed to pull off that particular trick, or maybe I would’ve figured it out anyway if I’d taken the time to work at it. In any case, I was still kind of clumsy with it; I could handle the basics just fine, but anything where precision mattered was a problem.
In any case, now that we’d gotten to Canterlot, it was time to make our next move. Luna’s spell got us through the force field around the city without any trouble, and we still had several hours before the princess dropped the sun, so hopefully we’d have some time for a bit of rest. Of course, that’s assuming we had somewhere to take it easy for a bit; we weren’t exactly in friendly territory, and buying a hotel room wasn’t an option.
Looks like it was time to see if Luna had a good reason for having us bring Derpy along. “So, mistress of spies and muffins, what’s our next move? We could use somewhere to get in position and lie low until we get the signal.”
Our spymistress was a little slow in answering, since I’d dropped my question while she was in the middle of rooting around through her saddlebags in search of the specific type of muffin she was in the mood for. When I finally got an answer, it was slightly muffled by a mouthful of some sort of apple-based muffin that got a slight approving nod from Applejack. “Don’t worry, the Princess has a place set up for us.” Derpy’s answer sprayed a few muffin crumbs onto me. The pegasus seemed slightly upset by that, though I’m not sure if that was because of the bad table manners or if she was just sad to see any bits of muffin going to waste. “We’re actually staying at Trixie’s place; Lyra and Bon-Bon have a bit of outpost set up there.”
Mentioning the showpony got an annoyed grunt out of Rainbow Dash. “Why do we have to stay at the ego queen’s place?” The irony of Rainbow Dash complaining about anyone being an egotistical show-off was rich indeed.
“Well, Rainbow, unless you have any good friends in Canterlot you’d be willing to trust with everypony’s lives, we shall simply have to make do.” Rarity answered primly. “At least Trixie should have decent facilities in her home; I will simply die if I can’t have a shower after walking all the way here. I am unbearably hot and sticky.”
“And since the Loud and Obnoxious Trixie’s back in Ponyville with the rest of the resistance, we won’t have to deal with her yammerin’ on about how great she is to anypony who’ll listen.” Applejack added optimistically.
“Yeah, but her house is probably all … Trixie-fied.” Rainbow huffed. ‘Bet it’s covered in posters of her, and mirrors so she can look at herself all the time, and stupid stuff like that.”
“Still, nice of her to let the folks fightin’ to fix up Equestria use her home and all.” Applejack gave credit where it was due, before cynically adding. “’Course, once this all done, I reckon she’ll be runnin’ ‘round tellin’ folks she won the war all by her lonesome, instead of spoutin’ a bunch of hooey about how she beat an Ursa Major.”
“If we can get things back to the point where a loudmouthed braggart who spins a couple stories to make herself look better than she really is constitutes a major problem, I‘d say we can call it a win.” I opined.
“Hey!” Rainbow gave a quick flap of wings that put her a couple inches above me and got so close up into my personal space that she was practically headbutting me. “Nobody asked you for your opinion, jerk!”
I felt a spike of irritation at the pegasus. Sure, I felt bad about upsetting Fluttershy, but lying to her wouldn’t have fixed anything, and I was sick of having Rainbow riding my ass on the issue. “Look, I’ve had just about enough of you and your attitude, Rainbow!”
“Yeah, well nopony gives a flying feather what you think!”
“Rainbow!” Applejack snapped at the pegasus. “I reckon it’s past time you stopped bein’ mad at Harry just cause he wouldn’t lie to Fluttershy for ya. Broke mah heart seein’ her so sad, but she deserved to know what really happened. Sure as sure ain’t his fault it happened though, so blamin’ him ain’t fair.”
“Well, yes, but he could have broken the news a bit more delicately.” Rarity cut in. “I’m sure Fluttershy could’ve been told the truth in a way that wouldn’t upset her quite so much.”
Fluttershy whispered something under her breath, but I couldn’t make it out over the escalating argument between the other ponies.
“I didn’t like seeing Fluttershy get all frownie-faced either, but it wasn’t Harry’s fault Dashie.” Pinkie jumped in.”
“What the hay Pinkie!” Rainbow shouted at the party pony. ”I thought you’d be on my side, and now you’re stabbing me in the back?”
“Well maybe you should stop being such a meanie-pants!” Pinkie shrieked back.
“Stop it.” Fluttershy cried very softly.
“Well, least the two of you actually care ‘bout fixing things.” Applejack jumped into fray. “Beats the hay outta miss prissy here bein’ more worried about getting’ herself gussied than she is about savin’ Equestria!”
“Well, I never!” Rarity gasped in outrage.
“Yeah, there’s a lotta thing you ain’t never done.” Applejack snapped. “Like a hard day’s work.”
“Now listen here you ruffian! I’ll have you know that just because I’m not an uncivilized brute like you doesn’t mean that I –”
Alright, this not-so-friendly spat was getting out of control. “Guys, I think you should –”
Four pissed-off ponies yelled variations on “shut up” and “stay out of this” at me in near-perfect unison. It was the first time in the last couple minutes that they’d actually acted like friends. That brief moment of unity didn’t last though, and soon they were right back at tearing into each other.
“STOP IT!” Fluttershy screamed, tears spilling freely from her eyes. The pegasus collapsed to the ground, sobbing softly. “Just … stop.” Derpy rushed over to comfort the distraught pegasus, sparing a moment to shoot a cross-eyed glare at the arguing ponies.
At least Fluttershy had finally managed to snap them out of their argument, and now we had four very ashamed looking ponies wallowing in guilt and awkwardly refusing to meet each other’s eyes. Guess that left it up to me to play peacemaker. “Alright guys, we’re all tired, hungry, thirsty, sore, stressed, scared, and just generally feeling rotten. That’s making us all mad and snappy, but fighting each other won’t do us any good.”
Stars and stones, I couldn’t think of anything much worse for our group right now than for us to start turning on each other. After all, the Elements of Harmony worked off of weaponized friendship. If the stress of everything we’d been through and everything we still had left to deal with started getting to everyone bad enough to start cracking those bonds of friendship, we were doomed.
At least, I hope it was just a case of normal stress putting everyone on edge until they started lashing out at each other over the smallest little thing. If I was Discord and I was messing around with the building blocks of Equestria, screwing up friendship and harmony would be pretty high on my priority list.
Nothing we could do about it but push on and hope we could keep it together long enough to deal with Discord though; time wasn’t on our side. Hopefully a bit of time to rest up after the journey to Canterlot would take some of the edge off of everyone’s stress levels, including my own. “Derpy, you said you had a safehouse set up for us, right?” Derpy nodded. “Alright, lead the way.”
The next few minutes of walking through Canterlot proceeded in painfully awkward silence, until Rainbow finally spoke up. “Sorry Harry. You too Pinkie, and everypony else.”
For a brief moment I was tempted to throw Rainbow’s apology back in her face, but that was just the stress talking. A brief moment of nasty satisfaction sure as hell wasn’t worth messing up our fragile group dynamic. “It’s fine. Sorry I made Fluttershy cry.”
That prompted a round of apologies from everyone too everyone else. Things were still awkward and uncomfortable afterwards, but at least the apologies had made the awkwardness and discomfort a bit less painful. Any progress was progress.
The awkward silence did end up coming in a bit handy though, since it let us hear the crowd long before we would’ve seen them. Derpy briefly took to the air to get a look at what was up ahead. “Looks like something’s going on in the square.” The cross-eyed pegasus informed us. “Wanna go check it out?”
“Might be worth having a look to see if it’s anything important.” I agreed. It’s not like the square was out of our way; assuming Derpy was leading us in more-or-less a straight line to our destination, we’d be passing right by it anyway, and a large public gathering in an enemy capital is often the sort of thing that might be worth checking out.
We arrived to find the square positively packed with ponies, and a dozen or so guards lurking around the perimeter. Luckily, the crowd was big enough that blending in wasn’t a big issue.
The only notable feature in the square was a single freshly constructed wooden platform, built high enough that just about everyone in the crowd could get a good view. Aside from a couple guard ponies and a vaguely familiar white unicorn stallion, the platform was empty, and the entire crowd was buzzing with a mood halfway between boredom and anticipation. “Let’s give it a bit guys, I get the feeling something big’s coming up.”
We didn’t have long to wait; less than a minute later there was a blinding flash of light, and once the spots cleared from my eyes I saw Celestia atop the platform in all her glory. She hadn’t undergone the same dramatic transformation as Luna apparently had when she became Nightmare Moon, but maybe that kind of thing took time, or would give the game away to everyone Discord hadn’t put his mind whammy on. The only sign that there was anything amiss with Celestia was the fact that the normal vaguely ethereal quality she carried seemed magnified a hundredfold. Celestia normally seemed, for the most part, like a normal pony who just happened to be a ruler with godlike powers. This Celestia seemed subtly set apart, above the rest of ponykind in a way that defied description, yet was undeniably present.
Celestia’s horn glowed, and a single banana appeared hovering next to her. “Bring out the next prisoner.” There was just a touch of the old Royal Canterlot Voice in her words; not as overpowering as Luna’s voice, but loud enough to carry clearly to the very back of the crowd, and filled with an understated yet undeniable authority. Celestia casually peeled her banana and began eating it as the guards dragged a sophisticated-looking white unicorn onto the stage in chains.
A tyrannical ruler dragging out prisoners into the middle of a public square for everyone to see? This isn’t going to end well.
The unicorn at Celestia’s side spoke up. “Fancy Pants, you have been convicted of lese-majesty, sedition, heresy, and treason against Equestria. Do you have any final words to say before your sentence is carried out?”
“Yes.” The prisoner turned to the crowd, and let out a soft cough to clear his throat. “My fellow Equestrians.” He began. “Surely you can all see that there is something terribly wrong in our land. Why does our Princess punish her faithful subjects simply for asking questions? Why do we hear tales of Nightmare Moon’s return when it is the sun that remains fixed in the sky? Why have so many of our fellow Equestrians been –“
Celestia’s horn glowed, and Fancy Pants was abruptly silenced by her magic. “That’s quite enough of your lies.” The princess brought out her version of the Royal Canterlot voice again, and declared. “Fancy Pants, you have betrayed Equestria and your princess by making common cause with Nightmare Moon. There can be only one punishment for this crime. Exile.”
There was another flash of blinding light from Celestia’s horn, and when the light faded the prisoner was simply gone, though I thought I saw a slight glimmer of light disappearing over the horizon. “Bring out the next prisoner.” Celestia announced calmly, before finishing off the banana she’d been nibbling on.
Rarity gasped in shock. “Did – Did Princess Celestia just send Fancy Pants…”
“Looks like it. Horseapples. I was afraid something like this might’ve been going on.” I’d suspected it for a while, ever since I’d seen what happened when I tried to use a tracking spell on Twilight, but that pretty much confirmed it. From the grim looks on most of the other ponies’ faces, they’d figured it out too. I guess once Discord had figured out what we were up to, he’d decided that the best way to stop us was to put last pony I needed to rescue beyond our reach.
Twilight Sparkle had been sent to the moon.
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Aww, buck. Tyrant Trollestia is here.
Dun-Dun-Duuuuuuuuun!
TO THA MOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!
also i shudered at the banana thing... it reminded me of molestia...
also.... 
First.
I'd wonder how it is that Luna hasn't noticed this yet given that the moon is her dominion, but really it beats the issues that would be raised if they were banished to the sun.
Love how this is going, can't wait to see how they fix this.
wait... couldnt he get the elements then trick Tyrant Celestia into moon banishing him then use both his and twilights combined magic to teleport back.
just a suggestion...
Somepony likes bananas...
The stand-out moment for me in this chapter is:
“’tis possible that certain facts thou hast accepted as a fundamental part of Equestria’s nature may no longer be quite some immutable as they once were.”
...does that mean Luna is becoming genre-savvy? I think I've read that fic...
Do you like bananas? Well thats good! Because you are about to go bananas! ON THE MOOOOOOOOOONAAAAA!
Great update! I also like the subtle reference to that one video...
510873
i think luna's just a bit too distracted with the resistance and discord and all of equestria going to hell to notice a few ponies roaming around on her moon
Harry is a wizard, and a unicorn as a pony to boot.
Screw Luna, give him the Element of Magic.
I mean, he did just spend the last couple of chapters saving all their asses.
Yeah, I went there, sue me. Hehehe.
Eh, the moon is nice. I expected that. I WAS HOPING for Tartarus though...
Well, that's easy. Harry just needs to piss off Celestia and get exiled to the moon.
...Though, if Discord did change rules around, the moon probably doesn't have an atmosphere anymore.
Details, details.
Well, Derpy is often depicted as having an uncanny ability to deliver mail to anypony at all, no matte where they are. So sending her on a pony-finding mission isn't such a stretch.
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Yeah, the second I read 'banana' I knew it.
-
Kinda guessed she'd been on the moon when it said his crystal pointed straight down. Makes sense if you think about it; the sun's up and the moon's down, therefore, down would be the direction she's in, just MUCH farther.
Bananas.
I feel like I'm missing out I didn't get the bannana thing at all. If anyone could enlighten me I'd be very grateful. This chapter certainly had alot going for it. A war, how bout that for action. And I can't forget Derpy, whenever she's involved its always nice to see how different authors handle her character. I liked how she's used here as just a clumsy, carefree pony who wants everyone to be her friend. Maybe I misunderstood the sentence but did Luna say Derpy was related to Daring Do cause that would be awesome.
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As Harry himself notes early in the chapter, that his spell still works on Twilight indicates that she's still alive wherever she is. So if that is the moon (we'll see; Canterlot does canonically feature mostly-forgotten underground caves as well, right?), that hopefully suggests that ponies can live there at least for a while.
Of course, it's always theoretically conceivable that everypony does get sent to the moon, only Twilight is actually equipped to survive there for whatever reason, and so all the others simply die upon arrival. I'd like to believe, though, that whatever fundamental constants of the Ponyverse may have been subtly changing it's not gone far enough to allow that sort of thing to actually happen yet.
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This should explain the banana thing.
And yes, Luna said that Derpy is related to Daring Do.
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Daring Do, Ditsy Do; makes sense. Only you're calling her Derpy and not Ditsy. Whichever is fine. We still know who she is.
I'm going to go against consensus and say that I really disliked the banana bit. Making a joke within the world you've created is one thing; making a joke out of that world is another. It's hard to take the ponies' plight seriously when goofy fan references like this are thrown in.
I don't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy the chapter, or that I don't like the story; I think you've done a wonderful job capturing Dresden's tone, and the comic/dramatic rhythm is great throughout. I've been reading along religiously, and will continue to do so (I know; I haven't commented previously despite liking it so much, I'm a terrible person). But even though Celestia didn't actually say "Do you like bananas?" (thank you for not having her say that, by the way), that scene took me right out of the story, and killed any sense of drama that the revelation of Twilight's lunar exile should have had.
P.S. If you're going somewhere with that inclusion, like if this is some sort of devious foreshadowing of the merging of Equestria with the fanfiction universes, I'll reconsider my opinion. I hope you're going somewhere like that with it. But it felt to me like a needless and distracting shout-out.
Huh. Derpy as a spy is interesting. But she's not the "cloak-and-dagger" assassination-type spy, but an informant-spy, the bartender or mailperson, the seemingly-harmless girl you see often and everywhere, so you just kinda subconsciously ignore her...allowing her to easily eavesdrop on any secret conversations you might be having...
I'm just gonna do this:
"Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like.
On a-Jupiter and Mars.
In other words, hold my hoof.
In other words, darling, kiss me."
That is all.
-Glassed
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I have to agree that having Celestia actually doing the whole "Do you like bananas?" bit would've taken things too far. As it is, I don't think it's too immersion breaking.
As for whether there might be some foreshadowing there ... no comment. (On a totally unrelated note, we need a LiarJack emoticon).
I totally predicted what was going to happen to the prisoner the moment I saw Celestia's choice of fruit, lol.
Derpy was awesome, Celestia was awesome, new plot development is awesome...I still haven't found anything not-awesome about this story
Soooo we got Trolestia ....
Can we go back and get Molestia instead?
this seems fitting
NOOOOO NOT FACNY PANTS. ANYPONY BUT FANCY PANTS!!!!!
At least he wasn't fooled, hes to awesome for that.
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This is one of the first stories here that I ever read. Re-reading it now, I finally understand what is up with that banana. Discord, you horrible, horrible bastard.
*grin* I already know where this is going. Harry, how do you feel about jewelry?
Yeah, I'm guessing she's been banished to Tartarus. Hell, if she's currently a Denariian, she's probably ruling Tartarus.
*finishes chapter* ... or not....
Honestly my version would've been more dramatic.
xD
If only you had known!
How does Harry not draw the parallels between this version of luna and Leia?