Part 1: Scream For Me, Baby

Starlight Over Detrot: Nightmare Night Special

I lay on my couch, one leg thrown over my face. It was an unseasonably warm evening; my apartment fan was on full blast, and still my coat was stuck to my skin. I’d finally gotten to the land of dreams after hours rolling around in my personal sweatbox, and was doing my best dead body imitation. Working in Equicide, there was plenty of opportunity to practice.

Detrot’s finest deserved a damn break...

“Come on, Hardy! Wake up! We’re going to be late!”

...but it was not to be.

I peeled open one eye to discover the source of the disturbance, and was greeted by a feminine horror six inches from my face: a green pony demon with enormous fangs that jutted down from a shapely mouth, and huge stitched-up gashes across its nose and cheeks.

I found myself suddenly awake, fully alert, and crouched on the floor behind the sofa.The demon, who was lucky I didn’t have my gun strapped to my foreleg, chuckled to herself in an annoyingly familiar way. “Ahhh, you’re awake! Teehee! Good.”

“...Taxi?”

“Duh! Who’d you think it was? Get up! We’re going to be late to the party!” My driver straightened her frightfully gelled mane with both hooves. Considering her normal layered black and white checker braid, it should have occurred to me that she could pull off some really strange effects with enough hair product, such as tonight’s lovingly constructed rendition of the Bride of Flankenstein.

Behind her, a very short green dragon with a glowingly orange face was up to her ears in a bag of candy, both cheeks full of something that crackled and popped as she chewed it. My diminutive pegasus partner, Swift Cuddles, had found covers for her outsized wings that made them look like bat wings, and her ears were done up to seem like horns.

“Ugh, why are we getting me up at this foul hour again? My day off is meant to be the one day of the week I don’t have to see either of you,” I groused.

Swift held her bag of candy closer to her chest. “It’s Nightmare Night, sir! You said you’d take us out tonight.”

“You want to go trick-or-treating?!” I scoffed. “Kid, you can’t be serious. When did I say that?”

“Night before last...”

“I was drunk the night before last!”

“Well... sir, it’s... my day off too. Things have been crazy lately, and I just thought we could take some time...” Swift pushed her lower lip out, demonstrating that the trade off for her short stature was a foal’s weaponized pouting powers.

“Fine, fine... ugh. Where are we going?” I rubbed my eyes with both hooves, trying to get the sand out of them.

“Well, there’s a party at the Castle.” Taxi replied, prodding one of the scars on her cheek back into place.

“Slip Stitch’s Nightmare Night party?! You really want to go to that? You spend three hundred and sixty four days a year trying to avoid him like the plague.”

“I will freely admit that he has a talent for the macabre, and that’s what tonight is about. So get off your lazy hump!” My driver grabbed the couch pillow supporting my butt, braced her hooves, and tugged me onto the floor.

I rubbed my freshly bruised behind, rolling over onto all four hooves. “Can’t I just go as ‘overworked cop?’”

“No! You’re going to get a costume on and you’re going to smile or so help me I will tell Slip Stitch you wanted a full explanation of the equine digestive system, top to bottom, inside and out.” It was no idle threat. Taxi’s storied vindictive streak would end my night fleeing a psychotic and surprisingly athletic coroner describing the lower intestine to me whilst swinging preserved and fragrant specimens in my direction.

“Alright!” I cried, holding my hooves up, “Alright, Celestia save me, just get me a damn sheet and some scissors! I’ll go as a ghost!”

“Oh, no you don’t! I’ve got something special for you.”

I don't do much with fortune-telling, but when Taxi grinned as she did, I could see the future reflected in her teeth.

It would not be pleasant.

****

“Where did you even get magic pelt dye?” I gasped for breath, trying to keep my mane out of my eyes. Foul chemical fumes came off the softly glowing bottle as Taxi shook it out over my head.

“Oh, stop complaining! I told you, it’s temporary. It’ll be out of your fur by tomorrow morning.” Taxi held my head down, soaking it into my cheeks.

“Watch the eyes! Is this what you used to dye yourself?!”

“Errr... no, this stuff is special! Hey, hold still or you’ll end up looking like a diseased zebra!”

Swift held my tail, rubbing something powdery into it. “Whew, this stuff stinks... are you sure it’s going to work?” She asked. She’d already done my mane; she was being thorough with the vile mixture.

“The dear ponies who provided this stuff guaranteed it would do the job. Just make sure you don’t miss any spots. We can’t go back and ‘redo’ once we activate it.” Taxi replied.

After a few more minutes trying not to breathe the awful stuff, Taxi cast the now-empty bottle aside and reached into her saddlebags and produced a small pulsing red gem, which she pushed against my forehead. I felt a brief tingle as the spell took effect; I waited to feel something change, but after several seconds, nothing had. I looked around myself.

“Well? What did it do?”

Swift’s eyes bugged out and she spat the candy lozenge she’d been sucking on across the room. Taxi merely smiled one of her devilish ‘I just got Hardy good’ smiles.

“Oh sir... you... oh wow...” My partner sputtered.

I closed my eyes and stepped in front of the bathroom mirror. It can’t be that bad...it can’t be that bad...

I opened my eyes.

It was that bad.

Staring at me from the reflective glass was a very pretty mare with big pink eyes and a fuzzy, canary yellow pelt. Her mane hung to her shoulders, streaked in black and white lines. I waved a hoof. She waved a hoof. My mouth fell open. Her mouth fell open.

I couldn’t think for a few moments. The first coherent thought I managed to assemble was ‘Turned me into a mare.’ The next coherent thought had me shoving my head down between my legs, making sure my ‘equipment’ was still there; I couldn’t see it but I could still feel it. I didn’t feel like turning around for a more thorough inspection.

Twisting my neck around I looked my pelt up and down; It was the same chalky citrine as my hooves. I turned back to the mirror and the image of-

“You made me look like you!?” I howled, swinging towards Taxi who was laying on her back in a gigglefit that had her gasping for breath.

She sniggered, holding her stomach with both forelegs. “Damn right! Just be glad I didn’t ask Minox to be my date for the evening. He’d be very confused. And maybe a little frisky.”

“How much did this even cost? Is this an illusion or did you actually...” I trailed off, staring at myself. Despite the horror swirling in my stomach, I had to admit: It really was a good likeness.

“Oh, it cost somepony plenty, I’m sure... and no, it’s just visual. You’re still ‘you’ under there. I just told Requisitions what and who it was for and they gave it to me for free!” She tumbled over in another spasm of mirth. Swift managed to keep herself to a barely contained grin, which made her look like she was having gastrointestinal difficulties.

“I’m not going out like this!” I scowled at both of them, crossing my forelegs over my chest and sitting down.

“Yes, yes you are! Conscious or not, you’re going to the Castle tonight. Consider this your comeuppance for that stunt you pulled.”

“Which stunt?” I asked, confused.

“Any of them! All of them! Now let’s go before we’re late.”

Grabbing my hat and coat, Taxi shoved the fedora on, uncomfortably mashing my ears then threw the jacket loosely around my shoulders.

Swift swung her sack of candy over one shoulder and opened my apartment door. A foal in full medieval regalia charged past, his sack hanging from a plastic lance.

“Well, sir, I just want you to know I think you look absolutely lovely.” My partner said with real sincerity.

Putting a hoof to my throat I rubbed it lightly. “Why does my voice still sound like it usually does? Don’t tell me you couldn’t spring for a fix for that.”

“I could have... but it’s a lot funnier this way.” My driver snickered, re-arranging her fetching black skirt over her hips.

---

Dusk was just settling in. Driving through my pleasantly peaceful neighborhood, I watched as colts and fillies dragged put-upon parents or wheezing grandparents from door to door whilst loading up on enough sugar to put them in comas for the next week straight.

The thundering echo of gunpowder resounded along the city streets. On any other night, that would be cause to dive for cover, or would at least herald a long night for some unlucky detective. Tonight, that gunpowder was inside firecrackers and party poppers, being gaily tossed by foals pretending to divert Nightmare Moon.

Even the criminals and unsavory elements seemed to get in the spirit. Three ponies I recognized mostly from their mug shots stood in changeling costumes on a corner, passing out treats to squealing kids. Community service hours on holidays were always just a little bit easier, and parole officers tended to look the other way if they had a few drinks during the celebrations.

It was a good night and, despite myself, I was glad Taxi had managed to drag me out of the house.

Then I eyed my reflection, took a deep breath, and fortified myself against the terrors to come.

---

Nightmare Night is that special evening every year when every pony gets to let their inner monster out. In the case of the Detrot Police Department, this meant letting Slip Stitch off his leash. He’d outdone himself.

We drove beneath the portcullis, which had been done up to look like opening jaws of a dragon, and I couldn’t help but smile. It bore a striking resemblance to another large reptile of my recent acquaintance, minus a ridiculous excess of makeup and with a much fiercer expression than I had ever associated with that other serpent.

A group of mismatched creatures stood at curbside as various vehicles pulled through. Taxi pulled us to a stop in front of the Castle itself... and then could only gape at the changes Stitch had managed with only a single day and the efforts of the Detrot Police Department administrative staff.

The Castle had become a monstrosity ripped right from the darkest days of pony history. Griffins in full war gear circled the tower, shining talon-carried lights on the illusory bodies of great star-beasts. Unicorns on the rooftops seemed to battle with them, firing bolts of lightning into the air as the creatures tore at the battlements. That the beasts never seemed to do any damage was immaterial; it was still an impressive sight.

On the central spire’s onion shaped roof stood the Eternal Night herself: Nightmare Moon, larger than she’d ever been in life and with her blue-fire mane spilling down the sides of the building. The fangs of the gratuitously sized alicorn glistened in the full moon Luna had provided for just this night.

I didn’t wonder where Slip got the energy to do this, nor did I wonder where he got the money. The budget might have gotten cut down like an overgrazed lawn in recent years, but even the most tightfisted Equestrian accountant can be counted on to cheerfully loosen the pursestrings when given a good excuse to celebrate.

As I stepped out of the car, a four legged tree beast with a tiny red fez handed Taxi a ticket while surreptitiously staring at my flank. I was about to ask what he found so damn interesting about my cutie mark, then remembered exactly how I looked at that moment and just ground my teeth together.

The cobblestones in the paths outside were letting off an eerie glow, which was a fantastic effect; it would probably save the drunken lives of several ponies who might otherwise stumble into the road. A few revelers looked to be well on their way to a classic ‘Hardy’ morning, cuddled up with a glass bottle and an open gutter.

My driver tugged on my tail lightly. I turned around, and when I saw what she had in her teeth I started to back away, but ended up just letting out a loud yelp as I felt Swift suddenly land on my back.

“Hold him! Hold him, dammit!” Taxi snarled.

A foreleg snaked around my throat and I tried to buck, but the pegasus was a wiry little thing, and held on long enough to keep me busy while Taxi went in for a police take-down, forcing me onto my stomach as I tried to pull away. “No! No, seriously, not necessary! Sweets, you don’t have to do this!” I pleaded.

“Your mouth or it’s going in your eyes!”

All my struggles between the two were for naught. She held my head still with her forehooves as she carefully applied a thin layer of lipstick to my muzzle. As she finished, Swift leapt off my back and huddled to the ground, whimpering.

“Sorry, sir!” My partner squeaked. “She made me do it!”

“Sure she did. Traitor.” I grumbled, then lifted her to her hooves and straightened her costume. “You do look good, kid. Come on. I’d rather get in there and start drinking now so I can get on towards forgetting most of what happens tonight.”

A smile peeked from her lips. I gave her a wink, which for some reason made her blush damn near fuschia.

“Sir, you’re very pretty as a mare.” She murmured softly.

“I’ll... try to take that as a compliment.”

****

Swift headed into the Castle ahead of me, her silly pointed tail swishing along behind her. Taxi tossed a leg around my shoulders and dragged me towards the doors.

“Let’s go, my little harlot! Your admiring audience awaits!” Taxi giggled, ruffling my mane.

“Harlot? I look like you, remember?”

She didn’t seem to care; she was practically juicing herself with delight as a tentacled creature held open the heavy door for us, checked our invitations, then waved us through. At that point, I wished I’d thought to burn mine, but that was before I saw what had been done to the castle interior.

I had to stop and take in the incredible changes wrought by magic and the absolutely deranged imagination of a psychotic party fiend. It was magnificent in its absurdity and, like all things involving our coroner, really did a number on one’s expectations.

The vast throne room had been cleared of cubicles and office rubbish. It took a minute to start to make out individual shapes in the great seething darkness. Some brilliant, crazy botanist had somehow transplanted, either magically or with a lot of back-ache, an entire forest indoors. It was the sort of darkly brooding wood that haunts childhood nightmares, with branches arching overhead forming a canopy through which a creepy blue light filtered, like the moonlight outside. Far above, the File Cloud, normally used to store documents and evidence, was now taking the role of special effects; It rumbled and shot occasional lightning that illuminated the forest. For the good of all eardrums present, actual thunder was kept to a minimum.

Between the trees, servers bearing trays of drink and nibbles roamed amongst dozens of chatting, cocktail-slurping beings dressed in all manner of sexy, scary, or just outrageous costumes. If there were ever a city-wide emergency on a Nightmare Night, it would likely have been handled by the most mad and eclectic police force ever seen by pony eyes.

A representative example emerged from the dim lightning: a frightful changeling matriarch, her scaly black carapace glistening in the dark and her stringy blue-green mane rustling in the light breezes, swept up to my side. She had four champagne glasses floating in the air behind her and a microphone headset clamped down around her neck.

“Taxi? Oh, Taxi ith that you? Wow, you look amathing! How’d you get your mane to do that?” The changeling demon asked with a hint of a lisp; The voice was that familiar old inflection from far down the police communications pipeline, but she seemed to be having trouble talking through a pair of huge, silly looking fangs.

“Telly? I didn’t even recognize you!” Sweets patted her mane and grinned. “This is a secret I only tell my closest friends... I used a magical cement. I’ll put the solvent in later!”

“Doethn’t that hurt your fur?” The changeling/radio operator asked, then spat out the fangs into her hoof. “Sorry, these look great but they make talking a royal bitch.”

“Nope, doesn’t hurt your fur one bit!... and yes, the teeth do look great. How’ve you been?”

“Oh, fine, fine... won’t you introduce me to your friends? I recognize Officer Swift over there. Looking fine, miss dragon! You’ll pick up a stallion tonight, easy!” Telly winked at my partner, who ducked her nose and pretended to have a piece of candy stuck in her teeth. “Who is this other one then? My, my, she’s a lovely thing!”

Taxi covered her mouth, barely managing to hold in a peal of laughter. “This? Heh, this is my date for the night. Hard Boiledweena.”

“Hard... Boiled... weena...” Telly’s eyes slowly widened. “Get out of town... Hard Boiled?!”

“Keep your voice down!” I hissed.

“No way! I should have recognized that silly hat you never go anywhere without.” She squealed, sloshing champagne over her own hooves. I could smell on her breath that she’d had more than one or two already and Telly is not a quiet pony when she’s toasted. “Is that some sort of magic spell? You’re waaay too hot to just be cross dressing! Ooh, and you look like... hee... you look like Taxi...”

“Can we skip straight to the part where you offer me alcohol?” I grumbled, holding my hoof out.

“Sure thing, beautiful.” Telly drifted the thin stem over and held it for me while I drank the entire thing in one gulp. “I’d take you home later, but I’m in the mood for a stud this evening.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek then vanished back into the forest; an insectoid succubus off to hunt a mate or a meal. Or both at once.

As I watched pleasingly shaped flanks retreating into the woods, It occurred to me that said mate or meal might not have been an entirely unlucky soul. I contemplated curvature until Swift reached up and quickly closed my sagging jaw. “Sir, you’re drooling a little...”

Apparently, my salivary glands agreed. I slurped, wiped my lips, then marched down the steps towards the forest trying to cover the burning on my cheeks. I found a quick cover story; Food.

“I’m just hungry, kid. There’s sure to be a buffet spread around here; let’s go find some grub.”

“What, now?” said Taxi, who was casting glances between her antique pocketwatch and Chief Jade’s office, a stained glass-festooned royal audience chamber above the raised dais where Celestia’s summer throne once lay. "The show is about to start!”

I got as far as “What sh—” before the File Cloud let out a blast of thunder that almost flattened me against the ground. I swung my gaze around to see Telly, back behind her control console on one side of the throne room, turning dials and adjusting knobs as she gave life and fury to the storm.

Another lightning blast made sure the Cloud had everypony’s attention. A tense silence settled over the crowd as all eyes turned upwards between the bare leafed branches of the small forest, towards the Chief’s Office. Several panels of the stained glass window slid back into the wall and the lights further dimmed until near complete darkness reigned.

“You all know this night!” The voice, magically amplified and enhanced, filled the room and sent a shiver down my spine. It was Telly’s voice coming from somewhere up above, but in the swirling blackness there was nothing to see. “You have come to celebrate! To hide your faces and pray that Nightmare Moon never returns to devour your souls! But I tell you, there are worse things in the deep night than she!”

The voice drew in a breath. “This is it, fillies and gentlecolts! Your matron of mayhem, your empress of fear... I give you your mistress of ceremonies, The Skeleton Queen!”

Lightning flashed. Somewhere in my hindbrain, in the place all those instincts we never give up entirely love to hide, I felt a pang of real, thrilling fear. Police Chief Iris Jade hung over the crowd in a glow of violet light as the carefully controlled stormfront blasted the walls with arcane power at predetermined points marked by lightning rods. Overall, the effect was perfect. My stomach turned to jelly almost immediately.

The unicorn’s bones glowed through her flesh, giving the impression of a moving, living x-ray. I wondered what spell she’d cast to get them to do that, then decided I didn’t really want to know. It probably involved sacrificing something.

She descended slowly to the ground, then stood at the top of the dais in front of the throne, raising her forehooves as she reared up on her back legs. “My children!” she began, and my bowels clenched again; I could hear her perfectly despite the distance. “Your Queen is here! And tonight, I call on you to be glad I am in a benevolent mood! I see into each of you, and I see you are afraid... but here, in my hall, in my woods, and within the grounds of my Castle, you will be safe from the evils outside! Pray I do not change my mind! Meanwhile, celebrate and make merry! Let the music... begin!”

Telly’s skillful hooves and horn practically flew as a wild, animalistic beat crackled from the speaker system. The crowd let out a whoop and the dancing began in earnest.

****

I finished stacking a third portion of pickles over top of a towering sandwich that wobbled precariously from side to side. Swift was hovering around the small carnivore’s outlay on one end of the buffet, trying to look like she hadn’t been sniping bits of roast duck and stuffing them into her candy-bag. Taxi was off somewhere in the forest: I caught glimpses of her now and then, following orders and making herself very merry.

I’d just seen Iris Jade being greeted by various dignitaries, so I decided I was relatively safe to have something to eat, and that I did not need to hide behind a pillar to avoid a heated and needlessly telekinetic discussion on the ‘unorthodox methodology’ I’d used to solve the Orb Weaver case. Of course, this being my life, that was the moment the ‘Skeleton Queen’ trotted up beside me at the buffet table.

She levitated a stalk of celery smeared in peanut butter to her muzzle, and bit the end off with the sound I’d always imagined certain parts of my anatomy would make if she ever got really angry. Her gaze flitted towards my hat, then down at my trenchcoat, then over towards Swift sitting in the corner loudly chewing the spicy meat and taking unhealthily large swigs of the cheap champagne.

A look of chilling joy spread across Jade’s skull-face. “Hard... Boiled.” She sang, tossing the celery over her shoulder and into a garbage can without looking. “I knew Miss Taxi was a clever pony, but this... She even went for the bonus, I see! I would have sworn I’d never get you into lipstick short of drugging you.”

“You... You did this?!” My voice rose precariously close to a shriek. A few people glanced at us, but apparently decided that the spectacle of a screaming argument with the Chief was utterly routine, and went back to their drinks.

She licked her chops. “Why, of course! Who do you think told Requisitions to release that wonderful dye? I had only the one box left, and the zebra who designed it is currently spending a lengthy sentence in Tartarus Correctional, so I shan’t be getting more... but I think this was worth it. You should feel honored that I felt the need to make certain you were ‘properly dressed’ for tonight, Hardy!”

Jade could be capricious, clever, and sometimes altogether cruel, and I realized I should have seen her hoof in my driver’s machinations.

I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing just how thoroughly she’d gotten my goat. Casually, I stuck a pickle in the side of my mouth and crunched it noisily. “Mmm, could be worse. Anyway, you want to let me get back to my meal? Slip Stitch did a sweet job with the catering. Speaking of, where is his high freakiness anyway? I haven’t seen him.”

A frown crossed her thin features. “You know, now you mention it, I haven’t either. He never misses a party, especially one he’s throwing himself. Last I heard he was headed down to storage to pick up some extra supplies.” She brightened. “Why don’t you go find him?”

I almost choked on the pickle. “Screw that! Day off!”

“Oh, Hardy...” Iris Jade wet her lips, gleefully. “It’s Nightmare Night and I’m... heh... The Skeleton Queen. I doubt anypony would bat an eye if I were to send the griffin consul home with a few extra doggy bags worth of flesh.” Her voice rose a couple of pitches and she threw a leg across her forehead dramatically. “It was awful! To find out that one of our fine officers fell into the industrial meat grinder! I’d just talked to him an hour earlier too!” She abruptly dropped the mocking voice. “Last I saw, Stitch was heading for the kitchen. Ta-ta!”

That was an ongoing issue with working for Chief Jade. Nightmare night or not, I could never tell with absolute certainty when she was being humorous. Either way, she moved off towards the crowd leaving me to consider defiance and death or hunting down the strangest pony alive on his personal favorite night of the year.

I set my sandwich back on the buffet table and gave it a despondent nudge. “Celestia bugger me. Not fair.” I pulled off my hat and waved it until I got Swift’s attention. The miniature dragon quickly forced down what she was chewing, then hopped to her hooves. “Kid, you mind helping me hunt up Slip Stitch?”

“Sir? I... um...can I hang out here for a little while longer?” Her eyes were drifting towards a plate of steaming sliced chicken. She shuffled her hooves self-consciously.

I rolled my eyes, grabbed the platter, and shoveled the whole thing into her satchel. She let out an ecstatic exhalation of surprise, then covered herself as I closed the drawstring on her satchel before one of the waiters could do more than give us a suspicious stink eye.

I gave her a firm poke in the ribs and pointed over the forest towards the general direction of the kitchens. “Are we good to go or do you want to try to grab that turkey too?”

She didn’t answer but stuck her nose into her bag and inhaled a deep whiff. “We-we’re good to go... um... Sir.”

I rubbed the side of my head and groaned. “Sometimes, kid, you are one creepy little pony.”

She nipped playfully in my direction. “Tonight, sir, I’m a dragon!”

****

The kitchens were absolutely bustling with activity. White-shirted chefs galloped between long rows of dishes and hot burners, shuffling plates and washing dirty things. It was ordered chaos at its best.

A towering female griffin seemed to be in charge. I determined this when she grabbed us by the scruffs and demanded to know why we’d invaded her realm on threat of immediate roasting. When mollified that we were not here to disrupt her perfect disorder, she directed us towards a back door beside the freezers.

Inside was a dank set of stairs, descending into the mold-ridden bowels of the Castle. It might have been a dungeon at one point, though I’d never known Celestia to go for locking ponies up. Outside of that one instance involving our nearest orbiting planetary body.

A set of dimly flickering gems in the walls provided enough illumination to see, but the stone steps were still treacherous. Swift had to grab my tail to steady me after what could have turned into a particularly nasty slip. We finally made it to the bottom and faced a row of disused holding cells, each one stacked almost to the ceiling with food. They’d tried to clean up down here, but the air still smelled faintly of fungus and underground lifeforms from which the mind recoils.

“Sir? Are you sure Mr. Stitch is down here?” Swift asked uncertainly as she stuck another piece of cooked bird in her mouth.

I didn’t reply. Instead, I shouted down the hall, “Hey, Stitch! You down here?” then turned my head to listen; after the echo died, a second voice came back. It sounded badly muffled and far off, but someone was there. I tried to get a better feel for where the other speaker might by trotting forward a few steps...

...And then, whiteness.

An explosion of light blinded me and a shockwave seemed to take me off my hooves. For a brief minute I was certain I’d walked into one of Slip Stitch’s party traps gone wrong. Maybe he’d fudged the recipe, or added just a little too much gunpowder to the mix. I wasn’t in any pain, though, and I knew that had to be there pain, unless he’d killed me outright.

Wouldn’t that have been ironic? Chief Jade might have missed her chance. It occurred to me that she might have been the one who set it up, but then, if she had, she’d want me to suffer more. And she’d want to watch.

When I realized I’d had time to have all of these thoughts and still hadn’t hit the stone or a wall, I tried to call out. No sound left my mouth, nor did I seem to have one. That strangeness lasted just long enough for the word ‘horseapples’ to form in what I hoped was still my forebrain.

Then I was back: lips, mouth, and body. All those precious little squishy bits! I patted my chest, then my mane and ears just to make sure it all hadn’t been alphabetized, or mystically rearranged in some other unsightly fashion, but no, they were even in the right order!

“Celestia, I take back all the things I said about buggering me,” I said, with eyes rolled towards the heavens; unfortunately, there weren’t any heavens to talk to. Just more faceless, slippery stone.

I was inside one of the cell blocks, the thick iron bars in front of me. The door was closed with one of those detestable enchanted locks that even the most skilled pony with a hairpin can’t jimmy. Not that it would have mattered either way; I didn’t have a hairpin and Taxi is the one with the criminal skillset.

“Erg... sir... what happened?” Swift said from somewhere nearby. It was when I took a step back that I figured out where “nearby” was, as I tripped over my partner and fell into a stack of light wooden boxes.She’d been almost under my hooves with the

An uncorked bottle on top of one of the crates rolled over and spilled a frothy stream of spiced pumpkin rum straight into my open mouth. I spat, gagged, then rolled over and began wiping my face. Pausing. I picked up the bottle and took a quick swig.

“Ugh, oh... mmm, that’s pretty good.” The drink helped me gather my wits in record time. “I think we were just teleported.” I replied, dusting off my coat.

“Quite so!”

A cheerful voice spoke three inches above my left ear, and again, my gun not being on my leg probably saved a life. I dropped onto my knees and rolled over onto my side in a position to buck my assailant’s head into next week, but no one was there. There were a few seconds of confusion while I righted myself, then looked around for who’d spoken. Swift struggled to get onto all fours, a task made all the more awkward by the presence of that silly draconic head on her costume having been pulled down over her eyes. A hoof she’d blindly placed in the puddle of pumpkin rum slid merrily out from under her, and she flopped onto the ground again.

Detrot City Chief Pathologist Slip Stitch sat on top of one of the crates stacked up near the ceiling, his rear legs crossed one over the other and a bag of toffee peanuts in his lap. He’d painted his robin’s-egg blue pelt with black and white stripes that ran right down the middle of his back to his tail. His mane of electric white seemed to have something worked into it that wasn’t so much ‘controlling’ it as encouraging the mass of insane fuzz into a less chaotic arrangement. He wore a top-hat and a disconcertingly smiling skull painted over his face.

“Stitch... Celestia save me, you damn near gave me a heart attack!” I shouted up at him. How he’d even gotten up to that seemingly unclimbable position at all was a mystery, let alone how he’d been in a position to yell into my ear three seconds ago.

“Apologies, Detective! I’ll be right down.” He slid out of sight.

I began helping Swift up and trying to wring the rum out of her silly plush tail with both hooves.

“Sir, do you have any idea what happened?” She asked, nervously.

“Not a clue. This might be one of Jade’s ideas of a joke. Wouldn’t put it past her to leave me in a dungeon for a couple of hours with Slip Stitch.” I grumbled.

“S-sir? Y-you told me he was... just fumes!” she squeaked, twirling to face me. “I imagined him giving me an eyeball popsicle! You said that wasn’t real!”

“And fumes were involved,” I assured her, “but Slip Stitch is real enough. Either way, mission accomplished.”

Swift pushed the hood part of her costume back onto her neck. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, sir... but... I suppose we have bigger things to worry about. Where are we?”

“Let’s look around a bit. Might be something in here to tell us.”

We began exploring our cell. It was actually surprisingly spacious for being what it was, and stacked wall to wall with anonymous wooden packing crates. Experimentally shoving the top off of one revealed what had to be six months worth of food: Buttered popcorn, more toffee peanuts, cupcake flavored vodka, and, best of all, a full basket of designer bagels in all the flavors of the rainbow.

“At least we’re not going to starve if we’re stuck in here for a bit.” I commented, pulling out a bagel and an unopened bottle of alcohol. Hooking the top on one of the crates I popped it open, then swallowed a few muzzlefuls of crisp, clean vodka. It made me feel better right up until I caught my face reflected in the bottle. The dim, industrial lighting was enough to see by, and seeing Taxi staring back at me nearly made me drop my drink.

Slip Stitch appeared at my elbow with the kind of stealth only mice and kittens should be able to manage.

“Ahhh, Detective! It’s excellent to have company. I was getting ever so lonely down here. I must say, your costume is rather special, isn’t it? Beautiful look for you if I do say so myself.” He enthused, snapping up the vodka and taking a few hearty belts. “Mmm, just the stuff, no? There are certainly worse places to be entrapped, though I do hope my guests aren’t missing me.”

“I think your guests are fine. Half of them are so drunk they’d have trouble finding their own plots with six hooves and an atlas. You have any idea why we’re stuck in here?” I asked, pulling a small box over and dropping my rump onto it.

“Yes, it is an odd place, isn’t it? Cell blocks from the Pre-Lunar Return age of Detrot.” He tapped at one of bars lightly and sparks shot off of it, dribbling down to the floor. “No idea what they were built to contain, but it wasn’t ponies. The door is alchemically enchanted and the bars are a funny alloy that does not like being kicked. High pressure attacks give a nasty shock. I think we stumbled into an anti-breakout measure.”

“You mean you think you’ve escaped, get to the exit, and then it teleports you in here?” Swift said, thinking.

“Precisely.” Slip Stitch bobbed his head, tossing another peanut into his mouth and crunching at it. “I believe the door might be opened by a unicorn. We were using it for storage for the party mind you, so somepony will be along eventually.”

Just as he finished that prophetic statement there was a flash and a pop, followed by a stumbling, slatternly Flankenstein’s monster, staggering off of the spot Swift and I had just occupied. Her mane was out of place and her lipstick was smeared on one side. I hoped she hadn’t kissed anypony important, though on reflection, it might help us in future investigations if she had.

“Whooo... that punch was stronger than I thought!” Taxi putting her hoof on her chest and belched so loudly it rattled my fillings. “Oh, hey... heh... y-you look like me, don’tcha? C’mere pretty girl, give us a kiss!”

I leapt back, out of her flailing reach. “Taxi, it’s me! How many have you had?”

My driver blinked her eyes blearily a few times. “Hardy? Awww...damn...I only had a... hic... couple...”

“A couple what?” I said, trying not to raise my voice.

“Couple bottles! Why? Oof, how’d I get down here? I was lookin’ for you and Jade said you’d gone downstairs. That big griffin lady in the kitchen pointed me this way.”

“There’s some kind of old security system on the door. We tripped over it and it dropped us here. Seems you hit the same thing.” I explained.

“Eee, yes. We’ve... gotten ourselves into some minor trouble here methinks. No worries though! By tomorrow, somepony will have discovered the situation and shall let us out.” Slip Stitch said, sounding not even vaguely annoyed by the idea of being locked in a dungeon all night long fifty feet from the lavish gathering he'd planned. Of course, I’d never seen Stitch perturbed. Anything that could ruffle his mane was likely to send anypony else running for any available hills.

Taxi, however, often had her mane ruffled by Slip Stitch’s mere presence.

“Slip Stitch? Awww, four oceans of manticore piss...” Trotting over to the door she began inspecting it. “Are we locked in here? Don’t tell me we’re locked in here! I don’t wanna hear... hic... that I’m locked in an underground cell with my boss and a lunatic on Nightmare Night!”

“Insults aside, Miss Taxi, we seem to be and I should warn you-” Stitch began.

Before anypony could stop her, Taxi whirled and delivered a full-power two-hoof buck to the lock. Lights flashed, sparks danced, and then my driver was laying in a heap at my hooves, her eyes rolling in opposite directions.

“-the lock is a teeeeny tiny bit irritable.”

The door was still letting off some threatening arcs of electricity, so I pulled Taxi a short distance away.

“Oooh, yikes...what a rush!” Taxi mumbled, her mane smoking. I patted out the little smoldering patch and helped her to four unsteady hooves. “That kicks worse than the tequila.”

She took a bit to gather herself together then began looking around the cell in greater detail. Naturally, one of the first things she located was an upturned container of rum; she immediately sat down and began slurping from it. Grabbing a whole pie from one of the tables, she tore the lid off and scooped out a bit on her hoof, stuffing it into her muzzle.

“Sweets, you know what booze and sugar does to you...” I said, warningly.

“Yeah?! What’re you gonna do about it?!” She got up, then found standing not to her taste and flopped down again. “Yahknow, this reminds me of something.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed. “What’s that, Sweets?”

“Heh, you remember when we met the princess?” Taxi said, giggling drunkenly. “You remember? She was so... so rad!”

Swift’s blinked at the two of us. Surprisingly, her first question was not about Taxi's use of the word 'rad,' because it would have been mine. “Sir, you’ve met Princess Celestia?!”

I shook my head. “The other princess... and yeah, once. Both of us did, actually... Not that Sweets made the best first impression.” I turned to my hammered driver. “I’m glad you’ve learned some self control since then; I thought she was going to send you straight to the damn moon.”

“Oh come on!” Taxi whined, wiping some crumbs off of her chest. “She wouldn’t really have done that. I was just being observant.”

“Your version of ‘observant’ is most ponies’ version of ‘poking around in their heads.’ She caught you, too.” I replied.

“It wasn’t like she had to do that... whatever it was she did... to everypony there.” Taxi rebutted.

“Taxi, you tried to stick your nose into the brain of one of Equestria’s rulers. You’re lucky it wasn’t Celestia! Who knows what she’d have done!”

“Awww, get stuffed, Hardy.” Taxi snickered, flipping her mane back. “Whatever little trick she pulled that made you get on your knees wasn’t the worst thing that happened that night.”

“Really?” Swift asked, her eyes wide with wonder.

The memories were starting to make me cringe. “Yeah, really... and I don’t want to think about—”

Taxi pulled a piece of cotton candy out of one of the open bags and winged it at my head. “Hey! Look, it was still the best night ever, even with all that... and it was Nightmare Night then, too. You remember that tale she told us, right? I’m too plastered to tell everything, and if I get bored I’m liable to start a food fight. You wanna be pretty and sticky? Tell the story!”

Slip Stitch picked up two bottles of hard lemonade, wrenching the tops off with his teeth and setting one near Swift’s leg. “Yes, I find myself most curious. As much as I enjoy a good culinary brawl, I was unaware Princess Luna made a habit of associating with our city’s constabulatory body.”

“She doesn’t. We were kids at the time and... damnit, can’t we just be miserable in peace and quiet?!” I shouted.

“Well, sir... it might make the time go faster if you tell us the story.” Swift said softly, picking up the drink and sipping from it. Smacking her lips she examined the bottle. “Mmm, this is tasty!”

I was cornered. My opponents had estrogen, alcohol, and insanity on their sides. Three forces, immutable when united.

“Fine!” I said, throwing up my hooves in defeat. “But if I’m going to tell this, give me a bottle.”

Taxi passed me her rum bottle and grabbed another. My partner dragged over her own crate and began tugging off one of her reptile-webbed wing covers; setting it aside, she began fastidiously preening her feathers with her teeth. Slip Stitch unraveled a small snack cake from its packaging and stuffed the entire thing into his mouth.

I drew my coat tightly around myself, sipped some of the pleasingly tart alcohol, and tried to think where to begin.

“Hmmm... Heh... how about this: ‘Far back in history, there was a time one might have called me ‘cute...’”

The gramophone spun up slowly, and a scary violin melody spilled out of it, spreading through the house. The last decorations had been put up, the pumpkins were carved, pie was cooling on the windowsill, and homework was finished. Now, if only the final ingredient to a perfect Nightmare Night would get home already.

“Mooom! When is dad getting back? We’re going to be late!” Hard Boiled Junior called for the sixth time in as many minutes.

He lay on his back on his bed, studying his grey hooves, then flailed them at the ceiling to make the shadows from his lamp shift into the faces of ghosts and ghouls. His room was beginning to feel smaller by the minute and he was antsy to get moving. There was candy to be had and he was missing it! Every minute was another sweet treat that slipped through his hooves!

“He’ll be here when he’s here, Junior! Just be patient!” His mother, Dovetail, called back from the kitchen. She sounded harried and her normally sweet voice was tinged with irritation.

Junior groaned impatiently, but knew better than to press the issue. His mother was the sweetest and most beautiful mare in the whole of Equestria, but when she got mad, even zombie ponies knew better than to stick around.

Zombie ponies! Maybe if he was smart, he’d get a cutie-mark in zombie hunting. Nightmare Night was the best time for that, after all. Everypony knew that. He looked down at his blank rear end, stroking the spot his cutie-mark would be one day. The expanse of off-white fur seemed so empty and boring. Most of his friends at school had theirs already.

He began adjusting his costume again, making sure each individual button was perfectly aligned. The police uniform had been his dad’s idea after all; even if it wasn’t as cool as some of the kids at school who were going as their favorite members of the Wonderbolts, it was still pretty neat. Junior stepped in front of his bedroom mirror and struck a pose.

“Zombies? Why, yes ma’am, I’ll handle them straight away!” Throwing his shoulders back he rose up on his rear hooves in one of the fighting poses he’d seen in his comic books, launching a shadow kick at an invisible enemy. “Hiyah!”

Plink.

Junior let out a very un-policepony-like yelp and dove for his bed, pulling the covers over his head. The trotting dead were right outside his window!

On second thought, maybe zombie hunting could be left to somepony else. Zombies are dangerous after all and everypony knows there is no better protection than blankets.

A few seconds later, there was another 'plink.' Wait a second, he thought to himself, zombies don’t throw rocks.

Pulling himself up he tossed off his blanket and went to the window, peering out into the darkness. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the dim evening light. There didn’t seem to be anything in the narrow strip of grass between his house and the neighbor’s fence except a couple of pumpkins. One of them did seem to have acquired a funny yellow lump though.

The lump moved in a flash and a pebble bounced off of the glass. Undoing the latch, Junior braced his hooves and threw the window open.

“Shiny?! Shiny, is that you out there?” He called out.

Sweet Shine poked her head up from behind the orange vegetable. She was just small enough to fit behind it.

“Shiny, why are you throwing rocks?” Junior asked, raising his voice slightly.

Looking both directions, Sweet Shine darted across the lawn and stood below the roof. “Lower the rope, doofus! I’m trying not to be seen!” She replied.

Pulling his head back in, Junior considered his options. Shiny and he had been friends forever. Like, a whole year. They had something in common which made them prime ‘friend’ material, at least according to Shiny: neither of them was super popular in school because their dads were scary.

His dad was a police pony and her dad was a jerk, so it made a certain sense. He’d just gone along with it because the alternative was some very lonely lunches, even if, like most girls, she talked way too much.

One thing he’d never banked on when he agreed to be her friend, however, was her tendency to show up at all hours, unannounced. She was a year younger than he was, so maybe it was just one of those things girls grow out of. He certainly hoped it was. Of course, even if she didn't, it didn't matter. Being a colt — and one day, a stallion — meant taking things ‘Very Seriously,’ as his dad often told him, and there was nothing more serious than friendship. Even if did sometimes meant losing some sleep.

Thankfully, she wasn’t crying. The nights she came to his window in tears were always kind of stressful, even if he secretly liked taking care of her just a little. He’d never tell anypony that, of course.

In the end, the decision was easy: He couldn’t very well leave her out there in the autumn chill.

Out of his closet, he tugged four scavenged jump ropes that’d been tied together by the handles. He threw one loop around his bedpost, tossed the other end out of the window, then put his forehooves on the windowsill. He felt the line take up slack then began hauling for all he was worth. The rope rasped at the edge of the sill, pulling the canary colored filly with it. Getting one forehoof over the side, she managed to throw one rear leg up and scramble into his room, tumbling onto her rear end with a thump — one too loud to completely avoid parental notice.

Junior raised one ear, waiting for the inevitable; Indeed, his mother called from the other end of the house, “Sweety, one of these days you’re going to have to teach Miss Shine to use the front door!”

“Yes, Mom!” He yelled back.

“Shine, darling, are you staying for dinner?”

“Um... maybe, Miss Dove!” Sweet Shine replied, carefully coiling up the jump rope and stuffing it back in Junior’s closet.

“Alright, wash up in a half hour. Junior, that means you too! Your dad should be home by then.”

“Yeeees, Mooom...”

It had become almost routine. Shiny would appear at his door at strange hours, but for some reason his parents never objected strenuously. His dad had been angrier when Junior had tried to get his cutie mark in lumberjacking than he was the first time Shiny crawled through the window at 1 AM and curled up at the foot of Junior’s bed.

Certainly, they’d never tried to stop her, even if they’d have prefered she find a better way of getting in. The front door wasn’t an option, though: it faced Shiny’s house. If she was sneaking, it meant her dad was having one of his ‘bad’ days and she needed to make herself scarce.

It was just another one of those ‘adult mysteries’ Junior never really felt the need to look into too heavily, like why his parents’ bedroom always smelled funny after he’d spent a weekend at his grandmare’s house.

“Oooh, Hardy, you look just like your dad in that!” Shiny exclaimed, running around him and inspecting from all sides.

“I do not!” Junior squirmed as Shiny got too close, sticking her nose into his pockets to see if there was any authentic policing gear in them. “Oof, stop that! Where’s your costume?” He asked, trying to distract her.

Her expression drooped and she slumped to the floor. “I don’t have one.”

“What? Aren’t your parents taking you out trick-or-treating?”

Shiny gave him a deadpan look. “My parents? Really?"

Junior’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Okay, so maybe not. You at least told your mom where you’re going to be, right?”

“Errr... I left a note?”

“Where did you leave the note?” Junior asked, suspiciously.

“Um...” Shiny’s eyes danced back and forth as she backed up against his bed. “Maybe... I... in... uh...”

“You didn’t leave a note, did you?”

The filly’s tail flapped back and forth then she slumped. “...no...”

“Good work, kiddo. You’re going to be grounded until Celestia gets bored and the sun goes out.” Junior gave her a little push and she shoved him back twice as hard; he almost fell over.

“Hey, you want to go trick-or-treating alone tonight?” She snapped, indignantly.

“Well, no... but who says I’m takin’ you?” He asked, straightening his uniform.

Shiny stuck out her lower lip and whimpered like a lost puppy. He could tell she was about to bring to bear the secret superpower all girls have to defeat a boy’s superior physical strength: waterworks.

Not that Shiny was much weaker than he was. She was a scrapper, and they’d gotten into more than a few wrestling matches where he’d come out on the bottom. Still, there was no beating a weepy girl.

“Okay, okay! Fine! We’ve got to get you a costume though.” He relented, turning and throwing open his closet again. “We could just cover you in super-glue and feathers. You could go as a turkey...”

“Yeah, I think not.” Shiny rebuffed, poking her head in alongside him.

“What about a ghost? Cut two holes in some fabric. Classics are best, right?” He suggested, pulling out a ratty sheet from the bottom of the pile.

“What about me is ‘classic’, Hardy? Wow, do you keep all your clothes?” She picked up a small sports jacket Hardy wore when he was still in diapers, turning it around with mild amusement.

“Mom makes me keep everything. She doesn’t like getting rid of cute things and my baby-clothes are apparently adorable... blech.” Junior stuck his tongue out as he shifted aside another pile of disused clothing intermingled with toys. His closet was a disaster, but that’s how he liked it. It meant his mother usually gave up ambitions of trying to make him dress fancy.

Something rolled out from under the mess, bumping against Shiny’s hooves. She sat, picking it up and examining it. “What’s this thing?”

“Oh... yeah. It’s a crystal ball.” He went to take it back and the filly held it away, waiting for a more complete answer. “Ugh...I don’t know. Some mare my mom used to know who worked as fortune teller gave it to her. She was her best customer.”

Shiny stared into the glass ball, mesmerized by its scintillating surface. “I... I think I should take this with us tonight.”

“What? Why?” Junior sat back, tilting his head curiously.

“I d-don’t know. I... uh... I’m going as... as, um... Ooh! That’s what I’ll be! A gypsy!”

“A gypsy?” Junior gave her a quizzical look. “Shiny, is this one of those ‘things’ you ‘feel’ again?”

“Uh... no?”

“Tsk. don’t lie to me, Shiny. You know it never works.” He pointed at her in an accusatory fashion.

She held the crystal ball protectively to her chest. “So? It’s not my fault, okay? I just feel these things sometimes.”

“Look, you can be a ‘gypsy,’ but don’t actually read anypony’s fortune. Just make some stuff up if they ask this time, okay? You remember what happened when you had that little origami folding fortune toy, right? I think the principal was red-faced for a month.”

Shiny gave a petulant hunch of her shoulders. “Well, he shouldn’t have been doing icky things with Miss Apple Balm then! He’s married!”

“People are gonna think you’re a freak if you keep doing that, and they’re gonna think I’m a freak for hanging out with you!”

“So? Who cares what people think?”

“...Whatever.” Junior gave up and pointed at his closet. ”I hope you can make that costume out of what I’ve got in there. We’re not raiding mom’s dresser again, because I got put in timeout for an hour last time we did that.”

“No! No, it’ll be fine.” Shiny assured him. Digging through the mass of clothing produced a number of old scarfs, which she threw around her shoulders. To this ensemble, she added a train conductor cap positioned at a jaunty angle, then dug out some glitter and patted some into her pelt. She inspected herself in the mirror, peering at it as though one last thing was missing... then proceeded to ruffle her mane until it stuck up in all directions.

All in all, it wasn’t the worst gypsy look Junior had ever seen. Not that there were all that many gypsy ponies to give Junior a basis for comparison, but it did the job.

Sticking the crystal ball in her saddle-bag, she adjusted the strap around her middle to take the extra weight.

“Mmm... there we go! Ooh, your dad is almost home... Eee, he’s got a surprise!” Shiny exclaimed, bouncing towards the door.

Junior heaved a sigh and followed the scarf-wrapped filly. He didn’t really feel like questioning how she knew his father was on the way home, or about the existence of the surprise. They’d had that conversation before, many times. It always came down to him trying to apply reason and finding a gaping logical hole, followed by her throwing something at his head. That it was inexplicable never bothered her; she was right and they both knew it.

It was just that simple. Infuriating, but simple.

Part 2: Play Me Those Nightmare Blues

View Online

Starlight Over Detrot: Nightmare Night Special: Part 2

Junior stopped at the door to the kitchen and smiled at his mother, who was bustling over a heap of cherry tarts that had just finished baking.

She was an earth pony like his father, but a whole world of color away; her mane was a mix of curly tie-dyed blues and greens, making it look like a waterfall. Her fur was the same shade of red as a ripe raspberry.

It being Nightmare Night, Dovetail had tossed on a pair of black wooden cat ears she’d carved and lacquered herself. Half of Junior’s toys were things his mother made; give her a piece of wood and she could whittle it into just about anything you could ask for. The roses in a vase on the kitchen table looked like perfect flowers, but still smelled of fine cedar.

“Oh, hello Miss Shine! My, my. Don’t you look just the perfect vagabond tonight?” Dipping a hooftip in some pie filling, Dovetail quickly licked it off. “Mmm, almost done. Junior, hooves clean?”

The colt immediately ducked into the hall bathroom, turning on the tap and pushing his hooves under it for about half a second, then shutting it off. “Yes, mom!”

“Right... and if they’re not, are you gonna give me half your candy?” His mother asked, pointedly. The tap came on again and stayed on for a full minute. Dovetail nodded to herself, satisfied.

A rattling rickshaw coming up the drive announced her husband’s return home. Tugging off her spotty apron, Dovetail threw it over the end of the exquisitely carved kitchen chair and trotted over to the door.

Hard Boiled Senior tromped in; the self-assured saunter of a bear coming home to his cave was only disrupted momentarily, when a raised eyebrow from his wife prompted him to wipe a bit of mud off of his hooves. Then, as per nightly ritual, he took her in his forelegs and delivered a kiss that had the two foals tittering like birds. His cloudy, drab pelt belied a warmth that seemed to fill the house.

“Good evening, dear!” He greeted Dovetail with a grand smile. In his son’s mind, of course, everything about him was grand, including the gesture he used to sweep off his blue police cap and hang it on the hat-rack just inside the door.

He turned to his son. “Ahhh, Junior! You do that uniform proud. You’ll be stomping the streets with me in no time!”

Junior swelled at the praise. “Thank you, sir!”

His father’s eyes went to Shiny... and dimmed, just slightly, as he gave her a deferential nod. “Miss Shine. Your... ‘suggestion’ paid off, you’ll be happy to know.”

“Good.” The yellow filly murmured, biting her lower lip. “Mister Boiled... don’t tell my dad, okay? I... after last time...”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Junior’s father agreed, tugging off his waistcoat and hanging it alongside his hat. “Dear, what smells so amazing?”

It was Dovetail, waiting with a slice of pie ready to stuff in her husband’s waiting mouth.

Meanwhile, Junior leaned over and nudged Shiny. “What’d he mean your ‘suggestion?’” he whispered.

She lifted her mouth to his head and replied quietly. “You remember the stallion on the radio we were listening to last week? The one who was asking for help finding his filly?”

“Sure, why?” Junior asked.

“I... told your dad I thought he really should go check that pony’s basement.”

“Oh.” He thought about this, then shook his head. There were no good questions to ask about that, so he changed tack. “What did you mean about speaking to your dad?”

Shiny hesitated, then dropped her forehead against his neck. “Your father thinks my cutie mark might be a talent for police work one day. He talked to my dad a few months ago and... I... I don’t really want to talk about it, okay? You remember when you promised?”

Junior did. A few months ago, Shiny had come to school limping. She wouldn’t say a word no matter how hard he pressed. Finally, she’d made him swear never to broach the subject again. Admittedly, she did so by putting him in a half-nelson, but he took promises very seriously, even if they were just made so he wouldn’t have a headache after lunch period.

“Okay, that’s cool.” Junior held up his hooves in submission. “Just don’t make a habit of that kind of thing, alright? Neither of us needs that kind of attention.”

Shiny nodded. They both turned back to Junior’s father, who was mid-way through an animated rant about his day. “-and those idiots in the PACT let it escape! I swear, those ponies need their heads banged together. Celestia knows where the damn thing is now. Probably still in the sewers somewhere.”

“What escaped, dad?” Junior asked, inquisitively. “There’s something in the sewers?”

“Ahhh... my boy, I... mmm.” Hard Boiled’s lip twitched slightly; he glanced at his wife for permission.

Dovetail snorted scornfully. “Oh, go on... you’re going to tell them the second my back is turned anyway. It’s Nightmare Night; I doubt they’ll be sleeping as it is. Besides, it’s not as though the PACT won’t have caught it by tomorrow.”

Shiny’s eyes glistened with nervous excitement. She knew a ‘Mr. Boiled’ story when she saw one and they were always the best, even if they weren’t always entirely true. “Oh yes... what is it? Is there a super big fangy demon bear loose in the city?”

“Weeell, it being Nightmare Night I suppose it can’t do any harm. If you get bad dreams, though, you asked for it!” Hard Boiled Senior’s deep, sonorous voice took on a particular tone he always used for spooking the kids as he dropped his flanks into his traditional place at the table. His wife merely rolled her eyes. “Do you two know what an ophiotaurus is?”

They both shook their heads, sitting closer together. Junior’s father continued as Dovetail began preparing dinner, “It’s a beast with the body of a bull and the head of a snake! Fangs you could use for swords and eyes of fire! Great creatures so big they could snap a little pony up in one bite!”

He lunged forward and clacked his teeth together an inch from their faces; they both gasped fearfully, drawing away. Satisfied with the reaction, Hard Boiled Senior sat back, his tone slipping back to casual. “Well, scary as they are, there’s something scarier: smart ponies doin’ stupid things.”

Right on cue, Junior asked: “How is that scarier than sword-fangs and eyes of fire?!”

“Oh, son, you’d be amazed what a pony with a big brain can do if he forgets his I.Q. doesn’t make him invincible.” He paused to let their interest build, turning to his wife as though he meant the story to end there. “Honey, what’s dinner going to be tonight?”

The foals both let out piteous moans. “Nooo! Sir, you can’t stop there!” Shiny said, unhappily. Junior concurred, though he wouldn’t have dared say it aloud.

Hard Boiled Senior cocked one eye at her. “If you must know...The Academy was transporting a small one this morning to do some ‘research’ and the thick headed foals let it get into some of their chemical agents.”

“Oooh, what happened?” The filly bounced in her seat. “Did it grow as big as a skyscraper?!”

“Heh, no... you kids and your imagination.” The dusky stallion replied, grinning hugely. “No, it was worse... the chemicals drove it mad. They usually only scavenge dead things mind you but this one broke out of its cage and escaped into a storm drain. It’s still down there, somewhere, lurking around, waiting for some pooorpony... to gobble right up!”

As he finished he banged his rear hooves under the table loudly; both Junior and Shiny let out a delighted, terrified shriek, clutching at one another.

“You’ve got a pretty rosy memory of our foalhoods, Hardy.” Taxi complained, plucking at her dress to straighten the hemline. It really was a lovely dress on her, even if it had probably cost her a whole paycheck.

“Yeah, but I was a kid, alright? I didn’t understand a lot of things.” I said, brushing off her objections. “I mean, when we were blankflanks, you still had fun at my house, right?”

“When you weren’t being a total prude!”

Swift snickered and bit off a hunk of a cupcake.

I sucked down a bit of rum, swirled it around my mouth, and swallowed. “‘Shiny’... I wasn’t a prude. I just knew precisely how long we’d have gotten grounded if we’d actually put a paint bomb in the teacher’s desk.”

“Same thing. And don’t call me ‘Shiny.’ You can call little me ‘Shiny;’ big me can still break your ankles.”

As the last piece of pumpkin pie was tucked away to a percussion section formed by appreciative burps—and in Hard Boiled Senior’s case, a belch that earned him a solid kick under the table from his wife— Shiny began looking pensive. Junior noticed her glancing again and again towards the clock, each tick making her just a little jumpier. Finally, he couldn’t take it any longer.

“Shiny, you look like that time we tried coffee.” He said, giving her a little poke. Rather than poke him back as expected, she sat up straighter.

“Um... Mr. Boiled, sir? Don’t you have something to tell us?” She asked, kicking her hooves under the table a bit.

Hard Boiled looked to his wife accusingly. Dovetail, who had been balancing a stack of dishes on her back en route to the sink, nearly dropped her pie tray.

“I didn’t tell them!” she protested, wiping a stray bit of cream off her flank.

He turned back and glared hard at Junior, who just looked genuinely baffled, before switching his gaze to Shiny, who was doing her best to appear cherubically innocent. Hard Boiled let out a slow breath.

“Miss Shine, you’re going to be the death of me. Yes, I do have something.” Heaving himself up from the table, Junior’s father trotted out to the living room. There was some rustling about in his woolen jacket and he returned with an envelope in his teeth, setting it on the dinner table.

Junior and Shiny immediately leapt for it; Hard Boiled had to fend them off with a hoof on both their foreheads, until they grumbled and sat back down.

“There, that’s better. May I present, my impatient foals...” He tore open the envelope and lifted it by one end. Three shiny, black pieces of paper fluttered out onto the table. “Three tickets... to Nightmare Moon’s Castle! Hosted tonight by Princess Luna!” He turned to his wife quickly and began, “Honey, I know you’re not interested in a haunted house my dear, but I had intended to at least ask-”

Dovetail put her hoof over her husbands mouth, then leaned down and gave him a quick kiss. “You know me. I jump when the newspaper colt tosses the morning post against the door too hard. Take the kids.”

Junior and Shiny meanwhile were sitting there with their jaws agape and eyes bulging. “Sir?! Really?!” Junior squeaked, almost toppling out of his chair in his eagerness to clutch his ticket, holding it like it was made of pure gold.

“Yes, my boy! Tonight, you will see Princess Luna!” Hard Boiled couldn’t keep a bit of excitement out of his own voice. “She’s on her annual national tour for Nightmare Night, and this year is the first year since the Crusades she’s been in Detrot. Thanks to your assistance in cracking that case, Miss Shine, I got VIP tickets that include a special event, led by the Princess herself!”

“There was no greater gift you could give a foal on Nightmare Night than a trip to Nightmare Moon’s Castle, but meeting the Princess... I’m surprised our little hearts didn’t explode on the spot. Every year since Princess Celestia gifted her Castle to the DPD, we used to have the single greatest haunted house in any part of Equestria, but until that night, I’d never gotten to go. Nothing compared-”

“Sir?” Swift interrupted. “Um...do you mind if I ask why there isn’t still a haunted house every year? I mean, aren’t the catacombs where we... hic... eep!... are now?” She put a knee on her breast to hold back the hiccups. The hard lemonade was giving her cheeks a fiery tint.

“Ehhh...” I looked around the stony cell. “No, I’m pretty sure they were a lot deeper than this. It was a long time ago. The city is... different these days. Luna still visits from time to time, but Equestria is a lot bigger. Might be ten years before she makes it back this way on Nightmare Night.”

Taxi sighed, wistfully. “We still have the party. It’s a smaller affair and mostly funded by the police department. Keep in mind, this was back when everypony thought the financial collapse was going to be a temporary thing.”

“I wish I could go see those old catacombs though!” My partner wiped a bit of frosting off her cheeks and clambered onto a crate, wiggling until she could get comfortable atop many unopened bags of cotton candy. “I bet they’re amazing.”

I picked up a bag of candy corn, popping it open and chewing on a few of the waxy kernels. My stomach was starting to gurgle with a pleasing fullness. “We ever get out of here, you can send the Princess a letter and see if you can get permission.” I said. “They usually only let scholars down there. You mind if I continue?”

“Oh... sorry, sir...”

Junior’s father had one further trick up his sleeve. After the dishes were cleared away and the evening had well and truly set in, a sound like a roaring beast zoomed up the road in front of the house and stopped. Junior and Shiny, fresh from the story of the ophiotaurus, immediately zipped behind the sofa into the tiny space only they could fit, peeking over the top.

“Ahhh, our driver is here! Oh kids, stop it... it’s just a car. You must get used to these things, my boy! They’re going to be everywhere one day soon.” Hard Boiled pronounced, trotting over and opening the door.

Junior and Shiny emerged, trying to seem casual about it. They’d heard of cars before, of course, and even seen one or two. They were still a novelty, though, almost as much as those incredible ‘televisions.’ For all their efforts to avoid seeming foalish, their tails both hit the ground almost in unison as they gawked at the sight just outside their door.

A shining metal creature the size of three bulls standing nose to tail sat in the road. It was painted a dark, forest green and it’s spoked wheels seemed made of glittering silver. The vehicle even had a woven canopy over the driver to keep the rain out.

A tall, ivory colored mare in a waistcoat and vest covered in gleaming buttons stood there with a very professional smile on her face. At the sight of the two foals gaping at her, it became just a little more genuine. She tipped her black and white checkered hat slightly.

The edges of Dovetail’s mouth dipped into an irritated frown. “Sweety, did you really pay for a ride in a cab?” She asked, prodding her husband firmly in the side. “Only rich ponies can afford rides in those things!”

Hard Boiled consoled her with a nuzzle on the neck. “I didn’t pay for it, thank the princesses. These were the Chief’s tickets, but he’s ‘otherwise occupied’ tonight. I think he’s taking his special somepony out to a movie. Call the cab a ‘bonus’ for cracking the case with the kidnapped filly so quickly.”

Her look of displeasure deepened a little and she let out a low sniff. “Well, you’ll never catch me in one of those magical motor carriages. Still...” Allowing the frown to drop she pulled the two children into her forelegs and hugged them close to her breast. “Y-you kids... y-you remember this night! You’re going to see something some ponies would give both left hooves to watch. You’ll get to meet the princess herself. Oh, part of me wishes I were going! Have fun now, you hear?”

Junior and Shiny both nodded vigorously. Hard Boiled whispered something in the driver’s ear and she nodded, turning back and marching off the doorstep. A few seconds later a howl of horse-power chained down only by the straining bonds of magic and metal.

“Dad, are... we really going in a... a c-c-car?” Junior stammered, finally finding his voice.

“That we are.” The stallion affirmed, sweeping on his long coat against the evening chill. “Come now! The princess won’t wait for us. Afterwards, we’ll come back here and you can go trick-or-treating, alright?”

“Okay!”

Junior dashed over to the car. It was even bigger up close and rumbled ominously, light jumping and dancing under the hood. He desperately wanted to see how it worked, but even more than that, he wanted to see it move.

The driver slid from behind the wheel and held open the back door of the vehicle. The colt immediately leapt in, only realizing after he’d sat down that Shiny wasn’t with him. He poked his head out of the window to find his friend standing in the door with a look on her face he’d never seen before: unrestrained avarice.

Sweet Shine was a filly of few wants. She never really tried to follow trends at school or get ‘cool’ things: When other kids were collecting Wonderbolt cards, interesting yo-yos, or — depending on your socioeconomic status — dead animals, Shiny had been content with a few books now and then.

But the moment she got her first good look at the cab, something changed inside her. This wasn’t her special talent calling out to her, but nonetheless her reaction to this machine was something... visceral. When confronted with that growling monster, built of gleaming steel and crackling magic, she wanted nothing more than to leap behind the wheel and let it take her to the horizon at pegasus-baffling speeds.

Shiny was in love.

Hard Boiled put his hoof gently around her shoulder as they both gazed upon the incredible vehicle. “They say we’re going to be getting those for the force soon.”

“Really?” The filly asked, breathlessly.

“Yes, they’re rebuilding part of the old chariot garage to accommodate them.” He replied, his eyes following the beautiful lines of the powerful motor vehicle. “One day, officers are going to be chasing criminals at a hundred miles an hour. Who knows? You join the force, you could have one of your own.”

She tried to think of something she could say, but all that came out was, “I...oh...my...”

Junior stuck his head out of the car window, “Shiny, let’s go!”

Jolting back to life, Shiny almost tripped over her scarves as she rushed over to the vehicle, hesitating for only an instant before crawling in beside the colt and pressing her cheek into the plush seat cushion. Junior already had his hooves up on the window, as though the neighborhood had already changed somehow by virtue of seeing it from the back of such an uncommon mode of transport. Hard Boiled slid in beside the two children, patting his coat to make sure he had the tickets before he pulled the door shut.

“Driver?”

“Yes, sir?”

“To the Castle!”

****

Junior contented himself with watching the passing scenery outside. The city seemed so small from inside the car, moving by quicker than he’d ever felt before. Even the time he ran down a hill as fast as he could wasn’t as fast. The streets seemed to zip by urgently, like they all had someplace else to be. For some reason he couldn’t ferret out, that thought made him feel a little sad, even though on all other fronts, he was the happiest he’d ever been in his whole life.

Shiny, meanwhile, had both hooves up on the passenger seat and was badgering their driver with endless questions about the function of the cab.

“So the engine is just covered in a big spell?” Shiny asked.

“That’s right.” The cab driver replied, giving the accelerator pedal a little goose which sent a shiver through the car’s chassis. “The engine has the spell carved into the block. I turn the ignition crank and it moves gems into a position that starts casting the spell which makes the engine turn over. The pistons inside have jewels that repulse and attract each other depending on how the spell is moving. They push up and down and then a flywheel and a bunch of cogs put power through the rear axles, making them turn. Imagine it like a whole herd of unicorns pushing in a circle all at once. That turns the wheels.”

Rubbing the side of her head, the filly tried to wrap her mind around the incredible device. “But... doesn’t unicorn magic have to have somepony thinking about the spell to make it work?”

“Unicorn magic does, yes.” The mare answered, sounding slightly impressed at the child’s knowledge. “The spell itself is triggered by zebra runes, so it’s always ready so long as the shape of the spell is right, but it needs power. Unicorns shape power from pegasus lightning in the weather factories to charge up gems to do that, and all I have to do is switch them out when they get drained. Everything but the magical bits are built by earth ponies, like us!”

“Oooh... I see!”

Junior had only been half listening, but something was bothering him the entire time.

He gently grabbed Shiny’s tail in his teeth and tugged until she sat back beside him. He leaned close for discretion’s sake; while his father seemed, outwardly, to be dozing, he knew that could be a mere facade. Hard Boiled had sharp ears for anypony who thought he could sneak an extra piece of dessert early in the morning.

“Shiny, I... okay, I get that the car is neat, but answer me something. Did you really know my dad was going to have these tickets?” He asked, rubbing his hooftips together.

“I... I didn’t know.” His friend muttered, slightly abashed. “I just knew I had to come see you just then, and something good might happen.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason?” He pressed, putting his hoof on her saddlebag over the crystal ball. “You never get those ‘feelings’ when it’s just good.”

Shiny wouldn’t meet his eyes. She shuffled about on the seat, then lowered herself to her stomach. “Hardy... can’t we just... have fun tonight? Please?” She pleaded, leaning into his side. She curled up against him, trying to let her warmth leech away his worries.

Junior let out a resigned breath and put his leg around her. “Fine. You’re gonna tell me later though, right?”

She said something quiet that he didn’t quite catch. Since the alternative was pressing her somewhere she clearly didn’t want to be pressed, he took it for agreement.

****

“Filly and gentlecolts,” the driver announced over one of his shoulders, “we’re almost to the Castle. You may want to take a quick gander out the windows if you want the ‘full effect’ this evening.”

Junior and Shiny threw themselves at the windows and Hard Boiled, rousing himself from his fortifying nap, soon joined them. The gatherings of costumed ponies on the streets were getting denser the closer they got to the city center. Soon they were starting and stopping regularly to let groups of pedestrians dash in front of the car, which made it easier to see the storefronts, lit up by dozens of Jack-o’-lanterns engraved with rictus grins.

Just as Junior was about to ask ‘How much farther?’ a flight of what looked like gigantic bats swooped low over the car, buffeting the roof. The driver didn’t bat an eyelash. “That’s our signal for ascent. Brace yourselves!”

"Hang on, kids!" Hard Boiled shouted as the entire vehicle shuddered. A low hum began outside followed by a strange pressure on everypony's chests.

"What's happening?!" Junior yelped.

"Did I forget to mention? The tour starts on the top floor!" His father answered, holding the two kids to his chest as the car’s wheels left the tarmac. Leaning up to the window he looked around until he caught sight of a unicorn standing on the roof of a nearby building, horn aglow. She waved and blew him a kiss.

As they soared up over the Castle, Junior gathered the courage to peer out. He'd never been a fan of heights, but these sights were not to be missed.

Hundreds of dressed up semi-equine forms swarmed outside, dancing and drinking in the Castle’s bailey between bonfires. In the distance, projected illusory shadows that looked like enormous, tentacled creatures, which could have swallowed the stone fortifications whole, roiled and beat themselves against some invisible boundary, making it seem like the old fortress was an island of shining safety in a land of eternal, terrifying night.

He'd been to the Castle before on a particularly memorable 'Take your colt to work' day, but that evening, on Nightmare Night, he saw the ancient buttresses as though it were for the very first time. Some part of him was dimly conscious of the fact that must have been the way his ancestors had seen it as they arrived from the wilds of Equestria on their routes of trade and immigration. It was a place lifted from his dreams, and he couldn't help but let a joyful shout.

It was, in some strange way, like coming home.

The car did one slow circle around the building, a series of unicorns standing on the curtain wall passing it from one magical levitation field to the next. As they neared the back of the structure, Shiny pointed towards two parallel lines of torches suspended in mid-air, forming a makeshift landing pattern.

As the vehicle’s nose dipped towards it, Junior's stomach seemed to rise into his throat. Shiny let out a squeal, and even Hard Boiled, normally unflappable, couldn't suppress a gasp as gravity chose that moment to re-assert itself and send them plummeting into the side of the Castle.

As Junior was mentally willing his entire collection of baseball cards to his mother, something glowed blue in the darkness of the archway into the minaret. The car slowed down until it was barely crawling forward, then eased into total, all consuming blackness. There was nothing to see outside, but when wheels met a surface again with a soft bump and the squeak of rubber on marble, Junior breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sir... Your stop.” The driver said as she casually pressed a button under her dashboard, opening both rear doors.

Shiny poked her head out from inside Hard Boiled’s coat. “A-a-are we d-d-dead?”

The stallion ruffled her mane lightly. “No, Miss Shine... we’re very much alive. We’re here.”

Through the windshield, Junior spied a small gathering of other kids and a few adults standing together in a group beside a flickering candle on a table which was the only source of light. Sliding down off the car seat he took a careful step out of the vehicle, feeling his hoof sink into a wonderfully thick carpet. His eyesight hadn’t quite adjusted to the darkness yet, but solid ground was solid ground, so he reached into the vehicle and gave one of Shiny’s gypsy scarves a solid pull.

“Come on out! It’s fine!” He said, encouragingly.

The filly took a bit longer, but finally emerged, stepping out a second before Hard Boiled did. The instant they were out, the car’s doors swung shut again and the vehicle shimmered, then rocketed backwards out into the night sky.

The trio trotted up behind the eager group, who all seemed to be various flavors of well-to-do. Junior inspected a filly wearing Royal Guard armor so perfectly crafted she might almost have been a tiny model for the force. His own costume, home sewn with wooden painted buttons, felt just a little shabby by comparison, but it was still an order of magnitude better crafted than Shiny’s thrown together mish-mash. She was staring with undisguised envy at a colt with hair done up to look like snakes.

Hard Boiled saw the look and nudged her flank with his forehead. She turned, looking up at him and let out a depressed whimper. “Oh... sir, what are we doing here? These kids have probably all got diamond toothbrushes!”

The stallion turned to Shiny and gave an eloquent shrug. “Does that matter? I doubt any of these ponies ever saved a life.”

“...Mr. Boiled?”

“That filly who was in her father’s basement is alive because of you. Don’t shortchange yourself.”

Shiny straightened a bit, let out a shaky breath, and nodded. “T-thank you, sir.”

“May I inquire?”

I jerked my head up as Slip Stitch finally decided to put his two cents in. I hadn’t realized I was staring at my hooves while telling the story until he broke my little monologue.

“Yeah?”

“It’s well known that Princess Luna is never one to skimp when a celebration is happening, however, I’m most impressed by this ‘flying car’ trick.” Stitch said, setting aside his sixth bottom of vodka. He’d already put away enough alcohol to kill most ponies or, incidentally, most Ursa Majors, and his speech wasn’t even slurred. “I must ask if this is some relative of the ‘fixed feather aircraft’ which have been in development for some years?”

I cocked my head. “The aero-fliers? I guess somepony might have looked at that and said to themselves ‘Yeah, sure, let’s take the pegasi out of the sky chariot.’ I think there’s been a big push by the charioteers unions to make sure that you have to have a high speed flying-license to use one, though, and since pegasi are generally the only ones who get those, I don’t think you’re going to have a flying car without somepony else driving it anytime soon, if that’s what you’re thinking. Besides, some things unicorns and pegasi are still just better at than zebra runes and alchemy. Levitation and flight for two.”

“Ahhh, well.” Stitch’s lips twitched into a smile. “More is the pity, though I will never cease to be amazed at what ponies come up with. Please, do go on.”

The small crowd of ponies was exchanging pleasantries and inspecting the table. Around the candle was a circle of little baskets, each full to the brim with gold foil wrapped candies in every shape imaginable, each one was capped with a shiny gemstone. One overeager colt dressed as a devil reached up to take one and his nose bumped against an invisible shield spell that whistled softly. He let out a little whine and fell on his haunches, rubbing his muzzle while his lacily costumed mother inspected him for damage.

Junior touched Shiny’s shoulder and pointed out the way they’d come. “Hey, your eyes are better than mine. What time does the clocktower say?”

Trotting to the edge, the yellow filly squinted down at the huge clock built into one of the shorter towers. “Um, it looks like-”

A massive clang reverberated through the building. The sound was followed a second later by another, even louder bell. Each reprise thereafter the noise grew, until Shiny and Junior were covering their ears with both hooves.

Junior counted off eight tolls before total silence descended. Eight’o’clock, on the dime. As his ears recovered, the candle flame disappeared. It didn’t go out; there were no lingering embers on the wick. It was simply gone. There were a few shrill screams in the dark followed by some scuffling of hooves. Then all was quiet again.

The flame re-appeared, hanging in the air beside the cloaked figure of a pony. The black robe obscured everything about the figure, except a toothy smile which gleamed in the candlelight. A farmer’s scythe with a twisted wooden handle hung beside the pony’s head in a soft, twinkling glow.

A collective gasp went up from the assembled crowd as everypony drew back. A heavy-set mare swooned against her husband, obviously expecting him to catch her. When he didn’t, she ended up flopped on the floor. For a moment, her irritation conquered her fear; she righted herself indignantly and proceeded to kick him in the fetlock.

Even with the resulting “Ow,” however, everypony else’s attention remained fixed on the robed stranger. The figure didn’t move, but the scythe lifted into the air, slid onto it’s side and spun over the heads of the little herd who, to a one, dipped low to avoid it. Swinging back around in a circle, the blade cut through an apple which just happened to be hanging there unnoticed above the crowd, slicing it neatly in two. Juice spattered Junior’s face, and in his anticipation-burdened imagination, he’d thought somepony’s head had been sliced open and blood now coated him; a delusion that persisted until the flavor of apples trickled onto to his lips. He quickly licked them and smiled at his own foolishness.

Levitating the fruit to its lips, the pony in the cowl took a bite and munched at it contemplatively, ignoring the ring of frightened eyes.

One of the stallions, a snooty looking fellow in period dress about a hundred years out of date, took a step forward. “N-n-now s-see here...w-whoever you are! T-that wasn’t f-funny!”

The anonymous pony regarded him coldly until he shrank back. Wind whipped in through the open window and the robe seemed to dissolve into a wisp of fog, swirling away, and revealing, in all her royal glory, the tall and regal form of Princess Luna.

Her billowing, cosmic mane swept out and flew up towards the ceiling, constellations flickering in it’s shape. She wore form fitting armor around her flanks, and a crown of what could only be artfully arranged animal bones. Junior recognized the presence of dragon’s teeth from science class. The outfit suited her, in a way.

“My apologies. You are correct, of course. It wasn’t funny.” Her voice was cool, like a calming breeze, but even standing at the back of the pack, the trio had no trouble hearing it. “It was hilarious!” Luna burst into raucous laughter. It seemed to fill the tiny space and left the smaller ponies shifting from leg to leg uncertainly. There were a few nervous giggles here and there.

As her chuckling died down, the princess straightened, sweeping the room with her eyes. “My friends! Excuse an old pony her little jokes. I wish to welcome yo-ouuu...” She stumbled over the last word, as one of her elegantly shaped eyebrows shot skyward. Her nose wrinkled and she shook her head violently back and forth.

She turned a suspicious gaze to one side, then the other. Her horn lit, an electric blue. A shiver passed up Junior’s back; It felt like the time he’d been to the doctor for a broken leg and the unicorn pediatrician examined it with his magic. “Welcome or not, there is somepony here who is too nosy for their own good...” She murmured.

Princess Luna’s mane seemed to grow until it filled his vision and her august presence swelled with it. Everypony, even those who had never shown a hint of deference in their lives, seemed to simultaneously realize precisely who was leading their little tour, and dropped to their knees, foreheads pressed to the floor. Junior realized in a detached sort of way that it must have been some sort of hypnosis like in his detective comics, but the feeling wasn’t unpleasant. It was just imperative. She hadn’t taken control of his body; he’d wanted to kneel. It felt important that he pay homage. And he wasn’t alone: It seemed to be affecting everypony at once...

...everypony except Shiny.

Junior hadn’t even realized he was kneeling until it was done, but as soon as he was there, he became aware of his friend standing beside him. He tried to catch his friend’s attention with a subtle poke, but she only had eyes for Princess Luna.

The immortal princess regarded, with a hint of a frown, the tiny filly who dared to stand when everypony else knelt. Lifting one hoof, she reached towards Shiny and he tensed, prepared to watch his only friend in the world banished to someplace dark and smelly where he’d never see her again. He put all his will into trying to leap up so she’d banish him, too.

However, Luna merely tapped Shiny lightly on the tip of her sunflower yellow nose. A second gust of wind billowed through the room and something seemed to pass between them.

Shiny’s face tightened like she was straining against an unseen force. Luna held her gaze for a few more seconds then a broad smile spread across her blue lips and she let her leg drop.

“You are an interesting child, little one. You were trying to look inside me.” Luna said, reflectively.

Sweet Shine touched her muzzle where the alicorn’s armored toe had brushed her. “I saw... endless grey. And it was... cold...”

“That which you have witnessed is between ourselves, dear filly. Maybe one day, you might find ponies who will understand you and your gift, but until then, I pity what you have lived through. Regardless, it is best you learn that curiosity is not always healthy. I have seen your mind... and there are things therein I do not think you would like revealed, either.” Luna paused meaningfully, her apple dicing itself into chunks on the edge of her scythe. One piece she snapped out of the air while the other floated down to the filly, who stared at it blankly before taking a tentative bite.

Shiny chewed for a second, paused, then gave a slow nod. Something about the act held a weight she hadn’t really had time to consider. It was a deal; a promise of some uncommon variety the young pony wasn’t wholly equipped to understand, and it had been sealed with an apple. “Yes, your majesty.”

“Good.”

Turning to the herd, who were just then realizing something had happened which they hadn’t been party to, Luna put on her most affable grin and the compulsion was released. They started got to their hooves, dusted themselves off, and looked around at one another, wondering what had just happened.

“Dear friends, please rise.” She began, dropping into a practiced storytelling mode and projecting pitch perfectly so the whole room could hear every word. “As I was saying, I wish to welcome you to my home. Once, this was a place of retreat for my beloved sister, when the cold winds blew and the nights in Canterlot grew long. Now, this Nightmare Night... it is mine."

“Wait, wait! What happened?!” Swift suddenly rocked upright, scattering bags of cotton candy in all directions.

I stopped again, sipped my drink, and swished it around my mouth. “What do you mean ‘what happened’?” I asked.

“What was that with the Princess?” My partner pointed one wingtip at Taxi.

“Ahhh...” I turned to my driver whose ears splayed out to either side. “You want to ‘illuminate’ that particular piece of awkward business? I can only tell what I saw and what I think. Do you want me to start making conjectures?”

The cabbie rolled onto her belly, looking very suddenly sobered and not at all inclined to answer questions. “Like she said. That’s between me and the princess.”

Swift shook her feathers out. “I don’t mean that. I mean... what did you do? Was it a spell?”

Taxi waved a hoof over her forehead in a little circle. “Do you see a horn? I just... I was looking at her, and it was like I... felt like I was seeing into... this other place. It’s... damnit, I was a foal and foals are sensitive. Apparently. I looked too hard. I don’t feel like discussing it, alright? I’ll try to explain later when I’m sober and in a good mood, but not now, okay?”

‘Later’ was an obvious lie if you’d known Taxi for even a few months, and I’d heard that line plenty of times over the last few decades. A list of ponies wanted to poke around in Taxi’s head, from the Chief right on through public prosecutors and police psychologists down to mystified patrolponies. All of them, myself included, had given up after the first decade or so of beating their heads against her eternal, stubborn self-secrecy. It made her a great undercover cop, but also a frustrating conversationalist when the topic turned to personal matters.

Swift was about to press for details that might have ended in thrown edibles, but I put my toe over her lips. “Let it go, kid. Not worth getting your blood pressure up. Besides, Taxi irritating Princess Luna wasn’t anywhere near the wildest thing that happened that night.”

The crowd parted for the princess as she strode through then followed at a respectful distance. Not all eyes were on Luna, however; a few of the adults and one or two of the foals were giving Shiny sideways glances as Junior tried to move between them, blocking their curious stares. The yellow filly, for her part, was studying her hooves, apparently lost in her own thoughts. Junior stepped on her scarves to get her moving.

The princess’s horn let off a huge globe of soft white light that drifted towards the ceiling. As the room was illuminated, a series of gems spread around the walls caught and scattered the light, finally revealing the space in its entirety. The space was one of the huge royal chambers, though it didn’t seem to have a door; just a precipitous drop. Against one wall there was a line of cushions and couches, and on the other, a huge table was practically sagging under the most incredible spread of food Junior had ever seen. His mouth watered at the sight of celery drizzled with chocolate.

“My friends, this next segment of the tour is for the children only.” Luna announced, waving towards the spectacular outlay. A few of the parents raised their ears and opened their mouths to object, but the princess silenced them all with one raised hoof. “You may, of course, exempt your foals if you prefer, and should any of them at any point wish to leave, they will appear here. Otherwise, please feast and converse.”

The adults turned to one another, clearly a bit nervous; on one hoof, she was a princess, but on the other, it would have been leaving their young in the care of somepony they didn’t know all that well. The decision was made for them, however, when they looked back at the children: Puppy-dog eyes from your own kid are bad enough, but a whole herd of them was impossible to deny.

Hard Boiled bumped Junior’s shoulder and whispered, “Hey, tell me about it when you get back, alright?”

The colt nodded eagerly, excited tension flaring in his gut. “Yes, sir!”

Seeing that nopony was going to make a scene, Princess Luna lifted her midnight wings and turned in a circle. ”Now then, children, do you all see the eternal sun on the floor?”

Junior hadn’t noticed it before, but he was standing on a huge rendering of the royal seal. The golden eight pointed star spread out on the floor was almost wide enough for the car they’d all arrived in to park comfortably inside it.

“Stay inside it unless you wish to be ground into a fine paste or fall to your deaths,” the princess instructed, smiling in a self-satisfied fashion. There was a hustle of tiny hooves. Junior was shoulder to shoulder with Shiny and a pegasus colt dressed as Wonderbolt Captain Soarin’, all keeping carefully away from the edge. Despite the shortage of room, nopony had the audacity to stand under the princess, and she was left plenty of space at the center of the emblem.

The alicorn’s horn lit up, casting moonlight on the faces of the ponies nearest her. Junior noticed a soft shine gathering around his legs and tried to lift one for closer examination, but discovered he couldn’t. A grinding noise somewhere under them set the small herd murmuring to one another.

“Oh, and children?” The Princess practically purred, waiting until all eyes were on her to go on. “If you might happen to feel the need to scream, now would be the time.”

Junior turned to ask his father what she meant, and the ground dropped out from under him.

****

Gravity is generally a friendly fellow one interacts with every day without incident. Every now and again, either because of foolishness, incaution, or — in Junior’s case — the whim of a powerful magical being with a particularly rough sense of humor, gravity goes completely off the rails and decides to scare the pants off of you.

As the great seal plummeted down the shaft, Junior had plenty of time to consider all the choices in his short life which had lead him to the point where he was falling atop a marble stone with only the grace of the princesses to protect him, one of whom had put him there. He couldn’t even flail or wave his legs around and, now he had the chance to think about it, those things would probably have been silly, childish, and unproductive. He could scream though, and when all other courses of action are exhausted, you go with what’s available.

Twisting to Shiny he decided to check if she was screaming too because if they survived, then he’d at least be able to feel a bit better about himself. No such luck. In stark contrast to her reaction to being in a plummeting car, she handled this with grace: Her hooves locked to the surface by the shimmer of magic, her mane and scarves blowing straight up, wearing a knowing little smile on her face.

Screaming was just beginning to get tiring when the princess gritted her teeth and their descent slowed, cutting everypony off mid-squeak. One little filly managed a breath, started to begin again, and a pony who could only have been her brother swatted her with his tail until she shut up. A second later little rain of personal accessories that’d come loose in the downward flight started. Finding their legs free, those that could caught their possessions with magic, wings, or teeth and set them absentmindedly back in place. Most were too scared to do more than hang on for dear life and trust their tour-guide wasn’t intent on splattering them across the bottom of the deep hole.

Junior’s knees were shaking as he stumbled sideways into Shiny, giggling drunkenly.

“Hee... ugh, you could have warned me...” He scolded, using her back for balance.

She shrugged, sitting down and adjusting her cap so her ears poked through the holes evenly. “It woulda ruined that awesome girly shriek if I’d done that. I’m so telling your dad you scream like a filly, by the way.”

Junior swatted her in the shoulder. She gave him a return punch in the ribs that sent him sprawling.

Most of the other kids were looking around and realizing they weren’t gonna die, and it was the best feeling in the whole world. The filly who’d been about to start yelling again was verging on tears, until her brother shoved a whole peanut butter bar from his candy satchel into her muzzle.

Their ‘elevator’ was still dropping, though at a greatly reduced speed. As Princess Luna was still concentrating on not letting them all splash on the bottom, Junior, rubbing his side where Shiny had smacked him, started inspecting the walls. The shaft seemed to have been cut very carefully out of the stone and polished to a mirror shine. Looking up, he tried to find the hole, but it was lost in the distance.

With a gentle bump, the platform came to a rest and the princess exhaled a long breath, grinning at the kids surrounding her. “Well, I am glad that actually worked. You would think in my long life that moving the moon would prepare me for something like that. You would be wrong, of course but you would think. Is everyone alright? If you need to vomit, try to do so in a corner.”

Shiny stepped up and put her hoof in the air. Luna acknowledged her with a wing.

“Your majesty... where are we?” She asked, lowering her leg.

“Ahhh, a good question!” The princess replied, folding her wings against her sides. “To answer, we are in the underbelly of your city, deep beneath the streets. I have not been here in more than a decade since I closed this vault. Let us see if I can remember...”

Turning towards a particular section of the wall, Luna’s horn blazed. A shining silver line appeared in the stone surface, spreading out into the shape of a doorway just tall enough for Luna to pass through comfortably. All at once, the outlined part of the wall vanished leaving a pitch-black tunnel.

“Here we are!” Luna declared, turning to her charges. “Now then children, I must ask you... have any of you studied the Cutie Mark Crusades in school yet?”

A particularly brave unicorn filly just a little older than Junior made her horn flash and the princess nodded in her direction. “It was a big fight with the dragons, right?”

“Yes! Very good, child!” The princess gave her an approving pat on the head with her feathers and the girl turned beet red. “It was a big fight. A war, some would call it, though not in the conventional sense.”

Striding to the passage, Luna turned and her wings flared to their full, impressive width.

“Tonight, I will reveal a secret to you I feel the world must know.” The alicorn began, taking in each of the small faces staring up at her. Their expressions held a mixture of awe, fear, and wonder. “I tell this tale Nightmare Night because it is the night over a millennia ago when I was banished from this world and became a myth, told to scare children. My sister might disagree with me discussing such dark matters with young ponies, but young ponies... like you... are the only ones who can see that such a thing never happens again.”

“Miss Luna... I mean, your Majesty! Sorry!” A little green unicorn colt wearing a pair of wolf-ears ducked his head.

“It is fine, child. Tonight, while I am with you, I will be Luna. Speak.” The princess flicked her tail against her cutie-mark.

Bucking up his bravery, the boy asked, “My mum was in the Crusades. She gets scared sometimes while she’s dreaming and throws things in her sleep and talks about dragons... but there’s a baby dragon in my school and she’s nice. Mum says I shouldn’t play with her though. Why are so many of the adults scared of dragons?”

“It... is complicated, my little pony.” Luna’s voice was full to brimming with a deep seated emotion that only one of her audience really understood; grief. “You can study the whole truth yourself one day. Suffice to say, when there is bad blood for many years, one tiny mistake can set off an atrocity. That... is not what tonight is about, however. Tonight.. .is about one of the things that ended the war. A lesson you must keep in your hearts...” Her eyes glinted with mischief. “-which might also just scare the fur off you!”

Stepping back into the shadowy passage, she beckoned them all to follow.

Shiny was first after the princess, with Junior quick on her heels; after a brief pause, the rest of the group went after them.

With only Luna’s horn for light, there wasn’t much for them to see. Junior could make out vague, boxy shapes on either side of the tunnel in low alcoves. The floor felt like some kind of brick or stone, but it was warm under his hooves. Something in the air smelled like dead leaves. He expected dust, but the hidden vault was immaculate. It’d been sealed so perfectly that even the spiders had long since died of starvation.

Luna stopped at a seemingly empty wall. Raising her wings, she shot a blast of shining sparks from the tip of her horn that arched high overhead... then hovered in the air, illuminating everything, as though a night-time firework had burst and refused to fade.

At last, Junior could see his surroundings. And so could everypony else. Every one of the foals let out a simultaneous breath as they took in the splendor behind the princess.

It was a mural in colors so perfect they might almost have been looking at a photograph. It depicted the familiar cityscape of his home city in a different time. Junior could make out a few shapes he recognized, including the peculiar arrangement of Shield obelisks near his house, and the ice-cream factory’s solid pink dome jutting into the sky. The artist’s perspective must have been from the air, as he or she looked down on an impossible army.

Hundreds of ponies stood on balconies, battle platforms, and manned unusual, dangerous devices he’d only seen on a few of the buildings that had been around since before he was born. In the sky, pegasi dove and wound around the few skyscrapers daring to poke up into the clouds, all wearing different kinds of armor. At the very center of the image, the Castle squatted in the middle of a carpet of ponies so dense it almost hurt to look at all the colors; at the very top of the Castle, Princess Luna stood atop the battlements of the bastion facing an ominous cloud of what looked like bats in the distance, gathered above a forest he couldn’t remember being that close to the Castle.

“It was the final days of the conflict that is now known as the Cutie Mark Crusades.” Luna began, her voice carefully neutral. “The last days, perhaps, for our civilization. Suffice it to say, it was our pride that drove us closer to annihilation than since I first left this world and it was pride that set me on that path.”

Gesturing towards the mural she let their eyes slide over the various details. “The war had been going on for nearly five years.” Regret snuck into her words. “We lost many of our most spectacular athletes, bakers, doctors, and writers to the war effort, and wasted our most brilliant minds on devising new ways to make death. Never had we constructed such evil devices of metal and mysticism as during those most foul times.”

Letting her wings slide down until the feathers dragged the floor, Luna started deeper into the dark, followed by more spots of light leaping from her to brighten the gloom. Junior took the time to stop and inspect one of the boxes lining the hall. Shiny stepped up beside him.

Each box had a face of a pony carved into the top of it with a number, a cutie-mark, and a symbol: a unicorn’s horn, a pair of wings, or a set of horseshoes.

“Coffins.” Shiny said, reverently. “This is a tomb.”

Junior hopped back from the sarcophagus like it might bite him. “What, for real?!”

His friend nodded, looking into the closed eyes of the mare whose face was carved into the top. Her cutie-mark looked like wood carving knife cutting a heart shape out of a log. It reminded him a little of his mom’s.

“Number one seven three. I wonder what that means.” Shiny said, pointing at the numerals.

“I... think we’re gonna to find out.” Junior pointed after the princess and then took a few steps in that direction before realizing Shiny wasn’t with him. She was still standing there, one hoof poised in the air, head swiveling back and forth.

“Do...do you feel that?” She asked, a note of worry entering her voice.

Turning his head left and right he listened but couldn’t hear anything besides the shuffling hooves of the other foals getting farther away. “Feel what?”

“I... don’t know.” She replied, sounding very unsettled. “It was like that time I licked a magic gem to see if it was charged.”

Junior started off in the direction the others had gone. “Shiny, we’re with a pony who can raise and lower the moon every day, a half mile underground. I think we’re okay.”

She shook her head as though trying to get a fly out of her ear. “I... I guess it... it was nothing...”

“Yeah, now let’s go before we miss any of the story!”

****

Luna halted again in front of a second mural. This one was painted on a wide wall, surrounding a particularly ornate coffin with a lid of shining obsidian.

It depicted Luna holding conference in a great hall before a roaring fire with three other ponies: a pegasus mare in the golden armor of the royal guard, a wild-eyed green earth pony stallion with a slicked back mane and enough tools in various pouches of his barding to make his knees sag, and a tiny unicorn that couldn’t have had her cutie mark for more than a couple years, yet wore a huge weapon strapped to her back, with a massive barrel that was almost as long as she was.

The princess’s head hung low as she continued her tale. “The dragons, all through the war, had always preferred to raid. Never to attack directly nor in great numbers. They carried off what they wanted or needed, destroyed what they thought would demoralize, but they preferred to leave survivors to burden the living. That changed when we developed... a new kind of weapon.”

Drawing herself up, she pounded her chest with one knee. “They were weapons so destructive that they should never have seen night nor day, much less ever be fired, but we were proud of the sheer power of those weapons, and no place was more proud than this city. Detrot was the center of our entire weapons development program. You had all the parts here: The gem mines. The Shield. The Twilight Academy. Unfortunately, you also had I to lead while your generals were away... history’s greatest fool.”

Luna put her leg on top of the black coffin and leaned against it like an old friend.
There was no cutie-mark nor face on its surface. The only distinguishing marks were the numbers one, two, and three, side by side.

Lifting her gaze from the box, she smiled sadly at each little pony around her one after the other. “Nopony knows how the dragons found out about the weapons; we only built a few.” She said as a single tear formed in the corner of her eye then leaked down her cheek. “They were meant to finish the war... not escalate it.”

Junior thought he should have been shocked to see his princess weep. He’d learned about her life in school or at least, what was known. Celestia’s was well documented, but over the centuries much of Luna’s had been lost despite the sun princess’s best efforts at preservation. A thousand years is a very long time. It was so odd to see her, to see an apex royal, as just a pony; a living, breathing creature with memories and emotions.

Pulling herself up, the midnight blue alicorn trudged down the corridor, every step seeming to add an invisible weight to her shoulders. Her small charges trailed along, listening attentively.

“Instead-” She continued. “-for our hubris and daring to create something so vile as those weapons, the draconic hordes set aside their myriad internal disputes and gathered to see us ended.” Turning around a corner, Luna stopped in a doorway that appeared to lead into a wider room. “Their leader, Lord Smoulder, hurled an enormous force at the city of Los Pegasus. - greater even than the dragon migrations, greater than anypony had ever seen. Our advance scouts barely got warning to us in time. It was strange, seemingly unprovoked, and completely out of character. We should have known it was a trap.”

Pointing her horn into the room she thrust it towards a wide trencher ringing the room. Oil inside it burst into flame, sending light up towards the tall roof.

Junior could only stare at the enormous painting therein.

A glowing metropolis in the clouds hung above a beautiful desert colored almost white by the mid-afternoon sun. Junior had seen deserts only in books and there, in that cold mausoleum, he found a rendering so perfect he thought he might almost prick himself on the cacti needles.

All was not well in that frozen city. He could make out small shapes falling from the clouds and curls of darker cloud which he realized could only be smoke. Lizard shaped beings clung to the clouds, blasting great gouts of fiery death down skyways and air-lanes. His curiosity got the better of him and he trotted forward first with the rest of the children quick behind. They spread out around the room, taking in the little elements.

The oil fires provided just enough luminance to see by but not much more so he had to get close to actually make out what the tiny forms raining from the city were. They were ponies. Wingless, burning ponies.

It must have taken months to finish with even the most skilled hooves at work.

Luna went on, regaining a bit of her strength in the telling as the children gawked at the visions of brutal warfare. “We dispatched our finest... the one the dragons called ‘The Demolisher.’” She indicated a group of strange looking vehicles blasting through the clouds, each one pulled by fliers, with a unicorn standing on the roof and an earth pony at the gunnery station on the side. The foremost vehicle in front was painted red and gold, with a badge of a rearing pony on it’s side. “She took Detrot’s entire mechanized defense force. Every war-scooter we had available took wing with her. We gave them gladly to save the lives of those ponies in Los Pegasus.“

Junior tried edged around, trying to see the features of the pony driving that lead scooter, but her face and mane were covered by silvery armor plating. Her pelt was a rich rusty orange.

“We sent the prototypes of the new weapons with them. Every... last... one!” The princess angrily beat her hoof on the stone to punctuate each word. “We sent them our finest warriors and left ourselves, foolishly, unprotected!”

In her fury, the alicorn was a truly terrifying sight. All of those listening took an unconscious step back.

“Our defenders didn’t even have time to engage the enemy at Los Pegasus.” Luna dipped her head in the direction of a carving, which spanned three of the room’s pillars, of mighty lizards being chased through the clouds by the boxy, horse drawn weapons platforms. “The dragons simply fled when they saw our war-wagons coming. They didn’t even bother to fight a delaying action. It was only then, our forces realized their mistake...”

Her starry tail fell, dragging along the stones with a strange rasping hum. “One cannot blame ponykind I suppose. A thousand years of peace left us unprepared for war. Our books on strategy were from ancient times of lances and raw lightning. Our guides for fighting dragons said simply not to. So, in the end, the decision to send our warriors was mine. The consequences... were mine.”

Reaching up to one of the frescos, she pressed a hidden switch. Gears twitched and an entire section of the wall swung up and out, revealing yet another passage. Junior was beginning to wonder just how deep this particular rabbit hole was going to go.

The group toddled along behind the princess as she left the chamber, her armored hooves clicking on the brickwork, sending echoes in both directions.

****

“It’s... it’s a map?” Shiny inquired, as she studied the grand hall they’d entered.

“Very good, child. Yes... this is your city as it was some years ago.” Luna affirmed, sweeping the soft ray of light from her horn tip back and forth over the area.

Spread out on the floor down a short series of steps, a huge and carefully modeled version of Detrot lay, preserved in time. The detail work on each of the buildings was absolutely amazing. Junior tried to peer into one of the little windows, only to discover it was carved from spectacularly painted stone.

“This was built for my war room by the great cow artisan, August Moodin.” Adjusting her crown, a faint blush entered her cheeks. “He and I... well, he was a quite a sweet bull.” Her face slid once more into carefully cultivated neutrality, but not before Junior saw a whisper of a smile.

Gesturing towards the far side of the city with a wing, Luna directed their interest towards a huge number of tiny figures of flying reptiles, each exquisitely carved and each no bigger than a baseball. Junior set his chin on the floor at their height, trying to imagine the perspective of a pony in the city then decided to try to find The Castle. When he did, it looked... odd. There was a circle of pony figurines surrounding the central tower and a strange spire-like object jutting up from its roof that, were it to scale, would have been immense.

He raised his hoof and waited until the princess nodded in his direction. “Your Majesty... I mean... Miss Luna... um... what’s that thing? It’s not really on the Castle outside.”

“Ahhh, our ‘final solution.’” Luna told him, musingly. “Pray you never see such a thing in actuality, my dear little police colt, because you are looking at the single greatest atrocity of the war.” Junior tilted his head, waiting for the princess to explain. It took a moment, but when she did, her voice was rife with guilt. “This was the first dual purpose weather factory, where we converted electricity to stored magic on a grand scale... and more than that, it’s where we designed and constructed those weapons.”

“The dragon attack on Los Pegasus was a feint. Lord Smoulder was... a canny foe... and their true target-” She sat and raised both foreknees, spreading them to encompass the whole model. “-was Detrot.”

Luna turned back to the crowd. “Smoulder foresaw the eradication of his species if we’d been allowed to make more than a few of those foul weapons. His plan was to eliminate any and all who might have contributed to their construction, just to be certain. But the very fact that we made them at all should have told him... just how far ]we were willing to go.”

Sidling over he put her muzzle under Shiny’s ear and asked very quietly, “Hey, how... come we never heard of any of this? I mean, grand-dad fought in the war. He even gave my dad his service gun, and dad told me about the attack on Los Pegasus. I never knew about any huge attack on Detrot.”

“You think I know?” The filly answered, her eyes roving over the miniaturized city. “Mom... said things were different when she was young. Nothing... nothing like this... thing.”

Shiny seemed disgusted by the entire idea of the war-map. Her lips curled as though she’d eaten something nasty and couldn’t get it out of her teeth. “Something about this feels... wrong.”

“What, like earlier?” Junior jerked his head back the way they’d come.

“No... This feels like... Like I’m in a hospital full of screaming voices nobody is listening to.” Shiny raised her head, and the colt felt himself go cold inside. “Hardy, this is a terrible place.”

His friend’s face was a mask of red hot anger. He’d only seen her like that once before, when she’d watched a group of colts tormenting a cat, and that had ended very poorly for everypony involved.

She stalked towards the princess, her shoulders high and tight as she advanced. Her saddlebags slid back on her hips, but she ignored them.. “You... what’s down here? What did you do?!”

Junior threw himself in front of his friend. “No way, Shiny, do not—” but she just shoved him aside as she strode towards Princess Luna, standing at the alicorn’s hooves, absolutely shaking with emotion as she glared up at her. The other foals in the room could only watch in abject horror as one of their number placed herself in front of the most influential, powerful being they’d ever been near, and leveled unbridled judgement at her.

Luna met the filly’s little pink eyes with that same stoic expression of boundless patience. Her mane blew a bit faster, as though the lunar tides were disturbed by the tiny pony’s rage alone. She offered her hoof to Shiny, who brushed it aside with a vicious swat.

Junior tried again to push between them but found his hooves no longer touching the ground. He hung there, suspended again in a field of gentle levitation, flailing to reach the two of them. Not that he had any idea what he was going to do if he could reach them.

The princess turned her head to peer at him critically, then back to the furiously trembling girl daring to demand truth from her. She spoke very slowly, in measured tones.

“If I were of the same mind as my dear sister...” She started, her horn lifting Shiny off the ground. The filly didn’t so much as blink at finding herself at the same height as Luna’s piercing eyes. “...I might be inclined, at this time, to take a student. Be glad, for your sake, that I am not. I am a much... harsher teacher than she.”

Part 3: Blue Moon

View Online

Starlight Over Detrot: Nightmare Night

Part 3: Blue Moon

“She didn’t...” Swift was wide-eyed as she balanced precariously on her cotton candy pillow.

“Oh yes she did!” Taxi howled, flinging her latest empty bottle towards the bars, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. “I was madder than a whole heap of ferrets on fire, and didn’t care whether or not she turned me into foal soup... and here she is suddenly talking about how impressed she is. I’d never been so confused in my whole life!”

“Her student, though?” My partner dropped her second bottle of alcoholic lemonade and rubbed her stomach. “Princess Celestia only took, like, one student I even know about, and Princess Luna never does!”

“Well, the Night Princess has always enjoyed a certain degree of ‘honesty’ in ponies.” Slip Stitch put in, somehow talking through lips stuffed to capacity with bits of string cheese. “She admires bravery, but moreso, she admires somepony who will tell her the truth, regardless of the consequences.”

“Also, you’ve got to understand what Taxi was like back then.” I said as I smirked at my driver who had a hoof-full of chocolate sprinkles halfway to her mouth. “She made her instructors at the Academy absolutely nuts. If her intuition had translated into being able to fire a gun, remember procedure, and not piss off the teachers she’d have been through there faster than I was. As a filly... she was far worse.”

Luna set Shiny and Junior to one side, then stepped up to the map of the city. “We discovered the dragon’s plans almost too late.” continued Luna, heedless of the continued glare Shiny was giving her. “We had nothing but my own talents, the wits of our artificers, and the spell matrixes around which our new weapons were based. They could not be replicated in time, but they could be used.”

The other children were mostly watching the princess, but were giving Shiny wary sidelong glances, like a baby cockatrice had suddenly appeared in their midst.

Junior crawled closer to the filly and put his hooves around her neck. “Shiny, are you okay?” He lifted her face so he could see her eyes.

“I’m fine.” She said it just loud enough to be heard; it was the least ‘fine’ thing he’d ever heard out of her mouth.

In the year he’d known Shiny, the colt had seen his friend in tears. He’d seen her angry plenty of times. He’d seen her laugh, even when she was hurting. But he’d never seen her like this.

Her eyes were like Luna’s. Dead. Empty.

Part of him desperately wanted her to cry, or scream, or do... something besides just sit there.

When he was unsure what to do with her, he often just gave her a hug; for some reason, that always seemed to work. After a few seconds, she returned the gesture, giving him a light squeeze as her breathing became a little more natural. “It’s okay. Really. I’m alright. At least, I will be.”

As he pulled back, he saw a smile. Her eyes hadn’t changed, but it was something.

Junior rose to his hooves as her realized that Luna was patiently waiting for them. As was everypony else, albeit with less visible patience.

“Sorry, your majesty,” he said, apologizing for both of them.

“Quite alright. Had I a friend like you to confide in a thousand years ago, I might not have made certain... mistakes.” Luna then returned her scrutiny to the crowd. “Understand, this war was one that could have been avoided. Both sides knew this, in their heart of hearts, and yet we persisted. We could have sued for peace. It might have taken a concession or two, but in the end, pride stayed our hooves... and brought us to that.” She waved her leg in the direction of the spire on the tiny Castle’s roof.

“These zebra rune matrixes were like very complicated blueprints.” The princess explained, lifting one of the dragon figures and turning it in a slow circle. “Etch the correct part of it onto an object and that object is endowed with the spell. Cast the entire spell matrix itself with a horn... and it is destroyed. It required more power, more concentration, and more thought than even I was capable of... but as always, the solution was in ponies working together.”

She lowered herself onto her belly, the weight of her guilt becoming like a millstone around her neck. “Our earth pony engineers cobbled together... a lightning rod. It was an ugly thing, built of whatever scrap metal we could scrounge together, but with it, we could call down the power of the storm itself to give life to the spell matrix. Every flight capable pegasus in our volunteer ranks would be called to shape a thunderhead and channel it’s fury into a single strike... and I... would catch the lightning, change it, focus it, and spread it amongst our spellcasters...” Reaching up she rubbed her horn as though trying to massage out an old ache.

“Every unicorn got a piece of the storm and a tiny piece of the spell. Together, we would cast it in it’s entirety. The most powerful spell incanted for... well... for a thousand years... which turned into an atrocity. The like of which this world had never seen and, cast your hopes to the sky, will never see again.”

She let the silence linger, drawing out the tension from her riveted audience. Finally, one tall and slightly chubby unicorn got up the nerve to ask, “But... Yer Majesty...What’d tha spell do?”

Nodding at the boy, she got up and moved around the outside edge of the map-room to a part of the mural, pointing her horn at what appeared at first glance to be just another part of the painting. She tapped her horn against it until she found a particular spot, into which her horn simply slipped. There was a click, followed by several grinding sounds. With a blast of air, the map began to rotate, rising out of the floor on three pylons; Beneath the miniature city, a circular staircase descended deeper into the sub-terra.

“Now, I ask you one more time if any of you wish to leave. You can go back to your parents. You will not hear nor see what I am going to show, though one day you might discover it on your own. If you want to leave, raise your hoof and I will send you back upstairs.”

The foals looked around at their neighbors; not one knee rose. Shiny was back to watching Luna with that same frigid rage.

“I see. Then, we go.”

****

The dim light coming off Luna’s horn was barely enough for everypony to see where they were setting their hooves as their plunge into the underworld continued. The walls were getting rougher, more like natural stone and less like the cut surfaces of the tomb.

Junior had long since lost sight of the ceiling and the princess was no longer putting out stars for them to see by, so when Shiny slowed down without warning, he almost ran right into her rear.

“Uh...Shiny?”

“What?” She asked, curtly.

“Are you... I mean, we can go back up...”

“No. She needs me right now.”

“What... who? The princess? Wait. Weren’t you just... Shiny?”

His friend didn’t reply; she simply sped up again.

The change in her attitude had almost given him whiplash, but Junior knew he wouldn’t get anything else out of her. She could be terribly hard headed like that.

****

The inability to see the sky was messing with Junior’s temporal awareness. The trip down the stairwell seemed to take many minutes and the air was thick and close.

Their descent eventually stopped at a series of long hallways, branching off in every direction. The princess led them unerringly in one direction, seeming to know precisely where she was going. After he’d long ago lost his way, their journey ended abruptly at an archway.

Unlike the rough-hewn, unfinished look of everything around it, this doorway was carved from pure alabaster marble. Across the top, there was a series of symbols in a language he didn’t recognize, wrought in gold.

As if reading his thoughts, Luna’s voice intoned: “It’s old Equestrian. ‘Here lies the great crime of Princess Luna. May time forgive her, though she will never forgive herself.’”

Dipping her head, she tapped the arch on both sides, her horn letting out a metallic ringing that hurt Junior’s ears. There was a noise like a very big bubble popping, followed by a rush of wind and a cacophony of smells which he definitely didn’t like. Burning meat, like from the griffin eatery he had to walk past on the way to school. The reek of snake, dry and foul. Decay. He remembered decay from the time he found his first goldfish floating at the top of it’s bowl.

Princess Luna proceeded through the door into the space beyond without another word.

He tried to get some glimpse of something but it was like walking into his closet late at night and closing the door. He’d found Shiny sometimes doing just that, sitting amongst his toys, cuddling his ragged, button-eyed teddy bear when she wanted a place to sleep without bothering him.

The smell was much stronger now and his nostrils were starting to burn, reducing him to breathing through his mouth. The gasping pants of a few of the others told him he was not alone in finding the stench unbearable.

They all trailed in Luna’s hoofsteps, trying to see out into the stygian nether they’d found themselves in. The walls and ceiling were far away, and the floor seemed to be some sort of dust that clung to Junior’s hooves. He stumbled, kicking something chalky white that rolled end over end, passing out of sight before he could figure out what it was.

Without warning, the princess’s horn went out, leaving them in utter, empty black. There were a few gasps and a squeak of fear. He felt Shiny bump into him and put his leg around her middle to stabilize himself.

“Worry not, children. I am here. I only tell this in darkness because I wish you to comprehend what was done.” The princess’s voice was tender and comforting. They all stilled and listened, ears perked.

“You all must understand this. Understand and take it with you. Whatever you tell your parents is your responsibility. They may not believe you, but you will know the truth, regardless. What you do with this truth will determine the course of Equestria’s future. I leave it now, in your hooves.”

Luna’s words washed over them, bringing unbidden images of their loved ones, friends and family, to their minds. Junior wondered if it was magic, or just her presence working on his imagination

“We knew the dragons were coming.” The princess’s voice no longer came from directly in front of them. Junior might have sworn she was whispering into his ear.

“Their cohort would have blotted out the sun with their wings. It was composed of every dragon they could drag into battle. Fully a fifth of their civilization, supporting the war effort. There had been negotiated rules of engagement, and until that day, both sides had managed to keep to them. They did not attack our hospitals nor our orphanages. On btoh sides, all those that died were warriors, and civilian casualties were only incidental.

“That all changed on that day... and we were the ones to change it.

“Overhead, a magnificent force of pegasi built the storm. We four, the generals, stood beneath the obscenity, the needle rising high into the morning sky; a monstrosity built of our boundless hubris. At the appointed hour, the weather control teams sped their work and I breathed the air of your city for what I thought could be the last time. Hundreds of ponies surrounded us, some holding the tower in place, some ready with their part of the spell, and each having taken a vow of secrecy. Each of them knew only that what we were to do would save their families and the lives of their loved ones. The time came. I gave the signal.”

Luna’s words were growing in volume. Junior hadn’t noticed it until she stopped to draw a breath but the force of her voice was like a physical thing, bearing down on his chest and making his heart beat faster.

“The lightning strike bore from the heavens! It ripped down the spire and our horn... burned. We dragged the maleficence of the storm down and bent it to our will. The spell matrix connecting all those minds waited, like a greedy child.

“We held the spell and cast... and for an instant, we were more than a pony. We were a pulsar! We might have our night eternal once more! Endless, endless power!”

A very faint gleam was emanating from a particular spot in front of them where Junior thought he’d last seen the princess... a gleam like two slitted, yellow eyes. As she continued, she sounded different; scornful, and not at all like the princess they’d come all the way down with.

“You saw the numbers on those tombs upstairs. Each corresponds to a number in a secret registry of names held only by myself, that only I might bear the guilt of what was done and the dead can remain, safely, nameless... because that second... that tick... that I wasted in revelry... caused the spell to break free. I lost my concentration. I failed. Our spell was meant to be a shield, impossible even for the dragons to breach. Instead, it began laying about with the furor of the storm we had the audacity to try to tame.”

The eyes hung there, unblinking, as Junior noticed the outline of the bone crown on Luna’s head, which had begun to shimmer. Her mane reappeared, a deep purple conflagration made out of nothingness. No stars shined within.

“The spire exploded, and half of our volunteers were dead in the second it took the lightning to fry their bodies from the inside out.” The flaming glory drew higher, surrounding them on three sides and Junior’s mouth went dry as the princess spun her tale. “The enchantment still rested in their horns, and even in death they continued to incant. So I... grasped what was left of it and placed that wild magic into the first spell that sprang to my mind.”

Heavy, purring breaths now seemed to roll out of the murk. “A thousand years ago, I was locked away for the good of all ponykind. A thousand years ago I felt crushing cold, unable to move, alone with nothing but my madness for company. That is where my thoughts fled. I did not only take their warriors. I took their young and their old. Their healers, slaves, cooks, and scholars. Their sick and injured. I took their entire force and cast my spell. I hated them...and I unleashed the mighty power of my hatred upon on them. I became... their Nightmare!”

Fire spilled out of the point where Luna’s horn should have been, swelling up into a bright pillar and revealing their surroundings.

Junior wasn’t aware he had any screams left in his body after the drop down the shaft; he was wrong. His mind went blank and he, along with every other foal in the room, let loose a noise that they probably heard in Canterlot.

Nightmare Moon, her fanged lips salivating for his flesh, stood barely two body-lengths away with her hooves set wide and her crown of bone seemingly having grown into her forehead. She radiated the sort of unholy energy he’d always imagined in all of his worst dreams. Her inky flanks and spreading, ebon wings made his knees weak with fear.

Had she been the only available focus of his terror, that alone would have been enough to send him caterwauling behind his mother’s skirt. But she wasn’t.

Behind her there lay a dragon. A dead dragon. It’s jaws were half open and most of the scales on it’s face were missing, scorched off like it had been left in a blast furnace. Something in the underground had long since eaten it’s eyes and tongue. The creature’s head by itself was three times his father’s height.

He twirled to run but found himself confronted by another giant lizard’s corpse, this one’s scales bright green. Flames had licked the great beast’s throat, leaving a charred hole. One of it’s rear legs seemed not quite right, but Junior was too scared to stick around for another look.

He bolted back towards the archway. The others quickly ran after him. A distant part of his fear-wracked mind realized he was walking in the ashes of all those dragons trapped underground, trying to free themselves.

He plunged through the door, following a trail of flickering stars which lit the path back the way they’d come. He dashed along it just as one of the smaller pegasi had the thought to take wing and flew past him, followed by several of the faster earth-ponies. He turned to yell for Shiny to run faster... but she wasn’t there.

Immediately, he skidded to a halt. Consequently, a big unicorn almost ran him over, part of the larger pony’s costume coming off and flying off down one of the passages. By the time he caught his balance, the others were around the bend going at breakneck speeds in the direction of the stairs. His instincts were absolutely crying for him to keep going until he was safe. Equally loud, however, was the horrible thought of his best friend being furiously gobbled by Nightmare Moon or an undead lizard.

A rational part of his mind knew neither of those things was terribly likely, but that rational part did not hold enough seats in his mental committee right now. Deep underground in a tomb full of who knew how many deceased dragons, he wasn’t feeling particularly rational. For a moment, he hung there, caught between survival and concern.

‘What would dad do?’ He thought. It was a question he’d only started asking himself the year before, and often, in Junior’s young mind, the answers placed bravery before other, lesser virtues, such as 'wisdom' or 'having a full set of limbs.' He turned back towards the charnel house he came from and set off at a hard gallop, praying the little magical lights didn’t pick that second to go out.

Finding the archway seemed to take a lot longer than it had the first time, but finally he found the gleaming white door with it’s message of endless guilt. There was just enough light from the trail for him to see Shiny’s yellow flanks standing a short distance inside on top of a protuberance of stone, staring out into the shadows.

“Hey! What are you doing? Let’s get out of here!” he shouted. His voice bounced off the far walls before coming back to him in a reverberating bellow.

She didn’t move. Taking a few cautious steps in, he almost tripped over a smaller dragon’s foreleg which lay half across the path. He wondered how he’d missed it the first time.

“Shiny, are you okay?” He asked, doing his best not to think about the fact that he was skipping over what could only have been part of a lower jaw.

“I’m... no. Hardy, there’s something here that’s not... okay.” Shiny sounded a little frightened, but not of the stinking bodies. “Can’t you feel...all of... all of... this?”

“I... don’t-” He hesitated, his throat closing around the words. There was a sensation here. Something about this place felt like watching Princess Celestia raise the sun at the Summer Sun Celebration his parents had taken him to when he was just a baby. It felt... holy, like he was dirtying the place just by being there.

“I feel it.” He murmured, raising his forehoof a bit higher to avoid stepping on a boney wing. Something else occurred to him. “W-where is Nightmare Moon?”

The filly shook her head. “Oh please. It was Princess Luna. She was giving the other foals a good scare. She vanished after the others ran. I think she’s probably waiting at the other end of the hall to take them back upstairs.”

He glanced back towards the arch. It seemed to emanate it’s own light, but the trail was still there, heading off through the cave system.

“What do you mean them? Aren’t we going, too?”

“We’ll... Hardy, would you stop being a silly boy and come over here? I want to show you this.”

The way she’d said ‘boy’ pricked Junior’s ego enough to overcome his fear. “Okay, I’ll look for a second, then we’re going, alright?”

“Sure, whatever. Just... here.”

She pulled the clasp on her pink saddle-bag open and retrieved a flashlight. Turning the end, she fitted it into a band with a loop, and wrapped the strap around her foreleg. The circle of light wasn’t big, nor did it reach very far, but it was enough for them to see by.

Shining the small torch towards a spot on the ground, she stepped to the side so Junior could see. The rush was dying and his taut nerves began to calm down so he gulped a breath then moved closer to where she was pointing.

At first, he was uncertain what he was looking at; it seemed to be a boulder just like a dozen others nearby, but as he approached it, he felt his hackles rise. The rock seemed to be shaped like a dragon’s muzzle, teeth and lips jutting above the ground, with the rest of the head buried in the earth. It seemed as though the surface had melted into the body such that the flesh had the same consistency as the granite around it.

“What...what is that?” Junior asked, unable to take his eyes off the terrible sight.

“She...the princess... she moved all of those dragons underground with that spell. That’s why they never got to dig themselves out. She wasn’t aiming for any particular spot. Just... underground. They were alive...alive with their bodies half inside the ground...”

Twisting the torch into a tighter beam she held it on the legs of a smaller specimen. Up to the creature’s thighs it appeared to be solid stone, like a statuary half brought to life.

“Why didn’t they rot? Isn’t that what dead things do? Dad showed me pictures from work!” He wanted to know as he nosed in the direction of another which looked almost perfectly intact but for the loss both of it’s wings which were burnt stumps.

Shiny rubbed her jawline. “Do you remember that big ‘whoosh’ when she touched the arch? I bet that was some sort of unicorn shield. Dragons can live a long time between meals; Years even, but they can’t live without air. All those dragons trapped together, in pain and shooting fire, probably burned off most of the oxygen and torched most of the germs.”

Junior twisted his head upside down he could look into the face of a gracefully hanging body whose shape was somehow more feminine than the others, probably a girl dragon. She clutched something in her foreclaws, which looked like part of a really big, broken eggshell. “So... so why didn’t the princess try to save them or something? She seemed like she felt really bad...”

“How?” Shiny indicated the form of a great reptile whose talons had broken off, obviously trying to claw his lower half out of the encasing rock. “The spell that put them here killed all those ponies upstairs. Is she going to cast that thing twice to save a bunch of half-dead dragons who were trying to destroy the city?”

“Fine, so... if it’s true and they were still alive, how did that get here?”

Lowering her nose, the filly shut her eyes and thought hard, scrunching up her face as she tried to put all the things she’d seen together into a story that made sense. “Um...the stairs we came down looked like they were cut with magic. They were really smooth. No chisel marks. Maybe the Princess did the work herself, then teleported the arch there and sealed it all shut. She probably did it before all that stuff upstairs was built. Some of the dragons must have...still been alive that whole time.” Her lips began to quiver as she held back tears, too overwhelmed by the enormity of this terrible act.

Junior’s nose wrinkled as he tried to comprehend. “So why are you so interested?”

“Oh, stop being stupid! Think! Why did the princess show us this?” His friend waved at the ceiling where he could see the dangling body of yet another of the creatures, it’s tail encased forever in the firmament. “I mean, I get scaring everypony, but she could have done that just by making them think she’d turned into Nightmare Moon. This isn’t a scare... this is a lesson. And something else...”

“A lesson?!” Junior all but shouted, quickly lowering his voice when his words bounced back off the far walls. “I almost peed my costume! If she wanted to teach a lesson she could have done it without a bunch of dead dragons! What lesson could she possibly be trying to teach?”

“I... don’t know why she did it, yet, but I’m going to ask her!”

“Are you crazy? You don’t ask the princess questions like that! You’re lucky you’re not napping in dirt yourself! I had my look and now I want to go!””

Her lips thinned to an irritated line. “You didn’t—” She stopped mid-sentence and leapt upright, ears swinging backwards then forwards.

“What?” Junior asked, alarmed. “What is it?”

“Shut up!” Shiny snapped back, slapping off the flashlight’s switch and leaving them again in the pervasive blackness.

The colt didn’t dare move, lest he back into one of the corpses, or worse, stumble into an open mouth. The arch still glowed just enough for him to see the outline of Shiny, twisting her head in all directions.

“S-shiny—” He started to whisper.

A low hissing rolled out of the dark. It didn’t seem to come from any particular place but rather grew in volume to a crescendo before abruptly ceasing.

“T-t-tell me that was you...” Junior murmured.

“...no...” Shiny answered softly.

“Didn’t... dad say... something about the... the ophio-whatsit... didn’t he say that it’s mostly eats dead things?”

“...yes...”

“Mostly?”

Shiny bobbed her chin affirmatively.

They both turned in a circle, realizing their unfortunate position.

“Running now?” Junior asked, trying to keep his voice calm. His friend, finally, needed no further encouragement. They scrabbled for purchase on the ashy floor, then were off at a gallop towards the white arch. Junior couldn’t be sure, but the echoes through the caverns made it sound as though there was a third set of hooves somewhere behind them, keeping pace.

Once through the archway and back into the tunnel, the colt’s eyes shot towards the ceiling. The trail of stars was gone. The only illumination they had was Shiny’s lamp and the arch itself.

“W-where’s the path?” Shiny squeaked. .

“You’re the one with the sense of direction!” Junior shot back then grabbed one of her scarved and yanked it until she started moving towards the tunnels.

“Why would the princess... Hardy, why would Princess Luna show you all something so awful? I mean, I know ponies did some pretty terrible things during the war but...” Swift held her fluffy, fake dragon tail to her stomach. “You were just children.”

Slip Stitch who was still showing no symptoms of his absolutely maniacal boozing, was in the middle of concocting something involving a donut and half a box of condiments. It was absolutely dripping with chocolate syrup, hot sauce, and nacho cheese dip. He dropped his creation on a place and began licking his hooves. “Mmm... You know, I believe I can answer that. If I may?”

I was feeling the need to wet my whistle again, but the only booze tasted like taffy, so I went instead for a carton of milk. “Sure, if you like.”

“It must be kept in mind that our kind Princess Luna did spend a millenia sitting someplace she wasn’t able to watch the development of pony civilization. There was a more brutal time, long ago, when terror was considered a perfectly viable method of teaching.”

Swift let out a choked gasp, spraying crumbs of crumpet all over my legs. “What?!”

“I’m afraid it’s true, my dear.” The coroner asserted, firmly. “Be glad, however, that you were not born a griffin. Until just the last hundred years or so, their methods of child rearing were nothing short of barbaric.”

“Barbaric?” My partner asked, wiping bits of her meal off her lips.

“Yes... corporal, in fact.” Stitch replied, smacking his lips around the insane donut. “Beatings, torn feathers, and if nothing else would help a fledgling fall in line they had a tendency to toss them out of the nest. Being that their nests are generally on top of extremely high cliff-faces, it often gave the recaltricent youth plenty of time to consider their mistakes on the way down.”

The pegasus shuffled her wings uncomfortably. “Suddenly, gran making me dodge blunt knives until I was too tired to fly seems less bad.”

“What little I know about your parents says to me they probably weren’t happy about that,” I commented.

“My dad totally lost it when he found out.” Swift bit her lower lip, stifling a giggle. “Mom... well, she knows gran would never hurt me. I never sassed gran twice, though.”

He’d tried his best to keep to what he remembered of the path back towards the staircase, but quickly found both himself and Shiny thoroughly turned around. He picked a path he thought might lead them back towards where they’d come from, only to find it criss-crossed by three more he didn’t recognize. Nonetheless, Junior kept his pace, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and whatever was following them.

Their hooves thumped over the naked stone, loud enough that with the reverberations through the ground shooting both ways up the tunnels it sounded like a whole marathon was running alongside. He kept running until he heard Shiny falter, pitching over against the cave wall.

“Ha-ha-Hardy... st-stop... c-can’t go...further!” She panted, a bit of foamy spittle running down her lip.

He started to tell her to get up and keep going, but all that came out was a tired wheeze. During the run, he hadn’t really felt the burn in his knees and neck, but a ten second break was enough to make him feel like his lungs were about to pop. The panicked adrenaline had faded for the moment, no longer able to keep him upright.

“Ugh... whoo... haa...” He gasped for breath, tottering over beside her and dropping, exhausted, against her side. “Do you... think we... ha... lost it?”

“I... oof... I don’t know,” Shiny replied, breathily. “I heard something a few... a few turns ago but now...” She trailed off, wiping her mouth with the back of her leg.

“Was that... whatever it was... was that what you felt when you were upstairs?” Junior asked, mopping his forehead with the edge of his collar.

“I think so. It felt so—” She was interrupted by a sound that sent icy tingles racing down their backs. It was a clatter that reminded Junior of the maracas he’d been stuck with when the school band ran out of instruments. The noise seemed far off, but with the confusing way the tangle of passageways seemed to twist back upon itself, there was no good way of gauging distance.

“L-let’s keep moving. This place can’t go on forever.”

****

“Ugh, this is taking forever...” Shiny complained, picking a pebble out of her hoof and tossing it away.

Junior couldn’t help but agree. He had to finally admit to himself that they were only getting further and further from the main path. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but the underground roads seemed to have no end. .

Whatever magic or creature dug the seemingly random assortment of tunnels was following a logic neither of them understood. It didn’t seem to care where it went nor what it cut through. More than once, they passed diamonds which had been sheared in half.

Faint luminescence from a few gems, which seemed to be growing from the walls, allowed them to see their own hooves and perhaps a body-length in front of their noses. It would have been easier with the torch, but Shiny wanted to preserve the battery, so they persevered until Junior ran nose first into a dead-end.

“Ow!” He cried out, falling on his tail and covering his muzzle with both knees. “Ugh, there’s a wall there.”

Shiny flicked her torch on and played it across the surface. It seemed almost perfectly smooth, mirrored like glass. “It’s... um... yeah. It’s a wall. Good detective’s instincts you’re developing.”

“Ha ha. Very funny,” groused Hardy.

“You know, I just had a thought. Do you remember that experiment we did in class last year with the ants?”

“You mean where we buried some food on one end of the ant-farm and then watched them dig to it?”

“That’s the one. They dug all those funny tunnels in different directions looking for it, then when they found it they stopped digging. What if this is like that?” Shiny asked, turning the lamp back off.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, unless Princess Luna knew exactly where she put all those dragons she must have had to look around a little bit under the city. What if it’s like a spell that eats stone until it finds something else?” Brushing her mane back from her eyes she tried to fit it all back under her cap. Tufts of black and white fur still spilled into her face.

“I really hope you’re wrong. These tunnels could go for miles!” Junior whined, realizing he’d lost the badge from his uniform somewhere as they made their escape.

“Yeah... but if we’re missed too long, they’ll all come looking, right?”

“Let’s hope. My dad is going to be so mad!” The colt replied,

“Oh, shut up! It could be much worse.” His friend snorted, derisively.

“How could it be worse? We’re stuck underground being followed by something in a maze full of dead dragons!”

“Trust me.” Shiny pulled him up by his mane until he stood. “My dad finds out that I snuck out again, I’ll be lucky if I don’t spend the rest of the year someplace really similar.”

They started off in yet another random direction, hoping they’d come across the stairs or, at worst, the dragons’ grave. The gemstones seemd to light the way only to unnervingly flat dead-ends, time and again.

Junior was just turning away from another blocked shaft when he heard rocks tumbling against each other. It sounded nearby, but the strange acoustic effects continued to counfound his hearing.

Shiny froze mid-step, then swung around and butted her head into her friend’s flank, shoving him out of the way as a barreling form flew down the hall at pony-crushing speeds and passed through the space he’d just been.

He went for a tumble as the filly let out an agonized shriek and slid the other direction, clutching at her right foreleg. The strap holding the flashlight to her thigh broke, sending the device spinning in the direction the creature had gone. Junior had an impression of claws, scales, and black fur standing at the far end of the tunnel.

It had the aspect of a snake given four cloven hooves, but was far more bulky. A wide cobra’s hood adorned with two bright splotches of green sprung from it’s supple, frighteningly flexible neck. Two goring horns, capable of skewering an adult pony, end to end, completed the ensemble. It stumbled back and forth at the end of the hall, shaking it’s head wildly like it was trying to dislodge a bee from it’s ear. He didn’t even know if snakes had ears, but something in the way it staggered from side to side indicated something was definitely wrong. Patches of scales along it’s face and neck seemed to be missing, leaving ugly, weeping sores dripping some foul liquid.

Junior found himself paralyzed as the monster lowed; It reminded him momentarily of the cow-lady up the street who sang while cleaning her laundry, but its reptilian eyes, glittering in the light of the tiny lamp, held none of her gentleness. It lowered its horns at him, pawed the ground, and charged. Behind it, a long tail capped by a dry rattle slapped the floor with each step, and viscous fluid dribbled from it’s lips, steaming in the cool underground air.

The colt took all of this in and threw his chest out, preparing himself internally for the end.’

Life hadn’t really been so bad he decided. He’d learned a secret that night and been scared worse than he’d ever been before. If he was going to die deep beneath the earth on the horns of a monster, there probably wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it and he might as well get it over with.

At least his dad wouldn’t be able to ground him and Princess Luna wouldn’t be able to banish him to the moon.

Thundering towards him, the bullsnake careened off the wall, still unerringly on course to turn him into a pancake even though it’s balance seemed rather poor until a lightning yellow burst of motion in his peripheral vision drew his attention off the beast. A pair of pink saddlebags flew towards the ophiotaurus. His mind seemed to be moving faster than his body could react.

‘Shiny, that won’t stop it. Run!’ he thought.

Then the bag met the oncoming creature with all the power of a freight train. The heavy crystal ball inside connected with it’s forehead and it pitched onto it’s nose, skidding almost to Junior’s hooves. Immediately, it began flailing at the ground, trying to get up to rip apart the foals who had dared defend themselves.

He didn’t give it time to gather itself for a third leap. Righting himself, he snatched Shiny and pulled her down one of the side passages. She was limping, her eyes glazed with pain as he took one turn, then another, doing his best to get them as lost as he could. Part of him desperately wanted to stop to check on her, but he knew if he did, they’d both be dead.

They hobbled along through the near total dark, almost blind but not daring to slow down until Junior spotted a crack in the sub-strata which bisected their tunnel from top to bottom. It looked just big enough for him to fit if he ducked low.

“Quick! In here!” He exclaimed, wedging himself into the crevasse. Junior pushed forward until his shoulders hit a tighter spot.

“Can you see anything?” Shiny asked, crawling in behind him.

Squinting in the dark he tried to see how deep their particular nook went. It took his eyes a second to adjust but it seemed a bit further in things widened out and there was more light. Letting out all the breath he could, he shimmied forward a few more inches, dislodging some gravel which slid down the front of his shirt. “Yeep... oh mom is going to go nuts when she sees what I did to this costume...”

“I really think your mom having to clean your little uniform is probably going to be a lower priority than you coming back with all your legs.” Shiny chastised,

Edging along, his forehooves broke free and slipped over a precarious edge. He was about to stop when the sound of scuffling hooves and that evil rattling tail began thumping down the passage they’d just come up.

“Hardy... it’s coming! Move!” Shiny gave him a hard shove from behind and he began to slide.

Thankfully, there was an incline rather than a drop, but for the third time in a night he was internally exploring the idea of being dead. The small pit evened out and he rolled to a stop against the far wall just in time for the filly to land solidly against his chest, knocking the air out of him.

“Oof!” Junior choked on a face-full of dust and leaves.

‘Leaves?’ He thought, pushing a pile away from his face. They were, in fact, leaves. He could even see them. Tilting his head back he caught a white sliver peering down from far above. The crack in the earth they’d found themselves in went right up to the surface.

Junior tasted the fresh, crisp air of the early evening. It was too far to even consider climbing. Despite what his class-mate Rock Roller said, he was pretty sure you could only do that with a bunch of equipment.

“Look... Can you see that?” Shiny pronounced, turning around to try to get a better angle. Her yellow pelt was turned a strange sepia by the unearthly light of...

“The moon. I see it,” he murmured. “We should see if there’s another way out of here.”

An irritated snort sounded down the crack they’d just emerged from and Junior felt an irrational anger light in his chest. He leapt forward, braced his hooves on the walls, and spat back at the menacing monster the worst curse he knew. “Darn you straight to Tartarus!”

Shiny covered her mouth with one hoof and sniggered to herself. “Oh Hardy, I never heard you cuss before. That was sooo adorable!”

“Hush!” He growled. “Look, I think I’ve had enough of wondering if I’m going to die. I want out of here, now!”

Taking a step forward, Shiny winced as her knee gave out and she almost fell on her face. “Ouch! Oooh... yikes.”

“Lemme see that.” Junior ordered.

“I’m fine.” The filly rebuffed, holding her leg away. “I’ve had way worse.”

“Let me see!” He insisted, moving closer. She tried to back up but hit the wall and slid to the floor. Standing over her, he took her knee and lifted it with his. A nasty slash ran from her thigh all the way up to her shoulder. It was shallow, but would probably need stitches. Blood dribbled down her knee, staining his shirt. He ignored it, pulling one of the mutitude of scarves from around her throat and tying it tightly around the wound just like his dad had taught him when he’d cut his shin on a piece of glass.

Shiny sucked in a breath as he bound the cut, then relaxed and put her hoof down. “Y-you didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeeeah, sure. Next problem.” Junior began feeling his way around the edge of their little prison, trying to find another way out besides the one they’d come in. He realized after a second that Shiny was still sitting there. “Are you going to help me?”

“I... sorry. C-can I ask you something?” Shiny stammered. Something in her voice made him stop and turn to face her.

“Uh, what do you want to ask me?”

“You never said... I mean back when I first said we were friends you never said ‘yes.’” The filly’s face fell and she shut her eyes. “I got us stuck down here and you’re not even mad at me. You came back, but you never said ‘yes, I’ll be your friend.’”

“Sweets,” he said softly. “I’m your friend. I get the feeling we’ll probably be friends for the rest of our lives.”

“Do you really mean that?” She asked, hopefully.

Reaching out he put his forelegs around her neck and pulled her into the dappled glow filtering from far above. Raising his eyes, he nodded at the sky. “Our lives might not be terribly long, but I promise, right here, under the moon, that I won’t leave you. So you can stop worrying, alright? I ain’t going anywhere except maybe into that thing’s stomach.”

Hugging him tightly for a second her eyes widened and she pointed over his shoulder towards the far side of the tiny chamber on the far side. “Hey! What’s that?”

“Awww, that’s so sweet!” Swift gushed, her wagging tail knocking over a stack of cherry cordial wrappers.

“Yeah, ‘sweet’ is the word alright.” Taxi gathered her small collection of single-shot liquor bottles and set them to one side. “Who’d have thought I’d be stuck with his bitchy self for the next three quarters of my life?”

I chucked the nearest snack-cake at her. She ducked, then winged an apple in my general direction. It rolled to the floor at my hooves and I snapped it up, juices running down my chin as I bit it in half.

“You’re the one who asked me for that stupid promise, kiddo.” I rebutted.

“Kiddo!? I’m a year younger than you are!” Taxi drew back her leg, this time holding a spoon full of cheese dip.

“Hey! Don’t waste the nacho sauce, or you can finish this story yourself.”

It was a hole. Not a big hole, but a hole. The opening in the rock-face was just above head-height. Rearing back, Shiny was just able to hook her foreknees over it.

“Give me a boost?” She asked.

Junior positioned himself under her and she planted her rear hooves on his back, shoving herself up and scuffling around until she had a firm grip.

“Oof, you really should lay off my mom’s pie.” The colt moaned.

“You’re one to talk! Just a little higher.”

Pushing himself up onto his rear hooves, he gave her just the lift she needed to scramble up onto the ledge before his legs gave out.

“Whew! What can you see?”

“There’s...There’s a way through!” She shouted back, excitedly. “It looks like it leads to another tunnel! I think I see... yeah! I see a candy bar wrapper! We must be right back near the entrance!”

“So, what are you waiting for?” Junior asked, impatient. “Go!”

Shiny stuck her head over the side. “I’m not just leaving you down there.”

“Oh please. Unless you brought a rope, you’re gonna need to go get somepony to get me out.” Sitting back against the wall, he pulled some leaves off his chest and flicked them away.

“Alone? Yeah, so not happening! Here, give me a minute.” Shiny began dickering with something up above which sounded like rustling cloth then something soft flopped down into his eyes. He batted it aside then caught it. It was the tail end of one of her scarves.

Tugging it a little he decided it might just hold his weight. “Shiny, you’re a genius.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t thank me until you’re up here.” came the reply.

Wrapping his leg in the fabric he pulled himself up, bit a section, shimmied up a few inches hanging by his teeth, then un-twined his leg and moved it up, repeating the procedure. It was tiring, but he was the best earth pony in gym class at the rope-climb. His friend was there and grabbed him by the back of the collar. Between the two of them, Junior managed to drag himself onto the short ledge. Shiny had tied the scarves around a stalagmite but it made a serviceable anchor.

Inspecting the holes, he noticed the sides were worn smooth, either by years of rainfall flooding the small space or because some animal had decided to make it their home. At the other end, he saw a piece of colorful foil laying on the dirt a short ways through. The dull gleam meant there were probably more glowing gemstones though he was extremely reluctant to leave the safety of their little retreat.

“Alright, so... let’s hope this is the way out. You getting any ‘feelings’?” He asked, working his aching jaw. He was glad he’d lost most of his baby-teeth, or the climb have been very short with a painful bump on the head at the end.

“Not a one. Sorry.” Shiny scratched her side apologetically, trying to come up with some way to explain how she’d lost her school saddlebags. “The crystal ball was the best I think we’re going to get. I’m tapped out.”

Junior wiggled his way into the short burrow, squirming through to the other side. “Either way, I’m glad you brought it or they’d be cleaning me up with a spatula.”

“No kidding.” Shiny said, hiding her amusement poorly. “I wonder if that monster’s poop is really long or if it’s like a pie.”

“What?!”

“You know, because it’s a snake and a bull-”

“Right, right, forget I asked. I’m glad I won’t have the opportunity to find out first-hoof.” Dropping his shoulders, he squeezed his way out of the tight entrance. A quick shake dislodged pebbles from his collar before he reached down to pull the filly free. Her hips stuck until she exhaled then wriggled out.

“Spelunking is definitely not my special talent.” Shiny groused. Her cap had a rip in it and she was down to one remaining scarf.

Junior, meanwhile, was examining the area around the candy wrapper. “Check it out!” He touched a scuff-mark on the rock where a small hoof had marred the stone. “Okay, so we’re somewhere near the entrance. That’s the wrapper from the chocolate bar that colt with the whiny filly-friend used to shut her up.”

He couldn’t see the details of her face in the half-light provided by the magical jewels but he thought Shiny grinned. “Awesome! When we’re out I am totally going to— oh no...” She backed up against the wall.

The heart-stopping hiss filled Junior’s ears. It sounded close. Too close. He inched his head around to stare down the snarling fiend.

It paced restlessly out of the end of the shaft perhaps ten meters away, biting at it’s own forelegs. Blood drooled from the nasty head wound Shiny had given it. The brute’s complexion hadn’t been improved by a weighted glass orb to the cranium; It’s scales were battered and torn, sloughing off in chunks. He could only imagine it had circled around somehow through the labyrinth.

Lifting it’s head, the ophiotaurus spotted it’s rebellious prey.

Junior stepped very deliberately in front of the filly and spread his hooves defensively, trying to make himself as big as possible. He knew it was coming... and he readied himself to leap onto the bullsnake’s head. It would never see that coming.

‘Even if it bites me, I’ll get it’s eyes first!’ he promised himself. It might eat foal after all, but if it did, he wanted the darned hellion to pay a price and no matter what, it wouldn’t get Shiny.

“Get ready. As soon as it charges, get back down the hole.” He murmured.

A vengeful moo rose to end in a frightening screech, and the monster threw itself at them.

Junior dug his rear hooves in and lowered his head then threw himself forward, teeth bared, trying to aim for the spot where the blood seemed to drip from most heavily. Maybe, he reasoned, two hits would put it down.

The passage of moments slowed to a crawl, like a series of slides. Junior studied the creature’s maddened glowing eyes as they set upon one another, his small legs pounding down the corridor while the cloven-hoofed feet of the bullsnake pounded on rock that was breaking and chipping with each step.

Buried under the chemistry induced psychosis, under the agony of it’s poisoned condition, the colt saw something familiar and felt a twinge of pity. The bullsnake was afraid. Young, hungry, trapped underground, and scared for it’s life.

Junior had never killed anything before, and he realized that something within him had changed just a little. It wasn’t a sweeping change, but it was one of willingness. He’d been a coward. The realization was striking but it gave him a sudden, powerful resolve.

Hiding under his blankets and weeping for his mother was what a child did when they were afraid. The foal who let terror steal their will would be just as dead as the one who fought, with far less impact on the world and without even the smallest hope of escape.

While he might not yet have known why he was alive, he was no longer willing to give up his life to fear. If he was going to die, he was determined not to let himself fall just because he was scared. If he was going to die, he would do it on his hooves, and no pony or drooling snake monster would dare change that.

He never got the chance to find out whether or not his desperate gambit might have worked. There was a flash of blue light behind it, then, only seconds before he was ready to launch himself onto it’s face, the bullsnake’s entire body began to shine. It stopped in it’s tracks, it’s eyes still rolling in their sockets as it tried to discover why it wasn’t happily mauling the irritatingly elusive little colt and filly.

It rose a few inches in the air then flew the other direction, slamming into the side of the tunnel.

Junior was too amazed at being alive and unchewed to take his legs off auto-pilot as he watched the creature crash with bone-breaking force into the stone then slump to the ground. Consequently, he ran face-first into a pair of dark blue legs. It felt much like the time he’d tried to skateboard and hit a telephone pole face first. The knee his chin met was just about as unyielding and he spilled over on his back in a dazed heap.

“Ow!” Princess Luna bellowed, putting her hoof on Junior’s chest, pinning him in place. Her horn hovered dangerously a few inches from his neck, until she realized what exactly had crashed into her. She picked him up in her magic by one ankle and gave him a firm shake. “Colt, I swear, you are the maddest little imp I have met for more than twenty years! What did you think you were doing? Attacking that beast?!” She scolded.

“I... I had to... Your Majesty. Where’s... hooo... where’s Shiny?” He managed, wheezing for breath as he dangled in front of her like a rag-doll.

“Your curious friend with the strange mane—” Luna let out a strangled yelp as she was bowled over by a yowling, scaly abomination tackling her at high speed. Spots of it’s dark blood spattered Junior’s cheeks as he landed on his head, which decided he’d had quite enough damage to his brain for one day. He teetered on the edge of unconsciousness, watching as the alicorn and the ophiotaurus squared off not far away. The princess seemed unhurt, but deeply annoyed.

The bullsnake snapped at the air in front of it’s face, biting unseen enemies before lowering it’s head to bring those ripping horns to bear. Luna barely had time to leap out of it’s way before it blasted past her, took three steps up the wall and did an uncannily flexible flip which Junior had only seen cats manage. It charged toward her again, steam rising from it’s furry undercarriage.

The alicorn threw up a glimmering shield which threw the monster back. It caught itself before it could fall, insanity and alchemy lending it unnatural endurance. Spitting up something wet and black, it tossed its head and pawed the ground preparing for another strike.

“Stay down! We have no desire to kill you!” Luna growled, baring her teeth.

Either the feral bullsnake didn’t understand her words, or it simply didn’t care. Hunching it’s rear legs it tore across the space, intent on the disemboweling the royal nuisance which had interrupted it’s hunt. Perhaps it thought a princess might make a better meal, or maybe the chemicals had eaten the part of it’s brain which controlled judgement. Whatever the case, it was sorely outclassed.

Standing tall, Princess Luna’s horn let out a sound like roaring waterfall. The monster froze mid-stride. It’s heavy tail no longer lashed. It didn’t even seem to be breathing. Junior heard a popping noise only a little louder than a soap-bubble bursting and the ophiotaurus was gone, leaving a void of silence filled only by a faint sobbing noise next to his head. There hadn’t even been a flash or a pretty explosion. Junior was a bit disappointed, but it was, he decided upon reflection, the perfect time to pass out.

****

Warm and comfortable. Junior wasn’t really sure he wanted to wake up. His last few thoughts contained a terrible throbbing just behind his eyelids and another on his chin. Despite that, he didn’t feel any particular pain anywhere. His legs seemed to mostly be in the right places. A soft blanket shifted on his chest and he rolled over, not wanting to open his eyes.

A number of raised voices hovered near his awareness but after some time they died down to a pleasant conversational tone. The bed smelled like his own. It was a dream, then. Nightmare Night nightmares. He couldn’t tell Shiny about this bunch or she’d think he was losing it. Reaching down, he touched his chest and felt sweaty fabric clinging to it. He still had on his dirty police costume.

Shiny! Junior’s eyes flew open and he sat up in a rush expecting to find himself still trapped in the dank dungeon deep below the earth with a raging bullsnake about to take a huge bite out of him.

All the voices stopped immediately.

Everything was a little blurry. His gaze slowly focused on the nearest shape which was fuzzy and yellow. As the image resolved, it was still fuzzy and yellow. Shiny sat on the end of his bed, her eyes big and wet. She seemed to have been crying but quickly wiped her face with the edge of her last scarf and threw herself forward, hugging him tight as she could.

“You stupid boy...why’d you do that?!” she whispered fiercely in his ear.

Junior’s mother was beside him, her hoof on his shoulder while his father sat on a chair that’d been pulled up beside the mattress. He looked haggard and the colt saw a thing he’d never witnessed in the eyes of the strongest stallion he’d ever known; fear. His dad was afraid. Junior gave him a tentative smile and relief washed over his grey features.

Behind them, Princess Luna sat on the floor with her starry mane drawn back in a tight ponytail to keep from knocking anything off the shelves in the small room, a cup of tea with a straw in it clutched in both hooves. She seemed too big for the space, like a doll in a house designed for much smaller figures.

“I... oh... ahhh... I... Princess? Mom? Dad? What happened?” Junior asked, petting Shiny’s head awkwardly.

The Princess winked at him. “I was just explaining to your parents that the staff of my haunted house were using a special cleaning agent on the underground segment of the tour. Apparently the two of you had an adverse reaction. I found you and your friend here off the path and wandering around the caves in quite a daze.”

“Yeah, we must have gone a looong way off the path.” Shiny apologized, sitting back. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted.”

Junior touched his nose, but couldn’t feel any bruising... or taste or smell any blood. Luna must have cleaned him off. “Oh... y-yeah.” He took his cue from the princess and Shiny and forced a grin. “The... the tour was really amazing. I wish I could remember it.”

His father reached down and tousled his mane. “Are you alright, son?”

The colt nodded and laid his head on Dove Tail’s chest. “Yes, sir. I feel a little woozy though.”

“We’ll get you checked out in the morning,” his mother announced, in a way that implied anypony who objected wasn’t getting dessert for a month or two.

“Okay... Did I miss trick or treating?” Junior asked, putting his hoof on his forehead.

“Oh, there are still a few hours left, I’m sure.” Hard Boiled patted his son’s leg.

Shiny turned to the Princess, then to Junior’s parents. “C-can we have... just a minute alone? I wanna thank Her Majesty and it... w-wouldn’t be proper for everypony to see me give her a hug...”

This was not likely to rate high on Shiny’s list of most convincing lies; Hard Boiled and his wife had to stiffen their lips against a bout of extremely improper laughter in the presence of royalty. Nonetheless, Luna nodded her assent, and that was that.

Leaning down, Dove Tail kissed Junior’s cheek then turned and trotted quickly out, followed by her husband a moment later. The door swung closed, leaving the colt and filly alone once more with the princess of the night.

Uncomfortable silence reigned for several seconds, until Shiny got down off the bed and marched up to the alicorn, plunking herself down between her forelegs.

“Why?” Shiny demanded.

“Why what, child?” Luna asked, her tea levitating to her lips.

“No! No, just don’t!” The filly barked, pushing the drink away so she could see the princess’ face. “After all that, you so do not get to play innocent! That stuff with the dragons. You weren’t just giving a bunch of foals a scare!”

Setting her tea to one side, the princess pushed herself up patiently to a standing position and walked around Shiny in a small circle. The child followed her with her eyes, her tail lashing against her blank flanks.

“Just who do you think you are, little girl, to order me to testify to my reasons?” Luna’s voice had become very soft and dangerous. “ I am more than a hundred times your age.”

“I know how old I am!” Shiny nipped at the royal mane, latching onto the etheric strands with her teeth and pulling the alicorn’s head down to where she could grab her cheeks in her tiny hooves, mashing them together slightly so the alicorn made a face like a fish. “I also know you’re lying. So I want to know right now! Why show us?”

The princess was too stunned to pull away for several moments. When she did, she blew a stray strand of hair out of her face and frowned sulkily. “I did want to give everypony a scare... but I wanted to teach a lesson, like my sister somehow always manages to do. I did something horrible during the war. I think ponies should know what happened. We can’t learn from history if I’m burying it.”

“Princess...” Junior began then had to stop and think about his words. He continued, carefully, “How did you do it? How did you make it so nopony remembers what’s down there?”

Her wings drew around in front of her face and she pinched the bridge of her nose with two feathers. “Memory spells. Lots of memory spells. Many of the survivors will never know they were involved and that’s for the best. At the time, I had a private agency devoted to spying and secrecy. They helped with paying off craftsponies, altering histories, and making it look like all those who died were part of attacked convoys or secret missions.”

Shiny leapt up. “It was a trick! You were... tricking the dragons!”

Luna nodded, holding her flowing tail against her side. “Yes. They believe we have a spell fit for destroying entire flights of dragons. Today we are better equipped and have greater numbers, whereas they will be two hundred years recovering their population. We could handily defeat them if they decided to attack.”

“What about the weapons?” Junior asked, rubbing his face fur. It had the funny glossy feeling that he only got when he’d been cleaned with magic. Clever princess. “The ones you mentioned? What happened to them?”

Luna gave an eloquent shrug. “My sister had them destroyed.”

Trotting back around in front of the princess, Shiny gave her a hard stare. “So why are you still lying?”

The princess rose to her hooves, her mane flying free of it’s ponytail and bursting up towards the ceiling on non-existent winds. Junior was scared briefly it might get tangled in the ceiling fan, but it seemed to pass right through it.

“You dare!?” Luna boomed, putting a hoof on Shiny’s forehead and pushing her away. “I have indulged your presumptuousness—”

“Save it!” Shiny cut her off and bounced forward. “This wasn’t about telling everypony or even the dragons so they’d learn a stupid lesson about ‘pride!’ You’re guilty!” Shiny’s hooves found the night princess’ hair and yanked. “You want those foals to rush right home and tell their moms and dads what happened, then you want their moms and dads to spread it to the local dragons, and then they’ll go and demand Princess Celestia drag you in chains right up to the moon again!”

“I... don’t—” Luna sputtered feebly. She could have used magic to toss the foal into the next country if she’d been of a mind and yet she remained there, whimpering at Shiny’s tiny hooves.

“No! You want someone to say you’re terrible, so here it is! You did something awful! Ponies and dragons died because of you and you should feel ashamed!” The filly shouted into her face, then released Luna’s mane, leaving the highest power in the land next to Princess Celestia, her profane lunar majesty, huddled there on the floor of Junior’s room. Royal tears ran down her chin.

Reaching up onto the bed, the filly dragged one of his blankets down in her teeth and walked around the princess in a circle, pulling it over her body. It was barely more than a towel on the alicorn’s frame, but the meaning behind the gesture was sincere. Leaning up, Shiny nuzzled against her cheek.

“I forgive you.”

“W-what?” Luna whispered, not quite believing she’d heard those words.

Shiny repeated herself, stroking the soft vermillion cheek. “I forgive you.”

“Y-you... how can you?” The princess stumbled over the words.

Lifting Luna’s chin on one toe, the girl gave her a sad smile. “You were trying to save pony and dragon lives. You tried and Equestria needs ponies who try. The whole world needs you.”

Sitting up, Luna put her forelegs around Shiny and lifted her off the floor, hugging her to her chest for a long moment. The filly’s rear legs hung under her, but she squirmed into a position she could return the hug.

It seemed as though the horrid weight which had been very nearly crushing the princess since Junior’d first seen her was lifting from around her neck. She’d been anticipating condemnation, judgement, and punishment. Instead, she was given that greatest of all gifts from a pony who should have been, by all rights, too young to understand her crime; she was forgiven.

Junior scratched at his mane. His mind felt like it was clogged with spinach, and what he was witnessing wasn’t helping. The mixture of exhaustion and fear had finally caught up with him and he let out a loud yawn, but this seemed to lubricate his brain sufficiently for a thought to dribble free from the vegetative morass. “Oh, uh... Princess, what are you going to do about the ponies who already know? You can’t just let this all get out right now, can you?”

The princess shook her head, setting Shiny down. “I fear that cat may have already left the proverbial bag, dear children.”

Rubbing her chin, Junior’s friend considered the problem for a bit then raised her hoof. “I... I think I have an idea.”

“We are all ears, my little pony.” Luna scooted sideways until she was sitting beside the colt, her mane coiled around his waist.

Dipping her nose between her front legs, Shiny began undoing the straps of her saddlebags until they slid off her side. She began shuffling through them until she found the crystal ball. It was split into two perfectly equal pieces. Picking one up, she shifted it around until it fit back in place with the other. The crack all by disappeared. Then she gave it a push and it rolled between the princess’s legs and fell in half again.

“You can’t pretend all that stuff isn’t there anymore... but punishing yourself won’t make it better for anypony. It’ll just make it worse for the whole world. Another thousand years on the moon with your poor sister stuck taking care of everypony? No way!” Shiny stomped on the carpet. “There’s better ways though. You made sure everypony will know one day, but it doesn’t have to be today. Close up the map room. Even if the other kids tell their moms and dads what they saw, deny it was anything but a Nightmare Night tour and a big scare.”

“I can’t lie anymore—” Luna started but Shiny waved her hooves and the princess stopped again.

“Most of them will think it was just a really neat tour with a really big scare at the end. Their parents won’t embarrass themselves by accusing you of all ponies of anything or spreading rumors based on something their foals saw. You’re Princess Luna... but even Princess Luna hasta take responsibility for what she did.”

“What... do you suggest?” Luna asked, her voice quivering.

“Close it all up again, for now.” Shiny clapped the two sides of the crystal together and pushed them under Junior’s bed. “Make sure nopony goes there except smart ponies. Ponies like those ones from that Academy place. Everypony today is... so angry at the dragons and the dragons are so angry and it’s so stupid... and you’d end up hurt and we might even end up at war again if Princess Celestia wouldn’t punish you. Do you want to kill even more dragons?”

“No...no I do not.” Luna replied, firmly.

“In a hundred years, you have to open it again.” Shiny instructed. “Open it and show the whole world what happened. If Mister... whatever his name was... if Mister Smoulder or one of his kids is still alive... you’re going to get on your knees and beg them to forgive you.”

“On... my... knees!?” The princess scowled.

“Yes! You’re gonna do it on your knees!” The filly pointed at her and gave the alicorn a hard tap on the chest. “When all the ponies who are alive today who hate dragons are gone, you go and you beg him!”

“That will not stop-”

“Then-” Shiny powered on. “-you knock down that statue of you in Canterlot. I saw it in school. You knock it down and you put up a statue of a dragon!”

The quiet that dropped over the room was like a thick treacle. Junior was afraid to move or speak. His heart was thudding against his lungs and his foggy head felt ready to pop. Meanwhile, the princess just sat there, the tears on her cheeks leaving deep tracks in her fur.

He’d seen pictures of her all his life. He’d watched her in cinema newsreels. He knew, in some far off way, that she was more ancient than he could possibly imagine, but there, slumped on his floor, for the first time he got a real sense of precisely how old she was. He wanted desperately to comfort her but didn’t have the words to.

After a full five minutes, the princess shook her mane and began tying it back again. “Child, if I may... how did you come to this conclusion? You have no cutie-mark. You are child of a home whose evil I... will not speak of. If I may posit your own question in return... why?”

Shiny slid onto her stomach and rubbed one ear. “I spend a lot of time grounded with nothing to do, so I read. I read a bunch of books about history last year. That statue in the bay here in Detrot was so you and the zebras could be friends. It would mean a bunch more to the dragons if it was a statue of yourself you were pulling down, right?”

Luna repositioned her starry mane. “I am... impressed. That isn’t a thing I am given to say terribly often. I believe I may now understand my sister’s pleasure at occasionally taking a student under her wing.” Hesitantly, the princess reached out to the little yellow filly. “Would you, perhaps, be willing to work under my tutelage? I believe you would be destined for great things if you were to come to Canterlot with me. I could ensure a place of importance in the Academy for you one day.”

The girl’s eyes brightened and she turned her head around, flicking her tail away from her rear-end and inspecting it. It was as still a bit grimey from the caverns but blank as ever. Her ears dipped, unable to hide her disappointment. She glanced over Luna’s shoulder at Junior who was furiously motioning her to say ‘yes’ and smiled sadly at him.

“No, your majesty. I-I don’t think I’m supposed to do that. Besides, I couldn’t leave... my friend.”

Junior thought briefly he’d misheard but Luna only shrugged, touched Shiny’s nose with her toe-tip, and said, “Then, take my blessing, at least. There will come a day when you know where you are meant to be, my little pony.”

“Thank you, Miss Luna.” Shiny replied, formally.

Sitting up, Junior remembered something which had been nagging him since he awoke. “Um... you healed us and that was really nice, but what did you do with that ophio-whatsit?”

The princess put on a knowing grin. “If you are truly curious, wake early in the morning tomorrow and look east towards the horizon.”

“You turned it into a constellation?!” Shiny exclaimed.

“Oh... hah, that would be quite rich.” Luna giggled, her mane sweeping around her body. “No, it will be re-entering the atmosphere around then and should burn up quite visibly.” Getting to her hooves she opened the bedroom window. “I must return to my guests and... do damage control as necessary. Your parents have been very gracious, though if you don’t mind, I will make my exit now. I’ve never been good with ‘goodbyes.’” She turned back to Shiny. “Should you ever change your mind—”

The filly leapt onto the bed and ruffled Junior’s mane. “Who’d keep this mess in line if I did?”

Pushing her hoof away, Junior threw his pillow at her. She ducked and the cushion flew at Princess Luna who caught it in mid-air and tossed it back, boffing him across the nose and sending up a blast of feathers. Then her mane swirled around her body and, in a flash of stars and fog, she whipped out of the window into the night, leaving two of the little treat baskets from the beginning of the tour on the floor behind her.

The two children sat there for some time before Junior broke the silence.

“You should have said ‘yes,’ yahknow.”

“I know.” Shiny pretended to check her non-existent hooficure. “I couldn’t. I’m... I dunno. Can you picture me among all those Canterlot ponies all the time? Besides I had... you know... a feeling.”

Putting his chin on his knee, the colt sprawled out on his side. “With my luck, that’ll mean I’m keeping your weird butt from getting eaten alive or banished until we’re grown ups.”

“Could be worse. Let’s go see if we can get your dad to take us over to the Heights. I hear they give out whole candy bars up there.”

“But... but... oh wow! That’s such an incredible story!” Swift exclaimed. She’d had a semi-permanent grin plastered across her face for at least fifteen minutes that was probably half booze and half sugar-rush. She’d managed to absolutely destroy a cheese-cake and still had some whipped cream on her eyelashes and feathertips. I didn’t envy whatever poor cloud she chose to shower in the next day.

“Yeah, well, it was one of the consummately strangest nights of my foalhood and I spent most of it trying to keep myself from peeing or crying in front of the most important pony I’m likely to ever meet.” My hat had slipped down onto my face somewhere during the description of the crazy run from the ophiotaurus. I pushed it back into place and sipped from my barely touched bottle. It was warm, but pleasant enough. “Sweets was the real star of that show.”

Taxi rolled over like a cat sunning herself after a mighty hunt, languidly disarranging her costume in a fairly indecent way. “D’awww, thanks, yah big softy.”

“You never did tell me whether that ‘feeling’ about where you were supposed to be turned out. You want to tell us?” I added.

“Eeenope.” She sniggered, trying to get her hyper-gelled hairdo to stop poking her every time she found a comfortable spot. “You and your inquisitiveness can sit on it and spin. I just did what came naturally at the time.”

“What ‘came naturally’ ended with you up to your ears in crap for the next however many years and now you’re my chauffeur. You could have been Princess Luna’s protege!”

Rocking back and forth until she built up enough momentum to flop over in my direction, Taxi replied, “and you could have been a pony with some tact. I don’t regret that decision. You might be a bastard sometimes, but most ponies don’t ever get a friend like you so you shut your pie-hole about what I could have been.”

Slip Stitch’s his eyes wandered dreamily towards the ceiling. “‘Tis true that good friends are rare and often come in strange forms. I don’t know what I would do without Miss Thalassemia. She is my confidante, minion, and, all too often, caretaker. I really must apply to the city for a raise for her.” Another idea ticked through his odd mind; I could almost watch as his personality shifted from kindly musing friend to the unstable scientist, curiosity unbounded. “Would that I could nip down there and get a look at all those lovely dragon bodies in their preserved state! Why, the experiments I could run on such a supply...”

Taxi smacked him lightly across the back of the head. “Don’t you dare even think it you freaky twerp! Those lizards deserve their rest and you aren’t messing with them!”

Stitch looked hurt. “I am allowed to fantasize. Besides, what else are they doing with their bodies?”

Before my driver could find words foul enough to describe her feelings on his fantasies, I heard quick hoofsteps coming down our cell block’s hallway. Charging up to the bars I stuck my nose between them, mindful of touching the enchanted bars, and shouted, “Hey! Hey, anypony there? We’re stuck in here! Could you get a unicorn?”

The reply froze the blood in my veins.

“Oh, a unicorn you say?” Chief Iris Jade trotted into my vision, her skeleton still shining through her skin, and dragged her hoof along the outside of the cage, making the bars ring. “I am certain that one might be found who would be sympathetic to your plight, Detective.”

I could have responded with dignity. I am a stallion, after all, and I have my pride. However, I somehow doubted that would get me released from the cell sometime during the same century.

“Chief... please let us out? I really have to go to the bathroom.” I begged.

Her lips curled up but there was no joy in her smile. “Didn’t you see? There’s a bucket in the back of that little oubliette for just such a purpose. And what do you mean, ‘us?’”

I turned and saw the small pail at the back. I also noticed I was very alone inside the little cell. Taxi, Slip Stitch, and Swift were all gone.

“What did you do with them?” I asked, nervously.

“I simply reversed the trap spell; a relic of a less civilized time, but clever enough to snare an incautious pony.” Jade replied, sweeping her bangs back off of her thin green face. “They will be upstairs, no doubt enjoying the party. “

“They’re going to be looking for me!” I shouted, slamming my forelegs against the cage and earning myself a solid shock that sent me over on my tail.

“Unlikely, as I sent a little note with them saying you’d be waiting for them in the morning at home.” The mare’s expression was a bit too close to his memory of the bullsnake’s for comfort. I wondered what all she was on just then, and how much she’d heard. “It was a shame they had to miss so much of the party. When I activated that spell, I thought for certain you would be coming down here alone after I told the chef to direct you this way. I didn’t realize Slip Stitch was actually down here.”

“Why?” I grabbed a bag of cotton candy and put my face against it, trying to look pitiful so she might take mercy. No such luck.

“Why?” Jade’s eyes flashed angrily. “Because the last time I had a party like this, you got drunk and made a pass at the zebra ambassador’s daughter. You are lucky. Their marital rules are quite... strict. You almost earned yourself a bride and jeopardized our relations with the entire zebra nation. Be glad I was able to convince them you were a eunuch and quite unsuitable for breeding.”

“I don’t... remember that...” I stammered. The night she was referring to had gone by in a haze of cognac and tequila.

“Somehow, I am unsurprised,” the Chief deadpanned. “Regardless, as you can see, I have taken some steps to ensure no such fracas could be repeated.”

“You could have just told me to stay home, yahknow. I was catching up on some missed sleep.”

A small hoof-held camera floated into sight. The lens adjusted itself and before I could cover my face, it flashed, leaving spots floating in front of my eyes.

“And miss your lovely costume?... not a chance.” Jade giggled maniacally and tucked the camera away. “I’m having that framed for my desk. By the way, unless you want that picture to go in the department newsletter, your reports to me had best never again end with the words ‘Dispatch to Empress Tight-Ass herself.’”

“You can’t seriously leave me down here!” I yelled, throwing a muffin in her direction. It bounced harmlessly off the bars.

“You will find I am entirely capable of that. Now... sleep tight. I’ll send Telly around to let you out in the morning if I remember to.” She started to turn away but then seemed to think better of it. “Oh, one last thing.”

A bottle of the expensive beer from the drinks table upstairs drifted into the cell with me. I twisted the top off and took a grateful swallow. The cupcake vodka was tasty but dried the mouth out something fierce. “Yeah?”

“You do make a lovely mare.”

“Sure, sure...”

“Happy Nightmare Night, Hard Boiled.”

“Happy Nightmare Night, you awful bitch.”