//------------------------------//
// On the Eleventh Day 
// Story: Twilight's 12 Pains of Christmas 
// by TheDriderPony 
//------------------------------//

	Tonight, Twilight was ready. Someway, somehow, someone was sneaking things into her home. But whether their origin be magical or physical, they had to be entering from some point in the castle. The castle was too big to be patrolled by a single alicorn and dragon team. Things could easily be snuck in in whatever part of the castle she wasn't actively monitoring. No, what she needed was a team. And, thanks to her rapidly growing unexpected entourage, she finally had one. 

The cows agreed readily. There were over two dozen of them, luckily all from the same herd. They were primarily thankful for the hospitality and stellar food, and wanted the help out any way they could.

The bureaucrats had been trickier to convince. Most were middle-aged government officials and not keen on the idea of keeping watch all night, even if the job was done in shifts. But an impassioned speech about the power of friendship and cooperation and ponies coming together against adversity soon rallied them. Before long they were drawing up maps of the castle, plotting out the most efficient patrol routes and most likely points of magical or physical ingress.

The dancers... The dancers had been both difficult and straightforward. After her friendship speech failed, Twilight tried using their rivalry to spur them to each try and outperform the other at defending the castle. Unfortunately, the dancing instructors saw through this very easily and failed to take the bait. Eventually, Twilight was forced to put her hoof down and, by royal decree, conscript both dancers and dance instructors as an impromptu guard force. The older mares grumbled, but didn't dare disobey a direct order from a Princess.

They divided the castle into sections, each section having a hoofful to teams assigned to it, each team composed of three members. The plan was to patrol the castle in shifts. Cycle through the halls along a determined path, checking each room, before rendezvousing back with the others to trade responsibility with another team. It was a simple, elegant plan, with a zero chance of failure. After all, with so many teams patrolling and searching, how could they possibly miss the expected arrival of nearly thirty ponies and cows?





Twilight strode to the ballroom with a confidence the belied her fatigue. It was time to see the results of her plan. Her perfect plan that would one hundred percent without a doubt definitely work. Either they would catch the culprit in the act, thus solving the mystery, or no new gifts would appear, thus proving the culprit merely a pony instead of some logic-breaking myth. Or possibly new gifts could somehow appear anyway, thus proving... Twilight did not want to think about that possibility. 

For once, it was quiet in the ballroom. No cacophonous bird cries. No tight-lipped dance instructors berating their students. Even the quiet undercurrent of occasional lowing seemed to have abated. Everything was quiet and still...

With trepidation, Twilight opened the grand doors and poked her head in. Most of the teams seemed to have returned already. A few who had late shifts were still sleeping, but most were awake, conversing in hushed so as to not disturb the others. The birds and trees were stored off to one side, each grouped with like members of its kind.  Notary noticed Twilight's arrival and trotted over.

"Your Highness," he bowed briefly before straightening, " I can report with confidence that nothing appeared in the East wing over the course of the night. No ponies, cows, poultry, or otherwise."

"Thank you Notary," Twilight acknowledged as a few more teams trickled in, " Have you heard from any of the other sectors yet?"

He nodded, stepping aside so another returning team could walk past. "Miss Metronome from Manehattan tallied reports from the teams in the central sector, who all reported nothing unusual.

As he spoke, a cranberry-maned yellow foal walked up to the two of them. "Captain Butterscotch reporting Miss Twilight Princess Ma'am!" He struck a serious, if lopsided, salute. "My team saw nothing strange in the West wing, the library, or the kitchens."

"Yes, thank you for your hard work." Twilight praised. The foal maintained his determined and rigid salute.  "Oh yes, you're dismissed." With a smile, he turned and ran back to a group of similarly aged ponies.

"Its nice to see them taking this so seriously. " Twilight commented as she watched him run off. Vice-mayor Notary scrunched his muzzle in confusion and concentration.

"Princess..." he began, "Perhaps sleep deprivation is getting to me, but I don't recall there bring any foals present when we broke into teams last evening."

Twilight had been in the middle of waving to one of the foals when she froze. Slowly, she turned to meet his gaze, then turned back just as slowly to stare at the group of laughing playing foals. She stared at them for several long moments before turning her attention to the room as a whole. Did the geese seem quite that compacted when they were placed in their holding area last night? Did the line of pear trees really extend that far down the side of the room? And didn't it seem to be taking a remarkably long time for all the teams to return to the ballroom?

"Everypony! Single file lines!" Twilight demanded in a voice that shook the room and immediately roused everyone who had been asleep. "Cows in one line, dancers in the next, anypony not covered by those two categories in the final line! Now hop to it!"

Canterlot trained soldiers couldn't have responded half as efficiently as these creatures did. Within moments, every being stood rigid in their lines, as Twilight conducted a rapid headcount. She stomped over to Mirabelle, who had become the de facto leader of her rapidly growing herd. "Mirabelle," she began alarmingly sweetly, "Your teams found nothing out of the ordinary all night long, correct?"

"That's- That's right P-Princess."

"Then, could you please be so kind as to tell me why your herd suddenly has eight more members than it did last night!?"

"I-I-I don't know, Princess!" She cowered, frightened by this new side of the previously pleasant purple pony. "We did our rounds, we never strayed from the assigned routes or shift rotations. I can't imagine how this happened!"

Twilight sighed, knowing she'd get nothing else out of the frightened heifer, assuming she even had anything else to offer. Cows were well-known as a honest and straightforward people. She turned her attention to the row of dancers. "Alright then who among you is from the Canterlot Ballet Studio? Raise your hooves, up, up now." Nine hooves flew into the air. "Good, good. Hooves down please. Now, who is from the Manehattan Ballet Corp?" Again, nine hooves were raised. Twilight turned to the pony nearest to her who had not yet raised a hoof. ""You. Who are you, where are you from, and when and how did you get here?"

The frightened pink pegasus yelped quietly before swallowing her fear. "M-My name is Golden Slipper, your highness, and I-I'm from Las Pegasus. I'm part of an evening dinner show there. And I... I... I don't know how I got here!"

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "You 'don't know'? Explain yourself."

"I-I remember walking home from a late show last evening. I waved goodbye to some of my friends, then took a shortcut down an alley. Then-" She paused, and her eyes widened as if realizing something. "Then I was walking down a hall made of crystal, with these two other ponies I'd never seen before. I-I didn't think it was at all odd at the time, but now I- oh, Oh! Oh, crumbs where am I!" She began to look about in a panic, her eyes darting every which direction as if looking for some means of escape. Several other ponies also began to realize they had gone though remarkably similar experiences, and began to panic. The room began to dissolve into chaos.

"QUIAT!" Twilight yelled. She was thoroughly fed up with everything not making sense, and two days with no sleep was not helping her temper. As the room returned to it's hush, she turned her fiery attention to the newest group of arrivals. The foals. Remarkably, they seemed completely unperturbed by her yelling. They were all roughly the same age, maybe a year or two below her friends' sisters. Twilight took a few deep breaths to try and calm down. No good could possibly come from scaring eleven delicate young foals. The one who had identified himself as Butterscotch earlier stepped forward, and gave another cheery salute.

"Anything I can do for you Princess Highness Twilight Commander Ma'am Sir?"

Twilight sucked in a sharp breath, pushing herself to remain calm. "Yes, ah... Butterscotch, was it? Do you know how you got here?"

"Noooo~" He trilled through a gap-toothed grin. "I remember going to sleep back at the orphanage, and then I had a dream about marching through some halls, and then we were here!"

Something from his speech caught her attention. "Orphanage?"

"Yes Ma'am Sir. 'Helpin' Hooves Community Orphanage'," he recited, "Two, four, six, oh, one Fleeters Street, Baltimare." He looked at Twilight sweetly. "Are you going to be our mommy now?"

Her jaw dropped as she stumbled over a response. "I- Wha- Our?!"

The foal nodded. "Yeah, our." He gestured to the ten foals behind him. "We's all orphans, all of us."

Twilight groaned as she fell into a sitting position. She rubbed her temples as she tried to wrap her mind around this new development. Orphans!? Cows and dancers and pencil pushers were one thing, but orphan foals?! What kind of a monster could even consider such an idea? Butterscotch, as if sensing her distress, came over and patted her withers. "Don't worry new Mommy," he consoled, "We'll cheer you up with a song. We've been practicing for the benny-faxors ball." He stepped back to his compatriots, each of whom Twilight subconsciously noted had a three-note wooden whistle on a string around their necks. All were very clearly hoofmade, and several of them quite poorly. They took a collective deep breath in, and began to play.

The music, if one was deaf enough to call it such, was terrible. Several of the pipes were so badly made they couldn't even produce proper notes. Those that could were almost never in the same octave as the others. The players themselves were terrible too. Even those that had working pipes could barely play one proper note out of three. It was loud, it was screechy, it was downright painful to listen to. But the orphan's little faces gleamed so brightly as they played their hearts out to please their 'new mommy'. One look was enough to know that they thought they could rival the Canterlot Philharmonic. 

Twilight fell to the ground in a silent scream. Despite the wrong notes, despite their terrible lack of tempo and coordination, her analytical mind could still decipher what the song was supposed to be. It was an old song, still occasionally played around the holidays but mostly forgotten. Twilight herself hadn't heard the tune since she was a filly, but in a flash the memories came rushing back. It was fitting, strangely enough, but for the worst possible reason. As Twilight collapsed and ponies began running to her aid, the name of the tune and it's implications rang throughout her mind like a church bell.

Dance of the Sugar Plum Pixies