Just a little bit after the Staff was broken, Dragon Mage got a letter from Celestia.
It was a short letter, bluntly asking about the situation, so the unicorn did the usual and used a somewhat esoteric spell, creating a memory packet of her experiences in the last few hours and sending it to the Princess.
Then she looked at the others “I think... Everypony here should want to understand what happened.”
They all answered in the affirmative, so she nodded.
“I think the princesses should be able to clarify things, I've just sent a message, so...”
She was interrupted by another letter appearing. This one was longer, and had a format Dragon Mage was familiar with. She summarized the letter.
“In their authority as rulers of Equestria, Celestia and Luna are calling all six of us to meet with them for a secret debriefing.”
There were looks in between the five, but they had fought together, and they had no reason to disbelieve Dragon Mage, so they all accepted.
The unicorn walked towards them and did a beacon spell around them, allowing Celestia to detect them and teleport all six directly to Canterlot.
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They appeared already inside the meeting room, with both princesses right in front of them.
Everypony except Dragon Mage did a hasty bow, before Celestia told them to stand at ease.
Mare Do Well took that opportunity to unmask herself.
“Mare Do Well?!” Dragon Mage was completely shocked.
“Pinkie?!” The other heroines were also shocked, but for a different reason.
She explained herself “I feel like this is something I should do. And there's nopony here that I don't trust.”
“If you say something like that, Ah guess there no reason for me not to do the same.” Ponyville Crusader said.
Considering that the two biggest heroines in Ponyville had agreed, the other ponies also chose to do the same thing, and Dragon Mage had the same idea. For both Ponyville Crusader and Sonic Rainbow, it was only a matter of deactivating their powers, Mare Do Well and Gemstone had a little bit more work to take off their costumes (Do Well stored hers in her mane), and Dragon Mage had to exchange her costume for what she usually wore, reverse her transmutation spell and summon the silver tablet again to reapply the magical seals.
Still, it was easier than Gaia Knight, who had to do a whole process to open up a path to crawl through and exit her mech armor. And during all this, Celestia and Luna looked on bemusedly at the interactions. It quickly became apparent that every single member of the Ponyville contingent knew Mare Do Well, or rather Pinkie Pie:
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“You were Mare Do Well this whole time?!” Rainbow Dash was the first to demand answers “How old are you even?”
“Twenty-two.” Pinkie answered, taking a photo of herself blowing out candles spelling out the number from her mane.
“That means you must have been only eleven when you started! How is that possible? Mare Do Well never seemed like a filly.” The pegasus asked, and the others also seemed fairly interested in the answer.
“I had special stilts, that also allowed me to kick a lot stronger than a filly should. Over time, I became strong enough and grew enough that they became obsolete.” Pinkie Pie explained.
“I still can't quite believe it. I have posters of you in my room!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, and the others expressed similar sentiments. Pinkie only smiled broadly.
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And that wasn't the only surprise in terms of ponies knowing each other. Ponyville Crusader turned out to be Applejack, the famous self-made boss of the Apple Corporation. But there was also a pony who knew her personally.
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“Applejack, but how could you be the Ponyville Crusader?” Gemstone, or Rarity, asked “I remember that time where both of us got saved by him!”
“Ah only became Crusader yesterday. During that time, Granny Smith was acting as Crusader, and recently, it has been mah brother. It's a family thing.” The earth pony answered.
“So... How do you know each other?” Twilight asked the two.
“We were in the same class in primary school and we just... kept in touch.” Rarity answered.
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And being moderately famous, Twilight's identity also drew some comment.
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“Ahh... I want to know... How did you manage to appear in two places at once? There were many cases where Dragon Mage was active while First Court Mage Twilight Sparkle was busy somewhere else.” Gaia Knight, or rather Fluttershy, asked.
Twilight shrugged “Princess Luna is very good at illusions and avatars.”
Said Princess waved at them upon being mentioned and spoke “Dragon Mage is going to make a patrol around Canterlot tomorrow.”
Fluttershy nodded, still a little intimidated by the whole situation.
“And what's the deal with the magical seals?” Pinkie asked, startling Twilight with her sudden appearance “I thought Twilight Sparkle's seals were only going to be removed when she reached twenty-five, but you did it easily.”
Twilight recovered and answered “They are. But my seals can be removed and put back whenever I want with the silver tablet. That was how they were made. But doing so by any other method would be incredibly difficult and time-consuming, so 'having sealed magic' is a good cover for me.”
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And then there was Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, who surprised the others by knowing each other and not being surprised at their secret identities.
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“Oh yeah. We knew about each others' powers for years.” Rainbow Dash explained “She was there the first time my ability manifested itself, and when she started having her mad science ideas, she told me about it.”
“I imagine it must have been quite a long time, considering how advanced her armor is.” Twilight said, pointing at the Chimera Armor.
“Yes... It's been nine years of designs, study and tests.” Fluttershy seemed less withdrawn when speaking about it.
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Everything done, Celestia decided to begin the serious talk.
“So.. I presume you have many questions.” She said.
Pinkie Pie was the first to speak “What is the deal with Nightmare Moon and that subworld?”
“What is the Staff of Gift Control and where did it came from?” Applejack asked.
“And why did Nightmare Moon make us go through all of that when she could have simply taken control of us at any time?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“And how did Mare Do Well managed to resist the power of the Staff?” Twilight asked.
“Well...” Celestia started “Apart from the thing about Mare Do Well, I can explain everything.” And then she looked meaningfully at Pinkie Pie.
“Oh?” She smiled “That was a Staff of Gift Control, right? I was safe because I didn't have a gift.”
“What.” Twilight said flatly “But... How can you sense danger? How can you store things in your mane? How can you throw things without using your hooves or your mouth?”
“Well... Throwing things is actually pretty simple.” She took one of her metal discs from her mane and made it move around her body “Earth ponies naturally use their magic to grasp things with their hooves, but using the hooves is just easier. When I was a filly, there was a performer who had trained to be able to easily use her earth pony magic from every part of her body. I thought it seemed useful, so I did the same thing.”
Then she brought out her grappling hook “There's also a technique used by earth pony climbers to weave their magic into the rope to be able to channel through it like the rope was part of their bodies.”
Then she put a hoof on her chin “Now the first two things... They are part of my Pinkie Powers. I'm not exactly sure about how they work, but they are definitely not a Gift. I think it's some form of natural magic.”
They thought about that, and Celestia walked closer to Pinkie “Would you allow me to examine your body to see what I can learn about that?”
“Okie doki!” Pinkie agreed, and Celestia cast a few diagnosis spells.
“Hmm... You really have a strange kind of natural magic. Part of it is white magic, part is black magic, part is chaos magic, part is empathic magic... And there's a few deeper things I don't quite understand...”
Rarity remembered something “Wait. Your Pinkie abilities... Does that mean all those weird things you can do, like appearing in mirrors and diving into shadows... Are they part of the Pinkie Powers as well?”
Twilight had her mouth open “Appearing in mirrors and diving into shadows... What?” She was feeling a little out of her depth.
“Yes.” Pinkie said simply, while acting like Celestia's spells were making her ticklish.
“Then... Why don't you use them as Mare Do Well? Is it just to protect your identity?” Rarity asked, not understanding.
“No. This is just how the Pinkie Powers work. I can't use most of them when I'm being serious. Just the two you already know I use.” She said, and Rarity nodded, satisfied with the explanation.
“Yeah... This is far beyond my understanding of magic.” Celestia admitted “But there's something I can do to help you. Could you allow me to heal you?”
“Heal? Okay.” Pinkie said, surprised.
Celestia used a spell, and Pinkie's eyes widened “Uhhhh...”
As soon as the spell ended, Pinkie jumped to an upright position and started going through a sequence of martial arts movements, which Twilight recognized as a variation on kenpo (it was the same thing Mare Do Well used, so Twilight had researched it), and kept going faster and faster.
“I've been reborn!” She shouted, forehooves to the air, and exploded.
-0-
Every single pony present blinked and shook their head. There had definitely been an explosion, with light, sound and impact... But there were no traces left, and Pinkie was simply sitting down with a smile on her face.
Having seen the natural magic on her body, Celestia decided that this should be one of those weird Pinkie things, and simply went forward with her explanation:
“Your medic is pretty good but...”
“She's nurse Redheart, she helped me a lot for a while.” Pinkie interrupted her, putting a hoof to her chest.
“But even with that, and your natural healing abilities as an earth pony,” She continued, ignoring the interruption “Spending over ten years fighting as a heroine, you've accumulated a lot of hidden damage and stress on your body. Even I can't heal all of it, but over time, I treated enough heroes to be able to reduce the burden on their bodies. Otherwise, one day you would slow down suddenly during a critical situation and... You know how that goes.”
Everypony looked down for a moment, but then Luna started to speak, her voice somber.
“Now that this issue is resolved. I guess the question of Nightmare Moon should be the next thing to deal it. And I am the most well suited for explaining things, considering that it is my fault that she even exists.”
“Lulu...” Celestia said, concern in her voice.
“Don't worry Celly. These ponies have trusted us enough to reveal their identities, so why shouldn’t I trust them with my biggest regret?” She took a deep breath and began “In public terms, Nightmare Moon is a villain that has caused trouble in the world since a thousand years ago. Her main motivation is power and control. Twenty-five years ago, in a fight against Grand Pegasus and Shadow Eye (who was actually a villain, but it was a complicated situation) Nightmare Moon tried to take control of a dangerous artifact and ended up being destroyed. There was no sign of her, and so even I thought she was dead, specially as the years passed and she didn't return.”
After a moment, she kept going “This enters into the territory of other questions, but the Staff of Gift Control was something me and Celly sealed millenia ago, and was absolutely a secret. I don't know exactly how things went, but the situation of her near death or something allowed her to access my memories, something she definitely wasn't capable of before, and either she chose to lay low to wait until we weren't paying proper attention to the seal, or she only managed to recover her strength recently, or she simply took that long to get through all the defenses. The trials you went through were actually reduced versions of the real defenses, who were also supposed to be endless. Nightmare Moon must have changed them to allow Gifted to pass through into a place where they could be controlled without interference, but that also enters the territory of other questions.”
She sighed, then resumed her explanation “You must be wondering why I thought she must have accessed my memories. The reason for that is because Nightmare Moon came from me. Once, a thousand years ago... I got jealous of my sister, and the fact that the ponies seemed to care more about her than they did about me. I secretly decided to rebel, and started empowering myself with black magic... When something at once lucky and unlucky happened. I fell ill.”
“As you might expect from an illness capable of striking an alicorn, it wasn't anything normal. I would only discover that later, but I had been infected with a magical parasite, a one-of-a-kind existence that only was born due to a series of coincidences that are too strange and complicated to get into here. The parasite started draining my power, and my sister started taking care of me.”
She smiled at Celestia “Seeing her concern, I understood that I had been blind to what was really important, and I confessed everything to her. She forgave me, and I let go of the dark magic, which meant the weakness the parasite had used to infect me was gone. Mine and Celestia's power managed to remove it from my body, but by that point, it had absorbed enough power to become the being now known as Nightmare Moon.”
There was a moment of silence before Pinkie Pie spoke “So, that means every time she appears you get reminded of your mistakes. That's sad.”
Luna blinked in surprise “You got it perfectly, little Pinkie. I've already come to terms with it, but this is still not a pleasant situation.”
Pinkie Pie put a hoof in her heart “Don't worry, Princess! We heroes won't allow her to cause too much damage!” She declared. Twilight agreed, and Applejack was only a little bit behind.
“Thank you.” Luna smiled.
Celestia decided to get the conversation back on track “And that is everything we can tell you about Nightmare Moon.” She stopped for a moment “Next is explaining the Staff of Gift Control, which will also explain Nightmare Moon's actions in regards to using it.”
She cast a spell that created the silhouette of a castle, with a unicorn with a crown on top of it.
“This is a very old story. So old, that even me and my sister aren't quite as old as it. It is a story that begins with... Queen Majesty.”
The six non-alicorns in the room felt chills on their spines. Queen Majesty was one of the worst monsters in the story of ponies (and other species, but the ponies took it particularly hard), and the only being that caused more fear than her was the legendary Tirek. For generations, the role of monster that appears in the nightmares of foals was shared between those two.
“The story is well-known. Queen Majesty used her great power to subjugate not only the pony race but also every living being in the world. The days of her rule were filled with fear, as she treated her subjects no better than toys, sometimes 'breaking' them when she was bored, or forcefully transforming them if she didn't like how they looked like. And her powers were so great that for decades, no heroes were able to defeat her.” Celestia recited.
She stopped for a moment, before resuming the story “The ending of the story is also well-known. After discovering a place in the world where magic didn't work, a certain group of heroes tricked her into stepping there, where she was powerless and could not defend herself... But this ending is a lie.”
The six heroines were surprised by that, and they paid maximum attention to what Celestia was saying.
“This ending implies that Queen Majesty's great power was magic, but that is actually a deliberate misdirection. Her actual power was a Gift, and a very famous one. She had the Gift of Wishes, the same one as the legendary Twilight of Paradise Estate.”
“What?!” Twilight was startled by that “But Twilight's power could only grant small wishes! How could that be possible?”
“The idea that the Gift of Wishes is so limited is another deliberate misdirection. Twilight understood the consequences of asking for big wishes and never did it, something that Queen Majesty didn't follow... There are reasons why there are few records of the time directly after her fall, let's just say that every living being in the world had to struggle with all their strength to survive.” She sighed “If any villains knew about the potential of the Gift of Wishes, they would seek it out, and that wouldn't have a good outcome. That is the reason why so much of the story has been obscured.”
She waited for a moment as they processed that, before moving on “But returning to the start, we know that Queen Majesty's power was a Gift, but the fact that they didn't have any way of dealing with her was true. So what did you think they decided to do?” She asked.
“You mean...?” Twilight got it first.
“Yes. They decided to try to create an artifact that would be the natural enemy of any Gifted. The best mages of the time came together and joined their knowledge to create it. And if you need any proof about how much Queen Majesty was feared, know that they even released Tirek from his prison on Tartarus so he could add his own knowledge of black magic to the task.” She waited for the six to recover from their shock “He obviously made it so the Staff couldn't be used against him, but even he was very determined to deny any chance Queen Majesty could have of escaping. He only betrayed the others (because of course he did, he is Tirek) after it had become completely certain that she was dead. But I'm getting ahead of myself.”
Celestia cleared her throat “This should answer why Nightmare Moon did things the way she did, but the Staff of Gift Control has some limitations. The biggest one is that it has a limited amount of effect unless you are close to the target. To get around that, the heroes used the power of the Staff to get Queen Majesty to move towards a trap. The same way, Nightmare Moon should have chosen to affect every pony with a powerful Gift in Ponyville with an urge to prepare themselves and go to a certain place, where she could take control of them... Though I don't know how Pinkie knew where to go.”
“Pinkie Sense.” She said.
“Okay. But here we get to an important part, everypony knew that the Staff was dangerous, specially after Tirek betrayed them and seized it for a bit, so it was decided that the Staff should be sealed and its existence should be a well-kept secret. This worked perfectly until now, to the point where I'm sure me and Luna should have been the only beings who knew where the Staff was, or that it ever existed in the first place (Tirek was fooled by the destruction of a fake Staff at one point). But you should be wondering one thing, if the Staff was so dangerous, then why wasn't it just destroyed? There were reasons for that.”
Twilight and Applejack stiffened.
“There's another part of the story I didn't mention. After Queen Majesty's death, the users of the Staff knew that another with the same power could appear in the future, like she inherited Twilight's Gift. So the Gift of Wishes was sealed, along with a few other Gifts that had too much destructive potential.”
“So... Does that mean that these dangerous Gifts are no longer sealed now that the Staff is broken?” Twilight asked in a small voice.
“No. They should still be sealed, since it was done in a way that even the wielders of the Staff wouldn't be able to unseal the Gifts easily, since that was too dangerous. However, this is something important to understand before the next part of the story. As I mentioned, due to Majesty's abuse of the Gift of Wishes, the world was in a fairly bad shape, and so it was decided that too many Gifted beings would cause too much chaos, and the Staff was used to suppress to appearance of new Gifts, to the point that in the generations since, there has only been a very limited number of Gifted in each generation.” She finished.
“And now, with it broken, there will be many new Gifted appearing.” Twilight said with finality “I'm sorry! I thought I was doing the right thing!”
Celestia swept her up in a hug “You were, my dear student. I do not blame you for your decision, for I would have probably done the same. Now that the existence of the Staff was exposed, it was simply too dangerous for it to remain.”
“But... But you said...” Twilight was confused.
“Yes. I'm sure this will lead to chaos. But the world is not as fragile as it was before. Millenia of work have made this society that won't fall to chaos easily, no matter what Discord tries. There will be a dangerous transition period as we adapt to this new era, but none of us will give up.” Celestia spoke with conviction.
“I definitely will do my best as Mare do Well!” Pinkie Pie said.
“And Ah will also help.” Applejack said.
“Indeed.” Rarity spoke “I never thought of becoming a heroine despite my powers because the heroes seemed to have things in hand, but if the world needs me, then there is no way I am going to stand by!”
“I agree with her.” Rainbow Dash spoke “For me it was more because I was more worried about controlling my power, but I'll do my best as Sonic Rainbow if I can help.”
“Ah... I-I will also do the same thing. I can't do nothing.” Fluttershy declared.
Twilight looked at them with a smile, and Celestia said “This should be the reason why you had to go to Ponyville, teaming up with this group of heroines.”
“Well, I'm game for a team, it's going to be great! But we need a good team name.” Pinkie said.
“I can help with that.” Celestia said “You were reunited with the goal of fighting back against the chaos, and from the dawn of time, there has always been one concept that was opposed to chaos, Harmony. Today, I declare you all the Harmony Six!”
“Meh.” Luna complained “That's lame. I think League of Harmony sounds better.”
“That could work too.” Celestia allowed.
Looking at the faces of the ponies, they could tell that the heroines approved of the name.
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Some secrets were revealed, and the team has formed. But how will this decision impact the lives of the six? And how will their team up work? Wait for the answers on the next chapter of The League of Harmony! Ordinary Days 1.
I'll see you there!