Amethyst Star walked east.
The pink and purple unicorn who called Ponyville her home was not explicitly giving up her journey but she was still heading back in the direction of Equestria instead of going further away from it. Things felt different. What happened at the Major Auditorium in Diminuendo weighed heavily on her mind and she was unable to stop thinking about it. And unlike the other failures on her adventure she wasn’t trying to ignore it or push it out of her mind anymore. She couldn’t, not after that humiliation and what Periwinkle had said to her. Not after he made her face how serious things were and how horribly things almost ended up.
What would have happened if they weren’t able to stop the Songstresses after she accidentally fell under their spell? And it was such a dumb thing that happened to her, it was embarrassing. She had screwed up before but never that badly when so much was on the line. Amethyst Star was supposed to be the kind of amazing pony that pulled through and saved the day in that sort of situation but instead the exact opposite had happened. That was going to be her big moment. That was the real adventure and she had screwed it all up.
“Am I… done?” Amethyst Star said to herself. She looked up at the sky where the sun hung in a spot a few hours before noon, puffy white clouds drifting by. “Should I really not have come out here? Am I… not as special as I think?”
Could she admit that? Could she realize it?
Amethyst Star sighed. “Whatever. I’ll just… I’ll see what else is out here but no more big adventures. No more going out of my way and trying to prove anything.” She lowered her head to the ground and sadly blinked. “It hasn’t gone well.”
She kicked a pebble that was on the ground and kept on walking. “Who even cares?”
She didn’t expect to find a new city out here in the direction she was going. And yet that’s what she came across, a real and breathing city. Amethyst Star could feel the excitement in the air oozing from this place as she walked down the first street. Checkered flags waved from on top of dozens of buildings, huge columns of balloons floated up, the scent of foods like cotton candy and delicious fried treats wafted into her nose. There was something big going on in this city right now.
But Amethyst Star wasn’t sure if she should find out what it was. What was the point? It was plain to see that she only brought problems whenever she went looking for adventure. It might be best to ignore this and just keep on her way. Her curiosity, pride, and selfish desires had gotten her into trouble already and at this point she truly didn’t want to get in anymore. Diminuendo had broken her.
Amethyst Star frowned at her negativity. Did she really have to go from being overly optimistic and naive to being a total sad-sack?
“I don’t need to do anything. I can just have fun seeing what’s up,” she said to herself. “Forget adventure, I’ll just enjoy this festival or whatever’s going on here even if it’s the most boring festival ever. Maybe it’ll help lift my spirits. No need to get dragged into anything like I would’ve done in the past, there’s still plenty of new and different stuff in the Undiscovered West I can see.”
The city was of a more modern type with well planned roads and uniform buildings made largely of cement and metal for businesses and mass-produced wooden frames straight off the assembly line for homes, giving everything a similar look. Practical but lacking the heart and uniqueness to be found in the homes of Ponyville. Currently most of the streets she was walking down were relatively empty too, aside from a few ponies inside of stores or walking around. Most must’ve been at whatever large celebration was going on right now, Amethyst Star could still hear and smell it getting closer.
On her way deeper into the city she saw more banners and waving flags along with confetti all thrown across the ground with trashcans on the sides of the road overflowing with food wrappers. Abandoned tents, tables, and stalls temporarily put up on the streets were also all over but no ponies were around to work them right now. It’s like a parade went through here and took every pony with it. Turning with the street to the north she could finally see something rising up at the end of it that wasn’t just a normal building.
Even from behind she had seen enough of these to know exactly what they were, the stands to a sports stadium.
They were very large though, maybe four stories high and several hundred feet long. From the sound and look of things they were probably completely full of ponies too. At the bottom of the backside of the stands a lot of tents stood just like on the rest of the street but these ones were still busy and she could see huge crowds of ponies milling about around them. It was too big a crowd for her to want to join so Amethyst Star stayed by the side of the street as she walked to the stands. If there was an entrance into the stands she couldn’t see it either so she figured she’d just walk around them to the front and check them out from there.
Ignoring the crowds and the noise she walked a bit to the edge of the stands and walked alongside them, glancing up she was able to see the railing on the edge of the stands and a few ponies pressed up along the sides, ready to watch whatever was going on down below. There was a cement sidewalk for her to walk on right beside the stands that led to a stairway that Amethyst Star could see should normally be locked behind a gate which was currently left open.
Amethyst Star took a brief respite at the top of those stairs and looked down at the stadium the stands were built for.
“Big,” was the first thing to escape past her lips as she surveyed what she initially thought was a stadium. However that turned out to not be the case, the stands were built for a track.
The stairs led down another story’s distance to the track, it (and everything beyond this point of the city) was built at a level lower than the streets she had been walking on. She could see why, the region just past this edge of the city on the far side from where the stands stood was mountainous and uneven with forests and cliffs in the distance, even a waterfall or two that she could see. The track also didn’t just go in a circle, it started to run right along the stands and city but then shot out into a forest right in front of some hills and mountains that lied to the east. Who knows how long it was or how far it went in there. All she knew for certain was that it eventually came winding back around to where it started, for at the northwestern side of this place a huge wooden bridge made of the massive logs from felled trees was suspended between the track grounds and a mountain that rose up farther north, which then turned into a wide curve that came all the way back to the beginning of the stands.
“Geez, it would take a whole day to run this thing, I can’t even tell when it starts coming back around to end up here,” Amethyst Star said as she looked out at everything with a hoof raised over her eyes to block out the sun.
The racetrack was wide and nothing more than dirt but beyond it was a grassy area where she saw a large tent that had a number of ponies milling about below it, far less than the crowds at the other tents. Amethyst Star smiled and started walking down the stairs, that seemed more her speed than getting jostled around by a mob fighting over food and good seats.
She walked down and across the track, glancing down it to see if there were any racers or anything but there wasn’t anything situated at the starting line that she could see yet. It’s possible that this wasn’t even a course for running but maybe for carts or something else ponies rode. There was a large, fenced off area, on the grass a bit father away from the tent that she couldn’t see into, maybe it held whatever was used for the race course.
Now that she was level with it she could see better inside the tent too. Lots of small tables were set up with white cloths thrown over them, but no chairs, the tables were just for standing around and placing your drinks or food on. There looked to be a temporary bar set up in the middle of the tent too with a couple of bartenders taking orders. A few mares wearing buttoned-up uniforms and holding trays of little snacks made their way around the tables to treat anyone who wanted something to eat.
“Mm,” Amethyst Star licked her lips. “Was getting a little hungry, I can grab a drink and a little something to eat and figure out just what’s happening out here.”
Amethyst Star trotted right into the tent and headed for the bar, she didn’t want to intrude on any of the conversations the ponies mingling here were having so she figured she’d ask one of the bartenders about the festivities. Looking around she noticed a lot of the ponies being waited on were wearing jumpsuits, or goggles, or even full helmets, she wondered what for. She ignored that for now, just another question for the bartender. Amethyst Star walked right up to the bar and smiled at the nearest one, a stallion with a thin mustache wearing the same kind of buttoned-up uniform.
“Heya! What do you have to drink here?” She asked him.
He turned to her with a smile. “We have-” the words died on his lips as he saw who he was talking to. The bartender tilted his head and frowned at her in confusion. “You’re not a racer.”
“Umm, no?” Amethyst Star matched his head tilt.
“I’m sorry Miss, but this is the racers tent. You shouldn’t be in here,” he told her.
A small blush crept up on her face. “Ohhh, eheh, sorry...” She looked around behind her to see that a number of the ponies here, racers no doubt, had noticed her and the fact that she had wandered into their tent when she wasn’t supposed to. Amethyst Star gave them all a little wave. “I’m from out of town, didn’t know. I’ll just um, see myself out.”
She quickly slinked away from the bar and out of the tent before anyone could say anything, hoping to avoid any further embarrassment.
“You know now that I think about it should I even be on this side of the track?” Amethyst Star said to herself as she walked along the grass, looking back at the stands on the other side where all the ponies in the city were sitting. With an added bit of embarrassment she realized they could all easily see her even though she’d only look like a speck to most. She just hoped they didn’t realize she shouldn’t be out here.
Amethyst Star looked over to the fenced area she had seen earlier, down here and right across from it on the grass there was an entrance into it that she could walk into from this side. But should she? Well, if it was for the racers it’s not like she hadn’t already embarrassed herself. What was one more case of trespassing?
The fenced area was large, very large, and contained numerous ponies dressed in blue overalls and enough oil and grime on them that Amethyst Star could tell at a glance they were mechanics despite there hardly ever being any in a slow, old-fashioned town like Ponyville. The mechanics were hardly all though, several dozen cement pits dotted the grass that each held a vehicle of some sort that Amethyst Star was unfamiliar with. Superficially they looked like Applewood Derby Carts, more than one of those Amethyst Star had made and ridden in in the past, but these were larger and made of metal with big rubber wheels that had rugged treading for making it over any kind of surface. There was a single seat near the front with a steering wheel in front of it and the back half was taken up by a large… engine? Did these things have their own engines? She had only seen the huge steam engines on trains but she couldn’t think of what else they would be. Numerous pistons, tubes, wires, and tanks full of who knows what took up the backside right behind the driver’s seat.
“Wow,” Amethyst Star looked over it. The vehicle was on a level of machinery and technology not commonly seen in Equestria. She frowned. “Hm, I probably shouldn’t be around all this stuff...”
She continued to walk up and down the pits anyways, none of the mechanics had bothered to say anything to her so whatever. Each vehicle had its own paint job to differentiate it from the others but besides that they were all identical. At the end of one row there was one decked out with pink flames all around the front half of the car right around and under the driver’s seat. The color matched her coat and it drew her eyes to it because of that.
Of course though when she got to this metal cart there happened to be a bunch of ponies gathered around it right on the other side, Amethyst Star paused mid-step, they weren’t mechanics, in fact one of them was wearing the same kind of uniform that she had seen a lot of racers back at the tent wearing. A racer? And the others wore matching white scarves with pink flames at the end.
A team? She wondered. If this is their cart they probably don’t want me messing around it.
Amethyst Star was about to take a step back when she noticed the incredibly sickly look of the stallion wearing the racing uniform and heard the start of a certain conversation.
“Sug’ there’s no way you can race like this,” a mare with a thick country accent and a cream colored coat said as she rubbed the back on the sick looking stallion.
“I have to, Mary Belle. Aint’ nobody else that can drive our car. We need to place in this race or it could be our last,” he tried to look at her with hard eyes full of determination but a sudden nausea came over him and he wobbled about, almost toppling over to the ground.
“Dad!” A little pink filly ran up to her father to helped steady him. “Come on, you don’t need to force yourself.”
He leaned on his daughter slightly to keep himself standing. “If-*cough*-if we don’t race at all we won’t have the money or prestige to make it in for the next one… we’re not successful enough for a sponsorship. You know as well as I do this is our last chance.”
“Even if you did race it would take a miracle for us to get as good a spot as we need,” Mary Belle sadly said to her husband. “I don’t want you to put your life in danger for a pipe dream, we all knew this was already a longshot.”
An older stallion stepped up now, he looked like he was probably Mary Belle’s father. “You just gotta give it up, Dew. It’s over.” He looked over at their car and sighed. “We can sell the car to someone else and still make something off this but that’s all we can do.”
“No!” The filly shouted at her grandpa. “We’ve put so much into this! This car is our dream, we can’t just sell it!”
“Calm down there,” her mother put a hoof on her head. “There aint nothing that can be done.”
“Isn’t there someone who can drive our car though? There has to be somebody out there that can help us!” The little filly wailed, tears welling up in her eyes.
And if it was even just a few days ago, Amethyst Star would’ve walked forward and said “Yes!”.
But it wasn’t a few days ago. It was the present, where reality had set in for her and Prince Periwinkle had done a good job of convincing her to not get in anyone elses business or lie about her being able to do something that she really couldn’t. It’s funny how this moment was essentially shoving itself in her face. Funny how eagerly she would’ve jumped at the opportunity to drive this car and participate in the race. She really did still want to prove how special and amazing she was… but she knew she shouldn’t try and would only let these ponies down or make things worse. They wanted to sell the car and make some money? If she attempted to drive it she’d probably wreck it and leave them with nothing.
There was an “adventure” just right there in front of her, but she was going to turn away from it. It wasn’t something she should do. All that determination and desire she had had throughout her journey was gone. Here was an opportunity but she was no longer naive or deluded enough in herself to believe she was the special pony this family needed. She sadly wasn’t the type of pony that could just help anybody with their problems and look awesome while doing it.
“Who are you?” Dew said
Amethyst Star snapped out of her thoughts and looked to see the eyes of all the other ponies around the car staring back at her, obviously Dew and the rest of them had finally noticed her standing by the front of their car.
“Uhh, hi,” she waved, nervously. “Sorry, don’t mind me. I was just wandering around and accidentally eavesdropped. I’m Amethyst Star, from out of town and I didn’t really know I shouldn’t be here...”
It seemed Dew or Mary Belle might’ve been about to say something, whether a quick forgiveness or admonishment Amethyst Star wouldn’t know, for their daughter’s eyes positively lit up when she saw Amethyst Star and heard her name.
“Wait!” The filly ran up to Amethyst Star and held a hoof up in front of her face to keep Amethyst Star from saying more. “Your name is Amethyst Star? Our car’s name is The Amethyst Flame!” She smiled and rubbed any last remaining tears out of her eyes, looking over her shoulder at her parents and the others. “Mom, dad, it’s gotta be her! She’s the one who’s going to race!”
There was only one response Amethyst Star and the other ponies had to that.
“What?”
The little filly was not discouraged by the unenthusiastic reaction, she bounced up and down on her hooves and squealed in delight. “This is just like something out of a story, think about it! We’re all totally down on our luck, about to give up and lose everything, and suddenly a cliché stranger from nowhere shows up on the day of the big race and just happens to hear us and she even shares a name with our car! This has to be fate or something!” She leaned up right into Amethyst Star’s face. “Will you drive our car in the race today, please? You have to, you must be some kind of adventurer or hero or something, right? I’m right, aren’t I?!”
Amethyst Star looked over her head at the other ponies. Dew, Mary Belle, and Mary Belle’s father were all looking at her with bemused and wondering expressions. Did they have a tiny glimmer of hope in them that this little filly was right about Amethyst Star? Would they even let her race?
Did she even want to?
She didn’t have any illusions that this would go well. She didn’t think she could win. She didn’t know if the world was playing another joke on her by throwing her into this situation.
Well, so what? Maybe she wouldn’t succeed or wouldn’t be able to awesomely win this big race. But maybe she could still help these ponies.
Forget about what she wanted. Forget about what she had been trying to do on this journey. If this filly wanted her to race and help them out then she could at least try her best at doing that.
Amethyst Star looked down into the filly’s eyes. She didn’t smile or speak with confidence, if anything resignation was what came out of her mouth, her spirit still trampled on by the events in Diminuendo and nothing she could do could disguise that. But she answered the filly either way. “Yeah, I’ll be your driver.”
“I don’t see why you feel the need to appear at the grand opening to a new grocery store of all things when we have your wedding to plan and prepare for,” Tasky said to Periwinkle as they stood inside the doors of said newly opened store after the Prince had just cut the ribbon for it. Numerous ponies were flowing inside already, the Prince’s appearance always drew a large crowd.
“I want everyone to see things are normal in Diminuendo after our little Songstress incident,” Periwinkle replied to her out the side of his mouth as he continued to smile and wave at all the ponies walking in. “It’s important for the people to see me after my absence.”
“They saw you at the concert and the following announcement. You are just refusing to take a day off. Again,” she frowned at him.
“The wedding isn’t going anywhere and my mother is having a perfectly fun time planning it herself. It’s fine,” his smile thinned slightly.
Tasky rolled her eyes and shook her head, knowing it was pointless to argue with him on this.
Periwinkle had to take a pause and yawn for a second when the ponies entering the store slowed, he needed a little rest even if he would refuse to admit that. “At least-” he started before being interrupted by another yawn. “At least, the Songstresses aren’t going to be causing any more trouble for anyone. Brilliant Sky said he’d get in touch with Equestria somehow and have them extradited. Hopefully soon.”
“Gilded Shield says they’ve been making a huge ruckus in the dungeon and have repeatedly attempted to escape already,” Tasky told him.
“Well that’s not surprising, I think-”
“Excuse me, are you Prince Periwinkle?”
Tasky and Periwinkle looked over at the one who had just spoken to them. A scarlet red mare wearing black had walked into the new grocery store, looking dead at the Prince from behind her black sunglasses. The Red Hornet had a bit of an intimidating and not very friendly look about her that made the Prince uneasy. Instantly he could tell that she was another pony not from Diminuendo but he hoped that maybe appearances were deceiving and she’d at least end up better than the last one that had come through here.
“I am. And you are?” He asked her.
The Red Hornet’s mouth slowly turned up in a smile. “Who am I? Well, that’s a good question. To my friends I go by one name and to my enemies I go by another.” She chuckled.
“I see,” Periwinkle’s eyes narrowed. “And so how can I get the name your friends call you?”
“Oh that’s very simple, honey,” The Red Hornet pulled down her sunglasses. “There’s a unicorn who I’ve been on the trail of for a while now and I know she came here but I’m not sure where she might’ve gone off to now. So if you could tell me everything about Amethyst Star and what happened here, I’d really appreciate it.”