The Nightmare Knights Become A Band

by SwordTune

Special Chapter: The Young Six's Night Out

Fillydelphia.
Late at night, the pony city was hard to navigate. The six young students kept close together as they got off the bus near the train station. The fliers in their group were too tired to finish the journey, so they decided to head back to Ponyville by rail.
“The last train for the night should be here soon,” Ocellus said, checking on the schedule posted outside the station.
“Trains run even at midnight?” Gallus looked around. He had never been to another Equestrian city before, and Fillydelphia was one of the largest and most populated. It was nothing like Ponyville.
Sandbar, on the other hoof, was a lot more comfortable. “Yeah, some ponies work or travel at night, so there are a few rail lines that run late.”
“Pony city not like Ponyville,” Yona noted the number of taxi carriages still passing through the street. “So much still going on.”
“This place is wonderful!” Silverstream gazed around at the stairs of the train station. This was no rail-side stop like Ponyville’s. The Fillydelphia Rail Hub was the centre of rail transit throughout all of Equestria’s southeast coast.
The station was thus built to fit thousands of ponies entering and leaving every day. On the second floor, coffee shops, book stores, and banks handled the needs of new arrivals or departing residents. And thusly, the stairs of the Hub were the largest Silverstream had ever seen.
She wiped a lone tear from her eye. “I didn’t know they could be this huge.”
“Yeah, it’s a real marvel,” Smolder pat her friend on the back. “I don’t think it’s for me, though.”
There was just one problem for the students waiting, one that dawned on them slowly as five minutes turned to ten, and then fifteen, until the watches they had brought ticked to the half-past midnight mark with signalled the supposed coming of the next train.
Ocellus and Sandbar traded glances, as they both quickly realized.
With Ponyville being halfway across the country, Fillydelphia was not in the same timezone as their watches.
“Every creature,” Ocellus mumbled as she realized they were an hour late for the train. “I just had a small-brain moment.”

“Time zone?” Smolder clutched her dorsal scales. “What does that mean? How is it one-thirty already here?”
“I’m sorry I totally forgot to check!” Ocellus whimpered.
Sandbar rested his hoof on her shoulder. “It’s alright, I kinda forgot too.”
“So, train not coming until morning?” Yona asked. “What friends do now?”
“Hey, I know,” Silverstream rejoined the group, content with her sightseeing of the stairs, “why don’t we find a hotel for the night and just catch the train tomorrow?”
“With what money?” Gallus asked.
“I know!” Sandbar hopped over to Smolder. “Dragons like to hoard gemstones, right? Smolder, you must be loaded--”
Smolder punched him in the face. “I don’t have it on me! And also, don’t generalize, dude.”
“Argh,” he rubbed his jaw, “sorry, yeah. I just freaked out a little and wasn’t thinking.”
“Yona always carry spare change.” She lifted the back-dress that yaks often wore and revealed a very small satchel for bits slung over her back. “Is five bits enough?”
Ocellus motioned to Yona to keep her money. “Haha, I’ve never been to a pony hotel, but I don’t think they’re that cheap.”
“If that the only problem and we’re all okay with staying at a hotel,” Silverstream spread one wing and unveiled a thin black card tucked inside her feathers, “we could always just use my black card.”
The other five stared at her.
“Uh, what is that supposed to be?”
“Oh, it’s like a crystal disc, but for money,” Silverstream explained. “It was made as part of the Mount Aris tourism project. My aunt knew ponies wouldn’t be able to bring a ton of bits with them if they visited Mount Aris, so she had some sea pony alchemists create these cards out of magic pearls.”
“Like the ones that let you transform?” Gallus pointed to the fragment of the Pearl of Transformation, the relic that had once saved the hippogriff kingdom from the Storm King.
“Yeah, something like that. I don’t know all the details, but I think a magic pearl gets ground into powder. Half goes into making the card, the other half gets turned into something like a ledger. Since they came from the same pearl, the card and ledger are linked, so as long as the ledger says I have money, I can pay with the card.”
“Woah.” They all stared at the miraculous trinket.
“Beats carrying around a sack of bits,” Sandbar joked. “But, I thought pearls are white. Why’s your card black?”
“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Silverstream laughed. “I’m the Queen’s niece, so just by attending the School of Friendship, I’m considered a diplomatic dignitary. Diplomats and some members of the royal family get black cards made to access funds from the royal treasury. Plus, since it’s usually used for international travel and business, I think there’s a bunch of other benefits that I don’t really know about.”
Gallus tenderly pointed at the card, afraid to even look at it from the awe of its power. “Sooo… what you’re saying is that you’re basically holding the keys to the Mount Aris royal treasury, right there in your wing?”
Silverstream nodded contently.
He chuckled nervously and turned away, unable to withstand the presence of such a powerful item. “I don’t know if I should be relieved or utterly intimidated. But, at least we can get a hotel for the night.”

As a new implement in Equestrian business, the young students had a hard time finding a hotel that actually had a pearl card reader. However, after trying a few front desks around the city, they finally got tipped off that there was a “Bitz-Colton” hotel on the coastal side of the city.
The downtown blocks of Fillydelphia were just like any other highly-urbanized city, but, to the young kids from Ponyville, it was a messy jungle of concrete, glass, and steel. The only reason they were able to find the Bitz-Colton hotel was because, within an array of monolithic skyscrapers, the hotel was the most monolithic of them all.
“Whew,” Gallus whistled at the blinding array of lights, the golden lettering over the entrance, and the water fountains by the driveway which were lit up by a rainbow of lamps.
“So maybe ponies best at building hotels,” Yona conceded.
Even Silverstream was dumbstruck. “Wow! I didn’t know pony hotels were like this!”
“They’re usually not,” Sandbar told her, “I think this one’s special.”
A door pony held the entrance open for them, and as they walked in a blast of heated air sheltered them from the cool autumn night outside. From within, one would never know the sun had set. The lobby was lit by hundreds of lights, both decorative and practical. On the furthest side from the entrance, there was a small casino. A bar was in the centre of the lobby for serving ponies who needed to wait around, though, in the middle of the night, it was kind of empty.
The floor was made from polished stone, eggshell white with gold trim between the tiles. Yona tiptoed onto a section of carpet further in the lobby. The floor had such a mirror polish that she felt bad even walking on it.
Two convenience stores offered the basic necessities for ponies on the go, though at an exorbitantly upscaled price, no doubt. Gallus spotted with his griffon eyes the price tag for a bottle of water.
“Five bits…?” He murmured in shock.
“I don’t even know what to look at anymore!” Ocellus clutched her head.
But while they swivelled their heads around, Silverstream had gone to the front desk to ask about open rooms. And sure enough, the unicorn at the front had a crystal scanner for her black pearl card. The mare cast a spell through the crystal, shining a light over the card.
“Welcome, madame!” She greeted Silverstream with a cheerful smile. “Do you have a reservation?”
“Actually, no,” she laughed at herself, “it’s a funny story actually. My friends and I lost track of time for the train. We just need a few rooms for the night.”
“Of course! Would you like the ambassador suites?”
“Uh…” Silverstream had never had to use her card for much, before, so she didn’t know all the rewards and benefits that came with it. The “ambassador” suites definitely sounded special. But she knew she couldn’t overspend. Her black card wasn’t a toy, it was for emergencies only.
“I’m sorry, remind me again, how much are the ambassador suites?”
“Mhm, let me just check the exact rate,” the unicorn flipped through a few files in front of her. “Ah, it looks like one night will be six hundred and ninety-nine per suite. Oh, and just to let you know, there are only two suites available right now.”
“Oh, that’s not so much. But only two?” Silverstream looked over to her friends, who seemed to be debating something by the bar. “Well, I guess we can split it up, boys and girls. Those two rooms will be great.”
The clerk cheerfully placed four room keys, two per suite, on the counter for Silverstream. “And, will you be needing any luggage help tonight?”
“Nope, we’re alright.” Silverstream thanked the clerk for her help and rushed back over to her friends. “Hey, guys, we’re in luck! Guess what I got us?”
The room numbers were listed on the keychains. Luckily for them, both suites were on the same floor. The six of them wrapped up the discussion of whether it was right for Gallus to get a martini from the bar, since Griffonstone didn’t have a formal governing body, and thus no drinking laws. Even when the bartender informed them that Silverstream’s black card got her drinks on the house, the rest of them decided that following Equestria’s laws was probably the best choice and headed up to their rooms. If the suites could even be called “rooms.”

The girls took the second room, just a few doors down the hall from the boys. It was pretty late, and they all just wanted to sleep.
But. And it was a pretty important “but.”
The suites were just too overwhelming. The suite was the size of an apartment. There were two small bedrooms, two beds each, complete with projectors to play crystal discs in both rooms. The seaside-facing wall was made almost entirely of glass, and stepping out to the balcony gave an unobstructed hundred and eighty-degree view of the ocean.
Their wonder surpassed their exhaustion.
“Yona can’t sleep.”
“Yeah, no, me neither,” Ocellus called out from her bed.
“I’m not even gonna try!” Smolder yelled from the kitchen. “Do the sodas in the fridge cost extra or are they complementary?”
Silverstream stepped out of the bathroom, wrapping up her mane after a quick shower. “I don’t know, actually.”
“Welp,” Smolder walked into the bedroom, drinking, “Mount Aris is going to get charged for a bottle of cider.”
“Silverstream, is it really okay for us to be using so much money?” Ocellus jumped out of bed for her turn in the shower.
“Of course! I don’t buy much anyways since school usually has whatever I need, so I guess it’s like I’ve been saving up for an occasion like this.”
“Occasion?” Yona got out and went to the living room. “But this an emergency, right?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun,” Silverstream said. “We almost never leave school. How are we supposed to learn about Equestria if we don’t explore Equestria? Think about it, we’ve already seen more stuff in one night than we have in a month!”
“She’s got a point,” Smolder said to Yona. She burped as she finished the last drop of her cider and tossed the bottle across the room to the trash bin in the kitchen. It landed with a clean swoosh into the trash bag.
“Yeet.” Smolder grinned. “I want to learn more about ponies, not read about them. Plus, I kinda want to see what they have for room service.”
Smolder and Silverstream sat on the sofa out in the living area, flipping through a special menu of dinners and desserts, while Yona sat back in her bed and looked at a list of movies that could be played on the projector.
“Yo, they have fire cake?” Smolder held up a picture of a four-layered cake lit by a torch. “Can we get one? I heard they pour alcohol over it and let it burn away, so it’s totally fine for kids!”
“Uh--”
Smolder jumped up on the sofa. “Silverstream, please?”
“Meh, why not.”
Ocellus stepped out, already dried since her changeling carapace was as waterproof as a raincoat. She glanced at a dinner menu on the coffee table and flipped to the pizza’s section. And from then on, there was no stopping the four girls from unwinding and living their life in Equestria to the fullest.
Even Yona, reserved at first, made the greatest discovery of the night. When the cake had been devoured and the pizza sliced up, Yona brought the crystal disc out for every creature to see.
“Yona found karaoke.”
One by one their heads turned.
Normally each one of them had their inhibition. Smolder had a hard time admitting to the things she liked to do. Ocellus’s anxieties were numerous and often dealt with her inner identity. And Silverstream… well, she had few inhibitions, actually.
But tonight they were gripped by something greater than those inhibitions. And Smolder, who had always wanted to sing like the pop-stars ponies raved about, was the first to volunteer.
“Oh, this one’s good! Countess Coloratura just released it.”
“I didn’t know you listened to her too,” Ocellus said as Yona selected the song for her.
“This one’s special. I dunno why she wrote it, but it’s basically the only song about dragons in Equestria.” Smolder sat herself on the bed right in front of the projector screen so she could read the words as they came up.
Luckily for them, although they were completely oblivious to the fact, the walls of the suites were designed to be soundproof for important guests with important information. Energetic instruments, distorted by some of magic, reverberated through the room. The beat was faster than expected, and even if with her renewed energy she tripped on some words as they scrolled across the screen.

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Smolder may have started the singing, but in no time the other three got a hold of the rhythm and joined in. One by one their voices compounded, and no creature could be certain who was leading who in their chanting.

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Meanwhile, in the boys’ suite…
Gallus and Sandbar felt bad having Silverstream pay on their behalf, even if it was with her pearl card. So, they decided the best thing to do was just go to bed.
“What do you think the girls are doing?” Gallus asked before they split off into their rooms.
Sandbar shrugged. “Meh, probably talking about some lame girl stuff like the guys they like or whatever.”
“Do girls really do that?”
“Totally, dude,” Sandbar nodded. “I mean, you read about it all the time in books. There has to be some truth to it, right?”
“Huh, I guess,” Gallus took his word for it, but he wasn’t so sure. “Well, goodnight dude.”