//------------------------------//
// Verse 19 
// Story: The Nightmare Knights Become A Band 
// by SwordTune 
//------------------------------//

“Sounds like it was a little rough at the start, but we got through it.”
A server placed three espressos on their table as Luna finished explaining how business went with Iron Will.
Though Luna wasn’t aware of it, Poppin had arranged with Iron Will to sell the Nightmare Knight’s CDs at a few souvenir stalls. In the morning after the concert, their album sales spiked by twenty per cent. It was an extra boon that she would have completely overlooked if not for Poppin’s intervention.
The coffee shop bustled like any other, but as they talked about plans for taking the band on their first tour, Luna noticed the atmosphere change around them. Ponies gave their table a wide berth, while eyes further away stared from behind coffee cups.
She wondered if it had anything to do with her, or if it was because Rara had decided to tag along with Poppin to Fillydelphia.
Bridleway was a huge success for her, but it seemed she needed a break away from her work now that her big musical production was done. Plus, when they met up, Rara admitted she missed the pop music industry a little bit.
“I say, avoid Las Pegasus if you can,” she gave her advice when Luna asked about good cities to perform at.
“Why?” Luna asked.
“Don’t get me wrong, the place and the ponies are wonderful,” she said, “but, well, you’ll be travelling with Svengallop. I know, you say he’s getting better, but you should probably make sure he doesn’t come within earshot of a slot machine.”
“Svengallop, a gambler?” Luna cracked a smile. “Well, he does seem to have a problem with accepting his losses. Maybe I should keep on Lightning Dust too, in that case.” 
“Alright, so Las Pegasus is off the list. I can still contact a few ponies I know in Vanhoover and Cloudsdale. After that, I think the Rainbow Falls Exchange will be open, we might be able to grab a special gig with the organizers.”
“That’ll be interesting,” Luna sipped her coffee. “Since it sounds like we’ll need to hear back from a lot of ponies before we make a decision, would it be alright if we met for lunch later?”
“Of course,” Poppin grinned. “You and the band going out for a celebration?”
“Actually, Tempest wanted to pick out some new guitars, ones that match our new costumes better.” Luna motioned with her horn down the street. “The city map said there would be an instrument shop which could serve this need, but she wants my input before we order anything customized.”
“Well, I’ll make a reservation for lunch, then,” Poppin said. Rara gave Luna a quick hug and wished her the best before returning to her bagel and coffee.
Popping and Rara took their time to talk about all the things that got brushed aside because of their work in Manehattan. Most of all, Rara talked about her friend Applejack, who she had not seen in over a year. Producing plays and musicals in Bridleway was a dream come true, sure, but travelling and meeting fans all over Equestria was something Rara really cherished. 
“Just might be about the only thing I miss from that guy,” she said into her coffee.
“Who? Svengallop?”
Rara nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I put it behind me, but I still can’t believe I let myself follow along with his ego. Sometimes I ask how much of my life I wasted because of it.”
“Well, no pony ever said you can’t do two things at once,” Poppin said. “I won’t have a new show for you to rehearse for quite some time. You could go on a short little nostalgia tour, you know.”
“Maybe,” Rara fiddled, “but not yet. If I’m going to get back into performing, I want to do it seriously. Luna has something she wants to sing about. I think I need to find something for me.”
“Well, when you find it, just let me know,” Poppin reached a wing out and rubbed her back assuringly.
As they finished up their dinner, six kids they had never met before slowly dragged themselves to the counter. A pony, dragon, yak, hippogriff, changeling, and griffon, they were young, but they look like they got along much better than any adults Rara had met before.
“You know, now that I think about it,” she said, turning back to Poppin. “Do you remember that single I released a few months ago?”





The students grabbed two booths by the windows. Gallus smirked as the girls laid their heads on the table, hiding their exhaustion from the sun’s powerful rays.
“Dude, I can’t believe you girls didn’t sleep at all,” he laughed. “What was the point of getting hotel rooms?”
“You don’t understand!” Ocellus groaned. “The cake was so good. It was so sweet, I thought I was going to die.”
“It’s a long train ride back to Ponyville,” Sandbar added, “it’d be a good time to take a nap.” He took a whiff of his coffee and gave the brown mixture a sip. And then he put it down.
“Ha,” Smolder laughed at his scrunched-up face, “I told ya you couldn’t handle it.”
But after a few sips, she put her cup down too, admitting defeat to the bitter drink.
“You know you can just add creamer, right?” Ocellus told them.
Silverstream squinted in her cup. “I think there’s something wrong with mine. I got the same as Sandbar, but it tastes fine.”
“Yeah, maybe they just made yours wrong,” Gallus echoed, drinking happily from his.
Yona eyed his cup closely, reading Gallus’s face to see if he was just putting up a front. But he drank and drank without so much as a twitch in his face.
“Give Yona a try,” she said, reaching across the booth. Gallus handed the cup over, but as soon as she tried his coffee she choked. “It’s more bitter than Yonas!”
“Yeah I just got black coffee, I don’t really like creamer,” he said.
Smolder did the same with Silverstream’s coffee, coming to the same result. Their friends looked at them like they were magicians or escape artists, performing the impossible.
“How are you doing that?” Sandbar said.
Gallus traded looks with Silverstream, neither really knowing the answer.
“Hippogriffs and griffons are part bird, so maybe we have different tastes,” he guessed.
Sandbar shook his head as he reached for some packets of sugar on the table. “That’s not fair, dude.”





Luna found Tempest holding up two different guitars for Glitter Drops to give a good comparison. From the sound of things, they had narrowed it down to those two and a couple of other designs.
They wanted custom guitars, not just in looks but with the highest sound quality, so the ones on the shelves were really only for comparison. 
“Looks good,” Luna said, “but do they have it in white?” The guitars were both painted dark blue with silver accents. “If the guitars were white like the moon, they’d show up better against the black backgrounds we usually use, right?”
The store manager, working from behind a set of glass doors at the back, suddenly rushed out to meet them before Tempest could explain her top picks.
“Princess Luna?” The earth pony reached out his hoof and shook Luna’s, laughing and speaking in a garbled mess. “I’m so sorry if I didn’t see you before. Uh… h-have your friends here already been helped?”
“It’s just Luna. And actually, we were looking for something custom,” Luna pointed to the few that Tempest and Glitter had looked at. “Is it possible to get some of these designs modified when we place our order?”
“Yes, of course!” he nodded and gave a wide grin. “We have the workshop on the second floor, so I can just down one of the guys who handle the custom orders and he’ll go through all the details that you want.”
The three of them asked a few more questions of the manager, what colours the store had and how long it usually took for an order to be completed. But eventually, they settled on what they wanted: two guitars made from an exceptionally dark wood from the Everfree, painted with a silky white pearl coating and then lacquered and polished. Black accents would come from the wood itself, where it had not been painted.
“And you want the Auroral pickups, right?” asked the workshop pony once they had almost finished their order. 
Electric guitars used magnetic pickups to sense the motion of the strings and produce sound. But to improve the quality, the magnets were mounted on special crystals from the Crystal Empire to boost their power, and Auroral was one of the few companies that made professional-quality crystal mounts. Their prices were far from competitive, however, letting the quality of their work be enough to attract buyers.
“That’s the best one, right?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “I mean, there are tons of other good pickups, but Auroral’s the best.”
Of course, that was just his perspective on it. And Luna realized that despite her questions, she had no way to compare his answers. It was time to call in an expert.
“I’ll be right back.”





Seeing the train station again in the busy, broad daylight was a different experience entirely. Signs were put up prohibiting flying, but the attempt to make the station more orderly only served to cramp up the entrance area even more.
The students thought they could simply walk back to the station like last night, but with hundreds of ponies blocking every line of site, it was difficult to retrace their steps.
“Can you see the route to Ponyville?” Sandbar asked Silverstream.
She was taller than the rest of them, and tried stretching her head up above the crowd. “I can’t even see the big stairs anymore. It’s covered in ponies.”
“Ow!” Gallus jumped and tucked himself tightly against Smolder. “Some pony just stepped on my tail!”
“Alright, that’s it.” Smolder climbed on Gallus and breathed a jet of fire up into the air. There was nothing to burn, but the sudden heat was enough to scare off the ponies crowding around them.
“There, I see it!” Ocellus pointed to a sign that read “Ponyville Platform.”
Being the most cramped of them all, Yona gathered up her friends and pushed on through the crowd, eager to make it to the platform before ponies began filling up the space again.
“Coming through!” They all laughed as they went. 
Stallions in business suits and mares travelling with heavy suitcases jumped out of their way of the yak barging through with a dragon on her head, spewing embers from a little too much excitement.
With little time and a lot of collateral damage, they made it to the Ponyville-bound train, just minutes before their departure. They may have gotten sour looks, but none of them really cared. Gallus chuckled as he checked to make sure his feathers weren’t ruffled.
“Heh. Let’s do that again.”





“The ebony wood is fine,” Starlight said, “but we’re performing live, not recording, so the sound quality between the Auroral brand and the standard mounts aren’t going to sound too different.”
Starlight teleported them back to Fillydelphia, a few streets away from the music store so they could talk in private.
“Really?” Luna cocked her head.
“Yeah, a recording studio might pick up the difference because a generic pickup and a branded one, but in a live performance the difference won’t be noticed. Auroral’s a good brand, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not worth the price.”
Luna nodded. “I suppose it would be irresponsible of me to continue draining the royal treasury.”
“Haha, yeah,” Starlight cracked a nervous smile and glanced around, “you should really stop telling ponies you can still do that.”
“Well, since you’re already here, why don’t you come check out the guitars we’re getting?”
Starlight shrugged. “Sure, that’d be fun.”
Between them and the music store were a few blocks, but for an alicorn and a talented unicorn, being able to travel through the skies made the distance trivial. They crossed over streets, not even having to wait for the walking signs to show.
But one thing did stop them, however. Between them and the music store was also the south-facing exit for the Fillydelphia Rail Hub. Tunnels running under the city eventually led back to the main station, but the distance was so long they generally felt like long empty caverns.
Not today. The station was so backed up that Luna and Starlight had to pause.
“What is going on there?” Luna wondered.
“No idea,” Starlight said.
“A short detour, then? It might be important.”
Starlight quickly agreed, curious herself to see why the largest train station in the southern coast of Equestria was suddenly overpacked. They flew together to the Rail Hub entrance, where the crowd increased in size and irritation.
There were stallions shouting and jeering at the conductors, and police ponies trying to contain the crowd so the streets could stay open.
“Tell them to just push them off!” Starlight could hear one voice shouting. Others around it burst in agreement.
“Princess Luna!” someone shouted as they neared the front door.
In a wave, heads started turning towards them both. “It’s Princess Luna,” more started to cheer. “Finally, she’s here to fix all this!”
Luna turned to Starlight. “Stay up here and keep an eye on the crowd. If it gets out of control, I think you know what to do.”
“Yeah, if there’s one kind of magic I know how to do,” Starlight frowned at the crowd, wondering the possibility that she’d actually have to use a spell, “it’s control spells.”





The crowd surrounding the conductors were not confined to the outside of the station. Ponies cleared the way for Luna as she landed, but inside the station there were more train workers trying to calm down the upset ponies.
Luna found the one pony with a different uniform, a gold-trimmed vest that signified its wearer as a Canterlot-approved Rail Coordinator.
“What is happening?” she asked the moment she could get through the crowd.
“Princess Luna!” the coordinator rushed over to her. “Thank goodness. Any news from the Crystal Empire?”
Luna gave the short mare a puzzled expression. “I’ve been out of the loop since my retirement. I’m not here on royal business, but I’m happy to help if I can. Tell me what’s going on.”
The coordinator’s face seemed to deepen upon hearing Luna was not the bearer of good news. Or any news, for that matter. But, she obliged and told her the summary of their problem.
“It’s the trains going in and out of the Crystal Empire. They’ve been blocked by protests.”
Luna shook her head, stunned by what she heard. “Protests? What kind of protests?”
She shrugged. “A dragon protest, apparently. Not sure what it’s about, but a telegram from the Crystal Empire station said there’s a dozen dragons blocking the rail lines in and out.”
“But, how can that back up so many passengers?” Luna gestured around to the hundreds of ponies packing the station.
“We have a system, Princess,” she said, “I don’t have time to get into the details. But the system’s broken right now, and we need help settling down the crowd so we can fix it. Can you do something about it or not?”
Luna thought about what she could do. The ponies wanted to go about their day. Would they be satisfied with a half-hearted answer? The truth was she was in no position to get the trains from the Crystal Empire running again.
But she knew who was.
“Not now,” Luna told the coordinator, “and definitely not here. I’m sorry but you must deal with this front on your own. I’m going to tackle the problem at its source, see if I can’t put an end to it from there.”
“Oh alright,” the short mare spun around and gestured at all the ponies harassing her workers for answers. “Guess I’ll just deal with this then.”
“I’m glad you understand,” Luna smiled and took off.
When Starlight found her and asked about the situation, Luna simply promised to explain on the way. She simply let her know that the Knights needed to go, and fast. The guitar orders could wait. There was something happening in the Crystal Empire, and this time Luna wasn’t going to let it slip by her.