My World Is Empty Without You

by McPoodle

Epilogue: Spike

The Canterlot Palace was a large and imposing structure, easily visible from most of Equestria. Up close, its size was even more evident. Most visitors were therefore surprised when they found the internal layout so simple. That was because the public parts of the palace were all situated in a straight line from the main gate, past the ballroom and kitchens, to the audience chambers.

The curious visitor who summoned the nerve to walk through the open doors located all along that public corridor would discover the “semi-public” section of the palace, the areas dedicated to the offices of the crown’s royal servants, and the various meeting rooms dedicated to diplomatic functions. Beyond that of course were the bedrooms and other private areas, separated by closed and locked doors from these areas that at least theoretically could be visited by anypony.

Unlike the public area, the semi-public area was immense, going up and down stairs. If you searched long enough, you could find the royal observatory…or the royal dungeons. You could also become very, very lost.

At the end of one corridor far from the bustle of the more used parts of the palace was a single door. This led into the chamber containing Cecil the living rock. The chamber that Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy and Vinyl Scratch had stepped through two days ago. They were teleported out to an unknown destination, and there was no telling when they would return. But it could be at any time, and they could come back hurt and in need of help.

And so, Spike the Dragon had camped himself out in this isolated corridor, to stand watch.

The first night had been the worst. Some sort of calamity had taken place in the main part of the palace, and Spike heard all kinds of running, shouting, and even screaming. But he remained in his post. And then it had gotten dark, and all the noise had been replaced by an unnatural silence. No guards came to check on him, or even bring him some supper. But despite this, Spike remained at his post.

On the second day, Princess Celestia had come by with some pastries and some gems, and tried to lift his spirits. She told him that the dragon armies were on the retreat, and it was certain that Princess Luna would soon be found.

Spike had noticed something off about Princess Celestia, but supposed it to just be Her response to all of the stress of running a war and looking for Princess Luna.

Spike had shown a hopeful face to the Princess at the time, and was glad that She might soon be reunited with Her sister. But he also saw between the lines: If the dragon troops were retreating, that could only mean that the Dragon Emperor had shifted his focus from the armies to his new captives.

After Princess Celestia had departed, Spike had opened the door, and checked inside. Not only were there no ponies, but Cecil wouldn’t talk to him. Spike didn’t know what this meant, but he supposed that it couldn’t be good.

Shortly after dinnertime on the second day, Princess Celestia had returned to tell him that the seven ponies were trapped in dreams being manipulated by the Dragon Emperor. Rarity had managed to escape, and was working to free the others. Spike was honestly surprised that somepony had actually told him the whole story the first time. Usually when something like this happened, somepony would tell him some lame lie to cover up the fact that somepony he cared about was in a life-threatening situation, like he was some kind of idiot. And inevitably, he’d have to force his way into Princess Celestia’s presence to find out the truth. Well, this time the Princess had decided to cut out the middlepony. It was also clear that She trusted him to handle the truth, and he did.

He was also terrified. But he remembered times when Twilight too was so very scared, and she did what needed to be done anyway. And sometimes he was the one she was scared for. So he wouldn’t fail her. He’d be a true Dragon Knight.

Only...that wasn’t going to be easy. When he had told Princess Celestia his intention of waiting outside the door for Twilight’s return, She had not only allowed it and arranged for regular food deliveries, but also got him books to read, to keep him from getting distracted.

In addition to the usual adventure stories, there were also stuffy volumes covering what little about dragons that ponies had written down over the ages. He and Twilight had gone through most of these, and were going to start on this latest shipment before the Dragon Emperor had sent his peace overture.

One book in particular was very interesting, because it was a translation of a big griffon tome on dragon lore.

The griffons had worked for the dragons for centuries, excavating areas too small for the giant adult dragons to reach, and too dangerous to trust to the smaller juvenile dragons. This meant that the stories they recorded were presumably devoid of the fear that plagued most pony accounts.

Spike mostly skimmed through the large jade-bound book, entitled simply Dragons. He found out a great deal that he would need to discuss with Twilight when she returned, but what struck him the most was the fact that the story of the Dragon Knight was just that: a single story, about a single dragon who had learned about knights from some traveling ponies he had captured for a month, and then out of boredom decided to become his own twisted idea of a knight himself, to protect the weaker of the dragons from the stronger. The story...was a farce, designed to show how foolish were the ways of ponies.

Spike didn’t like this story. At all. He decided that he didn’t care if the Dragon Knight was a joke. He was going to be a dragon knight anyway, and he’d do such a good job of it that the dragons would have no choice but to admit that he was right. He got out the scroll and quill that Twilight always made him carry, and set to work on Version 2 of the Dragon Code. He was stumbling his way through Section 6: Metaphysics, when he heard the approaching clatter of hooves running down the corridor towards him.

“It’s the Bearers,” Princess Celestia told him as She came to a halt before him. “They’ve been sighted outside the Everfree.” Despite what must have been hundreds of strides of galloping, she was not winded in the slightest. She then stretched out a wing for him to climb up.

With a huff, Spike tore off the section of scroll he had been working on, put the remainder along with the quill and stoppered ink bottle in his bag, and climbed up on the Princess’ back. “What are they doing out there?” he asked.

Princess Celestia teleported the two of them into the sky above Canterlot.

“Was the Dragon Emperor hiding in Fluttershy’s cottage?” Spike speculated. “There’s nothing else out there.”

“Except the Ancient rocket,” the Princess informed him. She teleported a second time, to be located over Ponyville.

“Oh...right.”

From their aerial position, the pair could see the rocket high above them, diminishing into a point of light. It was being followed by a second object.

“What is that?” Princess Celestia asked.

“Not sure. But it’s made of crystal.”

“You’re certain?”

“Of course! It’s a dragon thing.”

The Princess landed, and the pair spent the next few moments staring fruitlessly up at the sky. Both objects had by this point faded completely out of view.

“Let’s go back to the Golden Oaks,” Spike suggested. “Twilight has this special telescope for presentations. It has a wide angle of view, so it should be easier to find them with it.”

Celestia nodded, and with two quick teleports, they had returned to the same spot with the telescope in question.

Spike stood on Celestia’s back as he scanned the heavens. “I hope the rocket didn’t head to the other hemisphere,” he said as he oriented the eyepiece in various directions.

“There!” Celestia exclaimed nearly an hour later.

Spike didn’t have to see where the alicorn was pointing, as it was obvious: there was a small tear in the sky, allowing a milky-white light to leak into the night.

With the flash of teleportation, Princess Luna was suddenly standing beside them, dressed in Her battle armor. “What have they done to my night?!” She demanded. With the flash of her horn, a disk appeared before Her, acting like just the wide-angle telescope that Spike had been trying to use all this time. He nudged Celesia with a foot to get closer.

Luna used the disk to examine the edges of the tear.

“Can you fix it?” Celestia asked Her.

“I’m too weak to do it from here, and I wouldn’t be able to get there in time,” Luna informed Her sister. “The Dragon Emperor has been draining my magic during my imprisonment. It is only now, with his overthrow, that I was able to free myself.”

“The Emperor has been defeated?” Spike asked hopefully.

“He must have been the one in the rocket,” Celestia concluded.

At that moment, Luna’s examination revealed a blue speck drifting aimlessly across the surface of the tear. At Her command, the disk zoomed in, revealing an unconscious Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, no!” Spike exclaimed.

Luna zoomed out, and rapidly looked around for any other pony. She soon found a yellow speck drifting across the void, and revealed that to be Fluttershy. She was moving in the wrong direction.

“No, Fluttershy! RD’s over there!” Spike yelled at the disk, hoping that it might somehow allow sound to be magnified the same way it affected light.

“She needs our help,” Celestia informed them, acting as if She had received some message inaudible to the others.

And so those three sent their feelings of hope and goodwill in Fluttershy’s direction. Spike secretly suspected that they were too far away for them to have any possible effect on the outcome—and he had always been a bit suspicious about the power of friendship to do anything when divorced from the artifacts specifically created to be powered by it—but nevertheless, there did appear to be an effect: Fluttershy changed her course to reach Rainbow Dash, and the two of them slowly headed towards a gray crystalline shape.

Princess Celestia looked away from the disk. “It will be nearly an hour before they can get back to Equestria, and we need to be prepared. Spike, can you take several letters for me?”

Spike hopped off of Celestia’s back, produced his truncated scroll and quill, and saluted. “I’m at your service!” he declared.

By the time the strange spaceship had landed—and turned into a rabbit???—there were several pony carriages waiting, stocked up with food and blankets for a quick and direct path back to the palace.

Spike had been the first to greet Twilight when she had left the ship, and the loudest to congratulate the others on saving the world (universe?) and keeping each other safe. On the trip back he had wrapped his arms around one of Twilight’s forelegs, and said nothing. It gradually dawned on him that nopony was saying anything. Not even Rainbow Dash, who, as usual, had quickly recovered from whatever had knocked her out. Also, Pinkie Pie was Pinkamena, but nopony seemed to comment on this.

Celestia had tried to ask something, but Twilight had merely looked Her in the eyes and said, “Tonight. In our dreams.”

Something about this terse answer had put a mysterious grin on Celestia’s face. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the first time that Twilight had ever interrupted the Princess or refused to answer one of Her questions.

And so they had gotten to the Palace, and had been all sent to the personal bedrooms that had been reserved for them. Twilight, despite her obvious exhaustion, had insisted on writing a letter with her own magic and giving it over to a servant to deliver. Spike had managed to pick up that it was addressed to Twilight’s parents, but Twilight refused to tell him anything else. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up prematurely, Spike,” she had said by way of explanation. “After all, they could say ‘no’.”

After that, she went to sleep. And, a few minutes later, Spike did the same.

Spike found himself in a large chamber constructed of clouds, with large cushions lining the floor. Spike poked a claw experimentally through the cloud wall.

He looked around, and saw not only his friends, but also Vinyl Scratch and both Princesses sitting on pillows. Standing in the middle of the room was Pinkie Pie, dressed like a Saddle Arabian princess.

Spike did a double-take on realizing that Pinkamena was also in the room, sitting on one of the cushions.

“Am...am I dreaming?” he asked the others.

“You’re all dreaming,” Pinkie told the group. “And I’m letting you all share the same dream.”

Spike turned to Twilight, who was sitting beside him. “Alright, we’re in a dream. Now can you tell me what’s been going on?”

What followed was nearly two hours of explanations and story-telling. All of it was directed at Spike, as he was the one who knew the least about what had happened. But parts of the story were apparently new to each of the other ponies at one time or another.

Twilight had started off by explaining how the mad dragon in the asylum was not the Dragon Emperor’s wizard, but the Dragon Emperor himself. It was Oars in Wells who then snuck over to Castle By the Sea, to absorb all of the magic of the Great Will, and become a god even more powerful than Discord. And still he hadn’t been able to defeat the ponies, because of the Princesses, and because of Twilight and her friends.

Spike got his one chance to be an explainer, as Luna didn’t know who Oars in Wells was.

Once that bit was filled in, Vinyl Scratch took over. She quickly described the operation of the Dream Trap Chain spell, and how they had all nearly fallen victim to it, except that Twilight in her dream had forgotten that Vinyl was supposed to be blind, and so shocked her into becoming self-aware.

The rest of Twilight’s dream was glossed over, and then the account of Pinkie Pie’s dream was cut short—

“Luna and I have discussed the matter, and we have agreed to reveal to you the details of what you witnessed in the room with three walls,” Celestia informed them.

“But not tonight,” Luna concluded. “It would take a whole night answering the questions that would come from that revelation.”

—And so the account skipped forward to Rainbow Dash’s dream. This dream had not only ended with Rainbow becoming self-aware, but also doing the same for Applejack and propelling Rarity all the way into being fully awake.

Pinkamena interrupted to provide a detail that had been left out of the brief summary so far: the existence of Dream Spike.

“Vinyl was replacing me in my first trip to Ponyville,” Twilight explained. “And so I had a version of you in there. Not you yourself, you understand, but a version I made up. The same way I stuck Mayor Mare in the same dream.”

“Sure, I understand,” Spike said.

“But I was running a simulation in my dream, and I had to include the actions by all players. So I decided that Dream Spike was so smart that after he was abandoned—”

“Hey!”

“—Just like we left you behind to journey into the Everfree Forest—after he was abandoned, he managed to figure out that he was in a dream, and that he was imaginary. So, in his final act, he sacrificed himself to buy the others time when Nightmare Moon attacked.”

Spike was stunned. “No way. You had me save the day?”

Twilight nodded. “And when I needed somepony to talk through my theories in Rainbow Dash’s dream, there you were again. Not Rainbow’s version of you, but mine. And you remembered everything that had happened to you. So I kept you for all the rest of the dreams.”

Spike thought for a moment. “So this ‘Dream Spike’...he was a voice in your head. Like Pinkie Pie?”

“Not exactly,” said Vinyl in a quiet voice. “More like the voices in my head.”

“This is new,” said Luna. She then looked quizzically at her sister. “This is new, correct?”

“It is,” Celestia replied. “How did this happen?”

Vinyl sighed deeply. “I was sent to the Manehattan Home for the Mentally Incapacitated when I was very young.”

“How young?” Celestia interrupted.

“My fifth birthday. And things were...rough there. So I developed seven different personalities to compensate.”

“Wait,” Fluttershy said in a nearly inaudible tone. “I made that up for my story. Er...dream. That was real?”

Luna had a different reaction: She bristled. She had been studying psychology for the past several months, and was quite aware of the most-likely cause of Multiple Personality Disorder. She made a mental note to perform a thorough review of this ‘Home’ as soon as She woke up.

Vinyl resumed her explanation. “Anyway, I managed to escape and I...or I guess we...won our case in court, so I never have to go back there again.”

“So, should we be meeting any of these voices any time soon?” Applejack asked.

Vinyl shook her head. “They really much prefer being out of sight. Except P0N-3. You’ve met her at my sessions.”

The others took some time to take all this in.

Rarity next took up the reins of the story, telling how she awoke to find herself a prisoner of Oars in Wells, and how she talked him into letting her create her own dream, to give the dreamers a fighting chance of facing him in the final dream.

And this led to the bombshell, the whole reason why this debriefing was taking place in a dream instead of in a meeting room in the waking world, no matter how secure—the fact that Pinkie Pie wasn’t a pony or an alternate personality, but rather a goddess, a being akin to Discord in the extent of Her ability to warp reality. Pinkie told the others what She was, and how She had ended up in the body of Pinkamena Diane Pie.

Rarity told of how Oars had discovered Pinkie’s secret, and had used it to trap Her in a closed-off part of the dream world.

And then had come Fluttershy’s dream, where Oars had gone all-out to try and finish off the whole group of them. And then the wild sequence of events that had ended with the final defeat of Oars in Wells, and therefore the present moment.

“Hey wait a second,” Rainbow interrupted. “How come You’re not a pink alicorn anymore?”

Pinkie gave Rainbow a deadpan look. “Rainbow, I’m not even a pony. And I’m the Goddess of Dreams now. I can look any way I want. And for My friends, I want to look the way they most fondly remember Me as.” She then looked over at Luna, who had been silent throughout the last part of the story. “Princess Luna, I’m sorry that I’ve taken Your job away from You. I don’t think we had any other choice.”

“No, it’s alright,” Luna said quietly. “When I first started protecting fillies and foals from their nightmares, I was praised by everypony, and showered with thanks and works of art depicting My acts. But then came the Time of Troubles and the Night Army, and I was forced to leave the ponies to fend for themselves in their dreams for generations. And when I returned...a rumor spread that I was creating the bad dreams that I would then vanquish. This is where the name ‘Nightmare Moon’ for Me was originally from.

“When I returned, I tried once again to monitor the dreams of the pony children. They appreciated what I did, but their parents were terrified, so I very reluctantly stopped what I was doing. Now, I only protect the dreams of those ponies who are My friends in the waking world, who know that I would never do anything bad to those suffering from nightmares, and would never use anything I learned from those dreams against them.”

Luna closed Her eyes and took in a cleansing breath. “I am an immortal, so I can afford to be patient. Give Me a few decades, and I think I will be able to convince most ponies to entrust their dreams to My care.”

“And in the meantime, I’ll take care of them!” Pinkie exclaimed. “And I’ll be sure to put in a good word for You whenever I get the chance. Before You know it, the thirty thousand years of chaos will be shortened to a mere millennium!”

The others gave Her a typical “what are you talking about Pinkie Pie” stare.

Pinkie Pie groaned. “Someday, somepony is going to get one of My references.”

Pinkamena stood up. “And in the meantime, I’m leaving Ponyville.”

This pronouncement put everypony in an uproar that lasted several minutes.

“No, no, no!” Pinkamena finally exclaimed to quiet the others. “No, Rainbow, I am not leaving because I think the rest of you don’t like me. I know you all like me. But there’s something I need to do.

“Mauve Shadow is out there somewhere. Like Dream Spike, she was far too real to be a totally made-up character. I am convinced that Oars met this mare somewhere in Equestria, and that she is pretty much the mare we met in the dream. And that means she badly needs help. I am going to set out to find her, and find out why she hates cutie marks so much, and to become her friend in real life.

“Pinkamena,” Applejack pleaded, “even if this ‘Mauve Shadow’ does exist, we have no idea where in Equestria she might live.”

Celestia nodded Her head. “We’ve been over Oars’ papers. He did indeed have files on all seven of you, but there was nothing about a unicorn by Mauve’s name or description. Believe me, a pony possessing an artifact allowing her to remove other ponies’ cutie marks—if there was anything written about her, I would have noticed.”

“Nevertheless, I am determined to do this.”

“Pinkamena, we are all willing to help you,” Twilight told her.

“But are you willing to give up your lives in Ponyville, potentially for years, before you find her? I’m the only one without roots. I’m certainly no baker, and Ponyville doesn’t really have a place for a geologist. I’m the one for this job. I’ll have the chance to travel to places that never heard of Pinkie Pie, and maybe in those places I can figure out more about myself, and what else I might be besides a worrywart inventor that obsesses over rocks.

“And besides, any time I want a shoulder to cry on, or somepony to share my story with, I just have to go to sleep, and I’m sure Pinkie will take care of the rest, no matter where in Equestria I might be.”

“You know it, Sister,” Pinkie said, pulling the magenta earth pony into a warm hug. “Now unless anypony else wants to drop another big drama bomb on all of us, I wanted to move this dream along to the party stage, particularly the ‘Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash Are Married, Woo-Hoo!’ party, which is right over here!” And with that, Pinkie Pie walked over to the cloud wall and swept it aside like it was a curtain, revealing a simple banquet hall.

Spike woke up the next morning fully rested. The party the night before had seemed to go on for hours, but true to Pinkie’s word, it had actually taken up less than a single hour of dream time, leaving the rest for the kind of sleep that the stressed ponies and dragon had all desperately needed.

After eating a hearty breakfast, Twilight had put on a suit that had been hurriedly stitched together by Rarity in the early morning hours, and had then set out for her family’s house in Canterlot, with Spike sitting on her back. The predominant atmosphere of the city was one of jubilation—the war with the dragons was finally over, and all of the ponies who had spent the war sheltered inside Canterlot were finally free to head home.

Ponies had called out individually to both Twilight and to Spike. To Twilight for being one of the Heroes of Equestria, responsible through undisclosed means for the victory. And to Spike for standing with the ponies in their hour of need. Spike was overjoyed that ponies were showing their best side at this time, remembering his many small good deeds for Canterlot and its citizens over the past few years, and not just lumping him in with the group of dragons that had tried to mentally enslave Equestria. Never before had he felt so proud to be an Equestrian citizen.

He even saw a trio of juvenile dragons among the crowd. Two of them were as tall as Luna and the third was his size and colored a bright fluorescent green. That one looked strangely familiar, for some reason.

Twilight and Spike stopped outside a very familiar wooden door, which Twilight had sharply knocked on. It was opened by both of Twilight’s parents, wearing formal clothing. Spike had no idea what the occasion was.

“So,” Twilight asked the two unicorns in a somewhat formal manner. “Did you consider the course of action I proposed?”

“Yes,” said Twilight Velvet, “and to be honest we are both ashamed that we never thought about it before.”

“It should be obvious that we both want this now as much as you do,” added Night Light.

“What?” Spike asked Twilight, standing up on her back and leaning over her head to look into her eyes. “What do you all want?”

Twilight used her magic to levitate Spike into the air and turn him around so they were face to face. “Spike,” she said with barely-controlled emotion, “how would you like to formally become a member of my family? Dream Spike made me realize that I’ve been taking you for granted, and reminded me of what could happen if I ever got hurt far from Canterlot or Ponyville. The hospital staff won’t even let you see me if I was really hurt! And if I—”

Spike held Twilight’s snout closed with a claw. “Yes,” he said with tears in his eyes.

“We want to adopt you,” Night Light blurted out.

“Yeah, I kinda figured that out,” Spike deadpanned. And then they all laughed. And hugged. And ran all the way to the courthouse.

Fluttershy guided Rainbow Dash to sit down on her couch.

“You really don’t have to do this, Shy,” Rainbow insisted gently.

But Fluttershy didn’t reply, she was focused, she was single minded for once as she began to gather things on the coffee table.

Twenty-three books, eight etheric records, one hundred and eight short stories written under five different pseudonyms, a framed sociology degree.

Two writing awards, a business license, the title for her home, a veterinary certification, her wildlife caretaker’s title, her first story in an old notebook, a crude drawing of Daring Do, a slightly less crude drawing of Rainbow Dash.

Her bank statements, her list of charity contributions, her list of successful animal adoptions, her list of successfully rehabilitated injured animals, her very short list of friends.

Fluttershy sat next to the coffee table, her head low.

“I know it’s not much,” she whispered. “But this is everything I have, and I want to give it to you…”

Rainbow Dash stood and kissed Fluttershy on the forehead.

“No, Fluttershy,” she whispered. “You’re enough.”

“But I—”

“You’re everything I need, Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash whispered again. “What was that quote… ‘the measure of a mare is what she does with power’ right? You… Once you were free to use that power, you wanted me. You wanted… me, Fluttershy, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

On the other side of the Veil, Pinkie Pie was looking through Her compact disc collection, pulling out the ones that most closely resembled Herself and Her friends. The ones that contained the songs that Vinyl had used to enter each of their dreams.

There was “25 or 6 to 4”, for Twilight Sparkle. The “Waltz from Masquerade”, for Herself. “Crazy on You”, for Rainbow Dash. Applejack had been skipped, and Rarity had pulled them into her dream, but if Pinkie were to guess—and She was very good at guessing—She’d pick “A Hard Day’s Night” for Applejack, and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” for Rarity, and the former of these was only because Jeff didn’t have “Take Me Home Country Roads” on any of the CDs he had given to Her.

And finally there was Fluttershy. Her song was “My World Is Empty Without You,” and Vinyl had told Pinkie that they had all regretted going into her dream once they heard that title.

But that was no longer Fluttershy’s song. Pinkie reached into Her saddlebags and pulled out a new CD box set, one that had never been there before: The Dusty Springfield Anthology. Pinkie had to put on a smirk at that title: “Dusty Springfield” was one of those rare human names that was exactly the same in Pony. She got out one of Vinyl Scratch’s Trottman players, and put the second CD from the box inside it, cueing up track 9, and Fluttershy’s new song: “Magic Garden”.

And when your dreaming vanishes
Like snowflakes in the summer sky
Melts away in darkness
And you don't know why the magic garden
Waits with all the gates wide open
And darlin', I'll be standin' just inside.

Yes…much better, She thought.

Octavia finally returned to her Canterlot apartment from her enforced stay in Fillydelphia two days later. She shoved her way through the door, with five large bags just sticking to her back in a display of one of the lesser-known earth pony powers. The luggage-mountain on legs stumbled through the living room to fall apart into its component parts in her bedroom, and Octavia collapsed upon her bed, falling asleep instantly.

By the time she awoke, it was the middle of the night.

Octavia instantly remembered that she had left her front door open, and rushed out to first check it, and then do an inventory of what had been stolen during her nap. She found the door closed and locked, nothing missing, and a strange pony snoring on her couch.

Well, the snorer was Vinyl Scratch, but that didn’t necessarily change her category away from being a strange pony.

“That’s the sorriest excuse for a snore that I have ever heard,” Octavia loudly declared.

“Aw, you can always see through me,” Vinyl said, sitting up.

Octavia sat down beside her. “So, what did I miss?”

“Oars in Wells has tragically passed away in his sleep. ...Or, he got what he deserved after betraying the whole Pony race. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Uh-huh,” Octavia said stoically. To be honest, she had had her suspicions. “And what happens to his shows?”

“I was thinking we would take them over,” Vinyl said, trying in vain to cover up her enthusiasm.

“We have absolutely no experience.”

“And neither does anypony else! That’s why we’re perfect for the job.”

“This is a very bad idea, Vinyl,” Octavia said.

“No it isn’t, it’s brilliant. I mean, Pon-3 thinks so.”

Octavia raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Really! Just listen: ‘I, DJ Pon-3, think this idea is absolutely superb!’”

“Vinyl, that’s your Prince Blueblood impression.”

“And he loves the idea, too!”

Octavia shook her head at the absurdity of it all. “And what about his acting troupe?”

“Oh, they’ve all been arrested as co-conspirators. I mean...they all won fabulous all-expense paid vacations to the South Sea coast.”

“The agency you don’t belong to needs to come up with better cover stories,” Octavia quipped.

“I’ll be sure not to let them know,” Vinyl shot back. “So I think we should start rehearsing the second season premiere of the Risking It All Team next Tuesday.”

“...And who will be playing the parts? Us?”

“What? Of course not! I talked the Bearers into playing their own parodies.”

“You did not!”

“I did! It will be amazing.”

Octavia sat there for several seconds, hoping that Vinyl would get at least a suspicion that she wouldn’t be able to talk her into yet another hare-brained scheme. But eventually, she had to relent. “Alright, how does it start?”

“Now get this: We walk from the sounds of a Canterlot street into a forbidden dragon fighting ring. Enter the Dark King—”

That was Oars in Wells’ signature role. “Played by?” Octavia prompted with a wicked smile.

“...”

“Yes?”

“...Enter the Dark King’s evil twin sister, played by me! ‘Mwa-ha-ha!’ I cackle, as I outline my scheme to get revenge for the tragic tub-drain-related death of my brother…”