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// Verse 31 
// Story: The Nightmare Knights Become A Band 
// by SwordTune 
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The workshop was both exactly what Luna expected and surprising to the senses. In return designing the Knight’s costume and aesthetics, Luna was willing to write a blank cheque for Coco Pommel’s business. She trusted a fashion designer’s judgement. If it were any other pony, Luna would have been apprehensive about paying funds so freely, but Miss Pommel was trusted by Twilight’s friends, and that was good enough for her.
There were much larger places to choose from in Manehattan, but Coco’s new workshop was close to her home in Bronclyn. She had rented a small warehouse, but it was plain to see the previous occupants had renovated it for other purposes.
There was an empty row of drywall dividers, creating multiple workspaces. Whatever they were for before, Coco turned them into three neatly divided stations for sewing, modelling and accessorising. 
Luna had imagined warehouses to be bleak, cold empty spaces collecting dust alongside boxes simply waiting to be moved. But Coco’s truly made the place come alive as a workshop. With metres of dyed cotton and seemingly more colours than a rainbow, every part of the workshop had become alive with fabric. The rest of the Knights, save for Starlight, who was busy with her school, walked around the workshop like children in a candy store.
While they perused, Luna explained some of her ideas for what kind of props they were looking for. 
“I think I might have you covered for some of those.” Coco gestured her hoof to the third worktable, which was completely covered in a white sheet, although the props could still be seen sticking out from underneath.
“I hope they’re not bothering you,” Luna said, glancing at the rest of the band before she took a look at Coco’s work.
Coco Pommel waved her hoof. “No, no. I normally have two fashion students who intern with me, but I gave them the day off so we could talk about what you wanted for the band.” She pulled the sheet to reveal dozens of nearly finished designs.
“I might have gotten ahead of myself,” she giggled. “Most Bridleway musicals have so many bright and energetic designs, so I guess I wanted to try something else for a change.
Luna looked over four microphone stands, each with a unique design that was still keeping with the Nightmare Knights’ theme. On the worktable, there were coloured sketches of simple logos that could be added to backdrops or Lightning Dust’s drums.
“Are those what I think they are?”
Luna turned to see Tempest by a dressed-up mannequin, whose attention had been turned away from the clothes and back to the unveiled props. Her gaze led right up to the side of the table, where two guitars waited in silence.
“You like them?” Coco asked, a little shyly. “I don’t know much about instruments, so I asked a colleague if he could make some custom guitars with my designs on them.”
Tempest picked up both and plucked the strings. “I love them.”
“These are just models, though,” Coco took them off her hooves. “They won’t actually play. I wanted to run the final design by you all before I put the order in.”
“This is all really impressive,” Luna said, picking up one of the microphone stands. It was shaped much thicker than a thin metal limb, imitating a stone tower, with a gargoyle moulded from foam at the top. “And much better than I could have thought of.”
Coco blushed and pushed her mane back behind her ears. “Oh, thank you. But these are just some starting ideas. I definitely want to add more of your vision into them before I make the final adjustments.”
“Well, if I had to start somewhere, maybe we can talk about background props. If we’re the Nightmare Knight then we’ll need a Nightmare Castle, right?”





Besides taxis and private carriages, the routine appearance of buses drawn by teams of earth ponies dotted the Manehattan landscape. The band grabbed lunch at the Cantering Cook with Coco, treating her to whatever she wanted as thanks for her hard work.
It was late evening before they decided to head back to their homes.
“Hey, Luna,” Lightning Dust asked as they walked by Bridleway Street. “If things aren’t cool between you and your sister, do you still go back to the same house? Silver Shoals, or wherever.”
“But of course, we are still sisters. Arguing is a part of the job description, and we’ve learned to live with it.”
“Then, do you think you could get us a couple of tickets for a show?” Down the street, Lightning pointed to posters put up beside every shop for Celestia’s play. Tall, neon-lit displays erected at various points along the street housed board-sized advertisements taller than a stallion. In the foreground, the silhouette of a character stood with its back to the viewer, staring to a distant red moon in the distance. Attractive reds and pinks were sharply contrasted, forming two halves of the poster, one bright and the other dark.
“That’s… a lot,” Tempest whistled. The band took a detour, inspecting the infamously packed Bridleway theatre. Above the entrance, a bright incandescent sign. The old lightbulbs hummed with their orange glow, and there were so many that they easily warmed the ponies waiting in line. Windows on either side of the front door listed the upcoming shows, along with the same bold posters that dotted the street.
The overwhelming flood of promotional material knitted Luna’s brows together, forming ridges of discomfort and disgust. Her face was like that of a child taking a bitter medicine for the first time. “I will never understand the modern need to put advertisements everywhere.”
Svengallop looked on the posters with a distant sense of familiarity. “It’s all based on the material’s ignorance factor.”
“Ignorance factor? You’re making that up.”
“Think about it, doesn’t it make sense?” he said. “Producers want their product to be seen, so they advertise it everywhere. But then, it gets too familiar, so ponies start ignoring it. The easier it is to ignore, the more marketing the producer has to do to get attention.”
“It sounds like a vicious cycle,” Tempest said.
He nodded. “Oh, it is. And there’s nothing any pony can do to stop it. Mark my words, in the future, everything will have ads.”
Luna shuddered and stuck her tongue out, retching at the thought of constantly seeing brightly coloured and loud marketing campaigns.
“So… are tickets a no-go?” Lightning Dust tapped on the glass covering one of the poster boards. “It looks pretty dramatic. I dunno, I might want to see it.”
“You want to see a play called Wicked Moon?”
“I think it’s a musical. Pretty sure Bridleway only does musicals. And anyway, it’s not like it’s about you or anything.” Lightning tapped her chin and looked at the poster a little longer. “Even though it was written by Celestia, who had to fight you as your alternate self, which could be described as a wicked moon. Yeah okay, I see it. It’s definitely about you. But, it could still be fun, right?”
“It would be nice seeing other ponies perform for once,” Tempest weighed in, after inspecting the other poster boards hung up outside the theatre. “It doesn’t even have to be Celestia’s play. There’s Spectre of the Theatre, Dogs, even Manespray. Ooh, Dropsy said that one’s a classic.”
“Yeah, but those ones aren’t sold out,” Lightning Dust replied. “If I’m going to see something on Bridleway, it has to be the best one, right?”
Svengallop nodded. “That’s true. There’s something special about seeing a performance when it first comes out.”
“If you want to see a play, you’re free to go,” Luna told Lightning Dust. “I can’t pull strings for you. Besides, I’ve heard some ponies buy tickets just to sell them at higher prices. There must be some tickets you can buy.”
“Wow, that’s cold, Princess,” she smirked back, “but fair enough. No pony would want to go with me anyway.”
“Yeah, probably,” Svengallop said. “Who’d want to waste an evening with you?”
Lightning Dust punched him on the shoulder. “What the heck, dude? That’s the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘No, you’re a valued member of the team, Lightning Dust.’”
He winced and stumbled, the force of her hoof pushing him into Tempest. “Ow! If you weren’t such a massive pain in my ass maybe I would’ve said that.”