Chapter 4: The Gala part 1
A week after the coronation, while the air ships for the six new princesses to take their journey on were still being built, the nobles had demanded the Grand Galloping Gala be held early this year so they could all get a chance to talk to the princesses. They all knew the nobles just wanted a chance to suck up, but the princesses had a different idea of how the Gala should be. They told the nobles to invite all their children to the Gala. The princesses would also be bringing all their family. Which the nobles did not quite realize meant the entire Apple family, along with Pinkie Pie herself, would make the Gala a very different experience. Rarity decided she would just fancy up their first Gala dresses, as she was making dresses for Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, Babs, and Willow. Twilight and Pinkie Pie’s little brothers Amethyst and Dusk got tuxes but not from Rarity as she already had her hooves full.
By the start of the Gala all nine princesses of Equestria stood at the top of the stairs greeting everypony, trying to contain their excitement. With how many of the Apple family there actually were, the Gala was completely full, so the only ponies at this Gala were the princesses their families, and the nobles, no one else had been able to get tickets. So, in a way, the nobles were at their mercy. The two ponies most excited about this were Twilight and Rarity, Rarity was more than excited to meet Duke Blueblood once again. The duke had seemed to notice her as he awaited entrance and had quickly avoided her moving in the line to shake hands with Celestia rather than face that embarrassment, not that Rarity would let him get away so easily later. Or that Celestia was going to forget the stories she had heard so quickly.
“Oh Blueblood dear, wouldn’t you want to say hello to one of the other new princesses? you see me often enough.” The warm toned alicorn called, with an amused glance to Rarity as she struggled to contain the giant shit eating grin she wished she could wear in this moment.
“Oh uh, yes yes. Of course, you are right Celestia.” He said quickly. Nervously looking towards every princess but Rarity with strange looks from the other nobles. He seemingly decided Fluttershy would be the least likely to say anything about his incident with Rarity he was sure the entire group likely knew about.
But once he finally made it up to the yellow, brown, and pink alicorn adorned in her green dress with vines and butterflies he quickly realized he was wrong.
It was almost as if she was staring straight into his soul, like he was simply shriveling beneath the seemingly meek alicorns gaze. Anyone who had seen the stare before would be able to tell it seemed as though its power had much increased under the influence of alicorn magic.
“Blueblood, it is so nice to meet you, I have heard so much about you! I hope you have aa great a night as we plan to have.” Fluttershy said in her soft voice, seemingly pleasant and polite to the surrounding nobles. But Blueblood himself could hear the threat in those words. With a bow he practically scurried off as the nine princesses tried to keep themselves from laughing. Pinkie failing but the nobles chalked that up to her being the element of laughter and nothing more.
While the princesses were still greeting everyone, their younger siblings were all meeting, Amethyst was very anxious and quiet, just standing in the circle of foals not saying much. His mom had pushed him to start coming out of his shell, talk to and meet other ponies. He usually hid behind Cloudy Quartz at such events. Igneous had insisted that Amethyst be home schooled as to not ‘fill his mind with nonsense’. He had no idea what to say to these other kids. He hadn’t ever been allowed to leave the rock farm, and if he ever got too excited talking to his sisters his father would scream and throw things. Limestone always fought with him when that happened, she had told him it was because he reminded father of Pinkie Pie and after meeting his sister, he could see the resemblance they shared. He never really understood why Pinkie wasn’t around or why no one was allowed to talk about her around father. But once they had left the farm and moved across Equestria his mother had finally told him the truth, he had been horrified. He had already hated his father but that solidified it to Amethyst.
And now he was in a strange group of foals all his age and four of them looked like they were going to burn up in their excitement. He was working up the courage to ask what they were so excited about but before he could Willow spoke in the soft voice typical of Fluttershy’s family.
“Are you four ok? What are you so excited about? From what I heard about this thing from Fluttershy it was a total disaster last time.” She said, the steadiness and confidence she had didn’t quite match the voice and it threw Apple Bloom off only for a moment.
“Were excited because your all blank flanks!” The other three had varying reactions to the statement but all were bad, it looked as though Dusk was about to start yelling at her when she stopped him. “No, no it ain’t a bad thing, we’re all blank flanks too! We made a group dedicated to trying to find your special talent, and everyone our age around Ponyville already got theirs. And Babs lives in Manehatten, and she has a couple friends who joined there, but we always wanna add more so eventually there’s a whole network of ponies trying to help each other get their cutie marks!” Dusk looked at the yellow and red filly with skepticism, but Amethyst perked up at the explanation, that sounded fun. He always thought his talent would have to do with rocks, but Pinkies wasn’t about rocks, maybe his wasn’t either. Willow looked to be deep in thought and then shrugged.
“I don’t see a reason why not to join, I can see if anyone else in Cloudsdale wants to join when I go home.” Willow said with a grin, it sounded like fun, which she didn’t get very much of at home, everything was always so quiet. Amethyst nodded along with Willow; he had just moved to a new place this might be a good way to make new friends at his new school too!
Dusk looked a little more skeptical. “I mean, it’ll happen eventually I just don’t see the point in doing that, isn’t it tiring constantly thinking about how you’re going to try and get your cutie mark that day?”
“No, it’s pretty awesome! You get to try all kinds of new stuff and on the way, you find all sorts of things you’ve never tried that, even if you don’t get your cutie mark for it, you really like to do! Applebloom makes a bunch of cool potions and stuff with Zecora, Sweetie Belle studies magic in her free time, and I take apart and rebuild bikes and scooters and carts and all sorts of things or give them cool upgrades to make them go faster!” Scootaloo explained trying to win the colt over, she had noticed Apple bloom eyeing the dark blue unicorn dreamily when she thought no one was looking.
Dusk looked like he thought it was a rather useless effort but nodded along anyway. “Well, I guess so, when you put it that way, sure I guess.” He mostly only said yes because he knew Twilight wanted him to make friends. His parents always said he was so much like Twilight had been when she was younger, not making many friends. But now Twilight had a whole bunch of friends and even turned into an alicorn. Twilight looked at him like she pitied him. Like she knew something he didn’t, it made him want to blast magic in her face sometimes, she had been away the past three years what did she know. But he would do this anyway because he wanted to be close to his sister again, and it wasn’t as if he had much else to do. “So, since we are supposed to do things to try and earn our cutie marks what are we going to do right now? Or is this a later thing?” he asked looking at the other foals.
Applebloom gave a big grin as DJpon3, who had been hired to play the music for the event by Pinkie Pie started playing music the Gala had most definitely never seen before. “How bout’ dancing?” she said with a giggle as her Sweetie, Scootaloo, Babs, and Willow ran off to the dance floor, where most of Applebloom’s family was already gathered Dusk looked over at Amethyst, the other colt seemed rather shy. He was not, however, going to be the only colt on the dance floor with a bunch of weird girls, so he grabbed Amethyst in his pink magic to drag him along.
As the nobles and their children entered the adults looked rather horrified, and most of their children looked rather excited until they saw their parents’ reactions. As the Apple family, Rainbows family, the CMC and their new recruits danced, although Dusk was just as bad at dancing as Twilight, and Amethyst didn’t know what dancing really was. By the time the princesses were finally able to join the party themselves things were already getting weird. All the nobles had backed themselves into a corner, the cutie mark crusaders were coming by every so often and snatching the noble children without cutie marks to try and induct them into the club. Having Dusk there was helping in the effort, as many of them recognized him from school, and soon many of the young noble children joined the club. When Djpon3 finally changed the song to a more familiar song by request of the nobles, insisting she was only doing it once, waltz music started to play. And as they danced one of the foals who the CMC had dragged in got her cutie mark in dancing, she was dancing circles around the rest of the foals as the fancy music played. Dusk had told the rest of them her name was Tender Steps. Her mother was a very well-known dance instructor named Hoofer Steps.
While this was happening Scootaloo was particularly distracted. All the pegasi who had been dancing rose into the air, including Willow who had been expecting Scootaloo to follow and looked behind her confused. Scootaloo’s ears went back, and she shook her head. Willow simply smiled and reached out a hoof. “Common I’ll help” she said with a small smile. Scootaloo jumped up pumping her wings. But once she reached Willows hoof there was no more strain. She floated up easily. She looked at Willow bewildered as she hovered almost effortlessly for the first time in her life.
“Fluttershy has the same problem. A bunch of her magic not being in her wings. Although not quite as bad, she’s still able to fly, not very good but she can so no one did anything about it. So, I figured there’s no harm in trying. I have extra magic anyway.” She said smiling. Willow could see the aura of magic in a pony and had noticed quickly once she took a closer look that Scootaloo’s magic was pooling in her hooves instead of the base of her wings like most pegasi.
“Magic? What does magic have to do with it?” Scootaloo asked bewildered as she hovered in the air besides Willow, she hadn’t paid too much attention in school well, ever.
“Your magic is all pooling at your hooves instead of inside your wings. Pegasi magic flows out of our wings while we fly, we have a little magic in our hooves, unicorns too, so we can walk on clouds and pick stuff up with our hooves. But sometimes it can all pool in your hooves, it’s more obvious in unicorns. I’m pushing extra magic I have into your hooves to push yours to your wings.” Willow explained. Scootaloo started tearing up and gave Willow a hug. Willow looked slightly uncomfortable, having just met Scootaloo, but smiled anyway.
No one had ever investigated why exactly she couldn’t fly. Always telling her she was just a late bloomer, and it would happen eventually. As if babies like Poundcake weren’t already flying around better than her. She wondered how many pegasi foals had been just like her, unable to fly because they were told it would eventually happen. As the two fillies started dancing to the song, Scootlaoo blushed slightly as she realized they had been holding hooves this whole time. A loud crash sounded behind them. As well as screaming and a familiar laugh of a certain mismatched chaos being.