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// We Live a Life of Ease 
// Story: Rebirth of Magic: Find your Voice 
// by JimmyHook19 
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Can I say that military stuff is boring?

I know there's the cliché that whenever anything vaguely military is going on that all the dads in the world suddenly turn into armchair generals and decide they can dictate military strategy, but to be honest that sort of stuff never really appealed to me. I'm not aware of any military service in my family, so I don't really feel a connection towards any of it.

If I had my way, weapons would be made illegal and any form of army banned. But that's not realistic, to be honest.

Which, I guess, brings us onto the parade we had come to watch. After some speeches and watching some soldiers saluting and moving their hats about, we then got to experience the National Anthem. Basically swap some words around and it's the same as the old British one. I thoroughly doubt I'll ever be the subject of those words, though. Rather comes with being the Spare (I suspect mom expects Zipp to have kids.)

What's Britain, you ask? It's where the person who was originally Zipp was from. Small place, but quite important.

But anyway. After they were done, some loud march began to play and there was a lot of marching up and down. The square in front of us sounded to the precisely timed steps of hooves and the crash of equipment and drums. There were a lot of soldiers on the move, so I decided for those not watching on ZBS or unable to get there in pony that I would stream the event on my phone.

Unfortunately, the tanks were SOOOO LOUD! There were so many of them driving past you could barely hear yourself think! I have no idea how the ponies who crew those machines are able to hear anything!

And there were lots of them. This was pretty over the top. It felt like one of those Red Square parades taken to ridiculous extremes. If mom had only been on the throne 25 years and this was the scale of parade they picked, what must 50 or 60 look like?

Which brings me back around to my initial point. This was clearly ego stroking. Look at us, haven't we got loads of really big stuff! Not to mention I suspect it sent a hostile message to the other groups out there. Not always the easiest of things to stomach, seeing as it felt like sabre rattling. I believe one guy once said that to avoid war you shouldn't provoke cannon shots? Something to that effect? I can't quite recall the exact quote, but I'll look it up later.

Critically, mom seemed to be enjoying it. The Colonel- the head of our security- was giving her a running narration on what was passing by the box. It was a miracle mom could hear any of what he was saying over all the racket. Not to mention all the diesel fumes we inhaled.

We finally got to the end of that with a massive fly-past. I'd noticed it before, but the Pegasi have figured out ways around the inability to fly.

After all that was over (and I was pretty thankful it was) we returned to the Palace and did some stuff. I did a stream, which was nice with the evening sun, and was sure to thank the Pippsqueaks for wishing mom a happy Jubilee. We then left the stream and had dinner, which was another interesting experience.

Good thing mom promised to keep us safe. If I knew anything of what might be coming (although I wasn't totally sure when I was at that point in time) we could all be in danger. Zipp mentioned at one point she'd tried to persuade mom to recognise what was coming and the potential danger we were in, but mom just dismissed it. I wonder if that would happen now.

I had my doubts, truth be told. There were some elements of Mom's behavior that came across as a bit weird. I know it's a bit rude to call your own mom weird, but she suddenly didn't seem to know her way around the place. I'd had the exact same experience, and no doubt Zipp had as well.

But that evening we planned to go somewhere exciting. A WATER PARK! And you totally must know I totes LOVE water parks! They're so much fun in the hot climate we seem to be having this time of year, and best of all the one we went to had its own super special section specifically for royal use!

And we just got a chance to unwind and be normal ponies for a while, which was great. Mom even did a cannonball in public. Apparently that hadn't happened for a long time. I've still got the photo I took on my phone after she pulled off that stunt. What I remember the most about it is how happy we all looked. The smiles were genuine, not the forced ones we often have to put on for the media.





One day was rather different, though. We were all at the palace. Well, me and Zipp were. Mom had something about a factory- some sort of official opening or demonstration of something or something like that. This left the two of us at home, but we had rather different priorities for what we should be doing.

"I feel we should be investigating more," Zipp said, looking at me with her eyes firmly in detective mode. "The more we can learn about this place and how it functions the better. Of course, if we have as much intel as we can we can more effectively plan for what's coming."

"You really are getting into character!" I joked. "Sleuthing takes rather more than just looking about for clues. I can be looking about online, getting my hooves on the pulse of life here. It's the same sort of thing as what you like to do, just in a different space!"

Zipp sighed. "Very well. I'll check out what the guards are up to and you look about online. Best of luck!"

"You too!" I called as I sped off, resisting the urge to make a music joke. Speaking of music, I still had plenty of music related things to do as I headed off down the pathway. I still hadn't finished off that song I was meant to be singing at the Royal Celebration concert. Getting that done was a pretty high priority, so I headed off in that direction to do precisely that. It was time to get this song finished!

I had the basic track and the lyrics down, so finding the appropriate mixes in the background was all that needed to be done in order to get the song finished and ready to go. I consulted my musical archives and soon settled on a fairly mellow arrangement of backing piano, some bass, a fairly light drum track, and some synthesized brass.

That just left tempo to figure out. Knowing what speed I could go at would be important for performing the song live. Something I make a point of in my shows is that I don't lip sync along to a recording like some pop acts (like- URGH!- Filli Vanilli. That scandal was bad for the music industry). Instead, what you hear in a performance is my actual voice, unfiltered and with no autotune. If people wanted to hear a pre processed voice they would just go and buy the original recording. Not me. I like to spice things up in live performance.

I spent some time following the words along and testing a number of different tempos. I figured out I needed to slow it down if my attempts to keep pace turned into me screaming gibberish. I eventually settled on a relatively relaxed beat with some extra samples to beef up the sound a bit and produced a more rounded texture in the sound.

Time for final mixing. I ran the mix one final time to check everything was perfect, and then saved the resulting file for playback later. It sounded pretty good over my laptop speakers, so I could only imagine what it would sound like when played over the sound system in the Throne Room!

Of course, I'd need to test the song, but once I was done I popped out of my room- and sure enough there was mom.

"Hi mom!" I said, noticing her looking a little confused. "Need something?"

She looked quizzically at me. "Pipp, this is probably just my hoofwriting not being easy to read, but what does 'spa with Pipp' mean?"

Of course! I'd noticed this in my schedule of things to do! All I had to do was explain it and we'd be home free. "Mom, don't you remember? We go to the spa every week! Great way of getting the knots out of the mane, amiright?"

And as they say, a quick run with the brush and some posh shampoo always brightens my day