Princess Twilight was nothing but overly cautious; any letter that would have caused Celestia to unleash her inner poet was something very dire indeed, and the moment she got it that night was the same moment she devoted herself in trying, and failing, to make sense of it. She went so far as to forego sleep entirely, exhausting herself when the sunlight came back into the sky to shine in her eyes. She had sent a magical flare in the sky with a flash of her horn every hour for five hours, each in the shape of her friends' cutie marks as a way to tell them to come over immediately as soon as the sun came up the next morning. As she waited for them to gather, she was reviewing letters that came from Celestia in the past, as sparse as they were compared to the ones she had sent the other way over the years.
Worryingly, she reached the end of the stack of letters sent to her rather quickly, the opened scrolls dancing around her in a field of magic as she compared them to the one boasting the worrying poem. None matched, save for the hoofwriting, and even that was a near miss with how hurried it had been scratched out onto the parchment. The other letters made far more sense compared to the recent oddball. A part of her began to fixate on the poem in worry.
But before she could start fussing over this problem all over again, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to Spike, who looked at her worriedly. "Um… Twilight… cutie mark," he said, pointing at said cutie mark before Twilight could get a word out. Brow furrowing, she turned to her rump, and…
What in Equestria was happening? Her cutie mark… was shining rather oddly. It was glowing as if she were obtaining it all over again, yet… surrounded by dark clouds, oddly reflective, like broken glass, each one trying to stab themselves into her flank. She flinched away, but still the dark clouds followed her, making her ruffle her wings. "What the…?" was all she got out.
"Yeah," Spike agreed with a nod. "You were so engrossed in those scrolls, I'm amazed you didn't notice this sooner." Twilight frowned, and made to say something more when some of the dark clouds changed, some looking like raindrops, some like spiders, some preferring to remain as the darkness itself, some like eerily red clouds crackling like lightning… and some, worryingly enough, shaped and shining like razor-sharp scalpels.
Twilight continued to stare, before her eyes darted back to the scroll with the worrying poem. Alas, as with her previous attempts to understand it, it had not yielded any answers. Maybe she could write back, ask Celestia what kind of cider she had indulged in as of late… before she heard doors opening behind her and somepony shouting from that door. "T-Twilight! My… my cutie mark's doing something weird!" the unexpected guest shouted. Twilight turned to find Rainbow Dash, whose wings were flared, whose front hooves were holding up the door, and whose cutie mark was, indeed, behaving strangely thanks to those same dark clouds pooling around it.
Rainbow Dash was followed, in short order, by Rarity, then Applejack, then Fluttershy, and finally by Pinkie Pie, all of whom were also looking rather flummoxed at the strange behavior their cutie marks were displaying. "I didn't know my cutie mark could do this; I would say 'wowie-zowie,' but what's happening here isn't so wowie," Pinkie said, garnering much nodding from her friends as they decided to not argue with her strange logic for once.
The dark clouds slowly, ominously lifted from the flanks of the six, coagulating overhead before veering off out of the room to hover in the hallway outside. Twilight's brow furrowed even deeper. "That… I think it wants us to follow it," Twilight said uneasily, using her magic to shelve all of the other scrolls in a nearby bookshelf, making sure to keep the alarming one close to her chest.
With a nod of unison from all six ponies, Spike clambered onto Twilight's back before she took off at a dead run, though not before Rainbow Dash vacated the door to prevent any head-on collisions from taking place. She was flanked in short order by the other five, who followed the cloud of darkness and unusual imagery as it darted down twisting and turning hallways, its incorporeal form sticking out within the crystalline castle like a sore thumb.
The group didn't waste time asking the cloud itself any questions, and it was fortunate that it kept pace with them, never straying from their sights as it took them up and down some stairs, seemingly leading them nowhere in particular. Besides, it had no mouth, it could not scream, and just seemed to be a particularly odd logical aberrance at best.
Or so went Twilight's internal attempts to rationalize this thing, anyway. Nothing about this made sense, and so no other explanation would even suffice as hedging the realms of satisfaction in her mind.
Yet, after what seemed like one hallway, one door, one staircase too many, the cloud halted in a room that had baffled Twilight ever since the castle emerged into existence within Ponyville; seven chairs, a smaller one for Spike and six larger ones for herself and her friends, arranged around a table of crystal that was strangely inert. Each chair was emblazoned with the cutie marks of her and her friends, and the cloud of darkness hung over the table. If it could snort in impatience, it would have done so in that moment, but all it could do to convey whatever irritation it was capable of was to swirl around above the chairs' collective edges with a tempestuous crackle.
Frowning, Twilight and her friends moved to sit at their marked chairs, and Spike moved to sit in his smaller one after disembarking from Twilight's back. Everypony tapped at the table, expecting it to do something… but it remained inert. They turned to the cloud of strangeness to see if, perhaps, it would finally yield answers.
The cloud crackled… and so did the scroll to which Twilight had clung. Twilight yelped, flinging the scroll away from her to land open-side up on the table, holding her hoof to her chest as if she had been scalded by it all of a sudden. She regarded it warily, ears pinning back as she took a few seconds to process what in Tartarus just happened.
"G-girls…" Twilight stammered, eyes widening as the reality of the situation was starting to catch up. to her "I… think that scroll is enchanted…"
"Twilight, aren't all scrolls sent by dragonfire enchanted by default?" Rarity asked, shaking her head. "While I cannot deny that this one is behaving rather abnormally, I don't think it would be enchanted to do something like this even if the Princesses had sent it. Honestly, it sounds like you're being a worrywart again." Then she turned to her cutie mark, which was decidedly behaving for the moment. "Furthermore, you had received the scroll, yes? Shouldn't it have not caused our marks to behave as they had done simply by us not being within proximity of its opening?"
"Well… yes…" Twilight admitted, flinching and shrinking as she lifted a shaky hoof to gesture to the scroll. "But how else could you explain it? Such enchanted scrolls have only been used in the past, before I was even born, in case things like war break… out…" Then she remembered the scroll, specifically, mentioning war, and her expression grew pale. "Oh… oh buck…"
"Um… sugarcube… ya mean to say we've got a biggun on our hooves?" Applejack asked slowly, trying to comprehend the situation. "Well why didn't ya jest say so sooner?"
Twilight gravely nodded. "Yeah…" She lit her horn and gently shoved the scroll towards Applejack, who picked it up and read its brief contents once it came within reach of her.
"... yeah… this don't look like nothing Celestia would write unless it was in a hurry," Applejack muttered, setting the scroll down once she read its poem of doom and gloom. Rarity lit up her horn to take the scroll to scrutinize it for herself.
"... now that I look at it, it looks as if Celestia didn't have much time to make her usual fanciful calligraphy," Rarity said, shaking her head as she passed the scroll to Rainbow Dash, then Fluttershy, and then to Pinkie Pie to have a look-see for themselves. "A 'sixfold feud' doesn't sound very promising, I'll admit… but we've had nothing of the sort lately. I don't think it could mean us, of all ponies, engaging in such horrendous behavior."
"Which means, the feud and the ponies causing it hasn't come yet!" Pinkie said sagely. "But aren't feuds usually between whole families that don't get resolved until the families set aside their differences and all the nasties that come with them?"
"I've never pegged you as one who had read the tragedy of Coroneo and Jeweliet," Rarity muttered as an aside, frowning deeply as her head shook.
"Well, to make ponies smile, I gotta find out what makes them sad first! You can't make ponies smile if you never find out what hurt them! Can't fix a pipe unless you have the right wrench, after all!" Pinkie argued.
Rainbow's growing frown turned lopsided. Synapses in her brain fired off their warning shots, and she heeded the warning shots immediately. "... I think we're bucked, if Pinkie Pie of all ponies makes sense," she grumbled gravely.
Fluttershy weakly nodded. "O-oh… my…" she muttered, processing the gravity of the situation. She couldn't find it in her to argue, and nor could the others.
Spike frowned, and would end up finding himself uttering the fateful words that caused the cloud of darkness swirling overhead to give up the ghost: "Okay… if Pinkie Pie is making sense… then what else could possibly go wrong from here?"
The cloud crackled, before it and it's dark images lanced out to gingerly touch the heads of the gathered seven. They had seen mere glimpses of things that hadn't happened yet, could not have happened in any capacity—of blood debts being repaid, of war desecrating Equestria, of markless ponies with impossible armor and magics laying waste to all they had held near and dear to their hearts. These glimpses were brief, so very fortunately brief… but the transience did nothing to hide the sheer horror and despair contained within the vision. The last thing those seven had glimpsed were six curious equines, each confronting them personally before the vision went black as if to imply death.
When the vision faded, and with it, the cloud of shadows, Twilight and her friends slumped in their chairs with mouths agape. For several long moments, none of them could speak, just staring at the ceiling wide-eyed and listlessly. The silence stretched as their brains had to take a moment to catch up to the fact that, yes, they were still alive… and if they botched whatever was headed their way, that would no longer be the case.
After remaining in that position for a good five minutes, Twilight jumped to her hooves, fanning her wings out to let the others know that they were safe. Slowly, her friends rose from their chairs, each drawing in a shaky breath before Applejack spoke for all of them.
"Alright… sugarcubes… I'mma level with y'all… but what the buck did we jest see?"
Rainbow Dash ruffled her wings uneasily, her face as pale as those of her friends. "I think the better question is: can we stop the… whatever it was we've just seen?" Her wings snapped open, primary feathers moving to gesticulate at points way beyond the castle they were standing in. "Because… that's big enough it looked like it could've given even the Princesses trouble, like Tirek except if there were hundreds of him."
Twilight slowly nodded, taking that sobering point into account. Whatever it was, it had the potential to involve countless ponies, and even she with her teleportation spell could not be everywhere at once—and at this rate, nor could the other Princesses. Something that glaringly large required all sorts of planning that, from the looks of things, she didn't have the time for. Furthermore, it required all sorts of accounting for other things that were simply too numerous to count, too numerous to even prepare accordingly, and too many ponies for her to contact all at once… half of whom would have probably written her off as a paranoid princess as soon as she brought the vision to their attention.
In brief, she was stuck at square one. At least, until she remembered that the scroll itself was still on the table. She glanced back at it… and tried to magically lift the scroll, only for it to spontaneously catch fire and burn to ash when she did. Twilight sighed, and calmly swept the ashes off of the table after summoning a broom and dustpan to make the cleanup manageable.
"So… that rules out sending letters to Celestia to ask what the hay just happened…" Spike said, shaking his head. "Because letters that start by giving us waking nightmares and then turning to ash afterwards… that's not normal."
Twilight nodded, unable to argue with that. So instead, she focused on the contents of the vision itself… drawing in a deep breath first, before dredging up the willpower to confront those contents. She shivered as she re-ran it in her head, halting at the image of the six markless equines more or less kicking her new front door down to raise some Tartarus. Something about those six piqued her interest… before another re-run of the vision in her mind yielded something that she had missed the first two times.
Namely, the fact that those six were fighting amongst themselves just as much as they were fighting her and her friends to the literal death. Her ears perked upon this little discovery, and she turned to her friends once more to address them.
"Well… girls, I think I've sussed out the 'sixfold feud' the letter warned us about," Twilight announced. Before any questions could be asked, she lit her horn and summoned the vision again, albeit this time in an encased magical bubble that allowed her to more or less skip to the important parts, and then slow them down so that the contents would be more easily glimpsed now that everything wasn't so rapid-fire. "Since the scroll contained a vision spell that hit all of us, I think I can use a vision spell of my own."
Applejack whistled. "When didja learn that?" she asked.
"When I took my courses on dragonfire scrolls and their various applications after Spike hatched," Twilight answered. "Namely, because Celestia also pointed out to me back then that scrolls containing visions take more time to write, and enchant all at once, which is why vision scrolls have fallen out of use. The last time the scrolls had been used was before the Founding."
"Nifty," Rainbow Dash chirped, garnering nodding from her friends.
Twilight lifted a hoof to point at the markless, faceless equines within the vision. "Watch those six," she instructed, before letting the vision resume as it had the first time. It didn't take long for her friends to spot the issue as it was; the infighting of a potential foe was as plain as day, though fortunately the vision didn't relay any insults those six might have thrown around.
"Hrm… as fierce as they are, the infighting might seem counterproductive…" Rarity noted, shaking her head and bringing a hoof to her chin. "Yet, if anything, it only makes them even more frightening to behold, as if the words 'collateral damage' simply don't exist within their collective vocabulary."
"Exactly," Twilight agreed with a nod. "Which means if we have any hope of stopping this, we might have to make them see eye to eye."
"I 'unno, sugarcube…" Applejack paused, shaking her head as Twilight's horn diminished and the spell bubble with the vision in it faded. "Those six don't look like they can be reasoned with. If'n they're willing to give each other black eyes at the least, what's stopping them from not outright killing each other?"
The question hung in the air, and it was left without an answer. In the distance, across the other side of Ponyville, they heard the faint shriek of a train whistling as it billowed out more steam from its smokestack.
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That same morning, during that same stretch of time, the Champions boarded a train heading for a destination called Ponyville—all of them more or less confused at the rather on-the-nose names Equestria sported regarding its cities. Of course, disagreements over how on-the-nose the names were was an argument they weren't going to entertain amongst themselves, for even they saw it as an exercise in futility. It was as if the whole nation was formed from the world's greatest pun, and sadly, the world's greatest pun had been lost to time.
Whoever had taken the homeland of their ancestors, and then desecrated it with meaningless puns was going to get the short end of the stick, they had unanimously decided. Though… they were born long after those clowns had come and gone, and alas, they would need to invent time travel first just to have a crack at that unfortunate soul's snout. What a world, what a world… but if they could find the graves of the sods who had besmirched the nation with the puns, then the graves would end up paying some fair consolation.
Petty? Yes. Justified? Well, that depended on whose opinion was asked for, and in the case of the Champions, it was undoubtedly so.
But, that could wait. The Champions had far more important things on their plates, such as the decor on the train they had boarded. The wallpaper was blinding, the cloud-shaped seat dividers had no substance and barely offered any privacy, the floor was bland with one rug stretching between doors, and the ceiling was such an uninspired shade of blue that at least one of them was contemplating grabbing paint cans and dyeing the whole interior in more pleasing colors.
The only saving grace was that, at least, the seats themselves were plush, and large enough for them to lounge and sit on without having any dangers of rolling off. Nothing they would sleep on, per se, but for their purposes they would get the job done.
The loud, piercing whistle of the train as she departed from her station did not make the Champions flinch, though the whistle did remind them of home in a way. But it also told them of how advanced the train was, which was to say, trying to hold a candle to their homeland and failing to do so. At least they could even commend its effort at all, which for the nation as a whole was saying something to them.
Thus, the six focused on other matters—and once again, the talk of the train found itself foisted upon all of their shoulders as they, for the umpteenth time, started mocking each other once again. Rainy Parade and Agora kept to themselves again, but this time they were not immune to receiving insults from the others. "Look at those two goody-four-shoes over there in those tiny little corners, sitting all alone in this blinding cable car looking sad and mopey," Redsky Morning said, wearing a smug grin. "If I had my way, their ashes would be mounted on my fireplace within the gaudiest urns I could get my hooves on, all carved and decorated so they can show the world how happy they always were on the inside, y'know."
"Oh please, you couldn't force any smiles on their faces even with a knife applied to their funerary urns, you blinding priss," Broken Mirror hissed, shaking her head. "Any smile those two could make isn't even worth our time or theirs. Just cremate them, stick them in urns, and then dump them into the Ocean of Souls and be done with it. And while you're at it, melt Agora's false legs into something useful for once—I dunno, a brand new mace sounds like that would be right up my alley."
Agora rolled her eyes at the commentary, but did not rise to it. Rainy Parade had no change in her facial expression, and even she did not see the need to change it at all.
"Yeah, but the urns would break anyway!" Redsky Morning pointed out. "I'd make sure to get the cheapest ones available for their sorry hides! I'd put them in a trophy case to commemorate their defeats, y’know?!"
"Really? The cheapest urns for two of my worst enemies?" Nycto asked with a chuckle, wearing an insufferable smile. "Honestly… I'd actually put in the time and effort to commend them properly, with grand and glorious tombs detailing their faults, their prowess, and one that was self-cleaning for whenever I made the time to visit them after the fact—the same applies to you other three, as an aside. Surely, their souls would scream upon having their resting places in my grandest house, being desecrated again and again. The only mercy I could ever offer any of you is that your bodies wouldn't be desecrated—as they'd all be in tightly sealed ash urns that nopony could open, and truthfully, that's the only consolation you all will have earned in the end."
Nycto's smirk widened. "And I would gladly feast on their suffering, and toast to that anguish for every grand and glorious feast to follow afterwards."
"Please, they aren't even worth that effort," Arachno said, smirking just as wickedly. "Just put them six hooves under and be done with it. Nightmaria's cemeteries maintain the graves; they're already a built-in cleaning and restoration service. Just plunk them there, visit whenever we fancy, and be done with it."
"That's a load of horse manure!" Broken Mirror screamed, though not at a volume that would rattle the train car they were in, much less the rest of the train itself. Her shout made Agora and Rainy Parade wince at her volume. "What good is a tombstone that is routinely restored if it belongs to my enemies?! You may as well admit that destroying it permanently is less than useless if that route is taken!"
Agora looked at her left hoof, raising it to her eye level. She admitted to herself that a tomb of her foes, constantly being restored, was less than useless… and only then, because it prevented her from dissecting her hated ones. Her mind tinkered with ways to halt certain biological processes for when her foes perished, to get as much out of that experience as she could get away with—that way, before her foes would be put to proper rest, they would at least further the causes of science with their postmortem donations. However, now simply wasn't the time, so she could only dream about that eventual conquest for the time being.
Rainy Parade, meanwhile, was entertaining another private discourse between she, herself, and her, in the form of her mind's other Parades. They were engaged in a heated debate, toying with ways of talking down the other Champions before push came to shove, save for Angry Parade whose first rule of hoof was 'beat them senseless, and then kick them while they're down.' Rainy herself didn't say much if at all, because unveiling the other Parades to her foes would have then constituted as exposing a glaring weakness she couldn't help. Better to keep the lid sealed tight on that whole can of worms.
Besides, the insults were ones that Angry Parade more or less internalized, keeping as coal to use as fuel for later for her own outbursts. Rainy was no fool; she knew Agora was doing the same, despite the fact that Agora would then go on to vehemently deny it if ever asked about it. Certainly, their other four acquaintances were doing the same even amidst their own spat, and Rainy didn't need to be a rocket scientist to glean that much.
The insults continued to fly a mile a minute, and Rainy Parade was wondering if any other passengers who had also likely boarded this train had taken notice yet. Surely, even the conductor must have noticed, since the car she and her acquaintances were in was a stone's throw away from the smokestack up front by her estimates.
"Oh yeah, you overzealous brute?" Redsky Morning hissed, grinning and showing her fangs. "Well, what good is beating an enemy to pure paste when you'd just end up feeling like you're hoofing a tin of pudding after the fact, y'know? You sure talk big for somepony willing to punch Trypo and Nocti in their faces whenever they have to fetch you—" She gestured to herself. "—and even I, of all ponies, don't come swinging at them as soon as they barge in to tell me 'hey, the King wants you, and he wants you pronto!' Heck, before we came here, I had a good romp, and guess who I found at my front door after I freshened up!"
"That's besides the point! Those two weirdos who may as well be fraternal twins wouldn't know privacy if it bit them in the flanks!" Broken Mirror shrieked again, lighting her front hooves on fire as she flailed them in some measure of exasperation. Another point that Agora and Rainy Parade both agreed with, even if they kept that one to themselves as well.
"Well, duh! Those two are the King and Queen's personal guards, y’know!! If they can crack Rainy Parade's special doors, then they can crack just about anything else in Nightmaria!" Redsky Morning vehemently argued. "Not even security protocols bother those two that much! If I didn't know any better, I'd place a bet with all five of you here and now that they'd be caught nuzzling if it meant preserving the glory of Nightmaria!"
Another smirk blossomed on Arachno's face. She looked as if she had found some juicy material to blackmail Trypo and Nocti with, and among them, she didn't have the most spies within Nightmaria's trotting grounds. "None of you can convince me that those two had gotten themselves successfully sterilized; even as much as I hate those two brownnosers, I'd like to think they devote themselves to the King and Queen in their entirety," she said rather candidly. "Neither of them wouldn't've even signed up otherwise. Their own understanding of glory and fame… well, allow me to put it succinctly—" She sat down and lifted her front hooves up to her face to hold them an inch apart from one another and an inch away from her nose. "—it's sorely lacking, let me tell you."
"Oh please, even they have a less than base understanding of glory. As much as I hate the notion of agreeing with Arachno, there are some… issues those two could do with some sorting out on their end—" Nycto's smirk widened once more. Her ears twitched as if she were catching Trypo and Nocti potentially sneezing all the way back home. "—just like you, Redsky. Your attitude could use some work."
Redsky's eyes twitched, and her gaze snapped to Nycto. "Oh! Oh! You wanna throw down, you overinflated, egotistical maniac?!" she shrieked, her outburst causing Broken Mirror to look on with a narrowed gaze that anticipated bloodshed. Redsky lit her hooves, and reared on her hind legs to crack her neck and her pasterns. Her flames started cycling through the colors of the rainbow as she shouted, "We can throw down, right here and right now!"
"On a train as gaudy as this?" Nycto said, shaking her head. "Poor taste of a potential arena. As much as I'd like a high speed battle on a train, even if it brought me more glory for our fair kingdom, I don't think I can spare you the effort of even contemplating that notion right now." She lifted a hoof and gesticulated to their less than pleasant ride. "Besides, this thing simply isn't advanced enough for a high speed train battle between the two of us anyway. Even if I wanted it, which frankly I do, I'd shell out enough bits for extensive modifications for it to suit my interests anyway. Besides prettying it up according to my tastes, I could also afford to make it able to survive such battles as a precautionary measure."
She continued gesticulating. "Furthermore, I would also repurpose it so that it wouldn't be a civilian vessel in that eventuality, nor as a mobile weapons cache—seriously, I already have plenty of mobile weapons caches, and a train is as obvious as you could get with such things. Lose the train, lose the cache, and that is a notion that simply isn't conducive at all." Nycto planted her raised hoof firmly against her chest. "Greedy as I may be, and proud of it, even I recognize paltry cliches when I see them. And besides, a civilian train at that? Such senseless carnage—an affront best avoided were any of you sticks in the mud to ask for my honest input."
"Then just blow it to bits already!" Broken Mirror shouted. "And while you're at it, shut your mouth, Nycto!" She cracked her neck. "Or better yet, get rid of it!"
Nycto raised the hoof that was on her chest to cover her mouth as she yawned in boredom. "No can do," she replied. "Besides, we're all just as likely to shut up in our usual bantering anyway; for me, your outbursts and your paltry attempts to reach my stature and status are entertaining. And what good is entertainment, if you just waste your whole life throwing it away?"
Something about the comment seemed to make Broken Mirror's eyes twitch. Something about it made her teeth grind. Some part of her wanted to turn Nycto's smug, insufferable smile into her last joyous expression before her hoof came crashing down onto that Tartarus-damned face to forcibly wipe it off.
But a tiny voice in the back of her mind piped up, reminding her of the mission at hoof. And as much as Broken Mirror hated its suggestions, hated even listening to it to begin with… she had to quell her temper for now, and resign herself to dreaming of sending Nycto to the shadowlands another day. Namely, and the damned tiny voice could have never chosen a more convenient time to pipe up, but she and her fellow Champions could feel the train starting to slow down, the wheels gradually grinding to a screeching halt that preceded the sharp whistle from the smokestack up front.
"The Friendship Express has made a stop in Ponyviiiiiiille!" the train conductor announced in a voice that carried across all of the train cars as soon as the noise had died down. Good set of lungs on him, too, to be able to manage even being heard over the chaos that would inevitably follow his proclamation.
The Champions moved to stand, each running the name of the train through their heads as they disembarked to see what, exactly, Ponyville had to offer. Arachno pretty much spoke for all of them as she said, "The Friendship Express? Really? The Equestrians couldn't have picked a better name for their civilian train?" Then she frowned and mulled it over. "Now that I think about it… maybe that explains the blinding colors it had in its interior design…" A rare, sixfold nod erupted from her group as they, silently, agreed with that observation.
Agora noted that, if the civilian vessel was named such… then what could the royal guard squadrons have been named in turn? Names of locales, vehicles, buildings, and even a nation and its people tended to say quite an awful lot about what they valued, what virtues its leaders upheld. And she, and her Champions, having boarded the Friendship Express as technical diplomats was a scenario and horrifying realization that set off a thousand alarm bells in her mind that she dared not let show on her otherwise neutral face.
All she and her acquaintances could do now was step out into the train station to behold what Ponyville beheld in, her honest opinion, all its mediocre glory, and of all the surprises it could have held in its wake. For all of her smarts, even she would anticipate that maybe… just maybe, things might turn sideways. Especially if Equestria, of all nations, valued friendship above everything else, which probably went a long way to explain, she privately opined, the current sorry state of affairs.
Thus, she and her fellow Champions, each coming to that same realization on their own, took the additional time out of their itineraries to prepare their minds accordingly. This would be the longest diplomatic mission yet, she wagered… and one none of them could afford to let go to waste in that end.