Our three bullets soared through the empty sky, heading west. The wind in our faces was far too loud for conversation, we had already wasted too much time as it was, and had to make up for it by flying at full speed.
I hadn't been back to Ponyville in some time. I could speculate on why, but all I knew was that my services were no longer needed there, and so I hadn't spent any time. It was also a very out of the way village, as the official advisory for citizens traveling was to take the longer southern road around the vast expanse of unregulated forest territory the town bordered. It was tucked into a nook, cut off from the world, snug in a little hole.
Oh, and the tourism board had been noticing a lot of mysterious disasters afflicting the town recently. Dragons, Ursas, Parasprites, and a host of other strange creatures would attack every now and then. Maybe it was for the best that I had stayed away.
Ponyville had grown since I had last seen it, but it was still a small town with only three or four buildings worth noticing. A grand, ancient tree stood in the middle, and I nodded to my companions as we angled in to land there.
I had estimated it was about eight in the morning when we finally arrived, though something about its arc seemed off. Which is not to knock Luna's capabilities with the sun - far from it. A certain amount of practice is needed with such things, and she is no exception.
As we landed, I wasted no time. I trotted up to the door and rapped my hoof on in a few times, listening for a response. The town was still quiet, as it was almost winter and the farmers had likely finished up their last preparations. Perhaps they had taken the day off, or maybe the inhabitants just slept in. Canterlot never sleeps, and I had grown accustomed to wandering around at night, of late.
No response came from the door, and I tried to push it open to find it locked.
"Erm, that's weird," I muttered to myself.
"Is something amiss?" Luna asked, trotting up to me and noting my consternation.
It suddenly occurred to me that this door was at risk of getting kicked in if I didn't deflect her from the task. Luna's excesses are legendary, I recalled a case of an alarm clock burying itself in a stone wall when it had displeased her by going off at the appointed time. Had the clock had the good sense to let her sleep in, perhaps it would still be with us.
I was certainly not going to let her kill this door.
"It occurs to me that we will need food and water for the trip," I said. Luna turned her head sideways at me, hopefully causing the door to fade from her mind.
"What I mean to say is, Luna, could you go get some of that? For the trip?" I said.
"Right now?" I tried again.
"If you are attempting to keep me from meeting Ms. Sparkle for some reason, you are too late. I have been keeping some correspondence with her," she said.
Wedge cleared his throat. I had almost forgotten he was here.
"I wouldn't mind getting some breakfast, we didn't pack anything to eat," he said.
Luna shot a glare at me, before turning to Wedge and saying something too soft to hear. What just happened? I had suggested she get us some food, and now she thinks I'm hiding something? Is this normal? Am I living this life? Who are these ponies!?
The two walked away and left me standing in front of a locked door, uninvited and unannounced at eight in the morning. Luckily, I knew a few tricks about getting into locked buildings.
The handle of my sword would have knocked in the window, except I realized that there wasn't one. In fact, the building only had windows on about half of the openings, and the others were just carved in and had drawn curtains in front of them. I managed to squeeze through one, fortunately with nopony looking on, lest they see a heavily armed and armored Princess burgling a library in Ponyville. It'd give the local paper something to write about, I suppose.
The inside was dark, with only the light from the window I had come in through to illuminate the floor. Books were scattered everywhere and in every orientation, some up, some down, some open, some closed. None were actually sitting in a sensible place to read, such as a table, because it'd be much more efficient to just store them on the floor. Why use shelves when the floor is so much faster? This is one of the many reasons I'm not a librarian.
Still, the dark character of the building suggested Twilight may not be awake yet. Last we met, she told me she still lived in this library, but I didn't know if the basement or the second floor were better candidates to check.
My horn lit up the gloom as I made my way towards the basement entrance. On a small sign next to the door was written, "By royal decree, stay out of the basement. -The Management". The scrawl of the writing suggested it had been written by Spike, but the royal decree had Twilight's hoofprints all over it. Either way, the door was also locked, leaving me to check the upper floor.
This door wasn't locked, so I nudged it softly open and peeked inside. The darkness was near total, and I could hear something sleeping, making a soft snore every few seconds. Only a scatter of light that had passed the curtains above made its way in here.
Trying to be quiet always sounds louder than normal moving, and each step I took seemed to screech and squeak, but the dozing party did not wake. I kept the light from my horn as dim as possible and slowly made my way up the steps, the beds being on the upper floor of the upper floor. Whatever architect carved this place had a love of steps, it seemed.
When I got close enough, I noted a large basket with a familiar purple and green baby dragon sleeping in it. He was getting big, and was going to need a new basket soon, or maybe a proper bed. I could remember when he was so small, he could fit on one hoof, and would ride Twilight around, sometimes falling asleep in mid-trot. She had been a filly but he was about the size of a sandwich, and their relative proportions had stayed the same over the years. I wondered if he still rode around on her, and what was going to happen when he was big enough for her to ride.
I tried to sneak around his basket without waking him, before I remembered how he could sleep through anything, including having water dumped on him, if you were lucky. Which is not to say Twilight would even intentionally dump water on Spike, but she was rather clumsy sometimes. I had certainly not laughed about it. Not publicly. I suppressed that desire.
Her bed was empty, though she had made it before she left. Crud. This did not bode well.
A startled gasp came from behind me. I turned around to see the basket whirl and flip, as Spike was fighting with his sheets to get up and about. His claw broke free first and tried to grip something on the floor, causing the basket to pitch over and land on his head as he stood up. His vision obscured, he tried to say something under the blanket, but it came out unintelligible. He took a step, and lost his balance, tumbling towards the edge of the floor.
My foal-sitter instincts were still sharp after all these years, and I quickly grabbed the basket and yanked it off his head with my mouth. It was still too late, and he pitched over the edge with his foot wrapped in the blanket. I stomped on the other end and held it still, peering over the edge to see him hanging off the blanket.
"Twilight, don't be mad at me," he said, with a warble of fear in his voice. This wasn't the first time he had said that, to my knowledge. What sorts of terrible things did she do to him anyway? What sustained cruelty were her punishments for sleeping in, or was it all figments of Spike's imagination?
"I'm not Twilight," I said. I had figured that might help. It didn't, and he started to struggle as I pulled the blanket up. He stopped when he could make out my face.
"Cadence!" he shouted, throwing himself around my neck in a big hug. Just like old times, even though things were now capital-B Bad, I still took the time to return the favor. I nuzzled Spike and he smiled, before seeing the light coming through the blinds behind me. The panic came back.
"I slept in! Ahh! AHHH!" he shouted, leaping off the edge and landing hard on the floor below, then dashing through the partly opened door. I heard some thumping from downstairs as I made my way down after him.
I found Spike buried in a small stack of books, and it wasn't a big guess to say that he'd tripped in his haste. I pulled back the curtains to let some light in as he struggled to stand up.
"Okay, now that you've calmed down - " I said, foolishly with my back to him. When I turned around he was already gone, through the door to what must have been the kitchen. I followed after him.
"Spike, what are you doing?" I asked.
"Gotta make breakfast, way behind, what time is it?" he asked.
"Uh, around eight?" I said.
"Ack!" he shouted again, charging at the fridge and throwing it open so hard I thought the hinges were going to come off.
"So do you know where Twilight is?" I asked.
He stopped, calmly pulled his head out and shut the fridge. He turned to me and padded quietly over, and stopped in front of me, with all seriousness on his face.
He looked around the room to make sure we weren't being spied upon. Only the kitchen window was open, and there was nopony on the other side.
"Is this a test?" he whispered.
I was starting to think everypony but me was taking crazy pills.
"Spike, I don't know where Twilight is, and she's not here. It's very important that I speak with her," I said. As usual, whenever I say something direct and formal, that just causes more panic. Spike threw together a spinach sandwich in a few seconds and slapped some mayonnaise on it, then listened intently.
I really didn't know what kind of weird rituals these two had developed, but randomly testing food preparation skills was still not completely outside the range of Twilight's imagination. Spike waited for a few seconds before sighing and taking a bite of the sandwich.
"She's not here? She didn't say anything to me," he said, chewing. Terrible manners I must put up with, sometimes.
"Do you know where she might be?" I asked.
"No," he said, still chewing. He swallowed and made a face, then put the sandwich down.
"Did you mess up the library? I am not cleaning it if you messed it up. And why are you dressed like a knight? And why are you here? Don't you have stuff to do at the palace? And - " Spike kept on rattling off questions. I don't think he cared about the answers, and I knew how to reassure him. I gave him another nuzzle.
"Why, I missed you, Spike! Can't I come see my favorite dragon every now and then?" I said.
"Well then what's with the sword?" he asked.
"I always wear this, it's totally in vogue," I said with a chuckle.
"What's vogue?" he asked.
I suddenly remembered why I left the foalsitting profession behind. A knock came at the door, and the both of us went to go open it. Spike won the race and stared up at Luna, who was now sporting some saddlebags stuffed with packages.
"We have messages for you, Amoria," she said. Spike wasn't moving, so I poked Luna in the shoulder and pointed at him.
"Greetings, citizen," she said curtly. I cleared my throat.
"Spike, meet Luna. Luna, Spike," I said. I picked up Spike's claw and held it up, and Luna took a few moments to realize that she was supposed to shake it. That awkward greeting out of the way, Luna and Wedge pushed past us and put down a set of saddlebags on the library's one clean surface: the reading table.
"One Pinkamina Pie is unaccounted for, so said the proprietors of the bakery, and should we find her we are to send her back at once," she said. Wedge opened up the bag and started reorganizing it to fit better.
"You mean Pinkie?" Spike said.
"I hope that is a nickname," Luna said. If there was some history between these two, I hadn't heard of it. Why can't we all just get along? For my sake?
"Luna, Pinkie is one of the bearers, remember? Laughter?" I said. She was unfazed.
"Pinkie, Pinkamina. Hmm," she said.
She laughed and smiled brightly, from ear to ear. Spike and I instinctively took a step back.
"Ah, the one in the chicken costume! She is good fun, and she is a bearer? I was hoping we'd meet again!" she said, loudly. Not quite shouting, but still too loud for normal indoor speaking.
"Chicken costume?" I asked. Luna blushed.
"This is all well and good, but what's our next move?" Wedge interrupted. I shook my head quickly, I needed to think. Time was important now.
"Twilight's not here, and Pinkie isn't either, if I don't miss my guess. I'd go as far as saying the other four would be missing as well," I said. I looked at Spike, who was staring back at me with a grave look on his face.
"Spike, was this place clean when you went to sleep?" I asked him. He nodded.
Forget capital-B Bad, this was capital-W Worse. The bearers had already left and now we were behind by at least a few hours.
"Luna, we may have a problem here," I said. The happiness melted off her face at once.
"Am I to assume all our plans are now defunct?" she asked.
"We're not out yet, we could try to catch up to them, if we left right now. There's a shortcut they won't know about that Tia told me about once," I said.
"She told it to you, but not to me?" she said, disapprovingly.
"You weren't around. I'll explain on the way, we have to go," I said. I started for the door, but Spike stepped in front of me.
"What's going on Cadence?" he asked. Every time something bad might have happened to Twilight, even if it was just her having to go somewhere without him for a while, he would start to worry and no amount of nuzzling could get him to stop. Whenever I would sit for him during those absences, I could only keep telling him that everything was all right until he would eventually drift off to sleep.
This was no field trip, and looking at him now, I had no heart to lie to him. He was going to worry, and I was going to have to accept that.
"Spike, Twilight and her friends - " I said.
"Are going to go save the world?" he interrupted.
"Uh, well, yes?" I said.
"Oh phew. I thought it was something important," he said. He pushed past me and went upstairs, humming softly to himself. "I'm going back to bed," he said as he reached the door, and closed it behind him.
"He's so considerate," I said, replying to the quizzical look Luna was giving me.
"Please explain," she said.
"I know he's going to worry, so he's trying to save me the worry of that worry by acting tough," I said.
"Was that supposed to make sense?" Wedge asked.
"Come on, we're wasting time," I said, and made for the door again. A big white pony stopped me as I reached the portal.
"There you are! Just where do you get off leaving me behind like that?" she demanded.
I had to look up to see who it was, and for a split second I thought Tia was back and standing in front of me. All my worries and stress had vanished for that split second, but it wasn't Tia. It was a very tall, white earth pony with a red mane.
"Gabby?" I asked in disbelief.
"Who were you expecting?" she asked. I didn't have the heart to answer.