//------------------------------// // Once Upon a Midnight Dreary // Story: We'll Always Have Canterlot // by Tortfeasor //------------------------------// We’ll Always Have Canterlot Disclaimer: For the first of what I’m sure will be many times, I don’t own My Little Pony. Chapter One: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary To most ponies, particularly those still in school, being trapped inside a never ending library would be a nightmare. To some ponies being trapped in a never ending library would have thrown them upright in bed soaked in sweat and on the verge of tears. Twilight Sparkle however was not most ponies. To her, a never ending library was closer to being in a never ending candy store with your dentist standing right there telling you to eat as much as you wanted and not worry. She gleefully teleported herself with abandon from shelf to shelf lifting whole rows of books to trail behind her in a stream of magic. Mareistotle, Ponyfucius, Isaac Hoofton, Coltaire, and there was the combined contents of the Star Swirl the Bearded wing of the royal library! All she was missing now was a place to dig in to her literary extravaganza. As if on cue a giant oak table materialized on an empty level of the library that hadn’t been there before. Twilight Sparkle leapt in front of the table in a burst of light and magic with a smile on her face. The books held in her magic organized themselves several times, first by name, then by author, by subject, by number of pages, by date published, and finally by how much Twilight Sparkle simply couldn’t wait to read them. The magenta glow of her magic disappeared and the books settled to the table with a mighty creak. A normal table would have splintered under the weight of so many books coming down on it at once, but since Twilight Sparkle didn’t want the table to break, and this was all her dream anyways, the table was perfectly fine. “Let’s see,” Twilight tapped a hoof against her chin in thought, “I’m missing one last thing… Ah ha! A checklist of all the books!” Being all a dream Twilight Sparkle saw nothing wrong when a quill, pot of ink, and a long roll of parchment appeared right beside her as soon as she needed it. Normally she would have Spike nearby to take down everything she needed in list form. Not having her assistant there to do the work for her was a small price to pay to read all these books. Besides, it wasn’t like her writing was so messy she couldn’t read it, most of the time. At last her checklist was done, the books were all sorted, and a mug of the finest cider from Sweet Apple Acres awaited her as the perfect companion to the perfect book. She levitated the first book towards her and savored the moment as she cracked it open. The smell of the ink and the glue that bound it all together, the sound of the spine as it flexed open, even the feel of the book in her magic that was almost as familiar as her own coat, and to top it all off there was the gentle shaking of the library. Wait, the library was shaking? Yes, yes it was. Twilight leapt from her table intent on stopping the collapse around her. She darted around the fog shrouded library as books fell from their shelves in chaos that was almost unbearable to the intensely organized librarian. Soon the shelves themselves were collapsing and Twilight could no longer keep up with the disaster going on around her. The final straw came when the floor underneath her hooves cracked and Twilight fell into a bright light that dissolved itself into an unwelcome awakening. Twilight Sparkle jerked awake in her bed in her own very much finite library in Ponyville. The first thing she saw through her still sleep clouded eyes was a large white pony shaped blob with what she was pretty sure was a unicorn’s horn. “Rarity,” she groaned as she looked over at her clock, “whatever fashion disaster it is, it doesn’t need to be solved at one thirty seven in the morning. Come back when it’s light out and I’ll see what I can do.” Twilight Sparkle grabbed her sheets and rather roughly turned her back to her fashion obsessed friend. Her return to sleep was rudely interrupted by a pair of rough hooves on her back turning her back over. A part of Twilight’s sleep deprived brain noted that Rarity didn’t have rough hooves, but the rest of her brain was not remotely awake enough to receive the message. “Twiley,” came a much deeper voice than Twilight Sparkle had ever heard from Rarity, and Rarity would never call her ‘Twiliey,’ only one pony called her that. “Shining Armor?” Twilight Sparkle blinked her eyes several times until the white blob resolved itself into her older brother. “What in Equestria are you doing here in the middle of the night? Go bug Cadance with it. She married you, so she should get to put up with your middle of the night crazy.” She started to turn over once again when her brother took firm hold of her shoulders and turned her back to look into his face. “Twilight, Cadance is the problem. Something’s gone wrong, really wrong, in Canterlot. I can’t find Celestia or Luna anywhere, and Cadance isn’t acting like herself. She’s been acting more like the way you said Chrysalis was when she was posing as Cadance. The worst part is that I’m the only one who seems to realize something’s wrong. Everyone else just smiles and keeps on working like Celestia and Luna disappearing happens every week.” “Start over.” Twilight shook her head as she sat upright and tossed her covers back. “It’s way too early, or too late, for me to be dealing with all this.” “Sorry little sis.” Shining Armor grabbed Twilight’s saddlebags with his magic and started stuffing them with food she had lying around the library. “We don’t have time to play twenty questions, and I don’t know enough to answer even seven questions, we’ve got to run. Cadance is going to come for you and your friends next, and we need to have you guys a long way away from here when she comes.” “Let me get this straight.” Twilight was starting to get more than a little grumpy with her brother. “Celestia and Luna decided to take a vacation and didn’t tell you, Cadance is having a couple of bad days, and nopony else seems to be concerned about it? Well count me among the ponies not seeing anything wrong going on here. The princesses can take care of themselves, and if I had to put up with you freaking out in the middle of the night like this for several days in a row I’d be in a bad mood like Cadance.” “Twilight,” Shining Armor paused stuffing things into her saddlebags to look at her with not a trace of humor on his face, “I’m your brother, and I’m a captain of the royal guards. Celestia has never gone on vacation without telling me before, and I’ve seen Cadance have bad days. Something is very wrong in Canterlot, and I’m going to need your help to find out what’s wrong and to fix it.” “Ugh, fine. We can go to Canterlot and have a talk with Cadance, tomorrow. I’m not waking my friends up in the middle of the night to go on some wild goose chase!” “This isn’t a wild goose chase.” Her brother lifted Spike, who had somehow slept through everything, and settled the baby dragon on her back. “And it will be too late long before morning. We need to get you and your friends out of here now if we’re going to have a chance against whatever this is.” “Whatever.” Twilight sighed, she knew better than to argue with her brother when he got so single-minded. “But you’ll be doing all the talking, and all the apologizing when this turns out to be nothing.” “And you can apologize to me when we’re finished saving Equestria.” After Resigning to being up for a while,Twilight Sparkle followed her brother downstairs. She would have liked nothing more than to get a cup of coffee going for herself if she was going to be up at this kind of hour, but she didn’t think Shining Armor would take the delay too well in his state. She was definitely going to have a talk with Celestia and Luna, and her sister-in-law for that matter, about getting her brother to calm down big time after all this. A few weeks of vacation would probably do wonders for his stress levels. Even though it wasn’t that long since he and Cadance had gotten back from their honeymoon, but oh well, married life affects everyone differently. Twilight wasn’t too worried about having Spike on her back. Her baby dragon could sleep through just about anything save the end of the world. Rarity’s shrieks when they woke her from her beauty sleep might come close, but she didn’t think Spike would mind waking up to that. And besides, if Spike did wake up it would just be one more voice of reason to try to convince her brother to come back to the real world. The crescent moon didn’t provide much by way of illumination as they descended the stairs, but even without her brother’s spell lighting the way Twilight knew her way about her home well enough to have gotten around were it pitch black outside and in. Out a window Twilight caught a view of Canterlot in the distance. A few spots of light lit the otherwise black silhouette against the stars, and to her not at all surprise everything looked to be perfectly fine in the city. “There’s no chance I can talk you out of this crazy plan is there?” Twilight took one last chance at talking her brother down as they made their way towards the door. Her brother only sent back a look she hadn’t seen since she was a filly without a clue about how the world worked. As the doorknob took on a glow and started turning Twilight made a mental note to herself to start locking the library door when she went to bed. The door opened not to an empty and quiet street like Ponyville normally was at night, rather it opened to a pair of guards in their golden armor looking rather surprised to see the door to the library open well before they got close enough to knock. “Friends of yours?” Twilight turned to her brother. She was more than a little shocked to see Shining Armor’s horn glowing with what she recognized as combat magic. “Cut that out!” She jabbed him in the side with a not particularly gentle hoof. “It’s good to see you sir,” one of the guards crisply saluted. “Your wife apologizes that their highnesses didn’t inform you about their vacation, and for any… misunderstandings between the two of you for the past few days. She’d like you to return to Canterlot at your earliest convenience.” “I’m sure,” her brother said as he slowly side-stepped to give himself a shot at both guards. Twilight shot a withering glare at her brother. “See Mr. I’ve started seeing a changeling conspiracy under every rock, I told you there was a perfectly rational explanation for all of this. Celestia used to go off for a week at a time without telling me back when I was studying under her in Canterlot. All that’s different this time is that Luna decided to go on vacation with her. They can take care of themselves, and meanwhile your poor wife is trying to run Equestria all by herself while she’s worried sick about you!” She turned to the guards with an apologetic look. “I’m so sorry Mr. Grumpy Pants here made you two come all the way out here in the middle of the night. You two can go back to Canterlot and tell Cadance that I’ll have my brother out there tomorrow, and I’ll be having a long talk with him on the way.” Twilight was all set to go back inside and try to salvage something out of this night when suddenly a horrible wailing noise echoed across Ponyville. She immediately recognized it as the security spells Rarity had set up upon returning from the wedding in Canterlot. Twilight had been rather hesitant to help the other unicorn set up the spells, but Rarity had insisted that fashion was a dangerous and cutthroat business, and that her new fame from working on the royal wedding would make her a target. Twilight hadn’t believed a word of that, but relented upon realizing that no one would risk setting off the spells for years until Sweetie Belle and her friends got old enough to sneak in and out at night. The security spell’s alarm shouldn’t have been nearly as loud as it was though. Clearly Rarity had done some tinkering with the spells after Twilight had shown her how to cast them. When she looked over at the guards she got quite the shock. Instead of looking surprised at such a noise out of nowhere they appeared concerned, as if they knew about the wards and hadn’t intended to set them off. For the first time that night a part of Twilight began to suspect that her brother may perhaps not have been spouting nonsense. Before she could voice her suspicions the night sky was shattered by a suddenly expanding ring of light in all the colors of the rainbow. A bare second later came the thud of what could only be Rainbow Dash doing a sonic rainboom. And at the center of the ring of light there was the unmistakable glint of light reflecting off the highly polished armor only worn by royal guards. The final straw was another dozen guards emerging from the shadows and walking quite menacingly towards them. “Get her!” Shouted the first guard. “Cadance says she’s the only one that matters.” Twilight’s horn began to glow as she prepared to teleport herself, Spike, and Shining Armor well away from Ponyville. She didn’t like the thought of leaving her friends, but it was clear that they were out matched at this point and staying here would only get her captured as well. Several guards leapt at her, but Shining Armor’s special talent was shield spells and instead of tackling her to the ground they rather painfully hit a magenta shield that appeared from nowhere. “Now would be a great time to do something Twiley! And for the record, I told you so.” “Working on it, and keep them off me or you won’t get to gloat.” Several more shields sprung into existence as Twilight’s horn grew brighter and brighter. Just as it became painful to look at there was a burst of sparks and energy that threw the guards back, and blew out half the windows in Ponyville, when the dust cleared the spot where Twilight Sparkle and her brother had stood was empty. In a starlit field elsewhere in Equestria there was an accompanying burst of sparks and energy as three figures, two ponies and a dragon, appeared from nowhere. Twilight groaned and shook her head as she tried to recover from such an exhausting spell performed at such an odd hour. “Um, where are we?” Shining Armor looked around in confusion. Clearly he had been expecting Twilight to help him fight off the dozen guards attacking them rather than sending them somewhere else. “We’re not in Ponyville anymore. And Shining Armor, I’m sorry. I mean you came all the way to Ponyville in the middle of the night and tried to tell me what was going on. And I just...” “Hey it’s okay Twilight. You know what I always say, don’t let your mistakes tear you apart, fix it if you can, learn from it, and then move on.” “I know.” Twilight hadn’t felt so small since she was a filly and had had to have her brother’s help to fix Mrs. Smartypants. “Now please, start over. You have my complete attention.” At that moment Spike decided to wake up for what should have been a middle of the night snack trip. Unfortunately for him what should have been a stretch and roll in his basket back in Ponyville turned into a stretch and roll of Twilight’s back that culminated in a grunt of pain as he hit the ground. “Twilight,” the baby dragon groaned as he turned to look at her. “What in Equestria is going on?” “Somepony,” she pointed at her brother, “was just about to tell us.” “Okay,” he began, “you know how Cadance has always been a popular pony, right.” Yeah,” Twilight couldn’t help interrupting, “a pony who spreads love and happiness wherever she goes, kind of hard to imagine how she could be popular.” “Hey, I thought I was the one talking here.” Shining Armor didn’t seem in much of a joking mood. “For the last week or so Cadance hasn’t just been popular. It was like ponies were on the verge of worshiping her or something. I saw her ask for lunch and two servants started fighting over who would bring it to her. And when the guards came to break it up they were asking her what to do, and I was right there in the room!” “Okay, that’s odd.” Twilight stroked her chin with a hoof. “Cadance didn’t do anything to stop them?” “She was smiling at it. Needless to say I’ve been sleeping on the couch since then by choice. I thought about talking to Celestia or Luna about it, but they’ve been working around the clock getting everything sorted out with the Crystal Empire and this new trade agreement with the Griffons, and besides, I figured I could handle my wife having a few bad days. It kept getting worse though, Cadance wouldn’t talk to me, and whenever I tried to bring it up with somepony else they’d just gush about how great Cadance was and how much they loved her. I finally managed to catch Luna with a few minutes of free time this afternoon, or I guess last afternoon, and she agreed to at least go talk with Cadance. Twilight, when she came out… I haven’t seen either of them look that scared since Discord broke free. Anything that can scare her that much can’t be good. And I haven’t seen either of them since. The moon came up so they have to be fine wherever they are, but I looked all over the castle and couldn’t find either one.” “Well we definitely have a problem if Celestia and Luna are missing. Now I really wish we’d been able to get any of the others out of Ponyville.” “If we can find them I think you’ll find these useful.” Shining Armor grabbed hold of a bag so non-descript Twilight hadn’t noticed it until now. When he opened it and turned it over though, the most precious objects in perhaps the entire world spilled to the ground. “Shining Armor, those are the Elements of Harmony. How in Equestria did you get those?” “I am a captain of the royal guard.” He answered with a smile. “And your brother, which might have had more to do with Celestia giving me access to the vault. Do you think any of your friends might have gotten away?” Twilight looked up at the stars before turning to answer. “Applejack is isolated from the others, but her dog Winona can smell trouble coming from a mile away. And if they had time to get ready I would not want to mess with the Apple family. Pinkie Pie, well you know Pinkie Pie. Point is she’s probably the most resourceful and unpredictable pony I know. On her own I’d say no way Fluttershy would escape, but lots of the animals she lives with can get a bit protective if they think she’s in danger, and one of those animals is a bear. Rarity’s a lot tougher than she looks, and she put all sorts of security spells in her home. She’d know something was up when her alarm went off, and there’s a surprising amount of pointy things in a boutique. And I’m sure you saw Rainbow Dash do her sonic rainboom. If she got up to speed the Wonderbolts might be able to keep up with her, but I’d still put my bits on Rainbow Dash. So the short and long answer is I don’t know. They’re all very talented mares, but if they were surprised in the middle of the night. I mean if you hadn’t shown up they probably would have grabbed me in my sleep and that would have been that.” The change in his demeanor was small, but Twilight definitely noticed when Shining Armor switched from her older brother to captain of the royal guard. “If we can find them then using the Elements of Harmony would definitely work. It’s the most powerful magic I know of, but we have to find all five of your friends and we don’t know if they got away. We could also find Celestia or Luna and hope they can help us figure out what’s wrong with Cadance. There are only two of them we have to look for, but if Cadance managed to beat them the first time then I don’t know what we’ll be able to do to help.” “Hey,” Twilight put a hoof on her brother’s shoulder, “we’ll find out what’s wrong with Cadance and fix everything before you know it.” Her brother visibly relaxed. “Thanks Twiley, I just…” “I know, I’m worried too. Now come on Spike, ready for an adventure?” “Um, no!” The baby dragon hustled after them. “I’m still not sure what’s going on here!”