//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Setting the Stage // Story: An Extended Performance // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// The business of registering, surveying the venue, and making preparations calmed the Great and Powerful Trixie down sufficiently that there were relatively few murderous fantasies whirling about in her mind by the time she had completed the process. Oh, she was still unhappy with the gig. The stage was hastily put together, and while a few experimental stamps on its surface gave her confidence that she wasn't about to actually fall through the planking, she felt a little nervous about doing some of the more acrobatic parts of her act. She'd found out through harsh experience that one could never count on an unknown theatre -- she'd been lucky that time to only gash, rather than break, her right hind leg. Backstage was a horror -- some dirty and indifferently-maintained caravans had been drawn up behind the stage, for any performers poor and desperate enough not to have better facilities to use. Trixie's wagon was much cleaner and contained everything she needed for her act, and she was careful to chain it to a post and padlock the door once she fully realized the poor quality of the neighborhood. Not wishing to make any closer acquaintance than necessary with any small multi-legged creatures that might wish in their own turn to make a closer acquaintance with her own coat and mane, Trixie decided to leave everything in her van until just before she was to come on, and handle the initial costuming and make-up from her own wagon's facilities. She had been assigned an hour-long slot from 4:30 to just before 5:30 in the morning, right before the rising of the Sun and thus the climax of the Summer Sun Celebration. Normally, four-thirty in the morning would have been the graveyard in a club, since few clubgoers would have the stamina to literally party the night away. But for the Summer Sun Celebration, this wasn't too bad -- the whole point was to stay up the whole night and greet the rising Sun, and those ponies whose work schedules did not permit this would wake up early to be at one of the festivals. So she'd probably be drawing a decent audience. Thus it was with a sense of getting a good deal, of taking a step forward in her career, that the Great and Powerful Trixie signed the registration and affirmed her contract to perform for the stated fee. She insisted on one modification: she wanted to perform "from an hour before dawn until dawn". She felt this to be a much more beautiful and classic way of describing her role in the festival than some somber recitation of clock times, so she insisted on this. Later, she would come to regret this decision. But at the time, it seemed like a good idea. *** Eight hundred miles away, a brilliant but eccentric young mage had reached Ponyville and was meeting five other mares of their own varying degrees of strangeness. Throughout the land of Equestria, ponies were preparing for the Summer Sun Celebration. Some of these preparations involved laying down stocks of food and drink and party favors. Some of these preparations were not so innocuous. Manehattan was not the only city in which a coven massed, expecting a dark morning and hoping to profit from unleashed anarchy. Some dozens of miles to the north of Ponyville, in her capital city of Canterlot, Princess Celestia had quietly summoned her chiefs of staff to the new War Room she had constructed deep under the palace, a strong subterranean bunker built of concrete and structural steel. There, under the excuse of an exercise, she mobilized certain Guards units to prepare for crowd control at key points throughout the Realm. She had long been watching the cult of the Great Dark, and the cities of Equestria would not be as naked to the covens on the Longest Night as they so fondly imagined. Celestia had specifically constructed this chamber to withstand the effects of the impact of gravitational singularities against the Palace proper. She dearly hoped that it would prove unnecessary, that the Champions she had assembled would be able to save her sister from her Nightmare. But if the worst came, she was as ready for it as was possible in her merely-material form. Should her sister come out of the Everfree still in Nightmare, should she attack Canterlot, Celestia herself would emerge to do battle. The War Room could take a near-miss by a singularity, but no merely material object could withstand Nightmare Moon's full focused power. If necessary, Luna could have brought down the mountain itself in crashing ruin. Celestia did not intend to give her that temptation. Her plan -- if her Champions failed, and it came to a direct battle between the two of them -- was to move the fight as quickly as possible far to the north of Canterlot, into the cold wastes where they could both unleash their full powers as Avatars -- her own fusion beams and fireballs, and her sister's graviton beams and point singularities --- without annihilating any cities beneath them. She was not sure if she would survive such an encounter. The last time, she had done so only because she had been able to wield all six Elements, alone, against her crazed sister. In that wielding she had broken the Harmony, broken the Elements themselves until they could be attuned to new Bearers. If her faithful student could not perform the task into which Celestia had manipulated her, if Luna herself would not check her full might when she realized just whose soul animated the little lavender mage, then this might be Celestia's last fight in this incarnation, and the night might last a very long time. She had died many times before, and did not particularly fear her own death. What she feared was failure, and the resultant annihilation of her little Ponies. She issued her commands. Formations of Guards to be posted at various locations. Food stockpiles, amassed over the last decade, for as long as it could be safely stored, under their control, to be distributed under escort to the populace in the event of an interruption in normal supplies. Sealed envelopes, with the exterior salutations reading "In the event of Our disappearance or demise," had already been sent to Princess Cadance and her Guard Captain, Shining Armor, confirming Cadance to the immediate succession and instructing her and Shining to lead the resistance against "any who might usurp the Throne." Secret orders in sealed envelopes within the sealed envelopes were marked "In the event that the appearent usurper is My immediate relation and appears to have regained her sanity," contradicted the first set of orders, instructing them to in that event throw their support behind Princess Luna. She'd thought of everything -- if, after killing her, Luna regained her sanity, she wanted to avoid an unnecessary civil war. This was a slim hope, but a hope nevertheless, if all other hopes failed. Celestia had considered canceling the Summer Sun Celebration, but there seemed little point in doing so. Should her Champions succeed, there would be only some extra hours of darkness -- why spoil the parties her Ponies were looking forward to across a nation? And should they fail -- why not let the Ponies have one last night of revelry, of innocent enjoyment before the onset of true darkness? They would be mourning soon enough, in that eventuality, and more than just the loss of a Ruling Princess. She nodded to her general officers, left the War Room, walked down the long, curving and heavily-armored corridor leading to the exterior blast doors, to the ramp which spiraled upward. Her face was serene, her gait assured, as she went up the ramp, through the corridors of the aboveground Canterlot Castle, to her own private chambers. When her doors were closed, when she was alone, that was when she nearly broke down. Why, after a thousand years of preparation, had it come to such a desperate pass? I knew this was coming, I arranged its coming, I should have been more ready for it! Not for the first time, she briefly reviewed her mistakes -- talents encouraged too much or too little, students whom she had failed and who had thus predictably betrayed her. They worship me as a goddess, no matter what I tell them -- do they not know how deeply flawed, how utterly fallible I really am? For a single horrid moment, she felt utterly overwhelmed. I was never supposed to be doing this alone, she thought in anguish. Sister, you were supposed to be my dearest friend, not my deadly foe! She wanted to weep. Then she mastered her emotions. Too long spent in flesh, she thought, too long prey to the tides of body chemistry, the limitations of neural architecture. I must conquer them, I must be strong now. A whole nation, a whole planet, are depending on me. She could not be truly Cosmic, not in this form, but she had modeled this form on the best traits of a species with an extraordinary talent for surviving against long odds: surviving and yet still retaining their kind and happy spirits, their deep decency. So she could be strong. The Ponies needed her strength now, more than ever. She would be strong. For them. So she shifted her own shape slightly to appear even more impressively regal than was her normal wont. She summoned her servants. They styled her hair, applied cosmetics, dressed her in her full royal regalia. She smiled and joked with her hoofmaidens, even as on the inside she felt the full surreal absurdity of her situation. So close we came, she thought. We founded the Realm fifteen hundred years ago, fought the grasping noble houses to unify it so that the ordinary ponies could live free and without fear. Even when you went mad, I was able to keep Equestria safe from enemies within and without for a thousand years. Peace, prosperity, commerce, industry, energy from wind and water and steam, we've taken the first steps on the road back to what the Age of Wonders had known. In a century we would have had computers, orbital flight, nuclear missiles. In a century, we could have defended ourselves against you, my poor little Lulu, in anything but your full Cosmic form. Now it's all coming down to my slightly-confused Faithful Student and whichever she can gather of the numerous candidate Element Bearers with whom I populated Ponyville. The magic should make her pick at least one of each of the five others, but ... I should have dispatched mechanized divisions, bomber wings, whole regiments of sunfire missile launchers. But I don't have any of those things. So I sent a librarian. She chuckled to herself, momentarily surprising her hairdressers. But she's a very good librarian, Celestia reminded herself, attempted to convince herself that her plan was rational. And she's warm and fuzzy. And she's the reincarnation of Dusk Skyshine -- that has to count for something, Luna, even in your madness you won't miss that, will you? And she's the strongest mage of her generation. And the other candidates are very strong. And ... and I really hope this works. It's out of my aura, now. May the Allfather protect and guide you, Twilight Sparkle. So she smiled, and went to preside at the formal and boring event with which the elite of Canterlot signfied their enjoyment of the Summer Sun Celebration. Though she had heard, in general, of the Cult of the Great Dark, and prepared her various forces against them, she knew nothing in particular of the plans of those thirteen black-cloaked figures in Manehattan. Nor, even had she known their planned primary target, would she have necessarily grasped its significance. She was highly intelligent, but she also really was, as she kept trying to make her subjects believe, sadly fallible. And, of their earlier Aspects, it had been Moondreamer, rather than her elder sister Sundreamer, who had been the engineer. In some corner of her mind she did remember a certain misfit mare who had for less than a year attended her School for Gifted Unicorns, but had proven too arrogant and rebellious to submit herself to even a modicum of academic discipline. This had been a sad waste, because her raw magical potential had been truly impressive. But raw potential is more threat than opportunity, when not linked to a friendly spirit, and the spirit of Beatrix Lulamoon had been anything but friendly. If someone had told her that it was that very spirit that might soon be the only thing standing between the greatest city in the Realm and a terrible disaster, Princess Celestia would have been very astonished. So, of course, would have been the Great and Powerful Trixie. So the board awaited its first moves in the great game of war, Black planning a multi-pronged attack almost certain to generate some gains against White's position, while White had planned an ambush of the Black Queen. And neither side was aware of the presence of one small and overlooked pawn.