//------------------------------//
// 07 - Useless 
// Story: Curtain Call 
// by lunabrony 
//------------------------------//

	Luna dropped what she was doing immediately. 
"Pip, something has come up. Guard my Chamber, will you?" She asked, a very important job for the young colt. He nodded and disappeared outside the doors. The guards would listen to his relayed instructions, and he'd close the windows and turn on a light so that to all appearances it would still look like she was there. She didn't need to tell him that, he knew it instinctively. Luna would be in one of her moods, a mood by which he knew she was not to be disturbed.
Luna teleported. A sensation which upon first experience was disorienting and even sickening, but to her, second nature. Far away, inside Comets personal room, shadowy tendrils of darkness burst into life, as if someone had left a smoke machine running a bit too long. From the shadows of night, emerged the Princess, dressed in her best armor. Not that she needed the armor bit, but it was always good to keep up appearances.
The door behind her was closed she could hear Painted Wings and Gluon behind it. 
"Its going to be okay." 
"We love you, we'll make it work. Somehow." 
The room wasn't spartan, pictures of family members in various roles. Parts of scripts adorned the walls. Pictures from various plays. Prizes and awards. Resting, with her upper half on a table was… Luna. Or if she ever had a cousin who had everything she had, cutie mark, coloration, wings, that's what she'd look like. The wings seemed so real, that it would not have surprised Luna in the slightest if they started flapping. There was almost no recognizing Comet, the makeup cleverly his the jawline through subtle tricks of color. She had to squint a lot of to convince her mind that she wasn't seeing a younger twin. The illusion broke a little when the illusion spoke and revealed Comet's voice. "L.. Luna?"
Luna didn't have many close friends, but considered Comet one of them. He could summon her whenever he wished, and she would come. The theatre had since gained quite a following of popularity upon the publication announcing that Princess Luna herself was often seen there. There had been a surge in ticket sales that continued to this day. 
"We are here, friend. Why hath thou sequestered thine self in this way?" She asked, mentally kicking herself. As hard as she tried to be modern, sometimes her old dialect just slipped right into itself.
"I can't do it anymore.. I can't sound right." She.. he picked himself up, it was easier to recognise Comet now that he was speaking, he sat carefully, minding the wings. Some of the makeup from his hind end had rubbed off on the chair. "We were doing one of the new songs, and I'd had trouble. More trouble than usual." He gestured along his throat, a pained expression. "Filling the sound out, it was too stiff… bad day I thought, but then I couldn't hit the high note, my voice just..." He gritted his teeth, and a tear rolled down his cheek. It had finally happened, Luna could cast some diagnosis spells to measure the insides of his throat and gauge what had happened bodily to him, but there was no need. The latent malehood in him would be restrained no longer, he was becoming a stallion. A stallion with no place in a touring theatrical company.
She sat next to him, soothing and calm. "That is nothing to be ashamed of, it happens to every colt and filly. Some sooner than others, but all just the same." She said gently. "Can the song not be sung in a slightly lower yet more believable pitch?"
"I don't sing tenor, I'm an alto. And it would be horrible to hear you sung in a tenors voice." He wasn't angry with her, but he sounded frustrated. "What I think we might have to do, is have one of our female singers do it and then I'd have to adlib. Most ponies wouldn't know.. but I'd know. This show, it was going to be last of the traditional theatre. Its a dying medium, and I wanted to end with a great show but now I can't do it as it should be, most ponies wouldn't know.. but I would. Adlibbing is deception, and deception isn't right." 
He looked up at his family pictures.
"I failed."