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// 52 - Civic Affairs 
// Story: The Apple Falls Far from the Tree 
// by David Silver 
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In the Canterlot Royal Library, Lex was only half-paying attention to the mares who were gathered around a table with him. Sonata kept grinning at him, and Lex was confident that she'd have been unrelentingly voluble if she had been able to get a word in edgewise. That was currently impossible, however, since Twilight had been talking for the last several minutes about the current situation in Vanhoover, consulting several reports as she did so.

For his part, Lex was listening, but found his eyes drawn to the large map of Equestria, which had been returned to the library by the same aide that had brought it into their meeting with the royal sisters. Staring at Vanhoover's, now his city's, name on the map, Lex found himself - for the very first time in his life - admiring Celestia and Luna's political acumen, albeit grudgingly.

He knew it had been shrewd of them to put two of their political problems - himself and that city - together, since that removed both of them from their immediate concern. What he hadn't realized until now was just how adroitly they had given him exactly what he wanted while simultaneously checking his political ambitions.

Vanhoover wasn't among the largest cities in Equestria, but it was among the second-tier cities, something that was fairly remarkable given its relative isolation.

As the northwestern-most city not just in Equestria, but on the entire continent, Vanhoover was nestled between the western ocean and the Unicorn Range mountains immediately to the east. While it had abundant wilderness to the north, covering many hundreds of square miles - the mountain range skewed sharply northeast once it moved north of Vanhoover - before hitting the Frozen North, the mountains ran almost to that frozen wasteland, forming a natural barrier...one that was reinforced by Galloping Gorge being just east of the mountains anyway, making attempts to find further passes futile.

That remoteness kept Vanhoover firmly walled off from the rest of Equestria. Other than a single highway that threaded from Vanhoover through the northern wilderness - doubtlessly connecting it to various hamlets and thorps that were too small to appear on the map - and the ships that he was sure ran south along the coast to Las Pegasus, a single rail line was all that connected the city to the rest of Equestria, carefully threading its way through the mountains and south of the Gorge.

The only possible area for expansion was directly south, and here Vanhoover was also checked, not by nature but by another town: Tall Tale.

While Tall Tale was clearly the smaller of the two cities - even if their markers on the map hadn't been different, Vanhoover's nature as a seaport, thanks to its position where a mountain river met the bay, would have made that obvious - it sat at the northern edge of the vast forests of the western seaboard, with its own railway winding southeast through them to connect to the heartlands. 

With the river acting as a natural boundary between the two cities, Lex could tell at a glance that Tall Tale, surrounded by dense woodlands on two sides and mountains on a third, would be very sensitive to any appearance that Vanhoover's sphere of influence was extending southward. Winning them over to his system of government would likely prove difficult.

Bringing order and prosperity back to Vanhoover would be trying. Expanding his political vision beyond the city would be far more challenging. The royal sisters had been canny indeed; they had put the bait in a pit from which climbing out would be challenging, trusting that his ambition would lead him to leap in headfirst...and indeed, he had.

Inwardly, Lex smiled. This was exactly the sort of challenge - one of logistics, rather than personality - that he enjoyed greatly.

His musings were cut short as he realized that Twilight had just mentioned something with regard to what had happened to Vanhoover during the recent planar conjunctions. Shaking off his reverie, he turned his full attention back to the lavender alicorn. "Wait, say that again, Twilight?"

Twilight tapped the ocean beside Vanhoover. "Being a coastal city, I suppose it's unsurprising that they had a water elemental incursion, though Manehattan was on fire... Regardless, the flooding was severe and left many ponies homeless even after the city was reclaimed, to say nothing of infrastructural damages and general losses. Rebuilding has been quite slow with several of the local families at each other's throats." She started going into detail about the three major families of Vanhoover, sparing not a scrap of knowledge, immediately useful or not.





Willow sat beside the road, watching ponies go back and forth, most smiling as they did so. She had determined the town as miserably cheerful for her taste, and had developed a good grump until she heard someone settle across from her table. She glanced and saw a bright pink pony, who appeared to be imitating her sour expression. Willow raised a brow. "Can I help you?"

Pinkie grinned, breaking the frown. "Maybe, but I'd rather help you first. Why the sour face? You're Applejack's friend, right?"

Willow nodded. "Miss Apple was a great help to me and my family, three times by my count. I owe her a great debt. Why?"

Pinkie leaned over the table towards Willow. "Because she's one of my best friends! And if you're her friend, I want you to be my friend too! You look a little funny? Are you from that other place? Ever Shine?"

"Everglow," corrected Willow, sizing up the smiling pink mare. "So, you know Applejack then?"

"Yeah! We've gone on tons of adventures together. I've been to Everglow before too. Fun place! Kinda dangerous though." Pinkie produced a plate with a slice of cake on it from nowhere in particular and set it on the table between them. "Here, a snack might cheer you up."

Willow doubted it, and didn't hide the expression, but she reached for the plate, doubting the ponies of this pastoral place would poison her. She then tasted the small slice of the celestial planes brought down to the mortal realm. The cake danced across her tongue with a delicious decadence she could never have afforded back home after moving out of her mother's home. "Hmm... Are you a noble?"

Pinkie tilted her head. "What? No. Mrs. Cake made that! She's the best baker I know, besides me of course."

Willow took another light nibble. "She must be quite wealthy to provide such food for a stranger."

Pinkie waved a hoof dismissively. "You're not a stranger. You're Applejack's friend, which makes you our friend, and she runs a bakery so it's not that big of a deal to give some cake to a friend. So let's turn that frown upside-down. What has you down?"

Willow hesitated a moment, but ultimately decided to give Pinkie a chance. Something about the mare invited being open, and if she was a friend of Applejack's... "This world confuses me. Everyone here smiles too much. Life can't be that perfect."

Pinkie shook her head. "Naw, 'course not. Ponies have bad days all the time, but I try to cheer them back up. We're all friends here in Ponyville and it's my job, no, destiny! To be the bringer of smiles."

Willow raised a brow. "How do you manage that?" She glanced down at her cake. "There aren't happy drugs in this cake, are there?"

Pinkie blinked before bursting into a gale of laughter. "Of course not, silly! I just said, I'm their friend. Just like you, I talk to them. I remember their birthdays, and I throw parties for them and all the holidays and we have a good time, even if life gets frowny sometimes."

Willow's first instinct was to put some distance between herself and the self-avowed socialite, but Pinkie's bright smile and genuine-seeming warmth were hard to outright deny. "Alright... I'm going to take you at your word, and give you a challenge."

Pinkie tilted her head a little. "Ooo! A challenge? Alright, lay it on me! Pinkie Pie's on the case."





Sweetie nudged the door open a crack, allowing the sounds of her wailing sister to escape fully. Her ears folded back, she took a soft breath then hesitated. Her friends wouldn't let her back down, gesturing for her to go ahead.

With a nod and another slow breath, Sweetie allowed her voice free, singing a soft song of support for her sister. It was an old song, an epic about a princess who waited for her prince to return home from a war. Sweetie had learned it long ago, and it never had much meaning to her, but as she sang it then, tears flowed freely from her as she imagined Rarity as the princess, waiting for a prince who would never return.

The sounds from inside died down, and a tear-streaked Rarity peeked out of the store, looking down at Sweetie Belle as she sang the sad tale onwards. A ghost of a smile touched her features before she opened the door fully and walked up to the still singing Sweetie. The song hitched as Rarity gathered up Sweetie in a hug. Rarity flopped over, rocking with Sweetie, sniffling but no longer sobbing. "You're too good to your foolish older sister..."

The song ended with Rarity's words, and Sweetie smiled at Rarity. "Do you feel better?"

Rarity gave a slow nod, squeezing Sweetie tightly a moment before she set the smaller unicorn down and looked her over. "Oh... oh my..."

"What?"

Apple Bloom noticed what Rarity was staring at and gasped loudly. "Ya done got yer cutie mark!"

Sweetie Belle began to spin in place before she could spot the pink heart with little curls coming off of it with a lighter purple note right over it all. She shrilly squeaked. "I got it! I got it! I got my cutie mark!"

Sunflower clapped his paws together in applause, looking a little confused, but happy for his friend. "I never saw a pony get their brand of destiny before."

Rarity gave Sunflower a patient smile. "That's how it works here in Equestria. Why, I suppose maybe even you could get one? I don't know if cats can or not..." She sniffed then, wiping her streaky face with a fetlock. "Oh Sweetie, you've made your sister so proud of you! You really do need to go see mom and dad. They'll be entirely beside themselves with joy."

Sweetie moved to flee, but Apple Bloom put a hoof in the way. "Now just wait a second there. Ah want ta get somethin' straight first."

Sweetie tilted her head. "Huh?"

"We're still friends, right?"

Sweetie bobbed her head fiercely. "Forever! Maybe even longer than that."

Apple Bloom smiled nervously. "And... yer still... a crusader, right?"

Sweetie tilted her head then. "I... I don't know. How can I crusade for something I already have?"

Sunflower raised a finger. "Can't you crusade for Apple Bloom and Scootaloo's cutie marks?"

Sweetie smiled at her knight. "I'll gladly do that, if the Crusaders will still have me?"

Apple Bloom tackled Sweetie, hugging her. "'Course we will! Friends forever."

Rarity reached over and pat Sunflower on the head. "That was very sensible advice, young knight."