The front door of the house slammed shut causing the orange unicorn that was home to let out a sigh. “Scootaloo, how many times have I asked you not to slam the door?!” She waited for an answer so when one didn’t come and instead she heard a trail of stomping hooves leading upstairs she quirked an eyebrow. Shaking her head she turned the heat down on the chili she was making and slowly made her way upstairs.
As she climbed the stairs she heard the sound of sniffling coming from her sister’s room and she let out another sigh before rubbing her temples with a hoof. She slowly walked over to her sister’s room and pushed the door open quietly to find the orange pegasus with her head buried in a pillow. Moving over next to the bed she sat down and set a hoof next to the crying filly. “It was her again, wasn’t it?”
Aegis Flare sighed again as she ran a hoof through her sister’s mane to try and calm her down some. Eventually the filly’s tears stopped and the two sat in silence until the elder spoke up. “What was she saying this time?”
At first she didn’t say anything but eventually the pegasus started to speak. “It started out like she usually did, but I ignored her like you always told me to. But then she started going on about how mom and dad didn’t want a broken pegasus like me which is why they abandoned us.”
The unicorn frowned at this and from the look on her face it was a good thing that a certain pink filly was on the other side of town. She quickly returned her full attention to her sister again but she realized that she didn’t know their full motives as even she didn’t know what happened. Eventually she decided to just go with her gut instinct about what happened.
“Sis, you know that isn’t true. I don’t know what happened to them and even the princess doesn’t know. What I do know is that they never would have abandoned us over something like that. Hay, they took in a broken unicorn like me so why would something being wrong with you make them want to leave? Besides, you still have a few years of growing and I’m sure that your wings will grow in in another couple years.” The elder sister drew the younger in for a hug and they just sat there holding each other for a few minutes.
Eventually the two separated and went downstairs where the unicorn finished the preparations for dinner and left it simmering until then and the filly did her schoolwork. Looking over at her sister as she left the kitchen; Aegis Flare noticed that she still looked a bit down and decided to act on something she noticed earlier that day. “Come on Scoots, let’s go and check out that magic show that supposed to be in the town square today. You can finish that up afterwards.”
The filly seemed to perk up a bit at this and quickly set her things aside and rushed over to her sister. As they got outside they could hear the sound of fireworks towards the center of town which caused the younger of the two to move a bit faster. “Come on sis, hurry up! It sounds like it’s already starting!”
Smiling as her sister ran ahead, the unicorn sped up a bit as well to satisfy her impatient sister. She did pause for a moment as she caught a glimpse of Rarity darting between a few alleyways with the weirdest green mane style, but at another call from her sister she shook it off. Eventually they found where the magic show was being performed and took a spot at the back of the crowd, with Scootaloo perched on the unicorn’s head for a better view.
She was kind of surprised not to see any of her friends watching, though the area was pretty crowded so she may have missed seeing them. Shrugging she focused on watching the show which was pretty decent from what she could tell. While many of the tricks looked pretty simple, it was the variety and flawlessness of the performance that drew her eyes the most. She did frown a bit though when a pony challenged the performer who then proceeded to humiliate them in some way. She felt that that part was a bit cruel and overdone, but she refrained from saying anything.
By the end of the show Scootaloo was bouncing in excitement at the show with barely contained energy. Once the curtain for the show dropped that opened up the floodgates. “That was so cool! Not as much as Rainbow Dash but nothing is as cool as her.”
“I know right! Especially when she did the spell with the bang pow zoom!” The two sisters jump at the voice and turn to see Pinkie Pie bouncing right next to them, neither of them noticing when she had appeared.
Aegis Flare calmed down first and started to shake her head at Pinkie’s antics, as well as stopping herself from asking the obvious question, before responding. “I was wondering when you would show up since I didn’t see you in the crowd and you’d never miss something like this. I saw Rarity earlier but none of the other girls, have you seen any of them around here?”
This question causes the pink party pony to pause in her bouncing as she takes a thinking pose to ponder the question. “Well I was a bit late getting here, but Rainbow Dash came into Sugarcube Corner before I left and she looked really annoyed about something. I haven’t seen the others though.”
The unicorn just shrugged it off and figured that the others were probably busy with something else. Saying farewell to Pinkie, the two made their way back home for the rest of the day. As they were walking back, Aegis Flare caught snippets of conversations from the ponies they passed as they talked about the magic show that just ended. She caught snippets of what little she had missed by being late and what little she heard made her curious about the entire story.
As Aegis Flare was tucking her sister into bed for the night she felt their home start trembling. When it didn’t turn out to be a temporary thing but instead seemed to be getting worse she turned towards the window with a frown. “What in Equestria is that?”
When looking out Scootaloo’s window didn’t give an answer her horn lit up and she climbed out onto a trellis shaped shield before using it to rise to the top of the house for a better view. Once there she caught a glimpse of what was approaching which caused her to rub her eyes before taking another look. “Why would one of those be awake now?” She glances up to the starlit sky to confirm her suspicions. “None of the ones of that size are prevalent in the sky right now so they shouldn’t be awake.”
Dropping down again until she is level with the window again she popped her head in to see her sister’s worried look. “Stay here Scoots, but be ready to take cover in the cellar. I’m going to get a closer look on what is happening.” As soon as she saw her sister’s nod the unicorn dropped all the way to the ground and took off running in the direction that the figure seemed to be moving.
As she ran, she kept an ear out and was glad that she didn’t hear the sound of anything being destroyed. She did hear screaming from some ponies as she came closer to the creature, but considering the fact that the creature is awake when it shouldn’t be then they were probably at least partly responsible. Weaving through the buildings of Ponyville she eventually found herself in the town square and finally able to identify the celestial beast, an ursa minor, as it started to rear back to attack three ponies in front of it.
When Aegis Flare sees this, she immediately lights up her horn to throw up a barrier almost directly in front of the ursa. Remembering her experience with Nightmare Moon, she made this barrier more flexible than stiff so that it wouldn’t shatter right away. That, combined with the placement, was enough to prevent most of the impact as the ursa couldn’t pick up its full momentum and it was thrown onto its back as the shield rebounded that attack back.
As the beast began to topple backwards, Aegis Flare ran over to the three figures while wincing at the pain from her horn. On nearing them, she recognized two of the colts from her sister’s class as well as the stage mare who owned the wagon she just saved. “I’d ask who had the bright idea to wake up an ursa minor during its sleeping period, but right now I need to think of a way to stall it until the guard can rally to drive it off.”
“Wait, you mean that isn’t an ursa major? I guess we got the wrong one Snails, but this should be a piece of cake for the Great and Powerful Trixie.” The two colts look at the azure mare to see her staring at the orange unicorn with her jaw wide open. Aegis Flare was ignoring them as her thoughts raced while the ursa minor shook its head to clear it and began to right itself. When the ursa was about halfway up her hoof shot out and pointed at the showmare; causing her mouth to shut as she reared back in surprise.
“You! I need you to do whatever you can to stall it while I prepare something that will hopefully scare it enough to get it to retreat for now. Do you think you can do that?” The two colts were about to say something but the azure mare’s reaction shut them down though.
“”Are you crazy?! Trixie may be the most talented unicorn ever but Trixie has never actually faced something like that. Trixie only made up the story about the ursa major just so she would look good and draw in a bigger crowd. And you say this is only an ursa minor?!” The two colts cry out in disbelief at Trixie’s admission while the orange mare just shrugs it off.
“You don’t need to face it, just distract it for a few seconds while I charge up for a big spell. It shouldn’t be that hard to do and since it’s usually only out at night then it’s probably sensitive to light so just blind it or something.” Trixie just stares at the mare in disbelief before she shakes her head and looks over at the ursa with a look of fear in her eyes.
“Trixie isn’t sure about this, but okay.” Taking a wide-legged stance, the showmare faces down the giant creature as it finally climbs to its feet again. Taking a deep breath she lights up her horn and fires off one of her most used spells. When the celestial bear reared back and grasped at its eyes when a multitude of fireworks exploded right in front of them the mar’s confidence grew.
Before the beast could recover she cast another spell to shroud its head in clouds before throwing out a pose. “Take that you. No mere ursa minor is a match for The Great and Powerful Trixie!” Unfortunately for her, the ursa’s ears were not affected by her spells so it clearly heard her causing it to swipe a paw in her direction, forcing her to let out a yelp and duck for cover along with the two colts. She was about to cast another spell to recover, but a bright light and wave of heat behind her made her turn around and she gasped at the sight.
While Trixie was distracting the creature; Aegis Flare was steadily drawing as much of her magic as she could into her horn causing multiple coronas to form around it. The air around her also began to shimmer a bit as the temperature around her started to rise drastically as she channeled the spell. Before releasing the spell she had time to say one last thing before things got out of control. “I really hope this works as well at scaring this away as it does hydras.”
With a loud grunt of effort she released the spell into the air above her causing streams of fire to pour out of her horn into the sky above her. Maintaining her concentration over the fire; she gathered it all into a ball before forming it into the shape she was picturing. Soon enough a giant bird of fire, roughly the same size as the ursa, was flying in the air above her as she sweated heavily from the concentration it took to keep the spell going.
When the ursa minor’s vision cleared it caught sight of the flaming visage now in front of it and it retreated rapidly in fear. The flaming bird made as if to attack is it steadily advanced through the air, forcing the beast to retreat step by step. Unfortunately there were certain things that the unicorn could not imitate, such as the sounds the bird should make, which made the ursa suspicious. After retreating a couple dozen steps, and not hearing a single sound from the creature, the ursa minor lashed out with one of its paws, shattering the image and sending the orange unicorn to the ground clutching her head from the backlash that blackened her horn.
With the apparent threat removed from its sight, the ursa turned its attention to the ponies that it was chasing earlier. Before it could start to advance again its attention was grasped by a melody floating through the air. The four unicorns watched as the celestial beast tottered a bit before collapsing into slumber as a purple field supported it. When a water tower floating into its grasp before it flew off in the direction it came from they looked around to see Twilight nearby with her horn shining brightly.
Some of the townsponies came up and starting speaking about something, but Aegis Flare was distracted from all this by the splitting headache she had going on. Eventually one of the ponies that had arrived noticed her hanging back with her look of pain and moved over towards her. “Flare, are you ok there? Why are you hanging bac- Darling! What ever happened to your horn?!”
Aegis Flare looked up to see Rarity standing over her and she waved a hoof her way before slowly standing again. “It’s just a little magic burnout, Rarity. After a couple days of rest then I’ll be all better then.”
Unfortunately for her this wasn’t enough to reassure the alabaster mare. “But your horn is blackened with soot! That needs to be cleaned up before it permanently stains! Nopony should have to deal with that especially after having to deal with that foul braggart, Trixie.”
The orange unicorn just sighs before deciding not to try and argue overly much with her friend. “Rarity, I already had plans to take care of it over the next couple days at the spa since I can’t go into the Everfree like this. Also what was that about Trixie? Sure it was obvious that some of what she said was fake; but she is just that type of entertainer. Besides she did do a pretty good job of distracting that ursa minor while I cast my spell to try and delay it. Granted, I was more expecting the guard to show up than for Twilight to deal with it by herself.”
By this time the others had come over as the rest of the townsponies had already started to disperse. “What are you talking about? How could that loudmouth have done anything even remotely useful especially after what she did to us?” Aegis Flare raised an eyebrow at Rainbow Dash as she floated above the others with a light pout on her face.
“I missed what happened, except for Rarity running off with her green mane, but I caught bits of it when I walked home afterwards. Did any of you even bother watching her show before you started heckling her?” Three of the ponies looked at each other while Twilight was busy muttering to herself about something. Aegis Flare looked at Applejack since she never could lie that well and her darting eyes told her what she wished to know before she let out a sigh.
“You really should talk with her tomorrow and clear things up I think. Frankly I would have expected Rainbow Dash to understand her a bit since Fluttershy once told me a bit about what happened in flight school.” The cyan pegasus actually looked as if she was thinking back on those events judging from her blush while the other two looked a bit put off. Before they could say anything else they were all interrupted by a growl of frustration from Twilight as she marched up to the orange unicorn.
“Gah, I just can’t figure this out! How is it that you are out here without the guard having any information on you?! Every single pony of a sufficient level of power or that uses dangerous branches of magic are registered in the Canterlot Archives yet you aren’t on the lists! After seeing what you just did there is no way that you wouldn’t be on them!” All four of them watched the purple unicorn warily before Applejack spoke up.
“Um, you mean that there are ponies up in Canterlot keeping an eye on us down here without us knowing? Ah don’t think ah like the sound of that.” Twilight shakes her head slightly before pausing a moment.
“Well there might be something now on you after we acquired the Elements of Harmony, but I don’t think the princess will make that information public. Before that I don’t think any of you would have been listed, but I never did pay attention to the pegasus or earth pony lists. But Flare should definitely have been on them for being a pyromancer even if she is spell blind.” Seeing that Twilight wasn’t going to give up on this, the orange unicorn just sighs.
“Can we deal with this tomorrow Twilight? I promise that I’ll come over to the library and you can ask whatever you want. Right now I just want to go home and brew up some restoration tea before going to sleep.” The purple unicorn looks uncertain about all of this, but after a moment’s thought, eventually nods in agreement. Seeing as it is late they all head to their respective homes to prepare for the coming insanity of the next day.