Letters From a Little Princess Monster

by Georg


53 - 24 - Part One

Since it has been a few weeks (checks) months since the last update, I thought it would be a good idea to include a summary of where our characters are at the moment. The next five chapters will cover 24 hours of activites in the life of our little alicorn and her friends and family, starting with:

Trixie, who is at Flax and Wheat’s ‘spa’ while all of the appliances she accidentally signed to pay for are installed in the library.
Diamond Tiara and Scootaloo, who swapped bodies due to Monster’s spell.
Monster, who wants to fix it, and is willing to go anywhere to find a book with the counterspell.
Sweetie Belle, who is angsting over taking her test for Celestia’s school.
Scootaloo’ who may be taken back to Cloudsdale now that she can hover (briefly).
Filthy Rich, who is sending ‘Diamond Tiara’ to an expensive boarding school after finding her fighting with ‘Scootaloo.’ No, he doesn’t know.
All three princesses, Spike, and most of the town of Ponyville, who don’t know either.
Zecora and her two guests, who are busy decoding the Zebra lore she brought with her twelve years ago. (they stay off-camera)
Zecora’s husband, Tallgrass, who is traveling with five zebra shamans back to Ponyville by the scenic route, after which they are foolishly expecting to take Monster back to Zebrica.


Secrets will become known and more secrets will take their place. But first, we take you to the Ponyville Golden Oak Public Library, which is not open for business yet this morning, but that has not slowed down a certain patron who is looking for a book...


Letters From a Little Princess Monster
24 - Part One


Time: Pre-Dawn. Location: Ponyville Golden Oak Library

Dragons of any age were renowned for their ability to sense when anything threatened their hoard. Even the smallest mouse slipping away with a tiny jewel could awaken a dragon from centuries-long sleep and cause a substantial rearrangement of their lair to prevent any further thieving. Although it was easy to simply consider them walking (or flying) epitomes of greed, their burning desire for accumulating a hoard ran far deeper than just attempting to grab everything sparkly they could see. Dragons valued value in a hoard, and in the infinite diversity of dragonkind, this characteristic caused some particular oddities to creep into the family cave at times, from Vorel’aurix-levethuix Maekrix-book-rasvim⁽*⁾ and her collection of ancient manuscripts to Coinspinner and his rare coin collection.
(*) Talon and Thorn, Climbing the Mountain

Even though Spike was a very young dragon, he possessed the same affinity with his hoard. In fact, younger dragons could be considered to be more sensitive, as each item in their collection represented a larger percentage of their total worth. This would not normally be a bad thing, except over the last few months as Trixie and Spike had moved into the Golden Oak Library, he had been somewhat casually shoved into the position of Assistant Librarian, overseeing the caretaking and management of twenty-three thousand, seven hundred and twelve books, counting magazine collections, periodicals, and comics.

As the sun glowed just barely below the horizon in a subtle encouragement to a reluctant moon, Spike shifted uncomfortably in his sleep. There was an unaccustomed sensation tickling down in his throat and around his belly as deep draconic processes gurgled and rumbled.

He opened one eye and regarded the open curtains with the inky pre-dawn darkness beyond.

Then he looked back over at the spot where Trixie’s bed used to be, which was still empty until Quills and Sofa’s was scheduled to deliver a replacement sometime this afternoon.

One more day of vacation. Thank you, Rarity. Have fun at the spa, Trixie.

Closing his eyes and snuggling back down under his asbestos blanket, Spike attempted to return to slumber. Normally, it would have only taken a moment to begin snoring again. The situation was anything but normal.

He opened one eye and looked back out into the room again. The spot where Trixie’s bed had been was still empty, with a large sheet thrown over the pile of junk that Trixie had managed to stuff underneath her bed in a mere three months, but he could recognize the little purple pony’s rump sticking out from under the sheet now, and a soft violet light filtering through it.

“No,” said a small voice as another book scooted out from under the sheet and stacked itself to one side. “No,” repeated the voice as another book joined the stack.

Spike took a moment to look around the room before speaking. There were an astonishing number of bookshelves within sight, particularly considering this room was the librarian’s bedroom. What was missing on the bookshelves were books, although they were not actually missing per se, but stacked up in individual stacks towering far above Spike.

Had Spike been a little older and somewhat wiser, he would not have started off his morning by asking, “Twilight! What are you doing?”

Had Twilight Sparkle been a little older and wiser too, she would not have reacted with a guilty twitch and jumped out from under the covering sheet, bumping into one of the towering piles of books in the process.

Gravity followed. So did Pain, and a certain amount of learning for one small dragon.

A significant amount of time later, the books covering Spike floated up into the air and a very apologetic young alicorn peered into Spike’s small cleared space.

“Sorry.”

“That’s cool, Twilight,” said Spike, grateful for having a few minutes to calm down. “I’m a dragon, so I’m really tough. Are you looking for a particular book?”

“Spellbook.” The tall stack of books next to Spike levitated up into the air as it reassembled, and the little alicorn slipped a nearby book underneath it, checking the spine first to ensure its proper placement. Afterwards, she remained in place with her head so low her nose nearly touched the wooden floorboards and the ragged remains of her tail⁽¹⁾ swaying back and forth like a slow metronome.
(1) Post Cutie Mark Crusader Mane Stylists Yea! as of last week

“Any particular spellbook?” prompted the little dragon. “The library has a few copies of McPuffins Reader For Magic from grades one to eight for little unicorns who can’t afford schoolbooks of their own, but since this is mostly an earth pony town, I don’t think it has any real spellbooks. Well, except that one in the Restricted section…”

Spike paused with an instinctive sniff of the air. “Did you rearrange all the books downstairs too?”

“Yes.” The little alicorn shuffled around to look him in the eyes, although with considerable reluctance. “I’m sorry.”

As much as he wanted to go straight back to bed and sleep for another day, Spike smiled back in an attempt to support Trixie’s little student. He did not get to practice his reassuring smile on ponies very often, because the sight of so many sharp teeth caused most of them to recoil away as if they were about to be bitten. Twilight Sparkle was unperturbed by his smile, and even seemed to be more comfortable with him than adult ponies, which was not saying much, but it was good for his own ego.

“No prob, Twi. Trixie won’t be back until tomorrow anyway, so I’ve got all day to reshelve. Did you want to help?”

It was a phrase which Shining Armor had insisted would bring Twilight out of even the most sincere sulk, particularly after he had related a story about his little sister always putting away her toys in alphabetical order. It even looked as if the attempt was going to work, because the little alicorn’s eyes lit up and her tail wagged briefly, but then she sighed and looked back down at the wooden floorboards of the library bedroom.

“No. Need to fix the spell on Scoots and Diamond first. Need counterspell.”

“Oh,” said Spike. “Bummer. Well, I can reshelve the library today, if you promise to help me with it later, after you find the spell you’re looking for. Have you tried asking Rarity? She’s really good with magic, and has lots of books.”

The little alicorn pursed her lips in thought before nodding. “Ok. Thanks.” She stumbled forward rather uncomfortably before putting her forehooves around Spike’s neck and giving him a gentle hug. “Best little brother.”

“Best big sister,” said Spike, returning the hug. The warmth in his heart stayed with him long after Twilight had left the library, and did not go away for the entire day.

Reshelving was not that bad after all.

~ ~ ~ ~

“How about this one?”

“No.”

“Well, how about this one, then?”

“No.”

Rarity was not a morning pony much in the same fashion that one could say Pinkie Pie was not a big fan of dieting or Applejack rather disliked pears. Inspiration, once struck, could drive the young unicorn through the night in a burst of creativity which would fill the Carousel Boutique main room with colorful dresses and leave the creator in no condition to sell them. Several local early-rising residents of Ponyville had been the recipients of tremendous bargains when their dawn visit to the dress shop had coincided with the tail end of a massive overnight creativity spasm, and found themselves dressed and shoved back out the door at the cost of five or ten bits while wearing a thousand bits worth of diamonds or gemstones. This being Ponyville, they had all returned to the boutique at a more rational time of the afternoon and arranged a trade for the sunhat or kerchief they had originally intended on purchasing, thus allowing Rarity to reclaim her expensive creation for the much more wealthy client it had originally been intended to clothe.

“This one?”

“No.”

Last night had been a doozy. Having Trixie out of the town had both relaxed Rarity and given her somewhat of a guilty conscience, as she knew the exact condition of the ‘spa’ she had directed her new friend to. It would be a whole day before Trixie was scheduled to return, if she did not run screaming away from the rustic ‘delights’ of Flax & Wheat's New Age All-Natural Wellness Center long before then, or need to be taken to the Ponyville emergency room due to food poisoning. The guilt-gift of Trixie’s brand new dashing cloak and hat was spread out downstairs over a ponyquin, painstakingly stitched with great detail and only slightly gaudy, done in the perfect shade of yellow to complement her new lilac shade. It had taken considerable research to find Trixie’s mother’s coat color for comparison, but a trade magazine had done a story on Papi Presto’s Perfect Cajun Snack Mix where the whole family had been pictured, and Mirabelle Plum’s soft yellows would certainly look both home-like and smashing on the annoying but still somehow tolerable magician, at least until her natural blue colors reemerged during the next shedding season. Then it would be time for a new cloak anyway.

“These look promising.”

“No.”

Rarity shifted in bed beneath her silk comforter and matching silk sleeping mask. It was obviously a dream of some sort, with the quiet sounds of her sister whispering and the rustle of paper as a contrast. Certainly it was not noon yet, as Opalescence had not yet jumped up on the bed and begun to demand her daily pampering and feeding, but the constant whispering and rustling kept Rarity from drifting back to the delightful dream she had of cheering crowds amidst the lights of her own fashion show.

It was fabulous, of course.

The rustling stopped abruptly, which was more disruptive to Rarity’s attempt at returning to sleep than anything, as she had developed a finely-tuned Sister Sense over the recent years. In fact, now that her rebellious mind was insisting on connecting the dots between her ears, the rustling she had been hearing was awfully close to her locked private library with the complicated Minotaurian combination lock she had used to hide her diary as well as certain other books she did not want her darling and innocent sister to see until she was at least twenty, married, and with several foals of her own.

“Isn’t that a children’s book about Princess Cadenza?”

“Title looks wrong.”

“Could be. It really doesn’t look like Cadence. She’s too fat and sticks out in the wrong place.”

“Places. She has two of those.”

Curiosity is a dangerous thing, particularly when indulged in by a somnambulant unicorn, as magic tends to do whatever it wants without proper adult supervision. Rarity had only intended on lifting her sleep mask a crack to peek at Sweetie Belle and whatever other friend she had slipped into the bedroom to borrow a book from her bookshelf over— Rarity’s eyes shot open and the magic she was using to lift her sleep mask caused it to rocket across the room as she lunged forward.

Sweetie Belle and the little purple alicorn next to her were both entranced with the cover of Rarity’s precious hardback special-edition copy of Children of Arborvitae, portraying a… buxom young alicorn rising out of the sea-foam with her broad pink wings spread wide and her horn gleaming through her wet mane in the rising sun. The scene portrayed most certainly had to have been chilly due to a certain… pertness to the young maiden’s motherly characteristics, which undoubtedly had been enhanced by a talented young artist who did not know the proper proportions of an alicorn princess, or perhaps had simply been carried away by his hormone-fed delusions while wielding a paintbrush. Despite Rarity’s best attempts at remaining calm, she failed to notice the towering stacks of books around the room until she caromed off of one and into another, winding up at the bottom of a bookalanche on her bedroom floor.

“Sorry.” The young voice filtered through Rarity’s inadvertent covering of young mare’s books, featuring her complete collection of Harley Quinn’s rather risqué romantic novels as well as several other competing authors who all seem to have used the same handsome royal stallion on their covers, which gave Rarity the oddly naked sensation of being the center of attention of an entire crowd of passionate pirates/rogues/Royal Guards/nobleponies, with a smattering of gladiator stallions dressed in low-cut chainmail around the edges.

“Twilight?” asked Rarity as the books began to move away from her. Rarity really wanted to demand to know why the young alicorn was in her bedroom, but after seeing how shy Sweetie Belle’s friend was, she moderated her sleepy question into a more polite, “Was there something you needed, Twilight?”

The little alicorn just sat there in the darkened bedroom next to Sweetie Belle, blinking in the light of her own horn, before saying, “Need a spell. Need a counterspell. Swapped Diamond and Scoots. Need to put them back.”

“I see,” said Rarity, even though she did not. After all, there was a much more important issue to cover right away. She lit her horn and gently removed Children of Arborvitae from Twilight’s grasp and floated it over to the bed, where she tossed a corner of the coverlet over it. “I really don’t have much in the way of spellbooks, Twilight. Most of my spellwork does not involve much more than a few glitter and reflective spells that I learned in school. Have you tried the library?” At Twilight and Sweetie Belle’s rapid nods, Rarity added, “If the problem is this urgent, perhaps you could ask the mayor if the city archives have the spell you need.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Dawn and Mayor Mare had always met each other with a certain amount of hesitant respect. After her first failed mayoral election, she had decided that the town was determined to catch her flat-hooved and the only way to avoid that fate was to make an equal determination to be already at work before the town could try to slip one past her. So she strolled through the marketplace where farmers were already starting to set up their stands, watching for any upcoming problems as well as greeting the voters… that is town residents, while collecting a quick healthy breakfast on her way to work.

Of course, this week her attempts at staving off her inevitable weight gain were countered by Pinkie Pie, who bounced out of Sugarcube Corner with a tray full of donuts and two large coffees, one of which was delicately sprinkled with pumpkin spice and six cubes of sugar, just the way the mayor liked it.

“Good morning, Mayor Mare, or since the sun isn’t quite up to the horizon yet would it still be night even though it’s bright enough to see and all of the birds are warming up in the trees so they can sing through the whole day like some huge concert we don’t even have to pay for because the birds don’t have pockets to put bits into anyway and what would they spend it on anyway because it’s not like we have anypony who sells worms in the market except for Snips and Snails who did it that once but we’re not supposed to talk about that because of legal liability.”

The mayor took a long drink of coffee. It helped.

“Good morning, mayor!” Scootaloo and Featherweight buzzed by on the scooter and wagon combo that the Cutie Mark Crusaders used to terrorize the town during the day, but at the moment, the wagon was nearly filled with newspapers, one of which came flying out and bounced next to her hooves as they took a sharp turn. It took several blinks to recognize what was wrong with the combination this morning. Scootaloo was in the back for some reason, while Featherweight was pushing the scooter with a rapid buzzing of his small wings, which was probably the reason they were traveling at a somewhat safe rate of speed instead of their normal pell-mell zoom through the streets.

“Good morning, Featherweight! Good morning, Diamond Tiara!” called out Pinkie Pie as they zoomed by and took a corner on their way to the next newspaper delivery.

The mayor considered correcting Pinkie Pie, but decided that her ongoing sanity was far more important. She picked up the city-subscription paper and tossed it on her back before taking another drink of coffee and resuming walking.

“Thank you again for volunteering at City Hall while the renovations are underway, Pinkie,” said the mayor. “I have to admit, I didn’t think you were going to be as useful as you’ve been. Maybe someday you can actually win the election and become mayor of the city.”

And I’ll move to Sanfranciscolt and start that job as earthquake disaster preparedness coordinator that I’m qualified for now. Or maybe move south and take up alligator wrestling.

“Thank you, Mayor Mare,” bubbled Pinkie Pie as she bounced alongside the mayor. “My first responsibility as mayor will be to throw the biggest party anypony has ever seen, which I’ll pay for, because it would be silly to use tax money to pay for my party, after all, and Gummy has been putting together a list of campaign promises we’ll need to implement after the party, which will be a wonderfulspendific time to announce them!”

“That’s a good idea, Pinkie,” said the mayor automatically as she tried to juggle the paper, her coffee, and key to the door to the Town Hall all at once. To be honest, Pinkie Pie’s campaign had been almost exactly a last-minute affair, with her paperwork turned in just minutes before the polls had closed. If she had a few weeks to campaign, the popular party pony might have even been able to knock Mayor Mare out of the Big Chair in her office, which undoubtedly would be repainted pink afterwards. After getting the outside door to Town Hall unlocked, the mayor juggled her coffee and keys again as they walked through the hallways towards her office.

“I’ll get you the copies of the filing I need done and you can update the archives this morning while I work on the strategic planning session for Fall Wrap-Up booth placement. It sounds like this year is going to be the biggest celebration we’ve ever had in town, and I’m glad you’re helping keep things organized. I was a little worried that since things were going so smooth—”

She swung the door to her office open and paused in shock. The complete collection of Equestrian rules and regulations that made up the contents of the outer office bookshelves had been stacked into neat piles in the middle of the room. They still had that ‘new book smell’ since their delivery from Canterlot had been only a month ago, once construction on the replacement Town Hall had progressed far enough for the mayor to move in, but after taking most of a day to pack them onto her new bookshelves, Mayor Mare had not expected to touch them again until the next time an ancient goddess of legend burned the place down to ashes, most likely in a month or two.

Picking her way around the outside edge of the book pile with Pinkie Pie at her side, she could hear a commotion going on in her private office which became evident once she opened the oak door and peered inside.

The bookshelves inside her office had suffered much of the same stacking fate, with sheafs of proposals and pending paperwork neatly arranged into a foundation for the stacks of important sounding reference books she had never actually used before the Town Hall had been blown up three months ago, but still had gotten replaced because they had been in the office before. Diamond Tiara of all ponies was standing on top of the highest stack, pulling a set of books off of the top shelf while Sweetie Belle and Twist — who had managed to wedge themselves into shelves of their own — passed the books one at a time downwards toward the source of the chaos.

A small violet alicorn leafed through the most recent book she had been passed, shook her head in what seemed to be a practiced gesture, and floated the book onto the top of a nearby pile. The mayor was older than both Spike and Rarity, although not by too much, despite her artificially-grey hair, but she still had far better instincts. Without even pausing for thought, the mayor put a hoof into Pinkie Pie’s mouth to muffle the instinctive outburst, and only when she was certain that Pinkie was going to be quiet, did she continue.

“Twilight,” said the mayor in a very calm and artificially un-stressed tone, “can I help you find something?”

Mayor Mare made sure to put on her best constituent smile when the little alicorn looked up, although on the inside she was still trying to figure out if Twilight Sparkle was registered to vote, or worse, when all of the Cutie Mark Crusaders reached that age. Twilight looked startled, but she did not knock over the stack of books she was next to as she responded, “Need a spell. Need a counter-spell to fix Diamond Tiara and Scootaloo.”

Naturally, Mayor Mare looked up at the top of the stack of books where Diamond Tiara was clutching the last book on the shelf. It seemed a little odd, as earth ponies generally preferred to keep all four hooves on the ground, but she was holding herself perfectly balanced and did not seem the least bit worried about a fall. “Diamond, you can put that book back. My office doesn’t have any spellbooks in it. Have you tried finding one over at the library?”

“Yeah,” said Diamond Tiara in a casual way that the mayor had never heard her use before. “Twilight said there’s just one spellbook there that’s app… Applik…”

“Applicable,” said Sweetie Belle from her cramped shelf. “And she already looked over all of Rarity’s books, even the ones she keeps in her locked cabinet with all of her secret stuff. Can you help us down, Twilight?”

It was a little disconcerting the way the three little ponies jumped out into mid-air with little regard for the distance between them and the ground, although a soft violet magical glow surrounded each of them almost instantly and floated them to the floor like so many pieces of thistledown. The mayor tried to cover her near-leap to catch the falling ponies by coughing into one hoof, then spoke up once they were all safely on the ground.

“Why don’t you look in Trixie’s boxes over in the main atrium next door? Since she was Princess Celestia’s student, she must have had a large number of spellbooks. Just don’t move the crates around, and stay out of the ones she has her performance materials in. Particularly anything with ‘death-defying’ or ‘doom’ written on the side,” added the mayor in a rush. “In fact, keep whatever spellbooks you find closed and I’ll locate an older unicorn to help you go through them for what you need. Does that sound fair?”

The little alicorn shrugged back into her red cloak while thinking, but her motions began to slow as the mental wheels turned until she flopped down on the ground and closed her eyes. Twist moved up besides her and rubbed a hoof up and down her back, eventually asking, “You don’t want my thister’s good friend to help, do you, Twilight?”

“No,” murmured the little alicorn. “Yes. No. Want to do it by myself.”

“We’ll help you,” volunteered Twist, still rubbing a hoof across Twilight’s back. “Maybe we can uthe a potion to fix them. I’m really good at mixing things, and Apple Bloom thays they made a really powerful pothon oneth.”

“Ah don’t think we want to do that again,” volunteered Apple Bloom in a very quiet voice. “Ah can still taste the chalk from where Miss Cheerilee made us write lines on the blackboard, an’ we had to do Big Mac’s chores for the whole week.”

“Children,” chided the mayor. “First things first. You go look for your spellbooks while Pinkie and I put all these books back.”

That should keep all of them out of trouble for a few hours. At least nothing blew up. Yet.

~ ~ ~ ~

Once construction was completed, the atrium of Town Hall would once again be a large open area which could be rented for huge parties or indoor weddings, but for now it was simply an area protected from the elements with Trixie’s crates of equipment and gear from Canterlot piled in the center. It was a daunting task to sort through all of the wooden crates, but the Cutie Mark Crusaders had gained several new members in their quest for mystical knowledge, although some of them were of more help than others.

“Are you sure we can’t open that one?” asked Firelock, casting a longing stare at a box labeled ‘Flaming Rings of Doom’ while holding onto the short prybar they had been using to gain access to several of the more resistant crates. “We can just take a peek. Honest.”

“No,” said Monster, checking off another entry on the packing slip and making a notation on her checklist.

“I found that box you were looking for!” declared Dinky, backing out of the pile of crates with one glowing a bright gold in her magical field, and assisted in her towing effort by Twist biting on her tail and pulling too. Even with the two of them pulling, the crate still left some embarrassing scratches in the wooden floor, which Scootaloo checked out with a decisive nod.

“Just the top layer of varnish. I can sand them out in a minute when we’re done. Do you think the spellbooks are in there, Twilight? I’d kinda like to get my wings back. And my life.”

“Mine too,” harrumphed Diamond Tiara with a sharp snap of her ‘borrowed’ wings. “I still can’t get off the ground like I could before. It’s like the longer I stay in this body, the more looooser soaks into me,” she added, drawing out the word.

“Let’s just open it up,” said Sweetie Belle, pushing up on the lid. “Then you two can get back to sniping at each other in your own bodies.”

“Yeah,” said Diamond Tiara with a marked lack of energy. “So Daddy can send me off to Miss Puressence’s School for Young Fillies, and she can go live with her parents in Cloudsdale.”

“Oh. Right.” Sweetie Belle sat down next to the crate. “The entrance exam for Princess Celestia’s school is coming up soon too. If I get in, I could wind up in Canterlot for years, and never see any of you girls again!”

“Hey!”

The tension broke and Sweetie Belle giggled, as did the rest of her friends. “Or you too, Featherweight.”

“Goals,” said Monster, turning her checklist around and showing it to them.

☐ - find spellbook
☐ - reverse spell
☐ - everyting else

“You don’t have teaching Scootaloser how to fly on there,” said Diamond Tiara, unconsciously fluffing ‘her’ wings. “If she goes to Cloudsdale, you don’t want her to wind up falling to her death.”

Monster twitched, her inked quill making a long smear across the page as she whirled in a panic and stared at the small pegasus. “What?”

Diamond Tiara had taken a step backwards and frowned. “I just said you should add teaching Scootaloo how to fly on there, if she’s going to Cloudsdale.”

“What gives, Twilight?” said Scootaloo, moving up to give the trembling alicorn a hug. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Once Monster had soaked up a few hugs from her friends and gotten her breath back, she asked in short bursts, “Diamond. Said. Nothing about falling?”

“No,” chorused the surrounding little ponies, although Scootaloo scoffed at the concept.

“Falling? Really, Twilight. Even a foal can’t get hurt falling. You just stick out your wings and hold them level, and you kinda flutter down.”

“Too afraid,” said Monster, clutching her wings tightly to her barrel.

“Chicken.” Diamond Tiara picked up Twilight’s quill from where she had dropped it and added in precise script ‘☐ - Have Rainbow Dash teach Scootaloo and Twilight how to fly’ to the checklist. “There. What else?” she asked in a slightly muffled voice due to the quill between her teeth.

“We need to find a jar for my new beetle,” said Snails, proudly displaying a small black bug perching on the tip of his hoof. “Snips and Peep are trying to coax another couple out from between two crates. They’re some sort of bark beetles. Pretty, too.”

“Ick!” declared Diamond Tiara, although she dutifully scribbled down a checkbox for the bug as the sounds of young ponies pulling the lid off of the crate labelled ‘Records and Magazines’ echoed around the otherwise empty atrium, followed by excited gasps.

“Wow.”
“Awesome!”
“Thweet!”

The crate was filled almost to the top with comic books and magazines, which Scootaloo and Featherweight began to pull out by the bundle. There were superheroes and villains, cartoon animals with funny hats, and an endless assortment of colors and glittering paper, although there was a sudden exclamation of dismay as several of the dark beetles spilled out onto the floor along with the flood of comics.

“Don’t step on them!” declared Snails. “Or that one. Or those. Or… That’s a lot of bugs.”

“They’re big, too,” said Peep Sprout, scooping several of them together with the edge of a tattered comic book which had been severely sampled. “I wonder if any of them are relatives.”

There was considerable discussion on the topic as the rest of the crate was unloaded across the atrium floor and sorted by topic. It turns out there were no spellbooks in the crate other than a full collection of Doctor Range, Sorcerer Supreme, but there was a collection of phonograph records as well as a player.

“Power Ponies!” declared Featherweight. “Mine! Buhahaha!” He cringed at the sharp look that Monster gave him and added, “I mean, do you think Trixie would mind if we read some of these?”

“Thpethially the duck thories,” said Twist, still sorting out a collection of stories featuring an older duck and his three troublesome nephews⁽²⁾.
(2) Their names shall not be mentioned here. They have lawyers. Vicious lawyers.

Monster fished the last comic out of the bottom of the crate and checked it to see if perhaps there was a un-mind-swapping spell on it, but there was only an advertisement on the back for some x-ray goggles and some brine shrimp. “Nothing,” she muttered.

“Oh, come on,” said Apple Bloom. “This is awesome! School is gonna start in less than a week, and we won’t get no time to read comics then. Come on down here and take a break with us, Twilight. We can search for a spell to put Scoots and Diamond back together later.”

The rest of her friends had already given up on the search for the moment and distributed themselves around the badly-sorted piles of comics. Only Diamond Tiara seemed more hesitant than Monster to lay on her belly on the cool atrium floor and read. “Don’t like comics?” asked Monster as she nudged a stack of the colorful things.

“Daddy says they’re beneath us,” said Diamond Tiara, although she frowned as a colorful bit of comic cover printed with gold coins seemed to catch her eye. Monster moved a comic to one side and unearthed the peculiar book, which had a drawing of a wealthy earth pony filly wearing a huge hat and a colorful dress while standing on a pile of coins.

“Bitsy Bits?” Monster leafed through the first few pages and marveled at the way the well-dressed filly seemed so out of place among her somewhat ragged and poor friends, but still willing to help them out and go on adventures. She flipped through it, pausing when Diamond Tiara protested about not being able to read so fast, but enjoying the cheap garish colors and oddly-artificial adventures far more than she thought she was going to. Diamond even helped Monster whenever she found an unpronounceable word or a strange gadget on the pages. True, it did not seem to be getting them any further toward a solution to any of their problems, but in some strange sense, she felt it was.

“It must be nice to be rich,” said Scootaloo from where she was reading over Monster’s shoulder. “All those big houses and fancy stuff. You could do some amazing things with that much money.”

“It’s not all about the money,” sniffed Diamond Tiara as she pointed to the page Monster was currently reading which had a group of wealthy ponies standing around with colored drinks. “See, Bitsy has a social responsibility to other ponies to act as a role model. Other ponies look up to her, not like your lazy crush.”

“Rainbow Dash is not a crash, she’s a rolling model, and a looping model” protested Scootaloo. “Everypony looks up to her. She’s a hero. I wish there was a villain in Ponyville she could fight. She’d kick ‘em in the nose and box their ears.”

“Well, ma sis could whup any one of them darned villains,” said Apple Bloom, waving her Power Ponies comic around. “She’d buck ‘em upside the head an’ tie ‘em up with her magic lasooo.” Apple Bloom paused. “If she had one.”

“Hey, I know what we can do today!” declared Featherweight.