It was a bright winter day in Ponyville, the kind of day when everypony could expect a day off work so they could throw snowballs, skate on the frozen river, build snowponies, or just enjoy the chill in the air and look forward to a mug of hot cocoa afterwards. But two unicorns weren’t enjoying the fresh air and games. Rarity and Twilight Sparkle were once again hunched over a bench in the basement of the Golden Oak Library, trying to solve a seemingly intractable problem. A week or so earlier, they might have expected that they would still be working on the enhanced communication collars that Twilight had envisioned. But now they had a much more important innovation in mind.

“It must be possible,” Twilight mumbled, and bit her lip again as she tried to think just how they could make it happen. “I mean, there’s clearly a massive flow of magical energy when a dopant uses its powers, and we already know that there’s a connection between the Elements of Harmony, and between each Element and its bearer. Communication would require some kind of energy emission, so why can’t we detect it?”

A couple of weeks earlier, Rarity had been attacked by a dopant when her friends weren’t there to help her. It was the second time she’d felt threatened and alone now, and she wasn’t willing to suffer that again. So she had asked Twilight if they could build a Gaia Memory Detector, so that they could know exactly who to trust without asking everypony they met to show their flank. It wasn’t going as smoothly as it could have done, though. They knew that they would find a solution eventually, but it was hard to even construct the device while they knew so little about the Gaia Memories and how they worked. The only Memories they had to experiment with now were the Elements of Harmony themselves, and they were subtly different from all the other Memories out in the world.

“You need a break,” Spike commented, from his habitual perch atop the bookshelves, “You’ve just been staring at those crystals for days, and you’re not getting anywhere.”

“We simply must know.” Rarity was firm, “We could have been killed, just because we didn’t know who the dopant was. We’re not going to stop until we have a way to recognise them.”

“You know sometimes, you’ve got to take a step back, and then you see something you missed.”

“He could be right,” Twilight mused, “I see a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that a moment of epiphany comes when you’re least expecting it. Possibly a variant on the old superstition that a watched pot never boils, though I don’t think any empirical evidence on that has been gathered.”

“Maybe a little break would do us some good,” Rarity admitted, “Too much time in the basement isn’t good for my skin.” That comment came with a sideways glance at Twilight, who had installed a new system five days earlier that was supposed to precisely control the temperature and humidity in order to make conditions suitable for some rare equipment she was planning to order. Rarity still didn’t quite see the point in that, and was starting to resent the effects of the warm dryness on her delicate complexion, and on her mane.

“Why don’t we go skating on the lake?” Spike leapt in as soon as he saw any suggestion their research might be ending for the day, “I’ve been practising while you two have been stuck down here, and I want to show you how good I’ve got now. I bet you’ll think I’m really cool. And…” he hesitated for a moment, an idea coming to mind of how he could sell the two mares on this plan, but not quite sure if it would be good enough for the much more scientific rigour of Twilight’s mind. “And you’re trying to work out something with crystals, right? So when you look at all the ice and snow in the right way, maybe it’ll give you an idea! I mean, the whole field is white now, crystals all around you!”

“You know, snow isn’t actually white?” Twilight quickly proved that Spike wasn’t the only one who liked to show off, “It’s just the combination of the refracted light off the individual flakes, a hundred million rainbows mixing together to make white light again. It’s really quite …” and then she stopped speaking, but the enthusiastic gleam stayed in her eyes.

“Got something?” Rarity asked, “I guess that the snow did the trick after all.”

“Why don’t the two of us go out skating,” Spike wasn’t willing to let go of his idea, “Get some fresh air and make sure your mane stays beautiful, while Twilight checks out her epiphany thing. I bet winter will be ending soon, and I don’t want to miss the chance to show you what I’ve been practising.”

“The Winter Wrap-Up!” Rarity started, “I can’t believe we almost forgot.”

“This took longer than I thought,” Twilight added, “I haven’t even made my schedule, or analysed the pros and cons of each of the teams I might volunteer for.”

“Just because we’re saving Ponyville from monsters doesn’t mean I can shirk my social obligations! What date is it? Are we too late to enter our names on the roster?”

While Twilight Sparkle and Rarity rushed searching through piles of paperwork to find the appropriate deadlines, another pony was looking out over the lake. There were two couples skating in circles now. One was awkward, taking small steps before drifting farther along the smooth surface, while the other whirled in circles with their hooves together, enjoying the effortless grace. The watching pony hunkered lower behind a fallen log. It was a beautiful scene, everypony enjoying the cool air and the freedom that the ice gave them, and it was something she came to watch at every opportunity. Regardless of skill, a frozen lake was something everypony could enjoy. Even a knock-kneed colt falling on his haunches to the sound of giggles was having fun learning, and looking forward to the day he would do better.

There was just one thing wrong with the scene today, one thing souring the otherwise perfect entertainment. But even that could be dealt with. Nopony saw the watching pony raise one hoof holding a crystal with small metal spikes on one end; and the dancing couples were both too lost in each other’s eyes to pay any heed to a mechanical voice announcing its name in the background.

Early the following morning, it was time for the great Winter Wrap-Up to begin. Twilight and Rarity found themselves standing in line in the town square as the mayor gave a long and rambling speech. They should have filled in forms weeks before to let the committee know which team they wanted to be on, but they’d been too carried away with their work and hadn’t noticed that the seasons were ready to change. The rotas and plans had all been drawn up days before, with just a few spaces left for volunteers who had been too lazy or distracted to complete their proper applications.

“Now, Rarity,” a clerk who Twilight could call Pencil Pusher with some degree of certainty looked down the list in front of her, “You’ve been a little late deciding this year, and I’m afraid the nestmaking squad is already full. It’s a very popular task, after all, so I’m afraid you’ll have to …”

“No, she’s fine!” Pinkie Pie’s voice cut in from the other side of a small tree, “I thought she might have put her papers down somewhere and they’ve been eaten by a Gruffalo, so I booked the head nestmaker slot until Rarity could take over.”

“I’m sure that’s very thoughtful of you, Miss Pie, but we can’t have you left without a role on a day where every pair of hooves is needed.”

“Don’t worry, I’m down for two jobs. See?” She reached over and took one page of a checklist out of Pencil Pusher’s clipboard, causing the bureaucrat to degenerate into apoplectic panic.

“So what’s the deal with this ‘Wrap-Up’ thing anyway?” Spike asked, hoping to make it a little less embarrassingly obvious that everyone was staring at the chaos between Pinkie Pie and Pencil Pusher.

“Haven’t you been listening at all, Spike?” Twilight turned to look at the young dragon, and the set of her jaw told anypony who’d been around her for long that she was ready to deliver a lecture. “Ponyville doesn’t have a Royal Weather Warden, or any of the associated officers and departments. And the number of farms and wild animals in the area means that the changing of the seasons is a much more important and delicate process than it is back in Canterlot, so everypony has to do their bit to make sure it goes smoothly.”

“Oh, that’s all? I bet with your magic, you could do half of it by yourself and let everypony else have a day off!”

“What did I say? I wasn’t saying Twilight’s better than you, but she can do so many things at once, like hold every book in the library. She could sweep snow and break ice and whatever else you gotta do all at the same time!”

“It’s a tradition,” Twilight was able to take the suggestion more calmly, and explain the problem, “Ponyville was founded by earth ponies, and they like to keep everything done the way it has always been. I will be helping today by the strength of my hooves, not my magic.”

“No, not no magic. Remember that it’s magic that lets the pegasus weather squad move the clouds, and there’s magic in the way the earth ponies encourage the flowers to grow. But for one day, we respect the pride of this town’s founders. We lift rather than levitate, and substitute sweat for spellcraft.”

“A beautiful way to put it,” Rarity nodded, “So for one day each year I weave with my hooves, making nests for the birds who will be returning from the south. It is good to have a little variety in my routine, and I like to think it helps me stay in touch with the world around us, to generate new inspirations.”

“That’s incredible!” Spike finally accepted the idea, though he still wished that he’d known about this event earlier, so that he could have more than one chance to impress Rarity with his grace on the lake. “Does that mean I can’t breathe fire to help melt the ice?”

“I’m not sure,” Twilight furrowed her brow, “There’s a difference between a natural ability and magic, I’m sure. But I suspect that the heat of fire could harm the first seedlings trying to grow from beneath the snow, so you shouldn’t attempt anything without first checking with the relevant squad leaders. There’s a structure here for a reason, and as the outsiders we need not to do anything that would upset the status quo.”

“That’s all sorted!” Pinkie suddenly popped up between them, startling both Twilight and Rarity. For such a lively pony, she was capable of moving surprisingly quietly. “Rarity, you got your usual job, I saved it for you. And I was on the list twice so I’m still doing the ice, Twilight you can come with me. Are you good at skating?” She was already moving off as she started to speak, with Twilight hurrying to keep up.

“Not really,” Twilight thought back to the previous afternoon, when she’d been too nervous to step out onto the frozen lake. She’d been happy enough to watch Spike and Rarity from the side, but she didn’t really want to admit now that she’d been too nervous to even try skating.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Pinkie bubbled, “You don’t need to do all fancy dancing, just go across the pond a few times and then go to the next one, you score the ice so it breaks up faster when the weather team clears the clouds.”

“Got it,” Twilight tried to show a lot more confidence than she felt, “But, a lot of ponies go skating for fun over winter. Don’t they score the ice enough?”

“Maybe, but we need to make sure. Once the sun is out, the ice will melt pretty quickly. And if the ice doesn’t break straight away, some foals might get carried away and try skating on it again. So we have to be sure that all the lakes and ponds are properly scored to break up as soon as the sun starts warming them, and be sure nopony’s on them when they break. It’s very important, a serious job. And fun to do as well!”

Twilight hadn’t known that the Wrap-Up would involve ice skates, and if she had she might have taken the opportunity to practise a little more over the winter. But she couldn’t deny, her unpreparedness was her own fault. If she’d filled in the forms with all of her talents a week before, she would have been in a job that better suited her. In the circumstances, the only thing that she could do was her best.

In this particular case, though, it seemed that her best was sliding across a frozen lake on her belly, followed by a few moments of frantic scrabbling trying to get her legs underneath her, before Pinkie Pie had to pull her off the ice so she could stand. Pinkie went out onto the lake three times, four hooves in a dead straight line to deepen the same mark on the ice, and didn’t fall. Then she’d pirouette and leap, the surface beneath her producing clear cracking sounds. Every time Twilight tried to do the same, the only thing she could offer was a flat spin or an uncontrolled slam into one of the snow drifts on the bank.

The second lake on their tour of the area was Blossom Brook, a narrow channel which a healthy pony could easily have leapt over, even without the stepping stones that crossed it every time it was near a road or farm track. In the depths of winter, it was frozen across as thoroughly as any body of water, and Pinkie explained that it was important to make sure the ice was well broken because otherwise, ponies would be tempted to step on the surface rather than jump over it, and could end up embarrassed and with wet coats in the chill spring winds.

“But this place is perfect. I can’t believe nobody ever taught you to skate before. It’s so much fun!”

Pinkie could scratch into the ice along the stream easily, with her hind hooves closely following the edges while her forehooves cut a thicker line down the centre. She found this a little boring, so livened it up by trying never to brush against the trees that overhung the bank. But this year, she had a new game to play.

“It’s easy,” she said, “I’ll teach you!” On a narrow part of the stream, with dirt walls just a few feet apart reaching shoulder-height above the ice, Twilight couldn’t possibly fall over. And once she was standing on the slippery surface, she could learn how to move her hooves so that the skates bit into the surface, and start to keep her balance without relying on the sides. Pinkie started pushing her along gently, explaining how to shift her weight so that the skates bit deeply, and then started to push faster and faster. Twilight panicked for a second as the walls of their little culvert started to rush past faster than a comfortable walking pace, but Pinkie showed no signs of stopping. As the brook got wider, she started calling out “Stop!” But her friend didn’t show any sign of having heard.

Twilight shifted her full weight onto the front skates, plowing up furrows an inch deep in the middle of the stream, and then quickly came to a halt. A few feet behind her, Pinkie Pie was beaming proudly.

“I heard. And you learned. You’re standing on the ice without leaning on the sides, you stopped without hitting a snowbank, and you just carved a perfect line down the middle. And turned around without slipping, too. See, you can learn if you try hard enough.”

“I… guess you’re right. So the breakneck speed running was just to put me on the spot, so I’d learn how to stop myself properly?”

“You’ve got to try it before you can do it right,” Spike answered for her as he burst out of one of the bushes beside the stream, “One of the kids did something like that to me at the start of winter, or I’d never have got into it.”

“Spike!” Twilight gasped in surprise, “What are you doing here?” She tried to stand up again, but wasn’t quite that agile and she ended up spread eagled on the ice again.

“That’s mean,” Pinkie said as she helped Twilight up, but she couldn’t help giggling a little. “Twilight’s only just learned to skate, you shouldn’t startle her like that. Anyway, what are you doing here? You shouldn’t wander away from the group Pencil Pusher put you in, she’s very proud of her job and it wouldn’t be nice to cause trouble.”

“Oh, don’t worry. They said there aren’t any dragon squads, out of all the different teams they’ve got. So I said I wanted to help you, and they said that’s okay because there’s a pony who was going to come here this afternoon who wanted to try nest making. And they said I couldn’t do nests with Rarity any more, because they weren’t tidy enough! Can you believe that? I’m neater than any baby bird I ever saw.”

“Oh, so it’s just the three of us?” Pinkie seemed surprised, but confident they’d be able to complete the challenge set out for them. With Spike weaving between the two ponies’ legs, just about avoiding tripping Twilight, they carved lines into the ice until they reached Conder Lake, one of many small bodies of water around the outskirts of Ponyville.

“We didn’t used to do this one,” Pinkie explained as she started to follow a complex dance around the edges of the lake, “It’s a pool where nobody would care if it took the ice a few days to break up. But the Young Fliers Club uses it to practise emergency landings, they say it’s better for a young pegasus to splash than to crash. So we need to make sure the ice is all gone, so they don’t hurt any more than their pride.”

“Right. I think I got this now,” Twilight grinned with eager determination, “You do those spirals you were talking about round that bank, Spike can go the other way, and I think maybe I can balance well enough to criss-cross to the other side without falling on my dock more than once or twice.”

“Right you are!” Pinkie spun and swirled off to the left, and Spike repeated a version of the same maneuvers only slightly less elegant to the right. Twilight kicked off against the snow at the bank, and managed to score four neat, parallel lines as she drifted toward the opposite corner of the lake. Although this was something she never expected to be trying again, she felt oddly proud that she’d learned to score the ice on a lake. And just in time, too, because she could see the clouds on the horizon beginning to part as the pegasi on the weather team prepared to let the sun’s heat through as soon as it was noon. If the ice wasn’t properly scored, by Pinkie’s team and a half dozen other squads in different parts of the area, then the warm ice might not be strong enough to take a grown pony’s weight, and their only option would be leaving it to melt naturally.

Twilight knew she’d done it right, and she was so proud of herself. The task was probably trivial, certainly compared to using the complex refraction of the emotional energies of all ponies in an area to trace back and extrapolate the signature of energy emitted from a Gaia Memory, but it was something she’d never even managed to do before.

“Is something wrong, Twilight?” Pinkie called from the edge of the lake. Twilight suddenly jerked her mind out of the thoughts of pride, and looked down at her skates. She was still standing on the ice, right in the middle of the lake, but she wasn’t carving out four slow but inexorable lines toward the far bank. In fact, she wasn’t moving at all, and trying to kick off against the ice did nothing to change matters. Her skates were frozen solidly in place, with a thin crust of ice just strong enough to stop her legs from moving.

“I… It’s my skates! I can’t move my skates!” Twilight called back, suddenly realising just what a helpless position she was in. An earth pony in the same position would be completely paralysed with four hooves frozen in place, and could do nothing but call for help. As a unicorn, Twilight should be able to unfasten the boots, but that would leave her with no options other than stepping out onto the ice, and she’d be even less steady there than she had been when she first donned the skates. The only thing she could do right now was to wait for Pinkie to come and free her.

Pinkie Pie rushed closer, abandoning all grace in favour of helping her friend. She built up an impressive speed on the ice before slamming into Twilight, the momentum snapping through the thin layer of ice and sending the two ponies sprawling across the frozen surface.

“That doesn’t happen,” there was a new urgency in her voice, “You can’t just get frozen in place when you’re moving to start with. Something’s wrong here, it’s a dopant!”

“What? Where?” Spike panicked, spinning on the spot as he tried to look for an attack from any direction.

“It’s around here somewhere,” Pinkie was certain, and that was good enough for Twilight. She would be willing to admit she wasn’t Equestria’s greatest skating expert, but she’d never even heard of somepony being frozen in place by accident, and it didn’t seem like a very natural phenomenon.

Twilight whipped the Driver out, and swung the magnetic harness around her body. By now she was so used to it that it barely registered when she heard the catches click together at the back of her neck; each time they did this, it seemed to be a little quicker and a little less important.

“JOKER!” Her Element called out. She waited just a second before slotting it into the Driver, but Pinkie wasn’t quite ready yet. With presence of mind that actually surprised Twilight a little, she wasn’t going to let her body fall asleep until she was off the ice and standing on solid ground. It turned out that meant there was just time for somepony else to activate their Element. Magical light flickered around Twilight for a moment, too bright to comfortably look at, and a second later there was a double champion standing in armour that somehow included a set of crystalline skates

“What’s wrong?” Rarity asked, after glancing around for a second and seeing no immediate danger.

“There’s a dopant around here somewhere,” Pinkie hauled herself up onto the top of a stubby snowdrift and peered around, “I could feel the magic, it was just…” her shiver of disgust explained better than any words could.

“I didn’t feel anything,” Twilight mumbled, “I should have felt it.” Between them, Twilight and Rarity reached out into the magical aura of the place, feeling the residual trails of spells long gone, but there was nothing around her skates or on the ground to indicate that the elements had been altered.

(“There’s nothing to feel,” Rarity confirmed, though they could both see clearly enough, “You couldn’t have detected it because there’s nothing to feel.”)

“How do you mean, you felt it?” Twilight asked aloud, “We can’t feel anything, and we’re used to sensing magic. Unless… Is dopant magic similar to earth pony magic in some way? Or at least it’s something completely different from the magic we’re used to, but if you can feel it that’s a clue. Maybe something we can use instead of trying to detect the crystals themselves.”

“Or maybe it’s just her Pinkie Sense, and you’ll never be able to explain it,” Rarity commented with just a little sarcasm in her voice, “But we can’t be dealing with this now. If there’s a dopant right here we need to find it, and then I need to get back to my work. I’ve got three hundred nests to prepare before they bring the migrating birds back, and I’m still trying to fix the first one!”

“You can get back to work if you want,” Pinkie shrugged, “I don’t think the dopant’s here any more, and if they are, they’re more likely to attack once we carry on with our work. We can deal with it.”

With Rarity able to continue with her essential work for the Wrap-Up, Twinkie continued using their skates to break the ice across the rivers and lakes around Ponyville. When the sun came out, the scored ice would break up in moments. They finished the lake quickly, with Twinkie pirouetting around one bank while Spike took the other, both darting inwards occasionally to make sure that the ice would break all the way to the centre.

(“It’s so much easier,” Twilight muttered in surprise, “I can see how you’re moving our muscles, I can feel all the subconscious decisions that go into every movement. It’s like I’m learning how to do this without all the usual trial and error. When we’ve finished here I’ll probably be able to skate as well as Spike, at least, and with only one day of practice!”)

(“Oh, no you won’t!”)

(“When we’re finished here, there won’t be any ice left to skate on, silly!”)

By the time they’d finished scoring the ice, Twilight was even more certain that she’d mastered the difficult skill. But as Pinkie said, she’d have to wait until the following year before she could try out what she’d learned on her own. There was no more sign of a dopant, and they started to wonder if it had been some kind of natural accident, if the uncomfortable feeling Pinkie reported had been an unnatural sense that Twilight didn’t quite believe in reporting on something else entirely.

But Twilight also had plenty of time to think as she trooped back to the organisers’ table in the town square. She hadn’t been able to sense dopant magic in the same way she could feel the spells cast by another unicorn, but then she hadn’t ever really tried. Usually they were so obvious. But she was already aware of the Grand Unified Theory of Magic; that Equestria was overlaid by three distinct and separate fields of magical energy, capable of interacting with each other and with the material world only when channeled by ponies who had the right ability. Could that mean that a dopant’s powers were still linked to the tribe of the original Memory user; that an earth pony who used a Gaia Memory could gain the ability to perform clearly magical feats quite different from their normal affinity with the ground, while still exerting their abilities through the earth magical field? Or might it be that a dopant’s powers had a completely different mechanism of action? It would be difficult to test either theory while the Elements of Harmony were the only Memories she could experiment on, but she was already trying to think of ways to prove either hypothesis.

And there was the other idea she’d had, using crystalline resonance instead of magic. That was very much Rarity’s field, but she had the start of an idea in her mind. Something she could work on once the day’s work was done; of course. The evening was still a long way of, and Twilight had no doubt that the event organisers would have more tasks lined up for her.

Pencil Pusher and Rubber Stamp were sitting behind a desk in the square, with a huge pile of forms in front of them. They had taken on the additional responsibility of ensuring that everypony knew what was expected of them and when, in between their work shovelling away the drifts of snow in the corners of the town centre. Twilight could see straight away that they weren’t as organised as they seemed, relying on sheer mass of documents to give themselves an image of officialdom. If she’d been running that desk, they would probably only have needed one elegant chart to tell them where any pony would be at any given time.

But, of course, she hadn’t been involved at the stage they would have been drawing up their documents. She hadn’t been organised enough to remember the date, the irony of which was not lost on her.

“Twilight Sparkle. You know it’s me, Stamp, you don’t need to ask, surely?”

“We’re doing it by the book. The Winter Wrap-Up is not going to be delayed this year! We’re going to do it like they do in Canterlot and Manehattan, where whole-town events are managed by an organised bureaucracy, and everypony works together smoothly like cogs in a giant machine.”

“Thanks!” He didn’t seem to notice the irony at all, “Anyhow, you got the ice scored on all ponds and streams in section seven?”

“Yes,” Twilight restrained herself from mentioning that they already knew that, because Pinkie Pie had been ahead of her in the unnecessary queue. Rubber Stamp picked up a quill pen, grinned broadly, and made a large, extravagant tick on the piece of paper in front of him. Twilight could see that it was right next to an identical check, that had been made when Pinkie reported the job done.

“Right, it seems everything is in order for the watercourses project squad; and the Weather Team is at more than eighty percent completion of their morning schedule tasks. So you’ll be helping with a different team this afternoon; the … umm …” Twilight waited patiently while both of the administrative ponies leafed through stacks of paperwork, searching for another one with her name on it. By the third time they’d been through the pile – two or three task sheets for each and every pony in Ponyville, mixed in with all kinds of different documents for other purposes – Twilight was wondering whether the problem was more that the forms weren’t in any kind of order, or maybe that because of her late registration her name wasn’t actually in there.

Twilight looked away for a moment, wondering when she’d be able to take part in the Winter Wrap-Up again. She saw Fluttershy standing at the edge of the town square, trying without much luck to get Pencil Pusher’s attention. Twilight tapped her on the hoof as she tried to get her desk in order, and gestured over to where Fluttershy was standing.

“I think maybe we could use a few more hooves in the animals team. If there’s anypony to spare, I mean, I don’t…”

“I’m sorry Miss Fluttershy,” Rubber Stamp muttered, “We can’t change assignments at this stage. You should have properly commandeered an appropriate number of volunteers at last week’s planning meeting, there is nopony without an assigned duty on the roster, so we can’t–”

“How about I help the animal team until you can find out where I’m supposed to be,” Twilight offered. She wasn’t sure that she’d be so good at working with animals, but there were two very good reasons to speak up. Firstly, it looked like Fluttershy was about to cry and there was no way she could have that on her conscience, and secondly she wasn’t sure how long she could resist the temptation to dive into the piles of paperwork and show the two bureaucrats exactly how they should be indexed for maximum efficiency.

“We’ve got to wake the hibernating animals,” Fluttershy explained as they walked away, while the two organisation ponies just stared after them, not sure what else to say.

“That sounds easy enough. It’s just cute animals, what could go wrong there?

Half an hour later, Twilight Sparkle stretched out in her bath, massaging aching muscles. She would never have imagined that cute and fuzzy woodland creatures could cause such chaos, but then she had never imagined Spike’s voice could carry so far when he tried to give a roar to wake a family of hedgehogs.

Spike was still helping Fluttershy, as he’d been lucky enough to avoid bruises, swarms, stings, stains, and stink of all kinds. Twilight, meanwhile, had promised to return to the desk in the town square if a calming bath could help her recover in time. She could see the clouds parting outside her window as she washed, though, so she knew there wasn’t much time remaining until the winter would be fully cleared away.

“Miss Twilight!” Rubber Stamp greeted her as soon as she was out of the door. The sun was already close to the horizon, and she’d expected that most of the work would be done by now, but there seemed to be a lot of bustle in the streets and everypony going about their business. “We wanted to let you know, we found your assignments list. They were in a separate folder as you were late turning in your paperwork. You’re needed to help the plants team, you should meet up with Miss Applejack at her farm. It’s in plant team zone twelve B.”

“I know where Sweet Apple Acres is,” Twilight smiled and nodded as soon as she saw the other pony start to unfold a map showing the numbered areas that he and Pencil Pusher had divided the town up into, “Thank you, I’d better head there as soon as I can.”

On the farm, it seemed like there was a lot more physical labour involved. A half dozen farm ponies, including Applejack and Big Mac, were pushing heavy wooden plows that could cut through the snow. They had cleared half a dozen fields, and some of the seedlings were already starting to poke their way out of the earth as the ground defrosted. But there were a lot more fields to work on, and it seemed the work was being slowed somewhat by the organisation team’s insistence that the available labour be distributed equally between all the farms in the area.

Twilight watched for a while, and found herself calculating more efficient paths around the fields, to minimise the time each worker spent waiting for somepony else to pass so they could pass through a gate, and the number of times they would have to waste energy pushing the plow over an area which had already been cleared.

“Just watching, or are you going to help out?” The voice that jolted her out of her calculations was deep and mellow, a local accent but not anypony Twilight recognised. She turned to see a heavily built earth pony carefully unharnessing himself from one of the plows.

“I… I was just waiting for somepony to tell me what I need to do. Pencil Pusher sent me to help out with snow clearing.”

“Well, they’ve got me off to help make nests for birds now, so you can take this plow. Long straight lines, make sure the blade’s picking up all the snow but not disturbing the soil. Don’t spend more than three rows in the same field, or they’ll say you’re helping one farm more than another. Seems to be more rules every year, I guess that’s just a sign that our little efforts are getting more like the big events in Manehattan!” he babbled excitedly, and made haste to head back to the town square.

Twilight wasn’t quite sure about using a physical contraption like the plow without guidance from a more senior pony on this team, but it looked like they would already be hard pressed to clear the fields before darkness came. The operation of the device seemed fairly simple in any case, a wheeled contraption that she would step inside and then walk forward, pushing against a bar with her chest. It wasn’t as efficient a transfer of power as pulling, but it was clear that the plow blade on this cart would have to be pushed in front of the pony, rather than behind, making the unusual form of harness necessary.

She walked against the bar, and started to push. It was cushioned at least, which made it more comfortable. The plow moved a few inches forward, and Twilight carefully took a second step. It was hard to move, the thing was a lot heavier than it looked, but after half a dozen steps she really felt that she was getting the hang of it. Then the blade touched the first snowbank and she stopped with a jolt. For a moment she wondered what was wrong, then remembered just how heavy snow could be.

She backed up, and threw her full weight against the pushing bar. The plow did not move. She leaned against it, straining with four legs, and was rewarded with a little shifting against the snow. Every muscle on her body stood out as she tried to push harder, and by fractions the plow started to move. Her hooves slipped backwards on the ground more than any progress she made, and after nearly a minute of intense struggle she had made the thing move forward only a couple of inches. Then she looked down at the mess her hooves were making of the soft earth. It was clear that unless she could get a better grip, no amount of pushing would clear the snow. Twilight began to wonder if there might be a better way to do this.

Ten minutes later, Applejack was screaming at the top of her lungs: “Can anypony tell me what the hay is going on here?”

It had seemed to be a fairly normal Wrap-Up, although the new rules from the bureaucrats had everypony moving to a different farm, and cost more than a few minutes waiting in gateways. But as the sun started to set, the plow had started to become heavier and heavier. Applejack knew that everything seemed harder when you got tired, but there was no way her muscles would wear out so fast from this kind of work. And around her, she could see that some of her friends were having just as much trouble. And yet others, even townsponies without any obvious muscle on their bodies, were managing to shift the heavy-duty farm plows at a normal walking pace. It didn’t make any sense.

There was Twilight Sparkle, who certainly didn’t look strong enough to shift snow and wouldn’t have been on this team if Applejack had seen her when she arrived. She was moving along at a reasonable pace, not quite as impressive as some, and with an intense scowl of concentration. Spike was sitting on the top of the plow, prattling on like he had no work of his own to get done, which was almost certainly the case. But then Applejack caught the word “magic”, and when she took a second glance she could see the telltale flicker of pink light around Twilight’s horn. There was evidence of magic in the air over the whole farm, too, faint sparkles in the wind that you might miss until you were actually looking for them.

But before Applejack could say anything, a wave of tepid water surged across the field, soaking everypony to their knees.

“Can anypony tell me what the hay is going on here?” she called, quickly pulling herself out of the sudden puddle and walking up onto a remaining snowdrift. She knew that the ground was still cold, the snow having protected it from the warmth of the afternoon sun, and the water seeping into the soil now would soon be a rigid layer of ice. This was exactly why they always insisted on at least two dry days before the Wrap-Up.

“Well, at least the water’s washed away some of the light snow on the ground,” Twilight offered apologetically, “The bits that were too low for the plow blades to clear.”

“Twilight!” Applejack exploded, her temper already stretched after a day that had proved as hectic as always, “I am ashamed of you! We clean up winter without magic here, I thought you knew that. If you can’t honour our traditions, then you shouldn’t be on my farm. Go back to Pencil Pusher and see if you can help her with something that’s not so important, and I hope you can think about what you’ve done!”

“I don’t care what you were thinking, nopony uses magic for the Wrap-Up, and especially not on my farm. You see what you’ve done? Now get out of here, and let us try to clear up.” Then she turned away to bellow orders, directing everypony to get their plows on higher ground before the wheels froze. Twilight opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. There was nothing she could say to her friend now, so she began the long walk back into Ponyville.

“You can’t stay under there all day,” Pencil Pusher pleaded with a hidden, but clearly pony-shaped, figure.

“Why not?” Twilight’s voice was somewhat muffled, but it was easy to guess that she’d been crying. She was supposed to be a Champion of Harmony, a hero to the town, but letting her friends down had got to her in a way she’d never thought possible.

“Well, you should be with the squad you’ve been assigned to. Everypony needs to help.”

“And we need to check our records to dispatch everypony to the right teams! We can’t do that with you under the desk.” The only answer was a rustling of papers from the pony-shaped pile on the cobbles.

“Please, can you just come out and let us do our jobs? We haven’t finished the Wrap-Up on schedule in four years, but we’re sure that this time we should have enough records that we can analyse and solve the problem.” More rustling.

“Why are your papers on the ground under the desk anyway?” Twilight eventually spoke again, “I thought you had everything on top of the desk, I could barely see you over the piles before.” Rubber Stamp and Pencil Pusher glanced at each other for a second, and reached the unspoken conclusion that a Twilight Sparkle asking somewhat sensible questions was better than a Twilight Sparkle silently nesting in their documents.

“Five thousand, eight hundred and twenty four pages,” Rubber Stamp corrected.

“–and twenty four pages, is likely to be blown away by the afternoon gusts such that we have to spend time chasing them around the square. So we decided that it would be more efficient and businesslike to keep the excess pages out of the wind. See?” She picked up an ornamental pen holder that had been standing on the edge of the desk all afternoon, and held it below the desk for observation. As Twilight peered out from her papery pile, she could see that there were several rubber bands wrapped around the ornament with numbers written next to them. The highest band was labelled ‘←5824’.

“If any pile gets higher than the mark, we take the excess pages off and store them under the desk for safekeeping,” she said proudly, before returning the measuring stick to its usual place, which was indicated by a couple of chalk marks on the desk.

There was no reply from Twilight’s nest, but the two could tell how proud she was of their organisational skills. They had a proper procedure for everything, so they would never be stuck wondering what to do. Unless, of course, a depressive unicorn decided to hide from the world underneath the organisational team desk.

“Maybe it would be advantageous to keep all the papers in triplicate,” Rubber Stamp pondered, “That way it’s not such a problem if we can’t find one, and we’ve still got one to keep back at the office for long-term archiving in case we need one.” Pencil Pusher just nodded. For a few more minutes, there was no sound but the rustling of papers being moved around.

The two organisers were standing a little way back from the desk when a white-coated earth pony arrived, without a team-coloured jacket.

“You’re not wearing your jacket again, Clear?” Rubber Stamp was often the first to state the obvious, “How is everypony supposed to know which team you’re on?”

“You’re not going to ask my name this time?” the pony sighed, “That’s an improvement at least. I’m on Rarity’s squad, you know because you sent me there after my last break. And it’s too hot to keep wearing these things. Have the weather team overdone it a little? We’ve got a problem, anyway, Rarity’s trying to fix up one particularly bad nest that somepony made this morning, and no matter what she tries it isn’t looking any better. And after all the attempts, we’re out of soft twigs with three hundred nests still to make.”

Under the table, Twilight looked at Level Clear’s registration form while he spoke. His records suggested that he was quite strong but not so dextrous, and would have been a lot better off doing his stint with the nest-building team in the morning, when they were fetching the last cartloads of twigs from the forest-clearing team. Still, she couldn’t argue with the amount of effort the organisation team had put in, so she resolved to mention that to them when they weren’t so busy working.

“I’m sorry, the entire quota of soft branches has been allocated. Maybe the plants team can help you to find something later, but for now I think that they will be busy with their own part of the Wrap-Up.” Level Clear walked away, disheartened, and the organisation desk was in near silence again. They couldn’t keep their minds off the presence of Twilight Sparkle under their table, though.

“Umm… what are you doing under there?” Pencil Pusher asked when the silence had grown too long to bear.

“Sorting and indexing. It helps me relax.” Another few moments filled with just the whisper of paper on paper.

“That’s actually quite a good idea,” Rubber Stamp ventured, “Maybe next year we should make an index of all the documents, so it’s easier to check that none have been blown away.”

“I think you have a few documents too many,” Twilight commented, finally allowing the critical voice in her subconscious to be heard, “You’d never have time to check that every piece is here. Any organisational benefits from documenting everything are outweighed by the search complexity, and by the disordering every time you have a pile fall over.”

“We’re still working on it,” Pencil Pusher was suddenly on the defensive, “I’m sure if we add another index, we’ll regain any time lost in searching and then some!”

“S’right!” Rubber Stamp added, “If adding more documents doesn’t help, then you’re not adding enough documents.” Twilight must have been satisfied by that explanation, because she went right back to her filing.

The next pony to come seeking help was Cloud Chaser, whose paperwork showed that he had been with the migration team, leading birds back from the far south. As soon as his hooves touched the cobbles, Twilight peered out through the narrow slit between the desk’s modesty panel and the tabletop. A blue pegasus with streaks of indigo in his mane, there were several who matched that description, so it wasn’t until he was close enough for is cutie mark to be visible, almost at the desk, before a lavender hoof appeared from the mound of papers holding the correct documents. Pencil Pusher took them with a nod of thanks, glanced down and then smiled at Cloud Chaser.

“Welcome back, Cloud Chaser, I hope you enjoyed your journey. Are the birds all safely shepherded to their new nests?”

“Not as such,” his voice was unexpectedly high, given his build, and the cultured accent gave the impression he would rather be singing opera than leading birds back to roost. On the other hand, Twilight found she could easily picture him at the head of a flock, a pleasant countertenor leading a chorus of birds to sing as they flew. “I’m afraid that the return migration has been delayed somewhat, by a series of unexpected gusts that made it quite difficult for our feathered friends to remain airborne.”

“Gusts?” Pencil Pusher raised an eyebrow, “Rubber, make a note to bring that up with the weather team when they next check in.” Rubber Stamp glanced at the mountain of papers, and then down to notice that a form titled ‘Weather team – real time performance assessment’ was floating right under his nose surrounded by a faint pink magical aura.

“Oh, it’s not their fault,” Cloud Chaser shrugged, “These kind of things always happen when cold air and warm air meet, it’s not particularly easy to avoid. All it takes is a warm front across the migration route, and the air’s blowing here and there. Pegasi are used to flying across those things, birds don’t usually bother, but when you’ve flown a hundred miles in one day, you don’t deal with hard air so well.”

“I guess that means the nests aren’t so urgent. But what about everything else?”

“That means the nests are no longer urgent,” a muffled voice came from beneath the pile of papers – which looked a good deal neater now than when it had last been dumped down there – “You can divert the available horsepower to other projects. It’s just a case of determining the critical path.” Before she could explain more, another pony rushed up to the desk in search of organisational support.

This time it took Twilight a good few seconds to determine that there were no relevant papers in the pile she’d taken charge of under the desk, so she missed the beginning of the conversation. She couldn’t, however, fail to recognise a pegasus she’d frequently seen flying across the Ponyville sky in formation, teaching the most promising fillies to marshal stormclouds.

“…were planning the first lesson,” he was saying, “Emergency landing drill and all that, got to learn before you even try flying at the speeds these blasted nimbus require. But when I got out of my morning inspection, the Conder Lake is still frozen solid! I know you’re only working for a day or two, but every time you skip some vital duty, it has a knock-on effect and slows my students’ progress for the whole year.”

Pencil pusher could only murmur apologies, and offer to send somepony else out to look at the lake. The old stallion harrumphed away, returning to his own vital duties for now, but promised an unfavourable report to the mayor if the problem wasn’t sorted pronto.

“Which one’s Conder Lake, again?” Rubber Stamp asked as soon as he was out of earshot.

“Oh, that makes sense, then. Who was in charge of that area?” Rubber Stamp started rummaging through the papers on the desk, trying to find the appropriate allocation sheet, but Pencil Pusher just looked down at where Twilight was crouching under the desk.

“It was me and Pinkie Pie,” Twilight mumbled, “I’m sure I did it properly, though. Pinkie said I was learning really well, and we did it together. There must be something else wrong!”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Pencil Pusher admitted, “We’ve had more than a few reports of things going wrong and nopony can tell why, so it could just be one of those things. Looks like we’ll have to keep going for a second day again.” She looked over the piles of paper on the desk, this time with a little less confidence.

“How would you like to join the organisation team, Twilight? You’ve already shown you have the talent, and if you’re with us in the morning then we might be able to get everypony in the right place, and have spring started before the weekend is out.”

Early the next morning, Pencil Pusher and Rubber Stamp arrived together just a little before dawn, to make sure they were ready when the first ponies came seeking direction to their jobs for the day. They were surprised to see that Twilight Sparkle was already wide awake, and the piles of documents on the desk were a lot shorter than they had been before. Not a single stack was even close to five thousand eight hundred sheets of paper.

“I’ve got this,” she said, “These piles here are the first duties of the day for everypony who’s volunteering. Earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns.” She tapped her hoof on three piles for emphasis, “The tabs and paper clips on the sides indicate approximate coat and mane colours, so when you see a pony approaching the desk you’ve narrowed it down to a half dozen sheets even if you don’t recognise them. Then once they know where they need to be heading, you put that page in the ‘dispatched’ tray here. Smaller piles mean it’s easier to find the record you want, and all the information you need for one pony’s job assignment is on a single page. There’s bundles under the desk with the jobs that are depending on somepony else to finish first. We unwrap one bundle at mid morning, one at noon, one mid-afternoon, and one for the jobs that can’t be done until evening. That way the piles only ever contain jobs that are ready to be done, and it’s quicker to find the right one.”

“When we open out each bundle, we put the black paperclips on all the jobs remaining from the previous bundle. Those are tasks that haven’t started on schedule, whether because somepony overslept or because they’re dealing with an unexpected problem elsewhere. Anypony who finishes their work faster than expected and comes back for another, or if they come here late and their job has already been handed to somepony else, you look through the black paperclips and give them the first one that they’re capable of. That way, all the jobs get done even if something takes more or less time than we expected.”

“Now, the jobs in progress tray has dividers in it for what time a task is expected to be completed. Each task has the estimated time to completion pencilled in the top left, so look at the clock when you’ve given anypony their assignment, and put it behind the divider for the time you’re expecting them back by. Tasks on the critical path are clearly marked underneath the time estimate, so if one of those isn’t going to be finished in time, you put it on the ‘problem tasks’ pile here. If those aren’t finished on time, we’ll end up with other teams waiting for them, so before you give anypony their scheduled task, if it’s a low priority or cosmetic one, you check if they could help with a problem task instead.”

“Smashing!” Rubber Stamp grinned, “But…” He extracted a single document from the ‘unicorns’ pile, with his name clearly printed at the top. It said that he would be staffing the organisation desk this morning, and had clearly marked boxes to be ticked when he arrived, when the job was done, and if there were any problems that needed to be addressed. Beside each there was a clear note of which tray the document was to be moved to when the box was ticked, absolutely minimising any possibility of errors.

“You’ve got all the information on here, everything we’ve got I think. But we had so much more paper. What do we do with all the documents we don’t seem to need?”

“I’ve already thought of that,” Twilight smiled, “Unless you want to keep it for your records?” The two shook their head, and at least Pencil Pusher gave the impression that she would be happier never to have that volume of paper in front of her again. With Twilight double checking, the three administrators took the three pages that said they would be sitting at the desk all day, ticked the relevant boxes, and placed the first pages into the tray for jobs in progress.

The first pony to arrive this morning was Level Clear. She wasn’t wearing her team jacket again, insisting that it was a little too warm to be comfortable. This time, Rubber Stamp was worried because he was still trying to hide his shivering. He wasn’t sure what to do, but Twilight had an index now and could easily find somepony with medical training to take a look and make sure that she didn’t have a fever. The verdict was that she was maybe a little ill, but would be able to work if she didn’t push herself too hard.

As Level Clear walked away, Pencil Pusher turned to poke one more unfamiliar item on the desk. It was a polished steel tube, with numerous protrusions and switches on the side, and currently with a bundle of wires and crystal fragments sticking out following last minute repairs.

“So, what’s this for?” She asked, peering at the strange contraption, “Some kind of automated pencil holder?”

“No,” Twilight grinned at the idea of the complex technomagical device serving such a simple purpose, “This is a Gaia Resonance Meter. I’ve been working on it all night, just trying to get it working, and I thought here would be the perfect place to test it.”

“So, what does it do?” The question made Twilight hesitate. So far they’d avoided telling the general population about the existence of Gaia Memories in case that made somepony more likely to try finding one. She wasn’t quite sure how much she should say about the function of the device, and then started to wonder if she would have been better getting a bit more sleep to prepare her for a long day of work.

“You know the monsters that have been rampaging around town lately?” She eventually settled on, and got a couple of nods in reply, “They start out promising they can help somepony, then get more and more powerful feeding on your darkest emotions, until you can’t control them any more. So there might be some in Ponyville now, slowly gaining strength until they’re ready to attack.”

“That’s why you’re the Champions of Harmony, isn’t it?” Rubber Stamp shrugged, “Heroes I guess. Is this one of your weapons, in case a monster comes here today?”

“No. This is supposed to help us detect the magical energy they use, so maybe we can defeat the next monster before it destroys everything. It’s supposed to recombine different kinds of magical emanations across the three fields, creating a visible colour indicator in the same way snow crystals combine a million rainbows to appear white.” As if to demonstrate, she lifted the tube and looked through it at Pencil Pusher and Rubber Stamp in turn. It was just like looking through a normal periscope, the images slightly faded because of the quality of the mirrors and lenses, but nothing abnormal. “You see, there’s nothing unusual here, so I can easily tell that there’s not a monster in either of you. If we occasionally look at the queue through this, there’s a good chance we can find the next dopant before it’s ready to fight.”

“Wonderful,” Pencil Pusher beamed, “Everypony has to come here before they start work, and doing two jobs at once is more efficient.” It seemed that was all the explanation she needed.

There wasn’t a queue right away, and Pencil Pusher’s eagerness to try out the monster detector was somewhat dampened when the next pony to come asking about her job assignment was Pinkie Pie. Obviously, with the Wrap-Up having gone into its second day, she wouldn’t be working on the lakes any more. Now that the clouds had been cleared, the ice would be too thin to safely skate on even in areas where it hadn’t been fully scored. Twilight had assigned her to help with waking the remaining animals from hibernation, but Pencil Pusher had a few words to say first.

“Our notes say you were responsible for clearing the Conder Lake yesterday, Miss Pie?”

“But I also have a report that Conder Lake was only scored down one side, and therefore the ice has not yet broken up under the influence of the spring sun. When tutoring a pony new to any particular discipline, you must remember to ensure they are competent and until they are, to double check their work.” As she said it, Twilight blushed. She knew they were talking about her, but she was sure Pinkie had looked over her work thoroughly.

“Twilight knows what she’s doing, she’s only just learned to skate, but I was alongside her for nearly all of that lake, and I’m sure we scored every part. The ice should have broken up, and then melted as soon as the clouds parted. I’m sure we didn’t miss any parts, and I kept looking over to Spike on the other side, he’s practically an expert even though he only started a few days. He’s as skilled as most ponies on this team, I’d bet anything on it.”

“As skilled, maybe,” Twilight came to the conclusion first, feeling bad about it but somewhat glad she’d thought of it before anypony who might not be so friendly. “But skill isn’t everything. Maybe he just isn’t heavy enough for his skates to cut right through the ice?”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Pinkie gasped, “Maybe we can… but the ice is too thin to skate on. I don’t think we can…” and for once she was lost for words.

“Don’t worry about it too much,” Rubber Stamp stepped in, and nobody could argue with his reasoning this time, “It’s too late to fix it now, but the ice will melt on its own in a few days. Just remember next year, the organisational team is here to make sure that everything gets done, but we don’t know every detail of every different task involved in wrapping up winter. If you’re accepting the help of other creatures, you need to make sure they’re actually capable of doing the job.”

Even Pinkie Pie lost some of the spring in her step after that. She knew she’d missed something that had caused problems for others, and it would take some time for her to get over that.

As she headed off to take on her new role in Fluttershy’s wakeup squad, Rarity was the next to arrive seeking help from the organisation team.

“We’re out of small twigs for nest building,” she said bluntly, “We’ve used everything we got, and until the snow is cleared from the ground in the forest, there isn’t anywhere I can find some more.”

“Can’t you just break big branches into small pieces?” Applejack suggested from behind her.

“That would never work. The smaller twigs are soft and springy, providing a more rounded appearance and a comfortable surface for the birds to rest on.”

“Would this work?” Twilight held up a hoof full of torn paper strips, “We’ve ended up with more duplicates than we need, and if there’s somewhere it would be useful…?”

“There’s even different colours if you want them!” Rubber Stamp offered, “Maybe I overdid the paper a little.”

“That would be wonderful,” Rarity grinned, “Maybe now I can finish repairing that nest, and get to work making more.” She started gathering up boxes of spare papers, with Twilight watching to make sure the necessary and surplus papers didn’t get mixed up at all. But their work was interrupted by a shriek from Pencil Pusher, who was looking through the prototype Gaia Resonance Meter.

“Oh, you finished it?” Rarity looked up, “Is there one I can take with me?”

“I thought it would be better to have it here at the desk,” Twilight explained again, “We’ll see nearly everypony in town here. We can all have one once I’m sure that it works.” Then she recognised Pencil Pusher’s shocked expression, and quickly worked out what had got her upset. “Does it show a colour for us? I used the Elements of Harmony to calibrate the sensor, so there’s a chance it could give a false positive.”

Twilight had looked at her own Element through the meter when she was calibrating it, and it appeared as a purple glow bright enough that she could hardly see the desk, even when the crystal was under the desk, or behind stacks of other apparatus. She hadn’t been able to look at herself through it, though, and wondered what Pencil Pusher had seen. It was easy to test, as she walked around and looked at Rarity. The whole view through the meter was overwhelmed by the green glow of the element in her collar; but as soon as she put it down on the desk and stepped away the difference was obvious.

“It is clear that the power of the Elemental crystals suffuses all three of the world’s magical fields,” she said, “So they seem to be blindingly bright when you look through this. I think any Gaia Memory will appear the same. But this confirms that the Element’s power is strongly bound to the pony who represents that Element, as well. Try looking at me.”

Rarity was curious, and the two changed places. She hadn’t expected what she saw, though she would have been hard pressed to say what she did expect. Twilight had the Driver around her neck, and a faint image like a ghost on her flank as well. Not the actual Driver, but a tracery of violet lines in the air that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Rarity guessed that she must have something similar, and there was no way anyone who had the Meter could fail to recognise the Champions of Harmony.

“Can you feel it?” she asked, though she knew before she finished speaking how foolish a question it was.

“You know as much as I do,” Twilight shrugged, “And I don’t think it ever fades. The Driver has marked us for life.”

“It might disappear once we defeat all the dopants,” Rarity hazarded, “The Princess and you-know-who had to return their Elements, didn’t they?”

“But if I put the Driver on while the Princess was around, the other copy appeared on her flank too. Even after they returned their Elements, the Driver remembered them.”

“So is that how the monsters will appear?” Pencil Pusher felt like she should say something to give the impression she was following at least part of this conversation.

“Possible. We’re not sure, though. I didn’t have a dopant Memory in the lab to test it on. They may just change the colour of the image, and there may still be false positives. As well as finding the dopant that’s currently slowing down the Wrap-Up, today is going to be an excuse to test the Gaia Resonance Meter, and check that it works the way I expect it to.”

“Wait, there’s a … a dope ant interfering with our Winter Wrap-Up?” Pencil Pusher went from curious to angry in zero seconds flat.

“I ain’t seen one,” Applejack grumbled as she joined the growing crowd in the square, “We’re having enough trouble with folks using magic to make the job easier.” Twilight couldn’t look her in the eye now. She knew she’d broken an important Ponyville tradition, and could only hope that she’d be able to make up for it next year. Pencil Pusher looked back and forth between the two friends, sensing the tension in the air.

“I think you can’t hold a grudge over a genuine mistake. Twilight’s trying hard to follow the rules now, even filing papers without any kind of levitation magic.”

“Half my fields are covered in ice, that’ll take days to clear. Sure, I’ll forgive and forget, but not so quickly when it’s cost the farm so much.”

“All I did was change my clothes,” Twilight murmured, but her voice didn’t have the kind of certainty that would be necessary to make this into a real argument.

“Don’t make this worse by lying to me!” Applejack yelled, thumping the desk so hard it shook, “I heard you and Spike talking about making the plows go faster. Next think I see your horn a’glowing, and then you lost control, or whatever happened, and it’s the rest of the earth ponies who’ve got to clean up all the mess.”

“It’s true! Okay, Spike kept telling me I could speed the job up, but you know I wouldn’t do that. You know me, AJ, don’t you? Yes, Spike said I should use magic, and I told him I wouldn’t think of it. All I did was freeze a few pieces of broken ice onto my hooves, making cleats so I wouldn’t slip so much.”

“And somepony else was using magic to speed up the plows, or slow some of them down?” Applejack was looking away now. She knew that what she was saying was incredibly unlikely, a coincidence of the highest order, but when the words came out of her mouth it somehow sounded more believable that Twilight betraying a promise.

“I didn’t feel any other magic out there. I noticed some carts were moving faster than others, but I thought that was normal. Some ponies are just stronger than others, aren’t they?”

“I don’t think there’s any rules about changing your clothes by magic,” Rubber Stamp added, “The tradition is that we don’t use magic to move snow or ice, or to do the Wrap-Up work. There’s nothing wrong at all with changing your own clothes. That sounds pretty smart to me, if you’re having a problem with the mud.”

“Applejack knows farm work, though,” Twilight gave it a second thought, “If she says somepony was using magic, I’ll believe that. I’m sure I would have sensed it, though. Could it be dopant magic?”

“We can keep on checking everypony,” Pencil Pusher gestured with the Gaia Resonance Meter, “If there’s a monster interfering now, maybe you ladies should be ready to go stop it. Can we guess where it will attack next?”

Before Twilight could make a guess, though, the gems on her collar flashed pink. Pencil Pusher gasped, and dropped the Resonance Meter. Applejack was already running towards the edge of town.

“Fluttershy needs help,” Twilight spoke as quickly as she could manage, “I’ve done what I can for the organisation, I’m sure you can get spring started today if you just follow the plan. We’ll probably find the dopant, but in case we don’t you should keep checking everypony. Don’t challenge them, just make a list of who the device has a reaction for. I believe in you.” Before Pencil Pusher could answer any more questions, Twilight’s horn flared as bright as a star and she was gone.

“I guess we’d better start making that list, then,” Rubber Stamp commented, looking out at the queue that was just starting to form.

My Little Rider: Friendship is Joker

by lilAngel

Episode 11 - W Hijinks