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// Intermission 1: 
// Story: An Embarrasment In Three Acts 
// by Void Knight 
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	The porch of La Commedia Della Luna was a spacious and well-styled thing. Orbs of enchanted crystal spread a soft silvery illumination through the new-fallen night, and the air was cool without being chilly. A better backdrop for a discussion could not be imagined. And every drop of that beauty and serenity would be needed to counteract the ugly feelings bubbling up in the Elements of Harmony.
The cool air seemed thick with tension, as each of the nine ponies standing in a close herd tried to figure out where to begin. Predictably enough, it was the Element of Honesty that finally broke the awkward pause.
“What was that?” she spat. “What gave this Double Dash a right to write such lies about us? And why? What did we ever do to her?”
“Who knows?” replied Trixie bitterly. She waved one hoof at the program she held clutched in her aura. “According to this, Double Dash is a pen name. It could be anypony behind that. Noon, maybe it’s one of the stupider nobles, trying to get revenge on us for dragging their dirty little schemes into the light.”
Ditzy raised a hoof speculatively, but her voice was confident. “The weird thing is, I don’t think she was trying to make us look bad. Or at least not all of us. She made me a Shadowbolt, and even making Dinky my sister was probably supposed to be a good thing. Supposed to make it look like I never seduced somepony else’s stallion.” A faint trace of, not bitterness exactly, but perhaps regret, crept into the last sentence.
Cheerilee winced internally, but couldn’t think of anything to say. While she wished Ditzy would stop beating herself up about a decade-old indiscretion, she did have a point. An illegitimate, and even adulterous, child could be made into a huge scandal, even if Canterlot society generally refrained from doing so for reasons of mutual blackmail. Double Dash could well have been trying to make Ditzy look better, even if her methods of doing so left something to be desired.
“And if you ignore the fact that I’m head over heels in love with my Bonnie Bon Bon,” said Lyra, rubbing the back of the mare in question with one leg, “and that Trixie still turns green when she sees two ponies swapping spit…”
“Did you have to put it that way?” complained Trixie, who did indeed look queasy at the image.
“… then the ‘romance’ between Trixie and me wasn’t that badly done. If it was me and Bon Bon in those scenes instead, we wouldn’t have a problem. Really, Raindrops is the only one that it seemed like he was trying to make look bad. Maybe he has a grudge against you for some reason?”
“Maybe it’s Stormy Squall!” said Cheerilee. “She finally got so angry at our weather team for showing him up that she decided to write a play with the secret agenda of making Raindrops look as foalish as she is!”
There was an explosion of laughter and Cheerilee felt a sense of relief as some of the tension faded.
“So either she’s a devious schemer who’s trying to make us all, and me in particular, look bad for some reason that probably has to do with Night Court politics, or else she’s a well-meaning idiot who has no idea how badly the nonsense she’s writing will hurt us,” summed up Raindrops after the giggles faded. “Either way, is there anything we can do about it?”
“Let me check on something,” said Trixie, who then began to flip through her program. After a moment, she grimaced. “I was afraid of that. There’s a little disclaimer at the bottom here that basically says that Double Dash isn’t actually claiming any of this is true. She’s not saying that this story she’s written is what happened to us, just that it’s based on what’s happened to us. So we can’t get at her for lying about us because she makes it clear she’s not actually claiming to tell the truth.”
Written Script chimed in. “And it still doesn’t prove anything either way, because every writer puts that disclaimer if he’s writing fiction. Double Dash could think we actually were what he made us out to be and stuck the disclaimer in just to be safe, or he could have been trying to make us look better or worse, and there’s no good way to tell which.”
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Viscount Prince Blueblood was nervous. He might not know the Elements that well, but he knew enough about them to know that the portrayal of them in the play was rank nonsense. And there was no telling what the Elements would do in response to such folly. The last time the Elements had been provoked to act on the political plane, they had laid a mine that had blown the structure of the Night Court to splinters. Granted it had managed to put itself more or less back together, and Blueblood himself had come out of it with some quite unexpected good fortune, but still…
His train of thought was interrupted by said unexpected good fortune dragging him across the theater to the souvenir desk. Pinkie had been voluminous in her praises of the theater’s special salad dressing, and when she’d heard that it was for sale at the desk, she had practically bounced out of her seat then and there. When the intermission had been announced, he knew that they would be shortly making their way over to the gift shop to stock up on the bizarrely delicious condiment.
“Viscount Blueblood,” said a voice from behind him. 
He turned and flinched. “Duchess Posey,” he responded. This was definitely not good. Duchess Fragrant Posey was one of the very few who had just as much reason as the Elements to be offended by this farrago of a play, and judging by the look in her eyes and the spread of her wings, she suspected him of being responsible.
“I don’t suppose you would care to comment on how those lines slandering my niece ended up in the script?” she asked, voice dangerously level.
“I wish I knew,” he responded sincerely. “I’d like to serve up whoever wrote that script on a gold platter, before the Elements decide to upend the Night Court again.”
She snorted. “You really expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with this?”
“Yes!” he said heatedly. “Why the buck would you think that I did have anything to do with this?”
“Aside from the fact that it’s exactly the sort of thing you’d do? And that there aren’t a lot of other ponies who might know that Fluttering is living in Ponyville, know she’s my niece, and have the connections necessary to get a play rewritten?”
“Stop that!” interjected Pinkie Pie, hair frizzing even more spectacularly than usual. “Bluie isn’t a bad pony anymore! He wouldn’t do something mean!”
“Duchess Posey,” said Blueblood, “I swear to Luna I didn’t talk to anypony about the play. I was just as surprised as you were when they mentioned your niece. And, as you might have noticed, it wasn’t exactly kind to my father either. If you don’t believe me, ask the Internal Affairs Bureau to investigate the matter.” 
“Perhaps I shall,” said Duchess Posey, before disappearing back into the crowd.
Pinkie wrapped Blueblood in a hug. “Don’t worry Bluie. Everypony will know that you’re a good pony eventually.”
“I hope so,” he replied.
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The crowd was dense enough that it wasn’t until the Elements were all the way back to their tables that Trixie spotted Duchess Posey talking to the Princess.
Oh no. How the buck am I going to convince her that I haven’t got any clue where all that nonsense on the stage came from?
“-ve had my own experiences with a play not going where you expected it to go,” said Duchess Posey as Trixie came into earshot. She turned and started slightly as she almost ran into Trixie.
“Duchess,” said Trixie, trying hard to keep her voice level.
“Dames,” replied Duchess Posey. 
“Duchess, I swear to Luna I didn’t know they were going to have me say those things about Fluttershy!” blurted out Carrot Top. Trixie was forced to suppress an entirely inappropriate giggle as Luna rolled her eyes at Carrot Top’s turn of phrase. “I haven’t talked to anypony about her and even if I did, I would never ever say anything like that! Fluttershy’s animals don’t even steal my carrots! Well, except Angel Bunny that one time, but it was for a good cause and he paid me back later and-”
Duchess Posey cut Carrot Top off with an upraised wing. “I believe you, Dame Toppington. Fluttering has written a great deal about you, and she is generally a good judge of character. I am certain that the mare she describes in her letters would have prevented this if she had known. And, as I told the Princess, I’ve had my own experiences with a play getting out of hoof. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find where my...colleague...has wandered off to.”
Trixie sighed as she resumed her seat.
“Take heart, my faithful student. It could be far worse,” said Princess Luna cheerfully. “Have I ever told you about the New Moon incident?”
“Not that I recall…” replied Trixie.
“About two hundred fifty years ago, a six-book series came out. It was called New Moon, after the first book of the six, and purported to be written from the point of view of Zephyr Winds. The gist of the plot, such as it was and what there was of it, was that Zephyr Winds and I were lovers and that Cadence was the product of the purported relationship. It was a Canterlot best-seller for several years, before interest eventually petered out.”
There was a long and palpable silence. Pinkie Pie’s speculation on the etymology of the phrase “salad dressing” skipped off the surface of that silence like a stone as the pink party pony pronked past, paramour port-side. After a couple more breaths of silence, Cherilee finally spoke up. “But… But… Cadence is more than four centuries older than Zephyr Winds! How…?” She trailed off, making grabbing motions with one hoof as though trying to physically snatch the words she wanted out of the air.
“Zephyr Winds?” asked Ditzy.
“Luna’s fifth apprentice,” explained Trixie, “and one of the great mysteries of Equestrian history. Nopony really knows why Luna took him on or what he did as her apprentice. Except Luna herself, of course.” The blue unicorn shot a Look at her princess.
Luna’s response had the polished tone of something that had been said many times. “And this is one matter I am not going to explain, no matter how many times somepony asks. Suffice it to say that Zephyr Winds was as vital to Equestria as any of my other apprentices.”
“Hey, where’d Snails get to?” asked Raindrops abruptly.
There was a brief exchange of confused looks. None of them had really been paying attention to Snails when they’d run outside to have their discussion. Dinky and Sweetie had mentioned going to the filly’s room, and had already been and returned, but none of the Elements could remember Snails saying anything as to where he was going.
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They had no right to say those things about Raindrops.
Unlike his big sister, Snails didn’t get angry easily. But everypony has, somewhere in them, a button marked “Explode”. For some it is large and easily pressed, for others it is well hidden. But every pony has it, and Double Dash had just pressed Snail’s.
Raindrops hates it when ponies think that her temper is all that there is to her. And now Double Dash has told all these ponies that Raindrops is nothing more than a musclebound idiot. Sun-spawned jerk-plot. Ruining my sister’s life, and not even having the guts to do it to her face. I wonder what he’d think if I sent my friends to ruin his life. But I don’t… wait a minute. I don’t know who he is, so I can’t bug him… Hahaha, “Bug him”… but I could have my friends get rid of this theater.
Snails had already begun to gather his magic when another thought floated into his mind.
This won’t make Raindrops feel any better. She still hasn’t gotten over what she did the last time she got really angry. And if I let my temper loose, even in her defense, she’ll be just as disappointed in me as she would be at herself if she let loose and bucked Double Dash into the sun where he belongs. 
“The show will resume in three minutes,” said the announcer, his magically amplified voice cutting through the welter of voices. “The show will resume in three minutes.”
Oops, better get back to my seat. And hope the next act is better than this one.