The Pony Dialogues

by Knowledge

Missing Shade of Red 2.2: Deputy of the MMS (Revised)

Chapter context:

1.3: Ei Rikr has cast zir pacification spell again. Now a green sun shines above Ponyville preventing them from panicking at the sight of a changeling.

-------------------------------Lyra's Mansion---------------------------------------

Bring Bring Bring went the alarm in Lyra Heartstrings' bedroom. It signified that she had to hurry to town hall to get to town hall in a hurry to get briefed on whatever magical mishap was occurring in Ponyville now.

Lyra was a mint colored unicorn from Canterlot, living in Ponyville now as an assistant to the village's Representative for the Magistracy of Magic and Science (MMS), Evening Glimmer. Lyra's talent was history and was reflected by a lyre cutie mark. Since Starswirl the Bearded and Clover the Clever discovered all that was to be known about magic and science over a thousand years ago, those subjects naturally fell under the historian pony's jurisdiction. As Deputy of the Magistrate's Representative, Lyra's job was to investigate magical or scientific events caused by the citizens of Equestria and use her knowledge of all there is to know to solve them.

"What did Twilight do now?" Lyra groaned. Twilight Sparkle was almost always responsible for the catastrophes plagued Ponyville. At first, Lyra assumed Princess Celestia dumped Twilight as far away from Canterlot as she possibly could to prevent the unicorn from attracting disaster to the capital. Over time, Lyra realized the Twilight was going to play a major role in Equestrian history. For now, ponies in the Magistracy needed to keep a tab on all of Twilight's friends to make sure they followed the straight-and-narrow path of Harmony as the fate of Equestria hangs in the balance.

Lyra quickly got her red tie, black suit, and shades. While she was doing this, her sense of urgency was fading despite knowing how destructive rogue magic could be. She sensed the emotional numbing, trained against such magics by the gifted unicorn Evening Glimmer.

"Mental magic," Lyra said lethargically. She calmly and slowly reached into her oak nightstand by her bed to get her tin foil hat and Mind Torch.

All those who worked for the magistracy had carried sunglasses and a tin foil hat. The sunglasses protected against mental magic entering through the eyes and tin foil hats protect against aura-based mental magic like the one that was affecting the town this morning. While it made the MMS look dumb, looking dumb actually made them less conspicuous in earth pony villages, according to the higher ups in the Magistracy.

Unique to the Ponyville branch of Magistracy, Lyra carried a Mind Torch. The hoof-held magic device had been invented by Evening Glimmer to remove mental magic from ponies and to return them to a harmonious mental state. There was a similar spell which require a unicorn to touch horn against the head of another pony. Not only was it time consuming and dangerous to do this against masses of magicked ponies, but the caster would have to have the memories they wished used as the base for reprogramming ponies before casting the spell. In other words, the Magic Torch was a big boon in dealing with situations with aura-based mental magic. Unfortunately, the Magic Torch was still in its prototype stages. (1)

A year ago, Twilight had cast brainwashing enchantment on her doll affecting every pony who laid eyes upon it. The spell was the standard but overcharged Want-It-Need-It-Gotta-Have-It formula taught to all Gifted Unicorns. If Lyra remembered correctly, Twilight had said something along the lines of 'it works every time', which did not give Lyra much confidence in Twilight's ability to use mental magic responsibly. (2)

Dealing with the spell was rather simple. Donning their sunglasses, the unicorns of the MMS had set their Magic Torch to crowd mode. This created a large wave of light returning the ponies to prior to their brainwashing. Celestia had appeared on the scene almost immediately afterwards. The ponies assumed that Celestia had freed the ponies from Twilight's spell, which was fine with Lyra and Glimmer as they didn't do it for fame. The MMS works best when nopony realizes it is doing anything.

-------------------------------Ponyville---------------------------------------

With her mental magic protection in tow, Lyra left her small mansion on the east side of Ponyville Lake and galloped to town hall. Above her, she could already see the source of the mental magic, a large green ball of roaring flames. She could see strains of green flame coming off of exhausted ponies in the streets. The unicorn deduced that the spell fueled itself through these flames somehow. While the spell was unique in its appeared, there were many similar spells which drained ponies for power. This one seemed to focus on emotional states.

Lyra galloped through the ticky-tacky houses of the earth pony village. Rounding a corner, she heard some filly having a horrible coughing fit. Lyra almost stopped to make sure that pony got to the hospital, but her training told her that mass mental magic was more important and could not be ignored.

Lyra finally got to the pink round building known as Ponyville Town Hall. Doing so, Lyra accidentally knocked down Pencil Pusher who worked in the immigration offices downstairs. His fall almost knocked an anonymous earth pony on a ladder who painting the interior walls a festive pink. Luckily, the pony steady the ladder by gripping onto the ledge.

Lyra, in accordance with pony custom, quickly forgot that she had hurt anypony and rushed up the round staircase that lead to the top of Town Hall. Lyra reached the golden door that led to the Ponyville Representative of the Magistracy of Magic and Science office, where Evening Glimmer would not doubt be waiting for her.

Galloping from her home and straight up three flights of stairs had winded the unicorn. I need Glimmer to teach me how to teleport up here someday, Lyra thought herself.

Lyra pushed the door opened with trepidation.

-------------------------------Magistracy of Magic and Science office---------------------------------------

"You're late!" shouted the boss.

She had a violet mane covered partially by her tin foil hat and a orange coat, and was getting along into her fifties.

Unlike Lyra, Evening Glimmer had gone to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, where the most talented unicorns went to get educated and put on the fast track for the top jobs in Equestria's government, including Princesshood. Each gifted unicorn were given a unique animal as their familiar. A familiar's job was to do menial tasks and act as a guinea pig for potentially dangerous spells. Glimmer's familiar was a brown crab, which she called Cancer. Glimmer didn't have a healthy sense of humor as her taste in names demonstrated.

"I'm..." Lyra began but was too winded to say anything. Luckily, Evening was more than ready to make up for the unicorn's lack of breath.

"No excuses. I need you on the ground now. Need I remind you we have a code rainbow emergency on our hooves. You need to investigate whether the green ball of fire is dangerous, how to neutralize it, and who created it."

Lyra humored a salute. Glimmer turned to look out one of her large windows which gave view of most of Ponyville.

"Do you have any leads?" she asked.

Lyra couldn't answer. She needed a break. Even with the endurance she built up from the job in the past, that residual effects from the spell had sapped her more than usual.

"I don't know why we keep you un-gifted unicorns for," Glimmer mumbled while going through her spell books for answers.

"I don't know any spell like this. It is definitely draining ponies to fuel itself. I have no leads as to who may have cast it. Do you want me to look through my spell books for a counter spell?" Lyra inquired, hoping to she might help reduce Glimmer's temper and, more importantly, not have to go down those stairs again.

Lyra feared the Gifted Unicorn's temper as one time Glimmer had raged so hard that the whole town hall had been sent 50 feet in the air. They had Rainbow Dash and Derpy Hooves fix the building. Lyra remembered because Derpy Hooves needed to get reharmonized immediately afterwards for not being up to Prince Dusk Shine's standards and Rainbow Dash went on a wild adventure to Dodge Junction. This left Lyra needing to find new ponies to fix the town hall. Fortunately, Glimmer became impatient and fixed everything with a single spell rather than letting the other ponies do it the 'Ponyville way.' (3)

"No, just go. Like I already said, I need ponies on the ground. Right now, I need to find a counter spell and an excuse to the Prince of Harmony for why this catastrophe happened under my watch," Evening groaned. Lyra didn't take Evening Glimmer's anger personally. The gifted unicorn always apologize for her rudeness when she calmed down. She was a good pony at heart, just very prickly.

If Lyra had to change anything about gifted unicorns, it would be how they go completely insane when they think about possibly disappointing royalty. Celestia's school had conditioned their most powerful unicorns to be absolutely loyal to the crown to the point of self-destruction if they disobeyed. Anypony who had ever met Celestia knew she was really nice and her punishments had always been basically slaps on the fetlock. Twilight brainwashed the entire town and was 'punished' by not having to send letters every week. Yet it was like they thought the princesses would make them explode and then make them explode again. The only upside to this for Lyra was that she was thankful she wasn't a gifted unicorn.

It is good to know your place, and not be wanting of anything greater or less than what you are capable of, Lyra thought to herself as she left the office and started descending the stairs.

Author's Note:

1) The Memory Spell is the same one used by Twilight in "The Return of Harmony pt. 2."

2) The episode reference is Lesson Zero.

3) The reference is the beginning of "The Last Roundup," which was changed to remove mention of Derpy's name.