The Magic and Mysteries of Friendship

by The Stainmore Phoenix

A New Family at Last

Canterlot station was packed beyond belief. Twilight remembered when she left Canterlot Station to meet the ponies she now calls her friends and are the Elements of Harmony. The station was somewhat crowded when she left and she hadn’t realized that what she saw, with families reuniting, would soon be one part of her task as a good friend.

White Orchid managed to squeeze his companions onto the platform, then they made their way to the poor section of Canterlot and looked at the addresses until they found the one they needed. The door looked like a perfect imitation for Swiss Cheese. The windows were painted on the front of the house and the mat on the front of the door was completely frazzled and overly muddy.

“Wow,” Rarity said. “I feel sorry for Dangersignal’s son.”

White Orchid knocked on the door, only to have it collapse under his first knock. The others were starting to feel sorry for Dangersignal’s son and the choices that they had to make to keep him on the down low. Hopefully they can fix this and really make sure the son and father actually bond again.

“Who’s there?!” a voice demanded.

The voice sounded scared. Rarity walked into the dully lit room to see a seventeen year old batpony Alicorn. He looked exactly like the photograph Twilight had with her, the only exceptions being that he wore a fedora and a black blazer. His red eyes were wide with fear.

Rarity was the first to speak.

“You’re Stanier Five?” she asked.

He nodded, as if that would get rid of her.

“Darling, your father sent us to bring you down to him,” Rarity continued. “He would have come, but he’s broken up about having to do what he did to keep you safe. I’m a friend of his and my name’s Rarity. The stallion Earth Pony with me is White Orchid and the stallion Pegasus is Aquatis Storm. The mare Unicorn is Twilight Sparkle, student of Princess Celestia.”

Stanier Five stared. His father was sending “Friends” to take the youngster to his father. He tried to comprehend it all, but couldn’t. Rarity asked him if he needed to pack, and he said that he needed to get a suitcase, as he didn’t have many things to pack.

Twilight fetched a suitcase and Stanier Five packed his three replacement blazers and fedoras, all eight school books, fifteen notebooks, six ink bottles, twelve quills, seven sketch books and his family photographs. Twilight stared at the packed bag, as it was only half full.

“Don’t you have any more to get?” she asked. “This seems strangely light?”

Stanier Five rushed to his closet and pulled out a rather clean medium sized package box and shoved it in the suitcase. That finished filling up the suitcase. White Orchid tenderly loaded it onto his back, with Aquatis Storm and Twilight keeping an eye on it. Stanier Five walked alongside Rarity and asked all sorts of questions about his father.

Rarity answered them promptly and truthfully. Stanier was surprised to hear that his father was scared when it came to telling his friends if he had a family, and the reason was that he didn’t know how ponies would react to him. Rarity said that she’d be glad to befriend him just on one principle-Stanier Five reminded her of his father.

“I take after him to the letter?” Stanier asked, chuckling slightly.

“Not to the letter, but you do share some of his traits,” Rarity said. “You and he are both caring, have suffered great losses and have true friends to lean on in times of need.”

Stanier Five smiled weakly. Rarity paid for his ticket and they managed to catch the 5.15pm train to Appleloosa, calling at Ponyville Junction. Stanier Five’s ticket was a one way ticket to Ponyville, first class, while Rarity, Twilight, White Orchid and Aquatis Storm had first class round trip tickets.

The train jerked into motion just as Rarity shut the door after all were in the coach. Moving around carefully in the cramped compartment, White Orchid slid the suitcase on the floor and carefully tucked it under the seats and then sat down, with Aquatis storm joining him. Stanier Five, Twilight and Rarity sat on the opposite side of the coach and they talked about pleasant things.

The journey was slow, seeing as it was a slow train they caught. Had they caught an express, they would have had to wait six hours longer for another local train to Ponyville Junction. Since they wanted to spend the least amount of time healing wounds, the slower train was the only option they had, seeing as teleportation could easily break or lose Stanier Five’s suitcase. Besides, the train trip would give them time to fill in on all that had happened.

Instead of Rarity breaking any ground on family matters, Aquatis Storm did that, explaining that he and Hurricane were Clear Path and Dashing Clouds’s brothers, and second cousins to Dangersignal and Dragonstorm. Stanier Five felt happy knowing that Aquatis Storm wasn’t just a friend, but a member of family. Rarity smiled and after some more chatter, the train reached it’s intended destination.

The guard opened the carriage door and the five ponies popped onto the platform, with White Orchid handling the suitcase until they reached the exit of the railway station, where a cart was waiting. White Orchid lined himself up with the cart and allowed Aquatis Storm and Twilight to carefully load the suitcase into the cart.

White Orchid attached himself to the cart and the others climbed in. The residents were startled and some even panicked when they saw a batpony Alicorn, as they have never seen one before and thought he was a messenger of doom. Mayor Mare was not going to have some panic raiser in her town and made a real scene.

Having had enough of her lip, Aquatis Storm glared down at her and gave her a full tilt dirty look. Once she backed down, the group continued on, but many of the weather, railway, mail, and decent working ponies saw what had happened. That night, at the Stiff Signals Tavern, all the Ponyville Working Class Ponies were holding an indignation meeting.

“I don’t like this behavior,” Frame Lock snapped. “That Batpony Alicorn is Dangersignal’s kid, and he’s been away from home for a long time. This is the happy return he was expecting? Well, my dear friends, I have a proposal and here’s what we’ll do.”

Frame Lock laid her plan out and the others agreed to it.

“We’ll do it tomorrow!” they cheered.

The next day; there were no trains, no weather ponies did their jobs, mail was left undelivered and general duties were neglected. Every working pony was at the Tavern playing cards, throwing darts, reading books and slouching about. Mayor Mare flipped and she along with the town residents who were looking for jobs marched to the Tavern and demanded they go back to work.

“Sorry, but in case you didn’t get the memo, we’ve gone on strike,” Frame Lock smiled sweetly. “Your two faced behavior yesterday cemented this strike.”

“WHAT?!” Mayor Mare roared. “OUR BEHAVIOR?!”

“Yes, the way you treated that young Alicorn,” came the signal mare’s reply. “That was Dangersignal’s son. Dangersignal’s wife and that young Alicorn’s mother was killed in the infamous “Ponyville Northern Platforms” accident. Your promise was that you’d make him feel welcome and you went back on your word. Nice of you to do that, you poor excuse of an authoritative figure.”

Mayor Mare and the others were now stunned. They had made that promise, and made it as a Pinkie Promise no less. Now that they broke it, they were left feeling empty. At last, Mayor Mare asked how they could fix it.

“You can attempt an apology,” A Pegasus named Thunderlane snapped. “However, it probably won’t be accepted.”

As if matters couldn’t be made worse, Celestia arrived to see a full blown strike in action. She grinned to herself and passed Frame Lock a sly wink, then took off for Canterlot Castle. When the towns ponies finally collapsed under the fact that they were supposed to “Love and Tolerate” but failed to show that and that no pony in the right mind would move there, they agreed to apologize to him.

The day after the strike, all the working ponies were back in service and everything was moving. As for the town ponies, they apologized and said that they’d try to be a little more understanding. After all, they didn’t want another strike. Dragonstorm simply looked at Frame Lock when he accepted the box from her.

“Next time you decide to go on strike, make sure you do it when Celestia isn’t visiting,” he said.

“That’s okay. After all, we managed to sort out the problem with Stanier Five,” she said.

He rolled his eyes and continued on with belling stopping trains into the station and belling through trains through the station. As for the other Elements, they were making good progress in making friends with the Alicorn teen. He proved to Twilight that he was much more agile with his magic than most unicorns, but where he really accelerated was in mixed duties.

“Can you explain what you mean by “Mixed Traffic Duties”?” Pinkie asked.

“It means that I can do just about anything,” Stanier Five. “My Cutie Mark is a chalk white outline of a Stanier Class 5 or as humans called them “Black 5’s”. These engines earned the title of “Go anywhere, do anything” and often times did. Then again, there were 842 built between 1934 and 1951 and they were relatively successful, minus a few faults. I earned this Cutie Mark when it was found that I could do just about any job and go just about anywhere.”

“Really?” White Orchid said.

“Yes,” Stanier Five said. “I can do mail deliveries, rubbish collection, some weather duties *mainly rain and snow*, I do know some magic *mainly simple grab it spells with a few teleportation and offensive spells*, I’m skilled in music and can easily play a symphonic song from memory and speaking of memories, I had taken up a job as a detective, where I had trained myself to recite a seven hour long conversation between five ponies without missing a comma. That is a common thing amongst detectives in Canterlot, but down here, it’s considered freakish.”

“Well, that’s just down here, in the backwaters,” Darkseige said. “We could use someone like you on the force.”

“Thanks, but I have a slight confession to make,” Stanier said. “I’ve kind of become a free lance detective.”

“Really,” came a voice.

Stanier turned to see his father there, beaming. Stanier returned the grin and even gave a slight chuckle.

“Well, you don’t become a free lance detective without picking up a few tricks,” Stanier pointed out. “Blackmail, coercion, interrogation and even getting into fights which involve weapons. Trust me, roughing up scoundrels is fun and often times gets you information you need.”

“Does it bring bad news?” Applejack asked.

Before Stanier could answer, Dragonstorm barged in.

“Applejack, I bring you bad news.”