Friendship is Forever

by fabrosi

Putting the Pieces Together

Chapter 16: Putting the Pieces Together

Over the next few days, Twilight would practice magic—both with Perseus and on her own—until she got tired, gradually lasting longer and longer until she was able to keep up her training for most of the day. Her work served to distract her from the old fear, though it would occasionally return in sudden bouts, striking her whether she was alone or with friends, or waking her up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. She told no one.

From time to time, Luna would bring various supplies that the townsponies were unable to obtain or make on their own. During each of her visits, she would be sure to check up on her "honored guests", and even provided Twilight with a special telescope with magically augmented stargazing capabilities, which she made liberal use of every night.

The other ponies gradually ingratiated themselves with the rest of the town, and learned that the locals were unsure not only about their strange visitors, but about the entire operation. Most of the ponies without cutie marks had never even heard of Princess Celestia before meeting Princess Luna, and the town's population had basically been cobbled together from various nomads and villagers from the surrounding region, nearly all of whom had decided to stay in Maneheart simply because it offered them a better life than they'd known before. Princess Luna's underlying intention, it seemed, had been to oversee and protect a tiny kingdom of her own, without lies or schemes, even if the revolution against Celestia never came.

There were some ponies with cutie marks, but they were few and far between. All of them seemed to have left Equestria for their own reasons, and had only ended up under Luna's rule by pure chance.

…

On the first day warm enough that it might signify the beginning of summer, the Cutie Mark Crusaders found the flattest patch of grass they could, with Sweetie Belle kicking along a firm patchwork ball that Rarity had crafted.

"How're we gonna play when there's three of us?" asked Applebloom.

"We'll just have to have three teams," explained Scootaloo, "and three goals. She scouted the area. "Mine can be there"—She pointed to two trees at the edge of the woods—"Sweetie Belle's can be there, between those two hills, and Applebloom, your goal can be the side of that building."

They spent a good five minutes kicking the ball around before Applebloom suddenly stood still, noticing a band of five ponies roughly her age hovering near the edge of the field. The crusaders gathered in close to one another and the two groups stared at one another in silence for a while before Scootaloo called out:

"Hey! Do you guys want to play too, or something?"

The strangers bristled slightly, but, after a brief, hushed conversation, the approached the Equestrian fillies.

"The ponies you arrived with all have cutie marks," observed a lavender-coated filly, "so does that mean you're all from Equestria?"

"Yup," said Applebloom. "We lived there our whole lives, only we had to leave 'cause it weren't safe there."

"Yeah," said a dark grey colt, "because of Princess Celestia, right?"

"Well…" Applebloom bit her lip

"It's complicated," said Scootaloo. "We don't really know everything that's going on right now, but it has something to do with our teacher trying to assassinate her."

"Really?" The Maneheartian ponies leaned forward slightly.

"Yeah, only this unicorn called Twilight Sparkle saved her. She's staying here, actually." All five of them glanced behind them, towards the lodge.

"Don't worry," Sweetie Belle assured them, "she's nice." They remained silent.

"Look," said Scootaloo, "we were right about to play a game of hoofball when you came along. If you want, you can join us, and we can just explain everything we know while we're playing."

They looked at one another uncertainly. "What's hoofball?"

Scootaloo smiled. "Here, we'll show you." She strode past Sweetie Belle, kicking the ball away from her and taking it out a few yards. "You start with the ball in the middle of the field, and each team tries to kick it into a different goal. Usually you have a few ponies up near the front, near the other team's goal, and a few further back…"

The other ponies caught on quickly, imitating the Crusaders as they battled for control of the ball.

"So," said the lavender pony as she cantered alongside Scootaloo, "What does Celestia look like? Have you ever seen her?"

Scootaloo shook her head. "Not up close, but I've seen pictures of her. She's white, and her mane is blue, green, and pink."

She started to pose another question, but hesitated. "Do you.. . you know, have to worship her and stuff?"

"What?" The ball rolled to Scootaloo. She immediately kicked it away. "What do you mean?"

"It's just that I've heard ponies there are… brainwashed."

"Not really. I mean, I guess I wouldn't know if I was, but…"

Two of the Maneheartian fillies overheard the conversation and slowed to a walk, letting the ball roll away, downhill, where Applebloom and a red colt fought for possession.

"I mean, they must have done a bunch of stuff to convince you Celestia was good, right?"

"Honestly," said Sweetie Belle as she trotted over, "I'm still not sure what she did that was so bad. There was a pig city destroyed, and some guards were chasing us before we came here, but we don't even know for sure if Celestia was the one who ordered that."

The remaining ponies in the field noticed that the game was at a standstill and joined the gathering, letting the ball settle in a small depression, alone and forgotten.

"Well, the Wonderbolts were the ones who did it," said a chubby grey filly, "and they work for Celestia. She makes them control the weather and cause hurricanes and stuff, right?"

"They're athletes," said Scootaloo flatly.

"Not the way I heard it. They're able to fly fast enough to make all kinds of crazy weather, which can smash entire buildings. Then they chase down the survivors to finish them off." She stomped on a nearby pinecone to drive the point home.

"Are you sure?" asked Applebloom. "I mean, that sounds really, really horrible. Why would anypony do that?"

She shrugged. "I can't prove it happens like that. It's just what my parents told me, and I think they must have heard it from Princess Luna."

"Yer parents told you that? Who tells somethin' like that to their kids?"

"Who wouldn't? Don't your parents tell you when something important happens?"

Applebloom narrowed her eyes. "Somepony get the ball."

They spent the rest of the afternoon playing in silence.

…

One day at the lodge, while Twilight was away studying with Perseus, Applejack beckoned Pinkie Pie and Rarity to follow her into her room.

"We still haven't shown her the photo," she stated once they were all inside.

"Perhaps it's better if she doesn't see it," offered Rarity. "After all, she knows that Princess Celestia is up to no good, so why upset her with the details?"

"Because she's got a right to know," insisted Applejack. "She studied under the princess for years, and now it turns out she's been"—she lowered her voice—"she's been killin' ponies?"

"You're right, Applejack," said Pinkie Pie, "but we have to be really careful how we break the news to hear. I mean, we'll need the photo to prove we're telling the truth, but we can't just show it to her if she's not ready to handle seeing it."

"It's hard to imagine her ever being ready to see something like that," said Rarity, looking downcast.

"Maybe so," said Applejack, "but it happened, and fer all we know, it could still be happening. We'll have to tell her sooner or later."

…

Meanwhile, Twilight was concentrating hard, trying to lift ten massive, uprooted trees at once. Each was over a hundred feet tall, and as they rose, the clearing tripled in size. They hung precariously in the air, a bizarre spectacle. This was her first levitation test in some time, and she felt elated and nervous that her power had grown so much. His jaw dropped as she added an eleventh, followed by a twelfth, then a thirteenth…

"Don't push yourself too hard!" he urged. A few of the trees wobbled, causing needles and pinecones to rain from the sky. Perseus ducked, shielding his face from the barrage. "How about you try putting them back now, alright? And be careful!"

She complied, and he breathed a sigh of relief with each tree that she replanted. When the last one was back in the earth, a voice called up from down the trail.

"Twilight, that was amazing!" She looked up, still panting from the exertion, to see Spike running wide-eyed towards her. "Was that all you?"

Perseus laughed. "Are you kidding? Of course it was all her! Hay, I doubt I could even lift one of those giants!"

"Was there something you wanted, Spike?" asked Twilight once she had caught her breath.

"Well…"

She felt an icy grip on her heart as he gave her an envelope. "From Celestia?" she asked. He nodded.

"Well, it couldn't be about a friendship report," she said as she opened it. "I've been careful not to miss a single one… I wonder what…" She held it before her and read aloud:

"My dearest Twilight,

I have received word that you and your friends have been missing from Ponyville for some time. At first I thought you must be off on some adventure, but as nopony seems to know your whereabouts, I must say I've grown quite worried. Please reply and let me know if you're alright so I can rest easy. Yours,

-Princess Celestia"

Twilight was panicking badly. "What do I do?" she asked despairingly as she paced back and forth. "If I send her a letter, can she track where it came from? If I don't, will she come looking for me?"

"You should show that to Princess Luna at once," said Perseus. She nodded and galloped off, slowing only as Spike clambered onto her back.

"Excuse me," she asked a black mare near the trail entrance, "could you tell me where Princess Luna is?"

"She's away in Canterlot. Most likely, she'll be there for the rest of today, maybe tomorrow."

"Okay. Thanks."

To the confusion of ponies around her, Twilight darted about uncertainly, the letter hovering awkwardly around her. The lodge, she thought. Relieved to have a goal in mind, she set off.

"What?" said Rarity once she had seen the letter. Her hair twitched. "Twilight, you have to send a letter back," she urged. "Otherwise, Princess Celestia might send out soldiers to look for you!"

"I was worried about that too," explained Twilight, "but I don't see how she would know to look here of all places…"

"We go into the Everfree Forest all the time!"

"Yes, but never several miles into it… I mean, it's a really huge forest, isn't it?"

"I don't know," said Rarity, "it just seems as though you'd be better off coming up with some kind of alibi."

"What's all this, now?" asked Applejack as she approached them.

"Twilight got a letter from Princess Celestia," explained Rarity matter-of-factly, "and I think she should answer it, but she's not so sure, and"—

"From Celestia?" asked Applejack with an ashen look. "Consarn it, the guards must have gotten to her."

"It does seem likely," said Twilight, "but she writes like she has no idea where we went, or why. I don't know if she's just pretending not to know what happened, or if the guards were too afraid to tell her that they failed, or what."

"Say you're somewhere in Equestria!" urged Pinkie Pie, who had been watching from the balcony. "That way, she won't have any reason to try to look in the forest. Make it somewhere far away from Canterlot, though."

"Appleloosa," announced Twilight, and she got out a scroll while giving a pen to Spike. "Tell her we went down to Appleloosa and the buffalo sent us to look for… for one of their children that got lost in the area, and we're still looking, but we're all very well supplied and everything's fine, and thanks for her concern but…"

It took a few minutes, and she made Spike rewrite the letter to sound more collected. Once she had what seemed like a passable letter, Spike sent it on its way to Princess Celestia.

…

That night passed with no response from Princess Celestia, and the next day, Luna was in the town square, so Twilight hastily told her about the letter and her response.

"I think you handled the situation well," said Luna, though she was frowning. By now, Twilight's other friends (save Fluttershy, who was in the forest, taking care of animals) had taken notice of Princess Luna, and they had all gathered around her, along with several of the townsponies.

"Princess," said Twilight, "why exactly does Celestia maintain those enchantments over Equestria? The last time I was near Ponyville, there was this giant magical dome over it…"

"That dome has always been there, undetected," she explained. "It staves off the beasts that live in the Everfree Forest, though it has recently started to fail from time to time. It also regulates the temperature and weather. However, abolishing the seasons outright would have required Celestia to conceal so much history that it was easier just to add to the history books and make it appear as though ponies have always changed the seasons."

"And what about cutie marks?" asked Twilight. "Cheerilee said they're sometimes forced, and ponies outside Equestria don't seem to have them… so what do they actually mean?"

"Cutie marks involve a very complex type of magic," explained Luna, "because they affect the thoughts and behavior of young ponies. They take advantage of the power of suggestion, making ponies believe that their skills in life are innately associated with some higher calling or 'destiny'. In reality, most talents can be acquired primarily through practice, and a 'natural' disposition towards a talent is often the result of encouragement from a young pony's parents."

The words fell heavily on Twilight as she studied her own cutie mark, which now seemed a cruel trick, stamped upon her flank against her will.

"Wait," said Fluttershy, "so why do you and Celestia have cutie marks?"

"Because that way, our subjects in Equestria think they occur naturally. When Celestia and I first came to rule Equestria over a thousand years ago, we offered them under the guise of 'gifts'. Equestria has since forgotten this."

Noticing the ponies eyeing their marks, she added, "There's no need to be upset—there's nothing inherently bad about cutie marks. Part of their function is to help you perform better at something you love doing anyway, and I personally don't see why there's be anything wrong with that. Twilight, you in particular should be grateful for your mark, because it seems to be the source of your strength: a loophole, unintended and unanticipated by Celestia, that allows you to grow ever more proficient not just at a single branch of magic, but at the mysterious, fundamental mechanics that make magic possible."

Twilight pondered what she had learned. What about those enchantments is so bad that the princess would have to keep them a secret? she wondered. It sounds like they all make our lives better.

As if to answer her question, Luna continued: "Looking back, I should've noticed something was wrong when Celestia first suggested we should enchant Equestria. The idea itself made sense, but there was something off about the way she behaved around that time. She would stare out across the forest and refuse to tell me what she was thinking—or worse, lie. Her idea was a solution to something that had been troubling her for a long time… something to do with what happened to Corona, I think."

Everypony was silent for a long time. Maneheartian ponies watched from a distance Then, Twilight said "Wait… there's something that still confuses me. When I saw the enchantments over Ponyville first-hoof, they seemed like they were too strong to have been made even by Princess Celestia. Does that mean she's been hiding the extent of her power?"

"That's right," replied Luna. "She alone has nowhere near enough power to support the enchantments over all of Equestria. She…" as her gaze drifted across the ponies gathered around her, her eyes seemed to flicker hesitantly past Twilight. "…she maintains them using other sources."

"Is that why she attacked Sustria?" asked Twilight.

"No, the war against Sustria is essentially a measure to ensure that the border between it and Equestria stays as impassable as possible. Interaction between ponies and pigs has always been discouraged in order to hide the marked differences between Equestria and the rest of the world—making the pigs extremely hostile just happened to be a convenient, low-risk way for Celestia to accomplish that."

"How is a war low-risk?" asked Rarity.

"Because Equestria has a vastly superior military to Sustria," Luna replied. "That's where the Wonderbolts come in: a few decades ago, Celestia realized the usefulness of having a team of extremely fast, skilled pegasi. It was the same logic that led our father to amass an army of lesser ponies during the alicorn wars. The Wonderbolts excel at both at hunting down dissenters and at destroying entire cities."

"How did they end up doing that stuff anyway?" asked Rainbow Dash. "I mean, it's not like they just signed up for it, right?"

"No, I'm afraid the Wonderbolts have little say over their role in the nation's military. Celestia recruited them through two means: by tracking down pegasus ponies whose special talent was killing—of course, this was extremely rare—and by forcing pegasus fillies to develop this talent in the first place. She once tried to justify it all to me by saying that she was taking the innocence of a few ponies to protect the innocence of thousands, or something along those lines."

Rainbow Dash frowned "I didn't think they were killing because they wanted to… but it's hardly any better if Celestia's forcing them to do it. There's gotta be some way to set them free, though… right?"

"Well," replied Luna with the slightest hint of a sigh, "that's what I'm hoping to accomplish with Twilight here, but there are no guarantees about how all of this will play out. If you want my opinion, the best thing we can do is place our hope in her, because I must confess that I myself have nowhere near the magical power it would take to stand up to Celestia… and the sooner we're able to put a stop to what she's doing, the better."

"Why's that?" asked Applejack.

Luna gazed out into the trees. "Equestria has become too dependent on those magical domes. Whenever and wherever they fail, disaster strikes. The larger the population, and the larger the area the cover, the more terrible the disasters. If we don't remove them before Celestia expands their range much farther, then it may very well become impossible to do so without destroying all of Equestria."

If Twilight had felt pressured before, it was nothing compared with the burden that weighed upon her now. "I'm not going to have to… you know, kill her, am I?"

"Oh, of course not," said Luna quickly. "If it comes down to a fight, it should just be a matter of whose magical reserves run out faster. With the exception of… special circumstances, it's very difficult for alicorns of Celestia's caliber to be able to kill each other—just so long as they're not caught by surprise."

"You mean like that assassin caught Celestia by surprise at the gala?" asked Rarity.

"Exactly. He used a poison which had a fast-acting effect on her brain, instantly muddling her thoughts in a way that made it impossible for her to safely use magic. There are also certain types of magnets and other materials that can prevent spellcasting, but they tend to require such close proximity to the target as to make them impractical for use in battle."

Twilight and her friends looked at one another, trying to digest all the information they'd just been given. Up until now, Celestia's secrets had seemed to involve random cruelty and disconnected acts of tyranny, but now Twilight was beginning to see connections she hadn't before, designs and dreams that she knew all too intimately.

…

That night, as Twilight stargazed through her telescope from the top of a grassy hill, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo watched her through the window of the lodge.

"Why does she look at the stars every night?" asked Scootaloo, sounding vaguely annoyed. "She doesn't think they're gonna change, does she?"

"How do we know they don't?" asked Applebloom.

"I dunno. Sweetie Belle, do stars change?"

"Why are you asking me?"

They continued to look down on her as she peered through the telescope, scribbled some notes in a small red notebook, and then looked back into the telescope.

"Rarity says she's the whole reason we're in this place," murmured Sweetie Belle.

"What?" Scootaloo whipped her head around to look at the unicorn. "You know something about what the older ponies are doing here? Why didn't you say so?"

Sweetie Belle shrugged. "She didn't say much… just that Twilight needs to get stronger, because that way she can protect us if anything bad happens."

Scootaloo started to spit on the floor, but decided against it, since she didn't want to have to clean it up. "Well, that sounds pointless. Why do we need Twilight to protect us when we have Rainbow Dash?"

"Rarity says we need someone with really strong magic… I wish she'd told me what we need to be protected from, though."

"Monsters?" suggested Applebloom.

"Soldiers?" offered Scootaloo.

"Maybe we're better off not knowin'," sighed Applebloom. "Ain't that how it's supposed to be? The adults sort out whatever's wrong, we getta' enjoy bein' blissfully ignorant."

"Aren't you curious about what's going on?" asked Scootaloo.

"O' course I am. It's just that lyin' and hidin' things from me is how Applejack has shown me she cares. It's those little things that matter, like havin' a nice breakfast when I wake up, or not havin' to see the dead chickens before she buries 'em. Gettin' a hug when I'm upset, bein' told not to talk to that pony who dips himself in tubs of jelly without havin' to know why."

"Y'know, Applebloom," said Scootaloo, "it wouldn't kill you to start making sense one of these days."