Slight Learning Sensation (5)
Despite everything, Applejack smiled as she stepped off the underground. There was just something about trotting up those steps into Old Canterlot. Well, there was still the Mound to go, but like a lot of the city it was the view as much as the journey.
Night had come and gone with nothing apparently happening in any of Prince Blueblood’s current cribs, and they knew he was probably safe because Spike had spied him climbing into a carriage in Eminence Terrace. This had been almost noon, so they were all fairly refreshed even if Twilight and Night Light were very definitely not speaking to each other. But one problem at a time.
“Coulda flown here in a quarter of the time,” Johnnycake muttered beside her as if on cue. They’d been partnered up. That was one of the Despites.
“And tipped ‘em off.” She raised an eyebrow. “What part of not showin’ up in a streak of fire are you not gettin’ here?”
“The part where we wanna get here ahead of Blueblood and protect him.” Rolling blue eyes. “Assuming they didn’t already get him.”
“We ain’t gonna let that happen.”
“Sure about that?”
She knew he was probably joking, and yeah, it was Blueblood, but if it’d been Rainbow Dash it would’ve just been sarcasm and grumbling and it wouldn’t matter because they’d get it done, whatever it was. Johnny being a probably was throwing her a bit. And he’d been smiling that way when he said it.
“Look, we know he’s got a meetin’ with those Alchemax folks later today. Before that he’ll probably hit up every high end dive the neighbourhood has. Once we peg down which one--”
“Anticor,” Johnny said immediately. “Up in White Steeple. New but with old money connections, spiked in popularity the last couple weeks when Sassy started dropping in. Also, one of my, ah, contacts in the Tartarus Gate Club says ol’ Blue recently squared a debt with Sir Bastion but they’ve still gotta look publicly on the rocks, so that’s the only other dive he’d sink to in this neck of the woods.”
“Alrighty, so we know where he’s gonna be! Plenty of time to nose around, see if anypony knows somethin’. Or is gonna try somethin’.”
“And if they do, they’ll find the Highflying Horseshoe Torch waiting for them!” Johnny smirked, quipping just loud enough to turn a few heads. An impressed murmur snaked its way through the crowd.
“Provided he ain’t too busy makin’ sure everypony knows he’s here and signin’ autographs,” Applejack muttered.
“One time!” Johnny held up a defensive hoof, sparks flickering at the corners of his eyes. “That happened one time!”
“I was bein’ sarcastic, but good to know.”
“Oh.”
He seemed cowed for the moment, or as close as his ego would allow, so Applejack got to enjoy the rest of the trot up the artificial hill. She’d visited the business districts before on Sweet Apple Acres’ behalf, but even that gave her a bit of the old thill from school trips, or that time her aunt and uncle had offered to make up Manehattan to her by inviting her and Apple Bloom along for the less busy parts of summer. And again, the view!
Before them, rising over the hill, was Old Town, the roofs of the Bank of Canterlot and the Grassmarket and the Knot and the Equestrian Museum and Pinkie’s favourite stop, the Led Balloon club! And that was just at ground level, the stairways, balconies and turrets of the Trinity Seat mountain sparkling over it all.
Behind was just as great: the sloping street of the Mound, New Town bustling away under the palace and Canterlot Castle, the National Gallery right behind them and the valley stretching all the way, parks and ponds and all, to Celestia’s School and the Platinum Memorial Gardens, distant trees marking the entrance onto the downward slope to the Cauldr—Park Basin.
Again, all this just at ground level.
“Heck of a town,” Applejack smiled.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Johnny agreed, winking. Then blinked. “Uh, what’re you doing? White Steeple’s…over there. Somewhere.”
“Yeah, for starters!” Applejack was trotting to the curb, flagging down a cab that was just rounding the corner. The driver tipped her cap to let them know she was on the way. “We’ve gotta cut through practically half the Old Town if we wanna get there. The dang Knot’s on the way! We’ll be dead on our hooves if we walk it.”
“So why don’t I just fly on ahead?”
“You gotta problem with cabs?”
“No?”
“Then we’re takin’ a cab.”
Applejack smiled as the driver pulled up, passing her one of Celestia’s vouchers. “Thank you kindly! Just drop us off in White Steeple, please?”
“No problem, ma’am, you and your brother hop right in.”
“We ain’t related!” Applejack frowned, climbing onto the seat.
She was preparing to move over to the end to free up space, the way they all usually did on a trip, but blinked as Johnny dropped and rolled under the cab, springing up on the other side and vaulting over the door, Contessas of Haphazard style.
“You’re from Manehattan then?” the driver asked wryly.
“It’s why she disowned me,” Johnny said, relaxing back with his hooves behind his head. He smirked at Applejack as they took off. “So, you just wanna sight see or…?”
“Lil’ bit,” Applejack admitted. “But we’re passin’ close to Baker street, and y’know the line. Who notices cabs? We’re only gonna have one shot at takin’ whoever comes after Blueblood by surprise. Don’t know about you but I don’t wanna blow it and risk ‘em bein’ ready for us next time.”
“Pretty sneaky for the Element of Honesty.” A slight admiration in the smirk now.
“Practical.” Applejack leaned back and watched storefronts and cobbles go by.
“What I meant!” Johnny enthused, either missing or ignoring the hint. “You guys are more organised than Pete let on. Rarity made it all sound like you just go, like…super hiking or something.”
“Says the explorer.” That made him laugh and she smiled like he hadn’t been getting on her nerves for the last couple of hours. “Although gotta admit, first time I ever met an explorer who didn’t know their way around Canterlot.”
“Pegasi eye view!” Johnny protested.
“Even Rainbow Dash knows her way around regular eye view by now! An’ if she didn’t? Even she’s not so self-conscious she wouldn’t ask for directions. Back there, somepony’d think it was your first time ridin’ the underground.”
Johnny muttered over the clatter of hoofbeats on cobbles, forelegs crossed.
“Oh my gosh…”
“You’re the one who wants to keep it on the downlow!” Johnny put his hind legs up on the partition to try and get some cool back. “Surprised anypony can get around without flying, anyway. It’s all so twisty. One of the neighbourhoods is literally called the Knot!”
“You don’t know your way around Grocer, Baker an’ Maker street?” Applejack smirked. “Well don’t worry, I’m sure Highland Yard’ll help ya out!”
She gestured to a poster coming into focus as the driver slowed at a red light. Buddy, Your Friendly Guardpony Pal and Mine, was kindly drying the tears of a relived looking foal as captions encouraged them to just ask. A few C.E.U.P. beat bobbies were even making a point of standing in plain sight on the opposite sidewalk.
“I’m starting to see why Dash hangs out with you and Rarity.”
Johnny sat up slightly, extended foreleg glowing orange. In a silent burst of sparks Buddy’s cartoon face suddenly sported the sleek silhouettes of a moustache and pipe. One of the bobbies’ helmet plumes bristled with surprise!
“Wonder if I should take that as a compliment.” Applejack leaned over the partition to talk to the bug-eyed driver. “If ya wouldn’t mind forgettin’ my associates lil’ fit o‘ pique, an’ anythin’ about royal security ya might’ve overheard ya can keep the change.”
“Hey, 10-gems for a 15-bit fair, I’d forget my own hat size.”
“Whatever peels your apple.”
They’d probably have had to make an offer like this anyway. During her time as the Pony Everypony Should Know, Rarity had picked up the fact cabbies in Canterlot made a decent side-line selling info on significant passengers. Hay, they’d made use of it a time or two when they were on Element business in the capital.
“Speakin’ of Rarity, what’s up with you two?”
“What do you mean?” Johnny asked, eyes carefully on the souvenir stalls they were passing.
“I mean I already heard how badly it went when ya were datin’ one of my friends before and I’m worried it’s gonna happen again,” Applejack said, the same way someone would tell you they were worried it might rain when their in-laws came to visit. Bigger things out there in the world, but this was…closer.
“Well it’s a good thing we’re not dating then.” The soothing Canterlot breeze in the cab was slowly becoming stuffier.
“She know that?”
“There’s someone else, not that that’s any of your business either.” Johnny was still not making eye contact.
“Good to know. So you can stop bein’ all possessive.”
Johnny sat up, the smell of kindling following him…then shut his mouth. “Alright.”
Nothing but the rattle of hooves and wheels on cobbles, the clamour of pedestrians having way more fun than they were right now.
“I, ah…I can be blunt like that.” Applejack adjusted her hat awkwardly. “Work myself up over nothin’ sometimes. Stuff that ain’t my business.”
“I noticed.”
More bustle. More silence. Johnny finally glanced over at her.
“But Rarity’s your friend too. So…I get it.”
“Good.” Applejack nodded and tried a smile. “Could always use at least one more.”
“Keeping an eye on me?” Johnny smirked.
“Sayin’ ya don’t need it?”
He winked. “Didn’t say that.”
He hadn’t said yes, either. Not that she was sure this guy would be in her life if he wasn’t kind of in Twilight’s by dint of being in Peter’s, and if it came to it she’d always be Team Dash. Not no questions asked, just that she got the impression Johnny would answer them in…not the best way possible.
“Well, we’re workin’ together,” Applejack settled, “might as well try to part on the right hoof, yeah?”
“Oh, I’m totally sticking with you,” Johnny agreed. “You’re the only one who can make sense of these streets.”
“Gotta,” she countered. “Can’t fly.”
“Fair,” he chuckled.
They were cutting through one of the millions of archways that decorated the city, balconies and walkways turning the street into a kind of tunnel. She got where he was coming from, the capital was full of stuff like this.
Most of Old Town didn’t have fire escapes because the amount of staircases and walk in basements would allow an athletic pony to jog from their back door, up, down and through the streets, even under the hill and across a few roofs to call the fire brigade themselves.
Given the fish ‘n‘ chips shop she knew for a fact was at the end of Highland Yard’s block was looming around the corner at them, she guessed the archway itself must’ve been a dang shortcut.
She had a slight advantage over most of her friends, having had to learn how to navigate by district architecture or how high semaphore towers were in order to arrange deals with distant relatives, which was one of the reasons the native Twilight had asked her along. Even with their experience it would still be way too easy to lose track of Blueblood or his attackers, and Johnny’s…laziness(?) wouldn’t help.
“Twi said you had some way to keep in touch?”
She indicated the district’s trademark steeples rising over the local Fulmina Venite plant. The walls of the surrounding buildings also sported posters for the Spring Heels Walking Tour. “If those things are poppin’ up we’re practically there.”
“And you want me whispering sweet nothings in your ear? Aww!”
Johnny gave a magician’s flourish and made a Fantastic Inc. compact appear in his hoof. “For real though, here. This baby’s synced up to my collar’s personal radio frequency. Just flip it open and tap the little speaker rune with your hoof. The map’ll even let you keep track of me. I’m the distinguished flaming horseshoe icon!”
“Wow. Niffty!”
Applejack admired the device. The roof had enlarged somehow as she’d swung it up, allowing her to better make out the small symbols on the glass covering the high-tech looking compass. It helpfully turned a more luminescent blue as they passed into the darkness of the tunnel that would deposit them in White Steeple, allowing her to follow a passing wire frame rendering of the streets.
“So these engravings’re like buttons too?”
“Yeah! That little flag one’s for if you need help. Pings the others. And if you wanna call, you talk into--”
“I-I know-now how-ow a-a radio-dio works-rks, thanks-nks,” Applejack’s voice echoed out of his collar as she enunciated into the small grill in the base. She admired it as she tapped the speaker rune off. “That was pretty clear even for sittin’ right next to each other! Your boss find a way to compensate for the capital’s spellectrostatic? In somethin’ this tiny?”
“Uh, yeah, Reed’s a big one size fits all kinda pony,” Johnny said carefully, trying not to let on how much her know-how had caught his presumptuous self off guard and not to yell despite the ringing her stereo accent had started in his ears. “Twilight and Stud—”
“Spike.”
“—have one as well. They’re channel 2.”
“And 3 is a conference call, got it.” Applejack slid it shut, still admiring the way it shrank back to normal as she clipped it onto her saddlebag. “Not that I don’t got confidence in this lil’ enterprise but could we use ‘em to call in your family? Y’know, if we needed to.”
“Yours are basic compacts tuned to my collar, sorry.” Johnny shook his head, reaching up to tune the lining of his 4 logo. “And even if they could…hi sis! How’s it going?”
“—anks a bunch, Susie! That one mighta chipped my chin! Can’t risk losin’ these distinguished features!”
“No problem! Hi Johnny, busy. What’s up?”
A shuddering sort of roar explosion.
“Applejack says hi!” Johnny simpered.
“App…? Oh! Uh, hi hon! How’s the leg?”
“It’s, um, it’s fine Sue!” Applejack side eyed Johnny for putting her on the spot as more sounds of war echoed out of his collar. “Got some ice on it when we got home. Well, an ice monster but that’s a long story. Your brother was just showin’ me his equipment.”
“Tropical Storm!!!”
“His radio Sue, geez!”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Susaphone,” a rich, polite voice interjected, “but my father’s murderer is getting away with the Maestro’s flute and I could use a boost to that outcrop.”
“Coming right up, T’Challa. See you kids la--REED! ON YOUR LEFT!”
The call snapped off, the logo’s blue glow fading as it emitted a dull dial tone noise until Johnny turned it off.
“I savvy,” Applejack muttered as they finally passed out of the tunnel and into the bustle of White Steeple. “Hey, couldja pull over whenever ya can? Thanks.”
***
White Steeple was sort of the opposite of Park Basin’s story. Historically industrial, the neighbourhood had fallen into squalor as miners and immigrants trekked from all over only to find the warehouses empty. Underground passages to the caves that had acted as the city’s docks were eventually bricked up as trading and transport companies took over, stripping the neighbourhood of its primary means of survival long before the advent of the steam engine and the airship.
Originally built out of surrounding hills as watchtowers, the district's namesake marble steeple structures had been built on and remodelled by the local aristocracy, to make sure they needn’t have anything to do with the rising tide of poor ponies. Both had been legendarily haunted by the masked mischief maker Spring Heels, bounding from spire to spire.
While there was always some question if Heels had been anything other than old mares tales and an anti-social letter campaign, every history book in Equestria told the story of how Princess Celestia had returned after a year of adventuring, a new theory suggesting this may have been a coping mechanism for banishing her sister, taken stock of the situation and declared that this would not do.
It had taken a decade and change but the wave of social programs, including Celestia pointedly placing her main bank there and forcing the aristocracy to actively come down and deal with the area, had finally washed away many of White Steeples problems, turning the marble housing into public space and reopening the tunnels for Canterlot’s developing underground society.
Now for the last three centuries it had been just another part of Old Town, some areas trading on that history to draw curious tourists. Or rich ponies looking to repeat the aristocracy’s plans to rise above the residents. Hence one of Manehattan’s newest corporations opening an office here.
***
“There’s tons of coves and chambers that still haven’t been opened back up,” their driver, Head Down, was explaining after Applejack had asked about Alchemax’s presence. “Word is they want ‘em for alchemical work. Don’t-Let-The-RCSB-Know alchemical work, depending on who you ask.”
“Blueblood’s family owns a bunch of under-estate…” Johnny mused, sharing a look with Applejack. “And Reed’s always avoided his chemical businesses because they're the weakest. Even just dumping one of ‘em off on these jerks’d be a serious boost to his portfolio.”
Head Down blinked. “Wait, Prince Blueblood?”
“Eeyup,” Applejack smiled grimly, holding out two more vouchers. “His aunt herself asked us to keep an eye on the guy. An’ since we might ask ya to keep your ears open for anythin’ about him…and since it’s him, here’s two twenty-piece vouchers for the amount of grief you’ll be getting’ into if ya accept.”
“Eh, one’ll do,” Head Down smiled, already looking tired from the ocean of gossip and back biting she’d have to wade through. “You Elements saved my sister during that changeling invasion, so I owe ya.”
“But it’s Prince Blueblood, so I’m throwin’ in at least another ten-piece voucher,” Applejack countered.
“Won’t say no!”
Head Down accepted both, slipping them under her hat before tipping it at them as she turned back into traffic. “I’d wish you folks luck, but…”
“It’s Prince Blueblood,” Applejack and Johnny said simultaneously, waving after her.
“At least we agree on that,” Johnny grinned at her.
“BLEGH!” They both jumped as a pumpkin headed pony shoved his masked face between them. “Heh, sorry! Couldn’t resist!”
Applejack used her tail to slap the guide’s mask, spinning it around and blinding him as they set off. “Can we also agree these tours’re the lamest thing since clip on bolo ties?”
“Team coordination is important,” Johnny agreed. “On that note, where’re we going now? Alchemax or Anticor?”
“Should be easy enough to find.”
Applejack indicated the tower block a few streets away, with the fancy schmancy stylised A logo.
“Y’know the way to Anticor? I never heard of it ‘til now.”
“Dunno the street name but I know where every club in town is.”
“I had a feelin’,” Applejack chuckled, shaking her head. She wasn’t endeared but he’d been just so…honest! “Doubt my hat’ll come up to the dress code so I check on the office, you see what’s trendin’?”
“Spidey would be hanging Turkish Delight off a fire escape out of desperation by now, so I am very down with anything that looks like a plan.”
Johnny saluted her as he moonwalked backwards into an alley.
“’Least he wasn’t on fire…” Applejack murmured as she set off down her own street.
Another Spring Heel guide ‘just couldn’t resist’. Tourists found him a few minutes later and debated the artistic message of a pumpkin headed pony struggling to free said pumpkin head from between iron fence posts.
17
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Fluttershy mumbled, “I just don’t think that’s how it works.”
“No, I know,” Peter said nodding, rubbing the back of his now smarting neck and worrying she thought he was grimacing at her. “But he dug that trench, right?”
“Yes, but I mean…” Fluttershy shrugged as she adjusted his blankets. “How does that translate to Rookhoof Has Superspeed?”
“First off, river of lava!” Peter beamed. “Guy did not have a lot of time to dig!”
“He must’ve done it though, or else that story would be, well, a very depressing cautionary tale.”
“Point, but second of all he grew strong enough to dig it at all, yeah?”
“Yeah?”
“So his strength quadruples but his speed doesn’t?” Peter shrugged. “Mine did.”
“I see your point, but wouldn’t that mean Saddlerager’s does too?” Fluttershy held up one of Spike’s comics as if the character’s presence on the cover demonstrated something.
“Ah, you’d think so, but in fact her legs don’t transform when she does—”
“I thought that was just artistic licence,” Fluttershy murmured, a little self-consciously.
“—but her bones are harder than diamond!” Peter continued, lost in nerdery. “So it’s like, how can she even land a hit on Rockhoof at all, buuuut Sadie can soak up tons of damage, the only time she’s ever even been winded was by a blow from the Overcorn, but she was from another dimension so the laws of the magic in her armour were different, so the real question is can Rockhoof survive long enough to try for an Infinite Mass Punch? And would that even work?!”
“Oh, that’s one of the moves of Rainbow’s bucket list!” Fluttershy beamed.
“Seriously, anything,” Rarity muttered to a portrait of Celestia on the wall. “Actually going to solstice. Not mentioning everypony’s hair. Carrying Spike’s gem basket myself. Just a sudden loss of hearing or spontaneous combustion. Anything to get me out of this conversation.”
“Okay, so what about Radiance vs Mistmane?” Fluttershy asked.
“How is that a contest?”
“Well, they can both do practically anything, right?”
“Uh, did Mistmane ever contain a nuclear explosion?”
“Oh sun and moon…” Rarity buried her head in her hooves. “Shouldn’t you have dropped from your pain killers already, Peter?”
“Proportionate metabolism of a spider, dunno what to tell you.” Peter shrugged, enjoying the fact it no longer hurt after a good night’s sleep. “Besides, Twilight’s schedule says not for another couple of minutes and you’ve already tainted my apple juice with them enough as is!”
“You silver tongued devil.” They all jumped, staring at the smirking Rainbow Dash leaning against the doorframe.
Fluttershy tried not to crawl under Peter’s bed to die. “How long were you listening?”
“Since halfway through Flash Magnus vs the Black Knight.”
“And you didn’t save me?!” Rarity demanded.
“Like you have anywhere else to be.” Dash trotted up to the bed, pulling a deli bag out of her wing pocket. “Fluttershy and Pinkie already solved the riddle of the mummy’s gold and the Crusaders’re gonna be on rec centre paint duty to make up for that whole thing. Slow day! I had to go all the way out to the mountains to find trouble. Here, peace offering.”
“Thanks,” Peter smiled, accepting one of the hoagies. “This mean we’re good?”
“Gettin’ there.” Dash shrugged. “Anyway, you were goin’ on and on and on about how bad your happy pills taste, so I figured since you and Twilight are always stuffin’ yourselves at that place on Derby Street…”
“And I thought Rarity was the embodiment of Generosity,” Peter smiled wryly.
“99% of the time.” Ruby eyed side-eyeing.
“Betting against somepony who’s cutie mark is an arrow inside a target is a self-explanatory 1%,” Rarity smiled thinly.
“Speaking of Derby Street, the pub there sometimes has a darts tournament!” Fluttershy interjected. “And there’s a pool hall next to the bowling alley. You know, in case you ever wanted to invite anypony in the…um…”
“The business?” Peter supplied.
“That was it!” Fluttershy smiled. “Well, if you ever wanted to invite them over. Rarity said your friends might be coming? Your real ones, that is! Oh, n-not that your colleagues aren’t…I mean…”
“I know what you mean,” Peter said, smiling reassuringly. It turned slightly more sly. “Though off the top of my head, seems like you wouldn’t mind seeing the Falcon again?”
“Oh, that reminds me, next time you see him could you give him this?” Fluttershy placed a crumpled list from her wing pocket on the bedside table. “It’s a list of foods and grooming products Redwing might enjoy.”
“Redwing?” Rarity asked.
“His partner!” Fluttershy’s smile robbed her of any scandalous hopes by its pure innocence. “He has a psychic link with all birds in Equestria, maybe the entire planet, but he has an extra special connection with her! Isn’t that fascinating?”
“That’s one word for it,” Rarity said carefully.
“Hey, respect,” Dash said. “Guy’s got good moves in the air, but that’s basically the vow.”
“Un cielo per tutti e un cielo per tutto,” Fluttershy explained to the confused ground walkers. “A sky for everyone and everything.”
“Some legends say we got our wings from the lil’ guys,” Dash grinned, flapping her own to demonstrate, “so we look out for ‘em when we can.”
“Beats getting bitten by a magically irradiated spider.” Peter smiled grimly at the memory.
“Beg pardon, darling?” Rarity was staring at him. They all were.
“In joke.” Peter coughed awkwardly. “Sure Fluttershy, I’ll pass it along. And yeah, Rarity phoned MJ’s club. They’ll drop by tomorrow.”
“The redhead?” Dash tried to look nonchalant. “Cool.”
“Ah, the lovely Merry Jane!” Rarity flashed the speedster a lupine smile to let Dash know that yes, she’d noticed that little wing twitch. “I’ve always enjoyed our chats.”
“’Cause they’re mostly about you,” Dash muttered.
“Pinkie likes her too,” Fluttershy noted. “Is that the order she’s working on? Mr. Cake was behind the counter today.”
“Yeah, she said she’d whip something up,” Peter smiled, then glanced at the door as a distant ping echoed from downstairs. “Speaking of, think your soup's up.”
“Your soup,” Fluttershy clarified. “Glad you liked it!”
“It’ll go good with Rainbow’s peace offering,” Peter smiled as she left, saluting the other Pegasus with the hoagie before narrowing his eyes at Rarity. “Beats the apple juice.”
“Mmm, you have taken enough of a beating as is,” Rarity smirked, horn glowing. “Fine! Here you go, you big baby! A nice cool glass of conjured orange juice.”
“Oooh, freshly dimensionally squeezed?” Peter took it in his working hoof, admiring the swirling patterns inside. “Now this is medicine!”
“Quite.” Rarity’s eyes flashed malevolently as he took that first refreshing sip. Rainbow squinted at her, wondering what kind of plan/spell/revenge was being wrought. “And don’t worry about your medicine. All in due time. All in due time.”
“Your eyes are glowing.” Peter indicated his own with the glass. Rarity’s mortified hoof immediately flew to her left as he smirked. “They’re not, but they may as well be.”
“Startin’ to see why Twilight keeps you around!” Dash cackled, flapping at Rarity’s shoulder level to force the fuming seamstress to trot out with her. “Enjoy the sandwich! I hear it’s an acquired taste!”
“Kinda like these!” Pinkie Pie announced, bouncing up the stairs after Fluttershy, a tray of desserts balanced perfectly on her nose while the vet anxiously cradled a tureen that somehow smelled of crisp Spring air and a roaring hearth. “Hope you’ll have room for dessert, Pete. I wanna make sure everything’s pitch perfect for when your friends arrive.”
“Thanks Pinkie, everypony.” Peter smiled gratefully as the party pony laid the tray gently on his lap, allowing Fluttershy to deposit the soup. “You’ve all been great. Usually when it’s this bad it’s just me stuck on the couch with a bunch of band aids until I get feeling in my legs again. It’s why I’ve been kinda bleh.”
“A literal slime ball dropped a ton of pianos on ya, man,” Dash snorted, both dismissively and because that was still funny. “You can feel however you want, just feel better.”
“That desperate to get rid of me, huh?” Peter smirked, taring a corner of hoagie off to dunk in Fluttershy’s soup.
“You know it!”
“Man Pinkie, these all look so good…” Peter mused through his mouthful, looking over the row of cupcakes like he was considering which kitten to adopt. “Oooh, what’s this powdery looking one?”
“Wheatcake!” Pinkie beamed proudly at his bugging eyes. “Your aunt said it was your favourite.”
***
“Which retired filly scouts just nailed that caregivers merit badge so hard?” Dash flopped onto a beanbag, hooves behind her head and pointing at herself with one wing, Rarity with the other. “♪These fillies!♪”
“Here, here!” Rarity agreed, smile wavering only slightly as Dash kicked a shelf to send a copy of Smash Fortune’s autobiography tumbling into her grasp. “Perhaps we should take a quick jaunt to Canterlot so we can solve Princess Celestia’s problem and allow Twilight to admire our handiwork!”
“Quick’s my second middle name,” Dash muttered, “but the only reason I’d be anywhere near Canterlot right now is to make sure I could get AJ and Twilight outta range of Johnnyflake’s epic fowl up.”
“He is a professional, you know,” Rarity huffed, trying to keep a blush out of her face since she’d completely failed to stop that sounding so defensive.
“Professional pest maybe,” Dash muttered.
“He’s been a perfectly good friend to me these past months.”
“I’m real happy for ya.” Rainbow raised the book slightly to block her from view.
“You know I’ve tried wedeling just what went so wrong at flight school out of him?” Rarity frowned, sitting pointedly down on the couch she’d moved in from the living room. “And he still hasn’t told me anything? He’s never had anything but nice things to say about you, as a matter of fact.”
“’Least he could do!” Rainbow’s tail shimmered as it lashed. Her voice had been raised but she was still refusing to look up from her book.
“He’s my friend too, Rainbow,” Rarity sighed. “I love you too much to fix or force things between you and Johnny, but--”
“Then don’t.”
Rarity blinked. Anger she’d expected, petulance even, but there was something deeply concerning to her about how…tired Dash had sounded.
She’d seen vulnerable Rainbow Dash plenty of times, that mess at Best Young Flyer had happened at all because she’d recognised it. But when she thought of tired Rainbow Dash the image that came to mind was of that time she’d asked the Pegasus along to an Everything Must Go sale, to help fend off the more vicious shoppers.
The heiress they’d been competing with had been Queen Chrysalis and some of her horde, after a dress that legendarily held a map to the Heart of Equestria Itself! (Also, and she hated to admit this, but it had absolutely been Chrysalis’ style.)
The ensuing chase and melee had lasted several hours and just as many floors of the department store, which turned out not to be going out of business but simply infiltrated/infested with the little buggers. If Celestia and Luna hadn’t happened by incognito, hoping to score some bargains, and revealed the map to be simply part of a long defunct Legends-Through-Fashion line…
Anyway, the point was Rainbow had been found draped almost bonelessly over a throne of concussed changelings, staff and vicious shoppers, nothing left in her but contentment at a brawl well done. That was what a tired Rainbow Dash was supposed to look and sound like. Not an adult. A very weary one.
“I think that went rather well,” Fluttershy beamed, drifting down to join them.
Rarity blinked, wires crossing and wondering how Fluttershy had know about how they’d surfed that rack into the changelings’ pincer formation. “Sorry, what?”
“You know, lunch and everything,” Fluttershy smiled as she passed around extra bowls of her mother’s delicious soup. She had that look on her face, like whenever she tricked her animals into something. “Heh heh, and we don’t have to worry about making sure somepony takes his medicine, do we?”
“Ah, I was wondering if any of you girls would notice!” Rarity preened, taking a dainty sip from her levitated spoon.
“Notice what?” Dash asked through a mouthful of sandwich, eyes still on the book while she used her wings to hold her hoagie and bowl.
“My ingenious little ruse, of course.” Rarity admired her reflection in her spoon.
“Ruse?” Fluttershy asked in a very kitten on train tracks voice.
“You see—” Rarity flicked her fringe in triumph, savouring the moment. “—I just redefined elegance in simplicity by making our Mr. Trotter take his medicine.”
“Um.”
“What?” Dash was finally looking up now.
“Oh come now, isn’t it obvious? I took care of his medicine and his constant whining about the taste!”
“No you didn’t,” Dash said distantly, as if she’d just been concussed. “I did.”
“No, I did,” Rarity smiled as patiently as she did with Sweetie Belle, which nopony deserved. “I distinctly remember pulling the plunger.”
“No, shut up. I did.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I! Did!” Dash enunciated. “I gave Pete his meds.”
“No, I mean did you just tell me to shut up?!” Rarity fumed. Then blinked. “Wait, when?”
“Like…just now.” Dash was making eye contact like they were both stuck in two runaway wagons barrelling towards each other. “Those things taste like warmed over nothing, so I stuck ‘em in his hoagie so he wouldn’t notice. Y’know, like with a pet.”
“He wouldn’t shut up about the apple juice, so I used the same trick I do where Opalescence is being fussy,” Rarity agreed, feeling like her wagon was also a confession booth. “I mixed it into something else. His orange juice.”
“You didn’t conjure it.” Dash’s eyes were trying to narrow and widen at the same time. It made her look kind of like she was about to cry. “You mixed it up and hid it somewhere so you could teleport it in. Of all the Trixie tier—!”
“Pick your next words very carefully,” Rarity warned, horn flickering.
“I’m shakin’.”
Dash glared from her to the floor, trying to convince herself.
“It’s medicine, right? A double dose can’t be too bad, right? It’s not like we drowned him in the stuff, right? He should be, like, twice as better.”
“Not how that works,” Rarity sighed, trying to force a smile, “but yes, twice the dose shouldn’t--”
“I put it in his soup,” Fluttershy squeaked with the same silently screaming urgency she’d save for the sky catching fire or the Crusaders getting their drivers licences.
Rarity and Rainbow practically flung their bowls to the middle of the floor as if trying to put guilty distance between them.
“Not everypony’s!” Fluttershy stammered. “It-it-it-it’s just, yes, those potion pills can be a bit bleh, and Mom sent over so much soup and it’s made with so much love and care I thought…oh sun and moon.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Dash was on her hooves and skittering this way and that. “It’s fine! He survived the world’s lamest vaudeville accident! He can take a little secret sauce!”
“Rainbow, there’s pain killers in there.” Rarity looked like she could bite the entire tree in half. “Potions to sift things out of your blood.”
“Maybe we drowned it out,” Fluttershy quavered hopefully. “I mean, it’s a lot of different ingredients all at once. M-maybe my soup, like, cancelled out Dashie’s sandwich or something? He was dunking it…”
“You didn’t cancel me,” Dash scowled. “Nopony cancels me.”
“Priorities!” Rarity snapped. She stomped over to the small box Twilight had left on the table, sorting through it. “Look, alright, I’m going to find that schedule. We can try to figure out when his next three doses were supposed to be and how long we should wait, because the most important thing is to make sure he doesn’t take anymore.”
There was a pause. She turned around, levitating what looked like a medicine bottle but was in fact…
“Why is there a sugar shaker in Twilight’s medicine box?” Rarity asked with pre-detonation calm.
“Because Twilight packed it,” Dash responded leadenly. “And she was freaking out.”
“Oh my,” Fluttershy mumbled.
“No, wait, this is good, right?” Dash jogged up to Rarity, examining the shaker as if it might explode. “This means we haven’t been giving him meds, right?”
“No,” Rarity said with that same terrible calm, levitating an empty, similar looking pill bottle. “We have. That would be this. What I mean is, if this sugar shaker, with the Sugar Cube Corner logo on it, is in here instead of the extra pill bottle then where…?”
“Um.”
They all turned slowly to Pinkie, standing on the staircase with a worried expression and an almost empty tray balanced on her back.
“Twilight sent me out to pick up some extra stuff, but she, ah, ran out of sugar yesterday and I was gonna lend her one of ours. And they, uh, sure look sorta similar, huh? Guess those weren’t some new kinda sprinkles?”
She squawked as the other three bore her up and onto their backs, into the rush up the stairs to find…
***
...an empty bed.
“We vaporised him!” Dash blinked. “Is it weird I’m kinda proud of us?”
“Yes, and no we didn’t.” Rarity stormed into the room, looking around and trying to figure out what Shadow Spade would do. Other than not be in this situation.
“We‘ve lost Twilight’s boyfriend.” Fluttershy was running her hooves down the side of her face to avoid pulling out her hair. “How did we even do that? Is anypony else having trouble breathing?”
“Like he’d be under the bed,” Rarity snarled at Rainbow Dash’s peering face from her side. “Meds in his sandwich!”
“You’re lookin’ too, little miss orange juice,” Dash snapped back.
“Up here.”
The Elements almost fell over craning up to stare at the ceiling.
Seeing Peter Trotter crawling up there instead of Spider-Pony was disconcerting enough, but there was an odd, sedate motion to his slow progress that creeped them out even more. Including, y’know, the possibility he might fall off and break his head open.
“What in the name of Celestia’s sainted trousers are you doing?!” Rarity boggled.
“Trying to assert my machismo and independence, mostly,” Peter said with distant, droopy cheerfulness. He either looked down at them or more probably his head just dangled limply towards the floor. His smile and eyes were unfocused and constantly changing shape. “It’s just made my legs hurt and I feel even more insecure now.”
“Where are you going?” Fluttershy asked, trying to sound calm.
“Going to the bathroom.” Peter took another wobbly upside down step. “Should probably be worried it took this long.”
“Dude, gross!” Dash snapped without a hint of admiration. “Get down from there! What if somepony comes in? They’re gonna see you!”
“Sometimes I wonder if that would solve everything,” Peter beamed, finally scuttling under the top of the door frame. “Just strut into the middle of Ponyville Plaza and scream my secret to everypony at the top of my lungs. It would probably bring all my enemies down on what’s become a second home to me, and of course everypony would have the right to fear and reject me, giving me even more to feel guilty about, but maaaaaan, those five seconds of relief!”
The Elements looked at each other as his tail began the slow process of sliding under the door frame.
“I don’t think I like this game…” Pinkie murmured.
“I don’t think he knows he’s playing,” Rarity said. “Rainbow, if he’s going to crawl over everything you’re probably the only one who can keep up.”
“Gotcha.”
Dash nodded, flapping out the door and hovering a few inches in front of the arachnoid as he began to try and navigate the curve of the landing wall.
“Everypony else, draw the curtains!” Rarity urged, telekinetically pulling the guest room’s shut. “We can’t risk anypony seeing anything until we’ve gotten him back into bed.”
“Then we can burn our hoof prints off and get our counterfeit passports,” Fluttershy babbled. “And that way nopony can hunt us down for treason.”
“Ooh, what movie is that?” Pinkie asked, bouncing back up from drawing all the living room curtains.
“The one where the Princess of Friendship burns her friends at the stake for breaking her coltfriend.”
Fluttershy was quivering so much she didn’t trust her hooves to draw the main library room’s curtains, so she just slammed the living room door and dragged the couch in front of it.
“She won’t do that, darling,” Rarity assured, patting her. “She’ll be snippy and answer her own sarcastic questions for a few weeks, which is worse and why we’re going to make sure nothing happens, alright?”
They all jumped at the sound of a slamming door.
“What was that?!” Fluttershy squawked “The fuzz?!”
“Uh, the good news is he made it,” Dash called down to them.
She hovered awkwardly for a few beats listening to the sounds coming from inside the bathroom even though she really didn’t want to, then finally knocked on the door.
“Pete? Buddy? You, uh, you good in there?”
“My ribs still sting,” came the muffled, jovial reply, “and I’m scared there’s at least one more piano key inside me that I just can’t feel yet.”
“Cool?” Dash glanced over her shoulder at the others. “Yoooou need any help?”
“Nope!” Peter raised his voice over the flush. “And if I did, I’d probably be too embarrassed to ask! Kinda how my team ups work, really!”
“You’d know…” Dash mused, jerking back from the door swinging open and Peter’s Vandergraph recording in an earthquake smile. “Gyagh! Uh…did you remember to wash your hooves?”
“I forgot.” Same cheerful intonation. “I feel ashamed and a failure.”
“Okay, listen,” Pinkie huffed, “I’ve got plenty of songs to cheer ya up and all, but you sound, and I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, waaaay too happy! Also, and sorry for this Fluttershy, maybe you could share a little less?!”
“Yes, he is, isn’t he…” Rarity mused.
“Huh.” Dash banged on the door again. “Say Pete! Is your lawyer really Deerdevil?”
“Yep! Sometimes I feel like I’m taking advantage of our friendship but then I remind myself how much hardboiled monologuing I have to take from Matt on the job and that it’s a decent trade, which just makes me feel selfish and guilty all over again.”
“I think I’m going to cry,” Fluttershy whimpered.
“You just have a lie down, dear.” Rarity patted her on the shoulder but nodded up at Rainbow.
“Uh, what’s two plus two?”
She shrugged at Rarity’s eye roll.
“Four,” came the eventual cheerful replay. “I have a degree in thaumaturgical physics and had to think about that for a sec. Lapses like that are part of why I feel the need to remind myself and other ponies I have a degree in thaumaturgical physics, other than the lovely warm glow saying it gives me inside.”
“Did you really date the Black Sphinx?” Dash tried, opening the door to make sure he hadn’t drowned or scrubbed his hooves off or something.
“Oh my, yes.” Peter was either nodding or his head was trying to be in three places at once. “It was after MJ and I broke up for the first time. I was in a very weird place! There were a lot of gang wars, maybe that had something to do with it. Honestly? I was eighteen and Fera wore a lot of black. Also, it was nice to be wanted for being Spidey for once. Sometimes I wonder if the only thing that really gave me the high ground at all was the fact Fera was, and probably still is, the world’s most competent kleptomaniac.”
“Oh my stars and garters.” Dash slowly turned to grin at the others. “He’s blitzed!”
“What,” Fluttershy mumbled.
“I’ve seen it happen in the Wonderbolts infirmary! Sometimes a pony crashes so bad the docs have to fill them up with a lot of different stuff, and it all mixes together to take their brain through the pain and, like, out the other side! They’re so in tune with the universal truth or whatever they’ll tell ya theirs without even thinking about it! Or being asked!”
“Honesty’s one of the virtues we’re supposed to uphold!” Pinkie beamed in relief, bouncing a little. “I mean, we’re not super great at it, but this is a good thing, right?”
“Sleeping tablets.” Fluttershy began frantically digging through Twilight’s medicine box. “There must be sleeping tablets in here somewhere. Then we can end this nightmare. Just for a little while.”
“Up-bup-bup-bup!” Rainbow wagged her hooves, grinning ferally. “Primo opportunity here, ladies!”
“What does that mean and why’re you rubbing your hooves like that?” Pinkie asked, feeling obligated to be the voice of caution since Fluttershy was too busy trying to bite the uncooperative lid off another medicine bottle.
“Because what we have here is what every mare in Equestria wants.” Rarity’s grin was so bright it dimmed the room even more as she joined Dash in looping a foreleg around the serenely smiling Peter’s shoulders. “A stallion who will tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! And a free afternoon…”
18
“And nopony knew anything?” Twilight’s voice asked through the collar.
“Not the rank an’ file ponies anyway,” Applejack confirmed. “Some of ‘em heard they might be gettin’ a royal visit but nothin’ concrete. One poor gal was hopin’ to meet Princess Cadence.”
“We should probably tell the sisters to keep an eye on that company,” Twilight mused. “Any luck on your end, Johnny?”
“Not yet,” Johnny sighed, lifting his head from lying against the back of his current perch. “That’s the problem with clubs, most of the ponies in the know don’t show up until fashionably after dark. I can drop back in a couple of minutes and see if anypony from Blueblood’s school days is hanging around. Guys like that have a desperate need to stay aware of their old pals if they can’t keep in touch.”
“Because of friendship?” Twilight, who he now knew had been around those kinds of school cliques, didn’t sound too hopeful. He felt a chivalrous need to protect that reluctant optimism.
“What you don’t ask me I won’t have to lie about, Princess.”
He turned to smile at the distant tower of the Sky Garden in New Town, where Twilight and Spike were taking advantage of the 360-degree view with telescopes. If anything Blueblood shaped happened Twilight could teleport right over, or close enough for a quick flight.
“Mmm. What about that cab pony…Head Down? She mentioned Alchemax might be up to something with under-estate.”
“If she’d known more I figure she’d have told us,” Applejack pointed out. “Maybe we can use that? Tip the C.E.U.P. off an’ get Blueblood into protective custody?”
“Good idea, but we’ve got zero evidence of his collusion, or that they’re even doing anything wrong,” Twilight sighed. “Still no sign of him? Maybe he snuck into the club while you were…doing whatever it is your doing?”
“Keeping an eye on the situation!” Johnny declared, grinning as he shifted to better relax against the intricate tiers of his perch, nestled between two Pegasus statues.
“What’s he doin’?” Applejack muttered.
“He’s sitting on the top of the Balmoral,” Twilight reported simply. “I assume it’s a vantage thing?”
“Give the filly a prize!” Johnny winked, hoping he was looking right into her telescope. “Gives me a great view of not just Anticor’s front and the alley behind it, but the whole block. When our boy shows up, I’ll know it. Assuming you don’t spot him first.”
“How’d ya get up there?” Applejack asked suspiciously.
“Charmed my way onto a balcony in the building next door and used a big ol‘ thermal pulse to silently jet myself across the street.” Johnny buffed his crest and admired his hoof before looking back down at the throngs below. “Relax Applehat, no flash of flames, nopony saw anything.”
“AppleJACK,” both mares said sharply through the radio.
“Right, what’d I say?”
“Applehat,” Twilight said before AJ could stop her.
“Huh,” Johnny mused. “My bad, but on the other hoof if you girls ever decide to get into merchandising--”
“Don’t need to,” Applejack cut in, “we’ve got REAL jobs.”
“And I worked part time as a mechanic to save up for college,” Johnny shot back, sitting up to glare at the distant Alchemax building, “because I couldn’t legally get paid by my sister’s company until I turned eighteen and I didn’t wanna sponge off her while she was trying to build it. So spare me the plucky-proletariat-pony lectures the know-nothing-playboy routine, alright?”
“Fair enough, but maybe I wouldn’t feel like it if that smart aleck playboy had the decency to take this seriously or, I dunno, remember my dang name!”
“Yeah? Funny, ’cause the way I see it, forget you!”
“Guys!”
A violet flash danced on the roof of the Sky Garden.
The other end of the radio fell silent, leaving Johnny with nothing but the street noises and the nonplussed feeling of his temper having its brakes slammed on before it could really put the pedal down.
“You saw that, right?” came Twilight’s sheepish voice after a tense few beats.
“Yeah,” sighed Applejack. “Reckon we’re lucky the whole of Canterlot didn’t. Folks on the street’re lookin’ at me even funnier now.”
“Meanwhile, I’m almost as invisible as Sue,” Johnny tried to smarm, but there wasn’t much in the tank. Plenty of awkwardness and guilt, though.
“It’s Canterlot, they’ll just think one of the Magic Quarter’s ponies went off,” Twilight said, trying to sound reassuring and not exhausted, “but at least I got the attention of everypony who counts. You guys were fine at Plucky’s last night, where did all this come from?”
Johnny folded his forelegs, although he was sort of hoping her telescope wasn’t on him right now. “Hey, your friend took a shot at me.”
“Because I’M the one who had to do all the work to get us here an’ into position,” Applejack snapped, making him flinch.“An' even if I hadn’t would it kill ya to take this seriously?!”
“Would it kill you to lighten up?!“
“Against somethin’ that gave Princess Celestia a black eye?!”
“So, tension!” Twilight cut in, trying to sound upbeat. “Alright! Understandable!”
“Yeah, tryin’ to keep Equestria’s most unlikable bachelor alive, with only an explorer who’s too busy horsin’ around to learn street names in the most famous city in Equestria for back up, IS makin’ me feel mighty tense Twi, thanks for bein’ so understandin’!”
“Don’t worry, I’m more than happy to handle this solo if you’re too tense to remember we’re on the same side!” Johnny snapped. “And since you didn’t turn up anything, how about you just head on back to Discovery Canal and get out of the way?”
“An’ leave Twi ‘n' Spike to do the job an' carry your ego at the same time? Wouldn’t be very friendly of me!”
“Alright, alright!” They could practically see Twilight waving her hooves in placating desperation. “We’re handling this differently, I get it! But we CAN handle it! We’ve all had to handle bigger!”
“Yeah, with ponies we can rely on!” Johnny pointed out. “And it’s rich that the farm girl thinks I don’t have it together when she’s the one freaking out over a simple bodyguard assignment!”
“Aww man, you’ve gotta be FOUR TIMES what Rainbow said you were!”
“Oh boy…” Twilight moaned.
“Ah, there it is!” Sparks vented from Johnny’s eyes and he had to grip one of the statue wings to keep from angrily losing his perch. “I’m the bad guy because of stuff you weren’t there for!”
“Might as well’ve been! Worked alongside your friends and family enough times but man, not one of ‘em braced me for how condecendin’ you are!”
“Cheap talk when you’re talking down to me from on high, farm girl!”
“Say farm like it’s a slur again, playboy! I dare ya!”
“Is it a Blueblood thing?” Spike asked.
Nonplussed silence again.
“I mean, it’s past lunch so that’s all I’ve got besides being a hangry thing.”
“No,” Applejack sighed. “Sorry. I dunno. This whole thing’s gettin’ so big so fast. An' the big galoot hasn’t even shown up yet!”
“And I wouldn’t have agreed to let any of you come on this mission if you couldn’t do it!” Twilight assured. “AJ, this is my hometown, I’m freaking out too! And it’s SENSIBLE to take the scale of all this into account! It’s one of the things I know I can count on about you. It means you’re doing everything you can to help.”
“Might be oversellin’ me there Twi, but…thanks.”
The weary but relived smile in her voice cooled Johnny off a little. He didn’t like that part of her process seemed to involve harbouring a grudge on his ex’s behalf…but the modern Heroic Age had been going on for a decade now and the Elements had only been part of it for the last three years. And they’d been thrown headfirst at Nightmare-For-Real-Moon! For starters!
“And Johnny…”
Twilight took a second, trying to figure out what on earth she was supposed to say to her boyfriend’s roommate.
“I’ve worked with your friends and family too, and they all KNOW they can count on you. Even Rainbow Dash would give you that. I won’t lie, I’m not sure about how you’re handling this, but your methods work for YOU. That’s honestly what we do. Everypony does her own thing and we all sort of…bring it in.”
“Put it that way, that’s…not too different from the FF,” Johnny smiled.
“And that’s flattering.”
He could sense Twilight trying to figure out how to articulate something in the pause.
“You won’t remember me, so much was happening, but…Well, I was in my junior advanced year at Celestia’s school when Dr. Gloam hit the capital.”
“Wait, when he tried to steal her power?” Johnny blinked. “When…?”
“When he tried to threaten her into giving him dominion over the sun and the moon by levitating the school district, yes.” Twilight was trying not to giggle. “Sorry! It’s just…it’s so absurd, and I’m doing this over a phone. Anyway, I saw you all in action! I was the idiot trying to rally the rest of junior year? You and Mr. Grim stopped that tower falling on us?”
“Oh man, I do remember that!” Johnny shook his head. Advanced junior year, that would’ve been her equivalent of the high school grade he was in at the time. “Small world, huh?”
“You’d be surprised.” Applejack sounded more chilled out. “Should get Rarity to tell ya our cutie mark story sometime.”
“You were awesome that day,” Spike said sincerely.
“I’ve gotten better with age,” Johnny smiled, putting his hooves back behind his head.
“Uh, I meant Twilight.”
“Oh, right.” Johnny shrugged. “Well, same deal!”
“Thanks.” Twilight sighed. “The ironic thing? I did it because, I don’t know, school spirit I suppose, but this was when I didn’t really care about anypony around me.”
“Sugarcube, y’know that’s not true--”
“It wasn’t even the first time I was a leader,” Twilight continued, a bit too casually. “I’d had to take charge of projects...not the same scale, mind you, but you know. It was a thing I knew I could do. But both times, in the aftermath I’d always feel so…Everypony would come up to me to say good job, even try to hoof bump me and I’d just…at best I’d just smile and nod and wonder why they were taking up my time like this. It was probably only those legendary Canterlot manners that kept me from snapping at anypony because I STILL remember feeling so annoyed. Oh boy, one more ‘thanks, you too!’. Talk about school spirit, huh?”
Wow, Johnny was mercifully too stunned to say but unfortunately unable to stop thinking. No wonder she and Peter were…
“You still looked after everyone,” Spike urged.
“Seriously,” Johnny agreed, “if you guys hadn’t held that hall, we’d have been too busy trying to deal with Gloam’s windup toys to undo his spell. Was that escape tunnel your idea?”
“Heh, no!” Twilight giggled. “A stray bolt just opened up the lecture hall all the way to the sub-basement and I figured, well, it’s a bottleneck, they’ll have to come one at a time. It was Mr. Grim’s idea to use those old balloonist club models to float us all out of there.”
“An’ it’s a good thing he did! An’ a good thing YOU did for all your class,” Applejack pointed out in a tone that brooked no arguments, somehow even more stubborn than her spat with Johnny. “An’ then, what, five, six years later ya showed up in Ponyville to save us all!”
“Funny how stuff works out, right?” Twilight smiled. Johnny could hear it. “I only even read that old legend because it was the summer and I was trying to figure out what to pick for my major.”
“An’ lookit ya now.”
“Well, I’m miles away and thirty five floors up, but I know what you mean. Anyway, the point is…I’ve seen how the both of you work. It’s different, but you can do this. So please do whatever you have to do to move past this and…Huh.”
“What’s up?” Johnny sat up, unconcerned with the possibility of the motion tipping him off the hotel and towards the street.
“Spike just pointed something out…Blueblood’s here. Uh, there! In Old Town!”
“Where?” Applejack asked urgently. “I’m in the park next to Alchemax…”
“Graymalkin Street! He’s in his incognito carriage, so of course it’s got his silhouette wearing sunglasses and fedora on the shields, the conceited…!”
“On my way,” Applejack said grimly. “He stoppin’ anywhere?”
“That dress makers Rarity likes!” Spike piped up.
“Dimond Tips, got it!” Johnny scrambled up onto the roof proper and hesitated. “Uh, where’s Graymalkin Street?”
“On your left!” Twilight clarified. “No, my left! You got it! See the clock tower? It’s right past that!”
“Wait, you gonna fly?” Applejack’s voice was muffled and thumping with startled voices. “Sorry! Royal business! Sorry!”
“Nah, roof running!” Johnny grinned, pawing the ground and then galloping for the distant clock tower. Twilight’s startled protests sputtered out as his hooves flashed, a thermal pulse shooting him across the gap. “I’ll meet you on the street! No pyrotechnics unless we need ‘em, promise!”
“Thanks!”
It was progress of a sort. Hay, it'd taken him and Spidey most of freshman year to settle into just terse.
***
The unignited Torch landed on the lower façade of the clock tower, gave an apologetic salute to the startled window washers on the building he’d just dashed across, and used the tower’s drain pipes to slide his way down to Greymalkin Street level. He landed in the small gardens ringing the tower and vaulted the fence, hoping he was facing the right way.
Unfortunately, he was. Ugh. That carriage!
“Hey.” Applejack had been cutting through the alley he’d landed in, coming up next to him.
“Hey.” Johnny glanced at her, trying not to…he wasn’t sure. “Look, maybe we don’t like each other, but…”
“But we’ll always have this jackass,” Applejack smirked, nodding at the Blueblood silhouette on the door. It was actually holding a hoof up to its lips, shushing the world. “Maybe keepin’ track of him won’t be so hard after all. See anypony suspicious?”
“Other than Blueblood, you mean.” Johnny indicated the shop window. Applejack squinted. The prince was wearing the fedora and shades of his carriage logo, the top of his head poking out over a blue scarf wrapped almost all around his face. “What do you think he’s up to?”
“Talkin’ to somepony and…sneakin’ out the back? Ah nuts.” Applejack unclipped her compact. “Twi, we can see ‘im but…”
“I know, we’re on our way. Try and follow him! This leads onto Mousehole Street, if you lose sight of him…”
“Aw nuts,” Johnny echoed, eyes bugging. Applejack probably considered it a not particularly impressive omen that even he knew where Twilight was talking about.
“Quickest way between two points…” She lowered her head and galloped into the store, skidding slightly as she and the Torch stopped before the startled manager. “’Scuse us ma’am, but we gotta use your back door!”
“Well,” the mare said as she blinked, “that’s onto our diamond cutter and fitter on Mousehole Street you see, and she’s rather high end. Do you have an appointment?”
“We have a mission from Princess Celestia.” Johnny flashed her a winning smile.
“This is Canterlot, sir, everypony does.”
***
They made it out after hastily trading some vouchers for unadorned clothes, the only way to get access to the gem cutter. The store specialised in Rarity’s style of embroidering. Applejack wondered if that was a slightly better omen, even with the delay.
Luckily for them, their quarry had gotten his scarf caught on a lower branch of one of the magi-phosphorescent trees used to light city passageways like this one. He was causing patrons of the indoor shopping centre/hoof-traffic hub to give him weird looks as he practically pulled the thing down on top of him. At least they could keep him in view.
“Hey buddy, lemme help ya with that!” Applejack kicked the trunk just right, shaking the branch enough to toss the scarf lose. Johnny managed to catch Blueblood on his back before the prince toppled into somepony’s stall.
“Ah, thank you citizen,” Blueblood beamed before hastily wrapping the scarf back around his muzzle. “I mean, fellow citizen!”
It was more difficult to secure his disguise than it should have been because instead of the expected trench coat, the collar of which Blueblood could have simply tucked it into, he was still wearing his suit lapels, rose and all, meaning that in addition to an attention grabbing blue trail behind him his cutie mark was on full display.
“Going to get some gems sewn on?” Johnny wheezed, gambling that their charge would be enough of a doofus to think they didn’t recognise him, or even that he didn’t recognise Johnny. “Me and my friend here heard about this fancy custom filly in Diamond Tips.”
“Hardly,” the toff scoffed then coughed loudly. “That is, I could hardly have said it better myself!”
“Oh, well, since we all seem to be goin’ the same way…” Applejack shot Johnny a look, not sure of what rattled her more. The lie he’d just forced her to take part in or the fact it was sort of working.
“Ah, a philosopher!” They could hear the beaming expression behind the scarf, sucking them backwards through time to the moment Blueblood picked the word up and made a note to use it in conversation more.
They set off through the throng, shoppers parting before Blueblood’s bulk, not out of deference but because it and his sheer ignorance would crush them like a planetary collision. Applejack checked the crowds, trying to think what the ponies in Ambush on Station Sweet 16 or Die Herd would do. Then realised that was what Rainbow Dash would do and just felt kinda lonely.
The passageway between Greymalkin and Mousehole was one of hundreds all over Canterlot, old mining walkways caught up in the industrial revolution and the swell in pony population. Ponies needed to get around and shops needed to be where ponies were, so. The ceiling of the passage sported the occasional grate from the street above, allowing light and rainwater to aid the phosphorescent trees. Could that busker playing under one be the next assassin? The mare with the stroller? Any of the ponies and other creatures in the shops and café’s lining the passage?
Mousehole Street, around the next bend and named for the hundreds of doors and archways in its packed, twisting architecture, would have twice as many. Since the universe seemed determined to ruin her nerves today, it was also one of the biggest parts of the sun damned Spring Heels tour.
On the other hoof it’d be a nice excuse. ‘Sorry Princess, he just leapt out at us! I had to turn his pumpkin inside out, for the good of your nephew!’
Yeah, maybe. If she’d been a different sort of pony.
She blinked. “Sorry, what?”
“I said I like your hat,” Blueblood repeated, his beaming expression cutting right through his scarf and shades.
“Oh! Uh, thanks.”
“Yes, this is totally not a lie!” he continued, making Johnny shut his eyes briefly in the universal gesture of Aw Dude. “And why would I lie when we are of the same social standing? Why, as you can see, I wear a hat myself!”
Applejack checked the next storefront, her step skipping slightly as she fought to stop her hooves wrapping around his throat. “You certainly are wearin’ a hat.”
“Yes, as us commoners so often do! Despite the fact it is the 21st reign of my aunt…’sssss employer Princess Celestia and not a dance number in some hackneyed Manehattan musical hall!” He chuckled to himself, making the scarf flap in time with each Oh of his Oh-ho-ho! “All somepony of a slightly higher stock than yourselves need do to pass among you, dolphin like, would be to have their butler rummage through their least used walk-in wardrobe and ferret out the pile of Hearth’s Warming gifts their misguided aunt left them!”
Applejack noticed the intricate moon patterns on the dusty navy-blue scarf and imagined herself lassoing a stampede to rein in the need to punch this ungrateful brat right in the gut.
“So!” Johnny beamed, trying to cover the sound of her furious silence. “Are you, uh, from Canterlot originally?”
“Oh ho ho!” Blueblood chortled. “My family can trace itself all the way back to Princess Platinum’s sisters themselves!”
“Really?” Johnny half grinned, half sighed. The chortle had drawn even more shoppers’ and potential attackers’ attention, enough for the claim to draw even funnier looks.
“Ack!” Blueblood’s entire disguise jostled as his brain kicked him with a boot marked Undercover, You Dope. “Blagh! Did I say Princess Platinum’s sisters? I meant their…ngh…s-servants! Oh ho ho, the very idea that my custom made and maintained mane could come from such vaulted heights! What a hard to starboard kind of mistake for me to make! How very, um…”
“Common?” Applejack snarled.
“Mmm, was dipping my rod in the pond marked ‘foolish’, old hat rack but now you mention it, same pig sty, eh? Eh? Eh?” Blueblood made the mistake of elbowing Ponyville high’s star buckball player, who’d had to carry heavy loads since she was eight, in the ribs. “OW! Golly! Strong stock, aren’t we?”
Inspiration then made the subsequent mistake of sparking in his brain. “Ah ha! That would be an inclusive we, not a royal one, of course. For there’s no doubt that we are all of the walking class!”
“Working,” AJ and Johnny said hurriedly as a passing wheelchair user glanced over at them.
“Yes,” Blueblood said in tones that would have been for condescending to children if he’d been even remotely capable of talking to a child, “that is what we’re doing. We’re going to see that miserly dwarf Aggregate.”
Applejack blinked, impressed. “Huh.”
One of Equestria’s best jewellery workers and maybe the best diamond dog jeweller on the planet. Not so miserly when you considered the amount of finesse she employed, or the cost of the blackout glasses she needed so her telescopic eyes could cope with above-ground light. And the amount of charity work she did to pay forward pony kindness toward her own breed, who’d blame her for taking a bigoted cheapskate like Blueblood for all he was worth?
“Why?” she asked.
“Royal business,” Blueblood snapped, tripping a little as he mentally caught himself. “…which is…none of mine! Is the point I was making! Common as the mud beneath our very hooves! The sort Aggregate’s kind plays in everyday!”
“Hey, just occurred to me,” Applejack smiled. “Since we’re on the same level that basically means I can say whatever I please to ya, yeah?”
“I…suppose.”
“Then shut your mouth before I cram everythin’ your wearin’ so far down it they come out your nose.” Exact same smile.
“You dare—?!” Blueblood made a strangled noise, scarf shaking as he stamped the response down. “You…darling…thing! Oh-ho-hoooo!”
“Hey, we’re here everypony!” Johnny tried not to yell too loudly. “Well. Almost.”
Almost was Mousehole Street’s plaza, a passageway leading down to the under-offices that housed Aggregate’s workshop among other undercity businesses...and it was on the other side of a mob of pumpkin heads and placards. In a complete non-coincidence, the Greymalkin Street branch of the Canterlot tourism office looked down onto the plaza.
“I don’t believe what I’m seein’,” Applejack said with complete and total honesty.
“What do we want?!” a mare in a Canterlot Tours vest barked into her megaphone, her other three legs keeping her balanced on a soapbox.
“Air-conditioned masks!” the Spring Heels pumpkin-heads chanted.
“When do we want them?!”
“The high point of the Summer Sun Celebration and Nightmare Night!”
“OH HO HO!” Blueblood almost collapsed on top of Johnny, clutching his sides as the laughter shook him.
“I mean, it’s not exactly punchy but…”
“Oh no!” The prince used his telekinesis to remove his shades and dab at his watering eyes with the end of his scarf. “Workers rights just always crack me up. Like, the concept. Whoo!”
“Oh look, everypony!” The malevolent glee underlining the megaphone let the Element and the Torch know exactly what they’d see even as their eyes flew to the ringleader. Her eyes flashed with pink light and her smile with sadism. “It’s Prince Blueblood!”
The two heroes looked at each other, nodded, and squeezed against the still chortling prince to start forcing him to walk backwards with them.
“Destroy,” one of the pumpkin headed tour guides said. Pink lights began to flicker on in the eye holes of the masks behind him. “DESTROY!”
“DESTROY!” The chant danced from pumpkin to pumpkin. “DESTROY!”
“Flames now?” Johnny squeaked.
“Please an‘ thank you,” Applejack squeaked back.
“DESTROY!” The mob was only separated from them by distance and the decision whether to drop their placards or use them as bludgeons, but it was coming. “DESTROY! DESTROY! DES--”
They all froze as a violet flash blinded them. The ringleader yelped as she lost her balance, eyes still glowing pink as she toppled off her soapbox and into the plaza’s fountain.
“Twilight?!” Applejack gasped.
“Never fear, Twilight Sparkle is…” The announcer quality drained out of her voice as she realised she was looking up into Blueblood’s beaming face.
“Other way,” Spike squeaked reluctantly, eyes bugging at the sight behind them.
“Oh. Never fear!” Twilight spun around, her confident smirk lasting all of a second before her eyes registered what was coming towards them. “Twilight Sparkle is…here. Oh boy.”
Despite the panic and ‘Clowns!’ terror she narrowed her eyes as they met the glowing glare of the furious leader, rising out of the fountain. Was it her imagination or was the enemy’s chin…segmenting? Something was totally up with her lengthening ears and the green streaks shooting through her hair.
Then the nearest pumpkin-head was launching itself at them and she was too busy yelping and throwing up a shield to care.
“Twilight Sparkle’s here?” Applejack called over the thump-thump-thump and cries from the rapidly retreating crowds.
“I haven’t had to go into action as a princess yet!” Twilight whined. “I was trying to think Rainbow Dash thoughts!”
“Geez filly, don’t go scarin’ me like that!”
“Sparky!” Blueblood crowed.
“Not! Now!” Twilight was being forced back by the mob, partly because they’d started hurling bigger objects at her street length forcefield and partly to avoid crushing the innocent ponies behind that malevolent pink glow.
“Streets almost clear!” Applejack called. “We can make a break for the Gantry in just a few seconds!”
Twilight nodded. Not that her idea of a good time was being chased down the huge undercity elevator shaft by a rabid horde, but the winding tunnels would give them a chance to loose Blueblood’s pursuers and resurface somewhere where everypony didn’t wanna kill hi--
Well, where they wouldn’t necessarily do anything about it.
“Need any help?” Johnny called, flaming on. The pumpkin-heads were hurling barrels from abandoned carts at the field and one was being backed up by a team for use as a ram.
“Spider-Pony says you have a flare move?” Twilight grunted. Alicorn power meant she could maintain fields this size for a lot longer than she could have previously, not that doing so was easier.
“Gotcha,” The Torch agreed. “On your mark?”
“Yeah!” Twilight risked glancing over her shoulder. “Blueblood, we need you to… Why are you smiling?!”
She almost dropped her field from shock, yelping and throwing up another magenta layer to throw the throng back. The makeshift battering ram was derailed as a soaring pumpkin head crashed down on the drivers.
“Because everything suddenly makes sense, Sparky old fizzle stick,” Blueblood chortled. “Yes, it’s all so clear now. Aunty didn’t really loose her mind after all! Oh ho ho! Well done! Those wings are so convincing they even fooled me!”
“What?” The Torch squinted. Then his eyes widened. “Oh sun and moon. He thinks this is part of the play.”
“Well, it’s all so obvious!” Blueblood grinned. “I mean, Sparky? A princess?! Oh ho ho! Oh HO HO! OOOOOOH HOOO HOOO HO-hey, give those back!”
“Flare in five!” Applejack snapped, slipping his stolen shades over her eyes and retrieving her lasso from her hat. “Four!”
“Shield dropping in three!” Twilight snarled, backing up as Johnny positioned himself in front of them. “Two!”
She and Johnny nodded at each other, the princess spinning away and throwing up a wing to protect Spike’s eyes as the Torch burst into blinding white flame. The cries of “DESTROY!” became slightly more guttural and hysterical. The pumpkin heads rolled over street debris and each other, clawing at their eye holes.
“Plan?!” Johnny asked, flaming off and instinctively slipping Spike onto his back. Something about Applejack and Twilight’s attitude suggested they were going to be busy.
“Oh, it’s an Elements of Harmony classic.” Twilight’s reply was slightly muffled because she’d caught the other end of Applejack’s lasso in her mouth. They galloped into the dazed and mercifully silenced Blueblood’s gut, doubling him over with a satisfyingly windless grunt and dragging him behind them as they shot towards the Gantry’s bay at the other end of the street. “Get the ever-loving hay outta dodge!”
To be Continued
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As a Kentucky man, any Dukes of Hazzard reference is a win.
Many super hero stories could be described as such.
oooOOOooo!
I've always been kinda torn on how I feel about Black Cat. I would have liked to see an arch where she overcomes her more self-destructive tendencies and learns to love Pete, because that kind of mutual improvement is a lot of fun to watch and something most Rom-Coms just don't do, but I feel like the ship has sailed and I'm glad we finally have MJ back and the whole "Black Cat is the next Kingpin" thing has blown over. I'm liking her solo series right now.
Fluttershy, the answer to drug problems is not more drugs.
9802511
Glad to accidentally oblige considering how much of Canterlot is just me name dropping stuff from my capital.
Fair. That's kinda the neat thing about putting supers in Equestria? You can ride the more melancholic lines just enough without breaking either setting.
The real joke though is that Fluttershy is pure as the driven snow and Rarity and Peter are just being gossipy sluts. I kinda like the friendship that accidentally cropped up between them but don't wait for Sam to show up again. If he does it'll be platonic because at least three of the girls have been involved with a super at this point.
That's a good take. Mine's always been that Spidey-Cat is fun but it's the kinda fun Pete really ought to be having when he's 18 and trying stuff out.
Part of what compelled me to join in writing something as absurd and possibly accidentally eugenics endorsing as Spider-Pony Loves Twilight Sparkle is that they compliment each other a lot while still being distinct, and even with the Princess stuff Twi's basically someone doing a 9 to 5 or a weird consultancy gig. Like, every cold open is her either doing bureaucracy or reading in her downtime. There's a nice casualness there for both of them. So it's not that Peter dating another super or someone in the same line is a bad idea, it's probably just that you need that kind of thing to make it interesting and actually cute.
Felicia's a lot of fun, but she's also very definitely on the Spider side of his life so I feel like Spider-Man going with an adventuring jewel thief is kind of saying being Peter Parker just doesn't work and he shouldn't even try. Doesn't have to be that, but y'know.
That's not what Treehugger told her.
9802511
Minor update to chapter 5 before going on holiday, just because I got some free time between packing and work to finish one scene. Rest'll be in however many chapters when I get back and can devote time to them.