All You Need is Love

by AugieDog

1 - There's Nothing You Can Do That Can't be Done

Hitting the high note, Sapphire reared back on her hind legs and spread her front hooves just as the musicians behind her cut off. Not that she needed any instrument other than her own mezzo to fill the whole space.

Eyes closed, she let her voice fly, let it ring, let it soar from the front row to the mezzanine to the balconies and skyboxes along the walls of Canterlot Square Gardens—

And the audience loved it. They always loved it, always loved her, their emotions sweeter, thicker, and warmer than any crème brûlée. At a big show like this, she could practically feel it, a summer rain against her hide, and she soaked in it, reveled in the way it seeped into her.

Till something cold and dead and blank as a day-old fish smacked her behind the forehead, a spot of emptiness out in the vast arena that almost warbled her pitch, almost got her to flinch. Not that she did, of course: she'd played the rowdiest spots Equestria had to offer and had never lost her strut, had never allowed her nerves to show. With a toss of her mane, knowing the band was watching and would take the cue, she dropped to all fours, her hooves hitting the floorboards at the exact moment that the song's final chord blasted out into the hall.

Just the way they'd rehearsed it. A few seconds earlier than usual was all...

Half a heartbeat, and the place went crazy, whoops and whistles and stomps and clomps from the earth ponies, the unicorns all sparking their horns, the pegasi summoning little lightning clouds to flash and crackle in the space beneath the domed ceiling. Head bowed, Sapphire looked out through the black bars of her eyelashes, the flood of love almost overwhelming the dark little dryness, and heard a part of her shriek that she should run now and never look back.

But it was a tiny, tiny part. Snapping back up, she flashed the smile that had sold out every magazine to ever feature her on the cover and high-stepped toward the edge of the stage slowly enough and with enough sway to telegraph her movements for the lighting director. This part was gonna be ad lib, and, well, she wouldn't want the spotlight to go astray, now, would she?

"Thank you, Canterlot!" she called, and they roared back their approval—

Except for that glowering spot out there, the sucking puncture in the midst of all that adulation, a void she recognized no matter now much she really didn't want to.

Changelings. At least two of them watching her tonight. And, sure, her former hivemates had gone all 'sherbet moose' and friendly of late, but they still weren't real common here in the Ponylands. Worse, they weren't real likely to feel kindly disposed toward her, not if they'd found whatever records Her-Thankfully-Petrified Majesty might've kept.

All of it added up to her being pretty sure where in the audience they'd be sitting. To make completely sure, though—

"And let's make a little noise for our main gals, Celestia and Luna, huh?" She shaded her eyes with a hoof, the outpouring of love shifting in direction, tone, and flavor, and made a show of looking around. "Where you at, Sunbutt? Light it up if you still can! Or you too old and decrepit now that you're retiring?"

The sass got a laugh the way it had for two decades, but even better, it got her a beam of purest golden sunlight from off to the left of the Royal Box. Coming from the VIP Suite, then, the roomiest box in the venue, she knew, with space enough to hold a couple or three alicorns and a fair number of guests without cramping anypony.

Or in this case, anyling...

Though the carefully banked power she was feeling told her that these weren't just any changelings. No matter how enlightened the despot, they always smelled the same. And that meant no use running.

But a little sugar couldn't hurt. "There she is!" Sapphire waved toward the sunbeam's source like she was a filly, then put a serious look on her face. "But the fact of the matter is: I'm gonna miss you, Sunny. I mean, yeah, I know, I bust your chops a little here and there in a song or two..." She let that mischievous filly back out to play around her lips and got another burst of sweet emotion from the crowd. "But only 'cause I admire you, you hear me, girl? Admire and, yes, even love." Patting her own chest, she took a breath before adding, "Most of the time. And I know Luna hears me when I say that!"

She expected the explosion of whoops, but the building-shaking "Ha!" and the firework burst of dark-blue and silver from the VIP box was a lovely addition. Might be some sentiment there she could use once the concert was over.

Which it wasn't yet. Sapphire bared her teeth in an expression that ponies always took for a smile, an expression she'd learned years and years ago at the hooves of the Queen herself, and got back onto the script they'd rehearsed. "So how 'bout one more sweet serenade, huh, folks? One more tune to sing Celly off to the chateau we all paid for, one more song so she'll remember why she's retiring, and one friendly 'welcome to the rough-n-tumble' melody for the new Big Gal!" Sapphire pointed a hoof back and forth between her own eyes and the VIP box. "Watching you, Twiggy Spackles!"

She stomped and shouted it—"One! Two! Three! Four!"—and when the band swung perfectly into "Serves Her Right," it wasn't just the pegasi in the audience leaping out of their seats and punching the air in time with the rhythm.

No doubt about it: whatever happened tonight, Sapphire was going to see to it that her crew got a serious raise. Whether she'd be able to do it herself or would have to appeal to her captors, well, that was still an open question.

Bobbing with the beat, she launched into the first song she'd written, the song that had made her name in Canterlot's crowded club scene, the song that had gotten her denounced and praised in almost equal measure from one end of Equestria to the other, the song she'd been born to perform.

Or rather, that she'd been hatched to perform...

The end of the intro washed over her, and with head high and chest puffed, Sapphire shot out the verse:

"So yeah, you're giant,
And yeah, you're old,
But I'm no filly only doing what I'm told!

"I got no power,
I got no voice,
But when I bend a knee, it's 'cause I've made a choice!"

The musicians, the back-up singers, the dancers, the whole auditorium, it sounded like, chanted the title, then, each word on the beat with Sapphire delivering the lines between as fiercely as she ever had:

"Serves
Her
Right!"

"Don't go thinking I'm your pony puppet!"

"Serves
Her
Right!"

"If you got a game, it best you up it!"

"Serves
Her
Right!"

"There's a lesson here! You want to learn it?"

"Serves
Her
Right!"

"My respect's a coin: you got to earn it!"

The crowd howled with ferocious joy, but once again, no guards rushed the stage, no figures in black lurked in the wings, no mysterious power outages cut the sound or the lights.

Because ponies were weak, her mother the Queen had always said.

Of course, Mama now decorated the lawn out back of Canterlot Tower, didn't she?

And so, at a party celebrating Celestia stepping down from the throne, Sapphire Shores belted out the song that years and years ago had been meant to start that exact process, put her heart and soul into the performance even more than she always did.

Might be her final appearance, after all...

Author's Note:

In the episode:

"For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils," we get the titles of two Sapphire Shores' songs, one of which I'm appropriating here. The story's cover image is the "all-seeing eye" headdress that Rarity designs in that episode as well, and I'll post the five-panel contest prompt that inspired the whole thing at the end of the last chapter, hopefully before the final deadline of March 22nd.

Mike

Comments

[Dragon Turtle]

I can't even remember the last story I read with Sapphire in it. (Yet amazingly, I can remember the two episodes she featured in, and even her comic issue with Babs). I'd imagine her being a changeling had been a popular premise in the past.

Because ponies were weak, her mother the Queen had always said.

Of course, Mama now decorated the lawn out back of Canterlot Tower, didn't she?

HA!

[AugieDog]

10109556

I can't imagine:

I'd be writing about Sapphire if she hadn't been included in the prompt I got for this contest. But I'm having fun working with her!

Mike

[FanOfMostEverything]

Magnificent stuff this far, fleshing out Sapphire as a subversive element Celestia was happy to have. And "Serves Her Right" could just as easily be directed towards Chrysalis as Celestia. Looking forward to more.

[Yoshifan30]

This is pretty interesting so far So this is during the time of season 9 OK cool