The Runaway Bodyguard

by scifipony

Prologue

Starlight, Starbright, what little mare do I see tonight, with her nose oh so rosy red and her horn all aglow?
—Sunburst, the evening before he got his cutie mark.

(A rainboom had startled his filly friend into toppling a Jenga tower of grimoires. The same rainboom also entangled a half-dozen other fateful friendships in the same quantum thaumaturgical-mechanical event that would determine the fate of Equestria and the end of Princess Celestia's long reign.)