Chapter 14
"It's good to get away." Sweetie Drops took a deep breath of the crisp, chill air and let it back out. It was a different kind of weather entirely to Ponyville, not that she spent too much time there now the threat on her life had ended. She only wished she hadn't been promoted out of the running for field work. "What are you doing?"
"Setting up a gag." Turning back to the pony selling shaved ice, Lyra nodded and took the three treats from the mare and passed her some coins. "Now, to see how many ponies look at us funny."
"You—" Scootaloo watched in horror as Lyra got a little bag of yellow crystals from her jacket and tipped them over the three snow cones. "At least tell me it's lemon flavored?"
"Of course it is. Here." Passing out the yellow snow cones, it didn't take long for Lyra to both get a brain-chill and weird stares.
"I should have worn my armor," Sweetie said, though she too ate the snow cone she was given. The lemon flavored sugar crystals added a tangy sweetness to the slush that she had to admit was a good move.
The walk up the main street of the Crystal Empire had a background sound of hooves clopping on crystal, which was similar in sound to stone. They approached the front doors of the castle as they each finished their tasty—attention-getting—treats. The two guards were crystal ponies, each in some fancy armor and standing as stiff as any Royal Guard any of the three mares had met.
Clearing her throat, Sweetie spoke up. "We're here to see their royal highnesses, Empress Mi Amore Cadenza and Prince Shining Armor." The titles were intentionally wrong. She couldn't get the testing commander out of her blood. Neither guardpony showed any sign of reprimanding her.
"Their imperial majesties are not holding court today, but I will take word to them that…" Nodding to Sweetie, one of the guards raised an eyebrow in question.
"Captain Sweetie Drops of the E.U.P. Guard." Gesturing to Lyra, Sweetie did her best to maintain an even smile.
"Captain Lyra Heartstrings, commander of Princess Twilight Sparkle's Royal Guard." And Lyra gestured to Scootaloo.
Without missing a beat, and trying to ignore the look she got from the crystal pony guard, Scootaloo said, "Hi! I'm Scootaloo."
Schooling his features as best he could, the guardpony nodded his head. "I believe you are expected." He glanced at his fellow gate guard and got a nod. "Please, follow me."
Stepping into the castle required ascending a whole mess of stairs. The bottom of the thing was literally a group of enclosed stairways that acted as supports for the castle above, with a wide open plaza below that was dominated by the spinning Crystal Heart.
The throne room, when they reached it, had the two huge seats of power at the far end of the room, but sounds of conversation could be heard from an alcove to one side of the room—which is where the guard escorted the three mares.
For all the throne room was huge, the little alcove—where scribes normally recorded events—was cozy for a mare and a stallion to sit and have their lunch. Cadance, hearing hoofsteps approaching, stopped gazing lovingly into Shining's eyes for a moment and looked to see who it was. "Lyra! Sweetie! Scootaloo!"
Having a pair of high ranking officers from the E.U.P. Guard arrive was one thing, watching his princess tackle-hug them was another. Standing firm in the face of having not completely screwed up, the guardpony looked to his commander.
"Return to your post, Prism." Shining waited for the guardpony to leave and for his wife to finish subduing the greater threat. "Please say you didn't mess with him too much?"
"I barely said ten words to him," Lyra said, nodding toward Sweetie.
"I can't help testing guardponies. Too much time spent training them and leading them." With a shrug, Sweetie recalled the reason for their appearance—or at least the main reason. "Let's not keep you waiting. My answer is yes."
Cadance could feel herself radiating excitement. She was all but buzzing with a need to express her gratitude. She opened her mouth to be cut off by the smallest pony in the room.
Scootaloo said, "Which leaves me. It's a heavy decision, because I know this goes further than what was promised. If something should happen to you and Shining, what happens if both my mums were standing in front of you? The Guard isn't a job for ponies who don't feel obligated to defend lives with their own.
"Which means none of us know when that call might require a bigger price than we can pay." Gulping at the thought of it, Scootaloo pushed on. "So if—If you all have to pay that price, and I'm the only one left, I agree too."
The gravity of Scootaloo's statement hit home for Cadance and she bowed her head. "So you're all in agreement?"
Lyra nodded. "Yup. If you still think we're a good pick, we can all agree to raise your foal if the worst happens. But, please don't make us honor this promise." She accepted Cadance's hug when it came, but was a little surprised Shining dove in as well. Her own reinforcements of Sweetie and Scootaloo were welcome at such an emotionally charged moment.
"Now," Sweetie said as they ended the hug by mutual consent, "can we move on to something else now? I want to see the sights and do everything."
Scootaloo laughed. "With the concert next week, they both took leave at the same time. The Guard were in a mild panic about having two senior staff just disappearing at the same time."
"First, I've asked the local crystalberry growers to put on a special tasting of their fruit and their latest wines. It'll be wonderful, I promise." The loss of a major stress hanging over her shoulders freed Cadance, making her feel as light as air. She wanted to prance and fly and pronk—all the fun things she was told princesses should keep to a minimum or at least to important moments.
Sweetie didn't need to glance at Lyra to see she too was grinning at Cadance's obvious great mood. A look at Shining revealed him to have a big grin on his face too. She mostly kept quiet as they walked out into the crisp air. Even with Shining Armor, two of the Crystal Guard followed at a respectful distance.
It was a little detail, but she approved of the positioning, quantity, and make up of the group—a unicorn and an earth pony. She found herself curious of their training, though knowing Shining Armor was nominally in charge of such things, she expected they were more than capable of dealing with threats. If she were in his position, and had to assign guards to watch Lyra and Scootaloo's backs, she would be sure they'd been trained well.
"You're not following the conversation either?" Shining asked, dropping back to where Sweetie was walking.
Sweetie shrugged her shoulders, an action that was a reminder that she wasn't properly dressed—she was missing her armor. "I hate being away from work. I never thought I would become like this. Do you know if there's a cure?"
"Normally I'd say settling down with a loving mare and having a foal, but you've already tried that." Gesturing ahead, Shining let out a sigh. "I know what you mean, though. Bright Feather puts up with my letters. I try not to tell him how he could run the Royal Guard, but when he started asking for tips I couldn't help it."
"Well, that explains how he got up to speed so fast. I wish I'd had a mentor for my promotion."
"The curse of coming up with something that's such a good, new idea that you get put in charge of it." Nodding, Shining smirked after a moment. "From what I've heard, there are a lot less outbreaks of crazy."
It was a common enough term in the Guard. An outbreak of crazy was, in most cases, some magical artifact or creature from the past causing enough chaos that Discord himself sometimes showed up merely to eat popcorn and delight in the mayhem. "Down a lot, yeah. Finding and dealing with these damn artifacts is going to be my life's work, though. It's almost like fate itself produces them."
"If that's the case, what you have there is job security." Shining knew where they were going, but he was happy to let Cadance take her time on the walk. Between her and Lyra, though, they seemed intent on talking about everything and everyone before even reaching the farm.
The point was valid, which was part of why Sweetie missed her work—there was so much of it. "So what is this place we're going to?"
Shining took a deep breath and let it out. "Farmers. Smart ponies doing good work. The kind of people we're doing our jobs for." He looked at Sweetie to make sure she was getting what he said, and saw a look of understanding. "They wanted some big event to show off what they make, and they're getting us."
"So I need to put on a bit of a show as an Equestrian dignitary?" Sweetie wished she didn't put so much distaste into the words, but it was how she felt on the matter. "We should have brought Blue with us."
Rolling his eyes, then laughing, Shining nodded. "This would be the exact kind of thing that Blue loves. Somewhere he can relax and not have his personas in place. How are he and Bread doing?"
"She's now officially recognized as a noble of some out-of-the-way part of Equestria. Now that it's public, she gets to live a bit of a wild life for a while until the next drama happens." At Shining's grin, Sweetie narrowed her eyes. "What?"
"Look at you. Keeping up with all the castle gossip."
She groaned. "I have to. Can you believe two nobles tried to hide an artifact they'd found? The only reason I found out about it was Jet Set."
"You have spies at all levels then?"
Thinking about it, Sweetie nodded. "Yeah. Every town, every city, and every social group. Necessity is a powerful force. If I didn't, those fools would still be duplicating bits and using them to pay their debts."
"Ouch. How did that work out for them?" Shining asked.
"The coins dissolved the moment nopony was actually looking at them. The fools were lucky we caught up to them before the ponies they'd paid did." Nodding back over her shoulder, Sweetie said, "You trained them?"
"Partly. They didn't need training so much as a reason to do their jobs. When the Empire returned, it was fresh out of a nightmare where Sombra was still in control. It wasn't hard to rebuild their trust in rulership, but it is still an ongoing fight to make them trust themselves." His ears folded down as Shining brought to mind all the little encounters—every day—where a crystal pony seemed to dangerously defer to him. "And the first bit, trusting us? It's almost too much."
"'Almost'?"
"Cady is amazing. She has infinite patience and can wait out anypony that thinks she's above them. If it wasn't us here, trying to put this nation back together, then it might well be another Sombra ready to take advantage of them. So, almost. Almost too much, too slow, and too sad—but I'll fight for them."
"I seem to remember a brave captain who had the patience to teach a filly how to be the first female Royal Guard in generations."
"That was entirely borrowed from the filly in question."
"Well, if you happen to know that captain, let him know that he set the bar way too high for conduct in the upper echelons of the E.U.P. Guard." Ahead of them, Cadance, Lyra, and Scootaloo were slowing. "Looks like we need to put on our faces again."
"If anypony asks, we were discussing the latest training techniques." Shining put on his best smile, a genuine one. He didn't need to pretend he was something he wasn't when he had so many friends around him.
"Absolutely." Holding out one hoof when they stopped, she got a bump back from Shining. "Is this the farm?" she asked Lyra and Cadance. It obviously was. There was a small fence and a barn—and hundreds of rows of berry bushes strung out in lines leading away from the edge of the city.
"Bonny, you know it is. Now come on, the nice ponies are waiting for us." Without thinking on it, and mostly because she'd been having them out more and more at home, Lyra spread a wing out and put it over Sweetie's back. A moment later she realized her mistake and snapped it back.
Coming up on Lyra's other side, Shining coughed. "Still not ready to just let 'em out?"
"No. Also, this shirt is custom-made so I can hide them. I'm not going to leave them out for everypony to misinterpret." Lyra's minor grumpiness was overridden by Sweetie giving her a hug.
"I thought you didn't have them unless you cast a specific spell?" Shining asked.
"Go on," Sweetie said. "Tell him."
Groaning, Lyra rolled her eyes. "It's easier to hide them when they're physical. It turns out that ethereal, golden wings will pass right through a shirt meant to hide wings." The huge grin on her wife's face did nothing to cure the ironic pain of that realization.
All three of them froze when Cadance cleared her throat. "I hope you're all hungry and thirsty, they have a big tasting set up for us."
Bowls of berries and cream were dusted with powdered sugar and had smiling ponies near them, ready to explain the full heritage of the berries in question. Everyone got to try the berries, and though they all tried the wine, none imbibed so much as to even get a slight buzz from it.
Scootaloo was having a blast, which at the same time felt almost like a betrayal. Here she was, without her best friends or coltfriend, having way too much fun. The berries all tasted good, and while she wasn't a stranger to wine, she was being trusted to judge how much she should drink.
As they left the farm, she spotted Shining giving the two trailing guards a signal. It was subtle, but one she remembered from her time training with the Royal Guard. Priority shift. Escort alicorn. When he glanced her way and raised an eyebrow, she made a quick gesture for Acknowledged and Request orders.
Realizing he shouldn't have underestimated Scootaloo's perception, Shining gave her the gesture for Accompany me. "Dear, I promised I would do an inspection today. You should take the ladies back to the castle and get ready for tonight."
Eyes bright, anticipation building, Cadance actually did a quick little excited dance. "Of course! Don't spend too long playing guard commander." Turning her attention to Lyra, Sweetie, and Scootaloo, she said, "You're all going to love this! I planned a party for us!"
"I—I'd like to see the guardhouse," Scootaloo said, biting her lower lip. She really did want to see it, too, and not entirely because Shining had invited her. "But you all go and have fun!"
Lyra raised an eyebrow, but shrugged at Scootaloo. "You two have fun, then. Don't be too long!"
Walking to Scootaloo, Sweetie gave her a quick hug. "Sorry if we're no fun."
"You're plenty fun, but—" Scootaloo hugged back before letting go. "Yeah."
Watching the two Guardponies follow after Cadance, Sweetie, and Lyra, Scootaloo shot them a signal for Good work, and got a pair of raised eyebrows back before they left.
"You should see the cool spears we got. Sombra had his armory stocked up pretty well and after checking them over for any of his influence, I got the guards using them." Shining, at heart, was still a colt who loved playing with shiny things. He was absolutely unsurprised when Scootaloo matched his marching pace toward the barracks.
Scootaloo was no less the weapon nerd. Ever since she'd gotten to practice with Royal Guard spears and then acquired her first pair of foreleg claws, she'd been hooked on discovering and mastering everything she could find. "I'd think he would have been equipping ponies with some kind of shield against the Royal Guard spears."
"That's a bit of a grim story, actually. No, there is no shield against Royal Guard spears. Sombra didn't care about losing his Guardponies so long as they could also take down their opponents." It had hurt to realize this, when he put together the tactics training and capabilities of the crystal ponies' guard. "His actual plans for the weapons were to eventually have the death of their user act as a trigger to make the weapon detonate all its magic potential."
Wincing at the realities of that, Scootaloo sighed. "I'm glad he's dealt with. He is dealt with, right?"
"Oh, yeah. Even Princess Celestia made sure of that. He's gone for good this time. Nothing can bring him back." Turning, Shining led the way into what seemed like simply a larger than normal crystalline building.
"Wow." The inside seemed like some kind of converted warehouse. There was a large training area, that several ponies were using to practice formation fighting, and several offices along one side. Scootaloo was impressed. "This is pretty cool. It keeps all of your stuff out of the way."
"The whole block is dedicated to homes and specialist training for the Guard. I've been focusing on group tactics, making them most effective as fighting squads with dedicated roles. Crystal ponies don't have as many unicorns or pegasi among them, so the focus is more on physical control of fights." Leading the way over to one side of the training area, Shining gestured at the rows of weapons. "Want to give them some practice?"
"You're asking if I want to show off, that's always a yes." Selecting a pair of the larger training claws, Scootaloo strapped them on with practiced ease. "These are heavy. Not enchanted?"
"Too heavy for you?"
"Not when I'm in the air." To prove her point, Scootaloo gave her wings a pump and lifted off the ground. Doing a quick spin, she shifted the claws so they sprang out and rapidly reversed their momentum, showing the extent to which her natural pegasi skill had developed—they looked practically weightless.
Shining walked over, fully aware of the hellion mare hovering beside him, and approached the training soldiers at an angle so they could all see him.
"Sir!" All six of the crystal ponies broke off from their engagement and stopped to salute.
"At ease. I have a small challenge for you today, and you can take it or leave it." No sooner did he say that, though, than Shining noticed two of the ponies, a mare and a stallion, stiffen. "It's in two parts. The first will be a solo spar against this young mare. The second will be a group engagement against myself and her."
"Captain," Windbreak, the sergeant of the squad, nodded his head toward Scootaloo, "I believe Prism would be the best for undertaking that."
"Sir." Prism was almost a clear crystal—unique for a crystal pony—and she was even more exotic thanks to her horn.
Sizing up the mare, Scootaloo realized she was at a minor disadvantage. She knew that Prism would have good training as a unicorn, given the scarcity of them among the crystal ponies it seemed a given that those they had would have more training, but she was used to sparring with the best of the best unicorns. What worried her was the two unknowns—she didn't know Prism's special talent and she hadn't been paying attention to the bulletins regarding crystal pony racial abilities.
Flying to the opposite side of the training hall, as directed, she settled down onto the ground and felt the weight and mass of the claws she'd chosen reassert itself. Around her were odd dappled lighting, artifacts of the crystalline roof of the building letting the sun shine through it.
As Shining read the rules—standard Guard ones that she knew by heart—Scootaloo's mind assembled and processed the facts and speculation. Crystal ponies had reacted to light, or so she remembered reading in the report of Sombra's defeat. They had something that related to hope and power. Names were important to a lot of ponies, too.
When Shining Armor signaled the fight to start, Scootaloo latched onto the few facts she could assemble:
The mare was named Prism.
Prisms change light as it passes through them.
Light was key to crystal ponies' power.
Scootaloo didn't try to take to the sky. She didn't leap into the air, as any trained pegasus would do, to take advantage of her unique racial ability to fly. She dove sideways and forward—which is what saved her from a focused beam of coherent light that would have probably seared her feathers if she'd gone upward.
The next attack to come Scootaloo's way was magical—a spell she knew of. For a moment she dove up and caught some air with her wings, twisting the magical blast so it curved around her like air would when she was flying. Unlike other pegasi, though, she had been practicing something new with her coltfriend's help. Working her wings into an arc, she caught the spell with the primaries of her left wing and rolled it, shifting the magic's momentum and directing it back along her torso and right wing—aimed right back at its caster.
Prism wasn't ready for a spell coming her way, Scootaloo could see. The mare was stunned a moment before she dove to the side. Finally, safely in the air, Scootaloo could start to take some initiative and engage with her opponent. Dodging around the next beam of light, she spiraled down and was only forced back from a bout-winning attack at the last moment by a shield spell.
Circling back to the ceiling, Scootaloo watched as Prism realized her error. "That spell's too strong. You gotta lower it if either of us want this to con—What am I saying, you can't even hear me in—" She had to pump her wings hard as the shield dropped and another beam of light came at her, this time not petering out but drawing an arc through the air as Prism walked it toward her.
Dodging light, Scootaloo mused as she did it, was becoming her least favorite thing. Since she'd returned Prism's spell at her, there hadn't been a single other aimed spell used. Barely getting out of one roll with her feathers intact, she aimed her secret weapon and launched it.
The disassembled claw-pin, a small piece of metal that retained the claw blades in the housing, sailed down at Prism unseen—Scootaloo hoped—by the mare. As the next beam was starting to coalesce, the tiny fragment of metal hit Prism right between the eyes.
It wasn't a big opening, but Scootaloo took it. She didn't rely on gravity to send her ground-ward, instead pumping her wings as hard as she could and pouring her magic into her aerodynamics. The beam of light started to form, but its aim was off. Fortunate, for Scootaloo, since she didn't have an ounce of energy left to spare to bend around it.
When she landed on Prism's back, her left foreleg—the one with a fully functioning set of claws—hooked around the mare's neck and tugged tight.
"Damn, you move fast." Prism relaxed and waited for the smaller pony to climb off her, which she did after carefully removing the blades from Prism's neck. "Was that spell redirection a new training technique from Canterlot?"
"No." Shining Armor walked up to the pair, eyes fixed on Scootaloo. "I talked to some Wonderbolts recently—they would have mentioned something like that."
Looking around the floor for the missing pin, Scootaloo found it and reassembled her right claw. "It's something I've been working on. Firelance helped me practice it. Rather than twisting my body out of the way, I twist the path of the spell back onto itself."
"Yeah, I noticed that. Almost got me with it, too. Why didn't you do it with my light beams?" Prism asked.
"Way too fast. Spells move a lot slower and I can spread the effort out over half a second. Light is just—"
"You were dodging them well enough."
"Yeah, but that was bending me. Completely different." To Scootaloo it made perfect sense. Bending herself around something was far easier than bending it around her.
"Sir?" Prism asked, and when she got a nod continued. "Permission to sit out the squad fight. I know when I'll do more harm than good, and throwing magic her way will only end badly for us."
"If you wouldn't mind, Scootaloo, could you instead give Lark a lesson on how to do that?" Shining felt that the showing off that Scootaloo was apparently always happy to do was more than covered by redirecting magic.
Narrowing her eyes a moment, Scootaloo figured out the game and laughed. "Let me guess, after this you'll talk me into holding off teaching it to anypony in the Guard until after your next visit?"
Beaming his delight, Shining nodded. "Now that you mention it, I might ask that. It couldn't hurt, surely?"
Holding out her hoof, shoe out to Shining, Scootaloo laughed when his huge (compared to hers) hoof made contact. "Deal. Now, Lark, I'm going to get unicorns to throw spells at you. I want you to show me how well you can dodge them."
Lark judged he wasn't much older than Scootaloo, but it still felt a little weird to be taking lessons from someone his junior—until she started on the technical aspects of dodging spells, angling the path of the spell into an arc, and slinging it back at the caster.
Almost a dozen bolts struck him, thankfully without any energy behind them, before he managed to deviate one slightly. It was only a small adjustment, but it let him feel what he should be doing so that the next one he managed to get almost fully perpendicular to its original heading. "This—I can't believe I'm doing this."
"Keep it up. You should be at the point now where you need practice, rather than more theory." Scootaloo didn't mind giving out encouragement. This was, after all, a practice run for her teaching others how to do it. She wasn't being completely altruistic to Shining, of course. Firelance had been practicing with her and knew what spells he could employ that couldn't be redirected—even if they seemed like they should be able to. "Just don't go too hard on the Guard, okay?"
"You say that like turning their own spells on them won't make it impossible for a unicorn to fight. The only reason Prism had a chance was her special talent." Gliding down to the floor of the training hall, Lark landed with Scootaloo at his side. She'd been quite the surprise, over the course of the lesson. He'd expected a lot of you should be feeling and it kinda goes like. Instead he'd gotten precise instructions and critique that had quickly gotten him results. "Sergeant, Captain, I believe I need some more practice and I will be able to do perform this skill as required."
"And teach it?" Shining asked.
"Sir!" Lark nodded, giving his affirmative simply with the lack of denial.
"Good. Round up all the pegasi from each squad. I want you to practice this so you can perform it by the time I visit Canterlot in a month." Shining saluted to Lark. "Dismissed."
The walk to the castle was a good way to cool down for Scootaloo. It wasn't that being among guardponies was tiring, but treating a friend of your family as an officer demanded a different mindset compared to normal conversation. "You know, there are at least one unicorn that will adapt to this trick so fast Lark's head will spin, and I know of another who knows exactly how to counter it."
Letting loose a surprised whinny, Shining bit his lip. "Lyra and…"
"Not telling. I can't make it too easy for you." With a little strut in her step, Scootaloo enjoyed Shining's slight panic—even if she knew it was mostly for laughs. "Oh, I didn't get to see one of Sombra's weapons."
"You're here for a few days, right? Then we're all off to see the concert in Ponyville." Shining loved the idea of getting away, but he had learned to enjoy helping the ponies of the Crystal Empire thrive. Like bringing Scootaloo in to help him boost morale in the guardponies he'd been cultivating.
"Yeah, but then we have to make another excuse to sneak away tomorrow."
"I'll help."
Two days in the Crystal Empire had been fun. Lyra had indulged her girly side and let Cadance guide her and Sweetie around, going to health spas and fancy eateries had eaten the bulk of their time, but she'd noticed Scootaloo sneaking away each day with increasingly esoteric reasons to explain it—that were all corroborated by Shining. She knew the pair had been having a more rough and tumble time of it, but they seemed to enjoy that more than either would with Cadance's itinerary. "So, I arranged with Twilight to get us six tickets."
"Six?" Cadance asked. She had managed to talk everyone out of using the royal carriage because she wanted to keep a low profile in Ponyville. Hence why she and Shining also had disguises.
Sweetie smirked and said, "The five of us and Trixie. She's touring, but she has stowed her wagon at our place in Canterlot, then she'll be getting on the train with us and riding to Ponyville."
Cadance couldn't help but fluff her wings in excitement. "Oh! And Pinkie will be there too? It will be just like old times." Unlike her husband, who was disguised as a unicorn, Cadance had a pegasus illusion in place.
She'd kept a similar color coat to her normal self, but her mane was a single tone yellow. Shining had dulled his coat to a soft gray and had a brown mane, since his own colors were far too well-known.
"Assuming no epic disaster happens that needs Twilight and her friends to stop," Lyra said. When everyone stared at her like she'd let out a string of curses, she went on the defensive. "What?"
"Don't jinx this." Sweetie booped Lyra on the nose. "We're going to have a lovely time, and should anything dare to interrupt it, it will incur the wrath of an entire division of the Guard—"
"…an alicorn—" Cadance added.
"...the Crystal Guard—" Shining held up his hoof to his wife and they indulged in a little bump.
"…and a pegasus," Scootaloo said, finishing things up.
"So, what you're saying is, a small army will ensure this weekend goes according to plan?" Lyra asked. With everyone around her now nodding, she smirked. "Well, now I know something will go wrong. You can't draw up battle plans for an army without everything going to pieces seconds after you're finished."
Shining laughed and nodded in full agreement. "But we make plans anyway. Not making plans is how you lose a fight."
Sweetie nodded, letting out a soft grunt for all the first-time commanders who got to learn that the hard way. "We're about to come out of the tunnel." She'd commuted enough times to know the ride up and down the mountain well. Not ten seconds after she spoke, the morning light from Celestia's sun found the windows and swamped the electric lights inside the carriage.
The conductor entered the carriage and looked around all the ponies within. "We'll be stopping briefly in Canterlot, then moving on down to the south-east."
"Thank you. We'll have another joining us—a blue unicorn." Cadance didn't mean to take the initiative, it was her training and recent events pushing her to take the lead.
Shining, unlike his wife, was perfectly content to be out of the spotlight. He relaxed and let the others talk while the train came to a stop. In a few moments the door at the end of the car opened and Trixie Lulamoon stepped in.
Gazing around at the ponies present, she spotted Shining and Cadance and started to laugh. "Who in Equestria did those illusions?" Marching right up to Cadance, Trixie tilted her head to the side and then let out a sigh. "Was it Twilight?"
"It was Lyra." Cadance was perhaps little defensive, mostly because she liked the illusion.
"Drat. I could have bugged Twilight about it for days. No matter, The Great and Powerful Trixie will fix this." Warming up her magic, Trixie started assembling multiple layered illusions and, holding those patterns, she removed the illusions already on the pair. Or, she tried to. "What is this? I thought you said Lyra put these on?"
"Trixie, we've been trying to keep this quiet but"—Lyra walked up to Trixie and, carefully, began to extend her wings—"I've become an alicorn."
Staring and in shock, Trixie tried to put words together in a row but they kept failing to make sense even in her head. Eventually, when her awareness spread back out to more than Lyra, she realized there was a lot of laughter. "What?"
"She's not an alicorn yet, Trixie," Cadance said.
Lyra folded her wings back and under the folds at the back of the dress she was wearing. "I'm not the messiah, I'm a very naughty filly. It's a joke, Trixie. They're not exactly real."
"But they're not an illusion."
"No, Trixie, they're not. It's a long story, but it seems like I might be turning into an alicorn." Lyra slumped in place. It took a lot from her to finally admit it, though making a joke out of her winged state helped. "It all started when Twilight was on a trip with her friends and a mare stole her cutie mark.
"Friendship magic was coming undone and there was nopony else. Everypony in town helped, and together we—"
"What she's trying to say is that she held Twilight's newly created magic together until Twilight got her cutie mark back. Everyone in town helped, when they could, but she was the center of it," Sweetie said.
"This is a worrying trend." Trixie didn't bother trying to regain the illusion spells she'd been preparing. "At this rate, everypony I know will turn into an alicorn." Turning her head to look at Shining, Trixie asked, "Any feelings of feathers growing in? Maybe some new limbs growing from your back?"
Leaning a little closer to Trixie, Cadance clucked her tongue. "What about you, Trixie? Apparently wings are contagious."
"Growing wings would be too mainstream for Trixie." Always keen to play the straight character role in a gag, Trixie was subtle with her magic, making a pair of illusory wings appear under her cape without a hint of her pink magic showing from under her hat. Stretching one of the wings out, she pretended to preen.
Narrowing her eyes, Lyra let out a groan. "I couldn't detect that illusion at all."
"Well, don't look at me," Shining said in his deeper voice. "You're better at general magic than I am."
The look of joy on Trixie's face at having stumped the pair was, in a word, beatific. "That's because The Great and Powerful Trixie has been practicing, and she has also found a much better partial-pattern blocker for her hat." Lifting the item in question from her head, she passed it to Lyra.
With it hovering before her, Lyra could feel the joyful swirls of wild dark magic inside the threads of the hat. It called to her to dance with it and make it grow until it blotted out the sun. Hearing her name, she shook her head and looked at Sweetie—who was standing right beside her compared to across the car a moment earlier. Her wife looked concerned. "Uh, let me guess. Eyes got all purple-green, black smoke…"
Lyra only had to watch everyone nodding to realize she'd been a bit too carried away with darkness. "Sorry. Ever since Luna shared her source of darkness magic with me, it's been reacting to any spells that have darkness in them. I dread to think what will happen when I share harmony."
Trixie snorted and shook her head. "No. Light and motion will be the worst. All horns leak a little light magic and motion—telekinesis—is the most common spell ponies know."
"Maybe if I had a friend learning them with me, it wouldn't be so much of a problem?" Lyra shot Trixie her best evil grin. "I could give you a lesson in a better wing spell, for a start."
Setting her hat back on her head, Trixie rolled her eyes at the idea. "An illusion spell is all I need for wings. Anything else is not Trixie's style."
With the train moving (not that Lyra noticed it start, thanks to dark magic's little interlude), Lyra got comfortable on a seat and relaxed a little more. The discussion shifted to more mundane topics, and while Lyra did offer small opinions here and there, she was mostly thinking about her wings.
The joke, as good as it had been, was a sign of her slow acceptance of her fate. While sitting there, she kept glancing at Cadance—who didn't have a magic source of her own.
"You're frowning more than normal." Sitting beside Lyra, Scootaloo was a little surprised how little she had to look up to see Lyra's face. "Something wrong?"
"No. No, not really. I'm still working my way through the wings thing. The joke earlier was a bit—It surprised me. Why is this even a thing?"
Not expecting to be able to give a good answer, Scootaloo shrugged and said the first thing she could think of. "Well, the reason you started all this was because you were a—a backup for Twilight. Maybe there's a reason for you to be a backup for all magic?"
"That—" It made a lot of sense and ticked all the boxes that Lyra could think of. "I'd rather work so that that kind of backup isn't needed."
"I've read your training manuals for officers. 'Plan for the worst' was your motto for most tactical situations. Maybe fate itself has started reading them too?" Scootaloo wouldn't normally go so far with Lyra, but she felt the mare she considered her mother needed to hear her own words.
Taking the words and mulling them over, Lyra was both giddy that Scootaloo had read her books and surprised at the way she'd used the information now. "I guess destiny is far more pragmatic than I thought. That would fit, unless it knows for a fact that we can't get in the way of whatever force is trying to stop magic by disabling the princesses. That's a little bleak, though."
"It would mean, I think, that they will lose their ability to guide their magic sources." Extending her wing out, Scootaloo poked Lyra in the side. "That means—"
"… that I should stop shirking my duty and do this. Yeah. I'm going to have to surrender to fate. Ugh, I shouldn't have tried to fight it in the—" It was a hurricane. A swirling mass of raw power that wrapped Lyra up and isolated her. Despite feeling trapped by it, she realized it was allowing her to still move.
Fate, Lyra thought. Harmony.
As the second concept flickered into being in her mind, Lyra felt the magic open up and pull her into it. For an instant that may have lasted an eternity she could see everything stretching out before her. Not once. Not twice. But three times she would have to rescue not simply one of the magic sources—but all of them. The final seemed like it was destined to destroy her with an eternity of agony, but harmony showed her there was a path through it if she trusted her hooves to fate.
"Lyra?! Lyra!" The train had arrived in Ponyville and Sweetie had been forced to order it to halt. Lyra was frozen in place and not even Cadance's magic could coax Lyra back to motion. Bracing, she prepared to knock her wife over when Lyra gasped like a drowning mare and blinked her eyes rapidly. "Lyra?"
"Harmony!" Lyra looked around, her purpose renewed even if she couldn't stop the tears pouring from her eyes. "Harmony magic got to me when Scootaloo told me what I needed to hear. How long was I out like that?"
"It was a slow ride down the mountain, but not that slow," Sweetie said. "Maybe an hour."
"Huh, not bad. Last time it was over a day. Well, that's three now. I hope I didn't drool too much or anything?" Lyra looked around everyone as they stared at her. "What?"
"They're staring at me," Discord said, leaning down so he could put his head beside Lyra's. "Or did you really think your own part in the cosmos was that important?"
"Why are you here?" To Lyra, every time Discord had been present, a calamity had befallen her life. Though, the last one having introduced her to Tree Hugger had been a net victory.
"Harmony!" a good Discord said, floating beside Lyra's head. He was obviously the good one, wearing white with a halo. On the other side was a Discord in a red jumpsuit with his horns painted red.
"What abo—No. No. You can't be—You?!" Lyra stared at the good Discord in shock.
Pressing a paw to his chest, Discord pulled the lyre off Lyra's flank and strummed it a few times. "One of the delicious ironies of life. Don't get me wrong, chaos is my one true love, but harmony couldn't exist without that same chaos. They're stuck together. Crazy and sane. Fun and boring. Se—"
"I get it. It's a yin and yang thing. You can't have one without the other and their balance is—is your job?"
"Hrmm." Tossing the lyre back to Lyra's side, Discord made an excited wiggle as his two halves returned to one. "You know, we should spend more time together. No, we will spend more time together. You might be the only creature alive today that gets me. I want to take you apart and see what makes you tick."
Feeling her perspective shift, Lyra realized she'd turned into some kind of clock that was rapidly falling to pieces. Inside her, harmony coiled around and danced in sympathy to Discord's antics.
"Oh, you don't need this part anymore," Discord said, picking one gear out of the floating, exploded clock parts and flicking it away before the clock reassembled into a pony. "You'll thank me later."
"What was—? You know what, never mind." Centering herself, Lyra closed her eyes for a moment to ignore Discord before saying, "I humbly accept the offer, but it will have to wait until…" She looked at Sweetie.
"At least tomorrow afternoon. We have the concert tonight, and I'll be cooking breakfast for everypony tomorrow, then Shining and Cadance were going to have lunch and leave, right?" Looking at the couple, Sweetie got a pair of nods. "Right, so you two can have your little play-date tomorrow afternoon."
Picking up on the gag and running with it—literally—Discord collected the speech balloon that appeared beside Sweetie's head and shrugged. "I'll put that date in my calendar." Opening the speech balloon like a book, Discord produced a piece of fruit, a date, out of thin air and put it inside before folding it closed again. "Tootles."
"Why do you think Discord goes so easy on Lyra?" Cadance asked Shining. "Every time I've had to deal with him, he's—"
"Removed your horn. I know. He keeps taking my mane off to use to blow his nose." With a sigh Shining shrugged.
"It's probably because of Tufts," Scootaloo said.
Everyone went quiet for a moment, then Lyra nodded. "Yeah, but I guess I need to establish my own rapport with him. But, that's for tomorrow. Tonight we're going to have some fun!"
As all the adults cheered and charged out of the train car, Scootaloo couldn't help but feel a little odd. She was looking forward to the concert, but at the same time she wished she could share it with Firelance. But, what with Lyra getting the day off, his duty was at Twilight's side.
Climbing off the train too, she walked after her friends and family, unsure what to do about her melancholy.
"Hey, Scoots!"
The familiar voice dragged Scootaloo's attention away and brought a smile to her face. "Hey yourself, Apple Bloom. Where's Sweetie Belle?"
"She's already helping Miss Cheerilee with the contest. I came here because Countess Coloratura needed somepony to show her where the concert will be and—I think that's her." Pointing with her hoof, Apple Bloom drew Scootaloo's attention to a mare dressed as bizarrely as any she'd ever seen. Wearing a veil, a big jacket, and with faker eyelashes than she'd ever seen Rarity wear, Apple Bloom figured that was definitely her target.
Shrugging and following, Scootaloo glanced back over to where Lyra, Sweetie Drops, and their friends were collecting all the luggage from the trip. When Lyra glanced her way, and smiled with a nod. Turning back, she watched a stallion leave the train car behind Coloratura and immediately start loading luggage onto Apple Bloom's back. Walking over to her friend, Scootaloo asked, "Uh, what's going on?"
"Ugh, a pegasus? Couldn't they have sent a unicorn to help with our luggage. You'll barely be able to carry a quarter of my—our things."
"They're not here to carry our things, Svengallop. They're fillies from the local school." Coloratura lifted the cases off Apple Bloom's back and passed them back to her manager. "You wouldn't make my biggest fans—also my littlest—carry everything, would you?"
Svengallop didn't have much restraint, but the one thing he knew he couldn't push Coloratura on was her support of school foals. "I'll find somepony to help, then."
When her manager was gone, Coloratura turned back to Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. "Sorry about that. It's been a rough trip and—You remind me of somepony I used to know. Anyway, I'm Coloratura! Is there anything you want to talk about while we—" She realized, with her manager gone, she had a little more freedom. "Can you take me to see your school?"
The conspiratorial tone, hidden not at all, got a big grin from Scootaloo. "Sure. The first trick to ditching anypony at the train station is to get back onboard." Leading the way back onto the train, Scootaloo slipped over to the door on the opposite side—the one that had no platform—and opened it. "Now we jump down here and make a run for it."
Freedom never required so much exercise, but Coloratura let out a laugh as she landed and took off at a run with the two fillies—young mares, she corrected herself. She was laughing so much, in fact, that she barely heard the train start to move. For a little bit they ran alongside it before slowing and letting it pull away so they could cross the tracks into the town itself.
"The school's this way." Apple Bloom took the lead now that Scootaloo's sneaky trick worked. Wherever Svengallop was, he definitely had no clue where they were. "Why did you want to get away from him?"
"He can be a bit"—Coloratura didn't want to say annoying, but boy was she thinking it—"uh, pushy. He does it to keep me on schedule, and he means well, but I don't need to practice this early and I wanted to see my special fans."
The excursion was a little odd for Scootaloo. She was so used to being treated as an adult by so many of the adults that knew her, that being lumped-in with foals again had a chord of dissonance. Still, she was committed to the role of guide. "That's the school over there."
Coloratura followed Scootaloo's wing-point only until she noticed the big red building and picked up the pace. "Ever since I was a filly myself, I loved performing for foals. It's so—It's just so uplifting."
Cheerilee had been relieved. Coloratura had arrived at the perfect time, and all the foals looked so excited to have her they all tried to perform their acts at once. She'd relied a little more heavily than usual on the aid of the older foals—particularly Scootaloo and Apple Bloom. Despite how tired she already felt, she was careful to make a note that both would receive extra commendations for their assistance. "Okay, everypony, it's time for you all to go home and get ready for the big concert tonight!"
Like a hurricane leaving only disaster in its wake, the combined classes of the school fled the building, running off into the town and for their various homes. Scootaloo could fly all day, run all night, and still have energy left to fight—but she fell to her belly as her reserves flagged. Beside her, Apple Bloom was similarly drained and the pair could see Cheerilee was barely holding up.
Which is why it felt unfair to all three that Coloratura was practically bouncing with energy.
"Can you show me to the concert now?" Coloratura asked, only seeming to take notice of her companions' lack of energy thanks to the now-foalless room. "Or should I find somepony else?"
"No." Scootaloo pulled herself to her hooves. "I can take you. You need help to stand, Apple Bloom?" When her friend raised a hoof, Scootaloo used a wing to pull her standing. "We might be down a crusader, but that won't mean we'll get defeated by—"
"Countess Coloratura!"
The shout from the front of the schoolhouse sounded like a particularly angry Svengallop. When Coloratura tried to step forward and face him, she was surprised when it was Scootaloo who bodily pushed her back and took the lead. "I can—"
"Lower your voice, please. This is a school." Her training coming to the fore, Scootaloo let calm wash through her as she spoke with an even tone. "Coloratura is coming out in a moment."
Straightening himself up and gesturing flippantly at Scootaloo, Svengallop rolled his eyes. "And who do you think you are to speak to me like that? I'm her manager!" Walking up to Scootaloo, Svengallop stood in her personal space to ensure his height over her counted extra.
"I'm Cad—" Scootaloo didn't get any more out. Coloratura pushed past her and stomped up to Svengallop to stand in his face.
"She's a filly who was showing me around. How dare you bully her like that." It was her one trigger, the only one she still held up as being worth fighting for, but Coloratura felt a rising anger that was as pure as her cause and righteous to boot. "Turn around and go back to the venue right now and maybe I'll come in time to do a sound check."
Realizing his error, Svengallop clamped down on his teeth with all his willpower and, with a last glare at Coloratura, turned around. It was the beginning of the end, he knew. Now that she'd stood up to him once, he expected more instances to come. As he calmly walked away, a new sense of purpose filled him. "One last squeeze and she'll be back to the middle of nowhere—just where I found her."
Blowing out an angry little whinny, Coloratura turned back to Scootaloo and looked at her. "Sorry you had to see that." What she saw in the foal changed her opinion of her. Not a foal so much as a young mare, and the way Scootaloo had moved around her as if to protect her revealed more about her would-be defender. She'd had bodyguards a few times, and for the life of her Coloratura was sure Scootaloo had a similar way of standing and moving as they did. "But, thank you."
Apple Bloom, after confirming with Cheerilee that she didn't need their help anymore, headed outside too to find Scootaloo and Coloratura waiting for her. She fell in on the opposite side of the mare, but curiosity about Scootaloo's actions got the better of her. "What's up, Scoots?"
Fully aware that she was focused on keeping a lookout, but not wanting to spook Coloratura, Scootaloo shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, you know, keeping an eye out for my mums and their friends." It was as good a reason as she could come up with.
"I saw Trixie at the station, who were the others?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Err." Caught in a conversation she wanted to avoid, Scootaloo didn't want to lie—so didn't. "I'm not supposed to say. Sorry, Apple Bloom."
Curious, but not wanting to push her friend, Apple Bloom shrugged her shoulders exactly how her brother would. "That's alright. I know your parents get into some odd stuff that needs to be kept quiet. They're coming to the show tonight, right?"
"They've been hyping it up all week. I don't think an actual war would keep them away." Scootaloo laughed at the idea only because she knew it was absurd. "Anyway. You need to do a sound check? What's that?"
"I have to get up with all the mics and stuff and sing a song about a dozen times. Really boring stuff, but it helps Svengallop adjust the special sound equipment to suit the venue." Saying his name reminded Coloratura of her anger, but she tempered it for the sake of her company. "You want a song in particular?"
Scootaloo was in a bit of a panic. While she'd heard some of Coloratura's songs, she didn't know the names of any. She was saved, though.
"Countess," Apple Bloom said with certainty. "I really like that one."
"Then that's what I'll do. It'll give the guys a bit of a warm-up too." Feeling the anticipation of a song, and the joy of sharing it with other ponies, Coloratura couldn't help but prance a little. "How far away is the concert?"
"Not far. My sister donated a field for it," Apple Bloom said.
Apart from some Sapphire Shores events they'd been to, neither Scootaloo nor Apple Bloom had seen a show anything like Countess Coloratura. It was loud, bright, and there seemed to be ten times the energy of a recorded song simply by being there at the front of the stage and watching.
The dancing was nice, though Scootaloo was aware that she'd rather Firelance be doing it. She blushed at the thought and focused on the song to distract herself.
When she was done with the song, Coloratura felt her energy soaring. "Take a break, guys. I think they got enough floor-pounding." She tried to ignore their concerned looks. "Go on. I'll be okay. It's just—"
"He's not being rotten again, is he? I swear, we'll walk out if he talks down to you again. Right, guys?"
The grumbling voices and nods of agreement heartened Coloratura. "I couldn't ask you to do that. He's being a little… prickly, is all." She did her best to ignore the swear words a few of the dancers used. "I'll keep him in check."
"Hey, who're your friends? The pegasus looks cute. Can you introduce me?"
"What? But she's—" Realization dawned that Coloratura didn't know their ages and had assumed they were foals. She glanced down at them and realized they weren't too far off from being adults. "I'll ask, but I don't know if she's old enough—or single."
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom watched as Coloratura and one of the dancers approached the front of the stage.
"Hi!" Apple Bloom hadn't exactly missed noticing stallions, she always seemed too busy to do more than admire them, though.
"Drum Prancer wanted to come and say hi to two of my biggest fans. Drum, this is Scootaloo and Apple Bloom." Coloratura's mind raced, trying to figure out how to get the information she'd promised Drum. "Oh, I meant to ask, do either of you have special someponies coming to the concert tonight?"
"Ugh, I wish. Firelance is on duty tonight at the castle." Scootaloo completely missed the ploy to find out if she had a partner, but she did notice a look of disappointment on Drum's face.
"And I don't have anypony yet. My brother says I should tell my sister to stop giving me so many chores, but she's not that bad." Catching on where her fellow crusader hadn't, Apple Bloom looked between Drum and Scootaloo and her eyes widened. "Oh. Ohhhhh. Uh"—she bit her lower lip, wondering how to ask what she wanted to ask—"so I guess I don't have anypony apart from my friends to talk with later."
Drum had been captivated first by Scootaloo's physique, but turning his attention to Apple Bloom he realized she wasn't exactly behind the field when it came to a fit body. "I—Would you like it if I came and hung out after the show?"
"Yes!" Apple Bloom blinked in surprise at how loud she'd said it. She calmed down, blushing all the while, before managing a more sedate. "Sure. I'd like that."
A little surprised at the turn of events, Scootaloo looked between Drum Prancer and Apple Bloom before settling her gaze on Coloratura. "Soooo. More sound checks?"
"Yeah. They'll want me to walk all over the stage to make sure the sound pickups work, then I'll need to sing a full scale—from every point they want me to. Some nights I wonder if my voice will give out before things even start." It was then that she heard a pony behind her clear her throat. Turning, Coloratura saw an orange mare with straw-blonde made wearing a cowboy hat looking at her hopefully.
"Uh, hi. Remember me?" Applejack asked.
"That's totally a date," Scootaloo said. From the corner of her eye she could see Coloratura talking to her manager again, but they didn't seem to be arguing. She'd been keeping nearby all day in case things got problematic—she didn't know exactly why, but she had a feeling she might be needed.
"No. He's just—" Apple Bloom looked around to make sure her sister wasn't nearby. "Is it really a date?"
Giggling and stomping her hooves a few times, Scootaloo nodded. "Totally. Where's Sweetie Belle?"
"She's helping Rarity. It seems like half the town is coming to watch tonight's concert, and one of the dancers—not Dr—"
The screech of the P.A. system cut into Apple Bloom's words. "You know the drill!" Svengallop's voice was loud and clear over the powerful audio equipment. "Deliver, or the diva ditches your dippy charity!"
Silence reigned, though an astute listener could have heard Scootaloo mumbling some pretty horrid words under her breath that she definitely didn't learn from ponies in the Guard. As Coloratura and Svengallop started to argue, Scootaloo edged closer and closer, her wings loose at her sides and ready to start flying if she needed to.
When all was said and done, though, Svengallop stomped off the stage and left Coloratura standing there. Scootaloo started to approach, but Applejack was already there. Turning, she spotted Drum talking to Apple Bloom and decided that she should probably back up her friend. Walking over casually, she listened to them talking—thought it was mostly Drum.
"… need to do that high-rear kick with the one-two."
Apple Bloom was grinning with more than a little silliness. "We call that bucking."
"I guess that's a country thing? I grew up in Manehatten. We, uh, call something else bucking there." Drum had come to realize either his first assessment of age was wrong or Apple Bloom was about the most isolated young mare he'd ever met. Either way, he backed off his intentions a skosh. "Oh, there's Scootaloo."
"Hey, Drum. Did you hear all that?" Scootaloo asked.
Shrugging his shoulders, Drum sighed. "The guys will tell me what's happening before we need to start. If our show is called off, it's off. Honestly? I was mostly touring to keep my big bro company. He's one of the roadies for the Countess."
"'Roadies'?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Take stuff out, put it away, do all the running around and heavy lifting. That's about all there is to it." Shrugging, Drum tried not to stare at Scootaloo, then gave up and asked, "Do you work out?"
Scootaloo laughed. "No, but I do keep in shape."
Groaning and bumping her friend with her shoulder, Apple Bloom looked at Drum. "What she's not telling you is that her moms are in the Guard, and she's training to be in it too when she's the minimum age."
Drum looked between them like he was lost. "The Guard?"
"Well, I did do the whole cadet thing. I'll be going for initial training soon." On her favorite topic, Scootaloo lost track of everything in the conversation with Drum and Apple Bloom. "We visited the Crystal Empire and I got to see their armory there. You should have seen the spears they get to use! They were sooo awesome! Shining said he's still trying to figure out how some of the special weapons Sombra left behind work, and he thinks he might have to get Twilight's help."
"She really likes Guard stuff," Apple Bloom whispered to Drum.
Stopping in her tracks, Scootaloo blew a raspberry. "I don't often get asked about it, and if the pony asking is in the Guard, it's all technical stuff."
Feeling like a deer in headlights, Drum couldn't stop himself from asking, "That wasn't technical?"
"Nah, she's just pulling your leg. Oh, hey sis!" Not sure why she was blushing, Apple Bloom perked up as Applejack approached. "How is Coloratura taking this?"
"She's in a panic. Rarity's trying to help calm her down and manage the dressing for tonight, but I don't think she's going to be able to put on a show like she normally would. That no good Svengallop did one thing right, and that was to organize things." It was something utterly beyond Applejack. She could organize a barn raising, she could organize a huge dinner, and she could definitely organize a full day's work for as many ponies as she knew—but a concert? "What we need is somepony who knows how all this comes together."
"My bro could do it." When all three of them looked at him, Drum thought he'd said something wrong. "S-Sorry, I—"
"Can your brother organize this?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Well, yeah. He's been working on these shows since Countess Coloratura started." It wasn't merely a fierce need to defend his brother's talent that drove Drum to keep talking. There was something in the air urging him onward. "Let me get him. Uh, who should I tell him to talk to?"
Applejack laughed. "Okay, you see that mare over there that everypony is crowding around—the one who looks like she has a lot of answers but none for the questions anypony is asking her?" When Drum nodded, Applejack managed to keep her laughter to a chuckle. "Well, if you put somepony who knows what needs doing beside her, she'll make sure it gets done."
"Got it." Turning on the spot, Drum started to gallop toward where he knew the crew working on the show would be.
Scootaloo observed where Apple Bloom's eyes went as Drum ran and she looked toward Applejack. "Did you notice anything interesting about Drum Prancer?" she asked.
Reaching a hoof up and scratching her head, Applejack said, "Don't think I did. Was it something about his mane?"
Managing not to giggle, Scootaloo looked back at Apple Bloom and noticed her blush. "Something like that."
Apple Bloom couldn't stop blushing, but she managed to cover her state by giggling, which she was relieved to see Scootaloo start doing too. Only when her sister left her and Scootaloo alone did she breathe a sigh of relief and stop laughing. "Why'd you have to go and point that out?"
"He likes you."
Eyes wide, Apple Bloom shook her head. "Does not! . . . Does he?"
"When Coloratura was talking to all the dancers earlier, he wanted to be introduced to us." Scootaloo smirked and poked Apple Bloom with her wingtip. "And it wasn't like he spent so much time talking to me."
"Hey, girls!" Sweetie Belle walked up to her friends. "What's going on?"
"Apple Bloom was talking to a colt and now she blushes whenever I mention it." Scootaloo noted that merely saying it made Apple Bloom blush more.
Sweetie Belle's eyes widened like saucers. "Ooh. What's his name?"
"Drum Prancer. You should have seen them together. It was so cute!"
Prancing in place, Sweetie Belle couldn't help but let out a squeak of excitement. "I want to see them talking! Where is he?"
"He's gone to get his brother to help get the concert—well, the Coloratura part of it—back on track. Apparently her manager didn't like being called out of being a—" Scootaloo stopped herself before she used something that would likely set her friends' ears burning. "He was being pretty terrible."
"Wait." Apple Bloom managed to think clearly enough to walk back the conversation and find something that didn't make sense. "How did you know that's what Coloratura said to him?"
"It's Scootaloo. She probably has some kind of special thingy that she got at Guard training that lets her hear really well. Or her grandfather made it so she can hear like a bat." Sweetie Belle hadn't even needed to do much thinking to come up with the implausible ideas. "And it certainly wouldn't have been her reading lips."
It took Apple Bloom several seconds to catch up. "You can read lips?"
"Mom, Sweetie Drops, had a pile of books she read through a while back. I was bored." Scootaloo figured a shrug would explain all the motivation she needed to read the book cover to cover and then work her way through the practice exercises. But, alas, her two friends kept staring at her. "What? It's not that weird."
"It is," Sweetie Belle said.
"Mmhmm. Very weird," Apple Bloom said.
Fumbling for an excuse to use, Scootaloo tried to stall. "But everypony has these kinds of things they can do."
"Name one that you can't do," Apple Bloom said.
"Right. Something I can—Ah! I can't memorize waaaaay too many spells for a unicorn my age." As Scootaloo turned to look at Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom joined her.
"Huh?" Apple Bloom asked.
Sweetie Belle was blushing. After they both stared at her for a moment, she finally gave up and laughed. "Okay. But it doesn't seem that weird for me."
"Exactly!" Scootaloo felt her own point was justified, if only to one of her friends. "And you, Apple Bloom, I've seen the way you talk to plants."
It was Apple Bloom's turn to blush. "Yeah, but every—"
"If you're about to say every earth pony can do that, you're wrong." Smirking, Scootaloo put a foreleg around her friend's shoulders and pulled them both to her in a hug. "We all have special things we're especially good at. There's nothing wrong with that."
"But they're not our special-special talents," Sweetie Belle said.
"That should make them more special, though." Apple Bloom waved to Sweetie Belle's flank. "I mean, it's obvious that you're going to be an amazing singer. That's practically guaranteed. But you being amazing at whatever-it-is-you-do-with-magic has taken a lot of hard work. To be that good at something that isn't your special talent is extra-special!"
Thinking about it as logically as she could, it did sound right to Sweetie Belle. "I guess. I'll have to think about it some more though."
"You've seen ponies in the Guard, right?" Scootaloo asked, and got two blank stares in reply. "Hardly anypony in the Guard has cutie marks related to being in the Guard. I mean, Shining Armor is one, and Firelance is another, but there's my mums, Captain Stiff Peaks, Sergeant Citron, and—Okay, there are a lot of ponies with food talents in the Guard."
Sweetie Belle saw Scootaloo's point, but there was something in the way she'd perked up when mentioning one young stallion that completely stole the show. "Really? So Firelance is a special pony? Maybe a"—Sweetie winked conspiratorially—"special somepony?"
Eyes widening at first, Scootaloo gave up all pretense of embarrassment and nodded. "He sure is."
This had come as a surprise to Apple Bloom. She knew that her friend had been friends with Firelance, but it was a surprise to her that of the three of them, the tomboy of the group had been the first to find a special somepony. "So are you going to join Twilight's Guard too?"
"I don't think so." Scootaloo stretched her wings out and gave each a twitch. "I want to join the Wonderbolts."
"Didn't Rainbow Dash say you don't have to join the Guard for that?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Yeah. You can join the reserves like Rainbow did, then become a Wonderbolt as a civilian. But that's not exactly what I want. Rainbow is an amazing flier—a lot better than I'll ever be—but there are things I can do that she can't. I want to use those things to protect ponies, and even if I don't stay in the Wonderbolts, it will be great experience to learn advanced flying from the best. Like what you're doing with Princess Celestia's school."
"Huh." Sweetie Belle looked at her friend and felt a warm rush of belonging at the idea. "You're right."
"Plus, just from Twilight's class, how many of the graduates got jobs in the Guard or working directly for a princess?"
"I guess your mom, and… uh…" Sweetie Belle said.
"All of them. The answer is all of them."
Apple Bloom couldn't keep quiet any longer. She cracked up in giggles at the stunned look on Sweetie Belle's face.
"That can't be right. There's—"
"My mum, commander of Twilight's Guard; Moon Dancer, personal aide and advisor to Princess Luna; Minuette, who now writes intelligence reports that four nations subscribe to; Twinkleshine, who is now a senior member of staff for both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna; Lemon Hearts, who now juggles her own bakery business alongside being a senior speaker at the school you go to; and I'll finish off with Twilight herself—a princess." Grinning, Scootaloo joined Apple Bloom in giggling.
It all left Sweetie Belle with questions about what she was going to do with herself. She had some years to do the thinking, she knew, but Scootaloo seemed so sure of herself. "I'll have to think on all this. What about you, Apple Bloom?"
Like a deer caught in a bright beam of light, Apple Bloom's first instinct after the initial shock was to run. "Uh…"
Lyra stood next to Sweetie Drops, their shoulders together, with her horn glowing. Beside them was Shining and Cadance, still disguised, but that wasn't her focus. Up on the big stage, with an orchestra backing, was Rara singing with Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom.
The togetherness and harmony that the song preached swelled Lyra's heart. Friendship and harmony, two of the magics she carried now as part of herself, spiraled joyously within her, enhancing the moment more. She wanted to sing, too, but didn't know the words. "I love you, Bonny."
Kissing Lyra's cheek, Sweetie Drops leaned on her wife a little more. "I love you too, Lyra. Not having an emotive moment, are we?"
Lyra spared a glance Cadance's way. Luna held sway of emotive magic, but Cadance was master of at least one major part of it. "Not yet, though now that I have three magic domains inside me, it's only a matter of time. Can you tell me again?"
"I love you?"
"No, the other thing I need to hear every second of every day."
Sweetie Drops snerked at that. "You're doing things right, Lyra. You have a filly that has grown up to an amazing young mare; you have a wife who loves you more every day; and your have saved more ponies from boredom, slavery, and worse than you could ever possibly meet. Is that it?"
Closing her eyes and nuzzling her cheek against Sweetie Drops' own, Lyra said, "Mmhmm. That's the good stuff. Something feels different, though."
"Bad-different, good-different, or just different?"
"Good-different. Like an old tension is gone. I don't know what, but it's nice not to have to deal with—" Freezing at the feel of something under her wing, Lyra inconspicuously ruffled it and saw a rusted spring fall free. Details of a conversation earlier in the day came back. "'You don't need this part anymore'…"
"Huh?"
"Another question for tomorrow. I guess it's going to be a busy day." Energizing her horn briefly, Lyra turned the spring to dust with a little shift of its molecular bonds.
Princess Celestia: Tell me, how are you handling the third (technically fourth if you count screech) new Alicorn in a single generation?
"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't terrifying. As harmony and fate guide us, it raises some to the station of alicorn to face specific needs. Her Royal Highness, Princess Screech, at least from what my darling nephew has told me, needed to be such to rule a nation facing more hardships than I hope befalls her lands for the next century. Mi Amore Cadenza"—Celestia didn't bother hiding a little grin—"became an alicorn to save the Crystal Empire from Sombra's return. Twilight, if not to create an entirely new kind of magic, has become a shining light among the ponies of this nation.
"That brings us to Lyra. I hope she is on the path for peaceful reasons, but having two alicorns so close to one another brings to mind the last time such happened."
"She's referring to us, in case that wasn't obvious," Luna said. "Neither of us are aware if our falling out was meant to be or if one, the other, or both of us failed in some way, but we will not interfere in what must come to be—whether the outcome be good or ill."
So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any character within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right character to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post!
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Another exelent chapter that left me hungry for more. I loved the cute interactions between Scoots and…well, it’d be shorter to include the interactions I didn’t like.
I thought he's career was over
ASK......X????
So Lyra, what do you think of your future as an Alicorn? I know you never asked for it, but life never go the ways we want and its something to embrace like Twilight did.
You going to be a ruler of Equestria, defend Equestria from threats, try to live a normal life or become an EVIL ALICORN?
Yissss. It was so hard not to read this early. I wanted to wait till it made the site to get it all at once. Great chapter, love the interplay between the characters and the continued buildup to the finale. Season 5 was the best season. As much as I enjoyed the show's finale, I think this is going to be so much better. With Starlight's ability to affect time and destiny itself, I can't wait to see what Effect it has on a certain minty unicorn.
Discord is going to be facing a whole bath of cupcorns at this rate.
Svengallop nearly got diffused in the Lyra AOE this time. Good thing she didnt want to get Hands On with him.
Always fun to see Scootaloo defy expectations. To say nothing of her revolutionizing military doctrine. She seems to have a talent for that sort of thing.
Oh my. Lyra Heartstrings, Princess of Failsafes. That's quite the destiny ahead of her At least she knows how to trust in fate. As for Discord actually helping get somepony's head on straight, it wouldn't be the first time. He's just not always so direct about it. He must have taken a major interest in Lyra indeed.
Also, while Apple Bloom's crush is cute, I'm not sure it will last. Not like Drum Prancer has much reason to stick around Ponyville.
The ripples are building. Now it's a matter of seeing just what everypony gets up to during that time battle. If anything might catalyze Lyra's wings...
11518608
It's almost like she has a thing for dancers that will in no way actually reflect on canon at all. No sir-ee.
"Ripples?" Discord asked. "Oh, sorry, that was me. I have some things planned and—well, you'll see in about four years time.
Just one her.
Other than that this was a nice Slice of Life chapter with some foreshadowing. The next chapter will certainly be dealing with Starlight Glimmer's revenge plot that Lyra will certainly get mixed up in.
11521850 Thanks, fixed!
Wonder how Trixie would react if she overpowered a wing illusion so much that it even fools the universe into thinking she has wings.
11525634 Clearly all part of her plan for multi-dimensional domination!
It's funny because he introduced himself the spirit of chaos and disharmony. Few there are that realize what it takes to achieve harmony and why someone like Discord is so necessary.
Apple Bloom is finally blooming? Nice.
That component... Lyra's last bit of humanity?
11784744 The last of her dysphoria.
11784761
Aye, that was the second guess. 😉