The Spirits of Harmony

by TinCan

Chapter X

Lieutenant Stalwart Steel, the ranking officer in the squad of guardsponies surrounding the library, was having his skills and training tested to their limits.

“—And then he just made everypony in the shop get all spaced-out and everything, except for the two guys that hit me, I mean. They were acting all scared all of a sudden and not like eek scared or what-about-the-economy scared but straight-up go-crazy-right-there-on-the-spot scared,” babbled the familiar-looking pink mare, trying and failing to shake Stalwart by the collar of his barding for emphasis. The pony had sprinted up out of nowhere and begun gesturing wildly and talking a league a minute right in his face some time ago, and he wasn’t sure she’d so much as paused for breath since. “These two ponies from the hospital said he did it with a gas, just ask them!” she continued.

“We didn’t really—” Nurse Tenderheart explained from the sidelines, but Pinkie was far from done.

“So I think I tricked him and I ran to get Twilight because Twilight’s really smart (but you probably know that. Did you ever meet her when she was in Canterlot?) and she’s always prepared and for another reason I promised not to tell anypony about but then I realized he had tricked me too and I ran back here even faster but she wouldn’t believe me and then she was all scrunched up like this:”

The chirping of cicadas became audible again for a brief moment as Pinkie Pie did her best impression of Twilight’s current state. It was all Stalwart could do to remain at attention.

Pinkie couldn’t bear standing still for long, though, and burst back into frantic motion. “And-and Spike told me to go and get help and I did because that’s what friends do even though he’s out here hiding and he’ll turn me to gold or something but I went anyway and got an ambulance so please let us in because Twilight needs help and I don’t wanna stay out here with the alchemist!”

Stalwart hadn’t moved a muscle since taking his post, but hearing the ‘A-word’ finally made him flinch. And from a pony other than her highness, at that! If Princess Luna overheard, things would get... complicated. Still, it was his duty to stand here and keep ponies out of the library until ordered otherwise. He and his stallions remained at their posts and stewed in a sense of impending disaster.

Pinkie Pie began telling the story again, this time with greater embellishment, apparently under the impression he hadn’t heard her the first time. Suddenly, Stalwart noticed one of the ponies that had pulled the ambulance signalling to him. While the chunky stallion was carefully filling an injector syringe with clear liquid, the mare in the nurse’s cap pantomimed behind Pinkie’s back. Tenderheart pointed to the pink mare, then crossed her eyes and waved a hoof in a circular motion beside her head. Indicating her assistant’s needle, then Pinkie’s rump, she leaned her head to one side on her front hooves and closed her eyes, feigning sleep.

Stalwart’s relief, though hidden, was nearly palpable. This excited pony was sick or crazy, the medical professionals would take care of her and her highness would be none the wiser. Breaking protocol, he lowered his gaze to look directly at Pinkie, hoping to keep her attention long enough for the paramedics to carry out their plan. The nurse nodded and winked at him, and motioned for the other to approach and administer the drug.

“Oh, hello! Yes!” Pinkie said, cheered to finally have elicited a reaction. “I’ve been trying to tell you why you need to let us in to see Twilight. You see, there’s this guy going around saying he’s a... a...” Pinkie’s voice trailed off, her eyes widened and she looked at something above the lieutenant’s head. The two paramedic ponies gasped, then bowed low, shaking in fright. To either side of him, the other guardsponies snapped into even more rigid postures of attention. Gritting his teeth, Stalwart did the same. A shadow fell over him from behind.

“Oh! Princess Luna! Thank... thank yourself you’re here!” Pinkie Pie cried from the other side of the cordon. “I need to—”

“Yes, yes, I am very welcome,” the Princess of the Night quipped from the library’s doorway, so preoccupied that she didn’t even look to see to whom she was speaking.

Undetected by all, Twilight also flitted outside behind Luna. Okay, so a spirit can make things ‘un-happen’ when they want to, she reasoned to herself, but Concord and that other one, Verse? They seemed a lot more easy-going than Verity... dumber, too. Concord said he’d be coming back here. Maybe Princess Luna can just settle things peaceably with them, and they’ll tell her happened to me. Twilight remembered how Luna had reacted when she guessed what Verity was, though. What would happen when an immortal alicorn princess squared off against those things? The only other times she knew of when ponies had battled spirits were Discord’s two defeats, first by both princesses back in ancient times and then by Twilight and her friends. Neither would have been possible without the power of the Elements of Harmony, and her own had already been stolen! Did anypony else know about the other two spirits who were going to Canterlot right now to try and overthrow the government? She had so many vital things she needed to tell everypony, but none of them could hear her! It was infuriating. I just wish there was something I could do! Twilight didn’t scream into the sky.

While Twilight invisibly bemoaned her fate, Luna addressed her bodyguard. “Lieutenant,” she said to Stalwart, “you and your stallions’ duty here is complete. You are to return to Canterlot at once and report to the captain. Relay my orders to treble the guard around the vault. Be wary; the night promises to be an interesting one.”

Stalwart turned and saluted smartly, making sure not to leave a gap in the lines that Pinkie could squeeze through. “Yes, your highness.” He turned to his stallions. “Baldric, Dress Blues, remain here as her highness’s bodyguard.” He leaned closer to the pair and continued in a lower voice, “Make sure she’s not bothered by any over-enthusiastic subjects, Am I clear?”

The two guardsponies snapped a salute, glancing over at Pinkie. “Imperial crystal, lieutenant!” Dress Blues barked.

Noticing that their ruler’s attention was no longer on them, Tenderheart nudged Traction Spint, who was still bowing with his belly in the dirt. “Psst! Go and dose Pinkie quick before she hurts herself or causes a scene!” She hissed. Had she known royalty was making a surprise visit to their little town, she’d never have let this unwell pony near them. They were all lucky Pinkie hadn’t already attracted the ire of the princess or goaded the guards into action. Splint gulped, took the syringe in his mouth and crawled toward the pink pony, who was still jumping up and down, trying to get Luna’s attention over the guards’ heads.

“An escort won’t be necessary;” said the princess, “I have duties that demand swiftness and subtlety. Guards clanking about in armor will only be a hindrance,”

“Your highness, Princess Celestia’s orders concerning your protection—” Stalwart began.

”Are subject to review, amendment and veto by her co-regent!” Luna shot back, letting her annoyance show.

“But your highness—” Stalwart started to say.

“No ‘buts,’ Lieutenant!” Luna bellowed, slipping back into the Royal Canterlot Voice. “You have your orders, now imitate a tree and begone!” Her horn glowed and the entire company of royal guards vanished in a dozen separate flashes of blue light. Protection, indeed! She knew the guards had been ordered to keep her from embarrassing her sister. If Celestia could only see that there were more important things than decorum on the line here!

Now that the ponies blocking her way were gone, Pinkie rushed up to the princess. Splint lunged with the needle just a moment too late, missed, lost his balance and fell. Back beside the ambulance, Nurse Tenderheart facehoofed, picturing the three of them imprisoned for harassment of royalty, or worse.

“Princess Luna! Excuse me? Hey!” Pinkie called out, unaware she’d only narrowly escaped. “What’s going on? Is Twilight okay? I went to get an ambulance but your guards wouldn’t let me in when I got back!”

In the light, Luna finally recognized the bearer of the element of Laughter. “Pinkie Pie,” she exclaimed, “You are up quite late. Good. Twilight Sparkle is under the ministrations of my sister in Canterlot, and you and your fellow bearers must go to her at once. There is a villain at large in Equestria this night.”

Finally! Another pony who knew something was up! Pinkie felt her fear begin to diminish in the princess’s presence. “I know, that’s what I’ve been telling everypony, but none of them take me seriously! Twilight didn’t, and he got her!”

Luna’s eyes widened. “You know what happened? Tell me! Who did this?”

Pinkie told the story yet again in a firehose-blast of words. “I was with Twilight doing secret things and then this filly appeared and I asked why she wasn’t in school and then her brother showed up and I gave them a tour and when we were alone he said I was like stained glass and I think he has a crush on me or maybe it was just faking but then I went to work and there were so many ponies even though it was raining and I asked why and one of them said there was a fire but—ulmph!”

Luna held a hoof over Pinkie’s mouth. “Pinkie Pie, you are not making sense. What does this have to do with Twilight Sparkle?” She removed her foot and the flood of words continued.

“I’m really sorry princess but I was getting to that! At the store that guy from before comes in and does something to everypony in there and made them go all loopy and weird and he lied to be about who he was. I asked those two other ponies who came with me and they said it was probably a gas.”

Luna’s eyes flicked up from Pinkie to notice the Spint and Tenderheart hanging back in the darkness. Just beyond the light of the library, they would have been little more than silhouettes against her starry sky to the vision of an ordinary pony. Why were they sneaking about like that? She was certain she’d allayed the fears of the townsfolk last Nightmare Night.

As the princess scrutinized the paramedics, Pinkie chattered on. “I said he wasn’t really a pony and he played along, but when I was running to go and tell Twilight, I realized what he really was! He was actually an... an alchemist!”

Pinkie thought Luna would be a bit more receptive, but she wasn’t expecting the princess to pull her close and stare into her eyes with a hopeful, furious intensity. “Truly? This is not one of your jests? You’ve seen one of those fiends at last?”

Twilight really wished she still had a hoof and a face to smack it against. Of all the times and ways for Pinkie to completely mis-read the situation in that unique way of hers...

“You actually believe me?” Pinkie cried, similarly surprised and elated. “I mean, of course you do! You were the one who warned me about alchemists, after all. I’m being totally super-serious; there’s an alchemist after me right now!”

Traction Spint, a rather single-minded pony, took a cautious step toward Pinkie. Luna noticed something shiny, slender and sharp clutched in his jaws.

“Ambush!” the princess yelled, simultaneously shoving Pinkie out of the way with telekinetic magic and launching herself hooves-first at the startled intern. With one booted foot she sent the needle spinning into the darkness and with the other swept Splint’s feet from beneath him, sending the pudgy stallion crashing to the ground on his back. Before he even realized what had happened, one of Luna’s wings was resting against his neck, its pinions transformed to razor-sharp blades.

“You in the shadows, surrender at once if you value your compatriot’s life!” Luna commanded Tenderheart. Terrified and shaking, the nurse pony crawled forward and placed her front hooves over her head.

Pinkie looked confused. “Princess, what are you doing? They’re just here to help Twilight. I brought them here.”

“Oh?” Luna said, keeping Splint in place with her wing. “Then why was this one creeping up on you with a needle filled with who-knows-what at the ready? Explain that, if you can!”

The pink mare blinked down at Splint. “He was?”

Splint managed a squeak in his own defense, then fainted.

“She—Pinkie’s not well, your highness,” Tenderheart said, voice quavering. “She’s been having paranoid delusions. She needs to be sedated before she hurts herself or somepony else. We just—”

“Delusions?” Luna snapped. “Delusions of what?”

The nurse pony gulped. “She told us alchemists are after her,” she explained, forcing a laugh to illustrate how ridiculous it was. “You see? It’s nothing. She needs help.”

The princess glared daggers at Tenderheart, who hid her face, trembling. Luna normally hated when her subjects cringed from her, but in her righteous indignation she found it rather fitting right now. “Oh, I see,” Luna said coldly, “I see very well indeed. You think her mad to believe in the alchemist threat. Well then, I am as mad as she. Will you stick your drugged needles in your princess for her own good? ...Answer!”

Pinkie rushed between the two ponies and stood protectively beside Tenderheart. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” she insisted. “They just don’t understand. He’s really tricky, but I know you can get him, princess! You’ll catch him and then everypony’ll know we’re right, right?”

Luna held her glare at the nurse for a moment longer, then snorted and allowed her anger to cool. She took her wing off Traction Splint’s neck and folded it back to her side. Pinkie was right; it would do no good to scold her loyal, if misguided, subjects while their foes were free to work evil. The only way to vindicate herself was to finally get her hooves on some real, undeniable proof that the alchemists still existed and bring it to her sister and the public. Saving Equestria once more as she had of old would be the icing on the cake.

“Be off, both of you, and stay out of our way,” Luna commanded. Tenderheart nodded rapidly, scrambled forward, bit her assistant’s tail and began dragging the senseless pony back toward the ambulance. Pinkie moved to help, but Luna pulled her aside.

“Pinkie Pie, if I am to catch this villain, I will need your aid.” Luna said, placing a hoof on the smaller pony’s shoulder. “I know you are afraid, and with good reason. The order of alchemists is a vicious and wily foe that has eluded even my sister for many generations. Will you be brave and stand with me against them?”

Pinkie chewed her lip. She didn’t feel brave right now. Something inside screamed at her to stay far, far away from Concord or awful things would happen. Ever since she realized what he was she’d been scared: not the fun, exciting kind of scared, but the kind that made everything feel cold and gray and bitter.

But that was why she had to be brave, wasn’t it? No matter what her instincts said, she couldn’t live like this; it was completely un-Pinkie. She couldn’t bear to look into any more shadows expecting to see enemies instead of friends. She had even been unwilling to help Twilight at first because of what Concord might do to her! The memory made her burn with shame. No more, Pinkie resolved. Maybe Concord would boil her up into a cauldron, or force her to drink a mind-twisting potion so she was never herself again, or even turn her into a shiny lump of pony-gold for ever and ever. It didn’t matter. Anything was better than living out the rest of her days crippled by fear.

Pinkie gulped, then nodded to Luna. The princess smiled proudly back.

The resolution made Pinkie feel marginally better. Not only was Princess Luna here with her, who apparently knew a thing or two about alchemists, but all her other friends were still nearby, except Twilight, who was definitely safe way up in Canterlot with Celestia. When Concord got Twilight, she was all alone. The rest of her friends and a princess would be more than a match for any nasty old alchemist!

Twilight was (figuratively) beside herself with anxiety. Pinkie and Luna were actually going to waste precious time on this nonsense when there were real threats on the loose? Equestria needed all the help it could get right now! If only she hadn’t been torn from her mortal body by Verse’s weird spirit magic, then maybe Celestia could have fixed her! If only Just Deserts hadn’t paralyzed her in the first place... heck, if only Twilight hadn’t lost her mind and decided to want-it-need-it the Crusaders way back then! Was this what it was like to be taken over by an enchantment, forced to watch helplessly as everything around her went wrong? The former unicorn thoroughly repented of her rash actions. Twilight wafted back into her home. She couldn’t bear to witness any more of this farce.

“It makes my heart glad to have you at my side, Pinkie Pie,” Luna said. “Now tell me—”

“What about my other friends, I mean the rest of the elements, um, your highness?” Pinkie blurted, remembering her manners right at the end.

Luna nodded. “Ah, yes! I promised Celestia I would gather them.” She shut her eyes as a nimbus of magic whirled around her horn.

“Gather them? You said earlier we’re supposed to go to Canterlot but then you asked me to stay here and help you and I was just thinking that if we told my other besties what was going on they could maybe help us out,” Pinkie hastily clarified, not liking the idea of her best friends being whisked across the country while she was stuck here with Concord on the loose.

Luna’s eyes snapped open. “Done!” she announced.

Pinkie frowned. “Done? But... what did you do? Are my friends coming?”

“I wasted my time, is what I did!” Luna replied, frowning off into the distance. “No, your fellow bearers are just as oblivious to the threat as my sister. We will be better off without their interference.”

The younger mare wilted a bit. She wanted to argue, but Luna was now the only pony standing between her and the alchemist, and besides, it was probably unwise to contradict royalty. Pinkie ruefully remembered being insouciant to Celestia on the value of eternal chaos that came with chocolate rain. It felt like a lifetime ago; the lifetime of an entirely different pony. But, when Concord was out of their manes for good, everything would be okay again, wouldn’t it? Everything would go back to normal, and then so would Pinkie Pie.

She hoped.

Comments

[FashionablyHospitable]

Why best pony hold idiot ball.

[Nachtprophet]

I'm starting to think that Luna got hit by another "Fear the Alchemists" curse in the past.