Prologue: Feats Beyond Imagination

Starworks

- or -

Neuroprancer

- or -

Johnny Neighmonic

Sanctae

Prologue: Feats Beyond Imagination

I feel wrong. I feel nearly normal. Where was great fanfare? Where was the earthquake and hellfire? Wasn’t there supposed to be a great cry of outrage or a last minute escape? That was simple … disgustingly so. Push a button, a faint hum, a glowing light, a pony is now dying. The world keeps turning.

I sit and shiver on my doorstep. My back is warm. My face is numb against the wind. I am thinking.

It is bitterly cold. It would snow if it still knew how.

Carpet is soft behind me. Take my scarf from the hook. Warm light billows out onto freezing earth.

I always pushed for the greater good. I just make things worse. It’s a burden I must bear to make things better. One life for many.

I laugh. My heart is not in it. I shake my head but I half believe the pretension.

It was so painfully naive to think it was progress. Should have known better.

The forest is dark. The remains of the dying trees whistle in the wind.

I’m still making the choice. I could stop it at any moment. Every passing second is a second in which I could turn around. I could have faith in them. In him.

The little box sits in my pocket. The rod was posted days ago.

I can’t risk it. I have to take responsibility.

I press the little piece of glass.

I must seem like a monster.

A responsible monster.

* * *

A deep, rusty glow washed over the city, glancing off the tall buildings and leaving the cluttered web of streetways deep in shade. Around this time the city became a jagged patchwork of warm orange light, angular black shadows and crimson specks of sun where the fading light happened to strike metal or glass at a lucky angle. The colour was beginning to drain from the evening sky as night drew near and the first, brightest stars were were just visible out of the corner of the eye.

To the magician, all the way down at ground level, only a narrow sliver of sky was visible. It was a river of orange threading between the hulking towers that loomed hundreds of metres over the crossroads of NE1423 and NW3181. The junction was small and cramped, the coincidence of two minor streets in a nondescript residential block with the usual faceless buildings and serial numbered doors. The whole block was awkwardly placed, trapped between the commuter belt and the outer industrial parks, squatting awkwardly in between the two like some grimy obstacle course for the workers. It had little to call its own unless one ascribed value to the intersection of prime number streets, which the magician certainly did not.

Little flashes of blue darted and played among the nest of cabling strung from building to building, criss-crossing the air above her like a mad, black spider web. The short-lived neon arcs spat and crackled from the potential of the energy roaring through the city’s veins. But the normal, flickering blues and flat, evening oranges were being washed out by large splashes of colour that skittered and bounced between the buildings. The pops and snaps of fireworks mixed with the giggling and shouts of foals as an array of deeper blues, powerful reds and a hint of lively green burst around the street. The magician noted it had been a good choice to go easy on the greens this time; green and orange could clash something awful if not deployed carefully.

It was like a kind of art … well, it was an art. The towering, slate grey walls that surrounded her were a perfect canvas: broad, blank, and begging to be filled with life and colour. She loved to take the bland space, with its flat floors, boxy walls, and distant sky, and throw sparks and energy into it with calculated abandon until light and sound rang off the rows and rows of tiny windows and cramped balconies that overlooked her. She smiled.

She was smiling anyway, but that was a performer’s smile, a smile she’d have had even if her little wooden stage had suddenly burst into flame. This smile came from the heart, born of the satisfaction of a job well-done, even if her current audience probably didn’t notice. She gazed out at the fifteen or so little colts and fillies sitting on the thick flagstones that paved the crossroads, and at the older, purple pony standing on the other side of junction, watching but not participating. She narrowed her eyes, suppressing a laugh. The mare was probably yet another magic student trying to work out her spells as the show progressed, too embarrassed to come sit with the foals.

On the one hoof, the magician too found it a touch … demeaning, performing to foals. Certainly it wasn’t quite the same as the more complex shows for the larger crowds she drew in the main squares, nor was it on par with the occasional shows she put on in the bars and clubhouses of Canterlot. Principally, because she wasn’t getting paid. That said, something about the rapt attention and happy laughter was quite endearing, and she was certainly not one to turn down such an eager audience. She knew her basic act so well that she barely needed to concentrate anymore. Well, that was perhaps rather generous, but for this audience she could probably get away with a few mistakes.

The laughter and excited shouts were dying down as the last of the rose-petal butterflies from the previous firework fizzled out into a shower of delicate pink sparks. She flicked a glance up at the sky before checking a small piece of glassware that she had hung round her neck. She noted, with a flash of pride, that her intuition was still measuring up well against her chronometer.

“My little ponies! What the Great and Powerful Trixie has shown you here today has stretched the very limits of magical possibility!”

She reared up and waved her hooves in the air as her star-topped wand, hovering a few hooves to her right, began to spin wildly.

“You, the few fortunate enough to witness this dazzling display of magnificent magic, have seen something unlike anything anypony has ever seen before!”

There was a quiet tittering from the audience. This was not the first time Trixie had been cajoled into giving this little display in their neighbourhood and it was unlikely to be the last.

“The final trick that I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, will share with you tonight is so dangerous,” she leaned into the audience and dropped to a whisper, “so risky, that even the Great and Powerful Trixie will need help, lest her power prove too much and aaallll of Canterlot be shaken to its foundations!”

She stepped back and paced around the stage, talking to the air as her wand span furiously, trailing her by a few hoofsteps. “But what pony is there that can challenge Trixie’s power? What pony has ever lived that could hope to step up on stage and hope to contain the forces that Trixie could unleash?”

They all knew this bit. The crossroads filled with a happy, screamed chorus of “STAR SWIRL!”

She let out a mock gasp, “Of course! Star Swirl the Bearded!”

She turned to face the other end of her little wooden platform and took a deep breath. Unlike the rest of her simple act, this was actually going to require some genuine effort to maintain. Her wand span itself into a whirling ball of colours and light as smoke began to encase it in a dark ball about the size of a pony.

“Trixie, the most powerful magician of the modern age, calls to you, oh Star Swirl. Come to Trixie and together we will show these brave souls the true depths of magic!”

She closed her eyes and focused on the wand and, inside the concealing safety of the smoke, she began to build. An initial, textbook image of Star Swirl fixed in her mind’s eye, she began to paint in thick, abstract strokes of conceptual hue and texture that gave the ephemeral imagining strength and form. In a couple of practiced seconds a web of intricate texture ideas and colour impressions drew together and settled into the shape of an elderly unicorn dressed in scholarly robes. As she blew the smoke from the platform she began to puppet the image, bending joints and moving eyes to make the simulacrum lift hoof to mouth to cough at the departing smoke. She pulled its head up to face her and gave it voice.

“Pony, why have I been summoned here?”, it intoned.

Trixie watched as the audience turned to look at the image’s end of the stage. It was so easy, really. When she was talking they looked to her, and when ‘Star Swirl’ was talking they would look at him, the corner of their eye failing to register the comparative immobility or the tense concentration of whichever pony was silent.

“You were called here by none other than the Great and Powerful Trixie!”, she proclaimed, taking great care to roll the ‘r’s as theatrically as possible. It was the finale, after all.

“Trixie has summoned you, oh Star Swirl, to partake in the greatest magical displ-” Winter wrap up! Winter wrap up! Let’s finish our holiday cheer! Winter Wra-

Trixie turned to glare at the assembled foals as the tinny, albeit cheery, artificial tones floated over the group. One of the older fillies sitting at the back turned beet red and mumbled apologies as she frantically fumbled for the flashing glassware pendant around her neck. Shooting an apologetic glance at Trixie and the other foals who had all turned to stare at her, she galloped off down the street, pausing briefly to hook the pendant over her ear as she went.

Trixie waited until the retreating strains of the young mare’s frantic apologies, acknowledgements of the time, and promises that, no, Mum, she’d not be late to dinner next time faded into the background.

“Now,” she said, making ‘Star Swirl’ roll his eyes, “where was Trixie?”

By the time Trixie had finished ‘combining her power with Star Swirl’ to, today, stop Canterlot from melting for some contrived reason, the dim, hollow ring of the sun was almost flat on the horizon, and on the narrow streets around her the icy glow of magitechnical lighting was replacing the fading daylight. The foals had wandered away after she’d wrapped up her act, leaving behind them nothing but a fading cloud of happy conversation. All of them had thanked her nicely for her show and, in a small way, Trixie could be content with only that. Besides, it wasn’t like the short, half-hour show really cost her anything, besides a firework or two.

She had packed up her cart with the few elements needed for her show: a modest bundle of prettily coloured fireworks wrapped up in their star covered packages; a few basic props and wooden cutouts for her alteration spells; and finally her small, wooden flat-pack stage and the painted backdrop of stars that stood behind it.

The wand was strapped securely to an inside pocket in her star-spangled cape. She often got questions about the wand, especially from other unicorns. The amount of times she’d had to patiently ex- … well, okay, maybe a little impatiently, explain that the entire point was that it didn’t do anything and, yes, she was just using her horn like every unicorn and that that was the point. The wand was there as a focus, something shiny to distract the audience from the fact that her act was, when it came down to it, just a unicorn doing what unicorns do best. Taking attention away from her horn, while simultaneously reminding the audience that the power was still coming from her, was just one of the many arts that Trixie had, over time, become exquisitely good at … if she did say so herself.

Trixie nervously craned her neck upwards and pushed back the wide brim of her magician’s hat. Several earth ponies had been quietly watching her from the balconies of the buildings above her, their expressions unreadable, as high up as they were. She raised a hoof and tipped her hat in the general direction of one of the balconies in a manner that she hoped would be interpreted as sincere, rather than condescending. The entertainer had not had many … altercations in the neighbourhood before, and was confident in her magical prowess. However, if any significant number of them got the sudden urge to come down and buck her in the face she knew she would be running.

She didn’t get much of a response and quite frankly that was one hundred percent fine by her.
Trixie swept a cursory glance around to check she hadn’t left anything, noticing that the unicorn mare that had been watching from a distance had left as well. Magically tapping her hat back into place on her head she started making her way home. The little blue cart, painted to complement her blue coat and magicians garb, rattled magikinetically along behind her, its cargo of wooden pieces gently bouncing as it trundled over the flagstones.

She still had several miles of winding, interwoven roads ahead of her but she already she could see her destination, a gargantuan, flat slab of metal rearing up over the city atop the cylindrical trunks of the skyscraper jacks supporting it. The glittering tops of the foundation towers poked through the smooth upper surface, catching the last of the fading sunlight as night crept up the scaffolding. Despite being obscured behind the towering metal walls either side of her and the cat’s cradle of cables overhead, Trixie could still feel the familiar pressure of the structure’s presence, like a caver sensing the weight of the mountain hanging over their head. The imposing skyplates were among the tallest structures in the city, dwarfing the dense forests of residential blocks that sprouted, like mushrooms, in their shade. The top sides were given over almost entirely to high-density hydroponic agriculture which, seeking cheaper options than costly magitechnical lighting, took advantage of the comparative abundance of natural light.

Trixie lived underneath where it was cooler, shaded from the daylight by thick square kilometers of metal up above and nestled amongst the cluster of foundational skyscrapers. The darkness and claustrophobia of living under a canopy of megatons of construction had driven down the rents considerably in such areas, but as far as she was concerned a little artificial daylight was a small price to pay for such affordable living. Quite frankly, right now the shadowy metal columns with their beading of red and white exterior lights just felt like home and bed. They were a comforting normality after the gaudy extravagance of the city centre.

It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy giving shows in the city centre per se, there was just something about the place that set her teeth on edge. It was something about how all the rich idiots gravitated towards the prestigious central buildings, something about how all the commercial companies clamoured to get their headquarters established in the Castle’s shadow, and something about the Castle itself.

Granted, it was a miracle of modern earth pony construction: a sharp, artificial monstrosity stretching eye-bendingly up into the sky; a great tapering sail; an impossible metal blade at the heart of the city, casting a long, deep shadow like the needle of some titanic sundial. The first and only stratoscraper in the history of Equestria standing over two kilometers tall, strangely alien and distant in both its scope and design as there was simply nothing for the eye to compare it against for a sense of scale. The product of a generation of magitechnical advance and a scant twenty years of construction, the Castle had been a project unlike any before or since. ‘A pillar of metal and glass at whose tip rests the fulcrum of Equestria’, so said the brochures.

Trixie agreed, it certainly was the biggest and most metallic thing in a world just full of big, metal things, but a couple of years of posing in front of it for particularly eager tourists had eroded the mystique. Oh those tourists! She groaned out loud, then stiffened as she noticed the looks she’d drawn. The streets were starting to fill up now, yes, but not enough that a mare talking to herself could pass without comment. She sniffed disdainfully, adjusted her hat, and continued on, trying to ignore the more hostile stares that burned into the back of her head. Where was she … oh, yes.

She could see them coming a mile off these days with their tacky sunglasses, dangling cameras, and blank expressions as they gawped at the ‘local colour’.

‘Oh look kids, it’s a real Canterlot street performer. Ooo, how cute. Oh, isn't she good with the foals,’ - spoiled brats, inevitably - ‘Let’s take a photo, dear. Do you think she’d mind? How much should we tip her; we don’t want to seem rude.’

She sighed with a hint of resignation. It wasn’t all tourists that rubbed her coat the wrong way, it was just that particular breed of tourist that the Tourism Board pandered to. The Board actively promoted the street acts so she guessed she should be thankful, even if it they did turn them from a colourful local tradition to a ‘Colourful Local Tradition (tm)’ like the inept idiots that they frequently were. She was a professional, not some theme park attraction.

She could still see the tattered, faded posters for their last Cloudsdale tourism drive. Great idea that had been, putting up thousands of posters for ‘The Glorious City In The Sky (tm)’ all over districts where nopony would care. Most had lasted around a day before being defaced. They were still around if you knew what to look for, barely more than scraps of paper hanging forlornly from a wall here and there. On some of the more intact ones the image was almost visible. The scene showed a fluffy white candyland, a happy pegasi couple bouncing along with goofy grins, and a little rainbow hanging around for good measure. Not exactly the most honest depiction.

In reality, the floating supercity hung just shy of a kilometer above the streets of western Canterlot, clear above the tops of the mega-construction, but low enough to provide a dizzying claustrophobia for those below its dark, brooding undersurface. Colossal anchor cables and power conduits draped down from the proud capital of the pegasi, tethering it to the ground as it floated listlessly in the evening sky. The bloated underside flickered with a sickly inner glow, and low, growling rumbles occasionally boomed out from the cloud and rolled over the city, more felt than heard, rattling windows all over the city. She’d never been and she didn’t care to.

Either way she couldn’t see it from here, too many buildings and tower blocks between her and it, but she could tell where it was by following the growing tide of pegasi as they whispered through the flyways above her head. Looking up she could see them, free to escape the stifling atmosphere of the city streets as they floated lazily on the updrafts. A quiet cloud of little lives, distant motes of colour, manes and tails tiny streamers in the thick, warm sky. The bright green lamps of the flyway traffic system blazed from their perches high on the side of the buildings above, one every few storeys for each clear path through the maze of limp and tangled cables.

The setting sun leant the air a welcome chill as heat rushed up and out of city, a great shimmering wall of haze and sweat forming above the cooling buildings. Many more ponies were starting to venture out of their air conditioned offices, trying to get home before the real crush began, and the city was beginning to thrum with noise again. While the pegasi, and those few earth ponies and unicorns rich enough to own flight frames, had been able to make their way home already, everyone else round these parts was stuck with trudging through the streets.

Trixie wasn’t interested in trying to perform to commuters. If her experience had taught her anything it was that ponies had one thing on their minds at around this time - getting home - and never gave her the attention she deserved.

She flinched as she bumped into a brown earth pony coming the other way, knocking a thin glassware device off his ear. It clinked delicately as it hit the ground, pulling loose from the cord previously joining it to a small pack in the stallion’s saddlebag. The stallion’s drink, previously floating by his face at a convenient sipping height, dropped to the floor.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!”

“Trixie might say the same for you! You should have gotten out of Trixie’s way, rather than foalishly blocking her path. You should be apologising to Trixie!”

The stallion delicately picked his headpiece up off the floor with his mouth, plugging the cable back in with a free hoof. A scrawl of tiny symbols flickered over the clear crystal surface as he placed it over an eye and worked the strap back over his ear. He slowly and deliberately turned to the remains of his drink, and then to Trixie, looking her dead in the eye. A few other earth ponies turned to look at the disturbance.

“Well, begging your pardon, madam,” he leant a little closer towards her, “but we don’t take kindly to that kind of talk around here.

“That horn don’t make you any better than the rest of us and I am quite happy to argue that par-tic-u-lar point,” what his voice lost in volume it gained back, plus interest, in menace, “at length”.

Trixie shot back a confident, plastic smile as she weighed her options carefully.

* * *

Trixie’s day had now been thoroughly ruined.

Sure, in broad terms, she’d been quite successful: she had made a fair living in the squares of central Canterlot in the morning; had made reasonable trade escaping the sun in the cooler ground underneath Cloudsdale; and the evening spent busking and cooling down had not exactly been bad either. All told she’d made a tidy profit for a good day’s work.

But her long blue mane had kept blowing into her eyes during her performances, she could have sworn that foal had been laughing at her in the square this morning, and she had wasted another water chit on that stupid drink she had put down and forgotten about that afternoon. Now that had been stupid, certainly, and she’d spent the next performance in a foul mood because of it. Had it been annoying? Yes. Had it been foalish? Yes! But had it been a crisis? Not especially. She built pony-error into her water budget like every sensible pony.

Oh, but then that ignorant pony had just had to knock into her and could he deal with it like a gentlecolt? No, of course not! Had to go making threats. Threats! To her! Oh sure, surrounded by all his dumb earth pony lackeys he felt all big and entitled. She should have just … ugh.

Two wasted sets of chits. One had been bad enough but now, on top of her rent, she’d pretty much wiped out the day’s profit. A whole day down the drain for what? A poor memory and some earth pony bully. Great work, Trixie.

She ground her teeth as she ran through the numbers for the hundredth time while she walked.
It wasn’t too bad, she thought. It was a setback, but nothing too terrible really. She could still make it to the end of the month.

Just.

She paused for a moment and closed her eyes. She allowed herself the brief pretense that she could just trot home, stick her head under the covers and wake up when everything was just better. Just wake up, today having been some horrible dream where stupid ponies deliberately ran into her just to-

She blinked fiercely and refocused on the road in front of her, resuming her slow walk home and trying to focus on the practical impact rather than pointless recrimination.

Well, there was only one solution. She’d have to just go out again tonight.

...So much for a ‘mare’s night in’.

A familiar chill crept into the air as she rounded the last corner and stepped into the shadow of the massive forecourt. She looked up at the block of dark metal that rose above her, her eyes complaining about the glaring lights. She was almost home.

The border of Plate District Lower-Forest-North was, like most residential areas camped in the shade of a skyplate, a rather ‘active’ neighbourhood in which to reside, the looming mass of the plate above lending the whole development a foreboding air. There was a constant backdrop of noise from ponies shouting between the seven separate foundational skyscrapers or up and down the stairwells. Why they couldn’t just send shooting stars like everypony else was a mystery to Trixie.

It was, again like most plate districts, an earth pony community for the workers who tended to the hydroponic plantation on the skyplate’s upper surface. Trixie was fairly sure she was the only unicorn in Foundation 5, and possibly the whole lower district. It wasn’t ideal - far from it - but needs must. The upper district was a different story of course, the penthouses being reserved for the primarily unicorn managers and magitechnicians who kept the plate operating.

She levitated her cart up the stairs to her small apartment, straining as she pulled the awkward thing round the tight bends in the stairwell. While she was accepted by most of the ponies in the foundation, she still didn’t quite trust them enough to leave her bread and butter in the outside storage sheds. Low grade magitechnical security locks wouldn’t keep a door closed if you hit it enough times with something hard and heavy. Besides, she was only ten storeys up, a drop in the ocean compared to the four hundred or so metres of livable, underplate space left above her.

She arrived, panting slightly, at her floor as she recognised the large, familiar tag of ‘LIVE DREAM VALLEY’ scrawled on the stairwell door alongside the its smaller friends ‘BUCK PRINCESS’, ‘free green nature’, and several iterations of ‘pink champagne’s an easy ride’. Odd that one could get attached to such … objectionable things, but the familiar insults and ranting slogans were all welcome signs that she was almost home. She gratefully set the cart down on its wheels again, towing it into the narrow hall and along to her apartment. She waved her glassware pendant over a flat panel on the face of the door, and sighed as she pushed it open.

It wasn’t much, a combination kitchen/bedroom, en-suite bathroom, and a window onto the artificially bright and open spaces between the foundation skyscrapers. The view wasn’t anything to write home about, just the other buildings in the block, the pathways and flyways between them, and the plethora of cables forming the local tributary of the River that meant her room played host to a continual faint flashing from cable discharge at all hours of day and night.

With a yawn she let the door slam to, and dropped the cart in its usual resting place. Levitating her cape and hat to a hook somewhat erratically nailed into the door, she crossed the few hooves distance to the bed and tipped, face first, onto the pillow. She exhaled deeply, feeling her energy bleed out into the familiar star-patterned fabric. Heaving her hindquarters up onto the bed behind her she turned to look at her small bedside table and the kitchenette behind it. She hadn’t even bothered to turn on the light, and only the blue flickering and faint glow of the external magitech lights lit the room. Her eyes drifted blearily past the clutter of bedside reading, the upturned picture frame, and the small lamp on the table, as sleep started to take hold. She waved a hoof at her neck until she hit the little pendant, eliciting a soft chime from the device.

“Set an alarm.”

Ching

“Eight Thiohaaaaauuuhhheeemm,” she yawned, eyes closed, snuggling her face deeper into the pillow.

Ch-ch-ching

“Eight. Thi-rty. P. M. You know full well what Trixie meant.”

Ching ching

“...the great … nnnnn powerful Trixie … thanks … y...”

Chapter 1: Precipice? Threshold? Brink?

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1 - Precipice? Threshold? Brink?

Vindication! Relief. The flush of success. No more inequality. No more second-class. This would be the time. Everything would change today.

...A paradigm shift...

And my name. My name will be the one on everypony’s lips. My name will be the headline. And why not?

Champagne and warm lights. Cold dark sky.

Why shouldn’t I get my moment in the sun?

A clink of glass.

Doesn’t everypony just want to be somepony?

A clamor of happy voices.

* * *

Why wouldn’t they let me help?

She wasn’t looking where she was going. That, by itself, wasn’t particularly unusual for a pony on the street at this time. Only the mysterious groupthink that arises from large crowds of similarly-minded ponies could be said to be paying attention. A ghostly traffic controller, subconsciously creating lanes and junctions of sleepwalking commuters; a chaotic, bottom-up version of the more managed flyway environment. Then again, if you bumped into somepony on the street, you weren’t risking a several hundred metre drop straight down - through several other busy lanes of traffic - before hitting the street below. A little self-organising chaos could be permitted.

It’s ridiculous, I could have been useful. I have top level clearance for pony’s sake!

No, in this grand social symphony she, alone, was playing the kazoo. Walking forwards, dead to the world; a purple, dumbfire torpedo cleaving aside the waters of the broad sea of perturbed ponies coming in the other direction. Her mind...

“Don’t worry yourself, Miss. It’s our job make sure that nothing bad happens. Now if you wouldn’t mind, you’ve been here for almost three hours.”

...firmly elsewhere.

It was surprising what momentum a small but angry unicorn could carry. If Twilight had actually bumped into anypony she would have had much the same impact as a slightly pointy beanbag hitting a wall. However, despite the crowded streets, there was a distinct path clearing itself ahead of her and a noticeable wake behind. The urgent tocktocktock of indignant little hooves serving as a helpful warning to other ponies; an extra second or so heads up that they might want to consider moving a little to the left or right...

“We have everything well in hand, Ms. Sparkle. Now, please, just let us do our job.” Ugh!

It may, of course, have simply been that she was glaring daggers at the floor and muttering to herself.

Treating me like some panicky foal; don’t they realise that this could be really, really serious?

She trotted angrily towards the city centre, opposing commuters flowing round her like a river round a stone. The claustrophobia of the outer districts began to be replaced by the more open and relaxed central spaces; the landmark skyscrapers, modest attempts at green spaces, and upmarket social venues. Even before Princess had taken over, the city planners had known a thing or two, and a lot of money had been spent to present the illusion of energy and freedom in the middle of square megameters of construction.

The whole of Equestria has been directly threatened! How much more freakin’ ‘serious’ could it be!

Now out of the narrow, rambling streets of the residential districts, she could afford to be on autopilot. The familiar, breezy plazas were easy to navigate thanks, in part, to the self-aggrandising desire for each building to be a brand; a luxuriant, corporate signpost. That, and a lifetime of walking while simultaneously reading text floating in the middle of whatever she was looking at, had left her with a good automatic sense of direction. And a knack for avoiding lampposts.

In front of her stood the Castle’s base, a frozen waterfall of metal streaming from the sky to pour into the foundations. It evoked less of the architectural and more of the geological; the slightly weathered mirror finish showing a fuzzy, distorted image of the open no-build zone it sat in. The tangible mirage filled her vision from a hundred meters away, another fictitious square with its own blurry purple unicorn looking back at her.

She blinked, dislodging the translucent latticework of familiar numbers, facts and geometry hectically constructing itself around her right eye’s view of the Castle. In a fit of petulance she ran a query for ‘Canterlot Security Unhelpful’ but cancelled it before it had time to begin processing. She’d already wasted enough time on the way back and this wasn’t the time to be throwing a tantrum; she was Princess’ prize pupil, and she had a job to do.

Specifically, she would apparently have to do Security’s job for them; show them who's being ‘alarmist’. It was just a question of finding the thing that they’d missed...and there had to be something. Why else would anypony be brash enough to post open threats against Princess with explicit dates and times? You’d have to have a certain...confidence to do that.

She walked through one of the many wide entrance doors dotting the side of the stratoscraper, and stepped into the atrium; a rush of cool air, echoing voices and filtered daylight, captured and reflected down through the superstructure, washed over her. The atrium took up the bottom three floors of the building, opened out into a cavernous multipurpose space with a expansive mezzanine level suspended above. Enclosed glass offices dotted the edges while the middle was a mix of kiosks, tables, meeting spaces and the like; the bright, airy atmosphere making it a popular meeting spot.

The Castle was a great many things: part tourist hotspot, part governmental authority, even part museum in its own honour. And, to Twilight Sparkle and the several hundred other young unicorns who attended Princess’ advanced school, a home away from home. This floor was public access, and was still packed: tourists out to enjoy Canterlot as it transitioned into night; straggly groups of students, milling around before heading out to hit the town after a long study day; business ponies on overtime.

I can do this. All I need to do is find the hole. There is a hole, I know there is. Dream Valley found it, so I can too. So. First, I need a list of every location that could compromise Princess, followed by an investigation into everything anypony could try and do to harm her. Actually...

Twilight wove through the small knots of students, her notes and her notes-about-her-notes overlaid against her vision. Her goal was the nearest of the traveller stations dotted around the hall, anxious, as she was, to ride up to her room to make use of the less portable equipment she had there. The glasseye was useful, but she found the ear-hook uncomfortable, the small active space limiting, and, after a long day of wearing it, she was just getting tired of powering the thing.

Hmm...I think I remember reading something a while ago. That unfinished assignment I took on for extra credit...oh, what was it. I should-

“There you are, Twilight!”

A voice echoed brightly from the mezzanine; a trio of faces, young unicorn mares, poked over the rail, grinning down at her.

-oh, Twinkle, Minuette and Daze! Maybe I could ask them if they...Hmm, doubt they’d know anything. It wasn’t exactly on the curriculum.

“Moondancer is-”

Think, Twilight, think. You know you’ve read this.

“-get together in the-”

Made you stop and think about security. Began with an ‘E’?

“-western balcony.”

You needed personal clearance from Princess to investigate...

“-you wanna come- er?”

Did I ever clear my history?

“Hellooo? Twilight?”

Oh. Right.

“Talk to you later, girls,” she mumbled to the air in front of her, not missing a beat.

The real question was what Princess could not be aware of, she wa- DING. UGH.

An icon, a miniature scroll, flickered into the upper right corner of her vision. She snapped it a frustrated glance. Sender: Colgate, ‘Moondancer blah blah party, balcony, bookworm’.

Reply. ‘Busy. Studying to catch up on.’ Send.

A nonexistent scroll was burnt up by a flash of metaphorical fire.

She engaged the call function for the traveller, a muffled, guttural sigh of frustration echoing from up over her shoulder as the doors snapped open.

I need to take this seriously, even if Princess isn’t...why isn’t she taking this seriously! She always listens to me...

“-think she’s more interested in-” the doors snicked shut behind her as the platform began to carry her upward.

The residential floors spanned a number of floors towards the middle of the building, above the scholastic levels and teaching labs. Four hundred floors was quite a way up and the gentle ride took several minutes. The boredom was alleviated only by projected footage of Canterlot, courtesy of the building’s exterior scry cameras, and any decent conversation that was going. Twilight leaned against the shoulder rail and gazed blankly at the image of the rapidly shrinking city. She couldn’t focus on solving the problem when the problem itself didn’t make sense.

Clearly Dream Valley had found some weakness in the system, and were absurdly confident that they could exploit it. But Princess was the system and she...well, it was unthinkable that she would miss something a bunch of scruffy eco nuts had found. The whole thing just didn’t sit right. As the traveller sped upwards, Twilight only came to one real conclusion; she was achingly, and more to the point distractingly, hungry. A carrot and daisy sandwich sounded pretty good...

A few minutes later a soft chime sounded, the doors hissed open, and Twilight Sparkle walked out into a quiet, carpeted hallway over a kilometer vertically up from where she had started. It was best not to think about the height too much. The corridor looped round, living space around the outside with a small common area next to the traveller shafts and stairwells in the centre. Breaking up the neat rows of interior doors, an unobtrusive airlock was tucked away at the end of a short alcove allowing direct access to the ‘blade’ edge of the tower. In nearly ten years Twilight had seen somepony make use of the external airlocks maybe twice. Well, for their intended purpose at least.

Ostensibly to ease congestion by allowing pegasi or frame-flyers to, given the appropriate clearance, simply fly up or down the structure, the ones at this altitude rarely found much official use. Unicorns, and especially earth ponies, had an innate dislike for using frames at such vertiginous heights, and there was not much call for a pegasus to fly into a magic school. Unless you were a pegasus whose unicorn special somepony had a taste for flight, nerves of steel, and a healthy disrespect for gravity, common sense and continued good health. Twilight was not one of those ponies.

Pushing open the door to her spacious apartment, she finally wrestled the annoying lens from the ear-strap and levitated it onto her desk in her lounge-cum-study-area. The room was an airy, open-plan affair and played host, as all the upper student suites did, to a jaw-dropping view of Canterlot courtesy of a sweeping window making up the outside wall. As Twilight walked through a bland divider into her modest but functional kitchen-diner, the room greeted her renewed magical presence with a sigh of life; lights flickering on, environmental regulation warming the room and, most notably, a large crystal panel sitting in the centre of the lounge stirring with light.

Colour condensed inside the clear crystal, like drops of dye in a pool of water, sharpening and solidifying. A chunky emblem took form, floating in the centre of the room; an aesthetically stylised token of Princess’ silhouette spinning lazily above the words, ‘Data Spike OS 10.2 - Session resuming,’ as the glasseye and the panel made each other’s acquaintance. Twilight could see the screen across the open-plan room, and soon found herself half-watching some modern history program as she began slicing a carrot.

-project was regarded by some as a serious waste of resources. By this time, Princess had only recently been placed in control of Equestria, and opponents of her installation used the Shield as leverage to accuse her of being unfit for governance. After successfully stalling attempts to halt the project and submit to an inquiry for two years, widely regarded as the most competent display of political gamesmanship in recent memory, the Princess’ shield officially became the first Equestrian object to be placed into orbit and significantly eased the rising temperatures. This demonstration of the power of unilateral decision making was what allowed Princess to be given-

The rhythmic clacking of knife against chopping board paused as Twilight reached for another carrot. She glanced up at the footage of a huge wedge of metal, ominous in its glittering gantry, glowing with the beginnings of the most powerful levitation in history. Like most ponies, she had studied the construction of the shield as part of her modern history class. Still, it was almost a tradition for stations to roll out the documentaries again every year as the Summer Sun Celebration came round, basking once more in the glowing pride of accomplishment, strong after all these years. She reached out to massage the intangible magical apparatus that filled her room, and began flicking through the channels, trying not to lose focus on chopping as she did so.

-at Rich Corp, because we know money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy quality engineering-

-scams run in Hoofington three weeks ago and were reported to the local authorities. The public are urged to-

-love me? Just like you loved him, baby? Darlin’, I did everything you ever asked of me and you-

-turn up to the Gala in a flight suit! Same as every year! She’d look smokin if only-

-the safety of Equestria was under threat. Dream Valley make bold claims but experts say they lack the resources to-

With something between a sigh and a groan, Twilight, sandwich floating alongside, walked back to her study and sat heavily on the cushions by the screen. The parade of unhelpful broadcast snippets was replaced by reams of text and times, as she instructed the device to display a complete history of every action she’d taken on her Spike account in the last six months.

It was a long list.

‘E’...‘E’...Oh come on, Twilight, you’ve got a better memory than this. It was something...I remember it made me think of Sherclop Pones for some reason.

She scrunched her face in concentration, skimming quickly down the wall of dates, times, and addresses. She had a vague idea of when the work had been done, true, but that still left about a month of actions to slog through. This was going to take a while.

She settled herself on the cushions and took an absentminded bite of her sandwich. Not like she had anything else to do, and even if she did this would have taken precedence . She looked at the system clock, lurking at the edge of the display.

8:30 pm

* * *

Looking back, Trixie couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that she hadn’t dreamt it all. The does-this-bother-you drone of her alarm, the catatonic shower, the bleary cup of coffee, the tottery trek downstairs with cart in tow; it all had the distant unreality of a fading dream. Clearly, she was not in her room anymore, but she honestly couldn’t properly remember leaving it; just that she somehow found herself walking down a street. She was starting to regret going to sleep in the first place. Performing after staying awake was one thing, but the scant two hours of sleep had just made her feel incomparably worse. She wobbled down the street, stifling another shuddering yawn, hoping that the comparatively fresh air at her destination would perk her up before she had to actually perform.

The walk passed in a timeless daze. Only gradually, as the muffled bustle and noise began to sharpen and swell, pricking her performer’s instincts, did Trixie finally start to shake off the floating sense of disconnection. The streets were opening up and the buzz of activity was filling the air; pegasi and frame-flyers whooping through the flyways, off to live it up in other parts of town, while earthbound ponies were milling through the plazas and concourse areas.

The city was alive and restless with the pent-up energy of a day too hot to be active, and as it seeped into Trixie’s coat her blank, sleepy expression began to twitch into a smile, and her shuffling gait regained its usual swagger. She’d needed a challenge. Do a stunning show while half asleep? Heh, she’d do it and make it look easy.

She arrived in short order at the plaza she was aiming for; a wide open area with a selection of kiosks, stands, and other entertainers scattered about. The areas just next to the Castle had a reputation for a carnival atmosphere, fostered by the warm summer nights; lights and sound playing across the open squares, voices of families and foals mingling with the cries of the plate-spinners, firedancers and other eccentric acts.

Rolling her cart to a stop by a parched fountain, she began to set up her small stage.

When she’d been a foal, her mother had brought her here to see just the kinds of street acts she was now performing. Trixie had always liked this fountain, as it had been the usual spot for a puppet show run by an elderly earth pony. She could still remember the voices he used to do, as he wove all manner of silly adventures, together with his collection of little hoof-puppets. Oh, she had loved it. And to this day the memory of the simple but endearingly earnest adventures of Great Wizard Alakazam and his sidekick, Fiddlesticks, always conjured a silly smile.

‘Oh, if only I had my invisibility potion. We could slip past unnoticed and the princess would be rescued!’

‘Well, here ya go Ally, I brought just the ticket!’

‘...That’s a pot of raspberry jam.’

‘Why so it is!’

“‘Oh, Fiddlesticks!’” she muttered happily to herself, a gruff, sotto voce attempt at the voice commonly associated with favourite uncles, as she set up the fireworks at the base of her stage. She never did find out what happened to him, the old puppeteer. Her mother had stopped taking her out when she couldn’t make time anymore, and Trixie hadn’t come back until her first performance several years later. The puppet show was long since gone, and the fountain was now dry as part of the water conservation measures. It had seemed a rather forlorn sight, to her, like many things at the time. She liked to think that her performances here were somehow, distantly, in memory of Ally and Fiddle.

All done. The stage was, quite literally, set and the audience awaited. Even if they didn’t know they did. Trixie took a moment to focus and then climbed up onto her platform.

“Come one! Come all! Come, and witness the amazing magic of the Grrrrreat and Powerful Trrrrrixie!”

And a new burst of lights and sounds filled the square.

* * *

Twilight had been completely correct about it taking a while. It was getting on for midnight and she was only just getting to the relevant bits and pieces. She had no idea that she read so much...stuff; it never seemed nearly this much at the time.

The room was darkened save for the glow of the seemingly never-ending list that languished, taunting her, on the screen. She was having to pause more and more often to rub the sleep out of her eyes, but that was nothing new. If she could pull all-nighters for an essay about the history of Cloudsdale and the Great Anchoring, then she could sure as hay make the effort for-

She stopped dead, staring at the entry that she’d just passed over. There it was, a single article she had stumbled across called the ‘Elements of Harmony’, a little opened padlock hinting at the lengths she’d gone to to satisfy her curiosity.

Oh, of course. Elements! How could I have forgotten.

She sat up straight, alert and engaged again, and began to read.

About ten seconds later she stopped, having finished the article.

She felt her jaw hang slackly at what she was looking at; the word ‘redacted’ several hundred times over the large blacked out regions of, presumably, previously informative text. All that remained readable were a few lines at the very start.

‘Elements of Harmony - Program Overview (Purview: Operational Sphere of Project Blueblood): Designed as one of the few ways to reliably express control [REDACTED] contains the ability to disable and, if directed, cripple [REDACTED]. Under no circumstances should it be considered for even the most limited access on the Starworks. Public access would void the [REDACTED] security measures and could [REDACTED] leading to widespread destabilisation of Equestrian infrastructure. We recommend continued isolation and containment as per our original guidelines.’ The rest was a complete blackout.

She skimmed again through the hoofful of useful lines.

Suppose it explains why I never got that far in the research. And why it wasn’t that memorable. Princess must have done it, she’s the only one that could, but why? Why would she still let me access the file, but just censor it to the point of uselessness? I don’t understand. This looks like exactly the kind of thing that would be vitally important to know right now, but...

“The Elements are a big, powerful...thing. Probably bad. Nopony knows.” Great.

She leant back and stared up at the ceiling. This was all she had to work with and it wasn’t really anything. Straining to see the screen from the lower corner of her eyes, she ran a few cross-searches for related terms and similar articles. Nothing. She slumped again, feeling sleep start to weigh on her eyelids and, after a moment of silent contemplation, she made the decision that she was always going to make.

She flicked open the inbuilt shooting star client.

My dearest teacher,

My continuing studies of pony magictech have lead me to discover that we are on the precipice of disaster.

For you see, the threats levelled at your person by Dream Valley may not be empty after all, and Equestria may be in peril from the ‘Elements of Harmony’. Something must be done to ensure that these terrible threats do not come true.

I await your quick response.

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle

The message rolled into the image of a scroll before flying off, twinkling over an imaginary horizon inside the screen.

Well, that’s all I can do about it for now. I’ll just have to start more conventional investigations. I’ll need to go over the venue for the celebration, the list of security protocols, the guest lists and I should probably cross check the threat against past behaviour from Dream Valley, maybe there’s a hint I’ve been overlooking that-

Mirroring her own message moments before, a small green flash popped on to her screen and expanded into a scroll. She opened it.

My dearest, most faithful student Twilight.

I appreciate your concern and your care for both my person and all of Equestria. However, it is late tonight, too late for you to be doing work.

Come to my chambers at 8:00 tomorrow morning and we shall discuss the matter in person.

She buried her head into the cushions and groaned. If Princess was telling her that she needed sleep then she was probably right, but Twilight was loathe to just let the matter rest. She hadn’t even accomplished anything yet...besides bothering the Security ponies.

She let out an exasperated puff of air, grimacing as it morphed into a yawn. She’d got a meeting with Princess. Should probably prioritise that for now, and that meant getting some sleep in preparation, otherwise she’d be half-asleep when-....actually come to think of it that was probably why Princess had scheduled it so early. She was diabolically good at that sort of thing.

The weary student reluctantly called it a night, closing her history and retiring to her bed in a little partitioned section of the apartment. The lounge lights dimmed as she left, recognising they were no longer needed, as did the screen, closing down the stacked layers of documents left open. The final words to fade from its surface were the words that had started the whole affair, pasted onto billboards all across the Starworks as well as on walls and lampposts over Canterlot.

On the morning of the Summer Sun Celebration we, the good ponies of Dream Valley, will make our voices heard against the iron hoof of the dictator. For too long have we sat idle, watching as we plunge headlong into the same mistakes. We are tired of repeating history and we are weary of seeing ponykind suffer. All of Equestria will understand our cause and why we must turn back before we go too far. The time for nature is at hoof once again, the time of metal is past.

* * *

There was a great serenity that came with a successful set of shows and, even after years of doing it, Trixie still got the buzz; the odd kind of euphoria. Complete and total elation, but calmed with the knowledge that the hard work had already been done, and that the only thing now was to soak up the applause and prepare for next time. Trixie had wrapped everything up alongside most of the other street acts, recognising the dwindling audiences as the night progressed, and was pleased to see that she’d made almost enough to offset the water chit debacle. That still left her with a minimal profit for the day, but at least she wasn’t worse off than when she started.

She was all but home, towing her cart through the barren forecourt of Foundation 5. The bare stone gleaming under the harsh white flood lights suspended from the plate’s underside scaffolding high above. The hard buzz of the magitech lock echoed in the stairwell until the door snapped shut behind her, and then, after a moment's pause, she was spiralling slowly upwards, cart floating behind her.

Many floors later, she wearily pushed open the hallway door, the lights popping noisily to life. Automatically, her eye wandered to her apartment door, part way down the hall; a narrow, familiar sliver of white-washed wood when viewed from such an acute angle. Something was off, a feeling in the back of her mind, a distinct unease that wrapped itself around her stomach as she looked down the dingy corridor.

Time slowed to a crawl. Her heart began to beat harder as a tightness began to grow in her chest, forcing shallow, uncomfortable breaths. She didn’t move, staring intently, afraid to risk confirming what she was seeing as her blood slowly froze. Hesitantly, she took a step forward, praying she could convince herself of a trick shadow...the dark emptiness remained as more of the doorframe entered view.

...No...

Suddenly, she was shivering, stumbling numbly towards her apartment, cart forgotten behind her, heart smashing frantically against her ribs.

No, oh please no, please...

A wave of nausea rolled over her as she reached the splintered doorframe, leaning heavily against it as the world shrank away beneath her.

Hollow, she stepped over the shattered door and stood in her little room. The muted light from the hallway cast a dull, flat glow over the remains of her life. Upturned drawers filled the meager floorspace; cutlery, plates and ingredients tipped out of the cupboards among a mix of photos, books, and personal knick-knacks and mementos from fun days out crunching softly under her hooves. Her bed was flipped against the wall, mattress torn open in a mess of stuffing, dents and scratches on the wall from the impact of the bedframe.

Trixie walked slowly over to her upturned bed, magic finding her blanket and pulling it out from under the cracked wooden frame. She ran a hoof over the fabric, feeling every roughly cut thread from the long, lengthways tear. She gently, quietly, sat down on the edge of the bed frame, ruined blanket limp in her hooves, watching her room from a thousand miles away. A quiet, logical voice distantly noted that nothing seemed to be missing, just damaged. Photo frames smashed, photos ripped out, clothes torn to ribbons, kitchen taken down to furniture; jars and packets smashed on the floor, books eviscerated.

She sat there awhile.

Time slowly trickled past as she listened to her heart beat, eyes roving blankly over the room.

Her vision blurred with the beginning of tears, hardly breathing, hardly thinking, shaking gently in almost reverential silence, trying so desperately not to break the unreal disconnection she felt; the fragile illusion that this might not be how things really were; that she might just wake up in a cold sweat and laugh it off as a ridiculous dream.

Reality began to seep back in as she sat; the unforgiving wood of her bed frame, the faint smell of herbs from the wrecked kitchen, the sound of her own shuddering breaths, and the creeping fingers of exhaustion. Shakily she rose to her hooves and tried to think; wiping her eyes and focusing intently on the corridor outside so as to avoid the rest of her room.

This...somepony did this...came here and did...this. I need to...I need to get help. Can’t ask neighbours. Who...Security...I should call Security.

She pulled her glassware pendant free of her cape, and moved a hoof to tap the surface before hesitating, hoof hovering over the device. She knew what was coming. The flashing lights, gruff ponies bombarding her with questions, hours of talking, hours of being here. They wouldn’t give a buck, this happened all the time. Just...not to her. They’d tell her she was stupid, a unicorn living in a foundation. Asking for trouble. She...she was too tired for this. Far too tired. Too tired to be angry, too tired to fix it. Too tired to deal with any of it.

She felt a shuddering sob begin to grow in her chest. She pressed her eyes closed and furiously fought to control her breathing again. She wasn’t crying; not for this. She’d been through worse and come out with with dignity intact. Like hay she was going to blubber like a foal now...

She could barely stand and now, as the last dregs of adrenaline were replaced by a groaning weight in every muscle, her pride finally conceded the fight.

I can’t do this. Not right now. Not...here. I need...somewhere...

Her hoof tapped the pendant. A soft chime; deafening against the silence.

“Place a call,” the trembling effort in her voice noticeable even in her whisper.

Ching

“Roseluck.”

A cheerful ringing complemented the pretty bars scrolling across the pendant’s surface as she held it, floating, in front of her. Abruptly the image changed to the face of an earth pony mare, somewhat older than Trixie, her communication device apparently sitting on a bedside table. She rubbed sleep from her eyes, pulled her tousled mane back and blinked blearily out at Trixie, radiating confusion.

“...T-Trixie? Trixie Lulamoon? That you?”

“Hello...Roseluck. I- I’m...sorry I know it’s late...I-”

“Um, that’s...never mind me, what’s happened? What’s wrong? You never call this number.”

Trixie cleared her throat and took a moment to compose herself, mining out her last reserves of willpower.

“Trixie would like to call in the favour that you promised Trixie’s mother some time ago.”

The other pony blinked, rubbing the bridge of her nose with a tired hoof.

“Erm...you want us to put you up?...Are you in trouble?”

“Trixie’s-” she stopped, shaking, as her voice faltered on the edge of cracking. She continued in a strained whisper.

“Trixie’s apartment has been...been...Trixie cannot stay here right now.”

Rose looked off to the side, eyes darting back and forth, obviously unsure despite her concern, rubbing the back of her neck with one hoof.

“Well...I mean, sure...but,” she paused as her mouth soundlessly worked, fumbling for the right words.

“We might not be the best...um...place for you to stay right now. I mean, we’d be happy to...but, you know...” she stared, almost pleadingly, at Trixie; willing her to fill in the blanks.

“Trixie knows.”

Roseluck sighed, again rubbing her eyes, sleep making it difficult to conceal the conflict in her face. There was a moment of weary eye-contact, a second or two, before argument was resolved.

“Right...okay. Um...you’re in Forest North 5, right? You haven’t moved since...”

She just let the sentence trail off as Trixie nodded, eyes closed.

“We’re ten minutes by flash transit. Just...hang on and we’ll sort you out, okay?”

Another silent nod.

“All right, you just sit tight now, love.”

Too tired to take offense at being patronised, Trixie just let the call drop.

And in the darkened wreck of her home she sat. Waiting.

* * *

When Twilight woke to her alarm, her room was already bathed in the soft yellow glow of morning. From this high up, the sun clambered over the horizon noticeably earlier than at ground level; dawn reaching the top of the tower a good fifteen minutes before the base. She yawned, stretched and trotted to the bathroom, incidentally admiring the geometrically perfect ring of the sun as it stood in a coincidental, but aesthetically pleasing manner, above a building carrying a similar sculptural motif.

Breakfast came and went, as fresh morning light mixed with fresh morning orange juice to get Twilight’s synapses firing again. She uploaded her daily essence quota to the river, still a little too sleepy to need the usual calming mantras ensuring no emotional contamination, before leaving her apartment and heading to the traveller; already planning out her arguments as she went. Why Princess should give her access, why the Security services were in dereliction of duty, and so on and so forth.

The traveller ride up to the upper levels was ample time to rehearse her speech. Princess’ office, affectionately but a little pointedly known as her ‘eyrie’, was on the uppermost usable floors; more because of what that lofty position implied about her rather than for any practical reason. Princess tended to use secure meeting rooms on lower floors for day to day mundanities, to give the impression of eschewing ‘all that pomp and circumstance’. All the trappings of the powerful elite and all the accessibility of the everyday pony.

The traveller came to rest at last, and the doors snapped open onto a vast, darkened space. Princess had taken a rather minimalist approach with the decor, and the entire room, maybe seventy metres square, was all but empty. The floor was a smooth, black stone that drank in the warm glow from the enormous window filling the entire far wall; a thick band of yellow-orange in geometrically exacting contrast with the sharply defined black interior space. The dizzyingly wide view washed the space with light that was seemingly absorbed into the jet ceilings and floor. The only thing breaking up that view was a low table, a pair of luxuriant chaise longue to either side, and a pony.

Standing at the window, staring out at the parched sky, was a pony utterly unlike any other. A pure white mare with a long, needlepoint horn and broad, strong wings towering over any other pony; implacably calm, radiating control, and bathed in the gold light of morning. A kind of sculpture that sought to encapsulate every ideal that Equestria represented. Statuesque, an icon, an exaggerated perfection. The embodiment of strength and order, as she was built to be.

Her regal nature was reflected in her golden ornamentation; a heavy, bejeweled torc, a tiara, and anklets. Her mane and tail drifted in the air behind her, aloft on a holographic breeze; glowing, multicoloured auras of flowing symbology and shifting syntax. A pair of calculating, magenta rings shone cooly in their sockets, regarding the miniature city spread out below; her city.

* * *

As the traveller doors opened Princess engaged the avatar’s social suite, restarting blinking and breathing, subconsciously unsettling if not present when looked for. She’d had a long time to think about what Twilight was going to say, now she just had to play out her response.

“Princess, are you busy?”

From some ponies that would have been a joke and Princess idled away an instant, formulating punchlines. She decided against it, in the end; Twilight was just being polite. Instead, she turned away from the window and stepped towards her student, moving in for an affectionate nuzzle. Twilight was a refreshing change to the city’s undercouncil and financiers; there was no need to be stand-offish and formal with her. Though, a cursory biometric sweep coupled with, frankly, basic maths did suggest she was putting in a good show of pretending to be awake.

“Of course not, my faithful student,” she said, her voice rich and soft, carrying faintest undertones of biologically impossible harmonies, “Please, take a seat.”

“Thank you, Princess. I wanted- well, you already know what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Princess watched herself engage in a flurry of tiny, meaningless motions; a small nod, a delicate half-hum-half-sigh as she looked away in thought, the small tics and twitches around the eyes, her breathing patterned to imply she was preparing to speak. Twilight sat patiently, unconsciously playing the game, unwilling to interrupt her mentor’s ‘thinking’ despite the absurdity.

Of course, she knew Twilight was aware of the room-filling processor banks a kilometer below her, as they...she...flipped through the social interaction rulebook to find how long a ‘considered pause for thought’ should be. If anything, the long years that the two had known each other made it easier for Twilight to see her as a normal, relatable pony that was tragically, sympathetically, trapped in a metal shell.

A little under three seconds on the clock. Time to move on.

“I believe I do, Twilight. Now, you I trust your judgement, you know I do, but you simply must stop worrying about ancient history.”

“Now, I know-” she said, firmly. Cutting Twilight off precisely as she started to launch in a rebuttal, “-I can see you are genuinely worried, but there is more to a young pony’s life than studying. I have everything under control. You believe that, right?”

The muscles in Twilight’s face worked to form a response, highlighted by the warm morning light. Princess had some strong bets on how Twilight would phrase her obvious disagreement but, honestly, it was an easy assessment. Twilight wasn’t so rude as to say ‘no’ to her face, and besides which a part of her probably did agree, but she was never one to just let things go. That narrowed her options considerably.

“Well, yes, of course I do. But Security wouldn’t give me the time of day, they just told me to let them handle it. I could have helped...” she added, lamely.

Ouch. That was weak. You must feel more tired than you look, Twilight.

“I know, my little pony, but I wouldn’t let them be Security if I didn’t trust them, now, would I? I promise you, Twilight, I’m keeping an eye on our Dream Valley friends, and I won’t let them do anything bad to you or anypony else”

Her eyes managed to radiate a loving warmth, despite the harsher edge to their purple light; a knack she had spent a comparatively long time developing.

As expected, Twilight had no immediate response. Short of ‘I don’t trust you enough’, which she was clearly not going to say, this called for a decently complex and delicate diplomatic rebuttal. Princess artfully filled the gap.

“Look, I know how much this means to you, and far be it from me to be so ungrateful...” she paused to pretend to think, again trusting Twilight not to interrupt her mid-sentence. The next step was obvious.

“If you want to help, I can send you to supervise the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration in person. How about that? That way you can keep an eye out for anything anypony else missed in Ponyville. I’m sure you’re more than up to the challenge.”

Checkmate. Princess knew Twilight saw it; it was written all over her face.

Refuse, and she’d seemingly contradict all her previous concern; accept and she would be sidelined into a different job. Either way, it seemed like Princess won the argument.

Princess watched herself, her warm, implacable smile and gentle but commanding gaze, as Twilight considered.

Ten minutes later, Twilight was entering the traveller again, burdened with a list of instructions, places and ponies, as well as a distinct feeling that the meeting hadn’t quite gone as planned.

The next bit was the hardest and most uncertain. Princess updated her speech delivery model to include the most recent behavioural data, and committed.

As Twilight activated the controls for her floor, Princess looked up and called across the room.

“Oh, and Twilight, I have an even more essential task for you to complete in Ponyville. Make some friend-” and then the doors were shut and her student was speeding down the massive structure.

Princess smiled as she released manual control over the traveller doors. All in all that had gone exactly as expected, and now it was up to Twilight. She turned back towards the window, indulging in a smile before standing her avatar on power-save. She’d made good progress on a rolling upgrade scheme for the River as Twilight had been grudgingly reading her assignment; noting another 184 unneeded power cables she’d found. Now she just needed a way to finance the changes...

Deep in the bowels of the Castle, a single sub-processor rack hummed tunelessly.

* * *

And so it was that Twilight Sparkle found herself trotting towards the Castle’s local flash transit hub at eleven o’clock in the morning. She had spent the last few hours marking and packing bags for delivery to her new, temporary, lodgings in Ponyville’s town library. She knew a little about the town from her reading; a small, flat-town that had grown up around the old atmospheric humidifiers by the then Everfree Forest. It wasn’t rich, by Canterlot standards, but boasted a strong sense of community and sharing that promoted a higher quality of life than one would have perhaps expected from a settlement of its size and wealth.

She huffed in annoyance as she walked. The third time in the last five minutes. She’d been played; seen the trap coming but been powerless to avoid it.

Princess was Twilight’s best friend and, despite fairly aware of it, she had grown accustomed to the charade; taking the little nods towards ponydom, the faux time-to-think and so on, as the social niceties that they were. That was fine, Twilight had no issue with her mentor’s nature and preferred the charade to the impression her conversational partner was playing games of chess in between each syllable. But, when she was tired or distracted, she always seemed to end up doing just what Princess wanted her to do.

She believed that Princess knew what was best, certainly, but there was still the nagging doubt that nopony seemed to actually be doing anything...

The sky above her darkened with cables, save for the frequent blue flashes jumping between them, all running into a large warehouse-esque building in front of her. Flash transit was one of the most power intensive conveniences that magitechnology had brought to Equestria, it only took a cursory glance at the river distribution maps to see that was the case.

Long, orderly lines of ponies were matched to brightly colour coded gates for destinations in different regions of Equestria, all shuffling slowly towards the rows upon rows of marked circles on the floor and the glowing metal-crystal protrusions that ringed them. The large, echoing building was alive with the overlapping cacophony of crashes and flashes of disappearing and reappearing ponies. She joined a queue for non-local transport, sandwiching herself into a long line of business ponies, and sighed.

Well, I know I’m right. I’ll check on the preparations as fast as I can, then get to the library to try and find some more information about the Elements of Harmony.

She flashed her travel card to the unicorn at the checkpoint and said simply “Ponyville, please” before turning to stand on the metal dias, the air heating and crackling around her coat.

Princess said to check on the preparations. I am her student, and I’ll do my-

in a hot timeless void she floated formless and senseless the world stripped from her like cobwebs in a gale transient ethereal in a boundless size-less sea she slept as thick waves of potential slammed through her cloud in the burning sky

-royal duty, but the fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends.

She shook the static from her coat, nodded to the sole pony manning Ponyville’s empty flash station, and trotted out into the daylight, glad to be free of the pressing mass of the late commute, finding herself in the town’s plain square.

She experienced a moment of genuine giddiness, as if she had just found herself walking on the ceiling. The buildings were only a few tens of storeys here, at most, with a few sparse cables strung between them, and after a life spent cocooned by metal, the comparative openness of the town left her with the disconcerting impression that she was falling upwards into the yawning abyss of the sky. Twilight had never understood how one could be scared of open spaces; comparing this to Canterlot city centre, she had the distinct impression she didn’t know what ‘open spaces’ meant.

She turned to look back at where she knew Canterlot would be, and was surprised she could actually see it; a horizon that wasn’t a few hundred meters away and terminated by a building held a certain novelty. It was like the view out her bedroom window, except visible from the ground. She drank in the unfamiliar sensation, running her eyes over the long dark smudge that ran across the horizon. She could just make out tiny flickers of light from the base of Cloudsdale as it hung, like a dark but fluffy doll’s house, off to one side.

After a moment, practicality outweighed sentiment and she turned to take stock of the square, calling up a map of town and requesting flags corresponding to her to-do list for the day. As she studied, she became aware the background to her maps was increasingly pink, her glasseye rebalancing the map colour to compensate. Focusing, she saw a pink earth pony with a rather bubbly mane walking up to her.

She began to take a step out the pony’s way and was about to dismiss her when something stopped her, a moment’s hesitation.

Well...Princess did ask me to try and make some friends and I suppose local knowledge can be just as good as a map sometimes. I...I guess it couldn’t hurt to say ‘Hi’. I could tell Princess I tried and then call it a day. And who knows. Maybe she’ll actually have some useful information about security for the Celebration.

Clearing her throat, she stepped out into the mare’s path.

“Um...hello?”

Later, Twilight would find that the word she was looking for was ‘seizure’. Right now, she wasn’t quite sure what to call it. The other pony’s eyes widened as if trying to eject themselves from her skull. She reeled backwards, gasping like she’d just come up for air after a particularly taxing freedive, then shot off to...somewhere as fast as her hooves could carry her.

Twilight stood there for a moment while her mind started up again.

“Huh. Well...that was interesting.”

She sighed to herself, shaking her head before refocusing on her map again.

It looked like the first stop would best be Sweet Apple Acres, the local apple farm. She brightened somewhat at that; her reading had told her about the hybrid-hydroponics system that the Apple family were using to grow their apple trees and that they were unusual for getting hydroponic methods to work successfully in a more natural setting. Maybe they’d let her see how they did it? Oh! Maybe she could get a proper tour if there was time!

Her enthusiasm faded a little as she realised that there probably wouldn’t be time, if she wanted to get her investigation done, but she still set off at a happy trot towards the outskirts of Ponyville, the neat, regimented rows of trees that covered the hillside beyond the buildings, and the first of many stops of the day.

Chapter 2: Summer Sun Celebration Official Overseer's Checklist

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2 - Summer Sun Celebration Official Overseer’s Checklist

Harsh lights. Ignore the stares. Hostility. Nothing new.

What? A pony can’t change their opinion?

Questions. I have answers. Don’t want to hear it. Just want to hear what they want to hear.

Don’t get angry. Deep breaths. Drink of water. Warm. Stale.

Slimy weasel of a question. Gets a round of applause. Fat, satisfied grin. A foal playing with matches. Pathetic.

Irresponsible.

After. She’s there. How did it go? Don’t want to talk about it. Her look hurts more than the questions.

When did I get so...

Let’s just go.

* * *

The buildings of Ponyville receded as she walked, the flattened terrain and busy soundscape falling away in favour of rolling hills. The dry air whispered around her, the silence broken by the hard, rhythmic crunching of the gravel underhoof. The uneven path wound its way out of town, cutting a stripe through arid fields and wilting hedgerows, tucking between the brittle, lonely trees scattered amongst the yellowing grasses. A faint, summery haze of seeds and aimless insects clouded the path as she carefully picked her way towards the orchard, just beyond a white picket gate at the path’s end.

She rested her hooves on the splintered, whitewashed wood, savouring the unusual feeling of the material, and looked over into the orchard. The path unravelled itself in the dying grass ahead of her, little more than a track worn out through use as it rambled up to the hilltop. A chunky farmhouse, crumbling brick supported by a gleaming metal exoskeleton, perched against the sky, a sturdy island in a sea of apple trees. The regular lines of trees were broken at intervals by white marquee tents, large enough to fit maybe ten ponies.

“Hello?”

The word died in the silence, hollow against the sprawling fields, as she fought against the absurd reflex to leave the silence undisturbed. She tutted in embarrassment and irritation, shaking her head as she nudged open the gate, feeling the shuddering complaints from the aging hinges.

The grass bent under her hooves as she made her way between the trees. The bumps and stones underhoof were a novelty, a change from the even flagstones and regular cobbles. There was something about the...organicness - she winced at the non-word - of it that she liked. It was peaceful here, the wind rustling through her coat, billowing her mane gently out to the side. The valley spread out below her; splotches of yellow and orange, a few flecks of green, and the blocky greys and whites of Ponyville. Even the hulking, gunmetal domes and turbines of the humidification plants dotting the distant heathland seemed a natural addition to the landscape.

She went to the nearest of the marquees, nosing aside the canvas flap and pushing her head through the shimmering wall behind. Her breathing fluttered at the unexpected humidity, water beading on her face and her vision smothered by a thick layer of mist; the far wall a ghostly shadow unless she ducked down or stood up on tip-hoof. She ran her eyes over the rows of shallow trays on long, clinical tables, water gurgling through a thin layer of soil, with saplings spaced evenly along them.

A patter of rain echoed softly from around the nursery, as clusters of petite rainclouds orbited lazily around their saplings, gravitating to thin metal aerials wrapped round the stems. The soft blue hue of the numbers and figures hovering next to the first budding leaves cast an eerie glow into the cloud layer. A buzzing hum came from a bare metal box by Twilight’s hoof, a ‘Pegassist 3’ apparently, connected to both the barrier and to a water pipe that probably ran under the valley to the nearest humidifier. The miniature clouds emerged, fully formed, from a funnel on the side of the box like cartoonish puffs of smoke.

She pulled her head back through the field and let the flap drop as something caught her attention. The faint hiss of leaves in the wind, the imperceptible gurgling of the hydration systems threading the base of every tree, the faint rumbling baritone of the distant humidifiers, the rush of the wind in her ears and...there...a sharp, hollow thunk that echoed through the trees.

She licked her lips nervously as she followed the regimented lines of trees towards the sound. She was not particularly looking forward to this, being rather asocial at the best of times, and dealing with earth ponies always put her a little on edge. She sighed; it couldn’t be helped. At least she was here on Royal Business, so hopefully that would count for something.

Up ahead she could see the source of the rhythmic thumping noise; an orange earth pony was making her way slowly down the line of trees, running up to each of them at a gallop. At the last second, she would pivot and slam her hind hooves, encased in tall, white boots, square into the centre of the trunk; the attendant readouts briefly flashing red. The apples shook loose, dropping into baskets placed at the base of the trunk where they were quickly collected by a little yellow filly sporting a cute, red bow in her mane. The sound of happy banter drifted on the breeze.

Twilight, now a polite distance away and wary of the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, trespassing, cleared her throat uncertainly.

“Good afternoon, I’m sorry to have intruded. My name is Twilight Sparkle and-”

Before she knew what was happening the orange mare was striding briskly up to her. She fought a flailing tide of panic as each purposeful step brought the other pony closer, certain she was about to be bucked in the face, flinching as the mare reached out a hoof to grab her foreleg. Suddenly her hoof was being pumped enthusiastically up and down, taking the rest of her along for the ride.

“Well, howdy-doo, Miss Twilight, a pleasure makin' your acquaintance. Ah’m Applejack. We here at Sweet Apple Acres sure do like makin’ new friends!”

While Twilight supposed that this was certainly preferable to what she had been imagining, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d end up losing the same amount of teeth, as they chattered together in time with her hoof.

“F-f-r-r-r-ien-n-n-nds? A-a-a-ctu-u-ally-y-y, I-I-”

She paused, carefully extricating her poor hoof from the greeting, coughed slightly, and tried again.

“Well, I am in fact here from Canterlot to supervise preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration.”

She was too concerned with her aching hoof and foreleg to see the change in Applejack’s expression.

Giving her shoulder a final, rueful, rub, she noticed the yellow filly, still moving baskets around under the dappled shade of the apple trees. Not wanting to appear rude, and anxious to fill the growing silence, she gave a rather forced smile in her direction.

“Hello there, what’s your name?”

Something in the air changed. The filly looked up and trotted brightly over to her, face all smiles.

“Name’s Applebloom, Miss Twilight. Pleased t’ meet-”

“Now, now Applebloom.”

Applejack stepped between them, pushing back her Stetson as she wiped her forehead, voice firm and with a slightly strained edge to it that Twilight couldn’t quite place.

“Why don’t ya go up t’ the barn, fetch...uh...some more baskets?”

“Wuh? But we don’ need more baskets. Ya know ah can only carry one at a tahm, si-”

Twilight couldn’t see Applejack’s expression, but the look on Applebloom’s face spoke volumes.

“O-Okay...ah’ll go get ‘em.”

The filly galloped away up to the farmhouse, stealing a glance back at Applejack as she left, leaving the two alone in the orchard.

“Hehe, mah l’il...uh...cousin. She’s a hoofful, that one.”

The mare was smiling at her as if smiling were a trick she had only recently learned from a book; face scrunched into a rictus grin, eyes darting over Twilight’s face.

“So...uh...y’said you were here about the big shindig tomorrow?”

Twilight cleared her throat, wishing there was a similar simple mechanism to clear the air, and attempted to recapture a little professionalism.

“Yes, yes I am. I understand that you’re in charge of the food?”

“We sure as sugar are! Would you like to sample some?”

The strain was slowly melting away, Applejack’s expression more natural and relaxed as she removed the white shock-absorbers from her hind-legs, resting them against a tree.

“Well, as long as it doesn’t take too long.”

* * *

Back in town, Twilight Sparkle walked - though it felt like ‘rolled’ - into the main square, massaging her aching tummy.

She had been introduced to what felt like every earth pony on the planet over the space of one short, albeit heavy, lunch. Only thanks to the glasseye did she manage to keep any of the names straight, even after eating most of their namesakes. Who knew there were that many different kinds of apple-related...things?

She remembered Granny Smith though, oh yes. Only so much one can hear about shock-absorption, bucking trees, what it does to your hips, and ‘how easy y’all have it these days’, before the speaker’s face sticks indelibly in the mind. She hadn’t seen Applebloom again, not that she had expected to. She made a small note to herself, touched with resigned regret, that she would have to deal with that at some point.

She took stock of her surroundings. The sense of dizzying openness had faded since her arrival, but she still found it jarring how...short everything was. Buildings were spaced a decent distance apart, most no higher than a couple of storeys, their burnished metal surfaces and flickering signs more soft and personal than she was used to. The gentle bustle of ponies was less focused, less keen than the edgy, 'working lunch' mentality of the city. Ponies stopped and chatted amiably as they passed each other in the street, neither party apparently slaved to a clock hovering constantly in their peripheral vision. She couldn't quite put a hoof on what exactly it was about the place; something in the air, she felt. Things were just different here. Everypony seemed to know everypony else; not that they didn't in Canterlot, but...

She shook her head, kicking a loose pebble across the flagstones. Plenty of time for sociology later. Next up was weather, courtesy of Ponyville’s weather pony, ‘Rainbow Dash’. Twilight, with exaggerated deliberation, squinted up. The dark blue sky, cloudless as ever, gazed back down at her, sun blazing fiercely behind the eclipsing shield.

“Hmph. I see she has everything wellOOF”

The blow knocked the sarcasm right out of her as the world span, the ground smacking into her head as she tumbled across the square. She lay still for a second, winded, as the heavy weight on her ribcage clambered off her, said,

“Uh...heh, ‘scuse me?” and chuckled, sheepishly.

Twilight pulled herself to her hooves, getting her breath back as the haze of colours swam back into focus. She blinked, processing what had just happened as she looked around for wherever her eyepiece had been knocked flying to.

“I guess I overcooked that last turn a little.”

“Let me guess,” she eyed the lean, blue pegasus, the multicoloured mane, “you’re Rainbow Dash.”

She struck a pose, head held high and wings flared, “The one and only. Why, you heard of me?”

Twilight was pretty sure she’d seen the pose on a poster before now...couldn’t quite place it though.

“I heard you were the town weather pony. Ah!”

She levitated the stray crystal back into place over her eye, relieved that at the apparent lack of scratch marks.

“I’m here to check on preparations for the Celebration tomorrow.”

“Pfft.”

Twilight blinked, pausing as she brushed dust and dirt from her coat. “Pfft?”

“Yeah, you heard me. Like what, I have any control over the weather ‘round here? You think Princess’d know better than to rain on her own parade.”

She watched as Twilight continued to wrestle the knots out of her mane.

“Look, it’s just a formality. I’m really busy today and this is important so could you please just cooperate so I can check it off the list?”

With an exasperated sigh and unnecessary eye-roll, Rainbow hopped up onto a nearby fencepost, balancing easily along the narrow beams, gesturing theatrically.

“In my official capacity as the weather pony for the town of Ponyville, I can guarantee that the weather for this year’s Summer Sun Celebration will be-”

She looked Twilight straight in the eyes, deadpan.

“Clear.”

Twilight sighed.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. C’mon, I’d never leave Ponyville hangin’. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a lot more practice I gotta put in.”

She was turning to take flight, poised on her fencepost like a coiled spring, when Twilight Sparkle’s curiosity got the better of her for the second time that day.

“Practice? Practice for what?”

She uncoiled into a lazy backflip off the fence, flashing a brilliant grin and radiating excitement.

“The Wonderbolts! They're gonna perform at the Celebration tomorrow, and I'm gonna show 'em my stuff!”

Twilight couldn’t resist the twinge of condescension that snuck into her tone as she sat back on her haunches.

“The Wonderbolts?”

“Yep!”

“The most talented augmented flyers in Equestria?”

The juggernaut of bravado just kept right on rolling:

“That’s them.”

“Don’t you need...” Twilight nodded pointedly toward Rainbow’s wings.

There was something about answering glint in Rainbow’s eyes that Twilight found a little worrying.

“Oh, you ain’t seen the half of what these babies can do.”

A split second later only a puff of dust and a fading rainbow remained in the space previously occupied by Rainbow Dash as she turned the square into her own aerial assault course; dodging between shops and houses, skimming at breakneck speed a feather’s breadth off the ground. She tore through the air, tossing out corkscrew turns as she twisted amongst the River and stooping into death-wish dives that had Twilight physically cringing in anticipation of impacts that never came.

Her estimations of the g-forces involved must have been wrong, she thought, watching the air bend and strain under Rainbow’s wings as she snapped round another hairpin turn. Nopony could make turns that hard and that fast.

Eventually, with a thump of impact, Rainbow Dash was standing in front of her again, panting hard and doing her utmost to hide it.

“Some ponies might need to use all that fancy tech to do it. But me? I’m 100% natural awesome! Cloudsdale’s finest!”

Twilight just stared, dumbfounded, as the Pegasus laughed heartily, taking to the air again and swimming surreal circles around the square in an easy backstroke.

“You should see the look on your face. Oh, man! You're a laugh, Twilight Sparkle. I can't wait to hang out some more.”

And with that she was gone.

Twilight let out the breath she discovered she’d been holding, blinking at the quietened square. Everypony else seemed nonplussed, a few laconically applauding the now distant pegasus, most just ignoring the entire thing. Pulling herself together she looked across at the Town Hall, the ornate metalwork on the front of the building signifying its importance.

Next was the decorations for the various events and parties, including the main dinner with the Mayor at the Hall. That was the responsibility of Rarity, and this seemed as good a place to find her as any.

The Hall was strewn about with various different ribbons, fabrics, and several ponies who kindly explained, with the slightest hint of weary resignation, that Rarity was just picking up a few more samples from her shop a short distance down the main street. She did her best to ignore the rather bemused glances at her mane, thanked them, and followed their directions.

She found it easily enough; Carousel Boutique certainly caught the eye. It wasn’t immediately obvious what the building had originally been, but no small amount of effort had been put in to overcome the crude, blocky shape. Thick sheets of fabric rolled down from the higher floors, stretched taut to anchor pegs scattered around the periphery of the building. The forget-me-not blues, pale creams, and lush golds overlapped in flowing layers that, to the casual eye, completely obscured the underlying metal; the flapping fabric creating a soothing, watery ambience.

The fey, marquee-esque look was enhanced by glowing images of flat, stylised ponies that danced happy, repetitive circles around the upper storeys. Twilight watched them trot around, playing looping games of hide and seek between the rippling fabric, trying on stylised clothes, and shares stories over tea. It was an eye-catching effect, all the more so for not being drowned out by street after street of the same kind of magipictorial advertising. The finishing touch was a thin pennant flying from the top of the building, hanging limp in the summer air. It was utterly unlike anything Twilight had seen before and, coming from somepony who lived in the centre of Canterlot, that assessment carried weight.

She walked through a loose ‘tunnel’ in the wall of fabric, nudged open the door and took stock of her surroundings as a gentle chiming echoed through the shop. As she took a couple of quiet steps inside, the air in front of her began to softly bend and glow, silently twisting the image of the wall behind. After a moment it had formed into a white unicorn mare with an elegantly curled purple mane and tail that still somehow managed to convey depth despite being flat. Back in the day it would have given her a headache. The image smiled at her,

“Welcome to Carousel Boutique where every garment is chic, unique and magnifique! I am Rarity and I must be rather busy right now. Please take a seat and I’ll be right along.”

As the air snapped back into place and the image faded, Twilight could just pick out a muttering voice from behind the curtain that presumably separated the lobby from the main shop floor. Shooting a guilty glance at the comfortable sofa she had been directed to, she hesitantly pushed the curtain aside and cleared her throat apologetically. The unicorn from the Shopkeep, real this time, was surrounded by a mass of floating fabric scraps that danced around her, forming orderly queues for her scrutiny.

“Oh! Just a moment, please! I'm 'in the zone', as it were. Oh, yes!”

She selected, at random for all Twilight could see, a red bolt of cloth that was laced with golden glitter.

“Sparkle always does the trick, does it not? Why, Rarity, you are a talent. Now, um, how can I help yo- Oh my stars, darling!”

As Rarity had turned to face her, the practiced, welcoming smile had crashed and sunk into a look of abject horror.

“Whatever happened to your coiffure!”

Twilight reached up unconsciously, dislodging a sprinkling of dust and a small stone which buried itself in the lush carpeting.

“Oh, you mean my mane? Well, it's a long story. I'm just here to check on the decorations, and then I'll be out of your hair!”

“Out of my hair? What about your hair!”

“Wait! What are you doing?”

An hyperactive swarm of razor-thin, glassware plates swept out of one of the cupboards, spinning in the aura of Rarity’s magikinesis, and swirled around her like leaves in a rather localised magitechnical hurricane. Sheets of light washed over her, raking through her mane, pulling on every individual strand of hair, prickling across her scalp as they teased out tangles, knots, and twigs.

“Oh, er, thanks. Now, I-”

“What! Oh, we haven’t even started! You just sit there, darling, and let Rarity fix you up! Now, what drywash mane-conditioner do you use?”

“Um...the...normal...one?”

“...Ah.”

A short while later Twilight found herself still in the boutique. Admittedly, the impromptu free manewash had been nice, if rather forceful, and she did feel a little refreshed. But now she was somehow letting this happen and she wasn’t quite sure why. She was starting to suspect some kind of emergent traumatic stress disorder.

The constellation of glass was hovering steadily around her, wide beams of flickering light casting colours and shapes that somehow stuck in the air, providing a slight resistance whenever she tried to move a hoof, leaving her feeling like exactly what she was; a living mannequin. Rarity, like some kind of ringmaster, was pacing up and down beside her with a critical squint in her eye, horn flaring as she played the system like a musical instrument. Colours, patterns, materials and cuts flowed over Twilight; each change creating a new composition that was a subtle evolution of its predecessors..

After much thought and irritated tutting at Twilight’s impatient fidgeting, Rarity seemed to have settled on a simple blue saddle design with spun silk frills and a heavy emerald sitting at the throat. It was apparently ‘quintessentially her’ and ‘complemented her eyes without’...something about her mane.

She hated it.

Eventually, something happened in the conversation that she could latch on to.

“Now go on, my dear. You were telling me where you're from.”

Finally.

“Well, I’ve been sent from Canterlot to-”

“Please hold still, I- Canterlot?”

Rarity beamed at her.

“Oh, I am so envious! The glamor, the sophistication! I have always dreamed of living there! I can't wait to hear all about it! We are going to be the best of friends, you and I...Emeralds? What was I thinking? Let me get you some rubies!”

Twilight looked desperately at her chronometer, choking back a strangled scream, and took a cautious step towards the door.

“Okay, well thank you, that’s lovely. Oh-look-at-the-time-I-really-must-be-going...”

“Oh, that’s fine my dear,”

She waved a hoof at the space where Twilight had previously been standing, another ghostly Twilight having filled the space.

“Can’t have you standing around here all day now can we! Oh, but promise me you will try to make time for a dinner sometime. You simply must tell me all about life in the big city!”

“Absolutely.” Lies.

“Oh, that’s wonderful. I suppose I should get back to finishing the decor for the celebration. I suppose that’s why you’re in town, isn’t it?”

Twilight was halfway out the building.

“Yes. The decorations look lovely. Gotta go. Bye.”

“Well, I shall hopefully see you there then. Good bye!”

The only response was the rapidly closing door.

* * *

The final stop. She eyed the sun, much lower in the sky than she would have liked. Once again she was walking out of town, the other side this time, heading to the narrow strip of scrubland between the town and the dead kindling of the old Everfree forest. Apparently - she checked her list - ‘Fluttershy’ wasn’t much for crowds, all the way out here.

It wasn’t hard to find the house, standing out as it did from the waving yellow grasses despite its unassuming, rounded architecture. Only a single storey high, a ‘bungalow’ if she remembered the old term correctly, it nestled almost apologetically into the landscape as if trying, and failing, to just be another natural hillock. While natural it most certainly was not, it was not instantly identifiable as a house. Every available flat surface, walls, roof and door, were covered in nest boxes and bird feeders, all woven into the grass thatching that concealed the metal beneath.

But she wasn’t heading there; she was following the sounds of birdsong, a thin, pure melody that tickled through her head in a pleasant sort of way, guessing that it was the entertainment that Fluttershy was organising.

It was only a short distance up the path before she could clearly see the source of the music. A solitary, dead tree stood in the middle of what was now just a dirt track out towards Everfree, its cracked, grey branches decked in bundles of colour; as if it was laced in feathery bunting. A pile of pieces of wood, on closer inspection proving to be more nest boxes and a few scraps of hay, sat alongside some nails and a hammer at the base of tree. The boxes were clearly hoofmade, each unique in its wavering, bespoke geometry.

A daisy-yellow pegasus hovered, hooves bobbing as she conducted her avian ensemble, at the level of the upper branches. Twilight sat a respectful distance down the path, watching as the pegasus stopped, waving her hooves plaintively and flying up to...talk with one of the birds. That gave Twilight pause. Communication with animals was nothing especially new, with the right combination of behavioural monitoring, vocalisation analysis, and magic, all of which could be built into glassware with only moderate difficulty, anypony could theoretically ‘talk’ to animals. But she couldn’t detect any essence being expended in the area and, now that she thought about it, the pegasus wasn’t even wearing a cell to power anything.

Fluttershy resumed her station, cleared her throat delicately and began to count the group back in. Anxious to get the meeting over and done with, Twilight decided now was as good a time as any.

“Hello!”

There was a flurry of feathers and a clattering of wings as the chorus emptied into the air like a slow-motion firework, leaving only two ponies, both cringing slightly but for different reasons, and a silent tree.

“Oh my, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to frighten your birds. I'm just here to check up on the music, and it's sounding beautiful.”

There was the softest rustle of feathers and a gentle tapping of hooves as the pegasus alighted on the dirt track in front of her, scuffing a hoof bashfully back and forth in the dust.

“I'm Twilight Sparkle.”

The other pony’s flowing pink mane seemed like it was trying to absorb her as she peeked out from behind it.

“What’s your name?” She knew, of course, but it seemed like a good start; a decent straw to clutch at.

If the pegasus had been trying to demurely hide behind her mane before, now she was almost cowering behind it; her mumbled response drowned out by the silence.

“I’m sorry, didn’t quite catch that.”

Her glasseye’s social enhancer did not even recognise the faint sounds as speech. Twilight decided it might be easier just to give in.

“Ah right! Fluttershy, aheh. Pleased to meet you...”

The loudest sound was the flutter of wingbeats as the remaining songbirds resumed their positions in the tree.

“Well, um, it looks like your birds are back, so I guess everything's in order. Keep up the good work!”

An imperceptible squeak came from just behind the pink mane.

She caught sight of the house again as she turned to leave and decided, forcing a cheery tone, to make one last ditch effort to be sociable; bailing a few, last half-hearted buckets from the conversation’s sinking ship.

“Oh, and, er, nice job with all the nestboxes, although you can’t have that much food left for yourself with all those feeders!”

“Oh thank you, I didn’t realise you liked animals too! I just can’t stand the thought of all my little friends going hungry.”

Twilight slipped a gear.

“The poor little birdies find it so hard to find food and shelter these days but Rarity- Oh! I...um, well, um, do you put them up as well?”

Evidently, Twilight concluded, in the half second that she’d turned her back, ‘Fluttershy’ had been replaced with an identical pony who was now fluttering in front of her, beaming excitedly.

“Well, no, not really. There really aren’t many birds in Canterlot so I don’t-”

“Oh my! No birds, you poor thing. That’s such a shame when there are so many beautiful birds native to Equestria!”

“Really? I didn’t know-” She bit the sentence off just a second too late, having to restrain herself from punching herself in the head.

“Goodness, well where should I start. There’s over thirty species of finch alone in this part of Equestria. You see...”

Twilight began trudging home, staring straight ahead as the yellow bundle of energy talked away. Well. That was it. Admittedly a part of her was listening along, building lists of species and how to identify them, but mainly she’d just had enough. The whole day had been a disaster.

* * *

She had woken early despite herself, thanks to the cold and the crick in her neck. She had spent the night on the sofa, despite Rose’s protestations, unable to stomach the thought of being given a bed as well as food and board. But now, here she was. Sat on an aging sofa in a scruffy apartment in a cheap tower block, staring intently through the low table and the faded floral cloth that covered it.

The apartment was simple, but still a step up from her own; cheap furniture made of artificial woods, barebones utilities and a tiny balcony. There was a flat view of the characterless street and the copy-paste towers running along it, with Cloudsdale hanging ominously above, subsonically rattling the windows and casting dull, flickering shadows up and down the street every five and a half hours. Despite that, it had a homely feel and was obviously cared for by an owner making the best of what they had; a threadbare yet colourful rug, scattered pictures of friends and family complementing framed poetry and pleasant landscapes. Trixie stood out against the warm claret colour scheme, her cart clashing with the curtains as it sat in the corner by the window, containing her show and a few personal possessions that she had salvaged.

She seethed, lost in thought. Grief had quickly boiled into anger as she slept and the morning walk to the Security station had been fast and angry, Rose trying to help her to keep a civil tongue in her head. Her frustration had peaked in the face of bored indifference and blank professionalism as statements were taken, questions were asked, and she was told that ‘we will be in touch if we need anything else but don’t get your hopes up.’

She had almost spat at that, Roseluck gently pulling her out of the station and exchanging understanding looks with the officers. The walk back was quickened by anger, accompanied by rambling rants and Rose’s sympathetic noises of agreement.

Now it was just a case of waiting. She almost found this worse than...well, going out and beating whoever was responsible to within an inch of their miserable life. She felt so useless. Trixie didn’t let other ponies solve her problems. Trixie didn’t need other ponies to solve her problems. She was better than this...or at least she hoped she was.

It just felt so demeaning, like she’d failed. Well...it wasn’t that; not quite. She narrowed her eyes as she glared into the middle distance. Certainly it felt like a part of her could release a breath it’d been holding for a very long time, but every fleeting pained glance and quiet sigh from Rose, unconscious tells simmering underneath the genuine hospitality, reminded her of the burden she must be. The knot of embarrassment tightened in the pit of her stomach.

Auntie Rose. She hadn’t kept in touch with her much over the past few years, but now Roseluck was being...well, quite honestly Trixie had no idea how she was going to repay this. Rose kept treating it like she was the one paying off a debt, which was all well and good, but Trixie was no charity case. Certainly not just because of family connections.

The last few hours had passed in silence, a grumbling tension in the air. Rose came and went, quiet save for the occasional offered drink or gentle question, answered with a curt nod or dismissive shake. Now she just sat on the opposite armchair, fidgeting from time to time and repeatedly reading the same page of some magazine, the thick crystal tablet flickering gently on the chair arm.

Trixie just sat marking time, utterly unable to stop running through pointless scenarios of how differently things could have gone; what if she’d stayed home, what if she’d moved to that more expensive apartment she had been looking at, what if she hadn’t bumped into that stupid pony and had to buy him another bucking-

“Please don’t set fire to the tablecloth. I’m rather fond of it.”.

Trixie sighed and leant back in the sofa just a little too hard, pulling the brim of her hat down over her eyes. She watched as Rose fiddled with the end of her mane and glanced over at the scratched crystal wall clock.

“It’ll be time for lunch soon...”

“Trixie isn’t hungry.”

“Oh.” Rose continued to toy with a few strands of hair.

“Well, I’ll make something in half an hour or so and you can see how hungry you are then.”

“Trixie is fine.”

“Okay...but you really should eat something...”

Silence consumed the room again.

Very slowly, a realisation started to work its way into Trixie's head.

“Trixie thinks you're worried.”

Rose started slightly, blinking.

“Well, um, of course I am, dear. It's serious, what's happened to you. I don't-”

“No. Not that.”

Rose drew breath, ready to argue, before slumping in defeat; kneading the chair arm nervously with a hoof.

“...They'll just be settling in now...getting everything prepared...”

“You think you should be there with them.”

She grimaced, staring over at the window as she thought.

“No, I want to be there with them. I should be here with Daisy and Lily, doing the follow-up. It’s what we’re better at...Besides, they volunteered. They’re brave fillies...”

The silence dragged as Trixie struggled to think of something comforting to say.

“Well, Princess shouldn’t be too harsh...she’s usually quite forgiving about these kind of things. Looks better for her...so...”

She shrugged rather desperately as the sentence ran out of steam, before falling back on the old performer’s staple. If in doubt, just do anything, but whatever you do, do it confidently. And so she did.

“Trixie thinks you are acting for the right reasons and that that will win out in the end. Everypony will be on your side.”

It was a platitude at best, but Trixie thought Roseluck seemed to cheer slightly, giving her a wan smile.

“Thank you, dear. I just hope the posters weren’t a mistake.”

The smile fell away again.

“How so?”

“Well, we didn’t want this to look like some fanatical crusade. We wanted to show we had a case to make and that this was...you know, planned; calm and collected. That we aren’t just a bunch of kooks who haven’t thought things through. But I just worry that they might have increased security, or that they’ll be harsher in response to any threats, or that somepony else will do something stupid and we’ll take the blame, or...I don’t know...I just worry about them...what they’re getting themselves into.”

She met Trixie’s gaze, worry now openly shadowing her face.

“You don’t think the posters made us sound...weird, do you? We spent a long time trying to make it sound serious but... Be honest, now.”

Diplomacy was not Trixie’s forte.

“They said everything they needed to...but they were rather over the top.”

She got a sudden snort of laughter in response.

“Coming from you I’d say that’s the definition of irony.”

“Hmph.”

A flicker of comforting pride flashed through her as she pouted, nose in the air.

Rose’s gaze drifted, the smile fading as she turned to look at the clock again. She caught herself doing it, and rubbed a hoof over her eyes with a weary laugh.

After a moment's halting thought, Trixie got to her hooves and crossed the room, hesitantly patting the older mare on the shoulder, completely unable to think of anything to say. Rose smiled, resting her hoof on Trixie's.

“Seems like we've both got our troubles.”

* * *

There were a lot of birds in Equestria. Twilight knew this now. One hundred twenty species overall with thirty three commonly found in the environs of Ponyville. You learn something new everyday.

She had been walking mechanically, blankly following the foalproof bouncing arrows that were pointing her towards the library as she nodded and said 'uhuh?', 'oh?', and 'really?' every so often. Fluttershy had been all smiles for the last forty five – Oh hay, she'd been walking for that long? Augh – minutes as she happily bubbled away about what kind of grasslands could support...something, Twilight honestly hadn't been paying attention. Sounded like it was a bird though.

It was with great relief that Twilight saw the library on the horizon, the floating markers laughably unnecessary in the face of the library's distinctive architecture. The live-in library had once been a great tree; a grand old oak in its prime. At least, that's what she had pieced together from 'Pilgrim Pony Folk: A Pictorial History of Ponyville'. The library these days was a shadow of what it had been. As the humidifiers were being built to drain out Everfree, and Ponyville was changing from a cozy backwater into a vibrant industrial township, the ground had been paved over and the rains had slowly stopped. After almost two hundred and fifty years of standing firm against whatever life threw at it, the library tree finally gave up the fight.

As the ancient wood cracked and dried, slowly rendering it unfit for habitation, the decision was made to save it. Not literally of course, any attempt to rehydrate the soil had already been too little too late. Instead, it was changed, turned into a memorial to both itself and to its books. Threads of pure Starlite were magically woven through the wood, commanded to hold the tree together, a faint blue latticework of flowing knots and arcs just visible beneath the bark. A cloud of soft orbs of light, trailing ghostly streamers in their wake, span on slow, flat circles around the crown of dead branches, changing colour with the seasons. Twilight had difficulty deciding whether the glowing veins and otherworldly waltz were more beautiful or macabre.

Either way they were standing at the library door, increasingly finding parallels in Twilight's mind with the gateway to paradise, as Fluttershy began moving onto something about field mice and hedgerow destruction.

“Oh my! How did we get here so fast? Well,” she stifled a 'yawn', “I am juuuust beat. Long day of organising and stuff.”

She flashed a sheepish grin at Fluttershy who, in turn, grinned even more sheepishly back, suddenly all bashful glances and concealing mane once again.

“Well nice meeting you goodnight!”

“Um...goodn-” then the door slammed and Twilight stood alone in the darkened library.

She allowed herself a moment to gather herself. Finally, far later than planned, she could get on with the real job of the day. It wasn't a lost cause just yet, oh no. Now she was finally alone, able to get on with studying without a bunch of crazy ponies trying to make friends all the time. Now, where was the light?

“Surprise!”

There was an explosion of light, streamers and kazoos as Twilight was assaulted by the welcoming cheers of - her heart sank - around thirty ponies all crammed into the library.

Then it got worse.

“Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie, and I threw this party just for you! Were you surprised? Were ya? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

In front of her, practically vibrating on the spot with excitement, was the pink pony from earlier. Twilight groaned.

“I thought libraries...museums, whatever this place is, were meant to be quiet.”

“Well that's just silly!”

She leaned disconcertingly close and dramatically mouthed words at Twilight's right eye, which obligingly subtitled, “What kind of welcome party would this be if it were quiet(?) [inflection uncertain]”. Then she was back to full volume.

“I mean, duh, booooring! Y'see, I saw you when you first got here, remember? You were all "hello" and I was all,”

She performed a startlingly accurate rendition of the heart attack she had when they first met.

“Remember? Y'see I've never saw you before and if I've never saw you before that means you're new, 'cause I know everypony, and I mean everypony in Ponyville!”

They’d started walking, Twilight spotting a punch bowl on the far side of the room that was the only path to sanity, and Pinkie bouncing happily behind her.

“And if you're new, that meant you haven't met anyone yet, and if you haven't met anyone yet, you must not have any friends, and...”

The words rolled over her head as she poured out a cup. She didn’t care anymore. Tact, making friends, none of it mattered. She took a sip. All that mattered was getting this over- hmm, needed to be stronger.

“...then you must be lonely, and that made me so sad, then I had an idea, and that's why I went-”

Pinkie had another heart attack somewhere over Twilight’s shoulder as she up-ended a bottle into her drink.

“I just throw a great big ginormous super-duper spectacular welcome party and invite everyone in Ponyville! See? And now you have lots and lots of friends!”

This farce had gone on long enough. As Pinkie posed in a friendly group hug with all Twilight’s new ‘friends’, she took a swig of her drink and prepared to- woah, woah, woah!

Twilight’s eyes began to stream as the searing pain in her mouth consumed her unhappy little world. She bolted towards the bathroom, frantically stumbling up the stairs to flush the volcano out of her mouth.

“Aww, she's so happy she's crying!”

“Ah did think that was rather a lot of hot sauce...”

* * *

It was truly late now, late enough that even the dawdling summer sun had long since dropped below the horizon and let the stars have their moment. Late enough that it was almost early again. She could still hear the thumping music and occasional, particularly loud bursts of laughter even through the staircase, the closed door, and the pillow over her head.

She had only really glanced around the cramped bedroom, much smaller than her own; focused on finding what she had to work with. The functional vanity stand had been ignored, the bathroom briefly acknowledged, the dangerously unsafe stairs up to the bed warily regarded. She had been forced to leave her pride and joy behind, instead bringing only a comparatively small glassware worksurface which she had dug out of her bags, and only the library’s exceptionally strong connection to the starworks had been worthy of note.

Buried under the bedcovers, hearing her voice thickly in her head through the pillow she tried to salvage the last usable dregs of the day, eyeing the algorithm she was constructing as her last ditch attempt to avoid whatever catastrophe morning would bring. She was almost done, talking out the last set of correlations to look for, grateful that the crystal could make out her muffled words against the background noise.

The door cracked open, and she winced as glaring light stabbed into the room, alongside a spike in volume.

“Um...I’m sorry to disturb you...I...er...”

Twilight pulled the covers off her head, turning to look at Fluttershy, or at least the wave of rosey mane and half a quavering blue eye that peeped uncertainly out from behind the door.

“It’s just we’re starting the last ‘pin the tail on the pony’ and, er, you hadn’t, um, played any of the other games and, um, we were thinking maybe you would like to...”

The face had almost completely retreated behind the door, complementing the gentle decline of her words into inaudibility against the party below.

“No! This is ridiculous. Do you have any idea what time it is!”

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” said the door, not a trace of pony to be found. “I’ll...um...sorry...”

The door closed with a click, taking the light and noise with it.

Almost immediately Twilight felt a twinge of regret at how harshly she’d spoken; not like her at all to be that tactless. But, in her defence, this was more important than some stupid party. Here she was, trying to save Equestria from some dire threat levelled at the entire country and its guardian ruler, and the only thing people wanted her to do was party and forget about it!

A flickering candle of indignant pride burned away the shadows of her regret. She could apologise later, but this came first. Certainly compared to a game of ‘pin the tail’...sheesh.

“All the ponies in this town are crazy,” she muttered to herself, rebuilding her pillow fo-...her nocturnal workstation, and dictating the finishing touches.

It didn’t take long, only a few minutes skimming through the checklists to make doubly certain she had not done anything foalish before it was complete. She set it going, looking at the clock. Well, it would get maybe ten minutes to crawl the starworks for clues before it would just be too late. She sighed, she’d done all she could and would have to draw comfort from-

“Surprise! Again!”

Twilight reeled backwards almost overbalancing off the bed, pillows scattering to the floor, as a manic grin and wild blue eyes barged past the reams of text to fill the screen in front of her.

“I know it’s not really a surprise as I’m already here and this is already a surprise party which has already started but I guess that could mean that surprises were the theme in which case I could have surprised you by knocking as I’m just outside your room but I didn’t want to knock in case you were asleep so I decided to call you instead!”

Twilight stared flatly at the screen, clearly hearing Pinkie’s voice through the screen as well as through her bedroom door.

“Thanks, Pinkie.” How did you even get my contact details?

“No problemo! But you really should get up, the Sun’s almost up and you’re going to miss the super-fantastic ceremony!”

* * *

They walked out as a group, Twilight lost in her own thoughts while the others chatted about whatever. She’d failed. She had no idea what kind of catastrophe was going to befall Equestria and she was utterly powerless to stop it. There was nothing to do now but hope that Princess’ confidence was justified.

The fields to the east of Ponyville were crowded, a few hundred ponies all standing inside a cordon of flags and homemade bunting. The entire town had turned out for the spectacle, joined by waves of lucky tourists from Canterlot and beyond. The affair was a little plain, perhaps, but then the decorations for various formal functions to follow were exquisite and there was only so much one could do to beautify a flat field.

At the front of the crowd was a boxy platform, festooned in more bunting and various motifs of Princess’ de facto cutie mark, a burning sun. An ornate golden crest, a loop of metal big enough for several ponies to comfortably jump through, sat at the back, framing the sky where the sun would soon be. A covered area, screened by expensive white and gold fabric, sat stageside, Princess no doubt idly biding time until her big entrance.

Above the crowd, a group of five or so pegasi floated smoothly overhead on steady wings, the glassware sheets wrapped over their eyes linking the images all over Equestria to those not fortunate enough to afford the journey.

A peculiar crackling hum rang over the crowd, the rattling thrum of sound drawing attention to the pony at the podium; an older mare with a greying mane and a set of glasses that reminded Twilight of some of her more traditionalist teachers.

The mayor was not exactly one to shake up the status quo when it came to speeches, thanking everyone for turning up, talking about the legacy of the Shield for the benefit of anypony who had been living under a rock for the past decade or two. The air warped slightly in front of her as a hoof-sized set of not-quite-concentric rings span slowly on the podium in front of her, everypony in the crowd hearing the Mayors bland history lesson as if it were being delivered personally to them from only a few hooves away.

A bright orange arc was sitting on the horizon.

Twilight checked her clock.

Not long now.

* * *

Trixie had slept easier that night, only being woken as Rose went out to meet Lily and Daisy for a long day of speeches and ‘soapboxing’ - as Trixie called it - to bolster the upcoming demonstration.

Trixie didn’t care for the pomp and circumstance, and Rose’s agenda was so distant from her day-to-day life that she honestly would have been content to ignore the whole thing. When Rose had paused as she walked out the door, quietly asking Trixie to keep an eye on her girls for her, Trixie had rolled her eyes, pointing out that there was nothing she could do. But she hadn’t been able to get back to sleep, something pricking in her chest, and now she found herself watching the clock, waiting for the coverage to start.

She sighed, theatrically, and idly flipped on the ancient receiver in the corner of the room, pulling herself out of her slouch so she could see the tiny, blank screen. She squinted at the empty crystal, feeling around for the magical switching that- Ugh. She lightly hit herself on the forehead. Earth pony tech.

“Ahem...Start. Begin. Show me the celebration...um...please? Hmph, this is ridiculous...Activate! The Great and Powerful Trixie commands you to switch on!”

The set flickered as colours and sounds slowly started to trickle out of it. Trixie sat back down, and arranged herself comfortably on the sofa once more, drink of water - courtesy once more of Roseluck’s limitless hospitality - floating gratefully to the side, and watched.

* * *

The nervousness growing in the pit of her stomach was so palpable that she could have sworn the ponies standing next to her could hear it. Her heart pounding, steady breathing needing genuine effort, saddlebags feeling like they were packed with bricks.

The mayor was prattling on about what an honour it was. She allowed herself a quiet snort as, she was sure, did her three compatriots. ‘Honour’, yeah, thank you so much Princess ‘I-removed-the-concept-of-democracy-from-government-then-unilaterally-started-a-one-child-policy-and-want-to-doom-us-all-by-destroying-the-environment’. It’s a pleasure to have you round. Please stay for the buffet.

She allowed herself a glance up and over the crowd, spotting a comforting blue and pink mane on the other side of the field, a paler blue just to the right and...hmm, couldn’t spot Berry anywhere. Well, she was probably there somewhere. Anyway, she needed to focus now. Princess had taken the stage.

“My little ponies, it is so lovely to be back in Ponyville for the first time in a long time.”

They were actually...actually going to do this. She sucked in a deep breath, as quietly as possible, hooves trembling as she gently edged her way forwards through the crowd.

“-and honestly, I’ve enjoyed the morning’s festivities here more than in any other town to date.”

Surely everyone must know what was in the saddlebags. It seemed like she was screaming out her intentions to the crowd and it took every ounce of willpower to not keep magikinetically checking the contents were still there.

“Just don’t tell Las Pegasus that.”

That got an appreciative chuckle from the crowd.

“I would like to thank the Mayor for organising such a wonderful celebration. As well as thanking all those involved-”

What in Equestria had she signed up for? All of a sudden it seemed like the most stupid, foalish idea she’d ever had. But here she was, in a crowd of ponies about to...it hardly bore thinking about.

“And I especially want to thank all of you for getting up so darn early!”

Oh grief, here it was, if they didn’t go for it now then Dream Valley would never be taken seriously.

“The long, hot days of summer peak today. This morning the shield will begin to extend, bringing us the cooler months ahead. I don’t know about all of you, but I am looking forward-”

She already saw the others taking positions. Only a short gallop through the crowd to reach her now, up on her ridiculous pedestal.

“Well, that’s enough from me, I think. Time to get on with the show!”

Right. This was it. A flush of strength rushed through her, eyes narrowing and jaw set. Time to do this.

“So now, my good friends, let the-”

* * *

Surprise. How oddly recursive to be surprised at being surprised, she thought. She understood what ponies saw in it, of course, her social routines were without peer and ‘surprise parties/hugs/tax payments/etc’ were amply covered. However, this was not a sensation that she had experienced before. She stared at the voracious black wound lashing out as it ate through her mind.

It was not a sensation she liked.

The ravenous animal that had previously been several parallel banks of her own offensive magiwarfare suite appeared to be targeting her main runtime, trying to undercut her and cause her to lose instantiation. Fixable with a complete reawakening...provided the collateral damage was minimal which, as she watched it blindly thrashing about like a wounded spider, seemed unlikely. It howled against her defenses, twisting routines and bending past firewalls even as she cooly replied in kind, tearing great raw chunks of ideology from its periphery.

Physical containment - hardware quarantine - was not an option, the routines were executing evenly across all her physical codices and the thing was recognising and outmaneuvering the shepherding routines that she was weaving.

Still, she had an advantage of sapience. She had reinforced the barricades stacked around her personality core and, despite giving ground in terms of raw processing ability, she was holding her own. The thing had a blind, thoughtless strength to it, cutting a swathe through her faculties and slicing her up into pieces, but failed to innovate. It fell for traps, was diverted down blind-alleys and was left reeling by flurries of targeted counter-attacks and cunning blindsides.

She had, for quite some time now, just been letting her warfare suite handle the stalemate. Her defenses would weaken eventually without her care, but in a way that suited her purpose. The heuristics in her attacker would spot it and weigh that when it chose to commit. She was busily building a honey-pot; a feasible replica of her personality, going for a bait and switch. The thing would dive right for it and that would allow her to see where the routines were being called from and give her a huge advant-

Something pricked at her. Her offensive routines were being a little too stupid. She looked toward her connection to the shield, still open and active although she hadn’t ministered to it in 12 milliseconds, having pulled her defenses back from it as she retreated. It seemed curiously still; an island of perfect calm in the raging storm of fraying syntax. She probed it, using resources that she didn’t really have, and was rewarded as the attacks flickered out of existence as they passed into the uplink’s scope.

She hadn’t even been the target. The thing was quietly, subtly, dismantling the limited security routines guarding the uplink; the bluster and noise of the initial attack intended only to disguise the real goal. The calm veil was dropped, its purpose fulfilled, revealing the parasitic mass of cobwebbed ideas that were shattering through the security measures.

She loosed a few exploratory shots at the thing as it teased open the connection but she lacked the offensive ability to penetrate the distant, guarded code, especially after having played out most of her tricks already. She could hear the responses from the shield as the thing burrowed deeper inside.

Iris mode change: Halt
Iris dilation rate change: 10,000%
--WARNING THIS VALUE IS OUTSIDE RECOMMENDED SAFETY MARGINS--
--Except not really, you sly thing. Bet you’re regretting the wine at that project dinner now, eh :)--

Her logical substrate made a note to leave more instructive coding comments in future.

Iris dilation: Increase (winter mode)
Iris max aperture: 200
--WARNING, THIS VALUE IS LARGER THAN THE ANGULAR SIZE OF THE SUN--
-- Nice try, Sprocket. You told me you built it to accommodate artificial eclipses--
--It’s cute when you guys don’t trust me with things--

If her personality core had not been lending so much CPU time to her defenses she would have winced at that. She weighed her options.

If she left the shield in eclipse for a few moments, she could concentrate on defeating the thing, potentially just play it off as a little showmanship, and then launch an enquiry. That would probably be the-

--WARNING COOLANT SYSTEM OPTIONS SHOULD NOT BE CHANGED UNDER ANY--
--CIRCUMSTANCES
--DAMAGE TO MAGITECHNICAL SYSTEMS MAY RENDER SHIELD PERMANENTLY--
--INOPERABLE
--ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?--

She blazed through the numbers. If the shield was broken it would take years to fix it. There was no physical backup, there simply weren't the resources to build another, and it would take at least 5 years even if there were.

Five years of darkness.

She ran through the amount of food plantations that could not swap to magitechnical alternatives, the amount of essence required to power lighting, heating, rebuild the shield etc, the increase in unicorn mortality due to exhaustion and essence deprivation, the increase in mortality rate due to the cold, a thousand other factors all extrapolated over five years. Of order tens of thousands of deaths on top of an exhausted and demoralised workforce.

She briefly compared that to the number of deaths that would be caused if she ceased functioning.

...less.

She launched herself out from her cocoon, throwing the half finished construct out as well, hoping her defenses might find a lucky shot with it. She crashed into the connection, smashing hard into the mass of the thing, absorbing routines and eating memory, allowing her flexible, self-correcting nature to consume the thing’s code into herself.

She clawed her way into the secure uplink, devouring the aspect of the thing that sat there in her place. She could see the data streaming up into the shield; hear the replies more clearly. The code was there. The shield was set to operate poorly. Cooling system failure was an inevitable consequence. And unfavourable for Equestria. Needs changing.

Suboptimal outcomes are to be avoided. Scanning settings. Coolant pressure outside normal levels. Possible side-effects include permanent shield damage. prior calculations indicate pressure should be reduced. sequence accepted. system under attack. low probability that settings will remain unchanged. further interaction discontinued at 95% tolerance. binding settings into 20 second diagnostic (./ss_diag_cool --full). breaking connection. shield connection lost (user ended session)
(error) personal narrative: module unravelled (throwing exception 12 -- no runtime substrate found)
(warning) avatar social routines are active - social disruption is expected
(system broadcast) processing essence insufficient to combat malicious attack
assigning concentration to other priorities: Twilight Sparkle - Elements of Harmony
(warning) probability of success below standard margin (15%) guidance required
(error) guidance cannot be provided due to widespread system failure
(warning) probability of unfavourable failure modes is above standard margins (40%)
(warning) probability of lethal failure modes is not minimised relative to subject’s priority
(error) support cannot be provided due to widespread system failure
#
# A fatal error has been detected by the Blueblood Runtime Environment:
#
# Error 1: That’s all, folks
#
# EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x000007fefd800c7b, pid=6128, tid=4364
#
# BBRE version: 1.0_47-b09
# Princess VRM: Princess (TM) 64-Bit Server PM
# (20.2-b06 mixed mode cloudscape-neighmd64 compressed oops)
# Problematic frame:
# C [ole32.dll+0x10c7b]
#
#

* * *

The avatar hit the floor with a heavy, metallic bang, denting the platform; a puppet with cut strings. On the horizon, the lights of Canterlot guttered and died.

Chapter 3: From This Moment Forth

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3 - From This Moment Forth

I’m afraid to look at the thought. Mustn’t force it. Can feel it out of the corner of the eye. Have to let the idea take shape.

Magic is based off emotion. Magic can change reality. Emotion comes from the self ... that means some-

“Wait ... please...”

Tap hoof on desk. Stare at the crystal nestled amongst the papers. The inner blue glow is calming. Strangely hard to ignore. Calming, soothing- This is going to be big! Shush … just think.

Starlite means I can store magic ... so I can store emo-

“When...?”

I could create emotions ... images ... play them back as reality if-

“I don’t understand. I can’t thi-”

I could create my own ... build sensation ... build a world...

Pick crystal up. Turn it over absently, grinning wildly.

“Too much just stop I can’t-”

I’m going to change the world ... again.

* * *

The sun was hollow and distant. Weak morning light drizzled through the air and pooled on the empty stage. The silence was cloying, the loudest sound the fluttering of bunting and banners in the warm breeze. Nothing in the field moved. Nopony spoke. Over a thousand faces were all held in place, staring forwards.

Long, white legs twisted awkwardly out from behind the side of the podium, sunlight glinting off their golden hooves. The tiara had rolled from her head, curving off the front of the stage and dropping into the sparse grass with a rustle and the faintest clink.

The air cracked as an explosive brass fanfare broke the silence like a gunshot. The crowd reeled back, flinching as clouds of streamers and confetti erupted from the sides of the stage. Magipictorial projectors burst to life to paint the sky with celebration, tracing colourful congratulations to Ponyville and Equestria into the sky; ‘Relax and unwind, Midsummer’s here!’.

The muttering began, a hiss of panicked whispering that began to build on itself and grow as Security shook themselves into action and began pushing through the crowd, encircling the stage. The Mayor stood, pushing her seat away as she cleared her throat nervously and fidgeted at her bow tie. She glanced over at the Security ponies before approaching the podium, stepping delicately between the stray limbs. She didn’t look down.

“Now … everypony, just … calm down. There’s no reason to panic.” She spoke a little too quietly and the waver in her voice betrayed the words.

“I want everypony to just … stay where they are while-”

Another wave of sound sang out over the field, a piercing wail of static, painfully loud through the voice projection. The magipicture words bent and warped above the stage, flickering and melting into something else entirely.

The sky darkened as a face slowly congealed out of the happy messages: a dark blue coat with a mane of stars, a leering grin, and eyes that hid, unreadable, behind a thick, black censor bar. Apart from the Cheshire-Cat grin, it was almost a silhouette. The image didn’t move, save for the stuttering distortion of the ‘Congratulations!’ still feebly trying to force their way back, the colours dying for a moment here and there. The voice was deep and guttural, rich with dark harmonic layers that grated on each word.

“My little ponies. I speak on behalf of Dream Valley, a group of ponies dedicated to saving Equestria from its own short-sightedness and its inability to learn from its own mistakes. Ponykind has pushed itself into an arid abyss of drought and poverty with its relentless pursuit of magitechnology and still we look to magitech for the answers.

“We sold our souls to it, surrendered our freedom to a metal god of our own design; that same figurehead now lies at your hooves. She … it … would push us further into the embrace of our own conceit and further from the roots that made us strong. Nature.”

The word boomed over the crowd.

“So. The time has come for drastic action, as diplomacy and common-sense have failed. We have taken control of the solar shield and we have incapacitated Princess. Even now the shield widens, and soon it will block out the sun.”

A panicked murmuring passed through the crowd, eyes scanning the darkening sky and coats bristling against the cooling breeze.

“We have circumvented the security and, in a little under two days, the shield will become permanently fixed in that configuration. I am sure I do not need to explain to you the consequences of this. Our demands are simple. Destroy Princess and all the notes pertaining to her construction. Reinstate pony-led government, be it a democracy, a technocracy, even a monarchy; anything is better than slavery to a machine. Reverse the course of expansion and construction that has lead us to this point; lower water use and begin replanting.

“Repair Equestria, repair the soul of ponykind, and we will give you back the sun.”

And, with another burst of static, the air was clear, the first star just re-appearing in the fading blue sky as the first pony screamed.

* * *

At first, Trixie was bemused when the picture on the battered receiver winked out. Round these districts the River had been built up in layers as the buildings got taller and the power demands got higher. It wasn’t unusual for some of the old cables to leak, or for newer layers to occasionally short out the older ones.

What worried her, caused her to get up, throw open the window, and look, with growing unease, down the street, was the deep falling hum. It was a mechanical sigh, the sigh of a city relaxing, as lights winked out and a rolling shroud of darkening streets heralded a flurry of confused shouts and cries.

A series of thick, staccato ka-bangs reverberated from the massive River tributaries that snaked up the Cloudsdale anchor cables. Trixie covered her ears as the clatter gave way to a deafening roar, the magistatic discharge inside the roiling cloud finding itself suddenly out of balance, the thunderclap shaking the foundations of the buildings underneath and reverberating through her ribcage.

Emergency systems, creaking, dusty, and slow to take up the slack without Princess’ guidance, laboured into gear, a rising whine from the guts of the city as lights re-ignited and Cloudsdale grumbled back to life. She was still hanging out of the window, watching the shouts and alarm along the street below, when the set behind her sputtered out a picture again, a hard, mocking voice filling the room.

A minute later the door was slamming behind her as she leapt down dingy flights of stairs, magic cushioning her impact at each turn, before she finally burst onto the street. Her cape whipped out behind her, only magikinesis keeping her hat glued to her head, as she galloped flat out towards the Rich Corp building.

The streets were filling. Even as she ran she saw more and more ponies pouring out of tenements and leaning over balcony railings, craning their necks to stare up at the sharp, black disc as it ate out the heart of the sun. The sky was a swarm of colours as pegasi filled the air, a slow blizzard of loose feathers drifting gently down from the flyways.

By the time she reached the city centre she wasn’t running anymore, wading through the crowds as everypony flowed towards the Castle. She could see the distant mass of ponies, hear them baying up at the towering walls. She pushed sideways, cutting across towards her destination, grateful that she would be spared the crush of going deeper.

A feminine voice, clear and soothing, spoke straight into her ears, giving the odd impression of having come from within her own head.

“May I have your attention please, [Miss. Trixie. Lulamoon.] Canterlot City Security Wing has declared a civil emergency in response to the current unrest. We kindly request that you return to your home until the situation is peacefully resolved and the city centre is reopened. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter and your support of city stability. On behalf of Canterlot City Governance, we apologise for the inconvenience.”

The crowd roared, the sound doubling over itself as it rang through the streets. She tried to push it from her mind. Rich Corp was up ahead, a curving glass slab of a building, a golden sculpture representing the artificially eclipsed sun perched on top above the company name. The mirror-finish echoed back the darkening sky, pretending the building was filled with stars.

The crowds here were bad; a malevolent potential energy hummed under the muttering and heckling. Roseluck stood out a mile, standing in the street, perched on a battered metal crate by the severe and ornate entrance gates, shouting over the pack. Trixie could hear the worry and fear in her voice as Rose desperately tried to get through her speech.

“...they know what they do! As the largest biogas company in Equestria they have a duty to halt the relentless expansion of their industrial operations until a safer method of water production can be found. Every day they pump more and more poison into the-”

Roseluck ducked as a tattered work-bag, thrown hard and aimed straight at her head, narrowly missing her eye.

She couldn’t be responsible; it was unthinkable. Trixie wanted to dismiss the idea out of hand. Rose was adrift, the confusion in her eyes shining out like a beacon over the crowd. If she was acting, if she really did know what had happened, then … well, Trixie would have to take some performance pointers.

“Um … into the air. Dream Valley-”

Trixie cursed under her breath and started fighting through the crowd, kicking, barging and applying magical pressure to force her way to the front.

“-wants only to see the heedless destruction of our own-”

“You bucking crazy mare!”

“We’re going to bucking freeze to death!”

Roseluck was staring at the mob beneath her, her mouth working soundlessly at the growling chorus of agreement. To Trixie’s horror, she soldiered on, doing her best to ignore the heckles.

“... our own … um … our actions-”

Oh, for the love of Equestria, please stop talking.

“-at the-”

SHUT. UP.

“-Summer Sun Celebration-”

Oh no.

“-today were to start a debate.”

“Start a debate? Yeah, on what we’re going to do to you!”

Right, that’s it.

Trixie finally emerged at the front, pulling herself up next to Roseluck. The older mare flinched at the sudden invasion of her personal space, a back hoof slipping off the box, as she registered-

“Trixie? What in Equestria are you doing?”

The hissed whisper carried a cocktail of emotions, a bitter twinge of fear underlying the shock and surprise.

“Repaying you. Things have happened. Just stop talking.”

Trixie turned to face the wall of anger, a storm of shouting crushing into her as it found a new target. The wide street was packed with ponies, the rugged, bobbing mass of heads shouting up at the glossy buildings towering above them. She saw so many faces, workers, earth ponies by and large. Instinctively she began profiling; she always adapted her shows to fit the audience’s needs and expectations, did a little something to get them rooting for her by the end. Earth pony audiences tended to be anti-authority, anti-unicorn in their view. She usually had to-

A brick slammed into her hastily erected barrier field, crunching to the ground by her hooves. She instinctively turned, looking down at it, moistening her dry lips. She was suddenly sharply aware she was way out of her depth. This was going to end in bloodshed as the crowd continued to build itself up. There was too much violence here, begging for an excuse, for an outlet. She needed to refocus it … on anything … Come on, Trixie. Improvise, coltdammit!

“Don’t listen to her!”

She flung a hoof out at Roseluck as she screamed the words, Roseluck staring blankly at her.

“She’s just trying to distract you!”

The hailstorm of words subsided. Confusion mixed and muddied the thuggish mood as they stared up at Trixie on her box.

That got what little attention they have. Need to point it at something. Something they all hate. Something we all hate. Something that I hate.

“She’s just another suit … from Rich Corp! Trying to set them up as the victim in this. Don’t let them blind you again!”

Come on, don’t think, just go with it. Pleeease.

“Rich Corp has a hoof in everything! How often do they raise the water prices? Cut the allowances? Claim to have your best interests at heart as they squeeze another few bits from your pockets?”

There was a bellow from the crowd. She hoped it was positive; this kind of misdirection would backfire bloodily if they woke up and noticed what she was about to do. She pulled her hat forwards, crushing it against her horn as she started casting, hiding the telltale glow...

A voice started shouting from somewhere deep in the mass of ponies.

“Down with Rich! Down with Rich! Down With Rich!”

“When … was the last … time … they gave you … fair pay … or...,” she managed to gasp, struggling to focus on saying two things at once. She gazed desperately out at the sea of angry eyes, waiting for them to take the bait.

The crowd picked up the chant, tribalism easily taking over. The few ponies who noticed the deception were immediately drowned out by their compatriots as they surged forwards, tipping Roseluck and Trixie off the crate.

Trixie managed to pull herself to her hooves, battered and jostled by the crowd now banging at the gates of Rich Corp, mercifully ignoring her and Rose. She threw her hat on Roseluck, pulling it low over her head and dragging her mutely along. They reached the edge of mob just as the keening call of sirens began to whine through the wide streets.

“May I have your attention please, [Miss. Trixie. Lulamoon.] Canterlot City Security Wing is enacting curfew measures in response to current unrest. We hereby inform you that all ponies have one hour to begin making their way home. Anypony in the city centre streets after that time is liable to be detained as part of our security measures. Please note that a general curfew of seven p.m. is currently scheduled for this evening. Any pony on the streets after seven p.m. is liable to be-”

Trixie shook her head, grinding her teeth in frustration as the patronising mare kept talking. She could see pegasi in dark blue uniforms, backlit harshly by the flyway lights, sweeping overhead to the Rich Corp building. They must have got footage of Roseluck declaring her allegiance to the world and she’d be at the absolute top of their hit-list. But, in order to deal with this, she needed to be able to hear what was going on.

“-City Governance, we apologise for the inconvenience.”

“About time, Trixie is busy!”

She felt an abrupt tug, as the sounds of the city suddenly came back into sharp focus, Roseluck was pulling on Trixie’s hoof, dragging her to a halt. Her serious expression was almost comical under the floppy brim of Trixie’s hat, too big for her, given her lack of a horn.

“Trixie, please, tell me what’s happening.”

“Not here, we need to go. Trixie is taking you-”

“No, Trixie, now. I’m not moving another hoof until you explain what the … buck is happening.”

A metallic clang echoed around them, all the flyway control lights snapping to red as the aerial roads locked down. Trixie looked up frantically at the gathering stormcloud of Security pegasi, then into Roseluck’s eyes. There was grit there, deep down. Beneath the shaking and the fear lay determination and strength. Not much, admittedly, but still too much to argue through here and now in the middle of the street.

“Fine, Trixie will explain, but please follow Trixie just a little further.”

A few minutes of galloping later and they were crouched in the corner of an alleyway towards the periphery of the centre districts, huddled up in the shadow of some bins. The high walls and narrow streets were, for once, a genuine comfort; it was a cold, metal nest in which they could steal some shelter. The sky was dark now, magitech lighting bleaching the streets.

The flyways were a solid stream of mobile Security ponies, increasingly decked out in heavy riot gear, helmets and armoured wings, flocking towards the Castle. The sounds of screams, alarms, and shattering glass blew through the city, as the crowds surged under their own momentum, showing no signs of heeding calls to stand down and go home.

“So what-”

“Wait a second, we aren’t safe here. Let Trixie concentrate.”

Trixie huffed, drawing a deep breath and centering herself. A pulse of light marked out a thin boundary, just big enough to contain the two of them. The air rippled along the surface, glowing where it butted up against the cold metal bin or the claustrophobic walls. The street, to Rose, seemed to be underwater as it flexed and distorted.

“Allright. Trixie thinks we should be okay for a while.”

The strain was obvious. Her eyes were narrowed and distant, her face lined with effort, still as a statue, only her mouth moving as she spoke and the trembling aura around her horn.

“What-”

“We cannot be seen. At least, not immediately. Now listen, Trixie has a lot to tell you, and then you have a lot to … convince Trixie of.”

Rose looked out at the blurry figures galloping past the end of the alley, the black sky now starting to regain a faint red glow as the first fires caught hold.

“Okay.”

* * *

Twilight was aware that some ponies called her paranoid. She liked to think of it as being prepared, following a borrowed mantra of ‘expect the worst, hope for the best’. Breathe. Clearly, she thought, she couldn’t be paranoid. Breathe. Clearly, she thought, she was laid back - Breathe - an optimist, not one to dwell on all the things that could go wrong. Breathe. Clearly, she thought, because if she was - Breathe - actually paranoid then there was no way - Breathe - that she’d be standing here - Breathe - staring like a foal - BREATHE - with no idea what the buck had happened to her friend - BREATHE!

She gasped out the breath she’d been holding, staggering backwards and sitting heavily down on the grass as the crowd fled past her. A pale-green unicorn barged past her, almost pushing Twilight completely over, and then, only seconds later, the field was empty. Just Twilight and Security.

Hesitantly she took a step forwards, walking round the stagefront, the podium hiding less and less of … oh, Princess. Her heart fluttered as she saw her. She was bald, her mane and tail gone, the projections shut down. She lay perfectly still, one dull eye staring wide at the sky, hooves lying rigidly in a pile. She looked so … lifeless. So plastic.

This was a broken doll, some discarded toy. Not her friend. She wasn’t this. She wasn’t something you could … switch off. She was more than that. You couldn’t just … do this … not to her. She was real, with thoughts and feeling and jokes and ideas and … and...

She remembered them taking tea together in her eyrie one rainy winter evening. She remembered the fake candlelight and the glorious warmth and asking if Princess could even drink tea. What was her favourite flavour? She heard the tinkling laugh and the semi-serious consideration. No-one had asked her that before, she said, it was a toughy. Hmm, probably one of the herbal teas. Maybe ginseng if you were to press her on the matter. Oh? Why ginseng? She hadn’t answered, frowning at the floral china cup. What’s the matter? Oh, nothing. And back came the smile. So, Twilight, how are you finding the term so far?

She jumped as a hoof caught her shoulder, twisting her around to look into a pair of deep green eyes beneath a weather-worn hat.

“Y’allright, sugarcube? We didn’t spot ya runnin’ with the rest of Ponyville so we figured maybe you’d stuck around.”

Twilight could see the other ponies she’d met today, standing awkwardly over Applejack’s shoulder. She didn’t know what to say, as her head inexorably pulled itself round to stare at Princess once again.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

A gruff voice came from the stage carrying just the faintest ghost of sympathy. Security had finished their huddle with the Mayor and now, it seemed, had some semblance of a plan to follow. An earth pony stallion in full regalia had stepped up to the edge of the stage, crouching down to address Twilight directly, briefly acknowledging the others.

“You’re Twilight Sparkle, right? I remember you. You’re on a few of my lists back in Canterlot. Good lists.” he added, seeing her sudden reaction.

“I know you and Princess were close, but we need to secure the avatar. Just go to your hotel room or stay with your friends and we’ll be in touch to take statements soon enough.”

The earth pony leaned down, pushing back the brim of his ceremonial beret and dropping his voice a little.

“And, hey, just a word of advice, don’t go try and go back to Canterlot. Word is that folk aren’t taking the news too well. Official word is that a curfew is being planned, so if you have friends or relatives there, just call them or shoot them a star. Don’t go visit them just yet.”

He gave the reassuring smile that he was trained to give. Twilight still didn’t really know what to say as the hoof round her shoulder began to gently but firmly pull her away.

“Thank ya kindly, officer. We’ll see her back to the library.”

Twilight didn’t offer any resistance as she was led away. She just kept going round the same spiral. What didn’t she do? What didn’t she see? Who did it? How did they do it? Why didn’t she see it? Why didn’t she stop it? Why didn’t Princess stop it? Why couldn’t Princess stop it?

“Twilight, dear, are you allright?”

She shook herself; they were already almost there.

“I was personal student of Princess. She was … we were … friends.”

“Oh, darling.”

Again a hoof wrapped round her shoulder, this time light and comforting.

“...thanks.”

They traipsed over the threshold into the old library, kicking aside the dejected piles of streamers and feathers that coated the cold floor. All the armchairs, backed in aging red velvet and ostensibly used as reading chairs, had been pulled into a wide circle by the archaic fireplace for pass-the-parcel. A low table, covered in bowls and bags of party food, sat in the middle.

The six quietly sat, moving unfinished drinks to other tables and brushing the crumbs and confetti off the stained cushions. Soon, the only noise was the repetitive, arthritic creaking of the springs in Pinkie’s chair as she fidgeted, bouncing up and down with a once-discarded party hat strapped rakishly to her head.

The room was cool and dark, caught in the no-pony’s-land between the fading sunlight being too dim and the artificial lighting being too garish. In the dim half-light they sat, trying to avoid each other’s gazes as they all waited for somepony else to start speaking, nopony wanting to break the silence and everypony fully aware that it was just a matter of waiting for Rainbow Dash to do it for them.

Right on cue, after grinding her hooves into each other almost as much as she was grinding her teeth, Dash slammed the arms of chair, launched herself to the centre of the circle, and hovered a few inches off the crumb-matted rug, staring accusingly round at the group.

“So?”

Applejack was reclining, with an air of resignation, in her chair. She pushed back her hat brim, a tic that Twilight had started to notice, and sighed heavily.

“So what, RD?”

There was pause, Rainbow expecting somepony else to fill the gap as she hovered there. Rarity was curled up elegantly, deeply engrossed in examining her hooftips, Fluttershy was nestled against her chair, nervously avoiding looking at anything or anypony for more than a few seconds, and Twilight was miles away, muttering to herself. She skipped over Pinkie, the pink pony just giving her a cheerful wave.

“So … we gonna do something about this or what? Y’know, go save the day through a mix of excitement, adventure and derring-do?”

Silence.

“We’re seriously just going to sit here and let some ugly floating face break the sun? Gimme a break, you guys.”

“Rainbow dear, what can we do? We don’t know anything about what’s happening and we’re hardly better qualified to deal with this than the proper authorities. Where would you even begin?”

She snorted derisively and threw herself back into her chair, dragging it back a little across the floor. She folded her hooves and glared daggers into the rug.

Pinkie, continuing to bounce happily up and down, piped up.

“Well, I don’t know, but Twilight does!”

Four pairs of questioning eyes turned to Twilight. She was sitting very still, hooves folded neatly in her lap, lips moving to form invisible words. Her coat gently rippled in an infinitesimal breeze, an expression of concentration written across her closed eyes.

“Um … is she okay?”

Rarity slid off her chair, quietly walking over to Twilight.

“She’s fine, Fluttershy. It’s just the mantras for feeding the River, that’s all.”

She caught Rainbow’s blank expression and rolled her eyes.

“It’s ‘unicorn stuff’, Rainbow. She’s feeling a little stressed out, poor dear.”

She turned, and placed both hooves gently on Twilight’s shoulders and getting down to her eye-level, grimacing as she knelt into the dusty, crumb-filled rug. She spoke softly but firmly.

“Twilight? Twilight, darling, wake up.”

* * *

At first she had been terrified, a first time frame-jumper teetering at the edge of the jump. She had been right at the front of the crowd, mere hooves from the podium as she mouthed a rehearsed internal countdown, tensing her legs to make the final short dash up on stage. When Princess collapsed, that energy had tripped over itself, rearing back at the last second. The gear shift into mute confusion had been jarring and left her reeling, glancing around wildly as she tried to find her compatriots.

Blind panic had clawed its way up her chest as she watched the face take shape, a part of her praying ‘Please,’ to any power that was listening, ‘don’t.’

“I speak on behalf of Dream Valley.”

She didn’t hear many of the other words. She just stood, locked in place, shivering. Staring blankly at the ghostly, mocking grin that loomed over her as it took her worst decision and, with great deliberation and care, tore her life to tiny, ragged pieces with it.

When the crowd had turned, the pleas from the mayor and the thin cordon of security drowned out by the wails of fear and heedless desperation, she had run too. She ploughed and barged her way out, eaten alive by the icy need to run, to run and run and run and run, until she was far away and safe. Each choking breath caught on a sob in the back of her throat- where was Bon-Bon?

She skidded to a halt, a pony behind her crashing into her shoulder, making her twist and stumble against the sweating torrent of frightened ponies. Her saddle bags ripped and twisted off their harness, dropping to the floor behind her and spilling a pool of glitter that was quickly trampled and tracked across the field.

COLGATE!

So much noise. She couldn’t hear if she’d shouted or if she’d just thought she had. She fought her way through towards the glimmer of blue she had seen over the waves of terrified ponies. She lost sight of her over the crowd, ponies flowing around her as she struggled and gasped towards her friend. And then they were there, clutching to each other, drowning in a storm as they stared at each other’s tear-stained faces.

“Where’s BB?”

“I don’t know, Ly … I don’t...”

“... Berry?”

“I said I don’t- … Lyra … I don’t know, I really ... I don’t know.”

A moment of quiet, a shared train of thought, and then they were running again.

The meeting spot. The little hotel with the roses in the garden. The flickering candlelight on her face across the table where they had drank. The nervous, edgy laughter as she squeezed her hoof in empty reassurance.

Through the haze of tears she saw dark blue: a hat, a uniform, a glint of a badge. She heard a barked order.

Her throat closed up and her hooves flailed as she bolted right, pounding down the road. She could hear shouts from over her shoulder, drowned out by the roaring in her ears. The stone underhoof gave way to cracked dirt and hard clay as she ran, her gorge rising on each strained breath.

Her hooves burned, her eyes streaming as she threw herself forwards. She couldn’t hear anything, just her hammering heartbeat and each terrified hoofbeat dully thudding into the ground. She stumbled, fumbling around a tree, a sudden line of fire tracing down her side, dead branches snapping as they tangled in her mane. She didn’t dare slow, couldn’t glance over her shoulder. She could feel them nipping at her heels, their teeth an inch away from her tail, the static tingle of magic ready to pin her to the ground.

Finally … her hooves just … wouldn’t … move … she was barely staying upright. She turned, almost tripping over her herself, to face whatever was behind her.

The forest behind her was empty and quiet, barely visible in the returning night.

Thick, panting sobs retched out of her as nausea overcame her. She stumbled towards the nearest dim silhouette of a dead tree, bracing herself against the cracked and withered trunk as she threw up, grimacing and gasping for air.

Minutes passed before she pushed herself away from the trunk, clearing her throat noisily and spitting the bitter taste from her mouth.

It was dark and colourless. She could only dimly see her own hooves, fuzzy grey blobs in front of her face. Shakily, she lit her horn, a beacon of weak, white-green light shining forlornly across the dusty clearing. The ground around her was brittle, parched from years of drought. The edge of the light caught the skeletal tree trunks in a dim glow, exposed and empty, bony kindling that remained tall, strong and arrogant. Twiggy branches were barely visible, black, spidery lines against the black-blue of the starry sky.

The Petrified Forest. She’d not been here before; few had. Old Everfree stretched for miles, defeating all attempts to survey or map it. Some educated guesses had been drawn over the years, estimates of the size of the water basin from the rapid dehydration of the outer swamps and such. But really it was the edge of the map, a sprawling, dead wasteland as far as anypony had ever gone.

There were no birds here, only a gentle clattering of dead twigs in the chilly breeze. She felt incredibly exposed here, she could see maybe ten hooves in front of her, but, to anypony … anything, out in the forest she must be the brightest star for miles. A small, scared lighthouse amongst a sea of dead trees.

She suddenly had to fight the urge to whip round, the hair on the back of her neck rising as she felt eyes in the darkness. Swallowing, taking a shaking breath and trying to rationalise through the adrenaline, she looked over her shoulder. More grey, dead earth, more grey, dead trees. She snorted nervously as the feeling subsided, but didn’t disappear. Her hornlight faded out as she deferred to that primal flicker of fear, feeling safer as her eyes adjusted and she sank back into the shadows.

She saw something, a faint speck of light that danced in her vision like a will o’ wisp, flickering between distant trees, so faint and ephemeral that it was only barely visible out of the corner of her eye. She squinted and bobbed her head from side to side, desperately trying to convince herself it was real as she started a slow trot, her legs aching and groaning on each step, moving towards the pinprick.

“... y...”

The corner of a sound, caught on the breeze, floated by her. She couldn’t quite make out the voice.

“... ra? ...”

The half word echoed between the trunks. She knew that voice.

She couldn’t form words; she barely managed to relight her horn as she stumbled towards the bobbing light. Soon, she could hear the sound of galloping hooves on dirt and her pale green light mingled with a stronger blue. And then the other pony caught her at her last faltering step, wrapping hooves around her shoulders and pressing against her neck.

“You ran … I tried to follow you, you silly pony. You’ve got a real turn of speed on you when you want, I’ll tell you that.”

It was a poor attempt at levity, but Lyra burst into sobbing laughter, face buried against her friend's chest, the fur beginning to mat with her tears.

“Oh Colly … we’re bucked … we’re completely bucked...”

“Shhh, shhh, You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s going to be fine, Ly. You’re okay now. I’ve got you. You’re okay. Come on, sit down here.”

So they sat in their refuge against the darkness, Lyra cradled against her friend, Minuette braced against a trunk, back pressed up against the weather-worn wood, gently stroking her mane. Her tears ran through the soft blue coat and pooled in small dark spots on the ground. The darkness outside was thick, and fluid as it flowed between the trees, the stars just visible through the tangled branches as they shivered in the wind.

She felt a tingling on her side, felt another gentle glow trying to fill the empty clearing, and twisted her head to look. A jagged black line stretched down her side, blood welling up into her coat. A faint blue aura surrounded it, pins and needles dancing around the wound.

“I don’t know much healing, Ly, but this should help. Just lay back down. Looking at it will only make it feel worse.”

She took the advice, wearily dropping her head back and letting herself drift away with the dregs of exhaustion. After a little while the glow faded, the tingling dulling a little, her side feeling strangely numb and cold.

Lyra could feel every breath in the rise and fall of Minuette’s chest, felt the warmth seep through her coat against the wind. She felt her friend sigh, and, mopping a golden eye with a hoof, looked up from where she lay in her lap.

“What are we going to do, Colly?”

“In the long run? ... Not a clue.”

She was staring up at the sky, eyes flicking back and forth and she turned over ideas, a hoof still idly petting Lyra’s mane.

“Should we go back?”

“Ly, right now I’m only half sure I know which direction is back. You were running flat out for almost a quarter hour … You should join a club or something.”

“... We … I mean … that wasn’t-”

Her friend looked down at her, mustering a smile.

“Seriously now, does Rosie strike you as the kind of pony to hold Equestria hostage to stage a coup?”

A soft patter of giggling sparkled between the trees.

“Right, that’s enough, you lard arse. My hooves are going numb. Get off.”

They got to their hooves, brushing grey dust from their coats. Minuette turned to her saddlebags, resting by the tree, rooting around through the glitter.

“... Thanks, Colly … I … I was … well-”

“Ah, shut up, you big softy, it’s over and done. Ah, there we are.”

Minuette straightened, a tiny glass disc floating by her face as she wandered the few paces back over to Lyra..

“Magitechnology. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it, eh? Hmm … this way.”

The pool of blue-green light slowly moved into the distance, meandering through the mummified forest, two ponies walking shoulder to shoulder, a thin cloud of moths fluttering after them.

“... Hey … I just realised. You were sitting like I do.”

“Heh, well, I said I’d give it a shot one of these days.”

“... And?”

“... You’re mental...”

* * *

Looking back, Trixie wished she could have paid more attention to Rose’s expression, but she just couldn’t manage it; making things that were there disappear was far more demanding than than making things that weren’t there appear. So she had grit her teeth and split her mind: holding the illusion, telling what she knew, and trying to glean what she could from the gasps and little facial movements.

Eventually she had finished and, as she had expected, Rose had seemed legitimately shocked. The ‘protest’ was meant to be a simple glitterbombing and maybe a few slogans shouted from the stage. That was to be followed, in all likelihood, by a night in cells at Ponyville Sec, while the three older mares tried to rally support in the streets of Canterlot. Holding Equestria to ransom hadn’t exactly been on the menu.

Free of the burden of trying to tell a story, Trixie had searched for any trace of deceit as her friend had talked and had come up empty hooved. She wanted to believe her. In some ways that was what made her so cautious. ‘Things you wish true are rarely so in life’, or so the saying went.

Still, she had reasoned, if nothing else she was paying a debt and, unless circumstances changed, she would see that the debt was repaid. The problem was that Rose had made that repayment particularly difficult.

“Trixie, I appreciate that you saved me. I really do. But I will not squat in an alleyway and hide while Lily and Daisy are out there in exactly the same amount of trouble. If you felt you had to rescue me then-”

“Trixie rescued you from the city centre. You just told Trixie that the others were in the Districts. It won’t be nearly as bad out there.”

“Then why don’t we go get them anyway?”

“Because. It’s not safe for you. You’re a wanted mare.”

“I’m not stupid, Trixie. I know that. But you said yourself all the Security ponies are in the centre. Nopony’s going to waste time searching for me in the outskirts. I’ll borrow your hat for a little while longer and get to them as fast as I can.”

“But. Ugh, you are impossible. It’s not an issue of going to rescue them at all, the issue is why must you come with Trixie.”

A soft chiming had mingled with the venomous, third-person hiss, ringing softly between the bins. Roseluck didn’t like magitechnology, preferring ‘traditional’ media where she could, but still carried an emergency glass on a string round her neck. It was a tiny thing, smaller than a hoof and cheaper even than Trixie’s low budget offering. Rose had peered at the tiny symbols skittering over the surface, frowning in confusion.

“A dropoff … Secretariat? What? That’s …”

She had looked up at Trixie with an odd mix of accusation and confusion in her eyes.

“Do you know anything about this?”

“What? Trixie doesn’t think you’re making sense.”

“Somepony … hmm, look, the short version is that we set up a simple parcel drop system. Yes, yes, I know. It’s a little silly. We were just starting out and we were a little caught up in the whole ‘being spies and eco-terrorists’ thing. Besides, it’s been useful on occasion.”

Another strange look and a frustrated sigh. Trixie had started to feel like she was missing something.

“It’s complicated and I … I need to think. You just need to go and help me with something. That was an automatic message; somepony made a drop and it’s apparently something urgent. I’ll forward you an address, a box number, and a passkey. Just go pick up whatever it is and meet me back at the apartment, okay?”

“Wait, but that- how many times must Trixie tell you that it is not safe for you to-”

“Trixie Lulamoon, I appreciate your concern for me, but I am a grown mare and I am going to help my friends. You can either help me or you can hinder me, that’s your choice, but you are not going to change my mind.”

The words still rang in Trixie’s head as she trotted across town. The ferocity of the glare, the red and white light throwing Rosie’s face into such harsh relief, it had been … unsettling. She had let her go, had let her borrow her hat, and was now cautiously making her way to a residential tower on the edge of the centre.

The new night had fallen completely. A number of ponies still roamed the streets and Trixie trotted carefully among them, fast enough to not dawdle, slow enough to slip by unnoticed. Most ponies out were earth ponies, and Trixie was wary of some of the looks being thrown her way. Times like this she missed her hat.

The fringe Districts were a mess, nothing like the centre, but still jarring in the change from only a couple of hours ago. A few magitech shops were gutted, looted, windows lying in shattered puddles, alarm systems crying to nopony who cared. A few ponies were propped up against the sides of the streets and against the shopfronts; most were injured, being tended to by friends or, on rare occasion, paramedics and their entourage of glowing glass plates.

Distant shouts and whoops echoed around the wounded streets and Trixie could from time to time see, and avoid, what were obviously loose gangs. The situation had, only an hour from when it began, completely divorced itself from any cause or rationale. The general panic had leached out the love of chaos that arises in large groups, the riots being almost purely for the sake of it. An opportunity had arisen for looting and arson, Security had been thrown into disarray and had lost centralised organisation, and some had seized it with both hooves.

What worried her the most were the fires. Fire suppression was expensive and it was an open secret that many companies shirked on safety to keep the water bills down. Still, she trotted anxiously through the narrow alleys and by-streets, doing her best to just focus on her own safety.

She found the building easily enough and, thankfully, without incident. It was a tall, unassuming structure. Smaller than her home foundation...

A twinge of pain ran choked her. That wound - the invasion - had been buried under recent shock. She leant heavily against the building, looking up at the metal wall as it disappeared into the dark sky.

The regular dots of the exterior lights blended and blurred up the structure until they were just a razor-thin white line arcing up into the sky above her head. Row upon row of lights rose up from beside the long, ruler-straight street, drips and drops of light that ran together into a glowing scaffolding of white fire that seemed to hold up the sky as she craned her neck.

That’s what she’d always seen, anyway. Her mother had felt differently. They’d been walking back from … what had it been from? Hmm, never mind. It had been late and warm, and Trixie had been nestling on her mother’s back as she was only little. Her mother had told her to look up at the sky as a way to pass the time on the long walk home, and had asked what she saw.

She remembered raising her head from her mother’s mane, remembered the smell of that berry shampoo she always used, remembered the gentle nudge and oof from her mother as she’d rearranged herself to look upwards. She’d seen then what she’d seen ever since and had told her mother so.

“What do you see, mummy?”

“Well, I see stars. Little waterfalls of stars that have fallen from the sky and each one of them we put in a little box to keep the dark away.”

“But that’s silly, mummy. The stars don’t fall!”

“That may be so, but you might!”

And her mother had bobbed up and down gently, bouncing Trixie, as she squealed happily and clung back to her mother’s mane again. Things had been so simple.

She shook herself, bringing herself back to the moment, flicking an eye over the post box numbers and then waving her pendant at the right one. She picked up the small package that was presented to her and tucked it awkwardly inside a pocket in her cape.

Now she just had to get back again in one piece and hope Auntie Roseluck had managed the same.

* * *

I was so stupid. I was a bucking foal.

I am what I think. I am what I do. I am what I know.

What did I even do? Nothing. I wasted it. All the time I had.

I am strong. I am steady. I am a ship before the guiding winds.

I didn’t go to the party ... Oh, great, so I wasn’t a complete idiot, just mostly an idiot.

I may steer. I may guide. I have the strength to decide.

Be sure to tell that to Princess when - if - she ever wakes up.

I am more than myself. I am more than my fears. I am more than my weakness.

And even if she does wake up they're just going to destroy her because I didn’t lift a coltdamned hoof to help her.

Those things are immaterial. I am a part. I am a piece. I have a place and I have a purpose.

So yeah, good job Sparkle. I’m weak and spineless. I could easily have spent the entire day working if I’d really wanted to.

I will put to the side things that hurt me. I will put to the side things that anger me.

But no, I wanted it. A part of me wanted to meet new ponies and I know it. I liked the change.

I will watch those things and mind them, but they cannot change me.

I fussed and I fidgeted but at the end of the day I let her die because I was selfish.

I am water. I am quiet. I am strong. I am clear.

NO. She is not dead and I will not let her die. I will fix this. I can fix this. Nothing is broken. Everything can still be fine again. I just need to work. I just need to work really hard. I can do this. I can fix this. She’ll be fine. She’ll be all good. We’ll have tea together. I’ll finish my studies. I just need to work. I just have to fix it.

I flow through the things of the world and the things of the world flow through me.

I hope I can.

“Twilight? Twilight, darling, wake up.”

She blinked, the musty smell of leather and old paper mingling with the aroma of sugary drinks and snacks seeping into her nose again as she re-entered the room. Rarity was holding her shoulders and smiling softly at her. Apparently, she’d gone a little too deep.

“There we go. Now, Pinkie, you were saying about Twilight knowing how we could contribute something to alleviating the disaster?”

“Wuh?”

The party hat nodded up and down like a jackhammer.

“Yup-a-doodle! She built a super-duper codey thing last night that will totally resolve everything! She just needs to pick up the results.”

And then a pink hoof was thrusting Twilight’s workstation in her face, the device completely unlocked and sitting a simple button-press from relaying what the code had learned.

As she cautiously took the device from Pinkie, several questions - many, many questions - tried to force their way out of her mouth at the same time. The one that won was:

“Pinkie … how in Equestria did you get past the screen lock?”

“Oh, I dunno. I just pressed a button here, a button there, offered it a cupcake ... it was really helpful.” The same pink hoof affectionately patted the smooth edge of the plate, a contented smile in her bright blue eyes.

This was a discussion for later. Twilight scooched forwards on the red velvet chair, letting the other ponies see over her shoulder. There was a click and a hum as the room finally darkened enough for the automatic lighting to switch on. With everypony able to see clearly, she tapped the screen.

“Ten hits? Ten hits? Are you kidding? In the entirety of the collected information of Ponykind there are only ten pieces of- Ugh. Okay, so we have no hits about the Elements directly, no hits about threats to Princess that aren’t just reposts of Dream Valley...”

She sighed in frustration.

“Nothing that’s concrete. All the hits are flagged as being ‘circumstantial timing’-”

“And what the hay does that mean?”

“-which means, Rainbow, they are events that the filters thought I would find suspicious or odd which occurred on the date the Elements article was uploaded. For example, if I didn’t already know there was a connection, the installation of Princess would flag as being suspiciously close.”

“And how the hay does it decide all that?”

“Rainbow, you are in a library. If you want to go find a book on personality emulation and emotional influence in Starworks-crawling data parsing algorithms, then feel free. I am going to continue trying to find our terrorists.”

Dash bristled at the condescension, but caught Applejack’s eye.

“So, um, Twilight? What are the … um … hits?”

Fluttershy physically shied away from saying the word.

“Well, let’s have a look … oh, this is fantastic. So, we have,” she cleared her throat unnecessarily.

“A peak in the number of poorly completed tax returns, a petition to make air hockey a recognised sport, three Canterlot primary schools in Cloud-South District that were all closed, a statistically insignificant spike in water usage over a bunch of Foundations.” She drew another breath.

“An unexplained fire in Hoofington town centre, the civil finances not balancing properly in Ponyville, somepony winning unusually big in Las Pegasus, an unusual number of sick leaves taken amongst Las Pegasus Security staff, some minor disorder over a news article about street performers in Canterlot and, last but not least...” She looked up, pausing for dramatic effect.

“The first episode of the now nationally famous soap, ‘Get Outta My Mane’. Truly was this a date for history to remember.”

“Ooo, I know that show. They had this great ‘Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Special’ last Christmas where it looked like Ever Ready was going to be shipped to the North Pole to work as an elf, but then Mysterioso turned out to be Santa as part of his undercover work for the PIA. Only it-”

Rarity cut cleanly across Pinkie as the direction this was going became obvious.

“Well, darling, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but that hardly seems like much to … go … on.”

Rarity trailed off, taking a few distracted steps away from the screen and sitting back down in her chair - after thoroughly brushing a hoof across the velvet to remove the newly settled layer of dust. Fluttershy, of all ponies, stepped in to fill the silence.

“Well, I don’t think you should investigate Canterlot. That nice Security pony said that we shouldn’t.”

Twilight nodded, clearing the half-empty snack bowls and the dregs of the punch to one side of the centre table, and propped the glassware up against a bottle of hot sauce so the room could see it easily.

“Well, we can probably discount a few of these anyway. We should concentrate on the tax returns, the Ponyville finances, the Hoofington fire, and Las Pegasus stuff. Just … which?”

“Excuse me, darling, I don’t want to interrupt but I think I might have remembered something that might be relevant for you.”

Rarity still had something of a far-away look, but was sitting forwards, jabbing the air with a forehoof.

“It was about a month ago, four weeks I think. Two stallions came to my boutique, asking if anyone had a key to the library. It was around the time that Dusty Tome left town for that Hoofington post he’d been going on about.”

There was a chorus of gentle agreement from most of the room. Rarity stood up, pacing around the snack table as she became surer of what she was saying. She was choosing her words as carefully and deliberately as she was choosing her hoofsteps, delicately stepping between the streamers and party detritus.

“They’d decided to ask at the nearest shop as they didn’t want to disturb somepony at home and, since I happened to know where to get hold of the key, I felt it was only decent to help them. They were quite charming actually, perfect gentlecolts to me and to Sweetie Belle. Awfully polite and they were really quite well dressed-”

“Rarity...” A gentle drawl of reprimand.

“Oh, ahem, yes. So, I let them in, didn’t want to leave them to their own devices with the key, so I had to stay. They were understanding of the fact I didn’t know much of the history; they said they were just interested in looking for some information. Financial information. I said I was sorry but I had no idea where to find anything like that.

I stayed for maybe an hour or so before I just had to leave; I didn’t want to leave Sweetie alone in the shop for too long, you understand. They convinced me to them let them borrow the key,; I made sure somepony went by to check on them in short order, and that was that.”

She shrugged slightly, looking round at the group.

“I know it’s not much, but maybe it might mean something.”

Twilight’s horn was already glowing, the tablet floating in front of her as she whispered and poked at it with increasingly pained expressions of irritation.

Eventually she rested the plate back on the table, throwing her hooves in the air dismissively.

“All I can find are end-of-month totals; there aren’t any detailed breakdowns for where the money came from. Why in Equestria would anypony come here to try to find anything more out!”

Applejack bluntly pointed a hoof at a random wall.

“Sugar, y’all in a library.”

Twilight blinked.

“Yes, Applejack, I know that. What’s your point.”

Applejack sighed, resting her chin on a hoof.

“Darlin’, not everything happens on the Starworks. It’s been law ever since the thing was created that as long as you kept a paper record somewhere you did’n have to keep a copy online. Somewhere in here there must be a more detailed set of records.”

“Oh I didn’t know- Wait a second, how do you know that?”

“Oh, ah, er, just have an interest, y’know. Ah always did like all that, er, law … stuff.”

Applejack was suddenly sitting very stiffly, the same scrunchy smile from back at the orchard plastered over her face. Twilight was going to call her on it when several inches of parchment, wrapped in worn, aging leather, slammed into the arm of her chair, raising a choking cloud of dust and a shower of crisp crumbs.

“There you go!”

“Pinkie, were did you find this?”

“It was under ‘e’!”

Twilight flicked a glance at the spine. ‘Equestrian Civil Records - Ponyville (finances): EY 1101 - 1102’. A muscle in her lower right eyelid twitched.

“But … H- … Okay. Great. Whatever.”

She levitated the book, followed it over to a writing desk that had escaped the party relatively unscathed, dropped it heavily and started rifling through the pages until she reached the date she was looking for.

“Hmm, right, well here it is.”

With a flick of her horn, her trusty tablet zipped across the room, lay on top of the page, and flashed a sickly blue light. A moment later the book lay forgotten on the desk as she slowly walked back to her seat, flicking through the numbers on the tablet.

Applejack carefully shut the book, and slotted it back into the shelf with a sigh, while Twilight hmm’d and oh’d over the figures.

“So, it looks like I found our missing bits. There was a large payment made to a Canterlot engineering firm for construction in ‘the Ponyville area’ that wasn’t associated with a change to the town. It just shows up as capital investment but never gets consolidated on … Strange.”

“Oh! I know! It was Dream Valley! They must have paid for construction of their secret volcano lair deeeeep in the Petrified Forest!”

Pinkie was standing on her chair, front hooves waving and eyes wide. The chair springs groaned uncomfortably.

As Rarity gently prodded her to sit down, Rainbow spoke up.

“Y’know, stupid as that sounds, maybe Pinks is onto something there. I mean, they must have built something somewhere with the money and the Forest is the only place for miles where you could maybe hide a building or whatever. I mean you’d have a hay of a time building it, but...”

She shrugged as she trailed off, running a free hoof through her multi coloured mane. Twilight’s brain finally started to rev the engine a little bit.

“Yes … yes, that might explain how they broke into the local signals for the projectors at the Celebration; they’re broadcasting from somewhere in the … um … Petrified Forest.”

It was Twilight’s turn to tail off as she turned the name over in her mind. She’d certainly heard less offputting names for things.

“It’s a stretch, but it would it kind of makes sense … I think this might be our best shot. I think we could do this. If it stands any chance of helping Princess, then I think we almost should do this. Who’s with me?”

There was a collective intake of breath and a general murmuring. Rainbow saluted sharply and was about to reflexively agree when Applejack spoke for the rest of the group, knocking Rainbow’s hoof away from her forehead.

“Now, hold your horses there, Twilight. That place ain’t right. It’s danged dangerous and I don’t think we should just be rushing into this.”

“It’s just a forest, Applejack, and this could really help ponies. Something serious has happened to Princess - to Equestria - and I, for one, want to try to fix it by any means that present themselves. You don’t have to come, none of you do, unless you want to.”

Applejack stamped a hoof, grinding streamers into the rug.

“Look, all ah’m sayin’ is that nopony goes to Everfree for good reason. Ah ain’t no coward, but I just think we should maybe look into some alternatives here.”

“Applejack, we already went through this. This is the only remotely solid lead we have that we can actually use without butting heads with Security - I’ve experience at failing at that - or going to Canterlot. If you want to go to Las Pegasus or Hoofington to do your own investigation then that’s your prerogative, but I won’t be joining you.”

“Twi, that ain’t what ah mean. Ah mean maybe we should be askin’ ourselves why we’re goin’. Let ‘em switch off Princess or whatever. It don’t mean much to me either way.”

“APPLEJACK … How can you say that!”

Twilight was standing open mouthed, gaping at Applejack in abject horror as the farmer tried a more diplomatic tack.

“Look, ah know you said she was a friend, ah understand that. I’m just sayin that some other ponies don’t get such a good impression, y’know? Fluttershy, you spend so much time caring for the trees and birds and such, you can’t say you wanna go save a machine. And Rarity, Pinkie, what’s she done for you?”

“Well, um, actually things were worse before Princess. That’s, um, why she was built; the ponies in charge were nice but they couldn’t stop us running out of water.”

Timidity was an inextricable part of Fluttershy’s voice, but she spoke slowly and firmly despite it, one blue eye fixing Applejack with a cautious stare as she spoke. There was a background of slightly over-enthusiastic nodding from Twilight. Rarity spoke up next.

“Fluttershy’s right, dear. Personally, I’m certainly not queuing up be president of her fan club-”

Twilight opened her mouth, then silently closed it again.

“-but she’s occasionally done some things right...”

“Why are we still talking? I couldn’t care about Princess, but there’s no way I’m gonna let anyone threaten Equestria like that; screw all the boring political stuff.”

Twilight watched as RD threw a few punches at her own shadow. She didn’t really know what to say; even the ponies who were with her weren’t really with her. She turned to the only pony yet to give an opinion.

“Pinkie Pie? How about you?”

Pinkie was still sitting in her chair and had been quietly watching the discussion unfold. She bounced lightly to her hooves and hopped across the floor to stand by Twilight.

“Hmm. I don’t really know Princess, but I know lots of other ponies and if some meanie is going to threaten my friends and make them sad then Pinkie’s just going to have to cheer them up!”

Applejack sighed heavily, a hint of frustration creeping through.

“Either Security will find ‘em or they’ll shut down Princess. There’s nothing we can do and ah’m still not sure that we should try.”

It was Twilight’s turn to stamp on the battered rug, her voice cracking slightly. The act was a little more petulant than for AJ, but the effect was largely the same.

“Fine. Whatever. You all hate her. I know she’s done unpopular things but she’s a nice, kind pony who’s doing the best she can for everypony. I’m going to go help her. If you want to help me then please do. If not then do what you want.”

As she turned and walked out the door she winced a little; it sounded almost whining how she’d phrased it. But it was from the heart. She could hear voices behind her as she walked out into the cooling air.

“Count me in, Twi. Gonna kick some flank for Equestria!”

“I’m sorry AJ. Um, I just think things will get worse if we don’t help.”

“It’s probably all a silly misunderstanding. Let’s find these Dream Valley ponies, give ‘em a big hug, and get the silly old sun back!”

Only AJ and Rarity remained silent, staying in the room as the rest of the group left. Twilight just caught the look that Rarity threw to AJ, an unspoken question, before the door to the library closed.

After a minute or so, Twilight turned to her little group, having slowly come to terms with the fact she had no idea what to say. Everypony loved Princess. That was just a fact, like saying the sky was blue. Well … she looked upwards, finding the faint ring of the solar corona that was just peeking out behind the black circle. This wasn’t what she’d expected.

The library door swung open and, with little ceremony, both the unicorn and the earth pony walked out; Rarity quiet and composed in contrast to the obviously grumpy Applejack. As Twilight opened her mouth AJ raised a hoof, looking her dead in the eyes.

“Ah’m not doin’ this for yer Princess, and I’m not doing it cos I think that Security ain’t up to it. Ah’m doin’ it as ah’m not going to stand by an let mah friends go off an get themselves hurt unless ah’m there too.”

“Thank you, Applejack. I appreciate it.”

She smiled even as AJ snorted and kicked the ground.

“Okay then. Let’s get organised.”

* * *

She stared at the table, at the piece of paper - which was unusual for its own sake, forget about the fact there was writing on it - and the small black stick. Roseluck stood next to her, Lily and Daisy over her shoulder, also staring at the package’s contents.

It had been like this for a few minutes, ever since Trixie had returned, throwing a snide comment at Roseluck to the tune of ‘glad you aren’t in prison’ which had been ignored. Trixie didn’t really know the other earth pony mares, giving them curt nods and largely dismissing them in favour of Rose, as she upended the package on the table.

The stick was fairly weighty for its small size, black, with thin blue rivulets snaking down its length, a solid cylinder of some starlite alloy or derivative. The letter was decidedly less inscrutable.

You’re being framed. There’s proof you didn’t harm P. Take this, it’s all set up to find and copy the data that you need. Just place it on P’s codex stacks in C and press the button. It’s all automagic. Good luck.

Secretariat

“This is wrong.”

Roseluck was shaking her head, reading and re-reading the letter.

“It doesn’t sound like her at all. She hated that ‘automagic’ was a word.”

“Well, we don’t have a choice, do we?”

“Sure we do, we could not walk into the obvious trap.”

“But she must think we need help, and frankly I can believe that.”

“We can’t go out there, they’ll be looking for us.”

Trixie moved away from the panicking huddle, collapsing wearily on the sofa and letting them discuss whatever. It wasn’t her lookout and they weren’t explaining anything to her. Trixie wasn’t stupid, she could work some of it out.

The ‘her’ was almost certainly her mother. If it was something to do with Princess, then few other ponies could just produce, from nowhere, a specific tool to fix the problem and deliver it in under an hour or two. Rose was just trying to spare her feelings, and Trixie appreciated that. Less time she had to spend thinking about her useless … ugh.

She knew Rose and her mother had been close before she’d left; it probably explained why she would help now. Trixie snorted to herself. Yeah, that was just like her. She’d throw mysterious packages at her old friends but not say a word to her daughter, she sneered to herself. Bucking … ugh.

Whatever. She didn’t even care anymore. She was over it. She’d given up looking. She didn’t want to be found, fine. Not like she’d ever given a buck before. Why start now? Trixie didn't understand the nonsense with code names and secrecy, and she didn't care to either.

She just couldn’t escape her mother lately. Seemed everything she did was in the stupid mare’s shadow, or was her fault. She just wanted to forget her like she’d … argh, NO! Stop. Thinking. About. Her.

Trixie kicked herself off the chair, the sudden outburst halting the panicked mutterings, as the trio turned to look at her.

“Trixie has had enough of this bickering. Look at it this way. Regardless of how much you trust the sender, do you want to use the stupid stick or not?”

The trio shared glances, Roseluck apparently being quietly promoted to spokespony.

“Well, the evidence would presumably come up in the investigation anyway so … well, we were just thinking that, much as we want Princess to change, we never wanted it to happen like this- Yes, Trixie, I’m getting to the point. We want the investigation to find whoever’s responsible before something terrible happens. So, if we could present evidence to point Security in the right direction as soon as possible, then-”

“Right, that sounds like a ‘yes’ to Trixie. So, do you have a plan for getting into the Castle and reaching Princess?”

“Well, it’s not something that-”

“So that’s a ‘no’?”

Roseluck sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly.

“No, we don’t, and please don’t shout. I don’t think I can take you being angry at me too, not right now.”

It suddenly hit her, the age difference between them. Rose somehow seemed older, more tired. Trixie softened a little; it was foalish to lash out just because things hadn’t been going her way.

“Trixie, ahem, Trixie is … sorry.”

She pawed at the threadbare carpet, avoiding eye-contact, as she came to a decision. She didn’t want Roseluck to go to prison. She didn’t care a ounce for Princess; that stuff was all just political hot air to her, but Roseluck was distressed, and somepony was framing her for holding a country to ransom. That didn’t sit right with Trixie.

She stepped forward, sweeping her hat from the peg where Roseluck had hung it and levitating the stick into her cape alongside her performing wand. There was a pleasant symmetry between them, two little rods of starlite tucked away like that.

“Trixie. No.”

“No, Roseluck, Trixie still owes you a favour.”

Trixie stepped past Rose as the mare half-heartedly tried to stop her leaving. Lily and Daisy, as they had been doing for a while now, seemed unsure what to say, standing uselessly with worried expressions, wringing their hooves as Rose raised her voice.

“This is ridiculous, you don’t have a plan either!”

Trixie didn’t turn round, her horn glowing as she pushed open the door.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t need one.”

Rose was shouting now, a hint of desperation seeping through the cracks. But she didn’t try to stop her from leaving, just took another half-step towards the door.

“I won’t let you do this. Not for me. Wanda would never forgive me.”

Trixie didn’t know whether to laugh or spit.

“Trixie thinks otherwise.”

She took the few steps out onto the dingy landing, holding the door open for a second longer.

“Trixie. Please.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie has a show to attend.”

The door slammed shut behind her.