> The Rise of an Alicorn's Destiny
>  by HMXTaylorLee
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Origins of a Hero
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunlight flooded into the main hall of the castle through the open double doors, interrupted by the silhouette of the pony standing in the frame. The clop of hooves echoed throughout the crystalline chamber as the pony walked inside, the double doors closing shut in its wake. The light filtering in from the stained glass windows high above the front doors revealed this mysterious pony's identity as, step by step, her entire body was bathed in a dim filtered light. Twilight Sparkle was back home, and her spirits were high, as her song would confirm.  

"Morning in Ponyville shimmers, morning in Ponyville shines
And I know for absolute certain, that everything is certain-"

"Don't sing that song!" a voice shouted from one of the open doors adorning the hallway.

Twilight, the newly crowned Princess of Friendship rolled her eyes. "It's a catchy song, Spike!" she argued aloud, the acoustics in the hall making it difficult to tell where exactly the voice had come from.

Spike's head popped out from the open doorway that read "Library" above the frame, the dragon's face wearing an irritated frown.

"You remember what happened last time you sang that song, right?" he reminded her.

"Of course I do," Twilight said, "and look how everything turned out. I became an alicorn, and everything turned out alright." 

"But not before nearly bringing Ponyville to ruin and destroying the lives of all of your friends," he argued. "Messing with destiny and all that."

Destiny, destiny, destiny, destiny, destiny

Twilight's ears perked up at the sound of what seemed to be a mysterious whisper and foreboding rattling. She looked around, and discovered the source - a strong breeze had entered the castle through an open window above the front doors. The howling sound seemed to reverberate against the curtains and the decorative chandelier above, making an ordinary breeze sound eerily foreboding. She still wasn't used to this castle - it was much more grand in scale than her cozy library had been.

"I sincerely doubt that singing that song is what caused all of my friends' to swap cutie marks," she remarked, her gaze looking down from the ceiling back to Spike. "I think you might be reading a little too deep into things."

"Maybe." Spike shrugged his shoulders, turning around and making his way back into the library. "But I wouldn't take that chance!"

Chance, chance, chance, chance, chance

There was that sound again! Twilight looked back up at the open window with furrowed eyebrows. Her horn ignited, and the glass slowly lined up within the frame until the gap was just about sealed, but it wouldn't quite close all of the way. After a couple more tries to no avail, she dismissed it, and stuck her head into the library to observe what was becoming of her second favorite room in the castle thus far.

"How did everything go today?" she asked in a friendly voice, hoping that an excuse for some praise would cheer him up after their minor argument.

The dragon spun around the chair at his desk, holding a large quill in one claw, and an unrolled section of parchment in the other. "Actually, it went really good! Another shipment of books showed up, and I'm just cataloging them now before I put them in the shelves." He gestured behind him with his quill to a sizable stack of volumes on top of the desk. "Did you get the mail on the way in? My new Power Ponies volume set is supposed to come in today," he explained.

Twilight shook her head. "I checked the box on the way in, but the mail must not have come yet. I'm expecting another mail-order catalogue addressed to Twilight Sporkle again."

"Darn," Spike grumbled. "How did the rest of your day go?"

"It went well. I grabbed a bite to eat with the Crusaders, and browsed around in the marketplace," Twilight answered with a smile.

"Anything interesting?"

Twilight tried to remember the many odds and ends on display today. "Yeah, a whole bunch of really cool looking amulets and necklaces, but I didn't stay too long. It was surprisingly cold."

Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold

"Spike, do you hear that?" the alicorn inquired with a mild hint of frustration.

Knock, knock, knock

"Yeah, there's somepony at the door," the dragon answered. "You want me to get it or..?"

Twilight stepped back into the main hall, looking around perplexedly. "No, I'm already here," she replied as she trotted to the double doors she had just entered through. The right handle glowed in a magenta light as it rotated, and the bright light outside filled the hall once more when the door opened. From the entryway of the castle, Twilight could see the various homes and buildings of Ponyville not too far down the road, but she didn't see who had knocked on the door.

"Hello?" She stepped onto the cobblestone walkway, looking up and down the length of the castle wall, hoping to see somepony. "Hello?" she called again. Other than the light breeze, and the sun shining down upon her from a nearly cloudless sky, no response was given. With an unsatisfied huff, she stepped back into her home.

Twilight shut the door once more, and turned around once she heard the lock click into place."Not sure what that was - AH!"

Twilight would not have noticed the figure standing in the darkened hallway if not for its eyes. They glowed bright red, like the embers of a dying fire. The pony moved forward, stepping into the same light from the windows above just as Twilight had done moments ago. The pony's fur was black as night, and blended in perfectly with darkness of the unlit castle. It was no surprise then, that Twilight was surprised by his sudden appearance.

"What in the world are you doing here?" she cried. "You scared me half to death!"

"I'm sorry for the misdirection," the stallion spoke in a smooth, deep, and calm voice. He tilted his head back to adjust the long red hair that covered half of his face, a long black horn protruding from his forehead. He adjusted the satchel he wore around his shoulders. "I am not used to being around other ponies without the comforting embrace of the shadows."

"Clearly, you aren't used to common societal norms either," Twilight snapped with her heart still pounding. "Just because you're a unicorn and can teleport doesn't mean you should just zap yourself into my home. Why did you even bother to knock?"

"A unicorn?" he asked affronted, and instead of answering her question, he turned his body slightly so that Twilight could see a set of black feathery wing resting along his ribs.

"An alicorn?" Twilight mouthed, her eyes widened in surprise. There were more than just her and the other princesses? She paused for a moment to contemplate what that meant, but her heightened pulse reminded her that this mysterious alicorn had entered on his terms, not hers. "What are you doing in here?"

"Again, I apologize. I could not risk detection by lingering on the doorstep of a castle such as this for long," he explained.

"Detection?" Twilight asked in confusion. "Detection from what? It took me all of ten seconds to answer the door! Why are you even here?"

The black alicorn sighed, his breath shifting his hair, revealing a long scar running up the left side of his face. "I wish I could explain everything to you, truly. But, suffice it to say, destiny has brought me here to you."

Twilight raised her eyebrow. "Destiny?"

"Destiny," he repeated.

"You shouldn't have sang that song!" Spike cried from his desk.

"Ugh!" Twilight groaned. "Listen, mister... who are you again?"

"Who I am is not important," he stated. "The more pressing question is, who are you?"

Twilight raised her other eyebrow at him, the stallion's face remaining blank and emotionless. "You come into a castle of all places under the direction of your so-called-destiny, and you ask who I am?"

The stallion blinked. "I know who you are."

The pitch in Twilight's voice rose. "Then why did you just ask-"

"I can read your thoughts," he explained calmly, seemingly unaware that he had interrupted Twilight's question.

"Really..." Twilight said with more than hint of skepticism. Throughout her years of studying magic, the notion of mind-reading was pursued by many various interested parties, and claims of it's existence were always shown to be elaborate readings by con-men, or faked. "So, what am I-"

"You're thinking that 'there's no way he can read my mind'," he answered preemptively.

Twilight uttered a tiny gasp, genuinely surprised that he had guessed, more or less, precisely what she was thinking.

"You're thinking that 'how did he know that?' Now, 'Can he actually read my thoughts?' 'Oh no, think of something else-" 

"Okay, okay! So say you can read minds," she conceded reluctantly. "You still haven't answered who you are, or why you're here!"

"My name is Reveille," he sighed. Twilight could swear she could hear a distant horn sounding once he said his name, like one she'd hear in a parade. "I don't blame you for asking so many questions. It can be difficult to know who to trust in times like these. I trusted somepony once..."

The purple alicorn coughed quietly. "Well, before we get off track, I'd still like to know-"

"Many years ago, in a mining village far away from here, the pony that I consider my mother found me," Reveille continued, interrupting Twilight's question. "I was not born to her, for she was a simple earth pony earning a living just as best as she could. But the odds were never in her favor, for she was born with an unlucky streak as long as Equestria itself. Even her name was fitting for how she coped with such misfortune and sadness." 

******

"Despair!"

An earth pony mare with a grey coat and silver mane looked up at the sound of her name being called. Standing before her was a young stallion wearing a rather dapper black suit.

"Yes, sir?" Despair answered shakily.

"Throw away that garbage and strap up," her boss told her. "Another meteorite landed down south of our campsite on Monday, and we need somepony to go and see if there's any evidence of valuable ore we can mine from it. Seeing as it's the weekend shift, and you got selected to work it again solo, you'll have to take this one, okay?"

"Yes, of course, sir. May I ask a question, though?"

"The paycheck's in the mail," he answered.

"Oh good," Despair acknowledged with a nod. "I'm still waiting on the last three. But, actually I wanted to ask... if it landed on Monday, why are we just getting to it now, on Friday, and at the tail end of my shift?"

The boss mumbled under his breath, rubbing his forehead with one of his hooves. "...always has to be difficult... it's a matter of economics," he informed her matter-of-factly. "The last guy we sent on asteroid detail died of radiation sickness, and we had to pay his family a metric ton for his life insurance policy. You don't have one, so the balance between risk and reward leans more to reward. For us. Not you."

"Well, I'm trying to afford one, but I just don't quite have enough money," she explained.

"And whose fault is that?" Her boss tightened his tie almost menacingly.

"Um..." the crestfallen pony lowered her head, picking up her hardhat and flashlight. "I guess I'd better get going then."

"You'd better. I don't want to have to not dock your pay again," the stallion turned away and began walking to his carriage. "Oh, A few minutes before his heart failed, that other meteorite detail guy said that explosives were effective on opening it. Take some with you, but be careful with them - losing explosives to an employee would be a great loss. And get rid of that trash!"

The sound of her boss' command addressing her directly startled the mare, and she fumbled to grab her hardhat while it bounced across the ground with each grope of her hooves.

"Will do, sir!" Despair offered a salute, unwittingly striking her forehead with her hardhat in the process. After a quick massage, she placed the yellow cap on her head, gathered up her sizable pile of losing scratch-and-match game cards to throw out, and went on her merry way.






Cart full of dynamite trailing behind her, Despair approached the meteorite site. She was a little winded after ten miles, but she managed to make it while the sun was just barely above the horizon, and the axle on the cart only came undone twice.

As she approached the crater that the chunk of space rock had created, she stopped to gaze up to the purple sky above as she unhitched the explosives.

"Every night, I look up to the night sky. At all of the stars, the distant suns, and the moon," she said aloud to herself. "Every night, I spend wishes upon them, hoping that my fortunes may be reversed someday, and that I can finally experience true happiness like everypony else."

Despair hopped down in the darkened crater, and turned the flashlight on her mining helmet on.

"And the night sky replies with an irradiated chunk of rock that is probably going to kill me," she sighed, slowly clambering down the slope. Suddenly, she heard a soft cry from further down the hole. Despair quickened her pace, and then found the source.

At the very center of the pit was a meteorite. Or rather, half of a meteorite. The white rock seemed to have been hollow, for the remainder of its 'shell' formed a small basin of sorts. Or more appropriately, as Despair soon discovered, a cradle.

A tiny foal lay within, fur as black as the sky that had fallen, and his mane the color of dark crimson. Upon his forehead was a small horn, and on its side were a pair of little, feathered wings. He stirred and emitted a soft wail, his tiny limbs flailing about in search of something to hold on to. A few seconds later, it found the calloused but loving hoof of Despair. The sensation unfamiliar, the foal's eyes blinked open, and looked into the face of his new mother. Despair lifted him up, whispering her words of thanks to the stars, sun, and moon for finally answering her pleas.
> Born In The Darkness
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"...stars, sun, and moon for finally answering her pleas," Reveille finished with another deep sigh. Twilight stared at him, mouth and eyes agape. After a period silence, she snapped back out of her trance, looking back at the blank face of the stallion before her.

"That was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," she said simply. "A pony named Despair that literally lives in despair? You coming from space? How can you expect me to believe that? Are you an alien? H-how did you breathe?"

"I am not an alien," he insisted. "Not in that sense. I'm an alicorn, just like you. I did not think you would believe me... nopony ever does, no one understands."

Twilight did not know whether to laugh or to explain that the reason that no one understood his story was simple - it didn't make any sense at all. However, rather than instigate another powerful magical being, she approached the matter logically.

"So, if you came from space as an alicorn foal," she pondered aloud. "That must mean that your real parents were alicorns as well, but there aren't any other planets that ponies can live on as far as I know, and the only alicorn that was in space around that time was..." 

Reveille looked at her with a grim smile. "You're smarter than I thought," he complimented the princess.

"Princess Luna doesn't have a son," Twilight insisted stoutly. "There's no way that she has a son."

"I wish it were Princess Luna that had mothered me," the stallion muttered with an air of tragedy. "It was Nightmare Moon."

Again, Twilight didn't know whether or not to laugh. The whole scenario was utterly ludicrous. Yet, Reveille seemed so serious, so dark, and so brooding about the whole thing... what if it was true? There had to be a way to explain it, but the logistics didn't pan out.

"I know this probably sounds familiar to you," she started, "but that simply doesn't make any sense. First off, she was on the moon for one thousand years. The only reason Nightmare Moon survived at all is because the nightmare power kept her alive, and she was able to survive without any other sustenance. She wouldn't have even been able to support a foal's nutritional needs while pregnant. Furthermore, she couldn't leave, and I sincerely doubt that somepony decided to travel to the moon to... you know, get her pregnant," she cringed at the thought.

"I don't know how it happened, and I wish it hadn't!" Reveille screamed out of nowhere, Twilight flinched at the outburst, and Spike groaned in frustration from the library.

"Can your friend keep it down? I'm trying to organize these books," Spike called from the other room.

"Sorry!" Twilight yelled. "Come on, Reveille, let's -" Her ears perked up again, the sound of the horn from before once again entering her recovering ears. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" The shaking stallion snarled. "The sounds of a worthless pony that nopony loves crying because he's worthless and nopony loves him?"

"Never mind," Twilight answered quickly, not wanting to antagonize him anymore. "Let's go and get something to eat, and we can sit down on proper furniture, okay?"

"Fine! We'll just go to another room!" Reveille screamed again, much to the chagrin of Twilight and her ears. He adjusted his satchel, and stood up from the floor where he had collapsed rather dramatically during his outburst.

The two alicorns trotted through the castle together, not saying a word to each other. The only sound other than their hooves on the floor was the occasional sniffling from Reveille. Twilight led him into an open doorway, the room on the other side awash in the orange glow of the fireplace within. This was Twilight's study - where she would lay on a large padded mat (specifically designed for her by Rarity as a castle-warming present) in front of the fire and read. There weren't any windows in here, which Twilight secretly was grateful for - she felt better when she could read the day away without the setting sun to remind her of the time.

Aside from her mat, there were two sofas on either side of an exquisitely polished coffee table. She always made sure that the table had some sort of snack on it. When her growling stomach threatened the silence she needed to read, she would eat just enough to quiet it, and then return to her story. Today, the table had a plate of eclairs for them to nosh upon.

"Alright, take a seat," Twilight gestured to the sofa on the other side of the table as she hopped upon the one closest to her. No sooner than she had begun to nestle herself into a comfortable nook, she felt the cushion become displaced as Reveille took a seat next to her. Twilight assumed that the stallion simply hadn't seen her point to the opposite couch. Not a big deal. With a small flap of her wings, enough to lift her, but not enough to disturb the light treats on the table, she cleared the coffee table and landed on the opposite couch. Her feathered appendages settled against her side, and she turned around to find another comfortable spot and face the alicorn across from her. His fiery red eyes were fixed on her.

"So yeah, whatever, I don't know how it happened, I just know that it did," he summarized. "Neither of them wanted me, but I don't really care," he added with a noticeable hint of stoicism.

Twilight was a getting a bit annoyed by Reveille feeling sorry for himself, but she didn't say anything. After all, right after she discovered that she had swapped her friend's cutie marks without an immediate solution, she spent at least a minute or so actually singing about how bad she felt about it! The moody stallion on the other couch hadn't belted out song lyrics yet. With that in mind, she decided to indulge him.
Maybe getting the whole story off of his chest would make him feel better, and make sense of the bizarre proposal he presented.

"So... how did everything go with your mother - Despair, I mean?" Twilight asked politely, trying to convey a genuine sense of curiosity.

"It was like something out of a fairy tale," he replied. "She was so happy when she found me, she said I gave her a reason to live again, and she was delighted to wake up and see me." He looked at his hooves and issued a faint laugh. "That's where I got my name, my real name."

"Which is?" Twilight inquired.

"Revel," he said with another sigh. "Reveille is..." he paused for a second, ears perked and seemingly lost in thought. "It's my nickname," he frowned, looking disheartened.

"A lively celebration," Twilight paraphrased the definition from memory. "That's a very heartfelt nickname. It sounded like she really cared about you."

"That's what I thought too," Reveille huffed, blowing a strand of his red mane out of his red eyes. "Until she abandoned me."

Twilight didn't want to press the issue and risk upsetting Reveille again, so she just waited patiently for him to continue on his own. After another strangely long sigh, he did.

"She thought everything had turned around, and... for a while, I suppose it did," he lifted his hoof to his chin. "But I guess being the offspring of a powerful alicorn deity has it's growing pains. I couldn't control the magic within me, and whenever I would get upset or sad... things would happen."

"What kind of things?"

"Earthquakes. Fires. Localized electrical storms centered on the face of someone who wronged me. Those sort of things," he dismissed casually as Twilight's face blanched. "Eventually, they told her that I had to go. She insisted that it wasn't my fault, and it totally wasn't. I can't help that I'm a child of a god..."

Twilight was especially grateful that she had become an alicorn after having sufficient control over her powers after hearing that.

"She was ill, and it was getting progressively worse. As a result, I got more and more sad and upset as I got less and less attention, and more things happened. She eventually stopped defending me, claiming that I needed to learn to control my temper and my powers. And then, when I was only five, she and I went on a walk out in the woods. We went farther than we had ever gone before, and then..."

Though his foalhood certainly seemed tragic, he didn't seem really all that upset about the whole thing. Reveille kept inserting pauses and beats at seemingly designated intervals. And each time, Twilight noticed with slight discomfort, he would observe her for her reaction.

"At the base of the tallest tree in the deepest woods, she set me down, and told me that I needed to find my own way. She said that other ponies couldn't appreciate what I brought to the world, and that I should forge my own path without anypony else. This was all she left for me." Reveille opened his satchel, and withdrew a wooden box with a sliding top. He pulled it open, and reached across the table towards the curious Twilight Sparkle.

There were two things inside - a ridiculously large tuft of silver hair, and a note that said "Aceans" on it. Twilight was about to ask what they meant, but Reveille beat her to the punch.

"She left me a lock of her hair, and the last name of her husband," he explained. "'Aceans', with an 's' at the end, but it's silent. Told me to try and find him, saying that even though he joined a secret cult of guardians for the sole purpose of training to become the most powerful warriors imaginable, he would take care of me."

"Riiiiiight," Twilight drawled slowly, hoping to change the subject. "Did you um, did you ever see Despair again?"

"Nope," the black alicorn muttered as he helped himself to a chocolate eclair. "Died of radiation sickness." With a soft smack, the eclair vanished into his mouth. His mouth still full, he gave a pleasant chuckle, the happiest emotion he'd shown since he'd arrived that day. "I guess that explains why her lock of hair was a big chunk."

"Yeah, I guess that explains that..." Twilight giggled nervously, though she in no way found it funny. She could understand having some adjustment issues given his upbringing, but Reveille had just licked the cream filling off of his hooves after having a lighthearted laugh about his foster mother's mane falling out before she passed away.

"I suppose I should thank her," he mused, wiping his hoof against a napkin on the table. "If not for her leaving me for dead, I would never have learned to survive on my own."

Twilight shrugged, doing her best to empathize with that logic. "I guess that's one way of look-"

"I wandered that dark forest for years," he continued as if hypnotized, not acknowledging Twilight's remark. "Even when the sun shone from behind the tops of the trees, the forest was as dark as night. And when night fell, it was as dark as blackest night. I wandered blind for months until my eyes finally adjusted, staving off starvation with whatever I could acquire..."

Princess Twilight silently wondered how a pony, a creature that typically dined on plants and vegetation, could starve in a forest. She also wondered what forest was large enough to ensnare somepony for years.

"One night, I finally found a clearing, and I looked to stare at the moon, my eyes not used to seeing the world of light again, wondering if my true mother was looking down upon me," Reveille spoke with a sense of longing, staring into the fireplace. A single tear rolled invisibly down his cheek, and fell to the carpeted floor. "It turned out, she was. Nightmare Moon imbued her rays of moonlight with her essence, and sharing her bloodline, my body absorbed the magic within. My horn grew in size, tingling with pure magic, and with practically no effort, I was able to use advanced magic that took most unicorns the greater part of their life to master."

The black alicorn continued to observe Twilight's reactions at all of the natural beats in his speech, and Twilight didn't care that she was expressing disdain at the notion that all of the time she invested into learning magic could simply have been spent moonlighting. She could swear that she detected the faintest hint of a smirk as Reveille cleared his throat and carried on with his tale.

"Despite being endowed with great power, I still needed to learn how to control it. My first attempt to merely illuminate the way out of the forest had set the trees ablaze. I ran as fast as I could to escape, and after many days of running in the same direction without stopping even once, I finally had reached the edge and escaped the prison my mother had cast me to. I began the next part of my journey - to find Despair's husband," he added with flourish.

Laying down now on the couch, Twilight looked at Reveille curiously. Perhaps those many years in isolation were the cause of his explosive temper opposite his virtually blank expression the rest of the time. Maybe he simply didn't know how to deal with other ponies, ponies who would naturally fear him for his exceedingly unique upbringing. She felt somewhat sympathetic for his described ordeal - he was only a young colt that just needed someone to take care of him.

"Of course, I didn't need him to take care of me," Reveille said matter-of-factly. "I demonstrated that I could do that myself. I wanted to find him, and let him know that the wife he left behind and probably didn't pay alimony to had passed away. With only a last name and the description of his cult to go by, I did what my mother told me and forged a path across all of the land to search for him. In emergencies, I would also forge checks," he added with a wink. "Don't tell anypony!"

Twilight frowned, but nodded anyways. "I'll uh... I'll keep that to myself."

"I knew I could trust you, your highness," he smiled warmly. 

She was surprised that he was even able to present a check at the age he would have been. Strange.

"Though nopony knew his name, I was able to follow whispers and rumors to find the group of guardians he had absconded with. This group, the Secret Guardians as I learned they were called, were located at the top of world's tallest mountain," Reveille explained. "Without any experience, I could not yet fly, and my teleportation spells would often take to locations exponentially further than I intended because my magic was so strong. From the base to the peak, I had to climb in one the most frigid climates in the world, battling frostbite, hypothermia, exposure, and being really, really chilly."

"Did you try lighting your horn to start a fire?" Twilight asked jokingly. The lighthearted question seemed to throw Reveille for a loop, and he glared with annoyed confusion at the princess.

"I uh... I don't understand. What do you mean?" he asked warily.

Twilight couldn't help but let out a proper laugh. "You know! Because of the whole forest fire thing, accidentally starting a fire to keep you warm?"

Reveille didn't find it funny. "I don't find that funny," he answered through gritted teeth. "I don't understand what you find so humorous about a life and death struggle."

Twilight's laughing very quickly faded out. She didn't understand how Reveille couldn't take a jab at his (more than likely) successful mountain climb, but could indulge in a cream filled treat with a polite guffaw when his mother had succumbed to her illness. "I didn't mean anything... just thought it would lighten the mood."

The stallion exhaled audibly through his flared nostrils. "Well, it didn't. It hurts that you want to interrupt me to make light of something... something so affecting to me. I thought you were better than that," he added with more than a little accusatory tone.

"I'm sorry." Twilight scratched her hoof uncomfortably in a circle on the couch. "I didn't mean to. I'll try not to do it again," she offered.

"Fantastic!" He exclaimed with raised pitch, clapping his hooves together in what had to be the most momentous of mood-swings that Twilight had seen in a very, very long time. "Now then... where was I?"

"Climbing the mo-"

"Climbing the mountain, that's right!" As though somepony inside his head had flipped a switch, Reveille's mood changed from the energetic and excited one back to the dreary, serious, and (if Twilight could say so herself) melodramatic one that he had been using during his tale. "After scaling the ice-laden walls for three days in an endless blizzard, I finally pulled myself up one final ledge. Looming in front of me was the sacred Temple of the Secret Guardians. I could only hope that the stallion I had traveled for six years to meet lay within. I opened the doors, and stepped inside."
> The Secret of the Guardians
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"At first glance, it appeared to be abandoned. There were no signs of life, and nothing in the air but the smell of dust and decay. I entered the main chamber, examining the massive statue cast in bronze at the center of the room that had undoubtedly served as the centerpiece to many of their rites and ceremonies. The statue depicted a unicorn standing stock, a shield one hoof and a sword in the other. While the entire statue appeared to be fixed and immovable, there was one thing that was not."

Reveille hopped upon the base of the statue, sidling past the bronze shield to stand below the unicorn's chest. He reached up with his hoof to a shining medallion that hung around the neck of the metal pony from a melded chain. Reveille examined the large coin, which was free to move within the confines of the chain link that held it aloft. Though there was nothing but a sword and shield embossed on either side of the medallion, something else caught his bright red eye. There was font engraved along the side of the thick medallion. Stretching his rear legs, he got as close as he could and read aloud;




"To search for infinity, to find something more
The road that will take you is under the floor"




The chamber that had fallen silent for years was alive with the sound of eager hooves examining every square inch of the room for a method by which to reveal the passage. After around a minute and a half of fruitless searching, Reveille grew impatient. 

"I've waited six years for this moment," he said with bravado to no one in particular, "and I'm ready to break down!"

Using his powerful magic, he blasted at the bronze statue, freeing it from it's pedestal, and sent it careening down to the wood panel floor below. With a deafening crash, the statue destroyed the floorboards, and fell down into a what seemed to be a chasm leading further under the temple.

The alicorn peered down into the abyss, eager to explore what secrets it held, and began to search for a method to descend safely. He scanned around the room until he discovered a coil of rope hanging from a pillar. Reveille galloped towards the rope and using a wooden signpost that read Inner Sanctum Access Lever and Utility Rope for support, yanked the rope away, making sure it didn't catch on a precariously placed lever. Delighted at his cleverness, he tied a loop around himself, and then around a pillar close to the hole in the floor. The colt walked backwards towards the opening, and began to rappel down the wall towards the Secret Guardian's inner sanctum.

After about fifteen seconds, Reveille reached the bottom of the pit. Careful to avoid hitting his head on the destroyed statue, he opened yet another set of double doors. Reveille covered his eyes, blinded by a white light. His eyes very quickly adjusted, and he found himself on a ledge overlooking a gigantic cave that went on as far as the eye could see. There were trees and rivers winding below him, and the sunlight filtering through a thick sheet of ice with several icicles having formed upon it. The alicorn looked around the gargantuan hollow, searching yet again for a sign of life. Barely noticeable under a canopy of trees directly below him, was the roof of a building.

His destination in mind, he now had to find a way there. Cursing his current lack of flight, and over reactive teleporting, the only way down was by navigating a lengthy sloped outcropping following the outer wall.

"I've waited six years for this moment," Reveille announced aloud calmly, walking towards the beginning of the trail. "and I'm going as the crow flies!" He turned around, rapidly approaching the edge of the jagged platform at a full sprint, and jumped.

******

"I began my descent with a nine-hundred degree clockwise spiral and then, curling up to make myself as small as possible and decrease the time it takes to make a full rotation of course," Reveille added with a dismissive wave of a hoof, "began executing a series of no less than fourteen front flips, three torso axial aerial somersaults, and then fourteen back flips to keep things even. The announcement of my intent before I jumped seem to have triggered a series of huge icicles falling from the frozen ceiling, so I had to concentrate on both my distance to the ground as well the obstacles chasing me from above. I twisted as they fell, and with the ground coming ever closer, I looked up to see one fast approaching just slightly offset above me. I curled my legs together, and just as it was passing, I used my hind legs to springboard myself off of the icicle towards vines hanging down from a separate ledge above. I gripped it with two hooves, revolving counter-clockwise two and a half rotations before screeching to a halt two feet above the floor."

"...You jumped down," Twilight summarized, her chin cradled by her hooves.

Reveille took a sizable gulp of fresh air, slowly releasing it through his nostrils. "Quite."

******

Reveille quickly found the building he had seen from up above. It was not difficult, as the building was much bigger from his perspective on the cave floor. It looked almost identical to the temple he had entered at the mountain's peak. As the pony followed along the wall of the building in search of an opening, he mused aloud to himself once more.

"I've waited six years for this moment," His horn began to glow bright red. "And I'm the verge of a breakthrough!" A blast of energy collided with the wall, breaching the stone exterior and sending huge chunks of rubble flying into the newly made gap. Reveille bounced into the hole before the dust had even settled, landing on a massive slab that had just been a part of the wall. The stallion heard a collective gasp before him, and the blinding particles of dust and sand floated downward to reveal a grand hallway with two dozen ponies wearing sheathed swords and shields upon their back staring at him.

Reveille looked back at them, sensing the tension in the room growing to a fever pitch. Finally, an earth pony with a light blue coat standing to the alicorn's left stood up, pointing a single hoof at Reveille.

"He has defeated the master!"

Reveille glanced below him, but didn't see anything but the thick slabs of stone the had been blown away from the wall. If he had to guess, whomever it was that he defeated was underneath it.

"The rules state that whoever defeats our master will replace him as the head of the Secret Guardians!"

The room was filled with the clanking of swords and shields as all of the Secret Guardians knelt down before the smirking alicorn, who uttered with a cool, collected voice as he pushed the bangs of his red mane out of his face.

"I waited six years for this moment, and it was a... smashing success." 


******

"So, because you were impatient and just happened to make a hole in the wall at the exact place their leader was unfortunate enough to be, it was decided that you were to be the leader of a mysterious group of warriors as an 11 year old colt?" Twilight asked incredulously.

"Unfortunate?" an affronted Reveille replied. "Luck had nothing to do with it. I knew exactly where he was."

******

According the official handbook of the Secret Guardians, somepony taking over as the master needed to have been a member for at least three months. Reveille's first pre-official act was to burn the handbook, but his unfocused and uncontrollable magic wound up burning the entirety of the furniture in the dining room, and all of the food prepared for his inaugural feast with it.

"Food is for the weak," Reveille announced after the smoke had cleared and new, less exquisite but perfectly functional folding chairs and tables replaced the smoldering ones.

"But, my liege, how will we survive?" a pony asked from the back of the room.

"Survive?" the alicorn whispered blankly. "SURVIVE? I spent the better half of my life wandering through mazes of shadowy forests and crossing endless plains that stretched as far as the eyes can see. I've suffered winters so frigid that the snowponies wished they'd never been born, and summers so searing that you couldn't fry an egg on the sidewalk - because the bird got fried before it could lay one. I've gone without proper food and shelter for so long, I would eat a tent and sleep under a tortilla, just because I could no longer tell the difference. So, do not ask me how we will survive, because survival?" Reveille laughed quietly to himself as he shook his head in disbelief. "Survival is a game for foals."

Other than some debris still slowly crumbling down from the hole in the wall, the room was silent.

Another pony three seats down stood up shakily and cleared her throat.

"Your omnipotence, what could possibly drive a pony as young as you to journey so far and for so long to find us?"

Reveille opened his satchel, withdrawing the wooden box that Despair had given to him. "I'm looking for somepony," he answered while the box slid open. Groping with his hoof, he seized the weathered note with his step-father's last name written upon it. "Who here among you answers, or once did answer, to the name of Aceans?"

"I bore that surname long ago." A grey pegasus at the end of the table closest to Reveille stood up. "Before I had devoted my life to this cause, dropped it, and became simply known as Yrit." He bowed down to the colt before him. "My lordship, what of this humble Guardian do you deem worthy of your attention?"

Reveille placed the slip of paper back into the box, carefully scooping the tuft of his mother's hair into his hoof. "I have a message from your wife," he said.

"The alimony check is in the mail, your benevolence," Yrit exclaimed nervously.

"Call the bank, tell them not to honor it." Reveille raised the ball of hair above him, the silver strands shimmering in the glow of a nearby torch. "Because she's dead," he informed Yrit unflinchingly.

The room uttered another collective gasp as the pegasus wailed "Oh, Despair!"

"You'll get over it," the colt muttered to himself as he returned the box and it's contents to his satchel. "I know I have."


******


"Pardon the interruption, Reveille," Twilight asked, hearing a brassy tune emanate from the fireplace. "But, a lot of this seems..."

"What, my dear?" Reveille inquired, tightly clutching the wooden box to his chest.

"My dear?" the princess mouthed silently. "Uh, please don't take this the wrong way, but the actions and speech patterns that you say you did seem... highly advanced. I don't know any eleven year old ponies that speak with near the sophistication that you did. You didn't interact with ponies often, and you couldn't have been able to read a lot of books always being on the move with the amount of er... anguish that you described."

"Most eleven year old ponies are also not the son of a deity, absorbing her knowledge and magic every night that the moon doth glow. So yeah," he answered shortly. "Do you think I liked being superior in every way to everypony I met? It started to get old after a while."

"I can imagine..." Twilight grumbled, yet another one of her logically sound arguments being swatted out of the air.

"Right, I'm sure," Reveille nodded with a strained look on his face. "Now, may I continue?"

"Actually, I think a break woul-"

******


Reveille bounced on top of the large chunk of rubble he created, ready to make his way out of the temple, and out of the cave. He heard the shuffling of hooves on the stone floor pursuing him, and stopped moving. He craned his head to peek behind him, seeing all of the Secret Guardians huddled around with looks of anticipation upon their face.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," he said sarcastically. He was legitimately surprised when he heard the clicking of camera shutters, and saw the bright flash of the bulbs on the walls. Reveille turned the rest of his body around, his eyes firmly shut. "What are you doing? Stop that!"

The collective of ponies took a step backwards, their cameras stowed as quickly as they had appeared. Yrit stepped forward from the crowd timidly, having seemly followed the advice about his late wife's death.

"Your majesty," he whispered. "We were simply doing as you commanded. Were we... not supposed to?"

"You guys can do whatever you want, as far as I'm concerned," Reveille told him. "I'm getting out of here."

"Leaving, your grace?"

The alicorn groaned in frustration. "Yes, whatever other synonyms you wish to use, I'm going."

Yrit's eyes darted back and forth, the crowd behind him murmuring worriedly.

"Thine holiness, where will you go?"

"I'm not sure yet..." Reveille bit his lip. "I might go and try to fly again so I don't have to walk so much, and then get this teleporting thing down so I won't have to fly so much."

"El Jefe, your planning efficiency in planning efficiency to accommodate for your planned efficiency is..." Yrit paused, struggling to choose the right word.

"Yeah, my plans are pretty efficient," the black colt brushed his shoulders, glancing up at the female unicorn who had asked him a question earlier approaching from behind Yrit.

"Master, do you wish for self-improvement?" she spoke with a look of uncanny interest.

"You're going to have to be more explicit," Reveille said cautiously, "because I haven't felt the need for it."

"Self-improvement is master-" the unicorn coughed from the remnants of dust that the crowd had kicked up. "Apologies, sir, it's mastering the skills and talents you already possess to become more efficient at them, or learning new ones to increase your overall aptitude."

"Do you think that I need to improve after such a hard-fought victory?" Reveille's eyes squinted at her, causing the mare to yelp in fright.

"I meant nothing by it, your excellency! We have trainers who are experts at the very subjects you described, that's all I was going to say!"

The colt's eyebrows relaxed, but his eyes were still angrily fixed upon her. "Then I shall stay and consult with these trainers to see if I need any 'self-improvement', as you seem to be a very poor judge of my skills and talents," he informed her.


******


"I have to say." Twilight shifted uncomfortably. "That was kind of a mean thing to say to her. She seemed like she was just trying to help."

"Well, her telling a young colt that they aren't good at anything was mean. Completely uncalled for. One shouldn't dole out criticism if they aren't prepared to take it," he insisted adamantly.


******


"Your benevolence, might we save the training for after the ceremony?" Yrit suggested timidly.

With a roll of his eyes, Reveille sighed. "What ceremony is this now?"

"Your highness, it's to celebrate you as a new member of the Secret Guardians... and then subsequently promote you to be our master," Yrit explained.

"Does it take long?" the black colt inquired. "I don't enjoy partaking in tedious and laborious affairs when there's a faster and simpler way to do things."

Yrit looked behind him at his fellow guardians, perhaps seeking moral support, before he replied. "It's just a few short speeches, your sovereignty. The admittance ceremony is but a simple vow to protect the Secret. However, the ceremony for welcoming a new master used to have a number of steps and speeches, but none can recall precisely what those were. It was detailed in the Secret Guardian handbook, but per your instruction... none remain that are not burned beyond comprehension. Also..."

"Hmm?" Reveille tilted his head.

"There is an item we must present to you that was in the possession of our previous master. He - it - is underneath the large slab you are standing on."

The alicorn colt blinked at the pegasus. The pegasus blinked back. After half a minute of exchanges identical to these, Reveille took a seat, with an annoyed expression upon his countenance.

"Well?"

"Oh captain, my captain, you are standing on the fallen section of wall that we need to move," Yrit informed him once again.

"I can't help that," Reveille replied blankly, laying down upon the rock and wriggling to get comfortable, using his satchel as a pillow. "Now, I'm going to recharge my unfathomable energy with a well-earned nap." His eyes fluttered shut. "Wake me up when you get... whatever it is that you need to get. I would strongly advise against accidentally waking me up beforehoof, because..."

Like the flaming meteorite that carried him burning bright against the night sky, his red eye shot open upon his dark face, moving side to side as he gazed warily at his legions.

"There are plenty of walls left that could fall down." He shut his eye, and promptly fell asleep, the first nap that he had claimed to indulge in for three whole days.   

Yrit looked back at the group behind him, a helpless frown on his face as he silently pleaded for assistance. He was met with the same expression.


******


Twilight stared at Reveille with wide eyes, the black alicorn telling his account with nary a hint of emotion.

"I've heard that adolescent ponies could be awfully belligerent, but that..." her words faded as she struggled to find a proper way to phrase it.

"As I've expressed several times in my regaling," Reveille told her with a semblance of tragic undertones as his eyes shut. "Everything that everypony else is, I was more so. For better, or for worse."

"Yes, but -"

"It's the cross that lifts me, but my cross to bear."

"Um..."

"My gift," his eyes opened, his expression melancholy. "My curse."

"You have to admit that's a tad unnecessary!" Twilight blurted before Reveille could continue his tirade. Just like the princess' last objection to his methods of treatment, he had a retort that he was prepared with.

"It was valuable training. As I myself had learned while I evaded dangerous creatures in the darkness of the forest, silence is your one true ally. Having your presence needlessly announced among those that overpower you is certain death."

"Reveille, that's-" Twilight heard, more clearly than before, the sound of a bugle again playing briefly in the distance. "Did you hear that?"

"You're hearing things, Twilight," Reveille answered quickly. "As I was saying, it was both training, and a test. By acquiring the artifact without disturbing my slumber, they passed."

Twilight tried to think of how they could have moved the rock with the young Reveille laying upon it without waking him. "Did they do a very careful group lift with unicorn magic?"

The stallion shook his head. "No. They dug under the floor and came up from underneath."

Princess Twilight had to admit it would have taken her a little bit to figure out that sort of solution. "I'm impressed. Good job on their part." At the compliment, and she might have been mistaken, it looked as though Reveille's eye twitched.

"Having said that, I had hoped they would have figured it out sooner when I set the test up," he told her flatly. "I was trying to teach a lesson about the importance of utilizing alternate routes rather than the obvious one to avoid detection. The road less taken, if you will."

"Twilight!" Spike stuck his head in the opening of the study. "There you are. I'm making dinner, it should be ready in say... twenty minutes? Three plates?" he asked, holding up three clawed nails to illustrate.

"Yes," Reveille and Twilight answered at the same time, Spike raising an eyebrow at the instance.

"Right then, I'll get to it," the dragon said, turning around but quickly coming to a halt. "Oh and, Twilight! You know that big window above the front doors that wouldn't close?"

Twilight nodded, remembering her attempts to shut it earlier. "Yeah, what about it?"

"I went up there with the ladder, and there was a blob of gum sticking above the hinge! How do you suppose that got there?"

The princess scratched her chin with her hoof in puzzlement. "How strange, I have no idea."

"Me neither," Spike shrugged as he began to rapidly scoot backwards to the hallway. "Anyways, gotta run, food on the stove!"

"Thank you!" Twilight called after him, following it up with a pleasant giggle. "My number one assistant. Don't know what I would do without him."

Reveille cleared his throat, the noise more gutteral than it had been before - probably because his throat was sore after speaking so long, if Twilight was to hazard a guess.

"Right well, I venture that I should conclude my story with haste," he noted with disappointment.

"There's no rush," Twilight explained, though secretly glad that the rather long-winded tale was coming to a close. "We can continue after dinner, or whenever. We've got plenty of time."

"The story of a life, especially this part of mine, is not something that can be simply interrupted, your highness," Reveille cried at a surprising volume, leaving Twilight somewhat shell-shocked. "It may seem to speed up or slow down depending on the perception of whoever is experiencing it, but it will never, ever pause." The stallion took several deep breaths, more than seemed necessary for the volume and speed at which he spoke. "The only time the story ends," he whispered, "is when your heart becomes still and cold."

"Cold?" Twilight squeaked. She was unsure whether to be impressed by how rather poetic it was, or frightened by how morbid it became.

"Cold" the stallion repeated quietly, his eyes intensely fixated upon Twilight's wide violet ones. The lavender alicorn adjusted herself, taking the opportunity to look away from those infernal orbs, her hooves finding a new place to settle on the cushion.

"I um... I suppose you should probably continue?" she suggested, her voice having inadvertently raised in pitch.

"I suppose so," Reveille agreed, "before we run... out of time."


******


"Right so, I'm going to speed through all of this stuff here," Reveille explained, the first ceremony whizzing by at three times the normal speed. "Talk, talk, talk. It's just a bunch of self-serving and moronic rambling that the Guardians term as 'prose'." The voices of the various ponies were high pitched unintelligible squeaks, and even the motion of one of the ponies simply idling seemed jerky and unnatural.

"Blah blah blah, uphold this, do that - I still need to get a copy of that picture from him - 'I solemnly swear', alright... Okay! First ceremony done, here comes the next one." The ponies sitting in the chairs in front of the stage all stomped their hooves together, the boosted speed giving it the sound of a throaty growl. Everypony in the room lined up along the right side of the stage, and one by one, went on to shake the newest member's - Reveille - hoof. Some contact was so short that Twilight scarcely saw it happen. "Aaaand... promotion to leader. It's longer and filled with even more pretentious jargon," he explained.

"How are you able to manipulate this to go by so quickly?" Twilight asked, watching a pony with an itchy muzzle raise his foreleg to scratch it repeatedly, giving him the appearance of hitting himself in the face over and over again.

"You're about to find out," Reveille answered mysteriously, "...once this pony ceases his drivel." One pony that went on to speak had a rather deep voice that sounded quite funny when it was played back at triple speed. "Okay, this is it. The changing of the guard. Aaaand... now.


"Among the junior Guardians, this pony has demonstrated an unmatched mastery in the arts of combat, speed, and intelligence," the mare speaking behind the podium continued. "Though born without a voice, our rigorous process of selection has determined that among his peers, silence is truly golden. As the new Prime Guardian, his orders are not delegated through the chain of command, but come directly from our newest master. Any command given by the new master-to-be is to be followed without hesitation and with no argument or question why."

"Not like that will be a problem, if he's mute..." Reveille mumbled to himself as he sat upon the stage, slowly lifting himself to get some feeling back in his hindquarters. Even though all of the Official Secret Guardian Handbooks had been incinerated, there was one pony who had been so inexplicably bored that she had taken it upon herself to memorize the entire Master Induction Ceremony - all 12 single spaced pages. Reveille's first official act as Master Secret Guardian was going to be having her hoofwrite the entire thing in as many notebooks it would take to replace the lost handbooks for the rest of the ponies here.

"...a round of applause for the newest Prime Guardian, Seasons Yore!"

There was an abundance of cheering and polite applause, the enthusiasm of which had died several hours ago when the ceremonies started. Seasons Yore, a white pegasus with a neatly maintained purple mane took a short bow. He was given his shield, one that was also pure white, but had a curious symbol in the middle.

******

"I don't mean to interrupt, again, but what exactly is this 'secret' that these ponies are guarding? It seems really rather... generic," Twilight queried as swiftly as she could manage. The naturally inquisitive alicorn had followed along with most of the tale, but she found this point to be frustratingly vague.

"Do I need to give that speech about interrupting a life story again?" Reveille hissed.

"..."


******


"Stand up, Master Guardian," the unicorn mare at the podium said at long last. Reveille was only too happy to comply, bouncing up with enthusiasm, his crimson mane flopping over his right eye again. He slowly but deliberately stepped forward, centering himself with tiny 'x' that somepony had taped on the floor.

"From this point forward, you shall be known only as Master Guardian," she continued. "Like the dozens of Master Guardians before you, your old name and your old life will disappear once you don the Element. Your sole reason for existence as you know it will change to reflect the vow you've taken, to protect the Element from those who would abuse it's power. Many will come to take it from you, but while you still draw breath, none shall succeed. Only when your spirit leaves your body will you surrender it, because you are the Master Guardian."

Another pegasus glided upon the stage, their wings keeping her and the ornately decorated box she held aloft. Seasons Yore made a precise facing movement, turning to face the pegasus mare with two clean clicks of his hooves. His wings stretched outward, keeping Seasons' balance as his front hooves opened the box. He reached inside and withdrew the sole item that lay within, lifting it with an expert blend of speed and caution. Another facing movement, and Seasons' was staring directly at Reveille, holding in his hooves a golden necklace, bearing at the center a gold frame in the shape of a sideways eight. Within the hollow spaces sat two gems, pure white and sparkling with a brilliance unlike anything that Reveille had seen before. Seasons Yore marched towards the alicorn, keeping the necklace aloft, coming to a rigid stop in front of Reveille.

"Take hold of the Element, Master Guardian," the speaker commanded. Seasons' Yore motioned very slightly with his hooves, and Reveille grasped the necklace with his hooves. Up close, the necklace looked even more beautiful, the trim along the ∞ symbol embossed with equidistant studs of the same brilliant gems it surrounded. Seasons quickly made his way to Reveille's left side, and turned to face the crowd alongside him.

"We will send off your old life, and your old name, with the fanfare worthy of a pony willing to make such a sacrifice to protect the Secret. To protect the Seventh Element of Harmony, the Element of Infinity. Fellow Guardians, say hello to the Master Guardian, and goodbye to Reveille!"

After Reveille's name was announced by the speaker, everypony in attendance echoed it. Even Seasons Yore, his mute Prime Guardian contributed. While he could not shout along with the others, he lifted a shiny bugle to his lips and played the three syllables in perfect time with the others.

Starstruck and overjoyed at the attention he was receiving at just the mention of his name, Reveille scarcely noticed that Seasons had stepped behind him until he felt a tapping on his shoulder, signalling the final step. The golden necklace grazed the tops of Reveille's ears at the guidance of Seasons, finally resting in place upon the back of his neck. The alicorn looked down at the Element, the two gems glowing with an intense magical light. He could feel boundless energy coursing through him, and an increased concentration of that energy tingling upon his flanks. Reveille's eyes moved from the Element around his neck to his flank, and bore witness to the representation of his special talent, his coming of age, and of his destiny - his cutie mark.
> The Battle For Harmony
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It was the infinity symbol, just like the Element I had just - Twilight? Twilight?" Reveille's account halted as he called out the name of his sole listener, whom had hopped off the couch, and was making for the exit of the study. "Twilight, where are you going? I'm not finished yet!"

Her determined pace, one that she reserved almost solely for unquenchable curiosity, was halted.

"To the library," Twilight answered irritably. "In all of my time in Equestria, there's never been one mention of another Element of Harmony. And 'infinity?' What does that have to do with harmony at all? It's so outlandish - I need to look for some sort of reference!"

"One reference is right here." Reveille shifted his lower legs to reveal the golden ∞ along his flank. "My cutie mark - the infinity symbol."

Twilight squinted her eyes at it and quietly stomped her hoof in frustration. "First, it's called a lemniscate. Second, how did I not see that before?"

"Clever framing," Reveille fired as fast as he could. "And it's because I didn't want you to see it, for fearing that you might ask and doubt the story behind it."

Twilight wore a look of confusion, and quickly replaced it with one of dissatisfaction. "I don't think it would matter much, because while oddly convenient, this is hardly proof."

Sitting back down on the couch, Reveille sighed, biting his lip as he looked at Twilight with uncertainty. "I... I trust you," he breathed."You didn't report me for the crimes committed as I wandered across the land, when most ponies wouldn't waste a moment to see me locked away for all of eternity, never having to look upon my wretched face again."

"Crimes? You mean the forged check thing? I've been here the entire time, who could I have reported you to?" Twilight supposed she could have technically done something about it, being a princess and all, but then she remembered.  "Again, I wouldn't have had any actual proof."

"For your kindness," he carried on. "I will show you the second reference." For the first time since he'd arrived, he lifted his satchel from around his neck. Revealed underneath it, hanging from a gold necklace that was practically completely hidden by his flowing mane, was the gold lemniscate. Inside of the two circles were white gems, though in the glow of the firelight, looked like bright balls of fire.

"Is that-" Twilight stepped towards him with a hoof outstretched, eager to examine the long hidden Element. As soon as she got close, Reveille covered it with the brown satchel again, much to the princess' disappointment.

"It is." Reveille nodded grimly. "I couldn't show you before because I didn't know if I could trust you after having only just met. But I fear what will happen if another alicorn such as yourself were to touch it while it is bound to me. I could explain why, but it would be a very long and indulgent recollection that really wouldn't serve much purpose than to display how impressive it's power is."

Twilight sighed in relief. "Whew! I was kinda getting a bit restless -"

"Now, back to my story."


******


"After my celebration, the Guardians threw a party in my honor. Despite my previous attempt to bolster their survivability by reducing their food and eating surfaces, the Guardians managed to fashion a rather nice dining room and lounge in a separate room of the temple. It had music, decorative ribbons, high stakes card tables, and even books at the tables because the food took so long to cook. It was going to be the best meal of my entire life, but the Fates seem to have some sort of serious personality disorder - their emotions can turn on a dime."

"Dime?" Twilight asked. "What's a dime? And how do these Secret Guardians get all of this food and stuff to a temple inside of a mountain if they are so secretive?"

"Twilight," an exasperated Reveille replied. "Do you want a long, indulgent chunk of exposition about the infinite powers of the Element of Infinity, or do you want me to remind you about the still and cold heart?"

"Why do you emphasize the words 'cold' and 'destiny' when-"

"Master Guardian, I trust the food is to your liking?" The maitre d inquired politely from behind Reveille, the food falling from the alicorns' fork. Reveille turned around, not disguising his displeasure at the interruption.

"I'm not pleased at the interruption," he growled. "Every time I try to take a bite, somepony comes over to shake my hoof. The only bit I've gotten to sample has been this asparagus. Which, by the way, is far too soft and squishy."

The maitre d wore a nervous smile as his forehead practically gleamed in the light from all of the perspiration upon it. "My apologies, Master, I will take these away." His magic lifted the plate of asparagus off of the table. "Ring the bell if there's anything else you require. I will tell the chef to make them more firm, if it pleases you, and he can even bring them out himself."

"I will, and it does," Reveille confirmed, raising his fork with a bite of spaghetti to his mouth as the maitre d trotted hastily to the kitchen. No sooner than he opened his mouth, not one, but two ponies approached his table to speak with him. A pegasus and a unicorn. They both knelt before him, and stood up. The alicorn sighed, placing the fork back into the bowl. "What can you do for me?" he asked.

"It's such an honor to meet you, Reveille. I -" the orange pegasus speaking was interrupted by Seasons Yore playing three sharp notes on his bugle from the other side of the room.

"He does that every time someone addresses me by my old name, or if I introduce myself as such" Reveille explained. "To announce that they are speaking to somepony important."

This elicited a chuckle from the winged pony. "My apologies, Master. It was a slip of the tongue. You shouldn't have to worry about that once everypony gets in the hang of addressing you properly. I imagine it would get rather old to have a constant echo after your name."

"I actually like it," Reveille admitted. "It makes me feel as important as I think I am."

"In any case." The pegasus rubbed his foreleg nervously. "I am Winger, the lead flight trainer among the Secret Guardians."

The white unicorn that had approached alongside Winger introduced herself. "My name is Horner, the expert on unicorn magic."

"I was looking forward to speaking with the two of you." Reveille cracked his neck side to side. "Seems somepony thought I needed improvement in both fields, and said you were the two that knew what you were talking about."

"We-we can do an official evaluation later, but I don't think it will be necessary!" Horner stammered. "After all, if somepony with your raw magical ability simply focuses, you should be able to do just about anything with precision and ease!"

"Focus... I'll keep that in mind," Reveille noted.

"The same goes with your flying, Master." Winger nodded in agreement. "Just flap your wings, and I'm sure that somepony with your natural flying talents will be able to fly just about anywhere with speed and agility!"

"Flap my wings... I'll see if that takes off," the alicorn remarked.

The two ponies bowed before him once again, smiling as they stood up together. "It was an honor to speak with you. The line might have been long, but it was worth it." The duo trotted away after performing a hoofbump.

At the mention of the word 'line,' Reveille looked from where the trainers had come from, seeing a single file collective of even more ponies than he remembered seeing at the ceremonies waiting anxiously to figuratively lick the bottom of his hooves. He groaned, sliding the plates of his cold food off the table into the small trashcan below, since he wouldn't be able to eat it anyways. After already getting rid of his food, he decided to take care of all of the ponies in one fell swoop. He lifted the dinner bell next to him, swinging it about as it rang, shouting at the same time.

"Everypony, everypony! Stop what you're doing and gather round! Hurry, hurry, time waits for nopony, and especially not for me!"

Crashes could be heard from glasses and trays being dropped, and in less than ten seconds, he had the entirety of the Guardians encircling him. The record player made a horrible warble as it stopped playing. He leaped onto the table, looking around the room to view his audience. He cleared his throat, and quickly conjured a speech that would hopefully allow ponies to leave him alone long enough for him to eat.

"Secret Guardians, in case you didn't know, my name is Reveille." He smiled at Seasons' bugle playing.

"I would thank you all for this wonderful celebration if I didn't earn it. Since I did, I'm not going to. I also notice that there is a very large number of you in a line that wish to sing your praises. I don't blame you, not in the slightest, but in the interest of actually eating something and going to sleep at a reasonable hour, I'm going to let everypony express how much you absolutely adore me all at once."

There was a pause, and then from the crowd, somepony cried "But how will you hear each of our personalized greetings and well-wishings, Master?"

Reveille rapped a hoof impatiently against the table. "I don't know who said that, but rest assured that with the powers granted by the Element of Infinity combined with my already impressive mental acuity, I will be able to distinguish each and every line. Now, on three; one, two... three!"

As the cacophony of noise swallowed him, Reveille concentrated on how to spell cacophony. After the noise ceased, and he was fairly certain he had it spelled correctly, he addressed the crowd once more.

"With that, that concludes my speech. Once I eat my meal and head out for the night, I'm certain that many of you will miss me. I can't not say with any honesty that the feeling won't be mutual." Reveille hopped down the table, and climbed back into his seat, awaiting the return of his asparagus. All around him, the crowd failed to disperse. The whispers turned to a rumbling, and somepony finally spoke up.

"Pray tell, Master, but what do you mean by head out for the night?"

"What is with you ponies not understanding terms that equate to 'departing'?" Reveille shouted irritably.

"But... you cannot leave here, Master. Not with that Element around your neck," the grey pegasus pony replied, stepping forth from the line.

"Are you seriously telling your master what he can or can't do?" Reveille slid out from his seat, approaching the pegasus stallion in front of him. He looked familiar.

"Master, you must protect the Secret - the existence of the Element of Infinity. If you are out and about, everypony will know of it, and the Secret will be lost."

"It was probably lost already if an eleven year old colt could find it," Reveille snapped. He turned away from the pegasus and walking back to his table to get a sip of water. "Besides, isn't a moving target harder to hit?"

"If you intend to take the Element out of it's home, we will have no choice but to fight you," the pegasus announced over the sounds of water sucking through a straw. "Master," he said gently as approached Reveille from behind, placing a hoof upon his shoulder. The alicorn's response was not gentle in kind.

Not used to the soft contact of another pony since being abandoned by his mother, Reveille didn't quite know what to do when that pony touched his shoulder. He thought before he acted. Sometimes.

Ding!

Reflexively, Reveille had grabbed a hold of the nearest object he could - the dinner bell - and struck the grey pegasus on the head when he felt the weight of the pony's hoof upon his shoulder. The crowd gasped as the pegasus lay on the ground, whimpering into the floor.

"Master," the pony cried as he rolled on to his back to look at Reveille. "Don't you know who I am?"

"No." Reveille tilted his head. "But your face rings a bell."

"I... I am Yrit, remember? The one you came to deliver the message to, the husband of your mother, Despair."

Reveille sipped the last of the water out of his glass, setting the bell back on the table. "What makes you think she was my mother? And what does that have to do with anything like... at all?"

Yrit's eyes flickered back and forth. "I uhh... well... I loved your mother very much, and as your stepfath-"

Reveille had had enough. He stomped his hoof down hard, the causing the floorboard he was standing on to lower under his hoof, but raise on the other end. Sitting on the other side of said floorboard was the mini garbage can full of spaghetti and other discarded objects that had been catapulted into the air. With a juicy splat, the trashcan lodged itself upon Yrit's head. Tomato paste seeped past the pegasus' ears, and Reveille gave his next order.

"Can it, you dirty mother lover."

******


"Really?" Twilight's eyes rolled, though Reveille didn't seem to notice.

"I could scarcely believe he would try such manipulation either."


******

"As the new Master and Bearer of the Element of Infinity, I'm going to leave this place," Reveille announced before the crowd of stunned ponies surrounding him and the fallen Yrit. "If there is a fight to be had, then so be it!" With a flash of red light, he disappeared. An instant later, he reappeared in front of the now silent record machine. The pony rifled through the musical selections with his black hooves, searching for some epic music to battle to. Reveille could the hear the hoof falls of a lone pony quickly approaching from behind, and he had to settle for what was in his hooves - Flight of the Bumblebee.

Reveille withdrew the cardboard sleeve, looking at the image of a black and yellow bee flitting merrily about in a vivid green meadow under a bright blue sky. "I don't know much about being a bee," he said as the pony - a unicorn - drew closer to him. The colt spun around, record sleeve in tow, to face his would-be-assailant. "But I know all about being a B.A!"

Reveille withdrew the record, thrusting it forward through the air at the charging unicorn's head. The hole at the center of the record slid perfectly into place around the unicorn's horn, causing him to slide blindly to a stop in order to remove the obstruction. No sooner than the unicorn had pulled the record off of his horn and held it aloft in front of him, a black hoof burst through the disc,  striking the surprised pony in the face and knocking him out in one blow.

"That must have been the A side," Reveille said, pulling his hoof back through the gap in the now-destroyed record. "Because that was a pretty big hit."

"We've got a badass over here!" somepony shouted among the throng of Guardians.

"I'm glad that somepony picked up on that line," Reveille smirked as a wave of other Guardians charged at him now with a loud roar because it was customary to do so. With a swish of his tail gliding from the box to the player, he set the music to "Black and Red (Better Off Dead)" by Two-Winged Unicorn. Reveille kicked the box of records to its side, and one by one, he flung them through the air at the rapidly approaching ponies. It was as though he was playing frisbee with the father he never had, and instead of the objective being to have a fun time throwing it back and forth, it was to have a fun time striking his nonexistent father in the face so hard that the frisbee shattered.

Black discs whipped through the air at record speeds, each one making a crackling sound as they collided against their targets with needlepoint precision. The very last record in the box flew towards a rather lithe earth pony. Though Reveille didn't quite manage to break the record against this pony's face like he had intended, the disc grazed his cheek, and the pain from the small cut was sufficient to stop the pony's charge in it's tracks.

"That's what I call a vinyl scratch," Reveille remarked.

Another rash of ponies were charging towards him now, armed with spaded shovels that were likely used in the digging to the former master earlier. As the alicorn readied himself in what he thought would be the coolest possible pose, he heard a light cough behind him. A unicorn stood before him, a tall white hat upon his head, and a long black mustache upon his muzzle.

"Master, I am Chef Chef, the head uh... chef," he said nervously. "Chef is my name, and my title."

Reveille quickly glanced back between the cook and the spade wielding Guardians closing in on him. "What do you want? I'm a little busy kicking some flank here!"

Chef Chef jumped, his hat threatening to abandon him. "Oh! Sorry, so sorry! I'm here with your new asparagus - crisp, crunchy, and perfectly seasoned!" A silver tray levitated around him, with two stalks of asparagus resting upon it. "I hope they are to your liking!"

His attackers drawing nearer, and with no other alternatives, Reveille took the two sprigs. "I'll let you know in a minute," he exclaimed to the frightened chef. One asparagus stalk in each hoof, he met his attackers head on. He dodged blow after blow, striking at each opportunity with his asparagus, each hit rendering a satisfying thwack upon impact. With his grace, he effortlessly hopped over the attacks of his foes, and with his strength, his own attacks would often incapacitate the other Guardians in short order. Reveille rapped at the hooves of two earth ponies attacking with their spades, the stinging from the vitriolic vegetable violence forcing them to drop their tools. Suddenly, the ponies attacking found their weapons to be, not the shovels like they had arrived with, but simple stalks of asparagus. They gulped, exchanging a look at each other as the spades thudded against each of their skulls, knocking them both unconscious. Reveille turned around to face Chef Chef, and as he tossed away the shovels, he said;

"Looks like that stalk exchange paid off in spades."

Even after displaying his supremacy, more Guardians approached, far greater in number than before. Reveille had no idea where they were coming from, but he had to act fast. Using the word fast as a catalyst, he had a great idea. If he could take off with enough initial velocity, he could theoretically break the sound barrier, creating a pulse of raw energy in the form of a sonic wave to take out several foes at once.


******


"Huh," Twilight noted. "That sounds an awful lot like the principle behind Rainbow Dash's Sonic-"


******


"You ponies wanna party?" Reveille asked as the crowd encircled him like a pack of dogs. "Let's raise the roof!" The alicorn coiled his legs like a spring, and his majestic black wings unfurled. "Get ready for the Sonic Painboom!" he shouted. 

Reveille jumped and flapped his wings at the same time, and all chaos broke loose. In his wake, a pulse of crimson light matching his mane color emanated and spread outward like a destructive wave. Objects flew to and fro, and the vacuum of air following Reveille's ascent literally tore the stone roof off of the temple as though it were mere balsa wood from a movie set. 

Above the temple, a red trail pursued Reveille's otherwise invisible figure like a comet in the blackness of the cave. His first flight every bit as awesome and powerful as he thought it would be, he audibly screeched to a halt only inches away from the icy ceiling. He looked down upon the remains of the structure, seeing only the glow of fires inevitably caused by his explosive takeoff.

"Self-improvement, tch," he muttered as he zipped back down to the wreckage. The disparity of decadent ribbons and decorations with the crumbled stone and structure was striking. In what was once the ceremonial chamber where he had been officially presented the Element of Infinity was only a hoof-full of splintered chairs, and the stage, once beautifully polished, was now coated in a thick sheet of dust. The only sounds around him were the moans of pain from the ponies he'd fell, and the crackling of the fires. Reveille knelt down to examine a miraculously unscathed copy of The Secret Guardian Handbook with a frown, when suddenly he noticed a shadow quickly moving on the ground below him that did not belong to his figure.

Having spent the majority of his life staring down at his own shadow under the sun and moon, he knew precisely what this particular shadow meant -  danger. Reveille whirled around, thrusting his hoof forward to fend off the incoming blow. With a resounding crack, his gesture found his mark and stopped the strike, an overhead slam from the enraged maitre d wielding a staff, dead in it's tracks. The rod split into two from where Reveille had hit it. The longer half was sent flying into the smoky backdrop, and the remainder, no longer than the asparagus stalks Reveille had just used to defeat around twenty other Guardians, was gripped by the bewildered unicorn. The terrified maitre d looked back and forth between the feeble staff in his hooves, Reveille slowly rising from the floor, and around him in the carnage for the friendly face of a food serving cohort to assist him. He found no one.

"Feeling a bit short staffed?" Reveille asked, chuckling at the joke he only just realized he made without any forethought to the diminished rod in the unicorn's hooves. The maitre d threw the piece of wood at him feebly, turning tail and fleeing from the Bearer of Infinity with a whimper. The unicorn jumped onto the aforementioned stage, but was halted by what seemed to be a tornado whirling immediately around him. Reveille had taken hold of a long strand of ribbon, and pursued the maitre d, running the red material in loops around the fleeing pony's front legs. Sufficient that the binding would hold, Reveille tied a neat bow atop the maitre d's back, and pushed him forward on the wooden stage. With a puff of dust, the unicorn collapsed in an unintentional kneel, looking thoroughly embarrassed and horrified.

Reveille smirked at his handiwork. "Take a bow. Bow? Bow."

******

"Is it bow or bow? As horrible a pun as it is, they could both work given the situation." Twilight said.

"I didn't think this one through when I wrote it," Reveille quickly replied.

"Huh?"

******

"W-what do you want from me?" the maitre d inquired, struggling against his binds but completely forgetting about the magic he had at his disposal to help him.

"Information," Reveille answered simply. "I want to know about the-"

"Why don't you ask the other power-hungry ponies that will hunt you down?" the unicorn snarled quite uncharacteristically, given his profession. "Because they will. As long as the Element of Infinity exists and can be traced throughout history, there will be no shortage of those who would abuse it's power coming after you!"

"I was going to ask about getting the chef's contact information, but I appreciate that uncannily helpful tidbit," Reveille answered.

"You and your lackey are going to run for the rest of your lives. For as long as the Element of Infinity is the only functioning Element of Harmony, its power will allure everypony," the bound pony on the stage continued his spiel. 

"Yes, yes, you mentioned that. And my lackey?" Reveille looked around, the figure of Seasons Yore appearing behind him. "Oh, Greetings, Seasons." The alicorn did a double take at another Guardian that left standing, and immediately buckled down, wings flared and horn glowing. Seasons shook his head rapidly, kneeling down before Reveille in a show of allegiance. Reveille's wings slowly folded, and he gazed warily at the purple-haired pegasus, trying to determine his motives. "...You aren't going to try and defeat me?" 

Seasons shook his head slowly, standing upright.

I swore to protect you first, the Element second.

"You can talk?" Reveille squinted at Seasons unmoving mouth.

No, I-I... what? Seasons stared back at his Master with wide eyes.

"You said you swore to protect me first, the Element second," Reveille repeated, looking at the ribbon bound maitre d. "You heard that, right?"

"No, you're crazy."

But that's what I was thinking...

"So then... I can hear your thoughts," Reveille surmised.

Then you know my conviction is sincere.

Reveille nodded his head. "Yes... and your voice is a lot different than I thought it would be. It's really warbly and pitchy."

I will keep my thoughts to myself if it pleases you, sir.

"Will someone tell me what's going on?" the gift wrapped unicorn cried, squirming against his restraints. Reveille used his telekinesis to throw the handbook at him, knocking him out.

That angry maitre d had a point. We will face endless persecution from those who would take the Element from you so long as they know to look for it.

"Then we only have one choice," Reveille said as the stone walls continued to crumble around him and Seasons, smoke billowing about at the fire spread to the trees outside.

Whatever it may be, you have my sword and shield.

"Bring a quill instead," the alicorn told him as both he and his loyal follower were lifted in a flow of crimson light. "Because we're rewriting history."

With a flash of dazzling red light, the duo disappeared.

******

"Well, I suppose that we can go to get some dinner now." Reveille hopped up from his seat on the couch, walking past a stupefied Twilight.

"Wait!" The princess cried out, catching up to Reveille as they left the study, the orange glow of the fireplace being replaced with the orange glow of the setting sun from the first window Twilight had seen in a while. "Not that I'm complaining, but what about the whole 'can't-pause-a-life-story' thing? You were only eleven, and that hardly seems like the end."

Reveille took a left turn at the first fork, Twilight walking alongside him as they made their way to the dining room.

"Most life stories are like that, Twilight," Reveille said with a sigh. "Mine is not. My life is not the stream that flows in one direction, merrily merrily." Both alicorns entered the dining room, the fragrant smell of Spike's cooking wafting through the air. As Twilight took her usual seat at the end of the table, she observed Reveille taking his seat adjacent to hers. She could hear the sink running from the kitchen in the next room, Spike no doubt washing the cookware he had used in prepping tonight's dish - stir fried noodles with a sauce that Twilight hoped tasted as tangy as it smelled.

"It was funny that one of your first questions to me was whether or not I was an alien," Reveille continued, looking out the window as the sun inched closer down the horizon. "Because while I'm certain I'm of this world, I am from a different dimension altogether."

Twilight just looked at him without bothering to ask, already anticipating the end of his rather melodramatic and deliberately enigmatic statement.

"Most unicorns can teleport across the three dimensions, but I have the ability to traverse the fourth."

Spike trotted merrily along out of the kitchen, still wearing the apron that Rarity had made for him. "Hey, you two! Ready for some food?"

Reveille did not heed the question. He leaned in closer to Twilight and whispered the lynchpin to his explanation. 

"Time travel."
> The Last Supper
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight blinked. After hearing about all of the other extraordinary events in his life, time travel seemed like the next logical (or illogical) step.

"Time travel," she echoed as Spike hopped up into his chair at the table, his fork brandished and ready for feasting. At the mention of the words, he paused.

"What's this about time travel?" He set the fork down, looking at the black alicorn curiously. "Oh, I didn't mean to be rude - my name is-"

"Spike. I know who you are," Reveille interrupted calmly.

Rather than the confusion that Twilight had expressed when Reveille had claimed knowledge of her, Spike just smiled broadly.

"Oh, I bet Twilight's told you all about me, huh? Number one assistant and all that," the dragon said casually, throwing his fork in the air and catching it several times.

"Twilight only mentioned you but once, and never by name," Reveille corrected him. "Though, she very kindly did refer to you as her number one assistant." Twilight tried to remember everything she said during those conversations to find that she didn't actually say Spike's name. But of course...

"I can read your thoughts," Reveille announced before Spike could even ask.

Spike met the notion with much less cynicism than Twilight had. "Really? Then what am I thinking?" 

"You're thinking 'He can't read my mind.' Now, 'how did he know that?' and 'I better think of-'"

"Wow! You really can read minds!" Spike exclaimed, standing up in his chair. Standing back and observing the exchange, Twilight thought it was pretty obvious that those were the first thing to come to anypony's mind when confronted with a supposed mind reader.

"You're also thinking," Reveille added cryptically, "that you wish your Power Ponies comic had arrived today."

Even Twilight didn't see that one coming.

"No way! How did you do that, mister... eh, what's your name?" Spike inquired.

"Spike, this is Reveille," Twilight introduced for the alicorn, the faintest sound of a dying parade audible somewhere outside the castle.

"Nice to meet you, Reveille!" Spike offered his claw in greeting, but Reveille was reluctant to accept it.

"In my experience, dragons can be quite crafty and wicked. I've faced death against more than a few, so you'll have to forgive me." Reveille brushed away his mane to show Spike the scar upon his face.

Spike sat back into his chair, looking slightly hurt, but he shook it off like the stalwart dragon he was. "I understand," he said. "So, what brings you to Ponyville? Coming to study with Twilight?"

Twilight's eyes shot open at the thought. After all of the regaling and drama, Twilight still didn't know exactly why Reveille had come to her castle. The only inkling he gave was that 'destiny had brought him there,' whatever that meant. And, as much as Twilight would love to get a chance to study some of the advanced magic that Reveille demonstrated in his tales, she didn't know if she could put up with his rather self-centered attitude. Then again, maybe he just needed to get his story off of his chest before he could show his true colors.

"I did not come to Ponyville by chance, young drake," Reveille whispered.

"Chance?" Spike leaned just a hair closer, his chin accidentally rubbing against his noodle dish.

"Chance," the alicorn repeated solemnly. "My journey to Ponyville is one that was full of hardship, loss, and finding the light in a world shrouded in darkness. The story started twenty years ago, in a small mining community..."




 

For the second time that day, Twilight found herself listening to Reveille's life story. To Reveille's credit, not one iota had changed, and Spike was less scientific about the whole thing - he didn't interrupt nearly as often as Twilight did. But everything else, from the pauses in his speech patterns at specific "climactic" intervals, to the long sighs after a "rough patch", the story was identical.

"...Seasons and I teleported from the smoldering wreck of the Secret Guardians' cave, to begin the journey of protecting the Element of Infinity," Reveille finished with a heavy sigh. "I hope that wasn't too boring, Twilight. I know you just heard it, but Spike was so insistent..."

"Nope." Twilight poked at her cold noodles absentmindedly. "Just as riveting the second time around," she said with heavy sarcasm that she reserved for Rainbow Dash at her most thickheaded.

Reveille smiled at her, the first genuine smile he'd ever shown that wasn't making light of a horrible situation. "You're such a good listener, thank you."

"So where did you go next?" Spike asked enthusiastically, "and how did you keep the Element secret?"

"Not where, Spike," Reveille answered quietly. "But when. When Seasons and I warped from the cavern, it was not to go find a place to hide from the others seeking the Element's power, but to remove the Element from their memories entirely. We leapt through time, citing references in each of the eras we arrived in concerning the Element of Infinity. When we found out the when and the where, we simply continued to jump backwards, tracing documentation of the Element to it's source."

Twilight hated to admit it, but this would explain why she hadn't seen any reference to the Element of Infinity in any of her texts. If Reveille had taken the effort to remove it's mention from all historical texts, then it stood to reason that nopony would know about it and come to pursue them.

"For nearly the next ten years," Reveille continued, "we jumped from past, present, and future. Not only did we focus on the Element of Infinity, but we assisted in helping to resolve wars and other tragedies before they occurred. One such instance was to keep a deranged unicorn king from conquering all of Equestria with his dark magic, Seasons and I locked him and his crystalline empire away in a fold in time so that his evil would not spread."

"King Sombra?" Twilight awoke from her waking sleep. "Spike basically defeated him, almost a year ago! Your banishment wasn't entirely successful if he was able to return."

"Ah yes, I remember that Seasons was in charge of that one. He means well, but he does not possess the same gifts and talents that I do," Reveille admitted. "We brought the vaccine to polo back to before the disease could wipe out or cripple millions, and The Great Bare Hoof war between Equestria and the Horseshoe Republic was won by us just minutes after Metal 'Iron Hoof' Marks had declared it."

"There's no such thing as The Bare Hoof War or The Horseshoe Republic!" Twilight interrupted. Reveille didn't seem too perturbed by it.

"History is written by the victors," Reveille told her, "and Seasons forgot to bring the quill."

"So what about the future?" Spike inquired politely. "What about that?"

"The future is... far more futuristic than ponies predicting the future originally predicted," Reveille replied vaguely.

Spike gave a loud yawn, his lips smacking together at it's conclusion. Two hours had certainly flown by, and it was nearing bedtime for the young dragon. All that, and he hadn't touched his food - but neither had the other two.

"I got so distracted... forgot to even eat! Want me to heat your plates up?" He offered, both of alicorns gratefully accepting. Spike jogged into the kitchen, leaving Twilight and Reveille alone in the dining room.

The alicorn looked outside at the blackness of night that had fallen. He walked over to the window, and rapped against the glass softly. "It certainly has gotten late, hasn't it?"

Twilight fidgeted at the table. Her stomach was growling and her eyes were drooping, and she couldn't wait to turn in for the night. "Yes, it certainly has."

"I don't suppose that you would be willing to allow me to stay in your castle for the evening? It's been many a year since I've slept in a warm bed with permission, taking shelter from the deluge of rain outside," he asked, looking away from the window back at Twilight.

"But it's not raining." No sooner than Twilight had said that, a downpour started outside, contrary to everything the weekly weather report had told her. She simply sighed. Truthfully? Twilight had endured enough of Reveille to last a very, very long time. As much as Twilight wanted to learn more about the events in his story (not necessarily Reveille himself), she didn't want to have to involve herself with more of his long winded, stagy mannerisms. Worse yet, he seemed to have a complete lack of humility, and didn't seem to care who knew about it. Still, it was raining, and the castle had more than enough spare bedrooms.

"Why not?" she relented, and Reveille gave her another genuine smile.

"Thank you, your highness," he said. "So many would shun me away, but you... you're so kind. I wish I could express it more accurately, but... thank you."

Twilight just nodded, glancing back at the kitchen door as the scent of their meal began to permeate the air once again.

"I wrote a song for you," Reveille announced, moving away from the rain-soaked windows and back to the table.

"Really?" Twilight looked at him in amusement, curious but cautious.

Reveille nodded. "Yes... because sometimes words aren't enough." He cleared his throat.


Saying I love you
Is not the words I want to hear from you
It's not that I want you
Not to say-


"Once more, with feel- oh, whoa..." Spike walked in from the kitchen, balancing two plates in his claws, and one on his tail. "I'm not interrupting, am I?"

A furiously blushing Twilight looked down at the seat of her chair, shaking her head profusely. "Nope, nope, nope! We were just waiting for you to get back!"

"Oh, well, wish granted!" Spike exclaimed, handing his plates to the two ponies and keeping the one on his tail for himself. He set his plate on his seat, and made his way to the main hallway. "I'm going to go check for the mail, okay?" Twilight didn't even answer as she heard the door open and close again.

"I hope you liked it," Reveille said quietly.

"It was... it was... really nice of you to write a song for me," Twilight answered honestly, despite how embarrassed she actually felt about it.

"Thanks." Reveille nodded. "I'll sing the rest sometime, you're sure to love it."

Twilight gulped and laughed nervously, shoveling food in her mouth and thanking Celestia that Spike had come back inside as a distraction.

"No mail." He pouted, drying himself with a towel. "Guess they must not have updated our library address all of the way. I'll check the post office in the morning." He hopped back up on his seat, rolled a slew of noodles onto his fork, and joined Twilight in her feasting. 

Twilight looked up at Reveille occasionally, quickly glancing back down when he saw that his eyes were fixed upon her. She couldn't wait to finish her meal, to go upstairs to her cozy bed, and to go to sleep. In record time, she slurped the last of her noodles. Twilight had barely set the fork down before she scrambled out of her seat and made her way to the hallway, one step closer to her bedroom.

"Uhh... Twi?" Spike asked from behind her.

"What is it, Spike?" Twilight replied hastily, looking back at the dragon, her eyes trying as hard as they could to avoid the flaming red orbs of the black alicorn. "Oh yes, thank you for the meal, it was delicious. Reveille is sta-" Over the pouring rain, Twilight could make out the faintest hint of a bugle playing. "He's staying the night in one of our guest rooms. If you could set him up, that would be great - I've got to get some sleep, I'm just exhausted! See you both in the morning, have a good night!"

No sooner than Twilight had cleared the corner, she disappeared from the hallway, teleporting to her bedroom in a bright purple flash.
> A Destiny Revealed
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight inhaled deeply several times as she stood in front of her master bathroom mirror, ever so glad to be out of that embarrassing situation. She thought it was really very sweet of Reveille to write a song about her... but she didn't quite know how to reply when the words "I love you" were among the first mentioned. Then again, the song also mentioned that those weren't the words that he wanted to hear, so...

"GAH!" Twilight splashed her face with water, hoping to wash away some of the confusion. Surprisingly, the warm water was more relaxing than she thought. Inspired, she decided to relax even more with a nice warm bath. As she heard the cold rain patter against her bedroom's bay window, she was even more convinced.

Using her magic to let loose a stream of warm water from the faucet, she added a liberal amount of bubble bath (a castlewarming gift from Pinkie Pie) to the growing pool of water. She used her wings to gently float into the tub, grateful that she no longer need to clamber into it like she had prior to becoming a princess. Twilight lay in the tub, and when the foamy cotton candy scented bubbles reached her muzzle, she cut the water off and let the warm water and relative silence wash over her. She could faintly hear the pitter-patter of rain, and that was it.

After around thirty minutes, when the water started cooling, Twilight decided that she was sufficiently relaxed. She had almost fallen asleep several times at the end, and that was indication enough. She stepped on a purple towel, drying herself as the water drained from the tub. Contented after several minutes of rubbing herself dry with said towel, she threw it in the nearby hamper and walked back into her bedroom.

"I should do that more often," she mused aloud, looking around her room. It was much bigger than her bedroom at the library, but it was organized much the same way. Desk over here, personal favorite books on this shelf, plant in this corner, a lamp on the nightstand by her bed, and so on and so forth. Twilight would usually read before going to sleep, but she'd had enough storytelling for that day. The alicorn flipped the light switch, and using her horn as a night light, she climbed onto her mattress from the right side of the bed. She happily burrowed into the new blanket (hoof sewn from the Apple family) and sprawled out into the soft bedding. She was not expecting to come into contact with another warm, breathing entity in the bed with her.

"What in Equestria?" Her horn flared even brighter, the lights in the room turning on to reveal Reveille laying in her bed on the opposite pillow, red eyes gazing at her longingly.

"You smell really, really nice," he commented.

"AAAAAAAHHHH!" Twilight tumbled out of her bed, landing on her back without a shred of grace on the plush carpeted floor. "Owww..." She massaged her head, opening her eyes to see Reveille sitting up in her bed looking down at her. He was not wearing his satchel or Element. "What- what are you doing here?"

"I came to bid you good night, my princess," he explained simply.

"My princess?" Twilight's eyes widened, and she quickly jumped to her hooves. "This is my room!"

"Yes, it is. Thank goodness, I thought you might have been confused after that fall."

"And - and you're in my bed!"

"And it's a very nice bed."

Twilight was flustered, not knowing what to say or do to react in this situation, her brain flooded with the initial fear of discovering the stallion in her bed, and then trying to process why he was in her bed. So, she asked again.

"What are you doing here?"

Reveille smiled at her, but didn't move from her bed. "I thought my feelings were clear after my song, dearest Twilight. Though, you didn't hear the rest of it."

Twilight blushed. So her embarrassment was not entirely unfounded. Somehow, in the six hours they had spent together, Reveille had grown feelings for Twilight. Twilight however, did not reciprocate, and certainly did not approve of this method of "expressing" feelings. While Reveille cleared his throat, Twilight stammered out the cavalcade of words that were spinning around in her head.

"Look, expressing your feelings through song is one thing, but crawling into my bed is just - it's just..." 

Par for the course, Reveille did not wait for her to finish.


 "If you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me
'cause I'd already know"


"...extreme," Twilight finished her sentence after the lengthy interruption. Reveille didn't seem too happy about her sentiment.

"What?" He looked crestfallen. "No, no, no I wrote that! You said it was very nice, remember?"

"I did, but-" Twilight started, cursing her awkward politeness.

Reveille put his hoof in the air, the gesture serving to silence her. "Just... allow me to explain, Twilight."

"Yes, please!" Twilight sputtered.

"I think I speak for both of us when I say that we're ready to take our relationship to the next level," Reveille said with an air of utmost certainty.

"...What?"

"We can consummate our love together, blissfully surrendering to each other's ministrations in the throes of deepest passion," he continued.

"...You're not making any sense."

"I wasn't going to charge you, my dear."

"What are you talking about?" Twilight cried frantically.

"Sex, Twilight," Reveille spoke with finality.

Twilight's face could not have burned any hotter unless she cast a spell to set fire to it. Where in the world did this come from?

"Sex?" she squeaked. "Listen, I'm uh - I'm flattered that you feel this way about me, but... no. Just no."

"No?" Reveille hopped down from the bed, but his advance towards her was not threatening. "I... I don't understand. After all of the time we spent together-"

"-Six hours," Twilight reminded him, inching away from him in a way that she hoped he wouldn't notice.

"I feel as though I've lived my entire life with you-"

"-Because you told me your entire life's story. Twice!"

"Twilight, we've shared so much together." His lower lip quivered. "I thought after going through so much, and being alone for so long that you would be able to understand... that you would care enough about me..."

In these situations, Twilight wouldn't think twice to offer a shoulder to cry on for a friend in need. However, she didn't want to give him any ideas.

"Listen, please. It's not that I don't care, but I just don't see you that way," she told him slowly, taking care not to outright instigate or offend him.

"It matters not how we see each other, Princess Twilight," Reveille told her calmly. "Because love is blind."

Twilight reconsidered outright instigation if it meant that he got the hint.

"Love? Where did this come from? I thought we might have been friends, barely, and you're talking about sex and love? I never even had an inkling about your feelings until you sang that song!" Twilight explained, 

"Which I wrote, just so we're clear," the stallion reiterated. "Well, let me be clear to you now." He bowed down before the princess, looking up at her with a hopeful expression. "I love you, Princess Twilight Sporkle!"

Twilight blinked at him. Then again. And again.

"...Sporkle?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"...Yes," Reveille answered nervously, coming out of his bow with a slight grin. "That is your name, is it not?"

"No," Twilight huffed. "My name is Princess Twilight Sparkle, which you said you knew when read my mind."

"Yes, well..." Reveille scratched the back of his head. "I never went to school, so reading wasn't my strong suit..."

"That's the first time you ever said anything remotely negative about yourself! Well, let me make this clear to you." Twilight didn't care that she was talking to the son of Nightmare Moon, the Bearer of the Element of Infinity, or the time-travelling savior of all equinekind - confessing your unrequited love for somepony when you didn't even know their name was definitely a social interaction she was willing to correct. Reveille's eyes darted back and forth, his mind clearly searching for something to say.

"The whole concept of proclaiming your love to sleep with somepony whose name you don't even know might be foreign-"


"I want to know what love is
I want you to show me.
I want to feel what love is
I know you can show me."


Twilight's eyes were wide, and her ears folded from the impromptu song that Reveille had just belted out to her face. After recovering, she very slowly continued.

"be... foreign...er-"

Reveille's slap to her face didn't hurt, but that didn't leave Twilight any less stunned at the reaction.

"NO!" he shouted. "I wrote that! ME!"

Twilight didn't know what he was on about, and she didn't particularly care.

"...You hit me," she whispered.

"Sometimes I think before I act. Sometimes," Reveille said coolly, looking dismissively at his hoof.

"The least you could do is apologize!" Twilight cried angrily, rubbing her cheek.

"Love means never having to say you're sorry. Never."

"You wouldn't need to apologize if you didn't hit me!"

"You always hurt the ones you love. Always," the stallion continued with his expounding of cliched quotes.

"Sometimes, never, always, what in Equestria are you talking about?" Twilight shouted at him, frustrated by the fine demonstration for how obtuse a pony could actually be.

"Probability," Reveille answered smartly. "What are the odds that I know more about probability than Princess Twilight Sporkle?"

"Zero to one!" Twilight snarled, not even bothering to correct her mispronounced name.

"Twenty one?" Reveille laughed. "You might want to check your math, your highness."

If there was a vertical meter on Twilight Sparkle that measured her temper, she had had it up to here.

"Get out," she said through gritted teeth, pointing a hoof at the magically opened door to her bedroom. "I don't care that it's raining. I don't care that you are the Element of Infinity, I want you to leave."

She flinched as the stallion raised a hoof and started towards her, but he didn't touch her.

"Wait! There is one other thing - something you need to hear!" he pleaded.

Twilight glared at him, hoping that the one raised eyebrow would be sufficient to communicate her intent. She wouldn't blame Reveille if it didn't, because Twilight herself didn't quite know if she wanted him to continue or not.

"There was a prophecy!" Reveille exclaimed desperately, "It goes like this;




The one claiming birth, from Nightmare Moon
Alone holds the key that will save us from doom
When his age reaches that of a two and a one
If he's still a virgin, all life will be done."




Twilight was utterly lost. She had absolutely no idea how to reply to something so asinine and completely ludicrous.

"That's the prophecy?" was all that she could muster.

"Mhm." The black alicorn nodded.

Twilight had lowered her eyebrow when he started reciting it, but it promptly jumped back up. "Who wrote this prophecy, if I may?"

"I did." Reveille scratched his chin.

"You did."

"Yes, it's a 'self fulfilling' prophecy," he explained.

"Two and a one... twenty one," Twilight thought aloud. "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"And let me guess..."

"I turn twenty one in eighty eight minutes," Reveille said casually.

"Of course you do," Twilight rolled her eyes. 

"I told you it was my destiny to be here," Reveille reminder her. "I did not come here by chance." Twilight silently wondered why he kept emphasizing those choice words... which happened to be the same ones she heard whispered in the hall before they met.

"You were the one whispering those words in the main hallway, weren't you?" Twilight accused to the unflinching pony before her.

"Of course not. I was outside when you heard them, and I would never resort to cheap smoke and mirrors to make my appearance seem more mysterious."

That he knew precisely when she heard those words and had his alibi already in place was an answer enough for Twilight. "Because you would never do something like that," she said sarcastically. "Get your things, and get out of here." Her magic lifted his opened satchel that he had placed at the foot of the bed towards him briskly. It fell to the floor, it's contents spilling about all over the place. "I've never seen such desperation-"

"-if you'd kindly leave my mother out of it," he said as he nervously swept the numerous books and envelopes into the bag.

"What are you even - stop!" Twilight commanded as she watched him go about the packing, one of the items catching her eye.

Like a foal with it's hoof in the cookie jar, Reveille backed away slowly, a red flush creeping across his face. Twilight trotted to the satchel and the item that caught her attention. It was a catalog for a dress shop based in Canterlot, black and white, with splashes of blue on the cover. The only reason she recognized this at all was because of the way they addressed it to her. It didn't seem like something that an alicorn like Reveille would normally peruse. She turned the catalog over to see whom it was addressed to.

Twilight Sporkle

The princess spilled the rest of the items out, and among a large book and the Element of Infinity were several more envelopes and parcels. One large one already torn open, was from Canterlot Comics Inc and addressed to The Dragon, Spike.

"This is our mail... you didn't read our minds at all," Twilight whispered.

"No it isn't." Reveille answered adamantly.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT ISN'T? I CAN SEE IT RIGHT HERE WITH MY OWN TWO EYES!" Twilight yelled furiously, brandishing one of the envelopes in the stallion's face.

"Who are you going to believe; me, or your own two eyes?"

Many things happened next. Twilight's horn lit up a vivid shade of purple, and her beautiful bedsheets came undone, floating in the air above them. They magically twisted themselves together into a long, thin bundle of cloth, which promptly ensnared the also-levitating Reveille, binding him in a way that was not dissimilar to the method he had described in his story about the maitre d. In the frame of Twilight's open door, Spike popped his head in, looking confused at the scene before him.

"Twilight? What's going on? I heard shouting and-" 

"Spike!" Twilight answered, content with the makeshift rope that was holding Reveille in place. "Send a letter to the police station, tell them to get here right away!"

Spike knew enough of Twilight's tone of voice to not ask questions. He scampered away from the door to compose his letter, leaving Twilight alone with Reveille and the contents of his satchel. She sifted through, finding the entire days' mail within it and separated it from his belongings.

"Mmmmmf!" 

"I'm sure you are offended that I'm going through your things," Twilight imagined what the muffled protest was actually about. "That whole violation of privacy thing." Her hooves grasped the golden chain of the Element of Infinity, and she finally got to examine it closely, to see the one item that had been erased from history.

The first thing she noticed was that the golden lemniscate was not actually a golden lemniscate - it was a brass sideways 'eight', likely ripped from somepony's mailbox. The two brilliant gemstones inside of the eight were reduced to one - the other's glue had come undone, and the cheap plastic imitation gem landed upon a wooden box with a sliding cover. On top of that, the back of the necklace had a white sticker proclaiming that it was a product of "Ponyville Arts & Crafts." Twilight remembered that she had seen their booth when she was out and about in town earlier that day.

"You can't read minds, and your Element of Infinity is the production of various craft stores," Twilight told the squirming stallion before her. "I wonder what else you made up?" She pulled away the cloth from his mouth to allow him a chance to defend himself, but he remained silent.

She had already seen the contents of the sliding wooden box before, so she gave that only the minor look over. Then, there was an opened pack of fruit flavored gum. Next, there were a pair of tickets - flight tickets from Monteneighgro to Ponyville.

"Now, why would a pony with the ability to fly like lightning need tickets to fly here? Or if you could simply time travel fourth dimensionally, or however it was that you put it?"

Reveille sputtered a bit before he answered. "My wings weren't capable of flying such a distance with luggage in tow, but I did time travel - I flew across at least three time zones before landing."

Twilight wasted no time in shoving the bedsheets back into his mouth, shaking her head in disbelief whilst doing so.

The last thing he carried in his satchel was a large book. She pulled it towards him despite the increasingly loud muffled protests from her captive, and read the title aloud.

Book of Revel Aceans
by Blank Slate 

"Revel Aceans... Revelations?" Twilight sounded aloud, as Reveille shook his head adamantly. "Oh right, the 's' is silent," she corrected herself mockingly, gaining an approving nod from the bound alicorn. "What a pretentious name - I'm guessing that Blank Slate is your real one?"  

When Reveille didn't answer, she opened the book to the first pages, the text headlining the top of the page reading My One Wish. The princess continued to read down the page, her jaw dropping progressively more and more as the passage resumed.

I wish I could say I was satisfied with my lot in life, but that would be a lie. No, I rather despise being an earth pony of such little consequence - a failed author and ex-banker whose only income comes in the form of alimony payments from a self-proclaimed "miserable wreck of desperation and irritation" of a divorced wife. I won't deny that my existence is a boring one, but that is through no fault of my own. This is precisely why I wrote my original story "The Element of Infinity." To inspire and to entertain the audience to the notion that somepony, anypony could be the hero. Even a loveless and lifeless nopony like myself. 

The critics, if they can even be called that, can cite my magnum opus as "uninspired, pretentious, unrealistic, and unappealing to anyone but the author, who clearly sees his work as nothing short of a revelation." That's because it is a revelation. It's a wake-up call, if only for myself alone, to chase your dreams, and to be the change you want to see. That's exactly what I did.

The following is a comprehensive look at the story of the greatest savior of our time; Revel Aceans, or Reveille per his shorthoof. The pony who saved all of Equestria several times over, only to be spat on and shunned by those who wouldn't exist were it not for his trials and tribulations. The unsung hero, a martyr in every sense of the definition. Taking the ideals of modern day celebrities and heroes, I've created a perfect storm of traits and tales to fulfill my greatest desire, my one wish. 

I am Reveille, and I will be adored.


Twilight flipped through the rest of the book in a flurry, absorbing the highlights and emboldened texts as she could.

...Alicorn race implies power and rarity. Empathize with mysterious birth. Body/mane coloration in line with theme (black = dark/shadows, mane = red? Will finalize later)... 

...Needs to be an orphan - raised by single father mother = single mothers are statistically more common thus more relatable...

...Loss of parental figure at early age (death or abandonment???) Both - abandonment = pity, death with no reconciliation = emotions, plus possible connection with audience through mutual loss...

...Mysterious and detached = a must!!! Reinforce circumstances, harshness is acceptable. Statistics show that mares gravitate more towards aggression...

...Make him powerful! Fear of reprisal and respect for strength...

...Find a traveling partner. A physical presence will help to lend authenticity to the scenario. (NOTE: For future reference, find a pony that won't disclose unnecessary information!!!)

...Explain lack of historical context. Retcon methods? Invisibility, mind control, time travel?...

The rest of the pages revealed, almost verbatim, the "story" that Reveille had told. Fashioned like a screenplay, there were branches off of conversations, possible questions and answers. An entire chapter was devoted to the "art" of mind reading, with scripted responses matching to the initial reaction to claims of mind-reading, measuring facial expressions and body language. As Twilight skimmed to one of the last pages, she was horrified to see the following section.

Romantic Pursuits

Ponies are naturally drawn to those with power and influence. Romantic partners must be figureheads or in positions of power. Possible options include -

Princess Celestia -  Involved knowledge of presented historical inaccuracies.
Princess Luna - Same as above, plus implied "incest".
Princess Cadenza, Mi Amore - Crystal Empire princess, existing marriage likely a deterrent.
Princess Twilight - Ponyville princess, Bearer of Element of Magic. Likeliest candidate.

Will investigate other Elements of Harmony failing the above.

After hearing of exploits/power, infatuation is highly probable, regardless of time/relationship together. If not, romantic gestures (i.e. songs and poems), statements of trust, and assertive stance likely to ensure copulative outcome. 


Twilight closed the book softly, setting it beside the other trinkets of Reveille's false identity. Reveille was glaring at her with rage, but Twilight just looked back with a mix of pity and shock.

"All of this... the story, your powers, trying to sleep with me... Was all of it just some bizarre wish fulfillment?" Twilight asked him shakily, his eyes glaring at her underneath his mane and horn. "It said you were an earth pony, so this..." She tugged at Reveille's horn, already noticing that it wasn't fixed and steady like it should have been. With a solid pull, she ripped the false horn from his head, eliciting a muffled yowl of pain from the stallion, and revealing a light brown fur underneath.

"I would love to see you explain your way out of this one," she told him, removing the cloth from his mouth once again. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"This... this isn't my fault," he gasped. "I don't understand - where did I go wrong? The elements were all there, I did everything right, why wouldn't you just accept it? Why wouldn't you let me love you?"

"Because I don't love you, Reveille or whatever-" Twilight's cry was interrupted by a bugle outside of her closed window. In a purple flash, the window opened, revealing a soaked white pegasus with a purple mane floating outside, a bugle in his hooves. "I knew I wasn't hearing things! Who are you?"

The pegasus looked around nervously, back and forth from the seething princess and Reveille tied up on the floor. Still, he didn't say anything.

"Right, you can't talk, of course..." Twilight's horn glowed again, and a shred of parchment and a long orange quill floated in front of the frightened pegasus, underneath the outcropping to shield it from the rain. "Start writing." After several minutes of the quill scrabbling against the parchment, he gave Twilight the note, his head hung in shame. The note read;

Princess,

My name is Windy Whisper. This pony, Blank Slate, hired me out of Monteneighgro to act as a sort of follower. Being a pony that could not speak, work was difficult to come by, and I gladly accepted his generous pay and simple job - play three notes on a bugle whenever somepony mentioned the word 'Reveille.' When we arrived in Ponyville, he instructed me to follow him around from the outside of the castle to resume my playing after knocking on the front door, and to gather enough rain clouds to cover the castle. He claimed it was a costume party, and I was to answer to the name 'Seasons Yore'. I had my misgivings, but had I known his intentions, I would never have agreed to indulge him. I deeply apologize for the trouble this has caused you.

Windy Whisper

"It's alright, Windy," Twilight reassured the shivering pegasus. "Come in and dry off. You can stick around until after he's carted off," Twilight gestured to the growling Reveille behind her. "I'll make sure you get back home." Windy bowed his head gratefully, floating inside and sitting down on the carpeted floor, using one of the sheets that was sent flying from Twilight's spell to warm himself.

"Do you know why your plan didn't work, Blank Slate?" Twilight asked the pony formally known as Reveille, standing over him.

"Because you're too smart for your own good?" he snarled back.

"No," she answered simply. "It's because no matter what you do, or how powerful you are or think you are, or how prestigious you seem to be... nopony will like you if you act like it. In the last seven years, I can't think of anyone who was as egocentric, self-pitying, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, or downright irritating as you were in the last seven hours. Maybe if you just acted like a normal pony, treating others with respect and showing some humility, you would have better luck getting ponies to befriend you."

"That doesn't work!" Blank Slate cried. "When I was nice, everypony thought that I was boring and inconsequential. Now, I'm the most interesting and important pony there is!"

"Just... try it my way," Twilight insisted. "As Blank Slate, pretend I never met you. No preconceived notions. Tell me something interesting about yourself."

Blank Slate's face screwed up, and he bit his lip as if in deep thought. "I had a preconceived notion once," he started slowly. "But it turned out to be something I already thought of."

Twilight just shook her head sadly.

"This is why I love you, Princess Twilight," the stallion said. "You challenge me. You make me think about things in ways I never did before. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, so you can teach me how to be better."

Twilight scooted back away from him. "That makes one of us."

Even with his diaphragm being contorted from his tied up position, he still had it in him to sing one last song to her.


"Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take, I'll be watching you."
 


Through the pouring rain, Twilight's twitching ears could hear the approaching siren of Ponyville's law enforcement.

"That sounds like the police," she told him. She didn't understand why he got so, so angry.
> A Less Tangential Denouement
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a lengthy explanation to the police, and presenting Blank Slate's satchel as evidence, Ponyville's finest saw fit to take Blank Slate in for at least some questioning. Under the rain surrounding the castle, Blank Slate's false wings fell away with their glue coming undone, and the cheap paints that he had used on himself also began to wash away. Underneath the coat of dark black and the mane of crimson was a simple brown earth pony, sporting a brown mane and a cutie mark depicting a broken quill. Blank Slate was thoroughly embarrassed, and lashed out at the officers that were dragging him to the carriage.

"Let me go, this isn't fair!" Blank Slate shouted, wriggling helplessly to try and escape. His red contacts fell out in the struggle, revealing a set of normal chocolate brown eyes. "This is why I don't pay my taxes! I'm not supporting you!" He was forced into the back seat, the door slamming, but doing little to mask his angry cries of protest.

"That sounded like a confession to me," the first officer said, stepping around the front of the carriage to his door.

"And neither of us are ordained," the second officer added as he opened his door. "Have a good evening, your highness. We'll call you if we need you!"

"Thank you!" Twilight called after them from the cobblestone path at the front of the castle as the carriage pulled away. The princess emitted a long and tired sigh. "What a day, huh, Spike?"

The dragon looked up at Twilight with disdain. "I'll say. And they had to take all of our mail? Even my comic?"

Twilight turned around, eager to finally get some sleep. "Don't worry, Spike. It's just until tomorrow after they document it as evidence."

At that moment, the bells in Ponyville's clock tower began to ring at slow, steady intervals.

"Or later on today, I should say," she corrected herself with a laugh.

Spike held the door open for her, clicking his tongue. "You really shouldn't have sang that song, Twi."

Twilight stopped moving and gave the dragon a jokingly annoyed glare in the doorway. "Spike, taking stock in things like that is completely ridiculous."

"As ridiculous as say, the time traveling, mind reading, ultra powerful, Element-of-Harmony-bearing, son of Nightmare Moon?"

Twilight laughed as she stepped inside and out of the rain, Spike following closely behind as he closed the door.

"Yeah, that was pretty ludicrous." She wiped herself down with a towel that she kept by the door for just such an occasion. "Though I have to admit, he took the whole thing to heart to make it seem believable. Right down to recoloring himself, that's devotion to the role. He probably would have made a better actor than a writer." A freshly dried Twilight handed the towel to a dripping Spike.

"Probably. I don't get the whole black and red thing, that just seemed a bit much," Spike added through the cloth he was rubbing against his face.

"His book said that it was 'keeping in theme' with his story, but I agree. Black and red are exceedingly uncommon, both regressive colors if I'm not mistaken. Maybe that was the appeal?" Twilight asked, looking up at the closed window above the front doors, the clouds above distorted from the droplets of rain against the glass. "I also don't get why, out of all the windows he could have gummed up and used to come into our castle, he chose the one that was right above the main entrance. Seems pointless."

Spike joined in her in looking up at the window. "Well, no one said he was smart. What was that he said about preconceived notions?" The dragon giggled as suddenly the moon shone from the window, the rain cloud having been eviscerated. Silhouetted in the moon was the figure of a white pegasus with a purple mane, rapidly kicking away at the remainder of the black clouds. "Who's that?"

"That's Windy Whisper," Twilight answered. "He's the mute pegasus that Blank Slate hired to follow him around and announce his name with a bugle, to basically play the part of Seasons Yore. I feel kind of bad for him, his employer having been sent to jail, and him being stuck so far away from home."

"You know." Spike gently prodded Twilight with his scaly elbow. "We could use another set of hooves to help with our library. It's a lot bigger than our old one, and we wouldn't have to worry about him being too loud!"

"That's not a bad idea, Spike." Twilight nodded as she watched Windy corkscrew his way through a thick cloud, coming out drenched on the other side. "And maybe it's because he can't talk, but I already like him better than Reveille." 
 


> *Alternate/Original Ending* The Only Truth That Matters
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

 After a lengthy explanation to the police, and presenting Blank Slate's satchel as evidence, Ponyville's finest saw fit to take Blank Slate in for at least some questioning. Under the rain surrounding the castle, Blank Slate's false wings fell away with their glue coming undone, and the cheap paints that he had used on himself also began to wash away. Underneath the coat of dark black and the mane of crimson was a simple brown earth pony, sporting a brown mane and a cutie mark depicting a broken quill. Blank Slate was thoroughly embarrassed, and lashed out at the officers that were dragging him to the carriage.

"Let me go, this isn't fair!" Blank Slate shouted, wriggling helplessly to try and escape. His red contacts fell out in the struggle, revealing a set of normal chocolate brown eyes. "This is why I don't pay my taxes! I'm not supporting you!" He was forced into the back seat, the door slamming, but doing little to mask his angry cries of protest.

"That sounded like a confession to me," the first officer said, stepping around the front of the carriage to his door.

"And neither of us are ordained," the second officer added as he opened his door. "Have a good evening, your highness. We'll call you if we need you!"

"Thank you!" Twilight called after them from the cobblestone path at the front of the castle as the carriage pulled away. The princess emitted a long and tired sigh. "What a day, huh, Spike?"

The dragon looked up at Twilight with disdain. "I'll say. And they had to take all of our mail? Even my comic?"

Twilight turned around, eager to finally get some sleep. "Don't worry, Spike. It's just until tomorrow after they document it as evidence."

At that moment, the bells in Ponyville's church began to ring at slow, steady intervals.

"Or later on today, I should say," she corrected herself with a laugh.

Spike held the door open for her, clicking his tongue. "You really shouldn't have sang that song, Twi."

Twilight stopped moving and gave the dragon a jokingly annoyed glare in the doorway. "Spike, taking stock in things like that is completely-"

At that moment, she was interrupted by an enormous explosion of noise. Strong winds blew out of nowhere, buffeting the two with innumerable specks of dirt and grass. A brilliant flash of white light appeared suddenly behind the princess, a steady dark red glow taking it's place soon after.  Twilight turned her head to the source, and what was once Ponyville was now a massive crater in the ground, with a giant cloud of red smoke in the shape of a mushroom hovering above it.

"Oh no... oh no no no!" Twilight began to gallop towards the remains of her fair town, Spike left holding the door in shock, when suddenly a loud voice cracked the air.

"TWILIGHT SPARKLE!"

Out of the crater, a massive black and red blur erupted upwards into the cloud of red smoke. The smoke disappeared in a puff, accompanied by the loud sound of huge wings unfurling. Where the smoke once floated, there was now an alicorn. It was gargantuan, easily the size of several buildings. It's coat was pure black, silhouetted against the bright white moon behind it, and it's mane a deep red. Upon it's face, Twilight could see bright red eyes, glowing like the last embers of a dying fire, glaring directly at her.

"I offered you my love, Princess Twilight!" The male voice shouted. "I told you the consequences of what would happen were you to deny me! Yet, in your limitless cruelty and ignorance, you spurned my affections, and buried my love deep beneath the Earth, like the last remaining memory of a time gone by that you wish you could forget!"

Twilight felt Spike's shaky arms wrapping around her front legs.

A flaming red orb began to formed at the tip of the black alicorn's horn. "But I haven't forgotten, Princess Twilight, and now..." Like a comet, the fireball was launched towards a fear-stricken Twilight, who couldn't do anything but stare helplessly as it drew ever nearer.

"...LOVE IS IN BLOOM!"

A wall of flame engulfed Twilight's vision. She blinked slowly, holding her eyes closed, knowing that her time had come. With Spike whimpering into her side, she whispered her final words for all of Equestria to hear.

"Daniel Ingram."