Overture

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You know you've arrived when clubs throughout ponydom allow you to ask to appear with little notice, to play whatever you want, and to program the evening of other DJs around you. Spur of the moment offers to play in the neighboring city, and a bizarre cascade of railroad outages in Equestria, herded me back to Canterlot.

I had been working the summer in the south of Prance in the lodestar venues of the music world on the islands of Hearbreeza and Sandawhinney, and in the city of Cans (a city of buildings literally constructed cans, metal plates of shaped and rounded tin, aluminum, and steel). While the music scene there throbbed and buzzed, and the enthusiasm of the audiences could convince anypony to think ponies were crazy, the amount of bad behavior by too young to be so wealthy ponies quickly became grating. Hard cider, cheeky horseplay, and a string of stallions wasn't my thing, so I wasn't "in" with my peers who partied hard. I made the bits to rent a private beach, with one of those a white stucco cottages with a blue dome roof on the rocks above the surf, and the privacy to play my music or to silently listen to the gulls alone during the day after a night-long gig.

When I received a letter from Sapphire Shores written on Eohippus Records letterhead the same week Big Hoofer sent me an invite to play at Hoofing It! in Canterlot, I was really in need of a change of pace.

With the prodding of Countess Coloratura, Octavia Melody, and instrumentalists all over Equestria who wanted me to mix live with their music, I'd gone from being a DJ to a producer. I combined live music and recorded music, with loops and samples using sound processors to create a unique sound on the fly. I even sang. I'd been given a dozen bootleg recordings of my own work jamming with various artists, which I mixed in to further whet my creativity at the boards.

I suspected I knew what Sapphire Shores wanted to discuss.

This was how I ended up arriving on the 9:50 p.m. to Canterlot with enough time to set up for Luna's watch (2 a.m. to whenever) at the club. Sapphire Shores and I had planned to meet next week in Manehatten, but when I returned from Prance, I found my train rerouted from Horseshoe Bay away from the Big Apple while Sapphire Shores found herself unable to head northeast. Some sort of problem with the tracks, I presumed. Nopony had a straight answer. So I took Big Hoofer up on his offer, said goodbye to my parents in Ponyville, and took the evening train.

Helping Hoof, my assistant, helped me unstrap my wagon from the freight car and insisted that I harness him up. "No," I said, "I'm not becoming fat like DJ Buttercup."

The piebald earth pony was Dad's age, but had been a roady for Pink Cloyed and the manager for the Whinnyapolis 5, to name a few. He knew the business and helped me manage setting up, contacting other acts, and seeing to the lighting and sound checks. "The way you dance all night, that's not happening."

The station manager came out of the depot as we rolled down the siding in a gathering mist. He said, "The 11:01 to Ponyville, ending at Dodge City, is cancelled." When waiting ponies groaned, he added, "As have all trains until further notice."

Ponies began shouting, but he shrugged, returned to his office, and locked the door.

"That's really strange," said Helping Hoof.

"Maybe a magical rail-eating rodent is chewing up the tracks. In Equestria, you never know."

"Dear me, I hope not."

It wouldn't strand me in Canterlot. Ponyville Way ran from where it began on the Strand down the mountain and through Ponyville. We could walk the downhill in a few hours—after I met with Sapphire Shores.

We were a couple blocks from Castle Way and Canterlot Castle on Alicorn Way when I saw what to me seemed an unusual sight. I lifted my mop-like fringe with a hoof and squinted at somepony purple.

I'd met Twilight Sparkle long before she became a princess, the day of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration when I had played my first paid DJ gig at the Golden Oak Library. The newly appointed librarian had understandably disliked the noise and bother, but, come dawn, had walked down from the librarian's bedroom and noticed me packing my records and turntables. She had looked like she was carrying the weight of the world balanced on her withers, head down, ears akimbo. But she had smiled at me nonetheless and told me that I'd better come because she "hoped" Princess Celestia would soon raise the sun.

Hoped had echoed in my head. She'd known. She had known something bad would happen.

I'd found myself drafted by Dad—who had been contracted to the clean Town Hall that night—to empty the rubbish bin outside in the back of the building. That's how I'd witnessed Princess Celestia ambushed and apparently murdered by her sister, Princess Nightmare Moon. Her consumption by a tornado of rainbow magic had looked like a murder to 17-year-old me. Confronted by the sinister black armored alicorn, something in me had snapped. I'd curtseyed but held eye contact with the monster and called her Your Royal Majesty. I'd reflexively recognized her as the new monarch of Equestria.

She'd promised me knighthood in return.

I very much remembered everything that night, the certainty that Twilight Sparkle had demonstrated in her body language that she understood what would happen and, later, her determination that she'd fix it. It was the color of her unique soul, her signature. Squinting, I recognized the princess now at the end of the boulevard.

She looked... shaken.

I shrugged out of the harness and tack, then pulled on a black sweater from a drawer in my custom wagon. A thrice life-sized photo of me dancing with my signature pink bow at Burning Mare Trottingham adorned the van; inside, it held my musical kit, my lighting, and my wardrobe—everything in black.

"Helping Hoof—"

He too had been staring. His brown eyes focused on me.

"Take the rig to the club. Set up. I'll be there presently."

I could still hear the squeaking of the wagon as the princess walked down toward the train station at the end of Alicorn Way. She was very different from the other Princesses. Princess Luna never mingled in public. Guards always accompanied Princess Celestia, very discreetly. Princess Cadance, who could exude such an alpha mare aura that she could intimidate anypony, was always accompanied by maids and hoof-ponies. Twilight? Well, Twilight, when not accompanied by her friends would wander alone. Not at all like Queen Bliss More of Trottingham with her grand processions of ponies armed with pointy weapons. Mind you, nopony ought to mess with any lone alicorn unless you were usurping like Nightmare Moon had been, but still...

Princess Twilight Sparkle looked vulnerable, worn out, her hooves clattering and echoing on the wet cobblestones. I stood near Earth and Field, a restaurant outside which a dozen middle-aged ponies chatted. It smelled of roasted corn and grilled vegetables. An artist's theater, The Freebird, let out. The ponies exiting saw Princess Twilight and kept their distance. Her head and ears down, I didn't think she saw me. My hooves clattered as I backed out of her path.

I turned and escorted her quietly, our hoofbeats soon meshing in synchrony. After a block, I said, "You look like you could use a friend."

She nodded. After a few moments, she added, "Yes. Yes, I could, but some things you must do alone."

I could tell that she wasn't referring to walking alone. She glanced to her right at me, tall enough that she had to look down. She smiled before lowering her head. I remembered her as a bit of a runt, but becoming an alicorn had added more than just wings. I wondered why she wasn't flying. We walked a few blocks in what felt like companionable silence. As we did, I watched the other ponies out late. And, one by one, when they noticed me staring at them, they skirted us. Even passing carriages and taxis kept their distance.

Clip-clop-clip. Clip-clop-clip.

The princess sighed. "Thank you. Lieutenant Hart sent you, didn't she? You seem like a leader."

"No, I'm not one of the Guard, but I do protect ponies when they need protecting."

"I guess I would look like I need protecting. Not true. Not today, especially, but thank you for your kindness, nonetheless. You are?"

"Flopsy Mopsy. We met the night of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration. I DJ'd your unwelcome Welcome-Twilight-to-Ponyville-Party at the Golden Oak Library—"

She laughed.

"—and at Princess Luna's Welcome-Back-Little-Sister Party."

"Pinkie Pie," Twilight murmured, shaking her head. "I remember you. You're the quiet filly who visited the library a lot."

"I—I didn't tell you something." I hadn't told anypony except Princess Celestia. "I should have."

"You didn't return a book?" I heard a series of dainty snorts as she chuckled.

"I met Princess Nightmare Moon."

A spiral of lightning arced up her horn, then cracked out of existence. She stopped, took a very deep breath, and looked at me. Her purple eyes glistened in the flickering gas streetlights as she appraised me from snout to cutie mark. Her mouth opened. "Rrrright, you followed me into Town Hall and were there with the rest of us."

"Dad sent me out back to empty the rubbish bin. I saw Celestia ambushed. Princess Nightmare Moon spoke with me afterwards."

"I'm so sorry I let that happen to you."

"I should have told you that Princess Nightmare Moon was Princess Celestia's sister when I saw you in the library afterward. I didn't think it would make a difference, even though I had seen her spying on you."

"That explains a lot." She said, walking again. She murmured to herself, "Our world is filled with monsters."

"Innit?" I said, following. "And they make the ponies who face them stronger. Like you. Whatever it is that's bothering you, you'll face it. You'll come back stronger."

"I hope so— If it doesn't kill me." Her tail swished; she thought of something specific she did not share.

"A friend told me the same thing before the changelings attacked."

"Did it? Make you stronger, I mean?"

"I'm still alive." I chuckled.

"You faced Nightmare Moon, too?"

"Black armor, smokey mane, wolf-teeth and all," I whispered, still bewildered at what I dreaded to believe was my special talent. "And Discord in Ponyville." Despite him transforming me, I'd chased ponies away from him to safety and had even threatened him. "And the Changeling horde." I'd masqueraded as a shape-shifted changeling to guide ponies to safety. I'd seen Twilight afterwards leaving the royal physician's office with a small bandage and singed fur from her battles, escorting Princess Celestia. I'd thought of her as Celestia's paladin.

"Sweet Celestia! I guess you know what you're talking about. I have no desire to be stronger, you know."

"Sometimes you can't choose."

Her horn sparked again, arcing with lightning. She cast a spell to light the tip of her horn and the sparking stopped. She said, "You do know what you are talking about. And I sure could use a friend, but right now having one isn't an option, and I can't explain. Ugh! Frustrating!"

"Then trust you'll do the right thing."

"I don't always do that, either."

"Really?" I said. "Not from the results I've seen."

Princess Twilight just shook her head, but she'd picked up her pace with her ears perked forward and her tail held high. Her funk seemed lifted. I kept pace, feeling connected, sharing the sound of our horseshoes in the misty night.

When we were a block from the train station, I remembered. "Um, they canceled all the trains, tonight."

She stopped, looking at the mauve-painted building and at the train that normally would be smoking and maintaining a head of steam. She said, "Of course they did," and suddenly hugged me, wrapping her fore-legs and wings around my back. I tentatively reciprocated despite my shock. I didn't deserve it. "You've been a real friend, Miss Flopsy Mopsy. Thank you. Don't worry. They'll run a special for me because I'm the one who ordered the train service stopped. I'm certainly not up to flying under the circumstances."

"You're welcome. I-I've got a gig to prepare for," I said, pointing a pinion uptown.

"In a sense, I have a performance to prepare for, too. Keep yourself safe," she said and trotted off.

I let her last words repeat in my head as I flew back uptown, flying above Alicorn Way. Princess Twilight Sparkle had a habit of communicating inadvertently and indirectly about things she didn't want to talk about. I remembered being in the Golden Oak Library, as if it were yesterday, when she had said she "hoped" Princess Celestia would soon be there.

She had known something would happen. So what did "keep yourself safe" mean?

Instead of turning to the night club, I flew all the way to the castle. I landed at the entrance that had been closed with an iron portcullis. Two uncharacteristically unfriendly guards in armor stared past me.

I cleared my voice and said, "I walked Princess Twilight Sparkle to the train station. To catch a special train to Ponyville."

They continued ignoring me.

"She seemed a bit preoccupied. Do you know of anything that happened that might have upset her?"

They continued ignoring me.

I reached under my sweater and took a small gold medallion out that I kept on a black silk ribbon. Most ponies thought it merely inconsequential bling, but, if you looked at it closely, it displayed Princess Celestia's royal seal, a Canterlot horseshoe-C over a solar cutie mark, and the number 107. I waved it in front of the eyes of the blue-feathered pegasus on the right.

She stiffened.

"I can demand an answer." The Princess had dubbed me a Hero of Equestria after the Canterlot wedding, and though I'd refused the honor for doing what my heart had led me to do, she'd told me it didn't change the fact that I was one. Bloody bother, I thought. Now was the time to see if the medallion was worth more than its gold weight.

"Ma'am," the guardsmare said. "I can't answer that."

"Who can?"

"The captain of the watch." She rang a gong and the portcullis rose with much clacking of gears and clanging of chains. Another guard took her place and I followed her inside down a mildewy smelling hall into the firefly lantern-lit guard station. There I met a familiar face, and a muscular flank I'd had to kick midair to keep him from giving us away to the changelings.

"Oh, you again," the ginger-haired red pegasus said, looking at me with narrowed amber eyes from beside a mahogany desk littered with paperwork. He had not appreciated my lesson on how to think under combat pressure, me being a civvy and what not.

The portcullis guard whispered something and he frowned. He waved her to wait by the door. He opened his mouth before his eyes settled on my medallion.

I stepped forward and tapped to two silver bars centered on his brass breastplate. "Nice. Looks like you got a promotion, Riverdale."

He lifted my medallion with a wing tip and nodded. "You, too, Dame Flopsy Mopsy. Well deserved."

I shrugged and scoffed. Like I said, difference of opinion. Something inside me was broken and I didn't like calling attention to it—even when it made me do odd things like sticking my bloody muzzle where it didn't belong, like tonight. A physician had joked and called it Princess Compulsive Disorder. To Tartarus with him.

Looking into his amber eyes, I said, "Princess Twilight told me 'keep yourself safe.' So what's got Princess Twilight Sparkle's knickers in a twist?"

He didn't even blink at my Trottingham trash talk. Officer through and through, that one. "For you, I can say only that she met with the three other princesses. We've been on lockdown since. I'll add that's all anypony knows. Princess business. Leave it at that. Royalty can be inscrutable. I wouldn't worry. I'm not worrying."

Most ponies, in my experience, didn't worry about bad things before or after they happened—unlike me. Like I said, broken. "Let Equestria's newest princess worry instead?"

"I heard you're appearing at Hoofing It! I'm off duty late. I'll see about checking out the performance. Best that you get about it."

I could tell I'd get nothing more. "Tell any server your name and your first round will be on me." I smiled, bowed my head, and let the blue pegasus lead me out.

My hooves echoing on stone, passing through the Bailey wall, I thought perhaps I was imagining Twilight's discomfort. Still. She'd stopped the train service. All over Equestria? Nevertheless, the changelings had literally been blown out of Canterlot—by a wind that had incidentally blown me about also. Twilight had got her brother and future sister-in-law together to ignite their magic.

No monster would have the audacity to attack the Equestrian capital after hearing about that, right?

Prelude

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Helping Hoof waited for me outside the club and I landed beside him. The crowd in the roped-off line cheered upon seeing me and surged. The Clydesdale pony bouncer stomped the pavement and gruffly said, "Watch it!"

I curtseyed to the crowd and struck a few flutter poses for a photographer, then let Helping Hoof lead me outside the street cafe next door. He pointed over his shoulder at a golden pegasus mare who sipped an espresso and waved a wing. I recognized Candy Crusher by her peppermint mane and tail (both dyed). I smelled strong coffee as I noticed the saxophone case beside her table. I recalled hearing some funk and smokey jazz tracks by her. I gave her a two pinions up high sign. I'd certainly be able to mix in anything she might provide, and I had no doubt she could improv.

"I've gotten the equipment laid out and patched in. I'll do a sound check after DJ Popfizz's set is over. Besides Candy, there's a colt that Big Hoofer said answered your call for mix-in artists, but I've never heard of him. At all interested?"

"What's he play?"

"Not exactly sure, but it's big."

"Sound?"

"No, big as in large." Helping Hoof put a hoof to his lips and whistled.

A smallish brawny brown unicorn, with a mushroom-shaped mane of kinky dark hair that hid his horn to the tip, perked up across the street where he lay beside a tree. Beside him rested a four-wheeled pine pony cart with sides tall enough to haul ore. He wore wraparound obsidian-rimmed sunglasses, had a thin black string mustache, and polished black hooves. He was definitely cute, in a boyish way. What did he play, a tuba?

He didn't exactly look at me, but his ears rotated towards us. "What's his name?"

"Hauling Oats."

"That explains the cart."

The colt shook his head, obviously hearing us and I felt my cheeks warm up. Considering the music escaping the club and the fair amount of hoof traffic on the Strand, his hearing was good. Embarrassingly good. Whilst I bought the best ear monitors to protect my ears while spinning my beats, I had to admit the volume did affect my hearing. His acuteness might say something about his abilities, or more about his lack of experience.

"Should I send him away?"

"No, no. Every pony deserves a chance." Especially cute colts. I might not be in the market, but I didn't mind window shopping.

I pranced across the street, high tailing it, trying to imagine if there was a way I could place a tuba into the mix. I remembered an exciting wub-wub intro to a song that started out slow. Some Do Row song, maybe Take Five. No, that was probably double bass, but it would be brilliant with tuba instead.

I stopped before Hauling Oats. He didn't seem to be looking at me, though it was hard to say what he looked at behind his shades, same as it was with Vinyl Scratch. It reminded me of how I used to reflexively hide behind my fringe so ponies couldn't see me looking at them nervously. On a lark, I brushed my fringe forward.

He said, "I'm not good with faces. You are?" His voice was incredibly deep. A scent of cloves lingered in the vicinity.

I tilted my head without thinking. I was rather recognizable, at least in the EDM scene. Whatevs. "I'm DJ FM."

"Ah, Effie Emmay, The Songbird." It was a nickname that had stuck to me on the club circuit since I'd been invited to the high line clubs in the south of Prance. "I'm Hauling Oats." He held out a hoof in my general direction. "Nice to meet you."

I clacked hooves with him, liking his confidence. "Likewise." When he didn't say anything for an awkward half-a-minute, I asked, "What do you play?"

"Let me show you."

His horn lit with a pale crystal-blue aura. As a single mass, dozens of blocks of wood and pieces of metal rose from his pony cart, swirling like detritus blown in a wind storm. On the grass behind him, in a small clearing in the woods next to a curving path through Palisades Park, it all assembled accompanied by a cacophony of tuned wind sounds. A frame assembled into a table and blocks settled to be bolted down. Beyond that, lengths of sheet metal circled and became barrels one might fill with vegetable oil. Sheets of rounded metal settled on top and crimped musically in place. Drum sticks—more than a dozen, some with brushes, some with fuzzy heads, and some with conical knobs—floated mid-air, waiting for the assembly to complete, then began tapping the instruments' surfaces. Despite the shadowed woods at night, I now recognized what I saw with the clue of the sounds.

Marimbas and steel drums.

My jaw dropped. The fantastical musical noise took my breath away, as it did the ponies walking along the path in the park. A cute unicorn couple in a dress and a high hat stopped, and I saw a few other earth ponies speed up for a better look. I smiled. As he adjusted the tension on the wooden keys and the rims of the steel drums, completely by ear without any magical tuners, he began playing a Carobbean melody that made me want to sway. Using solely his horn, he played multiple melodic parts and harmonies. He was a one-pony band. The composition was only to check his tuning, which to my ear was in perfect pitch. He rested his sticks abruptly.

"Okay," I said, "You've definitely got my attention, but keep going."

He launched into a prototypical reghay song by the Pale Ales, I Want to Love You. His marimba took over the drum parts and his steel drum took the place of what I remembered as steel guitar, arguably with a more authentic tropical vibe. I soon found myself singing, "I wanna wuv you / everyday and every night!" By the time the last clong-clong on the drums faded into the night, twenty ponies watched us. He seemed unfazed. I shook a hoof and my head when the impromptu audience seemed ready to stomp their applause.

"Nice," I said and gestured over my shoulder at the club and added, "But they won't be into Dancehall and, as you can hear, my commoner Trotter accent is not right for singing reghay." After Coloratura had insisted I sing at the public rave after the Canterlot wedding, I'd added mixing my voice into the act, the flourish that had earned me my "Songbird" moniker.

"No worries. That was simply the music of my father. It makes it easier to tune. I can play most anything I hear. What do you suggest?"

I made my L-wing bad-lighting gesture across the street at Helping Hoof, then took out my iSing. I now rocked the Plus 500, an enchanted fire opal that held most of my music collection and could be charged with twenty recording spells at a time; it still had a frustrating click-spinner interface, though. Click-click-click... By the time Helping Hoof jogged over with a pair of sparkle-torches from my kit, I held one eardrop near the unicorn musician's ear. "Want to give this a listen?"

He didn't look at me. "From an iSing? Sure, drop it in." He wheeled an ear toward me.

Blimey. The puzzle pieces fell into place. He was blind.

I dropped the little white eardrop into his ear and popped its mate into mine. I clicked play. As a softly chattering audience watched us bob to music they couldn't hear, I waved Helping Hoof aside to keep the lights away from where they might interfere with Hauling Oats' levitation magic. Sparkle-torches provided a warm glow that modulated to the dynamics of the music. The "sparkle" part was just the normal sparkles that accompanied the play of the embedded Illuminate spell.

Suddenly, he tapped time on a couple of sticks and launched into Pony Behavior by Bee Shoring, a favorite of mine because of the lyrics. "If ever you get close to a pony / And pony be-hav-ior / Be ready, be ready to be confused..."

Sweet Princess Celestia, did that well describe me.

He muffled the steel drums to produce a sweet resonant ring to simulate the driving tympani drum line in a way that it slotted perfectly into the processed sound of the EDM I played. Boom-boom-de-boom-boom. I often looped solo sections of Pony Behavior into mixes because it was so incredibly danceable. He scrubbed his metallic brush sticks against the legs of the marimba to simulate bean shakers, and played mirror lines on the marimba, making it sound almost like a dulcimer, to support the melody while I belted out the lyric with gusto. He wisely dropped the guitar intermezzo, and not because I hadn't played the entire song in his ear, but because he knew the song well and knew he couldn't make it sound right. I kept picking up the main lyrical line after the chorus, forcing him to extend the song as I studied the audience. It did show he had experience at accompaniment.

Ponies bobbed with the music. Four blonde earth pony mares had trotted along the pavement and been ensnared by the beat. I watched as they nodded to themselves and found an empty area beside the trees where they could dance. In unison. They swayed and swept their forelegs, then snapped their tails and flicked their manes. I quickly suspected they were chorus-mares from an off-Bridleway musical playing in town. When Helping Hoof began dispersing the crowds that were forming, many exiting the line at Hoofing It! to join us, I specifically waved him away from the jazz-dancing mares.

They were giving me ideas.

Wanting to plumb the depth of his musical knowledge, I suggested something Selkie. Merpegasi songs had been big when I'd been a wee filly. He launched into Chinaid's I Want Your (Wings on Me). A bit too suggestive a song for me, but I played along. In a tit for tat, I asked for something substantially newer: All Falls Down. It took him a few moments to think, then he began bobbing his head in time, hit the intro hard with his marimbas, and sounded like he was three players not one.

"What's the trick?" I sang. "I wish I knew / I'm so finished with thinking it through..."

But I had a reason to my request. As he progressed into the melody solo, I whispered into his ear, "Do you sing?"

He grinned. "In the bath tub."

With his deep voice, I suspected he could. But he didn't twig to what I intended until it was too late. The stallion's part to this song about a couple with relationship trouble rushed up and I whispered, "Time to get wet."

He missed his cue, but he played the phrase, circled back to play the intermezzo, and charged into his part singing with a not too polished squeak. He caught up without damaging the rest of the lyric or losing a beat. He did well, once his voice warmed up. It was the stunt Coloratura had performed on me before a crowd of ten-thousand ponies—it proved I could sing for an audience—and I was delighted to pay it forward.

After the song ended, he began laughing nervously.

"I'm not hiring you to sing, but you could do worse to get yourself some lessons. And—"

The dancers were giggling amongst themselves and beginning to trot off. I cried, "You four, don't go."

They looked at each other.

"You have anything better to do tonight?"

One of the group, with a Hooflyn accent, said, "Da theatre's dark tomorrow, so, other than sleep, no. What'cha got in mind, Miss Songbird?"

Ha ha. Miss Songbird. "I was thinking we could clear part of the stage at the club for dance accompaniment. We play until dawn. I pay industry scale, and we split the tips four-ways between you-four, Hauling Oats, Candy Crusher, and me."

They clacked hooves as Hauling Oats asked, "I get the gig?"

"Sure, if you think you can improv off some of my playlist and take signals to repeat and change tempo."

"Yeah I can. Musical queues or you can tap me."

"You are a studio musician?"

"Well, part-time, after school."

"You may be too tired tomorrow for school."

"Mom will understand, trust me."

I began to wonder if he was a plant, a way for Sapphire Shores to test me for whatever plans she had for me. It didn't matter. I suspected it all would work out.

While we practiced my signals and cues, I had Helping Hoof fetch spare black blouses and a tank top from my clothing rack for the dancing mares so it would look like they were part of the act. When the time approached, Helping Hoof motioned me to the club. Hauling Oats' rig disassembled into a cloud of parts in a matter of seconds, then piled into a nice stack of parts in the wagon.

I said, "I don't think the wagon will fit through the door."

"No problem." A stack that had to weigh half a celestial ton levitated as I led him across the street. Under the lamplight, I got a good look at his cutie mark. It was a spherical cloud of darts, all pointing inward. Nice flank, too.

The club quieted expectantly as I stepped in. The previous DJ had finished ten minutes ago and Helping Hoof had laid out my boards. With everypony watching me and my entourage, I reached into my pocket and took out a giant pink ribbon. The crowd roared, "Songbird!" as I tied on my signature bow with my wings. Helping Hoof passed me four more ribbons (I aways had spares), and I gave them to the dancers. As they copied my moves, the audience roared again with a hint of surprise. Helping Hoof gave a ribbon to Hauling Oats who proceeded to use it as a cravat, tying an obvious winsome knot without collapsing the flimsy material.

Helping Hoof put the mic headset on me and adjusted the boom, at which point I shouted, "DJ FM is in the house!"

More roaring. More stomping of hooves.

"And, put your hooves together. Introducing the F-M-Ettes, Oat-Boy-Blind, and Miss Candy Crusher! Canterlot, are you ready to make some noise?"

As we assumed the stage amid the raucous sounds of stomping happy ponies—with Hauling Oats not even giving me a single clue as to whether or not I'd gone too far with his new stage name—I shouted, "Are! You! Ready!?"

As the marimbas and drums assembled in a cloud of keys and metal sheets, and Candy wet the reed on her sax, I set the drop on first record.

Oddly, we played until dawn should have come—and past that, until 6:30AM, and still dawn had not come. Rarely, Princess Celestia slept in.

Rarely.

Very rarely.

I was a pony to notice the details, though. With no morning light streaming in through the doors and the club manager giving me a furious T-sign, I wrapped it up and we very sweaty ponies bowed on the stage. The audience, larger than even at 2AM, chanted "Songbird, Songbird!" as the serving staff and bouncers pushed them out the door.

The air smelled of spilt cider, rose and Everhoof orange premium salts, and pony perspiration. As I began unplugging my processors and turntables, I wasn't surprised to hear somepony clapping in the back of the room, now vacant but for the cleaning crew. I'd seen shadows in the glass booth where technicians controlled the sound and lighting. Blue and purple gems glittered on her collar, though her midnight-blue Rarity couture jumpsuit otherwise lacked adornment.

"Wooie," she said, clapping some more. "Mama is quite happy."

I jumped when a half-dozen marimba keys and a steel drum head clattered to the floor. A few more pieces dropped as Hauling Oats grinned and tried to guess where the lost the errant musical parts had bounced to.

"He was a plant," I said as the record producer walked to the stage.

Hauling Oats said, "My stepmom."

Sapphire Shores said, "I signed Candy with Eohippus Records last month, too, and we are making beautiful music together."

"Really?" I asked rhetorically.

The Hooflyn spokespony for the dancers waved her hooves. "We're just part of the off-Bridleway show cast."

"And quite a good addition to Flopsy Mopsy's act, so leave me a resume." To me, she added, "Good girl! You have a reputation for having a good performance-minded head on your withers. Now we need to talk."

"Brilliant," I said. "But I promised everypony breakfast." Not until that moment, but I improvised.

That's how we found ourselves at Donut Joe's on Ponyville Way, just shy of the Ponyville Incline. If you haven't yet tried it, it's a Canterlot must. We had a breakfast basket stuffed with fresh-baked glazed and jelly donuts, peanut butter-stuffed chocolate Hooflyns, apricot fritters, strawberry-frosted curlers, and powdered bien-neighs. You could smell the canola oil and sugar. Joe's Prance bread was crusty and, lathered with butter, luscious. It crunched as I chewed. Coffee scent filled the heavily chromed, white-vinyl appointed diner with a neighborly feeling as the small crowd of morning business ponies chattered away. I nursed a cup of Trottingham breakfast tea with a spot of cream and lemon in it. Hauling Oats had a puff of powdered sugar on the right lens of his dark glasses, but I wasn't going to say anything as it made me smile. I needed that because the small and large hands of the clock pointed at 7 and 6 on the wall respectively. The red second hand jerking forward kept drawing my eyes, because, as of yet, the sun had not risen.

Typically unworried, the other ponies chatted. The normal ponies. Pony Behavior. I almost sang it.

I remembered when I was just 11. It had been my birthday, no less. The sun did not rise until sometime after noon. The tabloids had speculated heavily, but the consensus had been that Princess Celestia had been enraged about something bad that had happened in Canterlot, even sending somepony to bloody Tartarus over it.

Was she mad now? Was that why Twilight had seemed downtrodden last night?

"Mop?" Sapphire Shores said.

"Sorry, ma'am," I returned.

"No ma'aming me, girl. Here's the bottom line. You have an ear for sweet music. You can coax great performances out of anypony. You sing like a songbird. The arrangements I've heard on your bootlegs are strong. What I want you to do is to create original songs."

I forgot the clock as my heart fluttered in my chest. Well, so much for easing into producing dance records. I swallowed hard. "I— Well, that's not something I do, other than scatting and some alliterative drivel I originally cooked up to make fun of Discord."

She snorted at what she assumed was a joke (it wasn't) and sipped her coffee, taking time to keep me in suspense. "Songwriting. For somepony with your vocal talent, there's lessons for that. Candy, here, would be a good tutor."

The golden pegasus pushed her peppermint-stripe mane out her eyes with a wing and looked, blinking at me. "Sure. I've done collaborations. It might be fun, Mop."

"I dunno."

Sapphire Shores chuckled. "Look, dearie. I know the business. I am the Pony of Pop. I founded Eohippus Records. Sure, you're a producer, and you should be recorded live, too. Everypony on the world dance scene knows DJ FM, but if you want to go beyond being a niche player, you need mainstream hits. I see you creating some heavily sampled dance numbers mixed with various artists, like my son, maybe Countess Colortura, and others in addition to some ballads and uptempo vocal trance. We could produce covers, or I could get songwriters to put words in your mouth, but intuition tells me you can write, too, in a way that will mesh better with your Trottingham accent. What have you to lose?"

A contract and a pen from her saddlebags landed on the table.

The entire restaurant went quiet.

And it wasn't because they suddenly recognized The Songbird or realized that Sapphire Shores was in their midst. Or that a record producer was offering me a two-record recording deal.

No.

The restaurant shook. The tea in the glass mug in front of me shivered, circular waves oscillating inward and outward. Something heavy had stepped nearby. And it did again.

Thump... thump.

I stood so suddenly, the chair below me flipped away behind me. In an instant, I had flown to the glass door and flung it open.

Thump.

I looked left, toward the Ponyville Incline, the section of Ponyville Way that switch-backed down the face of Canterlot Mountain to the Ponyville Plain half a mile below. That was six blocks away.

Four blocks away stood an enormous red goat-faced centaur with longhorn steer horns, towering way over a story tall... and he held a struggling brown pony in one of his claws.

"Shag me in the flank!"

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The centaur held the witless brown unicorn and inhaled a stream of purple magic from the poor stallion's horn. Judging by the way the fellow pulled his head back, it wasn't being held that hurt but the magic being shorn from him. Red pangs colored his aura as it streamed into the creature's mouth. His hide went grey as the magic stream stopped abruptly.

I'd seen something like that before. I'd faced Discord when he had begun turning Ponyville into the "Chaos Capital of the World." I'd distracted him long enough that hundreds had been able to flee, before he transformed me, too. Oddly, since my encounter with Nightmare Moon had broken me, his manipulation turned my mind inside-out and actually fixed me, somewhat. It let me discover that I liked to sing, and helped me to learn how to simulate being normal. It also allowed me to be able to taunt Discord mercilessly in alliterative drivel when I realized that he no longer had any real interest in me after he'd transformed me. It kept him distracted from other ponies for awhile so they could also escape.

After he had deharmonized Twilight's friends, I'd warned him that "pretty purple pony" Twilight Sparkle "persists" and would come to defeat him. Did he listen? No. He had rolled on the ground, laughing.

After Twilight had changed him back to stone, I'd had the last laugh, though.

I'd figured out, correctly as it turned out, that he was fully conscious in his marble prison. I jumped on the tipped-over statute—banged on his delicate wings and bounced on his neck—threatening to break him apart. Doing so had felt good, but I'd stopped. He'd been turned to stone originally by Princess Celestia, so, in consideration of that fact, I had warned him not to blow his next chance at parole. I'd promised him I'd be there if he failed to heed my warning.

Somehow Fluttershy had reformed him, it seemed. Which isn't my point.

When he had changed me, and Twilight's friends, he'd turned us grey. He'd knackered my pegasus magic, or replaced it with his own—I dunno—but, in a variation on Discord, this beast was draining magic. I was certain of it.

I dashed back into the diner. I flared my wings and shouted, "Everypony, up! To the rear of the diner, toward the kitchen." I could see walk-in pantries. "There's a huge monster centaur out there stealing pony magic."

Sapphire Shores stood and said, "Now, Flopsy Mopsy—"

"Ma'am, I'm serious." I trotted forward, wings out, herding the business ponies and my group back. I put a wing around Hauling Oats to guide him, and gestured strongly at Donut Joe who did not look ready to abandon his cash register. I cajoled them all into the pantry, which could pack in just about everypony. Donut Joe turned off the walk-in icebox and stepped in with the remaining patrons.

"Stay here. I hope he can't steal magic through the walls of a building."

"Him?"

Yeah, I'd noticed. He was very definitely male. "Yeah."

When I turned, Donut Joe asked, "Where are you going?"

"To do what unfortunately I do best, to use my special talent," I said and flew for the entrance.

Yeah. My special talent.

Hours after Princess Nightmare Moon had appeared on the morning of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration to ambush and, to my eyes, murder her sister, Princess Celestia, I'd found out I'd got my cutie mark. It could have been for the bliss I'd experienced DJing my first party the evening before (at the official 1000th Summer Sun Celebration party, no less), for having stood up to Princess Nightmare Moon, or for having prevented a stampede in Town Hall that would have likely maimed hundreds. Encountering Nightmare Moon, I'd done the one thing any sane pony should have been unable to do—I mean, really, I should have peed myself and run screaming: I'd broken in a significant non-pony way, stood up to her, and become stronger. I'd even impressed the usurping princess.

She'd promised me knighthood.

I knew in my heart, at this very moment, that my special talent was represented by the hearts—kept marshaled like cheery candy-color puppets on a string—depicted on my cutie mark. I stood up to death as a shield to protect other ponies. That was my cutie mark talent. And it would be the death of me.

Yeah, shag compulsive me in the flank.

One thing I didn't feel like doing was to confront the monster centaur in the face like I'd done with Discord or initially with the green-goo-vomiting changelings. He looked taller than Discord had been, and Discord had been some species of bipedal wyrm. Each length to the centaur's hip or shoulder was Discord's height. He had a bodybuilder's physique and displayed amazingly ripped muscle on his legs, chest, and arms.

As I witnessed him inhaling magic from a group of ponies fainted- or frozen-in-horror around a bus stop bench, I knew what I needed to do. I didn't have unicorn magic or earth pony strength—I wriggled my wings—but I had these puppies.

Pony behavior still confused me. Most either froze or spooked when confronted by horror. I'd found during Discord's Ponyvillian rampage that I enjoyed spooking ponies. Must have been Princess Nightmare's influence. Mind you, Discord's modifications had made me fly hooves up with a tendency to whirligig, unable to communicate except by singing or flying erratically. Canterlot right now definitely needed more fleeing from danger behavior, with spooking necessary only for the hard cases.

Until the constabulary or the royal guard hammered the miscreant.

I had to assume any pony drained—and I watched him suck magic even from earth ponies—would be crippled for life.

That made me mad.

I saw him glancing southwest toward Castle Canterlot, not that I expected him to make it that far before being hammered, but as he stalked forward, bulky as he was, I was wagering he'd stick to the major boulevards; that meant Ponyville Way to Alicorn Way to Castle Way.

I fluttered off.

How many daft ponies were there? Too many to count. Two blocks down, I started shouting at the faces in the doorway, idiots hanging out of windows, and furred statues in the street. One such was a constable with his neat Prance-style blue copper's hat and a baton dangling at his hip. It took a full feathered slap, but I got the magenta-eyed chap moving, and a good bloke, too, for he shooed ponies inside or down the street on left side as I shouted to bar doors and windows and hide in wardrobes on the right.

I did not go unnoticed. When I looked back, he glared at me. His eyes were coal black with spooky glowing gold irises. I shuddered. Especially at his grin. He combed a big tuft of white hair between his horns, grinned hungrily, and turned to the storefront beside him. He inhaled and magic drained in five distinct differently-colored streams into his mouth.

"Bloody Tartarus!" I screamed.

I ran for Officer Runswell. Soon he and another constable were emptying buildings and getting ponies to run for Lower Canterlot. The monster paused now and again to feast, but each time I looked, he was closer.

Staring at me.

The thing spoke Equestrian. I could read lips after four years working in noisy clubs behind monitors with earphones on my ears.

He said, "You're mine."

"Aren't you the cat's pajamas?" I said. He wasn't my type of stallion, and considering how noticeably, grossly, male he was, I actually felt fear.

Fear was good for me. I needed to learn to feel fear, but tomorrow would be good enough, thank you very much.

I trotted over to the constable. "He's targeting buildings we went to. Skip any that look closed up, as many as you can. Let's not get caught with our knickers down."

I passed Donut Joe's by.

The creature might be monstrous, but he wasn't the brightest bulb. Our ruse worked—he skipped the buildings we skipped—but as we got to the intersection of Alicorn Way, that meant he was only a block away. At that moment, I heard a voice I really didn't want to hear.

"Oh, Tea Wreck..."

His voice was sing-song.

"Lord Tirek!" His voice was also off-key.

Discordant, really.

I shot into the air until I perched on the brass finial at the top of red-tiled peaked roof of the Great Adventures Building. Obnoxious It's a Small World piped into the street. The voice could be none other. From my vantage point, I could see onto Pistachio Street.

The wyrm, Discord stood there. Thankfully, he didn't look at me or I would have lost all sense and flown to confront him. I'd warned him. The had newspapers reported he'd been reformed, but I didn't trust him in the least. I forced myself to wait. I watched seething inside, but because of the winds at the top of the building, and the fact it was still night (still!), I could not tell what he said.

They talked.

My heart shrieked that I witnessed the bloodiest of betrayals. I wanted to scream, but smoothed my fluffed up feathers. I waited, vibrating in place, to see if he was friend or foe.

Discord pointed and snapped his chicken claw, then vanished.

I looked the direction he'd pointed. Diving from the direction of the castle, I saw a winged cavalry. A squadron of Wonderbolts lead the charge, followed by a battalion of armored royal guard armed with quivers of javelins. Beyond them flew constables and a very rag-tag Fleet of city-pegasi armed with torches and... Not pitchforks, andirons maybe?

While seeing the attack by hundreds of my pony flock filled me with sudden pride, Lord Tirek's calm manner, turning to face the assault quickly replaced the feeling with dread.

No, no, no! Not a frontal attack! I started waving furiously.

The centaur gaped his mouth. Shorn magic lit up the night as a rival to the moon, and soon, despite the stragglers trying to veer off, almost as bright as the sun.

Pegasi possess magic. Flight magic.

Screaming incoherently—and trust me I was incoherent—I launched at Tirek. I flew toward him as ponies wobbled and spun, losing control and tumbling from the sky. Without magic, ponies were as flightless as ostriches and made fat turkeys look graceful. Unlike stealing magic from unicorns or earth ponies, stealing magic from a flight of pegasi aloft was a prelude to a massacre of unimaginable carnage. Falling from ten stories or more on a glide path, I visualized ponies ramming buildings and splattering like dropped watermelons on cobblestone streets.

I soared east (he faced west), circled up his flank, and flared my wings at the last instant to land four hooves in the small of his torso-back.

The impact jarred my knees, shoulder, and hips. My face smacked his smelly bovine hide. Since I wasn't a gecko pony, I bounced off and rolled on to his horizontal back.

He roared and reached for me. Despite blood filling my nose and ringing ears, I fluttered aside, then dodged again as he twisted and tried to hit me. I ducked, fluttered back into his blind spot, and bucked.

Unfortunately, he bucked, too, and I missed.

Around me, ponies swerved and veered crazily. A few did strike buildings, but with legs out and wings spread. Like insects stunned by bug spray, they fluttered miserably, but intact to the ground. Some of the royal guard managed to throw javelins all the same.

They bounced off a very tough hide. One sliced my flank near my dock.

As I screamed and tumbled into the air, I saw a very open goats-maw gapping in my direction. I snapped my wings to my side and fell like a stone, spreading them at the last instant to shoot down Ponyville way. I flapped as desperately as ever I'd flown, like a sparrow ahead of a hawk, but then I heard him inhale.

I shrieked, banked hard left without looking, and hurled toward the wall of a building. Luckily, it had a window. I flared my wings, brought my hooves forward and crashed on through. Glass sprayed and tinkled across what proved to be an office floor filled with rows of desks and typewriters. It must have been The Inquisition's newsroom. Abandoned, thank goodness. I didn't take time to check if I'd cut myself to ribbons crashing through the glass. I shot through the starkly lit room, bucked open a locked office door at the opposite end of the building, opened a casement window, and escaped back into the night.

I loop-de-looped around lamp posts and around buildings, burning off the adrenaline and regaining my wits. Oddly, I felt good. Real good. Like I was having... fun. The pain helped. And with that realization, I shot back into the sky to see what I had wrought.

I found Lord Tirek had given up on me and turned back to the sundered pegasi that scattered the street and rooftops. I didn't see any obvious wipeouts, but I saw something incredibly disheartening.

The magic he had eaten had made him grow taller and wider. The curve of his horns had rounded slightly, noticeably, inward.

Why the frontal assault? flashed through my head, and on its hooves came the answer. Discord. The flight of pegasi had seen Lord Tirek but he hadn't been looking at them. They'd committed before Discord had come to warn his comrade.

I didn't have time to take a count of how many might have died had I not acted because Lord Tirek pressed my button again. He opened his mouth to fully drain the fallen pegasi.

I cried out, "What? What! You daft greedy beast!"

I dived and circled as he tried to home in on my voice in the dark sky. Still, there was enough light that he quickly sighted me. He said, "What kind of weak-minded pony are you?"

"Weak-minded?" I blinked as I flew erratically so he could not get a bead on me. As he jumped and tried to swat me instead, I thought, was I insulted? No, just becoming angrier. "What kind of pony am I?"

"I just asked that."

I dived under his barrel and up at the back of his head. Unfortunately, he ducked my kick. I spiraled away, through his feet, yelling, "The pony that's going to kill you."

Yes. I'd said that.

Whilst Princess Nightmare Moon hadn't actually murdered Princess Celestia in her ambush, she had killed a number of her guards. I'd seen that with my own eyes. And she promised to make me her knight. And I had broken. I was a pony-sociopath, a monster myself.

But this monster, Flopsy Mopsy, was working for Equestria. Let them tell me I'd done wrong afterwards.

"A new princess in training?" Lord Tirek laughed so hard at his own words that he held his flat, muscular belly as his laughter echoed through the streets.

Princess? I thought, then gasped. Princesses! If he got into Castle Canterlot, he'd steal not only unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus magic, he'd steal alicorn magic, too. If stealing the magic of hundreds of pegasi had strengthened him, what would stealing that of three alicorns do?

He kicked up a hoof and tripped me midair. I went somersaulting down the street, banging my head, hip, and hooves, finally skidding to a stop on my back on the pavement. Had I hit the cobbles, I'd likely have broken all my bones. As it was, my back felt skinned of all fur.

I shook myself, hooves up, trying to focus. My wings felt lethargic and half asleep, and it wasn't that I was stunned. I flipped myself to my unsteady legs. I'd left a Morris code stripe of blood on the pavement.

Lord Tirek had been stealing my flight magic, but from a distance. The street rattled to the clomp of his cleft hooves. Our eyes met and he stopped inhaling the dark blue stream from me. "As I said, weak-minded."

"Ugh!" I cried. He hadn't completely drained me. It took everything I had to get me airborne, but it was worse than when Discord had turned me into an upside-down flying whirligig. It was as if I'd turned to lead. My wings barely generated lift. I struggled into the sky, expending my energy like water from a burst dam, and was quickly on a ballistic trajectory that would hurl me into the ground. Heart pounding so hard I expected it to explode, I locked my wings and put all my momentum into a dive. Pressure against the failing flight surfaces of my wings tried to rip my limbs from my body, but I managed to pull up and bang into the second story roof of a building. I rolled upward, then, sadly, downward.

I flattened myself on my belly, legs and wings flopped out against the blue tiles. The uneven surface gouged at me, trying vainly to disembowel me. I scraped to a halt half a pony-length from the drop. One loose tile broke loose and a second later shattered below. I let out a gusting breath.

I lifted my head to look Lord Tirek in the eye. He said, "Despite my disdain for all things equine, I'm impressed." He opened his mouth and inhaled a stream of deep indigo magic laced with red pangs of pain. The sight of pain might have been imagined, but the feel wasn't. It was like every hair and every feather were being pulled from my body at once, but from the inside.

I screamed.

And then it was over. I had a sense of bereavement, like somepony I had loved had died. I felt oddly weak, like I didn't want to move. Like it was absurd to think about moving, or being happy again.

And then I looked into Tirek's smug goat's face.

I growled and levered myself up. It was suicidal, but somehow I did it. I found purchase with the frogs of my hooves on the edges of the roof tiles. While I found myself jerking to keep my balance with my hind legs elevated over my forequarters, I looked him square in the eye. He was little more than a pony-length away from me. I smelled an acidy pine scent on his breath.

It might be the last thing I'd ever say, pronounced with the last breath I'd ever take, but I shouted, "I'm going to kill you!"

I lunged at his face with every last bit of strength, bronze-shod hooves pedaling at his eyes.

He caught me in a massive right claw, a hoof-length from his nose. It was like smacking into the wall of a building, albeit a teensy bit softer, only to be enveloped by steel rods. I couldn't inhale, not that it mattered because the next thing I expected was for his grip to tighten and for me to pop like a balloon.

Instead, he set me down on my hooves on the cobblestone street, then, to add insult to injury, he swatted me on the rump. The sudden sting and instinct got me galloping down the street. I tried flying reflexively, but I might as well have been flapping cardboard. I didn't go far and turned around. I glared at his smiling face. What could he do to me now? I was drained of my magic.

"Maybe not so weak-minded an equine after all. When I've conquered this pitiful land and you've figured out that you want to be on the winning side, come beg me for a job." He laughed and walked away down Ponyville Way. Surprisingly, he didn't drain any of the ponies watching in shock.

This had happened to me before. Princess Nightmare Moon had killed Princess Celestia's carriage guards and sent her sister to the sun. Something inside had snapped. I'd curtseyed and called her, "Your Royal Majesty."

And I'd apparently bonded like a duckling to the mother duck.

Would that happen again?

I stood there shaking and shuddering—furious, spitting with curses. But I didn't follow him. Nor did I feel some sort of respect or love for him. He turned right on Alicorn Way, toward Castle Canterlot, and out of sight.

I collapsed. I was going to kill him?

What a laugh.

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A minute later, I wandered into Donut Joe's. The bell over the door jingled. I limped to the back and opened the pantry. I said, "It's safe, for now."

"You're bleeding!" cried Sapphire Shores. The other ponies gathered around me in the well-lit kitchen, amongst the steel sinks and fryers.

I looked and found myself bruised everywhere and covered in cuts and scratches, not to mention the glistening javelin graze puckering near my tail. A sliver of glass the size of a secondary feather stood stabbed into my withers on my right side. My nose felt congested; I sniffed and smelled an iron taint. It seemed that my nose was broken. "Bloody Tartarus," I said, the world suddenly tilting to the right.

The ponies hustled me, more like dragged me, to a stool by the counter. Somepony found a first-aid kit while Donut Joe poured me a coffee (now tepid), mixed in half as much sugar, and forced me to drink it. He said, "You look really pale."

"About that—"

Somepony jerked the glass from my withers. I gasped and dropped the mug. Jumping away from the spilt coffee, I accidentally smeared one of the dancers with a stripe of blood. She had been holding a wadded bar mop against my side.

Despite her golden blonde fur, she turned white as a sheet.

"Sorry," I said. Then added, "You ponies are going to have to get as far away as possible from that monster. He steals magic. Takes flight from pegasai. You need to get away."

"You said we're safe," Hauling Oats said.

"For now." As multiple ponies dabbed me with antiseptic, I launched into the whole mess, from the trying to save ponies by hiding them or getting them to run in a different direction from Tirek, to the cavalry charge, to me turning and fighting the creature, and my final embarrassing standoff.

Hauling Oats said, "You're a hero." Everypony began to stomp the floor.

I sighed and grabbed the medallion on a chain from around my neck, dangling it over a hoof. Everypony looked; some gasped; all recognized the royal seal. "It's what this says, but it's wrong in too many ways to enumerate. I'm a crazy pony, and I'd prefer what I said didn't go further than this room."

Sapphire Shores said, "Girl, you're my kind of crazy. Princess Celestia's, too, apparently."

And Princess Nightmare Moon's. "I threatened to kill him. I tried to kill him."

Into the awkward silence, Hauling Oats said, "And what's wrong with that?"

I heard an expected number of gasps.

"Look," he said, which in retrospect for him seemed like an interesting turn of phrase. "If somepony doesn't do something about this Lord Tirek, he'll ruin everypony's life. I might not be able to-to... to do it, but maybe... maybe it needs doing."

His stepmother looked uncomfortably at him, as if he'd admitted to leprosy, but I smiled. I looked at the fuzzy sphere of levitated darts depicted by his cutie mark. The young stallion still had his magic. And Lord Tirek was heading for Canterlot Castle. And the castle stood at the edge of a half-mile high cliff.

What if the centaur could conveniently convinced to slip and fall off?

I had a sprained something between my right rear hoof and the cannon bone. It hurt like the dickens, but, even with the limp, we were able to get ahead of Lord Tirek going uptown on a parallel street. The greedy beast, going by what I could understand from the frightened shouts of ponies fleeing him, was taking his time to dine on the magic of the populace—undoubtedly daring the princesses to confront him. Hauling Oats accompanied me, to the chagrin of his stepmother. That likely knackered my chances for a recording deal at Eohippus Records, but I'd risk that against losing the pony nation. I don't know who helped whom more, me guiding him as we trotted as fast as we could, or him letting me lean on him so I could move quickly, holding my leg against my stomach.

The sun had not yet risen. This worried me. Had the princesses fled? Probably smart. Had they hidden inside? Probably not smart. The gas lights still flickered and lit the streets. The lack of Canterlot hoof traffic at nearly 8 a.m. was both a relief and creepy at the same time. At least I didn't have to shout at many ponies to flee the city.

In all this, I realized something mildly comforting. My cutie mark had nothing to do with my standing up to danger. I was as blank a flank as I had been in the foal picture on my parents' fireplace mantel. I was simply off my trolley and well barmy to boot. I didn't try to sing, though. The thought of having lost my music forever threatened to make me very sad.

As I walked, I puzzled about why killing bothered Hauling Oats less than other ponies. Having sent the ponies from the last boutique dashing toward the Lower, I asked, "Why did you say killing this Lord Tirek monster might need doing, but that you couldn't do it?" My understanding of pony behavior gave me the answer, but I knew I was wrong in his case.

"I'm blind?" he tried.

"You jest."

"I like your Trottingham accent?"

"And until this morning, I was a beautiful hot-to-trot twenty-one year old filly. Not so pretty right now. Oat-Boy, if you don't want to answer, just say so."

"You're a harder case than my stepmother."

"Your stepmum rocks, so I've been told."

He shook his head, probably his version of an eye roll. "Okay, I'm not trying to avoid answering you, but since you aren't a unicorn, you might not know that unicorn magic has limits. It won't let a caster directly maim or kill anypony."

"He isn't a pony."

"Applies anyway."

"And that's because the magic is made of giggles and rainbows?" I'd seen rainbow magic a time or two, myself, and I well knew the joke.

"Hehehe," he said, "but that's not my point. You can throw something and let it fly—"

"Like a javelin."

"Or a stone, and I needed to throw a stone once, and I couldn't..." His voice petered out.

I'd hit a nerve. "I get it. You can stop—"

"I needed to throw the stone. I wasn't born blind. I know what my father looked like. I know what my stepmother looks like." He stopped. "I know what a monster looks like, and... I watched Father die. He liked his hard cider too much sometimes. It was a few months after he married Sapphire and we had returned to our island village for Marching Grass and it was night and he tripped over something on our way back to the beach cottage. I remember the moon and the rushing surf and the thick marsh grass filled with shadows not because of my bad eyesight, but because of the manticore it hid. Something had savaged the creature, left it crippled and starved, not ready to die though it should have. Father tripped over and tangled himself in some driftwood. It attacked. I tried to throw it but my magic wouldn't work because I wanted to hit the thing so hard it'd have been killed. It all happened so quickly. Its scorpion tail jabbed and jabbed. There were flat stones, the size of skillets, and I realized I could drop them on the creature's head. I-I couldn't."

He held his head low as he walked, but flicked his tail angrily. "The mangy beast died before Father did from its poison. It was very sick. The whole thing, a waste." His sunglasses glinted in the lamplight as he turned his head toward me. "And yes, I know, it isn't my fault and it won't bring back my father. But somethings need doing and I'm going to try and I'm going to see what it makes of me, and that's that."

I coughed. "I'm the crazy pony here. Don't expect me to stop you."

"Good."

"Fine."

"Some things need doing," he repeated

"Not stopping you."

"We sound silly, don't we?" he asked.

"May I call you Oat-Boy?"

"Uh, huh."

We turned right on Castle Way and marched up to the nearest castle entrance. Five large freight wagons had been turned on their side, blocking the view down Alicorn way. The portcullis, unsurprisingly, was down, but with nopony in sight.

I banged my horseshoe on the steel rods.

The blue pegasus from last night peered around a corner. Her feathers were fluffed and she looked very tired. She frowned at the blood crusted on my nose and the taped-on wads of cotton that peppered my hide.

"I need to speak with Riverdale."

She said, "He's not available—"

"Let her in," Captain Oh You Again said from down a hall.

The portcullis clanked up high enough to let me and Hauling Oats in, then crashed down. He and a dozen of the guard stood in the hall, armored in brass and armed with steel spears.

I said, "Spears won't work. Lord Tirek's hide is too tough."

Captain Riverdale stepped forward to examine my bruises and bandages. He smiled as he chuckled and shook his head. "I see you've been trying to get yourself killed, again."

"The Wonderbolts led a charge. The monster steals magic, even pegasus flight magic. Inhales it. Before they realized it, he drained them enough that they started crashing. Yes, I got into it. Distracted him... enough to allow them to land without killing themselves."

"He pummeled you."

"Bloody well pummeled me." I fluttered, but even that little effort lifting wings that had seemed weightless before, became immediately exhausting. "But I pissed him off, well and thoroughly." I grinned.

"Looks like he got the best of the deal."

"It was Discord who tipped him off about the pegasi. I saw it."

The troops behind started muttering.

I asked, "What is the princesses' plan?"

"Not something I can say."

"Well, I'll say something! That creature eats magic, and it makes him grow stronger and grow bigger. You need to keep him away from them—" I pointed toward the castle keep "—or the world as we know it ends today."

"I have my orders."

"Which you cannot share with me?"

"Pretty much."

"I have a plan I think can defeat this beast. But I am going to need some help and some supplies—"

"My orders are to protect this entrance."

"That's going to be a real help when he inhales and takes your magic and lifts the gate with his enormous strength. I fought him—"

"And clearly lost—"

"I'm alive. Bloody Tartarus! Give me a helping hoof. How many times have I heard not trying is trying to fail?" He looked at me. "Okay, fine." I reached through the neck of my shirt and pulled out the golden 107 medallion. It glistened, and part of that was sweat. "In a thousand years, 106 other ponies earned this, half of them in the last century. Does this give me any authority to ask for what I want?"

A couple of ponies in the hall nickered in surprise. Captain Riverdale sighed. "If we do anything, it'll be my decision to go against Princess Celestia's direct orders."

"With me and the hardy fellow here."

"Oat-Boy-Blind," said-fellow offered. "Something needs doing."

"I'm going to do it even if it kills me."

Riverdale said, "Pretty much what I'd expect from you, as well as the likely outcome. Tell me your plan."

It had involved oil and levitating water, but Riverdale said machine grease would be better and less visible in the moonlight, and available. Oat-boy and a unicorn battery sergeant explained that levitating water was difficult. Levitating things to dam up water was far simpler.

In the end, the Captain allowed only volunteers. The royal orders were explicit and astonishingly simple. Do nothing. Protect the castle entrances. He refused to command anypony to disobey who might face the princess' wrath, even if it would ultimately be his court marshal.

My team became Staff Sergeant Running Wolf and Lieutenant Sparks, both unicorns, and Riverdale himself, a pegasus like me but able to fly, and Oat-Boy. Too many minutes had passed and already the ground rattled with the sound of the approaching monster.

Oat-Boy carried a celestial-ton barrel of grease in his magic as Running Wolf guided him. Sparks flew ahead to figure out the logistics of my trap. I hoped my memory of the Canterlot Cascade and the bridgeworks from when I had put on the public Canterlot Wedding afterparty didn't fail me.

Captain Riverdale flew up beside the Bank of Equestria building, where he flapped against the shadowed peaked roof and could see down Alicorn Way without being seen himself. He watched for about a minute, then held his forelegs wide, indicating one block away and that Lord Tirek continued up Alicorn Way.

It was 8:15AM in the morning and still night. The cobbles were damp from the overnight mist. I looked right at the white brick university buildings nestled in a curve of the castle Bailey wall. Across the street, dark glass storefronts looked populated with shadows and ghosts. Not a pony nor a drawn wagon was in sight.

Except for the five overturned wagons.

Riverdale presently shortened the width between his legs by half. I nodded. He saluted and I saluted back, though I momentarily stood on two legs. He flew off.

I tottered forward, around the barrier, mindful of the suggestion a battery sergeant had made in passing. My teammate, Lieutenant Sparks—you could guess his special talent from his name, if not from his flint and steel cutie mark—had quickly implemented the idea and modified my iSing (which had survived my little battle). I now trailed a little pair of magical conductors behind me.

Alicorn Way was very well lit by gas lamps. Much of the jewelry district lined the south side of the street. Restaurants and couture shops lined the north side. Not to mention the bank building on the southwest corner. The walls gleamed white. Gold accents swirled around typical Canterlot flourishes of hearts and stars in blue and rose.

The street lay empty except for a monster centaur.

As I limped into view, Lord Tirek paused. His eyes narrowed as he recognized me.

"Oh, good, I don't have to introduce myself again."

"Weak-minded ponies!" he sneered, then snorted. "You didn't introduce yourself the first time."

"You're right! I'm Flopsy Mopsy, Princess Nightmare Moon's first and only Knight of Equestria."

He spat. The spittle exploded like a tomato thrown to the pavement. "Silly equine names."

"And Tirek means something? Lord of what?" I sniffed the air theatrically. "The flies?"

He stalked forward.

"What are you going to do, drain me of my magic?" I stepped forward, continuing to my imaginary line on the cobblestones.

"Maybe I'll squash you."

"You really don't think I'm going to let you do that, do you?"

He took two more steps and I flattened myself to the cobblestone street, my iSing before me. I had walked out with my earplugs popped in my ears. I tamped them in and...

Wait for it....

I pressed record.

Krump!

The explosion dazzled me, despite me seeing only reflections. I felt the blast in my stomach and lungs, and my tail and mane caught in a sudden gale blew forward. Splinters peppered my backside. My earplugs saved my ears; I only bought the best because I needed them every night, all night.

Bits of wagon flew overhead. Windows smashed. I watched a wagon wheel bounce and roll down Alicorn way, wobbling to where a stunned Lord Tirek stood, staring, catching the rim in his claw.

I looked over my shoulder. One wagon had been shoved to within a hoof-length of my flank. I hastily grabbed and pocketed my iSing, pulling out the magical conduits from my earphone and mic jack, then walked as fast as I could toward Palisades Park and the edge of Canterlot mountain. I looked over my shoulder. The barrel of fireworks powder had completely collapsed the stone around the portcullis, rendering the main gateway into the palace permanently shut.

Now was the hard part. I was the bait. Unless I had the measure of the stallion wrong, Lord Tirek would be furious that I'd made his conquest of Canterlot that much harder. All I had to do was limp three blocks without getting pulverized. Easy peazy lemon squeezy.

Perhaps the flash had blinded him, at least temporarily. I hoofed it as fast as I could, looking over my shoulder again and again. I'd got a block away, panting hard, before he appeared at the intersection with Alicorn Way. He grabbed the two wagons that weren't splintered and shoved them away like foal's toys to spin into a storefront, smashing out what little glass was left. I kept going as he walked up to the gate. It had been large enough to admit him, but the collapse would mean shoving aside boulders and digging away rubble before pulling out the steel bars of the portcullis itself.

That he'd attempt it was ridiculous. He had to know that there were other entrances. The big question was would he go north or follow me.

I turned and shouted, "Stupid equine name? Remember the name 'Flopsy Mopsy'. That's the name of the weak-minded pony that beat your sorry flank!"

He didn't even think. He stalked my direction.

This time I did run, on all four legs—the searing pain that left me gasping, be damned. I had to get to the trap before he did or all would be lost, the least being my life.

Castle Canterlot had a wide circular outdoor promenade. It was larger than a stadium. From a balcony in the wall of the castle, the princess could address a significant portion of the population gathered below. It had also held the largest outdoor rave ever held in Equestria, starring... guess who? The Bailey wall curved off to the west as I trotted for all I was worth, reflexively beating my useless wings any time I stopped concentrating and looked back at the rapidly approaching locomotive of death.

The castle—and the promenade and most of upper Canterlot—essentially paved over the south side of the mountain. Problem was that the Canterlot Cataract, the multiple waterfalls that cascaded down the mountain side, originated further up the mountain. Clever aqueducts, including one that spirited a stream of water around the throne in the throne room, sluiced the water safely to the edge of the mountain where it formed two rivers to either side of the promenade. An arched bridge rose over each.

With Lord Tirek not ten pony-lengths behind me, I reached the bridge. I trudged up the very right edge of the path, grunting with effort and got over. Lord Tirek's stance was very much wider. With his weight, the pressure down on his hooves made the grease layered there barely noticeable. I lost my footing and skidded the last few pony-lengths down the bridge.

At the crest of the bridge, the centaur loomed where I lay crumpled.

He laughed.

Captain Riverdale yelled, "Now!"

Lots of little things whistled through the air—stones probably—to pepper Lord Tirek's shoulders and face. He yelled out, hiding his eyes with a claw.

At the same time, I heard a titanic crashing splash. Lieutenant Sparks and Staff Sergeant Running Wolf had dammed the flow of the east river for the better part of a minute, and they had now let go.

Captain Riverdale, flying high overhead yelled again, "Now!"

Oat-Boy didn't really have to aim well if he was throwing a cloud of debris. This part was the biggest stretch in my plan. You slap a pony in the flank, stallion or mare, they'll rear and gallop away from you. It's instinct.

For centaurs?

The best I could see in the moonlight, the buckshot hit Lord Tirek square in the flank. His white tail whirled like a propeller as he yelled a curse in some lost language. And...

He reared.

By now the grease had smeared his cloven hooves—and the frogs of his hooves that had given him further traction. A moment later, his forequarters still in the air—his least stable stance—a wave washed over the bridge.

I didn't see much after that. The wave wasn't much higher than I was, but the muddy water swamped me, slapping me in the back, spinning me, and washing me out along the promenade. As the water receded, I coughed what I had inhaled from my lungs. I struggled to look. I faced the castle. Gasping, I turned around, but saw nothing.

I scrambled, fell, and got myself careening to the edge of the river channel where I slid into a curb with a bruising crash.

I had missed the splash of him falling in, but there he was being swept away. He flailed his arms and legs, but had apparently fallen in on his back. The flow floated him toward the edge. He couldn't catch hold of the wet algae-slickened boulders. In a space of about five heartbeats, he would sail over. Nopony his size would survive a half-mile fall to the pool below, assuming he avoided the rocks in the side of the mountain, which... how could he with his mass?

Ponyville's water supply would be fouled for weeks.

I grinned.

Then I heard, "Oh dear, that won't do," followed by an accursed snap!

Coloratura

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Tirek had tilted over the edge, flailing. The next instant, he vanished. And it hadn't been over the side.

I heard a thump.

I looked up. Lord Tirek had landed three stories up on one of the palace walkways, completely dry. He glared down at the bridge from whence I'd been washed away. Oat-Boy, Lieutenant Sparks, and Sergeant Running Wolf had gathered below him, and Captain Riverdale was braking to land beside them.

I yelled, but it was too late. Lord Tirek inhaled their magic, and, before they could start to flee, he'd sapped their strength. One by one, they slumped where they stood.

Discord stood at Lord Tirek's side, but he twiddled his thumbs looking at the still dark cloudless sky as if Lord Tirek's magical culinary pursuits were a waste of his time. He waited for him to finish, never glancing down at us. The wyrm pointed and marched the centaur away toward the castle keep.

Failed.

I'd failed.

I rubbed my closed eyes.

I'd— No, I hadn't failed. I'd saved thousands of ponies—assuming the ones I sent running followed instructions and fled Canterlot like I had told them—and the pegasus cavalry. That was significant.

Though not really if Canterlot, then Equestria, fell.

I limped to my four companions who lay there groaning. My anger carried me that far. I'd led them in to this, this ruin. Suddenly, viscerally, it hurt. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Why?" asked Riverdale. "Your plan worked!" He strained and levered himself up, then helped up his fellows. "Our dumb luck somepony saved him."

I sighed and shook my head. Pony behavior! Tears started and kept rolling. On impulse, I hugged Riverdale, sopping as I was, and probably bleeding all over him. He let me cry myself out.

I pushed my wet mane out of my face. We stood looking at each other, once again blank flanks all. Nopony knew what to say. In the scuffle, Oat-Boy had lost his sunglasses. His eyes were an eerie, though nonetheless wonderful, pale pale crystal blue.

Suddenly the sun rose. Or rather, it jumped into the sky, but not all the way. We looked and I saw it wriggle the rest of the way up until it looked like 9 a.m.

I said, "Well, Princess Celestia is still alive."

Captain Riverdale stiffened. He said nothing.

To Oat-Boy, I said, "And you, young stallion. It's time we get you back to your stepmum. Let's hope she doesn't flay my hide from my bones."

"She won't."

As my eyes adjusted to the morning light, I saw his sunglasses and popped them on his face. We left the royal guard behind and retraced our steps to Alicorn Way. The sooner we fled Canterlot the better.

I might be fooling myself, but, after Tirek won, I expected to be high on his enemies list.

Once again I guided and leaned on the stallion as we made our way. As we approached the rubble of the smashed main gate, a startling thing occurred. The air shimmered ahead of us and Discord appeared. He stood there, rubbing his claws together in obvious anticipation.

The hair along my spine rose. Not goosebumps. Hackles.

To my charge, I hissed, "I'm sorry. Go to your right until you find a wall and hunker down."

"What?"

"Shhh! It's Discord."

For long moments, the wyrm stood lost in his own imagination as I listened to Oat-boy's horseshoes on the cobbles, then him sliding down against a wall. I'd been there when Discord had transformed Ponyville into a chaotic jumble of deformed and inverted buildings and warped ponies. I suspected that was his plan for Canterlot.

When I had last seen him, Princess Twilight and her friends had encased him in a prison of stone. I had found that prison laying on its side in the middle of a park in Ponyville. Not only had I found a statue that was him, I had found it to be fragile. I'd jumped on it, flexing its neck to the cracking point.

But I hadn't done the necessary thing. No, I'd told him that Princess Celestia had imprisoned him because she had plans for him.

I had bounced on his neck. I'd evilly said, "Crack!" into his ear.

I had warned him that when Princess Celestia paroled him, he had better behave.

I had told him what to do if he were ever to see me again.

I stalked toward him, the best I could. My heart beat in my throat. I had no choice but to lift my rear leg to my stomach to maintain my composure, which lent a clack cla'clop... clack cla'clop... cadence to my steps. My mane was soaked, but at least it stayed out of my eyes when I pushed my fringe aside. Blood dripped in red rivulets all over my body. Bruises peppered my hide, which was slashed on every surface. I looked more than badly beaten up. I looked almost cadaverous. I hoped that meant I looked scary.

Zombie-scary.

Once again, I faced death. Really, what could I do against him? One snap of a claw or his facile tail and I would cease to exist.

Regardless, I stepped forward, one hard measured step at a time.

He was so lost in his plans that I got within five pony-lengths where I waited. And waited. Frustrated, I said, "Hey, Discord? Remember me?"

He turned his head, mouth open, then looked down into my eyes. His were red in a field of yellow.

"I'm Flopsy Mopsy."

He blinked.

"Crack!" I reminded him and took a step.

He stepped back a step.

"I warned you what to do if you ever saw me again." I took another step and said sharply, "Crack!"

He stepped back a second time.

"I am retribution." I took another step.

His mouth made like a fish. I felt certain the next instant he would fall over laughing and I'd be teleported to my doom, but I took another step.

And another.

And then another until I was immediately in front of him. I had to look straight up to capture his red-eyed gaze with mine.

I reached up a hoof. I did not blink. I tapped his scaly hide. It made a muffled click as I opened my mouth to say... what I had told him to do... the next time he saw me. My voice sounded like the breathy exhalation of a haunted dark cave as I whispered:

"Run!"

I heard a definite "Eep!" He said, "Maybe Tirek needs my help." He snapped his chicken claw.

And vanished.

I guess it wasn't my cutie mark talent, but Bloody Tartarus, it had worked nonetheless! The adrenaline rush snapped and I collapsed over onto my side, giggling then laughing, despite the pain, laughing until I couldn't breathe.

Oat-Boy appeared at my side. The velvety frogs of his hooves felt along my neck to my face. "Are you okay?"

"More than okay, mate. I feel brilliant. I hurt like the dickens, too, but I'll take my victories where I can get them. Discord is gone. I frightened the horse apples out of him."

"Really? Thank Celestia."

I rolled upward so I was laying with my legs to the left side. That's still uncomfortable if you're on cobblestones, as I was. That afforded me a clear view of my flank.

My cutie mark was back. Significantly faded, but clearly visible, too. That meant that everything I'd deduced was rubbish. Under my breath, I hissed, "Shag me."

Discord didn't reappear in Canterlot. No great battle against the princesses ensued. Not that I saw or heard, anyway. At least I knew that Princess Twilight Sparkle had made it out of Canterlot.

All-knowing Twilight Sparkle. I hoped somepony had a plan.

I realized I didn't have the energy to make it back to Donut Joe's and Oat-Boy admonished me not to try. The dear boy was clearly worried, especially after I related precisely what I had done with Discord... both in Ponyville and just now.

We made it to Palisades Park and I limped to the redwood fence that guarded the precipice. I wanted to see the pool below the falls. I wanted to imagine it ran red with centaur blood. I wanted to know how I would have reacted.

I wanted to know how corrupted I'd become from exposure to Nightmare Moon's darkness. Or if I were still a pony.

I couldn't imagine it, sadly. I could hear the cascades crashing on the rocks, but the turbulent foam below the falls just looked white and peaceful as it spread out and faded into the lake that glinted in the morning sunlight. I didn't know if that was good or bad.

I had been sitting, gazing into nowhere for some time when a sonic boom assaulted my ears. I spotted a purple contrail circle Ponyville a hundred pony-lengths above the ground. "Something's happening."

I got up, searched, and found one of the tourist telescopes. Unlike in Manehatten, the telescopes here were free. I looked, but saw nothing. I knew very few pegasi had the speed to cause a magical contrail. I'd seen a few Wonderbolts in a show that could do that. Rainbow Dash was another.

Purple—I'd never seen that, but I suspected whose contrail it was.

Nothing happened for a great long while. I spent it grazing on the grass around me. Nopony was around and I didn't care that it made me look low-bred. I was born a peasant anyway, and I was hungry.

I heard another sonic boom. As I jumped up at the telescope, I saw another looping contrail. The telescope slipped from my hooves—another smear of blood—and struck the side of my head, but I got it aimed down at the Ponyville plain. Through a halo of phosphenes, I saw various streaks of purple, which matched the princess' mane and tail, and sparkling stars. I followed it to the endpoint.

"That's Tirek."

"Where?" Oat-boy asked. "In Ponyville?"

"Discord must have teleported him out of Canterlot. Princess Twilight Sparkle is facing off in front of him. Sweet Celestia!" A ball of fire appeared between Lord Tirek's horns and Princess Twilight disappeared. "She teleported away."

"That's good."

"I don't know. Tirek's turning toward Ponyville. Oh, no!"

I related what I saw. The ball of fire released a fiery bolt that shot into town. I thought of my parents' house, but that wasn't his aim at all. The bolt struck the Golden Oak Library. The tree disintegrated into flaming flinders of branch and bark and book thrown high into the sky. Dark smoke drifted over Ponyville.

I hoped Princess Twilight wasn't in there.

Less than a minute later, a tremendous battle ensued. She led him away from Ponyville and any pony that might get hurt, though Tirek did trample the school playground I'd once spent hours a day in. Despite Twilight resembling a mouse compared to Tirek's elephant, both demonstrated equal power, and with it they destroyed acre upon acre of farmland and orchard. At one point, hills of stone rose only to be blasted out of existence.

Princess Twilight was trying to kill Lord Tirek, of this I held no doubt. When she blasted him deep into the ground, I was sure she had succeeded. I felt vindicated. Maybe I wasn't corrupted after all.

But Tirek proved more resilient than anypony could have imagined. Far from crushed, he threw off the dirt he was buried beneath and the pair fought again.

Then they gave it their all. Titanic blasts shot between them, meeting in the middle with a blinding flash.

Having used the telescope to look, I jumped back and tumbled into the grass, blinded in one eye by a light brighter than the sun. Sound of the immense explosion reached us seconds later and the ground trembled.

Oat-Boy found me and held me. I found it a bit cheeky of him, but I kind of needed it. He knew. I knew it. So I said nothing. He was warm and I liked that.

I didn't look for a long time. There were no further explosions, but as my eyesight cleared, I noticed flashes of light. I poked my head through the fence. Clearly, without need of the telescope, I could see Tirek. He had grown so big that he stood taller than the trees of the Everfree Forest. For some reason, he used his enormous power to rase tens of trees at a time, sending trunks tumbling over canopies flying into the sky. He searched for something. I hoped that something was Twilight Sparkle, that she still lived. In the past, through her own efforts or through a proxy, she had always won out over evil.

Still, I could not escape the thought that the reason Lord Tirek had grown was that he had eaten alicorn magic and incorporated it into his being. Still, why would he hunt her if he had bested the princess?

That question answered itself.

A ball of rainbow magic—not unlike the magic I saw deployed by Twilight Sparkle and her friends to turn Discord into stone—appeared, rotating, flashing, and hovering over the forest and over Lord Tirek. The centaur blasted the rainbow sphere, but whilst his power could cut down groves of trees, it bounced off the sphere like water splashed against a rock.

I scrambled up onto the telescope again, and good thing, too. The sphere wasn't much bigger than ten pony-lengths. Beams the color of Twilight and her friends collimated into a complete rainbow and lashed down at Lord Tirek. Rainbow magic swirled around him, causing him to— So hard to describe other than to say he evaporated. He became incrementally smaller as the magical aura grew. Suddenly, the monster disappeared completely, leaving the magic he had stolen as a cloud-size pulsing aura in his place.

Lord Tirek was dead. Tears streamed down my cheeks and my throat constricted as the implication of what I'd seen seeped into my darkened soul...

The rainbow sphere burst into three parts and sailed into the sky. Like a comet, it streaked up and over Canterlot. Once again, I lost my stance on the telescope and tumbled back, gathering further bruises and getting the breath knocked out of me. Less than a minute later, a wave of rainbow light washed across the ground. My whole body tingled. When I looked at Oat-Boy, rainbow lightening crackled along his horn. Suddenly a pale blue aura ignited around his horn.

His magic was back. His cutie mark was back. Mine colored in. Flapping my wings lifted me to all fours.

Once again, Twilight Sparkle had carried the day.

"Time to go home, kiddo."

I didn't make it to Donut Joe's, though. It seemed I had been bleeding all along.

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I had fainted from blood loss.

I woke hooves-up in a yellow-painted room adorned with daisies. I found bright sunshine streaming through a window, a needle attached to clear tubes in my foreleg, and my right hind-leg held straight by a system of pulleys and cords. Some device beeped in rhythm with my heart beat. A nurse walked in.

The white-clothed palomino mare said, "The royal physician, Dr. Flowing Waters, says you're going to survive." She also told me the Exchequer had paid for my stay.

All I needed to do was heal.

I did as ordered. My parents visited me and cried a lot. They told me I was crazy and I agreed with them. Sapphire Shores visited, too. By the time she finished telling me what she thought about my involving her stepson in my plan to kill Lord Tirek, I needed burn treatments for my left ear.

She signed me to a three-record deal. She arranged tutors to help me with my songwriting. And she gave me a new stage name. DJ FM didn't cut it for the recordings she wanted Eohippus to produce. Flopsy Mopsy was just wrong in too many ways to enumerate.

Songbird Serenade...

I'd get used to the name, I supposed. Anyway, Cheers!

Princess Celestia didn't visit me, thank... well, thank Celestia. I'd got her royal guard to disobey her orders. She'd obviously had a plan. It was plain to see, reviewing how Princess Twilight had acted as I escorted her to the train station that night. Crazy me. I of no faith. Well, I did have faith in Twilight Sparkle. That princess was the best, despite her steadfast naïvety.

As I waited in a entirely unnecessary wheelchair for the discharge nurse at Canterlot General, a scroll appeared midair. It was tied with a ribbon and stamped with a wax seal the design of which matched my medallion. I jumped away from it, knocking the chair over as I fluttered, then yelped when I put weight on my right leg by landing. I wore a bronze brace. I'd sprained multiple tendons and muscles, and cracked the bone when Lord Tirek tripped me midair. An uncontrolled fall for a pegasus could be fatal. I'd been lucky. With the brace, at least I could walk normally.

Helping Hoof met me at the exit. He shook his head. "You can't turn down a summons from Princess Celestia."

"If wishes were bits, all ponies would be rich," I said as he walked me to a waiting taxi.

Whatever the princess wanted she got. Still, I found the term "public audience" alarming. I can't exactly say I was embarrassed by my militant behavior because I would admit to it, if pressed. No, that pony who didn't fear death was not the pony I wanted others to recognize me as. It wasn't the pony I wanted to be. I didn't really like that me. "There are plenty of dress shops in Canterlot. Stop at one."

When I arrived at the public audience hall in Canterlot Castle, I wore a simple body sock that covered me from chin to hoof in black (did you expect any other color?), concealing the multitude of wounds I bore. A simple black bustle skirt covered my flank and hid my tail and recognizable cutie mark. It didn't hide all of the brace, but that added a nice touch of bronze color that stood out as if I were hiding armor under my clothing.

Maybe I was.

I'd tied my black mane back into a simple bun that crushed the hair together so it looked less mop-like. It left my deep blue eyes visible, but today I wasn't being shy. I couldn't hide. Bruises peppered my face, especially around my broken nose, so whilst anypony could see my light fur color, mostly they'd see a train wreck—and would look away. I could be incognito even in plain sight.

The doors to the throne room had been completely torn away, and the pony-sized twisted bronze hinges stood as a mangled testament to a conquering foe. As I strode in, carefully putting less pressure on my rear leg, I lifted my medallion with a wing to show the majordomo.

The red-robed pony straightened up. "Lady, please follow me."

I muttered to myself, "Lady is it now? Does anypony listen to how often I curse?"

The majordomo led me forward beside a queue roped off with red velvet. Ponies started looking. Even the earth pony merchants currently talking with Princess Celestia in front of her throne glanced back.

The princess wore her full regalia, her purple-jeweled breastplate, gold crown and horseshoes. She stood head and withers above everypony. Sunlight streamed colorfully through tall stained glass windows on either side of the long hall. Some force had melted one of them. Judging by the deep purple smear in the sagging glass, I had an inkling who had been depicted there.

So... Lord Tirek had captured Equestria's monarchs, after all. What kind of plan was letting that happen?

The throne itself was the fabled waterfall throne. Water surged down the sides, burbling, and added fresh moisture to the air as I approached. Princess Luna had joined her sister, despite it being late morning. She stood when she noticed me as if in shock, but sat again, looking down at some papers she had been reading.

I didn't miss that she glanced at me now and again.

As we walked beyond the queue, I saw benches against the wall. Upon one rested an orange pegasus and a blue earth pony brushing his blue handlebar mustache. Mum and Dad. They stood when they saw me, looking confused, concerned, and awed at the same time. We were immigrants from Trottingham. Nopony sat in the presence of the Queen Bliss More, and no commoners were invited to direct audiences.

But we were in Equestria.

I heard Princess Celestia say, "I'm sorry. We must continue this later."

The earth ponies bowed and retreated back to the head of the queue, far behind where I stood with the majordomo. He announced, "The Right Honorable, Lady Flopsy Mopsy, daughter of Duster and Spinfluff of Trottingham."

Bloody Tartarus. He styled me as the daughter of peerage, but my parents were untitled. Right honorable elevated me above my parents station. It made no sense. I guess I didn't know anything about the subtle stylings of titles in Equestria¹.

I did curtsey though.

"Your Royal Highness!" While I had no compunction about meeting eyes with powerful ponies, I knew when being rude was being rude. I looked down, holding the pose.

"Lady Mop, please rise. I wave formalities with you."

"Thank you, my liege." I raised my eyes and saw the the princess quirk a half-smile.

I'd called her "my liege." I had been naturalized, so it was true.

Her mane flowed behind her, the green, pink, and blue colors caught in a magical zephyr. Her violet eyes were as striking now as they had been the first time I had seen her, in the pre-dawn light on the day of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration when I'd seen her ambushed and caught in her sister's rainbow magic. I'd seen her heavily mascaraed eyes go wide. I'd thought I'd seen her murdered, that I'd witnessed regicide.

I glanced at Princess Luna. She glanced speedily down at the papers held in her magic. She'd been looking at me—and had found that embarrassing. In her Nightmare Moon aspect, we had history.

I knew better than to speak until spoken to. After a moment, Princess Celestia said, "I called you here today to speak of the events three days ago."

Here it comes.

I had to stop it.

I steadied myself and spoke, taking the thinest possibility that she had given me leave to do so. "I did what I had to do. It was no more than for another pony to breathe. I desire no credit for my actions and will bare any punishment my actions deserve."

I lowered my eyes.

The princess chuckled. "You will get what your actions deserve. Do not lower your eyes in my presence," she added sharply.

I looked up. Our eyes met and she bowed her head to me.

The gesture took my breath away.

Some ponies had been paying attention. I heard gasps from the assembled crowd. I blinked, stunned, despite all the words we'd shared the evening after the Changelings had been defeated. In private, she'd given me my medallion and dubbed me one of the Heroes of Equestria. She'd held me when I'd cried after remembering out loud my actions after I'd thought her murdered. This, however, was different.

I glanced and saw Princess Luna had also bowed her head to me.

Celestia continued, "Three days ago, you saved uncounted ponies from suffering thanks to an essential kindness in your heart. You saved a thousand pegasus lives that would have been lost but for your initiative. And, through a few words uttered from your mouth, your kindness saved a city from the torture of chaos unleashed." She raised her head and locked her gaze with mine. "You have a heart bigger than you know, my little pony. I hope that one day you can accept yourself the way other ponies accept you."

There was truth in those words, but she didn't see deep inside me. I was broken. I accepted only that much.

She saved me from having to respond by adding, "And please accept this for the kindness you bestowed on Canterlot and Equestria."

I glanced down at a little black velvet box set by her magic at my hooves. I curtseyed. "Thank you, Your Royal Highness."

"Thank you."

I swept it up with my wings as the Princess returned to her throne. I had been dismissed.

That hadn't been so bad. I hadn't been publicly called a Hero of Equestria. My audience might merit a paragraph or two in the royal going-ons in one or two newspapers, to be forgotten. Hopefully Sapphire Shores wouldn't pick up on it for some publicity. At the diner, I'd asked her to keep my story to herself.

I found myself walking to Mum and Dad. They waited until I got to the bench to enfold me in their embrace. My bruises complained, but I didn't cringe. Dad said, "Look at you, my little sweetie drop, recognized by a princess."

I hugged them back. And we all shared tears, despite it having to be a public spectacle. One thing I cared about was my Mum and Dad, and it felt brilliant that they could be proud of me.

Mum asked, "Did you do all of that?"

I liked Princess Celestia's sanitized version, but it was a bit of a lie by omission. "I can give you details later if you want."

"Supper? I'll make you your favorite, squash fingers and kale crisps!"

"I'd like that." I hadn't eaten much fried breaded food since I'd got out of the house, but it'd be a lark.

Mum asked, "What's in the case?"

I knew what the black velvet jewel case held. I wasn't surprised at the gold medallion on a gold chain. I was a second time a Hero of Equestria. 109 was stamped upon it.

Who was 108?

Mum noticed the 107 medallion hanging from my neck, and raised a hoof to better see it. Dad said, "Is there something you've been keeping from us?"

"Can we chat about it tonight?"

"You may. And..." Dad took a deep breath, "If your Mum and I catch the 11:35 to Ponyville, we can take the afternoon job in the Town Hall archives we'd had to tentatively cancel. See you for supper, right? Ta!"

I grabbed Dad with a wing and with the other pulled out a couple of silver bits from my purse. "Be a lord and a lady. Take a taxi."

"You're a luv." They grinned and trotted off.

I would have given them gold bit, but they prided themselves on their self-reliance. It had taken months before they'd let me pay off the house. This little token, being able to do little things for them, that made me smile for the first time today.

I glanced right and caught Princess Luna studying me. Her eyes flicked down to her papers as Princess Celestia resumed with the merchants.

"I'm happy," I whispered to myself. And...

I was. I was happy.

I put the second medallion over my neck so 109 nestled over my heart next to 107. I climbed up on to the bench and lay, making like a sphinx, suddenly content to veg.

Ok, that wasn't entirely true. The veg part was true, mind you, but something else kept me there. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, and when I opened them I found Princess Luna again watching me. Her behavior struck me as a foal in a restaurant who had spotted a celebrity and desperately wanted to fangirl about it, but couldn't, because, well, you know, parents. Princess Luna wanted to talk to me.

Princess Nightmare Moon had made me the Hero of Equestria I was today. I had bonded to her like the duckling to a mother duck.

So I lay there, awaiting the mare as she screwed her courage to the sticking-place. Princess Celestia's sister had a reputation for being haughty, prissy, cold, and fiery-tempered. The afternoon of the morning Nightmare Moon had broken me, Princess Luna had danced to my beats at a party thrown for her return. She'd been rejuvenated into a filly barely my age. She'd grown a lot since then, grown a darker midnight-blue coat and her mane had filled with a magical wind and twinkling stars. But then, as now, she'd demonstrated a shyness when dealing with ponies. I'd made the ingénue comfortable at the party, providing her a safe place beside my turntables to enjoy the music away from everypony. We'd left talk of Nightmare manias and knighthoods unspoken by mutual unspoken consent.

With my eyes closed, I heard a general shushing of the the chatter in the hall. A minute later I heard the clatter of approaching hoof falls. My heart began to race in my chest, making it hard to control my breathing as I pretended not to notice.

"Lady Flopsy Mopsy," said Princess Luna.

I jumped off the bench with a flutter of my wings, into a perfect curtsey. Pain shot through my leg as I said, "Your Royal Highness!"

"Please call me Luna."

I dipped my head. "Luna, my liege."

She laughed lightly. "Raise your eyes. Of all ponies, I understand the intricacies of court language. Just Luna."

I met her deep blue eyes. "Luna."

"I—" She glanced away, then said, "I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your music."

"You sound like a fan."

"I may not be your biggest fan, but I am your most royal one."

Unlike her sister, who'd attended the rave after the Canterlot Wedding with 107 in her saddlebag, I felt certain that since the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration, Luna had never attended a club or festival I had headlined. There were the bootleg recordings, of course, but I decided to push. "You remember me?"

She blinked a moment, the blue powder applied over her eyes making it a semaphore of her emotions. "My sister is correct. You are very kind. That first day when I returned to myself, I cannot express how your music calmed my nerves. It let me fit in when we first met."

"We met before that."

Silence. A very long silence, then, "I-I had been a bad pony, and then everypony forgave me. I was very confused. How could they? I had been—" She took a deep breath and whispered, "I had been evil."

I shook my head and said, "There is some good in evil, princess. How I kept Discord from rampaging three days ago, how I kept ponies safe while the Changelings attacked, how I prevented the stampede at Town Hall when Princess Nightmare Moon panicked everypony... all that was because of you. You saw me, you looked me in the eyes, and you transformed me into what I am today."

She blinked rapidly.

"When you were Nightmare Moon."

Her eyes began to glisten. She said, "I remember. You were the first pony to recognize me as royal. You were the first and only pony to bow to me as Nightmare Moon."

"You see," I swept my wings up to point at myself, to jostle the medallions that glittered there. "Good can come from evil."

Like me, the princess stood there, broken. Tears streamed from her eyes and rolled down her muzzle to drip to the marble tile floor. We had been watched, of course, and a hush came over the hall. It lasted maybe seconds. She didn't even wipe her eyes. She suddenly let out in a deep sob of what seemed like anguish and grabbed me up her wings into a tight embrace. Between sobs, she said, "Thank you! Thank you!"

I felt her tears roll down my neck as her mane pulsed around me like a living dreamscape. She felt very warm.

She added, "Your words are a gift of incalculable worth."

"And true," I whispered into her furry blue ear. They had to be true, because deep inside I was evil. I just redirected my evil to good purpose.

"Oh, oh, oh!" she said, pulling free. She swiftly wiped her tears, slightly smearing her eye shadow. "I have a long overdue gift. Kneel. You have to kneel."

In Trottingham, everypony kneeled or bowed. None of these wimpy curtseys mares got away with in Equestria. I prostrated myself as directed, left leg out and right bent, but I kept my eyes up so I could see.

She said, "In Equestria, we do not have knights. That is for fairy tales and histories. Ancient Unicornia had knights, but we rejected that for the hypocrisy and bad choices of its autocratic queen. Still, a knight should represent the best of ponykind, the strength and the kindness shown for the ponies of a nation. We don't have knights, but you, Flopsy Mopsy shall always be a knight in my heart, not just for your respect or for your loyalty to the nation, but for the good you have bestowed upon our world." Tears again streamed from her eyes as she bowed to me.

Or not.

Her long blue-grey horn lightly touched my left shoulder and then my right.

"I dub thee Dame Flopsy Mopsy. Please rise."

I stood and we looked around at the same time. Princess Celestia had continued her conference. A good couple dozen petitioners had watched and looked confused. None appeared to be court reporters.

In a loud whisper, Luna proclaimed. "You are now the first knight of Equestria, as promised!"

We smiled at one another, then began giggling in unison.

In our darkest moments, we had remembered one another. It meant a lot to me, and by her tears, it also had to Princess Luna. We had both found good in evil.

"Oh," Luna said.

"What, my liege?"

She snorted. In a real whisper, bending to speak so I felt her breath in my ear, she said, "I was wondering... Do you think you could spin me a private show? I would truly love that."

"Name the time and place."

"Is now good?"

__________
Footnote: ¹Right Honorable. "Right" means "Very" in this instance. In this case it denotes a member of the princess' privy council or an acknowledged agent of the crown.

Author's Notes:

Time to rate the story. Hint: 👍 (Please)

From Nightmare Moon's promise to fruition, Flopsy Mopsy's adventure to knighthood is complete. She's gone from music fan, to DJ, to headliner, to DJ producer, to singer/songwriter—and has the stage name she will be known by at the Friendship Festival. She now has her posse, which includes the Songbird-ettes, Helping Hoof, and Oat-boy Blind. In the picture, Helping Hoof is on the left and Oat-boy on the right. OBB is wearing magic glasses, but that's a different story. Can you find 107 and 109 in the picture?

As an experiment, I wrote the story arc out of publication order. I wanted each installment to stand alone, reprising the most important elements necessary for the current story from the "previous" ones. I did almost no fix-ups, so you might see some discrepancies in Unmarked Time, but I left them as Flopsy Mopsy's memory is ordinary and she does color some events through her own perspective. The stories were written in this order:

Knight of Equestria I: Certainty
Knight of Equestria IV: Unmarked Time
Knight of Equestria II: Discordant Harmony
Knight of Equestria III: Pizzicato and Changelings for a Pegasus Heart

While Flopsy Mopsy's story is complete, there are two other titles in the cycle.

Knight of Equestria V: Girl's Night
Knight of Equestria VI: Rainbow Tears

Flopsy Mopsy appears as a secondary character in Filly, Separated, after the events in Rainbow Tears.

I created the four covers from composited images. Each is different, meant to highlight something in Flopsy Mopsy's life.

I completed writing the first four stories prior to my publication of the first. This was a good thing for you as a reader. The cycle has turned into a labor of love. As you can see by the view count at the end of this chapter^* (subtract 11 views tallied during editing), Songbird Serenade's saga has not been well received. This likely has to do with a protagonist who—aside from singing, and her alter-ego writing, the best song of the movie—has a personality and character in the movie best described as... meh. Had I not enjoyed this story as much as I did, and all the messages about royalty, heroism, the psychological affects of living with danger, how pony mentalities differ from human mentalities (they are truly aliens in the SF sense), etc., I might have abandoned the cycle sooner—completed work be damned.

At this moment, V is partially written, and what I have written so far might pass as a completed story. It includes Luna. It's supposed to include Fluttershy, and a dangerous and easy-to-misinterpret costumed new friend she dresses up for the occasion. It takes place the Nightmare Night the year after the events in The Scare Master. VI is a rough outline. It's what really happened after Tempest Shadow conquered Canterlot, and answers why Twilight's friends had relatively little problem getting into and through occupied Canterlot, and why powerful friends didn't help.

You probably guessed it by now, but I'm putting the series on hiatus. (Oh noes!) I thrive on my stories being read, but barring a spotlight or a good review in a group like Seattle's Angels that dramatically improves the number of readers, Songbird Serenade, Knight of Equestria is now officially on the back burner.

Please. Please don't let this news or disappointment hurt your rating of this story! I'm just trying to be fair in telling you what to expect. You are welcome to encourage me to continue in the comments.

I will be publishing other stories, soon, so I'm an not giving up writing. Far from it!

^*Check the last chapter of the other stories, subtracting about 10 from each to get the actual reader views.