Then I encountered Discord turning Ponyville into the Chaos Capital of the world. I wasn't buying his changes made ponies more fun, and I told him as much, which meant I had a part to play in the drama.
Long before I became Songbird Serenade, while I was still in high school, I encountered Discord turning Ponyville into the Chaos Capital of the world. I wasn't buying that his changes made ponies more fun, and I told him as much, which meant I had a part to play in the drama.
Though this three chapter story is a sequel to Knight of Equestria: Certainty, it begins with a reprise of the first story and is written to be enjoyed as a standalone work. A big thank you! each to DoContra and Loganberry for pre-reading and suggestions.
Songbird's Playlist
Fly Away!, the JPB Remix by NCS. Looking for You by the Empire Cast Ain't Nobody, a cover by Ain't Nobody, not the original by Chaka Khan I'm Free by Kenny Loggins on the Footloose Soundtrack.
The following sequence from the long description of Certainty also sets the stage for this second story in the series: Music Biz's Wicked Tongue: So, Miss Serenade... World renown DJ, songwriter, records topping the charts, fans cry "Songbird" at you, Friendship Festival headliner... What's the scoop with the serialized stories The Strand is launching? Self-aggrandizing fiction?
Songbird Serenade: Self-aggrandizing? (She shuffles some pages on the table before her and takes a deep breath.) On the evening of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration, a blank-flank teenager was expecting to scrub and dust, helping her immigrant parents clean Town Hall overnight. She was... okay with that. Her family was glad for any opportunity. Her Trottingham accent worried her—
WT: Your accent—
SS: Might her classmates discover she was a peasant who cleaned up after other ponies and always would? She jammed with a nascent DJ named Vinyl Scratch, but, with her sorry excuse for being a DJ next to her only friend, she had no dreams of a musical future.
(Her blue eyes catch mine for an instant.) Little did I know at the dawn of the Age of Harmony, I would meet its first monster.
The filly made it to her next sunrise, but would be piecing herself together for the rest of her life. Ultimately, without Princess Nightmare Moon there would be no Songbird Serenade. This is one of those stories.
WT: Are you saying the stories are autobiographical?
SS: (She covers her face with her mop of bangs after I see incipient tears.) It's a confession. She dislikes the filly she was. As for the mare she became... (Shudders)
It's hard to reminisce about the naïve events of your foalhood when you can't help but remember seeing the princess of your adopted homeland murdered. Worse, moments later, said murderer looked me square in the eye.
Obviously, I experienced the morning of the 1000th Sun Celebration differently than you.
I'd been a shy pony. Shy had a ropey black fringe that hung over her eyes, and she often hid behind it—or behind her mum's legs.
You see, I was an immigrant, a foreigner in a strange land, a nopony class-climbing peasant who'd advanced to cleaning houses with her mum and dad. That night I pretended to be a DJ at the official party for the celebration. Pretended might be a bit harsh; ponies had danced happily to my beats and owning all the hooves had proven revelatory.
But then...
Eye to eye with Princess Nightmare Moon. Yeah, eye to eye. It turned the world I understood upside-down and pulled me inside-out.
And I held her gaze.
That pony I thought of as Shy evaporated like the fog on a hot summer morning. When I knelt and called her "Your Majesty!", the usurping princess promised to knight me. I later learned I was the only pony who knelt, or even recognized her manifest royalty. I was the pony who survived certain death—by acting on instinct and without thought.
Minutes later, I stopped a stampede in Town Hall the same way by glaring at the panicked ponies and shouting one word: "Stop!" Fear became a weird emotion that puzzles me even as I write this for its lack of grip on me. Those few twilight hours transformed me, maybe broke me (ha, maybe?), but they didn't have much of an outward effect on me.
Ok. I did earn my cutie mark, puppet hearts suspended from a cloud, that night—the night that was supposed to last forever—but I'm still not certain for what. So, not much of an inward effect, either.
Not much anyway.
I no longer suffered nightmares. Instead, I had vivid dreams, some accompanied by blaring heraldry trumpets and bright prismatic lights, almost all starring the black-crowned usurping princess in her armored regalia. She always recognized me as being her first knight of the realm. Sometimes I flew with and fought beside her in Town Hall accompanied by a symphonic overture.
Like everypony, I'd heard of Twilight Sparkle's travails mastering the elements of harmony, but my dreams did not follow the official line that seemed rather too friendly. Mine relied on a Trottingham-style peerage thinking Twilight Sparkle had indeed been named Crown Representative and therefore had been named Princess Celestia's regent because the princess had no progeny and no declared heir. The instant backlash of them discovering a commoner in the succession with Celestia missing resulted in a struggle by the six friends and their supporters to make the royal guard actually capture and master the mad alicorn instead of trying to arrest Twilight Sparkle. I typically found myself staring down Princess Nightmare Moon, trying to convince her to surrender in a grandiose drama—prance horns and cellos darkly playing her theme music—albeit usually to fail... but with the six mares getting their chance to catch her in the same rainbow tornado I'd seen murder Princess Celestia.
Each dream ended with the scent of ozone in my nostrils and the same feeling: That's nice. It's over. Don't I have some homework I've forgotten to do?
I knew what was truly terrifying: late homework.
The only thing that had outwardly happened until today, had happened on the school playground near the end of summer. It was going to be my twelfth year. I was a de facto senior as they call it here. The previous year's crop had moved on. I was theoretically one of the lords of the playground. Nevertheless, bullying proved more often a flaw of personality or a side effect of being strong than it did the class year to which you belonged.
One day, I walked around a corner toward the swing set to find Blue Bird and Gone South, both husky unicorn mares, telling Ruby he owed them his lunch by shaking him, causing the ginger pegasus' down feathers to swirl into the air. Since they'd ambushed him near the corner, I walked in on the tableau.
"What are you looking at?"
I'd just halted. I looked into Blue Bird's indigo eyes, parting my overhanging fringe against my usual instinct. I'd learned the trick; I could push back by holding my gaze. It was like keeping eye contact with Princess Nightmare Moon, or stopping the stampede. Something at the back of my mind complained that I didn't want to mess with bullies, that I'd get my wings broken. Instead, I lost all expression and kept staring... not even blinking.
"What are you looking at hearts-hiney?"
I glanced at Ruby tumbling mid-air in a midnight blue aura, then at Gone South with her grey fur and sunny yellow mane, then back into Blue Bird's indigo eyes. True, Ruby's mom owned a diner; she probably prepared her colt an extraordinarily tasty lunch, but you needed to find a way to share with a classmate, not to literally shake down your fellow student. "Ruby doesn't want to share his lunch."
"You'd better mind your own business," Blue Bird said, grabbing up a rock and dropping Ruby.
"Yeah?" I asked blandly.
"Yeah." Pissed off, she threw the rock half-heartedly and charged.
I shifted, causing the rock to bounce off my withers, not my wing. As I did so, I spun on my right leg with a flutter of my wings and kicked with my back legs.
That resulted in a bloody nose. Both Ruby and Gone South fled.
"Yeah," I said as Blue Bird sat hard and began to cry. I trotted back around the corner and bumped into Cheerilee. Well, I had a bruise to prove I wasn't the bully. Of course fighting wasn't allowed. I didn't mind detention because Cheerilee always had something interesting to teach. Mum and Dad weren't happy, regardless.
I was, however.
It made me wonder. I didn't like what I had done, but it had been what needed doing, and I liked that I had done the right thing. It puzzled me that I'd hurt a pony to do it.
After that, I had a reputation for secretly being an alpha mare. Bullies behaved when I was around, and I made a point of being in sight when particular wankers weren't behaving themselves. I heard that other ponies called me "cold and steely-eyed." Good enough for me, even if I usually hid my eyes behind my overgrown rag-mop fringe. Neither Vinyl Scratch, nor the ponies that hired me to DJ their parties, cared.
I was different. Yeah. A bit broken. How much, I would soon learn.
It came after the Running of the Leaves. It came after the Great Galloping Gala during which Twilight and her friends figuratively turned the event upside down to the joy of the tabloids and, as attributed to Pony magazine candids, Princess Celestia herself. It came out of nowhere, unless you considered the Royal Sculpture Garden somewhere. My immigrant parents had, on a cultural holiday to Canterlot, taken me to "appreciate" Equestrian high art, you know: paintings, stained glass, and, well, sculpture.
Who knew that Princess Celestia had a gallows sense of humor? I immediately recognized the no-longer-a-statue creature when I saw him in the flesh weeks after the trip.
Dense grey cumulonimbus clouds appeared in the sky as I trotted home from school, my latest batch of new music releases playing into my ears from my iSing. Mum and I being pegasi, we usually heard about the scheduling of storms—if not felt them as twinges in our bones. Dark and bulgy, they caused the sky to take on a green tinge. Rogue under-layers of fluffy pink cumulus and flat stratus scudded in quickly and unexpectedly. The new dancehall synth playing in my ears kept me dancing happily along, sliding now and again.
Having lived in rainy Trottingham until almost thirteen, a little rain never bothered me. However, having lived on the ground all my life, I hadn't yet taken enough climate science to know candy-floss pink clouds weren't proper weather, even in Equestria. The iSing was an enchanted black opal, so I didn't worry about moisture.
But when a very tall, lanky, faintly dragon-y looking monster appeared in the middle of town between one blink and another, I slowed. I had been about to cross the bridge over the brook in the park, but I turned toward him. He had a malformed stallion face, so I decided he was a he. His mismatched antlers and claws and hooves were a downright weird pastiche of unrelated animals, and, I thought, probably painfully unbalancing. He was the creature I'd seen in the sculpture garden. He grinned, widely, and looked extremely happy and—the primitive pony deep inside knew already—happy in a dangerous way. He rubbed his claws together greedily as his long tail rolled upward. The fluff at the end became a claw that made a snapping sound. The house in front of him turned into red-striped blue-plaid cloth and began flapping in the breeze. It collapsed like a tent as ponies cried and dashed out.
I stared as he made another snapping sound, snickering to himself like a five-year-old sneaking away with the contents of the biscuit tin hidden above the icebox. Something else changed down the street ahead of him. I couldn't see what, but ponies screamed.
I felt ice cold. I walked toward him, eyes narrowed, the clop of my hooves sounding incautiously loud. A brown pair of ponies in ballet clothing, dancing on point despite the dangerously uneven cobbles, crossed in front of me. Their bouncing pink tutus looked absurd.
I got within ten pony-lengths. His irises were red and mismatched like the rest of him, surrounded by a sickly yellow instead of white. I looked up, waiting, while, deep inside, suppressed pony sensibilities screamed Ahhhhhhhuh!, bucking me repeatedly in the belly, trying to make me spook and run where he couldn't possibly see me. But I had looked into Princess Nightmare Moon's electric green eyes. That I could, and did, had twisted me inside out. She'd acknowledged me by my action and it had capital-C changed me. The crucial cranial circuit between fear recognition and horse-spooking lay shattered like pink carnival glass. Replaced with...? I so wished to understand what—or why standing up like this made my hooves warm up and my heart beat strong.
He looked down. His eyes widened in surprise. Princess Celestia had kept this monster in her sculpture garden magically turned to stone. Alive. But turned to stone. What did that say about her? About him? That made him a definite puzzle—and somehow special.
He blinked first.
"What do you think you are doing?" I asked. My alpha mare voice might have convinced him better had it not quavered between "are" and "doing"!
In my peripheral vision, I saw ponies looking around corners and out windows and doors. They saw I'd gotten the monster's attention. Taking a very deep breath, I motioned with a hoof and a wing while maintaining eye contact.
I heard fleeing hoof falls.
What in bloody Tartarus are you doing? I thought.
He cried, "Ooo! Another serious pony!" He popped out of existence and back in beside me. "Are you related to Twilight Sparkle?" He wrenched up one of my wings, then pulled my tail.
I bucked his claw and got an "Ow!" I turned and fluttered back, again locking my eyes on his.
The dodgy creature held his claw in surprise and lifted an eyebrow as he stepped back, too. He said, "Maybe not. You don't seem particularly friendly."
"No. Not friendly when somepony is hurting everypony," I said. "Princess Nightmare Moon had a big influence on me."
"Hmm." He scratched his fuzzy bearded chin. "Never heard of her."
"You'll be sorry if you hurt ponies."
"Will I?" Between one heartbeat and another, he held me up at the height of one story, cupping my chest in his lion paw. I flapped my wings to support myself. His chicken claw flicked in the empty air above my forehead, but made a reverberating sound as if he had struck a rod of wood. "No horn."
"Others have them."
"Like this Princess Nightmare Moon?" I found myself suddenly mid-air, unsupported, happy I'd insisted on flapping just now. He said, "Haha. They don't matter."
"All ponies matter."
He looked at me, scratching his head, clearly puzzled, which was good. He had faced south when he first confronted me. Now he faced north. Most ponies were good at sensing danger, unlike myself. Behind him, ponies fled their houses and down streets. I saw tens, then hundreds. Their hooves made a distant thunder, but I had his full attention.
He said, "In any case, I'm not hurting ponies. I'm just making them more fun!"
"Most ponies would disagree."
"You are tightly wrapped, aren't you, my little pony?" He began laughing. "You get it? It's what Celestia says. But, she's not here. Haha. Get it?"
I circled slowly west, giving even more ponies an opportunity to dodge around corners and into alleyways or to shoot into the sky. I tried to look as dense and as confused as I could until his face began to sober before I said, "No..."
"Really?"
I pursed my lips and tilted my head, watching and waiting as his mercurial bewildered expression slowly condensed toward disbelief before I shook my head. "Nooo..."
"I mean, Celestia says, 'My little pony,' when she's trying to act like everypony's mommy and I said..."
"Um... I-I don't get it."
"Huh? Well, for a flying pony you are way too dense. Like lead. You need to lighten up. Let me fix that."
My heart skipped. The part of me that suddenly insisted I had a death wish did manage to make me flinch, but I held his gaze for my final seconds, hovering just out of paw-reach, even as his eyes changed into a swirling sparkly psychedelic light show. I said, "I don't need any fixing."
"Au contraire. You think you can control others, but you're wrong! You're controlling yourself, suppressing your inner happy pony while ponies shrug and humor you."
I heard a snap and felt a strange vertigo, like you get looking into a nauseating funhouse mirror; it warped my view of the creature, the buildings around him, and the sky of pink and grey clouds until they became twirly. My stomach flip-flopped and I felt my heart throb in my throat. For an instant, it felt like every inch of my body was pulled outward, then thrust back in, like bread dough being folded and punched down.
The frightened little voice previously inside me wrested control of my vocal cords and I shrieked. My heart raced. I found my wings beating in a blur as I streaked upward over the roof tops, flying as far away as I could get from the living nightmare.
Flying upside down.
The new voice inside, which replaced the old scared voice now in control, insisted I calm myself, that I ignore the panic that flooded my emotions, that I turn back immediately. Ponies needed help!
It failed to turn me.
There was the part of me that felt too much fear to think, which caused me to flee, and the part that told me to think of how the equally scared ponies felt, which I ignored. Scary but refreshing selfishness made me feel astonishingly normal, except that I whirly-gigged through the air, my wings flapping and legs pedaling, my body trying to fly with the buildings above me and the sky below, and each time I tried to compensate...
I dipped toward the roof of Town Hall, barely missing the finial atop it, my nose passing a hoof-length from the red shingles. I veered right, which was left, and down, which was up, skimming the grass, unable to slow down because everything I did went opposite my intention. I avoided a window across the street by sheer luck and got a face full of thatch as I streaked skyward. All the while, a babble of words streamed from my mouth like I had lost my mind.
That this was probably true for many at the moment tortured me and got me to loop back from the edge of town. I saw buildings floating upside down, the dirt formerly below them like roots pointing at the sky but dropping clods and stones, each a lethal bomb. The lawns and hills turned one after another into a crazy-quilt of fabric patterns, unimaginatively mostly checkerboards, but I did see a few paisleys that wriggled like fever-dream tadpoles.
Then it began to rain.
Something... eww, brown. I twisted midair and dived, a new panic trying to form in my already fear-wracked heart.
I got splashed in the face. Cocoa?
I smacked into a cloud and found myself covered in gooey sticky pink spun sugar that fought against the lift of my primaries and secondaries. Despite the desperation that drove me, I had to slow.
That allowed me to look around, avoid a red tile roof and dodge another covered in golden thatching. I still ricocheted through an open window across a bedroom where a pony hid beneath a brown woolen blanket and out the, thankfully open, opposite window. I touched the frame with the edge of my right wing, though; the candy floss stuck just enough that it set me spinning downward.
I flared my wings and landed hooves down on a street turned into a pastel blue and pink linoleum checkerboard. Trying to stay standing proved tricky. My twitchy muscles betrayed me. I fell on my left side, knocking the air out of my lungs. Despite my grunting and kicking against it, I found myself hooves up. Sugary pink goo made me a fly stuck to flypaper.
"Bloody Tartarus!" burst out of my mouth, followed by a string of Trotter invective that I'd always listened to carefully when Dad swore, but had never had the nerve to repeat.
No, I won't relate what I said.
The sun sank abruptly, instantly replaced by a crescent moon. Contrarian me spooked, but the combination of being hooves up and pasted to the linoleum road prevented me from springing into the sky.
I lay there instead, shrieking.
My eyes ached I held them so wide. My heart raced and I beat my wings against the ground for the many seconds it took for the impulse to pass.
Into my temporary submission—puffing, wings knackered and aching, throat burnt raw—I spoke.
"Did that really help any?" I heard my inside-out (or rather my outside suddenly inside) Nightmare Moon-inspired cold voice of reason.
The rest of me cried, tears running across my forehead, through my mane, and dripping to the street. In a sob, my emotional self answered, "N-no."
"Can we think this out?"
"Can we just leave? It's too scary here! I want to go home!"
My split-mind came together in an oddly balanced virtual pop. We—I yelled, "Mum and Dad!"
Thanks to the pooling of a sudden cocoa downpour dissolving the sugar securing me to the road, a renewed frantic-yet-controlled pulling and wiggling freed me.
"Do the opposite," I admonished my other-self out loud as my emotional side hesitated, quickly preened and threw me into the air again.
"Right, left," I said, over and over, fighting the need to tilt. "Right, left left." Never quite getting it correct, frightening myself over and over as I careered toward lamp posts and chimneys, I gave in and flew upside down. It made the flying less of a battle, which allowed me to find some calm. I still had to make vocal course corrections, but the internal war between the opposing domains of my mind refused to ease until I let something happen I'd never let happen before.
I began to sing—and "I" liked it.
It wasn't that the untransformed "me" didn't like singing. It was, well... I called her Shy for a reason. That whole having immigrated from Trottingham thing, the family having gone from being peasants to lower class maids and janitors. I had an ingrained dislike of being looked down upon and hadn't wanted to explain the word peasant to my Equestrian school mates. I didn't want to be noticed—and singing seemed a bit, well, demonstrative.
And, okay, yes Equestria is a friendly place. I could have taken the chance. I didn't because...
I didn't think my singing voice was any good. That voice now rang out and it didn't suck. Was I going to do everything I'd previously suppressed?
An image of an electric-blue-maned white colt appeared in my mind and my heart skipped beats. I swerved around Sugar Cube corner, now floating in my path, as his name, Ghost Zapper, came to me. Really a brill example of unicorn horse-flesh he was, and I'd really fancied him in my junior year, writing poetry and finding songs I was sure he'd like to hear that might make him dance with me. Figuratively, I mean, not figuratively. The senior had graduated.
I really hoped I didn't run into him in this chaos. It might be really embarrassing to explain why I was suddenly snogging him, especially under the circumstances!
The thought of him and me together seemed to clarify the resolve of my other half, so I wasn't going to fight that. Unless we—I found him.
Suddenly, I noticed I wasn't alone. Above me on the streets (okay technically below but bear with me), I saw ponies staring agape. Town Hall rose into the sky. The clock tower, big red tongues having replaced the hands on the clock, herded the bigger building around like a shepherd dog.
As my cloud of panic lifted in pieces, I recollected seeing dancing buffalos, probably the transformed ballet ponies revised from before, and stilt-legged antelope-rabbits, amongst other crazy things perpetuated in the name of "fun." How pony-like to stare at the bizarre.
I tried shouting to run, but it didn't come out and it interrupted the rhythm of my wingbeats. I spent long seconds correcting right-wing dominant whirly-gigging again.
How could I warn them?
Right. Singing.
I hit upon Fly Away!, a simple trap-y future-bass number by New Canter Soundmachine, a song covered by too many artists; it had few words, but I knew them well.
That my staid half wanted to sing appealed well to my emotional half. I sang, "I have ta fly... I have ta fly us... here, there, n' evvv-ver-ry-where." And as I did, finding harmony in chaos, I succeeded in flying in a straight line.
Albeit upside down. Abrupt stomach-churning yawing disabused me of perfection. I nevertheless looped back, dive-bombing the impromptu audience staring at the horror midtown. Not only did I sing the lyrics, I beatboxed the high-tops popping with the beat in my head, clacking my bronze-shod hooves, and even filled in the slack between phrases of the song with the almost meowed secondary voice that mirrored the main lyrical line.
With the cobble road hoof-lengths from my eyes, I swept away from the civic center. Ponies screamed and spooked, and ran from my on-coming flight. They scattered in the right direction, thankfully not to inside the houses but down the street. I swooped up and back into the sky.
That I succeeded so well in scaring ponies made me wonder if I'd turned into a monster. A glance at my legs and my wings showed pony legs and pegasus wings. The tail waving behind me trailed long mop-like dark hair, not writhing snakes. The sun came up, went down, and came up in quick succession. In the improved light, I slowed while passing glass storefronts. I saw myself swimming through the air on my back; only my straw-yellow fur looked a soiled white. My black mane had turned the drab grey of the soiled mop I wielded most afternoons helping my parents clean other pony's places. I looked as if powdered in ash—it was like seeing somepony in the depressing light of a very stormy day.
I wove through streets, trying to get my bearings amongst houses turned to things like candy canes, umbrella stands, and sand castles. Others waved like flags or looked like deflated balloons. I saw no rhyme or reason to it, or why half the thatched alpine-style houses stood unmolested, even when some hovered upside-down unchanged. I swooped up over a roof, high enough to figure out where the monster roamed, and down what I thought was probably my street. Twice, I had to charge bewildered transfixed ponies to get them running out of town.
I spotted our house, a little one-story featuring an eyebrow dormer that streamed light into the converted attic where I had my room. All the shutters stood open. I hoped that was a good thing. I looked in each window, including the half-round one upstairs into my room. I was singing, Search'n for Somepony. "Life means nothin' 'less I've got somepony ta love! / Search'n, search'n, search'n for some somepony who'll show me where you 'ave gone..."
I had no doubt Mum and Dad would hear me. They'd hear me a block away, belting it out as I was. They weren't home. They'd probably been out working.
I hoped that was a good thing.
Not seeing me like this was a good thing.
I heard voices as I flew away. I followed my perked ears in a direction that was away from where I'd last seen the monster. A few blocks down, I recognized branches over the rooftops and spotted the Golden Oak library. Some ponies argued loudly.
Joy! Another dozen ponies to scare toward the edge of town!
As I crested a roof ridge, I gasped, halted, and settled near a chimney which had a flat area for the chimney sweep to work upon. Laying on my back, I saw a very obviously annoyed purple mare leading a familiar white, yellow, pink, orange, and sky-blue mare, all of whom had been greyed as had I: Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony. I knew something was wrong by the way Pinkie Pie kept getting in the other's faces about laughing at her. The leggy fashion model pony... Fluttershy—she kept saying things, some shockingly unprintable things that I shan't repeat here (either).
And then there was the boulder the dressmaker carried on her back!
They all entered the library, after Fluttershy first trampled the bushes. I decided to leave when the dressmaker and Twilight Sparkle began arguing about bringing the rock inside despite the door not being wide enough.
Twilight Sparkle still looked purple, likely unaffected by the monster.
If there was one thing I'd heard, Twilight Sparkle never failed. She and her friends had battled, conquered, and transformed Princess Nightmare Moon into Princess Luna. In my state, there was nothing I'd be able to do to help Ponyville's librarian and notorious do-gooder. I lifted off, or rather flopped myself over and slid down the roof to launch myself spiraling into the sky. I found myself again singing.
I looked forward to convincing—okay, spooking—more ponies to flee to safety.
It was kinda fun.
And, so long as I wasn't getting near the monster, my two halves remained in accord.
The insane transformations swiftly became difficult to witness, though, as I encountered more and more of what the monster wrought. It didn't disturb me so much to see post boxes circling fire hydrants like puppy dogs and trees inching around on their sides like colossal caterpillars. Such aberrations pleased my emotional side enough that she remembered a song about trees.
No, what disgusted me were things like a purple mare shivering in the street, sneezing, her house knocked over like a house of cards. Worse was Diamond Tiara*. I recognized my snooty lower classmate. One could wonder what dissonance in her soul merited the monster turning her into a drooling slack-slipped pegasus who continually flipped her lips with a hoof and babbled. It wasn't the only desecration I witnessed, but, in the temporary moonlight, it broke something in me.
We cried.
We became very angry.
We flew midtown. I didn't think it was a good idea and expected she would turn tail and flee screaming when I saw the monster.
We didn't flee.
He sat upon a red high-backed throne amidst moon shadows. Sparkles of evaporating magic orbited his pink and blue crazy-quilt hill. His chicken claw held a glass containing one of those umbrella drinks adults thought cute or tasty or both. (They were neither—I'd sipped my share I'd found cleaning Berry Punch's house and other places.)
He lifted his dark sunglasses and glanced at me.
"Oh, you."
He lowered his glasses. He made a snapping sound with his grey wolf's paw and the sun rose. Having transformed me, I no longer interested him.
That made me even more angry.
I wanted to yell; she wanted to sing, but she couldn't get the words out. She couldn't remember a song sufficiently derogatory. (Regarding sad songs and country-pony songs, not a fan.)
Unless we harmonized our intent, we'd never get our point across. We didn't want to be just an annoying buzzing fly. We wanted to be a wasp—with a stinging tongue.
Surely, Twilight Sparkle would soon defeat the monster. About resigned to return to pony spooking, an idea formed in our frustration. Why did we have to sing other ponies' songs?
Circling a demonstratively dangerous, egregiously equine, dragon-like demon at thirty pony-length wasn't exactly conducive to creative song-smithing. How could I come up with a rhyme, let alone meter? I had remembered the after-school class Cheerilee had held on eloquence and elocution a few weeks ago for creative ponies from all grades. The youngest was Sweetie Belle. I was joined by Red Pencil, the editor of the Foal Free Press, and Grammar Book who'd already published a few short stories. Mum and Dad had always insisted on my knowing my letters. I always got high marks on essays. Cheerilee had discussed hyperbole, polyptotons, and other rhetorical tools. Alliteration seemed the thing for this, especially because of one purple pony I expected to see rampaging soon.
"Purple prose presents plain perfection," came out when I tried in a whisper. My grin grew and I chuckled evilly. I circled behind the throne and dived.
"Pretty purple pony persists!" I belted out, sing-song, gliding upside-down hoof-lengths over his mismatched horn and antler.
He gasped and jumped up as I made a hard right bank and whirled around him.
His snaggletoothed head turned and followed me with a queasy disregard for the articulation of his neck.
"Per-per-pernicious pa-pa-punishments," I sung at his face with such plosive vigor I could not help but spit in his eyes. "Personality purr purr personally pleased!" I added.
His lower lip crept under his front teeth, then he smiled. "Low wit! How perfectly chaotic!"
"Patently pedagogic," I returned as he let me sputter on him yet again, but this time with better aim. I flared my wings and tried to hover. And succeeded—mind you, hovering on my back, a hoof-length from his delighted face. He wasn't admiring me, just the chaotic craftwork I represented. "Pathological persistence probabilities populating purple pony pressure punishment. Placation? Pummeling probably."
His face visibly glistened. I could not help but laugh. He laughed, too, deranged beyond any comprehension of the scorn I heaped upon him, or the warning of his fate in my "low wit."
All because.
I really liked my emotional self suddenly. She was pretty cool suggesting this tiny bit of evil. Did two evils make a good?
"Pugnacity presages perdition plus purple pony purgatory!" I bellowed like a metal singer. I fluttered my wings in his face, flipped and zipped over his head, not missing my opportunity to buck the back of his throne. It fell over, and so did he. He proceeded to roll on the strangely carpeted ground, laughing his flank off at an imagined joke.
I pumped my wings hard and I sang There's Nopony. "There's nopony (nopony else) / who loves me (loves me more) / Takes me high / Takes me higher than you (nopony!) ..."
I crested the closest roofline, unwilling to press my luck. I flew loop-de-loops and then anyway. Back to pony spooking!
It wasn't a minute later, following a few day-night transitions, that I heard rapid-fire whooshing spring-loaded noises. Only magic could create such a sound—or a soundboard connected to a boom box, which was unlikely considering the chaos.
I had again circled around in the neighborhood of the library, so I zipped upward for a brief spy-hop. I felt it, that sudden pulling-tingling irreality that made the fur on your spine raise: Magic. Magic of an odd sort, nothing like the unicorns performed at school. This felt like... the hot sun on a cool day that made you want to rest on a cloud, fluff your wings, and just soak in some rays. Calming. I curved into a flat trajectory, upside-down, even as I saw colorful stars shooting up from below the roofline a few blocks away, near where I'd harassed the monster. The top of a red diaphanous sphere appeared and sank from view. As I approached, everything felt so right that I began singing an epiphanic drone as if I were one of a chorus heralding a miracle.
Maybe I was.
A strange rainbow light arced upward and down. The rainbow wasn't the colors of something produced by water and the sun, or a creation of the Cloudsdale weather factory. This rainbow displayed the colors of Twilight Sparkle and her friends. It raced downward and shot out of view.
Reality wrenched sideways and warped.
Or rather, I warped.
I blacked out. I found myself in a steep nose dive; I flared my wings barely in time to bang my hooves down hard on somepony's balcony and skid into a wall. The shock left my knees tingling. I wobbled, but had no trouble standing upright.
From my high vantage point, peering over a wrought iron balustrade, I saw the unbelievable. The perversion of reality reversed itself. Everything broken became whole all over Ponyville. Floating buildings planted themselves. Houses that had fallen apart reassembled. Stilt-legged rabbits became precious little bunnies. Ponies transformed by the monster into dumb bricks, dancing buffalos, and flying idiots became scattered unconscious ponies in the street.
I saw a few lever themselves up as the cloudy pink sky melted and evaporated into a cloudless blue one. The quilt-work landscape transformed into dirt, lawns, and distant orchards.
Could it actually be over?
Ponies in the street shook themselves. One tan stallion with an hour-glass cutie mark looked around and shrugged. With a smile, he trotted away. I saw a pegasus who'd crashed on a roof do the analogous thing, looping gleefully into the sky. I took to the air, well able to fly steadily. I saw the stallion's goofy reaction repeated again and again and again.
Did they think they'd fallen asleep and experienced a meaningless nightmare?
Why did I remember, then? Because I was a "serious pony?" I wasn't going to ask. I wasn't going to ask anypony if they remembered any of that. I mean—It was a nightmare. Forcing somepony to remember that. I shuddered. To make them think it might have been real... that would be unforgivable.
I flew past the Golden Oak library and navigated the restored landscape of Ponyville houses, eateries, and stores. Where the monster had placed his throne turned out to be where Ponyville Way crossed Main Street. Paddock Park provided a small green lawn that included the Prancing Pony fountain, a few trees and benches, and a bridge over the Canterlot Cataract brook. I had been about to enter the park when I'd first noticed the monster in my path.
In the middle of the street lay a black opal with white-wired eardrops. I landed and picked up my iSing, turning it over and around with my primary feathers. Unmarred. It had been here, in this spot, that he had—
De-harmonized me? It seemed forever ago.
Yet—yet, I had found harmony in hardship. I had lacked internal harmony. I'd had no inkling of the treasure I'd missed.
The need to sing rose up. Knowing my inner-pony better now, I let it bubble up as I looped the strap on my iSing over my neck and popped in the eardrops. I strolled toward the small hill I knew stood beyond the fountain. I keyed on a Keen on Loggin' song at low volume and sang along.
"Magic helps the pony who fights against fear / Friendship's the key and it sets you free..."
My voice sounded pretty good! Of course I knew everypony thought their voice sounded pretty good, until they heard it recorded, but the strength and clarity of it surprised me.
The uncanny observation might just have been due to what I'd been through today. I'd record it tomorrow. Sobriety would show if my impression matched reality.
Behind the fountain, a sorry sight hove into view. The toppled statue would have stood two storeys high. It had a mismatched antler and horn, a mismatched talon and paw, and two mismatched wings. The equine dragon looked quite surprised. Hard to believe I'd spat in his eye. A right wanker he was.
I started laughing as I walked up to him.
As I knelt before his head and stared into his mismatched irises, words bubbled up. I sang, "Pugnacity presages perdition plus purple pony purgatory."
He looked satisfyingly shocked, though I allowed that it might have been his reaction to what Twilight Sparkle and her friends had done to him.
"I tried to warn you! I told you I was influenced by Princess Nightmare Moon, but did you listen? Nooooo. She made me her knight, you see." Well, technically, she promised to make me her knight, but still...
I wasn't taking any credit for what Twilight Sparkle or her friends had wrought. Regardless, it was delicious to think that the monster wouldn't know I hadn't been somehow instrumental in his being... stoned.
I snorted loudly.
He remained unmoved, unmoving, his mouth open in disbelief. So deliciously fitting.
"You don't know what hurts ponies, do you? You bring discord to harmony."
No response, but something told me rainbow magic didn't kill. It would be very satisfying if he did indeed hear me. He'd been imprisoned in stone in the Canterlot Sculpture Garden awaiting Princess Celestia's parole. He was probably awaiting his next time, now.
I tapped his forehead. "Maybe I bring harmony to discord. Harmony in discord?"
I got up and looked at the trees that rustled in the slight breeze. A red bird with a black mask alighted on a branch—a cardinal. Behind me, the water in the fountain pattered pleasantly. I shivered, finding peace where minutes ago had dripped horror. I walked around him, breathing cool clean air to fill my lungs and noticing that ponies again trotted down the street. Some noticed me. They were dozens of pony-lengths away.
I kicked the statue in the bear-like foot. It clanked.
"Remember this if you're in there. Good in evil."
I bucked him in the hip. The statue wobbled. It felt pretty solid, but it was nevertheless carved from some sort of marble. I'd seen plenty of ancient marble statues missing legs or tails. Sweet.
"Evil in good."
I put my front hooves on his bat wing and pushed. It flexed delicately. I clambered up on him, flapping my wings to keep from slipping as I navigated his snake-like curves. I walked precariously toward his neck.
"Which are ponies? Good? Evil? I could just step on your neck here."
The curve of his neck provided tricky footing, and I had to work to get my wooden horseshoes properly positioned. Thanks to the big difference in our size, I could get all four hooves between his head and his chest. Wings out for balance, I began bouncing. There was no support between his shoulders and where his head rested on the ground.
Perfect.
I bounced harder, judging the flex in the stone and straining eee-eeh sound it made. I thought of malformed Diamond Tiara flying around reduced to a drooling idiot.
"Crack," I said, then looked down at his face.
I thought of ponies turned into objects and living nightmares. I thought of Twilight Sparkle's friends twisted and greyed like me, turned into irascible dis-harmonized wretches. All for "fun." I crept closer to his head and lowered my muzzle to his ear to whisper as I bounced some more.
"Crack... Then, no next time..."
I took a deep breath.
"But I won't. This... prison means there's supposed to be a next time... Princess Celestia could have sent you to Tartarus, but she didn't. Don't blow it! But... But if ever you see me again, remember, and remember well, that I'm not like everypony else and—"
Directly into his ear, I hissed, "Run."
I fluttered to the grass. I turned and faced him. Because curious chattering ponies had already entered the park, into earshot, I said lowly, "Oh, yeah. Thanks for fixing me."
The cardinal began singing his whistling, chirp, chirp, chirp song. I listened, then imitated it... Well enough that the bird sung back. I looked around as ponies noticed and smiled. I smiled, too. To think I'd actually been embarrassed to sing!
To the monster, I added, "I do appreciate you fixing me. I guess there can be good in evil."
I hoped so. For my own sake.
I really wanted to buck him in the muzzle, though—but that was personal and not the right thing to do, unlike when I bucked Blue Bird in the mouth. I decided it might be something other ponies would report. I wasn't keen on that, so I trotted off.
