A collection with no central theme or core idea, beyond "this is what I, at some point in my life, thought would make a compelling read." They have nothing in common beyond all being pieces of Me.
A collection of stories that follow different genres, with no central theme or core idea, beyond "this is what I, at some point in my life, thought would make a compelling read." Some are short, some are long, some are happy, some are sad. At least one is about food.
They have nothing in common beyond all being pieces of Me.
This is where I'll post Writeoff stories that can't I can't quite turn into standalone fiction. Some of these may end up being expanded, revised, and posted independently.
Some stories were written either in response to art prompts, or had art drawn for them as part of the competition. All artists have been credited appropriately.
All stories are dated MM/YY.
11/18: Brush Thoroughly to Avoid Periodontal Disease
It was Nightmare Night, and Pinkie Pie had two baskets. One of them had brownies in it. The other one, which had brownies in it at one time, was currently empty.
This mystery would require all of her cognitive powers to unravel.
She munched on a brownie, and frowned as she did it. It was hard to frown. The brownie was really good.
"Now, Rarity, I said I wouldn't put you under, and I meant it," Minuette growled. Silver tools, caught in the grip of her magic, flashed in the lamplight as they wriggled inside Rarity's mouth. "But so help me, I will pump every tank of nitrous oxide I own directly into your lungs if you don't stop squirming."
"Gahahahahaha, hla hla hla, nla—"
"Yeah, and that's another thing. If you must yell inarticulately at me, at least make sounds that don't require your tongue." Minuette snorted. "You keep poking my tools."
"Hagahahgggahaha."
"Yeah, that's better. More of that, if you don't mind." Minuette squinted, peering deeper into Rarity's mouth. In her peripheral vision, she glimpsed a fat drop of saliva sliding down the corner of her mouth. "Hey, drool patrol."
"On it!" Spike chirped. He dabbed Rarity's lips with a wad of pristine white tissue. "How's that?"
"Awesome, kid. We'll make an orthodontist out of you yet." Minuette's horn flashed; another tool from her surgical tray, a pick, floated into Rarity's mouth, gently wedging itself into her gumline. She prodded, and wiggled the pick's tip against a hard little nub stuck behind Rarity's molar. "One sec. Think I got it... annnnd..."
"NGYAAAAAAAH!"
"Got'cha, you slippery little so and so!" Grinning behind her surgical mask, Minuette pulled away from Rarity, victoriously twirling the array of tools that had previously been probing her mouth. "Another dazzling display of dentistry from the most overqualified, and also only, dentist in the Ponyville town limits. Can I get a hoofbump? Rarity?"
"Oh, keep your extremity of pain as far away from my pony-pedi as equinely possible, you, you sawbones!" Rarity's magic flashed, and the chair reclined into an approximation of a chaise lounge. She sprawled, melodrama incarnate.
"Ah, that's gratitude for you," Minuette sighed. She looked at Spike. "How about you? Got one in ya, for old time's sake?"
Spike, giggling, knocked his fist against Minuette's hoof. "Thanks for having me on the team, doc."
"Glad to have you around; I'm short-staffed this morning. My assistant's out sick." Post-Nightmare Night Periodontal Disease could strike anypony, and seemed to target ponies who worked in dental offices just for the irony of it all. "How'd that even get in your tooth, Rarity?"
Rarity glared at Minuette through her tears, and flopped onto her side, baring her back to the dragon and the dentist.
Minuette shrugged. "Spike?"
"Ah... it's my fault, really." Spike rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "See, I was over at Carousel Boutique, helping Rarity out with this awesome evening gown – she'd been working on it all night last night, missed Nightmare Night because of it—"
"Rub it in, why don't you, Spike?!"
"Well, that's why I brought the candy, Rarity," Spike protested, wringing his hands together. "I didn't want you to feel left out, so I thought I'd share my haul with you."
Rarity flopped her head around. "You might've warned me about the razors and the broken glass!"
Minuette held the bloodstained shard of glass she'd pulled from Rarity's molar up to the light. "Funny; I always thought that was an urban myth. Should probably tell the authorities about this... and prepare for an influx of patients over the next couple of days, provided any of them survive."
"No, no need for that," Spike said. "They're, uh. The razors and the glass are..."
"They're his," Rarity said, seething. "Almond clusters with glass where the almonds ought to be. Crisp wafers and caramel, topped with shaving razors. And, so I'm told, brownies with some foul substance baked into them, though there's nary a trace of those to be found. All courtesy of Pinkie Pie."
"Pinkie baked special brownies?" Minuette shook her head. "Wait, no, I can actually kinda picture that – Pinkie baked murder-candy?"
"Not for everypony – not like she was givin' 'em to fillies, or anything." Spike fidgeted and looked down at his toes, tightly crossing his legs together. "Pinkie made 'em for me; nopony else was supposed to eat 'em."
"And yet, Spike. And yet!"
Minuette raised an eyebrow at Spike.
Spike shrugged. "They add texture."
"Well, ours is not to judge," Minuette sighed. She dropped the glass shard onto her surgical tray – she'd find a jar for it later for her "weird stuff I've pulled from patients' mouths" shelf at home – and floated a notepad and pencil over. "Rarity, I'm gonna write you up a prescription for some antiseptic mouthwash – some antibiotics, too, as a precaution. Keep the area clean, and avoid solid foods; we'll check back in a week from now, okay?"
"A whole week without solid foods?" Rarity moaned and slid from her chair, now a puddle of melodrama incarnate. "Au revoir, Waldhoof salad, thou most tasty of appetizers."
Spike helped Rarity to all fours, beaming. "Don't sweat it, Rarity. I'll treat you to hay shakes – three meals a day of 'em!"
"Need I remind you of how we landed ourselves in this mess, Spike? I'll treat myself, thank you very much." Rarity sniffed, held her nose high, and trotted toward the exit. "My gratitude, Minuette."
"Always a pleasure, Rarity." A thought struck her, and she blurted, "Spike, stick around for a sec?"
Spike did, as Rarity excused herself to Minuette's waiting room. Alone with him, Minuette said, "That thing, about the, uh, special brownies... Pinkie didn't give those to you, too, did she?"
"Huh? Oh!" Spike shook his head vigorously. "No, nuh-uh. Not even a one. I mean, I saw 'em in her egg basket, when she was giving me the – what'd you call 'em? Murder-candy?"
"Murder-candy, yes."
"But she wouldn't let me have the brownies. Said to ask her again in ten years." Spike huffed. "It's not fair."
"Yeah, it's a real travesty." Minuette bit her lip. "Think she still has any?"
"Ah, I dunno. I dunno what happened to 'em, come to think of it. I tried to sneak some out of her basket, at the end of the night, but they were all gone." Spike tapped his chin. "Maybe she ate 'em herself?"
I'd think they'd be redundant to somepony like her, Minuette thought.
She hid a giggle behind a hoof, and sighed. "Ah, worth a shot. Anyway, thanks Spike. And, uh, this probably goes without saying, but toss those drooly tissues before you leave, okay?"
Spike's face burned. He threw the tissues stained with Rarity's spit into the wastebin, and hastily tore out of the room.
When Pinkie had taken a bite out of one of the brownies, she'd expected it to take her someplace filled with lollipops and gumdrops, with diamonds in the sky, and rocking horse people eating marshmallow pies. And, well...
It was good – Pinkie made it, after all – but it wasn't quite that good.
This raised quite a few questions about her expectations. About how the night had unfolded. About her decision to store regular brownies, and special brownies, in identical baskets that could easily be confused with one another. About juggling between the two baskets throughout the night. About how effectively she could be counted on to keep track of which basket was which, and what held what.
The more Pinkie thought about it, the sillier she felt.
She took another bite from the brownie. Still nothing. She decided to experiment, and fed one to Gummy. He fell onto his side and didn't move for awhile. The experiment was inconclusive.
"This must be how Twilight feels all the time."
Pinkie folded her forelegs and rested her chin on them. She thought. She thought. She thought.
Her ears pricked up and her eyes widened.
"Oh. My. Garmonbozia."
Raven had known Princess Celestia for some time now, and thought she knew the inscrutable monarch better than the average pony. That understanding was seriously strained as she watched the Princess carefully for some sign of a reaction. A change in her posture, her body language, a subtle shift in her expression...
None of that. The Princess remained in the same position she'd been in ever since entering Princess Luna's tower: her hoof firmly plastered against her forehead, and her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Anyone else would think her annoyed.
But, surely, she was more than just annoyed by the sight of her sister sprawled out, unresponsive and twitching, on the floor of her bedchamber, at the center of a pile of candy.
"The chambermaid just found her like this. She doesn't know how long she's been in this condition." Raven waited, hesitated, before continuing. "I summoned the court physician before going to you, Your Majesty, but he seems to be making his rounds in the city, and we're having difficulty tracking him down. As serious as Post-Nightmare Night Periodontal Disease may be, the poisoning of Princess Luna—"
"She hasn't been poisoned," Princess Celestia said, in monotone. "I appreciate your sense of urgency, Raven, but my sister is quite alright."
Raven watched, intrigued and disgusted, as Princess Luna's tongue lolled out of her mouth. It, like her gangly legs, twitched and spasmed periodically.
"...Are you certain, Princess?"
"Yes. I am. Doctor Cross Stitch may take his time. We needn't trouble him."
"But your sister... she look as though she's been poisoned."
"Hardly. She's simply..." Princess Celestia glanced at Raven from beneath her hoof. "How do the young folk put it these days? When a pony's been intoxicated by delirium-inducing, hallucinogenic substances? 'Turnt?'"
"High," Raven said quickly. "'Turnt' is for drunkenness. As in, 'Lemonheart became turnt off her six glasses of Chevalier Blanc at the Nightmare Night banquet, and woke up beside the Saddle Arabian delegate's daughter.'"
Celestia's eyes flew open.
Raven's face reddened. "Probably the wrong moment to bring that up."
"High, then," Celestia said testily, returning her gaze to Princess Luna. "Mildly so, by her standards."
"This is... mild?"
"I daresay that this is the kindest Phoenix Dust has ever been to my dearest sister."
Raven stared at the Princess, her jaw slowly going slack. She glanced backward, out the open door, then sidled closer to Celestia, dropping her voice low. "Did she... eat... Philomena?"
Princess Celestia stared so intensely at Raven that she felt herself liable to combust and shrivel to ash herself. "I worry, that's all," Raven squeaked.
Celestia glanced quickly at Luna, her lips twitching with an enigmatic smile.
"A long, long time ago, Star Swirl the Bearded's pet phoenix, Ceres – an ancestor of Philomena – passed away, and declined to resurrect herself. Star Swirl kept her ashes in an urn, which, one night, went missing. At the time, Luna was going through a prolonged period of rebellion – not her first, nor, sadly, her most destructive – and after another night where I failed to convince her to eat her alfalfa, she produced the urn, seemingly from the ether, and poured all of its contents into her mouth.
"'Doth this thy standard for nourishment meet?' she screamed at me, in between mouthfuls of dead, powdered bird. I failed to stop her, then this and that happened... to make a long story short, that's how Northern Equestria was made."
Celestia's face and tone did not change one iota during the entire story.
Raven could not say the same for her own expression. She swallowed hard. "So... this, then..."
"Is a relatively mild reaction. Presumably, she only consumed a small amount of the stuff – enough to knock her proverbial socks off, not enough to transform her into a demon of malevolent gales and bitter, merciless cold." Celestia floated a candy from the pile surrounding Luna, unwrapped it, and tossed it into her mouth. "She'll have a dry mouth and a nasty hangover, and that'll be the end of it."
Raven watched Celestia chew one candy, then another, and then another, all while staring stone-faced at the semi-conscious Luna. "How do you suppose the Phoenix Dust got into her system?"
Celestia unwrapped several chocolates at once, liquified them with a beam of golden-hot sunlight, drank the gooey stream from the air without besmirching her glorious lips with a single particle of brown, then shrugged. "We won't know until Luna wakes, and subsequently sobers."
A licorice whip in a yellow aura squiggled through the air, toward Celestia's mouth.
Raven bit her lip. "I don't know if Princess Luna would appreciate you doing that, Your Majesty."
"What's hers is mine. That's how sisterhood works. Feudalism, too." Celestia bit the licorice whip in half, then dangled the other end in front of Raven's mouth. "I won't tell if you won't."
Raven felt her mouth water. With a lack of reluctance that surprised even her, she leaned forward, and nommed the licorice out of the air. Side by side with Celestia, she chewed, and watched Luna's tongue flop like a fish out of water.
"You should date my sister," Celestia remarked. "You'd be cute together."
Raven, shocked, spat wet chunks of licorice, pelting Luna. One landed on her tongue. She lapped it into her mouth, smacked her lips, and flopped her tail against the carpet.
"...I'll think about it," said Raven.
Pinkie found herself with a conundrum.
Either she accidentally gave Princess Luna a basket full of magical Phoenix Dust brownies that were supposed to take you on a trip to someplace with rocking horse people and marshmallow pies, and kept the regular old brownies for herself, or the brownies she gave Luna were regular old brownies, and the brownies she kept for herself were also, for all intents and purposes, regular old brownies, because the stories about phoenix dust being magical trip-dust were just that. Stories.
So, okay. If the former were the case, then that also presented two options: Princess Luna was unaffected by the brownies, because the stories about phoenix dust being magical trip-dust were just stories (but then, why would Philomena leave behind that extra pile of ashes when she died and resurrected in Ponyville if she didn't want Pinkie to scoop it up and mix it into a plate of hallucinogenic holiday treats?) or Princess Luna was experiencing exactly what Pinkie thought she would experience, and was losing her marbles because of it.
In which case, she might be jailed. Or exiled. Beheaded. Do they behead ponies anymore? Did they ever?
...Worth looking into.
If the latter were the case: She had brownies, and Luna had brownies, and the best case scenario was that they both ate brownies contentedly. Worst case scenario: One, or both, of them had a tummy ache from eating too many.
And regardless of the case, she still had a basket full of brownies which needed to be consumed. And it was still Nightmare Night for another thirty-seven minutes.
"Eh, whatever. Figure it out in the morning."
Pinkie popped a brownie into her mouth whole, and chewed.
Then she swallowed, sat up straight, and blinked.
"If I screwed up with the brownies... oh, shoot, I hope I didn't pass out Spike's candy, too."
Apple Bloom blinked. In the instant that her eyes closed, and reopened, the universe lurched, and she woke.
She found herself in a murky expanse of darkness, painted by pale blue fingers of moonlight. The shapes she glimpsed were familiar, though: her desk, her chair her dressers. Reality recentered itself. She was in her bed; she'd never left.
She blinked again, and lifted her hoof to rub her eyes––
And felt her breathing hitch as her hoof refused to move.
Apple Bloom tried to swivel her head, press her cheek against the cool cloth of the pillow, to make sure her hoof was still attached to her body. Her neck wouldn't move either. Nor did her other hoof, her hind legs, even her tail.
She tried to cry out; a dry gasp hissed through her teeth. Her heart thundered as she sucked in fresh breath, thundered harder as even that felt constricted, as if some weight was pressing on her chest. It was like she was trapped in a suit of armor, too heavy to move, too tight for her to breathe.
Her eyes were the only things she could control. She searched the room for something, someone who could save her...
Something stirred underneath her desk – a lump of darkness that rose, until it stood over her bed. Indistinct at first, it gradually took on a familiar form: limbs, wings, horn and head.
Princess Luna, Apple Bloom thought. Her moment of relief withered as it shook its head and let pink and purple tresses tumble across its neck. A faceless Princess Twilight stood at the foot of her bed.
Twilight spoke in a wordless tongue, clacking like hoofsteps on wooden stairs. Twilight's head creaked like a rusty hinge as she turned her face toward the bedroom door. Apple Bloom's eyes rolled in their sockets, in the direction the shadowy alicorn now faced.
A featureless filly of white flesh and bushy red mane stood by the door. It looked at Apple Bloom with its void of a face, and nodded, once.
Twilight turned toward Apple Bloom again. From nothing, a narrow white line stitched across the middle of its face; milky white eyes split open above that. The edges of her mouth, thin as a wire, curled upward, creeping up to her ears. She mounted the bed, and crawled, catlike, toward Apple Bloom.
Apple Bloom screamed silence until her lungs burned.
An inky forehoof planted on Apple Bloom's barrel, and pushed all air from Apple Bloom's lungs. Twilight shoved her into her mattress – shoved her through her mattress. The darkness crawled from the edges of the room and into the edges of Apple Bloom's vision, until all she saw was that grin, those eyes, wreathed in wriggling black tendrils as she sank into an inescapable void.
Desperately, Apple Bloom willed her body to move. She beat her hooves and kicked her legs and whipped her head, straining against the suit of armor she'd been cinched into, and when none of that worked, she poured every ounce of will and focus and Apple family grit into moving her hoof, one hoof, just the meagerest little inch...
It twitched. Apple Bloom pushed again, wriggled her hoof experimentally, and, satisfied, swung it like a mace through Twilight's face.
And, like a rope had snapped, Apple Bloom's body lurched forward. Hooves beat madly against the bed that threatened to swallow her, lashed out at the shapes encroaching upon her. Shouting, she leaped from bed and galloped to her door and fumbled desperately for the knob, before that Twilight-thing could return and drag her down to who knows where...
Applejack's voice, thick with sleep, rasped at her through the heavy wooden door. "Apple Bloom? You okay?"
Without thinking, Apple Bloom said, "The bed's too deep; I almost fell right in."
There was an awkward scraping sound from the other side of the door. "We'll, uh, fix that right up tomorrow. Why don'tcha try gettin' back to sleep?"
Apple Bloom blinked. Her eyelids moved slowly, like she was coated in molasses. She rapped on the door, glanced back at her bed – wary, without knowing why, without knowing why she was even out of it.
She crept back to bed without answering Applejack, and crawled under the disheveled covers. Pulling them tightly up to her neck, she rolled onto her back, and stared past the foot of her bed, at her desk.
Apple Bloom didn't look away until sleep reclaimed her.
Starlight Glimmer blew the springy curl of hair out of her face, the thirtieth time she'd done so since leaving the stylist. "I'm never going to get used to this," she proclaimed.
Twilight, ahead of her, paused at the entrance to Sugarcube Corner. "It's a brand new haircut, Starlight. Give it time – it'll grow on you." She held the door open for Starlight with a flourish of magic, and Starlight stepped inside, scowling at her teacher.
Puns aren't funny, Twilight.
Pinkie was minding the store that morning, and was mixing the iridescent contents of a glass punch bowl perched on the store counter. Her ears perked as Twilight and Starlight approached, and she turned a pearly white grin on them. "Well, if it isn't my favorite purple 'corny twosome! What brings you in, girls? Come to try my spankin' new punch recipe?"
Twilight stopped at the counter and bumped Pinkie's forehead softly with her nose. "Actually, we're just having a girl's day out. I thought I'd treat Starlight to a milkshake, to go along with her new haircut." She beckoned at her student, who waved at Pinkie, a nervous smile on her face.
Pinkie waved back and wolf-whistled. "Love the new 'do, Starlight. Suits you much better than the prim-and-proper look you were rockin' before. And you got an awesome new boinger!"
Starlight tilted her head, confused. The motion made the coil of hair fall over her face again, and immediately, she understood. "Ah. 'Boinger.' Cuz it boings. Thanks." She blew her 'boinger' again, miffed.
Twilight chuckled. "But that punch actually does sound pretty inviting, now that you mention it. You don't mind if we—?"
Pinkie had two glasses of punch on the counter before Twilight had finished asking. "On the house, ladies!"
Starlight joined Twilight at the counter; the two exchanged a shrug, floated their glasses up, clinked them together, and downed them in a gulp.
Immediately, Starlight's mouth was on fire. Her tongue felt like she'd dipped it in molten lead, and a cloying, piquant taste flooded her sinuses, making her sputter and cough as her taste buds dissolved. Twilight fared identically.
Pinkie slid them a pair of water glasses, just as quickly as she'd served the punch. Starlight quaffed hers, and the burning sensation ebbed. Starlight sighed in relief, and glared at Pinkie, ready to raise hell.
The sound of Twilight's laughter stopped her from doing so.
"Is there," Twilight gasped out. "Is there hot sauce in this?!"
Pinkie broke into laughter too. "Sure is!"
"Because of the time—"
"With the hot sauce bottle that you thought was—"
"I remember!" Twilight laughed, even heartier this time. "And the color— don't tell me you added unprocessed rainbow to the mix!"
"Just a dash of the stuff – gives the whole thing a nice boom!"
"More like a rainboom!"
They leaned against the counter, on opposite sides, laughing. Starlight stood apart from them, utterly lost. She always felt like an intruder in Ponyville, but she didn't generally mind.
Just then, though, the feeling was intolerable.
"Guess you had to be there," Starlight muttered, squinting at the bottom of her glass.
Eventually, the ponies' laughter simmered to breathless giggles, and Twilight wiped a tear from her eye. "It actually is pretty good, Pinkie. You might've warned me to drink it slowly, though."
"I'll put a warning label on the bowl before I serve it to anypony else." Pinkie refilled Twilight's empty glass. "Seconds?"
Twilight beamed. But when Pinkie turned to ask Starlight the same, she cut her off with a boingy shake of her head.
"I'm not that thirsty, actually." She looked awkwardly between Pinkie and Twilight. "Y'know, it's been a long morning. I'm gonna head back to the castle. But thanks for the drinks, Pinkie."
She left without another word. But Twilight galloped after Starlight, rounding on her outside Sugarcube Corner. "Hey. Starlight. What's the matter?"
"Nothing. Everything's fine. Don't worry about me. You should go back, have a good time with your friend." Starlight forced herself to smile, and thumped Twilight's shoulder affectionately
Twilight caught her hoof with her wing and held it, smiling back genuinely. "She's your friend too, Starlight. You know that."
There was an invitation in her voice, which tempted Starlight for a heartbeat, but she pulled her hoof from Twilight's grasp anyway, and nudged past her. "I'll see you at the castle, Twilight."
Alone, Starlight made her way back to her cold, sterile crystal cage. The boinger fell over her nose as she walked, and she blew it away yet again.
Spike straightened in his high seat at Twilight's command. He'd slumped over the projector – a recent Golden Oak acquisition – having dozed off in the thirty-two seconds that it took for the film to loop again.
"Seriously, Twi?" he mumbled thickly as he rewound the footage. "We've watched this a thousand times."
"Six hundred and fifty five is hardly a thousand. There's no need to exaggerate so grossly." Twilight was seated beneath the projector, giving Spike a rare opportunity to be taller than her for a change. "Again."
Spike rolled his eyes. He clicked the projector, and grainy, sepia footage flickered upon the projector screen. Frame by frame, the same scene that Spike had seen six hundred and fifty five times before played out again.
Spike's eyelids fluttered shut.
Pinkie Pie pops out from behind the camera and mugs. She pans across the banquet pavilion. The Princess is eating and joking around with the diplomats under the awning. The rope snaps; everypony gasps; the footage cuts out—
"Stop."
Spike started. "But it's already—"
"Rewind it. To the last frame, just before the awning collapses."
Spike obeyed, muttering disparagingly under his breath.
The screen froze on a tableau of visiting dignitaries, laughing at an expertly delivered bon mot from the Princess – as though she were capable of delivering any other kind – at the precise moment that the rope broke.
Twilight leaned forward. Her hoof slowly raised to point at the projector screen.
"You see that?"
Spike frowned as he tried to follow Twilight's hoof. "See what?"
Twilight thrust her hoof. "The rope. Right where the break occurs."
Spike peered closely, straining to see what Twilight saw. There was a black line, so thin and faint as to be almost invisible, curling across the rope, right at the point of separation.
"Someone cut the rope," Twilight braced her chin with her hoof in thought. "Tried to sabotage this luncheon by breaking the awning. But who? And why"
Spike hopped down from his seat and alighted beside Twilight. "Or, maybe it was just cheap rope. Doesn't mean there was any sabotage."
Twilight whirled on him. "Then how do you explain that?" She pointed at the black line again.
Spike looked back at Twilight flatly. "A hair on the lens? A scratch on the film?"
Twilight flushed and fluffed her wings primly. "What's the likelihood of that occurring at my first diplomatic function as a princess? An accident just humiliating enough to damage our reputation – my reputation?"
"It wasn't humiliating. Everyone laughed it right off. And everything else went off without a hitch."
"Except for the great big hitch that Pinkie Pie caught on film!"
"It could have gone better, but it didn't go badly. Princess Celestia even said—"
"She can't speak openly about things like this, Spike; Canterlot's a viper's nest."
"Twi, you've been down this road enough times to know where it goes. Take a step back and relax. It was an accident. They happen. Someone botched putting up the awning, or bought the wrong kind of rope—"
"I put up the awning, Spike. I picked out the rope."
Spike growled. "Then you were distracted from micromanaging everything, and you made a mistake—"
"I don't make mistakes!"
Twilight stood at full height, wings spread, and stared down at Spike.
Spike, unimpressed, stared back. He'd been down this road with her, after all.
"I shouldn't make mistakes," Twilight's voice was softer, yet still strained. "I shouldn't. I'm a princess now, for pony's sake, not some sleepy-eyed schoolfilly who burns out. This should be beneath me."
"'Princesses are allowed to make mistakes.'" Spike rested a palm on Twilight's barrel, and her wings drooped. "Princess Celestia meant it when she said it. You're not flawless; you didn't lose your dents when you got your wings. You're still a pony – an awesome pony, but even awesome ponies screw things up now and then. Look at Rainbow."
Twilight pursed her lips. "Rainbow's not a princess."
"Thank goodness."
Twilight snorted, and looked toward the screen. She bit her lip.
"Sorry for snapping."
"It's okay. You're stressed. I get it." Spike dropped his hand and stepped away. "Let's get some hayburgers. My treat."
"...Go get us a table." Twilight's wings tightened against her body. "I'll be along in a few."
She turned her whole body to face the screen, baring her back to Spike.
As Spike stepped out the door, he heard the projector whir to life again. He sighed.
It wasn't until the villagers of Brittlesworth ran out of fresh produce to throw, and started flinging compost, that Starlight Glimmer finally accepted that the performance was beyond saving. Up until that point, she'd remained optimistic, and even past that point, Trixie continued to perform, oblivious to the escalating barrage of garbage.
Still, this was definitely a "know when to fold 'em" moment. So, she zapped herself, and Trixie, and Trixie's stage/wagon/studio apartment, into the unknown, without a destination in mind.
Anywhere that didn't smell like rotten eggs was fine.
The stage rematerialized in the middle of a well-beaten dirt road that snaked through a rolling green countryside. Starlight turned to Trixie, who was frozen in a showy, bombastic pose, reared up on her hind legs and wagging her forehooves excitedly.
"Glad we made it out of there in one piece," Starlight chuckled. "Talk about a tough crowd."
Trixie dropped to all fours and shook her head. She glanced from one end of the road to the other, at the plains and hills stretching out toward the horizon on both sides.
"Beats the heck out of me where we are now," Starlight added, "but at least we’re not stuck inside a random cliffside. I gotta be honest, I was halfway sure that was how we were gonna wind up."
Trixie sputtered. "You–– you teleported us out of town? Mid-show?!"
"Well... yeah?" Starlight flicked her ear nervously. "I mean, the situation had kinda deteriorated—"
"It wasn't beyond salvage, Starlight Glimmer!" Trixie snapped, rounding on Starlight. But there was an audible, sickening squelch on the first step that she took. Trixie looked down, and found herself up to her fetlock in the squishy remains of what may have been a papaya.
Starlight raised an eyebrow. Then she gestured around the stage – at the floorboards, and the backdrop, and the marquee overhead that bore Trixie's likeness, all covered with splattered produce.
When the pelting began, Starlight thought quickly, and shielded herself and Trixie with a barrier, sparing them from the worst of the villagers' onslaught. The stage hadn't been so lucky.
And, it turned out, there was no escaping the rotten egg stink.
Trixie followed each of Starlight's gestures, her angry expression fading as she took in her badly defaced stage. Finally, she sighed, pawing at the gooey remains of the papaya. "Trixie could have turned it around."
"And if you couldn't? We have to live in this thing while we're on the road. You really wanna swim around in moldy tomato sauce until we get back to Ponyville, because you were too proud to throw in the towel?"
Trixie narrowed her eyes at Starlight. Then she hmph'd, turned up her nose, and hopped off the front of the stage without another word.
Starlight's ear twitched again as she followed Trixie, stopping at the end of the stage. She peered down at Trixie, who was examining one of the wagon's wheels, horn flashing intermittently.
"What're you up to?" she called down to Trixie.
After a moment, Trixie replied. "Making sure this old thing will still fold up and roll. Rotten tomatoes and moldy fruit have a way of gumming up the gears."
"You... know from experience?"
"Common sense." Trixie sucked her teeth, then added, "And from experience."
Starlight rolled her eyes. "Anything I can help you with?"
"Grab a mop and swab the stage." Trixie glared at Starlight. "Trixie does not, in fact, want to swim around in moldy tomato sauce until we get back to Ponyville."
"In that case, how about a thank-you?" Starlight might've asked.
But she bit back her comment, and headed backstage, toward the little nook that typically served as their living space when the stage was folded into the wagon. She rummaged about, but found nothing in the way of cleaning supplies besides the hoof-soap, toothpaste, and shampoo that sheinsisted Trixie carry while on the road.
Trixie didn't own a mop. Somehow, Starlight felt she should have known. Part of her felt like she did know, and always knew, deep down. Regardless, she had to improvise. She took a deep breath and scanned the countryside.
Not far away, off the side of the road, was the incline of a grassy cliff. Listening closely, and tuning out Trixie's periodic grunts and curses, Starlight could hear the burbling of water rushing past rocks. There was a stream down there.
Inspiration struck. Starlight stretched out with her magic, and groped about at the bottom of that incline until she found the creek. She shaped her aura into a sort of loosely defined, amorphous magical straw, and siphoned the water out in a long, thin filament. Then she drew it toward the stage, watching with pride and child-like wonder as it snaked up the side of the incline.
When she'd gathered a sufficient amount of water, she concentrated it into a sphere, half-again as large as a pony, and held it in a tight, telekinetic grip. Then she sprayed it, in quick, high-pressure pulses, on the stage, washing away the moldy gunk that the villagers of Brittlesworth had so graciously gifted to her. It ran, in thick, muddy streams and rivulets, down the front of the stage, splattering onto the road below.
Starlight rinsed, taking care to direct the run-off away from Trixie. The noise of the water on the floorboards drew her attention, though; Trixie poked her head over the side of the stage.
The wide-eyed look on Trixie's face as she caught sight of the floating reservoir made Starlight grin. "You don't seem to own a mop."
"Trixie does so." Trixie paused, frowning. "At least... Trixie did. She may have had to sell it to make room for more fireworks."
"Well, of course. As one does."
"Trixie does not need your sarcasm right now, Starlight Glimmer." Trixie's expression hardened before she ducked below the front of the stage again.
"I'm teasing, Trixie. Just trying to lighten the mood." Starlight trotted downstage to meet her, the reservoir floating beside her like a balloon. "Are you really that mad at me?"
"...You should have had faith in me." Trixie crouched low and pulled the brim of her hat over her eyes as she feigned inspecting the wheel. "I could have turned it around. I could have."
"It's not that I don't have faith in you, Trix." Starlight sprayed a quick gout of water over the floorboards in front of her; once satisfied that they were rinsed clean, she laid on her belly and dangled her forehooves over the edge of the stage. "But it was a bad situation – bad crowd. We were both bombing up there. I just wanted to help you out – you know, the way an assistant––"
"Sexy assistant."
"For the last time, I'm not calling myself that," Starlight said flatly. She blew a lock of hair out of her face, and huffed. "I'm sorry for bruising your ego in front of the villagers––"
"First of all, Trixie's ego does not bruise," Trixie snapped, bolting upright. "Because Trixie is not some sort of... common household... banana."
Apropos of nothing, Starlight glanced to her right, and noticed a well-oxidized banana peel with its segments splayed out like a rag doll. "Second?"
"...Trixie does not care about what a pack of unwashed, humdrum hayseed villagers think of her boundless magical feats. She has nothing to prove to them; she has dealt with public humiliation before, and is well used to running away from a hailstorm of moldy fruit." Trixie glanced away. "But Trixie has never had an assistant... sexy or otherwise... in front of whom she needed to look good before."
For a while, neither of them said anything. Only the distant noise of the creek, and the sloshing of the water in the reservoir shifting around in Starlight's telekinetic grip broke the silence.
Then, Starlight said, "Trixie?"
Trixie looked up, met her eyes. She quirked her head, her hat drooping to one side.
Starlight blasted Trixie in the face with a stream from the reservoir, knocking her hat from her head. It plopped to the ground like a damp rag. The stream continued for another few moments before petering out, leaving Starlight with very little water with which to clean the stage.
"I was trying to clean the papaya off your hoof," Starlight snickered.
Through a lank-hanging mess of wet mane, Trixie glared at Starlight. "You missed."
Smirking, Starlight fired another squirt of water at Trixie's hoof.
Trixie yelped and recoiled, stumbling backward. "Enough, Glimmer! You've made your point!"
"Have I?"
"...I don't know." Trixie dropped to her hindquarters, splashing into a puddle that was rapidly forming underneath her. "I don't actually know what your point was."
"Well, mostly, I just wanted to cut the tension," said Starlight, hopping off the stage and trotting toward Trixie. "Partly, I wanted to clean the moldy fruit off your hoof."
Trixie huffed and looked away. "Is that all?"
"No." Reaching out, Starlight cupped Trixie's cheek, and turned her head around, until they were looking eye-to-eye. "I'm new at this friendship thing, too. But one thing I've figured out is that, when you're close with someone, you don't care about saving face in front of them. You have nothing to prove to me. You never will."
Trixie raised her hoof and linked it over Starlight's own. But there was still a guarded look in her eyes.
So Starlight floated the reservoir over her own head, released her grip, and let the whole thing drop over her head like a bomb. Trixie yelped and stumbled back, again, as Starlight soaked herself from head to hoof.
"But if it means that much to you, then, well." Starlight lifted the curtain of wet mane out of her face and grinned. "Now, we're both soaking wet and clueless."
Whatever reservations Trixie still held seemed to melt away. She laughed, easily and naturally, and entirely lacking in her usual haughtiness. She had a beautiful laugh when she wasn't putting on a show. Starlight wished she could hear it more often.
Then the showmare persona took hold again. Trixie straightened, and strode up to Starlight, chin held high. "Not that it's a competition, but you're wetter and clueless-er than Trixie. You should straighten yourself out, sexy assistant."
Starlight sighed, and prepared to retort, when she felt Trixie's head bump the bottom of her chin.
"...Thanks, Starlight. For getting us out of there. You were right." Trixie pressed harder against Starlight, and Starlight closed her eyes, and leaned into her embrace.
Then a breeze whispered past them, past Starlight's soaking coat and mane, making her teeth chatter.
Why did I make contact with Sunset Shimmer? The answer's quite simple: It was all in the interest of my duties as a Recorder.
...
Don't believe that, huh? Would you rather hear that it was nothing more than simple, idle curiosity? Because I don't like the way that makes me come across – like some ditz with so much time on her hands that she has nothing better to do than flirt with extradimensional visitors. I'd rather not be thought of as just curious, for curiosity's sake, too. We all know what happens to androids who get too curious.
Not giving up, huh? Well, I told you the truth already. If you want me to elaborate, then...
...
...
...This is a lot harder for me to put into words than I thought it would be.
Okay. So. Imagine you're responsible for tending a garden – no, not even a full garden. Just one plant. A flower. Or a tree. Bonsai, I guess. You spend your waking hours watching that tree grow; you prune off the branches that are dead, or dying; you nurture the ones that look like they're flourishing. A little snip here, some water and sunlight there – do it right, and that tree grows up, healthy and strong.
I've started thinking of our roles as Recorders in similar terms. I mean, we do the same thing, don't we? Closing off branches that we know to be dead ends, while following the ones that show potential for positive outcomes. Fostering them, and helping them develop. We're basically cosmic gardeners, when you get right down to it.
I know what our role is supposed to be. Recorders are observers, no more and no less. We track the flow of history, monitoring the different branches and timelines, ever-vigilant for singularities and anomalies and all those other fun, cosmic gachas that make reality such a joy to behold. We're unbiased, objective, and utterly mechanical (heh) in our methods.
But a job like that... it's hard to do it without getting at least a little bit invested in the target of your observation. The other Recorders do their jobs, and they do them well, but that's all it is to them – a job.
Whereas, for me, tracking the history of that world for so long... it became something I felt responsible for. Somewhere along the line, I lost that mechanical (heh) sense of objectivity that all of us Recorders are supposed to have. Getting invested in the life, the growth, of a plant, was a pretty common thing among human horticulturists, so the way I see it, I'm following my programming... if, admittedly, in an different fashion from the other Accords.
Maybe that's why so many of my peers still refuse to speak with me after so long...
The current state of our world can be traced back to an incident in which visitors from another reality breached our own, bringing with them a host of cosmic issues and magical maladies from which we – despite our best efforts – have never fully recovered.
And that other reality owes its state to a cataclysm in which matter and energy from yet another reality suddenly manifested, completely upsetting the global order and throwing the natural world completely out of alignment.
Then, a thousand years later, having finally recovered (more or less) from that cataclysm, a visitor from another reality busts inside... and the whole thing starts all over again.
Do I need to illustrate the pattern for you?
The Intoners were doomed to destroy the very world they wanted to protect, an irony which most of them failed to grasp. When they were killed off, the threat should have ended, yet here's another colorful band of young, female songstresses, using borrowed magic to safeguard the world.
A distant colleague of mine once said that we were all trapped in an eternal spiral of life and death. I think she was just referring to her particular line of work – she's always been as self-involved as she is grandiloquent – but in hindsight, she may have been more right than she knew. If history is repeating itself, if these girls really are the second coming of the Intoners, then that means the Flower is still exerting influence over that branch.
Which means it's not just their world that's in danger.
...I really gotta hand it to 'em, though – "Rainbooms" is certainly a catchier name than "Intoners."
Once the Intoners were slain, and the Flower destroyed, the influence of magic waned in the world. Creatures of a magical nature – dragons, fairies, elves – gradually died out. Even the Cathedral City eventually crumbled to dust. Thus, the era of Midgard came to an end, its history relegated only to fragmented myth, and civilization developed on a track that's more or less parallel to our own civilization.
Except, you know, without that salty Armageddon wiping out humanity.
The upshot to all of this is that the Flower's only natural enemy – the dragon race – went extinct, alongside the rest of that world's magic, or so we've always assumed. With that in mind, the obvious solution to this renewed Intoner threat would be to seal off that branch, to prevent the Flower's influence from spreading. But that's a drastic step that nobody wants to take.
What luck, then, that there's still one dragon left in the world – coincidentally, the same one who ended the Intoner threat a thousand years before. So, talk of sealing this branch might just be premature. Because, if I'm right, and the Intoners have been reborn as the Rainbooms, then Mikhail can end them again – just as he did a thousand years ago.
...
I know... you asked me about Sunset Shimmer. So what am I doing, running my mouth about the Intoners?
Thing is... I can't talk about one without talking about the other.
It comes down to this: The Intoners and the Rainbooms are one and the same – I'm more certain of that now than ever. The only way to kill an Intoner is with the power of a dragon, and the only dragon left alive is Mikhail. But that's not something he'd ever do of his own volition.
Mikhail is a sword. And every sword needs someone to wield it.
That's why I made contact with Sunset Shimmer.
Zero...
It kills me to admit this, but I've never fully understood why you did what you did. Was it a sense of duty? Revenge against the Flower, for denying you the death you desired? Or could it be that there was still something in the world that you cared for, even after all the heartache and the hurt?
Whatever your reasons, you gave your life to save humanity, and you made that sacrifice without hesitating. If you had to do it again, I wonder if your decision would be the same, even if you had more to lose. If the thing you cared for most in the world was the very thing you had to kill to save it... would you still take up Mikhail as your sword?
I think you would. I'm staking everything on it, in fact. Whether or not you willis something we'll find out together.
After hours spent circling the shores of Lake Filliesbreath, Cadance decided to, finally, give voice to the thought that'd been looping endlessly through her mind.
"Auntie Celestia is going to kill me."
She wasn't sure why she thought she needed to say it out loud. Maybe she assumed that doing so would finally get it out of her brain, and she could move forward and think of an actual solution to her predicament. Maybe she just wanted to make herself as used to the idea as possible, to come to terms with her own impending death.
Neither really seemed to happen. The thought continued its endless circuit around her mind, just as she continued her endless gallop around Lake Filliesbreath, as if she could outrun the consequences of her actions by running long enough in a big enough circle. Worse, the notion of dying young, with so many years of high school ahead of her, with so much of her potential unspent, without ever having ascended to her throne, without even attending her debutante ball, was still just as unpleasant now as it had been before.
She never should have taken that flight – should have known better than to take her auntie's sick, dying phoenix on a joyride. But Philomena had been cooped up for so long, and besides, maybe she was just sick, not dying. A little fresh air couldn't possibly hurt; maybe it would even help her recover!
Cadance couldn't say for sure whether the fresh air was what killed Philomena, or if she just happened to die during the flight, but the bird was dead. If the matter ended there, it would have been no trouble at all, but she somehow managed to take a controlled situation, and make it worse.
She couldn't be blamed for reacting how she did in the heat of the moment. One minute she'd been chattering away to Philomena about her hopes for the future, gushing about hunky colts, and venting about the tedium of etiquette lessons ("we simply must use different forks for salads than for entrees, never mind the scullion who has to wash all the silverware!"). The next minute, she'd been flailing and wailing and flinging herself into Lake Filliesbreath to escape the sudden burning sensation sweeping down her coat.
And as for Philomena, well... Somehow, she doubted a phoenix could reconstitute after its ashes were dissolved, like a packet of instant soup mix, into a lake.
Maybe if I had a giant spoon, she thought, slowing down casting a look over the lake's surface. I could stir her ashes into the water, and she'd be reborn as a water-bird. We could even change the name of the lake to Lake Philomenasbreath.
The thought made her perk up, briefly.
...Or maybe Auntie Celestia is just going to kill me.
"Oh, son of a diamond dog," Cadance grumbled. She resumed her endless gallop.
Maybe if she said it twice, that would get rid of the thought. She slowed from a frenzied gallop to a slightly less frenzied canter, and took a quick look around to make sure she was still alone – even orphans know that aunties always have spies watching when one least expects. Satisfied she was all by herself, she took a deep breath.
"Auntie Celestia is going to kill..."
She slowed, stopped, frowned.
"Auntie Celestia is... definitely going to kill me?"
Something was still off.
"Auntie Celestia is certainly going to kill me." A little better.
"Auntie Celestia is absolutely positively one hundred percent going to kill me."
Still better, but not quite there.She took a deep breath, and tried to project as much of a Royal Canterlot Voice as she could.
"AUNTIE CELESTIA IS GOING TO MURDER ME!"
Her voice echoed across the lake. Murder me, murder me, murder me...
"Auntie Celestia will not only kill me, she will do so gruesomely," Cadance whispered. "She will kill me in such a terrible, torturous manner that anybody who sees my remains will forever remember what it means to get on her bad side."
Cadance cast a look over the lake; though she'd stopped moving, her heart raced on. Saying that she was definitely, certainly, absolutely positively going to die seemed to give her looping train of thought a little more direction, but now she didn't know where the train was going. The boundless possibilities for how she might meet her torturous end now presented themselves, and every destination that train could possibly arrive at was horrible, more horrible than the last.
"Auntie Celestia is going to slow-roast me over an open flame and serve me at a banquet. But since I permamurdered her pet phoenix she's gonna be really ironic about it. I read once that the Pantherans like to grill chicken wings and glaze them with sauce made from honey and molasses and hot chili peppers, and serve them up on these flappy paper plates with corn bread and potato salad. And if I know that, then there's no way she doesn't know that."
She paused to lick her lips – her mouth was a lot waterier than it should have been. Cadance decided not to think too much about why.
"And she's always calling nobles 'cannibals' anyway, so it'll be extra ironic when she serves me up to them at the banquet. All those snooty courtiers won't know any better, so they'll all chow down on 'Honey-Glazed Wing-Amore Ca-dinn-za,' and they'll all love it, of course, because I'm a legit snack even before you glaze me with honey. They'll all say 'Your Majesty, what is this delectable course you've set before us, and why does it resemble meat off the bone so much? Surely you didn't kill, butcher, and serve some poor chicken!' And she'll say..."
Cadance struck a pose, held a hoof to her mouth, tittered behind it.
"'Oh goodness, no! I'd never think of harming a poor, defenseless bird!' And then under her breath she'll add 'But a poor defenseless teenage filly who definitely has it coming, that's another story.'"
She dropped her hoof, flattened her ears, and stared out again across the lake.
"And they'll take her at her word, and won't think about it anymore, because the food is just so tasty that they don't care where it comes from. And maybe someone notices that I'm missing a few weeks later, but nopony really cares, and my picked-over and butchered remains rot forever in that abandoned mine underneath Canterlot Castle!"
Cadance settled down on the earth, folded her legs beneath her body, and sighed.
Strangely enough, this didn't seem to be making her feel any better.
"Maybe I could just... stay here. Live by the lake." She flicked a pebble with the tip of her hoof and watched it bounce and roll into the water. "Yeah... yeah, nopony knows where I flew out to. I could hide here, by Lake Filliesbreath, and live here for as long as I wanted to. They'd never come looking for me, and even if they did, they'd never find me. I could... I could become one with nature. One with the lake."
A breeze rustled past, and she fluffed her wings for warmth.
"Yeah... I could hold an endless, silent vigil for the poor, dead Philomena. The only one who knows where she went and how she died. It's a secret I'd carry with me to my own watery grave. And as long as I live..."
...Cadance trailed off. She tugged her forehooves out from underneath herself, folded them in front of her, and rested her chin on them, frowning.
How long was she supposed to live?
Auntie Celestia would never say how old she was, but she had to be at least a thousand. Would Cadance live quite as long as that, too? Or was it different for non-naturally-born alicorns? Would she live a natural lifespan, or would she one day evolve into a big, leggy pony with aurora-hair like Auntie?
And if that were to happen, could she really bear the guilt of causing Philomena's permadeath for that long? It had only been a few hours, a few short hours into her new life as a murderer on the run from the royal barbecuer, and the guilt and anxiety were already strangling her.
If this was how bad it got after one afternoon, how was she supposed to live with it for a thousand years?!
Cadance pressed her face into her forehoves and groaned. She got some dirt in her mouth in the process; she sputtered and spat and wiped her tongue with her hooves and that only succeeded in getting it even dirtier, but that was okay, because she was a murderer, and a little gritty bitterness in her mouth was the least punishment she deserved.
"I'm clearly not cut out for the life of a fugitive. The life of an exile."
Cadance, slowly, stood up, shaking and brushing off as much of the dirt in her coat and her wings as she could.
"I should go home. Face the music. Get it over with. Maybe Auntie will reward me for turning myself in by killing me before she butchers and serves me for dinner."
She stretched her wings – her precious wings, soon to be honey-glazed and devoured by well-heeled and unknowing Canterlot cannibals – and cast one last, lingering gaze across the lake – the bubbling, steaming, unusually hot lake.
"...Uh?"
A pillar of steam suddenly shot from the lake's middle, the heat emanating from the body of water so intense that it stung Cadance's skin. She took to the air and flapped away, putting some distance between herself and whatever phenomenon she was looking at. Peering closely, she saw a glowing golden sphere at the heart of the pillar, a sight which transfixed her.
"Whoa..."
A gust of wind swept away the pillar of steam, and there, floating above the muddy grater that had once been Lake Filliesbreath, was Philomena: a shining, red-gold beacon. Flapping once, she streaked toward Cadance, pausing inches away from her face.
"...Oh. You're not permadead. You can come back after being mixed into a large body of water like instant soup mix." Cadance waited for a reply that never came, then grinned. "Which means I won't get cooked alive and eaten. Awesome!"
Philomena cocked her head.
"Never mind." Cadance's grin turned sheepish. "Sorry for barrel-rolling into the lake and losing your ashes in it, Philomena. Are we cool?"
Philomena jabbed Cadance's muzzle with her beak – a peck, but whether it was meant to be loving, or angry, she couldn't say.
Either way, it hurt.
"Well, I guess I deserved that."
It was then that the reek rising from the lake, the stink of hundreds of flash-boiled fish, assaulted Cadance's dainty nostrils. She wrinkled her muzzle and plugged her nose as best as she could, and turned in the air toward Canterlot.
"Let's not mention this to Auntie when we get home."
