Side stories related to my main fic, "The Majestic Tale (of a Mad-Pony in a Box)".
The Doctor, the Doctor's companions, the Doctor's friends, the princesses, various one-shot characters... with all these characters, there's going to be too many stories to tell and not enough time in the main fanfiction.
Which is where The Merely Mundane Tales come in. They tell various short stories set in the same world as The Majestic Tale (of a Mad-Pony in a Box). You won't need to read these stories to make sense of the main plot (though I may drop minor pieces of foreshadowing in here). Anyway, enjoy!
On Cruciform the fires burned Like tendrils of a war well-earned
To mark the dead of Gallifrey
Who never had a chance that day And not a single one returned.
The Eighth Doctor examined what he'd written. I'm sure Mr. McCrae wouldn't mind... though I find myself wondering why I've written it in the past tense.
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE!”
Ah, yes. He dropped his paper and pencil, and picked up his gun. Because we've lost.
“You''ll never take the—” General Maxil's defiant shout was cut off by his own choked scream as a Dalek deathray struck his side. He fell to the ground, frantically trying to crawl to cover and a safe place to regenerate, but it was no use. The golden energy was beginning to surge from his hands when another green laser struck and ended him.
“Maxil!” The Doctor clutched the modified de-mat gun close to him. It would destroy a whole group of Daleks, erase them from existence itself, but it had a long charge time. In theory, this wasn't a problem, because the brave defense of the Gallifreyans at the front would only permit a few small groups of Daleks to enter the control room at a time.
He poked his head up from behind the cover of the control panel, then promptly ducked as several death rays burned through his hair. Bloody theory. There's a hundred of them. He thought for a moment about what he'd seen, then calculated his shot very carefully... easy does it... now. Without looking, he brought his gun above the level of the embankment and fired right into the center of the group. He was rewarded by the sound of nothing at all—the Daleks had disappeared from history, leaving nothing but wonderful silence.
“Nice work, Doc!” Drax called from across the corridor. “Toss the gun over here, I bet I can get it working again in a minute.” The Doctor kicked it over to his side, whereupon Drax pulled out his sonic spanner and began tinkering with the object. “While we've got a lull, what do you want to talk about?”
“Do you want to talk about how we might be the only two left?”
“Not particularly, no.” His friend's weak chuckle was cut short by a sound worryingly unlike most of those they'd been hearing. It wasn't the sound of a deathray, or a scream, or even a Dalek's voice. It sounded, if anything, like a muffled explosion. “Well, I suppose we're about to see whether or not these work on Special Weapons Daleks too.”
“Drax, get over here now.” The Doctor's senses felt even more heightened than usual—he could tell exactly where the noise was coming from. “Get away from that wall.”
“What, you think they'll be blasting through? Oh, there's a good one, Doc.” Drax slapped his knee, still tinkering with the gun, then rapped on the wall behind him. “It may be a Special Weapons Dalek, but this is dwarf-star alloy. Nothing gets through these walls.”
BOOM
The Doctor was moving even before his senses told him what had happened. He was standing, he was running, catching the de-mat gun in one hand as it flew through the air, catching Drax in the same arm, pulling out his own screwdriver, turning it to the highest setting, draining it in a heartbeat to power up the de-mat gun, and ducking under the Dalek lasers pouring through the breach in the wall.
“Shows me, huh?” Drax coughed. They were both perfectly aware of how grievous his injury was, but the Doctor didn't have time to think about it. He aimed his gun straight for the Special Weapons Dalek and pulled the trigger, wiping the abomination and a dozen more of its kin from the universe in a flash of light, but it wasn't enough. He heard more Daleks just around the corner. They were trapped.
Or, more accurately, they looked trapped.
“You'll be fine, Drax,” he insisted, dropping his spent sonic screwdriver and grabbing the spanner from Drax's slackening grip. “There's always a way out.” He aimed it at what looked an awful lot like thin air, right beside the gateway to the Cruciform, and his TARDIS uncloaked.
“So you don't think we can stop the Daleks?” Drax grimaced as the Doctor dragged him across the floor. The light was coming out his palms now, but still he tried to stand up, to stagger back to the battle. “The legendary fighter, giving up already?”
“We've lost the Cruciform, Drax, can't you feel it? Tell me you can sense any other Gallifreyans on this base besides us.” The Doctor paused at the door of his TARDIS to fish his key from his pocket. “But we're getting out, you and me—”
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE!” Drax didn't even cry out. The Doctor just felt him go limp. He didn't have the time to pull his friend's body inside the door: only enough to whip the key from his pocket, unlock the TARDIS, and run inside. He closed the door on his people, his friend, and the Cruciform, hearing the triumphant yells of the Daleks: “THE CRU-CI-FORM IS AC-QUI-RED!”
He ran to the TARDIS and slammed the ignition on the console, not bothering to set the coordinates. Anywhere was fine. Except that's wrong. Nowhere is fine—nowhere is safe. They have the Cruciform, and I failed. I ran.
Vworp... vworp...
He slumped against the console, unthinking and unfeeling.
“It has been many centuries since Equestria had such a war. I'd forgotten the grief it brings.”
“You've never had a war like this.” The Doctor was suddenly conscious of several things. He was not the Eighth Doctor in human guise, but the Tenth Doctor in pony form, and he was having another nightmare. The immediacy of his guilt diminished, replaced by anger at Princess Luna's brazen intrusion into his dreams. He looked up to see her standing solemnly in the dream-TARDIS. “What are you doing in my head?”
“I am the Princess of the Night, and I have authority over dreams.”
“Not my dreams,” he growled, raising the sonic spanner in front of his face. He'd smack himself on the head and wake up, simple as that—but she grabbed it with her magic and threw it away.
“Doctor, you are not my subject. But I consider you my friend, even if you do not, and I have watched you suffer these long nights.” She laid a hoof on his shoulder. “How can you live with such nightmares ever in your mind?”
In truth, it had been years since the Doctor had had such nightmares. Something about how Discord was poking around in my mind must have dredged it up... that and, perhaps... He noticed Luna motioning to him, as if to say 'go on', and narrowed his eyes. “Don't tell me you can read my thoughts too.”
“You are dreaming, Doctor. Everything here is your thoughts.”
Fair enough. The Doctor looked up at his old TARDIS, flying to the next destination. “If you hadn't interrupted, right now I'd be starting to think about what had happened. How many friends I lost that day—how hopeless the War seemed. Maybe I'd start dreaming of an old... friend... of mine, who watched as the Cruciform was taken and fled to the end of the universe.”
“No, Doctor. For you dream of the war not merely because of the losses you suffered, but the actions you were forced to take to end it.” Luna sat beside him, and the Doctor noticed that her starry mane was passing ethereally through his console. “So your sight would leave the TARDIS, to watch as your race resurrected their most ancient and powerful father to lead them once more. Your senses would revolt against the calamitous changes they made to the timeline of your people, transforming themselves into the ruthless warriors they thought could end the war. Your race tried to claim the godhood they thought they deserved. But they fell to the level of the monsters they fought.
“And you were forced to discard your own scruples to stop them.” The Doctor turned to the door and saw his eighth self standing there, holding the Moment and aiming for his home—but Luna pulled his gaze back to face her. “Every one of your dreams has ended that way, Doctor, ever since you came here. You do not need to see it again.”
“You didn't need to see it at all.” He got out from under her foreleg and walked to the TARDIS door to take in the sight of Gallifrey as he'd seen it that day, for the last time. For all its scars and craters, there was still beauty there. “I don't need your pity, Princess. I'm fine.”
“You are not fine. And I did not come to pity.” A hard edge crept into her voice. “I came because I believed you needed someone who could sympathize with your guilt.”
“Oh yeah, thanks.” The Doctor had been avoiding her gaze, but this was too much provocation to bear. “Lovely to know how understanding you are—but tell me, what's the worst thing you've ever done, Princess?”
But this was too much for her to bear. “How dare you!” she hissed, and the Doctor saw a pillar of smoke rise up and engulf her. A moment later, it was dispelled, revealing not Princess Luna, but Nightmare Moon. The TARDIS darkened in her presence.
“I smothered Equestria in endless night. I invaded the dreams of my once-beloved subjects, and tortured them with nightmares beyond even your imagination. I nearly killed my planet in the cold and the dark, and I forced my sister to banish the pony that had been her only friend. I broke her heart, and she will never recover from that pain. And I did it because I was jealous. How dare you suggest that no one else feels the guilt you do!”
The Doctor felt like he'd been slapped in the face, and took a few steps backward toward the door. He couldn't say anything 'out loud', but his thoughts and emotions were on display to her. A few moments later, she glowed white, and transformed back into Princess Luna. The lights came back on as she returned to her gentler tone.
“Jealousy turned me into Nightmare Moon, but it would not have been enough. I also needed to decide that my sister would not understand—that nopony would understand my anger. I needed to give those evil thoughts a place to live, to grow and fester, deep in my mind where they would not be rooted out before I was poisoned beyond saving.”
“I don't need to burden my friends with the mistakes of an old fool.” The Doctor walked past Luna to lean on the console like a crutch. He didn't feel up to meeting her eyes. She hesitated, unsure what to say for the first time in the conversation.
Eventually: “Let me tell you the story of a traveling magician who lived many thousands of years ago. He was the cleverest in the land, and performed many impossible feats of conjuration and illusion and incredible escapes. His magic box was filled with many wonders never seen by pony eyes, and his magic wand had powers unmatched by anything in Equestria.
“Yet he was flawed, and mortal, and infamous for getting in over his head. For putting himself in traps even he could not escape from. Many of his most famous acts almost ended in disaster. But where he might have failed, he succeeded instead. Do you know why?” The Doctor said nothing. “Doctor, what does every master magician need?”
“An oversized hat and a gaudy cloak?”
“What every great magician needs, and what this stallion had, was a group of assistants. They may not have been as clever or daring as he was, and when he took his bows the crowd did not applaud them—for all the crowd could see were the magician's majestic powers. He and his friends saw behind the illusion to the truth: without them, he was powerless, but if they joined together they could do anything. So he made them appear in impossible places, sent them flying wingless across the starry sky. And they in turn lifted him and let him fly. When his daring and his cleverness failed him, they were there by his side.”
Luna smiled. “I heard this tale so many years ago, and it taught me this: do not be afraid to share a burden with your friends. Never presume that they cannot help you—or that it would be better for you to suffer silently than to confide in them.” Her smile faded, and she fixed the Doctor with a stare so powerful that he could not avert his eyes. “I forgot this lesson once, and I regret that more than anything in my long life. You cannot afford to forget, Doctor.”
“All right, all right.” He straightened and walked around the console to where she was standing. “I know you're right, it's just... how can I tell them about this?”
“But they already know, do they not? Discord saw to that—and it did not terrify them; it did not drive them away. Your friends have stayed with you through the worst this world has to offer. They will not let you down.”
“But still—”
“They will not let you down.” And at this the Doctor heard the sound of knocking. A terrible wind rushed through the TARDIS, ripping up the pillars and the floor and everything in sight, and drawing it into a vortex howling about the center of the room, with the Doctor caught in the eye of the storm and Luna disappeared, and it was just him and the storm and the knocks. The Doctor felt himself pulled into the vortex, flying around and around, up and up and up—
And waking up with a start in his bed, in his modest Ponyville two-story flat. He sat still for a moment, but then he heard the knocking again, coming from his window. He ran to it and pulled the curtains aside to see—“Derpy?”
“You don't like the sound of knocking?” She frowned at the look of apprehension, then dawning relief, that he supposed must have been all over his face.
“What are you doing here?”
“I had a dream weird—I forget what it was—but when I woke up all I could remember was that you needed to tell me something really important. Like in real life, and I know how crazy that sounds. Whoa—” Right out of nowhere she almost managed to topple out of the sky, and did several flips before coming right side up. “Never fly tired, my mom always said—can you let me out? In, in, sorry.”
The Doctor opened his window to let her fall in, a sneaking suspicion forming in his mind about the origin of her 'dream weird'. “It's nothing, thanks. I'm okay.”
“You're a terrible liar, Doctor alien,” she yawned. “But if you really don't want to tell me, then sorry about waking you up. G'night!” She jumped out the window before the Doctor could react.
He stood there, staring at her retreating, corkscrewing form, and felt very stupid. Always with the 'I'm all right' schtick. A minute later, he sighed and crawled back into bed, knowing from experience that he wouldn't have a peaceful rest. He stared at the wall for a few minutes, before sinking into a doze.
Fwump
From which he sat up to see a freshly fallen Derpy face-first on his rug. “Sorry again, but—” She moved to a sitting position to make her voice less muffled. “Now I can't sleep either, because you need to say something and you're not saying it, and I hate it when ponies keep these stupid secrets.”
Acting, Bon Bon thought as she trotted home with a saddlebag full of bits laid over her back. I love acting.
She'd just finished doing voice work for a radio advertisement for the Sofa and Quills shop, in which the store had received the official endorsement of Princess Celestia. Or, perhaps, somepony who can sound just like her, but what are the chances of that? She wondered how long it would remain legal to pull a trick like that, and strongly suspected that the only reason it wasn't illegal was because Celestia had not gotten around to banning it yet.
Until then, she looked forward to a steady supply of work, and to hearing celebrity endorsements by everyone from Princess Luna to Iron Will. Or, very occasionally, Princess Luna and Iron Will. “Thy royal princess declares the taste of new Salt'n'Sweet Snacks to be most splendid! Dost thou agree, Iron Will?” she asked herself, then replied: “That's right, Princess! Iron Will loves how they have half the calories and all of that real flavor you love! Oh yeah!” She snorted. They don't even talk like that!But whatever—it's acting either way.
She turned onto Hoofridge Drive and stopped dead. There at number 44 was the house she'd formerly shared with Lyra. Now she seemed to be sharing it with Lyra and some sort of metal monstrosity growing out the front door, around which not just Lyra but Vinyl Scratch were buzzing like mechanically-inclined bees.
“What if we tighten the linkage with this screwdriver?” Bon Bon heard Vinyl ask, tapping a thin section of the device with a large wrench. “And by screwdriver I mean wrench. Would that work?”
“You'd get a lot of destructive interference, I think...”
“What about here?” Vinyl tapped a slightly thicker part of the apparatus.
“No idea,” Lyra yawned. “I mean, that'd boost the bass signal at the top, but I think it'd drown out the... you know, other bits.”
“You're talking like there's something wrong with that! Go bass or go home, baby.”
“But Octavia's supposed to use this too...” Neither one noticed Bon Bon walking toward them, or much of anything else. Lyra's in her own little world again... minus the little.
“Are you kidding? She loves the bass so much she's got a double!” Vinyl chuckled. “Well, cello, but that's close enough, right?”
“Actually, no... though I bet I could, could make a cello that turns into a double bass!”
“Ah, but could you make a double bass that turns into a cello?”
Bon Bon had heard enough of that, and cleared her throat. “Ahem.”
“Of course I could, silly! It would be the same instrument! Wait, was that a joke?” said Lyra.
“Ahem.”
“That was the idea,” Vinyl replied, as oblivious as Lyra to Bon Bon's presence. “Wow I am off my game right now.”
“Lyra!”
Finally Lyra noticed her and turned to face her. Bon Bon, seeing her friend's baggy, bloodshot eyes, pulled her face together into a pleasant smile, instead of the very annoyed expression she'd have liked to show. Now's the time for some real acting.
“Oh hey! G'morning, Bon Bon.” She yawned and looked up at the sky; then her eyes widened in shock, presumably from finding a sun there. “Wow, it is morning already? Didn't realize I'd pulled an all-nighter... what time is it?”
“It's five o'clock—”
“Not too bad!”
“—PM,” Bon Bon finished. “Five o'clock PM. You pulled an all-dayer.”
“Wow, really? Time flies when you're having fun, I guess... I think that's my personal record for staying up!”
“What, only 31 hours?” Vinyl snorted. “Awww, that's adorable!”
Bon Bon sighed. “Lyra, you're going to bed now—”
“Wait, wait wait wait you've gotta see what I've been working on with Vinyl,” Lyra stammered, grabbing Bon Bon with a shaky hoof and pulling her to the part of the machine by the doorframe. “You see, it's a... it's kinda like... Vinyl, it was your idea, what's it called again?”
“I commissioned Lyra to build a prototype antennifier for me and Octy's upcoming show in Fillydelphia,” Vinyl explained.
“Antennifier,” Bon Bon repeated.
“Antennifier! Antennifier antennifier antennifier!” Lyra repeated much more. “Sorry, just that now that I think about it antennifier's really fun to say, antennifier antennifier. So you've basically got a little place over there,” she pointed into the house, “right by the base of the antennifier, where the musician plays their instruments, right? And then the antennifier picks up the noise made by those instruments and plays them really loudly so that everyone can hear!”
“Lyra, I think it's...” Basically a clunkier microphone that's keeping me from entering my house, she thought. Now think of a nice way to say that. You love acting, you're a master actress. A worker of wonders with the spoken word. “It's basically a clunkier microphone that's keeping me from entering my house, and it's kind of dumb.” Well, never mind. Years of acting lessons wasted.
“Oh no no no, it's not just a microphone! An antennifier is cooler than a, than a microphone in... lots of ways!” Lyra insisted.
“Could you explain?”
“Well, first of all it’s more like an amplifier,” Vinyl yelled. “And second of all, it's way cooler! Take a look!” She opened the window of Lyra and Bon Bon's house and jumped in, then stuck her head back out. “By the way, sorry about the door thing, but windows are cool too, right?” Then she bounded into the front hall, and Bon Bon managed to see her squeeze into a sort of cubby at the base of the 'antennifier'. “Can you hear me now?” she yelled.
“Yes.”
“But not through the antennifier!” Indeed, the machine had failed to amplify any sound from Vinyl. “It only amplifies stuff it recognizes as music!”
“So you can't use it?” Bon Bon asked, unable to help herself.
“Oh, burn! Nice. But look what happens when I siiiiiiiiiiIIIIIING—”
As Vinyl's voice found notes, the antennifier lit up. Blue lines pulsed down its length, leading to a large metal sphere on the end that glowed red. Bon Bon had to admit it looked rather impressive, what with the way the lights spiraled around the device, changed color, and got brighter as Vinyl's voice grew in volume.
And grew, and grew.
Bon Bon stopped admitting it looked impressive, collapsed to the ground, and covered her ears from the sheer volume of the thing. The antennifier kept glowing brighter and growing louder, as it replayed its own noise in an ever-increasing feedback loop, until she felt her ears would burst. “ONE OF YOU, FIX IT!” she yelled, as the ground started shaking.
Lyra squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and whacked her head a few times with her hoof in concentration. Then she opened her eyes, levitated the wrench Vinyl had dropped, and tightened a nut protruding from the thinnest part of the antennifier. The effect was immediate; the volume of Vinyl's voice plummeted, and within a second faded entirely.
Bon Bon took a few deep breaths and waited until she could see straight again, then got to her hooves. “How'd that happen, then?” she asked.
“Destructive interference!” Lyra exclaimed. “Produce counter sound waves and cancel the original ones out.”
“Aw yeah, what a rush!” Vinyl jumped out the window with a mildly sane grin. “That'll keep me going for another twelve hours at least! So, Ly, any ideas for fixing the feedback thing long-term?”
Lyra's attention went right back to the antennifier, but Bon Bon had no time for that; she heard the sound of the door across the street opening. It was time for damage control.
Bon Bon crossed the street and got to the door just as the house's owner stepped out, with an angry expression on his face and a fractured piece of vase in his raised hoof. “Here's ten bits,” she interjected before he could speak, and tossed the money past the gray earth pony to land in his home. “This time, get yourself a nice, sturdy wooden bowl, or something.” Before he could get a word in edgewise, she slammed the door in his face and moved on to the next house.
“Don't worry, it's just Lyra again,” she explained to the red pegasus nextdoor. “Yeah, that thing over there... she calls it an antennifier. Basically a clunkier microphone, but only for music... point is, don't play any piano for a few days. I don't want to find out how far that thing can hear.”
That pretty much covers the specifics... She raised her voice and yelled down the block: “Sorry! Lyra again! Don't worry about it!” A few of the ponies had stuck their heads out their windows, looking down the street for the source of the noise; upon hearing Bon Bon they shrugged and went about their business.
“And as for you—” Bon Bon interrupted Lyra in the middle of some rant about why double basses and cellos were different. “Lyra, when's the last time you ate something?” Lyra's mouth stayed open, and she looked down at her stomach; it grumbled loudly. “Okay, that settles it. Vinyl, go home and get some sleep. Now,” she added, fixing Vinyl with a glare like a cockatrice. Vinyl shrugged and set off toward home. “Lyra, I'm going to get you something to eat, and then you're going to bed too.”
“But BB...” Lyra sighed. “Okay, I guess you know best.” She clambered through the window, and Bon Bon followed her.
“Oh, and another thing?” Bon Bon climbed over the base of the antennifier. “While I'm getting you food, you're going to explain something to me.”
“I bet you wanna know how it works, right?” Lyra grinned and extended a hoof to help Bon Bon down.
“I'd be fascinated to learn!” She smiled back. “After you explain how you're going to get it out of the house when you've built the base wider than the door is tall.”
Lyra's smile took a few seconds to die away. “Oh. Right.”
Oh god. The Doctor ran through the town, looking frantically for any cover, any nook or cranny, any sort of shelter he could take. There was nothing—door after door was shut, and there were no cracks between the houses. It had been such a nice day.
“Get back here! I'm not finished with you yet!” the voice shrieked behind him.
“Aah!” He spied a sign post in the distance for Hoofridge Drive. Thank goodness. He veered right, rushed to the house numbered 44—which, mercifully, was open—and dove through the front door and under the window.
“This had better be another chaos god, or I'm throwing you out.” He looked up to see Bon Bon giving him an annoyed look from the couch—or, more simply, Bon Bon looking at him.
“No, but it's as potentially destructive. Get down before she sees you talking to me!”
“She?” Bon Bon rolled her eyes, but crouched down beside him. “Girl troubles. You of all stallions are having girl troubles. Who's the oh-so-lucky mare?”
“Not like that, Bon Bon. Not even close.”
“And I'm the liar?”
“Bon Bon, you need to listen to me right now, because what that mare's about to do could destroy all Ponyville.” Bon Bon shrugged. “That's your reply? A shrug?”
“Funny thing about living here; you get used to town-destroying events.”
"Seriously! It's life and death.”
“Darling, where are you?” The Doctor flinched, then peeked over the windowsill to see Rarity looking up and down the street, levitating a long brown textile behind her. “We haven't finished yet!” He pulled himself closer to the rug, vainly hoping to pass through it somehow.
“You didn't finish something with Rarity?” Bon Bon snorted. “The jokes just write themselves, don't they.”
“What?” It took a moment for the Doctor to see what she was getting at. “No! Not even a little like that!” he protested, glancing up at her.
“Okay, I'll bite.” Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “What's it like, darling?”
“Oh, Doctor!”
The Doctor wondered how it was that he'd gotten used to being a pony, but still was surprised that random ponies in the street could call him by name. A moment later, however, he realized it was not a random pony; it was Rarity. This fact was confirmed when she sidled up next to him, put a hoof on his shoulder, and began steering him off course.
“Oh! Uh, hullo, Rarity. I was just, ah, going to the, um...” He ransacked his brain for a suitable lie, but found nothing, perhaps because Rarity was batting her eyelashes at him. “Where are we going?”
“Well, I hope you'll forgive me if I tell you that I positively adore your suit. Those pinstripes really do suit you, and I'd never have thought that shade of blue workable before now, especially on a brown pony—but I must say, the contrast works! So, I was wondering if I could ask where you got it.”
“Funny you should ask, because, er... this may be a bit hard to explain, so I'll just show you.” The Doctor stopped walking, reached into his pocket and tugged part of the lining to the outside. “Could you take that and pull, please?”
She grabbed the white corner sticking out of his pockets with her magic and began pulling it out. “Well, all right, though I don't see why you couldn't...” It kept coming out, expanding like a balloon until it was fully half the Doctor's own size. His sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, spectacles, a large dictionary, and quite a lot of receipts fell to the ground. “Oh my.”
“It's bigger on the inside. Best pockets you could ask for. More to the point, do you see anything familiar?”
She scrutinized the pocket lining, and before long her mouth opened into a perfect 'o' shape. “Why, this is—it reads 'Rarity'! In my stitching—I'd know that stitchwork anywhere. But how...”
“Really? You made it for me in the future. No, sorry—you will have made it for me.” Her mouth was still suspended in shocked place. “Tenses aside, this really isn't that hard. I got this shirt from the future along with my time machine,” he explained, grabbing the odds and ends that had fallen from his pocket and stuffing them back inside. “My future self will have sent it back to me using said time machine, once I've created it. However, you will be the one to create the clothes. Makes sense?”
Rarity's brow furrowed. “I think so... but what if I decided to not make it after all? Would that cause a paradox?”
“Do you not want to make it?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then no problem.”
“Well... in that case, there's no reason to wait!” Rarity declared, grabbing him once more and pulling him down the street.
“Um, okay,” said the Doctor, acutely aware of how little say he seemed to have in the matter.
The two of them traveled to Rarity's own opulently decorated Carousel Boutique, a building whose correctness in naming the Doctor had to admire. It really was as if someone had fixed a carousel in place and added walls, windows, a front door, and a second story. Unfortunately, the inside seemed less admirable to him. His eyes were assaulted by virulently pink walls, pink ceilings, pink drapes and pink floors—enough to set the head spinning, providing the feeling of rotation that the carousel no longer could.
“Perhaps a little more pink,” he suggested. Rarity seemed not to hear this suggestion as she crossed the room to open a drawer and pull out a few swathes of fabric.
“Now, here's one of a few fabrics I think might be suited, no pun intended of course, for making your clothes.” She pulled out a roll of fabric that was, near as the Doctor could tell, identical to his own suit. Wait, hang on....
The Doctor took an unconscious step back, and a moment later his mind caught up with him. “Actually, I'd say that one looks fine, Rarity...”
“But I simply can't get it wrong!” she cried, a look of utter anguish contorting her features. “Knowing I could create a masterpiece, and failing? Now just stand still—this will only take a moment.” She carried the cloth closer to his suit, and the Doctor felt a growing tingling running through the fabric, like a cloud just itching to connect to the ground via a particularly lively bolt of lightning.
He backed away. “Rarity, if that is my suit's material, it'll be my suit from the past touching my suit from the future. The time differential's gonna short out and take Ponyville with it!”
“Oh, everyone has an excuse, don't they.”
“No, not an excuse, I promise, just please!” His pleas made no difference: she kept coming, leaving him with no other option. “Listen to me!” he yelled, bolting out of her boutique and down the street.
“So that's the story?”
“Yes, and that's why it's absolutely imperative that you let me stay here,” the Doctor finished.
“What a strange and wonderful tale,” Bon Bon muttered, who had been carefully watching his face for most of the story. Then she grinned and said, “I don't believe a word.”
“What?”
“You've got the lying face on.”
“What—I do not!”
“You think I don't know the lying face? I've practiced in front of a mirror for years, trying to get rid of the lying face, and that—” she tapped his snout “—is the lying face.” The Doctor wondered what kind of cues she could possibly be picking up. “Then again, maybe you're not lying about the whole story... so which bit is it?”
The Doctor remained silent, still listening for Rarity's calls of “Doctor?” They were coming closer and closer.
“There's at least one way to find out,” Bon Bon said as she stood up and opened the window. “You know what my dad always told me to do for problem solving?”
“No...” The Doctor suspected he didn't want to know the answer.
With a moment, she confirmed this suspicion. “Lateral thinking. Alley-oop!” Before he could react, she lifted him up and turned him out the window.
"No! Bon Bon!” He tried to stand up and jump back in, but she closed her window and locked her door. “Please!” He knocked on the window many times, but she merely grinned at him.
“There you are!” With a horrible feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, he turned around to meet his fate, who brandished a length of pinstriped brown fabric at him. “Now stand still, and this will only take a moment.”
“Rarity, no—” He tried to move, but once again he was not fast enough. He closed his eyes as the pinstriped fabric touched his suit, bracing himself—
He waited a few seconds, still flinching all the while. Surely it would have to explode at some point.
Apparently not, he decided another few seconds later, and opened his eyes. There was still a Ponyville around him. He picked up his hoof and wiped some nervous sweat from his brow, making a mental note to reprimand Rarity and Bon Bon for being so reckless.
“Mmm,” mumbled the former, looking perplexedly at her fabric. “No, this isn't right at all.”
“No, this is—this is good, everyone's alive—”
“Oh, I see! Wrong color pinstripes.” She pulled out another swath of brown fabric and touched it to his suit.
“What?”
BOOM
The Doctor stood blinking in a puff of smoke. Soot covered every inch of him; mane, face, tail, and most of all suit. It also covered Rarity’s swath of fabric, but ended there; there was absolutely no damage to be found in the surrounding environment.
“Seriously! It's life and death.” The Doctor glared at Bon Bon, who smirked and continued mimicking his voice through the window. “What that mare's about to do could destroy all Ponyville.”
“Well, I might have... slightly exaggerated the area of effect.” She rolled her eyes, prompting him to continue. “All right, the intensity too. But can you honestly blame me for not wanting this to happen?” He raised his hoof to begin wiping off his suit.
“Oh dear.” Rarity sidled up to him to help with brushing. “Terribly sorry, Doctor—if I’d known something like this would happen I would never have been so enthusiastic.”
“Yes, if only there had been some way you could have found out,” the Doctor sighed.
“And look, the swath is all dirty as well... I just hope it won’t take very... long... to clean.” As Rarity trailed off, she drew her hoof over the square of fabric she was levitating. Around and around her hoof went, until the only ash left was in a faint spiral pattern.
“I-DE-A!” she exclaimed. “Subtle decorations of ash on stallions' formal wear, for the customer who simply must distinguish themselves from the crowd! A soot suit, if you will! It will be, as they say, bon chic bon genre!”
"Wonderful,” the Doctor said, brushing the last of the soot he could see from himself. “Just not with that fabric—we already know what it’s used for. You hear me?”
“Don’t worry, dear, I know how to listen. And thank you for giving me two wonderful ideas in the same day! Please let me know if any more fashion ideas pop off that spectacular brain of yours.”
A thought occurred to him. “Oh, I've got a few,” he said, turning around. “Would you like to see them?”
“Oh, I'm sure... but see them? Do you have any suit designs stashed away in those magical pockets?”
“Psychic communication. We've done it before, remember? I can send the image directly into your brain, if you’ll let me.”
“Well, don't wait!” She pressed her face right up against his own. “Show me the most beautiful fashion in the universe, if you can!”
He closed his eyes, and concentrated very hard. Focus on Six... Six... Six... Six...
Rarity gasped. The Doctor opened his eyes to see hers with shrunken irises and a shellshocked expression. She slowly turned around and meandered back to her boutique, mumbling something about “clown vomit”.
“What did you do?” Bon Bon asked, poking her head out the window with an amused expression on her face.
The Doctor smiled. “Let’s just say that some things are best forgotten.”
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.” Got it right. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.” Got it right. “Hi hi, Mom Dad.”
Derpy cringed at the mistake, and said the words a few more times under her breath to be sure. At least no one was around to hear it; her parents lived in a quiet corner of Cloudsdale, and ponies were likely to be sparse on most days of the week.
She angled downward toward the cloud bank that had been her front 'lawn' for umpteen years, and landed gently. Now she wished someone had been around to see her; goodness knew she'd crashed face-first into the lawn enough times. She walked to the front door and knocked four times.
A few seconds later, it opened to reveal her parents standing there. Derpy smiled. Okay, easy does it. “Hi, Mom! Dad, hi!” What? No! “I mean, I mean—”
“We know, dear,” her mom said, pulling her into a hug.
“I mean... happy Family Appreciation Day,” Derpy finished into her mother's neck, clenching her jaw a bit. She pulled back from the hug, fumbled in her saddlebag, and pulled out a wing-made card, which she offered to her parents.
“That's very thoughtful of you, Ditzy.” Her father grinned and grabbed the card in his mouth. “Come on in, make yourself at home—so to speak.” With a wink he walked into the living room. Derpy groaned. Dad jokes. What can you do?
“So, how is everything?” she asked, once they were all sitting down inside. “It's been, like, a month since I got your last letter.”
“Well, considering what happened a few months ago, there hasn't been that much to tell.” Mr. Do took a draught of lemonade before continuing. “At least not compared to Canterlot burning down and all. Right now we're just shipping materials and materials from the plant. They say that within the year the city'll be pretty close to her former glory.”
Mrs. Do grimaced. “I still shudder to think what would have happened if those Elements of Harmony hadn't been there to save the day. Why, Cloudsdale might have been next on the chopping block. Say,” she asked, peering at Derpy, “they live in your town, isn't that right? Down in Ponyville?”
“Yeah, they do,” Derpy said. And I'm one of them now, Mom, she did not say. A little smile came to her lips, and she covered it by taking a sip of her own lemonade. Sometimes it was fun to have a secret.
“Speaking of shipping,” her dad said, “how's the old mail job going, eh? Still delivering, rain or shine or sleet or hail?”
Derpy's feathers shook, and some of the lemonade in the cup between them sloshed onto her body. She gasped. “Oh, sorry, Mom, I'll clean it up—”
Her dad did not hesitate; he upended his whole cup over his head, soaking his blonde mane immediately. “Haha, Ditzy! You'll have to do better than that if you want to beat the raining world champ!” Derpy chuckled in spite of herself. Dad jokes.
“I guess I'll get some napkins,” her mother sighed, fluttering over to the kitchen.
As she left, her father leaned in close to her, lemonade dripping down his forehead. “Is something wrong with the job, Ditzy?”
“No, no, it's fine. I'm just sorta, you know, job betweens right now. Bejobs tween. Between jobs!” she blurted, then shoved her hooves over her mouth, as if that would cancel out the words.
To no one's surprise, it didn't. “You're what?” Her mother rushed in from the kitchen, a single napkin held between her wing feathers. “Since when? I thought you were doing fine at the post office.”
“It was going fine! I didn't get kicked out or anything, I was doing great—I just left because...” But she could not say any more.
“Because...?” her mother, of course, had to ask.
Because an alien from another universe showed up, and we fought Discord together, and now I'm helping him build his magical time machine, and for some wonderful reason I'm really really good at it, she did not say. She felt sick in her stomach. “Research,” she managed.
“Um?”
“I'm doing magic research.” It's almost true, after all, she told herself. Oh, no it's not. It's a sack of lies. Who am I kidding?
Not her parents, by the look of it. Her mother's face looked so dubious, Derpy might as well have told her she'd gotten a pet windigo. “Magic research with who?”
“Uh...” She said the first name that popped into her head. “Doctor.” Only to realize she couldn't use that, and cast around desperately for a second name. “Shift Blue! I mean Blue Shift, Doctor Blue Shift. We're trying to figure out how to—how time magic works. And it's not a really big project, that's why you've probably never heard of it.” That was the worst lie ever.
“And... how is that?” her father asked.
“Good! Really good.” She raised her glass to her face and drank slowly.
No one talked for what was probably a minute, but seemed like an hour. Then her mother, hesitating almost with every word, said, “Sweetie? You know you can tell us anything, right?”
“Um... yes?” Not this, she thought.
“And if you're doing magic research with Doctor Blue Shift, we're very proud of you,” her mother continued. “And if there's anything else you want to tell us...” Not this, Derpy thought.
“Kind of our job, isn't it?” Her father smiled warmly at her. “But if you need to take your time to tell us, that's fine too.”
“... yeah,” she said. “That one. The second option.” She looked down at her still-dripping front.
There were a few more painful seconds of silence before her dad jumped right back in. “Anyway! I hear the Stratushire Zephyrs are playing the Cloudsdale Chinooks in about an hour at the thunderball stadium, and tickets are half off. What do you say we head on over and watch the sparks fly?”
“Dear, you're sounding like the stallion on the radio commercials,” his wife admonished.
Derpy's father shrugged. “If you say so. So who wants to head on down this Sunday, Sunday, Sundaaaaaay?” Her mother sighed, but raised a hoof in assent. “Wonderful! Whaddya say, Derpy?”
“I'm not doing magic research,” she mumbled.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Her dad's smile pinched inward.
“I said I'm not doing magic research!” Both her parents looked at her, and Derpy felt incredibly small. She huddled back into the chair, her head bent inward; it was too hard to return her parents' gazes. “I lied, because I can't tell you the truth about this one, not now right.”
“Well, why not?” her mother exclaimed.
“You'd think I'd gone crazy.” Derpy forced herself to look at her mother. “But I swear it's nothing bad—it's the opposite of bad. It's literally out of this world. I just—I just can't tell you right now, okay?”
“If not now, then when?” Derpy averted her gaze once again, only to feel a wing pushing her chin up. Her mother had crossed the room and was standing in front of her. “Ditzy, you're making me worried.”
“Derpy, Mom!” She pushed away her mother's wing. “Ponies call me Derpy now!”
“You shouldn't call yourself stupid just because everypony else does, Ditzy.”
“He doesn't!” Derpy's eyes widened. So did everyone else's. Did I just say that?
“Oh?” Her mother pounced. “There's a boy?”
“No!” Derpy grimaced. “Well, technically, but not like a boyfriend—ugh, this isn't how this was go to supposed! I mean supposed to go!” She cast a pleading look at her father. “Can we just talk about this later and go watch thunderball now?”
“Yes! Great idea! I'll get my moneybags and then we'll get going.” Her father leaped from his chair and exited the room at top speed.
“Ditzy.” Her mom leaned in close and dabbed tenderly at the lemonade still dripping off her body with the napkin. “Please just tell me.”
“Soon,” she replied. “I promise, Mom. As soon as I can make sure you'll believe me.”
Her mother grimaced, but before she could say anything more her dad was back with his money bags. “Well don't just sit there, you slowpokes!” he called as he dashed out the door. “Do we want good seats or not?”
Her mother pulled a tight, presentable smile onto her face and followed her dad out the door. “Are you coming, Ditzy?” she said.
“Coming, Mom!” A few seconds later, Derpy walked out of the house, closed the door behind her, and took off. “Hi Mom, hi Dad,” she muttered, letting the wind at her face carry her words away. “I'm actually the Element of Honesty, and this is the Doctor, and we're building a time machine. I'm the new Element of Honesty, and this is the Doctor, and we're building a time machine. I'm the Element of Honesty....”
When Lyra stepped off the train in Fillydelphia, a hoof-made Family Appreciation Day card in her saddlebag, she made no attempt to find her old home. It was a weekday, after all; neither love nor money would keep her mother away from the job. So, Lyra took a map and followed it downtown until she was at 5470 Broad Street. She looked up to see Libra Heartstrings, Attorney at Law in big letters over the door, then grimaced and went inside.
Not much had changed. The walls were covered in the same old books, which she doubted anyone but her had ever read. There was the same old carpet over the same old mahogany floor. She recognized the same wooden chairs on the sides of the room, and the same wooden receptionist's desk at its end—but she did not recognize the receptionist, a stallion with his black mane done up in a formal little ponytail. Which meant, of course, that he would not recognize her. Because this needed to be so much more fun, right? Lyra sighed and stepped forward.
The receptionist looked up at her and smiled a tight smile. “Welcome to Libra Heartstrings' office. Do you have an appointment?”
“I'm Miss Heartstrings' daughter, and it's Family Appreciation Day. That counts, right?”
The stallion's eyebrow rose. “She has a kid?”
Lyra rubbed her face with a hoof. Should I have expected anything different? “Look, just tell her Lyra Heartstrings is here to see her. I'll just... wait here.” She found a chair, sat down, and pulled a book from the shelves behind her without looking. She opened it to a random page and read aloud.
“'Among the most important things a modern Equestrian lawyer can do is to establish and maintain a relationship with their clients.'” She smirked a bit at the irony, which seemed to be the only interesting thing on the page. Further reading confirmed this suspicion: “'This relationship can begin with an interview, in which the lawyer learns the facts of the client and his or her case....' Bleh.” She replaced the book in its shelf. She expected me to make a career out of that?
Lyra waited a few minutes more in silence. It was a familiar feeling, one that brought to mind the collection of times she'd come here after school with some homework, or maybe a book, and waited for her mother to finish the day's legal nonsense and pick her up—and, if Lyra was lucky, ask how her day had been. It had been just as much fun in the past as it was in the present. She slouched in her seat.
Finally, a dour-looking stallion walked out of the back room and through the front door, muttering something about 'a waste of time' and 'distracted'. She gave the receptionist a questioning look, and he gave her a shrug. Good enough, I guess. She got up and walked into Libra Heartstrings' office.
Here, it seemed nothing had changed, either in the room or in her mother. Her graying, golden hair was still done up in the same tight bun, and she still wore the same kind of formal clothes and expression. And, as always, she hardly seemed to acknowledge Lyra's presence, but grabbed some documents from her desk and slid them into a file instead.
Lyra took a deep breath. Well, one of us has got to make the effort. “Happy Family Appreciation Day, Mom!” she said in as bright a voice as she could manage.
Libra looked up. For a moment, her formal expression changed into something that looked like surprise. Yes, mother, it's so surprising that I'd come on Family Appreciation Day. “It's good to see you, Lyra,” she said eventually, though not convincingly.
“I got you a card.” Lyra fished the card out of her saddlebag with her magic and passed it to her mother. Libra opened it and read the contents with a flat expression, then picked it up with her teeth—she had no horn, unlike her daughter—and placed it into the same file from before.
Lyra's face fell. “Did... did you like it?”
“What? Oh, yes. It was very nice.” Her mother wasn't even looking at her.
Lyra gritted her teeth. It was obvious; nothing had changed. Nothing would change, no matter how hard she tried. Why bother?
She let the anger grow inside her for a few seconds more, as her mother continued to aimlessly shuffle papers around. She was surprised at how good it felt, just as she let it out. “Should I have sent it by mail, Mom? Would that have saved you the trouble of having to see me?”
Her mother didn't look up. Lyra plowed on. “I mean, after how thrilled you were that I decided not to do exactly what you do, I guess it should have been clear that you care so much about the two of us. That you'd put so much effort into this family.”
Libra made a little noise, like clearing her throat. Lyra couldn't let herself stop here; if she let her mother start talking, she'd just be cowed like usual. She'd back down, just like always. And she'd been reined in long enough. Her lips contorted into a snarl.
“Heck, it's been a whole year—I thought you might have gotten over it, but of course not!” she yelled at her mother, who still wouldn't look at her. “I mean, you can't have thought I'd want to be a lawyer anyway, right? Not if it would mean ending up as... as bone dry as you! Happy Family Appreciation Day, Mom,” she spat, before turning around and walking for the door.
Her mother made the little noise again, but this time Lyra stopped—because she realized that it didn't sound like her mother was clearing her throat. It sounded like a sob. That can't be right. She looked back around to see her mother's body shaking, her head still looking down at the desk. Lyra's jaw dropped. That's impossible. Not in a billion years. “Mom, what's wrong?” she found herself saying, almost against her will.
Her mother took a few deep breaths, still facing the desk so that Lyra saw no tears—if indeed her mother was crying. It would be another first. Eventually, she spoke, evenly and clearly. “Your... father came earlier today.”
Lyra's jaw dropped another notch. “Dad? But he's never shown up, not since... ever.” She tried to form a mental image of him; nothing came to mind. It had always been a half-hearted fantasy of hers that maybe, one of these holidays, he'd appear and help fill in that image.
“You say that as if I weren't also surprised, Lyra. After all, you were two when we....” Libra sighed, and looked up once more. Her face was composed, but what struck Lyra most was how tired her mother looked. It was like she'd aged twenty years staring at that desk. “He came to ask about you. Apparently, a recent concert in the city was a massive success, and he'd heard you designed the sound systems. He wanted to know, as a father, what you've made of yourself.”
“And... um... what did you tell him about me?” Lyra bit the inside of her cheek. Really, how much did she want this stranger to know about her?
“He left disappointed. I told him that he didn't deserve to learn anything about you, because...” Libra's face trembled, and her next words were a bit rushed, a bit less even. “Because a decent father would have been there for you a day in your life.” She brought a hoof above the desk and buried her face in it.
“No, you don't have to feel like that.” Lyra reached to her mother and awkwardly patted her back. She tried to think of some other comforting thing to say. It took a few seconds. “You're right. He was never there for me. It was always you.”
“You've always been too forgiving.” It was the closest thing to a compliment she'd gotten from her mother in a long time. “You were right earlier, though. I never made a serious effort with either of you.”
“Don't be like that.” Lyra gave her mother a weak smile, keeping eye contact as best as she could. It was difficult, like watching a proud old building collapse. “It must have been hard, with me growing up and him not there.”
“I believe I could have taken some days off.” Her mother reached down to the file from earlier and pulled out a few scraps of paper—the same papers, Lyra realized, that her mother had been looking at when she'd entered the room. “I saved the reviews of your concert, if you would like to read them. From everything I've heard, your equipment was superb. You should be... proud.”
Lyra looked at her mother, then took one of the scraps of paper and sat down in the office's other chair, her head spinning. It was so much simpler just to hate you.
As a general rule, ponies did not go to Campolina per se: they went to the Campolinian beach. The town was essentially an accessory to the miles and miles of fine white sand, and the flawless expanse of sea beyond. Flawless meant expensive, and expensive meant that the train lines to Campolina stayed well away from the shore, so that neither steam nor noise would put a dent in the happiness of a single paying tourist.
Thus, Bon Bon could not see very much through the train's open window—just a sliver of white under a band of blue. Even so, if she breathed deeply, she could smell the sea air. It felt like home again, and she let herself relax. The tourist season was dying, leaving the train almost empty; it was safe to relax for a little while.
Several minutes later, she'd exited from the train to the station, and was on her way to exiting that when a voice stopped her in her tracks. “Hey, BB!”
She looked around and saw her brother Scone Bon approaching her from across the station. Relaxation was no longer possible. She managed a smile. “Hello there, Scone! Didn't expect you to be here.” Remember, she told herself, you like him. He's your brother and you like him.
“I figured I'd meet you here. Just to make sure you didn't get lost.” He grinned and walked past her.
Okay, maybe you don't like him that much. She clenched her jaw for a moment, then started walking again, trotting until she'd passed him in turn. “Oh, like, thank you so much!” she whined, pitching her voice high and nasally. “Could you, like, show me to the mall? It's not like I've ever, y'know, been here before.”
He winced, then sped up a bit until the two of them were walking side by side. “Just when I'd gotten used to you not being around to do that.”
“Get used to it, if you're gonna keep saying stupid stuff.” Remembering that she liked him, Bon Bon flashed a smile at her brother and gave him a little noogie; it seemed like the right thing to do.
They walked out of the station and into the town—such as it was. Ignoring the hotels, souvenir shops, and other tourist-centric buildings, Campolina was basically a school, a store, a doctor's office, and a few dozen houses—not even as big as Ponyville. It was a wonderful place to spend a few weeks, but Bon Bon had no idea how her family stayed sane for years on end.
Even so, it was home. “It's good to be back,” she said, and she meant it. “How are things?”
Scone Bon shrugged. “Same old. Dad's working with the council; they're petitioning the weather service to have the summer last longer. Mom and I are still ba—” He caught himself, and amended, “We're still doing the same old thing.”
“You can say baking around me, you know.” Bon Bon frowned. “I'm not a bomb.”
“If you say so.” He chuckled nervously.
“And what's that supposed to mean?”
He rolled his eyes, but didn't answer. They continued down the main road in silence for several minutes, flanked on both sides by brightly-colored shops, still open for the last days of the season. Each had, at best, a few customers inside. I came at a kind of depressing time.
“Hang on,” she said, struck by sudden realization. “We missed the turn for our house—it was two blocks ago.”
“Really?” Scone Bon looked back at her, and his eyes widened—too much. “Whoops! Didn't notice.”
Her brother was a horrible liar. “What's going on, Scone?” she demanded. “Where are we really going?”
“Bon Bon, dear!” This voice came from further down the road. Bon Bon followed the voice to its source, and saw her mother waving from outside a bakery.
“BB?” her brother asked, probably seeing the scowl that Bon Bon was making no effort to hide.
“I can't believe you,” she snapped, looking him in the eyes for a moment. Then she trotted forward and directed her glare at her mother.
“Hello, my little sweet and sour,” her mother said, smiling warmly as Bon Bon approached. “How was the train?”
"Did you put him up to this?"
The warm smile changed to a frown. "I don't understand, Bon Bon."
“Drop the dreck, Mom.” she said, before switching to a crooning imitation of her mother's voice. “Oh hello, my little sweet and sour. Fancy meeting you here at the bakery, when—imagine that—I've got a big order of pastries I need help with! So why don't you just stop being a crazy actress and help your poor mother out!”
Her mother's mouth hung open. Good, Bon Bon thought. Saw right through you, didn't I? Even better, she noticed several shoppers jump at her outburst in the corners of her eyes.
“Well, you're sort of half-right.” Scone Bon appeared at his mother's side. “I mean, we're done baking for today by a long shot, so you're wrong there. But you're absolutely crazy. Heck, you've always been crazy.”
Bon Bon flicked her tail. “Say that again.”
“Oh, come on.” Scone snorted. “If you hadn't always been crazy, you wouldn't have done the whole acting thing after you got your cutie mark. That's not rational, BB.”
“You arrogant little snot—”
“You two!” The two siblings froze at their mother's tone. “Scone Bon, go inside and sweep up for the day. Your sister and I need to talk.”
Scone walked to the door of the family's bakery. Just as he entered, outside of his mother's peripheral vision, he gave Bon Bon a little wink—then he was inside. Bon Bon bared her teeth at the door, before her mother took her shoulder and led her around the side of the bakery, where the smell of fresh food overpowered the sea air.
“Sweetie, please,” her mother said. “Hear me out.” Bon Bon didn't look at her—and if she was being honest with herself, she couldn't.
“We won't force you to do anything. And I know every mare needs to do her own thing for a while.” Her mother smiled. “Why, the things your father and I got up to in our early days... you'd hardly believe them.”
Bon Bon rolled her eyes, still turned away from her mother. “Filibustering a town meeting for three days? Baking a dozen cakes in one crazy afternoon?”
She felt her mother's hoof laid across her back. “Bigger and crazier than you can imagine. And do you know, I wouldn't undo it for the world. But everyone has to settle down in the end, don't they?”
“Is that what you think this is?” She turned and looked at her mother, trying to sound angry, or at least convincing—but she couldn't do it. “Just some phase? Mom, this is—it's who I am. Don't make me change that.” She wished that last sentence had sounded like an ultimatum instead of a plea.
“Never, sweetie. But it's hard, isn't it?”
“What is?” Bon Bon asked, as if she didn't know the answer.
“Why, going against your cutie mark—and keeping it up for years, you stubborn little thing.” Her mother put her other hoof around Bon Bon's other side and hugged her tight. “Your father and I are proud of you, but how can you keep it up for so long? Don't you ever need a break?”
Don't you get tired, keeping up the facade? Out of her memories came Discord's voice, soothing and deceitful. Don't you wish you could stop? I can help. Bon Bon gasped and broke away from her mother's hug.
“Sweetie, what's wrong?” her mother asked, real worry on her face.
“Nothing,” she managed. “And I—I don't need breaks.”
“Everypony needs a vacation now and then, right? Just to rest for a while? And you're in the perfect place for it.” She gestured at the town around them. “Maybe it'll be easier for you after you take this vacation.”
It was like a whole frame of springs were pressing from within Bon Bon's body, compressed to within an inch of their lives and trying to get out—and it was like she couldn't stop them any longer. Her breathing sped up. Her mother continued, “It's not the same thing as giving up, sweetie.”
Bon Bon looked back at her cutie mark. Damn you, she thought, stopping a sob in her throat before it could escape and do any damage. Then she turned back to her mother. “Maybe....” She took a deep breath before forcing the words out. “Maybe just one batch.” She imagined the springs bursting out of her body all at once, tearing bits from her as they left.
Her mother smiled. “You always liked making the little hard candies, didn't you?” She took Bon Bon by the shoulder once more and led her into the bakery. “Oh, it'll be like old times. And you can tell me all about your acting career!”
“Just like old times,” Bon Bon repeated, not really thinking about the words. It's not the same thing as failing, she told herself. But as she entered the room, she saw her brother look up from his sweeping and wink at her.
It wasn't easy, walking through what used to be Canterlot, but Octavia felt like she was coping. She'd been preparing for it on the train; she knew what kind of devastation to expect.
And there it was, as she walked down the main street. To her right were the burned-out remains of an old jeweler's. Boards covered windows that had once displayed the most beautiful amethysts she'd ever imagined. Just think of other things—clerical things. Like which room your family's in.
She turned away and continued on toward the castle, where her family was being housed until their home could be rebuilt. Her mind flicked toward memories of that place—the old oak tree where she'd had a swing, the kitchen where her father had made the best food in the world—
Enough, she told herself. Thinking about it won't do any good. Just get to the castle and you'll be able to go see them. You have to be close now, anyway.
Upon turning another corner, she saw a large mass of ponies surrounded by royal guards. One of them was shouting to the crowd: “Fillies and gentlecolts, you're all going to be able to see your families, but we have to do this in an orderly fashion! Find the line for your name and just wait. You'll see your families soon enough.”
There's a line to go visit my family. Octavia tried to stop her brain from continuing this train of thought, but it was on the march now. There's a line because everyone else is doing it and they're worried—and because everyone's taken refuge in the castle because everyone's lost their homes to the fire—
“Stop!” she muttered to herself, forcing her eyes shut before anything managed to escape. This isn't the place, and it isn't the time. After a few deep breaths, she trotted to a royal guard and found the line for the 'O's. It's okay... it's nothing major, just a line... just a line that stretches for... She leaned to the side to see how long the line was, then groaned. That stretches for hours! … no, stay calm. It'll be fine. You can endure this.
“Excuse me, miss? Miss Octavia?” She opened her eyes and was surprised to see a second royal guard in front of her. This one's uniform was different, with purple and gold around the edges; she supposed he must be a captain. “You are the Octavia, right?”
“I... suppose I am,” she replied, feeling rather uncertain. Her eyes widened further as he pulled out a piece of paper and offered it to her. Is this one of those looking-for-autographs things Vinyl gets so excited about?
Then she realized that she'd seen him once before. “Hold on, you're... something Armor, isn't that right?”
“Captain Shining Armor, ma'am.” He leaned in closer and spoke softly. “The Princesses told me you'd be here, and gave me instructions to help speed you through.” He lifted the paper once more. “Here are the directions to your family's room. Go on ahead.”
The ponies around her were giving her odd looks. “I really shouldn't,” she said, smiling nervously at them. “I should wait like everyone else.”
“You saved my sister, and the princesses. Please, Element of Generosity,” he said, pressing it closer to her. “It is, perhaps literally, the least we can do.” She finally took it from him, whereupon he straightened up and marched away from her.
She was still conscious of the range of expressions around her—from bemused to openly annoyed—as she opened the note and read it, then placed it in her saddlebags. I don't have the right to just saunter off ahead of everyone else, do I? Why should I get to skip ahead and not them?
Though I did help save Equestria. She shrugged; it was hardly a point she could argue. And the princesses made a special point to think of me—it might not be right to ignore that... but then again...
Oh, I'm being ridiculous, she decided. What would Vinyl Scratch do? After another moment's hesitation, she got out of line and began walking parallel to it, ignoring the muttered vindictive remarks she heard from the ponies in line. I'm not going to feel guilty about this.
Octavia was fairly sure that the wooden door before her was the correct one, but in the dusky cellar of the castle it was hard to be sure. Besides, the hallway she was in had dozens of identical doors, like a dimly lit hospital, or a dungeon. For all she knew, it had been a dungeon, at some point.
I'm brooding again, she noticed, and took another deep breath. Then she raised her hoof, hesitated again, and knocked with a tentative “Hello?”
The door opened and her Aunt Vivace poked her head out. “Is that...” She beamed, and before Octavia knew what had happened she'd been pulled inside the door in a giant hug. “It's little Octavia! And just when I was wondering if prisoners were allowed visiting hours—welcome!”
“Happy Family Appreciation Day, Auntie.” It wasn't easy to say those words, considering the surprising amount of force her aging aunt was exerting on her diaphragm.
“Oh, you have no idea how much I appreciate this.” Vivace pinched her cheek with both hooves, then turned around to the room at large and said, “Now, look who poked her head in here!”
Octavia wondered whether she could truthfully say 'at large' in respect to this cell of a room. A little chest of drawers stood in one corner by the door, and a lamp sat on top of it to provide the room's light; there was no window. Sitting on various mattresses that took up almost half of the room's remaining floor space were her father, mother, and grandfather, each one wearing a plain white robe. As Octavia entered the room, they all rose and embraced her, one by one.
“Oh, mia cara!” Her father kissed to the side of her left cheek, then her right. “You bring light into this hall.”
“If we had a hall,” Aunt Vivace muttered.
“Now, Vivi,” said her grandfather, standing up slowly from his own mattress, which had the most blankets of all of them. “Come here, my darling.”
“Grandpa Fando!” Octavia smiled and rushed into his hooves.
He grunted as she made contact. “Not too rough, my dear. My bones aren't what they were... especially on these old slabs.” He tapped the bed behind him with a back leg.
“Oh, don't be that way, Father,” said Octavia's mother, pulling her from her grandfather's embrace to hug her. “Wonderful to see you, dear. Please, sit down.” She gestured toward her own mattress.
“No, don't worry,” Octavia said, stepping back.
“I insist!” Her mother and father remained standing, and Octavia, after a few seconds, gave in and sat.
“I brought something for you,” she said, pulling a check out of her saddlebag. “My last show with Vinyl was a big success, and... I wanted you to have something.” But as she lifted the check toward her parents, her father shook his head.
“We can't be accepting charity, my dear. No, no,” he said, pushing the hoof with the check back toward her, “not even from our own daughter. We may not have our home, but we still have our pride.”
“But...” Before she could get any farther, her father narrowed his eyes and shook his head once, and sharply. “All right,” Octavia said, putting the check back in her bag. “So... how is the rebuilding going?”
“Oh, I've heard it's going wonderfully!” her mother said. “That is, considering the damage. I've heard that ponies are actually getting back to their homes already.”
Octavia tilted her head. “You've heard?”
“Well, we haven't exactly been out and about, have we?” Her father laughed. “What are we going to do, rebuild the old manor ourselves?”
“That's an option?” Octavia leaned forward.
“Ha! Not one we'd take!” Her father beamed at the family around them. Octavia didn't smile back quite as brightly—nor, she noticed, did anyone else. Then again, Father's always been the boisterous one. “The princesses have hired workers to rebuild everyone's homes, in time. No need for us to heave timbers into place like common laborers!”
“Would that speed the process? I mean, wouldn't you rather be out of this... this cell as quickly as possible?”
Grandpa Fando rolled over to look at her. “I know it may seem difficult, bela, but in life one must sometimes make sacrifices.” He rolled back over and started to snore.
“But you—” Octavia wanted to do something—what, she didn't know—that would make her family see sense. But you don't have to endure this. You can take your situation into your own hooves. You're all being so...
So much like me, she realized. Me, seven months ago. When I hadn't met Vinyl; when I just waited for good things to come to me. She smiled. But I changed. I took a new life for myself.
“Now there's my little girl's smile.” Octavia mother knelt down in front of her and ran a hoof through her hair. “See? It'll all be fine for us.” Octavia's smile tightened a bit.
“Hey, you know who you might like to see?” Aunt Vivace stood up and helped Octavia to her hooves. “Your old ensemble!”
“They're here?” she asked, sitting back down again. “Why?”
“The fire left them in the same boat as the rest of us, of course!” Vivace leaned in close with a frown and whispered, “Though I'd be happier if this place was a boat. Boats are watertight, but when it rains here... plop plop plop.” She dropped her hoof sharply with each 'plop', like a water droplet striking the ground. Despite herself, Octavia giggled a bit. “But enough about that, you've got the old gang to visit! They'll be thrilled!”
“Is that so?” Octavia said automatically. I forgot about them. I brought money for my family and I forgot about bringing anything to help them—I forgot about them entirely! What kind of Element of Generosity am I? Her head turned downward a degree, so that she didn't have to look at Vivace's eager eyes.
“Oh, very very much so!” Vivace turned around to her family. “No offense, but I don't think Octavia should be spending too much time with some old fuddy-duddies like us; we'll make her old before her time. Does anyone mind terribly if I show her the way to her old friends?”
“Do whatever makes you feel best, dear,” her mother said with a smile.
“Wonderful!” Vivace took Octavia, escorted her out the door, and closed it. “Now, you'll be taking a right, then another right, and then keep going until you hear music sounds; one of them's always sawing away this time of day. And I'll take that, by the way,” she said, reaching toward Octavia's saddlebag.
“What do you mean?”
“The check, if you still want to give it!” Vivace laughed. “We're not all damned fools in this family, I'll have you know.” Octavia smiled and passed the check to her aunt, who slipped it into her robe. “Now,” her aunt continued, “just take those rights and you'll be seeing your old friends in no time!”
“Thank you!” Octavia said with a smile, walking right as Vivace returned to the room and shut the door. Then Octavia stopped in her tracks and sighed. I left them all that time ago—I abandoned them, and now they're in this refugee camp. And I don't even have any way to help them. What am I going to do, rejoin? I can't go.
She stood in the hallway for a few seconds more, then turned left and walked past her family's door—back on the way out of the castle. I suppose I was wrong after all. I do have to make sacrifices.
The Doctor was dimly aware of how dim it was in the room. Mostly he was aware that he didn't care; there wasn't much for him to do. Well, nothing—there was nothing for him to do. Everyone he knew was off spending the day with their families, whereas he—well, he knew exactly how depressing his situation was in this regard.
You're going to have days like this, he reminded himself. Not every day, not even most, but certainly some. Might as well get used to it and get some rest. He sprawled on his couch, closed his eyes, and prepared to snooze.
Knock knock knock.
His eyes snapped open. Nevermind, then. He sprang from the couch, unsure of whether to feel glad or guilty; unless a salesman was at the door, one of his friends had probably given up their day with family for his sake. Well, let's see who to feel bad about.
He opened the door to see Vinyl Scratch—for once without her goggles—standing there with a bottle of whiskey suspended magically next to her. “Hello! Do you have a moment to spare for your lord and protector Celestia?”
The Doctor smiled in spite of himself. “Whose whiskey is that?”
“Mine and Octy's. We're saving it for special occasions, so I figured, what the hay? Happy Family Appreciation Day.” She raised the bottle and shook it. “Got any cups?”
“In the kitchen.” He stepped aside with a frown. “It's still very odd to be pointing people to my kitchen.”
“Isn't the TARDIS gonna have one?” Vinyl pulled two moderately sized cups—hardly shot glasses—from the cupboard and filled them nearly to the brim.
“Well, yeah. Still, I won't be pointing anyone to it so much as I will be giving them a map. Or a GPS.” As Vinyl offered him one of the cups, the Doctor shook his head. “No thanks, I don't really drink.”
Vinyl shrugged. “More for me.” She picked up her glass and took a large gulp, smacking her lips after she swallowed. “That goes down good. So, lazy day?”
“Considering everyone I know's spending the day with their families, a bit, yeah.” They walked out the front door—a front door that goes to the same place every time; imagine that—and onto the porch, where there were a couple of couches waiting for them. “Well, everyone except you,” he amended, glancing at Vinyl as she took a seat and laid both glasses on the table beside her.
“Yeah, I'm nice like that.” She winked, and took another draught. The cup was almost empty by the time she finished.
“Maybe you should slow down a bit?” the Doctor asked as she pouted at her cup. “Your tolerance can't be that high, can it?”
“Baby, you've got no idea how high it goes.” While the Doctor was trying to figure out how to respond to being called 'baby', she cut in with more food for thought. “And don't worry, I know the drill for days like this.”
The Doctor frowned, as what should have been obvious from the beginning dawned on him. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but you didn't exactly choose to spend the day away from your family, did you.”
Vinyl grimaced. “Knew you'd probably get there. Yeah, me and my mom don't talk so much since that thing twenty-three odd years ago.” She downed the remaining contents of her cup. “Actually, pretty close on exactly twenty-three years.”
“What thing twenty-three years ago?” he asked.
“Oh, you know—the one where she chucked my baby butt at an orphanage and ran like hell.”
“She what?”
“I know, right? What a bitch.” The Doctor winced at the unusually harsh word. Vinyl put down her cup and continued, “Actually, for all I know it could have been my dad. No one saw me arrive, they just saw me on the step in a little basket with a little blanket, and nothing else. Not even a note, not even a name—” Her breath caught, and she buried her face in her hoof.
The Doctor swiped the second glass of whiskey from her table and tucked it beneath his own couch. Vinyl didn't seem to notice; she spent a few moments more with her head in her hoof, then looked back up past him. He wasn't surprised to see no tears on her face, though he hadn't expected the wry smile.
“Aw, I'm making it sound worse than it was. Orphanage wasn't that terrible. I mean, sure, no one picked me up—they said I shoulda gotten a decent manecut, so that wasn't ever gonna happen—but besides that... you learn a lot in Manehattan orphanages, you know.”
The Doctor waited for her to continue, but for a few seconds the two sat in silence. Then Vinyl rolled her eyes at him. “Well, you gonna ask or what?”
“All right. What do you learn in Manehattan orphanages?”
“How to fight, for starters. You'd better believe you get in a couple fights before you get out of there. Turns out, though, that if you're smart you can learn how not to fight.”
“And were you smart?”
Vinyl let out a big bark of laughter. “Have you met me?” Some time later, she continued, “But I was pretty darn funny, which ended up being good enough a lot of the time.”
The Doctor frowned. “And no one took you? Really?”
“Stayed there till about five years ago, and then they couldn't keep me any longer.” She smiled. “I still send 'em Hearth's Warming cards.”
“Do you ever wish—” the Doctor began.
“That I'd been adopted? Or that I hadn't been thrown out in the first place? Take a wild guess.” Vinyl reached toward the table, realized there was no more whiskey there, and frowned. “Coulda sworn... nevermind.” The Doctor became even more convinced he'd made the right decision in hiding the second glass.
“Anyway,” she said, “I guess that's why I came here at all, because I don't have anywhere else to go and you... well... you too. Right?”
“Right. Right.” The Doctor sighed and leaned back into his couch. “Thanks, by the way.”
“For being the life of the party?” She snorted. “Sorry for throwing all this at you. I usually save it for empty rooms and pillows.”
“I mean it.” He looked over at her and saw a sad half-smile on her face. He tried to put a full one on his own. “Thanks for coming over.”
“Don't mention it.”
“Okay.”
“Actually, really don't mention it. At all, ever.”
“All right.”
They lay there, looking at the day. The Doctor had to admit it was a good one, with only a few clouds in the sky—safe ones that promised no rain for a while yet. It was the kind of day they could bury themselves in, and for a few minutes they did just that, watching the clouds not drift. Something else I don't plan on getting used to.
“Do you think they realize?”
The Doctor looked over at Vinyl with a frown. She snorted. “Sorry, was kind of thinking my own thing there. But do you think they realize how lucky they are? Having, you know, dads and... everything?”
“Oh yes.” The Doctor sat up, passably imitating a smile. “Not all the time, mind you, but there's always moments. Sometimes a lot longer than moments.”
“You sure? I mean, Octy never brings it up, no one else ever really brings it up... I always figured it was just me obsessing over the whole family thing, because... hell, you know.” She sighed. “Look at me, getting all depressed. Still glad I came over?”
“Actually...” The Doctor tapped his chin. “You said it was nearly twenty-three years ago to the day that you got dropped off at the orphanage?”
“Yeah, the anniversary's in, like, two days from now. So?”
“Which probably means you were born not so very long before then. And since we can't be sure of the day...” The Doctor reached under his couch, pulled out the glass of whiskey, and raised it. “Happy birthday, Vinyl Scratch.”
Vinyl rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I totally want to celebrate my birthday on the day I get reminded of the family I don't have. Real smooth, Doc.”
He smiled a full smile. “Vinyl, as the world's most stupendous hypocrite, let me tell you something to remember: you don't have to be with your relatives to be with your family. You might not have a lot of one, but I think you know you've got plenty of the other.”
He clinked his glass against the empty one on the table—“Cheers.”—then took a sip. His eyes widened, as did the inside of his mouth—expanding away from the whiskey that was much stronger than he'd anticipated. Realizing that Vinyl was smirking at him, he took a moment to steel himself before swallowing the alcohol. “Delicious,” he croaked.
“I told you it was special occasion whiskey. You'd better have two livers to go with those hearts.” She levitated her glass and clinked it against his with a grin. “Cheers, ya big softie.”
Mr. Kingpin had never really thought about knocks, but if he had then he might have supposed there wasn't much to them; they could be loud, quiet, or somewhere in between, and that was all. However, the knocks at the door of his bowling alley were the kind to prove such thoughts wrong: quiet, but clearly insistent.
“We're closed!” he called out, not deigning to look in the knocker's direction. It was, after all, half past six, the sun was well down, and he'd just finished sweeping up for the weekend.
Another extended family of knocks told him in no uncertain terms that the knocker didn't care about his problems. Grumbling, he turned himself around and saw the pony disturbing his peace through the glass door.
It was a mare who seemed to have quested long and far to find the most tasteful, elegant clothes in the world—just so that she could go to the other side of the globe and buy from there instead. An ugly gray bonnet thing had deflated around her head, sadly leaving enough room to display overlarge eyeglass things (somehow, Mr. Kingpin thought, it was important to refer to each of her clothes as a “thing”, if only to remind one that they didn't quite count). Beneath that was an overlarge purple robe thing, and above that was a tannish face with a determined expression. Probably no one too important, Kingpin thought, but I suppose I'd better humor her. “Can I help ya?” he said through the glass.
“This is Ponyville Lanes?” the mare asked in an odd accent.
“Says so on the sign.” Kingpin pointed up. “And if you'll read that one—” he pointed right, where a second sign informed passersby that they were closed “—you'll see that this isn't an incredible time for bowling.”
“I'm afraid I'm not here for that, Mr....”
“Kingpin.”
“I'm here for the arcade machine.” It wasn't immediately clear to Mr. Kingpin what was wrong about the mare's accent, but somehow it seemed as ill-fitting as her robe thing. Perhaps I should think of it as an accent-thing, then.
“Well, you can't come in and play that either, so come back in a few. G'night.” Kingpin turned tail on her.
“I'm not here to play it. You see, er... young man, I am A.K. Yearling.”
Young man? With a glance backward, Kingpin estimated he was twice the mare's age, her gray hair notwithstanding. Then it occurred to him that she'd stated a name, apparently with the expectation that he'd know it and, possibly, grovel. “Who?” he asked.
“The author of the Daring Do series of novels.”
“Oh.” Now the proverbial bells began to ring.
“Such as Daring Do and the Serpents of Sakat. That is to say, the one based on which you seem to have an... arcade game. And, from all I've heard, you seem to be making a profit on it, without my knowledge or permission.”
“... oh?”
Yearling rolled her eyes. “Young man, have you heard of copyright infringement?”
Kingpin could hardly keep from rolling his, from the way she kept putting on airs-things. “Miss Yearling, I'm quite sorry about this situation, but I think you should contact the manufacturer. I assumed that Shift Laboratories had contacted you already for the granting of permission.” Keep her talking, he thought. We don't need anyone asking questions about the machine; no need to open that can of code. “So, you're a writer, you say? You know, I've been thinking of writing a novel myself, I think I have the voice for it—”
“Don't get off topic. They claim up and down that they've never even manufactured a single one of these machines, and it appears that you are the sole proprietor. So here I am, Mr. Kingpin, with a simple demand: shut it down.”
“I'm afraid I can't do that—”
“I'm afraid I can force you to.” If it wasn't his imagination, her posh-ish accent slipped for a moment into something coarser, more threatening. Her eyes narrowed.
“Ma'am, you don't understand. This machine must stay operational....” He trailed off at the fire in her eyes, one which seemed strangely fierce considering its frumpy source. Eventually he added, “A life depends on it.”
She snorted. “Whose?”
Should not have said that. “It's a long story.”
“Long stories are exactly my business, young man—”
“All right!” he said, abruptly unlocking and yanking open the door to Ponyville Lanes.
Yearling gazed at him curiously. “You'll shut it down?”
“No. What I will do is, I will let you see it, and then you won't let anyone shut it down either.” He grimaced and directed her forward; with some hesitation, she followed him into the dark alleyway. Within several steps they were at the alcove wherein resided Daring Do and the Serpents of Sakat. He reached behind the machine, turned it on, pulled out one of his own bits, and placed it in the slot, bringing the game to life.
He'd long since cast aside all expectations about what the game would look like, and was therefore unsurprised to see the pixelated Daring Do in, not a desert, but what looked like an ancient temple before it had become ancient. Blocky waterfalls cascaded in the foreground and background, and reflected light played off the off-white marble; everything seemed to be slipping around in constant motion.
Everything, indeed, except Daring Do, who was still as a rock.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Yearling asked, peering at the pixels through her obnoxious glasses-things.
Kingpin sighed, reached around the machine once more, and pulled a hidden switch. When he looked back at the screen, Daring had not yet moved; he sighed and said, “Daring, you can show off.”
“Why are you talking to a machine—” Yearling's words were cut off as she looked back at the screen and jumped away with an astonished cry. Daring Do had flown to the other side, and her face filled the screen.
“Evenin', Kingpin,” she said with a lazy grin. Kingpin smiled back at her.
“It—it talks!” Yearling said. Her accent was gone, and for some reason her voice sounded very familiar.
“Excuse me—she talks.” Daring rolled her eyes. “So who's this frump? And why are you letting her in on the big secret? I thought we’d agreed I was officially just a fictional character.”
“Daring Do, this is... um... your author,” Kingpin said. "Say hello." Daring squinted at Yearling, and Yearling didn't have what it took to squint back. Kingpin went on. “She's trying to have you shut down, and I'm trying to persuade her otherwise. I daresay I've succeeded, Ms. Yearling?” he asked, with a tilt of the head as he regarded the author.
“Uh... I....” She'd lost her composure and accent in much the same way a child at the park could lose a helium balloon—irretrievably.
“I'll make this quick,” Kingpin said, “because it's been a long week for both of us.” He tapped Daring's machine for emphasis—lightly, as to avoid disturbing her. “She's alive, she's intelligent, and in most ways that matter she is real. You may think of her as a fictional character, Ms. Yearling, but if you shut her down, that means you've killed her. Are you a murderess?”
“I—you make some very good points, uh, young man, and I should—should definitely go—”
Daring Do laughed a laugh with such volume that it distorted the sound of the machine's speakers. “Oh my—oh my code!” she exclaimed, doubled over in mid-air. “It's like looking at a mirror!”
Kingpin gave Daring a confused look. “She doesn't look anything like a mirror.”
“Well, not to you!”
Daring pointed at Yearling, who was by now halfway out the alcove, but whose momentum had vanished as if to spite certain physical laws. “Come on, girl!” Daring said. “Show us what you've got! Shake that compass!”
Yearling sighed. “Oh, all right,” she said, and suddenly comprehension dawned on Kingpin—a whole choir of metaphorical bells ringing in his head. Of course her voice was familiar. “You showed me your secret... tit for tat.”
With a motion that seemed too fluid, Yearling's garment-things were cast aside, revealing a second Daring Do. She matched the one in the game perfectly, from her pith helmet to her wings to her compass rose cutie mark. Now Kingpin understood Daring's remark about her looking like a mirror, albeit one that had escaped from a thrift shop. That's good, actually, he thought. I should write that down.
After a few seconds, Daring Do—the one in reality, not the one in the game—though that was equally real, as he'd just explained—Daring Prime gave him a look like a magician who'd just made a castle disappear in front of an audience of thousands and received no applause. “Well?” she asked him. “Aren't you impressed?”
“Eh?”
“The character you've all thought for years was fictional is in fact the author of her own book series. Aren't you supposed to be impressed?” She seemed embarrassed. “I mean, I've never done this before, but I always figured it would blow some minds if I did.”
Kingpin shrugged. “We're sharing a room with a machine that apparently was never built, which contains a character who shouldn't be alive, and... oh, it nearly destroyed the world once. Mind-blowing is relative... young lady.”
She grimaced. “Look, sorry about the 'young man' thing—it helps with the whole A.K. Yearling illusion. That and the gray hair. Ponies expect things, ya know?”
Daring Do—or, as Kingpin resolved to call the one in the arcade machine from here on in, Daring Deux—rapped the screen. “Hey,” she said, “I'm kinda impressed, I guess. So, you're real?”
“Apparently,” Prime said.
“So it's all actually real? Me, Ahuizotl, Quetzalcoatl, the Serpents of Sakat and the doom-portending prophecy about it?”
“The books are entirely autobiographical,” Prime replied. “So, uh, yeah.”
Deux groaned and struck her head against the screen. “Dammit!”
“What?”
“I owe Ahuizotl ten bits! And we don't even have money in here!”
“So,” Kingpin said, showing Daring Prime the door. She'd conversed with her copy for about an hour about various things, many of which were incredibly interesting—Kingpin supposed he could have written several chapters about them—but he had had to put a stop to it; it was getting late and he had a dinner waiting for him at home.
“So?” she said back, pulling on her disguise. “That is to say... so?” Now she'd pulled on her accent-thing as well.
“I promise to not tell anyone about your identity.”
“Thank you, young man,” she said, replacing her eyeglasses with a wink. “Though I suppose no one would believe you anyway.”
“And in exchange... you don't tell anyone about her.” After a moment, Kingpin smiled. “Well, I suppose no one would believe you either.”
Daring Prime laughed. “They already don't, Mr. Kingpin. That's the point of the whole shebang!” And with that she departed into the night, her dark robe helping to quickly obscure her from view. Kingpin almost didn't see her trip over it half a minute later, mutter for a bit, glance around, and then pull it off to take to the skies.