#001 - "Bats!" | Et Ceterbat
Joint Cabinet. The promise of it tempted Celestia to keep the sun lowered an hour later than usual, push her head through a stained glass window—fly raving through the halls in nothing but her bathrobe. She had even entertained notions of showing Discord the perfumed letters she kept beneath her mattress, letters unknown even to dearest little Luna, in exchange for one small favor.
“What were you two doing on that beach last night?” little Luna whispered.
“Crossword puzzles,” Celestia said immediately. She was above blushing at times like these—the centuries had only given her time to perfect her Galloptean poise.
Luna gazed at the ceiling with the smallest of grins.
“Most improbable indeed, this sudden cumulus cloud of sharks appearing over San Franciscolt Bay,” continued the bespectacled advisor to her left, missing the probe into his liege lady’s nighttime fantasies entirely. “The weather pegasi there are bedeviled.”
“Tell the mayor I would be glad to render my assistance,” Celestia said, resisting the itch beneath her eyelid. “I should be able to slot them in between Trottingham and Tall Tale this afternoon.”
“There is also that matter with Baltimare, Your Highness,” said the mare opposite her at the table, her hair bun twanging under incredible tension with every syllable. “There is muttering in the Herd.”
“Luna will go to Alla Brio on my behalf and secure nephew Blueblood’s release. Again.”
“I have done wrongs before,” Luna whispered. “Leaving you alone with that one for so long still haunts me most.”
“Alla Brio?”
“You think yourself witty.” Luna plopped her cheek on the table and drew circles with her hoof, snorting.
The rather built, close-shaven pegasus a few seats down from the sisters shuffled some papers. “Catastrophe in Cloudsdale once more,” he reported. “Something to do with muffin batter in the cloud vats at the factories. They have a suspect.”
“I wouldn’t have believed otherwise.” Celestia sighed on the inside. Bad enough she had to sit through these meetings every Monday, but she’d had time to get accustomed to this. Luna, on the other hoof…
She still had this last chance. She leaned forward and gazed toward the end of the table, where a scrawny clerk still wearing his visor snoozed in his seat. “Coltsworth?”
The young stallion started in his seat. “Y—Your Highness?”
“Anything to report from Ponyville?”
Coltsworth yawned. His eyes traveled around the table as the table gazed back at him. The wall clock counted the seconds.
Coltsworth yawned again. “N-no, Your Highness. Completely quiet these past twenty-four hours. Absolutely nothing happened.”
Celestia blinked. Nopony said anything.
“Is something ahoof?” asked Luna, raising her head.
Celestia stood up.
***
Abandoned, but not decayed. Market carts with gleaming wares stood unattended in the avenues. Flags waved from rooftops against the evening sky. Despite the recent sunset, the town seemed drained of its color.
Ponyville led the kingdom in two very important statistics: apple bushels per pony annual, and cost of insurance premiums. When silence came from Ponyville, the Crown came with reinforcements.
“Morning Rush,” said Celestia, trotting alongside her lieutenant, “I need your forces to comb the streets. Report back to me with anything you find.
The armored unicorn snapped off a salute. “You heard her,” she yelled back at her squad. “Break off!”
While unicorns covered the land, wings searched the sky.
“And I will be first to know if you discover anything, Mnemosyne,” said Luna.
“Just leave it to us.” The cat-eyed mare flashed her commander a fanged smile before swooping up above the roofs.
Luna bounced in her gait as she eyes the thatched roofs all around her. “Ah, invigorating! Darkened windows, tuneless plazas, a vanished populace. What poltergeist lurks at the end of this mystery, sister?”
“I don’t know. And did you really have to bring that along?” Celestia asked her.
Luna nuzzled the silvered warhammer floating before her horn. “Sammy feels left out if I leave him behind.”
“You’ve had him for all of two days.”
“We are very fond of each other.” Luna stepped aside to tee off on an imaginary foe. Equestria could have no greater Protector of the Realm. “Where are you off to?”
“The library,” said Celestia, indicating the great oak up ahead. “You?”
“The domicile of the shy one!” Luna skipped down a side street toward the Everfree. “’Tis proper I should call upon she who taught me serenity and restraint!”
Celestia decided against explaining how serenity was not something one conveyed while brandishing a warhammer in full gallop. She had to focus on getting to the library—knowing its current resident, her arrival there would not be unwelcome.
The lack of lights in the windows only steeled her as she arrived at the front door. She rapped twice and waited, horn tilted slightly forward. “Twilight?” she called. “Twilight, are you in there?”
Something clicked on the other side. Celestia never heard the approach of hooves, but a moment later the knob turned and the door opened.
“Oh, my,” she said. “So sorry to bother you. Is Twilight in?”
Instead of her former pupil, a bat had answered the door. The little creature hanging off the doorknob had beady eyes, spindly wings, and fangs like icicles—and, from the tiny half-moon spectacles perched on its snout, an affinity for the written word. It fixed the princess with a look of indifference before it flapped off toward a nearby table piled up with books.
It sat down and began to read.
“Skree!” came a screech from the opposite wall.
“Skaaah!” the reader replied, waving a wing without looking up from its reading.
Two bats on the other side of the library struggled to shelve a book against the pull of gravity. Another bat dropped from the ceiling with a feather duster, swiping at the wooden horse head decorating the center table. The more Celestia looked, the more she saw: bats reading, bats cleaning, bats waddling out of the kitchen with plates of alfalfa sandwiches held awkwardly in their wings.
“Your Highness!” Morning Rush called from behind her. The unicorn skidded to a halt just outside the library. “You’re never going to believe this.”
“Do we have bats living out the lives of ponies?” Celestia asked over her shoulder.
“How did you know?”
“Sister!”
Celestia turned around this time—only Luna could slam an open door like that.
“I have found my people,” Luna declared laughing, tugging on Celestia’s hoof.
***
“I promise I had nothing to do with this,” said Discord. He took a spot at Celestia’s side and gazed out with her, snacking on pieces of parchment with an oddly familiar fragrance.
“He’s telling the truth, Princess,” said Fluttershy, taking the Princess’ other side.
From the pegasus’s cottage on the edge of the Everfree Forest, the party enjoyed a wonderful vista of Sweet Apple Acres famous orchards—what remained of them, at least. Shadowy figures swarmed the defoliated trees, each of them about the size of a normal pony.
“I have her!” With the moon as her halo, Princess Luna descended to earth with a triumphant smile, a fuzzy lavender bat-winged figure draped over her flanks. She deposited the creature before the others, smiling a little more sheepishly now. “Sammy may have contested her ploy for queenship a little too seriously.”
Celestia nudged her Twilight’s unconscious body with her nose. “How did this even come to pass?”
***
“Hey, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Little busy here!” the alicorn snapped back, wrapping their mutual mutated friend in a swath of violet magic.
“I know, I know.” Rainbow pumped her wings nervously. “It’s just that—if we’re trying to reverse the spell on Fluttershy, and the spell needed us to gather all the vampire bats in the first place…”
“And if we don’t have those bats around, but we have plenty of mirrors...” Pinkie Pie added.
Seconds passed. The reversal spell pulsed once.
Oh.
Twilight’s world went white.
***
“And most importantly of all, I learned that if I can’t cast a spell that alters the diet of magical creatures responsibly the first time, I should never try to do it again,” said Twilight.
“Agreed,” said everypony, safe and sane in the library once more.
“We’re so fortunate that Princess Celestia knows so much about mass cancellation theory,” Rarity chimed in. “I shudder to think what I would have done had I been forced to remain a bat.”
“Is it too late that we ask some of our citizenry to remain that way? Luna asked, tugging at Celestia’s peytral.
Celestia only smiled.
“How ‘bout we talk about how I don’t have a cider crop after the whole town went to town on it?” asked Applejack.
Rainbow Dash huddled against the base of a bookshelf, twitching.
