Alicorn

by Aldea Donder

Rating: teen
Tags: Rainbow Dash, Comedy, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Princess Luna
Length: 187205

When an incredible revelation sends Rainbow Dash's life into a tailspin, she finds herself at the mercy of emotions she never thought she had, faced with hard questions and impossible choices.

Rainbow Dash usually had her head in the clouds, but she always thought she knew up from down. When an incredible revelation sends her life into a tailspin, she finds herself at the mercy of emotions she never thought she had, faced with hard questions and impossible choices.

Life is full of changes, but none of them are quite as disturbing as having a horn pop out of your skull…

Original Lauren Faust canon; non-alicorn Twilight, non-alicorn Cadance, no ascension. Diverges from the cartoon after season 3, with nods to later continuity wherever possible. Contains mature themes.

Published 2012-04-07 16:44:02 UTC
Last updated 2020-06-28 20:14:02 UTC

01. The Start of the Matter

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER ONE
The Start of the Matter

Originally Published 6/7/2011

This chapter is a rewrite of the flashfic Mommy Nearest by Fairy Slayer.
All credit for the original idea goes to him.

Trouble can come calling in all manner of ways. It can announce itself and come expectedly, without any pretense. Or, if it prefers, it can jump at you out of the clear blue. Trouble can change the course of a life. Trouble can change the course of a nation.

In Rainbow Dash’s case, trouble came in the guise of a migraine.

It was only Monday, and the week already felt like a never-ending slog. The forecast called for rain, and with planting season in full swing, the farmers sure were thirsty for it. But Cloudsdale was late on a shipment of storms, which meant Rainbow didn’t have a drop to spare.

Try telling that to a certain orange earth pony, though.

“Consarn it, Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow sighed and massaged her forehead, her wings snapping back and forth irritably as she hovered in the apple grove. She could feel the headache coming on. Oh yes, she could. “Look, Applejack—”

“Don’t you ‘Look, Applejack’ me! Now, see here, I put in a request for a spring storm three weeks ago. That oughta be more than enough time for you and your weather team to get it together!”

“Me and my weather team have it together! The shipment was—”

“—Late. You already said.”

Rainbow threw up her hooves. “Yeah, I was pretty sure I mentioned that to you a few times already! Just like I spent the whole freaking morning mentioning it to Carrot Top, Chives, Leafy Greens, Red Onion, Potato Peels, Rutabaga Root—”

“Rainbow.”

“—Celery Stalks, Roma Tomato… Jeeze, who’s the idiot that comes up with the names for you earth ponies, anyway?”

Applejack’s voice cut sharp. “Rainbow!”

“What?”

“Get this through that colorful head of yours! These here trees are full-grown, which means they can tough it out—leastways for a while. But the seedlings are just babies. They need all the water they can get!”

Rainbow rubbed her head again. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Y’all been slackin’ off, if you ask me. Been keepin’ it too dry all month long. And June’s right around the corner! I don’t need to tell you what that means, do I?”

“No, I’ve got a pretty good—”

“It means the Summer Sun Celebration, that’s what! And two weeks of clear, sunny skies leadin’ up to it! I need my crops watered now, Rainbow Dash! Before the drought! So get off your lazy pegasus butt and whip me up a storm!”

“I already told you, the shipment’s late!”

“Then go figure out some way to make it un-late!”

Rainbow grit her teeth. “Yes, ma’am.” With that, she spat on the ground and zipped away over the treetops.

No sense wasting time. She still had half a dozen farmsteads to notify of the weather postponement… Which meant she could look forward to getting chewed out by half a dozen more farmers before the day was done. Joy.

It was after six o’clock by the time she punched out. Being the last one out of the weather office wasn’t exactly her style, but then again, neither was having her reputation smeared by the Ponyville Board of Agriculture. Even so, despite her best efforts, she still had no idea what happened to the missing shipment. She flew back home with a scowl on her face and a percussion band thumping away in her skull.

She tried to unwind by practicing a couple of her aerial stunt routines, but the headache put her completely off her game, and it just didn’t seem to be going away. After she messed up the double-barrel triple-corkscrew for the fifth time in a row, Rainbow called it a night, retreating to the sanctuary of her cloud house with a look of self-disgust.

She went straight for the cider. Poured out a shot, and tossed it back without a second’s pause. It didn’t go down smooth, but then again, she wasn’t in a mind to care.

Slamming the empty glass down upon the mantle, she raised her eyes to the framed work of art that hung on the wall above. A painted rainbow darted out from the left side of the canvas, full of resplendent color and energy, set against a brilliant blue sky. But as it arced rightward, the blue sky gave way to gray, and then to the jet black of night—and the rainbow curled in on itself and shriveled away into nothingness.

“It isn’t what you thought it would be, is it?” Rainbow muttered to an empty room. She closed her eyes and sighed wearily, using the long of her hoof to wipe the drink from her mouth.

“Tryouts again in September. Gotta keep at it. Gotta keep going. Gotta show ’em all you’re good enough.”

She went to bed not long after that. Her head continued to throb with pain, even as sleep whisked her away.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

That night, she had a dream.

A very old dream.

She knew it was an old dream because somehow, it resonated in her. In the weird, sealed-up sarcophagus of her subconscious, it resonated. In that dusty place where all memories go once they’re dead and embalmed, until something jars the lid and wakes them up. It resonated.

A feeling of peace and wholeness came over her. Of love, and of being loved. There was a sense of herself as a tiny foal, of being held and being nuzzled, and echoes of a lullaby that made her heart sing.

She was… She was in her mother’s loving embrace. She could feel the warmth of her body, and smell the fragrance of her mane… could hear her mother’s voice whispering to her, soft words filled with adoration, taking away all her pain, all her fear…

Then, as the dream drew to a close, she felt another pony’s arms wrap around her, lifting her up, wrenching her away. She cried and reached out, but her mother was gone, nowhere to be found. She looked all around, but she couldn’t see her.

She was separated—

Abandoned—

She woke up with a splitting headache and a hole in her soul.

It took her a full five minutes to get hold of herself. The sobs just would not quit coming, and she had to clamp a hoof over her mouth to keep herself from hyperventilating. Blinking through her tears, she looked around the darkened room and made out the profiles of her dresser, her chair, and her Wonderbolts posters on the walls.

It was a dream.

It was only a dream.

But knowing that didn’t make her feel any less hollow inside.

“What—the hay—was that?” Rainbow gasped.

She flopped back onto the pillows, heart still flying in her chest. With every rapid beat, her head gave another pang of discomfort.

Her hoof went to her face. It came away with a dab of moisture.

She scowled at it.

Rainbow Dash didn’t cry.

Rainbow Dash never cried.

“I must be losing it,” she murmured, closing her eyes and settling back under the covers. “It was just a nightmare. Everypony gets them. It’s not real. It doesn’t mean anything. Just… go back to sleep.”

She grunted and rolled over.

And she rubbed her forehead.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Toothpaste… Band-Aids… Mouthwash… Tweezers…

The pile of junk on the bathroom countertop grew larger by the second as Rainbow emptied out her medicine cabinet.

Cough drops… Thermometer… Vitamins… Rubbing alcohol…

Aha!

Rainbow’s teeth clenched around the lid of the pill bottle. She twisted it open and popped two aspirin for the headache. No, wait, scratch that. Better make it three, just to be sure.

She went about her morning rituals, showered and ate breakfast, and then she was ready to head out. Hopefully, work wouldn’t be as miserable today as it had been yesterday.

Before she left, she spared a parting glance for the little picture frame on the table near the door. The elderly pegasus couple in the photograph smiled back at her. The same as they always did.

Rainbow’s prayers for an easy day went unanswered. Tuesday proved every bit as miserable and then some. Not only was the shipment still missing, not only did she have half the earth ponies in town at her throat, but also—

“What do you MEAN, all your storms are on BACKORDER?”

She stared across her desk at the Cloudsdale sales rep, incredulously.

“I meant what I said,” the sales rep replied.

Rainbow moaned into her hooves. This could not be happening.

“You own a weather FACTORY!” she said. “If you don’t have any more storms, how about you turn on the waterworks and make some more?”

“Really, Miss Rainbow Dash. You’re a pegasus. You of all ponies should know there’s more to it than that. We run a refined operation in Cloudsdale, and there are variables to account for. Per-annuum water exports, supply and demand—”

“Yeah! Supply and demand! I’ve got a demand for rain, and I need you guys to supply me some!”

“It just isn’t that simple, I’m afraid.”

Rainbow slammed her hoof down on the desk. “Look, I’ve got a whole town here that’s gonna dry up if it doesn’t get some water! The crops are wilting in the sun out there!”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the sales rep with a patronizing smile on his face. “But that, as they say, isn’t my problem.”

He coughed just then, and with a look of disdain, glanced around the cramped and dusty confines of the Ponyville weather office. A hoof went to his jacket to brush off some imaginary dirt.

“Nice place you’ve got here. Very… quaint,” he said. Then he left.

Rainbow watched him march out. The moment the door clicked shut, she groaned and rested her aching head on a stack of paperwork, allowing her eyes to fall shut.

This day could not get any worse.

The day got worse.

Or rather, her headache did. But she figured one was about the same as the other. There had to be a mathematical formula somewhere in one of Twilight’s dumb, egghead books equating the horribleness of your day to the horribleness of your headache.

The hours passed with grueling slowness, and each hour that went by sent her migraine soaring to new heights. It took forever, but eventually, five o’clock rolled around, and she flew home.

She didn’t even bother to practice her tricks. She went straight for the medicine cabinet, downed another dose of aspirin, and then crawled into bed, burying her head beneath the pillow.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

That night, she dreamed again.

She dreamed of white wings and smiling eyes. Of hooves that held her and rocked her to sleep, and a soft voice full of tenderness that sang. Of a lullaby she still couldn’t remember, the notes wafting across her memory without any words to pair them with.

And of a love that warmed her. And of a peace that filled her heart. And the feeling of being safe. The feeling of being little and helpless, but knowing that she was protected, knowing that somepony treasured her and would never, ever let anything happen to her.

But then she felt herself being pulled away again, and she reached out for her mother’s wing and caught only air, and she looked and looked, but she couldn’t see her, couldn’t see her anywhere—

“MOMMY!”

Rainbow sat bolt upright in bed, tears streaming.

It probably would’ve taken her just as long to stifle her emotions as it had the night before, but a dagger of pain picked that moment to slice into her brain. She yelped and fell back, clutching her head.

The tears didn’t stop, though. And she hated herself for them.

“You’re cracking up!” she yelled. “Quit having these dreams! This is all stupid! It isn’t real! It ISN’T!”

Even to her ears, the words seemed to drip with despair.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Charades?”

“Boring.”

“Musical chairs?”

“Boring.”

“Hmm…” Pinkie Pie tapped her chin. “Monopony?”

Rainbow gave her a glazed-over look. “I thought the point was to celebrate our friendship with Twilight, not destroy it forever.”

Pinkie giggled. “You’re totally right, Dashie! Monopony’s probably not the best game. Guess I’ll just… bank that idea for now. Ha!”

She snorted at her own funny.

Ordinarily, Rainbow might have been annoyed to find herself assailed with bad jokes after another excruciating day at work, but at the moment, she didn’t have enough energy to be irritated. As she trudged—not flew—down the forested path out of town, the full-boughed trees swayed in the breeze above her. Their shade helped hide her suffering.

Beside her, Pinkie bounced along obliviously, full of her usual pep.

It was all Rainbow could do to try to keep up with her.

“Look, Pinkie, no offense, but party planning’s your special talent, isn’t it? Do you really need my help with this?”

It was an earnest attempt to convince Pinkie Pie to leave her alone. It was also totally doomed, but nopony could blame her for trying.

“Don’t be a silly filly!” Pinkie chirped. “A one-year friendiversary party is a super special thing! I need a lot of help to pull this off! You don’t want Twilight to be disappointed, do you?”

“No, I… Of course not.”

“Besides, it’s not just a party for Twilight! I mean, I guess it’s mostly for her, since it’s the day she and Spike first came to Ponyville, but it’s also the one-year friendiversary for all six of us, too! And you know what it is that makes one-year friendivesaries so special, doncha Dashie?”

“They… only come once?”

“No, it’s the paper crowns they let you wear at Burger Princess! Oh, but I like your idea too.”

Rainbow shook her head. “Pinkie Pie, you are so—”

“TRIVIAL PURSUIT!” Pinkie shouted suddenly.

The pegasus almost fell over. “W-What?”

“You know. Board game? Question cards? Test your knowledge?”

“…Total egghead game. Twilight would probably love it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She’d be the only one, but she’d love it.” Rainbow gave a flippant toss of her mane. “Why don’t you go ahead and throw her an encyclopedia-themed party while you’re at it?”

“Hmm. Do you think she’d like that?”

“Of course,” Rainbow said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Who wouldn’t want an encyclopedia-themed party?”

Pinkie’s face screwed up in concentration, her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth. She almost looked to be taking mental notes.

Another few minutes went by, and they continued down the road, the blue sky opening above them as they traded the woods for flower-specked meadows. All the while, Pinkie kept rattling off ideas, and Rainbow did her best to put up with it. She was glad when her cloud house finally came into view, its colorful waterfalls sparkling in the air above them.

“Ooh! Ooh! I know! We could play Mother May I!” Pinkie shouted.

This time, Rainbow did fall over.

One second, she was looking up at her house. Then Pinkie opened her mouth, and the waterfalls turned into a vivid mane, and the clouds became white wings, and she was a tiny foal reaching out for her mommy, but her mommy wasn’t there, her mommy was gone and she was alone and crying and scared and—

“Oof!”

She hit the ground. She hit the ground and she didn’t get up.

“Uh, Rainbow Dash? Are you okay?” she heard Pinkie ask.

“I’m—”

She opened her eyes, and she was promptly rewarded with a blast of agony from inside her brain. “GYAH!” she yelped, clutching her head as she writhed on her back.

A few moments later, the pain fizzled away, and she lay groaning as Pinkie appeared upside-down above her. “Um… How are you feeling?” the party pony finally thought to ask.

Rainbow winced. “Awesome. Just awesome.”

Pinkie made to help her up, but Rainbow waved her off, climbing back to her hooves with some difficulty. She slapped on a grin that was all too fake. “Those… Potholes. Heh. I don’t know how you earth ponies manage to get by without… uh… tripping over them… more often.”

Pinkie hesitated, presumably weighing the excuse, and Rainbow could only stand there with a big, dumb grin stapled to her face, fully expecting to be called out on her lie. In a couple seconds, she’d probably be shot out of a party cannon on her way to the clinic. Or worse, to Twilight’s basement of mad science horrors, to be hooked up to some weird machine and run tests on for the next three days in a row.

But then, to her surprise—“STOP, DROP, AND ROLL!” Pinkie shrieked.

Rainbow stared. “W-What?”

“It’s the super fantabulous idea you just gave me! We would play stop, drop, and roll! It’s great physical activity, AND we’d get to practice our fire safety at the same time! We could even…”

Whew. Rainbow congratulated herself. Slid that one right past her.

“Look, Pinkie,” she said, “I appreciate your wanting to get my opinion on the party, but I think I’m just gonna go home now. I’ve got… stuff to do. In places that aren’t here.”

“Okay, seeya, Dashie! I hope your head feels less achy tomorrow!”

“Huh? But I didn’t even mention—”

But it was too late. Pinkie was already gone, bouncing her way up the road.

She shook her head. So random.

Rainbow sighed and flexed her wings, trying hard to ignore the twinge that went through her. It was two hundred feet straight up to her house, and getting there had never been harder.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Wednesday came and Wednesday went, and Rainbow didn’t feel any better. No matter how many pills she took, the headache wouldn’t let up. It did just the opposite, in fact. Each minute that went by gave her a deeper understanding of true misery.

Thursday, the post office found the missing shipment. Thank goodness for small favors. It had been mailed to the next town over and stuck in delivery hell for days on end. Rainbow was glad to finally have the storms she’d requisitioned, but unfortunately, Cloudchaser was on leave visiting family in Fillydelphia, and Thunderlane was out sick again.

Which meant it was up to her to deploy the weather.

All by herself.

The job took hours. Tearing open boxes, digging through the packing peanuts to get at the clouds, then hauling them up into the sky, pushing them over this pony’s ranch or that pony’s farm, kicking them to make the water rain down. Her headache was so bad by the time she was done, she wondered if she was dying.

Friday was torture. Literally torture.

She was growing desperate. Headaches were supposed to go away on their own, weren’t they? They weren’t supposed to keep getting worse by the day! This wasn’t even pain anymore. This was anguish!

Sleep was the only escape. In the fantasia of her dreams, the pain and agony abated, only to be replaced, each night, with that same awful scene of herself as a foal, reaching out in vain for her mother. After a while, she stopped trying to resist and just accepted the tears.

She hoped the weekend would cure her. A break from work, from the stress of her job. That was probably all she needed.

But as Saturday grew long in the tooth, her suffering became unbearable. The pain was like a nail being driven into her skull. It affected her to the point where she couldn’t think. Could barely even fly.

As she felt her wings start to fail, she made an emergency landing on a nearby cumulus, doubled over, and collapsed. For some time, there she lay, nursing her head and trying to remember how to breathe. There in that place where she had always felt safest: high in the sky, nestled in the warm embrace of the sun.

“Please, make it stop!” she cried, and she hugged herself. A futile attempt to keep from shaking. “This hurts… so… much.”

Far below her, Big Macintosh was hard at work tilling and seeding the land. The scrape of his plow seemed to echo in Rainbow’s ears.

It was the last thing she heard before she hit the ground.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“HELP! HELP!”

Most of the shoppers milling about the Ponyville market square were wise enough to make way for Applebloom when she came galloping down the road, screaming and hollering at the top of her lungs. The ones that didn’t were bowled over by the hulking red stallion who came charging after her.

“HELP!” the little yellow filly cried again. “APPLEJACK!”

A screech of pain like nothing a pony should ever make pierced the air, and the throng of onlookers backed away.

Applejack raced over from her stall, accidentally upending a ripe bushel in her haste. The juicy red fruits spilled across the street and splattered ’neath her trampling hooves. “Applebloom, what the hay—?”

She broke off mid-sentence, interrupted by another one of Rainbow’s horrific, ear-splitting wails.

Big Macintosh had her draped over his back, trussed up by all four hooves to keep her from falling off. In spite of that, she was putting up one heck of a fight, writhing and jerking against her bonds, babbling incoherently in-between cries of unbelievable pain. Her wings fired uselessly, landing blow after blow against Big Mac’s neck and head, but he didn’t even seem to notice as he sprinted through the plaza and up to his sister, jabbering at her through his tears.

“Big Macintosh,” Applejack said, and when he wouldn’t quit blubbering, she grabbed him by the shoulders to make him stop and repeated herself again, “BIG MACINTOSH! What happened?”

“She—She fell,” he choked out. “I thought she’d be fine—she’s come out okay from worse falls, but she just—”

Applejack paled at the news, and at the thin trickle of blood running down Rainbow’s head. “Take her to the hospital,” she said to her brother, and then, to her sister, “Applebloom, go fetch Twilight, NOW!”

Applebloom nodded and bounded away.

Rainbow continued to thrash and sob as Big Macintosh took off around the corner, with Applejack nipping at his hooves and a small crowd of other ponies in tow. They trucked it past Town Hall and the Carousel Boutique, over the bridge, barreling through the double doors of the hospital. The receptionist rushed them into a room.

Applejack struggled to untie Rainbow and get her situated on the bed, but every time she managed to lay a hoof on her, the pegasus kicked and fought her way free, screaming in tortured agony. Thankfully, a doctor and a pair of nurses came racing in to help. It took all of them plus Applejack and Big Macintosh to hold Rainbow down. On more than one occasion, one of her forehooves would jerk out of their grasp, and whenever this happened, she would begin savagely hitting herself on the head, shouting, “IT HURTS! IT HURTS! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!”

“What happened to her?” the doctor demanded.

Big Macintosh filled him in as best he could.

When Rainbow’s wings kept flaring open and pushing her off the bed, one of the nurses cried out, “Put her on her stomach!” It was no small feat, but they managed to roll her over. Once that was done, the doctor ordered her restrained to keep her from killing herself, and they went to work belting her legs and arms to the bedposts. She was pretty well immobilized after that. Except for her wings, of course, which continued to flap erratically, occasionally gaining enough lift to raise her an inch off the mattress.

“Applejack!”

The farmpony turned around to see a purple-colored unicorn pushing her way through the congregation of onlookers at the door. She had never felt more relieved in her life.

“Excuse me! Pardon me!” Twilight said, forcing her way through the crowd. As soon as she made it into the room, she glanced back at them and said, “Sorry, hate to do it, but the show’s over, everypony. Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that. You know how it is.”

Then she slammed the door in their faces.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Twilight!” said Applejack.

Twilight strode over, looking concerned, but unruffled. She stooped beside the bed to examine Rainbow.

“What happened?”

“She fell,” Big Macintosh said hoarsely, not for the first time that day. He was beat to hell, covered in rope burns and scratches. His face, normally stoic, was streaked with tears.

Twilight nodded. “How long has it been since—”

“AUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!”

Rainbow’s scream made everypony jump—especially Twilight, who’d been kneeling six inches away from her. Who now found herself sprawled on the floor with her heart jackhammering in her chest.

“STOP! PLEASE! IT HURTS!” Rainbow yelled, twisting her head to bang it against the mattress. The bloody wound in the center of her brow oozed a sanguine trail down the bridge of her nose.

The doctor proceeded with his examination. After ten minutes looking her over from head to hoof, he shook his head. “Other than the one obvious wound, I can’t find anything physically the matter with her. She has no other injuries. I can only speculate that brain damage stemming from blunt force trauma to the head has put her in an extended seizure.

Applejack looked ill. “B-Brain damage?”

The diagnosis didn’t inspire confidence, but that didn’t stop Twilight from pushing past the nurses to kneel again by Rainbow’s side. “If it’s okay with you, doctor, I’d like to conduct my own examination.”

The doctor frowned, but agreed.

Twilight leaned in close, thinking to nuzzle the pegasus and calm her down. She was rewarded with a smack to the face.

“Ow!”

Rainbow suddenly stopped squirming and looked up at Twilight, her teary eyes pleading for help. Then she went back to struggling. Even though she was exhausted, she was no less determined to break free.

The tormented look Rainbow had paid her sent a chill down Twilight’s spine. She hunkered forward, lowered her head, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Her horn began to shimmer, gradually brightening as she probed ever deeper into her friend’s anguished mind.

A fraction of the agony slipped across to Twilight’s side of the mental link. The pain was so sharp, it stabbed; so intense, it seared. She cried out aloud from it, and Applejack, Big Macintosh, and the others were instantly at her side, telling her to stop what she was doing.

“Don’t go hurtin’ yourself, sugarcube! The last thing we need is to put you in the hospital, too!”

Twilight took a minute to catch her breath. It felt like somepony was trying to drive an icepick through her brain. Still, she wouldn’t allow herself to quit.

“I’m going to try again,” she announced.

But after minutes and minutes of delving through the pain, she couldn’t find anything the matter with the distressed pegasus aside from the bleeding gash on her forehead.

Twilight doubled down, determined to do something—anything—to help her friend. She tried pouring her magic into a healing spell. The drain on her was so immense, it caused her to tremble, the pinkish glow of her horn brightening to a blinding white as she put everything she had into the warp and weft of the restorative energy.

It was no use. No matter how hard she tried, the pegasus continued to moan and pull at her bonds.

Twilight was finally forced to give up. She wobbled to her hooves, staggered, and probably would’ve fallen down on the spot if Applejack hadn’t been there for her to lean against.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Pinkie Pie standing at the door.

The party pony’s saddlebags were crammed full of candy, flowers, and a giant ‘get well’ card, and she held a colorful bunch of balloons between her teeth. But as she took in the unvarnished horror of Rainbow’s suffering, she was frozen in place with eyes as wide as saucers. Her jaw fell open, and the balloons shot up, covering the ceiling.

There was a clear note of desperation in Twilight’s voice now that her magic had failed. “Pinkie Pie! You and Big Mac, go get Zecora! Quickly!”

Big Macintosh didn’t waste any time. He rushed to the door, pausing only to whisper something to Pinkie. Whatever he said seemed to un-stupefy her. She shook off her paralysis and dropped her saddlebags, and then then two of them went racing for the Everfree Forest.

Twilight toddled over to one of the chairs and slumped down in it, overcome with tiredness. She only pretended to watch as the doctor brought a clean rag to Rainbow’s forehead to soak up the bleeding. Her magic had been a bust. She felt utterly defeated.

When Applejack noticed her staring off into nothingness, she approached.

“What’s wrong, Twilight?”

“I couldn’t do it,” Twilight mumbled. “I couldn’t help her.”

“Don’t blame yourself, sugarcube. None of this is your fault. Maybe you have another spell you haven’t thought of? You did put that ursa minor under like it wasn’t nothin’ a few months back.”

“That’s… actually a good idea.”

Swallowing her apprehensions, Twilight returned to the bedside. The glow of her horn washed over Rainbow’s entire body, and slowly, the fight seeped out of her. Her cries softened to whimpers. Her eyes fell half-shut.

“Weird. She should be completely unconscious,” Twilight muttered.

“At least she’s doing better. You done good, Twi.”

Rainbow twitched and murmured. Then she began to rub her face against the mattress, as if she were trying to nuzzle it. She started crying softly. “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy…”

Applejack sniffled. There were tears coming down her face.

Twilight cast an urgent glance toward the earth pony. “Do you know where her parents are? We need to find them.”

“I’m sorry, sugarcube, but they passed away. A long time ago.”

“That’s terrible! I never knew.” Twilight looked down at Rainbow, her heart weighed down by a new sadness. “How did it happen?”

“Illness and old age. They were already gettin’ on in years when she was born.” A frightened look came over Applejack’s face. “If she doesn’t remember that, does that mean she really is brain damaged? I mean, if her memory’s goin’—”

“No.”

Twilight’s confidence startled Applejack. “But how can you be sure?”

“Because I couldn’t sense anything wrong with her aside from the pain and the cut,” Twilight explained. “If she had any permanent damage, I would’ve been able to detect it.”

Applejack sighed in relief. “Thank goodness for that. I was terrified there for a minute.”

“What I don’t get,” Twilight said, circling around to the other side of the bed to get a better look at the wound, “is why my magic couldn’t heal it. If it were an ordinary laceration, I should’ve been able to patch it up, no problem.”

“But… if’n it ain’t an ordinary cut, then what is it?”

Twilight shook her head. “I don’t know. But it scares me.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Fluttershy came as soon as she heard the news, but she stayed in the hall for some time, covering her ears at the sound of Rainbow’s screams. After a while, Twilight went outside and convinced her it was okay to come in. The instant the yellow pegasus saw Rainbow lying there half-conscious, tied up and shaking, she pushed a second bed up against the first one and hopped up on it, hugging her friend and nuzzling her gently.

Rarity brought her most luxurious blanket for Rainbow, as well as the softest, comfiest pillow she had. The blanket proved to be a godsend—the extra warmth made Rainbow feel better and helped calm her down—but lifting her head for the pillow turned out to be too painful. It ended up tossed aside in a corner, and Rarity ended up sitting in a chair next to Twilight, looking equally as miserable as everypony else.

It was nearly dark by the time Big Macintosh and Pinkie Pie returned with Zecora. When the zebra’s troubled face appeared in the doorway, Twilight rose to greet her. “Zecora! Thank goodness you’re here!”

“Show me to the injured mare. For her, I’ll do my best to care.”

Within a matter of minutes, Zecora had set up a small tray next to the bed, piled high with ingredients and chemicals and the implements of her alchemy. One by one, she applied them to the wound on top of Rainbow’s head. First this salve, then that one. A rubbing of rare blue belladonna, or an extract of poppy from the far reaches of the world.

One by one, her treatments failed, and Rainbow continued to shudder and convulse. Zecora’s lips drew thin. Undaunted, she reached for another assortment of roots and a mortar to crush them up.

Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie crouched beside the bed and began to whisper into Rainbow’s ear. “It’s okay, Dashie. I know it hurts, and hurting’s never any fun, but before you know it, you’re gonna be all better again! And I promise, just as soon as that happens, I’ll throw you the biggest, bestest, funnest party ever so you can celebrate, and all of us will be there to celebrate with you, because not hurting anymore is always something to celebrate. And all of us will have something to celebrate, too! Because even though you’re hurting the most, we’re your friends, and we’re hurting right along with you.”

Rainbow didn’t reply. She only whimpered and wept.

As Zecora continued her work, Twilight trudged to the far side of the room, where the doctor stood monitoring the situation with a glassy-eyed expression. “What are your thoughts?”

He grimaced and shook his head. “I’m afraid this is all beyond the scope of what medicine we practice here in Ponyville. It’s one thing to mend a scrape or set a broken bone, but an injury like this…”

“What do you make of the cut on her forehead?”

“It’s magical in nature,” the doctor observed. “There’s no doubt about it. But I can’t even begin to imagine what could’ve inflicted it. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it before. Perhaps a creature of the Everfree might have the power, but then again—”

CRASH!

They looked up in time to see Zecora’s wooden mixing bowl explode against the bedpost.

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “What was that?”

“The bowl, darling!” Rarity said, her mouth agape. “It just—well, it took off, flew through the air, and shattered!”

Pinkie Pie jumped up and down. “I saw it! I saw it! It had one of those aura thingies around it! Like when a unicorn levitates something and the air goes all swirly and colorful!”

Twilight stared at Rarity, incredulous. “Did you—?”

“I swear, I didn’t do anything! I’m as baffled as you are!”

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “But you and I are the only unicorns here. If you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it, then who…?”

“It does no good to frown and blame,” Zecora interrupted. She wasted no time in reaching for another bowl, and a few seconds later, had already begun to whip up a new concoction.

“But—”

“This pony’s illness is no game.”

Twilight fell silent at that, but the gears kept turning in the back of her head. It didn’t make any sense. Who could have caused the bowl to go hurtling across the room, if not herself or Rarity?

Rainbow sniffled and cried out again. “Mommy… Mommy…”

Forty minutes later, Zecora set down the last of her liniments, pushed away the tray, and got up from the bedside, shaking her head. “What ails this girl, I do not know. I cannot lift her from this throe.”

The news didn’t exactly come as a surprise. The exasperated look on Zecora’s face had done nothing but grow since she began her efforts. Hearing her admit defeat was a bitter pill, though. Another ray of hope snuffed out.

“Thank you, Zecora, for all of your help,” said Twilight.

Zecora nodded, then grudgingly turned to go. Before she departed, she gave the pegasus writhing on the bed a solemn look and promised, if she thought of anything, that she would come back straight away.

Nopony said anything after she left. Nopony but Rainbow Dash, whose sobs went on… and on… and on…

After hours of sitting, pacing, and long chats with the doctor, Twilight told the others she would return to the Golden Oaks Library and consult her medical books on how to help Rainbow. It was a half-truth: she would do the research, of course, but part of her desperately wanted to be out of that hospital room, away from those horrible cries.

In the end, even her most prized texts let her down. As she closed the cover on the very last book, Twilight knew there was only one pony in the world left for her to turn to.

She picked up her quill and prepared to write the letter.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Dear Princess Celestia,

In recent months, with the benefit of your guidance, I’ve learned friendship is one of the most important things in the world. But it can be painful sometimes, too. When a friend is suffering, everyone else suffers right along with them.

I’ve attempted to become more self-reliant since I moved to Ponyville almost a year ago, to solve problems by myself instead of depending on your favor. But now my good and loyal friend, Rainbow Dash, has been badly hurt, and neither I nor anypony else can figure out how to aid her. She fell from the sky this afternoon, and ever since then, she’s been in horrible pain. There’s an open wound atop her head that will not heal, no matter how hard we try. Medicines, both modern and mystic, have proven ineffective. As she cries, she also keeps calling out for the comfort of her mother, who sadly is no longer with us. Our hearts are breaking.

I beg you, dearest teacher and princess. Please help her.

Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

A thousand miles north of the grisly drama that was unfolding in Ponyville, a howling wind whipped ’round the pinnacles of Griffil’la, the city’s snowcapped spires sprouting from snowcapped summits to meet a starry evening. On a terrace made of alabaster covered in white, Princess Celestia stood tall, unmoved by the gale. A plain brown cloak draped her body, and a concealing hood was drawn about her face.

“Thirteen? Are you certain?” she asked.

Across from her, the only other living soul nodded his head. He was a griffin, ungarbed, the black of his feathers like coal against the snow. “Yes. Thirteen, in two weeks’ time.”

“And you don’t know where it will happen?”

The griffin shook his head. “No, Your Majesty.”

“Then you must endeavor to find out. Glean it from your contacts as best you can. I shall meet you here tomorrow at the height of the moon, and you shall tell me what you’ve learned.”

She turned to leave, but paused to give the griffin a sober look.

“Let none know of this meeting.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. For Equestria.”

“For Equestria.”

With that, they went their separate ways. The griffin, home to his den, and Celestia, to the hole-in-the-wall inn where she’d taken out lodging for the week. The accommodations weren’t anything to write home about, but the place was quiet and unfrequented, and the innkeeper was on her payroll, and that made it worth its weight in gold for an alicorn princess attempting to go undetected in the Griffin Kingdom.

It was after midnight by the time she arrived, touching down in front of the chalky old building amid ankle-high eddies of snow. As she stepped inside, she cast her eyes about furtively. The common room was empty, as promised. The door swung shut behind her, and the all-encompassing sound of the wind died down to a mere howl.

All was still, but just the same, she kept her head down and pulled the hood of her cloak tightly about herself as she strode across the room. The lock to her door clicked open with a faint glow of her horn. She hurried in, flicked the bolt, hung the chain, and cast her wards.

“I should have left this to Luna,” she mumbled to herself, allowing her eyes to fall closed. “She used to be so good at espionage, and the hours always did suit her better.”

She shucked her cloak, all but collapsed onto the bed, and would have been asleep in no time.

If not for the belch of green dragon fire.

Celestia eyed the letter. She half considered letting it set until tomorrow, but no. If Twilight sent something at this late hour, then it must be urgent. She ought to take a look at it.

Off popped the seal, and the parchment unfurled before her.

Three minutes later, Celestia came tearing out of the building. She took off into the sky so fast, she set off a shockwave, and lights went on in homes up and down the street and clear across the whole griffin city.

She left the room in disarray: the door ajar, the cloak forgotten, and a scorch mark on the desk where she had quite literally fired a message back to Twilight.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

UNDER ROYAL SEAL OF PRINCESS CELESTIA:

My Faithful Student,

Go to Rainbow Dash and comfort her. Apply neither magic nor medicine upon her, no matter what! You need not beg ever, and you need not despair. As surely and swiftly as the first rays of dawn kiss the earth, I will be in Ponyville upon the sunrise.

—C

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Twilight did as Princess Celestia bade her and returned to the hospital, glad for the knowledge that she was on her way. If anypony could heal Rainbow Dash, it was her.

Princess Celestia would fix things. Princess Celestia always had. In the years and years Twilight had spent in Canterlot as her pupil, she had never known a problem the princess couldn’t resolve. Had never known her to make a mistake, or to fail at anything she tried.

Princess Celestia would fix Rainbow Dash. She was sure of it.

It was a rough night for everypony. Mercifully, Rainbow didn’t rouse from her half-conscious state, but she still continued to whimper in her strange delirium, calling out for her mother.

Fluttershy made room on the bed for Applejack, who crawled up next to her and helped comfort their injured friend. But as the hours dragged on, she only grew worse. Again and again, her sobs rang in their ears. There was a desperation in Rainbow’s voice that cut into their hearts; a longing for something that none of them could provide.

It seemed to take forever, but at long last, morning came. As the first slivers of dawn filtered through the window and inched across the bed where Rainbow lay in her tormented fugue, Twilight rose stiffly from her chair, traipsed down to the lobby, and opened up the doors. There in the threshold, she stood, watching the sky as brushstrokes of pink and orange appeared.

The first glimmer of sunlight over the mountains exploded in a brilliant glare, forcing her to shield her eyes. When she looked up, there was Princess Celestia in all her glory. Yet she was without raiment, coach, or guard, and the goddess incarnate couldn’t hide her tiredness.

“Princess,” Twilight said, falling into a bow. But before she could bend at all four knees, Celestia had already brushed past her.

“Where is she?”

Twilight grasped for words as she stood up again. “Upstairs.”

“Take me to her.”

Twilight led the princess up the stairs and down the hall, to the room where she and her friends had endured the night. As they approached the door, Rainbow cried out—a long, painful, yearning cry that made Twilight cringe and stopped Celestia dead in her tracks.

Twilight swallowed hard. “Like I wrote in my letter, she’s been doing that all night,” she said, peering up at the princess. “Ever since yesterday afternoon, when she fell off a…”

She stopped talking. Bit down on her lip.

Twilight had pinned all her hopes on Princess Celestia being able to mend Rainbow Dash. She had expected to see an expression of determination on her face. Or confidence, or wisdom, or serenity, or—horseapples, any emotion in the world but fear!

But no.

Celestia. Looked. Terrified.

“P-Princess?”

Celestia looked down at her with wide eyes. It took a moment for the shock on Twilight’s face to register, but once it did, she seemed to realize the panic she was telegraphing and clamped down on it.

She took a few more seconds to compose herself.

Then she opened the door.

Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity all jumped up as soon as they saw her, each one bowing in respect. Celestia barely even noticed, so frozen was she by the tableau in front of her. By the sight of Rainbow Dash restrained by the arms and legs, quivering in pain.

The goddess lingered in the doorway for a few seconds more. Then a change came over her. Her face hardened with resolve, and she walked to the bed with purpose in her step. In an instant, the belts holding Rainbow in place snapped free, and her body went limp.

Celestia gently pushed back Rainbow’s colorful bangs, and then, with special attention, began licking the wound on her head.

“M-Mommy?” Rainbow whimpered.

“Shh,” Celestia said. She climbed onto the bed, wrapped Rainbow in her wing, and nuzzled her. “Yes. Mommy’s here for you.”

Twilight’s mouth fell agape.

There were similar reactions all around. Fluttershy squeaked in surprise, and Rarity gasped. Applejack just looked plain confused, her mouth frozen in a tiny little ‘o.’

But… Wait. There was a perfectly logical explanation for all of this. It was a ruse! That was all. A brilliant ruse to calm Rainbow down, to make her think her mother was near and lessen her pain.

Truly an impressive demonstration of the principles of modern psychology. That didn’t make it any less surreal, though. The sight of her teacher nurturing Rainbow Dash, of all ponies… It was bizarre! And pretending to be her mother, on top of it!

“Are you really Rainbow’s mother, Princess?” Applejack asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes. Naturally, she was the first one to figure it out while the others jumped to conclusions. “No, Princess Celestia isn’t really Rainbow’s mother,” she explained. “She’s only saying that to calm her down. It’s a trick.”

Fluttershy stepped forward. “Will Rainbow Dash be okay?”

“Rainbow Dash is going to be fine.”

Celestia bowed her head. Breathed in, and breathed out.

“And… it isn’t a trick.”

She nuzzled Rainbow again, then tilted her face to peer into those unseeing pink eyes.

“I’m your mother, Rainbow Dash,” she said.

And Twilight’s brain short-circuited.

Not even Celestia knew if Rainbow understood what she was saying, but the revelation left everypony else dumbfounded. All except Pinkie Pie, that is, who tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“Huh. Y’know, I guess it’s kinda obvious now that you mention it,” she mused. “Seriously, guys, they’ve both got the same rainbow thing going on with their hair. And practically the same eye color, too!”

“But—But—”

Twilight reached out for a wall to steady herself.

It wasn’t possible!

Applejack glanced back and forth between Celestia and the little blue pegasus in her hooves. Rainbow was still completely out of it. But driven by something—instinct? craving?—she had cuddled up against Celestia, buried herself beneath that blanketing white wing, and pressed her face into the crook of Celestia’s neck. The princess looked down at her somberly and went back to tending the wound on her head.

It didn’t seem to be doing any good. The trembling that wracked Rainbow’s body was worsening by the second.

“Beggin’ Your Majesty’s pardon, but what’s wrong with Rainbow? Can you do anything to help her?” Applejack asked.

Rainbow suddenly latched onto Celestia and started huffing.

“There, there. Everything is going to be fine. I’ll take care of you,” the princess whispered. Then she glanced up and gave Applejack a tired look. “It would seem you’re about to see for yourself.”

The pegasus let out one last anguished, strangled cry, so long, they thought it would never end. She tossed back her head, every muscle in her body strained to the breaking point.

Then, with everypony’s eyes glued to the spot, a bump erupted from beneath the wound on her head. It kept rising and twisting, and after several excruciating seconds, a horn had grown out of her skull!

“Oh, my!”

“What in tarnation?!”

“Aww, it’s so keyuuuuute!”

Pinkie Pie jumped up with one hoof on the bed to support herself. With the other, she reached out for the new horn.

“Don’t touch,” Celestia said. Her voice carried no malice, but it was enough to make the excitable pony immediately back off.

Twilight’s jaw was half-dislocated from such a sudden drop. “But… But that doesn’t make any sense!” she cried. “I’ve never heard of a pegasus pony growing a horn before!”

“That’s because pegasi don’t grow horns,” Celestia said quietly.

With a sad little smile on her face, she nuzzled Rainbow.

“Alicorns… do.”

Rainbow was completely gone. Her energy spent, her week’s long torture at an end, she had succumbed finally, mercifully, to sleep. A sigh rattled out of those tired lungs, and at last, she knew peace.

Celestia kissed her gently on the forehead.

When she looked up again, she saw bewildered, astonished expressions all around. Applejack and Rarity were at a loss for words, and her faithful student was staring at her incomprehensibly.

The time for secrets was past. One way or another, the truth would have to come out now.

Easier, then, to tell them all here and now. If nothing else, it would prepare her for the task that lay ahead of her…

…in a matter of time, when Rainbow Dash woke up.

“Come around, my subjects,” said Celestia, inviting them with a smile, weary and strained though it might have been. “Come around, and I shall tell you the whole story.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Regret can be a pernicious thing. It creeps, and it clings, and it stings, and it smothers… and it yearns for forgiveness.

But the choices we make can’t be unmade, nor the paths we walk be walked back. And often, the forgiveness we seek is not so easily given.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Celestia was tired.

It had been a long night, and a long day, to top it off, lying awake with this little blue pony curled beneath her wing, passing the time idly, just listening to her breathe.

The others had departed ages ago, gone back to their libraries and cottages and bakeries and boutiques and farms to get some much-needed respite. Which left Celestia alone in the company of a sleeping Rainbow Dash.

In the company of Rainbow Dash… and her own thoughts.

A thousand years of regret played out in her mind’s eye.

Rainbow gave a little yawn and stretched out, snuggling into the warm white of her coat. Celestia’s wing gripped her protectively, pulling her against her side and holding her there, safe and secure.

She could still remember it all so clearly. That was the worst part. The way the December snow piled up along the square panes of the window, and how the sky outside looked so bleak, and white, and cold. The painted cradle in the corner. The pop and crackle of the fire as it danced orange in the hearth, and the smell of burning pine.

The knock at the door…

Celestia closed her eyes.

A thousand years of loss. A thousand years of heartache. A thousand years of having to say goodbye, over and over and over.

A thousand years of guilt.

A thousand years, looking up at the Mare in the Moon. A thousand years, singing her nightly penance across time, across space.

A thousand years, and how well her heart had been eclipsed by it.

Yet so much had changed since that cold December day. She had taken on a pupil, whom she cared for more than she could ever say. And she had reunited with her sister again after lo these many centuries. Her heart had opened up so much, in so many unfathomable ways.

Why, oh why, couldn’t it have opened up just a little sooner?

“Perhaps it was losing you that made me want to feel whole again,” Celestia said, gently stroking her daughter’s bangs.

Her face darkened with despair.

“Oh, Luna, this isn’t going to work, is it? I’ve really messed up. I’m… I’m not sure I can do this. Once was hard enough. I can’t go through it again.”

A tear rolled down her cheek and landed, unnoticed, in the vivid tangle of Rainbow’s mane.

She wished it had all happened differently.

She wished this moment would never end.

But even though she could raise the sun and lower it, Celestia couldn’t make time stand still. Nor could she make it go backward, no matter how desperately she wanted to.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Three times, afternoon turned into night, and night into morning, and still, Rainbow lay asleep, her chest rising and falling with deep, peaceful breaths. Her suffering had disappeared, replaced by a serenity that manifested in every soft exhale. Her face, formerly the province of anguish and misery, was split by a smile that stretched from ear to ear.

Dreams flitted behind her eyes. Dreams of being held by a wonderful mare, whose face she could almost see. Who tended her wounds when she was hurt, and comforted her when she was afraid.

She could feel the heat of her body, and the softness of her mane…

She could almost remember the words of a lullaby, dancing on the edge of her memory.

The light crept across her sleeping visage. It shined through her eyelids and coaxed her back into the waking world. Slowly, Rainbow became aware of herself lying against something soft and warm, with what felt like a big, feathery blanket wrapped around her.

She yawned and stretched.

Then she rolled over and promptly fell back asleep.

Little did she know there was a goddess watching over her.

Minutes went by, and Rainbow’s breathing grew deep again. Celestia looked down upon her, and her heart glowed in a way she had so seldom felt it do in the past millennium.

She began to hum. Softly, at first, so as not to wake the sleeping filly. Then she began to sing:

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry.
Go to sleep, my little baby.
When you wake, you shall have,
All the pretty little ponies.
Blacks and bays, dapples and grays,
All the pretty little ponies.

Way down yonder, in the meadow,
Poor little baby crying mama.
The birds and the butterflies flutter ’round her eyes,
Poor little baby crying mama.

Can you see the little ponies dance before your eyes?
All the pretty little ponies will be there when you arise.

Rainbow stirred, enticed by the promise of something wonderful.

She seemed so close, that motherly figment. And there it was: the lullaby. Not in snatches, half-forgotten, wrapped in deafening obscurity, but as golden and pure as the first time she’d heard it, so many years ago.

“Mommy,” she whispered urgently.

“I’m here, little one.”

A warm snout nuzzled the back of Rainbow’s neck. She smiled.

Then reality caught up, and she snapped awake in realization.

“Who—I—what?!” she sputtered, jerking away automatically, only to realize a gigantic white wing had her in its clutches. She threw it off and scooted back until she banged against the headboard. “Ow!”

She blinked through the pain, and then recognition dawned.

“Princess Celestia?!”

The princess! Here! Rainbow’s brain fired into maximum overdrive. She was supposed to bow, right? But she was still in bed! Was she supposed to get up and then bow? Or maybe she should stand on top of the bed—

“Shh. There’s no need for any of that.”

Rainbow stared at her, slack-jawed and bewildered and totally confused as to what the hay was going on. In a state of still-cool, totally-not-panicking, she scanned her surroundings. She arrived at one inescapable conclusion.

This… was not her cloud house.

The angles were wrong, and so were the colors, and the air in here was way too stuffy. It smelled a bit like antiseptic, actually. And it looked a whole lot like the cell they’d stuck her in at Ponyville General that one time last year, after she botched the snap roll coming off the Bell Tailslide. She could still taste the dirt from that crash.

But even if this was the hospital, she still wasn’t sure how she’d gotten here. She wasn’t sure of anything, actually. Except that waking up in Princess Celestia’s plumage was bucking weird.

“How do you feel?” Celestia asked.

“Um… Okay, I guess?” Rainbow said, frowning. She shook her head to clear out the cobwebs.

Nope. No good. Still couldn’t remember anything.

Except the pain in her head. How could she forget that? And… falling and hitting the ground. She definitely remembered that. Emphasis on the hitting the ground part. And then… er… Big Macintosh was in there too, somewhere. She remembered Big Macintosh. And pain. And Twilight. And pain, and more pain. And… Zecora?

Urgh. Her memory was totally fried.

Oh well. She was still alive, apparently. Still, she musta hit the ground pretty hard to wind up in the hospital. Especially since, like… two hundred percent of her memories were all about pain. They’d even called in the princess on this one. Weird… Twilight hadn’t even done that the last time she’d been laid up with an injury, and she hadn’t been able to fly for a whole week after…

Rainbow’s heart clenched with fear. Her eyes widened.

“Oh my gosh, my wings!” she shouted, twisting to get a look at them. Were they okay? Please, let them be okay!

There wasn’t a sling, no bandages she could see… She fanned her primaries experimentally to test them out…

“Rainbow Dash.”

She froze. Oh yeah, the princess.

“Er… Sorry ’bout that,” she said with a sheepish look. “Wings. Pegasus thing. You wouldn’t understand. Uh… Well, then again, I guess you’ve got wings too, so you probably do understand—”

“Rainbow Dash,” Celestia interrupted. “We need to talk.”

“Uh… Am I in trouble?”

Celestia was silent for a long moment.

“No, you aren’t in trouble,” she finally said.

Then she took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and blew it out in a long exhale. She almost seemed to deflate as the air went out of her, and in that moment, a strange thought struck Rainbow: that in all the times she’d seen the princess since they met after last year’s Summer Sun Celebration, she had never looked more apprehensive, more exhausted… more mortal.

“Something wrong?”

Another pause. And then…

“Everything is wrong,” Celestia murmured. “I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash. Let me say that much up front. For all that’s happened to you, I’m sorry. For everything I’ve done to you, I’m so, so sorry.”

A tendril of dread squirmed in the pit of Rainbow’s stomach. She didn’t like where this was going. “Uh…”

“This isn’t going to be an easy conversation. Not for me, and certainly not for you. I expect you’ll be angry with me by the end of it. You may even hate me for it.” Celestia’s voice all but dripped with sadness.

“Just… Please. Please, no matter what happens, no matter how mad you get, please, don’t run away. Stay here with me on the bed until we’ve finished talking. I… I don’t…”

She looked away. Far, far away, as if she were peering back through time to reflect on a distant memory.

“I don’t want to part ways in anger,” she whispered. “Not again.”

“…Sure,” Rainbow said, slowly.

It didn’t seem like too much to agree to. Although this little chat was really starting to weird her out.

“Do you remember anything of what happened to you? Do you recall any of the day’s events when you were brought here?”

Rainbow bit down on the urge to roll her eyes. She’d already cruised this jet stream. “Yeah, uh… It’s kinda hard to remember anything.”

“Order your thoughts. Begin with the first thing you recall, and proceed from there. Try to remember as much of what happened as you can. In the meantime, I shall tell you a story.”

Rainbow’s brows knit together, but she did as the princess commanded. She let the lids of her eyes droop shut.

And she remembered… She remembered…

Panic. Yellow panic, rising in her belly. Her wings. Sluggish. So sluggish. Too sluggish to stay aloft. And the pain, so sharp, she couldn’t breathe. Like a red hot fireplace poker stabbing her in the brain.

The cloud… The warmth of the sun… The scrape of the plow… The whistle of the air in her ears… The red-speckled green of the orchard and the blue of the sky, somersaulting in her field of view…

Meanwhile, Celestia began her tale:

“Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in a beautiful castle. She reigned over her kingdom with the wisdom and experience of years, and the land prospered under her leadership.”

The sound of her own voice screaming, crying, howling as they forced her onto the mattress… Twilight’s face, filled with worry, suddenly there in a single moment of clarity, then gone the next as the darkness seeped back in, tugging at the corners of her vision…

“But even though her people knew peace and happiness, their ruler’s heart was sick with grief. For the princess had alienated everyone she had ever loved and cared for. In her arrogance, she allowed a wedge to come between herself and her sister, the only family she had left. Their relationship grew bitter. Many cruel words were spoken in anger. And the things they did to each other… the things they did were crueler still.

“Eventually, the princess realized her folly. She pined for reconciliation. But the opportunity was gone. The princess found herself all alone… and alone is a terribly lonely thing to be.”

All alone. All alone as she cried out in the darkness. All alone as she cried out for her mommy.

But her mommy was gone. Her mommy had left her.

And now the hooves came around her again, and now they were lifting her up, wrenching her away, and now she reached out for her mommy, reached out as far as she could.

She came up empty.

Celestia’s gaze went out the window.

“With each passing year, the princess withdrew more and more into herself. She forgot how to love. And even though she remained a just ruler who treated her subjects with kindness, she closed herself off from them. She closed herself off from the whole world, and would not let anyone in.”

And now the tears were streaming down her face. And now she was all alone, and scared, and she would never see her mommy’s white wings again, or her smiling eyes, or listen to the songs she sang…

“Then, one day, a certain earth pony came to her court. At first, the princess thought him an ordinary petitioner, but he…”

The smallest of smiles touched her lips.

“He had a way about him. A way of making others laugh. And laughter was something she had been without for far too many years. She was so desperate to make that feeling last, she asked him to stay for dinner. There was food, drink, and many hours of conversation. One thing turned into another, and they… had an indiscretion.

“Months later, before she began to show, the princess went into seclusion. ‘To study and meditate in solitude,’ with only her most trusted servants and advisors to aid her. And then…”

And then Celestia was beside her.

Through the fog of a fevered dream, in the warm light of a new dawn, she felt Celestia lay down beside her and wrap her in that motherly embrace she knew all too well.

And she could feel the warmth of her mother’s body, chasing away the cold and the dark. And she could smell the sweet fragrance of her mother’s mane, the same as ever before—

Rainbow snapped alert in shock. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints.

“And then you were born, my little Aurora,” said Celestia. The princess gave her a tiny smile tinged with sadness, and looked at her in a way that said more than words ever could.

Rainbow could only stare open-mouthed and make strange, voiceless noises in the back of her throat.

A few seconds later, the old gray matter finished rebooting, and she backed away as far as she could until she was up against the edge of the bed. Frantically, she looked around, half expecting to see Pinkie Pie hiding behind a curtain or something, waiting to spring the prank on her. “Good one, Pinkie!” she would say, and they’d all laugh.

But no. They were alone. It was just her and Celestia.

“No.” Rainbow shook her head. “You’re lying. You’re making it up.”

“Touch your forehead.”

Rainbow did as Celestia asked, and to her amazement, found herself with a hoof full of horn. “Wh-What—?” she stammered as she crossed her eyes to look up at it. “What—!”

“The alicorns of old had a name for it. They called it Unity,” Celestia said. “It’s the moment when one of our kind grows into the fullness of their potential. It happened to my sister, and it happened to me. And now, it would appear, after all these years, it’s finally happened to you.”

No matter how hard Rainbow tried, she couldn’t string a sentence together. Trying to find the right words—or any words, for that matter—was proving to be an impossible task.

In the end, she went with just one of them.

“How?”

Celestia looked away. “The ‘how’ of it isn’t what’s important.”

“The ‘how’ of it isn’t what’s—” Rainbow repeated. Then she broke off. Her face twisted into an angry snarl. “What do you mean, it isn’t important? How ISN’T IT important? I HAD a mom, AND a dad!”

“Yes,” Celestia agreed. “You did.”

“Then HOW?”

The question hung in the air like an accusation.

“Reality is a world of beliefs, Rainbow Dash. We build up our lives on a vast foundation of assumptions—the things we’re told to believe are true. Most of the time, it’s sturdy ground, but every now and then, a falsehood creeps in. In your case, you were brought up with the belief that Nova and Blaze were your true mother and father—”

“No,” Rainbow said. “No, no, no, no, no. I am not hearing this!”

“Listen to me, Rainbow Dash. Listen to me!” Celestia’s voice gained a frantic edge when Rainbow spread her wings and tried to take flight. She had to reach out with her magic to keep her from running.

“Please, you mustn’t leave! Not now! Not yet! And no matter what comes of this, you mustn’t think any less of your parents! They had no idea whose child they were adopting. They weren’t complicit in anything other than loving you as their own.”

Rainbow squirmed, wings straining instinctively against Celestia’s hold on her. She needed to think—she needed to fly—

“Let go of me,” she begged. “LET GO!”

Celestia immediately released her.

She felt her heart skip a beat when Rainbow shot off the bed, though thank goodness, she didn’t try to flee the room. She only zipped away to the far side of it, fear and confusion rapidly trading places on her face as she beat a course back and forth through the air, the same way an earth pony or a unicorn might pace the floor.

Celestia grimaced.

Somehow, somewhere, in some alternate reality, there must be some magic combination of words she could speak to fix all of this. The right combination of subject and predicate and noun and verb and explanation and apology that would make Rainbow understand what she had done and why she had done it. That would allow her to be forgiven.

She closed her eyes and remembered Luna.

It wouldn’t be enough.

It never was.

“Why?”

Celestia winced. ‘Why’ was the only question more difficult than ‘how.’

“Why did you do it? And why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Rainbow felt the stuff of her nightmares be dragged out into the light of day. The being-wrenched-away, the reaching-out-and-not-finding, the feeling-afraid, the feeling-abandoned, and all those other things she’d told herself weren’t real, all of those horrible, phantasmal things from her dreams and nightmares came rushing back at her now.

“All those times… All those times you coulda said something, and you never did… the Best Young Flyer Competition, the Gala—”

Celestia looked away.

“—that thing with the parasprites, the one time with Fluttershy and the stupid bird… All those times you just brushed me off, and you never said ANYTHING!”

“Rainbow Dash…”

The tears flew off her face in a rage. “WHY? Wasn’t I GOOD ENOUGH for you?” She squeezed her eyes closed and looked away—she wasn’t good enough, she was never, ever good enough—

Celestia felt the room close in on her. It was all spiraling out of control and she didn’t have the words. “I couldn’t… I just couldn’t…”

“WHY? Because I didn’t have one of THESE?” She jerked a hoof at her horn.

Celestia’s mouth fell open. “No, that’s—”

“You took Twilight in, and you didn’t even KNOW her! WHY NOT ME? What was wrong with ME?” Rainbow’s wings flared, every sky-blue feather bristled in fight-or-flight readiness.

Celestia tried to break in. “I never—”

“Oh, but the day I grow a horn, all of a sudden, I’m good enough for you to show up! ‘Hey, Rainbow Dash! Guess what? I’m your mom! Here, have a lullaby to make up for all the years I WASN’T THERE!’ What kind of idiot do you TAKE ME FOR?”

“It had nothing to do with that!”

“You never said anything! You never even looked TWICE at me! What, were you laughing at me behind my back the whole time too?!”

“No!” Celestia’s voice rose to a rare volume. “Listen to me. I know I’ve done wrong by you, and I’m sorry for it. Goodness knows, you have every reason under moon and sun to bear grievance. But pegasus, unicorn, or alicorn—Rainbow, it never made a difference to me!”

Rainbow fell quiet at that, her face unreadable.

Celestia fixed her with a look that bespoke all the love and regret she had in her heart. Or at least, she hoped it did. There were so many ideas she wished she knew how to express. So many thoughts floating around inside her, all bunched up in memories and feelings and other abstract forms she just didn’t know how to give voice to.

“I can’t believe this,” Rainbow muttered. “I can’t believe YOU. I thought… I always thought you were different. I thought you were somepony that we—that I could TRUST.”

“Rainbow—”

“But no, turns out you’re just another BUCKING PHONY! ‘It never made a difference’ my bucking hoof—”

“I would never lie to you!”

“You just spent my WHOLE LIFE lying to me!”

Celestia sucked in a breath. “I…”

The words stuck at the end of her tongue.

She was right, of course. She was right, and Celestia didn’t know what to say. Her diplomacy, her oratory, her confidence, all of it burned away beneath that withering, rose-colored glare.

Another argument. Another hopeless, unwinnable argument. Say the wrong thing, and the world falls apart. Say nothing at all, and the world falls apart. Why did it always seem to come to this?

Celestia gathered her wits.

“You were always good enough. Giving you up was one of the most painful things I’ve ever done. I agonized over it for weeks, and the day I sent you to live with your parents, I cried so hard, I couldn’t raise the sun.”

Rainbow looked away. A storm raged behind her eyes.

“Words can’t express how sorry I am,” said Celestia. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. A thousand times over, I’m sorry.”

Her face turned to ash. She wilted in shame.

“I’m not perfect,” she continued. “People suppose I must be because I am who I am, and because it gives them the comfort they need to sleep at night to think I’m watching over them with some kind of… divine insight. But it isn’t so. The universe never told me any of its secrets. The truth is, I’m just as lost and adrift as everyone else who’s born, lives, and dies in this world. I try so hard to do the right thing, but at the end of the day, I’m just as capable of making a mistake, just as capable of—”

Her voice broke.

“—of hurting the ones I love.”

Rainbow choked on something. Half a laugh, half a sob.

She didn’t know what to think or what to feel. Her mind was a dragon going around and around in circles. A dragon with its jaws clenched around its own tail, slowly eating itself.

Pissed off? Boy, was she ever.

But it wasn’t anger that was threatening to break her down. It was heartache and sadness, not knowing who she even was anymore, and the thousand voices in her head all shouting out in denial. It was the shock, the confusion, the terror. It was the fear and self-doubt. The hurt.

The betrayal.

And like a shadow beneath the waves, rising quickly to the surface, it was the feeling being completely, totally worthless. Tossed out like a pile of old rags.

Not good enough. Never, ever good enough.

She could feel it squeezing her, trying to get out. She was over a pit, dangling. She was flailing on the edge of a knife.

“How could you?”

The question was barely a whisper. Celestia flinched, just the same.

“I don’t get it—” Rainbow felt the tears pooling in her eyes, even though she hated herself for them. “Why did you do it? Why? Why?”

“Because I was afraid,” Celestia said.

Rainbow stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“I was afraid. There’s no other reason. There’s no… There’s no better reason,” Celestia mumbled. “I’m sure it sounds absurd to you, but the thought of holding another’s life in my hooves… terrified me.”

“You’ve ruled Equestria for, like, a million years. You rule over millions and millions of ponies. You raise and lower the freaking sun. And you’re telling me you skipped out because you were scared of the responsibility?”

“Partially.”

Celestia cast her eyes downward. She spent a good, long while studying the wrinkles in the bed sheets.

“The thought of allowing another into my heart, of opening myself up to all that love, all that inevitable pain…” She swallowed audibly. “I was so afraid of it. And… I’ve never been the best role model. I’ve always had a way of… hurting… those who hold me close. Of bringing out the worst in them. I… I just… I didn’t trust myself to be the one to…”

She trailed off. Shook her head. How could she explain herself? How could she possibly explain herself in a way she would understand?

“Did you know this was gonna happen?” Rainbow demanded.

The princess looked up at her. “What?”

Rainbow pointed at the horn growing out of her head. “This. Did you know I was gonna get this thing?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“And… if I hadn’t gotten it, would you have ever said anything to me about any of this? Or would you have swept me under the rug for the rest of my life and gone on not giving two bits about me?”

Celestia opened her mouth to reply. But the painful truth lodged deep in her throat, and she found she couldn’t say anything at all.

She didn’t have the words.

She never had the words.

Rainbow wrenched her head to the side, refusing to let Celestia see her tears, even as she furiously rubbed a forehoof across her eyes to dry them. But within a matter of seconds, her poise, her mask of bravado, eroded and washed away. The tears fell freely.

And Rainbow Dash, who’d always prided herself on being strong, fell apart right then and there. An anguished wail tore from her chest, the sum of all the horrible, unspeakable things she’d been through, every moment of misery and agony and anxiety and insanity, every self-image called into question, every self-doubt seemingly affirmed, and every knife, every knife Celestia had just plunged into her heart twisted, until the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own cry filling the room—

“GYAAUUUUAUUUGUGHH!”

She blasted to the window and threw herself against it as hard as she could, but before she could crash through, Celestia’s aura flowed into the glass, infused it, reinforced it—

“LEMME OUT!” Rainbow cried.

She made a desperate lunge for the door. But now the golden glow was over it as well, rendering it impervious to her hooves, no matter how many times she pounded against it—

“Lemme out! LEMME OUT!”

“Rainbow Dash!”

She whirled. Celestia was up off the bed, standing right behind her, so close, so very close—

Too close!

Her wings fired into reverse gear, her back hit the wall, her feathers splayed in every direction. She slid down to the floor, then scrabbled backwards until she hit the corner.

“Stay back!” she said, staring up at Celestia fearfully. “Stay b—”

Before she could finish, the princess fell to her knees and swept her up in a flurry of white.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Celestia, pulling her close, holding her tight, as every last muscle in Rainbow’s body locked up and she could only sit there, paralyzed. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and the dampness on Rainbow’s shoulder made it clear Celestia was weeping openly now.

It didn’t register in Rainbow’s head. She was in a world disconnected, staring past the colors of Celestia’s mane through distant, unfocused eyes. She felt the words trickle into her ear, though she didn’t hear them. All she knew was stupor and numbness, a dull throb and the scent of spring.

Several seconds passed before her brain plugged itself back in again. And as soon as it did—

“Ge’off,” Rainbow said, voice muffled by the embrace. She wriggled to get out from under Celestia’s wing. “GET OFF!”

At once, the wing lifted from her, and she scrambled to get away as fast as she could. She scrambled away and didn’t stop. Not until she reached the far side of the room, where at last, she crumpled against the wall, panting.

They remained that way for some time. Rainbow Dash and Celestia, each in a different corner. And there was a long stretch of silence that neither of them wanted to be the first to fill.

“I want you to know how… proud… I am of you.”

After what felt like hours, but could only have been minutes, Celestia finally made a pathetic attempt at conversation. Her voice was as flat and worn-out as old parchment.

She looked utterly defeated.

GOOD! Let her feel bad! I DON’T CARE! Rainbow told herself—even though her head was gushing with memories—memories that dangled like little white strings, just begging to be pulled—

Celestia continued on, not quite meeting Rainbow’s gaze, “You’ve grown so much. You’ve become confident, talented, brave… A true, true friend to others, in every sense of the word, and a more self-reliant pony than any brought up in Canterlot, to be sure.”

—The princess, lying there beside her on the bed, tending her wound, cradling her like a newborn… a loving voice whispering loving words, taking away all her pain, all her fear…

“And a Bearer of Harmony, to top it all off.” Celestia managed a small smile. “Imagine my surprise, finding out. That Loyalty would choose you, out of all the ponies in the world.”

“Why? Didn’t think I was worth it?”

The smile evaporated. “You are worth it. You always have been.”

Rainbow just folded her hooves and looked pointedly away. They went back to nursing their scars in silence.

Another minute passed, and Celestia spoke again.

“Things are bound to change now,” she murmured. “Whether you like it or not, you are my biological daughter, which makes you the Princess Aurora and a Scion of the Realm. The truth will come out now, one way or another. It won’t be possible to keep it hidden. Your path will be forever altered.”

Rainbow’s scowl gave way to a fearful look. Forever altered?

Celestia went on:

“I would… I would like to be able to make this right,” she said. “I know I can never make up for what’s happened to you—for what’s been taken from you. But if you’re willing… If there’s any way that I can earn your forgiveness… I would welcome you to Canterlot. I would welcome the chance to spend time with you. Maybe… the chance to get to know you better.”

She sucked in a breath. Her chest quivered.

“You had the chance.”

Celestia slumped, the spark of hope fading from her eyes. The weight of the moment brought her low, her head drooping in resignation as a mask of sadness slid across her face.

“Do you wish me to leave?” she asked.

Rainbow stared at her, her expression somewhere between anger, loathing, and uncertainty. Slowly, she nodded.

Celestia stood and turned away, breathing pain. “The offer still stands, if… if you decide to reconsider,” she said hoarsely.

She made her way to the door.

When she reached it, she paused for a moment and stared at the knob. Her face reflected back at her in the brass, warped and devastated.

She thought of Luna.

She thought of everything that had happened between them a millennium ago. The unsettled arguments, like open sores left to fester, breeding bitterness and grudge.

In all the solitary years that came after, what would she have given to have another chance? Another chance to go back in time and say something different, something more, something that could bridge the distance between them and bring them together again. To speak the words she hadn’t spoken, because she hadn’t known what to say.

Because she didn’t have the words.

Because she never had the words.

Maybe… Maybe, if she tried now, she could do it. She could figure out the right combination of words and speak them, and it would make everything all right. She would be forgiven her past mistakes. She could be forgiven for all the wrongs she had done.

And she wouldn’t have to live on with the guilt and the shame of it. And she wouldn’t have to suffer the heartbreak. And when she closed her eyes and went to sleep tonight, it would only be Luna’s face that haunted her.

She had to make it right.

She had to say something.

She had to try.

She stopped and looked back. “I want you to know, I always—”

“Get. Out.”

Celestia’s eyes traced the floorboards. She lowered her head, resigned to the futility of it all.

There was no reconciliation to be had here.

Rainbow didn’t even react when Celestia slipped out. She only sat there, her eyes unfocused, clinging to the debris of her life. The floating bits and pieces she thought she still knew about herself.

Her whole body began to shake.

And the whispers of a lullaby bobbed on her memory:

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry.
Go to sleep, my little baby.
When you wake, you shall have,
All the pretty little ponies.
Blacks and bays, dapples and grays,
All the pretty little ponies.

02. Worlds Fall Apart

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER TWO
Worlds Fall Apart

Originally Published 7/14/2011

She was trapped, she was suffocating, she had to get out, if she stayed here another minute she was gonna lose it, she had to get out, she had to get out RIGHT NOW.

So she did.

Out she went, out through the window, and up, and up, so high nopony on the ground could see her, because she didn’t want to be seen, not like this, not while she had tears on her face and a horn coming out of her head and her mom and dad weren’t really her parents and Celestia didn’t want her so she gave her away as a foal oh goddesses why

The wind clawed at her, tangling the orange and yellow of her mane, but she didn’t care, she just wanted to be home, she just wanted to be alone someplace she could think, because she couldn’t think right now with all this wind and Truth howling in her ears, she couldn’t she couldn’t she couldn’t—

gave me away, gave me away, gave me away

She flew and she flew and she didn’t stop until she threw her shoulder against the door of her cloud house, and in she stumbled, legs flailing underneath her like greased lead, her hoof grasping for the knob, desperate to shut it, shut it out, shut the whole world out, she didn’t want to think about it anymore, shut it out, it wasn’t true, shut it out, shut it out shut it out shut it out shut it out SHUT IT OUT SHUT IT OUT SHUT IT OUT

Her legs buckled, the room tilted up to meet her, the granite corner of the table caught her haunch and dug a swath of pain across the left side of her body, her mouth wrenched open in an anguished yelp, and a heartbeat later, she was flat on the floor with her cheek pressed against the tile and a twinge blossoming in the wing she’d landed on. She heard something go wobble-wobble-wobble and her eyes shot open, her head lifting just in time to see the picture on the table she’d knocked go tumbling off. She reached out to catch it, but it fell right through her hooves. It fell right through and it hit the floor and it shattered, it shattered into a million pieces, it shattered and the glass went everywhere, but the photograph stuck in the damaged frame and she lunged for it, not even caring if she cut her stomach and got blood all over the broken glass, because it was shattered, it was shattered and there was no way it would ever be whole again.

Her hooves found the picture, and she picked it up and clutched it to her chest. Something caught in her throat, half gasp and half sob, as she looked down at it with bleary eyes.

The elderly pegasus couple in the photograph smiled back at her.

The same as they always did.

all a lie, everything, all a lie, mom, dad, why didn’t you ever

“I’m sorry,” her voice trembled out. “S-Sorry…”

gave me away, gave me away as a foal, gave me away and never told me, all this time, never said anything, why, why, why

“TANK!” she shouted, hoarsely.

She climbed unsteadily back to her hooves. Her wing still hurt and so did every other part of her, she needed Tank, she shambled on over to the stairs and started taking them two at a time, she needed Tank, she reached the landing and poked her head in the bedroom, the guest room, the closet, she needed Tank, she needed Tank, she needed—

Probably at Fluttershy’s.

The lone, logical thought surfaced on the sea of her emotions. But still there, roiling just beneath the tide: what was wrong with me, not good enough, not good enough, gave me away, not good enough, why, why, why

She stumbled into the bathroom, still in the vain hope of tracking down her tortoise. Her hoof fumbled for the switch. Light filled the room. When her eyes adjusted, there was no tortoise to be found.

But she did see her reflection.

The horn spiraled upward, seven inches from base to tip. It wasn’t a fat, stubby thing, like so many unicorn horns she had seen. It was slender and graceful, cyan blue, and when she turned her head just right, it caught the light and shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow.

She stared at it with something between awe and horror. A fearful hoof came up to test it, prodding it gently.

It didn’t move.

She tried again, more forcefully this time.

It still didn’t move. It stood there, tall and gleaming, as resolute as reality itself.

A reality she could never, ever cover up.

She sank to the floor with her back against the wall, despair pressing in on her. Her throat was tight. She couldn’t breathe. She gasped for air as though she were drowning, tears breaking against the bathroom floor.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

A cold wind swept up and down the halls of Canterlot Castle, rocking through the ancient timbers, along the chill-touched stones. Everything was darkness, and all the world a blue melancholy as by the stained glass oriels, Celestia traipsed. A thousand years of glossy history peered down at her: laws passed, treaties made, peace fought for and won. But she walked past them all with her head held low, thoughtless of all her exploits but the one seventeen years ago that was wrapped around her heart, squeezing so hard, she couldn’t feel anything else.

Her hooves pattered, her breath hitched, and she didn’t hear any of it. Only her inner monologue, drenched with hate, SCREAMING at herself. She roamed the corridors and all she could see was Rainbow Dash cowering in the corner, struggling to get away.

She was ANGER! She was RAGE! Rage at herself, at how PATHETIC she was, and how STUPID!

‘Not in her blood?’ NOT IN HER BLOOD?

And oh, to think how FREELY she’d given herself over to that CONVENIENT misassumption! When Nightmare Moon returned to stalk her dreams—when she peered into the cradle and caught a vision of Luna, so trusting, so helpless—

When a week turned to a fortnight, and a fortnight to a month, and the leaves of autumn were covered up by snow, and there was still no sign—how EASY it had been to go along with it! To trust the ‘experts’ and let herself be convinced. IDIOT! She wasn’t pureblooded! Only a quarter of her was alicorn. OF COURSE her maturity might be delayed!

“Your Majesty?”

Celestia halted mid-stride, barely turning her head to acknowledge the guard.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he addressed her. “Captain Armor notified us you were away on a diplomatic errand, and that we shouldn’t expect you back for several days yet.”

“I’m back now.”

Celestia’s voice was curt and barely restrained. The guard wisely picked up on it, deferring with a bow as he took an obeisant step backwards. “Of course, Princess. My apologies.”

“Guard.”

He dutifully lifted his eyes. No oblique glances this time: Celestia’s hawk-like gaze was on him, full-bore.

“Post yourself down the hall. If anypony should come looking for me, do not admit them. Under no circumstances am I to be disturbed.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Celestia continued on her way with nary another word. A minute later, she found the knob on her study door and slipped inside.

She stood perfectly still for a moment.

Then she erupted.

“AIUUUUUUUUUUAAAAARRRRRGHGHHHHH!”

Her hoof found the marble bust and flung it across the room before she even put eyes on it, and it SMASHED against the fireplace in an explosion of debris. Her horn blazed with magic, snatching up an armchair in her levitation aura and bringing it CRASHING down over the coffee table, even as she ripped the books from the shelves. The books littered the floor. The table cracked down the middle, throwing off splinters.

There was a mirror mounted on the wall next to her, and she barely had time to glimpse her own APOCALYPTIC expression before her hoof went once through the glass, then again, and AGAIN, and AGAIN—

She sank to her haunches, nursing her bloodied foreleg with its embedded glittering shards, emptying her heart and soul onto the floor as another anguished scream WRENCHED out of her—

‘It WOULDN’T happen!’

‘It COULDN’T happen!’

IT HAD HAPPENED.

And now the girl’s whole life was destroyed—her dreams obliterated—her future blown to pieces—and she would never be forgiven for any of it.

She didn’t deserve to be forgiven.

Through her grief, Celestia spied what little was left of the marble bust. The carved and polished likeness of herself had been brought to rubble, fragments of her noble face dashed beyond recognition. A fate justly earned.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“How long ago did you say it was?”

“Can’ta been fifteen minutes ago. I tell ya, Twi, they were real anxious to find her. I don’t blame ’em. T’ain’t right, her bein’ alone right now.”

Twilight tapped her chin, her brows knitted. Above her, perched atop one of the many bookcases in the Golden Oaks Library, Owlowiscious rotated his head to peer down on them with interest.

“You’re sure it was the same guards who’ve been posted outside the hospital for the past few days?” the unicorn pressed.

Applejack nodded. “It was them, all right. I’ve been seein’ some more of their kind comin’ into town on the Friendship Express since the weekend, too. I expect they’re all out and about searchin’ the town right now.”

“You aren’t wrong to be worried,” said Twilight.

“Well, when a couple unicorns in golden armor come bangin’ on the door of my farmhouse, wakin’ up Granny Smith, I’m gonna be worried regardless. I don’t get it, though. Princess Celestia’s been by her bedside this whole time, hasn’t she? How could she have given’ her the slip like that?”

“It is Rainbow Dash we’re talking about,” Spike pointed out.

“It is Rainbow Dash, but Applejack’s right. That doesn’t mean she should be by herself after everything that’s happened,” Twilight said. “We should—”

There was a loud BANG-BANG-BANG, and all four pairs of eyes turned to the front door.

Twilight cast the others a wary look before getting up to answer it. She stuck her head outside. “Oh! Good day, gentlecolts! …Actually, yes, I did hear you were looking for her. …No, I’m sorry, I’m afraid she isn’t here. If we see her, you’ll be the first ponies we… Oh. Um…”

She looked over to Spike and Applejack. “Can either of you think of any place she might have gone?”

“Her house?” Spike suggested helpfully.

Twilight shook her head. “They say they’ve already checked her house.”

Applejack pulled her stetson low over her eyes, slouching unhappily in her chair. “T’ain’t right, any of this,” she muttered.

With a grimace, Twilight went back to talking to the guards. “No, I’m sorry, I guess we can’t think of anywhere else she might have… Okay… No, that’s not a problem. I have Spike—my baby dragon—with me. I can have him send a letter if she turns up… Okay, will do. Okay. Okay. Yes, we’ll keep our eyes out, thank you. Good luck, officers.”

She closed the door. Her head drooped.

“We need to find her,” she said flatly.

Applejack was on her hooves in an instant. “That’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard you say yet! What’s the plan?”

“You make the rounds around town. The Carousel Boutique and Sugarcube Corner first, then anywhere else you can think of. I’ll use my cloudwalking spell to go to her house.”

Spike interrupted, “But you said the guards already checked—”

“She’s our friend,” Twilight said with a note of exasperation. “I don’t care if they already checked. We’re going to double-check, just to make sure.” She looked back at Applejack. “We can meet up at Fluttershy’s cottage. Hopefully, one of us will find her.”

Applejack nodded. “All right, Twi. Best of luck to both of us.”

She was out the door in a hurry. Twilight allowed herself half a moment to collect herself before gathering Spike on her back and setting out the door as well, her lips pressed together with worry.

What’s going on with you, Rainbow Dash? she wondered.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

It didn’t take them long to make the short journey out of town to Rainbow’s cloud house. Spike sauntered up the path and rapped his scaly knuckles against the door while Twilight tied down the hot air balloon.

“Hellooooo? Is anypony home?” he called.

There was no reply.

Soon enough, Twilight joined him at his side. “Any luck?”

“Nope. It’s just like the guards told you. I don’t think she’s here.”

“Or maybe she just doesn’t want visitors,” Twilight speculated. Frowning, she tried her own luck knocking on the door. “Rainbow Dash? Are you in? It’s us—Twilight and Spike!”

Still no answer.

Spike pressed his nose up against a window, struggling to see inside. Twilight just turned the handle. She had expected to find it locked and to have to finagle it open with her magic, but to her surprise, there was no such obstacle. The door opened without protest.

“Huh. That’s kind of peculiar,” said Spike.

Privately, Twilight agreed, but she bit down on her apprehensions for the time being. Perhaps the guards had taken license to invite themselves in when they’d swung by earlier.

They entered the house. Almost immediately, Twilight heard something go crunch under her front left hoof, eliciting a small wince of pain. She stuck out her foreleg to bar Spike from going any farther.

“Be careful,” she cautioned him. “There’s broken glass here.”

The little dragon picked up his feet. Sure enough, the floor next to the entrance was strewn with tiny shards, which glittered as they caught the daylight shining in from outside.

Spike rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Double peculiar. Oh, wow, are you okay? That didn’t hurt, did it?”

Twilight made a face. She lifted the affected leg and rubbed her sole against the neighboring hoof, causing a few powdery motes of glass to come off. “I’ll be fine. Just watch your step, okay?”

“No arguments there!”

They took a few seconds to look around the airy foyer.

Twilight had never been to Rainbow’s house before. It was a difficult place to reach without wings, and the usual parties and get-togethers among friends were much more easily accomplished at Sugarcube Corner or Sweet Apple Acres. She was taken aback at just how beautiful it was. The architecture was so exquisite, so refined, so… un-Rainbow-like. From the polished blue cloudwalls to the tall, fluted columns with their volutes and their plinths, every surface waltzed a graceful arc, not a hard edge or a corner to be seen.

It was all so delicate, and so very, very fragile.

And yet, even though it seemed at odds with her friend’s brash, swashbuckling personality, Twilight knew from Applejack and Fluttershy that Rainbow had built this place herself.

A frown creased her brow as she pondered that.

“Rainbow Dash? Hello?” Spike tried calling out again. His voice echoed back on him, unanswered.

“Why don’t you try looking for her upstairs?” Twilight suggested.

“I’m pretty sure she isn’t here, Twilight. She would have said something.”

“Spike,” Twilight said firmly. “Go look for her upstairs.”

Her tone of voice brooked no room for argument. Grumbling and shaking his head, he legged it up the steps.

Twilight’s frown deepened as she swept her gaze across the broken glass again. She levitated a piece and examined it meticulously, holding the oblong shard up to the light.

A minute passed. Behind her, she heard the pitter-patter of little dragon feet coming back down again. “No sign of her,” said Spike.

“This wasn’t forced entry. I’m sure of it.”

“Who said it was?”

“For one thing, none of the windows are broken. For another, this isn’t pegasus-enchanted glass, so it can’t have come from the superstructure.”

Spike looked at her oddly. “Um, no duh? This is Ponyville. Like, the safest town in the history of really safe towns? Preeeeetty sure there aren’t a lot of burglars in the neighborhood. Let alone burglars who can reach a floating house two hundred feet in the air.”

Twilight put down the piece of glass. “I’m just being thorough.”

“Hmph. Being paranoid is more like it. Who would even want to break into Rainbow’s house, anyway? Aside from, like… some kind of crazy Wonderbolts memorabilia collector, or somethin’. ”

“Things change, Spike.”

She turned her eyes to the window to avoid his curious look. Outside, the sun was near its midday height, and the whole world was bright as can be. All except for the shadows of the house’s pinnacles, which draped across the cumulus lawn in long, shady stripes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Spike.

“It means I’m not taking anything for granted. This situation is already beyond stupid… She even shouldn’t be out there, alone and unsupervised, after suffering a neurological trauma like that. And—”

The sun hid behind a cloud, and an overcast darkness engulfed the pinnacle shadows. Her voice died along with the light.

“Yeah? And what?”

She hesitated. Two beats. Three.

“There’s… a reason why princesses have guards,” she said finally.

Spike stared at her. By the time he burst out laughing, she was already halfway to the door. “Bwahaha! You aren’t being serious right now, are you? Please tell me you aren’t being serious!”

“Enough, Spike.”

“Pa-ra-noid! Hey, hold on a sec—what’s that?”

Spike was a lot shorter than Twilight, which made it easy for him to spot the small, rectangular object lying forgotten under the little table by the door. He got down on claws and knees, grabbed it, and handed it to her.

It was a picture frame. An empty picture frame, by the looks of it, for there was no picture in it. And a broken one: it was obvious now the fragments on the floor were what was left of the glass inset.

“Mystery solved, courtesy of the Spike Detective Service!”

Twilight shook her head. “Now I’m even more worried.”

“Seriously? Oh, come on!”

She set the picture frame down gingerly on the table before heading outside. Spike raced to keep up with her. Briefly, they paused on the doorstep, and Twilight used her magic to lock up the house.

“You worry too much,” said Spike. “This is Rainbow Dash we’re talking about. You know Rainbow Dash, right? Total athlete? Black belt in karate? Fastest pony in the world? If anypony picked a fight with her, they’d be in for a total butt kicking. Not that anypony would.”

“I’m just worried about her in the condition she’s in. She shouldn’t have left the hospital without telling anypony. Now she’s disappeared, and we have no idea where she’s gone.”

“I’ll bet she’s fine! She’s probably flying high, practicing an awesome new trick right now! And besides—” He made a sweeping gesture with his arms. “This is Equestria! Nothing bad ever happens here.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Twilight peered up at the dizzying heights of the cloud house. Daylight filtered through the variegated waterfall spouting off the top, casting a prism of colors across the white turf. She looked back at Spike.

“It won’t stop me from being concerned, though. Call me paranoid all you want. The world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”

Worry weighed on Twilight’s mind as she ushered Spike back into the hot air balloon. She paused for a moment to glance over her shoulder and give the cloud house one last rueful look. Then she climbed in after him, working on autopilot as she magically adjusted the outlet on the parachute valve. The two of them began to descend.

The plan, of course, was for them to head straight to Fluttershy’s cottage to link up with Applejack. That changed when Spike leaned over the basket, a claw raised to his brow as he squinted at the ground. “Look!”

Twilight looked. Then, frowning, she piloted the hot air balloon down to the earth. A pair of voices came gradually into earshot:

“I thought you said you was gonna bring a ladder.”

“I did bring a ladder! Whaddaya call that thing right there, genius?”

“Uh… It looks like a slide you pushed all the way here from your mom and dad’s back yard.”

“Well… Yeah! But it’s got a ladder on it, see? You’ve gotta climb up the ladder before you can slide down it, don’t ya?”

“Um… I don’t know. I don’t think it’s gonna be tall enough…”

“SNIPS! SNAILS!” Twilight called out. She set the balloon down, anchored it with a flick of her magic, and trotted over to them.

The two young colts shared a look. Their eyes lit up, and a pair of grins flashed across their faces.

“Hi, Twilight!” said Snails.

“Yeah! Hi, Twilight!” said Snips. “What brings you out here today?”

Twilight frowned at each of them in turn. “I could ask both of you the same. Town is miles away. What are you doing out here? Do your parents know where you are?”

That line of questioning wiped the joy of Snips’ face. “Uh… Well, actually, it’s like this…”

“We’re trying to get up to Rainbow Dash’s house so we can talk to her!” Snails blurted out. Snips shot him a glare.

“Why?” Twilight asked.

Snips rubbed the back of his head. “Um… Er… Y’see…”

“We was hoping to score an interview for the Foal Free Press!” Snails said. This time, the look Snips gave him was pure venom.

“You two are with the Foal Free Press?” Twilight asked skeptically.

Snails stuck out his chest, puffed up with pride. “We’re reporters!”

“And you want to interview Rainbow Dash… why?”

“Uh… Well, I mean, practically the whole town saw her get carried into the hospital the other day, screaming and yelling and stuff… It’s kind of a big news event, you know?”

“Yeah!” Snips agreed. “I heard Princess Celestia was there, too! I heard she flew into Ponyville, and she’s been in the hospital room with her ever since!”

“What’s up with that?”

“I know, right? Oh! And I also heard when they brought her to the hospital, she was crying for her mommy! Totally uncool, huh?”

Snails snickered. “Yeah! And all this time, I thought she was supposed to be… uh… cool, and stuff.”

“I’m totally questioning her image now!” said Snips.

“I heard,” said Snails, “the reason she was in the hospital was because she grew a unicorn horn out of her head.”

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. “Who told you that?”

“Um… I dunno. It’s all over town.”

“Yeah! Everypony’s talkin’ about it!”

“Uh-huh! Diamond Tiara thinks it would make a great story for the next Gabby Gums column!”

Snips elbowed his buddy in the side. “Jeeze, Snails! You don’t gotta tell her everything, y’know!”

“Ouch! S-Sorry.”

“Um… Hey, Twilight, d’ya think you could give us a ride up to Rainbow Dash’s house in that balloon of yours?” asked Snips, putting on his finest pout.

“Oh! Hey! That’s a great idea, Snips! We’ve been tryin’ to get up there for an hour now!”

“I brought a ladder—”

“Slide.”

“But it ain’t tall enough, see? With your help, though, we could be up there lickety-split, real fast-like!”

“And then we can interview Rainbow Dash for the column!”

“Yeah! Diamond Tiara says this story’s sure to move papers! And the people, they got a right to know!”

“The people’s got a right to know what’s going on with Rainbow Dash,” said Snails, nodding in agreement.

“It’s a reporter’s job to cover big stories like this! It’s about responsibility!”

“Ethics!”

“Journalistic integrity!”

“And if we sells a lotta copies, Diamond Tiara says she’ll cut us in on a portion of the revenues on the paper!”

The candid remark earned Snails another punch in the ribs.

“Ow!”

Twilight had spent less than two minutes listening to the little rabble-rousers spew their guts, and she could already feel the twinge of a headache blossoming behind her eyes. Irrespective of that, she couldn’t allow this to go on. She had to get out ahead of it; to defuse it before Snips and Snails took their story to print, and the situation blew up into something even worse.

She made a theatrical show of shaking her head. “Honestly, I’ve never heard anything more preposterous in my life!”

“P-Preposterous?” Snips stammered.

“Preposterous,” Twilight affirmed. “Rainbow Dash, growing a horn… Ha! You two have quite the imagination.” She smiled down at them good-naturedly and hoped they bought it.

It was a hard sell. “But we didn’t come up with it! Everypony in town—”

“Rainbow Dash fell and hit her head. She was taken to the hospital because she was hurt. That’s all.”

“Yeah, but—!”

“That’s all.” Now Twilight allowed the look on her face to shift to something closer to disapproval. “By the way, I know there’s such a thing as access journalism, but that doesn’t give you the right to access somepony’s private property. If you don’t desist trying to ambush Rainbow Dash in her home, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take it up with your parents.”

“What? No!”

“In fact, you might as well forget about this story altogether. Tomorrow, I’m going to raise the matter with Cheerilee and make sure your column is scrubbed from the pages of the Foal Free Press. The school newspaper shouldn’t be misused to violate other ponies’ privacy like this.”

“Aw, man!”

“Come on.” Twilight jerked her head. “I’ll give you a ride back to town.”

She waited for them to give up their quest and begin the reluctant trudge over to the hot air balloon. When they dithered, she rolled her eyes and levitated the slide, bringing it along with her as she started back. That was enough to motivate them, it seemed, as they hurried to keep up.

“Are you a hundred percent sure Rainbow Dash didn’t grow a horn, Twilight?” Snips asked suspiciously. “Because I’m sure I heard—”

“Rainbow Dash is fine. She’s just… recovering. And for the record, everything you’ve heard is an unsubstantiated rumor.”

“And you’re sure you can’t substantiate it?” Snails asked.

Twilight smirked. As she opened the door to let them into the basket, she gave herself an invisible pat on the pack for dealing so expertly with the situation; for keeping Rainbow Dash and Princess Celestia far away from the gnashing teeth of the press.

“No comment,” she said cheekily.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Meanwhile, aboard an eastbound train to Manehattan—

“…Well, you know I don’t like to spread gossip,” a tawny earth pony mare was in the middle of gossiping to her traveling companion, “but back at the Ponyville Station, when all those guards disembarked? I heard it was some kind of medical incident happened there.”

“No!” the other mare gasped into her hoof.

“Yes! Nothing contagious, mind you, but… Well, I heard it was a pegasus girl. Only rumors, but just the same… I heard it from a pair of blokes, one of ’em’s sister actually works there at the Ponyville hospital, right? According to her, this pegasus filly, she gets brought in over the weekend, all screaming in pain about her head—and by sunrise the next day, she’s had a unicorn horn sprout up out of her noggin, just like that!”

“Ahem! Pardon me, ladies…”

So wrapped up had the two mares been in their idle chitchat, neither one had paid any attention to the stallion seated across from them. Up until a second ago, all they could even glimpse of him was a pair of hooves grasping the back of a newspaper, he’d had his nose buried so deep in the A section. But now the paper lowered to reveal a sharp-eyed unicorn with roguish good looks and a press pass jammed in the ribbon of his slate-gray fedora.

“If it’s not too much trouble…” he asked, subtly levitating a notepad and quill as he flashed them a million-bit smile, “would you mind filling me in some more on the recent tidings… out of Ponyville?”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

If Rainbow Dash had nothing else to be glad about, she could be grateful for the fact that Fluttershy’s cottage was far, far out of town. Tucked right up against the edge of the Everfree, it was about as secluded a place as she could hope for at a time like this.

That didn’t keep her eyes from darting about nervously as she crept up on the little arch bridge over the stream. She heard the sound of frogs croaking on the lily pads, and her chest tightened with anxiety. She felt a gentle breeze sweep at her bangs, and she wished her mane was normal-colored, less recognizable, like everypony else’s.

She knocked on the cottage door, anxiously checking her baseball cap as she stood there waiting. It was still propped awkwardly overtop the horn, the same as she’d left it. Probably not the best camouflage, but it got the job done. And it made her feel less vulnerable. Less exposed.

The door opened.

“Rainbow Dash! You’re all right!”

Fluttershy’s hooves were instantly around her, sweeping her up in a desperate hug. Rainbow Dash cringed to hear her name announced to the world in what, for Fluttershy, amounted to a relatively loud voice. Her mind was at work imagining ponies staring at her from behind the trees and bushes, silently judging her. She stiffened in her friend’s embrace.

“H-Hey, Fluttershy…” she mumbled into that taffy-pink mane.

“You were so hurt before, and we were all so scared—none of us knew what was wrong—”

She forced herself to let go. Rainbow didn’t miss the tears in her eyes.

“Do you feel okay? You aren’t in any pain now, are you?

“Yeah, I’m… I’m good. C… Can I come in?”

Fluttershy was slow to answer. For the first time, she had stopped to take the measure of the newly minted alicorn. Her gaze swept up to the baseball cap on Rainbow’s head, then down again to the expression of barely concealed terror on her face.

“Yes. Of course,” she finally said.

On any ordinary day, Rainbow Dash might have swaggered in with confidence and bravado. This was not that Rainbow Dash. No, the wide-eyed Rainbow Dash who came slinking through the door was a different pony entirely than the one Fluttershy had known all her life. She had been swallowed up by timidness. By something dark and fearful.

“Rainbow Dash… Are you okay?” she felt it right to ask again.

“Y-Yeah. You know me. Can’t keep the Dash down!”

The corners of Rainbow’s lips wobbled, as if the fragile smile she’d plastered to her face might come crashing down at the first gust of wind. Her skittish eyes flitted to the still-open door.

“Hey, um… Do you mind closing that?”

Slowly, without looking away from Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy laid a hoof on the door and pushed it shut. Rainbow actually seemed to relax a little, even if she was still a bundle of nerves.

“I was… I was actually looking for T-Tank. Is he here?”

“He’s here,” Fluttershy said softly. “I took him home with me while you were in the hospital, so he wouldn’t get lonely or hungry… He’s been so very worried about you.”

“Can I see him?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Of course you can.”

But she made no move to go and get him.

Seconds passed, and neither one said or did anything. The moment drew out like a wire, stretched taut.

Then Fluttershy began to approach, slowly and cautiously, as if creeping up on a wounded animal who might try to bolt. Her eyes raised again to the baseball cap on Rainbow’s head. Her hoof followed her eyes.

“F-Fluttershy…”

Rainbow flinched as the hat came off.

The Truth jutted out from her forehead, undisguised. Fluttershy sucked in her breath to see it again. That spiraling horn, that impossible thing that had attached itself to her oldest friend, forever marking her as an alicorn. Forever marking her as Celestia’s own.

Rainbow shrank into herself, instinctively trying to make herself small. Her body betrayed her with a tiny whimper.

“Oh, Rainbow…”

She felt Fluttershy’s hooves wrap around her again, gathering her in another hug. Rainbow tried to pull away at first, but her resistance was quick to crumble. Before she knew it, she was burying her face in Fluttershy’s shoulder. Something was building in pressure behind her eyes—and now something was stinging her eyes, running hot and wet down her cheeks—

No! No! Not like this! A little voice in the back of her head was in open revolt. She wasn’t supposed to fall apart like this! She wasn’t supposed to cry! Not in front of Fluttershy!

“Shh. There, there. It’s okay,” Fluttershy whispered.

And Rainbow could tell, from the thickness and the slight hitch in her voice—Fluttershy was crying too.

She tried to compose herself, to keep up her defenses, but it was too much, it was just too much. All those swirling feelings of worthlessness, of rejection, were crashing against the last vestiges of her self-control, fighting to make themselves heard. Rainbow’s whole body was shaking now, her chest heaving with the trauma of everything she’d been through, with the terror of what lay ahead, with the death of her own identity and everything she thought she knew about herself, with the memory of her mom and dad, with being lied to, with being unwanted, with sob after sob that RIPPED from her lungs, until all she could do was collapse against Fluttershy, a shivering wreck.

And Fluttershy was there to hold her, to cry with her, to share in her sorrow and grief, to rock her gently and whisper that it was okay to cry, that everything was going to be all right. In her mind were all the times Rainbow Dash had ever stood up for her since their school days in Cloudsdale. All the times Rainbow Dash had been her rock, her salvation, her shoulder to lean on whenever she was afraid and alone. This time, Rainbow needed her.

“She had me, and sh-she just—gave me away! Like I was nothing!” Rainbow cried into Fluttershy’s mane.

Fluttershy rubbed her back. “I know. I know.”

“And sh-she never told me—all this time—all this time, she could have said something—and she never—sh-she never—”

Something rough and scaly pawed at Rainbow’s leg, and she looked down to see Tank standing there at her side, his little head craned to peer up at her sadly. Fluttershy let go, and she crumpled to the floor, throwing her hooves around the tortoise and weeping, and weeping. A moment later, the yellow pegasus kneeled down to join them, wrapping them both in a blanketing wing.

They stayed that way for quite some time.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

An hour later, Twilight’s hot air balloon made touchdown on the front yard of the cottage. Applejack was already there, leaning against a fence and chewing on a sprig of wheat.

“I’m sorry we’re late,” said Twilight, collecting Spike and hurrying over. “We had to make a slight detour.”

“That’s all right. Y’all can rest easy, now. Rainbow Dash is here.”

“Oh, thank goodness! How is she?”

Applejack frowned. “I don’t rightly know, to be honest. Fluttershy wouldn’t let me in to talk to her. Said she wasn’t up to seeing anypony, and she needed time alone. I reckon that means she’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Did something else happen?” Spike wondered.

“Nothin’ else happened, as best I know. She just didn’t take the news well from Princess Celestia is all. She roused this morning sometime around sunrise. The two of them had words, she didn’t like what she was hearin’, and she high-tailed it out of there.”

“Of all the short-sighted, irresponsible things to do,” Twilight muttered.

Applejack shot her a disapproving look. “It’s Rainbow Dash. Short-sighted and irresponsible are kind of what she’s all about. In this case, though, I can’t say I blame her too much. If’n Princess Celestia gave me that pill to swallow, I think I’d need to get some air, too.”

“Well, at least we know where she is now,” said Spike.

Twilight nodded. “If Rainbow Dash isn’t taking visitors, I think we should all head home. Spike and I can send missive to the Royal Guard. We’ll let them know where she is so they can call off the search.”

“Fluttershy says she wants to be alone, Twi,” Applejack interjected. “If you tell the Guard, they’re gonna be all up in her business.”

“No, sorry, I’m not going to aid and abet her going missing! As unbelievable as it may seem, Rainbow Dash is now a princess, and technically next in the line of succession after Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. She needs to be protected. What if somepony abducted her and tried to ransom her? Or used her as leverage against Princess Celestia and the Crown?”

Applejack looked at her doubtfully. “From talkin’ to Fluttershy this morning, and from all the years I’ve known R.D. myself, seems to me the biggest threat to her health and happiness right now ain’t somepony abductin’ her. It’s the private battle she’s fightin’ in her own heart, mind, and soul. Sugarcube, we’ve got to give her some space. If y’all roll up on her with a battalion of guards, she’s gonna feel cornered, and it ain’t gonna go over well.”

“We have a responsibility to tell somepony, Applejack. You might not like it, and she might not either, but it’s what has to be done. If it really is that important, I’ll put in a request for them to keep a wide berth.”

Applejack still didn’t look convinced, but she seemed to realize it was a losing battle. Gazing out into the impenetrable green depths of the Everfree, she silently chewed on her wheat.

“Can I give you a lift back to the farm?” Twilight offered.

“Nah. I’ll walk home. Reckon I’ve got a lot of thinkin’ to do.”

“All right. Spike and I will be on our way, then. Thanks again for all your help, Applejack. Take care of yourself.”

Twilight started back toward the balloon, but a half second later, she paused, thinking better of it. With a small, sad smile on her face, she laid a reassuring hoof upon the earth pony’s shoulder.

“Rainbow Dash is strong. She’s going to come out of this all right. You’ll see. With so many good friends by her side, how could she not?”

She gave Applejack a friendly pat, and then she and Spike were off. Applejack watched them go with an uncertain expression.

“I just hope you’re right about that, Twilight,” she mumbled.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Day turned to night, and Rainbow Dash stood alone by herself in the solitude of Fluttershy’s bedroom, staring at her own reflection. Her mind was hard at work, sifting through old memories.

As a kid, whenever somepony crossed her—like, really, seriously got on her bad side, usually when she was defending Fluttershy against Hoops and his gang—her go-to reaction had been to beat the living snot out of them. It was a habit that had landed her in hot water quite a few times during her days in Cloudsdale, and it earned her one heck of a reputation. Even though years and years had gone by since she’d last strolled out the doors of Little Wings, she liked to imagine her left hook was still legend there.

Just how many punches she’d thrown, how many kicks and bites and bruises she’d dealt out, who could say? It was always such a rush. But reliably, every time, whenever the fight was over, and her teachers managed to pry her off Hoops or another one of his big, stupid goons, and the adrenaline had worn off, and she was sitting all alone in time-out, isolated from everypony else, just thinking over stuff—somehow, she never felt good about herself after the fact.

It was no different in this case.

To her credit, she hadn’t given Princess Celestia a black eye. Even though she kind of really wanted to.

Maybe she should have. Maybe it would have made her feel better.

…No, it wouldn’t have. If her current mood was any indication, it probably would have made her feel even worse. And anyway, she didn’t want to get thrown in a dungeon for assaulting royalty.

Would they even do that to her now…?

She stared ahead. Her own face peered back at her, full of confusion.

And the horn sparkled brilliantly atop her head.

Buck Celestia. BUCK CELESTIA! Buck Celestia and all her bucking excuses! What kind of pony turns their back on their own kid? WHO DOES THAT? That was, like, the least loyal thing you could EVER do to ANYPONY, EVER! Her own mom and dad had NEVER—

Rainbow stopped mid-thought, crashing short. She spared a heartrending glance at the photograph of her mom and dad, brought with her from her house and set beside the mirror.

She swallowed hard. “Damn it,” she muttered, looking away.

Her mouth felt dry, her stomach tied in knots. Celestia’s shame-tinged words played over and over again in her head, like a record player bleating out the same unhappy notes. And every time she happened to glance over toward the bed, she swore she caught a flicker of the princess lying there, filled with so much sadness and regret…

She groaned. If Spitfire, Soarin, and every single other Wonderbolt personally wrote her a rejection letter proclaiming how much she sucked, it wouldn’t even come close to hurting as much as this did.

And still, her heart was caught in a dreamlike dance, flowing unbidden from memory to newly awakened memory…

Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it.

For the love of Celestia, how the hay could she even bucking REMEMBER anything from when she was THREE MONTHS OLD?

She sneered and made a face.

For the love of Celestia. Yeah, right.

Why was she so broken up over this?

Why did she feel so… so bucking guilty?

Why was she standing here, surrounded by ghosts and phantoms, going over the conversation again and again and again, staring into a mirror like she didn’t even know who she was?

She KNEW who she was. She was RAINBOW DASH.

AND DAMN IT, SHE WAS ANGRY.

BUCK Celestia! BUCK HER!

Turning away, she rubbed her temple, where a vein was throbbing.

I shoulda given her that black eye.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Pegasus ponies. Pegasus ponies with painted wings, twirling in the air above her. Pegasus ponies orbiting just beyond her grasp… She stretched out her arm to bat at them, but they were too far away, she couldn’t reach… She just couldn’t reach… She couldn’t…

A window covered in frost, with snow piling up on the ledge outside, and it was cold… So cold… But it was warm in front of the fire, nestled in those white hooves, in those wonderful white hooves that cradled her, that rocked her, that promised her she would always be loved, that she would never be alone. That warm, wonderful mare who nuzzled her, who sang to her…

And now the other pony’s hooves were picking her up, taking her away—and she cried, and she cried, and she stretched out her arm for her mommy, but she was too far away, her mommy was too far away, and she couldn’t reach! She just couldn’t reach! She couldn’t—

Rainbow bolted awake with a sob on her voice.

Her wings flared in panic. Every part of her was gasping, was trembling. The shadowy, unfamiliar shapes of Fluttershy’s bedroom stalked the dark alleys of her imagination, and it took a whimpering minute just to remember where she was before she could start to get a handle.

She hugged herself. It would be hours before she’d fall back asleep again.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

It happened by chance that Twilight awoke before dawn the next morning. She made herself ready for the day, put the coffee on, and plonked herself down in her upstairs study, her nose buried in a historical manuscript on the alicorns of ages past.

She had only just begun her early-morning reading when she heard the rustle of leaves outside her window, and the sound of flapping wings, almost too quiet to hear. She didn’t pay it any mind. It was probably just Owlowiscious returning from the day’s first hunt.

A few moments later, there came a faint knock at the terrace door:

Rap. Rap. Rap.

She froze. That wasn’t Owlowiscious.

Rap! Rap! Rap! Again the noise came, more insistent this time. Twilight shot a glance at the clock to confirm, yes, it was indeed four in the morning. Who in their right mind would come calling at this hour? And from out on the treetop balcony, no less?

Rap! Rap! Rap!

She picked up the oil lamp. Cautiously, she edged closer to the door, holding up the light to try and cast its rays outside. “Who’s there?” she queried.

Came the response, “Twilight Sparkle, is that you?”

“Erm… Yes, it is.”

“Would you kindly let me in? It’s Luna.”

Twilight’s mouth went suddenly dry. She threw open the door to admit the lunar alicorn, immediately falling into a bow. “P-Princess!”

She could be forgiven her trepidation. Twilight could count on one hoof the number of times she’d made Princess Luna’s acquaintance: after last year’s Summer Sun Celebration, when Nightmare Moon had escaped from her thousand-year imprisonment to banish Celestia and impose eternal night, only to be thwarted by the Elements of Harmony. That had been almost ten months ago, and the tall, midnight-blue royal who debuted in front of Twilight now was nothing like the tiny filly she had appeared as back then.

Luna strolled into the Golden Oaks Library, wrapped in a raven-black cloak that somehow made her seem even more formidable. She slipped back her cowl to reveal not the ordinary azure mane Twilight remembered, but a phantasmal mane, rippling with stars, which billowed and undulated behind her in the same fashion as Celestia’s. She was every inch of her a goddess now—literally, too, for she now commanded a towering height, although Twilight noticed she still stood perhaps a head shorter than her sister.

Something new had been imbued in her since Twilight had last seen her. Or perhaps something old had been given back.

Luna held up a hoof. “Please, don’t bow. You don’t ever need to bow to me, Twilight Sparkle. Neither you, nor any of your friends.”

“Sorry. I’ll remember for next time,” Twilight said, straightening up. “It’s good to see you again, Princess Luna. What brings you to Ponyville?”

“Urgent business. Please forgive me for the earliness of the hour. I would’ve come during the day, but… Well, I imagine there’s been a lot of talk around town already, what with everything that’s happened publicly to Rainbow Dash and my sister’s involvement in her long ordeal. I didn’t wish to create further spectacle by showing up in broad daylight and giving ponies a reason to talk more. Talk can be dangerous.”

Twilight frowned. “May I ask, where is Princess Celestia? I know she spent several days by Rainbow Dash’s bedside, but she left so abruptly without telling anypony, I was concerned.”

Luna was momentarily silent at the question. Her brows knit, as if weighing answers. Twilight felt more than a little uncomfortable when the alicorn paused to give her a long, appraising look.

“On behalf of my sister and myself, I’d like to thank you for the message you sent yesterday,” Luna cordially changed the subject.

“Oh! Um… Of course.”

“It showed diligence, good judgment, and dedication your friend. Celestia’s confidence in you wasn’t misplaced.”

A smile radiated from Twilight at the high praise.

Luna continued, “You kindly shared Rainbow Dash’s whereabouts with us, so I’ll return the favor. Celestia is in Griffi’la.”

“In Griffi’la?!”

“Please, speak more quietly! I know you share this home with a baby dragon. This information mustn’t leave this room.”

Twilight looked sheepish. “Sorry. I’ll try to keep my voice down. But still… The Griffin Kingdom is practically on the other side of the world. Shouldn’t she still be in Ponyville? Or in Canterlot, at least? Somewhere she can keep a close eye on the situation here?”

“The situation here is what I’ve come to discuss,” Luna said solemnly. “Please don’t think less of Celestia. She’s on a mission of vital importance to the safety of Equestria. She had already been attending to that mission when she received the news of your friend’s Unity, and she set aside her obligations to be with Rainbow in her hour of need. Now that the hour is past, she’s returned again to Griffi’la to gather what information she can.”

Twilight took a few seconds to mull over what Luna had told her. She gave a slow nod of her head. “I understand, and I appreciate you telling me. But I’m not sure Rainbow’s hour of need is in the past.”

“I’m sure she would be here if she could. If I may say something—and I hope I don’t come across too insensitive, for I do appreciate the trauma you and your friends, and especially Rainbow Dash, have all been through—but the timing on this has just been…”

Her voice trailed off. She expelled a weary puff of air from her lungs.

“Is there something going on?” Twilight asked.

Luna smiled weakly. “Tia told me you were perceptive.”

“If there’s anything we can do to help…”

“Certain events are gathering to a focus. Events that were set in motion last year, with my—”

Luna hesitated. Twilight thought she saw her flinch.

“—with—with Nightmare Moon’s unshackling from her prison. But that isn’t for you or your friends to preoccupy yourselves with. This burden is my sister’s and mine to bear. Now, come! Tell me what you know about Rainbow Dash. How is she? What’s her state of mind?”

Twilight spent the better part of the next hour filling her in on anything and everything she could think of concerning the pegasus-turned-alicorn. Luna was an active participant throughout, frequently pressing for additional details and chiming with questions whenever she thought of them. They talked far beyond Rainbow’s recent medical episode and her mental and emotional health, although those too were discussed. Luna seemed intensely interested in forming a fuller picture of Rainbow Dash in every respect. To that end, they discussed everything from her childhood in Cloudsdale, to her aspirations of joining the Wonderbolts, to her sonic rainboom.

When Twilight recounted how Rainbow had cried out for her mother in the hours of fevered anguish before her horn had grown, Luna nodded and tapped her chin sagely.

“It’s a natural reaction brought on by the genesis of the horn,” she explained. “As you witnessed, Unity can rob a pony of their wits and defenses, leaving them vulnerable. Who protects the child, then? The parent does, of course. Consequently, there’s a visceral psychological craving for the maternal figure approaching the hour of transformation. In the olden days, when I grew up, it wasn’t uncommon for an alicorn facing Unity to be completely inconsolable if they didn’t feel the touch of their mother’s skin.”

“So it was all just… endorphins and magic, then,” Twilight observed. “All of it was biological, instinctive.”

“In essence. You have to understand, though, the process usually happens a lot faster, and when the alicorn is much, much younger. Now, you were telling me about this book series she fancies—Daring Do…?”

They talked and talked, covering this topic and that one. At length, the sky outside Twilight’s window began to brighten with the first hints of the coming dawn, lightening from black to inky gray. When Luna noticed, she interrupted the conversation, a chagrined look on her face as she got up from the little stump table they’d been sitting at.

“Forgive me. I’m late,” she said. “Celestia is nothing if not punctual.”

Twilight nodded. She imagined her mentor and teacher standing alone on some forlorn mountain peak a thousand miles away in the griffinlands, her head bowed as she dutifully raised the sun. The mental image did nothing to improve her mood.

“May I use your balcony?” Luna asked.

“Of course.”

“Thank you. Why don’t you say your good mornings to Spike? It will take me some time to lower the moon. As soon as that’s done, I think we should head to your friend Fluttershy’s house before too many ponies are up and about. I’d like to pay Rainbow Dash a visit.”

Twilight hesitated. A warning impulse gnawed at the back of her mind. She pictured Applejack leaning against the wall, chewing on her sprig and shaking her head ever so slightly.

“With all due respect, Princess Luna, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Fluttershy said she didn’t take the news well, and she needed time alone. Maybe we should wait until she’s ready.”

“Ordinarily, I would agree with you, but time is a luxury we don’t have,” Luna said. “It’s important that I speak to Rainbow Dash as soon as possible. You’ll help me, won’t you, Twilight?”

Luna was a princess and a goddess. Who was Twilight to say no?

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The morning found Rainbow and Fluttershy gathered at the kitchen table. Rainbow was much more calm and relaxed today, and Fluttershy’s heart swelled with gratitude to see that time, company, and a night’s rest had done her a world of benefit. She still wasn’t quite her normal self, and there were moments when depression stalked her face and grim thoughts of yesterday seemed to flash in front of her eyes, but mostly, she was holding together.

For her part, Fluttershy had woken up early and prepared a delightful meal for them to enjoy: scrambled eggs fried in butter, savory oats with tomatoes and mushrooms, pancakes smothered in maple syrup, red strawberries, golden hash browns, and even a box of blueberry muffins fresh from Sugarcube Corner. Angel Bunny complained when his precious carrots made their way into the blender for a fruit and vegetable smoothie, but Fluttershy only shook her head at him and didn’t think twice. Some things were more important.

A yummy breakfast seemed to do the trick. Rainbow’s spirits were on the up and up with every bite. Before long, the conversation began to take on shades of normality, and Fluttershy felt comfortable enough to broach the one subject she’d been curious about all along:

“So… What’s it like? Um, if you don’t mind me asking.”

Rainbow stared at her in confusion, her cheeks puffed out with a mouthful of half-chewed pancakes. “Whaf’s whuf wike?”

“Um…”

Fluttershy made a swirly gesture with her hoof, coming off her forehead.

Rainbow noisily gulped down her food.

“Oh… This thing,” she said not at all enthusiastically, crossing her eyes to look up at the horn. “It’s…”

Her shoulders sagged.

“I don’t know. If you told me a month ago I was gonna wake up with a horn, I woulda been super stoked. What could be cooler than that, right? But the way this has all gone down, it’s not cool. It’s anti-cool. It’s like… this constant reminder that I can’t get away from, right in the middle of my freaking face.”

She shrugged helplessly.

“I don’t know… I guess it’ll help make me more aerodynamic? I oughta cut through the air like a hot knife through butter with this stupid thing out in front of me, right?”

“Oh…” Fluttershy said.

She topped off Rainbow’s glass, smiling weakly.

“Have… Have you been able to do any magic since you got it?”

“No. Mostly I just keep bumping into doors.”

Fluttershy snorted out loud. She covered up a burgeoning grin behind her hoof while Rainbow stared at her incredulously.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” Fluttershy said, trying hard not to laugh. “What you said just made me remember…”

“Remember what?”

Fluttershy smiled innocently. “Maybe I could send word to my brother. He might be able to give you some pointers.”

Rainbow stared for another few seconds. Then comprehension dawned on her face, accompanied by a sweeping grin. “That one time when we were foals? And I totally lied and told him all the best pegasi know how to echolocate to see in the dark?”

“And he put on that blindfold to try to impress you—”

“And he went around all week long making those stupid clicking noises and bumping into everything!”

“Oh, my goodness!” Fluttershy giggled—both of them were cracking up now—“I can’t believe you did that! That was so mean!”

“I can’t believe I forgot about it!” Rainbow choked out between laughs. “That was the awesomest prank ever, wasn’t it? Your mom and dad’s walls probably still have the dents!”

They laughed together for a good long while. At the end of it, Rainbow sat back and wiped a tear from her eye.

“Thanks, Flutters. I needed that.”

Fluttershy smiled and helped herself to another slice of toast. “Remember all the times he said you were too good to be a weatherpony? How you should drop everything and become a free spirit, just like him? Run away together and be his perfect pony princess? If he could see you now.”

“Yech! Where would we even ‘run away together’ to? Your parents only had the one couch.”

“That’s not true. They also had the futon.”

“Oh, riiiiiiiiiight,” said Rainbow.

She tapped her hoof idly on the tabletop. A thought suddenly occurred to her and seemed to dampen her spirits.

“Speaking of weatherponies, I probably oughta head down to the office and clock in tomorrow…”

“You’re going back to work?” Fluttershy sounded surprised.

Rainbow gave her a dry look. “I kind of have to. It’s my job.”

“I just thought… I… Never mind.”

Fluttershy’s eyes crowded with concern, but if Rainbow noticed, she didn’t give any indication.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to go back… so soon, though?”

Rainbow slumped. All the levity drained back out of her.

“It’s not like I really want to,” she mumbled, casting her gaze to the baseball cap, which even now sat in hoof’s reach dangling off a nearby chair. “You know, the farmers are all parched for rain before midsummer, and we were already way behind schedule getting it to them even before I fell out of the sky… I can’t leave Ponyville hanging. They need me, Fluttershy.”

“Actually, I heard they brought on Derpy Hooves to fill in for you while you were out. I know she’s already put in several hours since the weekend, and I think they said—”

“They did WHAT?”

Rainbow’s forehooves slammed against the table as she jumped out of her seat, all the color draining from her face.

“…And I think they said they were going to give her your shift today as well,” Fluttershy finished. She gave Rainbow a scolding look. “Don’t be mad at her. You know she needed the work.”

“Yeah, but—!”

There was a knock at the front door. They both looked up.

“Who could that be?” Fluttershy wondered.

She folded her napkin and got up to answer it. Meanwhile, Rainbow stayed put, sulking over the leftover crusts from her toast and pondering when exactly the world had gone totally insane.

Derpy Hooves. On weather.

Her imagination flooded with a dozen disaster scenarios that were probably unfolding over Ponyville even now, from black blizzards to upside-down tornados to ponies melting in the streets in a deluge of acid rain. A feeling of doom crept over her, and for the first time since she’d woken up in the hospital, she stopped dwelling on her own bucked-up situation long enough to consider how royally screwed everypony else probably was.

Derpy Hooves on weather! Hurricane’s nads, they were all going to die!

The front door opened with a squeak. “Oh! Good morning, Twilight! Good morning, Spike!” came Fluttershy’s voice, pleasant as can be. “And good morning to you too, Pr… Pr-Princess L-L-Lu… eep!”

Rainbow’s brow quirked. That didn’t sound the least bit normal. She turned around in time to see Fluttershy fall into a bow right there on the spot. Standing in the doorway was Twilight, smiling widely with Spike perched on her back, and standing next to them—

Her jaw dropped. No. Freaking. Way.

“Please don’t,” said Luna. Her astral, star-speckled mane easily landed a spot on Rainbow’s ‘top five coolest’ list of the month, but her face was stamped with discomfort as she beckoned Fluttershy to rise. “Not to me, and never in your own home. If anything, I should be the one bowing to you.”

Fluttershy made some pathetic mewling noises and stayed low to the ground. Luna glanced questioningly at Twilight, who just put on a nervous, toothy grin and shrugged.

“Er… I don’t suppose Rainbow Dash is here, is she?” Luna asked. She peered around the whimpering yellow pegasus, attempting to catch further glimpse into the cottage.

And Rainbow, who until a moment ago found this all pretty awesome, felt a sour taste come into her mouth.

Of course it’s about you, idiot. Why else would she be here?

Fluttershy answered the question with a fearful nod of her head.

“May we come in?”

Another nod. Twilight and Spike entered, with Luna following close behind. She stopped to glance cautiously both ways outside before shutting the door and flipping the bolt.

When she turned a second later, she saw Rainbow Dash sitting wrongways, legs straddling the back of her chair. There was a sharp intake of breath, then a long, hushed moment as Luna’s wide eyes lingered on Rainbow’s horn. The sight of it almost seemed to entrance her.

Rainbow felt her annoyance pique.

“Whoa, Rainbow! Looking awesome!” Spike was first to break the silence.

“Hey, Spike,” Rainbow said flatly.

Luna finally thought to meet her eyes. She smiled timidly. “Excuse me, I’m sorry. It’s just been so long since… Well, anyway, good morning to you both. I’m sorry if we interrupted breakfast.”

“I’m sure it’s no trouble, Princess,” said Twilight, trotting beside her.

“N-No! No trouble at all!” Fluttershy squeaked.

A kindhearted look softened the angles of Luna’s face as she glanced again at the cowering pegasus. She crouched down next to Fluttershy, offering a slippered hoof to help her up.

“Twilight told me you were the first pony Rainbow Dash came to yesterday after she left the hospital. You must be very good friends. Thank you for taking such good care of each other.”

Fluttershy’s trembling eased, though it didn’t abate completely. After a brief hesitation, she accepted Luna’s help getting back on her hooves. “Um… Th-Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Luna,” the midnight-blue alicorn said firmly.

Turning back to Rainbow, she offered an apologetic smile.

“Rainbow, I can’t even begin to express how sorry I am for everything you’ve had to go through in recent days. The physical pain alone, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Then, to add onto it the shock of growing a horn, of coming to find you’re an alicorn… as well as the… the emotional trauma of… everything else that’s come with it…”

Words failed her, and her voice trailed off. A second later, she started again, awash with compassion.

“Please, tell me how you’re doing. Are you holding up okay? Is there anything I can do to make things—”

Rainbow cut her off with a slow clap.

Everypony stared, Luna included, but Rainbow wasn’t about to quail in front of any of them. She kept up her ovation, punctuating it with a frosty glare. “You might as well quit while you’re ahead. I’ve heard enough.”

The look on Twilight’s face was half panicked and half mortified. “Rainbow, that’s not how you address a princess!”

“No. It’s okay,” Luna said. “She’s free to speak her mind.”

Rainbow scowled. “Look. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, so don’t lay it on so thick. If I hadn’t grown a horn—if I’d fallen off that cloud, knocked myself out for three days, and just broken my wings, or something—I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even get a ‘get well soon’ card from you, let alone a personal visit and all this sympathy. So don’t go pretending you actually care about me. Why don’t we get real? You’re here to do Celestia’s dirty work.”

“Rainbow!” Twilight gasped.

Luna held up a hoof, and the whole room fell silent. Everypony looked at her, wondering how she might react.

To their surprise, she seemed to shrug off the criticism. A gentle, but genuine smile lit her face as she looked softly at Rainbow.

“It might be hard for you to believe, but I do care about you. I care about what you’re going through, and I care about helping you. You saved my life, Rainbow Dash. You, and Twilight, and Fluttershy, and Spike…” Here, she looked at each of them in turn. “I care about all of you. You saved me from the darkness. I could never turn my back on any of you.

“And if I’ve been too much a stranger… If you hold it against me, the distance I’ve kept… Then perhaps that’s something that needs to change. It isn’t an easy thing, catching up to a world that’s left you behind—and Canterlot never was a forgiving town, even when I knew it twelve thousand moons ago. I’ve fought my own battles, faced my own struggles, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. But this much, I promise you: coming here to see you this morning wasn’t one of them.”

There was a pained honesty in Luna’s voice. One that made Rainbow squirm, feeling like a bit of a jerk for the way she’d just savaged her. She rubbed the back of her neck uncomfortably. “Look, Princess Luna…”

“Luna. Just Luna.”

“…Okay. Just Luna, then. Look—”

“It’s all right, I understand. You want to get down to brass tacks. That’s fine. Truthfully, there are some things I need to talk to you about in private, Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy, may we use your back yard?”

“Yes, of course,” said Fluttershy.

Luna nodded. “Thank you, and please accept my apologies if I seem a rude guest. Given everything that’s happened and the way it’s affected Rainbow’s life, I hope you can understand—some things are personal, and I would be betraying her confidence if I were to speak of them openly in front of anypony else. Even her very best friends.”

She beckoned to the door that led out to the back of the cottage.

“Now, Rainbow Dash. If you please, a few minutes of your time…”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

They exited into Fluttershy’s fenced-in back yard. The sunlight fell pleasantly on Rainbow’s face, and she had to stop and marvel at the lack of hurricanes and firestorms. Despite them having put Derpy Hooves on weather, everything was surprisingly peaceful.

Almost immediately, they were met by a tall, white pegasus stallion in golden armor, who descended from above and dropped neatly into a wide-winged bow in front of them. Rising, he addressed Luna directly:

“All’s well, Your Majesty. None have approached since we started our watch. There’s a pair of unicorns picnicking about three quarters of a mile that way, but otherwise, nopony to speak of.”

“The Fourth Estate?” Luna inquired.

“None we’ve spotted. I’ve had sentinels posted since daybreak and pegasi on flyover at fifteen-minute intervals. We’re fortunate this area’s so lightly-trafficked. There have been a couple reports from out of Ponyville, but for the most part, it looks like the lid’s still on it.”

“Let’s dial it back to thirty-minute intervals, just to be safe. As you said, the area’s untrafficked. No need to draw undue attention.”

“Of course, Princess.”

Luna nodded with satisfaction.

Rainbow’s ears splayed back. Beyond the bushes and the chicken coop and the heart-topped fenceposts of Fluttershy’s yard, the twisted flora of the Everfree Forest rose menacingly. But only now did she notice the guards, patrolling those woods. The guards, posted on every side of them. The guards, flying high above them overhead…

“Rainbow, I’d like you to meet Captain Tristar. He heads the Pegasus Corps of the Canterlot Royal Guard,” Luna introduced the armored stallion. “Captain, this is Rainbow Dash, also known as Princess Aurora. Celestia’s daughter, and my niece. I don’t need to tell you, that’s still privileged information at this time, as far as your subordinates are concerned.”

The pegasus removed his centurion helmet in a formal gesture of etiquette. Rainbow felt small looking up at him; he wasn’t quite as tall as Big Macintosh, but neither was he far off. As he peered down at her, she thought she could see a glimmer of disdain smoldering behind his violet eyes

At the same time, she felt her heart race, a panic rising in her chest to hear the Truth laid out again—Princess Aurora—Celestia’s daughter. That, on top of the enormity, the sheer enormity of everything else that was happening—standing here next to Princess Luna with all these guards—all these guards!—her courage and tenacity were buckling, threatening to yield to the same suffocating anxiety that had taken her over yesterday, with Fluttershy. It was lapping at her ankles, about to pull her back under.

No! She wasn’t gonna let that happen to her again! She was Rainbow Dash, damn it! She was Rainbow Dash! And Rainbow Dash didn’t lose her cool in front of anypony!

Swallowing her nerves, she stuck out her hoof for Tristar to shake.

“Yo,” she said feebly.

Tristar’s eyes flitted down to her proffered hoof. Then back up at her.

His lip curled, ever so subtly. As facial expressions went, it was tiny, almost invisible. But Rainbow caught it.

“Princess Aurora. It’s my sworn obligation to serve and protect you,” he said, falling into another bow.

Rainbow stared at him, her hoof stranded in mid-air. Slowly, she lowered it, feeling like an idiot. The stirrings of panic that had licked at her only a moment ago were rapidly ebbing, replaced by a much more grounded, much more useful emotion: supreme annoyance.

“Thank you for making your report, Captain,” said Luna. “I need privacy to speak without risk of being overheard, so for the time being, I’d like you to stake out a wider perimeter. Pull back the Guard as you see fit, but please continue to to keep an eye out for… malefactors.”

“As you wish, Princess.” Tristar donned his helmet and gave a martial salute. Then he rocketed off into the air, barking orders at his lieutenants: “Bravemane! Proudclad! Fall back three hundred yards! All wings down from the sky to plug gaps in formation! Let’s go!”

It didn’t take them long to disperse. A lead weight sank in Rainbow’s gut as she watched dozens and dozens of them fan out into the forest and surrounding countryside, heavy boots tromping across Fluttershy’s well-manicured lawn, into the overgrown brush.

Not too terribly long ago, Rainbow had teased guards like these, badgered and pestered them, clowned around and made funny faces at them. Even jokingly asked how to enlist. Now she found their very presence unsettling. Her muscles tensed as she stood and watched them clear out. She felt Luna lay a reassuring hoof upon her shoulder.

“What is all this?” she demanded of the other alicorn.

Luna grimaced. “More than a formality,” was her joyless reply.

A few minutes later, Captain Tristar retreated from view along with the last of his guards. Rainbow’s wings snapped tetchily as she watched him glance back from across the stream and throw Luna one final salute. Then he turned, and his silver mane and tail disappeared behind the embankment.

“Jerk…” Rainbow muttered under her breath.

“I’m sorry,” said Luna, with apology in her voice. “I should have mentioned inside that the Royal Guard was keeping watch. In the honesty and excitement of the moment, I suppose I forgot.”

Rainbow let out a long, upward breath of air, which caught in her forelock and tousled it. She tried to calm down, to let the tension and antagonism of the last several minutes roll off her. Her anger cooled, and her anxiety along with it. The thundering drumbeat of her heart in her own ears gradually began to play slower, to play softer.

She looked up at Luna. At the earnest regret in her eyes. As Rainbow came back down to earth, she remembered, once again, the “honesty” of the moment they’d just shared inside the cottage. The way she’d laid into the princess, and all the less-than-awesome things she’d said.

“Look, Luna… I’m real sorry for the way I acted in there a minute ago. That wasn’t cool of me.”

Luna shook her head. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry for all the pain and misery you’ve been put through… and for everything you’ll have to go through, yet. Your reaction was completely understandable. And anyway—” She gave a small, pained smile. “—I’ve grown used to the judgment and suspicion of others by now. Don’t trouble yourself.”

Rainbow did trouble herself. As a matter of fact, she winced. She had heard the whispered rumors, seen them given platform on the editorial pages of the Sun and the Gazette, the same as everypony else. “Luna…”

Luna held up a hoof again to silence her. “How about this? I’ll make you a deal. I’ll forgive you for acting uncool a minute ago, if you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to do.”

“What are you about to—OOF!”

The air was ejected from Rainbow’s lungs as she found herself pulled into a bone-crushing hug. Rainbow’s wings flew in a frenzy, desperate to get away, but Luna’s grip on her was iron, clutching her emphatically to her shoulder.

Rainbow’s face buried in that ethereal blue mane. For a time, it was the only thing she could see. When those smothering hooves finally let go their captive, she gasped for air and flew back, feathers splayed in every direction. But it was Luna’s shimmering eyes—not the lack of oxygen—that left her speechless.

Luna smiled through her tears. “Walk with me, Rainbow Dash.”

They walked. Or rather, Luna did. Rainbow mostly kept to the air, as was her custom, a respectful distance away and conveniently out of hugging range. Luna didn’t mind. As they tracked along the boundary of the Everfree Forest, she fell into an easy comfort, freely bringing the newest, littlest alicorn up to speed on various matters of importance she had already discussed with Twilight Sparkle earlier that morning.

“Griffi’la?!” Rainbow’s jaw hit the floor.

Luna nodded. “I met with her briefly yesterday afternoon, some hours after she returned to Canterlot. She was…”

A troubled look passed over Luna’s face, but she quickly swept it away and pressed on.

“Well, never mind how she was. The long and the short of it is, she made me aware of your situation, and of everything that had happened. Then she flew for the Griffin Kingdom with the setting of the sun.”

A heartless laugh popped out of Rainbow’s mouth before she could contain it. “Couldn’t get far enough away from me, huh? She just hit the border and kept right on going.”

“In fact, she was in the Griffin Kingdom before any of this ever happened to you, on a secret undertaking whose importance I cannot even begin to describe. Your Unity forced her to return to Equestria prematurely. She’s gone back now to finish what she started.”

“I’m sorry I was such an inconvenience to her,” Rainbow said dryly.

“My sister is an idiot. Take me at my word. If there’s such a thing as an expert on hating Celestia, it’s me.”

Luna slowed to a halt and looked down at her hooves, toeing the ground in front of her uncomfortably. As she spoke, her voice sagged with guilt and bitter, bitter irony.

She glanced back up at Rainbow Dash.

“I love Celestia, and I’ve reconciled with her. I won’t ask you to do the same. If you can find it in your heart to forgive her, I think it would be a tremendous relief to both of you—but that’s something that can only happen with time, and it’s up to you to decide whether she’s worth it. I don’t pretend to understand her motivations for giving you up, nor for keeping you at a hoof’s length after your parents passed away. I won’t make excuses for her.

“But this much, I will say. If Celestia is absent right now, it isn’t because she’s walked out on you. She cares about you, and she cares about what’s happening to you. No, don’t give me that look—she does care! Trust me, I’ve witnessed the depths of just how much she cares.”

Luna looked uncharacteristically grim as she finished her speech. Rainbow just looked unimpressed.

“Anything else?” she asked.

Another nod from the moon princess. Luna’s horn glimmered, and a crisp, white envelope appeared in the air from out of a void of star-studded blue. She levitated it to Rainbow Dash, who accepted it reluctantly.

“Celestia wrote this letter for you before she departed. I don’t know what it says, but she wanted you to have these words.”

Rainbow stared down at the unwelcome thing in her hooves. On it was a red wax seal depicting a phoenix inside of a radiant sun. The royal seal of Princess Celestia. She knew it only too well from the dozens of times Spike had coughed up a scroll wrapped in an identical-looking seal. Always for Twilight and never, ever for her.

She crumpled it up and flung it into the forest.

Luna caught it in her levitation aura before it made it too far. Gingerly, she smoothed it over, then presented it to Rainbow again.

“Please take it,” she implored.

Rainbow folded her hooves. “You don’t get it. I don’t care about ANYTHING Celestia’s got to say.”

“Be that as it may, please, just take the letter home with you. I’m not telling you to consider what it says. You don’t even have to read it if you don’t wish to, but you mustn’t throw it away like that. The forest is no place to casually discard a private correspondence from a princess.”

Rainbow scowled and snatched the hated envelope out of the air, grudgingly tucking it under her wing. “Fine. Anything else?”

“Just one more thing, and it’s an important one. Rainbow Dash, I’d like you to seriously consider coming with me back to Canterlot.”

For a good few seconds, Rainbow was at such a loss for words, all she could do was stare. Then her mouth split with a derisive laugh. “You’re kidding, right? Is this some kind of joke?”

“I promise you, it’s anything but.”

“Ponyville is my home. My home. You get that? Not some stuffed-shirt unicorn town. And besides, there are ponies here who depend on me, who are relying on me to come through for them! I can’t—I won’t leave Ponyville hanging. Not in a million years.”

Luna gave her an empathetic look. “I understand your perspective. Actually, I admire it. I wouldn’t expect anything less from Loyalty. But you may come to find it’s Ponyville that leaves you hanging.”

“Come again?”

“I’m going to make a case to you logically, point by point, on why I think it’s in your best interest to accompany me back to Canterlot. I know you’ve already made up your mind and you aren’t about to change it, but please, just listen to what I have to say.”

Rainbow perched herself on the lower bough of a twisted old Everfree oak, peering down at the other alicorn skeptically.

“Number one,” said Luna. “You have a horn.”

“Uh, yeah. Amazing powers of observation, there.”

Luna carried on, undeterred. “You have a horn, which means you also have magic. And magic can be dangerous and unpredictable if you’re untrained. I’m sure you’ve heard horror stories of unicorn foals casting spells they didn’t mean to, haven’t you? Accidentally leaving their classmates stuck upside-down to the ceiling in a split second of anger, or lashing out and transmogrifying somepony they hadn’t intended to in a rush of fear?”

Rainbow ruminated quietly. She had heard stories.

“But where foals have the advantage of being young, you’re full-grown. Your magic isn’t limited in the same way theirs is. Coming to Canterlot Castle would be the best thing for you. It would allow you to learn and develop your talents in a safe environment outside the public eye, with the least amount of risk to both yourself and your friends.”

It was a sound argument, but not sound enough to convince Rainbow Dash. She shook her head adamantly and hopped to a higher branch. “Feh… Big deal. I’ll figure it out.”

“Number two,” Luna continued. “You have a horn, which means others are going to treat you differently from now on. This is important, so please, hear me out. Your life, as you knew it, is not going to be the same. There is no going back. I wish it weren’t the case, but ponies are going to look at you and see the wings and horn first and Rainbow Dash second. There are going to be rumors. There are going to be ponies who try to use you. You’re going to be hurt if you stay and pretend everything’s normal. Furthermore, on top of everything else, you’ll have the press to contend with.”

Luna noticed Rainbow seemed to make herself smaller, every lithe muscle bunched at the mention of the press. Sensing a weakness in the stubborn filly’s resolve, she hammered it.

“The press is going to come looking for you. How could they not? You’re the first new alicorn the world has seen since Celestia and I were crowned more than a millennium ago. The press will come to Ponyville in search of you. They will come in droves. They will leave no stone unturned until they find you, and when they do, their appetite will be insatiable.

“They will demand every intimate detail of your private and personal life. They will stalk every failure of your past. Every mistake you’ve ever made will be ink for their quills. If they’re able to discover it, they will gleefully reveal the truth of your parentage. They will publish rumors and innuendo with no regard for your reputation. I have firsthoof experience with this. Don’t stay here, Rainbow. Don’t allow yourself to be their victim, as I have been.”

Rainbow was clearly flustered now. There was a register of panic in her voice, but she remained intractable. “So what? It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before! Ponyville is my home! My home! I’m not gonna abandon my home to go live in Celestia’s stupid house!”

With a flap of her wings, she bounded upward again, landing on one of the highest limbs of the withered old tree. There, she began to pace back and forth along the branch.

“Number three,” Luna said. “You have a horn, which marks you as Celestia’s daughter. Which means there are certain risks to your safety and security now that you didn’t have to worry about a week ago.”

Rainbow stopped and peered down at her in confusion. “Huh?”

Guilt crept back into Luna’s mien. She looked away.

“After you defeated Nightmare Moon, Celestia tried to keep a low profile for you, for Twilight, for Fluttershy, and the rest of your friends. Your heroism was publicly acknowledged, of course, but she did as much as she could to suppress the details, to keep the spotlight on me instead of on you. She did that to protect your safety as much as your privacy.”

She looked up the tree again with a hard expression.

“There are things going on right now that you aren’t aware of. And there are ponies, Rainbow—flesh-and-blood ponies—who might take the worst kind of interest in you. Who could seek to do harm to you as a way of getting to me and my sister. And you won’t be hard to overlook anymore. As soon as word of this gets out, you’ll become a known quantity. Canterlot is the best, safest place for you, if only in the short term.”

Rainbow looked uneasy. “That seems a liiiiittle far out there.”

“Trust me when I say there are worse things than sleeping dragons that have taken up residence in Equestria these days. I’m asking you, Rainbow. I’m begging you, not for Celestia’s sake, but for your own. Please, come with me. Come with me to Canterlot. It doesn’t have to be forever. Even if it’s only for a month and a half, until after the Summer Sun Celebration, it would be so much safer for you, and so much a relief for us.”

Rainbow shook her head and resumed pacing the upper branch, muttering under her breath. Luna watched her sadly.

“I’m returning to the capital within the hour,” she said. “The longer I remain here in Ponyville, the more my presence risks drawing attention to you. Under the present circumstances, with my sister abroad, it isn’t wise for me to be away from the throne for too long, anyway.”

She paused.

“I would love for you to be standing next to me on the chariot when I go. But I know you won’t be. Ponyville is your home, and your friends are your friends, and I can appreciate your reluctance to want to venture anywhere near ‘Celestia’s stupid house’ at a time like this. Rainbow… Twilight knows how to contact me. If… If you change your mind…”

Luna let the implication hang in the air. Rainbow looked like she was going to be sick, but she nodded her understanding.

“Think I’m gonna catch some sky…” she mumbled.

“It’s a lot to take in, I know. Take care, Rainbow Dash. Be safe, and be smart. It was an honor to meet you again.”

“Yeah.” Rainbow’s voice sounded more raspy than usual. “You too.”

Luna smiled soberly. “I’m sure it won’t be the last time. I only hope our next meeting will be under better circumstances. Go with my sympathies, Rainbow… and with my sincere remorse for everything that’s happened to you.”

Rainbow paid her a dull, glassy-eyed look. Then her wings fired into motion, bearing her up, up, away, and out of sight. Luna tilted back her head to watch as she disappeared over the green hills.

No more than twenty seconds later, Captain Tristar spiraled down out of the sky and landed in the tall grass at her side. This time, he skipped the bow. “She’s headed west. Orders, Your Majesty?”

“Follow her,” said Luna. Her eyes didn’t peel from the horizon. “Don’t lose her, Tristar, no matter what. It’s important that she be guarded. But don’t stray too near her, either. Give her space to breathe.”

Tristar nodded and took off again without another word.

Twilight had been watching the proceedings from the rear-facing porch of Fluttershy’s cottage, unable to overhear what was being said, but doing her best to decipher the state of affairs from the expressions and body language. When Rainbow Dash took off, followed soon after by Tristar, she broke into a gallop and hurried to Luna’s side.

“Where’s Rainbow Dash going? Is everything all right?”

For a long several seconds, Luna was quiet, thoughtful and reflective. Then she turned and regarded the unicorn with a frown.

“Twilight. I need to ask you for your help once more.”

“Of… course,” Twilight stammered. “I’m happy to do whatever I can. What do you need?”

“You are one of Rainbow Dash’s closest friends. I’ve just now invited her to Canterlot, for her own safety and protection. She’s reluctant, as I anticipated she might be. Twilight… I’d like you to talk to her for me. With the events that are now in motion, I would like it to be her choice to come to Canterlot. Do you take my meaning?”

The gravity of Luna’s words was impossible to miss. Twilight hesitated before responding, “Y-Yes, I do.”

“Twilight… I don’t wish to put you up to something you aren’t comfortable doing. Above all else, I don’t wish to jeopardize your friendship with Rainbow. The consequences of that would run deeper than you know. If I’m going too far by asking you to do this—if you’re uneasy or conflicted about my request—then please, be honest and tell me. You aren’t obligated to me, nor to Princess Celestia if you say no.”

At the mention of Princess Celestia, Twilight’s thoughts turned at once to her oldest teacher and mentor. She thought of the letter she had sent the princess as Rainbow Dash lay writhing, crying out in pain. The immediacy of the response to that letter, and the alacrity with which Princess Celestia had made the far-flung journey to answer Twilight’s call. She thought of the terror, the apprehension on Princess Celestia’s face before she’d walked into that hospital room. And yet she had gone in anyway.

She thought of Princess Celestia standing alone on that desolate griffin peak. Doing her solemn duty, even now.

She swallowed her qualms.

“I’ll talk to her,” she said.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Rainbow didn’t realize how badly she’d longed to feel the wind in her mane again until she was somersaulting through the sky, zooming from here to there, twisting and twirling, pounding out corkscrews and ailerons and barrel rolls and too many other feats of aerial daredevilry to count. In her heart of hearts, she was a bundle of worry, but she pushed down her anxiety over Celestia, and Canterlot, and Celestia, and all the bleak, nerve-wracking notions Luna had just ladled in her ears, and Celestia. She didn’t want to think about any of it right now. All she cared about was the taste of freedom.

The sun beat down on the countryside, giving birth to a rising column of hot air. Rainbow opened her wings, caught the thermal, and rode it a mile up. After it dissipated, she flapped and climbed five thousand feet more, until the air grew cold and her head scraped the bottoms of the altocumuli.

She allowed herself a contented grin, enjoying the frigid cold and the way it made her blood pump in her veins. “Man, what an awesome day for flying,” she said to nopony in particular.

Then her eyes flew wide in realization.

“Oh my gosh! I almost forgot! They put that featherbrain on weather! I’ve got to… got to… Hang on a minute. There’s no way Derpy is capable of engineering weather conditions anywhere near this perfect.”

She raised a hoof to her brow and scanned the countryside.

“Yeah, something’s definitely wrong here. There isn’t enough fire. Or floods. Or avalanches.”

She bit her lip.

“Well, she’s only been running the show for a couple days now. Maybe I’m just overreacting. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

In the sky above Sweet Apple Acres, a maelstrom of sinister gray clouds belched thunder and lightning. Rarity milled about the orchard, obliviously transforming tree branches into cute little pony leaf sculptures.

Then a dark shape on the horizon caught her eye. A twister! And it was heading her way!

“Oh no! A twister! And it’s heading my way!” said Rarity.

Rarity tried the storm cellar, but it was locked, so she hoofed it for the barn. A powerful gust sent the door flying backward as she went to secure it, bonking her on the head. Dozens of tiny pegasi flew around her.

Suddenly, the building shook and rattled. The twister lifted the barn clear off the ground and sent it spiraling into the sky!

“Oh dear me! Help! Help! …What are you supposed to pack when you’re being carried off by a tornado?” she couldn’t help herself but wonder. “Are you supposed to pack warm?”

Just then, there was a horrible screeching laughter from outside the window! Rarity went over to investigate. There, hovering next to the barn, was… Pinkie Pie on her flying machine!

“Hello, Rarity!” Pinkie cackled.

But it wasn’t the normal Pinkie Pie. This was, in fact, an EVIL Pinkie Pie, dressed like a witch with long, straight hair!

“Pinkie Pie? Are you all right?”

“Okey-dokey-lokey! Say, Rarity, would you care for some… CUPCAKES?”

Pinkie Pie reached into the basket of her flying machine and pulled out a whole armful of cupcakes! She started pelting them at Rarity through the window! Rarity just stood there as the crumbs ran down her face, and screamed, and screamed—

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

She blinked. “Okay. It probably wouldn’t be that bad.”

Rainbow continued to survey the land from her high vantage, searching for signs of an unscheduled early apocalypse. She was still in the middle of scoping things out when she spotted them.

The guards.

Rainbow’s eagle eye counted twenty armored pegasi, with Captain Tristar at the head of the pack. They had obviously tailed her from Fluttershy’s cottage. For the moment, it looked like they were hanging back about a quarter-mile, though that didn’t keep Rainbow’s hackles from being raised at the trespass against her privacy and solitude.

She stared at Tristar. He stared back at her.

She swore she saw his lip pull back in a disdainful sneer.

Anger boiled in her veins. What the heck was this jerk’s problem, anyway?

What a dirtbag! I’ll show him!

She tucked back her wings and extended her hooves, enjoying the rush as she plummeted back down to the earth. The wind lashed against her face and pulled her lips into a grin, the air howled in her ears like thunder. Then she spotted the wispy gray fingers of the mach cone out of the corners of her eyes, felt it resonate through her skull right down to the back molars. Now the ground was racing up to meet her, six thousand feet, three thousand, one!

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

At the very last moment, at breakneck speeds, with one final burst of velocity and adrenaline, she pushed herself over the edge! Rainbow Dash shattered the sound barrier, and the blue sky over the countryside exploded with the spectral brilliance of a sonic rainboom!

She opened her wings and blasted off like a sideways rocket, leaving Tristar and his goons to feast on her dust.

Heh. Rainbow smirked, even as she panted for breath. Still got it.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Consarn it, Applebloom! I don’t wanna have to tell you again, Winona is a workin’ dog! She’s got responsibilities on this here farm! She AIN’T there so you and your friends can file away at her nails all day long!”

“But sis, how else am I supposed to get my pet pedicure cutie mark?”

“I reckon t’ain’t none of my concern how you get your gal-darned cutie mark, so long as it don’t hinder my ability to plant these here apple trees! Won’t be long before summer’s upon us, and if this new crop doesn’t take to root by then, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt by the time apple-buck season rolls around.”

“But Winona really enjoyed it!”

The little border collie gave Applejack a whine and a pleading look.

“Aw, horsefeathers, Winona! You know better than to shirk your duties like that! Now, see here, Applebloom, I can appreciate that you’re tryin’ to get your cutie mark, but you’re gonna have to find another pet to practice on. How ’bout givin’ Opal one of your treatments?”

Applebloom looked appalled. “But Opalescence scratches back!”

“In that case, why don’t you mosey on down to Fluttershy’s and see if you can’t borrow Angel Bunny for a while?”

“Angel Bunny’s even scarier than Opalescence!”

“That’s just too doggone bad! You’d best start makin’ a list of all the other pets in Ponyville so’s to ask their owners instead, because unless pigs take to flyin’ or a winged unicorn sets herself down here in the next three seconds, you AIN’T GETTIN’ WINONA!”

Two seconds later, Rainbow Dash alighted on a nearby tree branch.

“Trouble in paradise?” she asked.

“Yaaaaaaaaaay!” Applebloom and Winona shouted in unison. Although in Winona’s case, it came out sounding a lot more like, “Arrrrrrrrrrf!”

Applejack threw down her stetson hat and stomped on it. “GAL-DARN IT, RAINBOW DASH! AIN’T YOU GOT ONE LICK OF TIMING?”

“Huh? I have lots of timing! Do you know how much timing it takes to thread the needle on an inside loop and an outside loop while pulling off twenty barrel rolls? A lot, that’s how much!” She paused to peer over the trees in the direction of the Apple family farmstead. “Oh, good. The barn’s still there.”

“And why in the sam hay wouldn’t it be?”

“Oh. Heh. No reason,” Rainbow laughed nervously.

Applejack glared. “Rainbow Dash, you get your flank down here this instant so I can inspect you properly!”

“Yes, ma’am!” Rainbow swooped down to the ground and landed next to the vexed cowpony.

Applejack did just as she said she would, squinting at Rainbow as she circled around and examined her critically from every angle. Rainbow just stood there, feeling more than a little self-conscious.

A second later, Applejack threw her hooves around her, sweeping her up in an unexpected hug.

“Y’all don’t know how worried we were about you!” Applejack cried. “Don’t you ever put us through anything like that ever again!”

Rainbow smiled, doing her best to quash the niggling guilt in the pit of her stomach. Thankfully, she was a whole lot more put-together today than she had been before, with Fluttershy. She wasn’t about to break down. That didn’t mean she took any solace from these desperate hugs from her friends; from realizing how scared her episode had made them.

“Heh. Yeah… I’m real sorry you had to go through that, A.J. You’ve been my friend forever. Longer than anypony, except for Fluttershy. It’s not cool you had to worry over me.”

“You promise me you ain’t gonna go fallin’ offa no more clouds!”

“I promise I won’t go falling off anymore clouds,” Rainbow pledged, holding up her right hoof.

“And don’t go growin’ no more horns, neither!”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I will try not to grow another horn.”

Applejack looked her over from head to hoof one more time. “In that case, we’re square. Welcome back to the land of the living, sugarcube.”

“Are you feelin’ better now, Rainbow Dash?” Applebloom asked.

Rainbow crouched down. “I sure am, kiddo, and a little birdie told me you might have something to do with that. I heard you helped bring me back to town last week after I took that fall. Is that true?”

“Yeah, me and Big Macintosh did! And then Big Macintosh and Pinkie Pie went to fetch Zecora!” Her face fell. “Not that it did any good in the end.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short! It takes a lot of guts to do what you guys did. You were awesomely brave.”

The little filly tilted her head. “I was?”

“Heck yeah, you were! You can be on my rescue team any day.”

Applebloom turned this over in her head for a few seconds. Then her eyes lit up. “THAT’S IT! Cutie Mark Crusader rescue team! Wait until I tell Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle! This is gonna be great! Hey, Applejack, do you know where we can get us some jaws of life?”

Applejack facehoofed. “Oh, landsakes, would you and Winona just get out of here already? Shoo! But you’d best be back with that dog before suppertime, or I’m not gonna be happy!”

“All right! All right! I’m goin’! See you later, sis! See you later, Rainbow Dash! I’m glad to see you’re back on your hooves again!” Applebloom said. Then she and Winona bounded away, laughing and barking.

Rainbow turned to Applejack. “Where is Big Macintosh, anyway?”

“That sap should be along any minute with Rarity in tow. I sent him back to town to fetch her.”

“Rarity? What are you doing dragging her all the way out here for?”

“Somethin’ stupid. We had a storm here the other night, and the wind done blew in a bunch of the bedroom windows. Dang near spooked Granny Smith half to death. The rain got in and wrecked the curtains, so I asked Rarity to come take some measurements for the replacements.”

Sure enough, not a minute later, Rarity and Big Macintosh crested the hill, coming down the road from Ponyville. Rarity flashed a dazzling smile, waved, and trotted over.

“Good afternoon, Rainbow Dash, Applejack! Rainbow, I didn’t expect to see you out here. I’m so thrilled you’re up and about again!”

“Heh. Yeah. Good to see you too, Rarity. How is—”

“Macintosh, you lug! What in the SAM HAY are you doin’ over there?”

Bewildered, they turned to find Big Macintosh kneeling low to the ground.

“Genuflecting to royalty,” he said.

“What in the… See here, Macintosh, Rainbow Dash ain’t royalty! Well, she is, in a way—but you don’t gotta bow to her! Now get your big, dumb, clodhoppin’ self up and get over here already!”

Big Macintosh did as he was told. “Good afternoon, Princess Rainbow Dash. You gave us all quite a scare. I’m happy to see you pulled through your affliction all right.”

Rainbow was speechless, and more unsettled than she had been at any other point that day—except, perhaps, for the moment she’d walked out of Fluttershy’s house and been ambushed by the Truth laid bare by Luna, Tristar, and all those guards. Now, the Truth had her in its sights again. She could hear Luna’s words play back in her head, tinged with commiseration: “Others are going to treat you differently. Your life, as you knew it, is not going to be the same. Ponies are going to see the wings and horn first, and Rainbow Dash second.”

She scraped the ground with her hoof.

“Uh… Yeah… Good to see you too, Big Mac,” she said awkwardly. “You, uh, don’t have to bow down to me. Or call me princess.”

“Sure thing, Miss Rainbow Dash.”

“As a matter of fact, seems like I’m the one who owes you some respect. Mac, I don’t know what I woulda done the other day if you hadn’t got me out of that field. Guess I probably woulda laid there all day and night, alone and in a lot of pain… It wasn’t cool, what happened to me, but it coulda been so much worse if it wasn’t for you.”

She stepped forward and gave him a hug. “Thanks,” she said.

Big Macintosh blushed.

Rarity joined in the embrace. “We were all so very worried about you, darling!” she said. “And we’re all so very grateful that you came away unhurt. Incidentally, you should know Pinkie Pie is planning a party for you. She wanted to invite the whole town, of course, but Twilight and I were able to talk her down to a small get-together among friends. Do you feel up to it? Sugarcube Corner, tonight at eight o’clock?”

Rainbow considered. “Yeah, I guess I’m down for one of Pinkie Pie’s parties. Just as long as it’s only the six of us and not… y’know… the universe.” She made a deliberate effort not to look self-consciously up at her horn. She had forgotten her baseball cap back at Fluttershy’s.

“Delightful! Oh, but let me take a look at you!”

Rarity spun Rainbow Dash around, looking admiringly up at the object of her discomfort.

“Oh, your horn is simply exquisite, darling! It’s enough to turn any unicorn green with envy!”

Applejack nodded. “Yeah, I hadn’t mentioned it up ’til now, but that sure is one humdinger of a can opener you’ve got comin’ out of your forehead! I can see why it musta hurt so much!”

“A can opener?” Rarity regarded Applejack with scorn. “You would compare the majesty of a unicorn’s horn to something as—as crude and barbaric as—as a can opener?”

“Aw, stuff it, Rarity! I didn’t mean nothin’ by it!”

“A horn is more than just a can opener, Applejack! It’s a thing of beauty and grace! And beyond that, it’s a gateway to our magic—the greatest gift our kind possess! How uncouth of you to compare it to a rusty old can opener!”

Applejack was practically frothing at the mouth. “I’ll be hogtied if you ain’t the most pretentious pony I ever met, Rarity! First of all, I never did say a word about that can opener bein’ rusted, did I? For all you know, I coulda intended it to be made of gold! And second, I wasn’t tryin’ to cause you any offense with my analogy, so go soak your head!”

Rarity scoffed. “Well, I never! Perhaps you should go find somepony else to measure your silly curtains!”

“I didn’t need your fancy mathematics anyhow!”

Rainbow grinned lazily, falling out of the group and relaxing against a tree. At least for now, everything was back to normal.

Still, there was one all-important thing she had on her mind. When she saw an opening, she grabbed Applejack and pulled her aside. “So… You mentioned before you had a storm the other day, and that’s why you needed Rarity out here to do your measurements,” she casually remarked.

Applejack nodded. “Yep. Sure did.”

Rainbow had a greasy glint in her eye. “Then it would be fair to say you had some bad weather, eh?”

“Yeah, no thanks to you, ya gal-darn delinquent weatherpony, ’cause you were off sleepin’ on the job! Them thunderheads blew in overnight from the Everfree. Thankfully, the mayor put Derpy Hooves on weather duty the next day, and she had the problem taken care of lickety-split!”

Rainbow sighed and shook her head. Nope. Still unbelievable.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

It wasn’t quite dusk yet by the time of Pinkie’s party. Rainbow had spent the rest of the day alone, keeping to her cloud house and the unpopulated environs that lay between it and Sweet Apple Acres. She needed time on her own to think, to come to grips with everything that was happening. The day-to-day trivialities of angry farmers and missing shipments seemed a lifetime away from her now, even though they weren’t even a week in her past. Back then, they’d grated on her, but how grateful she would be for the chance to go back in time and trade her current circumstances for those humdrum irritations.

She stayed out of the Royal Guard’s sight and everypony else’s. So much the better if she went unnoticed. She didn’t feel like getting noticed this afternoon, this week, this month, this century. Maybe someday, she’d remember how to be carefree and awesome, but not now, not today, not with this Truth sticking out of her forehead for everypony to trip over. As she circled in the sky high above Sugarcube Corner, she made sure to wait for the street to clear before swooping down, glancing both ways, and hurrying inside.

The bell gave a jingle above her.

Honestly, she didn’t even feel like partying. As mouth-watering as the smells and flavors of the bakery were, she was bone tired. She longed for the warmth of her own bed. Even after she was done here, sleep would be a long time coming. There was still one more thing she needed to do tonight before the evening was up. Two more ponies she had to visit.

If were anypony other than Pinkie Pie, she probably would’ve skipped out.

The strawberry-sweet joy on Pinkie’s face made it all worthwhile.

“DASHIE!”

Pinkie tackled her in a ferocious hug, which Rainbow was only too happy to laugh and return. They were joined soon enough by Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity. The five friends shared a giggling, impromptu group hug right there on the bakery floor. Soon enough, even Spike and Tank moseyed over and got in on the action.

Rainbow’s smile was a mile wide as Pinkie Pie helped her back to her hooves, but the party pony matched it and then some. “Oh my gosh, DASHIE! I’m soooo glad you’re all better!”

“I’m glad to be better!” Rainbow laughed, twisting her neck to track Pinkie as she bounced in circles all around her. Tank leaned his leathery head against Rainbow’s side, a content little smile on his green little face, and she crouched to rub noses with him.

She felt Fluttershy’s hoof on her shoulder, and she looked up. “We’re all glad,” said the yellow pegasus with a gratified look.

Spike nodded. “Yeah! Nopony likes seeing a friend get hurt the way you were hurt. And no dragon, either!”

“That’s right, sugarcube.” Now Applejack was hovering over her. “It was plum awful what you went through. But you pulled through it like the Rainbow Dash I know! We’re all mighty proud of you. Now, just don’t go usin’ magic to try and cheat at our next Iron Pony!”

“Ooh! That’s right! The horn! Can I touch it now?” Pinkie asked, craning her neck at a freakishly wrong angle to inspect the thing. She didn’t bother waiting for permission. “Touch! Touch!”

“Pinkie!” Rainbow laughed and fought her off.

Rarity arrived at her side with a helping hoof and a slice of cake. “It’s simply divine having you back again, darling. And don’t you dare think for one second that we don’t understand what you’re going through and support you, because we do! And we always will!”

“That’s right,” Applejack said. “No matter what happens, we’re all such good friends, ain’t nothin’ gonna come between us, right?”

Rainbow’s smile wavered just little a bit. “Yeah…”

She hoped not. More than anything.

“Now’s not the time for grumpy-frumps! Now’s the time to PARTY!” Pinkie exclaimed. “You see, Dashie? I told you I’d throw you a party once you were all better! You did your part, so now I’m doing mine! And I never woulda come up with the theme for this party if it weren’t for youuuuu!”

There were awkward looks all around.

Rainbow blinked. Only now did she bother to look around and take note of that theme: plastered on every wall, hanging from every hook and doorknob in Sugarcube Corner, the whole place was covered in…

“Encyclopedias,” Rainbow muttered with shake of her head and a roll of her eyes. “Of course.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The party died down several hours later. Fluttershy excused herself to go put Angel Bunny to bed, followed by Applejack and Rarity for their sisters. Rainbow headed out shortly thereafter.

Tiredly, she ambled past the darkened homes and storefronts, grateful for the solitude of the night. Luna’s moon was a waning crescent, barely bright enough to light the winding road beneath her.

Not that it mattered. She knew the way well enough.

Her hooves carried her robotically down the road and out of Ponyville. The Winsome River veered inward and ran parallel for a spell, allaying her frazzled nerves with the quiet murmur of water through the brook. It kept her company for a few minutes, then meandered off to carve out a path toward Hoofington in the south.

Soon after, the broken-down windmill came up on her right, its tattered old blades creaking mournfully in the breeze. This was her landmark. She knew the path forked here, the main path continuing straight, a dirt trail shooting off to the left and disappearing into the overgrowth. She never would have noticed it if she hadn’t already known it was there.

She followed it through the woods, which soon gave way to rising foothills. In-between two of them, the trail ended at a black wrought-iron gate. It opened without making a sound.

In the vale on yonder side, hundreds of mares and stallions lay at rest. She walked quietly among them, the only noise the slow trudge of her hooves across the unmown grass.

At last, she came to her destination.

Two granite stones rose up out of the ground in front of her. For a while, she just stood and stared at them, lost in her thoughts.

Then she spoke. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.”

The graves were silent.

“So… I haven’t come to visit you guys lately. I’m real sorry about that. I know I promised I would. It’s just… Things have been so crazy. Between weather duty, training, kicking around with my friends…”

She scraped the ground with her hoof.

“I know what you’d say, and you’re right. I could make the time. I… I should make the time. And I will. You guys always made the time for me, even when you couldn’t keep up as well. I guess I haven’t been a very good daughter lately… But I’m gonna try harder from now on. You’ll see.

“It’s been so long since… since… that day. I was just a little filly back then… Now your little girl is all grown up.” She cracked a smile. “I wonder what you’d have to say about that, Daddy?

“I remember the first time you took me up on your back and told me about the clouds. And two years later, when you ran down that field with me and lifted me up so I could catch the air and fly for the first time. Heh. If you saw some of the stunts I do today, you’d probably be terrified. And Momma would probably be passed out on the floor.

“You know… I won the Best Young Flyer Competition. Dazzled ’em all with a sonic rainboom. Just like you always knew I did, even when they said I didn’t. Like you always knew I could.”

She paused meaningfully.

“And—And I saved, like, four ponies’ lives in the process. And this one time last year, when Nightmare Moon came back, I even helped save the whole world.

“…I only wish you guys coulda been there to see me do it.”

Her throat clenched. She stared down at the earth.

“I never woulda come this far if you hadn’t believed in me. You’re the reason I’m the awesome pony I am today. I just…

“I always wanted you guys to be p-proud of me. You’re the ones I was always trying to impress, even when it looked like I was showing off for everypony else. And even though I didn’t turn out as pretty and ladylike as you always wanted, Momma, I just hope I—that I—”

Her legs buckled, her whole body wracked by quiet sobs.

“—that I m-make you proud.”

Rainbow buried her head in her hooves, her emotions spilling out onto the cold ground. She felt awful; physically sick and mentally torn. Her chest stopped heaving after several minutes, though the tightness in her throat remained.

“You guys will always be my mom and dad. I swear… I SWEAR! I don’t care about all this stuff! I don’t CARE about Celestia! She can’t take your place! She CAN’T! I—I won’t LET HER! I don’t CARE! I don’t…”

Red and orange bangs draped across her eyes as she bowed her head. “I don’t care… I don’t care… I’m sorry.” She sucked in her breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Rainbow Dash?”

She jumped and wheeled around.

Twilight.

“Damn it,” she growled, scrubbing furiously at her tears. “Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT! How long have you been standing there?”

Twilight took a step back, startled by her anger. “Only a second. I was just… uh… passing by, and I thought I heard somepony, so—”

“So you thought you’d stick your nose where it doesn’t belong and invade my privacy. Got it.” She opened her wings and took off.

“Wait!”

Rainbow stopped and spun in midair. “What?!”

“Please, don’t go,” said Twilight. “I honestly didn’t hear that much. You’re one of my best friends, Rainbow. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Rainbow was so furious, she had half a mind to leave Twilight in her dust, but something in her voice made her do otherwise. Grudgingly, she flapped back down to the ground.

“Fine.”

A long, uncomfortable silence passed between them. Twilight looked like she didn’t know quite what to say. Rainbow was still cross, but she made an effort to redirect her glare away from the speechless unicorn, shooting daggers off into the bushes instead.

“I didn’t see you at the party,” Rainbow said.

A token attempt to break the ice.

“Yeah, I was… preoccupied.”

“That’s nice.”

Dead silence.

“I… I’m not sure if it means anything to you, Rainbow. But if it does, I think Princess Celestia is just as intimidated by this situation as you are.”

Rainbow scowled. “I am not intimidated.”

Twilight edged closer, violet hooves padding across the dew-covered grass. That fiery pink gaze fell on her again, and she forced herself to meet it.

“What… happened between you and Princess Celestia yesterday morning?”

Rainbow’s face flashed with rekindled anger. “I gave her a piece of my mind, THAT’S what happened!”

Another step forward. “Rainbow, I never had the chance to meet your mom and dad, but from everything Fluttershy’s told me, it sounds like they loved you more than anything else in the world. Do you really think they’d want you to be doing this to yourself?”

“Doing what to myself?!”

“This,” Twilight said, gesturing broadly. “Dragging yourself in front of them in the middle of the night. Laying yourself across their graves like a wreath, and begging them to forgive you.”

Rainbow rounded on her. “I don’t see how it’s ANY of YOUR BUSINESS!”

“Look—”

“This is MY business, and MY life, and MY DAMN FAMILY PLOT! You’ve got NO RIGHT coming out here lecturing me about ANYTHING, Twilight!”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“SHUT UP! Why did you REALLY follow me out here?”

Twilight winced, and for a moment, she entertained the thought of backing down. Then she remembered what Princess Luna had asked her to do, and the tormented look that had adorned Princess Celestia’s face four days ago when she faced that hospital room, not so different than the one Rainbow had worn a few short minutes ago. She steeled herself.

“Your parents will always be a part of you,” she said. “Nothing can ever take away from who they were. But letting somepony else into your heart doesn’t mean you have to cut them out of it.”

The look of anger cracked, and confusion shone through on Rainbow’s face. “Huh? Let somepony else into my…” Then realization dawned, and her rage and fury came back in full force. “What, you mean CELESTIA? The pony who kicked me to the curb, then acted like I was NOTHING to her EVERY SINGLE TIME SHE SAW ME until the day she COULDN’T anymore? THAT’S the somepony I should let into my heart?”

“Listen, Rainbow—”

“No, YOU LISTEN! I knew my mom and dad for eleven years, and in all that time, they didn’t miss a birthday, or a flight expo, or a race. Even when they were sick and dying, they went to work EVERY DAY to put food on the table for me. I was never someone else’s daughter to them. But now you’re telling me to replace them with—”

“Princess Celestia would never try to—!”

“—somepony who wasn’t even THERE! WHERE WAS CELESTIA after they died? WHERE WAS CELESTIA when I was all alone in flight school, and every single day, I had to listen to ponies whisper about what a disappointment and a failure I was—until the day I finally dropped out? WHERE WAS CELESTIA when I had to eke out a two-bit living on third-shift backwater weather duty, or teach myself how to build my own cloud house? WHERE WAS SHE?”

Twilight bit her lip. She didn’t have an answer.

“Tell me how I’m supposed to feel, Twilight! TELL ME! Go ahead and look it up in one of your stupid books! Because from where I’m standing, I should be FURIOUS at Celestia! I should HATE Celestia! I shouldn’t want anything to DO with her!”

Rainbow’s hoof slammed! against a nearby tree. A web of cracks flourished across the bark.

Twilight fell quiet. Her eyes drank in the depths of her friend’s anguish and despair. Her brain rifled for something to say.

She opened her mouth and spoke:

“When I was a little filly, Princess Celestia—”

“I DON’T CARE!” Rainbow roared, reeling on her. “I DON’T CARE about ANYTHING you could POSSIBLY have to say about Celestia! I DON’T CARE how great a TEACHER she was to you, or a… a mother…”

Her voice broke.

“I… I don’t care. I DON’T CARE! I don’t care how many amazing things she taught you! I don’t care how good she treated you, or how much she… l-loved you. I DON’T CARE! None of it means anything to me, because I DIDN’T MEAN ANYTHING TO HER!”

Twilight took a step forward, desperate to bridge the rift. “Rainbow…”

“It was different for you! You got took in, and I… I got tossed out.”

Rainbow trembled. The pain went through her in shudders, pooling in tiny beads at the corners of her eyes. Then her whole body gave a hitch. Her hooves buckled. She slumped to the ground, choking on a sob.

“Why didn’t she want me, Twi?”

Twilight rushed over to her side at once and threw her hooves around her. Rainbow’s head hung limp.

“Why wasn’t I good enough? Why didn’t she want me? What was wrong with me?” she asked. “I don’t… get it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you!”

“Then why? Why would she…?”

“Shh,” Twilight whispered, rocking her gently back and forth. She peered at the back of Rainbow’s mane, the mottled colors heaving in time with her sobs. The turmoil in her soul was all-consuming. Twilight numbly wished Fluttershy were here to offer comfort.

“And now—” Rainbow choked out, “—here I am, crying my heart out over her, right in front of the only two ponies in my whole life who ever actually cared about me—”

She squeezed her eyes closed as tightly as she could, but it wasn’t enough to stanch her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she cried out, tilting her head to the graves. “I’m sorry!”

Twilight cradled her tightly. “Oh, Rainbow,” she whispered, rubbing a hoof across her friend’s back. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

Rainbow sniffled.

“For being the worst daughter in the world. Because—Because every time I think about her, I get mad, I HATE HER!—But part of me keeps remembering all this… this stuff from a million years ago… Like how she used to hold me, and sing to me, and… and it DOESN’T EVEN MATTER! It doesn’t even MATTER anymore! But I still can’t help feeling like… like…”

“Like you aren’t being loyal to them,” Twilight finished for her.

With a pained expression, Rainbow pried herself from Twilight’s comforting hold. She huddled on the ground, little and alone, chest still heaving as her grief stabbed into her. A long time went by before either one broke the silence.

Then…

“When I was a filly,” Twilight began her story again, speaking softly, “I spent almost all my time under Princess Celestia’s wing, learning from her in person in-between classes at her school. It was a wonderful opportunity, but it meant I wasn’t able to see my family very often.

“I could still spend time with my brother. He was a part of the Royal Guard, so I saw him regularly enough. But… my parents…”

Something moved behind Twilight’s eyes.

“The first time I went away to study in Canterlot, I was only eight years old. I had never been away from my mom and dad before… and we ended up being apart for months. When the term ended and Princess Celestia accompanied me on the train to go see them, I was terrified they wouldn’t recognize me. I thought they’d just… I don’t know… glance over me on the platform and keep walking, wondering where their daughter was.

“But they did recognize me” she finished with a meaningful look. “And when I got off the train and they saw me, it was like nothing had changed between us. I was still their little girl. It didn’t matter to them that I had spent so much time with Princess Celestia, because they loved me, and they only wanted what was best for their daughter.”

Rainbow straightened up, rubbing her eyes as she sniffled. “Is this the part where you tell me what’s best for me?”

Twilight didn’t answer at first. As the sky above them began to lighten with the first gray hues of dawn, she sat pensively, seeming to weigh her next words. Far off in the distance, a robin began to sing, and a breeze blew through the vale and rustled the leaves on the hoof-scarred tree.

“Go with Princess Celestia,” she said finally. “Go with her to Canterlot.”

“What? No!”

Rainbow recoiled. She jumped up and stalked away several paces, turning to regard Twilight with a mutinous look.

“Why? Why the HAY would I do that?”

“Because you need to, Rainbow.”

“WHY?”

“Because you need to,” Twilight said, standing and moving close again. “From everything you’ve told me, you need to do this, more than anything. The things you keep remembering… Your heart and your memories are at war with each other, and it’s tearing you up inside.”

Rainbow scowled and turned away. “So what? I’ll get over it!”

“There are questions you need answered, and the answers aren’t anywhere to be found here in Ponyville. They’re in Canterlot. With her.”

Twilight rested a hoof on her friend’s quivering shoulder.

“Give yourself the chance to explore those spaces and discover the answers for yourself. You won’t be whole again until you do.”

“Celestia doesn’t deserve one SECOND of my time!”

“Don’t do it for Princess Celestia then. Do it for yourself. You deserve those answers, Rainbow. You deserve to have peace. And…

“And you deserve to let go of this guilt,” she said, watching sadly as Rainbow tensed and shrank in on herself. “Wherever your mom and dad are now, you’ll always be their little girl, and they’ll always love you. I know how loyal you are to them, but this doesn’t have to be a betrayal. It’s just… a new beginning.”

With that, everything was said that needed to be. They lapsed into silence, and a hush fell over the cemetery.

After some seconds had passed, Rainbow turned one last time to gaze on the two ponies who’d remained mute throughout the whole conversation. The two ponies who would never say anything ever again.

She looked back at Twilight with tears in her eyes.

“Do you—do you think—my parents would be proud?” she asked.

Twilight smiled. “I know so.”

They said their goodbyes and departed. Rainbow took to the sky, and Twilight went her own way on the ground.

Not long after they had gone, the sun broke over the eastern hills, carrying with it Celestia’s light, Celestia’s warmth—

—and Celestia herself.

The princess arrived in a flash of golden light. She stood still, her puffy eyes fixed on the spot near the graves where Rainbow had lain. She stood still, and she pondered the answer to a question.

Then she spoke:

“Watching over you every day, my Aurora. With every sunrise.”

Then she kneeled, lips brushing against the wet blades of grass. Reverently, she kissed the earth where Rainbow’s father was buried, then did the same for her mother.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much.”

She stood tall. A light enveloped her, and then she was gone.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The golden chariot stood waiting.

As the drivers scuffed their hooves restlessly, waiting for their passenger to board, Rainbow Dash sulked a short ways away, huddled with her closest friends. Her wings flicked anxiously at her sides as they gathered to see her off. Her legs bowed. Her hooves pointed inward.

She didn’t want to go.

Pinkie Pie was hopping around in circles like a rabbit on amphetamines. A description Angel Bunny might have taken umbrage with if Fluttershy weren’t inadvertently squeezing the life out of him.

“Ooh, Rainbow Dash, I’m so excited! You get to go to CANTERLOT! It’s such a super-duper-amazing place! Even if everypony there WAS a big mean-meanie-pants at the Grand Galloping Gala. I mean, jeeze, how can ANYPONY hear the Pony Pokey and NOT stick their right hoof in? HEY! I just had a great idea! You should invite me to Canterlot so I can throw you a PARTY! We can do all sorts of super fun things together, like submarining, making racecar noises, playing pranks on Princess Luna, shaving cats—”

Applejack wore a somber expression on her face as she gave a tip of her hat. “Take care of yourself, Rainbow Dash. It’s gonna be real boring ’round Ponyville without ya,” she said.

Rainbow felt a stab of heartache at Applejack’s forlorn look. Why had she let Twilight convince her to go along with this?

“Gonna be real boring in Canterlot without you,” she echoed back.

Leaning in close, she whispered into Applejack’s ear, “Be sure to let me know if you have any problems with the weather while I’m gone. You know, tsunamis, droughts, Armageddon, that sort of thing.”

Applejack chuckled. “Don’t y’all worry none. I’ll be sure to send you a letter if’n anything happens, Spike Express. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“—and the best part of it is, you’re going to live in a castle, and castles have moats, and moats have alligators, and that’s SUPER DUPER FANTASTERIFIC because Gummy’s an alligator too, and he would loooooooooove the chance to meet his aunts and nephews and sisters and cousins—”

Rarity’s blue eyes lit up. “Don’t be a stranger, Rainbow, darling! We’re all just a short train ride away! And do be certain to drop me a line if you find yourself in want of a formal gown. I’ll be happy to whip up something chic and feminine for you!”

Rainbow blanched. “Uh, sure. Thanks, Rare.”

Applejack snickered.

“—and stepfathers and brothers and grandmas and uncles and great uncles and great great uncles—”

Fluttershy smiled weakly. “Have a safe trip. We’ll all… miss you.”

Rainbow trotted over and pulled Fluttershy into a great big hug. Angel Bunny saw his chance to escape and made a break for it. He scampered away, coughing and gasping and wheezing and making a very rude gesture with his paw, though nopony noticed.

“Hey, Fluttershy, no worries, right? Canterlot isn’t far, so don’t you shed any tears over me. Besides, Ponyville needs you to stay strong in case anymore dumb dragons decide to show their ugly mugs around this place while I’m gone.”

“Hey! I resent that!” called out Spike.

Fluttershy smiled warmly. “Thank you, Rainbow.”

Then, at last, it was time to go. Rainbow flew to the chariot.

Almost a year had gone by since Nightmare Moon’s long-prophesized coup d’état ushered in the night. If you had asked her then, as she stood at the bounds of the Everfree, about to venture forth into the unknown—if you had asked her then how she felt about the five ponies standing next to her—she would never in a million billion years have predicted her feelings for them would ever amount to anything as much as this. So much had grown between them. They had been through so much together.

It hurt to part ways with them, these wonderful ponies. Her friends. And not just her friends, but the town as well. Only now, with one hoof in the cart, did she realize how painful it was to leave Ponyville behind.

Ponyville. Ponyville, with its thatched-roof cottages and cobblestone streets. Its wildflower meadows and its forests, softly breathing, swaying in the wind day by day. Its clear blue rivers reflecting clear blue skies, and groves and groves of apple trees rolling far and wide across the horizon.

Ponyville. Her home, for so much of her life.

She spared one last glance over her shoulder at it. Twilight must have caught the misty-eyed expression on her face, because she started to say something. But Rainbow cut her off.

“Shut up, Twi. I don’t know how I let you talk me into this dumb idea, but you did. Mission successful. Just shut up and leave it at that.”

Twilight smirked. “Actually, I was going to recommend a restaurant I thought you might like to visit in Canterlot. But since you snapped at me, now I’m not going to tell you.”

“You were not!”

“Was too.”

“—and then I said, ‘Oatmeal? Are you CRAZY?’ But then he started to laugh, and balloon animals and party favors started coming out of his ears. And that’s how Equestria was made!”

Twilight grinned. Rainbow rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

With a flap of her wings, she hopped onto the golden chariot. Tank already lay sprawled out in the cart, soaking up the heat from the sun-warmed metal as he waited for her to board.

Up front, the pair of armored pegasus drivers shared a look and a nod, and then they took off running. Their hooves clapped like thunder against the road, the thicket of Whitetail Wood hurtling toward them like a towering green wall as the distance in front of them rapidly turned into distance behind them.

“WAIT! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIT!”

An orange blur exploded out of the shrubs and raced down the road, nearly bowling Rarity over.

Scootaloo ran faster than she ever had, her little wings beating against the headwind, hell bent on catching up, on seeing Rainbow one last time. But as the forest loomed, the pegasi drawing the chariot opened their wings and kicked off, bearing the chariot up into the air.

She stopped short, huffing and puffing, reaching out in vain as her lifelong hero disappeared over the trees. “RAINBOW DASH!”

Exhausted, she collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.

Tears stung her eyes. “Too late. I just—I—I couldn’t make it in time.”

“Hey, kid. What’s eatin’ ya?”

Scootaloo perked up. “R-Rainbow Dash?”

Sure enough, there stood Rainbow, grinning and flexing her wings. She had ditched the chariot to fly back down.

“The one and only! Hey, Scoots, what are you—Whoa! Hey!”

Scootaloo ran at her so fast, she practically tackled her, knocking her down onto her bottom. The orange filly threw her hooves around Rainbow and buried her face in her mane. Rainbow was tempted to laugh, and she probably would have if Scootaloo weren’t crying her eyes out.

“I thought—I th-thought I wouldn’t get a chance—to—to s-say—”

“Goodbye?” she finished. “Aw, Scootaloo, this isn’t goodbye.”

She smiled and hugged Scootaloo lovingly, allowing the child to take refuge in her arms.

Scootaloo sniffled and looked up at her, hope shining in her eyes. “You mean you’re not going away after all?”

“No. I am.”

Scootaloo’s face fell, and Rainbow felt no small amount of chagrin.

“I wish I could stay here with you, kid. Really, I do. Sometimes in life, we’ve gotta do things we don’t want to do. It isn’t easy trying to figure out who you are.”

Scootaloo shot her a withering look. “Don’t you think I already know that?” she grumbled with a gloomy nod toward her blank flank.

Rainbow burst out laughing.

“Hey! It’s not funny!”

“Yes it is! Haha!” Laughing hysterically, she fell backwards onto the ground, taking the surprised schoolfilly along with her.

Scootaloo pouted. Her hero was laughing at her!

Rainbow brought herself under control. “Aw, hey, don’t be that way, Scoots. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Hey, come here! I’ve got something to tell you.”

She wrapped her hoof around Scootaloo and drew her close.

“I’ve got a really important job I need you to do. See, I’m gonna be gone for a couple months. I need you to take my place here in Ponyville for as long as I’m not around.”

Scootaloo blinked. “As a weatherpony?”

“Well, no… Although it’s hard to imagine you being any worse than the mare they actually picked for that job. No, I need you to take my place as the coolest pony in Ponyville. You think you can do that for me?”

Scootaloo’s jaw dropped. “Coolest pony in Ponyville? Me?”

“Of course, you! Do you want the job or not?”

“I—well—y-yeah! Sure!”

“It’s not easy. Not everypony is cut out for it. You’ve got to eat, breathe, and sleep coolness wherever you go. Think you’re up for the challenge?”

Scootaloo stuttered. “I—I—”

Rainbow gave her a wink. “I think you’ll do fine. You’re already the coolest pony in Ponyville in my book.”

“I am?”

“Well, second awesomest. After me, of course.”

Scootaloo’s eyes lit up. Rainbow Dash thought she was cool! She felt like she could soar!

“Hey, Rainbow Dash. What happened to the chariot you were on?”

“Oh yeah. That,” Rainbow muttered. She glanced unhappily at the sky beyond Whitetail Wood, where her ride was a tiny dot quickly retreating into the endless blue. “Yeah, I’m gonna need to shred some serious air to catch back up. Guess it’s time for me to make my exit.”

She gave Scootaloo a noogie, which had the schoolfilly giggling and feigning protest. Then she spread her wings and took to the air with a mighty gust. With a mock salute to Ponyville’s new coolest pony, she started to fly away.

Scootaloo ran after her. “Goodbye, Rainbow!” she called.

“Don’t sweat it, Scoots! I’ll be back before you know it!”

To Scootaloo’s surprise, she didn’t immediately fly in pursuit of the chariot. Instead, she went up… and up… and up… until Scootaloo could barely see her. Rainbow hovered at the height of her ascent, the sunlight reflecting off her horn, shining vividly. Then she dived, and dived, and just when it looked like she was about to impale herself on the treetops at eight hundred miles an hour—

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Scootaloo’s eyes filled with wonder as she beheld the awesome beauty of the sonic rainboom for the very first time.

Rainbow thundered away, laughing wildly. Yep. Definitely still got it.

She flew toward Canterlot. Toward tomorrow.

03. Dashed Expectations

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER THREE
Dashed Expectations

Originally Published 9/29/2011

All her life, Rainbow had looked out her window and seen the lonely mountain. Atlas Rise, the Crown of Equestria, the Seat of the Sun; names, it had in abundance, but none that did justice to the sheer size of this natural wonder, this colossal rib of the world. As the chariot soared over the land, it loomed ever larger, dominating the eastern sky.

How ancient was it? Nopony could say. Not even Princess Celestia, as timeless as she was, could remember an age when the mountain hadn’t been there. Forests were seeded, grew, and perished under her reign. Rivers ran dry and new ones gurgled forth to take their place. But the mountain was forever.

It was a monument to prominence and permanence. Qualities the kingdom venerated, which was probably why they put the capital city here. Moreover, it was a monument to patience. Born in time immemorial, eons before the first pony set hoof upon the earth, from the slow seep of magma bubbling up over untold millions of years. All to create the misty blue peak that stood before Rainbow now, challenging every notion she had of big and small, old and young.

She was so busy staring at it, the sudden arrival of the Royal Guard took her totally by surprise.

“Hey, what gives?” she shouted, lifting herself over the side of the chariot to get a better look.

They fanned out around her in formation. Pegasi on the left and right of her forming a flying ‘V,’ pegasi above, pegasi below, and one pegasus out front who she definitely remembered—Captain Tristar, as surly-looking as ever, decked in his brilliant golden armor as he flew at the point position. Rainbow’s eyes drew narrow to see him here, but she could set aside a bad first impression in search of answers. Nonchalantly, she ditched her ride, pumped her wings, and flew up to meet him.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“GET. BACK. IN. THAT. CHARIOT.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. The sheer strength and power of his voice blew her head-over-hooves back into the cart. Tank gave her a sympathetic look as she rubbed her head. “Sheesh. What a loudmouth.”

Rainbow Dash wasn’t a dummy. Something had these pegasi spooked. She could tell from the way they held their wings—a little too stiff for comfortable flying, even for the no-frills Royal Guard.

And gee-whiz, how many of them were there? Twenty? Thirty? A teensy bit overkill for the half-hour trip up to the capital. Twilight never mentioned being accompanied by this many pegasus guards whenever she made the journey to Canterlot by air.

“All right, what the hay’s going on?” Rainbow asked the drivers.

“Don’t worry, Miss. We’ll get you to Canterlot safe and sound,” said the one on the left.

“As long as you don’t go jumping ship again,” grumbled the other. “Sit back and relax. We’ll make sure no harm comes to you.”

“Make sure no harm comes to me? Why would I need you to—”

Before she could finish her sentence, they rounded the mountain, and great Canterlot Castle came into view. Canterlot, with its quartz spires and its golden domes; its statues of copper, white marble, and gold-plated bronze; its majestic, sparkling waterfalls crashing down from on high, pooling in basins the size of lakes before spilling over the lip, cascading down to the countryside far below. Canterlot, heart of the nation, jewel of the world, sparkling white from its perch on the mountainside.

They flew past it and kept right on going.

“Hey, what gives? Where are you taking me?”

The drivers dipped a wing, putting them on a path directly toward a rocky crag on the side of the cliff. Their escorts mirrored their movements, falling into an even tighter formation.

Seconds later, the chariot clattered to a halt on a wide ledge, and a dozen or more pegasi set down all around them. The remainder stayed aloft, darkening the bluff with their great, winged shadows.

“Princess Aurora,” an oily voice breathed down Rainbow’s neck.

It was Tristar, of course. The burly stallion loomed over the side of the cart, his violet eyes smoldering through the gaps in his helmet. Rainbow wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated. She leered right back at him, her feathers bristled and choler on full display.

“We’ve arrived without incident,” he said, “no thanks to your little… in-flight detour. In the future, I would appreciate you not giving away my troops’ position with a sonic rainboom under any circumstances. Especially not when we’re exposed in the middle of a clandestine movement.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Rainbow growled back.

He jerked his head to beckon her off the chariot. “We’re sitting ducks here. I need to get you off this cliff and safe behind castle walls. Quit wasting time, now. Daylight’s burning.”

“What castle?! This isn’t Canterlot. Where are we?”

“For your own safety, I advise you to comply.”

Rainbow’s wings twitched. She gave a defiant scrape of her hoof. “First, how about you tell me what the hay’s going on!”

“Are you going to cooperate, or not?” Tristar demanded.

Rainbow only glared at him.

When she was slow to answer, he gave another motion of his head to signal the guards. They were all over her before she could react. A pair of them swept in from behind and seized her by the arms, while the rest of them circled around and raised up their wings like a Roman shield wall. Then they advanced, bearing a sputtering Rainbow Dash at the center.

“LET GO!” she yelled, kicking and biting.

Off to one side, a lone unicorn guard bowed his head in concentration. His horn lit up, and with a rumbling snarl, a stone outcropping slid aside, revealing the gaping black maw of a cavern.

They dragged her in, and she fought them all the way. Again, the unicorn’s horn shimmered, and the secret door groaned and rolled shut, shrouding them all in the subterranean dark.

“Lights,” spoke Tristar, and instantly, a line of torches blazed with magic fire, casting weird, flickering shadows up and down the fathomless length of a rock-hewn, underground corridor.

Rainbow saw her opportunity. The confines were narrow, too cramped for the pegasi on either side to maneuver. She twisted free of one, bucked the other, and made a break for it, hooves clapping against the stone.

She didn’t make it far before Tristar stepped out in front of her.

“Get outta my way,” Rainbow ordered, although she didn’t feel half as brave as she sounded.

Tristar didn’t even bother to hide his sneer. It slithered across his face, plain as day. “Enough of this.”

He took a step forward…

“Rainbow Dash?”

Both of them froze. That voice didn’t belong to any guard.

It came from Princess Luna. The alicorn stood in the dim hall just beyond them, starry mane rippling at her back. She surveyed the scene before her with patent concern.

“What’s the meaning of this, Captain Tristar?”

“Protecting my charge as ordered, Princess,” Tristar said, quickly turning and falling into a bow. The rest of the guards did the same. Rainbow just stood there, frozen in place, though her heart was still jackhammering away in her chest at a million miles an hour.

Luna took stock of Rainbow. Her feathers disheveled, her body shaking, her mane tousled and matted with sweat.

“Was it necessary to assault her in order to protect her?”

“Nothing of the sort, Your Majesty. We experienced an… unexpected sonic rainboom in transit. Our position was compromised, and we were vulnerable on the mountainside. Under the circumstances, operational security required me to make a quick extraction.”

Luna nodded. “Very well. Thank you for your assistance, Captain. I’ll take it from here.”

Rainbow’s expression dripped with open disgust as she threw off the pegasi on either side of her. They quickly backed away, which just so happened to give her a clear line of sight on a third guard standing back and to the left of her, his hooves wrapped around a struggling green tortoise.

“TANK!”

She lunged and ripped the reptile out of his grasp. Tank’s face eased into a wrinkled look of gratitude at being rescued, but Rainbow’s knew only explosive, volcanic rage.

“Oh, and Captain?” Luna said. “I’m sure Princess Celestia will expect a full report on this incident.”

Tristar tensed. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Just like that, the confrontation was over and done with. Luna motioned for Rainbow to follow her, and Rainbow happily obliged. Tristar shot her a glare as she stormed past him. She returned it in spades.

Luna set Tank on her back, and the three of them started down the corridor. Soon enough, they headed down a side passage, and the captain and his retinue disappeared from sight.

“Some welcoming committee you’ve got here!” Rainbow snapped as soon as they were out of earshot.

Luna grimaced. “I’m sorry. Captain Tristar’s methods can be rather drastic, but a more loyal soldier, you aren’t likely to find. I didn’t mean for this to be your experience coming here.”

“Pretty sure I know what loyalty looks like, and that ain’t it! Where the heck are we, anyway? I thought we were going to the castle!”

“This is the way to the castle. Rather, it’s a way. A back entrance, of sorts.”

They turned left down another offshoot tunnel. Luna had to duck to avoid scraping her head on the low doorway, if the hollow egress in the rock could even be called such a thing.

She explained, “Under the circumstances, I had the idea to avoid the main approach, to hold rumors at bay and keep your horn a secret from the press for as long as possible. At the very least, until Celestia and I have a chance to confer and decide on a strategy. The revelation of your existence is something that has to be handled delicately. A mysterious new alicorn being paraded through the main gates would create quite a spectacle.”

Rainbow clenched her teeth at the mention of Celestia. Her wings puffed out like an angry bird. “Oh, so letting people know that I exist is Celestia’s business now? Don’t I get a say in anything?”

Luna stopped. She turned to look at Rainbow, gently laying a hoof upon the irate filly’s shoulder. Even in the flickering torchlight, the sadness and regret on her face were apparent.

“Of course you do,” she said honestly. “I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless thing for me to say.”

Rainbow scowled, but allowed the enmity to roll off her. “Look, I know your heart’s in the right place, but I’m still me, okay? I’m not some soft princess who needs to be protected. And I definitely didn’t come here to have Celestia control my freaking life.”

“Controlling your life is the last thing I want to do, and the same goes for my sister,” said Luna. Her somber eyes didn’t leave Rainbow’s. “But you do need to be protected. At least for now, in these early days. The situation is so very, very precarious. And there are so many unknown factors in how others will respond to you—the press, the populace, the nobility. I don’t want something to happen that could cause you to get hurt.”

“I know how to defend myself,” Rainbow said curtly.

Luna shook her head. “I don’t just mean the physical kind of hurt.”

Rainbow frowned and looked away.

“I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I don’t want you to suffer, as I have suffered. Please, Rainbow. Will you let me help you?”

There was an earnest compassion in Luna’s voice, and a weariness, a pain in her eyes that reached down to Rainbow’s sensibilities. With a sigh, she relented and nodded glumly.

“All right, fine. You win. For now.”

Luna hugged her, and Rainbow was distracted once more by just how totally bucking bizarre her life had become.

“Thank you,” the lunar alicorn spoke past her ear. Then they resumed their trek through the passageways.

As they continued on their way, Rainbow spared a concerned glance for the tortoise perched on Luna’s bank. “You okay over there, buddy?”

Tank nodded lazily, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Right turn here,” Luna said.

They went down another cramped corridor, kicking up centuries-old dust and grime. The ceiling dipped low, and this time, Rainbow had to duck her head to squeeze under it as well.

“Sheesh, this place is creepy. It’s like Nightmare Night year-round in here.”

Luna visibly tensed. It was fleeting, but Rainbow noticed it.

“The Warrens,” she spoke after a brief hesitation. “Most of these tunnels were dug out over a thousand years ago. They haven’t been used in almost as long. Not since the war.”

“We’re using them right now, aren’t we?”

Luna made a face. “I’m sorry. I should have said they haven’t been lived in in over a thousand years.”

Rainbow recoiled. She hadn’t seen a lot of it, but this wasn’t someplace she would volunteer to spend any amount of time. It was essentially a labyrinth of tunnels carved right out of the stone guts of the mountain. Every now and then, they would walk past a cobweb-covered alcove, or a crude doorway that led to a room barely high enough to stand up in, or a new passage altogether that shot off into the cold, black unknown. And always, Luna led them deeper, twisting and turning their way further into the depths.

“Ponies just lived here… temporarily, right?” Rainbow asked. The thought of anypony living here, cut off from the sun and sky, was repulsive to her.

“Some did. Others never left. Those who didn’t are still buried here, within these walls,” Luna replied nonchalantly. As if she were talking about the freaking weather or something.

A shiver went down Rainbow’s spine. She walked a little closer to Tank and the princess of the moon.

But now they arrived at their destination. The corridor ended abruptly at a sheer stone wall, devoid of any features save for a single carved glyph of the sun. Luna put her horn to it, and Rainbow heard the distinctive click-click-click of a locking mechanism. The wall swung open on a hinge. They walked through, and on the other side—

On the other side was—was—

Rainbow stopped dead.

Her pupils shrank. Her heart started to fly again in her chest.

Her eyes traced the contours of the circular room.

The window.

The fireplace.

The door.

Luna was looking at her strangely. “Is everything all right?”

Rainbow started to answer.

Her voice died in her throat.

After several moments of worried silence, Luna spoke up again. “Celestia’s private study,” she said, in answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. “Erm… If it’s the lack of furniture that has you so aghast, please, don’t think anything of it. We’re… remodeling.”

She winced and tried not to glance at a particular mirror on the wall, which had been hastily covered with a sheet; behind it, cracks in the glass spiderwebbed out from several violent points of impact. Aside from the elegant marble hearth and the bookshelves that lined the walls, the only other thing of note was a large mahogany desk, which dominated the center of the room.

Rainbow swallowed hard. “It’s, um… It’s okay. I’m cool,” she said.

Her voice wobbled.

Luna sealed the secret passage that led back into the Warrens, which from this side was camouflaged as yet another bookcase. Then she strolled across the office, over to the door. She placed her hoof upon the ornate golden handle.

The door opened to reveal a stately hall. Pearl-colored walls rose to meet a tall, arched ceiling. Tapestries and decorative urns stood formally throughout, while a procession of windows and soft-glowing chandeliers bathed the whole place in light.

“Would you and Tank like to see the castle? I know you were here briefly for the Gala, but I’d be happy to give you the grand tour.”

Rainbow trotted over and joined Luna at the portal. She paid the study one last, long, reminiscent look. “S-Sure.”

Canterlot Castle was every bit as opulent as she remembered. More opulent, if it was possible, for this time, she was treated to a glimpse behind the curtain. Beyond the public-facing spaces. To the private chambers enjoyed by the royal sisters themselves.

Luna was only too happy to be her guide, ushering her from one grandiose room to the next, expositing a laundry list of facts and trivia about the palace as they went along. In spite of the day’s earlier stresses, Rainbow couldn’t help but be amused. It was comfortable. Familiar. In some ways, it was kind of like being with Twilight.

When Luna casually remarked that the castle featured no fewer than eleven conservatories and sixteen ballrooms, an all too obvious question popped into Rainbow’s brain.

“How many bathrooms does it have?”

Luna blinked. “I don’t think anypony’s ever asked me that before.”

“Come on! You’ve gotta know how many bathrooms! What do you tell all the colts and fillies when they come asking on school tours?”

“To be fair, it’s been less than a year since I was set free from the moon, and the very concept of bathrooms is still rather stupendous to me. The real magic isn’t friendship. It’s indoor plumbing.”

Rainbow cracked a grin.

They continued on their way. After Rainbow had feasted her eyes on enough extravagance to fill fifty lifetimes, the three of them drew to a stop in front of an intricately carved wooden door.

“This room,” Luna said, “is to be your bedroom.”

They went inside.

The four-poster canopy bed was the first thing Rainbow saw. She frowned. It wasn’t exactly cozy-looking; rather than a pony of her dimensions, it seemed sized to fit about five Celestias. The silken purple bedclothes weren’t exactly her style, either. They were too fancy, too frilly, and much more suited to a pony of Rarity’s tastes than her own.

The bedroom did have one thing going for it: a massive balcony that looked out over the whole of the city. Warm sunlight kissed Rainbow’s face as she took her stock of the view, and a pleasant breeze came up and tousled her mane. She closed her eyes and leaned into it, breathing in the air and the prism of colorful smells that wafted on it—sweet red roses, fresh-cut green grass, and the faintest hint of blue mountain mist.

“Hey, you wanna go flying?” Rainbow asked. “It’s an awesome day, and the air currents are perfect for—”

“Someday, when this situation is behind us, I would love to go flying with you. I’ve heard so many fantastic stories about your talents, I would relish the chance to see them with my own eyes,” Luna interrupted. “But Rainbow Dash, listen to me, this is important. You mustn’t leave the castle, and you mustn’t go flying. Not for any reason.”

“Huh?”

Luna’s features pulled down in an unhappy frown. She lifted Tank off of her back and set him down gently on the bed, then trotted over to join Rainbow at the balcony.

“I wish it weren’t so, but tearing up the skies over Canterlot would provoke even more of a spectacle than parading you through the main gates. There would be no keeping it from the press, and no way of controlling what the press sends to print about you. On top of that, there’s also the matter of your personal safety to think about.”

The alicorn gazed down on the white-and-purple edifices of the city below them, so small and faraway from here atop the castle. The indistinct bustle of the metropolis filtered up to them on the wind’s breath, carrying with it the muffled ambiance of clattering wagons, the sweet sound of music, softly playing, and the murmur of distant crowds.

“Inside of these walls and upon these grounds, the castle’s magic will protect you,” Luna spoke quietly. “It’s an ancient enchantment laid upon this place from the time of its founding. Lower Canterlot has no such safeguards. Venturing out without guard at a moment like this would be foolhardy.”

Rainbow side-eyed her shrewdly. “This is about the super-secret stuff that’s going on that you won’t clue me in about. The reason why your stupid sister is in Griffi’la.”

Luna gave a weak smile.

“I know flying is something that’s near and dear to you. It pains me to ask you to refrain from it, but please, Rainbow. Keep your hooves on the ground, at least for now. I realize it’s a lot to ask, but I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you—and it easily could. Please, Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow was about to voice her loud objections to this, when suddenly, a little yellow unicorn burst into the room behind them, yipping, “PRINCESS LUNA! PRINCESS LUNA!”

Luna turned to look at her curiously. “What is it, Domo?”

“Lord Brilliant… is demanding… an audience,” the little unicorn managed to choke out amid her breathless panting. “Something about… property rights. For his son in Manehattan. He stormed in… blustering about… how he thought Princess Celestia was a pony of her word…”

“Oh no,” Luna groaned. “Has he been waiting long?”

“Ten minutes.”

Luna gave Rainbow an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay. I’ve got a little… court… thingy… to take care of. Erm… Domo, this is Princess Aurora. I’m sure you attended the briefing of the top-level palace staff yesterday, but she is Princess Celestia’s daughter. Could you please attend to her while I speak with Lord Brilliant? Make her as comfortable as possible, and…”

She pulled a face.

“…and see to it that she gets cleaned up.”

“Gets cleaned up?” Rainbow repeated sharply.

She scowled and looked herself over. Unfortunately, she was forced to admit that Luna might have a point. Thanks to her scuffle with the guards and her trip through the filth and grime of the Warrens, her appearance, such as it was, was even more unkempt than usual.

Luna hid a grimace behind her hoof. “I’m sorry. Don’t take it the wrong way, but it just isn’t a good idea for you to go around looking like that. It could cater to… certain preconceptions.”

Rainbow shot her a glare.

Meanwhile, Domo’s eyes flew wide. “P-Princess Aurora? Princess Celestia’s daughter? I—I mean—Yes, Your Majesty!”

Luna nodded. “Good. If you’ll both excuse me.”

With a parting look of remorse, the lunar princess withdrew to discharge her duties, leaving Rainbow alone in the company of a sputtering Domo.

But not for long.

“I—I—I’ll be right back!” Domo said, tearing out of the bedroom.

Rainbow stared after her. “What the hay.”

Dumbfounded, she wandered over to the enormous bed and flopped down on it, noticing immediately that for all its exquisite dressings and craftsmanship, it wasn’t nearly as comfortable as her own cloud bed back in Ponyville.

Tank snuggled up next to her, and she patted his shell affectionately.

“A month and a half,” she mumbled. “Only for a month and a half. Only until after the Summer Sun Celebration. That’s all. A month and a half. Nooooo flying for a month and a half.”

She stared bleakly up at the ceiling.

“I’m gonna go stir crazy.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Domo returned a half hour later. The bedroom door was still open, so she stuck in her head to announce herself.

“Princess Aurora?”

“Mmmfff… Rainbow Dash… Call mmmfff… Rainbow Dash.”

The unicorn took a few hesitant steps into the room, a pair of handmaidens following close at her hooves. “Your Highness?”

Rainbow didn’t so much as twitch. She teetered on the brink of sleep, all the tension in her wings and body melting into the softness of the bed.

Domo came closer still. “Your Highness?”

There was that annoying voice again. Why wouldn’t it leave her alone?

“Goway,” she groaned.

“Er… Did you say something, Princess?”

Rainbow pulled a pillow over her head. “Gowayanlemmesleep.”

“Could you repeat that a little more loudly, Your Highness?”

“Leavemealone!”

“I’m—I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I still didn’t quite understand.”

Rainbow’s eyes shot open. She snapped up in bed, flinging aside the pillow and eyeing Domo crossly. “What?!”

“Oh! Princess Aurora! You’re awake! For a moment, I was afraid you might have been sleeping!”

Rainbow facehoofed. She could feel her temper start to smoke.

The unicorn dropped into a bow. “I’m Domo, chief steward to Her Majesty Princess Celestia’s royal house. Please forgive me if I seem a bit… flustered. We weren’t notified of your impending arrival until last night. Actually, the truth is, I didn’t even know Princess Celestia had a daughter—”

Rainbow snorted. “Big surprise there.”

“—but now that you’re here, you can be rest assured we’ll do everything we can to make you as comfortable as possible!”

“ ‘Rest assured,’ huh? Good! Then you can shut up and lemme get some rest. I’m tired and I want to catch some z’s, all right?”

Domo’s smile faltered. “Oh… Yes, Your Highness.”

Rainbow shut her eyes and eased back onto the cushion. It was barely past noon, but she was exhausted, darn it, and her mind and body were dead set on a little siesta. One of her patented Rainbow-Dash-Extra-Strength-Power-Naps was sure to do the trick.

Yes siree, getting woken up by that stupid unicorn sure had been annoying, but sweet, blissful sleep was still right there, just over the next horizon. She felt herself drifting off, lulled by the warm breeze coming in from the balcony, the steady inhale and exhale of her own lungs…

Cough. Cough.

…the sound of somepony coughing…

Wait. What?

She snapped awake again. Domo and her cohorts were still there!

Rainbow threw her hooves in the air. “What do you want?!”

“To make you as comfortable as possible, Your Highness!” said Domo.

“How am I supposed to sleep with you watching me?! Do you have any idea how creepy that is?!”

“Oh. Would you prefer it if we didn’t watch you?”

“Yes!”

“As you wish, Princess!”

Domo signaled the handmaidens on her left and right. Then all three of them spun around to face the wall, leaving a flabbergasted Rainbow Dash to stare at their backsides.

Her eye twitched. “Are. You. Serious.”

“Are you done sleeping yet, Your Highness?”

“Yes,” Rainbow growled.

“In that case, may we turn around again?”

Rainbow scowled and rolled out of bed. So much for that power nap.

“Yeah. Sure. Knock yourselves out.”

Domo took one look at Rainbow and gasped. “Oh, dear! I pray I’m within my bounds to say so, Princess Aurora, but you look dreadful! Your feathers are such a mess, it’s unsightly! And your mane! Why, it’s simply uncouth! You must permit us to assist you!”

“The name’s Rainbow Dash. And what’s the matter with my mane?” she asked, running a self-conscious hoof through her forelock.

“Please allow us the privilege of running you a bath!”

“I ain’t takin’ no stinkin’ bath!”

“But you must, Your Highness! Princess Luna personally requested it!”

Rainbow sighed. There was no winning this.

“Fine. Run the stupid bath, then,” she grumbled.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than Domo and her attendants took hold of her. She squawked in indignation, but her protests went unheard as they whisked her into an adjoining bathroom.

The handmaidens—a pair of gray-colored unicorns—bore her into a raised basin, which might just as easily have passed for a swimming pool as a bath tub. Their horns shimmered, and water started pouring in from silver faucets on all four sides.

Rainbow’s eyes widened. “Wh-What are you doing?!”

“Making everything as comfortable for you as possible, Your Highness!” said Domo. She struck a match and lit a stick of incense, perfuming the air with the rich, earthy fragrance of amber.

Rainbow stared up at the handmaidens in horror. “This is not comfortable!”

“It’s not?”

Domo dipped a hoof into the water. Her expression soured.

“Oh, can’t the two of you do anything right? This is far too cold!” she chided the grays. “Forgive me, Princess. I’ll warm it up for you.”

The bathwater, which had already risen past Rainbow’s haunches, went a full thirty degrees hotter in the span of a millisecond. Rainbow yelped and shot up into the air.

Domo tilted her head back in surprise. “Your Highness?”

“I’M NOT COMING DOWN!” Rainbow shouted, swinging wildly from the chandelier. “I CAN TAKE A BATH BY MYSELF, THANKYOUVERYMUCH!”

“But Your Highness, I must insist!” said Domo. Her horn glowed.

The chandelier went slippery, as if the whole thing were suddenly made out of grease. Rainbow flailed without any purchase, and the next thing she knew, she was falling down, down—

SPLASH!

—straight back into the bath.

She jolted back to the surface, gasping and sputtering. She could barely see through her bangs, dripping wet and hanging low over her eyes. She couldn’t fly away, either. Not with these waterlogged wings. And before she could even think about making a last-ditch wade toward freedom, she felt a pair of hooves grab her and hold her down, while another dumped a cold, sickly-smelling shampoo over her head.

“There, Princess Aurora! That’s not so bad, is it?” said Domo as the servants lathered the icky stuff into her mane.

“Rainbow Dash,” she gurgled into the water. “Call me Rainbow Dash.”

The next thirty minutes were an exercise in humiliation for Rainbow as she was spritzed, scrubbed, moisturized, bristle-brushed, and loofahed half to death. Eventually, her bath time torture drew to a close, and she emerged from the tub feeling violated, clinging to the tattered remains of her dignity.

Then came the towels! Horrible, levitating towels that chased her from one end of the bedroom to the other! It was a miracle Tank didn’t wake up from his snore-fest as she ran around screaming her bucking head off. At one point, she actually threw Luna’s cautionary warning to the wind and made a break for the balcony, but the towels cornered her before she could get there and proceeded to smother the resistance out of her. Stupid towels.

Just when she thought it was over, she spotted something out of the corner of her eye. One of the grays, advancing toward her with a bottle of… mysterious green liquid! Oh, Celestia, NO!

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING.”

Domo suddenly appeared beside Rainbow and made her jump fifteen feet in the air. “Now that you are clean, we shall anoint you with ointments, lotions, and perfumes!”

“NO OINTMENTS. NO PERFUMES.”

Domo blinked. “What about the lotions?”

“NONE OF THOSE EITHER.”

“Oh…” Domo rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Well, in that case, I guess we can move on to the next step. We shall prepare an elegant wardrobe for you and dress you in—”

“I DON’T WEAR CLOTHES.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t start wearing clothes! We have all the finest stylings from the Canterlot fashion scene! Including a brand-new line from Hoity Toity, based on the designs of an up-and-coming fashionista he discovered out in Ponyville, of all places—”

Rainbow facehoofed again. Damn you, Rarity!

“But I suppose the wardrobe can wait a little while. After all, we still need to do your hair!”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Domo and her minions took a step back. “P-Princess Aurora?”

Rainbow quaked with rage. Go to your happy place, Dash. Count the clouds. One cumulus, two cumulus, three cumulus, four…

“Look, I’m not interested in baths, or clothes, or hairstyles, or—LOTIONS,” she roared at one of the handmaidens, who was still trying to sneak up behind her with the bottle. “All I want is some FOOD. I haven’t eaten in forever! Do you think you can at least do THAT for me?”

If Domo took notice of the sarcasm in Rainbow’s tone, she didn’t let it show. “Of course, Princess Aurora! The castle kitchens are always open! Allow us to be your escort!”

“My name is Rainbow Dash!”

But they hurried out the door and paid no attention. Domo poked her head back in. “Coming?”

Rainbow had half a mind to slam the door in her face, but a rumbling in her stomach convinced her otherwise. She followed Domo down the hall, the grays trailing dutifully behind.

At length, they arrived at the dining hall. It was no less grandiose than what Rainbow had come to expect. A checkered marble floor glistened in the light of so many candelabras. The table stretched forty feet down the center of the room, with seating enough for twenty on either side—not including the two massive chairs at the fore, which bore the emblems of the sun and moon.

Rainbow very coolly, very casually sat down in the seat nearest to her, which just so happened to be the big one with the carving of the sun on it. Domo and the handmaidens let out a shrill gasp.

“What’s wrong?” Rainbow asked.

“That’s—That’s—Princess Celestia’s chair!”

“Yeah? So?”

They looked nervously to the windows, where stained glass representations of ponies throughout history leered down at them with fierce, judgmental eyes. One image in particular had them all riveted: a colorful little scene recalling the lunar exile of Nightmare Moon. Boy, oh boy, did Celestia ever looked pissed off in that one!

Domo turned several shades paler. Her eyes darted about the room, as if an unseen spy might be skulking in the shadows. “Nopony has ever sat in Princess Celestia’s chair before.”

“Who cares? It’s not like she’s here right now, is she?”

Domo’s lip quivered. “But… But…”

“But nothing! Jeeze, are you always this high-strung? Just sit down and shut up already.”

“Sit down? But Your Highness, it would be highly inappropriate for me to sit at the same table as—”

“Look, I can’t eat with you guys lurking there over my shoulder. Gives me the heebie-jeebies worse than Rarity before a race. So sit down.” She shot a glare at the gray pair of attendants. “You too.”

The servants reluctantly took seats at the table. Shortly thereafter, they were joined by a chef, who strolled in through a swinging door. The second his eyes fell on the odd foursome, he almost tripped over his own hooves.

“She eez een zee chair!”

Domo shrugged helplessly.

The chef’s mouth flapped open and shut. His dainty Prench mustache stood on end. “Very well!” he finally said. “On your ’eads be eet! What will you ’ave to eat zees afternoon?”

Everypony looked at Rainbow.

“What? Isn’t anypony else hungry? How come I’ve gotta be first to order?” she complained. “Oh, fine. I guess I’ll have… uh… a daisyburger and hayfries.”

“A daizyburgeh and ’ayfries.”

The chef’s lip curled.

“ ’Ow very… rustic. But per’aps zee madame would care to try some of zee kitchen’s more cultured deeshes?”

“Nah, a daisyburger and hayfries will be fine.”

His face contorted, then rapidly flew between a number of expressions, none of which could be described as serene. “Oui, oui, madame. I will return shortly with your… food.” With a snort, he spun and walked out, the door swishing shut behind him.

Rainbow paid no attention. She stretched out luxuriously on the regal chair, looking satisfied and content for the first time since… well, since the bath from hell, at least.

“So—”

“Your Highness, I just want to say what a privilege it is to sit at the same table as you,” said Domo. “I think I speak for everypony here. We’re honored that you would allow us this honor.”

The other two servants nodded vigorously.

Rainbow grinned. “Yeah? So you guys are fans of mine, huh? That’s cool. Did you see me at the Best Young Flyer Competition or something? I really killed it there a few months ago.”

“Um. No. Not exactly.”

“Oh.” Rainbow frowned.

She shrugged and leaned back, folding her hooves behind her head as she kicked her legs up on the table.

“Well, that’s okay. Tell me more about how awesome I am.”

Domo threw her hooves up in the air for dramatic effect. “You are Princess Celestia’s daughter!”

Rainbow’s good mood disintegrated before another tidal wave of anger, to have to be reminded of that awful fact. “…So what?” she snapped.

The unicorn’s smile flickered, and she stared back like a deer caught in the headlights. “The same blood that runs in Princess Celestia’s veins… also runs in yours!” she tried again.

“So wait, let me get this straight. The only reason you have any respect for me is because I happen to be—to be—”

She seethed.

“—related to Celestia.”

“I… Well, no, Your Highness! You are also related to Princess Luna!”

Rainbow rubbed her temples. Why did it all have to be so bitter?

“Look. Enough about me. Let’s talk about you,” she changed the subject. “I don’t know the first thing about you.”

Domo flushed. “Me, Your Highness? I’m honored that you would—”

“No. Not you. Anypony but you. I’ve listened to you just about as much as I can bear.” Rainbow looked over at one of the handmaidens. “You, there. Tell me about yourself.”

“Oh, they don’t talk, Your Highness,” Domo laughed.

Rainbow ignored her. “C’mon. What’s your name?”

The eyes on the young, gray unicorn grew wide as soon as she was singled out. Terrified, she looked back and forth between Rainbow Dash and Domo, as if searching for a cue on what to say.

“L-L-Lady’s Maid, Your Highness,” she finally squeaked in a voice so timid, she might have given Fluttershy a run for her money.

“What are your hobbies?”

“H-Hobbies?”

“You know, things you like to do in your free time?”

“In my free time, I like… uh…”

She stopped mid-sentence at the sight of Domo, who was waving her arms frantically, drawing a hoof across her throat to make the universal ‘kill’ gesture just out of Rainbow’s field of view.

“Um… What are… your… hobbies? …Your Highness?”

“Me? I like cloudball, flying, the Wonderbolts…”

The handmaiden squirmed. “I… um… I like the Wonderbolts… too.”

“You do?!”

Rainbow leaned forward, excitement shining in her eyes.

“I’ve loved the Wonderbolts forever! Ever since my dad took me to see one of their shows when I was a kid! The way they fly so fast, in sync—so awesome! Hey, who’s your favorite?”

“Um… Who’s… your… favorite? …Your Highness?”

Rainbow opened her mouth to reply, but then she stopped.

The gears in her head turned. Her eyes narrowed to mere slits.

“Fleetfoot,” she said slowly. “Spitfire’s my second favorite. I’ve always admired her sonic rainboom.”

“My favorite is… er… Fleetfoot as well. Followed by Spitfire. I agree that her sonic rainboom is very… um… impressive.”

Of course.

How stupid for her to think she might actually have something in common with somepony else in this dumb castle. That the ponies who worked here might fall into some category other than pompous jerks and fake flank-kissers.

Cold fury descended on her. Her gaze turned to ice. “I see.”

The handmaiden shrank back in her chair.

A few uncomfortable minutes later, the swinging door burst open, and the chef strolled back in bearing a silver-lidded platter. He placed it on the table in front of Rainbow Dash and lifted the cover. “Bon appetite, madame!”

“What. Is. This.”

The stench was the first thing that hit her: a pungent blend of raw sewage and roadkill. And it didn’t fare any better in the looks department. In fact, it looked like… something a mother bird might vomit up to feed her young. A coiled-up mass of glistening purple strands, like half-digested worms.

The chef set the table with silverware and began filling their goblets from a pitcher of water. “Eet eez kelp salad. As zee one who eez being een charge of zee kitchen, I refused to even consider making a deesh like zee one you requested! A daisyburgeh and ’ayfries! Such… commoner food!”

“…Commoner food.”

There was no malice in Rainbow’s voice. No emotion. Just an ominous quiet. Like the calm before a storm.

“We do not serve such slop een zees kitchen! Eet eez poison, unfit for ponies to consume—except zee sweaty, uneducated commoners who toil een zee fields and skies, bucking zee trees and pushing zee clouds! ’Ere in zees castle, we ’ave much more rarefied tastes!”

Domo threw out her hooves. “Garcon, you imbecile! Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? This is Princess Celestia’s own daughter! Just bring her a burger and fries!”

She looked at Rainbow apologetically.

“Forgive his folly, Princess Aurora. He didn’t realize who you—”

“MY NAME IS RAINBOW DASH!”

There was an ear-splitting CRACK! and the goblets shattered, sending little bits of glass flying everywhere. Domo and the grays cringed low in their chairs while the chef pedaled back, tripping and falling through the kitchen door when Rainbow SLAMMED her hooves against the table, her eyes glowing white, rising above them like a force of nature!

“RAINBOW DASH! THAT’S THE NAME MY MOM AND DAD GAVE ME, AND IT OUGHTA BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR ANYPONY!”

Now the shards came up from the floor and flew into a whirlwind, spinning a deafening circle around Domo and the others. The candles flickered and died, plunging the room into darkness, while the air filled with the crackle of magic and the tempest’s mighty roar!

Domo whimpered, raising her hooves to shield herself. “Your Highness—Princess Aurora—Rainbow Dash!” she cried. “Please, stop this!”

Instantaneously, the light went out of Rainbow’s eyes. The airborne debris froze on the spot, then fell unceremoniously to the ground.

“GET OUT.”

Domo ran screaming from the room, the grays hot on her hooves.

Rainbow chased them as far as the doorway, sticking her head out into the corridor in time to see the three of them skid around a corner.

“AND I CAN TAKE MY OWN DAMN BATHS!” she shouted after them.

She leaned against the wall, sucking down air in short, shuddering breaths. The room was spinning. It wasn’t doing that before, was it?

Rainbow winced. “Shoulda taken that power nap.”

She took a minute to steady herself, squeezing her eyes shut to fight off the motion sickness that was threatening to unleash her breakfast. When she opened them again, she was floored at what she saw.

Dining room chairs lay toppled and broken amid a field of scattered candles, tempest-plucked their chandeliers and candelabras. Over half the stained glass windows were shattered. The suits of armor were noticeably battered, but intact, as was the table, which—while too heavy to be flipped or flung about—had still managed to drift several feet from its proper home.

The place was a mess.

It also didn’t help that there was kelp salad covering everything.

“What the hay,” Rainbow said. Her expression of the day, apparently.

With the hired help gone—probably cowering for their lives in some corner of the castle sub-basement—Rainbow set herself to the task of cleaning up. She wrinkled her nose and gathered the kelp, piled up the candles, straightened the chairs, and even threw her shoulder against the table in a semi-successful effort to push it back into place.

The whole time, her brain did somersaults, struggling to come to grips with the fact that somehow, she had done all this.

When the dining room was halfway put back together, she took a step back and admired her work. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly like it had been when she first got here, but it was the best she could do.

Rainbow sighed. “So much for lunch.”

With that, she took her leave.

She didn’t notice the pair of intelligent silver eyes monitoring her from the shadows. It seemed there was a spy after all.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The eyes followed her down the white corridor.

Then down another. And another.

The guards made no attempt to stop her. Perhaps, by now, word of the new firebrand princess had circulated among them, and they were merely showing their deference. Or maybe they sensed the apocalyptic anger rippling off her and decided to steer clear.

Whatever the reason, they didn’t harass her.

Neither did they stop the spy with the silver eyes.

But then again, he never gave them the opportunity.

She took turns at random. Seemingly lost. Seeming not to care. Before long, she traversed the key-shaped arch that separated the palace’s private chambers from its public wing, and a few minutes later, she stood before the great golden doors of the throne room.

And the pair of silver eyes followed her inside.

Luna’s court was in session, though the term was hardly apropos. The throne room was empty, save for the princess, her knight protectors, some porters, and that fat, ugly tumor of a pony they called Lord Brilliant.

But look! See now how young Rainbow Dash slinks in the shadows, how she skirts the royal limelight! And for that matter, the stairs! See how she bides her time until the court is distracted, then flits up to the second-story gallery when nopony is looking!

See how she stands there with such fire in her eyes!

She was headstrong, temperamental, more dangerous than she knew, and ten times more interesting than everypony else in this stuffy palace. How things had changed in the last seventeen years. How far she had come.

The silver eyes were joined by a smile. An introduction was in order.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Sheesh. And here Rainbow thought she was having a bad time.

Yeah, she’d trashed the dining room, watched her dignity go down the drain with the bathwater, and worst of all, she was still hungry. But before any of that, Luna had scurried off to go deal with this Lord Brilliant dude. And she was still talking to him! A whole hour later!

Well, maybe talking to him wasn’t the right way to put it. Actually, it seemed like Lord Brilliant was the one doing most of the talking. Luna was mostly just sitting there on the throne in what looked like total misery, cradling her head in her hooves.

Lord Brilliant huffed in a high falsetto, “It’s SCANDALOUS! An affront to my title, and an insult to my family name! That the Brilliant clan should bow to the whims of some—COMMON STRUMPET!”

He was about twenty percent fatter than the fattest pony Rainbow Dash had ever seen. He was so fat, she could count the fat rolls rippling down his body, even from way in the back! A fat unicorn with about four dozen chins and a gold coat that bulged under the effort of containing the sheer fat-fat-fattiness that was Lord Brilliant. Also, he was fat.

She wondered if he could even walk under the weight of all that fat. Didn’t look like it. Lord Brilliant reclined on a sumptuous chaise lounge inside a little curtained compartment. Four earth ponies carried the compartment on poles, groaning and teetering under the burden of lifting the great equine blob who was their liege.

“Lord Brilliant,” Luna spoke. “We both know that’s unfair. I’ve met the mayor of Manehattan before, and I found her to be a pony of unimpeachable—”

“YES! A stupendous idea, Your Majesty! You should impeach her! Impeach the mayor! Impeach her at once!”

Luna groaned. “That isn’t what I was trying to—”

“Oh, but she SHOULD be impeached! Do you know what she told my son? She told him that she represents the PEOPLE! And that the will of the people is more important than his business affairs! And that SHE has more authority than ME! Simply because she happens to have been DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED! Isn’t that funny? What a JOKE!”

“If I may interject—”

“It’s not like the land’s even being used for anything! It’s a wilderness, ripe for industry, sitting unused in the middle of the city! My son is well within his rights of nobility to demand the local government cede the property to his company for exploitation and development!”

“Lord Brilliant, I do believe Central Park has some significance to the people of Manehattan. There are many who would be saddened to see it bulldozed and turned into a factory.”

Lord Brilliant scoffed. “RUBBISH!”

By now, their bickering was just a buzz in Rainbow’s ear. She yawned. This was super boring. Nowhere near as awesome as she thought it would be. Maybe she should go find something else to—

That’s when she saw him. An old unicorn, royal purple, with a snow-white beard that fell halfway down his chest. Watching her from the opposing balcony, from behind a pair of half-moon spectacles.

She blinked, and he was gone.

Weird.

A growl in her stomach reminded her how hungry she was. She made up her mind to head back to the kitchen. Even if the culinary staff were still duck-and-covering it up in a bomb shelter somewhere, she could always throw some popcorn in the microwave. Any idiot could use a microwave, right?

Luna sneezed. “Gesundheit,” said a guard.

Yeah, this place was dullsville. Time to blow this popsicle stand.

Rainbow turned to leave—

—and bumped right into him! The old purple geezer!

She flailed back. “WAHHH! Where’d you come from?!”

“Over there,” he said simply.

Rainbow’s head whipped back and forth between the unicorn standing here, right next to her, and the balcony where he’d just been no more than a moment ago, fifty feet away and clear on the other side of the room. “How the heck did you do that? You got over here in ten seconds flat!’

He chuckled. “Just a little parlor trick of mine.”

“A parlor trick?” She scrutinized him carefully. “What, are you some kind of jester or something?”

“Something like that,” he answered cryptically. “I’m Sage Whitehoof. It’s an honor and a privilege to meet you again, Your Highness.”

“To meet me again?” she echoed his words. “That’s funny. I don’t remember meeting you the first time.”

He smiled a far-off smile. “Well, it has been a few years.”

“If that’s true, and you know who I am, you might as well cut to the chase and save us both some time.”

“The chase?”

Rainbow scowled and swished the air with her hoof. “Yeah, you know, the stupid bowing, tripping over yourself with praise, etcetera, etcetera. You might as well just get it out of your system right now.”

“Very well! If you insist!”

He dipped low, his back hoof scraping the ground in a courtly bow.

“Her Highness, Princess Aurora. Scion of the Realm, heir to the throne, and long-lost daughter of Her Majesty, Princess Celestia.”

Rainbow muttered a few choice words under her breath.

He bowed a second time. “Rainbow Dash, captain of the Ponyville weather team, self-styled fastest flyer in Equestria, and the only known practitioner of the fabled sonic rainboom. Incarnation of Loyalty, Fifth of the Bearers of Harmony, and one sixth the downfall of the usurper, Nightmare Moon.”

“Well, at least somepony got the memo!”

“Knowing things is an important part of my job,” said Sage. “And speaking of jobs, I saw the job you did on the dining room a few minutes ago. I imagine Princess Luna must have warned you that such runaway sorcery could befall an untrained talent in magic?”

Rainbow’s ears flattened against her head. “You, uh… saw that, huh?”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s an understandable thing to have happen to somepony in your situation. You see, a horn is a bit like a garden hose—it’s a useful tool, but lose control of it, and you’re sure to make a splash. If you’d had the upbringing most unicorns do, you’d have learned the basics of control ages ago. Without that foundation, it’s only natural for outbursts of the dining room sort to occur. Your magic feeds on your emotions, and your emotions feed on your magic. One reinforces the other, and so it can all intensify rather quickly. Like sound reverberating in an echo chamber.”

“Yeah, that’s… um… part of the reason why I took Luna up on her invitation to come to Canterlot,” Rainbow admitted sheepishly.

“And a wise decision it was,” Sage observed. “If you should happen to meet Domo and her maidservants again, you might consider an apology. But I don’t want you to spend another minute worrying about the damage inflicted on the castle. The princesses anticipated minor fits of magic like this. It’s nothing to be ashamed about. As for your missing foundations, your lack of control over your horn… We’ll take care of that soon enough.”

Rainbow frowned. Her eyes darted to his cutie mark: an arcane eye, bright and shining blue, embellished with runic symbols all around.

“…What did you say your job was again?”

He swatted his head. “Pardon me! Where are my manners?”

Now he stuck out a purple hoof for her to shake. For a heartbeat, Rainbow regarded it with barely disguised suspicion. How well she could remember the scene in Fluttershy’s back yard a few short days ago when she’d made a similar overture to Captain Tristar, only to have it thrown back in her face.

She hesitantly offered her own hoof. He shook it in earnest.

“I’m what’s known as a mage—a practitioner of the magical arts. For the last thirty-one years, I’ve served at Her Majesty’s pleasure as headmaster of Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“That’s that big-time magic school Twilight went to, isn’t it?”

Sage’s face brightened. His eyes gleamed with pride. “Ah, Twilight Sparkle! A finer student I’ve never had. There’s a filly who was born for a purpose!”

He gave Rainbow a little wink.

“I expect you’ll give her a run for her money.”

“Me?”

“IT’S NOT FAIR, YOUR MAJESTY!” Lord Brilliant’s shrill screech carried up from the throne room floor, diverting their attention. “I won’t sit for it while you trample the rights of the nobility in your sister’s absence! I WON’T SIT FOR IT, I TELL YOU!”

“He won’t sit for it?” Rainbow repeated disbelievingly. “It doesn’t even look like that guy’s stood up on his own in the last couple decades!”

The elder unicorn chuckled.

Rainbow continued to fume. “You know, I don’t get it. I’ve never understood why Canterlot’s got this upper crust of stupid, snooty unicorns whose job it is to look down on everypony else.”

“The High Court,” said Sage, with unhidden disdain. “A vestigial organ of the Equestrian government, but one we haven’t evolved out of yet.”

“Vestigial?”

“It’s a word for something old that no longer serves a purpose.” His ancient face crinkled with a smile, kindhearted and warm. “Pardon an old stallion who’s read too many dictionaries.”

He continued, “In olden days, when the kingdom was newly established and old hatreds still simmered among the tribes, Celestia and Luna were the rulers of unified Equestria in name—but their political power was limited. Outside of Canterlot and the other Crown holdings, the sisters had little practical ability to enforce policy, administer justice, raise garrison, collect tax, and carry out other such functions that the state demanded. Those powers devolved onto the nobles, who in those days presided over their own fiefdoms, but swore allegiance to the Sun and Moon, recognizing them as liege.”

“Is this learning?” Rainbow groaned. “This sounds like learning.”

“In that case, let me bring it down to earth. Or would you rather I brought it up to the sky? You being an ex-pegasus, it’s hard to guess which direction’s your preference.” There was a twinkle in Sage’s silver eyes.

Rainbow gave him a look. “You’re sure you’re not a jester?”

“You work for the Ponyville weather office. How many other pegasi do you have on your weather team?”

“Other than me? Just Cloud Chaser and Thunderlane. Unless there’s a freak storm or some other emergency that forces us to call up reserves. Or a holiday, like Winter Wrap Up or something.”

“Are there ever days when the weather’s too demanding for a single pony to handle, and you’re forced to divvy up responsibilities?”

Rainbow nodded. “Sure, all the time. I usually tell Thunderlane to manage the skies between town square and Sweet Apple Acres, and Cloud Chaser to take on everything else out to Whitetail Wood.”

“Well, in the dawning years after Equestria was founded, that’s about what it was like for Celestia and Luna—with the added wrinkle that if they had tried to govern the entire country by themselves, the Cloud Chasers and Thunderlanes of the world would have revolted against the Crown and splintered off to form their own rival weatherpony kingdoms.”

“Feh! I’d like to see Thunderlane try. That dude takes way too much time off work to be the king of anything.”

Sage explained, “Even though the princesses conducted the sun and moon, they couldn’t amass too much political power for themselves in those days, for doing so would have invited mistrust and risked shattering the realm. They were hamstrung, and so they depended on the noble houses to stake out new castles and settlements, raise levies, and carry out their will.”

Rainbow’s head swam with the unexpected history lesson. She figured she’d absorbed about half of it. “That’s not the way it works anymore, though,” she felt it necessary to point out.

“Not these days, no.”

“Why not?”

Sage looked thoughtful. “Hmm… There’s more than one reason, I suppose. As time went on, the old hatreds faded, and the kingdom wasn’t as unstable as it had been before… Which, in turn, allowed Princess Celestia to pass new laws to centralize power in Canterlot, depriving the nobility of their clout. Then came the era of democratic reform and representative government, in the earth pony tradition. These days, titles of nobility are more ceremonial than anything. But the High Court and the noble houses endure.

“Princess Luna, however—” he said, with a tip of his head toward the fiasco still playing out in the throne room below, “—doesn’t understand the new way of things. She’s still mired in the way things used to be, before she was banished to the moon. Even then, she only ruled as a princess for but a few years before the Nightmare took her, and much of that time, she spent in her sister’s shadow. She’s still a young pony, despite her ancient origins. Not all that much older than you, in fact. She still has a lot to learn about governing… And she hasn’t come to grasp yet how much the balance of power has shifted away from the nobility in the last thousand years. If she did, she would probably turn Lord Brilliant out on his sorry rear end here and now.”

Rainbow rolled these new insights and revelations around in her head. The facts made sense, as Sage described them.

Then she thought back to the Grand Galloping Gala. In her mind’s eye, she saw all those stuffy nobles again. All those arrogant jerks, looking down on her and her friends, sneering at Pinkie Pie’s choice in music and Applejack’s ‘carnival fare’ food, and she couldn’t help but wonder—

“If they’re so useless nowadays, why not just get rid of them? Why keep any of them around at all?”

Sage considered for a moment. “Some would say a debt is owed. Several of the noble houses are ancient, tracing their pedigrees to the original three tribes, predating Celestia, Luna, and Equestria itself by hundreds of years. A few of the nobles can even backtrack their lineage to the Founders themselves. Blueblood, for example, is descended of Princess Platinum’s line.

“Then, too, we are still a nation of laws. As eminent as Celestia and Luna are, they aren’t absolute monarchs. They don’t rule by edict alone. Celestia made the willful choice to recuse herself from such tyranny centuries ago. It would trigger an uproar if the princesses tried to retract a title of nobility without due cause. As for suspending the High Court in its entirety—why, that would take nothing less than an act of Parliament.

“And the nobles of the High Court do have their supporters in Parliament… and in the press.” Sage grimaced. “Make no mistake. The nobles aren’t nearly as powerful today as they once were, but they aren’t powerless. They’re old money, with influence and connections to spare. They wield the power of tradition. And tradition can be a persuasive thing.”

Rainbow had just opened her mouth to reply when Lord Brilliant’s sniveling voice cut sharp—

“THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!”

Their eyes snapped back down to the throne room, where it seemed things were quickly coming to a head: Luna was up off the throne, standing angrily on the dais above Lord Brilliant, while the fat aristocrat was practically steaming at the ears.

“I remember when this court had INTEGRITY! When the High Court was respected, and the Second Estate came FIRST!”

“Now, SEE HERE, Lord Brilliant! My sister would NEVER countenance this kind of rudeness!”

“Princess Celestia? WHERE IS SHE? I’d much prefer to talk to her! I’m sure SHE would remember—my family’s loyalty to her goes back a thousand years! We shed our blood for her cause in the War of Night Eternal! But I suppose that wouldn’t mean much to YOU, would it?”

Luna’s eyes flew wide. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I shall take my leave of you now, thank you very much! Do be sure to notify me when Princess Celestia takes the throne again. Perhaps THEN I’ll have the chance to bring my dear son’s proposal to somepony with a record of being on the RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY!”

Lord Brilliant motioned to his valets, who proceeded to bear his overstuffed carcass toward the exit.

Rainbow felt a tsunami of anger crash over her. She was about to fly down there and give the inflated blowhard a piece of her mind, but before she could, she felt a gentle hoof on her shoulder.

“Allow me.”

She glanced up to see Sage’s horn emitting an onyx glow. Then—

CRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAACK!

CRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAACK!

There was a sound like twin thunderclaps, and two bolts of lightning came down, snapping the poles clean off the back of Lord Brilliant’s booth! The earth pony porters tried to salvage it, but it was too late. The whole thing tipped over, and pompous Lord Brilliant, spherical as he was, went spinning out the back on his fantastically round belly!

“ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!”

Lord Brilliant’s face was a blur as he bowled down the throne room, finally rolling to a stop right in front of the lofty dais. There he lay in a grotesque heap, wiggling his arms and legs ineffectually, too obese to stand.

“HELP ME!” he rasped. “I’VE FALLEN AND I CAN’T GET UP!”

Rainbow clamped a hoof over her mouth to keep the laughter in.

Luna looked down at him, horrified. “Are you all right?”

By some incredible feat of jiggling, Lord Brilliant managed to roll over onto his belly, prostrating himself before the lunar princess. “MERCY! PLEASE, YOUR MAJESTY! MERCY!”

Luna’s eyes grew wider still. “But—I didn’t—!”

“PLEASE!” he bawled like a frightened child. “DON’T HURT ME!”

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

Torment flashed across Luna’s face as old regrets, freshly buried, were once more unearthed. Time slowed down, and in a moment that stretched to eternity and back, she was transported to another place, a different time. A thousand years of sorrows reflected in her teal-blue eyes.

Suddenly, Rainbow didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

“Jeeze,” she muttered. “Some ponies can’t take a practical joke, huh?”

She waited expectantly for Sage to chime in with another salvo of wisdom. After a few seconds went by, she glanced up.

He was gone. Disappeared, without a trace. Again. He’d been standing right there! Then, POOF! And she hadn’t even noticed! How did he DO that?

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

And the silver eyes watched her, unseen.

Watched her look for him, high and low. Watched the frustration set in on her face. Watched her succumb at last to boredom and aggravation, and vexed, slip down the gallery stairs and leave the throne room behind, still shirking the attention of the court.

She certainly had come a long way. No longer the quivering little ball of blue fur and pudge he remembered from so long ago. To think—she even embodied an Element of Harmony now!

He pondered. Would Celestia have consented to send her away if she had known Loyalty would one day choose her to be its avatar? And if she hadn’t sent her away, what then? Would a royal upbringing have sparked such a fire in her? Or would the Element of Loyalty have passed her by like a ship in the night, to moor itself upon another pony’s shore?

How loyal she had become. Loyal to her friends. Loyal even to the point of wishing to rush off and defend Luna, whom she had only just met.

How loyal she was, indeed.

And how proud.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

There was no place more breathtaking than the East Garden.

The setting sun threw its gaze upon the place, softening the palette of white and emerald with a honeyed glow. Here and there were oaks, maples, and other trees that were alien, but no less stupendous: towering, graceful things draped with reams of golden leaves, reaching up to kiss the sky. As twilight approached, the birds retired to their nests for the evening, and an army of fireflies came out to take their place.

In the center of the garden stood a statue. Not a statue of marble or bronze, like so many of the other monuments in High Canterlot, but a statue carved out of basalt, black and plain. For of all the statues in the castle and the city, this one was the oldest. Sculpted and dedicated over a thousand years ago, in the time of Canterlot’s founding, from stone borne by ancient lava flows long ago harvested from the mountain.

It rose up ten feet, and the shadow it cast stretched long in the evening sun. The chiseled likeness of a stallion, his heroic head held high, his wings proudly displayed, decked in armor, with a crown situated atop his noble brow. His face was gentle, but reflected a will of iron.

And on the pedestal, these words appeared:

ATLAS
FRIEND, FATHER, FOUNDER
HE WHO RAISED THE HEAVENS
LIFTED THE WORLD OUT OF DARKNESS

In the shade of this silent sentinel, Rainbow Dash lay on her back, gazing out across the horizon with longing. Remembering what freedom tasted like. What it felt like. The way the air filled her lungs, making her feel so alive. Then, as she swept back her wings and fell into a dive—The velocity! The adrenaline! The wind in her mane! The rush of vertical g’s when she leveled out, and the whole world righted itself!

There was nothing for her here in Canterlot. Nothing… and nopony. It had been three days since the unfortunate little incident with Lord Brilliant at court, and although Luna tried to make time to see her when she could, the princess was still far too preoccupied with running the kingdom in Celestia’s absence to pull herself away for long.

Toward Canterlot. Toward tomorrow.

Toward confinement. Toward concealment. Toward boring.

She wanted to be back home! Back in Ponyville, with all of her friends! She wanted to race Applejack through Whitetail Wood, play pranks with Pinkie Pie, and rehearse for the Wonderbolts to Fluttershy’s soft-spoken chorus of “yay.” She wanted to sleep the day away on a cloud without any stress or care in the world. And if the weather schedule said, “Rain,” she’d just give that cloud a kick and go find another one to sleep on.

She wanted her old life back! She wanted her friends! She wanted to fly!

It’s only for a month and a half, she told herself, clamping down on a rising tide of homesickness. Only until after the Summer Sun Celebration. I’ll be home soon… ish. Eventually.

Rainbow heard hoofsteps coming down the walk. She glanced up and spied a navy-blue pegasus meandering in her direction. He wore a straw hat and a neat gray beard, and he hummed a little tune around the handle of the watering can he carried clenched in his jaw.

He stopped at a bed of magnolias not ten feet away. Without acknowledging her, he started watering the flowers.

Rainbow stared at him. She’d been residing at the castle for days, and in all that time, she couldn’t remember a single occasion when a servant hadn’t tried to kiss the ground she walked on. Yet here was this humble gardener, toiling in front of her without even a “Your Highness.”

“Uh… Hi,” she said.

The pegasus glanced at her from under the wide brim of his hat. “Oh. Hello. Didn’t see you there,” he said.

Then he turned his back and resumed his watering.

Rainbow blinked. Something wasn’t right here.

She stood and walked over. “That’s it?”

“That’s what?”

“That’s all you’re gonna say?”

A chuckle escaped him. The magnolias were sated, so he continued on to the next flower patch and tipped his watering can again. “What else would ye have me say, lass?”

“Well—Look at me!”

The old blue pegasus did as he was told. He put down the watering can and paused to give her a thorough survey, looking her over from head to hoof.

“Well?”

“Ye look all right to me,” he said with a shrug. Then he went right on back to watering the plants.

Rainbow stared. “Aren’t you gonna bow down and tell me who I am?”

“Do ye want me to bow down to you?”

“I—well, no, but—”

“Then I won’t bow. Do ye want me to tell you who you are?”

“…No. Not really.”

“I didn’t think so. In my experience, folks around these parts are all too happy to tell you who you are and what to be.”

The last few drops trickled from his spout, and he strolled over to a nearby fountain to refill the watering can. Rainbow jogged to keep up with him.

“So, who are you?”

“Me?” he laughed. “I’m nopony important.”

“Come on! You’re, like, the first normal pony I’ve met since I got here. What’s your name?”

The pegasus just smiled knowingly. He picked up the container again, water sloshing over the sides, and ambled back over to the flowers.

“Call me whatever you like,” he said, hovering over some chrysanthemums. “No matter what ye choose to call me, it won’t change who I am on the inside. In the end, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

“I… I guess,” she said, giving him an odd look. “Well, fine then. I’ll just call you Gardener.”

The old pegasus snorted. “That’s a terrible name.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because gardeners wield trowels and shovels. They dig up the dirt, and then they grow the seeds they plant themselves.” He moved on to the tiger lilies. “As for me… all my sowing days are done. I don’t plant the flowers anymore. I just help them on their way.”

“Okay then, wise guy. If you aren’t a gardener, then what are you?”

He stooped over a plot of morning glories. The indigo flowers wilted in the fading light. “I suppose you can think of me as a caretaker.”

They stood quietly apart for a spell, Rainbow Dash and the Caretaker, until he exhausted his supply of water again. Then he set down his watering can and turned to look at her with an eyebrow raised. “So, what’s your name?”

“I’m—”

She paused.

Would he know her by her ‘common’ name? Then again, did she really want to start going by the royal one? She already felt like she was losing herself in this place. They’d taken away her freedom, her friends… Did she really want to let them have her identity too?

Aw, screw it. What difference did it make? It was just a dumb name.

“I’m Princess Aurora,” she said, albeit through gritted teeth.

He smirked. “Ach, that’s funny! And here I was all this time, thinking I was talking to Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow sputtered, “I—But—How did you—?!”

“Word travels quickly around Canterlot Castle, lass. Especially when you go terrorizing the domestic servants.”

She grimaced. “You heard about that, eh?”

“Of course! But just between you, me, and the statue here, I’m sure they had it coming. They can be a tad… enthusiastic at times,” he said, smiling wistfully. “Tell me, how d’you like Canterlot so far?”

Rainbow cast her eyes downward and kicked at a rock. “It sucks.”

“How eloquent! Care to elaborate?”

“I can’t stand being cooped up in this place. I wanna be out there!”

She pointed at the horizon sky, which had finally shed its golden cashmere for the violet cloak of dusk.

“That’s where I’m supposed to be! Not stuck in a stupid castle all day long! I think they gave me a room with a view just to torture me. And,” she added with a sneer, just to emphasize this last point was particularly awful, “nopony around here knows how to make a daisyburger and hayfries!”

The Caretaker roared with laughter.

Rainbow gave a little “hmph!” and plopped back down, leaning against the base of the statue. “Laugh it up, buddy.”

“Don’t despair. I’ve a feeling things will start looking up for you soon enough. But take this grain of wisdom from an old pegasus: any four walls can serve as a prison, but it’s not until we open our hearts and minds that we’re ever truly free.”

He leaned down and whispered, “Keep your eyes on that horizon.”

Then he picked up his watering can and started back toward the castle. He gave her a wink as he sauntered past.

Rainbow listened as his whistling tune faded into the distance along with his hoofsteps. Once he was gone, she turned her eyes back to the sky.

Luna had worked her magic upon the firmament, bringing out the moon. A few stars glimmered in the purple-deep amid faint gray brushstroke clouds.

Man, what she would give to be out there right now.

It’s only for a month and a half, she reaffirmed. Only a month and a half, and then you’ll be back home again.

As she gazed out into the west, she saw something strange. A beacon of light, rapidly descending toward Canterlot. Rainbow leapt to her hooves and squinted through the encroaching darkness.

That shock of color, that flicker of white—

Celestia was here.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Celestia was exhausted.

She persevered against the headwind. Against the soreness in her wings and the throbbing ache behind her eyes. The trials and travails of the past weeks had taken their toll on the empyreal goddess. Back-to-back journeys to and from the Griffin Kingdom had made her physically tired, but it was nothing compared to the mental strain, the emotional taxation of reliving every tortured second of her bitter parting with Aurora along the way; the fear and anguish of knowing what awaited her here upon her return.

And it was more than one unhappy task that awaited her. The information she had gleaned from their operatives in the frozen north would save lives. That information was her priority now; that obligation, her sovereign. And there was still so much to do. The chancellor had to be notified. There were exercises and rehearsals that had to be drilled into the Royal Guard. Preparations to be made for reconnaissance and rapid response. Briefings, briefings, and more briefings with municipal officials and departments…

As she glided down over the castle, her eyes fixed on a high tower window. Her window. There was so much that lay in front of her, but her soul cried out for peace and solitude. For the chance to stand still and be alone with her pain and her emotions.

Half an hour wouldn’t make a difference.

She could allow herself that.

But now as she descended on that window, on that sanctuary, a yellow glow of firelight alerted her to the presence of somepony inside. She heard the scratch of a quill against parchment as she landed on the ledge. Peering in, she saw Luna at the desk, scribbling away at some documents.

She tapped on the glass.

Luna heard the noise and looked up, a smile dawning on her lips. She sprang to her hooves and magically undid the latch.

A blast of warm air hit Celestia in the face as the window swung open. She stumbled into the study.

“Isn’t it a bit peculiar to be up doing paperwork at nine o’clock at night?” she deadpanned as she took stock of her sister.

Luna snorted and closed the window. “Gee, I don’t know. Isn’t it a bit peculiar to be sneaking into one’s own castle?”

“Touché.”

They looked at each other, and the sarcastic jabs were forgotten. Luna was at her sister’s side in an instant to welcome her with a nuzzle, a gesture Celestia lovingly returned.

“I’ve missed you, Tia.”

“Oh, Luna. I’ve missed you too.”

Then a wave of dizziness overcame Celestia. She broke away and staggered to the hearth, all but collapsing onto a pillow by the fireside.

“All you all right?” Luna rushed over, looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” said Celestia with an obvious wince. “Just a little tired.”

“You look like you’re in pain.”

“I’m a goddess, Luna. I’m supposed to be above pain.”

“You’re supposed to be above the vanilla cloud cakes they bake down in the kitchens too, but I’ve seen you put more than a few of those away. Now, how do you really feel?”

Celestia groaned. “Like somepony took a rolling pin to my brain.”

“Should I send for the court physician?”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Celestia said quickly. “But, ah… I wouldn’t turn down a slice of cloud cake, since you mentioned it.”

Luna nodded.

Before she could go, Celestia touched her gently on the hoof. And when the younger princess looked down, she found her sister’s tiredness replaced with an expression of the utmost determination and resolve.

“Friday.”

Luna took a moment to process this. “You’re certain?”

“Friday morning. Somewhere downtown. That’s all I could learn.”

“Have you notified the appropriate agencies? Local authorities?”

“That, dear sister, I leave in your good hooves.”

Luna sucked in a breath, feeling the mantle of responsibility on her shoulders. The two of them shared a knowing look.

“I did stop by the Academy,” Celestia admitted. “I informed Sage. He should be here in a few minutes.”

“You… want to start planning tonight? Tia, you’re exhausted!”

“Sage needed to know. There isn’t anypony better suited to spearheading this thing than him. And I will not rest so long as my people’s lives are in jeopardy.” Celestia’s voice carried all the weight of her crown and then some.

“But—”

“Aurora deserves the chance to meet him, besides.”

She hung her head, suddenly weary again.

“How is she, Luna?”

“Why don’t you ask me yourself?”

Now it was Celestia’s turn to suck in a sharp breath. There, leaning against the doorway, was Rainbow Dash.

An icicle of dread skewered her through and through. She had known this moment was coming, of course, but she hadn’t expected it to be upon her so soon. She’d spent the last six days trying to put the inevitability of this reunion as far from her mind as possible, and now it was here—

She felt Luna lay a steadying hoof on her shoulder. She hadn’t realized she’d begun to shake.

Then—

“I hope my tardiness hasn’t been cause for delay.”

There, standing behind Rainbow Dash, was an elderly purple unicorn with a snow-white beard and intelligent silver eyes, smiling out from behind a pair of half-moon spectacles. Sage Whitehoof.

He sidled on into the study. “Your Majesty. Your Majesty,” he said, bowing to Celestia and Luna each in turn.

Rainbow gaped at him. “You!”

With a merry twinkle in his eye, he turned and bowed down a third time for Rainbow Dash. “Your Highness,” he said.

“Rainbow, this is Sage Whitehoof,” Luna spoke up. “He serves as headmaster of Princess Celestia’s School for—”

“We’ve met,” Rainbow cut her off.

“You have?” Luna quirked an eyebrow. “Then you already know we intend him to oversee your tutelage here in Canterlot?”

“Toota-what?”

“Tutelage. Schooling in the arts of magic.”

Rainbow blanched. “School?”

Sage stepped forward. “Pardon me, Princess Luna. If I may interject… I’m honored that you and your sister think me worthy of such a noble charge, and I shan’t refuse if it’s your decree. But I can think of another purple unicorn who might be better suited to the task.”

“Who—?” Luna began. But Celestia stopped her with a touch.

Sage’s suggestion was no great puzzle to her. She had already caught on, and now her brow furrowed as she turned the idea over in her head. A friend and a familiar face might be more beneficial to her education, she rationalized. And another thought resounded in the aching hollows of her soul:

It would make her happy.

“Do it,” said Celestia.

“I’ll send missive first thing tomorrow morning.”

Celestia nodded. Then her eyes wandered back to Rainbow, and she bit her lower lip.

“Sage… I know I requested your presence here tonight on a matter of grave importance, but I neglected to realize how tired my travels have made me, and I’m afraid I must adjourn. Why don’t you and Princess Luna carry on without me? My sister is aware of all the relevant details, and I’m sure she can show you to a parlor when you can begin to hammer out strategy. I’ll reconvene with the two of you tomorrow morning.”

“Tia…?” Luna asked, an obvious edge of concern in her voice.

Celestia gave her hoof a pat. “It’s all right, sister.”

“Very well, Your Majesty. I bid you good evening,” said Sage. Then, with an affable smile, “Princess Luna, if you’ll lead the way?”

Luna’s eyes darted between Celestia and Rainbow Dash with apprehension. She gave her sister’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze before she slowly, reluctantly withdrew. “Of course, Professor Whitehoof. Princess Celestia and I are grateful for your assistance in this matter, as well as your discretion. I do believe there’s a chamber down the hall that will suit our purposes…”

The door clicked shut behind them, leaving Celestia alone, once more, in the company of Rainbow Dash.

Celestia took a deep breath. She had to face this. She couldn’t keep running from it. Her hooves were trembling… Elements, when was the last time anything affected her like this? She’d been a pillar of strength for centuries, and now here she was, shaking like a leaf!

Her shivering anxiety, her bottomless self-doubt… She forced them down like the bitter pills they were. Putting on what she hoped was an even expression, she looked back at that cyan-blue filly again.

“It’s good to see you again, Rainbow Dash. How… How are you faring?”

Rainbow’s reply was pure acid. “How am I faring?”

Celestia froze. The bottom fell out of her stomach to hear the bitterness and rage behind those words, to see those hard, pink eyes flashing at her like rubies again. Instantly, she was back in that hospital room, drowning in her own shame and flailing for something, anything, to say—

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Rainbow snarled, “I’m here for ONE REASON, and ONE REASON ONLY. I’m here for ME. You got that? Not you. ME.”

Her forehoof pointed at Celestia, violently jabbing the air, and the princess reeled back, cowering, her eyes wide, as if she’d actually been struck. It was truly a bizarre sight to see, but the flames were licking at Rainbow’s temper, and she was in a place that was too hot and too red to bother caring about how out-there this situation was—the fact that two weeks ago, she would have been bowing in respect for this pony, and now, here she was, shunning her to her face, about to go on a tirade that would leave her trembling—

“I’m here for ME. I’m not here to play nice, get to know you, sing Kumbaya, whatever the BUCK was going through your head when you asked me to come to Canterlot! If it weren’t for Luna and Twilight, I wouldn’t even BE here, and do you know why? Because I don’t care about ANYTHING you’ve got to say! I don’t care about you! I DON’T NEED YOU!”

Her wings were buzzing, she was in the air now, looming over Celestia, and Celestia was shrinking into herself, smaller than ever—

“My WHOLE LIFE, I didn’t need you! My WHOLE LIFE, you weren’t there, and that was FINE! I didn’t need you! I got by on my own! So don’t go thinking I need you now, because I DON’T!”

Rainbow’s hoof slammed against the door. It banged open, and she stormed out into the hall, pausing only to hurl one last grenade of invective and spite back in Celestia’s stupid face: “I DON’T NEED YOU! I NEVER DID, AND I NEVER WILL. NEVER!”

The door slammed closed with a devastating note of finality.

Outside, Rainbow pressed her back against the wall, adrenaline thundering in her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay.

It wasn’t enough. It never was anymore.

Inside, Celestia hung her head, hers to wallow in the sting.

The fire had gone out in the marble hearth. Nothing remained, not even so much as a withering flame. Only embers, rapidly cooling, and ashes, and ashes, and more ashes.

She wondered if there was enough kindling there for anything to catch.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Elsewhere, in Ponyville, one little pony tossed and turned, tossed and turned, kicked at her covers and tossed and turned. Horrors darted in front of her eyes. Horrors upon horrors upon horrors upon horrors upon…

Nightmares.

Running. Running in the dark. Dark shapes. Dark shapes all around.

She writhed and she trembled and she tossed and she turned…

In an ancient castle, surrounded by ruins.

Something glowing on the floor. A necklace. A golden necklace with a red bolt of lightning. She reached out to touch it. It floated up in the air. Started spinning. A sudden flash of light.

The lightning bolt was cracked, its brilliant scarlet hue faded to a forlorn gray. She looked at it and she cried.

The tears pushed past her eyelids and ran down her cheeks.

Dark shapes. Dark shapes all around her. Trapped. Nowhere to run. She tried anyway. They caught her. They wouldn’t let her go.

…and she tossed and she turned…

A glint of silver in the dark.

Pain. Horrible, stabbing pain.

Coldness. Coldness pushing from her chest into her limbs, filling her veins with ice. Darkness seeping in, turning the whole world black. Yet when she looked down, it wasn’t herself she saw lying there, motionless, in a pool of red.

…horrors upon horrors upon horrors upon horrors upon…

Nightmare.

Those jet-black wings. That swirling hair. Nightmare Moon, smirking from up on the dais, shedding stars from her indigo mane and filling her ears with the most wicked kind of laughter.

She stomped her hoof. The Elements shattered into a thousand pieces.

The night. Would last. Forever.

Nightmare Moon scraped her hoof and charged, and she cowered away from her. From those dragon eyes, running at her in the dark. From those twin, purple-colored icicles, glittering with malice.

Toss and turn. Toss and turn. Scream for your life and toss and turn.

TWILIGHT…

An earthquake. Black fire. A gash that split the sky.

TWILIGHT…

Dark shapes. Dark shapes, galloping all around her. A glint of silver. A pool of red. And lying in the pool, covered in the red, was—was—

“TWILIGHT!”

…Then she woke up, drenched in sweat, gasping for breath, clutching at her blanket like it was the only thing in the world that would protect her.

“A dream,” she choked out. “Just a dream.”

She blinked in the morning sunlight through pinpoint pupils.

This was one ghostie she couldn’t bring herself to giggle at. She didn’t think she ever would. Slowly, she rocked back and forth, hugging herself.

“TWILIGHT! ARE YOU AWAKE YET?” Spike called up.

“Y-Yes, I am, Spike!” she shouted back immediately out of habit. She cursed herself and closed her eyes, praying the little dragon wouldn’t catch the obvious quiver in her voice.

He didn’t. “THERE’S A LETTER FOR YOU FROM CANTERLOT! LOOKS LIKE IT’S IMPORTANT!”

Twilight groaned. Probably a message from Princess Celestia berating her for her lack of friendship reports. Nightmare upon nightmare. What a way to start the morning.

She dragged herself out of bed, took a couple minutes to brush her teeth and her hair, and then descended the stairs to the library proper. The smell of coffee and eggs wafted in from the kitchen. Spike was cooking breakfast.

“The letter’s on the desk!” Spike shouted over the sizzle of the frying pan.

Twilight’s stomach rumbled, but her appetite could wait. Blinking through the last bleary remnants of sleep, she crossed the room to where the missive lay upon her writing desk.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

The parchment didn’t bear Princess Celestia’s seal. Instead, staring back at her was a red wax disc stamped with an arcane eye.

The emblem of the Academy.

She tore into it, barely able to contain her excitement. She read every word. When her eyes reached the bottom, she started over and read it again.

And again.

And again.

Then at last, she set the letter back down.

She heard Spike humming in the kitchen, accompanied by the clink of pots and pans and the gush of water from the tap. Quietly, so as not to alert him, she went to the front door and slipped outside. Rounding the trunk of the massive old oak tree, she stood on a grassy rise, and with a small frown, gazed out into the north.

Twilight Sparkle looked on Canterlot, far in the distance.

05. The Shadow Risen

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER FIVE
The Shadow Risen

Originally Published 4/1/2012

“P-Professor? May I come in?”

The ebony door rose up, ancient and unknowable. Twilight Sparkle stood before it for a while, staring at her skulking reflection in the brass, flinching at the audible quaver as her voice limped down the spiral stair to the floor of the tower, and pretty much feeling like an idiot.

She knocked again, and again there was no answer. Trying the knob, she found it unlocked, and she nudged it open a crack. “Professor?”

The bedroom was immaculate. It had all of the castle’s customary garnishes—expensive marble, elegant furnishings, beautiful latticework, and the like—but not a single personal item adorned it. No artwork, no photographs, no trinkets, tokens, or mementos. The bed might have gone unslept in for a hundred years for how neatly made it was, and Twilight was especially bewildered to see not a single book peeking out from the long-running shelves.

“Twilight Sparkle! Is that you?” said Sage, stepping into view.

She felt the beginnings of a grin, the hot blush creeping up. All those hours in school, listening to his lectures, gazing awestruck at his magic, hanging on his every word… A dozen years of inspiration flashed in front of her eyes.

But she put on an even face. Professionalism. Sophistication. Maturity. You’re an adult now, Twilight. So act like one.

“Um… H-H-Hello, Professor Whitehoof,” she heard herself say.

She facehoofed. Nice job, Twilight. Very sophisticated.

“Well, don’t just stand out there on the steps, my dear girl! You didn’t have any difficulty making an entrance a couple of hours ago. I don’t see any reason why it should trouble you now. Please, enter.”

Twilight did just that.

Sage strolled over to the desk and picked something up. A small hand mirror, by the shape of it, with the looking glass wrapped in velvet cloth. He levitated it into a little trunk, which Twilight now noticed at the foot of the bed, and then he gently shut the lid.

“Are you packing?” she wondered.

“No. Quite the opposite. Princess Celestia has invited me to stay here at Canterlot Castle for the next few weeks, that I might oversee… certain things. I’m free to decline, of course. But just between you and me,” Sage said with a wink, “I think I’ll stay.”

“Really? I mean… are you finding the accommodations satisfactory?”

He smiled. “You always were one for formalities. I’ve outgrown them, myself. But then again, I have a few more years under my belt than you.

“Why, I remember the day Princess Celestia first brought you to my door. It wasn’t so long ago, you know. Oh, I’m sure it seems an eternity to you, but to me, the years are like chariots, racing past on wheels of light. One thing, though, which I’ll never forget… even back then, while all your classmates were busy magic fingerpainting, you still had your little nose buried in a textbook.”

Twilight turned a deeper shade of crimson. With every expert pull at her heartstrings, she felt her resolve weaken and crack, as the barricades of her self-consciousness threatened to come down in face of a torrent of roiling emotions. She wanted so badly to reach out to him. To show him how much she cared, and how she hadn’t forgotten.

Sage continued, “Of course, as grown-up as you fancied yourself, you always found it in you to put aside those little formalities and greet your old professor with a hug…”

That was it. The dam burst, and all her pretenses about maturity and adulthood fell forgotten by the wayside.

Twilight ran to Sage, embracing him in friendship.

Sage’s silver eyes twinkled. “It’s been too long, Miss Sparkle.”

“Oh, Professor, I’m sorry. I’ve been so preoccupied with my advanced studies, and the princess, and my friends in Ponyville—”

“Nonsense, my dear,” said Sage, returning the hug in earnest.

He strolled over to the hearth and reached for an amber bottle on the mantle. “The magic of friendship is ancient and powerful. It’s well worth your study. Would you care for a drink?”

“Oh… No, I couldn’t.”

“You’re a grown mare now. You’re welcome to share in a drink with your senile old headmaster if you like.”

“Thank you, Professor, but I’m alright,” said Twilight. She paused for a few moments to ruminate on his words. “Do… Do you really think my studies in Ponyville are important?”

Sage smiled distantly as he poured into a glass. “Absolutely, I do. And Princess Celestia shares in that opinion, to say nothing of Princess Luna. As much as you are Celestia’s protégée, I think you will find you have no greater advocate than the young princess of the moon.”

“Really?”

“She has much to be thankful for, and at least six ponies to whom she owes her gratitude. None of them more so than you. As a matter of fact, we all owe you a great deal.”

Sage sighed. “But I’m a sentimental fool. Forgive me. The hour grows late, and I’m sure you didn’t come all the way to the West Tower to listen to me prattle on.”

“Professor…” Twilight struggled to find the right words.

She approached him again, crossing the room to stand beside him at the fire, and touched him tenderly on the shoulder. “Just being here, with you… Being able to talk to you again, after all this time… It’s well worth a late bedtime.”

Something moved before Sage’s eyes. “You’re too kind.”

Twilight opened her saddle pack and produced the letter. “This came to my home at the Ponyville library yesterday. I take it you were the one who sent it?”

“Indeed, I was. Thank you for answering the summons so promptly. I feared you might delay in coming to Canterlot. As intentionally vague as the letter was, it pleases me to see you correctly interpreted its urgency.”

The young unicorn’s brow knit in confusion. “I don’t understand. The last time I got a letter that was anywhere near this serious, a dragon had taken up residence in the mountains west of town, and Princess Celestia asked me to convince it to find another roost. That letter wasn’t vague at all, though. Why the sudden need for secrecy?”

Sage seemed to mull over the question as he stared into the crackling fire, raising his glass every now and then to take a drink.

“Twilight, do you remember the Three Pillars?” he asked at last.

“I—well, yes, of course. Wisdom, Fortitude, and Devotion.”

“Qualities that your friend, Rainbow Dash, sadly lacks. She has a fiery temperament, as you know, and a chip on her shoulder where school and learning are concerned. It wouldn’t be a problem if not for her newfound powers, for what Rainbow Dash lacks in control, she makes up for in raw magical ability.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same Rainbow Dash?”

“Last Wednesday, in a fit of rage, she blew up the royal dining room.”

“She blew up the dining room?” Twilight struggled to wrap her brain around the concept of her high-flying pegasus friend slinging spells, and she came up a mile short. She defaulted to sarcasm. “What happened, did somepony insult her favorite Wonderbolt or something?”

Sage chuckled. “There was a little more to it than that. Regardless, it stands to reason that Rainbow Dash is a force of nature. Most of the time, her powers lie dormant beneath the surface… but unchecked by careful study, they have a proclivity to explode forth with all the sound and fury of a volcano. She’s a danger to herself and everypony around her, and so she requires a guiding hoof to teach her the ways of magic. Which is why I’ve nominated you for the task.”

“What? Me? I’ve never taught anypony anything in my whole life!”

“There aren’t very many things in this world more powerful than the magic of friendship, and the bond between you and Rainbow Dash runs deep indeed. You are the pony for the job.”

“But—But—”

Sage’s smile faltered. “Of course, it’s up to you. You are free to decline if you wish. I only hope Princess Celestia won’t be too disappointed…”

Twilight’s eye twitched. “Disappoint…? The princess…?”

Sage downed the rest of his liquor, then turned away to pour himself another drink, pausing briefly to admire his victorious smirk reflected in the bottom of the glass.

“W-Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint Princess Celestia…”

“You’ll do it then? Oh, I’m so happy to hear it!” said Sage, clapping her on the shoulder. “Now, don’t fret about a thing. Just make up a list of the items you’ll need brought from your home in Ponyville, and I’ll see that a courier is dispatched to pick them up.”

Twilight looked confused. “Items? From Ponyville…?”

“In preparation for your extended stay, of course,” Sage explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m sure there are plenty of things you’ll need that you didn’t pack—textbooks, spellbooks, glyphs, charts, reference materials…”

“Spike—”

“—would be better to remain in Ponyville. You’ll want your dragon there so you can send letters to your friends, won’t you?”

Twilight’s mind reeled. The conversation was moving too fast for her to keep up with.

Sage quelled her anxieties with a reassuring smile. “It’s admirable of you to volunteer for this duty. Truly, Rainbow Dash has no better friend in the world. And Princess Celestia has no finer pupil.”

“Th-Thank you, Professor,” said Twilight. “But… if I’m really going to do this… I think I’d rather go back to Ponyville and do my own packing. I don’t know how I feel about the idea of some stranger going through my things, and I never actually said goodbye to any of my—”

“I would advise against that.” A hard look swept across Sage’s face.

Twilight was taken aback. “Professor?”

“Miss Sparkle, you’re a bright girl, and you’ve known me long enough to trust my judgment. So trust my judgment in this. Stay in Canterlot. Don’t go back to Ponyville, and don’t venture outside the castle alone.”

With those ominous words, Twilight remembered the purpose of her visit. The secret meeting in the lower chambers of the castle, and all the dark things she had overheard from behind that decrepit wall. Curiosity vied with apprehension as she regarded her old teacher, searching for an explanation amidst all the shadows at play on his face in the fitful orange glow of the fire.

“I grew up here in Canterlot,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Before I moved to Ponyville, I lived here for most of my life. Nopony has ever told me it wasn’t safe to go outside before.”

Sage sighed. “Twilight…”

“And the letter. You never answered me when I asked you why it was so vague. You just changed the subject.”

“Twilight.”

“And that meeting you had with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, down in that room—that war room—”

“Twilight. Please.”

“No, Professor,” said Twilight, her face taking on a stony countenance all of its own. “There’s something going on. If it’s drastic enough that you don’t want me to leave the castle, I think I have the right to know why.”

Sage mustered a weak smile. “I wish I were at liberty to tell you. Two nights ago, the princess visited me at the Academy to ask for my expertise in this ordeal. I swore to her then that I wouldn’t divulge any of the secrets she revealed to me—secrets she’s worked very hard, over many months, to unearth; secrets that ponies much younger and more nimble than I am have risked their lives to come by. I can’t betray all that, Twilight. I can’t violate that trust. Not even for you.”

“I… I guess I can understand that. But—”

“Shh. Listen to me, Twilight.”

As he stood there nursing his drink, age itself seemed to seep into his every feature, clouding his eyes and evaporating the levity and the vigor that Twilight had always known him for.

“An old stallion sees many things, in his days upon this earth, that he would sooner forget than go on remembering,” he said, his voice heavy with gravity. “I’m old, Twilight. Older than you know. And the things I’ve seen in my life… Tragedies which ended empires. Injustices that scar the soul. Love so bright, it could light up the sun, turned as cold and dark and desolate as the moon.

“All your life, you’ve known only peace and pleasantness. A world in harmony under the banner of Celestia… and now Luna, as well. But there are still some ponies who are like me, who are old and full of memories. Who remember the tragedies and the injustices, yet who’ve forgotten the love. Time has turned their passion to madness, and their bitterness into the worst kind of religion.”

Absently, he swirled his glass, peering down at the little vortex which churned the brandy. “Hate is a violent, dangerous, all-consuming thing. It lures in the best of us with false promises and inflamed rhetoric, and one need only wade into it haunch-deep to find oneself seized by the current and swept down to its hungry depths. It seems a few of Equestria’s youth have been snared by this undertow, pulled in from the fringes of society to serve a master much more sinister than they realize. It has nothing to do with you—or with Rainbow Dash, for that matter. That this comes on the morn of her Unity is a fluke of timing. No, this has been brewing for a long while now. Especially since the last Summer Sun Celebration.”

“Does this have anything to do with Nightmare Moon? With what my friends and I did last year to stop her?” asked Twilight, searching out his eyes. When she found them, she held on and didn’t let go.

“I can’t tell you that,” said Sage. “I wish I could.”

The darkness wrapped around him now as the fire began to burn out and its orange radiance retreated behind the logs. Sage levitated a poker from the rack beside the hearth and nudged the wood. The flame surged with renewed life.

“Heed my advice,” he said. “This castle has stood, impenetrable, since the time of the Coronation. It has never been assaulted. It has never been breached. And as much as our resident captain of the guard might like to boast, it has less to do with the diligence and training of his ranks than it does with the enchantments placed upon the cornerstone. As long as you have a hoof inside the castle or on its grounds, no harm may come to you from anypony with malice in their heart.

“You are destined to do great things, Twilight. Heed my advice. Don’t go back to Ponyville. Don’t risk your future and your life. Some things are more important.”

Sage ended his monologue, and then the room knew only the crackle of the fire, and the whistle of the wind through the gaps in his curtained window. Twilight was quiet for a long, long time.

At last she spoke again, “My friends. The other Bearers of Harmony. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity. Are they in danger?”

“The princess has placed them under constant surveillance. No harm should come to them.”

“But it could?” Twilight asked, the anxiety rising in her voice. “Maybe you should bring them all to the castle. I mean, if it’s really as dangerous as you say—”

“They have lives. They have stores and farms and animals to tend to, and they have families who love and depend on them.”

“But—”

“Don’t spend your hours fearing for them. They’re under the Guard’s protection. They will be safe enough.”

Twilight’s head spun. “I—I don’t know what to say, Professor. This is all so much. When I left Ponyville this morning, I never expected…”

Sage smiled. “Fortitude, Twilight. Fortitude and Wisdom. Don’t fear. This isn’t your burden to bear. Just walk the path in front of you, and let me handle the rest. Rainbow Dash needs your help.”

Twilight nodded, lost in her thoughts.

Sage patted her on the shoulder. “It’s almost night. You must be tired. Would you like me to walk you back to your room?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. I’m fine. I… I think I need some time by myself to go over all this in my head, anyway. Thank you for everything you’ve told me.”

She took him in a hug again, wrinkling her nose as the silvery hairs of his beard tickled her. After a few moments, she broke it off, and with one last nod and the smallest smile, she marched over to the door.

Her hoof stopped inches from the knob. Then she remembered…

“Professor… What is the Ascendancy?”

The breath hitched in Sage’s chest. He stared into the fire.

“A Brief History of Equestria, Part One, Chapter Three, Page 171. The Canterlot Archives should have a copy,” he replied at length. “If you can’t find the answers you’re looking for there, ask me tomorrow at the end of the day, if by then the whole world doesn’t already know. By the grace of Celestia, I pray that won’t be the case.”

Twilight nodded. “Thank you, Professor. Good night.”

The door glided silently open, and Twilight slipped out. Sage listened to the sound of her hoof-falls as she circled down the stairs to the base of the tower and out onto the castle ramparts.

He continued to stare into the fire for a long time after she left.

Then, with a cursory glance toward his trunk, he set the brandy glass back on the mantle and reached straight for the bottle.

The setting sun stroked the marble fixtures of the East Garden with a golden brush, tinting everything its dazzling shade of yellow. On top of a certain statue lay Rainbow Dash, gazing skyward with her hooves behind her head. Nearby, the Caretaker worked a rose bush, listening to her relate the day’s adventures.

“…and then he called me a PEASANT! That stupid JERK!”

At least, she would have been speaking about the day’s adventures if she didn’t keep coming back to the subject of Tristar. Over the last fifteen minutes, she had called him by every bad name that was in the book and a few that weren’t.

“And then—THEN—he tells me I haven’t got any honor. Like he’s the most honorable pony ever to walk the face of the earth! And not even ten seconds later, he tackles me THROUGH A WALL!”

“It looks like ye survived, lass.”

“Yeah, but seriously, what kind of guy DOES something like that? I’m supposed to be a freaking princess, and BAM! Right through three inches of solid rock! Can you believe that?”

“Actually, I can.”

The navy-blue pegasus took off his straw hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead, gazing up at the plant with hard-set determination. It was a big, overgrown thing, towering twice his height above him, with no more than a couple early-spring roses peeking out through the gangling mess. He took a minute to look at it critically, then went straight for the shears, lopping off huge swaths of foliage until it was down to hock-height.

Rainbow glared. “What? You’re saying there’s a reason why he had to go all linebacker-mode on me?”

“That’s a silly question. There’s a reason for everything.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s his reason?”

“It seems fairly obvious to me.” Snip. Snip. “He doesn’t like you.”

“Well, the feeling’s mutual!”

With a petulant little sneer, she rolled off her perch and took to the air, drifting over to where the pegasus worked, still staring up at the sky as her wings beat lazily beneath her.

“Aye, lass, you can hate him if you choose. It won’t make a difference to him, though. You’ll always be a bam to him.”

Rainbow flipped over in mid-air to give him an odd look. “A what?”

“A bam.” Snip. Snip.

“What the hay does that mean?”

“It means he won’t be voting for ye in any popularity contests.”

“Well, I coulda told you that already!”

She watched with mild interest as he lowered his shears and kneeled beside the freshly-pruned bush, sweeping out the brush with his hooves and tossing it into a pile. Once that task was done, he took each rose cane in his arms and began to gently strip them down.

“What are you doing, anyway?” she asked.

Scrape. Rustle. Scrape. “Taking off the leaves.”

“Why?”

“So they can grow back again.”

“You just cut the whole thing down to a shrub. What’s the point?”

“The point is to clean it of any insects or diseases that might’ve taken hold. Don’t worry, she’ll come back tall. This time next year, I’ll have to trim her back down to size again.” He grinned. “I always do.”

He continued to strip the plant, skimming his hooves along the canes in long, downward strokes until all the foliage came off. It was only a few minutes before the bush was brought down to bare sticks and all of the leaves found their way into the pile. When he finished, he stood up again and turned to face Rainbow.

“Now then, lass, how is everythi—” He broke off mid-sentence when he noticed the frown still etched into Rainbow’s face. “Oh, come now, you aren’t still on about that daft captain, are you?”

“So what if I am?” She flipped over again, picked out one mischievous little nimbostratus cloud bobbing his way through a patch of cumuli, and made him the focal point for all her anger. “Guy’s a jerk.”

The old blue pegasus dusted off his hooves and looked off at the sky with her. “Aye, that he is. But what good will it do sit and stew?”

“I just wish I knew why the guy hates my guts so much. I mean, yeah, I probably didn’t do myself any favors when I started running my mouth, but that dude’s had it out for me since the day we met.”

“Tristar isn’t some lowly servant. His position as captain of the guard is honorific. It’s been in his family for umpteen generations, passed down from father to son over the centuries. He belongs to a noble caste. He’s a member of the High Court of Canterlot.”

Rainbow turned up her nose. “I don’t see what’s so noble about him.”

“He is what he is, and his noble house happens to be among the most exalted in all the kingdom. His ancestors were some of the most virtuous, courageous, and self-sacrificing ponies ever to lay down their lives in the name of Equestria.”

A smile passed over the Caretaker’s face as he stooped down next to the leafless bush again. “They were also some of the proudest. It’s a load of rubbish, lass, but as ye learn the ropes of Canterlot, ye’ll come find the same is true for a lot of the old clans. As the years fade into decades and the decades into centuries, so do titles fade into entitlement.”

“I still don’t see why he’s gotta be such a jerk.”

“The High Court isn’t the most accepting lot. They’re a loud-mouthed bunch of blaggards, and they place a lot of weight on things like pedigree and purity of birth, which you have naught of. I gander your prominence seems very much like an intrusion to them. Then there’s the social order to think of… For a millennium, Princess Celestia has been the fulcrum on which they teeter and totter—and then to have you show up! I’ll betcha five bits they’re all scared out of the gourd you’ll disrupt the status quo, and suddenly Celestia won’t be granting them favors anymore.”

“Good! If they’re anything like Tristar, she oughta just fire them all!”

The Caretaker smiled. “Aye, well, that might be wee bit hard. They’re a tad entrenched in way of things anymore, and they wield a lot of power and money. The Princess would have less of a rabble on her hooves if she sacked the all of Parliament.”

Rainbow yawned. “This is super interesting and all, but it still doesn’t change the fact that Tristar is a—what are you doing now?”

The old pegasus leaned over the naked canes of the rose bush, giving each one a close eye as he sifted through them. “I’m inspecting the plant. Trying to decide what’s worth keeping.”

“But there’s barely anything left of the plant! You just cut it down to a third of its size and took off every single leaf!”

“Aye. And now I’ll cut her down even more.” He picked out one of the canes in the back and turned it over in his hooves. A frown curled his lip. “Ack. Discolored.” He reached for the shears again.

Rainbow only watched for a minute or two more before she realized how totally, utterly, mind-numbingly bored she was. She flew back over to the statue and threw herself onto it with a strangled groan.

“ARGH! This SUCKS! I wanna cruise the sky so bad!”

Snip. Snip. Snip. “Well, what’s stopping ye?”

“Stupid Celestia, wasting my bucking time! As if the last however many days weren’t bad enough, she’s gotta keep me waiting for hours until her dumb meeting lets out.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t her choice, lass. As the ruler of this kingdom, there are a lot of tasks on her plate which aren’t exactly a barrel o’ monkeys. It takes patience and sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice,” Rainbow muttered. “What a stupid word.”

“It’s an important word.”

She shot the Caretaker a look. “What’s so great about sacrifice?”

“It’s a sacred thing. There wouldn’t be an Equestria today if not for it. The next time ye chance to open a history book, ponder, sometime, why there are so few alicorns left in the world, or how this harmony came to be. Little is possible without sacrifice. Celestia has learned that well over her millennial reign, and in time, so will you.”

He finished clipping away at the bush and stepped back to admire his work. With a satisfied smile, he laid down his shears and disappeared off to the shed around the corner. He returned with a wheelbarrow a couple minutes later, squeaking and trundling across the lawn to stop in front of the sizable pile of brush. “Would ye mind giving me a hoof with this?” he asked Rainbow.

“Huh? Oh. Sure.”

Rainbow jumped down off the statue and approached the leafy heap. She picked up a few sticks between her teeth and dropped them into the bed of the wheelbarrow. Then she did it a couple more times.

She would have kept right on doing it if the Caretaker’s unimpressed look hadn’t stopped her in her tracks.

“Whafft?” she garbled out from around a mouthful of twigs.

“I meant with magic. That horn of yours could take care of this job in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

She spat out the foliage. “Huh? Magic? I don’t know any of that mystic mumbo-jumbo. I’ve only had this thing for a couple weeks.”

“Well, I thought—”

“And what’s with the smear against lambs, anyway? Some of my best friends are lambs.”

“Ah, well, forgive me for being so improper,” the Caretaker said with a roll of his eyes. “Might want to consider brushing up on your spells. I’ve known enough unicorns in my day to say magic is a useful skill.”

“So how do you want to do this?” Rainbow asked.

The pegasus picked up a branch in his jaws. “The old fashioned way.”

They worked together for the next five minutes, clearing away all the pruned plant-life. When everything was said and done, a veritable jungle of vegetation spilled over the lip of the wheelbarrow. The Caretaker took hold of the handles and made ready to cart it away.

“Time for me to go,” he said. “Don’t worry your head. Celestia will be along shortly. Just give her time.”

Rainbow sighed and sat down against the base of the statue. “See ya.”

“Eyes forward, lass. Eyes forward.”

The Caretaker gave her another one of his crafty little winks. Then he started on his way back down the garden path, whistling a jaunty tune as he pushed the wheelbarrow along.

Rainbow just kept staring straight ahead, unblinking, expressionless, as he turned the corner and departed out of view. As the sun reached the end of its daily transit, and the amber-tinted grass shifted to hues of gray and violet beneath the darkening sky.

Ten minutes passed. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, there was Celestia right in front of her, coming up the same walk the Caretaker had just left by. Her multicolored mane streamed off to the side in the gentle breeze.

And… And there was something different about her. It took Rainbow a few seconds to figure out what it was.

She was smiling.

Not the strained kind of smile she had put on the other evening when Rainbow ambushed her in her office. Gone was the usual uncertainty, the apprehension, the weakness that Rainbow had come to expect of her and disdain her for. Instead, just an easygoing smile. And a twinkle in her eye that said she was planning something.

“Hello, Rainbow.”

Rainbow gazed up at her with a puzzled look. “What’s up?”

Celestia stopped a short distance away. She leaned down to meet her daughter at eye level. “I’m sorry I took so long. I know how anxious you are to fly. I think I might just be able to do something about that… but if you’ll come with me, I have a little surprise for you first.”

Rainbow perked up. “Surprise? What surprise?”

Celestia just smiled. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

“Alright. I’ll play.” Rainbow picked herself up off the ground, cracking her neck back and forth. “Where are we going?”

“Up!”

A mighty gust from her wings kicked up a storm of petals and leaves and blades of grass. Rainbow dug in her hooves and shielded her eyes as the sudden whoosh blew back her mane. The Princess skyrocketed high into the air, up and away.

“Come on!” Celestia shouted from twenty feet above. “What are you waiting for? I thought you were the fastest pony in Equestria!”

Rainbow snorted. “Is that a challenge?”

“It’s more than a challenge!” Celestia smirked. “It’s a race!”

She shot off the ground like a cannon. As soon as her hooves left solid earth, Celestia tore off into the night, pointed toward the lilac towers and twilit rooftops of the castle.

“Oh, it’s on!”

Rainbow took off after her, teeth grit and wings pushed to their limit, powering upward as hard and fast as she could. The graying landscape of the garden spiraled out of view beneath her, and then it was just her and the open sky.

And Celestia.

Far out in front of her, the goddess soared. Not flew, but soared, as if she were riding uphill on an invisible train. Her wings flared out, but she didn’t flap them. Not once. It was like every molecule of air just leapt out of her way to allow her to slip between the streams.

And Rainbow was stuck behind.

She pumped her wings for all she was worth. Celestia’s contrail arced around the golden domes, fifty feet of pastel rainbow blazing through the dark of dusk.

Now sixty feet.

Now seventy.

Rainbow growled and pumped her wings all the harder.

Up was the hardest way to fly, and she was starting to feel it in every muscle of her body. Her lungs heaved, and her heart pounded a drumline in her head, and the wind screamed in her ears, and now she was eighty feet behind, and now she was ninety—

“What’s the matter?” shouted Celestia. “Can’t keep up?”

Anger. Little flashes of anger going off like fireworks before her eyes.

“You wish!” she yelled back. And still she flapped. Faster. Faster.

So what if she couldn’t beat Celestia on the ascent? She’d make up for it on the straightaway. All she needed was a little downward momentum. As soon as she heard the whistle of that mach cone, she’d have the whole thing won. Fifteen seconds of straightaway was all it would take.

Celestia swerved around a corner.

She swore.

Then she followed.

Above the magisterial halls of the throne room, between the tapering towers, they flew, the little fuchsia flags atop every spire painting them a narrow racetrack. This was it. Her straightaway. She could feel the mach cone stirring up, the air pressure whipping against her face—

Celestia swerved again.

Rainbow slammed on the brakes and veered sharp, barely managing to avoid slamming into the observatory dome. She snarled. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

And on, they went. Celestia threaded the battlements and looped the turrets and took a hairpin turn every other second, and Rainbow chased her, not quite catching up, but not losing ground anymore, either.

And as they went on, she began to feel something bubbling up inside.

Fun. Exhilaration. Happiness.

And something else.

Something to do with Celestia. Something she hadn’t ever felt before.

Something she didn’t quite know what it was.

They flew around the pointed tip of the West Tower, the whole of the valley laid out beneath while the moon smiled down from the amethyst sky. Celestia still out front, Rainbow not far behind.

And then she saw it.

Sitting on a ledge of the mountain, where the waterfall crashed down from the snow-covered peak. A round marble building, like a miniature Colosseum, tucked away amidst the crags and crevices.

It was the finish line. It had to be.

And Celestia was flying straight for it.

Celestia was flying straight.

Rainbow grinned a devilish grin. She trimmed her wings.

The mountain loomed large, the speed blurred her vision, the scream of the mach cone rang loud, rang shrill, she nosed up, tightened her body, came up fast on Celestia before Celestia even knew what was happening. By the time the goddess realized, it was almost too late, but she kicked it into high gear at the last second, and then they were racing side-by-side, neck-and-neck, down toward the mountain, down toward the finish line. There wasn’t enough distance to pull off a rainboom, but Rainbow knew she was fast enough to win, she just knew it.

Because the only thing Rainbow Dash liked more than flying fast—

They dived in unison toward the open top of the building—

—WAS WINNING.

One final burst of speed, and Rainbow pulled out front. They plunged down beneath the marble rim, past the columns and the arches, toward the finish line, toward the floor.

Rainbow’s hooves touched down first.

Not half a second later, Celestia landed beside her. “Oh, my, that’s the most fun I’ve had in ages!” she laughed. “But I have to hand it to you. You won the race fair and square.”

Rainbow panted. “Ha… Ha… You actually… thought you could win?”

“Against Equestria’s best young flyer? Oh no, of course not. I thought I’d give it a try though. You have to admit, I came close.”

“Give it a… few more… centuries… of practice… and you might just… stand a chance… of beating me!”

Rainbow’s legs buckled. She promptly collapsed onto her back.

“Hold on… just gimme a minute… to catch my awesomeness…”

Celestia leaned down. “If you’re winded, a drink from the pool might slake your thirst. It’s fresh, clean, ice-cold mountain runoff. Don’t worry about the animals. It’s enchanted for purity.”

“Pool…? Animals…? What the hay are you—whaaaaa?”

Only then did Rainbow open her eyes to the vast, circular lake which stretched eighty feet from side-to-side, dominating the whole floor of the amphitheater. At least a dozen fountains fed into it, adding their gushing white water to the placid blue. And all around, there were towering trees with trunks that shined like pearls in the moonlight and leaves of every color under the sun.

And there were birds. Hundreds of them. Eagles and hawks and owls and parrots and toucans and sparrows and ospreys and loons and doves. Peacocks strutting across the grass with their tails on full display. Giant pink flamingos with dopey grins balancing one-legged in the water.

Rainbow groaned and climbed back to her hooves again.

“How do you feel?” asked Celestia.

“Like I just dropped into Fluttershy’s dream come true.” She watched in disbelief as a trio of ducks floated up to where they stood on the bank, quacked, and took off laughing amongst themselves. “What is this? Some kind of bird zoo?”

“This is the castle aviary. It’s what I wanted to show you.”

Celestia pursed her lips and whistled. There was a flicker of orange, a shock of flame in the treetops, and then a huge, fiery bird swooped down and landed on Celestia’s hoof. It was—

“Philomena, this is Rainbow Dash. I believe you met before, correct?”

The phoenix flared out her wings in greeting. A plume of fire went up from the tips of her feathers.

Rainbow stared, open-mouthed. “No way.”

“Aren’t you going to say hello to Philomena, Rainbow?”

“Er… Yeah. What’s up, Philomena? Long time no see.”

Philomena cawed a hello.

If the blaze of the phoenix was anything to write home about, the fire that burned in Celestia’s eyes was something even warmer.

“Hold out your arm, Rainbow,” she said.

Rainbow stared up at her suspiciously. “Why?”

“So Philomena can perch on it, of course.”

“What? N-No, I don’t think that’s such a good—”

“Shh, Rainbow. Trust me.”

With trepidation, Rainbow extended her hoof. Philomena opened her wings and took flight, and a burst of hot air washed over Rainbow as the phoenix gave one mighty flap. A second or two later, the fiery bird made the short hop onto her vulnerable, exposed, very-much-not-fire-resistant arm. Rainbow flinched. And then…

Nothing. There was no heat. No pain. No burnination.

“She’s… She’s cool,” Rainbow said.

Philomena flared her wings and preened.

Celestia smiled. “Philomena thanks you for your compliment.”

“No, I mean she’s literally cool. As in, the opposite of hot.”

“Phoenixes only scorch their enemies and those who seek to do them harm. To everypony else, they’re as mild as a daisy.”

Rainbow grinned and sat down at the shore of the pool. She stuck out her other hoof, and Philomena jumped between them, her fiery plumage rustling against her mane. “This is wicked awesome.”

“I’d like you to have her.”

Rainbow stared in disbelief. “What?”

A wisp of sentimentality graced Celestia’s face. She reached out with a delicate hoof and stroked Philomena under her beak. The phoenix gave a soft coo. “Philomena has been my companion for hundreds of years, for countless dozen life cycles. Ever since she was a hatchling, when I saved her from a liontaur in the grim reaches of the Fringe. I arrived too late to rescue her parents—”

Philomena gave a little caw and rubbed her face up against Celestia’s, as if to reassure her. Celestia smiled and closed her eyes.

“—but life goes on. It always does. And over the centuries, Philomena has proven to be the truest of my friends.”

“So where’s the part about me having her come in?”

Celestia chuckled. “That was probably a poor choice of words on my part. Philomena isn’t a possession to be had. She has a life and a family of her own. But I would like for her to become your companion, just as she has been mine. When you leave Canterlot, let her go with you. When you fly, let her fly by your side.

“This, I ask of you, Rainbow. It’s my only request. I don’t wish to keep you from flying and pursuing your dreams. But with Philomena by your side, at least I’ll know that you’re safe.”

Rainbow was at a loss for words. “I… I don’t…”

“Promise me you won’t fly alone without Philomena with you.”

“Y-Yeah. Of course,” Rainbow said. Then, seconds later, “What’s going on? Does this have anything to do with that thing Twi and me dropped in on earlier this afternoon? That big conference with Princess Luna and all those other ponies?”

“Do you know how to whistle, Rainbow?”

Rainbow blinked. “What? I… yeah, I know how to whistle. But what’s that got to do with—”

“If you ever want to call Philomena, just put your hoof between your lips and blow. Like this.”

Celestia demonstrated. A sonorous note rang forth, golden and pure. At the sound of the note, Philomena stirred on Rainbow’s hoof and gazed at the Princess expectantly.

“She’ll hear you from anywhere in the world, and she’ll come as fast as she’s able to. That’s another aspect of phoenix magic.”

“But what about—”

“Shh. Now you try.”

A trickle of annoyance seeped through the cracks in Rainbow’s poker face. She did as Celestia said and blew a whistle. Once again, the phoenix stirred, staring at her with a deadpan expression, which Rainbow figured probably translated to something like, ‘Really? Did you really just whistle at me from two feet away? I can hear you any place on earth. What the hay are you bothering me for?’

She cracked a wry grin. “I hear you, buddy.”

“Promise me you won’t go flying without Philomena.”

Rainbow frowned. “I already did.”

“Promise me, Rainbow!”

“I promise! I promise, already! Jeeze!”

Celestia’s hard gaze relented. “Then fly high, Rainbow Dash. Fly high, and may the winds be at your back. Fly high, and make every second you have on this earth matter.”

She stared off into the heavens. The moon caught her eye, sliding out from behind a ghost of a cloud, and a dark look fell over her face.

“Because there’s no way to know what tomorrow will bring.”

Friday morning was well underway in Lower Manehattan.

From the sparkling blue waters of the East River to the banks of the Studson, rimmed with piers, like rows of teeth, and from there out to the harbor, where the steamboats chugged across the bay to the tempo of paddle wheel splashes and belches of white. From the forested walks of Central Park, where the sophisticates were already a-stroll in their finest top hats and monocles, reveling in the chance to see—and be seen by—their fellow emissaries of the urban elite; to the gargantuan constructs of girders and rebar, rising upward from the quaint dwellings of yesteryear to challenge the pegasi’s dominion over the sky.

And Friday morning was well underway atop the Equestrian State Building, where no fewer than a hundred officers of the Royal Guard and the Manehattan Police Department stood gathered. All of them had their eyes fixated on the downtown city streets.

Lording over them, imperious and tall, was Tristar. As he paced back and forth along the rim of the antenna spire, looking down on the troops at his command, a tide of scorn seemed to roll off of him with every bold stride and gallant toss of his mane.

The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife.

Rumors had filtered down the ranks, of course. Rumors of an unseen peril, cloaked in darkness, building in the underworld day by day, as fast and intangible as the shadows it inhabited. Even the lowliest grunts, too pathetic and ignoble to be briefed, had insight enough to glean a sliver of the dread which gripped the hearts of their superiors.

Yet nothing had happened. As the morning sun crested the pinnacles and rooftops in the east and shined down upon the city, all was peaceful in Lower Manehattan.

It was… just another Friday morning.

Tristar glared through a pair of binoculars. Far off in the distance, on a remote construction site, a company of hardhatted construction ponies were slaving away, swarming over the skeletal frame of a skyscraper like insects over fresh-picked red bone.

“Captain Tristar, sir,” one of the police lieutenants addressed him.

Tristar growled and lowered the binoculars. “What is it?”

“It just turned nine-thirty, sir.”

“And?”

“And… And you asked to be notified every half hour, sir.”

“I know what I asked. Do you think you need to inform me of my own orders?” Tristar snarled.

“I—no, Captain Tristar, sir, I don’t think—”

“Precisely. You don’t think. Now shut up, fool, and let me do my job.”

Tristar turned on his hoof and stormed away.

Nine-thirty meant it was report-in time. An unfortunate necessity, as it meant he had to interact with that moron, Sage Whitehoof. Tristar shot a withering glance at the uppermost rooftop platform, where the old fool was “hard at work” talking to Princess Celestia. Damn his eyes.

He approached the metal stairway that led up to them, then stopped at the foot of it, surveying it with disdain. With another proud toss of his head, he opened his wings and gave them a mighty flap, took to the air, and landed lightly beside the Princess and… that other stallion.

Tristar immediately fell into a bow. “Princess Celestia.”

“Arise, Captain,” said Celestia. “We haven’t time for such formalities.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. Forgive my interruption, but the half hour has arrived, and we require the magical ability of this… wizard… to make the rounds.”

Tristar’s contempt was thinly masked, but Sage just smiled right on back at him with a twinkle in those silver eyes. “Certainly. This wizard is happy to help in any way he can. Your Majesty?”

Celestia nodded. “Proceed.”

Sage’s horn crackled. In a flash of light, he conjured up a crystal ball atop a little onyx pedestal.

“Behold. My preferred method of communication. Simply think of the pony you wish to commune with, and you will be able to speak to them. The crystal is tuned to the diviner’s thoughts.”

Tristar eyed the crystal ball warily. “Black magic…” he muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

With a sigh of resignation, he shut his eyes and formed the picture of another stallion in his mind—Otto, his trusted deputy, who was heading the detachment at the southern tip of the island. Taking a second to clear his throat, he spoke loudly and clearly into the crystal ball.

“Otto. Otto Bravemane. Come in, Otto.”

He puffed out his cheeks, pouring all his thought and concentration into keeping the image in his head. After several seconds had passed and there was still no reply from the crystal ball, he cracked open one eye—and was enraged to see Sage smirking at him.

“You have to touch it first, Captain.”

“Why, you—!”

“Gentlecolts, please! We don’t have time for this,” said Celestia.

Tristar slammed his hoof down on the crystal ball. “Otto Bravemane, report in. Now!”

The orb gave a chirp of static, and then a voice resonated forth.

“Captain Tristar? Is that you?”

“Of course it is! Issue your report!”

“Yes sir, Captain. Trottery Park reporting. It’s a beautiful day out here. Castle Garden is open, and the boats are streaming in. There’s a few civvies out and about. Street vendors setting up shop, mostly, and a couple tourists here and there. Nothing suspicious. It really is a beautiful day—”

Tristar scowled. “Enough! Statue of Harmony, report in!”

“Statue of Harmony here. All’s well on the harbor. Seven tour groups so far this morning. A lot of families. A few school field trips. We’re keeping a close eye on the kids, but so far, nothing out of the ordinary. We had some barges go up the river, but they all had the proper paperwork—”

“Manehattan Stock Exchange, report in!”

A new voice came over the line, accompanied by a cacophony of loud shouts and deafening clicking noises: “Reporting in. The stock market just opened, and it’s, uh, a little on the loud side here. Can you hear me alright? I’ve got nothing to report—it’s all business as usual here—”

Tristar went down the list, from Broadneigh to Pony Island. They all checked in okay. By the time the last squadron sounded off, it was almost ten, and the Captain of the Guard was thoroughly bemused.

Narrowing eyes joined forces with a contemptuous sneer as he gazed down upon the city. “Where the hell are they?”

The train screamed through a pitch-black tunnel. A bullet in the dark.

On board, the electric lights were out. Hundreds of candles burned in their stead, casting withering fingers of orange across the cabin. Hidden in the murk, barely visible, the faceless forms of a dozen cloaked figures cut a terrifying profile.

A dozen cloaked figures… plus one more.

The thirteenth loomed larger than the rest. As he glided down the center aisle, the others fanned around him like a sinister honor guard.

“My friends. The moment is upon us.”

He spoke in a rasping voice which was neither loud nor soft, but stretched each sentence to its fullest, as if every last word and syllable were laden with a secret diabolical meaning.

“Princess, are you certain of the information you were told regarding this attack?” Tristar asked. “Is there any chance you may have erred? Or that the intel has been compromised?”

Celestia regarded him with frost in her eyes. “Are you certain the sun will rise tomorrow, Captain? Are you certain that when you wake up in the morning beside your loving wife, there will still be an Equestria for you to enjoy? And that your children, when they are roused from their beds, will be able to venture outside and play in the warmth of the day, without fear, under the blessings of freedom and protection which I have provided for a thousand years, without fail?”

Tristar flinched. “I… of course I’m certain, Your Majesty.”

“Then do not ask me whether I have erred, Tristar. I have neither the time nor the inclination to justify myself to you. I looked into Benedict’s eyes when she told me everything she knew. I saw the loyalty there. The honesty. Suffice it to say, the information is trustworthy.”

“Celestia believes her inquisitions have borne fruit. That her mongrel dogs remain loyal to her. Even now, the usurper stands on high, peering down at the city with dread, awaiting the disaster that has been foretold to her. The same disaster we thirteen martyrs will wreak upon her head.”

The train gave a lurch as it flew around a bend, causing several of the cloaked ponies to lose their balance. The leader did not falter. Did not sway. Did not so much as twitch.

"I, Bedlam Bustle, carry the rite of voice. I alone may speak in the name of the Goddess. But all of us together shall carry out Our Lady's will. We shall do what the Goddess requires of us. We shall carry out Her bidding, from this life into the next."

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” said Tristar, bowing low again—even as a maelstrom of indignation churned behind his purple eyes. “I should not have been so presumptuous. I only meant to clarify. The hour grows late, and my guards are growing restless—”

“They’re my guards first, Tristar, and yours third. Sage Whitehoof is in command of this operation. You are here to render support in any way he deems appropriate.”

Tristar’s eyes thinned at the sight of the elder unicorn, still with that same damn smile on his face, whimsical and infuriating as ever. “Then—if I may—perhaps the wizard has some advice as to what our next course of action should be.”

“Patience, my friend,” said Sage. “All of our pieces are in place, but it isn’t for us to make the first move. Be at peace. Your valiant heart will be tested soon enough.”

“And where is Princess Luna on this fine morning?” Tristar asked. He directed his sweltering glare down upon the city again. “I was under the impression she would be joining us.”

A tiredness crept back into Celestia’s countenance. “It would appear she won’t be.”

“Pity. Luna is the one pony who might actually be able to quash these insurrectionists. If she were here—”

“Please, Captain. For once in your life, hold your tongue.”

“Who better to understand what they aim to achieve?” Tristar asked. “Their goals, their ambitions—”

“We shall be the harbingers of Her return,” Bedlam said.

He approached the front of the coach, and then he stopped, turned, and looked back on the others, his face hidden beneath his long, red cowl.

“To send a message. To Celestia, and to all ponies, everywhere. That the cancerous spread of the light across these stolen lands will be met by fire… That their cities, their churches, their wretched little homes will burn… burn… all of them… burn…”

He headed back down the center aisle, pausing to shed his malevolent gaze on each pony in turn.

“Go forth. In the name of the Goddess.”

Grand Central Station.

The transit hub of Lower Manehattan and a breathtaking monument in its own right. As the sun’s golden rays poured through the tall, arched windows and melted on those honeyed walls, a hundred ponies shuffled through the main concourse, bound for destinations near and far.

The terminal glowed with warmth and life.

A lavender-maned white filly bounced through the crowd with stars in her eyes, barely able to keep a lid on her excitement. “Wow! This place is cool!” she exclaimed.

A skip and three hops behind her, a white stallion in a Hawaiian shirt grinned out from beneath the brim of his straw hat. “Hurry along there, Sweetie Belle! Doncha know we’ve got a train to catch and we don’t want to miss it, yeah?”

“Sure thing, Dad! Hey, what are we gonna do next?”

“Gee, we’ve been out all morning, haven’t we? Maybe we should head on back to the hotel. Your mother’s probably wondering where we are.”

“Awwwww…”

“Hey, don’t look so down in the dumps! We’ll get your mom, grab a bite to eat, and then we’ll find something fun to do. I’ve always wanted to see that there big statue out in the water, eh? Maybe we can give that a looksee. Whaddaya say?”

“Cool! I can’t wait to tell Applebloom and Scootaloo all about—”

A shout went up from somepony on the platform, which was quickly drowned out by the banshee screech of steel wheels against steel tracks. Seconds later, a noise like a thunderclap shook the walls and rained dust down from the ceiling.

Terror ripped through the crowd in waves. The ponies nearest to the center of the commotion turned and ran screaming, while those farther back looked on with nervous confusion.

Sweetie Belle edged closer to her father. “Dad, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but stay behind me, okay?”

She did. Curiosity sank its teeth into her, though, and she peeked out around her dad in spite of herself, squinting through the fleeing masses.

The crowd pulled back to reveal thirteen figures cloaked in red. They filed through the door of the train with their cowls drawn over their faces. What was left of the platform smoldered behind them, cast in rubble, bleeding black columns of smoke.

Sweetie Belle tugged on her father’s leg. “Dad, what are they—”

The cloaked pony out in front turned his horn on the ticket booth.

A jet black ray shot out.

The four-faced golden clock exploded in a molten ball of fire.

And the crowd screamed all the louder.

“ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF EQUESTRIA!”

Sweetie Belle felt her father’s warm muzzle press against the nape of her neck, felt him grab her by the scruff, and the next thing she knew, he tossed her through the air, she landed on his back, and then they were galloping off together, her hooves wrapped tightly around him. Another salvo of explosions rocked the building, shattered windows, rained down shards, and she screamed as a vicious fang of glass bit into her shoulder, drawing a rivulet of blood, but nopony heard her, her voice was lost in the uproar.

The chandeliers were the next to go, the little lightbulbs bursting one after the other in rapid succession, filling the air with a shower of orange sparks and a POP-POP-POP! as they went off again and again and again, and when the sparks went out, the place was dark, the windows the only source of illumination, and even they seemed dimmed, as if a smothering black curtain had been drawn around the building, blotting out the light of the sun.

Then the Equestrian flag hung over the concourse went up in flames, the circle-bound image of Celestia and Luna winding their course around the sun and moon shriveled, turned black, and fell from its mount on the ceiling, giving birth to a bonfire in the center of the room.

Suddenly, it wasn’t difficult to see anymore.

But it wasn’t any easier to breathe. Sweetie Belle squeezed her eyes shut and coughed into her daddy’s mane, the smoke burning the back of her throat…

She felt the push of inertia as her father skidded to a stop. A hundred scared ponies were piled up in front of the exit, pushing and shoving and screaming for their lives.

Sweetie Belle and her father made them one-hundred and two.

“I HAVEN’T GIVEN YOU PERMISSION TO LEAVE!”

Another black ray erupted from his horn.

The doors slammed closed.

Then everything exploded.

The bottom fell out, the world upended, her iron grip turned to sand and slipped away, there was a bright light, a blinding flash, one moment there were screams, and the next, just a loud ringing, she felt the tongues of the flame against her hooves, the scalding sting of hot gasses upon her face, and when she opened her eyes, she saw a dozen ponies silhouetted against the orange plume, and when she closed them again, all she could see were the faces of her mother, her father, her sister, making capes for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, winning first prize for the comedy act at the school talent show, running alongside Rarity at the Sisterhooves Soc—

She hit the ground with a thud.

Her vision went black, but the world kept spinning. Twenty-five feet later, she rolled to a stop. A gasp escaped her lips, interwoven with fear, pain, shock, and something more.

“R-Rarity,” she choked out. “Mommy… Daddy… Rarity… help…”

She opened her eyes.

Five feet away, a white stallion lay face-down, motionless. A wisp of smoke curled upward from his smoldering shirt and the charred remains of his hat.

She tried to stand up, tried to crawl to him, but a shooting pain in her ribs put an end to that. She reached out to him in vain. “Daddy…”

Then a shadow fell over her.

Sweetie Belle had never known true terror until that moment, when she looked up into the faceless visage of the cultist. Her blood ran cold, her muscles froze, she couldn’t run, she couldn’t look away. She just lay there, shaking, powerless, afraid.

The last thing she felt was his hoof slamming into her chest, punting her away like a football.

And the last thing she heard before sweet, merciful unconsciousness finally claimed her was his voice, dripping with malice.

“HEAR ME, EQUESTRIA! HEAR ME AND TREMBLE! FOR THE REIGN OF CELESTIA IS OVER. THE TIME HAS COME… FOR THE ASCENDANCY OF THE NIGHT.”

06. Aftermath

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER SIX
Aftermath

Originally Published 5/17/2015

Retribution came on swift wings.

They came through the splintered doors and windows, the combined battery of police and guards. They came with speed. They came with strength. They came with overwhelming numbers. They came with fury enough to storm the gates of hell, if that was what it took.

The Thirteen were ready for them. With cold eyes and colder hearts, they lay in wait, scattered around the devastated remains of the station, lurking unseen in the dark nooks and crannies, like rats, like evil, hooded rats. They bunkered down amid the rubble, behind the ruined counters and the blind corners, waiting for the moment to arrive, waiting for the moment to strike.

Then they came, those police and guards, and with them came the moment, heralded by the shatter-crash! of the glass windows and the sound of a hundred wings beating on the air. They came, and their armor glinted even in the darkness, even through the haze of smoke that went up from the concourse, littered with the bodies of the wounded and the unconscious.

They came. And the Thirteen started shooting.

Tristar pitched down through one of the upper windows, down into the train station, down into the hornet’s nest. All around him, crackling ribbons of magic flashed through the air like lightning.

The place reeked of smoke and the electric stench of ozone. Blinking past the sting, he sought out a safe landing zone, even as another jet-black javelin of energy came screaming up, forcing him to roll narrowly out of the line of fire. Intuition and training coaxed him toward the relative safety of the west stairs. He made a beeline for them.

He’d had a dozen wingponies when he flew into this hellhole, but they were all gone by now, each one threading his own separate course through the deadly lightshow. It didn’t matter. He could fend for himself. Yet as he darted through the air, he caught sight of something: a flicker of white dashing along the balcony below, side-stepping piles of rubble here and there, but still keeping pace. Tristar banked right, then flew down beside the other stallion.

“ARMOR!” he called out. “WITH ME!”

Shining Armor glanced up. “WITH YOU!”

Tristar alighted at the top of the stairs, and Shining Armor skidded to a halt nearby. A second later, another magic missile came twirling up at them, sucking the light out of the world like a spiraling black hole.

“GET DOWN!” Shining Armor shouted. He launched himself at Tristar and tackled him. The two of them hit the hard tile together.

A millisecond before the blast hit, the air all around them shimmered with a magenta gloss. Shining Armor’s trademark barrier sprang up, wrapping them in a protective bubble.

The pulsating energy slammed into it like a freight train. Torrential waves of obsidian crashed down all around them, obliterating the top seven or eight steps of the staircase and leaving the two of them gawking over a precipice. But the shield held.

They scampered for cover, their backs against a nearby railing. “I think they mean business,” Shining Armor muttered.

Tristar snorted. “Is that your strategic assessment of the situation?”

“Yeah. Comes from all my years of experience dealing with insane cults.”

Another beam whizzed overhead, shaving off half an inch of Tristar’s mane before it flew out the window and blew a hole in the building across the street. Tristar threw out a string of curses, but he peeked over the rim of the balcony in spite of himself and surveyed the battlefield below. Only a quick glance—then he ducked back down, taking cover again.

“Seven that I can see. The one sniping at us is down in the ticket booth.”

Shining Armor gave a wry smirk. “Seven? Are you sure? You never were all that good at counting, you know. Want me to double-check?”

“There. Are. Seven,” Tristar replied through gritted teeth.

“Hey, as long as you’re sure.”

Tristar rubbed his temples. “Armor. Don’t do anything stupid. I know feats of reckless heroism are your namesake, but we’re going to have enough letters to write as it is.”

“Stupid? Me?” The unicorn smiled roguishly from behind his sweat-matted blue bangs.

Tristar risked one more glance over the side. The battle-scarred floor of the terminal was a picture of chaos. He recognized Noble Duty, Argent, Proudclad, and Stormheart, the exertion on their faces patently visible as they fought in the hellish glow of the fires. All four of them were in locked in hoof-to-hoof combat against a single member of the Ascendancy. It was the same story everywhere he looked. They outnumbered the enemy twenty to one, but somehow, these rabble were holding them back.

And there were other faces Tristar recognized down there as well. Faces he knew. Faces he’d looked on every day, from training to the watch.

And there they were. Down there on that cold, hard, undignified floor.

Their eyes closed. Their bodies deathly still.

He turned away.

“Pincer maneuver. You go left over the top. I’ll go right.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Shining Armor.

“On my mark. Three, two, one, MARK!”

They sprang out from hiding, each one negotiating his own way down to the ticket booth. No sooner did Tristar’s back legs clear the railing than the air lit up with magic, beam after beam bulleting up at him.

He was eighty feet away, now seventy, now sixty.

Tristar dodged nimbly out of the way, and a torrent of energy flew past him, splattering against the wall, burning a circular hole in it like some kind of weird demonic bile.

Now forty feet. Now thirty! The air whistled in his ears. Twenty feet! Ten! He was almost there—!

And then the explosion happened.

The shockwave picked him up and flung him like a ragdoll. He sailed across the room, his chest impacted on the stairs, and a wrenching pain shot through his barrel and ripped the breath out of his lungs.

The whole world went orange in the blinding light of the flash. He lay there for a moment, nursing his injury, trying to hear past the ringing in his ears and shielding himself against the scalding glare.

Uneasily, he pulled himself up to sitting. Clutching at his ribs and breathing in shallow rasps, he looked out across the smoking battlefield.

His mouth dropped in horror.

Time seemed to slow down to a standstill. Shining Armor’s limp body was dangling in mid-air, caught in the same detonation that had thrown Tristar. The blast had torn off his helmet, and his head was tipped down on a collision path with the hard, unyielding floor.

Time started up again.

There was a deafening CRACK! that Tristar’s ears latched on to from halfway across the concourse. Even surrounded by the din and mayhem, with his own heart pounding in his ears—he heard it clear as day.

The sound of Shining Armor’s skull as it whammed against the ground. His body crumpled, and he lay there, still.

The color drained out of Tristar’s face. “No… No…”

But the word was voiceless, drowned out by the battle raging all around. The battle didn’t care about the innocent souls it threw down or the lives it shattered. The battle was loud… and unapologetic.

“NO!”

Tristar shot up off the ground, ignoring the pain that blazed in his ribs like a burning stake. He galloped past the fallen bodies of so many of his comrades, over to the tall, gilded windows of the ticket booth, so steeped in elegance and grace and a million other things that were completely at odds with this moment, HIS moment—the moment when he would lay down his wrath on the bastard behind that counter.

He did a running leap, skidding to a halt on the other side.

The enemy was there, and evidently caught off-balance as he stared at Tristar with wide, turquoise eyes. Tristar pulled back his hoof and slammed it into the cultist as hard as he could—and into that blow, he poured all his hatred, all his rage, and the memory of everypony who had perished—

But the blow didn’t connect.

A shimmering red force field crackled around the pony, encapsulating him like a sphere. Tristar stared in slack-jawed confusion.

His opponent began to chuckle. A low, guttural, menacing sound.

Again and again, Tristar bashed the magic shield with both forehooves, to no effect. The disciple’s laughter turned into a cackle.

Then, before Tristar could blink, an invisible force seized him, lifted him up, and threw him into the wall. His body broke against the stone. As he slid to the floor, his vision began to swim.

He stared straight ahead, and his eyes took in the fetlocks of the other pony, standing smugly above him. He lay there, helpless, unable to defend himself. All he could do was wonder—how had it come to this? How could a life—any life— be cut down so easily?

And all he could think of was his wife and children, their faces bobbing on the tide of his memory…

The cultist’s horn began to glow a malevolent black.

Before it could go off, a dazzling light lit up the booth, and Sage Whitehoof appeared. He stood between Tristar and his nemesis, his hoof wrapped around a silver staff. For once, he didn’t have a smile on his face. For once, Tristar was glad to see him.

“Cease this foolishness,” said Sage. His voice was sober, filled with a gravity it seldom knew. “Princess Celestia will be here soon. If you surrender, I promise there will be mercy.”

The cultist laughed. “You would stand in our way, ancient one?”

“I can, and I will.”

“I’ll make you regret it. With every fiber of your being, with every—”

Before he could finish the sentence, another blinding flash of light went out from Sage. It washed over the other pony, who stepped back and raised his hoof defensively in front of him.

Then the glow subsided, and the place became dim again. Nothing obvious had happened. The cultist’s laughter came spilling out. “Is that the best you can do? Shine a little light from your horn?”

Sage only smirked.

The cultist went right on chuckling. “That’s hardly impressive! Even a school filly is capable of—OOF!”

The silver staff planted in his gut, and he doubled over.

This time, there wasn’t a force field to protect him.

Sage brought the staff to bear once more. With one final thwack to the head, the disciple collapsed and didn’t move.

The old archmage smiled and offered to help Tristar off the ground. Tristar sneered at his outstretched hoof, as if it were a snake. Ignoring it, he struggled to a shaky stance.

“My friend,” said Sage, “perhaps you should—”

Tristar burst into a coughing fit. He raised a hoof to cover his mouth, and his arm came away stained with blood.

“—take it easy,” Sage finished with a grimace.

Tristar wiped his mouth. “Where the hell is Celestia?”

He glanced frantically out the ticket booth window. Dozens of his brothers were still fighting for their lives, throwing themselves against the magic barriers on the other insurrectionists like waves against the rocks.

“She’s here,” said Sage.

Tristar frowned. “Where?”

“Here. Breathing life into the fallen. While their hearts beat, while the spark of life still glimmers inside them, they can yet be revived. Time is of the essence in what she does.”

“My men are dying out there!” Tristar yelled. “Where the hell is she?”

“Quell your anxieties, Daedalus. Nopony is going to die today. As soon as she has cast her blessing upon those in need, Celestia will be here to—”

“ENOUGH!”

The battle ended with a single word.

A golden light poured through the windows, driving away the darkness in a triumphant blaze of glory. It was as if the sun itself suddenly reached down from the heavens and swept aside the shadowy curtain that surrounded the place. It shook the walls until plaster dust rained from the ceiling, and it snatched up the members of the Ascendancy, and it slammed them down against the floor, their magic shields fizzling around them.

Then a majestic pillar of flame went up from the center of the station. Twin tendrils of fire spiraled up and around it, streaking ever faster, drawing thinner and thinner with each revolution until finally, they flew together over the top of the inferno and collapsed to a point—and from out of that point, there shined such a brilliant beacon of light that Tristar and Sage and everypony else had to shield their eyes and look away.

When the light died down and they looked back again, there stood Celestia, surrounded by a burning halo of fire. Every smoldering step she took seemed to communicate just how royally pissed off she was.

Her gaze fell on one of the cultists, lying in a heap near what was left of the eastern staircase. She stormed over, placed her hoof on him, and rolled him over onto his back.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He didn’t say a word. He only sneered.

It didn’t take long for their remaining forces to realize the Ascendancy was down for the count. The guards and police officers bowed low in honor of their princess, as was their custom.

The ones who were still standing did, anyway.

Sage magicked open the ticket booth door and strolled across the scorched and pockmarked concourse to meet her. Tristar staggered out after him, doing his best to ignore the warm trickle of blood down his brow.

“Your Majesty, the Ascendancy is defeated,” said Sage.

Celestia gave him a nod, then directed a glare at the masses of genuflecting guards. “What are you all doing? Stop wasting time and help the wounded! Our people need medical attention!”

It didn’t take any more urging than that. They snapped into action at once, and the whole place fell back into an uproar as the able-bodied rushed to the aid of the fallen.

It was all just a dull roar in Tristar’s ears. A peculiar humming that seemed to grow louder as the whole world slowed to a crawl, and a weariness crept into his distant, glazed-over eyes.

He watched in a daze as a team of guards sprinted to where Shining Armor lay in a slumped, unmoving pile. One of them called for a stretcher.

“…ain Tristar? Did you hear me?”

The sound of his own name yanked Tristar out of his stupor. He snapped to attention. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

Maybe it was the wobble in his stance, or the red runnels seeping down his forehead. Whatever the case, Celestia paid him a sympathetic look. “You’re hurt, Captain Tristar.”

“I’ll be fine,” he muttered. “What’s the enemy’s status?”

Sage looked down at the mute Ascendant. “Neutralized.”

“Neither he nor any of his comrades are going anywhere,” said Celestia, her voice hot with anger. “I expect you to take charge of this situation, Sage. See that they’re detained and properly interrogated.”

“Shall I take them into royal custody?”

“No. Transporting them to Canterlot would only create spectacle, and we’ve had enough of that for one day. Leave them to the local authorities. It’s the least I can do for Mayor Fairmane after the assistance she’s rendered.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” said Sage.

Celestia gave Tristar a somber look. “Go home, Captain.”

Tristar stiffened. “I won’t abandon my post.”

“Your obligations are fulfilled. Your honor is secure. Go home to your family. There’s no need to give them cause for worry.”

“With all due respect, Your Majesty, I’d sooner chop off my own wings than leave before every one of my men is accounted for,” he said, his face hardening. “My job’s not finished yet.”

Just then, they heard something.

A cough. Tiny, almost imperceptible, smothered beneath a pile of concrete and jutting rebar. Celestia and Sage shared a look of wide-eyed surprise. Their horns flared, and the debris shifted.

The filly they uncovered was out cold. Her white coat was caked with soot, and all of the spring had gone out of her lilac mane. Her little hoof was hooked around the haunch of a brawny, platinum-colored stallion, who was still mostly buried under the wreckage but for his leg and the trio of footballs on his flank. With another shimmer of magic, they unearthed him, too.

Celestia’s eyes flew wide.

“MEDIC!” Tristar called. “NEED A MEDIC OVER HERE!”

“Your Majesty? Do you know these ponies?” asked Sage.

The princess didn’t respond, but the look of pained recognition on her face answered Sage’s question well enough.

A pair of medics rushed over and began tending to the stallion, who looked to be the more injured of the two. Meanwhile, Celestia kneeled down beside the wounded girl, stroking her mane with a gentle hoof.

Sweetie Belle stirred at the touch. “Ra… rity...” she whimpered.

Celestia bowed her head.

“Captain Tristar,” she said. Her voice shook with barely contained emotion. “If your honor demands it… then I have one more duty for you to fulfill. A very important one.”

Tristar stepped forward. “Your Majesty?”

“This is Sweetie Belle and her father, Hondo. I want you to accompany them to a hospital, and as soon as they’re able to travel, escort them to their home in Ponyville. Make sure they’re well taken care of.”

“I—of course, Princess.”

“Call in extra guards. I don’t want any more surprises for them on the way.”

Tristar bowed. “Thy will be done.”

“And Sage,” Celestia said, rage crackling behind her pink eyes. “I want you to make a full investigation. I will not allow my subjects’ lives to be so endangered. Take as much time as you need away from the Academy and bring me answers. There will be consequences. There will be punishment.”

Sage nodded. Without a moment’s pause, he stuck a hoof between his lips and blew. The whistle was so loud, it stopped nearly everypony in the room. The guards looked at him expectantly.

“First and second companies, commence post-operations! Report anything suspicious to your commanders, and commanders, bring those reports to ME! I want a full head count: theirs, ours, and civilians! I want to know the WHEN of it! I want to know the HOW of it! I want NAMES! I want DESCRIPTIONS! I want to know which train they came in on! All other companies, continue to render medical assistance and provide support to first responders as they come in the door! BACK TO IT!”

They flew into action at once.

Tristar shifted on his hooves. His lip couldn’t help but curl to see the ponies under his command scurry around at the old fool’s beck and call. He looked at Sage, and he scowled.

Down on the floor, Sweetie Belle kicked out and gave a little sob. She buried her head between her forehooves as a trembling racked her body, clearly in the throes of a nightmare.

A tear slipped down Celestia’s cheek. She smoothed the girl’s disheveled hair and leaned over her. A serene, golden glow emanated from her horn as it drew near to Sweetie Belle’s anguished face.

Sweetie Belle ceased her struggle and relaxed into Celestia’s arms.

Celestia gazed down at her, her royal brow creased with sorrow and regret. She brushed a matted lock off Sweetie Belle’s face, and then she whispered into her ear:

“May you have only sweet dreams from now on.”

Decades ago, when the architects raised up their vision on the downtown metropolitan soil, they poured their hearts and souls into Grand Central. They gave it its elegant sculptures. Its gold-plated chandeliers, flashing at every turn. Its limestone walls, like smooth butter. Its running floors of marble, like creamy lakes of milk.

And one more thing: an enchanted ceiling. They summoned the top mages in the kingdom to work their magic, transforming the banal slab overhead into the spitting image of the night sky.

A thousand years prior, Nightmare Moon might have taken some solace in the knowledge that one day, ponies from all walks of life would converge here, at this station, beneath her cosmic sphere. That every morning, her constellations would shine down upon the masses. That every evening, as the tired multitudes made the journey home by train, they would glance up to see the stars above them. Like faraway lanterns, signaling hope.

But now the sculptures had shattered, the chandeliers had fallen, and great cracks ran across the floors and up the walls, from whence the daylight spilled in careless, unsympathetic shafts.

The whole place was destroyed.

All except the enchanted ceiling. By miracle, luck, or ill intent, the artificial night plastered across the vaulted roof had come out completely unscathed. Not a single beam of magic had struck it.

The stars winked in and out. Voiceless observers, harboring secrets.

Sage Whitehoof leaned on his staff and looked up at them in silence.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Excerpt from the Canterlot Sun, Tuesday, May 21st, Late Edition:

MANEHATTAN SMOLDERS
AS EQUESTRIA LOOKS INWARD FOR ANSWERS

The choking black smoke has cleared above Grand Central Terminal, the site of Friday’s unprecedented magical attack, but questions regarding the incident continue to swirl in the air. Four days after insurrectionists swarmed Manehattan’s downtown commuter hub, raining down untold terror and destruction, the initial shock has turned to anger. Citizens far and wide have raised their voices in a call for justice.

On Saturday, the Manehattan magistrate’s office moved ahead with arraignments for the thirteen suspects currently in police custody. Crown judicial officials were quick to offer their support, with the High Justiciar pledging Canterlot’s full cooperation with local authorities in the ensuing investigation and trial.

These promises come as the Crown faces uncommon criticism for its failure to foil the attack, the first of its kind in over a century. Prominent members of the Highborn, Thoroughbred, and Right Venerable factions of the High Court, who together constitute nearly half of the titled nobility, were quick to offer censure over the weekend. Today, they were joined by their Bluestocking allies in Parliament.

Shadow Chancellor Gilt Garland said in a prepared statement: “It is Princess Celestia’s sovereign duty to protect the weak and innocent. That is her most sacred charge, and one that’s obviously fallen on stony ground of late. This bungled effort to safeguard our people is yet another example of the Crown’s recent inadequacy. We’ve seen this kind of weakness more and more since the return of Nightmare Moon. Princess Celestia just isn’t the aegis she used to be.”

Royalists and members of the Popular Coalition offered stern rebuke, accusing Mr. Garland of capitalizing on a tragedy in order to further his party’s electoral prospects and legislative ambitions. The acrimony marks a new low in relations between the ruling chancellery and the aristocracy since the falling-out last August, when the Bluestockings’ proposed tax cut on noble estates failed to advance in a floor vote.

Lord Brilliant, a luminary of the Right Venerable faction and one of Mr. Garland’s chief supporters on the High Court, added his voice to the growing chorus of criticism. “I, for one, find it disgraceful! The people of Equestria deserve better from their leaders. Do you know the fighting went on for ten minutes before Princess Celestia bothered to show up and put a stop to it? Ten whole minutes! That’s unacceptable!”

Further controversy has stemmed from the suspects’ rumored affiliation with the Ascendancy of the Night, a fanatical underground order, which appears to be singularly devoted to the overthrow of Princess Celestia and the elevation of Nightmare Moon to the throne. Princess Luna hasn’t been seen in public since before the incident and was unavailable for comment, but Palace spokesponies have loudly dismissed popular theories about her involvement in the incident.

Over one hundred ponies were injured in Friday’s terrorist attack, of whom over half remain hospitalized, though by a stroke of good fortune, no fatalities occurred. The Port Authority has estimated the damage to Grand Central at a staggering eighty million bits. Reconstruction is scheduled to begin next month, and is expected to be bankrolled in part by the Crown’s considerable largesse.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Twilight tore her eyes away from the newspaper dispenser, unable to bring herself to read another word. A vacant look was on her face, and her emotions were in the grip of a hollow emptiness.

Numbly, lethargically, she turned her gaze back to the vending machine in front of her, teeming with bright, happy bags of empty calories and sugar-sweet delights. She fed another dozen bits into the coin slot, then mashed the buttons with her hoof, not particularly caring which number she happened to punch in. The mechanism whirred and dropped a bounty of junk food into the bin as she hung her head.

How could it have come to this? How could any of this have happened? It didn’t seem possible. Not in Equestria. Not in her Equestria.

Twilight felt a familiar ball of grief ping-pong off the cavernous walls of her heart. She tamped down on a sob.

Shining Armor…

She stooped to gather the snacks from out of the vending machine, tucking them away in her saddlepack. As she straightened back up, her eyes tripped over the blaring headline on the newspaper again. A thundercloud of ire descended over her.

How could anypony possibly blame Princess Celestia for what happened in Manehattan? She was the one who stopped the bad guys, wasn’t she? Didn’t that matter to anypony?

She fumed.

Apparently not. Apparently, there were a whole lot of ponies out there who didn’t care one bit about how amazing Princess Celestia was. Or how much of her own sweat and blood Princess Celestia poured into keeping Equestria safe every single day.

All her life, Twilight had made a purposeful effort to stay out of the fray of politics. That wasn’t to say it never came knocking on her door. When you were the protégé of the princess, it was inevitable, sometimes. But she never enjoyed it. It was always frustrating.

Of course, she knew freedom of the press was an important pillar of a free society, and it was essential for ponies to be able to question and criticize their leaders. But these ponies were such scumbags! Morality wasn’t important, facts weren’t important. All that mattered was advancing some self-serving agenda. Anything and everything was ripe to be exploited. They’d hitch their wagons to any disaster, any controversy—and they didn’t care who got trampled under the wheels, as long as made them a little richer, a little more powerful.

How could anypony be so despicable? How could anypony treat somepony else so horribly, with so much disregard?

Her shoulders drooped.

But then, what kind of question was that? The High Court and their minions in the government and the press were repulsive, sure. But what did they have on this… this Ascendancy? On ponies who would deliberately attack the innocent with intent to injure, maim, and kill? Not even Discord had been as monstrous as that. No, she had seen the worst that equinity had to offer, and it wasn’t even a week in the rear-view mirror.

With a forlorn sigh, Twilight adjusted the straps on her saddlepack, turned, and trudged away. It was a brand-new world she was living in now, and all she could do was face it.

Cadance was still slumped in the bedside sofa when she got back to the room, her pink pegasus wings pulled tight against her body. Twilight Velvet’s gray hoof was wrapped around her, and Night Light was mostly keeping to himself some ways away, a thousand-yard stare affixed to his face.

Shining Armor, of course, hadn’t moved.

They said it was a medically induced coma. They said he’d actually regained consciousness briefly when they first brought him in—though exactly how lucid he’d been at the time was another question.

He needed this, they said, to reduce the intracranial pressure. The squeeze put on his brain by the swelling and the edema.

It was to help him heal.

Twilight understood that. She understood all the science and the medicine underlying it. She knew, right now, that his veins were gushing with thiopental, and it was the drug that was keeping him under. Not the concussion that was to blame for all this.

That didn’t change the reality that neither she nor her family had seen him awake since the attack in Manehattan. Under the circumstances, it was hard to peel those things apart. There was a soul-crushing dread hanging over them all, even if the doctor’s prognosis was cautiously optimistic.

The heart rate monitor beeped. The ventilator clicked and whooshed. The IV bag hung above Shining Armor like a lifegiving fruit.

Twilight traipsed over to where Cadance and her mother were seated. Her saddlepack rustled as she flicked open the canvas cover and started distributing the loot.

“Let’s see. I got… four bags of potato chips. Some pretzels, cookies, granola bars…” Her eyes flicked up. “Anything?”

Cadance didn’t take her eyes off Shining Armor. “Thank you, Twilight, but I don’t think I can eat right now,” she said miserably.

Twilight’s mother gave her a sad, albeit encouraging smile, and a tiny shake of her head.

She sighed and continued to rifle through her pack. “Dad? You want some Prongles? They’re stackable, shaped like a hyperbolic paraboloid, and… erm…” She squinted at the cannister. “Pizza-flavored.”

“No thanks, sweetie.”

A grimace brought down Twilight’s face. Defeated, she dropped her bags by the side of the bed and crawled onto the couch beside her mother and Cadance, resting her head against Twilight Velvet.

A few minutes passed in silence.

“He should be here with us right now,” Cadance mumbled at length.

Twilight Velvet looked at her softly. “He is here with us.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Cadance…”

Twilight Velvet reached out and gently took her hoof. Cadance turned her pain-clouded eyes to look at her.

“He’s going to come out of this. My son’s too much of a fighter to go quietly into that good night. He’ll pull through.”

“He should never have been hurt in the first place! He shouldn’t have to go through this. None of us should!”

A short stretch of silence followed as Twilight Velvet considered her words. Twilight looked up at her mother blearily.

“All of us have our part to play,” she said at last. “My son’s part is to be a hero. It’s never been an easy path to walk—not for the ponies who are brave enough to walk it, nor their loved ones, who walk it with them… But Night Light and I knew that when he signed up for the Guard.”

She sent her husband a little smile, which he returned.

“I know.” Cadance said. “That’s what I love so much about him.”

“And he loves you, Cadance. More than anything, he loves you.”

Twilight Velvet beamed at Shining Armor as he lay unmoving on the bed, her face aglow with so much love and pride. Softly, reassuringly, she began to stroke Cadance’s mane.

“And that’s the other reason why I’m so sure he’ll come back to us. He loves you so much, Cadance. More than anything else in the world, he loves you. He loves you too much to leave you.”

“He asked me to marry him,” Cadance said in a trembling whisper.

Twilight Velvet sucked in her breath. Evidently, that news hadn’t made the rounds yet.

She sniffled and mopped her tears. Then she embraced Cadance in a fierce hug. “He’ll find his way back to you. I have faith.”

Cadance’s eyes glistened. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “Thank you.”

Time slipped by, and not another word was spoken among them. The four of them lapsed into silence again.

Twilight didn’t mind. She wouldn’t have known what to say, even if she had been in a mood to chat.

Three days, she’d been sitting here in Canterlot Hospital, helping her family keep a round-the-clock vigil. Three days, and the cupboards had long since run bare of things to talk about. Nopony felt like talking. Nopony even wanted to be here, except that leaving Shining Armor to suffer by himself in a medical ward seemed like such an awful thing to do.

But Twilight was just about at her breaking point. Her brain felt like mush. Her emotions were raw, worn down to the nub. Her mom and dad had told her at least a dozen times that she didn’t need to be here. That they would send her a letter straight away if her brother’s condition improved, and in the meantime, she should go to Ponyville and see her friends.

She felt guilty for even considering it. But after languishing here for so long, the idea was more and more tempting by the hour.

Cadance was right. This wasn’t fair. Shining Armor shouldn’t be hurt right now. He should be laughing. He should be smiling. He should be up and about, awake and happy.

Twilight loved him so much.

She knew Cadance loved him so much. The two of them should be picking out the date for their wedding, looking forward to a wonderful future together, not… whatever this was. Suffering apart, in loneliness and in fear. Wasting away in this sterile, claustrophobic box.

And she should have her big brother to lean on.

Her big brother, who taught her how to fly a kite… Who was always there for her, no matter what… Who knew all her hopes, all her dreams…

There was a knock at the door.

Four pairs of eyes lifted. “Come in?” Twilight Velvet said.

The door opened.

In walked none other than Princess Celestia herself. A pair of guards were standing post in the hall outside, and they quickly shut the door behind her to give the family privacy.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long,” she said. “I came just as soon as I could pull myself away.”

“Auntie Celestia!”

Cadance was instantly on her hooves. Quicker than lightning, she charged across the room, burying her face in the alicorn’s chest.

Twilight also stood up out of respect, though she made no move to rush the princess. Something told her to let Cadance have this moment. The sight was so moving, she felt her heart drop out of her ribcage and shatter against the floor: Cadance, crying into her great aunt’s coat. Princess Celestia, softly cradling her, stroking the back of her head.

“Shh… I know, Cadance. I know…”

They stayed that way for over a minute.

Then at last, Princess Celestia walked her back over to the rest of the family, a sympathetic hoof draped around her. Cadance took a seat on the bed next to Shining Armor. Twilight waited for the princess to acknowledge her with a nod, and then she sat back down as well.

“There’s nothing I can say that could make this situation any better, any less terrible,” Princess Celestia addressed them, looking somberly from one pony to the next. “But I hope you won’t hold it too much against me if I ask… How are you all holding up?”

Twilight Velvet answered for the group. “We’re taking it day by day. It’s hard, and I don’t think any of us are truly all right, but… it is what it is, Your Majesty. We’ll get through it.”

“Is there anything you need? Anything I can provide that would ease some of the burden on you and your family?”

“I don’t think so. The hospital staff has been gracious, and the other guards have been more than kind.” Twilight Velvet looked at her son warmly. “It’s clear how much respect they have for him.”

Princess Celestia’s lips twitched upward. “Well, that isn’t surprising. Captain Armor has made an impression on quite a few of the men under his command. That’s just his way.”

She hesitated.

“The doctors tell me they expect him to be all right, though obviously, there are no guarantees. I just… I want to let you know how much I honor him. How much I honor you all, for the sacrifices you’ve made. The willing ones, and the unwilling ones. We’re fortunate to live in a peaceful world where tragedies like this don’t happen often anymore—but when they do happen, it takes somepony with real character, real courage, to put their life on the line and be a shield for the innocent. That’s who Shining Armor is. That’s your son.”

“Thank you, Princess,” said Twilight Velvet.

“You know, I was thinking about the first time I met him, and how much he impressed me. I know it’s no substitute for having him awake again, but… if you care to hear the story, I’ll be happy to share it with you.”

She glanced about the narrow room. There weren’t any arguments. Not from Twilight and her mother on the couch, nor from Night Light off to the side. Nor from Cadance, who was hovering protectively over her fiancé, peering dolefully at up at her auntie.

“It was quite a number of years ago,” Princess Celestia began her tale, pausing to regard the bedridden unicorn with kindly eyes. “Shining Armor was sixteen at the time, and he had only just completed his schooling and started working toward his vocation. He was inducted into the Canterlot Regimental Academy as a cadet. The program was intensive: ten hours a day, five days a week. To top it off, each morning, he would show up to the barracks an hour early, and each afternoon, he would stay an hour late.”

Twilight found herself leaning forward. Her ears perked up, eager to gorge themselves on whatever warm memories the princess had to offer; on whatever sunshine she had to bestow.

“It happened, one morning, that Shining Armor and one of his fellow cadets were standing post on the castle grounds, shooting the breeze. Standing post, it turned out, underneath a balcony I happened to be perched on at the time, and so I overheard the conversation.

“The other cadet asked him, ‘Why do you show up so early?’ To which, our Shining Armor answered—to make a good impression. He was in the habit of arriving before the dawn to make sure his uniform was neatly pressed, and his plate and shield were polished to a mirror finish. ‘But why do you stay so late?’ came the next question, and Shining Armor replied—because there are always little things that need doing, here and there. Training fields in need of tidying, and equipment to be put away.

“Now, this bootlicking didn’t impress me much. I’ve been around for more than a thousand years, and in that time, I’ve known many a yipping young pup on the pant leg of opportunity—”

Cadance snorted, a pink hoof pressed to her lips. Even Twilight Velvet and Night Light looked amused at the description.

“—but what the two of them talked about next did impress me.”

Princess Celestia smiled serenely as she tipped her head to Shining Armor. “You see, even after he hung up his helmet at the end of the day, he wasn’t done yet. He would continue to do odd jobs around town well into the evening hours, running errands and making deliveries for a few extra bits on the side. When the other cadet asked why, he gave two reasons.”

Her gaze turned to Cadance.

“First, because there was a pony in his life who was very special to him, and whom he loved very, very much. Even though she was a princess and a member of the nobility, he wanted to be able to give the world to her, because she meant the world to him.”

Cadance swiped at her eyes, but the tears came anyway, welling from deep inside her and spilling down her cheeks. She sniffled, then put on a wistful smile, peering down at her beloved through the mist and pain. She took his limp hoof in her own and gave it an affectionate squeeze.

Now Princess Celestia looked at Twilight.

“And second, because there was a little filly whom he cared for just as much. His eight-year-old sister, who had only recently passed her entrance exam and come to stay with him in Canterlot while she completed her first term. It was up to him to provide for her, with a little extra help from his parents. And it was a responsibility he wouldn’t shrink from.”

This time, it was Twilight’s turn to cry.

Those first couple semesters living in Canterlot. Being away from her mom and dad for the first time. How homesick she’d felt, and how scared. But he was right there to protect her, with a place to stay and a bed to jump on. Sometimes, he’d even jump with her.

Her big brother best friend forever.

Her knight in shining armor.

The tears streamed down her face, unbidden. She felt a hoof slip around her shoulders and realized it was Twilight Velvet, hugging her snug against her side. Nestling into the warm safety of her mother’s coat, she gazed sorrowfully up at Princess Celestia and let herself be carried away by her mentor’s soft voice and sweet recollections.

“Well, that was the end of my eavesdropping that day. I had other important things to do, so I left them to it. It was a few weeks before I heard the rest of the story from one of Shining Armor’s instructors. It wasn’t that his performance had begun to suffer; only that he started coming into drill more tired, less energetic than he had been before. The instructor noticed, and he pulled Shining Armor aside and asked to know why.

“It turned out, the other cadet—the one he’d been talking to on the grounds that day—had fallen on some hard times. His father back in San Franciscolt had been suddenly and unexpectedly laid off, through no fault of his own. And San Franciscolt is not a cheap place to live.”

Princess Celestia’s eyes glowed with pride and affection. She gestured at the sleeping unicorn, grinning from ear to ear.

“Do you know, Shining Armor had such a generous soul, he gave all the bits he’d earned to his friend’s family, to help them weather the bad times until they found their footing again? It meant he had to work twice as hard! Overnight on weekends, too!

“Here’s the thing, though. Even though he was tired and exhausted, he never stopped coming in early to make sure his gear was spick and span, nor staying late to help with the putting away. And he never put aside his commitments to his loved ones—to Princess Cadance, or to Twilight. He didn’t compromise on anything, because that’s the kind of pony Shining Armor is. And when I found all this out, that’s when I knew I wanted him for captain.”

There wasn’t a dry eye all around. For a brief spell, the room was quiet, but for that steady beep, and that click-whoosh, and Cadance, softly crying.

Night Light volunteered to step forward. He gave the princess a cordial dip of his head. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Princess Celestia nodded. Her smile shrank a bit as she finished recounting the tale, and Shining Armor’s family floated back down to earth; back down to bleak reality. Even so, she looked between Night Light and Twilight Velvet with a golden reverence.

“I want to tell you how much I admire you both,” she spoke quietly. “You’ve raised two remarkable children.”

In spite of all her other churning emotions, Twilight felt a blush creep onto her face at the praise.

She heard her mother chuckle beside her, and felt those wonderful hooves give her a loving squeeze. “Oh, believe us, we know!” Twilight Velvet said. “And we know Shining Armor is going to be all right, too. Thank you for everything you’ve done, Your Majesty.”

“You’re very welcome.”

The princess hesitated for a moment. Her happiness dissipated.

“I really wish I could stay here with you all,” she murmured. “Unfortunately, there’s still a mess in Manehattan I need to sort out… and Shining Armor wasn’t the only soldier wounded in the line of duty there, it pains me to say. There are several more families I need to meet with yet before I head out east again.”

“We understand, Your Majesty,” said Twilight Velvet.

Princess Celestia looked at her imploringly. “If you need anything—”

“—we’ll know who to come to.”

Another nod from the solemn-faced alicorn. Then Princess Celestia sent a meaningful look at her many-times great-grandniece, who was still on the bed, hovering over Shining Armor and clasping his hoof in hers.

“Cadance…?”

“I’ll… I’ll be fine, Auntie Celestia,” Cadance’s voice quivered. She glanced up, those amethyst eyes still glimmering with tears—and also, an ember of burning, impassioned conviction.

Just as quickly, her gaze flicked down to Shining Armor again. She sniffled once. Twice.

Then, in a sudden move, she unfurled one of her wings and buried her face in her plumage. Her teeth clenched around a bright pink primary feather, which she fervently coaxed out.

Grasping the thing in her mouth, she lowered her head over Shining Armor and tucked it gingerly behind his ear.

“I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.” She looked up at the others with steadfast resolve. “Life’s full of challenges you’ve got to overcome, right? This is only one of them. Shining Armor and I will get through it. I know we will. And we’ll be together forever—till death do us part.”

She leaned over him again, and she kissed him gently on the forehead.

Princess Celestia’s slippered hooves clicked against the tile as she made her exit down the corridor, guards flanking her on either side.

Twilight quietly followed her out into the hall, closing the door behind her. She stared after the princess with longing.

“P-Princess Celestia?”

The princess stopped. Turned.

Her eyes were about as sad as Twilight could ever remember seeing them. She hung her head in remorse. “My faithful student,” she said.

Twilight was barely even aware of herself. One second, she was standing by her lonesome, nursing her stricken heart. The next, her hooves were pounding down the hallway. She threw her arms around the princess, spilling all her grief and anguish into her chest.

“Twilight…” Celestia’s voice broke. “I’m so, so sorry.”

A whimper fell out of Twilight as the princess embraced her. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to blot out reality, but all she could see was Shining Armor, lying in that bed.

“It’s okay to cry, Twilight.”

Twilight peered up at her mentor, eyes shimmering. She was amazed to see Princess Celestia’s eyes shimmering back.

“It’s okay to cry. Right now, it’s the healthiest thing you can do, as long as you remember—you don’t ever need to cry alone.”

“I… I know,” said Twilight.

“I’m sorry for what happened to him. I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t stop it. You of all ponies deserved better.”

The princess visibly wilted. A shameful tear ran down her cheek and broke against the floor.

Twilight stared up at her, aghast. “N-No!” she exclaimed. “Princess, it’s not your fault! You did everything you could!”

“Maybe… Maybe…”

Doubt rolled over Princess Celestia’s face as she pulled away, but she swept it aside, if only for her student’s sake.

“Twilight, do you intend to stay here much longer?”

Now it was Twilight’s turn to look guilty. She stared down at her hooves. “I don’t know. I feel terrible leaving my brother like this, and Cadance and the rest of my family too, but… It’s been days now, and all we do is sit in that room. I’m not sure how much more of it I can take.”

“I won’t presume to tell you what to do. It’s your choice to make, and there’s no wrong answer. But the magic of friendship is made for times like these, when the world seems dark and full of treachery.”

“There’s still Rainbow Dash too, right?” Twilight mumbled. “You wanted me to teach her magic. That’s why you summoned me to Canterlot.”

Princess Celestia pursed her lips.

“If you need something to strive for—something to take your mind off this horrible tragedy—then I’m sure Rainbow Dash would appreciate your tutelage, and I can think of no finer teacher. But what’s most important right now is your well-being, my student.”

Twilight nodded her head glumly. “Thank you, Princess.”

“If you go, go with guard protection. The others, I’m not as worried about— but you and Rainbow Dash need to be kept safe. Look out for each other. Don’t do anything reckless.”

Princess Celestia pulled her in for a parting embrace.

“Even the sun shines on the back of a cloud sometimes. As terrible as these days have been, as dark as things may seem—this, I swear: the dawn will come again. You’re strong, Twilight. You’re one of the strongest ponies I’ve ever met. Never doubt yourself.”

She nuzzled Twilight affectionately.

And Twilight was assured.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The rain came down on Ponyville. It came down hard.

Rainbow lingered back, separate from the others, and peered out the foggy second-story window. Outside, beyond the panes of water-flecked glass, the sky boomed and rumbled. Puddles of water splashed against the embankment of the cross-emblazoned hospital sign, and rumpled, greenish clouds slid eastward over a horizon of thatched-roof houses.

If nothing else, she could take some comfort in knowing Derpy was doing a bang-up job on weather. Still, Rainbow couldn’t help but dwell on how totally messed up this all was.

The world had gone insane. That was all there was to it. That was the reason why psychopaths were running around blowing up train stations, and why she was back in this miserable, stuffy room at Ponyville General for the second time in two weeks.

She peered across the way. Most of her other friends were gathered around Sweetie Belle’s hospital bed: Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and—of course— Rarity, who was doing her best impression of a mother hen, nervously fretting and squawking about this and that.

All things considered, Sweetie Belle had come out of the woods a heck of a lot better than a lot of other ponies had. The doctors were still holding her over for observation, but it was plain to see she was going to be fine. That was a huge help, and it did a lot to reduce the stress on everypony. The atmosphere was still tense in the aftermath of everything that had happened, but a whole lot less so than it might have been otherwise.

Of course, that didn’t stop Rarity from obsessing—

“Oh, Sweetie Belle, are you all right?”

“Yes, Rarity, I’m fine!”

Rainbow couldn’t help rolling her eyes. It was probably the bazillionth time Rarity had asked.

Applejack must have been thinking the same thing, because she chimed in just then. “Sugarcube, Sweetie Belle’s plum dandy. Matter of fact, she’d be even better without you clingin’ to her like a cowpony to a rodeo bull. Why don’t you give her a little space?”

“Let go of my dear Sweetie Belle? How dare you even suggest such a thing!”

Sweetie Belle choked as Rarity put her in another stranglehold.

“Rarity! Can’t… breathe!”

“Oh, Sweetie Belle! My poor, poor, poor, poor injured sister! I’ll never, ever, ever let you go!”

It didn’t look like she was about to. Rarity was latched on to Sweetie Belle so tightly, it would’ve taken a pile driver to come between them.

Naturally, that didn’t deter Pinkie Pie. Faster than a speeding cupcake, she popped up from outta nowhere, shoving her face right up against Sweetie Belle and ogling her with an enormous, bulging eye.

“Jeeze-Louise, Rarity! Maybe you’re right! Maybe she is injured! Her face is turning all bluey-bluey-blue!”

It took Rarity a second to process that. Then she let go. Sweetie Belle gasped and collapsed back onto the bed, hooves splayed out, wheezing as she sucked in desperate lungfuls of air.

“I dunno about the whole ‘poor, poor, poor, poor’ part, though,” said Pinkie, tapping her chin. “I don’t think Sweetie Belle is really all that poor. Are you poor, Sweetie Belle? Because OHMYGOSH, if you are, you TOTALLY have to come stay with me and the Cakes at Sugarcube Corner!”

Applejack laid a hoof on her shoulder. “Pinkie Pie, the bakery’s undergoin’ reconstruction right now, remember?”

“DON’T SLEEP ON THE STREETS, SWEETIE BELLE! IT ISN’T WORTH IT!” Pinkie cried. “The streets are hard and unforgiving! And the cobblestones always leave these weird little indentation things in your back when you wake up the next morning! You don’t have to do it, Sweetie Belle! THERE ARE PONIES WHO LOVE YOU!”

“Landsakes, girl! What’s got into you?”

“Aww, leave her alone. She’s just being Pinkie Pie,” said Sweetie Belle. There were half-hearted smiles and chuckles all around.

It was a funny thing, Rainbow mused—the aftermath of a cluster like what went down in Manehattan. Even though Equestria was pretty freaking big, and the metropolis was practically on the other side of it, the terrible reality of what happened there had left its mark on everypony. And everypony had their own way of dealing with it.

Pinkie Pie had thrown herself into her baking. Each day she paid a visit to Sweetie Belle here in the hospital, she brought a heaping platter of freshly baked cookies or cupcakes with her.

Applejack probably would’ve taken a page out of the same book and reaped half the trees in her orchard by now, if only it were applebuck season. Rainbow knew she and Big Macintosh were volunteering a lot of their time at the various charity fundraisers and donation drives that had sprung up over the weekend. Same with Fluttershy.

As for Rainbow, she was all right. When the news first smacked her upside the head Friday morning, Luna had to talk her down from popping a rainboom and hightailing it for Manehattan to look for somepony to beat up. Since then, she’d grudgingly made peace with the notion that she didn’t have a part to play in all this, though she was still royally pissed off.

Still, Rainbow wasn’t as shook up as a lot of other ponies were. Rainbow was used to living spontaneously, letting the winds carry her wherever they may, and taking the bad along with the good.

It was the ponies who weren’t like her who were the worst off, she’d come to realize. The ponies who lived and breathed structure. Who tricked themselves into thinking they could control every facet of their lives and prevent anything bad from ever happening to them, as long as they worked hard enough. When the world pitched them a variable they couldn’t plan for, those were the ponies who had it rough. Who went through the wringer and came out the other side feeling powerless, vulnerable, on a hair trigger to lash out.

Sweetie Belle had been put through the wringer too, and she’d taken it like a champ as far as Rainbow was concerned. She’d earned the right to complain, so nopony could hold it against her when she folded her hooves, fixed her sister with a petulant glare, and whined:

“How many more days do I gotta be stuck in this dumb room? I miss being outside! I wanna go home already!”

“Oh, Sweetie Belle, I know you’re anxious to go home, and I don’t blame you one bit after everything you’ve been through! You’ve been such a trooper so far. I’m so proud of you.”

“If you’re so proud of me, then tell mom and dad to get me out of here!”

“I rather believe I’ll be the one to take you home, actually,” Rarity said, a bit more reserved than she had been before. “Mother has her hooves full right now with… everything else.”

Applejack read the discomfort on her face and traced it back to the source, plain as day. “How is your pa doin’, Rarity?”

The unicorn’s expression darkened.

“As well as can be expected, for a pony with eight broken bones! Honestly, I don’t know whether to be impressed with him for bouncing back so quickly or enraged at him for being such a foal! He’s shaken, of course, and worried about the rest of us—but would you believe he’s already planning out the next family vacation? And he’s not even out of traction yet!”

“Well, at least he ain’t emotionally scarred or nothin’. ”

“I’m emotionally scarred! How could something like this happen, Applejack? And not because of dragons, or chaos gods, or monsters of the Everfree Forest, but because of ponies! Ordinary, everyday ponies! Flesh-and-blood ponies, no different than you or I!”

“It’s a hard pill to swallow, all right. But believe me, t’weren’t nothin’ normal about them ponies.”

“A pack of shameless degenerates, all of them! No better than smelly mules in a paddock! To think they would harm one hair on Sweetie Belle’s head! That they would deliberately hurt a CHILD!”

She slammed her hoof down on the nightstand so hard, it sent the bedside lamp wobbling.

Fluttershy flinched.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, dear. That was crude of me,” said Rarity.

“Oh, n-no, it’s okay. I completely understand. We’ve all been affected by what happened, but nopony has been caught up in this whole thing as much as you and Sweetie Belle. And your dad, of course. And—”

Her ears lowered.

“And Twilight,” she finished sadly.

Now, everypony else’s mood followed Fluttershy’s. Twilight’s absence was as conspicuous as anything, and every single one of them felt it. Collectively, they spent a good several seconds studying the floor.

“Shoot. I hope she’s all right,” Applejack mumbled.

“Yeah… Me too,” said Pinkie Pie. Her cotton-candy mane almost seemed to deflate a little.

Twilight wasn’t far from Rainbow’s mind, either. The look of desolation on her face when she learned about her brother…

Rarity gave Fluttershy an encouraging smile. Then she politely changed the subject—perhaps recognizing, as Rainbow did, that it was useless to drown and suffocate imagining worst-case scenarios. All any of them could do was wait to hear word and hope for the best.

“Thank you for your kind words, dear. I appreciate it, and I’m sure Twilight would as well, if only she were here. But please, darling, tell me—how have you been holding up in all of this?”

“Oh, um… I’m fine,” the pegasus replied. “It’s a little scary, you know, living alone so close to the edge of the forest. But I think the animals have been more affected than I have.”

Applejack laughed. “Don’t tell me there’s a little woodland critter you can’t lullaby to sleep? That ain’t the Fluttershy I know! I know the birds migrate and such, but Manehattan’s a ways from here. They can’t all be on edge about what happened over yonder.”

“I don’t know. But something has them spooked,” Fluttershy insisted. “And if they’re on edge, well… that puts me on edge, too.”

“Oh, I don’t blame you one bit, darling!” said Rarity. “It really wakes you up, seeing something like this happen. I don’t think anypony in Equestria feels safe today.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “It’s a shame that captain fellow couldn’t stay in town for a little while longer…”

Sweetie Belle groaned. “Hoo, boy. Here we go again.”

Rarity turned up her nose and put on a dignified air. “I’ll admit, when that handsome stallion came chugging into town, I was smitten. What hot-blooded mare wouldn’t be?

“Oh, the thought of him coming down from that locomotive! So filled with grace and poise and dignity, with such valor in his step! His helm off and at his side, mane billowing in the wind like silver. And stars above! His armor… His muscles… Those wings! Why, it’s enough to make a girl shiver with delight! And there astride his back, my little sister, brought home to me at last by this… this sculpted savior!”

Rarity made a show of draping a hoof across her brow and tilting her head back, as though she were about to faint.

“Be still, my heart! What a tragedy that he was already taken. And oh, how I envy the lucky mare who won his love before me!”

“You done yet?” Applejack asked bluntly.

Rarity shot her a seething glare. “If you had only been there with me when he stepped onto that platform, you would understand! Oh, what was his name again…? Tristar? Something of the like?”

Rainbow gagged.

“Still,” Rarity continued, “if I had known he would be returning to Canterlot so soon, I would’ve pressed him to leave a few extra guards! Oh, I do worry so about safety, after what happened to my father and sister. These are such strange times, and you never can tell when chaos will come knocking.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Everypony stopped and looked up. The knob turned, the door swung open. Nurse Redheart was there, bearing a serving tray with Sweetie Belle’s lunch on it. She started into the room—

—and promptly gave a shriek when Applebloom and Scootaloo scampered in-between her legs, almost tripping her and knocking her over. The two fillies bounded over to the bed.

“Hey Sweetie Belle!”

Sweetie Belle’s eyes lit up. “Hey, girls!”

“We missed you so much!”

They came together in a tremendous hug. A shout went up from the three of them in unison: “CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS REUNITED!”

“Should I take your energy to mean you aren’t hungry for lunch?” asked an angry Nurse Redheart, who was clearly ticked off at their antics. “Because I can throw this away and come back later with dinner instead.”

“Oh, no! Please don’t!” Sweetie Belle begged.

“We’re sorry! We were just in such a hurry to get here,” said Scootaloo.

Applebloom nodded. “Yeah! We came as soon as Miss Cheerilee dismissed us. Didn’t wanna be late!”

Applejack gave a smile from off to the side. “Well, girls, maybe we ought to head out for the day. Give these three gals some time to catch up. Lunch sounds pretty good to my belly right now, actually. Whaddaya say, Rarity? How about we go get some grub?”

Rarity frowned. “Well, I don’t know…”

“I’ll be fine, Rarity! Really!” Sweetie Belle insisted.

“Yeah! We brought over all kinds of stuff to help pass the time and make her feel more comfortable!” said Scootaloo.

“I’ve got coloring books, crayons and markers, board games, cards, puzzles, dominoes, a funny little hat with a propeller on it…” Applebloom shifted under the hefty weight of her saddlepack.

Scootaloo jumped in after her, “Yeah! And I snagged… like, half of Spike’s comic books when he wasn’t looking!”

“Maybe we can get our cutie marks in indoor activities?”

“Heck yeah! Great idea, Applebloom! Hey, if we get really bored, maybe we can sneak down the hall to where they’ve got Sweetie Belle’s dad cooped up and draw funny, gross stuff all over his casts!”

“Yeah! We could get our cutie marks in cast graffiti!”

Rarity pretended she didn’t hear that last part. “Oh, very well. I suppose it’s only fair you three have a chance to spend a little time together, so long as you stay out of trouble.” She gave them a critical look.

“We will!”

Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, and Scootaloo posed next to one another. They looked like a trio of angels with devil horns, sporting grins that were about ten sizes too large for their faces.

Rarity sighed.

With that, she, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie all said their goodbyes and headed out, leaving the Cutie Mark Crusaders to play, laugh, and probably run rampant across Ponyville General.

Rainbow floated out after them, lost in her thoughts.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The five friends stopped in the lobby on their way out and did a quick group huddle to discuss lunch options. After some negotiation between Rarity and the others, they decided upon the Hay Burger. Yes, it was greasy and outrageously decadent, but it made up for those flaws by being close, and that was enough to appease Rarity on a blustery day like today.

Outside, the rain was still coming down in sheets and droves. Rarity paused by the door. Her horn flashed, and she produced a white-and-purple umbrella, levitating it in her magical grasp.

She gave the others a patronizing look. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one who thought to plan for weather?”

Applejack scuffed her hoof sheepishly. “I reckon so, sugarcube. Guess in all the commotion, we plum forgot to check the forecast. Don’t suppose you could share with us?”

“Of course, darling!”

Rarity pushed through the door, the umbrella flinging itself open the instant it tasted the storm. Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie rushed to take refuge under it, but it quickly became clear that one umbrella just wasn’t enough. All four of them were getting soaked.

Rainbow was the last one to emerge from the hospital, still lagging behind. She wouldn’t have minded the downpour, but before she felt the first drop on her head, a pair of armored ponies closed on either side, each one raising a wing to shield her from the rain.

“Princess,” acknowledged the one on the left.

Rainbow facehoofed. Not here! Not now!

Her friends stopped ahead of her and looked back, their coats wetter than wet, manes and tails dripping with water.

Rarity looked annoyed.

“You see? That’s what I’m talking about. Security!” she said. “A guard escort! That’s what my sister needs to keep her safe!”

She gestured up and down the avenue. There were at least two dozen other guards all around them, posted at every alleyway, every intersection, observing a wide perimeter around Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow looked at her security detail hopelessly. “Uh, I don’t suppose you dudes would mind sticking around here to keep an eye on the hospital for a few hours, would you? Her sister’s up in room 311. She was one of the ponies who got hurt in Manehattan.”

The left guard bowed his head contritely. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but our orders are to provide you with maximum security. Captain Tristar would have our hides if we broke ranks.”

Rainbow saw the muscles in Rarity’s jaw clench. She pointed at her friends desperately. “Well, can you at least go over there and help keep them dry? I’m a weatherpony. I’ll be fine walking in the rain! Really!”

Another apologetic look. “It would be unwise for us to leave your side, even for so selfless a reason. Your protection is our top priority.”

“Argh! Not cool, guys! Totally not cool!” Rainbow cried.

Rarity glared through her sodden bangs. “It’s all right. Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, dears. You three take the umbrella. I’ll walk in the rain.”

“But sugarcube—”

“It’s quite all right, Applejack. I insist.

She relinquished the umbrella, turned, and started down the street, the rain splashing off her with every frustrated step. Applejack and the others glanced at Rainbow awkwardly before hurrying to join her.

Rainbow groaned and followed after them, the pair of guards still defiantly at her side. She couldn’t remember feeling more embarrassed.

That lasted all of five minutes, until they got to the Hay Burger. Just as they were about to head inside, one of the guards blocked the door.

“We can’t let you in, Princess. Not until we’ve conducted a security sweep.”

“Oh, you can’t be SERIOUS!” Rainbow yelled.

Rarity rolled her eyes, still wearing a cross expression as she and the others stopped outside the entrance. “Well, you’d best conduct your sweep, then. This rain isn’t getting any lighter.”

“I’m sorry, guys!” Rainbow said. “I’m so, so, so, so sorry!”

“Hush, Rainbow Dash. Honestly, you’re so ungrateful sometimes. The guards have a job to do, and they’re here for a reason. Don’t begrudge them it. They’re meant to keep you safe.”

Rainbow grumbled. Ungrateful. Heck of a way to spin it.

She suddenly realized neither guard had moved from her side. She gawked up at them. “What are you still doing here?”

The talkative guard looked troubled. “If one of us were to venture inside to perform the sweep, that would only leave one of us to remain outside here with you. You… might get rained on, Princess.”

Rainbow felt a vein pop.

“GET IN THERE AND DO YOUR STUPID THING ALREADY!”

A few minutes later, the guards had given the establishment the green light, and Rainbow and her friends were finally out of the storm, seated in one of the booths. Rarity looked like a wet dog, and Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy weren’t much better. Even though Rarity had given them the umbrella, they’d all gotten drenched.

Rainbow, on the other hoof, was hardly wet at all. A fact she didn’t exactly feel good about.

“Golly, what a storm!” said Applejack. She pulled off her stetson and started wringing out her hair.

Rarity looked horrified. “Applejack! That’s appalling!”

“What? A pony’s gotta get dry.”

“Well, there are certain things a pony shouldn’t do at the table!”

A loud skreeeeeeeeee! filled the room as Pinkie Pie pulled a hair dryer out of thin air and put it on full blast, her lips flapping in the jet stream.

“Honestly!” Rarity groaned.

Rainbow looked around. The eatery was mostly deserted. The other tables stood clean and polished, patiently waiting for customers who wouldn’t come, who wouldn’t dare leave their homes on a gloomy day like today—especially in the wake of Manehattan.

Behind the counter, the lone waiter on shift was speaking frantically to the cook. Every now and again, he would turn and point to where the five of them were sitting.

Eventually, he ambled over to their table with a stack of menus and handed one to Rainbow. “Hello, and welcome to the Hay Burger—”

Rainbow started leafing through, already drooling at the thought of normal food that wasn’t kelp salad.

“—and may I say what an honor it is to have royalty dine with us in our fine establishment today!”

She slumped down, suddenly less interested in what was on the menu than in hiding her face behind it.

“F-Forgive me, Your Highness. I, erm… couldn’t help noticing… the wings and the horn. Guess it’s true, all the rumors that have been going around lately! Heh. I—I mean—”

His eyes flew wide in terror.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness! P-Princess Aurora! I didn’t mean to imply there’s any rumors going around about you! I—I just—”

“Bosco. It’s me, Rainbow Dash, remember? I live here in Ponyville? Watered your daffodils that one time?”

“Oh, right! Princess Rainbow Dash! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause any offense! And—And I definitely haven’t heard any rumors about you! I don’t even read the newspapers! Heh. I mean, what a pack of lies, right? I’m canceling my subscription tonight!”

Newspapers? Huh? Rainbow goggled at him uncomprehendingly.

The waiter twiddled his hooves. “But, uh, since you are here, might I just… pitch the idea… If Princess Celestia or Princess Luna ever wanted to sample our food sometime, we’d be abundantly grateful for their patronage! It would really raise our restaurant’s profile! Maybe even earn us our first Hoofelin star! If you, uh, ever wanted to pass along an invitation—”

“Ahem,” Rarity cleared her throat.

The waiter’s head swiveled, his eyes blinking stupidly, as if he had only just remembered there were four other ponies there apart from Rainbow. Fluttershy seemed bored, Applejack was drumming her hoof on the table, Rarity had her arms folded, and Pinkie Pie was amusing herself attempting to balance a spoon off the end of her nose.

“Um, what?” the waiter asked.

Rarity glared at him. “Our menus, please?”

“Oh! Right!”

He broke into a cold sweat as he passed them around. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your orders. I hope everything is to your satisfaction, Princess! And s-sorry again!”

With that, he scurried off.

“Well, I know somepony who won’t be receiving much of a gratuity,” Rarity muttered to herself.

The five of them lapsed into silence.

Ostensibly, they weren’t talking because they were supposed to be figuring out what to order. But as Rainbow sat there, squirming in her seat, she couldn’t help but feel like… like there was more to it than that.

The celebrity treatment was really getting old.

Give her a fan club to preach about how awesome she was for saving other ponies, sure! An audience of spectators to cheer her on as she blew them away with her flying skills, no problem! But this princess thing?

It was like… What did she have to take pride in?

She hadn’t done anything. She hadn’t earned it.

Besides, how was anypony supposed to recognize her for her achievements if they couldn’t see past her wings and this big, stupid horn? She wanted ponies to appreciate her for all the cool things she could do, not because she was related to Celestia, or whatever!

But no. That was asking way too much.

Being an alicorn was like… constantly wearing a billboard, each and every place she went. A big, flashing, neon billboard, painted with the words, “Insert false praise here, get favor.”

Except she hated false praise, and she wasn’t a personal favor machine, and she didn’t want to be used for her so-called connections with Celestia, damn it! She barely even knew Celestia!

But more than that, she was terrified all this special treatment was driving a wedge between her and the rest of her friends.

Everything felt so… messed up right now.

It wasn’t just because of Sweetie Belle. Already, that made everything totally bizarre. But that wasn’t the only reason for it.

She felt like the dynamic between her and the others had been altered. The group, and her place in it… Her relationship with her friends. There was an aura of weird that hung over everything like a sickening cloud.

Or was it just her?

Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe her friends still felt totally normal around her, and she was the only one who felt awkward. She couldn’t be sure. Was she off-balance because she was looking at things the wrong way, or was it because the ground had actually shifted?

“Sooooo…” she said, eager to break the ice. “…How’s the farm, A.J.?”

Applejack gave her a wry smile. “Well…”

She launched into an account of recent events. Preparations for the coming zap apple harvest. Construction on a new silo. Just a bunch of simple, mundane stuff that Rainbow was all too happy to listen to. The kind of stuff she had been missing out on.

Yet all the while, she sat with a lead weight in the pit of her stomach, certain the conversation would eventually come back around to her.

It did.

“So, Dashie! How’s princess life treating ya?” Pinkie asked.

The muscles in Rainbow’s shoulders coiled in tension. Once again, she was in the unfamiliar spot of not wanting to talk about herself.

Mercifully, the waiter came back just then. “Can I take your orders?”

“Just a salad and a glass of water, dear,” said Rarity.

Fluttershy nodded. “Make that two.”

“Reckon I’ll have the apple fritters,” said Applejack.

“Ooh! Chocolate cake! Chocolate cake!” Pinkie Pie, of course.

Rainbow’s eyes danced across the menu. It all looked… so… good…

“I’ll have ten daisyburgers and hayfries,” she declared.

The waiter’s face tweaked. “T-Ten?”

“And a pineapple pizza… three burritos… a grilled cheese sandwich… egg foo young… guacamole… mashed potatoes with extra gravy… oh yeah, and a chocolate malt, that sounds awesome!”

Fluttershy looked at Rainbow strangely. “Um… Are you sure—?”

“Look, you guys don’t know the kind of garbage they try to pass off as food in Canterlot! I’m hungry, okay?”

The waiter shrugged, jotted down the order, and hurried off again.

“I take it life in paradise ain’t all it’s cracked up to be?” Applejack said.

Rainbow scowled. “It sucks.”

“Oh, nonsense, you silly thing!” chided Rarity. “I’m sure it’s simply exquisite! Canterlot—The glamor! The excitement! You really should try to be a little less ungrateful for it all.”

There was that word again. Ungrateful.

“Whatever,” Rainbow muttered. She stared down at her fork and knife on the table. For no particular reason, she reached out and started to play with them, pushing them idly across the wood.

“Now then, Dash. Here’s what I’d really like to talk to you about.”

Rarity leaned forward, brushing aside the silverware and placing her pearly white hoof on top of Rainbow’s blue one.

“The guards,” she said.

Rainbow stared and pulled back her hoof. “What about ’em?”

“We need them. Sweetie Belle needs them.”

“Uh…”

“Now, see here, it isn’t fair of Princess Celestia to withhold them. My father and sister were ruthlessly and deliberately attacked! They require some kind of protection to keep them safe!”

“But… There’s already, like, a billion Royal Guard unicorns with big, pointy spears backing up every police station from here to Trottingham,” Rainbow said. “Not to mention a billion more pegasi flying patrols over every city in Equestria, plus Ponyville.”

“That’s all well and good, but my Sweetie Belle deserves more than that. She needs a personal escort, like the one you enjoy!”

“I don’t ‘enjoy’ anything!”

“But you do!”

Rarity leaned forward again.

“Please, Rainbow Dash, for Sweetie Belle’s sake. You could talk to the guards! Surely they can spare one or two bodies?”

Rainbow gave a hollow laugh. “What, you think they’re just gonna do what I tell them to do? Me and them don’t exactly see eye to eye.”

“But you are the Princess Aurora! To be sure, I can think of at least one pony in Canterlot you might speak to on our behalf. Somepony with the authority to post guards on a whim.”

“Look, if you’re talking about Captain Jerkface—”

“I’m talking about Princess Celestia!”

Rainbow grit her teeth and tried to clamp down on her annoyance. To her credit, she didn’t let it show. Not much, anyway.

“What about Celestia?”

“Well, you are her daughter after all, and you’ve been with each other for the past several days! Surely, you must have some currency with her by now?”

“Nope. Still flat broke.”

Rarity feigned a laugh. “Oh, you are a riot!”

“Look, what is it you want, Rare?” Rainbow asked, folding her hooves as she leaned back in the booth. Her eyes locked with Rarity’s, a stubborn glare pitted against a mercenary glint.

“Only for you to put in a word with the princess on our behalf. Now, I know you’ve moved up in the world, darling, and you’re living the palace lifestyle now. But you mustn’t forget us little ponies who were there for you along the way!”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, Rainbow! Of course! After all, once you’ve concluded your visit here, you’ll return to Canterlot and resume living in pomp and splendor. But the rest of us who remain will be forced to endure the most frightful of conditions! You don’t know what it’s been like here in Ponyville!”

Rainbow’s eye twitched. “Pretty sure I do, actually.”

“Oh, please, Dash. You know what I meant to sa—”

“You know, considering I’ve lived here since I was twelve.”

Rarity’s face softened. “I’m sorry, dear. It’s just… It’s been hard for me, these past few days, knowing my family was just—that Sweetie Belle and my father— that they could have been—”

The unicorn looked away, tears threatening.

And Rainbow instantly felt like the biggest ass in the world.

“Rarity…”

“I’m the Bearer of Generosity. I have been ever since we stopped Nightmare Moon. But never did I once consider…”

She looked back up.

“Who would’ve thought Equestria could ever come under attack the way it did a few days ago? But it happened. It happened. And whomever is responsible for it—whether it’s this Ascendancy, or somepony else—aren’t they just as able to strike at Equestria by attacking the Element Bearers themselves? By attacking us? And if that’s so, what does that mean for our friends and families? Is Sweetie Belle at risk because she happens to be near and dear to my heart? What about Applebloom? What about Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow’s ears flattened as the implications swam in her mind’s eye. Visions of a little orange filly, hurt, crying, alone, caught up in something much bigger than herself…

Rarity was right, wasn’t she? Scootaloo wasn’t Rainbow’s sister, but it wasn’t a secret what a fanatical devotion the kid had for her. She could get roped into this as easily as Sweetie Belle had.

She bit her lip. “Celestia will keep everypony safe,” she said lamely.

“You mean like how she kept my sister safe?”

Something in Rarity’s tone rubbed Rainbow the wrong way. But what could she say to the pony with a sister in the hospital?

“Please, Rainbow Dash. Be a friend,” said Rarity. “A true, true friend would help a friend in need. A true, true friend would do everything she could. Won’t you help me?”

“Look—” Rainbow’s voice was uneven. “If… If you really want, I’ll try to get Celestia to post more guards. I’ll try.”

“That’s all anypony can ask of you, dear,” Rarity replied. She gave Rainbow an encouraging smile. “A few extra guards aren’t too much to ask. And really, it’s the least Princess Celestia can do to make amends.”

That said, Rarity finally sat back and relaxed. Satisfied, at last, to have gotten what she wanted.

And that probably would’ve been the end of the matter. The subject would’ve changed, the conversation would’ve moved on, Pinkie would’ve cracked a joke or two, and they all would’ve enjoyed the afternoon.

It probably would’ve turned out that way.

But after spending the last week and a half in Canterlot, Rainbow had finally figured out there was such a thing as subtlety in a conversation.

“Make amends for what?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed.

Rarity looked surprised. “Whatever are you talking about, darling?”

“You said, ‘It’s the least Princess Celestia can do to make amends.’ What do you mean? What’s she got to make amends for?”

“It’s—I—” Rarity stammered.

She seemed to grasp for the right words. But a second later, her brows drew together, and her face hardened with indignation.

“For what she allowed to happen to Sweetie Belle, of course!”

“For what she allowed to happen,” Rainbow echoed icily.

“Well, yes! Surely you’ve seen fit to pick up a copy of the Canterlot Sun in the past few days? The Manehattan Times? Princess Celestia isn’t blameless in all of this. Her fecklessness was the reason this Ascendancy was able to draw blood in the first place! I won’t stand for her denying my family basic protection when it’s largely her fault they were hurt!”

“What?!”

A sudden, inexplicable anger tore through Rainbow. She jumped out of her seat, bristling with rage, front hooves up on the table in front of her. The feathers on her wings stood tall, like battle-ready soldiers.

“What do you mean, it was Celestia’s fault?”

“Oh, Rainbow, darling. Don’t be so uncouth.”

“Uncouth?!”

At this point, Applejack finally thought to intervene. “Um, girls? Maybe y’all had better—”

“Where was Princess Luna when the battle was on?” Rarity demanded. “All the periodicals are consistent about the fact that she was absent!”

“So? What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Rainbow.

“If Princess Celestia truly thought the Ascendancy was a credible threat, why wasn’t Princess Luna there? For that matter, why weren’t we there? Why wasn’t it all hooves on deck?”

“I—I don’t know! I’m sure she had her reasons!”

“Perhaps because she underestimated the danger those barbarians posed! Or rather, because she overestimated herself! Either way, my father and sister paid the price!

“And what of the response time?” Rarity thundered on. “Five whole minutes before the Royal Guard arrived on the scene, and another five minutes after that until Princess Celestia herself showed up! Did she have something better to be doing with her time while my family were buried under rocks? I find myself in agreement with Lord Brilliant—that’s totally unacceptable!”

“Lord Brilliant’s an IDIOT who wouldn’t know his head from his own flank! You actually BELIEVE that hatchet job? It was because of Celestia that nopony got killed!”

“It was because of Celestia that my Sweetie Belle ALMOST DIED!”

They were nose to nose over the table now. Close enough for Rainbow to see the tears glimmering at the corners of Rarity’s eyes.

Why am I getting so mad over stupid Celestia?

The question poked at the edge of her mind.

She felt Applejack’s hooves on her shoulders, pulling her down, guiding her back into her seat. “Now, Rarity, I don’t think you’re bein’ at all fair about this,” she heard the earth pony say.

“Talk to my Sweetie Belle about fair!”

“We know the princess. She’s done more for us five than most ponies could ever ask for. Come on, now, you know she’d never intentionally put your sister or anypony else in danger! Y’all are just… hay, what’s word them psychologizers have for it… projectin’ your anger where it doesn’t belong. T’ain’t rational, and t’ain’t right.”

Rarity met the other pony’s gaze. “Be honest, Applejack. Suppose it had been Applebloom caught in the crossfire. How would you react?”

Applejack fell silent, and Rarity put on a satisfied smirk.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t believe this,” muttered Rainbow.

“And as for you, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity fired back, that ice-blue glare filled with reproach. “Try being a little more loyal to your friends.”

“Are you serious?”

“My father and Sweetie Belle were almost killed! How serious do you think I am right now?”

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to decide if this is all one big joke.”

“N-Now, girls,” said Applejack, “I realize emotions are high, and this here’s a tough time for both of you, but maybe we should all hold our horses for a spell. You know, let things cool down a little.”

“ ‘A tough time for both of us?’ ” Rarity repeated incredulously. “How is this a tough time for anypony other than me? Your family didn’t come within an inch of death, Applejack!”

“I—well—”

“And how can this possibly be a tough time for her, of all ponies? She doesn’t have to live in fear here in Ponyville! She’ll go back to the castle, to live in peace and security while the rest of us are in danger! For goodness’ sake, she doesn’t even have a family here left to lose!”

“SHUT UP!”

The lights flickered as the alicorn’s voice BOOMED in their ears.

Rainbow was up out of the booth, wings snapping furiously. She sneered at Rarity with fire in her eyes.

“You are the DUMBEST pony I’ve ever met!”

Rarity was startled at first, but she recovered quickly. “How dare you!” she lashed out. “Is this what our friendship means to you? Crude insults and temper tantrums? My loved ones were put in harm’s way, no thanks to Princess Celestia! But you won’t even admit that! Some Element of Harmony. It’s obvious where your loyalty truly lies!”

“I hope you DO get attacked!” Rainbow spat.

The unicorn stiffened in her seat. “You can’t mean that.”

“I DO! I hope somepony DOES attack you! And whoever they are, I HOPE THEY GIVE YOU A FAT LIP!”

Rarity sputtered, her face flushing beet-red. “How dare you even say such a thing, you—you—!”

“Girls! Please!” Applejack tried, hopelessly.

“I was GONNA help, but now, you can go buck yourself!” Rainbow shouted. “You and Sweetie Belle can go hide in a bucking closet for all I care! Go make out with your precious Tristar if you want extra guards posted. It’s obvious you two were MADE FOR EACH OTHER!”

Rainbow whirled around and took off. She blew out the restaurant doors so fast, she sent her guard retinue spinning. A second later, they gave chase, their cries rapidly fading into the distance:

“Wait! Princess! Come back! Waaaaaaaaaait…!”

Which left four friends to sit and stew back inside.

Rarity sniffed and held back tears, while Pinkie had a cotton swab jammed halfway down her ear, working to re-kajigger her blown-out hearing. Applejack just slouched and facehoofed.

“Well, that escalated quickly,” she deadpanned.

Fluttershy meekly peeked out from under the table. “Is the fighting over?”

Applejack helped her back up. “I reckon so, sugarcube,” she said with a sigh. “Leastways, things can’t get any worse.”

Just then, the waiter wobbled over, balancing ten daisyburgers and a dozen other plates piled high with food.

“So, will that be one check or separate?” he asked as he looked at the four of them expectantly.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

By the time Twilight Sparkle descended into town shortly after, the weather was even worse. The fat, blustery droplets of a few hours ago had retreated into themselves, becoming cold and dagger-sharp. She felt them crash against her as the chariot dipped beneath the roiling clouds, like tiny icicles clawing their way into her skin.

Her mood wasn’t any less stormy than the weather.

The grief of the last several days had soured in her cask, turned to the most bitter kind of vitriol. She was angry. She was furious. She was a rope pulled taut, ready to snap.

It wasn’t because of her brother.

Lying there, helpless… Cadance, crying, wispy-eyed at his side…

It wasn’t because of her brother.

Her big brother best friend forever…

She was in complete control of her emotions.

Buck this weather! Buck this week! BUCK EVERYTHING!

Complete control.

“Could you please fly a bit faster? I’d like to get there sometime this century. Preferably before I turn into a popsicle,” she snapped at the charioteers.

“You got it, Miss Sparkle.” They kicked it into high gear, swooping over the village with purpose.

The fog drifted lazily, covering the town in a shifting soup. Up through the haze poked the rooftops of Ponyville, gabled summits floating above the murk like boats on a marsh, ghostly and passengerless.

As they banked lower, she spotted the bobbing helmets of perhaps twenty or thirty members of the Royal Guard, all converging around the Hay Burger. She pointed down. “There!”

They landed in front of the building. Twilight hurried over and exchanged a few words with one of the lead centurions, whose rank insignia marked him as the commanding officer.

“What’s the situation, sir?” she asked him.

The fierceness in his eyes softened when he recognized her. “Miss Sparkle,” he said gruffly. “We’ve got a missing princess here. That’s the situation.”

“Not Rainbow Dash again?”

He nodded. “Seems there was an argument a few minutes ago between the princess and her associates. I’m sorry to say, she came charging out so fast, she gave us the slip. Wouldn’t stop when called to, either. I’ve just sent out patrols to search for her, but so far, nothing.”

Twilight felt her temper inch closer to eruption. Not again!

They traded a few more questions and answers. Then Twilight asked him if she could go inside and speak to Rarity and the others. He told her yes, and she started for the door.

Just before she got there, he called out to her. “Miss Sparkle?”

She paused and looked back at him.

“You’ve… just flown in from Canterlot, have you?” he entreated her. “I don’t suppose… Is there any word about Captain Armor?”

Twilight hesitated. The water sloshed around her hooves. The rain poured off her shoulders.

Then she answered: “My brother’s a fighter.”

That seemed enough to appease him. He gave her a respectful nod, and she hurried inside to see her friends.

She didn’t stay long.

The door slammed behind her as she stalked out, muttering to herself. “Of all the stupid, immature, reckless…!”

Her charioteers were speaking to the commander when she came out. She beckoned them, and they trotted over and hitched themselves to the cart again. Twilight hoisted herself back in.

“Where to, Miss Sparkle?” one of the armored stallions asked.

“East. Out beyond the edge of town. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

Seconds later, they were back in the air. This time, they weren’t flying with the wind, so it buffeted them as they went back up, knocking them turbulently from here to there.

Twilight braced herself against the golden rail. The storm’s frigid breath hit her in the side, seemed to pierce between her ribs and chill her body from the inside out. She shivered.

Despite her outward cold, inwardly, she was close to boiling. Barely a week had gone by since Rainbow led the guards on a foalish chase around Canterlot. Now, here she was, doing the same thing again!

Nothing mattered to Rainbow! It was the Royal Guard’s duty to protect her, to keep her safe, just like it had been Shining Armor’s duty to protect and keep safe all the innocent ponies in Manehattan. Did Rainbow care about that? Did she stop and think for two seconds? Of course not! She would throw caution to the wind any day of the week, put herself at risk, put the guards at risk, as long as it meant satisfying her own childish impulses!

Below them, the town dwellings began to thin out, supplanted by the fields and fog-drenched meadows of the countryside. Whitetail Wood lay south from here, though the banks of mist rolling through the trees made the placid forest look about as inviting as the Everfree. Likewise, she knew Canterlot was to the north, though there was no hope of seeing the mountain in weather as choking as this.

From out of the haze, their destination melded into view.

“There it is,” Twilight said, pointing down.

Rainbow’s home had seen better days. The waterfalls were gone, the colorful streams all dried up. The structure itself had taken on a mean, grayish look, like a thunderhead fat on lightning.

All in all, it looked about as bleak, grim, and depressing as everything else cloud-related Twilight had seen today.

“Set us down there,” she said, indicating to the front drive.

The stallions spread their wings and swooped down for a perfect landing on the fluff. Twilight checked her cloud-walking spell, then hopped out and made for the door.

She knocked.

She waited a minute.

Then she knocked again.

When there was still no response from inside, she tried the doorknob, and she was surprised to find it unlocked.

“Miss Sparkle,” spoke one of the drivers. “Please, allow us to accompany you. I know you’re an accomplished mage, and you can fend for yourself, but given our orders from Princess Celestia and the ongoing security situation—”

“Stay here,” said Twilight.

The stallion balked. “But—But Miss Sparkle—”

“Stay here. I’ll be fine. Don’t follow me.”

Twilight stepped into the front hall and shut the door behind her. Her eyes strained to make anything out. Shadows draped about the place in defiance of the gray light from the windows, and she heard the sound of curtains billowing in the wind in distant rooms.

“Rainbow Dash!” she called out.

There was no reply.

She pressed on anyway.

The pillars of the foyer gave way to Rainbow’s airy den. Twilight wandered in, her hooves clicking noisily against the checkered floor. The solitude dredged up memories, and she found herself remembering the last time she’d been here and found the place deserted. The aftermath of Rainbow’s injury and her flight from the hospital, and all the anxiety those things had caused.

Twilight’s anger notched down a few degrees.

“Hello? Is anypony here?” she tried again.

The room answered her with silence, and a quick scan turned up no sign of her friend. Only dust and disarray.

As a peal of thunder rose above the pitter-patter of the rain, Twilight’s eyes drew to the barren fireplace, and to the framed work of art that hung crooked over the mantle: a painted blue sky fading to black, and a vivid ray of color that swooped and spiraled into nothingness.

She sighed.

It felt strange being here, in this house so dark and derelict. Like standing in the middle of an empty heart, desolate and familiar. And Twilight would have left right then—

—if not for the sudden crash from upstairs.

Her head snapped toward the noise, the breath catching in her throat. The frown on her face deepened.

Two seconds and a teleport later, Twilight was at the top of the steps, peering cautiously around the upstairs landing. The door to the bedroom stood open at the end of the hall. Through it, she heard the sounds of somepony rummaging through their belongings and muttering to themselves, and she spied a familiar cyan pony as she approached.

“Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow was so wrapped up in… whatever it was she was doing, the sound of Twilight’s voice made her jump. She spun around in surprise, and something flew from her hooves and landed on the floor.

“Whaaa? Twi? What are you doing here?”

Twilight bit her lip at the state of Rainbow’s room. Every drawer and cabinet was ajar, their contents tempest-tossed. Trinkets and knick-knacks were strewn across every surface, and what paltry articles of clothing Rainbow owned were currently decorating the floor.

“Wow. What a mess,” she murmured.

Rainbow scowled. “I’m gonna assume you have a better reason for breaking into my home than to rag on me for my housekeeping.”

Her wings fired into a lazy motion, and she drifted, grumbling, across the room to pick up the thing she’d dropped. A book, Twilight now realized as she watched Rainbow scoop it up.

Rainbow buffed the forest-green cover with the back of her hoof. Her eyes darted up to meet Twilight’s. Then, back down again.

“How’s your brother doing?” she asked, a bit less brusquely.

It was a well-meaning question, born out of nothing more than compassion friendly concern. It was also a question Twilight wasn’t in any kind of mood to answer. She was fed up with dwelling on her brother, being forced to relive that grim memory over and over again.

“He’s fine.”

Twilight’s words came out sharp. Sharper than she’d intended them, at any rate. She realized it immediately, and she quickly tried to get a handle on herself. When she spoke again, some of the sting was gone from her tone.

“I’m sorry, I just… I’d rather not talk about it. Okay?”

“If that’s what you want. But you know, we’re here for you if you ever want to get it off your chest. The other girls are really worried about—”

“Rainbow Dash.” Twilight’s voice edged up warningly.

Rainbow held up her hooves. “You got it. Subject dropped.”

Twilight nodded in satisfaction.

She took another step into the bedroom. A trio of pegasi in azure-blue flight suits peered questioningly down at her from a poster on the wall, as if to ask her what she was even doing there.

“I spoke with Rarity,” she said, as measured as possible. “I heard about the… disagreement… you two had over lunch. And I also bumped into your security detail. They were in such a panic over losing you, I thought I had better try and track you down.”

“As long as you don’t tell them where to find me,” Rainbow replied, her gaze angled downward as she flipped through the pages of the book she was holding.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want them here!” She snapped the cover shut. “Didn’t you see the sign on your way in?”

“Sign? What sign?”

“The one on the front door that says, ‘No Guards Allowed’. ”

Rainbow gave Twilight a puffed-up look, which withered to a frown. “Gah. I forgot to put it up, didn’t I? Knew I forgot to do something.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened with Rarity?”

“Rarity’s an idiot!” Rainbow snarled. “If you came here to try and get me to say sorry, you can bucking forget it! You wanna leave your brother at the door? You can leave Rarity at the door, too!”

“Fair enough.”

In the seconds that followed, some of the heat drained out of Rainbow. But her posture was still tense. Defensive. She stared at Twilight in a suspicious, so- why-are-you-still-here sort of way.

“So…” Twilight fumbled for something to fill the silence. “I like what you’ve done with your house. It’s very… lived in.”

“You mean to say it looks like a tornado went through her.”

“I wouldn’t have used those exact words, but—”

“Psh. What do you expect? She’s a high-maintenance house, and she doesn’t take it well when her caretaker just up and leaves her. Actually, I think she’s held up pretty good. A part of me was expecting to come home and find her blown halfway across the Everfree, but I guess Derpy’s a whole lot better at weather and cloudsitting than I initially gave her credit for.”

Rainbow finished checking over the book. With a flap, she vaulted through the air, dropping it neatly into a suitcase on the bed. A suitcase festooned with Wonderbolts stickers.

“You’re packing,” Twilight said.

It wasn’t a question.

Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah. Figured I might as well.”

“You’re not… actually giving up on all of this, are you? When I told you to go to Canterlot, I never meant for you to have to move out of your own home. You know that, right?”

“I’m not moving out. I’m just… grabbing a few things, that’s all.”

“Just grabbing a few things,” Twilight echoed.

“Yeah. I don’t know the next time I’ll have a chance to hit up Ponyville, so I figured, since I’m already in town… why not pack some stuff to take back with me? Not a lot. Just… some of the stuff that really matters.”

Twilight sauntered over and levitated the book. Her eyebrow perked at the gilt-embossed title: Little Green Gallopinghood and Other Classic Bedtime Stories for Fillies and Colts.

“Branching out from Daring Do?” she asked.

Rainbow made a desperate lunge and tore the book from her magical grasp. “I—No!” she sputtered, color rising to her cheeks as she hugged the beat-up old hardback to her chest. “Look, Twi, if you’re gonna be a pain in the flank, maybe you should just—”

“Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to embarrass you!” Twilight said quickly. “I still keep my children’s books, too. In fact, I have a whole shelf dedicated to them at my parents’ house.”

“Good for you,” Rainbow muttered.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s odd at all. There isn’t anything wrong with keeping a book you treasure from your childhood. I think it speaks highly of you. It’s a very noble thing to do.”

Rainbow’s jaw clenched. “Great. Noble. Just what I always wanted to be. The world’s awesomest, noblest pegasus.”

“Rainbow Dash—”

“Except I’m not really even a pegasus anymore, am I?” Rainbow kicked the air uselessly, a scowl rolling across her face. “What’s the point, even? Home isn’t home anymore, nothing feels right, nopony’s the same, and my whole freaking life is just as bucked up as my house.”

Twilight watched helplessly as Rainbow floated back over to the bed. “Look, I know you’re having a hard time adjusting to all this, but—”

“Aw, shut it, Twi,” Rainbow snapped.

She held in her anger for a few seconds more. Then a sigh rattled out of her, and her shoulders sagged.

She glanced up. Tired.

“A hundred ponies get hurt in some sick attack, your brother’s in the hospital, Rarity’s sister’s in the hospital, and all I do is get mad and yell at ponies. Some awesome pegasus,” she mumbled.

Gingerly, Rainbow set the book down in the suitcase. Then she flitted back over to the closet to continue her rummaging.

Twilight watched her, the gears in her head spinning, frown still adamantly refusing to abate. She peered down over the lip of the suitcase to see what else Rainbow had packed.

Unsurprisingly, there were some trophies in there, and ribbons of all colors and sizes tucked away in the luggage pockets. But those were mostly shoved to the sides.

What really took Twilight aback were all the… well, the mundane items that had been stashed away.

The golden stub from Rainbow’s ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala.

A battered old horseshoe, engraved, “Iron Pony – 1st Place”.

The colorful, cloud-studded dress Rarity had made for her, folded up along with the flight team garb Rainbow wore every Winter Wrap Up.

A photo of the six of them together on a bright, blue day, taken in one of the fields out near Fluttershy’s cottage. Twilight smiled. She remembered this photo. She remembered taking it, and how she’d enclosed a double of it along with her very first friendship report to Princess Celestia. It had been just after the defeat of Nightmare Moon, when their friendship was still developing and they barely even knew each other. It seemed like so long ago…

And sitting right there on top of the pile, the creased and dog-eared copy of Little Green Gallopinghood. Right next to…

Right next to the one item in the bunch she didn’t recognize.

She picked it up.

It was another picture. Black and white, and lovingly framed—though the glass inset was missing. Instantly, Twilight knew it for the broken picture frame she and Spike had stumbled across when they came looking for Rainbow Dash weeks ago. Only this time, there was a photo in it.

Twilight took the time to study it. She had never gotten the chance to meet the two pegasi in the picture, but she could guess who they were easily enough. The kindly eyes on the stallion, and the motherly smile on the mare…

Rainbow Dash was in the picture too, in her own way. For whatever reason, she hadn’t been in the original shot, but she’d fixed that by tearing herself out of a different photograph and slipping it into the frame. The result was a full-color likeness of Rainbow as a filly that sprung up between the pale-faced couple. She looked younger and spikier than Twilight could ever remember seeing her, but she still had that patented daredevil grin. And if you stared at the composite for long enough, it almost looked like she belonged there.

Father, mother, and daughter. The three of them, alive and together, if only in memory.

But now this was becoming a little too personal for her liking. She was here to talk to Rainbow, not to snoop on her. Seeing all the relics of her past laid out like this… For the first time since breaking into Rainbow’s house, she actually felt like she was trespassing.

Reverently, she placed the picture back down in the suitcase where she had found it. As she did so, her eyes fell upon the little book again. Bedtime Stories for Fillies and Colts, the title read.

Her eyes flicked from the book to the photo. Then back to the book.

In that moment, she thought she understood.

“Princess Aurora!”

A sudden voice made them both jump. There in the doorway behind them were the two pegasus guards she’d left outside. Shoulder to shoulder, they began to advance, stomping into the sanctity of Rainbow’s bedroom.

Twilight saw every well-toned muscle in Rainbow’s body coil, saw her wings flare open, each primary and secondary, covert and alular standing on end as a wildfire of rage blossomed across her face.

“They can’t come in here,” she snarled.

“Princess! Thank Celestia we’ve found you!”

“I told you gentlecolts not to follow me!” Twilight cried.

“Sorry, Miss Sparkle. We got anxious,” one of them said. Them, pushing his way past her and closing in on Rainbow, “The other guards have been looking everywhere for you.”

“Get out of my house.”

If the guards heard her, they didn’t pay her any mind. Instead, they came up on either side of her, boxing her into a corner. The talkative one even went so far as to place a hoof on her shoulder, as if to guide her out. Rainbow stared down at it in cold fury.

“Allow us to escort you, Princess.”

“Let go of me. And get. Out.”

“Please, Your Highness. If you’ll just cooperate and come with us—”

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

Rainbow’s voice crashed over them like a tidal wave.

The offending guard let go and took a step back. “Princess—”

“GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”

A crack of thunder BOOMED around them, the lights went out, the room plunged into darkness, save for Rainbow’s eyes, shining bright with a terrifying radiance, and for the briefest moment, Twilight could only watch in awestruck horror as the ceiling swirled like a hurricane above her, and electricity began to leap from the walls in crackling yellow arcs. She dove for cover behind the bed, a counterspell glowing at the tip of her horn—

But before she was able to cast it, the guards ran away screaming with their tails tucked between their legs. They burst through an open window and took off into the sky.

The room gradually brightened as the lights came back on. The walls stopped sparking. The ceiling stood still.

Half in a daze, Twilight peeked over the wispy mattress, gaping at Rainbow. Her friend’s eyes were back to their usual shade of pink, the power gone out of her as she leaned against the dresser, panting.

“R-Rainbow…”

“…Yeah?”

“That was—That was—”

To Twilight’s complete and utter disbelief, the agitation on Rainbow’s face melted to a grin. “Pretty awesome, right?”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. “NO! That was the most UN-AWESOME thing I’ve ever SEEN!”

“…I thought you said ‘un-awesome’ wasn’t a word.”

“WHEN DID I EVER SAY THAT?”

Rainbow stared at her quizzically. “Uh. Like, a week ago, when we went on that romp around Canterlot, and I accidentally got your hot air balloon trashed. Remember?”

“ARGH!” Twilight facehoofed.

She could feel her temperature ticking up, that roiling torrent of emotions from the flight over surging back into her again, bleaching her brain a fiery red. She teetered on the edge, about to blow a gasket.

“You ALWAYS do this!”

“What?”

“THIS! You ALWAYS do something stupid, dangerous, and immature, and you NEVER think about anypony other than yourself!”

Rainbow’s face fell. “So what? I’m supposed to just let them kidnap me out of my own freaking home?”

“The guards are only following orders! Keeping you safe is their JOB!”

“Their JOB is to clip my wings and keep me under Tristar’s big, dumb hoof, and I’m TIRED of it!”

Twilight just shook her head and shut out Rainbow’s protests, unwilling to hear any of it. Princess Celestia wanted them to be kept safe. Princess Celestia didn’t want them to do anything reckless.

She went on, “Rainbow, you’ve GOT to learn some self-control! Over your attitude, and ESPECIALLY over your abilities—I’ve never seen such a flagrant abuse of magic—”

“I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS!” Rainbow shouted, jabbing at her horn. With a furious flap of her wings, she charged across the room, face to face with Twilight as she glowered at her, mere inches between them. “I DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS! You think I know how this is supposed to WORK?”

“Rainbow—”

“I woke up from a bad fall, and everything’s DIFFERENT! Nopony looks at me the same as they used to, nopony treats me the same, and everypony expects me to be somepony I’m not! I can’t BE the pony you want me to be, Twilight! I DON’T KNOW HOW!”

Twilight stood her ground. “The least you can do is respect the ponies who are here to keep you safe! If Princess Celestia didn’t intend for them to protect you, she wouldn’t have appointed them to the task!”

With a roll of her eyes, Rainbow touched down, stuck a hoof in her mouth, and whistled.

There was a flash of orange at the bedroom window, and a blazing glory of wings and talons. The phoenix who came swooping in from outside gave a loud and familiar, “CAW!”

Twilight gasped. “Philomena!”

Rainbow held out a hoof, and Philomena swooped down to perch.

Flashbacks to Fluttershy’s birdnapping escapades played in Twilight’s mind like a train wreck. “Rainbow, what are you doing with the royal pet?” she asked, a queasy feeling rising in her gut.

“Philomena, meet Twilight Sparkle. Twilight, meet Philomena, my Celestia- appointed bodyguard. Bet you feel dumb now, huh?”

A stunned silence was that question’s reward. Rainbow frowned.

“Er… Actually, I guess you two have already met before, right? Flutters told me about that one time a year ago, after the royal brunch, when the two of you decided to play doctor—”

Philomena visibly shuddered. She buried her head in her wing and made a retching sound.

“Princess Celestia… gave you her pet phoenix? Why?” Twilight finally found her voice.

“I dunno, because she’s my mom or something? Because she decided to cut me some slack after everything bad that’s happened? Because she felt guilty for ruining my life?”

The words spewed from Rainbow’s mouth like venom. She grimaced, then gave her hoof a little shake, sending Philomena flying for the bookcase with an indignant squawk.

With that, the little blue alicorn turned around and retreated to her suitcase, ears flat and head bowed low. Her prismatic tail dragged across the floor like a frayed, worn-out paintbrush.

And the sneer on Rainbow’s face collapsed to depression.

Twilight didn’t see it.

Her frustration was already at high tide, and Rainbow’s newest snipe at the princess put her right over the edge. In a flash of anger, she was back in front of that newspaper in Canterlot, seething over the headlines, all the takedowns and the unfair attacks.

“How can you even talk like that?” Her voice dipped low, her brain working itself into a frenzy, unearthing memory after memory. As if gathering evidence she could use to throw in her friend’s stupid face and proclaim, ‘Here, Rainbow. Here’s why you’re wrong:’

Memories of study sessions under Princess Celestia’s watchful eye. Of days spent curled up together with a good book, and nights spent stargazing. Of all the happiness, and the wisdom, and the joy.

Princess Celestia, comforting her in the hospital after taking time to check up on her parents and Cadance. Princess Celestia, crying with remorse because she couldn’t do more to help Shining Armor!

Celestia had been there for her!

Celestia had been there for her family!

Apparently, nopony gave a damn about any of it!

Twilight’s face twisted with anger. Her emotions were too hot, too gushing to hold back. “You don’t know how lucky you are! Princess Celestia is the most special pony in the whole world!”

“Look, Twi—”

“Do you know what I would give to be in your place? To be something other than just her student?”

Rainbow groaned. “Look, I’m sorry about—”

“No! I’ve heard enough. I can’t believe how ungrateful you are.”

The change that came over Rainbow Dash was apocalyptic.

“YOU KNOW WHAT? Why don’t you just GET OUT!”

Twilight barely had time to dodge out of the way before the lamp flew past her head, smashing against the wall. Over on the bookcase, Philomena winced and flitted to a higher shelf.

“But—”

Rainbow was airborne, overshadowing her like a fearsome bird of prey. “I DON’T CARE! GET OUT!”

“But I—”

“OUUUUUUUUUUT!”

As Twilight inched backward, taking note of the positively murderous look in her friend’s eyes, she was forced to consider the possibility that she may have taken her criticisms a teensy bit too far.

“Fine! I’m leaving!”

She backed up cautiously, too worried about being pegged in the head with a vase or an alarm clock to risk turning around. Rainbow floated above her and watched her go with a leer.

Then Twilight’s hoof clanged against something metal.

Her eyes darted down to it. So did Rainbow’s.

It was a headdress. A circlet made out of brilliant yellow gold, with a pair of ornamental pegasus wings at the temples, and a bolt of lightning grafted to the crown. Although it lay on the floor, kicked aside and forgotten about, Twilight recognized it in an instant.

“Rainbow, it’s the trophy for your sonic rainboom…”

“I KNOW what it is!” Rainbow said, a growl rising in her throat. “What are you still DOING here?”

Twilight ignored her and levitated it off the ground. The pristine gold band flashed as it twirled in the air.

“It wasn’t in your suitcase… You weren’t actually going to leave this behind, were you?” she asked. “You worked so hard for it. All that time, perfecting your sonic rainboom… Princess Celestia herself gave you this.”

“What do you care?”

Rainbow turned away. Her hooves folded across her chest.

“Stupid thing’s worthless to me now, anyway,” she muttered. “Doesn’t even fit anymore. They made it for pegasus ponies with normal heads, not alicorns with dumb horns that just mess everything up.”

Twilight’s frowned.

Her horn glowed, and the metal at the front of the band began to change. It shimmered as it turned to a liquid: a long, thin strand of molten gold, dangling in the air like stretched taffy. Then it shifted, hardened, and compressed. By the time Twilight was finished with it, it was back to looking like normal, but with a newly added notch, big enough to fit a horn.

She tossed it into Rainbow’s open suitcase. “You’re welcome.”

“I… uh…”

Rainbow hovered in place, staring. Whatever words of anger she might’ve had died on her lips.

“Princess Celestia has asked me to teach you magic,” Twilight said, voice still simmering. “Given your attitude, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea or not. But for her sake, I’ll try.”

She turned around and strode out.

“We can start next week,” she called out on her way through the door. “Just as soon as you’re done feeling sorry for yourself.”

And the door swung shut behind her with a slam.

Rainbow resumed her efforts, diligently packing while Philomena perched and watched quietly. She had a conflicted look on her face as she worked, and it stuck with her long into the night.

07. Lessons

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Lessons

Originally Published 6/14/2015

“Well, lass! It’s been a few days!”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a heck of a week.”

The Caretaker straightened up to observe the familiar blue pony with the rainbow mane as she came trotting down the garden path. She had her wings clamped at her sides, and the look on her face was… troubled.

“Need a hoof?”

She motioned to the bulging burlap sack slung over his shoulder, and to the two dozen more identical bags piled on a wooden wagon off to one side. The axles on the poor little cart bowed under their weight.

He sized her up with a skeptical eye. “I don’t think you’re cut out for it, girlie. I appreciate the offer, but this here’s stallion’s work.”

Her lips twisted into a wry smile, and all of a sudden, he felt the weight of the heavy sack lift from his back. As it hovered in midair, teetering and tottering, a pure white aura sloshed around it—a perfect complement to the light shining from her horn.

The Caretaker smiled. “Well, I’d say you’ve picked up a new skill since last I saw ye!”

“It’s not hard, really,” Rainbow said, though the look of concentration on her face showed it wasn’t exactly effortless either. “Celestia says I need a bunch more practice to get good with it. I dunno, I kind of like it though. Making stuff fly is totally my style.”

“Do I take that to mean you and she are on cordial terms now?”

Rainbow’s control started to peter. “Where’s this go?”

“Over here, in this flower bed,” the Caretaker said. Not about to let her do all the work, he one-upped her by lifting two more bags, draping them over his body. “I forgot to compliment ye on your house, by the way.”

“Yeah, well… it’s a house.”

The sack in Rainbow’s magical grasp shuddered, but managed to stay upright as she carefully manipulated it through the air.

“What’s the heck’s in these things, anyway?”

“Mulch.”

He stopped at the garden plot he’d pointed out to her, bright with the vivid yellow-red of marigolds and roses. Then he flipped one of the loads off his back and tore it open with his mouth.

Rainbow stared. Hesitation crept into her eyes.

Then, with a shrug, she switched off her horn, let her sack of mulch fall to the ground, and ripped into it with her own set of teeth.

“Ack! And you were doing so well!” the Caretaker lamented.

Rainbow spat out a strip of burlap onto the ground, clutching the open bag. She glared. “Even Rarity uses scissors.”

“Didn’t your mother teach you how to snip things open with a wee bit o’ magic yet? Snip! Snip! Save your molars, lass!”

A discouraged look slid across Rainbow’s face. “No. Twilight’s been the one trying to teach me.”

“And what’s the matter with that? I should think there can’t be a better magic teacher in the world than the Prime Element herself. And she is your friend, isn’t she?”

“Twilight is…”

The word hung in the air for a second. Then Rainbow groaned and fell back into the grass, cyan hooves splayed out in all four directions like the arrows on a compass.

“Sounds like it’s been a heck of a week.”

“Yeah. It has been. I said that already.”

“And what of your mother?” the Caretaker asked. He took a break on an overturned bag, reaching up to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Has she given ye any insight?”

“She’s not my mother.”

“Then what is she?”

“She’s…”

The alicorn twirled a hoof in the air, searching for the right words.

“…there. She’s there.”

“Ah. Well, I suppose ‘there’ is a better thing than ‘not there.’”

“I dunno,” Rainbow muttered, rolling onto her side. “I kinda think the ‘not there’ days were simpler.”

The Caretaker dusted off his hooves and smirked. “Well, I’ve a half an hour to spare, and a hardworking helper who’ll make my job twice as easy. Why don’t we sit a spell, you and I, and ye can fill me in on the last couple o’ days? A little talk might un-mince your head.”

Rainbow smiled.

A comfortable breeze rustled through the treetops of the East Garden and lent their conversation a whispering backdrop. High up above, the sun added its warmth to the perfection of the day, shining bright off a familiar dwelling of clouds as it traced its path across the cerulean sky.

Three days earlier…

“So, who wants to help me practice magic?”

Tank and Philomena looked up from their poker game as an easygoing Rainbow Dash strutted into the room. They both had the same reaction: a nervous glance across the table, a shared expression of dread. Their wings and claws each clenched the cards a little tighter.

“Come on!” Rainbow said, stopping in front of them. “Which one of you guys is cool enough to help me out, huh? I need a volunteer.”

“Nuh-uh!” Philomena cawed. Tank likewise croaked his refusal.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pony’s sake! I just want to try to float you around in the air a little. Unicorns do it all the time! How hard could it possibly be?”

The two animals stared at her skittishly.

With a scowl, she reached over to a nearby fruit bowl and snatched up an apple. Then, placing it down on the table between the three of them, she flashed a cocky grin and lowered her head, aiming her horn at it like a gun. “Look, I totally got this! Just wait. You’ll see. I’ll have this thing cruising around in ten seconds fla—”

BOOM!

The apple blew up into a million, billion pieces.

Philomena screeched in mortal fear and made a mad flap for the open window, kicking up a gust that knocked over half a dozen stacks of poker chips. Tank didn’t have his ’copter on, so he couldn’t escape along with her, but he made up for it by sucking his head and legs into his shell. A couple seconds later, a scaly green paw stuck back out and planted a wooden sign that read, “GONE FISHING. NOBODY HOME.”

Rainbow stood frozen in shock, her face slathered in applesauce. She blinked a few times.

“Well, okay, then. Maybe next time, guys.”

She wobbled and fell over.

“Twilight! Twiiiiilight!”

Some hours later, Rainbow drifted through the immaculate halls of the Royal Canterlot Library, past row on row of teeming shelves. She stuck her head down each narrow aisle as she flapped on by, searching for any sign of the brainy unicorn.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Gyah! How the heck was anypony supposed to find anything in here when the whole freaking place was clogged with all these dumb books?

“Twiiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiiiii—”

“Oh, for the love of—I’m over here!”

She peeked over a procession of dusty tomes and spied her goal sitting at a table on the other side. A look of relief spread across her face.

“Whew! Thank goodness! I thought I was gonna get lost and starve to death in here!” she exclaimed, leaping overtop the shelf.

Twilight shot her a cross look. “There’s a window right there, Dash.”

“Oh my gosh! Daylight! It’s a miracle!” Rainbow cried, falling down on her knees in reverence of the bright, blue sky.

Her antics did nothing to impress the irritated unicorn, who continued to glare at her. “Where have you been all this time? You were supposed to be here half an hour ago!”

“Yeah, well, I got lost,” Rainbow said simply. She jumped in a chair and kicked her hooves up on the table.

“You know, some ponies have the courtesy to show up to their appointments on time.” Twilight scowled and shoved the pair of cyan hindlegs off without ceremony.

“Some ponies didn’t grow up in the Canterlot Archives reading boring, stupid books every day! Sorry for not knowing my way around!”

“These books are not stupid!”

Rainbow folded her arms in front of her chest. “Oh yeah? Well, where’s the Daring Do Wing, huh?”

Twilight stared. “What?”

“Uh, hello? Equestria to Twilight? The Daring Do Wing? The place they put all the Daring Do books? Sheesh, you take a librarian out of the library for one week…”

“There isn’t a—”

“Hey, do you think it’s the room with the ginormous hourglass on top of the pedestal? Because, I mean, come on. That’s totally gotta be a nod to Daring Do and the Time-Tossed Timekeeper.”

Rainbow tilted back in her chair, one leg up on the table again to help keep her balance. A frown passed over her face.

“I didn’t see any Daring Do books in there, though. Just a buncha lame old scrolls about chrome-magic.”

“It’s called chrono-magic,” Twilight corrected. “And you shouldn’t have even been in there! That’s the Starswirl the Bearded Wing. It’s a restricted section. You have to get special permission to peruse it.”

Rainbow nodded. “Is it far from the Daring Do Wing?”

“THERE ISN’T A DARING DO WING!” Twilight shouted.

“…Jeeze. This library sucks.”

Twilight facehoofed.

“But hey, speaking of magic—”

The front legs on Rainbow’s chair clacked against the hickory floor as she tipped back forward. She brightened with eagerness.

“—weren’t you gonna teach me it?”

“That is why we’re here,” Twilight said. “That is why I asked you to be here on time, thirty minutes ago—”

“Oh, come on! Are we gonna get this show on the road or what?”

“Fine.”

Twilight brought a book from out of her saddlebag and placed it neatly on the table in front of them. “You did do the reading I assigned you to do, right?” she asked.

Her eyes snapped back up, as if daring her friend to admit she hadn’t.

“Uh…”

“Rainbow Dash? You did do the reading, didn’t you?”

“…If I said no, would you be really mad at me?”

“RAINBOW!”

“Look, I tried, okay? But it was reallllly boring!” Just to emphasize that fact, she squished her hooves against her cheeks and pulled down her eyelids, exposing the red bits underneath.

Twilight’s teeth grinded in her mouth. “You show up late, you don’t do the reading, you act like this is all just a game to you—”

“Hey! I’m super serious! You wanna see my super serious face?”

Rainbow put on her super serious face.

“Ugh…” Twilight said. “All right. Whatever. Let’s just… take it from the top, I guess. We’ll start with the basics. Here. Move this book.”

The thick, leather-bound tome sat between them atop the table, gilded lettering flashing contemptuously in the light.

Rainbow stared at it. “Er…”

“What are you waiting for?” Twilight said. “Move the book.”

Rainbow hesitated. Then, tentatively, she nudged it with her hoof—

—only for Twilight to swat her on the wrist. She yanked back her arm.

“Ah! Hey!”

“Move it with magic,” Twilight clarified.

Rainbow blinked as she nursed her hoof. “Uh… How… exactly… do I go about doing that, again?”

“You mean you’ve had a horn all these weeks and you still don’t know how to perform basic levitation?” Twilight gaped at her. “I don’t know if I believe that. Even foals are clever enough to figure out telekinesis.”

“Telly-ka-whatsis?”

The unicorn gave a heavy sigh. “You know, if you’d done the reading I assigned, you wouldn’t have to ask all these questio—”

The book flew off the table and smacked Twilight in the face.

“Ow!”

“Okay, Rainbow Dash. First thing’s first. I want you to close your eyes and reach out with your magical energy. See if you can feel out the book in three dimensional space.”

Rainbow sighed and did as she was told.

A few seconds went by. Then…

“What are you doing?” Twilight’s voice cut sharp.

Rainbow cracked open one eye. “Er… What you told me to do?”

“Not like that!” Twilight groaned. “Why are you wiggling your hooves at it? This isn’t some magic show where you wave your arms over the box the magician’s assistant comes out of!”

“You told me to reach out!”

“With your magical energy! Come on! Take this seriously!”

Rainbow banged her head repeatedly against the tabletop. The steady thud-thud-thud set the beat as she chanted her displeasure: “I hate learning stuff. I hate learning stuff. I hate learning stuff.”

Twilight stood in front of a blackboard, which was covered in symbols and scribbles and all manner of chalky gobbledygook. She had her back to Rainbow as she lectured.

“…and so, the pulse originated in the carbuncle flows into the horn via the thaumaturgic pathway, where it’s concentrated, focused, and directed outward to act upon the world. The localized emission of magical flux can be easily measured with the aid of a mana-electron transducer equipped with regularly-patterned arcanium dynodes. Top unicorn scientists have placed the average output of an adult unicorn’s horn in the range of 10.0 to 20.0 picostarswirls, with a standard deviation of… RAINBOW DASH! Are you even listening?!”

Rainbow snapped to attention. Outside, the flying pair of pegasus colts she’d been watching through the window sped off to continue their cloudball game someplace else.

“Huh?”

Twilight seethed. “You know, you would probably gain more from this if you bothered to pay attention!”

“I would probably gain more from this if it weren’t so boring!”

“The underlying theory is essential to know! Now, once more, from the top: the magical pulse doesn’t actually originate in the horn, but in a bodily organ located directly behind the horn, which is known as the…”

Rainbow slammed her head against the table.

“I hate learning stuff.”

“Move this book.”

The same book as before sat on the table, glinting maliciously.

Rainbow crossed her hooves and scoffed at it. “I still don’t even know how I made it fly the last time!”

“The correct term is ‘levitate.’ And you did it before. So do it again.”

“I don’t know how!”

“We’ve been over this, Rainbow Dash! Reach out with your magic. Feel the book, and allow the manifestation of your arcane will to coalesce into mundanality underneath it. If you do it right, it should—”

A completely different book picked that moment to shoot off a nearby shelf and thwack Twilight in the back of the head.

“Ow!”

She jumped up, spinning to try to defend herself. But before she could get up a barrier, a second volume flew at her from the other direction and bashed her again. She staggered, groaning.

“It seems to work all right whenever it involves hitting you,” Rainbow observed helpfully.

Twilight glared at her. “Rainbow Dash, that’s enough—!”

The original book whizzed off the table and popped her in the nose.

Rainbow tipped back in her chair and laughed and laughed. When the book finally let go of Twilight’s face and dropped to the floor a few seconds later, the unicorn had a red rectangular imprint to frame her expression of absolute, unmitigated rage.

“That’s IT! I’m DONE!”

She picked up her things and pushed in her chair.

Rainbow stopped laughing. “Hey, wait, where are you going?”

“I have better things to do than to waste my time catering to somepony who would rather throw things at me than listen to a single word I have to say! If this is how you’re going to act, you can teach yourself magic!”

“But—But I’m not doing it on purpose! I really can’t control it!”

“A likely story!”

Rainbow struggled to keep a straight face. “You have to admit, though, it’s pretty funny.” A snort came out of her, her laughter barely contained—and then she tilted back and cracked up again.

Twilight facehoofed. “ARGH!” she cried.

And she stormed out in a huff.

“Professor?”

Sage’s kindly silver eyes raised at the sound of a familiar voice, and his face lit up when he saw Twilight Sparkle leaning in the doorway. For once, her expression wasn’t nervous.

“Come in, Miss Sparkle! Come in!”

Not nervous, but certainly exhausted. Twilight shuffled in wearily, her hooves dragging across the hardwood floor.

She sat down in a chair, frowning as she glanced about. The bedroom was every bit as spartan as it had been the last time she stopped by to visit her old headmaster, with empty desks and vacant bookshelves aplenty. To the sojourning librarian, it almost seemed like a crime.

It didn’t matter.

A sigh parted her lips, and she slumped. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take that drink now, Professor.”

Sage arched an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”

Twilight watched him rise and saunter over to the brandy decanter on the mantle. He kept his drink close at hoof, if nothing else.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” she mumbled.

Sage glanced at her sidelong as he began pouring into a pair of crystal glasses. “I assume you refer to the young Princess, and to the sacred duty I entrusted you to fulfill in teaching her.”

“She can’t be taught,” Twilight said adamantly. “She’s the worst student in the world. Maybe even the universe.”

“I’m sure she can’t be all that bad.”

“She is! And the strange part is, she keeps telling me she wants to learn magic. When it comes right down to it, though, will she pick up a textbook and read it? No! Will she listen to anything I have to say? No! She has zero patience, zero attention span, and zero regard for knowledge or wisdom. How can I teach wisdom to somepony who doesn’t want to be wise?”

Sage chuckled. “She sounds like quite the formidable student.”

“Oh, please! She’s the least formidable student of magic I’ve ever seen! She couldn’t even levitate a toothpick!”

Twilight knitted her hooves and slouched in defeat. A pout sullied her face as she looked away.

Her wandering eyes chanced upon a little hand mirror, which lay upon a stand next to Sage’s chair. It was the only other thing of note in the entire room, which was why it caught her interest. She vaguely recalled seeing it the last time she came here, though only briefly.

Its wood was an inky shade of blue, carved to look like gnarled roots, interwoven together, winding their way up the handle and around the oval looking glass. They combined at the top, ending in a motif that resembled a black, three-pronged crown.

There was something peculiar about it, and without thinking, Twilight found herself reaching out to touch it. But before she could, Sage’s shadow fell over her. She looked up to see the old headmaster standing above her, holding out a drink.

She accepted it. “Oh. Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it.”

Sage smiled and sat back down. A silvery aura rippled around his own glass of brandy as he swirled it at his side.

“Now then, Miss Sparkle. Let’s talk.”

Twilight nodded, grateful to have a friendly ear. In all her years at the Academy, Professor Whitehoof had always been there for her, in all ways, from the paper-and-quill tests to the everyday tests of life and growing up. Always there to raise her spirits, to talk her up when she was feeling down, to give her confidence when she had none in herself.

She opened her mouth to speak. “Rainbow Dash—”

“—is a difficult student, to be sure. Learning doesn’t come as easily to her as it does to you. But there are other ways to teach a pony.”

Twilight ruminated on that. “Well, I guess I could try highlighting… or flashcards… or—”

“The best teachers find a way to connect with their students’ strengths. You’ve known Rainbow Dash for a long time now, Twilight. You’ve known her at her best, and you’ve known her at her worst, and you know for a fact where her strengths lie, better than most anypony else in Equestria. Take me at my word. You are the unicorn for the job.”

“But she won’t listen! No matter how thoroughly I prepare my lectures, she won’t listen to anything I have to say!”

“Well, perhaps you’ve been lecturing her too much lately.”

Sage paused to sip his drink.

He continued, “As far as how… formidable… she is, I think you’ll come to find you’ve vastly underestimated her. Rainbow Dash has a raw magical talent, the likes of which I’ve not witnessed in a long, long time. Not since a certain purple unicorn attended my school, in fact.”

He didn’t mean it to cause offense, but the subtext of his message, and the way that he said it—that quirk of his snowy brow, that cheery twinkle in his eyes—it all sent a rush of annoyance through Twilight. “You aren’t actually comparing her to me, are you?”

“Goodness, no! There’s no comparison.”

She nodded. “Good.”

“Rainbow Dash has far more magical ability than either one of us. Any comparison would be laughably tilted in her direction.”

“What?!”

Twilight jumped up out of her chair.

“I am not worse at magic than Rainbow Dash!”

“Oh, not yet, I’m sure. But I think you’ll find her capacity to be nothing short of extraordinary. With a bit of coaching and a nudge from her friend, she’ll be a powerhouse yet.”

No. No, no, this was not true. This could not be happening.

Rainbow Dash? A powerful mage? The world would blow up. Horrible visions swirled in her mind’s eye: visions of the reckless speedster trying a magic-boosted rainboom and turning all of Equestria into candy-colored slag, or perhaps time traveling into the past, creating a dozen grandfather paradoxes, and carelessly leaving them to compound and compound until the fabric of the universe ripped apart. “It’s just chrome-magic, Twi!”

And just the thought of it—Rainbow Dash, better at magic than her—

“I don’t believe it,” Twilight muttered as she stalked the floor back and forth. “Magic is my special talent!”

“That it is,” Sage intoned solemnly. “But a unicorn is a unicorn, and an alicorn is an alicorn. At the end of the day, we must accept the limitations of our physical forms.”

“I’m the Element of Magic, for pony’s sake!”

“And that makes you the most qualified teacher in the world!”

Twilight’s face turned to ash.

Until this moment, it hadn’t dawned on her just what Princess Celestia and Sage were asking her to do. She’d been so caught up in trying to teach Rainbow Dash parlor tricks, the magnitude of what they actually wanted escaped her. Not just levitation, but magic. Actual magic.

“Listen to me, Twilight,” Sage said, looking at her meaningfully. “Some ponies are destined for great things. That’s the way of the world. And the rest of us… it falls to us to show them the way. Just like it fell to me to show you, when you turned up.”

“But—But Professor—”

“Not everypony can move mountains, Twilight.”

Twilight sucked in her breath. She felt like she’d just been punched in the gut. There it was: the truth laid bare, in black and white. How had she been blind enough not to see it before?

She hid her bitterness and feigned polite conversation for another ten minutes or so. Long enough to give the pretense of being unaffected. Then she excused herself—“Thank you for your help, Professor Whitehoof. I’m sure I’ll get through to Rainbow eventually.”—and she headed quickly out the door, nursing her ego as she slinked down the stairs.

Sage took a long draught of his brandy and watched her go.

“Bustle, Bedlam T.,” the top of the file read.

It was a rather thick file. A full dossier of documents and photographs, crammed between two bulging manila flaps. Tristar had read it more than once, front to back, cover to cover. Yet always, his eyes came back to those three little words: “Bustle, Bedlam T.”

Once more, he shuffled through the papers, digesting the minutiae of a privileged life. Two parents, still happily married, both counted among the lower nobility. An affluent upbringing in Baltimare, complete with private tutors and piano lessons. High marks on all aptitude tests, and high praise from all teachers, schoolmates, and neighbors, right down to the little old mare he helped cross the street every morning. Delivered the valedictory speech at his graduation, was all set to embark on a lucrative career in his father’s finance company, and then…

Gone. Disappeared. Fell right off the map.

But up until that strange event, there was certainly nothing in his past to suggest he might go astray. It didn’t make any sense. This kid should’ve been a model citizen, not a criminal.

“They’re ready for you, sir.”

Tristar glanced up from the file and gave the detention officer a polite nod. “Thank you. I’ll see him now, then,” he said, and he stepped back and watched as the uniformed filly heaved back the lever next to the massive, metal door. It screeched open, and he strode on in.

“Good afternoon, Mister Bustle!”

There was no reaction from the chocolate-coated stallion seated in the center of the room. Not a dart of his eyes, nor a twitch of his hooves, which rested before him on top of the interrogation table, connected by a pair of white manacles. Not a trace of a flinch when the prison door clanged shut, and Tristar walked out in front of him.

“I’m happy to see you’re looking so healthy!” Tristar said. “I was afraid jail wouldn’t agree with you, but you’ve proven me wrong!”

Bedlam stared straight ahead and didn’t say anything, turquoise eyes glued to the concrete wall.

Tristar circled around him, a predator toying with its prey. “You wear that jumpsuit well! That’s good! I was afraid you’d lose your weight and it would slide right off you—but no, you seem to be thriving! And goodness me, just look at the color in those cheeks!”

He reached out and gave the prisoner’s face a forceful pat.

That got a reaction. Bedlam twisted in his chair and tried to jerk away. He met Tristar with a malicious stare.

“Touch me again.”

His voice was quiet, but intense: calm and storm both rolled together, one and the same. And they carried more than a hint of a threat.

Tristar just smiled cheerfully and circled back around. He pulled out a chair on the other side of the table and sat down, leafing idly through the manila file.

“Bedlam T. Bustle. Age, twenty-seven. Born A.D. 979 to Prosperity and Starlight Bustle. One sibling, Crescent, age twenty-two…”

“You’re looking healthy as well,” Bedlam spoke in a low register. “Far healthier than you looked a week ago, when I left you bloody, broken, and whimpering on the floor, surrounded by the screams of your—”

“What’s the ‘T’ stand for?” Tristar interrupted.

“…Come again?”

“The ‘T’ in ‘Bedlam T. Bustle.’ What’s it stand for?”

Bedlam’s lips curled into a crooked smile. “It stands for Triumph.”

“Not a good name, if I’m honest. Matter of fact, in light of where you’re sitting right now, I’d venture to say it doesn’t suit you.”

Bedlam scowled and fell silent.

“Then again, when Mama Bustle named you, I don’t suppose she ever imagined her only son would throw away his life for a fanatic’s dream. It’s done a real number on her health, you know—having to live with knowing her baby boy is public enemy number one, cuffed and chained and left to rot behind bars for the rest of his life—”

Tristar paged through the file again.

“Huh. It says here the ‘T’ stands for ‘Thomas,’ actually. Why’d you have to go and tell lies to me, Tom? Now I don’t know whether or not I can trust you to be honest with me.”

“We both know that never would’ve happened, anyway,” Bedlam said with sourness in his voice.

Tristar flipped the file closed and tossed it on the table. He leaned back in his chair, hooves crossed as he studied the caged Ascendant.

Bedlam opened his mouth to say something. “I—”

“Shh,” Tristar stopped him.

He made a show of sniffing the air, inhaling it in noisy whiffs.

“Do you smell that?”

Bedlam frowned. “I don’t smell anythi—”

“That’s the smell of, ‘I’m sorry, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. I’m sorry for breaking your train station and hurting your subjects. It was very wrong of me to do those things, and I promise to make up for it by telling you everything there is to know about the Ascendancy, because I know you’ll have mercy on me if I do.’”

“And what will you do if I say nothing?” Bedlam mustered a smirk. “Put me in time out? Teach me a nice little lesson about the virtues of harmony and friendship?”

“Tell me, Tommy. Have you ever heard of the prisoner’s dilemma?”

The smirk fell away. “My name is Bedlam.”

“The prisoner’s dilemma is this: you’re the prisoner, and you’re stuck here in prison. And I alone hold the key that can set you free.”

At this, Tristar plucked the key ring from his belt, jangled it, and threw it down on the table. He leaned forward in his chair and met Bedlam’s gaze with the utmost seriousness.

“But if you don’t wise up and tell me exactly what I need to know before one of your co-conspirators does, then I swear to you, I will put you in the coldest, darkest, loneliest hole, and there shall you stay for the rest of your pathetic life, until all memory of warmth and companionship retreats from your mind, and you either kill yourself or go insane!”

“Is that really the best you can do?” Bedlam’s undaunted voice crackled over the intercom.

In the adjoining observation room, a pair of alicorns watched intently, eyes fixed on the interrogation playing out beyond the enchanted one-way mirror. Celestia and Luna stood side by side, whispering in the darkness.

“He’s a charming one, isn’t he?” Luna muttered.

Celestia snorted. “Yes. A real winning personality.”

A minute passed, and the drama on the other side of the glass played out all too predictably, with Tristar getting nowhere in his questioning and Bedlam refusing to budge from his stubborn zeal. A creeping despondency settled over Luna as she watched him from afar. That righteous conviction, that self-certain air…

The horrors he’d wrought were beyond grotesque, and a small fraction of her couldn’t help but wonder how anypony could be capable of such an act. But on another level, this all hit far too close to home for her.

“Do you suppose he’ll give anything up?" she asked.

A shrug rolled off her sister’s shoulders. “Perhaps. Time will tell.”

“And they’re certain his actions were his own? He wasn’t… compelled to commit this crime by any outside force?” Luna furtively shifted her gaze, peering up at Celestia out of the corner of her eye.

“None of them were. Sage brought in a team of arcanists to check that possibility first thing. He reported no evidence of mind control, no planted suggestions. They did what they did of their own free will.”

The interrogation continued:

“How many innocents did we manage to fell, anyway? They won’t let me have a copy of the newspaper to check for myself—too afraid I’ll cut out the pictures and hang ’em on the walls, ha! But in all seriousness, how many did we manage to bring down? Seventy? Eighty?”

“Who gave you the order to attack that train station?”

“Ninety? Am I hot or cold?”

“WHO GAVE THE ORDER?”

“A hundred? A hundred little ponies all laid out on the floor, while your precious Celestia scrambled to do the work of two?”

Luna flinched.

Celestia furiously made the throat slash gesture with her hoof, and the sound from the other room cut off. Her face burned with anger—anger at the imbecilic comment, anger at the imbecile who’d said it. But her molten rage cooled and honed to pain when she looked at Luna.

Her younger sister’s head was turned down and away. She looked like she’d just been slapped. Celestia thought she saw a glimmer of tears, and when Luna spoke, her voice was thick with guilt.

“He’s right. I should have been there. I let everypony down.”

“Luna…”

“It’s the same as ever, isn’t it?” the smaller alicorn mumbled. “My fault. It’s always because of me that ponies get hurt.”

“Luna, no! That’s—”

“—the truth! If I hadn’t been so pathetic, I could’ve done something to stop them straight away! Instead, you had to spend precious minutes just trying to keep everypony alive, and you didn’t have anypony to take your place on the battlefield. And all of those ponies ended up getting hurt… all those guards…

“And it’s my fault,” Luna said in a quiet voice. “It’s my fault in the first place. If I hadn’t been so weak, nopony would’ve been hurt. And… And if I hadn’t been so weak a thousand years ago, then none of this would’ve ever even happened—”

“This isn’t about you!” Celestia said hotly. “This was never about you! You were a victim in all this, as much as anypony! As much as Hurricane, as much as Father—”

“I really wish I could believe that, Tia.”

The Princess of the Moon flicked her hoof, and the air filled again with the tinny sounds of conversation played over-intercom.

“—only be a matter of time before your whole wretched outfit is brought down from within,” they caught the end of Tristar’s sentence. “All it takes is one viper to turn on the rest—”

“You’ll pardon me if I don’t take advice on snakes from the chief serpent himself. You speak with a forked tongue, Captain.”

“Idiot!” Tristar’s hoof slammed against the tabletop. “Have it your way! There are twelve other hooligans in this cellblock who’ll be happy to loosen their lips for a deal. I’ve wasted enough of my time trying to help you salvage the wreckage of your miserable life.”

Bedlam’s thin, gray lips twisted into a caricature of a smile. “You talk of having honesty and integrity, yet you don’t have either one. Even now, you’re lying through your teeth. My brethren won’t take your deal. They won’t even say a word to you, will they? That’s the reason why you’ve ‘wasted so much time’ trying to convince me to accept your ‘gracious’ offer. Because I’m your only lead. Because they’re all voiceless and powerless to say anything, and I alone am entrusted to speak in the name of the Goddess.”

“He’s astute,” Celestia muttered.

Tristar spent a good, long while just sitting and staring across the table at his gaunt nemesis. He sucked in his lips as a frown lowered his face, and he reached for the file again and began flipping through it.

“Tell me about this Goddess of yours,” he tried a different tactic. “I didn’t see her show up to the party you boys threw her last week.”

“No. She wouldn’t have.”

“Why’s that? She afraid of public appearances?”

“The Nightmare fears nothing. She sees and knows all. And one day soon, she’ll open up her wings and blot out the sun, and the moon, and the sky, and the peace that’s run unchecked these past thousand years will be driven into the darkest crevices of memory.”

“The Nightmare,” Luna observed. “Not Nightmare Moon.”

“The press always gets it wrong,” Celestia said dryly.

Luna turned an anxious eye toward her sister. “Does Twilight—?”

“No. She doesn’t,” Celestia sighed. “Under the circumstances, I’m glad Sage invited her to stay at the castle. If the Ascendancy knew…”

“Who’s to say they don’t?”

Hesitation reigned. “I’d like to think our state secrets are impregnable to them. But you’re right. They’ve been in the driver’s seat for the last two years. They very well may.”

Tristar’s voice crackled: “And does this Nightmare of yours plan to turn her back on you now that you’ve done your part for her cause? I don’t exactly foresee her storming the gates to set you free.”

Several seconds went by, and the prisoner was silent.

Tristar tried one more time. “It must be a real slap in the face—to have so much power and ability at your beck and call, only to wind up here, of all places. You know, I read your record. You were a real talent at spellcasting. A prodigy, even. You sure as hell knew one end of your horn from the other when you went up against me the other day. And now, here you are. Cut off from your magic for the rest of your life.”

He paused to let his words sink in.

“What’s it like, being surrounded by all these dampening fields? Is it like going blind?” Tristar tilted his head. He put on a look of mock pity. “What a shame. What a shame you chose the path you did—and what a shame your precious Nightmare has abandoned you here to rot.”

“What’s it like to fall to your death?” Bedlam spoke up.

Tristar skipped a beat.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, you’re a pegasus. Your kind takes to the sky like a fish to water. I’ve just always been so curious—do you ever entertain the fear of falling and killing yourself?

“Just hypothetically—let’s say it’s a week ago, and you and your dogs are back downtown, lined up on top of that skyscraper again, waiting for the call to come in. You get word of the attack, you jump off the side of the building, you open your wings to catch the air—and right then, a draconequus decides to snap his fingers, and your wings disappear. Poof.

“Is that, like, a secret terror for you pegasi? Falling?” Bedlam wondered, blithely indifferent to the rising rage in Tristar’s eyes. “The howl of the wind as you twist in midair, desperate to save yourself, to brake your descent… the sickening crunch when it proves useless, and every single one of your bones shatters against the pavement…”

He whistled the cartoon sound effect of a freefalling object and mimed the same with his foreleg, a hoof slowly plummeting from above his head to crash against the tabletop.

“Say, what color do you think your puddle would be if you were splattered all across the street? Red to match your blood, or white to match your coat? A mixture of the two? More red than white?” Tristar was fuming by now, but Bedlam carried on jovially. “You got a wife? A daughter? A couple colts back in Canterlot, waiting for their daddy to come home? What color do you think their puddles would be if somepony tied them up and dropped them from a thousand feet? Do you think their guts would fly far?”

“ENOUGH!”

Celestia silenced the audio with another slash of her hoof, and a black fog rolled over the window as she caused it to go opaque, blocking all view of the interrogation. Then, with a look of disgust threatening to boil over, she mashed a gray button on the intercom and opened up a channel to the detention officer outside.

“Get my guard captain out of there! We’re done here!”

“Yes, Princess Celestia.”

She let up on the button and counted to ten. A deep breath shuddered out of her as she fought to contain her anger.

“This was a waste of time.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” said Luna.

“I should’ve deferred to the police commissioner’s report—” Celestia’s hoof shook as she rubbed her brow. “It would’ve saved a lot of time—“

“You’re exhausted, Tia.”

She frowned and shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Luna said, gazing up at her, her face etched with concern. “When was the last time you slept?”

Celestia squeezed her eyes shut. “What day is it?”

“Monday,” the younger alicorn answered with a note of worry.

“It hasn’t been that long, then. I’m not even up to a week yet.” Celestia carried on without pause, “We should contact Sage and see if he’s managed to scry anything new. And we ought to tap our informants in Manehattan, while we’re at it—we’re here in town, after all—”

“Tia, you need to stop.” Luna laid a hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You need to take a break.”

“My subjects’ lives—!”

“—are safe, for the time being,” Luna said. “Let me continue to oversee things. It’s the least I can do to make up for my absence last week.”

“But—”

“You need to take a sleeping car on the midnight train back to Canterlot. I know you’re furious, and you want to see the Ascendancy brought down. But there are more important things in your life right now.”

“No.” Celestia shook her head. “I’ll stay here with you. I need—”

“You can’t keep avoiding her, Tia!”

She winced.

“I hear the words that come out of your mouth, even if you don’t,” Luna continued, the heat in her voice tempered with compassion. “You need to see to her, and you know it! Your mind’s divided—I listen to the things you say, and half the time, the thought of her creeps in. Your heart is sick with so much guilt—”

“And yours isn’t?” Celestia fired back.

“At least I only pull my guilt from one pot! At least I can sleep, and sleep soundly! Why do I even have to explain this to you when it’s clearly eating you up inside? Tia, you’re dallying here for a nebulous purpose while your daughter languishes halfway across the country!”

“You’re right.”

Luna had her mouth open, her next sentence already teetering on the tip of her tongue when her sister suddenly surrendered the argument. She stopped herself before she said anything more.

Celestia paused for an interval, then sat down unceremoniously on the ground. Her tail swished the floor like an ethereal broom.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said quietly. “This, I know. I know how to lead a country, how to be a champion for my people. But where Aurora is concerned… Luna, I’m lost. I’ve tried to make overtures, but every time, I grasp for words, I say the wrong thing, she doesn’t want to listen, I only drive her further away…”

Luna sat down at her sister’s side. Their cutie marks brushed against each other, the sun and the moon brought together in the darkness shared between them.

“What do you want, Tia?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If she decided never to speak another word to you, she would be fully within her rights. She doesn’t owe you anything. Not love, not forgiveness, not understanding. So what is it you want from her?”

Celestia absently rubbed one forehoof against the other, presumably for comfort. Luna’s blunt assessment was a vise to the spirit, squeezing all the vigor and vitality out of her.

“Forgiveness,” she finally said. “And understanding.”

“I see. None of the first thing, then?”

“I’ve got you for that.” Celestia’s eyes rose to meet Luna’s, and she put on a mirthless smile. “Besides, I’m not foolish enough to expect to receive it—nor pretentious enough to think I deserve it.”

“You asked me to send a chariot for her and keep her safe in the castle under heavy guard. Then, the first time she flashed her ire at you for taking away her freedom, you countermanded me, gave her a pet, a pat, and free reign. I’m still not sure it was wise.”

“I—”

“You claim you want forgiveness and understanding, but you’d rather stay here chasing ghosts than go home and be near her. You’d rather hide in the dark, five hundred miles away.” Luna shook her head. “You need to stop vacillating. You can’t have it both ways.”

Celestia’s shoulders hunched. “It’s not that simple. If I were three feet from her, we would still be ten million miles apart.”

“Maybe so.”

The midnight alicorn climbed to her hooves.

“But you gave her free reign, and license ‘to go and do as she pleases.’ She could have left Canterlot a thousand times by now, gone back home to Ponyville to try and put the pieces of her life back together. And yet, Sage tells me she’s still at the castle. Almost like she’s waiting for something—or somepony.”

Luna extended a hoof.

Celestia took it, rising shakily off the floor. A few beats passed between them, and they shared a commiserating look. Then Luna threw her arms around her sister and hugged her tightly.

“I’ll debrief Captain Tristar,” she said as their horns touched together. “I’ll conference with Sage and the rest of our contacts. Trust me to do what needs to be done to keep our subjects safe. As for you—”

They parted, and Luna’s expression turned back to concern.

“Go back to the hotel, Tia. Figure out what you want to do. Stay or go—whatever you decide, I’ll support you. But please, please, please, for pony’s sake, get some sleep.”

Celestia closed her eyes. “Thank you, sister.”

Luna held open the door, and they walked out together into the light.

“Princess Celestia! Princess Celestia!”

Twilight Sparkle scampered as fast as she could through the tapestried halls of Canterlot Castle, swerving around corners and weaving through the legs of more than one guard patrol. With an enormous grin on her face, she blew through the white double doors of Princess Celestia’s private study, too excited to even think about knocking.

Her teacher looked up from her desk in surprise. “Twilight!”

“Princess!” Twilight squealed. “I can’t wait to show you! I—”

“Ahem!” somepony cleared their throat.

The eager filly skidded to a halt on the champagne carpet, her jubilance quelling at the unexpected presence of a third pony in the room. The military unicorn stood rigidly opposite the desk from Princess Celestia, sniffing down at her through his bulging salt-and-pepper mustache. The stodginess of his slate gray coat was accentuated by the formal blue service uniform he had on, adorned with full medals and regalia.

“I’m sorry, my student,” Princess Celestia said. “You’ve caught me in the middle of something.”

Twilight’s ears splayed. “Oh. I’m… I’m sorry, Princess.”

With her head bowed self-consciously and her tail tucked in-between her legs, she began to trot out. She felt her mentor’s eyes on her as she went. By the time she was halfway to the door, the military unicorn had picked up the conversation again.

“As I was saying, Your Highness, we’ve tracked the Diamond Dogs to the foothills outside Bridle Shores. My lieutenant talked to the foremare of Lord Brilliant’s mining operation, and she reported the disappearance of thirteen sapphires, five rubies, three emeralds—”

“Thank you, Colonel Steelspur, but I’m afraid something’s just come up,” Celestia said, glancing at Twilight out of the corner of her eye. “I think we’ll postpone the rest of this discussion until tomorrow.”

Twilight stopped and looked back hopefully.

The Colonel frowned. “But Princess, Lord Brilliant will be expecting—”

“You’ll forgive me if I can’t bring myself to care too terribly much about Lord Brilliant’s missing jewels. Goodness knows, he probably hasn’t seen the two that are attached to him in the last twenty years. I think he can afford to be without these ones for a few hours longer.”

“But—But Princess!”

“Not now, Colonel. We’ll talk later,” Celestia said formally.

The sputtering old unicorn looked back and forth between the Princess and her student. At first, it appeared he was about to argue further, but then he wisely accepted defeat and shuffled out, grumbling.

The second the door closed behind him, Twilight raced across the room and threw herself into Celestia’s open hooves.

“Oh my gosh, THANK YOU!” Twilight said as she burrowed her head into the crook of Celestia’s neck.

“It’s all right, my student!” Celestia laughed, giving the overjoyed filly a squeeze before swinging her back to the floor. “Now, what is it that’s got you so worked up this evening?”

“I was deciphering some ancient scrolls in the library today after school, and I came across some of the unpublished work of Marvel the Magnificent! I cross-referenced the incantum incantatem with some historical texts, and I actually think I solved his Seventh Spell. Look!”

Her horn wrapped in its usual scarlet glow, and very quickly, it was the brightest thing in the whole room. The candles dimmed, the shadows leaping forth to take their place, and even the orange rays of sunset filtering through the panoramic window were suddenly snuffed. The air itself seemed charged with mystery.

Then, from out of the incandescent end of Twilight’s horn, a million tiny pinpoints of light took wing, floating gracefully all around, dancing in the air like snowflakes. Wonder and astonishment reigned on Celestia’s face as she watched them drift and fill the room, a galaxy of delicate stars spiraling all about them.

“This magic hasn’t been seen in over seven hundred years,” she gasped. A hoof darted to her mouth to cover her surprise.

Twilight beamed. “I know! I pieced the whole spell back together myself from what I could find in the library!”

Celestia reached out experimentally and touched one of the glimmering motes. It reacted immediately, doubling in size and yellowing to a beautiful, golden hue. A thousand other specks of light blew out of the way like dust in the wind to reveal its twin: a second golden mote, suspended in the air some ten feet away. The two tiny orbs flew together and began orbiting each other, a miniature binary system.

“It does that whenever you perturb one of them,” Twilight attempted to explain. “I think it’s quantum entanglement, but I’m not sure.”

The millennium-old alicorn princess found herself at a loss for words, so enchanted was she by this breathtaking ballet of stars. Eventually, though, she broke away her gaze and smiled down at her student.

“Twilight Sparkle, you’re incredible!” Celestia said, and there was pride radiating from her eyes as she scooped the purple filly back up again.

Twilight blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“Really,” Celestia affirmed. Their noses bumped as she lifted the ecstatic unicorn up and over her head. “You have an amazing future ahead of you, my student. If you remain this diligent, I have every confidence you’ll grow up to be one of the strongest, smartest, most talented spellcasters Equestria has ever seen.”

Twilight’s mouth dropped at the compliment. “R-Really?!”

Celestia smiled at her lovingly. “Really. There’s no limit to what you can do. You’ll move mountains, Twilight.”

She planted the filly on her shoulders, piggyback. Long into the evening, the two of them sat together, enjoying each other’s company and watching the universe unfold.

“TWILIGHT! TWILIIIIIIIIII—”

CRASH!

Twilight sat bolt upright in bed, her heart flying as her eyes blinked to pierce the dark of dusk. From off in one corner of the guest bedroom, there came a pained, scratchy groan, and the metallic clink of… pots?

She sighed and rubbed her brow, already anticipating the cause of the commotion. “Lights!” she snapped, and they came on.

Rainbow Dash lay upside-down in a pile of cookware and crockery, a frying pan topping her head like a backwards baseball cap. Twilight rolled her eyes. Another fabulous three-point landing from Equestria’s so-called best young flyer.

The cyan pony gave a moan.

“Ow… That kind of really hurt.”

She rolled off the pile and staggered woozily to her hooves. It took her a second to notice the purple unicorn glaring at her from under the covers of the bed.

“Oh. Hi, Twilight,” Rainbow said, still in a daze.

Then her brain got back to firing on all cylinders, and she flipped into the air with an enormous grin. Her wings flapped double-time in a rush of excitement.

“TWILIGHT! Twilight, I can’t wait to show you—”

“Seriously, Rainbow?” Twilight snarked.

Rainbow stopped. “Seriously what?”

“I was asleep! Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Nine thirty. Look, Twilight—”

“Your bedroom is literally right down the hall from my tower! Literally right down the hall! How the heck do you crash when you’re only flying a couple dozen feet from window to window?”

“I was in a hurry! Look—”

“Why would you even fly to begin with? Is there something the matter with knocking?”

“I’ll do it next time! I just—”

“Where did all this stuff come from, anyway?” She plucked the pan off of Rainbow’s head with her magic, staring at it in disbelief. “This bedroom doesn’t have a kitchenette! Where did you get these pots? How could you possibly have landed in all of these pots?!”

“I think there’s, like, some kind of unwritten cosmic law that says I’ve gotta make the noisiest possible entrance anytime I crash into your place. It’s either that, or magnetism. I’m not sure which.”

Rainbow rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. But she brightened a second later.

“Oh! But the reason I came over here—Twilight, I figured it out!”

She touched down on the floor, beaming with pride.

Twilight stared at her.

“You figured what out?”

Rainbow’s smile drooped. “The telekinesis thingy. I was working on it all night long, and I finally got it to move a little bit. Here, look!”

She fished around in the pile of cookery and came up with a shiny, red apple. Flapping over to the bedside, she set it on the nightstand right next to the ill-tempered unicorn.

“Watch!”

Twilight’s annoyance came out in an exasperated sigh, but she played along as Rainbow stared straight at the apple, face set with a no-nonsense seriousness that was… uncharacteristic of her. To her surprise, it gave the faintest twitch, and she actually thought she could make out a wisp of an aura around her friend’s sky-blue horn.

Her eyebrow raised. She leaned forward, intrigued—

—and the apple promptly blew up in her face.

It exploded in a loud BOOM!, showering the room with its wet, yellow guts. The soggy remains of the fruit splattered everywhere: onto the bed, onto the walls, and onto Twilight herself as she sat frozen in place, silently raging, a vein popping out of her forehead as the runny bits dribbled down her cheeks.

Somehow—Twilight made note of this, furiously—the sweet-scented shrapnel had totally missed Rainbow Dash. Her friend chewed on her lip, looking sheepish. “Uh… It wasn’t supposed to do that.”

“Really.”

Rainbow scratched her head. “Well, on the upside, I think I’ve come up with a new way to piss off Applejack…”

“You are THE WORST at magic!” Twilight erupted.

“But—” Rainbow stammered. “But I just wanted to show you—”

“How? HOW can it be you? How could it possibly be YOU, out of all the ponies in the ENTIRE WORLD?”

Rainbow opened her mouth, but she couldn’t think of a single thing to say in her defense. As her failure crashed over her, she stared down at the floor, shoulders slumped.

Twilight’s magic spun her around and scooted her away.

“Just… Go!” the unicorn barked.

She rolled over in bed, her back to the discouraged alicorn, and waved off the light.

A long period of silence followed. Then…

“All right, Twi… See you tomorrow.”

A dejected Rainbow Dash trotted out. Through the door this time, not the window. She trotted out with her head bowed self-consciously, and her tail in-between her legs.

Twilight closed her eyes and buried her head underneath the pillows. She didn’t get to sleep for a long time.

Two days later, they met for magic lessons again.

They met again in the same place as before. Back in the Royal Canterlot Library, at the same musty desk, as daylight flooded in through the same window. Although this time, Twilight had taken the sensible precaution of casting a dampening field over all the nearby shelves. There wouldn’t be any books using her for target practice today, no siree!

Rainbow watched with curiosity as the unicorn tore open her bag and yanked something out of it, plonking it down on the table in front of them. It hit the wood with a heavy-sounding thunk.

“Open this,” Twilight said.

Rainbow leaned down to squint at the thing at eye-level.

It was a can.

A cylindrical, metal can.

Which put it just barely off the family tree from her other arch-nemesis, the jar of peanut butter with the sticky lid.

Actually, the can was probably even more evil than the peanut butter, because it didn’t even have a lid. It was solid metal on all three sides. How the buck did Twilight expect her to…?

“Uh… I don’t have a can opener,” she pointed out.

Twilight glared. “You shouldn’t need a can opener. Any half-competent unicorn can use her magic to cut open a simple can.”

“Yeah, but I’m not half-competent,” Rainbow muttered. She grimaced and rubbed the back of her head.

Once more, she leaned in close and examined the can. It was wrapped in a shiny, colorful label, and on it were… beans. Loads and loads of brown, baked beans. And a grinning green dragon in a chef’s hat holding a spatula, with a plume of flames spewing out of his mouth and a speech bubble that said, “Fire up the grill!”

“That doesn’t even make sense! You don’t grill beans! They’d fall right through the little gap thingies down into the coals!” she lamented.

Twilight looked confused. “Huh?”

“Ugh. Have you seen how much sodium’s in this stuff?” Rainbow made a face as she continued to eye up the label. “I’m not a hundred percent clear on how all this milligrammy science junk works, but I’m pretty sure this is enough to kill a pony.”

“RAINBOW DASH! The point of this exercise is for you to OPEN the can, not evaluate its nutrition content!”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how!” Rainbow gave Twilight an earnest look. “I can’t even levitate a can! How am I supposed to use magic to get one of them open?”

Twilight rolled her eyes, as if she’d just asked the stupidest question in the world. “Project your magic to a locus on the flat top of the can. Allow it to corporealize in the aspect of a sharp-edged cutting tool, and carve open the top.”

“Yeah, except I don’t know how! Am I the only one of the two of us who knows how to speak Equestrian?”

“Obviously not if you can’t follow a simple set of instructions!”

Rainbow shook her head. “Seriously, Twilight! I feel like you’re asking me to do the impossible here!”

“Why’s that?” Twilight said. “For an alicorn like you, it should be easy.”

Ordinarily, a barb like that might have slipped past Rainbow Dash. But there was an obvious insult skewered on the sharpness of Twilight’s tone. A nastiness that couldn’t be missed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

“It means you should stop wasting time and open the can already!”

Rainbow growled.

Fine. She’d give it the old college try.

She stared at the can. She stared at it really, really hard for a super long time, concentrating as much as she could on shifting the arcane essence of her thaumy-turdy pathways into resonance flux with her dynodes, and all the other junk Twilight had yammered on about.

It just sat there.

It sat there, and it didn’t move.

Rainbow scowled.

“This can is mocking me. It’s full of evil,” she muttered.

“Actually, it’s full of beans.”

“YOU’RE full of beans! How the hay do you expect me to—”

“Good afternoon!”

Their heads shot up.

Standing there in the archway, looking in at them, was none other than Princess Celestia.

Twilight was up and bowing in an instant. “Princess!” she exclaimed.

Rainbow, in contrast, didn’t budge from her seat. “Finally remembered I was here, huh?” she snorted, kicking up her legs.

Twilight shot her a dirty look.

The smile quivered on Celestia’s face, but a moment later, it found its foothold again. She pulled out a chair for herself and sat down at the table, and Twilight did the same.

“I just thought I’d drop by and see what you two were up to!”

“Magic lessons,” Twilight said.

“Oh, wonderful! I’m glad I made it, then!” Celestia clapped her hooves together enthusiastically. “You know, I’m actually a little surprised to find you both here. I thought for certain you would’ve preferred to set up shop in the Daring Do Wing.”

Rainbow stared at Twilight in disbelief. “SEE?”

“Tell me, how is everything going? I’d love to know what Twilight has taught you about magic so far. What are you working on today, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh…” Twilight said. She glanced at the can. “We were just…”

“She wants me to create some kind of magic doohickey out of thin air to jackknife this stupid thing open, even though I don’t have any idea how,” Rainbow said flatly.

Twilight winced. She felt her teacher’s attention settle on her.

“Isn’t this a little… advanced… for a novice magic user, Twilight?”

Her ears tucked, and a blush heated her cheeks. One thing was certain: she felt a lot less self-assured about this whole exercise with the Princess for an audience.

“I… I wouldn’t have given Rainbow a challenge like this if I didn’t have complete confidence in her ability to do it,” she justified herself.

Rainbow only scowled.

“Very well,” Celestia said with a nod. “Please, proceed.”

Twilight grimaced and looked back at her pupil, silently urging her to succeed, now, in getting the can open—if for no other reason than to save face in front of the Princess.

“Okay, Rainbow…” she said uneasily. “The first thing you need to do is concentrate on transmitting your arcane essence. Do you remember when I showed you how to do that?”

Rainbow crossed her hooves. “No.”

“But… But we just went over it the other day!” Twilight’s voice chiseled with a frantic edge. “I spent a whole hour sketching out the fundamentals for you on the chalkboard!”

“I don’t know how to do it, Twi.”

Half a minute went by—

“Your willpower is the impetus for all of your magic, Rainbow! You’ve got to really focus on channeling it!”

“Oh,” Rainbow quipped, her words dripping with sarcasm. “Was that in the reading, too?”

And then a full minute—

“You need to use your horn!”

“I’m TRYING to use my horn!”

And the whole time, Celestia watched and listened to them bicker with apprehension growing in her stomach. Until finally, when it became clear the task was beyond Rainbow’s ability to complete, she resolved to put an end to it.

A hush fell over the squabbling pair when the Princess leaned forward and picked the can up off the table. She raised it in the air and looked at it appreciatingly. Then, in a single fluid motion, she pulled back her hoof and smashed it against her head!

Twilight’s jaw hit the floor along with Rainbow’s. The poor metal can hung there, rest its soul—impaled on Celestia’s sharp horn like meat on a shish kabob. As for Celestia, she just sat and smiled as the beans oozed out and dribbled down her face.

“I got it open!”

“P-Princess…” Twilight stuttered.

Beside her, Rainbow guffawed. “HAHAHAHA! Now THAT’S what I call using your horn!”

“But—But—”

Celestia plucked the can off her noggin and cleaned herself up as best she could with the back of her forehoof and a low-level cleansing spell. Her eyes turned then to Rainbow.

“Rainbow Dash, I’d like to talk to you. Would you mind taking a break and walking with me?”

“Sure. Why not? Anyplace else would be better than here!”

With a toss of her mane and a parting glare for the unicorn at the table, she jumped down and trotted out the arched door. Celestia got up as well and followed her, leaving Twilight sitting by herself.

She sputtered. “But—But Princess!”

“Not now, Twilight. We’ll talk later,” Celestia said formally.

She turned and left with Rainbow, and Twilight was all alone.

They headed east, side by side, down a beautiful snow-white hallway, walking in and out of the regular squares of light that flooded through the diamond patterns on the windows. Rainbow Dash kept to the ground, for a change, while Celestia carried herself cautiously, maintaining a two foot minimum distance at all times. And for a while, neither one of them spoke, and the only noise was the squish of their hooves plodding along the long, pearl-colored carpet.

It was awkward. It was awkward, and uncomfortable, and strange. And judging by the anxious look on Rainbow’s face, it wasn’t any more pleasant for her.

Celestia sucked in a breath. She needed to say something.

“Look—” she said.

“Look—” Rainbow said at the same time.

They both drew to a stop in a play of bright daylight. Outside, through the window, a pair of earth pony guards patrolled the palace grounds, and the world spun on. But in here, between the two of them, time dragged to a standstill.

“You go first,” Celestia said.

“I—I just—” Rainbow started.

The words caught in her throat, but she managed to get them out.

“I just wanted to say… that was a really cool thing you did for Rarity’s little sister and all those other ponies in Manehattan.”

Celestia was taken aback. “Thank you."

“Like… really, really cool. I guess I didn’t realize…”

She paused, appearing to wrestle with herself in some sort of internal debate. But then she made up her mind and shook her head. “It’s nothing. Never mind. You go.”

Celestia nodded. “I…”

She hesitated.

“I… wanted to apologize.”

Rainbow didn’t say anything, but she turned up her rose-colored gaze to look at her. Waiting, expectantly.

“Nothing that’s happened over the span of the last month has been fair to you. It isn’t right, what you’ve had to go through. And what you’ve had to go through is entirely my fault.

“It isn’t right that you’ve been made to feel like a prisoner here. It isn’t right that you’ve been kept away from everything and everypony you hold familiar. It isn’t right that you spent your first week in Canterlot tied to the ground, forbidden to spread your wings and fly. And…

“And it isn’t right that I’ve been… absent… this whole time, either.”

Still, Rainbow said nothing.

Celestia bowed her head in remorse, unable to bring herself to look at the rainbow-maned filly. She knew this was probably a mistake. She knew retreading these injustices was tantamount to priming Rainbow Dash to go off again, and any moment now, it would all blow up in her face when she lashed out with even more well-deserved anger. The chasm between them would only grow wider.

But she felt she needed to say these things, and Rainbow Dash needed to hear them.

“It… wasn’t right of me to have you brought here, only to keep you at a hoof’s length. I won’t pretend circumstances didn’t conspire to create their own complications, but… I’m equally to blame. I thought it would be easier for both of us if I stayed away for a while. I’m sorry. I’m sorry if it feels like I’ve sidelined you. I’m…”

She clamped down on her tongue. ‘I’m sorry’ was a pair of words that had spilled out of her mouth quite a lot recently, and they always seemed to do more harm than good.

A few seconds ticked by, and Celestia steeled herself for the inevitable retaliation that was sure to follow. But then, to her surprise—

“Eh. Whatever. Don’t worry about it,” Rainbow said.

After a thousand years of rule, there wasn’t a heck of a lot that could’ve stumped the age-old Princess of the Sun. But that certainly did.

“Don’t worry about it,” she echoed incredulously.

“Look. You were dumb. I get that. But you were also really, really cool, like I said before. And you’ve had a lot on your hooves lately. I get that too. Truth is, if you weren’t loyal to your subjects first, you wouldn’t be a very good princess.”

Rainbow rattled all of this off like it was conventional wisdom, though Celestia had a hard time wrapping her head around it.

“It’s like this,” the filly attempted to explain. “You’ve got a cool column, and you’ve got a dumb column, okay?”

Celestia nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“And you’ve got some points in the cool column, and you’ve got some points in the dumb column. Right?”

“Right,” Celestia said, following along. It was also the first time in a long time that anypony had called her dumb, although she wouldn’t have cared even if she’d had her wits about her.

“And in-between the cool points and the dumb points, you’ve got… uh, you’ve got…” Rainbow frowned and swished the air with her hoof. “One of those sideways-pointy-math-symbol-thingies.”

“A greater-than less-than sign.”

“Yeah! One of those! And it’s facing… uh…” She stopped. “…Which way does the alligator’s mouth open again?”

Celestia stared blankly, and Rainbow’s expression soured.

“Look, we’re still not cool. Not by a long shot. But at least as far as you locking me up in this castle and hightailing it to Manehattan is concerned, you’ve got more cool points than dumb points, all right?”

The Princess looked at her strangely. “If you say so.”

And just like that, it was as if a tremendous weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Celestia didn’t pretend to understand the calculus by which Rainbow had decided to refrain from anger, but she silently thanked it as she turned and led the way again.

“There’s something in the East Garden I’d like to show you,” she said.

Rainbow flitted into the air, hooves crossed in a totally-not-impressed kind of way. “It’s not another surprise, is it? Because I really, really, really hate surprises.”

Celestia smirked, and Rainbow grumbled as she trailed behind her.

Bucking surprises.

They emerged into the familiar expanse of the East Garden. Only this time, it was extra familiar, because—

“What the hay is my house doing here?!”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped at the sight of her cloud house, bobbing in the air some twenty feet aloft. It didn’t belong here, that much she knew—but then again, it seemed perfectly at home just floating there, tethered to the ground by a long, golden cord. High enough for the runoff from its colorful waterfalls to evaporate on route to the ground, but low enough to remain cloistered within the castle walls.

Her brain chugged to make sense of it. The waterfalls were running—they hadn’t been before. The house was back together in one piece—it had been falling apart when she’d left it. The pillars stood straight and tall. The towers shined like new.

Rainbow felt a prickle in her eye as she looked at it. It… It was…

She didn’t have any words to describe it. She’d all but said goodbye to this place her last trip to Ponyville. To see it brought back to life like this… it… made something move in her chest. But at the same time—

“What the hay is my house doing here?!”

“I hired a company of cloud wranglers to retrieve the rooms that had come unmoored and effect major repairs. I hope you don’t mind.”

Rainbow wiped the dampness from her eye as she took a deep breath to steady herself. “Okay, first of all, thank you,” she said.

Celestia smiled warmly. “You’re welcome.”

“Second of all, no. You can’t do this.” She shook her head. “You can’t do this for two reasons. One, I don’t live here—”

“I don’t expect you to,” Celestia said. “It’s a cloud house, Rainbow Dash. It’s the very definition of a mobile home. I ordered it towed here, and I can order it towed back.”

“I… guess that makes sense,” Rainbow muttered.

“I just thought you might like the comfort of sleeping in your own bed for a change. I—”

Celestia stopped short.

“You aren’t a prisoner here,” she said softly. “The first time I asked you to come to Canterlot, it was partly out of fear for your safety. I would still prefer if you stayed a little while longer, until this nasty business with the Ascendancy is concluded. But as long as you have Philomena to watch over you… Rainbow, if you would rather go back to your home in Ponyville, say the word, and I’ll have your house taken back tonight.”

Rainbow opened her mouth to give a reply, but then a memory surged to mind. A recent memory. A painful one.

She looked down at the ground, her gaze landing in the emerald grass between her hooves. But all she could see were a trio of diamonds, purple hair, and blue eyes.

“I… guess I don’t want to go back,” she said. “Maybe after a little while, but… not yet, anyway.”

She meant it. Ponyville would always be her roost, but right now, she just couldn’t be there. The hurt of her last visit was still too fresh, and the lingering strangeness between her and her friends…

Rainbow shook her head. There was no point in dwelling on that now. She swallowed down her misgivings, and hard determination returned to the fore.

“Okay. Second reason you can’t do this. You can’t keep giving me stuff.”

“Can’t I?” Celestia asked with a playful glint.

“No! You can’t! I mean, first it was the phoenix, now it’s this… You can’t just bribe me into forgetting everything you did! That’s not how it works! And there’s nothing you can ever offer me that I would ever just roll over and accept—”

“Two tickets to the Wonderbolts tomorrow. Private box.”

Rainbow jumped up and ripped the silver tickets out of her hoof.

“You’re good,” she grumbled. “You’re real, real good.”

“One is for you, and the other is for anypony else you decide to take.” Celestia smiled. “Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie… I don’t think Twilight has ever been to see the Wonderbolts in Canterlot. Perhaps you could ask her if she’d like to go with you?”

Rainbow’s lip curled at the idea. “Yeah… Maybe.”

But the Princess didn’t notice her reaction as she turned and gestured up at the floating mansion. “Why don’t we fly over and take a look at your cloud house? I’m sure you’re eager to see it.”

They touched down on the fluffy front walk and trotted together over to the door. Rainbow’s sharp eyes darted across the superstructure as they approached and took in every line and contour, inspecting for the slightest defect. She pushed her hoof against the outside wall to test it. It sunk in a half an inch.

“Seems sturdy enough. Temperature’s fine. Density checks out. Water content’s about point-seven grams per cubic meter, so it should be a while before she starts to aerosolize again.”

Celestia marveled at her. “You know your clouds.”

“Yeah, well… Weatherpony,” Rainbow mumbled. Her keen gaze sank to the welcome mat. “Apparently, it’s the only thing I know. But yeah. I do know clouds.”

She opened the door and jaunted inside, glancing appraisingly about the sunny front hall.

“This looks good too. Beats me who the heck you hired to fix my house, but they did a bang-up job.” She stood back and scrutinized the pillars that lined the foyer. Finding them acceptable, she gave an approving nod, then started toward the den. “I probably oughta double-check the other rooms and make sure they’re all—”

It was right about then that she realized Celestia wasn’t with her. She was still outside, in fact, peering in through the open door.

“May I come in?”

Rainbow looked back at her strangely. “Uh… Sure.”

The lanky goddess ducked through the low entryway, straightening up again in the spacious interior. “What’s wrong? Do I still have beans on my face?” she wondered.

“No, it’s just… I think you’re the first pony to ever ask for permission to come into my house.”

She chewed on that for a moment. Then, with a shrug, she headed into the next room. Celestia brought up the rear.

“You have a lovely home.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Rainbow stopped in front of the fireplace and the familiar work of art that hung above it. She reached up to straighten it, shaking her head at the same time. “Jeeze, I hate this picture.”

“What did you mean before?” Celestia asked suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Outside a minute ago, when you said clouds are the only thing you’re knowledgeable about. What did you mean?”

Rainbow’s feathers bristled as she stiffened. “What’s not to get? Was I speaking Neighponese or something?”

“I just don’t see how—”

“I suck at learning stuff, okay? Always have.” She tapped a hoof against her skull. “Got nothing up here.”

“Now, that can’t be true,” Celestia said softly.

“Always has been. I sucked when I was a kid in flight school, and I still suck now.”

The sun princess drew closer. “What’s happened? Why are you saying these things?”

“It’s… It's all this magic stuff.” Rainbow sulked. “I’m awful at it.”

“You’re new at it.”

“I’m the worst at it, apparently.”

Celestia shook her head. “Becoming good at something takes time. You of all ponies know that. You can’t expect to be casting complex spells when you’ve only just—”

“Who said anything about spells?” Rainbow interrupted. “I’m so dumb, I can’t even make an apple float.”

Celestia was taken aback at that. Telekinesis was among the most basic of basic skills. She frowned—Twilight should’ve had her levitating simple objects days ago.

Her attention wandered to a nearby shelf, where a complete collection of Wonderbolts action figures stood on display in their blue, plastic flight suits. She pondered for a moment.

“Rainbow Dash, who’s your favorite Wonderbolt?”

“Fleetfoot,” Rainbow answered without a second’s thought. Suspicion trickled into her eyes. “Why?”

“Okay,” Celestia breathed. She reached out and gingerly picked up one of the tiny figurines—the turquoise one with the silvery-white hair, posed in mid-flight with her wings wide open at her sides. “You’re going to make Fleetfoot here fly.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on! That’s a limited edition collector’s item!”

“It’ll be fine,” Celestia reassured her.

Rainbow sucked in her lower lip. “Look, I don’t think you realize what happens when I screw up trying to—”

“Trust me. I know you can do this.”

They looked at each other, and Celestia held Rainbow in her confident gaze until the smaller pony capitulated. “Fine! But just so you know, you’re totally paying for her when she blows up.”

“The first step is to not imagine her blowing up at all. That indicates a lack of self-confidence, and not having confidence in yourself will get you every time, whether you’re doing magic or doing stunts.”

“Great,” Rainbow said. “Terrific. So how do I—?”

“You need to project the magic from your horn directly underneath the object you wish to levitate. Envision it rising around your target, lifting it and carrying it upward.”

Exasperation marched across Rainbow’s face, but she went along with it nevertheless, angling her horn downward as she puffed out her cheeks in concentration.

Thankfully, the little figurine didn’t explode—but it didn’t float, either. Half a minute later, Rainbow released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and gasped for air, red in the face.

“You see? I can’t do it!”

“Don’t become upset with yourself. Instead…” Celestia paused to think for a moment. “Instead… Think of it like flying.”

Rainbow stared blankly. “Huh?”

“It’s just like flying! Look.”

Celestia dangled the action figure in the air.

“Fleetfoot here is out for an afternoon flight. She’s just taken off from Wonderbolts Stadium after a challenging day of practice, and as she glides over the city, the sun warms the earth and the roads beneath her, creating a rising column of hot air. She catches it in her wings and feels it boost her upward into the sky.

“That’s your magic, Rainbow. Let your magic be a thermal, no different than the hundreds of thermals you’ve soared on before in your life. Picture your magic billowing underneath her, pushing against her feathers, lifting her up, and up, and up—”

As simple as that, a light began to shimmer around Rainbow’s horn. It was a weak light, wavering like a candle in the breeze, and the moment it appeared, she gasped with so much surprise she almost put it out. But to her astonishment, the light stuck around, gradually brightening to an aura of purest white, until it gleamed like a dazzling cloud against the sky blue of her coat and horn.

And then it paired with an identical glow around the Fleetfoot figurine. And then Fleetfoot began to rise up in the air—

“Oh my gosh! I’m doing it!” Rainbow gasped.

Excitement wiped the doubt and insecurity clean off her face. Her grin stretched so wide, it could’ve fallen right off her, and Celestia felt her heart melt just to see the childlike wonder in her eyes as she started to play, making Fleetfoot bank and dive, exploring the possibilities of this whole new world that had just opened to her. As enthusiastic about magic as she’d ever been about anything.

Small steps, Luna, she thought to herself. Small steps.

Rainbow Dash and the Caretaker toiled for more than an hour into the afternoon. The mulch poured from burlap sacks both hoofed and hovered, and each of them had a sheen of sweat to show for their efforts by the time they were finally done.

“That’ll do, I think!” the old pegasus said at last. He waved for Rainbow to stop, and she willed the bag she was levitating shakily to the ground.

“All done?” she called over.

“Aye.”

“Ha! And you said it would take the rest of the day!”

The Caretaker took a step back to admire the garden plots, all freshly decorated with a layer of pristine, chipped bark. “It helps when you’ve got somepony else to lighten the load,” he answered her. “That’s the way o’ life. It’s harder alone, and better together.”

He peeled off his straw hat to wipe the perspiration from his brow and shucked it in the wagon, leaving it tipped on its side amid a pile of fifty or sixty emptied-out bags. As Rainbow ambled over to join him, he gave her a mischievous look.

“So, you’ll be taking me to the airshow now, right?” he needled her.

She laughed. “Psh! Dream on, pal! Heck, after all the work I just put in, you oughta be taking me somewhere!”

“Ah, a stallion can dream. I’ll be off now, then! Enjoy the Wonderbolts for me, won’t you?”

“That won’t be a problem! Oh my gosh, THE WONDERBOLTS!” She did an aerial somersault in her adrenaline rush of excitement.

The pegasus just chuckled at her antics.

“Hey, I’ll see you soon, huh?” She quit the acrobatics and landed beside her friend, grinning wide. “Maybe tomorrow?”

The Caretaker grasped the handles on the cart and started wheeling it away. “Tomorrow, perhaps. The sun is new each day, lass. Keep your face to it, and you’ll never see a shadow.”

And then he trundled off again to wherever it was he always went.

Rainbow trotted to the fountain and splashed some of the crystal clear water over her face to rinse off, still gushing with fangirl glee. Her energy soared even higher when she took a glance at the sundial and realized just how much time she’d managed to kill doing all that lame garden work—T-minus forty minutes to awesomeness, oh my gosh…!

…Though her exhilaration fizzled somewhat a minute later, when she looked up and spied the golden chariot descending out of the sky; all her joy and elation replaced by that weird blend of emotions she felt whenever she encountered Celestia.

The drivers’ hooves found purchase, and the vehicle rolled to a smooth stop on the lawn. The door opened, and out she stepped.

“Are you ready?” Celestia asked.

Her body language was tense, but her expression was cautiously hopeful as she waited anxiously for the reply.

Rainbow gave a flippant toss of her mane as she approached. “Psh. You know it,” she said nonchalantly. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Celestia beckoned to the cart. But Rainbow was already thirty feet up, her wings flapping impatiently behind her as she gazed down with hooves folded anxiously over her chest. “C’mon, what are you waiting for? It’s the Wonderbolts!” she called down.

The white alicorn stared up at her, bewildered, for a moment, before she put on an even face and climbed back aboard the chariot. She signaled the pair of pegasi at the reins, and with that, they were off—blasting away from the swaying trees and newly-mulched flowerbeds of the East Garden, past the kaleidoscopic falls of Rainbow’s home; a streak of gold racing skyward with a cyan-colored blur by its side.

08. Quality Time

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Quality Time

Originally Published 9/27/2015

High in her tower, surrounded by loneliness, Twilight Sparkle stood at the window and peered woefully out. She watched the golden chariot take off from the garden, wending its way into the afternoon sky.

“Lights,” she mumbled as she drew shut the curtains, and the shadows leapt forth to stake their claim. Silently, she made her way over to the bed and flopped down.

She felt tired. Stretched thin, like a worn-out rag. Her head was full of cotton, and her spine ached from too many hours in the Canterlot Archives, sitting in those hard, wooden chairs.

A part of her wondered, whimsically, if her back pain might presage a pair of wings.

She shook off the thought.

The events of the last few days infested her mind’s eye. From crashing through the wall and interrupting Celestia’s secret meeting, to hearing her headmaster expostulate on her “proper place” in the world—it all played out in her brain like a massive train wreck. And yesterday’s incident with Rainbow Dash and the can was like an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, just to top off how pathetic she was.

Twilight nested her head in her hooves and sighed. What had seemed, at the time, to be a perfectly-sensible, empirically-sound plan to gauge the limits of Rainbow’s new alicorn abilities now seemed wrongheaded, even cruel. She’d earned no scolding for it from Princess Celestia, but she knew in her heart this sort of pettiness was—or at the very least, ought to be—beneath her.

She was a pony of logic, not emotion. Logic! In the great Venn diagram of life, logic inhabited one circle, and emotion another, and never did the two come nigh! What would Professor Whitehoof say if he knew she were crossing her circles like this? What would Princess Celestia say?

As she pondered what a charlatan she was, Twilight’s eyes wandered to the empty sleeping basket tucked away in the corner. She wrapped her hooves around a pillow and sighed.

What she wouldn’t give to have Spike here with her right now. She had never been without him for this long before, and she wondered, somberly, if she should send for him. She missed him so much. She missed Ponyville so much. She missed home.

And… And her brother…

Twilight buried her head in the pillow. She knew, from experience and way too many friendship reports, that this was pointless. That it wouldn’t help to sulk.

But that wasn’t about to stop her.

For Rainbow Dash, there was no such thing as ‘too close.’ The concept didn’t even exist in her world. That carefree attitude had been the bedrock for her personality—had given her the in-your-face temperament she was so known for, and chipped away at her respect for personal boundaries to the point where she was wont to fly right up and kick a dragon in the nose. And right now, it was the reason she was hanging halfway out the window, bursting with energy as she screamed her head off—

“SOARIN! OH MY GOSH, SOARIN!”

Her arms waved frantically as the cobalt-maned stallion did his flyby, zooming past the crowd so fast, their lips blew back in his slipstream. He did a half loop up and rolled off the top in a perfect Immelmann, blasting back the other way again with two wingponies on his left and another two on his right.

At the stadium’s apex, the five of them stunned with another daredevil display. They spread out in a circle, evenly-spaced, and then in unison they converged toward the center, slicing past each other at breakneck speeds, missing by inches. Then they fanned out again, and they all doubled back in five perfectly-synchronized, split-second turns, so quick and acute they made Rainbow’s jaw drop. Once more, they buzzed one another, and not a single hair was put out of place on any one of their heads as they whipped on by.

They did this again, and again, and again, never once colliding, and by the time they were done, five contrails had painted a perfect five-pointed star across the sky. Then Soarin shot up from below and threaded through the center, and the whole pentagram flared and blew up in a tremendous, technicolor KA-BOOM!

The awe-inspiring beauty of the starburst reflected in Rainbow’s eyes as she leaned forward… forward… a little too far forward. Dazzled beyond awareness, she started to tip out the window—

—and a gold-slippered hoof came down lightly on her tail to keep her from falling out.

That got her attention. She snapped back to reality at the unwelcome touch, her face flashing with annoyance as she wheeled on Celestia. “Hey, lady! Hooves off!”

Celestia didn’t need to be told twice. She yanked back her foreleg in an instant. “Sorry,” she said, and Rainbow made a face before turning back to the action.

Strike the previous notion. Apparently, there was such a thing as ‘too close’ in Rainbow’s book—at least when it came to Celestia.

But the faux-pas fled quickly from memory, and soon enough, she was engrossed back in the airshow, leaning halfway out the window again. She tracked the Wonderbolts with wide, astonished eyes as they whizzed and soared past the screaming crowd.

Celestia watched as well. Though just as often, her attention would slip from the performance to the gleeful filly in the box with her.

“Look! Look!” Rainbow shouted.

The crowd whooped and hollered when a yellow mare with a wildfire mane came out the tunnel ’neath the stands and jetted around the stadium, slapping the hooves on the spectators in the lower rows. Her flight goggles shined like sapphires as she veered straight up, her airspeed bleeding to zero, stalling out at a five hundred foot height. At her apogee, she executed one—two—three—four—five rolls, each one of them dropping Rainbow’s jaw a little closer to the floor, before flipping around and catching the wind again in a daredevil swoop.

“A PERFECT HAMMERHEAD!” Rainbow screamed.

Weeks of stress and sadness, of hurt and betrayal, of heart-wrenching dreams and the catastrophe of having her identity swept out from under her, of pushy servants and pushier guards, the events of Manehattan, and conversations between friends better forgotten than remembered—all of it burned away in the firestorm of adrenaline that blew through her now, boiling in her veins while she sprung with excitement. At least for now, in this moment, Rainbow Dash’s joy was all-encompassing.

Celestia could only smile.

“That was AMAZING!”

The rooftops and pinnacles of Lower Canterlot drifted by below them as they flew, side-by-side: Celestia, standing tall in the golden chariot, and Rainbow, soaring through the air beside it. The enormous grin on her face did nothing to weigh her down.

“That thing they did where Spitfire went into freefall and then they all flew in from outta nowhere and buffeted her back up with the air coming off their wingtips?—WOW! And when Fast Clip and High Winds did those twin vertical ups and weaved them into a double helix all the way around the outside of the stadium?—OH MY GOSH! And the way they didn’t break formation the whole time Fleetfoot was doing her Leaping Lightning Loop?—SO COOL!”

Rainbow busted out a corkscrew, punching the air in excitement.

Then, with a breezy sigh, she flipped onto her back, her wings fanning the air beneath her and keeping easy pace with the chariot. A blissful smile lifted her features as she tucked her forehooves behind her head and gazed dreamily skyward.

“Someday, that’s gonna be me out there.”

No sooner had those words flown from Rainbow’s mouth than a bleak expression lodged on Celestia’s face.

“Your life’s aspiration was to become a Wonderbolt?”

“Heck, yeah!” Rainbow said, flipping over right-side-up again. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted since I was a filly!”

She didn’t notice the past tense. Nor the unhappy shadow that rolled over the Princess, nor the creeping disquiet that overcame her.

It was gone in an instant. Celestia shook her head and pushed aside her apprehensions. Matters such as these were made for another day. No need to dwell on such things now.

Rainbow continued, “Those moves, though—that timing! I don’t even know which way’s up anymore after watching that! I mean, seriously, did you see Fire Streak’s Blazing Blue Adieu?”

“It was quite grand,” Celestia agreed with a nod. “Though I must admit, I have a soft spot for their Icaranian Sun Salutation. The way they catch the light on each chandelle turn always leaves me breathless.”

Rainbow gave a moment’s pause. Then…

“Wait a minute.” She darted out front of the chariot and looked Celestia straight in the eye. “You know about the Wonderbolts?”

Celestia showed a look of puzzlement. “Know about them? They report to me, Rainbow Dash.”

“Yeah, but… like… their moves, their tricks—their flight patterns, and stuff. You, uh… You know about all of that?”

Celestia smirked. “Well, I’ve only been a patron of the Wonderbolts for the last seven hundred years.”

Somehow, this bit of information completely stumped Rainbow.

She knew it shouldn’t have. If there was one thing she could safely take away from all her interactions with Celestia, it was that there was always more to her than met the eye. But this well and truly baffled her.

“You aren’t wrong, though,” Celestia went on. “Fire Streak gave a stellar performance today. I can’t remember the last time I saw such artistry with a thunderhead. The blue electricity leaping off his feathers, the wing-over-wing box canyon turns, the aileron rolls…”

“An aileron’s not exactly a difficult maneuver, y’know.” Rainbow found her voice and shrewdly decided to gauge Celestia’s savvy.

“It isn’t, but it’s certainly impressive to see so many of them strung so quickly together. How many was it? Twenty, I believe?”

“Twenty,” Rainbow affirmed, still with suspicion in her voice. In all the years since she’d departed Cloudsdale, she’d never met anypony else who shared her enthusiasm for the Wonderbolts. Fluttershy pretended, Pinkie Pie went along for the ride, and Applejack scuffed her hooves and looked to the topsoil. This was something new.

“It was a gratifying display, in any case,” Celestia said with a soft smile. “And I’m sure the inverted windshear loop must have intrigued you, even if the ailerons didn’t. Fieselfeather himself would have been swept away by that little maneuver.”

“You know about Fieselfeather?” Rainbow asked, her mouth agape.

Celestia’s smile lengthened a hair. “What do you say we stop and have something to eat for dinner?” she suggested, skillfully switching subjects. “I know a decent restaurant not too far from here, with a private balcony we can enjoy.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever, I could eat,” Rainbow muttered. Then, returning to the important topic at hoof: “You know about Fieselfeather?”

The chariot—and the sounds of their conversation—carried on across the afternoon sky.

“Rapid Road?! Rapid Road?!”

“What’s the matter?” Celestia said, a smirk on her face as she slid into a chair at the small, polished table. She levitated the napkin roll and deftly plucked out the knife and fork. “Rapid Road’s got talent to spare. He isn’t as good as Steel Ace, I’ll admit, but he still has plenty of great seasons left in him.”

Rainbow’s head shook with disgust as she flopped into the seat across from her. “You gotta be kidding! Steel Ace is an awesome quarterback with the heart of a champion and the drive to make himself the best he can be, every day. Rapid Road is a stat-padding loser!”

“Rapid Road has had two significant shoulder injuries in the last three years,” Celestia pointed out. “He also has two more seasons under his belt than Steel Ace does.”

“Exactly! He’s all washed up! He needs to retire! Just look how bad the yardage on his throw is these days—”

“Laser rocket arm to bottle rocket arm,” Celestia declared.

Rainbow scoffed. “Did you see him last season? The guy throws like a wet noodle anymore! And that’s putting aside the fact that he can’t read a defense to save his life!”

The conversation paused when a waiter arrived at their table a second later. He greeted them respectfully, handed them their menus, and jotted down their choice of drinks. Before he left, he dipped into an exaggerated bow, his forelock scraping the floorboards as he acknowledged them both by name: “As you wish, Princess Celestia, Princess Aurora.” And with that, he cantered off.

Rainbow made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. Her hooves folded across her chest as she slipped low in her chair. “Yech. How do you get used to that?”

“It gets easier after a thousand years.”

“Yeah. I get that. But seriously, how do you get used to it?”

Celestia’s grin thinned to a wry smile. She looked away soberly, losing her gaze in the chattering throng of ponies who were busy scarfing down meals at other tables.

“It wasn’t easy,” she admitted. “It took ages for me to learn to ignore it. Luna still isn’t comfortable with it, as you might have noticed—though, to be fair, she has a thousand years less practice than I do.”

“Hmph.”

Rainbow snatched up her menu and flipped straight to the entrées.

“Beats me how you managed to tune it out,” she said. “After a thousand years of that, I think I’d probably snap.”

“I thought the same, when the crown first passed to me.”

Celestia reached out absently and placed her hoof upon her own folded menu, pulling it across the tabletop until it sat in front of her, although she didn’t make any attempt to read it.

A minute went by before she spoke again.

“I was about the same age as you are, you know.”

Rainbow’s eyes rose from the house special.

“No kidding?”

“Actually, I was a full year younger than you. Sixteen. A peculiar age to become a princess, no question—to say nothing of having the fate of three tribes on your shoulders.”

“Huh.”

Rainbow glanced back down again, distracted by all the tasty pictures. The carrot dogs looked so delicious. But the club sandwich had her mouth watering too…

“Luna was even younger. She was fourteen.”

The menu slapped against the table.

“No way! Luna’s only two years younger than you?”

Celestia cocked her head. “Well, technically, she’s a thousand and two years younger than me now.”

“Okay, okay, look,” Rainbow said, jabbing a hoof in the air. “See, that’s the thing. It doesn’t seem weird to you because you’re so freaking old. Uh… No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Point is, these days, you’ve got a thousand years of achievements to look back on. You’re, like, the strongest spellcaster ever—there’s gotta be a gazillion pictures of you in the history books, wearing super-cool armor and leading armies and stuff—you came this close to beating me in a race that one time—”

Celestia lifted an eyebrow.

“—so it doesn’t seem weird to you anymore when everypony and their mother bows down to you, because you’ve done stuff. In your case, ponies actually have a reason to bow. But Luna and I haven’t done stuff, which is what makes it suck.”

The waiter reappeared from the rear of the restaurant, squeezing past the other patrons as he made his way back over with a pair of drinks on a levitating tray. Rainbow watched him out of the corner of her eye as she brazenly polished a hoof against her chest.

“Don’t get me wrong. I am the awesomest pony in Equestria—”

“Of course,” Celestia agreed.

“—But it still doesn’t feel right, you know? I’m not a Wonderbolt yet. I haven’t made my mark on the world. I’ve got nothing to take pride in that could ever justify them tripping over themselves the way they do, and it’s super awkward. Luna probably feels the same way. You know what, buck it, I just want a daisyburger and hayfries,” she said, tossing her menu onto the table just as soon as the waiter trotted up.

“Make that two,” Celestia amended.

The waiter bowed again. “Very good, Your Majesty,” he replied, and he set down their drinks and whisked away their menus before hurrying back to the kitchen.

“I think you’re wrong,” Celestia said.

Rainbow’s brow furrowed as she fiddled with the paper on the end of her straw. “Yeah?”

“I’m sure you’re correct about yourself and Luna, but I don’t think you have me pegged quite right. It isn’t that their praise meshes with my own accomplishments, or that I’ve come to embrace it. I think it’s just that I’ve put up with it for so long, I’ve learned to ignore it.”

“So why not tell ’em to put a cork in it? Knock it off with all the bowing, the ‘Your Majesty’ this and ‘Your Highness’ that…”

“It will probably sound strange to you, but the honest answer is that I couldn’t. Not in the early days, anyway—it was critical then, with the peace so newly-established and the kingdom dangling by a thread, for Luna and I to be what they expected us to be. The people needed to know we were above them, watching over them, protecting them… and that the sun and moon would continue to rise and set. We were the glue that held Equestria together. If we were anything less, then the nobility would’ve tasted blood and circled like sharks, the tribes would have splintered, and the country might have descended into civil war.”

Rainbow’s hooves pawed uselessly at the straw one more time before she got mad and gave up. With a scowl, she stuck the plastic tube between her lips and blew, and the paper jettisoned off the other end and launched across the restaurant. “Sounds dumb.”

“It is dumb,” Celestia agreed. “That’s the thing about being an alicorn. You aren’t just a pony anymore. You’re a symbol to other ponies.”

Rainbow frowned. “A symbol?”

“A symbol of the realm, and of harmony. Of the peace that’s blessed us for so many centuries, and the safeness that enfolds us. It’s a lot to live up to, and it demands a lot of sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice. Psh.”

The straw plunked into Rainbow’s fizzy brown cola, and she brought the drink to her chest as she sipped from it.

A solemn look passed over Celestia’s face.

“But I’m sure you know what I mean. You, of all ponies—you’re just as acquainted with it as I am. You knew the weight of expectation before you were even out of elementary school.”

Suddenly, Rainbow stopped slurping her soda.

Her wings tensed, and her body went deathly still.

“The enormous expectations other ponies place upon you… The awful pressure of trying to live up to them…” Celestia shook her head sadly. “We shouldn’t let those expectations control us, but we do. You didn’t tell them to ‘put a cork in it.’ The truth is, you couldn’t have, no more than I could. Instead, you went out there and faced them every day, trying to replicate your feat. Expectation is not so easily dismissed.”

She looked down at the table.

“I’m sorry you had to experience it at such a young age. No foal should have to sacrifice as much as you did.”

“Yeah?” Rainbow snapped, hot anger rising in her voice. “Well, I don’t remember you being there to make it any easier.”

Celestia took the lash without flinching.

Thankfully, the waiter arrived a moment later with lunch in tow, and a longsuffering Rainbow Dash felt her anger ebb when at last, after so many weeks, a juicy daisyburger was set in front of her, with a heaping helping of hayfries on the side. It looked and smelled so freaking good, she couldn’t help but salivate.

Then the stupid waiter had to spoil her good mood by bowing to them both again before departing.

“I still bucking hate that,” she grumbled to Celestia.

“Comes with being a princess.”

“Quick service, though.”

“Comes with being a princess.”

Rainbow snorted.

“So, that’s it, then?” she probed. Her eyes raised as she reached for the salt shaker. “You just put up with the special treatment for so long, you… What? Grew numb to it?”

“I grew numb to a lot of things.”

The monarch adjusted her plate in front of her, speared some fries on the end of her fork, and munched on them, silently.

Rainbow shrugged. “Whatever. Still doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been around a thousand freaking years, and you’ve been and done pretty much everything in that time.”

“That isn’t true,” Celestia said. “I haven’t been everything.”

The table talk lulled. Rainbow’s concentration was elsewhere, already half-sunk into that delicious-looking patty—she had the bun peeled back, and she was currently decorating it with lettuce, red onions, tomato slices, and all the other little flourishes the cooks like to pile on the side. Her face was a picture of delight.

Meanwhile, Celestia’s gaze turned outward to the restaurant. As she continued to pick at her plate, her pensive eyes swept across a booth across the way, and the lone filly seated there.

She was young. Perhaps twenty-five years old or so. And dining alone, by the looks of it. She had a pair of shopping bags sitting at her side where the husband should’ve been, and another pair of bags under her eyes to go with them, and worry lines that would’ve looked at home on a mare twice her age, and a smile worn thin by stress. But she had a baby with her, there in a carriage by the tableside. And every part of her lit up with joy as she leaned over it.

She hid her face behind her hooves, only to pop out a moment later—peek-a-boo! Inside the stroller, a tiny pegasus foal giggled and swatted up at her, and then the mother hid her face again—

Celestia felt a pang in her heart at the sight of them. Distractedly, she helped herself to some more hayfries.

“Rainbow Dash, have… have you ever done anything you regret?” she wondered out loud.

“Nope,” came Rainbow’s immediate reply.

Celestia was caught off-guard. She glanced back. “Never?”

The younger alicorn grabbed the ketchup off the table and yanked off the cap. “Nuh-uh. Not my style,” she replied, tipping it over her wonderful, precious, long-awaited burger.

“Never once, in your whole life?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Regretting stuff is dumb.”

She shook the container, but despite her efforts, the ketchup wouldn’t come out. Rainbow frowned and slapped the bottom of the bottle with her hoof to convince it.

Celestia’s lips pressed together in thought. “Dumb how?”

“It’s dumb because it’s stupid and useless,” Rainbow said. She gave the bottle another thwack. “What good’s it do? The way I see it, way too many ponies get caught up in regretting stuff all their lives. It’s like mud in your feathers—all it does is slow you down, and you never get anywhere. Nah, that’s not for me. My way’s forward.”

She thwacked the bottle again.

Celestia gave her an appraising look. “You know, I’ll bet nopony’s ever said this to you before, but you might just be one of the wisest ponies I’ve ever met.”

Rainbow’s eyes slid upward to meet Celestia’s.

“Uh… Thanks, I guess?”

She regarded the Princess for a brief moment. Then it occurred to her that the stupid ketchup still hadn’t come out, and she scowled down at the bottle as she slapped her hoof against it over and over, again and again in rapid succession.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Stupid condiment.

“Seriously, though. Regret is super-dumb,” she said. “And I can’t think of a single thing I’ve ever regretted in my whole li—”

One thwack too many was all it took, and all the ketchup came gushing out of the bottle at once. It sopped all over the plate and buried Rainbow’s daisyburger beneath a mountain of red.

Celestia stifled a laugh behind her hoof.

The shock on Rainbow’s face turned to horror and dismay, and then to the most grievous kind of loss. The sight of her poor, lost lunch reflected in her misting eyes.

“I regret the consequences of my actions,” she sniffled.

Celestia only chuckled and pushed her own pristine, untouched burger across the table.

“S-Seriously? I can have it?” Rainbow asked, glancing up at her.

“Seriously,” Celestia said. “Go ahead. I’m not very hungry anyway.”

Rainbow stared down at the unblemished plate. The delicious-looking daisyburger stared back at her, ripe for the taking.

Her favorite food. So long anticipated. So frequently denied.

Tentatively, uncertainly, she picked it up.

She took a bite out of it.

And her face was bliss.

On their way back to the castle, Celestia insisted they make a pit stop. The golden chariot veered down, the drivers’ hooves clapping loud against the stones on the high, flat-topped roof of one of the outlying guard towers. Rainbow tucked back her wings and landed beside it. She wondered what the reason for the detour was.

She didn’t have to wonder long. Celestia stepped down regally from the carriage and strode to the building’s edge. She looked west, out across the valley, and she raised her horn to the evening sky.

Nigh-imperceptibly at first, then with speed gradually-gaining, the sun began to set, arcing lower and lower across the heavens as Celestia guided it unto its nightly rest. She looked more angel than goddess throughout—and Rainbow’s jaw dipped just to behold her, a shimmering halo wrapped ’round the pearl-white of her body, casting her in partial silhouette. As she worked her art across the shining yonder, she seemed, in that moment, to be a magnet for all the light and goodness in the world.

Minutes passed, and the onset of twilight swept away the amber glow of dusk. The last glimpse of day disappeared beyond the farthest vantage, sinking below the hills and out of sight.

As the night enfolded them, Celestia finally lowered her eyes from the canvas, turned, and started back toward the chariot.

“Good to go.”

“Okay. That was…”

Rainbow paused to come up with a good adjective. She went with the best one she knew.

“…Awesome. That was totally awesome.”

A small smile graced Celestia’s face. “Most ponies tend to be enchanted by it the first time they see it. Twilight certainly was—it was what inspired her passion for magic when she was but a young filly. I’m honored to know it impressed you.”

“How do you do it?” Rainbow had to ask. “I mean, it’s the freaking sun. Isn’t it, like… heavy, or something?”

“It weighs eight hundred septillion tons,” the Princess rattled off easily. As if it were common knowledge.

“…That’s a really big number, right?”

Celestia chuckled. “It is, indeed, a very big number. But my bond with the sun runs ancient and deep, and it answers me like an old friend. Such is the nature of the gift my sister and I were given—that which empowers us also allows us to commune with our spheres better than anyone else in the world. It’s our talent, our purpose for being. It’s the thing that makes us special.”

“Huh.”

Rainbow took a moment to think on that.

“So you and Luna are, like… the only ponies in Equestria who can raise and lower the sun and moon?”

Celestia paused to consider the question.

“Twilight could do it,” she said. “It wouldn’t be easy for her at first, and she would have to work hard to hone her skills at it. But with diligence, in time, she could do it. I’m confident of that. Her ambition, her intellect, her innate ability, her cutie mark, her Element... every part of her is aligned to the task. And I’m sure there are others, too.”

Celestia’s slippers clicked as she strode up onto the metal coach again. And Rainbow, for once in her life, decided to eschew flying as she hopped up alongside her.

“What others?” she asked.

The chariot began to roll forward, the wind catching in her mane and tossing it playfully.

“Others who have it in themselves to succeed,” Celestia explained. “If there’s one thing I know for sure in my heart, it’s that everypony is capable of amazing things. Everyone has excellence inside of them, just waiting to be unlocked.”

Rainbow pondered the events of recent days. The constant reminders of her own inadequacy at anything resembling levitation, and the several dozen apples she’d exploded. “Even me?” she wondered.

“Especially you. You have so many outstanding features to your credit. Your confidence, your spirit, your loyalty…”

“You left off coolness, awesomeness, and radicalness.”

“Those too,” Celestia said. “And now, you have a horn. And Rainbow, I don’t know if you even realize… I don’t know if it’s occurred to you…”

She struggled to voice her thoughts.

“Magic is our world’s greatest gift, and everything we’ve built up these past thousand years, we owe to it. Magic is what’s allowed us to tame the land, to grow the crops we depend on to feed our kin… Magic is what’s let us control the weather, to bring forth the wind and storm. Without magic, we wouldn’t be united as a people. We would still be scattered, living in an age of darkness and hunted to the ends of the earth.

“Magic is the light that’s lit the world. And a horn, Rainbow—a horn is the gateway to that light in its purest form. It’s such a special, special thing. It’s the ability to change the world. To work miracles.”

Celestia’s ancient eyes lifted again to the deep, black sky as Rainbow stood quietly beside her.

“Therefore, be at peace with yourself, and with every part of yourself. Never make the mistake of doubting what you’re capable of. And always, always love yourself for who and what you are. Your horn is a part of you, no less so than your wings and your hooves. And whether or not it’s clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

“Treasure it,” she said, gazing out into the night as Luna’s half-lit moon shined down on them. “Strive to be happy.”

“So…”

“So.”

Rainbow and Celestia traded looks on the fluffy front step of the cloud house. A dozen yards away and well out of earshot, the drivers stood with their backs turned, just as Celestia had bade them do.

Even so, the awkwardness was thick enough to cut with a knife.

“Well, uh… Thanks again for the tickets,” Rainbow said.

Celestia’s face was inscrutable as she nodded. “Thank you for inviting me. That wasn’t something you had to do.”

“Yeah, well… None of my other friends are Wonderbolts fans, so…”

There was an uncomfortable pause. Rainbow shifted her weight from hoof to hoof, looking at the ground. At the sky. At the moths flitting a circle around her porch light.

“It was fun,” the monarch said, at length.

“It… actually didn’t completely suck,” Rainbow admitted. She rubbed the back of her neck.

Another anxious pause.

“I’ll be taking up long-term residence in the castle again,” Celestia said. “I think I mentioned it before—”

“You did.”

“—but just to remind. You know where my office is. You’ve been there before. If you ever… If you ever feel like…”

The sentence hung. Rainbow understood it, just the same.

“Yeah, well… It’s getting pretty late. Almost time for my nightly siesta. Gotta be up early to get a jump on… stuff. So, uh… Peace.”

She thought she saw something sad pass across Celestia’s face. But the goddess gathered herself together and said in an even tone, “Of course. I’ll leave you then. Goodnight.”

Half a minute later, the strangeness of the day was officially over. The door closed, the deadbolt clicked, and Rainbow was back her in her home, surrounded by familiar things and unfamiliar thoughts.

The shadows of the night stretched long across the floor, but a streak of moonlight came aslant through the window and shined on the frame of the picture near the entrance. Rainbow glanced at it.

And the elderly pegasus couple in the photograph smiled back at her.

The same as they always did.

She stared at them for a long moment. Then she sighed a troubled sigh. And she went to bed.

Princess Celestia lay on her side near the dying hearth. The lights were low, and orange fingers of firelight raked across the pale of her hooves as her chest rose and fell.

The window was open a crack, and through it drifted the sound of the wind’s wavering breath, a flurry of gusts diminishing to a murmur, softly whispering, before rising and blowing strong again. Each time the zephyr swelled toward a new crescendo, it caught in the boughs of the old oak tree outside, filling the room with the melancholy rustling of its leaves and the creak of its branches.

Minutes went by, and Celestia lay there, quietly breathing.

Then, at length, the door inched open, throwing a long sliver of hallway light across the dim confines. A purple head poked in.

“Princess?”

“Mmm…?”

Celestia barely stirred. Her tail flicked, and so did her ears, but otherwise, she was dead to the world.

Twilight stole into the room, shutting the door noiselessly behind her. She bit her lip as she took stock of things.

She wasn’t surprised to see the Princess relaxed in front of the fire. It was a favorite spot of hers. A toasty-warm bastion of solitude and solace, especially on cold winter nights, when the chill nipped in through the gaps in the window panes. And it wasn’t any less comfortable on warm summer evenings, like this one. It was always peaceful and quiet, and the fire gave off the perfect ambiance for reading a good book.

Although, she didn’t recognize the little book with the sky-blue cover lying open on the floor in front of the Princess… And by the look of it, the Princess was already halfway to dreamland…

“I’m sorry, are you sleeping?” Twilight asked. “I can come back another time if you are.”

“No… i’s fine… ’m awake…” Celestia said.

She didn’t sound awake. Her voice was distant and faint, as if she were speaking from far away, through a haze. And she scarcely moved a muscle when she talked.

But then she spoke again, though no less drowsily:

“Wha’s wrong…?”

“I—I just—”

Twilight stopped herself. Her throat felt tight. Constricted. Like it was too small for the words that were trying to squeeze out of it.

She couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. Why had she come here again? Having Princess Celestia’s high esteem and regard meant everything in the world to her, and here she was, prancing up to her mentor’s office to belt out these… foalish insecurities.

Why had she thought to bare her soul to the one pony she didn’t want to think less of her? It didn’t make any sense. And yet, seeing the Princess like this pulled at memories lodged deep, deep in her heart. She swallowed hard, and she heard herself sniffle.

“Is it okay if… if I lie down next to you for a while?” Twilight asked, her voice trembling. “The way I used to, when I was little?”

It sounded sad and pathetic, even to her ears.

Nevertheless, it brought a smile to Celestia’s face. A warm, wonderful smile, like the kind that lifts you up when you’re given an unexpected gift. Something you’ve yearned for that you thought was out of reach.

She opened a wing, though her eyes remained closed. “That would be nice…” she murmured.

Twilight lay down on the floor, and the white wing folded around her, drawing her close, bringing warmth to her body and soul. And for a while, she just sat there quietly, resting against the alicorn’s chest, taking in the sound of her heartbeat, listening to her breathe. The tension eased out of her. Her face relaxed into a look of contentment and hope.

“I’ll always be important to you from now on, right, Princess?”

The words hung in the air.

Celestia gave no reaction at first, and Twilight worried she might have drifted off to sleep. But then, a few seconds later, in a gesture that was both strange and reassuring, she felt the white wing rub her back, drawing her closer still against her oldest friend and teacher. Her head cradled in the crook of the alicorn’s neck. She felt the hug, the nuzzle on her tear-stroked cheek, soothing her fears with unspoken promises of love.

And then, a second later, the reply, spoken from someplace far-away:

“Of course you will, my Aurora…”

A dagger stuck in Twilight’s heart.

She didn’t know how to react. For the longest time, she just lay there, uncomprehendingly. Until Celestia’s breathing grew long and shallow, and she knew for a certainty the Princess really had nodded off.

The sting of it all was too much to bear.

Twilight buried her head between her hooves. In a few minutes time, she joined her mentor in slumber.

Time went on, as it often does.

Days passed, and May gave way to June. The Summer Sun Celebration loomed large, with the twenty-first of the month circled in red on the royal calendar and preparations already underway by a considerable portion of the castle staff. If organizing festivities for the sun-raising ceremony didn’t consume enough of the servants’ time, then arrangements for the evening ball more than made up for it.

It was all background noise to Rainbow Dash. Life, for her, settled back into a strange semblance of normality.

Having her cloud house back helped a lot. She didn’t waste any time in moving back to the old digs—day one, she’d already re-packed, relocated, and re-unpacked her worldly belongings into good ole’ Casa Cumulus, and both she and Tank were happier for it. To hay with stuffy Canterlot Castle and its stuffy attendants! As far as she was concerned, the next pegasus to grow a horn and get outed as an illegitimate daughter of royalty was more than welcome to that hellhole.

So she lived in her own house, and she cooked her own food, and she let her own dishes pile up in her own sink, and she went to sleep each night in her own cozy bed, curled up amidst the clouds with a smile on her face and Tank in her arms. And come the dawn, it was the light from her own window that woke her up—even if there was a parapet on the other side of it.

But she was still bored.

So freaking bored.

She still had flying practice to keep her busy. She was practicing more than ever these days, actually. Mostly because practicing was pretty much the only thing there was to do.

For hours and hours each day, she laid claim to the sky above the East Garden, swerving and swooping and landing and looping and honing her routines until they were so sharp, they flashed. She took satisfaction in the knowledge that she was improving, but it was just such a… well… a lonely affair. Sometimes, the Caretaker would sit on the ground and critique her as she flew—

“Trim the wings, lass! Ye look like fat bagpipe floatin’ ’round up there!”

“What the hay do you know? I’ve never even seen you fly!”

But for the most part, she was on her own.

She missed her job. She missed being a weatherpony. Sure, it sucked a lot of the time, especially around the seasonal changes, but at least it gave her something to do. No amount of garden work could ever fill that gaping hole in her life.

But more than anything else, she missed Ponyville, and she missed her friends. Teaching Fluttershy how to cheer, playing pranks with Pinkie Pie, going mano-a-mano with Applejack… even Rarity woulda been a sight for sore eyes.

Time went on for Celestia, too.

It took a while, but ever so slowly, the stress of the last several months began to melt off the overwrought princess. All the suspense and anxiety, all the coiled-up dread—the combined wages of too many trips abroad to the Griffin Empire, scouting out the Ascendancy’s extraterritorial bases of operation, and too many trips to too many hospitals in the bleak aftermath of Manehattan, paying honor to her wounded guards and subjects—all of it began to slough off her now that Luna was leading the investigation. She almost felt her normal self again.

But then there was Rainbow Dash.

From time to time, as she sat in her office, busying herself with stacks of mindless paperwork, she would glance up from her desk and catch sight of the athletic filly slaloming through the battlements or corkscrewing up and down the towers. Always, a knife of guilt would slip between her ribs. Her jaw would tense, and she would force herself to look back down again, sinking her eyes into the ink strokes.

Celestia knew her place, and her place was here. Here, to make herself available in the event Rainbow Dash should decide to come to her. But not to initiate, and never to push.

Soon enough, Rainbow did come. She showed up at Celestia’s door one day not too long after the Wonderbolts show, leaning against the wall and trying to be all cool. It almost made Celestia laugh at how adorable she was, but there was a troubled look about her, and the Princess thought it wise to put on a more poised air.

“Good morning, Rainbow Dash. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Uh… Well, yeah. Sort of, I guess.”

Rainbow scraped the floor with her hoof. A grimace rumpled her face.

“There’s, um… something I kind of need to talk to you about.”

Celestia nodded, strictly business. “What is it?”

“It’s… It’s Rarity,” Rainbow said—and Celestia pretended not to notice the way her feathers ruffled at the drop of the name—“Y’know, her sister was hurt the other day in Manehattan, and… and, uh… Well, she’d just feel safer if you sent some extra guards to watch over her and her family, that’s all. She… wanted me to ask.”

Celestia’s eyes flickered up and down, scrutinizing the pursed-lipped filly in front of her.

“I see.”

There was more to this story, that much was obvious. How to convince Rainbow to open up to her, though? The gears spun in Celestia’s head for a long moment before she settled on a tack:

“I hope you know, you can come to me about anything. If something is wrong, if anything’s the matter, I—”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Rainbow visibly bristled. “Everything’s peachy, all right? I’m just trying to do a friend a favor.”

Celestia’s stare lingered for a few brief seconds before she broke away. Never to push, she repeated her oath. It wasn’t her place to pry where she wasn’t invited, and all things considered, it was better to provide the help that was asked for than the help unwanted.

“Mmm. Well, it’s the noblest of requests—we all of us want to protect the ones we love. In the aftermath of everything that’s happened and the Ascendancy’s dark designs, it’s only natural for a pony in her place to seek safety and security for her family.”

“Uh-huh,” Rainbow said, nodding with understanding. “Yeah, so like I was saying before—”

“It’s also completely unnecessary.”

“—Huh?”

Celestia had been occupied scratching her signature into some legislative documents when Rainbow came in, and now she pushed these to the side, devoting her full attention to the perplexed cyan filly. “Rarity has had a covert contingent of protectors assigned to guard her and her loved ones in Ponyville since the day Generosity chose her to be its avatar—the same as all the rest of the Element Bearers.”

Rainbow stopped and blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Bodyguards, Rainbow Dash,” Celestia explained, pressing her hooves together atop her desk. “You and your friends have all had bodyguards to watch over you this past year, ever since you banded together to vanquish Nightmare Moon.”

“Who?” Rainbow demanded. Her wings snapped irritably at her sides. “I never saw any bucking bodyguards.”

“If you knew precisely who they were, then they wouldn’t be covert,” Celestia said with a playful smirk. “It was Princess Luna who came up with the idea, actually. A visible troop of guards, we feared, would be disruptive to life at a boutique, on an apple farm, in the weather patrol—but a small team of well-placed agents might be able to keep vigil and provide security without intruding overmuch. Don’t fret. Rarity, her family, and the rest of your friends have the best protection there is to be had in Equestria, short of taking up residence here in the castle. I’ll write to her at once and make this known to her—though of course, she and her relatives are more than welcome to stay here anytime they wish, should it help quell the anxiety in their hearts.”

Rainbow rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, I guess that makes se…”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Wait a sec. You had a secret agent on weather assigned to watch over me for the last year?!”

Celestia tapped her chin innocently. “Hmm. Did I say that? I’m not sure I can say, really. I don’t quite remember.”

“Who is it?!” Rainbow took to the air, wings ablur and feathers flashing. “I’ll bet it’s Stormwalker, isn’t it?! I KNEW it was too good to be true when Cloudsdale conveniently found somepony to fill that opening last summer! No, wait—It’s Flitter! That two-timing Flitter—I always felt like there was something funny about her—”

Celestia just smiled and returned to her paperwork.

“It better not be Thunderlane! If my bodyguard is putting in that many sick days, he’s BENCHED!”

Talking got easier the more they did it. Barriers came down and walls fell away, and slowly, something began to build between them.

In truth, neither one of them knew what it was. It sure as heck wasn’t tenderness, warmth, or affection, because no way was Rainbow ever going to open herself up to that kind of mush—especially not to the pony who’d thrown her out like garbage before she could even crawl. But whatever it was, it was something.

And for Celestia, that was enough.

Rainbow returned the following afternoon seeking more help with her magic. It seemed Twilight had given a lecture on mana pathways, and the whole subject had gone over her head. Nothing made any sense to her, and she seemed pretty discouraged.

As concepts went, it was a rudimentary one, but understandably hard to grasp for a novice who’d been disconnected from the arcane all her life. Thankfully, Celestia had no trouble explaining it in a way that made sense to her, and Rainbow left feeling buoyant, happy, and full of confidence. The next day, she was back again

Before long, these impromptu lessons burgeoned into a regular affair, and Celestia found she could look forward to spending as much as an hour or more with Rainbow each day, usually under the pretense of giving her magic lessons—though magic lessons could just as easily turn into chatter about the Wonderbolts or spirited hoofball debates.

“Are you being serious right now? Come on, just admit it. Admit you’re not being serious.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Give me a break! Jackpot Thunder can throw a fifty yard bomb on his knees! You really wouldn’t pick him for the draft?”

“Hrm. Maybe if it were the seventh round, and nopony else had chosen him yet—”

“GYAH!”

As for Twilight, she got on as best she could. And in time, things began to get back to normal for her as well.

As normal as normal could be, being away from Ponyville.

In a sense, she shouldn’t have felt out of place being back in Canterlot. She’d been born here, she’d grown up here, she’d gone to school here. The castle was practically a second home to her, and her first home was a scant one-quarter turn around the mountain, barely a mile away. But Ponyville had been her home for the past year, and her heart longed for the familiar knots and hollows of Golden Oaks, with Spike busying himself restocking the shelves and all of her friends close at hoof.

She had Princess Celestia here, of course. Almost every day, the two of them would share polite company—usually at breakfast, lunch, or dinner, when they crossed paths in the royal dining room. Twilight always looked forward to these cherished interactions, and she had it in good confidence that her teacher did as well.

But something always felt off about them. Something wasn’t right.

They talked at length about this or that: arrangements for the Summer Sun Celebration, a new citywide ordinance requiring mandatory pruning for dragonsneeze trees, some tactless petitioners Celestia had received at court the other day, a spell Twilight had recently invented for scraping the black stuff off burnt toast. And it was all very mild-mannered, very cordial, very friendly.

It was the words that weren’t said between them that made her come away from each conversation feeling glum.

The fault was hers, Twilight knew. The Princess was just as warm and welcoming as ever, and their relationship marked by just as much mutual respect as it always had been. To tell the truth, she didn’t even know what it was she wanted to hear from Celestia. A heartfelt word? A reassurance? It all seemed so foalish, so very much beneath her, and Twilight was sure she wouldn’t have dared broach the subject even if she had known exactly what to say.

But as she watched Rainbow Dash grow closer to Celestia, day by day, she couldn’t help feeling forlorn. Like a boat untethered and set adrift, left to watch the shore from afar.

It wasn’t rational, she knew. Nothing about the way she felt made any sense. But it was the way she felt.

And too often, her treasured time with the Princess would turn to talk of Rainbow Dash—

“…and so the morphic matrix of the spell rewrites the metaphasic field of the toast. It convinces the toast that it’s actually bread, and bread knows intuitively it’s not supposed to be charred, so there’s a transitory response that causes the char to fall right off!”

“That’s wonderful, Twilight!” Celestia said. And there was a light in her eyes that showed that she meant it.

Twilight beamed. “Thank you, Princess.”

“Have you thought about submitting this breakthrough to the Journal of Culinary Conjuration? I know it’s been a while since you last published, but there’s an audience out there with an appetite for this sort of thing—pun not intended. If you’re open to it, I’d be happy to help write the cover letter for the manuscript.”

Twilight clapped her hooves together. “That’s a great idea! I’ll get on it straight away! I can probably have a rough draft on your desk by tonight—that isn’t too soon, is it? Oh, I’m so excited! With your assistance, I’m sure I won’t have any trouble in the peer review process!”

“Gourmands across Equestria will look back and remember this day,” Celestia said with a wink and a smile. Then, carving herself another slice of cloud cake, she segued, “Speaking of morphic matrices, how is Rainbow Dash coming along in her studies? Has she been able to grasp the fundamental concepts yet?”

Twilight’s excitement dissipated. Her eyes lowered to the floor. “Uh… No. Not exactly.”

A sickening discomfort sunk in the pit of her gut. Her failure at getting Rainbow Dash to learn anything substantive about magic was exactly that: her failure. Being pressed on it by Princess Celestia wasn’t something she relished or looked forward to.

“Hmm,” Celestia said. Her eyebrows curled in a frown. “Well, we might have to switch things up. Did you know she’s been coming to me for extra help on top of her lessons with you?”

“Oh… No, I didn’t know that,” Twilight said. An icepick of dread lodged in her stomach at the news. Rainbow shouldn’t have to bother Celestia for assistance! How did that reflect on her, the teacher, when her only student needed remedial training?!

She needed to redouble her efforts. She needed to crack the whip. She needed to—

“How about this? I’ll take over teaching her the basics and ensure she has a strong foundation. During your sessions with her, I’d like you to focus on applied spellcraft—specifically, protective magic. I’d like her to have a good repertoire of abilities to turn to should an emergency situation ever require her to defend herself.”

“Is… there anything particular you had in mind?”

Celestia tapped her chin. “Teleportation is still much too advanced for her, and likewise with a lot of other spells. Begin with something simpler, like a rudimentary magical barrier. From there, you can move on to shield charms and simple healing spells. Being able to mend an open wound can mean the difference between life and death.”

The alicorn looked at her meaningfully.

“This is a very important task. Be honest with me. Are you comfortable doing it, Twilight?”

“Of course, Princess,” Twilight answered.

What kind of student would she have been if she’d said no?

And so, Twilight’s lessons with Rainbow Dash continued along a path slightly altered. Whereas before they would’ve spent hours knocking their heads together on the most basic of concepts, now they had an even higher bar to meet. They met each day in the library and tried to muddle through it as best they could.

It didn’t go quite as badly as either one of them expected. Which wasn’t to say it went well—it was still Rainbow Dash’s thick skull she was trying to drill knowledge into, after all—but Twilight had to admit, she did seem to be trying. Trying and mostly failing, but still trying.

By all measures, progress was ridiculously slow. Every time Rainbow managed to achieve the faintest glimmer of a magic field around her, she lost her concentration and dropped it a second later. This went on for days and days, and after a while, Twilight was on the edge of her seat, impatient for a breakthrough. But no matter how many times she demoed the spell, it never seemed to do any good.

“Yeah, I know you can cast the stupid barrier. You don’t need to show me again,” Rainbow grumbled, folding her hooves and glaring at the pink hemisphere that sprung up around Twilight.

“Look at the way the magic warps the space around my body,” Twilight said helpfully. “See how it bends and curls along the contours of the field my horn’s projecting? That’s what you need to aim for.”

Rainbow groaned. “Magic is sooooo dumb.”

“Magic is not dumb. Magic is what brings order to our universe. Magic is what takes us from confusion to understanding in a way that’s precise, predictive, and reliable.”

“It’s duuuuumb!” Rainbow declared, and she banged her head against the open books on the table.

Twilight bit her tongue. It was irritating, to say the least, having to put up with these childish antics. And it always seemed to come to this. Every day, after they’d been at it for an hour or two, Rainbow would hit her limit and just… shut down.

It took her a while to come to terms with this. The unicorn was nothing if not a scholar, well-accustomed to burning the midnight oil on this spell or that one, working well into the night for hours on end. It was different for Rainbow. She didn’t handle failure well—not in general, and especially not failures of an ‘egghead’ nature. Failing was the same thing as losing to her, and Rainbow Dash hated losing. It made her angry. It made her sullen and withdrawn.

Twilight swallowed a sigh. If only her brother were around to lend his expertise. Shining Armor’s mastery of barrier magic was legend, not only in the ranks of the Guard, but in the Academy to boot. If anypony could get through to Rainbow Dash, it would be him.

But Shining Armor wasn’t here. Shining was—was—

Twilight clamped down on her musings. That avenue of thought didn’t go anyplace useful.

“Let’s… call it a day,” she suggested with some reluctance. “We’ll come back to this again tomorrow.”

It was a bitter pill, having to continually postpone these sessions when she knew Rainbow needed to learn this, particularly in light of the fact that her own reputation with Princess Celestia was riding on it. She grimaced and shook her head. If she didn’t have it from Professor Whitehoof himself, she would never have imagined Rainbow Dash to have any hidden magical talent locked away inside her—but she supposed the bill for repairs to the castle dining room spoke for itself.

So Twilight went about trying to teach Rainbow as best she knew how, with measured, incremental success. And things were okay between them. She kept it logical and professional, no more emotions, no more ‘bean can’ incidents. Granted, she still had terrifying premonitions of Rainbow Dash using her magic to inadvertently summon some kind of grotesque eldritch monstrosity, but as long as she tried not to think about it much, she found she could soldier through the lessons just fine. Even if the answer to “Did you do the reading?” was a perennial “No.”

One sunny morning, Twilight startled awake from a dream.

It was a terrible dream. A nightmare, actually. The latest in a string of nightmares that had plagued her since the day Sage’s letter summoned her to Canterlot.

These nocturnal terrors were so frequent anymore, and the imagery in them so persistent, she had begun to wonder whether they were weighing on her sanity. Always, it was the throne room of the old castle, and the dais, and the Elements of Harmony failing around her, and a silverglinting edge amidst a cavernous darkness and a pool of red. And always, she woke up clutching her sheets, roused in a panic by the sight of that horrible, slitted purple eye.

But the morning light shone in through the curtains, as it so often did, filling her bedroom with brightness and cheer. And she heard the chirping of songbirds over her own labored breathing, and smelled the richness of coffee wafting on the air, and soon enough, her dread slithered away back inside of her. She dragged herself out of bed, showered and dried herself, and descended from her tower for breakfast.

She froze at the dining room door.

Sitting at the table, hunched over a bowl of cornflakes, was none other than Princess Luna.

The alicorn’s starry mane was tangled and mussed, and Twilight’s jaw dropped when she took a long, unprincesslike slurp of milk off the end of her spoon. She looked like she’d just gotten up—or just gotten in. One or the other.

Luna’s weary eyes raised along with her next spoonful of cereal. If she was surprised to see Twilight gawking at her from the door, she certainly didn’t show it.

“Morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” Twilight replied. She racked her brain for the proper protocols before falling into a belated bow.

Luna quickly waved her off.

“No need,” the goddess said, concisely. She tilted her head toward the chair on her right. Twilight hesitated only briefly before sitting down next to her.

A servant hobbled out from the kitchen to ask what she wanted to eat, and she politely requested some scrambled eggs and coffee. He bent at the knees before scurrying off. Meanwhile, Luna finally reached the bottom of her bowl. She tipped it back and gulped down the milk, and Twilight found herself staring again.

“Something wrong?” Luna wondered.

“…Mustache,” was all Twilight could manage to say.

“Huh?”

“Mustache.” She raised a hoof to point at her muzzle. “Mustache. Milk mustache. All over you.”

“Oh!”

Comprehension dawned over Luna’s face. It didn’t do anything for the stain on her upper lip, but it did bring her a smile and a chuckle.

“How’s it look on me?” she asked impishly.

Twilight could only goggle at her. A few moments later, she rattled off one of her usual clinical assessments.

“It looks… cold. And… milky.”

Luna wiped herself off with a napkin. Twilight yawned.

“Trouble sleeping?” Luna asked.

The grandfather clock ticked away a few seconds.

“You could say that,” Twilight said, finally.

“Bad dreams?”

Twilight nodded. “Yeah. Uh… Do you ever get them?”

Luna paused to consider the question. “Sometimes, I have dreams of a peculiar alternate reality where I’m really loud and I speak frequently in the third person. But other than that, no.”

Eventually, they broke the ice and got to talking. The conversation naturally turned to recent events and the Ascendancy of the Night. Luna was surprisingly forthcoming about the investigation, although disappointingly, she didn’t have a lot to tell. All of the perpetrators in custody were uncooperative. There was no imminent threat of another attack—at least, not as far as she knew.

When Twilight mentioned how her brother was among the wounded, Luna was quick to commiserate.

“It’s terrible,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Too many good ponies have been made to suffer because of that group’s behavior. It’s disgraceful that anypony still practices such hatred this day in age.”

“Thanks for your understanding,” Twilight replied. “Princess Celestia said the same.”

Here, Luna looked at Twilight strangely. “Has my sister spoken to you at all about the Ascendancy’s fascinations since she came back last week?” she asked.

“No, she hasn’t.” Twilight frowned. “Why?”

Luna put on a feeble smile. “Oh. No reason,” she said.

And then she swiftly changed the subject.

It struck an odd chord with Twilight, but she didn’t pay it much mind. Soon enough, they drifted on to other topics, and they enjoyed themselves talking about more pleasant things.

Then the clock chimed the three-quarter hour, and they both realized they had someplace else they needed to be.

“It was good seeing you again,” Twilight bade a polite farewell. “I hope you’ll consider staying in Canterlot for a days. I know it means so much to Princess Celestia to have you here.”

Luna gave a cordial nod as she stood up. “It’ll be a few days before I’m due back in Manehattan. We should all have dinner together—you, me, my sister, and Rainbow Dash.”

Twilight faltered at the suggestion, but Luna was off on her way before she had a chance to notice, bidding adieu and gliding out in the direction of Celestia’s office, a pair of night guards at her side. Twilight stared after her, then down at the empty bowl of cereal she’d left behind.

She really was still an enigma in so many ways.

Twilight drained the last of her coffee, then pried herself up out of her chair and started for the library. It was going on ten, and she still had the next week’s magic lessons to plan out. With any luck, she could make some headway before Rainbow Dash showed up for another disappointing day of barrier attempts.

And time went on…

Late one day, as the afternoon grew old and the sun waned in the sky, the beaked-and-winged denizens of the castle aviary found an audience in Rainbow Dash and Princess Celestia.

There wasn’t any race to be had between them tonight. No adrenaline-pumping pursuit through the towers, no mach cone catchup, no wheezing proclamations of victory. Only a stroll through the sunlit garden, just the two of them. Celestia’s hooves treaded lightly across the hard-packed path while Rainbow buzzed above, jabbering:

“…I still wanna know the RPM’s on that thing. It musta been over two hundred—I shoulda asked the guy working the levers while I had a chance. It was super-fast, though, like some kind of twisted-evil carnival ride from Tartarus. I think they painted the spiral on it just to hypnotize ponies into losing their lunch.”

“I don’t believe that’s how hypnosis works,” Celestia said.

Rainbow threw her hooves in the air. “Green and purple! I mean, come on! Vomit was clearly the objective! It worked, too—you shoulda seen the bathroom after everypony was done—”

“Oh, that’s quite all right. You don’t need to describe it.”

“I tell ya, There was this one pink pegasus with a sunflower for a cutie mark, and oh my gosh, you never saw anypony handle spin-out worse than her. Her initial time off the stopwatch wasn’t even that bad, but the whole time everypony else was taking their turn, she kept running to the porta-potties again and again—”

“Did she run in a straight line, at least?”

“Heck, no! I think she was still seeing double on the obstacle course a whole day later!”

Celestia chuckled. “Well, that is the Wonderbolts way, after all. It’s not all that surprising, to tell the truth. They only take the best of the best, and they have certain precautions to ensure the ponies they draft measure up to the challenge.”

“Heh. Yeah. Quell the storm, ride the thunder, right?” Rainbow said.

Celestia nodded. “That’s the motto.”

A warm breeze whistled through the boughs as they drew to a halt in front of a grand old tree, with lush, summer-green limbs stretched far out over the path. They both turned their attention to a nest of twigs built upon a low branch. Rainbow frowned to see it empty.

“Where’s Philomena?” she wondered.

Celestia raised her brow. “Someplace else, it seems.”

Sucking in her lips, the radiant white alicorn cast her gaze out upon the water, lapping so tranquilly against the shore.

“I’d like to talk about something different, if you don’t mind.”

“Yeah?” Rainbow tossed her a look. “What?”

The day was fine, the weather perfect, and the sun shone bright in the rose-colored sky, its vermillion rays skipping off the surface of the lake like rubies. But in the pit of her stomach, Celestia was a gathering sea of clouds, gray and unsure and heavy with foreboding at the delicate matter she was about to raise.

Apprehension burrowed into her mind and stilled her, for a moment, as Rainbow looked on questioningly. She wished she didn’t have to broach this subject. The banter was so quick, and the mood was so light, and the two of them were talking and getting along so much better than she could ever have hoped, it was easy to overlook the trauma and turmoil that had brought them together; the emotional wounds, only just begun to heal; the explosive mixture of anger, hurt, and resentment that still lay underneath the surface, waiting for something to set it off. Rainbow Dash had a mellow and laid-back way about her, in general—but one wrong word, one wrong move, and she could turn on you like a viper.

That was Celestia’s experience, at least, borne out over the past many days spent interacting with the irascible filly. Of course, the Princess was shrewd enough to realize she was probably the only recipient of this type of ire; that Rainbow still had plenty of reasons to be angry at her. And that was enough to convince Celestia to walk on eggshells around her, for the most part.

But she had to dispense with that now. The solstice was coming up on them fast, the opportunity quickly approaching. If they wanted to seize it, they needed to act soon.

Celestia spoke cautiously around the subject: “It’s been over a month since you grew into your horn. I haven’t put too much on you in that time, have I?”

It was probably a mistake. Definitely a mistake, if Rainbow’s ears were any indication—they splayed back against her head almost instantly. The girl had developed a nose for doubletalk.

“What’s this about?” Rainbow asked, looking at her suspiciously.

“I need to ask something of you now. Rainbow—”

She paused here, all her qualms and misgivings seeming to creep into her expression. But she continued, nevertheless:

“Three weeks from now, the Summer Sun Celebration will be held here in Canterlot on the palace grounds. The who’s who of Equestria will be in attendance—distinguished statesponies of Parliament, honored nobles of the High Court, and representatives of the press.”

“And…?” Rainbow demanded. Her voice was sharp. She could already sense where this was going.

“And I’d like to make the most of the occasion,” Celestia said, her wings held rigidly at her sides. “The Summer Sun Celebration will go on as usual, with all the customary ceremonies, celebrations, and banquets… and one more thing. Your formal presentation to Equestrian society.”

“You wanna stick me in a fancy dress, put a crown on my head, and trot me out for everypony to stare at,” Rainbow said flatly.

Celestia shook her head. “No crowns. Something tells me you wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing one, and this isn’t a coronation, anyway. Though technically, by all laws and edicts, a coronation would only be symbolic, in your case. You’re already a princess by birth.”

Rainbow scowled.

“Not interested.”

“Neither am I,” Celestia said quickly. “But this isn’t something we have a lot of choice in. Presenting you to the public is something we have to get around to doing sooner rather than later.”

“So crowns are optional, but making me prance in front of your ‘who’s who’ friends is mandatory,” Rainbow surmised. Her voice was as bitter as bitter can be.

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t think it were in your best interests. And I promise you, they aren’t any great friends of mine.”

“I don’t care who they are, the answer’s still—”

“They’re the movers and the shakers of Equestrian society; the elite of the elite. And although ordinarily, I wouldn’t wring my hooves pandering to them or seeking their high opinion, in this case, I believe it’s the wisest course. Perception means the world to these ponies. If we take advantage of this opportunity to have you put in a good appearance with them, it will make life easier later on.”

“The answer’s still no,” Rainbow said. Her nose wrinkled with distaste. “Where’s the ‘we’ come into it, anyway? Sounds like I’m the one you want to go through with this.”

Celestia steeled her resolve. “I understand this is something you aren’t looking forward to, but—”

“There’s nothing to look forward to, because I’m not gonna do it.”

“—but there are certain expectations you have to meet. This isn’t going to go away, Rainbow. You’re an alicorn, and—”

“I never asked to be one!” Rainbow fired back, eyes blazing. “And why’s it anypony’s business who or what I am?! Why do I gotta parade myself in front of anypony?!”

A frantic Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! came down from the nest, and they both looked up. Rainbow sprang into action, the frown on her face softening as she perched on the bough and found a single phoenix hatchling with tears running down its orange face.

“Hey there, little guy. Where’s your mom?” she asked, tickling it under its beak with the tip of her wing.

The baby phoenix just looked up at her with sad, yellow eyes.

“Probably off foraging for food,” Celestia brushed off the question. “It’s just one night. If you would just—”

“No, it’s not just one night. It’s ‘my formal presentation to Equestrian society.’” Still up in the branches of the tree, Rainbow sneered and looked away. “As far as I’m concerned, Equestria society can go buck itself, ’cause that’s not who I am.”

“It’s not that much to ask,” Celestia said, exasperation creeping in.

Rainbow’s face submerged again in a tide of anger. “It’s more than you woulda asked for two weeks ago! What happened to all that crap about my freedom, my choice? And now you’re putting me up to this?”

“I’m not putting you up to anything!”

“Sure looks that way from where I’m sitting!”

“You’re sitting in a tree, Rainbow,” Celestia noted, with just the faintest hint of cynicism. “And won’t you please come down from there? Philomena will be back shortly, I‘m sure, and it would be far easier for us to have this discussion face-to-face.”

“Fat chance of that. There’s nothing to discuss.”

The monarch’s lips pressed together in a thin, white slash. If it had been anypony else, she would have run out her patience ages ago. But of course, this was Rainbow Dash she was talking to. And dealing with Rainbow Dash required uncommon levels of delicacy.

But her gaze was adamant and unwavering, just the same. “You aren’t clear-sighted on this. You need to understand—”

“No, YOU need to understand,” Rainbow cut her off. “If I do this—if I go to their prissy parties and play their stupid games—I’ll never be anything to any of them.”

“Rainbow Dash—”

“I won’t be an athlete, I won’t be a future Wonderbolt… I won’t be me.” The third pronouncement was stressed—something essential, something meaningful, carried on those four little words. “I’ll just be Princess Bucking Aurora to them—”

Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! went the baby phoenix again, and Rainbow Dash glanced down at it sympathetically. She reached out tenderly to pet its soft, downy head. The fledgling almost seemed to lean into the contact, rubbing desperately against her hoof.

“Where the buck is Philomena?” she wondered again. “Shouldn’t she be here for this little guy?”

“Enough with the bird! Philomena will return shortly, I’m sure. Please, won’t you just come down from there? There are more important matters to talk about right now.”

Rainbow didn’t come down.

Celestia gave her a long, hard look. And for several seconds, the two of them just glared back and forth in stony silence, until finally, the Princess sighed and relented:

“You might not care for it, and I might not either, but here’s the reality of things. You’re an alicorn in a kingdom that venerates alicorns. Where the senseless and the sensible alike will revere you one minute, then turn and whisper about you superstitiously behind your back the next. And for the rest of your life, you’ll have to deal with it—have to deal with the rumors, and the speculation, and the presumptions, and Rainbow—you need to get out in front of it! Don’t let them define you. Seize this opportunity and use it to define yourself first!”

It all seemed very reasonable and clear-cut in Celestia’s head, but the words just seemed to roll off of Rainbow Dash. “I don’t give a BUCK about ANY of that,” she spat.

“The press gives a buck,” Celestia said sternly. “For a thousand years, I was the only alicorn left in the world, and the burden fell on my shoulders alone. Then the Elements of Harmony gave me back my sister, and the day Luna was restored, she was thrust into the spotlight.”

Serenity melted away as her face twisted into a mask of anger. “Do you remember the headlines? The way the tabloids bellowed on and on and on for months, spewing suspicion and paranoia? I have a habit of reading the newspaper every day, and there weren’t a lot of days when I didn’t come away in a white rage of anger.”

Her lip curled in disgust.

“Even now, they speculate about her. All because of Nightmare Moon, and the positive first impression she didn’t make.”

She looked up at Rainbow Dash, hoping to have gotten through to her.

But the cyan filly’s face was still fierce.

“What does ANY OF THAT have to do with me?”

“It’s your turn now—that’s the point,” Celestia said hotly. “Perhaps, if you’d kept a low profile, we could have contained the news to Ponyville—could have kept a lid on it a while longer—but two weeks ago, you caused multiple sonic rainbooms in the sky above Canterlot and led the guards on a widely-reported chase through the city—”

“Maybe if I’d been allowed to FLY, I wouldn’t have—”

“I’M NOT BLAMING YOU.”

Her voice rang loud, her visage cracked, and annoyance shone through on her face, clear and bright—at the same time, the fledgling phoenix gave another TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! from its nest, and Rainbow gathered it protectively in her arms.

“Are you purposefully misreading me?” Celestia demanded, glaring up at her. “Are you doing everything in your power to view this as an attempt to provoke? Because that’s not my intent.”

“I don’t give a BUCK about your intent, and I don’t give a BUCK about anything else you’ve got to say. I’M NOT GOING TO DO IT. I’m not going to dress up like a pretty little princess, go out there in front of everypony, and pretend to be something I’m not!”

“Think back to the Gala. Have I ever been keen on doing the same? No, I don’t go gleefully into such affairs, nor do I occasion to put myself through misery because I enjoy it—but I do it because it’s wise, because it’s necessary, and because it’s expected of me.”

“GOOD FOR YOU!” Rainbow’s voice was all but dripping with sarcasm. “How ’bout you go out there and take one for both of us, then? Have fun at your fancy shindig and LEAVE ME OUT OF IT!”

“You still don’t get it.”

The Princess’s tone was measured, but noticeably restrained, and her vexation was on full display as she shut her eyes and pressed a white hoof to her brow.

Rainbow folded her arms. “There’s NOTHING to get.”

“This is something you will have to deal with. Whether you deal with it weeks or months from now, alone or by my side, eventually, it will confront you. It will! There isn’t any getting around it. Unless you plan to remain in seclusion for the rest of your life—which you won’t—you’re going to have to face the public.

“Do it now!” Celestia peered back up. The look in her bright, pink eyes was imploring. “Don’t let it ambush you. Do it now! Head it off! Get out in front of it!”

“The only one who needs to ‘get out’ is you,” Rainbow muttered.

Celestia’s patience snapped like a rope. “Why are you acting this way?!” she seethed, her agitation blistering. “Don’t you see? Now is the BEST time to do this. Ponies are curious right now—they’re crowing for a chance to meet you—”

“Then let ’em CROW!”

“That’s not how it WORKS! If you don’t meet them halfway, if you don’t give them what they expect of you, they’ll make up the story and run with it, and who knows what the press will send to print!”

“Whatever they print, at least I won’t be living a bucking LIE!”

“No, you’ll be living THEIR lies! I don’t want what happened to Luna to happen to you! Is that so hard to understand?”

“Is it so hard to understand that I’M NOT GOING TO DO IT?”

A profound sort of quiet had fallen over the aviary. The chorus of birds and insects had ceased chirping, and even the wind and the lapping of the waves had gone to silence. There was nothing to be heard now, except for the clash of their voices, shouting back and forth—and the baby phoenix kept right on screaming all the while, TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!

“Listen to me, Rainbow! The press—the press is vicious,” Celestia said. “I’ve done what I can to shelter you from it so far, but I can only stave it off for so long before—”

“You SHELTERED ME?” Rainbow gaped at her.

TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!

Celestia hesitated, caught off-guard. “I—”

“At what point in my life did you EVER shelter me?”

TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!

They were glaring down at her, both of them—Rainbow Dash and the bird, both glaring down at her with so much hate and anger. But even so, she had to hold firm. “I’ve tried to—”

“I’m pretty sure SHELTERING ME is the OPPOSITE of everything you EVER did.”

The blow struck home.

Celestia tried not to show any reaction. But she felt the fight drain out of her, just the same. Felt the plugs fall out of the familiar old holes in her heart, and the sick feeling as they started to bleed anew.

“I… hoped we were past that,” she said.

“No, we’re NOT past that. We’ll NEVER be past that, because it’ll NEVER stop being true.”

TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!

“Why? Why won’t you just agree?” Celestia pleaded.

She was well and truly disarmed at this point, but she had to keep trying, for Rainbow’s sake. She was simply headstrong, she just hadn’t come around to seeing the logic in it yet, she didn’t understand—

“It’s only one night! It’s not that much to ask.” If only she could find the right words, she could make her see reason—if only she kept at it for just a little while longer… if only… if only…

“Please, why won’t you just consider—”

“BECAUSE I’M NOT YOUR BUCKING DAUGHTER!”

TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!

Rainbow rose up like a hulking beast, full of rage and pain and sorrow, and she bored into Celestia with so much fire, Celestia could barely stand to meet her gaze.

Then she turned away, and she lowered the screeching baby phoenix gently down into the nest. And when she turned back a second later, all of the fire was gone, and there were hot tears rolling down her face. Pain and sorrow had won out.

“And that’s ALL I’LL BE—that’s all I’ll EVER be—to ANY OF THEM.” Her voice cracked. “That’s ALL I’VE BEEN to ANYPONY since I got this stupid—bucking—thing—”

She tried to keep from losing it, but the pain tore apart her armor, and the tears squeezed out between the lids of her tight-closed eyes. “Just your stupid daughter, even though I’m not… I’m not… I’m not—!”

Celestia saw her wings fire into action a moment too late.

“Wait!” she cried, reaching out in vain.

But there was no stopping Rainbow Dash once she was in motion. She bolted like lightning, off and away in a meteoric burst of speed. Celestia’s hoof stayed suspended in midair as she watched the familiar contrail blaze across the darkening sky.

She stayed that way for some time. Standing there in stunned silence, nursing her newly-inflicted wounds and wondering how everything could have gone so wrong.

A short while later, Philomena returned at last with a big, juicy worm clutched in her beak. She swooped into the nest and dangled it down, and the baby phoenix that Rainbow had tended in her hooves not two minutes before craned its neck to receive it. Its cries were all gone, like they’d never even happened. And as it gobbled up its dinner, Philomena puffed out her feathers and gathered the hatchling under her wing, blanketing it against the encroaching cold of night.

Celestia watched it unfold through far-off eyes. Her chest constricted with heartache.

09. The Pranking of Princess Luna

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER NINE
The Pranking of Princess Luna

Originally Published 7/13/2016

The midnight train out of Manehattan clacked its way through hill and vale, past the bountiful forests and little cottage homes that dotted the rural countryside of northeast Equestria. All sight of the soaring metropolis had long since retreated from view, but outside, through the windows of the caboose, the city lights still smeared across the horizon, bleaching the eastern sky.

Inside, a pair of hard-nosed guards were traveling back to the capital. One of them was Otto Bravemane, a hulking ogre of a pegasus with braided auburn locks and a beard to frame his limitless smile. The other one was Captain Tristar, who had a contemplative expression fixed to his face as he pretended to listen to his junior officer:

“…Mowing the lawn. Definitely mowing the lawn. A real stallion takes pride in his lawn, y’know? The neighbors, they hire it out. Lazy cads. Gets one of ’em pizza-faced earth pony colts to come up and push the mower every week. Nah, that ain’t for me. A well-tended lawn’s something to take pride in, hoof, wing, or horn. Ain’t that right, Cap’n?”

Tristar didn’t answer. He was too deep in his thoughts.

His gaze drew to the center of the train car. To the little onyx pedestal that had been installed there, and the swirling silver surface of the crystal ball set on top of it.

Whitehoof’s little miracle orb.

Two weeks now, he’d lived with the damn things, and he still hadn’t gotten used to them. He felt like he was being watched.

Otto kept right on talking. “Cooking. Barbecue. Mmm-mmm, barbecue! I can’t wait to have me some of that! I’ve had my fill of field rations and chow hall grub. You know, we spent two weeks in Manehattan and I didn’t even get to try a Pony Island hot dog?”

A scowl darkened his face, but it gave way to a smile at the thought of home.

“Still, home cooking’s gonna be a welcome change. Might even be worth the missus dragging me out every weekend to help with the shopping!”

Bedlam Bustle, Tristar mused bitterly. Bedlam. Bustle.

Visions of recent failures flashed in his mind’s eye. Metal chairs and concrete rooms. The look of frustration on Princess Luna’s face after every dead end and aborted interrogation.

Ponies didn’t usually last this long under pressure. Normal ponies didn’t, at least. Normal ponies broke and sold each other down the river.

In twenty years as a captain, prisoner’s dilemma had always been his surest ally, an indispensable weapon in the art of interrogation. Fear. Desperation. The inevitability of betrayal. One weakness, one hairline crack in their resolve, and even the most tight-knit cadres came crashing down like a house of cards.

Until now.

Thirteen suspects, rounded up after the attack on Grand Central. Every one of them, locked up in separate cells, subjected to endless questioning, sleepless nights, the works.

And yet, not a word.

It was eerie. Unnatural. They wouldn’t turn on each other, not even to save their own skin. None of them caved. Not a single one even spoke.

Except for Bedlam Bustle.

Otto’s babbling about barbecues and lawns barely registered in his ears. All Tristar could think about were the grim, defiant faces on the perps.

Maybe it was paranoia. His mind playing tricks on him. Or maybe it was an intuition honed by too damn many years in law enforcement, dealing with all manner of bucked-up people.

Somehow, he just didn’t buy it.

They shouldn’t be this quiet. Not after the gambit they pulled—the loudest, most audacious and destructive attack on Equestria since the Tartarus Revolt a century ago.

They knew it would fail. Knew their senseless, wanton violence would never bring down the kingdom, would never bring down Celestia. They didn’t care. It didn’t matter to them. They were trying to send a message.

So why clam up now?

They should be reveling in it. They should be gloating. Bouncing off the walls, basking in their own sadism, and bragging to everypony in earshot about what they’d done. Especially this bunch of losers! This wasn’t some seasoned military outfit with discipline and training. They were a ragtag crew of misfits. Outcasts, deadbeats, petty criminals. The kind of ponies who’d never tasted real power or respect. They should be puffing up their chests and sneering at the system, trying to squeeze out validation, recognition… whatever it took to feed their ravenous hunger for superiority, to let the world know they’d “won.”

It should’ve been impossible getting them to shut up.

Instead, it was the opposite. Not a single word out of any of them! No taunts, no boasts, no jeers. Only a chilling silence. They ate their meals, moved where they were told, followed commands. And they sat in their cells. Their eyes sharp and watchful, but giving nothing away.

Except. For Bedlam Bustle.

Maybe he was overthinking it. There were cult dynamics at work here, and that left open the door to indoctrination, suppressed individuality, and extreme psychological conditioning. All underwritten by some diabolic, quasi-messianic, apocalyptic beliefs. Their devotion to their goddess. To their Nightmare. Their zeal to usher in a new order, to remake the world in purifying fire.

Maybe it was just dogmatic fanaticism. That was Princess Luna’s conjecture, and Whitehoof’s. Maybe he ought to just accept it.

But not a single weak link? Not one, except for Bustle?

…If he were smart, he would just accept it. Just accept it and move on. Turn over other stones. Investigate other leads.

He definitely wouldn’t do what he was thinking about doing.

But Tristar knew, deep in his bones, there was more to it. A deeper game. A tighter web.

It wasn’t just stonewalling. It was like they couldn’t talk. The idea gnawed at him like a persistent splinter…

Just let it go, Daedalus, a warning voice spoke inside him. You know what the repercussions will be if you don’t.

He closed his eyes, and he saw the shattered ruin of the train station. Ponies screaming. Flames licking the grand limestone walls. The Ascendancy weaving through the smoke-filled chaos with terrifying precision.

Shining Armor…

He stiffened.

No. He couldn’t just close the book on this. There was too much riding on it Too much at stake.

Why couldn’t they talk?

Was it oath and belief? Was it fear of retribution? Contract? Covenant? Or something… else?

“Doesn’t make any sense…” he muttered.

“Heh! I’ll say it doesn’t make any sense! Grocery store’s always packed on the weekend! But y’know, some things are worth the hassle. Like good eating. And keeping the ole’ house harpy happy.”

Tristar’s eyes rose. “Otto.”

“Yes, sir?”

“…With me.” He jerked his head toward the door.

A minute later, the two of them were outside on the rear-facing platform of the caboose, the train tracks whizzing by below them as the noise thundered in their ears. Otto Bravemane had a funny look on his face as Tristar shut the door behind them and secured it. “There a good reason why we’re out here right now instead of in there?” he shouted.

The silver-maned pegasus checked the door one more time before he turned and looked at Otto. “We need to have words!”

“It’s a little loud for that! Maybe we oughta go back inside.”

“Not in front of that thing!” Tristar spat.

He pointed east, off in the direction of the city.

“I’m sending you back to Manehattan! If you take off now, you can be there by first light! Tell the commissioner to prep for another round of interrogations. I’ll arrive in a few days to oversee them!”

“What? Back to Manehattan?” Otto gaped. “That whole investigation’s been charlie-foxtrot from day one! We already know they ain’t gonna gab. You really want to put on another goon parade?”

“LIEUTENANT!” Tristar snapped. “You aren’t here to question my orders! Fly for Manehattan. UNDERSTOOD?”

The other pegasus snapped to attention. “Yes sir, Cap’n Tristar, sir!”

“This one’s OFF THE BOOKS. We’ve done things Celestia’s way, Luna’s way, Whitehoof’s way… Now, we’re going to do things my way. And I’m bringing in my own experts. Whether the princesses like it or not.”

“Sir, yes sir, Cap’n Tristar!” came the response.

Tristar gave a nod. “Dismissed.”

Otto opened his wings. Before he took flight, he paid one last glance at the blustery guard captain, and his trademark smile landed back on his face. “Well, on the bright side, looks like I’m gonna have a second shot at that Pony Island hot dog, eh?”

With a mighty gust, he launched into the air, away from the rumbling train and off into the night.

Tristar had a frown on his face as he watched him go.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Look, Twi, I get what you’re saying and all. It’s just…”

“I get what you’re saying, too. I still think you should reconsider.”

“Nothin’ doin’. I’ve made up my mind on this, and nothing you or anypony else says is gonna get me to change it.” Rainbow Dash cast her gaze to the side, her troubled eyes roving across the polished suits of armor as they walked down the state hallway. “Party, shmarty. It ain’t for me.”

Twilight gave her a pointed look. “You were excited about being able to go to the Grand Galloping Gala, weren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah! We all were! …Until we actually got there and realized how lame it was, remember?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Besides, that’s not the same as this. Things are… different now.”

Rainbow’s face fell. She gave Twilight a wry smile.

“Eeyeah, no. Think I’m gonna pass. A fancy-shcmancy party with a buncha stuck-up snobs? Not my scene.”

“The Summer Sun Celebration is more than just another snooty party. Sure, the banquet and ball can attract some… ‘stuck-up snobs,’ I’ll admit it. But that’s not really what it’s about.”

“Yeah?” Rainbow interjected. “What’s it about, then?”

“It’s about…”

Twilight paused to think how best to explain it.

“I know you aren’t a student of history, but you know about the Dark Ages that predated Equestria, right? Before the Migrations, when the three tribes set aside their old hatreds and banded together. Before the Coronation of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, when it seemed the whole world would be torn by shadow—or saved by a miracle alone.”

Rainbow rubbed her head. “Ugh. You’re giving me flashbacks to third grade social studies here, Twi.”

“The Summer Sun Celebration commemorates the end of that chapter and the inauguration of Princess Celestia’s age of light. It’s about more than just the solstice, or even honoring the sun. It’s about…”

She trailed off, and Rainbow frowned at her. “What?”

“It’s about… hope.”

Rainbow seemed unimpressed, but Twilight doubled down. “It’s about hope. The hope our ancestors had for a better world… a better future. The hope all of us are supposed to keep alive inside ourselves. Burning bright, like the light of the sun.”

She paused and looked down, falling quiet. Then she looked up again, face writ with indictment and voice full of meaning. “The Summer Sun Celebration is about hope. And it’s about coming together.”

“Yeah? Well…!” Rainbow looked ready to argue.

She didn’t, though. In the end, the fight drained out of her, and she looked away and sighed.

“I… I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe you’re right, and there really is something more to it than a buncha jerks tripping over themselves to see who can bow the lowest. I dunno.”

Twilight gave a satisfied nod.

“That still doesn’t mean I’m gonna change my mind and go through with it, though,” said Rainbow.

“I’ve been to every Summer Sun Celebration since I was little. It’s one of the most special days of the year for me. The Summer Sun Celebration was when I realized I wanted to learn about magic. It’s where I discovered my passion and who I really was.”

A wistful smile touched Twilight’s face. She continued, “Rainbow, you need to really think about this. Princess Celestia knows Canterlot, and she knows the High Court. She knows what’s best for you. The smartest thing you can do right now might just be to listen to her.”

“Yeah, right. Celestia knows what’s best for me.” An edge of anger crept into Rainbow’s voice.

“Rainbow.”

“I don’t wanna go to some stupid, stuck-up, horrible bucking—”

“Rainbow!”

“Fine! I’ll think about it. Are you happy?”

Twilight smiled. “Good,” she said.

She decided to leave it at that. Hopefully, Rainbow would take her advice to heart. It was no easy feat convincing her headstrong friend to do anything, but going would be the best thing for her.

On they went through a gaping archway, and the mammoth expanse of the castle dining room opened around them. Twilight pulled out a chair for herself at the long table. Rainbow followed suit, glad to be done with that conversation. Glad to just be here, actually. It was a quarter past six, she hadn’t eaten since that pre-nap granola bar, and she was bucking hungry.

The moment she jumped up on the seat, she could tell there was something wrong. Twilight’s face had gone white, and she was staring at her with a look of unmitigated horror.

“Uh… Something the matter?” Rainbow asked.

“That’s—That’s—Princess Luna’s chair!”

Rainbow glanced over her shoulder at the carved emblem of the moon set into the wooden back. She groaned, “Aw, jeeze, not you too! Y’know, I’ve kinda come to expect it from the rest of the zombies around this place, but hearing it from you is just—”

“JUST! …Stand up, Rainbow,” Twilight said. Each word squeezed through a toothy grin so impossibly wide, it looked like it hurt.

“Why?”

“Because that’s Princess Luna’s chair! And there’s lots of other chairs you can sit in! That’s why!”

“So what?”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. Her eyes darted nervously to the open archway, as if anticipating somepony might walk in and catch them in a crime.

“So what? So what?”

“Yeah, so what?” Rainbow shot back. She kicked her legs up on the table to show how little she cared.

Twilight’s eye twitched. “Rainbow Dash—”

“Just relax, would ya? Jeeze! Do you always have to do this?”

“Do what?”

“This!” Rainbow spread her forehooves in an obvious gesture. “You always do this! You obsess over stuff nopony else cares about but you!”

“I do not!”

“Um, yeah! You do! Especially when the princesses come into the equation! Doesn’t matter if it’s the most low-key thing ever. If the banner isn’t spelled just right, or the decorations aren’t perfect, or the spoon’s on the wrong side of the fork, you lose your marbles!”

“Okay, first of all, the spoon shouldn’t be anywhere near the fork. The spoon goes next to the knife.”

Rainbow pulled down the bottoms of her eyelids. “Oh my gooooosh.”

“And second, I do not obsess over things! Just because I have manners and I pay proper respect, that doesn’t make me obsessive!”

“It’s just a chair, Twi.”

“It’s Princess Luna’s chair. And would you get out of it? Please? For my sake? Please, if our friendship means anything, could you just… sit somewhere else? It would make me feel better.”

Rainbow rubbed her chin as she pondered the request. After a few seconds, she gave her reply:

“Nah.”

Twilight gaped at her. “What?”

“I said no. I like this chair. In fact—” Rainbow jumped up and did a couple push-ups off the armrests. “—I think I’m gonna keep it.”

“What?”

“That’s right! Luna thinks she can just claim all the good seats for herself? Ha! Her and what army? I’ll show her a thing or three!”

Rainbow spun the chair backwards and used it for a podium. “For way too long, the poor, deprived Rainbow Dashes of the world have been CHAIRLESS, while Princess Luna and her Canterlot pals have been totally chair… ful.”

Her face scrunched up as she ran the last sentence back through her head. She shrugged and slammed the table.

“ALL OF THAT ENDS TODAY! Today, we strike a blow for chairless ponies everywhere! Today, we tell Luna WE WON’T STAND FOR IT! …Like, literally, get it? Because we’re all gonna be sitting. You got that, right Twi? I’m still new to this witty banter stuff, you’ve gotta let me know if I’m hitting the mark.”

“What’s going on, sister?”

Twilight’s head whipped around. Princess Celestia was at the far end of the table, and an intrigued-looking Princess Luna was standing right next to her.

“I’m not sure, Tia. But I think my chair has been annexed,” Luna said.

Twilight buried her head in her hooves. “Oh, no.”

“Mwahahahaha!” Rainbow’s mad laughter filled the hall. “That’s right! Your chair is totally an eckst! And real soon, lots of other stuff of yours is gonna get eckst, too!”

She struck a pose. Then, in a totally-not-obvious-to-anypony-watching sort of way, she leaned over and whispered behind her hoof, “Hey, Twi. The heck is an eckst?”

“The word is annexed. It means taken over.”

“Right! I knew that!”

Rainbow gave a flap. In the blink of an eye, she was balancing skillfully on the back of the chair. “LUNA!”

The princess raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

Rainbow grinned wickedly. Summoning her best Power Ponies impression, she jabbed out her hoof and declared, “Luna! Your evil reign of evilness is at an end! I, the awesome Rainbow Dash, am here to put a stop to your chair-sitting ways, once and for all!”

“Oh?”

“Tales of your crimes are told far and wide! And they’re, uh… really, totally not awesome. Too many innocent chairs have been made to suffer at the hands of your butt!”

Twilight gave a humiliated groan and buried her head even deeper.

Meanwhile, Luna’s smirk turned absolutely carnivorous. She beckoned for Rainbow to continue. “Please! Do go on!”

“Uh…” Rainbow frowned and paused to think. “Your evil reign of evilness is at an end!”

“You said that already,” Celestia pointed out.

“Shut up!” snapped Rainbow. Striking a pose, she gloated, “Remember this day, Luna! Remember it well! For today is the day you learned the totally lame taste of DEFEAT! Oh yeah, that’s right! Live in shame with the knowledge that your magic is no match for my awesomeness, and know that this chair is only the first chair to fa-AAAAAALL!”

In a puff of blue smoke, the chair disappeared out from under her. Rainbow gave a squawk. Her wings fired too late, and she fell down and hit the floor with a thud!

Seconds later, she got woozily back up, her eyes spinning in her sockets. She lifted her chin onto the table and groaned.

Above her, Luna sat levitating in her chair, sipping tea.

“Hey! No fair! I annexed that!” Rainbow cried.

The lunar goddess smiled down at her smugly. “First rule of war. Don’t take over what you can’t keep.”

“Oh, so it’s a WAR you want, is it?”

Celestia approached cautiously. “Rainbow Dash,” she spoke gently, “Maybe you should—”

“Nuh-uh! YOU stay out of this! This is between ME and HER!”

Rainbow hoisted herself back up, forehooves splayed upon the tabletop. She had a dangerous glint in her eye as she glared at Luna’s cocky, self-satisfied, tea- sipping mug.

“If it’s a war you want, then IT’S A WAR YOU’LL GET!” she said, cracking her neck from side to side. “So what’s it gonna be? An iron pony competition? A race? Pranks at dawn?”

“Pranks?” Luna repeated.

It didn’t seem like she quite understood at first, but slowly, a cheshire grin spread across her face.

“Doth mine ears deceive me? Art thou daring me to a duel of wits?”

“Rainbow…” Twilight said warningly.

But Rainbow just waved her off. “I don’t know what the heck you just said, but you’re going DOWN, Princess!”

“Pranks it is, then!” Luna clapped her hooves together. “Oh, Tia, this will be so amusing, don’t you think? Just like when we were young! Why, it’s been more than a thousand years since I’ve had a challenge! Although, I probably ought to warn you…”

She floated forward in her chair, leaned down, and met Rainbow Dash with a psychotic leer.

“—you aren’t going to win.”

Rainbow took an automatic step back. Her lip curled.

Luna’s crazed expression lasted no more than a moment. Then it was gone, vanished without a trace. “Now then!” she exclaimed, smiling happily—

—as her chair pivoted in midair, drifted lower, and thwacked Rainbow Dash out of the way!

Another yelp flew from the poor, battered filly. Knocked ruthlessly onto her back, she could only glower and look up with clenched teeth as Luna set down the chair at the head of the table, assuming her rightful place.

“Shall we eat?” the victorious princess suggested.

Rainbow growled and jumped to her hooves. “You think this is over? This is SO not over! I’VE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT!”

With that, she took wing and stormed out. Her voice carried back into the dining room, full of retribution: “MARK MY WORDS, YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE LAST OF RAINBOW DASH…!”

The three remaining ponies fell quiet after that. Celestia shook her head at the shenanigans and took her own seat next to Luna.

Luna gave her sister a knowing look. “How long until she’s back?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Celestia said. “Give it about… thirty seconds.”

Twenty-eight seconds later, Rainbow waltzed back in. She rubbed the back of her head sheepishly.

“Uh, sorry. Forgot I hadn’t eaten yet.” Her stomach picked that moment to let out a particularly loud rumble.

Luna smiled graciously, their hostilities temporarily forgotten. “That’s quite all right. Come join us for dinner.”

Rainbow swallowed her pride and pulled out a chair next to Twilight.

“Told you so,” the unicorn whispered.

Rainbow gave her the stink eye.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

A few hours later…

“Challenge me to a prank war, will she? Ha!”

Rainbow’s tongue stuck out the side of her mouth as she fumbled with the scissors. Snip, snip, went the blades as they chomped through another sheet of black construction paper.

“I’ll show her…” she muttered. “I’ll show her who’s the prankingest pony of them all… GYAH!”

She crumpled the paper in her hooves and tossed it over her shoulder with a grimace. Behind her on the floor, the discarded remains of her past attempts collected in a crinkled-up pile, a testament to just how bucking hard it was for a pony to use a pair of scissors. Friggin’ unicorns had it so easy with their stupid bucking horns…

Wait a sec.

She stopped short. Realization washed over her, and she bonked herself on the head. “Duh!”

Rainbow closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Her horn glowed, the scissors wobbling in her pure white aura. She grinned. Reaching for another sheet, she proceeded to mutilate it by magic instead of by hoof.

It took a ream of construction paper, but she finally had it: the perfect prank to show Luna how completely in-over-her-head she was. She smiled down at the hoofmade terror she’d created, a devilish glint in her eye. Her mind was already racing victory laps.

She secreted it into a saddlepack and took it with her to the castle solarium— ostensibly a place for ponies to soak up the sun during the day, but also a place Luna had a habit of visiting during her evenings. (More than once, when doing her night flights, weaving through the castle’s lofty spires, Rainbow had glanced through the glass dome of the solarium and spotted the lunar princess reclining there. Usually with her nose buried in some thick, egghead book.)

Rainbow couldn’t wait for the chaos to unfold. Her only regret was that she wouldn’t be here to see the fallout!

She stuck her arts-and-crafts project up into the lamp. Then she flew away, snickering to herself.

A few minutes later, Luna flew in. She flicked on the light, plucked her worn, dog-eared copy of Crime and Ponyshment from the bookshelf, poured herself a glass of wine, and was just about to sit down and enjoy her evening when she did a double-take.

A cockroach was silhouetted against the lampshade.

At least, she thought it was supposed to be a cockroach. If you ignored the fact that it had four legs, not six. And if you squinted at it just right… it almost- kind of-not really looked like a cockroach.

Luna’s horn flickered, and the black insect-shaped cutout levitated out from behind the shade and into her waiting hooves. She scoffed and shook her head at it. “Amateurish.”

She zapped the thing away without a second thought.

Then she looked all around, peering out through the wall-to-wall windows and up through the great glass roof. No sign of any intruders. Only the stars up above and the blackness of the mountainside.

Of course, she didn’t have any doubts whom the culprit was. Her lips drew thin with a fiendish smirk as she plotted her revenge…

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“I still think the whole thing is foalish,” Twilight grumbled. Her head hung as she shuffled down the long, lily-white hall, on her way to the castle library for their morning magic lesson.

Next to her, Rainbow backstroked through the air, not a care in the world. “It’s not foalish! It’s a matter of honor!”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with honor. It’s foalish.”

“But—”

“And you don’t have a snowball’s chance in Tartarus of winning, by the way,” said Twilight, turning up a piercing eye to look at her friend.

“Oh yeah? What makes you so sure?”

“You aren’t as powerful as Luna, for one thing. Or as talented.”

“Gee, thanks,” came Rainbow’s reply, dripping with sarcasm. “Glad to know you have so much faith in me.”

“I don’t think you know what you’re up against. Princess Luna is more than a thousand years old—”

“Most of which she spent in the moon.”

Twilight waved off the point. “Granted. But even before she was imprisoned there, she was already an accomplished mage, and the most gifted illusionist of her time. The historical accounts of her spellwork all confirm—”

“How good were her pranks?”

Twilight gave her a long stare. “…There aren’t any historical accounts of her pranks, Rainbow.”

“Exactly! So how do you know how good she is at them?”

“…I’m just saying, her proficiency at magic will give her an advantage when it comes to—”

“Did they even have pranks a thousand years ago?”

Twilight tensed. “Are you even paying attention to what I’m sa—”

“Twi, you worry too much! I’ve got this thing in the bag! Don’t forget, you’re looking at the undisputed Ponyville prank master three years running!”

Twilight scowled. “Whatever. I just hope this little war of yours doesn’t get too out of control.” They drew to a stop in front of the library door, and she met Rainbow with another pointed look. “Speaking of control, did you bother to do the assignment I gave you?”

“I—uh—”

Rainbow clammed up. She rubbed the back of her head sheepishly.

“My… tortoise ate my homework?”

“Rainbow Dash!”

“I know! Jeeze! Cut me some slack, will you?” Rainbow griped. “To tell you the truth, your lessons are kind of annexing my life right now.”

Twilight clenched her teeth as she magicked open the door. “That’s not the correct usage of—”

ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAORRRRRGHHHHH!

Their hooves left the ground, and the next thing they knew was the bang! of the impact as they each hit the wall, lobbed through the air like toys by the force of the bellowing roar! Twilight sputtered, the air left her lungs, her vision swam as her brain bounced in her skull. Next to her, she heard Rainbow Dash groan, and they slid to the floor, leaving a pair of perfect, pony-shaped impressions in the white plaster of the corridor.

“Wh… What happened?” Twilight croaked.

Rainbow pointed through the open doorway. “Look!”

Twilight looked. Her eyes followed Rainbow’s hoof, and… and…

It was GIGANTIC! Fifteen feet of glistening exoskeleton, TWENTY if you counted the antennae, scrabbling on spiny, spindly legs the size of tree branches! Its soulless eyes gleamed like black diamonds from between the bookcases. As it started advancing on them, smashing through the tables and shelves, its maw opened wide, and it gave another roar—

ROOOOOAORORORRRGHGHHHGHHHHH!

“It’s a ro… It’s a roaaa…”

“I don’t care what it is, IT’S COMING RIGHT AT US!” Rainbow yelled.

That was enough to snap Twilight back to her senses. She jumped in front of Rainbow, a spell already charging at the tip of her horn. “GET OUT OF HERE! I’LL HOLD IT OFF!”

“What?!”

“I said GO! GET OUT OF HERE!” A crackling globe of magic was growing above her head, throwing off rays of purple light like a mad disco ball. “FIND A GUARD OR SOMETHING! GO GET HELP!”

“But—”

Rainbow’s protests caught in her throat when the monster skittered up to the door, and—finding it a teensy bit too small—decided to undertake some minor renovations by KNOCKING IT THE HELL DOWN. The wall exploded, leaving a gaping hole.

Twilight looked horrified, but she bounded straight ahead to meet the beast. It swiped at her with one of its razor-sharp legs, and she jumped out of the way at the last second, dancing around to the other side of it and shouting to draw its attention.

It worked. The thing lumbered around to chase her, leaving Rainbow alone in the rubble, in what was left of the East Wing corridor.

“Twilight!”

She shook off her stupor, flapped, and zoomed up in the air. No way was she gonna let her friend do this by herself!

“RAINBOW! WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?” Twilight shrieked.

The thing lashed out again, trying to pincer her with its swordlike legs. She barely evaded them, dodging back into the periodical section as the razor-sharp appendages shish-kebabed a twin pair of busts. Celestia’s head flew off its plinth, cracked against Luna’s, and they both shattered to pieces.

“I SAID GO GET HELP! DIDN’T I SAY GO GET HELP?”

Rainbow’s wings revved. “HANG ON! I GOT THIS!” she shouted, aiming herself at the monster’s backside, her left hoof outstretched in front of her like a battering ram.

Twilight peered around the creature’s hulking frame. Her eyes bulged. “NO- NO-NO-NO-NO-WAIT!”

Too late! Rainbow shot off like a missile at the exact same moment the spell finished charging and flew from Twilight’s horn. The globe of magic swelled and surrounded the creature, enveloping it in a violet dome.

Now it was Rainbow’s turn to panic as she found she couldn’t stop, couldn’t peel off, couldn’t do a single thing to keep from slamming into the magic barrier at a hundred miles an hour—

PING!

She ricocheted off the bubble like a stone skipping off water, cartwheeling through the air, tumbling around and around—and straight into Twilight.

“OOF!”

The two of them rolled together until they both crashed into a bookcase. A hundred dusty tomes fell out, burying them. Then, for no other reason than to drive Twilight past the edge of madness, the bookshelf toppled over backwards into another bookshelf…

…which toppled into another bookshelf…

…which toppled into another bookshelf…

…which toppled into another bookshelf…

Twilight’s head exploded out from the book pile, her eyes filled with the wild, berserker frenzy of an obsessive-compulsive librarian. “I SAID TO GET HELP! WHAT WAS WRONG WITH GETTING HELP?”

“I WAS helping!” Rainbow said. The books rolled off her as she staggered to her hooves.

Behind them in the background, the …whump! …whump! …whump! of the bookcase domino effect went on… and on… and on…

Twilight’s eye twitched.

She might’ve lost it again, but just then, the dome, already cracked down the middle by Rainbow’s collision, flickered and went out when the creature threw its weight against it one more time.

“Oh, COME ON!” said Rainbow.

Twilight glowered. “You know, if you’d bothered to learn a SINGLE THING I tried to teach you about barrier spells, this WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED!”

“GYAH! I’m sick of this! Don’t try to hold me back, Twi! I’m gonna SQUASH THIS THING!”

“It’s a COCKROACH! You can’t kill it! For crying out loud, it can survive a THERMONUCLEAR BLAST!”

“I DON’T CARE! I’M STILL GONNA… Wait, a cockroach?”

Rainbow froze. The gears turned in her head.

A shadow fell over them as the behemoth opened its wings and jaws at the same time. With a roar, it vaulted into the air, and time slowed down as it hung there above them, all gnashing mandibles and crushing carapace and six spindly legs ready to come down and skewer them, and Twilight’s eyes flew wide in fear, she didn’t have another spell prepped, she couldn’t put up another barrier—

“TRY AND MAKE A CHUMP OUTTA ME, WILL YA?” Rainbow snarled and flew up to meet it. “I’LL SHOW YOU!”

Her vision was blurring at the edges, the speed was ringing in her ears. She tore ahead, hooves windmilling, ready to plant one between the monster’s cold, black eyes…!

Then, there was a poof! and a puff of smoke. The creature disappeared!

…and Rainbow went flailing through the suddenly empty space where it had been, not a second ago! The last words out of her mouth before she smacked into the wall were, “WAI-WAIT! WHERE DID IT—ARRRRRGGGH!”

She slid slowly, painfully down to the floor. For a short while, there she lay, slumped forward and groaning, until Twilight came to help her up.

“Did…” She coughed. “Did I squash it?”

“Look,” Twilight said, and Rainbow looked.

She couldn’t believe her eyes. The whole library was put together again. The shelves were back standing, and the books were back on them, and the damage of the last few minutes looked like it had never even happened. Even the wall had been un-demolished.

Everything was exactly as it had been before.

Except one thing.

There was something on the floor, smiling up at them. Situated exactly where the monster had been.

It looked small and harmless, but they approached it with caution, both on guard. Rainbow didn’t know what to expect at this point, though privately, she was ready for the thing to jump on her and try to chew her face off.

Twilight picked it up.

It was a stuffed cockroach, made of felt and cotton plush, and it grinned at them evilly as it twirled in her magical grasp. Their eyes fell upon a tag sewn just below the antennae, where a message had been scrawled for them in swooshing blue cursive:

Nice try. —L

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Are you happy now?!”

Twilight paced the floor. A short distance away, the stuffed cockroach floated inside a precautionary bubble, and she bounced a glare back and forth between it and Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow, for her part, looked distraught. “I can’t believe it,” she mumbled, gazing down at her hooves.

“How can you not? You just saw it with your own eyes! I told you, you’re no match for Princess Luna!”

“I just… can’t believe it,” Rainbow mumbled again.

She looked back up. A cloud of anger had rolled over her.

“I… I just… I can’t believe I fell for it!”

Twilight looked at her disbelievingly. “What?”

“It’s a BUG! A stinkin’ BUG! I shoulda seen right through it! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She smacked herself in the head.

The incredulous look on Twilight’s face morphed back to anger. “Seriously? After what just happened, that’s all you can think about?”

“I can’t believe she got me so good! GYAH!”

Now Rainbow began to pace as Twilight looked on, silently stewing.

“She thinks she can out-prank the prank master? Ha! No way! This calls for some serious payback—”

Twilight waved her hooves frantically. “No! No! No payback! Payback bad! Peacemaking good!”

“But how can I make peace when I haven’t won yet?”

“Don’t you get it? You aren’t GOING to win. You’re going to lose! Badly! And you’re going to take Canterlot down with you!”

“I won’t lose,” Rainbow scoffed.

“You will.”

“I won’t.”

“Yes, you will!”

“No, I won’t! Look, Twi, all I need is a little magic in my corner, and I can so totally pull this off! If you and I teamed up against her—”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”

“But—”

“NO!” Twilight stomped her hoof. “I won’t be a party to this!”

Then she saw the betrayed look on Rainbow’s face. Her expression softened, and she spoke again, remorsefully, “Look, you’ve obviously made up your mind to prank her, and I’m obviously not going to be able to talk you out of it. Just… leave me and the books out of it, okay?”

“Fine! Way to leave a friend hanging,” Rainbow snapped.

Twilight reached out to her. “Rainbow Dash…”

“Tank.”

“T… Tank?”

“Yeah. Tank,” Rainbow said. “Tank’s a bro. He’ll help me.”

“…How, exactly?”

“I… I could get him to… to…” Her voice trailed off. Then inspiration struck. “CROSS THE ROAD!”

“Cross… the road?”

“Yeah!” Rainbow said. “Tank’s a tortoise, right? And tortoises cross the road all the time! So they can, like… get to the beach to lay their eggs, right?”

“Actually, that’s a popular misconception. It’s mostly sea turtles belonging to the taxonomic family Cheloniidae who tend to—”

“So I get Tank to cross the road in front of Luna’s carriage, and BOOM! She has no choice but to sit and wait in traffic! Instant prank!”

Twilight stared at her dubiously.

Rainbow’s confidence began to waver. “It’s… guaranteed to waste practically… minutes! …of her time!”

Her face fell. She glared at Twilight, fuming.

“Look, I DON’T KNOW, okay? I’ll think of something!”

“Rainbow—”

“What’s it to ya, anyway? I thought you ‘weren’t going to be a party to this,’ or whatever. AUGH!” She ran a hoof down her face. “Where’s Pinkie Pie when you need her?”

Twilight shook her head. “I still don’t think—”

“DID SOMEPONY SAY PARTY?”

“AHH!”

Rainbow and Twilight yelped and fell over backwards! They hit the ground hard on their rumps.

“Hi guys!” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight stared up at her, her mouth dangling. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, blinked again, and stared some more.

Rainbow was the first to find her voice. “Whoa! Pinkie? Is that you?”

“Of course, silly! Who else would it be?”

Now Twilight chimed in, “But… you weren’t here a second ago! Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

Pinkie’s smile grew three sizes larger. “Oh, Twilight, you’re so silly. I’m the main special guest star for this chapter!”

“What?”

“I said, I was on the train looking for the snack bar! This morning, I was in Ponyville shopping for a vacuum cleaner I could use to suck the spiders out of Gummy’s wig collection when I noticed the Friendship Express was running a half-price special on tickets to Vanhoover! So I figured, what the hay? It’s been over ten hours since I went on a totally pointless train ride anywhere, it’s not like my doctor’s gonna mind! And besides, the snack bar on the Friendship Express has this super great deal on all-you-can-eat popovers that’s just amazing!”

“Pinkie Pie—”

“So there I was, licking my lips, waiting on my fifty-eighth plate of popovers when the whistle goes WOOOO-WOOOO and the train comes chug-a-wug-a- wugging into Canterlot! Then the conductor walks in, and the hostess runs over and starts talking to him, and I didn’t think there was anything weird about that, but the whole time she kept looking over at me and making these frantic hoof gestures, and I’m pretty sure I lip-read her saying something about ‘eating us out of business,’ but that can’t possibly be true, right? You both know I would never go popoverboard!”

“Pinkie Pie—”

“Then the conductor walked past, whistling in a totally-not-suspicious way, and I tugged on his pant leg and said, ‘Hey, shouldn’t we be in Vanhoover?’ and he was all like, ‘Yeah, don’t worry, it’s our next stop!’ and I kinda shrugged and went back to my popovers. But a minute later, there was this loud KA-CLUNK, and I realized they’d unhitched the snack bar car from the rest of the train! Can you guys believe that? They totally forgot I was in there and left me behind on accident! What an oopsie!”

“PINKIE PIE!” Twilight yelled.

“So then I was like, ‘Oh no! Now I’m stuck in Canterlot with no place to go! What am I gonna do?’ But then I was like, ‘Wait a sec! Dashie and Twilight are here! They’ll totally let me crash on their couch!’ So here I am! Whaddaya say? You don’t mind a popover pony popping over, do you? Oh! And did I mention how SUPER AMAZING and FANTASTIC it is seeing you guys again? I missed you both sooooo much!”

Her hooves stretched out freakishly long, and she pulled them both in for a big bear hug. Every element of Twilight’s rational mind was at war against this explanation, but as her cheek pressed against Pinkie’s, she gave in to a twinge of a smile. “It’s… good to see you too, Pinkie.”

“This is GREAT!” Rainbow beamed. “You’re just the secret weapon I need to turn the tables against Luna!”

“Oh! I love tables!” Pinkie said. “Picnic or poker? Billiard or bedside? Come on, gimme the scoop!”

“Pranks, Pinkie! We’re talking about the biggest, most epic prank war of all time, against none other than Princess Luna herself! And… uh… it isn’t going well so far.” Rainbow rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe I oughta take a step back. We might pull off an upset if I let you annex control of the operation for a while.”

Twilight clenched her teeth. “That’s not the correct usage of—”

“That sounds super fun! I love coming up with pranks!” said Pinkie. “Give me all the juicy details!”

“Well, y’see, it’s like this…”

Rainbow wrapped her hoof around her newfound partner in crime, filling her in with a (biased) account of recent events. Excusing herself from the effort of correcting all the factual inaccuracies, Twilight rolled her eyes and followed the two of them out of the room.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Pinkie Pie’s arrival passed without too much ado. By now, most ponies were used to her antics—princesses included—so nopony batted an eyelid when she came skipping to dinner ahead of Twilight and Rainbow that evening.

Celestia’s reaction was characteristically magnanimous. “You’re more than welcome to stay the weekend here, of course! Canterlot Castle is always open to you, your friends, and your family.”

“Yay! Thanks, Princess C!”

“It’s an honor and privilege to meet you again, Pinkie Pie,” Luna said, no less graciously. “Although…”

She looked slyly at Rainbow Dash.

“You should know, rallying more troops to your cause won’t save you.”

“Yeah?” Rainbow fired back. “Well—!”

Pinkie jumped on top of the table, scampered over, and pinned down Luna with an eye-to-eye glare. Luna recoiled in surprise, and Twilight reached out in vain and cried, “Pinkie Pie!”

“So YOU’RE the one who challenged Dashie to a prank-off!” said Pinkie.

A few seconds went by. The accusation hung in the air.

Then, with all the advance warning of a buffalo stampede on a Wednesday in downtown Cloudsdale, her demeanor totally flipped. Pinkie brightened, she grinned, she stuck out her hoof and said, “It’s great to see you again, Luna! How ya been?”

“I’ve been well, thank you!” Luna said with a grateful smile. Her shrewd eyes darted down, then back up. Her lips drew into a smirk. “I’m afraid, however, if you’d like to shake hooves, you’ll have to take off that shock buzzer first. I wasn’t born yesterday, after all!”

Pinkie’s face fell. With barely concealed disappointment, she glanced down at the silver-colored gadget strapped to her hoof.

“You’re good. You’re reeeeeal good.” She retreated to her chair, pouting.

“Nice try,” Rainbow leaned over and whispered to her.

Pinkie grimaced. “She’s good. She’s reeeeeal good.”

“I know. I heard you the first time.”

“After-dinner prankstorming session?”

“You know it!”

Twilight just sighed and shook her head.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

An hour later, after Domo showed Pinkie to her suite, and Rainbow nicked Twilight’s roll-around chalkboard, the two conspirators stood, quite literally, in front of the drawing board.

“Whoopee cushion?” Pinkie suggested.

Rainbow waved off the idea. “Too small-time.”

“Chinese finger trap?”

“What’s a finger?”

“Snake nut can?”

“Seriously, you’re gonna have to start explaining some of these to me,” said Rainbow, her brow furrowed. “I know I’ve been out of the game for a few weeks now, but what the hay is a snake nut can?”

“Oh Dashie, don’t be silly. You know what a snake nut can is!”

“I do?”

“Yepperooni! It’s a can of nuts, only without any nuts in it, because you took the nuts out and replaced them with a bunch of fake, spring-loaded snakes! You leave the can out, and an unsuspecting pony comes up on it, and they open it, and KABLOOEY! Snakes everywhere!”

To illustrate, Pinkie took the chalk in her mouth and drew a stick pony with a bunch of squiggly lines attacking it.

“Ohhhhh,” Rainbow said. “That prank has a name?”

“I told you, it’s the snake nut can! Snake nut can! Snake nut can! C’mon, say it with me. It’s super fun!”

“Pretty sure the snake nut can isn’t gonna cut it, Pinkie. Luna’s not gonna fall for something that obvious.”

“But the snake nut can is an age-old terror!”

“So is Luna!”

“…Good point!”

They looked at each other, a twin pair of grins twitching at their lips—and they both burst out laughing. Pinkie’s giggle-snorts filled the room, matched by Rainbow’s guffaws.

After a while, they settled down, and Rainbow’s laughs faded to a happy sigh. She sank deeper into her beanbag chair, her gaze drifting lazily to the ceiling fan above. It turned in slow, drowsy circles, casting slow-moving shadows across the textured stucco. Her wings sprawled out comfortably at her sides as she let her eyes fall shut. She breathed, and she smiled.

For the first time in a long time, she was content.

“…Hey, Pinkie?” she said at length.

“What is it, Dashie?”

“I’m… really glad you’re here.”

Her voice trembled. She felt a lump in her throat. And she was confused, she didn’t know why—why, when they’d both just been laughing…?

Pinkie smiled again. Not her usual smile, but a small, somber smile mixed with a pain all her own. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

“It… hasn’t been an easy couple weeks,” Rainbow admitted. Another tremor rolled through her voice, and now her eyes were stinging too, and she wanted to go further, but she held herself back. “I, um… Sorry, I’m being dumb. I shouldn’t even… f-feel this way… after…”

Pinkie wrapped her in a hug. “Shh. It’s okay,” she whispered softly.

Rainbow’s chest constricted, her breath catching. “N-No, it’s not—”

“It is,” Pinkie said, and hugged her even tighter. “I promise, it’s okay.”

“But Rarity…”

“…Rarity’s going through something big right now.”

The words were tentative. Strained. Pinkie held her firmly, and for the first time, Rainbow sensed the tension in her friend’s body. A heaviness that weighed against her usual bounce. How long had it been there?

Pinkie’s voice came again. Soft, but filled with quiet strength. “I know. You feel like you shouldn’t feel this way, right? Like you’re supposed to be all strong and loyal. But Dashie… you’re allowed to hurt, too.”

Rainbow laughed mirthlessly. “It’s stupid, though…”

“It’s not stupid! You’re going through something big, too! Something huge! Like, bigger-than-Gummy’s-sombrero huge! Everything that’s happened to you? Becoming an alicorn? Moving to Canterlot? Finding out that Princess Celestia’s your mom? That’s no small potatoes! It’s big potatoes! Like, the biggest potatoes you could ever grow! And you’re allowed to feel all the things that come with it, whether it’s sad, or mad, or confused, or… lonely. Whatever you feel, I promise, it’s okay! But don’t ever think you’re alone!”

Pinkie let go the embrace. And now it was plain for Rainbow to see: her eyes were shimmering, too.

“It… hasn’t been very fun times lately, huh?” She offered a weak smile. “I’m sorry. I wish I could bake a cake so big, we could jump inside it and hide from all the bad stuff… I really wish the world worked that way.

“But I’m here for you, Dashie! I’m here, and I get it! And so does Applejack, and so does Fluttershy… and so does Rarity, too! We all understand how extra-sprinkles-of-awful this has been for you, because we’re your friends. And we’ll always be your friends, no matter what!”

Rainbow dried her eyes on her forehoof. “…Heh. Thanks, Pinkie,” she said, mustering a grin. “I… think I’ve needed this for a while now.”

“De nada, mi amiga!”

“And anyway…” Rainbow kicked out her hooves and sat upright, a devilish plan brewing on her face. “…I just came up with an awesome idea for a prank!”

“Oh?” Pinkie’s ears perked up. “Do tell!”

“You were on the right track with the shock buzzer, but we’ve gotta go bigger than that, y’know? No more foal stuff. None of that itching powder, stink bomb, ink-on-the-telescope lameness. I’m talking a full-bore, all-out, stalls-to-the-wall mega prank!”

“Wowie! I’m so excited!”

Rainbow pulled Pinkie in close. “So here’s the plan. Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed Luna always has a slice of vanilla cloud cake delivered to her room every night around ten o’clock. And I just so happen to have a liiiiittle piece of cumulonimbus stashed away for a rainy day…”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Go easy on them, won’t you?”

Luna looked up. “Why, whatever do you mean, dear sister?”

“You know precisely what I mean. No earth pony can hold a candle to your talents—though that one might come closer than most. Neither can Aurora, for that matter. Even if she weren’t a novice at magic, she could spend the next fifty years training and studying and still not match your artifice.”

“I did warn her about that before she threw down the gauntlet. You should know. You were there, weren’t you?”

“Be that as it may, I hope you’ll keep the disparity in mind and refrain from responding too disproportionately,” Celestia said with a frown. “Fun and games are one thing, but try not to take it too far.”

Knock. Knock. “ROOM SERVICE!”

Luna quirked an eyebrow. “What, is this a hotel all of a sudden?”

“Enter!” shouted Celestia.

The door opened. “As usual, you’re not being fair, Tia,” said Luna—neither she nor her sister paid any attention to the pair of ponies, one pink and the other blue, who slipped into the room wearing chef’s whites and big, bushy mustaches, pushing a serving cart—“You ought to know me better than that!”

“Should I?”

“Yes! When have I ever taken things too far?”

The ‘servants’ parked the cart before stealing back out, quietly snickering.

Celestia’s voice was deadpan. “Well, there was that one time when we were foals and you chased me around, throwing rocks at me—”

“You’re still not over that?”

“You broke my horn!”

“Chipped! And it wasn’t my fault! It was your fault for not dodging!”

“Don’t pretend you’re the victim. I couldn’t do magic for three months.”

“I was grounded for six months!”

“Be that as it may—”

“Oh, ‘be that as it may,’ my hoof!”

“Be that as it may, I expect you to exercise some self-restraint.”

Celestia reached out to the serving cart with her magic. On top was a silver platter with a domed lid, and under the lid, a delicious-looking slice of vanilla cloud cake, which floated over to her in her shimmering aura.

Luna turned up her nose. “Please. Have a little faith in me.”

“I do have faith in you, which is why I haven’t obstructed your efforts,” said Celestia. She speared a bite of cake on her fork and raised it to her lips. It floated in front of her, fluffy and enticing.

“I have to say, I’m feeling a little singled out here,” Luna spoke up in her own defense. “Have you asked them not to go too far? Or am I the only one you trust so little?”

Celestia chuckled. “What, are you afraid they might jump out at you from behind a corner wearing scary masks? They’re an earth pony and an ex-pegasus. I don’t think you’ve got too much to worry about. In fact, I’d be embarrassed if they got the drop on you.”

She popped the cake into her mouth.

KRA-CRACK!

There was a thunderclap, a flash of light, a hail of sparks, and a shock wave so powerful, it sent Luna reeling. She staggered back, shielding her eyes against the burst, shuddering along with the rest of her tower. And when the dust cleared—

When the dust cleared, there was Celestia, round-eyed and soot-faced, and miraculously still standing in the middle of a giant scorch mark. Her mane had given up on billowing to stand on end in electrified spikes, charred at the tips. She opened her mouth and the fork fell out, along with some smoke and a feeble- sounding, “Puh…”

Luna’s face flushed with anger. She stalked over to what was left of the cake and levitated a glob of it up to her eye for inspection. A growl rose in her throat. “Why, those little…!”

“Wh… What hap…?”

“Look! Pure thunderhead!” Luna lifted the morsel, storm-gray and crackling with tiny tendrils of electricity beneath the vanilla frosting. “How dare they try to trick me with such an obvious ploy! What kind of a slack-jawed idiot do they take me for?”

“Unnnnnggggghhhhh…”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Tia. I forgot. How are you feeling?” Luna’s lips curled with sweet, sweet schadenfreude. “Not too embarrassed, I hope?”

“…Luna?”

“Yes?”

“…I wish you the best of luck in the wars to come.”

Celestia strode onto the balcony and flew off with nary another word. Luna watched her go, then turned to the task of plotting revenge.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Rainbow Dash had a splendid home, Luna decided, as she let herself in the front door. Vaulted ceilings, spacious interiors, and it was probably quite well-lit during the daytime. Why, the stairs didn’t even creak as she stealthily made her way up them to the second floor!

Soon, she was at the foot of Rainbow’s bed. The sky-blue filly was sprawled out in front of her, snoring loudly.

Obliviously.

Vulnerably.

Luna’s smirk curled into something insidious. “Oh, dear niece, I’ve got you in my web this time. Surprise!”

Alas, Rainbow was too busy sawing logs to hear her. She only rolled over and hugged a pillow to her chest.

“Multichromatic muffiiiiins…” she murmured in her sleep with a sweet little smile. “Fastest muffins in Equestriaaa…”

Then an azure glow lit Luna’s horn, and that sweet little smile turned to ash on Rainbow’s face.

She stifled a laugh behind her hoof. Her night’s work complete, she turned and left the filly to her fate—though she did allow herself one last, appreciative look around the cloud house before gliding silently into the night.

It really was a splendid home.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Rainbow Dash woke, bloodshot and bleary-eyed, to the sound of an alarm clock going off.

She didn’t realize it was an alarm clock at first, though. Which was actually quite understandable, given it didn’t sound anything like a regular alarm clock. It sounded like somepony blowing a party favor, again and again and again and again and again…

Her first instinct was to squeeze her eyes shut, roll over, and try to ignore it. “Cut it out, Pinkie!” she groaned.

But the noise didn’t stop. It kept on going. Over and over, like some kind of demented kazoo. And it almost seemed to get closer… louder… until she could swear it was right next to—

The party favor went off again, this time tickling inside her ear. She bolted upright in bed.

“GYAH!”

Her hoof swung out defensively and knocked the thing onto the floor. It hit the ground with a resounding TWANG!, and the party favor’s trill died slowly, mournfully down.

Rainbow squinted at it. It was a totally normal wind-up alarm clock—only instead of the usual ring-a-ding bells, a delicate porcelain pony was perched on top. The figurine held a paper noisemaker in its mouth, slowly coiling up as the last bit of air seeped out.

She stared at it, bewildered. “What the hay…?” Her hoof flew to her throat. “Huh? What’s wrong with my voice…?”

Only then did she notice her surroundings.

The streamers. The confetti.

The strawberry frosting windows. The candy cane columns.

The balloons on the quilted bedcovers.

The photos. The Victrola. The long table, where she could vividly remember getting into an argument with a pile of rocks a few months ago—not to mention the bucket of turnips or the sack of flour.

Then, as she shucked the covers to get up out of bed, she finally noticed the color of her own hooves and body. Not the sky blue she’d known all her life, but a sickly-sweet, candyfloss pink.

The mirror told her everything else she needed to know.

As the morning sun rose on Sugarcube Corner in Ponyville, an ear-splitting scream shredded the air:

“LUUUUUUUUUUNAAAAAAAAAA!”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Are you sure you’re all right, Pinkie Pie?” Mrs. Cake asked.

“I already told you, I am NOT Pinkie Pie! And no, I am NOT all right!”

“Satchmo,” said Mr. Cake.

Mrs. Cake smiled at him. “Yes, dear.”

“ARGH!” Rainbow stomped her hoof in a storm of frustration. A stray lock of cotton candy-colored mane fell between her eyes, and she batted it away with a furious flick.

“Pinkie, dear,” Mrs. Cake spoke again, “I know it’s short notice, but we have some errands to run. Would you mind tending the bakery while we’re out? Oh, and do keep an eye on Pound and Pumpkin. You know how rambunctious they can be.”

“I’M NOT PINKIE PIE!”

“Satchmo,” said Mr. Cake.

Mrs. Cake furrowed her brow. “You look like Pinkie Pie to me.”

“I KNOW I LOOK LIKE PINKIE PIE!”

“You even sound like Pinkie Pie!”

“NO, I DON’T! I’M CLEARLY PISSED OFF RIGHT NOW. SINCE WHEN DOES PINKIE GET PISSED OFF?”

“Satchmo,” said Mr. Cake.

Rainbow grabbed him by his stupid bow tie. “WHY THE BUCK DO YOU KEEP SAYING THAT?”

“Well, if that’s all, I think we’ll be off,” Mrs. Cake said with a smile. “Try not to throw too many parties while we’re gone! Toodles!”

The two of them vanished into thin air.

Rainbow tumbled forward into the empty space where Mr. Cake had been, her hooves suddenly without purchase. “Oof!” she grunted as she smacked face- first into the ground.

She got up unsteadily.

Then she looked around. Also unsteadily.

“What the HAY? Where did they GO? …All right, fun and games are over. Think, Rainbow Dash. Think!”

She began to pace, chewing her lip.

“This totally isn’t the weirdest thing to ever happen to me. Nope, nope, nope! Totally not the weirdest thing…”

She halted in front of the full-length mirror. Pinkie Pie’s body reflected back at her: sapphire-blue eyes, raspberry coat, three-balloon cutie mark, and worst of all—

“No wings,” she muttered. “Can’t fly. Can’t fly. No wings.”

She shuffled anxiously on her hooves.

“And everypony keeps calling me Pinkie Pie, no matter what I say…”

“What’s in a name?” came a rasping, ponderous voice from behind her. “That which we call an alligator by any other name would be as fierce.”

Rainbow whirled around. “Who’s there?”

“But what of the woeful reptile who has no teeth? His mouth as barren as his hopes. His dreams and incisors, forever plucked. Doomed to a life edentate, never again to chomp, to his undying shame. Is it simply his lot in life to be whisked away toward a biteless, unfulfilling future, forever christened with the badge of his own dishonor? Or should he paddle against the relentless tides of fate, even in the face of unquestionable futility?”

Rainbow gawked at the toothless alligator on the nightstand. “Whoa! Hold up a minute! You can talk?”

Gummy looked at her glassily and licked his own eyeball.

Just then, there came a loud—

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Commotion—

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

From outside the window—

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

And she threw open the shutters to see ten simultaneous sonic rainbooms shattering the crystal-blue sky—

KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM!

She stuck her head outside, her mouth wide agape. A rainbow contrail was zooming down the street, weaving in and out of the cottages, pulling off a new sonic rainboom every other heartbeat. And at the head of that dazzling ribbon of light, she spotted a pair of magenta eyes and a daredevil grin—

“THAT’S MY BODY!”

By the time Rainbow’s brain got around to considering the inherent danger in jumping out a three-story window without any wings, it was too late. She was already falling.

Luckily, her aim was true: she tackled the doppelganger out of the air, and they went tumbling together into a bed of shrubs. Rainbow was back on her pink hooves in an instant, her eyes burning with candy-coated wrath as she pressed her nose right up against the impostor’s. “All right, you body-snatcher! I wanna know WHO YOU ARE!”

The doppelganger just giggled. “Hiya, Dashie!”

“…Pinkie?” Rainbow’s jaw dropped.

“Aw, no fair! You figured it out already! I was trying super-duper hard to be awesome, too! I bet it was shades, huh?”

“What?”

“The shades!” Pinkie put on an all-too-familiar pair of sunglasses. “Darn! If I’d remembered to wear these babies, I coulda been quadruple-awesome with a double-scoop of cool and radical sprinkles on top!”

“Pinkie, what the hay is going on?”

“Beats me! But if I had to guess, I’d say we’re actually both asleep in our beds right now, and Princess Luna just used some crazy dream magic to trick us into thinking we swapped places with each other.”

“…She can do that?”

“Heck if I know!”

Pinkie cracked up in another fit of giggles, and Rainbow made a face at the sight. It was kind of wild seeing her own body from this angle, and it might even have been cool—if it weren’t for the way Pinkie was bouncing around in it, all bubbly and goofy.

“Great. Just great. So… How long are we stuck like this for?” she wondered, looking purposefully away.

“Oh, probably not much longer. Time always goes by super fast when you’re asleep, after all! You just close your eyes, and then, whiz-bang-zoop! It’s time to wake up again!”

“Hmph… Well, I guess we should make the most of it.” Rainbow tapped her chin. If she’d been able to, she probably would’ve flown around a bit to burn off some nervous energy, but since THAT was obviously off the table, she settled for pacing instead. “We can totally use this time to our advantage to plan a majorly awesome revenge prank! Something Luna will never see coming…”

“Revenge prank? Ha!” Pinkie tipped the shades over her eyes. “Nuts to that. I’m going flying!”

“What?!”

“Heck yeah! This is great!” said Pinkie, launching off the ground into a lazy corkscrew. “Flying’s SO MUCH fun! Did you see how many sonic rainbooms I did in a row back there? It was all like KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM!”

Rainbow watched her with clenched teeth, her patience wearing thin. “And just what am I supposed to do, huh? Go dream-babysit some dram-foals for the dream-Cakes?”

“Ooh, have fun with that! The dream-twins can be a dream-handful!”

“Why am I stuck doing your dream-chores while you get to go out and have all the dream-fun? That’s not fair!”

“Aw. I’m sorry, Dashie.” Pinkie drifted back down to the ground, though she didn’t land. She smiled. “You know I would never leave you hanging! I’ll pitch in and lend a hoof.”

“You will?”

“Sure I will… IN YOUR DREAMS!” Pinkie fell into the grass, giggling and holding her belly.

Rainbow groaned and turned away in abject disgust, drawing a bubblegum hoof down the bridge of her muzzle. “Ugh… I can’t stand it. You’re being me all wrong, you know.”

“Hee hee hee!—You—Y-You’re right!” Pinkie managed in-between giggles. “I should probably work in a mid-morning cloud nap while I’m at it! Then I’ll get the real Rainbow Dash experience!”

“I mean it! I protest! This is not an authentic representation of what it’s like to be the Dash!”

“Really? I thought I was doing pretty good!” Pinkie rolled over and propped herself up on her elbows, smirking at Rainbow with a playful glint. “The shades, the naps, the sonic rainbooms. What did I leave out?”

A guardpony’s head burst out of a nearby flowerpot. Pinkie jumped back in surprise. “Huh—?”

“Princess Aurora!” said the guard, a daisy bobbing on his noggin. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Princess Aurora!” said another guard, popping out from behind a lamppost that was way too skinny to have hidden him.

“Princess Aurora!” said a third, rappelling down from the frosted gingerbread roof of Sugarcube Corner.

“Princess Aurora!” “Princess Aurora!” “Princess Aurora!” Up and down the street, guards appeared from literally out of nowhere, bum-rushing Pinkie with singular purpose—

Pinkie screamed, “AIIIIIEEEEE!” and blasted into the air like a rocket. The guards swarmed after her, undeterred, and before long, the sky was filled with whole flocks of them, a hundred white wings giving chase to a rainbow-colored mach cone.

KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM!

Rainbow stretched, rolled her shoulders, and flopped down cheerfully on the grass. Her hooves tucked leisurely behind her head as she lay back and watched the show.

“Hey, this might be a relaxing night’s sleep after all!”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Rainbow Dash had a dirty look and a reluctant smile for Luna at breakfast the next morning. The dirty look, because she knew she’d got got, and got good. The smile, because it had actually been a pretty awesome prank.

“Pleasant dreams?” Luna asked sweetly over a plate of eggs and toast.

“More like TOTALLY AMAZING-TASTIC dreams!” Pinkie gushed. “I’ve never done so many sonic rainbooms before in my LIFE! Well, I mean, I guess technically, I’ve never done ANY sonic rainbooms before in my life… until last night! WOWIE! That was sooooo cool! You should beat Rainbow Dash at pranks more often, Princess Lu—”

Rainbow stuck a hoof in her mouth. “Ha! Don’t go cracking open the cider just yet!” she taunted. “You’ll be singing a different tune once we get even!”

Luna met her with a smirk. “Is that so?”

“Psh. Try harder. Your mind games won’t work on me,” Rainbow said, not at all convincingly.

“Well, we’ll just have to see which one of us prevails, won’t we?” Luna took a dainty sip of her coffee. “I must say, though, those are some awfully formidable words for somepony who’s oh-and-two.”

Rainbow didn’t have a rebuttal to that. She folded her hooves and sunk low in her chair. Stupid Luna, acting like such a hotshot…

“Hey, Pinkie,” Rainbow whispered privately behind her hoof.

“Yeah, Dashie?”

Luna’s ears pricked up.

“Prankstorming session at my place. Twelve noon. Don’t be late.”

“Okey-dokey-lokey!”

Grudgingly, Rainbow poked a fork into her breakfast. Stupid Luna.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Stupid Luna… Stupid Luna… Stupid Luna…”

The sun was near its zenith in the overcast sky, glaring down through gaps in the steel-gray cloud cover. Rainbow was glaring, too, as she winged it over the East Garden on her way to meet Pinkie Pie.

She glanced down as she flew, half hoping to see the Caretaker there in the garden, puttering away, as he so often did this time of day. She’d known him long enough to trust his wisdom and his uncanny knowledge about most things, and had given thought to enlisting him as an ally in the war.

He wasn’t around today, though. She bit back her disappointment.

Oh well. Didn’t matter. She and Pinkie had enough tricks up their sleeves to take down a rookie prankster like Luna. With both of them putting their heads together, they were sure to get the upper hoof.

…Eventually.

It was just a matter of time. They were ready for anything!

Rainbow was anything but ready to see a brazen batpony guard—no doubt one of Luna’s Thestral Corps—hoisting Luna’s own banner up shiny-new flagpole in front of her house. Seething with righteous anger, she skittered to a landing on the cloud-tuft front yard and seized him roughly by the collar. “What in the hay are you DOING?”

“R-R-Rainbow Dash!” the guard choked out.

“Two points for getting my name right, minus INFINITY points for WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY HOUSE?”

She looked past him, only to spy another pair of stiff-jointed batpony guards stationed on either side of the portico… and another pair, running surveillance from the veranda… and a dozen more, patrolling the roof…

“W-Well…” the guard stammered. “I’m afraid your house has been…”

“What?”

“Annexed,” said the batpony.

Rainbow’ face screwed up with rage. “WHAT?!”

The guard nodded meekly. “By order of Princess Luna, your house has been formally annexed for the next twelve hours. She said—”

“WHAT did she say?” Rainbow demanded, raising a hoof.

“She said it was just so splendid, she couldn’t resist!”

Rainbow stared at him incredulously. Then she pushed him out of the way with a snarl, turned, and shouted in the direction of Luna’s tower, “THIS ISN’T OVER YET! I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS!”

Somewhere far away, Luna cackled.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Thwack. Thwack. THWACK!

Rainbow’s hoof connected with the plush cockroach—hard. Stuffing spewed out in every direction as it flew back, then rebounded, swinging by its neck from a rope noose.

Over on the beanbag chair, Pinkie was racking her brain for ideas. “Hmm… Oh! I know! We could inject her donuts with toothpaste!”

“She doesn’t. Eat. Donuts.”

THWACK! went Rainbow’s hoof against the plush toy again, sending it into a twirl. She reached out to steady it.

Pinkie looked horror-struck. “What? She doesn’t eat donuts? Who doesn’t eat donuts? Everypony eats donuts!”

“Luna doesn’t. At least, I ain’t ever seen her eat any. For all I know, she doesn’t even know what donuts are.”

“Impossible! How can anypony not know about donuts?”

“I dunno. Luna’s, like, a thousand years old or somethin’. Were donuts even invented a thousand years ago?” Thwack. Thwack. “She spent a lotta time on the moon, didn’t she? Could be wrong, but I don’t think they got many donut shops up there.”

“That’s awful! Poor Luna. I’m totally gonna bake her some donuts!”

Rainbow gave a snort. “Kiss her flank, while you’re at it! We’re supposed to be planning revenge here!”

“Okay, new idea.” Pinkie leaned forward. “Biscuits.”

“Bis… cuits?”

“Yeah! If she doesn’t eat donuts, she’s gotta be scarfing down biscuits, right? That’s, like, a snooty old-timey alternative!” Pinkie declared, as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

“I don’t think—”

“So here’s the plan, Stan! We get Luna a box of biscuits. You know, as a kind of peace offering. But before we fork ’em over, get this—we take ’em all apart, we scrape out the cream filling, we replace it with toothpaste, and then we put ’em all back in the box! You see? It’s just like the donut trick, only better! Whaddaya think, Dashie? …Dashie?”

Pinkie stopped and squinted at Rainbow, who had her head turned up and was looking awfully strange.

“Dashie? Are you oka—”

“AHHHHH-CHOOOOO!”

Rainbow’s sneeze was so explosive, it blasted back Pinkie’s mane and nearly straightened all her curls.

As Pinkie teeter-tottered in surprise, Rainbow reached for the wall to steady herself. She leaned against it, sniffled, and rubbed her bleary eyes into the crook of her hoof.

“Jeeze, Pinkie Pie,” she said unsteadily. “Your prank ideas are so bad, I think they’re actually making me sick.”

She sniffled a few more times. Then, audibly swallowing a throatful of snot, she got back to pummeling the stuffed cockroach. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Pinkie’s ears lowered. “What’s wrong with toothpaste?”

“It’s totally lame, that’s what!” Rainbow snapped. “Luna’s one-upped us with dream magic and insect monsters. She annexed my freaking house! There’s no way we’re gonna upstage her with—with dental hygiene pranks!”

“Well, there’s always the snake nut can…”

“HIIIII-YAH!” yelled Rainbow, and she took the roach’s head clean off with a spinning high-kick. She turned and glared at Pinkie. “We aren’t gonna beat her with a snake nut can, either!”

“What if we fill it really, really full of snakes?”

“Pinkie, that’s the dumbest—”

“Listen, Dashie.” Pinkie was suddenly up out of the beanbag chair, wrapping a hoof around her shoulder. “I totally get where you’re coming from. You want something big! Something epic! Something so legendary, it’ll go down in history as the most pranktacular prank ever pranked!”

“All right! Now you’re speaking my language!”

Pinkie leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “We need to hit Luna—hard! Where it hurts the most! Where she least expects it! Right in the place she rests her royal rump!”

Rainbow stared uncomprehendingly. “Her… flank?”

“No, silly. Her bedroom!”

“…Come again?”

“A pony’s bedroom is their castle,” Pinkie explained. “Their sanctuary. Their refuge. Their haven. Their fortress of solitude. Their—”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” said Rainbow, pushing Pinkie off. “So what? You want to prank Luna in her room, where she’ll be taken by surprise?”

“Bingo!”

“Awesome plan. Just one teeny-tiny little issue: I already thought of it! Days and days ago, when I had the brilliant idea to swipe all the toilet paper out of her bathroom.” Rainbow grimaced. “The guards keep Luna’s door locked up tighter than a headmare’s hindquarters. And I don’t she’ll fall for ‘room service’ again.”

“No great cake was ever baked without adversity!”

A puzzled look crossed Rainbow’s face. “What—?”

“What you failed to take into consideration, Dashie, is for every lock, there’s also a key!” Pinkie began drawing up a plan on the chalkboard. “Or in this case, two keys. One of them, kept by Princess Luna…”

“There’s no way we’re getting our hooves on that.”

“…and the other, by the pegasus captain of the guard!”

Pinkie gave a devious smile, but Rainbow just looked past her to the board, where a crude doodle of Captain Tristar sneered back at her. Drawn beside him was a floor plan, and an annotated mission brief…

“Oh no,” said Rainbow, backing away. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“…no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—”

“Why are you still saying no? We changed scenes.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, didn’t you notice the five little diamonds up there? We’re in italics now and everything.”

“Pinkie, what are you even talking about?”

“Listen up, Dashie! Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the private offices of Daedalus Tristar, Pegasus Captain of the Royal Guard! Once you’ve penetrated security, you’re to locate and recover Captain Tristar’s keyring, which will prove essential to our efforts to break into Luna’s command-and-control nexus on a follow-up mission.”

“Command and ka-what?”

“Captain Tristar’s office is on black vault lockdown. That means anypony who wants to get in has to pass through a series of security checks.”

“Black vault lockdown? Huh?”

“Black vault lockdown is super serious stuff! There’s no room for horseplay on this one! Now, pay attention. The first security check is a voice print identification, but that only gets you into the outer room. Next, you have to pass a retina scan…”

“I’m… pretty sure you’re making this up.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Pinkie Pie’s look was one hundred percent serious for a change. “You know the signal, right? Be sure you know the signal!”

“Caw!” said Philomena.

“That’s right. Caw! You see anypony coming, you be sure you give the signal so we can make a clean getaway. Capeesh?”

Philomena gave a wing salute.

“I still don’t get why I gotta wear this,” Rainbow complained, tugging at the fabric of her all-black catsuit.

“Oh yeah? Well, I don’t get why they call the itty-bitty candy bars ‘fun-sized!’ Wouldn’t it be funner to eat a big one?”

“…Pinkie Pie, you are so random.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“The only other way into Captain Tristar’s office is via an overhead ventilation shaft, which—get this—happens to be conveniently pony-sized! Major design flaw, am I right?”

“Er… I guess?”

“Buuuuut there’s also a laser security grid built right into the duct that’ll set off an alarm if anypony crosses it.”

“You’re… uh… joking, right?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll hook you up with the reflecty-mirror thingy so you can redirect the beams and slip past. It’ll be a cinch!”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Toast. Toast. Toast.”

Rainbow’s nose scrunched up as she squeezed through the metal ductwork on knees and elbows. “Why do you keep saying toast?”

“Sorry, I can’t help it!” Pinkie’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “I really wanted toast for breakfast this morning, but the kitchen was all out! I don’t even understand that. What kind of castle runs out of bread?”

“The mission, Pinkie!”

“Right! Okay, you should be at the vent. Deploy the reflecty mirror thingy!”

Rainbow peered down at the grille. “I don’t see any lasers.”

“Duh! They’re invisible! You can’t see a laser grid in real life, Dashie!”

“Now I know you’re making this up.”

“Psh! Visible lasers! Whaddaya think this is, some kinda Hollywood movie spoof? Deploy the reflecty mirror thingy!”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and deployed the reflecty mirror thingy.

“Good job,” said Pinkie. “Next, you’re gonna have to unscrew the vent. This is gonna be tricky, because—”

“ ’Kay, I got it open.”

There was a brief, stunned silence. “Wha-What? But… You didn’t even use a cool gadget! And the screws are on the other side of the grate!”

“Eh. I’m kind of an expert at unscrewing vents from the wrong side.”

“…Okay, then!” said Pinkie. “Here goes nothing!”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Meanwhile, as Rainbow and Pinkie were off on their caper, Twilight was all alone in the library, suppressing the urge to grind her teeth down to nubs as she stared, infuriated, at the clock.

Rainbow Dash was a no-show for magic lessons. Again. For the third time this week.

It was bad enough her favorite roll-around chalkboard had mysteriously gone missing. Now her student had, too! It was worse than adding insult to injury. It was… It was inexcusable!

This wasn’t a game! Princess Celestia had asked her to teach Rainbow Dash serious, life-or-death magic—the kind that could make the difference between disaster and survival.

She felt like such a failure. So many wasted afternoons with so little to show for it. Two weeks of lessons, practice, and training, and her pupil still couldn’t produce the first glimmer of a magical barrier, nor any other abjuration! What would Princess Celestia say?

If only Rainbow would take her studies seriously. If only…!

Twilight stuck around the empty reading room far longer than she rightly should have. Finally, at three quarters past the hour, she gathered her textbooks and stormed out.

As she went on her way, she heard an oily voice behind her. “Miss Sparkle,” it spoke, and she turned to see none other than Captain Tristar standing in the hall in full accoutrement.

She scowled at him. “You. What do you want?”

“If you please,” he said. “A moment of your time.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Okay, so there’s one teeeeensy little detail I might’ve forgotten to mention up until now. Captain Tristar’s office has three state-of-the-art security systems that switch on whenever he isn’t in the room.”

“Suuuuure! Lemme guess, does he have Big Hoof for a security guard, too?”

“No, silly, he’s on vacation. Now pay attention! The first security system is in the floor, and it’s pressure-sensitive. The slightest weight will trigger it, so you’ll need to keep your hoofsies off the ground. The second security system is attuned to magic. Any levitation, spellcraft, or sparky-wooshy-zappy stuff of any kind will trigger an immediate containment protocol.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard. It’s not like Twilight’s taught me anything about magic anyway. What’s the third system?”

“The third system is highly sensitive to country and western. For the rest of this op, I’m gonna need you to disavow all song lyrics about ice-cold beer, girls in tight jeans, and pickup trucks.”

“…What?!”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The scrape of the kevlar cable against the ventilation duct was the only noise as Rainbow descended, dangling upside-down, into the white abyss of Captain Tristar’s office. Adrenaline coiled her every muscle as the floor rose up to meet her. Racks of gleaming swords and pikes loomed like menacing stalactites over her head.

“Do you have eyes on the objective?” Pinkie chirped over the comm.

Rainbow craned her neck up—or rather, down. Tristar’s desk was an island of black against the pearl-colored flagstones, growing in her field of view. “I see it,” she whispered back.

“SHHHHH!”

A screech of feedback lashed Rainbow’s eardrums. She spasmed in pain and nearly ripped out the earpiece.

“No talking!” said Pinkie.

Rainbow grit her teeth. “Then why are you asking me questions?”

“No talking!”

The room was shaped like a towering lung with the vent at the very top, so it took some time for Pinkie to lower her down on the cable. After a minute, she found herself paddling the air, suspended horizontally in front of the desk.

“Do you see the keyring anywhere?” Pinkie asked.

Rainbow opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. She cocked her head as if to say, ‘Seriously?’

Pinkie giggled. “You’re learning! Okey-dokey, eyes on the prize. That key’s gotta be here somewhere. Time’s a-wastin’, Dashie!”

She searched and searched, taking care (as Pinkie constantly reminded her) to stay perpendicular and keep her hooves off the ground. She didn’t have much luck, though. After several minutes, Rainbow had uncovered a rather dusty book titled How to Smile Like a Normal Pony: A Step-by-Step Guide, a framed photo of a cactus labeled ‘Lieutenant Spines,’ and a very suspicious-looking, half-eaten sandwich with a note attached: ‘Do Not Touch—Very Important Sandwich!’—but there was nothing remotely resembling a keyring.

She was ready to admit defeat when Philomena’s voice came over the line:

“CAW! CAW! CAW!”

“THE SIGNAL!” Pinkie gasped. “Somepony’s coming!”

Rainbow’s eyes bulged, her head snapped up. She heard hooves scuffing at the door, the sound of voices—

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Just a moment,” said Tristar to Twilight, halting outside his office.

He stooped and leaned in, fixing his steely gaze on the sleek, glassy panel set flush into the wall.

Tzeep-Tzeep! The retina scanner chirped its approval.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“CAW! CAW! CAW! CAW! CAW!”

Rainbow felt the cable yank against her back, and the next thing she knew, she was shooting upward, the desk and floor whirling away below her. She gave a strangled cry, “Pinkie P-ackkk!”—and then she snapped right back up into the ventilation shaft.

Not a moment too soon! The door opened, and in strolled Captain Tristar, the grizzled old jerkwad himself! Trailed by…

“…Twilight?” Rainbow mumbled, half in a daze, peering back down at them through the open vent.

Tristar carefully checked behind them for privacy, giving a sweeping look up and down the empty hallway. The door shut. The chain rattled as he hung it. The deadbolt thunked.

With a flick of his hoof, he motioned Twilight to a lone chair in front of his desk. “Please, be seated.”

Twilight eyed him indignantly. “Fine,” she said after a long, tense moment. She sat down. “I hope there’s a good reason for all this.”

“Would I have asked you here if there wasn’t?”

“It’s become clear to me, you don’t need a good reason to do anything.”

Tristar gave her a wry look. Then he strode behind his desk. For a second, it looked like he was about to sit down across from Twilight.

He didn’t.

Instead, he started busying himself with something on a counter against the back wall. “You know, Miss Sparkle, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you didn’t like me,” he chuckled.

Twilight regarded him coldly. “What was your first clue?”

“I don’t care whether you do or don’t,” Tristar said, “so long as you and I are able to get along professionally.”

There was a metal-sounding jangle as he looped a brass keyring off his belt and hung it on a peg on the wall.

High up in the vent, Rainbow’s eyes went wide. The mission objective!

Her mind raced, sifting through options, darting from one wild idea to the next. Swoop in fast, snatch it with her tail? Maybe try for a risky upside-down grab? But just when she started to piece together a plan, she felt a familiar itch creep into her nose.

Oh no. Not here! Not now!

She swallowed. Breathed in and out a few times, tried to clear the airways.

No dice. The pressure spread from her nose to her sinuses.

“What’s going on?” Pinkie’s voice crackled in her ear. “Status report!”

“Pinkie, I think I’m gonna… Ahh…”

“Uh oh. Tell me you aren’t about to…”

“Ahh… Ahh…”

“Don’t do it! If you sneeze, they’ll hear you! They’ll catch you! The Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions!”

“Ahh…! Ahh…!”

“Oh, for pony’s sake! Hold on! Engage Muffler Protocol Alpha-Zulu!”

Rainbow had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t have time to ask. Her face scrunched up as she fought against the explosive urge building inside her, her eyes watering with the effort—

In the days that followed, Rainbow would wonder how, exactly, Pinkie Pie managed to squirm through a labyrinth of vents the length of a hoofball field in the span of five seconds, just the nick of time to reach her. She came zipping out of the darkness, and something soft and gooey slapped against Rainbow’s nose. Startled, she blinked, cross-eyed, to see a pink hoof clutching a chocolate donut right over her nostrils.

“Bite it! Quick!” Pinkie urged her.

Without thinking, Rainbow chomped down on the donut just as the sneeze overtook her. The sweet, sugary pastry absorbed the worst of the noise, turning what could’ve been a catastrophic “ACHOO!” into a muffled splork! of frosting and chocolate ganache. Rainbow’s cheeks puffed out, but a pair of pink hooves were there to hold her mouth shut.

The sound didn’t carry beyond the vent. Below them, Tristar and Twilight carried on their conversation in angry tones.

Twilight was still fuming. “In all the years I spent in Canterlot, growing up under Princess Celestia’s tutelage, I never knew the Royal Guard to behave so… so unprofessionally in my life!”

“If you’re still mad about the hot air balloon…”

“I don’t care about that! Rainbow Dash did something stupid, she slipped her guard detail, went tearing up Lower Canterlot, you had to go after her, and I got in the way. I get it. That’s not what I’m mad about!”

“I’m sure you have lots of conceptions about me,” Tristar said, still clattering away at the counter. “You’re a bright girl, after all. Freshly educated and utterly convinced of yourself. I’m sure you think ill of me and my methods. But I’m not in the business of changing conceptions.”

He turned from the thing he’d been fiddling with—a percolator, it was now plain to see—and placed a steaming cup of tea on the desk in front of Twilight, smiling self-assuredly.

“I’m in the business,” he continued, “of keeping ponies safe and alive.”

Twilight scowled up at him through her bangs. She made no move to take the cup. “Do you normally serve your guests warm drinks to go along with the insults? What kind of tainted kindness is this?”

“One required by etiquette. Now then—”

There was a wooden scrape as Twilight scootched back her chair and stood up. Tristar stared at her impassively.

“Sit back down, please.”

“I think I’ve had enough hospitality, thank you!”

“You mistake me. I didn’t ask you here to trade barbs with you.”

Now he sat down himself, his hooves clasped together atop the desk. Even though she was standing and he wasn’t, Twilight found, to her annoyance, that he was still looking down on her.

“This might be hard for you to believe,” he said, “but everything I’ve done— everything I do—I do for the Realm. If I don’t play nice, if I’m rough around the edges, it’s only because I don’t cater to useless idiots and their warm-and-fuzzy delusions about the world. I don’t cloak myself in ignorance and sentimentality and call it wisdom, and I don’t waste my time pandering to the feelings of other ponies. But everything I do—” he leaned forward in his chair, “—everything I do, I do for the Realm, in service to Princess Celestia.”

“So do I.”

Twilight looked like she was about to spit fire. Their faces were inches apart, almost nose-to-nose over the desk.

“And believe me, I get it! It can be a thankless job!” she spat. “Do you think I’d be here in Canterlot right now if Princess Celestia hadn’t asked it of me? Do you think I’d be wasting my time trying to teach Rainbow Dash how to use her stupid magic? Do you think I’d have bothered convincing her to come here?”

Rainbow’s eyes flared. She pulled against Pinkie’s iron grip on her, muffled protests breaking against the metal walls of the duct. “Mmmmmfffff!”

“Every day I spend here feels like getting stabbed in the heart. And I’ve done it all for Princess Celestia, same as you! But I would never sink to what you did. What kind of world-class jerk takes out their anger by—by bullying somepony they’re supposed to look out for?!”

Tristar waved his hoof dismissively. “Enough. Please, hate me all you want, but sit down and hear me out.”

“I don’t think so,” said Twilight, matching his scowl. “I’ve heard everything I need to hear.” She turned and stalked away, her hooves clicking noisily against the floor.

Tristar’s voice rose behind her. “Do you love your brother, Miss Sparkle?”

Twilight stopped, her whole body tensing. Her head swung around. “What kind of question is—?!”

“Please, don’t take me the wrong way. I’m not trying to make this personal.” The sharpness in Tristar’s eyes dulled, just a bit. “You need to understand, I know Shining Armor too. Maybe not like a brother. But like a fellow soldier, a fellow captain. Somepony I respect.”

Twilight hesitated, caught off guard. She had been ready for more scathing remarks, not… whatever this was.

Tristar regarded her coolly, his face tight with a measured calm. He nudged the teacup forward with his hoof.

“You grew up with him in one of those Stargazer Heights townhouses, didn’t you? Over on Dawnshade? The one with the star-shaped stained-glass window above the door?”

Twilight’s lips parted in bewilderment. “How did you…?”

“I make it my business to know about every promising recruit who comes up through the ranks,” Tristar’s expression softened, if only by the faintest degree. “Your brother was more promising than most.

“I remember going up against him in a joint training exercise, not long after he made lieutenant. Old Sigellian put him in charge of the unicorn runesquad. A test of his leadership and command. Sigellian loved throwing his officers into the fire like that.

“I’ll be haybaled if that young pup didn’t pull a fast one on me. Tricked me into deploying my pegasi to the wrong sector while he launched a sneak attack and captured our flag. I was madder than hell, but I was also impressed. Takes guts to pull something that audacious on an old warhorse like me, twenty years his senior. Takes brains, too. I wasn’t surprised when Sigellian retired and put in his name for captain.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Twilight demanded.

Tristar studied her, his eyes unwavering for a long, quiet moment. Then he flipped a manila folder onto the desk.

“I need your help, Miss Sparkle. Your brother needs your help.”

More than a dozen crisp, white, typewritten documents spilled out, each one paper-clipped with a different pony’s mug shot. Despite her anger and distrust, Twilight’s eyes were drawn to them, her curiosity at war with her convictions.

Curiosity won.

“The criminals who attacked Grand Central and hurt your brother are being held at the 14th Precinct in Midtown, Manehattan. Sage Whitehoof thinks these individuals acted freely and of their own volition. That they weren’t bewitched, bedazzled, or beguiled by any influence of magic. I’d like you to accompany me back to the city and give your honest assessment.”

“I don’t understand,” said Twilight, sifting through the documents with her magic. “Don’t you know what happened? Weren’t you there?”

“I know what happened, but I don’t know the why of it. I trust your insight, Miss Sparkle. I would value your second opinion.”

“But… Princess Luna already gave a second opinion, didn’t she? She looked at them too, just like Professor Whitehoof.”

“With all due respect to Princess Luna, her knowledge of magical theory is a thousand years out of date. Oh, I have no doubt she can eclipse any unicorn in raw power. She was the most terrifying mage of her day, and a master of illusion second to none… But I’m not sure she has a nose for the subtleties and nuances of modern magical theory. Not like you do.”

Twilight shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sure a dozen other experts must have weighed in by now. I’m not sure what help I would be.”

“Give yourself some credit. You’re a genius, Twilight Sparkle. A savant and a prodigy, and Bearer of the Element of Magic, to top it off. Nopony in Equestria can match your expertise, not even the alicorn princesses. The respectable ones, or the little gutter trash hoodlum.”

In the vent high above them, every last one of Rainbow’s blue feathers was standing on end as she squirmed, mad with rage, barely restrained by a pair of pink hooves—

Twilight swelled with the praise, but winced at the remark. “You… shouldn’t say things like that,” she offered weakly. “Somepony might hear you.”

She picked up the teacup and took a small sip.

“MMMMMFFFFFFFFFFF!” Rainbow’s stifled expletives didn’t travel beyond the vent.

“Anyway… I don’t think I can help you.” Twilight’s tail flicked, her shoulders slumping under an invisible weight. “I made a promise to Professor Whitehoof that I wouldn’t leave Canterlot Castle. And Princess Celestia is counting on me to teach Rainbow Dash how to use her magic…”

“How’s that going for you?” he asked.

Twilight didn’t answer.

Tristar stood. He collected the folder and papers off his desk, shuffling them back into a pile.

“Thank you for your time. I won’t ask you to vacate your responsibilities to Princess Celestia. I would be remiss in my service to the Crown if I did. If here is where you’ll do the most good, then here is where you should stay.”

He gave a gracious bow of his head. Twilight averted her eyes as he strode past, unchained the door, and held it open for her.

“Give my regards to your brother’s family. To your mother, your father, and Princess Cadence as well.” His tone softened. “I’ll see this through, no matter the cost. It just might take a little longer. But I swear, I’ll do right by him. I won’t let him down. I’ll do everything I can to bring his attackers to justice.”

“Captain,” Twilight said.

Tristar stopped and looked at her. “Yes?”

The look on her face was full of determination. She took a step forward.

“I’m going with you.”

Rainbow and Pinkie heard the door click shut in the office below. Twilight and Tristar’s voices faded from earshot as they carried on down the long castle corridor, until even the distant murmur of their conversation was swallowed up by the polished marble halls.

Only silence remained, thick and heavy in the air.

Then Rainbow finally managed to throw off Pinkie’s hooves. She pushed her away, a quivering mess of blue feathers, frosting, and rage.

“Get off me! GET OFF!”

Pinkie looked at her friend with worry. “Dashie—” she said, reaching out a tentative hoof.

Rainbow recoiled from her touch. “DON’T,” she snarled.

“Dashie, I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

“DON’T. Don’t even TRY.”

Pinkie fell quiet.

Rainbow took a moment to breathe. She elbowed her way back over to the open vent. “Let’s just… grab the stupid key and get out of here.”

“Oh, right! The mission!” Pinkie remembered. “If you want, I can lower you back down—”

Rainbow reached behind her back, unclamped herself from the cable, and threw it away. Then she flew down into Tristar’s office and snatched the keyring unceremoniously off the wall.

“Or you can just do that,” said Pinkie.

Rainbow scowled. “Let’s go.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Luna’s bedroom was peaceful.

Then the key turned in the lock.

“IN LIKE FLYNN!” Pinkie shouted, throwing open the door and striking a pose as she cartwheeled into the middle of the room. “See? Mission successful! What did I tell ya?”

Rainbow trudged in after her, head lowered. The smile wobbled and slid off Pinkie’s face.

“Dashie, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I’m great.”

Rainbow’s voice was hoarse. She coughed into her hoof a few times to clear her throat.

Pinkie squirmed. At least Rainbow Dash didn’t seem mad anymore, she told herself. Although scoop for sprinkle, she wasn’t sure her current funk was any better. All the fire had left her, replaced by a tiredness Pinkie hadn’t seen since the day she fell off a cloud and sprouted a horn.

“Y’know,” Rainbow started to say—

She stopped to smother another cough, steadying herself with her left hoof against the door as she covered her mouth with her right.

“…Sorry,” she said. “I was gonna say, it was pretty nuts trying to get in here. But now that we’re in, it’s preeeeetty awesome.”

“Yeah!” chimed in Pinkie. “And check out this full-length mirror Luna’s got over here! I think it really shows off my good side!”

“All right, time to get this show on the road. We need to—”

Rainbow’s voice died in her throat. Pinkie took a break from making funny faces at herself to glance over, only to see her friend frozen in smoldering fury, looking like a volcano about to blow its top.

“Uh… Something wrong?” she asked.

“Balcony.”

“What?”

“There’s. A. Bucking. Balcony.”

She followed Rainbow’s sightline. Sure enough, there was a wide-open arch leading to a ginormous balcony. “Oh. Huh. There sure is!”

“Why didn’t we pay attention when we were in here the other night with the cart? I coulda just FLOWN us in! ARGH!”

“Hey, no big! It’s all about the adventure, right?”

Rainbow facehoofed.

Pinkie tilted her head with a playful shrug, a sly grin tugging at her lips. “So, now that we’ve broken, like, a BAJILLION laws and infiltrated the enemy’s lair… what are we gonna do to pull off the Pranking of Princess Luna?”

A brief hesitation. Rainbow’s gaze swept across the regal chamber: the bed, the wardrobe, the astrolabe in the corner, the lunar tapestries with their woven cosmic designs, the roundtable with its beautiful blue vase.

She tapped her chin and pondered.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Of all the phases of the moon, Luna enjoyed the new moon least of all.

She knew it was shallow of her. The new moon was supposed to represent renewal, second chances, and new beginnings to old things. On some level, that probably should’ve appealed to somepony like her.

But mostly, she just wished ponies on the ground could look up and see the damn thing.

As she finished raising her heavenly sphere, the navy-blue aura faded from the tip of her horn. She rolled her neck from side to side. A little groan slipped out as she listened to the vertebrae crack.

Then she lifted her gaze to the ebony sky, her expression flat and impassive. Her moon hung there, veiled in darkness. Unseen and unnoticed.

“How majestic, the sight of absolutely nothing,” she deadpanned.

Tia didn’t have to put up with such ignominy. Matter of fact, if the sun were completely invisible for three days out of every month, Luna was pretty sure her sister would’ve filed grievance against the universe.

Still, she thought, as she opened her wings and kicked off the silvery cloud with her haunches—what a long, strange month it had been since the last time she missed the beautiful glow of her moon. What a long, strange, tragic, violent, soul-wrenching month. Filled with so much carnage. So much pain.

And for her own part, so much regret.

She sighed.

Yet for all its heartaches, it had its welcome surprises. A small smile played on her lips. After a thousand years of cold, loveless exile, she never expected to come home to a niece. And an alicorn, too! Never’s the day she imagined she’d see another alicorn again, other than her sister!

New beginnings to old things, indeed.

Her tower beckoned below. Luna glided down and landed on the balcony. She strolled into her bedroom, the night breeze trailing in behind her, stirring the indigo curtains.

The chambermaids had prepared the room with care and attention. Her bed was turned down, the blue silken sheets neatly folded back, and a goblet of wine set out on the bedside pedestal for her to enjoy. Flames danced from the brass oil lamps and the myriad candles on the chandelier above, bathing the space in soft, living light.

With a glimmer of magic, Luna removed her royal regalia, setting down her torc and crown upon the mantel. The tension began to ease as she stretched her wings and forehooves in a languid motion, the evening calm wrapping around her like a comforting blanket.

There had to be some good at the end of all this, she decided. Some light to pierce through all this darkness. The past was so painful, and she and her sister lived and breathed that pain every day.

She didn’t know where this situation with Rainbow Dash would lead, or if it wouldn’t yet fall apart. She hoped it wouldn’t. They both deserved so much more. Rainbow Dash and Celestia.

Besides, she was rather coming to enjoy being an aunt. Canterlot Castle felt so much more like home when it was filled with talking and laughter instead of unspoken regrets. And she was developing a genuine fondness for Rainbow, the brash young filly. Even if her pranks were terribly lackluster.

Her gaze fell on the vase atop her table. In it, the chambermaids had placed a beautiful blue lily, the like of which she’d never seen before. It was striking, but oh so delicate. And such an enchanting shade of cobalt blue—her favorite! The servants knew her so well.

“What a lovely blue flower,” she said, stopping to admire it.

She breathed from it deeply.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“ARRRRRGHHHHHGUUUUUAAAAAAHHHHH!”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Poison Joke?! POISON JOKE?!”

Celestia bit down on her hoof, trying and failing to hide the smile breaking across her face. “I don’t know, Luna. I think it suits you.”

“I’LL BANISH THEM TO THE MOON!”

“Now, that’s a little off-color, wouldn’t you say?”

Luna glowered at her sister from the blue granite bath, her hooves working the bristle brush over her coat with relentless frustration. “OF COURSE! YOU of all ponies would find this FUNNY!”

“What can I say? I’ve always been tickled pink by a good prank.”

“SHUT UP!”

Celestia’s eyes twinkled with mirth.

How had Rainbow Dash done it? Celestia couldn’t be sure. But somehow, through some quirk of luck and skill and grit and nerve, against all odds, she’d managed to pull one over on Luna.

On pretty pink Princess Luna.

It was so much more than a practical joke. It was a masterpiece, one Celestia had spent the whole day giggling at. Luna looked like she’d stumbled into a turf war between two rival gangs of flamingos and gotten blasted with Miami in the crossfire. From her fuchsia fetlocks to her laffy taffy lips, every part of her was a walking, talking explosion of flamboyant, eye-popping pink. Even her astral mane, once a swirling sea of starry blue, had transformed into a syrupy nebula in a billowing bubblegum haze.

“You know, I always liked pink,” Celestia noted innocently. “I like to think I wore it pretty well. Not as well as you are, of course.”

The look Luna gave her could’ve fused hydrogen. “Really? You didn’t like it a thousand years ago when those idiot toymakers in Trottingham made all those dolls of you in the wrong color!”

“Well, they were just being stupid.”

“GYAH!” Luna scrubbed and scrubbed at her coat, double-time. “Why isn’t this WORKING?”

Celestia arched an eyebrow, then looked down at the botanical pharmacopeia her valet had fetched from the castle library: Super Naturals, Natural Remedies and Cure-Alls That Are Simply Super.

“Hmm… When you drew this herbal bath, did you make sure to dissolve the powdered root of asphodel?”

“Yes!”

“The infusion of wormwood?”

“YES!”

“Well then, you must have left out the zebrastone crystals.”

“I MOST CERTAINLY DID N—wait, what?”

“Zebrastone crystals,” Celestia read sagely. “They only grow naturally in one place: the sun-scorched savannahs of Zebrica. It says right here, they’re the key ingredient. The bath won’t work without them.”

Luna’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. “But—But—ZEBRICA IS TEN THOUSAND MILES AWAY ON ANOTHER CONTINENT!”

Celestia snapped the book shut. “You know, Luna, maybe you should lean into this fabulous new look? I’m thinking a touch of shimmer blush, a dusting of glitter, maybe a bright pink tiara or a ribbon in your mane. This might be just what you need to turn over a new image!”

“Will you be serious for a change?!”

“What do you think? Shall I schedule a royal portrait sitting?”

“By the constellations, Tia, SHUT UP!”

Celestia smirked. “Relax, sister. From reading Twilight’s friendship reports, I happen to know of a zebra shaman who lives not far from here in the Everfree. I’ve already sent a courier to gather the zebrastone crystals from her. This time tomorrow, you should be back to your dark and gloomy self.”

Luna’s relief was palpable. She sank low in the bath.

“Thank the stars for that,” she mumbled. She looked up at Celestia, resigned. “How did she beat me, Tia?”

“I have no idea.”

“It was a pretty good prank, wasn’t it?”

“It was pretty pink-credible.”

“Where is she, anyway? I thought she would be here to gloat.”

But Rainbow Dash wasn’t there.

She was alone in her cloud house, newly re-annexed, with the covers pulled up around her, shivering.

Author's Note

Alternate Scene

“This is GREAT!” Rainbow beamed. “You’re just who I need to turn the tables against Luna! Hey, did you happen to bring any popovers with you?”

Pinkie’s grin vanished. “No! I couldn’t find any more! And it’s not like I didn’t look. I practically turned the whole train car upside-down searching for supplies and provisions before I set out for Canterlot Castle. But in the end, all I could find were these nasty fruit cakes!”

She reached into hammerspace, rummaged around, and came up with an unappetizing-looking pastry. She shoved it into Twilight’s face.

“Do you want a slice, Twilight?”

“But I hate—BLUGGH—” Twilight’s sentence was cut off as Pinkie forced the fruitcake down her throat.

“Do you want another slice? Huh? Huh? DO YA?”

~fin

10. Once Upon a December

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER TEN
Once Upon a December

Originally Published 12/8/2019

“Feather Flu.”

Celestia stared at the doctor, still trying to come to grips. “Feather Flu,” she repeated at some length.

“That’s right. Influenza. Nothing to be overly concerned about, at least not yet at this early stage. It looks to be in its fifth or sixth day. She could’ve picked it up anywhere, really.”

“Isn’t it a little late in the year for Feather Flu?” Luna wondered.

“We typically expect flu season to peak in February and tail off through the end of May. June infections are fairly unusual, but not unheard of. It’s all a matter of exposure. This year’s strain was particularly nasty, I’m sorry to say. Over half of Ponyville’s weather team was stricken with Feather Flu in an outbreak earlier this spring. It’s a wonder she didn’t come down with it then. I take it she didn’t get vaccinated?”

The question took Celestia aback. “I… I don’t know.”

“Is there anything you can prescribe?” asked Luna.

“She said she didn’t want anything when I saw her. Said medicine was ‘gross’ and ‘for foals.’ ”

“Did she,” Luna drawled.

“Indulge us, please, if you would be so kind,” said Celestia.

The doctor nodded and snapped open his medicine bag. “I can provide a decongestant for her lungs and sinuses, and some ibuprofen for the pain. That’s the limit of what I can do, though. I’m afraid for all the advances of modern medicine, there’s still no substitute for the body’s own defenses. She needs lots of rest and plenty of fluids. These things generally clear up on their own.”

Celestia nodded. “I understand. Thank you, doctor.”

“One more thing. Feather Flu is notoriously contagious. I’ll continue to check up on her twice daily, but until she’s out of the woods, I recommend restricting access. That includes friends, guards, and attendants. With any luck, she’ll be over the hump in a week, and back on all cylinders again in ten to fourteen days.”

“Of course. Thank you.”

The doctor packed up his things and shuffled out. All the while, Luna’s piercing gaze never left Celestia.

“You feel guilty,” she observed.

Celestia let out a long, heavy breath that blew a lock of her hair out of place. “Par for the course,” she muttered.

“Do you want to try to talk some sense into her, or shall I?”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Rainbow growled and lifted her eyes from her Daring Do book, feeling quite annoyed and full of wrath. She was queasy and clammy, she’d just finished reading the same paragraph for the tenth time and she still didn’t know what the heck it said, and she sure as hay wasn’t in the mood to talk to this bozo again.

“I SAID I’M FINE, YOU STUPID QUACK!” she raised her voice. “You can take your thermometer and SHOVE IT UP YOUR—”

“Should I come back later?” Celestia called from beyond the door.

Rainbow mouthed a silent curse. Snapping the book shut, she sprang out of bed and started doing wing-ups off the floor. “Eh-heh, just kidding! Come in!”

Celestia did. The odd sight brought her to a faltering halt.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were in the middle of…”

“Strength training! Can’t be all about the cardio, you know. Gotta keep the ole’ wing power up!”

“Ah,” said Celestia with a nod. Turning, she placed a pair of pill bottles on the nightstand. “I only wanted to bring you these medicines. The court physician recommended this one for your headache, and this one for—”

“I am NOT sick!”

Rainbow flipped back onto her hooves, almost snarling. Celestia quirked an eyebrow at her.

“The Dash does not get sick. The Dash has not been sick. The Dash is a fortress of immunity.”

“Forgive me for not knowing,” said Celestia.

“Immunity’s my middle name, in fact. Rainbow Immunity Dash!”

“Of course.”

“Rainbow Dash does not get sick. Sickness is beneath the Dash. And so are doctors, and medicine, and—”

The last item in the list would forever remain a mystery, as her lungs chose that moment to erupt in a fit of coughs. She sank to her haunches, hacking into her hoof.

Celestia looked on her pityingly.

“Don’t”—COUGH, COUGH—“s-say anything,” she choked out.

Celestia didn’t say anything.

As Rainbow’s fit died down, her expression gradually turned to annoyance. “So what? Now you’re just gonna stand there and silently judge me? ‘Look at the miserable little pony hack up a lung two seconds after she just swore she wasn’t sick. Hil-larious!’ ”

Celestia protested, “That isn’t what I meant to—”

“Aw, just get out of here! Who invited you in, anyway?” She picked up a shoe and threw it half-heartedly at the princess. It made it halfway across the room before it hit the floor.

There was a pained, downcast look in Celestia’s eyes as she mumbled an assent and excused herself. After she had gone, Rainbow collapsed back onto the bed, groaning and feeling awful.

As she lay there with her face buried in her pillow, that pained, downcast look lodged in her memory for a good long while.

“Stupid Celestia,” she said to no one in particular, her eyelids drooping as she drifted toward a fitful sleep. “Not sick… ’m not sick…”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Night, and she writhed under her sheets, rolling first one way and then the other, kicking her legs at phantoms. Her eyes flew in a frenzy beneath shuttered lids.

Rarity was falling, plummeting below her. She’d flown too close to the sun, and now her wings were burned to cinders, and now she was screaming, and now she was falling, falling, falling, and Rainbow reached out her hoof to grab her, but the distance between them was too great, she wasn’t fast enough, she wasn’t good enough.

Everypony was watching, and she wasn’t good enough. She could feel their eyes crawl over her like ants, could hear every note of Rarity’s terror shrieking in her ears, and she wasn’t good enough. It was just like before. All the times she’d tried and failed, all the things they’d written about her, all the laughing in her face and the whispering behind her back and the sad looks her daddy gave her sometimes when he thought she wasn’t looking, and nothing was any different now than it was back then, she still wasn’t good enough.

Except it was different now.

Now they would all watch her kill her friend.

Please! Please, not like this!

Ten yards out. Close enough to see the tears streak down Rarity’s face as she flailed in the air, helpless—

A little farther, a little faster! It’s not too late. She’s RIGHT THERE! I can still reach her! Please! PLEASE!

“PLEASE, RAINBOW DASH!” Rarity screamed.

Pulse pounding, wings burning, the ground shooting up—

Five yards out.

Faster! FASTER! I can do it! Please, just this once, LET ME DO IT!

Three yards out.

Two!

She reached out her hoof. Rarity reached out hers—

THE MACH CONE FLARED AROUND HER LIKE A SILVER BULLET. She HOWLED in pain and turned her head to the side, tears slipping off in the wind as she SLAMMED into the pressure barrier. Her wings BURNED and her lungs BURNED and her dreams BURNED and it was just like before, it was just like before, she couldn’t keep up, the cone was tightening around her and she couldn’t keep up, the quivering tension about to snap her back and she couldn’t keep up—

“RAINBOW DASH! PLEASE!”

The look in Rarity’s eyes, the pleading, mortal fear, oh Celestia, please, just a little faster, PLEASE! She could almost reach her, she was right there, she was still right there—

One yard out!

PLEASE! PLEASE, CELESTIA! She could ALMOST reach her—her hoof jabbed forward, desperate to make the grab—

She wasn’t good enough.

She saw frost on the window, snow piling on the sill, and white wings, and smiling eyes, and gentle hooves that cradled her in the firelight, kept her safe and warm and promised she would never be alone—

She wasn’t good enough.

Rarity’s hoof brushed against her own—they were inches apart—

PLEASE! I CAN ALMOST REACH HER! PLEASE!

The heat of the crackling hearth as those wonderful hooves rocked her softly, lovingly back and forth, holding her like she was the most precious thing in the entire world—the cold air lashing her face as she FOUGHT and FOUGHT against the mach cone, REACHING with EVERYTHING she had in her—the pressure barrier SHRIEKING in her ears, rising above the wind’s angry roar—a quiet voice whispering to her, promising her she was loved and wanted, making her feel safe, giving her peace, filling her with trust, singing her off to sleep with a lullaby, so gentle and so pure—

SHE REACHED OUT AS FAR AS SHE COULD—

PLEASE, CELESTIA! She squeezed her eyes shut. Please…!

And now the other pony’s arms were wrapping around her, taking her away—and she reached out as far as she could, but her mommy was gone, wasn’t there anymore to love her, and sing to her, and keep her safe—and she cried out from the hole in her heart, and she reached out as far as she could, reached out for the soft hooves that rocked her and the quiet voice she trusted, but it was too late, her mommy was gone—

She wasn’t good enough.

One yard out.

The mach cone pushed against her. Her reality shrank down to the fear on Rarity’s face and the deadly ground, shooting up.

She wasn’t good enough.

She reached out as far as she could. Knowing it was all on her.

She wasn’t good enough.

Knowing what would happen when she failed.

One yard out.

She wasn’t good enough… She wasn’t good enough… SHE WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH SHE WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH SHE WASN’T

Two yards out.

Three.

The air was crackling and shards of the silvery pressure barrier were bleeding around her, but the harder she pushed, the more it pushed back. It was too late. She couldn’t catch up.

She wasn’t good enough.

Rarity hit the ground. Her body jerked, her neck snapped and twisted the wrong way around, her blood—

“AHHHHHHHHHH!”

Rainbow jolted upright in bed, gasping in terror. Her body rewarded her for it by plunging a knife of pain into the back of her skull and sending her into a fit of coughs.

She rolled over onto her side, hacking into the crook of her hoof, feeling her headache worsen with each spasm of her lungs. When it was over, she swallowed the phlegm back down, groaned, and shut her eyes. The afternoon light lashed her face and murdered any hope of getting back to sleep.

Not that she could have, after a dream like that.

She felt tears threatening, but she fought them back, trying as best she could to put the nightmare out of mind, the way she usually did. It was hard this time though. They usually weren’t that vivid.

And Rarity…

She grabbed hold of a second pillow and clutched it to her chest like a life preserver. Slowly, her pulse came down. Her nerves settled.

Then Luna’s voice made her jump out of her skin a second time.

“Trouble sleeping?”

“GYAH!” Rainbow squawked. She bolted upright again, her headache sinking its white-hot branding iron back into her brain.

As she sat there in something approaching total misery, her eyes gradually shifted into focus to reveal the young princess of the moon herself, seated in a cushy armchair opposite the bed. Rainbow groaned and braced herself for the ‘ha-ha-gotcha’ grin she knew by now to expect, but Luna’s look was inscrutable. A perfect poker face.

Rainbow lowered herself back into her pillows, her breathing fast and labored. “I hope you don’t do this often.”

“Depends on your definition of the word.”

“Here we go again with the mind games. You know, I never had a problem with ponies breaking into my house back in Ponyville.”

Rainbow paused to think.

“…That I know of, anyway. Remind me to get a new guard tortoise.”

Off in the corner, Tank yawned, stretched, and raised his green, scaly head, blinking slowly.

“You really shouldn’t say such mean things about your beloved pet. It isn’t courteous,” Luna jokingly admonished her.

Rainbow laughed. It was a mistake. She was coughing and sputtering for the next two straight minutes. Once her respiratory system decided to fall back in line, she peered up at Luna through wary, weary eyes. “Tell me this isn’t another one of your pranks.”

“It isn’t.”

“Good, because if I drag myself over to the window and see your stupid flag sticking out of my front lawn again, I’m gonna be super unimpressed. You did that one already.”

“How long has it been happening?” Luna asked.

“What?”

“The dreams. The nightmares.”

Rainbow didn’t bother to hide her scowl. “What are you even doing in here? I thought I was under quarantine or something. You know, ultra-contagious, no visitors allowed.”

“Goddesses don’t get sick, Rainbow.”

“Well, isn’t that the most awesome thing ever?” Rainbow snarked. “So was it not a thing for ponies to knock before entering back when you were socialized a thousand years ago…? Or were you all so busy living in caves and rubbing sticks together to make fire, you didn’t figure there was any need for doors and door-related etiquette?”

“We only huddled in caves to save ourselves from extinction. We had doors, but we tended not to answer, because it was usually death who came knocking,” Luna answered dryly.

Rainbow blinked. “Wow. Okay. Bit of a mood kill.”

“I’ll give you credit, though.”

“For what?”

“Your banter. A million times better than before you came to Canterlot. I think this place is rubbing off on you.”

Rainbow stared for a long moment. “You’re bold. You know that?”

“I suppose you’d be the expert.”

“I was gonna go with ‘creepy,’ but I decided it wouldn’t be courteous.”

Luna rolled her eyes. “I haven’t been sitting here watching you sleep. I only let myself in a few minutes ago. I did knock first, but you didn’t answer, as you were too busy suffering your terrible dream. I’m only here to check up on you because you didn’t let in the court physician earlier this morning, it’s past noon, and nopony’s seen you all day.”

Rainbow fumbled with the clock on her nightstand. “Aw, horseapples.”

“How long has it been happening?” Luna asked.

“What?”

“The nightmares, Rainbow.”

No use trying to dodge the question anymore. Rainbow closed her eyes and sighed. “A while.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. What day is it?”

“Sunday. June tenth.”

Rainbow did some math in her head. “A long time, then. It was the start of May when I got this dumb thing—” She flicked her horn. “—and I guess the dreams started… I dunno, a week before then?”

“What do you dream about?”

The look on Rainbow’s face turned sour again. “Sunshine, lollipops, and ponies who know how to mind their own bucking business!”

“You dream of your mother, don’t you?”

“You—I—Celestia is not my mother!”

“But you do dream of Celestia. You just now admitted as much.”

Rainbow sputtered, her mouth flapped open and closed like a goldfish. She felt like kicking herself under the sheets.

“Listen. It isn’t uncommon for alicorns to yearn for their mothers approaching and during the hour of their Unity. Vivid dreams to that effect aren’t unknown either,” Luna said.

“Yeah. It’s all biological. Instinctive. I get it.”

“No. It isn’t.”

Rainbow peered at her strangely.

Luna seemed knowledgeable, even self-assured, but soon enough her face dissolved into doubt. “At least, I don’t think it is. I’m not certain. I don’t know if you realize what a strange case you are.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You do understand what happened to you was unprecedented, don’t you? Unity isn’t supposed to be such a painful ordeal. It’s meant to happen when an alicorn is an infant, when the bone of the skull is soft and the horn can emerge without resistance. It was never some kind of horrific torture like what you had to endure, at least as far as I understand it—because it doesn’t ever happen to full-grown ponies.”

“But… Why me, then?” Rainbow asked.

“I can’t say for sure. I was still banished when you were born, of course, but as best I understand it, when you were a foal and your horn didn’t appear after weeks and weeks, Celestia summoned the most powerful archmages in the realm to scan you and see whether you had any alicorn magic in you. At the time, there wasn’t a drop to be found. I can only speculate the alicorn blood is so dilute in you, it caused your Unity to be postponed. It’s why my sister never realized you would have to go through all this someday when she…”

Luna trailed off. She pursed her lips, realizing she’d said too much. But her meaning came through to Rainbow Dash, crystal clear.

When she gave me away, she completed the sentence.

She felt her throat tighten. The burning sting of tears. A sniffle got out despite her best efforts. “S-Stupid stuffy nose,” she said, her voice thick.

Luna didn’t say anything.

An uncomfortable moment went by. Rainbow was sorely aware how uncool she looked. She tried to swallow her emotions. “So… You’re saying these dreams I’m having aren’t natural because… because what happened to me isn’t natural? It’s all just… biology gone haywire, or something?’

“It could be,” Luna said. “Or…”

“Or what?”

“Or maybe there’s something else causing you to suffer them. It could be there’s some part of you that can’t let go. Or can’t stop letting go.”

Luna shrugged and stood up.

“Or maybe it’s both. Maybe there is some lingering residual effect from your Unity, and something psychological as well. I don’t know. I’m not an expert on these things.”

“Awesome. Just awesome,” Rainbow muttered.

“Can I get you anything before I go? An aspirin? A glass of water?”

“I’m fine.”

Luna nodded. She headed to the bedroom door, but stopped there and lingered, pausing to give Rainbow Dash one last sympathetic look.

“I hope you feel better,” she said. “In every way.”

Then she left. Rainbow tracked the sound of her hoofsteps as she went down the stairs and out of the house. No sooner did she hear the front door close than her head crashed into the pillow, her body surrendering to her aching muscles.

She settled in for another fitful sleep. Nothing was ever easy anymore.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Rainbow Dash felt worse and worse as the hours ticked slowly, miserably by. Her cough deteriorated. Her breathing became shallow and ragged. Her headache kept up its relentless assault on her pain centers, to say nothing of the thousand other aches all throughout her body. By the time five o’clock rolled around, she couldn’t have done another wing-up if she tried.

“Open your mouth and say ‘ah,’ please.”

Then there was the doctor.

He was a middle-aged stallion, smart-looking, all done-up fancy-like in a collared shirt and necktie, with the obligatory stethoscope hanging off his white coat. Having him here bothered Rainbow, but she wasn’t in any kind of position to put up a fight.

That said, she wasn’t about to go easy on him.

“I never liked doctors,” she rasped.

“Why is that?”

Rainbow only glared at him, lips pressed tightly shut.

The doctor met her bleary, mistrustful eyes with his intelligent ones. “You can speak your mind if you want to. Whatever your feelings about us physicians are, we don’t bite. I promise.”

“You’re just… trying to trick me… so you can stick that stupid popsicle stick in my mouth and shine your stupid light down my throat.”

“I took a Hippocratic oath to do no such thing. Tactics like that would be a violation of medical ethics.”

Rainbow muttered something under her breath about a ‘hypocritic oath,’ but almost immediately, another fit of coughs exploded from her lungs and sent her into writhing convulsions. Pain, pain, and more pain mushroomed in her skull with every heave of her chest. At the end of thirty seconds, the attack subsided and left her trembling under the bedsheets, a sweat-faced, groaning mess.

The doctor hovered over her, concerned. “What is it that’s causing the cough? Does it come on its own?”

Rainbow opened her eyes and looked up at him bleakly. She motioned with her hoof, and he picked up the cup by her bedside and raised it to her lips. She spat another throatful of yellow phlegm into it.

“Yeah,” she answered. Her voice sounded raw. “Happens every now and then. And… if I breathe in too much.”

“Can’t fill your lungs? Makes you cough?”

She nodded.

The doctor returned the cup to her nightstand, then retrieved a small notebook from his bag. For a while, the room was quiet. Just the sound of her ragged breathing, and the scratch of his quill against the parchment.

After a minute had gone by, he broke the silence and asked, without looking up, “So why is it you don’t like doctors?”

Rainbow let her eyelids fall shut. “I dunno. Bad experiences, I guess.”

“Bad experiences?”

“Had a lotta bones set in my life. Fractures. Sprains. If somepony makes you feel a lot of pain, it’s natural to have a knee-jerk distrust for them after a while. I talked to Twilight about it once, a long time ago…”

A tormented look passed across her face like a fleeting shadow, there all at once and gone again in an instant.

“She explained it to me. Gave it a… funny psychology name.”

“Conditioning.”

“Yeah. That’s it. Conditio—blaaaggghhh!”

The doctor seized the opportunity to jam a tongue depressor into her mouth and shine a flashlight down her throat. He was done in a moment, but that didn’t save Rainbow Dash form exploding into another fit of coughs.

“What the hay—” she wheezed in-between paroxysms, “happened to—your stupid—bucking oath?”

“You aren’t the first stubborn patient I’ve ever had to contend with. Lucky for you, I’m stubborner.” He helped her sit up in bed. “I did ask you to open your mouth and say, ‘ah.’ ”

As her coughing fit began to abate, he brought the cup to her lips again, and another sticky wad of throat-matter found its way in. Rainbow moaned pitifully and collapsed against her pillows.

“Yeah,” she croaked. “That’s the problem with this place. Everypony lies.”

He actually looked a smidge regretful. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I am. I don’t mean to abuse your trust, but you are my patient, and it’s my job to get you back on your hooves again. Take me at my word. I’m only looking out for your best interests.”

“That doesn’t make it right!”

“No. It doesn’t.”

Another rasping, quill-scratching minute went by. Half of Rainbow was curious what he could be writing. The other half of her felt so terrible, she didn’t think she could bring herself to care about anything ever again.

“Lean forward for me, please,” the doctor spoke up at some length.

“Don’t wanna lean forward. Just leave me alone.”

“Lean forward for me, please.”

Rainbow swore, but she did as he ordered, propping herself up in bed once more. A moment later, she felt the cold metal of the stethoscope press against her bare back, dead-center between her wings.

“Inhale… Good. Now, exhale… Good. Thank you. You can lie back.”

Her head hit the pillows again, and she fumbled for the blanket to keep the shivers at bay. The doctor helped pull the covers up around her and make sure she was tucked in.

Goddesses, this was the worst. It was like she was a helpless little foal. Maybe death would swoop in and save her from this embarrassment. Then again, she’d always hoped for a really awesome death, with samurai swords and zombies and explosions. This was the opposite of cool, the lamest possible way to go: death by slimy balls of snot.

More quill-scratching. More rasping.

Rainbow stared up at the ceiling through unfocused, half-lidded eyes. From the depths of her fevered mind, a sudden curiosity bubbled up.

“Hey.”

“Mmm.”

“Mind if I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Rainbow’s brow wrinkled as she gathered her thoughts in a fog, trying to figure out how to best put her question to words. “What… What do you know about me?”

“I know you’re my patient, and not a very cooperative one at that.”

“No… No…” She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating harder to try to find the right words. “What do you know about me apart from that? Like… about my identity? Who I am?”

The scratching stopped. She knew she had the doctor’s full attention.

“Why do you ask?”

“I’ve spent practically the last month of my life cooped up in the palace. It… hasn’t been all great. And I’ve got… like… no idea what’s happening on the other side of the castle walls. But you must know something, right? You’ve got friends and family on the outside. You probably keep up with the papers. What do you know about me? What are other ponies saying?”

“I know your name’s Rainbow Dash. You had a hoof in defeating the tyrant, Nightmare Moon, and redeeming Princess Luna. My daughter and her husband were in Ponyville for the Summer Sun Celebration a year ago when the whole fiasco went down. After the tyrant was defeated, it was quite the celebration the kingdom threw for you and your friends, or so they say.”

He pursed his lips.

“And I know that these days, you also go by the name Princess Aurora. That much is common knowledge among the guards and staff. It got out to the press ages ago.”

Rainbow gestured at her horn. “What about… this? How much do you know about this?”

“More than most others, I expect, being the court physician. Princess Celestia informed me of your ordeal when you first came to reside here at Canterlot Castle. Unity, she called it. Your doctors in Ponyville were kind enough to forward me the relevant medical records before they burned the original copies.”

“But… what do you know about my relationship to Celestia?”

“Next to nothing. The Crown has kept that information under wraps. But I can make an educated guess.”

His expression hardened. He shook his head.

“Enough of this line of questioning,” he said. “Thinking about these things isn’t going to help you get any better.”

“What about other ponies? Ponies out there.”

Rainbow tilted her head meaningfully in the direction of the open window. Her lips curled upward in a funny-looking grin.

“You know, I did a few sonic rainbooms in the sky over Canterlot a few weeks ago. I… haven’t been super discreet. Lots of ponies must have noticed the horn when I was zooming up and down the avenues. What are they saying about me? What are they writing?”

The doctor stood up without answering and proceeded to rifle through his medicine bag. Rainbow watched him, perplexed.

“Doc?”

“A patient’s emotional well-being is just as critical to her recovery as all things physical,” he answered vaguely.

“Huh?”

“I’m afraid,” he cut her off, “it isn’t just Feather Flu. You’re also suffering from acute bronchitis. The airways in your lungs are inflamed. That’s what’s behind your cough. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for this sort of thing to develop from a respiratory infection like the one you’ve come down with.”

Rainbow felt like burying her head under a pillow. Great. Just great.

“So what’s the good news?”

The doctor snapped his bag shut. When he turned back around to face her, there was an amber bottle in his hoof, with a mysterious-looking liquid sloshing around inside it. “The good news is that I’ve got some cough syrup here that’s going to alleviate some of the misery. Take one capful morning, noon, and night. One, and only one. Understood?”

“Got it.”

He held out the bottle to her. When she reached to take it, he pulled it back again. “One capful.”

“One capful! All right, already! I get it!”

She snatched the bottle with a nasty look. When it became obvious he wasn’t about to let the issue go until he’d done his due diligence, she made a show of unscrewing the cap, measuring out the prescribed amount, and swigging it down in a single gulp. “There. Happy?”

The doctor nodded. “My other recommendations are unchanged. Lots of bedrest, fluids, and time. I’ll stop by tomorrow morning and check up on you again. And if you’d like somepony else to talk to about your concerns, I can bring it up with Princess Celestia, and she can—”

“Just get out.”

The doctor did just that, leaving Rainbow Dash to sit and sulk alone.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Twilight Sparkle and the guard captain boarded the train to Manehattan at a quarter past two, and it chugged its way out of Canterlot Station shortly after. Of the train, there wasn’t a lot to say. Of the trip, there was even less.

Tristar showed her to a private sleeping car, opening the door for her as she shuffled inside. “My personal lodgings,” he said. “It’s eighteen hours to the city. Make yourself comfortable.”

Twilight looked around the suite, finding it to be well-appointed. She turned a suspicious eye up at Tristar.

“Where will you stay?”

“With the rest of my men, two cars up. I’ll be bunking there.”

Twilight nodded. They exchanged a few more courtesies, and then she was grateful to see him leave.

The trip went by without incident. Hours passed, and she didn’t stray from the car, preferring to stay put and dig into the reading material she’d brought along for the ride. She cracked open the criminal dossier and flipped from page to page, committing to memory the photographs and biographies of each of the thirteen members of the Ascendancy.

But the longer she read, the more her mind began to wander, reflecting first on the mission yet to come—then, in due course, on her traveling companion; on Tristar. Her jaw clenched, adrenaline crashing in her veins as she replayed the earlier confrontation in her head. The way he’d dressed her down in his office, refusing to admit one iota of accountability for any of the things he’d done! Her anger flared.

“Tch! A lot of good this is doing me.”

Still fuming, she stuffed the intel back into the manila folder and pushed it to the side. She couldn’t concentrate on this right now. She needed to focus on something different.

A flash of her horn, and her travel bag flew open, a worn and weathered book floating out. Its gilt lettering glittered in the fading daylight as she took it in her hooves: A Brief History of Equestria, Part One.

It fell open naturally to Chapter Three, page 171, and she pored over it for the hundredth time, searching for any new information, anything at all she could use against the terrorists who’d hurt her brother. It wasn’t long before her mind began to wander down the same well-trod, vindictive paths as before. Her eyes flickered over each line, but her brain just couldn’t churn the words into meaning. The arrogant guard captain stuck in her craw.

The light in the cabin turned pinkish-orange as the sun began to set. It was behind the train and out of sight, but nonetheless, she cast her gaze out the heart-shaped window, savoring the view as the trees and hilltops were painted with the magnificent colors of dusk.

Back to the dossier she went, then back to the book, then back to the dossier, and so it went for a time until at last, she pushed back her chair and stood up, filled with frustration and annoyance and the need to know why. She barged through the door and headed up the train.

Two cars up, she found another sleeping cabin, though it wasn’t anywhere near as luxurious as the one she’d been provided. This one was crammed with narrow bunks, and there were no fewer than twelve guards clad in armor, fortified and fighting-ready. Her security detail for the trip, and they were understandably on high alert.

“Where’s Captain Tristar?” she demanded of one of them who looked to be the acting commander, a gray-coated stallion in regalia.

“Not here, Miss Sparkle,” he replied. “He’s taken wing. Gone up for a fly and a breath of air. He’ll be back by nightfall. Is there something I can help you with in the meantime?”

“No. Thank you.” She returned to her car, dissatisfied.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The countryside stretched beneath Tristar like a sea of ink. The sky above was its mirror, the moon and stars blotted out by onyx fields of clouds, jet-black and formless.

It didn’t matter. It was enough for him to be up off the ground, away from that suffocating, claustrophobic prison-on-rails. Back on top of the world, where he belonged.

He looped and rolled, and his muscles stretched pleasantly, all the piled-on stress of the last several days bleeding off the tips of his wings and the vanes of his feathers. These cross-country trips were getting to be a bit much. As grave a threat as the Ascendancy posed, he looked forward to the day when he could go home to more important things.

One last corkscrew, then he leveled out and began his descent toward the moving train.

Of all the things he expected to find on his return, Twilight Sparkle standing on top of the caboose was not one of them. But surprise, surprise, there she was. Waiting for him.

“We need to talk!” she yelled. The wind was deafening, and so was the clatter of the wheels on the rail joints.

Tristar landed a few yards away from her on the roof of the train. His lips drew into their usual scowl.

“What are you doing out here?” he shouted back.

“We need to talk!” she insisted.

“I can think of a thousand places better suited to it than this!”

Right on cue, a circle of light burst from Twilight’s horn, rapidly expanding to envelop them both. There was a lurch, a blinding flash—and then they were suddenly someplace else.

Tristar leapt back into the air, wings firing, martial instincts kicking in. The train was gone. They were on a paved road. Two-story brick buildings on either side, with paint peeling off the doors. Some of the windows were boarded up.

“What did you DO?”

“Teleported us,” Twilight said simply.

A few flickering streetlamps. Not a lot of light, but enough to make out the words on the shingle-signs that hung from the nearest establishments. There was a union hall. A boarding house. Not another living soul in sight, but that didn’t mean they were safe. Concealing shadows were all around them. If anypony was out there lurking in the dark, they’d have no way of knowing.

They were exposed.

Twilight seemed unconcerned by all this, but Tristar could barely contain his rage as he spun on her.

“WHERE did you teleport us?”

“Why, we’re in a charming industrial town someplace east of Neighton! I’m not sure what it’s called. I was sitting at the window when we went by it thirty minutes ago, and I thought it would make a lovely place for a visit. Surely you must have seen the lights from the air?”

“Our train is MILES and MILES from here!”

“Relax. I can bring us back any time I feel like it. I’m Princess Celestia’s prized protégé, after all!”

Tristar would’ve kept up the fight, but he sensed the looming futility of it. He hung his head, defeated.

“Have they got a pub?”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

A familiar tingle in the back of Rainbow Dash’s throat yanked her from her reverie, made her sit up in bed so fast, she swore her brain must have bounced off her skull, her head was pounding so hard—her hoof fumbled blindly for the cup on the nightstand, but found the lamp instead, managed to smash right into it, sending it teetering, falling—it hit the floor the exact same instant the coughs came bursting out of her—

CRASH!

“AHCK-khaaah! Khaaakh! Kuh-KHAKH!”

The coughs came and didn’t stop coming. A long, hacking string of coughs from deep inside her lungs, rough with the scrape of the phlegm in her throat and wet with the mucus that came sputtering up. She reached again for the cup and found it this time, brought it to her mouth, and spat the gunk into it.

She peered down in a detached way at the fresh layer of yellow ooze that had collected in the bottom of the cup. Then she put it down on the nightstand and collapsed back into her pillows, gasping and wheezing as her eyes fluttered shut. The chills picked that moment to come back on, and she drew her blankets tight around herself, quivering as she curled up into a little ball.

It was a short-lived rest.

“AHCK-KUH-KHAAAKH! Kuh-KHAKH! KHAKH! KHAKH!”

Again with the coughing. Again with the cup.

Again with the gasping. The wheezing. The pounding headache.

Rainbow would’ve thrown up her hooves in exasperation if she didn’t ache so much. “This is the worst,” she moaned.

She couldn’t go on like this. Staying awake was a nightmare, and there was no getting back to sleep so long as her cough continued to torment her like this. In a moment of desperation, her eyes fell upon the bottle of medicine the doctor had left by a her bedside.

“Buck it.”

She snatched it up, plucked off the lid, and chugged the whole contents down, her face scrunching at the hideous taste. Once she’d emptied it, she tossed away the container without a second thought and retreated, shivering, back underneath her covers.

The discarded bottle rolled off into a corner. If only she’d bothered to read the label, she might have known what she was in for.

WARNING: CONTAINS 50% ETHYL ALCOHOL
TAKE ONLY AS DIRECTED

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The town was… What would be the best word to describe it?

Twilight racked her vocabulary for a fitting adjective as they rambled past another shuttered storefront.

Shabby? Dilapidated?

No, that would be too judgmental. She was a guest in this place, which meant she oughtn’t think any impolite thoughts about it. Every city, town, and hamlet had its own unique and special charm. Sometimes, you just had to look a little harder to find it.

And besides, this place had its own architectural marvels. She cast a glance at the behemoth structure rising out of the distant hills, all crumbling masonry and twisted metalwork, gantries woven between the rusted-out blast furnaces overtop the corrugated roofs. More pipes than she could ever count, thick pipes, and slender pipes, and pipes so huge, they could double as obelisks, sloping skyward to meet the smokestacks and shot towers, which loomed gargantuan over all, silent as tombstones.

It was… certainly something.

Twilight opened her mouth to ask Tristar a question. “How long do you think it’s been since—”

He hushed her, then took her by surprise, pulling her into a narrow alley they happened to be going past. Twilight struggled against him for a few seconds until her ears picked up the unmistakable sound of a group of colts coming down the road in the other direction. There were five of them, maybe six, all adolescents, laughing and shouting drunkenly to each other, egging each other on. As they jaunted on by the crevice they were hidden in, Twilight saw they were all earth ponies, not quite old enough to drink yet. Though that didn’t seem to be keeping them from passing a bottle back and forth.

They kept on going around a corner, and the sound of them faded into the distance. As soon as she was sure they’d gone, Twilight wrestled free of Tristar and fixed him with a livid glare.

“What’s the big idea?”

“Avoiding trouble.”

“From who? The Ascendancy is all locked up, aren’t they?”

Tristar stared at her. Then, with a grimace, he shook his head. “Naiveté isn’t a good look on you, Miss Sparkle.”

“What?”

“Enough. Let’s go.”

A few more minutes wandering, and they found a drab little hole-in-the-wall, the Wistful Spirits Tavern. It was… not the most reputable establishment Twilight had ever set hoof in, by appearances. But it was off the road and brightly lit, and that was enough for their purposes.

Tristar immediately made for the bar, but Twilight nudged him over to a corner booth. He snorted, but complied. They slid into the secluded nook, and a haggard-looking earth pony barmaid soon waddled over.

“What’ll you have?”

“Whiskey. Neat.”

“Think I can remember that easy enough. And how ’bout you, Miss…?”

“Twilight Sparkle,” said the purple unicorn with a smile.

The barmaid stared at her. It was several awkward seconds before Twilight realized her mistake.

“Oh. Um, iced tea, please.”

The earth pony nodded and lumbered behind the bar. Now it was Tristar’s turn to stare.

“Iced tea?”

“What? I’m designated teleporter.”

Tristar shook his head. When their drinks arrived a minute later, he took a good-sized swig, savoring the burn of the whiskey as it rolled down his throat. Only after he had the warm glow of the liquor inside him did he deign open up Pandora’s box:

“All right. Mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Very well.” Twilight folded her hooves primly. “I don’t like you.”

Tristar rolled his eyes and took another long pull.

“And I’m willing to bet you don’t like me much either,” Twilight said. “But you invited me to be a professional collaborator on this mission, and I respect that.”

Tristar tipped his glass. “Salud.”

“I want to know why you are the way you are. I want you to tell me why you have such a chip on your shoulder. About me, and about Rainbow Dash.”

“And I suppose if I say no, you’ll leave me to hitchhike the rest of the way to Manehattan,” the guard captain chuckled.

Twilight stared at him, stone-faced.

Tristar’s smile disappeared. “You’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, you know. My opinions are my own.”

“Your opinions are your own. Your actions are conduct unbecoming an officer in Princess Celestia’s retinue.”

Tristar laughed darkly. “Why? Because I took certain measures to keep your little disappointment of a friend safe in Canterlot Castle on the eve of a terrorist attack? I shed my blood in Manehattan alongside your brother to keep innocent ponies safe. Don’t forget that.”

“ ‘The bastard child of an earth pony,’ ” Twilight echoed his words sourly.

“Do you really want to have this conversation? You aren’t going to like me any better at the end of it, you know.”

“Try me.”

Tristar drained the rest of his whiskey in a single swill. He slammed the glass down and signaled the barmaid for another.

“Fine,” he said. “I don’t like unicorns.”

“That’s your answer?” Twilight scoffed. “That’s your explanation for all the awful things you’ve done?”

The barmaid delivered his second drink. Tristar sipped it leisurely and chose not to reply.

Twilight couldn’t wipe the disbelief off her face. A single laugh escaped her, mirthless and hollow. “Wow. What a fantastic friendship report this one’s going to make. ‘Dear Princess Celestia. Today, I learned some ponies are huge racists.’ ”

“A bit late in life to be learning that lesson,” Tristar said dryly. “Especially for a unicorn born and raised in Canterlot, of all places.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?!”

The look on Tristar’s face was half smirk and half leer. “You know, it shouldn’t amaze me how oblivious some ponies are, but it always does. It’s usually the smart ones, too. Never fails. Folks like you, you’ve always got the biggest blind spot for the prejudice you grow up around.”

“You make it sound like I’m the bigot when you’re the one who just admitted you don’t like me because I’m a unicorn!”

“No, I dislike you because you’re an ignorant little girl who brings down her judgment like it’s a hammer of truth. It’s got nothing to do with you being a unicorn. I only dislike unicorns in general.”

“Why, then? Why do you generally dislike unicorns?” Twilight bristled. “And how am I ignorant?”

Tristar shoved his drink to the side. The animosity shooting back and forth between could have crackled in the air above the table.

“You really want to do this?”

“Yes!”

“Fine. You’re ignorant because you grew up ignorant. You aren’t wise. You sure as hell don’t know how the world works. You don’t know a damn thing you didn’t read in a book. You’re a unicorn, born to other unicorns. You’ve never had the short end of the stick in life.”

“So what?! Who cares if I’m a unicorn?!” Twilight had to struggle to keep from shouting. “What difference does it make?”

“Only a universe of magic at your disposal.”

“And what of it? Magic has done more to advance the quality of life for ponies than anything else in history!”

“Has it,” Tristar said dryly. “How convenient for you that magic should be the thread that holds up the world. Our society… Our technology… The sum of our progress over the past thousand years depends on it. It’s true! Magic is the engine that drives Equestria. And what a cruel, unhappy fate it is that it must fall to the unicorns to shoulder such a burden. That your kind should suffer the responsibility of pulling all the levers.”

“That’s not—!”

“You being the smart, perceptive girl you are, I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your powers of observation how masterfully your unicorn brethren have capitalized on that unfortunate way of the world. While we pegasus ponies push clouds and the earth ponies play in the dirt, you unicorns have carved out quite a healthy slice of the pie for yourselves. As scholars and scientists, technologists and engineers. Artisans, craftsmen, and precision laborers beyond compare.”

Tristar’s lip turned up in a sneer. “Two days ago in Manehattan, I even saw a flyer for a pair of unicorn inventors pitching a fully-automated apple-picking and cider-squeezing machine. As if the world needed such a thing.”

“You’re wrong,” Twilight said adamantly. “The unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies put aside their differences a long time ago. We live together now, in peace and harmony.”

“Harmony’s a pyramid with your kind on top,” Tristar spat.

Twilight stared at him in horrified disbelief, as if he’d just voiced something obscene or sacrilegious.

“If that’s true, then what about you? You’re nobility!”

“I’m one of the few pegasi who are. Even then, I’m only nobility on account of my bloodline. If I weren’t a direct descendant of Commander Hurricane and heir to the honors and decorations of his House, I wouldn’t be nearly so lucky. And what about you?”

Tristar leaned over the table, his face writ with indictment.

“The bright, talented young Twilight Sparkle. Recipient of the finest education in this kingdom or any other, courtesy of Princess Celestia and her School for Gifted Unicorns.”

Twilight’s eyes blazed. “I worked for every SCRAP of my success. I EARNED my achievements.”

“How fortunate for you, then, that you were born with that horn atop your head! That you could be eligible for enrollment in such a prodigious institution! Last time I checked, Princess Celestia didn’t sponsor any schools for gifted pegasi or earth ponies.”

“Well, of course not! Pegasi and earth ponies have no affinity for magic. What would they even teach?”

Tristar sneered. “You’re a nasty little girl, you know that? Totally ignorant to all the doors of opportunity that have been opened to you on account of your privileged birth and upbringing. It’s depressing to think you and Shining Armor come from the same stock.”

“Don’t you DARE talk about my brother!”

“You really think you could’ve reached the same heights if you’d come into this world a pegasus? Imagine it! Twilight Sparkle, born with a pair of wings instead of a horn. Could you have hatched that dragon’s egg at your enrollment test? Been accepted to the same school? Gotten the same world-class education in magic, science, history? Risen to become the protégé of Princess Celestia? The Bearer of the Element of Magic? You think your life would’ve been anywhere near as plush?”

“I—”

“Do you ever even THINK of such things? Do you think your little friend Rainbow Dash doesn’t?

“You have the AUDACITY—” He leveled an accusatory hoof. “—to claim the moral high ground. You point your guns at ME for being reprehensible because I’ve said a few unkind words to her. It’s true, I have! When you’re born a pegasus, you’re born with PRIDE, and NOTHING stings worse than having that pride ripped away from you. So maybe I did speak out of turn—but I’m not her friend. YOU have the GALL to be JEALOUS of her.”

“JEALOUS of her?” Twilight laughed. “Me?”

“Oh, please. Don’t even try to deny it. It’s all over your face.”

“Even if I WERE jealous, I never swore an oath of duty. YOU did. And you’ve violated it COUNTLESS times over!”

“Write me up, then! I’ll wear your censure as a badge of honor! Why the hell should I listen to you? Arrogant little unicorn who’s never seen a day’s hardship in her life! You’ll NEVER know what disappointment feels like—not until you’ve seen the clouds roll in after the sky shatters into a miracle of colors, and listened to the silence that comes after the boom.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The painting hung, as ever, above the mantle in Rainbow Dash’s home. It was an abstract composition: a playful depiction of a rainbow as it arced across the sapphire sky, brought to life in swooshing, vivid brushstrokes. At the center of the canvas, it crossed the line from day into night, plunging courageously into the darkness—but once it found itself there, it shrank and it shriveled, it spiraled in on itself, and it disappeared into nothingness.

A million different ponies could have looked at the painting and drawn a million different meanings from it. That’s the nature of art. When Celestia raised her eyes to it, all she felt was the inexorable creep of time, and the melancholy of missed chances. A swirling uselessness of should-haves and could-have-beens.

A roll of thunder diverted her. Outside, a storm was brewing.

Celestia turned and headed up the stair.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“The sonic rainboom. That’s what this is about. Isn’t it?”

Tristar went back to his drink and pointedly didn’t answer. That didn’t stop Twilight’s brain from churning.

“The sonic rainboom… That’s why you resent her so much. That’s why she’s a disappointment. But why…? What’s that got to do with…?”

Then it clicked.

“It’s because she isn’t a pegasus.”

“If only you could understand. But you can’t. You aren’t a pegasus either, and even if you were, you’re too young to remember what it meant at the time. What an inspiration it was that one of our own—a little filly, even!—could accomplish something so monumental!”

“And then she couldn’t,” Twilight finished for him.

“The press descended on Cloudsdale. Photographers were camped on every cumulus. Journalists from far and wide stalked the playgrounds for an interview. She talked big. The sonic rainboom was foal’s play. She could pull it off again, no problem. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Newspapers began to question the story. Why hadn’t she broken the sound barrier again? How could an elementary school filly have accomplished something so impossible in the first place? Sensationalism gave way to mockery and doubt. Cynics suggested it was all one big con job. That she must have enlisted a unicorn accomplice and staged the whole thing. Her failure was an embarrassment to all pegasi, everywhere.”

“She was only a child!”

“She was a hotshot. She was cocky. Never knew when to stop running her mouth. It only made things worse for her. For all of us. Then, when the spotlight turned its back—that’s when she got reckless.”

“But Rainbow Dash HAS recreated the sonic rainboom. I was there, at the Best Young Flyer Competition,” Twilight pointed out.

“And what a great practical joke on our kind that turned out to be! Yes, she did finally pull it off again. A few months later, what happened?”

The answer wasn’t long in coming to Twilight.

“She grew a horn.”

“She never was one of us to begin with,” Tristar corrected her. “Come to find out every yearning pegasus heart, every wide-eyed pegasus filly and colt who wanted to believe in her got played for a fool. The sonic rainboom, nothing more than alicorn hocus pocus. Our humiliation. Our punishment for dreaming we could ever be capable of it. We looked for a speck of hope, and we thought we’d found it. The audacity of us! It was never ours to aspire to in the first place.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The rain came down like a thousand angry hooves beating their wrath against the lonely cloud house. The sky was dark and treacherous, the menacing storm swirling around the mountaintop, blotting out all sight of its lofty peak.

Celestia knocked on the bedroom door. As ever when she was about to come face-to-face with Rainbow Dash, there was a tempest of emotions roiling in her, every bit as potent as the weather raging outside. The worry intertwined with regret. The queasy dread of anticipation. She was never eager to walk back into the little alicorn’s line of fire, to have another row of holes blown in her heart.

There was no answer, so she knocked again, taking a deep breath as she sought a moment’s serenity in the sound of the rain; in the calm before whatever was about to follow. When there was still no reply, she let herself in.

“Rainbow Dash?”

It took Celestia’s eyes a second to adjust to the darkness. Rainbow Dash was passed out under a pile of blankets five layers thick, asleep in her bed, half-rasping and half-snoring. The sound of her labored breaths wasn’t at all comforting, but at least it meant she was getting some rest.

Celestia drifted to the bedside, as quiet as a mouse. Ever so gently, she laid a white hoof upon her forehead to feel her temperature. A grim expression fell across her face.

She wet a rag under the bathroom faucet, folded it neatly, and placed it on Rainbow’s head for comfort. Next, the blankets: slowly and carefully, she adjusted them, gathering up the ones that were about to slip off and spreading them back overtop the sleeping filly. She collected the tissues wherever they’d fallen onto the floor, discarding them in the wastebasket; and, bringing the wastebasket with her, along with the well-used cup from the nightstand, Celestia started on her way out the door.

“Sparkle seven duckies? Huh?” Rainbow lifted her head, blinking rapidly. The rag slid down and draped across her snout.

“…Pardon?” Celestia asked.

“S-Sorry. Don’t think m’brain was working right.” Rainbow swallowed, her sore throat causing her to flinch. “Um… Hi.”

“Hi, yourself,” said Celestia with a strained smile. She levitated the rag off the end of Rainbow’s nose and set it aside. It was obvious she was uncomfortable as she lingered halfway through the open doorway. Rainbow hadn’t been awake to invite her in, after all. She wasn’t certain if she was welcome, whether she should stay or leave.

Rainbow answered the question for her. “Where ya goin’?”

“I was… just about to empty your trash and wash out your cup.”

“Why? They’re just gonna fill up again.”

“Maybe. But it makes life a little more bearable in the meantime.”

“Guess so…”

Setting the items down, Celestia returned to Rainbow’s bedside. “How are you feeling?” she asked softly.

Rainbow didn’t seem to hear her. She had picked up the rag and begun to fiddle with it. “Wha’s this?”

“Only a wet cloth, Rainbow Dash. To help keep you cool.”

“Keep me cool?” An enormous grin spread across Rainbow’s face, as if it were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “Keep me COOL! Hahaha! Never needed help with that before! Hahahaha-kuh-KHAKH—”

A hacking string of coughs cut her laughter short. Celestia’s eyes flew wide as she helped the struggling girl sit up in bed, sputtering relentlessly. She ripped a tissue from its box and brought it to Rainbow’s mouth. In her momentary panic, she didn’t notice the stench of the alcohol on her breath.

After a minute, the coughing fit abated. Celestia gingerly took away her hoof, allowing Rainbow to melt into bedsheets.

All the life and energy had gone out of her eyes. “Not so cool…”

Celestia hovered over her, face etched with worry. “Are you all right?”

Rainbow looked up at her pitifully. “I’m sick.”

“That, you are,” replied Celestia with a twinge of a smile. “I think your fortress of immunity may have sprung some leaks.”

“Y’know, ’s funny…” Rainbow’s words slurred together. “All the times I times I chewed out Thunderlane for taking too many sick days… but I don’t think I ever felt this bad before in my whole life. Have you ever just wanted to die?”

Celestia’s blood froze to hear that question. She wallowed for something—anything—to say. “I…”

“Hey, can I tell you somethin’?”

“Of… Of course.”

A long silence went by. Rainbow lay still upon the bed, eyes closed, her chest barely rising with each shallow breath. When she finally spoke, the words fell out of her in a mumbled-out whisper.

“I don’t even know what the point is anymore.”

Celestia forced herself to reply calmly, clamping down on her growing alarm. “What do you mean?”

Another long, long stretch of silence. Rainbow lay so quiet and deathly still, Celestia dared to imagine she had drifted off to sleep.

Then her eyes cracked open, dull and lifeless.

“I used to know who I was. I was me. And now… ’m not.”

Her eyes fell back shut.

“I used to be a pegasus. It made me so proud. Made me proud to know others looked up to me… that I made other pegasi proud.” Her lips lifted with the wisp of a smile, gone as quick as it came.

She swallowed again. Winced.

“I used to have friends…” she rattled out. “Friends who cared about me, who’d be there no matter what. And now—”

She flinched and exploded in another fit of coughs. Celestia was there in an instant to help her sit up, to bring another tissue to her lips. Rainbow spat into it before settling back again, wheezing.

“Know… how old I was… when my mom and dad died?”

“Eleven,” Celestia answered without missing a beat. Her eyes stung. Her throat felt suddenly, indescribably tight.

“Eleven! Guess I had it easy… Applejack was even younger. We still talk about it sometimes, you know… or we used to. ’Specially around cider season. Always somethin’ to look forward to!”

Her mouth split open in a huge grin. She started to laugh. A voiceless, hissing laugh that wouldn’t quit.

“It’s so funny! All the nights I cried for my parents. Now I’ve finally got one again, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone!”

“Stop. Please, stop.” The words were thin, almost mute. Celestia was weeping openly now.

“If I didn’t believe in me, I wouldn’t have anything left…”

Rainbow fell quiet. Only for a few seconds, but those seconds stretched to eternity and back again.

Celestia’s soul filled with the pummeling accusation of the rain.

“Why wasn’t I good enough?”

She buried her face in her hooves.

“Why? Why…?”

Rainbow’s voice seemed to come from far away now. As if dancing on the edge of a dream.

“I still remember stuff, y’know. I remember… I remember pegasus ponies spinning up above me. I would reach up and try and catch them, and they would go ’round and ’round, playing that song… D’you remember that? That was real… wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Celestia choked through her tears. “That was real.”

“And I remember… I remember the snow. It was so white outside… so cold… but you were always there to keep me warm. And sometimes, you’d even sing to me… that lullaby…”

Celestia sniffled and nodded.

“I don’t… I… I’ve tried so many times to… to figure it out… You named me. Aurora… I still hear you call me it sometimes when you think I’m not around. I wasn’t nothing to you. So why? Why wasn’t I good enough…? Was it really just because… because I didn’t have… a horn…?”

Celestia couldn’t speak. She could shake her head no, but she couldn’t speak. Her world was too much anguish for words. Too much heaving sobs and shuddering breaths.

Rainbow’s voice was no more than a whisper now as she slipped further and further from consciousness. Her lips barely moved:

“I could’ve loved you, you know…”

There was no refuge, no sturdy rock, no salvation Celestia could cling to that would spare this moment from engulfing her. Her shoulders shook. Her pain bled out and left desolation in its wake.

The rain continued to fall against the house, echoing mournfully.

“…Mom?”

Celestia wiped her eyes with a trembling hoof. “Yes?”

The clock ticked on the nightstand. The wind blew.

“I really wish Twilight was still my friend…”

Rainbow’s chest rose and fell peacefully as she succumbed, mercifully, to sleep.

Celestia stood and fled the room.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“How is she?”

Luna lingered at the doorway to Celestia’s office, peering in. The lights were off. The fireplace, cold and forlorn.

Celestia stood at the window, bathed in the solitude of the night. Outside, the storm continued to rage, lashing the castle with rain and thunder.

“Honest,” she answered hoarsely.

Luna took a step inside. It wasn’t like her sister to dwell in darkness. Celestia was always so much warmth. So much radiant light.

“Tia?”

Celestia only had to look at her. That was all it took.

“Tia!”

Luna ran to her sister’s side and threw her hooves around her, wrapping her in a loving embrace. Celestia’s head buried in her shoulder. She cried. She cried so hard, it hurt.

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “I’m sorry!”

“Tia, what’s the matter? Tell me what’s wrong. Tia!”

Celestia only cried harder, the whole world crashing down around her. She felt Luna’s hooves give a squeeze, and she leaned into her, weeping uncontrollably.

“Tia! Please, talk to me!” Luna’s voice choked with emotion. She felt her eyes mist, her own tears beginning to threaten.

She had never seen Celestia break down like this, not once in all her years. Seen her cry, sure: lots of times when they were children, and after mother, and after father, and the tears fell freely when they were reunited in the aftermath of Nightmare Moon’s defeat. But not like this. Never like this. This was the weeping of a soul beyond hope.

“Tia…”

“I’M SORRY! Please! If I could take it back, I WOULD!”

“Shh. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“If I’d known—if I’d known, I never would’ve done it—if I’d known it would hurt this much—”

“It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“L-Luna! What have I done? She’s broken! She’s broken inside, and I can’t help her! I’ve ruined her life! I’ve ruined EVERYTHING!”

“It’s all right. Let it all out.”

“I DIDN’T KNOW! If I had known she would have to go through it, I never would’ve—n-never would’ve—”

She howled her anguish into Luna’s mane, a wailing scream that ripped from her like a shard of glass. Luna cried silently alongside her, rocking her with those midnight-blue hooves.

“What can I do?” Celestia sobbed. “WHAT CAN I DO?”

She cried like a well without a bottom. Like there was a tempest inside her, fighting to get out. She cried until her lungs shriveled in her ribcage and all she could do was gasp breathlessly.

Luna was with her the whole time to share her grief. And when her sister’s sobs quieted to whimpers, Luna was there to help her off the floor and over to a sofa.

Celestia’s voice eked out in a tiny, pained cry. “Luna…”

“I love you, Tia. I’ll always love you.” Luna didn’t know what made her choose those words when it was clear her sister’s despair was centered on Rainbow Dash, but she said them all the same.

Celestia shook her head. “I don’t deserve you…”

“You’re my sister. Sisters are there for each other, no matter what.”

“I wasn’t,” Celestia mumbled.

Luna hesitated. “That’s behind us now.”

“It’s never been behind either of us.” Celestia managed a sorrowful laugh and the smallest of smiles. “Should I thank the Ascendancy for giving you back to me? If they hadn’t needed back their goddess…”

“Enough, Tia.”

Celestia gave Luna an emphatic hug before sliding out from under her hooves.

“Look at me. I’m the older sister. I’m supposed to be the one to comfort you, and here you are, turning the tables on me yet again. It’s true, though, no matter what you say. Driving others away, hurting the ones I love—it’s all I do… It’s all I’ve ever done…”

“All you’ve ever done is torture yourself over things in the past that you can’t change. What were you even doing in here all alone by yourself? You know you can come to me about anything!”

Celestia answered the question by levitating something off the windowsill—a little book with a sky-blue cover. It floated over to Luna, who plucked it out of the air and looked down at it curiously.

“What’s this?”

“The mausoleum of my embalmed grief,” was Celestia’s joyless reply.

Luna flipped open the cover.

Rainbow Dash smiled up at her with that brash, confident grin of hers. Page after page of her. Photo after photo. Every gap-toothed school picture day. Every little league cloudball game. Pictures of Rainbow Dash blowing out the candles on her birthday cake jockeyed for position with snapshots of her tearing open presents on Hearth’s Warming Morning.

Luna’s mouth fell open. She had never seen Rainbow at so young an age, nor with hair quite so spiky. She looked up at Celestia in awe. “You’ve kept this all her life?”

Celestia replied bitterly, “Days lost lamenting lost days.”

On this page was a photograph of Rainbow Dash as a little foal, looking no older than four years old. It was Nightmare Night, and she was dressed as—what else?—a Wonderbolt.

There was an older-looking pegasus stallion accompanying her in the photo. Her adoptive father, Luna hazarded. He had a bright, jubilant smile on his face as he lifted her high in the air, supporting her on the end of his hoof. Rainbow’s arms and legs were outstretched, mimicking an actual Wonderbolt in flight. Her pink eyes shined as she grinned into the camera, holding a trick-or-treat bag between her teeth.

Luna turned the page. Here was one of Rainbow Dash with her mother. No special occasion: just a candid shot plucked from normal, everyday life. Rainbow was laughing, trying to push away her mom, who had her muzzle buried in her mane and appeared to be blowing a raspberry into her neck. They both looked so happy.

“Why?” Luna wondered. “Why keep an album of these?”

“I didn’t, at the start. But after a while—”

The look on Celestia’s face betrayed her torment.

“Nova and Blaze were kind-hearted ponies. They never thought twice about sending doubles.”

“But why keep an album at all?”

Celestia looked away. “You haven’t realized yet… You haven’t realized what a curse this actually is. You were asleep for a thousand years… In some ways, it spared you a lot of pain.”

Luna looked up at her questioningly. It was clear she didn’t understand.

Celestia scrounged for the words to explain. “Time… slips by. And moments become precious. If the universe had been ordered differently… If a pony could rise from the ashes as easily as a phoenix, and my heart along with them… But no. Not everyone can live in eternal summer. That just isn’t the world we live in. I… I needed something, Luna. If I blinked, and missed it... then how could I ever forgive myself?”

Another turn of the page, and here were all three of them, smiling from the stands of a Wonderbolts show. Mom and Dad were sporting toothy grins, but Rainbow’s was biggest of all. She was leaping out of her seat, practically bursting with joy.

Every photograph, a perfect moment in time.

“I’m sorry, Tia,” Luna said quietly.

Celestia laughed through her tears. “Aren’t we all?”

“I don’t know what to say. Nopony should have to bear this weight alone for so long a time.”

“I’ve been bearing this weight for a thousand years. Since the day you were taken away from me… I’ve never been brave enough to let another into my heart. I’m a coward, Luna.”

“You are many things, Tia. But you are not a coward.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I am. All my life, too afraid to open myself up again to the pain of loss… It was never hard to justify. These ponies make dying their life’s work. But what choices did I make because of it? Were any of them good?”

Luna flipped ahead in the book. No photographs on these pages. Instead, she saw news clippings taken from the kingdom’s various major daily publications. The articles were old, but the subject matter was all too familiar.

“Cloudsdale Filly First to Break Sound Barrier!” roared the headline on the Manehattan Times. “Sonic Rainboom Stuns and Delights!” shouted the Baltimare Herald. The story was much the same across the Tribune, the Sun, the Gazette. The press lavished praise, heaped accolade after accolade upon Rainbow Dash, who looked so incredibly young to Luna, her picture smiling out from the black-and-white newsprint, sometimes confidently, other times with clear apprehension. Reading between the lines, it was clear there was more at stake. Every rhapsodizing column and word of acclaim was laced with expectation.

Then, on the next page: “Boom Filly a Bust?” wondered one daily. “Cloudsdale’s Prodigy Falls Flat!” sniped another, set alongside a picture of a defeated-looking Rainbow Dash hobbling to her hooves after crashing into a field.

The Canterlot Sun was cruelest of all. The headline was smaller, as by this point the news had fallen off the front page. But it still made room to mock, in stinging block lettering: “Not Good Enough.”

Luna read:

The meteorological phenomenon observed in the skies from Canterlot as far east as Manehattan is once again without explanation as experts have pushed back on popular claims. Initial speculation in the aftermath of the event two months ago had purported the attainment of supersonic flight was the cause of the spectacle, but that theory has been widely challenged.

“A pegasus could not create a marvel like this, much less a pegasus foal,” supplied Dr. Gusty Gale, a renowned unicorn weather scientist and academician at Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. “A pegasus is not physically capable of reaching such velocities.”

Asked his opinion on the cause of the phenomenon, Dr. Gale lent his voice to the growing chorus of experts asserting a mass deception, enabled not by pegasus wingpower, but rather unicorn illusion magic.

These allegations place Dr. Gale and fellow like-minded experts squarely on the opposite side of the controversy from the Crown, which has adamantly opposed the notion of unicorn involvement since it became embroiled in the dispute last week. An official spokespony for the Palace waded in, “We didn’t detect any unicorn magic over Cloudsdale. There was no unicorn magic over Cloudsdale. At this time, we see no reason to contradict the account as it was originally described in the press: that this was an amazing feat of athleticism on the part of one awesome pegasus filly.”

A smile fought its way past Luna’s lips. Celestia noticed.

“What’s so funny?”

“You,” said Luna. “You’re too hard on yourself. You pretend like you waged a campaign of deliberate neglect. Like you never once cared! The evidence to the contrary has been in front of you this whole time. It’s right here, in black and white—and living color.”

She flipped to another photograph. This one showed Rainbow Dash in her element: darting through the sapphire sky, the vivid colors of her mane whipping around her in the headwind. Squeezing every drop there was to be gotten out of life and basking, as ever, under the warm and watchful glow of the sun.

“You give me too much credit,” Celestia said.

“I only give it where it’s due!”

“I’ve done next to nothing.”

“Oh? And after her parents died, when she wanted to strike out on her own. That inheritance that came her way—that little windfall that let her build that mansion of hers—that wasn’t you?”

Celestia looked at Luna in amazement. “How did you—?”

“After my restoration, I dipped into the budget and reviewed the kingdom’s finances going back most of the past millennium. Did you really think you could sneak that one past me?”

A feeble smile wormed its way onto Celestia’s face. “Underestimating you is one thing I’ve never been guilty of.”

“Love is the most powerful emotion there is, sister. You cite the loss of me as the reason for your aversion to it, but you forget the opposite side of the same coin. The most important thing of all!”

Luna gently took Celestia’s hoof.

“What’s damaged doesn’t always need to be. What’s frayed can still be mended. So long as there’s still breath in our lungs and life in our veins. You and I are proof enough of that.”

“Luna…”

“Stop mourning your yesterdays,” she pressed the book into Celestia’s hooves, “and start living for your tomorrows.”

Celestia looked down at it bleakly. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to.”

“It isn’t that easy, Luna. You don’t understand. To hear her talk… I don’t know if this is something I can fix. She’s lost her place in the world and everything she ever dreamed of. She’s lost everything.”

“Not everything,” Luna said quietly.

Celestia looked up at her. Luna’s eyes shined with so much love.

“I believe in you, Tia. I believe in your ability to make things right.” She smiled tenderly and cocooned Celestia in another gentle, loving hug.

“Thank you,” Celestia’s voice trembled. “Thank you.”

“I love you. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Celestia nodded through her sniffles. Her sister’s hold on her loosened, and she took it as a cue to rise from the sofa.

Maybe Luna was right. Maybe there was a way forward, a path through this darkness. She didn’t know if she believed it, and she severely doubted her ability to make things better for Rainbow Dash, who was clearly hurting so much… But she owed it to her to try.

Gathering her courage, she prepared to face the road ahead.

“Luna. One last thing.”

The window latch yielded to Celestia’s magic. The pane of glass swung open on its hinge, letting in the furious sound of the storm. Celestia glanced back at her sister from the opening, face etched with sadness.

“Tomorrow, I need you to find Twilight and bring her to me. It’s urgent that I speak with her.”

“Of course, but why—?”

“The circle is broken. The Elements are out of play.”

Celestia took to the sky, leaving Luna to digest the news in shock.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Once more, Celestia stood in the forlorn heart of Rainbow’s home, surrounded by the aching darkness.

She felt uncomfortable as she looked around the den. More than once, on her way back over, she had second-guessed herself, questioned her wisdom and her purpose. Of course, the room itself hadn’t changed in the scant hour since she’d been here. The shadows still crept from behind every pillar. The painting and its spiraling, moribund rainbow still hung upon the wall.

On a petite table next to the front door, there was a small, framed picture. The glass in it was broken, save for a few defiant shards that clung to the edges here and there. Inside it was an old black-and-white photo of a pegasus stallion and mare, whose kindhearted faces Celestia knew all too well. And at the bottom, one other pony: Rainbow Dash, in vivid color, cut out from a separate photo and pasted in-between them, so that the three of them could be together again, if only in remembrance.

Celestia glanced down at her sky-blue book of memories, brought with her from the castle. With a throb in her chest, she placed it on the tabletop next to the picture for Rainbow to find.

Her mission accomplished, she could have slipped out then and there, retired to her chambers for the rest of the night—but responsibility drove her back up the steps. She was already here. She ought to check on Rainbow Dash, to see how she was doing.

Once again, she stopped in front of the bedroom door. Took a moment to steel herself. Then, let herself in.

Rainbow was still passed out on the bed, her mouth hanging open. It didn’t look like she’d moved an inch. Her breathing, what there was of it, was shallow, almost imperceptible, with not even the usual rasps.

Celestia’s brow creased. She edged closer.

Nothing about the young girl’s appearance was encouraging, but it was the pallor of her face that really concerned her. She hadn’t been nearly so pale during her short-lived visit an hour ago, nor as silent, nor as still…

Ever so gently, Celestia laid a hoof upon the little alicorn’s forehead to take her temperature.

A curse fell from her mouth.

Her fever hadn’t been nearly so dire an hour ago, either. She was burning up, and likely suffering from acute dehydration.

Urgently, she gave the sleeping filly a shake. “Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash, can you wake up for me?”

But Rainbow was nonresponsive.

Celestia’s mind flew as she weighed options. The rain was still coming down like jagged knives. Outside, lightning flashed, and another preternatural belt of thunder resounded off the mountaintop. Best course was to send for the doctor, get Rainbow Dash out of here and back over to the main keep, where he could tend to her. But flying there was out of the question. Rainbow’s frail constitution wouldn’t abide the gale. Teleporting, too, might cause a dangerous shock to her system, putting her in even worse straits.

Determined, Celestia marched over and threw open the bedroom window. The rain fell sideways into the room. The storm howled at her, screaming all its violent hate and anger in her face.

She pursed her lips and whistled into the roaring wind.

Back to Rainbow’s bedside, she went. She pushed back the blankets, nosed under the filly’s sprawled-out form, and lifted her gently onto her back. Rainbow’s hooves dangled as she lay there with her face buried in the softness of Celestia’s mane, but otherwise, she didn’t move. Didn’t react.

A glance through the bathroom door, and on went the faucet, filling the tub with lukewarm water. Celestia watched from afar as the bath slowly came up. In her ears, the shallow inhale-exhale of the unconscious girl’s breath. In her chest, a coiled-up mass of anxiety.

Now, the flutter of wings at the window. Celestia felt the first mote of tension dissolve, though there was still plenty more where that came from. “Philomena, thank goodness for you!”

The phoenix perched on the sill, shining bright. Her feathers were pristine, unscathed by the torrents of rain that were boiling off all around her. She gave a plaintive caw.

“I’m sorry to pull you away from your brood, but her fever’s taken a turn for the worse. Fly for the castle. Alert my sister. She’s to summon the court physician and return here with him as soon as she’s able. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can to bring down her temperature.”

Not a moment’s hesitation. Philomena took off at once, a blazing orange lance in the darkness. Celestia closed the window to keep out the storm.

By now, the bath was nearly ready. She ambled over to it, still with Rainbow Dash draped across her back. Shucked her golden slippers and her vestments, and dipped in a hoof to test the warmth of it.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured as she shut off the tap. “I’ve got to bring that fever down. Please, have mercy on me for this.”

The moment was upon her. She spent another few seconds gnawing on her lip. Then, gently as she could, she levitated Rainbow Dash off her back and into the tepid water.

Rainbow didn’t stir from her reverie, but she instantly began to shake, her whole body erupting into shivers. A bullet of regret lodged in Celestia’s heart to have to watch her suffer. The water must still be too cold.

A golden aura lit up her horn as she poured her energy into the bath, raising the temperature by degrees. Slowly but surely, Rainbow’s shivering began to quell. She crumpled like a ragdoll, but Celestia was there to hold her, to keep her head above water and whisper reassurances in her ear.

“There you go. You’re doing fine,” she said soothingly.

There was a glass beside the sink where Rainbow Dash kept her toothbrush. Another glimmer of Celestia’s horn, and it whisked to her from across the room. She filled it at the tap and raised it to the filly’s parched lips.

“Do you think you can take a sip for me?”

Rainbow was unconscious, but she still had enough reflexes to swallow when Celestia tipped the cup. She gave a tiny, pitiful-sounding cough.

Celestia continued to provide her drink in this manner for a while longer. Once she felt satisfied that Rainbow had partaken enough, she began to drizzle the cooling water over her head and body.

Rainbow still didn’t stir.

That was probably for the best. It didn’t take much to imagine how embarrassed she would be if she were awake for this kind of treatment. How loudly she would protest, and all the venom she would hurl…

Idly, Celestia wondered how different it all could have been.

Her lips drew thin as she upended another cup onto the overheated girl. For an age, she didn’t say another word. So hung up was she on the shriveling, spiral-down trajectory of her own ill-fated choices. On her own swirling uselessness, should-haves, and could-have-beens.

But for the sloshing of the water and the fury of the storm still raging outside, the silence was deafening in Celestia’s ears. At long last, she broke it with a single gray laugh.

“I should be better at this.”

Again, she laid her hoof upon Rainbow’s brow. Her fever was still far from breaking, but her temperature had come down some—that much was apparent. It should have been a comforting sign.

Celestia couldn’t find it in herself to be leavened by it, so dark a place was she in. She brushed Rainbow’s wet and matted bangs away from her eyes, gazing down at her sadly. Her magic did the work to unstopper the drain.

“I should be better at a lot of things…” she mumbled. “It doesn’t make sense, I know. I can command conversations with heads of state, but whenever it comes to you, I stumble… I fall.”

She wrapped Rainbow in a towel and did her best to pat her dry. The little alicorn wasn’t a pretty sight: she was drenched; bedraggled; her body hung limp, her feathers askew and out of place, her mane knotted and snarled. As the air nipped at her damp coat, the shivers came back with a vengeance, plunging her into a new bout of misery.

Celestia brought her to her chest and hugged her tight.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

They made the short journey back over to the bed, and Celestia set her down again among the rumpled blankets. For a moment, the goddess stood over her, lost in how gaunt she looked, and how pale, and how cold…

Then her gaze fell once more upon those disheveled feathers.

She closed her eyes.

She couldn’t. She shouldn’t. It would be a violation. Already in her mind, she held the fully-formed image of Rainbow Dash lashing out, tearing her down for it, shattering her—the way it always ended up playing out.

But she also knew how badly it would hurt her to wake up in such a state, her coverts mussed, her pinions bent or broken…

How many times had it come to this? She only wanted to do what was right, and to do right by her. So many times, she had tried to do right! So many times, only to have the heart and soul ripped out of her.

Her mind drifted back a week, to the verbal and emotional thrashing Rainbow had given her in the fading light of the aviary garden. Her best hopes laid waste in her arrogance, in her ineptitude. The hurt and betrayal in Rainbow’s eyes… The burning anger…

The burning anger in Luna’s eyes, a thousand years before. Luna, screaming back and forth with her across the negotiating table. Luna, turning and walking out with her supporters in tow. Out of the castle… Out of her life…

So many should-haves. So many could-have-beens.

And still, Rainbow Dash continued to shiver…

Celestia made up her mind.

Up onto the cloud bed, she climbed, and she lay down at Rainbow’s side. Her white wing folded over the shaking filly, blanketing her against the cold.

Rainbow still didn’t react. She was out like a light.

She looked down somberly, but with unmistakable fondness for the sleeping girl nestled at her side. The situation being what it was, she couldn’t help but be reminded of the scene a month ago at the outset of this journey. The days spent in hospital with Rainbow Dash tucked under the crook of her wing, recovering after the trauma of coming into her horn… Her naïve, selfish hope that her past sins might be forgiven…

The wind and rain continued to batter the house, and another peal of thunder echoed through the walls. Celestia was about as tired as she could ever remember being. By now, the doctor must be on his way, but how long it would take him to get here in a tempest like this was anypony’s guess.

A few minutes went by, and the warmth of her enveloping wing chased out the shivers. Rainbow relaxed into her side, snoozing quietly. For the first time in hours, she looked to be in something approaching restful sleep.

Celestia breathed a sigh of relief. Now, for her next trick…

With a mirthless smile, she lowered her head to Rainbow’s wing and began coaxing the rumpled feathers back into place. She started at the top and worked her way down: the coverts first, then on to the medians, then finally the tertials, secondaries, and primaries. Her teeth closed around the tip of each untidy plume, straightening it and tucking it underneath its neighbor.

She worked slowly, methodically. In her ears, the steady rhythm of the rain and the slow, deepening sound of Rainbow’s breathing as she lulled off ever more and more. But in her mind’s eye…

In her mind’s eye, Celestia remembered her mother.

She remembered her mother, and those wonderful occasions when her mother would gather her up in her hooves, hold her snugly, and preen her feathers, just as she now found herself doing now for Rainbow Dash. And how loved it made her feel. And how safe and secure, snuggled in her shielding embrace… in those perfect days, before the Nightmare came.

Celestia slowed, then stopped her ministrations altogether as the memories lapped at the banks of her mind. Her wing folded over again and pressed Rainbow protectively to her side.

She closed her eyes. Then she spoke quietly:

“I lost my parents too, when I was growing up.”

She hesitated. For a brief instant, she imagined she might have seen Rainbow’s ears give a little flick, but no. It was only in her mind.

Her own ears pinned back. A terrible weariness bowed her head, and Celestia felt every one of her thousand-plus years weigh down upon her. Her heart twisted in her chest, but still, she continued:

“My mother, I lost when I was very young. Even younger than you were when your mother and father were taken from you.

“I don’t talk about it. Not with anyone. Not ever. In fact, I don’t think I’ve talked about it since the day it happened. But I watched my mother… die… right in front of me.

“I watched the roof rip off my home. I still remember looking up and seeing the clouds through the gaps in the beams. So dark… Darker than anything else I’ve ever seen. And my mother, pushing us into the cellar nook… Telling us to stay put, stay together, no matter what.

“Then the roof ripped off, and it was so loud… it was so loud… And she was there. My mother was right there in front of me, so close I could’ve reached out and touched her. Standing between it and us, screaming, begging for mercy. For it to take her in our stead. And then…

“Then she wasn’t there anymore.”

Her voice was scarcely a whisper now. Her gaze, distant and unfocused.

“I reached out for her… I reached out for her, and I screamed for her to come back, please, please, come back. I screamed, and I reached out my hoof… and I almost went out after her. But I remembered what she said, and I stayed put… If I’d gone out, I would’ve been killed too.

“That was the last time I saw my mother. There wasn’t even a body to bury… There never were bodies, in those days. She gave her life protecting us. My only comfort is that Luna was too young to remember any of it.”

Celestia laughed and wiped the dampness from her eyes.

“There. Now you know something I’ve never, ever told my sister.”

She smiled, ever so briefly. Then her face crumpled.

“Or you would, if I only had the courage to talk to you while you were awake. You can’t hear any of this, can you?”

Rainbow lay still and didn’t move. Her eyes were shut, her breathing sonorous and deep. Celestia gave another chuckle, full of pity.

“I’m pathetic, aren’t I?” she mumbled weakly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for so much.

“Whether you can hear me for not, I guess what I’m trying to say is—I know what it means to look up at the sky and wonder if your parents are looking back down on you. To fall asleep pouring so many emotions into your pillow, you wake up numb from the lack of them. To be willing to give anything—anything—to be with them again. And to have to go on without.

“I know what it means to be alone. I’ve been alone longer than anyone else in the whole, wide world. For almost my entire life… until you gave me back my sister a year ago. And I’m so, so sorry—”

The words caught in her throat.

“I’m sorry you had to suffer that loneliness! I wanted it to be different for you— I wanted you to be happy! But when your parents fell ill, I stayed away—not because I was afraid of scandal or what anyone else might think, but because of my own failure—because I was afraid of you!

“Afraid of losing you—afraid you would hate me for everything I’d done—for everything I hadn’t done, hadn’t been to you in life. I kept my distance, and because of it, I wasn’t there to hold you up when you needed anyone to believe in you—and I’m s-sorry for it! I’ll never be sorry enough!”

She tried to keep it bottled up inside her, but the emotions were overwhelming, years of shame and heartache clawing to get out. A few hitching whimpers slipped past her defenses.

“From the moment I gave you up, when you were a foal—the very reason I gave you up—I was only thinking of myself, and that’s the one thing a mother should never, ever be able to do!

“I let you down! I let my mother’s memory down! I let everyone down! It’s my fault! It’s… It’s always my fault, every time. But it was never yours!”

The tears rolled down against her will. They fell from her cheeks, staining the alabaster of her hooves a damp, forlorn gray. Through shimmering eyes and a cloud of despair, she gazed down at the little sky-blue filly nestled underneath her wing, so fragile and so frail.

“It was never your fault! It was never because you didn’t have magic! It was never because you didn’t have a horn! It was never because I was ashamed of you, or because you weren’t good enough!

“The greatest pony I ever knew wasn’t an alicorn, wasn’t a unicorn. He was a child of the sky, just as you were—just as a part of you ever shall be, no matter what. He wasn’t born with magic, but he brought the whole world light and hope. He taught me about devotion and sacrifice… He didn’t have magic, but I loved him more than life itself.

“And—when my father died, I cried over him until all the warmth and joy in the world went out of me. I cried over him for a thousand years—just as I will again someday, when… w-when you…”

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

Celestia broke down. Her grief was like an ocean washing over her as she swept Rainbow Dash up in her hooves, holding her tightly to her aching heart, frantically, desperately, as if she might disappear if she let go. Rainbow’s face buried in her chest, and Celestia’s in her little girl’s mane as she gently rocked her back and forth, gasping through her sobs and muffled cries.

“I’m sorry!” she choked out. “I’m SORRY! Please! Please…!”

It went on like this for some time.

At long last, Celestia managed to take control of her hitching breaths. Now she cradled Rainbow in her arms, her anguished eyes roving over her, taking in every detail of her countenance: the delicate lashes of her eyes, and the bold colors of her hair; the shallow rise and fall of her chest; the serenity on her face as she slept; her nose, her mouth, her ears…

Still sniffling, Celestia placed a tender kiss on her forehead. Then she hugged her again, and hugged her tight.

“I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry…” she mumbled in a broken voice that seemed to come from far away. “So many millions look to me for guidance. My sun is the kindling for their hope, burning bright. They whisper my name in their prayers: ‘Celestia, please!’ But who does a goddess speak prayers to? Who does a goddess beg for forgiveness…?

“I know I’ll never be your mother. I gave up all rights to that privilege a long time ago. But I’ll never stop being proud of you! You’re so brave and devoted, and so, so smart! I know you don’t think you are, but you are! So many others would yearn to be in your place, but you above all of them have the wisdom to recognize this for the gilded cage, the poisoned chalice it actually is. I… I only wish it hadn’t been forced on you.

“And… even though you might never look on me as a mother, I s-swear, you will always, ALWAYS be in my heart! I will NEVER forsake you again! If I could change the past, I would—b-but all I can do is promise—for every second I wasn’t there, I’ll love you ten times more! I’ll move the sun and sky for you, if that’s what it takes!”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Her voice sounded raw. Every part of her felt raw. Celestia indeed seemed very aged then, no longer the elemental force of nature she so often projected. She was less the towering mountain and more the mountain worn down by time. Beaten by the elements, pummeled into submission.

Still, the sobs continued to wrack her. They were quieter now, fewer and farther between, but every bit as meaningful. She buried her face in Rainbow’s shoulder and nuzzled her tenderly. Her hoof stroked the hair on the back of the filly’s head. She wished she didn’t have to let go.

But she did, of course.

Regretfully, Celestia forced herself to lay the sleeping girl back down on the bed. Her lips placed one more gentle kiss on Rainbow’s brow, and then she drew away, her shoulders sagging.

A minute passed, and she was silent.

Then, above the waning sounds of the storm, which was finally tapering off outside, the room filled with the haunting, ethereal notes of a lullaby:

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry.
Go to sleep, my little baby.
When you wake, you shall have,
All the pretty little ponies.
Blacks and bays, dapples and grays,
All the pretty little ponies.

The song was already far from upbeat to begin with, but infused with Celestia’s unfathomable melancholy, that solemn melody took on an entirely new definition of sadness.

And Rainbow’s ears flicked.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Not long after that, a thestral-drawn chariot pulled up in front of the cloud house, and Luna disembarked along with the doctor. Celestia met them at the front door, wearily explaining the state she had found Rainbow Dash in and everything she had done to provide remedy. The doctor thanked her and praised her for her timely intervention, then headed up the stairs to check on his patient.

Celestia would have liked to stay longer, but Luna was adamantly opposed to the idea, insisting she had done enough for one night, that it was important she get some rest. After some back-and-forth, Celestia relented. Luna ushered her onto the chariot, and minutes later, she was helping her sister into bed back at Canterlot Castle. The lunar goddess smiled reassuringly and encouraged her on a job well done before bidding goodnight… though Celestia didn’t miss the way she hovered at the door, nor the small, sad look she threw her before departing.

Her head hit the pillow. Even for how tired and worn down she was, she didn’t fall asleep for some time.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, Captain Tristar led Twilight Sparkle out of the ramshackle little tavern, past the sagging eaves on the tinderbox homes. They slipped out of sight into an alleyway, and from there, Twilight used her magic to teleport them back onto the train bound for Manehattan.

The contingent of guards Twilight had encountered earlier was in a white panic when they reappeared in a flash of light, frantic at the disappearance of their captain and V.I.P. escort. Tristar was able to explain the situation and smooth things over, though Twilight’s ears flattened at the indignant look he paid her. So obsessed had she been with interrogating him, she hadn’t fully considered how their security detail would react when they both went missing.

In truth, she hadn’t considered a lot of things. As Twilight lay herself down to sleep, listening to the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the train as it sped on its way down the tracks, her mind was racing just as fast, pondering all the things he had said to her. The truths about herself laid bare.

Was she really jealous?

Was that the reason for her—well, she might as well own up and admit it—her less-than-professional behavior, of late, vis-à-vis Rainbow Dash?

Thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts swirled in her memory. Visions of short-tempered interactions and conversations gone wrong. Private moments of insecurity. A can of beans.

She sighed. Deep down inside, she felt stirrings of guilt. Sleep wouldn’t come for her, either, for quite some time.

Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, slept peacefully for the first time in days. Hours later, when the dawn chorus of birdsong roused her, it was the first morning in a long line of miserable mornings that she hadn’t awakened to a guttural cough or a nightmare.

For a while, she just lay there, contemplating whether she felt well enough to get out of bed. She was still far from a hundred percent, but days spent cooped up had given her a nasty case of cabin fever. She unfurled her wings experimentally, and that’s when she noticed her feathers.

Every one of them was groomed to perfection. Days spent tossing and turning should have made an unmitigated disaster of them, but no: from base to tips, they had been perfectly aligned, worked over with more time and attention than most pegasi would have spent even on their own upkeep. They were so immaculate, they almost seemed to shine.

Rainbow sighed and closed her eyes, deep in thought.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Well, well, well! A trifle earlier than I’m used to seeing ye, lass! The sun’s not even up yet! Since when are you an early riser?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Rainbow said pointedly.

The Caretaker straightened up from the soil bed he’d been preparing under a tall, broad-limbed oak. He brushed the dirt off his hooves. “Aye, well, I reckon ye’ve done enough of it lately. Feeling better?”

Rainbow had a complicated look on her face as she peered down at him from the branch she’d perched on. “Yes and no,” she answered cryptically.

“Come down here and help me with these azaleas. Now’s the perfect time to be replanting them. They like the shade.”

Rainbow came down.

“Look, um… No offense, but I’m still off my game,” she said when he offered her a trowel. “I’m not up for anything strenuous.”

“You?”

She gave him a look. He returned it with a mischievous smile.

“Well, now that ye mention it, you are a… little hoarse,” he said, scratching his beard.

“Ugh! Please, don’t. Your jokes are just the worst.”

He winked at her playfully. “Gardening’s always made ye feel better in the past. But it’s up to you, of course.”

“Just give me the stupid thing, already.”

He offered her the trowel again, and she took it from him, levitating it easily in her pristine, white aura. Then, sinking to her knees, she began the task of scoring the root bulbs on the azaleas.

The Caretaker watched her in silence for a minute as she worked, moving with precision from one plant to the next. He gave an impressed whistle. “I say, but you are getting good at that.”

“The levitation, or the gardening?”

“Both.”

She didn’t reply. That brought out a frown on the old stallion’s face.

“Everything all right, lass? You’re mum, this morning.”

Rainbow winced. “Mum?”

“Mum! You know, quiet, mute, all buttoned up?”

“Oh… That kind of mum.”

Rainbow gave him a thin smile. She allowed herself to relax a little.

“Yeah… Guess I kind of have a lot on my mind right now,” she said.

“Aye, that’s the problem with being sick. Any time the nose gets stuffed up, the mind’s sure to follow. Too much time to sit and stew. Here, you can move on from those azaleas. You’ve done good enough.”

“Good enough…”

She rolled the words around in her mouth. Chewed on them.

Felt the Caretaker’s eyes on her as she climbed back to her hooves, wobbling unevenly. Her balance wasn’t quite up to par yet, and she had to spread her wings to right herself. Her companion likewise reached out a hoof to support her. “Steady, there, Dash.”

“Good enough…” she repeated.

The Caretaker looked at her expectantly. She shook her head.

“I have been sitting and stewing,” she admitted quietly.

“What was that?”

“Sitting and stewing. It’s all I’ve done since the day I woke up with this stupid horn, wondering why I… why I wasn’t…”

She stopped mid-sentence.

“No… That isn’t right. I’ve been doing it way longer than that. Here, you can have your dumb trowel back…”

She passed back the gardening tool, then fluttered weakly to a wooden bench under the boughs of the old oak. The Caretaker followed in short order and sat down beside her.

“Something happened, did it?” he asked knowingly.

Rainbow huddled into herself, staring down at the ground. Her tail swished restlessly behind her.

“Feels like I’ve been stewing for most of my life,” she said.

There was no response from the aged pegasus beside her. His face was serene as he watched her silently, respectfully.

“Years and years, now,” she mumbled. “I’ve always had something to prove.”

“I believe that’s what they call a rut.”

“I used to think I had something to prove to everypony else, but… maybe, the whole time… I really had something to prove to myself.”

She lifted her eyes.

“And maybe… maybe I never needed to. Maybe the whole time, I really was good enough.”

A sniffle came out of her. She wiped her eyes with her forehoof.

“Aye, lass. And good enough for who?”

She thought for a moment.

“Good enough for myself,” she said firmly, looking up at him with the ghost of a smile. “And… for all the pretty little ponies.”

There was nothing more that needed to be said. Together, they supped on the tranquility of the East Garden, just listening to the gentle breeze and the morning song of the robins. Out across the glade, Rainbow gazed, past the gallant statue of the First King and the ivory majesty of her cloud house, its waterfalls streaming. Toward the horizon, where twilight was ebbing, and the first radiant colors of the dawn blended with the blues of Luna’s night to paint a masterpiece of light and vivid splendor.

“Celestia’s making it a good one,” the Caretaker broke the silence.

Rainbow felt her heart squeeze again. “Yeah,” she murmured. “Celestia…”

“Well, that’s enough loafing! I really ought to get back to these azaleas.”

“I never thanked you, you know.”

The Caretaker stopped after rising from the bench. He raised an eyebrow at Rainbow. “Thanked me? For what?”

“Uh, duh? For everything you’ve done? Everything you’ve been to me, ever since the day I came here? There’s been times I felt trapped… Times I felt lost… Times I didn’t know who to turn to. If it hadn’t been for you…”

She looked at him meaningfully.

“Think nothing of it!” he waved it off with a grin. Then, leaning forward, he spoke into her ear: “Truth is, you’re surrounded by ponies who care about ye. You just need the courage to open up and see it.”

Rainbow smirked. “Aye?”

“Aye!” he laughed.

He stretched his wings.

“You know, lass, if gardening’s not to your liking, perhaps a bit of flying would do you some good? I know too well how ye look forward to it. Say… a quick jaunt to the castle and back, maybe?”

Rainbow’s smile faltered, but she hesitantly nodded. “Aye…”

She stood up slowly, using the armrest of the bench to steady herself. Then, stowing her trepidation, she thanked him again and departed, wings bearing her out across the verdant meadow, off into the open sky.

Author's Note

Instead of laboring on about this story, I thought I would take the opportunity to highlight some other wonderful stories in the weird little genre of Rainbow-is-Celestia's-daughter fanfiction.

Rainbooms and Royalty by Trinary

What if Princess Celestia had been in Cloudsdale on the day of the sonic rainboom, and had chosen Rainbow Dash to be her faithful student instead of Twilight Sparkle? So begins Trinary's masterpiece, the first in a wide-reaching saga of stories roughly following the continuity of the cartoon, but always with a Rainbow-ish twist. A must-read story for any fan of the genre, with too many heartfelt moments of bonding between Rainbow Dash and Princess Celestia to count. Trinary remains active in the community to this day and has recently embarked on a remaster of the original tale.

Little Glimpses by Skijarama

Starlight Glimmer's meddling in the timeline inadvertently causes the deaths of Rainbow Dash's parents, which in turn precipitates a butterfly effect that brings about the doom of the canon universe. In the newly created alternate universe, an orphaned Rainbow Dash is adopted by Princess Celestia and raised in Canterlot as her daughter. Skijarama's epic is the first in a series of amazing stories that explore Rainbow Dash as she grows into her role as a princess and a leader, chock-full of unforgettable, heartwarming moments and truly dark plot twists. Although the original timeline is dead and gone, it's never far from mind, as Princess Rainbow Dash and her friends are frequently beset by visions of the original canon universe — the eponymous "little glimpses," which give them clues on how to proceed even as dangers circle.

Not Another Alicorn! by LordBrony2040

In the immediate aftermath of the Mysterious Mare Do Well incident, Rainbow Dash writes a friendship report to Princess Celestia describing her feelings of pain and betrayal. Unexpectedly, the wisdom she gushes out on paper triggers her alicorn ascension — or so it appears. LordBrony2040's tale is clever on a number of levels, and it features perhaps the most innovative, interesting, and original explanation for how Rainbow Dash could possibly be Princess Celestia's daughter that I've yet seen in a fanfic. A wonderful story that's worth a look. (Just don't let Princess Celestia hear you mention the sea ponies.)

11. Recriminations

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Recriminations

Originally Published 6/28/2020

The sun rose on a new day.

Celestia stood upon her balcony, her head raised to the eastern sky. A golden light issued from her horn as she willed her heavenly body across the firmament, enveloping her, suffusing every molecule of her being with the glory and majesty of the dawn.

It was a lie.

She was run-down. She was exhausted. The world stretched out in front of her, dull and lightless for as far as she could see.

Her chest was hollow. Her eyes, dull and vacant. The memory of yesterday had laid its familiar gash upon her heart. A gash on top of wounds, on top of bruises and abrasions, on top of scars and scars and scars that would never fade, would never heal. Her soul weighed down with the irredeemable guilt of every wrong decision she’d ever made, every sorrow and regret.

She turned, now, from the balcony, her morning rites completed, and in her head played every word Rainbow Dash had spoken the night before, when still she had consciousness to speak. Every distillation of pain, every pronouncement of despair was hellfire in Celestia’s ears as she retreated unto the welcoming dark of her bedchambers, to slip back underneath her covers and blot out the world with her pillow.

“Pr-Princess Celestia?”

She stopped in her tracks. Slowly, she looked behind her.

Her ears hadn’t lied. Sure enough, there was Rainbow Dash, hovering over the railing of the balcony. Her voice was raspier than normal, but noticeably less raspy than it had been yesterday.

Still… “Good morning,” Celestia offered cautiously, “but what are you doing up? You should be in bed.”

Something shifted behind Rainbow’s eyes. Something new and unfamiliar, stirring just beneath the surface. Something strange was in her body language, too, and in this whole situation. Since when did Rainbow Dash seek her out at the crack of dawn? For that matter, when was the last time Rainbow addressed her by her royal title?

Rainbow traded the air for the ground, landing nimbly.

Then she produced the little book with the sky-blue cover. Briefly, she glanced down at it, an unreadable look about her.

The breath caught in Celestia’s throat.

“Did you leave this for me?” asked Rainbow. To the point, as always.

After a moment’s hesitation, Celestia nodded. “I did.”

It would be difficult to describe the flurry of expressions that flashed across Rainbow’s face, they came and went so fast. A struggle waged across her features: reluctance melding into agitation and uncertainty, then giving way to heartache, longing, and remorse.

Then, before Celestia could blink her eyes—before she even knew what was happening—Rainbow Dash had closed the distance, throwing her hooves around her neck, burying her face in the soft tuft of her chest. The photo album pressed between them.

“Thank you!” Rainbow cried, tears springing from her. “Thank you for giving them back to me!”

Celestia was slow to react. Haltingly, she reached out a white hoof to wrap around her and return the hug, as if she were in a dream. As if any moment, she might blink and wake up.

“You’re welcome.” It was hard keeping the disbelief out of her voice.

“Thank you!” Rainbow said again. Her sniffles punctuated the air, along with her labored breathing. Celestia realized the girl’s wings were working overtime to keep her aloft; the size difference between them was such that she’d have been at hoof level, not hug level, without them. Immediately, the goddess knelt down, allowing Rainbow’s legs to find purchase on the balcony.

Her tears and sniffles continued unabated. After an age, Rainbow managed to peel herself away.

“I didn’t have anything of them for so long. Just the one picture…”

Eyes still swimming, she looked back down at the book, then back up again at Celestia.

“How… How long have you kept this?”

Celestia felt her throat constrict. Now her own emotions began to wash over her as she peered back with more hope, more desperate, pleading hope than she had allowed herself in an ocean of time.

“Seventeen years,” she said quietly.

Pain raked Rainbow’s face again. A stunned astonishment rolled over her like thunder. Like a flash of revelation through the fury of a storm.

She lunged forward and threw her hooves around Celestia again. This time, Celestia returned the hug with earnest, clutching Rainbow tightly to her chest as her own eyes shined with unshed tears.

“Thanks for giving them back to me. And th-thanks for…”

Rainbow tripped over the words. Over stubbornness and defiance that had been long-ingrained in her.

She spoke them anyway.

“Thanks for being honest,” she said. “Thanks for believing in me.”

Gently, she let go the embrace.

“I, um… I know I said before that I didn’t need you, and I… I didn’t want… anything to do with you… but… I guess I… I guess… I…”

Rainbow’s smile was the first thing to wobble.

Then the rest of her did.

She stumbled, swooned, and would have fallen over if Celestia hadn’t been there to catch her.

“Ohhhhh…”

It was the night before all over again. Apprehension and worry staked their claim on Celestia’s face as she pressed a hoof to the pale girl’s forehead.

“The fever’s back,” she noted grimly. “You’re burning up.”

Rainbow managed a wry grin. “Guess… my immune system… hasn’t caught up to the rest of me yet, huh?”

Celestia gently scooped Rainbow up and set her on her back.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Twilight Sparkle’s hooves folded neatly on the hard, metal tabletop as she sat and counted the minutes in the hard, metal chair. In front of her, a bulging manila file lay closed and foreboding. Printed at the top of it were three innocent little words: “Bustle, Bedlam T.”

But the pony to whom that name belonged was anything but innocent. The pony that name belonged to had committed unspeakable acts of violence. Had rained down terror and devastation on over one hundred bystanders, inflicting trauma both physical and emotional. Trauma some of his victims would carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Neither could Twilight discount the way her own life had been affected by him. No, affected was too cutesy a word. The way her own life had been upended, had been screwed with.

“Bustle, Bedlam T.” was the reason why Sweetie Belle had spent a week in the hospital, and why Sweetie Belle’s mom and dad were afraid to let her out of their sight even now, after all this time.

“Bustle, Bedlam T.” was the reason why Shining Armor was still in the hospital, lying comatose in some forlorn Canterlot medical ward. Just the thought of what had happened to him made Twilight want to cry… and filled her with an anger so blistering hot, her finest thermometer would crack at the strain of trying to register it.

“Bustle, Bedlam T.” was the reason why her entire view of the world had been demolished. Her naivety, as Tristar put it last night in that dark, dismal alley. Her foalish belief that all ponies were basically good, that everyone acted with the best of intentions, and that such an act of senseless bloodshed could never, ever happen in Equestria had been shattered by the attack in Manehattan. To say nothing of her full faith and confidence in the magic of friendship. For what was friendship to a heart with so much evil in it?

It was an uncomfortable thing to sit in anticipation for, coming face to face with this monster. Yet she had agreed to it, hadn’t she? She had come all this way. It was too late to back out now.

The fluorescent lights shined their harshness down upon her. She fidgeted in her seat.

There was a buzz, and the metal door screeched open. A brown stallion in a prison jumpsuit shambled into the room, his front and rear hooves bound with thick, white cuffs. He had an inhibitor ring slipped over his horn to nullify his unicorn magic, and a smile on his pretty-boy face. A smile that doubled in size the second he laid eyes on Twilight.

His teeth flashed like a row of pikes. He stooped as low as his restraints would permit him, venerating her with a mockery of a bow.

“Your Majesty!” he quipped, his voice laden with sarcasm.

One of the uniformed officers at his side jerked him back upright. “Enough of that! Fall in line, there!”

Spoke the other, “Bedlam Bustle, this is a Crown interrogation related to the events of Friday, May 17th, for which you have been charged. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to—”

“—An attorney. Yes, I understand my rights already. Do we have to go through this song and dance every time?”

The first officer shoved Bedlam roughly into a metal chair opposite the table from Twilight, while his partner shackled his ankles to a thick metal bolt on the floor. Bedlam scowled. “Manehattan’s finest,” he muttered.

Twilight gave the police an appreciative nod. “Thank you for escorting him, gentlecolts. I’ll take it from here.”

The officers filed out. The door slammed shut, leaving Twilight all alone.

Alone, with the author of so much terror.

She cleared her throat. “Mister Bustle, my name is Twilight Sparkle. I’ve been asked to interview you, and also to perform a thaumaturgic scan to evaluate you for any latent magical influence.”

Bedlam batted his eyelashes at her. “Is that so?”

“It is.” Twilight remained impassive. “For both of our sakes, I’d like to ask you for your cooperation.”

“You’d like to ask for my cooperation? How novel! I can’t even put a number on how many ponies have frog-marched me in here to demand answers out of me. Asking? That’s something new!”

“Does that mean you agree to cooperate?”

A cheshire grin split Bedlam’s face. “Why don’t you start talking, and we’ll see how far you get?”

Twilight frowned. “Mister Bustle—”

“ ‘Mister Bustle!’ So polite! Oh, what a sweetheart you are. You’re a much more agreeable pony than that head-up-his-ass captain I’ve gotten so well acquainted with these past few weeks. Better looking, too!”

He leaned forward in his chair.

“Where’s he at, anyway? Here in Manehattan? Cloudsdale? Back in Canterlot, groveling at the feet of his phony, usurper princesses?”

Twilight knew glancing at the one-way observation window was a mistake. She’d known it coming into this interrogation. Later, she would blame her lapse on the high-stress situation. On the effect it was having on her nerves.

Bedlam’s gaze followed her own. He looked at the half-silvered window. At his own leering face, reflected back. Slowly, he began to laugh.

“Oh-ho-ho! Is that you back there, Captain Tristar? Color me surprised!”

“Mister Bustle.”

“Big, strong pegasus couldn’t crack the case himself, so he’s gotta send in little girls to do his job for him! What a joke!”

“Mister Bustle!”

“The well-honed skills of the Canterlot Royal Guard, everypony! Let’s have a round of applause!”

“MISTER BUSTLE!”

Bedlam glanced at Twilight out of the corner of one eye, then back again at the window. Still grinning from ear to ear, he whistled the sound effect of a pony falling, then acted out the same with his chained-together forehooves, bringing them down together to ker-splat against the table.

“Mister Bustle, that’s quite enough! Will you cooperate, or won’t you?”

Bedlam’s blue eyes twinkled with cruel-hearted mirth. His smirk stretched wider than the Styx in Tartarus.

“For you, Twilight Sparkle? Anything.”

Twilight sighed in exasperation.

“Hold still, please. This will only take a few seconds.”

She closed her eyes and quieted her other senses, focusing her mind on the spell she’d come prepared with. It was almost exactly the same spell she’d used on the mountainside nearly a month ago, when she and Rainbow Dash were forced to beat a hasty retreat through the warrens to escape the Royal Guard, and she’d studied the enchantments on the secret entrance for a way to unlock it. Then, as now, her perception reattuned itself to a different facet of reality, allowing her to pierce the veil of the physical world. To peek behind the curtain at the unseen threads of mana that wove together, rippling and undulating, to form the very stuff of magic.

It was not an easy spell to pull off, requiring inordinate amounts of talent and finesse. Yet as Twilight turned her magesight on Bedlam, she was gratified to find her lifetime’s dedication to the study of magic had paid off. There was a curse on him! Luna and Sage had missed something!

She could see it twisting in the arcane wind, a sinewy ligament of magic that coiled around him like a viper. The mana threads were spiculated, as if covered in razor-sharp thorns. Twilight was leery even to try manipulating them. Even more unsettling was their color: not the tranquil silver-gold of most spellcraft, but a vicious, unnatural crimson.

Twilight’s apprehensions mounted as she surveyed it. It was dark magic, but not the kind Tristar had suspected. This was no bewitchment, no off-beat flavor of mind control. But it had sinister implications, just the same.

She probed further. From the malignant tumor of magic that held Bedlam at its core, twelve outgrowth tendons slithered down and away, like the tentacles of some horrifying, monstrous creature of the deep. Twilight’s brow knit as she felt along the length of them, following them across the concrete floor; out of the interrogation room; down the bleak, white corridor, and into the cellblocks. Into the cells of Bedlam’s twelve co-conspirators, his fellow terrorists who’d joined in his dark cause. Each grotesque appendage sought out a different brother of the Ascendancy. The dark magic slinked up their legs and burrowed in their chests, nesting there like a cancer.

“Aquarius,” Bedlam spoke suddenly, breaking her concentration.

She opened her eyes to find him smiling at her lecherously. “What?”

“My sign. Just figured I’d let you know. Beautiful, you don’t need to waste your time casting a spell to figure out if we’re compatible. I knew it from the moment I walked in the door.”

“Charming,” Twilight said with a sour grimace. “Mister Bustle, I’d like to ask you some questions. When you and your confederates attacked Grand Central Station twenty-four days ago, were you acting of your own free will?”

Bedlam’s self-satisfied grin showed his teeth again. “Ours and ours alone.”

“Were you acting under duress?”

“No.”

“To your mind, were you being manipulated in any way?”

“No.”

“Were you acting under the direction of any outside party?”

“But of course!” Bedlam chuckled with black amusement. “We’re never alone in anything we do. We have Our Lady to guide us.”

Twilight’s brow creased with puzzlement. “ ‘Our Lady?’ ”

“The Nightmare, of course,” said Bedlam.

“Of course.” Twilight fought to keep the disgust out of her voice. “Moving on. Other than you and your… colleagues… at this time, to the best of your knowledge, are there any other elements of the Ascendancy of the Night operating anywhere, either inside Equestria or extranationally?”

Bedlam gave her a hooded stare. Then he leaned back in his seat, turned, and sneered at the window. “Captain Tristar, did you really drag this child all the way cross-country so she could ask me the same questions, only worse?”

Twilight’s face flushed with anger. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean anything by it,” Bedlam said wryly. “It’s just… I’ve heard it all before. I’ve had this line of questioning from Tristar, I’ve had it from Whitehoof, I’ve had it from Luna herself!

“It’s funny, you know.” He leaned forward again, smiling in that devilish way of his. “All of you, tripping over yourselves to come up with answers, explanations, actionable intelligence… Does it frighten you to realize I’m not somepony’s sock puppet? That there’s zero mind control, zero hypnotism, zero compulsion upon my heart and soul? That a normal-looking pony just like me could be capable of so much evil?”

“It does, actually,” Twilight admitted.

“But it shouldn’t frighten you! That’s the beauty of free will! I’m capable of it, and so are you!”

His eyes locked with hers, burning with mad intensity.

“You’re more than capable of it, Twilight Sparkle. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so compatible!”

“We are NOT compatible!”

Twilight’s hooves slammed against the table. She practically leapt out of her chair, a feral snarl on her face.

“I could never be compatible with—with the likes of YOU!”

Bedlam lounged back. “I love it when ponies put themselves above others.”

“I DO NOT PUT MYSELF ABOVE OTHERS!”

There was a rap, rap, rap! against the enchanted glass of the window. Twilight’s ears flicked toward it. Ignored it.

“You put yourself BELOW the rest of us!” she snapped. “You committed an act of terrorism against innocent ponies who never did a THING to you! Elders, families, even CHILDREN! You put my friend’s sister in the hospital! You put my BROTHER in the hospital!”

“Did I?” Bedlam rubbed his chin. “I’ll have to try harder next time.”

“I know all about you! I’ve READ your file!”

She slapped the dossier down on the tabletop in front of him.

“You have NO EXCUSE for walking the path you did! What makes somepony as SICK as you? What makes somepony do something so TWISTED?”

“You really want to know?”

“YES!”

Bedlam grinned up at her. A gloating, cold-hearted grin, half conviction and half threat. “Since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you. You see, when I started out, I was unsure…”

Twilight stared at him.

“I thought I knew all that I needed. Didn’t know what to expect. But when my walls came down, I saw the truth.”

Bedlam stared back at her, through her, malevolence glittering in his bright, turquoise eyes. His expression was sweet poison. His voice was danger, stalking quietly in the night.

“All along, something was missing… and I think you’ll see it, too.”

Twilight faltered. Then, took an instinctive step back.

It took her a moment to find her wits. Her pique of anger had frozen over in her veins. Something about him… about the way he looked at her… with such… solidarity, such kinship…

She collected the dossier off the table.

“We’re done here,” she said. Her voice sounded steadier than she felt.

“Twilight Sparkle, don’t you see? You may be done with me, but you’ll never be done with her. You walk in the shadow of the Nightmare’s glory every day of your life. She lives in you!”

Twilight’s hoof slammed against the waiting button. A red light flashed above the door, signaling the guards.

At that instant, Bedlam tried to burst out of his chair, perhaps intending to stop her—but his chains pulled taut against the anchor bolt, preventing him from rising. Angrily, uselessly, he pulled against his bonds.

“YOU HEAR HER TOO! Don’t even PRETEND you don’t!” he bellowed as Twilight flinched back. “Does she speak to you in your dreams, as she speaks to me? I see her in your eyes! I see her in your SOUL!”

The door flew open, and in rushed the police to subdue him. Twilight backed away as they wrestled with him.

“SHE DOESN’T LOVE YOU, YOU KNOW!” Bedlam shouted.

“Wh… Who?” Twilight asked. Her eyes fell back upon him. On the sight of the deputies dragging him away: this crazed, wild-eyed pony, who’d been so lucid and collected only a moment ago; who’d all but turned rabid, as if some switch in his personality had been flipped and begun to throw sparks. She watched him twist and writhe against his captors, screaming and hollering, flinging little flecks of spittle from his maw.

The officers paused at the door to let him answer Twilight’s question. Bedlam leered back at her, face set with a manic grin.

“Celestia,” he answered smugly. “She doesn’t love you.”

Twilight’s eyes flew wide. “What?”

“She doesn’t love you! She doesn’t love ANY of us! It’s a farce—ALL OF IT! Her kindness, her compassion, her benevolence—she pretends, but it isn’t true! We’re all of us pawns in her great game! She LIES to us, she USES us, and then she CASTS US ASIDE!”

Twilight turned away, and the police strong-armed Bedlam out of the room, still ranting and raving. Even as they hauled him back to his cell, his voice floated down the corridor: “SHE DOESN’T LOVE YOU! SHE DOESN’T LOVE YOU! SHE DOESN’T…!”

The cellblock door slammed shut.

Twilight leaned one hoof against the wall to steady herself, her face buried in the crook of her elbow. After a confrontation like that, she needed a minute to pull herself back together.

She heard the door to the observation room open, and a few seconds later, felt Tristar’s gentle touch upon her shoulder.

“Miss Sparkle…” she heard him say. His voice was less gruff than usual, with an uncharacteristic note of concern.

“I’m fine. Just… give me a minute.”

He fell quiet at that. Twilight sensed him pull away.

Then there was a raucous screech-and-clatter as he violently overturned the metal chair Bedlam had been sitting in.

“That little shit,” he muttered. “I should knock a few teeth out of that psycho grin of his.”

Twilight didn’t reply. There was silence again.

“If you like, we can hit pause on the rest of the interrogations for a few hours,” Tristar suggested. “Celestia knows, these scum aren’t going anywhere, and our train isn’t due out of station until the day after tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother. It’s a waste of time,” said Twilight.

Tristar hesitated again. “I really think—”

“It’s a waste of time.”

She dragged herself away from the wall, turning to look at Tristar with weary, lifeless eyes.

“You can bring the other twelve in here, if you want. You can sit them down in front of me for a week, a month, a year. It won’t make a difference. None of them are going to say anything.”

“Miss Spar… Twilight,” he implored her. “I believe in you. I believe in your abilities. I wouldn’t have asked you to come all this way if I didn’t feel there were something to be gained by your insights. I’m sorry if that experience rattled you, but… will you at least make the attempt?”

Twilight bowed her head. She could still feel Bedlam’s putrid gaze upon her, like maggots crawling across her skin.

She thought of Princess Celestia, a month ago on that far-flung griffin peak, standing steadfast against the cold and the gale. Doing what had to be done for the good of all her subjects.

She thought of Shining Armor, his unwavering resolve and determination. Shining Armor, rising to duty’s call. Shining Armor, charging courageously into mortal peril.

Shining Armor, lying broken in that hospital bed…

Her jaw set.

She nodded her agreement.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

It was, as Twilight predicted, a waste of time.

One by one, the other twelve members of the Ascendancy were brought in for interrogation. One by one, they refused to talk.

Each time the police colts dragged another mean-looking prisoner in front of her, Twilight would scan him for any trace of dark magic, only to confirm that which she already knew. Each time she tried to wheedle out information through direct questioning, her best overtures were met with an ill-tempered scowl and a flinty-eyed glare.

Tristar had expected the interrogations to stretch into mid-week, but they were finished by the end of day one. As they sat down for a bite to eat under the umbrella at an outdoor cafe, Twilight explained:

“It’s an ancient, powerful type of magic. Blood magic, to be precise. They won’t speak because they can’t speak. A part of each of them is held in bondage to the will of an agreed-upon designee, who’s known as the blood warden.”

“The blood warden,” Tristar repeated, swilling the words around in his mouth and frowning, as if he found the taste and texture of them disagreeable.

Twilight shrugged. “I didn’t make up the terminology. Look, I said it before, and I’ll say it again: this is ancient, powerful stuff. Even before the Coronation, this school of magic was banned in the Unicorn Kingdom, and only practiced on the fringe by certain members of the Magocracy—the sorts of ponies who also dabbled in chaos magic, necromancy, and the like. It wasn’t widely known even back then, let alone today.”

“You seem to know a great deal about it,” Tristar pointed out.

“Only enough to recognize it when I see it. Professor Whitehoof thought it was important for us to be able to do that much. Dark magic has always held a certain… allure… for some unicorns. I won’t pretend I don’t have any experience dealing with it. Living in Ponyville, you never know when some self-important prestidigitator’s going to show up with a cursed amulet, exile you from your own town, and impose a totalitarian dystopia on the populace.” Twilight made a face at the memory, but she brightened a moment later when the waitress arrived with their drinks. “Oh! Thank you!”

“Sage Whitehoof taught you about this… blood magic?” Tristar pressed.

“How to spot it and defend against it, along with other forms of the occult. That’s part of the curriculum at Princess Celestia’s School. Professor Whitehoof himself teaches the class.”

Tristar swirled his whiskey, his brow furrowed. Twilight sipped her tea.

“You said a part of each of them was held in bondage?”

“Right! That’s part of the spell. In this case, the part that’s held in bondage is their voice. Blood magic is ritual magic, so the fact that none of them other than Bedlam can talk implies a ritual offering of blood.”

“A ritual offering of blood…?”

“It’s not necessarily as dramatic as it sounds. Could be just a tiny drop, just a pinprick of blood. That’s how blood magic works, though. It requires a pony’s life essence to seal the deal. You mentioned the cultists were inordinately powerful when you went up against them, right?”

A scowl darkened Tristar’s face. “That would be putting it mildly.”

“Well, that was probably more of the same. I didn’t detect any wellspring of hidden potential, any untapped reservoir of magic about any of them. In fact, I’d bet my bottom bit they came prepared with all manner of dark magic already cast upon them—anathemas, execrations, vile abjurations. To borrow a turn of phrase from Spike’s Ogres and Oubliettes compendium, they were all ‘buffed up’ ahead of time.”

Tristar tapped his chin thoughtfully. “So Bedlam Bustle is the blood warden. He rounds up this group of fanatics, radicalizes them to his cause, swears them to silence, carries out a dark ritual to take away their voice and guarantee nopony squeals. He arms them to the teeth with dark magic, and then they go to town. Is that your theory? Do I have that right?”

Twilight shifted uncomfortably in her chair. All around them were the sights and sounds of everyday life in Manehattan: ponies smiling, laughing, chatting; pigeons skittering across the sidewalk as pedestrians rambled by, and yellow taxi carts with checkered decals click-a-clacking over the cobblestones. She broke gaze with Tristar and looked out over the urban vista, losing herself—at least, for the moment—in the normalness of it all.

“Bedlam…” she began after an uneasy pause. “You’re assuming he’s the leader of the group, but that isn’t necessarily so. He’s the blood warden, sure. But that doesn’t mean he has to be the spell’s author. In fact, having read his biography, I tend to doubt that notion. For a unicorn with his background to cast a spell of that complexity…”

She shook her head.

“Let’s just say it would require a mage of some ability to pull it off. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Bedlam is that mage.”

“You’re suggesting he’s a frontman. He acts as a public face for the group, but in reality, he’s a small fry. Meanwhile, we train our investigation on him because he’s the only one who’ll talk. He’s the low-hanging fruit. And we lose sight of the bigger fish.”

“Any one of the other twelve could be the brains of the operation, and you’d never know it,” Twilight said. “Or…”

“Or?”

She gave a sad smile. “Or the mastermind behind the Ascendancy could be somepony else entirely. It could be that Bedlam Bustle and his cohorts are just a single cell in a larger organization, and there are higher-ranking individuals they take their orders from.”

“A distinct possibility, and an assumption I’ve been operating under since day one. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna as well,” Tristar admitted.

Twilight’s eyes lowered to the black metal mesh on the patio table. “I’m sorry. I guess I haven’t been much help, have I? I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

“Twilight.”

Tristar reached across the table and clasped her hoof at the wrist. She looked up at him uncertainly.

“You’ve absolutely been a help to me,” he declared. “I know more today than I knew yesterday, and that counts for something. Even if they weren’t bewitched, beguiled, or bedazzled—even if they attacked Grand Central of their own free will—the rest of this? This blood magic stuff? That’s what we in the Royal Guard like to call a clue, Twilight. It’s a clue I didn’t have before, and who’s to say where it will lead?”

Twilight’s shoulders tightened. “I suppose.”

The waitress cantered back over, balancing Twilight’s order on the end of one hoof: a pair of daffodil and daisy sandwiches with a side of chips. She set down the plate in front of the brooding unicorn, asked if either of them would fancy another drink—“No, thank you,” Tristar answered for them—and then she hurried off to tend to the other customers.

Twilight didn’t make any move to touch her food as she sat there, her violet eyes lowered again. The little pimento olives stared back at her, speared on the ends of their toothpicks.

She could claim to be complex and multi-faceted all she wanted. Didn’t make any difference. Tristar could see right through her.

“You’ve still got your tail in a tangle over Bedlam, don’t you?”

Twilight’s head snapped up. A scowl rolled over her face like a swift summer storm. “Excuse me?”

“Reading ponies is a part of what I do. It’s obvious you haven’t been yourself since Bedlam popped his cork this morning. Don’t let that lunatic’s ravings put you off your game.”

The unicorn’s mouth pinched, her muzzle crinkled. She levitated one of her sandwiches, nibbling around the edges.

“I just don’t understand him,” she muttered in-between bites.

“What’s there to understand?”

“I’ve been thinking about him all day long. Trying to figure out what makes a pony like him tick. What is it that causes a perfectly ordinary stallion to turn out so vicious and hateful?”

“I’ve pondered over the same questions. Listen, Twilight. There are mysteries in this world that even your intellect can’t wrap itself around, and the insanity of Bedlam Bustle and his ilk rank high among them. You don’t have to understand them. What you do have to understand is yourself.”

“Myself?” Twilight echoed.

“I saw how you reacted to him today. I saw how he got under your skin, into your head. He baited you, and you took the hook. The second you responded with anger in kind, he’d already won.”

“Really? You’re going to give me advice on anger management?”

“There’s an old Yakyakistani proverb: do as yak yaks, not as yak does.”

Twilight paid him a severe look.

“Anyway,” Tristar continued with a dismissive wave of his hoof, “I don’t know as much about magic as you, but I do know a great deal about ponies. How they think, and how they act. I know there are going to be times, in your life, when another pony comes at you with anger in their heart. Times like those, the best thing you can do is keep a cool head. It doesn’t pay to lose your temper and do something you’ll regret.”

“Of all the ponies to give me this lecture—!”

“I’m the best pony to be giving you this lecture. If nothing else, you can take me as a case study on how not to be. You really want to walk my path and be as bitter, jaded, and miserable as I am?”

She fell quiet at that. Tristar knocked back his glass and polished off the last of his drink.

“Exactly,” he said. “So master yourself, Twilight Sparkle.”

He reached into his coin purse, pulled out a few bits, and threw them on the table to cover the cost of lunch, plus tip.

Twilight’s lips pressed together in a tight grimace. She cast her gaze up the length of Park Avenue, where the patched-up masonry and portcullis windows of Grand Central could be spotted across the viaduct, standing prominently over 42nd Street. Droves of workers in orange hard hats, pegasi and earth ponies both, flitted in and out of the ruptured building. Repairs were well underway.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Their business in Manehattan all wrapped up, Twilight and Tristar planned an early exit. As sunset approached, they took the ferry back across the Studson to Neigh Jersey, thence to reboard their train and begin the long cross-country journey back to Canterlot.

Tristar led the unicorn back to his private car, which had been freshly cleaned and laundered for her comfort on the trip back. “I’d like to thank you again for your help,” he spoke gruffly, but in earnest. “Maybe to you, it doesn’t mean much. But it means a lot to me, and I guarantee you, it means a heck of a lot to all the mares and stallions, fillies and colts who were caught in the crossfire last month. Believe it or not, we’re one step closer to cracking this thing.”

Twilight put on a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “It was no problem. I’m glad I could be of some help.”

“You were,” Tristar said adamantly.

He shuffled toward the door, but stopped and lingered. After some internal debate, he looked back at her.

“Shining Armor would be proud of you,” he told her.

Then he left. Gone back to bunk with his men, two cars up.

Twilight felt the train pitch under her as they began to pull out of the depot. Heard the locomotive give a mighty chuff of steam, and listened to the sound of the goliath wheels as they clacked across the fishplates. She headed out the rear gangway, opposite the direction Tristar had gone, continuing along the length of the train until her head poked out the back of the caboose. There on the platform, she raised herself up over the railing and watched the metropolis retreat slowly into the distance.

Tristar was right. Bedlam had gotten in her head. Even now, hours later, she felt unsettled just thinking about him. She could still feel his eyes staring through her, as if her skin were made of tissue paper, too wispy and insubstantial to keep the truth of her soul from shining through. She could hear his words, like raw sewage ladled in her ears: “She lives in you!”

Nothing about this mission had gone as she imagined it would. Certainly not where Bedlam Bustle and the Ascendancy were concerned. Even if they were her brother’s attackers, she should have been more composed. Why was she falling to pieces like this?

Not where Tristar was concerned, either. Although her top-level impression of the guard captain hadn’t changed all that much—she still found him boorish, arrogant, colored by prejudice, and often insufferable—she couldn’t find fault in his thoroughness, nor in his dogged pursuit of the facts. As she watched the day fade from her vantage on the back of the train, the sky giving up its blues for the first pink inklings of dusk, she pondered their diversion last night in that shabby old tavern, in that rustbucket town. The truths he’d spoken—the ones she could pluck out from all the bigotry and narrow-mindedness. And, most unsettling of all, the possibility that he might be right about some things.

There was a lead weight sitting in the pit of her stomach; a weight she knew only too well. It was an off-shade of the same anxiety she felt whenever she was late in sending Princess Celestia an assignment or a friendship report; that had once possessed her to enchant a childhood doll, to turn Ponyville upside-down in search of a problem to write a letter about. When Princess Celestia was due in town for a visit, and Twilight flew into a near-mania over the preparations—she knew the feeling, then. When those preparations happened to be undermined by a sudden swarm of parasprites, or by Fluttershy stealing the royal bird—she felt that weight press down on her all the more.

She knew what it was. It was the need to prove herself to her dearest mentor and teacher. To lift herself up in the eyes of the princess. To show that she was dependable, that she was worthy, that she was good enough.

The need to be near and dear to her heart.

The need to be cherished.

“SHE DOESN’T LOVE YOU, YOU KNOW!”

Twilight tore her eyes away from the rolling countryside. Her head bowed, her shoulders slumped, she withdrew back inside the train. It wasn’t helpful to distress herself with dark imaginings.

She started to head back toward her room, but stopped in her tracks when something caught her attention. There in the middle of the caboose, positioned directly underneath the cupola, a white tarp had been draped over some kind of object, about chest-high. She’d overlooked it a few minutes ago, but now on her way back, it stuck out like a sore hoof.

Curiously, she approached it, wondering what it could be. Her magic lifted the cover and set it aside.

Beneath it was a crystal ball set upon an onyx pedestal, unlike anything she had ever seen before. She could sense ripples of magical energy emanating from it. Something to do with divination, sight, and great distance.

She was peering into it when it happened.

A maelstrom suddenly kicked up inside the shimmering sphere: a cavalcade of stitched-together thunderheads that surged from out of nowhere, roiling and churning with ominous portent. Twilight watched, enthralled, as the miniature storm front billowed outward, crashing against the glass confines.

Rapidly, the clouds darkened from platinum, to ash-gray, to charcoal-black. As the magic light inside the orb was eclipsed, so too did the ambient light seem to recede from all around her. The orange glow of the kerosene lamps withered and died. The shafts of sunset spilling through the windows grew shadowy and dim, as if some malevolent, unholy force had moved to blot out the sky. Twilight barely noticed any of it, so intent was she on the crystal ball, on the fathomless mysteries it concealed. The tempest crackled with flashes of hidden electricity, each augury of lightning reflected in her infinite pupils.

Then the clouds shifted and gave way to a chasm of purest darkness, deeper than deep, blacker than black. And from out of the fissure, framed by the writhing storm, SHE SAW IT! SHE SAW IT, and she yelped, and fell back—

A single eye, glaring back at her.

A single eye. Slitted, like a dragon’s eye. Like Nightmare Moon’s eyes as she smirked down at her, filling her ears with cackling laughter.

A single, slitted, purple eye.

The eye from her dreams.

Then the whole world dissolved away, and she saw all the other stuff of her night terrors play out, all the things, all the terrible, horrifying things she tried not to think about. A scarlet bolt of lightning, faded and cracked, the sky above Canterlot riven by a column of black fire, dark shapes all around her, the silver glint of a knife’s edge, a sanguine pool of red. Trapped, nowhere to run, then pain, then coldness pushing from her chest into her limbs, darkness seeping in from all sides, make it stop make it stop MAKE IT STOP

It stopped.

Twilight’s heart raced, her eyes squeezed shut. She whimpered on the floor, quivering and shielding herself behind her forehooves.

Seconds went by, and the blow she’d been expecting never came.

With trepidation, she cracked one eye open to reveal the railroad car in all its normalness and banality. The crystal ball still sat on its pedestal, exactly as it had been before. No storm clouds threatened from behind the glass. No premonition of existential dread stalked her courage, and no horrible purple iris was there to stare at her. To pierce her through and through, and peer right down to the very core of her.

Everything was as it should be.

Had… Had she imagined it all?

Slowly, the adrenaline drained out of her, leaving her rattled, but no worse for wear. She picked herself up off the floor, glancing about anxiously. The sun was back to shining through the window sashes, and the lamps were back to glowing, and nothing was amiss.

Starswirl’s beard! What was wrong with her? Had speaking to Bedlam really affected her that much, that she was coming apart over nothing now?

His jeering taunts echoed in her memory:

“YOU HEAR HER TOO! Don’t even PRETEND you don’t! Does she speak to you in your dreams, as she speaks to me?”

BUCKING WASTE OF TIME, this WHOLE TRIP was! Why had she even agreed to come? Dreams weren’t real, and neither were nightmares! It was all so STUPID, and she KNEW IT! Just her OVERACTIVE IMAGINATION, trotting out all this MEANINGLESS symbolic imagery, these STUPID INSECURITIES! She should’ve stayed in Canterlot—

“I see her in your eyes! I see her in your SOUL!”

She SLAMMED her hoof down.

—should’ve stayed in Canterlot, where she BELONGED! She had a JOB to do in Canterlot, teaching Rainbow Dash how to control her magic. Princess Celestia EXPECTED her to be in Canterlot, not some POINTLESS BOONDOGGLE in MANEHATTAN, of all places! But she’d come here anyway, for Shining Armor’s sake—AND FOR WHAT?

So a PSYCHOPATH like Bedlam Bustle could buck around with her head? Her nights were fraught enough with these terrors. Now she had to hallucinate them during the DAY, too?

So Tristar could SNEER AT HER, could PUT HER IN HER PLACE for the CRIME of being born a unicorn? So TRISTAR, of all ponies, could rub her face in how ARROGANT she was, and ENTITLED, and JEALOUS? TRISTAR, that POMPOUS ASS!

Well, not anymore! SHE’D HAD ENOUGH!

In a white rage, she snatched the tarp off the floor, yanking it back overtop the crystal ball with her magic. Teeth clenched and muscles bunched, she threw open the door and stalked out, her whole body shaking like she had a rampaging Ursa Major in her.

She never should have agreed to come on this trip.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

An hour later, Twilight was alone in her private car, attempting to meditate over happier thoughts. She had just tucked A Brief History of Equestria, Part One away in her luggage when above her, there was a burst of green dragon fire, and a scroll dropped into her lap.

It was a letter from Ponyville! Instantly, she felt her spirits lift. She ripped off the seal and unfurled the parchment.

Enclosed within it was, oddly enough, a crisp white envelope. The envelope was sealed, and the words For Rainbow Dash were written on the face of it in an elegant purple script. With a frown, Twilight set the parcel aside and turned her attention back to the scroll.

It was from Spike! Hey Twi, I hope you and Rainbow Dash are still having a wicked cool time in Canterlot, the message began—her eyes roved over it hungrily, devouring every word and paragraph, every morsel of vicarious joy there was to be gotten from his description of recent events back home.

Oh, she missed Spike so much! She missed his home cooking, and the way he kept her grounded, and how sweet and kind he always was, and how diligent he was about keeping an accurate checklist, and how he would always look up at her with those bright green eyes and beg her to buy him the latest Power Ponies comic book, and even how he got up to the occasional mischief. She had never been apart from him for so long a time, not since the day he was hatched. What she wouldn’t give to be able to see him again! To hand him a basket of gems and watch his face light up, or smile and shake her head the next time he got into a ‘who’-ing match with Owlowiscious…

But Professor Whitehoof had told her it was better, safer, wiser for Spike to remain in Ponyville. And Professor Whitehoof surely knew best.

Still, she missed him so much! She missed Ponyville, and all of her friends! Every time Spike occasioned to send her a letter like this, gushing with so much news from home—how excited Fluttershy was to be able to attend next month’s breezie migration, or how Rarity had thrown her hat in the ring to be the pony of ceremonies at the upcoming Ponyville Days festival—ordinary things; even inconsequential things; but things she wished she could be there for, things she was missing out on—every time she got a letter like this, her heart ached with so much longing.

Even so, Twilight wouldn’t trade these words for all the riches in Canterlot. She needed these letters. She relied on them to keep her sane.

Everypony here misses you a lot, Twi, began the last paragraph. Me, most of all! After all, what good’s a number one assistant without somepony to assist? But we all understand how important the work you’re doing in Canterlot is. Rainbow Dash is lucky to have you for a teacher. Keep on being awesome, and don’t worry about me! The Carousel Boutique is almost as comfy as the library, and Rarity definitely hasn’t been spoiling me with more sapphires and emeralds than I could ever dream of. And I’ve been reshelving all the books in the Golden Oaks every week, just like you asked me to! Honest!

She cracked a smile.

Below the dragon’s signature, there was a postscript:

P.S. You’re probably wondering about the envelope. Rarity asked me to fire it your way, since you’re already in Canterlot. She wants you to MAKE SURE it gets to Rainbow Dash AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. She wouldn’t tell me what’s in it, but it seems REALLY important to her.

Twilight set down the parchment, her curiosity bubbling up.

What could be so paramount that Rarity needed to contact Rainbow Dash AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, in all caps? …Measurements for a dress, maybe? Some secret-squirrel, hush-hush ensemble to be worn at the Summer Sun Celebration next week? No, that didn’t make sense. Rainbow had bucked Princess Celestia’s every request, had adamantly refused to go.

Come to think of it, hadn’t Rarity and Rainbow Dash gotten into some kind of argument a while back…? Yes, a little over two weeks ago, when her friends had met in Ponyville in the aftermath of the Ascendancy’s attack. Twilight had only heard about it after the fact, as she’d been in Canterlot at Shining Armor’s bedside when the heated words were exchanged. But as she understood it from Applejack, the two of them were anything but amicable.

Twilight’s eyes flickered to the missive.

She levitated it. The envelope floated in front of her, dangling in her aura.

What could possibly be so important…?

Before she had even begun to contemplate the ethical ramifications, Twilight used her magic to sever the bonds holding the adhesive together. The top flap of the envelope opened primly without a tear, and out popped the letter, written on Rarity’s finest stationery.

She read:

Dear Rainbow Dash,

I won’t mince words. I’m writing to apologize for my horrid behavior at our last meeting, when my pettiness and self-indulgence caused us to part ways in anger. A lady shouldn’t be as mean-spirited as I was on that day, but it’s even more inexcusable for a friend.

I’m ashamed to admit, I wasn’t a good friend to you then, nor have I been, these past weeks. In the aftermath of Manehattan and what happened to Sweetie Belle, I was too distraught, too single-minded, too thoughtless of anything and anyone but my beloved sister and parents to spare a drop of empathy for you, and for what you’ve been going through. In my outrage over the injury done to my family, in my thirst for retribution, I looked for somepony to be angry with, somepony to blame. You just happened to be in my line of fire. It wasn’t fair to you, and I shall forever regret the things I did and said.

I must also plead guilty to being the teensiest bit envious of your recent elevation in rank and station. Admitting that fills me with an even greater remorse, but it’s a flaw in myself that I’ve come to recognize. The truth of the matter is, it’s always been a dream of mine to live a life of glamor and prestige, richness and majesty in Canterlot: the life of a princess. So caught up was I in imagining how wonderful it must be, I failed, in that moment, to remember it was a circumstance that had been forced upon you, and a circumstance that’s been nothing short of devastating for your happiness and well-being. I was blinded by jealousy. I failed you as a friend.

I should have been there for you, just as you were there for me. After all, you went out of your way to travel to Ponyville, to show your support for myself and Sweetie Belle. I should have been grateful to you. Instead, I foolishly tried to exploit our friendship for special favors. Even after I was so untrue to you, you spoke to Princess Celestia on my behalf concerning my request for guard protection, and even extended an invitation for my family to come stay at Canterlot Castle. That amount of selflessness speaks volumes about the true virtue of your character.

Pinkie Pie returned from her impromptu visit to Canterlot this past weekend bearing news of your melancholy. I hope you can forgive her that. Knowing you, I’m quite certain it’s something you wouldn’t want shouted from the rooftops—but it is Pinkie Pie, after all. If what she told us is true, and indeed you are experiencing any amount of isolation or depression… Suffice it to say, it pains me to know I might have had even a small hoof in it. All I can do is beg your forgiveness and pray our friendship has not been irreparably damaged.

I’m just glad Twilight has been by your side this whole time to show you all the love and support we haven’t been able to from so far away here in Ponyville!

Truly, Rainbow Dash, I wish you only blue skies, peace, and happiness. I hope you take the best of every day and spin it into something even more beautiful, the way you always do so well. What storms may come, I hope you weather them with family and friends by your side and never, never alone. And I desperately hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.

Sincerely Yours,
Rarity

Twilight lowered the letter. An uncomfortable feeling churned her gut.

Rainbow Dash was suffering from… isolation and depression?

Since when? Twilight racked her brain. Rainbow had been perfectly fine a few days ago, hadn’t she? She’d been going head to head with Princess Luna in that stupid prank war. She hadn’t seemed depressed then, nor had she at any of their recent interactions.

What had Twilight overlooked? What had she missed?

She thought back to the beginning of May, to the start of this strange saga, when Rainbow had first come into her horn. Twilight knew all too well what an excruciating ordeal that had been for her. If she closed her eyes, she could still hear Rainbow’s tormented pleas, burned into her memory like a hot iron brand. Could still picture her lying there, helpless on the bed, as pain breathed shudder after shudder through her labored body… As each howling sob of deep, hollow emotion ripped out of her, heart and soul. To be sure, there was no shortage of trauma there.

Then, the difficult days after, and Twilight could well appreciate how badly the reckoning had affected Rainbow Dash. Her disappearance from the hospital. The refuge she’d sought at Fluttershy’s cottage. That sacred night in the cemetery, huddling behind the knotted old willow, the boughs creaking mournfully in the wind as Rainbow watered her parents’ graves with her reverence, her guilt, and her pain. How could she ever forget?

Now Tristar’s voice was in the back of her head, there to remind her what a nasty, jealous, self-absorbed jerk she was. Her mood darkening, she slipped the letter back into the envelope, then used her magic to seal it up again, leaving no obvious clue it had ever been opened.

Could she really have been so wrapped up in herself? That somehow, she had failed to notice one of her friends… suffering? Once more, she thought back on some of her own recent behavior. Her stomach twisted in her abdomen.

She had to get back to Canterlot. Had to talk things over with Rainbow, as soon as she could. Had to find out if there was any truth to the dire impression given by Rarity’s letter. And if there was—

Before she could finish the thought, she heard a tearing sort of sound from above her, and she glanced up to see the jaws of space and reality prying open over her head. A small rift had formed there, navy-blue and twinkling with an extravagance of Luna’s stars.

Apparently, it must have been mail hour, because two more scrolls dropped out of the cleft and bounced off her muzzle. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the starry fissure zipped back up and vanished.

Twilight frowned and absently rubbed her nose as she reached for the nearer of the two scrolls. On it was Princess Luna’s seal, stamped in blue wax instead of in red. Off it came, and the letter rolled out in front of her:

Twilight Sparkle,

Despite my earnest efforts, I haven’t been able to locate you at any of your usual Canterlot haunts, nor in Ponyville. Therefore, I have to assume you’ve taken leave without giving notice of departure, and you’re currently traveling about the kingdom somewhere.

Of course, you aren’t beholden to anypony, and you have full liberty to come and go as you please, but I urge you to be more judicious. These are uncertain times, as you’re well aware. Your safety means the sun and moon to us. Keep your wits about you, and be cautious.

Twilight’s ears lowered to hear those words pointed at her. It was neither a reprimand nor a rebuke, but she felt chastened all the same. This trip felt more ill-conceived by the minute. Why had she let Tristar goad her into it?

She read on:

My sister has requested your presence back in Canterlot at your earliest opportunity. There are matters of some importance that she would discuss with you. I bid you, please finish attending to whatever business you have, then make haste for the capital.

For our peace of mind, please send a reply to let us know you’re okay, and to make arrangements for your conveyance to the palace. I’ll be there promptly by chariot to escort you.

Princess Luna

Fidgeting anxiously, Twilight levitated the quill and inkwell, scratching out a quick response. She let Luna know she was safe and already on her way back to Canterlot. She was sorry for picking up and leaving so suddenly. She hadn’t expected to be gone long, and didn’t think her temporary absence would cause a problem. Of course, she would be happy to meet with Princess Celestia just as soon as she could.

With a scarlet flash of her horn, she sent the message on its way to the lunar princess. Then she rubbed her shoulders and sighed, her weary gaze drawing to the last unopened scroll, still in front of her.

She picked it up and began to read it.

No sooner had she skimmed past the second line than her eyes grew big as a bugbear’s britches, and a smile bloomed across her face. After she read to the bottom of the scroll, she started again from the top and went over it for a second time, just to make sure she wasn’t imagining what it said—and once she’d done that, she gave a squeal of joy, clutching the parchment to her chest as her hooves kicked out with happiness.

It was a letter from Cadance.

Shining Armor was awake.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Shining Armor was AWAKE!

Twilight had never been happier in her LIFE as she stepped off the train and onto the platform, breathing in that warm Canterlot sunshine. Shining Armor was ALIVE and AWAKE! He wasn’t in a coma anymore! He was AWAKE, and she was going to see him!

She had a jaunt in her step as she weaved her way through the crowded train station, humming a little tune and toting her bags behind her in her levitation aura. It felt like the weight of the world had come off her. Her joy was like a rose in winter, shooting up through the frost and snow.

“Twilight Sparkle?”

A voice from the concourse off to her right. She turned her head to look. It didn’t seem possible for her smile to get any bigger, but that’s exactly what it did. “Professor Whitehoof!” she exclaimed.

Sure enough, there was her old headmaster, beaming at her from behind his snow-white beard and spectacles. “Ah! There you are, my dear girl!” he said, and he trotted over to meet her.

Twilight greeted him with a warm, friendly hug. “Professor, it’s good to see you again! But what in the world are you doing here?”

“I’ve been waiting for you, of course! It seemed like the considerate thing to do, being here to welcome you back. Don’t fret too much about it. I do live in the neighborhood, so it’s hardly an inconvenience.”

“But… how did you even know I’d be coming on this train? Or on any train? I didn’t tell anypony!”

“Oh, call it a premonition,” he answered vaguely, but with a generous smile that crinkled the lines around his eyes. “Here, let me help you with those.”

He plucked Twilight’s travel bags out of the air, heaving them onto his back with a physical strength she found surprising for a stallion of his years. Instantly, she gave protest.

“Professor, I can carry my own luggage!”

“Nonsense, my girl.”

“Really, it’s no trouble! I can levitate them myself.”

“Give a doddering old fool an excuse to do something nice for his best and favorite student, won’t you? Come now. Let’s walk together.”

They walked. Through the bustling depot, they strolled side by side, past the restaurants, the shops, and the lounges, down the wide, outstretched steps, and out into the sprawling expanse of the ticketing lobby. All the while, they chatted as they went.

“It’s good to be back,” said Twilight.

“It’s good to have you back! I don’t know if you realize it, but Canterlot never shines as brightly as when you’re in it.”

Twilight’s face turned a shade redder beneath her lavender coat. “W-Well, I just hope things haven’t been too bad off without me. I feel regretful for having skipped town the way I did, even if it was only for a few days… I shouldn’t have left my lessons with Rainbow in the lurch, for one thing.”

“Or left against the advice and counsel of your old headmaster, for another,” Sage observed.

There wasn’t any heat or fire in his words, but Twilight winced anyway.

Sage chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. What’s done is done. The important thing is, you’re safe and sound, and no harm’s come to you. And as far as young Rainbow Dash is concerned… Frankly, the timing of your holiday couldn’t have been any better.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid she came down with a sudden case of the flu. She’s over the worst of it now, I’m told, but she’s been bedridden for the last several days, and not in any kind of condition to take lessons.”

Twilight’s eyes lowered to the inlaid patterns on the polished tile floor. Idly, her mind drifted to Rarity’s letter, tucked away in her bag.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I remember last fall, when she fractured her wing in an accident and couldn’t leave the hospital. How much she hated being cooped up… Maybe I should bring her a book to read.” She looked up again. “You said she was doing better, though?”

“I think so. I know Princess Celestia has been caring for her.”

The knot in Twilight’s gut pulled a fraction of an inch tighter. “Oh…”

“Actually, I had planned on paying Rainbow Dash a visit tomorrow to see if she might feel well enough to take a magic lesson from me, but now that you’re back, there’s no need for me to be your stand-in. If you want, you’re welcome to drop in on her.”

“No, please, you go right ahead. Tell her I’ll come and see her soon. There’s actually a lot I need to talk to her about, but right now… There’s someplace else I need to be.”

They had emerged from the train station and onto the portico. Sage stopped at the top of the stairs leading down to the white flagstone street.

“You aren’t headed for the castle?” he asked. Dozens of ponies were coming and going, hurrying up and down the steps all around them, but the old purple unicorn only had eyes for Twilight.

“Not just yet. I’m actually on my way to the hospital right now. You see, my brother’s just woken up, and—”

“Shining Armor’s awake again? Twilight, that’s magnificent news! You must be so happy!”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile.

“And your mother and father, and Princess Cadance, too! I can’t imagine how much a relief it must be for all of you!”

“You don’t know the half of it. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a letter from my family like the one Cadance sent me last night. ‘Relieved’ is an understatement. ‘Gushing with tears of happiness’ is probably more accurate—and I can’t blame her for it, either.”

“Say no more, and don’t bother yourself one bit over Rainbow Dash. I’ll see to her lesson. Let’s get you on your way!”

Sage whisked down the steps, Twilight trailing close behind him. He halted at the curb, stuck a hoof between his lips, and whistled for a taxi. In short order, one rolled to a stop in front of them.

When the elder stallion took it on himself to hoist her heavy luggage into the cart, Twilight raised her objections again, “Professor, please! I can levitate them myself! It’s really no problem—”

“Too late!”

Sage finished placing the last of Twilight’s travel bags on the floor of the cab, then turned and regarded her with a gleaming smile. Twilight only laughed and shook her head.

“You know, I don’t remember you doing any of the heavy lifting for me when I took your class.”

“You never needed me to,” Sage said with a twinkle.

Twilight smiled. “Thank you for everything, Professor.”

She started to climb into the carriage, but Sage suddenly caught the door in front of her, blocking her with his hoof.

“Forgive me, Miss Sparkle, just… one last thing, before you go. It’s nothing, really. Just a passing curiosity that came to mind. But… wherever have you been, these past few days?”

A morose look stole across Twilight’s face. “Oh… That.”

Her hoof scuffed against the pavement. Her eyes darted away, preferring the manicured row of boxwoods set against the stationhouse to the archmagister’s penetrating silver gaze.

“Well… To tell you the truth, I’ve been in Manehattan,” she admitted.

Sage inclined his head ever so slightly. “I had a suspicion that might be the case. Did Daedalus press you into service?”

“He didn’t force me into going, if that’s what you mean. He asked me, and I agreed to accompany him.”

“Hmm.” Sage nodded. “Wanted you to give your opinion on the members of the Ascendancy being held on the Upper East Side, did he?”

“That’s right.”

“And what were your findings?”

Twilight’s eyes flitted back from the hedges. “They are under an enchantment. A blood pact, of some kind. All thirteen of them are joined in it. I could see the tendrils of dark magic running between them, binding them together from soul to soul… I think that’s the reason why they were so formidable when they made their stand, and why none of them but Bedlam can talk.”

“Have you spoken of this to Daedalus yet?”

“Of course! He was the first pony I told!”

The wrinkles on Sage’s ancient face pulled taut with a grin. Eyes shining, he clapped Twilight on the back.

“You truly are remarkable, Miss Sparkle! The best and brightest of us all, with wisdom and insight far beyond your years!”

“Oh!” Twilight found herself blushing again. “Well… Thank you!”

“I’ll make sure word of this discovery reaches Princess Celestia. As a matter of fact, I’ll bring her the news myself!”

He gave her a little push into the taxi.

“Now, off with you! Off, and pass along my sincere good wishes to Princess Cadance and your brother. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

Twilight seated herself. Peering over the side rail, she paid the wizened old sorcerer a parting smile.

“Thank you again, Professor,” she said.

Sage slipped the driver a small pouch of bits. “To Canterlot Hospital, on the double!” he told him.

Then the taxi was off, bearing Twilight Sparkle across town with a clatter of copper wheels and a thundering fury of hoofbeats. Sage Whitehoof stood by the wayside and watched the cart retreat into the distance.

Perched on a cloud high above, Captain Tristar did the same, standing tall and observing with a troubled frown on his face.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Twily? Is that y—oof!”

Shining Armor barely had time to sit up in bed. Before he could say another word, a purple blur flew across the room and tackled him against the baby-blue hospital pillows.

Twilight’s hooves clinched around his barrel, her head buried in the crook of his neck. Her eyes were misting over, but she didn’t need to see. All she needed was the steady percussion of his heart, still beating; the up-and-down lull of his chest, still breathing. The tenderness of his hoof as it gently folded over her back, reassuring her that he was still there. That he wasn’t gone.

“Twily…” she heard him murmur.

She tried to say something, but all that came out was a hitched sob. Vaguely, she was aware of her brother lifting his head, looking somewhere off to the side. Then, of a familiar pink shape rising from a chair set next to him. Circling, now, around to her side of the bed.

The mattress depressed as Cadance sat down beside her, draping her with a comforting pink wing. “It’s okay, Twilight. He’s right here,” she said, though there was a quiver in her voice. “He isn’t going anywhere.”

“That’s right,” Shining Armor quickly agreed. “Twilight, I know you’ve been worried sick over me, and so have Cadance, and Mom, and Dad. I love you, and I’m sorry for putting you through all that. But it’s okay! I’m all better now, see? I’m better, and I’m still here.”

Twilight looked up, swallowing sniffle after sniffle, hot tears coursing down her cheeks. Then her face contorted with a sudden rage as she exploded at him, “Shining Armor, you BIG, STUPID IDIOT!”

“Whoa! Hold on a second!”

“Don’t you EVER let yourself get hurt like that EVER AGAIN!”

“I believe your sister just gave you an order,” said Cadance. “You remember how to take orders, don’t you?”

Shining Armor awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, a grimace tugging at his face. “You guys are putting me in a tough spot here, you know. Believe me, I wish I could promise you nothing bad’s ever gonna happen to me. Heck, I wish I could make myself that promise. But I am a captain of the Royal Guard. It’s not a job that’s without danger.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to hang up your helmet with the Royal Guard, then,” Cadance said bitterly.

Shining Armor groaned. “Cadie…”

“Sibling Supreme,” Twilight interjected. Her voice came out muffled, as she had buried herself in another hug.

“What?”

“I said, Sibling Supreme. You aren’t allowed to get hurt like that ever again.”

Shining Armor gaped at her. “What? You can’t just invoke Sibling Supreme like that! You don’t even have the—”

“Shining…” Cadance counseled gently.

He glowered, but only for a moment. Then he sighed and relented, “I won’t make a promise I can’t keep. But I promise I’ll try—I’ll do everything I can—not to get hurt again. Is that good enough?”

Twilight’s grip on him tightened, her head sinking back into the plush of the hospital blankets that lay overtop him. She nodded.

Cadance gave him a shrewd look. “Everything?”

“…We’ll talk about it later,” Shining Armor grumbled.

His hoof folded over Twilight again, gently rubbing her back, and Twilight felt lighter and happier than she had in weeks.

Together, the three of them passed the time in quiet conversation, lifting one another’s burdens and reveling, as much as the setting would allow, in the simple joys of shared company.

It was Cadance who wound up doing most of the talking.

She chatted about this and that. Idle gossip from their own circle of friends, and the latest juicy tidbits from the Guard. A funny story about how the waiter had screwed up her order the last time she took Night Light and Twilight Velvet out to dinner. A pointless anecdote about Hinny of the Hills, a popular musical Shining Armor adamantly refused to go see. Preparations for the wedding. She talked at length, though Twilight didn’t fail to notice how she avoided mention of the Ascendancy’s attack on Grand Central, the aftermath of that skirmish, or any allusion to the emotional trauma that had followed on the heels of Shining Armor’s hospitalization.

Soon enough, a one-hour visit turned into a two-hour visit, then bordering on two and a half. The time flew by quickly, despite no shortage of reticence on Twilight’s part. Oh, she chimed in here and there, but otherwise she took a back seat to the conversation, only too happy to let her brother and former foalsitter do most of the talking.

No, happy was too strong a word. She was relieved, yes. Content… maybe. But as the catharsis of seeing her brother well again faded, her euphoria gave way to a creeping despondency.

Rarity’s letter burned in the back of her mind. Bedlam’s sickening leer was fuel for the fire. Her eyes darted to the clock, counting down the hours until she was doomed to meet with Princess Luna.

Eventually, Shining Armor felt like talking about the experience that put him in the hospital, much to Cadance’s dismay.

“Man. Three weeks in a coma,” he said wistfully. There was a funny-looking grin hanging off his face.

Cadance’s reply was noticeably restrained. “That’s right. Three weeks.”

“Three weeks! Heh. And I thought I felt hammered waking up the morning after Steelwing’s bachelor party…”

“What was that about a bachelor party, dear?”

“Nothing,” he chuckled, still with that same loopy grin. “Three weeks…”

Cadance gave him a scornful look. “Honestly, what is it about stallions? You get beat up, suffer a concussion, lose a few liters of blood, break half the bones in your body, and it’s all just bragging rights to you! Just another scar to show off, another war story.”

“Now, that’s not fair,” Shining Armor objected.

“Isn’t it? Then why are you so sentimental about spending three weeks in the hospital while the rest of us were losing our minds over you?”

“I’m not sentimental! Do you think I didn’t see the look on Mom and Dad’s faces yesterday? Or Twilight’s, just now? Or yours?”

“You cheated death. Congratulations.”

“It’s not about cheating death!”

Cadance quirked an eyebrow at him.

“…Okay, it is partially about cheating death,” he admitted. “But that’s not all there is to it!”

“What more could there possibly be?”

Shining Armor’s forehead knit. He took a few seconds to gather his thoughts before answering.

“We go through life, and we think we know who we are… But we don’t. Not really. It’s like… there are some moments that just… define you. I spent years in the Royal Guard, training my body, training my mind for a crisis like the one we had in Manehattan. I thought I was prepared for it. But up until the day it actually happened… did I ever really know?

“I don’t think I did… I don’t think most of us do. See, here’s the thing—I don’t care if you’re a princess, or a pauper, or a captain of the guard. There’s always this little voice in the back of your head whispering that you aren’t brave enough, or strong enough, or clever enough, or disciplined enough, or good enough. You’re always wondering… am I really everything I think I am? But then, the moment is upon you, and it all just kind of… crystallizes. You don’t have to wonder about yourself anymore. You know.”

Irritably, Cadance shook her head. “Ponies discover things about themselves all the time. Without almost getting themselves killed.”

“I guess. Life’s full of tests like that, right? This just happened to be mine. It doesn’t have to be a moment of noble self-sacrifice, or life-or-death struggle, or whatever. Could be it’s a moment of humility, or honesty, or integrity. Could be it’s a moment of choosing between right and wrong. Sometimes, your whole life pivots on little moments like those, and you don’t even know it. We all fight our own battles. When the moment arrives, it’s just a question of whether we rise to it… or whether we don’t.”

Shining Armor grinned as he glanced over at Twilight, who was wilting in a chair next to Cadance. “Heck, maybe it’s literally a test! You know, the academic kind. Our Twilight knows a thing or two about those! Hey, how are you doing over there? You sure are quiet.”

“Oh… I’m f-fine,” Twilight answered unevenly.

Shining Armor and Cadance shared a look.

“I feel like Cadie and I have been talking your ears off. Why don’t you catch us up on how things are going for you? How’s teaching Rainbow Dash coming along, and your studies on the magic of friendship?”

“The magic of… f-friendship… right…”

She stared down at the foot of the bed.

“Twilight…?”

“I failed the test,” she whispered in a voice that was too small, too hollow for either of them to hear.

She looked back up at them, her face marred by uncertainty.

Her voice trembled. “Do I… Do I put myself above others?”

More looks of concern were exchanged. Shining Armor sat upright in bed, while Cadance reached over and took one of Twilight’s violet hooves in her pink one. “Where’s this coming from?”

Twilight hesitated before answering. “I don’t know,” she said miserably.

But she did know, of course.

Over the past few weeks, she’d fumbled about in a fog of her own problems, blinded to the wider world by the bitterness and heartache pressing in. But now, Shining Armor was okay again, and the fog had begun to lift—and for the first time in a long time, she was capable of seeing beyond herself.

She just didn’t like what she saw.

“Twilight Sparkle, you’re the sweetest unicorn I’ve ever met. You only bring out the best in everypony,” Cadance attempted to reassure her, which only made Twilight sink lower in her seat. Shining Armor held up a hoof to stop her from digging the hole any deeper.

“I know that face, Twilight. You’re spiraling,” he said. “Look at me.”

All of a sudden, his voice was full of military bearing, poise, and command. Twilight did as he ordered and looked up at him.

For the next few seconds, silence held lease. Then…

“Yes. You do put yourself above others,” said Shining Armor.

Instantly, Twilight’s hopes, her protestations, her ego-driven self-assurances came crashing down around her.

Cadance leapt viciously to her defense, “Shiny, how can you SAY something like that? She’s your SISTER!”

“I like to think that makes me a pretty qualified judge of character.”

“Still, you can’t just—!”

He held up his hoof again, signaling for Cadance to be quiet. All the while, his hard-nosed frown never wavered.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Twilight. You do put yourself above others…”

Twilight rocked back and forth, feeling like the moon and stars and planets had fallen on her.

“…and you are also the sweetest unicorn I’ve ever met. Who only brings out the best in everypony.”

She peered at him, eyes forlorn and full of confusion. Then she cast her gaze aside, mumbling something under her breath.

“What was that?”

“I said, those things are mutually exclusive.” Her voice was miniscule, barely any louder than before.

Shining Armor smiled softly. “I’ve known you for a long time. In some ways, I probably know you better than you know yourself.”

Twilight grimaced. Visions of the last month blazed in her memory like the seared and scorched skeleton of an ill-fated zeppelin wreck: a fiery disaster she couldn’t look away from.

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

“Really? When Nightmare Moon was on the cusp of returning, who saw the signs before anypony else did? Speak up, now!”

“…I did,” Twilight admitted reluctantly.

“And when Nightmare Moon appeared promising to bring about an eternal night, and Princess Celestia wasn’t anywhere to be found—just who was it that led a ragtag group of ponies into the Everfree Forest on a mission to recover the Elements of Harmony?”

“I did.”

“And when you finally faced Nightmare Moon in the throne room of the old castle, standing side by side with the other five of them—who was it that ignited the spark of friendship in each and every one of your hearts? Who rallied those hearts? Who joined those hearts together, beating in time, beating in solidarity, beating toward the same purpose—with so much goodness in them, it brought back the sun and redeemed Princess Luna?”

Twilight’s ears perked up. “I did.”

“You did,” Shining Armor affirmed. “Twilight, you bring out the very best in other ponies. You make other ponies want to be a better version of themselves. That’s what you’re best at. That! Not magic! If it had been any other unicorn in the throne room that night, even one as freakishly good at spellcasting as you are, I’m pretty sure we all would’ve died in the dark a year ago.

“But,” he continued, “you do have a way of putting yourself above others. It’s something I’ve noticed about you all my life. As allergic as you are to boasting, if there’s somepony who doesn’t share your interests, your priorities… you can take a very dismissive attitude toward them. Growing up, all those times you looked down your muzzle at ponies who tried to be your friend, who would rather play than study. All the times you pushed us away—pushed me away!—for the sake of reading one more book! One more chapter!”

“I was studying under Princess Celestia!” Twilight argued weakly. There was desperation, almost pleading, in her voice. “I couldn’t just shirk off my studies! I had obligations!”

“Well, that’s another thing. Your obligations to Princess Celestia have always come first, haven’t they?”

Shining Armor shrugged.

“I mean, I’m a captain of the Royal Guard. I get how hard it can be to juggle commitments sometimes. But I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to juggle them. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought twice. Learning spells, proving yourself to the princess—those things have always been most important to you, even at the cost of other things. But that’s why you’re Magic, right? Not Loyalty.”

Twilight stared numbly, woefully down at her hooves. Reality had a diamond edge, and it cut deep.

Shining Armor noticed her reaction. He heaved a sigh.

“I’m sorry. I’m not saying any of this to tear you down. You asked an honest question, you deserve an honest answer. I’m not begrudging you, either. Truth is, you worked your tail off for everything you’ve got! I can’t tell you how many nights I poked my head in on you, and you were huddled under the bedsheets with your little firefly lantern, just reading away…

“I love you, Twilight, but yeah, it’s true. You pour everything of yourself into everything you do—blood, sweat, and tears—and sometimes, you can get it in your head that the world owes you something. But that doesn’t make you a bad pony! All it makes you is imperfect, just like the rest of us!”

With some effort, he scootched himself over to the edge of the bed so he was directly across from Twilight, who still had her head hung. Tenderly, he reached out and placed a hoof on her shoulder.

“Nothing I’ve just said changes the fact that my sister is the kindest, sweetest, lovingest, most amazing and inspirational pony I know. Watching you come out of your shell this past year has been incredible, and we’ve never been more proud of you! Isn’t that right, Cadie?”

Cadance gave an audible sniffle. “That’s right,” her voice wavered. “Twilight, you are the most wonderful pony in the world! I know how beautiful your heart is, even if you can’t see it yourself sometimes, and—and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to the day when I get to call you my sister, too. Please, don’t ever doubt yourself, okay?”

Twilight’s eyes shimmered as she looked between them. Silently crying, she leaned into Shining Armor’s chest.

“Lovingest isn’t a word,” she summoned the wherewithal to tease him, a tiny smile trembling on her lips.

Shining Armor felt the warmth of her tears as they streamed down her face, pooling against his shoulder. His hooves tightened around her.

“One other thing I know about Twilight Sparkle. Yeah, she isn’t perfect, and she’s capable of making a mistake from time to time… But I’ve never known her to make a mistake she didn’t go back and set right.”

Twilight choked on a sob, eyes pressed tightly shut, holding onto him like a rock in a storm. As weeks of pent-up guilt, shame, and regret spilled out of her, he squeezed her protectively, and a hoof wrapped around her shoulders to stroke her mane. Soon enough, Cadance moved over to join them.

“If there’s something you want to get off your chest, you know you can talk to us about anything,” he whispered.

She nodded her head against his white coat.

So it went inside the little hospital room.

As the tempest began to quell in Twilight’s heart—for now, at least—outside, the pegasus ponies were busy at work, clearing the last clouds from the evening sky, allowing the fire of Celestia’s sunset to shine through.

Next to the window, in the trimmed boughs of a Canterlot cypress, a crow and a bluebird sat in tension on the same branch, side-eyeing each other uneasily and occasionally glancing in.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Sage Whitehoof, my dear friend! As always, this court is brightened by your presence. Stand and be at ease.”

“The sun needs nopony to brighten it, Your Majesty. Your words do this old stallion too much honor.”

“Silver-tongued, as ever! Nevertheless, the sun shines its welcome upon you, this day and every day. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I have some news, Princess, if I may trouble you for a few minutes of your time. News I think you would be most interested to hear. News about Twilight Sparkle, and our dear Captain Tristar’s investigation…”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“You. Took. Her. TO MANEHATTAN?!”

A lesser pony might have melted into a quivering puddle of goo, to stand so near before the flames of Celestia’s righteous, blazing anger. Tristar’s spine must have been laced with steel, because he didn’t flinch.

“I did,” he said.

Celestia’s lips pulled back to bare her teeth as she glowered down at him from her throne. “Are you an IDIOT? No, don’t answer that!”

Her jaw set. She pressed a hoof to her forehead, visibly struggling to rein in her temper.

Tristar glowered right back at her. “Your Majesty gave me full discretion to pursue the investigation as I saw fit.”

“On the eve of the Ascendancy’s attack, I gave ONE ORDER to you, Captain Solemn, Captain Armor, and the rest of my lieutenants. ONE ORDER that was to be followed above ALL OTHERS! Twilight Sparkle and the other Bearers of Harmony were to remain UNINVOLVED!”

“Twilight Sparkle’s expertise—”

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT TWILIGHT’S EXPERTISE! YOU DISOBEYED A DIRECT ORDER!”

“Permission to speak freely, Your Majesty.”

Celestia glared at him, simmering. “Granted.”

“You’re wrong to shelter her. She’s a grown mare. She can handle herself.”

“You would presume to judge me, little pony?” she asked, rising, now, from her chair to loom over him imposingly. “Me and my plans? You, who know so precious little?”

Tristar shook his head. “Twilight Sparkle is involved in this.”

“Because of YOUR INCOMPETENCE! YOUR OVERSTEP!” The furnaces blazed back to life behind Celestia’s eyes.

“Twilight Sparkle was already involved! She’s been involved since the moment Captain Armor took that concussion on the battlefield! All I did was give her a PURPOSE again, and the chance to BE USEFUL—as opposed to wallowing here for the last month, stewing in her own failures at teaching Rainbow Dash how to do parlor tricks!”

“ENOUGH!”

Tristar wasn’t finished yet. He took a defiant step forward. “Twilight Sparkle should have BEEN involved from the beginning! If we’d had Princess Luna and the Elements of Harmony in our corner a month ago, there wouldn’t have been HALF as much carnage or collateral damage! We might’ve been able to stop the attack before it even happened!”

“If you knew what the HELL you were talking about, you wouldn’t oppose me in this! If you had ANY IDEA the amount of DANGER you’ve put Twilight in, exposing her to—to THEM!”

Celestia had begun to pace the golden platform before her throne. Presently, she stopped and looked down at Tristar, still smoldering.

“I’m removing you from all charge of the investigation into the Ascendancy, effective immediately.”

Tristar’s eyes darkened, but he didn’t protest. He knew enough to recognize when he was beat, and when fanning the embers of Celestia’s rage was likely to blow back against him.

“If that is Your Majesty’s wish, then so be it,” he said, a clear note of derision in his tone.

“Captain Solemn will take leadership of the investigation. You will prepare a thorough summation of your findings to this point, to be made available to him, myself, Princess Luna, and Captain Armor, once he’s cleared to return to active duty. As well as redacted versions for the High Justiciar’s office, Mayor Fairmane, the prosecution, and the defense.

“You,” she said acidly, “are being reassigned.”

“To what?”

Celestia gave him a narrow look. “Security. You’ve done more than enough gallivanting around. Henceforth, you are to remain here, in Canterlot. Where I can keep an eye on you.”

Tristar grit his teeth, biting back a retort.

The princess continued, “The Summer Sun Celebration takes place a week and a day from today. You will oversee the preparations. You will safeguard the event. If the mood strikes me, you will take tickets, poison test the hors d’ourves, and run security on the stallion’s lavatory. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I needn’t remind you that Twilight Sparkle and Princess Rainbow Dash are both likely to be present for the festivities. If. One. HAIR should come to harm, on either of their heads…”

She let the sentence dangle. The consequences didn’t need to be said.

“I understand, Your Majesty.”

“I hope you do, for your sake. Needless to say, I expect you to tend to these responsibilities with DIGNITY and RESPECT for both of them—and preferably, considerable distance. So help me, if you EVER drag Twilight into this business with the Ascendancy again…”

Celestia’s boiling fury was only too obvious, those fiery pink eyes crackling down at him with more than a hint of threat. As he stood there in the corona of her anger, Tristar’s resolve briefly slipped, and he found himself pondering just how many forms of discipline and punishment the princess must have become acquainted with since she was first crowned over a millennium ago, back in the stocks-and-pillory days.

Before he could utter another word, she marched back onto her throne and sat down again, her rainbow-colored tail whipping behind her. She held him in her withering gaze for a few seconds more, and then she dismissed him with a flick of her hoof.

“Get out of my sight.”

Tristar found his courage again, and his ire along with it. To be taken off the investigation now, of all times, when he was so close to the answer—so close! But he knew it was futile to try and argue.

“As you wish, Your Majesty.”

Dropping into a courtly bow, he backed away the prescribed distance before rising and heading for the door.

“And Captain Tristar?”

He stopped and turned back toward the throne. The look on Celestia’s face wasn’t any friendlier.

“Don’t take me for a fool,” she said. “If these duties are not carried out to my satisfaction, I will hold your title of nobility, your rank, and your personal honor in abeyance.”

Tristar stared at her, his expression hard as marble. Then, without reply, he turned again and swept out of the room.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“I was so relieved when I heard about your brother! Celestia was, too. I hope it wasn’t too presumptuous of me, forwarding Princess Cadance’s letter on to you along with my own. When it came addressed to you at the castle, I figured you wouldn’t want to wait to hear the news.”

“Not at all! I’m happy you did.”

It was the next day, and Twilight stood beside Princess Luna upon a golden chariot. The wind rippled in her mane as the drivers whisked them through the mid-morning sky, the white streets and purple rooftops of the city zooming by below them.

Princess Luna smiled a reminiscing smile. “Reunions between siblings are always the most joyous occasions… I know the last month hasn’t been easy for you. I only hope it helped heal some of the injury that’s been done to your heart, being able to see Shining Armor again.”

“It did,” said Twilight. “I was so glad for the chance to spend time with him. With both of them.”

The princess gave her a happy look.

A night’s rest had done Twilight worlds of good. She had woken up feeling invigorated, refreshed, and orders of magnitude more put together than she had been yesterday, or any day since journeying to Manehattan. She wasn’t ‘spiraling’ anymore, as Shining Armor had put it, and the sobering memory of Bedlam was far from her mind.

But even so, she was unsettled.

She felt less sure of herself than she ever had. And heavy. Weighed down by something. Like she had a mountain on her back, and someone saw fit to throw another boulder on the pile with every breath she drew. The malignant anxiety that nested in her three nights ago in that tavern was alive and well, shuddering inside her.

Hence, the reason why she found herself gnawing her lip, gazing timidly up at the lunar diarch. They were already about halfway to the castle, and the trip across town wasn’t a long one to begin with. Sensing her window of opportunity was about to close, Twilight ginned up her courage enough to broach a subject she’d been wondering about for days now.

“Princess Luna? Can I ask you a… personal… question?”

The alicorn gave her an easy smile. “Luna. Just Luna.”

“Right. Sorry, I keep forgetting…”

“Think nothing of it. And yes, of course! Anything you wish to know, you’re more than welcome to ask.”

Slowly, Twilight nodded her head. She stared down between her hooves at the golden floor of the carriage, speaking quietly. “A thousand years ago… when you and Princess Celestia had your falling out… it was jealousy that drove the two of you apart, wasn’t it?”

Luna seemed briefly puzzled. Then her eyes widened with a sudden flash of understanding.

“I see,” she murmured, more to herself than anypony. “I get it now, Tia.”

Twilight felt her cheeks burn at the non-answer. She looked up again. “If it’s something you don’t want to talk about, that’s fine! I’m sorry I asked, I was just curious, and—”

“No, it’s fine.” That easy smile sauntered back onto Luna’s face. “It… isn’t the easiest topic. But for your sake, I’ll make the effort.”

She took a few seconds to gather her thoughts.

“To answer your question… Yes. It was jealousy, in part. Though truthfully, my relationship with Celestia had already grown strained… There were a lot of unsettled arguments between us, dating back to the first years after we accepted the crown. And… I don’t think she ever forgave me for…”

Luna’s voice trailed off.

Twilight arched an eyebrow. “For what?”

The princess shook her head. She had a somber, wistful look about her. The ripple of some bygone pain, reaching out across the centuries.

“I think we were too young,” she avoided Twilight’s question. “Too young for what was asked of us. Too young for what was required… We thought we were smarter, wiser than we actually were. Celestia was surrounded by ministers and supplicants who lavished praise, and I was already on my way to becoming the most accomplished mage of my generation. It gave us blind spots. Made us too certain of ourselves. Too prideful.”

Twilight nodded glumly, feeling pessimism encroach. There was an echo of herself in what Luna was describing.

“And all those huddled masses, yearning for somepony to show them a way forward. To lift them up out of the rubble, and build a future for them to live in. To be their guiding light…”

Luna visibly wilted.

“Naturally, when my sister’s light shined brighter… I felt jealous of her. And then she would lord it over me, and then I would do something to intentionally aggravate and undermine her… And all of it was so pointless! So stupid! If we hadn’t been so young and arrogant… If either one of us had known our quarrel would lure back the Nightmare…!”

“The Nightmare!” Twilight exclaimed. “So Bedlam Bustle isn’t crazy? There really is some kind of… entity… out there! Different than Nightmare Moon, and apart from her!”

Luna looked at Twilight with tired eyes.

“Yes, the Nightmare is real,” she said quietly. “It’s a vicious, murderous thing, drawn to the negative emotions between ponies: anger, hatred, jealousy… Like the windigos of old, only far more bloodthirsty. In ancient times, it would come like a storm, bringing death and destruction in its wake… It’s a manifestation of the darkness in all of us. It abhors the light.

“For a short time, it was vanquished, and it retreated into the wilds, making a host of the plants and animals of the Everfree. Even today, its corruption still lingers in that place. Then, as my bitterness and jealousy grew, it came slinking out of the forest, and it made a new host out of me. Co-opting my ambitions to further its own… To banish my sister’s sun and usher in a new age of darkness, so the Nightmare could run amok again.”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. “I’m so sorry! I never knew any of that!”

Luna shrugged. “Most ponies don’t.”

“Well, what happened to it? Where did it go?” Twilight wondered. “Was the Nightmare destroyed when my friends and I used the Elements of Harmony on you a year ago?”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

“…Luna?”

The princess looked away, unable to bring herself to meet Twilight’s shrewd gaze. “You should… really talk to Tia.”

“But what—?”

“Twilight… Listen to me. If lived experience means anything to you, please, take my warning. I descended into hell’s morass and met my shadow at the very bottom. The anger… The jealousy… They aren’t worth it.”

The castle was coming up fast in front of them now, the charioteers dipping a wing to swoop down on the landing berth. Luna began to speak more quickly, with more fevered intensity.

“It’s a path that doesn’t lead anywhere good, that’s guaranteed to bring you to ruin. I walked it, and sometimes, I wonder if I’ll ever be done paying for it. All it took was one mistake, a single moment of anger, and I burned down so many bridges… I burned down my friendship with my sister, and a lifetime’s worth of love and joy I could’ve shared with her.

“Twilight… If that moment should ever come for you—if anger and jealousy ever start to sing to you, and you feel that heat rising in your brain, telling you to do something stupid, to burn it all down—if that moment ever comes—”

Her eyes locked with Twilight’s, glimmering with imperative fire.

“Don’t burn it.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Twilight was surprised to see not a single petitioner lined up in front of the great doors of the throne room. The guards, as well, were gone from their usual posts, which was odd, to say the least. It wasn’t even lunchtime, but it appeared Princess Celestia had already suspended court for the day. Twilight didn’t know what to make of that, but as she and Princess Luna traversed the great hall, she found herself swallowing a nervous apprehension.

Luna held open the door, and in they went. Princess Celestia was sitting on the throne, not a single other pony in sight. She had a kindly smile on her face, but it still felt like an interminably long walk to get to her, down the red carpet, across the checkered floor.

“Twilight Sparkle, my faithful student. It’s wonderful to see you again,” came her greeting.

There wasn’t a hint of anger in her voice, but neither did Twilight’s ears miss her somberness. She scraped the floor in a formal bow, a jittery knot tightening in her chest.

Luna continued up the steps to the throne. She whispered something into her sister’s ear, hidden behind her hoof. The white alicorn nodded her head and said something in reply, and then it was Luna’s turn again.

The whole time, Twilight kept her bow. When Princess Celestia noticed, she beckoned for her to rise.

“Please, be at ease, Twilight. There’s no need for any of that.”

Twilight straightened back up. A few more words were exchanged between the alicorns. Then Luna smiled sadly and gave her sister’s hoof a gentle squeeze, which Princess Celestia fondly returned.

“Thank you, Luna. That will be all,” Twilight heard her mentor say.

With that, Luna departed, heading back down the stairs, past Twilight, and out the great doors.

No sooner were she and Princess Celestia alone together than Twilight’s ears pinned back, and she launched into an explanation. “Princess, I’m so sorry I left Canterlot without saying anything! I should’ve—”

Princess Celestia held up her hoof. “I don’t care about any of that, Twilight. All I care is that you’re safe.”

She paused. Then, motioned for Twilight to approach.

“Why don’t you come up here?” she invited.

Twilight gawked at her. “Me? Come up on your throne? But—But I—”

The princess patted the velvet cushion beside her, entreating Twilight with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

Twilight hesitated, then made her way up the dais, putting one hoof in front of the other. She sat next to Princess Celestia, feeling skittish. Never, not once in her entire life, had she been allowed up here before. She knew Luna occasionally sat the throne whenever she held court, but otherwise, the Seat of the Sun was off limits to all comers.

Her astonishment doubled a moment later when Princess Celestia draped a white wing around her shoulders.

“How long has it been since you passed your enrollment test, Twilight?”

Twilight stared up at her, dumbfounded. “Ah… Almost ten years?”

“A long time, then.”

Her teacher’s smile was feeble, as if pulled down by some great burden. But still, entirely earnest.

“We’ve known each other long enough… If you aren’t opposed to it, I’d like to dispense with some of the needless formality between us. No more protocol. No more bowing. And… could I just be Celestia to you, from now on? Would that be all right? If we dropped titles?”

She gave Twilight as friendly a look as she knew how, but Twilight’s mind had completely seized up.

Celestia’s face fell. She sighed, considering that perhaps, a direct summons to the throne room hadn’t been the best way to go about this.

“Tell you what. Why don’t we go somewhere else?” she suggested.

“G… Go? Somewhere else?”

“I only want to chat for a while, Twilight. I haven’t seen you since last week. I promise, you aren’t in any trouble.”

Delicately, she reached out a hoof and brushed Twilight’s bangs to the side, pink eyes shining down at her. Twilight felt her mouth slip open, taken aback by the familiar gesture.

“It’s obvious you aren’t comfortable here, so let’s go somewhere else.”

“Where?” Twilight asked.

“Anywhere you want,” said Celestia. “Anywhere we can talk. Anywhere you feel comfortable. The library? The castle gardens?”

“Your study?”

Celestia placed her hoof on Twilight’s back. “Take us there.”

Twilight nodded, then bowed her head in concentration. There was a pop, a flash of light, and they both teleported at once.

The white paneled walls and bookcases of Celestia’s office surrounded them. The mahogany desk rose at the head of the room, and the wide window behind it, looking out on the swaying boughs of the old tree.

Celestia gave Twilight an admiring look. “You always were so good at that.”

She shuffled over to the fireplace and lit the logs with a bolt from her horn. Bending slowly at the knees, she sat, then lay herself down on the rug in front of the hearth. As Twilight watched her, rooted in place, she was struck by just how tired she looked.

Now the princess glanced up from the floor. She opened her wing.

“Would you… like to lie down next to me, for a while? The way you used to, when you were little?”

It was almost exactly the same scene from two weeks ago, only the shoe was on the other hoof this time. Once again, Twilight’s lip quivered, the words dying in her throat.

Even so, something sparked inside her. Something that had gone untended for far too long, that now began to shine again with warmth and light renewed. Her heart lifted, and the worry and tension that had so long beset her began to dissolve away at last.

She trotted over and lay down, nestled at Celestia’s side, and the white wing folded over her. Welcome, this time. Not disarming.

“Thank you, Princess,” she whispered with a grateful sigh.

Celestia was quiet for a while after that, lost in the writhing ghosts of the fire; in the glowing orange cinders they sent up. After half a minute had gone by and she still hadn’t said anything, Twilight dared look up at her. She wondered what she might be thinking about.

Then Celestia spoke softly. “Tell me about Ponyville, won’t you?”

“Ponyville?” Twilight said, startled. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Nothing in particular. Whatever you feel like.”

Twilight cocked her head, her brow furrowed in confusion. “But…what can I say about Ponyville that you don’t already know? You’ve been there yourself so many times… And I’ve already written so much about it in all of my letters and friendship reports…”

“I don’t mind,” said Celestia. Her heavy lids fell shut. “I just want to listen for a little while.”

So Twilight told her about Ponyville.

She told her all about the town. How different it was compared to Canterlot, slower and more rustic, but not without its charms. How those differences had surprised her when she first moved there, but how she had come to appreciate the little village even more for them. Its festivals, holidays, and traditions, from Winter Wrap Up and the Running of the Leaves to the Sisterhood Social. Its odd quirks here and there, and the ever-present sense of danger tickling at the back of her mind that came from living at the edge of the Everfree Forest. Above all else, the wonderful fraternity that Ponyville embodied: not a unicorn town, like Canterlot, but a place where unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies could all come together in love and harmony.

She told her about the ponies who lived there, the ones she’d come to know so well. Cheerilee, and what a fantastic teacher she was, and how much Twilight admired her for passing the torch of knowledge on to the younger generations. Mayor Mare, and how she depended on Twilight for her organizing skills, and the pride Twilight took in every chance to show them. Zecora, the zebra shaman who’d taken up in the forest, and how frightened the others were of her at first before they stumbled into a patch of poison joke, and what an incredible friend she turned out to be in the end. Cranky Doodle Donkey, and what a sweet and lovable curmudgeon he’d become since reuniting with his beloved Matilda. The Cutie Mark Crusaders, and how thick their friendship was, and the bottomless mischief they got up to, and how they would don capes and roam around town causing no end of trouble in search of their special talents. Twilight swore she saw the corners of Celestia’s lips pull ever-so-slightly upward when she listened to that description.

She told her about her friends. Applejack and her common sense, her work ethic, her love for her family, her famous zap apple jam, and the cider she made that whipped Ponyville up into a frenzy each year. Rarity and her elegance, her sophistication, her dedication to her craft and to her little sister, and her dreams of making a name for herself someday. Pinkie Pie and her randomness, the way she tore down Twilight’s every notion of logic, but still brightened up every day with so much joy, her love of making others happy, of Pound and Pumpkin, her sister, Maud, the rest of her family, and Mr. and Mrs. Cake, who’d taken her in. Fluttershy and her gentle soul, her stare, her ability to soothe any savage beast, including the dragon Celestia sent them to evict that one time, her compassion and her hospitality, her willingness to open her home to anypony or anycreature who needed it, no matter how big or how small.

All these things Twilight talked about, and more. And the more she talked, the more her spirits soared. Soon enough, she was animated, speaking with so much passion and gusto, she lost track of time. Until her mouth went dry, and she realized she’d been going on for the better part of an hour.

Celestia listened attentively the entire time, occasionally piping up with the odd comment, asking a question here and there. She seemed content on the face of it, but Twilight didn’t miss the sheen of melancholy that hung about her, nor the invisible burden that seemed to weigh on her.

Eventually, after a few minutes had gone by and Celestia had slipped into a quiet lull, Twilight tilted her head and peered up at her. “Princess, why are you so sad?” she asked.

Celestia smiled weakly. She gave the unicorn an affectionate squeeze, which Twilight took as an invitation to snuggle closer.

“I’m sad because sometimes, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Because every year I wear this crown, it feels heavier… Because there are days and days when I cannot see the sun.”

Confusion etched across Twilight’s face, but she didn’t press.

Celestia sighed. “You opened yourself to me, and I’m grateful for that. Now, it’s my turn to repay the favor.”

A pause.

“Luna told me you had some questions for her about her fall. Would you like to know my part in it?”

Twilight’s puzzlement turned to curiosity. She nodded.

Another pause. Celestia’s eyes closed as she composed her thoughts, though Twilight could see them twitching, peering back across memories. Across time, space, and unfathomable emotion.

“I was a terrible sister,” she said.

She shrank into herself. That confession alone was enough to abase her.

“I was awful to her. I… I shunned her, and I… humiliated her, in front of all our subjects. I was vindictive and abusive. I made her feel ostracized, alienated her from our countrymen… and she never deserved any of it. She did what she had to do—what I wasn’t strong enough to do—and instead of showing her my love, I punished her for it.

“The kingdom fractured, cracked right down the middle. The harmony we had all fought for—that our father gave his life for—withered and died. And all of it was my fault.

“Luna took her banners, and I took mine… One night, she refused to yield the sky. The heavens dueled for supremacy: anywhere I would move the sun, she would move the moon to block it. For three straight weeks, Equestria languished in darkness. The crops shriveled in the fields, entire ecosystems teetered on the brink… and there was plenty of war and bloodshed to go around. By that point, it was already too late. The Nightmare had her.”

Her voice had begun to tremble, centuries-old pain bleeding out. There was no way to stanch it, no healing to come: truth had sliced across her, exposing an oozing viscera of guilt.

“Canterlot was still pledged to the sun, but she had taken the old castle keep in the Everfree Forest and garrisoned it, made it her citadel. There, our armies clashed. We fought each other in the sky under the dread eclipse, while our little ponies slaughtered each other on the ground below us.

“Nightmare Moon was stronger than me. She almost killed me. I—I couldn’t let her win! It was more than just sibling rivalry now. Everything was at stake. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked! I panicked, and I used the Elements against her. I didn’t know that they would—”

Her voice choked off, strangled by emotion. Celestia stared up at the ceiling, and Twilight heard her swallow painfully.

“The war was won,” she whispered.

“For weeks, I tried to come to terms with it, but I couldn’t… I just couldn’t. My conscience ate at me. My grief was all-consuming. I fell into a deep, dark pit, retreating from court, leaving the rebuilding of the kingdom in the hooves of a regency. I would’ve done anything—anything!—to have a second chance. And so, I gathered the Elements and tried to reverse what I’d done, to pry my sister back from the moon… only to discover, too late, that my connection with Harmony had been severed.

“Five of the Elements still resonated with me. Magic was still my ally, as well as Honesty and Generosity. Kindness and Loyalty too, although I wondered if I really deserved them.

“Come to realize, out of all the Elements, it was Laughter that had forsaken me. Laughter! It seemed like the cruelest kind of joke. I tried and I tried, locked myself away in research, spent years trying to revive it, all for naught. Eventually, I saw the futility. A scar had been laid upon my soul, and Harmony would never look past it. The sapphire gemstone was dull to me forever. So, my hopes were obliterated… and I was condemned to live with the consequences of my actions, and to wait for the appointed time.

“Eventually, I came out of seclusion. I took up the throne in Canterlot again. For a thousand winters, I raised my sweet sister’s moon, forced, each night and morning, to look upon her tormented face in the heavens… to know that I had put her there. Through it all, my heart was bereft. There was no joy. No peace of mind. No one to share in my burdens. And I never, ever allowed myself to love anyone ever again. Until…”

Finally, she looked back down at Twilight, and Twilight nearly gasped. The firelight was sparkling, dancing in and out of her tears.

“Until I met you,” Celestia said.

Twilight didn’t have words. She felt the sting of tears in her own eyes.

Celestia’s voice came more quickly now, more desperate and urgent. “I love you, Twilight! You know that, don’t you? I may not be your mother, but so help me, I love you as any mother can love their child! When you came to my school, I was the one who was supposed to teach you—but you ended up teaching me! You showed me so much goodness and hope, opened my eyes to possibilities I never dreamed of. You showed me how to love again!”

Tenderly, she touched her forehead to Twilight’s, their horns brushing past, and Twilight heard herself whimper as she lay there with that wonderful white wing holding her close, holding her precious and beloved. Now Twilight leaned her cheek into the crook of Celestia’s neck, into the warmth and softness of her coat. Her head slipped under her mentor’s chin, and Celestia’s wing curled even tighter around her.

“M-Maybe… Maybe I should’ve said this to you a long time ago.” Celestia’s voice hitched. She was weeping now, but she pressed on. “There were so many things I should’ve said to Luna, that I never did… And by the time I realized it, it was too late. I won’t make the same mistake again!

“Twilight… Luna and I never needed to fight! The animosity, the bitterness, the jealousy between us, the hateful words spoken in anger, the arguments back and forth… Never did I realize what it would cost me! So many times, I could have made things right between us. I could have talked to her, owned up to my mistakes, and stopped pushing her away! I didn’t realize what I lost until it was already gone. Until it was too late to ask forgiveness!

“Please, Twilight. Be better than me, the way you always have! Don’t make my mistakes! Don’t let the light in your life go dark, as I did!”

Twilight cried, and Celestia along with her as she pulled the unicorn to her chest and nuzzled her dearly.

In Canterlot Castle, the spark of love burned bright.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Why is the candle purple?” Rainbow demanded.

Sage raised his eyebrows at her, smiling serenely from the other side of the coffee table. “Why are you blue?”

“I can think of a couple reasons, lately.”

Rainbow kneaded her temples, a vain effort to keep the malaise at bay. The worst of her sickness was behind her, the stubborn vestiges of the flu retreating slowly bit by bit. But little aches and pains still wracked her body, and her mind felt like it was draped with clouds.

Sage chuckled. “Wordplay! Clever! I like it!”

“Well, I think this is stupid.”

She gestured at the purple-colored candle sitting between them in its little pewter holder. The flame was already burning at the wick, violet wax dribbling down the sides in rivulets.

“What’s the point of being able to put out a candle with magic if I don’t even know how to light one in the first place?”

“Consider it an exercise in fire safety. I know this house of yours is made of clouds, but you still wouldn’t want to risk starting an uncontrollable blaze near any of that expensive-looking Wonderbolts memorabilia, would you?”

“Uh… Well, when you put it that way…”

“It’s also the simpler lesson. As a matter of history, it’s always been easier to destroy than to create.”

He swept out his hoof, indicating toward the burning candle.

“Magic isn’t any different. Take this flame, for instance. It takes some doing to bring it to life, but snuffing it out? That’s easy.

“Don’t be intimidated by what it is. Fire is like any living organism. It needs oxygen to breathe, just like you do. It needs fuel to keep it going, just like you do. It needs heat to sustain it, just like you do. Kick any one of those legs out from under it, and fire is no more.”

He demonstrated. His aura coalesced around the wick, and just like that, the candle extinguished. Gray smoke curled in the air above.

“Oxygen is the easiest thing to take away. It’s nothing terribly advanced. Just a simple envelope of mana around the flame, not too different than the barrier spells you’ve been studying with Twilight Sparkle. Cut off the air supply and the fire will go out. Here, you try.”

Sage relit the candle. Rainbow leaned over it, staring at it intently, her cheeks puffed out.

After a minute, she threw up her hooves in exasperation. “Gahhh! I hate this! Magic is so dumb!”

“Now, now! Don’t lose heart!” Sage consoled her. “Nopony was ever an expert at something overnight. I’m sure you worked plenty hard to condition your body before you were as nimble in the air as you are today.”

“Psh. You might be surprised. I’m Rainbow Dash. I kind of have a knack for being awesome. Especially when it comes to flying.”

“You never practiced a routine? Never went over and over a particular trick until it was perfect?”

“That’s different,” she said with a wave of her hoof. “That’s finesse.”

“So is this. Maybe you’re right, and you do have a natural gift for speed—”

“Uh, yeah. Was there ever a doubt?”

“—but you have a gift for magic, too, whether you realize it or not. You’ve got to hone it, Rainbow. It’s not going to come without effort. Do you have any idea how many hours Twilight spent in practice and study before she mastered even the most rudimentary of spells?”

Rainbow lowered her head, grinding her molars in frustration. “Right…” she muttered sourly. Twilight again…

Sage beckoned toward the candle, urging her to give it another try. She did as he bade her, muscles taut, visibly straining to project a thaumaturgic field, to reach out with her magical-tactile whatevers and do something to the flame. She bucking hated barrier spells, all this dumb abjuration stuff Twilight liked to rub her nose in. What the hay was the point of it, even? When would she ever need it? Couldn’t she settle for making stuff float around?

Scowling, she shot up from the table and stalked away, wings snapping open and shut at her sides.

She was sick of magic.

She was dying for some air.

She would’ve gone for a lap around the East Garden to cool off right about now if she didn’t feel so bucking miserable! This headache, ARGH!

Rainbow threw open the swing-out window so hard, the casement bounced off the outside wall, and probably would’ve shattered if her house weren’t made out of water vapor. Sulking, she folded her hooves on the sill, head perched on top of them. Next best thing to flying.

“Maybe your problem isn’t magic,” Sage suggested, eyeing her from his seat. “Maybe your problem is something else entirely. Or somepony.”

Rainbow sneered. “Oh, yeah? What do you know?”

“I know there’s clearly something eating you up inside, and we aren’t going to make any headway with this magic lesson until you open up about it,” Sage told her bluntly.

She groaned. “It’s all this princess garbage. I knew it was bad news from day one! I mean… some of it’s super cool, okay, I’ll admit it! Like… being able to do this, and stuff…”

Rainbow twirled her hoof in the air theatrically. Without even looking, the candle floated off the table, then set itself back down.

“But the rest of it is just… Gyah!”

She whirled around to face him, wings snapping again.

“Why do other ponies gotta be so stupid?”

Sage shook his head. “In my experience, other ponies usually are.”

“I’m still Rainbow Dash! I’m still awesome! I’m still loyal! I’m still the fastest flyer there ever was! I’ve still got a pet tortoise named Tank! I still care about my friends! I’m still gonna be a Wonderbolt someday! So what freaking happened? Did I sleepwalk and piss in her Cheerioats or something?”

“You aren’t the same pony you always were. You’re an alicorn now. You’re a princess of Equestria and heir to the throne.”

“Heir to a throne I don’t want and I’m never gonna inherit, because Celestia and Luna are gonna live for another bajillion years!”

“That’s beside the point. You’re royalty.”

“Okay, but I’m still me!”

Her wings flared, her feathers bristled. Anger ripped through her like white molten steel. After a moment, she realized she was panting.

Rainbow marshalled her emotions. She mean-mugged Sage for a few more seconds. Then she spun around and went right back to hanging out the window, a tight grimace on her face.

Sage stood up, quietly pushed in his chair, and drew across the room until he was standing just behind her. “Tell me, just who is this mysterious pony that has you so upset?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes, though he couldn’t see it. Twilight and Sage went way back. She wasn’t about to badmouth her friend to him, even if she did have it coming.

“Nopony,” said Rainbow. “Just somepony I thought I knew better.”

“Ah,” said Sage with an understanding nod. “Somepony who’s let you down. Somepony who isn’t treating you the way you deserve to be treated.”

“That’s putting it mildly!”

“And compared to the way they treated you before you became a princess and an alicorn—would you say they’re showing you too much respect, these days? Or would you say they’re showing you less?”

“Less. Definitely less,” said Rainbow. It was impossible to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Hmm.” Sage clicked his tongue. “They’re passive-aggressive toward you most of the time, I’ll wager. Openly disrespectful, now and again. They probably give you the feeling they look down on you.”

“Heh. Right on the money, pal.”

“Well, it isn’t surprising. After all, jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to greatness, Rainbow.”

It took a moment for Sage’s words to land. The instant they did, Rainbow’s eyes exploded open. Her hooves almost slipped off the windowsill.

Jealousy.

That was it, wasn’t it?

Twilight was jealous of her!

The realization hit her like a cloudburst. Her mind raced, as if seeing the last month for the very first time. The weirdness, the petty jabs, the bucked-up magic lessons. The nasty looks she threw anytime Rainbow went off to do something or other with Celestia. It all made sense.

Twilight’s words came floating back. That stormy day in Ponyville a couple weeks ago, when the unicorn had invited herself over and made a total ass out of herself—Do you know what I would give to be in your place? To be something OTHER than just her student?

Twilight was jealous over—what?!

Over Celestia?! That didn’t even make sense!

Rainbow’s teeth clenched. A righteous fire lit under her, and her resentment began to percolate. “What kinda lousy friend—!” she started to rant.

Sage took a step closer. “I hope it doesn’t come as too much of a shock, but the world is full of lousy friends.”

She brushed him off, fighting to rein in her temper. She and Twilight were gonna have words. Oh yes, they were.

“You aren’t wrong to feel upset,” said Sage. “After all, you’ve gone through so much. We all know how lonely it’s been for you, and yet this pony is supposed to have your back!”

Sage inched closer, still.

“Forgive me if I’m going too far, but… could it be because they don’t care?”

Twilight… did care about her, didn’t she? She contemplated her time since coming to Canterlot.

Since Twilight told her to come to Canterlot.

All the times she needed a friend. Somepony to talk to. Somepony to hang out with. Somepony to be there for her, so she wouldn’t have to go through this thing alone.

She hated being alone…

Where was Twilight in any of it?!

Oh, she was there, all right! There to put her in her place! To chew her out for not being Little Miss Perfect-at-Magic! To bludgeon her over the head with EVERY mistake! EVERY screw-up!

Rainbow’s face grew hotter yet, a boiling outrage welling up inside her. Last week, spying from behind the vent as Twilight had her private little rendezvous with Tristar. When Tristar called Rainbow a gutter trash hoodlum, and Twilight practically rolled over and AGREED with him! Why didn’t Twi stand up for her? WHERE WAS HER FRIEND, THEN?

She flexed her ears, stewing in her own fury.

“I’m sorry, Rainbow. You deserve so much better,” said Sage.

Yeah, I do.

“For a friend to sit in judgment, to be jealous of you…! And it doesn’t even make sense! After all, you didn’t grow up with advantages…”

No, I didn’t.

“Other ponies had benefits you never had. For one thing, parents who were still alive, who could be there to offer their love and support. Not to mention a stable home, a complete education, and a universe of opportunities that life just never gave you.”

He shook his head, regarding her sadly.

“Who’s to say how much more you could’ve achieved if you’d had any of it? Maybe you wouldn’t feel so hopeless about all this book-smarts stuff, and about learning, in general. Maybe they wouldn’t have beat you down when you were all alone in the world with nopony to turn to.” Sage sighed. “Maybe… things could have been different.”

Maybe she wouldn’t be stuck pushing clouds her whole life, scrimping by on a second-rate flying certificate.

Maybe she would be on an elite racing team, the way the grown-ups said it would all pan out for her the first time she broke the sound barrier when she was just a filly.

Maybe she would even be a Wonderbolt.

Where would she be right now if she hadn’t caught such a bad break? If she had just a little more wind under her wings all those years ago? How different could it all have been if she'd traveled the jet stream not taken?

And WHAT RIGHT did TWILIGHT have to be JEALOUS OF HER?

“But you know, some ponies are just like that. They can have the whole world gift-wrapped for them, and it still isn’t enough, because it will never be enough. They’ll hide a smirk when you fail, because they don’t want you to win. They’ll leave you hanging when you need a shoulder to lean on, because they don’t care about you. Not really. The only thing they care about is using you. All you are is a road to an end for them.”

“Luna said something… kinda similar… when I first got the horn,” Rainbow mumbled. She thought back to Fluttershy’s cottage, to all the cautionary advice the midnight alicorn had given her. All the warnings she’d discounted, that she hadn’t taken seriously.

“Luna’s no dummy. But you’re not either, are you? You’ve dealt with bullies before. They tried so hard to hold you down, but you blazed on past them and never looked back!”

Hoops and his gang, and everypony else who had their heads up their own hindquarters, who called her a FAILURE, a FRAUD! She showed THEM in the end! All the times they LAUGHED at her, the ink they spilled writing their little lies! She didn’t need ANY of them!

Sage placed a hoof on her shoulder. “If this other pony truly is as toxic as she sounds—if she’s really so bad a friend—then the best thing you can do—”

He bowed his head apologetically.

“—might just be to cut her out of your life.”

“Cut her out?!”

She whirled around on him, a horrified expression on her face. Sage took an immediate step back.

“I can’t do that!”

“Don’t let yourself be walked over, Rainbow.”

“I can’t cut her out! I’m Loyalty, for pony’s sake! And Loyalty doesn’t turn its back on anypony!”

“Loyalty deserves loyalty in turn, doesn’t it? Listen…” He wrapped his hoof around her, walking her back over to the table. “This is clearly something that’s bothering you a lot. You can’t keep it bottled up inside! If you do, it’s only going to fester and poison your friendship with this other pony even more!”

It seemed reasonable enough.

“Honesty is an Element of Harmony too, isn’t it?” Sage pointed out.

A bewildered frown set upon Rainbow’s face. “Well, yeah, but—”

“Then take my advice and be honest with your friend! You need to clear the air. This pony’s hurt you, Rainbow Dash. Not only that, she’s wronged you! She needs to comprehend just how much she’s wronged you, and how very wrong it was of her for having done it! If you don’t tell her the truth about how you feel, your mutual resentment will corrode away the bond you still have with her until nothing’s left. Honesty is the best policy. Applejack would agree with me, don’t you think?”

“I… uh…”

Sage clasped her by the hoof.

“I care about you, my dear girl. Celestia and Luna both care about you too. If this jealous friend of yours cares for you the same, she’ll value your friendship enough not to throw it away. If you confront her with everything she’s done and how she’s caused you to feel, then surely, if she’s a true friend, she’ll apologize for her behavior. And if she doesn’t…”

He winked at her.

“…then she doesn’t deserve to be friends with such an awesome, incredible, spectacular pony in the first place.”

Rainbow’s smile twitched, a glimpse of her usual bravado slipping through. “You, uh… really think I’m awesome, huh?”

“You’re better than awesome. You’re phenomenal! The most gifted student I’ve ever had! A menace in the sky, if I ever saw one—and once you get the hang of your magic? Rainbow, you’re going to do stupendous things that will leave your doubters in awe! The poseurs, the pretenders, the hangers-on… You don’t need them, and you never did! If this other pony thinks she’s too good for you, then why mourn her? The world will witness your legend, Rainbow!”

Rainbow beamed with glowing pride, an immortal grin fastened to her face. Sage clapped her cheerfully on the back before pointing his hoof at the candle, still burning on the table.

“Go ahead! Put her to the test!” he said.

She looked at it with stone-cold intensity. Her horn flashed.

The flame on the purple candle went out.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“Rainbow Dash?” Twilight called out. “Are you in here?”

It was the next morning, and Twilight was wandering the castle in search of her prismatic friend. A knock on the door of her cloud house had gone without answer, and there was no sign of the alicorn’s trim, blue profile in the sky above the grounds. With nowhere else to look, she was checking the obvious spaces of the palace room by room.

There was an uneasy gait in her step as she went along. A storm of emotions warring inside her. She felt lighter than she had in ages, buoyed by the memory of talking to Princess Celestia yesterday—and simultaneously, more heavy than ever. The saddlepack she had strapped to her side felt like it weighed a million tons, and she knew every ounce of it belonged to Rarity’s letter.

Twilight found Rainbow Dash in the castle dining room.

She was standing in front of the fireplace, staring into the flames. She didn’t look well. Twilight recalled Sage telling her that Rainbow had been sick, and it showed. There was a sort of gaunt paleness about her. A way she held her body in a kind of slouch, which was totally at odds with her usual bearing. She looked feeble, weary, and worn.

“There you are!” Twilight said as she trotted over.

Rainbow tensed. Her wings pulled tight against her sides. Twilight saw her steal a quick glance.

Then her head snapped back, and she was staring into the fire again.

“I’ve been looking all over the place for you.” Twilight flashed a mild smile. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately. I heard you were under the weather. Are you feeling any better?”

Rainbow didn’t respond. Only kept her steely vigil over the hearth. Twilight shifted her weight uncomfortably from hoof to hoof.

“I was, um… I was in Manehattan. I’ll tell you all about it!”

Her smile stretched a little wider. A little thinner. Each second that went by felt more tortured than the last. The silence radiating off of Rainbow Dash was weapons-grade.

“Here. I’ve… I’ve got something for you, actually.” She reached for the letter in her saddlepack—

“Are you my friend, Twilight?”

Her foreleg froze in mid-air. There was a frostbitten chill in Rainbow’s voice, colder than a windigo’s bite.

The question left Twilight stunned, instantly on the back hoof. “Wh-What? I—I don’t understand.”

“You don’t? Let me put it another way, then. Were you EVER my friend?”

Rainbow looked at her with eyes she’d never seen before, filled with so much hurt and anger, they made Twilight cringe.

“R-Rainbow…”

The little alicorn began to pace slowly back and forth, her head held low, her tail swishing in the air behind her. “I thought we were friends. I really thought we were. I mean, when the six of us went into the forest together, and you were alone in the castle, facing down Nightmare Moon by yourself, and the rest of us were rushing up the steps to get to you—I was scared, Twi. I don’t like admitting it, but honest to goddesses, I was scared. Because even though I’d only just met you, you seemed cool… like somepony I could be friends with… like somepony I could trust.”

She stopped in her tracks suddenly, her back turned.

“I really thought we were friends. How could the Elements of Harmony have worked for us if we weren’t…?”

“Of course we’re friends, Rainbow!” Twilight cried desperately.

Rainbow whipped around on her, tears flinging off her face. “W-Well, how can I argue that, right? You’re the genius, after all! You’re the expert on the magic of friendship!”

Twilight shrank back. There was something barbed, something poisonous dripping in her voice. Rainbow furiously dried her eyes on the back of her hoof. She started pacing again.

“And then, everything that came after. When you raced against me and A.J. in the Running of the Leaves, and you beat me, I was mad at myself, sure! But I was also super proud of you for placing fourth. I was impressed! When I flew in the Best Young Flyer Competition, I felt nervous. But it meant the world to me to know that you were in the audience. That you were there to root for me and cheer me on.”

Her voice shriveled to a whisper. “When I broke my wing, and I was stuck in that hospital, and y-you… you opened my eyes to how cool reading was, and Daring Do… I… I really thought I had a connection with you. I really thought that… that we were friends.”

Twilight tried again. “But Rainbow, we are friends!”

“That time you hooked me up with a ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala… I was so grateful to you for it.” Rainbow gave a snort. “I was such an idiot. It’s not like that ticket even meant anything to you. You coulda asked for ten tickets, a hundred, a thousand, and Celestia still woulda hooked you up. You and Celestia were always so close, after all—Twilight Sparkle, prized protégé of the princess herself! Twilight Sparkle, the pony who had everything and it still wasn’t enough for her!”

Rainbow looked up at her. Her eyes were pools of liquid fire. Like twin stars, blazing at her.

“Did you EVER really care about me?! Were you EVER my friend?!”

“Of course I was your friend!”

Tears were streaming down Twilight’s face. Every pleading word she spoke was ringing with disbelief. A part of her brain was still trapped on the thin slice of reality where this wasn’t happening to her right now.

Rainbow jabbed out a hoof. “You wanna know what I think? I think you’re a BUCKING LIAR!”

Twilight cowered away from her.

“You’re not really my friend! You don’t give a DAMN about me! You NEVER DID! The only one you EVER cared about was Celestia!”

“That’s not true!”

“ISN’T IT? When Celestia told me she wanted me to go to the Summer Sun Celebration, and we got into a big argument, and afterwards I came to you for a FRIEND—did you hesitate for ONE SECOND before you took Celestia’s side? Did you think about ME and what I WANTED? Or did you appoint yourself to be her ace in the bucking hole? Her second line of fire, so you could pressure me into doing whatever SHE wanted?”

The accusation sent Twilight’s mind whirring. She barely even remembered that conversation, but it must have stuck out to Rainbow Dash. She fumbled for some way to defend herself. “I—I don’t—”

“And all the other stuff you PRETEND you did for me! How much of it were you ACTUALLY doing for CELESTIA? All so you could score a few extra points with her! So you could prove what a good and loyal student you were while you were STABBING ME BETWEEN THE WINGS!”

As she worked herself up more and more, Rainbow’s face twisted with rage. She took another step forward, and Twilight, another step back.

“When you agreed to come to Canterlot and teach me magic! Did you do it for ME? Because you actually CARED about me, as a FRIEND? Or did you only do it because that’s what Celestia WANTED you to do?”

“Rainbow, I—I—” Twilight’s words dried up on the tip of her tongue.

What could she possibly say?

“Don’t even TRY to defend yourself! Celestia snapped her hooves, and YOU CAME RUNNING! Just like you ALWAYS DO!”

Rainbow’s wings puffed up, looming over her like a predator. Twilight wilted under her. She felt a sinkhole opening up in her heart.

Please stop, Rainbow Dash. You’re really hurting me.

But Rainbow wasn’t about to stop. The symphony of anger inside of her was playing forte now. It was the release of a deep, long-building resentment; a purge of darkness.

“And all the times you made me feel like an IDIOT!” Rainbow seethed. “The snide remarks at our magic lessons! The tests I had zero chance of passing! You practically called me stupid! How could it possibly be ME, out of all the ponies in the ENTIRE WORLD?”

“YOU NEVER EVEN TRIED!” Twilight finally latched onto a defense. Fury began to burrow itself inside her, tunneling into her soul. “You NEVER did the reading! You NEVER put in the effort! The only thing you did was GOOF OFF! EVERY SINGLE DAY!”

Rainbow raged, “Every time you TORE ME DOWN for sticking one HOOF out of line! For saying the wrong thing, sitting in the wrong chair—”

“EXCUSE ME for trying to keep you from EMBARRASSING yourself!”

“YOU WERE THREATENED BY ME! YOU WERE SPITEFUL!”

Rainbow’s chest heaved. In her weakness and poor health, she had to reach for a nearby chair to steady herself, to keep her legs from crumpling underneath her. If Twilight felt any pity, she didn’t give a sign.

Even so, Rainbow wasn’t anywhere close to bottoming out yet. She looked more wolf than pony as she kept up her assault:

“YOU HAD EVERYTHING! I HAD NOTHING! While I was eleven years old and ORPHANED, you practically had Celestia for a SECOND MOM! All I did was come into her life for ONE MONTH, and WHAT? You thought I was gonna STEAL HER AWAY FROM YOU? Is that how a FRIEND is supposed to behave? IS THAT ALL OUR FRIENDSHIP WAS WORTH?”

Twilight opened her mouth to say something, but Rainbow rolled right over her. “That night you followed me out to the cemetery! YOU WEREN’T THERE BY ACCIDENT, WERE YOU?”

A sickening dread wrapped itself around Twilight’s throat.

“WHEN I WAS ON MY KNEES, CRYING OVER MY PARENTS’ GRAVES! AND YOU SPIED ON ME! YOU PRETENDED TO CARE ABOUT ME, AND YOU TOLD ME TO COME HERE! YOU TOLD ME TO LEAVE MY FRIENDS, AND MY HOME, AND EVERYTHING I HAD!”

Rainbow was trembling, the sum of all her pain and heartache, her misery and betrayal coursing down her cheeks in rivers. She didn’t even bother to hide it anymore.

“I WAS GRIEVING! I WAS VULNERABLE!”

“R-Rainbow, I—”

“DID YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT ME ONCE? DID YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT I WAS GOING THROUGH? ABOUT WHAT YOU WERE TELLING ME TO DO? DID YOU CARE?

“OR WAS THE ONLY REASON WHY YOU TALKED ME INTO COMING TO CANTERLOT BECAUSE LUNA ASKED YOU TO? BECAUSE CELESTIA WOULD’VE WANTED YOU TO?”

Twilight locked up. She found she couldn’t speak. Only stare in mute horror as her friendship burned down right in front of her.

Those rose-colored eyes glowed with primal emotion, hard as iron; cold as ice. Rainbow jabbed a hoof at her again.

“You are the WORST FRIEND in the WORLD! All this time, I thought you were smart! Turns out, YOU’RE NOT SMART ENOUGH TO SEE PAST YOUR OWN MUZZLE!

“I DON’T NEED YOU, TWILIGHT SPARKLE! I don’t need your friendship! I don’t need you to teach me magic! I! DON’T! NEED! YOU!

“I’LL BE BETTER AT EVERYTHING THAN YOU! I’LL BE EVEN MORE AWESOME WITHOUT YOU! I’ll be better at MAGIC than you! I’ll be cooler with CELESTIA than you! AND I’LL SURE AS HAY BE A BETTER FRIEND THAN YOU EVER WERE! I HATE YOU, TWILIGHT! So just GO AWAY and LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Rainbow’s wings pumped once, twice. She tore into the air, tears glittering. Before Twilight could react, she bolted through a window and took off into the leaden, overcast sky.

That left Twilight to stand and gawk, staring at the vacated space in front of the hearth where her friend had been. She heard herself whimper.

“Rainbow Dash…”

Like day turning to night, the reality of what had just happened descended on her, and the magnitude of it—the sheer, sheer magnitude of it—at last began to register.

Her head hung. Her bangs drooped in front of her eyes. Beside her, the fire continued to pop and crackle with impervious cheer, but Twilight didn’t hear it. She was in another place altogether.

A place far away from light, and life, and hope.

A place surrounded by the dust and ashes.

Rainbow Dash… hated her.

Rainbow Dash. One of her best friends. One of the ponies who showed her how important it was to have friends.

Rainbow Dash. Her fellow Element Bearer, who stood by her side through thick and through thin, against so much adversity. Against Nightmare Moon… Against Discord… Who never, ever left a friend hanging, and was always loyal and true to the end.

Rainbow Dash, whose sandy voice and riotous, guffawing laughter livened up any day. Rainbow Dash, whose self-confidence was infectious. Rainbow Dash, who could gush about Daring Do with her for hours on end, and never missed a chance to crash into her library.

Rainbow Dash. Hated. Her.

Twilight sniffled, staring blearily in the fire.

She was so numb, and in such a state of shock, she barely noticed it staring back at her from out of the flames.

That single, slitted, purple eye.

Her breathing hitched. She dragged a hoof across her face to wipe away the shame and dampness.

She’d come here to apologize.

All she wanted to do was APOLOGIZE!

She’d made mistakes, SURE! She could SEE THAT now! All she wanted to do was move past them! Put all this awfulness behind her! But Rainbow Dash wouldn’t even let her do THAT! Rainbow Dash wouldn’t even let her get a word in EDGEWISE!

Like RAINBOW DASH was so perfect?

Like RAINBOW DASH had never made a mistake in her life?

Like RAINBOW DASH was SUCH A GREAT FRIEND?

She was breathing fast now, almost on the verge of hyperventilating. Every drop of sadness transmuted to anger, running hot and loud through her veins. Every tear dried in the heat of her rising scorn.

She’d come here to apologize, and Rainbow ended their friendship without even LETTING HER! The WHOLE TIME Twilight was out looking for her this morning, she was in here, just SHARPENING HER HOOVES!

WAS THAT ALL SHE WAS WORTH TO HER?

The blood was roaring in her ears. The heat, rising in her brain.

Rainbow Dash didn’t need HER?

WELL, SHE DIDN’T NEED RAINBOW DASH, EITHER!

Twilight tore open her saddlepack. In an instant, Rarity’s letter was in front of her, the delicate white envelope trembling in her grasp. All these words their unicorn friend had written—apologies, good wishes, promises of friendship—Rainbow didn’t deserve ANY OF THEM!

She tried to think of a reason not to, but in that moment, the only thing she could see was RAINBOW DASH, BOASTING about being better at magic than her. RAINBOW DASH, GLOATING about being closer to CELESTIA! SMUG, ARROGANT, INTERFERING, POMPOUS—!

Twilight thrust her hoof out over the fire. Rarity’s letter dangled, suspended above the blaze.

The orange tongues lapped at it hungrily. The bottom edge began to shrivel. To molder and turn brown.

And the beauty of the flames danced in her eyes…

Appendix: Previous Revisions

Author's Note

Previous Revisions

Alicorn has been through numerous edits since its initial publication. Previous chapter revisions are recorded here for future record.

Chapter One

2011 Publication –

Originally published as a one-shot sequel to Mommy Nearest by Fairy-Slayer. Content and tone are similar to that parent fic.

Rainbow Dash expresses only minor, fleeting anger toward Celestia. Some unpalatable facts are brought to light, e.g. Celestia’s refusal to acknowledge her parentage on myriad previous occasions; these facts are quickly moved past, and the story ends with a moment of heartfelt reconciliation.

Other challenges related to Rainbow Dash’s new rank and biology are not addressed (e.g. how being a princess will uproot her life, how others will perceive her differently, how her future ambitions will be affected, how her friendships will be affected, how she will grow into her magical abilities).

Rainbow Dash is known as Princess Freyja in this version, in direct continuity with the original published version of Mommy Nearest.

Celestia’s rationale for giving up Rainbow Dash for adoption (“Because you weren’t a unicorn”) also mirrors the original continuity of Mommy Nearest.

Certain staples of the modern version of Alicorn are already present, such as the lullaby, but the overall structure and narrative are very bare-bones.

2012 Revision –

Chapter remains in direct continuity with Mommy Nearest.

By this point, the overall narrative of Alicorn had begun to take shape, and it became clear that developing and exploring a plausible mother-daughter relationship between Rainbow Dash and Celestia would be at the heart of the story. Therefore, any tearful reconciliation in Chapter One would come far too early. The chapter was revised to end with Rainbow Dash turning away from Celestia, refusing to forgive her, and refusing to acknowledge her as her parent.

Rainbow Dash’s emotions are barely exposed. She expresses only minor sadness and very little in the way of anger or fear.

Celestia’s point of view is unexplored outside of dialogue, and her own emotions are left mostly untreated.

By this point, Rainbow Dash is known as Princess Aurora, not Princess Freyja.

2015 Revision –

Complete rewrite. Chapter is no longer in direct continuity with Mommy Nearest. With this revision, the major narrative developments of Fairy-Slayer’s original fanfic are fully integrated into Alicorn.

Several of the story beats remain the same: Rainbow Dash falls from a cloud and is brought back to town by Applebloom and Big Macintosh; the doctors are unable to provide remedy; Twilight Sparkle is unable to provide remedy; Zecora is unable to provide remedy; Twilight Sparkle writes to Celestia, who arrives and reveals herself to be Rainbow Dash’s mother.

Several new scenes are written on the front end to examine Rainbow Dash’s station in life at the start of the story (i.e. dead-end job, aspiring to the Wonderbolts, looking forward to tryouts in September).

The recurring thematic motif of the painting above the fireplace and the concept of “Good Enough” are introduced.

Several dream sequences are provided to foreshadow the revelation of Rainbow Dash's parentage and provide examination into her unraveling mental and emotional state.

A scene is written for Celestia in Griffi’la to foreshadow the Ascendancy story thread.

Rainbow Dash’s reaction to hearing the truth from Celestia is now apocalyptic. Her anger, fear, and sadness are powerful.

Celestia’s mental and emotional state are also investigated.

"Because you weren't a unicorn" is struck from Celestia's list of reasons for giving Rainbow Dash up for adoption, as this was, in the author's opinion, too ignoble and accommodating of racism to stand as a justifiable rationale. Instead, Celestia cites a number of other reasons for wishing to recuse herself from the responsibility of raising Rainbow Dash, including her past failures raising Luna.

The fallout between Rainbow Dash and Celestia follows the contours of the parallel scene in the 2012 revision, but the emotional punch is much more raw and faithful to Rainbow Dash’s loyalty and emotional nature.

The scene showing Celestia’s introspection lying in the hospital with an unconscious Rainbow Dash is slightly overwritten.

2019 Revision (current version) –

Celestia's introspection is rewritten.

Paragraphs are removed showing Rainbow Dash being made to wear a bridle to restrain her from hurting herself, a holdover from Mommy Nearest.

Several other minor edits.

Chapter Two

2011 Publication –

Chapter remains in direct continuity with Mommy Nearest.

Celestia features at the beginning of the chapter, still in the hospital room with Rainbow Dash following their heartfelt reconciliation at the end of Chapter One. She briefly lectures Rainbow Dash about her horn when Rainbow Dash makes the mistake of referring to it as a “can opener”—thus, the origin of the can opener joke, eventually to be paid off in Chapter Seven.

Rainbow Dash and Celestia are soon joined by Fluttershy, marking the first of several perfunctory appearances by the Mane Six in this chapter. Fluttershy’s inclusion contributes nothing to the overall narrative, nor do the follow-up scenes with Applejack and Rarity at the farm and Pinkie Pie at the party; these scenes are largely short and superficial, serving only to tick the boxes on mentioning the Mane Six.

Rainbow Dash performs a sonic rainboom, which was noteworthy during the 2011 hiatus between the first and second seasons of the cartoon, as it was unclear then whether Rainbow Dash would keep her signature ability after the events of S1E16.

There is a minor romance/shipping between Rainbow Dash and Big Macintosh during the scene on the farm.

Numerous background ponies are included at Pinkie Pie’s party.

The central narrative dilemma is beginning to take shape: Twilight Sparkle and Celestia share a picnic lunch, where Celestia conveys some trepidation about being a parent to Rainbow Dash; later on, the graveyard scene between Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle lays bare Rainbow Dash’s reservations about opening herself up to Celestia and betraying her adoptive mother and father. However, the tone of the chapter—as well as the chapter title itself, “A New Beginning”—are still notably upbeat. There is little to give the impression that Rainbow Dash has suffered as a result of growing her horn, and she and Celestia are quite cordial.

2012 Revision –

Chapter remains in direct continuity with Mommy Nearest.

Celestia no longer features at the start of the chapter.

Despite following the revised version of Chapter One in which Rainbow Dash rejects Celestia, her emotional state is still muted, with boredom at being stuck in the hospital and fascination with her horn ranking chief among her concerns.

Fluttershy’s scene is expanded.

During her picnic with Twilight Sparkle, Celestia remarks on her intention to fly north to a place called Asgard, later to become Griffi’la in a future revision. This marks the initial authorial conception of the Ascendancy and the beginning of their role in the story, although at this primordial stage, their foreshadowing is still quite sparse.

Celestia also asks Twilight Sparkle to speak to Rainbow Dash and convince her to come to Canterlot for her own protection, with the unsavory alternative that if Twilight Sparkle does not convince her, Celestia will order the Royal Guard to bring Rainbow Dash in by force. This would turn out to be an unfortunate narrative revision: because the threat posed by the Ascendancy was so ill-defined, and because Celestia's relationship with Rainbow Dash was so nascent, Celestia's request had the effect of causing readers to second-guess her intentions, turning them against her from an early stage.

Later in the chapter, when Rainbow Dash visits her the graves of her mother and father, she asks their forgiveness for harboring certain feelings toward Celestia that she can’t control, rather than their permission to pursue a mother-daughter relationship with her, one step further along the path of making Rainbow Dash's alienation from Celestia a central plank of the story.

2015 Revision –

Chapter is no longer in direct continuity with Mommy Nearest.

Minor patch job to make the chapter compatible with the 2015 revision of Chapter One. Several narrative problems still persist, which these edits were simply insufficient at addressing.

The chapter now begins with Rainbow Dash trying not to think about Celestia and the revelation of her parentage. While this is closer to the devastation she experiences in the 2015 revision of Chapter One, Rainbow Dash is still far too reserved and composed during the initial scenes and throughout the chapter.

Tank is included at Pinkie Pie’s party, as by this point, he had been a long-established character in the franchise.

The background ponies are excluded from Pinkie Pie’s party, making the event more of a small and intimate get-together among friends.

Apart from the graveyard scene, tone remains problematic, and the catastrophic repercussions on Rainbow Dash’s emotional state are left unexplored.

Chapter Three

2011 Publication –

Chapter remains in direct continuity with Mommy Nearest.

Celestia makes a cameo at the start of the chapter, as at this stage, her mission in the Griffin Kingdom had not yet been conceptualized.

Tristar is overly antagonistic while escorting Rainbow Dash into the Warrens. His rejoinders to Rainbow Dash cross the line into disrespect and insubordination.

First published appearance of Luna in Alicorn. As this chapter was written nearly a month before S2E04 Luna Eclipsed aired, the story did not have the advantage of leaning on the character’s canon depiction. Instead, Luna’s personality takes inspiration from fanon portrayals, especially Progress by Andrew Joshua Talon. Here, she is portrayed as reserved, unassuming, something of a bibliophile, and tormented by guilt over her actions as Nightmare Moon. Over time, with future chapters and revisions, Luna’s personality would come to more closely resemble that seen in canon, with greater self-confidence and forthrightness, although it would never be an exact match.

Several allusions to Progress are included as fan service (i.e. the abacus, the microwave).

Sage Whitehoof is overly evasive about his identity, for no particular reason other than to prolong the reveal until the end of the chapter. He contributes almost nothing of substance during his introduction to Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash expresses aloofness toward Celestia at the end of the chapter, but still minimal hostility.

2015 Revision –

Chapter is no longer in direct continuity with Mommy Nearest.

Celestia no longer makes a cameo at the start of the chapter.

Tank accompanies Rainbow Dash to Canterlot.

Luna remains mired in her fanon characterization.

Chapter Six

2015 Publication –

At time of publication, this chapter marked Shining Armor's first appearance in the story. The previous two chapters were published 4/1/2012, three weeks prior to the air date of S2E25 and S2E26, A Canterlot Wedding. As such, Shining Armor did not feature in the narrative prior to this chapter, nor did Cadance. The addition of these characters to the show posed several immediate challenges to the canon compatibility of Alicorn:

Cadance is an alicorn. The existence of a third alicorn other than Celestia and Luna retroactively created a problem in the first several chapters of the story: why was Cadance not mentioned or featured in Chapters One through Five?

The mechanism by which Cadance had become an alicorn—ascension—had also not been cemented yet, and would not be cemented until S3E13, Magical Mystery Cure. At this stage, Cadance's background and relation to Celestia and Luna were entirely speculative. The tie-in novella, Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell, would later establish Cadance as a pegasus who was adopted by Celestia and transformed into an alicorn due to an act of heroism, but this had yet to be conceptualized. As a result of Cadance's vague background, it was difficult to integrate her into the story with any amount of forward accuracy.

Once ascension was unveiled in the cartoon, Alicorn became even more incompatible with Cadance's canon depiction. In the internal logic of the fanfic, alicorns are born, not manufactured. Thus, it would be impossible for Cadance to have been born a pegasus and made into an alicorn at a later date.

Shining Armor is revealed as Captain of the Royal Guard in S2E25, A Canterlot Wedding. However, Alicorn had already given this role to Tristar. This was yet another plot point that caused friction between the show canon and the fanfic.

This constellation of problems, which was later compounded by Twilight's ascension in the cartoon, led to a three-year hiatus in which the story was not updated. Although a draft was written as early as 2012, Chapter Six would not be published until 2015. Ultimately, the following compromises were made:

Cadance would retain her rank as princess, but she would remain an off-screen character as much as possible so as to not draw reader attention to her. To maintain compatibility with the narrative of the fanfic, she would not be presented as an alicorn, but rather as a pegasus. Thus, this chapter marks a critical divergence with the cartoon, and the point where Alicorn basically becomes an alternate universe.

Whereas Cadance was pushed to the background, it was decided that Shining Armor would feature in Chapter Six at the battle in Manehattan. His captaincy was reconciled by making him captain of the Unicorn Corps of the Royal Guard, whereas Tristar is captain of the Pegasus Corps.

Because Shining Armor was not previously established as a character in Chapters One through Five, it was necessary to quickly write him during the battle at the start of Chapter Six. This has the downside of being contrived: in the span of a few paragraphs, Shining Armor is established to be Cadance's fiancé, as well as Tristar's friend and protégé. The tone and realism of the scene suffer as a result: why is Shining Armor reminiscing over old times in the middle of a major battle?

There is uncertainty over the extent of Shining Armor's injuries.

After the battle, Shining Armor is described as climbing to his hooves, flashing Tristar a smile, and limping off the battlefield.

In a later scene, Twilight is described as having just come from a visit to Shining Armor in the hospital. Shining Armor is mentioned as having been "sedated" and "unconscious" with Cadance "wispy-eyed at his side," but with injuries non-threatening enough that he would be "out in a week."

This vacillating over the extent of the character's injuries was due to uneasiness about how dark the tone of the story ought to be.

The word "terrorism" does not appear anywhere in this version of the chapter, also owing to concerns about tone.

The primary argument deployed against Celestia in the newspaper (and later cited by Rarity in her argument with Rainbow) is that Celestia was guilty of failing to alert to populace of an imminent attack despite having foreknowledge of it.

Tone is kept light during the hospital scene with Sweetie Belle.

Celestia's rationale for keeping the operation a secret is that she wanted to capture the ringleader of the Ascendancy, and she feared he would go into hiding if she tipped her hoof by putting out a public alert. However, this smacks of an idiot plot. There's no compelling reason to believe the Ascendancy's ringleader would make himself a target in Manehattan regardless of whether the danger posed by the Ascendancy was made public. Indeed, despite keeping the operation quiet, Celestia apparently fails to capture the ringleader anyway. Thus, upon examination, Celestia's actions in this version of the chapter are almost indefensible.

Uncertainty over tone continues into the hospital scene with Sweetie Belle. Pinkie Pie's antics are comical and light-hearted throughout. Rarity's father is described as having suffered no major injuries, and he takes a jovial disposition about the vacation. When the Cutie Mark Crusaders show up, their interactions with Sweetie Belle are played for laughs. Overall, the consequences of the events in Manehattan are not treated with any amount of gravity by the main characters, with Rarity being the lone exception.

2017 Revision

Chapter Nine

2016 Original

The final prank involves a can of nuts and some over-the-top lunar shenanigans.

2024 Revision (current version) –

The opening scene between Tristar and Otto Bravemane is lengthened, giving further insight into Tristar's thoughts and assumptions about the Ascendancy.

More popover puns.

The first prankstorming session between Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie is lengthened, hopefully giving more space for the emotions to breathe. A call-back to Rarity is also included.

Tzeep-Tzeep!

The conversation between Twilight Sparkle and Tristar is completely reworked, providing further insight into Tristar's past history with Shining Armor. The dialogue should hopefully be less overwrought.

The final prank has been reworked, incorporating concepts from the cartoon and bringing things down to a more grounded level of realism. Celestia no longer cheats. This is far closer to my original vision for the chapter. When I wrote The Pranking of Princess Luna in 2016, I was never satisfied with the final prank — I just ran out of creative juices, threw something at the wall, and said, "Good enough!" The final prank in the revised version is elegant, straightforward, and much more to my liking. (Actually, I think I had a lightbulb moment where I came up with this exact same idea back in 2016, but I went to sleep without writing it down and it fell out of my head. Always write down your ideas, folks!)

Appendix: Previous Revisions

04. Twilight's Arrival

ALICORN
by Aldea Donder

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is property of Hasbro, Inc.
Please rate and review.

CHAPTER FOUR
Twilight’s Arrival

Originally Published 4/1/2012

Wednesday morning was well underway in Lower Canterlot.

The streets were crowded with ponies of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Ponies pushing past one another in throngs, scurrying and scrambling to get from here to there. Rising above it all, the deafening pulse of the city: street vendors barking out prices, news colts shouting headlines from the latest issue of the Canterlot Sun, and the creak-and-clatter of wagons, wagons, wagons.

Folks tripped over each other as they went about their daily business, running their errands, tending their shops. Racing on their way to work, to school. To the bakeries and markets to buy food for their families.

Grim Gull was one such pony, traipsing through the merchant stalls in Atlas Plaza. Her eyes darted about, looking for lunch.

Looking for a patsy.

The onset of years had not been kind to her. Shriveled and gray, she seemed likely to blow away with the slightest gust. The townsfolk looked on her pityingly as she went by, but she didn’t mind. If age and infirmity helped her leverage the merchants for a better deal, so much the better!

Speaking of which, here was her mark. A produce merchant. One of those hoity-toity monocled gits from up on the hill, posh and unsympathetic. He would do nicely.

She opened the negotiation with a grin, wide and toothless. “How much for a bushel of apples, dearie?”

The merchant took one look at her and flinched. “Eighteen bits for a bushel,” he said, looking down his nose at her.

“EIGHTEEN BITS!” she shouted, drawing glances from the nearby crowd. “CELESTIA ABOVE! Where do you get off charging EIGHTEEN BITS for ONE BUSHEL? In my day, we had a word for that—HIGHWAY ROBBERY! Mercy me! Don’t you know we got KIDS TO FEED?”

Right on cue, a little yellow filly slinked between the old mare’s legs and put her hooves up on the counter. “Gramma, is it time to eat yet?”

“No, child, but don’t you worry your little head. Your grandmother’s working it out with the greedy salespony right now.” She gave the filly a pat before turning her smoldering eyes back on the merchant. “You see there? My granddaughter’s hungry! Are you going to tell her she can’t eat today over a measly eighteen bits? For SHAME, sir! For SHAME!”

“Now, wait just a minute—”

“SEE HERE, sir! I don’t know what kind of SLEAZY OPERATION you run here, or what sort of ROBBER BARON you think you are, but EIGHTEEN BITS for ONE BUSHEL is madness! We got KIDS TO FEED! Have you no SCRUPLES, sir? Have you no DECENCY?”

“Look, lady, I got kids to feed, too!”

“Oh, so YOUR kids are more important than OUR kids? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

And the quarrel went on.

Meanwhile, high on the northern bluff stood the clock tower, majestic and proud. Its elegant walls and trimmings of silver and white gold marked it among the grandest structures in the city. As the sun neared its zenith in the azure sky, it caught the light and shined like a pearl, a brilliant counterpoint to Canterlot Castle on the southern rise.

The minute hand joined its partner at the twelve. It was high noon.

The gears came to life, shaking off the dust of the last hour. The mechanism griped and grumbled and groaned, the hammer pulled back on the great bronze bell, and finally—

CLANG… CLANG… CLANG…

The toll of the hour rose above the street noise. Above the shuffling and the clickity-clack of wagon wheels as they skipped across the cobblestones. Above the birdsong. Above the breeze.

But not above Grim Gull’s screeching tirade. She was relentless, and she was drawing quite a crowd.

“Is he really charging that much for a bushel of apples?”

“There’s no way a pony in her condition can afford to pay so much.”

“She’s got a filly to feed, too!”

“Disgraceful!”

Said filly was rapidly growing bored with today’s shakedown. Every one of them was more of the same. Put your hooves on the countertop, make a pouty face, and whine about how hungry you are. Then sit back and wait for the ship to come in. It was boooooring.

With a sigh, she cast her gaze to the horizon.

CLANG… CLANG… CLANG…

“Gramma! Gramma!”

Annoyance flashed on Grim Gull’s face. “What is it, Sunrise? You know I’m in the middle of something here!”

“There’s a pony up there!” the filly exclaimed.

“Up where, child?”

The filly pointed off in the distance. “There! In the sky!”

“Don’t be silly, Sunrise. Pegasi fly around in the sky all the time.”

“Yeah, but she’s really fast, and she’s got a horn! I’ve never seen—”

“Hush now, child. I’m conducting business.” She gave the filly a scoot, then turned back to her quarry. “Now then, AS I was saying…”

CLANG… CLANG… CLANG…

“Look, you shriveled old prune! You win, okay? I’m bleeding customers here.”

Grim Gull pursed her lips. “How much for the bushel, then?”

“I can come down… a little. Best I can do is fourteen.”

“FOURTEEN? FOURTEEN BITS for ONE BUSHEL? Why, in MY day—”

“TEN! TEN! Just take the apples and get away from my stall!”

Grim Gull smirked. She levitated the coins onto the counter, then magically hoisted a bushel. “Thank you for your patronage. I’ll be sure to tell all my friends what a pushover you are.”

The merchant muttered something unpleasant.

Grim Gull beamed down at sunrise. “Now, child, what are you saying?”

CLANG… CLANG… CLA—

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

SOUND! COLOR! The heavens exploded in a million hues, and ponies all over the place screamed and ran!

Grim Gull swept her granddaughter behind the fruit cart, spilling her hard-won apples all across the street. She cursed. “What in the blazes—?”

Sunrise wriggled out from her gramma’s protective grasp. “Look!”

Grim Gull followed the filly’s gaze—and gasped. It was an alicorn! A little alicorn, the color of the sky, slicing through the air with the spectrum at her back and a daredevil grin on her face—

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

As the sky shattered again into a myriad of reds, blues, greens, yellows, and every other color imaginable, the shockwave from the first blast rippled outward and joined the second, creating a kaleidoscopic firestorm over the rooftops. The earthbound denizens looked up in awe.

The alicorn blasted out of the heart of the aurora, threading her way through an obstacle course of chimneys and spires before doing three laps around the clock tower and blasting back into the sky, a blazing band of color following her the whole way.

A blazing band of color… and about fifty members of the Royal Guard.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

Rainbow felt ALIVE.

THIS was what she was made for. THIS. Soaring high, racing the wind, being completely and totally AWESOME. How had she managed to go five whole days without THIS?

A DOUBLE RAINBOOM. And she pulled it off like it was nothing!

She could TASTE the adrenaline. Her wings hurt, but it was the good kind of hurt. The kind that comes from breaking your limits. Her lungs were on fire and her face was covered with sweat, but otherwise, she felt GREAT. She could probably even pull off a third sonic rainboom.

Her face twisted into a manic grin.

A third sonic rainboom.

It was INSANE! She’d never dreamed of doing three in a row before! But the idea was intoxicating. There was no stopping her now. She had to go for it. She had to try.

She twitched her primaries. “Wonderbolts, here I come!”

“DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.”

Rainbow glanced over her shoulder in mild surprise.

Huh. She’d planned on having another minute and a half before the peanut gallery showed up. Guess they were really on the ball today.

There was a swarm of angry pegasi behind her, but she only had eyes for one of them. A familiar white stallion in radical golden armor, flying at the head of the pack.

“Well, look who it is! Captain Jerkwad, right?”

She twisted around in mid-air so she was flying backwards, casually crossing her legs and folding her arms behind her head, all the while maintaining forward velocity, staying just out of Tristar’s reach.

Captain Tristar growled and flapped twice as hard. He was rewarded with a burst of speed, but Rainbow just opened her wings and caught the air, drifting lazily up and away.

“Nice day for flying, isn’t it?”

“GET. BACK. HERE.”

“Why? So your goons can pounce and drag me back to that stuffy old castle? Hmm, lemme think.” She tapped her chin. “Nah.”

“YOU WERE INSTRUCTED TO REMAIN ON CASTLE GROUNDS. YOUR DEFIANCE IS A DIRECT DISOBEDIENCE TO THE WILL OF HER MAJESTY, PRINCESS CELES—”

“Listen, pal! I’m Rainbow Dash! The awesomest pony in Equestria! Nopony orders me around. Least of all, you.” Her brow furrowed. “Come to think of it, I’m, like, a princess or something. Shouldn’t I be the one giving you orders?”

Tristar’s eyes blazed with rage. “I WOULD SOONER PLUCK EVERY LAST FEATHER FROM MY OWN TWO WINGS THAN TAKE AN ORDER FROM A SNIVELING LITTLE—”

“Sheesh. You don’t gotta be so dramatic about it.”

“THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!”

“Like I said, buddy, I don’t take orders too well. That’s part of the reason why they hated me so much back in flight school.”

She flipped back around and spread her forehooves out in front of her. With a glance overshoulder, she gave Tristar a sly wink.

“I showed them in the end, though, didn’t I?”

Tristar lunged, but she zipped away before he could catch her, pitching down into another one of her trademark Rainbow Dash death spirals. The streets, lawns, and rooftops of Lower Canterlot zoomed up to meet her, blurring together in a mishmash of green and white. Then the world somersaulted back into focus as she leveled out, skirting above the teeming masses, a funnel of angry pegasi hot on her hooves.

The air roared in her ears as she swooped through the monumental archways, corkscrewed up one glimmering white spire and down the next, blitzed beneath bridges with zero regard for their perilous narrows. She took ninety-degree turns at a hundred miles an hour, crowing with laughter at the lateral g’s. Celestia, how she’d missed this!

She emerged into the wide expanse of Atlas Plaza, buzzing right overtop the canopied market. The guards spilled out behind her, chasing her past fountains and statues and vendor stalls. Past one stall, in particular, where Grim Gull and her granddaughter looked on in amazement.

An enormous grin split Sunrise’s face. “She’s incredible!”

One of her pursuers lunged at her, forcing her to dip down into the gawping crowd to evade him. As she rocketed forward, inches above the flagstones, she almost bowled over one stallion—a sharp-eyed unicorn with a press pass jammed in the ribbon of his slate-gray fedora, recently arrived in Canterlot on the nine-o’clock train.

Recovering quickly, he fumbled for his camera. So it was true after all! He’d had his suspicions, but he hadn’t expected the story to fall into his lap quite this easily. Maybe he should outsource to the Royal Guard more often. They certainly brought new meaning to the phrase chasing a lead.

The guards kept up their pursuit through the market, fanning out to block all avenues of escape. Rainbow sneered and doubled back into the Manor District, but she was met by Tristar and five of his henchmen. He sprang at her, and she barely managed to slip away. But now the guards were pouring onto the boulevard, cutting off all hope of retreat. She scanned the area wildly—

There! An open window! She made a break for it.

Prince Blueblood was just sitting down to lunch when a polychromatic blur blasted through the window and out into the hall, upending his table, getting kelp salad and milkweed simply everywhere.

He was even more bewildered when a legion of angry guards piled in after her, toppling the rest of the furniture, smashing the china, knocking priceless works of art from the walls. The fearless prince hid underneath a tablecloth until the sound and fury had passed, only then peeking out to gander at the trail of destruction that stretched from one end of his house to the other, ending at the window of his newly-demolished bedroom.

Blueblood gasped in horror. “Good heavens!”

The window opened onto the freedom of the clear blue sky. Rainbow smirked. With the guards bottlenecked back in that mansion, she was home free.

She tucked her wings and dived, skimming along the gables of a white marble compound, zigzagging past parapet after parapet. At the end of the rooftop, she took a hundred-foot plunge to the grounds below, where unicorns young and old were milling about.

“Time for a victory lap!”

She swooped low and circled the building, knocking over at least one bearded old codger in a flurry of papers. As she flew past the massive front doors, the sun flashed upon a little gold plaque, highlighting its engraved lettering, though she was going far too fast to read it:

PRINCESS CELESTIA’S
SCHOOL FOR GIFTED UNICORNS
SAGE WHITEHOOF, HEADMASTER

FOUNDED IN ETERNAL MEMORY
OF ATLAS, KING OF EQUESTRIA
A.D. 142

High above, at the top of the tallest tower, a pair of intelligent silver eyes gazed down upon the school and the rainbow-hued blur zooming a circuit around it. Sage Whitehoof smiled. Then, with a glance at the old grandfather clock ticking away in the corner of his office, he disappeared in a flash of light.

Rainbow was wrapping up her third lap when Tristar came at her like a bolt out of the blue, flanked by a dozen other pegasi, with the entirety of the Royal Guard’s aerial regiment bringing up the rear. She dodged easily and resumed her hooves-behind-head posture.

“What’s up, Cap’n? Thought I lost you back there.”

An enormous vein bulged in Tristar’s forehead. He grit his teeth, red in the face. “YOU’RE A MENACE TO SOCIETY!”

Rainbow took a second to ponder that. “Yeah, they told me that back in flight school too.”

“I’LL GIVE YOU ONE LAST CHANCE TO SURRENDER YOURSELF AND COME QUIETLY. AS MUCH AS I’D ENJOY DRAGGING YOUR FLANK BACK TO CANTERLOT CASTLE IN A NET, I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO LAND RIGHT NOW.”

“Sure thing, buddy. I’ll come quietly. No problem!”

With that, Rainbow blasted back into the sky, leaving Tristar and the rest of the guards to eat her dust. She shot them a wicked grin. “But you’ve gotta catch me first!”

Tristar swore and took off after her.

Nothing could out-decibel Rainbow’s cackling laughter as she caught the air under her wings, riding high on thermals and adrenaline. Enough city flying! It was time to show these jokers was speed really was!

She set her sights on the western horizon, adjusting course to take her out over the Equestrian countryside. If these morons had a hard time keeping up with her on the streets, just wait until they got a load of what she was capable of out in the open!

But as Rainbow flew, she caught sight of something strange. In the distance, coming up fast on her left. A purple dot, floating in midair.

No, wait. Not a purple dot. A purple hot-air balloon.

A very familiar purple hot air balloon, with a very familiar purple unicorn sitting in the basket.

Rainbow slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt. “Twilight! What are you doing here?”

“Rainbow! What—”

“Unidentified flying object is within range of the princess!”

“Take it down! Take it down!”

Rainbow’s eyes went wide. “Oh, crap!”

She barely had time to dodge out of the way before a javelin of pegasi went through the balloon and blew out the other side. Another three or four squadrons followed their lead, zeroing in on the huge, purple target and rupturing it from every conceivable angle.

Hot air spewed from the puncture points in squealing geysers. As the balloon began plummeting to the ground thousands of feet below, Twilight rushed to the side of the basket. “RAINBOOOOOW—ACK!”

Tristar had plucked her nimbly from the dying aircraft. He threw Rainbow a murderous look as he hovered in place, his hooves hooked under the flailing unicorn’s armpits. Below them, the balloon fell away, a great purple blob writhing in its death throes as it careened toward the forested blue foothills, disappearing down and back and out of sight.

Rainbow fumed to see her friend held captive in the big, dumb jerk’s clutches. “Let her go!” she demanded.

“Surrender yourself and come quietly!” Tristar countered.

“I said, LET HER GO!”

“Rainbow, I r-really don’t think that’s a good idea!” said Twilight. She looked green in the gills, her eyes glued on the long, looooong drop below her.

A growl rose in Rainbow’s throat. Snarling, she threw herself at Tristar like a linebacker, and he had barely enough time to dodge back out of the way of her blitz. She whooshed past him so fast, she sent him spinning—and Twilight, who only a second ago had been dangling, now found herself seated astride Rainbow’s back as the two of them whizzed earthward.

Twilight felt her stomach drop out from under her like a plunging elevator. Panicked, she held on for dear life, barely even aware of the silvery mach cone that was rapidly narrowing around them.

“RAINBOW DASH! What in the WORLD is going on?!”

“Twilight,” Rainbow choked out. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly planning on—AHH!” Twilight shrieked as Rainbow suddenly dodged right, and an armored pegasus shot past them.

“GIVE UP! YOU CAN’T ESCAPE!” Tristar screamed.

Rainbow’s face screwed up with annoyance. “Hey, Twilight.”

“What?”

“You know a spell to conjure a pair of ear plugs?”

Twilight looked startled. “No. Why?”

“Oh well. Don’t try to cover your ears. Probably better to hang on.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “What are you going to—?!”

Rainbow launched into another aerial nosedive and the whole world went vertical, the treetops rushing up to meet them like coniferous spears. Twilight’s lips pulled taut against her cheeks as she kicked and screamed and held on for everything she was worth. “RAAAAAINBOOOOOOOOOO—”

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The explosion made playthings out of the guards, lifting them up and tossing them, scattering them far and wide across the sky. By the time Tristar and his men got their bearings, Rainbow and Twilight were already long gone, sailing back toward the mountain on a beam of light.

Rainbow’s psychotic laughter echoed through the valley.

Twilight, on the other hoof, was not as enthusiastic about their situation.

“RAINBOOOOOW! THIS IS INSAAAAANE!”

“I KNOW! ISN’T IT GREAT?”

“NOOOOOOOOOO!”

“A TRIPLE RAINBOOM!” Rainbow whooped. “I AM SO COOOOOL!”

They orbited the mountain twice before Rainbow ran out the mileage on her sonic rainboom and began to decelerate. She made a perfect three-point landing on a rather unremarkable cliff.

It wasn’t Canterlot, but Twilight was just glad to have the solid ground under her hooves again. The second they landed, she collapsed and hugged the gravelly soil, gasping for air.

“THANK CELESTIA! I thought we were going to DIE!”

“Oh, come on, Twi! I totally had your back the whole time!” Rainbow cracked her neck from side to side. “You really think I’d let you fall? That would make me, like, the most un-awesome pony ever!”

“UN-AWESOME ISN’T A WORD!” Twilight yelled. “And there isn’t anything AWESOME about ANY of this!”

She approached the edge of the cliff and looked down over the valley, wincing at the sight of a purple wreckage impaled on some pine trees in the distance. She moaned. “My balloon is ruined!”

Rainbow shrugged. “You can fix it, right?”

“No! I can’t fix it! It’s destroyed! There’s no way I’ll ever be able to—”

“Hey, I hate to interrupt, but we’ve got more important things on our plate.” Rainbow pointed at the vivid trail she’d left behind, which shot off the ledge and curled around the mountain—a byproduct of the sonic rainboom. “There ain’t no pot of gold at the end of this thing, you know. Those guards are gonna come for us, and they’ve got one heck of a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.”

Twilight blinked. “Right… The guards… I forgot.”

“There’s a secret door here somewhere,” said Rainbow as she walked along the mountainside, tracing the various stones and crevices with her hoof. “It’s made to look exactly like the rest of the mountain. I’m guessing it’s magic, because they had a unicorn with ’em to open it when they ‘escorted’ me into the castle this way a week ago…”

She stopped in front of a familiar boulder. A smirk crossed her face.

“Here it is!” she called over her shoulder. “Open ’er up, Twi!”

Rainbow allowed her smirk to widen to a self-satisfied grin. With Twilight on the job, they were practically home free! No way was some dumb rock gonna stand between them and escape. Any second now, she would do some bonkers unicorn magic stuff, the boulder would roll out of the way, and they would make their super awesome getaway through the underground.

…Aaaaany second now.

Rainbow tapped her hoof. “Yo, Twilight, what’s the deal?”

She turned around to admonish her friend, but a narrow-eyed glare from the unicorn stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Why were the guards chasing you in the first place?” Twilight couldn’t keep the suspicion out of her voice.

Rainbow bristled. “Because they’re a bunch of jerks, that’s why!”

“What did you do, Rainbow?”

“Nothing! I just went out for a mid-morning flight, that’s all!”

Twilight stared at her, unimpressed.

“And, um, I might have said some unflattering things about the captain of the guard’s mother,” Rainbow admitted, rubbing the back of her neck uncomfortably. “But that’s not the point! Look, this door isn’t gonna open by itself, so give it the open sesame, already!”

Twilight heaved an exasperated sigh. Lowering her horn to the stone, she set herself to the task of probing the complex weave of mana that wrapped around the hidden door, pulling ever so slightly on the mystical threads in a cautious bid to unwind them.

“How long’s this gonna take, Twi?”

“Shh!”

“But those guys are gonna be here any minute!”

“Quiet! I’m working!”

The spellwork fabric rippled in the arcane wind, a million silver-gold tendrils of light against a velvet backdrop. Twilight methodically worked her way across it, straightening the weave here and there, searching for a hole, a fray, an opening of any kind.

It was then that the guards appeared along a distant ridge, cascading over the lip of the mountain in a constant, gushing stream, their dazzling armor flashing in the sunlight.

Rainbow took a step back. “Twilight…”

“I can’t get it! There’s a locking enchantment! If we were on the other side of the door, I might be able to do something with it, but the magic is designed to be impervious from the outside!”

Still the guards came, dozens at a time, surging from beyond the peak and following the rainboom’s trail. Rainbow eyed the approaching horde anxiously, ticking down a silent countdown in her head.

Forty-five seconds out… Forty… Thirty-five…

“TWILIGHT!”

The urgency in Rainbow’s voice struck an ominous tone. Twilight redoubled her efforts, working as fast as she could, even though deep down, she knew it was probably hopeless—

Then she felt something go twang in her mind.

She stared ahead in horror. “Oh no.”

“What? What is it? What’s wrong?” asked Rainbow.

“I… I tripped a ward.”

Rainbow glanced rapidly back and forth between her somber friend and the guards, who were twenty seconds out now and closing fast. “You tripped a ward? What’s that even mean?”

“An alarm. I tripped an alarm,” Twilight groaned. “Meaning if there’s anypony guarding the other side of this door, they’ve been—”

They heard the sound of rock scraping against rock. The boulder slid out of the way to reveal four huge, hulking unicorns standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the cavern on the other side.

“—alerted,” Twilight finished with a wince.

One of the unicorns stepped forward. “Halt! Who trespasses?”

“Nopony! Nopony at all!” said Rainbow, backing away. “We were just, uh, out for a picnic, me and my gal pal here, here on this nice, scenic cliff, and uh…”

“And then I saw this incredible boulder of yours!” Twilight chimed in. “We were just packing up to leave when I noticed it. I decided to bring it back home for my rock collection.”

Rainbow’s face lit up. “Yeah! Her rock collection! Twilight here is all about her rock collection. She loves it. Can’t get enough of it. Actually, I’m a pretty big rock fan myself. You know, Aerosteed, Van Haylen—”

Twilight facehoofed.

“—So you see, fellas, this is really all just one big misunderstanding. Hey, no harm done though, right? We’ll just be on our way…”

“SEIZE THEM!” Tristar yelled, swooping down from above with a hundred guards at his back. “SEIZE THEM NOW!”

The Royal Guard arrived at last. Pegasi rained down like a hail of spears, and all Rainbow could do was gape up at them, her back against the edge of the cliff. At the same time, all four unicorns came charging out of the tunnel, kicking up clouds of dust with their massive hooves—

Twilight edged back, inches from the drop-off. Her mind went blank.

Before she even knew what she was doing, she grabbed onto Rainbow and closed her eyes. In a brilliant flash of light, the two of them disappeared right out from under Tristar’s grasp—

—and reappeared in the yawning maw of the cave.

Twilight stumbled about in a daze. “Did I… teleport?”

“CLOSE THE DOOR!” Rainbow yelled. “CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT!”

Sweat beaded on Twilight’s forehead as she shut her eyes again.

Her scarlet aura gripped the boulder and dragged it back to its proper place in front of the cavern entrance. In a panic, Tristar ran to the door, reaching out for them in vain.

“COME BACK HERE! YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH THI—”

The rumble-thud of the boulder cut off his sentence quite abruptly, and then Rainbow and Twilight were all alone in the dark tunnel.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“The Warrens.”

Twilight swiveled her head to gander at the place in bewilderment, though there wasn’t a lot to see in the narrow confines and gloomy torchlight. They had taken a few minutes to catch their breath. Now, they faced out again into the long, dark, twisting unknown.

“That’s what Luna called ’em, anyway,” Rainbow continued. “Buncha creepy-looking tunnels dug into the mountain. There are hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. It’s like a ginormous ant hill. When they brought me in from Ponyville, this is the route we took. Luna led me straight to a secret door that connected to Celestia’s office.”

Twilight looked perplexed. “I practically grew up at the castle. I spent more time there as a filly than half the members of the Royal Guard. But I never read or heard anything about a subterranean network.”

“Subterrane-what? Oh boy, here comes that headache again…”

“Do you think you can take us back to that secret door?”

Rainbow rubbed the back of her neck. “Uh, maybe?”

Twilight fixed her with a lidded stare. “Maybe? I thought you just said Luna led you straight there. If it’s a straight shot, what’s the problem?”

“Well, it wasn’t straight-straight…”

“Come on. Let’s get going,” Twilight said, clamping down on her burgeoning annoyance. “The locking enchantment I put on that boulder isn’t going to hold forever. You lead the way.”

With that, the two of them embarked down the shadowy passage, the little alicorn navigating the winding maze with all its twists and turns while Twilight fell into an easy step beside her.

The silence that followed went unbroken for some time. Twilight turned her attention back to their surroundings, examining the primitive glyphs engraved in the rock next to every side passage they walked by. She surveyed the tunnels themselves with scholastic interest, although there wasn’t much of them to see. The corridors faded into a narrow darkness, the meager torchlight swallowed up into the bowels of the mountain.

“This place really is ancient,” she mumbled after a few minutes. “There isn’t any artistry or artisanship here to speak of. Not like the rest of Canterlot. In fact, these excavations probably predate Canterlot by quite some time.”

“Yeah?”

“I recognize the inscriptions on some of these side chambers. They’re dates, but they don’t appear to use the modern format. Look, the years etched on this slab refer to the previous age, before Princess Celestia’s reign—see? That puts the construction of these tunnels before the War of Night Eternal. Probably around the time of the Migrations.”

“Why would anypony write a bunch of dates all over the walls?”

The unicorn paused. “I’m not sure, but I think they’re dates of death.”

“Oh, jeeze,” Rainbow said, suppressing a shudder. “Hey, Twi, do me a favor, will you? If you see any skeletons lying around, don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know about it!”

Twilight paled. “There are ponies entombed here? These aren’t just tunnels, then. They’re catacombs. That’s… really creepy.”

“Yeah, I know! I said the same thing to Luna!”

Twilight was by no means a superstitious pony, but she found herself inching closer to Rainbow Dash nevertheless. The darkness that wrapped around them seemed suddenly palpable; the silence, save for the click of their hooves against the rough-hewn floor, an ominous threat. As they crept through the labyrinth, she was all too aware how completely alone they were, wandering in this abyss with a million tons of rock suspended right above them.

Another silence passed between them, so long and fraught, it could’ve filled at least two or three eternities.

At length, Twilight asked, “So… How much farther is it?”

Rainbow grimaced. “Erm. About that…”

“What?”

“I… uh… sorta forgot which way to go. I got lost a few minutes ago.”

“You what?!”

“Hey! Don’t blame me! It’s dark, and all these tunnels look the same!”

Twilight bit down on the urge to slam her head against a wall. “You could’ve said something before! How are we going to find our way out? These passages could run for miles!”

“What is this, Everypony-Pick-On-Dash Day or something?”

“When you claim to know the way to a secret door and then you get us lost, I’d say you have it coming!”

“I didn’t claim to know anything! You’re the one who told me to lead the way, remember? Look, I’m doing the best I can here!”

“You’re doing the best you can?” Twilight repeated incredulously. “Rainbow, you’re the one who got us into this mess in the first place!”

“Hey, I saved you from the guards!”

“After they destroyed my hot air balloon!”

“How was I supposed to know they were gonna destroy your balloon, huh? I didn’t tell them to do that! And anyway, who was there to make the awesome, death-defying save when they grabbed you and tried to haul you in? I was, that’s who!” Rainbow skewered her with a pointed look. “I still haven’t heard a ‘thank you’ for that, by the way.”

“Thank you? FOR WHAT? I’d be on the ground in Canterlot right now if you hadn’t baited them into a chase! What good did you actually think was going to come from disobeying them?”

“Look, I’m real sorry your hot air balloon got destroyed, okay? I’m sorry you aren’t in Canterlot right now, and I’m sorry you’re stuck in this cave with me, and I’m sorry I’m not perfect like you. Happy?”

Twilight had about three or four retorts waiting in the wings, but Rainbow’s sudden abdication of the argument put her off-balance. “I—”

“Let’s just keep on going, okay? These caves have gotta end somewhere, and ‘somewhere’ is a whole lot better than here. We’ll stay on a straight path. Have a little faith in me, huh?”

They forged ahead through the solemn darkness, and several more minutes went by with barely a word uttered between them. Still, Twilight felt uneasy in these forsaken, sunless depths, and her ears stood on end to pick up any muffled grunt or growl, any rattle of distant footsteps, any noise at all that could signify a threat lurking in the vast unknown all around them.

As their spelunking dragged on, and she didn’t hear anything that gave her pause, and no monsters or predators jumped out to attack them, the edge came off her apprehensions. Twilight’s temper gradually cooled along with her anxiety, and her thoughts, naturally enough, turned inward.

She considered Rainbow Dash, walking beside and slightly out front of her, bravery in her every step, ready to face down whatever perils the mountain had in store for them. Intrepidly beating a path through the shadows, even if she had no idea how to get where she was going. It all ran so counter to Twilight’s own instincts, and to what Twilight would have done.

Twilight, whose way it was to stop, and think, and never press on without a plan, without a direction already in her mind. All her life, Twilight had never been without a direction: from the moment she set out to learn magic at an early age, every decision was carefully calculated to bring her one step closer to her goals.

But Rainbow wasn’t like that.

Twilight was cautious and deliberate. Rainbow was impulsive, headstrong, spontaneous. Twilight was regimented, ruled by priority sheets and timetables and checklists and plans, always with her eye on the prize and the path in front of her. Rainbow… Rainbow was freedom.

Of her five closest friends, Rainbow Dash was probably most her opposite—except, perhaps, for Pinkie Pie, whose eccentricities Twilight had long given up on trying to decipher. The others were less of a mystery to her: Applejack’s work ethic was all too familiar; Fluttershy’s introversion mirrored her own; Rarity was a fellow unicorn, and Twilight saw a lot of herself in the fashionista’s ambition and dedication to her craft.

Rainbow was an amazing pony and an amazing friend, but there were times, like now, when Twilight found her difficult to understand and relate to.

Twilight was bookish; Rainbow was athletic.

Twilight was reserved; Rainbow was outgoing.

Twilight was thought; Rainbow was action.

Rainbow wasn’t a unicorn. She was a child of a totally different universe, a pegasus all her life. Until last Sunday morning, when she’d grown her horn.

And then, there was that!

Twilight flinched to have to recall it. The memory of Rainbow Dash draped across that hospital bed, crying out in anguish, crying out for her mother. How uselessly she’d hovered over her, wanting to do anything to help. The bitter sting of defeat when her magic wasn’t up to the task.

Then Princess Celestia had come, and with her, the revelation. And despite herself, for she knew she shouldn’t—Twilight had felt a mild sort of restlessness ever since that day. Not hostility or turmoil, nor anything even bordering them, but a… kind of vague uneasiness.

It made her feel guilty even to admit it. She understood how badly this had affected Rainbow. As long as she lived, she would never forget the heartbreak of watching her fall apart in that cemetery, of seeing her beg her mom and dad for understanding, for forgiveness. Still, the whole situation resonated strangely in Twilight. Rainbow being an alicorn, Rainbow being related to Princess Celestia… It was something Twilight had never calculated for.

A strange knot had settled in her gut. A knot that drew tighter the more she thought about it. A knot she didn’t have a name for.

Twilight sighed and shook her head. She shouldn’t be thinking these useless thoughts. Rainbow was amazing, fearless, mischievous, playful, steadfast, loyal, cool. She needed Rainbow, and Rainbow needed her. After everything that had happened, Rainbow needed every one of her friends, and as much compassion and support as her friends could ever give her.

Her hot air balloon was just a thing. It could be replaced. And this journey through the depths of the mountain, just another adventure. A stupid, pointless, impulsive, irresponsible adventure that Rainbow had dragged her into, but still an adventure to share with a friend.

Her conscience gnawed at her until at last, she picked the conversation back up. “I’m… I’m sorry, Rainbow. You’re right. Arguing isn’t going to get us out of here any faster. I guess the stress was getting to me… I shouldn’t have been so vituperative with you.”

“Vi-tooper-what? Man, sometimes I think you make these words up.”

“Vituperative. You know. Mean. Angry. Belligerent.”

Rainbow’s lips pulled back into a half-smile.

“Egghead.”

“Having a good vocabulary does not make me an egghead!”

“Whatever you say,” Rainbow laughed, shaking her head. “I really am sorry about dragging you into the thing with the guards, though. I promise I’ll get us out of here. Not exactly sure how yet, but I will.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Junior Speed Scout’s honor.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Well, now I’m reassured.”

“Y’know, you haven’t mentioned yet what you were doing out in that hot air balloon in the first place,” Rainbow pointed out. “It’s not like you to make a trip to Canterlot out of the blue.”

“I’m not exactly sure, myself. Yesterday morning, Spike received a letter from the Academy. It didn’t have any details, but it requested my presence in Canterlot as soon as possible.”

“When you say, ‘the Academy,’ you mean Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Yadda-Yaddas, right?”

Twilight nodded. “Unicorns, and yes. I graduated last year, not long before we defeated Nightmare Moon and Princess Celestia bade me stay in Ponyvillle to study the magic of friendship.”

“Maybe it’s a class reunion! I remember when my flight school had their one-year. Gilda and I totally crashed that thing.”

“I don’t think so. The request was pretty formal. ‘Miss Twilight Sparkle, your honored presence is requested in the court of Her Majesty, Princess Celestia, at your earliest convenience, but no later than such-and-such a date. Please make all appropriate arrangements to ensure your safe and timely arrival.’ ”

“Weird. Maybe it’s a surprise class reunion?”

“Unless they put Pinkie Pie in charge of alumni get-togethers and didn’t tell me, I doubt it,” Twilight chuckled.

“Well, no matter what the reason is, it’s awesome you’re here! I was about to go brain-dead from boredom sitting around this place. Hey, what’s the haps back in Ponyville? What have I missed?”

Twilight did her best to bring her up to speed. Quills and Sofas just got in a really nice shipment of designer quills, though they were currently sold out on sofas. Octavia was headlining a concert over in Hoofington next week, and she was excited to be the marquee performance. No, Ponyville hadn’t been felled by any wildfires since Derpy had taken a position on the weather team, or blizzards, or earthquakes.

“You know, earthquakes aren’t technically even a weather event,” Twilight felt it necessary to point out.

“Shut up, Twi!”

It seemed Cheerilee was out of town visiting family, so Lyra Heartstrings was filling in as substitute teacher in her absence. Twilight had already had to have three chats with her about the curriculum.

“Not that anthropology junk again!”

Oh. And the Cutie Mark Crusaders had blown the roof off Sugarcube Corner. That happened too.

“They did what?”

“Apparently, Pinkie Pie was trying to perfect a new cupcake recipe. She was looking for something with some extra zip, so she added a pinch of nitroglycerin to the batch…”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Yep. Sounds like Pinkie.”

“She persuaded Applebloom to come over and help her out with the baking, but then Scootaloo decided to show up. One thing led to another, and they got into a… rather explosive food fight.”

“And that sounds like Scoots! Leave it to Ponyville’s new awesomest pony to blow something up her first week on the job. Wonder if she’s trying to beat my record? I tell ya, Twi, that kid’s got style!”

“Thankfully, nopony was hurt. The Cakes aren’t too happy, though.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet!” Rainbow laughed. “So where was the third crusader while all this was going down?”

“Sweetie Belle? She’s off on vacation with her mom and dad. Believe it or not, they actually brought her with them for a change instead of springing foalsitting duty on Rarity.”

“I’m sure Rarity was thrilled about that!”

Twilight smirked. “Actually, I think she misses having her around. She keeps dragging herself around Ponyville, moping about how she’s ‘lost her dear, sweet sister, and her inspiration along with her!’ ”

Rainbow raised a dramatic hoof to her brow and did her best impression. “Oh, Sweetie Belle! Dear, sweet Sweetie Belle! How my heart pines for your company! Of all the worst things that could happen, this is—”

“—the worst! Possible! Thing!” Rainbow and Twilight finished together. They broke into a fit of giggles.

“I know it sounds like a lot, but really, it’s just been another run-of-the-mill week over in Ponyville,” Twilight said. “So in a sense, you haven’t actually missed all… that… much? Rainbow? What are you doing?”

Rainbow had stopped walking. She stood motionless, her head cocked, with a quizzical expression on her face.

“Uh, Equestria to Rainbow Dash? Why did you sto—?”

Rainbow clamped a hoof over Twilight’s mouth. “Shh!”

Only then, in the tomblike silence, did she hear it. From beyond the wall, the muffled sounds of voices holding a conversation.

Twilight’s eyes swept across the stone brick wall. “Mmmmpf!”

Rainbow unplugged her hoof from Twilight’s muzzle. “What?”

“Over there!” said Twilight. “There’s a chink in the wall!”

Sure enough, a pair of eyeholes had been filed out of the stone, and a feeble light seeped through from the chamber on the other side. Twilight and Rainbow shared a glance before creeping up on the secret lookout.

Rainbow didn’t waste any time. She immediately peered through.

“What are you doing?” whispered Twilight. “They might see you!”

“It’s Celestia!”

That was all it took for Twilight to throw caution to the wind and shove up against Rainbow, putting her eye to the remaining vantage.

On the other side of the wall was Canterlot Castle. Which room of the castle, she couldn’t say; the shadowy cobblestone expanse resembled a dungeon more than any of the opulent quarters she had inhabited throughout her tutelage. But she recognized it anyway from the banners that adorned the walls, and from the royal crests hanging prominently.

And indeed, there was Princess Celestia, sitting at the head of a grand table. Even through the tiny cleft in the rock, she struck an imposing figure, her mane billowing majestically in defiance of the still, earthen air.

“Hey! It’s that guy! Sage what’s-his-name!” Rainbow whispered.

Twilight’s eyes doubled in size at the sight of the silver-haired unicorn seated on Princess Celestia’s right. She sucked in her breath. “That’s Sage Whitehoof! My old headmaster!”

At least twenty other figures occupied chairs around the table, though many had their backs turned so Twilight couldn’t see them. The ones she could catch a glimpse of held themselves so rigidly, they seemed more like carved totems than ponies, with bodies inanimate and faces grim and shadow-lit. Of the ponies she could make out, Twilight didn’t recognize any of them, nor did she know them by their voices, though their quiet conversation filtered through the cracks and reached her in subdued tones:

“…will have the full cooperation of the Manehatten Police Department in this operation. As of this morning, we’ve briefed the police chiefs and deputy police chiefs in all five boroughs, and we have uniformed officers on standby for rapid response throughout the city.”

“Your department’s cooperation is appreciated, Commissioner,” said Sage. He gestured to the others at the table. “As do we appreciate the efforts of everypony here. When a manticore threatens, it’s all hooves on deck.”

Celestia nodded. “The Crown thanks you all for your assistance.”

“I only wish we knew where this manticore was going to strike,” spoke a new voice. “Princess Celestia, I think we’d all feel a great deal more confident if you could give us a hint about the whereabouts. I don’t doubt your information, but the specifics are a bit hazy.”

“Like spearing sea serpents in muddy waters,” another pony muttered.

“If we discover any further details, you’ll be the first to know them,” said Sage. “Our plan, at this time, is to monitor the situation closely from a central location and be ready to act at a moment’s notice. Mayor Fairmane will have our sincere thanks for the latitude.”

Rainbow gave Twilight an odd look. “What are they talking about?”

Twilight frowned and didn’t reply.

Celestia spoke again, “Since I returned bearing this dire news, my sister has been working tirelessly with our unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony captains of the Royal Guard, Shining Armor—”

“That’s my brother!” Twilight gasped.

“—Daedalus Tristar, and Vigil Solemn, to ensure the Guard’s integration in the planning and execution of this operation. She’s volunteered to speak to you all this morning on the Crown’s capabilities.”

Princess Celestia cast her eyes down the length of the table. At the far end, a shadow stirred, and the darkness sloughed off to reveal the somber face of the princess of the moon.

Twilight stifled a gasp. “It’s Luna!”

“Yeah,” said Rainbow, looking on grimly. “It sure is.”

She was seated so far away, it was difficult to hear her. Twilight and Rainbow leaned in close and put their ears to the gaps, listening intently as Luna cleared her throat and said—

“If either one of you so much as twitches, I will gut you like a fish.”

Of course, it hadn’t been Luna who’d uttered those words.

It was Tristar. The blood ran cold in Rainbow’s veins to hear that oily voice behind her, breathing spiders and meal worms down her neck again. Twilight’s muscles bunched as well.

He circled them like a cat around its quarry, forcing them to back away from the wall. The cavernous gloom of the tunnels did little to mask his pulsating rage.

“You!” Rainbow exclaimed. “How did you find us down here?”

There was fury simmering in Tristar’s amethyst eyes as he leered over her. Even through the white of his coat, his face was visibly reddened, like an overripe tomato ready to pop.

“Diligence, cleverness, and good judgment,” he answered. “Things, I’m sure, you know nothing about.”

Rainbow glanced up and down the length of the corridor. A pair of guards stood side-by-side down either avenue, blocking any chance of escape. She played for time. “You didn’t take a hint when we left you stranded on the other side of that big, bad boulder? Man, you’re something else. I bet you’d tail me all the way to the gates of Tartarus if it meant you got a chance to step on my freedom!”

“If it meant keeping you in line,” Tristar growled.

“You say that, but I’m pretty sure you’re just hard up, and you’ve got a thing for harassing innocent, good-natured ponies!”

“Good-natured?”

His scornful laughter rang in their ears.

“Believe me, I know what good-natured looks like,” he said, “and I know what a disappointment looks like. You are unquestionably one of them.”

Rainbow bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You would actually try to convince me of your good nature? After this foalish stunt of yours? Tell me, how many times is it you’ve gone out of your way to evade your guard protectors with a sonic rainboom? Three? Four?”

“Er… Well…”

“You would plead your good nature to me after this very morning, when you called my mother a—a dirty cockatrice sucker?”

Twilight looked aghast. “Rainbow Miriam Dash! You didn’t!”

Rainbow shot her a look. “Seriously, Twi? You’re gonna take his side?”

She jabbed her hoof at Tristar.

“You’re a bully,” Rainbow spat. “That’s all you are. Just a big, overgrown bully! I know what your kind is like—I’ve known a lot of bullies in my life, and you fit the mold to a tee!”

“And I know what your kind is like.”

Every word out of Tristar’s mouth dripped with loathing and contempt. He advanced on her, closing the distance and forcing her back until she pressed up against the cold, unyielding stone. His chin tilted down to meet her defiant glare with one of his own, eye to eye.

“My kind?” Rainbow breathed back.

“Your kind doesn’t know respect. Respect for the natural order of things, and for knowing your place. I knew you’d make a mockery of yourself from the day I saw you. You have such a lifelong skill at it, after all. All you’ve done is proven me right.”

Twilight rushed to Rainbow’s side, glaring her disapproval up at the captain. “Excuse me! You are not allowed to talk to her like that. Rainbow Dash is my friend. And she’s your princess too, need I remind you!”

“Princess?” Tristar snorted. “Being a princess takes dignity and grace. All I see in front of me is a pretender. An immature little nestling who never figured out how to grow up.”

Rainbow’s wings twitched. “You two-faced son of a mule! You had it out for me from day one!”

“Oh, trust me, you’ve been an embarrassment since long before then!”

She tried to shove him back, but he expertly intercepted her hoof, and now she was grappling against him, writhing, twisting, trying to break free, to wriggle out from under his steel grip. He signaled the guards, who began to close in on either side, and all Twilight could do was look on helplessly.

“Today, of all days…” he growled. “You had to pick today, the eve of disaster, for your miserable game of tag!”

Suddenly, Tristar’s head jerked, as if punched. Rainbow had spat in his face.

He lost it.

“You GUTTER TRASH HOODLUM!”

Rainbow flailed against him. “GUTTER TRASH?”

“You’re a charlatan with wings and a horn! A CHARLATAN! That’s all you’ve EVER been! You strut into Canterlot like you own the place, disrupt the way of things, and make a farce out of traditions that predate you by a thousand years! I see right through you, you little urchin! There’s nothing even remotely pegasus ABOUT you! What the hell do you know about honor, sacrifice, or loyalty to a higher cause?”

“I know more about loyalty than you EVER will!” said Rainbow.

Tristar gave a curt laugh. “Why? Because one day, a necklace appeared on you which was inscribed with the word?

“Your loyalty is a JOKE! Loyalty to oneself, to one’s own ambitions… SELFISH! CONTEMPTIBLE! You aren’t SPECIAL! You’re just a pathetic little dropout who wasn’t good enough for Cloudsdale, who tucked tail and ran when she couldn’t pull off the boom!

“And YOU have the NERVE to spit on ME? You stupid, smug, inconsequential little hotshot! The bastard child of an EARTH PONY, no less! It’s no surprise how you turned out, given the pair of lowlifes Celestia picked to rear you—”

Something went SNAP! inside Rainbow’s head. She kicked off the rock wall, her whole body twisted, Tristar’s grip on her slipped, and then she was flying at him, teeth bared, arms windmilling. One of her hooves caught him in the chin, he staggered back, and she would have landed a second blow if the guards hadn’t swept in from behind just then and seized her. Her back arched as she tried to lunge at him again, even as they held her fast, murder glittering in those bright, pink eyes, ready to tear Tristar limb from limb—

“LET ME GO!” she snarled, struggling in vain.

Tristar touched his face. He glowered at the sight of the crimson blood that came off on his hoof. “Savage!”

A red haze bled in from the corners of Rainbow’s vision as she pulled against her captors, trying to break free—

The other pair of guards appeared beside her bearing Twilight between them, carrying the unicorn with her hooves off the ground. She looked none too happy about the situation.

“Well, Rainbow, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into,” she said.

Rainbow stared back at her in shock. “ME? What did I do THIS time?”

“The same thing you did LAST time! You’re so irresponsible!”

“I am NOT irresponsible!”

“YOU ARE! You treat this like it’s all some kind of stupid game to you! Like provoking the Royal Guard and leading them on a chase through Canterlot isn’t a foalish, immature thing to do! We haven’t been in a predicament like this since that one time when the princess asked us to kick out that dragon!”

“Man, you are FULL OF IT! Some friend you are!”

“I said, we haven’t been in a predicament like this since the princess asked us to KICK OUT that dragon!” She gave Rainbow a pointed look.

Rainbow opened her mouth to deliver a stinging rebuke, but then Twilight’s meaning sunk in. She stared back at her in confusion.

Tristar signaled his underlings with a toss of his head. “Let’s go.”

One of them gave her a push, and then the guards began to haul them back down the tunnel. Tristar took point, with Twilight still beside her.

“Or that one time when we fought Nightmare Moon in the Everfree Forest, at that old castle in the woods,” Twilight continued. “Remember when we lit the spark and got the Elements to work? The light was so bright, you had to CLOSE YOUR EYES.”

Rainbow steeled herself and gave Twilight a nigh-imperceptible nod.

“You’re such a JERK, Twilight! I can’t believe I was ever DUMB ENOUGH to think you were ACTUALLY my friend!”

“I can’t believe it either! I hated your guts from the DAY I MET YOU!”

“Yeah, well, SAME HERE!”

“YOU WONDERBOLTS WANNABE!”

“YOU VI-TOOPER-TIVE EGGHEAD!”

“RAINBOW!”

“WHAT?”

“NOW!”

Rainbow closed her eyes milliseconds before the light exploded from the tip of Twilight’s horn, filling the tunnel with a blinding radiance. The guards cried out, their grip went slack, and she kicked out with her hind legs the moment the opportunity presented itself, catching the left one in the chest and the right one in the shoulder, causing them to teeter and fall over backward.

Seconds later, the white glow subsided, and she cracked one eye open to find the tunnel back to its customary darkness. Twilight had already incapacitated her own pair of guards. That just left Tristar.

“YOU LITTLE DEMONS! HOW DARE YOU! WHEN I GET YOU, I—”

“TWILIGHT! TELEPORT US OUT OF HERE!”

Twilight ran over, placed her hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder, and concentrated with all her might. But then—

“NOT THIS TIME! I WON’T LET YOU GET AWAY!”

Tristar lunged at them, tackled them, broke Twilight’s concentration and her grip, and all three of them went hurtling into the eyehole wall. The old masonry groaned in protest, then gave way.

His hooves suddenly without purchase, Tristar grabbed onto the first thing he could find, which just so happened to be Rainbow Dash. Rainbow snarled and twisted in midair, sinking her teeth into the base of his neck. Tristar howled in pain. Then, in a flurry of dust and rock, they all went through the wall.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

“What the—?!”

“Dear me!”

“By Starswirl’s Beard!”

“Good heavens!”

Shouts went up from the meeting-goers at the table as the wall at the back of the room exploded outward, and a trio of ponies came crashing through. They landed together in a pile of stone, spent mortar, and tangled limbs.

Twilight hit the ground, and the air went out of her lungs. Lying on her back in a gasping daze, she could only stare up at the ceiling through rapidly blinking eyes and wait for the world to stop spinning.

Then Princess Celestia appeared above her, gazing down in shocked, open-mouthed consternation. Twilight’s mortification went up several notches, and her heart joined her stomach in its nauseating, flip-flopping theatrics.

“What in the WORLD is going on here?” the princess demanded.

Rainbow and Tristar ceased rolling around on the ground attempting to kill each other, both at the same time glancing up at Celestia. Rainbow spat out the mouthful of Tristar’s flesh she’d been clamping down on. She wiped her lips clean of the blood.

Tristar staggered to his hooves, falling into a bow. “P-Princess Celestia,” he said. “I—I’m sorry. You caught me by surprise.”

Celestia frowned. “It would seem to be the other way around.”

“Twily?!”

Twilight looked up in a daze. The room was full of serious-looking ponies, most of them dressed in uniform or otherwise formally attired, and every last one of them gawping at the odd spectacle. But none of them looked more horrified than Shining Armor. The brawny, sapphire-maned unicorn had jumped out of his chair, three places down from her old headmaster, who was also regarding her curiously from behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

She groaned and lowered her head back into the pile of dust and rubble. Was it possible for her to feel any more embarrassed?

The droning murmur of several conversations had grown in the background. Sage Whitehoof clicked a gavel for attention.

“Fillies and gentlecolts! In light of the interruption, I propose we recess for half an hour. Please adjourn to the antechamber through the doors at the back of the room. Feel free to take your operational briefs with you for further review, but remember, documents marked confidential are NOT to be brought outside castle walls! We’ll reconvene at one o’clock!”

A grumble went up from the gathered ponies, and then the room filled with the shuffling of papers, the scrape of chairs sliding in, and the click of hooves on the cobblestones. Shining Armor rushed over straight away to help his sister off the floor, pulling her up onto her hooves and secure against his chest.

“Twily, are you okay? What are you doing here?”

Twilight craned her neck to give him a wavering smile. “Oh, you know, just thought I would… drop in… while I was in the neighborhood! After receiving an academic summons! Eh-heh-heh…”

“Well, you sure haven’t forgotten how to make an entrance!”

Shining Armor squeezed her in a big bear hug. Twilight’s face was still warm and redder than Applejack’s finest produce, but wrapped in those familiar hooves, she felt her anxiety start to quell. “Thanks, B.B.B.F.F.”

“No problem, little sis.”

Meanwhile, Celestia’s expression could only be described as guarded as she offered Rainbow Dash a helping hoof up.

Rainbow’s distrustful eyes flickered between the white foreleg and the lousy, double-crossing princess it was attached to. She would’ve ignored Celestia and gotten back up herself, and indeed, she tried to—but after having her bell rung going through three inches of stonework, she couldn’t seem to find her footing on the loose debris, and her wings were too caked with dust to provide much in the way of lift.

Hesitantly, reluctantly, she held out a sky-blue hoof. Celestia clasped it and helped her off the ground. No sooner had she stood up again than an enormous white wing raised around her, shielding her from the view of passers-by as the meeting’s attendants shambled out.

She knew they were all staring. A few words reached her, in whispered tones:

“Was that… an alicorn?”

“Another one?”

“It’s covered in dirt!”

Her ears flattened.

As soon as the last pony had gone, and the huge, reinforced wooden doors creaked and slammed shut, the white wing disappeared from around Rainbow. Celestia traipsed across the room to join Luna in front of the newly made hole in the wall. The four other guards whom Rainbow and Twilight had managed to escape peered out from the crumbling passageway, each one bowing low as the princess approached.

Celestia stuck her head in and peered down the shadowy corridor. “Another remnant of the old underground?”

“Looks like it,” said Luna. “Probably an offshoot service access they dug out when they were building this wing of the castle.”

“Did you have any idea this was here?”

Luna shook her head. “There are so many tunnels. I know the major routes through the mountain, but this one is unfamiliar to me. It’s possible it was just lost to time. We use this room so infrequently…”

Celestia frowned. “See that it’s filled. It’s a security risk.”

Now she wheeled around and bore down on Tristar again, her face flushed with righteous anger.

“Explain yourself,” she demanded.

Tristar winced. Behind the princess, Sage Whitehoof was still seated at the table, extracting an obvious schadenfreude from the guard captain’s discomfort as he looked on with a mocking little smile.

“On behalf of myself and my subordinates, I offer you my humblest apologies, Your Majesty. We didn’t intend to cause distress, and we certainly didn’t intend to crash the meeting. In fact—” He spoke his next words through gritted teeth. “—it was my intention to be on time for this appointment. And I would’ve been, if we hadn’t been waylaid.”

“Waylaid? How?”

“Princess Luna charged me with young Rainbow Dash’s protection. That was to be my topmost priority, to the exclusion of all else. I only had her safety in mind. I didn’t wish to see her come to harm.”

“You’re a JACKASS and a LIAR!” Rainbow shouted.

“Please. One at a time,” said Celestia, holding up a hoof. She looked back at Tristar. “Go on with your story.”

“Princess Luna gave an order that Rainbow Dash—”

“Princess Rainbow Dash,” Celestia firmly reminded.

Tristar stiffened, ever so slightly. “Princess Luna gave an order that Princess Rainbow Dash was to remain on the castle grounds, for her own safeguard and security. This morning, she deliberately flouted that order when she led us on an aerial chase through Lower Canterlot, culminating in three sonic rainbooms performed in clear view of the populace. Followed by an extensive combing of the Warrens when she and Miss Sparkle purposely evaded us at the rear-facing cliffside entrance…”

Twilight cringed to hear Tristar’s unflattering description of the events; the morning’s antics laid bare. “Oh, Rainbow…” she mumbled.

Celestia looked stricken.

She began to pace the floor, her mask of composure slipping as worry sank its hooks into her. After a long, uncomfortable silence, she stopped and glanced at Rainbow Dash. “Is this true?”

“You’re DAMN RIGHT it is!” Rainbow said. “You’ve had me locked up in this stupid castle for almost a week! I can’t see my friends, I can’t get a decent meal, I’m not even allowed to FLY! You might as well chop my wings off if this is how it’s gonna be!”

A sliver of regret ripped through to join the apprehension on Celestia’s face, but she but she buried it quickly enough. After a brief pause, she looked to her sister. “Luna, do you have anything to add?”

Luna inclined her head. “I did ask her not to leave the castle. At the time, it seemed like the most sensible thing.”

Celestia nodded grimly. Now her gaze dipped to Twilight.

“Twilight Sparkle, my faithful student. Please, forgive me for being inattentive. Are you well? You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“I’m all right, Princess,” Twilight answered, prying herself out from under her brother’s protective hooves. As many humiliations as she’d already borne today, she wasn’t in any mood to let herself be coddled in front of her oldest mentor and teacher.

“I’m gladdened to hear it. Please, forgive me for your rude reception. I hadn’t intended your welcoming back to Canterlot to be so inglorious. But now, I must ask you as well: do you have anything to add?”

Twilight hesitated.

Her eyes snapped to Tristar, recalling all the deplorable things the captain had said minutes ago in the gloom of the tunnels. The absence of dignity, respect, and professionalism in his bearing toward Rainbow Dash, who was his charge. It was misconduct, it didn’t deserve to go unpunished.

“YOU GUTTER TRASH HOODLUM!”—His words echoed in her memory. Twilight’s expression hardened. She opened her mouth to speak—

“Shut up, Twi,” Rainbow cut her off.

Twilight stumbled, momentarily at a loss for words. “But…”

“I can fight my own battles,” Rainbow said.

She spared Tristar one more black, hateful scowl. Then she glowered up at Celestia, daring the princess to challenge her.

The truth about what had happened caught in Twilight’s throat. She was torn. She wondered if she ought to go along with Rainbow in this, or if she should let Tristar’s abuses be known.

She had been the one who’d dragged the Royal Guard into Rainbow’s life in the first place, hadn’t she? The message she’d sent to Canterlot a week ago, when the armored stallions were going door to door looking for the missing princess. Then, the day after. Her promise to Luna in Fluttershy’s back yard. Ambushing Rainbow Dash out among the graves. Convincing her to come here, to subject herself to all of this.

Guilt was tugging at the strings of her convictions. Applejack was leaning in the shadows at the back of the room, chewing her wheat and shaking her head, telling her to leave well enough alone.

“…No, Princess Celestia,” Twilight said slowly. “Nothing else to add.”

Celestia glanced back and forth between them. She sighed.

“Princess, if I may chime in?” Sage spoke up from the table.

“Yes?”

“Captain Tristar raises a valid point, and Princess Luna’s judgment was sound. Under the circumstances, it’s risky for Princess Rainbow Dash—or Miss Sparkle, for that matter—to go adventuring without escort.”

Twilight looked at her old headmaster. He met her violet eyes with his silver ones, and he smiled at her with the same warm, reassuring smile she had always known him for. In that moment, it was like she was a little filly again, back in one of his classes. She tried to hide her blush.

He saw through her, of course. He always saw through her.

But he refrained from comment. Eyes twinkling, he looked at Celestia and continued, “That being said, Your Majesty, there are other solutions worthy of your consideration.”

Celestia stared at him “What are you suggesting?”

“Hope is never lost, Princess. Even though chaos may break down our walls and leave us in disarray… From the ashes that remain, hope itself may yet take wing and blaze again with glory renewed.”

He gave the princess a knowing look.

Realization dawned on Celestia. For the briefest instant, her face lit up. Then her budding grin disappeared, whisked away to wherever it is princess smiles go when they deign to look intimidating.

“Captain Tristar,” she said, slipping back into regal authority mode.

Tristar dipped his head. “Your Majesty.”

“I find your actions this morning to be without merit. Rainbow Dash’s will is her own, and as a princess of this realm, she is subservient to nopony—not to me, not to my sister, and certainly not to you and the Royal Guard.”

The fury and indignation rolled off Tristar in waves. “I… see.”

“Therefore, I decree that Princess Rainbow Dash is free to do as she wishes, and to come and go from Canterlot Castle as it pleases her.”

“BOOM! In your FACE!” Rainbow pumped her hoof in the air.

Luna looked troubled. “Tia… The nobility… The press…”

“Three sonic rainbooms and a high-profile chase through Canterlot. What’s done is done, Luna.” Celestia’s voice was adamant, but the midnight in her eyes betrayed her own unspoken reservations.

“Tia—”

“What’s done is done.”

Now she flashed her ire back at Tristar:

“Captain, there will be no reprimand against you or your deputies, but I find your judgment in this matter to be questionable at best. Engaging in any sort of pursuit through the city is likely to have contributed to an even greater spectacle. Moreover, I take no amount of solace in seeing my personal student and one of her good friends explode out of a wall.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. My apologies once again,” said Tristar.

“You are hereby relieved of all protection duties. Dedicate yourself to making preparations against the Ascendancy, Captain Tristar. Henceforth, they are to be your first concern, to the exclusion of all else.”

“With gratitude, Your Majesty.”

“You can begin by elaborating on the Royal Guard’s operational capabilities for our guests when the meeting reconvenes in…” Celestia glanced over at Sage. “How long, Professor Whitehoof?”

“Twenty minutes,” the old unicorn said.

“Twenty minutes,” Celestia affirmed. “Until then, dismissed.”

Tristar beckoned his underlings out of the split-open tunnel, and the room filled again with the scrape and scuffle of hooves. Twilight took advantage of the momentary commotion to question her brother: “Shining Armor, what’s going on? What’s this meeting all about?”

Shining Armor gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry, Twily. Can’t talk about that. Classified operations. Very hush-hush.”

“I’m Princess Celestia’s protégé, the Bearer of Magic, and your sister. I think I have a right to be kept in the loop!”

“Believe me, I wish I could. Hey, don’t sweat it, though! This threat’s, like, way below your pay grade. You and your friends, just keep an eye out for any more thousand-year-old evil godheads that are about to get sprung on us. Leave the riffraff to us.”

“So there is a threat,” Twilight said flatly.

“You didn’t hear it from me. Seriously, don’t worry about it! Your big bro’s got this one under control. Since when have I ever screwed anything up, eh?”

Twilight looked at him skeptically. “Do I need to make a list?”

“Oh, jeeze! Not again with the lists! Forget I said anything!”

“Let’s see… There’s the time you flew my kite into a roc’s next… And the time you decided an Ogres and Oubliettes convention would be a great place to take a first date…”

“True love is rolling a critical save after a natural one, Twily. And anyway, it all worked out in the end!”

“Cadence never got a false impression of what a complete and total dork you are, that’s for sure.”

He punched her playfully in the shoulder, and she giggled and swatted him right back.

“Doofus.”

“Nerd.”

“It’s good seeing you again, big bro.”

“You too, little sis.”

Rainbow Dash stood alone and apart, observing from a measured distance the reunion between Twilight and her brother. Her victory over Tristar achieved, her freedom from house arrest assured, her natural instinct might have been to crack open the cider and find somepony to celebrate with. But something told her to hang back; to let Twilight have this moment.

So she waited and watched with a small, wistful smile on her face. Up until a few days ago, Rainbow hadn’t known the first thing about the unicorn’s family, but seeing how easily she and her brother talked, it was only more obvious how blessed Twilight was, and how lucky—to have a sibling who loved her and rushed to protect her, and a mother and father, and so many other ponies in her life who cared. It was an aspect of Twilight that just wasn’t conspicuous back in Ponyville, where the day-to-day drudgery and occasional adventures rarely gave revelation into the complex tapestry of who she was other than ‘crazy good at magic’ and ‘neurotic librarian.’

It was a good thing, Rainbow decided, that Twilight had so many ponies in her corner; that she had that network of support, and bonds of love to go along with the friendship. That she wasn’t all alone.

As she quietly mulled over these things, Celestia finished exchanging some final words with Luna and Sage. Now the princess drew across the room to stand just out of the corner of Rainbow’s eye. Not quite close enough to be next to her, exactly, but near enough to be heard.

“Now,” she spoke softly. “Please, tell me, Rainbow Dash. Are you all right?”

Rainbow shot her a sidelong glance. “You didn’t seem too curious a minute ago when you asked Twilight and not me.”

Celestia was silent for a moment. “It didn’t seem like a cool idea, at the time, to question your awesomeness in a public forum.”

Despite herself and despite her grudge, Rainbow snorted.

Several more seconds went by. At length, she tipped her head toward Tristar, who had taken a seat at the long conference table and was rifling through some papers. Doing his best impression of a normal, well-adjusted pony, whose blood definitely wasn’t boiling in his veins right now.

“What’s gonna happen to him?” she asked.

“Nothing will happen to him. Nothing can happen to him. Not without due cause,” said Celestia.

Rainbow felt the unfathomable magenta gaze of the goddess upon her.

“Rainbow, if there’s anything you’re holding back… That you don’t feel like you can tell me…”

“What? You gonna get the hoof screws and drag it out of me?”

Celestia hesitated again. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to face your struggles alone.”

“That’s real funny, coming from you.” Rainbow’s eyes hurled another blazing javelin of anger her way. “When were you ever there to face them with me? Give me a break. Don’t go pretending like you actually care about me.”

“I do care. I know you don’t believe me, but I do. All I want is to see you happy, and safe, and fulfilled. If I really cared so little about you, would I have given you back your freedom to fly?”

Rainbow made a face. “Thanks for that,” she grudgingly acknowledged.

“I wish the circumstances were better. When I invited you to Canterlot that day in the hospital, I didn’t have in mind for you to be a prisoner here. Goodness knows, this place is enough of a cage already; chopping off your wings is the last thing I wish to do. But you have to realize, these are dangerous times. Not since the return of Nightmare Moon has there been such a…”

Celestia stopped herself short.

“Please, for your own sake, don’t abuse this liberty. Exercise caution and sound judgment. No more flights of fancy through the city. And please, for my sake, if you wish to go flying, wait until this evening before you do. I’ll come find you as soon as I’m finished here.”

Rainbow gazed up at her inscrutably. “This evening?”

“This evening,” Celestia said with a nod.

“All right.” Rainbow rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck from side to side, stretching out her feathers. “I’ve had my wings clipped for close to a week now. Guess it’s no big deal being grounded for a few more hours. Guess I can catch up with Twilight some more, or something…”

“And Rainbow… If there’s ever anything you want to talk to me about…”

Rainbow scowled. She threw a glare across the room at Tristar, then looked determinedly away.

“I don’t need you,” she said. “Not for anything.”

As the clock ran down on the thirty-minute recess, a growing chatter from beyond the doors in back made it clear ponies were congregating, ready to come back in. Shining Armor clicked his tongue.

“Almost time to start this shindig up again. I probably ought to go.” He peered at Tristar from across the room. “Gotta go pull that lunkhead’s hooves out of the fire one more time, anyway.”

“Dinner tonight?” Twilight asked.

“Can’t. Sorry.” Shining Armor looked apologetic. “I’ll be on a train headed out east. Gimme a rain check. By this time Sunday, I should be back in town. Then we can hang, and I can spill the beans on everything.”

Twilight sighed. “All right. I forgive you for being lame in the line of duty.”

“Thanks, Twily. Love ya.”

“Love you too! Stay safe!”

He gave her a wink, and then she watched with a feeble smile as he strolled across the room, away, and away, and away. As she stood and watched him go, she reached out her hoof, struck, for one strange, fleeting moment, by the notion to stop him; to say something more to him.

But he was already gone, cantering over to the conference table, where Tristar sat with a perpetual scowl glued to his face. She heard her brother’s voice carry back, light with razzing mirth: “Jeeze, Daedalus! You really stuck your hoof in it this time, didn’t you…?”

Rainbow Dash approached beside her, followed by Princess Celestia.

“It pains me to do it, but I’m afraid I have to ask you both to leave,” Celestia said. “This meeting was not meant for your ears. If you wait outside, Domo will be along shortly to lead you back to the upper halls of the castle.”

“Thank you, Princess. We’ll leave you to your meeting,” replied Twilight. “I’m sorry if we caused a disturbance.”

Celestia smiled. “A little shake-up can be a welcome thing sometimes. Even so, this is an affair of state, and I would ask you to refrain from further attempts to eavesdrop.”

“We will, Your Majesty,” said Twilight. “Isn’t that right, Rainbow?”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

“It’s good to see you again, my student. I’m sure you have many questions for me. We’ll talk later. For now… Welcome home.”

With that, Rainbow and Twilight departed up a flight of stairs, through still another ancient wooden door. They heard the meeting-goers trickling back in behind them, and Sage’s voice, rising above the din.

“Come, one and all! Take your seats! Take your seats! Once again, we beg for your discretion, for look at what just now has come to pass. Even if you confide only in your closest and most trusted associates, who among you can say what ears might not be listening from the shadows…?”

The door swung shut with a slam.

Once again, Twilight and Rainbow found themselves all alone in a gloomy underground corridor. The only light emanated from a funereal procession of candles ensconced on the walls—walls which themselves seemed to press in on them, suffocating every last gasp of oxygen and happiness. The only things that marked this place as being a part of the castle and not the tunnels they had just come from were the royal tapestries, although even these were a sad sight, caked with dust and insect-chewed.

Rainbow gave Twilight an odd look. “What the heck was all that about?”

Affixed to the door was a little brass plaque, smudged and tarnished with age. Twilight’s face hardened as she squinted up at it, and in the flickering torchlight, read the inscription:

WAR ROOM
SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I intend to find out.”