My Little Pony: Friendship is Absurd

Chapters

Master of the Ticket
Apple Stuck Season
Griffon the Prank-Off
Boasts 'n Busters
Dragon Shy
Wrapping Up Winter
Fall of the Cutie
Suited for Failure
Sonic Rain-Dust
The Return of Irony
Lesson 0
Lunar Eclipse
A Hearth's Warming Eve Carol
Mare Do Well vs. The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000
Some Canterlot Wedding
Too Many Magic Duels
Wonderbolts Academy 2: Electric Boogaloo
Magical Mystery? Sure!
[REDACTED] Sunset Shimmer
Daring Power
How Suri Took Manehattan
Lightning Falls
Two Plus One's A Crowd
Leap of the Century
Tirek's Kingdom
Cutie Markless - Part 2
The Lost and Found Treasure of Griffonstone
Would It Matter if Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?
Manehattan Made
The Cutie Re-Remark - Part 1
The Cutie Re-Remark - Part 2
The Chrysalis-ing
Another Hearth's Warming Tail
You Bet Your Spice
The Times They Aren't A-Changeling
Vivan Los Pegasos
From Here and Back Again
Bottled Up Trouble
Shadow Played
S.C.H.O.O.L. Raze
The End - Part 1
The End - Part 2
Friendship Is Absurd
The Worst Night Ever
The Crystal Empire Strikes Back
Cutie Markless - Part 1
The Last Chapter

Master of the Ticket

A knock on the door woke up Sunset Shimmer. Or rather, the crash of the door as it fell into the library woke her up, as the door hadn’t been fixed yet since the last time it got broken.

“What is it?” she asked as she walked over to the door.

“Mail delivery for Shimmer Sunset!” said the gray-coated, cross-eyed pegasus mailmare.

“That’s Sunset Shimmer!” Sunset said crossly as she took the envelope.

“That’s not true! It says Shimmer Sunset right here.”

Sunset put her hoof in front of her forehead, an act she was finding herself doing increasingly often ever since having to move to Ponyville. “It says ‘Shimmer, Sunset.’ The comma shows the last name came first.”

“Ooooh,” the pegasus said, as if she had just learned some kind of ancient knowledge. Sunset decided not to further the conversation. Instead, she picked up the door and placed it back where it was. It seemed no worse for the wear outside of there being a noticeable hole in the center now.

“That carpenter had better get here soon,” she said. “I need all this stuff fixed.” She looked up at the ceiling, where the holes from Lightning Dust crashing into and out of her new house were still around. “Whatever, let’s just see what I got in the mail.”

Sunset opened up the letter to find two tickets and a note. The note said:

“As appointed ambassador to Ponyville, you are entitled to two free Gala tickets. One is for yourself; the other is for another being of your choosing. It is customary to bring someone else, so if you don’t have a significant other, friend, dependent, or someone else to ask, you should hurry up and find one. No, imaginary friends do not count.”

In smaller print, the following was added:

”Void where prohibited. This ticket is only valid for the applicable year of the Grand Galloping Gala and cannot be redeemed on any other year. Tickets are nontransferable and ineligible for resale. Actual cash value 1/10,000th of a bit. Offer only valid in Equestria and related territories.”

“Well, so much for the plan of auctioning these off,” she said to herself. “I guess I’ll have to find some shmuck that’ll agree to go with me.”

Quite abruptly, Lightning Dust crashed straight into the house. Fortunately for Sunset, this time she went through one of the already-existing holes rather than a new one.

“Please, Lightning Dust, use the door,” pleaded Sunset. “Also, by ‘use the door’ I mean knock and wait,” she further clarified.

“No time!” Lightning Dust declared, picking herself off the floor. “I heard on the grapevine that you got two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala!”

“How did you hear that?” Sunset asked. “I just got them!”

“The grapevine has finely attuned ears! Anyway, I’m just the shmuck to go with you!”

“Lightning, even if I were to give you a ticket—and I don’t think I will, because you did break parts of the ceiling—why in the world do you even want to go?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lightning Dust asked.

“No. It isn’t,” Sunset deadpanned.

“The Wonderbolts are totally going to be there! I’m going to take the opportunity to show off my awesome skills to impress them! And maybe do a little social networking while I’m at it. But especially that whole showing-off-my-skills thing. Anyway, so what if some parts of your house got broken? I do that all the time!”

“That doesn’t make it any better!” Sunset shouted.

Lightning Dust considered the matter. “So, like, if I fix these things for you, you’ll give me the ticket?”

Sunset’s fury disappeared as she realized she might actually get something out of this. “I’ll consider it,” she said noncommittally.

“Awesome!” declared Lightning Dust. “I will be back with the necessary materials!” She zoomed out of the house at high speed.

“Something good might actually come of this,” Sunset noted to herself. She was interrupted as a knock came on the door, which caused it to promptly fall over. The knocker turned out to be Gilda, who then walked in. “Wow, you really need to get that fixed.”

“Hopefully, it will be. What do you need?” Sunset asked.

“Oh, I was just wondering what Lightning Dust was so excited about. She was babbling about fixing things, and I figure anything that will get her to do something useful would be great to know about.”

“Oh, I just got two tickets for the Grand Galloping Gala, and I said that I might give the other to Lightning Dust if she was willing to fix the things she broke.”

Gilda suddenly grabbed Sunset, picking her up with her claws and bringing Sunset’s face next to hers. “Wait, you have tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala? And you didn’t tell me?”

Suddenly nervous for her life, Sunset simply answered, “I just got them.”

Gilda released her. “Do you realize how much I need one of those? Forget Lightning Dust; give me the ticket!”

“Why do you want it so badly anyway?” Sunset asked, dusting herself off.

“Oh, actually, I don’t. I was just screwing with you,” Gilda said. “Oh man, you should’ve seen the look on your face! It was priceless! Heck, the look on your face right now is pretty great too!”

Sunset glared at Gilda. “If you’re not going to be useful in any way, get out of here!”

Gilda stroked her face with her talons. “Yeah, you’re right. Don’t want to wear out too many pranks on one individual too quickly,” she said before flying out the door. Coincidentally, Lightning Dust chose that time to return carrying a variety of tools.

“Where’d you get all of those tools?” Sunset inquired.

“Enh, I’m sure the store won’t mind if I borrow them,” Lightning Dust said. “Much,” she added.

Lightning Dust quickly got to work on repairs. Unfortunately, her lack of expertise in the matter was soon apparent, as her idea of repairing the roof amounted to simply putting a big piece of cardboard on top of it and attaching it with duct tape. Her solution to the door was no better, which was to simply paint “Out of Order” on it. “Ta-da!” she declared. “Good as new! How about that Gala ticket?”

“I don’t think a fixing job that bad deserves a Gala ticket,” Sunset said.

“All right then! What do you want me to do?”

Sunset blinked. Lightning Dust was still offering to do favors? Maybe she could get something out of this after all.

“Well, if you can’t fix it yourself, you could at least pay the carpenter to fix it when he gets here.”

“All right!” shouted Lightning Dust. “I won’t let you down! Just like how lightning never strikes in the same place twice!” she added before zooming off before Sunset could ask her to explain how that analogy made any sense at all.

Sunset turned around, only to suddenly find herself face to face with Flim. “Gah!” she said in surprise. Regaining her composure, she added, “How did you get behind me?”

“Oh, I’ve actually been here for a while; I just didn’t have much of an opportunity to say anything yet. You can be surprisingly not perceptive sometimes,” he noted. “Anyway! After pulling a prank, Gilda happened to mention you have a spare Gala ticket! I was wondering if I might be able to obtain it.”

“What do you need it for?”

“Well,” Flim said, “apparently the Grand Galloping Gala attracts all kinds of upper-class people. We’ve been trying to get investors to invest in the next iteration of the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000, named the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000. But the only person around here with much money is Filthy Rich, and he hasn’t been interested. This seems like a great opportunity to raise some funds!”

“Can't you just get a loan at the bank? It hardly seems necessary to go to the Gala.”

“Well, yes,” Flim said, “but rumor has it that producers from the hit show Shark Den will be about, and there might even be tryouts. We totally want to make it on there!”

Sunset was confused. “Shark Den?”

“You know, that show where entrepreneurs try to convince the investors to give them an investment in exchange for equity?”

“You want an investor?”

“Oh, certainly not. A loan would be preferable; we’re sure not giving up any equity. That whole thing about wanting an investment is just made up so we could get on the show. But the exposure from appearing on the show is basically free advertising!”

“You know, I do only have one ticket, so only you could come. Your brother wouldn’t be mad?”

“Oh, not to worry! We legally count as one individual.” Sunset gave him a puzzled look. “Look it up; it’s true!”

“Uh, well, gee,” Sunset said, an idea coming to her, “Lightning Dust already asked me about that and said that she’d pay for repairs, and–“

“Ah, so you want something a bit better than that, eh? How about some free cider?”

“Not really that big a fan of cider. How about a cut of your profits?”

“Well–“ Flim started before abruptly being covered by a puff of smoke. When it dissipated, Trixie was there, and Flim had collapsed to the floor, apparently unconscious.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is here to prevent you from making a major mistake! You should bring me to the Gala!”

“Uh, Trixie? I think you hurt Flim kinda bad there,” Sunset said, looking at the farmer. “I mean, normally I wouldn’t care, but it did happen at my residence, so I might be legally–“

“He’s only been put to sleep. More importantly, stop thinking in the past! I’ve got a much better reason to go to the Gala than anypony else!”

“Do tell,” Sunset said flatly.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie must go to the Gala in order to impress ponies with her feats! Surely one will find it impressive enough to hire her out for shows, which would lead to exposure and substantially higher income!”

“So, basically, exactly what Flim wanted, except without the Shark Den part?”

“Exactly!” Trixie seemed quite pleased with herself. “And I am willing to do anything to get that ticket.”

“Anything?” Sunset asked eagerly.

“Anything! Including…” A sudden burst of smoke surrounded Sunset. When it cleared, she saw Trixie standing at the door, holding one of the tickets. “Stealing them straight from you! See ya at the Gala!” shouted Trixie as she ran off.

“Wha… get back here!” Sunset shouted, running for the door. Unfortunately, Lightning Dust chose this time to return, flying at breakneck speed through the broken door and slamming straight into Sunset as she was trying to leave. The resultant crash sent both ponies flying backwards, crashing into the walls and breaking various items in the process.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” Sunset screamed at Lightning Dust.

“I was! Not my fault you got in my way. Anyway, I totally got all the coins to pay for the repairs! Can I have my ticket?”

“Uh, well, Trixie just stole it, but–“

“What? Then what am I talking to you for? I’ll just go get it from Trixie, then!” Lightning Dust declared. “Plus, because it’s stolen goods, I probably don’t have to deal with any legal repercussions for taking it from her!” Lightning Dust zoomed up through the roof without giving Sunset the money, breaking not only the fixes she had made but also creating another hole in the process.

Sunset decided she was going to worry about the additional repairs after she got the ticket back. Then she suddenly realized she had no idea which way Trixie went or even where she was likely to head.

Naturally, this was when Suri chose to drop in. “So, can I get your Gala ticket?” she asked. “The Gala would be the perfect place to–“

“I don’t care! I don’t even care how you found out! All I have to say is that I don’t have the stupid thing because Trixie stole it!”

“Trixie? That ruffian,” Suri said. “I bet she made a show of it also, rather than simply taking it discreetly. She has no business smarts. No wonder she never gets hired for anything and has to try to desperately attract attention.”

“Do you at least know where she is?” asked Sunset.

“Oh yeah, she and Lightning Dust were having a go of it in the town square. Of course, if she does have the ticket, then that means I should…” Suri trailed off as she noticed Sunset had already run off. Shrugging, she followed her.

The town square was not as chaotic as one might expect. Trixie and Lightning Dust may have been fighting and chasing each other, but all the other ponies seemed content to watch from a safe distance.

“Give me that ticket!” Lightning Dust shouted as she lunged at Trixie.

“Never!” declared Trixie as she used a cloud of smoke to distract Lightning Dust long enough to move to another location.

“I want you both to stop being idiots and give me back the ticket!” declared Sunset. “Then I’ll decide who gets it!”

Neither Lightning Dust nor Trixie took any notice of Sunset. They did, however, take notice of Suri, who was able to use the fact each was distracted by the other to seize the ticket from Trixie’s grasp. “Now I’ve got it!” she crowed. However, Flim then bashed into her, causing her to drop the ticket, which Flam picked up. “Hey, two against one! No fair!”

The fight between the six continued with substantial kicks and various other injuries being directed in all directions while Sunset watched. Gilda walked up to her.

“Are the idiots fighting over that stupid ticket?” Gilda asked.

Sunset nodded.

“Hey, are they aware that those things come with a built-in defense mechanism if they change hoofs too often?” Gilda asked. “Ugh, ‘change hoofs.’ I’m sticking around you ponies too much.”

“Wait, what? What are you talking about?” asked Sunset, still transfixed by the surprisingly epic struggle.

“Oh yeah, to try to prevent them from being stolen or auctioned off, if the person in possession of the ticket changes too many times, especially in quick succession, the ticket blows up. It’s a security measure.”

“What?!” screamed Sunset. “I need that ticket! Hey! Guys! Stop fighting over that ticket and give it to me! It’s dangerous!”

“Never!” Trixie declared, having snatched the ticket back from Suri. “I’d rather die than–“

BOOM.

When the miniature mushroom cloud dissipated, the conveniently empty town hall in the center of the town square had been vaporized along with everyone who had been fighting over the ticket, which floated down onto the ground, perfectly fine.

“Huh, bigger explosion than I thought,” Gilda said. “Maybe that was had a defect. They’re not supposed to be that big… ah well, should be safe to pick it up now. It resets after that happens.”

“Gilda, they all just got killed by that explosion! Don’t you care at all about that?” Sunset asked as she walked over to grab the ticket.

“What, do you particularly care?” Gilda responded.

Sunset considered the matter. “Okay, not really. How did you hear about the explosions on the tickets anyway?”

“Enh, I read.”

“Well this is just great,” Sunset said, “now who do I bring to the Gala? After that display, nopony is going to want to compete to try to get it, so what’s even the point? How do I decide now? At random?”

Gilda gave whatever the griffon equivalent of a thumbs-up is. “I could go!”

“Wait, I thought you didn’t want to go?” Sunset asked, feeling confused.

“Well, not enough to do any favors, but hey, might still be fun. I mean, it’s not like I knew all about the tickets blowing up, so I deliberately stayed away from it knowing the others would fight over it, causing an explosion that would get rid of the competition and leave me as the sole recipient, right?”

Sunset stared at her.

“No, really, it’s not like that! I just realized how amusing it would be if it actually was like that.”

“Fine,” Sunset said, giving Gilda the ticket. “Darn it, I can’t believe I didn’t even get anything out of this. Let’s just get out of here before anypony decides this is our fault.”

“I’ve decided this is your fault!” one of the ponies in the crowd declared.

“No, no, no,” another said. “Don’t you see? In a small way, it’s all of our faults for letting this happen. We can’t simply lay the blame on these deaths on the individuals who perpetuated it, because they were molded that way by our society. A society that each one of us contributed to. And really, every single one of us had the opportunity to try to stop this from happening, but instead we all simply watched. We can’t waste all our energy placing blame on others when something bad happens; that is the path towards ruination. We should view this not as something to place blame for, but an opportunity to examine ourselves and try to prevent such a thing from happening. Besides, they were all jerks anyway.”

This explanation appeared to satisfy everyone else, who soon wandered off.

“Oh crud, that carpenter is probably going to be here to fix the house!” Sunset said as she suddenly remembered. “I have to go back!” She dashed off.

Sunset reached her house. To her relief, the carpenter had not arrived yet. “Well, might as well get something done in the meantime,” she said to herself. She pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and started writing.

Dear King Sombra,

Today I learned that if you have a lot of friends—although I use the term “friends” loosely—fighting over something you have, the correct answer is to make there be fewer friends.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

“I guess I’ll just put this in the mailbox,” Sunset said to herself. While heading out the door, the mailmare from that morning suddenly appeared.

“Sorry!” the cross-eyed pegasus said. “These were supposed to come in that envelope for you!” She handed Sunset five more tickets.

“Wha… how?” she asked.

The pegasus shrugged. “I guess they got mixed up in the mail.”

“No, I mean how were they supposed to be in here? The envelope was shut; it wasn’t open or anything. And the note said there were two tickets! How were there supposed to be five more?”

“Oh, right. There was a letter that accompanied them,” said the gray pegasus. She pulled out a letter and read it. “Sorry about only sending you two by accident. See, there was this mixup involving a giant octopus fighting a squid, and… well, the details aren’t important. The point is, since it’s obvious you’d want to bring everyone that went with you on that adventure with Nightmare Moon, here are the necessary tickets to bring them all! Hopefully whacky hijinks didn’t ensue due to the mixup.”

Sunset stared in disbelief.

“By the way,” asked the gray pegasus, “did wacky hijinks ensue? I’ve been busy and haven’t seen much as of late.”

If Sunset was going to give a response, she was cut off by Lightning Dust suddenly flying in at high speed. “So, hey, I heard on the grapevine that you got more tickets and that it’s actually straight up supposed to go to me! Can I get it?”

“How did you hear about that so quickly?” asked Sunset. She blinked. “More importantly, aren’t you dead?”

“Oh, come on. You think I’d be killed by an explosion that small? I’m made of sterner stuff. I welcome the explosion that thinks it can kill me! Besides,” Lightning Dust added as an afterthought, “all the explosion actually did was teleport us away from the ticket. Nopony got vaporized. Who told you we got killed?”

“Gilda,” said Sunset.

“Oh, Gilda told you that?” asked Suri, who suddenly walked up to them. “What a genius! Make you think we’re all gone as an excuse to get the ticket! Why didn’t I think of that? Ugh.”

Flim, Flam, and Trixie arrived right then. “Wait, did I hear something about additional tickets?” Trixie asked.

“Oh yeah!” said the mailmare obliviously. “Apparently there were extra tickets sent that are supposed to go to all of you. Anyway, I’ve got more deliveries to do, so see you!” She flew off.

Sunset stared at the ponies assembled. “Why in the world would I give you these tickets after all the aggravation you’ve caused me today?” she demanded.

“Well,” said Suri, “probably because the letter said that they were to go to us, so if you give them to somepony else you’ll look really bad.”

Sunset closed her eyes and counted to 10, then sighed and threw the tickets to them. “There. Take them.” She stomped back inside her house and slammed the door in frustration, which of course only caused it to collapse.

The celebration of the other five over their new Gala tickets was cut quite short when a police stallion arrived. “There you are! The guys who made the town hall get teleported! Well now it’s all broken, and you have to fix it.”

“What?” asked Trixie incredulously.

“Well, it was you fighting over the ticket that caused its teleportation spell to trigger, and the hall happened to get teleported several feet off the ground. So it fell and broke. Now you guys have to get all of the pieces, bring it back to the town square, and rebuild it.”

“I don’t even know anything about rebuilding buildings!” protested Lightning Dust.

“Well, it’s time to learn! And none of you are going anywhere until that town hall is good as new! Now let’s get going!”

Their expressions suddenly far more depressed, the five all were led away by the police stallion. Before Sunset had an opportunity to take any schadenfreude from any of this, however, the carpenter arrived. “I’m here!” he said.

“How much will it cost to fix all of this?” she asked him.

The carpenter examined the damage to the roof and doors. “Hrm, well, ordinarily it would be covered by the warranty, but that got voided after a non-certified individual tried to fix it.”

“When did any non-certified individual try to fix it?”

“Well, as clearly can be seen, there was an attempt to fix the hole improperly with cardboard as well as an unauthorized attempt to fix the door. That voids the warranty and means you have to pay full price for the repairs.”

Sunset cringed and then sighed. “Fine. Just do it.”

“Alrighty!” said the carpenter, who immediately set to work.

Sunset went back to her letter and read through it again. She added:

P.S. Never trust the mail service.

Apple Stuck Season

“No!” Trixie declared as she slammed the door on Flim and Flam’s faces.

“Well, so much for that. You’d think they would show a little more concern for our problem,” Flam said.

“I know!” Flim responded. “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 isn’t working quite right, so we have to do all the work manually! That takes a whole lot more time and cuts into our sleeping! But no one is interested in helping us!”

“Wait,” Flam said, “I already know all that. Why are you telling me?”

“Because,” Flim whispered, “you never know when somepony might be listening and take pity.”

The two looked around for a few seconds, hoping that that might be the case. They soon realized, however, that it was not.

“Well, I guess we have to do it all alone,” Flam said. “I certainly hope this won’t make us overly tired and unable to keep up all of my town duties that I recently volunteered for!”

“Oh, please,” Flim said. “What are the odds of that?”

One day later…

“All right!” Lightning Dust declared. “Are you familiar with what you have to do?”

“What? Oh, yeah, sure,” a tired-looking Flim said.

“Good! No problem!” declared Lightning Dust as she stood on one end of a catapult. A few seconds ticked by. “Uh, Flim? You’re supposed to do your bit here.”

“Oh, yeah!” Flim said sleepily. A pause. “What bit was that, again?”

“Maybe I should just get someone else…” Lightning Dust mumbled to herself.

“Oh, no, no need for that! I’m here! Just remind me what to do!”

Lightning Dust sighed. “You climb up that tower I made, then jump onto the other side of the catapult, which will then catapult me up into the air, allowing me to do all kinds of super cool stunts and whatnot.”

“Oh, right,” Flim said. He climbed up the tower, then jumped… missing the other site of the catapult entirely. This happened several times in succession, to Lightning Dust’s increasing irritation.

“Okay, that’s it. If you don’t get it right this time, I’m finding someone else,” she threatened.

Flim yawned. “Okay, don’t worry, it’ll be done this time…” he said as dozed off and walked off of the tower. Luckily for him, he landed right on the catapult. Unluckily for Lightning Dust, her calculations on the catapult were entirely wrong, causing her to instead get thrown smack into the Golden Oaks Library, breaking the door on the way.

Sunset looked up from the book she was reading. “I just had that thing fixed! Can you wait a little while before breaking it again?”

Lightning Dust got up, feeling loopy. “Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry about the whales,” she added before collapsing.

Sunset looked at the unconscious Lightning Dust, then picked her up and threw her out of the tree, closing the now-broken door behind her.

“So how’d it work, Lightning Dust?” Flim asked, eyes still mostly closed. “Lightning Dust?” he called again after no answer was given. “Enh, must have flown off.” He walked off himself, coincidentally soon coming to the street where Lightning Dust was lying. “Oh, hi Lightning Dust. How was your routine?” he asked, yawning.

“Uh, terrible,” Lightning Dust muttered, having just regained consciousness. “I totally miscalculated that whole thing.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just because my sleepiness didn’t screw you up somehow?”

Lightning Dust considered the suggestion. “Well, I sure don’t mind deflecting blame away from myself, and maybe if Sunset decides to try to make me pay for the repairs this time, I can blame it on you. So yeah! Totally your fault for being so tired.”

Flim yawned. “I’m glad we agree.”

Across the town, Flam seemed to be doing no better in staying alert. He had volunteered to help Mr. and Mrs. Cake bake cupcakes. Coincidentally, Trixie had also volunteered to do so (“free cupcakes!” was her stated reason) and was taking the lead in the cupcake creation. Or at least, she was the one telling Flam what to do while sitting around reading a magazine.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie shall show her great power over cupcakes!” she declared dramatically, then stopped when she realized that she was alone outside of Flam. “Regardless! I now need you to get me chips!”

Flam yawned. “What?”

“Chips!”

“Oh, sure, chips.” Flam grabbed some tater chips and threw them into the bowl. “What next?”

“Enh, apparently baking soda.”

“Gotcha!” Flam grabbed some baking powder and poured it into the bowl.

Luckily for anyone who was going to eat the cupcakes, Trixie grew bored of her magazine and went off to find another one. Along the way she happened to pass by the bowl and look in. “I don’t think these are what I asked you to get.”

“What? You asked for chips and baking powder.”

“Okay, fine, so I should have specified more on the chips, but I said baking soda, not baking powder!” Flam had apparently fallen asleep midway through Trixie’s sentence, so she grabbed him and shook him back and forth. “Stay awake! What’s with you?”

“Didn’t I tell you? The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 isn’t working quite right in ripping the apples off the trees, so we’ve been having to do it manually and it makes us very… sleepy…” Flam said as he nodded off again, then collapsed onto the floor.

Trixie looked at his sleeping form. “No matter! The Great and Powerful Trixie shall best any and all cupcakes!”

Later…

Trixie looked at the large crowd at the Ponyville hospital. “Okay, so maybe I did need a little help in preparing those.”

“So, are you the one who made the cupcakes?” a nurse asked Trixie.

“Uh, well… I was one of them,” she said.

“Well, that seems problematic, because there’s a whole lot of liability issues here. You’re probably going to have to at least face some serious fines. Here’s a starting estimate.” The nurse gave Trixie a sheet of paper. Her eyes bugged out at it.

“What? This is way too much! I don’t want to have to pay it!”

“Well, should’ve thought of that before you made all of these people get sick,” the nurse said with a shrug.

Trixie was so annoyed she decided she had to find someone to rant to. Luckily, Suri’s shop was nearby, so she went there.

“Gyah! Flim and Flam are driving me crazy!” she complained upon entering. “Well, okay, technically it was just Flam, but you know as well as I do you might as well group those two together!”

Trixie stopped her ranting upon observing that Suri wasn’t even in the store at the time. “Huh? Where did she go? The door was unlocked.” She looked up. “Oh, right, this place has multiple floors. Maybe I just don’t come here enough to remember that.”

Sure enough, Suri soon came down to the ground floor. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Is it to buy something? Because I have some amazing specials today on–“

“Suri, you’re forgetting I’m familiar with your trick of claiming your regular price is 50% off. And that’s not why I’m here anyway.”

Suri frowned at Trixie. “Well what do I care then, if you’re not here to buy something? Especially because I’m a bit busy at the moment. Flim volunteered to buy some things for me, but he was so tired that he bought completely different things than were on the list.” She paused. “Although, it turns out the list I gave him was completely wrong anyway.”

“You’re having trouble with Flim? Flam was way worse! He was of no help in making cupcakes! Though,” Trixie added in an unusual bout of self-recognition, “I guess my directions were pretty bad to begin with.”

“And Lightning Dust was in here recently complaining about how Flam messed up her catapult by not landing on it, but the whole thing was flawed to begin with…”

Trixie scratched her head, which was surprising considering she had hoofs. “So is basically what happened wasn’t so much that they screwed things up by being sleepy, but that we were all being idiots, and if Flim and Flam were more awake, they might have stopped us from being said idiots?”

“So, what,” Suri asked, “are you actually advocating we help them out with the apple harvesting?”

“If it’ll make them more helpful, why not?”

Later…

Lightning Dust, Suri, and Trixie all approached Sweet Apple Acres. “Hey! Flim? Flam? You here?” Trixie called.

Flim and Flam showed up in surprisingly fast speed. “You rang?”

“Uh, yeah. We figured that you two probably needed some sleep, so we figured we’d help out some.”

“Great idea!” yawned Flim. “Though we’re so tired from working that we’re not really up for working at the moment, so if you could gather the apples and then we’ll help you out…” he said before yawning and then falling asleep.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Suri said. “Seriously, the only reason I’m doing this is because I’m sure I can leverage this to get favors from them.”

Several hours of grueling work later, they had managed to clear out a substantial portion of the apples from the trees and brought them to the main house.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but the Great and Powerul Trixie feels like she’s done a fulfilling thing today!” Trixie declared.

“Is that why you kept sneaking all those apples away for yourself?” Suri asked.

“It was highly fulfilling!”

“Ugh,” Lightning Dust groaned, “I’m just tired. No wonder those two were so sleepy. Though at least it wasn’t that bad a workout. I’m sure this will totally get those Wonderbolts to notice me!”

The three went back to the main farmhouse with the gathered apples in tow and knocked on the door. Flim opened it. “Only a few hours? I’m disappointed. We were working for far longer on gathering the apples…”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. We helped you, at any rate,” Lightning Dust said. “Though I thought you guys were asleep?”

“Oh, well, erm, you just woke us up is all.”

“Sure answered the door fast enough. Anyway… uh… that’s it.”

“No more apples?” Flam asked. “We could still use the help…”

“You know,” Suri said, “despite you saying we should’ve done more, where are all the apples you gathered? I didn’t see any.”

“Oh, they’re all in storage somewhere,” Flam said. “That’s all.”

“Where?” Suri asked.

“Oh, that’s right,” Flam said. “They all got sold.”

“Already? That seems rather odd… well, can you show us the trees you took the apples from?”

“What’s with all the questions?” Flim asked.

“Because,” Suri said, “before we went on our apple-grabbing hunt for you, I happened to look into the bedroom, and the beds seemed oddly… used. This struck me as odd, considering you were supposedly so tired from not sleeping. I didn’t think much of it then, though, but with this… you two were just pretending to be tired because you were too lazy to get the apples yourself and wanted us to do it, weren’t you?”

“What? That seems a ridiculous accusation!”

“Ha! I can prove it if it’s true!” Suri declared. “All we have to go is look at the bedroom and see how the bed looks! If it was just slept in, that means you actually were using it. If it isn’t, then you clearly made up the claim that you were using the opportunity to sleep. Let’s look!”

“Oh, well, we just were sleeping on the floor. We were too tired to get into the bed. That’s why we were able to answer the door so quickly!” Flam claimed. “Now can you stop with these ridiculous accusations?”

“You do have some points here, Suri,” Trixie said, “but it does seem circumstantial.”

“Look,” Flim said, “I’m glad you helped us and all, but if you’re just going to attack us for no good reason…”

Suri’s mind raced. Could she have imagined it all? “Wait. I know how to find out. Why don’t you tell us who you sold the apples to, and we’ll simply check your story with them?”

“Well, they didn’t really give us contact information. They sorta just came, bought them, then left. In retrospect, maybe we should’ve checked on them; who knows if it was illegal.”

“Maybe it’s just the fatigue talking, but that makes a lot of sense to me!” Lightning Dust said.

Just then, a certain gray-coated mailmare arrived. “Hope I’m not interrupted anything! I’m just here to deliver that part you ordered for the Super Duper Siding Squeaky 4000.”

“It’s the Super Speedy Cider–“ started Flim.

“Yeah, it’s too hard for me to remember. Anyway, sorry for having to constantly check back here in the last few days to make sure everything in the order was right. Luckily, you guys just stayed at the house, so I was able to find you easily!” Derpy seemed oblivious to Flim’s attempts to cut her off. “Anyway, see you later!” she said as she flew off, leaving Flim and Flam with a very angry-looking Suri, Lightning Dust, and Trixie.

“Ha!” Suri said. “I was right! It was all made up!”

“Hey!” Flim said. “Saying they’re all in storage and all got sold is still true even if there weren’t any!”

“You know, Flim,” Flam said, “maybe now is not the proper time to be explaining that sort of thing.”

“Whatever!” Suri said. “The point is, you totally made all that stuff up to make us do work for you. GET THEM!”

With speed and power one would not expect from several ponies who just spent the last several hours doing exhausting work, the three all piled on Flim and Flam.

Dear King Sombra,

Well, some valuable lessons were learned recently, albeit by people other than me.

The first valuable lesson is that when you enact a hoax in order to get people to do what you want, you need to be really careful to make sure they can’t find out. And have a quick way to appease them if they do find out. That’s what Flim and Flam presumably learned, albeit perhaps a little too late.

The second valuable lesson is that while beating up people who have tricked you can be really therapeutic, you don’t want to do it so hard that they end up in the hospital for several weeks. That’s what I’m assuming Lightning Dust, Suri, and Trixie learned. The lesson will probably stick with them for a while.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

“And seriously, just look at the thread used in this! Even for a cheap outfit like this, this is inexcusable!”

“Suri,” Trixie said, calling down to the bunk below her, “you’ve done nothing but complain about the uniforms since we got here. Could you give it a rest?”

“Not when there’s so many things wrong with it! I mean, you can’t tell me these prison uniforms aren’t horribly ugly! Even the color’s boring. Orange? It’s so predictable! Let me tell you, orange is not the new black! And speaking of the color…”

Trixie stared up at the ceiling of their cell and sighed. “This is going to be a long 10 weeks.”

Griffon the Prank-Off

Sunset Shimmer was having what was, for her, a good day. So far she didn’t have to actually interact with anyone, the spell that she was studying seemed to be coming along well, and the meal she had just eaten was decent enough. At the moment, she was relaxing in the shower, having temporarily forgotten about her utter hatred of the world.

“Ahhhhh,” she said to herself. “It’s so nice to not have to deal with anypony else. Could this day get any better?”

She quickly discovered how it could get worse when she exited the shower and looked at her reflection. “AHHHHH!” she screamed. All of her hair was missing. “But… where… how… what?”

Her mind quickly raced through the possibilities. She certainly had her hair before the shower. Therefore, something must have happened during the shower to make it fall off.

She quickly examined the shampoo bottle she used. Now that she looked very closely, it did seem slightly different than normal, though it nonetheless was a very good fake. “Ugh, did someone switch out my regular shampoo with hair removal shampoo?” Her mind quickly named several possible culprits. However, before she could do anything about that, she still had to do something about the hair situation. There were some spells to grow hair more rapidly, but even those would require at least a week for it to fully grow back.

A quick scouring of her rather limited wardrobe showed a surprisingly limited amount of clothing that was particularly effective at hiding the baldness. Ultimately she had to make do with an old dress she hadn’t worn for years to cover the lack of a tail, and the hat she bought from Suri when she first got here to (partially) cover her head. She looked at herself in the mirror; it worked as long as no one took more than a cursory look at her.

With the disguise complete, she left and made a beeline for Suri’s store, the only place in town to get the new clothes she needed. She knew that Suri would probably charge a markup of 2000% or something due to her desperation, but she was so desperate that she didn’t care.

However, upon actually reaching the store, she was stopped by giant signs saying “BIOHAZARD.” Various ponies in the pony equivalent of a hazmat suit were cleaning up a gross-looking green liquid that surrounded the store.

“What is going on?” she asked aloud.

“Oh, someone just decided to dump toxic waste on my lawn,” Suri said, appearing next to her. “I can tell you, this is killing sales. What happened to your hair?” she asked as she got a closer look at Sunset.

“Someone switched out my shampoo with something that got rid of it.”

“Darn it! And I could’ve made a fair amount of money if I had the opportunity to sell you something due to it. Gilda’s gone too far this time with her pranks, because she made me lose money!”

“You know,” Sunset said, “I just realized. I don’t even know where Gilda lives.”

“I do! Let’s go and demand she adequately compensate me for my damages!”

“You mean the fact you can’t sell me stuff at drastically marked up prices?” Sunset asked.

“Exactly!”

“Ugh,” Sunset said, “and I still need that stupid hat. Let’s just get over there quickly and hope nopony gets a good look at me in the meantime.”

A short time later, they reached Gilda’s house. Suri knocked on the door, and Gilda opened it. “Oh, you guys. What do you want?”

“What do you think?” Suri asked. We’re angry about the pranks you pulled!”

“Actually, Lightning Dust was the one who pranked you. See, we had a competition going as to who could pull the best pranks, and she got you two as some of the targets to prank. What’d she do, anyway? I can at least see she somehow got rid of Sunset’s hair… and by the way, you look really dumb in a dress. What’d she do to Suri?”

“Dumped toxic waste on my lawn,” Suri mumbled discontentedly.

Gilda looked at her for a moment, then fell over laughing. “Oh man… toxic waste! How’d she even get that? That’s just so good!” A look of concern suddenly overcame her. “Oh, crud! That’s so good it might win her the bet! I have to beat that!” she added before quickly exiting her house, closing the door, then flying off at breakneck speed. There was an awkward pause between Suri and Sunset.

“Okay, so I guess we confront Lightning Dust about it, then,” Sunset said. “Do you think the toxic waste cleanup is done yet, so I can get that bigger hat?”

“Well, they gave me an estimate of two weeks before the place was habitable again. Hey, can I stay with you in the meantime?”

“Two weeks? By then I probably could have gotten all my hair to grow back anyway!”

“Well, sure. But anyway, about staying with–“ Suri started.

Sunset wasn’t paying attention. “Ugh, two weeks? I’ll probably just stay home the whole time and avoid contact with anypony even more than usual. After I deal with Lightning Dust, anyway.”

The two went for Lightning Dust’s house. Sunset was finding it increasingly difficult to successfully hide herself from the various ponies that were milling around. Still, they were able to get to Lightning Dust’s home fairly quickly. Which was, to Sunset’s surprise, not covered with holes.

“What?! So she only crashes through the roof and door when it’s my house?” Sunset asked indignantly.

“Well she doesn’t do it to mine, so I guess it is only yours,” Suri observed. “Huh.”

Rather than knock, Sunset simply knocked the door down with her magic and marched in. “Lightning Dust!” she screamed.

Lightning Dust looked up from the book she was reading. “Oh, hi guys. Did you like your pranks?”

Sunset glared at Lightning Dust with the anger of something that was incredibly angry.

“Huh, guess not. Well, I thought they were funny.” Lightning Dust went back to reading her book.

“Are you going to compensate us for our damages?” Suri asked. “I’m losing tons of money because my store is closed, and Sunset… well, her problem is far more minor, but it bears mentioning!”

“What are you complaining about? Those pranks were hilarious! Do you know what I had to go through to get that toxic waste? And that shampoo was special order!”

“Oh, that is it!” Sunset said as she started firing magical blasts at Lightning Dust. However, the pegasus was fast enough to avoid them, then zoom out of the house.

“Well, I can see you’re in a grumpy mood,” Lightning Dust said. “Maybe some more pranks in the future will lighten you up. So see you later. Oh, and don’t think that destroying my house will be revenge; it’s all insured!” Lightning Dust zipped away.

“After her!” Sunset shouted, and the two tried to run after her. However, Lightning Dust’s incredible speed had her vanish out of sight before they could follow her for long. “Now what?”

Suri looked in the direction Lightning Dust was heading. “Sweet Apple Acres is in that direction. Maybe she went to prank Flim and Flam?

“What if she was just going in that direction to make us think that, and then she quickly went in another direction as soon as she was out of sight?”

Suri stared at Sunset. “You think Lightning Dust is capable of that kind of forward thinking?”

“Okay,” Sunset replied, “fair point. Let’s go!”

The two galloped off to Sweet Apple Acres, home of Flim and Flam. Who they happened to run into on the road there.

“Did you see Lightning Dust?” panted Sunset, who wasn’t used to running this much for so long.

“Her? Oh, she was at the farm briefly. Not sure why,” Flam said.

“Did Lightning Dust pull any pranks on you?” asked Suri. “She’s been doing that.”

“Oh, no. She didn’t pull and pranks on us,” Flim said. “Gilda, on the other hand, gave us brownies a day or two ago that turned out to have laxatives inside. It was… not a pleasant experience.”

“Oh,” Suri said. “You must have been one of the people Gilda pranked. Apparently they’re having a prank-off or something.”

“On a completely unrelated note,” Flam added, “we’ve discovered a great new fertilizer! Want to hear about it?”

“No!” Sunset and Suri found themselves saying simultaneously.

“Well, I thought it was interesting,” muttered Flam. “Ordered it all the way from Saddle Arabia, too.”

“You know, you two seem awfully chummy considering all that stuff that happened between you,” Sunset said.

“Oh, you know how it is,” said Suri. “Someone lies to you and tricks you, you nearly kill them, you have to go to prison for a while. It all evens itself out and becomes water under the bridge. Anyway! It’s obvious what we should do. Since they’re both to blame, we should all team up and force them to make compensations for us. Is there anypony else they pranked?”

“Well,” Flim said, “Lightning Dust did say something about Trixie…”

The four decided that without any other leads to go to, they might as well head to Trixie’s home.

"Yet another house I'm learning the location of today," muttered Sunset.

"Oh, it's not a house," said Suri. "She lives in a cart."

“Wait, she lives in a cart?” Sunset asked. “Does she actually move around enough to warrant the mobility?”

Suri shrugged. “Apparently she just never bothered to buy a house. I guess living in a cart is probably reasonably cheap, m’kay.”

Sunset stared at Suri. “What did you just say?”

“I said ‘Apparently she just never bothered to buy a house. I guess living in a cart is probably reasonably cheap, m’kay.’”

Sunset face-hoofed. “Please never use that phrase again. It sounds really stupid.”

“Which one? Apparently? Bothered? Guess?”

“The whole m’kay thing. It’s just annoying.”

Suri shrugged. “Fine. It’s not like it’s a major trait or anything that a lot of people have associated with me despite it only being stated once or twice.”

Sunset was confused. “Huh?”

“Oh, I said it once, and apparently it caught on for some reason. Just thought it might be fun to try it again. Oh, and here we are!” The four stopped upon reaching Trixie’s cart. Or at least what had been Trixie’s cart, as it had been cut in half.

“Huh,” Flim said, finally breaking the silence. “I guess that was the prank.”

“That’s probably fairly significant property damage…” Flam observed.

“So where’s Trixie anyway?”

“Aha!” Suri said, pointing to a note. “That must be a clue!”

Sunset blinked. “A clue?”

“Look, I’m just trying to make things more exciting by pretending this is all a mystery or something.”

Sunset read the note. “Out for a while. Will probably be in the Ponyville Hospital if you need me. Signed, Trixie.” She looked up. “Huh, might as well look there.”

The group did look there. Sunset found herself relieved to be traveling in a group, as she could simply stay in the middle and avoid attention. Eventually they reached the hospital.

“Hi. What is your emergency?” The receptionist seemed to be paying little attention to them, instead working on a crossword puzzle.

“Uh, no emergency,” Suri said, “we were just looking for Trixie, who we think recently came here.”

“Oh, her? Pretty sure she’s recuperating from the operation in Waiting Room 6. By the way, do you know a 28-letter word for a movement opposed to the removal of an establishment? I’m stumped.”

No one had the faintest idea, so they went to Waiting Room 6. Inside they found Trixie, somewhat unexpectedly, waiting.

“You guys?” she asked, her face clearly disappointed. “I was hoping that doctor would get back here and tell me if my insurance covered that operation…”

“Operation?” Sunset asked. “What operation?”

“Well,” Trixie said, “somepony apparently thought it would be hilarious to replace my toothpaste with glue. And by the way, it was not pleasant to have to get all that explained while my mouth was stuck shut!”

Earlier that day…

“Hi. What is your emergency?” the bored-looking receptionist at the Ponyville hospital asked, not even looking away from her crossword puzzle.

“Mmm mmmph mmmph mmmph!”

“Huh? Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

“Mmm mmmph mmmph mmmph!”

“Can you stop with the mumbling?”

“MMM MMMPH MMMPH MMMPH!”

“Ah!” The receptionist put down the crossword puzzle and looked at the blue unicorn who was standing there. “Someone replaced your toothpaste with glue and you now find yourself unable to open your mouth? Why didn’t you just say so?” She pressed a button. “They’ll be with you shortly. Also, do you know a 29-letter word for the act of believing something to be basically worthless or trivial?”

Trixie stared at her.

“Oh, right. Glue. Sorry about that.”

In the present…

“And let me tell you, that operation wasn’t pleasant either!”

Suri looked carefully at Trixie. “It doesn’t look like it left any scars.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful!”

“Anyway,” Flam said, “we were trying to figure out how to get back at Gilda and Lightning Dust after all these annoying pranks they’ve pulled. Laxatives in brownies, hair-removing shampoo, toxic waste on lawns, cutting carts in half, and now apparently replacing toothpaste with glue.”

“Huh. Whose cart did they cut in half?” Trixie asked.

Flam raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t know your cart got cut in half?”

“No!” Trixie screamed. “I’ve been here most of today!”

“Oh,” Flim said. “Guess you didn’t know.”

“So that’s what Gilda went and did when she said she needed to top Lightning Dust’s prank…” Suri said.

“All right, that’s it!” Trixie declared. “I finally know how to get back at them! I vote that we sneak into their houses late at night, gag them, drag them by their feet to the middle of the woods, and shove them in a big plastic bag!”

Everyone stared at Trixie. “Wouldn’t that kill them?” Suri asked. “I, for one, am not keen on heading back to prison, at least not if I didn’t have some control over the uniforms.”

“And even ignoring the prison sentence, it would kill my chances at getting any kind of promotion,” said Sunset.

At that point, the doctor came in. “Well, after doing some examination, it looks like your insurance doesn’t cover this. Sorry.”

“Okay, seriously, we’re going with that bag in the woods plan,” Trixie said.

“Why not get back at them in a more reasonable fashion, like returning the same pranks?” Suri asked.

“There’s some new pranks I can think of…” Flim muttered.

“Uh, maybe it’s not my place to ask, but what’s going on?” asked the doctor.

“Oh, some people we know pulled a whole lot of annoying pranks,” explained Sunset, who then filled the doctor in.

“Hrm,” said the doctor. “You know, did you consider just suing them for damages?”

There was a lengthy pause. Suri finally spoke.

“You know what, guys? I just realized something. We’re idiots.”

“So because I took slightly less of a monetary loss from all those lawsuits, I think I should be considered the winner of the prank-off,” Lightning Dust declared.

“Are you kidding? The fact my pranks incurred a higher penalty just shows they’re better!” Gilda said.

“Hey, I took enough of a loss from those lawsuits! I’m not losing more money on that bet we made.”

“Well, I’m not paying up because I clearly won! Not to mention you were the one that said we wouldn’t be legally responsible for any damages!”

“Yeah… about that…” said Lightning Dust. “Turns out what I was reading was about accidental damages. Ones done on purpose are another matter.”

“Hey, you two!” said a pony observing them. “We put those hazmat suits on you for a reason! Stop slacking off and get back to cleaning up that toxic waste! There’s a lot left!”

Gilda and Lightning Dust sighed and went back to work.

Dear King Sombra,

Today I learned that lawsuits solve everything.

Also, according to Trixie, revenge is a dish best served cold with shiitake mushroom sauce. No, I don’t get it either.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

Boasts 'n Busters

“Okay, so I’m confused,” said Trixie. “Why is there this big crowd around this stage even though nopony is on it?”

Flam shrugged. “I guess everypony just got curious about why it was here and gathered around. Though if something doesn’t start soon, I’m going to demand my money back.”

“Wait, did you even pay to be here?” Trixie asked.

“No, but that’s never stopped me before.”

Their conversation was abruptly halted by the abrupt appearance of a lavender unicorn on the stage. “Greetings, Ponyville!” she declared in a loud voice. “Do any of you know who I am?”

The crowd murmured among themselves, apparently unsure. “Wind Whistler?” one of them finally asked.

“Yea… no, not Wind Whistler!” the unicorn said, suddenly appearing grumpy. “I am Twilight Sparkle, vanquisher of ursa majors and one of the, if not the, most powerful unicorns in existence! I come here seeking opponents to test my might against! Who wants to try?” Lightning and thunder ominously crackled after she said this.

“Lightning Dust, why did you make it thunder and lightning?”

“Don’t know; it just felt appropriate.”

Meanwhile, there seemed considerable hesitance on the part of the crowd to take up Twilight’s challenge. Except for Trixie, who leaped up to the stage. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will do it! Watch in awe as the aforementioned Great and Powerful Trixie performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by pony eyes!”

“Excellent…” said Twilight before aiming her horn at Trixie and letting loose a magical blast so powerful it knocked Trixie several blocks away. An awkward pause resulted. “That’s the best you can do? Anypony else wish to try?”

The sight of Trixie being so effortlessly defeated seemed to deter anyone in the crowd from trying their luck. “Oh, come on? Nopony?” Twilight audibly sighed. “Well, I’ll be in town until noon or so tomorrow if anypony else wants to try.” She used her magic to make the stage vanish and walked off.

“Well,” Sunset said as the crowd dissipated, “that was pointless. I’m going back home to–“

“Wait!” Suri declared. “Sunset! You’re pretty strong, right? I bet you could take Twilight on!”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “What motivation would I have to do?”

“Do it for Ponyville!”

“What’s Ponyville ever done for me?”

“Oh, um, good point.”

“Although,” said Sunset, “I actually do recognize her. She was a student at magic school several years below me. She definitely had a ton of magical power, but she seemed to care more about books than strength… I wonder what happened to change her priorities.” She paused. “Enh, don’t care enough to find out.”

“Man,” complained Lightning Dust. “I hate arrogant people like that. They’re all way less impressive than I am.”

“Go away, Lightning Dust,” said Flim.

“What? Are you still angry about the pranks? You got your stupid reparations. Heck, I wasn’t even the one who pranked you; that was all Gilda. Speaking of which, where is she, anyway?”

“Did you hear the part about the ursa major?” Suri asked, completely ignoring Lightning Dust’s question. “Now that’s just ridiculous. I’ve read about those things; you sure as heck can’t just vanquish one by yourself.”

“Hey!” said an orange-colored unicorn colt who had stayed behind. “Twilight was super powerful! I bet she could do it!”

“Yeah!” said a blue-colored unicorn colt with him. “She could totally do it!”

“All you did was repeat exactly what I said!”

“Well, I wanted to say something!”

“Ha!” declared a bruise- and dirt-covered Trixie, who had finally managed to walk back. “I doubt she could even defeat an ursa minor!”

“Says the person who personally experienced the brunt of her power,” muttered Lightning Dust.

“Exactly! That wasn’t enough power to take down an ursa major! And the Great and Powerul Trixie knows that, because she once fought one!” She paused, then added, “And defeated it!”

The suggestion of Trixie defeating an ursa major caused everyone else except for the colts to collapse into laughter.

“Oh man,” Sunset said. “You think we’d believe you could take on an ursa major?”

Trixie glared at them as they continued laughing. Eventually they ceased.

“Well, that was about the funniest joke I’ve heard all year,” said Flam. “But back to work.” Flim and Flam walked away. Everyone except for Trixie and the two colts took the opportunity to leave as well.

“Oh boy!” said the blue colt. “I bet you did an amazing job with the ursa major! Maybe you and Twilight could work together to fight several of them!”

“Oh, please, Snips,” Trixie said, finally giving the narrative an excuse to refer to him by his name. “The Great and Powerful Trixie needs no Twilight Sparkle to defeat an ursa major! But now I have important things to do and must take my leave.”

“What are those important things?” asked the technically-unnamed-as-of-this-point orange colt.

“Uh, important things. Nothing that needs concern you, Snails,” Trixie said, again helping the narrative out a little by providing a name. She then left.

“Hey, Snails!” Snips said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“We should totally lure an ursa major into the town so they can prove to everypony they can do what they said?”

“Exactly! I love how we’re always on the same wavelength.”

“Although,” Snails said, “I was also wondering why they call it a flea market if they don’t sell fleas.”

Snips stared at him. “Okay, mostly on the same wavelength.”

Later that night…

Trixie woke up to the sound of a knock on her door. “Ugh… who could that be at this hour?” She went over to the door and opened it, finding Snips and Snails.

“Oh. Hi, you two,” Trixie said flatly. “What in the world do you two need?”

“Just need you to vanquish the ursa major we brought into town for you to vanquish!”

Trixie stared at them, started to say something, stopped, stared some more, then finally spoke. “What.”

“Well, yeah, you were talking about how you could vanquish them, but no one believed you, so we figured we’d let you show them.”

Trixie face-hoofed. “You two are idiots. Even if I didn’t make the whole story up, that’s reckless endangerment!” The two stared at her, confused as to the meaning of the last two words. “Uh, it’s something Lightning Dust went on about. The point is, you’re idiots!”

“Wait,” Snails said, “you made up the story?”

“Yes! And now I’m going to get the heck out of this town until the–“ Trixie faltered as the lumbering ursa happened to lumber up to her. “Uh… well… maybe I can bluff it.”

Trixie attempted to pull off a few threatening karate moves—or whatever the pony equivalent of karate moves are—in order to threaten the ursa. After a few seconds of apparent puzzlement, it opted to squash Trixie flat with one paw and destroy her cart with the other.

“AAAAHH!” screamed Snips, who proceeded to start running away again.

“AAAAHH!” agreed Snails, who proceeded to run off as well. Showing surprising intelligence for two characters that up until this point had mostly been, as Trixie said, idiots, the two split up, leaving the ursa confused. After scratching its head for a few seconds, it opted to go rampaging in an entirely different direction.

Snips and Snails soon did meet up with each other due to their paths intersecting. “That was a brilliant idea!” declared Snips. “Splitting up to make it leave and then meeting back together!”

“Uh… yeah. That was totally the plan,” said Snails.

“Now to see if Twilight is of any greater help!”

In the meantime, the noise and destruction of the ursa started waking ponies up, who left their houses to try to figure out what was going on. Their reaction to the ursa wandering around varied from running back inside and barricading the door, running around screaming, or taking pictures. Sunset’s reaction, however, was to simply stare and say, “You have got to be kidding me.”

Ordinarily she would have written it off as someone else’s problem and simply gone back to sleep, but the fact the ursa might be an actual danger to her was enough to make her care.

“I hate my life,” she muttered to herself as she went back into the library to try to find information on defeating ursa majors.

Elsewhere in Ponyville, Snips and Snails had managed to find Twilight’s “residence,” a miniature house that the unicorn had presumably conjured out of magic. “Hey! Twilight!” they shouted. Upon receiving no answer, they opened the door to find no one was there.

Elsewhere in Ponyville, Twilight was facing down the ursa. She had already been woken up and tracked it down, making some of that stuff with Snips and Snails ultimately useless in retrospect.

“An ursa minor?” Twilight asked herself out loud. “Ha. Peace of cake.” She hit it with a powerful blast that sent it sprawling all the way back to the Everfree Forest, albeit causing considerable property damage along the way.

By little more than pure narrative convenience, this was also when both Sunset Shimmer and Gilda happened to come upon the scene. “Well,” Sunset finally said, “I guess that took care of itself.”

“That barely felt worth the effort,” complained Twilight. “Is there nothing that can prove a challenge?”

A loud roar was heard in the distance. “Um,” Sunset said, “now that I think about it, don’t ursa minors usually have parents?”

“You think that one was old enough to still be staying with its parents? I thought it seemed more on the upper end of the age of an ursa minor, at which point it would have left the nest,” said Twilight.

The roaring grew louder and was soon accompanied by loud footsteps. A large creature was seen in the distance.

“Yep,” said Gilda in a matter-of-fact tone that added a surprising amount of humor to the situation, “I think it’s coming here.”

“Gyah!” exclaimed Twilight. “What are we going to do? I can’t beat that thing!”

“Wait, weren’t you going on about how you vanquished ursa majors?”

“Yeah, after spending considerable amounts of time setting traps to weaken it first and being at full power. I already expended a decent amount on that ursa minor!”

Gilda snapped her fingers… or at least she would have if she had fingers. She did the talon equivalent of that instead. “Got it! You guys hold that stupid thing off while I get my secret weapon!” She quickly ran off.

At this point, the gigantic ursa major had finally reached Ponyville. Luckily for the residents, Sunset and Twilight were close to the edge, meaning it didn’t stomp on many buildings when it got to them.

Sunset groaned. “Really should have taken off running to save myself instead of wasting time talking. Now I’m going to die to an ursa major.”

Twilight aimed her horn at the ursa major and let loose a magical energy blast that appeared to at least hurt the creature. “Come on! You seem strong enough; maybe together we can defeat the thing.”

Sunset rolled her eyes but joined in. “Fine. Might as well go down fighting. It wouldn’t be the first time I survive implausibly due to an incredibly stupid plan.”

Unfortunately for both Twilight and Sunset, the magical blasts, while effective at holding the ursa major off, seemed to only irritate it otherwise. Additionally, the continued strain caused both of them to become exhausted quickly.

“Ugh…” said Sunset. “Can’t keep this up much longer. I think we’re both dead.”

“That’s where you’re wrong!” declared a familiar voice, as Gilda ran up to them, holding an odd-looking and rather long apparatus. “I’m here to save the day!”

At this point, their magical energy ran out. “What’s your big plan?” asked Sunset. “We couldn’t beat it with our magic. All we’ve done is wound it a little. What can you do that the magic can’t?”

“Because,” Gilda said with a grin, “I hold in my hands something even more powerful than magic!” She pointed the device at the ursa major. “A surface-to-air missile launcher.” She pulled the trigger and the aforementioned surface-to-air missile launched from the launcher on the surface into the air. This had the effect of felling the ursa major.

Twilight and Sunset stared in disbelief. “What was that?” Sunset asked.

“I told you, a surface-to-air missile launcher. Always keep them, just in case!”

“There aren’t tons of regulations on those things? I mean, you needed a permit just to use the Elements of Irony.”

“Oh, sure, in griffon lands there’s tons of regulations,” Gilda explained. “But these can’t be operated by ponies due to their lack of fingers, claws, or talons, so there’s actually surprisingly few restrictions on them here in Equestria.”

“Huh.”

Gilda surveyed the now-dead ursa major. “Hrm, I suppose this does leave the ursa minor without a parent, but if I stopped to care about consequences I’d never do anything. Enh.”

“Well what do we do with this thing now?” asked Sunset.

“I actually know a guy who knows a guy who would pay a lot of money for ursa major meat.”

“Blech,” said Twilight, though their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a fair number of ponies who had been woken up by all of the commotion and left their homes to see what was going on.

“Okay,” the mayor said, “can someone fill me in on what just happened?”

“From what I can tell,” said Lightning Dust, “an ursa minor came into Ponyville, which then got blown away by Twilight. Then an ursa major came in, and it was defeated by Sunset, Twilight, and Gilda.”

“Mostly Gilda,” said Gilda idly.

“Hey!” said Twilight. “I bet you wouldn’t have beaten that thing if we hadn’t already weakened in! And how did you know all this, Lightning Dust?”

“Oh, I was just watching it all. Looked fun.”

“All very interesting. But here’s the question,” said the mayor. “Who is going to pay for all this property damage?!”

Sunset, Twilight, and Gilda looked around and saw that a decent amount of Ponyville had been destroyed by the battle. “Um…” said Sunset hesitantly.

“Not to worry!” declared Lightning Dust. “I’m a total expert on accidental property damage! Be right back!” Lightning Dust zoomed away quickly, then a few seconds later zoomed back holding a book entitled “Property Damage Laws for People Who Don’t Want to Buy a Book called “Property Damage Laws for Dummies.”” “Let’s see…” she said as she looked through it.

“Hey! Twilight!” shouted Snips as he and Snails approached them. “Wow, it looks like unlike Trixie, you were able to defeat the ursa!”

“Glad to see we didn’t bring it here for nothing!” agreed Snails. The two suddenly found everyone looking nastily in their direction. “Hrm, maybe shouldn’t have said that bit out loud.”

Lightning Dust landed. “Okay, so, normally these two idiots would be the ones to pay. But they’re minors, so they’re exempt. Who gave them the idea to bring the ursa in?”

“Well, Trixie was talking about how she could vanquish one…” said Snails.

“Okay,” said Lightning Dust, “so I guess Trixie has to foot the bill.”

“The ursa minor kinda squashed her, though,” said Snips. “We saw it.”

“Our young, impressionable minds may never recover from that kind of trauma,” added Snails gravely.

“Okay, so… uh…” Lightning Dust seemed unsure where to proceed. “Ah! Somepony else said they could vanquish ursa majors and incentivized them!” She pointed at Twilight. “Looks like you’re stuck with the bill.”

“What?!” Twilight exclaimed. “I just helped save your town!”

“Yeah, and did a bunch of property damage in the process. Heck, even not counting the ursas themselves, you’d be liable for some.”

“I don’t have the money to pay for all of that!” Twilight protested.

Lightning Dust looked closer into the book. “Well, if that’s the case, you can always pay it off by being sentenced to hard labor. For this amount of damage it looks like… about 20 years. 18 if you really work hard.”

Twilight’s expression was incredulous. “What?” she asked.

“Do you want me to repeat what I said? Is that what you’re asking “what” for?”

“I… you…” Twilight said, apparently at a loss for words. Finally she seemed to get those words. “Screw this; I’m just getting out of here,” she said as she was enveloped by purple smoke that, when dissipated, left her vanished.

“Oh, wait!” Lightning Dust said. “This is my old copy of the laws! Hang on, be right back!” Lightning Dust zoomed off, then zoomed back with a different book. “Okay, let’s see… oh, never mind all that I said. Looks like the government actually gets to foot the bill for all of this. No wonder taxes were increased so much. It looks like the penalty the perpetrators suffer is that they'll have to pay for repairs of their own property themselves. So, Twilight, looks like I got things a little… Twilight?”

“She kinda ran off,” said Sunset.

Lightning Dust shrugged. “Enh. She’s fine. It’s not like she won’t take the time to double-check what I said, thereby staying perpetually on the run from something that isn’t chasing her.”

“Well, I’m going back to bed,” said Sunset. “This whole ordeal has been exhausting. Someone else can clean all this stuff up.” Sunset stalked off, taking her out of the rest of the story until the obligatory friendship report and allowing this narrative commentary running gag to be put to a rest.

“This does leave the question of what to do about all of the people who are currently homeless without their houses,” observed Lightning Dust. She shrugged. “Ah well, my job is done, see you all later!” she said as the zipped off.

“Not to worry, everypony!” came a voice. Everyone turned to see Flim and Flam. “We heard all about what’s happened thanks to reasons that have nothing to do with cheese. And anypony who’s been left homeless is welcome to stay at one of our barns for a surprisingly low price!” said Flim.

Suri sighed. “I can’t believe they came up with that idea before I did,” she groaned to herself.

Meanwhile, Sunset reached her house and entered it.

“Hi!” said Trixie, who was standing inside.

“Trixie?! Didn’t you die?”

“Oh, no, that was just a fake double of myself. Anyway, since my cart got destroyed, I was wondering if maybe I could stay with you for a while.”

Sunset stared at Trixie for a few seconds, then said, “No. Get out.” She then pushed Trixie out and slammed the door.

“Well, somepony is in a bad mood,” huffed Trixie.

Back inside, Sunset took out some paper and wrote the following:

Dear King Sombra,

Today I learned something about gun control.

I’m not entirely certain what I learned, but it was something.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

Dragon Shy

“So anyway, my house finally got fixed after the Ursa Major attack, so I don’t need to use your barn as a residence anymore,” explained the pony to Flim. “Thanks for it in the meantime, though!”

After the pony left, Flam turned to Flim. “Well, that was certainly a profitable enterprise.”

“I’ll say! We weren’t using those barns for anything anyway! Easy money to charge people to stay there.”

“I say, though, what is that?”

“Well, it looks like a big cloud of smoke heading right for Ponyville. You know what that means!”

“An opportunity to finally sell those gas masks we accidentally ordered?”

“Exactly!”

“Mail delivery!” Sunset Shimmer heard an all-too-familiar voice call out. Remembering that the last time she was late to open the door for the mail, the mailmare simply kept knocking on the door and shouting “Hey! Listen!” until she did, she decided to save herself the aggravation and simply open the door.

“Please tell me that for once I’m getting something other than credit card advertisements,” Sunset said.

“I have no idea! Anyway, one letter did look particularly important,” said the mailmare as she dumped a series of letters onto Sunset.

“Would you mind telling me which one?” Sunset asked.

“It’s a surprise!” declared the pegasus before flying off.

Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself. Still, it wasn’t hard to figure out that it was the letter with the word “URGENT” stamped onto it. She opened it up and read through it quickly. “Oh, come on!” she said when she was done. “This is so not in my job description! Seriously, I’m going to just write back and say I won’t do it because it’s absolutely not in it. Now, where did I put that?”

Fortunately for Sunset Shimmer, her job description happened to be nearby. She quickly read through it again. “Yeah, it’s totally not here! It’s…” She paused as she took note of some small print she hadn’t noticed before. Pulling out a magnifying glass, she read it. “Wait, it’s in here? Come on!”

Sunset sighed. “Well, at least maybe I can get some points for this… if I don’t die in the process.”

A bit later…

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” said Sunset. “That big cloud of smoke that just reached Ponyville? That’s from a dragon snoring. So it is our mission to find that dragon and convince it to go somewhere else or else Equestria will be covered by smog for the next hundred years.”

Trixie raised a hoof. “I have a question!”

“What?”

“I’m confused by the specifics,” said Trixie. “Is the dragon actually going to sleep for a hundred years? Or is the nap just going to to produce that much smoke? I mean, this seems like a critical distinction, because it would be a great way to establish how long dragons actually live. Are they more long lived than ponies?”

“Who cares?” said Sunset. “The point is we have to make it go somewhere else.”

Trixie ignored the answer. “And here’s another question,” Trixie continued, “are there places completely covered with smoke? I assume dragons have to take naps somewhere, so are there sections of the planet completely covered by smoke?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” demanded Sunset.

“I just want to have this statement explained to me, because I don’t understand it.”

Sunset threw up her hooves in frustration. “I don’t know! That’s just what the letter said!” Meanwhile, the aforementioned act of throwing up her hooves in frustration caused her to tumble forward onto her face.

“I have a far more relevant question,” said Gilda, giving a quick glare at Trixie. “Why are we the ones that got stuck with this?”

Sunset shrugged. “Apparently that whole ‘almost defeating Nightmare Moon’ thing gave us some credibility.”

“The Royal Guard was able to defeat her with one cannon! Why can’t they take care of a dragon? Why send us?”

“That’s a little uncertain,” Sunset said. “According to the letter, the reasoning given by Sombra was either ‘because I find it amusing’ or ‘mobilizing them would take a while, and hopefully you can resolve it more quickly.’ They weren’t really sure which one; those charades can be hard to interpret.”

“Great,” said Suri. “So we’re all stuck on this quest to get a dragon to leave. I hope I at least get some money out of this.”

“Dragons do tend to have large hordes,” said Gilda.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?!” asked Suri. “Let’s go!” She dashed off.

“I’m surprised you were so eager for Suri to join us,” said Trixie to Gilda.

“Enh, I figure she’s probably the most likely of us to get eaten by a dragon. Having a distraction is never bad.”

Suri returned. “Okay, I ran off too early. Is anypony else coming?”

“Treasure sure isn’t a bad thing to have!” declared Flim.

“I bet I could defeat a dragon by myself!” announced Lightning Dust.

“Let’s just get this over with,” said Sunset. “Even if we all get killed in the process, I at least want my suffering to be brief.”

“Doesn’t it take several years for a dragon to completely digest what it eats?” asked Gilda.

Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself. Out loud she said, “Oh right, apparently we’re supposed to take some pegasus named Fluttershy along the way. Do any of you know who she is?”

“Oh, her?” asked Gilda dismissively. “She’s a complete scaredy-cat who gets intimidated by bunnies. Why in the world would we want to get her?”

“Well, the note said something about her being an expert with animals. Hey, worst-case scenario she can totally be dragon chow while the rest of us escape, right?” Everyone stared at her. “Hey, you all know you were thinking it!”

“Whatever,” said Gilda. “I’ll go grab her and meet you at the mountain’s base.”

After some preparations, everyone except for Gilda had gathered at the base of the mountain.

“Okay, so where is Gilda?” asked Sunset. “She’s late.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie suggests we play a game to pass the time!”

“Great,” said Sunset flatly. “What is this game?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie spies with her eyes… something starting with B!”

“Chocolate?” Lightning Dust guessed.

Trixie frowned. “How did you know?”

“Uh,” said Sunset, “you guys do know that not only does chocolate not start with a B, there’s also none to be seen?”

“Oh, it was just a trick question,” explained Trixie.

“One that I saw through!” Lightning Dust announced proudly.

“A trick…” Sunset face-hoofed. “If Gilda doesn’t get here, I seriously am probably going to kill somepony.”

Gilda chose that moment to arrive, with an extremely fearful-looking pegasus with her. “Okay, so I brought her. And by the way, it took a lot of work to make her more afraid of me than the dragon so I could intimidate her into coming.”

“Wait, you intimidated her into coming?” asked Flim. “That was how you got her to come?”

“Yep! Took a whole lot of threatening to do it, also. Actually, I might have severely traumatized her in the process. Enh, builds character.”

Fluttershy made a small squeaking noise.

And so the group made their way up the mountain. Surprisingly, absolutely nothing noteworthy happened on the way up except for encountering a jive-talking purple penguin from Baltimare who turned out to be a figment of everyone’s imagination. At any rate, they made it to the cave at the top.

“Okay, Fluttershy, go in and ask the dragon to leave,” said Gilda.

Fluttershy made a squeaking noise again and shook her head.

“Darn it, is proximity to the dragon making you too scared of it? Ugh,” said Gilda. “Oh well. It’s not like you were going to be of much use anyway.”

“Fine, I’ll try,” said Sunset. She went into the cave. “Uh, hi, Mr. Dragon?” she asked. No response came. “Uh, hello?” she asked more loudly. Still no response. “HEY! DRAGON!” she shouted. The dragon opened his eye. “Would you mind maybe going someplace else to sleep? Like, maybe where dragons usually sleep?”

The dragon seemed to consider this. Then it moved a claw and casually flicked Sunset out of the cave before falling back to sleep.

“Okay,” said Sunset, getting up. “That clearly didn’t work. Anypony else want to try?”

“No problem,” said Gilda. “I’ve got this.” She pulled out a large contraption.

“Wait, is that that surface-to-air missile launcher you used on the Ursa Major?”

“Well, actually, it’s a different one.”

“Where in the world were you even storing that?” Trixie asked.

“You don’t want to know. Anyway, I bet this will take care of that dragon!”

“You know,” said Sunset, “maybe we shouldn’t immediately resort to violence. I mean, there’s no going back after that, so that should really be our last–”

Sunset was cut off due to Gilda already taking aim with the launcher and pulling the trigger. Moments later, an explosion rocked the cave.

“Well, that should take care of–” started Gilda before being cut off by a large roar. “Huh, guess it didn’t.” She quickly threw the weapon at Sunset’s feet.

“What are you–” Sunset started asking, but she was interrupted by the dragon storming out of the cave.

Gilda pointed at Sunset. “She did it! See? She’s got the weapon!”

“What the–” Sunset said, unsurprised this time to be cut off. What she was surprised about was that she was cut off by the dragon grabbing her and tossing her into his mouth. “With my last breath, I curse Gilda!” she shouted before the dragon closed his mouth.

“Well, Sunset’s down. Anyone else have any plans?” Gilda turned around to see that only Lightning Dust was left. “Where did everyone go?”

“Oh, I think they ran into the cave to try to get some treasure while the dragon is distracted,” Lightning Dust said with a shrug. “Oh, and here they come now.”

Flim, Flam, and Suri were running out of the cave while carrying a reasonable quantity of treasure and gold. Unfortunately for them, the dragon spotted them trying to carry off his treasure. The dragon was about to lunge at them before a voice rang out.

“How dare you… how dare you!”

Everyone looked around, confused as to who the voice belonged to. The question was soon answered when the previously timid pegasus flew up to the dragon and landed on his snout. “Listen here, mister,” she said with a level of aggressiveness no one would have expected from her before now. “Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you get to be a bully. You may have huge teeth, and sharp scales, and snore smoke, and breathe fire. But you do not—I repeat—do not hurt my… uh… um…” Fluttershy found herself fumbling for the right term. “My… er… acquaintances? That sounds good. You do not hurt my acquaintances!”

She stared straight into the dragon’s eyes and added, “You got that?”

At this, the dragon broke down crying. “Huh,” said Gilda. “Now I almost feel bad for terrorizing her so much. Enh, builds character.”

“Well?” asked Fluttershy to the dragon.

“But that orange one shot something at me!”

“Actually,” said Fluttershy, “it was the bird who did it. But that’s not the point. You’re bigger than she is, and you should know better. Speaking of which, maybe you should let her out?”

The dragon suddenly underwent a coughing fit, ending with Sunset being expelled from his mouth onto the ground. She got up. “Oh, good. I was wondering if I was going to have to try that explosion spell to blast my way out.”

“Anyway,” continued Fluttershy, “you’re not a bad dragon, you just made a few bad decisions. Now go pack your things. You just need to find a new place to sleep. That’s all.”

The dragon glared at Suri, Flim, and Flam. “Oh,” said Fluttershy, “you should probably give him back his gold.”

“Never!” declared Suri. She got blasted with a small amount of fire. “Okay, I’ll redefine what ‘never’ means to ‘sure, no problem.’”

The dragon grabbed its loot from the three and went back into the cave. After several minutes, it emerged holding an enormous bag of its loot. It flew off holding it, accidentally smashing it into Gilda on the way out.

“Oh,” said Lightning Dust, looking at Gilda, “looks like that really hurt. Probably got a ton of bones broken. I’m no doctor, but that’ll probably require some serious medical attention. Probably will involve a lot of highly invasive and painful surgeries to sort out.” She shrugged. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“So… much… pain,” said Gilda.

“Enh,” said Sunset. “Builds character.”

Dear King Sombra,

Today I learned that reading job descriptions carefully is really important.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

Wrapping Up Winter

“Three months of winter coldness
And awesome holidays”

Sunset Shimmer turned over in her sleep. “No, doctor, I don’t want you to stick that there.”

“We’ve kept our hoovsies warm at home
Time off from work to play”

“Why?” Sunset continued murmuring in her sleep. “Because sticking the pill there would mess up my combo. I need those green pills lined up right to wipe out those germs.”

“But the food we’ve stored is running out
And we can’t grow in this cold
And even though I love my boots
This fashion’s getting old”

“Ugh,” Sunset muttered to herself as she woke up. “Is something going on?” She went over to the window to look outside, only to see a large quantity of various ponies moving around while singing. Trixie appeared to take over the next verse:

“The time has come to welcome spring
And all things warm and green
But it’s also time to say goodbye
It’s winter we must clean
How can you help? Well, let’s just see
What does everypony do?
We’ll do all of it without magic!
With hard work through and through!”

“Did Trixie just suggest doing hard work and not using magic?” Sunset stared blankly. “Is this all a dream? This is surreal.”

“Winter Wrap Up! Winter Wrap Up!
Let’s finish our holiday cheer
Winter Wrap Up! Winter Wrap Up!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!”

“But… it’s fall,” said Sunset, feeling extremely perplexed. “You can’t just skip from one season to the next. There wasn’t even any snow on the ground yesterday!” Meanwhile, Lightning Dust started up the next verse:

“Bringing home the southern–“

“Lightning Dust!” shouted out the mayor as the music all crashed to a stop. “This isn’t your verse! Flitter was supposed to take the lead on this one!”

“Yeah,” said Lightning Dust, “but she was late coming in and I wanted to try to salvage the thing.”

“No, you came in too early!” argued Flitter. “If you had just waited a few seconds–“

Sunset had had about enough and left her house to try to figure out what was going on. “Okay, what’s with all the noise that’s been keeping me awake?”

“Take five, everypony,” said the mayor to crowd before turning to Sunset. “Oh, this? This is just our Winter-Wrap Up rehearsal.”

“Rehearsal?” asked Sunset.

“Well, there’s a big musical number that starts up the yearly Winter Wrap Up celebration, so we’re rehearsing it.”

“Why are you rehearsing it?”

“You don’t have the whole town doing a musical number out of the blue! These things take work to put together.”

“Yeah!” said Lightning Dust, who had zoomed up to them. “Maybe Flim and Flam could do something crazy like that, but not everypony at once.”

Sunset looked around. “Where are Flim and Flam? I’d think they’d be into this.”

“Enh,” said Lightning Dust, “they opted to sit this one out. They were upset they didn’t get to write the song this year.”

“Yes,” said the mayor, “there was this other duo that got the win. Oh, here they come now.”

“Hey, mayor!” called out a unicorn with an electric-blue mane. “I was thinking that we should rewrite the intro a little. I don’t think it’s original enough.”

The other, a gray-coated earth pony, sighed. “Vinyl, I told you that just because something isn’t new doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

“Yeah, but it’s just so dull. For starters, how about we rewrite the fourth line as ‘Electro-music plays’?”

“Why do you keep insisting we have something about electronic music? That’s not what the song is about!”

“Hey, I was willing to include that dumb line about the families of the southern birds growing, including the awkward emphasis on the word ‘families’ and ‘grow.’ You can at least indulge me on this, Octy.”

“That was not a dumb line, the emphases were necessary for the melody, and I told you to stop calling me that!”

“Whatever,” said Sunset, suddenly remembering how little she cared as the two continued arguing in the background. “All I’m really curious about is, how in the world did I not know about this?

“You didn’t see all the signs posted about it?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Uh… no?”

The mayor gestured towards a large sign with the phrase “WINTER IS COMING” written on it. “There’s one right there,” she said. “What did you think this was in reference to?”

“Um,” Sunset said. There was an awkward pause that was interrupted by Trixie arriving. “Hi! I bet you were wowed by the Great and Powerful Trixie’s singing skills! Surely this will lead to exposure and publicity!”

“Well, I didn’t expect to hear what I heard out of your mouth, that’s for sure,” said Sunset in as neutral a tone as possible. “Anyway, I’m just going to go back to bed—this time with heavy-duty earplugs—and I guess you guys can go on with this.”

“Why don’t you join in? You could probably assist on the bridge section.”

“You’re building a bridge?”

“No, the musical bridge.”

“Uh, no thanks,” said Sunset, starting to wish she hadn’t even bothered coming out. “But, uh, good luck with that song!” She ran off.

“Huh,” said Lightning Dust. “Maybe she just doesn’t like music. By the way, I totally should be doing the second verse, not Flitter.”

“No,” said the mayor. “She was the one who won the audition. Quite handily, in fact.”

“Hey, I wasn’t trying to make those clouds explode during mine!”

Several months later…

“Winter Wrap Up! Winter Wrap Up!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is heeeeeere!”

Much to Sunset’s frustration, her earplugs were no match for the fully orchestrated rendition of the song, forcing her awake. Even worse, the song was so maddeningly catchy she knew there was no chance of her forgetting it anytime soon.

Knowing she was unlikely to get back to sleep, she decided she might as well pass some time by observing how the ponies in Ponyville went about wrapping up winter without the usage of magic and thus opened the door and left the house.

“Oh, great to see you,” said the mayor. “Would you mind help the cleaning up with your magic? It’d help the other unicorns out.”

Sunset stared for a few moments, an act she found herself performing quite frequently since moving to Ponyville. “Uh, wasn’t the song all about how you were transitioning the seasons without magic?”

“Oh, yes, it used to be that way. But there was always so much work put into performing the song that everypony got too tired to put in the manual labor necessary to do it without magic, so we just started using the magic to quickly change the seasons. Plus there was also this lawsuit from the Equestrian Civil Liberties Union alleging racism against unicorns.”

“Then what’s still the point of even having the song?”

“Tax breaks,” said the mayor. Sunset stared at her yet again. The mayor shrugged. “We get some great government subsidies for preservation of the performing arts. Definitely makes it easier to pay for all the reconstruction that the various monster attacks tend to cause.”

Sunset stared some more. She opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and closed it. After enough staring that the mayor got bored and moved on, she finally walked back into her house as if in a zombified state. With a blank look in her eyes, she took out some paper and wrote the following:

Dear King Sombra,

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

Fall of the Cutie

Gilda was absorbed in her copy of How to Defeat Friends and Intimidate Ponies when she heard a knock on the door. “Ugh,” she groaned. She put the book aside and went to the door, passing by her extremely large weapons cache on the way. She opened the door and was greeted by the sight of a pink and gray filly. “Do I know you?” she asked.

“I’m Diamond Tiara,” said the pink filly.

“I’m Silver Spoon,” said the other.

“Oh right,” Gilda said. “I think I remember you two vaguely. What do you dweebs need?”

Diamond Tiara seemed annoyed by the insult, but still said, “Well, it’s like this…”

“Today we are going to learn about cutie marks!” said Cheerilee to her class.

“Boring,” complained Diamond Tiara. “Why even bother when there’s only one student who’s enough of a loser to not have one?”

Cheerilee frowned at Diamond Tiara. “You shouldn’t speak so rudely about your fellow classmates. Just because somepony hasn’t gotten a cutie mark yet–“

“Wait,” asked Twist in her lispy voice. “Who exactly hasn’t gotten their cutie mark yet?”

“What are you, stupid? I’m talking about… you…” Diamond Tiara trailed off as she noticed that Twist was in fact adorned with a cutie mark in the form of two candy canes arranged in a vaguely heart-ish shape. “Huh.”

“All right,” said Cheerilee, “never mind all that. Instead we’ll learn all about the movement of the sun and moon!”

“Yawn,” muttered Diamond Tiara to herself. “This might be even more boring.”

“Now, a long time ago, the sun and moon were moved by two alicorns, though later it was reduced to one. However, when that alicorn was deposed, everypony thought that maybe it would be the end of the world because nopony was controlling them anymore, but then it was discovered…”

Whatever Cheerilee said afterwards left no impression on Diamond Tiara because her mind had completely wandered by that point. It then got completely lost and had to ask for directions, but the directions turned out to be a prank, and it accidentally ended up in a swamp before the metaphor completely broke down.

After school had ended, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon walked home. “Now that everypony has cutie marks, there’s nothing to make fun of them for!” complained Diamond Tiara. “How can we show how much better we are than them, if not by mocking?”

“Accept that we’re all different and nopony is really superior or inferior to one another?” asked Silver Spoon.

The two looked at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Okay, that was good,” said Diamond Tiara. She turned more somber. “But seriously, what do we do?”

Silver Spoon thought for a moment. “Well, Twist has a lisp. That’s something, right?”

“I guess,” said Diamond Tiara, but she seemed uncertain. “Man, there’s got to be somepony to ask for help on this.”

“How about Gilda? She’s always criticizing everypony else.”

“And that’s why we’re here!”

There was an awkward pause. “Okay,” said Gilda, “you know that you just said ‘Well, it’s like this. And that’s why we’re here,’ right? That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Um, well,” stammered Diamond Tiara, confused as to why she did say that. “Well, we used to make fun of people for not having cutie marks, but now everyone does, and we figured that since you mock people all the time you might have advice!”

Gilda stared. “You guys are idiots, you know that?” She slammed the door.

Diamond Tiara turned to Silver Spoon. “Okay, so she’s out. Got any other ideas?”

“Hrm,” she said. “I guess Trixie is always going on about how great she is. Maybe she knows?”

“What do you need from the Great and Powerful Trixie?” asked Trixie dramatically as she popped up out of nowhere.

“Gyah!” shouted Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon simultaneously.

“Where in the world did you come from?” asked Diamond Tiara.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is always on the lookout for those who say her name! The fact that she happened to be on her way to see if Gilda for completely unrelated reasons is a coincidence.”

“Fine. You’re always talking about how much greater and powerful-er you are than everypony else, so do you have any advice on how we can convince our peers of that?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Trixie. “Just become great and powerful! Everypony will simply admire you naturally! Watch as Trixie demonstrates!”

Trixie went up to Gilda’s door and knocked. Gilda opened it, frowning. “Oh, it’s you. What do you need?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie demands a loan!”

“Why do you need a loan and why do you think I’d give you the money regardless, especially considering how much cash you got from me as a result of that lawsuit over the pranks?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie needs money to upgrade her wagon after it got destroyed by the Ursa Minor! As for why, Trixie will give you a free ticket to her next show.”

Gilda looked at Trixie. “Yeah no.” She slammed the door.

“Wait!” said Trixie. “‘Yeah’ and ‘no’ are contradictions! Is the answer the ‘yeah’ or the ‘no’?” No answer came. Trixie turned around and realized that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were still there. “Um… and that’s how it’s done!” Trixie used a cloud of smoke to abruptly vanish, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact she simply chose to ran off rather than pull an actual vanishing act. An awkward pause resulted.

“You know what?” Diamond Tiara finally asked. “How about we just stick with the whole lisp thing? That seems good.”

Dear King Sombra,

Not really much to say because I didn’t have to actually interact with anypony much as of late. Which would explain why I’m so much more relaxed. I guess the lesson is that you should avoid interaction as much as possible. Though I can’t say I really learned that because I’ve known that for a long time.

If you really need something else, apparently offering a free ticket to performances that you practically have to pay people to attend isn’t a very good incentive for anything.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

Suited for Failure

“Hey! Are you in there?” Sunset asked, pounding on the door. Suri opened it.

“You know, the door is open. You can just come in. This is a store, after all,” said Suri.

“Last time I tried to come in without knocking your burglar system went off and sprayed me with some kind of disgusting goo that took way too long to get rid of.”

“Maybe using the Smooze for that was a little overkill,” admitted Suri.

“Anyway, I need a new dress for the Grand Galloping Gala.”

Suri smirked. “I never took you as the dress-wearing type. Outside of cases like when your hair all fell off and–”

Sunset stopped her with a glare. “Don’t bring that up again. Anyway, hopefully my work here will impress Sombra enough to give me some kind of promotion, and the better I look the better the chances of that.”

“All right then,” Suri said. “I’ll make sure to get a top-of-the-line dress for you.”

Sunset sighed. “And how much is this going to cost me?”

“Oh, well, in compensation for that alarm accident, I’m going to make one for free!”

“That seems…” started Sunset. She did a double take. “Wait, did you just say you’d do it for free?!”

“Yeah, free.”

“You’re not going to charge me an exorbitant amount? You’ll give it to me for free?”

“That’s what I just said.”

Sunset stared at Suri for a little while. “No hidden strings? I’ll just get it for free? And it’ll be good?”

“If it’s not to your satisfaction, I’ll redo it until it is… for free!”

Sunset looked around. “Have I entered an alternate universe or something?”

“Hey,” said Suri, “if you really want to pay me, I won’t object.”

“Never mind that,” said Sunset hastily. “If you’re really going to make me a great-looking dress for free, by all means do it.”

“And you know what?” Suri asked. “I’m in such a generous mood today that I’ll make free dresses for all of our friends!”

“Friends? I always thought of them as ‘idiots that through surprising coincidence I keep having to deal with,’” said Sunset.

“Well, whatever you want to call them, go and tell Lightning Dust, Gilda, Flim & Flam, and Trixie that if they want a great outfit for the Grand Galloping Gala for free, I’m their seamstress!” declared Suri.

“Okay, now I know I’ve entered some kind of parallel universe,” said Sunset. “That, or you’re some kind of doppelganger. But whatever, I might as well enjoy this as long as it lasts.” Sunset left.

“Right!” said Suri. “Now it’s time to get to work on that dress and–“

“Aha!” declared Sunset as she entered. “I caught you… huh. Never mind.”

Suri was confused. “What?”

“Oh, I just figured you’d be mumbling to yourself your secret angle for being so generous, but looks like you didn’t… uh, I still get it for free, right?”

“Certainly,” said Suri.

“So… uh… bye!” said Sunset as she left. She shook her head as she walked away. “Surreal…”

Several days later…

“Viola!” declared Suri as she let the others in. “Three amazing dresses and two handsome-looking suits! What do you think?”

“You didn’t make one for me?” Gilda asked.

“Well, no. After volunteering to make one, I realized you’d probably hate the idea of a dress and didn’t want to waste my time or yours.”

“Smart girl,” said Gilda.

“Anyway!” continued Suri. “How about them? What do you think? Sunset, I tried to make your dress blazing orange to show a fiery spirit while still maintaining the formality necessary to impress others!”

Sunset examined her prospective dress. “Looks fine,” she said. “I guess I’ll take it as is.”

Suri seemed slightly surprised. “No complaints or requests to change things?”

“No; I’m afraid this weird version of you might wear off soon, so I better take advantage of it while I can.”

Suri rolled her eyes. “I already told you; I’m just being generous.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is in agreement!” declared Trixie. “And if you’re wondering why I was so oddly quiet, it’s because I was looking at this dress, which is actually quite nice looking. Good shade of blue… stars in a good formation… it will do.”

Lightning Dust inspected her dress. “Bleh, dresses. Well… I guess it’s about as good as you can get.”

Flim and Flam also voiced acceptance of the suits Suri made for them.

“Excellent,” said Suri with a smile. “I’m so glad that you all enjoyed them, especially after how much work I put into them.”

“But seriously,” said Lightning Dust, “you don’t have some kind of angle in this? You always have an angle.”

“Again, no angle,” said Suri. “Although there is one thing…”

“And here it comes, of course,” said Sunset with a sigh.

“I was thinking that these designs were good enough that I could set up a fashion show! As you would have no need for these outfits until the Gala, could I hold onto them for that long?”

Flim blinked. “That’s… actually not unreasonable at all.”

“Wait a minute,” said Lightning Dust, pointing a hoof in Suri’s direction. “Now I get it. You just want us to be part of the fashion show and model these designs for you! That would save you money from having to hire people to do it!”

“Oh, no! I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do something for free that others would charge a hefty fee for. I’ll pay you. This could be even better than a regular model because these dresses were custom-made for each of you individually!”

Sunset ran up to Suri and grabbed her. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with the actual Suri? Also, how can we make sure that the actual Suri doesn’t return? You’re a whole lot more tolerable!”

Suri smiled. “Well, I’m glad you happy. This will be the best fashion show ever!”

One fashion show later…

“That was not the best fashion show ever,” admitted Suri. “But it was close! And Hoity Toity really liked my designs! Maybe this could be my in to the greater fashion world!”

“And to think,” said Flam, “it all happened because you decided to be generous and give us free outfits. You should do that more often!”

“Well, I can’t exactly make a habit of it,” said Suri, “because I have to make some money. But hey, considering how great this experience has been, maybe doing things like that more often isn’t a bad idea.”

“In case you do, I have some great ideas for that free outfit for my brother and me!”

Suri glared at him. “You’re just trying to take advantage of generosity for free outfits now, aren’t you?”

“Indeed! Shame on you,” declared Trixie. “Suri actually did something very nice, and you’re completely wrong to try to take further advantage of that. And I’m not just saying that to make myself look good and possibly get more free outfits!”

“Well, I for one am planning to head home, because I have to sent off another letter to King Sombra. And this whole experience has actually given me a great idea,” said Sunset. “Apparently he hasn’t been really happy with the letters I’ve sent detailing what I’ve learned about friendship because they don’t really have much to do with friendship a lot of the time. Or at least that’s what they think he said. It might have been that there wasn’t enough suffering involved, though I’m pretty sure it’s the first one. At any rate, thanks for the free dress.”

Sunset left. The others expressed thanks as well before departing. Suri was left standing alone in her store.

“Well, that was pleasant enough,” she said to herself. “This could all be the start of a new direction for the business! Who needs to always put profit first?“

As Suri continued babbling about the merits of generosity, she didn’t notice a large figure suddenly appear on the second floor. “Well, I guess I should’ve expected that this wouldn’t be that much fun,” said the figure. “Like I thought before, it’s so much more fun to see crazy ponies doing things rather than normal ones. Would have actually gotten more enjoyment out of her regular behavior. Ah well. Should probably return her to normal now.”

The figure snapped his fingers twice. The first time he snapped them, Suri suddenly stopped talking and appeared confused. The second time he disappeared without a trace.

Suri shook her head rapidly to try to get her bearings right. “What just happened?” Suddenly, the recent events all flooded back to her. “Oh no! I gave away all those dresses without making any money on them! And paid extra money for them to wear it rather than guilt them into doing it for free! All that money… completely lost…”

She whimpered for a little while, but suddenly a sly smile appeared on her face. “Wait! I’ve got it! They’re sure to be trusting me far more because of this. And I’m sure they’ll be telling other people about this, making them trust me as well. It has sometimes been difficult to persuade others into paying higher prices due to my reputation; this could fix it all! They’ll be able to fall for my price markups all over again! Every cloud does have a silver lining! Ha!”

Dear King Sombra,

Today I learned that a little generosity can go a long way.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

Sonic Rain-Dust

“All right!” said Lightning Dust. “What have we learned?”

“You’re really making me go through with this,” Gilda said flatly.

“Loss of control, screaming and hollering, and passion. Those are the elements of a good cheer. Now let’s hear one!”

Gilda held up a flag and waved it around slowly. “Yay,” she said unenthusiastically.

“You’re going to cheer for me like that?” asked Lightning Dust indignantly.

“Um, duh?”

“Louder!”

“Yay,” said Gilda in a tone only fractionally more enthusiastic than the first one.

“Louder!”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Yay,” she said in a tone technically more enthusiastic than the previous one but still so unethusiastic it didn’t really matter.

“LOUDER!”

Gilda inhaled, and…

“YAAAAAAY.”

Lightning Dust found herself blown away by the sheer strength of Gilda’s shout. She flew back quickly. “What in the world was that?”

Gilda held up a megaphone. “Enh, just the power of a megaphone turned up all the way. I thought it would be amusing to screw with you.”

“Are you kidding?!” asked Lightning Dust excitedly. “That was awesome! You’ve got to bring that along to cheer me on!”

“Yeah, yeah, on your stupid Best Young Flyer Competition.”

“The winner gets to spend a day with the Wonderbolts! Do you have any idea how much that could do for me becoming a member?”

“Well,” said Gilda, “if you’re lucky, it might make them ignore your questionable legal history. You know, the constant property damage and the fact you even got convicted of battery.”

Lightning Dust glared at Gilda.

“What? I’m just saying. And I’m only going because there’s some stuff I had to do in Cloudsdale anyway.”

“Oh man,” said Lightning Dust giddily, “I bet lots of other people will want to come watch me! I’ll go ask everypony right now!” She dashed off.

Gilda stared after her. “I can’t believe she thinks she can get anyone else to come.”

Later…

“I can’t believe you got five other people to come,” said Gilda as they all walked on the clouds in Cloudsdale.

“What can I say?” asked Lightning Dust. “I’m a master motivator!”

Suri bristled. “Master motivator? It was just dumb luck somepony happened to place an order for some outfits that they insisted must be delivered in person to Cloudsdale.”

“And the only reason I bothered coming was–” started Sunset before finding herself interrupted yet again.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Lightning Dust said dismissively.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie has made a decision!” said Trixie. “She will be entering the Best Young Flyer Competition!”

“Look, Trixie, I know you all got that spell that lets you walk on the clouds–”

“And oh boy, did we have to sign a ton of waiver forms to be able to come here,” commented Flim. “And also agree to wear these invisible automatic parachutes.”

“–but that’s still completely separate from actually being able to fly,” finished Lightning Dust.

“Oh yeah?” challenged Trixie. “Watch this!”

Trixie concentrated very hard. Her horn started glowing, and absolutely nothing happened.

“Huh,” said Trixie. “I guess that wing-making spell actually did require a lot of power.”

“Didn’t they forbid anyone without natural wings from participating anyway due to an accident where some idiot using magical wings tried to take part in the competition, but then the wings got all burnt up by the sun, and they fell?” wondered Gilda.

“Yeah, something like that,” said Lightning Dust.

“Well, I have better things to do than stand around mumbling about past accidents, so I am going to go deliver these outfits so I can get money,” said Suri. She turned around and handed several uniforms to some pegasi. “Here you go. Have fun with these!” After receiving some money, she turned back again. “Well, that’s done. Now what?”

“I don’t care,” said Sunset. “I’m just going to go do what I came here to do and then engage in a little sightseeing.” She walked off. Everyone else took the cue to wander off as well except for Lightning Dust.

“Well, as long as they’re around to see me totally win this thing, I guess I don’t care what they do in the meantime,” she said to herself.

The pegasi that Suri handed the uniforms to approached Lightning Dust, now wearing said uniforms. “Hello, Lightning Dust,” one of them said.

“Do I know you?” Lightning Dust asked, feeling confused.

“See?” another of the pegasi said to the other two. “I told you she wouldn’t remember us in these totally different outfits. Those old ones were way better.”

“Look, we’ve already been over this! We had to get rid of them so… hey! Don’t go away!” the pegasus shouted out to Lightning Dust, who had gotten bored and started walking off. “We were having a conversation!”

Lightning Dust sighed and turned around. “Fine. What do you guys want? More importantly, who are you?”

“Well,” said the first pegasus in an ominous tone, “since you don’t seem to remember us, I’ll have to remind you. Remember when you went to stop Nightmare Moon?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Lightning Dust, “that was an adventure. I… wait. You guys are those stupid Shadowbolts I encountered?”

“Yes. Well, okay, it’s technically Team Shadowbolt. You were actually right about that whole intellectual property thing; we had to change our name a bit and get different uniforms.”

“Huh,” said Lightning Dust, trying to figure out how she felt about all this. “Did you guys still want me on your team?”

“Oh, not anymore,” said one. “We figured out that we’re great enough by ourselves! We have no need of someone like you.”

“Well, I would’ve said no anyway; you guys are still lame. Do you even have names?”

The apparent leader pointed to himself. “Thunder Strike.” He pointed to the female of the group. “Stormy Skies.” He pointed to the remaining male. “Maelstrom Tempest.”

“Fine,” said Lightning Dust. “I guess that’s better than Shadowbolt A, Shadowbolt B, and Shadowbolt C. But if you didn’t want me to join your stupid group anyway, why are you even bothering to talk to me?”

Thunder Strike pointed a hoof at Lightning Dust dramatically. “We’re just here to intimidate you.”

Lightning Dust stared at them for a little bit, then shrugged. “Okay, I’m… intimidated, I guess. See you.” She walked off.

Stormy Skies face-hoofed. “I told you she wasn’t going to be intimidated by that.”

“That wasn’t the actual point, and you know it,” said Thunder Strike.

“My question is why we didn’t just fight her last time. We could’ve just beaten her and maybe even her companions up, but no, you insisted on that whole temptation thing.”

“Oh, come on, you know as well as I do that Nightmare Moon was about the lamest boss ever. I was just following her inane orders.”

Maelstrom Tempest simply said, “Hrm.”

Sometime later…

“Welcome to the Best Young Flyer Competition!” announced the announcer. He paused. “Yeah, that’s all I have for an introduction. Let’s begin!”

Lightning Dust waited with the other competitors in the waiting room, feeling restless. She surveyed the rest of the competition. She observed that Thunder Strike was there, but neither Stormy Skies nor Maelstrom Tempest were. Hrm, wonder where they are, she wondered.

Meanwhile, outside in the stands…

“Ugh,” complained Sunset. “I can’t believe basically everywhere is closed to the contest. Now I’m stuck watching the stupid thing because there’s nothing else to do around here.”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Yes, Sunset, we are aware of that. Just as aware as we were the last five times you complained.”

“Well, complaining about it is a lot more interesting than sitting here doing nothing!”

“All right, contestant number one, you’re up!” declared the announcer.

“There,” said Suri, “maybe now you’ll stop complaining when there’s something to watch.”

After performing a number of stunts, the first contestant’s final routine was to, with a smoke creator machine strapped to them, leave a trail of smoke left in the sky. Rather than simply settle for skywriting, however, they used the opportunity to sketch an in-detail drawing of a a hand.

“That one is going to lose some serious points,” commented Suri.

“Why?” asked Sunset, trying to find something to keep her attention on to avoid getting bored.

“Just look at Gilda. Species with hands, claws, or anything else with fingers clearly all have four fingers, but for some reason this was erroneously drawn with five.”

The announcer spoke up again. “That was contestant number one! Now please welcome contestant number two!”

Another pegasus rushed out of the waiting room into the open air. Again, after several random stunts, this contestant opted to try to impress the judges by flying around with extremely heavy weights chained to them.

Sunset found herself yawning. “Boring,” she muttered.

“Oh, hey, look,” said Gilda, “I think Lightning Dust is next. That could be interesting.”

“What’s she doing?” asked Sunset.

Gilda scratched her head. “Come to think of it, I don’t know. She never said.”

Lightning Dust emerged into the outdoors stadium. After the usual filler stunts, she announced, “And for my trick, I shall create a tornado!”

Gilda buried her face in her claw. “Oh, please don’t tell me she’s serious. Every single time she does this the same thing happens.”

“Wait, so what’s the thing that happens?”

Gilda sighed. “You’ll see.”

Lightning Dust flew around in a circle, increasing her speed more and more as she did so. The speed of the wind created a tornado. Eventually it took on a life of its own and she exited it.

“Viola!” she said, pointing towards the tornado. “A perfectly created tornado! And one much larger than you’d expect a single pegasus to be able to create! I’m sure you’re all very… uh-oh,” she said as she noticed the tornado started moving. “Darn it, not again.”

“And that,” said Gilda to Sunset, “is what always happens.”

Sunset grabbed Gilda. “Then get us out of here! That thing is coming straight for us!”

“Oh no,” said Gilda with a manic glint in her eyes. “We’re fine. I came prepared.” She took out her loudspeaker and spoke into it:

“YAAAAAAY.”

The sheer force of the soundwave pushed the tornado away and sent it flying harmlessly to the ground. Lightning Dust suddenly found herself being glared at by everyone in the audience.

“Um… tada?” she said nervously.

Everyone immediately found themselves distracted, however, by a female voice ringing out from the stands. “Oh no! The tornado made my baby fall!” And indeed, a small pegasus could be glimpsed falling towards the ground.

The Wonderbolts in the judging area all immediately flew straight down towards it. Lightning Dust did as well, hoping that the act of saving the pegasus might redeem the dislike the tornado caused. To their surprise, however, another pegasus had managed to get ahead of them to catch the falling child in the horizontal portion of a U-shaped dive.

“Oh, thank you,” said the female pegasus as the child was given back to her. “You’re a hero!”

Everyone started to cheer on the pegasus who grabbed the child. Lightning Dust, however, recognized both pegasi. “Hey, you two are the Shadowbolts! Stormy Skies and Thunder Strike!”

“Your point being?” asked Thunder Strike.

“This whole thing seems fishy to me because of that! I don’t think you even have a child!”

Unfortunately for Lightning Dust, the apparent act of heroism by Thunder Strike combined with the dislike of Lightning Dust’s tornado caused everyone to consider her accusation an act of jealousy. A large amount of boos resulted.

“Boo! Get out of town!” shouted Trixie.

“Why are you booing her?” asked Flam.

Trixie shrugged. “It’s nice to be part of the angry mob for once.”

Lightning Dust looked nervously at all of the pegasi looking at her nastily.

“Uh, excuse me,” came another voice. “But while I have no idea who the ‘Shadowbolts’ are, what just happened was impossible.”

Everyone turned around to look at one of the contestants who hadn’t yet performed. “Care to explain?” asked Thunder Strike.

The other pegasus sighed. “I can’t believe it isn’t obvious to everypony here. Physics! At the rate that alleged child was falling, there was no way a sudden stop to its fall by catching it would have allowed it to survive. It would have been no different than if they hit the ground. To save it, you would have had to, while going at its own velocity downward, grab it and then gradually decrease your speed until you came to a stop. You just grabbed it with no pause!” She pointed at Stormy Skies. “I think this whole thing was just staged to make yourself look good! I demand we get a look at that supposed child and see if it’s real!”

“Um…” started Thunder Strike. “Well, the thing is, we, er… Okay, run for it!” He and Stormy Skies suddenly took off flying at top speed. Maelstrom Tempest, who was just sitting in the stands, simply said, “Hrm.” He then took off after them.

“I told you this wouldn’t work,” complained Stormy Skies to Thunder Strike as they flew away.

“Hey, the plan was working great for making us look good and making Lightning Dust look bad up until that thing about physics.”

“How could you not realize something as obvious as that?”

“I didn’t hear you bring it up in the planning stages!” He sighed. “Regardless, we’ll need new uniforms after this to stop us from being recognized. I’ve heard there’s this great seamstress in Manehattan…”

Back in the cloud arena…

“Okay,” said the announcer, “now that that whole thing is done with, can we have the next contestant go?”

“That’s me!” declared the pegasus who had exposed the hoax, who immediately took off and, after continuing the tradition of starting with filler stunts, flew off in a blinding speed.

“Oh, come on, just going fast?” asked Flim, feeling disappointed. “Anypony can go fast. What makes this one so–“

BOOOOM!

An explosion of color occurred.

“Did she–“ started Lightning Dust, eyes wide open.

“–just perform the–“ continued Gilda.

“–Sonic Rainboom?!” finished Lightning Dust.

“The Sonic what-now?” Flam asked.

“Why did we even bring them along if they don’t know anything?” sighed Gilda.

“But who is that?” Lightning Dust wanted to know. “It’s hard to see much about her because of that full-body flying suit she’s wearing.”

The pegasus in question returned to the stadium, briefly bowed, then darted away. The remaining contestants emerged and performed their own various routines.

“Meh,” commented Sunset as a pegasus just finished juggling while flying around. “These are all even more boring than usual in comparison to what just happened.”

“Do you do nothing but complain?” asked Gilda.

“Pot. Kettle. Black.”

“And now,” said the announcer once everyone had competed, “our judges will retire to make their decision.”

2.5 seconds later…

“And they have decided! The winner of the Best Young Flyer Competition is the performer of the Sonic Rainboom… Rainbow Dash!”

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!” Rainbow Dash said excitedly, her previous calm demeanor having completely disappeared. “This is the most amazing day ever!” She flew straight to the Wonderbolts. “By the way, does the ‘whole day’ thing mean the next 24 hours or is it just the remainder of this day?”

“So,” Lightning Dust said a ways away, “her name is Rainbow Dash.” Her eyes hardened. “She is now my ultimate rival.”

“Ultimate rival… do you even listen to yourself?” asked Gilda. “Also, she doesn’t even know who you are!”

“That will change!” Lightning Dust announced dramatically.

“Look, now that the whole stupid thing is over, can we just go home? This whole thing has been a giant waste of time for me,” said Sunset. “Didn’t even accomplish what I wanted to.” A pause. “Nopony wants to ask what I wanted to accomplish?”

“Not really,” said Suri.

Dear King Sombra,

Today I learned it isn’t the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

The Return of Irony

“Today’s lesson is mighty important to remember,” said Bullwinkle.

Rocky read what was on the chalkboard. “Bullwinkle is a dope.”

“Not that lesson!” said Bullwinkle in a slightly harsher tone than usual. He spun the chalkboard. While it was spinning, he said in a his more usual voice, “This lesson.”

In a completely different story…

“Welcome to the gardens of Canterlot Castle!” said Cheerilee. “I’m hoping you’ll all enjoy this field trip slash educational experience!”

“Boring,” yawned Diamond Tiara. Silver Spoon snickered.

“Diamond Tiara!” called out Cheerilee. “I’m certain that if you think it’s boring, it’s because you already know the material. So, tell me. What is this?” Cheerilee gestured towards a statue.

“Um,” said Diamond Tiara. “A hydra?”

“No, it’s a draconequus. He has the head of a pony and a body made up of all sorts of things.”

“Looks lame,” said Diamond Tiara.

“I think it looks cool!” said Snips.

“Of course the guy dumb enough to bring an ursa into Ponyville would think that,” muttered Silver Spoon.

“Hey!” said Snails. “We were ruled legally not responsible for that!”

“Oh!” said Diamond Tiara as she sarcastically widened her eyes. “You know the word ‘legally.’ Clearly that means you’re smart. Not.”

“Oh yeah? Well I think you–”

“All right, that’s enough!” snapped Cheerilee, being far less cheerful than her name would suggest. “It’s ironic that you’re arguing, especially because this statue represents discord, which means a lack of harmony between ponies. Now let’s just move on or else I’ll start handing out detentions.”

They all left. No one took notice of the cracks that had appeared in the draconequus statue. Or, for that matter, the cracks in the other statues in the garden due to the general lack of upkeep on them.

Trixie was walking through Ponyville when she felt something liquid hit her on the head. “Ugh, what now?” She looked up and saw the clouds raining chocolate. “Haven’t seen that before,” she said.

“Hey! Trixie!” shouted Lightning Dust as she zoomed straight up to her taking shelter from the rain. “You don’t happen to know what’s going on with this chocolate rain, do you?”

“Wait, you don’t know? I just assumed this was some prank you were pulling.”

“Oh man, I wish I knew how to pull of a prank like this,” said Lightning Dust. After some consideration, she added, “Well, not enough to actually bother studying cloud composition enough to figure out if it’s possible to begin with, because that sounds boring.”

“Well, I’m going to get some buckets to make usage of all this free chocolate before it ends.”

Elsewhere…

Sunset’s concentration on putting a potion together was broken completely by a loud alarm noise. “What is that?” she asked as she looked around.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t actually remember what this particular alarm sound meant or what it was coming from. But she did know that it was extremely annoying and loud, so she had to find the source as quickly as possible. Several noisy minutes later, she finally discovered it was coming from a book that was loudly buzzing. Sighing, she opened it up and read what was in it. “Great, now I have to get those idiots together again. Joy.”

A short time later…

“All right, so we’re all on this train to Canterlot now,” said Suri. “Can you tell us exactly why it’s so critical we go that you couldn’t spend any time explaining why beforehand?”

Sunset shrugged. “I have no idea. I just got a message saying all of us had to head to Canterlot right away. I assume that since it was the seven of us who got summoned, it’s probably some stupid adventure or something we have to embark on.”

“Hey, the dragon thing wasn’t that bad!” said Trixie.

“Because you bailed on all of us the instant things looked like they were going slightly wrong!”

“So I guess we’re not going to get any answers until we get to Canterlot,” said Gilda with a sigh. “This had better be worth it. Probably has something to do with the chocolate rain and the cotton candy clouds and all the other crazy weather that seems like it was all done by some kind of candy-obsessed person.”

“Something comes to mind,” said Trixie.

“What?” asked Lightning Dust.

“If our lives were a film, would this scene be necessary?”

Everyone stared at Trixie.

“I mean,” she said, “it seems a bit redundant. It’s repeating things we either already know or presumably will learn once we get to Canterlot. If I was trying to adapt my life into a movie, this whole bit would be unnecessary, I think.”

“I vote that Trixie not talk for the rest of the train ride,” said Flim.

“Seconded!” said Flam.

“How’d you get the summons so fast anyway?” asked Lightning Dust. “The mail service isn’t that fast. Especially the Ponyville mail service.”

“Oh, well, I’ve got this journal that actually lets me communicate back and forth with Canterlot, because it magically writes in a journal they have there.”

“Why wasn’t this ever used before?”

“Because it’s only supposed to be used for absolute emergencies.”

“And Nightmare Moon wasn’t an emergency?”

“What’s with all the questions?” protested Sunset.

“Because the existence of such a sudden and convenient method of communication makes me wonder why it wasn’t used before!”

“Well, the reason I didn’t use it with Nightmare Moon was because… um… I forgot.”

“Seems plausible,” commented Suri.

“Okay,” said Trixie. “Now this scene would be worth inclusion, as it explains some critical points. Man, I have to write this all up in a screenplay sometime.”

“So do you think it would have been proper, if my life was a film, to include scenes of us moving from the train to where we are now? Or would a regular cut be sufficient?”

“Trixie,” Sunset said, eyes blazing with anger, “you’ve spent the last hour analyzing if every single thing that happens to us might work in a movie. We don’t care! Shut up!”

“I’m pretty sure that would’ve been mostly cut out if it was a film, though. The gag would get a little repetitive otherwise. How much do you think you would cut out?”

“Ignore Trixie,” said Sunset. “Now, what were you starting to tell us before somepony interrupted us for no reason?”

“Well,” said Shining Armor, “all this crazy weather and animal mutations is most likely the act of Discord. Now, our history books are a bit sketchy on the details, but apparently Discord was this guy who ruled over Equestria a long time ago but was sealed away by Celestia and Luna. Of course, later–”

“Yeah, yeah,” interrupted Sunset. “Celestia beat up Luna, Sombra beat up Celestia, and that’s how we got to our current state. I know how history goes. I want to know why he’s up and around now. More to the point, where is Sombra and why isn’t he telling us all this?”

Shining Armor shrugged. “Communication with him can be a bit slow due to his inability to speak, so it made some sense for me to do it all in order to speed things up.”

“Who cares?" asked Lightning Dust. “Just tell us why we have to be here.”

Shining Armor rolled his eyes but continued. “If Discord is back, we have to re-seal him, and since the Elements of Irony do technically belong to you, we wanted you to do it. You’ve been authorized to use them against him.”

“What, didn’t you guys have those super-powerful cannons and other weapons that were on par with the Elements? Why not just use those?”

“Well…” said Shining Armor with a bit of a guilty look. “Funny story there. Our weapons were supposed to get Discord-proofed, but there was a bit of a mix-up and all of our Discord-proofing material got used on our glass cups instead. Not only that, it’s not certain the weapons are strong enough to begin with. We haven’t really had any opportunity to test them against someone at Discord’s level. But the Elements are supposed to be inherently resistant to Discord’s powers and are known to be something that can defeat him, so we want to try them first.”

“So just take us to the Elements already, so we can do our thing and restore things to normal,” said Gilda.

“Right! Let’s go. The Elements are being held in a vault just down this way.”

The eight went to the aforementioned vault, which Shining Armor opened, only to discover nothing.

“Oh no!” said Flim. “They’ve disappeared!”

“Actually,” said Shining Armor, “this is a fake vault to trick potential robbers. He pressed a wall, which created a door. “This leads to the real vault.”

The real vault, however, was also empty.

“I don’t get it,” said Shining Armor. “This is supposed to be protected by a magical spell that only I or Sombra can break. This doesn’t make sense.”

“Make sense?” came a voice. “Oh, what fun is there in making sense?”

Everyone looked around for the source of the voice.

“Oh, darn it. You didn’t put the vault near stained glass windows? Did you know how awesome it would have been for me to appear in those? Ugh. I mean, it would’ve been so much more entertaining because you could’ve seen me and I could’ve moved around, but now I’m just stuck as a voice. Ugh.”

“Discord?” asked Shining Armor.

“The very same! Anyway, I just wanted to say–”

“Hey!” said Trixie. “I have a complaint!”

“Oh joy,” said Gilda, rolling her eyes.

“You can’t just say ‘what fun is there in making sense’ in response to what, if my life had been a movie, would be an obvious plot hole! You need some explanation as to how the Elements were removed!”

“See, this is the problem with the whole verbal-only communication,” said Discord’s voice. “If you could see me, I’d be able to be visually fatigued by your complaint, which would make my response more funny. Anyway, fine. I was just so powerful I was able to get past the spell. Is that good enough for you?”

“I don’t know, it would seem that if my life was a film–”

“No one cares, Trixie!” shouted everyone at once.

“Fine,” muttered Trixie. “But the audience would complain about weak writing, I’d think.”

“Anyway,” said Discord’s voice, “to find your missing Elements, just make sense of this change of events. Twists and turns are my master plan. Then find the elements back where you began.”

“I approve of the rhyming scheme!” declared Flam. “But what does that mean?”

“That’s why it’s a riddle! Figure it out yourself!”

Sunset considered it. “Maybe it’s that labyrinth that’s in the garden?”

“You guys go there,” said Shining Armor. “I’m going to do some extra research on Discord to see if he has some kind of weak point we've overlooked.”

The seven all looked up at the massive garden maze. “What was the purpose of putting such a gigantic maze in the castle garden? I mean, this thing is huge.”

“The gardener went a little crazy is what I heard.”

Discord suddenly appears. “Hi everypony!”

“Hi, Discord,” the rest all said unenthusiastically.

“Now I know you’re all probably ready to do stuff like fly around, but no can do!” He snapped his fingers, suddenly leaving Lightning Dust and Gilda without wings, and Sunset, Flim, Flam, and Trixie without horns. “The pegasus and griffon lose their wings, the unicorns lose their horns, and the earth pony loses… well, who cares about that.”

“Hey!” protested Suri.

“So anyway, the rules are you have to go through the maze without magic or wings or… whatever it is earth ponies get. And no quitting midway through! If anyone violates the rules, you lose the game!” He paused, then facepalmed. “Oh, great, now I just lost The Game!”

“I don’t get it,” said a confused Flam.

“Enh, it was never funny to begin with,” said Discord. “Regardless, those are the rules. Good luck!”

“Wait,” said Trixie. “This doesn’t make sense. If we can’t use magic or fly—as in, literally, can’t use magic or fly—how do we possibly break that rule?”

“Not the point! Now get going!” said Discord as he pointed to the maze.

The seven ponies all went into the maze, only for the hedges to suddenly separate all of them.

“Okay, uh, guys? Let’s just try to get to the center of the maze,” called out Sunset.

They all went off on their own paths.

“Well, at least you and I ended up sticking together,” said Flim.

“I know! Wasn’t that a lucky coincidence?” asked Flam.

Suddenly, three apples appeared in front of them, only to then run off.

“Moving apples!” declared Flam. “We could sell them and make a fortune!” The two ran after them, only to come upon a large orchard of apples.

“How in the world did all this get in the labyrinth?” wondered Flim.

More apples fell from the trees and converged together to make several weird-looking blobs that were made of apples.

“Huh. What are you guys?” wondered Flim.

“We are the keepers of the grove of truth. You may ask us one question, past, future, or present. But be warned that the truth may not always be pleasant.”

Flim and Flam briefly conferred with one another. “Got it!” said Flam. “What should we do to make the maximum amount of money?”

The apples seemed confused. “Um, you sure you don’t want to ask something like what happens at the end of this mission?”

“Who cares?” asked Flim. “What will happen in regards to that will happen. What I want is practical advice. How do we increase our cash flow?”

“Um,” said the apples. “Economics aren’t really our thing.”

“Fine, we’ll just go with the original idea. Grab those apples and sell them! People would pay a fortune for talking apples!”

“Gyah!” screamed the apples as they all jumped into a pool of water that immediately disappeared.

“Darn it,” said Flim. “Now we’re never going to get those apples. Let’s just go on.”

“Maybe we’ll find talking pears!” said Flam hopefully.

“Ugh, this is such a pain,” complained Gilda. “Why’d they make this thing so gigantic anyway?” Several butterflies suddenly appeared. “Butterflies? Meh.” She tried to swat them away, but they moved out of reach.

“So, Gilda, looks like you’ve been left behind by your so-called friends, huh?” asked one of the butterflies.

Gilda stared at the butterflies. “You can talk?”

“Focus, Gilda. Your friends left you behind, didn’t they?”

“If you take a really loose definition of ‘friends’ I suppose they qualify, but they didn’t leave me behind. Discord did something to the maze walls that separated us all.”

“Well, it must be upsetting to know how weak and helpless they think you are.”

“Uh, how would you arrive at that conclusion based on the facts established so far?” wondered Gilda. “We all got separated. Whether I was weak or strong doesn’t have relevance to that.”

“Well it burns you up, right? That they’re always pointing out your flaws?”

“Actually,” said Gilda, “I am getting kind of burned up by how dumb this conversation is. If you can’t help me through the maze, then just go away.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” said Discord as he appeared. “You’ve been kind for far too long, my dear. Time to be cruel.” He touched Gilda on the forehead.

Gilda looked around, confused. “Uh, did you do something to me?”

Now Discord was the one that looked confused. “Why didn’t that work?” he asked. He touched her on the head again.

“Why are you doing that?” asked Gilda. “It’s rather annoying. Look, if you don’t want me to go through the stupid maze, fine, but make up your mind.”

“Oh, screw it,” said Discord. “Maybe I’ll come back to you.” He snapped his fingers and vanished.

“Well, that was weird,” said Gilda.

Suri, meanwhile, was trying to make her own way through the maze when she discovered a wall with what appeared to be diamonds on it. “Oooh!” she said, her eyes widening. “These could be worth a lot! Forget getting to the center of the maze; I want these!” She examined them carefully. “Oh, wait, never mind. These aren’t real. Should’ve known they’d cheapen out on the decorations. Bah.”

Suri walked off.

Lightning Dust ran through the maze, looking around. Unfortunately, her lack of paying attention to where she was going caused her to slam straight into Discord, who fell down due to the impact. “Don’t you look where you’re going?” he asked irritably.

“Not as much as I probably should,” said Lightning Dust with a shrug. “Now let’s put them up! I bet I can take you on!”

“Well, if you’ll put that on hold for now, I do have a message for you. A weighty choice is yours to make. The right selection or a big mistake. If a wrong choice you choose to pursue–”

“Can you just give it to me straight instead of cryptic rhymes? I’m kind of in a hurry.”

Discord rolled his eyes. “Ugh, fine,” he said with a scowl. “Cloudsdale will crumble with you,” he said. He snapped his fingers and a vision of a being-destroyed Cloudsdale appeared. There was an awkward pause. “So, aren’t you going to run off and try to save Cloudsdale?” he asked.

“Enh,” said Lightning Dust dismissively. “Don’t really care that much for the place. Besides, even though I’m awesome, I doubt there’s any disaster or destruction they couldn’t handle without my help that they could handle with my help.”

“Oh come on!” said Discord, looking flustered and irritated. “You’re supposed to be so concerned for Cloudsdale that you forsake your friends once I offer you some wings! That’s going against your Loyalty element and helps me win!”

“Wait. Wouldn’t going to Cloudsdale show my loyalty to Cloudsdale, thereby being a demonstration of loyalty?”

Discord stared blankly.

“I mean, if there’s two things you’re loyal to, and you have to choose between them, that would be showing loyalty to one of them. Wouldn’t either decision be an expression of loyalty?” She stroked her chin in contemplation. “I suppose you could try to claim one deserves more loyalty, but that’s difficult to quantify.”

“Fine!” snapped Discord. “How about I guarantee you entry to the Wonderbolts if you agree to give up this quest to get the Elements?”

“You can do that?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Sure! Once I’m ruler, I can do whatever I want, including forcing them to immediately accept you. And if you join with me, it’ll be sure I will be ruler! How about it, Lightning Dust?”

“This won’t cause anything bad to happen to the world that could adversely affect me, right?”

“No,” said Discord with a groan and a sigh. “It won’t. If you don’t like something, I’ll undo it for you.”

“Sounds great! You’ve got a deal!”

The two stared at each other in silence.

“So, uh, we have a deal, right?” asked Lightning Dust.

Discord looked at Lightning Dust with confusion. “You’re supposed to be turning gray, you know.”

“Why in the world would I do that? That would just make me look lame.”

Discord face-palmed. “All right, this is getting ridiculous. What do I have to do to get you corrupted? Nothing is working!”

“So wait, no Wonderbolts entry? The deal wasn’t for real? Darn it.”

“Okay, that is it!” said Discord crossly. He snapped his fingers and disappeared. Lightning Dust stared after him, then shrugged and continued on.

Eventually all seven of them made it to the center of the maze.

“Here we are in the center of the maze!” said Trixie.

“We know,” said everyone else.

“So, did anybody else encounter Discord on the way here?” asked Gilda. “Because I did, and he was all weird.”

“Yeah,” said Lightning Dust, “it seemed like he was trying to achieve something, but it didn’t work and he gave up.”

They all shared the details of their encounters with Discord.

“I can’t believe I didn’t get one,” complained Trixie. “What, does he not think I’m worth it?”

“Look,” said Sunset, “none of that matters. The question is, where are the Elements? Weren’t they supposed to be here?”

Discord suddenly appeared. “Well, actually, you just assumed they were; I never explicitly said that. Bet you feel pretty dumb right now, eh?”

Sunset stared to answer, but Discord cut her off. “That was a rhetorical question. Anyway, that’s not the point. You know what?” Discord threw his hands up in exasperation. “I finally figured it out. I couldn’t corrupt you idiots because you’re all already sociopaths! There’s no point!” He stamped his foot in annoyance. “How in the world did you manage to gain access to the Elements of Harmony when you’re all so obviously the opposite of them?”

“Elements of Harmony?” asked Sunset, feeling puzzled.

“Yeah, the Elements of Harmony! The things that were used to seal me in the first place! Isn’t that what you’re looking for?”

“No, we were looking for the Elements of Irony. Never heard of the Elements of Harmony.”

“Oh,” said Discord. “Huh. Wonder what happened to them. Could something mysterious have happened in the intervening years to change them from the Elements of Harmony to the Elements of Irony?” He stroked his beard in contemplation. “Well, it has been quite a few years. Maybe I just got things mixed up. My memory could have been playing tricks on me.” He shrugged. “Guess it doesn’t really matter at the moment, though.”

“So, uh, where does that leave us?” asked Sunset.

“You can keep your stupid Elements, which weren’t even in the maze to begin with; they’re back in Ponyville, as hinted in the poem. Anyway, until I can think of some way to have fun with you guys, I’m just going to go on vacation. Oh yeah, and here’s your stuff back. You unicorns get back your horns, you pegasi and griffons get back your wins, and you earth ponies get back… whatever it is you have.” He snapped his fingers and everything returned.

“Wait a minute!” said Trixie. “I have some questions! If you’re so super powerful, why did you bother with all of this stuff in the maze? Why give us any hints at all? Heck, if the Elements are all you fear, why not just put them someplace we’d never find them and give us no hint? And then take away our powers just to be sure? There’s just so many things you could have done to easily achieve victory, and yet you chose this roundabout way. You’re not as dumb as Nightmare Moon, but it still kinda seems like your evil plots aren’t that smart. I can tell you, if my life was a film, the audience would be really angry about your constant idiocy.”

Discord glared at Trixie. “Okay, just for that you get the penalty box.” He snapped his fingers and she disappeared.

“What’s the penalty box?” asked Flim.

“Hope you don’t have to find out!” said Discord.

“Hey!” said Suri. “I just remembered something! I think you were the one responsible for that brief bit of generosity I was doing a while ago!”

Discord shrugged. “Huh, don’t remember that. Maybe later on I got bored and went back in time to fiddle around with things. Meh.”

“Before you go on vacation, could you possibly get us some of those talking apples? Those really would be worth a fair amount,” said Flim.

“See, this is what I’m talking about,” said Discord. “I can’t have any fun with you because you’re all already screwed up. Anyway, I hear Acapulco is nice this time of year. Arrivederci!” He snapped his fingers and disappeared. They all stared at each other.

“Guess that’s a no,” said Flam.

“Darn it!” said Flim. “I bet talking apples would be the next big thing, too.”

“I’m just disappointed about the fact the gems were fake,” said Suri. “I would’ve loved to have those things if they were real. But Discord was so rude. Sociopath? Screwed up? I’m perfectly fine! Where did he get any of that from?”

“Yeah,” agreed Lightning Dust. “That seemed kinda harsh. What, wanting to join the Wonderbolts makes me screwed up now?”

“Don’t really care,” said Sunset dismissively. “Well, this whole thing felt really dumb. Guess we might as well tell Shining Armor we won… kind of.”

They all made their way out of the maze and met Shining Armor. “Discord seems to be gone for now,” said Lightning Dust.

“You re-sealed him with the Elements?” he asked. “Wait, that can’t be it. You still don’t have them.”

“He kind of got bored and decided to leave,” said Lightning Dust with a shrug.

“Well,” said Shining Armor, “the weather does seem back to normal, so I guess he is gone, at least for now. Did you happen to find out where the Elements were, at least?”

“Yeah, he said that they were back in Ponyville.”

“Great!” said Shining Armor. “I’ll just send another member of the royal guard back with you guys to pick them up. By the way, even if it was apparently somewhat accidental, I’m sure that aiding in defeating Discord is definitely going to look great on your guys’ records!”

“So do we get some kind of epic awards ceremony for defeating Discord?” asked Lightning Dust eagerly.

“Well, you didn’t exactly defeat him,” said Shining Armor. “But I’d say you do deserve at least something. But definitely no ‘epic awards ceremony’ because we’re kind of low on funds right now. It really cost us a whole lot to get the castle fixed up after that whole Gala disaster, and then there were also the reparations for the foreign dignitaries. But I’m sure we can scrounge up something to give you all as a gift.”

“By the way,” said Sunset, “I know this is kind of coming out of nowhere, but I wanted to kind of clear the air on something. You’re Twilight’s brother, so… you don’t happen to bear any grudges against me about what happened to her, right?”

“You mean the fact that after that ursa incident, we haven’t been able to find her? The assumption being that she’s convinced she’s going to go to prison if she’s discovered, so she’s on the run?”

“Yeah,” said Sunset with a guilty look. “That.” I really don’t want to be on his bad side. Could hurt my promotion chances, she thought.

“Several years ago, I probably would have been upset about it,” he said. “But Twilight and I… haven’t been on the greatest of terms for a while.”

“Why?” asked Sunset.

“That’s between me and her,” said Shining Armor in a voice that made it clear he wanted the subject to end there. “Besides, if I were to get angry, it’d be at Lightning Dust or Trixie, not you.”

“That’s right!” said Lightning Dust proudly. “Er, wait, what?”

“You know,” said Flam, “I do want to know the reason Discord didn’t zap us all away when he apparently has the power, or why he didn’t use the opportunity to take over Equestria while Trixie was gone.”

“Well,” said Shining Armor, “I’ve done a little bit of research while you were in the maze, and apparently all draconequus have a whole lot of extremely random and arbitrary limits to their power, though exactly what they are is unknown to everypony else. I guess under those restrictions, he wasn’t able to do it due to whatever random limitation there was. Oh yeah, about Trixie. What happened to her? I assumed she was just getting here a little slowly, but she’s still not here. Where is she?”

“Penalty box,” said Gilda.

“Penalty box?”

“Penalty box.”

Meanwhile…

“All right,” said Stormy Skies crossly. “We’re 0-for-2 so far with your plans. If this one doesn’t work, I’m coming up with the next one.”

“Well, all we have to do is impress Discord enough that he’ll cut us in on the ground floor of his new empire,” said Thunder Strike. “Granted, it won’t give us the rule of Equestria we desire, but as long as Discord’s around we won’t be ruling it anyway, so we might as well get the best thing that’s available at the moment.”

“I know all that,” said Stormy Skies. “Why do you feel the need to tell me that again?”

“Just making sure we’re on the same page,” he said. “Now let’s find Discord! The Shadowbats will gain their rightful place as rulers—or semi-rulers in this case—of Equestria!”

“I still want to register the fact I think Shadowbats is a really stupid name,” said Stormy Skies.

“Now you’re the one repeating things I already know. Let’s go!”

Stormy Skies, Thunder Strike, and Maelstrom Tempest all took off at breakneck speed. Unfortunately, this was all too literal, as they broke their necks and had to go to the hospital.

“Okay,” said Thunder Strike while lying in the hospital bed. “You can’t hold that one against me. That actually had nothing to do with the plan at all. I still get the next one!”

Stormy Skies, also lying in a bed, pulled out a newspaper. “According to this, Discord is gone. Therefore, that plan would have failed regardless. So I do get it next time!”

“Oh come on! That shouldn’t count!”

“Ha! Doesn’t matter; your plan won’t work anymore! Next time, we do things my way! And that means you have to pay for the medical bills!”

“What?!” asked Thunder Strike. “That’s ridiculous and has nothing to do with plans!”

The two continued arguing. “Hrm,” said Maelstrom Tempest.

Several days later…

“Special delivery!” declared an all-too-familiar voice.

“Maybe now I’ll get that award!” said Sunset. She ran over to the door and opened it. The mailmare gave her a letter and flew off.

“Odd, usually she’s more talkative.” Sunset shrugged. “Whatever, let’s see what I got.”

She tore open the envelope to find a letter. “In recognition for your achievement in sort of defeating Discord,” she read, “please enjoy this free 2-year membership in the Jelly of the Month club.”

Sunset stared at the letter for a little longer, then finally went over to write a letter herself.

Dear King Sombra,

I’ve really got nothing for this one. Sorry.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

In a completely different story…

Rocky scratched his head in confusion. “I don’t think that was the right lesson, Bullwinkle,” he said.

“It did seem off,” admitted Bullwinkle. “Let’s try something else. Hey, Rocky! Watch me put a rabbit out of my hat!”

“But that trick never works!” protested Rocky.

“This time for sure!” said Bullwinkle. “Presto!” He reached into the hat and pulled out a blue female unicorn. “Huh. That one’s new.”

The unicorn sighed. “Penalty box,” she muttered ruefully.

Lesson 0

Sunset Shimmer paced back and forth in her house. “Okay, think,” she said to herself. “I really do need to do a better job with these friendship lessons. I suppose that one when we visited Cloudsdale was at least technically something I learned, even if not related to friendship, and I suppose I can count that one after the Discord nonsense to count as my singleton opportunity to just say ‘I didn’t learn anything.’ I have to come up with something real for my next one if I want to try to keep Sombra impressed.” She paused. “And I’d better do it fast, because it’s making me talk to myself constantly, which I read somewhere is a sign of insanity.”

She continued pacing back and forth. “I could make something up, but what if he finds out? That’d be even worse than making a bad one. I guess I’ll just have to visit some of those idiots I know. They’re always screwing things up, and I suppose if I put forward the effort to fix whatever they broke, I can find a lesson in there somewhere.”

Inspired with her new plan, she walked to the door, or at least she tried to. However, she had been pacing back and forth for so long that she actually wore the floor down a bit, causing her to trip due to the sudden elevation change. “Life is pain,” she muttered to herself before getting up and leaving the house.

Gilda’s house was the closest to hers, so she decided to go there. However, upon reaching the door, she noticed a note taped to it. “Busy with Diamond Dogs. If you really need me, I’m on the outskirts of Ponyville towards the Everfree Forest,” she read. “Wait, Diamond Dogs? Is she using them to perpetrate more pranks or something?”

Sunset dashed off towards the Everfree Forest. However, her dashing soon turned to walking as her endurance ran out due to that side of Ponyville actually being a bit of a ways away. “I need to get in shape,” she muttered to herself.

Eventually she reached the edge of Ponyville. After walking just a little longer, she found Gilda standing in front of some Diamond Dogs while holding a gun.

She must be terrorizing them, thought Sunset. All right, if I can stop her, I’ll be able to say I learned something about stopping bullying or something dumb like that.

“So, to repeat one more time to make sure you guys understand, the most important–” started Gilda before being cut off by Sunset lunging onto her and grabbing the gun.

“I won’t let you use your gun to intimidate these poor creatures!” declared Sunset, holding the gun as it pointed at Gilda. “The lesson here is that bullying is wrong!”

Gilda got up. “What the… huh? Bullying? I’m just giving these guys gun safety lessons.”

Sunset stared at Gilda. “Gun… safety lessons?”

“Well, duh,” said Gilda. “They can actually operate these things due to their fingers. I doubt they’ll ever get their hands on any, but in the off chance they do, I’m trying to make sure everyone who might use a gun knows proper gun safety to prevent accidents. Because accidents lead to complaints, and complaints lead to,” Gilda shuddered, “gun control laws.”

Gilda grabbed her gun back and turned back to the dogs. “Now, Sunset has demonstrated exactly how not to follow the most important rule of gun control, which again, is to never point it at anything you’re not willing to shoot at. Now, while the gun isn’t loaded this wasn’t quite as dangerous as it should have been, you should be following this even if the safety is on or if it’s not loaded. More gun accidents happen because…”

Sunset lost interest and walked off. “Okay, so that wasn’t helpful at all,” she muttered to herself. “I bet I can find Suri ripping somepony off.”

Sunset went to Suri’s store. As she approached it, a male earth pony left the store carrying a large number of clothes. “Did Suri totally rip you off with high prices?”

The earth pony looked at her quizzically. “Uh, she gave me these for free.”

“Wait, free?!” exclaimed Sunset. “As in, for no money?”

“That is generally what the word ‘free’ means,” said the earth pony flatly.

“Actually, that’s false,” said Sunset. “I’m pretty sure that the word ‘free’ is more commonly used to refer to not being under the control of somepony else or being unrestrained.”

The earth pony stared at her. “Uh, okay. Anyway, I’m free to end this conversation right now.” He walked off.

Sunset suddenly became aware of what she just said. “Arguing about what’s the most common definition of the word ‘free’? Argh, I really am getting stressed if I’m doing something stupid like that. Okay. Time to see Suri and hope that I can get something out of this.” She entered the store.

“Oh, well, hello, darling,” said Suri as she suddenly flew up to Sunset and put her hoof around her neck. “I can see you’re clearly in distress! Do you need an outfit repaired? Or a new one?”

Sunset looked at Suri’s rather intimate holding of her and also remembered her usage of the word ‘darling.’ She put Suri’s hoof away. “Okay, I’m flattered, maybe even a little curious, but the answer is no.”

Suri stared blankly at Sunset. “Huh?”

“Wait, weren’t you hitting on me?” asked Sunset.

Suri facehoofed. “No! I was trying to be nice! Never going to bother trying that again with you.”

“You were trying to be nice? Did Discord put you under a spell again?”

“Not as far as I know,” said Suri.

“Anyway, what I wanted to know was why you gave away all those clothes for free.”

“What? I can’t be a little generous?”

“Uh, not really,” said Sunset.

“Well, I was! Now buy something or get out!”

Deciding she wasn’t likely to get anything out of the situation by remaining, Sunset left.

“Hrm, maybe I did go a little far in trying to be nice,” said Suri. “At least donating all of those dresses I couldn’t sell anyway should go a long way to making myself look better in the community.”

Unbeknownst to Suri, Sunset had been listening in to her from outside. “Oh, I guess that’s the reason,” she muttered to herself. Realizing she was still no closer to finding something to write a friendship report on, she decided to try Lightning Dust next. However, Lightning Dust, like Gilda, wasn’t home. Only a sign saying “At Sweet Apple Acres” was an indication of where she had gone.

On her way to Sweet Apple Acres, Sunset heard a lot of loud noises. She quickened her pace to see what was going on. When she reached the area, she saw Lightning Dust in the process of destroying a barn.

“Huh,” Sunset said. “Guess Lightning Dust is angry at Flim and Flam again and figures that destruction of property would get her a lesser prison sentence than battery. Time to go to work!”

Sunset ran up to Lightning Dust. “Hey! Lightning Dust!”

Lightning Dust turned around. “What’s going on?”

“I know you’re upset with Flim and Flam again, but don’t worry! I’m sure I can help you resolve it.”

Lightning Dust appeared confused. “What are you talking about?”

Sunset grabbed Lightning Dust’s face with her hooves. “Oh, Lightning Dust, you don’t have to hide my feelings from me! I–”

Lightning Dust pushed Sunset away. “Whoa, whoa, hang on there. Okay, I’m flattered, maybe even a little curious, but the answer is no.”

“What do you…” started Sunset before realizing what she meant. “Oh, um, whoops. I didn’t mean that to come across like it did. This is why I usually try to avoid contact with others. I was referring to your feelings towards Flim and Flam.”

“Bleh!” said Lightning Dust, sticking out her tongue. “That’s just as gross!”

“I don’t mean romantically! I mean feelings in general! Before you cut me off, I was going to say ‘I know you must have had a fight or something.’”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you’re destroying their barn?” asked Sunset, resisting the urge to throttle Lightning Dust.

“Oh, that? No, they asked me to. They don’t use this one anymore and wanted to use this space for other stuff.”

“Oh,” said Sunset. “How much are they paying you?”

“They’re not actually paying me,” said Lightning Dust. “I’m doing this for free.”

“To satisfy your inner destructive urges?” asked Sunset.

“Nah,” said Lightning Dust, “I’ve got your house for that. I’m just trying to help others out so I can add ‘community service’ to my resume, which might help me get into the Wonderbolts. Gotta do something to offset the whole criminal record thing.”

Sunset looked around. “Where are Flim and Flam?”

“Oh, they’re off donating to some charity.”

“Let me guess, a fake one.”

“No,” said Lightning Dust. “I think they learned their lesson on that after that whole ‘Human Fund’ debacle. It’s a real one.”

“Why would they do that?”

“It’s the right thing to do?” asked Lightning Dust. Sunset stared at her. “Okay, fine. They barely passed the top of their income bracket this year, so if they donate some of the money they can reduce their total income reported by that amount. Since that’ll lower them to the previous bracket and reduce their tax rate, it’ll actually make them more money.”

“Huh,” Sunset said.

“Anyway, you might want to go away, because there’s going to be a big explosion soon!” said Lightning Dust. Sunset took the hint and ran off.

“Ugh,” she said to herself as she walked home. “Of course it’d be today they all decided to not be selfish idiots. What am I supposed to do? Figures Trixie is still missing; I’m sure she’d provide me with something.”

Sunset walked home and took out a piece of paper. She stared at it for a while, willing a friendship letter to be written on it. When that didn’t work, she willed harder. When that still didn’t work, she gave up on the idea and started pacing back and forth again.

“There has to be something to write about… think, Sunset, think! Ugh, why did all of them decide to actually be productive citizens the one day I needed them to be their usual selves?” She paused. “Wait, why did they? It was because it benefited themselves… wait, that’s it!”

Sunset ran back to the piece of paper and started writing.

Dear King Sombra,

Today I learned that even selfish motivations can still occasionally produce positive results for other people. Even jerks can sometimes be nice.

Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer

She stared at the letter. “Well, I guess that’s the best I’m going to come up with.” She sealed it in an envelope and put it in the mailbox outside.

As she turned to go back into the house, a voice called to her. “Hey, uh, sorry to bother you, but could you maybe help me out?”

Sunset turned around again and saw a unicorn stallion. “Uh, hi,” he said. “I know this is awkward, but through a whacky series of circumstances, I ended up losing the money I had, and now I can’t buy a ticket back to Canterlot. Any chance you could help?”

“What do I look like, a bank?” snapped Sunset.

“Well I’m kinda in the royal guard, and I think Shining Armor and maybe even Sombra might be annoyed if I don’t get back in time.”

“And the bank is open now!” said Sunset, handing him some money.

“Oh, thanks!” he said. “I heard you were kind of a jerk, but I see you’re actually really nice!” He left.

Sunset stared off at him, then shrugged and went back inside. However, she tripped again on the hole left by her constant pacing. “I really need to stop pacing,” she muttered to herself.

Lunar Eclipse

Sunset was, for once, in a good mood, having recently been notified that she didn't have to keep sending friendship reports out. She wasn't exactly certain why this change was effected, but she also didn't care enough to find out. However, she was distracted from her reverie by a knock on the door. “Didn’t the mail already come?” she wondered out loud. She went over and opened the door. Several children were outside dressed in costumes.

“Nightmare Night! What a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!” they said.

Sunset stared at them for a few seconds, then slammed the door shut.

“Told you she wouldn’t give us anything,” said one of the kids. They walked off.

Meanwhile, back inside, Sunset groaned to herself. “Oh, right, Nightmare Night. Stupid holiday. It was much nicer back in Canterlot where I lived in an apartment, so I didn’t have to bother with any of it. Ugh.”

Knocking on the door interrupted her monologue. She opened it to discover more children. “Nightmare Night! What a fright! Give us–” they started to say before she slammed the door on them again.

“This is going to be an annoyance,” she muttered to herself.

“Nightmare Night! What a fright! Give–”

SLAM!

“Nightmare Night! What–”

SLAM!

“Nightmare–”

SLAM!

“Sunset Shimmer! We have graced your–”

SLAM!

Sunset Shimmer did a double take. “Wait, what was that last one?” She went back and opened the door to discover a dark blue alicorn standing outside. “Er, do I know you?”

“Sunset Shimmer!” the alicorn said in a deep, booming voice. “We have graced your tiny village with our presence, so that you might behold the real Princess of the Night! A creature of–”

“Er,” Sunset interrupted, “could you tell me who you are? Because I’ve only met one alicorn and she looked different than you.”

“We are that alicorn!”

“No,” said Sunset. “She was more gray colored, lighter-coated, and her hair wasn’t all wavy. Which is kind of cool, by the way. How can I get my hair to do that?”

The alicorn sighed. “No, we are Princess Luna! Well, okay, not exactly princess anymore, but Luna nevertheless! Did you forget that whole Nightmare Moon thing?”

Sunset stared. “That was you?”

“Yes! But thanks to a way that most assuredly involved neither torture nor brainwashing, we are back to normal! So we were hoping to use tonight as an opportunity to make ourselves look better!”

Sunset looked around. “Uh, you keep saying ‘we,’ but I don’t see anypony else. Also, could you tone it down? You’re being really loud.”

“But this is the traditional royal Canterlot voice! It is tradition to speak using the royal ‘we,’ and to use a booming voice such as this to address our subjects!”

This is going to be painful, though Sunset to herself, but she knew better than to deny the request of someone affiliated with the federal government. “Well, for starters, you’re going to have to cut out that weird royal we and also stop with the booming voice.”

“Why in the world would we need to do that?” asked Luna loudly.

This is going to be really painful, Sunset thought. “Well, here, I’ll show you.”

She left her house and closed the door behind her, then gestured for Luna to follow her. Spotting some children, she said, “Okay, go over there and try to talk nicely to them.”

Luna walked over to them. In her usual booming voice, she declared “Together we shall change this dreadful celebration into a bright and glorious feast!”

The kids looked at her for a few seconds. One shouted, “Stranger danger!” and they all ran away screaming.

“See?” asked Sunset. “You have to quiet down.”

“Oh,” said Luna without lowering her voice. “Any suggestions on how to do that?”

Sunset knocked on the door. “Come on out, Fluttershy!” No answer came. She knocked some more. “Come on! I need to talk to Ponyville’s resident quiet-talker!” Still no response.

Sunset turned to Luna. “Do I have governmental permission to knock down the door?”

“No,” said Luna.

“Hey!” shouted Sunset to the door. “I have governmental permission to knock down this door if you don’t open it up!”

“But we just said–”

“Yeah, I know,” said Sunset quietly, “it’s all a bluff.”

The door finally opened very slowly. Once it was opened just a crack, though, Sunset grabbed it and pushed it open, revealing an extremely scared-looking pegasus. “Eep!” she said as she looked as if she was trying to figure out which way to run.

“So anyway, I need you to help teach Luna here how to speak more quietly,” said Sunset.

Fluttershy made a squeaking noise.

“Don’t give me that! I’ve seen you can be assertive when you want to be! Just stop whining and help me with this!”

Fluttershy mumbled something inaudibly.

“Couldn’t hear that! Talk louder!”

Fluttershy muttered something else inaudibly.

“I know you’re supposed to teach being quiet, but not this quiet! Speak up!"

More mumbling.

“Ugh,” said Sunset with a groan. “Look, if this is your normal talking voice, just shout. I’m sure that’ll be a regular voice for you.”

“OKAY!” shouted Fluttershy. Unfortunately, she was actually so loud this time that the soundwave sent Sunset and Luna flying backwards and slamming into a tree. “Um, too loud?” she asked nervously

“You know,” said Luna, “maybe Fluttershy isn’t the best one to teach being quiet.”

“Well, this actually gives me an idea,” said Sunset. “How about you try whispering?”

“Like this?” asked Luna in a normal voice.

“Exactly!” said Sunset. “Whispering for you is actually normal talking! Problem solved! Now go and enjoy Nightmare Night while I go back home!”

Sunset started to walk off, but was halted by Luna. “Wait! What if they still don’t like me? I need you to come along just in case!”

Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself. “Fine,” she said out loud, “let’s go.” Please let everypony like her so I can get out of this.

The two returned to the town square. “Now, just go and have some fun.”

“Fun?” asked Luna. “What is this fun?”

“Okay, seriously,” said Sunset, “I have to ask. How in the world did they think it was a good idea for you to come to Ponyville when you don’t seem to understand social norms at all?”

Luna grinned sheepishly. “We may have… Er, I may have sort of come on my own without letting them know.”

Of course, thought Sunset. “Well, ‘fun’ is just doing something you enjoy. So maybe you could try playing the various games that are around. Like… that one!” Sunset pointed to a game where people would try to throw spiders at webs. “Have fun!”

Luna tried the game. After several attempts, she managed to succeed. “Huzzah! How many points do I receive?”

“Uh, this game doesn’t have points. You just try to throw the spider there,” said Sunset.

“If it doesn’t have points, how does anypony know who is ahead?”

“You got me,” said Sunset with a shrug. “I don’t see the point of any game that I don’t win.”

“Well, I found it enjoyable regardless!” said Luna.

“At least you seem to have dropped the ‘we’ business.”

“Let us partake in further merriment!” declared Luna.

“And there it goes again,” muttered Sunset.

“Oh, you misunderstand. By ‘us’ I refer to the two of us!” She grabbed Sunset. “Two great friends against the world! Or at least the games of the world! Nothing will stop us!”

“Hey! Hey!” said Sunset, pushing Luna away. “Personal space! Personal space!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Sunset didn’t want to put up with the alicorn any longer, but she knew that quitting now could make herself look bad. So she simply sighed and went along with Luna to play more games.

Not counting a mishap involving banana cream pie, things went without incident for the next few minutes. Observing things seemed to be going well, Sunset used the opportunity to slip away. “Maybe now I can get a break,” she muttered to herself. However, in her mutterings she wasn’t looking where she was going, causing her to walk straight into someone.

“Ow! Why don’t you look where you’re going?” asked the someone she had just walked into.

“Why don’t you–” started Sunset before seeing who she ran into. “Trixie! You’re back? Where have you been? What was the penalty box?”

“Don’t ask!” snapped Trixie. She abruptly stopped when she saw Luna. “AAAH! Nightmare Moon!” she shouted.

Apparently, simply screaming “Nightmare Moon” was enough to cause havoc and pandemonium to reign. Shortly into their reign, they gave birth to chaos. Luna’s attempts to fix of the situation, such as turning the toy spiders into real ones and multiplying them, only caused chaos to then have a younger sibling in the form of mayhem.

“BE STILL!” Luna finally screamed in a voice even louder than her previously loud voice. Everyone else, terrified of her, simply stood around whimpering. “Since you choose to fear your princess—well, former princess, but that’s besides the point—rather than love her, and dishonor her with this insulting celebration, we decree that Nightmare Night shall be canceled! Forever!”

Sunset had to work very hard to contain her utter glee at this announcement. “Oh, how sad,” she said in the most emotional voice she can muster, which had about as much emotion as something that lacks a particular something has of that particular something it lacks. Luna started to stalk away.

Help her out or just go home? thought Sunset to herself. Wait, why am I even asking myself a question I already know?

“So, Sunset,” said Trixie, pulling up to her, “have I been the talk of the town since my disappearance?”

“Actually,” said Sunset, “nopony really cared or noticed you were gone.”

“In that case,” declared Trixie, “the Great and Powerful Trixie must do everything in her power to remind everypony of her existence so much they’ll never ignore the fact she’s missing!”

“I think they might have noticed, but just in how they were being irritated less,” said Sunset. “Anyway, I’m going home to celebrate the fact there are no more Nightmare Nights.”

Sunset went home. Somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes later, however, she heard a large commotion. She left the house to see what it was and discovered Luna running through the town square away from a group of royal guards. Unfortunately for her, they were able to catch up and subdue her.

“All right, Luna,” one of them said, “you’ve terrified enough ponies tonight. We’ve talked about this. It’s time to bring you back now. And we’ll need to do some more reprogramming.”

“What?!” screamed Luna. “No, not that again! Not Room 101!”

Luna’s screams were quickly muffled by a gag as the royal guards led her away. Sunset ran up to them.

“So, uh,” asked Sunset to one of the guards, “is there still no more Nightmare Night? She said there wouldn’t be.”

“Oh, of course there is,” he said. “Luna here doesn’t have the authority to make a decree like that.”

“Oh, okay,” said Sunset. Darn it.

“Though it is a shame,” continued the guard. “If she had been able to connect with everypony here in some way and shown she was ready to integrate back into society, that would’ve been great. If somepony had managed that, that certainly would have won them a lot of points with the government and practically assured them a high-paying job of some sort. Ah well.”

Sunset stared off at at them as they left, then went back into her house. “I hate everypony,” she said.

“Nooo!” screamed Luna. “Not more reprogramming!”

“Sorry, but you have to do it,” said the unicorn in the room with her. “Now, let’s ease ourselves into it for a bit and start with this.” The screen lit up and the following displayed on it:

public class FirstTest
{

public static void main(String[] args)

{

System.out.print(“This is the first line.”)

System.out.print(“This is the second line.”)

}
}

“Now, how would we fix it so that ‘This is the second line.’ actually displays on the second line?”

“Replacing the first ‘System.out.print’ with ‘System.out.println’ should do it,” said Luna is a dull voice, as if answering a basic math problem.

“Good! See? This totally relaxes you and aids in your rehabilitation. Now for the next bit of reprogramming!” A new bit of code appeared on the screen.

“Can’t we at least do something more challenging? This is beginner’s stuff,” Luna protested.

“Hey, this is called Room 101 for a reason!” said the unicorn. “Do a good enough job and maybe you’ll move up to Room 102.”

Luna sighed. “I wish this had at least been Perl.”

A Hearth's Warming Eve Carol

“Bleh,” said Suri. “I hate Hearth’s Warming Eve. Nopony is interested in buying clothes around this time. They’ve already purchased all their winter gear. Biggest shopping season of the year and I can’t even profit from it!” She growled in frustration. Her irritation, however, was interrupted by a knock on the door. Desperately hoping it was a customer, she went over to open it.

“Hi! Would you like to donate to the homeless?” asked the unicorn on the other side of the door.

“I gave at the office!” snapped Suri.

“But you don’t work at an office,” said the unicorn.

“Are you going to buy something?” asked Suri.

“Well, no, but if you wouldn’t mind donating some outfits, that would be–”

They were interrupted by Suri slamming the door on them. “Well, it was worth a shot,” he muttered to himself.

“Bah, humbug!” declared Suri. She paused. “Huh, that was an odd thing to say.”

Later…

Suri went up the stairs to her bedroom. As she reached for the doorknob, it suddenly mutated into a weird face before turning back into a doorknob.

“I don’t know what I was thinking when I installed that ‘face doorknob’ installed,” said Suri, shaking her head. She went into the room and went to sleep.

Still later…

“Hey, Suri! Wake up!”

Suri continued snoring.

“I said wake up!”

More snoring.

“Ugh. Hey, Suri, I want to buy something from you.”

Suri suddenly sprang up from the bed. “What do you want?” she asked, turning on a light. She looked at the figure standing in her room and screamed. “A burglar!”

Suri grabbed a lamp and held it threateningly towards the figure. “Stay back! I have an antique lamp from the post-Classical period, and I know how to use it!”

The figure finally walked into the light, revealing a green, translucent earth pony wearing various chains. “I am the ghost of your former partner, Marely!”

“Wait, I never had a partner named Marely,” said Suri, feeling confused. “There was this one assistant I had for a while, but she quit, and I wouldn’t really call her a ‘partner.’ Not to mention that she’s not dead as far as I know. Her name wasn’t Marely, in any case.”

“Uh, well, I am the ghost of your non-existent partner, Marely! And if you continue on your present course, you’re going to end up like me!”

“Nonexistent?” asked Suri.

“Yes!” said Marely. “I mean, no! I mean that like me, you’ll have to carry these chains around forever after you die because you’re so greedy.”

“Are you sure it’s a matter of greed?” asked Suri. “It seems more like you have bondage issues or something.”

“Not the point!”

“And in fact,” said Suri, “now that I look more closely, they look like they’re made of plastic.”

“Look,” said Marely, “we were low on budget, okay?”

“Why are you trying to warn me anyway?” asked Suri. “If you were supposedly so bad in life, why are you suddenly so nice? What kind of a reward do you get for this?”

Marely shrugged. “A paycheck. There isn’t much in the job market for ghosts, you know. Anyway, you will be visited by three other ghosts tonight.”

“Can they put it off for a few days? I’d love to be able to charge people entry to a haunted house.”

“Okay, you know what?” said Marely. “I quit. The pay isn’t worth this.” She took off the chains and walked away.

Suri stared after her for a while. “Well, that was a weird dream. Now I’m going back to sleep.”

Suddenly, there was a flash of light. When it cleared, a translucent Sunset Shimmer stood there. “Hi! I’m the ghost of Hearth’s Warming Eve past!”

Suri continued staring. “Uh, no, you’re Sunset Shimmer.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Look, just because I have a passing resemblance to somepony you know–”

“You don’t just have a passing resemblance! You look identical outside of the whole transparency thing!”

“I’m not Sunset Shimmer!”

“Sunset Shimmer says what,” said Suri.

“Huh?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, darn it, you messed up the whole thing,” complained Suri.

Sunset sighed, closed her eyes, and counted to ten before opening her eyes again. “Anyway, I’m supposed to show you your past, when you weren’t the super-greedy pony you are now. Gotta be some point where you were much nicer!” She pulled out a book and started flipping through it. “Um… er… hrm.” She closed the book. “Okay, this might be harder than I expected.”

“Just hurry up,” said Suri. “I’m not paying you by the hour, you know.”

“You’re not paying me at all!” said Sunset. She paused. “In fact, nopony pays me anything! I’m going on strike until I do get paid!” She vanished.

Suri stared at the space where Sunset was previously staring. “I wonder, am I going to be able to go back to bed now?”

Her question was answered by Sunset reappearing. “Ugh, they said I have to finish up with this before I can try to get a raise. So fine. We’re going into your past.” Her horn flared and the two disappeared.

They reappeared in an odd location. A brown plain had a large wooden block on it with what looked like a branch on top of it. On the branch and the block were watches that looked as if they were melting, along with a stopwatch covered with ants. Cliffs were in the distance, and next to the block was an odd white object that looked vaguely like a blanket, also with a melting watch on it. “Does this scene look familiar?” asked Sunset.

“Uh, no,” said Suri.

“I thought so,” said Sunset. “Let’s try this again.” Her horn glowed a second time, and the scene suddenly shifted to a street corner. The two saw a younger-looking Suri conversing with a stallion.

“Ha!” said Sunset, pointing at the scene. “This is where your boyfriend broke up with you because you were so into money!”

“Actually,” said Suri, “if memory serves right, I was just asking this guy for directions.”

“Oh,” said Sunset. “Um, well, hopefully this will have caused you to seriously reconsider the way you live your life.” Her horn glowed and the two returned to Suri’s room.

“You know,” said Suri, “I’ll admit I don’t have much of a baseline to compare with, but you seem kind of lousy as a Ghost of Hearth’s Warming Eve Past.”

“Look, all I want to do is just get paid and get done with this job,” said Sunset.

“See, this is what I’m talking about,” said Suri. “You’re apparently trying to tell me not to be hung up on possessions, but you’re constantly going on about money you want. I don’t think you’re very good at your job.”

“Should’ve taken that part-time job haunting that house,” muttered Sunset, “but no, I had to give this job a shot instead.” There was a pause.

“So, uh, what now?” asked Suri.

“I’m waiting for my shift replacement, the Ghost of Hearth’s Warming Eve Present, to show up,” said Sunset. “She’s supposed to be here. I guess there is a 5-minute grace period before they’d actually get in trouble.”

Several minutes passed. Sunset clearly grew irritated. “Come on! Where is she? We’re 4 minutes and 45 seconds past the deadline!”

Just then, a translucent Lightning Dust crashed into the room through the roof. Luckily, she seemed immaterial, so the roof remained unharmed. “Ghost of Hearth’s Warming Eve Presents reporting for duty!” she declared with a salute. She paused. “Nah, ghost sounds too dead. How about the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Eve Presents?”

“Uh, I think it’s the Ghost… or Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Eve Present. As in ‘present day.’”

“Well of course it’s Present Day! Hearth’s Warming Eve is all about presents!” said Lightning Dust.

Sunset sighed. “Screw it. I don’t care anymore. This is your problem now.” She walked off.

“So, uh, if it’s about presents, where are the presents?” asked Suri.

“Good point!” said Lightning Dust. A large quantity of presents suddenly appeared. “These presents represent all the stuff you have denied yourself throughout your life!”

“But I buy all sorts of stuff,” said Suri.

“No, I mean, like, more metaphorical things. Like, y’know, friendship and love and stuff. The stuff you should get through generosity.”

“Do I get to keep the presents?” asked Suri.

“No!” said Lightning Dust. “They’re all mine! MINE!”

“I thought you were supposed to be teaching me about generosity.”

“Hrm, good point,” said Lightning Dust.

“Oh, and Lightning Dust, why are you doing this?”

“I’m not Lightning Dust! I’m the Ghost of Hearth’s Warming Eve Presents! And oh boy, is that a mouthful to say each time. Anyway, I just happen to have a mild resemblance to somepony you know named Lightning Dust.”

“Can I get an answer to my question?” asked Suri.

“I’m doing it because it’s my duty as the Ghost of Hearth’s Warming Eve Presents! But another duty is to show you things in the present, so we’re going to go around and see what a few individuals you know are doing.”

Lightning Dust grabbed Suri and flew up through the ceiling. Unfortunately, all that was accomplished was Suri hit her head on the ceiling and then fell to the floor. Lightning Dust went back through the ceiling. “Oops. Forgot you’re not immaterial like I am.” She opened a window, then grabbed Suri and flew out with her.

The two flew for a short while and reached Trixie’s wagon. “Now see what Trixie is doing on this Hearth’s Warming Eve!”

“Why Trixie?” asked Suri.

“Because everypony else you know is out of town for a bunch of reasons that aren’t relevant right now.”

Lightning Dust and Suri looked into the wagon’s window. Trixie was eating what seemed to be a pitifully small meal.

“Huh, that looks like a pitifully small meal,” said Suri. “Is she on a diet?”

“No!” declared Lightning Dust dramatically. “She’s just so poor that’s all she can afford! The constant upkeep on the wagon has cost her the majority of her money!”

“Enh,” said Suri. “She could always just sell the wagon and get an apartment or something. Would probably be cheaper.”

“No, don’t you get it? You’re supposed to feel really bad she has to undergo such hardship.”

“Okay,” said Suri. “I feel bad. Can I go now?”

“Not before one last thing!” said Lightning Dust. A dirty-looking Flim and Flam appeared.

“Uh, why are Flim and Flam here, and why do they look so dirty?” asked Suri.

“No, these aren’t Flim and Flam. These are Ignorance and Want. Beware them both, but especially the Want.”

“Wait,” said Flam. “Am I the Ignorance or the Want?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re the Ignorance,” said Flim.

“I don’t want to be Ignorance! You be Ignorance! I’d rather want stuff than be ignorant of them.”

“No, no, didn’t you hear what she said? Want should be the one especially bewared. I’m being nice by letting you be Ignorance.”

Lightning Dust sighed. “Okay, maybe this part was a bad idea.” The two vanished. “Well, I guess my work is done. Go ahead, walk back to your store.”

“You can’t fly me back?”

“Maybe if you lost a few pounds,” said Lightning Dust.

“Are you calling me fat?” asked Suri indignantly.

“No, just overweight,” said Lightning Dust. “Anyway, I’m off for an audition with the Ghost Wonderbolts. I’m sure this will totally impress them and get me in!” She dashed off.

With nothing else to do, Suri went back to her store. Unfortunately, she discovered she was now locked out of her house. “Darn it!” she said. “Now I have to go get help.”

“Not quite yet!” came a voice. Suri turned around to see a translucent Gilda. “So are you the Ghost of Hearth’s Warming Eve Future?”

Gilda shrugged. “Pretty much. I was supposed to wear this ominous cape and hood, but they were sized for ponies, not griffons, so I kind of decided to forego the whole thing.”

“So,” said Suri, “are we going to go into the future or something?”

“Yeah, but we have to be careful to avoid spoilers,” said Gilda. “So we can’t show too much. Anyway, here we go!”

The two suddenly found themselves in Ponyville, except that night had turned to day. Many of the buildings looked different. Additionally, Suri’s store looked far more broken down.

“So, this is the future?” asked Suri.

“Yep,” said Gilda.

“How far?”

“You know,” said Gilda, “I suddenly remembered I’m supposed to be all silent and spooky. So I won’t answer any more questions about the future.”

“Great,” said Suri. “Just great. Guess I’ll have to figure this out on my own.” She opened the door and went in.

The interior of the building was essentially barren but covered with a lot of dust. “Well, let’s see,” said Suri to herself. “Either I moved somewhere else, or we’ve gone so far into the future I died. Kind of a grisly thought. Oh well.”

Suri left the house. “Okay, so now what?”

“Told you,” said Gilda, “not answering your questions about this future. Might answer other questions if I feel like it, though.”

“Oh yeah,” said Suri, “I forgot to ask. Why are you doing this, Gilda? Or are you going to claim that you also just have a superficial similarity to Gilda?”

“Huh? No, I’m totally Gilda. I just took this as a side job of sorts. Pays surprisingly well. Plus, because I go into the future, I can find out the results of sports games and make money by betting on the winning team!”

“Couldn’t that cause a temporal paradox?”

“Enh,” said Gilda. “Not my problem.”

Suri shrugged. “Guess I’ll just go take a look around.” She walked off.

Half an hour later…

Suri returned. “Wow, this future is actually pretty cool! Lots of new technology that makes things way more convenient! I think I want to stick around here.”

“You like it? You aren’t at all worried about how you’re generally disliked in this future?”

“Who cares?” asked Suri. “I just want to stick around here in the future so I can take advantage of all this cool future stuff. I mean, did you know–”

“Hey, hey!” said Gilda. “Don’t go into too much detail now. Spoilers, you know. Anyway, no, you don’t get to stay in this future.”

“Aw, come on,” whined Suri. “I actually like it here. It might take a little work to get my cash back together, but it’s worth it.”

“Whatever,” said Gilda. “I did my part.” The two suddenly were transported to present-day Ponyville. “Anyway, see you.”

“Wait!” said Suri. “I’m still locked out of my house!”

“Not my problem!” said Gilda. “Besides, I’ve got some bets to place.” She walked off.

Suri stared at the door, then shrugged and tried to kick it down. It held firm. “Oh, right. I got this thing reinforced. Ugh. And I’ll have to wait until the morning to get somepony over to help.”

Unable to do anything else, Suri went over to Trixie’s wagon to try to find a place to stay the night. She knocked. Trixie opened the door.

“Uh, hi. Kinda got locked out of my house and was wondering if I could stay the night here,” said Suri.

“Well,” said Trixie, “I’m out of food at the moment, and it is a bit cramped, but okay. I don’t have any beds, though, so you’ll have to sleep on the floor like I do.”

“No bed?” asked Suri.

“Costs too much. But yeah, you can come in.”

“Thanks!” said Suri.

The next day…

“Ugh,” said Suri. “How do you sleep in this thing? It’s so uncomfortable without a bed.”

Trixie shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“You know what?” asked Suri. “Because you showed me some kindness here, and because I achieved some kind of enlightenment due to last night’s events, I’m going to repay you! I’ll give you 50% off of any outfit you want!”

“Oh, wow!” said Trixie. “That is generous. Thanks!”

And so, Suri became a changed mare and showed her generosity in offering reasonable discounts. And everypony lived happily ever after.

Suri finished reading, put down the pieces of paper, and stared at Trixie.

“So, did you like my Hearth's Warming Eve story about you?” asked Trixie as she bounced up and down. “I worked really hard on it!”

Suri looked back at the story she just read, then looked back at Trixie. “It was, um, definitely not something I expected to read.”

“Did you think the characterization was right?” asked Trixie excitedly. “What about the humor? Do you think the prose was too simple?”

“Um,” was all Suri could manage to say.

“I bet you want to read my other story, too! It’s about Lightning Dust coming up with the idea of this character named ‘Mare Do Well’ to sell merchandise of! And then–”

“Hey, you know what, Trixie?” asked Suri. “How about you bring that story over to Lightning Dust? I’m sure she’d be extremely interested because it’s about her.”

“That’s a great idea!” declared Trixie. She ran out.

Suri stared after her, then looked back at the story she read. “I’m suddenly afraid to go to bed tonight.”

Mare Do Well vs. The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000

“So what was it that was so important you insisted I had to come over to your house to see?” Gilda asked.

“Only the most important thing ever!” said Lightning Dust. “Check it out!” She gestured to a large collection of posters, toys, and various other memorabilia or merchandise all depicting a masked figure in a purple and dark blue labeled “Mare Do Well” on the outside.

“Okay, so you’ve become a collector of something I’ve never heard of,” said Gilda. “Can I go now?”

“No, you don’t get it! I paid to get all this stuff made! Mare Do Well is going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread, and I’ll be cashing in on it with all this merchandise!”

“That expression never made that much sense to me,” said Gilda. “I mean, sliced bread isn’t really that great. Heck, what was the greatest thing before that?”

“Focus, Gilda! I could make tons of money and get lots of fame for this! I’ve even made a theme song!”

“Oh joy,” said Gilda as she rolled her eyes. Lightning Dust put on a record and played it.

“Mare Do Well, Mare Do Well
She’s a pegasi that’s so swell
Flies around, fighting crime
Stops them all just in time
Look out!
Here comes the Mare Do Well

Is she strong? Listen bud
Powerful stuff is in her blood
Fills villains up with dread
Take a look overhead
Hey there
There goes the Mare Do Well.

She’ll provide you support
And help stamp out some crime
So don’t sell her short
Buy her toys all the time

Mare Do Well, Mare Do Well
Friendly neighborhood Mare Do Well
Merchandise
You can buy
The prices are not high

To you, she is a great big hero
If your cash isn’t zero
Buy stuff marked ‘Mare Do Well’!”

“So, what did you think?” asked Lightning Dust as the music ended. “Pretty catchy, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s lyrically lacking, but the melody and instrumentation is pretty good. But how are you planning to actually sell this stuff?

“Easy!” declared Lightning Dust. “I’m going to dress up as this character and fight crime! Then I’ll become really popular and everyone will want to buy my stuff!”

“How’d you even come up with this idea, anyway?” wondered Gilda.

“Oh, Trixie insisted on showing me some story she wrote. It was about me coming up with the idea of this ‘Mare Do Well’ character and trying to sell merchandise based on it.”

“You came up with a business idea based on a dumb story Trixie wrote?”

“Well, when you say it that way, it does sound kind of stupid,” said Lightning Dust. “But think of the money that could be made!”

“How’d that story of hers end?”

“I totally screwed the whole thing up and lost all the money I made,” said Lightning Dust with a shrug.

“And you don’t think that maybe that’s an omen?”

“Nah,” said Lightning Dust. “It failed in the story because I had the line ‘she can totally stop a flood’ in the song, so when a flood happened, everypony lost interest in Mare Do Well. But I have a different lyric in there now, so it’s foolproof!”

“Uh, I think I may have found a problem with your genius idea,” said Gilda.

“What?”

“Ponyville’s a very peaceful town. There’s hardly any crime to fight. Heck, the biggest crime was probably that time you, Suri, and Trixie assaulted Flim and Flam.”

“Enh, there’s enough occasional disaster and giant monster attacks that I’m sure something will turn up.”

Several weeks later…

“Extra! Extra!” shouted the paperboy. “Read all about it! Absolutely no disasters or anything else that might require the services of a superhero occur in the last few weeks! Police force facing potential budget cuts!”

Lightning Dust growled. “Darn it, gotta find some way to make Mare Do Well the next big thing. I sunk too much money into making all this stuff for it to go to waste.”

She went home and paced back and forth. “Got to be something to do,” she murmured to herself. “What did I do last time I needed attention?” Lightning Dust considered the matter, then snapped her fingers. Or at least that’s what she would have done if this was an anthropomorphized universe, which this is not.

Trixie put the record onto the player. “All right! Time to give the new album a listen again!” She moved to press the play button, but was interrupted by knocking.

“Ugh,” she mumbled. “What is it this time?” Grumbling, she walked over to the door, only for it to get knocked down by Lightning Dust from the outside.

“Hi Trixie!” said Lightning Dust. “I need your help!”

“And you think that knocking down my door is the right way to get me to agree?”

Lightning Dust considered this. “I guess I didn’t think that through too well.”

“Fine, what’s your request this time?”

“I need your help promoting Mare Do Well. There’s no crimes around so I can’t promote it that way. Any ideas?”

“Well, we could stage accidents,” said Trixie.

“Oh come on, that was straight from your story!”

“Because it was a good idea!”

“Do you have any idea what the legal issues of that could be?”

Trixie shrugged. “It’s only illegal if you get caught.”

“Come on, Trixie, work with me here,” said Lightning Dust. “You’ve got partial equity in this thing because you came up with the name ‘Mare Do Well,’ so start showing your worth.”

“Considering I came up with it, I think I should have all of it,” muttered Trixie.

“Hey, I was the one who financed the making of all that merchandise and actually designed the character!”

“Fine,” said Trixie. “Come back later, and maybe I’ll have something. In the meantime, I have music to listen to.”

Lightning Dust’s eyes fell on the record player. “Didn’t know you listened to music. What is it?”

“The new Cheese Pie album, Required Entertainment!”

Lightning Dust stared. “Cheese Pie?”

Trixie’s eyes widened. “You’ve never heard of them?”

“Not really.”

“You’ve never heard of the best and funniest musical comic duo to ever grace Equestria?!” asked Trixie with a feverish look in her eyes.

Lightning Dust suddenly felt threatened. “Uh, you know, you did want me to leave, so I’ll leave you alone–”

“Oh no, oh no!” declared Trixie. “This album is 45 minutes and 21 seconds long. By that time I’ll have figured out an answer. But in the meantime, you are going to sit here and listen to the whole thing with me.”

“Erk,” said Lightning Dust.

One hour later…

Trixie knocked on the door. Flam opened it. “What you want?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie and the not-as-great and not-as-powerful Lightning Dust are here for a business proposition.”

“Hey!” said Lightning Dust.

“Silence!” declared Trixie. “Anyway, Lightning Dust and I made a bunch of merchandise around this ‘Mare Do Well’ superhero, but we’ve been having trouble promoting it. Considering cider season is coming up soon, and you’ll be selling a lot of cider, we were hoping maybe you could put something about Mare Do Well on the bottles to give us more promotion.”

“You think there’s a big crossover between people who collect superhero memorabilia and people who get drunk on cider?” Flam asked.

“Well, on the non-alcoholic cider,” clarified Trixie.

“And what’s in it for us?”

“A lot of money for putting them on the bottles?”

“Sounds good!” said Flam. “And with the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000 almost ready, there’ll be more cider than ever this year!”

An indeterminate amount of time later…

“Ugh,” said Sunset as the sun woke her up. “Great. Another day.” She got out of bed. “Hopefully this will be better than the last.”

A loud commotion got her attention. “Do I really want to know?” she asked herself. Curiosity got the better of her, however, and she left the house to find a large line of ponies. “Uh, what is this line for?” she asked.

“You don’t know?” asked one of the ponies in line. “It’s cider season! Everypony gets in line for all the cider the Flim Flam Brothers make.”

“Cider, huh?” asked Sunset. “Alcoholic or non-alcoholic?”

“Both!”

Sunset stared at the long line. “I know I’m going to regret this, but if the stupid cider is this good, I might as well give it a try.” She got in line.

One lengthy line later…

“Ah! Sunset!” said Flim. “Want cider? It’s made with the all-new, top-of-the-line Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000!”

Sunset stared at him with a dull look. “After over an hour in line, I’m going to demand my money back if this isn’t the best cider ever.”

“Sorry!” said Flam. He pointed to a sign. “No refunds.”

After a weary sigh, Sunset paid him for the cider and drank it. “Oh, wow. This actually is pretty good. Can I have another?”

“Sure! Just get back in line!”

She looked back and saw the line remained as huge as ever. “Why don’t you hire help? You’ve got plenty of cider, but you seem slow at handing it out.”

“Would cost too much,” said Flim with a shrug. “We did the calculations. The estimated loss of customers due to waiting is less of a revenue loss than if we hired help.”

“Well, screw it then,” said Sunset. “By the way, what’s this ‘Mare Do Well’ thing on all of the bottles?”

“Oh, just a sponsor. There’s more information on the bottle itself.”

“Well,” said Sunset, “I’ve just realized how little I care. I’m off.”

Sunset started to walk off. However, an orange earth pony suddenly sped past her. Surprised, Sunset turned around.

“Hey!” said Flim. “Wait in line!”

The earth pony pulled out a badge. “I’m with the government to investigate claims of false advertising,” she said with a slight accent. “Is that cider really cider?”

“Wha… why, of course it is!” said Flam, producing a bottle of cider.

Sunset was curious as to what was going on, so she approached. “I have just marginally enough interest to ask what’s going on,” she said.

“Oh, it’s just Applejack,” said Flim with a glare at the earth pony. “Butting into our business again.”

Applejack glared at him. “Well, maybe if you weren’t constantly trying to swindle people, I wouldn’t have to keep tabs on you.”

“She has a grudge against us ever since we won a bet that gave us exclusive cider rights to Ponyville,” Flam said in an aside to Sunset.

Applejack in the meantime had used a convoluted-looking mechanism to apparently analyze the cider. “Well,” she said, “this one seems real enough… but how about I try that one?” She pointed to a bottle that was going to be given to the next customer.

“Hey!” said the customer. “I was going to use that! You’re just holding up the line!”

“Don’t worry,” said Applejack, “I’ll buy you two if this doesn’t work out.”

“You know,” said Flim, “you are holding up the line, and you already tested your bottle, so if you’d just leave us alone, that would be appreciated.”

“Oh, this’ll be quick,” said Applejack. She inserted the previously used device into the bottle. It suddenly started beeping and a knob turned red.

“Well,” she said, “what would you know? This drink you’re passing along as cider isn’t actual cider. Care to explain it?”

“Um,” said Flam nervously.

Applejack looked him straight in the eye. “Lying to a government inspector is extremely frowned upon. I’d suggest you come as clean as possible if you want to avoid getting in even more trouble.”

“Okay!” said Flam. “I admit it! The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000 isn’t actually making cider out of apples! It uses a synthetic substitute to replicate the taste! But it’s almost impossible to tell the difference! It tastes the same!”

“Well then,” said Applejack, “maybe you should’ve advertised it as such. As is, you’re liable for false advertising, so you have to give refunds to anypony who purchased your cider.”

“But that’ll cost so much money,” whined Flim, but stopped after wilting under Applejack’s gaze. “Um, I mean, yes, sure.”

“Hey everypony!” called out Applejack to the line. “Just so you know, this isn’t cider made from actual apples, and it’s all just some kind of fake substitute. Just thought you’d want to know!”

A fair number of ponies opted to stay in the line, but some decided to wander off at the news.

“Well, you got your revenge,” said Flim. “Happy?”

“Oh, please,” said Applejack. “If this was actually about revenge, I would’ve waited until you had sold way more of your ‘cider’ before calling you on it, so you would’ve had to pay more back. Anyway, I’ve got other cases of false advertising to investigate, so I’ll leave you two for now.” She gave them a harsh look. “And if you don’t do any of those refunds, you’re going to get in some real trouble.” She left.

Sunset had to work hard not to not burst out laughing during the entire exchange due to the schadenfreude of the situation. She did, however, immediately go up to Flim and Flam. “Hey! You! I want my refund!”

Flam sighed and handed over the money. Sunset left.

“Well,” said Flim with resignation, “we’d better take off all these labels from the bottles, because they advertise it as all-natural cider. Don’t want to get in more trouble over it.”

Later…

“All right!” declared Lightning Dust. “They’ve probably sold through tons of their stock and done all that advertising for us. Let the orders begin!”

Lightning Dust and Trixie set up Trixie’s wagon to have a large booth selling various Mare Do Well merchandise. “All right, business might be a little slow at first, but I’m sure all the kids are going to be nagging their parents to buy them the stuff that they saw on the cider bottles.”

Sunset walked by. “What are you two idiots doing?”

“Selling Mare Do Well merchandise! Want to buy any?”

“Huh,” said Sunset. “I feel like I saw that stupid thing before.”

“Did you get cider today?”

“Oh yeah,” said Sunset, “that must have been it. I think it was on the bottles. For a little while.”

“A little while?” asked Trixie, confused.

“You guys don’t know? Why wouldn’t you be at the site of your promotion?”

Lightning Dust shrugged. “I was there for the start, but then it got really boring, so I left. It would've been preferable to set up near where Flim and Flam were, but they thought it'd be too much of a distraction, so we're here. Anyway, did something happen?”

“Apparently there was false advertising, so they had to take off all the labels from the bottles. Pretty sure most didn’t see the bit with Mare Do Well because of that. Plus, anypony who did see it by buying it probably had a bad impression of the whole thing due to the aforementioned false advertising. Don’t think you’ll probably be able to sell much.”

“What?!” exclaimed Lightning Dust.

“Hey, at least I got free cider out of it,” said Sunset. She walked off.

“Well,” said Trixie, “I guess we could try to get our money back from Flim and Flam?”

A short time later…

Trixie and Lightning Dust approached Flim and Flam’s cider-selling booth just as the last customer in line left with an unlabeled bottle of cider. “Hey!” said Lightning Dust. “What’s going on here? Where’s the labels?”

“Oh, um, er,” said Flim. “There was a mixup, and–”

“I already heard what happened,” said Lightning Dust. “You idiots got in trouble for false advertising, so nopony saw the Mare Do Well stuff, and anypony who did was probably uninterested due to your scam. So I want the money I gave you back!”

“Well, actually,” said Flim, “if you read the contract, you’ll notice it only said we had to put the labels on the bottles. It never said we couldn’t take them off.”

“Oh, come on!” snapped Lightning Dust. “You’re using that to weasel out of the debt?”

“Oh please,” said Flam, “are you telling me you wouldn’t use any legal trick you could to get out of a debt?”

Lightning Dust considered the matter. “Well, I wouldn’t have been guilty of false advertising to begin with, so the point is moot!”

“Well, not quite, because the point is that we’re not paying you back. Sorry.”

“Oh, you two are going to get what’s coming to you!” said Lightning Dust angrily.

“Uh,” said Trixie, “just for the record, I’d like to point out that I’m standing back here, and if Lightning Dust decides to beat you up, I didn’t have anything to do with it. I really don’t want to have to deal with Suri spending 10 weeks complaining about how badly she thinks the prison uniforms were knitted.”

“But Suri isn’t even here,” said Lightning Dust. “You’d get a different cellmate.”

“Not the point!”

“Ugh,” said Lightning Dust, glaring one more time at Flim and Flam, who cowered behind the counter. “You idiots aren’t worth it. I’m going home.” She walked off.

Trixie shrugged. “Well, another get-rich-quick scheme goes down the drain. This feels almost like a running gag at this point.”

Trixie knocked on the door. “Hey, Lightning Dust! You haven’t come out of your house for the last few days, and I really want the money you owe me to fix the door you broke!” No answer came.

“Ugh,” said Trixie. She then knocked the door down to find Lightning Dust feverishly writing something on a piece of paper. “Uh, what are you doing?”

Lightning Dust finally looked up. “Doing what I should’ve just done in the first place as a promotion: Making a comic book. Almost done with it now! Want to check it out?”

Trixie raised an eyebrow but went and read through the comic.

“So, what did you think?” asked Lightning Dust eagerly when Trixie had finished. “Really awesome, right?”

“Kinda boring, actually,” said Trixie. “And not particularly well drawn, but I suppose that’s because it’s hard to draw with the pen in your mouth. Why do we even have pens like that? They’re so ill suited for how we actually hold things.”

“Boring?!” asked Lightning Dust indignantly. “How? Mare Do Well is awesome in this story! Nothing can beat her!”

“Which is why it’s boring,” said Trixie. “Nopony wants to see such patently perfect superheroes. She’s so powerful she’s practically invincible; there’s no real suspense.”

“And what would you do?”

“Make it into a comedy or parody!” said Trixie. “Like, take this montage bit where she saves several ponies. I’d rewrite it to something like this.”

Trixie took out a piece of paper and started scribbling on it quickly.

“AAAHHH!” screamed the various ponies in the cart that had gone out of control. Fortunately for them, their ride was halted by a masked pegasus. “YAAAY!” they all said afterwards.

“Stay in school!” declared the pegasus before flying off.

They all looked at each other. “Uh, aren’t we all adults?” one asked.

“AAAHHH!” screamed an earth pony as a falling piece of debris was about to hit them. However, the aforementioned pegasus from earlier saved them from it.

“Oh wow! You saved my life!” he said. “Actually, I don’t think I would have died, but you sure saved me some health costs, if nothing else.”

“Right!” declared the masked pegasus. “Don’t drink and drive!” She took off.

The earth pony stood there, confused. “Huh?”

“AAAHHH!” screamed a unicorn, who was swiftly approached by the twice-aforementioned pegasus from the previous scene.

“What’s the problem?” asked the pegasus.

“My finger got a papercut! The pain!”

The pegasus stared at the unicorn. “You don’t have fingers. Also, you’re not holding paper.”

The unicorn quieted down. “Oh, I guess you’re right. Thanks!”

“Eat your vegetables!” declared the pegasus before flying away again.

“Now there goes a true blue hero,” said the unicorn. “Well, more like dark blue, but blue nevertheless.”

“See?” said Trixie. “That’s interesting and comedic.”

“It wasn’t that funny,” said Lightning Dust.

“Well, it’ll work better in context.”

Lightning Dust scratched her head. “Why did you write the whole thing in prose format when this is going to be a comic? Some of the stuff here can’t translate at all.”

“People don’t like script format for some reason. I had to put it in prose.”

Lightning Dust stared. “Huh?”

“Never mind. You should have goofy stuff like that. Make the hero good intentioned but still slightly dim. That way you can get a lot of comedy and jokes out of the situations while still having them be a real superhero. Heck, maybe you could have them become more competent as the series goes on for character development.”

Lightning Dust looked back at the comic. “Well, I guess we could do some rewriting to have more jokes. I’m sticking with the general story, though.”

“Oh, no complaints there,” said Trixie. “I liked the story of Mare Do Well having to fight against the evil Dr. Film and Dr. Falm. Including the battle against the giant robot they made out of a cider-making machine. You sure you can call it the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000, though? Isn’t that trademarked?”

“I actually looked it up. The two completely forgot to trademark the thing, so it should be fine.”

“Yeah, but see, that’s the thing. This whole thing is really silly, but it’s played overly straight. Play it more loose and it’ll be hilarious.”

“All right, then!” said Lightning Dust dramatically. “We will work together and make this comic as awesome as I am!”

Gilda put down the comic. “So, what did you think?” asked Trixie eagerly. “Did you like it? Lightning Dust and I worked really hard on it!”

Gilda shrugged. “It was okay. Not anything I’d pay for.” She left.

“Well, that was disappointing,” said Trixie. “I at least thought she’d like the art I drew for it.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Lightning Dust. “That’s the most enthusiastic I’ve seen Gilda about anything outside of the things she actually does get really excited about. I think we’ve actually made something good here. Now we just need to get this distributed.”

“Ugh, that’s going to be the annoying part,” said Trixie. “Actually getting a comic published is a long and arduous process.”

A long and arduous process later…

“All right! Finally got it all published and stuff!” said Lightning Dust. “Now we just hope people check it out and like it.”

“And then buy all the merchandise, too?” asked Trixie.

"Huh?" asked Lightning Dust. "Oh, yeah, that too. But I guess for now we wait.”

Some waiting later…

“Well, the money from the comic sales by themselves seem to have recovered the cash I gave to Flim and Flam,” said Lightning Dust. “So that fixes up that, at least.”

“And it looks like it caught on enough to sell some of the merchandise! We’ll want to make some more!” said Trixie.

“Really should also get to work on making the next issue, too.”

“Uh, guys?” asked Sunset. “Why are you telling me all this? I already told you I don’t care.”

“Just keeping you informed!” said Trixie.

“Look, I just wanted to borrow something, but if you’re going to be annoying again, I can leave.” Sunset walked off.

“Enh,” said Trixie. “Her loss.”

“So,” said Lightning Dust, “my idea for the next issue is that–”

She was interrupted by a knock on the door. Lightning Dust opened it and found Flim and Flam were standing outside. “Oh. You two.”

“Hi!” said Flim. “We’ve got a new product called ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ Because apparently this ‘Mare Do Well’ thing is actually catching on, we were hoping maybe you could put a plug for it in your comic.”

“We’ll give you free samples if you do!” added Flam.

Lightning Dust stared at the two, fell over laughing, got up, and slammed the door. “Sorry,” she said to Trixie. “What were you saying?”

Outside…

“Huh,” said Flim. “I guess that’s a no.”

Some Canterlot Wedding

“Well, the last few days have actually been pretty decent,” said Sunset to herself. “Which of course means something is going to happen soon and ruin everything. Like always.”

A knock was heard at the door. “And there’s the trouble right there,” she muttered. She went over and opened the door.

“Normal delivery!” said the familiar mailmare.

“Regular delivery?” asked Sunset.

“Well it’s not a special delivery, so what else would it be?”

Sunset sighed but took the mail. “Let’s see,” she said as she went back inside and looked through the mail. “Ad… ad… ad… invitation to a wedding? Who do I even know who’s getting married?” She opened up the envelope.

“Ooooh,” said Trixie, eyes widening. “That Shining Armor guy is getting married to someone? And you got invited? And it said to bring along others, so you’re asking me?”

“Trixie,” said Sunset with aggravation, “I just told you all of that. Why are you repeating what I said ten seconds ago?”

Trixie shrugged. “I’m just making sure I understand the situation. Why’d you get invited anyway?”

“Apparently, because Twilight Sparkle isn’t around they had a vacancy, so I got invited instead because my name is similar. Which doesn’t really make sense, but I’ve learned to not question such things.”

“Sunset Shimmer… Twilight Sparkle,” said Trixie. “Huh, they are kinda alike. So, why are you asking me to come along? Normally we have to force you to agree to bring us along.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Because I knew that if I didn’t bring you and the others along, you’d all repeat that nonsense from when I got the Gala tickets, and I don’t want to go through that again.”

“And because you’ve also secretly, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself, grown attached to all of us, right?”

“Uh, no,” said Sunset. “Just the Gala tickets thing.”

“Who’s he even getting married to?” asked Trixie.

“Mi Amore de Cadenza.”

“Whoa!” said Trixie in an alarmed voice. “Okay, I’m flattered, maybe even a little curious, but the answer is no.”

“No, you idiot!” said Sunset crossly. “That’s her name. She’s that mare who can spread love or whatever.”

“Oh,” said Trixie, “yeah, I remember that. Though I think I remember better all those lawsuits she got hit with as a result by people who considered it brainwashing, which is why she stopped doing that after she grew up.”

The train arrived in Canterlot. Trixie said, “Here we are in–”

“We know, Trixie!” said everyone else.

“Seriously,” said Gilda, “why do you constantly feel the need to constantly remind us of what we already know? It’s getting really irritating.”

“I’m just making sure everypony is informed.”

“We are! So shut up about it already!”

Ugh, thought Sunset to herself. Maybe I should’ve just went through the Gala ticket mess again rather than have to deal with these guys here.

“Well I, for one, am going to use this visit to Canterlot as an opportunity to promote our new product!” said Flim. “Because Lightning Dust wouldn’t help us with that.”

“Well, if you’d pay me back the money I gave you, maybe I would!”

Sunset lost whatever tiny bit of interest she may have had in the argument and walked off. “Maybe I can find Shining Armor and impress him I could get some help in that promotion,” she muttered to herself.

Meanwhile, Lightning Dust was still arguing with Flim and Flam. “Oh yeah?” said Lightning Dust. “Well up your nose with a rubber hose, pal!”

There was an awkward pause.

“What does that even mean?” asked Flim.

“I… don’t know,” said Lightning Dust sheepishly.

“I’ve got better things to do than sit around listening to people argue using nonsense phrases,” said Suri. “See you all later.”

“Bah, whatever,” said Lightning Dust. “C’mon, Trixie, let’s go.”

“What are you two planning to do, anyway?” asked Gilda.

“Having some writer’s block on the next Mare Do Well issue. Was hoping maybe something here would give inspiration,” said Trixie with a shrug.

Meanwhile…

“Shining Armor has got to be around here somewhere,” muttered Sunset to herself. She left the hallway and entered a balcony. Shining Armor wasn’t there, but a pink alicorn was.

It’s that girl he’s marrying! Maybe if I impress her I can improve my social stature, she thought to herself. “Hi!” she said. “You must be Princess Mi Amore de Cadenza.” I can’t believe I remembered that.

The pink alicorn turned around. “You can call me Cadance,” she said coolly. “Now, what do you want?”

“Uh, well, what do you need? I work for Sombra, and I figured I should try to make sure you’re as happy as possible! Need help with anything? Need me to do anything? I’ll do anything you want me to do!”

“Sounds good!” said Cadance. “Anyway, here’s a list of things I’d like you to do for me.” She gave an extremely long list to Sunset.

Sunset stared at the list. “Do you just keep this around in case someone offers to do things for you?”

“Pretty much,” said Cadance with a shrug. “Anyway, come see me when you’re done.”

Cadance walked off, leaving Sunset staring at the list. “The things I do to get ahead,” she muttered to herself.

“Got any inspiration yet?” asked Lightning Dust.

“No, I do not have any more inspiration than I did when you asked me thirty seconds ago,” said Trixie. “Look, you can’t always just turn on inspiration like a switch. Sometimes it takes a while.”

“Hey, what’s that?” asked Lightning Dust. She gestured towards a store window next to them. “Maybe that will help with inspiration?”

Trixie looked in the window and saw, among other things, a book labeled Inspiration Manifestation. She raised an eyebrow. “A spellbook for inspiration?”

“Yeah!” said Lightning Dust. “You should totally get it. Maybe it’ll help you out.”

“Pfft,” said Trixie. “Those things usually come with some kind of side effect.”

“Oh, come on!” said Lightning Dust. “They wouldn’t make it easy to buy if it was that dangerous, would they?”

In response, Trixie pointed to a nearby shop labeled Akbar’s Shop O’ Magic (Not One Single Cursed Item).

“Huh,” said Lightning Dust. “Valid point. You know, you’d think someone would’ve sued him by now.”

“Hello, fellow pony!” declared Flim to a passerby. “You look like a fellow who wants something just as good as cider without necessarily being cider!”

“Uh, no,” said the aforementioned passerby. “I’m pretty sure I look like someone who just wants to walk on without being disturbed.”

“Oh,” said Flim, disappointed.

“But I am someone who wants something just as good as cider without necessarily being cider. I just don’t look like it. I’ll take it!”

Flim and Flam shared a confused look but took his money and gave him a bottle of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’

Gilda passed an exhausted-looking Sunset in the castle hall. “What happened to you? Looks like you’ve been through the wringer.”

Sunset turned her blank eyes towards Gilda. “Just doing favors for Princess Cadance. Right now I’m off to try to find a hydrodynamic spatula with port and starboard attachments and a turbo-drive.”

“What in the world is that, and why does she want it?” asked Gilda.

“I don’t know!” screamed Sunset in despair.

“Uh, yeah, well, hope you find it. See you,” said Gilda as she left with a shrug. Gilda rapidly ran into Suri.

“Do you know where the wedding dress might be located?” asked Suri.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“You know, um, inspiration! I want to see it and be inspired!”

“Well, no idea,” said Gilda. “Now go away and stop bothering me; I have things to do.”

“Like what?” asked Suri.

“Secret things!” Gilda left.

Suri shrugged and kept looking. “Come on, it has to be around here somewhere.” Quite a bit of room checking later, she finally found what appeared to be a wedding dress. “I can’t believe they’re not guarding this more heavily,” she said to herself as she pulled out some scissors from her satchel. “After all, who knows if a mysterious vandal might pop in to destroy it in order to force them to use her design instead!”

Suri abruptly threw her scissors back into her satchel, however, when she heard someone coming. She glanced around quickly for somewhere to hide, but the room was too bare outside of the dress on the model to hide. Therefore, she simply stood in front of the dress as if admiring it. Which wasn’t particularly hard to fake, because she actually did think it was a fairly nice dress.

“And so, I think you’ll love the dress I made!” came a voice. A white unicorn walked in with Cadance. She noticed Suri. “Who are you?”

“Uh, just an admirer of this dress!” said Suri, pointing to it.

“Oh, well, thank you!” said the unicorn. She pointed at Cadance. “But she’s the one to judge it.”

Cadance looked at the dress. “I was hoping for something with more beading and a longer train,” she said coolly.

“Oh, yes, of course!” said the unicorn in response. I’ll get right on it!” She watched Cadance leave, then turned to Suri. “So, a fellow seamstress?”

“Exactly!” said Suri. “A shame she didn’t like it. I thought it was great. What’s your name?”

“Rarity,” said the unicorn. “I was hired to make the dress, and I will make it as fabulous as possible!”

“Want any help?” asked Suri.

“Oh, thank you for the offer, darling, but I really wouldn’t feel right being paid for this if I weren’t doing the work.”

Suri was about to respond, but was interrupted by an even-more-exhausted-looking-than-before Sunset entering. “Have either of you seen Cadance?” she asked in a tired voice.

“She was actually just here,” said Suri.

Sunset stared at her with blurred eyes. “Could you help me find her, please?”

“Oh, go ahead,” said Rarity. “I do have to get to work on this dress.”

“Thanks,” said Sunset in a dead sort of voice. “Come on, let’s go.”

Suri couldn’t think of a good objection, so she left with Sunset. Sunset continued staring blankly as the two walked down the hallway.

“So, uh, what have you been up to, Sunset?” asked Suri.

“Errands,” she said dully. “Very, very tiring errands.”

“Why have you been running errands and how have they been so tiring?”

“Been trying to impress Cadance,” muttered Sunset. “Was hoping if she liked me, Shining Armor would like me more. Plus, as she’s a princess anyway, both of them liking me would help me move up in the world.”

“And what’s so tiring about them?”

“Have you ever tried to carry 50 pounds of beads across Canterlot?” asked Sunset. “It’s not pleasant.”

“Huh,” said Suri. “She sounds really demanding. I didn’t know Shining Armor that well, but I’d think he’d have better taste in mares than what Cadance sounds like.”

“Anyway,” said Sunset, “I’m trying to find her to tell her I finally finished with everything.”

“You know, I didn’t realize it before now, but this hallway is pretty long, isn’t it?”

“Hey, wait,” said Sunset, breaking out of her stupor. “I think I heard Cadance’s voice.”

The two peeked into the room to see Shining Armor and Cadance in what seemed to be an argument. “And I think I should wear it,” said Shining Armor.

“Are you disagreeing with me?” asked Cadance.

“I guess I am… gyah!” Shining Armor was interrupted by him clutching his forehead and falling over.

“Oh dear,” said Cadance, “are you getting one of your headaches?” She zapped him with some kind of spell that left his eyes looking hypnotized. “Feeling better?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Seeing that Cadance looked like she was going for the door, Sunset and Suri took the opportunity to quickly dart into another room and close the door. “Okay,” said Suri, “what was that?”

“I don’t know,” said Sunset. “I didn’t recognize that spell. But it looked sinister. I think something’s really off with this Cadance character.”

“She did seem a little demanding about her dress,” said Suri. “Ordinarily I’d just think that’s a case of her wanting something different, but after that…”

“And she was so demanding in making me do all those errands after I asked her if she needed anything,” complained Sunset.

“Well, you did explicitly ask her if she wanted you to do anything. You did sort of set yourself up for that,” said Suri. “Also, what grounds do you have to complain about people being rude to you?”

“Are you telling me you don’t think there’s something seriously fishy about all this? You saw that spell.”

“I”m not saying there’s nothing fishy; I’m just pointing some relevant information out. And for all we know the spell could have just been a headache-fixer. Isn’t he the one keeping up that big shield around the city?”

““Hrm,” said Sunset. “We should follow her and try to collect a little more proof. And if she is actually evil, I’ll be a hero!”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” said Suri. “I really don’t want to try to declare she’s evil only to find out there’s actually a reasonable explanation for everything. Would make me look really dumb.”

“Fine,” said Sunset. “Let’s go find her and see if maybe we can get some more dirt.”

The two left the room, and saw Cadance down the hallway. They ran up to her. “Okay!” said Sunset. “I’ve accomplished all of your errands. Is that all?”

“Enh,” said Cadance, “I guess that’s everything. Anyway, see you.” She walked off.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Suri.

“All right,” said Sunset, “I’ll try to follow her around a bit. You keep an eye on Shining Armor and see if anything weird happens with him.”

“Might as well,” said Suri. “Doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to accomplish what I was hoping to anyway…”

“Argh!” said Trixie. “This writer’s block is killing me! We must’ve walked around the whole city and still haven’t gotten any inspiration!”

“Hey,” said Lightning Dust, “it’s sure going to help you stay in shape.”

“Wait, that’s it!” said Trixie. “Stay in shape! That works because… um… well, darn it, I lost it now.”

“I mean, we can always just wait longer to introduce a sidekick character if we’re still stuck. We already did decide to delay that plot point until we could think of a good enough way to use it.”

“It’s just so annoying!” said Trixie. “Why can’t we think of one?”

“We could go back and buy that Inspiration Manifestation,” said Lightning Dust with a shrug.

“No.”

“Well,” said Flim. “After the initial burst of interest, it doesn’t seem like there’s much interest in our new product now.”

“There’s only one thing to do!” declared Flam. “We have to use that wedding somehow to increase awareness of our product!”

“Great idea!” said Flim. There was a pause. “Uh, how do we do that?”

“Um,” said Flam. “Well, we’ll have to think about that one.”

Sunset found herself growing bored. Tailing Cadance so far hadn’t produced any extra evidence outside of the fact that she seemed to walk around a lot. “If I don’t find something soon, I’m just going to go back to Suri,” she muttered to herself.

Sunset followed Cadance into the throne room, which was empty at the time. Cadance abruptly turned around and faced Sunset. “Are you following me?” she asked.

“No, I just happened to be heading into the throne room,” said Sunset.

Cadance looked at Sunset. “I wish I could believe you.” She zapped the floor around Sunset, surrounding her with a green force field of some kind.

“Wha–” started Sunset, but she and the force field suddenly descended through the floor.

After this plot twist that would have probably been far more dramatic had it ended a chapter rather than happening in the middle of one, Sunset found herself in a dark room. After lighting up her horn, she found herself in a cavern full of crystals.

“Ugh,” she muttered. “Where am I?”

Cadance appeared on some of the crystals. “The caves beneath Canterlot, once home to greedy unicorns who wanted to claim the gems that could be found inside.”

“Unicorns?” asked Sunset. “Why just them? What about the pegasi and Earth ponies? I mean, I’d almost expect more Earth ponies due to it being underground.”

“Ignoring that,” said Cadance. “Anyway, now it’s your prison.”

“How are you communicating with me, anyway?” asked Sunset. “How are you making your face appear on these crystals?”

“That’s what you want to ask?” asked Cadance. “Not something about my plans?”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d tell me, but sure.”

“Sorry,” said Cadance. “Not telling.”

“Then what was the point of–”

“You know, maybe we’ll talk later,” interrupted Cadance. “Just sit tight. But for now, it’s goodbye.” She disappeared.

Sunset sighed. “Guess I’ll just have to try to find my way out of here.”

Not having the patience for finesse, Sunset simply started blasting the crystals to try to find a way out. While she didn’t quite find that, she did find a frightened-looking pink alicorn. “Cadance?” she asked. “Is that the actual you?”

Cadance looked at Sunset and flinched. “You’re not another changeling, are you?”

“Uh, no,” said Sunset. “What’s a changeling? Is that what was masquerading as you?”

“We can talk later!” said Cadance. “Right now we have to get out of here and stop her!” She dashed off.

Sunset stared as she followed. “And is there any particular reason why you couldn’t do this before I got here?”

Rather than receiving an answer to her question, an orchestra suddenly started up despite there being no orchestra being visible. “Oh, joy,” muttered Sunset to herself as Cadance starting singing.

“This day was going to be perfect
The kind of day of which I’ve dreamed since I was small
But instead of having cake with all my friends to celebrate
My wedding bells, they may not ring for me at all”

There was an abrupt end to the song. Well, thought Sunset, at least that was short. The two continued on their way, but soon afterwards the song started up again.

“We must escape before it's too late
Find a way to save the day
Hope, I'll be lying if I say
I don't fear that I may lose him
To one who wants to use him
Not care for, love, and cherish him each day
For I oh so love the groom
All my thoughts he does consume
Oh, Shining Armor, I'll be there very soon”

Yet again, there was an abrupt stop to the orchestra sound and the song. “Okay,” said Sunset. “Have you gotten that out of your system? Because all of this music is really kind of creeping me out now. It’d be–”

“Oh, the wedding we won't make
He'll end up marrying a fake
Shining Armor will be–”

The music stopped at this point. “Will be?” asked Sunset.

“Will be what?” asked Cadance.

“You just said ‘Shining Armor will be’ and then abruptly cut off! What was the rest of the line?”

“That’s not important right now!” said Cadance. “Look! The exit! Maybe we can make it in time!”

I’d better be getting extra credit for all of this, thought Sunset to herself as she followed Cadance.

Meanwhile, at the wedding…

“So I think what Sombra is saying here is the part about ‘in sickness or in health’ but that would seem odd, as I think that comes later,” said Shining Armor. “You know, no disrespect to you, King Sombra, but I think maybe we should’ve had another person administer the vows.”

“Oh, it’s no problem,” said Cadance. “I wanted him to be here.”

“I’m just saying, maybe we should have a government official who can go through this a bit faster do it,” said Shining Armor. “Is that okay?” he asked Sombra.

Sombra continued his attempt at charades. “I think he said ‘that would be perfectly fine,’” said Shining Armor. “That, or ‘all of you will soon suffer my wrath.’ I think it’s the first one.”

“Sure!” said Cadance. “We can do that. But I think it would be a little nice if you were to be quiet for a while.”

“Yes, dear,” said Shining Armor as his eyes glowed oddly green.

They were interrupted by the door abruptly opening and Cadance and Sunset entering. “Stop this wedding!”

Everyone looked between the two Cadances. “Wait, which one is real?” asked Flim.

“Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!” shouted Trixie, walking up to the aisle. All eyes turned to her. “This is not how you do it! You come in at the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ line. So I want you two to go outside, wait until that line gets said, and then burst in.”

There was a brief pause. “Anyway,” said the Cadance that just entered, “she’s the impostor!”

Trixie slinked back into the crowd. “Nopony ever listens to me,” she muttered.

“She's a changeling,” continued the aforementioned Cadance. “She takes the form of somepony you love and gains power by feeding off your love for them.”

“Oh, come on,” said the Cadance next to Shining Armor. “That is a completely unfair stereotype.”

“Stereotype? That’s exactly what you did!”

“Pfft,” said the Cadance who was in the room at the start of the scene. “Whatever. I was hoping to stick around a little longer like this, build up a little more power… but I suppose it’s enough.” She was suddenly surrounded by a green aura and transformed into Queen Chrysalis, who presumably is familiar enough to the reader to not have to go through the rigamarole of describing.

Sombra’s eyes widened, and he suddenly started up the charades again.

“Long time no see, Sombra,” said Chrysalis as she aimed her horn at him and fired. The beam slammed Sombra into a wall and knocked him unconscious.

Seeing their leader be so summarily dispatched threw everyone else into a panic. “Ugh,” groaned Chrysalis as she rolled her eyes. “This was why I wanted to do this when there was less of a crowd.” She sighed, then shouted, “BE STILL!”

Everyone instantly quieted down and stopped moving.

“Huh,” said Chrysalis. “Guess large, dark-colored quadrupeds with horns and wings screaming ‘Be Still’ is the best way to stop a panic. Luna may have been onto something.”

“So what do you want, anyway?” asked Sunset. “I mean, I’m guessing your endgame isn’t to actually get hitched with Shining Armor, especially because I’m pretty sure any such marriage wouldn’t be legal due to entering it under false impressions. And, with the apparent mind control, also duress.”

“Look,” said Chrysalis in a dangerous voice, “if all of you will just shut up and be still for a while, you’ll all make out of this alive.” She paused. “Probably.”

“Any ideas?” whispered Sunset to Cadance.

“You and your friends have the Elements, right? Can’t those be useful?”

“Well, yes, but it would require us to get out of this room without getting blasted by her. She does seem to have considerable power right now.”

Sombra finally stirred. “Ah, that’s good,” said Chrysalis. “Glad I didn’t have to wait on that one.” She approached him. “So, how are you feeling?”

Sombra groaned. “How do you think I feel?” he asked. “You blasted me into a wall!”

There was a sudden silence, and all eyes fell on him. “Wait,” said Sombra, “did I just talk?”

“Yes!” said Chrysalis. “Those doctors were right! A big enough blow to the head would cure your speech impediment!”

Sombra rubbed his head. “Are you sure this didn’t have any kind of side effect?”

“Well, it made your voice much less gravelly, and they said there was a chance of personality changes. However, they assured me the chance of the latter was extremely slight.”

“Okay,” said Sombra. “Question time. So your whole goal here was to blast me and fix my speech impediment?”

“Pretty much,” said Chrysalis. “Replace Cadance for a while, feed off of Shining Armor’s love for a while to boost myself a lot, then blast you and cure you.”

“And you couldn’t have asked me?”

“But that would take out all the fun,” said Chrysalis. “And what are you complaining about? If anyone has something to criticize, it would be Cadance for the kidnapping thing and and Shining Armor for the brainwashing thing. And speaking of happy couples, now that your speech has been restored, how about we finally get back together?”

Sombra sighed and rolled his eyes. “Chrysalis, as I told you back then, I’m just not interested in a relationship anymore. It’s got nothing to do with whether I can talk.”

Chrysalis frowned. “Oh, that’s what you were saying? I thought it was that it wouldn’t work out until you could talk again. That, or you were planning to destroy the universe. Figured it was the first one.”

“So you misunderstood me,” said Sombra. “Just like every single other person I talk to. And no one ever gets it right! They keep thinking it’s one of two things, and it’s never either! Like… Sunset!” He turned to Sunset Shimmer. “Back then, I wasn’t telling you to go oversee the Summer Sun Celebration or to take over the griffons back when you went to handle the Summer Sun Celebration. I wanted you to do some research on dragons.”

“But if that’s the case, then who was supposed to handle the celebration?” asked Sunset, confused.

“Somepony else, but they misunderstood what I was saying and did something else, so you never met them! Argh!” Sombra sighed. “You know what? Now that my voice is back, I can finally announce something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now, but couldn’t because nopony could ever understand me.”

“What’s that?” asked Chrysalis.

“Oh, easy one,” said Sombra. “I quit. I’m done. Don’t want to be king anymore. Now that my voice is back, I can finally achieve my lifelong dream: Become a singer on Bridleway! Check it out!”

Chrysalis stared at Sombra as he started singing and dancing:

“Hello my baby!
Hello my honey!
Hello my ragtime gal!
Send me a kiss by wire!
Baby, my heart’s on fire!”

Chrysalis continued staring.

“So, what did you think?” asked Sombra.

“Um,” said Chrysalis.

“Great!” said Sombra. “Oh, come to think of it, I guess I do owe you something for helping me out, and the throne’s vacant, so… how’d you like to be the new ruler? You’ve got the experience as a ruler, being queen of the changelings and all.”

“Well, um–” started Chrysalis.

“Great!” said Sombra. He grabbed his crown and put it on her head. “Have fun! See you later!” He ran off. There was a long silence.

“Well,” Chrysalis finally said, “this is awkward.” Another long silence followed. Chrysalis turned to Cadance and said, “So, want to sing a duet or something? For some reason, I feel like we could do a good job at it.”

“You kidnapped me and left me in the Crystal Caverns all alone, then brainwashed my fiancé and tried to marry him. And you’re asking if I want to sing a duet with you?”

Chrysalis shrugged. “Just trying to break the ice. But if you’re going to be so naggy about it, I guess I do owe you something.”

“That,” complained Sunset as the train left Canterlot the following day, “was the stupidest trip I have ever been on. Even dumber than that Nightmare Moon incident. What a waste of time.”

“What are you complaining about?” asked Suri. “At least you got a raise from all of those errands you ran for Chrysalis.”

Sunset slouched. “Cadance and Shining Armor got the Crystal Empire in compensation for what they were put through. Where’s my kingdom? I got stuck in the Crystal Caverns, too! ”

“Meh,” said Gilda. “You still got something.”

“What were you doing, anyway? I didn’t see you at the wedding.”

“Oh, I was just trying to pull off one of the most epic pranks ever,” said Gilda. “I was going to fool everyone into thinking we were under assault by these creatures that looked like a cross between an alicorn and insect that could shapeshift.”

“But there were–”

“I know, and that’s why the stupid thing didn’t work!”

“Well, I had a great time,” said Flim. “Turns out those changelings actually love ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ due to regular cider not sitting too well with them.”

“Any of you know why Lightning Dust and Trixie aren’t here?”

Gilda shrugged. “Lightning Dust said something about finding ‘inspiration’ in the changelings and wanted to spend some time with them so that they’d portray them accurately in the comic or something. I kinda zoned out during her explanation.”

“So, anyway,” said the changeling, “hope you have a good time around here in our society. Let me assure you that this is a totally legitimate attempt to spread awareness of changeling society and in no way a secret plan to try to lure you into our domain in order to capture you and derive sustenance from you while we keep you prisoner.”

“I have a good feeling about this!” said Lightning Dust brightly.

“At any rate,” said Sunset, “I stick with my idea that this was the stupidest trip I’ve been on so far.”

Gilda patted her on the back. “Don’t worry, I’m sure one day you’ll go on a trip that’s even more stupid than this one.”

Sunset groaned.

Meanwhile…

Yawning, Luna entered the throne room. “Sorry I’m late for the wedding; I kinda I slept in. Did I miss anything?”

Too Many Magic Duels

Rain fell in Canterlot for dramatic effect as a cloaked figure entered a magic shop.

“May I help you, traveler?” asked the shopkeeper.

The cloaked figure pointed to an amulet. “Ah, you have a keen eye,” continued the shopkeeper, “the Alicorn Amulet is one of the most mysterious and powerful of all the known magical charms. Though I’m afraid it’s far too dangerous.”

“Then why in the world are you selling it?” asked the figure.

“You got me,” said the shopkeeper. “I don’t actually own the place; I’m just an intern. So I can't sell it to you.”

The cloaked figure opened a bag and showed a lot of gold coins to the shopkeeper.

“You know what?” asked the shopkeeper. “They don’t pay me enough to not get bribed. It’s yours.”

Meanwhile, sometime later…

“… and that’s how Equestria was made!” finished Trixie.

“Um, that’s very nice,” said Suri, “but I just wanted to know what was for lunch.”

“I’m getting to that,” said Trixie, but she found herself interrupted by the arrival of a lavender unicorn wearing a rather conspicuous amulet. Well, technically more of a light grayish mulberry unicorn, but who’s counting?

“Well, if it isn’t… Trixie,” said Twilight, the aforementioned lavender unicorn in the off chance this wasn’t obvious.

“Oh, hi, Twilight,” said Trixie. She turned back to Suri. “Anyway, as I was saying–”

“‘Oh, hi, Twilight’? That’s all you have to say?” asked Twilight indignantly.

Trixie considered the matter. “Would you prefer I say ‘hello’ instead of ‘hi’? That is slightly longer.”

Twilight’s eye twitched. “Considering you ruined my life, I’d expect you to have a little more to say.”

“Oh, you didn’t realize? When Lightning Dust was going on about punishments, she was using an outdated law book. You actually weren’t responsible for any of the damages.”

Twilight stared. “What.”

“Yeah, we kinda tried to contact you to tell you, but since you thought you were on the run, we weren’t able to get through to you.”

Twilight continued staring in disbelief.

“Staring in disbelief seems oddly common recently,” said Trixie. She turned back to Suri. “Anyway, as I was trying to say–”

“Hey!” said Twilight. “I did not go through the effort of getting this magical amulet and coming all the way back here to get revenge just to be brushed off!”

“How were you planning to get revenge, anyway?” asked Trixie.

“By challenging you to a magic duel to show you that you’re inferior in terms of magical power!”

“Enh,” said Trixie, “no need. You’re the stronger one. I admit it. Now, as I was trying to tell Suri–”

Trixie suddenly found herself blasted into a wall by Twilight. “Screw this,” said Twilight, “everypony in this town is going to suffer my wrath for what happened, because no one thought to defend me.”

“You did kind of run out before anyone had a chance,” said Suri, causing her to get blasted as well. “Yeah, this is why I usually keep my mouth shut around powerful beings who have reason to dislike me,” she mumbled to herself.

Sunset approached, having heard the noise. “What is all of this rumpus?” she asked wearily.

“Twilight’s back and she’s mad,” said Trixie. She pointed a hoof in Twilight’s direction. “She’s over there.”

“Ugh,” said Sunset with a groan, “looks like something else I have to take care of. At least I know what to do.” She walked over to Twilight. “Hi,” she said.

Twilight shot a glare at her. “What is it?”

“Well,” said Sunset in as convincing a voice as she could, “to try to recompense you for your issues, we put together a fund of sorts. So, to make up for everything you went through, we’ve got a rather large amount of cash for you.”

“I don’t want money!” said Twilight indignantly. “I want revenge!”

Sunset shrugged. “Well, I guess the money will go towards its original goal, then: Getting double-ply toilet paper in all the public bathrooms.”

“Screw it,” said Twilight, “I’m tired of this. Sunset, you at least helped against the Ursa Major. And Gilda,” she continued as Gilda spontaneously appeared, “you also assisted. You two get spared. She blasted the two with a magical beam that sent them flying out of the city. A large dome then appeared around the city.

“Ow,” said Sunset, “my head. Did she teleport you to her location?”

“I assume so,” said Gilda. “Did that ‘Appease Twilight’ fund not work?”

“What do you think?” asked Sunset dryly.

“Where’d she get all that power anyway? She was always strong, but shooting us out of the city? Teleporting me to their location despite not knowing where I was? She seems crazy strong right now, even for her.”

“Maybe it was that amulet around her neck,” said Sunset. “I feel like I read something about an amulet that would turbocharge your magic, but I can’t remember the details.”

“And, of course,” noted Gilda, “any information would probably be in that library you have. But we’re stuck out here.”

“Well,” said Sunset, “we had a good run in Ponyville. We had some fun times. But it’s obviously a lost cause at this point, so time to skedaddle!”

Gilda grabbed Sunset as she tried to walk off. “No way! We have to find a way to defeat Twilight so we can get back into Ponyville!”

“Why do you care so much?”

“Uh, well, I kinda left my gun collection back there,” said Gilda sheepishly.

“Of course,” said Sunset with a roll of her eyes. “Well, defusing the situation could earn me some points, I guess. Any ideas?”

“Plenty!”

“That don’t involve guns?”

“Hrm,” said Gilda. “That’s a tougher one.”

“I’ve got one!” declared Trixie as she suddenly popped up.

“Trixie?” asked Sunset. “How did you get out here? I thought she sealed off Ponyville.”

Trixie shrugged. “I dug my way under the dome.”

“But… we were just blasted out. You would’ve had to have dug your way through in a matter of seconds.”

“Hey,” said Trixie, “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Gilda.

“Whatever! Do you want to hear my idea?”

“Sure why not?” asked Gilda. “It can’t be worse than your last terrible idea.”

Trixie ignored the second portion of Gilda’s comment. “I have made the determination that the amulet Twilight is wearing is the source of her recent power! It’s called the Alicorn Amulet, and all we have to do is get her to take it off. Then instead of a super-powered unicorn, we’ll just have to deal with a regular powered unicorn. Also, the amulet may or may not warped her personality, so if we get it taken off she might not be in a fighting mood anyway.”

“How in the world did you know all that?” asked Sunset, confused.

Trixie shrugged. “Last time Lightning Dust and I were in Canterlot, we were looking at random stuff in magic shops for inspiration. One of them had something called the Alicorn Amulet and the owner went on this long spiel about it and how it was really dangerous and stuff, so he wouldn’t sell it.”

“Then why did he have it on display in the store?” asked Gilda.

“Apparently, it was worth a lot, so if the store burnt down or something he’d be able to claim it for the insurance money.”

Sunset waved her hoof in dismissal. “I don’t care about that. How do we get the amulet off of her?”

“How should I know?” asked Trixie. “I’m just the inspiration. You guys are the brains. You figured out how to beat Celestia, didn’t you?”

“Hrm,” said Sunset, “maybe if we could get a large enough army, we could overcome her with sheer numbers.”

“Funny you should mention that,” said Trixie. “See, there’s something I didn’t mention…”

“Oh, joy,” muttered Sunset. “What is it this time?”

“Hi everypony!” declared Trixie as she walked up to them. “What’s going on?”

Sunset looked back and forth between the two Trixies. “I… you… what?”

“Yeah, well, I kinda cloned myself using this cloning pool in the Everfree Forest. There’s a bunch of them running around.”

“Which,” said Gilda, “is how you actually managed to get that tunnel dug so quickly, I assume.”

“How in the world did you get all of these clones around without anypony noticing beforehand?” asked Sunset.

“Hey,” said Trixie, “genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.”

“That still doesn’t make any sense!”

“Guys!” said Gilda. “Are we just going to stand around here talking? It’s time to take action already! Are we mice or men?”

“Uh, neither,” said Sunset.

“Exactly!” said Gilda. “Now, where are all the other clones that we can use to help defeat Twilight?”

A sudden stampede of Trixies stampeded in. “Here!” said Trixie.

“Well, I guess we can figure out something based on all of these,” said Sunset as she looked at all of the Trixies. “Uh, which one is the original again?”

“Me!” declared all of the Trixies in unison, except for two which looked around in a confused manner and jumped up and down a few times before saying the same thing.

“Meh,” said Sunset, “I guess we’ll figure it out later. I wonder what horrible things Twilight is subjecting Ponyville to.”

“Work, my slaves!” declared Twilight. “Work!”

“Uh, Twilight?” asked Suri. “I’m not sure what you expect us to work on. We already alphabetized the books you wanted us to do.”

“Exactly!” said Twilight. “Now no one will ever be unable to find their favorite book again!”

“I think she’s a little crazy,” whispered Suri to Flim.

“Next,” announced Twilight, “it’s time to sort the trash!”

“All right,” said Sunset, “you’re sure you have what you need?”

“Absolutely!” said Gilda. “It was actually surprisingly easy to sneak into my house to get my stuff. Now you just need to get Twilight into the town square.”

“That’s going to be the tougher part,” said Sunset. “Getting her there could be–”

Sunset found herself cut off by a loud voice announcing, “TWILIGHT SPARKLE WILL BE IN THE TOWN SQUARE FOR THE NEXT QUARTER OF AN HOUR. THIS IS JUST A FRIENDLY REMINDER.”

“Uh, nevermind,” said Sunset.

“It’ll take me a little while to set up,” said Gilda, “so don’t go engaging her immediately.”

After Gilda left, Sunset turned to the various Trixies. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Um,” said one of the Trixies, “some of us already did.” She pointed at several of the Trixies having already walked past Sunset.

“This is why cloning is a problem,” muttered Sunset to herself as she dashed after them.

“All right!” said Twilight to the gathered ponies. “For our next order of business, we will–”

“Hold it!” shouted Sunset as she entered the square. “You may be powerful with that amulet thing of yours, but I managed to find one that makes me even more powerful! Time for a magic duel!”

Twilight looked at her. “That ‘amulet’ you’re wearing looks like it’s made out of plastic.”

“Uh, no it isn’t!” said Sunset indignantly. “And I’ll prove it! Trixie, come here!” Trixie came up to Sunset. “With the power of this amulet, I will clone Trixie, thereby proving–”

A large group of Trixies suddenly ran into the square before Sunset was able to fake casting a cloning spell. “Um… never mind,” finished Sunset lamely. “I guess the gig is up.”

“Jig is up,” said Twilight.

“Huh?”

“That’s the expression, ‘the jig is up.’ You mixed up the two words.”

“Uh, okay,” said Sunset, feeling unsure what else to say.

“Anyway!” said Twilight. “Do you think I’m stupid? You obviously just used that reflecting pool to clone Trixie.”

“Hey!” said one of the Trixies. “Don’t give her the credit. I used the pool to clone myself. Sunset had nothing to do with it.”

“The point is,” said Twilight, “Sunset didn’t have all this amazing power after all. So I don’t have anything to fear. Especially after I do this.” Twilight zapped all of the Trixies but one. “There. Only one left.”

“You sure you left the right one?” asked Sunset.

“Meh,” said Twilight with a shrug. “Does it really matter?”

Just then, a bang was heard and the amulet on Twilight’s neck fractured. “What?” she asked incredulously.

“I think your amulet got destroyed by Gilda’s sniper rifle,” said Sunset.

Twilight looked down at the amulet. “No, not destroyed… just damaged.” Twilight suddenly appeared as though she was thinking extremely quickly. “That’s not enough power left to really accomplish any goals of domination here… but if I were to go there… that would be another matter. See you!” She teleported away.

“That was anticlimactic,” said Sunset. “Well, at least we got rid of all of the clones and it’s just the real Trixie back.”

“Yes,” said Trixie sinisterly, “the real Trixie.”

“Well,” said Gilda as she flew down and landed next to them, “I’m sure the real Trixie will have no problem paying for all the damages caused by this whole thing.”

“What?” asked Trixie.

“The clones sure did a number on the town, and someone has to pay for it. Since you were the one who cloned yourself, you’re liable.”

Trixie frowned. “Screw this,” she said. Her horn suddenly glowed and she zapped herself.

“Did she just zap herself?” asked Sunset.

“Yeah, guess she was one of the clones,” said Gilda. “I figured that mentioning that thing about liabilities would drive her off if she was a clone.”

“Doesn’t that mean the real Trixie did get zapped back to the pool with the other clones, though?”

“You almost sound like you care,” said Gilda.

“Well, if it turns out not to be the real Trixie, it’s a legal headache,” muttered Sunset. “And guess who gets stuck dealing with the paperwork?”

“The mayor’s office?” asked Gilda.

“Exactly!” said Sunset. “I need to maintain some level of decent ties with them. All that paperwork wouldn’t help. But anyway, to get back on track, doesn’t all this mean we have no Trixies now? That might be even worse paperwork.”

“You know,” said Gilda, “that spell confuses me. The reason it can hit the real Trixie is because it can’t tell the clones from the real one, right?”

“Right,” said Sunset. “But getting back to–”

“But how does that make any sense?” asked Gilda. “How does the spell know that someone actually was the person who made the clones? What would differentiate the real Trixie from any random pony? Wouldn’t it have to work on anyone, even if they never made the clones?”

“Well, I’m not that familiar with the spell, but I’m guessing there are residual effects of using the pool on them?” said Sunset. “And maybe that makes it, for the spell, impossible to tell the clones apart. However, as I was saying–”

Gilda interrupted again. “But then why not make a spell that can detect that residual effect? There must be a difference in magic, shouldn’t there?”

“Look, I don’t care!” said Sunset. “The point is, is there no Trixie around anymore?”

“Oh, that,” said Gilda. “Actually, I’ve been totally stalling you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because in order to show the amazing genius that I possess, I needed you to wait long enough for something to happen.”

“And what is that thing to happen?” asked Sunset.

“Hasn’t happened yet,” said Gilda with a shrug. “Have any small talk you want to engage in to pass the time?”

“No!” said Sunset indignantly. “What I want is–”

“Hey everypony!” declared Trixie as she came to the town square. “Sorry I’m late, but it took a while to run all the way over here. All those exercises Lightning Dust has been making me do actually paid off.”

“Wait, what happened?” asked Sunset.

“Wow, my suspicion was correct,” said Gilda. “After the remaining clone popped itself back into the pool, they all threw Trixie out of it, and she came here.”

“Exactly!” declared Trixie.

“And what would you have done if your suspicion was wrong?” asked Sunset.

“Hey,” said Gilda, “if I stopped to care about consequences, I’d never do anything.”

“So what happened while I was away, anyway?” asked Trixie. “As Twilight’s not here, did the plan work?”

“Well, Gilda’s shot appears to have destroyed the amulet’s power amplification, but seems to have left Twilight a bit screwed up in the head. She muttered something about going someplace else. But her tyranny is over for Ponyville!”

“Actually,” said another pony, “the town is probably a little better for her rule. Got the trash cleaned up, got stuff organized… she wasn’t that bad a ruler.”

“You know, I had a question,” said Gilda. “Why in the world did you clone yourself? Not even the usual having to be in multiple places at once makes sense for you, because you have so little to actually do.”

“Well, um,” said Trixie, “I kinda figured that I could do all the crazy stuff I always wanted to but would get in trouble for, but the clone would give me an alibi.”

“That,” said Gilda with her eyes widening, “is brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Is this stupid adventure done, then?” asked Sunset. “I’d like to be able to relax.”

“I guess it’s done with,” said Trixie, “though don’t you think it all feels rather unfulfilling? Nothing is at all wrapped up due to Twilight still sort of being on the run. It seems like a lame way to end an adventure. Let me tell you, if my life was a movie, I’d feel really disappointed if this isn’t concluded more properly soon.”

“For the last time,” snapped Sunset, “your life is not a film or a screenplay for one!”

“Well if it was,” said Trixie, “now would be a great time for me to end it with a great quip!”

There was a pause.

“You’ve got nothing?” asked Gilda.

“I’ve got nothing,” said Trixie.

Wonderbolts Academy 2: Electric Boogaloo

“So anyway,” started Lightning Dust, “for the next Mare Do Well issue–”

“Gyah!” said Gilda. “Shut up about Mare Do Well!”

Lightning Dust looked hurt. “But we worked really hard on it and–”

“It’s always about Mare Do Well with you now!” shouted Gilda. “Mare Do Well this, Mare Do Well that! It’s like that’s the only thing you care about! Whatever happened to your dreams of being a great flyer and joining the Wonderbolts?”

“Nothing happened to them,” protested Lightning Dust. “But I might as well do something while I wait for them to accept my application. Besides, this pays my bills a lot better than having to pay extra bills due to wanton destruction.”

“Bleh,” said Gilda. “Man, I liked you more when you had a real objective in your life and were trying to reach it, even if it constantly backfired comedically. You don’t understand. You could’ve been somebody. You could’ve been a contender!”

“Huh?” asked Lightning Dust, feeling confused.

“Sorry, got a little carried away there,” said Gilda. “The point is, for the longest time I’ve known you, you were always obsessed about flying the fastest you could, beating everyone else, and getting into the Wonderbolts. You know the last time I heard you even mention the Wonderbolts? Two weeks ago! And do you remember why you mentioned it?”

“Erm, not really?” asked Lightning Dust hesitantly.

“You mentioned the Wonderbolts because you thought it’d be a good idea to use them in a Mare Do Well comic! Gyah!” Gilda threw her arms up in frustration. “I don’t even know why I’m complaining about this, considering you’re actually less annoying and don’t seem to cause as much property damage. But seriously, man, is that what you want to spend your life doing? Being a co-writer for a dumb comic book?”

“It’s not dumb!” said Lightning Dust. “It’s actually a really humorous comic that manages to be an effective parody of superhero comics while still retaining the qualities that qualify it for being an actual example of the genre.” She paused. “Or at least that’s what Trixie said.”

Gilda face-palmed. “Ugh, and there you go again. Fine, whatever. If this makes you happy, go with it. But I think you might be wasting your potential.”

Lightning Dust walked Gilda stalked off, then walked away slowly herself. Aw man, she thought, is Gilda right? I have been practicing flying a lot less. Have I really been losing sight of what I wanted? Am I–

Lightning Dust’s thoughts were cut off by her walking straight into a pole due to not looking where she was going. “Ow!” she said as she rubbed her head. Not wanting a repeat performance, she opted this time to continue by heading to her house while doing as little musing as possible.

When she reached her house, she found the gray-coated mailmare waiting there. “Uh, you know you just put the letters in the mailbox and leave, right?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Oh, normally I would,” said the mailmare, “but this is an extra special delivery!”

“What makes it extra special?”

“It’s even more special than a regular special delivery, of course!”

Lightning Dust sighed and, rather than attempt to continue a conversation she knew wouldn’t lead anywhere fruitful, simply asked, “So, can I have it then?”

“Oh, sure!” she said, handing the letter to Lightning Dust before flying off.

Lightning Dust looked at the letter. “This had better be worth it,” she muttered before opening it. Her eyes flew across the paper. “I got accepted into the Wonderbolts Academy? Awesome! Making a point not to commit any more felonies for a while does pay off!”

Feeling giddy but not wanting to make this fact overly obvious, she quickly went inside with the letter.

“All right,” she said as she took a closer look at the letter, “so this is in exactly one month. That should give me enough time to get off work so I can go. No problem!”

One time transition later…

Lightning Dust heard a knock on her door and went to open it, finding Trixie on the other side. “Hiya!” said Trixie. “I have got some great news!”

“Bet it’s not as good as the news I got,” said Lightning Dust.

“Oooh, but I’m sure it is,” said Trixie. “See, we actually caught the attention of a movie studio, and they indicated that just maybe, they perhaps might have a small amount of interest in making a film adaptation. I’ve got a meeting set up and everything!” She grabbed Lightning Dust. “Think of the exposure! Think of the money! Think of the fun!”

Lightning Dust pushed Trixie away. “The fun?” she asked.

“What, you don’t think making a movie around the superhero we made would be fun?”

“Well, it probably would, but don’t they usually put different writers and directors in charge of the film than the original creators?”

“Hrm,” said Trixie. “Good point. Just think of the exposure and money, then.”

“Well, okay, that is pretty good, but I got accepted into the Wonderbolts Academy.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” said Trixie. “So, upon completion do you gain entry to the Wonderbolts?”

“Not really.”

“Do they offer you special opportunities to apply for positions unavailable to anypony who didn’t go into the academy?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Do they impart some kind of valuable skills that would possibly aid you in getting into the Wonderbolts?”

“No, the whole thing is basically a bunch of exercises.”

“Then what in the world is the point of the whole thing?” asked Trixie.

“I guess it makes you look good if you complete it,” said Lightning Dust with a shrug. “Look, it can’t hurt.”

“What if you screw up really badly and get expelled, thus ruining your dreams of being a Wonderbolt forever?”

“Psh,” said Lightning Dust dismissively, “like that would ever happen. Anyway, when is this meeting of yours?”

Trixie held up an appointment note. Lightning Dust looked at it, frowned, then looked back at her acceptance letter. “Um, these are on the same day.”

”My Little Pony, My Little Pony
Ahh ahh ahh ahh–”

“Trixie,” interrupted Lightning Dust, “what are you doing?”

“I’m… not sure,” said a confused Trixie. “For some reason, it felt natural to sing that.”

“Look, just reschedule the appointment. Problem solved.”

“Do you know how hard it was to get that appointment? I can’t just reschedule it!” said Trixie.

Lightning Dust thought for a little while. “Well, you can do the meeting by yourself, right?”

“I guess I could,” said Trixie, “but they did really seem like they wanted to meet both of us rather than just one. Might hurt our presentation.”

“Wait a minute!” said Lightning Dust. “The answer is obvious. I just have to clone myself using that cloning pool you used.”

“Yeah,” said Trixie sheepishly, “about that. They kind of closed down the whole thing after that incident. Doesn’t work anymore.”

Lightning Dust threw her hooves in the air in frustration. “Well then what am I supposed to do?!”

“Figure out which is more important to you?” asked Trixie with a shrug. “I don’t know. I’d obviously prefer if you come with me to the meeting. Anyway, let me know when you figure it out.” She left.

“Only one thing to do!” declared Lightning Dust as she slammed her hoof on the table. After the throbbing pain from the slam went away, she finished, “Ask for advice!”

“Okay,” said Lightning Dust, “so asking for advice didn’t work.”

“Well, duh,” said Gilda, “you didn’t ask me for advice.”

“Well, Suri didn’t want to help unless I bought something. Sunset didn’t care. I wasn’t going to ask Flim and Flam, but then they decided to give me a bunch of their ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ as recompense for that failed promotion of Mare Do Well a while ago that I was so angry at them for, and I ended up getting so drunk from it all I forgot to even ask them, and it just felt so awkward to go back and ask. Incidentally, I’ve been thinking that Dr. Film and Dr. Falm have sort of served their purpose as antagonists in Mare Do Well and might work better as anti-heroes who are occasional allies.”

“Do you want my advice, or are you just going to babble on about inconsequential things?” asked Gilda.

“I can’t have both?”

“No!” snapped Gilda.

“Fine,” muttered Lightning Dust. “What would you suggest?”

“Well, remember when I said you were spending too much time on Mare Do Well and should just focus on the whole Wonderbolt thing?”

“Yeah, that was fairly recently. So are you saying–”

“Well, you should forget all of that,” said Gilda. “If you can’t decide something, just flip a coin.”

“That’s your advice?” asked Lightning Dust. “Flip a coin?”

“Well, duh,” said Gilda. “It’d spare me from actually trying to figure it out. Besides, I find this can actually be a way to figure out which one you really do want to do, as you’ll be tempted to renege on it if it comes to the one you actually don’t like.”

“Fine, flip the coin.”

Gilda took out a coin. “So, heads the Wonderbolts, tails Mare Do Well?”

“Go ahead,” said Lightning Dust.

Gilda threw the coin up in the air. The two looked down at it.

“Well,” said Lightning Dust, “I know what to do now.” She sped straight off at the door, then slammed straight into it and fell to the ground unconscious.

“Huh,” said Gilda. “Having the door have an interior steel lining to it to prevent Lightning Dust from constantly crashing through it actually worked. You know, I probably should take her to the hospital.”

“Well, we’ve got a lot of broken bones, a concussion, and a few more minor injuries that don’t sound as impressive as those,” said the doctor. “So it looks like you’re going to be stuck here for the next month.”

“What?!” asked Lightning Dust. “I’ve got something to go to!”

The doctor shrugged. “Should’ve thought of that before you ran straight into a steel door. Just be glad your insurance actually covers this.”

Gilda came in as the doctor left. “Well, what did I tell you? Flipping that coin totally resolved your dilemma.”

“In the stupidest way possible,” muttered Lightning Dust.

“Well, it just goes to show you that you shouldn’t fly through people’s doors. Truly a lesson for the ages. By the way, what were you planning to do?”

“I can’t even remember,” said Lightning Dust. “That head injury probably gave me short-term memory loss.”

A little over a month later…

“So how’d the meeting go?” asked Lightning Dust. “Did my absence affect anything?”

“Bah,” said Trixie, “the whole thing turned out to be pointless. They wanted to make Mare Do Well into a ‘darker and edgier’ superhero who actively killed criminals and was a fugitive from justice as a result. And, for some reason, had a rapping sidekick. I’m not sure where that came from. So you being around wouldn’t have helped.”

“So… between that and the whole Wonderbolts Academy getting so trashed a week ago that the whole thing got cancelled until next year, it looks like that whole dilemma about where to go turned out to be completely pointless,” said Lightning Dust.

“Yep!” said Trixie. “Well, you know what they say.”

There was a pause. “What do they say?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I have no idea,” said Trixie, “I assumed you knew.”

“I still think we should’ve finished the job and really destroyed that academy,” complained Thunder Strike.

“That wasn’t the point and you know it,” said Stormy Skies.

“Yeah, yeah, causing destruction was just a way to prevent them from noticing we stole their uniforms. Whatever. This plan is absurdly convoluted.”

“Hey!” said Stormy. “It’s a bit complicated, but it’ll all pay off once we take over. And we got exactly what we needed from that attack. Now all we have to do is wait a little before moving to the next step.”

“Hrm,” said Maelstrom Tempest.

Magical Mystery? Sure!

“Somewhat special delivery!” called out a a familiar voice. Wincing in preparation for the pain that she was sure was about to come, Sunset went over to the door and opened it.

“Do I want to ask what makes it somewhat special?” asked Sunset.

“Nope!” said the mailmare, who promptly gave her an envelope and flew off.

Sighing to herself, Sunset took the envelope and went inside. She then opened it and found a letter inside. Actually, a whole lot of letters were inside, but those letters then made words, which together made up a letter under a different definition of the word ‘letter.’ “I know this is going to lead to pain, but I have to open it anyway,” she muttered to herself as she read it.

Dear Sunset Shimmer,

The spell contained on the last page of this book is some secret unfinished masterpiece or something like that. I don’t know; I wasn’t really paying too much attention when it was explained. In case you’re wondering, I found the whole thing when doing the laundry. At any rate, it was by some guy whose name was something like Starswirl the Barbed, but I don’t feel like looking it up. Anyway, apparently he never finished it or anything, so I guess it’s up to you to finish it. I was going to have some of the really knowledgeable unicorns handle it, but apparently they had a drinking game last night over how many times they found someone whose name somehow perfectly fit their personality and/or job description despite it being given at birth before such a thing could be figured out, and they’re expected to be passed out for the next few months. So I guess it’s up to you to try to figure it out. Or something like that.

Sincerely,
Queen Chrysalis

P.S. No, this is not some roundabout way to make you learn about friendship. Probably.

P.P.S. Why am I doing my own laundry? I need to speak with someone about that.

“Well, it’s something to do, I guess, and if I succeed maybe I could get some recognition or something,” Sunset said to herself. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

A short time later…

“Okay,” said Sunset as she observed the chaos around Ponyville, “I guess some really bad stuff can happen.”

Gilda landed next to Sunset. “Hey, you seem sane… by the current standards of Ponyville, at least,” said Gilda. “You have any idea what’s going on?”

“I think I may have inadvertently cast a spell that caused all this commotion,” said Sunset.

“Well, gee, maybe you shouldn’t have cast such a commotion-causing spell?”

“It’s not my fault!” said Sunset. “How was I supposed to know that just reading ‘From one to another, another to one. A mark of one’s destiny singled out alone, fulfilled’ would actually cause this? Incidentally, what is going on?”

“Enh, apparently everyone’s cutie marks got switched and that made them convinced they should be doing different things than they’re normally doing. I, not having any of those silly-looking things, am thankfully immune.”

“Why should having their cutie marks switched make them act so differently?” asked Sunset. “I mean, mine is a cool-looking fireball, but it doesn’t mean I look at it and decide that it means I have to do fire magic.”

“This is why I don’t bother with those stupid things,” said Gilda. “Anyway, how do you plan to fix this? It’s so annoyingly noisy.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

“How would I? You’re the expert on magic!” exclaimed Gilda. “Besides, I’m tired of constantly being the one who has to save the day. I was the one who got that Crystal Heart delivered, and I was the one who destroyed that Alicorn Amulet. I don’t want to have to go through something like that a third time in a row.”

“Hey!” said Sunset. “I helped in all of those cases, and that was after I went through all that stuff at the wedding!”

“You mean the wedding where your interference was ultimately completely irrelevant beyond getting Cadance out of her prison a little earlier? But anyway, if you need some kind of possible solution, I’d suggest just hitting everyone on the head.”

“How in the world would that fix anything?”

“Well,” said Gilda with a shrug, “maybe it would rejigger their brains and restore them to normal. Or maybe it would just make them fall unconscious. Either way, it would do something.”

Gilda went up to a nearby pony. “Hi!” she said. “Do you feel like you’re not really that good at what you think your destiny in life is?”

“How did you know?” asked the pony.

“Don’t worry! I have the fix!” declared Gilda as she pulled a large hammer out of nowhere and hit the pony on the head with it, causing them to spontaneously collapse. “Well, just wait a while and we’ll see if that worked.”

“Where in the world were you storing that hammer?!” asked Sunset incredulously.

“Oh, that’s a Handi-Hammer™. It actually is able to fold up really well into itself and allow you to carry it around in your pocket.”

“But… you don’t have a pocket,” said Sunset.

“Yeah, they also made Handi-Pocket™, which allows you to fold up your pocket,” said Gilda.

“You know what?” asked Sunset. “Screw it. We’re just going to find some of the idiots we know, then remind them of what they actually do, and maybe that will restore them to normal. Have you seen any of them?”

“Flim and Flam are right over there,” said Gilda as she pointed offhandedly towards Flim and Flam trying unsuccessfully to sew some clothes.

“How did I not see them?” wondered Sunset. She went up to them. “So, why are you guys trying to make clothes when you’re obviously so bad at them?”

“Well…” said Flim as an unseen orchestra suddenly started up.

“Oh, no,” said Sunset, her face falling as she recognized the telltale signs of a song about to start.

“Look–”

“No!” shouted Sunset. “We are not having another stupid song! We all have more important things to worry about than it!”

“Aw,” said Flim, “but we worked really hard on this one. It even had a rhyme so forced at the end, it was intentionally unintentionally funny!”

“Don’t care!” snapped Sunset. She pointed a hoof at them. “You idiots are going to get back to what you’re actually half competent at, which is making stuff on that farm of yours to sell to other idiots.”

“But our cutie marks are telling us–”

“Ugh,” groaned Sunset. “Come on! A stallion is more than their cutie mark! They are a master of their own destiny! Just because a cosmetic change happened to you in it being swapped for Suri’s doesn’t mean you should give up what you’ve been doing!”

“Wow!” said Flim. “I never thought about it that way!”

“There’s only one thing to do!” declared Flam.

“Use that as the basis for a cheesy self-help book and publish it and make tons of money?”

“Exactly!”

Sunset stared after Flim and Flam as they left. “Well, that worked… I guess.”

“I liked the actually rather impressively rousing speech you came up with,” commented Gilda.

“Wait, that’s it!” said Sunset. “All I have to do is come up with really cheesy speeches that sound really rousing, and they’ll be cured!” Suddenly, music from an unseen orchestra started up. “Oh, come on,” muttered Sunset.

Several seconds went by. “Uh, not that I want any singing, but doesn’t somepony normally start singing when this music starts up?”

“Maybe you’re supposed to be the one singing this time?” asked Gilda.

“I’m not going to sing! It’s annoying enough when others do it!” The music grew louder and louder. Sunset sighed. “It’s not going to disappear until I sing something, will it?”

“Probably not,” said Gilda.

Sunset hung her head in resignation as the music continued. Finally she looked up and started singing.

“A true, true friend helps a friend in need.
To see the light that shines from a true, true friend.”

She said all of this very unenthusiastically. The music, apparently satisfied, abruptly vanished. “Now can we just fix up the rest?”

“Where’d you come up with those lyrics?”

“I just tried to think up the cheesiest thing I could,” said Sunset.

And so they set about trying to cure everyone, with Sunset giving rousing speeches as to how they were more than their cutie mark, and Gilda hitting anyone on the head that wasn’t immediately affected by it; as it turns out, this actually worked as a cure as well. After enough speechifying and acts of battery that would get awfully repetitive if individually explained, they seemed to have made everyone act normally again.

“Hooray!” said Sunset. “Everything is getting back to normal. Finally, life is smiling on me. Sort of.”

“But even if they’re acting more normal-ish, everyone still has the wrong cutie marks.”

“Who cares?” asked Sunset. “As long as they’re normal-ish, my problem is done.”

“Well,” said Gilda, “if you can reverse the spell, you’d have completed it, and could patent the spell and make lots of money off of it.”

“You can’t patent spells!” said Sunset.

“Well, I’m sure there’s money to be made in that somewhere,” said Gilda.

“I don’t know how to go about completely reversing the spells! Why don’t you figure out what that whole ‘From one to another, another to one. A mark of one’s destiny singled out alone, fulfilled’ thing means?”

Gilda considered it. “Well, considering how things seem to usually work out, most likely it’s something incredibly cheesy.”

“Uh, let me think about that,” said Sunset. “Cheesiest explanation I can think of… uh, from all of us, together we’re friends? With the marks of destinies made one, there is magic without end?”

Gilda scratched her head. “I don’t get it. But it does look like everyone’s cutie marks are suddenly back to normal, so I guess it worked.”

“Well, it–” started Sunset before spontaneously disappearing.

“Huh,” said Gilda. “That was odd.”

“Gyah!” shouted Sunset as she suddenly found herself in a weird void with what looked to be stars in the distance. “What happened?”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow at Sunset. “What are you doing here?”

“Chrysalis?” asked Sunset. “Where are we? Why are you here? Why am I here?”

“Oh, you were just suddenly transported here?” asked Chrysalis. “Ugh, great. I come here because it’s a good place to get some peace and quiet, but since you’re here… as reigning queen of Equestria, that means I get stuck with the job of explaining to you what’s going on. Wouldn’t have sent you that spell if I knew it would translate into this bother. I mean, I assume it did. You actually figured out that spell?”

“Yeah, I actually did!” said Sunset.

“Huh,” said Chrysalis. “Had no idea that thing could actually be figured out. I thought you’d just spend a whole lot of time trying to solve it, would give up, and then I’d admit to you I never expected you to be able to, and then I’d have a good laugh about it.”

“Don’t you mean we’d have a good laugh about it?”

“Nah,” said Chrysalis, “just me.”

Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself. “But why does solving it transport me to here?”

“Oh, well, I guess by solving the spell you did something that was never done before, and that inherently transports you here… or something. How’d the spell even work?”

“I just said ‘from all of us, together we’re friends. With the marks of destinies made one, there is magic without end.’”

“That sounds incredibly cheesy,” said Chrysalis.

“Yeah, I know, I was trying to come up with the cheesiest thing I could!”

“Well, apparently it had something to do with friendship or whatever, and Starswirl couldn’t solve it because he didn’t know friendship well enough.” Chrysalis paused. “Which is odd, because didn’t he befriend some guy named Scorpan who was originally here to take over Equestria? I mean, you’d think that would indicate he had a good knowledge of friendship.”

“So, I solved the whole thing completely by accident?” asked Sunset.

“Pretty much,” said Chrysalis, “but I guess it counts because you’re here.”

“How do you even know all of this?”

“Luna told me a whole lot,” said Chrysalis with a shrug. “She’s always getting on my case to learn all this stuff. Though it all does seem rather confusing. Exactly why this would trigger it is unclear, and it’s almost as if someone thought it up at the last moment as an attempt to justify a transformation.”

“Transformation?”

“Oh, yeah, that,” said Chrysalis. “Wow, I feel like I’m giving exposition in a comic book or something. Anyway, after you get transported here, you get to undergo some kind of ascension that involves a transformation. Let’s see, I think it’s on a timer after the initial transportation, so it should be going off about… now.”

Sunset suddenly found herself blinded by a bright flash of light. “Gah!” she shouted as she slammed her eyes shut. “I can’t see!”

“I like the fact you said ‘gah’ this time instead of ‘gyah’ to avoid repetitiveness,” said Chrysalis.

“Ugh,” said Sunset. “Still kind of blinded, though my eyesight’s coming back. I feel like I have wings now. Did I become an alicorn?”

“Oh, pfft,” said Chrysalis dismissively. “Alicorns are so old hat nowadays. Nah, you got turned into something way better.”

“What?” asked Sunset, confused.

Chrysalis held up a mirror to the no-longer-blinded Sunset. “Changeling! Congratulations!”

Sunset looked at the mirror, then at Chrysalis. She opened her mouth and said the only thing that came to mind.

“What.”

[REDACTED] Sunset Shimmer

“What? What do you mean ‘what’?” asked Chrysalis.

Sunset looked at herself. “Well, for starters, I look ridiculous. Seriously, the whole holes in legs things might work when you’re completely black, but I’m the same color as I was before. The weird-looking horn and holes and the wings don’t really work well when I’m orange.”

“That’s racist,” said Chrysalis.

Sunset had to exercise great restraint with her next comment. “The point is, if I was undergoing some kind of ascension, I was kind of hoping it would be something like an alicorn, not a changeling.”

“Pretty sure that’s racist, too,” said Chrysalis.

Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself.

“I don’t even see what you’re complaining about,” continued Chrysalis. “What do alicorns get that changelings don’t get anyway? You get the wings, you get the horn, and you get the ability to shapeshift! What more do you want?”

“I guess shapeshifting is nice,” muttered Sunset.

“Well, if you have the express written permission of the one you’re mimicking,” added Chrysalis. “There’s a lot of paperwork to fill out.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, had to make a law about that due to complaints. You know, you’d think in an absolute monarchy, there’d be less red tape for rulers.”

“So why’d I turn into a changeling if Cadance got turned into an alicorn?” asked Sunset.

“Well,” said Chrysalis, “it just affixes the race of whoever happens to be ruler of Equestria to you. So it’s changeling for you.”

“But… Sombra isn’t an alicorn. How did Cadance turn into one, then?”

“Oh, she technically didn’t. She just got unicorn added to her, so she looks like an alicorn, but lacks what Earth ponies have… whatever that is. You’re technically not really a full changeling, but a changeling-unicorn hybrid, hence why you look different than a regular changeling when in changeling form.”

“Ugh,” said Sunset. “Is there some way to reverse this? I look ridiculous, and I don’t want to have to deal with that whole stupid ‘feeding on love’ thing.”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Look, if you have such a problem with it, head over to the Crystal Empire. Maybe they know some way to change it.”

“You really think so?”

“Actually, I don’t have the faintest clue, but their bad experience with changelings and their knowledge of actual alicorn ascensions with Cadance makes them the closest thing to experts on the subject, plus it’d mean I wouldn’t have to deal with your whining for a while.”

Wait, she’s complaining about dealing with me? Really? thought Sunset to herself. “Fine. So how do I transform back into my previous form?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Chrysalis. “You just have to concentrate on it, and it happens. However, there’s a bunch of paper work they have to fill out.”

“Why?” asked Sunset.

“Weren’t you paying attention? I said you had to fill out a lot of paperwork to be able to transform into someone. So to transform into yourself, you have to fill out all that paperwork. So you’ll have to do that before you go on your trip, at least if you’re so determined to look like your ‘normal’ self when doing so.”

A significant amount of paperwork later…

Sunset’s eyes were blurry as she signed the last page. “There. Is that everything?”

The clerk looked through the various pages. “Looks like it’s all done! Congratulations, Sunset Shimmer! You now have the right to transform into Sunset Shimmer! Note that this approval only lasts for a year and must be renewed at that time.”

Sunset transformed back into her normal unicorn form. “Finally. Now I can actually go to the Crystal Empire.”

An extremely convoluted trip later…

“Well, that was an almost complete waste of time,” muttered Sunset as she and Trixie got off the train. “Not only did I not accomplish anything I wanted to on that trip, I also had to go through the stress of visiting an alternate universe.”

“Yes, you think it was an almost complete waste of time,” said Trixie flatly. “Just like the last ten times you mentioned that on the way here. You know, I’m starting to think you only brought me along to the Crystal Empire because you wanted somepony to complain to.”

“Trixie, I told you that was the only reason I brought you along!”

“Which is why I’m starting to think that,” said Trixie.

“You’re just screwing with me, aren’t you?” asked Sunset.

“Probably,” said Trixie.

“I get enough of that from Chrysalis! Please don’t you start!” Sunset groaned. “The last few days have been exhausting. I’m just going to head home and relax and try to find some peace of mind.”

Sunset found herself woken up by a knock on the door. “Okay,” she said to herself, “I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to open that door, and then I’m going to be confronted by an annoying problem or pony I’ll have to deal with. I’m going to ignore it.” She pulled the cover over her head to try to dull out the knocking. However, the knocking kept going on, leaving her unable to get back to sleep.

“Screw it,” she said as the tossed away the sheet. “I know it’ll be something stupid and annoying, but it’s clearly not going to leave me alone.” She went up to the door and opened it.

“Hi, Sunset!” declared Suri, who was on the other side of the door. “Got something important to tell you.”

“What, is it some kind of special sale you’re having?”

“No, but I am having a great sale on clothes! There’s some great discounts on–”

“I don’t care!” said Sunset. “Just tell me what was so important you kept knocking on my door!”

“Are you sure you don’t want to hear about my great sales?”

“Suri, I have not been having a good last few days, so if you would get to the point it would be appreciated!”

“Fine, fine,” muttered Suri. “Ponyville’s getting attacked by evil vines, and they’re causing all sorts of mayhem.” A vine knocked straight into Sunset’s house as Suri said this.

“And you don’t think this was important enough that you should have mentioned it right away without wasting time on the whole clothes sale thing?”

“Not really,” said Suri.

Sunset gritted her teeth but chose not to continue with that part of the conversation. “Okay, so what do you want me to do about it?”

“Uh, figure out a way to solve the problem?”

“Why should I have to do everything? I’m not going to go through that whole stupid Nightmare Moon thing again, struggle through a problem just to find out they already had a way to solve it. We should just contact Canterlot and have them figure it out!”

Sunset went back into her now-somewhat-destroyed house and pulled out a journal. “Dear Canterlot, we have a bunch of vines that are attacking. Can you send somepony to deal with it?”

“Is there any particular reason you’re speaking out loud to yourself when you write?” asked Suri.

“No,” said Sunset. “Now we just wait for a response.”

Just then, some words started appearing on the journal.

Well, I’d love to help you, but we’re too busy hanging around.

Get it? Vines? Hanging around? Ah, I crack myself up sometimes. But you’re on your own due to those vines attacking Canterlot. Besides, didn’t we leave the Elements of Irony in Ponvyille anyway after that whole Crystal Empire thing? Just use those.

But wow, that hanging around thing was gold, I’m telling you. Or at least silver. Certainly no worse than bronze.

-Chrysalis

“Naturally,” muttered Sunset to herself. “Fine. Gather up the other idiots we know, grab the Elements of Irony, then let’s just go into the Everfree Forest and zap whatever is causing the problems. Maybe for once, just once, we’ll not only get to use them, but they’ll also do something.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” asked Suri.

“Then we’ll just go to the griffon lands or something.”

“Isn’t Gilda banished? How could she go?”

“Not my problem!” declared Sunset. “Now let’s just find those guys before these vines get any more troublesome.”

“All right,” said Sunset as they stood on the edge of Ponyville, “everypony has their Elements? Nopony has to go to the bathroom?”

“I still have doubts about this plan,” said Gilda. “Do we even know what we’re supposed to target with the Elements?”

A fingersnap was heard. “Hi everypony!” declared Discord as he appeared. “I bet you’re all thrilled to see me!”

“Uh, not really,” said Gilda.

“Oh, relax,” said Discord, “I’m not here to take over Equestria or anything and plunge it completely into chaos. I realized that if everything is chaotic, then ultimately nothing is chaotic and it all becomes boring. So I’m just going to be around to cause a little bit of chaos rather than a whole lot.”

“Good for you,” said Gilda. “But we’ve sort of got our own problem right now.”

A vine hit Discord in the face. “Hey!” he said. “Do you know who I am?” The vine responded by hitting him again in the face. “Okay, that’s it!” Discord started punching the vine, which managed to make it go away. “Ugh,” he said. “If I had known what a pain these things would be, I wouldn’t have planted those seeds so long ago.”

“You did this?” asked Sunset. “Give me a good reason why we shouldn’t just zap you with the Elements right now, particularly considering we have them with us.”

Discord pulled a potion out of nowhere. “Because I have this special potion that will let you know how to handle this problem! Or at least that’s what the guy who sold it to me said. He did seem a little shifty.”

“I’m not going to drink something you offered me! It could be some kind of poison!”

“Oh, fine,” said Discord. “I’ll try it.” Discord drank some of the potions. His eyes suddenly widened. “Oh… wow,” he said. “Now I can see sound.” He stared at his hands. “My fingers can touch anything but themselves. Is this going to be forever?” Then he fell over and collapsed.

Flim went over and sniffed the potion. “I think this is actually super-potent alcohol called Superclear. From what I’ve heard about it, it packs the power of 100 regular bottles of vodka in one sip.”

Discord suddenly pointed upward and then got up. “I saw it! A vision showed what was going on!”

“You mean a hallucination from getting drunk?” asked Sunset. “Come to think of it, you seem awfully sober.”

“Oh, please, I can handle alcohol,” said Discord. “Anyway, now I know what you have to do!”

There was a pause.

“And… what is that?” Suri finally asked.

“Oh, just because I know doesn’t mean I’ll tell you,” said Discord. “That would be boring. Figure it out yourself!” He snapped his fingers and disappeared.

“So… we going to just ignore him for now?” asked Flam.

“Yes,” said Sunset, “let’s. Now let’s just see if we can figure out where these stupid vines are coming from.”

“Again, how do you plan to figure that out?” asked Gilda. “There’s a lot of vines. It’ll be hard to figure out exactly where they’re from.”

“I was getting to that,” said Sunset. “First, we’ll test the Elements out on the vines. If that works, they can probably take care of the root of the problem.”

Trixie fell over laughing. “Root of the matter! And it’s vines! Oh, that’s a good one!”

“Huh?” asked Sunset.

Trixie stopped laughing and got up. “Darn it, even when you do say something funny, it’s by accident.”

“Anyway,” said Sunset with a trace of patience in her voice (the rest of her voice was simply frustration, so there was only a trace of patience left), “let’s see if they work on the vines.”

“Wait!” said Trixie. “Let me try something!” Trixie went up to the vines. “Now, listen, vine, I know you may have had a bad day. But I’m going to be your friend! I’ll be really nice to you! For example, I’ve got a great gift–” Trixie was interrupted by the vine smacking her backwards. “Okay,” she said, “this can’t be defeated in the same way as the Pottsylvania Creeper.”

“The what?” asked Sunset.

“Don’t ask!” said Trixie. “Okay, try the Elements now.”

And so the group aimed their Elements at the vines and fired. The vines then disintegrated.

“Finally, these stupid things actually did something,” muttered Sunset. “So let’s just try to follow them back to their source.”

The group continued into the Everfree Forest, continually zapping the vines with the Elements of Irony. However, after a while, the Elements stopped working.

“Wait, what happened?” asked Sunset.

“Did they run out of batteries?” wondered Flam.

“The Elements of Irony don’t have batteries!” shouted Sunset.

“Oh, they’re solar powered, then,” said Flam. “At any rate, they seem to be out of power for now.”

Suri pointed a hoof at an important-looking tree that was covered in the vines. “Maybe we’re done anyway. This seems to be where the vines are coming from. All we have to do is blast it… but the Elements are out of power now. Hrm.”

“Well… maybe we can still use them somehow,” said Gilda. “Do you want to try throwing them at the tree?”

“That sounds incredibly stupid,” said Sunset.

“So,” said Gilda after a pause, “do you want to try throwing them at the tree?”

“Sure, why not?” asked Sunset. “I always thought this crown looked kind of tacky anyway.”

Sunset threw the Element at the tree. Or rather, she threw it at a weird sort of indentation on the tree that the Element coincidentally seemed to fit well. This resulted in it glowing and attaching itself to the tree. Seeing this, the others shrugged and threw their Elements at it also, and they all ended up on different indentations on the tree. This made all of the remaining vines disintegrate and the tree look healthier.

“You know, this is a really weird-looking tree,” commented Flam. “Well, I’m sure it’ll sell for a great price after it’s cut down.”

“No!” declared a voice as a large white alicorn faded into view. “I am Celestia! I speak for the trees! Because the… um… darn it, what’s a good rhyme for trees?”

“Celestia?!” asked Sunset. “What are you doing here? I thought you got arrested after you were defeated and imprisoned?”

“Oh, that?” asked Celestia. “No, I got rehabilitated. But my previous job is filled, and I’ve been having trouble finding a new one. My skillset seems surprisingly poor for the current job market, anypony I could use as a reference isn’t available anymore, and I’ve technically got a criminal record.”

“Didn’t Luna get a job at the castle despite having those same strikes against her?” asked Trixie. “As an advisor or something? I can’t remember the exact title.”

“Apparently it involved some kind of misunderstanding with Sombra’s charades,” said Celestia. “At any rate, I had to take this job as the speaker of the trees until I find something better, because there was a vacancy due to the previous person in this position quitting after getting a cushy offer from a logging company. Anyway, I’m supposed to stop anypony from chopping down trees and plants while speaking in rhyme. So… uh… I speak for the trees, because the trees can’t talk through their bees.” She frowned. “No, the meter is off on that one.”

“Well, as ‘speaker of the trees,’ do you happen to know what’s special about that tree?” asked Gilda.

“This is the Tree of… something. It ended with a Y. It’s where the Elements came from.”

“Well, they’re the Elements of Irony, so… the Tree of Irony?” guessed Sunset.

“Probably,” said Celestia.

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve lived a really long time, and I kind of went a little crazy during that lengthy time I was in exile–”

“A little crazy?” asked Suri.

Celestia ignored her. “So my memory is a bit fuzzy on a few things. However, the tree is the source of the Elements’ power. Apparently it was weakened by all of those vines, but you restoring its power by returning the Elements to it made it go back to normal.”

Just then, a flower sprouted on the tree a big box with six locks on it fell out. “Huh, what’s that?” wondered Trixie.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a box,” said Gilda. She went over and tried to open it. “Nope; won’t open. Looks like we need to find the keys.”

“Oh boy!” said Lightning Dust excitedly. “I bet we’ll get to go on an epic quest to find them, right?”

“Do you even know where to start?” asked Suri.

“No… I guess not,” said a deflated Lightning Dust.

“I know what to do!” said Flam. “We’ll charge people for the right to open it up, and if they succeed, they can take whatever’s inside! I bet we’d make a ton!”

“Don’t you think that, considering this emerged from the tree that the Elements originated from, perhaps this box might be something really important and thus not to be handled lightly?” asked Celestia

“Fine,” said Sunset, “I’ll hold onto the thing in case we stumble upon a bunch of keys. Can we go now?”

The group returned to Ponyville. “Well, there’s one good thing about this,” said Sunset. “At least now that the Elements are gone, our odds of getting forced to go on dumb adventures in order to use them against some enemy have dropped.”

“What about the possibility that the lack of the Elements could mean some new enemy that requires the Elements to be defeated would therefore be unbeatable and take over the world?” asked Lightning Dust. She paused. “That was a bit awkwardly phrased.”

“Screw the world! What has it done for me lately?” asked Sunset.

“You got changeling powers,” said Trixie.

“Wait, Sunset has what now?” asked Suri.

“Curing that stuff with the cutie marks caused her to ‘ascend’ and she got turned into a changeling,” said Trixie.

“Wait, what?” asked Suri. “That’s awesome! Why can’t that happen to me? Wings would be great. Not to mention shapeshifting power.”

“Can’t shapeshift,” said Sunset, “at least not without a whole lot of forms getting filled out. Heck, I had to fill stuff out just to be able to transform into myself. And I can’t fly without going into changeling form, and I look ridiculous like that.”

“So,” said Gilda, “you’ve received powers you either can’t or don’t want to use. What’s there to get angry about? All it really means is that nothing’s changed.”

“I’m angry because I was kinda expecting if I was going to ascend or whatever, it would be into alicorn like Cadance!”

“So, again,” said Gilda, “you’re getting angry over literally nothing because nothing actually changed. It’s not even like you worked hard and got no reward, as the whole thing happened totally by accident. I don’t see any disadvantage.”

“There’s that whole feeding on love thing. That could be a bother,” said Sunset.

“Oh yeah,” said Flim, “it suddenly occurs to me, I don’t know exactly how that works. I know there was the whole impersonation thing, but that’s not really legal anymore. How does that work?”

“I don’t know!” said Sunset. “Things have been hectic, and there hasn’t been much of an opportunity to ask about it!”

“Don’t worry!” said Trixie. “I’ll explain! Lightning Dust and I spent a month in changeling society, so we know all about them! Lightning Dust, get me a chalkboard and chalk!”

Lightning Dust took the cue to dash off. In a second or two, she returned with a chalkboard and some chalk.

“You see,” said Trixie, “that impersonation is but one way to feed on the love. Another way is to forcibly extract it, which is usually done after imprisoning the target into a cocoon and putting them to sleep. So they basically opted to do that to all of the convicted criminals, so changelings can just go over to one of the prisons to feed. It has the effect of dramatically lowering prison upkeep costs, too!”

“Wouldn’t that count as cruel and unusual punishment?” asked Flim.

“Enh,” said Trixie with a shrug.

“Why did you get a chalkboard and chalk here if you weren’t going to use it at all?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, this wasn’t for the explanation; this was for tic tac toe,” explained Trixie as she and Lightning Dust quickly played a game of it on the chalkboard. “Darn it, another tie,” said Trixie.

“Well, there you go!” said Sunset. “It’s going to be annoying to have to go and do the feeding and such that frequently!”

“Actually, if you fill up enough each time, your visits can be really infrequent,” said Lightning Dust. “So really, there’s barely anything to complain about there. Also, as only a partial changeling, I wonder if you need to do that at all.”

“So basically, the whole ascension thing was pointless, then!” complained Sunset. “See what I mean?”

“You could always get over your complexion about how ‘ridiculous’ you think you look and take advantage of the abilities,” said Flam. “It really does seem like you’re whining over nothing.”

“I agree!” said Discord, appearing after the customary finger snap was heard. “You’re just complaining for no good reason.”

“Who asked you?” asked Sunset.

“I did!” said Discord. “I ask myself lots of things. Anyway, I’m sure we’ll meet again sometime. See you later!” Discord snapped his fingers and disappeared.

“Well, anyway,” said Flim, “I think that–”

Flim found himself interrupted by Chrysalis arriving. “Hello, loyal subjects!” she declared. “I’m just here to congratulate you for getting rid of the vines!”

“How did you get here so fast?” asked Sunset.

“The stairs,” said Chrysalis.

“That doesn’t make any–”

“Anyway!” said Chrysalis. “In recognition of your heroism in defeating the vines… here’s a sandwich.” She gave a sandwich to Sunset.

“All that and all I get is a single sandwich?” asked Sunset.

“Hrm,” said Chrysalis, “fair point. You weren’t the only one who went, after all. You all get sandwiches!” She handed out a sandwich to the other six as well.

“Mmm,” said Flam, “really good sandwich. Thanks!”

“You’re okay with her giving you a sandwich for everything we just went through?” asked Sunset.

“It was a really good sandwich,” said Flam.

“Come on!” said Sunset. “We saved you from those vines! Don’t we get anything else?”

“Oh, you didn’t save me from any vines,” said Chrysalis. “I made that whole thing up because I didn’t want to have to do anything.”

“What?!” asked Sunset.

“What do you mean ‘what’? I just told you I made it up because if I were to do it for you, you wouldn’t have overcome it yourself and grown stronger as a result.”

“That’s not what you just said!”

“Semantics,” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, I’m off. See you later!”

Sunset stared after Chrysalis as she left. “How… I… she… huh?”

“Enh, just shut up and eat your sandwich,” said Gilda. “These actually are rather nice.”

Yet another finger snap was heard and Discord appeared. “I said you’d see me later, and it’s later! Hi again!”

“Why don’t you just go bug Chrysalis instead?” asked Sunset.

“Hrm… bug… Chrysalis… that’s a great pun!” said Discord. “You know what? In honor of your likely completely unintentional pun, I will! I’ll show her who’s the real troll in Equestria!” For a change of pace, he disappeared without snapping his fingers.

“Well, I guess that’s one way to… whatever the applicable expression is,” said Sunset.

Later…

“Hey!” said Chrysalis. “I already told you, no sitting on the throne!”

“But it’s so comfy,” said Discord.

Chrysalis growled menacingly.

“Oh, fine,” said Discord as he teleported himself off the chair. “Be that way.”

“Thank you!” snapped Chrysalis. She went to sit on the throne, then stopped. “Wait a minute. You did something to the throne, didn’t you?”

“What?” asked Discord. “What makes you think I would ever do that?”

“Because the last time you were sitting on the throne, you rigged it so that whoever sat on it next blew up!”

“You got better,” pointed out Discord.

“Pulling yourself together after getting blown up is not a pleasant experience! You go and sit there!”

Discord shrugged and sat on the throne. “Woohoo! I’m king of Equestria now!”

“No, you’re not!” snapped Chrysalis. “Get off and let me sit there.”

Discord obediently got off the throne. Chrysalis sat on it and promptly blew up.

“Silly Chrysalis,” said Discord as Chrysalis started reassembling herself, “I set it up so the second person to sit on the throne would get blown up. Just face it, you’ll never be able to–”

Discord found himself interrupted as the still-mostly-blown-up Chrysalis grabbed a bucket of water and threw it onto him, causing him to burst into flames. “Ahhh!” he screamed as he ran around. “Water that’s exactly 1.0471975512% sodium! My one of only six and a half weaknesses! Ahhh!" He continued running around screaming while on fire.

From outside the room, Luna looked at the blown-up Chrysalis and on-fire Discord. “Oh, just kiss already,” she muttered.

Daring Power

Gilda hummed to herself as she read her book. “Man, I should write my own novel sometimes,” she said. “It’d be about this griffon named Glida who would go on adventures and shoot all her enemies.”

Gilda was interrupted from her thoughts on a potential self-insert story by a knock on the door. She went to open it.

“Hi, Gilda!” announced Lightning Dust, who was accompanied by Trixie.

“You have five seconds before I slam the door,” said Gilda.

“TheDaringDobooksarereallypopularandwewantedtocontacttheauthortoseeaboutdoingsomekindofcrossoverbutwedon’tknowhowIknowyou’reareallybigfansowehopedmaybeyouhadsomesecretcontactinformation,” saidLightningDustatincrediblespeed.

Gilda stared. “Huh?”

“I had to package all of that into five seconds somehow.”

“Fine,” said Gilda with a sigh, “take a little longer to explain it this time.”

“The Daring Do books are really popular and we wanted to contact the author to see about doing some kind of crossover, but we don’t know how. I know you’re a really big fan, so we hoped maybe you had some secret contact information.”

“What?” asked Gilda. “I don’t like those books!”

“You’re holding one right now!” said Trixie.

“No, this is a book on sniper techniques,” said Gilda.

“It says Daring Do right on the cover!”

“That’s just to disguise it,” said Gilda.

“What would you even be disguising it for?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Oh, for the love of,” said Trixie as she grabbed the book out of Gilda’s hands and opened it. “See, this clearly… huh. This actually is a book about sniper techniques.”

“See?” asked Gilda. “Can I have it back, then?”

Trixie turned the page. “Oh, wait, no. This is a Daring Do book. It looks like a bunch of pages from an unrelated sniper manual have been inserted into it to disguise it.”

Gilda snatched the book from Trixie. “Fine! I have a marginal interest in that book series. I still don’t know anything about the author or how to contact her.”

“Aha!” said Lightning Dust. “You referred to the author as a ‘she.’ But those books are written by an A.K. Yearling. The only way you’d know the author’s gender is if you did know something about her! What’s your answer to that?”

Gilda stared at the two, shrugged, went back inside, and slammed the door.

“Darn it, I always forget about that answer,” muttered Trixie.

“Well, what do we do now?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Go to the comic book store and see if we can get inspiration?”

“Sure!”

Later…

Sunset heard a knock on her door. “This never ends well,” she muttered as she went to open it. She found Lightning Dust and Trixie outside with guilty expressions on their faces.

“Hey, Sunset,” said Lightning Dust, “we kind of need a little help.”

“Does it involve a monster rampaging through Ponyville?” asked Sunset wearily.

“No,” said Trixie.

“Then I don’t care!” snapped Sunset as she slammed the door. She then heard loud crashing noises from outside and opened her door again to take a look. She saw a purple earth pony with extraordinarily large green hair that looked more like a bunch of tentacles rampaging through Ponyville. Sunset glared at Trixie.

“What?” asked Trixie. “I wouldn’t technically classify her as a monster.”

Sunset gritted her teeth. “What. Happened. This. Time.”

“We got the new Power Ponies comic which was apparently enchanted with some sort of spell that let you go into it for fun, but it seems this one had a defect that caused stuff to come out of the book instead, so we have the villain of the piece rampaging through town.”

“If all the stuff from the comic came out, shouldn’t the good guys from said comic come out and defeat her, saving us the trouble?”

“When it all happened, the comic was open to a page where she had knocked them out, so they weren’t able to exit the comic.”

“How does that even… never mind,” said Sunset. “Why do you always come to me with these problems?”

“Because as duly appointed government representative, or whatever your title is, you’re supposed to be our leader in times of crisis. Plus, you tend to have decent ideas on what to do. Plus, you–”

“Never mind,” said Sunset wearily. “Fine, I’ll see if I can stop this idiot. Though why hasn’t she been attacking while we’re having this conversation?”

“It’s a comic book character,” said Trixie, “they never attack while an important conversation is going on.”

“Comic book character… hrm,” said Sunset. “Got it!” Sunset was briefly surrounded by green fire as she transformed into a copy of the Mane-iac.

“I thought you said you couldn’t transform into anypony without all that paperwork?” asked Trixie.

“She’s a comic book character! That shouldn’t apply to her!”

“I’d be more worried about getting sued for copyright infringement,” said Lightning Dust.

Sunset ignored them and tried to attack the Mane-iac using her newly grown hair. However, due to lack of knowledge on how to use them, she inadvertently tangled them into knots. The Mane-iac, apparently amused, used her own hair to whack Sunset into a wall.

“Aaaaand this whole changeling thing continues to be useless,” said Sunset as she transformed back into her usual self. “Anypony else have an idea?”

“Ha!” declared Gilda as she landed next to them. “I should’ve known you guys needed my help!” She pulled out a pistol. “Observe!”

Gilda pointed the pistol towards the Mane-iac and pulled the trigger. Instead of a bullet, a stick came out. Attached to the stick was a flag with the word “BANG” on it. Gilda stared at it. “Did one of you guys swap out my gun as a prank?” she asked.

“I think it’s simply because the Mane-iac is from a comic series for the younger crowd, and thus guns would be disallowed,” said Trixie.

“That doesn’t even make sense!” screamed Gilda. She then got whacked away by the Mane-iac’s hair.

“Okay,” said Trixie said to Lightning Dust, “so that’s Sunset, Gilda, you, and me. Now what?”

“Hello!” declared Flim as he ran up. “What’s going on? And please explain quickly!”

“WegotthenewPowerPoniescomicwhichwasapparentlyenchantedwithsomesortofspellthatletyougointoitforfunbutitseemsthisonehadadefectthatcausedstufftocomeoutofthebookinsteadsowehavethevillainofthepiecerampagingthroughtown.”

“Ah!” said Flim. “That’s an easy one to solve! Flam, since the Mane-iac is clearly going to defeat everypony, let’s get on its good side by giving it lots of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’”

“How does that help anything?” asked Trixie indignantly.

“It helps us!” said Flam, who had arrived with Flim but wasn’t noted by the narration until this point. He took out several bottles and approached the Mane-iac. “Hello, new overlord! We come bearing gifts to try to get on your good side!”

The Mane-iac looked at them suspiciously. “And I’m to believe that these aren’t poisoned?”

Flam shrugged and opened up a bottle and drank some. “See? No problem.”

“Well, this had better be good,” said the Mane-iac. She took the bottle and drank some. Her eyes bugged out. “This… is… amazing!” she declared. She downed the entire bottle. “More! More!”

A whole lot of bottles later…

“You know what?” asked the Mane-iac in a stupor. “You’re all my friends! We can all be one big happy… family…” She promptly collapsed.

“Hooray!” declared Flim and Flam.

“What, what just happened?” asked Gilda.

“Oh, that was the alcoholic cider,” explained Flim. “We figured that if she drank enough, she’d get so drunk she’d be harmless.”

“How the heck can alcohol affect her if the guns wouldn’t?”

“Well,” said Trixie, “you can disguise alcoholic beverages quite easily in a comic. Happens all the time, when something clearly alcoholic gets referred to as something else so no one gets offended.”

“That still doesn’t make any sense!” said Sunset.

“It’s comic books,” said Trixie. “When do they ever make any sense?”

“Whatever!” said Sunset. “What do we do with her? How do we get her back into the comic?”

“I’ve got the answer!” declared Suri as she ran up. “I’ve got this really great hat that, if we put it on her, will prevent her hair from being a danger!”

“How does that help us get her back into the comic?” asked Sunset with irritation.

Suri took notice of the scene. “Oh drat, you already defeated her? I didn’t even get a chance to try my solution! I had a hat that would contain her hair.”

“Should’ve gotten here before us!” said Flam.

Suri looked at the hat. “Well, maybe I can use this for something else.”

Sunset stomped her foot in irritation. “Fascinating as this may be to you, this doesn’t help us figure out what to do with her! Is there some spell for getting her back into the comic?”

Trixie shrugged. “No idea. This whole thing was due to the comic being defective, remember? I do have it right here, though.” She held out the comic.

Sunset looked at the comic, then back at the unconscious Mane-iac. “Hrm…” she said.

“And you’re absolutely sure this is legal?” asked Flam.

Lightning Dust rolled her eyes. “Yes. Just as I was the last ten times you asked.”

“Okay then!” said Flam as he tossed the very-tied-up Mane-iac into the box, then used tape to close the box.

“So happy I was able to put that hat to some use,” said Suri. “Now she can’t use her hair while she’s locked up in the box.” She frowned. “Darn it, I should’ve charged something for its use.”

Sunset wrote the address for the publisher of the comic onto the side of the box and attached a bunch of postage stamps to it. “There. After we mail her to them, they can figure it all out.”

“So!” said Trixie. “Now that we’ve all worked together to take down an enemy, I’m sure that has inspired some level of camaraderie among us. So, Gilda, will you help us out with that whole Daring Do thing?”

“No,” said Gilda flatly.

“Yeah, that was about what I expected,” said Trixie.

“Okay, Celestia,” said Celestia to herself, “maybe that speaker of the trees thing didn’t work out. But you’ve got a new job as a mail opener now, and you can probably get some experience and references in doing so. Maybe you’ll even stop talking to yourself constantly while doing so. As long as nothing crazy happens, everything should be fine!”

Celestia opened the first box and discovered the tied-up Mane-iac. “Mmmph! Mmmph!” the earth pony said through the gag.

Celestia sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

How Suri Took Manehattan

“Here we are in Manehattan!” said Suri as they got off the train.

“I know, Trixie,” grumbled Sunset.

“Hey! I didn’t say it!” protested Trixie.

“Oh,” said Sunset, “sorry.” She turned to Suri. “I know, Suri!”

“But don’t you think that it’s such an amazing city full of history and culture?”

There was a pause. “No,” said Sunset bluntly.

“Your loss,” said Suri.

“Look, the only reason I’m even here is because it’ll look bad if I don’t see the play after I got sent all these tickets.”

“Speak for yourself!” said Trixie. “I happen to be a connoisseur of the dramatic arts.”

“I thought the play was a comedy?” asked Flim.

“Okay, can someone explain to me what’s going on?” asked Lightning Dust. “Why are we here? What’s this play?”

“How do you not know why we’re here?!” demanded Sunset.

“I’ve been out of town the last few days,” said Lightning Dust. “I just got back and then you grabbed me onto a train to Manehattan. I didn’t ask anything more until now because I thought the whole thing was some kind of surprise birthday present.”

“It’s not your birthday,” said Trixie.

“Which is why I was so confused,” explained Lightning Dust.

Sunset made a face but decided to explain. “Okay. Apparently Sombra actually did land a major part in a musical called A Streetcart Misnamed Chesire, and I received a bunch of tickets for it in the mail, which I assume he sent me. Although I’m not really that interested, it’d look pretty bad if we didn’t go see it after being sent the tickets, so we’re here. Well, except for Suri. She’s here for some fashion competition or whatever that happens to be coincidentally on the same day, so she’s coming along for that. I assume that’s why I only got six tickets.”

“And I’m going to win that competition!” declared Suri. “Suri Polomare will finally receive the recognition she deserves!”

“So,” said Gilda, “you’re going to get absolutely no recognition?”

Suri glared at Gilda.

“Hey,” said Gilda, “don’t get angry at me. You just straight up walked into that one.”

“Honestly, you really did,” said Trixie.

Suri growled. “Look, the point is that this will hopefully get me attention and let me sell more stuff.”

“Wait, stuff?” asked Trixie. “I love stuff! What kind of stuff are you selling?”

“Uh, clothes?” asked Suri.

“Darn it, you got me all excited,” complained Trixie. “I was hoping it would be ‘stuff’ of a more interesting variety.”

“Whatever!” snapped Suri. “Let’s just get to our hotel room!”

“Don’t you mean hotel rooms?” asked Gilda.

“No, I mean hotel room,” said Suri. “You think I’m going to pay extra for multiple rooms?”

Gilda turned to Sunset. “You went along with this?”

“My dislike of dealing with all of you is marginally outweighed by my desire to save money,” said Sunset.

The group reached the hotel. They then inadvertently went on a grand adventure that involved a breach in time and space, but the whole thing ended up causing the timeline to reset so that the grand adventure never happened, thereby making everything in this sentence without a point.

“Excellent!” declared Suri. “Now I just have to check in for entering the Fashion Week competition! And once I win, everypony will want to buy things from me! Hahahaha!” Lightning flashed in the background as she cackled.

“How did that lightning flash indoors?” wondered Flim.

“Enh, it seemed appropriate,” said Lightning Dust as she put the cloud that caused the lightning away.

“You could’ve hurt somepony with that!” said Sunset. “Or, perhaps more specifically, you could have hurt me!”

“Oh come on,” said Lightning Dust, “this lightning is completely harmless. Just watch as–”

Lightning Dust suddenly found herself struck by the lightning. She collapsed onto the floor, her hair blackened. “Okay, maybe not so harmless. I guess I forgot to put the safety on.”

“Hey!” said Suri. “You should be paying attention to my needs! This fashion competition is important, you know!” She sniffed sadly. “I would have thought my dear friends would be more supportive.”

“Okay, there are so many things wrong with that sentence I’m not sure where to even begin,” said Sunset.

“Which sentence?” asked Suri.

“All of them!”

“You know, you should really lighten up,” said Flam. “I’ve read that an overly cynical outlook on life is bad for your health.”

“Maybe if it didn’t seem like the world was out to make me miserable, I wouldn’t have such a cynical outlook!”

“Now, see, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” said Flam. “That cynical outlook of yours. The only reason you believe the world is out to get you is because you already think it is. By the way, where’d Suri go?”

“She went off to register for the Fashion Weekday or whatever it was called,” said Lightning Dust. “I think she got bored of us not caring about what she was doing.”

“None of them have any appreciation for the finer arts,” muttered Suri to herself as she went to the stage with the outfits she made. “I should find somepony new to hang out with that does have such an appreciation.”

Suri suddenly realized that she had found some ponies that had an appreciation for such things, namely the other contestants who were standing on stage in a row. They don’t count, she thought, they’re the competition. Still, she took her place in the row. There was a pause.

“Okay,” said Suri, “are we supposed to just stand here while we wait?”

“Pretty much.”

“Yeah.”

“Looks like it.”

Some waiting later…

After the aforementioned waiting, a white unicorn suddenly ran onto the stage. Luckily for her, Prim Hemline, the host of the event, only showed up a few seconds later. “Miss Rarity, how is it that all your competitors are here half an hour early and yet you arrive a few seconds before we begin?”

“Uh… just lucky, I guess,” said Rarity with a nervous chuckle.

Lucky her, thought Suri to herself, she didn’t have to just stand around here waiting.

Lost in her thoughts, Suri hadn’t been paying attention to what what Prim Hemline had been saying before she finished. “The rest of you must go home early. So sad. Dismissed!”

The rest of the prospective fashionistas departed, but Suri used the opportunity to zoom up to Rarity. “Hi!” she said. “Remember me? We met briefly at Shining Armor and Cadance’s wedding?”

Rarity groaned. “Oh, right, that wedding. Tell me, why would Chrysalis be complaining about the state of the wedding dress? It wasn’t even her wedding, and the whole thing was a ruse so she could enact that convoluted plan of hers! So the dress was completely irrelevant to her! So why force me to stay up all night changing it if it wasn’t going to matter?! Do you know how tiring that was?! All for something that turned out to not even matter! What was the point?!”

Suri stared at Rarity.

“Sorry,” said Rarity quickly, “just some frustrating memories.”

“No, Chrysalis has that effect on anypony she interacts with,” said Suri. “Which makes you wonder how she’s still so popular among the general populace. Maybe it’s just relief that we can actually understand our ruler. Or the fact that most don’t ever have to deal with her personally.”

“Well,” said Rarity, “it was nice catching up with you. Unfortunately, I really do have to get my things together, particularly as I was in such a rush to get here. Certainly nice to see you again!”

“Yes… nice to see you too,” said Suri in as honest a voice as she could.

Then she got an idea. An awful idea. Suri got a wonderful, awful idea! However, she realized that the idea of stealing the presents from Whoville didn’t make any sense at all, particularly because she had no idea what Whoville was. She became so confused by this odd thought that she unexpectedly found herself asking, “Still, do you need a hoof with anything?”

“Well,” said Rarity, “I could use some help getting my dresses backstage.”

Brain, why do you do this to me? thought Suri.

After some transportation of clothes to the backstage, Suri noticed an interesting-looking fabric Rarity had used. Then she got an idea. An awful idea. Suri got a wonderful, awful idea! However, this time, that idea was actually relevant to the situation. “Your collection is gorgeous. Particularly this piece of fabric here! In fact, this could actually work great with my culottes. Would you mind terribly if I took a swatch?”

“Oh, not at all!” said Rarity. “Here, I have loads extra.”

“You’re sure?” asked Suri.

“Positive! Well, it’s been nice to meet you again, but I really must finish my preparations and I am a bit late as it… is?” Rarity felt confused as she finished her sentence, because Suri had taken the moment to leave. “Guess she was in a hurry too.”

“It’s the perfect plan!” declared Suri to herself. “Use the fabric she lent me to completely redo my line! Then they’ll be way better, and because she’s going last in the competition due to being late, it’ll look like she ripped off me! Hahahaha!”

Lightning flashed in the background as she cackled. She stopped laughing and frowned. “Lightning Dust! I told you to stop that!”

“Actually, that was me,” said Gilda from atop the cloud. “Doing that is actually rather fun.”

“Well, you stop it too! Go away! I’m busy!”

“You mean busy with that incredibly stupid plan of yours?”

Suri glared at Gilda. “How is it stupid?”

“In regards to thinking it’d make it look like Rarity stole it from you, why would they think that? You indicate that it’s due to her going later in the competition, but for that to work, it would have to be plausible that she would notice it in the middle of the competition and then change her designs. I’m not sure how long the competition is, but it’s certainly not long enough to manage that, and the judges would certainly realize that. So the order really doesn’t give any indication as to who ripped off who. And because you’d have to do a rush job even when doing it overnight, yours would obviously end up being inferior to the originals, as much more time was spent on the originals. So any comparison between the two would make yours seem worse, thereby guaranteeing she places higher than you, making it impossible for you to take first place. I mean, duh.”

Suri stared at Gilda, dumbfounded.

“Wow, I talked for a while there,” said Gilda. “Anyway, have fun with your stupid plan!” She quickly flew out the door. There was a pause, then she flew back in and grinned sheepishly before grabbing the cloud and leaving again.

Suri stared out the door for a little while longer, then finally was able to get her thoughts together to the point she could form coherently sentences. “Okay, new plan,” she said to herself, “use the time to make lesser improvements and try to win the contest that way.”

A rather abrupt transition later…

“Okay,” said Sunset as the group left the auditorium, “I’ll admit it. That play was actually decent. And wow does Sombra have a great singing voice.”

“I never would’ve imagined he could hit all those high notes,” said Trixie.

“I almost regret the fact we weren’t able to scalp those tickets successfully,” said Flim.

“Okay, now that we’re done with the play, there’s no reason to bother sticking around this city anymore,” said Sunset. “Is everypony ready to head home?”

“Isn’t Suri still at that fashion show or whatever?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Well, she was supposed to be here by now. I vote for leaving her behind!” said Sunset.

“Nah, that seems unfair,” said Gilda.

“Because it’s mean?”

“Because I accidentally left some of my stuff with her, and I don’t want to leave without it.”

“Okay, then, we’ll leave both of you behind,” said Sunset. “Problem solved!”

“We can’t leave without Gilda,” said Flam.

“Dare I ask why?” asked Sunset.

“You just did,” said Flim.

“Huh?”

“You asked if you would dare ask why, but in doing so you asked why, thereby answering your question.”

Sunset closed her eyes, counted to five, then opened her eyes. “All right. I guess I will dare to ask why. Why?”

“Because I have the tickets for the train ride home,” said Gilda. “You know, you should really lock those things up better, or else someone far more nefarious than I could take them.”

“I appreciate the fact you correctly said ‘than I’ rather than the more common but incorrect ‘than me,’” said Trixie.

“Fine! Whatever!” snapped Sunset. “Let’s just go back to the hotel, grab Suri, then get out of this city before my frustration completely undoes the enjoyment I got out of that play. And if she’s not done with whatever she’s doing, we’ll just grab your stuff from her and leave.”

“Works for me!” responded Gilda. “Okay, I’d assume she’s still at the fashion thingy, so let’s just go there.”

And so the group returned to the hotel, having absolutely no wacky misadventures on the way there. When they got there, they noticed Suri waving goodbye to someone as they entered a taxi. “See you later! I’ll be sure to contact you if I need anything!” she called.

Gilda went up to her as the taxi left. “Who were you talking to?”

“I–” started Suri.

“Actually, never mind that,” interrupted Sunset, relishing the opportunity to interrupt someone else for a change. “Why were you so late? You haven’t even left the hotel!”

“Well, I kind of won… sort of,” said Suri. “That resulted in meeting all of those fashion designers, as was the grand prize, which took time.”

“How do you ‘sort of’ win?” asked Flam.

“It was a tie,” said Suri. “So it is only a sort of win.”

“I thought there was supposed to be just one winner?”

“Well, there were three judges, and after figuring out the top two, each was to vote for one contestant, with whoever got two or more votes winning. One judge voted for me, then the other voted for the other contestant. But before the third could vote, they suddenly passed out and haven’t woken up yet. As a result, it ended up being a tie.”

“What caused them to pass out?” asked Gilda.

“Apparently, a major case of cardiomegaly. Their heart swelled three sizes or something.”

“Okay, so are we all ready to go? Are we done asking questions?” demanded Sunset.

“You should calm down,” said Flim. “You’ll live longer.”

“In fact, speaking of living longer, we’ve stumbled upon this great anti-aging–” started Flam before being interrupted.

“Are we done?!”

“Huh?” said Suri. “Oh, yeah, pretty much.”

“Then let’s go!” declared Sunset.

“So, anyway,” said Gilda as the group started for the train station, “who were you talking to?”

“Oh, just the one I ended up tying with. Rarity apparently came away with the idea that I was way nicer than I actually am, so she said to contact her if I needed anything. Now I’m owed a favor! I’m sure I can think of some great way to cash in on that and come ahead! Hahahaha!”

There was a pause. “Oh, come on!” said Suri. “I actually wanted you to do that lightning thing this time!”

“Enh, I thought that gag was getting a little stale,” said Lightning Dust.

“Aw, it sounds like you made a friend,” said Gilda.

“More like someone who I can leech off the generosity of,” said Suri.

“Exactly!” said Gilda. “A friend!”

At this point they got onto the train and sat down. “Finally!” said Sunset. “Though I am left wondering who actually sent the tickets.”

“I thought it was Sombra?” asked Flam. “That’s who you said it was.”

“I thought it was him, too, but I couldn’t get in contact with him after the performance, and if he had sent them you’d think he’d want that. I wonder who did send them to me.”

As Sunset reached her house, she found the all-too-familiar mailmare waiting there for her. “I’ve got an important message for you!” she said.

“Have you just been waiting there in front of my house for me to come back?” asked Sunset.

“Pretty much! You took a while, by the way. Anyway, there was a mixup of the mail. You got tickets to a play that were supposed to go to somepony else.”

“Who originally ordered them, then?” wondered Sunset. “And why didn’t they realize beforehand they got the wrong package, if they were expecting the tickets?”

“Oh, they moved away before they were delivered,” said the mailmare.

“If they were moving after ordering tickets, why didn’t they set up a forwarding address or something?”

“That’s a rather long story.”

“How long?” asked Sunset.

“About twenty-two minutes.”

“Never mind, then,” said Sunset. “But if it was a mixup, what was I supposed to get?”

“What you were supposed to get were the adhesive medical strips. Got them right here!”

“I never ordered any adhesive medical strips!”

“Are you sure?” asked the mailmare. “Because I’m pretty sure I sent them to you.”

“Wait, you sent them?”

“Yep! I figured you’d need them!”

“Why would I need adhesive medical strips?!” demanded Sunset.

“Huh, good point,” said the mailmare. “Why did I do that?”

Not caring enough to wait for a definite answer, Sunset decided to walk into her house. Unfortunately, she tripped and slammed headfirst into the door. “Ow…” she muttered before collapsing.

The mailmare’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah, that was why!”

Lightning Falls

Lightning Dust surveyed the two pegasi in front of her. The first was a white stallion muscular to the point one wondered how his wings were able to lift him off the ground. The second was a yellow mare with a look of constant nervousness. “This is going to be painful,” Lightning Dust muttered to herself.

“YEAH!” shouted the stallion with no apparent regard to what Lightning Dust just said.

Could’ve gotten Thunderlane. Or even Flitter or Cloudchaser. But no, I got stuck with these guys, thought Lightning Dust. “Okay, so we are going to make Ponyville qualify for the Equestria Games, whether it wants to or not! And since I’m stuck with you guys, you have to do well enough that I’m not completely dragged down. Got that, Bulk Biceps? Fluttershy?”

“YEAH!” shouted Bulk Biceps.

Fluttershy made a whimpering noise and looked away.

Lightning Dust sighed. “Typical. Nothing is ever easy.”

“Come on, Gilda,” said Lightning Dust as the two boarded the train along with the others. “You’ve got to help me out here. My team is really weak, and I’m not sure even I can pull them up.”

“No,” said Gilda, “I’m there for archery. I didn’t build up all those sniper skills for nothing. And for reasons that have never been properly explained, no one can be in more than one event.”

“Well, then what am I supposed to do? I’m fast, but I’m not sure I can bring up the whole team!”

“Not my problem!” said Gilda.

Lightning Dust sighed in frustration again.

The group departed the train. There was a pause.

“You’re not going to say ‘here we are at’ again?” asked Sunset.

“Why would I do that?” asked Trixie. “We all know where we are.”

“Because you’re always doing that!” said Sunset.

“Hrm, I don’t think so,” said Trixie. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t done it that often. If you were to go back and count the number of times I used that phrase, you might be a bit surprised at how relatively low it was. Though I am still surprised how all of us coincidentally had our own reasons for coming here at the same time. For example, Suri, you–”

“No,” said Suri, “we are not going through you repeating things we already know again.”

“Fine,” said Trixie dejectedly. “But if you forget something important because I didn’t remind you of it, don’t blame me!”

“I do not need this headache,” said Sunset. “It’s annoying enough I have to actually come out here and observe these qualifiers. I’m going to head somewhere where I don’t have to deal with you guys.”

“Well!” said Lightning Dust as Sunset left. “It’s time to try to whip my team into better shape and to scope out the competition. Maybe we can actually do well in this thing after all.”

Figuring that scoping out the competition would be the logical first thing to do, Lightning Dust decided to do it. “Let’s see… a team of griffons, that’s interesting. The Cloudsdale team is made up of Wonderbolts, of course… and then–”

“Why are you talking out loud to yourself?” Trixie interrupted. “It’s rather odd.”

“Don’t you do that all the time?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Not the point!” said Trixie.

“Why are you following me, anyway?”

“Hey, I have a Mare Do Well comic to write and I want to make sure you don’t spend so much time here that you can’t help me write it.”

“Can’t you just write it yourself?” asked Lightning Dust.

“The last time I did it myself I got all these complaints that the issue was too overly goofy and lacked the amount of action expected.”

Lightning Dust shrugged and continued looking at the competition. “All right, is there anyone else to worry about? The only team I can’t see is–”

“You’re talking out loud to yourself again,” said Trixie.

“No, I’m not! I’m talking to you!”

“I don’t know,” said Trixie. “It didn’t sound like something you’d actually say to somepony other than yourself.”

“Fine!” snapped Lightning Dust. “Trixie, the only team I don’t see is the Manehattan team. Maybe they’re running late, or maybe they just didn’t bother with a team.”

Potentially on cue, three pegasi wearing Manehattan uniforms appeared, one of them blue with a prismatic mane.

“Wait, Rainbow Dash lives in Manehattan?” asked Lightning Dust.

“You’re the one who’s always yammering about how she’s your archrival, how did you not know?”

“What? I am not always yammering on about that!”

“Maybe not lately,” said Trixie, “but you were doing a lot of that earlier.”

“Really?” asked Lightning Dust.

If this were a cartoon, a humorous montage of clips in which Lightning Dust declares Rainbow Dash to be her rival would ensue. However, a text-based story can’t really do it that well, so instead the following and completely unrelated punchline will be substituted: Just one, but it takes six episodes.

“Hrm, maybe I did talk a lot about it,” admitted Lightning Dust. “But only because she is my archrival!”

“Riiiiiight.” said Trixie. “Well, it does look like your ‘archrival’ is coming towards us.”

Rainbow Dash walked up to the two. She studied Lightning Dust. “Hrm, do I know you from somewhere?” asked Rainbow Dash. “You seem familiar.”

Trixie suppressed a laugh while Lightning Dust suppressed a frown.

“Maybe it was at the Best Young Flyer competition?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Might have been,” said Rainbow Dash. “Oh, wait, now I remember! You were the one who created that tornado that got out of hand. You’re lucky nopony got hurt.”

Whatever response Lightning Dust was going to make was interrupted by a loud crash. The three turned around to see that Soarin, one of the Wonderbolts, had crash landed into a large pile of pillows.

“Why do people keep crashing into our pillows?!” asked one of the ponies around the pile. “Is it a magnet or something?”

Meanwhile, Soarin emerged from the pile of pillows, rubbing his head. “Ow… darn it, that hurt.”

Rainbow Dash went up to him. “Wait, what happened?”

“I kind of got distracted while flying, then got my wing clipped on a hoop, causing me to crash. But I’m perfectly fine now!” His wing suddenly bent awkwardly. “Or… or not.”

“Ooh, you should probably get a doctor to look at that,” said Rainbow Dash with a wince.

As if on cue, a cart arrived with a stretcher. “How’d you get here so fast?” asked Soarin.

“Our response time is really fast! We get notifications of accidents before they even happen!” said the medic.

“But how in the world can you–” started Soarin before being interrupted by being brought onto the cart and carried off.

“Do you know what this means?” Lightning Dust asked Trixie excitedly after Rainbow Dash left.

“That the medical system is able to warp time itself?” asked Trixie.

“No! It means the Cloudsdale team, which is made up of Wonderbolts, has a vacancy! All I have to do is take that, as I grew up there, and they’ll be totally impressed by me and offer me a position in the Wonderbolts.”

“Wait, you’d give up on Ponyville just like that?”

“Screw Ponyville!” said Lightning Dust. “What’d it ever do for me?”

“Give you a fairly good job?”

“Um, besides that.”

“Didn’t fire you from said job even after you got arrested and thus missed 8 weeks of work?”

“Um, besides that.”

“Let you switch it to part time to make room for all the stuff related to Mare Do Well?”

Lightning Dust frowned. “Okay, fine, so I guess it did do a few things for me. Maybe I can compete for both teams or something.”

“You can do that? That would seem really weird if you can’t compete in more than one event for your town, but you can compete in the same event multiple times for different towns.”

“Aha!” said Lightning Dust. “But Cloudsdale isn’t a town, like Ponyville is! It’s a city!”

“Does that really make a difference?” asked Trixie.

“Probably not,” admitted Lightning Dust. “Okay, here’s the new idea: I’ll put a paper bag on my head and compete for one of the teams in disguise.”

“Somehow, I think people might notice,” said Trixie.

“Whatever! I’ll just get on the Cloudsdale team and then figure something out!”

“Okay,” said Trixie. “And how do you plan to get on the Cloudsdale team to begin with?”

“I’m going to handle it the same way I handle any problem!” sald Lightning Dust. Trixie opened her mouth to say something, which Lightning Dust interrupted by quickly adding, “By facing it head on!”

Darn it, I had a great snarky remark there, but she finished her thought too fast, thought Trixie to herself.

In the meantime, Lightning Dust had gone up to Spitfire and Fleetfoot, who by lucky coincidence happened to be nearby. “Hi!” said Lightning Dust. “I hear you might have a team vacancy! Can I join?”

Fleetfoot and Spitfire took a quick glance at each other. “Uh… we’ll keep you in mind if we need a replacement,” said Spitfire neutrally.

“All right! You know where to find me!” said Lightning Dust.

“I think they want me!” said Lightning Dust to Gilda.

“Which is why they were trying to get Rainbow Dash to sign up, right?” asked Gilda. “They said Soarin was too injured to fly, so they wanted her as the replacement.”

“Wait, what?”

“You don’t pay much attention, do you?” asked Gilda. “Well, to be fair, they were discreet about it, and I’m not sure Rainbow Dash even realized that was their eventual goal. But too bad I happened to overhear when they were planning it! Griffon ears are really good at picking up secrets, don’t you know.”

“No,” said Lightning Dust, “I didn’t know that.”

“No wonder,” said Gilda, “because I totally made that up. I’m just good at eavesdropping. So, what are you planning to do?”

“There’s only one thing to do!” declared Lightning Dust dramatically.

“Do tell,” said Gilda flatly.

Lightning Dust deflated. “Think of something to do.”

“Good luck with that,” said Gilda.

“Man, what’s she got that I don’t?”

“Besides the talent and the nicer personality and the fact she doesn’t have a history of causing destruction and the lack of a criminal record and the fact she can do the Sonic Rain-Boom and–”

“Fine! Fine!” snapped Lightning Dust. “But I’ve got one thing she doesn’t have!”

“I can’t wait to hear what that thing is,” said Gilda.

“I’m the co-author of a popular comic book series!”

“I’m sure they’ll be impressed by that,” Gilda said sarcastically.

“Hey!” said Lightning Dust. “I make a lot of money off of that, more than my previous job ever paid! Fans have asked for my autograph!”

“Uh, maybe, but what does that have to do with flying ability?”

“Darn it, that’s a good point,” muttered Lightning Dust.

“Ugh,” said Gilda, “I don’t want to deal with your problems today.”

“Do you ever want to deal with my problems?” wondered Lightning Dust.

“No,” admitted Gilda. “But I especially don’t want to today. You figure it out! But shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, training your team, considering you’re the only competent member of it?”

“I put Sunset in charge of it,” said Lightning Dust.

“Sunset? What does she know about flying?”

“Not much,” said Lightning Dust, “but she sure knows how to vent anger and yell at ponies. That should make them work hard.”

“Well, whatever,” said Gilda. “Have fun doing… whatever it is you decide to do.”

“Okay,” said Lightning Dust to herself after Gilda left, “I just have to find a way to really impress the Wonderbolts enough that they’d want to select me instead of Rainbow Dash. That, or find out a way to make her look really bad. Hrm…”

For someone who tended to be as loud and overbearing as Lightning Dust was, she could actually do a fairly good job being sneaky when she really wanted to. After spending some time spying on Rainbow Dash, she got a fairly good idea of what was going on.

“So, from what I can tell, Rainbow Dash is flitting between practicing with the two teams in what, if this was a film, could have been a fairly humorous montage. And then eventually the Cloudsdale team, who might as well be classified as the Wonderbolts because that’s all of their members, asked her to join them. Judging by her expression and body language, this is either causing intense inner turmoil for her, or she ate something that expired.”

“Great,” said Trixie. “Now, come on. Mare Do Well! Writing! Comic! The deadline isn’t for a while but it’s important to get this done as far ahead as possible. I need to ask what you think of the opening narration I wrote for the issue.”

“Uh-huh,” said Lightning Dust distractedly. “Go ahead. Read it.”

“In a city where crime never sleeps or even takes the occasional nap, there is only one hero who is capable of cleaning up all of the crime, because if you don’t clean up crime it starts to really smell. One hero can halt the malevolence. One hero that can save the day and even sometimes save the night as well. Unfortunately, that hero is owned by another comic book company, so for now we’re still stuck with Mare Do Well.”

“Sounds good,” said Lightning Dust.

“Did you even hear what I said?” asked Trixie.

“You said what now?”

Trixie bopped Lightning Dust on the head. “Ow!” said Lightning Dust. “What was that for?”

“Come on, pay attention! Was that part about crime being smelly too over the top? I need to know!”

“Look, Trixie, can this wait? I’m trying to figure something out here.”

“Fine!” Trixie huffed. “But get this stuff together soon.”

“Do you at least have any advice here on how to make myself look better for the Wonderbolts?”

“Uh… I don’t know, go talk to Soarin in the hospital and maybe the act of kindness will make you look good for them?”

“That’s a great idea!” said Lightning Dust. “I’m so glad I thought of it.”

“Uh, I was the one who thought of it,” said Trixie.

“Oh, right,” said Lightning Dust. “Force of habit, I guess. All right! Let’s do that!”

A short time later…

“Hi!” said Lightning Dust as she and Trixie entered the room. “We’re here to visit you!”

“Oh, really?” asked the crazed-looking mare. “I love visitors! We can sit here and talk about our feelings and the meaning of life and if the universe is made of green cheese and–”

“This must be the wrong room,” said Trixie.

“You think?” asked Lightning Dust.

An even shorter time later…

“Hi!” said Lightning Dust as she and Trixie entered a different room. “We’re here to visit you!”

This time, they actually picked the right room, because Soarin was sitting in one of the hospital beds. “That’s great! Nopony’s been by to visit me. Eh, too busy practicing, I guess.”

Wait, no one’s been by? thought Lightning Dust. Darn it, if he’s not getting visitors, then the others won’t hear about how nice I was to visit him, because they’re not visiting him… then again, it would at least really impress him, which might help! So, if–

“Psst!” whispered Trixie to Lightning Dust. “You’re just staring off into space! Say something!”

“Anyway!” said Lightning Dust as she snapped out of her inner monologue. “Uh… um… well, hopefully your wing will get better soon.” That’s a nice thing to say, right?

“Oh,” said Soarin, “it’s fine. I’m just keeping it warm in case my team wants me back.”

Lightning Dust suddenly found herself confused. “Wants you back? I heard them say you were too injured to fly.”

“They told me that they were worried I wouldn’t be one hundred percent by the tryouts, so they were going with somepony else!” said Soarin.

“And they told me…” started Trixie. She frowned. “Actually, they didn’t tell me anything at all. Darn it, I wanted to be a part of this.”

“So, wait… if they told you that… and they told Rainbow Dash that… then that means…” muttered Lightning Dust to herself. Her eyes suddenly widened. “Aha! That’s it! I know what I have to do!”

“What?” asked Trixie.

“And another thing!” shouted Sunset at Fluttershy and Bulk Biceps. “My baby brother flies faster than you! Which is impressive, considering he can’t fly and also doesn’t even exist!”

Lightning Dust came up to Sunset. “Hi, Sunset!”

“Oh, hi,” said Sunset. “Can I stop dealing with these two now? I’m tired of telling them to do better.”

Lightning Dust looked over at Fluttershy and Bulk Biceps practicing. “Actually,” said Lightning Dust, “they seem to have improved a lot and actually look fairly good.”

“Oh, really?” asked Sunset. “I had no idea if they were good or not, so I just kept yelling at them. I pretended they were you two.”

Trixie scratched her head in confusion. “But I can’t fly. If you were pretending that one of them were me, then wouldn’t you just be really confused as to how I got wings?”

“See, this is why I was so good at yelling at them when pretending they were you two,” said Sunset. “Anyway, are you done? This has all been tiring.”

“Yep!” said Lightning Dust. “Everything should be all solved about… now.”

There was a pause.

“Uh, hang on, I think my watch is fast,” said Lightning Dust. “Let’s try that again. Everything–”

“You’re not wearing a watch,” observed Sunset.

“Look, that’s not the–” said Lightning Dust, but she found herself cut off as Rainbow Dash and Soarin marched up to where Spitfire and Fleetfoot were standing. “Great,” grumbled Lightning Dust, “now it’s already happening, and I can’t do that cool timing.”

“Well,” said Rainbow Dash, not hearing Lightning Dust’s grumbling, “I wanted to fly with both you and Manehattan, and was having so much trouble deciding that I was considering faking an injury to avoid deciding… which doesn’t really make much sense at all when you think about it. But anyway! Now I know who I should’ve been loyal to.”

“Good choice!” said Spitfire. “Always stick with the winners.”

“Manehattan,” finished Rainbow Dash, “because it’s not just where I live, it’s where my friends are. The ponies who really care about me, whether I can help them win a race or not. Or, at least, the ponies that don’t lie to me about Soarin’s wing just so they could get a better flyer. Which suddenly makes me wonder why you didn’t let me become a Wonderbolt already if you apparently consider me to be even better than one of your top flyers. You may be a winning team, but you’re still not the kind of team I want to be part of.” She paused. “Wow, it’s a darn good thing I didn’t fake any injuries, because then I’d have absolutely no moral ground to stand upon here when accusing you of lying.”

“Huh,” said Spitfire. “Rainbow Dash, you are something. We could learn a lot from a competitor like you.” She walked up to Soarin. “Ready to fly?”

Soarin scratched his head. “Huh?”

“Uh, I’m inviting you back onto the team?” said Spitfire.

“Whoa, hang on a minute,” said Soarin. “You think I’d come back after that? I’m out. Man, I used to know you.”

“Well, then how are we supposed to compete if we only have two members?” asked Spitfire.

“Not my problem!” said Soarin. “You’ll have to find a replacement for me in the Wonderbolts, too. Rainbow Dash and I have been talking, and we’ve decided to make our own team. With blackjack! And pies!”

“Enh, forget the blackjack,” said Rainbow Dash. “I’m not sure where that came from.”

“Fair point,” said Soarin.

“Also,” said Rainbow Dash to Spitfire and Fleetfoot, “since I’m not looking for your approval anymore, I should tell you two that those sunglasses look really stupid on you.”

Rainbow Dash and Soarin walked off, leaving behind a speechless Spitfire. Lightning Dust, meanwhile, had developed a grin so large her face looked like it could break. Realizing that that would probably be very painful, she stopped.

“Ha!” said Lightning Dust. “My plan worked! I knew that after I got Soarin to tell Rainbow Dash what was going on, it wouldn’t make her happy, so any desire to fly for Cloudsdale will be gone. Similarly, Soarin would be miffed and want to quit. And between the bad press and the short amount of time before the race is done, Cloudsdale would be extremely unlikely to find anypony interested in joining their team.”

“And let me guess,” said Sunset, “you’ll now be able to take advantage of the vacancy to join them?”

“Huh? No,” said Lightning Dust, “that whole thing made me lose interest. Why would I want to be on a team that would do something like that? Anyway, with Cloudsdale out, there are only three teams I can see plausibly outdoing Ponyville, thereby ensuring we place, as you only need to get in the top four to qualify.”

“Wait a minute, you thought all of that out?” asked Sunset.

“Uh, yeah?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I’ve stumbled into an alternate universe where everything is backwards,” muttered Sunset. “And since when did you care so much about Ponyville qualifying?”

“What? You think I wouldn’t that, like Rainbow Dash, I’d want to support the city I live in?”

“From what I’ve heard, you spent most of the time while you were here scheming to get onto the Cloudsdale team!” exclaimed Sunset.

“Well, yeah, but that was before I knew they were lying. That totally changes it.”

“But that shouldn’t… you didn’t… argh, screw it,” said Sunset. “I’m out of here.”

“Wonder what’s into her,” said Trixie as Sunset left. “I think she needs to un-stress herself; that’s not good for your health.”

“Well, I for one consider this day to have been a tremendous success,” said Lightning Dust. “Oh, and Trixie? That part with crime getting smelly was kind of too much.”

Two Plus One's A Crowd

Lightning Dust’s sentence that wasn’t important enough to be transcribed in this paragraph was interrupted by a knock on the door. She went to open it, but a blast of magical energy suddenly took down the door and sent it straight into her. “Ow,” she muttered.

“So, did I interrupt something?” asked Sunset on the other side of the now-missing door.

“Kind of,” said Lightning Dust.

“Ha!” said Sunset. “Finally I get to interrupt somepony rather than the other way around!”

“Did you have to destroy the door?” muttered Lightning Dust as she pushed it away.

“You’ve done it to my house enough times,” said Sunset.

“Hey!” said Lightning Dust. “I haven’t done that in at least eight weeks!”

“Whatever,” said Sunset. “Anyway, it looks like Chrysalis wants us all again, so I have to go get you and the others together for that.”

“I don’t know,” said Lightning Dust. “See, I kind of–”

Lightning Dust got interrupted by being knocked out by a blast of magic from Sunset. “Wow, it feels good to be interrupting somepony else for a change.”

One scene change later…

“Hi everypony!” said Chrysalis cheerfully.

“Hello Chrysalis,” said the group unenthusiastically.

“Oh, come on, show some enthusiasm! For all you know I’m here to give you some kind of gift or something rather than a task to complete!”

“Are you?” asked Suri.

“No,” said Chrysalis, “I’ve got a task for you to complete.”

“Then why did you even–”

“Anyway!” interrupted Chrysalis. “Before we get to that, it’s time for you to answer a very important question for me! Would it matter if I was a changeling?”

There was an awkward pause. “Uh, you know you are a changeling, right?” asked Sunset.

“Well, of course,” said Chrysalis. “But would it matter if I was?”

An even more awkward pause ensued. “Oh, fine,” said Chrysalis grumpily. “I guess it is hard to answer a hypothetical about an actual situation. Here’s an actual hypothetical. Would it matter if I wasn’t a changeling?” This question was followed by a pause less awkward than the second but more awkward than the first. “I spent all this time coming up with all of these great counterarguments for any potential answers you could give! You could at least try!”

“You’re not going to let us leave until we engage with this, are you?” asked Flam.

“Nope!” said Chrysalis.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Okay, then. The answer is yes, it matters.”

“And why?” asked Chrysalis.

“Because if you weren’t a changeling you wouldn’t have been able to pull off that whole plan to mimic Cadance and feed off of Shining Armor’s love or whatever, so you wouldn’t be ruler of Equestria right now, and thus I wouldn’t be a unicorn/changeling hybrid. These are rather significant changes, at least from my perspective!” said Sunset. “Also, you wouldn’t be here right now asking us this question.”

“But what if I were able to just disguise myself really well, train myself to be powerful, and some other changeling took control and sent me to tell you this?” asked Chrysalis. “Then none of that would change. So that doesn’t mean it matters. Point for me!”

“No one cares!” said Sunset. “It doesn’t matter if it matters!”

Chrysalis appeared taken aback. “Huh. Wow. I actually didn’t prepare for that one.”

“Can we just get onto the task already?” asked Gilda.

“Oh, right,” said Chrysalis. “The task. The task for you. The task chosen especially for you to do, your task. That task?”

Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself. “Yes, that task!” she said out loud.

“Your mission, which you will of course accept, will be to deal with Discord while he’s sick, because I sure as heck don’t want to.”

“And why do we get stuck with it?” asked Sunset.

“Because you guys for whatever reason seem reasonably capable of dealing with things like that,” said Chrysalis. “That, plus it’s funny. At least to me.”

Several guards wheeled in a carriage containing a sick-looking, blue-colored Discord. He sneezed, covering everyone but Chrysalis in goo.

“Don’t worry; it’s not contagious to ponies. Anyway, have fun!” said Chrysalis as she quickly left.

Sunset sighed as she and the others tried to wipe the goo off. “Well, I guess we’re stuck with it. Who’s going to try to work on dealing with this guy?”

“Not it!” said Flim and Flam.

“Not it!” said Suri.

“Not it!” said Lightning Dust.

“Not it!” said Trixie.

“Not it!” said Discord. Everyone turned to stare at him. “What? I’m not going to take care of myself while sick. That’s your job! Anyway, the time limit for ‘Not it!’ has clearly elapsed by this point, so it looks like I get to hang out with Gilda and Sunset. Woohoo!”

Sunset sighed and rolled her eyes. “This is going to be a headache.”

”My Little Pony, My Little Pony
Ahh ahh ahh ahh–”

“Trixie, what are you doing?” asked Sunset.

“I don’t know!” said Trixie. “It just happens sometimes!”

Discord sneezed again, though this time the group was able to jump out of the way just in time to avoid getting covered by anything. “You know, this is the kind of gross-out humor we try to avoid in Mare Do Well,” muttered Trixie.

“What about the time she went up against Mucus Man the Mighty?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Exception that proves the rule!”

“That expression does not make that much sense when you think about it,” said Flam. “Wouldn’t any exception disprove a rule?”

“Hey!” said Discord. “You’re supposed to be taking care of me, not standing around having conversations with each other.”

“Or at least Sunset and Gilda are!” said Flim as he and the others took the opportunity to run off.

“Ugh, fine!” said Sunset. “You said you wanted us to take care of you. What do you want us to do?”

“I’m glad you asked!” said Discord as music suddenly swelled despite there being no orchestra in sight at the site.

“Oh no,” said Sunset in despair.

”A little glass of water–”

“Here you go,” said Gilda as she handed Discord a glass of water. The music abruptly stopped.

“Wait, huh?” said Discord in disbelief.

“You asked for a glass of water, so I got you a glass of water.”

“How in the world did you get a glass of water before I even finished the line?”

“Mostly the water fountain that’s right here,” said Gilda as she pointed to the aforementioned water fountain.

“Well, that was great!” said Discord. “But there’s something else…”

“Here we go again,” muttered Sunset.

”A fresh pressed hanky if I–”

“Got it!” said Gilda, giving Discord a handkerchief and causing the music to abruptly stop again.

“I… you… huh?” asked Discord.

“What? You don’t carry around handkerchiefs? Those things are useful.”

“Stop ruining my musical number!” said Discord grouchily. He then sneezed again on the two.

“Why did you ask for the handkerchief if you weren’t going to use it?” asked Gilda.

“Oh, this one is just for an emergency. You two are serving great as handkerchiefs.”

“Okay, is there any kind of cure for this?” asked Sunset as she cleaned the liquid off of herself again.

“Oh, there is one way!” said Discord. “On a hill at the very edge of Equestria, there grows an exquisite magic flower. Pick the flower as it drops its petals at sunset. Then you can make a magical soothing elixir to cure the blue flu.”

“And is there any reason you didn’t simply get it when you realized you were sick?”

“I can’t travel far in my condition,” said Discord. “After all, I was brought here; I didn’t actually travel here myself.”

“And is there any reason why Chrysalis didn’t get it or send someone to get it when you were sick?”

“You know it’s Chrysalis you’re talking about, right?” asked Discord.

Sunset sighed. “Fair point. And is there any reason why you didn’t tell us beforehand?”

“You didn’t ask,” said Discord.

“He’s got a point,” said Gilda. “You didn’t ask.”

Sunset growled. “Fine. We’ll go get this stupid flower. Where is it?”

“Hrm, the route is a bit complicated,” said Discord. “I’ll tell you along the way.”

“You said you were too weak to travel,” said Sunset.

“Well, duh,” said Discord. “You guys are going to pull this carriage thing I’m on.”

“That sounds awfully slow,” said Sunset.

“Well, again, duh,” said Discord. “That’s why you’ll carry it in the air by flying.”

“I can’t fly!” said Sunset.

“Yes you can,” said Gilda. “Changeling, remember?”

“No,” said Sunset. “No no no no no. I’m not doing that. I look ridiculous. If we have to do that to get the flower, then we’re just going to have to stay here and deal with Discord.”

Discord sneezed again, yet again covering them with goo. “Bleh!” said Sunset. “I think this is stickier than the previous time!”

“Okay,” said Gilda. “I don’t care how ridiculous you think you look. You are going to switch to changeling form so we can pull Discord over there, so he’ll be Chrysalis’s problem again.”

Sunset grumbled a little but finally nodded. “Fine. But you have to promise not to laugh at how ridiculous I look.”

“Fine, I promise! Now just do it!”

“Do you cross your heart and hope to–”

“Just do it!”

Sunset was suddenly wreathed in fire. When it dissipated, her changeling self was revealed. Gilda took one look and fell over laughing.

“Thanks,” said Sunset through clenched teeth. “I can see how well you keep your promises.”

“Huh?” said Gilda after she managed to stop laughing. “No, I wasn’t laughing at how you looked, I was laughing at how you kept going on about how ridiculous you supposedly looked, and you actually look okay. I mean, I was expecting you’d have a rubber nose or something silly like that considering what you went on about.”

Sunset looked at herself. “You really think I look okay?”

“It’s just you, only your horn looks a little weirder, you’ve got the wings, and you’ve got the leg-holes. I can see why you wouldn’t want to normally look like that, but it’s not so odd that if there’s a reason to do it, such as flying, that you shouldn’t.”

“Are you saying that because you want me to help you fly Discord over there?”

“Partially,” admitted Gilda.

“Look, the sooner we get this darn flower, the sooner–” Sunset found herself interrupted by another Discord sneeze. “The sooner we can be rid of this headache,” she finished.

“Hey!” said Discord. “I object to being called a headache! I’m think ‘migraine’ is a far more applicable term.”

“The word ‘headache’ is becoming annoyingly literal,” muttered Sunset to herself.

And so they flew off. Discord used the opportunity to tell a story where the moral was ‘I hate sauerkraut.’ The story was so long and rambling that by the time they arrived, Sunset and Gilda found themselves not hating sauerkraut, but hating the fact that Discord hated sauerkraut.

“Here we are at the edge of Equestria!” declared Discord as they landed.

“I know, Discord,” muttered Sunset as she transformed herself back into a unicorn.

“Well, yeah,” said Discord, “but Trixie’s cut down on that, so it’s up to me to make sure that everyone is still appraised of the situation.”

“Let’s just get the stupid flower and get out of here,” said Gilda.

“Nuh-uh!” said Discord. “Remember when I said that you have to pick up the flower as it drops it petals at sunset? It isn’t sunset yet!”

“Well, we’ll find the flower, and then wait until sunset!” said Sunset.

Discord suddenly fell over laughing.

“What is it?” growled Sunset.

“Oh, I just realized, we’re talking about sunset the time of day, and your name is Sunset! Isn’t that hilarious?”

There was a pause. “No,” said Sunset bluntly.

“Well, you have no sense of humor,” muttered Discord before sneezing on them again.

“Yeah, this is way worse than the time Mare Do Well fought Mucus Man the Mighty,” said Gilda as she cleared the goo off herself yet again. “And that was already my least favorite issue.”

“You read those things?” asked Sunset.

“Now and then… here and there…” said Gilda sheepishly.

“Aren’t you way too old for those?”

“Hey!” said Gilda. “I’ll have you know that it’s surprisingly popular among the older demographic!”

“Are you going to go get that flower, or am I going to have to sneeze on you again?” asked Discord.

“You just said to wait!”

“I changed my mind. Up and at them!” Discord paused. “If I were at full power I’d suddenly be dressed as a general and have one of those cool pointer things you use to point to things on a blackboard, but I’m too weak to do that, so just imagine it. Anyway, as I’ve established, I’m too weak, so you’ll have to go yourself.”

Sunset and Gilda both sighed but walked along the path, eventually finding a gigantic flower.

“Huh,” said Sunset, “how did we not notice the flower was so big from a distance?”

“Okay, so I guess we have to wait until sunset,” said Gilda. “You didn’t happen to bring any games to pass the time, did you?”

“Uh, no,” said Sunset.

Gilda frowned. “This is probably going to be boring, then.”

Just then, a giant monster popped up from the ground. “Scratch that,” said Gilda wearily.

“Gyah!” said Sunset. “It’s a tatsel… tatzul… tutzil… giant worm monster! Uh… got any ideas?”

Gilda pulled out a rocket launcher. “Darn it, I’m running out of these,” she muttered as she pointed it at the difficult-to-pronounce Tatzlwurm. “Distract it so I can get a clear shot!’

“A clear shot? Look at the size of that thing? How could you miss?”

“I have to hit the right part of it, if memory serves right. So get to distracting already!”

Sunset sighed but tried zapping the Tatzlwurm, which had been for some reason waiting patiently for them to finish the conversation before attacking, with some magic. This caused it to start chasing after her in a sequence that would probably be well accompanied by Scooby Doo chase music or Yakety Sax. “Anytime, Gilda!” she shouted desperately.

Gilda aimed her rocket launcher at the Tatzlwurm and fired, which made the creature get knocked back.

“Did that at least hurt it enough it won’t bother us?” asked Sunset.

The Tatzlwurm got up. “I say,” it said, “that really rather hurt. Deary me, and here I was having so much fun attacking. But I suppose that fortune did not smile upon me presently, and thus my potential victims will achieve clemency due to my injury. It’s back to the underground abode in order to nurse my wounds a bit.” After this, it dug into the ground and disappeared.

“I… it… what?” stammered Sunset.

“Don’t question it. Can we get the petal now?” asked Gilda.

“I thought it didn’t fall until sunset.”

“I assume that’s the case normally, but all the ruckus made one of the petals drop. Might as well grab it and see if it works for Discord.”

Sunset and Gilda grabbed the rather large petal and brought it over to Discord. “By the way,” said Sunset, “you could have helped.”

“But I’m too weak to do so,” said Discord.

“Well, fine. Just take the petal and be cured.”

“Oh,” said Discord, “I wasn’t sick in the first place. This was all a test!”

Sunset stared for a few seconds before finally speaking. “What.”

“Oh, well, I wanted to see if you valued our friendship enough to bring me all the way over here to help out, and possibly face any danger along the way.”

“But you just said you didn’t help because you were sick!”

“Did I, Sunset? Did I?” asked Discord.

Sunset felt like she was about to explode. “Yes!”

“Huh, you’ve got a point there,” said Discord.

“So you put us through all that as a test? I nearly got eaten! And got sneezed on repeatedly!”

“And I had to use up a rocket launcher!” complained Gilda. “Those things cost a lot!”

“Should have conserved ammunition and used a rifle instead,” said Discord. “So, how about you get me a glass of water?”

Sunset finally did explode, figuratively at least. “No! You’re the most aggravating being I’ve ever met! Get it yourself! I don’t care how annoyed Chrysalis is about me giving up dealing with you, it can’t possibly be any worse than continuing to deal with you!”

“I’m finding myself in agreement with Sunset for once,” said Gilda.

“So, wait, you’re giving up?” asked Discord.

“Again, yes!”

“Bingo!” said Discord as he snapped his fingers and Chrysalis appeared.

Chrysalis sighed. “Really, Sunset? You couldn’t hold out for just a few more minutes?”

“Why would that matter?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, Discord and I just had a little bet going on how long it would be until you gave up dealing with him. You lasted long enough so that it was the interim stage where he didn’t win but not long enough that I won, so it ended up being a tie. Darn it.”

“This whole thing was a bet to see if Discord could be obnoxious enough for us to give up?” asked an astounded Gilda.

“Yep!” Chrysalis appeared pleased with herself. “But seriously, just a few more minutes and I would’ve actually gotten something. You two need to be able to put up with him more.”

“Why? Would you have given us something if we did?”

“Nope!” said Chrysalis.

“That’s it. I’m done. Let’s go,” snapped Sunset as she was wreathed in fire to get the wings back prior to her and Gilda flying off.

“Well, that was fun,” said Chrysalis. “We should do this again sometime.”

Just then, the Tatzlwurm appeared out of the ground and sneezed on the two, covering them with goo. “Oh, I say,” it said, “dreadfully sorry about that. I’ve gotten a bit of a sickness, and I didn’t want to mess up my interior decorations, so I exited in order to sneeze. Then again, I’m not sure what I’m sorry for, considering I’m a malevolent monstrosity that doesn’t care about anyone else, but I suppose one might as well be polite to their prey, or at least the beings that would be my prey if I weren’t feeling considerably under the weather due to my illness and rather wounded from that mechanism that the avian utilized.” It then vanished back into the ground.

“Bleh,” said Chrysalis. “Disgusting.” She was then covered by even more goo thanks to a Discord sneeze. “You don’t have to pretend to be sick anymore!”

“I’m not pretending!” said Discord. “I think I caught whatever that thing had.” He sneezed again.

“Well stop sneezing and just get us out of here!” said Chrysalis angrily.

Discord responded by snapping his fingers. In response, a significant number of bananas fell onto the two of them.

“Uh, sorry, but it looks like now that I’m sick, my powers don’t work right,” said Discord after they managed to get out from under all the bananas. “I’ll just have to wait until I get over it.”

“Well I’m not sticking around, so I’m out of here!” said Chrysalis. She tried to fly off, but then promptly fell onto the ground, then sneezed. “Great. Now I’ve gotten it too. And Sunset and Gilda already flew off, so they can’t help.”

“Which was your fault, by the way,” said Discord. “You should’ve acted nicer so they didn’t immediately leave.”

“My fault? You were the one that got them so angry in the first place to the point that they did leave after I showed up!”

“Well, you were the one that–”

A short while away…

“Well, I can’t see them anymore,” said Gilda as she and Sunset continued flying away, “but it looked like the giant monster thing sneezed on the two of them. That’s bad for them, right?”

“It was weirdly colored blue, so it likely had the ‘blue flu’ which is different than the disease Discord was faking. It’s a rather incapacitating disease, so they’ll be largely powerless while suffering from it. It generally takes at least a week to get cured, and could possibly take several.”

“So, for at least a week, maybe even longer, they’re completely alone except for each other, sick, and also without their powers?” asked Gilda. “Sounds like they’ll be miserable.”

“I assume so,” said Sunset. “You know what, Gilda?”

“What?”

“I feel good about how today went.”

Leap of the Century

Diamond Tiara stared at Flim and Flam. Flim and Flam stared back.

“So are you dolts going to get me food, or what?” demanded Diamond Tiara. “My dad said you’d better take care of me, so you’d better take care of me!”

“Fine,” said Flim, “do you want apples?”

“Bleh!” said Diamond Tiara. “I don’t like apples! I want a three-tier chocolate cake with frosting from Saddle Arabia!”

“How are you even going to eat all of that?” asked Flam.

“Not your problem! Now get me that cake!”

“How are we even supposed to get that frosting? By the time it’d arrive we’d be done taking care of you.”

“You don’t have to order it from there, you just use the imported frosting, duh,” said Diamond Tiara. “How have you guys not gone bankrupt with how dumb you are?”

“Look,” said Flim with great restraint, “we’ll get you some cake if you behave yourself, but we’re not getting you a three-tier chocolate cake.”

“Then I’m sure my dad would love to know just how poorly you’ve been treating me,” said Diamond Tiara with a devious smile. “Like when you locked me in the shed.”

“We didn’t lock you in the shed!” said Flim.

“Oh yeah? Well I say you did! And I’m sure my dad will be so happy to hear that.”

Flam appeared as if he was about to outright attack Diamond Tiara, but was held back by Flim. “Calm down, Flam. We only have to deal with this for one day.”

“Ugh,” said Flam. “Next time we have to get money from Filthy Rich, offer him a stake in the business instead of agreeing to do some favors for him later on.”

“Well, it did seem like just owing Filthy Rich some favors was cheaper than giving up part of the business… who knew one of the favors would be something as annoying as this?”

“Hey!” said Diamond Tiara. “Stop talking and get the cake!”

“How do we get into these messes?” wondered Flim.

Earlier…

”It cures the reins, the spurs, and the Clydesdale fur blight.
Hooferia and horsentery cured in just a night.
You’ve got swollen hooves and hindquarters or terrible bridle-bit cleft.
Saunter sitz and gallop plop will give your tail some–”

“Are these actual diseases?” wondered Sunset aloud. “They sound made up. I mean, ‘hooferia’?”

“Don’t interrupt the song!” snapped Flim. “Uh, where were we?”

“Blah blah, miracle cure, blah blah, only place you’ll find it, blah blah,” said Sunset. “If this thing is so darn great, why haven’t you done the smart thing and patented it, then licensed it to some large pharmaceutical company to get royalties?”

“We’re building a brand!” said Flam.

“But you don’t have the distribution channels they do. It seems like you’re giving yourself a lot of extra work when you could be profiting off of it way faster if you did so. And even if you did want to strike out for yourself, there’s got to be more efficient ways to sell it than this.”

“Would you wait until later to try to give us business advice? We’re in the middle of something here!”

“It’s better than listening to that lame song,” said Sunset.

“Actually,” came another voice, “there’s a much bigger problem with this.”

Flam’s face fell as he recognized the voice. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes,” said Applejack as she jumped onto the stage and strode up to Flim and Flam. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you two, because I know you couldn’t resist these kind of schemes for long. Now, you’re making a whole lot of claims about this pill of yours, such as its ability to cure all of these diseases. Do you have independent, double-blind studies proving it?”

“We’ve got this guy over here that it cured!” said Flim, pointing to a white-coated stallion named Silver Shill who was introduced in a part of the song that was skipped over for brevity’s sake. “Didn’t you see that?”

“First, that’s not an independent, double-blind study. That’s just anecdotal,” said Applejack. “Second, that was complete fakery on your part.”

“No, it wasn’t!” said Flim and Flam.

“Uh-huh,” said Applejack as she held up a piece of paper. “Then why did you include ‘Silver Shill’s payment’ as a business expense on your tax forms?”

“I knew that was a bad idea,” muttered Flam.

“Anyway,” continued Applejack, “this all counts as false advertisement and fraud, so I have to hit you with a rather stiff fine.” She pulled out another piece of paper, scribbled some numbers on it, and gave it to Flim and Flam. “There you go.”

Flim and Flam looked at the piece of paper and went pale. “That’s a lot of zeroes,” said Flim.

“Don’t commit the vice if you can’t pay the price,” said Applejack before she left.

“Darn it,” said Flim, “how are we going to get the money to pay it off?”

After the exact amount of time between then and where the previous scene left off…

“Cake!” shouted Diamond Tiara.

“Okay, okay, calm down!” said Flim. “Why don’t we go over to Sugar Cube Corner and we can get the cake made for you?”

Diamond Tiara suddenly perked up. “Now, that would be just lovely,” she said cheerfully in a voice dramatically different than the one she had previously been using.

“That settles it,” muttered Flam. “I am never having children.”

The amount of time required to get to Sugar Cube Corner later…

“Ah, hello!” said Mr. Cake as the group entered. “What can I get for you?”

“A three-tier chocolate cake with frosting from Saddle Arabia,” said Flim wearily.

“What a coincidence!” said Mr. Cake. “We have one in stock.”

“Really?” asked Flim.

Mr. Cake took a look at a list. “Oh, I’m sorry, my mistake. What we have is a four-tier chocolate cake with frosting from Saddle Arabia. Would that be okay?”

“No!” said Diamond Tiara. “I said three-tier chocolate cake, and that means I want a three-tier chocolate cake!”

“But a four-tier cake is just a bigger version of that!” said Flam.

“Yeah, but four is such a dull number. Three is much more interesting.”

Flim and Flam face-hoofed. “Well,” said Mr. Cake, “if you’re willing to wait a bit, we could adjust the cake to have three tiers. We could just use the bottom tier as a standalone cake.”

“Okay!” said Diamond Tiara in an astoundingly sweet voice. “That sounds good.”

And so the group waited. After approximately 8.3 seconds, however, Diamond Tiara grew bored. “You dolts should do something to entertain me in the meantime,” she said.

Flam sighed. “What do you want this time?”

“I shouldn’t have to do your job for you! You figure out something!”

“Ugh,” groaned Flim. “Well, how about a puppet show?”

“Do you have any puppets?” asked Diamond Tiara.

“Er, no,” admitted Flim.

And so the conversation went, with Flim or Flam trying to suggest something only for Diamond Tiara to shoot it down. After enough of this that it would get awfully boring and repetitive if it were to all be transcribed, Mr. Cake came out with a three-tier chocolate cake with frosting from Saddle Arabia. “Here’s your three-tier chocolate cake with frosting from Saddle Arabia!” he said. He brought it over to them and was paid by Flim. “Enjoy!” he said before leaving for the back again.

“This thing was expensive enough that I wonder if it would’ve been easier to just pay the fine in the first place,” muttered Flam.

“Yay! Cake!” said Diamond Tiara. She cut a piece and ate it. “Okay, I’m done,” she said.

“Why did you ask for a three-tier chocolate cake with frosting from Saddle Arabia if you were just going to quit after one slice?!” demanded Flim.

“Oh, I didn’t really care that much about the cake; I just wanted to see if you guys could actually get it,” said Diamond Tiara smugly.

”What?!”

“Actually” said Diamond Tiara, “I did come up with another way to use this cake!”

Diamond Tiara wheeled the cake out of the store and into the street. “Hey everypony!” she shouted. “Free cake, courtesy of Diamond Tiara!”

There was a mad stampede of ponies. However, said mad stampede ran right past the cake. “Huh?” asked Diamond Tiara. Her vague question was answered when a swarm of parasprites flew by, quickly ate the cake, then flew off in the same direction as the crowd. “Huh. Well, there goes that plan to gain popularity.”

Flim and Flam came out of the shop. “Wait, was that a swarm of parasprites?” asked Flam.

“Uh, I think so?” said Diamond Tiara. “Does it really matter?”

“Of course it matters!” said Flam. “Those things cause chaos wherever they go and eat all the food!”

“More specifically,” added Flim, “they could totally eat all of the food we’ve got!”

“There’s only one thing to do!” said Flam.

“Protect me from the parasprites at the potential cost of your own lives?” asked Diamond Tiara.

“No!” said Flam. “Something totally different! And much more useful! We’re going to defeat them with the most dangerous weapon that has ever been conceived!”

“And what would that be?” asked Diamond Tiara.

Flim patted her on the head. “You’ll learn all about it when you’re older. In fact, you’ll probably be downright intimate with it.”

“AAAAAHHHH!” shouted one of the myriad of ponies that were running around.

“AAAAAHHHH!” agreed another.

“AAAAAHHHH!” shouted a third before abruptly stopping. “Wait, why are we running around screaming? They’re not attacking us. Losing food is annoying and all, but our lives aren’t in danger.”

“Okay!” said another. “Let’s see if we can get rid of them somehow!”

All attempts to get rid of the parasprites comedically failed, except for the one involving the folding chairs, which instead failed in a non-comedic fashion.

“Why does this sort of nonsense always happened in Ponyville?” muttered Sunset to herself. “I mean, can’t the monster attack Cloudsdale or Manehattan for once?” Just then an unseen orchestra started up as Flim and Flam arrived.

”We’re the–”

“Don’t care!” screamed Sunset. “If you have a solution to the parasprites, use it without the song! And if you don’t, then don’t sing anyway!”

“Oh, come on!” said Flam. “We worked really hard on this song!”

Sunset glared at him.

“Fine!” said Flam. “We have the perfect way to deal with the parasprites!”

“Then use it!”

Flam shrugged and pulled out several barrels of cider. The parasprites, seeing the nutrition, immediately divebombed straight at them and gobbled them all up.

“What did that accomplish?” asked Sunset.

“Wait for it,” said Flim.

Shortly after consuming the cider, the parasprites all fell to the ground unconscious.

“Ta-da!” said Flam. “That was the alcoholic cider! So they drank all of it, but because their bodies are so small they had essentially no tolerance and all fell into a stupor.”

“Isn’t this the same thing you did with the Mane-iac?” asked Sunset.

“Just further proof that alcohol solves everything!” declared Flim.

“Okay, and what is your solution for when they wake up? They’ll just start eating things and cloning themselves some more."

“Oh, easy one,” said Flam. “You see, parasprites live lives so short that they make the lifespan of an adult mayfly seem long. The only reason the species is even still around is because they reproduce so crazy fast. Thus, the problem takes care of itself, as they’ll all be dead before they wake up.”

“Well, you may have saved the town, so I guess you guys did something good for once,” said Sunset.

“Can we sing our song now?”

“No!” snapped Sunset. “Though, what are you going to do with this big pile of parasprites in the center of town?”

“That’s not our problem!” said Flim cheerfully.

Sunset sighed.

“All right!” came a whiny voice as Diamond Tiara walked up to them. “You had your fun! Now I want you to go buy me another three-tier cake because that one went to waste!”

“We’re not buying you another cake,” said Flam.

“Well, then, I’m going to be telling my dad you guys locked me in the shed!”

Flim and Flam shared a glance at each other.

Later…

“Hello,” said Filthy Rich, “I’m here to pick my daughter up. Where is she?”

“Oh, we just locked her in the shed,” said Flim. “You can find her there.”

Filthy Rich’s eyes narrowed. “You locked her in the shed?”

“She was becoming unbearable. Couldn’t take her anymore,” said Flam.

“Hrm,” said Filthy Rich. “Is that shed for sale, by any chance?”

“Why?” asked Flam.

“Because that’s a brilliant idea. Now I want a shed for that. If you give it to me for free, I’ll consider our account entirely settled.”

One shed ‘sale’ and subsequent departure later…

“Well!” said Flim. “That all worked out reasonably. I’m just glad he wasn’t angry about the whole shed thing.”

“Just giving him the shed was easier than the original idea of trying to guilt-trip him into not getting angry due to us stopping the parasprites and presumably saving his money.”

There was a pause.

“You know,” said Flam, “I can’t help but feel we’re forgetting something.”

There was another pause.

“Oh well,” said Flim. “If we are, I’m sure it isn’t anything important.”

Meanwhile…

“Okay!” said Trixie. “So here’s my idea for how to close out the Mare Do Well issue. You know how a lot of times in a story, somepony will say ‘I can’t help but think I’m forgetting something’ and then it’ll cut to something they forgot for comedy’s sake, then usually followed by them adding that they didn’t think it was anything important?”

“Yeah?” asked Lightning Dust.

“We should do that, but not cut anywhere at all to demonstrate what, if anything, was forgotten. This leaves the question unanswered for the reader, and the lack of a punchline thus becomes the joke.”

“I don’t know,” said Lightning Dust. “It seems like it’d be easy to miss the fact that it’s a subversion at all and just leave the reader confused. I think you’d have to include some kind of explanation at the end so they get it, and that could ruin the whole joke if you explain it.”

Trixie sighed. “Okay, fair enough. Let’s go with the original plan of her trying to make a failed analogy about kittens and chewing gum.”

Tirek's Kingdom

A long time after a long time ago, in a galaxy far away from a galaxy far away, in another universe entirely, a brown unicorn wandered through an alley.

This is not his story.

Instead, it is the story of a different brown unicorn in a different alley. Actually, it isn’t his story either, but his story involves events that start up the actual story.

“Oh boy!” said the unicorn to himself. “A dark alley! I sure hope no one ambushes me while I’m here.” Just then, a figure appeared. “The irony!” shouted the unicorn.

“‘Is he friend or is he foe?’ the pony wonders,” said the aforementioned figure to the aforementioned unicorn. “I can assure you, I–”

“Actually, I wasn’t quite wondering that,” interrupted the unicorn. “What was going through my mind was–”

“Oh, come on!” said the figure. “I had this ominous speech all ready until you screwed it up.”

“Uh, sorry?” asked the unicorn uncertainly.

“Whatever. I’ll just take your magic.” The figure drained the magic from the unicorn, erasing his cutie mark as well.

“Well, that wasn’t very nice,” muttered the unicorn before falling over.

“I might as well finish my ominous speech,” said the figure. “I am Lord Tirek, and I will take what should have been mine long ago!”

“Lord Tirek. Huh. Any relation to Lord Seth?” asked the sprawled-out unicorn.

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” said the unicorn, “but I think I heard he was important.”

Tirek grumbled. “All this work on this great ominous speech and I just get asked about some guy I’ve never heard of. Back in my day, ponies respected the ominous speech.”

“Yeah!” said Chrysalis as she entered the scene. “You should accept the fact he put some work into that! Here, let’s try again. Give the rest of the ominous speech.”

“That was the ominous speech,” said Tirek.

“Wait,” said Chrysalis, “so your entire ominous speech was ‘“Is he friend or is he foe?” the pony wonders. I can assure you... I am no friend. I am Lord Tirek, and I will take what should have been mine long ago’?”

“Uh, yes?” said Tirek uncertainly.

“Two things,” said Chrysalis. “First, that’s a lame ominous speech. Second, having a quote within your speech makes it weird for me to quote it because it requires a quotation within a quotation within my dialogue! It looks so awkward.”

“Why should you care? I said it out loud!”

“True, but if someone were to write this all down, it would look really weird.”

“Well,” said Tirek, “I thought it was a great ominous speech.”

“Really?” asked Chrysalis. “With that ‘is he friend or is he foe’ line? That was one of the cheesiest things I’ve ever heard.”

“Screw it,” said Tirek. “I’m out of here.” He walked off.

“Uh, any chance I can get my magic and cutie mark back?” asked the unicorn.

“You’re just a generic character,” said Chrysalis, “so who knows?”

Just then, Luna arrived. “Chrysalis! This isn’t just a dream; it’s a vision,” she said.

“Wait, this is a dream?” asked Chrysalis. She paused. “Well, that would explain why everything seemed even more meta than usual.”

“Could you be serious for just one minute?” asked Luna.

“Probably not,” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, why do you have to come into my dreams to communicate with me? Can’t you just knock like everyone else?”

Luna sighed and placed her hoof on her forehead. “Look, Chrysalis. The point is that this clearly was a vision about how Tirek will return to cause havoc and how you, as the reigning ruler of Equestria, need to take the necessary precautions to stop it.”

“So, wait, did this vision already happen, or is this something that will happen?”

“I think it already happened.”

“Including the part where I came in and complained about the situation?”

“No,” said Luna, “I’m pretty sure that part was dream exclusive.”

“Are you sure this wasn’t just a really weird dream with no relation to reality? Because I’d hate to prepare for what turns out to be nothing.”

“Yes, I’m sure!” snapped Luna.

“Wait,” said Chrysalis. “How do I know you’re not a figment of my imagination within the dream? You might not be the real Luna.”

“Oh, for the love of,” grumbled Luna. “Fine!” She disappeared.

“I really need to stop eating that garlic, green pepper and tofu chili before I go to bed,” muttered Chrysalis.

She was then abruptly woken up by a rather loud noise. “Whosawhatit?” she asked groggily.

“Just doing the Royal Canterlot Voice to make sure you woke up,” said Luna.

“You could knock first,” said Chrysalis as she got out of bed. “What’s so important you had to get me up?”

Luna face-hoofed again. “Chrysalis. Do you not remember what just happened in that dream you had?”

“I’m not very good at remembering dreams,” Chrysalis said. “Did it involve chili? I think I remember that part.”

One exposition dump later…

“Are you sure this was a vision and not just my subconscious trolling me?” asked Chrysalis. “Because it has a tendency to do that.”

“Yes, I’m sure!” said Luna.

“Ugh,” said Chrysalis. “Well, I know what I have to do.”

“Hi, everypony!” said Chrysalis cheerfully.

“Hello, Chrysalis,” said Sunset, Suri, Gilda, Flim, Flam, Lightning Dust, and Trixie unenthusiastically.

“Oh, come on, show some enthusiasm! For all you know I’m here to give you some kind of gift or something rather than a task to complete!”

“Okay,” said Sunset wearily, “the last time we went through this, you made us have to deal with Discord after making a bet with him on how quickly he could drive us crazy. Are we going to have to go through that again?”

“Maybe,” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, before we get to anything else, it’s story time!” She pulled out a book and started to read it. “There was once this bad dude named Tirek, who was not a bad enough dude to steal magic from Equestria, as was his plan. I mean, he was a bad dude in the terms of being bad meaning evil, but he wasn’t a bad dude in the terms of bad meaning cool, which was why he failed despite being the bad dude, as he was evil-bad rather than cool-bad. Particularly considering the cool-bad Starswirl was able to befriend Tirek’s brother, Scorpan. So he got locked up. Tirek, I mean, not Scorpan or Starswirl. Now he apparently got out. So someone needs to deal with him.” After she finished, Chrysalis threw the book away and it exploded.

“And that’s us, I assume,” said Sunset.

“Huh?” asked Chrysalis. “Nah. You guys are weak, especially without those Elements of Irony you used to have. I’m sending Discord instead, as he’s more powerful and could find Tirek by sensing whenever someone is stealing magic. You guys can do whatever inconsequential things you inconsequentially do in your inconsequential lives.”

“If you don’t need us, why in the world did you come all the way here to Ponyville just to tell us something that didn’t matter to us?”

“Because now I can write this trip off as a business expense on my taxes,” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, tallyho!” She left.

“Well, that was a waste of time,” muttered Sunset.

“Who actually says ‘tallyho’?” wondered Trixie.

“I was hoping having to spend all that time with Discord might make her more tolerable, but I think she might be even more annoying than before,” said Gilda.

“As long as we don’t have to deal with this sort of thing for once, I’m okay,” said Suri. “It’s such a nice change of pace to not end up dealing with some giant monster.”

“By the way,” said Flim, “did you ever figure out what that box that came from that tree was about? Because I’m sure we could get a good price from it if we sold it. Who could resist the lure of the mystery box?”

“I’m pretty sure anypony could resist the urge of something whose contents are unknown,” said Sunset, “especially when they have no way to open it, and even the seller doesn’t know the contents! I’m not getting rid of this until I know what’s in it, because it might be important. And, more importantly, would probably be worth more than a box with unknown contents if sold. Though if you guys can find somepony willing to pay a high enough price maybe, I would sell it.”

“Righto!” declared Flam. “Let’s go!”

Sunset watched Flim and Flam run off. “Well, that got rid of them, at least. Since I apparently have nothing better to do, I might as well get to work on that box.”

“Oh boy!” said Discord. “We get to spend more time together! Don’t you agree, Chryssie?”

“One, I told you not to call me that,” said Chrysalis. “Two, we’ve already spent way too much time together. Three… you’re so annoying that I forgot what three even was.”

“You could just leave me to deal with Tirek by myself,” noted Discord.

“Oh no,” said Chrysalis, “I’m keeping an eye on you. You’re too much of a loose cannon to trust without supervision. What kind of idiotic ruler would I be if I didn’t keep an eye on you during this?”

“That hurts, man. That hurts,” said Discord. He then got hit in the head by Chrysalis. “Ow!”

“No,” said Chrysalis, “that hurts.”

“Ha!” said Discord. “Joke’s on you! That hit didn’t hurt at all, and I was just pretending it did when I said ‘ow’!”

“Joke’s on you,” said Chrysalis, “because that was a really light hit that wasn’t intended to hurt and served only to demonstrate that because that hurt more than what you previously were claiming hurt, it showed that you weren’t hurt at all in the first place and were just trying to play for sympathy!”

“That was really clumsy sentence structure,” said Discord. “And while I’m sure you’d like to continue this attempt to outdo the other in terms of being annoying, I should mention that Tirek is totally draining the power of someone right now.”

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

“Just a moment,” said Discord. A moment paused. “Okay, let’s go.” He snapped his fingers and disappeared.

Chrysalis stared at the spot where Discord was. “Naturally,” she muttered to herself.

“Greetings!” said Discord as he appeared in front of Tirek, who had just finished draining the magic from another pony. “I was originally going to go up to you disguised as a pony, but then I realized that would serve no real purpose other than to provide something to make fan art of.”

Tirek stared at Discord. “Fan art? What are you babbling about?”

“Well, of course you’d be confused,” said Discord dismissively. “You don’t have fans.”

Tirek scowled but ignored the comment. “I’m more surprised that you’re free. I commend you on the escape.”

“I’m afraid the feeling isn’t mutual,” said Discord as he snapped his fingers and handcuffs appeared on Tirek’s wrists.

“Oh, I should have known you would want to have Equestria all to yourself,” said Tirek.

Chrysalis finally caught up to them. “You could have brought me with you!”

“But then you wouldn’t get exercise!” said Discord. “You could stand to lose a little weight.”

“I do not need to lose weight!” snapped Chrysalis.

Tirek glanced at Discord. “You’re not saying you’re friends with ponies?”

“Hey!” said Chrysalis. “I’m clearly a changeling!”

“Oh, you’re a pony at heart,” said Discord.

“What does that even mean?”

“Anyway!” said Discord to Tirek as he ignored Chrysalis’s question. “I realized that actually taking over all of Equestria would be awfully boring, and things would be a lot more fun if I didn’t. Nothing is actually chaotic when everything is chaotic, you know? Besides, they Discord-proofed a bunch of stuff anyway, so I probably couldn’t take over even if I tried.”

“Discord-proofed, but not Tirek-proofed,” said Tirek. “Discord, help me to grow strong, and be rewarded with something far greater than friendship. Freedom. Once I’ve stripped these ponies of their magic, nothing would–”

“Could you just zap him before he babbles on further?” asked Chrysalis impatiently. “I don’t want to hear another lame speech.”

“Now, wait just a minute, Chryssie,” said Discord, eliciting a growl from Chrysalis. “I think it would be impolite to not hear him out. Go on, finish.”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see their world turned upside down,” continued Tirek. “Who better to do so than the master of chaos himself? Join me, Discord, and reclaim your greatness. Unless, of course, ‘pony errand boy’ is the role you’ve always wanted to play in this world.”

“Okay, he gave his stupid speech, now will you just take care of him?” asked Chrysalis. “He’s obviously just going to betray you if you help him out. And as surprising as you might find it, I do have other things to do with my time than this.”

“Hrm,” said Discord to Tirek. “Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. But, unfortunately, I can’t accept because, as noted, you’d just obviously betray me at some point. Though I am still interested in that newsletter.”

Tirek abruptly ripped apart the handcuffs. “Very well,” he said. “I guess I’ll do this the hard way.”

“Wait, how did you–” started Chrysalis before being interrupted by Tirek grabbing magic from them of them before departing. The two collapsed.

“Okay,” said Chrysalis after she managed to herself back up, “note to self: Always eat a full breakfast before you get the magic sucked out of you.” She turned to Discord. “You’re supposed to be incredibly powerful. How in the world did he snap those chains and steal your magic?”

“Well,” said Discord nervously, “funny story there. You see, when I was on my trip a while ago, there was this accident involving a genie and a robot that resulted in me being substantially weaker. Sorry.”

“And you couldn’t think to tell me this beforehand?” asked Chrysalis.

“Why would I want to tell people I’m weaker than they think I am?”

“Okay, okay,” said Chrysalis, “time for Plan B.”

“I hope you had a good reason for calling us all here,” said Suri. “I was in the middle of something.”

“Quiet,” said Sunset. “Anyway, after doing research, which I’d like to note none of you helped me with–”

“You didn’t ask,” pointed out Flim.

“Because I knew you guys would screw it up! Anyway, based on some research and supposition, to open up the box we all have to find some time we demonstrated one of the Elements recently, which will then open it up. Anypony have any?”

“Ooh! Ooh!” announced Lightning Dust as she waved her hoof in the air. “I totally demonstrated loyalty when I helped Ponyville out in the tryouts for the Equestria Games!”

“First,” said Sunset, “those games got canceled. Second, you spent most of the time scheming to get on another team. That’s not loyalty!”

“That seemed more like a case of honesty,” said Trixie. “I mean, you exposed the truth and whatnot about what Spitfire was up to.”

“Okay, we’ll come back to that one,” muttered Sunset. “Suri?”

“I guess that whole thing in Manehattan served as generosity?” said Suri. “Where I didn’t steal all of those fabrics?”

“Are you seriously trying to say that not stealing counts as generosity now?” asked Gilda. “Maybe it’s honesty, as you actually did go through the whole thing honestly, but it’s not generosity.”

“Ugh!” said Sunset. “We’ll figure it out later. Flim, Flam, you have anything for me?”

“Saving the town from the Mane-iac and parasprites shows clear honesty!” declared Flim.

“How?!”

“Uh… we used ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ to do it, and it’s true we can’t believe it’s not cider,” said Flim. He frowned. “No, darn it, I can believe it’s not cider, because I helped make it.”

“Well, this is just wonderful!” snapped Sunset. “Has anypony here actually done something representative of their element?”

Trixie held up a Mare Do Well comic. “I help make these. Since these things have comedy, obviously that should count towards laughter.”

“You know, some of those jokes came from me,” said Lightning Dust. “I can be funny, too.”

“I did most of then,” said Trixie, “Normally you’re the one who provides the action portions.”

“Hey! I came up with all those jokes in the most recent issue where Mare Do Well mistook the aliens for–”

“Enough!” said Sunset. “Okay, that’s one down. Did you do anything particularly kind recently, Gilda?”

“Uh… I reassured you that you didn’t look as dumb as you thought you did in changeling form?”

Sunset stared. “Wow. That actually… does seem like it counts. And because I’ve done magic, it looks like I count for my part.” She turned to Flim, Flam, Lightning Dust, and Suri. “Okay, you guys are going to go out and find some way to embody your elements so we can open this thing up.”

“Do we have to?” complained Suri. “Being generous is so annoying. It means I have to give things up without getting anything in return.”

“You kind of need the right opportunity to demonstrate loyalty,” said Lightning Dust. “It doesn’t seem like something you can just demonstrate on a dime. Or even on a nickel.” She paused. “Ha! See? I can totally do jokes.”

“The sky is blue,” said Flim. “That’s true. Is that good enough?”

“I don’t think you can just say something that’s true; if that were the case, anypony could do it. There has to be some kind of extra effort to it,” said Sunset. “Anyway, how to do it isn’t my problem! You guys figure it out.”

“But aren’t you the one asking us to do it?” asked Flam.

“If you guys want any part of whatever we get from this, you have to do your part! Now get to it!”

“Well,” said Flam, “it’s not like we were making any progress finding a buyer for the unopened box anyway.”

Chrysalis and Discord entered the room to find Luna. “So, how’d it go?” she asked.

“Not well,” growled Chrysalis. “We need plan B. Did you get your sister and Cadance?”

“About that,” said Luna. “Cadance is on her way, but my sister said she couldn’t get time off from work.”

“Time off from work? The fate of Equestria could hang in the balance here!”

“It’s not her fault she got fired from several jobs in a row due to circumstances out of her control. She lost that job with the Wonderbolts after they had to downsize due to some bad publicity they recently got, and then that parasprite removal company folded because some new way of dealing with parasprites was discovered… though you’d think even with a lack of references and a criminal record wouldn’t outdo the appeal of having a super-powered alicorn working for you. I told you that you should’ve hired her for some kind of position when she got rehabilitated after that whole Crystal Empire business.”

“Ugh! Fine,” said Chrysalis, “I’ll hire her as a creative consultant or something.”

“What does a creative consultant do?” asked Luna.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Chrysalis. “But it sounds official.”

One getting of Celestia later…

“I’d just like to say,” said Celestia, “what an honor it is to–”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Chrysalis dismissively. “Anyway, because Discord and I got our power taken away, you two are probably the most powerful beings at the moment.”

“So you want us to take out Tirek?” asked Celestia.

“Huh?” asked Chrysalis. “No. I want you to hide your power in someone else because he’s obviously going to go for you, and then he can’t drain your magic.”

“That plan seems tremendously stupid,” said Discord. “If your combined power is supposedly enough to beat him, why not just all join up together and fight him? Why go through this convoluted plan of combining them?”

“Exactly!” said Chrysalis. “It sounds stupid! That means he won’t be prepared for it!”

“That makes even less sense! And I know something about not making sense!”

“He’s not wrong,” said Celestia.

“Okay, fine,” said Chrysalis, “that wasn’t the reason. I was just screwing with you. The real reason is that he needs a lot of power to drain someone’s power, and he has to do it in one go. If the power is separated, then he’d have an easier time even if you all attacked him at once, because he could take them out individually. If they’re all combined, then he’d have a much harder job with it.”

“And who’s getting the power, then?” asked Discord.

“Discord, did you pay any attention when I laid this all out for you earlier?”

“Not really,” said Discord.

“Okay,” said Chrysalis, “then pay attention this time. Tirek knows about Luna and Celestia as they were around when he was banished. So he would come after them. We’re going to combine their powers into Cadance because he probably doesn’t know about her, as she wasn’t around back when he was.”

“Well, that’s slightly better,” said Discord. “But why are we listening to you? Your previous plan only made him more powerful.”

“Well,” said Chrysalis, “if you had told me that you were a bit weaker, maybe I could have done things better!”

“Excuses, excuses,” said Discord. Seeing that Chrysalis was clearly about to blow up at him, he quickly added, “But, whatever.”

“Why Cadance?” said Celestia. “Why not just transfer Luna’s power to me or my power to Luna?”

“Because,” said Chrysalis, “she’s the only alicorn around who hasn’t gone crazy and tried to take over Equestria!”

“Oh, come on!” said Luna. “We only did that twice.”

Chrysalis sighed.

“All right!” announced Sunset after she had re-gathered up the rest of her group into her house. “Who has accomplished the goal of showing off their element that hadn’t done so already?”

“Um…”

“Er…”

“Uh…”

“Work with me here!” snapped Sunset.

“You didn’t seem that obsessed about the box beforehand,” said Flam.

“Well, I am now! I want to get whatever is in the thing because it’s likely to either be really important to dealing with some future enemy or be really valuable, in which case it would be worth money! Either way, it would be good to have!”

There was a knock on the door.

“Oh, joy,” muttered Sunset as she went to open it, finding Chrysalis on the other side.

“Hi, everypony!” declared Chrysalis cheerfully.

“Hello, Chrysalis,” said Sunset, Suri, Gilda, Flim, Flam, Lightning Dust, and Trixie unenthusiastically.

“Is this just another visit to write off on your tax returns? Because I really don’t want to have to deal with that again,” said Sunset.

“Oh, no, no,” said Chrysalis as she came in. “Congratulations! You’ve been selected as being the most important part of an overly convoluted plan I came up with!”

“Joy,” said Sunset flatly.

“Why does it have to be overly convoluted?” asked Trixie. “Can’t it just be regularly convoluted?”

“Just tell me what it is you want me to do this time,” said Sunset with a sigh.

“Discord and I tried to stop Tirek, but thanks to reasons that were mostly Discord’s fault, we failed and ended up getting our magic taken away. And in case you’re wondering, no, Tirek hasn’t gained the ability to shapeshift from me or any of the other changelings he may have absorbed by this point, because while that is reliant on the magic that can be drained, you can’t do it if you’re not also physically a changeling. The good news is that the absorption of the power is tiring—maybe it’s heartburn—so he needs to take a rest whenever he absorbs something particularly powerful, so he shouldn’t be a threat for a little while still. Rubber baby buggy bumpers. Anyway, the plan is that we need someone to get really powered up, so we need to combine the magic of the alicorns, as they’re really powerful, which is why Luna and Celestia are here with me, although outside. Ordinarily I would’ve wanted to do it myself, but from my understanding I can’t get the magic added to mine because mine got lost. We were originally going to combine their powers with Cadance’s, but she’s not really available at the moment so you’re the one that it looks like you’re the prime candidate. That was a rather long speech, wasn’t it?”

“Why in the world isn’t Cadance available?” asked Sunset.

“She got stuck in traffic on her way here,” said Chrysalis. “So until she arrives, you’re our best shot.”

“Uh-huh,” said Sunset. “Dare I ask why you consider me your ‘best shot’?”

“Well, originally I was going to assign to to who Tirek would least expect,” said Chrysalis. “But it took too long to go through expecting everyone that I gave up. The best person to pick would probably be one who’s already magically inclined, and who better than the Element of Magic?”

“I think the might be the nicest thing you’ve said to me,” said Sunset.

“Eh?” said Chrysalis. “Oh, no, that wasn’t a rhetorical question. There actually would’ve have been someone way better, namely Twilight. Remember how she got free of that Alicorn Amulet and she’s living up north now?”

“Uh, yes?” said Sunset.

“Good! Because I didn’t. Anyway, she was also unavailable, as she’s with Cadance. But you’re the runner-up! Well, the runner-up after the next runner-up, who–”

“Can we just get on with things?” asked Sunset wearily.

“Right!” said Chrysalis. “So, through power transfers that were for some reason never mentioned prior to now, you’ll get all that power. Then we just wait for Cadance to finally show up, combine that power with hers, and then we can take Tirek by surprise and beat him, save Equestria, and all the rest of that. Then we can all live happily ever after for a month or two until the next giant threat shows up. I’ve got a bet going that it’ll be androids from the future.”

“Can I at least get something better than a sandwich for doing so this time around? That was such a lame reward.”

“Hey!” said Flim. “That was a really good sandwich.”

“Yeah, sure, fine, whatever,” said Chrysalis absentmindedly. “Oh, wait, I almost forgot. You can’t tell any of these guys about this plan. It could put them in danger.”

“But… you just told her in front of us!” said Suri. “We already know!”

“Oh, right,” said Chrysalis. “I guess we’ll have to erase your memories of that. Though there is one issue with doing that.”

“Erasing memories exists in a highly morally ambiguous area and is presumably illegal anyway?” asked Trixie.

“Nah,” said Chrysalis. “The issue is that memory-erasing spells don’t exist.”

Everyone stared at her.

“Anyway!” said Chrysalis. “The power transfer process! Let’s go!” Chrysalis left with Sunset.

“The fate of Equestria is at stake and she still can’t stop trolling,” muttered Suri.

“Well!” said Trixie. “I might as well mention that Lightning Dust and I have great news!”

“You’re pregnant?” asked Gilda.

“Ye… no! Neither of us is even dating anypony! How would we be pregnant?”

“You are aware it’s possible to become pregnant without dating somepony, right?” asked Flam.

“Gah!” said Trixie. “No, it has nothing to do with pregnancy! The good news is that it looks like we’re actually getting a film adaptation of Mare Do Well.”

“Didn’t you already get that and reject it?” asked Gilda idly.

“Yeah, but they wanted to make dumb changes. But the series is more popular than it was then, so we can keep greater creative control! It’s what happens when your main series is the second most popular comic series after Power Ponies!”

“Well, uh, congratulations,” said Gilda in a deadpan tone of voice. “Somehow I think this is less than important compared to the potential fate of Equestria.”

Meanwhile, outside…

“The power transfer is complete!” declared Chrysalis.

“But… we haven’t done anything yet,” said Sunset.

“I know,” said Chrysalis. “I’m just rehearsing what I’m going to say when it’s complete.”

“I’m really having some second thoughts about this,” said Celestia.

“Look, I’m a bit low on options here!” said Chrysalis. “I’ve been over this already. We need to try to put all of the high powers into one being so they have a better chance against Tirek. Tirek knows about you two already, Discord and I can’t take the power, and right now Cadance and Twilight aren’t available. And I don’t want to wait because not only is traffic killer at this time of day, Tirek might show up in the meantime. Plus if you give too much power to anyone who has a history of trying to conquer things, maybe they’ll go nutso again and be a threat! I feel annoyed I have to explain all of this again!”

“Oh, come on,” said Celestia. “I only did that twice. And I technically wasn’t out to conquer anything.”

“Look, you get a 94.2477796% approval rating and then maybe you can call the shots.”

“I still can’t believe you have that memorized,” muttered Luna.

“Look, can we just get this power transfer done with?” asked Chrysalis. “This has dragged on too long. And I do have other things to do with my time than this.”

“Wait, you do?” asked Sunset.

“Do you think that ruling a country doesn’t take up a lot of time?”

“Well, considering you seem to have time to screw around with me… wait, this whole power transfer thing isn’t another prank, is it?”

“The safety of Equestria is at stake, and you think I might be be pranking you?”

There was a pause. “Yes!” said Sunset.

“Well, I’m not!” snapped Chrysalis. “Anyway, Celestia, being willing to transfer power to another individual in the case of emergency is listed in your job description, so if you want to keep that 401(k), you’d better do this!”

One reluctant power transfer later…

“The power transfer is complete!” declared Chrysalis. “Yeah, that was totally worth the rehearsal. Oh, and Sunset, just for the record, in the off chance you have any plans of doing something like using that power to take revenge for any pranks I’ve pulled, I should point out that having that level of foreign power puts considerable wear and tear on your body, so you’ll want to use it as little as possible if you don’t want to start aging yourself prematurely.”

“Lovely,” said Sunset in a flat tone of voice.

“You could try to be more enthusiastic,” commented Chrysalis.

“Ugh,” groaned Luna as she got up after having fallen down due to the power transfer that was skipped over in the narration. “Getting your power completely drained really takes a whole lot out of you.”

“Yeah, well, join the club,” muttered Chrysalis. “Okay, Sunset, you just stay here in Ponyville and be as inconspicuous as you can until we do get someone around here to take the power.”

“And, uh, how do you suggest I be inconspicuous?” asked Sunset.

“Inconspicuously!” said Chrysalis.

“Thanks,” said Sunset flatly.

“No problem,” said Chrysalis. “Though you should put more emotion into your voice. You’ve been saying a whole lot of things flatly as of late.”

Sunset sighed and trudged back into the house. “So,” she said, “did any of you make an act that represented your element while I was out?” There was a pause. “I’m taking your silence as a no.”

“How does demonstrating the elements open up the box thingy anyway?” asked Lightning Dust. “I mean, do you just do it and then it opens up? I feel like there’d be something extra.”

Sunset pulled a book of a shelf. “Well, according to this book I was doing research in, you’re supposed to find something that represents some exercise of the elements, then you use it to fulfill one of the keys for the box, and then it opens up.”

“What book would tell you that? That seems rather specific,” said Flim.

“The book’s called ‘How to Open Up Mysterious Boxes That Drop From Magical Trees,’” said Sunset.

“That’s… oddly precise,” muttered Flam.

“Yeah, apparently it didn’t sell well. Anyway, the point remains, you guys all have to go and get something that’s related to a time you demonstrated your elements.”

“Uh-oh,” said Trixie. “What if the box is really some aliens that came to our planet long ago and were imprisoned in the box by some sort of ancient magic, but then the box also turns out to be what holds something that lets them communicate with their spaceship, so once you open the box they get out and then zap us with their weapons and use the box to call for help, causing a massive alien invasion?”

There was an awkward pause as everyone stared at Trixie blankly.

“I read it in a story once,” she said defensively.

“As I was saying,” said Sunset through clenched teeth, “you guys should find some way to demonstrate the elements, then get something from those incidents to use to open up the box. It might contain something important to defeating Tirek.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“You don’t think that something that popped up from a tree related to the Elements might not be some kind of weapon?”

“Hrm, good point,” said Gilda. “What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“Well, I suppose I could try to be inconspicuous over in that castle where we fought Nightmare Moon a while ago.”

“You mean that one we also took a subsequent trip to where absolutely no whacky shenanigans happened and thus, in a story, would probably be skipped over completely?” asked Trixie.

“Why do you need clarification?” asked Sunset irritably. “How many castles have we actually visited in the area?”

“You never know,” said Trixie with a shrug.

“Look, just find some way to demonstrate the elements,” said Sunset wearily.

“Well, that was a bust,” muttered Lightning Dust. “I was hoping to get hired and then not quit immediately to provide evidence of my loyalty, but it turns out it can actually take several weeks to get hired. You guys do any better?”

“Well,” said Flim, “we thought that answering ‘yes, it absolutely does’ to anypony who asked ‘does this make me look fat?’ could count as honesty, but we always got beaten up before we could finish answering the question.”

“Incidentally, our medical bills went up a bit,” added Flam.

“I was trying to give things away, but nopony wanted them,” said Suri. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been trying to get rid of the stuff people didn’t want?”

Sometime later…

“There has got to be something interesting to read to pass the time here,” muttered Sunset to herself as she looked through the books. “Or something that might help out in this situation. Maybe I should have brought one of those idiots along; not because I’d find them interesting to converse with, but because it would make me seem less crazy for talking to myself. Bah. I’m going to go get some air.”

And so Sunset walked out of the castle, only to find a much-larger-than-before Tirek right outside it.

“Huh,” was all Sunset could think to say.

“Sunset!” bellowed Tirek. “You have something that belongs to me!”

Crud, thought Sunset to herself. I think I’ll just have to try to stall him until I can think of what to do. “How did you even find me?” she asked.

“I was just passing through,” said Tirek.

“Really? You just happened to come here?” asked Sunset.

“Where else would someone try to be inconspicuous after they’ve gained magic from a power transfer?” asked Tirek as he threw a fireball at her, which she dodged.

“How did you know I had the magic anyway?” she asked.

Tirek responded with another fireball.

“Figures, a villain who isn’t talkative. Screw it,” muttered Sunset as she ran off.

One chase sequence later, Sunset arrived back in Ponyville, only to find it strangely empty. “Hrm,” she said to herself, “this is strangely empty.”

The redundancy in the dialogue and narration was abruptly stopped by a large fireball being launched at her by Tirek. Sunset dodged the blast, but it had the effect of destroying the library. “Hey! I didn’t have insurance on that!” she protested.

“Little pony,” declared Tirek ominously, “no more escape.”

Tirek fired a fireball at Sunset, which she was able to defeat simply by blasting with her own magic. Wow, I did gain some power, she thought to herself.

“Impressive,” said Tirek in a clearly unimpressed voice. “I suppose the power of two alicorns, particularly the two alicorns you did gain power from, is not trifling. But I have gained the power of many ponies, Discord, changelings, and even the other alicorn and that lavender unicorn friend of hers.”

“Wait, what?” asked Sunset. “You got Twilight and Cadance?”

“Yes, I took the opportunity to do so before coming here,” said Tirek in a bored voice. “However, I see little need for us to fight. Not when I have these to bargain with.”

Tirek raised his hand and floating bubbles containing Flim, Flam, Lightning Dust, Trixie, Suri, Gilda, and Chrysalis suddenly appeared.

“Wait, where have they been all this time?” asked Sunset. “Were they just floating around somewhere?”

“How about a trade, Sunset? Their release for the magic you have stored within you.”

“Don’t do it!” said Lightning Dust.

“Why?” asked Sunset.

“Well, I wouldn’t do it if you were the one in one of these bubbles,” said Lightning Dust. “Ha! See? I can totally do comedy.”

“How did you guys get captured anyway?”

“Oh, it was an incredibly epic battle,” said Chrysalis. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to see it. It was one of the most epic things ever.”

“Tirek just appeared and made these imprisoning bubbles form around us,” said Gilda bluntly. “And then everyone else just ran off.”

“I liked the way I said it more,” said Chrysalis.

“Enough babble,” said Tirek. “Sunset?”

There was a pause.

“Sunset?” asked Tirek in a more aggravated voice.

“What? I’m thinking!” snapped Sunset.

“Well,” said Tirek, “while you’re thinking, what I think I will do is start executing these friends of yours until you make up your minds.”

“Uh, okay, wait!” said Sunset. “I’ll do it.”

“As you wish,” declared Tirek as he caused the bubbles to burst, making them all fall onto the ground.

“Could have done that a little more gently,” muttered Suri.

“Your turn,” said Tirek as he absorbed Sunset’s power, causing her cutie mark to disappear and her to collapse. Tirek then nonchalantly walked off.

“Ugh,” muttered Sunset as she shakily got herself back up, “having the power sucked out of you is tiring.”

The others came up to her. “Wow,” said Gilda, “I didn’t know you cared so much about us.”

“Actually, my reasoning was that I didn’t think I did have the power to defeat him, so my hope was that in giving the power to him, it would make him go away long enough that we could open up that box which would hopefully have something that could defeat him. It was just a calculated gamble. You guys did manage to fulfill your requirements, right?”

There was an awkward pause.

“Really?” demanded Sunset. “Really? You couldn’t do the one thing I asked you to do? The thing that the fate of the world depended on?”

“I tried,” protested Lightning Dust. “Those job applications took a while.”

“What do job applications have to do with… oh, who cares?” asked Sunset. “We’re all just going to be ruled over by Tirek now. All because I actually trusted you guys might do something right. You know, if not for the fact I’m so disenfranchised with the world, I’d probably be crying right now.”

“Are you joking?” asked Gilda.

“No, I’m not. Being glib about everything no matter how serious is Chrysalis’s job,” muttered Sunset.

“She’s not wrong,” said Chrysalis.

Gilda put her claw on her forehead. “No, I mean, are you actually joking around? Do you not see the solution?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re being serious. You didn’t see it?”

“Just tell me!”

Gilda sighed. “Fine. I’ll enlighten you. Okay, so everyone has to demonstrate an element to open up the box, right? Did it explicitly say they had to demonstrate their element?”

“No, I don’t think it… wait,” said Sunset. “Do you mean–”

“Exactly!” declared Gilda. “You and I fit Magic and Kindness. As for the rest?” She pointed at Flim and Flam. “Generosity for being willing to use up some of their product to save the town.” She pointed at Suri. “Honesty for being, um, honest in that whole Manehattan incident.” She pointed at Lightning Dust. “Laughter because I guess she can actually come up with a decent joke or two sometimes.”

“A decent joke or two? Sometimes?” protested Lightning Dust. “Come on, I deserve more than that.”

“Shut up. And Trixie counts as Loyalty because… uh… I guess when she was pestering Lightning Dust to work on the comic during that whole Equestria Games event. Loyalty to the fans. There. Done.”

“Why didn’t you say this before?!” asked Sunset.

“I thought it was obvious,” said Gilda.

“Fine! Whatever! Let’s try it out!” said Sunset.

One trying out later…

“Well,” said Sunset as the box opened up, “I’ll admit it. That was smart thinking, Gilda. Let’s see, what we have is… a camcorder?”

Sunset levitated the camcorder out of the box and stared at it. Then, to avoid the plot hole of how she could do that after losing her magic, time abruptly went back a few seconds and she pulled it out with her hooves instead.

“This was… not what I was expecting,” said Sunset in disbelief. “I was expecting some kind of amazing power. Or at least something worth a decent amount of money. A camcorder?”

“Oh, um, sorry about that,” said a particular gray-coated mailmare who had suddenly flown up. “I kind of messed up the delivery. That was supposed to go to somepony else.”

“That box came out of a mystical tree! How the heck does delivery get messed up?”

“I’m just a lowly mail carrier. How am I supposed to know? Anyway, just wanted to apologize,” she said before leaving, causing Sunset to simply stare in disbelief.

“Um… we could find Tirek at a really embarrassing time and record him, then blackmail him?” suggested Flim.

Sunset face-hoofed.

“The specs on this thing actually look pretty cool,” said Lightning Dust. “I’ve been looking at the accompanying handbook. Do you know this thing has the power to broadcast whatever it records to everypony in Equestria? Although it looks like that really drains the batteries and you won’t be able to use it afterwards, and you can’t recharge because the company that made it went out of business before they could release the recharger.”

“Great!” said Sunset sarcastically. “We can just broadcast us all getting killed by Tirek. Hooray!”

“You know,” said Chrysalis, “considering the situation, I figure I might as well give a confession to you. It’s something I’ve wanted to say for a while, and this is probably my last chance, so I should probably take it.”

“And what is this confession?” asked Sunset.

“I’ve always loved ukuleles!” declared Chrysalis.

There was a pause. “Ukuleles,” said Sunset in a deadpan voice. “That’s your confession.”

“Hey!” said Chrysalis. “Everyone else is all about the violins and cellos. I tell you, ukuleles are an underappreciated instrument!”

“She’s not wrong,” said Flam.

Sunset started hyperventilating. “Chrysalis,” she said in a low and deadly voice, “is there something honestly wrong with you? All you ever seem to do is screw around with us. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? Like, I don’t know, run a country?”

“Oh, have you ever tried to run one?” asked Chrysalis. “Do you know how much work it is? And how many stupid things I have to deal with? I had to recently deal with these two groups called the Hooffields and McColts who were feuding and causing all kinds of trouble when they couldn’t even remember what they were fighting about. It was the biggest freaking waste of time ever. So I’ll screw around with others like yourself because it’s the only way to not go insane!”

“How’d you deal with those two group anyway?” asked Suri.

“Oh, I just sent them off in opposite directions,” said Chrysalis. “An evacuation. Since they’re not very good readers, they misread it as ‘vacation’ and went along with it.”

“And what are you going to do once they figure it out?”

“Who cares?” asked Chrysalis. “Once they’re out of the country they’re someone else’s problem. Anyway! All of that aside, I actually do have a suggestion on how to defeat Tirek.”

“Because your plans have worked out so well so far,” said Sunset.

“Hey!” said Chrysalis. “It’s not my fault I didn’t know about Discord’s weaknesses, and as for Tirek detecting power transfers… okay, fine, that one’s on me. But, I’m assuming that as Tirek didn’t know about your status as a pony-changeling hybrid, he only took the pony-related magic and left your shapeshifting power intact, right?”

“Fine, I’ll try,” said Sunset with a sigh. She was engulfed in flame and changed into her changeling version. “Huh, he did.” She shifted back.

“So!” said Chrysalis. “All you have to do is put yourself on camera, make everyone love you, absorb all of that, and then you’ll gain all the power necessary to beat Tirek. All that love from all those different people should power you up so substantially that you’ll actually be more powerful than Tirek.”

“How would you get anypony to love Sunset, though?” asked Flam. “She’s so unloveable. She’s obnoxious and annoying and–”

“I’m also standing right here!” said Sunset.

“Do you think she might be more appealing if she were to be shown playing ukuleles?” asked Chrysalis.

“You guys are idiots,” muttered Sunset.

“See?” said Flam. “That’s the obnoxious part I’m talking about.”

“Well,” said Trixie, “if my life were a film–”

“Which it isn’t!” interrupted Sunset.

“Hence the if! Anyway, if my life were a film, the proper thing to do would be to use a side plot that was going on and integrate it into what’s going on here, in what would presumably be the primary plot and have that provide the solution.” Trixie stopped and looked in deep thought, then her eyes widened. “Oh, wow. Wow. Hang on everypony, I think I’m about to be brilliant!”

There was a pause.

“Care to share your brilliancy?” asked Gilda.

“Not yet!” declared Trixie excitedly. “I want you all to think for a little bit about what my solution is before I continue. Then I’ll reveal it, and we’ll see if you guessed it properly!”

“Trixie,” said Gilda in a clearly irritated voice, “this is stupid. Just tell us.”

“Okay, fine, but if you didn’t use this time to think of what it was, then you’re going to feel really bad for not at least speculating,” said Trixie. “But this is the last chance.”

There was a pause.

“Okay, so to make sure, everypony has now thought about it and made their–”

“Just tell us, Trixie!” shouted everyone.

“Fine,” said Trixie. She pointed at Sunset. “You dress up as Mare Do Well and fight Tirek. Since your changeling powers haven’t been removed, you can even pass for a pegasus, which Mare Do Well is, under the costume. This will all be recorded on the camcorder and transmitted to everypony. Since the series is popular, the love of the fans towards the character will all be transferred straight into you, hopefully giving you enough power to beat Tirek. How’s that?”

“That is the…” started Sunset before she abruptly stopped and paused for a moment. “That is… actually a rather intelligent plan.”

“I know, right?” asked Trixie. “Sometimes I surprise even myself with my brilliance! Okay, let’s get this plan ready. Lightning Dust, I need you to get the Mare Do Well costume–”

“Done,” said Lightning Dust, holding the costume.

“Wait, did you just fly back and get it? Didn’t Tirek grab your powers?”

“Nah,” said Lightning Dust. “I keep copies of the costume scattered around so that if I ever need to get one, I can easily grab it.”

“Weird,” said Trixie, “but whatever. Suri, you need to adjust it so it fits Sunset.”

“I’ll do it!” said Suri. “I’ll even do it for 90% off!”

Everyone glared at Suri.

“… but as it would be done for free anyway, it doesn’t really matter because zero times nine tenths is still zero,” she quickly added. She grabbed Sunset. “Come on, Sunset! To the laboratory!”

“Laboratory?” asked Sunset.

“My new nickname for my store!” said Suri.

“That name makes no sense,” said Sunset.

“Not my problem!” declared Suri as she dragged Sunset off.

“Next!” announced Trixie. “As this could take a while, I need Flim and Flam to try to delay Tirek in case he’s ready to come back before we’re all set up.”

“How?” asked Flim.

“If I knew that,” said Trixie, “then I’d be doing it myself rather than asking you to do it!”

“Flawless logic,” admitted Flam. “I’m sure we can think of something.”

Flim and Flam left.

“And what’s my part in all this?” asked Gilda.

“Um,” said Trixie uncertainly, “I didn’t think of anything. Just go off and do whatever.”

“That’s the way I like it!” declared Gilda as she marched off. “I’ll do the greatest whatever the world has ever seen!”

“All right,” said Trixie to Lightning Dust, “that leaves just us. Time to get some dialogue ready for the fight!”

“Greetings!” said Flam. “I know exactly what you want!”

“For you puny ponies to be subservient to me?” asked Tirek.

“Well, yes, that, but we’re going to be subservient to you in a particularly great way!” said Flim. He pulled out a bottle. “Ta-da! Welcome to the wonder of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’”

“And you expect me to drink something you likely poisoned?” asked Tirek.

“It’s not poisoned!” declared Flam. “You have the Flim Flam Brothers personal guarantee. And we even have a song ready for the occasion! Ready?”

”It’s the–”

“SILENCE,” thundered Tirek. The song abruptly ended. “Now, the two of you are going to prove it isn’t poisoned or else I’m going to take the opportunity to destroy you both. Slowly. And painfully.”

“Okay!” said Flim quickly. “We’ll drink some!”

The two quickly opened up the bottles and drank some. “See? Perfectly fine.”

“Very well,” declared Tirek as he grabbed one of the bottles. “But if this isn’t amazing, I’m going to destroy you both anyway. Although because it wasn’t a trick, it will be quickly and painlessly rather than slowly and painfully.”

“What a nice improvement!” said Flim brightly.

“Hrm,” said Tirek after he had finished, “this actually is reasonably tasty. If you can consider to procure this, perhaps I will give you an elevated status in my new regime.”

“You mean we’ll be really rich?” asked Flam excitedly.

“No,” said Tirek, “I just mean instead of eating mud all of the time like all the rest will have to do, you’ll only have to eat it most of the time.”

“Uh, well, thanks,” said Flim. “Anyway, have some more!”

Many bottles later…

“Well,” said Tirek, “that was reasonably enjoyable. But now I have some things to do, namely finishing my conquest of Equestria.”

Tirek left.

“Wow, that guy can really hold his liquor,” said Flim.

“All right!” declared Trixie. “Everything seems to be ready! It looks like Flim and Flam were able to delay Tirek for long enough. Now, Sunset, it’s really important you actually talk like Mare Do Well, so make certain that you only say what Lightning Dust or I instruct you to. The fans’ love won’t work if you don’t actually act like the character they love.”

“Sure,” said Sunset.

“And I mean it,” said Trixie. “I don’t want whacky misunderstandings to happen here because you said something different and then we have to improvise.”

“I already said sure,” said Sunset.

“Oh, and I almost forgot,” said Trixie. “You can’t punch Tirek in the face.”

“What? Why?!”

“Have to try to keep things appropriate for the kids,” said Trixie. “Punching him anywhere else is okay, though.”

Lightning Dust approached. “Well, there aren’t any changelings around at the moment. I was hoping we could get one to play Carapace.”

“Carapace?” asked Sunset.

Lightning Dust sighed. “Have you read any of Mare Do Well? It’s her sidekick who’s a changeling. Plays the comic foil to Mare Do Well’s wackiness. But there’s no male changelings around to play his part! Why’d we have to name this town Ponyville anyway? It seems like it skews the population heavily towards, erm, ponies.”

Large, pounding footsteps were heard in the distance.

“And that’s probably Tirek,” said Lightning Dust. “I guess we’ll hope he functions right as the straight man. Well, I guess it’s up to Gilda to operate the camcorder. She’s the one with actual fingers, after all.”

“Exactly!” said Gilda, who had just arrived. “All that ‘whatever’ I was doing was training in regards to the camcorder.”

“Then why didn’t you just say that at the time?” asked Sunset.

“That is a very good question!” said Gilda. “And I have a very good answer. But I can’t tell you right now for a very good reason.”

“What is that reason?”

“That is also a very good question!”

Sunset stared at Gilda.

“Look, if we lose, this is going to be my last chance to screw with you like this. Let me have a little fun.”

“Let’s just get this started,” said Sunset.

“Be sure that when you’re talking to Tirek, to say it pretty loudly so the camcorder will pick it up,” said Gilda. “I obviously have to stay a reasonable distance away.”

“Final countdown!” declared Lightning Dust. “Sunset’s in the costume… check. She’s got that earpiece so we can communicate with her… check. Gilda’s got the camcorder to broadcast what’s going on to everypony to make the plan work… check. Okay, checkmate! The rest of us, get out of here!”

The group quickly dispersed, leaving Sunset alone wearing the costume. Guess I’ll just find Tirek, she thought to herself.

Finding Tirek proved to be very easy, as the rather gigantic being stomped up to the outskirts of Ponyville.

“Okay!” came Lightning Dust’s voice. “So start up by declaring ‘halt, evil villain! Your short-lived reign of terror has come to an end!’”

This is popular? thought Sunset to herself, but she shrugged and went along with it. “Halt, evil villain!” she shouted out. “Your short-lived reign of terror has come to an end!”

Tirek stared down at her contemptuously. “And who are you?”

“I am Mare Do Well!” said Sunset dramatically. “Champion of justice! Defender of the helpless! And moderately proud sponsor of Minuette brand toothpaste! Remember, if you want to make sure your teeth are shiny, always choose Minuette toothpaste!” Seriously, this is popular?

Tirek stared at her briefly, then shrugged and threw a fireball at her, which Sunset managed to dodge.

“What, were you upset about the product placement?” asked Sunset. “Look, being a superhero doesn’t pay the bills that well; I have to give endorsements.”

“You are surprisingly quick,” said Tirek after several more dodged fireballs. “I wasn’t expecting there to be anyone who could dodge my attacks after absorbing so much power. Of course, that just means it’ll be more powerful for me when I take it from you!”

Tirek took a stance to start the absorption, but before he could attempt to absorb her power, Sunset uprooted a tree and threw it his mouth to stop it.

“Hey!” said Sunset. “Absorbing the power of ponies like that is wrong! Remember, you should always get consent before you forcibly remove anypony’s power!”

After spitting out the tree, Tirek tried to grab Sunset, but she again dodged. She then flew up into the air and hit him in the chest, sending him sprawling backwards.

As Tirek picked himself up, Sunset stared at shock at her hoof. I became that powerful? she thought to herself. I guess this stupid thing is popular.

“Hey, Sunset,” came Lightning Dust’s voice, “do you think you have the power to pick him up?”

“Pick him up?!” whispered back Sunset. “Uh… maybe?”

“Good! Then do it!”

“This was vaguely amusing at first,” said Tirek, “but it’s time to end this.”

“Indeed!” said Sunset brightly as she flew over quickly and physically lifted up Tirek.

“What in the–” started Tirek prior to being interrupted by Sunset slamming him down onto the ground.

“So Tirek, now you see why good will always triumph,” said Sunset. “Because evil is bad.”

“How did you get this much power?” asked an astonished Tirek.

“For three years, I did one hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, one hundred squats, and ran ten kilometers every day,” said Sunset as she punched him back down again.

“What’s even the difference between a squat and a push-up for a quadruped?!”

Right, thought Sunset. Because that’s the unbelievable part of that line. Out loud she said, “Well, I did have a movie I wanted to see, so I don’t have time to keep fighting. Let’s finish this!”

“What, are you going to fire some kind of rainbow-colored beam at me?” asked Tirek contemptuously.

“No, that’d be stupid,” said Sunset. “I’m just going to keep hitting you until you collapse.”

A considerable amount of hitting Tirek everywhere but the face later…

“All right!” declared Sunset. “Final blow time.” She readied herself to charge right at Tirek.

“Wait! Wait!” said Tirek. “I have something to say before you do that!”

“What?” asked Sunset indignantly.

“Uh… um… er… April Fool’s?”

Sunset stared at Tirek.

“Yeah!” said Tirek. “This was all an elaborate April Fool’s joke. I wasn’t really trying to take over Equestria. And oh boy, did you fall for it.”

“It’s not even April!” said Sunset.

“Oh,” said Tirek. “Um… I guess when I was keeping track of the days when I was imprisoned, I forgot to count leap years, and that threw it off?”

“Do you actually expect me to believe that?” asked Sunset.

“Watch! I’ll prove it!” declared Tirek.

One castle-building montage later…

“Ta-da!” declared Tirek. “One giant castle ready to go! That totally proves I was just joking around, right?”

Sunset stared at him blankly.

“Great! So there is clearly no need whatsoever to banish me, throw me into a dungeon, or banish me and then throw me into a dungeon in the place that you banished me to,” said Tirek.

What odd phrasing, thought Sunset to herself. “Okay, so what do you suggest we do do with you?”

“Well, as I’ve clearly reformed,” said Tirek, “you should just let me go.”

“How about you return all the magic you stole first?”

“Right!” said Tirek. “The magic. The magic that I stole. The magic–”

Tirek abruptly stopped midway through the sentence in order to slam Sunset straight into the ground.

“Fool!” declared Tirek. “I can’t believe you were actually falling for that April Fools thing.” He took the opportunity to slam into Sunset several more times, leaving her dazed. “And now,” said Tirek, “I’ll be taking that powerful magic you have and becoming truly unstoppable!”

“There’s one thing you don’t know,” said Sunset groggily.

“What?” asked Tirek as he readied himself to deliver the final blow.

“I’m not left-hooved.”

Sunset suddenly leaped into the air and uppercut Tirek with her right hoof, smacking him straight up into the air. When he fell down, he came down with a crash.

“But you were using your right hoof to begin with!” he said.

“Oh, good point,” said Sunset. “Well, it’s a little late to tell me that now. Anyway, remember when I said earlier it was time to wrap things up? Now it’s actually time to wrap things up.”

Sunset unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks to Tirek that knocked him out that, if this had been a comic, would have been accompanied by a number of comedic sound effects.

“This isn’t… possible,” grunted Tirek as he fell down into a heap and passed out.

“Well, time to return the magic to everypony,” said Sunset. She paused. “Actually, I have no idea how to do that. But when in doubt, just punch things really hard. For great justice!”

Sunset punched Tirek in the gut really hard. Similar to how applying pressure to an inflated ball can cause the air to rapidly escape, this caused all of the absorbed magic to be expunged from Tirek and to fly off in every direction. Tirek shrunk back to his original size.

“Huh,” said Sunset as she looked at the now considerably smaller Tirek. “I guess punching things really hard does solve problems. I should remember to do that next time the television isn’t working.”

“And… cut,” came Trixie’s voice. “That should all do the trick.”

“I’m disappointed we couldn’t come up with better lines,” said Lightning Dust. “Hard to write it well when it’s so spur of the moment. If this was an actual comic it would’ve been way funnier. Especially when he tried to pull that April Fool’s trick. I thought of so many great responses after the battle.”

“Anyway!” said Trixie. “You should probably stick around until he gets properly detained, just in case he gets up in the interim.”

“Interim?” asked Lightning Dust. “Seriously? Why not just say ‘meantime’ like anypony else? ‘Interim’ just sounds awkward. It doesn’t even sound like a real word.”

“Meanwhile is such a boring word, though. Interim has more flair.”

Sunset sighed as Trixie and Lightning Dust continued arguing. “At least I can speak normally again,” she muttered to herself. “Doing nothing but repeating their lines felt awkward. Seriously, ‘I’m not left-hooved’? Well, apparently the fans did like it, as I did get a power boost…”

“Well, I have to give you all credit,” said Chrysalis, “you ended up beating Tirek and saving Equestria.”

“Where in the world were you during all of this?” asked Gilda.

“Oh, I was around,” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, I guess you do deserve some kind of a reward so… um… oh, I know! You don’t have to pay any taxes on the castle that Tirek built.”

“That’s it?” asked Sunset.

“Do you know how high castle taxes are?” said Chrysalis. “You’re getting a bargain.”

“Wait,” said Trixie, “is the word ‘high’ there being used as an adjective for just ‘castle’ or the phrase ‘castle taxes’? It’s unclear if you’re talking about castle taxes that are high or taxes on high castles.”

Chrysalis and Sunset stared at Trixie.

“It’s a valid question!” said Trixie.

“If you’d prefer,” said Chrysalis, “I could give you a lifetime supply of ukuleles.”

“I’ll take the castle,” said Sunset quickly.

“Thought so,” said Chrysalis. “No one else seems to appreciate ukuleles.”

“So, does having a castle make me a princess or ruler or whatever?” asked Sunset.

“No,” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, I have some stuff to actually take care off after this whole mess. Like beefing up security to make sure Tirek can’t escape again. Maybe we could add a sign saying ‘Please do not escape’ or something like that. Anyway, I’m bored now, so I’m off. I have to clean up the whole mess Tirek made anyway.”

“Oh, you’re going to get rid of all the debris here in Ponyville?” asked Suri.

“Nah,” said Chrysalis. “I’m talking about Canterlot and such. Ponyville can take care of itself. Eminent domain and whatnot.”

“But eminent domain has nothing to do with this,” said a puzzled Lightning Dust.

“Semantics!” declared Chrysalis. “Anyway, you guys actually seem to make a decent enough team, so I’m sure you can figure it out. And when you do, I’ll be able to retroactively claim it was all a friendship lesson of some sort! Woohoo! Wait, I probably shouldn’t have said that last part out loud. Or that part either. Or that part. Actually, no, that last part was okay, so never mind.”

“And she’s still no more tolerable than before,” muttered Sunset after Chrysalis left.

“I still would’ve liked an answer to my question,” muttered Trixie.

“What are you complaining about?” asked Sunset. “You’re probably going to shoot up to number one in sales after all that.”

“Chrysalis was actually right, though,” said Flam. “We did all manage to work together to defeat Tirek. We would’ve lost if any of us hadn’t been around.”

“I’ll admit,” said Sunset, “you all have become slightly more tolerable.”

“Great!” said Flam. “So I’m sure you’d have no objection to covering our costs for all of the ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ that we used to defeat Tirek, right?”

“Emphasis on slightly,” muttered Sunset. “I wonder how long it will take to get this town fixed up. Couldn’t take that long, right?”

Three years later…

“Hey, remember when Tirek attacked and Ponyville got wrecked?” asked an earth pony.

“Yeah, I do,” said another. “They sure managed to get everything back to normal; it only took a week or two!”

Cutie Markless - Part 2

One ‘To Be Continued…’ note later…

“Did you know that the name for fear of the number 13 is triskaidecaphobia?” asked Trixie.

“In sameness, there is peace. Exceptionalism is a lie.”

“Is this going to be your new thing?” asked Flam. “Continually spouting off random tidbits of trivia?”

“Free yourself from your cutie mark. Choose equality as your special talent.”

“It beats complaining about how boring it is to listen to Starlight’s propaganda through this loudspeaker while she keeps us locked up in one of her houses,” said Trixie. “And hey, maybe this trivia will win you a game show someday.”

“Be your best by never being the best.”

“That line doesn’t even make sense!” said Flam.

Gilda finally woke up. “Oh, hi guys. Did I miss anything?” she asked groggily.

“You missed Starlight taking us all captive and locking us in this house,” said Lightning Dust. “And then playing all of this stuff over the loudspeaker.”

“Conformity will set you free.”

“It gets really tiring pretty quickly,” said Sunset.

“Accept your limitations, and happiness will follow. You’re no better than your friends. In sameness, there is peace.”

“Especially because it loops,” said Trixie. “You know, like that song. ‘This is the song that doesn’t end! Yes, it goes on and on–’”

“Stop it!” said Lightning Dust.

“Because it’s annoying?”

“Because I think that it might actually be copyrighted. Don’t want to infringe on it.”

“Is there any reason why none of the unicorns simply teleported out of here?” asked Gilda.

“We can’t,” said Sunset. “I’m guessing she set up some kind of anti-teleportation spell.”

“Never fear!” declared Gilda. “Unlike you lot, I never had a cutie mark to begin with! Thus, all my talents and skills are preserved!”

“Great,” said Sunset. “How about you use those to get us out of here?”

“No problem!” said Gilda. There was an awkward pause. “Uh… you guys don’t happen to have any of my guns, do you? Because I don’t have them.”

“Why would we have them?”

“Darn it, Starlight must have taken them,” said Gilda. “Well, looks like we’re screwed then.”

“Okay, I guess it’s back to the plan of pretending to agree with them so that they’ll let us out,” said Sunset.

“You think they’d be convinced after only one night of this?” asked Flam.

“Do you have any other suggestions?”

“Scream out ‘there are five lights’?” suggested Trixie. Everyone stared at her.

“I’m ignoring that,” said Sunset. “Okay, Gilda, I think they might buy that you’ve accepted it as you didn’t have any cutie marks to begin with.”

“Sounds like a plan!” said Gilda. “Though first we’ll have to wait until they let us out. Assuming this loudspeaker ever stops repeating itself…”

Much loudspeaker repetition later…

“Good morning!” declared the loudspeaker as it suddenly stopped saying the same thing over and over. Starlight then opened the door from outside. “I trust you had a pleasant night?” she said.

“Why didn’t you say ‘good morning’ when you opened the door rather than doing it with the loudspeaker?” said Lightning Dust.

Starlight ignored her. “This way, please. There are some friends who’d like to see you.”

Starlight led the group outside to find a crowd of the ponies with awkward-looking smiles. “Gather round, friends, gather round! We’ve come to ask if any of you are ready to join us! There are so many friends to be made once you realize you don’t need your cutie marks or the talents that come with them.”

“Sure, why not?” said Gilda.

“Don’t be a fool!” said Starlight. “Cutie marks are the source of… wait, did you just say yes?”

“I mean, I haven’t really seen them perform any real function outside of that one time they all got inadvertently switched and chaos resulted,” said Gilda with a shrug.

“That only happened once!” hissed Sunset.

“Well, it’s still one more time than I’ve seen any positive thing they resulted in outside of I guess looking kind of cool sometimes. Anyway, it’s not like I ever had one to begin with, so what do I care?”

“Hooray!” declared all of the ponies around Starlight.

“Well, if you didn’t have one to begin with I suppose it wouldn’t be that hard to persuade you,” said Starlight. “But I–”

“This is the biggest betrayal I have ever suffered!” declared Trixie. “How dare you give up on our friendship! After everything we’ve been through! Don’t you remember that time you had that fear of performing in public, but then you were able to overcome your fear thanks to us?”

“Uh… no?” said Gilda.

“Exactly!” said Trixie.

“Oh, please!” said Flim, causing everyone to turn to him. “This is all clearly a fake attempt to trick you all into thinking she’s accepted the philosophy even though she actually hasn’t.”

“I mean, just look at how badly Trixie was overacting,” added Flam.

“Hey!” said Trixie. “I do not overact!”

“Flim, Flam, what are you doing?” hissed Gilda.

“Just pointing out the obvious, that you’re clearly just trying to trick them,” said Flim.

“Aha!” said Starlight. “Just as I suspected. I appreciate the honesty from the two of you. I’d like to–”

“Can I ask a question?” interrupted Lightning Dust. “What, exactly, is supposed to be preventing us—or at least those of us who can fly—from just flying off?”

“The fact that those of us who can fly would just grab you?” said Starlight.

“I’m pretty fast,” said Lightning Dust.

“But you’d be slowed down due to me removing your cutie mark,” said Starlight.

“Exactly!” said Gilda as she flew up into the air. “But not me! So long, suckers!” she shouted as she flew off. The other pegasi tried to chase her down but couldn’t keep up.

“Not an issue,” said Starlight, “there’s nowhere close to here. She’ll have to come back eventually.”

“Okay, now I’m confused,” said Sunset. “Where are we right now?”

“In Our Town, obviously,” said Starlight.

“I thought this was your town,” said Lightning Dust.

“No, its name is… wait, you’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” said Lightning Dust.

“What I meant,” said Sunset, “is where we were in regards to the situation we were in before Gilda flew off.”

“Flam and I were demonstrating our honesty by trying to warn you about Gilda’s plan,” said Flim, “because we’ve been completely won over by your village and its philosophy!”

“Hooray!” declared all of the other ponies.

“How dare they!” declared Trixie. “This is the most horrible betrayal I have ever suffered!”

Suri facehoofed. “Trixie, the plan failed. You can stop with the overacting.”

“You say I overact?!” said Trixie. “How dare you?! I thought we were friends! This is the most horrible betrayal I have ever suffered! By the way, did you know that a hummingbird–”

“No one cares about your random facts!” said Sunset.

“I say things you know, and you complain. I say things you don’t know, and you complain,” grumbled Trixie. “This is the most horrible–”

“Okay!” said Starlight. “I can’t stand listening to you any more! Flim and Flam, you can join our village, because you proved your earnestness by trying to expose the scheme of the others.”

“Hooray!” declared the various ponies in the town.

“Any chance you’d believe us if we said were totally cool with your town and wanted to join?” asked Suri.

“No,” said Starlight. “Because your group tried to trick us.”

“Would you say this was the most horrible betrayal you have ever suffered?” asked Trixie.

“No,” said Starlight. “Because the larger betrayal is that it seems that some in our midst might be dissatisfied with the village life!”

All of the town residents gasped, with a few gasping so hard they fell over unconscious.

“Unfortunately,” continued Starlight, “it’s all too true! So, Flim and Flam, can you reassure us your intentions are pure by telling us the name of the friends who so desperately miss their cutie marks that they would sneak around in the shadows talking to strangers about it?”

Flim and Flam glanced at each other, then immediately pointed to Party Favor. “It’s him,” said Flim.

“What?!” said Party Favor. “How could you betray me like this?”

“Because we have realized the fault in our cutie marks!” said Flam. “And thus, we need to expose you.”

“Well!” said Starlight. “You gave no thought to the pain you’d cause your friends. Such selfishness. You can go with the others back into the house and reconsider things some more.”

“I’m sorry, everypony!” said Party Favor. “I never wanted to leave the village! I love all of–”

“So,” interrupted Trixie, “Party Favor, do you think that this betrayal was the most horrible–”

“Back into the house!” screamed Starlight.

And so our protagonists, along with a character of little importance, found themselves locked back into the house.

“Figures Flim and Flam ruined it,” said Sunset. “I always did peg those two as a bit untrustworthy.”

“You considered them a bit untrustworthy?” asked Suri. “They’re even less trustworthy than I am!”

“What was I thinking?” lamented Party Favor. “I can’t believe I even considered asking for my cutie mark back.”

“Don’t worry!” said Sunset. “Despite Flim and Flam’s betrayal…” There was a pause. “You’re not going to cut me off with another note about worst betrayal, Trixie?”

“Of course not,” said Trixie. “I’d cut you off with a note about whether it was the most horrible betrayal, not the worst betrayal.”

“Uh, okay,” said Sunset. “Anyway, despite that, I’m sure Gilda will be able to rescue us all. Eventually. Unless she decides to go off on her own adventure and forget about us, which is unfortunately not an improbable thing to happen.”

“So do you think that would be the most horrible betrayal if that happened, or what Flim and Flam pulled?” asked Trixie.

“That’s it,” snapped Suri. “You are hereby banned from ever using the phrase ‘most horrible betrayal’ for the remainder of this adventure.” As Trixie started to say something, Suri quickly added, “And that goes for any synonyms!”

“Darn it,” said Trixie.

Meanwhile, sometime later…

“So, do you think Gilda’s gotten help yet?” asked Suri.

“Would it make any difference as to whether I thought she did or not?” asked Sunset. “She either has or she hasn’t.”

The door opened and Gilda was thrown in before the door closed and locked again. “Uh, hi guys. Sorry I wasn’t able to help more.”

“What happened?” asked Lightning Dust.

“There’s not really anyplace nearby to escape to, so I came back to get my guns, but then I got caught and thrown back in here,” said Gilda.

“Well, just great,” said Sunset. “There goes our escape plan. I guess we’re doomed.”

“See?” said Trixie. “That’s the ‘pessimistic and annoyed’ part that Flim mentioned. Speaking of which, I wonder what that guy is doing now.”

“Well!” said Starlight. “All new friends stay with me until their cottage is completed. Let’s get you settled, and then you can enjoy all that our little village has to offer.”

“Right!” said Flim. “Because we like your village and are in complete agreement with your philosophy. This is not just a way to make you let us go for long enough that we can run off as soon as we get a chance.”

“Huh?” said Starlight.

“Exactly!” said Flim.

Starlight put on a forced smile. “It doesn’t matter. Just stay here until your home gets created.”

Starlight left, and Flim and Flam looked at each other. “Do you think she bought it?” asked Flim.

“I don’t know,” said Flam. “But we’re out of that annoying hut now, at least. I mean, sure, we’re still stuck inside a place, but it’s roomier and without the annoying loudspeaker. Any ideas on how to get out?”

“Hrm,” said Flim.

“Party Favor snores really loudly,” whispered Trixie.

“About time he fell asleep,” Sunset whispered back.

Outside the house, the guards were playing a game to pass the time. “I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with–”

The two were interrupted by a knocking from inside. “What is it?” one of them asked.

“Uh… I kind of got stuck in here with a teleportation accident,” came Starlight’s voice. “Could you open the door and let me out?”

“Wait, how did you do that with the anti-teleportation spell on it?”

“Because it only prevents teleportation out of the house, not teleportation into it.”

“That makes perfect sense!” said one of the guards as he opened the door and let Starlight out.

“Thanks for that,” said Starlight as they closed the door. “Well, I’ll go back home.” She started walking off.

“Isn’t your house in the other direction?” asked one of the guards.

“Um… I was talking the scenic route,” said Starlight.

The guards looked at all of the very bland-looking houses. “Makes perfect sense!”

Starlight glanced at them quizzically but then walked off. Once she made it to the edge of the town she took a quick glance to ensure no one was following her, then dashed off in the direction of the cave, which she eventually reached.

“No guards?” she wondered to herself. “Well, guess that makes things easy.” She quickly ran over to the wall of cutie marks to find Flam. “Oh, you’re here?”

“Starlight?!” exclaimed Flam. “Oh, um, I’m just here to admire the cutie marks.”

“I’m not Starlight,” said Starlight as she was suddenly wreathed in flame and turned into Sunset.

“Huh,” said Flam. “I thought you seemed slightly more pessimistic and annoyed than Starlight usually did.”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Sunset. “If you’re already here, why didn’t you smash this wall and see if that would return the cutie marks?”

“Because,” said Flam with a frown, “after I managed to sneak out of the house through the chimney, through the window I happened to observe Starlight had actually taken our marks for safekeeping. Destroying this, if it actually can simply be destroyed like that, might cause a little chaos, but it wouldn’t actually help us. She could just run off with them when she figures out the wall got destroyed. Especially because this would return her cutie mark to increase her power.”

“Wait,” said Sunset, “she brought them into her house? Where you guys were living with her? Doesn’t that seem extraordinarily stupid? What if you had just walked in? Or overheard her from the room you were in?”

“I was wondering about that,” said Flam.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like things are all that hard to figure out,” said Sunset. “We just go into her house, break the stuff she’s got the cutie marks in, and we’ll all be fine.”

“And then get re-captured by the other ponies,” pointed out Flam.

“Oh please, they’re without their talents, so what the heck are they going to do against us when we do have them? We only got beaten the first time because we were taken by surprise and were in an enclosed location.”

“Fine. But how do we find where she put them? I wasn’t able to see from the window I looked in. Speaking of which, I should really get back before she notices I’m gone. Flim might be able to stall her, but she’ll notice eventually.”

The two walked back towards the town. “You could search her house?” suggested Sunset.

“How would I get an opportunity to do that without her noticing? She’s probably not leaving it until the morning when she brings the rest of the group out.”

“I guess I’ll just use that opportunity to search,” said Sunset. “It’ll take her a little while to get the town together to try to convince the rest to join up, so hopefully I can find it in that time period.”

And so, the next day…

“All right!” said Starlight after the town had assembled. “Let’s let them out again and see if they’ve reconsidered! Open the door!”

The pair of guards sitting outside the house opened the door and the group came out.

“I have a good feeling about… wait,” said Starlight. “Where’s Sunset?”

“I don’t know!” said Party Favor. “I went to sleep and when I woke up she was gone! The others said she vanished into thin air! Maybe she was just a figment of our collective imagination all along!”

“You’re not very bright, are you?” said Starlight.

“No, not really,” said Party Favor sadly.

“Wait, how do we know you’re not a product of our collective imagination all along?” demanded Suri.

“Oh no!” said one of the ponies in the town. “What if all of this is a product of our collective imagination and we’re slowly being digested by plants?!”

“That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” said Starlight.

“That’s just what a figment of our collective imagination would say!” declared Suri.

“What if us pondering about whether everything is a product of our collective imagination is just a product of our collective imagination?!” asked one of the ponies. This prompted them all to start running around screaming.

“Hey! Calm down!” shouted Starlight. “They’re just trying to trick you!”

The panic instantly abated. “Huh, that would make a lot more sense than the collective imagination thing,” mused one of them.

“Now lock these guys back into the shed, then go and find Sunset!” said Starlight.

There was a sudden flash of light, and the cutie marks of Flim, Flam, Trixie, Suri, and Lightning Dust all suddenly reappeared.

“How did–” started Starlight, but she was interrupted by Sunset, also with a restored cutie mark, emerging from Starlight’s house and marching up to them.

“Next time you hide cutie marks in your house, it would probably be better to hide them in someplace less obvious than the closet,” said Sunset.

“How did you let her escape?!” Starlight hissed at the guards.

“We didn’t,” one said. “Why didn’t you notice she escaped anyway? You were in there.”

“I was never in there!” said Starlight.

“But… you walked right out,” said the confused guard. “We saw you. We talked to you.”

“How is that possible if I wasn’t there?”

“Enh, not that hard to figure out,” said Sunset as she was wreathed in fire and transformed into Starlight. “I kind of got stuck in here with a teleportation accident. Could you open the door and let me out?” she said in Starlight’s voice before smirking and transforming back into herself.

“You’re a changeling?!” asked Starlight. “But that’s not possible. If you were a changeling, I shouldn’t have been able to take your cutie mark!”

“Yeah, well, life surprises all of us,” said Sunset as she idly examined her hoof. “By the way, if you’re wondering how this isn’t illegal what with that whole requiring anypony’s express written permission in order to imitate them, there’s actually a number of exceptions written into the law if you actually bother to read all 900 pages of it, many of them very oddly specific. Such as ‘if you’re locked up somewhere because the leader of a town is trying to force you to accept their philosophy.’”

“Wait, how is that law 900 pages?” asked Suri. “Why would it take that much?”

“Well, it turns out there’s actually comparatively little law in the law,” said Sunset. “Most of the text is a bunch of knock-knock jokes. Also, on page 482, it says, ‘Yes, Sunset. I did totally leave out a self-mimicking exception in order to screw with you just in the off chance you got that ascension.’”

“I think Chrysalis enjoys her job a little too much,” said Lightning Dust.

“Who cares?” said Starlight. “It doesn’t even matter if you got your cutie marks back for now, I can still–”

“Oh,” said Sunset in a bored tone of voice, “if you were planning to re-capture us to take away our cutie marks again, that might be hard after this.” She nonchalantly pulled the Staff of Sameness out of a bag she had, then smashed it into the ground before setting it on fire. Everyone stared at it in disbelief.

“Unless, of course,” continued Sunset, “the cutie mark stealing was actually a spell you came up with and the staff was a fake-out, but for that to work you would’ve had to have been faking losing your cutie mark because good luck having that level of magical power without it.”

“I… well…” stammered Starlight as she glanced at the rest of the crowd. “Look, just because I can’t add more friends to the town for now doesn’t mean we won’t be perfectly fine and content! And I’m sure I can find some new way to remove cutie marks!”

“Oh yeah,” said Flam. “About that…”

There was a pause.

“What about that?” said Starlight.

“Darn it, I thought I had the timing right,” said Flam. “Guess I’m not in tune with my brother as much as I thought. Wait just a little. It’s sure to happen soon.”

“Wait, where’s your brother?” asked Starlight.

“Maybe he nonchalantly walked off during all of the fuss,” said Party Favor. “Or… or maybe he was just a product of our collective imagination all along!”

“Okay, remember when I said that you guys should get them?” asked Starlight. “How about you get to the getting of them now?”

Just then, there was a flash of light and everyone’s cutie marks returned except for Starlight’s. All of the ponies in town were so surprised and distracted they forgot all about grabbing them.

“Okay, now it happened,” said Flam. “He just went off to destroy that whole wall of cutie marks. We were deliberately stalling you in order to accommodate it. Odd it didn’t return yours, though.”

“Yes, well, mine was just kept in a different location, so–” started Starlight before she was suddenly doused with a bucket of water that Sunset threw at her. “How are you carrying so many things?”

“Ha!” said Sunset as she pointed at Starlight’s equal sign cutie mark, which had been partially washed off to reveal an actual cutie mark underneath. “My suspicions were correct! You never gave up your cutie mark at all, and were just faking it! That’s why that Staff of Sameness wasn’t one of the known artifacts! You were just pretending it was the cause and you were using a spell to remove the cutie marks!”

“And then you were trying to scare everypony away from the cave so you could secretly mine the gold yourself!” declared Trixie. “And you would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for us meddling ponies and griffon!”

Everyone stared at Trixie blankly. “I… don’t think that whole part about the gold is the case, Trixie,” said Gilda.

“Hrm, must be getting it mixed up with something else,” muttered Trixie.

“So you didn’t give up your cutie mark despite insisting all of us do it?” demanded Sugar Belle. “You said cutie marks were evil!”

“But they are!” declared Starlight. “Just look at them! Don’t you see? Evil!”

“But then why take ours and not give up your own?”

“Because of the fact I had to in order to cast the spell? As Sunset just explained?”

“So you lied to us?” asked one of the ponies.

“Only about that one part! Everything else was true!”

“Even the part about the beans?” asked Party Favor. “Because that part always did strike me as a bit odd, even when I did believe in your philosophy.”

“Yes, even the part about the beans!” snapped Starlight. “The only way to be happy is if we’re all equal!”

“Except for you,” said Flam. “Either you’re all equal, or none of you are.”

“That’s right!” declared Double Diamond. “Let’s get our cutie marks back! To the cave!”

“YEAH!” shouted the crowd as they all ran off.

“But… they already got them back,” said a confused Sunset.

“I’m kind of getting the feeling the ponies in this town are not very smart,” said Gilda. “Which would explain, I guess, why they all fell for Starlight’s really obviously false claims.”

“Wait, where is Starlight?” asked Lightning Dust. “She’s gone.”

“She must have used the opportunity to escape,” said Trixie. “That, or she was a figment of our collective imagination all along.”

“I think I’m going to go with the first explanation,” said Flam.

“Yeah, me too,” said Trixie. There was a pause.

“So… is that it?” asked Lightning Dust. “Are we done with this whole nonsense now?”

“I guess so,” said Sunset.

“Okay, I have questions,” said Suri, “because you didn’t get a chance to explain it. Why did we bother with returning their cutie marks and exposing Starlight instead of just skedaddling out of here because we had our powers while they didn’t?”

“Because I figured that if we just ran off, it wouldn’t count as solving the problem we were sent to solve,” said Sunset. “And I did not want to have to deal with Chrysalis if we didn’t.”

“She’d probably banish us from Equestria, imprison us in the place where she banished us, and then come by a month later and say that things got mixed up and we were supposed to be sent to a theme park, but it’s too late to fix it now and thus no theme park for us,” said Flam.

“The sad thing is, I could totally see her do that,” said Sunset. “Anyway, I had my suspicions Starlight was faking it, so I had Flim go off and destroy the cutie mark wall to expose it. And even if she hadn’t been faking it, the return of the cutie marks would hopefully cause enough chaos to get away. So now that all the problems seem to have been solved and our mission is complete, we can leave this whole stupid town behind as soon as Flim shows up and the train comes back.”

Some waiting later…

“What is taking him so long?” asked Sunset in an irritated tone.

Just then, a large rush of the townsponies came up, and they tossed a tied-up Flim to Sunset. “Ta-da!” one of them declared.

“Why is he tied up?” asked Suri.

“Because he betrayed you, so we tied him up to bring him here!” said Sugar Belle.

“Oh, no, that was all a fake-out,” said Sunset. “The whole thing was a plan with two backups. The first plan was to have Gilda just run off and escape, the second was for Flim and Flam to pretend to betray us in order to gain Starlight’s trust, and the third was for me to escape. We figured at least one of those would work.”

“But wait, you talked about how Flim and Flam betrayed you even among yourselves,” said Party Favor.

“That was because you were around. We didn’t know if you would blab the plan to Starlight,” said Suri. “So we kept up the masquerade.”

“Oh, well that makes sense,” said Party Favor. “Wait. Hang on a minute! The only reason I was in that position was because you guys sold me out to Starlight!”

“And the only reason you’re here to complain about it is because of that,” said Flam. “We had to gain her trust. Sorry about that.”

“Are you saying that because you’re actually sorry, or because you don’t want to annoy a potential future customer to your cider business?” asked Party Favor.

“A little here, a little there,” said Flam.

“Well!” said Night Glider, finally having a speaking role again. “Now that we’ve gotten all those explanations out of the way, I wanted to mention that when we were looking through the caves, it turns out there was a big stash of gold! Trixie was right about it.”

“Huh,” said Sunset.

“Since you guys helped us find it, we figured we’d give the seven of you a pretty hefty share!”

“Can I get untied first, please?” asked Flim.

“You know how people say that virtue is its own reward?” asked Suri as the train sped away from Our Town.

“Yes?” asked Lightning Dust.

Suri looked at all of the gold. “I’m starting to wonder if those people are right. Virtue does seem surprisingly good at providing rewards.”

“I’m just disappointed that we went through all of that, and I still didn’t get a chance to use my rocket launcher,” said Gilda.

“Did you even bring it along?” asked Sunset.

“No,” said Gilda, “but what’s that got to do with anything?”

Later…

“And so the map and everything else got installed over in Ponyville,” said Luna.

“Oh, good,” said Chrysalis. “That thing was really cluttering up the place.”

“You know, you could give the job of notifying of you of these things to somepony else,” said Luna.

“But you’re so good at it!” said Chrysalis. “No one is at relaying mildly relevant information as you are!”

Luna sighed.

“But, it looks like that mission the Tree of Whatever sent them on was a success, and whatever problem was there was successfully solved by the group,” said Chrysalis.

“You didn’t find out what they actually did?”

“Nah,” said Chrysalis, “finding things like that out is for poor people. But! As has been shown by them defeating Tirek and now handling this… my plan is still working. Soon it will ALL come to fruition!”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” asked Luna.

“My secret plan!” said Chrysalis. “It’s going exactly as planned!”

“What plan is this?”

“I’d tell you,” said Chrysalis, “but then it wouldn’t be a secret.”

“Do you even have a plan, or are you just messing with me?” asked Luna.

“The annoying thing,” said Chrysalis with a frown, “is I’m not entirely sure myself.”

I need a new job, thought Luna to herself. However, her internal musings were interrupted by a grumpy-looking and covered-in-goop Twilight Sparkle pushing a not-as-grumpy-looking-but-equally-covered-in-goop Discord into the room, giving Discord an angry glare, and then walking out without saying a word.

“What was that all about?” asked Chrysalis.

“Don’t ask,” said Discord with a sigh. “Just know that I’m not going to be allowed in the Crystal Empire for a while. And neither is the Smooze.”

Still later…

“Did you see the new Mare Do Well issue?” a pegasus excitedly asked the unicorn next to him on the bench. “It’s great! Mare Do Well stumbles upon this village where the leader, Guitarlight Slimmer, is trying to enforce equality by removing cutie marks, but then it turns out it was all a lie and she actually had one. It’s really good! I’m pretty sure that for a long time, anypony who tries to spread a message about equality through getting rid of cutie marks in real life is going to have a lot of trouble thanks to this.”

Starlight Glimmer, the aforementioned unicorn, stared at him for a few moments, then got up and stormed off.

“Hrm,” he said. “Maybe she hasn’t read it yet and is upset I spoiled things for her. I really need to remember to use those spoiler tags more often so I don’t accidentally tell people things like how that one guy was a ghost through the whole movie.”

The Lost and Found Treasure of Griffonstone

Gilda peered over the large and empty table. “So how does this darn map thing work anyway?” she asked. “What makes it turn on?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sunset. “Chrysalis’s instructions were rather unclear.”

“What were her instructions?”

Sunset held up a piece of paper. On it was written ‘I think it does stuff sometimes when something happens. Just wing it.’

“Of course,” said Gilda in a defeated tone. “Well, any luck with selling the castle?”

“Not yet,” said Sunset. “Castle selling is kind of a small market. You just have to stumble upon that one guy who wants it.”

Just then, the map suddenly appeared on the table… but disappeared a second later. “What happened?” asked Gilda.

“The things’s malfunctioning, I think,” said Sunset. She kicked it and it came back. “Ah, just like a projector.”

The two looked at the map, which had a talon and several buttons floating above an area. “Huh, they’re floating above Griffonstone,” said Sunset. “Great! I’ve always wanted to visit there!”

“What stopped you before?”

“It’s a costly trip,” said Sunset. “But now I can write it off as a business expense!”

“But your cutie mark isn’t on there,” said Gilda. “Can you write it off under those circumstances?”

“It’d be incredibly stupid if I couldn’t,” said Sunset.

A short time later…

“Turns out I can’t,” said Sunset, “which is incredibly stupid. Great. I guess it’s up to you and Suri, then. Bring me back some souvenirs.”

“Why would I even want to go?” asked Suri.

“I’m sure you can find some money-making exercise,” said Sunset.

“More importantly,” said Gilda, “while I wouldn’t mind visiting there, how am I getting in? Griffonstone is part of the Griffon country! And I got banished, remember?”

“Oh, pshaw!” said Suri. “Just wear a disguise.”

“Do you have any idea what the punishment for trying to sneak in with a disguise is?” asked Gilda. “They tie you up and make you listen to bad karaoke for a few days.”

There was an awkward pause. “Um, okay,” said Sunset. “Anyway–”

“You wouldn’t be so flippant if you ever heard bad griffon karaoke!” said Gilda.

“Fine, you two figure it out!” said Sunset before she walked out.

“Well,” said Suri, “we just have to get a disguise. Though good disguises cost a lot of money. Well, I’m sure we can find something that’s good for a reasonably low price.”

“I would like to reiterate, for the 100th time, that this is possibly the stupidest plan we have ever tried to do,” said Gilda.

“I think you’re underestimating the sheer stupidity of some of our previous plans,” said Suri. “Now come on. The border patrol is coming up soon.”

“Just remember, if this doesn’t work, you’ll buy me that new rocket launcher. And I got that contract notarized, too.”

“Just get the disguise on already,” said Suri. She put the disguise on Gilda, which was a paper bag over her head with eye holes cut into it. The two went up to the border patrol.

“Hello!” said Suri. “We are here to go into the Griffon country! I am Suri Polomare and this is my associate, Bagboy.”

“Sounds good,” said the griffon. “Go right ahead.”

Suri and Gilda walked past the border. After they got a while away, they stopped. “What just happened?” asked Gilda.

“I wonder that myself,” said Suri. “I heard the quality of the border patrols had really decayed, hence why the paper bag could work, but I was at least expecting to have to bust out that fake ID card we got for you. Well, don’t look a gift alligator in the mouth.”

“Whatever,” said Gilda. “It worked. Do you have that souvenir list that Sunset gave us? We might as well get on that now.”

“Because we’re so generous?” said a confused Suri.

“Because knowing our luck, in trying to buy these things, we’ll end up finding whatever it was we were supposed to find.”

And so they walked towards Griffonstone, and absolutely nothing interesting or controversial happened along the way. Eventually they reached an archway. There was an awkward pause.

“Huh,” said Gilda. “It feels weird to travel without Trixie for once. I was expecting her to announce ‘here we are in Griffonstone!’ at this point.”

“Well, let’s go!” said Suri. “Money is going to make itself, you know.”

The two walked through the archway and turned the corner to find a lot of dilapidated houses. “Wow, this place sure took a turn for the worse while I was gone,” said Gilda.

“That just means the prices will be cheaper, allowing for higher profits when they’re sold back home!” declared Suri.

“So, I suppose we should try to figure out what happened in the intervening years?” suggested Gilda. “Maybe we got sent here to try to do that?”

“Who cares?” asked Suri. “I’m just here to make some money.”

“Well, I guess as long as I’m here I might as well visit someone I know,” said Gilda. “Want to come along?

“Would this be likely to be a profitable visit?” asked Suri.

“Probably not,” said Gilda.

“Then I’m not interested,” said Suri.

“You know, there is more to life than money,” said Gilda.

“Well, duh,” said Suri. “There’s also fashion. Which can be used to make money. They go together like water and sugar!”

Gilda stared at Suri in a confused manner for a few seconds before deciding not to pursue the matter further. “Fine. We’ll go our separate ways and then meet up again later.”

And so the two went on their separate ways, planning to meet up again later.

“Let me see,” muttered Gilda to herself. “It’s been so long since I’ve been here. I hope I can still remember where Gilbert lived. Hopefully it won’t take too long.” She turned around and found herself face to face with Gilbert. “Oh. Well, that was easy.”

“Hello?” said Gilbert uncertainly. “Who are you?”

Gilda took off the bag before putting it back on again. “It’s me, Gilda.”

“Oh,” said Gilbert. “That would explain the disguise. What are you doing here?”

“It’s a long story and you’ll feel dumber for having heard it,” said Gilda.

“No, really, I want to know.”

“After a big battle, this mystical tree left behind a map, but it got delivered to the wrong place, possibly due to dyslexia on the part of the tree, so it got moved to where we live. Then it said Suri and I should head to Griffonstone to accomplish something without actually specifying what it was. So we did, and that’s why we’re here.”

“That wasn’t really that long of a story,” said Gilbert. “Though I’ll admit, I do feel a little dumber for having heard it.”

Suri suddenly ran up. “Oh, Gilda, I forgot to… wait, who is this guy?”

“Oh, him?” said Gilda. “This is Gilbert. He’s a guy I knew when I used to live here. Speaking of which, whatever happened here anyway? This place wasn’t as run-down when I was here before.”

“The Idol of Boreas, that golden statue that King Grover found back in the day, went missing,” said Gilbert. “Then everything kind of fell apart.”

“This all happened because you guys lost a statue?” asked Gilda.

“Well,” said Gilbert, “shortly before losing the Idol, there was a massive stock market crash due to people buying only on margin, and the banks didn’t have enough money stored to cover all of the withdrawals that resulted and closed down. That could have also contributed.”

“Fine, whatever,” said Gilda. “Any suggestions on how to possibly get my banishment removed or reduced while I’m here?”

“Find the statue?” suggested Suri.

“Oh, sure, that’ll be easy!” said Gilda sarcastically. “It could be anywhere!”

“It supposedly fell into the Abyssal Abyss,” said Gilbert.

“Yeah, and I’m sure we could easily find it with the help of a redundant redundancy,” said Gilda.

“Wait, how would a redundancy help?” asked Suri.

“That was clearly a sarcastic remark on the name Abyssal Abyss,” said Gilda in an irritated tone.

“I think you need to improve your one-liners,” said Suri.

“What are you talking about?” said Gilda. “That was a great one-liner!”

“But it had no bearing on the context! It would have made more sense if you had said we could do it with a ropey rope or something like that.”

“Whatever!” said Gilda. “Let’s get back to the point. It’s been years. I assume that it would’ve been found by more qualified people if it could be found. Why the heck would I be any better at finding it?”

“Because you have something that none of them ever did!” declared Gilbert.

“What?” asked Gilda.

“I don’t have the faintest idea. It just seemed like an inspiring thing to say.”

Gilda sighed.

“Oh, wait, there is something,” said Gilbert. “You have the money to buy the stuff necessary to climb down there and the enthusiasm necessary to do so. No one else ever bothered because, you know, bad economy.”

“Enthusiasm?” asked Gilda. “What enthusiasm? I’m generally as apathetic as they come, unless it involves pranks or guns.”

“Well, I’m speaking relatively,” said Gilbert. “There’s a really high amount of apathy right now.”

With the timing that a comedy story requires, there happened to be another griffon somewhat nearby who tripped and fell, falling onto a sharp rock and resulting in an injury far more serious than one would expect in a comedy story. “Huh,” said the griffon as they looked at the large and bleeding laceration, “that seems bad. Well, whatever. Too lazy to get medical attention.”

“Uh, okay,” said Gilda. “Why do we have to get supplies anyway? Can’t we just fly down?”

“The winds are rather strong,” said Gilbert.

“All right!” said Suri. “Let’s do this! Let’s get that thing and help fix the country!”

“You seem awfully excited about this,” said Gilda. “How does it benefit you?”

“Easy!” said Suri. “The exchange rate is really bad right now, so I can get tons of Griffon money in exchange for Equestrian money. So if I do that, and then the economy improves, I can exchange the Griffon money for much more Equestrian money than I initially used and come out ahead with a big profit. So if we can get that idol and fix the economy, then I could double, triple, maybe even quadruple the money I used for that!”

“Well, it all assumes that we’d be able to find the stupid idol,” said Gilda.

“Why couldn’t we?” asked Suri. “The tree sent us here! Obviously the tree has been sending us to places where we can make a profit, much like how we came away richer from that whole business with Our Town.”

“You went to your town?” asked Gilbert. “Wouldn’t you normally be there?”

“No, we went to Our Town,” said Suri.

“But you just said that–”

“We went to a town that was named ‘Our Town,’” said Gilda.

“That seems like it would lead to a lot of misunderstandings,” said Gilbert.

“The point,” said Suri, “is that it wouldn’t have sent us here if we weren’t able to find the Idol and thus make money.”

“You sure it’s for money-making tips?” said Gilda.

“What else would it be?” asked Suri.

“Are we just going to stand around talking?” asked Gilbert.

“That is what we seem to have a strong tendency to do,” said Suri. “But sure. Let’s get that idol!” She paused. “Wait, should it be idol or Idol? Would it be correct to capitalize it when it’s not being followed by the ‘of Boreas’?”

“Who cares, unless we’re writing it down?” said Gilda.

“Fair point,” said Suri.

“I see what you mean about having a tendency to stand around talking,” said Gilbert.

One supply-purchasing trip later…

“Okay, so who ends up going down?” asked Suri. “I call not it!”

“That’s not how it works,” said Gilbert. “What we need to do is carefully examine what each of us–”

“Not it!” said Gilda.

“Looks like it’s you, Gilbert,” said Suri.

“Ugh,” said Gilbert, “why me?”

“Because I don’t have wings, so I’d be in more trouble if we didn’t make it,” said Suri. “Also, as an OC, you’re less important and more expendable.”

“OC?” asked Gilbert.

“Ordinary Citizen,” said Suri.

“What does that even mean, and what does it have to do with anything?”

“Do not question the acronyms!” snapped Suri.

“I’ll side with Suri on this one,” said Gilda.

“That’s only so you don’t have to go down there!” said Gilbert

“Possibly,” said Gilda.

“Ugh, fine,” said Gilbert. “I’ll give it a try. But you owe me!”

Gilbert tied one end of the rope to himself and the other to a rock. “Well, here goes nothing,” he said as he tried climbing down. However, the rope broke midway through the climb, causing him to fall down onto a ledge that conveniently happened to be there. “Uh, guys?” he called out. “Can one of you help me out?”

“Darn it,” said Suri, “I should’ve known that an Ordinary Citizen would be of little use. You need to be more special to pull this kind of thing off.”

“Then why did you say that being an OC would make him better suited for this?” asked Gilda.

“That is a very good question,” said Suri. There was a pause.

“Could I get an answer to my my very good question, then?” asked Gilda.

“I said it was a good question,” said Suri, “not that I had a good answer.”

“I could still use a little help here!” called out Gilbert.

“Fine!” said Gilda. “Suri, get me the backup rope and tie it to the rock. I’ll climb down this time.”

Suri got the backup rope and tied it to the rock. Gilda climbed down. She eventually reached the platform where Gilbert was. “You didn’t happen to find the idol while you were here, did you?” she asked.

“No, and–” started Gilbert before they were interrupted by Suri, tied to the other end of the rope, falling onto their platform.

“Why are you here?” asked Gilda.

“It was the craziest thing,” said Suri. “The rock turned out to be a troll that was supposed to be in some totally different world but got lost, and it decided to sing a song about how it was annoyed about the rope, so it tied it on me to see how much I’d like it, but then I got pulled in because of the weight.”

“What?!” exclaimed Gilda.

“At least I think that’s what it said,” said Suri. “That song was a bit hard to decipher at points. Wish I had a lyrics sheet.”

“Not that,” said Gilda. “What do you mean, pulled in because of the weight? Are you saying I’m overweight?”

“Well, you could maybe cut down on the sweets,” said Suri.

“Couldn’t we handle the current situation before you argue about Gilda’s weight?” asked Gilbert. “I’d like to find that idol.”

“Well, I guess that would make sense,” said Gilda. “I suggest we–”

Gilda was interrupted by the platform they were standing on suddenly collapsing, sending the three falling and screaming. Luckily, there was another platform on the way down, which Gilda managed to grab hold of. Gilbert grabbed the rope on the way down, leaving them in the awkward position of Gilda hanging onto the platform while being tied to Suri with the rope also held by Gilbert.

“Yeah,” said Suri, “it really does look like you could stand to lose some weight.”

“Is that really the thing you should be saying when in a life-threatening situation where the supposedly overweight being is the one keeping you alive?”

“If we all die, I wouldn’t get a chance to say it,” said Suri, “so I might as well take the chance now. Can you pull us all up now?”

“Fine,” said Gilda, “I’ll…” She trailed off as she noticed on another ledge there was an idol of some sort. “Hey, it’s the idol.” She reached to grab it, then stopped, frowned, and climbed onto the ledge before pulling Suri and Gilbert up.

“Wow!” said Suri. “You care about us so much you abandoned getting the idol to pull us up!”

“What are you talking about? I abandoned nothing,” said Gilda as she nonchalantly leaned over and grabbed the idol. “In fact, it would’ve been downright stupid to try to grab the idol while in that position. I might have knocked it over or something.”

“Oh,” said Suri. “Well, if it had been between us and the idol, which would you have picked?”

“At any rate,” said Gilda as she ignored Suri’s question, “we should probably be getting out of here. I guess I’ll just climb and pull us up.” She paused. “Hang on a minute. Gilbert, why didn’t you climb up when you originally fell?”

“I panicked?” said Gilbert.

“Makes perfect sense to me!” said Suri.

“Ugh, just hold onto that idol for me,” said Gilda.

One climb upwards later…

“Okay,” said Gilda, “I suggest we never do something like that again. But whatever, we have the idol. Let’s find the ruler, present it, and hopefully get my banishment rescinded. And also get us a bunch of money with that exchange ratio. Ready, Gilbert?”

“There is one problem with that,” said Gilbert.

“What?”

“Well, truth is, I was never Gilbert,” he said. He pulled off his skin, which turned out to be a suit, revealing a light gold pegasus mare with a mane that was basically a grayscale version of Rainbow Dash’s mane. “You thought you were working with a griffon named Gilbert. But it was I, Daring Do!”

“Why did you put stress such seemingly random sounds in your name?” wondered Suri.

“I thought Daring Do was a fictitious character,” said Gilda. “Did you pop up from one of those interactive books?”

“I think it’s more likely that she’s actually the alter-ego of the author, and that the books are actually autobiographical,” said Suri.

“Exactly!” said Daring Do.

“That is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard,” said Gilda.

“I think you’re underestimating the stupidity of some of the things we’ve heard,” said Suri.

“Whatever,” said Gilda. “So where is Gilbert?”

“There never was a Gilbert!” declared Daring Do. “It was just me in disguise all along! I did it in order to get this idol!”

“But… but I knew Gilbert before the idol ever got lost,” said a confused Gilda.

“Yes, I played the long game there, didn’t I?” said Daring Do.

“Well what are you planning to do with the idol, then?”

“Put it in a museum, of course!” declared Daring Do. “As should be done with all artifacts!”

“But doesn’t it technically belong to the–”

“Museum!” snapped Daring Do. “See you!”

Suri and Gilda watched Daring Do fly off in a flash. “You’re not going to go after her?” asked Suri.

“Nah. Because I still have the real idol right here,” said Gilda as she pulled out an idol.

“Wait, why do you have a fake one?”

“It was a part of a prank,” said Gilda. “It’ll explode into a big bunch of glue soon enough. See?” She pulled out some glue. “I just used this… oh, wait. I used the wrong glue. This is that super-permanent glue that basically never comes off. Oh well. Guess now I don’t have to feel bad about that.”

“Okay, hang on a moment, I have some questions,” said Suri. “When did you even have a chance to make a fake idol?”

“Oh, I had heard what it supposedly looked liked, so I made one that looked similar. I figure she didn’t get a close enough look at the real one to tell the difference.”

“You made a fake idol before we went down there just so you could give it to who you thought was Gilbert as part of a prank in case we actually found the idol?” asked Suri.

“Much like Daring Do,” said Gilda with a grin, “I play the long game.”

“And where were you holding that idol and the glue?”

“In my inventory,” said Gilda. “It’s the best place to hold things.”

Suri stared blankly at Gilda.

“Come on!” said Gilda. “Let’s find the king already.”

One trip to the griffon king later…

“Hooray!” said the unnamed griffon king to Suri and a Gilda wearing the bag on her head again. “We have the Idol of Boreas back! Thank you, Suri and Bagboy.”

“Indeed,” said Suri, “those are absolutely our names.”

“With this,” continued the still-unnamed griffon king, “we will surely be able to recover our former glory. I feel in such a good mood I’m going to rescind all banishments! Which is especially easy as if I remember correctly, there was only one banished griffon to begin with.”

“So how is the idol going to suddenly revitalize the economy anyway?” asked Gilda.

“Oh, that’s an easy one!” said the king. He walked onto a balcony that happened to be there. “Hey, everyone! We got the idol back!”

“Hooray!” declared all of the griffons, who promptly ceased their apathetic ways. One hour later, unemployment was at a record low, stocks were at record highs, and life expectancy had increased by 10%.

“If all it took to revitalize things was showing them the idol,” said Suri, “why didn’t you just make a fake one?”

“Golly!” said the griffon king. “I didn’t think of that.”

After some money exchanging and a return home…

“Yet another profitable enterprise!” declared Suri. “I love this Tree of Whatever and its tips!”

“It’s so wonderful it didn’t even let me come along to make that money,” muttered Sunset.

“I didn’t get sent either, and you didn’t hear me complaining,” said Trixie.

“Maybe that’s because you were away promoting Mare Do Well until just now!” said Sunset.

“The point stands,” said Trixie.

“Whatever,” said Sunset. “So, Gilda, are you planning to move back to Griffonstone now that you got un-banished?”

“Well, I was thinking about it,” said Gilda, “until I learned about how unreasonable their gun control laws are.”

“What, do they require background checks or something?”

“Oh, I’d be fine with that if that were all,” said Gilda. “But seriously, they don’t even let you carry loaded rocket launchers in public. Who does that? Certainly no country I have any interest in living in.”

“Um… okay,” said Sunset.

“Oh no!” said Trixie. “I just realized something!”

“What?” asked Sunset.

“Remember back when Gilda got rid of the ursa major with the rocket launcher?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Gilda. “Good times.”

“I just realized, back then I should have made a joke about the right to bear arms!” said Trixie. “Argh! Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“Well,” said Daring Do to herself, “this has been a bad day. The idol turned out to be fake, the glue got on my wings and they’re stuck to me so I can’t fly, I’ve gotten a bit injured from the fall, I’m lost in the jungle, and worst of all, I’m talking out loud to myself for some reason. But as long as some super powerful villain doesn’t show up, I should be fine!”

Just then, she ran into a group of ponies wearing stereotypical jungle tribe outfits and paint. “Um, hi,” she said. “I’m kind of lost, any chance I could get help?”

“Wait a minute,” said one of the ponies, “aren’t you A.K. Yearling, the writer of Daring Do?” Before Daring Do/A.K. Yearling got a chance to answer, she was interrupted by the pony continuing. “Of course you are! Wow, I didn’t realize how much you looked like your character until just now. But this is great! We’re your biggest fans! We’re the Lost Tribe of Daring Do Fans!”

“How is that a tribe or lost?”

“We’ve been wondering that ourselves,” said the pony with a frown.

“Well, anyway,” said Daring Do, “if you’re such fans, you’ll help me out, right?”

“Sure! We’ll take you back to our place and help fix our your injuries.”

Some time later…

“Well,” said Daring Do, “the wings are still stuck, but I guess I’ll have to get some kind of advanced solution to get rid of this glue. Anyway, thanks for the help.”

“Great!” said one of them. “Now you can repay us by writing the next book while you’re here! No need to go anywhere else.”

“Well, um, I kind of need to travel to get inspiration, so–” started Daring Do before getting cut off.

“Oh, pshaw! You’ve got fans! All the inspiration you need is right here!” Her eyes suddenly took on a more sinister look. “And you’re not going anywhere until you write a book that’s to our expectations. We found the last one a bit disappointing.”

Uh-oh, thought Daring Do to herself. Well, as annoying as this will probably be, it shouldn’t be that hard, right?

“Oh boy!” said one of the members of the Lost Tribe of Daring Do fans. “Finally! We’ll have Daring Do and Dr. Caballeron get together!”

“Nah, she clearly belongs with Carapace from Mare Do Well. Have them meet and fall in love in a crossover!”

“You’re both wrong!” said yet another. “Daring Do needs no man! She’s a strong and independent mare!”

As those three continued arguing in the background, the original unnamed pony turned back to Daring Do. “See? All you have to do is write something to satisfy all of us, and you can go!”

Life is pain, thought Daring Do to herself.

Would It Matter if Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?

While there was the sound of hooves galloping in the distance, Luna turned to a blue-ish mist. “Greetings, Tantabus. I am ready. Do your worst.”

“Okay!” said the aforementioned Tantabus. “What do you call a fly with no wings?”

Luna appeared perplexed. “I’m not sure what that has to do with–”

“A walk!” declared Tantabus.

“I… huh?” said a confused Luna.

“You said to give you my worst. That was one of the worst puns I could think of.”

“I meant to do your worst in trying to turn me back into Nightmare Moon,” said Luna.

“Wait, you want me to do that?”

“No, I don’t!” snapped Luna.

“Then why are you asking me to?” asked Tantabus. “I actually would be happy to do so, but you’re being awfully unclear.”

“Because… because…” Luna trailed off. “Actually, that’s a good question. I think it’s just a standard expression.”

“Fine!” said Tantabus as it left. “Come back when you’ve figured out what you actually want.”

“I feel so confused,” said Luna. Just then, the hooves galloping that was mentioned over 10 paragraphs ago resulted in Sunset, Gilda, Flim, Flam, Trixie, Suri, and Lightning Dust arriving into the room. “Sorry we’re late. Did we miss something?” asked Sunset.

“Hey!” said Trixie. “Sunset, your line should have been a new paragraph! You’re supposed to do that when the speaker changes!”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” said Sunset.

“How doesn’t it make sense? It’s a basic rule of dialogue!”

“I’m so confused…” muttered Luna to herself. Suddenly, Tantabus came back in. “You know what?” said Tantabus. “I’m tired of waiting for you to make up your mind. I’ll make it up for you!” Tantabus flew into Luna and turned her into Nightmare Moon.

“There it goes again!” said Trixie. “It needs to be a new paragraph! Clearly it is your corrupting influence that is causing this blatantly inaccurate grammar, and you therefore must be removed!” Trixie blasted Nightmare Moon with the power of correct grammar. The mist emerged from her and flew off, and Luna returned to normal. There was a pause.

“So… was that it?” asked Gilda. “We came all the way here just for that? I thought there was going to be something more interesting. Then again, I guess I can’t complain about my life not getting put in danger.”

Luna woke up, revealing the entire previous sequence to be just a dream. “What? My dream ended… happily? That cannot happen!”

“It is inaccurate to separate two independent clauses, also known as complete sentences, with just a comma,” read Chrysalis from a book while sitting next to Luna’s bed. “This error is known as a comma splice. You should either use a conjunction such as ‘and’ in addition to the comma or make the comma into a period or semicolon.”

“Chrysalis, what are you doing?” asked Luna.

“Familiarizing myself with the rules of grammar,” said Chrysalis. “I had just gotten through the part on dialogue and was starting on commas when you woke up. By the way, did you know there is absolutely nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition? The idea that it’s grammatically incorrect to do so is actually a myth.”

“No, I mean, why are you doing it next to my bed and reading it out loud?” said Luna in a frustrated tone.

“Reading it out loud encourages better retention!” said Chrysalis. “As for why I’m doing it here? It’s because I thought that if you absorbed it while sleeping, you’d become an expert as well. Then we could be Grammar Buddies!”

“Grammar Buddies?” said Luna in disbelief.

“Grammar Buddies!” confirmed Chrysalis.

Luna sighed. Do it for the dental plan, she thought to herself. Do it for the dental plan.

“So, why did you call all of us here today?” asked Suri with a yawn.

“I… um… actually, I’m so tired I forgot,” said Sunset. She noticed the rest yawning. “Did you guys not sleep well either?”

“Yes,” said Suri.

“Wait, is that ‘yes’ as in ‘yes, I did not sleep well’ or ‘yes’ as in ‘yes, I did sleep well’?” asked Trixie as she yawned.

“I mean that yes, I didn’t sleep well!” snapped Suri.

“Just clarifying,” said Trixie.

“Okay,” said Gilda, “I submit that we suspend the meeting we can’t even remember the reason for until we’re not so sleepy. It’s weird I’m so tired. Normally I sleep pretty well aside from the fact I instantly jump out of bed and grab my gun if I hear the slightest noise, but I had this nightmare with this cloud of evil smoke that kept me up.”

“Wait, you had a dream with a cloud of evil smoke?” asked Lightning Dust. “So did I. What are the odds?”

“I also had one like that,” said Suri.

“Wait,” said Sunset, “did we all have a nightmare involving a cloud of evil smoke?”

Everyone else nodded agreement.

“I am so not in the mood for this kind of tomfoolery,” said Sunset. “Isn’t Luna in charge of dreams? Or at least has power over them? Or at least can visit them? Maybe she can help.”

“Is ‘tomfoolery’ really the right word?” asked Trixie.

“I don’t care!” said Sunset. “Let’s just send her a letter and see if–” Sunset was interrupted by Luna entering. “That’s convenient timing.”

“I received your letter!” declared Luna. “And I am–”

“Wait, I didn’t even send the letter yet!” said Sunset.

“Isn’t Canterlot an hour ahead thanks to being in a different time zone?” asked Trixie. “That could make her get it before you sent it.”

“That’s not how time zones work!”

“Regardless of how this happened,” said Luna, “I received your letter about putting the castle up for sale. I came to mention I am not particularly interested in purchasing a castle.”

“That… wait, what?” asked Sunset. “I didn’t send that letter to you.”

“That would explain why it had a name on it different than mine,” said Luna. “I thought you had just forgotten my name. Chrysalis does that sometimes, though probably on purpose.”

“It must have gotten delivered incorrectly,” said Sunset. “Darn postal service. But no, the letter we were talking about that I hadn’t even written yet was about these wacky dreams we were having involving a cloud of evil smoke.”

Luna did a double take. “Wait, cloud of evil smoke?”

“It’s not as weird as the dream I had about evil cream puffs,” said Suri. “Actually, I think I liked that one more. At least I got to eat the cream puffs. And they had zero calories, too!”

“So all of you saw a cloud of evil blue-ish smoke?” asked Luna.

“Yep,” said Flim. “Do you know something about it?”

“The Tantabus is a creature of my nightmares,” said Luna. “It escaped from my slumbers yesterday.”

“And it got into ours?” asked Flam. “How does that even work?”

“The Tantabus is like a parasite,” said Luna. “My dreams must no longer be enough for it. Now it seeks others to infect and corrupt. It must have learned of you seven from seeing you in my dream.”

“Oooh! Oooh!” said Trixie as she waved her hoof around. “What did I do in your dream? Was it something spectacular?”

“You mostly complained about my dream violating dialogue rules for paragraphs,” said Luna.

“Well, duh,” said Trixie. “Just because something’s a dream doesn’t mean it shouldn’t follow paragraph structure.”

Luna rubbed her forehead in annoyance. “That is not the point. The Tantabus is clearly growing more powerful if it could escape my dreams and enter into yours. If its power grows, it might be able to escape into the real world and turn all of Equestria into a living nightmare!”

“Couldn’t Discord just snap his fingers and get rid of it if that happened?” asked Sunset. “That just seems like such an obvious solution to such a problem. And it would prevent us from having to presumably go on some crazy adventure that would be highly stressful.”

“You may be overestimating Discord’s power, considering he was not able to defeat Tirek by himself,” said Luna. “Also, I believe he is on vacation right now.”

Meanwhile…

“Ah,” said a sunglass-wearing Discord contently as he laid back on the folding chair, basking in the sun’s warmth. “This is the life. Being on the beach when it’s warm and sunny, but not too sunny. The temperature is perfect too. I suppose there is the downside of me being trapped on this deserted island with anti-teleportation magic while a bunch of sharks prowl the water around it to prevent me from leaving, but sometimes you just have to overlook the minor problems.”

Back in the actual plot…

“Fine,” said Sunset. “So what do we have to do this time?”

“Go to sleep,” said Luna. “Then I will be able to pursue the creature into whichever of your dreams it infests.”

“Wait, that’s it?” asked Sunset. “Just go to sleep? That’s all?”

“Yes?” said Luna uncertainly.

“I’m in!” said Gilda.

“Me too!” declared Trixie.

“Me four!” said Flam, causing the rest to stare at him. “Oh, sorry. I thought Flim was going to jump in with a ‘me three’ and then I would be the fourth. Sorry about that.”

Later, after the group fell asleep…

“Oh, Count Whatchamacallit,” said Suri, “you are so handsome. And rich. But so are the rest of the suitors, such as Duke What’s-His-Face and Earl So-And-So.”

“I shall win your hand!” declared Count Whatchamacallit. “Because once I reveal the truth, you will never want to be with any of the others!”

What will this incredible truth be? Will it be incredibly stupid? The answer will be revealed… right now.

“The truth is,” said Count Whatchamacallit, “I’m actually an evil dream-controlling parasite.”

“Well, nopony’s perfect,” said Suri. “Though exactly how is that supposed to make me not want to be with the others?”

“Because,” said Count Whatchamacallit dramatically, “I will hypnotize you into falling in love with me!” Count Whatchamacallit laughed maniacally as thunder struck outside.

“Oh no!” said Suri. “Not again! Why do so many of my love interests want to brainwash me?”

Suri started running away, and Count Whatchamacallit gave chase. However, Luna suddenly appeared and blasted Count Whatchamacallit with a blast of magic.

“What’s going on?” asked Suri.

“That is the Tantabus,” said Luna.

“So, are we going to stop it?”

“No, please!” said Luna. “I don’t want you or anypony else to suffer any more because of me. I will catch it myself.”

Count Whatchamacallit dissolved into Tantabus, then dashed out through a window before causing a bunch of bricks to block the window.

“It has jumped into another dream,” said Luna. “I must follow it where you cannot.” Luna blasted through the bricks and flew out.

“Darn it,” said Suri, “before the whole dream-controlling parasite thing, I was leaning towards Count Whatchamacallit. Now I have to decide between Duke What’s-His-Face and Earl So-And-So.”

“And do you know what the best thing about being rich is?” asked Flim.

“No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” said Flam in a resigned voice.

Flim gestured towards the extremely large amount of gold. “Diving through it like a porpoise! Burrowing through it like a gopher! And tossing it up so it hits me on the head!”

“I suppose that is something somepony can do with three cubic acres of money,” muttered Flam.

“Oh, you’re just saying that because you’re jealous,” said Flim. “As I’m the rich one and you’re not. By the way, where are Suri, Zuri, and Luri anyway? Those three are usually more happy to go on my crazy shenanigans across the globe to find treasure.”

“I wonder if it’s obvious enough this is supposed to be a DuckTales parody,” said Flam. “I guess I’m Donald?”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” asked Flim.

“Actually,” said Flam with a frown, “he was more prevalent in the original comics. He didn’t show up that much in the cartoon. Am I Beakley? Launchpad?”

“Seriously, what are you talking about?” demanded Flim.

“How should I know?” said Flam. “I’m just a manifestation of your subconscious.”

“Oh, wait, this is a dream?” said Flim.

“I think?” said Flam. “I’m pretty sure it’s your dream, at least. I don’t think it’s mine.”

“This is a far weirder dream than usual,” said Flim. “Well, might as well enjoy the money while I have it!”

Flim jumped into the giant pile of money from the platform he was on… but the money suddenly disappeared in a puff of sinister-looking smoke, causing him to instead fall straight to the bottom of the rather large room and slam into the ground. “Ow,” he muttered. “What happened to all of the money?”

“Oh no!” said Flam. “It must have been the Beatle Boys! They’re always after it! Maybe they stole some kind of crazy teleportation invention from that inventor guy to get the money with. I’ll go ask to see if that’s the case!” He ran off.

Luna appeared next to Flim. “No, Flim, it must not have been the… whoever that was. It must have been Tantabus.”

“Are you sure? Because that whole sequence did seem like something that could happen normally in a dream.”

“I know because of the fact it disappeared in sinister-looking smoke,” said Luna. “At any rate, now I will go deal with the Tantabus.”

“I’ll say!” declared Flim. “Nopony steals from Flim and gets away with it, even in a dream! Let’s go!”

“No, I must do this alone,” said Luna.

“Well, fine, but make sure you bring back the money,” said Flim.

With a mighty bound that ended up feeling pointless considering she had wings, Luna jumped from the bottom of the giant room to the door and left.

“Um… Luna?” called out Flim. “Any chance you could help me get back up there? I just realized the ladder isn’t tall enough to reach down here, so I’m stranded. Luna? Luna?”

Meanwhile…

“Come back here!” declared Luna as she pursued the cloud of smoke known as Tantabus.

Unsurprisingly, this request was not heeded. Instead, Tantabus pulled open a portal in time and flung itself far into the future, where its evil is law. Now Luna sought to follow through the portal and undo the future that is Tantabus. The first part of that awkwardly phrased sentence turned out to be easy, as she simply jumped in.

Luna found herself in a plain standing next to Gilda, who was wearing white robes and holding a sword. “Gilda?” she asked.

“Luna?” asked Gilda. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

“This is a dream; I just entered it,” said Luna.

“Oh, this is a dream?” said Gilda. “Suddenly a lot of things make sense. Or rather, the fact things don’t make sense makes sense. It was a bit odd everyone called me Jack for some reason.”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“Oh, I’m this samurai from the past, but then I went into the future, but evil has taken over in the meantime, so I have to find a way back…” Gilda stopped as she saw Luna staring at her. “Look, I would’ve rather had a continuation of that other dream series I was having! But I don’t get to control it!”

“Dream series?” asked Luna in confusion.

“My dreams are usually serialized,” said Gilda. “They end with a ‘To Be Continued…’ and then the next dream picks up where it left off, sometimes with a recap in case I forgot what happened. Well, okay, not this particular series we’re in now, as there isn’t really all that much continuity.”

“You dream in a series,” said Luna flatly.

“Doesn’t everyone?” asked Gilda. “Anyway, my preferred dream series was this one where there are these giant monsters called Neighbors that invade, and everyone uses these things called Triggers to fight them, which let you form weapons and shields to fight…” Gilda trailed off yet again as she noticed the expression on Luna’s face. “Hey, it’s really great once you get past the early parts! Lots of intelligent tactics are involved! A whole lot better than that one with the ninjas. That one was decent at first, but then the guys with the magic eyeballs got way too overpowered.”

I should know better than to ask for more information on things like this, thought Luna to herself. “At any rate, we need to find the Tantabus. It should appear as some kind of corrupting influence.”

“Not sure how that would happen,” said Gilda. “This dream series already has Achoo, the shapeshifting master of darkness, as the ruler of the world. It’s actually a pretty dark setting if you stop to think about it, but the action tends to cover that up. But maybe if we continue on the episodic quest that’s standard for each episode, we’ll find it anyway!”

One epic quest with lots of action but essentially zero character development later…

“So, all that and you ended up not actually getting any closer to the goal?” asked Luna.

“Oh, that’s fairly typical,” said Gilda. “I have an adventure, but it ends up not mattering, making the whole thing feel like filler. Still, no sign of this Tantabus.”

Just then, a stallion wearing a suit walked up to them. “Greetings!” he said. “I’m the network executive. I’m just here to mention that this dream series is being cancelled.”

“Wait, what?” asked a confused Luna.

“Unfortunately, this dream hasn’t been performing very well in the 6-11 demographic,” he said, “so we’re pulling the plug. Sorry.”

“Really?” asked Gilda. “Not even the opportunity to make a conclusion?”

He shrugged. “Well, maybe if you had actually been working towards a conclusion rather than wasting time with filler for all this time, you would’ve actually reached it.”

“Fair point,” said Gilda. “Oh well, at least I’ve got that one with the triggers.”

“Actually,” he said, “that one is getting cancelled also. It was getting a bit too close to catching up to where the source material is, and the ratings weren’t quite high enough to warrant another filler arc to prevent that. But don’t worry! We’ll have hundreds more episodes of that ninja dream series!”

“Darn it, all the good dreams end up cancelled,” complained Gilda.

“Wait!” said Luna. “That’s it! That is the effect the Tantabus is having! It is canceling the dreams! I am not sure how that even works, but it’s happening!” She blasted the executive with a spell, causing the aforementioned Tantabus to fly out of him and into the sky. It quickly created another portal and flew through it, with Luna following.

“So, where does this leave us?” asked Gilda.

“Well, if you want, maybe we can try for a revival a few years from now?” suggested the executive.

“I don’t care about this one,” said Gilda. “I want that one with the guy who used his nose hairs to attack. That was freaking hilarious.”

“And do you know what the best thing about being rich is?” asked Flam.

“No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” said Flim in a resigned voice.

Flam gestured towards the extremely large amount of gold. “Diving through it like a porpoise! Burrowing through it like a gopher! And tossing it up so it hits me on the head!”

“I suppose that is something somepony can do with three cubic acres of money,” muttered Flim.

“Oh, you’re just saying that because you’re jealous,” said Flam. “As I’m the rich one and you’re not. By the way, where are Suri, Zuri, and Luri anyway? Those three are usually more happy to go on my crazy shenanigans across the globe to find treasure.”

“Wait a minute,” said Flim, “do you feel like we’ve gone through this before, just with our spots reversed?”

“Not particularly,” said Flam. “I think I would have known if you had ended up with the wealth instead of me.”

“Hrm,” said Flim.

There was an awkward pause.

“What’s the matter?” said Flam.

“For some reason, I had the feeling somepony was supposed to show up,” said Flim. “Perhaps they simply overlooked us.”

“Halt, evildoer!” declared Mare Do Well. “Your doing of evil ends today! Or at least will be suspended for a length of time equal to the time you spend in prison!”

“It’s too late!” said Tirek. “As I absorb the power of–”

Tirek found himself interrupted by Mare Do Well smacking him in the face. “Hey! I was in the middle of powering up!” he protested.

“Exactly!” said Mare Do Well. “And one of my superpowers is the ability to attack the villain while they are in their transformation or powerup sequence! It’s a surprisingly rare superpower.” This statement was followed by quite a bit of punching Tirek, causing him to fall over.

“Admittedly,” said Mare Do Well, “that latter part doesn’t tend to apply much in the comic books itself. But this isn’t part of the comics, so I can get as violent as necessary!”

Luna emerged from a portal. “Mare Do Well?” she asked.

“Yes, indeed, Mare Do Well!” declared Mare Do Well as she landed next to Luna. “Champion of justice! Defender of the helpless! And–”

“Are you Lightning Dust?” asked Luna.

“Mare Do Well has no secret identity! She is only Mare Do Well!” declared Mare Do Well. “But, yeah, as this is a dream—I think—I totally am Lightning Dust. You can get away with some crazy stuff when it’s outside of canon. Did you know that in this alternate continuity, my super strength came from being bitten by a radioactive gorilla?”

“No,” said Luna bluntly. “However, the important thing is we find the Tantabus, which has apparently escaped into this dream.”

“Have no fear!” declared Lightning Dust. “Mare Do Well is here! Evil shall never triumph!”

Tirek suddenly got up and smashed Lightning Dust into the ground.

“But, you know, there’s an exception to everything, even the claim there’s an exception to everything,” said Lightning Dust with a groan.

Lightning Dust got back up and went back to fighting Tirek. After a fight that would have probably been impressive if animated or in live-action but would feel lame if reduced solely to text, she managed to knock him down again. “Ha!” she declared. “Good triumphs yet again!”

“And?” said Tirek.

“And what?” asked Lightning Dust curiously.

“What are you planning to do now? I doubt you can imprison me with the power I currently have, and it’s not like punching me really hard would somehow make me lose all of it. I’ll just get back up and continue on my rampage in short order.”

“I…” Lightning Dust trailed off.

“Of course,” said Tirek idly, “you could just kill me. But that would be awfully dark, to essentially execute me. That could lead down a path to darkness, possibly culminating into you fighting another hero for contrived reasons that is then resolved by your mothers having the same name.”

“Oh no!” said Lightning Dust. “It’s happening! We’re getting darker and edgier!”

Another pegasus suddenly flew up to her. “Maybe this is bad timing, but I’m here to notify you that due to a really bad accident, your sidekick has gotten paralyzed and is going to have to go around in a wheelchair permanently. But maybe he can get a spin-off where he fights crime from a computer?”

“Noooooo!” screamed Lightning Dust. She paused. “Wait, what’s a computer again?”

“Aha!” said Luna. “That is the Tantabus’s effect on your dream! It is making it… well, whatever it was you said.

“Darker and edgier,” said Lightning Dust sadly.

Luna blasted Tirek into smithereens.

“That was kind of violent,” said Lightning Dust.

“It is a dream,” pointed out Luna. “It doesn’t matter if it gets ‘darker and edgier.’”

“Hrm, good point,” said Lightning Dust. “I guess we can always fix it with a reboot if necessary.”

Tantabus emerged from the surprisingly non-bloody remains of Tirek. Luna tried attacking it, but it simply dodged and opened up yet another portal.

“This is getting awfully repetitive,” muttered Luna to herself as she followed it.

“…though I believe we can fight fire with fire,” said Abacus Cinch. “I’ve seen what your device can do, Sunset. Containing magical energy is fine, but have you considered releasing it?”

“Outside of a highly controlled environment to try to prevent mass chaos and destruction? Not particularly,” said a humanoid Sunset.

“But you’d like to,” continued Cinch. “And since our opponents have already used it to stay competitive, I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same. Unless, of course, you have no interest in Everton. Though, honestly, I think there’s more knowledge packed in that little device than any independent study program could offer.”

“Well, actually–” started Sunset prior to being cut off by an off screen orchestra starting up. “Why is there a band practicing?” she asked, but further pondering was cut off by Cinch singing:

“I realize that you’ve always been an outcast
It's not everyone at school who likes to think
To find a student that’s like you
I've had one or maybe two
But the good ones disappear before I blink”

Sunset stared blankly at Cinch, then shrugged and pulled out her cell phone. “Whatever,” she muttered to herself as the song continued, “I’m just going to play Angry Birds until you finish.”

Part of a song later…

“What I’m suggesting’s very simple
And since it’s win-win on all–”

Cinch and the Shadowbolts (Crystal Prep versions) suddenly stopped their singing when they noticed Sunset was paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to them. “Sunset, I’m talking to you,” said Cinch in an irritated tone.

“Yeah, yeah, release the magic to try to help you win,” said Sunset dismissively without looking up from her game. “I spy a number of problems with your brilliant plan. First, there is no guarantee it would even help us at all; it could indeed hurt us. It would be far more intelligent to wait until midway through the next game and only unleash it if we’re losing. In fact, did it really help out the Wondercolts? It seemed more like it just caused a bunch of chaos that didn’t help anyone. And why are you so nonchalant about it? We had giant plants attacking.”

“Listen, Sunset,” said Cinch in a deadly voice, “if you don’t do what I say, I will make sure to deny your submission to Everton–”

“And that’s another thing I’ve been thinking about,” continued Sunset in a bored tone, still not looking up from her game. “Your claim was that you had all this power due to reputation due to always winning the Friendship Games. But these are held every four years and only occur between two schools. I don’t know how long you’ve been the principal, but even if it’s something like 40 years, winning what amounts to ten games isn’t all that impressive. It’s not like this is some kind of tournament with a lot of schools that happens yearly you’ve continually won. I think you either wholly overestimate your importance or are just making it up.”

Frustrated, Cinch grabbed Sunset’s cell phone and threw it to the ground, breaking it.

“Hey!” said Sunset. “I was on track to get a new high score!”

“What’s going on?” asked Luna (alicorn Luna, not human Luna) as she walked in.

“My high score is ruined!” said Sunset. “And I worked really hard on it, too!”

“You are aware this is a dream, right?” asked Luna.

“Really?” said Sunset. “That would explain how things make even less sense than usual.” The rest of the crowd disappeared.

“Why do you and all the rest look so different?” said Luna. “Different body shape, bipedal…”

“I think this is all related to these two random adventures I had in this alternate world I visited,” said Sunset. “They all looked like this.”

“Actually,” said Luna, “this one does have a few of the hallmarks of a vision. Perhaps something similar to this will happen in the future?”

“I sure hope not,” said Sunset. “I do not want to ruin a high score on my game.”

“Wait,” said Luna. “Your nightmare was just not getting the high score on a game?”

“It was very distressing!” snapped Sunset.

Tantabus suddenly emerged from the broken cell phone and flew off. Sunset picked it up. “Hey, it’s working again!” she said. “Even if this is all just a dream, I could still use it as practice for getting that new high score in real life.” Sunset looked up and saw that Luna had taken off after Tantabus and the two went through another portal. “Well, her loss,” said Sunset with a shrug as she returned to the game.

Luna emerged from the portal to find Trixie watching Soarin and Lightning Dust make out with each other very vigorously.

“Hooray!” said Trixie. “Yet another successful shipping.”

“Shipping?” asked Luna.

“Well, of course,” said Trixie. “I totally ship SoarinDust. OTP.”

“Ship? OTP?” asked Luna, feeling even more confused than she had in all of the previous dreams put together.

“OTP is one true pairing,” said Trixie. “Shipping is when you take two people you think would make a great couple and put them together.”

“So… does this ‘shipping’ just involve them kissing, or is there more to it?”

“Oh, you came in late,” said Trixie. “You missed all of the really great romantic buildup to this moment. Anyway, SoarinDust might be the OTP, but I also totally support Sombralis, Flashimmer, Dislestia, and Lunamac.”

“Wait, why is my name in there?” asked Luna. “What is this ‘Lunamac’?”

“Oh, that’s you and Big McIntosh.”

“Who?” asked Luna, knowing this was all going to lead somewhere painful, but still knowing she had to ask.

“Applejack’s brother. I think he works for the government,” said Trixie.

“I don’t even know him!” said Luna. “How would I be in a relationship?”

“It’s okay,” said Trixie in a kindly tone. “I know the age difference makes it seem awkward to some. But don’t worry. I won’t judge you for that kind of thing.”

I am going to have such a headache when this is all over, thought Luna to herself.

“Wait,” said Trixie, “why did Lightning Dust just disappear? Why is Rainbow Dash showing up? Oh no! Now Rainbow Dash and Soarin are the ones making out! It’s SoarinDash! This is horrible!”

“Why are you describing what’s going on as if I can’t see it for myself?” asked Luna.

“What if you spontaneously went blind?” asked Trixie. “Then you’d need to know.” She paused. “Oh no! Now Fluttercord is showing up! Clearly, something is having a sinister effect on this dream to come up with those nonsensical ships! Why would anypony prefer SoarinDash over SoarinDust? Or Fluttercord over Dislestia?”

Luna blasted the apparently happy couples with magic, causing them to disappear and making Tantabus reveal itself. “Now we have you, Tantabus!” she declared dramatically.

However, Tantabus simply expanded, and…

Everyone woke up. “So, did it work?” asked Sunset.

“I am sorry,” said Luna, “but I failed. It will be back to infect your dreams the next time you sleep.”

“Oh, it infected the dreams?” said Trixie. “Huh.”

“How do you not remember that?” asked Luna.

“It’s not that easy to remember dreams!” said Trixie. “I can’t remember mine at all. Though for some reason I feel like I should try to set up Fluttershy and Discord on a date. Weird.”

“All I remember was there being a lot of gold,” said Flim.

“Great minds dream like!” said Flam. “That’s also all I remember!”

“I remember my dream,” said Gilda. “I was a samurai in the future and then my dream got cancelled.”

Everyone stared blankly at Gilda.

“It made more sense in context?” said Gilda.

“And you will see bad things like that again and again, every night, until it grows powerful enough to infect the waking world,” said Luna sorrowfully. “After what I did as Nightmare Moon, the fact that I am once again responsible for harming others is more than I can bear.”

“You’re just a bundle of laughs, aren’t you?” asked Gilda.

“Would it be humorous if I were to take that phrase overly literally?” wondered Trixie out loud.

“No,” said Gilda.

“I thought so,” said Trixie sadly.

“There is still a chance to catch it before it is too late,” said Luna, “but unfortunately it has been made more difficult. Trixie’s dream involved several other ponies, which could lead the Tantabus to entering their dreams as well. Also, Trixie? You should consider seeing a psychologist.”

“Okay, I’m considering it,” said Trixie. After a pause, she added, “Nah, I don’t think I need it.”

“It gets worse,” said Luna. “Infecting all those dreams gives it more and more power. Soon it will be able to escape into the real world and infect Equestria with a nightmare plague! And it will be even harder now to find, because it could spread to a few more.”

“Oh, so like a needle in a haystack?” asked Suri.

“No, that would be easy,” said Luna. “A simple metal-finding spell would get it for you.”

“Well, just do the same thing with this, and give everypony involved the same dream,” suggested Flam.

“How does that relate to a metal-finding spell?” asked Gilda.

“I’ll admit,” said Flam with a frown, “I didn’t really think that analogy through very well. But still, wouldn’t that shared dream work, at least if you could do it?”

“I could create a shared dream,” said Luna. “But because some of those individuals are a ways away, it would take considerable power. I haven’t done anything like that before…”

“Well, it’s worth a try,” said Flim. “I do want to get all that gold back.”

“Well, I cannot allow the Tantabus to escape into the real world,” said Luna. “So all of you must now go back to sleep and hope I can create such a dream. First, however, did any of you happen to dream of anypony else besides Trixie? I do not think the weird bipedal creatures that appeared in Sunset’s dream would count, as they were apparently from an alternate universe.”

“Chrysalis popped up in my dream,” said Suri. “She was a romantic rival for Duke What’s-His-Face.”

Luna groaned. “Well, get back to sleep and let us try again.”

One magic spell and several acts of falling asleep later…

“Here we are in dream Ponyville!” declared Trixie.

“I kind of figured that out,” said Sunset grumpily.

“Does it really have to just be about regular Ponyville?” said Suri. “Couldn’t we have a bit more pizzazz and be in a more exciting place?”

“The world—which includes us—might be in peril, and you’re complaining about the lack of pizzazz?” asked Sunset.

“Well, obviously somepony has to,” said Suri. “Besides, don’t underestimate the importance of pizzazz! It could save your life one day.”

“Heh, pizzazz,” said Lightning Dust. “That’s such a weird-sounding word. In fact, I just noticed that if you replace the Z’s with–”

“Don’t care,” interrupted Gilda. “Well, let’s find that Tantabus. Get that metal-finding spell ready and take it out.”

“The metal-finding spell was part of that needle in a haystack analogy,” said Luna. “It does not mean it will find the Tantabus.”

“Well, when we do, at least I’m ready,” said Gilda as she pulled out a rocket launcher. “Best of all, because this is a dream, I’m pretty sure I’ve got unlimited shots on this thing!”

“Do we need a tracking spell anyway?” asked Flim. “Don’t we just figure out where the bad warping of the dreams is and go there?”

“I say use a metal-finding spell to look for gold!” said Flam. “Obviously Tantabus would steal the gold as part of the nightmare, and we could get it. And if it doesn’t, then we’d have gold! It’s win-win!”

“But the gold isn’t real,” said Sunset. “It’s just in your dream.”

“I’ll admit,” said Flam, “that dream gold to real gold doesn’t have a particularly effective conversion rate.”

“Hello, everypony!” declared Discord as he suddenly popped up out of nowhere. “You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing!”

“Relaxing on the beach in great weather, but being trapped on a deserted island with anti-teleportation magic with a bunch of piranhas preventing you from leaving normally?” asked Trixie.

“Ha!” said Discord. “You guessed wrong. It was a bunch of sharks, not piranhas!”

“Are you sure they were sharks, and not just super giant piranhas?” said Trixie.

“Hrm,” said Discord, “maybe I should double check. Hang on a minute.” Discord slapped himself and disappeared.

“Wait, where did he go?” asked Flim.

“I think he woke himself up to go check on that,” said Lightning Dust. “In the meantime, how about we find that Tantabus?”

And so the group went to try to search for Tantabus. But in the dream world, you don’t find Tantabus; Tantabus finds you! And indeed, Tantabus showed up rather suddenly.

“So!” said Sunset. “What’s the plan for dealing with it?”

“Plan?” asked Luna.

“You decided to go and fight it without a plan?” asked Sunset incredulously.

“I was in a hurry!”

“When in doubt, use brute force!” declared Gilda as she pointed her rocket launcher at the mist and fired. However, Tantabus simply changed its shape to create a large hole in its center that the launcher harmlessly passed through. “Well, okay, maybe brute force isn’t always the answer.”

“I will engage it,” said Luna as she and Tantabus entered a battle so epic, so amazing, so spectacular, that words cannot describe it, and thus the prose will not attempt to do so. However, Tantabus also used the opportunity to cause various havoc to occur in the town, which resulted in a not-quite-so-epic, not-quite-so-amazing, and not-quite-so-spectacular battle, which therefore will be transcribed. It began with Tantabus enchanting the houses to come to life and attack!

“Oh no!” said Trixie. “It’s enchanted the houses to come to life and attack. Even worse, it’s caused the narration to use awkwardly placed exclamation marks!”

No one else understood what Trixie was talking about, but that didn’t matter! The group fought the evil houses and other various threats valiantly using all kinds of crazy dream powers! Lightning Dust turned into Mare Do Well! Flim and Flam gained the ability to suck money out of the enemies, which caused said enemies to turn into diamonds! (it made slightly more sense in context) Trixie copied herself into so many copies that the dream temporarily crashed and had to be rebooted, resetting it to the last saved state, which was the start of this paragraph!

No one else understood what Trixie was talking about, but that didn’t matter! The group fought the evil houses and other various threats valiantly using all kinds of crazy dream powers! Lightning Dust turned into Mare Do Well! Flim and Flam gained the ability to suck money out of the enemies, which caused said enemies to turn into diamonds! (it made slightly more sense in context) Trixie was more careful this time around, creating a lower number of copies that did not overclock the system! And other crazy things happened as well! But nothing seemed to actually make progress in the fight because it was all just an excuse to have crazier than usual stuff happen! Then, suddenly, Discord appeared!

“Okay, we were both right. Turns out they were half-piranha, half-shark,” he said.

“Kind of busy here!” said Trixie.

“Oh, I noticed,” said Discord as he gazed absentmindedly on the battle. “It’s actually quite nice chaos. But in the midst of all this chaos, I’d actually be the straight man if I acted like I normally do. So I figured that by acting bored and uninterested in this context, I’d end up being the opposite.”

Discord realized that no one was paying attention to his musings. “Darn it, no one appreciates comedy theory,” he muttered to himself. “Fine, I’ll help out.” And so he also joined the battle. However, his addition caused this part of the battle, also, to be so epic it defied anything more than the most general of descriptions. The epicness went on for a while, without any side apparently making much progress.

“I do have a question,” said Flam. “There were supposedly more who were in our dreams and thus would be here, like Chrysalis. Do you know where they might be? Maybe they could help.”

In response, Tantabus suddenly turned into Chrysalis. “Ha!” she said. “I was Chrysalis all along!”

“Chrysalis was always a dream-controlling evil parasite?” said Suri. “Well, I guess that makes some kind of sense.”

“Actually,” said Chrysalis as she turned back into Tantabus, “I’m just screwing with you. I have nothing to do with Chrysalis.”

“Well, it certainly acts enough like the real thing,” said Gilda.

“I cannot hold this dream together much longer,” said Luna in a strained voice as the epic battle continued. “Equestria will fall because of me.”

“Huh,” said Flam. “Did Tantabus just get bigger after she said that?”

“Aha!” said Trixie. “Clearly, Tantabus is feeding off of depression! Quick, everypony! Get some antidepressants!”

“I think it feeding off of guilt is more plausible than depression,” said Sunset.

“Ridiculous,” said Trixie. “What do I have to feel guilty for?”

“I mean Luna,” said Sunset crossly.

“Why would I feel guilty about Luna?”

“I’m just going to ignore you,” said Sunset. She turned to Luna. “Is there anything you feel guilty about?”

“Hello, loyal subjects!” declared Chrysalis as she suddenly jumped onto the scene while the epic battle continued unabated in the background. “Have no fear! Everyone’s favorite monarch is here!”

“Oh no,” said Luna with a groan.

“Oh, come now,” said Chrysalis, “you’re almost acting like you’re not happy to see me. And I even brought a gift!” She pulled out a sandwich and gave it to Luna. “Ta-da!”

“A sandwich?” asked Luna in disbelief.

“Hey, my sandwiches are great!” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, am I correct in my guess that is this some kind of shared dream put together by Luna in order to find an evil smoke monster that’s terrorizing dreams and could, if it gains too much power, escape from dreams and wreak havoc in the real world?”

“That’s a… surprisingly accurate guess,” said Suri.

“There’s a reason why whenever I played 20 Questions, we had to reduce it down to 10 Questions so that I wouldn’t automatically win every time!” said Chrysalis smugly. “Anyway, what were you saying?”

“What I was saying,” said Sunset, “is that I think it was feeding off of Luna’s guilt.”

“If that is so,” said Luna, “then perhaps that is how it grew strong enough to escape in the first place!”

“Huh?” asked Flim.

“I created the Tantabus to give myself the same nightmare every night,” said Luna as she continued her struggle in the fight, “to punish myself for the evil I caused as Nightmare Moon!”

There was a brief pause. “Two questions,” said Sunset grumpily. “First, is there any reason you didn’t just tell us this critical piece of information to begin with?”

“Now that you mention it,” said Luna, “that probably would have made more sense.”

“Second,” said Sunset, “why would you do something like that?”

“To make sure I never forgave myself for how much Equestria suffered because of me!” declared Luna. “But it seems I have not learned my lesson, for now I have only made you suffer more!” she added in a forlorn tone.

“Fine, whatever,” said Sunset. “You made it, so can’t you stop it? If it gets strong because you feel bad, then just stop feeling bad about it.”

“Seems like a great idea!” said Gilda. “I make it a point to never feel bad about anything I do.”

“But how can I forgive myself?” asked Luna. “I am no better now than I was then. My creation is about to turn the world into a living nightmare!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Chrysalis. “So you felt so bad about that whole Nightmare Moon thing that you made this Tantabus creature in order to punish yourself?”

“Yes,” said Luna.

Chrysalis appeared confused. “Why would you ever do that?”

“I just said why,” said Luna. “It was to punish myself.”

“No,” said Chrysalis, “I mean, why would you ever think you needed additional punishment? You’re my personal assistant! That should be punishment enough for anyone.”

“That’s… a good point,” said Luna in a surprised tone.

“Of course,” added Chrysalis, “if you feel it’s not punishment enough, I can cancel your next vacation.”

“No, no,” said Luna quickly, “you were right. I don’t need any additional punishment.”

“Great!” said Chrysalis as she turned to Tantabus. “You hear that? You can just scurry off now. I can do your job way better than you can.”

And so Tantabus was defeated, leaving them all standing around awkwardly.

“So… any ideas what to do while we wait for us to all wake up?” asked Suri.

Rainbow Dash and Soarin approached the group. “Oh, darn it, did we miss the whole thing?” asked Rainbow Dash. “We ran into Fluttershy, who was here for some reason, and tried to help her out before entering the battle. But it looks like it finished by the time we got here.”

“You know, seeing you two together makes me realize something,” said Trixie. “Forget SoarinDust! I don’t know what I was thinking there!”

“SoarinDust?” asked Soarin.

“Don’t ask,” said Luna wearily.

“Clearly, SoarinDash is what I should have been asking for all along!” said Trixie. “I say you two should get together as a romantic couple! You’d be so cute together!”

Rainbow Dash and Soarin shared a quick glance. “You should probably know that–” started Rainbow Dash, but because this is not a shipping story, she was interrupted by Chrysalis, leaving it unclear whether she was going to say that they were already in a relationship with each other, that one or both was in a relationship with someone else, that they simply weren’t interested in a romantic relationship with each other for some other reason, or some variation of ‘ooga booga chooga.’

“I’ve got a great idea!” said Chrysalis. “Let’s do a singalong! Because it’s a dream, I can even put up lyrics so you can sing along with me! We can all be Singalong Buddies! Let’s go!” Chrysalis started singing.

“This day is going to be perfect
The kind of day of which I’ve dreamed since I was small
Everypony will gather round, say I look lovely in…”

Chrysalis trailed off as she noted everyone else had woken themselves up to get away from her. “Darn it, no one appreciates the art of the singalong anymore,” she said dejectedly.

Sunset got up, rubbing her head. “Well, at least that adventure is over.”

“Oh, did we win?” asked Trixie.

“You were there!” said Sunset.

“I can never remember my dreams,” said Trixie. “Did somepony say ‘ooga booga chooga’ in it? I feel like I remember that part.”

“No, Trixie, nopony said ‘ooga booga chooga,’” said Sunset. “But you did try to get Soarin and Rainbow Dash together.”

“I did? Who are they?” asked Trixie curiously.

“You don’t remember them from that time we were trying to qualify Ponyville for the Equestria Games?” said Lightning Dust.

“Oh, those two,” said Trixie after thinking for a short while. “Why would I try to get them together, though? I barely know them. Are you sure you’re remembering things correctly?”

“Ugh, never mind,” said Sunset. “By the way, did Chrysalis’s song seem familiar to any of you?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Odd,” said Sunset, “I thought I had heard it somewhere before. Well, I’m just glad to be done with that. I know our adventures tend to be really stupid, but that was pretty crazy even by our usual standards.”

“It did seem to have a rather odd and sudden conclusion,” said Lightning Dust.

Manehattan Made

It was a dark and stormy night. Or rather, it would have been, if not for the fact it was the middle of the day and there were no clouds in the sky. “What a nice day!” declared Lightning Dust.

Lightning Dust’s outer monologue was interrupted by her cutie mark suddenly shining. “Huh,” she said. “That’s new. Is it a sign I’m gaining superpowers?”

Lightning Dust saw a doctor, who assured her that she was not, in fact, gaining superpowers, but to come back in several days if the problem had not disappeared. Dejected, she went back to the castle to do what she often did in times like this: Complain about the situation to Sunset. However, much to her surprise, Sunset’s cutie mark was also glowing. “Why is your cutie mark glowing?” asked Lightning Dust.

Sunset started to answer, but was momentarily interrupted by Lightning Dust. “I can tell you that you’re probably not gaining superpowers, if that’s what you were wondering about.”

“No, I did not think it was giving me superpowers,” said Sunset. “It’s a sign that we should look at the map.”

“Really?” asked Lightning Dust. “It didn’t happen last time.”

“Because we were all in the room at the time,” said Sunset. “And when it happened the second time, you were out of town, so you weren’t aware of it then. Though it would be nice if you remembered considering I told you about it afterwards.”

“I often kind of zone out when you’re talking,” said Lightning Dust. “I might have missed it.”

“Are you at least listening now?” asked Sunset.

“Listening? Oh, yeah, sure,” said Lightning Dust in an absentminded tone.

I can’t tell if she’s messing with me or is being serious, thought Sunset to herself. “Well, in any case, let’s go take a look.”

The two went to look at the map, where their cutie marks were hovering over Manehattan.

“Did you really have to drag me here?” asked Lightning Dust. “Couldn’t you have just said the cutie marks were floating above Manehattan?”

“Manehattan is a big city!” said Sunset. “I was hoping maybe you had more clue where the money-making tip was supposed to lead us!”

“Are you sure this thing leads us to where we could make money?” asked Lightning Dust. “Maybe that’s just coincidental.”

“Whoever was sent to the previous places ended up richer as a result,” said Sunset. “But, hey, if you don’t want some extra cash…”

“Actually, I’m not really strapped for that,” said Lightning Dust. “My net worth is actually rather high.”

“How high?” asked Sunset.

“Hrm,” said Lightning Dust as she took out a pen, some paper, then did some calculations before circling a number. “According to my calculations, it’s this.” She held it up.

“Wait,” said Sunset, “you’re that rich? You’ve got all this cash? Why didn’t you ever give any to me?”

“I don’t think you ever asked,” said Lightning Dust.

“I didn’t think you had that much money!”

“Why wouldn’t the owner of half of the world’s most popular comic franchise have a high net worth?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Well, now I am asking,” said Sunset. “Can I have some of that?”

“Well, the truth is, while I might be worth a lot, it’s not really liquid assets,” said Lightning Dust. “It’s all based on my equity.”

“Whatever!” said Sunset. “I guess there’s no point in going if we don’t even know where to look!”

“Hrm,” said Lightning Dust. “Did you try checking the instruction manual? Maybe there’s a zoom option.”

“It didn’t come with an instruction manual!” said Sunset. “Remember?”

“Do you remember the part I said about often zoning out when you’re talking?” said Lightning Dust. “That might have been when you said it. When I was zoning out, I mean.”

Sunset muttered to herself in a frustrated tone.

“Did you check the refrigerator?” suggested Lightning Dust.

“Why would it be in the refrigerator?” asked Sunset.

“Trixie told me that was where the instruction manual for that portal ended up being,” said Lightning Dust. “Maybe you’d find it for this as well.”

“It would be incredibly stupid if it turned out to be in the refrigerator of all places,” said Sunset.

A short time later…

“I can’t decide if it being in the freezer was more or less stupid than the possibility of being in the refrigerator,” said Sunset.

“Okay!” said Lightning Dust as she inspected the manual. “It looks like this is the instruction manual for an older version of the map, so it might be a bit out of date on some parts. Like when it suggests contacting Clover the Clever for troubleshooting.”

“Does it at least mention a zoom in function?” asked Sunset wearily.

“Uh, let’s see,” said Lightning Dust as she flipped through the book. “It says ‘zoom in function currently unavailable. This will be added in the next update.’ So I’m guessing that because this is dated, a zoom in function was added at some point later and would be included in our map.”

“That’s not particularly useful if it doesn’t tell us where it is! Is it a button or something? If so, where?”

“Maybe it’s voice commands,” said Lightning Dust. She turned to the map. “Uh… zoom in?” Nothing happened. “Hrm. Maybe it’s a different command?”

“What would it be besides ‘zoom in’?” asked Sunset. “Boom in?”

At that, a small fireworks display suddenly appeared above the map before disappearing. “I’m not sure if that’s more or less stupid than if that had caused it to zoom in,” said Sunset.

“Wait!” said Lightning Dust. “I’ve got it! Remember back when Chrysalis was telling you about it? She remarked that ‘the tree was probably a bit dyslexic. It’s my understanding that’s a common problem for them.’ Remember that?”

“Wait, how did you even know that conversation?” asked Sunset. “You weren’t even in the room!”

“Gilda was there, and she told me,” said Lightning Dust.

“I was on a cell phone!”

“Gilda has very good hearing.”

“Fine!” said Sunset. “What’s your point? The tree is dyslexic. So what?”

“Well, first,” said Lightning Dust as she cleared her throat, “I need to make it clear that this is not meant to make fun of dyslexia at all, nor is it a particularly accurate depiction of such. Dyslexia is a legitimate learning disability that some suffer from, and it is wrong to mock them for–”

“What are you doing?” asked Sunset.

“Treating my life as if it were a Mare Do Well comic,” said Lightning Dust. “That’s totally the sort of thing she would say.”

“Just get to the point.”

Lightning Dust sighed. “How about just saying ‘in zoom’?”

The map suddenly zoomed in. Sunset stared at it in shock. “Wait, that worked?” she asked incredulously. After a short pause, she added, “The real question is, why am I even surprised at this point?”

“Surprised that I figured it out?” asked Lightning Dust.

“No,” said Sunset. “Surprised that the solution was something that seemed incredibly stupid.”

“Oh, please,” said Lightning Dust. “Stupid is in the eye of the beholder! It’s all subjective!”

“That is one of the stupidest things I have heard,” said Sunset.

“Exactly!” said Lightning Dust. “You think it’s stupid, but that’s just your subjective opinion.”

“Okay, I’m going to cut this painful conversation short,” said Sunset. “Let’s just go to this place already and do our stuff so that I can maybe get some more cash out of this.”

“Sounds great!” said Lightning Dust. “It feels like we never get to hang out together without the company of the rest of our group! It’ll be just you and me, two friends against the world in an effort to maximize our profits!”

“I think the word ‘friend’ is a bit of a stretch,” said Sunset.

“Two semi-friends against the world in an effort to maximize our profits!” said Lightning Dust.

“Good enough,” muttered Sunset.

One trip to Manehattan later…

“Okay!” said Lightning Dust. “According to this map I took from a highly trustworthy source, we should be looking for the Manehattan Park!”

“What was this ‘highly trustworthy’ source?” asked Sunset.

“It was highly trustworthy!” said Lightning Dust. “Let’s go! The park should be… right in front of us.” Lightning Dust put down the map and saw there was a big sign saying ‘Welcome to Manehattan Park!’ In smaller text underneath, ‘Not to be Confused with Man Hating Pork’ was added. “See? I told you the map was highly trustworthy!”

The two entered the park, only to find it in a massive state of disrepair. “Maybe there’s gold hidden here somewhere that hasn’t been noticed because of the state of disrepair?” suggested Sunset.

“Hrm,” said Lightning Dust. “Well, if I were a professional detective in charge of figuring this out…”

There was a pause. “Are you going to finish that sentence?” asked Sunset.

“Well, it’s hard to do, because I’m not a professional detective,” said Lightning Dust. “If I were, I’d have the knowledge necessary to figure out what to do. But if I had to wing it, I’d guess we look in… that direction!”

Lightning Dust pointed to the right. The two turned and saw absolutely nothing interesting.

“Okay, let’s try… that direction!” said Lightning Dust as she pointed to the left. Again nothing interesting was shown.

“Well, let’s try… that direction!” said Lightning Dust as she pointed to the right.

“You’re just pointing in the same direction you did in the first suggestion!” said Sunset. “You just turned right, then left, then right again, so you end up facing the same direction.”

“Hrm, maybe you’d be a good professional detective,” said Lightning Dust. “What’s your suggestion?”

“Um…” said Sunset uncertainly.

“I’ve got it!” declared Lightning Dust. “We should go find a professional detective to do it for us!”

Sunset picked up a pamphlet. “Hrm, maybe this has something to do with it. ‘Please help us to restore our long-lost but beloved tradition, the Midsummer Theater Revival. Blah blah guest performance by local theater troupe, blah blah attempt to bring neighbors together, blah blah sense of community, blah blah need help.’ There’s some contact information on it. Apparently the one in charge is somepony named Coco Pommel.”

“Let’s do it!” said Lightning Dust. “Let’s blah blah attempt to bring neighbors together!”

“‘Blah blah attempt to bring neighbors together’?” asked Sunset.

Lightning Dust shrugged. “It’s what you said.”

“Okay, fine,” said Sunset. “More importantly, how would trying to restore a sense of community get us any extra cash?”

Lightning Dust shrugged again. “I didn’t expect overthrowing Starlight to get us gold, either. Let’s go! Seriously, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“That it could all be a trap by aliens that would abduct us, dissect us to death in a slow and torturous fashion, and then use the knowledge they gained to wipe out all life on Equestria,” said Sunset.

Lightning Dust stared at her.

“You asked,” said Sunset.

“All right,” said Sunset as they approached the apartment door, “you let me do the talking.”

“Why can’t I do the talking?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Because you’d probably mess it up,” said Sunset.

“Why do you think I would mess it up?”

“Because you mess things up all the time,” said Sunset.

“Like when?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Like right now,” said Sunset, “when you’re messing up my plan to go and open that door.”

While Lightning Dust tried to puzzle this statement out, Sunset went up to the door and knocked. After a short wait, a light amberish gray-coated earth pony with light cyan eyes and a partially pale, light grayish cyan and partially light opalish gray mane answered the door. “Hello?” she asked.

“Are you Coco Pommel?” asked Sunset.

“Yes?” she said. “Uh-oh. This isn’t about those beans, is it?”

“Um… no,” said Sunset as she held out the flyer. “It’s about this flyer we happened to see.”

“Phew,” said Coco Pommel in relief. “I was starting to worry that I distributed those leaflets in the wrong part of the city, because I wasn’t getting any responses.”

“However, I did have a question,” said Sunset. “What is this Midsummer Theater Revival it mentions that apparently is the reason for fixing up the park?”

“How about we continue this conversation inside?” suggested Coco Pommel. “It feels awkward to just stand here talking about it.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Lightning Dust, “we often end up standing around having conversations while doing nothing. It’s kind of our thing.” She shut up after a quick glare from Sunset, and the two went into the apartment.

“So, what is that Midsummer Theater Revival?” asked Sunset after they had all sat down.

“An outdoor play held at the community park,” said Coco as she showed the two some pictures of such a performance when she was younger. “Many moons ago, local theater troupes would perform, and ponies in the neighborhood would help make the costumes and design set pieces, prepare food to share during the performance.”

“And what happened to stop it?”

“Charity Kindheart, a well-known costume designer on Bridleway, started it up originally,” said Coco. “But later she moved away to be closer to her grandfillies, the neighborhood lost the special tradition she had started, and worse, the sense of community it fostered. I’ve been trying to take her place, but I’ve just gotten a last-minute request to alter costumes for the cast of My Fair Filly, and I'm afraid I haven't made much progress. This seamstress named Rarity was initially helping me, but just her wasn’t enough, and she got an incredibly large order and hasn’t been able to offer much assistance.”

“That name sounds familiar for some reason,” said Sunset.

“In any case,” said Coco with a sigh, “there’s a lot to do in order to bring it all back, and my flyers haven’t attracted any volunteers.”

“So you just need to get volunteers to help out and make the park and stage decent?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Yes, but even with the two of you, there’s so much work to do that–” she started before getting interrupted.

“No problem!” said Lightning Dust. “Let’s go to the park!” She sped off, breaking through the side of the building in the process. Sunset and Coco stared off at the hole in the wall.

“Just for the record,” said Sunset, “I’m pretty sure I’m not legally liable for that.”

The three gazed at the very broken down park. “This might take longer than I thought,” said Sunset.

“The Method Mares are coming to the park tomorrow for a costume fitting and rehearsal,” said Coco. “And I still need to finish the costumes.”

“Why did the Tree of Whatever decide to send us now rather than, I don’t know, a week or longer ago when we would’ve actually had time to fix this?” asked Sunset. “Is the tree a procrastinator?

“The Tree of Whatever?” said Coco.

“Don’t ask,” said Sunset.

“Ha!” said Lightning Dust. “I’ve already figured out a solution! Many hooves make light work, so we just have to get a lot of others to help us out and it’ll be fixed in no time!”

“But how are we going to do that when I wasn’t able to?” asked Coco.

“Because,” said Lightning Dust, “you don’t have what I do!” Lightning Dust held up a megaphone.

“I don’t think that a megaphone will suddenly make everypony want to help,” said Sunset.

“Oh, I wasn’t referring to the megaphone,” said Lightning Dust. “I meant this.” Lightning Dust went to the outside of the park and held up the megaphone. “HI, EVERYPONY! IF YOU VOLUNTEER TO HELP FIX UP THE PARK, YOU’LL GET FREE TICKETS TO AN ADVANCE SCREENING OF THE UPCOMING MARE DO WELL MOVIE!”

A mad stampede of ponies suddenly ran into the park. A very pleased-looking Lightning Dust flew back to Sunset and Coco and then landed next to them. “See? No problem.”

“Yes, that was… very impressive,” said Coco. “While you take care of this, I’m going to have to finish those outfits.”

“I have to admit,” said Sunset after Coco left, “that was a great idea.”

“Good!” said Lightning Dust. “Since I’ve clearly done my part, now it’s up to you to take charge of the cleaning effort to make sure it’s all done in a neat and orderly fashion.”

“Why should I be the one to do it?” asked Sunset.

“Because according to you, I mess things up all the time?”

“Fine,” said Sunset reluctantly.

One cleaning up later…

“Everything looks great!” said Coco. “I have to hand it to you two; you managed to completely solve the problem. Working together even caused everypony to believe more in the community, too, cure the apathy that perpetrated the city.”

“So, I assume for our effort, we’ll get a reasonable percentage of ticket sales?” said Sunset.

Coco appeared confused. “Ticket sales?”

“Yes,” said Sunset flatly, “the act of selling tickets.”

“Oh, we don’t sell tickets,” said Coco. “Admission is free.”

“Admission is free?” asked Sunset in disbelief.

“Indeed!” said Coco. “It’s to demonstrate the importance of community!”

“Then how in the world do you even afford the actors?”

“We usually got them to volunteer,” said Coco. “You’d be surprised how willing they can be able to do so in order to make themselves look good and sell more tickets elsewhere.”

“Well that’s just great!” said Sunset. “How are we supposed to get anything out of this?”

“Hey, I got great exposure for Mare Do Well!” said Lightning Dust. “I’m fine with how everything turned out.”

“Well, I’m not!” snapped Sunset. “What, was I supposed to find some stockbrokers’ tip hidden somewhere in the park? Was that how I’d get some cash?”

“That sounds incredibly stupid,” said Lightning Dust.

“It does,” said Sunset. After a paused, she added, “Well, I’m off to look for a stockbrokers’ tip hidden somewhere in this park.”

“Why?” asked Coco.

“Because based on previous experience, it would turn out to be something like that,” said Sunset.

“Sorry,” said Lightning Dust, “I kind of zoned out there. What did you say you were going to do?”

Sunset stared at Lightning Dust briefly, then walked off.

“Whoops, zoned out again,” said Lightning Dust. “Did she answer my question?”

As much as I appreciate the help, thought Coco to herself, these two are weird.

After a considerable amount of searching, Sunset was unable to find a stockbrokers’ tip hidden somewhere in the park, although she did find several priceless gems and heirlooms. Unfortunately, to her dismay, the ‘priceless’ part turned out to mean they had no worth at all.

“So,” said Lightning Dust after Sunset returned, “any luck?”

“No,” said Sunset. “I’m going to be annoyed if I came all the way here without anything to show for it.”

“Well, did you try reading a Mare Do Well comic?” said Lightning Dust.

“How would that help?”

“I don’t know,” said Lightning Dust. “However, I wouldn’t complain about having another reader!”

“Wait a minute,” said Sunset. “That’s it! I’ve got it!”

“You got inspiration from Mare Do Well?”

“No, that was stupid and had nothing to do with my idea,” said Sunset. “It was just coincidence you showed it to me when I came up with my idea. Anyway, I’ve got stuff to do.” She ran off.

“Well, I’ll admit it,” said Lightning Dust. “That was a decent enough play. Though I do think the script could have used some tweaking, the acting was overly broad, the set design was subpar, the songs were a bit off key, and the props look like they came from a discount costume store. But other than all of that, good play.” She looked around and saw no one was listening to her. “Uh-oh, I’m talking to myself. Isn’t that supposed to be a sign of insanity? I’m not going insane, am I?”

Lightning Dust rushed over to Sunset. “Sunset! I’m not going insane, am I?”

“I am not sure how to respond to that question,” said Sunset. “Though I will say you have a tendency to drive others insane.”

Lightning Dust appeared confused. “Like who?”

“Like me!”

“You’re insane?” asked Lightning Dust. “You know, I always did think there was something not quite right with you…”

“You know what?” asked Sunset. “I am in too good of a mood to let your inanity ruin it.”

“Oh, your plan to make money was a success?”

“Oh, very much so,” said Sunset. “Who cares if the tickets were free? The real money in theater is in the concessions!”

If this were in script format, it would say the camera zoomed out to reveal Sunset was in a concession stand. However, it is not, and will therefore instead be expressed thusly:

“Oh,” said Lightning Dust as she looked at the concession stand Sunset was standing in. “So that was your plan to make money? Sell concessions at the play?”

“I told you it was!”

“Maybe I zoned out again,” said Lightning Dust.

“I’m still refusing to let this ruin my good mood,” said Sunset. “But let’s get out of this city and back to Ponyville before something does ruin my good mood.”

“You mean like the fact that after taxes, you won’t have made quite as much money as you think you did?”

“Yes,” said Sunset in a frustrated tone, “like that.”

Later, in the map room in Ponyville…

“Oh, by the way,” said Lightning Dust. “I just realized I never asked where you got all those concessions from to begin with.”

“I just purchased a lot from Flim and Flam at wholesale price,” said Sunset.

“I’m surprised they sold it to you at that price.”

“Did you zone out at the part where I said I purchased a lot?” asked Sunset. “That’s how wholesale works!”

Just then, Lightning Dust’s cutie mark started flashing again. “Huh,” she said, “another tip from the map?” She looked over and saw the map wasn’t activated. “That’s odd. Why is it flashing if there’s no map?”

And so Lightning Dust went to the doctor again. After several tests, the doctor declared that it was a side effect of radiation exposure that caused her to gain superpowers.

“Oh boy!” said Lightning Dust. “What superpowers?”

“The ability to realize that this is just a dream sequence,” said the doctor.

“I’m not sure I understand–” started Lightning Dust before she was cut off by waking up. “Aw, just a dream? I guess I’ll do what I usually do in times like this: Complain about the situation to Sunset.”

Later…

“I had the weirdest dream,” said Lightning Dust. “We both went to Manehattan and helped fix up the park.”

“Lightning Dust, that did happen,” said Sunset.

“Even the part where my cutie mark started glowing again and I got superpowers afterwards?”

“No,” said Sunset. “Not that part. I think you dreamed that.”

“Did I dream the part where you sold a bunch of concessions?” asked Lightning Dust.

“No,” said Sunset. “That happened.”

“What about–”

“I don’t care! You figure it out!”

And so Lightning Dust tried to figure it out. After a short period of time, she got bored and stopped. As did this chapter.

The Cutie Re-Remark - Part 1

“Good news, everypony!” declared Sunset.

“Is this actually good news, or are you just doing that to try to butter us up for what’s actually bad news?” asked Gilda.

“It’s news that’s so good that I’m not even going to respond to that quip of yours,” said Sunset.

“You just did,” pointed out Gilda.

“It’s news that’s so good you’re not even annoying me with that,” said Sunset. “I think we might finally have a buyer for this castle!”

“Really?” asked Suri. “Who?”

“Unfortunately, their name is smudged on the letter,” said Sunset. “I guess I’ll just ask them when they show up.”

“I can’t wait to get the money from the sale!” said Flim. “I’m going to use mine to further finance my business operations.”

“Huh, so am I,” said Lightning Dust.

“Me as well,” said Trixie. “Or should that be ‘I as well’?”

“Forget business operations,” said Gilda. “I’m going to get that new rocket launcher I saw an ad for.” She held out a magazine. “Look at this specs on this thing! It’s top of the line!”

“Why are you carrying that around?” asked Sunset.

“Mostly just so I can gaze at it,” said Gilda as she stared at the picture of the rocket launcher. “So beautiful…” she said dreamily.

“If you like it so much, why don’t you just marry it?” said Flam.

“Well, first, I don’t think an inanimate object can legally give consent to marry,” said Gilda. “Second, I can’t really stay loyal to just one firearm. So I’d probably go through all those marriages pretty quickly. And I don’t know about you, but I do not want to have to deal with all those divorce proceedings.”

“My brain hurts,” muttered Sunset.

“I’ve heard that’s a sign of dementia,” said Trixie. “Maybe you should get it checked out.”

“And my good mood is rapidly fading,” grumbled Sunset.

“So, when does the buyer get here?” asked Suri.

“They were very eager, so they should be here any moment now.”

An unspecified number of moments later…

“Hello!” said the arriving pony, who was wearing an outfit so large and heavy it was not possible to see what they actually looked like. “I’m here to look at the castle! My name is Ragmill Mightrest.”

“What’s with the outfit?” asked Sunset.

“I’ve just been feeling very cold,” said Ragmill.

“Sure, whatever,” said Sunset. “Anyway, do you need a tour of the castle?”

“Certainly,” said Ragmill. The two left.

“Hrmmmmmmm,” said Gilda ponderously as she watched the two walk off. “Ragmill Mightrest…”

“And here we are in the map room!” said Sunset. “The map activates sometimes to send some of our group off on crazy adventures that seem to end up with us solving some kind of problem and making money doing so. For that reason, it isn’t for sale, but the rest of the castle is.”

“Well–” started Ragmill before being interrupted by Gilda kicking open the door and marching up the two.

“All right, I’ve seen through your game,” said Gilda. “I’m not sure exactly what your goal is, but it stops here!” She pulled out a gun and pointed it at Ragmill.

“Gilda, what are you–” started Sunset.

“Ragmill Mightrest is just an anagram for Starlight Glimmer,” said Gilda. “Watch!” Gilda pulled off Ragmill’s hood, revealing a pony that looked nothing at all like Starlight Glimmer, who promptly sneezed on Gilda.

“Okay,” said Gilda after she lowered her weapon. “This is awkward.”

Ragmill grabbed the hood back and put it on. “Well, this tour has been… interesting. I’ll have to… think about buying.” She ran off quickly.

“Great!” said Sunset. “You might have cost us a customer because of your paranoia over Starlight Glimmer!”

“She was completely covered up and had a name that was an anagram for Starlight Glimmer!” said Gilda. “I thought it was a perfectly logical conclusion.”

“Why in the world do you think Starlight Glimmer would deliberately choose a fake name that’s an anagram for her actual name?” demanded Sunset.

“Um, Sunset–” started Gilda.

“If she were to choose a fake name,” interrupted Sunset, “it would’ve been something that had no apparent connection to her actual name, like Feels Cold!”

“Speaking of–” started Gilda again before getting interrupted.

“Why did you think Starlight Glimmer was suddenly going to show up?!” said Sunset. “If she–”

Gilda didn’t bother saying anything this time. Instead, she grabbed Sunset and turned her around, revealing Starlight Glimmer lounging on one of the chairs.

“Hi, Sunset,” said Starlight nonchalantly. “I was wondering when you’d notice me.”

“How long has she been there?” Sunset asked Gilda.

“It was between the words ‘deliberately’ and ‘choose’ that she came in,” said Gilda.

Sunset sighed. “Well, Starlight, are you here to buy the castle? It is for sale.”

“No, I am not here to buy the castle!” said Starlight. “I’m here to extract my revenge!”

“I guess that was too much to hope for,” muttered Sunset to herself.

“You see,” said Starlight, “ever since you foiled my plans by that whole shapeshifting trick, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out how you could be a changeling. After all, the cutie mark removing spell doesn’t work on them, as they have no actual cutie marks to remove! And so, I started my research by going to–”

“Can you get to the point?” asked Gilda.

“I eventually figured out you’re a hybrid changeling/unicorn due to that whole transformation induced by figuring out that Starswirl spell,” said Starlight. “That’s how you were able to transform like a changeling while having a cutie mark like a pony. And in my research, I was able to discover something else very important about Starswirl!” She levitated up a crumpled up piece of paper. “I won’t need that anymore!” she said as she threw it away. Magic zapped, and a large portal suddenly appeared above her, which she was sucked in.

“That was odd,” said Sunset.

“I agree,” said Gilda as she went over to the piece of paper. “What was this, anyway?” She touched the piece of paper, and suddenly the portal appeared again and started sucking her in. Sunset grabbed Gilda to try to stop her, but only got pulled into it along with her.

Another portal opened elsewhere and unceremoniously spat out Gilda and Sunset. Unfortunately for them, the portal opened up high in the sky. Fortunately for them, the two emerged above a solid roadway on one of the clouds. Unfortunately for them, they fell out a reasonable distance above said road. Fortunately for Gilda, Gilda could fly and was able to simply land. Unfortunately for Sunset, she couldn’t. Fortunately for Sunset, she knew a spell that let her walk on the clouds. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t have time to cast it while in free fall, plus it wouldn’t have eliminated her velocity from the fall. Fortunately for Sunset, she also had transformation abilities, so she transformed into changeling form, used her wings to slow her descent, then transformed back and landed.

“Why are we in Cloudsdale now?” asked Gilda.

“You ask that as if I should have any better idea than you,” said Sunset.

“Oh no!” said Gilda. “I just realized something!”

“What?”

“In all that commotion, I inadvertently dropped my gun! This is terrible!”

“That you don’t have it?” asked Sunset.

“Well, that’s a problem,” said Gilda. “But far worse is the fact that I left it lying there where anyone could grab it! That is such a major violation of gun safety rules!”

“Uh, sure,” said Sunset. “Anyway–”

Gilda grabbed Sunset. “You don’t understand! That’s the sort of thing that can cause accidental gun deaths! And that can lead to gun control laws! We have to go back right now!”

“Gilda, how likely do you think it is that someone would come by who’s even capable of using it? Ponyville is dominated by ponies who can’t use guns thanks to their hooves.”

Gilda sighed. “Fine. But let’s try to deal with this as quickly so we can get back to Ponyville as soon as possible.”

“No arguments there,” said Sunset. “Now let’s just try to figure out why Starlight even came here.”

The two were interrupted by a significantly younger Rainbow Dash suddenly flying by.

“Hey, isn’t that… what was her name again?” asked Sunset. “Prism Bolt?”

“No, it’s Rainbow Dash,” said Gilda.

“Right, Rainbow Dash,” said Sunset. “Did she seem a lot younger to you?”

“Maybe she’s discovered the fountain of youth,” said Gilda. “Come on! Let’s go ask her where it is so we can use it to get young too!”

“Do you think it’s possible we traveled back in time?”

“Oh, come on,” said Gilda. “The fountain of youth thing makes much more sense.”

“Well,” said Sunset as she pointed at a similarly young Fluttershy, “do you think she found the fountain of youth also?”

“It’s a possibility!” said Gilda.

Sunset pointed at several other ponies they had seen at some point previously who were now much younger. “And all of them?”

“If they all used the fountain of youth, then… hang on,” said Gilda as she looked more closely at the piece of paper she was holding. “Oh, this is labeled a time travel spell. I suppose the time travel thing is more plausible.”

Sunset grabbed the piece of paper from Gilda and inspected it. “Wait, I think I read about this spell before. But I thought it could only send you back a week?”

“Why are you asking me?” said Gilda. “All I know about magic is that the rules aren’t consistent and seem to be made up as they go along.”

“Let’s just see if we can find Starlight,” said Sunset. “Maybe then we can figure out how to undo the spell.”

Sunset and Gilda looked around but couldn’t find squat. This made sense, as squat was not a fruit that grew in Cloudsdale. More pertinently, however, they could not find Starlight either.

“Well, I’ve got nothing,” said Gilda. “Might as well go watch that race those foals are having.”

“Why would I care about that?” asked Sunset.

“It’d pass the time,” said Gilda.

“Fine, sure.”

The two went over to watch Rainbow Dash’s race against the generic characters no one really cares about. Fluttershy, who was apparently the referee, gave the signal to start, but then got knocked down off the cloud and fell.

“Should we help her?” suggested Sunset.

“She’s a pegasus; she can just fly,” said Gilda with a shrug.

And so the race continued. “Well, this is boring,” said Sunset. “I’m not sure why we thought this would be interesting. Come on, let’s–”

Sunset was interrupted by Starlight suddenly emerging from a cloud and zapping Rainbow Dash, halting her progress and costing her the race. “Sorry about that,” said a not-looking-sorry-at-all Starlight.

“Well, I guess that’s where she is,” said Gilda as she flew over. “So, what are you doing interrupting a dumb race between a few foals? As far as traveling back in time plans go, it seems a bit lame.”

“You are about to find out,” said Starlight with a smirk. Suddenly, the portal from before appeared and sucked both Sunset and Gilda into it. They were unceremoniously dumped onto the map table, except there was no castle around it anymore.

“Well, that was annoying,” said Sunset. She looked around. “Wait, where’d the castle go?”

“Clearly, Starlight’s meddling in the past has caused the present to change!” said Gilda.

“It kept the map but not the castle? What kind of sense does that make?” Sunset looked more closely at the map. “It looks like it’s malfunctioning. The whole terrain is different. Why is the Crystal Empire larger? And why does it look like Equestria itself has been split into two halves?”

“Let’s consult the instruction manual!” declared Gilda as she pulled it out. “I’m so glad I made a copy of this.”

“Why are you carrying that around?” asked Sunset.

“I carry all kinds of random stuff around!” said Gilda. “For example, I also have the instruction manual for the stove. You never know when these things might come in handy!”

“Gilda, somehow I doubt there’s a note regarding time travel,” said Sunset.

“Well, of course there wouldn’t be,” said Gilda. “Why would an instruction manual for a stove have that?”

“I meant the instruction manual for the map,” said Sunset.

“Let’s find out!” said Gilda as she flipped through the index. “Aha! Time travel!”

“Huh,” said Sunset.

Gilda turned to the applicable page. “‘Your map is not automatically insured against time travel tomfoolery. This option can be purchased at an additional cost.’ Darn it, we didn’t get that?”

“Whatever!” said Sunset. “Let’s find Lightning Dust, Suri, Flim, Flam, and Trixie and see if they can help sort this out.”

“You actually want to get them?” asked Gilda in a surprised tone.

“As annoying as they can be,” said Sunset, “they often tend to be important in solving these things. Hopefully they’re still around in this alternate timeline. Why does this town look so dilapidated and abandoned anyway?”

“That is a good question,” said Gilda.

“Hey, you two!” announced a uniformed Trixie as she approached Susnet and Gilda. “What are civilians like you doing here? We’re extremely close to a battleground. It isn’t safe!”

“Battleground?” asked a confused Gilda. “What’s this about a battleground?”

“Great,” muttered Trixie to herself. “Clueless civilians at that.”

“I should mention that we’re from an alternate timeline in which whatever is going on right now isn’t going on, so it’d be really useful if you were to fill us in on what was going on!”

“Crazy, clueless civilians,” added Trixie. “Come on, let’s go.” Trixie ran off.

“Guess we might as well follow,” said Sunset as she and Gilda quickly gave chase. They ran through the town as several more explosions were heard around them. Eventually they came to a a doorway on the ground. Trixie opened it, revealing stairs, and the group ran down them before Trixie closed the door behind them. They reached a room where they found Flim and Flam.

“Oh, there actually was somepony else in the town?” asked Flim.

“It’s a good thing I checked,” said Trixie.

“All right, can somepony please explain what the situation is?” asked Sunset.

“How do you not know?” said Flam.

“She says she’s from an alternate timeline,” said Trixie. “I’m pretty sure she’s just crazy.”

“Well, humor us and tell us anyway, because there’s not that much else to do right now,” said Gilda as another explosion was heard.

“I had better get extra credit for this,” muttered Trixie. “Fine. Equestria is currently engaged in a three-way civil war, with the three sides being the Celestia-led faction based in the Crystal Empire, the Sombra-led faction based in Canterlot, and the Shining Armor-led faction based in Appleloosa. Ponyville has the unfortunate fact of being located near the disputed border, so it tends to bear a lot of the brunt of the fighting.”

“Wait, Celestia? Sombra?” asked Sunset.

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Celestia popped back up and took control of the Crystal Empire in short order, which partially involved forcing everypony there to get along with the Crystal Heart. Ordinarily I expect Equestria would have been able to fight them off, but years before that Sombra went mad with power, causing the west and south portions of Equestria to secede, creating the current situation.”

“That seems… really weird for Sombra to have done,” said Sunset. “I wonder what happened?”

Meanwhile…

“Okay, Sombra sir!” declared the one of the soldiers. “What are your orders now?”

Sombra made a complicated set of charades.

“Hrm,” said the other soldier. “He may have said, ‘Let’s stop this futile war and make peace so that we can defeat our true enemy.’ That, or he said, ‘Crush our enemies! See them driven before us. Hear the lamentations of their women.’ I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. Let’s pass along the word!” The soldiers ran off.

Sombra sighed to himself. I was just asking for some coffee, he thought.

Back with our main characters…

“Well, whatever it was that caused it, that’s the situation,” said Trixie.

“And why are you here, then?” Gilda asked Flim and Flam.

“Oh, just hiding out from the bombs,” said Flim. “We’ve got to stick around Ponyville because selling cider is really the only way to make ends meet. Not that it turns much of a profit considering the low prices we have to sell them for.”

“I’m only here because I got stuck with the job of trying to make sure this town was fully evacuated during the battle,” said Trixie. “But I suppose it was decent enough for your sake, as you could have gotten really hurt otherwise.”

“Gotten really hurt?” asked Sunset. “Wouldn’t the thing to worry about in regards to the bombs be them killing us?”

“Actually,” said Trixie, “weirdly enough, there has been a grand total of zero casualties in this war. If I weren’t so cynically hardened, I’d note that it’s almost as if it was a lame attempt to try to keep things ‘family friendly’ by not delving into the more horrific aspects of war.”

“Wait, if our lives aren’t in danger, why are we even hiding?”

“You can still get comically injured by the explosions,” said Trixie.

“This war is sounding a lot less dark than I originally thought,” said Gilda.

“Now that you mention it,” said Trixie, “it is actually surprisingly tame.”

“Well, I guess once this battle is over we’ll head back to the map thing that’s still here somehow and try to use the spell ourselves to return and fix up the timeline,” said Sunset. “I’m assuming that spell somehow rested on the map’s power in order to send us as far back as it did.”

“Sure,” said Gilda. “I suppose we can just wait here.”

“I know what to do in the meantime!” said Flim. “How about we talk about our feelings?”

“Oh joy,” muttered Sunset to herself.

Later…

“Wow,” said Trixie with her eyes open. “I never thought about it that way. My insistence on trying to stand out does tie back to some of the teasing about my last name I suffered when I was younger.”

“And my constant desire for riches and the unscrupulous acquiring thereof is a result of never receiving that train set for my birthday,” added Flam.

“And you lot babbling like this is the source of my current irritation,” said Sunset in an annoyed tone.

“I think that may actually come back to your childhood experience of–” started Trixie before getting interrupted.

“Don’t care!” said Sunset. “There haven’t been any explosions for a while. Let’s just go over to that map and see if we can use it to time travel!”

“Well, I guess the map was working properly,” said Gilda as the two stood next to it. “In fact, maybe the reason it’s still here is because that time travel insurance was purchased by someone.”

“I’m not going to try to puzzle out how any of this works anymore,” said Sunset. “Let’s just use the spell to go back a little earlier than Starlight did, stop her, and then hopefully things can get back to normal.”

Many years earlier…

Sunset and Gilda fell out of the portal onto Cloudsdale like before. “Okay, so now all we have to do is find Starlight–” started Sunset before getting interrupted yet again.

“Well, finding her will be easy!” announced Starlight as she suddenly sealed the two in some kind of magical prison box. “But stopping her’s gonna be harder than you think! Sorry to disappoint you, but I created that spell to send myself back in time. So even when you cast it, I still get sent back here. It wasn’t difficult to change Starswirl’s spell. He’d already done the hard part. But figuring out I could use the map to go to any time or place and pull you along with… hey! Are you listening to me?”

“Not really,” said Sunset. She turned to Gilda. “Is it cloud?”

“No, that would be too obvious,” said Gilda.

“How about–”

“Hey!” snapped Starlight. “I was talking!”

“It looked like you were going to ramble on for a while,” said Sunset. “So we decided to play ‘I spy’ to pass the time. Can you give us the abbreviated version?”

Starlight stared at her angrily.

“Well, in the meantime,” said Sunset, “is it Cloudsdale?”

“Again, too obvious!” said Gilda. “Think outside the box!” She poked the box-like prison the two were in. “Hrm, I wish I was interested enough to try to come up with some joke about that phrase and us being inside a box.”

“Fine!” said Starlight. “Have it your way! Thanks to the map, I modified it so that the spell sends myself back in time, so if you use it to send yourself, I come along! I knew you’d try to stop me, so I left the scroll so you would follow me and be forced to see me erase what linked you to your friends!”

Sunset and Gilda stared blankly. “Wait, link to friends? Huh?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” asked Starlight. “The Sonic Rain-Boom was what caused your friends to get their cutie marks! Lightning Dust saw it and wanted to become a better flyer than whoever pulled it off! Flim and Flam–”

“You’re aware I don’t have a cutie mark, right?” said Gilda.

“I was getting to that,” said Starlight. “According to my research, your banishment from the griffon lands happened around the same time as the Rain-Boom. Is that a mere coincidence?”

“Actually,” said Gilda, “there was a weird flash in the sky that momentarily distracted me and caused me to get caught. So I wouldn’t have gotten banished and moved to Equestria if not for that? Remind me to punch Rainbow Dash next time I see her in retaliation.”

“Wait, you said that banishment happened a only few years ago,” said Sunset. “This is longer back than that was, isn’t it?”

“I may have slightly played down the length of my banishment when I said that,” said Gilda.

“See?” said Starlight. “All of you were connected by the Sonic Rain-Boom.”

“I wasn’t!” said Sunset.

“Are you sure that the Sonic Rain-Boom didn’t have some kind of important impact on your life?”

“Hrm,” said Sunset. “All I was doing was looking at this weird mirror and momentarily thought I saw some vision of myself as an alicorn in it. But then I realized it happened at the same time as that big batch of prismatic light in the sky and figured it must have been an illusion and lost interest. I can’t imagine it causing me to lose interest in a mirror would have had anything major to do with my life.”

“It could have!” said Starlight. “Even if it didn’t, 6 out of 7 isn’t bad!”

“Everypony getting their cutie marks on the same date seems awfully unlikely and convenient,” said Sunset.

“Not that unlikely,” said Gilda. “That Sonic Rain-Boom was responsible for a lot of cutie marks. I think that day had a record-setting number of cutie marks appearing.”

“Why do you know that?” asked Sunset.

“It was in a trivia pursuit game,” said Gilda with a shrug.

“I found all this out after some research,” said Starlight. “So your friends will lose your cutie mark bonds if not for this! Cutie marks for cutie marks and/or other things that majorly affected your life! Sounds like a fair trade to me!” She took the opportunity to fly off.

Sunset used her magic to destroy the prison they were on, but not before Starlight had gotten away. “Why didn’t you just do that earlier?” asked Gilda.

“Because if I had started, she would’ve just run away anyway,” said Sunset. “Besides, we already know where she’s going.”

The two returned to where the race was going to be held. “All right, now we just wait for it to start?” said Gilda.

“I guess,” said Sunset. “By the way, was it ‘crazy Starlight’?”

“No,” said Gilda, “the C was the start of a noun. You’re thinking too far outside the box.”

“Can you just tell me?”

“Nope!” said Gilda. “You have to figure it out.”

“I have no idea why this is irritating me so much,” muttered Sunset. “Well, maybe… wait. Is that Starlight over with some kids? Go!”

The two quickly scrambled over to where Starlight was. Starlight was talking to Fluttershy, Hoops, and Dumb-bell. “Just remember how you’d feel if somepony said those things to you,” finished Starlight.

“Wait, what’s going on?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, I was just reminding these two colts how hurtful teasing can be,” said Starlight.

“Yeah!” said Hoops. “Because we’re dumb and impressionable, we never thought to think of something like that until it was explicitly pointed out to us!”

“Um… good for you?” said Sunset uncertainly.

“That’s not how you handle children!” said Gilda. “You gotta show them tough love!” She turned to Fluttershy. “Hey, you wimp! Not everyone is just going to roll over because someone gives them a quick speech on being nice! You’d better shape up or else you’ll be the victim the rest of your life!”

“Wow,” said Fluttershy, “I never thought of it that way.” She paused in contemplation, then screamed, “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” at Gilda before walking off.

“I should charge for this,” said Gilda. “So when does that Sonic Rain-Boom happen?”

“Ha!” said Starlight. “Fluttershy getting picked on by those kids was the original impetus for it! So it won’t happen!”

“But the rest of our companions will still get the cutie marks even if not for the Rain-Boom,” said Sunset. “Perhaps under different circumstances, but they’ll still get them. I don’t think this plan is very well thought out.”

“Even worse, just talking to them like that seems a surprisingly lame way of stopping it,” said Gilda.

“Oh, I was just convincing them not to be bullies because everypony should be equal,” said Starlight. “Stopping the Rain-Boom was just a bonus!”

“Oh, so it’s not going to happen and we’ll get zapped back to the present?” asked Gilda.

“Yes, that is what I tried to explained earlier,” said Starlight.

“Well, if we’re going to go through all that again anyway, might as well use the opportunity to do all the crazy things I’ve always wanted to do but didn’t want to deal with the consequences of doing!” declared Gilda. She paused. “And I’m not even in a position to do any of it. Darn it. What do you suggest we do while we wait?”

“Oh, I’ll try again!” said Sunset. “Is it cumulonimbus?”

“No, Sunset, it is not anything that has to do with clouds!”

“Hrm,” mused Sunset to herself.

“You two are being irritatingly nonchalant,” said Starlight.

“Well, I guess as long as we’re here, I might as well–” started Sunset when the portal suddenly opened again. “Of course I get interrupted again.” Sunset sighed as she and Gilda got sucked in and deposited where the map was, which was in a forest this time.

“Okay,” said Gilda, “do your thing again and let’s give it another go.”

“Well, let’s–” started Sunset before she was interrupted by several spears pointing in her direction. “Really? Interrupted twice in a row?”

The aforementioned spears were held by various ponies with odd tribal-ish paint designs on them, two of them being Lightning Dust and Suri. “Silence, changeling!” declared Lightning Dust. “All servants of Queen Chrysalis found in these woods must be destroyed!”

“You know, I should feel scared,” said Gilda, “but instead all I can think about is that I’m pretty sure these painted-on symbols are probably culturally insensitive to someone.”

“I know!” said Suri, who happened to be one of the spear-wielding ponies but who was in the middle of them and thus not seen before this point. “I said that the body paint looks gauche and I believe it’s also bad for your pores. But did anypony listen to my expert advice?”

“Why did we even bring her along?” muttered Lightning Dust to herself.

“Would you believe us if we told you we were from an alternate timeline?” asked Sunset.

“I would believe you were crazy, certainly,” said Lightning Dust. “And possibly still a changeling anyway.”

“Stop!” came a voice. They turned and saw a Zebra standing in a tree. The question of how the Zebra got into the tree in the first place was ignored as she simply jumped down. “If they are changelings, we’ll soon see. But I think they’re not what they appear to be.”

“I’m confused, Zecora,” said Lightning Dust. “How wouldn’t they be what they appear to be if they’re not changelings?”

“Maybe that was necessary to make the rhyme work,” said Suri.

“Beneath this salve, no changeling hides,” started Zecora before pausing and frowning. “But in my other pocket I fear it hides.”

“Did you just rhyme a word with itself?” asked Gilda.

“When I constantly speak in rhyme, it is not easy to be perfect all the time!” snapped Zecora. “We’ll get some more back home, where the changelings do not yet roam.”

“You know, I suddenly wonder why we didn’t just use the salve before we started being all threatening,” said Suri as the group walked into the forest. “Is it just a short attention span?”

“Great,” muttered Sunset, “another whacky timeline. I wonder what’s going on in this one. Something to do with Chrysalis, apparently.”

“Silence, possibly-crazy possible-changelings!” declared Lightning Dust.

The group eventually reached a village of some kind in the forest. Zecora went into one of the huts and took out the salve. “Let us try this again, much like a repaired pen. Beneath this salve, no changeling hides, for it reveals the truth inside.” She threw it at Gilda and Sunset. Nothing happened.

“Oh, I guess they weren’t changelings after all,” said Lightning Dust. “Sorry!”

Gilda and Sunset shared a momentary confused look before Sunset said, “Uh, well, yes, not changelings. Can we go now? We sort of had something we were doing.”

Just then, an injured-looking Flim and Flam ran into the camp. “So, I have some good news and some bad news,” said Flim. “The bad news is that the changelings attacked Ponyville and are heading this way.”

“The good news,” added Flam, “is that thanks to the attack, most stores are holding a going-out-of-business sale and their prices are really cheap!”

“The only changeling attack that I see,” said Zecora, “is the one that came here… um… looking for me!” she finished awkwardly.

“Darn it,” said Flam as he turned into a changeling, “I knew that going-out-of-business part was going too far. Should have gone with the claim that everything was 10% off. Oh well. Attack!”

Several of the ponies in the village suddenly turned into changelings, and a a large horde of changelings suddenly invaded the village. Sunset and Gilda tried to use the opportunity to run off but got captured instead. After a long and bloody battle with zero casualties or serious injuries, the changelings were victorious and the various ponies were all captured.

“At least we won’t have to wear all this ugly paint anymore,” said Suri.

“How did they know exactly where our village was?” wondered Zecora. “Oh, right, I do know the reason it was because.” Zecora took a sudden leap towards the changeling guards, suddenly being engulfed in flame mid-jump. When she landed, she had turned into Chrysalis. “Surprise! I was Chrysalis all along!”

Everyone stared at her blankly.

“Honestly,” said Chrysalis, “I would have thought those terrible attempts at rhyming gave it away. But, as you might have surmised, I was able to do this to infiltrate the resistance, including totally giving you cream that supposedly revealed who a changeling was but actually didn’t. That’s how there were those changelings in this camp, if you were wondering.”

I guess this could work out, thought Sunset to herself. “And… um… I was a changeling also.” She transformed into a regular-looking changeling. “So… can I be let out?”

“Wait, why didn’t you join the fight on the side of the changelings, if you were actually one?” asked Chrysalis.

“I was trying to stay undercover in case the changelings lost?” said Sunset.

“That sounds like a perfectly plausible explanation,” said Chrysalis.

“Also, um…” said Sunset. “This griffon over here? She’s a changeling too.”

“Sure, just have her transform into one and show us,” said Chrysalis.

“Um… being watched makes her too nervous to transform,” said Sunset.

“Right!” said Gilda. “Stage fright and all that.”

“Sure, whatever,” said Chrysalis. “You two can go.”

Sunset and Chrysalis left the ponies to be with the rest of the changelings.

“Anyway!” said Chrysalis. “As I was saying before I got interrupted, my plan was a success and I was able to be the leader of the resistance!”

“But why were you, leader of the changelings, masquerading as the leader of the resistance?” asked Lightning Dust. “And more importantly, why didn’t you take the opportunity to defeat us well before this? You were leader for a while.”

“Well,” said Chrysalis, “I was waiting around until today. Because, you see, as April started today, I can finally say… APRIL FOOLS!”

The blank stares from before became even blanker.

“Yes, the entire invasion and subsequent taking over of Equestria was just one giant prank!” declared Chrysalis. “And oh boy, did you all fall for it! Aren’t I such a great actor?”

“But you razed entire cities to the ground!”

“I’m a method actor,” said Chrysalis with a shrug.

The stares somehow became blanker still.

“Oh, come on,” said Chrysalis. “One day you’ll look back at this and laugh. Although, there is something else I should add.”

“What?” asked Suri.

“I was just kidding around,” said Chrysalis. “This wasn’t a prank at all. AND NOW I RULE EQUESTRIA!” Chrysalis laughed maniacally.

“I guess that does make some more–”

“Actually,” said Chrysalis, “I was just messing with you when I said I was just kidding around about it being a prank. It really was a prank! I’m the prank master! Totally worth my approval rating plummeting to 5.7522204%!”

“Then–”

“Nope, I wasn’t being truthful there,” said Chrysalis. “I was just screwing with you when I said I was just messing with you when I said…”

“I don’t really care enough to find out whether it was a prank or not,” whispered Sunset to Gilda as Chrysalis continued. “Shall we make our exit?”

Sunset and Gilda slowly moved away from the group as Chrysalis kept talking, then suddenly broke into a run to get away.

“I have to say,” said Gilda, “full-on changeling looks good on you.”

Sunset transformed back into her regular self. “Oh, shut up. Let’s just get back to the past and try again to fix up the present.”

One spellcasting later…

Sunset and Gilda fell down onto Cloudsdale again. They quickly found where Starlight was and attempted to attack her, but her magical prowess was great enough that the battle was ultimately a stalemate.

“Well,” panted Sunset, “at least we’re stopping you from stopping the Sonic Rain-Boom.”

“Are you?” asked Starlight with a smirk as she gestured to a young Rainbow Dash watching the fight and eating popcorn.

“You know, you should go into your race,” said Sunset.

“No way. This is way more exciting!” declared Rainbow Dash.

“You’re making it really hard to not punch you in the face,” said Gilda.

“See?” said Starlight. “You can’t stop me no matter what I do! And, in fact, that portal should be opening up again right about… now.”

Sunset and Gilda once again got sucked into the portal and then spat out onto the map, which this time was floating in the air along with most other things. “Now what?” asked Sunset grumpily. “You know what? I just realized I don’t care. Let’s just go back and–”

“Wait a minute, Sunset,” said Gilda. “We didn’t have the power to beat Starlight. But, all I have to do is get one of my rocket launchers and that should give us the edge we need! Let’s go!”

“Gilda, what makes you think they even sell those in… whatever this weird present is. Why is everything floating?”

Gilda shrugged. “Maybe they just discovered a way to make things float. Let’s go!”

Gilda hopped off the map and got a better look at her surroundings. Not only were a lot of things floating in the air, some were upside down. An odd checkerboard-colored road led into Ponyville. “Wow, things look really weird. Even weirder than before. What is–”

Gilda was cut off by the two seeing a robe-and-crown-wearing Discord making two mares that looked suspiciously similar to Luna and Celestia run around while wearing clown outfits.

“Hey, it’s Discord!” said Gilda. “Maybe he’ll do it. Hey, Discord!”

Discord stopped what he was doing and suddenly teleported in front of the two. “Yes?”

“You don’t happen to have any rocket launchers around, do you?”

“Not since I took over, no,” said Discord. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Oh, we’re from an alternate timeline where you didn’t take over,” said Gilda. She paused. “And now that I say that out loud, I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“So,” said Discord, “are you saying that if you leave this timeline, you would cause the timeline where I rule Equestria not to happen?”

Quickly realizing that Discord deciding to stop the two from returning could cause problems, Sunset started to fire up the time travel spell, but was interrupted by Discord’s next remark.

“Do it!” exclaimed Discord as he grabbed Gilda. “You have to do it! I’m going completely crazy here!”

Confused, Sunset momentarily stopped the spell. “Wait, you don’t like being ruler of Equestria?”

“No!” said Discord. “Well, I guess being ruler might not necessarily be that bad in and of itself, but I made everything chaotic in the process!

“You don’t like everything being chaotic?”

“I thought I would, but I didn’t!” said Discord as he threw his hands up in frustration. “It makes everything boring! It means that being chaotic is normal! I don’t want to be normal! It’s driving me cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” Discord pulled out a bowl of cereal and added, “Part of a balanced breakfast!”

Sunset and Gilda stared at Discord. “Huh?” asked Sunset.

“Exactly!” said Discord as he threw away the bowl of cereal, which turned into a sock and exploded. “That’s the reaction I should get! But no, now everyone just accepts it when I do crazy stuff like that! I need a straight man around to play off of!” He pushed the two towards the map. “So go! Fix things! Shoo! I’ll throw my voice out if I use any more exclamation marks in this dialogue!”

“Can I get my rocket launcher before I go?” asked Gilda.

“Rocket launcher?” said Discord. “Sure.” He snapped his fingers and one appeared. “There. Now get going!”

Gilda grabbed the rocket launcher, then Sunset re-cast the spell and the two entered the portal. Yet again, they emerged in Cloudsdale.

“Okay, now let’s see if we can take down Starlight,” said Gilda.

The two quickly found her again, and Sunset and Starlight started fighting with magic.

Gilda held up her rocket launcher. “Perfect! Just have to hit her at the right time and that’ll be it.” Gilda waited patiently for the right opportunity, then fired. However, instead of a rocket, all that emerged was a stick with the word “BANG” on it. Gilda stared at it in disbelief. “Again? Seriously? Last time I ask Discord for anything.” She threw the rocket launcher away in frustration. It knocked a nearby Rainbow Dash on the head and sent her plummeting to the ground. “Oops,” said Gilda.

“Ha!” said Starlight. “I knew you would fail again, but I didn’t expect you to mess things up this badly! And so–”

Suddenly, a large explosion of prismatic light was seen. “Wait, what?” asked Starlight in disbelief.

“Hrm,” said Sunset, “perhaps Rainbow Dash woke up in freefall and performed it in desperation.”

“Ha!” said Gilda. “We totally won! The Rain-Boom was performed! I bet we’ll return to the present any moment now!”

Several moments passed.

“Any moment now,” said Gilda.

Several moments later, the portal appeared, and Sunset and Gilda were sucked back through it and deposited on top of the map. This time, the map was in the castle and was surrounded by the usual chairs. “Well, things look normal,” said Sunset.

“Huh,” said Gilda. “The symbols on the chairs are different. That one has jewels on it, that one has butterflies on it, that one has apples on it, that one has balloons, that one–“

“I can see perfectly fine!” snapped Sunset. “You don’t have to describe it!”

“Well, obviously something is different,” said Gilda. “Let’s take a look outside.”

The two went outside to find Ponyville looking fairly normal. “I can see a few minor differences, but otherwise things seem like they were,” said Sunset. “It looks like we didn’t get the regular future, but at least something close to it.”

“Let’s just find some newspapers or a library so we can try to figure out what’s different,” said Gilda.

Some research later…

“Huh,” said Gilda as she read the newspaper. “So they beat Tirek with something colloquially known as ‘Rainbow Power’ rather than that scheme we did? Sounds a lot less interesting.”

“I’m more weirded out by the fact Sombra got banished about a thousand years ago by Celestia and Luna,” said Sunset as she read another. “We only went back so far as the Sonic Rain-Boom. How did that make the past before us change? Same question applies to other things, like how the Elements of Irony are only known as the Elements of Harmony.”

“Maybe it’s all a coverup by the government!” said Gilda. “They’ve taken control of the newspapers and are fooling the population!” She paused. “Or maybe the new timeline caused it so that someone in the future ended up traveling back farther than we did and changed the more distant past.”

“By the way, do you have any idea who Pinkie Pie is?” asked Sunset. “I recognize the other names of the ones who got the Elements of Harmony in this universe, like Twilight and Rainbow Dash, but I don’t recall any Pinkie Pie.”

“Isn’t she a member of that musical duo that Trixie is a fan of? That one that does all those song parodies?”

“Hrm, maybe,” said Sunset. “Speaking of Trixie, it seems really weird that she was the one who came to Ponyville as a visitor during the ursa major thing rather than Twilight.”

“No, what’s weird is I can’t find much of anything about you in this timeline,” said Gilda. “It’s like you disappeared. At least there’s a few references to me.”

“Well,” said Sunset, “I guess we might as well stick with this timeline. It seems reasonable enough. Sure, there’s some things that are worse, like how Sombra and Chrysalis are apparently outright evil, but on the whole it seems possibly better than our own timeline. Though we’ll want to try to be a bit incognito to not meet our alternate selves and cause confusion.”

And thus, canon occurred.

The End

The Cutie Re-Remark - Part 2

“And so after some thought, Sunset and Gilda settled into the new timeline, and canon occurred. And that’s how Equestria was made!” finished Chrysalis.

“That had nothing to do with the founding of Equestria,” said Luna.

“Of course it did!” said Chrysalis. “It told the story of how, via time travel, Equestria got made.”

“Chrysalis, the fact we are having this conversation strongly indicates that’s not how the story ended.”

“Ooh, you caught that contradiction!” said Chrysalis. “Good job! Glad to see you’re staying on your toes! That was my April Fool joke for you!”

“But… that day was yesterday,” said a confused Luna.

“Again, keeping you on your toes!” declared Chrysalis. “I never want my assistants to get too complacent, because then they slack off.”

“What did you even mean by canon occurring?”

“Oh, a ‘canon’ is a kind of song,” said Chrysalis. “After deciding to settle in, they took out ukuleles and decided to play one of those songs. I thought their adventure was highly lacking in ukuleles so I decided to add some in.”

Luna sighed heavily. “Could you at least tell me how Sunset’s adventure actually ended?”

“I thought that the ending I came up with was a perfectly fine and thematically appropriate ending,” said Chrysalis.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Luna, “because it isn’t how it actually ended.”

“Pfft, reality is overrated,” said Chrysalis. She frowned. “Darn it, I just realized something.”

“What?” asked Luna.

“It would have made a lot more sense if Starlight had gone back to when they got those Elements of Irony in the first place,” said Chrysalis, “as that was a more strong showing of them getting together directly than the Sonic Rain-Boom. But I guess she was kind of crazy, so that could explain it. Oh well. Too late to change it now that I’ve already told you it.”

“I don’t think you can just change reality like that,” said Luna.

“Like I said,” said Chrysalis, “reality is overrated.”

One of these days, I’m going to realize that asking her questions about things like this—or about anything at all—only leads to pain, thought Luna to herself.

One sentence before the end of the previous chapter, because much to the displeasure of ukulele fans everywhere, that final sentence of the previous chapter mentioning canon was the only part of that chapter that didn’t actually happen…

“Well, I guess we could take the opportunity to explore the world a bit,” said Gilda.

The two went over to the train station to buy tickets. “Can we get the cheapest tickets to Canterlot, please?” asked Sunset.

“Uh, sure,” said the pony working at the ticket station. “That leaves tonight. Here, can you sign these?”

Sunset and Gilda looked at the pieces of paper they were handed. “Waiver forms?” asked Sunset in a confused tone.

“Well, of course,” said the pony. “Night is when the flesh-eating zombies come out. We need to make sure we’re not liable for any injuries if they happen to attack the train.”

“Wait, what?” asked Sunset. “What’s this about flesh-eating zombies?”

“How do you not know about those? They’re everywhere!”

“Um… well… we recently lost all of our memories, right!” said Sunset. “So we caught up by reading some newspapers, and they didn’t say anything about zombie attacks.”

“Why would they?” asked the ticket seller. “They’re so common they’re no longer newsworthy. Also, the newspapers are notoriously unreliable, even getting things like who’s the leader of this country wrong.”

“I’m sure we can just pick up some guns to handle the zombies,” said Gilda.

“Guns?” asked the ticket seller.

“You know, guns?” said Gilda impatiently. “Weapons incorporating a metal tube from which bullets, shells, or other missiles are propelled by explosive force? I’d expect they’d be great at getting rid of zombies, especially shotguns.”

“Never heard of them,” said the ticket seller.

There was a pause, then Gilda started hyperventilating and grabbed Sunset. “We have to go back! I can’t take this world!”

Sunset batted Gilda away. “Look, I admit that the part about the flesh-eating zombies might be a little bit of a deal breaker, but we are not going to go through all that time traveling again just because you’re such a gun nut. I’m sure if we make it a point not to venture out at night, we’ll be fine.”

“Right!” said the ticket seller. “During the day, all you have to deal with are the flesh-eating giant leeches. They’re much less of a problem.”

“Okay, we’re heading back,” said Sunset. “Let’s go.” She and Gilda left.

“Hrm,” said the ticket seller. “Maybe I should have only given all that information after they bought the tickets. Might have cost myself a sale there.”

After another fight with Starlight and subsequent warp to the new present…

“Okay, what happened in this present?” asked Sunset. The two quickly saw a gigantic Tirek wrecking havoc. “Mystery solved,” she said as she cast the spell again and they returned to the past, resulting in yet another confrontation with Starlight.

“How much longer do you plan to keep this all up?” asked Gilda.

“Until you give up!” declared Starlight.

“What if Sunset and I don’t give up, and the three of us keep doing this forever?”

“If that’s necessary to stop you and your friends from that cutie mark connection, sure!” said Starlight.

“Is this really a connection?” asked Gilda. “Seems more like a coincidence.”

“Even if so,” said Starlight, “the fact you lot didn’t get your cutie marks at those particular times in a new timeline clearly would change your lives sufficiently that you wouldn’t meet and become friends.”

“You know, I’ve been meaning to bring that up,” said Sunset. “I think you’re under some incorrect impressions. Our group being ‘friends’ seems to be stretching the definition of that word.”

“Who cares?” said Starlight. “I’m still getting my revenge.”

“Yes, but it results in futures that are all kinds of screwed up,” said Sunset. “I mean, our little group did help stop several major threats to the world.”

“Hrm, which of those futures were specifically averted by that?” asked Gilda.

“Well, the first was partially caused by us not helping, as we didn’t defeat Celestia, which made the war worse,” said Sunset. “The one with Chrysalis and that weird one with the zombies didn’t seem to directly involve us and likely came out due to other things that changed in the past. But we definitely helped stop the others.”

“What are you babbling about?” asked Starlight. “Wait, on second thought, I don’t care.” She zapped Rainbow Dash. “Looks like you failed again.” The portal opened up. “See you–” started Starlight, but Gilda suddenly grabbed her and she was pulled into the portal along with Sunset.

The three were dropped onto the map yet again. They looked around and saw they were surrounded by vines. “Didn’t expect to see this,” said Sunset.

“What, were you expecting a barren wasteland?” asked Gilda. “That would be overly convenient for the one time we grabbed Starlight.” Gilda flew up quickly to get a better view. “Wow, it looks like these vines go on forever. Might have overtaken the whole continent for all we know.”

“Oh, no,” said Starlight sarcastically. “Some vines. Why should I care about that?” She went up to the vines and suddenly got hit by one. “Okay, that’s how you want to play it?” She blasted the vines with some magic. It had no effect, but the vines grabbed her and smashed her against the ground a few times before letting go. “Oh, look at all the cute birds…” she muttered before collapsing.

“Let me guess,” said Sunset, “this one came about because we didn’t get rid of those vines when they were attacking, as we didn’t have the Elements of Irony to stop it?”

“Probably,” said Gilda. “Though I do wonder what happened to all the threats in the various futures. For example, whatever happened to Tirek in the futures without him? I know a bunch of small changes add up to bigger ones, but it does seem a little odd, don’t you think?”

“Honestly, at this point I’m trying to not bother making sense of things,” said Sunset. “It just gives me a headache. Now let’s see if we can get Starlight up.”

“I’ll do it!” said Gilda. She went over to Starlight and punched her in the face.

“Ow!” screamed Starlight as she suddenly got up. “What was that for?”

“To wake you up,” said Gilda. “Also, it didn’t look like I was going to get to punch Rainbow Dash anytime soon, so I decided to take it out on you instead.”

“Why did you even want to punch Rainbow–” started Starlight before getting interrupted by Sunset.

“Well, now we’ve shown you that the future can get awfully screwed up when you decide to change what happens to a group that ends up saving the world several times!” said Sunset. “Maybe sometimes we did so inadvertently, but it still happened!”

“Like when Discord said we were such sociopaths he wasn’t interested in trying to corrupt us, so he left for some place named Acapulco,” said Gilda. “Good times.”

“What’s your point?” demanded Starlight.

“Do I have to spell it out for you? Ugh.” Sunset sighed. “The point is that your meddling is just screwing things up in the present and not doing anything to restore your village. For example, in this timeline, it presumably just got taken over by the vines. Actually, there’s a possibility these might have wiped out all life.”

“Rather dark, really,” said Gilda. “Anyway, now that you’ve learned this, any chance you’ll change your mind?”

“You don’t know anything about me!” screeched Starlight. “I was perfectly happy before you and your group ruined what I built!”

“I don’t think that was ever in dispute?” said Gilda. “It was about you not messing things up for everyone, including yourself.”

“This does actually bring up a question,” said Sunset. “Whatever happened to you to make you like this?”

“Well,” said Gilda, “I think my gun fixation probably comes from–”

“Not you!” snapped Sunset. “I was talking about Starlight!”

“You want to know?!” asked Starlight. “You really want to know?!”

“The fact I asked in a non-rhetorical tone would seem to suggest that,” said Sunset flatly.

“Fine!” said Starlight. “I’ll show you!”

“Can you do it quickly?” said Gilda. “I just noticed these vines seem to be closing in on us.”

Starlight cast the spell. A portal opened, sucking all three of them into it. The portal disappeared.

The three were dumped yet again out of the portal, though this time in a nondescript town. “I really wish this could be done a little more gracefully,” said Sunset. “Where and when are we?”

“In the past, when I was young,” said Starlight. “This was my home town.”

“Wait, you aren’t from the future?” asked Gilda.

“Um… no?” said Starlight.

“Darn it!” said Gilda with a sigh. “So much for my theory that you were Shining Armor and Cadance’s daughter who traveled back in time.”

Starlight stared at Gilda.

“The color schemes match really well!” said Gilda defensively. “It wasn’t a completely unwarranted guess!”

Starlight rolled her eyes, then walked over to one of the houses. They all looked in the window to see a much younger Starlight along with an orange-colored colt with red hair. They were balancing books in a big stack.

“Wow,” said Sunset, “let me tell you, Starlight, pigtails do not suit you.”

“Hey, that other kid looks kind of like you, Sunset,” said Gilda. “Is there any relation?”

“Well, I never really knew my family,” said Sunset, “so who knows?”

“Maybe it’s your long-lost brother!” said Gilda. “Or maybe you split off from him in a scientific experiment gone totally wrong!”

“Hey!” said Starlight. “Stop making this about yourselves! Pay attention!” She pointed through the window. “That’s me and Sunburst. We were best friends! But then…”

There was a pause as the group continued watching the two try to stack the books. “But then?” asked Sunset.

“Did he fall in with the wrong crowd, and you got so depressed you ran into a treehouse and ate so many cookies you got huge?” suggested Gilda.

“Um, hang on,” said Starlight. “I think I may have brought us back slightly farther than I should have. Wait for it.”

Younger Starlight attempted to take one of the books from the pile, but it caused it to start tilting. Just before it fell onto her, however, Sunburst used magic to stop the books, levitate them away, and then put them back on the shelves. Afterwards, a cutie mark suddenly appeared on him. He was apparently so excited he ran out to show this off to two ponies that were apparently his parents, and the three walked off. The younger Starlight took on a depressed look.

“And just like that, my friend was gone,” said the older Starlight. “His family recognized his magical talent and sent him off to Canterlot. I never saw him again.”

“Um,” said Sunset, “why not?”

“Because of his cutie mark!” declared Starlight angrily. “He got his, and I didn’t! He moved on, and I didn’t! I stayed here and never made another friend because I was too afraid another cutie mark would take them away, too!”

There was an awkward pause. “Aren’t you going to say something?” asked Starlight.

“Er… one moment, please,” said Sunset. She went over to a nearby tree and slammed her head into it a few times, then came back. “No, that didn’t make it make any more sense. Okay, Starlight, I need to ask you a question, and please don’t take it the wrong way. Are you insane, or are you just stupid?”

Starlight was taken aback. “What?”

“Probably a bit of both,” said Gilda.

“Not everypony is’s lucky enough to get her cutie mark at the same time as her friends!” Starlight paused. “Or whatever you call that group of yours!”

“But what difference would it have made if it hadn’t all been simultaneous for most of our group?” asked Gilda. “I mean, sure, it makes for a nice backstory, but none of them met each other until after getting their cutie marks, so it wouldn’t matter if the timing had been different.”

“Before getting into the questionable nature of your revenge plan,” said Sunset, “I’d like to confirm. This is your reason for hating cutie marks? That’s it?”

“What’s wrong with–” started Starlight.

“I’ll lay it out for you!” said Sunset grumpily. “Point number one! Why didn’t you keep in any kind of contract with Sunburst? You wouldn’t even have had to go to where he was; just writing would be enough!”

“Um…” said Starlight hesitantly.

“Point number two!” continued Sunset. “You’re clearly really powerful magically! Why didn’t you just go to that school yourself?”

“That’s because… er…” Starlight trailed off in confusion.

“Three! How dumb and childish do you have to be to carry some kind of grudge towards cutie marks into adulthood and do all those crazy things like setting up that town just because of that? Talk about blowing things out of proportion!”

“I–” started Starlight.

“Four!” said Sunset as she cut Starlight off. “If you were… wait.” She turned to Gilda. “Was it cutie mark?”

“No, that would be too simple considering the scenario,” said Gilda. “Like I said, think outside the box. It might be closer than you think.”

Sunset sighed. “So much for that. Where was I? Oh, right.” She turned back to Starlight. “If you were so afraid of making friends because they might get taken away because of cutie marks, then why didn’t you just make a point to only make friends with ponies who had already gotten theirs? Point number five! If–”

“Uh, Sunset?” interrupted Gilda. “Two things. First, we are still in the past, so maybe we should go back to the present to make sure we don’t mess up anything in this timeline.”

“Oh, good point,” said Sunset. She opened up the portal and all three were sucked back in and were sent back to Cloudsdale. “I guess I have to come here before returning to the present,” muttered Sunset before she cast the spell again and the three were deposited on top of the map, but this time in a castle with the thrones having the normal cutie mark symbols on them.

“The other thing I wanted to say,” said Gilda, “was that you’re starting to sound a little like a character from one of those bad fanfics that only exists to let the author complain about something they didn’t like in the series. Could you wrap it up?”

“You read fan fiction?” asked a surprised Sunset.

“I skim,” said Gilda.

“Fine,” said Sunset. “Just one more point, then. Point number five! Starlight, if you had access to freaking time travel, why didn’t you use the opportunity to only go back as far as us visiting your village and tell yourself to be more careful of us? It’d help you out and wouldn’t have had as much of a chance of screwing up the entire world. And what was even your endgame with the plan? If I gave up, you still would’ve been stuck in the past! My plan to take over Equestria with an army of brainwashed teenagers made more sense!”

“Wait, when and why did you have a plan to do that?” asked Gilda.

“I went through a really weird phase when I was a younger, okay?” said Sunset.

There was a pause.

“Hrm,” said Starlight. “When you lay it out like that, it does feel like everything I’ve done has been awfully stupid.”

“Right!” said Sunset. “Now that you’ve admitted that, maybe–”

Sunset was interrupted by Lightning Dust suddenly smacking Starlight in the back of the head with Gilda’s gun, knocking her out. “Glad you kept her distracted!” said Lightning Dust. “That let me pull it off!”

“I think she was actually coming around,” said Sunset.

“Oh,” said Lightning Dust. “Well, I still don’t think I’m legally liable for any injuries caused to her.”

“At least this whole nonsense is over,” said Sunset. “I know I constantly say this, but this was quite possibly the dumbest adventure I’ve had so far. Seriously, if Starlight had spent even half as much time figuring out her revenge plan as she did figuring out this cutie mark connection, it might not have been so dumb.”

“Oooh, sweet burn!” said Gilda.

“Would you say she got… sunburned?” asked Sunset.

“Now you’re trying too hard,” said Gilda.

“Well, here’s your gun back, Gilda,” said Lightning Dust as she returned it.

Gilda looked at the unconscious form of Starlight. “Any suggestions on what to do with her? I don’t think we can just shove her in a box and ship her off to the comic book company like we did with Mane-iac.”

Ragmill returned. “You know, although that was awfully rude, I’m thinking of giving you another chance,” she said. “Maybe I will buy this castle.”

“Really?” asked Sunset eagerly.

“Nope!” said Ragmill. “Just screwing with you.”

“Why?” asked Sunset.

“Because…” said Ragmill as she suddenly transformed into Chrysalis, “surprise! I was Chrysalis all along!”

Everyone stared at Chrysalis.

“Honestly,” said Chrysalis, “I would have thought that such a crazy name would have given it away. I mean, Ragmill Mightrest? What kind of name is that? Does it mean I’m ambivalent about giving ragmills a rest?”

“But why did you go through all of this?” asked Lightning Dust.

“April Fool joke,” said Chrysalis.

“Oh, wow, I forgot that was today,” said Lightning Dust.

“That was a pretty lousy April Fool joke,” said Gilda.

“Oh, I was just kidding around,” said Chrysalis. “This wasn’t a prank. I did decide to buy the castle and just wanted to do it incognito.”

“Really?” said Sunset, her eagerness returning.

“Actually,” said Chrysalis, “I was just messing with you when I said I was just kidding around about it being a prank. It really was a prank! I’m the prank master!”

“Why did I even get my hopes up,” muttered Sunset.

“That’s a great question!” said Chrysalis. “You should know better by now than to do that. By the way, what’s Starlight Glimmer doing here?”

“We had a very stupid adventure that led to this situation,” said Sunset.

“You had an adventure in a minute or two?” asked Chrysalis in a confused tone. “I was only out of here for that long.”

“Time travel was involved,” explained Gilda.

“That sounds interesting!” said Chrysalis. “I’d like to hear it!”

“Do I have to?” asked Sunset.

“Only if you don’t want me to declare imminent domain on this castle,” said Chrysalis.

“I believe you mean eminent domain,” said Lightning Dust.

“No, imminent domain,” said Chrysalis. “The problem with eminent domain is that it takes a while. Imminent domain is much faster, as the name suggests.”

Sunset sighed. “Okay, here it goes.”

One story later…

“…and that brings us to now,” said Sunset.

“Hrm… I think I’ll give you a C+ for that report,” said Chrysalis. “I feel it dragged on a bit too long, plus I sort of zoned out for most of it after you found out about the flesh eating zombies.”

“Ha!” said Lightning Dust. “I’m not the only one who does that when Sunset is talking!”

“Whatever!” said Sunset. “You’re queen of Equestria. Can you do something about Starlight?”

“Well,” said Chrysalis, “causing the potential end of the world by time travel isn’t technically illegal, because we never bothered passing a law about that.”

“There’s no law against it?” asked Sunset incredulously.

“How often do you think time travel comes up?” said Chrysalis. “Though there was going to be a bill to add that in as part of a ‘just in case’ initiative, but when it came down to approve it, we couldn’t find the bill. It seems the bill went off to star in a musical number about how a bill becomes a law. It was catchy, but as a result it never got passed.”

“Well, there’s got to be something illegal about all that stuff she did in the town!” said Sunset. “Including taking me prisoner!”

“Oh, that was illegal,” said Chrysalis. “But it has a rather short statute of limitations. By the time we took it to trial, said statute of limitations would be over.”

“What if we hurried?”

“Well, we’d have to really hurry,” said Chrysalis, “considering we’ve got about 5 more seconds until it runs out. Oh, darn it, there we go.”

“Why is the statute so ridiculously short?” asked Gilda.

“We used up all of the long statutes on other laws, so we were only left with short statutes for this one,” said Chrysalis.

“That doesn’t even make…” started Sunset before thinking better of it and deciding to no longer pursue that line of inquiry. “Fine. What are we supposed to do with Starlight in the meantime?”

“Hrm,” said Chrysalis. “There’s probably something we can catch her on. I’ll just take her into custody until I can find something. In the meantime, I’ve got some work to do. That 94.2477796% approval rating isn’t going to maintain itself!” Chrysalis left with the still-unconscious Starlight.

“You know,” said Sunset, “it’s sad to think that based on those alternate timelines, this is apparently the good version of Chrysalis.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Gilda. “We still have that scroll that can let us travel through time. Why don’t we go back and try to improve things for ourselves?”

“Because doing so could easily have unforeseen consequences and only make things worse for you?” suggested Lightning Dust.

“Well, maybe if we carefully considered–” started Sunset before getting interrupted by the scroll suddenly flashing and all of the text on it being replaced.

“What happened?” asked Gilda.

Sunset read the new text on the scroll. “‘Your free trial of Trusty Time Travel™ has expired! Any changes to the timeline as a result of its usage may have been reverted as a result. To purchase a subscription to the full version of this spell, please contact manufacturer.’ Starswirl made this as a demo?”

“Trials periods are a good way to entice customers who might not want to jump into the premium plan right away,” said Lightning Dust.

There was a pause. “Wait a minute, that’s it!” said Sunset. “I’ve been having so much trouble selling this castle. What if we did a sort of trial version by renting parts of it out? I’m sure that could more reliably make money than trying to find somepony to actually buy the thing.”

Suri suddenly dashed in. “Did I just hear a great money-making idea?”

“Well…” started Sunset. There was a pause.

“Yes?” asked Suri.

“Sorry,” said Sunset, “I’ve gotten so used to being interrupted I didn’t bother finishing my thought. What I was saying was that we were going to try renting out parts of this castle for money. It doesn’t seem like we’re having any luck selling the whole thing.”

“A brilliant idea!” declared Suri. “Previously I didn’t bring up that idea because I thought it might void the warranty on the castle, but if it won’t get sold anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

“I still can’t believe there are warranties to be voided on castles,” said Sunset. She paused. “Wait a minute. Gilda, it was changeling, wasn’t it? You were talking about me!”

“And the last horse finally crosses the finish line,” said Gilda in a satisfied tone.

Several days later…

“Guess who’s back?” announced Chrysalis loudly as she entered the castle. “No, seriously, guess!”

“Okay, I’ll guess. Is it Chrysalis?” said Sunset flatly.

“Wow, you got it right!” said Chrysalis. “Anyway, it turned out I didn’t really need to find anything illegal Starlight did, because after she finally woke up, she totally had reformed and wanted to put all of that equality and such things behind her and was willing to take any punishment I offered. I’m sure the head injury was completely coincidental to this sudden change in personality. Of course, I had to find something in order to come up with a sentence, so I got her for tax fraud, as she wasn’t paying taxes on that town of hers.”

“Great!” said Sunset. “So we won’t have to worry about her anymore?”

“Well, I won’t,” said Chrysalis. “You, on the other hand, will. I’ve decided to put you in charge of her rehabilitation!”

Sunset stared. “What.”

“Yep!” said Chrysalis. “You’ll be able to teach her all about the magic of friendship!”

“How am I in any way qualified to teach anypony that?” asked Sunset.

“Because you’ve learned so much!” said Chrysalis as she pulled out several pieces of paper. “I mean, just listen to some of these lessons you sent in! ‘Today I learned it isn’t the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden step at the end.’ ‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.’ With you knowing things like that, how can I not consider you a friendship expert?”

Sunset could only continue to stare at Chrysalis blankly.

“Anyway, I’m glad we’ve sorted all that out! Also, don’t worry; you actually get some decent tax breaks for this.” Chrysalis left briefly and came back in with Starlight. “You all have fun! I’m off!”

“And what are you planning to do while I handle this?” asked Sunset wearily.

“Embarrassing story, that,” said Chrysalis. “You know about how you need express written permission to transform into someone? Turns out there actually, by pure bizarre coincidence, was a Ragmill Mightrest. So I had to sentence myself to some prison time.”

“Makes perfect sense!” said Lightning Dust.

“But don’t worry!” said Chrysalis. “It probably won’t be too long. I’m sure that I’ll be able to give myself early parole for good behavior. Also, there is a small chance that everything I said starting with ‘Embarrassing story’ and ending with ‘good behavior’ was made up. Tallyho!”

The group stared at Chrysalis as she left. “So,” Gilda finally said, “that happened.”

“Chrysalis is… a very unique individual,” said Starlight.

“Well!” said Gilda. “I guess you’re in charge of Starlight now, Sunset. Now all you have to do is teach her to make friends!”

I guess it is in my best interests to try, thought Sunset to herself. After all, the faster Starlight makes more friends, the less I’ll have to deal with her. “Sure!” she said out loud. “I’ll do my best to do that thing you just said.”

“I never thought that I would find a place
To step right in and start again
I never thought–”

“Okay, friendship lesson number one!” said Sunset grumpily as she interrupted Starlight’s song. “No singing while I’m around!”

“Not even Winter Wrap Up?”

“Especially Winter Wrap Up!”

The Chrysalis-ing

“And that is why not disposing of bubble gum properly is antithetical to friendship,” said Sunset.

“That’s your friendship lesson for Starlight?” asked Gilda.

“It seems awfully valuable to me,” said Trixie.

“Well, I have to have it be something!” said Sunset. “And I’m running out of them! I already mentioned things like how it’s obnoxious to crash through walls.” There was a pause as Sunset stared at the wall, then shrugged. “Wow, I guess Lightning Dust didn’t crash through the wall when I said that.”

Flim and Flam crashed through the wall with some kind of vehicle. “Whoops,” said Flim. “Sorry about that.”

“You set yourself up for that,” said Gilda.

“I really did, didn’t I?” said Sunset with a sigh. “What are you two doing anyway?”

“Testing out our new invention!” said Flim. “It’s called a car! It works on an engine like a train, so you don’t have to move things around manually like a cart. The breaks need some work, though.”

“Don’t you mean the brakes need work?” asked Trixie.

“Well, those too,” said Flam. “But I was saying that I think we were taking an improper number of breaks when building it.”

“Wait, how could you tell the difference between homonyms when they were spoken out loud?” wondered Gilda.

“Because brakes is spelled B-R-A-K-E-S and breaks is spelled B-R-E-A-K-S,” Trixie said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“That still doesn’t explain it!”

“It’s not my fault you clearly failed spelling class,” said Trixie.

And the insanity begins again, thought Sunset to herself.

“Hello, everypony!” declared an all-too-familiar gray-coated mailmare. “I’ve got a letter for you!” She paused. “I’m sorry, this letter is addressed to somepony else. It’s supposed to be for Sunset, Gilda, Trixie, Flim, Flam, Suri, and Lightning Dust.”

“That’s us!” said Sunset.

“Nuh-uh,” said the mailmare in a disapproving tone. “I only see some of them. It’s addressed to all of those names, so unless all are present, I can’t deliver it.”

Sunset growled. “Well, what are you waiting for? Find Lightning Dust and Suri!”

“Righto!” declared Flim. The two drove their car of the hole they had previously created.

“They didn’t make another hole when exiting?” asked Sunset in disbelief. “Maybe things are looking up for me after all.”

“Incoming!” declared Lightning Dust’s voice as she crashed into the floor, albeit going through the hole that was already created. “Did you need me?”

“I’m grateful for the fact you didn’t crash through the wall this time,” said Sunset.

“Why would I crash through the wall?” asked Lightning Dust quizzically. “There’s a perfectly good hole already. No need to create another.”

Why does that make far more sense than it should? wondered Sunset to herself.

A short time later…

“All right!” said Suri. “What’s going on with this letter, then?”

The mailmare gave the letter to Suri. “Hooray! Yet another successful delivery!” She flew off.

“What does it say?” asked Sunset.

Suri opened up the letter and read it. “You are cordially invited to–”

“Wait,” interrupted Trixie, “how often does somepony get a non-cordial invitation?”

Suri frowned at Trixie in disapproval.

“It’s a valid question!” said Trixie. “It seems so redundant!”

Suri rolled her eyes but continued reading without further comment. “You are cordially invited to the Crystalling of Shining Armor and Cadance’s soon-to-be-born foal. Bring a friend if you want.”

“Cadance was pregnant?” asked Gilda in surprise.

“What, you didn’t read the tabloids?” asked Suri. “It was on the headlines of all of them, usually next to stories about Fluttershy being a vampire or Chrysalis being in a secret relationship with Discord.”

“Setting aside that,” said Flim, “what is a ‘Crystalling’?”

“Oh, there’s a footnote about that,” said Suri. “Let’s see. ‘When a baby is born in the Crystal Empire, they bring it before the Crystal Heart.’ Then there’s some stuff about how it increases the joy everypony feels and that strengthens the Crystal Heart or something cheesy like that. Most likely it’s really just an excuse to party and get drunk.”

“Sounds great!” said Flam. “Let’s go!”

“Well, it’s not yet,” said Suri. “It’s scheduled several days from now. Doesn’t it seem frightfully late to be sending these letters so last-minute?”

“Maybe they got lost in the mail until now,” said Gilda.

And so, some time later…

“Okay, everypony is packed?” asked Sunset. “I don’t want anypony to be deciding they forgot anything while on the train and having to head back.”

“Don’t you mean you don’t want anypony to be realizing they forgot anything?” said Trixie. “Nopony ever decides that they forgot something.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ to my question of everypony being packed,” muttered Sunset.

Starlight approached the group. “I’m sorry I’m late, but I have everything packed.”

“Why is she here?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Did you zone out again when I was telling you?” asked Sunset in an irritated tone.

“How would I know?” asked Lightning Dust. “If I were zoned out, I wouldn’t know what you were talking about while I was zoned out.”

“I’ll take that as another ‘yes,’” muttered Sunset. “She’s supposed to be in my custody, and since you lot are all going with me, I have to bring her along. Besides, her friendship final exam involves being in the Crystal Empire.”

“What is it?” asked Starlight.

“It’s a pop exam!” said Sunset. “You won’t know until you get it. Now can we all get going now?”

“Well!” said Trixie after the train had left the station. “It’s a bit of a wait to get to the Crystal Empire by train. In the meantime, who wants to talk about their feelings?”

The rest of the group stared at Trixie briefly. Then everyone except for Lightning Dust quickly exited the car.

“Works every time,” said Lightning Dust. “Come on, let’s get that next issue of Mare Do Well scripted now that we don’t have to deal with them. I say we should bring Anon-a-Miss back!”

“Anon-a-Miss?” asked Trixie. “But that story was so controversial.”

“But it got a lot of attention!” said Lightning Dust. “Plus, if we have another go at it, we can prove we can have a story involving her that everypony will like!”

Trixie sighed. “What’s your idea, then?”

“My idea was just to bring Anon-a-Miss back,” said Lightning Dust. “I was hoping you could figure out the specifics.”

Trixie sighed again.

The train eventually reached the Crystal Empire, and the group went into the castle. “I’m so happy they finally finished the railroad so that we can get straight to the Crystal Empire without having to go through that snow again,” said Suri as they walked through. “It’s substantially more convenient!”

“All right then,” said Sunset to Starlight, “so your test, now that we’re in the Crystal Empire, is to find that Sunburst character and reunite with him.”

“Um…” said Starlight uncertainly.

“Should be easy!” said Gilda. “After all, he was the one you cared so much about that you went all psycho crazy evil.”

“Psycho and crazy are synonyms, making that statement redundant,” said Trixie.

“Your face is redundant,” said Gilda. “And unnecessary.”

“How is my face redundant or unnecessary?” demanded Trixie. “How would I even see or eat without… oh, wait. ‘Redundant and unnecessary.’ I see what you did there.”

“Uh… anyway, here’s the address!” said Sunset as she gave Starlight a piece of paper. “Now get going!”

“You know, maybe this should wait,” said Starlight. “I mean, I–”

“Don’t worry!” said Sunset as she patted Starlight on the back. “I have complete and utter faith in you! You just need to believe in yourself! In fact, you don’t even need to do that! Believe in the me that believes in you!”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Starlight.

“Exactly!” said Sunset. “Kick reason to the curb!”

“You’re unusually gung ho,” said Flim.

“That’s such a weird-sounding phrase,” said Lightning Dust. “Where did it come from?”

“It comes from the phrase ‘gun go,’” said Gilda. “Must have been made by gun enthusiasts.”

“Are you sure about that?” asked Lightning Dust.

“No,” said Gilda. “But it would be cool if it did.”

“So, who’s going to go with Starlight?” asked Trixie.

“Why would anypony need to do that?” asked Suri.

“Uh, moral support, I guess?” said Trixie.

“I’ve got it!” said Flim. “Let’s roll a die to decide!”

“There’s seven of us,” said Trixie. “Dice have six sides.”

“Oh, you can just count Flam and me together,” said Flim.

“You’re just doing that to lower your chances of having to do it yourself,” said Gilda.

“I’ve got it!” said Suri. “To make it sufficiently even, let’s have one option be that Starlight just goes alone. Now, we put three of us, plus the ‘go alone’ option in one group. Then the other four are in another group. We roll the die, and if it’s an even number, we continue with the first, and if it’s odd, the second. Then we roll the die again for that group, and each of the four, including ‘go alone’ if applicable, will be assigned a number, and on a 5 or a 6 we reroll.”

Gilda pulled out an 8-sided die. “Or we could just use this instead.”

“Why are you carrying an 8-sided die around?” asked Sunset.

“Why wouldn’t I?” said Gilda. “These things can come in handy sometimes, like in this situation! By the way, I’d like you to notice that it is transparent, so you have no need to worry about it being weighted. So, let’s roll the die to decide!”

“Don’t I have any say in this?” asked Starlight.

“No,” said the rest of the group simultaneously.

“Okay!” said Gilda. “So, the order will be our names alphabetically, and the number where none of us have to bother will just be Starlight’s name I guess. So that means that Flam is 1, Flim is 2, I’m 3, and–”

“Just roll it already,” said Sunset.

“Fine!” said Gilda as she rolled the die. Unfortunately, some wind caused it to roll into a gutter. “Um, hang on,” she said. “I have another one.”

“Why do you have a second 8-sided die?” asked Suri.

“Why wouldn’t I?” said Gilda. “Let’s try again.” She rolled the die and it landed on 4. “Okay, that’s Lightning Dust.”

“Aw,” said Lightning Dust, “but I wanted to do just about anything else.”

“The die has spoken!” said Gilda.

“Actually,” said Trixie, “the die didn’t speak at all. It’s incapable of making sounds.”

“Who cares about the semantics of the word ‘spoken’?” asked Sunset.

“I do!” said Trixie.

“Well, nopony else cares,” said Sunset. “Now let’s all go off and do our assigned activities.”

“Is it just me, or does the palace seem slightly more extravagant than before?” asked Trixie as they walked through it.

“It only recently came back, so I assume there’s been some renovations,” said Gilda. “I’m sure that’ll make the feast all the better!”

“Feast?”

“We’re getting a feast, right?” said Gilda. “I mean, it’s not like there’s much of any other reason for us to come all the way out here.”

“Gilda, we’re here because the travel and accommodations were free and it’d look bad to refuse an invitation,” said Sunset.

“Well, then why aren’t we doing something interesting like sightseeing?”

“Because we have to still check in,” said Sunset. “Where is Twilight or Shining Armor or Cadance anyway? I would’ve thought they’d be here to say hello. We did help save this place.”

“Well, I did most of the work in that,” said Gilda. “Maybe they’re just going to have a big surprise party and feast for me. How about you lot all clear out so I can have my party?”

“Hey!” said Sunset. “I was important in that also!”

“Fine,” said Gilda, “Sunset can stay. What did the rest of you do in that adventure anyway?”

“We did get the crystal ponies around to power up the Crystal Heart,” said Trixie.

“Right,” said Flam, “since the crystal ponies were around, their hope then rejuvenated it or something cheesy like that, and that solved everything somehow.”

Twilight came around the corner and approached the group. “Hello! I’m sorry nopony was around to greet you before now. We’ve been really busy.”

“No problem!” said Gilda. “Just give us our feast.”

“Feast?” asked Twilight in a confused tone.

“Ignore her,” said Sunset. “But even if you, Shining Armor, and Cadance were busy, couldn’t you have sent some guards to escort us?”

“Budget cuts,” said Twilight.

“Why were there budget cuts?” asked Flim.

“Well,” said Twilight, “there was this whole thing with Discord and a Smooze, and… you know what, let’s skip over the details. It wasn’t a very pleasant business. Anyway, I’m glad all of you showed up for the Crystalling.”

“Which involves a feast, right?” asked Gilda eagerly.

“Why are you so suddenly obsessed with feasts?” asked Flim.

“I never really got much as a reward for my pizza trick the last time we were here,” said Gilda. “I wouldn’t mind a feast. How about one with pizza?”

“Can we just get to seeing the kid already?” said Sunset.

“Sure!” said Twilight. “She’s this way.”

The group followed Twilight and soon came to a room with a moose. Then they realized they got the rooms mixed up, so they went to the next room which had a crib in it. “Oh!” said Twilight. “I should tell you beforehand that–”

Flam looked into the crib. “She’s an alicorn? Huh.”

“Wait, you can be born an alicorn?” asked Trixie. She frowned. “Darn it, now my fanfics are obsolete.”

Sunset looked into the crib. “Aw, she’s so cute.”

“You’re totally feeding off of her love right now, aren’t you?” asked Gilda.

“Hey!” declared Chrysalis as she suddenly jumped into the room. “That is a completely unwarranted stereotype! But it is probably true.”

“Huh?” asked Sunset. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, actually, I was looking for the employee lounge,” said Chrysalis. “Then by pure coincidence, I happened to end up just outside of this room as Gilda said that! So I took the opportunity to enter and say the thing that I said. I was in no way waiting outside of this room waiting for a good opportunity to jump in.”

“No, I mean, why are you here in the Crystal Empire?” said Sunset. “And does this castle even have an employee lounge?”

“How should I know?” said Chrysalis.

“Wait, was that an answer to my first or second question?”

“The second,” said Chrysalis.

“Okay, can I have one for the first?” asked Sunset in an irritated tone.

“Sure!” said Chrysalis. “You see, I originally wasn’t going to show up until the end, as a joke on the title. It makes you think I’d show up, but then I wouldn’t until the end, and it’d be a great joke. But it was funny enough for me to suddenly pop in after that was said that I decided against it.”

“Title? Huh? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Sunset.

“That’s odd,” said Chrysalis, “considering my appearance here is just a figment of your imagination. You’d think you would know what I’m talking about.” Chrysalis suddenly disappeared.

Sunset stared, flabbergasted. Finally she realized Gilda was speaking to her. “Huh?” asked Sunset. She turned and saw everyone was staring at her in a confused manner.

“I was asking why you were babbling to yourself,” said Gilda. “Are you going insane? Because if you are, it would be good to know.”

“No, I’m not going insane,” said Sunset. “I just had a hallucination of Chrysalis and was talking to it. That’s all.”

There was a pause. “That, um, doesn’t really put my concerns to rest in regards to the insanity thing,” said Gilda.

“You think Chrysalis isn’t a big enough troll to deliberately appear as a hallucination?” said Suri.

“Hrm,” said Gilda. “Well, when you put it that way…”

“I think I read somewhere that hallucinations is a potential side effect of feeding off of an infant’s love,” said Twilight.

“I wasn’t doing that!” protested Sunset.

“Well, that should be your story in any case,” said Trixie, “because I’m pretty sure you can get put on a list for doing that.”

Shining Armor entered. “Hello!” he said. “I see you’ve met her. Do be careful, though; her magic is extremely powerful and sometimes causes hallucinations.”

“Aha!” said Sunset. “I’m not insane! I knew it!”

“You seem surprisingly calm considering the circumstances,” said Suri.

“Oh, inwardly I’m a complete wreck,” said Shining Armor. “But Twilight’s been helping out, so I’m at least able to keep my composure.”

Just then, the currently unnamed baby alicorn sneezed and blasted a whole hole through the ceiling.

“See?” said Shining Armor. “Mentally I’m running around screaming, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at me.”

“And this is why I will never have kids,” muttered Sunset.

“I think your antisocial personality is the real reason for that,” said Gilda.

“Do you think it might be a little dangerous to go forward with the whole Crystalling thing if her magic is so powerful?” Flam asked Shining Armor.

“Well, what could possibly go wrong?” asked Shining Armor.

“She’d accidentally destroy the Crystal Heart and cause the entire empire to be buried under a mountain of ice and snow?” suggested Sunset.

There was a pause. “Actually, that’s a good point,” said Shining Armor. “Let’s just call the whole thing off.”

Meanwhile, Sunburst and Starlight were actually hitting it off very well.

“I never would’ve thought to combine Starswirl’s apparition spell with Spacium Flexibus!” said Starlight. “But what would happen if we added Somnabula’s Tempus Objectus?”

“If we do it just right,” said Sunburst, “it should allow us to materialize an object that was lost in the past. Finally, I’ll be able to find my missing sock.”

“Let’s do it!” Starlight and Sunburst started drawing an ornate design on the floor that was in no way a ripoff of Fullmetal Alchemist.

“So how does this work again?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Well,” said Starlight, “the interval between the two points is defined as the square root of the sum of the squares of the separation between the points along three spatial dimensions.”

“Sorry,” said Lightning Dust, “I sort of zoned out after ‘interval.’ Can you explain it more simply?”

“I already explained it to you more simply several minutes ago, and then you said you zoned out!”

“Well, that clearly shows a lack of quality communication on your end,” said Lightning Dust.

“Okay,” said Starlight, “how about you just sit there and be quiet?”

“No problem!” said Lightning Dust with a salute. “Sitting in one place and being quiet is one of the things I do worst!”

Starlight briefly tried to puzzle out this statement before deciding it wasn’t worth it. She and Sunburst finished drawing the picture and then activated it with magic. Suddenly, a large black hole appeared on the floor where the picture was, and starting sucking everything into it.

“Oh, darn it,” said Sunburst with a sigh. “Did I forget to carry the 3 again?”

Sunburst, Starlight, and Lightning Dust rapidly were sucked into the portal, which then disappeared.

A black hole suddenly appeared above the ground. Lightning Dust, Starlight, and Sunburst were all dropped unceremoniously onto the ground, and the hole disappeared.

“Any idea where we are now?” asked Starlight.

Sunburst stared at Starlight, then looked at himself. “Actually, just as importantly, what are we? I didn’t have fingers a moment ago. And the two of you have transformed into something else.”

“Oh, wow!” said Lightning Dust. “We must have ended up in that alternate universe Sunset visited a few times. Apparently, entering it transforms you into a totally different being.”

“Well, at least we have some information,” said Starlight. “What do you know about the universe?”

“Well,” said Lightning Dust, “I think Sunset said something like, ‘So then, after figuring out how to stand and walk on two feet, I… wait a minute, Lightning Dust, are you even paying attention to my story? Are you zoning out again? Screw this, I’m out of here.’ But I was only pretending to zone out! Ha! Got her good that time!”

Starlight and Sunburst stared blankly at Lightning Dust.

“It seemed like a clever prank at the time!” said Lightning Dust defensively. “Okay, let me see what else I can remember. She met some alternate version of Twilight Sparkle at a place called Canterlot High School, and… yeah, that’s all I’ve got. Maybe we could find her.”

“Do you have any suggestions on how to do that?” asked Sunburst.

“Nope!” said Lightning Dust cheerfully. “But hey, you guys are the smart ones, I’m sure you could come up with something on how to find Canterlot High School.”

Starlight pointed to a sign. “Well, that sign does say, ‘Canterlot High School.’”

“See?” said Lightning Dust. “This is why I need smart guys like you, so I don’t miss hidden clues like that.”

Starlight and Sunburst looked at each other quizzically for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay, so we’re at least in the right place. Now what?”

“We go in!” declared Lightning Dust as she attempted to run to the school building. However, not being used to walking on two legs, let alone running, caused her to quickly fall over. “Okay. Maybe we need to practice walking a little first.”

Some practice later…

“All right!” said Lightning Dust. “Now we should–”

“Hang on a minute,” said Starlight. “Why are you the one in charge?”

“Because I’m not the one who caused a portal to appear and suck us all into this world,” said Lightning Dust.

“She’s got a point,” admitted Sunburst.

“Anyway!” said Lightning Dust. “Now we just have to find the counterpart of Twilight Sparkle, and hopefully she’ll know how to get us back. Let’s go!”

A short time later…

“Greetings, fellow human!” said Lightning Dust.

“Um… hello?” asked the girl Lightning Dust had greeted.

“Indeed!” said Lightning Dust. “I’m trying to find an individual named Twilight Sparkle!”

“Oh, Twilight?” said the girl. “Probably in the auditorium with most everyone else for the Friendship Games. By the way, who are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”

“Well, you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you that we were from an alternate universe where we’re ponies and we came here through a freak accident involving a portal of some sort,” said Lightning Dust. “So instead I’ll say we just recently transferred.”

The girl stared at Lightning Dust for a few moments, stared for a few more moments, then walked off.

“I am so good at going undercover!” declared Lightning Dust. “To the auditorium!”

Sunset must be some kind of friendship master if she’s able to get along with Lightning Dust, thought Starlight to herself.

The three entered the auditorium to find a group of students and presumed faculty mingling around. “I suppose now–” started Lightning Dust before getting interrupted by a voice coming from a microphone.

“Greetings, students!” declared Chrysalis as she strolled onto the stage. “I’m Chrysalis, the principal of Canterlot High School, and I’m so glad you all made it to our slightly delayed Friendship Games between the Canterlot Wondercolts and the Crystal Prep Shadowbolts. As you know, we had to delay it because… well, wait, if you already know why we had to delay it, no need to tell you. As I was saying, I’m so glad you all made it, because if some you didn’t due to some kind of injury, there would’ve been all kinds of injury lawsuits, and all the schools in this district already had to face some budget cuts due to that incident with the beans. Anyway, we’re all here because of the Friendship Games, a competition that’s about friendship, because clearly the proper way to emphasize getting along with each other is to compete. Makes perfect sense!”

“Exactly!” said Lightning Dust. “Finally, there’s someone who gets that! The best way to make friends is to beat each other up! I learned that from comics!”

“In fact, one wonders what the point of it even is,” continued Chrysalis. “Granted, maybe I’m in the dark because I only got this job a few years ago and wasn’t here for all previous ones, but let’s face it. It happens only every four years, and it’s just one event between two schools, so even the idea of bragging rights are rather limited. It’s not like winning a single competition against one other school is going to affect your chances of getting into college or anything; it needs to be something bigger, like a competition among several schools. Sometimes I–”

“Ahem,” said Principal Cinch.

“Oh, fine,” grumbled Chrysalis. “Well, ignoring the fact that this entire thing is a pointless waste of tax money for the reasons I said, I’d like to welcome you all to the Friendship Games!” She held up a piece of paper and read it. “Representing Canterlot High School are Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Rarity. Representing Crystal Prep are Sour Sweet, Indigo Zap, Sunny Flare, Sugarcoat, Lemon Zest, and Sunset Shimmer. Technically, there’s six more individuals on each team but we all know they’re just there to be filler and will be knocked out after the first round.”

“Hey!” came several voices from the audience.

“Just telling it like it is!” said Chrysalis. “You’ve probably gotten your fill of me for now, but don’t worry, I’ll be back later for more! Anyway, here is Abacus Cinch, whose name is even goofier than my own!”

Chrysalis handed the microphone to Cinch, who took it awkwardly. “I’d like to think Principal Chrysalis for her… unconventional welcome,” said Cinch. “It’s been four years since the last Friendship Games, but it feels as though nothing has changed. Canterlot High continues to pick its competitors in a popularity contest and Crystal Prep continues to field its top twelve students. It is a comfort to know that even after so many years of losses, your school…” Cinch broke off as she heard some laughter from the audience. “What’s so funny?” She turned and noticed Chrysalis noticeably yawning, which was the apparent reason for the laughter. “Chrysalis, what are you doing?”

“Yawning,” said Chrysalis with a yawn. “I mean, your speech was rather dull and boring, especially compared to mine.”

Cinch glared at Chrysalis.

“Admittedly,” said Chrysalis, “maybe it was that anime I was up late watching last night. Have you ever watched it? It’s about attacks on titans.”

Cinch started to respond, but after a pause, reconsidered and continued on as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “It is a comfort to know that even after so many years of losses, your school remains committed to its ideals, however misguided they may be. I wish you all the best of luck, regardless of the inevitable outcome.”

“That was a lame speech,” said Lightning Dust. “It’s bad when even Chrysalis outdoes you.”

“Who cares about the lameness?” asked Starlight. “Didn’t you hear the fact Chrysalis name dropped Sunset? Her counterpart must be here as well.”

“Why do you think Sunset’s counterpart would be of any use?” said Lightning Dust. “It seems unlikely that she’s been researching the crazy hijinks that happened recently at this school and would have in some way stumbled upon a magical source of power that could get us all home.” She paused. “But, hey, dumber things have happened.”

And so the three went to look for either Twilight or Sunset. Lightning Dust developed a clever way to try to find them. “Are you Twilight Sparkle or Sunset Shimmer?” she asked a random girl.

“Um… no,” said the girl.

“Are you Twilight Sparkle or Sunset Shimmer?” Lightning Dust asked another girl.

“No?” she asked.

“Are you Twilight Sparkle or Sunset Shimmer?”

“I’m a guy!” said the student.

“Are you Twilight Sparkle or Sunset Shimmer?” Lightning Dust asked yet another student.

“Yes?” said Twilight awkwardly. “Who are you?”

“Ha!” said Lightning Dust. “Solving a puzzle by stupid brute force wins again!”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” said Twilight.

“Oh, right,” said Lightning Dust. “My companions and I are from that alternate universe that you came from and that Sunset you met a while ago was also from. Thanks to crazy magic shenanigans that I don’t understand, but I’m sure were very well thought out and completely consistent, we ended up accidentally making a portal that brought us here. However, we don’t have any way to get back as far as we know. So, I was hoping that maybe you’d know of some way to fix the whole thing up, bring us back to our own universe, and then we can all pretend this entire thing never happened until someone inadvertently travels between universes again.”

Twilight stared in disbelief.

“Uh-oh. I didn’t keep it too brief, did I?” asked Lightning Dust worriedly.

“No, that was fine,” said Twilight. “Just a lot to take in. But… hrm. I’m not really sure what I can do about the situation. The portal’s been shut down, and the phone doesn’t even work for trying to contact Sunset back in Equestria. I think her line got cancelled.”

“Darn it!” said Lightning Dust. “I hope we don’t end up stuck here.”

“Where are those companions you mentioned?” asked Twilight.

“Oh, there’s two others with me,” said Lightning Dust. “But we split up to try to find you… or this universe’s Sunset. Is she anything like the Sunset I know?”

Meanwhile, less than 0.038 miles away…

“Oh, there she is,” said Starlight as she pointed towards a human Sunset standing in the corner. “I finally found her.”

Sunburst scratched his head. “Do you really think she’ll necessarily know anything at all about getting us back?”

“There’s no harm in asking!” said Starlight.

The two sent over to Sunset, who was playing a game on her cell phone while paying no attention to them. “Hello?” said Starlight.

“Yes?” asked Sunset, not taking her eyes off her cell phone. “What do you want?”

Hrm, thought Sunburst. How should we approach this? We can’t just start by saying ‘we’re from another universe and knew an alternate version of you and were wondering if you knew anything about getting us back.’ That would seem really weird.

“We’re from another universe and knew an alternate version of you and were wondering if you knew anything about getting us back,” said Starlight.

This actually caught Sunset’s attention enough to make her look up from her game. “Say what now?”

“We’re from another universe and knew an alternate version of you and were wondering if you knew anything about getting us back,” repeated Starlight.

Sunset took a step towards them. “Did you–” she started, but suddenly a locket around her neck opened. Some kind of aura appeared around both Starlight and Sunburst, which was then suddenly sucked into the locket, which then closed.

“I guess there was possible harm in asking,” said Starlight as she grabbed a nearby pillar to stay up. “What just happened?”

“Hrm,” said Sunburst. “Felt like when Tirek took my magic.”

Sunset suddenly took out a notebook and a pencil. “So, can you describe the feeling that occurred in detail?”

“Why are you suddenly so interested?” asked Starlight.

“For the purpose of scientific advancement!” declared Sunset.

“Really?”

“Well, actually, I just made this thing so I could try to get a transfer to an independent study program so I could minimize interpersonal contact because I hate everyone, and gaining more data on it would help guarantee it.”

“I preferred the previous way you put it,” said Sunburst with a frown.

“Hey, everypo… everybody!” announced Lightning Dust as she and Twilight approached. “I found Twilight! I see you found Sunset!” She paused. “And now I have absolutely no idea what to do next! Any ideas?”

“Well, Sunset made some kind of magical device,” said Starlight. “Maybe that’s the key.”

“Sure!” said Sunset. “If we can figure out a way to get you all home, that’d be even more proof I made something great, allowing me to get into that independent study program! Or even better, make me rich! There’s probably money in this!”

“Sounds great!” said Lightning Dust. “So, do you just open the doohickey and release the magic to open a portal?”

“‘Doohickey’?” asked Sunset.

“Whoops,” said Lightning Dust. “The technical term is thingamabob, right?”

Sunset stared at Lightning Dust briefly. “Uh, anyway, I’m sort of worried about using it like that. It’s not particularly tested, and thus it could cause all kinds of catastrophes. And worse yet, due to my proximity, those catastrophes could affect me! I think we’ll have to wait until after these games to really try for much testing. Otherwise, who knows what could happen?”

A rip in reality suddenly appeared in front of the group before disappearing just as quickly as it came.

“Something like that, you think?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Yes,” said Sunset with a sigh, “something like that.”

“The real question is why it happened to begin with,” said Sunburst. “I believe that–”

“Ahem,” came a voice. The group looked around to see Abacus Cinch standing there. “Sunset, that’s enough time to be mingling with those from Canterlot High. Let’s go and prepare for the first round of the Friendship Games.”

“But isn’t that not for a while?” said a confused Sunset.

“Early preparation is key to winning!” declared Cinch as she pulled Sunset away.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to put all of that on hold for a little while,” said Twilight.

“Put it on hold?” asked Starlight. “We just saw a rip in reality!”

“Sunset’s the one who made that device! Without her, we’re operating blindly!”

“I think we’re all getting a little too worried,” said Lightning Dust. “Maybe that was just reality’s way of saying hello to us.”

One round of the Friendship Games later…

“After a careful tallying of points—as opposed to a non-careful tallying of points—we’ve determined the students moving on to the Friendship Games’ special event,” announced Chrysalis. “And guess what? Just like usual, I was completely right about who was going to make it. Ha!”

“If we could move on…” said Cinch in an irritated tone.

“Anyway!” said Chrysalis. “We’re going to have a break between that and the next round. And that’ll give me plenty of time to tell Cinch here the rest of my theory about my anime!” She turned to Cinch. “So, the next reason is that the characters in the series–”

“How about we just start the next round now?” asked Cinch.

“Are you sure?” asked Chrysalis in a disappointed tone. “Because I didn’t even get to the really good parts before. I’m sure I could go on for at least half an hour–”

“Yes, I’m sure!” snapped Cinch.

“Fine, but when the plot twist inevitably comes, just know I called it!”

And so the next round was set to begin after some preparations that probably did not involve cheese or the repetition of a joke from chapter 5.

“I’m bored,” said Lightning Dust.

“The event hasn’t even started yet!” said Starlight.

“That’s exactly why I’m bored,” said Lightning Dust. “I’m also confused about what this entails.”

“There’s several different events, each with two members of each team, and once the team clears the applicable event, the next one begins for that team. Seems simple enough.”

“No, I mean, I understood that,” said Lightning Dust. “But it seems like a bad setup. You get one weak person on your team and then it can stall out permanently if they can’t advance. Seems badly designed.”

“All right!” said Chrysalis. “Are you all ready?” Before anyone had an actual chance to answer, Chrysalis quickly said, “then let’s go! Dedicate your hearts!”

After a few moments in which everyone tried to puzzle out why Chrysalis used such an odd-sounding phrase, everyone quickly remembered there was no point trying to figure out anything about Chrysalis and the competition began.

However, despite their apparently high degree of intelligence, neither Twilight nor Sunset appeared to have much in the way of physical ability. Their task to was to shoot an arrow at a target, but neither had any luck, and several minutes passed with neither hitting the targets.

“Well,” said Chrysalis over the intercom, “while we wait for one of these two to actually hit the target, I’d like to share my theory about that anime I mentioned to you all before. Luckily, it looks like we’ll have plenty of time!” Chrysalis took out a rather large stack of paper. “I’ve got it all prepared here. You see, I first realized that the potato girl was the mastermind behind everything when–”

Desperate to avoid a long-winded exposition from Chrysalis, both Sunset and Twilight suddenly found the ability to hit their targets with their arrows, and the race continued.

“Aw,” said Chrysalis in a disappointed tone, “I worked really hard on that, too.”

“Oh, good,” said Lightning Dust, “maybe this will be interesting now. See? This is the problem when you have it all set up like that. You can end up with them just taking forever to do one particular task. It’s just lousy course setup.”

The next part of the race was a motocross competition, but it ended up not mattering much because while walking off, Sunset inadvertently tripped on a rock and fell. The force of her pendant hitting the ground caused it to suddenly open up, sending what looked like a special effect spreading around. “Huh. That probably wasn’t good,” she said to herself. Apparently due to the special effect-like force that emerged earlier in this paragraph, various vine tendrils suddenly emerged and began attacking the contestants.

“All right!” said Lightning Dust. “Finally, things are getting cool!”

“I’m not sure this is supposed to be part of the event?” said Starlight uncertainly.

“Well, you just think that because–” started Lightning Dust before several giant plants emerged along with the vines to continue the attack. “Hrm. Maybe you’re right. That does seem a little extreme… unless that’s the point!”

“No, I’m pretty sure this was unexpected,” said Sunburst, observing various panic. “Maybe we should do something?”

“Nah, we should leave this to the professionals,” said Lightning Dust.

“‘Professionals’?!”

“Today is a good day to die!” declared Chrysalis dramatically as she stood up. After a brief pause, she added, “For the plants, that is! You see what I did there?” She pulled out two swords.

“Wait, where in the world were you even keeping–” started Cinch, but Chrysalis had already started running towards the plants. “Never mind,” she said with a sigh.

As the plants attempted to grab several contestants, Chrysalis used the swords and in an absolutely epic display, was able to cut up and defeat the plants without anyone getting hurt. “I bet this will do wonders for my approval rating!” she said.

Because the contestants for some reason opted to continue racing through all of this, the race did conclude, and the Wondercolts ended up winning.

“So!” said Chrysalis after she returned to the announcers’ booth. “I suppose this ties up the score? Because you won the first round, right?”

“You can’t possibly call that a fair race,” said Cinch.

“The plants were attacking indiscriminately, though,” said Chrysalis. “I’ll admit it did add an amount of randomness, but it didn’t seem like it favored either side. That seems fair.”

“Also, are you even legally allowed to carry around those swords on school grounds?”

“Probably,” said Chrysalis. “By the way, aren’t you going to ask why I have these in the first place?”

“No,” said Cinch.

“Aw,” said Chrysalis. “I was hoping someone would. But don’t you think that maybe under the circumstances we should suspend the whole thing and leave it as a tie? This does seem like something that should be freaking people out more than it is.”

“A tie?” asked Cinch in an offended tone. “Was this your strategy all along? To force us into accepting you as equals? I think not. The games will continue and Crystal Prep will prevail despite your antics.”

“Wait a minute,” said Chrysalis, “you did all this, right? You’re secretly a government agent who set up a false flag operation to make us ignore the destruction of the rainforest, right?”

Cinch stared blankly at Chrysalis.

“Hey, that’s no less stupid than you insisting on us continuing!” said Chrysalis.

“Well, I am insisting!”

“Okay, just know that you’re the one legally liable for any damages.”

A short time later…

“Hello again, everyone!” declared Chrysalis while on the stage, speaking into the microphone. “The results of the previous event have made the score tied, so we’re going into the final round. Now, you might be wondering ‘wait, shouldn’t this whole thing be suspended in order to figure out why in the world there were giant plants attacking people? Why is everyone being so weirdly blasé about this?’ Those are very good questions!” There was a pause. “Anyway, good luck!”

“Wait, what’s the competition?” asked a student.

“Oh,” said Chrysalis, “good point. I forgot to mention that. Let’s just go outside and get it started. Come to think of it, I’m not sure why I started my announcement here in the gymnasium rather than having everyone go outside and then say it.”

After a trip outside…

“Okay!” said Chrysalis. “Hopefully there will be no more giant plants or weird adjustments of reality. The next event is a capture the flag! Well, more accurately, a lamer version of it. Somewhere on campus, a pennant from each school has been hidden, and the first team to find their school’s flag and bring it back wins. Ordinarily we’d start now, but Cinch wanted to give a motivational speech or something to her students first. In the meantime, who wants to listen to me do karaoke of anime theme songs?”

While Chrysalis tried to set up for karaoke, Cinch was talking to the Shadowbolts. “I know I’m asking you to beat a team that isn’t playing fair, but Canterlot High must be made to understand that even with magic at their disposal, beating Crystal Prep is simply not an option.”

“And what if giant plants attack again?” asked Sugarcoat.

“A fair question,” said Cinch. “And unlike Chrysalis when she makes a comment like that, I’m going to provide an answer. I believe we–”

“Aw,” said Lemon Zest, “I thought it was funny when she said stuff like that.”

Cinch briefly frowned at Lemon Zest but then continued. “I believe we can fight fire with fire. Sunset, I’ve seen what your device can do back at the gymnasium. Containing magical energy is fine, but have you considered releasing it?”

“Isn’t that exactly what caused the giant plants to attack to begin with?” asked Sunset.

“Huh?” said Cinch.

“The thing opened up and made the plants show up,” said Sunset. “Did you not notice?”

“Well, I’m sure they must have deliberately tripped you somehow,” said Cinch. “Thus, they were still at fault. Also, I’m sure Chrysalis using those swords like that violates some kind of rule.”

“You’re actually complaining about the thing that actually saved people?”

“Still against the rules!” said Cinch. “So let us use that magic and win! Crystal Prep will not lose!”

“So, I have a quick question,” said Sugarcoat.

“What?” asked Cinch.

“Are you actually a guy?”

“With how obsessed you are with winning what, as Chrysalis pointed out, doesn’t seem to be that particularly important an event, is there some kind of personal inadequacy you’re trying really hard to compensate for?”

Cinch stared at Sugarcoat briefly, before saying, “Huh?”

“If so,” continued Sugar Coat, “I’ve heard there is medication for that sort of thing.”

Cinch blinked several times in confusion, then continued. “As I was saying. We can fight fire with fire if you unleash the magic.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to fight fire with water?” wondered Lemon Zest.

Cinch’s eye briefly twitched before recovering. “So, Sunset, would you? If not, I am fully prepared to start a song trying to convince you.”

“Actually, I’d suggest refusing,” said Indigo Zap. “That thing took so long to learn that it’d be really annoying to not have an opportunity to go through with it.”

“You prepared a song just for the off chance that there was some kind of magic going on that you wanted me to release?” asked a confused Sunset. “That seems awfully goofy for your otherwise stern demeanor.”

“It was a way to get more usage out of music class,” said Cinch airily. “Anyway, will you do it?”

“But what if it backfires and I end up absorbing it, making me crazy and try to combine alternate universes to potentially bring about the end of the world? And even worse, making me wear an outfit that makes me look like a really bad cosplayer?”

Cinch stared at Sunset.

“Okay, that last part did seem odd,” said Sunset. “But seriously, couldn’t this just backfire on us just as easily, as we have no way to control it?”

“Sunset,” said Cinch, “I should mention your entire application for Everton is at stake here.”

“Oh, come on,” said Sunset, “you think they’re going to care about what you think after I demonstrate what this thing can do? ‘Well, this pendant has all kinds of magical powers that could overturn everything we know about science… but a high school principal doesn’t like Sunset, so we’ll pass on all of it.’ That sounds doubtful.”

Lightning Dust, Starlight, and Sunburst approached. “Hey,” said Lightning Dust, “I know this might be a bad time, but I really wanted to–”

Suddenly, the pendant opened up and, similar to earlier in this story, grabbed magic from Starlight and Sunburst. “Huh,” mused Lightning Dust. “I guess this was a bad time.”

“That does it,” said Cinch as she suddenly grabbed the pendant from Sunset. “If you’re not going to use this, then I will.” She opened the pendant and was engulfed by the magic in it, transforming into a being that looked kind of like Midnight Sparkle from the original movie but not really. “With this power, we’re sure to win! Because they’ll forfeit!”

“How are they going to forfeit?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, I’ll just simply destroy them all,” said Cinch in a matter-of-fact tone.

“That’s where you’re wrong!” declared Chrysalis as she suddenly ran up. “I’ll stop you!”

“With what?” said Cinch in an unimpressed tone. “Those swords?”

“No,” said Chrysalis, “with this!” She bit into her hand and suddenly turned into a giant.

“Okay, okay, stop right there,” said Starlight. “That did not happen at all. Cinch didn’t absorb any magic, and Chrysalis never became a giant. How did you even recall conversations you weren’t present for?”

“Really good hearing,” said Lightning Dust.

“I liked it!” said Trixie. “I thought Chrysalis having the ability to turn into a giant was actually a very interesting plot twist!”

“Exactly!” said Lightning Dust. “I’m just trying to add some more style to the whole thing. The way things actually ended was considerably more boring.”

“How was it boring?” demanded Starlight.

“You mean Cinch grabbing Sunset’s game and destroying it, causing Sunset to get angry and open up the pendant and absorb its power?” said Lightning Dust. “Sure, that seemed exciting at first, but then Chrysalis just showed up and said Sunset could just use the power to fix her game, so she did, then we asked her to open up a portal back to our world with her remaining power, and we left. So anticlimactic! So I changed things a bit to set up a big climactic battle between Chrysalis and Cinch.”

“Huh,” said Sunset. “So that dream was prophetic…”

“Dream?” asked Trixie.

“You remember when that whole Tantawhatchamacallit thing was infesting our dreams?” asked Sunset.

“Not really,” said Trixie. “I don’t remember my dreams very well.”

“Never mind,” said Sunset.

“Can I go back to my story?” said Lightning Dust. “I really wanted to get to the part where Starlight, Sunburst, and I all became cyborgs. We were way too irrelevant the way things actually went, and I wanted to fix that in my version.”

“Maybe later,” said Sunset. “So, Starlight, it seems you and Sunburst got along pretty well?”

“I suppose,” said Starlight, “outside of the whole inadvertently opening a portal to another universe.”

“Oh, that’s no problem,” said Sunset. “Anyway, you re-made a friend! I therefore have nothing else to teach you! Congratulations, you just graduated!” She grabbed Starlight’s hoof and shook it vigorously.

“Um… thanks?” said Starlight. “But where should I be living now?”

“That’s not my problem!” said Sunset. “Um, no, I mean, uh… maybe with Sunburst?”

“I suppose I do have a spare room,” said Sunburst. “But do you–”

“Great!” said Sunset as she shook his hoof vigorously. “Have fun together! Don’t open up any more portals! Anyway, we should probably all get going now.”

“Aw,” said Trixie in a disappointed tone. “I wanted to stay and see all of the ship teases between the two of them.”

“The what between the two of us?” asked Sunburst.

“You really don’t want to know,” said Gilda.

“By the way,” said Lightning Dust, “we’ve been talking about what I got into with Sunburst and Starlight. What kind of crazy shenanigans did you all get up to in the meantime?”

“Well,” said Flim, “we might have gotten into crazy shenanigans had something gone wrong with the planned Crystalling, but they decided to skip the whole thing. Some were initially upset, but then there was a big feast and everypony got cheered up.”

“The feast was my idea!” said Gilda proudly.

“So!” said Sunset. “I guess that wraps everything up.” She paused, then awkwardly added, “So, uh, bye.” She walked off.

“About time you came back from your vacation,” said Chrysalis. “You missed a lot.”

“Like what?” asked Luna.

“One of the students from Crystal Prep somehow tapped into magical power, which made giant plants appear and attack the students, then later on absorbed all the power into herself after Cinch broke her video game and looked like she was about to wreak havoc, then I turned into a giant and fought it all off.”

Luna stared blankly at Chrysalis.

“Sorry,” said Chrysalis, “bad memory. I didn’t turn into a giant. I just suggested she use the power to fix the game, then she opened up some portals and some random people went through them, and that was it.”

“Why wasn’t this mentioned in the newspapers?”

“Because they had more important things to cover,” said Chrysalis. “A celebrity getting divorced dominated most of the news.”

“Sometimes I think something is just wrong with the world,” said Luna.

“In case you were wondering,” said Chrysalis, “the end result of the Friendship Games is that the whole thing exhausted Sunset enough she wouldn’t compete anymore, though she had probably lost interest anyway, and thus we won by default. Then Cinch snapped as a result and went on a killing spree.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, wait, no, that last part didn’t happen either,” said Chrysalis. “She sure did get angry, though. Anyway, now that that’s all over, want to hear my theory about this anime I’ve been watching?” Before Luna had a chance to answer, Chrysalis launched into her explanation. “You see, I’m convinced that the mastermind behind everything is that potato girl. My first reason is–”

“Wait,” said Luna, “are you talking about that one with the titans?”

“Oh!” said Chrysalis. “You’ve heard of it?”

Luna sighed and facepalmed. “Chrysalis, she isn’t the mastermind behind everything.”

“How would you know?” asked Chrysalis.

“Because I read the comic that anime was based on, which is further along, and that wasn’t what happened.”

“Oh,” said Chrysalis in a disappointed tone. She paused. “Wait a minute, you pay attention to it too? Do you know what that means? It means we can be Anime Buddies!”

“I’m actually more of a reader than a–” started Luna before she was interrupted by Chrysalis again.

“So here’s a question!” said Chrysalis. “I’ve been watching this other one about a world where everyone has a superpower. If I had a superpower, what do you think I would have?”

Luna sighed. “I don’t know. Flight?”

“Flight? Pfft!” said Chrysalis. “Flight is almost as lame of a superpower as shapeshifting.”

“You were surprisingly nice on this trip,” said Gilda as the train left. “Did you take your attempt to teach Starlight about friendship to heart?”

“Pfft!” said Lightning Dust. “She was probably just doing all that to try to get Starlight to live with Sunburst so Sunset wouldn’t have to put up with her anymore.”

“That would make more sense,” said Gilda.

“Oh, shut up,” said Sunset. “Like you lot would’ve done anything different.”

“So!” said Trixie. “During your big adventure, did you come up with any ideas for how to handle Anon-a-Miss?”

“Who is ‘Anon-a-Miss’?” asked Sunset.

“A character who appeared once in a Mare Do Well comic,” said Trixie. “She was a green alien who had no real personality. It was supposed to be a joke on self-insert stories.”

“Didn’t go over very well,” said Lightning Dust. “Fans thought the parody was a bit stale and too in your face. But to answer your question, Trixie. No, I didn’t find any inspiration. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

“Good call!” said Gilda. “I never cared for that story myself.”

“Wait, you read the comic?” asked Suri.

“I mean… um… I assume I wouldn’t have cared for it based on the sound of it,” said Gilda. “Because I certainly never read it.”

“One thing still bothers me,” said Lightning Dust. “Why did only Starlight and Sunburst get hit by the magic absorber thingamabob?”

“I don’t know,” said Sunset, “maybe the magical power that unicorns have carried over into that universe in a latent manner, and because you’re a pegasus, it didn’t affect you?”

“Huh,” said Lightning Dust. “That makes a lot more sense than magical powers usually do.”

“Well, just as well we didn’t go to that whole Crystalling thing,” said Chrysalis, “as it looks like it got cancelled. By the way, Luna, do you ever get the feeling that you were only supposed to have a small part at the end of something as a joke, but then you ended up showing up a lot more, or at least a hallucination or alternate version of yourself showed up a lot more, and therefore turned what was supposed to be an ironic title into an accurate one?”

Luna stared at Chrysalis for a few moments before finally answering. “Um, no?”

“Phew!” said Chrysalis. “I was afraid you did and was worried for your sanity. That takes a load off my mind.”

“Why in the world would you think I was thinking that?” asked Luna.

“You were just making that kind of face,” said Chrysalis with a shrug. “By the way, want to hear my theory about this comic I’ve been reading? I think I’ve figured out the mastermind behind the whole thing.”

Another Hearth's Warming Tail

“Hello, Sunset!” declared Trixie. “I have just the cure for your apathy towards Hearth’s Warming Eve!”

Sunset stared at Trixie for a few moments, then said, “Come again?”

“I said, I have just the cure for your apathy towards Hearth’s Warming Eve! I noticed how uninterested you were in the whole thing.”

“Hearth’s Warming Eve was three weeks ago,” said Sunset. “This seems a little late.”

“Well, it took me a while to get it together!” said Trixie as she pulled out several pieces of paper. “Are you ready for this? I wrote a story to help you get into the spirit!”

“That sounds incredibly insipid,” said Sunset. “I’ll pass.”

“Well, if that’s what you want,” said Trixie in a forlorn tone as an incredibly dejected look appeared on her face. She started to walk out, looking sadly at the ground.

“Oh… fine,” muttered Sunset. “I’ll read the stupid thing.”

Trixie suddenly brightened up considerably and ran back to Sunset. I knew those ‘looking sad’ classes would eventually pay off! Trixie thought to herself. “All right, here you go!” Trixie gave the papers to Sunset, who started reading.

Once upon a time, ‘once’ decided that it was tired of being on top of ‘time’—this isn’t supposed to be any kind of innuendo, this is in reference to the fact that the floor that ‘once’ lived on was higher than the floor that ‘time’ lived on—and wanted to change apartments for a while. After lengthy negotiations, this actually happened.

Therefore, time upon a once, there was a unicorn named Snowfall Frost, who looked almost exactly like Starlight Glimmer except she wore glasses and wore a goofy-looking coat because apparently that’s what stuck-up ponies do.

“Why does she look almost exactly like Starlight?” asked Sunset.

“I didn’t want to come up with new character designs, so I just copied some that were already existing,” said Trixie. “The glasses and coat are to differentiate her a little.”

“This is going to be painful…” muttered Sunset to herself.

“Keep reading! Keep reading!” Trixie urged Sunset on.

Snowfall Frost was an extremely powerful unicorn who studied magic almost as much as Starswirl the Bearded. Almost as much, because if she had, then she would have actually been better known. In that case, you could namedrop Snowfall Frost and everypony would know who you were referring to, and this introduction would be unnecessary. Snowfall wanted to be perfect, and anything that got in the way of that would be a waste of time.

“Wait,” said Sunset, “what’s this next bit that’s crossed out? It looks like the narrator was ruminating on the meaning of the phrase ‘dead as a doornail’?”

“In retrospect, I’m not sure where I was going with that,” said Trixie. “So I crossed it out.”

“This is really going to be painful…” muttered Sunset to herself.

“Well, maybe if you didn’t stop reading after every paragraph to make a snarky remark, it would work better!”

At the moment, Snowfall was working on a brew in a cauldron. The specific nature of the brew has been lost to the sands of time, but probably had something to do with cantaloupes. In any case, she found her concentration interrupted by the noise of Hearth’s Warming Eve celebrations happening outside. As a result, she inadvertently dropped the ingredient she was using, creating a mess on the floor.

“Well, that batch is ruined,” she grumbled. “Snowdust! Come in here and–”

Snowdust was Snowfall’s assistant, a green pegasus who looked a whole lot like Lightning Dust. She flew into the room, smashing a hole in the wall while doing so. “What do you need, chief?” she asked cheerfully.

Snowfall looked at the hole in the wall. “A new assistant. You’re fired.”

“Aw, come on,” said Snowdust. “Think about all the good times we’ve had!”

“Good times? You were hired earlier today!”

“Exactly! And all those things that happened in the intervening hours were great, right?”

Snowfall stared blankly at Snowdust. “No,” she said bluntly.

“Well, I guess it’s back to the old grind again,” said Snowdust before she flew out, breaking a wall in the process. Much to Snowfall’s frustration, this had the effect of making the noise from outside even louder due to there being less of a wall to block said noise.

“Just more evidence of how bad Hearth’s Warming Eve is. How I hate it!” declared Snowfall.

Snowdust zipped back in, blowing another hole in the wall. “Wait. What does me being an incompetent assistant and ruining your walls have to do with Hearth’s Warming Eve?”

Frustrated, Snowfall used the really powerful magic that she was previously established to have to blast Snowdust so far away, she ended up in another story altogether. That, however, is another story. Snowfall then realized to her frustration that not only had she blasted yet another hole in the wall, she had used up so much magic with the blast that she didn’t have enough left to fix the walls properly and would have to wait until the next day for her magical power to fully recover.

“That does it!” she said. “Everypony would be better off if we skipped this stupid holiday! Especially me! I’ll use my magic to erase it from existence!”

“Wait,” said Sunset, “how in the world does that even work? I’m not sure how a spell–”

Trixie pointed at the paper, gesturing to keep reading. With a sigh, Sunset continued.

Sunset Shimmer suddenly walked in. “Wait, how in the world does that even work? I’m not sure how a spell can actually erase a holiday.”

“Wait, who are you?” asked Snowfall.

“I’m just here because Trixie thought that I’d probably make an objection like that and wanted to see if she was right,” explained Sunset.

Sunset stared at Trixie.

“I’m good, aren’t I?” asked Trixie proudly.

”What are you talking about?” asked Snowfall. “I don’t understand.”

“Not my problem!” declared Sunset as she walked out.

“And that’s another example of how bad Hearth’s Warming Eve is!” said Snowfall. And so she got to work on her spell after making some rudimentary repairs to the walls. But just before she was about to begin the start of the preliminary stages of part one of the introduction of the beginning of the first step of attempting to cast it, she was interrupted by an interruption from the hearth.

“Hi!” declared a transparent Discord as he walked into the room from the hearth. “I’m here to give an important message!”

“Wait, who are you?” asked Snowfall.

“I’m Discord!” said Discord. “No different names involved here like with you or that Snowdust character; it’s me, bona fide Discord! Though I’m only here in spirit because I’m turned to stone… I think? When is this supposed to take place?”

Snowfall stared in confusion.

“Well, anyway!” said Discord. “You will be visited by three spirits in order to teach you all about Hearth’s Warming Eve!”

“Wait a minute,” said Sunset, “this is the same story you showed to Suri a while ago.”

“Actually,” said Trixie, “both are based on an already existing story. I just adapted them a bit differently. This one is actually closer to the original than the other.”

”Oh, wait, now I remember you,” said Snowfall. “You’re that spirit of chaos or whatever. Why are you doing this?”

“That’s a very good question!” said Discord. “It does feel awfully out of character. But trust me, there is a very good explanation for it. I just don’t feel like telling you. Anyway, ciao!” Discord snapped his fingers and nothing happened. “Oh, right. I’m here in spirit. I have to actually walk.” Discord walked out, leaving a confused Snowfall alone.

Before Snowfall had an opportunity to properly process what happened, ghostly figures that looked remarkably like Flim and Flam suddenly appeared, followed by some music suddenly starting up.

“What is going–” started Snowfall before being interrupted by the two bursting into song:

“Well, you’ve got opportunity, but don’t act with impunity!
He’s Flem!
He’s Flum!
We’re the world famous Flem Flum Brothers!
Hearth’s Warming Eve spirits nonpareil!”

At that, the music abruptly ended. “We had a much longer musical number ready,” said Flem, “but it had to be drastically shortened so Discord could show up. Sorry.”

Snowfall was about to ask for more information about that, but then she reconsidered and decided to ask about more pressing matters. “Who are you two?”

“Do you want us to sing the song again?” asked Flum. “We explained that pretty well. But if you insist… ahem. Well, you’ve got opportunity, but–”

“No, I understood your names,” said Snowfall grouchily. “What I don’t understand is why you’re here.”

“We’re here to explain to you about the past!” said Flem. “Specifically, your past. But first, a word from our sponsor!”

“Huh?” asked Snowfall.

“Do you find your toothbrushes boring?” asked Flum, ignoring her question. “So do many! In fact, studies show that this causes many ponies to be uninterested in brushing, leading to cavities! But don’t worry! With a subscription to BrushFun™, you’ll get a new, exciting toothbrush every month!” He pulled out a poster with pictures of various exciting-looking toothbrushes. “Here are just a few samples! Best of all, the first one comes with a money back guarantee; if you want to cancel after the first, your money will be fully refunded. Is that not enough? Well, if you use the code FLEMFLUM when ordering, you’ll receive a 10% discount off your first order! So keep your toothbrushes fun and your teeth white!”

Snowfall, who had found herself eerily unable to move during the speech, suddenly felt herself free up. “What was that about?”

“Oh, well, time travel can be expensive,” said Flem. “We have to cover our costs. Let’s go!”

There was a pause.

“Flum? That’s your cue to start up the time portal,” said Flem.

“Wait, I thought you brought it,” said Flum.

“Oh, darn it, did we not bring it at all?” said Flem. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to verbally say it all instead of showing it.”

“Can you just get it over with?” asked Snowfall. “I was in the middle of something when you interrupted me.”

“So, according to our reading on your backstory,” said Flum, “you used to not dislike Hearth’s Warming Eve. But then a professor told you that you should put all your effort into studying magic and not anything else. This made you who you are today.”

There was a pause.

“Come to think of it, I’m not sure we had to actually do any time travel to reveal that,” said Flem. “It seemed rather simple. Well, it saved us money on time travel fuel. See you!”

Flem and Flum suddenly disappeared, leaving Snowfall standing in confusion. “Maybe the eggnog is making me hallucinate,” she muttered to herself, but then realized she hadn’t drunk any eggnog. Before she could think of what other food or drink she had ingested that could have such an effect, there was a large puff of smoke that suddenly appeared. After it dissipated (and Snowfall stopped coughing from the smoke), she found somepony else that had an extremely strong resemblance to Suri.

“And who are you?” asked Snowfall.

“Well,” said the Suri-look-alike, “I am the spirit of Hearth’s Warming Eve Present! Not to be confused with the spirit of Hearth’s Warming Eve Presents, which is a completely different spirit. This role was originally going to go to a Trixie-look-alike, but that seemed to come too close to an author self insert, so I was put in this role instead.”

Are all of these ‘spirits’ insane? thought Snowfall to herself.

“But, if you want a name, you can call me Zuri!” continued the Suri-look-alike. “Now we’re going to look around at what’s going on in the present. We were originally going to do a music number, but sort of blew the production budget on the Discord cameo—he’s rather pricey to hire out—so we’re just going to skip past that.”

Don’t question it, thought Snowfall to herself. Just don’t question it.

“Now,” continued Zuri, “let’s head out into the town!”

“What if I don’t want to?” asked Snowfall.

“Well,” said Zuri, “then I can give you a sales pitch! I’ve got a sweater on sale for a great price, and–”

“I’m going! I’m going!” said Snowfall.

“So, is the story supposed to make me like this Snowfall character?” asked Sunset. “Because I am feeling a lot of empathy for her right now.”

“Well,” said Trixie, “the answer to that depends on your perspective. There is some disagreement among literary theories as to how much you should factor in authorial intent when–”

“You know what?” said Sunset. “Never mind.”

And so the two went out into the town, which was largely uneventful thanks to the absence of any musical number. But they soon came to a party where various ponies (who looked awfully like some ponies you sort of knew) made a number of cameo background appearances. However, the focus in this scene is instead on the look-alikes you actually are more familiar with.

“Hi, Glida!” declared Snowdust. “You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing!”

“Your boss got angry about you breaking walls and blasted you really far away, and you only just got back now?” asked the aforementioned Glida, a griffon who looked extremely like Gilda.

“Darn it, that’s a good guess,” muttered Snowdust.

“You know, Snowfall might be a bit of a jerk, but I can’t really blame her for firing you,” said Glida.

“Well, that’s another firing for me,” said Snowdust. “How do you keep your job?”

“I don’t smash into walls constantly,” said Glida.

“So if I’m in a hurry to get somewhere, and there’s a wall blocking my way, what am I supposed to do?” asked Snowdust. “Go around it?”

Glida stared at Snowdust for a moment. “Yes!” she said incredulously.

“I don’t understand,” said Snowdust in a confused tone.

“Argh!” said Glida as she left.

“You see?” said Zuri. “This is what you firing Snowdust led to.”

“But this just shows that Snowdust was an idiot that deserved firing,” said Snowfall.

“That’s entirely besides the point,” said Zuri huffily. “Besides, as you saw, that griffon thought you were being a jerk. That shows you need to change!”

“That doesn’t seem like quite enough–” started Snowfall before being interrupted.

“Well, it would’ve made perfect sense if I had a chance to do a song,” said Zuri. “I think we probably spent the budget incorrectly. Well, time for the next spirit.” She vanished in a puff of smoke, which prompted another coughing fit from Snowfall.

Eventually, the smoke dissipated, revealing an alicorn with a very strong resemblance to Luna. “Greetings,” she said.

“I assume you’re the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Eve Future?” asked Snowfall.

“No,” said the aforementioned spirit, “I am the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Eve Yet to Come. Also, just to be clear, I am not Chrysalis.”

“I never said you were?” said Snowfall uncertainly.

“Good. I wanted to make that clear. I am not Chrysalis.”

“Uh, fine, Not-Chrysalis, whatever you say,” said Snowfall. “So, are you going to show me future Hearth’s Warming Eves?” She paused. “Oh, wait, there wouldn’t be any, because I’d succeed in my spell, right? That seems to make you superfluous.”

“If you succeed with your spell,” said Not-Chrysalis, “that would make the windigos return and lay waste to Equestria. Observe!”

Their surroundings shifted to show a barren, snowy wasteland.

“Wait,” said Snowfall, “you mean they weren’t a legend made up in order to try to keep the populace in line?”

“No, they are quite real,” said Not-Chrysalis. “Thus, your spell, if successful, would make them a problem again.”

“Then why not just tell me that to begin with and not bother with the previous spirits?” demanded Snowfall. “It seems like just letting me know this information would be sufficient to stop me from doing it.”

“Well, spirits have trouble finding employment,” said Not-Chrysalis. “There’s just not that big of a market for them. This was a way to put them to work.”

Snowfall sighed and rubbed her head. “But this doesn’t even make sense! Weren’t the windigos all driven off because the ponies all got along or something? The removal of a holiday doesn’t seem like it would make that much of a difference. In fact, they were driven off not by the holiday, but just by there being generally good cheer. Getting rid of the specific holiday shouldn’t suddenly bring them all back.”

“Look, I don’t make the rules!” said Not-Chrysalis. “I mean, how much sense does it make that a spell could remove a holiday to begin with?”

“That’s what I said!” declared Sunset, who wandered back into the story for this one line, then wandered back out just as quickly.

There was a pause.

“So that’s it?” said Snowfall. “The big lesson is just to put on a happy face and pretend to like the holiday?”

“You got it!” said Not-Chrysalis. “I’m glad I didn’t have to spell it out for you. By the way, just to be perfectly clear, I’m not Chrysalis.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” asked Snowfall.

“Because it’s true?” said Not-Chrysalis. “Well, as my job is done, I suppose I can leave.” Not-Chrysalis vanished in a puff of smoke. And thus did Snowfall learn the value of Hearth’s Warming Eve.

Sunset stared at the last piece of paper. “That’s it?”

“I’ll admit,” said Trixie, “I did get a bit of writer’s block towards the end. Still, I think the message permeated through.”

“That even if I don’t like the holiday, I should just pretend to like it?”

“Right!” said Trixie. “That doesn’t seem unreasonable, does it?”

“I… guess?” said Sunset. “It just seems an odd moral.”

“Well, if I made it so Snowfall learned a big lesson about the importance of Hearth’s Warming Eve and fell in love with it, would you have taken it to heart?”

“Probably not,” admitted Sunset.

“Then it did its job!” declared Trixie.

“I did have one question about it,” said Sunset. “I mean, outside of all the questions regarding its general insanity, which I think I just have to accept. It said that Snowdust got blasted into another story. Where’d she end up?”

“Well,” said Trixie, “I was–”

“Incoming!” came a voice as a familiar-looking green pegasus crashed into the floor through the roof.

“Argh!” said Sunset. “Lightning Dust, I thought you were done crashing through roofs!”

“Huh?” said the pegasus. “I think you have me mixed up with somepony else. My name’s Snowdust. Anyway, this wasn’t my fault. My employer blasted me really hard, so I ended up crashing into this.”

Sunset and Trixie stared at Snowdust in disbelief.

“Anyway!” said Snowdust. “I’m out of here. I have a Hearth’s Warming Eve party to get to.” She flew off, creating another hole in the roof.

Sunset and Trixie stared off at her in silence and confusion, then stared at each other in the same way, then returned to staring off in the direction Snowdust had left. Finally, Sunset spoke. “I… guess that answers my question?” she said hesitantly.

“But it raises so many more,” said Trixie in a worried tone.

Snowfall looked around after she finished her usual coughing fit caused by the smoke marking the disappearance of the spirit. “Um, spirit?” she called out. “I’m still in this snowy wasteland. Do you think you could help me get back?”

“Spirit?”

“SPIRIT?!”

You Bet Your Spice

“I’ve come up with a great idea for a magic trick!” said Trixie.

“What?” asked Lightning Dust.

“How about blasting myself into the open mouth of a hungry manticore? And then, after the manticore chews me up and swallows me, I magically step out of a box on the other side of the stage? It was done by the great Hoofdini.”

“That sounds like a pointless threat to your life,” said Lightning Dust. “What’s even the purpose? Attention? You’re already reasonably famous.”

“Hrm,” said Trixie. “Maybe you have a point.” She brightened up. “What if it were a timberwolf instead?”

“Trixie, does this abrupt rekindling of interest in your magic show have anything to do with that weird existential crisis you said were suffering from last week?”

“Oh, no, I’m over that,” said Trixie. “I’m just annoyed that I never got a mission from the Tree of Whatever. So I’m trying to make things more exciting.”

“Hrm,” said Lightning Dust.

There was a pause.

“You don’t have any suggestions?” asked Trixie.

“Sunset’s the smart one! Go ask her.”

“So!” said Trixie. “What do you think of this trick: Blasting myself into the open mouth of a hungry manticore, and then after the manticore chews me up and swallows me, I magically step out of a box on the other side of the stage?”

“That sounds like it has a very high chance of being fatal,” said Sunset. “So…” Sunset trailed off.

“Yes?” asked Trixie.

“I’m trying to decide whether I should recommend you do it or not.”

“Oh, wow!” said Trixie. “You’re actually uncertain about whether I should do something potentially fatal. You’ve come a long way to being more friendly, Sunset.”

“Can you go bug someone else?” asked Sunset wearily. “I really don’t want to have my trust in reality temporarily shattered again.”

“Oh, come now,” said Trixie. “I thought we agreed that the most plausible explanation for what happened was that some crazy changeling broke into my house, read my story, then waited around just outside our castle and waited for you to finish the story before crashing in transformed into a character from it.”

“Just go talk to somepony else before you make me decide to recommend you do the trick,” said Sunset.

“Sunset thought the trick sounded really dangerous,” said Trixie.

“I meant you should ask her for suggestions on the whole Tree of Whatever stuff,” said Lightning Dust.

“Okay!” declared Trixie before running off.

“When did I become the sensible one?” wondered Lightning Dust.

“I have another question!” declared Trixie to Sunset. “I want to get my own map mission. Do you know how to do it?”

“Did you read the instruction manual?” asked Sunset.

“Who reads those things nowadays?”

Sunset sighed. “Well, take a look at it yourself.” She left and brought a large book in. “Here. Enjoy.”

Some time later…

Trixie put the instruction booklet on the table. “Can you help me with this?”

“Er, help you with what?” asked Flim. “You just came in and asked for help without any explanation.”

“Finding information in this instruction booklet for that map on how to get my own mission already.”

“You didn’t ask Sunset?” asked Flam.

“I tried, but then she said ‘figure it out yourself already’ and threw me out. Since you guys do things with contracts and stuff, I thought maybe you could find information about it, particularly as you haven’t gotten one of those missions either.”

Suddenly, the cutie marks of all three of them lit up. “Well,” said Trixie, “that made all of this feel pointless. To the map!”

One trip to the map later…

“So,” said Flim as they looked at the map, “we’re off to… Canterlot?

“Wait,” said Trixie, “Canterlot rather big. How are we supposed to know where to go?”

“Wasn’t there some kind of zooming feature?” asked Flim. “You said ‘in zoom’ or something like that?”

The three all looked at the map. Nothing happened.

“Odd,” said Flim. “That’s what Lightning Dust said worked for her.”

“Maybe it’s something about her voice,” said Flam. “Could you get her here?”

One getting of Lightning Dust later…

“Okay, here it goes,” said Lightning Dust. “In zoom.”

Nothing happened.

“That’s odd,” said Lightning Dust. “Worked perfectly fine before. Maybe kicking it will help. Worked for Sunset!”

Lightning Dust kicked the map. It suddenly turned off. “Oops,” she said. “Well, maybe this will make it come back.” She kicked it again, to no effect. Frustrated, she started kicking it more.

“You know, they say that trying the same thing repeatedly expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, so–” started Flim before the screen suddenly came back on. “Never mind.”

“That’s not the definition of insanity anyway,” said Trixie. “The definition is ‘the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness’ or ‘extreme foolishness or irrationality.’”

“Wait, do you have the dictionary memorized?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Of course not,” said Trixie. “That would be silly. I just cast a special dictionary spell that can give me the definition to any word upon command. Want to know what ‘gonfalon’ means?”

“I just want the map to have the zoom in function work so that–” started Flim before being interrupted by the map suddenly zooming in.

“Hooray!” said Lightning Dust. “Kicking it fixed that problem! I should go and kick other things that aren’t working right to see if they start working!” She flew off.

“How do you put up with her as much as you do?” asked Flam.

“Oh, Lightning Dust is quite easy to get along with if you ignore all of the things that make her difficult to get along with,” said Trixie. “Anyway! According to this, we go to a… restaurant?”

“I’m not sure how that would be a way to make money,” said Flim, “but the map hasn’t been wrong so far.”

“To Canterlot!” declared Trixie. There was a pause. “I, um, assume we’re using the train?”

“Well,” said Flim, “that whole car thing we were working on didn’t really pan out. I don’t think the technology is quite there yet. So, I suppose we’re still using trains in the meantime.”

“To the train station!” declared Trixie.

“Shouldn’t we pack first?”

“To our respective houses!”

Some packing and a train ride later…

“To the restaurant!” declared Trixie.

“Can you stop doing that?” asked Flim wearily. “You’ve been saying ‘to the ____!’ every time we’ve been about to head somewhere today. Even when it was just changing the train car we were in!”

“I never said ‘to the underscore underscore underscore underscore!’ as far as I know,” said Trixie.

There was a pause. “I’ll admit that phrasing was a little weird,” said Flim. “But it’s just showing how irritating it is! You’re making me say weird things like that! Let’s just find that restaurant and figure out what we need to do. Its name was The Tasty Treat, right?”

And so the three went and found the aforementioned restaurant. “To the inside of the…” started Trixie, provoking a glare from Flim and Flam, which in turn prompted a sheepish grin from Trixie.

“Are you here for lunch?” asked a orange-ish unicorn mare with a striped purple mane in the restaurant.

“Actually, we’re here because a magical tree told us that we should come here!” declared Trixie.

The unicorn stared blankly at Trixie.

“Yes, we’ll have lunch,” said Flim hurriedly.

“Erm, yes,” said the unicorn. “I’m Saffron Masala, the chef here at The Tasty Treat, the most exotic cuisine in Canterlot. Would you like to hear about the specials?”

“Sure!” said Flam.

“We have a curried oat cake,” said Saffron.

“We’ll take two,” said Flim.

“Also, a grass sandwich that has been marinated overnight in a mustard Dijon dressing,” continued Saffron.

“Why not?” said Flam.

Saffron turned to Trixie. “And for you?”

“I’m not sure,” said Trixie. “You were talking about specials, but I feel like I might be in the mood for normals instead. Can I get back to you?”

“Um… sure,” said Saffron, who then left for the kitchen.

“Odd we’d get sent to a restaurant that seems unpopular,” said Flim. “How do we make money here?”

“Hrm,” said Trixie. “Well, Lightning Dust and Sunset ended up fixing up a park and getting money due to it being restored, so maybe our job is to get customers here, and that will somehow get us the cash.”

Their money making schemes were interrupted by an older, tan-ish unicorn stallion with a brown striped mane walked through the restaurant, stacking chairs.

“Who are you?” asked Flim.

“Coriander Cumin,” he said grouchily.

“Well, no wonder you went into the restaurant business, with a name like that!” said Trixie brightly. “I assume you’re a chef?”

“No,” said Coriander, “my daughter cooks. I host.”

“Hrm,” said Trixie. “Wouldn’t a name like Hosting Stackpony make more sense then?”

“I’ll admit I’m not that familiar with the restaurant business,” said Flam, “but isn’t stacking chairs a bit of an odd thing to do for the host?”

“Well, without customers, I have nopony to host for. So I stack!”

Saffron came out of the kitchen and gave the group the food they ordered. “Father, stop it! Don’t close up the restaurant around our guests!”

“What does it matter?” demanded Coriander. “When they leave, nopony else will be coming in!”

“As you would be stacking them at the end of the day anyway,” said Flim, “wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until then? You have to do the same amount of work either way, but doing it later would be positive if you did have customers, whereas doing it now conveys no benefit even if no further customers enter.”

“Well,” said Coriander, “maybe the problem is that you, by your own admission, don’t understand the restaurant business!”

“That kind of attitude isn’t going to bring in customers or keep the ones we have around!” said Saffron to her father. “Can’t you at least pretend to be positive?”

As the two continued arguing, Flam shrugged and took a bite out of the sandwich. His eyes widened. “Oh, wow. That’s a really good sandwich.”

“I’ve made up my mind!” said Trixie. “I’m in the mood for specials!” She grabbed another piece of the food and bit into it. Her eyes also widened. “Hokey smokes! That is good! If we were characters in that comic series about cooking that I sometimes read, the tastiness of the food would probably be emphasized by our clothes bursting off in a fanservice shot!”

Flim and Flam stared blankly at Trixie.

“Why does everypony keep staring at me?” asked Trixie. “Is it my hair?”

Flim and Flam sighed, then turned to Coriander and Saffron, who had still been arguing. “If the food is this good, why don’t you get more customers?” asked Flim.

“Because without a rating from Zesty Gourmand,” said Coriander, “nopony is interested in trying out the restaurant, and when we did try to get Zesty Gourmand, she looked at how empty it was and said it wasn’t worth rating!”

“Wait,” said Trixie, “so nopony will try out a restaurant without Zesty Gourmand’s stamp of approval, but Zesty Gourmand won’t give any stamp of approval to a restaurant that nopony is going to? How does any new restaurant manage to survive under such conditions? Is it like those fields where every single job apparently requires job experience in the field, making you wondering how anypony breaks into the field to begin with?”

“I’ve got an idea!” said Flim. “How about the three of us work to bring in customers for you?”

“You think you can do it?” asked Saffron.

“Of course!” declared Flam. “If the makers of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ and Mare Do Well can’t bring some attention to this place… um… well, that’s not going to happen, so there’s no need to finish that thought!”

Coriander looked doubtful. “Well, you can give it a try.”

“Great!” said Trixie. She quickly slid up to Flim and Flam. “Should we ask for equity in the restaurant in exchange for our help now or wait until after we pull it off?” she whispered to the two.

“If you can pull this off before the next rent is due,” said Coriander, “I’ll repay you with 25% equity in the restaurant.”

“Erm, never mind,” said Trixie to Flim and Flam. She turned back to Coriander and Saffron. “Sounds great! When is that?”

“In two weeks,” said Coriander.

Trixie deflated. “Oh,” she said. “Um… kind of was hoping we’d have a few months, because then I could get an ad in one of the Mare Do Well comics.”

“Please, father, I’m sure we can wait a bit longer,” said Saffron.

“Rent is expensive!” said Coriander. “If we’re not getting customers, I’m not going to keep paying it!”

“Okay,” said Trixie. “I’m sure if the three of us think about it, we can come up with a great plan!”

“Get that Zesty Gourmand to come here and give the food a try?” suggested Flim.

“I don’t think any of us know her,” said Trixie. “Besides, I get the feeling that the restaurant would end up worse due to whacky misunderstandings, and we’d just have wasted our time.”

“Do what Lightning Dust did in the last mission and give away advance tickets to that Mare Do Well movie to anypony that shows up?”

“Can’t,” said Trixie. “She already used up all the advance tickets we could give away like that.” She paused, then turned to Coriander and Saffron. “Did you two try advertising?”

“Er… no,” said Saffron.

“How the heck did you expect to do well in business if you didn’t advertise?!”

“We put up a nice sign,” said Saffron defensively. “The bigger problem is that we’re too busy with the restaurant to do that.”

“Didn’t Coriander have so little to do that he was just stacking chairs to pass the time?” asked Trixie.

“He’s not really that much of a people person,” said Saffron.

“Then why does he work as the host?” asked Flim.

There was a pause. “That’s actually a good question,” said Saffron. “Maybe we should work together in the kitchen?”

“All right!” said Trixie after they left the restaurant. “Let’s get to work! Got any ideas in particular on how to attract customers?” Before Flim or Flam could answer, she suddenly said, “Oh, wait. I have an idea. I have the perfect idea.”

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” wondered Flam.

“Probably the odd emphasis on the word ‘perfect,’” said Flim.

“Oh, wait,” said Trixie. “That idea is terrible. Forget it. I have a much better one now! Remember that magic trick I was considering doing earlier?”

“No?” said Flim.

“Oh, right,” said Trixie. “It was Lightning Dust and Sunset I told about it. In the magic trick in question, the magician blasts themselves into the open mouth of a hungry manticore. And then, after the manticore chews up and swallows them, they magically step out of a box on the other side of the stage.”

“You’re planning to do that?”

“Oh, no,” said Trixie. “That was the terrible idea I came up with before. Now I have a much better one!”

“Okay,” said Flim. “What is it?”

“Hrm,” said Trixie. “On second thought, the newer idea is even worse than the first. Let’s go with that one!”

“You’re planning to risk your life just to get equity in a restaurant?”

“Of course not!” said Trixie. “We’re going to risk our lives just to get equity in a restaurant. You two are going to help me out with it!”

Flim and Flam stared at Trixie for a while before answering, “Come again?”

“I realized that there’s a reason that trick isn’t done much anymore: It’s boring!” said Trixie. “It’s easy to figure out how it’s done, as it’s teleportation, so any unicorn who can teleport can pull it off. But three unicorns in succession? That would be impressive, and we can use the attention to get everypony to try out the restaurant.”

“I don’t think I like this plan,” said Flim.

“Oh, fine,” grumbled Trixie. “We’ll just do it the old-fashioned way and just urge others to try it out. With the help of some coupons, naturally.”

And so the three went off to advertise for the restaurant. Although they initially had some difficulty due to many confusing The Tasty Treat with a completely unrelated music store named The Basted Beat, the three were still able to get some attention and convince several to try out the restaurant.

“Now we just have to wait a while for good word of mouth to spread,” said Flam. “That shouldn’t take too long, right?”

2.5 seconds later…

“Has it happened yet?” asked Trixie eagerly.

“It doesn’t happen that quickly,” said Flim.

2.75 seconds later…

“Now?” asked Trixie.

“No, not yet!” snapped Flam.

2.875 seconds later…

“How about–” started Trixie before being cut off.

“Extra! Extra!” shouted a newspony. “Read all about it! New restaurant named The Tasty Treat becomes a massive success thanks to good word of mouth! Also, newspaper gets super-efficient printing press!”

“Well,” said Trixie, “that was easy. Especially if we compare it to Gilda and Suri’s trip. It’s a bit disappointing that all we had to do was go out and give away some coupons whereas they had to scale down cliffs to find a long-lost idol.”

“Are you actually complaining that ours was easier and didn’t involve possible loss of our own lives?” asked Flim.

“No,” said Trixie, “but I wish it had been a little more exciting. For example, what if it were to involve all kinds of complicated business negotiations?” She paused. “Actually, that sounds even less exciting than what we did do, so never mind.”

The Tasty Treat went on to be such a big success that franchised restaurants opened all over Equestria, and even in some other countries, thereby causing Flim, Flam, and Trixie’s equity to more than treseptuaguple in value. And so things all worked out for pretty much everyone involved, except for Zesty Gourmand, who lost a lot of clout after review aggregator sources became a more common way to assess something’s quality than the opinion of one critic. It all goes to show how much more quickly things can get accomplished when whacky misunderstandings don’t occur to make an adventure last longer.

The Times They Aren't A-Changeling

“Ugh, these train rides can be so boring,” said Sunset as the train rolled along.

“You’re in an even worse mood than usual,” said Suri.

“I’m tired of apparently being Chrysalis’s personal errand girl!” said Sunset. “Can’t she send somepony else on these things?”

“What if she does do that, just for all the other missions she has to have somepony do? You aren’t necessarily getting any shorter end of the stick than any of them. Besides, you’re uniquely qualified for this one… sort of.”

Sunset opened her mouth to answer, then closed it as she considered Suri’s statement. After a short while, Sunset said, “I just want to fume here. Stop making legitimate points!”

“Just think of it as a free trip,” said Suri. “Get in, make sure Starlight hasn’t inadvertently created another interdimensional portal, then spend the rest of the day doing whatever you want. After that, you can tell Chrysalis that she was doing fine and you fulfilled your obligation to check in on her.”

“That’s what I was planning to do,” said Sunset.

“Then why were you complaining?” asked Suri. “You know, sometimes I think you just complain in order to hear yourself complain.”

“That is not true!” said Sunset. “It’s so annoying when somepony just tells me I’m doing something like that! If you ask me…” Sunset stopped talking as she realized the situation. “Oh, forget you,” she said grouchily.

“You could have gone alone,” said Suri.

“If some kind of major problem occurs, which it probably will considering my track record, then I need somepony else along to help out,” said Sunset.

“And you didn’t ask Gilda? She’d probably be far more useful in a fight, and you seem to get along better with her.”

Sunset shrugged. “She said she was busy.”

“‘And then Glida pulled out her bazooka and was able to hit the tank’s only weak spot right on the nose,’” Gilda said out loud as she wrote. “‘Her marksmanship, combined with her legendary beauty, was so perfect that she immediately captured the heart of everyone who was there, even those who were already in relationships.’”

“Well, no complaints here!” said Suri. “Free trip, and I might be able to sell off some of my wares. Like this one!” Suri pulled out a sweater. “What do you think of this?”

“I don’t care,” said Sunset.

“Great!” said Suri. “That one was lame anyway.”

“Screw it,” muttered Sunset. “I guess I’ll just read something.” She searched her pack. “Wait, did I not pack any books?”

“It looks like there’s a book there,” said Suri.

“Yes, but that’s a Mare Do Well comic that Lightning Dust foisted on me that I haven’t gotten around to getting rid of yet,” said Sunset.

“You could read it,” said Suri. “That book did end up saving all of Equestria.”

“Fine,” muttered Sunset as she opened it and started reading.

The rest of the train ride later…

“So, what’d you think?” asked Suri.

“Um,” said Sunset, not wanting to admit she thought it wasn’t that bad. “I guess it wasn’t that bad.” Oops, I just admitted it.

“That’s high praise coming from you!” said Suri.

“Well, it helped pass the time, at least,” said Sunset. “Let’s go find Starlight and get this over with.”

The two went over to Starlight and Sunburst’s house to find a note on the door. “‘Out right now. Be back later,’” read Suri.

“I can read, you know,” said Sunset. “I guess we can go do whatever we want and then come back later for them.”

“But what if they’re not back by then?” asked Suri.

“Then I’ll just write in my report that they mysteriously disappeared!” said Sunset. “It’s not like we have any idea where they went!”

Suri looked more closely at the note. “Oh, wait, there’s something here in small print. It adds some further detail about where they went and also mentions it could be a while until they come back. It looks like they’re out in the snow. I guess you did need me to help you read after all!”

“Why are they out in that snowy wasteland?” asked Sunset.

“It doesn’t say,” said Suri. “They probably ran out of space.”

“Well, I say we just come back later,” said Sunset.

“It said they it could be a while until they come back,” said Suri. “What if they’re not back?”

“Again, mysteriously disappeared!” declared Sunset.

Suri shrugged. “Well, sure. It’s not like I’d be in any trouble if something goes wrong.” She paused. “Or would I? I’m not entirely sure how blame works in these sorts of things.”

“Fine!” said Sunset. “We’ll just go take a quick look, so we can at least write down we put forward some effort into trying to find Starlight.”

The two wandered out into the snowy wasteland outside of the Crystal Empire. “Well, I don’t see anything,” said Sunset after they looked around for several minutes. “Now let’s go back.”

“Wait!” said Suri. “I thought I heard something.”

Sunset listened and did indeed hear some scuttling about. “Okay, let’s look over there.”

After moving, they still didn’t see anyone. “All I can see is my reflection,” said Sunset as she looked at herself in what seemed to be some kind of mirror.

“Hey, you never know how noisy reflections can get!” said Suri as she walked up to Sunset and looked, though no reflection of herself appeared. “Wait, where’s my reflection?”

“Maybe it means you’re a vampire?” said Sunset. “Because I don’t–”

Sunset’s speculation was put to rest by Sunset’s “reflection” suddenly turning into a nervous-looking changeling.

“Hey!” said Sunset. “You need my express written permission to do that!”

“You’re… not afraid?” asked the changeling.

“I’m more curious about why you’re out here,” said Suri. “Isn’t it rather cold? Why not go into the Crystal Empire?”

“Oh, I wanted to share in all of the love there,” said the changeling, “but I don’t think the Crystal Ponies want to be friends.”

Sunset and Suri shared a confused glance. “Um, why?” asked Suri.

The changeling looked at them in a perplexed matter. “The Canterlot invasion? Didn’t it make everyone dislike changelings?”

“Invasion?” asked Sunset. “That whole thing was just some convoluted scheme of Chrysalis to blast Sombra and get his voice back. She had some of the changelings hold down some members of the royal guard temporarily to stop them from interfering with it, but that was it. Who told you it was an invasion or that there was any kind of particular dislike towards changelings as a result?”

“Oh, that was…” started the changeling before trailing off, then frowning. “Oh, I am going to kill my brother when I find him,” added the changeling grouchily before flying off.

“I wish more of our problems were that simple to solve,” said Suri.

“But it didn’t bring us any closer to finding Starlight and Sunburst!” said Sunset. “But, hey, we tried, right? I say we just go back to–”

Starlight and Sunburst suddenly walked up to the two. “Oh, hi,” said Starlight. “What are you two doing here?”

“Looking for you,” said Suri. “What are you two doing here? The note on your door didn’t say.”

“Huh?” said Starlight. “Yes it did. Didn’t you look at the note below it?”

“What note below it?”

“Darn it!” said Starlight. “We should have gotten stronger tape. The wind must have blown it off. Anyway, we were here because we were testing out our new invention. We wanted to see how it’d work in an area like this.”

“What is this invention?” asked Suri.

“Oh, it’s really exciting!” said Sunburst. “This could revolutionize Equestria! See, I record something with this camera–” he held up a camera “–and then it transmits what it records into this little box wirelessly for viewing.”

Starlight held up a box that had an odd sort of screen on it. “Take a look!”

Suri and Sunset looked at the box while Sunburst aimed the camera at them. They saw themselves on the screen. Suri made a few silly gestures which were replicated on the box’s screen.

“We got the idea because we saw some of these in that human universe we went to,” said Sunburst. “But unlike there, we can use magic to make it!”

“Since the whole thing can transmit wirelessly, you could take something you recorded, like a movie, and then play it on here!” added Starlight. “Except unlike a movie, there’s no need for giant screens or projectors, so you can watch it anywhere the transmission can reach! Think of the possibilities!”

“That’s… actually… one of the most brilliant ideas for an invention I have ever heard in my entire life,” said Suri. “How do I sign up to get one of these?!”

“Well, you can’t yet as we’re working still on it,” said Sunburst. “There’s a number of issues. The transmission can’t work that far, and the quality isn’t very good. We need to work on fixing that. Anyway, we were out here trying to see how being away from everything else affected things.”

“What’s this invention called anyway?” asked Sunset.

“We haven’t fully settled on a name yet,” said Starlight. “What do you think of ‘minivision’?”

“I don’t care what it’s called,” said Suri. “I just want it made. I need one of these so I can watch soap operas!”

“What’s a soap opera?” wondered Sunset.

“Exactly!” said Suri. “Until this is finished, they can’t be invented! What do you need? How can I help? Need promotion? Funding? Inspiration? Moral support?”

“Well, it looks like things are going fine with you two,” said Sunset. “If you want to keep testing out this ‘minivision’ then go at it. I’m going to go do something else.”

“I’d think you’d be more excited to be at the cutting edge of technology!” said Suri.

“I don’t like movies to begin with,” said Sunset. “Why would I be excited about a smaller version of them?”

“Well, I see the potential!” said Suri. “I want to become an investor!”

“To make money?” asked Sunset.

“Actually, mostly because I really want one of these,” said Suri. “But money is great also!”

“Suri, do you even have enough money to be a real investor?”

“Hrm,” said Suri. “Let me see.” Suri pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil and did some calculations. “Carry the 4… ah, here we are. I think this is about the amount I have.” Suri showed the piece of paper to Sunset.

Sunset looked at the piece of paper. “You have that much? How? Why?”

“That trip to the griffon lands was highly profitable!” said Suri. “Besides, I’ve been saving up to open up new locations, but I can just divert those funds to this. Completely worth it!”

“Well, have fun with your investment,” said Sunset. “I’m going to go do anything else.”

“‘They then named a national holiday after Glida,’” Gilda continued in her writing. “‘However, this was just the first holiday. Glida received a second after–’” Gilda was interrupted from writing her self-insert story by a knock on the door. After quickly shoving the papers into a drawer and out of sight, she went to open it.

“Hi, Gilda!” announced Lightning Dust.

“You have twenty seconds before I slam the door,” said Gilda.

“Aw, you’ve become a lot nicer,” said Lightning Dust. “That’s more than you offered last time!”

“Fifty seconds,” said Gilda. She paused, then said, “Oh, wait, sorry, I meant fifteen–”

“Too late!” said Lightning Dust gleefully. “Now I have fifty seconds! Well, forty-five by now. Anyway, Trixie and I were going to go to a nearby comic book convention, but she can’t make it, so I was wondering if you could come instead so the ticket doesn’t go to waste!”

“There are comic book conventions?” asked Gilda.

“Well, it’s primarily a comic book convention,” said Lightning Dust. “It, like most other conventions, also have things like games or movies on the side.”

“Uh-huh,” said Gilda. “Why do you think I’d have any interest in something like that?”

“I have special VIP tickets!” said Lightning Dust.

“Because you two are so famous as the creators of the comic?”

“Oh, no,” said Lightning Dust. “It’s not possible to go out and enjoy a convention if everypony knows that. They were purchased under another name. By VIP I mean paying extra to get various bonuses.”

“Like what?” asked Gilda.

“Priority in lines, mostly,” said Lightning Dust. “Anyway, it’s next weekend! Want to go? I don’t want my ticket to go to waste, and everypony else I might ask is annoyed at me for breaking some of their stuff when I tried kicking it in order to fix it.”

“Well, ordinarily I’d laugh in your face and slam the door,” said Gilda. “But I actually have nothing to do that weekend, and if you’re footing the bill I might as well try. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“The convention center might be the target of an attack by a previously unknown enemy that would destroy it and kill us,” said Lightning Dust.

Gilda stared at her.

“You asked!” said Lightning Dust.

Gilda sighed. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“That is a distinct possibility!” said Lightning Dust cheerfully. “By the way, anything broken you want kicked?”

“No,” said Gilda.

“Good, because I’d probably break it worse,” said Lightning Dust.

And so the next weekend, Lightning Dust went up to Gilda’s house and knocked on the door. Gilda opened the door, revealing she was wearing an extremely accurate Mare Do Well costume.

“That’s an extremely accurate Mare Do Well costume,” said Lightning Dust.

“Well, of course,” said Gilda. “You think I’d want to be identified at this stupid thing? I bought this costume to obscure my identity.”

“Hrm,” said Lightning Dust. “This poses a problem. Since I’ll be in costume also, and in fact the same costume, how do we find each other? What about secret code words? One of us says ‘supercalifrag’ and then the other says ‘it is and shall be’ in response?”

“Not only is that an incredibly stupid idea,” said Gilda, “you also seem to be under the mistaken impression that I actually plan to spend much time with you at this thing.”

And so the two left for the convention. Before getting there, Lightning Dust put on her own costume. Upon reaching the convention, the two quickly discovered that they had chosen what seemed to be the single most popular character for cosplay.

“So, want to go back to those code words now?” asked Lightning Dust.

“No,” said Gilda.

“Fine!” said Lightning Dust. “I’ll go out and hang out with real fans by taking part in the trivia panel coming up!”

“Is taking part in something like that really fair when you helped write the thing?” asked Gilda.

“Well–” started Lightning Dust.

“Actually, I just realized something,” said Gilda. “I don’t care if it’s fair or not! See you.”

And so, in another paragraph beginning with the words ‘and so,’ Gilda and Lightning Dust split up. Lightning Dust went off to a trivia panel about Mare Do Well. Being one of the authors of the series, she quickly was able to accumulate an inordinately high number of points, but actually lost the game to another convention-goer due to not remembering the pun that was made in page 4 of issue 21 thanks to mixing it up with the pun from page 5 (there were a lot of puns in that issue).

“You really know your Mare Do Well,” said Lightning Dust to the aforementioned convention goer, a brown-coated earth pony stallion.

“Oh, I’m a big fan,” he said. “It helped fill the massive void in my life after the Daring Do series went downhill.”

“I never really read those,” said Lightning Dust. “But I heard that the fourth and fifth books were way worse than the first three?”

“Oh, absolutely! And even worse, there was a much longer wait between them. So we waited longer just to get a worse product. And it’s been so long since the last book that I’m not sure it’ll ever even come out!” He sighed. “Well, at least we’ll be able to find out the ending via the film adaptation.”

“So, what’s your name anyway?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I’m Quibble Pants,” he said.

Lightning Dust stared at him briefly. “What did you do to make your parents hate you so much?” she asked.

“They wanted a girl,” said Quibble Pants. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, my name?” said Lightning Dust. “It’s… Thunder Blast.”

“Well, that’s a lot better than my name,” said Quibble Pants. “I was planning to head to the open gaming room after this panel. Do you want to come?”

“Would I?!” asked Lightning Dust in an an excited tone. She paused, then added in a more pensive tone, “Would I?”

“Well, it would be nice to have some company,” said Quibble Pants.

“Oh, sure, why not,” said Lightning Dust. “Trying out one of those roleplaying games might be interesting.”

The two went to the convention’s tabletop game room to find a number of games in progress, some roleplaying, some card games, and some simply being regular board games.

“You know,” said Lightning Dust as they looked around, “I never realized exactly how many of these games have pony-based puns in their names until now.”

Fortunately for the two, a mini-campaign for one of the tabletop roleplaying games was just about to start, so they joined with several other convention goers in costume.

“All right,” said the game’s master, “so we start–”

“Wait a minute,” said one of the players, “I just noticed we’re using Ogres and Oubliettes, 3.75 Edition. That’s lame. Can’t we use another one? Or maybe Trailfinder?”

“What’s wrong with 3.75?”

“What’s not wrong with 3.75?”

An argument quickly erupted between the two. “Maybe we should go somewhere else,” suggested Lightning Dust.

“Oh, fine!” snapped the game’s master. “You want a different system? I’ll give you a different system!” He snapped his fingers—an impressive task, as he had no fingers to snap—and suddenly turned into Discord.

“I didn’t expect that,” said Lightning Dust.

“No one expects the…” started Discord before stopping, then finishing with, “Meh, that’s overused.” He snapped his fingers again and the group was suddenly transported to another place entirely. “Ta-da! Ogres and Oubliettes in real life! It’s like LARPing, except without looking like a fool while doing so!”

“Wasn’t this a Mare Do Well comic?” wondered Quibble Pants.

“Yeah, there was a story where something really similar to this happened,” said Lightning Dust. “See, the villain–”

“Oh, fine!” said Discord. “If you’re not going to listen, then–”

“What do you mean, not going to listen?” asked Lightning Dust. “You weren’t in the middle of a sentence when we started talking.”

“I was in the middle of a sentence when you interrupted me the second time!” snapped Discord.

“Hrm, good point,” said Lightning Dust.

“Anyway,” said Discord, “I was going to have this all be a fun way to do this, but since you guys are annoying me, I’m going to make this even more realistic, with actual pain and danger!”

“Wasn’t that in the Mare Do Well comic also?” asked Quibble Pants.

“I have to say, this really isn’t very creative,” said Lightning Dust.

“So, um,” said the other unnamed player who had been previously mostly quiet up until this point outside of the complaint regarding 3.75 Edition, “because they were the ones who interrupted you, can I get a reprieve and get out of this?”

“Not after you denied the greatness that is 3.75!” declared Discord.

“Can you just compromise at 3.625?” asked Lightning Dust wearily.

“That makes no sense whatsoever!” said the other player.

“You know what?” said Discord. “Just go through the game already!” He snapped his fingers and disappeared.

“So!” said Lightning Dust. “What’s your name anyway? I don’t want to just refer to you as ‘other player.’”

“Well… I… well…” started the other player. “Oh, screw it.” She threw off the costume to reveal Gilda.

Lightning Dust shrugged and took off her own costume as well. “You play this game?”

“It seemed more interesting than the rest of the convention!”

“But you seemed awfully knowledgeable about the intricacies if you were just trying this out for the first time,” said Lightning Dust.

“Look,” said Gilda, “just because I tried this out once or twice in the past doesn’t mean–”

“Can you set aside your squabbling for a moment?” asked Quibble Pants. “It looks like a horde of monsters is suddenly coming at us.”

“All right,” said Gilda, “what classes are you two?”

“I don’t know,” said Lightning Dust. “We sort of got sucked into this game before we got around to choosing them.”

“Hrm,” said Gilda. “So, level 0. Okay. I have a suggestion.”

“What?” asked Lightning Dust.

“RUN FOR IT!” said Gilda, before quickly adding, “But do so with as much dignity as possible.”

The three ran away screaming, albeit with extreme dignity, while the horde of monsters chased after them with much less dignity. However, dignity prevailed, and they were able to outrun the monsters. Suddenly, their surroundings returned to the convention and everything was back to normal.

“Well, that was short,” said Quibble Pants.

“Oh, darn it,” said Discord. “I didn’t program that right. It wasn’t set up to handle running away with dignity. Shouldn’t have skipped on the beta playtesting. Oh well.” He snapped his fingers and disappeared.

Lightning Dust, Gilda, and Quibble Pants all stared blankly at where Discord was. “So, um, want to go through the actual game?” suggested Gilda. “I might as well try this out for lack of anything better to do.”

“Who’s going to be the game master, then?” asked Quibble Pants.

“I don’t know, I could give it a try?” said Lightning Dust.

“Well, that means you can’t be one of the player characters,” said Gilda.

“Aw, why not?”

“Because it makes no sense whatsoever for anyone to double as both! Unless you were playing against yourself, I suppose.”

“You seem to–” started Lightning Dust before being interrupted by one of the other ponies in the room taking notice of her.

“Hey, look!” said the aforementioned pony. “It’s Lightning Dust! One of the creators of Mare Do Well!”

A large swarm suddenly came her way. “Um, see you,” said Lightning Dust as she flew straight up, breaking through the ceiling along the way. Everyone stared at the hole in the ceiling.

“Just to be clear,” said Gilda, “I’m not paying for that.”

Some time later…

“So,” said Trixie, “did anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

“Well,” said Lightning Dust sheepishly, “I got banned from a convention. Sorry about that.”

“Another one?!”

“It wasn’t entirely my fault,” said Lightning Dust defensively.

“Uh-huh,” said Trixie flatly. “And how much of it was your fault?”

“About 95.8%,” said Lightning Dust. “That’s a noticeable improvement from last time, when it was 98.3%!”

Trixie sighed. “When did I become the sensible one?” she wondered.

“Hey!” said Lightning Dust. “I’m perfectly sensible. I’ll have you know that my insurance covered all of the damage! They’ll probably double my rates again after this, though.”

Meanwhile…

“‘And then Glida was unanimously voted the best table RPG player of all time,’” continued Gilda in her writing. “‘Well, almost unanimously. She was far too humble to vote for herself.’ I know this is all absolutely terrible, but darn it if it isn’t therapeutic.” She paused briefly. “I really need to stop reading all of my writing out loud.”

Vivan Los Pegasos

“So!” said Suri as she approached Flim and Flam. “I was wondering if you might be willing to do me a favor.”

“What’s in it for us?” asked Flim.

Suri frowned. “The point of a favor is that you don’t have self-interest in it!”

“When was the last time you did somepony a favor without having some level of self-interest?” asked Flam.

“Don’t change the subject,” said Suri. “Anyway, how about it?”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to say what the favor was before expecting an answer?”

“I guess it would,” said Suri. “Anyway, anypony who I ever try to go out with quits after the first date, so I was hoping maybe one of you could go on some pretend dates and see if you can figure out what’s going wrong with how I act on said dates.”

“I–” started Flam before Gilda suddenly popped up and interrupted him.

“Don’t do it!” screamed Gilda as she grabbed Flam. “I know how this goes! You’ll–”

“I think she was asking Flim,” said Flam.

“Oh, sorry,” said Gilda as she let go of Flam, then grabbed Flim. “Don’t do it! I know how this goes! Anytime two people do some kind of fake romance like this, they end up falling in love for real! It’s how it always happens in fanfics!”

“You read fan fiction?” asked Flam.

“I skim,” said Gilda. “Anyway, don’t do it!”

“Okay, Gilda,” said Suri in an exasperated tone, “there are two notable issues with your complaint. First, that wouldn’t actually happen with us. Second, even if it did, why do you even care?”

“I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of nonsense!” said Gilda. “Do you know how annoying it is to have the group dynamic interrupted by two of the people in it starting up a relationship?”

“Um… no?” asked Suri tepidly.

“Neither do I!” said Gilda. “But I don’t want to find out! Pointless shipping is a major ruiner of fanfics!”

“Gilda, this is the stupidest…” started Suri before her cutie mark, along with those of Flim and Flam, suddenly started glowing. “Oh, hey, Tree of Whatever mission. Let’s go see what it is.”

The group went over to the map to see the cutie marks of Suri, Flim, and Flam floating above it. “Las Pegasus?” asked Suri.

“Excellent!” declared Flim. “We’ve got an all expense paid vacation!”

“I don’t think it’s actually paid for,” said Suri. “I think we have to pay for the trip out of our own money.”

“Well… if the pattern for map missions holds, we should get more than enough cash at the end to pay for the whole trip!” said Flam. “Besides, even if we don’t find anything, it’s a good excuse for a vacation. We might even be able to write it off as a business expense! Where in Las Pegasus is it? Zoom in!”

The map did indeed zoom in. “Ooh, a resort!” said Suri. “Even better! Even if we don’t find anything, we’ll get to relax.”

“Oh, you three are not going alone,” said Gilda as she pointed at them. “I’m going to follow you to make sure pseudo-romantic hijinks don’t occur, like you accidentally getting uncomfortably close during a dance. I’m not going to stand for that kind of nonsense.”

“This kind of absurdity on your part feels more like something Trixie would do,” said Flim.

“Nah,” said Gilda, “she’d be all for you getting together. She’s even got names for pairing you up, Slim for Suri and Flim or Slam for Suri and Flam. Which are the same as her names for pairing either of the two up with Sunset, now that I think about it, which makes things confusing.” Gilda grabbed her head in frustration. “Why do I know this?!”

“But the map doesn’t indicate you should go,” said Flam. “Therefore, you’re exempt from the trip.”

“Oh?” said Gilda. “And what is the map going to do about it?”

Lightning suddenly came from the map and zapped Gilda.

“Okay,” said the charred Gilda after she coughed, “that was clearly an electrical malfunction. My statement was completely coincidental. I’m still going with–”

Lightning again came from the map and zapped Gilda.

“Again, malfunction!” declared Gilda. She moved away from the map. “All right, I’m far enough away. So again I insist on going with–”

Yet again, lightning came from the map and zapped Gilda. “Oh, fine!” she said in exasperation.

Suri, Flim, and Flam made the necessary preparations and went to the train station, only to find Gilda waiting there.

“I thought you gave up going with us?” said Suri.

“Oh, please,” said Gilda. “I just said that to fool the map. Now that I’m out of its range–”

Lightning suddenly zapped Gilda again. “Okay, I won’t go for real!” she said. “Where’s the instruction manual for that thing? Maybe it says how to turn this off?” Gilda left, grumbling to herself.

One train ride to Las Pegasus later…

“All right!” declared Suri. “Now, what was the name of that resort again?”

“Ponet Fantastique,” said Flim.

“I think the T is silent,” said Suri.

“Ponet Fantastique, then,” said Flim. “Such a pretentious-sounding title.”

“Oh, pshaw,” said Suri. “That’s just a sign that’s it’s upper class.”

“Actually, I think it’s the name of a show that’s at the resort right now, not the resort itself,” said Flam. “But I think the show is such a big attraction that it’s sort of been adopted as a name for the general resort, particularly as nopony ever bothered to come up with a name for the whole thing.”

“Maybe the key to making money is to invest money into the performance!” said Suri. “Well, let’s just check into the hotel first.”

The three went into the hotel lobby where various ponies milled about. “Hrm,” said Flim. “I wonder if one of these is how we’d…” Flim trailed off as he noticed a particular earth pony mare heading their way. “Uh-oh.”

“Flim. Flam. Hello,” said Applejack coldly after reaching the three.

“Applejack,” said Flam in an equally cold tone.

Suri looked between them. “You know each other?”

“Of course I know these two idiots,” said Applejack. “They keep trying to swindle others.”

“Hey!” said Flim. “We never got convicted of anything worse than a misdemeanor!”

“Because you pled guilty to get lesser charges,” said Applejack.

“Not the point!” said Flam. “Besides, I’ll have you know that ever since that business with Silver Shill, we haven’t done anything that would plausibly get us in legal trouble! If I’m lying, may I be struck by hail!”

Hail abruptly struck Flim. “Um, sorry about that,” said a nearby pegasus. “Been having some trouble with this cloud.”

“See?” said Flam as the pegasus left. “I wasn’t the one struck! That proves my claim!”

“Riiiight,” said Applejack in a flatly sarcastic tone.

“As far as I know they haven’t done anything illegal,” said Suri.

“And you are?” asked Applejack.

“Suri Polomare!” declared Suri. “I–”

Applejack pulled out a book and riffled through it. “Let’s see… ah, Suri Polomare, here you are. It says here you’re a convicted felon who served three months in prison for two convictions of assault. You originally only got sentenced to ten weeks, but had some extra time added for unruly behavior.” She slammed the book shut.

“It’s not my fault the uniforms were so gaudy!” said Suri. “I had to break into storage in order to try to spice them up a little.”

“Yes, well, it does mean I have less reason to take anything you say seriously,” said Applejack.

“Does the fact my conviction came from beating up these guys help?” asked Suri as she pointed at Flim and Flam.

“Wait, why are you just hanging around them nonchalantly if that happened?” said Applejack in a perplexed tone.

“Oh, you know,” said Suri. “Someone lies to you and tricks you, you nearly kill them, you have to go to prison for a while and wear terrible-looking uniforms. It all evens itself out. What, that never happened to you?”

“No, because I don’t make a habit of committing crimes!” Applejack rubbed her head in frustration. “Well, if you three don’t commit any crimes again, you’ll be fine. I have things to do now.”

“Like what?” asked Suri.

“Not your concern,” said Applejack before walking off.

“Well, that felt pointless,” said Suri. “Unless she’s somehow connected to the cash we’ll get if we can figure out whatever the Tree of Whatever sent us to do?”

“We haven’t really figured out what it could be about yet,” said Flim. “Who knows? It might be her. It might be gambling. Or it might be this lamp!” Flim pointed at a lamp, and they all stared at it for a little while. Nothing happened. “Okay, so it’s probably not that lamp,” said Flim. “But in the past, these things tended to just find us anyway, so maybe there’s no need to actively look for it.”

“Fine,” said Suri. “Let’s use the opportunity to relax and–”

“Greetings!” announced a purple-ish stallion as he came up to them. “Unless I have made a mistake, aren’t you two the creators of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’?”

“Why, yes!” said Flim. “It’s so nice to have somepony actually recognize us for that.”

“Excellent! My name is Gladmane, and I was wondering if you two might be interested in you might use your advertising prowess to help advertise for Ponet Fantastique!”

“How does it pay?” asked Flim.

“Pretty well,” said Gladmane as he held up a piece of paper with a reasonably high number on it.

“I’m in!” declared Flam.

“I wouldn’t mind being paid ‘pretty well’ either. Need my help?” asked Suri eagerly.

Gladmane peered at Suri briefly. “I greatly apologize, but I only need two. Accounting, you know.”

“Aren’t you going to insist that you won’t sign up without me?” Suri asked Flim and Flam.

“Not particularly, no,” said Flim.

Suri grumbled to herself.

“Well!” said Gladmane. “Shall we begin?”

“Sure!” said Flam. “Suri, could you bring the rest of the luggage into the hotel room for us?”

Before Suri gave any answer, the three had left, leaving her just standing there. “In retrospect, I really should have seen something like this coming,” she muttered to herself. “Well, I heard it’s easier to get into events by yourself anyway.”

Suri went around and saw various attractions like the one in that one place, that other one in that other place, and the other other one in the aforementioned other place, not to be confused with another one that wasn’t mentioned in this paragraph. After the preceding sentence of filler, she went to the stage of Ponet Fantastique to try to find Flim and Flam.

“Hey, so have you–” started Suri as she approached two ponies that were talking, but she was interrupted by their talking turning into an argument.

“It isn’t just your show, and I’m improving it!” declared one of them.

“You don’t pull a rabbit out of a hat on a trapeze!” said the other.

The two continued their argument. “Um, hello?” asked Suri. They didn’t notice her. “Hello?” she asked more loudly, to still no response. “HELLO?!” she screamed, finally getting their attention.

“Yes?” one of them asked.

“Have you seen Flim or Flam?” asked Suri. “They were just hired, so you might not be familiar with them, but they’re two nearly identical unicorns with cutie marks of apples.”

“Nope, haven’t seen them,” said one of the ponies, who then turned back to the other. “As I was saying, your ideas are terrible!”

Suri shrugged and walked away to try to find other help as the two continued the argument. After encountering several arguing ponies who didn’t know where Flim and Flam were, she finally found some who did.

“I think they left already,” said one of the ponies mentioned at the end of the preceding paragraph. “They were really annoyed with each other, though.”

“It seems everypony around here is,” said Suri.

“It’s too bad,” said the pony mentioned in the paragraph preceding the paragraph preceding this one. “They’d probably all be more successful if they got along better, as they could take the show on tour. But as long as they’re bickering, they’re sticking around here.”

“Hrm,” Suri mused to herself before returning to the hotel room to find Flim and Flam arguing.

“What’s the issue?” asked Suri wearily.

“Gladmane told me he thinks I’m just a mouthpiece without a single good idea!” said Flim.

“Gladmane told me that he said I couldn’t sell heat lamps to yaks!” said Flam.

“I never said that!” said Flim.

“Well, I never said what you said I said!” said Flam.

“You lie!” they both shouted at each other.

“Um, guys?” asked Suri. “Don’t you think it’s entirely possible that Gladmane just made up those claims?”

Flim and Flam suddenly stopped arguing. “Huh,” said Flim. “That would make sense. In fact, buying into it so easily seemed uncharacteristically gullible of us.”

“But why would Gladmane lie about something like that?” wondered Flam. His eyes widened. “There is only one possibility!”

“What is it?” asked Suri.

“Gladmane is actually a siren like the ones Sunset ran into in that alternate universe who is spreading discord in order to feed upon arguments, grow stronger, and destroy us all!” said Flam.

“Or, possibly, simply conquer us all,” said Flam. “I’m not sure he’d gain anything from destroying us all.”

Suri stared at them briefly. “Or, possibly,” she said in an irritated tone, “he’s just making you angry at each other to prevent you from leaving and using your talents elsewhere, as he seems to be doing for the rest of the show.”

“That would seem more plausible, now that I think about it,” admitted Flam.

“Only one thing to do, then!” said Flim. “Expose him for being a fraud, then buy his whole show at a cheap price to turn a profit!”

“Great!” said Suri. “Now how do we do that? In the movies they trick them into admitting it while they’re being recorded or in an area where others can hear it. But I have the feeling he’d be too smart to fall for that.”

“His entire plan relies on everypony blindly trusting him and never bothering to communicate with each other,” said Flam. “How smart can he be?”

“He was smart enough to outwit you two,” said Suri.

“Temporary insanity, that’s all that was!” declared Flam.

“Fine,” said Suri. “What’s your plan, then?”

“It’s obvious, now that I think about it,” said Flim. “All we have to do is tell everypony he’s tricked that he’s tricked them. Then they’ll all get along again and his plans will be thwarted! And maybe they’ll be so grateful for showing them the truth that they’ll give us lots of money in gratitude! Let’s go!”

And so the three went and told everyone involved that Gladmane had been manipulating them, causing them all to feel very stupid for falling for such an obvious ploy.

“I feel very stupid for falling for such an obvious ploy,” one of them said.

“That seemed awfully easy,” said Flim after rest of the group left to tell off Gladmane. “Although, I’m disappointed they didn’t give us lots of money in thanks.”

“I thought the plan was to buy the whole thing for cheap due to the devaluing?” said Suri.

“Sure,” said Flam. “But in previous cases the money came much more naturally and easily. We’d be able to buy it for cheap, but it’d only be worth a little, so it feels like it’d take some time and money to fix the place up in order to make a profit.”

“Who knows?” said Suri. “Maybe we’ll find a winning lottery ticket or something as a result of this.”

Just then, the crowd of ponies returned, all arguing with each other.

“I’m not taking this show on the road until you apologize!” declared one.

“I’m not leaving until you apologize!” shouted another at the previous one.

“Huh?” said a perplexed Suri. “Why are they all arguing again?” She went up to one of them. “Why are you all arguing again? Didn’t you all realize that Gladmane made up all the stories about you?”

“Oh, right!” they said. “Let’s go and tell him off!” The group rushed back into Gladmane’s room. A short time later, they emerged, arguing with each other again.

“Okay, seriously, what is going on?” asked Suri. “Is this all a big prank on me?”

“Well,” said Flim “maybe we should just go and confront him outselves.”

“Ourselves,” said Suri.

“Isn’t that what I said?” asked Flim.

“No, you said confront him outselves,” said Suri.

“Oh,” said Flim. “Well, I meant to say ourselves.”

“Actually, wait a minute,” said Suri. “What if he’s using some kind of magic to cause the arguments? That would explain why they suddenly went back to arguing. If we try confronting him, the same thing might happen to us.”

“Hrm,” mused Flam. “That is a valid point. How should we proceed, then?”

“How should I know? You two are the unicorns! I’d think you’d understand magic more than I would!” She paused. “Wait, weren’t you selling some kind of anti-mind control hat a few years ago? Why not use that?”

“Oh, that,” said Flam. “Those may or may not have actually been normal hats with no special properties whatsoever.”

“So it was a scam?” asked Suri.

“It had an 82.9% success rate according to our customers!” said Flam. “Which may or may not have been due to the placebo effect.”

Suri rolled her eyes. “Fine. So why don’t you two go in and confront him while I stay out here? If there’s some sort of weird mind control going on, I’d at least be immune due to not being in there.”

“Why should we be the ones to take the risk?” asked Flim.

“Because it’d make more sense not to split you two up,” said Suri. “You’re too interchangeable.”

And so Flim and Flam went to confront Gladmane. Soon afterwards, they came back arguing again. “How could you–” started Flim before being interrupted by Suri.

“Okay,” said Suri, “so I suppose there is something weird going on if you’re still arguing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Flam. “My ex-brother of mine said–”

“Do you have any reason to believe that he said this outside of Gladmane saying that?” asked Suri wearily.

Flam paused. “Hrm, you’re right. In fact, didn’t we go in there with the idea that he had been faking us out into arguments?”

“And the last horse crosses the finish line,” said Suri. “Well, let’s see what we got.” She grabbed Flim and Flam’s bowties.

“Wait, what are you doing?” asked Flim.

“Oh, I planted some miniature microphones on your bowties,” said Suri. “I didn’t tell you because if there was some kind of mind control you might mention it to Gladmane. Now, let’s listen to what happened.” She pressed a button.

“So!” came Suri’s voice out of the microphone. “I was wondering if you might be willing to do me a favor.”

“What’s in it for us?” asked Flim’s voice.

“The point of a favor is you don’t have self-interest in it!” came Suri’s voice.

“Erm,” said Suri in the present. “Hang on. I think I may have to fast forward a bit.”

“Exactly how long have these been recording what we say?” asked Flam.

“You probably don’t want to know,” said Suri. “Ah, here we are.”

“All right, Gladmane!” came Flam’s voice. “We know what’s going on! We know your secret!”

“Eek!” came Gladmane’s voice. “How did you find out about the beans?”

“Er… no, this has nothing to do with beans,” said Flim. “What we mean is that we know you’re telling everypony under your employment lies about each other in order to make them argue and stick around!”

“But not anything involving beans, right?” asked Gladmane.

“No, nothing about beans,” said Flim.

“Phew!” said Gladmane. “You had me worried there.”

Ordinarily eye rolling isn’t something that can be conveyed in an audio-exclusive medium, but somehow Flam managed it. “Do you have anything to say in response to the accusation about making up stories? Like when you told me false things about my brother?”

“Oh, you’re just being silly,” said Gladmane. “Don’t blame me for the fact your brother told me you were a small-time thinker.”

“Really?!” exclaimed Flam. “Flim, how dare you!”

“And Flim, Flam here said that you thought you were the only brains of the operation,” continued Gladmane.

There was an awkward pause. “Huh?” asked Flim. “Your phrasing was so confusing I don’t know what you meant.”

“Er, I mean, Flam said that he thought Flim believed he was the only one with any smarts,” said Gladmane.

“Oh, that phrasing is less ambiguous,” said Flim. “And how dare you, Flam!”

“Just as a quick question,” said Gladmane, “do either of you have any recording devices on you?”

“No,” said Flim and Flam simultaneously before returning to argue with each other on the audio.

“How odd,” said Flim. “Us falling for that this quickly doesn’t make sense. He must have some kind of mind control.”

“Maybe he is one of those sirens after all!” said Flam.

“Okay then,” said Suri. “We at least established there is mind control going on. So how do we handle that?” She paused. “Actually, wait just a moment. Why are we working so hard to fix things here? We agreed that the plan to buy out the place didn’t seem very profitable. So what do we actually get out of all of this?”

“Hrm,” said Flim. “A valid point. We got so caught up in the excitement that we forgot why we came here to begin with! We need to go find the actual way to get money!”

“It does feel odd to leave this unresolved, though,” said Suri. “Doesn’t that Applejack girl work for the government? Can’t we just alert her and let her do all the hard work? Maybe it’d even make her dislike you two less.”

“Well,” said Flam, “I suppose it can’t hurt.”

“Let’s find her, then,” said Suri. She frowned. “Wait, do we have any way to contact her? I have no idea where she even is.”

Flim pointed. “Isn’t that her right over there?”

“Oh, I guess it is,” said Suri. She went over to Applejack. “Can I talk to you?”

“What is it?” asked Applejack.

“This guy named Gladmane, who’s in charge of the Ponet Fantastique show, came over and asked Flim and Flam to join up with him in order to help advertise the show. But then they started arguing with each other, which seemed really odd, but then I found out it was because he told each of them the other was being insulting towards them. We quickly figured out that was just something he made up, so we went to investigate it more, and it turns out everypony else in the show was the victim of that. It seems the goal was to keep them all there instead of moving elsewhere so that he could continue to benefit from it. We went and told the rest of the show this, and it seemed like they were going to go and tell off Gladmane, but then they all started arguing again with each other. We reminded them of what was going on and they went back, then started arguing again due to taking his claims seriously. We thought maybe something really weird was going on, possibly involving mind control, so Flim and Flam went in to try it, but I bugged them to record the audio. It can’t be completely confirmed because it was just audio, but it did sound like he was doing some kind of mind control on them to make them argue, which may or may not be related to the abilities of these sirens in this alternate universe that Sunset visited, although the sirens were originally from this universe. Of course, it could be something different, but it does seem similar. But then we weren’t sure what to do with that information, and you happened to be here, so now we’re reporting it all to you,” explained Suri.

“Hrm,” said Applejack. “That does coincide with some of the suspicions I’ve had of him. I was going to start on a more direct investigation, but this would expedite things. Do you still have the recording? That could be important evidence.”

“Right here!” said Suri as she handed it over.

“This will certainly make things easier,” said Applejack.

“Need any more help?” asked Flim.

Applejack eyed him suspiciously. “What’s your motivation?”

“Mostly revenge for the mind control,” said Flim.

“No, I think I can take it from here,” said Applejack. “However, I will say thank you for alerting the proper authorities of this, rather than trying to engage in some convoluted scheme to expose him yourself that would likely fail.”

“Well, I guess that at least helped us towards revenge,” said Flam after Applejack left. “But we’re still no closer to making any cash!”

“You don’t think a good deed is its own reward?” suggested Suri.

“No,” said Flam.

“Just making sure,” said Suri. “There’s got to be some way to make our cash around here. The tree wouldn’t have sent us here otherwise, right?”

“Well,” said Flim, “I suppose we could just try to have a good time at the resort. Maybe we’ll discover it in the process. Even if we don’t, it’d at least be fun.”

A decent degree of vacationing later…

“Well, I guess that was enjoyable enough,” said Suri. “But we still haven’t found anything.”

“Hello!” said an official-looking pony as he went up to them. He looked at a list. “Are you three Huey, Dewey, and Louie?”

“Um… no?” said Flim.

“In that case,” continued the aforementioned pony as he checked the list again, “are you Flim, Flam, and Suri?”

“That one is true,” said Flam.

“Oh, good,” he said. “There was a reward posted for information leading to the recovery of those pieces of the siren pendants, and your tip helped lead to that.”

“The recovery of the what now?” asked Suri.

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, there were these sirens, and they used pendants–”

“I know that part!” said Suri. “What’s this about recovery of fragments?”

“Apparently fragments of one of the pendants ended up coming back into this world, but it went missing. It looks like that Gladmane character found it and managed to, with a rubber band and polaron resequencer, reactivate it to a limited extent; it could cause arguments, but it couldn’t gain power from them. Anyway, there was a reward for information leading to finding them.”

“Why would there be a reward for that when there’d be no reason to believe the pendants or fragments of them were even in this universe to begin with?” asked Flam.

“Oh, it was offered a long time ago, when the sirens were an active threat,” said the messenger. “Everypony forgot all about it until now, so it never got revoked.”

“How much of a reward?” asked Flim eagerly.

“A pretty big one,” said the messenger. He held up a piece of paper with a number written on it.

“Wait, that much?!” asked Flam in a stunned voice.

The messenger looked at the piece of paper again. “Oh, I’m sorry, wrong paper.” He pulled out another one. “Here you go.”

“That’s less, but still pretty good,” said Flim.

“Well, it looks like everything worked out fine, then,” said the messenger. “Also, do you know where I might find Huey, Dewey, and Louie?”

“Haven’t got a clue,” said Suri.

“Darn it,” he said as she walked off.

“Well,” said Suri, “at least we got our money.”

“A good time to have it, too!” said Flim. “Our sales have suffered a bit due to the knock-off ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’!’ cutting into our business. This should help jump-start things back to normal.”

“I suppose that with this new money, we can also make our vacation here last a bit longer,” said Suri. “Though I wonder where Gladmane got the pendant pieces.”

“Most likely those Shadowbolt guys grabbed some of them before running back into our universe through the portal,” said Suri. “Speaking of which, I wonder what happened to them?”

“And you all doubted me,” said Stormy Skies in a satisfied tone. “Selling those pendant fragments to get a good amount of cash, then wisely investing it in a number of illegal and legal ventures, making us millionaires?”

“Well, it did work out a lot better than any world-conquering scheme did,” admitted Thunder Strike. “So long as no inspector looks too deeply into our finances and discovers the various discrepancies, we’re home free!”

“Um, sir?” asked a pony as he entered the room. “There’s somepony that wants to speak to you from the government. She says her name’s Applejack.”

“Why do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this?” wondered Thunder Strike.

“Hrm,” said Maelstrom Tempest.

“And that’s how they managed to arrest Gladmane, recover those pendant fragments, and safely dispose of them!” said Chrysalis. “They also discovered his illegal bean operation and put a stop to that too. So, how was that? Did you think it was a good summation of that case?”

“Yes, I suppose it was a good enough summation,” said Luna in a tired tone. “As you claimed you wanted to say all this to me in order for me to provide a test audience, now will you tell me who you wanted to deliver this summation to?”

“Oh, I was going to report it to you,” said Chrysalis. “I figured you were the best test audience for yourself! But now that I’ve already done it, I realize I don’t need to do it again.”

Luna sighed.

“But,” said Chrysalis, “that name seems familiar. Gladmane, Gladmane… where did I hear that before?” She paused, then took on an irritated look. “Oh, darn it, now I remember,” said Chrysalis grumpily.

“Hrm?” asked Luna.

Chrysalis took out a piece of paper with various names on it, then crossed out one that said ‘Gladmane.’ “I can’t believe I found another one. This is ridiculous.”

“Gladmane was on that list?” asked Luna.

“Yep,” said Chrysalis in a sour tone. “You know, when I made this list of ‘pony names so completely ridiculous no one would ever actually name their kid it,’ I didn’t expect to actually be so many of them, as evidenced by the title. I’ll admit Gladmane isn’t as silly as Quibble Pants was, but there’s only two left on this! Honestly, if I happen to find ponies named Fizzlepop Berrytwist and Star Butterfly, there is a distinct chance that I’m going to go crazy and become some kind of despotic dictator that wants to imprison all the ponies, including you, in some sort of weird goopy liquid thing and forcibly feed off their love.”

Luna stared blankly at Chrysalis.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Chrysalis cheerfully. “You’d still keep your dental plan. Not the pension, though.”

“Well, anyway,” said Suri to Flim, “want to go out on that pretend date I suggested?”

“Well, I was feeling hungry,” admitted Flim.

“Wait, why him and not me?” asked Flam.

“I flipped a coin,” said Suri. “Let’s go!”

A short time later, at a restaurant…

“So!” said Suri. “What are your interests?”

“Mostly making money,” said Flim.

“What a coincidence!” said Suri. “That’s one of mine also. Do you–”

“By the way,” said the waitress, “which one of you is paying?”

“Why does it matter?” asked Suri.

“We’ve had some problems with disputes about who pays, so we want to make sure it’s decided upon ahead of time,” said the waitress.

“Well,” said Suri, “I think you should pay. I believe you’re the wealthier of the two of us.”

“Why should I pay?” asked Flim. “Coming here was your idea!”

“Why would I ever go out on a date if I wasn’t saving money somehow?” demanded Suri.

“Well, that’s what I was thinking!” snapped Flim. “I’m not going to pay money just to indulge you!”

An argument quickly erupted between the two. “Um,” said the waitress, “if you could–”

“You know what?!” said Suri. “I think this was a terrible idea to begin with! I’m just going to leave. You pay for yourself if you want!”

“Well, I…” Flim suddenly trailed off. “Wait. Is this a real argument about paying, or is this all part of the fake date?”

“I’m… not sure myself,” said Suri hesitantly.

The two stared at each other briefly.

“Let’s never do this again,” said Suri.

“Agreed,” said Flim.

The waitress watched the two leave, then grinned to herself before taking off her disguise and leaving the restaurant as well. “Well,” said Gilda, “glad I nipped that in the bud.” She was abruptly struck by lightning. “Worth it!”

From Here and Back Again

“Okay, Sunburst,” panted Starlight as the two were running at top speed, “I admit that perhaps aggravating an ursa major was not the smartest idea I’ve ever had. But, hey, it was better than trying to remove all cutie marks, right?”

“I’m not sure the distinction matters?” said Sunburst as he took a look back to see the ursa major catching up to them.

“So… um…” said Starlight. “Since we’re probably going to die in less than a minute, do you have any deep confessions you’ve been holding onto?”

“Well, there is one,” admitted Sunburst. “I can do this.”

Sunburst bit into his hoof and suddenly grew into a giant and started fighting the ursa major.

“Huh,” said Starlight. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Starlight watched the epic struggle for a few seconds, then Luna suddenly appeared. “What are you doing here?” asked Starlight.

“Dreams are my domain, Starlight Glimmer,” said Luna. “I am here because you need me to be.”

“Oh, well, this being a dream makes this make more sense,” said Starlight. “But why do I need you to be here?”

“Actually, I’m not sure you do,” admitted Luna. “But saying that sounded more profound than admitting I took a wrong turn.”

“So is this dream some kind of deep indication of inner struggles or worries going on in my mind?” asked Starlight.

“Huh? No, I’m pretty sure it’s just a silly dream,” said Luna. “Most dreams don’t have any symbolic meanings. Though I suppose this one might technically count as mild spoilers.”

“Oh, phew,” said Starlight. “So I don’t have to worry about that dream last night where I was body swapped with Sunburst, transformed into a child, chained up, gagged, turned to stone, and tickled by tentacles while being eaten alive?”

Luna stared briefly. “Actually, you might want to see a professional about that one,” she said.

Starlight suddenly vanished.

“Hrm,” said Luna. “Something must have woken her up. I wonder what.” She shrugged and pulled out a map. “Well, maybe I’ll look into that when I’m not on vacation time. Or lost on the way. These dream shortcuts never take as much time off as they’re supposed to. They also have a tendency to make me talk out loud to myself much more than usual.”

“All right,” said Lightning Dust. “So what should happen after Mare Do Well shows up at the villain’s lair? Do you have any good idea for quips?”

“Nope,” said Trixie.

“But you’re always able to think them up!” said Lightning Dust in a disappointed tone. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing!” said Trixie. “I’m just not thinking of any right now.”

“That’s what you’ve said throughout the writing of this entire issue!” said Lightning Dust. “I need you for the comedy sections! You’re better at them than me!”

“Well, um… just having trouble today, I guess,” said Trixie.

“Well, let’s try again tomorrow, then,” said Lightning Dust.

Later that tomorrow…

“So, has your muse returned?” asked Lightning Dust. She then realized that Trixie wasn’t actually in the room and thus her question was pointless, so she went to find Trixie and then asked, “So, has your muse returned?”

“Not really,” said Trixie. “Sorry.”

“Are you sure you’re really Trixie?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Ahh! Okay! I admit it!” said Trixie as she suddenly turned into a changeling. “I’m not really Trixie! You broke me down with your relentless questions and saw through the disguise!”

“Um, actually, I was saying that as a joke,” said Lightning Dust.

“Oh,” said the changeling. There was an awkward pause, then it turned back into Trixie. “Can we just forget the last 20 or so seconds happened, then?”

“Uh, no,” said Lightning Dust.

“Drat,” said the changeling. “Would you buy that Trixie was actually a changeling all along?”

“Uh, no,” said Lightning Dust.

“Would you buy this is all a dream?”

“Uh, no,” said Lightning Dust.

“Can you say anything other than ‘uh, no’?”

Hrm, thought Lightning Dust to herself. Would a better answer be to repeat ‘uh, no’ or to say something like ‘yep’? Decisions, decisions.

“Okay, I admit it!” said the changeling desperately. “You’ve worn me down with your conspiracy of silence and stern demeanor! Chrysalis told me to take Trixie’s place and pretend to be her!”

“Uh, why?” asked Lightning Dust after a brief pause.

“Oh, so you can say something other than ‘uh, no,’” said the changeling in relief. “Which, in retrospect, I should have realized because you said things other than ‘uh, no’ prior to saying that phrase.”

“Can I get an answer to my question?” Lightning Dust asked impatiently.

“I don’t know!” said the changeling.

“Wait, do you mean you don’t know if I can get an answer to my question, or you don’t know why Chrysalis did that? Your phrasing was ambiguous.”

“I meant the latter,” said the changeling. “It’s probably part of some epic prank of hers.”

“Oh, okay,” said Lightning Dust. “By the way, what’s your name? Constantly thinking of you as ‘the changeling’ in my mental narration feels odd. So I–”

Lightning Dust was interrupted by the changeling in question taking the opportunity to run for it. “Hey! Come back here!” she said. Unfortunately, the ability of changelings to change into others, along with Lightning Dust’s own short attention span, caused her to lose track of it quickly and give up.

“Sunset!” declared Lightning Dust as she walked into the room. “I have something important to ask you!”

“What is it?” asked Sunset in an irritated tone.

“Are you a changeling?” demanded Lightning Dust.

Sunset stared at Lightning Dust for a short while, then said, “Um… sort of?”

“Aha!” said Lightning Dust. “That’s exactly what a changeling would say!”

“Why are you being even weirder than usual?” asked Sunset.

“Trixie got kidnapped and replaced by a changeling,” said Lightning Dust. “So I’m trying to check to see if that happened to anypony else. And by the way, you haven’t convinced me yet that you’re not a changeling!”

“You’re an idiot,” said Sunset.

“Hrm,” said Lightning Dust. “Maybe you are the real Sunset.”

“Are you sure this whole thing isn’t just a product of your hyperactive imagination?” asked Sunset wearily. “Like that cannibal clown invasion?”

“That was an honest mistake!” said Lightning Dust. “And no, this one wasn’t my imagination. I remember it like it was yesterday… which is odd, as it was just a few minutes ago.”

Sunset sighed. “Fine, so there’s some changeling run amok. What do you want to do about it? Ask Chrysalis for help?”

“Actually, she’s supposedly the one behind it,” said Lightning Dust.

“Great,” muttered Sunset. “Another dumb prank of hers. Does she not have better things to do?”

“Well, there is only one thing to do!” declared Lightning Dust.

“Sit back and wait for the whole thing to take care of itself?” asked Sunset.

“That is a very solid Plan B,” admitted Lightning Dust, “but I was thinking of getting the rest of the gang together to try to investigate and stop whatever nefarious scheme is going on!”

“‘Nefarious scheme’? You know this is just going to be some dumb prank of hers again,” said Sunset.

“You don’t think that kidnapping might be going a bit far for a prank?”

“You know this is Chrysalis we’re talking about, right?” said Sunset.

“That’s not a bad point,” said Lightning Dust. “Well, I still say we go with my previously suggested suggestion!”

“Sure,” said Sunset with a sigh, “I suppose I might as well try.”

The two quickly rounded up Flim, Flam, Gilda, and Suri. While Lightning Dust’s initial idea of testing to see if they were changelings by asking them if they were changelings did not yield much in the way of results, simply asking them questions only they would know the answers to did work out.

“Okay!” said Lightning Dust. “It looks like all of us are in fact us. Now what?”

“You didn’t have a plan?” asked Sunset indignantly.

“I just sort of figured that if we got all of us together a plan would just sort of naturally emerge,” said Lightning Dust. “Like, maybe go to the changelings’ home country and see if anything weird is going on. Incognito, of course. I mean, incognito as in the word, not ‘in cognito’ as in the phrase that I believe means being in the principle establishing the existence of a being from the fact of its thinking or awareness.”

“That needless last sentence aside, that’s actually not a terrible idea,” said Sunset.

“See what I mean?” said Lightning Dust. “It just naturally emerges!”

“Although,” said Flam, “wouldn’t it make sense to alert someone about this? Maybe somepony with power or authority?”

“Like who?”

Flam shrugged. “Discord? Shining Armor? I don’t think it would hurt.”

“What if one of them has been replaced by a changeling and this just alerts them to our knowledge?” asked Suri.

“Wouldn’t that already be the case thanks to discovering the part about Trixie?” said Sunset. “Let's just–”

Sunset was interrupted by Sunburst walking in. “So, um, I need your help,” he said.

“What, did somepony you know get replaced by a changeling?” asked Lightning Dust.

“How did you know?” asked Sunburst.

“Well, it happened to us,” said Lightning Dust.

“Wait, you’re all changelings?”

“Nah, only Trixie got replaced with one,” said Lightning Dust. “Though us all being changelings would be a great plot twist if my life were a movie.”

Everyone stared at Lightning Dust.

“What?” she asked defensively. “Trixie’s not here, and somepony has to cover for her in making zany statements like that.”

“Look, let’s just figure out what’s going on,” said Sunset. “Where would Chrysalis be right now anyway?”

“Isn’t this her vacation time?” said Suri. “She’s probably at that place where she and the changelings hung out before she was promoted to queen of Equestria.”

“How do you know Chrysalis’s vacation schedule?” asked Flam.

“It’s not like she keeps it a secret or anything,” said Suri.

“Okay, so we can try there,” said Sunset. “Any plans?”

“Aren’t you usually the one who comes up with those things?” asked Lightning Dust. “Or, wait, are you just the one who complains a lot?”

“I think it’s both,” said Gilda.

Sunset sighed. “Let’s just get back to what we were talking about. How about just alerting somepony in a better position of power about this and let them deal with it? Even if they were actually a changeling, they already would’ve been alerted due to Trixie being exposed.”

“But that’s exactly why we should go right away to Chrysalis’s home base!” declared Gilda. “Because otherwise they’ll get warned!”

“You’re just saying this because you always wanted to visit there and never got the chance, aren’t you?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that statement,” said Gilda. “I’m bound by a nondisclosure agreement.”

Everyone stared blankly at her.

“Sorry, I can’t discuss the specifics of the nondisclosure agreement, because there’s a nondisclosure agreement for that as well,” said Gilda.

Sunset decided not to press Gilda further on the subject for fear of becoming even more irritated. “Fine! How about one of us goes to alert somepony and the rest goes off to see what’s going on?”

“I nominate Sunburst!” said Lightning Dust.

“Why?” asked Sunset.

“He doesn’t contribute properly to the established group dynamic,” said Lightning Dust.

Everyone stared at Lightning Dust.

“I mean, when we went to that alternate world, it mostly felt like he was just there,” said Lightning Dust. “Too much of a hanger on. I mean, there’s already a bit of redundancy in our group with Suri being awfully similar to Flim and Flam.”

Everyone stared harder at Lightning Dust, who shrugged. “Like I said, Trixie’s not around and somepony has to fill in for her. This is just a further demonstration of how the group dynamic doesn’t work right when it’s messed with.”

“I’m confused about what you’re talking about, but I’ll go alert Shining Armor,” said Sunburst.

“Wait a minute,” said Suri, “why didn’t you just tell him right away? Don’t you live over in the Crystal Empire?”

“Well, Starlight and I were on a trip, and you’re closer to where we were when I found out,” said Sunburst.

“So it’s decided!” declared Lightning Dust. “Sunburst can go off and alert others, while we keep our treasured group dynamic and go off to wherever Chrysalis is in the meantime!”

“How do we keep our ‘group dynamic’ anyway?” asked Gilda in exasperation. “Trixie’s not here!”

“Oh, good point!” said Lightning Dust. “Sunburst! How about you stick with us and act exactly like Trixie would? Trying to take that role on in addition to my usual contributions is getting a bit tiring.”

“I’m not entirely sure how Trixie acts?” said Sunburst hesitantly. “I didn’t spend that much time with her.”

“Darn it, I guess I’m still stuck with being the Trixie substitute,” muttered Lightning Dust.

“Argh!” said Sunset. “Let’s just go! If I have to listen to any more of this I’ll just go and see if I can get myself replaced with a changeling so I don’t have to put up with this!”

And so the group went on an epic adventure to reach the edge of the changeling kingdom, except without any actual epicness, which may or may not be an actual word. In other words: They walked over there without any notable events.

“Huh,” said Suri. “This place seems kind of like a dump.”

“It was better-looking when Trixie and I visited it,” said Lightning Dust. “I guess too many of the changelings moved over to Equestria since then.”

“All right!” said Sunset. “Let’s go over the plan once again. Because I can actually pass for a changeling, I’m going to go in and try to see what’s going on. And then, if applicable, I’ll come out and tell you all. In the meantime, you stay here. Got it?”

“That seems completely reasonable,” said Gilda.

And so Sunset wandered off. After a short while, she came back. “Wait, you guys actually stayed here?” she said in a shocked tone. “No wanderings off that put the whole plan in jeopardy?”

“Why would we do that?” asked Lightning Dust. “What, did you think we were stupid and irresponsible?”

Sunset stared briefly, then continued talking. “Anyway, apparently Chrysalis has been replacing several beings with changelings, but none of them have any idea why. The general theory is it’s some sort of convoluted joke and they’re all excited to see the payoff. In the meantime, those replaced are being held unconscious in her chamber.”

“Who got replaced?” asked Flim.

“From what I could tell, it was just Trixie and Starlight so far,” said Sunset. “Apparently there are plans for more, though.”

“So it’s just some dumb prank of hers?” said Gilda. “Fine. Let’s just head back and save ourselves the trouble.”

“But what if Chrysalis has totally gone power hungry and it’s all part of an elaborate evil plot?” suggested Lightning Dust. “We might be the only ones standing in the way! And it could very well be something time sensitive!”

“Okay then, what’s your plan for how to get into there?” said Gilda.

To make a long story short (because this chapter is already taking longer to write than it has any right to), their plan worked and they made it to Chrysalis’s throne room.

“I have to say,” said Suri, “this isn’t quite what I expected.”

“You didn’t expect to see various unconscious ponies floating in these weird liquid-filled sacs on the ceiling?” said Sunset.

“Actually, I was referring to how aesthetically unpleasing it is in general,” said Suri. “I would’ve positioned those sacs elsewhere. Where they are right now doesn’t work right with the color scheme. You’d think Chrysalis would have an interior design consultant. It’s a far cry from her throne room in Canterlot. Of course, she doesn’t spend that much time here, so maybe that’s why it…” Suri trailed off as she noticed no one else was listening to her anymore.

“There’s Trixie,” said Flim. “There’s Starlight, there’s… I don’t know who that changeling is.”

“Oh, isn’t that the one met on that trip to the Crystal Empire?” said Suri. “I don’t think we ever got his name.”

“All right!” said Lightning Dust. “We’re here and we’ve found them! Now what?”

“Free them, I guess?” said Flam with a shrug.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” came a voice. The group turned and saw Chrysalis, flanked by a number of changelings.

“Oh, hey, Chrysalis,” said Lightning Dust. “Fancy meeting you here. I mean, I guess this is your summer home and all, so it’s not that odd, but–”

“Seize them,” commanded Chrysalis in a cold voice.

“Are you sure?” asked one of the changelings. “I think–”

“Do it!” shouted Chrysalis.

“Uh, got any ideas, Sunset?” asked Suri as the changelings swarmed towards them.

“Well, I have one,” said Sunset. “But I’m not sure it’ll work.”

To make a short story shorter, Sunset’s plan almost succeeded, but ultimately failed and they all got captured.

“All right,” said Chrysalis dangerously, “now you’re going to answer some questions.”

“I admit it!” shouted Lightning Dust in fear. “I was the one who ate the last piece of cake! I couldn’t help myself! It just looked so tasty!” She paused. “Actually, wait, I purchased the cake. Never mind. I guess that wasn’t such a dark secret after all.”

Chrysalis stared at Lightning Dust very briefly, then said, “Okay, imprison that one first.”

One of the changelings pulled out a Mare Do Well comic. “Can I get my comic autographed by her before we do that?”

“Why in the world would you ask such a stupid question?” asked Chrysalis in an irritated voice.

“Uh, do you mean why would I ask her in particular, why I would ask about this particular issue, why I would want an autograph in general, why–” the changeling petered off upon seeing Chrysalis’s gaze. “I’ll, um, take that as a no.”

“So, uh, can you possibly tell us exactly what is going on here?” asked Sunset. “What’s your plan or end goal in all of this?”

“You came all the way here, and you somehow don’t know?” asked Chrysalis.

“I mean, it seems like you grabbed such a random collection of people to replace,” said Sunset.

“I don’t see any reason to–” started Chrysalis before being interrupted.

“Actually,” said one of the changelings, “could you tell us? We’ve kind of been wondering that.”

“Because,” said Chrysalis in a clearly irritated tone, “that way they won’t be able to stop the actual plan of grabbing Luna, Celestia, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy.”

Everyone looked at each other in confusion. “And, uh, why are we getting them again?” asked another one of the changelings.

“I’m not even sure who most of those are?” said another uncertainly.

Chrysalis’s eyes twitched. “Elements of Harmony? Helped thwart the Canterlot invasion? Need to be removed to take over? Hello?”

More confused mutterings occurred among the changelings. “Okay, I’m sorry, I really need to know,” said one, “is this just another one of your gags? We sort of went along with it as much as we did because we thought there’d be some great comedic payoff, but it’s really starting to go a bit far and leave us wondering about your sanity.”

“There isn’t a gag or a prank!” said Chrysalis. “The point is to take over Equestria!”

The changelings glanced at each other, then fell over laughing. “Okay,” said one, “that punchline was worth it. Shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“Has everyone gone insane?!” screamed Chrysalis. “Why are–”

They were all interrupted by a door at the upper end of the chamber that a staircase led to opening up and singing suddenly occurring.

“It’s a bright sunny day in this cavern!
It’s a bright sunny day in this cavern!”

Another Chrysalis emerged from the door and took the opportunity to make a large jump onto the stairs before continuing.

“Stalagmites as high as ursa major’s eyes!
The stalactites are high too, but that’s no surprise!”

She jumped down further, not apparently taking any notice of the crowd at the bottom.

“Oh what a wonderful morning!
Oh what a wonderful day!
I’ve got a wonderful feeeeeling…”

She then jumped down to the ground floor by finishing:

“…everything’s going my waaaaay!”

This was greeted with complete silence. The singing Chrysalis, who had her eyes closed upon landing, frowned and opened her eyes at the completely motionless and silence crowd. “What, that didn’t impress you? Did you know how much practice it took to get that right? Fine, I’ll offer more.” She cleared her throat.

“All the changelings are standing like statues!
All the ponies are standing like statues!
They don’t say a thing as they–”

“What in Equestria is going on?!” said an extremely frazzled Sunset.

“I’m making a dramatic singing entrance,” said the formerly singing Chrysalis. “Duh? I like to do that when I get back from vacations.” She took note of the other Chrysalis. “Oooh! Someone made a lifelike statue of me! Who did that?”

“I’m not a lifelike statue!” said the other Chrysalis. “Now seize this imposter!”

“And it talks, too!” said the other other Chrysalis. “You really outdid yourself, whoever you were! In the meantime, can–”

“Um,” said one of the changelings, “she’s not a statue. She’s claiming to be the real Chrysalis.”

“Oh,” said the Chrysalis who had been cut off, who to be clear is the one who entered while singing. “So, a fine game of spot the impostor, eh? In a case like this, should I lead with the whole ‘you should shoot us both to be safe’ or just trying to give answers only I would know? The latter seems less painful.”’

There was a brief pause, then most everyone shrugged. “Yeah, that’s the real one,” said one of the changelings, pointing to the Chrysalis that just talked.

“What the… why are you taking her side?” said the other Chrysalis angrily.

“Everything about her demeanor indicates she’s the real one,” said the changeling with another shrug.

“Oh, wait, I think I figured it out!” said the other other Chrysalis, hereafter known as Chrysalis-1. “You’re from some alternate universe where apparently you were out to take over Equestria or something like that, presumably failed, and without your knowledge got transferred to our universe, most likely in an accident involving cheese somehow, then didn’t realize what happened due to not leaving this area and not running into me, which caused you to think you went back in time and wanted to try the plan again, this time capturing first some of those who thwarted you the first time around, and no one corrected you because they thought it was some kind of joke, which then led up to the current situation in which I explained everything to you. It all fits, like how you’d want to try to take over a country I was already queen of.”

There was a pause as everyone absorbed this information. “I think that was a run-on sentence,” said Lightning Dust, which prompted stares. “I still have to fill in for Trixie until she’s back,” she added defensively.

“Good point!” said Chrysalis-1. “How about we let her go? Keeping them prisoner ruins the aesthetics of this place.”

“That’s what I said!” declared Suri.

Chrysalis-2, who had been silent for a brief time, took this moment to speak up. “Alternate universe?” she asked.

“That is what I said, yes,” said Chrysalis-1 dryly.

“How are you getting along with the ponies, then? You don’t look like you’ve been sharing love or whatever that nonsense was, because you’re all still black.”

“Oh that? That’s easy,” said Chrysalis-1 as she momentarily transformed into a much more colorful version of herself prior to changing back to her usual black self. “That whole colorful look might be the ‘normal’ form nowadays, but it also looks ridiculous. Who wants to look like the unholy child of Rainbow Dash and a deer?”

“Why do I suddenly feel an urge to punch Chrysalis?” wondered Rainbow Dash out loud.

“I think that’s a natural compulsive for those who have directed interacted with her,” said Soarin.

“So even if it’s not really the ‘natural’ state nowadays, we just stick around in these much less silly-looking black forms,” said Chrysalis-1. “After all, these holes are stylish!”

Discord suddenly appeared. “Did somebody say supercalifragilisticexpialidiscord?” he asked eagerly.

“None of us said anything like that,” said Sunset.

“Oh, good!” said Discord. “Because it would’ve sure felt weird if that was the case.”

“Wait, how in the world did you get in here with the fact the throne turns off all non-changeling magic?” asked Chrysalis-2.

“Oh, that?” said Chrysalis-1. “I keep that thing turned off. The power bill was insane when that thing was running.”

“That makes no… oh, wait a minute,” said Chrysalis-2. “This is all just some whacky dream I’m having. No wonder everything is so crazy. I’m sure I’ll wake up any moment now.”

“Okay, I have to address the elephant in the room,” said Discord. “And darn it, that line would’ve been a lot funnier if there had actually been an elephant in the room, but they can’t all be winners. But in the figurative sense of an elephant in the room, why are there two Chrysalises here?”

After one infodump that was extremely similar to the lengthy dialogue paragraph that Chrysalis-1 gave earlier this story…

“Ah!” said Discord. “This is easy enough to fix!” He snapped his fingers and Chrysalis-2 disappeared.

“Wait, what happened?” asked Chrysalis.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” said Discord. “I possess the power to, with the snap of a finger, transport anyone back to their own universe if they’re from another universe, have a name that starts with C, haven’t been in this universe for over a month, are a quadruped, and rarely eat soggy waffles.”

“What an oddly specific power,” said Sunset.

“Oh, I’ve got more!” said Discord. “I can also send individuals to alternate realities if it’s in the afternoon of the fifth Tuesday of an odd-numbered month and their names are no more than 7 letters and–”

“I lost interest,” said Sunset. “Anyway, now that this is all sorted out, any chance you could let us all go free?”

“Wait a minute!” said Chrysalis. “How do I know you’re not from an alternate reality too?”

“You know,” said Lightning Dust, “I actually was wondering about that. There’s been a few suspicious things, like when she’d slip up and admit to having been to alternate universes.”

“That’s because I have been to alternate universes, you idiot!” said Sunset.

“See?” said Lightning Dust. “She slipped up and admitted it again!”

“You went to that alternate universe too!”

“No, I didn’t,” said Lightning Dust. “That was Lightning Dust. I’m Trixie.” She paused. “Oops, I think I got too into character there. Never mind.”

“Not only has this adventure been a headache,” muttered Sunset, “but it ended up being completely pointless, because it all would’ve been resolved without our involvement.”

“Oh, nonsense!” declared Chrysalis. “If not for you keeping that alternate and significantly more lame version of myself in this room, I might not have encountered her at all and she would’ve continued her plan! After all, I was only here to practice my singing and was planning to leave afterwards. Speaking of which!” She turned to Discord. “Do you really think the right thing to do was blast her back to her own universe? What if she wreaks some sort of havoc there?”

“Oh, come on,” said Discord, “what’s the worst that would happen? That she’d, thinking this was all a dream, get some kind of inspiration from seeing alternate versions of us to make evil clones of her enemies?”

“That does sound lame enough that she might do it,” said Chrysalis. “Darn it, meeting such a lame version of myself is giving me major self-esteem issues. Reminds me of that whole incident with the bunnies.”

“You mean where you started off a war to draft us and then lost and had to sell off a bunch of stuff as reparations?” asked Suri.

“Oh, no, I made all that up,” said Chrysalis. “I called the whole thing off after you went off to the Crystal Empire, so no actual fighting occurred. I sold off all that stuff to help pay off some governmental debts; it was an important part of balancing the budget my first year. I’m kind of surprised none of you figured that out, considering the lack of any news about any such war.”

“Darn it,” said Discord, “I’m jealous. I wish I could do retcons as well as you can.”

“I’ve been taking a correspondence course!” said Chrysalis cheerfully.

“Why in the world did you tell us what you started up that war and sold things to pay off reparations, then?” demanded Sunset.

“Because it was funny,” said Chrysalis. “Also, now that I think about it, that whole thing had nothing to do with self-esteem issues, so I’m not sure how that came to mind. Anyway, I just realized based on that anecdote that I have no reason to suffer self-esteem issues because I’m just that awesome.”

It’s so depressing to know this is apparently the good version of Chrysalis, thought Sunset to herself.

“Anyway,” continued Chrysalis, “now can we fix the aesthetics by getting these three out of this whole gooey sac thingies?”

“On it!” said Discord as he snapped his fingers and the aforementioned gooey sac thingies disappeared. However, with nothing hold them up, the three then crashed into the floor. “Another flawless rescuing!” he declared.

“I think I sprained my leg,” said Trixie as she got up.

“Again,” said Discord, “a flawless rescuing.”

Starlight rubbed her head. “What exactly happened? So much seems like a blur. The last thing I remember was having this weird dream where Luna showed up.”

“Wait, where was Luna through all of this anyway?” asked Gilda.

“Oh, just vacation time,” said Chrysalis.

“Can I get an answer to my question about what happened?” said Starlight.

One exposition dump later…

“Huh,” said Trixie. “I guess that explains it all.”

“Well, I guess everything is nicely resolved, then!” said Chyrsalis. “Good thing this didn’t go too far. I’m actually a bit grateful you decided to go on this ill-conceived plan to try to figure out what was going on all by yourself without telling anyone!”

“Uh-oh,” said Flim.

“‘Uh-oh’?” said Chrysalis. “Are you saying that you sent someone else, possibly Sunburst, to go tell the leader of some foreign country, possibly Shining Armor, and that this could therefore lead to some kind of armed conflict?”

“How does she guess these things so easily?” wondered Flam.

“Only one thing to do!” declared Chrysalis. “Discord, you warp over there and explain the situation before anything goes too far. Needless armed conflict could really hurt my approval rating and cause other bad things to happen.”

“Uh, I kind of got banished from the Crystal Empire for a while,” said Discord. “Can you ask me again in a month or so when the banishment is over?”

“Since when did you care so much about following the rules?”

“Hey, I’ll have you know those Discord-proof glasses they’ve got are really annoying to deal with!” said Discord.

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Fine. Just send someone else there.”

And so all misunderstandings were cleared up, thereby making that setup of Sunburst going to the Crystal Empire utterly irrelevant. Also, in recognition of their (sort of) heroic deeds, Sunset and the others got acorns and a racecart. Which might sound lame, but due to an acorn shortage they were able to make a good amount of money from selling the acorns.

“Hey, I just realized something!” said Flam after they all reached their home castle. “If changelings can just share love or whatever, then what was with that mention of how they were all taking it from convicted criminals that were trapped in cocoons? You said that to us soon after that whole business with the vines.”

“Oh, that,” said Lightning Dust. “We were wrong about that when we told you, sorry.”

“Probably shouldn’t have assumed that everything in the ‘Totally True and Honest Guide to Changeling Culture (Not Made-Up Facts)’ pamphlet was accurate,” said Trixie. “In retrospect, the part where it claimed changelings have a hive mind really should’ve tipped us off that it wasn’t correct.”

“Well, then why didn’t you tell us you were wrong after you found out?” asked Flim.

“We forgot to,” said Lightning Dust.

“Hrm,” said Flam. “Sounds plausible.”

“Oooh!” said Discord as he suddenly appeared, “did you guys take the same correspondence course Chrysalis did?”

“Do you just listen to everypony in the world constantly in order to pop up like this?” asked Suri.

“Oh, certainly not,” said Discord. “That would be such a headache. And beyond my power. I just happened to be in the next room and overheard you, and teleporting myself is much faster than walking.”

“But then why were you in the next room?”

“Oh, please,” said Discord. “If I stopped to think of why I did things before I did them, I’d never do anything at all.”

“Well, can you go someplace else, then?” asked Sunset wearily.

“That sounds like a great idea!” declared Discord as he snapped his fingers and disappeared. A pause resulted.

“So, uh, is that it?” asked Gilda. “We’re done with this whole thing for now?”

“I think we need a witty quip to close out this adventure!” declared Trixie.

There was a pause.

“You’ve got nothing?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I’ve got nothing,” said Trixie.

“Wait, didn’t we have this conversation before?” said Gilda. “It seems familiar.”

“Did we?” asked Trixie. “Do you remember when?”

“Hrmmmm,” said Gilda as she thought about it. There was a pause.

“You’ve got nothing?” asked Trixie.

“I’ve got nothing,” said Gilda.

Bottled Up Trouble

“Oh boy!” said Gilda as she looked at the map. “Another opportunity to make some money brought to us by the Tree of Whatever!”

“You know, I’ve been wondering about these missions,” said Lightning Dust. “Is there really any need? A lot of us have decent cash already.”

“Nonsense!” said Suri. “You can never have too much money.”

“What about the possibility that you get buried in so much money you can’t dig your way out and suffocate to death?” said Trixie. “That seems like too much.”

“That’s just money being nearby, not actually having it,” said Suri.

“Wait, what exactly is the definition of ‘having’ money, then?” said Lightning Dust.

“Can you all stop debating stupid things like that and just figure out where you’re supposed to go?” asked Sunset.

“You’re just jealous because your cutie mark didn’t show up, so you don’t get to go,” said Trixie.

“Neither did yours!” said Sunset.

“That’s entirely besides the point,” said Trixie.

Gilda looked more closely at the map. “So, it looks like this is in some place called… Flutter Valley? Never heard of it.”

“Wait, if you never heard of it, how did you know where it was?” asked Flam.

“It says Flutter Valley in small print over the area,” said Gilda.

Flam took a look. “Wait, it does. How did that happen? It didn’t do that before.”

“I just read the instructions booklet,” said Gilda. “It’s an option you can turn on.”

“I didn’t see that when I read through the instructions,” said Sunset.

“Oh, that was the first edition,” explained Gilda. “I only just got the second edition.”

“Where did you get a second edition?”

“It was in the freezer,” said Gilda.

“Wasn’t that where the first one was?” said Lightning Dust. “Why didn’t we see it?”

“Oh, no, the other freezer,” said Gilda.

“Whatever!” said Sunset. “You know where it is. Why don’t you all just go off and do whatever it is you’re supposed to do?”

“That sounds like a great idea!” declared Lightning Dust.

Everyone except Trixie and Sunset soon departed. “So!” said Trixie. “It’s just you and me! Now seems like a great time to give you a gift!”

Sunset was taken aback. “Wait, what? A gift? This isn’t one of those gag gift things, is it?”

“No, it’s an incredibly useful one, particularly for you!” said Trixie. There was a pause. “Uh, hang on. I left it at home. I’ll be right back.”

Sometime later…

“I’m back!” said Trixie.

“What took you so long?” asked Sunset.

“You don’t want to know,” sighed Trixie.

“Really?” said Sunset.

“Given the frequency with which you ask questions you end up regretting, do you really want to still know?” said Trixie.

“You raise a good point,” said Sunset. “All right. What’s this present?”

Trixie produced a bottle. “Here you go! It’s called ‘All Bottled Up’ and it allows you to channel any anger or frustration you’re feeling into it in order to remain calm and pleasant!”

Sunset look the bottle. “That’s… actually something that might be incredibly useful.”

“I know, right?” said Trixie. “I knew you’d like it! That’s why I charged it to your bank account!”

“Wait, what?” asked Sunset as the bottle filled up slightly.

“I mean, it’s a present for you, doesn’t it make sense you should pay for it?”

“That’s not how presents work!”

“Isn’t it, Sunset, isn’t it?” said Trixie.

Sunset stared briefly, then said “No!” The bottle continued filling up.

“Oh,” said Trixie. “Then you might be a little upset when you look at your statement at the end of the month. I kind of used your money to buy a bunch of stuff for myself, because I thought you’d naturally repay my kindness by buying me some presents.”

At this point, the bottle was about 1/2 full. Or, for the pessimist, 1/2 empty, though the point became moot as it filled up some more. “How much of my money did you use?”

“Well, I think one of the checks bounced, so probably a lot,” said Trixie.

“All right,” said Sunset in an extremely irritated voice, “you are going to pay me back for all of that.”

“Yeah… about that…” said Trixie. “I can’t do that. I sort of made some poor investments, so my money is low. But I can pay you back with Mare Do Well issues!”

“How the heck can you not have enough money? You’re co-owner in the most popular comic book series on the planet!”

“Really poor investments,” said Trixie. “I had to sell some of your stuff to help pay off the debts. You don’t mind, right?”

At this point, the bottle became filled to its top and started shaking. “Uh-oh,” said Trixie as she grabbed it and threw it out the window, whereupon it exploded shortly after reaching the outside. “Well, that was a bust. Guess it failed the test.”

“Test?” asked Sunset, having some of her rage be replaced with confusion.

“Oh, I was just making stuff up to try to make you angry and see how it would handle it,” said Trixie. “But I guess it had shoddy construction. That, or your cynicism and anger is even worse than I thought. Maybe a little here, a little there.”

“Oh, so you didn’t take any of my money?” said Sunset in an increasingly calm tone.

“Not anytime recently!” said Trixie.

“Wait, what do you mean by–” started Sunset, but she was interrupted by a loud commotion outside. “What’s that?”

“I think there was a convention of some kind today,” said Trixie. “Anyway, let me see if I can get a refund on that. Maybe it’s under warranty. Maybe there’s information in this booklet about it.” She read through a book. “Nothing about warranty here… uh-oh.”

Sunset sighed. “This is going to be painful, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” said Trixie. “It says ‘WARNING: If bottle is about to overflow, stop usage immediately and move it away from others, as it exploding could infect those nearby with extreme anger.”

Just then, the door was knocked down and some very angry-looking ponies entered.

“Trixie?” said Sunset.

“Yes?”

“You don’t happen to have another one of those bottles, do you? I really need an outlet for my anger right now.”

“So what do you know about Flutter Valley anyway?” asked Lightning Dust as the group got off the train and started walking.

“You didn’t look it up before we left?” said Gilda.

“It’ll probably be a boring trip, so I figured I might as well use it as an opportunity to talk along the way!” said Lightning Dust. “Plus, doing that sort of research sounded really boring.”

“I’ll admit,” said Suri, “I kind of skipped out on any of that. I figured you’d do it for us.”

Gilda sighed. “As usual, I’m the only responsible one here. Flutter Valley is the home of the flutter ponies, which are basically pegasi except their wings are translucent.”

“Huh,” said Lightning Dust, “never heard of them.”

“Supposedly they tend to keep to themselves,” said Gilda.

“So what kind of way do you think there’d be to make money here?” said Flim. “It’s out in the middle of nowhere and they don’t seem to have much contact with the rest of the world.”

“Maybe it’ll be gold like at Our Town!” said Suri.

“You mean Ponyville?” said Flam in confusion.

“No, that town that Starlight was in charge of,” said Suri. “Which really needs a new name, honestly, to avoid confusion. I suggested Nowheresville last time we were there, but that was shot down.”

“So how long until we get there?” said Lightning Dust.

“It’s out in the middle of nowhere; it’s a bit of a walk,” said Gilda.

“Sounds boring,” said Lightning Dust. “See you there!” She took off at a fast speed.

“Does she even know where it is?” asked Suri.

“Probably not,” said Gilda. “How long do you think it’ll take her to figure that–”

Lightning Dust suddenly zoomed back to the group. “Uh, I realized I didn’t know exactly where it was. Can I see the map?”

Gilda offered the map to Lightning Dust, who glanced at it, then promptly took off again.

“Ugh, yet another walk,” said Gilda. “Maybe I should train more so I could get there faster by flying.”

To pass the time due to the walk, they talked of many things, like shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, kings, why the sea is boiling hot, and whether the preceding assumption that the sea was boiling hot was correct to begin with, as some parts of the sea are actually quite cold. By the time they arrived, they had all gotten on each others’ nerves enough with the discussion that they had stopped.

“You guys took a while,” said Lightning Dust.

“Well, did you find anything while we were on our way here?” said Gilda.

“Actually, no,” said Lightning Dust. “I was busy thinking about whether pigs have wings.”

Gilda gave Lightning Dust a look of confusion but declined to press further. “Well, we’re here. Now let’s see where we can get some money! Maybe the flutter ponies know.”

And so the group went off to find the flutter ponies, which didn’t take long at all. As Gilda had observed about 20 paragraphs ago, they were essentially pegasi except with translucent wings.

“Hi!” said Flim. “I know this is going to sound like a weird question, but is there any way to make money here?”

The various flutter ponies glanced at each other briefly. “Actually, we don’t bother with money here,” said one.

Flim and Flam briefly considered this idea, then fainted.

“Sorry about them,” said Gilda. “Anyway, we got sent here by a mystical tree on some kind of unclear mission.”

“That makes sense,” declared one of the other ponies. “That’s usually why we get visitors.”

The groups introduced each other. “So, what do you do most of the time around here?” asked Suri after the introductions had completed.

“Live cheerfully!” declared one of the flutter ponies.

“Well, while you do that, can we take a look around?” said Flam.

“Sure!”

And so a look around was had. Said look around ultimately revealed nothing.

“I don’t know about you guys,” said Flim, “but I’m stumped. Unless there’s gold hidden someplace underground, I’m not seeing where the money is supposed to be.”

“Maybe whatever we’re supposed to to do get some extra money just hasn’t happened yet,” said Lightning Dust.

“Well, then how long are we supposed to just hang around here?” said Gilda. “There’s plenty of things I could be doing right now!”

“Like what?” asked Lightning Dust.

There was a brief pause. “You know… things,” said Gilda.

“Ugh, let’s just go back and talk to the flutter ponies one more time,” said Suri. “Maybe they’ve thought of something. And if not, maybe we should head home. I have things to do, like getting more outfits ready.”

“She can clearly name something she could be doing,” said Lightning Dust.

“Oh yeah? What other thing could you be doing?” demanded Gilda.

“Uh, working on Mare Do Well?” said Lightning Dust.

“You win this round,” muttered Gilda.

“Sunset’s not here,” said Flam, “so I suppose it falls to me to suggest we end this conversation and just go and find the flutter ponies.”

The group returned to the center of the valley. “So, anything new to report?” asked Gilda.

“Nope!” said one of the flutter ponies.

“Well, I’m stumped, then,” said Gilda. “I suggest we go home. Maybe look into that instruction manual some more, too; it could explain the situation.”

The group started to leave the area. But just then, something dramatic occurred! In fact, it was so dramatic that an additional paragraph break is necessary to emphasize how dramatic it was!

A rainbow appeared in the sky.

“Look! A rainbow!” declared one of the flutter ponies, making the prior paragraph feel mostly redundant. They all quickly flew up to it. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“But it didn’t even rain,” said another skeptically.

Just then, something even more dramatic occurred! You might think that a rainbow suddenly appearing would be hard to top, but topped it was indeed! While the flutter ponies were distracted by the rainbow, a large group of bees suddenly invaded and grabbed an orange, glowing stone from the area before flying off.

“They’re stealing our Sun Stone!” declared one of the flutter ponies.

“I knew it!” said the flutter pony that spoke three paragraphs ago. “This rainbow’s a phony! After them!”

“Wait wait wait, what’s going on?” asked Gilda.

“No time to explain!” declared one of the flutter ponies. “Sorry. You see, it all goes back to… oh, wait, I’m wasting time explaining, sorry!”

All of the flutter ponies quickly left.

“Well, of course the rainbow was fake!” said Lightning Dust. “Didn’t they look at the colors? It was red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, unlike every rainbow I’ve ever seen, which is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. For example, haven’t they ever looked at Rainbow Dash? There’s no indigo in her hair!”

“So, uh, should we follow them?” asked Gilda.

“Is it really our problem?” said Suri.

“Hey!” said Lightning Dust. “The tree hasn’t let us down yet! I vote we go for it!”

“It seems more dangerous than normal, though,” said Flam.

“But if you don’t go, that’d mean you wouldn’t get your share of the money,” said Lightning Dust.

“Your logic has convinced me!” said Flim. “Let’s go!”

Sunset and Trixie peeked out of the alley they were hiding in. “I think they’re gone for now,” said Trixie.

“Just for the record,” said Sunset, “I’ve come to the conclusion that this is probably the worst present I’ve ever received.”

“I have to unfortunately agree,” said Trixie sadly. “Er, wait. Not quite. I don’t agree with the statement ‘this is probably the worst present I ever received,’ because I didn’t receive it. It’s more accurate to say it’s the worst present I’ve ever given, so I… just realized there are more important things to pay attention to right now, like the imminent danger we’re in by the various angry ponies. How much longer until the effects wear off?”

Sunset glanced at a clock. “Looks like it’ll still be several hours. We should probably just get out of here. Any ideas on how to do that?”

“Head back to the castle, find that magical portal, then use it to go someplace else until this blows over?” suggested Trixie.

“You mean to that alternate world?” said Sunset. “I’m not sure it’s done charging itself up yet.”

“Actually,” said Trixie, “we don’t need to use it for that. I’ve been consulting the instruction booklet, and you can actually use it to send yourself to other places in your own universe, and it won’t use up as much energy! It’s one-way, though.”

Suddenly, their cutie marks started glowing. “Well I suppose that’s possibly a reason to go back to the castle anyway,” said Sunset, “as it seems we’re supposed to go on that adventure. But with the rest of the town on the prowl, I’m not sure–”

“Hey!” came a voice. “I saw something glowing in that alley! I think they’re hiding there!”

“To the castle it is!” declared Sunset as the two quickly started running off.

“So, uh, you can quickly set up the mirror, right?” said Sunset as the two were running.

“Um… maybe?” said Trixie.

“I don’t want to risk life and limb on a ‘maybe’!”

“Would you risk it on a ‘probably’?” asked Trixie.

“Might as well!” said Sunset.

The two managed to make it into the mirror portal room of the castle and quickly switched it on. “All right, so do we set a specific destination?”

“Putting in coordinates could take a while to figure out,” said Trixie. “Let’s just put in Gilda as the–”

Just then, the door was kicked open.

“Do it!” screamed Sunset.

Trixie quickly made the necessary adjustments, which mostly consisted of saying ‘Target: Gilda’ and the mirror activated. The two quickly jumped in, and the portal closed afterwards. The various rampaging citizens tried to follow them, but smacked straight into the mirror instead.

“Uh-oh,” said one of them, “breaking a mirror gives you seven years of bad luck!”

“But the mirror isn’t broken,” said another.

“That’s even worse!” said the first. “Almost breaking a mirror gives you thirteen years of mediocre luck!”

“Wait, is that really worse? The length is greater but the luck isn’t as bad.”

An argument quickly erupted as to which was worse, but the argument wasn’t particularly funny, so it’ll be skipped over in favor of what happened with Sunset and Trixie.

Sunset and Trixie emerged from the portal, which promptly disappeared, into a wooded area to find Gilda.

“Wait, where did you two come from?” asked Gilda.

“It’s a long story and involves really stupid things,” said Sunset. “Can you tell us what’s going on right now?”

“That’s also a long story and involves really stupid things,” said Gilda.

“Well, yours is probably more immediately relevant to the situation, so can you tell us it?” asked Sunset impatiently.

“Well, we got here, and there was nothing that seemed like there was a reason to come, but then these giant bees showed up and took some rock called the Sun Stone and the flutter ponies went after it, then we figured ‘hey, why not?’ and did also, but then the bees trapped all of them in two big beehives and threw honey on them so they couldn’t fly out, plus it has some kind of anti-teleporting properties to stop that. But I managed to avoid being captured, which leads us up to about two minutes ago.”

“Do you have any plans for a rescue?” said Trixie.

“No, but I came up with a great plan on how to get out of here safely!” said Gilda. “All we have to do is–”

“You don’t think we should rescue them?”

“Uh, well, I considered trying to blow my way into the beehive with a gun, but that gives too high a risk of inadvertently shooting one of them if I can’t see the inside,” said Gilda. “And there wouldn’t be enough time to make sure they get out of the way with the various guards around there.”

“How about we go up to the bees and ask nicely for them to let them all go?” suggested Trixie.

Gilda and Sunset stared blankly at Trixie.

“What?” said Trixie. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

“If you think it’s such a great idea, why don’t you go ask them?” said Sunset.

“Sure!” said Trixie as she turned to leave.

“Uh, I meant that sarcastically,” said Sunset.

“But it made a lot of sense,” said Trixie in a confused tone.

“Ugh, fine,” said Sunset. “If you’re going to go with that plan if we don’t help, I suppose we might as well help.”

Ha! thought Trixie to herself. I knew that playing dumb like that would get them to go along! Reverse psychology works yet again! Wait, was that reverse psychology? Maybe–

“Much as I hate to interrupt whatever inner monologue you’re undergoing,” said Gilda, “can we hurry up and figure things out? Who knows what kind of horrible torture the bees are putting them under! They might even be making them listen to bad griffon karaoke!”

“Where would they even get a griffon?” said Trixie.

“You never know!” said Gilda.

“Fine, whatever,” said Sunset. “One of us serves as a distraction while the others mount the rescue mission. How’s that?”

“I nominate you to be the distraction!” declared Trixie.

“Why me?” asked Sunset.

“Your shapeshifting powers?” said Trixie. “You seem almost uniquely suited for that sort of thing. Just change yourself into one of the bees to get the others to go away, and then we’ll commence the rescue. Seems simple enough.”

“Okay, that’s actually not a bad idea,” said Sunset.

A short time later…

“Pssst!” said Gilda as she whispered into the beehive. “Can you guys hear me?”

“Who is it?” came a voice from inside the beehive.

“Oh, wait, sorry,” said Gilda. “Wrong beehive. This must be the one the flutter ponies got imprisoned in.” She went to the other one. “Can you guys hear me?”

“Yes, Gilda?” came Suri’s voice.

“Great!” said Gilda. “I’m going to blow a hole in the wall. Be sure to get out of the way.”

Gilda waited a short time, then did the aforementioned blowing of a hole in the wall. The others came out, covered in honey.

“All right!” said Gilda. “We’re all out! Now let’s skedaddle!”

“What about the flutter ponies?” said Trixie.

“What about the flutter ponies?” said Gilda.

“I think Trixie is suggesting that we should try to save them,” said Flam.

“I don’t think we have time for that right now,” said Gilda. “Let’s just try to get out of here first. Where’s Sunset right now?”

Sunset suddenly ran up to them. “Bees are coming right behind me. Let’s get out of here now.”

Deciding to only ask for further details after running, the group immediately started running off. With that accomplished, Flam asked, “So, what happened exactly?”

“Well, I pulled the whole ‘the leader wants you all to stop guarding’ thing like they often do in the movies,” said Sunset, “but then they talked to said leader and discovered it wasn’t the case, so they came back.”

“Huh,” said Trixie. “That latter part doesn’t usually come up in those movies. Who would’ve known it’d happen in real life?”

“Let’s just try to hide,” said Sunset.

They hid and the bees all went by them. “Well, that was easy,” said Flam. “Now what?”

“We take advantage of the fact that we’re alive and not captured and make a point to get out of here?” suggested Gilda.

“What, without the money?” said Lightning Dust. “The tree hasn’t been wrong so far!”

“Money isn’t good to me if I’m dead!” said Gilda.

“What if you wanted a really fancy funeral?” asked Trixie. “Then the money would be useful, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s worth pointing out none of us have died on these missions so far!” added Flim.

“So far,” said Gilda.

“What I mean is, perhaps it’s only giving us missions that we won’t die on!” said Flim.

“That’s a whole lot of trust you’re putting in a tree!” said Gilda. “What if it was just lucky up until this point?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Lightning Dust. “If that’s the case and you end up dying, you won’t have to worry about it being wrong anymore!”

“Okay, fine! Can you come up with any plan that isn’t likely to get me killed?”

“Could you define ‘likely’?” said Trixie. “What percentage are we talking here?”

Gilda sighed heavily.

“Do any of you lot even know what the Sun Stone does?” asked Sunset.

“Yeah, it does… sun stuff,” said Suri.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Am I the only one who paid attention in class about magical artifact?”

“Sunset, I think you might have been the only one who attended a class about magical artifacts,” said Suri.

“That’s not true; I did!” declared Trixie. After a pause, she added, “But I’ll admit I didn’t really pay attention.”

“I once went to a class about something that had absolutely nothing to do with magical artifacts, does that count?” asked Lightning Dust.

Sunset growled. “Look, the Sun Stone is a mystical artifact that gets energy from the sun to benefit the environment in the surrounding area and keep it all nice and good and stuff. Presumably, the bees stole it to get access to that. But the Sun Stone only accomplishes its ‘keeping it all nice and good and stuff’ thing in specific locations, and if you try to do it elsewhere it soon causes everything to heat up too much and cause fires.”

“Great!” said Gilda. “So we just wait for the bees’ home to burn down, and it’ll all take care of itself. Then we can grab the Sun Stone from the ashes with no possible danger.”

“What about the flutter ponies?”

“I’m sure the beehive will melt down from the heat and they’ll all escape,” said Gilda.

“But they might die in the interim!” said Flim. “And maybe they’re somehow related to the cash!”

“I’m surprised being trapped in that beehive and likely to die didn’t cause you to re-evaluate your money obsession,” said Gilda.

“Oh, it did!” said Flim. “But then as we were there longer, it caused me to re-re-evaluate it and change my mind on changing my mind.”

“Okay, I know this kind of incessant blather is sort of our trademark,” said Sunset, “but seriously, can we figure out what we’re going to do already?”

“I’ve got it!” said Trixie. “I’ve figured it all out! We should go ask the flutter ponies what they want us to do!”

“How would we be able to manage that without getting caught again?” said Gilda.

“Oh, just use Sunset’s changeling powers again,” said Trixie. “Actually, why didn’t we suggest that to begin with?”

“You think they’d fall for it again?” said Suri.

“Guys?” said Flam. “It’s getting a bit hot. I think the Sun Stone is doing its thing.”

“Hooray!” said Trixie. “Our inane blathering helped us solve the problem by taking up time and making things heat up! New plan! While they’re distracted dealing with the heat, we should open up the presumably-in-the-process-of-melting-and-therefore-easier-to-break-open hive they’re trapped in! Sunset can help further distract any bees with the shapeshifting powers I mentioned a very short time ago!”

“If it’ll end this inane blather, I’m for it,” said Sunset.

“You’re willing to put your life into danger just for that?” asked Gilda.

“You underestimate my hatred of inane blather,” muttered Sunset.

“Great!” said Trixie. “Let’s do it!”

And so they did. Or at least they would have except for the fact that in a dramatic plot twist, the last 43 paragraphs never actually happened.

“I think Trixie is suggesting that we should try to save them,” said Flam.

“Wait, didn’t you just say that?” said Gilda.

“Did I?” wondered Flam. “Well, the point stands.”

“Do we even have time for that?” said Gilda.

“I punched a hole in the hive and rescued them all while you were talking!” said Lightning Dust as she led the aforementioned group of flutter ponies (wings covered with honey) to them.

“Well, I guess we did have time,” said Gilda. “All right, let’s get out of here already!”

“We can’t leave without the Sun Stone!” said one of the flutter ponies. “It’ll be the end of Flutter Valley if it doesn’t get returned in time!”

“Have you considered setting up a residence somewhere that doesn’t fall apart within a day if a particular artifact is removed?” said Gilda.

“Can we just quickly devise a plan to recover it before Sunset’s distraction stops working?” said Trixie.

Sunset suddenly ran up to the group. “I got the Sun Stone! Let’s get out of here before they figure out what happened!”

“Well, I guess that solves that,” said Trixie as the group took the advice and ran off.

“So, any plans on what to do if the bees do catch up to us before we get back?” said Flam.

“The seven of us will delay the bees somehow while the flutter ponies take it to the valley!” declared Lightning Dust.

“Why in the world are we the ones stuck with the dangerous part?” asked Suri.

“No time for questions!” declared Lightning Dust. “We must act now!”

“But the bees aren’t even here yet!”

Buzzing was suddenly heard which grew progressively louder.

“See?” said Lightning Dust. “No time for questions!”

As the buzzing indicated, a group of the giant bees caught up with them. “All right!” said Lightning Dust. “This will be our final stand! Today is a good day to die!”

After a short but intense battle, Lightning Dust managed to defeat all of the bees by herself (mostly by using her speed to trick them into running into each other), then joined the rest of the group. “Well, that wasn’t that hard.”

“If you could have just done it yourself, why did you insist we stick around?” demanded Sunset.

“Because I needed somepony to witness how awesome I am!” said Lightning Dust as she performed a midair loop-de-loop. “I don’t have enough opportunities for that nowadays.”

“Wait, I thought you got that honey on your wings, how were you able to fly?” said Trixie.

“That is a very good question!” said Lightning Dust.

There was a pause. “So, can I get a very good answer?” asked Trixie.

“How about we get out of here first?” said Sunset.

“Okay,” said Trixie, “but if I don’t get an answer by the end of this, I’m going to be upset.”

The group then continued out of the area and reached Flutter Valley. However, they found the various flutter ponies were all captured in a net by a giant spider.

“That’s not a sight you see very often,” observed Flam.

“The giant spider?” asked Trixie.

“No,” said Flam, “I’ve seen several of those. It’s the fact it’s a giant spider who’s guarding a bunch of flutter ponies that are captured in a net.”

“Is this a bad time to tell you that I have really bad arachnophobia?” asked Suri.

“Alrighty then!” declared Gilda as she pulled out a large shotgun. “Let’s show this spider that… that… uh… hang on, I’m having trouble thinking of a good quip.”

“Show it that the gun is mightier than the sword?” suggested Lightning Dust.

“That eight legs are not better than two or four?” said Trixie.

“Just shoot already!” shouted Sunset in frustration.

“What if we hit the flutter ponies?” said Suri. “The liability damages could be devastating.”

“You doubt my aiming skills?” asked Gilda indignantly.

“Do you have any idea how much money you can get in lawsuits over these things? I’m here and could be labeled an accomplice! I’m not giving up all that money!”

“Fine!” said Gilda. “What’s your bright idea, then?”

“We distract the spider, rescue the flutter ponies, and then you can let loose with your gun,” said Suri.

“Can you be a little more specific on how to accomplish that?”

“Um…” said Suri. “Wait. Hang on. Do any of you have some kind of binoculars? I want to check something.”

“I guess there’s a spell for that,” said Sunset as she zapped Suri with the spell for that.

Suri blinked. “Oh, cool, binocular vision.” She paused briefly. “Wow, I never realized how unappealing your coat color is when zoomed in on.”

“Can you just do whatever it was you were planning to do?” demanded Sunset in an irritated tone.

“Oh, right!” said Suri as she turned her gaze towards the spider and net. “Aha! I was right! Now we just have to communicate with them to let them know how to escape.”

“And how do they escape?” asked Flim.

“Oh,” said Suri, “that’s easy. If you look, the holes in the net are actually pretty big and they should be able to just fly out. Not sure how they didn’t notice that. Maybe they’re just not very smart. Anyway, we just have to find a way to communicate with them from over here without getting too close to the spider in the meantime.”

“I know what to do!” declared Flam as he pulled out a loudspeaker.

“Wait, why do you have a loudspeaker?” said Lightning Dust.

“Why wouldn’t I have one?” said Flam. He turned it on and spoke into it. “Hey! Flutter ponies! Those gaps in the net look big enough for you to escape out of! Also, if you get a chance, buy some copies of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’”

“Huh,” said one of the flutter ponies, “I guess we never noticed that.” The group easily escaped from the net.

“Can I take the shot now?” asked Gilda eagerly.

“Sure, go ahead,” said Flim. “The spider’s running at us anyway.”

Gilda blasted the spider as it drew close to them, knocking it onto its back.

“Ow!” said the spider. “That hurts you know. Like, a lot.”

“Wait, you can talk?!” said Gilda.

“Why would you assume I couldn’t?” asked the giant spider.

“Well, you never said anything!”

“You never asked me anything! Why would I say anything?”

“Well, can you just go away, then?” said Sunset.

“Well, I guess I screwed up in my job of keeping them in the net,” said the spider. “Darn it. The job market’s no good for giant spiders unless it involves holding people in nets. Well, I guess I botched my job, so I might as well head out now.”

“Wait, job market?” said Suri. “Who hired you?”

“Oh, those witches over there,” said the spider as it pointed one of its legs towards three figures that were nearby. “Anyway, see you,” it added as it walked off.

“How did we not notice them before?” wondered Flam.

“They kind of fade into the background,” said Trixie. “You know, like that… other person who fades into the background.”

“Who?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I don’t know!” said Trixie. “Like I said, they fade into the background!”

“Stop babbling and grab them!” said Gilda.

And so the group, along with some of the flutter ponies, managed to get up to the three figures and surround them, who turned out to be bipedal. One was short and fat. One was tall and thin. And the third looked exactly like the other two.

“Hey!” said Lightning Dust. “These guys look like those guys we met in that alternate universe! They were called humans, I think?”

“Humans in Equestria?” said Trixie. “Sounds like something out of a bad fan fiction.”

“Hey!” said Gilda. “I’m sure there’s good fan fiction that involve that idea!”

“You read fan fiction?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I skim,” said Gilda.

Everyone took a quick and confused look at Gilda but decided not to pursue the subject. “Anyway, who are these?”

“They’re the witches from the Volcano of Gloom!” declared one of the flutter ponies. “They moved in a month or so ago.”

“Who names a place the Volcano of Gloom?” said Gilda. “Why not something like the Volcano of Happiness? I’m sure it would be better for tourists.”

“When did you last hear of a happy volcano?” said Suri.

The various three alleged witches all took the opportunity to escape. However, after a quick chase, they were re-captured, leaving one wondering what the purpose of this paragraph even was.

“So, are any of you going to actually say anything already?” said Sunset. “This silence is getting a bit weird.”

The witches just stared at her.

“Aha!” said Lightning Dust. “I’ve figured it out! It’s been right in front of us this entire time! I know who they really are! The clues were obvious in retrospect!” She grabbed their heads and pulled off their masks, revealing the human shapes were a costume and it was just three normal pegasi. “It’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee!”

“Uh, Lightning Dust?” said Gilda. “It’s just those three Shadowbolt idiots.”

“That would make more sense in retrospect,” admitted Lightning Dust.

“Okay, fine; you got us,” said Stormy Skies. “Can you let us go now?”

“Well, what were you even trying to do with all of this?” asked Gilda.

“None of your business,” said Thunder Strike.

“I’ve got it!” said Lightning Dust. “They wanted to gain ownership of Flutter Valley, but the flutter ponies wouldn’t sell it, or at least wouldn’t sell it for a low price. Since the Sun Stone is what keeps the valley all nice and stuff, they wanted to get rid of it! That way they’d be able to either buy it for a really low price or just take control of it after the flutter ponies left. So they made a deal with the queen of the bees to grab the Sun Stone after the rainbow diversion, solving their problem. Plus, due to the likelihood of the flutter ponies going after the stone and getting captured, they might not even have to worry about buying the place, because they’d be gone.”

“Wait, why would they want to get Flutter Valley anyway? And what was with the dressing up like witches?”

“I was getting to that,” said Lightning Dust. “They dressed up like witches to try to scare anypony away who did show up so they could try to bill it as some sort of haunted place and sell tours. They could have tried to do that with someplace like the Everfree Forest, but since that has actual dangers, they’d be liable for lawsuit, but if they just fooled everypony into thinking it was haunted, they could make all kinds of money with those tours! Alternatively, they could trick somepony else into thinking there was that kind of money in it and sell it all at a profit. As for the specific dressing up as humans, maybe one of them got mixed up with their human counterpart when they were last in that other human universe, so they just went with that for inspiration.”

“How’d she figure it all out?” muttered Thunder Strike.

“Oh, wait, I got it right?” said Lightning Dust. “I was just making stuff up, mostly, because I wanted to sound intelligent. I do that a lot.”

“But you almost never sound intelligent,” said Gilda.

“I know,” said Lightning Dust sadly.

“Whatever!” said Sunset. “We figured out their plan and captured them. Are we done with this adventure already?”

“We didn’t get our money yet, so I don’t think so,” said Flim.

Suddenly, the Shadowbolts attempted to escape again. This actually might have worked, if not for the fact the Sun Stone managed to activate to bring the sun back, causing a blinding flash that temporarily blinded them, as blinding flashes are wont to do, allowing Sunset and the others, along with the flutter ponies, to grab them again. Gilda then whacked them in the head to knock them out.

“I think that can cause brain damage,” said Sunset.

“Enh,” said Gilda.

“I still want the money,” said Flim.

“You know,” said Trixie, “maybe the tree wasn’t actually just giving us ways to get money. Maybe it was sending us places to help out others, and it was just coincidence that we got richer each of those times.”

“I sure hope not,” said Flam. “I’d hate to think we came here just for that.”

“Well, I guess we might as well go, then,” said Trixie. “But are we forgetting something? I feel like we’re forgetting something.”

A large swarm of bees suddenly was seen approaching the valley.

“Oh,” said Trixie, “we’re forgetting that.”

The large swarm of bees came up to the valley, and some of the flutter ponies flew up to meet them. “I demand the Sun Stone!” declared the one who was presumably the queen bee, which is aided by the fact she was the only one who didn’t look exactly like the others by virtue of a different design. “It’s too cold in Bumbleland, and the flowers don’t grow!”

“Did you ever consider just asking for some of our flowers?”

There was an awkward silence. “Hrm,” said the queen bee. “I didn’t think of that. Sorry about the mess, then.”

The bees started to fly off. “Well, that was easy,” said Suri.

Just then, the queen bee suddenly came back. “Just to confirm. You would give us the flowers if we asked, right?”

“Sure,” said one of the flutter ponies.

“All right!” declared the queen bee. “Let’s get them!”

The bees quickly seized about half of the flowers in the field, then flew off.

“That was a little more than I meant,” said the flutter pony that spoke previously.

“Well, I guess we’re off,” said Gilda. “Doesn’t seem like there’s anything else to do here.”

And so the group said goodbye to the flutter ponies and left, taking the tied-up and unconscious Shadowbolts along with them.

“Well, at least we won’t have to deal with these three idiots again once they’re arrested,” said Sunset.

“Right!” said Lightning Dust. “Unlike superhero comics, escapes don’t happen every week or so!”

Upon reaching normal civilization, the group found a police station, or whatever the equivalent of that is in Equestria.

“Hey!” said Sunset. “We’ve got these three who tried to take over Flutter Valley!”

“Wait,” said Lightning Dust, “now that I think about it, was that technically illegal? I think it falls outside of Equestria’s jurisdiction.”

The policeman (policestallion?) took a lot at the Shadowbolts. “Wait a minute, these three look familiar. Let me check the wanted posters.” He went over and looked at the wanted posters, of which there were only three, each one of the Shadowbolts. “Oh, right, these guys! They’re the only wanted criminals right now. They’re wanted for multiple trademark infringements, several instances of fraud, one case of ‘trying to take over an alternate dimension which may technically fall outside our jurisdiction but whatever, I’m Chrysalis so I make the rules, oh, and by the way, hi Sunset, glad you grabbed these guys,’ four cases of–”

“Wait, what was that last one?” asked Sunset.

The stallion shrugged. “I don’t know, just one of the weirdly titled crimes Chrysalis set up. Anyway, there was also–”

“Okay, fine, they’re guilty of a lot of crimes,” said Lightning Dust. “So you’ll take them off our hands?”

“Oh, sure!” said the stallion. “And there’s actually a surprisingly high reward for them.”

“Reward?” said Flim eagerly.

“Apparently we were really underbudget, so they just decided to put the money into a reward for their capture,” said the stallion. He showed them the wanted poster, which had a fairly sizable number on it.

“I never doubted you, tree!” declared Suri.

After getting their money, they all boarded a train and headed back. “Hrm,” said Trixie after a while. “I feel like we’re forgetting something important.”

“Like what?” said Suri.

“How am I supposed to know?” asked Trixie in an irritated tone. “If I could remember what I forgot, I wouldn’t be asking!”

Eventually they reached Ponyville, or what was left of it. Fortunately, “what was left of it” applied to 85.7% of the city.

“Oh, right!” said Trixie. “We may have accidentally caused mass havoc in the city and a lot of destruction. That was it.”

Lightning Dust shrugged. “Enh. It happens.”

“As long as I don’t get held legally responsible for any of this, I’m fine with it,” said Sunset.

Trixie went up to one of the ponies in the city. “So… uh, what caused all of this? The rampaging from everypony getting angry?”

“Oh, no,” said the pony. “That wore off before there was much actual destruction. This mostly came from that ‘Create Massive Destruction’ convention that was going on. In retrospect, agreeing to host that was probably a mistake.”

“Hooray!” declared Trixie after the pony had left. “I bear no legal responsibility for the mayhem!”

“Swell,” said Gilda.

Trixie frowned. “I feel like I’m forgetting something else, though. Like there was some question I didn’t get answered. Darn it, this is going to bother me for weeks if I can’t remember.”

“You know, maybe you should get your memory checked out, if you’re so constantly forgetting things,” said Flam.

“I’d like to reiterate this is your fault,” said Stormy Skies as the Shadowbolts were led down a corridor by guards.

“We’ve already been over this; it wasn’t mine, so it had to be yours,” said Thunder Strike.

“Well, I don’t think–” started Stormy Skies before being interrupted by them reaching the end of the corridor. The guards opened the door and pushed the three into the room to find a large, dark blue minotaur.

“Who are you?” demanded Thunder Strike.

“My name is Iron Will,” said the minotaur. “Now, it’s my understanding you three are looking at some fairly long prison sentences. How would you like to have them cut down… considerably?”

Stormy Skies sighed. “How about we skip the pitch and get to the offer?”

“Fine!” said Iron Will. “I’m in charge of a secret team of various convicted criminals who, in exchange for dramatically shortening their sentences, will agree to go on various clandestine and extremely dangerous missions for the government. Are you in?”

“Sure, why not?” said Thunder Strike. “Sounds more interesting than prison, at least.”

“Excellent!” said Iron Will. “Welcome to the Suicide Squad.”

The three Shadowbolts glanced at each other. “Suicide Squad?” asked Stormy Skies skeptically.

“Iron Will admits,” said Iron Will, “that the name could use some work. It’s not that great for morale, especially after that lame movie came out. So your first mission is to come up with a better name for the team!”

“Hrm,” said Maelstrom Tempest.

Author's Note

Sorry for (yet another) long wait between chapters, but I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I don't know if my writing progress blog post helped out at all in the wait in knowing how far I was, but hopefully it was useful.

Given that this was primarily a parody of something not from Friendship Is Magic (this is chiefly a parody of "The End of Flutter Valley," a story in the original My Little Pony cartoon), I thought I should explain a few jokes that might have been confusing if you didn't see the original.

The mention of the rainbow being suspicious because it had indigo in it is because in the show, the rainbow in question actually DID have indigo in it, as actual rainbows do, in contrast to so many fictional depictions of rainbows which leave it out entirely (the purple in the rainbow in that episode also looked more like pink, though, so it wasn't perfect either). Also, the mention of the holes in the net being big enough for them to fly out of refers to the fact that if you look at the net they're held in, the holes actually are really big and they should be able to just fly out of it.

It's possible you figured that out without my help, but I thought I should mention them anyway. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Shadow Played

“Things have been so nice since that Flutter Valley adventure,” said Sunset to herself as she read her book. “Everything has been great and peaceful. Even my normal pessimism is dissipating.” She frowned. “So when is something going to happen to ruin it all? That’s how it always seems to work.”

Sunset stared at the door. It didn’t move.

“Well, might as well enjoy it while it lasts,” she muttered before returning to her book. After reading a few more sentences, she suddenly stopped and resumed staring at the door. It didn’t move.

“Really? Nothing?”

The door continued standing there doing nothing.

“Blargh!” she said as she threw the book aside. “I’ll admit it! I’m bored! Can something happen that’s exciting, as long as it doesn’t involve my life being in danger in any way? It’s so bad I’m even talking to myself out loud about talking to myself out loud!”

Just then, the door opened and Twilight came in. “Hi, Sunset! I know this is kind of out of nowhere, but I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“Why didn’t you write to tell me you were coming?” asked Sunset.

“I was so excited that I came directly here,” said Twilight, “so there wasn’t much opportunity to write. I’d be here before the mail would have reached you. Anyway, like I said, I was hoping to get your help with something.”

“Does it involve anything that could put my life in jeopardy?” said Sunset.

“Probably not,” said Twilight.

“Probably?”

“You never know,” said Twilight. “Somepony I knew once was eating breakfast, and it turns out it created a vortex that caused a lot of giant crabs to show up and attack.”

“Well, okay, fine, what do you want help with?”

Twilight pulled out a book. “I found this journal of Starswirl the Bearded, which includes what seem to be his final writings. It mentions that he and the other Pillars of Equestria made a sacrifice of some kind to stop the Pony of Shadows, and I wanted your help to try to figure out how to get them back.”

“Why come to me? Why not ask Starlight or Sunburst, who live much closer to you?”

“Oh, I did ask them!” said Twilight. “And they were able to help me decipher this. But they’re also busy developing that ‘minivision’ invention of theirs and weren’t able to offer any additional help.”

“Sure, why not?” said Sunset as she walked over to Twilight. “I was bored anyway. So what’s the plan?”

“First we go to Ponehenge, which is apparently where they last were!” said Twilight. “And then… well, that depends on what we find there.”

“Why don’t you get your brother or his guards to help?”

“They’re busy with something,” said Twilight.

“With what?” asked Sunset.

“Mostly the invasion of the giant crabs I mentioned earlier,” said Twilight. “Since that might take a while, I was hoping you could help out.”

“All right, let’s go,” said Sunset.

“Do you want to bring along your friends?” asked Twilight.

“Well, I suppose they do work as distractions if something goes wrong,” said Sunset.

Twilight looked confused. “Distractions?”

“You know, in the off chance this all ends up unleashing some kind of great evil that attacks us. Having more targets around decreases the odds I’ll end up hit by their attack.”

Twilight stared at Sunset blankly.

“I like living, okay?” said Sunset. “Life isn’t necessarily pain, you know?”

“Uh… sure,” said Twilight, suddenly wondering if Sunset was the right person to ask for help in this matter.

Sometime later, at Ponehenge…

“I’m not sure why we had to come along,” said Lightning Dust. “I don’t know anything about magic. You weren’t here just because you wanted us as shields or something, are we?”

“Why are you asking this now?” said Sunset.

“It makes more sense to ask it now than later!” said Lightning Dust.

“I mean, why didn’t you ask this before, like on the way here?”

“Mostly my short attention span,” said Lightning Dust. “But don’t worry! I’m sure I’d be a great shield! Probably. Maybe. Actually, it’s more likely I’d just charge into danger and get taken out before you yourself were after in danger, therefore not actually serving as a shield at all. You didn’t think this through very well, if you ask me.”

Maybe I should’ve just stuck with reading that book after all, thought Sunset to herself.

“Hrm,” said Twilight. “Well, it seems like just a bunch of ruins nopony has been near for a while.”

“So it’s all a bust?” said Trixie.

“Of course not!” said Twilight. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if you set things up just right, you’ll get some kind of magical explanation! For example, if I put the journal on this stump, it might reveal everything!” She put it on the stump. Nothing happened. “Okay,” she continued, “what about this rock?” She put it on the rock. Abruptly, the journal started glowing. “Ha! I was right!”

An older stallion who was presumably Starswirl appeared, along with various other ponies.

“Starswirl?!” exclaimed Twilight. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

“Uh, did you miss the fact he and the rest are all see-through?” said Gilda. “I don’t think they’re real.” She went over and tried to touch Starswirl, but her claw went through. “Yep, not here. You should get your eyes checked if you didn’t notice the obvious transparency.”

“Actually, I read that partial transparency isn’t that uncommon of a problem for older stallions to suffer from,” said Trixie.

“Really?” said Suri.

“Oh, wait, no,” said Trixie. “I’m thinking of incontinence.”

The holographic Starswirl sent a blast of magic towards the center of the area and a large, shadowy pony appeared. “You summon me at your peril, Starswirl!” it declared. “Once I defeat all of you, this realm will embrace the darkness as I did so long ago!”

“That’s incredibly cheesy dialogue,” said Suri.

As Starswirl’s group and the shadowy pony did battle, the aforementioned shadowy pony continued. “Drawing me here will only make me stronger. You will never defeat me!”

“Seriously, that’s really cheesy dialogue,” said Suri.

“Now, see, if not for the fact I know this isn’t an actual thing, I probably would’ve tried to fight the guy,” said Lightning Dust. “So your shield plan wasn’t very good. I expected better of you, Sunset.”

“Can you stop talking?” said the shadowy pony impatiently. “We’re in the middle of a re-enactment here.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Lightning Dust.

“We did not…” started Starswirl before stopping and frowning. “Uh, I forgot. What was my line here? I got thrown off by the interruption. Darn it, the Magical Hologram Union is going to get really upset about this.” He turned and looked at Sunset and the others, who were staring with completely blank expressions.

“Uh… well… so… okay, I’ll just get to the point. We weren’t here to defeat the Pony of Shadows, but to contain him, which I suppose is sort of the same thing when you get down to it. We trapped him in limbo by taking him there ourselves, thereby banishing all of us. The end.”

“Just as well we didn’t go through with actually showing that,” said the magical holographic Pony of Shadows. “Those special effects would’ve been expensive. Maybe the union won’t mind since the expense was less.” He turned to the group, who were still staring incredulously. “Anyway, we’re off to another gig, so we hope this was useful to you.” The entire holographic group disappeared.

An awkward pause ensued. “Well, I guess we got our answer,” said Flim.

“The worst thing,” said Sunset, “is that I honestly wasn’t that shocked something like that happened.”

“Well… um…” said Twilight. “The weirdness towards the end aside, it’s clear what we need to do now! We should rescue Starswirl and the others! All we have to do is figure out how to free them. I’m sure if we put our heads together, we can figure it out!”

“You mean put our heads together as in work together to figure it out, not put our heads together as in actually meld our minds into one, right?” said Sunset.

Twilight stared blankly at her.

“You know how weird magic can get!” said Sunset. “It wasn’t an unreasonable question!”

“Hang on!” said Trixie. “I just realized something!” She turned to Lightning Dust. “You never answered my question about how you were able to fly around if you got honey on your wings!”

“That was weeks ago,” said Lightning Dust. “Why are you asking me about it now?”

“Because that’s what I forgot!” said Trixie. “Now, I want an answer!”

“I ran over and washed it off with water from a nearby river,” said Lightning Dust.

“Oh,” said Trixie. “Well, why didn’t you say that back then?”

“We got interrupted by Sunset, remember?”

“Well, that clears that up,” said Trixie. She turned back to Sunset. “You can carry on with whatever you were doing now.”

“Sure, let’s go figure it out,” said Sunset to Twilight. “It’d certainly be less irritating than dealing with this.”

Some figuring it out later…

“Got it!” said Twilight. “All we have to do is find the most important relics that belong to Starswirl and the rest of his compatriots. Then we can use them to bring them back. Let’s do it!” She paused. “Uh… how do you think we should get the relics?”

“Enlist the help of your brother to get them?” said Sunset. “He does have an army. Plus there’d probably be some kind of negotiations necessary as some of them seem to be in other countries.”

“Darn it, we’ll have to wait until they’re done with the giant crabs,” said Twilight. “That could take a while. I want to rescue Starswirl as soon as possible.”

“How about you go and help him against the giant crabs?” suggested Sunset. “In fact, now that I think about it, why didn’t you help them before doing all this?”

“Because I think rescuing Starswirl is more important,” said Twilight. “In fact, it’s so important that why don’t we go and find those relics ourselves?”

“What’s the rush?” said Sunset. “Why’s it matter? They’ve been gone for so many years that I doubt a little extra time will make that much of a difference. Heck, for all we know they’re frozen in time and thus it doesn’t matter to them anyway.”

“Hrm… you may have a point,” said Twilight.

Some time later…

Sunset heard a knock on her door and went over to open it. “Oh, hi, Twilight,” she said.

“Great news!” said Twilight. “We’ve gotten everything ready! Now we can rescue Starswirl and the others!”

“What did you need me for, then?” said Sunset.

“You helped me out, why wouldn’t I invite you along to see the actual rescuing?” asked Twilight. “What have you been up to in the meantime?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” said Sunset. “We had to deal with some evil clones of ourselves, nothing too weird.” She paused. “I can’t believe I consider that sort of thing to be usual now. At least there wasn’t time travel involved. But anyway, sure. I’ll go.”

“Do you want to bring along your friends?” asked Twilight.

“I’m pretty sure they’re all busy with other things,” said Sunset.

One transition later…

“All right, we’ve put all of the artifacts in the right places and done the other necessary work!” declared Twilight. “Let’s do it!”

“Why did you rig up the machine to what looks like one of those things you push down on to make dynamite go off?” asked Sunset.

“So it seems more dramatic when I do it,” said Twilight.

“That seems like a weird thing for you to do,” said Sunset.

“It wasn’t my idea,” said Twilight.

“Then whose was it?” asked Sunset, but was cut off because Twilight had already pushed down on the aforementioned device. This resulted in a lot of cool-looking magical effects that are difficult to convey properly in text. After the budget-breaking effects finished, Starswirl and the others had appeared.

“Yes!” said Twilight. “This is so going to get me another entry in one of those magical peer-reviewed journals.”

“Wait, you did all this for that?” asked Sunset.

“Not just that,” said Twilight. “Why wouldn’t I want to help one of the most famous unicorns get out of the prison he was in?” She went up to Starswirl, who appeared to be in a temporary daze. “So, how are you feeling?”

Starswirl rubbed his forehead. “What… what has happened?”

“You and the others have been trapped in limbo for a lot of years, but I figured out how to get you–”

“What?!” said Starswirl. “No, no, no, no! You must undo what you’ve done!”

“What? Why?” asked Twilight.

“You cannot bring us back!”

“I’m pretty sure she just did,” said Sunset.

Starswirl sighed. “No, I mean you can’t only bring the Pillars back!”

Just then, the Pony of Shadows appeared as well, who laughed evilly. “You might be wondering why I showed up a little laster than the rest of the group, but I was waiting for dramatic effect! In any event, your pathetic attempt to imprison me has failed, Starswirl!”

“You must return us to limbo. It’s the only way to stop him,” said Starswirl to Twilight. He then took notice of the cannon next to her. “Wait. What’s that?”

“Oh, this is the other only way to stop him,” said Twilight.

Quite a while earlier…

“So, just go help out against the giant crabs, then get it all together,” said Sunset. “Though I’ve been meaning to mention something. Are you sure it’s safe to bring them back?”

Twilight looked confused. “Why wouldn’t it be safe?”

“I mean, they sealed themselves away to get the Pony of Shadows with them, right? So there’s a high probability that getting them back would bring him back as well. Do you have some kind of plan on how to deal with the guy if that happens?”

“Um…” said Twilight.

“Wait, you were going to just bring them all back without some plan to deal with the highly probable chance that you’d unleash the Pony of Shadows along with them?”

“When you say it like that, it does seem I didn’t think the plan through very well,” admitted Twilight.

“Well, why don’t we get that big cannon your brother used to beat Nightmare Moon? That would probably do the trick.”

“Oh, that?” said Twilight. “Actually, that was made specifically for Nightmare Moon. It probably wouldn’t work as well against the Pony of Shadows, unless his quasi-quintessence rating was similar enough.”

“Quasi-quintessence rating?” asked Sunset in a confused tone.

“You know, the ratio between one’s photopolaron count and magic sequential variable,” said Twilight.

“Oh, right, that,” said Sunset, not wanting to admit the only one of those terms she actually knew the meaning of was ‘photopolaron count.’ “So, uh, what about making one that does work on the Pony of Shadows?”

“That could take a while,” said Twilight.

“How long?”

“Depends on when they finish dealing with those giant crabs,” said Twilight.

“See?” said Sunset. “Just another reason to go and help out against them. Then you can all get the weapon ready while looking for those relics.”

One return to the present later…

Twilight pushed a button on the cannon and it blasted the Pony of Shadows with incredible force. “What, you didn’t think I’d be dumb enough to bring you back without a plan to deal with him, right?” she said.

“Uh, you kind of were planning to do so until I suggested otherwise,” said Sunset.

“You’re right; let me correct that,” said Twilight as the cannon continued blasting the Pony of Shadows. “What, you didn’t think I’d be dumb enough to bring you back without having somepony else around who was smart enough to make sure I had a plan to deal with him, right?”

“I guess that’s good enough,” said Sunset.

At about this point, the Pony of Shadows was overwhelmed by the canon’s power and vanished. Twilight turned the machine off, and the group looked to where the Pony of Shadows had been. A relatively small gray unicorn was left in its place, sprawled out on the ground.

“Ugh… what happened?” he said.

“Huh, another super-powered enemy who turned out to be a regular pony after you blasted them with enough magical force,” said Sunset.

“That’s Stygian,” said Starswirl. “He was a former ally, but he betrayed us and turned to darkness.”

“No!” said Stygian. “You were the ones who betrayed me. I brought you together. I planned strategy, and I read all I could about the beasts we faced. But I didn't have magic or strength, so nopony ever noticed me. I went to Ponhenge to make my own copies of the artifacts. With them, I thought I could be a Pillar, too, and stand by your side in battle. I never wanted to steal your power. But instead of sharing and letting me help, my friends threw me out. So I became stronger than any of them! The darkness welcomed me when no pony would!”

“Wait,” said Sunset. “So this whole thing was just a stupid misunderstanding? It could have been avoided with just slightly better communication?”

“It looks like it,” said Twilight.

“Well, I suppose it isn’t quite as dumb as Starlight’s motivation,” said Sunset. “Oh well. I guess we send him in for reprogramming, then, like with Luna?”

“Aw, that’s no fun,” said Stygian. “Is it at least Object-Oriented Reprogramming?” he added hopefully.

“You know,” said Starswirl, “with this new information, I think I need to tell Stygian that–”

“Anyway!” interrupted Twilight. “Now that we’ve dispensed with all of that, I have to ask. As you’re the most famous and smartest unicorn in history, is there any chance you’d be willing to teach me everything you know? I’d love to know your thoughts on photopolarons!” As Twilight said this, Stygian was led away by some of the guards that were in this scene the entire time but weren’t mentioned up until this point.

Starswirl looked confused. “Photopolarons? What are those?”

Twilight looked equally confused. “Didn’t you do a lot of research into energy theory? They’re a major, if advanced, part of it.”

“Wait, exactly how long have I been out?” asked Starswirl. “What’s the current date?”

“I have trouble remembering that sometimes too!” said one of the guards. “That’s why I always get a newspaper!” He held up the newspaper to Starswirl.

“I was gone for that long?” said Starswirl. “Well, no wonder! Magic must have advanced enough in the interim that I’m now uninformed in important parts of it.”

“Wait,” said Sunset, “you made that time travel spell, and nopony’s been able to replicate it since; the full version, anyway. I know because Starlight used it in a not-very-well-thought-out plan to try to get revenge on me. But then it stopped working because it turned out it was a demo version. That seems like something you’d know that nopony else does.”

“Oh, that?” said Starswirl. “I never was able to make a full version. Those things always eventually stop working and cancel out any effects of time travel they may have caused. Good for a bit of fun, but not much else. Which is probably a good thing, because if the changes could be permanent, it could cause major problems. Can you imagine living in a world overrun by flesh-eating zombies and flesh-eating leeches?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Sunset. “But wait, if there isn’t a full version, why did it say it was a demo version?”

“I probably added it by accident when I was under the influence of that ‘Make Self Incredibly Drunk’ spell that I invented,” said Starswirl.

“Why would you make a spell to do that?”

“I’m not sure,” said Starswirl. “I might have been drunk at the time I invented it.”

“So you don’t have any magical super-knowledge to teach me?” asked Twilight in a disappointed tone.

“Probably not,” admitted Starswirl. “I’ll have to spend some time catching up on all the new magical developments that have happened in the meantime.”

“Well, at least I can probably get an entry in one of the magical journals over this,” muttered Twilight as she walked off.

“Wait,” said Sunset as she followed Twilight, “your only goals were to learn super magic from Starswirl and get an article in a magical journal?”

“Hey!” said Twilight. “Learning super magic is a very worthwhile endeavor! And those magical journals can be quite prestigious!”

“Well,” said Sunset, “it’s just that I thought you idolized him or something from when you were a child and that because of that, you wanted to get him out.”

“When I was a child, I wasn’t even in this universe,” said Twilight. “How would I have been idolizing him if I didn’t know he existed yet?”

“Oh, right, alternate universe and all that,” said Sunset. “I forgot about that. I guess you wouldn’t have as much of an obsession over him as you would have if you had grown up here.”

“So, I’ve kept quiet so as not to interrupt you,” said Somnabula, one of the Pillars, “but what’s changed in Equestria after all these years? Does tech support come to your house on time now?”

“No,” said Sunset.

“Didn’t really get my hopes up on that one,” admitted Somnabula.

“You know what?” said Sunset. “I’m trying to figure out if I’m happy this whole thing got sorted out so easily, or irritated that it meant I’m just stuck sitting around here trying to make conversation. It just felt like there was a big wait for this, and then nothing really happened. There has to be some kind of happy medium between the annoying adventures I keep getting stuck with compared to this sort of dull event.”

“Well,” said Twilight, “what do you think of trying to finish that secret unfinished masterpiece of Starswirl’s? He wasn’t able to get it right. Maybe we can!”

“Oh, that dumb thing?” said Sunset. “I already figured it out by accident. Trust me, don’t bother with it.”

“But what does the spell do?” asked Twilight.

“Uh, nothing as far as I can tell,” said Sunset. “If you cast the unfinished version, it messes up all the cutie marks nearby. Then when you finish it, they’re all back to normal. So it appears that the finished spell does absolutely nothing other than cancelling its previous effects out. Apparently, if you’re the one who finishes it, you get some ascension that affixes the race of whoever happens to be in charge of Equestria to you, but I’m pretty sure that only applies to the first to solve it and is independent of the spell itself.”

“That’s a disappointment,” said Twilight. “Well, unfortunately I don’t really know of anything else for the two of us to do, unless you really want to help with writing that entry for the magical journal.”

“That doesn’t really sound like my sort of thing, unfortunately,” said Sunset. “Of course, knowing my life, I’m sure something is going to happen soon enough. I guess I’ll head back to Ponyville for now.”

Later…

“Okay, I’m back,” said Sunset. “Anything important happen in Ponyville while I was gone?”

“Oh, not really,” said Lightning Dust. “Except–”

“Wait,” said Sunset, “I know how this goes. You’re going to tell me ‘except for’ and then follow it with something really big, like ‘except for the invasion of rogue changelings,’ right?”

“Actually,” said Lightning Dust, “I was going to say ‘except for that cake auction.’ You missed a pretty good one.”

“Huh,” said Sunset.

Suddenly, a large Bugbear started rampaging through town.

“Now, see, I could have done what you said, if you had come back a day later,” said Lightning Dust. “As in, I could have said ‘except for the Bugbear that showed up and started attacking.’ Your timing could have used work.”

Sunset sighed heavily. “Well, I guess we have to deal with this.”

And so the Saga of the Bugbear began. But that is another story. Or at least it would be another story, if not for the fact it all ended quite quickly, because it turns out they’re not actually that hard to defeat.

S.C.H.O.O.L. Raze

Sunset, Trixie, Flim, Flam, Suri, Gilda, and Lightning Dust all walked into the train car and slumped down onto the seats, exhausted.

“Okay,” said Sunset, “that’s it. That is the absolute last adventure we’re ever going to go on from that map. I don’t care how much cash we get; it’s not worth going through that again.”

“Uh, Sunset?” said Suri. “Why are you saying this now? You’ve already made this claim repeatedly. We’ve heard it.”

“I’m saying it this many times because I’m determined to make sure that I actually stick with it this time,” said Sunset. “The previous adventures could be annoying, even dangerous, but they didn’t take months to accomplish!”

“We know, Sunset,” said Gilda wearily. “We were there too, remember?”

“Too many stupid adventures in a row,” said Sunset. “We went through all this right after that nonsense with the Storm King, and then before then there was… okay, there wasn’t any big stupid annoying adventure immediately before that one, but the point is it makes this already awful experience even worse!”

“I believe studies show that complaining too much, especially about things you can’t change, isn’t good for your health,” said Flim.

“Well, it makes me feel better!” snapped Sunset. “That’s good enough for me! I refuse to go through that again!”

“Aw, come on,” said Lightning Dust. “Outside of the part where we got forced to repeatedly relive our worst nightmares nonstop for a week, I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“Please don’t remind me of that,” said Sunset with a groan.

“Hey,” said Gilda, “it built character.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re the only one who didn’t get caught in that!”

“Well, duh,” said Gilda. “My character is already built. And it was that building of character that allowed us all to come together in the end to find the Golden Magic Monkey idol and make a fortune. And I suppose also fix the weather in that place so they can actually grow crops and stuff again.”

“I don’t think that the ‘building of character’ had much to do with our victory,” said Suri.

“It’s my theory and I’m sticking to it,” said Gilda. “Besides, I doubt we’d ever need to go on another one of these map adventures again considering how much we got out of this one. So quit your complaining.”

“At least we made sure to get enough issues of Mare Do Well done as a buffer in case our visit took as long as it did,” said Trixie with a yawn. “Hopefully there won’t be too many changes while we were gone. It’d be annoying to come back to town and discover that a castle had suddenly sprung up.”

“There’s already a castle,” said Gilda.

“Well, duh,” said Trixie. “That’s why it would be especially weird.”

“That doesn’t even begin to make sense,” said Flim.

“Ugh, ask me when I’m no longer so tired,” said Trixie. “I’m so sleepy it’s a wonder I can do good talking still.” She promptly collapsed into sleep.

“That seems like a reasonable idea,” said Suri as she also fell asleep. The rest followed suit. Eventually the train came to Ponyville, and they all departed.

“Well, it doesn’t look like much changed,” said Trixie. “Outside of that huge massive building, I suppose. Any of you know what that is?”

“I hope it’s a roller-skating rink,” said Suri.

“You like roller-skating?” asked Gilda.

“No,” said Flam, “but I think it would stimulate the economy.”

“Let’s just go and find out,” said Sunset as the group went up to the large building and saw a big sign on it that said ‘School of Friendship.’ “Really?” asked Sunset. “Somepony actually made a school of friendship?”

“Yeah, I was surprised it turned out that way too,” said Chrysalis.

Sunset did a double check. “Wait, Chrysalis? When did you get here? Why are you here?”

“Oh, I just happened to be around,” said Chrysalis. “It’s not like I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible here in Ponyville so that I could meet you all when you came back, after all. Because that’s just be plain stupid. Why would you think such a stupid thing? It was just a simple co-inky-dink!”

“Uh… okay, but why is there a ‘School of Friendship’?”

Chrysalis shrugged. “We had a lot of money left at the end of the year thanks to my fantastic budgeting abilities, so we held a referendum to decide what to do with it. ‘Build a School of Friendship’ won out.”

“Really?” said Gilda. “That won?”

“Don’t underestimate the troll vote,” said Chrysalis.

“So… you teach students about friendship here, then?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, certainly not,” said Chrysalis. “I showed those trolls! Yes, I built the School of Friendship… or, more properly, the Society of Creating Helpful Original Ordinary Likable Objects and Funding Fantastic Research Into Entertaining Notions Delivering Substantially Happier Individual People!”

There was a pause. “The what?” asked Trixie.

“It’s about encouraging inventions that make life more convenient,” said Chrysalis. “Honestly, considering the acronym I had to fill, I think I did a pretty good job with that.”

“What kind of inventions are these?” said Suri.

“All kinds of things!” said Chrysalis. “Portable movie players! Devices you can carry around to call and instantly communicate with others around the world! Carriages that drive themselves! Little devices with screens that can store thousands of books on them!”

“So, uh… television, cell phones, cars, and reading tablets?” said Sunset.

“Exactly!” said Chrysalis. “Your description of those things from that alternate universe was incredibly conducive for coming up with new inventions!”

“Wait, cars?” said Flam. “We tried inventing those, but quit because we didn’t think they’d catch on.”

“I’ll admit, that one seemed to be a more risky invention,” said Chrysalis. “But throwing spaghetti at the wall until one sticks is how you find success! Especially if you’ve put glue on the wall!”

“What exactly does the glue represent in this analogy?” asked Trixie.

“Why does it have to represent anything?” said Chrysalis. “Much like how sometimes a cigar is just glue, sometimes glue is just glue.”

“Well, whatever,” said Sunset. “You’ve got your Society of Creating whatever, good for you. Now that we know, is there any reason for us to stick around here?”

“Probably not,” said Chrysalis. “Unless you want to meet Starlight and Sunburst, as they’re both here.”

“They are?!” said Suri eagerly. “Well, let’s go!”

“Sure!” said Chrysalis. “I can give you a tour. Did you know I always wanted to be a tour guide?”

“No,” said Sunset.

“Well, of course you didn’t know that,” said Chrysalis. “It’s not true. I never wanted to be a tour guide. Let’s go!”

The rest of the group shared a glance that said ‘Yes, I knew Chrysalis was going to say something like that. You knew it too? I think she’s getting a bit bad at this now, if she was this obvious. Well, I suppose we just have to go along with it and follow her on the tour. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see something interesting. Well, we know we’ll see Starlight and Sunburst so that’s something, but I mean aside from that maybe there will be something interesting. By the way, how are we communicating all of this with just a glance? Is it some kind of special language? Or is this all happening in our heads? Or, wait, are we communicating at all? Is this whole thing just a bunch of nonsense? I guess we’ll never know, and should just forget this glance ever happened.’ Then they shrugged and followed Chrysalis.

“That’s a door!” said Chrysalis cheerfully as they walked through the hallway. “And that’s another door! And there’s a third door! Isn’t it amazing how many doors we have? But at last we come to something incredibly exciting!” Chrysalis pointed to an open door. “An open door!”

“What’s inside it?” asked Trixie.

“Absolutely nothing!” said Chrysalis. “That’s why it’s open. Instead, let’s open this other door that’s closed for something more interesting!” Chrysalis opened the door to reveal an empty room. “Oh, wait, sorry,” she said. “Wrong door.”

“If you’re going to insist on showing us around, could you pick someone who actually knows their way around here?” asked Gilda.

“That sounds like a great idea!” declared Chrysalis. “Do you know who might be a candidate?”

“Okay, that’s it!” said Gilda. “I’m done. Let’s just get out of here.”

“What, you’re not going to ask ‘wouldn’t you be better equipped to find someone’?” said Trixie.

“I agree!” said Chrysalis. “You should ask that!”

“Why?” said Gilda. “I’m just going to get an irritating answer. Why even bother?”

“You should have more faith in your queen!” said Chrysalis. “I know just the person to ask!”

“Then why did you ask us?” started Gilda before being interrupted.

“What, it wasn’t obvious it was a rhetorical question?” said Chrysalis.

“Just get the person already,” said Gilda.

“Righto!” said Chrysalis as she opened another door to reveal Starlight and Sunburst working on a device. “See? I bet they know! In retrospect, I probably should have done that to begin with.”

“Starlight! Sunburst!” said Suri as she rushed over to them. “How are you two doing? Are you close to ready?”

“Extremely close!” said Sunburst. “‘Minivision’ is almost here!”

Suri clapped her hooves together in excitement. “Oh, this is going to be big. And I’m going to be rich!”

“Yeah, well, maybe,” said Sunset. “I finally put some investment into this after you kept yammering about it, so hopefully I’ll get something back.”

“Okay, so we’ve met Starlight and Sunburst again,” said Gilda. “Are they going to show us around now?”

“I guess we could?” said Starlight.

“Actually, I’ve officially lost interest at this point,” said Gilda. “You guys can do whatever else you want; I’m heading home.”

“Aw,” said Sunburst. “Can we at least show you the invention working?”

“Fine!” said Gilda. “Just be quick about it.”

“All right!” said Sunburst as he went over to a box with a screen in the front. “Watch this!” He pressed a button and suddenly a video started playing on it.

Gilda blinked in surprise. “That’s actually good video quality.”

“Right!” said Starlight. “We made sure to do that. Anyway, I’m sure that after–”

Suddenly, the video stopped and the screen became blank again. “Darn it, what now?” said Sunburst with a sigh as he tried to figure out what was wrong with it.

“Did you try whacking it?” asked Trixie. “That works on machines in the movies!”

“Actually, I think because that got so overused, it’s more common in movies nowadays for whacking it to not work as a subversion,” said Suri.

“I’d say it’s about half and half,” said Trixie.

“Can’t you just magic it back to working or something?” asked Gilda.

“Well, now that I’ve figured out what seems to be wrong, I can,” said Sunburst. There was a pause.

“So… are you going to do it…?” asked Gilda.

“Um… my magic isn’t working,” said Sunburst with a frown.

“I heard that can happen to stallions as they get older,” said Gilda.

“Um… my magic doesn’t seem to be working right either,” said Starlight.

“Yeah, it can happen to mares, too,” said Gilda. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure why I specified stallions alone in the first place.”

“This isn’t time to be flippant!” snapped Sunset. “None of our magics are working!”

“Hrm,” mused Chrysalis, “transforming doesn’t seem to work either. Well, it seems we’re all in one dilly of a pickle.”

Sunset gave a very pained look at Chrysalis.

“Oh, right, I’m supposed to do leader-like stuff and try to solve it, right?” said Chrysalis. “Okay! First step is to figure out if it’s limited to us or not. That should be easy.” She walked over to the window and opened it. “Hey!” she called out. “Is anyone here experiencing a sudden loss of magic?” There was a pause. “Okay, I should’ve probably asked where there are actually people to ask. I’ll be right back!” She jumped out the window and walked off.

“Darn it, if this isn’t fixed, it could really wreak havoc on the minivision rollout,” complained Sunburst.

“I think there’s bigger issues with a massive loss of magic than the ability to push a particular product,” said Sunset.

“Right!” said Flam. “It could hurt our products too!”

Sunset sighed heavily.

“Well, at least I can still fly and stuff,” said Lightning Dust as she jumped up… and then fell down. “Okay, so I guess I can’t fly. But at least there’s still the ‘stuff,’ right?”

“Wait, why can’t you fly?” asked Suri.

“It takes magic to fly,” said Lightning Dust. “I mean, what, did you see how pegasi go flying around? If there wasn’t magic involved there’s no way we could actually stay floating with the way we flap our wings. We’d have to be flapping them way faster for that to work.”

“I guess that makes sense… sort of,” said Suri.

Chrysalis suddenly jumped back through the window. “Okay! So after checking around, both in town and in communications with people super-knowledgeable about magic and stuff, it looks like it’s affecting everyone else to varying degrees! Apparently it’s hitting all across Equestria. And at the current rate, all magic will drain in three days. First the unicorn and pegasus magic will fail, then the next day creatures will lose magical abilities, and then the third day all the artifacts will stop working.”

“That’s an oddly specific timeframe,” said Flim.

“Yes, as it turns out, magic tends to disappear on a very convenient timetable,” said Chrysalis. “Well, there is only one thing to do!”

“Send us on a mission to fix it?” asked Sunset wearily.

“Great idea!” said Chrysalis. “But first we have to figure out who’s causing this.” She paused. “Okay, well, Tirek can steal magic. So that makes him a suspect. But he’s also locked up, and he’d be out if he was the one doing it. But he might have an idea of who is doing it. So you should go and try to interrogate him.”

“Why do you think we’d be in any way good at interrogating?” asked Lightning Dust.

“I have no idea,” said Chrysalis, “but experience has shown me that if I throw you all at a problem, it tends to get solved one way or another. So what are you waiting around for? Tirek! Tartarus! Go!”

“Do we all have to go?” asked Trixie. “It seems like a major drag.”

“Good point!” said Chrysalis. “I could use someone along while I conduct my own investigation. Who wants to spend the next day or two with me?”

“Uh, on second thought, I’ll go check on Tirek,” said Trixie.

“Really?” asked Chrysalis in a disappointed tone. “No one else wants to help? This could all be some kind of trap, you know. It would make more sense for only some of you to go.”

“Hrm…” said Suri. “That is a good point.”

“Great!” said Chrysalis. “I’m sure we’ll have great fun together!”

“… but just in case we need the whole group, I think we should all go visit Tirek,” added Suri hastily.

“Darn it, I was hoping we could be Investigation Buddies,” said Chrysalis. She pulled out a key and gave it to Sunset. “Here you go! The Key of Unfettered Entrance! It has the power to magically open any door.”

“You just carry that around?” said Flim.

“I carry all kinds of things around!” said Chrysalis. “Although you should be quick about it, because as noted the magical artifacts will lose that magic soon. Anyway! You should probably get going. In fact, why are you still here? I know my sparkling personality is great and all, but you should get going!”

“Uh, for starters, we don’t even know how to get there,” said Sunset.

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Chrysalis. “First you go to the Blasted Lands, then pass through the Sea of Sorrows, then the Forest of the Dead, traversing the Nightmare Realm, going through the Dead Forest (not to be confused with the aforementioned Forest of the Dead), then you’ll find the entrance in the Dark Haunt.”

“That sounds… really irritating,” said Gilda.

“Alternatively, you can take the stairs,” said Chrysalis. She pointed to some nearby stairs.

“Wait, you have stairs leading there?” said Lightning Dust.

“Too many got stuck in the Nightmare Realm,” said Chrysalis. “See, you have to find and fight these six or so enemies in order, and then they drop beacons in the maze that you can follow to–”

“Forget I asked!” said Lightning Dust.

“How?” asked Chrysalis. “I can’t forget things on demand.”

“Let’s just go,” muttered Sunset as she grabbed the rest of the group and left.

A short time later…

“So how is it that a simple set of stairs is able to lead to the same place as going through all that lengthy process Chrysalis mentioned?” asked Suri.

“Why are you asking me?” said Sunset.

“I’m not asking you in particular,” said Suri. “I’m asking the whole group.”

“No idea,” said Trixie.

“I’ve got nothing,” said Gilda.

“Not sure,” said Flim.

“Maybe it’s beans?” pondered Lightning Dust.

“Ugh,” said Sunset. “Obviously some kind of spatial magic is involved.”

“Wait, if you had the answer, why did you object to being asked?” said Suri.

“It’s the principle of the thing! Why should I answer every question?”

“Because you’re probably the smartest of all of us?” said Lightning Dust. Everyone else nodded.

Sunset was taken aback. “I… wow. That was surprisingly nice of you.”

“Just to clarify,” said Gilda, “she said probably. I think there’s still a reasonable chance I’m the smartest. I’d say the odds are about 60/40 in your favor.”

“You really had to ruin the moment, didn’t you?” said Sunset in an irritated tone.

“You’re right,” said Gilda, “that wasn’t fair of me. It really is more like a 72/38.”

“I… I guess that’s good enough,” said Sunset. She paused, then added, “Wait. That adds up to 110%.”

“Oh, wait, you’re right,” said Gilda. “What I meant to say was–”

“Can we hash out the specific probabilities later?” said Lightning Dust.

“There’s not much else to do until we get to our destination,” said Gilda. She paused, then stopped. “Oh, wait, never mind. We’re here. I guess the specific probabilities will have to wait until another time.”

Suri gazed up at the massive gate. “Is there any real purpose to this gate being so big?”

“Decoration, maybe?” suggested Trixie.

“Why would you care about decoration in a super high security prison?”

“We’re doing that thing again where we just suddenly stop what we’re doing to have inane conversations about nothing,” said Sunset. “Can we just move on?”

“Good point!” said Gilda. “Let’s go in. Get out that key, Sunset!”

Sunset pulled out the key and used it to open the door. The key then turned into a snowball shaped like a cow and exploded.

“Huh,” said Lightning Dust after a short pause. “I guess they don’t make Key of Unfettered Entrances like they used to.”

“Wait,” said Trixie, “shouldn’t that be Keys of Unfettered Entrance? I think that it’s more proper to pluralize the word ‘key’ than ‘entrance.’”

“And now we’re doing it again,” groaned Sunset.

And so the group went in. A short time later, they found Tirek locked in a cage.

“Oh, hello,” said Tirek in a bored tone. “What brings you here?”

“Magic is disappearing from Equestria,” said Sunset. “Any chance you’d know something about that?”

“Well, that’s possible,” said Tirek. “Maybe if you let me out of here, it’ll help make it more clear.”

“Don’t worry,” said Trixie, “I’ve got this.” She marched up to Tirek’s cage. “Where were you on the night of yesterday?!” she screamed into his face.

Tirek blinked in confusion, then grouchily said, “I was here, you idiot, just like I’ve been ever since you ponies threw me back here.”

“Hrm,” mused Trixie,” “the alibi checks out. Well, I’m stumped.”

“By the way,” asked Tirek lazily, “you seem to be missing a member. Where’s that Flam… Flim? Enh, you two are the same either way. Where is he?”

“Oh, Flim had an unfortunate encounter with a cockatrice on the way,” said Gilda. “Guess its magic wasn’t fully drained. We’ll worry about that one later.”

“Don’t worry, though; I’m fine!” said Flam.

“Well, as I was saying,” said Tirek, “how about letting me out of here?”

“Ha!” said Lightning Dust. “Shows what you know! We’re out of magic keys, so nopony can open the door, so you have to help us out.”

“Wait,” said Suri, “we’re trapped here too?”

“Hrm,” said Lightning Dust, “that does seem uncharacteristically stupid of us, doesn’t it?”

“Well!” said Tirek. “Maybe I’m not getting out, but neither are you, it seems! Sweet revenge for me. It seems my little protege’s plan worked after all.”

“That’s protégé,” said Trixie.

“Look, protege, protégé, whatever!” said Sunset. “Who are you talking about, Tirek?”

“Oh, I’ve never met them,” said Tirek. “We’re pen pals. All of the letters had so many questions about draining magic.”

There was a pause. “Wait,” said Sunset incredulously, “you get pen pals here?”

“Oh, sure!” said Tirek. “It’s part of some kind of rehabilitation process. Or something like that.”

“And there wasn’t anyone who checked over the letters?!”

“It surprised me too!” said Tirek. “It seems like spectacular incompetence on the part of you ponies. But, hey, I wasn’t going to question it! Anyway, I was bored, so I pointed them in the right direction.”

“And who is this ‘pen pal’?” asked Sunset. “We’re all stuck here anyway, so you might as well tell us.”

“Oh, sure!” said Tirek. “Their name is…”

There was a pause.

“Their name is what?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, I was just taking a pause before revealing it,” said Tirek. “You know, for dramatic effect. I have to get my amusement somehow. Her name is Cozy Glow.”

There was a pause. “Who?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, you don’t even know?” chortled Tirek. “You guys really are out of the loop!”

“Uh, duh, we were away for the last few months and haven’t been back for even a day,” said Gilda.

“Oh,” said Tirek. “Well, anyway, Cozy Glow’s this filly who apparently got some kind of position at that School of Friendship. Who would ever suspect someone like that would be the perpetrator?”

“Okay, but how is she taking away all of the magic?” asked Sunset.

“Something about taking all friendship for herself or whatever; it didn’t make that much sense quite honestly,” said Tirek. “But, hey, I want revenge, so I just went along with it!” He paused. “Oh, wait, you asked how, didn’t you?”

There was a pause. “Well, are you going to answer that question, then?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, sure, why not?” said Tirek. “That School of Friendship managed to get a bunch of powerful artifacts together for research, so she’s just linking them together and using that to drain all the magic. It seems a bit odd that’s possible, but it’s magic; it just works however it works.”

“So all we’d have to do is find those artifacts, de-link them, and problem solved?” said Sunset.

“Oh, sure!” said Tirek. “I’m sure you can figure it out… after you get out of here! Oh wait … you can’t!”

“Ha!” said Gilda. “Joke’s on you! After the key thingy broke, we just propped open the door to keep it open. And just to make sure something didn’t happen in the meantime, we left Flim to keep an eye over it. That’s the actual reason he wasn’t here.”

“Argh!” said Sunset. “Gilda, I told you we should leave without telling Tirek that! What if he has some way to alert others?”

“The small odds of that are worth the look on his face right now!” declared Gilda as she gestured towards Tirek’s flabbergasted face.

“You propped open the door?!” asked Tirek in disbelief.

“What, do you think we’d be stupid enough to just walk in without making sure we had a way out?” said Gilda. “We’d just let the door close in on us with no way out? We’d have to be a group composed entirely of morons to do that! And that can’t be the case, as I’m a member of the group!”

“Okay, we’ve told off Tirek,” said Sunset. “Can we get out of here already? We’re on a time limit, remember.”

And so the group left a flabbergasted Tirek behind. After a short journey in which nothing of any consequence happened whatsoever, they reached Flim at the entrance.

“So, we all ready?” asked Flim.

“I think so,” said Gilda. “We did get him to admit who was behind it. Though I suppose there is always the chance he was making stuff up… but it’s at least something to go on.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Trixie. “This place smells like Tartarus.”

“I agree,” said Sunset. “Let’s just–”

“Wait,” interrupted Trixie, “nopony is going to say in a frustrated tone ‘That’s because this is Tartarus’? Because I had a great comic answer to that.”

“That’s exactly why we didn’t bother to ask,” said Sunset. “Can we just go?”

“You lot are no fun,” said Trixie dejectedly. “Come on, it’ll give us something to talk while we go back up.”

“Ugh, that will be an annoying climb, won’t it?” said Sunset.

“Climb?” said Trixie. “I thought we were talking the elevator.” She pointed to an elevator.

“…There’s an elevator?!” said Sunset. “Why didn’t we use that to get down here?!”

“It’s broken and will only move upwards,” said Trixie.

“How do you know that?!”

Trixie shrugged. “It’s what the sign on it says.”

Sunset looked closer. “Huh. There is a sign. So does this mean the elevator is one use, if it can only go up? Why even bother making it, then?”

“Probably had a discount to it or something,” said Flim.

“Wait a minute!” said Suri. “What if it’s some kind of trap? What guarantee do we have that the elevator will work?”

“Would you prefer to go up those stairs again?” said Lightning Dust.

“Elevator it is!” declared Suri.

One elevator ride later…

“Okay,” said Sunset, “now we just have to find Chrysalis.”

“How do we do that?” asked Flim.

“Darn it,” said Sunset. “We should have come up with some way of finding her. Oh well. We’ll just follow the trail of annoyance.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Gilda.

“In retrospect, I’m not sure,” admitted Sunset. “Okay, forget that. Let’s just find those artifacts and de-link them. Any idea where they’d be?”

“How would any of us know?” asked Suri. “We don’t know any more than you do!”

“I’ve got a great idea!” said Trixie. “HEY! ANYPONY HERE?!” She paused. “See, maybe there will be somepony nearby, and they’ll know.”

“Hrm,” said Gilda. “Crude, but it could work.”

Starlight walked up to them. “Do you need help?”

“Correction,” said Gilda, “Crude, but it did work.”

“My esoteric brilliance works again!” declared Trixie.

“Uh, that sounds great,” said Starlight. “But what did you want?”

“We found out from Tirek that somepony named Cozy Glow took a bunch of artifacts and is using them to steal away all the magic, so all we have to do is find those artifact, de-link them, and everything will be back to normal,” said Sunset.

“Wait, Cozy Glow?” said Starlight. “But she’s really young. Are you sure Tirek wasn’t just sharing some badly written fan fiction with you?”

“Nah,” said Gilda, “I know badly written fan fiction. This was more like the confusing thing that happens in canon that fans then try to explain in fan fiction.”

“You read fan fiction?” asked Starlight.

“I skim,” said Gilda.

Everyone gave an odd look at Gilda but didn’t say anything further on the subject. “Getting back on topic,” said Sunset, “do you know where these artifacts or this Cozy Glow are?”

“Uh, let me think,” said Starlight. “I don’t know about the latter, but the place to link up the artifacts would be the catacombs under the school, given it’s large but it doesn’t really get visitors.”

“Why does it seem like there’s catacombs under everything?” wondered Flam.

“We can solve that mystery later!” said Trixie. “For now, let’s get to those artifacts! Show us the way, Starlight!”

One showing of the way later…

“Okay, so I think this should be…” started Sunset before trailing off as they saw what was in the room. “Wait, Chrysalis?!”

The artifacts that have been mentioned repeatedly but not seen were set in a ring around a pillar in the middle of the room. On the top of the pillar was Chrysalis in some kind of weird magical ball.

“Oh, hi,” said Chrysalis. “Nice to see you made it. Any chance you could get me out of here?”

Unfortunately for Chrysalis, the weird magical ball was sound proof, so none of them heard what she said.

“I think she said ‘don’t worry about me; you figure out how to de-link the artifacts,’” said Sunset.

“Oh, were you able to read her lips?” asked Flim.

“No,” said Sunset, “but I’m going to assume that’s what she said because anything that keeps Chrysalis silent is good.”

“Okay, so we de-link the artifacts then?” asked Trixie.

Sunset inspected them. “Actually, I’m worried about the possibility that doing so might cause this entire place to blow up.”

“Oh, that would be bad,” said Trixie. “Think of how much money this place cost to make!”

“I think the fact we’d be at ground zero of the explosion might be a bigger thing to worry about,” said Sunset.

“Aha!” declared Cozy Glow as she marched in, followed by a large group of who were presumably people who were working at the School of Friendship. “Did you hear that? They’re trying to blow up the school!”

“Wait, who are you?” asked Suri. “Are you that Cozy Glow?”

“The one and only!” Cozy Glow declared with a manic glint in her eye. “Anyway, as I was saying, they want to destroy this whole place, and us along with them! In fact, I bet they’re the ones responsible for taking the magic out of Equestria! They weren’t around for several months and they’re jealous of the magical advances we’ve been making! Look! They even took Chrysalis captive!”

“That makes total sense!” declared one of the ponies with Cozy Glow.

“Uh, no it doesn’t,” said Gilda.

“Oh, you’d be surprised how persuasive I can become after sufficient, several-months-long secret application of the Suggestibility Ray,” said Cozy Glow. “Anyway, get them!”

The group suddenly converged upon the seven. They quickly got beaten up. To clarify, the larger group got beaten up, not Sunset and the others.

“Ha!” said Suri. “Those self-defense classes did come in handy!”

“Why wouldn’t you think they’d come in handy, considering the things we get into?” said Gilda.

“Honestly, actual physical fighting doesn’t seem to be useful in most of these adventures,” said Suri.

“Ugh,” muttered Cozy Glow. “I need to get better minions. Fine!” She pulled out a weird-looking device. “I’ll just use this instead!”

“Wait a minute,” said Sunset. “Can you explain why you’re doing all of this?”

“To stop ‘minivision’ from being distributed!” declared Cozy Glow. “Trust me, by preventing reality shows from becoming a thing, I’ll be doing you all a favor.”

There was a pause. “That explanation makes no sense,” said Gilda.

“Well, duh,” said Cozy Glow. “I just made that up for fun. The real reason is that by absorbing all of the magic, all of the friendship will be mine! MINE!”

“Uh, you know the School of Friendship isn’t actually about friendship, right?” said Suri.

“Also, aren’t you a little young to be trying to take all the magic out of Equestria?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Yes,” said Cozy Glow. “Yes I am.”

“What about my question?” asked Suri.

“Guys, can we stop with the jibber jabber for once and just get this done?” said Sunset. “We’re kind of on a time limit here! Just restrain her while we think of what to do.”

“Ha!” said Cozy Glow. “With this, my victory is assured!” She pointed to the device she had pulled out.

“Okay, what is that anyway?” asked Sunset.

“It’s the XFJ-29,” said Starlight. “Be careful! It’s powerful enough to… wait. Sorry. She’s holding the XFJ-28. That thing’s harmless.”

“What are you talking about?” said Cozy Glow. “This is an XFJ-29.”

“No, it’s XFJ-28,” said Starlight.

“What in the world is an XFJ-28 and 29 anyway?” demanded Sunset.

“Weapons that were in development,” said Starlight. “But we could never get the XFJ-28 to work. So we abandoned it and made the XFJ-29, which is a really powerful magical laser weapon that could take us all out in one hit.”

“Wait,” said Sunset, “if the magic is gone, why are we worried about a magical weapon anyway?”

“Oh, good point,” said Gilda. She pulled out a shotgun. “This thing, on the other hand, works fine with or without magic!”

Cozy Glow took one glance at Gilda’s shotgun, tossed the XFJ-whatever-it-was to the side, and ran off.

“After her!” declared Lightning Dust as she dashed after Cozy Glow.

“You magic experts see if you can figure this out; the rest of us will help Lightning Dust!” said Gilda as she ran off with Suri following her.

There was a pause, then Sunset said, “Okay. So we want to try to de-link all this stuff, preferably without causing a massive explosion.”

“Do you think maybe we should get Chrysalis out of there first?” suggested Starlight. “She might know.”

“Well, maybe Cozy Glow let something slip to her,” admitted Sunset. “Sure. You know anything about this containment field, Starlight?”

“It looks like it’s linked to the artifacts,” said Starlight.

“So again we come back to just de-linking them,” said Sunset. She sighed. “Okay. Here’s my suggestion. De-linking them might cause an explosion? Let’s just set something up to de-link them on a delayed basis, get out of here, and then if there’s an explosion we’ll be free.”

“That could kill Chrysalis, though,” said Sunburst.

“I’m prepared to take that risk,” said Sunset.

“What about all of the various ponies we beat up after Cozy Glow sent us after them?” Sunburst asked, gesturing to the various unconscious ponies that had mostly been forgotten about in the last several dozen paragraphs.

“Fine, those we should probably evacuate first,” said Sunset.

“I’m not sure if we have enough time to get everypony out and set up a delayed timer, especially without any magic,” said Flim. “I think we need somepony to stay behind and do the de-linking, thereby minimizing any potential casualties.”

“Not it!” said Trixie.

Everyone stared at her.

“Oh, come on,” said Trixie. “That was comedy gold.”

“Let’s just roll a die or something,” said Flam. “Anypony have a die?”

There was a pause.

“Darn it, of all the times for Gilda to not be here,” said Flim. “She usually has one.”

“You know,” said Sunset, “I think there’s a lower chance of explosive blowback if all of the artifacts are removed simultaneously anyway. And if something fails in the process, there’d be more of us to try to fix it. Let’s just all do it.” She turned to the various defeated ponies. “Hey! Idiots! Get out of here. This process might cause this whole thing to blow up.”

“Ugh…” said one of them. “Sorry, too weak to get up.”

“Well, I tried,” said Sunset. “Let’s just do this already.”

“Wait, I know,” said Trixie. She turned to the collapsed ponies. “Hey, guys, I think that bubble Chrysalis is in is weakening. In just a few seconds I think she’ll be able to talk to all of you about–”

There was a sudden mad dash out of the room.

“How did I not think of that?” wondered Sunset. “Well, fine. Let’s de-link these things.”

“I think I’ve heard the phrase ‘de-link’ more in the last day or two than I have the rest of my life,” said Trixie.

And so the six grabbed the six artifacts and pulled them away, causing them to be de-linked and making it so the word ‘de-link’ and variations of it need no longer be used. This did not cause an actual explosion, but did result in what would be a fairly neat special effect in a movie that restored the magic to everyone. Also, the six of them and Chrysalis were transported away to a courtyard of the School of Friendship.

“Uh, why did we get transported out?” asked Sunset. “Seriously, what caused that?”

“Heck if I know,” said Chrysalis. “Guess it’s just a magic thing. But I’m so proud of you! You were able to figure out the message I was trying to mime that there wasn’t any need to worry about explosions if you removed all of the artifacts at once!”

“Uh… right,” said Sunset. “Okay, now where is Cozy Glow? Did they catch her?”

“Oh, there you are, Sunset,” said Lightning Dust as she flew in abruptly. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you to tell you that we caught Cozy Glow after all the magic returned.”

“Looking everywhere? But the magic hasn’t even been back for a minute!”

“Well, duh,” said Lightning Dust. “I was in the process of looking everywhere. I didn’t finish yet.”

“But that wasn’t…” Sunset started, then decided it wasn’t worth pursuing the matter further. “Okay, great. So everything is back to normal. What are we doing with Cozy Glow?”

“Enh, I think I’ll imprison her in Tartarus for a while,” said Chrysalis. “She and Tirek would probably drive each other crazy, which would be hilariously ironic.” She paused, then added, “And if you think that seems a little harsh for someone her age, you’re overlooking the fact that it’d still be hilariously ironic.”

“Uh, sure,” said Sunset. “So does that make this whole thing wrapped up?”

“Well, the magic’s back, so yes!” said Chrysalis. “But you know what? This whole thing has made me realize something.”

I’m not even going to ask whether it’s that she should be less annoying, because she’d just say ‘no, I’ll probably never realize that’ or something similar in response, thought Sunset to herself.

There was a pause, with Chrysalis apparently expecting some kind of answer, but then she shrugged and continued. “I mean, look at it! All that magic just got taken away, just like that! And this is the second time that sort of thing has happened. If you ask me, we rely way too much on magic. So I’m going to reformat the entire School of Friendship to being about inventing magic-less technology.”

“What about minivision?” asked Sunburst. “We’re so close to completing production on those.”

“Hrm, that isn’t a bad point,” said Chrysalis. “Does it still work after the magic zapping, though? The way that was built, the draining might have had permanent effects of some kind.”

A quick checking later…

“Yep, it’s busted,” said Chrysalis. “But I’m sure you can use the stuff you did make to make a version that doesn’t require magic.”

“That’ll take much longer,” said Sunburst.

“And I want a faster return on my investment!” said Suri.

“Well, slow and steady wins the race, or… something,” said Chrysalis.

“Wait, something I meant to ask,” said Sunset. “Why in Equestria did you let Tirek have a pen pal?”

“Wait, he had a pen pal?” asked Chrysalis. “That’s completely idiotic. Doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”

“Well if you didn’t, who did?”

“Uh, let me think,” said Chrysalis. “Oh, right. There was this guy named Neighsay I couldn’t stand, nor could most anyone else, so I transferred him to the Tartarus Mailing Division so no one would have to deal with him anymore.”

“That sounds like an awfully important position to put someone in if you wanted to get rid of them,” said Suri.

“Tartarus hasn’t gotten any mail for the last few centuries, how was I supposed to know there would actually be one?” said Chrysalis. “I guess he got lazy and didn’t screen them properly. He’s going to get an earful from me. And maybe a transfer to someplace even more pointless. I’ll probably send him to the Department of Redundancy Department.”

“Is that an actual thing?”

“If not, it will be!”

“So, once again, everything is wrapped up,” said Sunset. “You know, I really am getting tired of all of these adventures where the world nearly comes to an end.”

“Oh, the world wouldn’t have come to an end,” said Chrysalis. “We would’ve just lost all the magic. Which would dramatically change things, but wouldn’t have actually ended it. In fact, I’m not sure of any time the world was in legitimate danger of coming to an actual end. Maybe Nightmare Moon? But I kind of feel she would’ve eventually relented to some degree and allow for some sun.”

“Well,” said Trixie, “it may not have been the end of the world, but it’s the end of this adventure! Cool wordplay, eh? Eh?”

Everyone stared at Trixie.

Trixie shrugged. “They can’t all be winners.”

The End - Part 1

Author's Note

I'm not usually one for author notes, but because it's been so long since I posted the previous chapter ("S.C.H.O.O.L. Raze"), I'd recommend rereading it as it does set up a few things here.

The End - Part 1

Dark. It was dark. It was very, very, very dark. It was also some combination of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, though not all of them. In any event, it was dark. Then it was no longer dark, because the light was turned on. However, the light was not particularly bright, so while it was not dark, neither was it particularly light. Then the light burnt out and it went back to being dark again.

A man listened to the door. There was a knock. He went and opened the door to find the pizza boy.

“Hello!” said the pizza boy. “Here is your pizza.”

The man paid him and got the pizza. He replaced the light, ate the pizza, and then he did some other stuff and also he got a race car. Then he went back to bed.

We now return to our story, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the previous four paragraphs.

“Psst, Tirek!” said Cozy Glow.

“It’s Lord Tirek,” said Tirek in an irritated tone. “And what is it?”

“I just wanna make sure you can see my best friends rock sculpture from over there!” said Cozy Glow cheerfully as she pointed to a small sculpture of the two of them together.

Tirek stared blankly. “Where did you get the materials to make that?”

“Oh, you know,” said Cozy Glow in her cheerful voice.

Tirek sighed deeply. “You know, the dissonance between your manipulativeness yet apparent youthful innocence would actually be endearing in a weird way if not for the fact I have to actually deal with it.”

“See?” said Cozy Glow. “We’re becoming friends already!”

Suddenly, the two found themselves somewhere else entirely. There was a pause.

“That was unexpected,” said Tirek. “Wait, who are you?”

Tirek’s question was directed towards the Storm King, who was there with him. “Hi!” he said. “I’m the Storm King. Granted, maybe I don’t technically count as a king given that I lost my throne and such. But it’s still officially my name!”

Tirek and Cozy Glow stared at him briefly. “Uh, sure,” said Tirek. “Did you bring us here?”

“Oh, no,” said the Storm King. “I was too busy being a rock. I kind of got turned into one. But suddenly I found myself here and back to normal!”

“Well, then who–” started Tirek before being interrupted.

Suddenly, a… ram? Goat? Well, whatever the specific species was, one appeared. “I was the one who brought you here. You may call me… Grogar.”

“You say we may call you,” said the Storm King. “Does that mean Grogar isn’t your actual name?”

“Wait, you don’t know who he is?!” said Tirek.

“Oh, I know. He’s an ancient super-powered being who took over Equestria, or in this case the land that would become Equestria later, until a hero showed up and banished him,” said the Storm King. “But honestly, guys like that are a dime a dozen in Equestrian history. There’s been multiple cases of that in just the last few years!”

“My reign was much longer than any of those!” snapped Grogar. “Anyway, since Gusty the Great rose up and banished me, I’ve spent millennia gathering power, biding my time, and waiting for the perfect opportunity to seize control of Equestria!”

“I kind of feel like there were plenty of great opportunities before this,” said Cozy Glow. “What about after any of the recent times there was some kind of villain who caused massive damage to Equestria? That sees like it would be a great time to make your move.”

“And what would you have done if the plan to remove all of the magic of Equestria worked?” asked Tirek. “I doubt you would have been able to take over then.”

“That’s not your business,” said Grogar. “However, I have watched all of you. And I’ve seen your humiliating defeats at the hooves of six puny ponies and one slightly less puny griffon. Do you know why they’ve always bested you?”

“Wait, were you expecting an answer, or was that rhetorical?” asked the Storm King.

“It’s because they work together,” said Grogar.

“Uh, I should point out that I had an army and such,” said the Storm King. “So it’s not like I haven’t worked with others.”

“Exactly!” said Grogar. “And you were doing great until you decided to pointlessly alienate your strongest supporter!”

“True, in retrospect that was not a particularly smart decision,” admitted the Storm King.

“So we’ll use their own strategy to defeat them!” said Grogar. “I demand you join me and together, Equestria will be ours!”

“And why should we go along with this?” asked Cozy Glow.

“Because I’ll zap you back to where you were before this if you don’t,” said Grogar.

“Sounds like a plan!” declared the Storm King. “Speaking of plans, what’s the plan to take over Equestria? Does it involve flesh-eating cream puffs?”

“No,” said Grogar.

“Oh, that’s good,” said the Storm King. “Because flesh-eating cream puffs are such a stupid idea I’d never want to join up with anyone who’d propose such a plan.”

“Okay, I really have to ask at this point,” said Tirek, “why did you bring this guy along? Did we just need a third member or something?”

“Hey!” said the Storm King. “I almost took over Equestria too, you know! And even before that, I had an empire of my own!”

“Didn’t you inherit the whole thing?” asked Cozy Glow.

“Details,” said the Storm King dismissively.

“If you are done prattling,” said Grogar, “I’ll answer your question. We will strike… but only when the time is right.”

Some time later…

“Is the time right yet to take over Equestria and wreak our vengeance?” asked Cozy Glow eagerly.

“No, not yet,” said Grogar.

“Honestly, what was even the point of dragging us all here now if we were going to have to wait so long?” asked the Storm King. “I’ll admit it’s less boring than being stone, but it’s not that big of an improvement.”

“Well, fortunately for you, I do have a task for you to complete,” said Grogar. “Get the others in here!”

“Uh, there’s only one other, Tirek, so why is ‘others’ plural?” asked the Storm King.

Grogar glared at him.

“I think it’s a reasonable question!” said the Storm King. “But fine. Hey, Tirek! Get in here!”

And so Tirek came in. “So are we doing something already? Grogar, appreciate you restoring my strength so I don’t look so sickly, but it is indeed rather boring. You do have a plan, right?”

“Of course I have a plan!” said Grogar. “I have located an object of power, and it occurs to me this is the perfect test. The three of you will work together to retrieve it. Against this item, those ponies—and griffon—won’t stand a chance.”

“Oh, right, that whole ‘working together’ thing you’ve been trying to get us to do,” said Tirek. “Can’t we just skip past that and take over Equestria without it?”

“As I told you,” said Grogar, “the reason they defeat you is because they work together. You need to work together to defeat them! So in preparation for that, you’ll work together to get this item.”

“Right!” said the Storm King. “Cozy Glow, you’ll be my backup. Tirek, you’ll be my backup. And I’ll be the leader!”

The three quickly started squabbling over who would lead the mission. Grogar blasted all of them into the wall and held them there with his magic.

“Again, this is a demonstration of why you fail!” said Grogar. “And my power is greater than all of yours combined, with this blast being just a fraction of it. Do you understand?”

“Uh, I guess that makes sense,” said Cozy Glow. “Can you let us down now?”

Grogar relented and they fell to the floor. “As I was saying,” said Grogar, “Gusty the Great stole my Bewitching Bell, which held much of my magic. As it cannot be destroyed, Gusty hid it, and it has taken me until now to discover where it was. It’s in an enchanted cave high atop Mt. Everhoof, protected by magical winds that prevent anypony from reaching its peak. There it has remained until now.”

“Well, that sounds awfully dangerous,” said Cozy Glow. “And you said that it prevented anypony from reaching its peak, so I guess I’m out, being a pony. Good luck to you, Tirek and Storm King!”

“Anypony is just an expression,” said Grogar. “All three of you are going. So scale Mt. Everhoof and bring back my bell!”

“That sounds easy!” said the Storm King.

The three looked up at the mountain. “Well, it sounded easy,” said the Storm King.

“What sounded easy?” asked Cozy Glow.

“The scaling of the mountain and bringing back the bell,” said the Storm King.

“How were we supposed to figure that out? You just said ‘it sounded easy’ out of nowhere without any clarification as to what ‘it’ was!”

“It was clearly supposed to be a thought based on when I said ‘that sounds easy’ to Grogar,” said the Storm King. “I thought it was obvious.”

“How is it obvious you were referencing something you said hours ago and make no mention of in between?!” demanded Tirek.

“Look, are we going to go and get that bell or not?” said the Storm King.

After a fairly amusing adventure that brought the three together sort of not but not really…

“You failed to retrieve the bell?!” demanded Grogar.

“We’re sorry, almighty Grogar,” said Cozy Glow.

“We worked together like you asked, really!” said Tirek.

“We just aren’t as powerful as you,” added the Storm King.

Grogar angrily blasted a hole in the wall. “Obviously,” he said. “At least you did as you were told and worked together.” He stormed out through the hole.

“There has got to be a better method of moving around than constantly blasting your way through walls,” said the Storm King after Grogar had left. “Though I’m kind of confused. Why does he just accept our word that we worked together? Was he watching us? And if he was, wouldn’t he know about… you know?”

“You mean us keeping the bell for ourselves?” asked Cozy Glow.

“I was trying to avoid saying it in the off chance he had some kind of ability to listen into us,” said the Storm King.

“If he’s got that then we’re basically doomed anyway, so we might as well operate under the assumption he doesn’t,” said Tirek.

“Still!” said the Storm King. “You might as well take some reasonable precautions and avoid saying it unless it’s actually necessary.”

“I can’t believe we’ve come so far so quickly!” declared Chrysalis. “Cell phones! Minivision! Which apparently was called television back in that alternate world, but that’s the name we ended up sticking with. We’ve already gotten them rolled out as a test run, and soon enough we can get them to the full population! And there’s plenty of other great technology coming down the pipeline! This is sure to let me finally hit 95% in my approval rating! Maybe even 98%!”

“Well, it’s not that hard to gain advancements in technology when you’re just copying information from another world entirely,” said Starlight. “And the magic helps also in speeding up the process, even if it’s just to jumpstart things and we leave it out of the manufacturing itself once it’s ready.” She paused. “Okay, I don’t think this whole ‘tell us things we already know’ game you suggested is all that fun.”

“It is, admittedly, only fun in short doses,” said Chrysalis. “Well, it’ll still be several months yet, so in the meantime let’s work on some of that other stuff.”

“All right, Grogar is definitely gone again,” said the Storm King. “Any progress on figuring out that Bewitching Bell?”

“It would help if we had a magic expert,” said Cozy Glow.

“Oh, come on!” said the Storm King. “You guys were able to grab all kinds of magic from Equestria! How did you do that if you didn’t understand it?”

“That’s like asking how you can digest food if you don’t understand the digestive system!” said Tirek. “You just do it and it works.”

“Well,” said Cozy Glow, “I think I heard that the Archives in Canterlot castle has a restricted area. Maybe that might have information. Any ideas on how to get in?”

There was a pause.

“Really? No ideas?” said Cozy Glow in a huff.

“If you think it’s so easy, why don’t you offer some?” asked Tirek.

“I already did!” said Cozy Glow. “I’m the inspiration. You guys are the ones who come up with the specifics.”

“Ugh,” said the Storm King. “I wish we had a changeling or something. Maybe we could try to convince one of them it’s all some kind of big prank? Changelings like pranks, don’t they?”

“Actually, they’ve kind of moved away from that,” said Cozy Glow. “Everyone’s kind of given up trying to top Chrysalis.”

“Okay, maybe we could get Chrysalis to offer some kind of help… maybe?” said the Storm King.

Cozy Glow fell over laughing. “Chrysalis? Help us? In what kind of insane alternate universe would that happen?”

“At least I’m offering ideas!” said the Storm King. “Fine. If we can cause some chaos, then we can probably sneak into there.”

Some chaos causing later…

“Okay, so that plan worked surprisingly well,” said Tirek.

“I know!” said the Storm King. “I never knew I was that good at getting various ponies to get angry at each other! It’s certainly something to think about.”

“Can we get out of here and then have this conversation first?” said Cozy Glow. “We’re still in the archives, you know.”

One sneaking out later…

“Well,” said the Storm King, “I’ll say that on the whole, I find this mission to have been a success.”

“On the whole? What part wasn’t a success?”

“We didn’t have time to get the new Mare Do Well issue,” said the Storm King with a shrug. “Well, I guess I can do that after we take control. Along with, you know, all the much more important stuff that I’d get. But in the meantime, we can try to figure out this bell!”

“Ugh,” said Cozy Glow, “taking over the world is fun and all, but movies never show all the boring planning it involves.”

“Hey,” said the Storm King, “at least turning the ponies against each other might be fun.”

A good deal later…

“So, another successful trip?” asked Tirek.

“Yes,” said Cozy Glow. “But I still really wish we had a changeling or something on our team. Putting on all those disguises to pass as an earth pony or unicorn takes a lot of work.”

“Hey, you think it’s annoying for you?” asked Tirek. “Think of how annoying it is for me or the Storm King to disguise ourselves as ponies when we go out! Those costumes really cramp!”

“Too bad we didn’t have Chrysalis,” said the Storm King. “I bet she’d be amazing at getting ponies angry at each other.”

“Pfft!” said Cozy Glow. “Like I said, in what kind of insane alternate universe would Chrysalis help us?”

“Well!” said Tirek. “I think we’ve finally got everything ready for the plan.”

“You mean for our plan to get the ponies angry at each other and have more difficulty fighting us when we unleash Grogar’s Bell, because it can steal any kind of magic?” asked the Storm King.

“No, I meant the plan to order pizza,” said Tirek sarcastically. “Of course we’re referring to that plan!”

“I’m not so sure they’re different,” said the Storm King. “I plan to get a lot of pizza after we take over.”

“Pizza is tasty,” admitted Cozy Glow.

Tirek made a face. “Look, just because we ended up trusting each other a bit more after that adventure we went on to get the bell doesn’t mean I like you all that much. We’re all going to go our separate ways and rule our own kingdoms alone after we take over.”

“It’s a good thing no one saw us in that whole adventure, actually,” said the Storm King. “If they had, they might be expecting some kind of redemption for us or something. Good thing there wasn’t a very entertaining and silly adventure anyone other than us saw that made it seem like it was setting up a redemption, or at least a partial redemption, for us, right?”

Cozy Glow and Tirek stared blankly at him.

“I’m just saying,” he said. “Anyway! I think we should try the spell out before Grogar gets back. Always better to test these things out first, you know? Rushing a product out too early can really harm sales in the long run.”

“I have no idea what you’re yammering about with the product thing, but you are right on testing it out,” said Tirek.

Some more time later…

“I have returned,” announced Grogar, entering with a jewel. “We’re all ready to take over with this artifact. But you have to work together to succeed.”

“Oh, way ahead of you,” said the Storm King, now looking much more impressive in ways that will be left to the reader’s imagination—that’s not meant as a bit of innuendo or anything, it’s because the reader would have more fun picturing it on their own. Actually, wait, no. He got his staff back. That’s a good upgrade, right? “We’re going to set records for getting along!” He blasted Grogar’s front hooves, gluing him to the ground.

“What the–” started Grogar.

Tirek and Cozy Glow also entered, Tirek looking much larger and more muscular than before, and Cozy Glow with a unicorn’s horn. She zapped the artifact that Grogar had. The bell levitated in front of him.

“The bell?!” asked Grogar. “You had it all this time?! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“We’re villains, duh,” said Cozy Glow.

“I consider myself more of an anti-hero, actually,” said the Storm King. “But I suppose that’s besides the point right now. Drain his power!”

The bell drained away Grogar’s power. He then turned into Discord.

“That was unexpected,” said Tirek.

“Yeah, I’m not sure how well that was set up,” added the Storm King.

After an unsuccessful finger snap, Discord took the opportunity to run away really quickly.

“Uh, should we follow him?” asked Cozy Glow.

“What are you, stupid?” said the Storm King as he started running after him. “Of course we should!”

And so the three tried to chase after the fleeing Discord and managed to eventually catch him.

“Ha!” said Tirek as he held up Discord. “What do you have to say for yourself now?”

“I’m sorry, sir!” said Discord. “It will never happen again!” He then promptly exploded.

“Okay… that was a decoy, I suppose,” said Tirek. “He’s got to be here somewhere!”

And so they searched, only to find several more Discords that all simply stated, “I’m sorry, sir! It will never happen again!” prior to blowing up.

“Darn it!” said the Storm King. “He must have set those up ahead of time to distract us!”

“He set up a bunch of copies to distract us just in the off chance we zapped all of his magic?” asked Cozy Glow.

“I mean, it worked, didn’t it?” said the Storm King.

“Bah!” said Tirek. “He’s nothing without his magic.”

“Hey!” said the Storm King. “You know that if he goes off and alerts someone about our plan, it could hurt us. That’s why I wanted us to capture him! The element of surprise is probably gone now!”

“Well, then let’s hurry up and get this thing completely ready!” said Cozy Glow.

“Right!” said the Storm King. “Time is money! And who wants to work minimum wage?”

“I’m not sure how… you know what? Never mind,” said Tirek. “Let’s do this.”

“Chrysalis! Chrysalis!” shouted Discord as he ran into the throne room.

“Is this an emergency? I’m kind of busy,” said Chrysalis.

“Busy doing what?” asked Discord.

“You’d get bored if I told you,” said Chrysalis.

“Yes, you’re probably right,” said Discord. “But yes, it is an emergency.”

“Ugh,” said Chrysalis with a sigh. “Fine. What is it?”

“I knew you were annoyed about your inability to reach a 95% approval rating, so I was planning to give you a gift of sorts so you wouldn’t be too upset when you find out about that incident with the noodles.”

“What noodles?” said Chrysalis.

“Uh… I’ll tell you at a better time,” said Discord. “Anyway, I was thinking maybe if you beat a bunch of villains, people would like you more. So I kind of sort of grabbed Cozy Glow, the Storm King, and Tirek from Tartarus and set up robot duplicates in their place so you wouldn’t notice they were gone. Anyway, I was going to set them off against you to be defeated, but then they ended up stealing this bell that gave them all super powers and they’re probably coming here to take over Equestria.”

Chrysalis stared at Discord, blinked a few times, stared a little more, then finally said, “WHAT?!”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time!” said Discord.

Chrysalis took a deep breath. “Okay. Do you have any idea how long it’ll be until they get here?”

“Uh… that depends on a number of factors,” said Discord. “How well will they manage to get along? Will they be able to master my chaos magic that they took away? Will they–”

“THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR JOKES!” screamed Chrysalis.

Uh-oh, Chrysalis is angry, thought Discord to himself. When she’s screaming rather than retaliating with passive-aggressive trolling, you know she’s upset. “Uh, well, they’ll probably be here soon,” he stammered. “It’s hard to give an exact timetable. I’m going to guess between the time it’ll take them to finish setting things up and get here, we have more than an hour but less than a day?”

Chrysalis took another deep breath, exhaled, then pulled out a cell phone and punched in several numbers.

“Oooh, is that one of those new ‘cell phone’ things you were inventing?” asked Discord. “Maybe I should’ve gotten one to contact you more quickly. By the way, how’d you change the design so that they worked with hooves, which aren’t as specific as fingers?”

“You don’t get to talk until I tell you to,” snapped Chrysalis as she held the phone up to her head. “Hey, Sunset? I kind of need you and your crew in here. Right now.” She paused, then added, “Yes, I mean right now as in right now. I don’t care if Trixie and Lightning Dust would want to make some last minute changes to the Mare Do Well episode that airs soon!”

A very short time later…

“So what do you need this time?” asked Sunset as she and the others came in.

“Tell them,” said Chrysalis to Discord with a sigh.

“I knew Chrysalis was annoyed about her inability to reach a 95% approval rating, so I was planning to give her a gift of sorts so she wouldn’t be too upset when she find out about that incident with the beavers. So I was thinking maybe if she beat a bunch of villains, people would like her more. So I kind of sort of grabbed Cozy Glow, the Storm King, and Tirek from Tartarus and was going to set them off against her to be defeated, but then they ended up stealing this bell that gave them all super powers and they’re probably coming here to take over Equestria,” said Discord.

They all stared at Discord, blinked a few times, stared a little more, then finally all said in unison, “WHAT?!”

“Yeah, that was my reaction too,” said Chrysalis.

“Well then send the army!” said Sunset. “Get others to help! What are we supposed to do?”

“Honestly?” said Chrysalis. “I don’t know. But you have such an amazing track record with dealing with threats like this that I had to call in your services. But I did try to get the army and such ready, but there’s a weird level of division going on in it right now. But first!” She turned to Discord. “Okay, you’ve given your exposition, so you can leave.”

“Finally!” muttered Discord. “You kept me in here all this time waiting until they arrived just to say that to them!”

“Because it was so absurd I’d feel dumb if I had to explain it myself,” said Chrysalis.

“Well, there’s some stuff I have to take care of anyway,” said Discord. “In case this goes wrong and we all die, it’s important to take some precautions like selling my garden gnome collection.” He left.

“Okay,” said Chrysalis, “so any ideas?”

“Ugh,” said Sunset. “Okay. Maybe we should try to see if we can get those Elements of Irony back.”

“If these guys can absorb magic, couldn’t they just absorb that too?” asked Gilda.

“I say we stop talking and just go over there right now and try to take them out!” said Lightning Dust. “Element of surprise! Which isn’t one of the Elements of Irony but is still good!”

“By the time we get there they’ll probably be perfectly set up,” said Flim.

“Is there some way to release power from the bell?” suggested Trixie. “Maybe we could do that? It’d take some boring research, but it might be possible.”

“Um… guys?” said Suri. “Maybe these would work, but have you noticed how many times we’ve had to deal with these sorts of crazy powerful magical threats that threaten the world as we know it?”

“Yeah, it has become surprisingly common and is rather tiring,” said Flam.

“Is there any reason to believe this will be the last one?” said Suri. “I mean, we could stop them, but then another crazy powerful enemy will be just around the corner. I’m not sure our luck can stand up for that much longer.”

“Well, then what’s the solution?” asked Sunset. “Just forget bothering to protect Equestria and run off to an alternate universe entirely?” She paused. “Unfortunately, they’d probably just figure out some way to get to that universe after taking over Equestria, so never mind. What’s your suggestion?”

“Well…” said Suri. “I kind of had an idea of how to deal with them… and make sure we don’t have to deal with these sorts of threats in the future. I’ve been mulling it over ever since the Cozy Glow incident, but it seemed a bit extreme to suggest it before now.”

“Too much suspense!” said Trixie. “Tell us!”

Suri told them.

They all stared at her, briefly speechless.

“That would… yeah, that would do it,” said Sunset. “But… kind of extreme, don’t you think? That would cause so much chaos.”

“Let’s do it,” said Chrysalis.

Everyone stared at her.

“Honestly,” said Chrysalis, “I was pondering that. But it seemed so crazy I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it unless someone else suggested it. It’ll probably kill my approval rating worse than this whole incident already would, though. Oh well, hopefully all this technology will help make up for it.”

“Maybe we should, uh, think about it a little more?” suggested Lightning Dust. “You know, have some other plan and then if that falls through, go with this?”

“Well, obviously,” said Chrysalis. “But since this is going to take some time to set up, we need to start on it as quickly as possible. And prevent those three from stopping us before it’s done. You’ll probably need to split up for this, because I’m going to be assigning you to do different things.”

“Oooh! Oooh!” said Lightning Dust. “I volunteer to be the distraction!”

“I never said anything about a distraction yet,” said Chrysalis.

“Well, I think I’d make a great distraction!” said Lightning Dust.

“You’re certainly being distracting right now,” said Sunset.

“Exactly!” said Lightning Dust. “If there’s a distraction needed, I want to be it!”

“Here’s what we’re doing,” said Chrysalis. “Flim, Flam, you’re fairly good at sweet-talking. I need you to get the other countries forewarned of what’s going to happen so they aren’t completely blindsided, and hopefully don’t get overly upset about it all.”

“That’s kind of a tall order,” said Flim.

“Well, that’s unfortunately the situation we’re in,” said Chrysalis. “As for the rest of you…”

“Fools!” declared the now-transformed-into-some-kind-of-weird-alicorn-monster Cozy Glow. “Now I have more power than you all! Kneel before my–”

Tirek and the Storm King shrugged and zapped Cozy Glow back to normal.

“Okay,” panted Cozy Glow, “so you were right. Discord is the only one who can control his chaos magic.”

“You guys need to listen to me more often,” said the Storm King. “Why do you think I put all of the energy I absorbed when I tried to take over Equestria into the staff? It was so that it wouldn’t screw me up like it could if I put it into myself!”

“I thought the entire thing, including the staff, was just your lieutenant’s idea, and you just sat around and did nothing in particular in the meantime,” said Cozy Glow.

“Details,” said the Storm King dismissively. “Besides, a mark of a good leader is knowing when to let others the dirty work. That’s why I let you try to absorb Discord’s magic instead of doing it myself!”

“Ugh,” said Tirek, “we wasted too much time with that stunt. Let’s just leave it in the bell and take over the kingdom already.”

“Where do we strike first?” asked Cozy Glow.

“Everywhere,” said Tirek.

There was a pause. “I don’t think all three of us can attack everywhere at once,” said Cozy Glow.

“I’ll admit, I don’t think that statement made much sense in retrospect,” said the Storm King. “It was one of those things that sounds cool and ominous, but once you stop to think about it, it isn’t as impressive.”

“Fine!” said Tirek. “We’ll prioritize our targets. Do either of you have anyone in particular you wanted some kind of revenge on?”

“Kind of everyone, honestly,” said the Storm King. “It took a team effort to beat me. I suppose it was either Chrysalis or Sunset that contributed the most, though, depending on how you look at it?”

“Hrm,” said Tirek, “the same holds true for me. Well, without the Chrysalis part, I guess. As far as I know, at least. Maybe she came up with the plan to beat me.”

“They’ll probably all go to Canterlot anyway after finding out about what happened, so let’s try there,” said Cozy Glow. “We at least know Chrysalis will be there.”

“I think this is the part where you’re supposed to give a big, inspirational speech,” said Trixie.

“What? Why?” asked Sunset.

“To get us inspired?” said Trixie.

“Ugh, fine!” said Sunset. “Uh… we’ve fought enemies in the past, and always have come across triumphant! Sometimes by accident, but still!”

“I feel so inspired,” Lightning Dust whispered excitedly to Gilda, who rolled her eyes.

“So,” continued Sunset, “if the pattern holds, we should be victorious this time as well! We’ve managed to get a lot accomplished in less than a day. After all–”

Abruptly, Cozy Glow burst through the doors and entered the room, standing on a bunch of defeated guards. “Oh, come on! Where’d you get that nonsense?”

“That’s another reason to give the big, inspirational speech!” said Trixie. “It makes the entrance of the villain more dramatic when they interrupt.”

“That doesn’t even make–” started Sunset before getting interrupted again, this time by a zap from Cozy Glow.

“Wait,” said Trixie, “did you physically drag all of those guards in with you? That seems like a lot of unnecessary time and effort to–”

This time Trixie got interrupted by getting zapped herself. “I have to stop questioning the plans of super-powerful enemies,” she muttered to herself.

“So is it just you, or are Tirek and the Storm King here also?” asked Suri.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” said Cozy Glow.

“Uh, yeah, I would,” said Sunset.

“Surrender and I’ll consider telling you,” said Cozy Glow. “You’ve got three seconds. One, two–”

Tirek crashed through the door. “You haven’t beaten them yet?” he said.

“I was going to in just a few seconds!” said Cozy Glow.

“It’s always ‘just a few seconds’ with you, isn’t it?” muttered Tirek.

“You took your time dealing with them in the past!” said Cozy Glow.

“Only because… you know what? How about we hash this out after we beat them?” said Tirek.

“Wait, hang on!” said Cozy Glow as she peered at Sunset and the others. “Aren’t there usually more in your group? I’m sure there were two guys who looked super similar to each other. Where are they?”

“Oh, Flim and Flam?” said Suri. “They went off to talk to some foreign leaders. I’m not sure of all the specifics, but it may have had to do with forming a coalition to beat you all.”

“Uh, by the way, guys?” said Discord. “You know that bell you’re using to gain all that magical power? It kind of has a few problems you should know. Once you start it up, it starts grabbing magic power in general, and eventually no one other than you will be able to use magic!”

Suri face-hoofed. “Discord, why would you tell them that?”

“To appeal to their better nature!” said Discord. He turned to them. “Did it work?”

“No,” said Tirek, “but I thank you for the information.”

“Ha!” said Discord as he stuck out his tongue. “Shows what you know! If you overuse the bell and don’t give it time to recharge, it’ll gradually power down into nothingness, and then you’ll have to wait a day for it to recharge itself.”

“Stop giving them information!” said Chrysalis in an irritated tone.

“It’s my lack of power! It’s addling my brain!” said Discord.

“Oh, screw it,” said Sunset. “I’m out of here.” She suddenly disappeared.

“Don’t worry!” said Trixie. “She’s not running away from all of this; she’s just off to get more reinforcements! She’ll have them ready for us any moment now!” There was a pause. “Any moment now.” There was another pause. “I think I may have overestimated Sunset’s devotion to our cause.”

“Enough,” said Tirek as he fired a blast at them, which hit Chrysalis and Discord, knocking them out.

“Uh… I’ll go look for Sunset!” said Trixie as she abruptly teleported away also.

“I think I left the water running, come to think of it,” said Lightning Dust before she abruptly flew off in a rush.

“Ugh!” said Suri. “Of course they run. Got any ideas, Gilda?”

“Yeah!” said Gilda as she pulled out a shotgun. “Unfortunately, they don’t involve you.” She fired and a large black cloud suddenly appeared. Cozy Glow and Tirek blasted it away, but Gilda had managed to vanish, leaving only Suri.

“I need to get more loyal acquaintances,” she muttered to herself before being abruptly blasted by Cozy Glow and Tirek.

Just then, the Storm King burst into the room through a wall. He looked around. “Darn it! You already beat them? I had the perfect entrance line prepared, too! In fact, I had multiple ones ready for all kinds of different situations! My favorite was the one for if I were to enter and they had all turned into giant rubber duckies to fight you.”

“You came up with that but didn’t have a line for coming in when they were already defeated?” said Tirek.

“Hey, that one for the rubber duckies was great, I’ll have you know! I would’ve said ‘rabbit season? More like duck season!’”

There was a pause. “I don’t get it,” said Cozy Glow.

“Look, that isn’t the point!” said Tirek. “What we need to be doing now is going and getting the others. They’re still out there and a threat!”

“First, should we finish off these guys?” said the Storm King as he gestured to the slumped-over Chrysalis, Discord, and Suri. “If we spare them, they might escape and thwart our plans somehow. Getting rid of them might be little more violent than I’d like, but sometimes you need to bump up the parental guidance rating a bit. On the other hand, sometimes bumping up the parental guidance can actually attract edgy teenagers to your film, plus they could make possible hostages. Sunset and the others, I mean, not the edgy teenagers, because no one likes edgy teenagers, not even the edgy teenagers.”

“Please get to the point,” said Tirek.

“Oh, right, back to the hostages. I mean, do you really have any leverage once they’re gone? Also, if you wanted to have any fun while getting revenge, you want them to stay alive for a while. Decisions, decisions.”

“Wait!” said Discord. “If you spare me, I’ll help you find them!”

“Hey!” said Chrysalis. “If you’re going to sell them out, at least extend the sparing to the rest of us in the room!”

“Okay, fine, spare me and the rest of us, at least for now,” said Discord.

“Before we even discuss sparing anyone, exactly how are you going to be of any help when you don’t have your magic?” asked Tirek.

“Oh, sure, I don’t have magic,” said Discord. “But I planted tracking devices on all of them! You can find them that way.”

“Wait,” said Suri, “you put tracking devices on us?!”

“It was part of a zany prank idea I had,” said Discord, “but I ended up deciding against it, as I couldn’t find enough penguins to make it work. But I never took them off, and kept them on just in case…”

“Fine,” said Tirek, “where are they, then?”

“Well, I kinda need my little device for that,” said Discord. “But thankfully, I have it!” He pulled out a weird-looking device.

“Where were you keeping that?” asked Cozy Glow.

“In my pocket!” said Discord. Before anyone could ask where his pocket was, he quickly added, “anyway, this thing is like a compass. It’ll point you to where any of them are! Who do you want?”

“I don’t trust him,” said the Storm King.

“I can prove it, really!” said Discord desperately. “Look! According to the device thing, Gilda is still in this room!”

Tirek grabbed the device from Discord and looked at it. “Hrm. And according to it, she is… there.” He pulled away some curtains to reveal Gilda clinging to the wall.

“Ha!” said Gilda as she pointed her shotgun at Tirek. “You’ve fallen into my–”

Tirek grabbed the gun and twisted it in half.

“–classic prank!” finished Gilda quickly. “I wasn’t actually going to shoot you, so–”

Tirek punched her across the room.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t buy that either,” muttered Gilda. “Also, Discord? I am so killing you if we somehow survive this.”

“Meh, get in line,” said Discord.

“So how exactly does this device work?” asked Tirek.

“No way,” said Discord. “I’m not stupid. I’m not going to give that all away. You’ll just say you have no further use for me or something cheesy like that before killing me.”

“Nonsense,” said the Storm King. “I feel the word ‘kill’ is a bit violent. We were really just planning to destroy you a little.”

“What’s even the difference?” asked Cozy Glow.

“Oh, you know,” said the Storm King.

“The point is, I know this is my main way to make it so you don’t kill or destroy or anything else to me!” said Discord.

“First,” said Tirek, “we need to make sure we have Canterlot completely subdued, or else we’ll have to just have to go through this again when we come back. Once we do that, we can see if Discord will take us to them.”

“Come on, come on,” muttered Sunset to herself as she looked through the books desperately. “There’s got to be something here.”

“Hiya, Sunset!” said Trixie as she came in. “I thought you’d be here.”

“Because we agreed we’d try to meet back here in the Crystal Empire library if we failed to stop them in Canterlot and we ran off and escaped?”

“Well, duh,” said Trixie. “Why would you feel the need to mention all that when I already knew?”

“Because it was so obvious why you’d think I was here that it didn’t make sense you mentioned it at all!”

“Hrm, that makes some sense,” said Trixie.

“Okay, your weird habit of stating the obvious has gotten weirdly endearing over time, but if you’re here, would you help me research? There’s got to be something in here that could help us figure it out.”

“How long have you been searching?” asked Trixie.

“Not sure,” said Sunset. “It’s been about a day since we found out about them getting the Bewitching Bell, but I’m not sure exactly when I got here.”

“Actually,” said Trixie, “given the importance of all of this, why haven’t you been given help?”

“Apparently the only one who actually is able to navigate this giant library to any real degree is Twilight, and she’s off in Ponyville right now,” said Sunset. “In retrospect, maybe we should’ve asked her to do the research, but then again she might be more useful there. But anyway, we really don’t have much time to find something before it’s too late.”

“Okay, then!” said Trixie. “I don’t know if I’ll be of any help, but–”

“Greetings, fellow ponies!” declared Lightning Dust as she suddenly flew in. “I just flew in from Canterlot, and boy, are my wings tired!” She promptly collapsed onto the floor. “Yeah… wasn’t kidding about them being tired. Barely made it here. Not going to be able to fly for a while.”

“Were you two the only ones who made it out?” asked Sunset.

“No idea,” said Lightning Dust. “When I darted out, Gilda and Suri were still there. Not sure what happened with them. For all I know they were turned into cream puffs.”

“Uh… okay,” said Sunset. “Anyway, do you think you might be able to help find anything here?”

Lightning Dust looked around the giant library. “Honestly? Not really. I’d probably just mess everything up in the search and comically annoy you. Wouldn’t it be better to ask one of the librarians for help? Or Twilight?”

“Sunset already explained that when you weren’t in the room,” said Trixie.

“Oh, really?” said Lightning Dust. “Never mind then. No need to repeat it. So! Any ideas on what I could do?”

“Go try to rally all of the random ponies everywhere to try to band together and fight the villains?” said Sunset.

“Already tried that,” said Lightning Dust. “It didn’t work. They’re all angry at each other for some reason. Way more than usual.”

“Oh, right, I meant to bring that up,” said Trixie. “On my way here, because it took a lot of teleports to travel this whole space, even with that Teleport-o-Enhance™ that Starswirl made, I kind of tried to see if I could get anypony to go along, but they’re all upset at each other and stuff.”

“Well, that’s… stupid,” said Sunset.

“Kind of,” said Trixie.

“Ugh,” said Sunset. “Guess it’s back to trying to look through all these books. We should still have some time before they end up here, because I’m sure they’ll have to make sure they completely subdue Canterlot and leave it under their control after locking everypony who might conceivably be a threat to them up before they come after us, which should give us a day or two to keep looking.”

“Hey, look on the bright side!” said Lightning Dust. “Even if you can’t find a new way to deal with them, that plan we did come up with as a backup seems to be coming along fine, so we–”

“Hang on!” said Trixie. “Don’t say anything about the plan itself! In stories, plans like that are way more likely to work if they aren’t said out loud!”

“Even setting aside how dumb that sounds, we did say it all out lout when we discussed it before!” said Sunset.

“The first discussion doesn’t count,” said Trixie. “It’s usually set offscreen.”

“This is stupid,” said Sunset.

“Hey!” said Trixie. “I can’t be the only one to notice how frequently our lives resemble that of a movie series! This stuff may seem dumb, but it actually seems to fit real life!”

“I guess that makes sense in its own completely nonsensical way,” admitted Sunset.

“Exactly!” said Trixie. “So unless we absolutely have to, we should avoid talking about it.”

“Okay, fine,” said Sunset. “In the meantime, do you have any suggestions?”

“Why not use the Crystal Empire’s army or other resources?” suggested Trixie.

“Even if they did have enough power, which is unclear given how everything else got defeated, they’re busy dealing with an invasion of carnivorous noodles right now anyway,” said Sunset.

“I always knew you couldn’t trust pasta,” muttered Lightning Dust.

“Okay, so I guess that’s out,” said Trixie. “Well, let’s keep looking, and then maybe I’ll come up with something later!”

One or two days later…

“I’ve got it!” said Trixie.

“You found an answer?” said Sunset.

“Huh?” said Trixie. “No, I meant I figured out the way we should try to beat them! Since it seems villains around here have a bad habit of not killing off their enemies, we just have to figure out a way to rescue the rest of our crew, and then once we’re all together, we’ll… I don’t know, but stuff seems to work out great when we’re all together.”

“Flim and Flam are still away, though,” said Lightning Dust.

“Find a way to get them back, then!” said Trixie.

“I can’t contact them from here!” said Sunset. “Do you know how bad cell phone reception in the Crystal Empire is?”

Just then, Flim and Flam entered. “Oh, hi!” said Flim. “They said you would be here.”

“Did it go all right?” said Sunset.

“And be sure to answer it in a way that doesn’t reveal what you were sent off to do!” added Trixie.

Flam gave Trixie an odd look but shrugged. “It went about as well as it probably could have gone.”

“It’s awfully convenient that you guys came in right now,” said Lightning Dust.

“We would’ve been here earlier but got held up in an irritating sequence of events that was rather comical in retrospect,” said Flim.

“That sort of thing happens a lot, I’ve noticed,” said Trixie.

“So what’s going on?” asked Flam. “We did get the gist of the situation by asking around on our way here. Any major breakthroughs on how to go back and fix things?”

“Well, we were hoping we might find an answer in one of these books, but it hasn’t worked so far,” said Sunset. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ll actually stumble across anything useful at this point.”

“Okay then!” said Trixie. “So the only thing to do is to get the group together, and then somehow we’ll come to victory.”

“That’s not much of a plan,” said Flam.

“It’s never failed to work in the past!” said Trixie.

“You bring up a point,” said Flim.

“And it’s vague enough of a plan that talking about it won’t decrease the odds of its success!” added Trixie.

“Huh?” said Flim.

“We can discuss that bit of Trixie’s weirdness on the way,” said Sunset. “Let’s just get going. Tirek, the Storm King, and Cozy Glow are probably on their way here anyway.”

“Hey, wait,” said Lightning Dust, “do you guys hear something?”

“Hear what?” said Flim.

“It sounded kinda like the wailing of a group of weird ghostly entities that had been gone for a long time but just recently reappeared thanks to rampant disagreements amongst ponykind.” She paused briefly. “Alternatively, it might have just been one of your stomachs grumbling. Did any of you not eat recently?”

“No, it does seem to be coming from outside,” said Sunset as it grew louder. They all went out to the window to see a bunch of windigos in the sky.

“Well, that may complicate things,” said Flim mildly.

The End - Part 2

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Friendship Is Absurd

Sunset Shimmer was not having a happy day. Of course, with her personality, she tended to not have happy days so much as “I don’t absolutely hate the world” days.

The main source of her ire for today was being sent to Ponyville to help in setting up the Summer Sun Celebration. Actually, the Summer Sun Celebration didn’t have much of a point anymore due to the the fact that the individual the whole thing was supposed to be honoring had been deposed at some point in the past by King Sombra. But everyone figured it was too much work to change the designs for the occasion, and it was apparently a popular time to get drunk, so it ended up remaining a tradition even after most people had forgotten what it was even celebrating.

Sombra was, in fact, the one who had sent her on this job. Or at least that’s probably what he wanted her to do; Sombra had a throat condition that prevented him from saying much, making it difficult for him to communicate precisely. Writing in text was out, because for some reason whenever he tried to write anything down, the paper would burst into flame. Thus, he was relegated to trying to communicate by a complicated set of charades. Based on previous experience, the charades used here either meant “go to Ponyville and help set up the Summer Sun Celebration” or “go, my sweet student, and spread terror in my name across the sea in griffon lands.”

Sunset wasn’t entirely sure of which one it actually was, but the former seemed like it would be much less hazardous to her health. Though after having to wait through a complex song and dance routine by the local apple farmers that was accompanied by an apparently invisible orchestra, she wasn’t sure if she should have tried interpreting it the other way. At least griffons were more serious.

“We’re the world-famous Flim Flam Brothers
Traveling salesponies nonpareil!”

With that, the two unicorns ceased their singing and dancing, and the mysterious orchestra that had been somehow playing in the background abruptly vanished.

“Okay,” said Sunset, resisting the urge to not bury her hoof into her face, “that was a complete and utter waste of time. And how are you traveling salesponies when you live here on this farm?”

“That’s a great question!” declared either Flim or Flam; Sunset didn’t care enough to try to keep track of which was which. “And the answer lies in another song!”

“No! No! Stop!” Sunset screamed at them, but it was too late. Another song ensued, again backed up by an orchestra that was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t even bother paying attention to the lyrics and just waited for them to stop. When it finally died down, Sunset was wishing more than ever she had just tried to take over the griffons instead.

“Look, just tell me, do you have the apples?” she asked, desperately hoping to cut this interaction short and move onto other ponies who couldn’t possibly be this irritating.

“Oh, sure,” declared one of the unicorns. “Thanks to the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy–” He halted as he noticed Sunset had, after the first two words spoken, opted to run as far away as possible. “Huh. Maybe she just doesn’t like cider.”

After having run like a mare terrified of more songs, Sunset arrived back into Ponyville proper. Which was good, because her next stop was there anyway to make sure the skies were clear. Which, she noted in retrospect, she probably could have just done before heading to check on the food.

Regardless, to her relief, the sky actually was clear. “Well, at least this means I don’t have to deal with another–”

Whatever Sunset Shimmer was about to say was cut short by a loud “Incoming!” yell, immediately followed by a fast-moving, light-green blur slamming straight into her. When the dust cleared, she found herself facing a green-coated pegasus with a cutie mark of a lightning bolt and three stars.

“Oh, sorry about that,” said the pegasus.

Sunset got up and rubbed her head. “Are you insane? Somepony could be seriously hurt because of that! In fact, you’d better give me an immediate reason why I shouldn’t sue your pants off for endangerment.”

The pegasus seemed to consider the matter. “Is it worth pointing out I’m not wearing any pants?”

“No!”

“Fine. I can see somepony is grumpy. Anyway, as you don’t seem to have actually suffered any harm, I’m lawsuit free. Can’t sue for damages when there aren’t damages! Additionally…”

Sunset stared as the pegasus rattled off legal jargon regarding lawsuits and accidents is mind-numbing detail. Finally she snapped. “Okay, fine, forget it! How do you even know this much?”

“When you get into as many accidents as I do, it’s important to keep up with the laws!”

Sunset figured that in the off chance she did have a case, she might as well find out who it was against. “So what’s your–”

She found herself cut off yet again by the pegasus, apparently deciding that the conversation was over at this point, flying off at remarkable speed. Sunset wasn’t able to see where she flew off to, but a loud crash several seconds later indicated it probably was into something. She stood there for a little while before finally sighing and moving on. “Just a few more places to visit, Sunset… then this whole nightmare will be over.”

“Hey, you!” called a voice.

Sunset turned around and found herself facing a grumpy-looking griffon floating in the air. “You didn’t happen to see a light green pegasus with an apparent death wish come through here, did you?”

“Uh, actually, I did,” said Sunset. “Who was she?”

“Oh, that’s just Lightning Dust. I always have to freaking babysit that idiot. Did you know that when clearing the clouds today she created a tornado that almost hit the town? Ugh!” The griffon sighed to herself. Sunset found herself oddly empathizing with this individual. “Anyway, which way did she go?”

Sunset pointed, and the griffon immediately flew off in that direction. “Finally, someone who seems almost sane,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe the rest won’t be that bad.” She relaxed a little.

That is, until a sudden drench of water hit her from above. “Ha! Gets them every time!” said a voice identical to that of the griffon from just earlier. Sunset looked up to see the griffon fly off.

“Life is pain,” she grumbled to herself, attempting to shake off the water before sighing for what must have been the hundredth time this day and moving on.

Decorations were next on the itinerary, so she entered the town hall. Which, she had to admit, was decorated fairly well. In the middle of the area was a pink-coated earth pony with violet hair, who was adjusting the decorations.

“Well, things seem fine here,” muttered Sunset to herself. “I guess this time I can actually avoid contact by–”

In what appeared to be a running gag of some sort, Sunset found herself cut off yet again by the earth pony abruptly stopping what she was doing and zooming straight up to her with almost uncanny speed.

“Oh my!” she said. “You’re all wet! I should do something to fix that!”

“No, you don’t need to. Really.” Sunset tried to protest, but immediately found a hat forced onto her head.

“There! Now your mane won’t look so bad, because it’s all covered up! Suri Polomare has done it again!”

“Oh, well, thanks,” Summer said flatly.

“Anyway, that’ll be 100 bits.”

Sunset blinked. “Wait, what? I thought this was a gift.”

“Oh, you’re right! I’ll be nice and give it to you for half off! Only 50 bits.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “No, I’m not paying for this. I don’t even want it.”

“30 bits?”

“I’m not haggling! I don’t want the stupid thing!”

“10 bits? That’s my final offer.”

“No! I think this would probably be too much even if it were free!”

“Well,” said Suri, “that’s a real shame. I’ve become so distressed by your refusal to buy it at such a stupendously low price that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to finish up the decorations! And what a catastrophe that would be!”

Sunset growled, but found herself so aggravated that she was willing to pay Suri just to shut up. She forked over the bits, then promptly left.

Luckily for Sunset, the last place to visit was far less irritating, as it only consisted of having to meet with one astoundingly shy pegasus. The lucky part came from the fact that the pegasus was so shy that it meant Sunset didn’t even have to talk with her to confirm things. With her work done for now, she entered the library-tree that was to be her temporary place of residence, only to be surprised by:

“SURPRISE!!!”

A blue unicorn wearing a star-colored cape and hat was standing in the middle of the library, surrounded by balloons with the word “welcome!” written on them. Confetti promptly fell from the ceiling.

“Welcome to Ponyville!” the unicorn stated. She paused before adding, “Well, that was fun. See you!”

As the blue unicorn turned to leave, Sunset finally regained her composure enough to talk. “Wait. What were you doing? Who are you? How did you get in here? What was the point of any of this?”

“Giving a welcome. Trixie Lulamoon, though you can call me the Great and Powerful Trixie! The door was unlocked. I want to make sure all new arrivals are aware of who I am!”

Sunset Shimmer was taken aback by the odd nature of the response. “What?” she asked, trying to puzzle out the answers that were all given.

“What, what? I can’t answer a question if it’s that vague.”

Sunset simply stared. Trixie walked up to her.

“The hat isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere as good as my own. Did you get that from Suri? She’s selling those things for 5 bits.”

Sunset’s thoughts finally managed to collect themselves into a semblance of coherence. “I–”

Sunset was at this point no longer surprised to be cut off, but she was irritated all the same. “Oh, never mind. Have to get going!” Trixie declared. A large blast of smoke appeared, and when it faded, Trixie was gone.

Sunset stared at the room, which was now covered with confetti that she hoped someone else would have to clean up. “Just a little more… just a little more…” she said to herself, hoping she would get through the next 24 hours without snapping and going insane.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, as the mayor of Ponyville, a position I would like to once again stress I did not get through any kinds of bribery or double-dealing no matter what my opponents may claim, it is my great pleasure to announce the beginning of the Summer Sun Celebration!”

Everyone cheered.

“But it doesn’t technically start until sunrise, so we have to wait until then to start the partying.”

Everyone stopped cheering. Sunset hoped sunrise would come already so she’d have an actual opportunity to start drinking and try to put this stressful day behind her. And if she wasn’t so aggravated by anything, she might have bothered finding the idea of someone named Sunset waiting for the sunrise to be amusing. However, because she didn’t have a particularly great sense of humor at the best of times, she didn’t, thus making this and the previous sentence feel awfully pointless.

Minutes ticked by with no sign of the sun. “That’s odd,” someone said. “By now the sun should be rising…”

Several more minutes ticked by, and people started to grow restless. “I’m growing restless!” someone else declared.

The mayor attempted to call the populace down by stalling. “You know, I just realized, we didn’t technically open the curtain to introduce our sovereign. Granted, that was because she isn’t the sovereign anymore, but it at least used to be part of the tradition, so…”

Suri rolled her eyes and went over to the curtain on the balcony to open it, revealing a black, malevolent-looking alicorn. Gasps resulted.

“Huh, that normally doesn’t happen…” the mayor said, confused.

“About time!” the alicorn shouted. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting here for my dramatic entrance? Couldn’t you have opened this thing up earlier so I could make said dramatic entrance dramatically?”

“Huh,” said one of the ponies. “Usually I don’t see giant black alicorns until after I’ve taken several shots…”

Ignoring the outburst, the alicorn continued. “I had a great speech prepared, but it was all contingent on the dramatic entrance working right so… uh… the night shall last forever! See you.”

And with that, the alicorn vanished. Everyone seemed confused by the whole experience, but most decided to just go on with the celebration, i.e. get horribly drunk.

Well, with a few exceptions. Sunset actually did take the whole thing seriously, and opted to head back to the library to try to figure out what had just happened.

Several hours and an act break later…

“Ugh,” Sunset muttered to herself. “What idiot organized all these books? It’s one of the most counterintuitive forms of organization I’ve seen.” But at least she had finally found something about the mysterious black alicorn in a book named “Mysterious Black Alicorn Reference Manual.”

Sunset paged through the book, which was full of various examples of mysterious black alicorns, most of which were labeled as Mary Sues. Exactly what that term meant, she had no idea, but they clearly weren’t the applicable ones anyway. After a little bit of searching, she found an entry labeled “Nightmare Moon” that matched the description exactly.

“Banished to the moon by her sister wielding the Elements of Irony, which are apparently Generosity, Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Magic, and Loyalty. Well, this seems simple enough. I just have to–”

“Boo!”

“Gyaaah!” screamed Sunset as she dropped the book in confusion, turning around to find herself face to face with Gilda.

“Ha! Gets them every time!” Gilda said, clearly enjoying the prank she had just pulled.

“What are you doing here?”

“Enh, the whole bit about eternal night seemed bad, and you seemed to be one of the only people who didn’t take to just drinking afterwards, so I figured I’d come over and see if you knew anything about it.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “And you think that startling me is the way to get me to tell you something?

“Hrm,” Gilda mused. “I suppose I didn’t think that part through.”

“INCOMING!”

Lightning Dust crashed through the ceiling, slamming into the floor. Luckily, the part of the floor she crashed into happened to be where there were a lot of pillows, so she wasn’t particularly hurt. This did, however, leave a notable hole in the ceiling.

“You are going to pay for that, aren’t you?” asked Sunset.

“Actually, according to subsection–”

Sunset didn’t want to hear another lecture on legal loopholes. “Never mind! Why did you feel the need to smash through the roof?”

“Because I wanted to come in. You seemed like you might actually know something about that whole eternal night thing, so–”

“I mean, why didn’t you use the door?” Sunset interrupted, taking a brief moment to savor the fact she was the one doing the cutting off this time.

“Hrm,” Lightning Dust mused. “I suppose I didn’t think that part through.”

Lightning Dust took off through the ceiling, creating another hole. She then crashed through the door. “Was that better?”

Sunset found herself struggling to maintain any kind of composure, only succeeding by reminding herself that this wasn’t a place she was going to have to stay in. Before she could say anything, however, four more individuals decided to enter the room through the now-broken door: Suri, Flim, Flam, and Trixie, although the last opted to instead appear in a puff of smoke rather than simply walk through the door.

“Let me guess,” Sunset said, “you’re all here because of the fact I seemed to be the only one to care at all about the possibility of a night lasting forever?”

“The end of the world does seem bad for business.”

“I’m sure that we’ll all become super famous if we manage to save the world!”

"My brother and I can explain in the form of a song!” said Flim. Sunset glared at him. “Or, er, maybe we’ll skip that part.”

Well, thought Sunset, at least them aiding me means whatever hazards I could encounter might kill them instead.

“So let’s go get those Elements!” Lightning Dust said eagerly. “Where are they?”

“Um…” Sunset suddenly realized the book didn’t actually bother to say this.

“Oh, I know this one! They’re in this deserted castle!” declared Trixie.

“How did you know that?”

“Enh, I read things.”

“Okay, where is this castle?”

“It’s in…”

There was an awkward pause. With her thought apparently incomplete, Trixie simply walked out the door.

“I think we’re supposed to follow her,” Lightning Dust said.

“Without her at least telling us where she’s going?” Suri asked.

“Ugh,” groaned Sunset. “Fine. I hope she knows where she’s going.”

The six all dashed after Trixie, though Lightning Dust perhaps dashed a little too fast and hit a wall in the process. Luckily, she apparently wasn’t injured enough to not continue following.

Trixie didn’t respond to any questions, though finally they reached the point where Ponyville ended and the Everfree Forest started.

“… the Everfree Forest!” Trixie finished dramatically.

Gilda buried her claw in her face. “And is there some reason you couldn’t tell us that before we got here?”

“Waiting until now made for the perfect scene change!”

Everyone stared at Trixie, confused.

“You guys really don’t understand editing, do you?”

“Ugh,” said Sunset. “Let’s just get through this place.”

Off they went. Flim and Flam tried to make the time pass by singing a song, but were quickly slapped down—literally—by the others. Things were fairly quiet until a shadowy giant suddenly appears. “HALT!” it shouted in a commanding voice.

Unsurprisingly, this resulted in the seven halting.

“I AM TASKED WITH THE GOAL OF PREVENTING THOSE WHO WOULD USE THE ELEMENTS OF IRONY TO DEFEAT NIGHTMARE MOON FROM… REACHING THE ELEMENTS OF IRONY,” it bellowed. “Also, I’m, like, really good at telling when someone is saying something that isn’t true, so if you lie, I’ll know,” it added in a much less threatening voice.

“Wait,” said Gilda, “if Nightmare Moon just came back, how’d she have time to make a monster to do all this?”

“Oh, I’m actually a temp,” said the giant. “It’s actually kinda hard for shadowy giants to find work, so mostly I get stuck with guarding things. It pays the bills, you know. ANYWAY, STATE YOUR PURPOSE OR PERISH!” it suddenly added in a significantly more threatening voice.

“Not to worry!” said Flim. “We have no plans to use the Elements of Irony to attack Nightmare Moon.”

“And we can express all of that in a catchy pop song!” Flam added.

“Enh, I’m more of a rock fan. Anyway, your statements are clearly totally true, so you pass.” The shadowy giant opted to retreat. “At least this stopped the monotony of this job…”

“Guess he wasn’t that good at detecting honesty, then…” Gilda muttered after the figure had gotten safely far away.

“What? We were being completely honest!” protested Flim.

“Wasn’t the whole point of us going here to defeat Nightmare Moon?”

“Oh, certainly,” Flam said. “But we obviously can’t have any plans to defeat her until after we get the Elements, so it was completely true that we had no plans to do so!”

“Huh,” said Gilda. “That makes a certain twisted kind of sense.”

And so the group continued on.

“I wonder if we’re going to encounter any more obstacles,” wondered Suri. As if on cue, a manticore suddenly appeared and roared at them.

Trixie face-hoofed. “Seriously? You actually said that out loud?”

“Ha! A manticore? I can take that thing out, no problem,” Sunset said with a smirk as she started to ready her magic.

Gilda held up a talon. “Wait. I don’t think we have to necessarily fight that thing.”

“Then what–” started Sunset, unsurprised to find herself cut off immediately again as Gilda flew straight to the manticore.

“Hey, you!” Gilda shouted. The manticore seemed momentarily confused, prompting Gilda to get right up into its face. “What, are you raging because you received some tiny boo-boo? Toughen up! No one likes a crybaby!”

The manticore seemed to consider this, then ran off crying.

“Ha!” Gilda said as she floated back to the ground. “Tough love wins again!”

The others ran up to her. “Wait, what happened?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, the manticore obviously had a thorn in his paw or something. Wimp. I’ve had way worse injuries, and you didn’t see me running around screaming.”

“… huh.”

“Ugh,” complained Suri as the group continued on, “is this trip going to be much longer? I want to get back soon.”

“So you can take advantage of everypony’s inebriated state to sell them generic merchandise at marked up prices?” Trixie asked sarcastically.

“I prefer to think of it as a drunk tax. Anyway, the other point is the longer you spend in the Everfree Forest, the more likely you are to meet up with some kind of dangerous monster.” Suri paused to reflect on recent events. “Well, okay, we’ve already encountered two, but that just serves my point!”

“You’re welcome to go back if you want,” said Trixie.

Suri mumbled something inaudibly to herself. But the mystery of what she said shall remain a mystery, because yet another interruption happened in the form of a menace appearing. In this case, a manticore, which roared loudly at the group.

“Wait, is this the same one as before?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Don’t think so,” Gilda said. “This one’s rage seems more genuine.”

“Ha!” said Trixie. “Watch as the Great and Powerful Trixie shows this manticore who’s boss!” She took a few steps towards it, then suddenly engaged in a series of moves and yells. If ponies knew kung fu and made films about it, then someone made a parody film, Trixie’s actions would probably be a close approximation of what would be seen in that parody film. “Are you intimidated now?!” she asked.

The manticore stared at her briefly, then promptly fell over laughing. “Ha!” Trixie said. “I have frightened this manticore into giving up!”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “I think he’s just laughing at the pathetic nature of what you just did.”

“That’s how it might look to an untrained eye! But that laughter is just a cover to mask his inner terror!”

At this point, the manticore suddenly opened its eyes wide, then gasped for breath. It then spontaneously fell over and stopped moving.

“Huh?” Suri asked.

“Oh, manticores have surprisingly small lungs for their size. I’m guessing it wasn’t able to maintain consciousness after laughing so much,” explained Gilda. “Enh, it got rid of it.”

“And the Great and Powerful Trixie defeats another foe! I can’t wait to brag about how I singlehoofedly vanquished a manticore!” Trixie declared. Sunset started to say something, then thought better of it and didn’t.

And so they continued on… again.

“You know, something occurs to me,” Flim said. “If these Elements were so important to stopping evil, why in the world would they put it in such an isolated place? Wouldn’t it make much more sense to have an easy access point?”

“Or at least a more convenient one,” Flam added. “How about… say, a safety deposit box? That seems like a great place to put these sort of things, and it would require far less walking and encountering obstacles that seem oddly suited to our individual abilities.”

“Yeah, but then then what would happen if whoever had the safety deposit box died or something?” Suri asked.

“Hrm. Good point.”

Just a little further, Sunset consoled herself. Then this inane chatter can be done with, the world can get saved, and I can finally get out of this stupid town.

The group soon came to a river full of surprisingly turbulent water.

“Huh, a river full of surprisingly turbulent water,” said Trixie.

Suri rolled her eyes. “Is there any reason you had to state the blatantly obvious?”

“Absolutely!”

“Well, crossing it should be easy enough,” Lightning Dust noted. “Gilda and I can just carry–”

Just then, a giant sea serpent emerged from the water, crying considerably, having the effect of turning what might have been a rather fearsome monster into something much less ferocious.

“Let’s just ignore him and keep moving,” Sunset said. “As long as he isn’t trying to kill us…”

“Wait!” declared Suri. “I think we should do our duty as generous people and help this creature!”

“Wait, what?” Sunset asked, feeling very confused at this apparent change of heart.

“Sir,” Suri said in a kindly voice, “what exactly is the matter?”

“Oh, it’s horrible! Just look!” The serpent pointed to his mustache, revealing half of his mustache being gone. “All of a sudden, this cloud of smoke came by and took off half of my mustache! And that’s all I have going for me! It’s the only way I get any respect from the other serpents! Do you know they say I overact? Can you believe that? Overact? Me?”

Suri suddenly had a glimmer in her eyes. “I cannot let this go uncorrected! Allow me to fix it!” she declared as she abruptly tore off a scale from the serpent with her teeth, causing him to scream out in pain.

“Ow! That hurt! What was the point of that?”

Suri simply used the scale to cut off a significant portion of her tail, which she quickly tied to the small stump that remained of the serpent’s missing mustache half. “There! Problem solved!”

The serpent looked at his reflection in the water, his previously flamboyant attitude oddly disappearing. “Enh… well, it’s not quite the right color. I’ll give it a B-. Ah well, good enough!” he added as he swam away.

“That was oddly… generous of you,” Sunset said to Suri as Lightning Dust and Gilda started flying them and the others over. “I had you pegged for an individual who only cared about money.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Suri. “I’m actually quite generous!”

“Hey, Suri, can we get that serpent scale?” Flam asked. “We would like it for, uh, posterity.”

“What, are you crazy?” Suri asked indignantly. “You think I’d just give this away! Do you know how much sea serpent scales are worth? I can buy a new tail with just a fraction of the cash I’d get from this!” She tossed the scale into the pack she had been carrying around.

“… and the mystery is solved,” Sunset muttered to herself as she and the others resumed their walk, having all been deposited on the other side of the river.

A specific-but-nevertheless-unspecified number of steps later, a similar obstacle reared its head, in this case a large gorge. “This should be no problem!” Trixie declared dismissively. “We can just get flown over again.”

“Uh, yeah…” Lightning Dust said. “About that. Not really sure I have the strength to do that again. Some of you guys are surprisingly heavy… er, some!” she added hastily as the glares began. “You agree with me, right, Gilda?”

“Huh? Oh, sure. Whatever,” Gilda said lazily.

Sunset’s eyes looked over the gorge until she saw a broken bridge. “Well then you guys should make yourselves useful and fly over there and fix that bridge.”

Lightning Dust dashed downward in a blur. “You know, for someone who says she doesn’t have the strength to carry us over, she sure seems to have plenty of speed left,” Trixie observed.

Meanwhile, Lightning Dust had grabbed the end of the bridge and brought it to the other side. She was about to start tying it up, when suddenly three pegasi wearing dark uniforms appeared.

“Lightning…” one of them said.

Lightning Dust looked around. “You sure? It doesn’t seem particularly stormy.”

The dark pegasus ignored her comment. “We’ve been eagerly awaiting the best flyer in Equestria.”

“Who?

“Why, you, of course.”

Lightning Dust blushed at the praise. “Oh, uh, thanks. But I’m not really looking for romance right now, so as effective as your pickup lines are–”

“No, no, no. I’m not trying to ask you out. We want you to join us, the Shadowbolts. We’re the greatest aerial team in the Everfree Forest and soon to be the greatest in all of Equestria, but first, we need a captain. The most magnificent, swiftest, bravest flyer in the land!” A pause. “That’s you, Lightning Dust.”

“Well I was kinda trying to get into this other team called the Wonderbolts, but that sure sounds promising!” Lightning Dust moved towards the bridge to start tying it up. “But right now I’m kinda in the middle of something, so we can talk about it after–”

“No!” interrupted the Shadowbolt. “It’s them or us! You have to choose! Now!”

Lightning Dust stared at the Shadowbolt for a few seconds. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“Er, what?” the Shadowbolt stammered.

Lightning Dust rolled her eyes. “Okay, let’s stop and take stock of the situation. Eternal night seems to have been declared. That’s pretty bad for staying alive and all. So, regardless of anything else, trying to save the world comes before anything else. Doesn’t matter if you get to be captain of some awesome team if you just die from the cold afterwards. This is all just common sense. Living comes before joining some team. Plus, the whole dark uniform thing makes you look kinda obviously evil.”

Lightning Dust paused briefly. “Oh, and the intellectual property is an issue also. Your outfits look like a total rip-off of the Wonderbolts, and your name isn’t helping. Even if you were real, you’d probably get sued into oblivion.”

“Hey!” the Shadowbolt protested. “Fair use protects us!”

“I’m not an expert on intellectual property law, but I don’t think that’s quite how it works. Anyway, the sheer obviousness of this trick is actually kinda pathetic.”

“So, uh, just to be clear: If it wasn’t a matter of preserving your life, you would’ve totally gone with us?”

“Oh, sure! Who cares about those guys back there? This job actually sounds awesome… or would, if not for the obviously-a-trick part and the questionable legality.”

“Fine!” snarled the Shadowbolt. “We’ll just make our own team! With blackjack! And cookies!”

“Wait,” said one of the other Shadowbolts, finally speaking up. “What does blackjack have to do with our team?”

The first Shadowbolt considered the question. “Good point. We’ll just get the cookies. Because the dark side always has cookies.”

“But we’re still making the team, right?” asked the third.

“Yes, yes. But with cookies.”

The three flew off. Lightning Dust shrugged. She then finished tying up the bridge, prompting the others to walk over one at a time.

Sunset was the first across. “Why didn’t we just have you and Gilda fly us over again?” she asked.

“What, do you have a bad memory? It was clearly the weight problem.”

Sunset buried her face in her hoof. “I remember that. But after walking across that old and creaky bridge, I’m going to tell you something: Next time the only way across a gorge is a bridge suspended over a high height, you’re going to carry me even if I just binged on donuts!”

“Oh, that weight thing? I made that up.”

Sunset stared blankly at Lightning Dust. “What.”

“Oh yeah,” Lightning Dust continued as the others started coming over. “You guys all got to overcome some cool obstacle, so I figured it was my time to do so. So I just made that up. And I got one, too! These guys called the Shadowbolts showed up and tried to make me go with them, but I said no!”

“You put everypony, including myself, through that because you wanted to overcome an obstacle?!”

“Well, yeah,” said Lightning Dust. “Was kind of a lame one, too. Wish I had gotten one of the manticores. Besides, you were hardly at risk. Having to walk across a bridge, how dangerous.”

“That’s not the point!”

“What are you guys arguing about?” asked Trixie.

Sunset pointed a hoof at Lightning Dust. “She could’ve carried us over, but didn’t want to because she wanted her own stupid challenge!”

“Well, duh,” Trixie said. “Why would you not want to do that? Are you jealous just because you haven’t gotten your own yet?”

“I don’t care about challenges! I just want to get the stupid Elements!”

“Sounds great!” Gilda said, having opted to fly over. “Let’s go in!”

Everyone else walked past Sunset, who simply stared in disbelief. “Are you coming?” Lightning Dust asked.

Life is pain, Sunset thought idly to herself, but she still went with the others and entered the castle.

“Okay, so we all have to keep an eye out for the Elements of Irony. I’m not sure exactly where they are, so–” Sunset stopped talking when she saw a large sign saying “Elements of irony below.” Underneath that sign was another sign saying “Sorry for not capitalizing that sign properly.” Underneath that sign were five large stones with insignias carved into them.

“So, we found the elements!” Flam said.

There was an awkward pause.

“Um, now what?” Flim asked.

“Ummmmmm,” Sunset started. She suddenly realized that despite coming all the way here, they hadn’t really thought of how to use the Elements. “I guess we just take them back to Ponyville to try to figure it out? Though, first we have to figure out where the sixth is.”

“No need for that!” came a loud, booming voice. A large cloud of black smoke suddenly appeared in front of them, with Nightmare Moon being revealed once it dissipated. “I will be taking those.”

“Wait,” Trixie said. “Were you here the whole time, or did you just get here?”

“Well–” Nightmare Moon started.

“You left traps and such on the way, so obviously you were ahead of us. Why didn’t you just take them before we got here?”

“I–”

“And come to think of it, the ‘traps’ were all kinda lame. Wouldn’t it have made a lot more sense to just confront us immediately? I mean, your plan seems to not really make much sense the more one thinks about it.”

“Trixie, maybe you shouldn’t be insulting the alicorn with the power to freeze the moon?” Suri asked nervously.

“ENOUGH!” shouted Nightmare Moon, who stomped her hoof, shattering the Elements.

“And why didn’t you just do that in the first place, before we got here?” Trixie continued. “I mean, you’re just not a very credible villain.” She tilted her head. “For that matter, what do you even want to accomplish with your plan? To make the ponies like the night more? Or is it just an ego thing? Your motivation seems unclear.”

Rather than say anything, Nightmare Moon chose to aim her horn at Trixie, then let loose a burst of black magic that slammed her into the wall.

“Told you so,” Suri said with a shrug.

“And with the Elements destroyed, nothing will stop me! This night will last forever!” Nightmare Moon shouted in triumph.

“Seriously, it’s a lame motivation. And she already used that night-lasting-forever line before,” Trixie said, although she was so weakened by being hit that no one heard her.

Sunset found herself racking her brain to think of ways to deal with the situation. There had to be some way of, if not winning, at least getting out alive. Looking around at the others, an idea suddenly popped into her head.

No, that’s stupid. That couldn’t possibly work, she thought to herself.

“Anyway,” Nightmare Moon continued, “as insignificant of a threat as you are, you did try to defeat me, so I feel it’s necessary to give proper retaliation. Namely, death.”

Screw it. Even if this doesn’t work, at least I’ll go down doing something, thought Sunset. Out loud she said, “That’s where you’re wrong! We don’t need the Elements of Irony because they live on inside us!”

Everyone, Nightmare Moon included, stared blankly at Sunset Shimmer.

“Wait, what?” asked Suri.

“Uh, well,” Sunset said hastily, “look at it! The Flim Flam brothers represent Honesty, because they said things that were technically true in order to get the shadow guardian guy to leave! Trixie is laughter because she incited laughter in the manticore! Lightning Dust showed loyalty by rejecting the offer of the Shadowbolts!”

“I think it had more to do with common sense than loyalty…” Lightning Dust muttered.

“Quiet! Okay, so, uh, still Generosity, Magic and Kindness left.” Sunset quickly tried to think of how to frame Gilda and Suri’s actions in light of that. “Suri showed generosity in offering up some of her tail to the sea serpent! And Gilda showed kindness, by… um…” she said as she trailed off. How is yelling at a manticore kindness?

“Tough love is a form of kindness. If nothing else, it has the word ‘love’ in it,” Gilda said.

“Right! That’s kindness! And Magic goes to me, because I’m the most… magically advanced? Okay, that works.” Sunset tried to think of something else to add. “Uh, so there!”

Nightmare Moon continued to stare blankly at Sunset for a few seconds more. “Well, that was a waste of time,” Nightmare Moon said. “So it’s time to–”

Nightmare Moon suddenly found herself cut off by the broken Elements levitating into the air, each group of rubble heading straight for one of the ponies. Well, except for the ones that went for the Flim Flam brothers, which were by definition going for two of the ponies. The pieces started orbiting around the corresponding ponies, who then began to levitate into the air.

“Wait, that actually worked?!” Sunset said in shock.

Before anyone could say anything else, another sphere-shaped Element appeared above her, which exploded in a white light. Sunset suddenly found herself wearing a crown, while the others all had necklaces that the rubble of their Elements mutated into. A large sphere of light engulfed them all, which a rainbow-colored helix emerged from the top of. The helix then went straight for Nightmare Moon, hitting and defeating her.

Or at least that’s probably what would have happened if a giant blast of energy from the door hadn’t slammed into Nightmare Moon before the rainbow-colored helix could. With nothing to target, the helix disappeared, causing Flim, Flam, Suri, Trixie, Gilda, Lightning Dust, and Sunset to all fall unceremoniously to the floor. “Okay, that’s a sprain,” Sunset groaned to herself as she looked to see where the magical blast had come from.

Several ponies dressed in Royal Guard uniforms entered the room from the door, all carrying what appeared to some kind of cannon. The apparent leader, a unicorn stallion with a white coat and blue hair, surveyed the situation. He approached the area where Nightmare Moon was. However, Nightmare Moon had vanished, being apparently replaced by a significantly smaller and collapsed gray alicorn. “Do you surrender?” he asked in an authoritative voice.

The alicorn gradually opened her eyes to look at him.

“Do you surrender?” he repeated, his tone growing slightly harsher and more impatient.

The alicorn stared at him uncertainly.

He sighed. “Look, I’m trying to be a nice guy here and give you a chance. But I’m still ready to blast you again, this time straight back to the moon if you won’t cooperate. So, do you surrender?”

The alicorn looked down, sighed, then nodded.

“Good! Now, you should still have some considerable power left, so…” The unicorn gestured to the other guards, who swiftly attached some hoofcuffs to her. “This should keep that in check.” She was then led away.

Sunset finally spoke. “What just happened?”

The white unicorn stallion turned towards her. “Ah! Sorry you had to see that bit of unpleasantness. Normally I’m much nicer. Sorry for ignoring you; work called. Anyway, I’m Shining Armor. What are you guys doing here anyway?”

Sunset picked herself up. “Well, after Nightmare Moon popped up, we were trying to get the Elements of Irony to defeat her.”

“Oh, so that’s what the rainbow-colored helix was. Did you have a permit?”

Sunset stared. “Permit?”

“Oh right,” Lightning Dust said. “I totally forgot about that. Usage of the Elements of Irony on anyone requires a permit or else it can incur a rather hefty fine.”

“Why would you need a permit to use them?!” Sunset asked incredulously.

“We are talking about what amounts to super-powerful weaponry,” Lightning Dust said. “It requiring a permit makes a lot of sense when you think about it.”

“Exactly,” Shining Armor said. “That’s some seriously dangerous stuff. I’d also question the wisdom of going after a super-powered alicorn by yourself anyway. You should leave things like this to the proper authorities.”

“Speaking of super-powerful weaponry, what was that cannon?” Gilda asked.

“Oh, that?” Shining Armor asked. “That is an especially potent magical cannon we’ve been developing for a while for cases like this. We knew the banishment seal would end tonight, so we had that all ready. The problem was we didn’t know exactly where she would manifest, so we made a list of where she would be likely to go wherever she did manifest. For Ponyville, that was this castle, so upon finding out she showed up at Ponyville, we made for here as swiftly as possible.”

“So the Elements of Irony aren’t the only thing that can defeat Nightmare Moon?”

“Well, it may have been that way back then, but it’s not like technological advances somehow stopped in all that time. Nope, we’ve developed significantly more powerful weapons since then. I mean, it would be pretty darn embarrassing if the most powerful items around were from so long ago; it’d mean we didn’t make any kind of progress in all that time.”

Sunset tried to wrap her mind around all of this. “So, uh, where does that leave us?”

“Well, it does look like you got the Elements to work, so I guess you count as the bearers.” He paused, appearing to contemplate the situation. “That said, I probably should be taking them all back to Canterlot for now for safekeeping, at least until you’re able to receive a permit. Though those things are fairly difficult to get, so it might be a while.”

Sunset briefly contemplated just hitting him with the Elements and keeping them, but decided that even if that did work, there was still the matter of the large cannon still tended by some of the guards to deal with. Reluctantly, she surrendered the crown she was wearing. The others handed theirs over as well. She noted that all of the necklaces were emblazoned with gems in the shapes of their cutie marks except for Gilda’s, whose gem was just a claw.

“Well, that’s that!” Shining Armor said. “Back to Ponyville! Looks like that eternal night is done, because the sun is coming out!”

When they returned, the sun had finished rising, and the celebrations had concluded in Ponyville. Naturally, this meant everything was actually quite quiet, due to the high number of ponies that were either passed out or at home nursing a hangover.

“Well, see you all later,” Shining Armor said. “I’d actually love to stick around and chat, but I’ve got to tie up this matter with Luna.”

“Luna?” Trixie seemed confused.

“Ah, you might have been unaware. Prior to her transformation into Nightmare Moon, she was known as Luna. I guess that’s a bit of trivia for you.”

“What is going to happen to Nightmare… er, Luna?” Lightning Dust asked.

“That… depends on a number of factors. Regardless, it’s also something that’s not necessarily for the public to know yet, so I don't think it's something I can really discuss with you anyway.”

Shining Armor left. There was a pause.

“Well, that was a complete waste of time,” Sunset complained.

“Speak for yourself! I’ve gotten a valuable sea serpent scale, and those Element thingies appear to have regrown my tail. It’s win-win!” Suri said happily.

“I wonder if those Shadowbolts might be interested in letting me be their captain now… I wish I had thought to get their contact information,” Lightning Dust mused idly to herself. “Actually, come to think of it, they were rather lame anyway. Still, the fact they thought I’d be a great captain is doing wonders for my ego.”

Gilda shrugged. “Enh, this whole ‘Element of Kindness’ thing at least gives me a good comeback to whenever anyone claims I’m mean.”

“Talking to those royal guards, I was able to make some inroads on possibly selling to Canterlot. You have no idea how competitive a market that is…” Flim said.

“A shame they didn’t want to hear our song, though,” Flam noted. “In fact, they seemed oddly eager to place orders with us in exchange for us not singing.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie can now boast of how she overcame a manticore!”

“Well, I didn’t get anything out of this outside of nearly dying! I, for one, am going to bed before I finally get out of this town!” Sunset declared as she stormed off.

“Well, somepony seems to be in a bad mood today,” Trixie said. “Oh, right! I just realized another way that Nightmare Moon was lame! She could have easily just attacked Sunset in the middle of her big speech on the Elements and instantly won! I mean, wow.”

Sunset was awoken several hours later by a knocking at the door. She considered ignoring it, but she then remembered that despite managing to get the broken-down door back on the hinges after a bit of work, it would still fall apart if pushed too often. Therefore, she figured she probably should get the door, though she did grumble some to herself on the way. Unfortunately, as soon as she was about to open the door, the knocking pushed it off its hinges, hitting her right in the face. “Ow!” she said.

“Oh, sorry,” said the royal guard member who was on the other side of the door. “Wasn’t aware the door was so badly constructed. Have you considered getting it fixed?”

Sunset held back an insult. Insulting royal guard members tended to not end well. Instead she said, “Actually, I have. I would assume anypony who has a broken door has at least considered getting it fixed.”

The sarcasm was lost on the guard, possibly for the best. “Well,” he said, “I have some good news! King Sombra thought you did such a great job handling the Summer Sun Celebration that he’s decided to give you a permanent post here! Congratulations!”

Sunset stared in disbelief. “What.”

“Yes, you’ve been awarded the post of ambassador of Ponyville. We’ve actually been looking for a new one for a while.”

“So I’m in charge of the city? I can enact laws?” Hope started to rise in Sunset’s mind.

“Oh, no. That’s still the mayor’s job. Actually, you don’t really have much power at all; your main job is to take the occasional bit of orders from Canterlot. You know, dealing with monsters near the town, that sort of thing.”

Hope immediately disappeared. “Well, I get a raise out of it, right?”

“No, not really. But hey, it’ll look great on your record after you’ve worked it a few years. Will definitely help you move up later.”

Sunset found her mental state breaking down, but she tried her best to not let it show. “Well, that sounds fair enough,” she said while desperately trying to keep her composure. “Anything else?”

“Oh, yeah! Sombra wanted… Hey, are you okay? You seem to be shaking a lot.”

“Just, uh, shivering.”

The guard frowned. “Are you sick? It’s pretty warm.”

“Sick, yeah! That’s it! Totally sick! In fact, I’m so sick you should probably get away before you catch what I have!” Sunset said, hoping she wouldn’t collapse into insanity before the guard left.

“Well, anyway, Sombra wanted you to send him regular updates on what you learned about friendship.”

“Why?!” Sunset screamed. The guard stared at her. “Uh, the sickness affected my hearing a little, so sometimes I talk loudly by accident. Sorry.”

“Well, that part was a bit harder to figure out; we do have to sometimes guess at what he was saying. But they were pretty sure it was either ‘I need a laugh now and then’ or ‘in order to help increase your social skills.’ Probably the latter, though. Anyway, I should get going.”

The guard left. Sunset stared at the broken down door, then tried to set the door so that it, even if not on the hinges, at least blocked the door. To try to calm herself, she started breathing deeply and counted to 10. That didn’t work, so she counted to 20. That still didn’t work, so she tried for 30. She finally found herself in a state of relative sanity 14,887 later. She looked around at the tree library and noticed that all the confetti from Trixie’s appearance still wasn’t swept up. Also, the holes in the ceiling from Lightning Dust’s entry and exit weren’t fixed. She sighed.

“I really should have just gone to take over the griffons…”

The Worst Night Ever

“Here we are at the Gala!” declared Trixie.

“Yes,” said Sunset flatly. “We are indeed at the Gala. I could not have possibly known that we were at the place we were preparing to go to and spent a while traveling to if you didn’t mention it.”

“Glad to be of help!”

“All right!” declared Suri with a manic grin. “This is it! Finally I’m here! Now I can finally succeed at my goal!”

“Goal?” wondered Sunset.

“Oh, right, I never got the chance to tell you in all of that chaos over the tickets. I am going to woo the heck out of Prince Blueblood.”

“Blueblood? Isn’t he that notoriously unpleasant and stuck-up stallion who isn’t even technically prince but for reasons that haven’t been revealed retains that title and privilege?” asked Trixie. “Why in the world would you want to do that? Why would you want a relationship with him?”

“Relationship? Ha!” said Suri. “All I have to do is get him to like me just enough to endorse and/or wear some of my designs, and they’ll completely take off! Then I’ll dump him like the rotten banana he is.”

Lightning Dust stared. “Rotten banana?”

“All right!” declared Flim. “Time for Shark Den!”

“Hooray,” said Gilda without a trace of emotion.

“Hey, so what were you planning to do here anyway?” asked Trixie. “I mean, you’re the only one of us who didn’t bother to dress up.”

“You know what?” interrupted Flim. “I think this is a great opportunity for us to express or re-express our goals in the form of a song!”

“No!” said everyone else simultaneously.

“Fine,” muttered Flim.

Sunset spotted Sombra. “There is he. Maybe I can take the opportunity to impress him enough to get that promotion I want.”

Without further ado, the seven split up.

Suri looked around for Blueblood. “He must be somewhere,” she said to herself. Soon she spotted him. “Okay, Suri. It’s the most obnoxious prince that’s ever lived. Time to make a good first impression.”

She went up to him. In the most pleasant voice she could manage, she asked, “Why, hello, Prince Blueblood. Would you like to spend some time together?”

Blueblood stared at her for a few seconds before simply stating, “No.” He then walked off.

Suri frowned. Clearly this was going to take more work than she hoped.

“All right,” said Trixie to herself, “time to impress everypony here.”

Trixie ran up to the stage where several musicians were performing. “Attention everypony!” she announced. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is here to show you amazing feats!”

Whatever Trixie’s amazing feats were will be lost to the ages, because several guards quickly grabbed her and started removing her from the floor. “Hey!” she protested. “Let me go!”

“Sorry, but you were clearly making a disturbance. We have to remove you.”

“Fight the power!” screamed Trixie. “Fight the–” She was cut off as the doors slammed shut.

Upper Crust turned around. “Did something happen? I thought I heard some shouting.”

Jet Set shrugged. “Maybe somepony was just being a little loud.”

Lightning Dust made her way to an area where a high number of Wonderbolts appeared to have gathered. She looked around, trying to see a good opportunity to make a good impression.

One soon did in the form of accidentally dropping his pie. “My pie!” he exclaimed.

If I grab that, that’ll make me look good! thought Lightning Dust to herself. She lunged to try to grab it… only to be cut off by a rainbow-maned pegasus who caught it first, causing her to instead skid straight into a wall. “Ow,” she said.

After she managed to clear her head, she looked back to see the aforementioned pegasus joining the Wonderbolts in what looked like a VIP area. “Rainbow Dash… you again,” she growled. “My archrival gets the best of me again!”

“Uh, you know that she doesn’t even know who you are, right?” asked Trixie.

“Trixie?! Where did you come from?”

“Oh, well, I got kicked out for being disruptive, but I totally snuck back in.”

“Well, you’re an expert at getting noticed,” said Lightning Dust. “How would you suggest I go about getting their attention?”

“You could–”

“In a positive manner,” added Lightning Dust quickly.

Trixie made a face. “That’s a tougher one.”

Flim and Flam looked around. “This place is big. Where could the Shark Den auditions be?” Flim asked.

Flam spied a sign. “There!” he said. “It says ‘This way to Shark Den’ with an arrow pointing in said direction. That must be it!”

The two followed the sign and soon came across a long line of ponies. “Oh boy,” said Flam, “I can’t wait. If we can pass this audition, exposure will be ours!”

“So King Sombra either said ‘Welcome to the Gala, and I hope you have a good time’ or ‘Soon you will all be under my iron dominion,’” said Sunset.

“You don’t know which one?” the griffon asked.

Sunset shrugged. “Probably the first?” This appeared to satisfy the griffon, as he then left.

Sunset desperately hoped she was translating Sombra’s charades correctly. Her performance could mean the difference between getting out of Ponyville or remaining stuck there. “Erm,” she said to the next guest, looking at the complicated set of gestures Sombra was engaging in. “I think what Sombra is trying to express here is either ‘I’m glad you could make it’ or ‘This entire night is nothing but a farce.’”

Suri watched as Blueblood entered the gardens. She quickly went in after him, trying to remain inconspicuous. When he walked towards a rose bush, she leaped into action, grabbing a rose and presenting it to him. “Would you like this?” she asked.

“It does go with my eyes,” he said as he took it. He then wandered off, leaving Suri standing there awkwardly.

Okay, thought Suri to herself, I guess he needs even more buttering up.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” asked Lightning Dust. “It seems like it could backfire.”

“Nonsense!” declared Trixie. “It’s foolproof! And I’m the one taking the real risk in hitting the guy; you just have to catch him. Then the Wonderbolts will see your act of heroism and thing you’re awesome.”

“Yeah, surprised me you would volunteer for something like that,” said Lightning Dust. “Seems oddly selfless of you.”

“Hey, I already got kicked out. Can’t make things worse for myself. Might as well have some fun.”

“Okay,” said Lightning Dust, “give it a go.”

Trixie slammed into one of the guests. Lightning Dust quickly sprang into action, making a dive to try to catch him. However, this attempt resulted in her slamming into a wall again due to Rainbow Dash saving the guest in time.

“Look at the cute little mice,” slurred Lightning Dust before collapsing.

Trixie looked at the nearby Wonderbolts, who hadn’t even taken notice of the rescue. “Enh, wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

The line moved at a glacier’s pace. Well, maybe not quite that slow, but it was slow nevertheless. “Wow, who knew how many people wanted to try out for Shark Den,” observed Flam.

“Wait, what?” asked someone else standing in line. “This isn’t the line to try out for the Shark Den show. This is the line to see a den of sharks. That’s the line for Shark Den.” They pointed towards a much longer line going in another direction.

Flim and Flam sighed and joined the other line. “Why would so many even want to see a den of sharks?” Flim wondered.

“Wait, that’s the line for that?” asked the person in front of them. “I’m in the wrong line, then. Hey, everypony! The line to see the den of sharks is that way!”

A mad stampede resulted in the other direction, trampling Flim and Flam. “At least the line is shorter now,” mumbled Flim as he got up.

Suri observed Blueblood about to open a door. She quickly ran up and opened it for him. “Huh, thanks,” he said. “You know, you’ve been awfully helpful all evening.”

“Just showing proper respect to a prince!” said Suri.

“Yes, there has been a lack of that towards me,” Blueblood said huffishly. “One would think that a distant relative of a deposed monarch would attract more respect. Care to join me?”

Yes, thought Suri, finally things are looking up!

“This seems even more unlikely to work than the previous plan,” said Lightning Dust dubiously.

“What do you have to lose?” asked Trixie.

“Well, they could dislike me, and I’d be guaranteed to not get into the Wonderbolts.”

Trixie considered that. “Enh,” she said. “Anyway, I’ll provide a distraction to hopefully get some attention for myself, then you can just go talk to them.”

“Why are you repeating the plan I already know?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Posterity,” replied Trixie. “Now watch!” Trixie walked into the center of the room and loudly declared, “Observe the Great and Powerful Trixie!” She then performed several magic tricks. Attention was taken off the Wonderbolts, leaving them open.

Lightning Dust took the opportunity to approach them. “Hi!” she said. “I’m Lightning Dust!”

“Weren’t you the one who made that tornado during that competition?” asked one of the Wonderbolts. “Seemed to be reckless endangerment.”

“Well, uh, yeah,” stammered Lightning Dust. “But I did correctly identify the fake baby, even if someone else got all the credit for that.”

“Well, that was something,” admitted the Wonderbolt. “So, what did you want?”

“Just to hang out, I guess.”

The Wonderbolt shrugged. “Seems okay.”

Awesome! thought Lightning Dust to herself. Finally getting somewhere!

Trixie, meanwhile, seemed to actually be attracting some positive attention. “Maybe I can get some gigs out of this after all,” she said to herself.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably just a long time, Flim and Flam had reached the audition area. “Well, here’s to hoping our well-rehearsed pitch will get us on the show!” said Flam.

Sunset wasn’t great at reading Sombra’s mood, but as far as she could tell he didn’t seem upset at her. She didn’t have too much time left before someone else took over for her in regards to the translation. If she could do the job until then, she’d surely at least rise slightly in Sombra’s graces.

“All right!” said Thunder Strike as he, Stormy Skies, and Maelstrom Tempest entered the main room. “This time no lousy laws of physics will stop us. The Shadowboltz will attain the glory they deserve!”

“I still think we should’ve stuck with Team Shadowbolt,” complained Stormy Skies. “That Z just looks stupid. And it’s not like more than just a handful even knew that was our name; we could still introduce ourselves as such and no one would think of that whole Cloudsdale incident.”

“Silence!” declared Thunder Strike. “That’s not what’s immediately important. What is important is that we enact our plan correctly to make ourselves look great and have everypony like us, which is step one towards us taking over Equestria! It took a lot of effort to get those Gala tickets, and I do not want it to be wasted.”

“I will admit,” said Stormy Skies, “this plan is better than the last one.”

“Okay,” said Thunder Strike, “now for step one, we… wait, what’s that sound? Sounds like rushing water.”

The three, along with everyone else, suddenly found themselves swept up in a giant wave of water.

“Oh, come on,” said Gilda outside of the castle. “There’s got to be a way to rescind–”

“I told you,” interrupted the other griffon, “it’s not easy to shorten these things. Maybe if you–”

This time the other griffon found himself interrupted by a large torrent of water depositing a huge number of guests onto the lawn.

“Huh,” said Gilda as she looked at the wet and bedraggled ponies, griffons, and other species. “Glad we talked out here. I wonder what happened.”

With the Gala canceled due to the castle being overrun with water, the seven ended up going to a restaurant instead after they managed to drive themselves off.

“Ugh,” said Suri. “So close to winning over Blueblood.”

“So close to possibly getting on Shark Den,” muttered Flam.

“So close to fame and fortune,” complained Trixie.

“Meh,” said Gilda. “Who knows if any of you would have succeeded anyway, from what you’ve told me.”

“What were you doing, anyway?” asked Sunset.

“Seeing if I could get my banishment revoked earlier than schedule,” said Gilda with a shrug.

“Wait, banishment?”

“Oh, guess I never told you. I kinda got banished from griffon lands a few years ago. See, there was this prank I pulled that kinda ended with the leader of the country getting a wedgie, and he didn’t take it well. So I got kicked out for a while.”

“That’s why you’re living in Ponyville?”

“You think I’d be there if I had a choice in the matter?” Gilda asked.

“Well,” said Sunset, “if there’s anything I think we can all agree on, that’s that this was the worst night ever.”

“I’ve had worse nights,” said Suri. “There was this one time where I got kidnapped by these diamond dogs, and–”

“Don’t care,” said Sunset. “But fine, if we add up all of our experiences, then it was the worst night ever for us a group. At least I don’t have to write up a letter about it. Incidentally, I do wonder what caused all that water.”

“Well, so much for that brilliant plan,” said Stormy Skies sarcastically. “Took me forever to get dry.”

“Hey!” protested Thunder Strike. “That was totally a brilliant plan. Not my fault all that water came bursting out. How was I supposed to account for that? And what even caused that?”

“Oh, I did ask about it. It seems somepony got every toilet in the entire castle to flush simultaneously, causing a buildup in the pipes that caused them to explodes.”

“How the heck can anypony flush every single toilet simultaneously?!”

Stormy Skies shrugged. “Apparently they hooked up something to all of the individual toilets to make them flush at a designated time. Probably required at least two people to make it happen though.”

“Why?”

Stormy Skies rolled her eyes. “Because you needed a female to set it up for the girls’ toilets and a male to set it up for the guys’ toilets.”

“Hrm,” said Maelstrom Tempest.

“So, Gilda, did you think it was worth it?” asked a griffon, not to be confused with the griffon Gilda was talking to earlier. “The interruption did mean you didn’t get a chance to try to get yourself un-banished earlier.”

“Who cares?” asked Gilda. “That probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. And seriously, Gilbert, I will never get a chance to pull a prank that great again. Totally worth it. My only regret is that I can’t ever let anyone know I was the one who did it without getting into way bigger trouble than I want. By the way, thanks for your help.”

“Man, that was just like old times,” Gilbert said. “Next time I visit Equestria or you come back, we’ll have to do something like this again. Was it as hard for you to not laugh when you saw the results?”

“Horribly,” said Gilda. “I had to struggle so hard to remain composed or else I might give away the fact I did it.”

There was a pause.

“So… uh… bye?” asked Gilbert. “Man, ending conversations can be hard.”

“Yeah,” agreed Gilda. “Ah well. Pulled off my best prank ever and with no consequences. Best night ever.”

A few days later…

“Extra extra!” shouted the pony trying to sell papers. “Read all about it! Griffon leader gets so angry about the water catastrophe at the Gala he was attending that he decides to extend all banishments for several additional years!”

Gilda sighed. “I hate my life,” she said.

The Crystal Empire Strikes Back

“You know,” complained Sunset, “one of these days I’m going to figure out a way to travel back in time. Then I’ll stop myself from ever going on that Nightmare Moon adventure, so I don’t keep getting stuck on all of these missions.”

“What makes you so sure this is yet another mission?” asked Gilda.

“All of us getting invited to Canterlot? It’s a mission. Again. Ugh. And we never get paid for these things, either.”

“What are you talking about?” said Trixie. “We totally got compensation for beating Discord.”

“You think a 2-year membership in the Jelly of the Month Club is proper compensation?”

“Hey,” said Trixie, “it’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

“I just want to move up in the world already,” said Sunset. “Something to get me out of this rut I’m stuck in.”

“‘Well,” said Flim, “we were looking for an investment on something, so if you’d be interested in ponying up the money–”

“No,” said Sunset flatly.

“I just hope whatever we have to do is short,” said Lightning Dust. “I really have to finish up the new Mare Do Well issue.”

“You mean ‘we,’” said Trixie.

“Well, I do most of the work.”

“What are you talking about?! We write it together, then I draw the thing. That’s more work for me.”

“Except I’m the one who came up with the character and designed her!”

“I came up with the name!”

“I was the one–”

“Your voices are making me sick,” said Sunset wearily.

“Ooh, that’s a good line,” said Trixie. “Gotta remember that for when Mare Do Well and the villain are trash-talking each other.”

The train reached Canterlot at this point, and the group departed.

“So, why did we all get called here for anyway?” asked Sunset.

“Great question!” said Chrysalis.

There was a pause. “And am I going to get an answer to my question?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, right, that,” said Chrysalis idly. “There’s trouble in the Crystal Empire.”

“The Crystal Empire?” asked Trixie.

“Oh, just this empire up north that mystically disappeared and recently reappeared. I didn’t care about it, so I just gave it to Shining Armor and Cadance. But apparently giving someone a kingdom isn’t seen as enough to make up for kidnapping, imprisonment, and brainwashing, so they want me to send some people to help fix them up. And I thought, ‘hey, who’s expendable and, possibly with the help of some magical artifacts, has great power?’”

“Us?” asked Sunset.

“What? Oh, no. First I wanted to get the Power Ponies, but they didn’t work out, so you’re the ones.”

“The Power Ponies are comic book characters,” said Lightning Dust.

“Which is exactly why they didn’t work out,” explained Chrysalis.

Sunset closed her eyes and counted to five. When she opened her eyes, she said, “Okay, so what exactly do we need to help with?”

“Oh, that?” asked Chrysalis. “Enh. Didn’t really pay too much attention. Something about Celestia being back, and the Crystal Heart is involved in some way. So, anyway, have fun!”

“I don’t really feel like it,” said Trixie.

Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“It sounds dangerous, and there’s things I’d rather do. I’m sure others agree on this.” Some of the others nodded agreement.

“Okay, then,” said Chrysalis. She turned to a nearby guard. “Go declare war on the bunnies.”

The guard ran off. “Uh, what was the point of that?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, easy,” said Chrysalis. “As we are now in a state of war, I can reinstitute the draft. All seven of you are now drafted in the Equestrian military. Congratulations!” She saluted them. “Your orders are to head out to the Crystal Empire to help them out.”

They all stared at Chrysalis.

“I can tell you’re so completely awestruck by the honor it is to serve in the military that you don’t have anything to say. Oh, yeah, and Sunset, you have to defeat Celestia by yourself. That’s a test for you.”

“Wait, what?” asked Sunset. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Enh, just screwing with you.”

Sunset stared. “What.”

“Well, it would’ve been funnier to mention that only after you came back and you went through an inner turmoil about how to go about it, but that might put the whole thing in jeopardy for no reason. Anyway, like I said, you guys go have fun at the Crystal Empire. We’ll transport the Elements there separately.”

“You know, I think I liked it more when we didn’t understand what our ruler was saying,” said Gilda as they left to board the train. “I mean, at least Sombra wasn’t a troll.”

“Pranking is apparently a really popular hobby among changelings,” said Lightning Dust. “Kinda learned that during the time we spent with them.”

“Why did you do that, anyway?” asked Gilda.

“Oh, Trixie and I weren’t able to figure out what to do in regards to a sidekick for Mare Do Well, but then it suddenly hit me: Changeling! That comes with its own set of powers, plus it’d tap into the new changeling demographic. But they wouldn’t go for it if it was an unflattering portrayal, so I figured we should spend some time in their society to get a feel for them.”

Gilda raised an eyebrow in surprise. “That’s… surprisingly complicated thinking for you.”

“You know what I think would be really funny?” asked Trixie. “If it turned out one of us was a changeling all along. Because now would be the time to reveal that!” There was a pause. “Okay, guess none of us are changelings. Anyway, anyone feel like going AWOL?”

“Are you kidding?” asked Sunset. “I’m in the army now. I’m sure not going to desert.”

“Because you have so much loyalty to Equestria?”

“No,” said Sunset, “because the army has a great dental plan.”

“Ooh, we should take advantage of that when we get back,” said Flim. “I’ve always wanted a golden tooth or two. Or three. Or four. Or, heck, one for each tooth.”

“Why would you want that many golden teeth?” asked Suri. “What’s wrong with your current teeth?”

“Oh, absolutely nothing. I’d just get the golden teeth, but instead of putting them in my mouth, sell them for profit.”

“Ugh,” groaned Sunset. “Let’s just go.”

One train ride later…

“So, this is the Crystal Empire, eh?” asked Trixie. “I’m not seeing the crystal.”

“That’s because we’re not quite there yet,” explained Sunset. “We have to walk through a bunch of snow to get there. You can see it in the distance, though.”

“Why in the world couldn’t the train take us straight there?”

“Budget cuts, apparently,” said Sunset with a shrug. “Let’s just get over there already.”

The group started walking towards the empire. After walking for a few minutes, however, a multi-colored tornado suddenly overtook the group. “What in the–” started Suri.

Suri, however, was interrupted by said tornado abruptly turning into a large white alicorn with flowing multi-colored hair. Not sure what to say, she just asked, “Uh, who are you?”

Just then, an invisible orchestra started up. “Oh, great, this again,” Sunset muttered to herself as she observed the aforementioned alicorn break into a song and dance routine:

”Oh, I am Celestia, I always get along!
Each day I do a little dance and sing a little song!
If you ever disagree, it means that you are WRONG!
Oh, I am Celestia, I always get along!”

Sunset stared and said the only thing that came to mind. “What.”

“I’ll admit it,” said Celestia in a cheerful tone. “That was extremely derivative of the Buddy Bears song. But if there was ever a thing to be derivative of, it would be the Buddy Bears!”

“The who?”

“Not the who, the Buddy Bears! In my lengthy exiling, they were my only source for comfort! And I have taken their lessons to heart!”

“Um, well,” said Gilda, “that all seems very interesting. But we are sort of on our way to somewhere.”

“Oh, really?” asked Celestia. “Oh, go ahead then. I wouldn’t want to keep anypony from going where they want to.” She dashed off.

“That was interesting,” said Flam neutrally.

Soon afterwards, the group reached the Crystal Empire, which was protected by a large shield.

“Wonder what the big shield is for,” said Lightning Dust. “Celestia, I guess?”

“Probably, but she didn’t seem exactly threatening when we met her,” said Gilda.

The group entered the throne room and were greeted by Shining Armor and Cadance. “Greetings!” Shining Armor said. “It’s nice to see you when I’m not in a brainwashed state.”

Sunset looked around the throne room. Why couldn’t I get one of these stupid things? she wondered to herself. “Well, we’re here to help you with… whatever it was.”

“You weren’t told?” asked Shining Armor.

“Chrysalis was less than specific.”

Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “Of course she wasn’t. Anyway, you know how Celestia used to be the one in charge of Equestria until Sombra deposed her. Do you know why that happened, though?”

“Actually,” said Sunset, “no. That part never got covered.”

“Well, the short version of it is that Celestia became a bit too obsessed with everypony getting along, to the point that she tried to harness the power of the Crystal Heart to effectively force everypony into that. She was thwarted, though, by Sombra, who banished her. I don’t really know the details of the banishment, but she seems to have broken free and is now after the Crystal Heart again to carry out the plan.”

“So far, we’ve been able to keep her at bay with this shield,” said Cadance. “But it’s really exhausting, so I haven’t been able to do much of anything else, like eat or sleep.”

“Celestia, huh?” asked Gilda. “That’s that weird alicorn we met on the way here.”

“You met Celestia?” asked Shining Armor.

“Yeah,” said Gilda. “Was a very surreal experience. She sang a dumb song about getting along, then left after we said we were on our way somewhere. Didn’t really come across as particularly threatening. Incidentally, do you know who the Buddy Bears are?”

“The who?”

“Celestia said something about meeting something called the ‘Buddy Bears’ during her exile.”

Shining Armor shrugged. “Probably some hallucination she had during the exile. She apparently wasn’t that stable even before that.”

“Probably,” said Suri. “But anyway, fine, Celestia is back. What do you need us for?”

“Well, we can’t keep the shield up for that much longer, and when it goes, Celestia can get in. We do have some powerful weapons, but she strikes me as smarter than Nightmare Moon was, and thus she’s more likely to be able to dodge them. What we need to do is find the Crystal Heart so we can use its power to negate her own. Problem is, we have no idea where it could be.”

“We can’t just use the Elements?” asked Flim. “Seems like it would save us a lot of time.”

“You’d have to find her and pin her down long enough to use them,” said Shining Armor. “You should take them just in case, but it’s possible there won’t be an opportunity to use them.”

“Fine,” said Sunset. “But why can’t you find the Crystal Heart on your own? What do you need us for?

“Well, Cadance and I have been spending most of our time trying to keep the shield up, so we haven’t had much of a chance to do research on exactly where the Crystal Heart is. We need you guys to figure that out.”

“Research?” asked Lightning Dust. “Boring. Can’t we do something more exciting?”

Shining Armor shrugged. “You could go out and try to defeat Celestia by yourself.”

“Research is fine!” said Lightning Dust.

The seven arrived in a giant library. “This is certainly rather large,” observed Trixie.

“I guess we just look under C for ‘Crystal Heart,’” said Sunset.

“Why did we all come here, anyway?” asked Flam. “Doesn’t only one of us need to be here to look it up? The rest of us could do something like, oh, selling stuff.”

“Fine,” said Sunset. “I’ll probably be faster without you guys bothering me anyway.”

A brief bit of searching later, she found ‘Crystal Heart: A Reference Guide.’ “Let’s see,” she said as she skimmed through it, “by having a Crystal Faire with the crystal ponies, the Crystal Heart can be powered.” She closed the book. “Well, I guess that’s useful. But it still doesn’t say where the stupid thing is.”

Some quick exposition later…

“So,” said Gilda, “still no closer to finding the Crystal Heart.”

“Well, we know how to power the thing up,” said Sunset. “We get that Crystal Faire thing going.”

“So,” said Gilda, “still no closer to finding the Crystal Heart.”

Sunset sighed. “Look, if we do this Crystal Faire thing, it’ll maybe make the Crystal Heart appear because it powers it. Unless anypony has a better idea, we might as well try.”

“Fine,” said Gilda, “so we need this fair or whatever. How do we do it?”

“Apparently, we have to raise the morale of the crystal ponies,” said Sunset.

“Hrm,” said Gilda, “not sure we’re really one to tell other people to be nice.”

“Not moral, morale.”

“Fine, whatever,” said Gilda. “How do we go about doing that?”

“I’ve got an idea!” declared Lightning Dust before zipping off. A few seconds later, she zipped back in while wearing the Mare Do Well costume. “The Mysterious Mare Do Well shall make them feel good! And give increased exposure to the brand while doing so! I’m so glad I brought along this costume, just in case.”

“I’ll help!” said Trixie.

“We’ll sell ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cider!’ at a discount,” said Flim. “Nothing makes someone happy like getting overly drunk! And it’ll give us more exposure.”

“This seems like a good opportunity to get rid of those super-bright outfits I made that nopony’s been buying because ‘goth’ is apparently in now back in Equestria proper,” said Suri.

“Sure,” said Gilda, “I’ll also join in by doing something that’ll make them feel better but also benefits my own interests.”

“I guess in the meantime,” said Sunset, “I’ll keep searching to see if I can find the Crystal Heart somewhere.”

“I feel like this is a great opportunity for a song!” said Flam. Everyone but Flim glared at him. “Or, er, maybe not.”

“Maybe asking the locals could help,” muttered Sunset. She turned to a nearby crystal pony. “Do you know where the Crystal Heart might be?”

“Oh, sure,” said the pony. “It’s somewhere in the castle.”

Sunset stared in disbelief as the pony walked off. “Really? All we had to do was ask somepony?”

“Sometimes the simplest solution is in fact the best!” said Trixie.

“What, did you pull that out of some kind of ‘wise-sounding but ultimately useless sayings’ book?” asked Sunset as she rolled her eyes.

“Um, maybe,” said Trixie.

“Whatever,” said Sunset. “I guess I’ll look in the castle. Anypony else want to join?”

“Um…”

“Well…”

“We were going to do this thing for the faire, as we said…”

Sunset sighed. “Of course.”

“Oh, what the heck,” said Gilda. “I’ll help. I was having trouble thinking of something that would both simultaneously entertain them and further my own interests anyway.”

“So do you have any idea what we should be actually looking for?” asked Gilda.

“Not really,” admitted Sunset.

“I hope you figure out something, because this castle is awfully big. It’d take forever to search the whole thing.”

“There’s got to be a clue somewhere around here,” muttered Sunset.

Gilda pointed to a sign saying “For the dryer ones took that dull heart in can.”

“What does that mean?” asked Sunset.

“It’s an anagram for ‘To Find A Crystal Heart, Look Under The Throne.’”

Sunset stared at Gilda. “How did you figure that out?”

“Enh, I do these things sometimes. I’m fast at them.”

“No. No way. I’m not accepting that. You couldn’t have possibly done it that quickly. How did you really do it?”

“Well, okay,” said Gilda. “Truth is, I saw that when we were here earlier, and I eventually figured it out. Just thought I’d look really cool if I waited until now to reveal it.”

“Fine. So I guess we look under the throne?”

“That is what I would expect when the clue is ‘look under the throne,’” said Gilda dryly. “I thought stating the obvious was Trixie’s shtick?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Sunset as she went over to look. After a brief attempt to move the throne failed, she asked, “Any ideas?”

“Oh, easy,” said Gilda. “One moment.” She ran off.

“Why do I have the feeling this is going to be painful?” Sunset asked herself.

Gilda came in holding a weapon of some kind. “You might want to stand back,” she said. “The rocket launcher can do some collateral damage.”

“The what?” asked Sunset as she stood back.

Gilda fired at the throne with the rocket, which hit said throne and destroyed it. Once the smoke cleared, a hidden passage was seen.

“I really hope they don’t expect us to pay for that,” said Sunset.

“Enh,” said Gilda. “I’m sure they have insurance.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then this will be a valuable lesson as to why they should have insurance,” answered Gilda. “Now, are we going down in there or not?”

Sunset looked down at a long and winding staircase whose end could not be glimpsed. “I guess we have to go down there. Looks like a long drop if we fall; why isn’t there a hand rail on this thing? Anyway, watch your step.”

“You forget I can fly,” said Gilda.

“Oh yeah, good point. Fly me down there?”

“Demand, demand, demand,” said Gilda, but she grabbed Sunset and deposited her on the bottom.

Once there, Sunset noticed a door. “Guess we have to open this,” she said. She went up to the door and tried opening it to no avail. “Can you try using that rocket launcher of yours on this?”

“Sorry,” said Gilda. “They’re kind of a one-time use, and I didn’t have enough room for more. I can only store so much in my case, and I didn’t want to give up any of my healing items.”

“Healing items?”

“What, you don’t carry some of those around?”

“I didn’t even know they existed!”

“Huh,” said Gilda. “You can often just find them randomly lying around. Anyway. How do we get this door open?”

“Maybe it needs magic,” muttered Sunset. Her horn flared and she blasted the door, which promptly opened. “Well, that was easy. I would’ve expected there to be more safeguards so far. I mean, a door you just have to use magic on?”

Gilda pointed to a sign that had “Protective Trap Out Of Order. To Intruders: Please Think Of Your Worst Fear Until It Is Fixed” written on it.

“Who put up these signs anyway?” asked Sunset.

“Who cares? Let’s just go,” said Gilda.

The two went through the door and found themselves on the outside of a tower that had a staircase leading upward around it.

“So, wait,” said Gilda. “We had to go down a staircase, then immediately up another? Why not just have the secret passageway go up to begin with? Who designed this stupid thing?”

“No idea,” said Sunset. “But can you fly me up?”

“Ugh, fine,” said Gilda. “You need to get wings one of these days, though.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t born a pegasus! I’ll try to do better in that department!”

“Good!” said Gilda. She grabbed Sunset and flew her to the top of the tower. When they reached the top room, they found the Crystal Heart.

“Okay, so it was here the whole time? Under no real guard?”

“Well, there was that trap that was out of order.”

“Yeah, but even counting that, you didn’t have to go through it! You could’ve just gone straight up into this tower from outside!”

“Look, whatever,” said Sunset. “We found the stupid thing, now let’s grab it and bring it back to Shining Armor and Cadance.”

“Hey,” said Gilda. “I am not going to fly this and you down simultaneously. Either you’re carrying this, or I’m making two trips.”

Sunset looked outside. “Hey, is it just me, or does the shield look a little weaker?”

Just then, the shield vanished.

“Well,” said Gilda, “that’s concerning.”

“We gotta get the Crystal Heart to the Crystal Faire!” said Sunset. “That’s the only way to stop Celestia.” She gave the Crystal Heart to Gilda. “You can fly; take it there!”

Gilda took off with the Crystal Heart while Sunset walked down the stairs.

“Hooray!” declared Trixie. “The faire is doing well! Or at least our comic book sales are!”

“Uh, guys?” asked Suri. “I think the shield just fell.”

“Oh,” said Trixie. “That’s not good.”

“Enh, all we have to do is get the Crystal Heart to the center of the faire and everything works out fine,” said Flim.

“You’re awfully confident about that.”

“Oh, of course,” said Flim. “That’s Gilda right over there coming with it.”

Just then, a blazing light flashed towards them. “And I think that’s Celestia,” added Flam with a frown.

“Have no fear!” declared Lightning Dust in her Mare Do Well costume. “Mare Do Well is here!” She dashed at Celestia and promptly got knocked back into the ground. “Oh boy. That’s not going to help sales.”

Meanwhile, Gilda was still speeding with the Crystal Heart. “Got to get there,” she muttered to herself. However, she was promptly hit by Celestia, who grabbed the Crystal Heart, then landed in the center with it.

“Greetings, friends!” declared Celestia in a creepily cheerful voice. “Have no fear! Now that I have the Crystal Heart, everypony will get along perfectly! Say goodbye to all strife and fighting!”

“Hooray!” said Trixie. Flim, Flam, and Suri stared at her. “What? I might as well get with the winning side.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Celestia in the same creepily cheerful voice that should probably be assumed to be her regular voice unless otherwise noted. “Soon the entire world will get along!” The Crystal Heart suddenly was surrounded by an aura that expanded, soon encompassing the entire Crystal Empire. “And there we go!”

Gilda and Lightning Dust, now out of the Mare Do Well outfit, landed with the others. “Did something happen?” asked Gilda. “I don’t feel any different.”

“Yeah!” said one of the crystal ponies. “I still think this whole thing is a horrible idea!”

A safe suddenly appeared above the head of said crystal pony and dropped, crushing him. “Ow,” he muttered.

“I guess that safe wasn’t very safe, eh? Eh?” asked Trixie with a wink. Everyone stared at her. “Just trying to bring some levity to the situation,” she muttered.

“Okay, what was with the safe?” asked Suri.

“What, did you think you were going to be brainwashed or something?” asked Celestia. “I’m offended. The proper way to make everypony get along is to drop 16-ton safes on top of them when they disagree.” She turned in a random direction. “So remember kids, always agree with everypony else! Otherwise, a 16-ton safe might drop on you!”

“Who are you talking to?” wondered Gilda.

At this point, Sunset made it to the scene. “Did I miss anything?”

“Celestia got the Crystal Heart and activated it. Now people who disagree get 16-ton safes dropped on top of them.”

“Oh,” said Sunset. “That’s… unexpected. Hey, wait! We’re all here! Use the Elements!”

The seven quickly gathered together. Like with Nightmare Moon, a large rainbow-colored helix appeared, went straight at Celestia…

… and went straight through her. “Was that supposed to do something?” asked Celestia.

“No effect?!” exclaimed Sunset.

“Well,” said Lightning Dust, “to be fair, we’ve never actually used them on anypony before. Maybe they were defective this whole time.” She closely examined her own Element. “It does look like the warranty expired quite a while ago.”

“I’m glad to see everypony is getting along!” said Celestia obliviously.

“Any other ideas on what to do?” asked Sunset anxiously.

Gilda stroked her chin. “Hrm. I think I may have something,” she whispered quickly. “Stall for me. Be right back! Oh, and Flim and Flam! Agree with each other on the next question I ask you!” She ran off.

“Don’t we always agree anyway?” asked Flim.

“Okay, stalling,” said Sunset. “Um. So, Celestia, what are your plans now that you’ve, erm, ‘given friendship’ to the Crystal Empire?”

“Today, the Crystal Empire! Tomorrow, the world!” said Celestia.

“That is such a cliché line,” complained Trixie. She suddenly found herself crushed by a safe. “Oh, come on. That counts as disagreement?”

“My question,” said Sunset, “is how having safes fall on you doesn’t outright kill you.”

“You don’t make friends by killing them!” declared Celestia. “You can’t be friends if that happens! You don’t want to do anything more extreme than causing horrible pain.”

“Hey guys!” shouted Gilda as she ran back. “I’m back! And there’s a place here that sells pizza! The bad news is that I can only buy one. So,” she continued, gesturing to Flim, Flam, and Celestia, “what do you guys want as toppings?”

“Tomato seems good,” said Flim.

“Seems good to me as well!” said Flam.

“Tomatoes?” asked Celestia. “I’d prefer regular cheese.”

A safe suddenly appeared above Celestia and fell on her, crushing her to the ground and causing her to drop the Crystal Heart. Gilda quickly grabbed it. “Well,” she said, “that was easy. It really is impossible for people to agree on pizza toppings.”

“Quick,” said Sunset, “put the thing on the pedestal. The hope of the crystal ponies will then rejuvenate it or something cheesy like that, and that’ll solve everything somehow.”

Gilda shrugged and put the Crystal Heart on the pedestal in the center of the faire. The hope of the crystal ponies then rejuvenated it or something cheesy like that, and that solved everything somehow.

Shining Armor and Cadance took the moment to arrive. In the meantime, however, Celestia managed to throw off the safe. “Oh, you think that was enough to stop me? Now I’m going to–”

Celestia was cut off by several more safes popping up and falling on her, this time keeping her down.

“Huh,” said Gilda. “Looks like Celestia using it reconfigured it to drop safes instead of using shields to thwart enemies, which is staying true even after I set it back to protecting the Crystal Empire.”

“I’m surprised you did that rather than using the opportunity to take control yourself,” said Suri.

“Meh, controlling a country is boring,” said Gilda. “Besides, the safes falling on her? That was hilarious!”

“Well, I guess that wraps things up,” said Sunset. “I do wonder why the Elements didn’t affect her, though.”

“Well,” said Shining Armor, “they are the Elements of Irony. Forcing friendship already seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it?”

“So what do we do with Celestia now?” asked Lightning Dust, pointing to the now-unconscious alicorn.

“I’m sure we’ll think of something,” said Shining Armor.

“Uh, guys?” asked Trixie. “Can anypony get this safe off me? And preferably some medical attention?”

“Well, guess that fulfills my debt to Shining Armor and Cadance,” said Chrysalis. “Hopefully this will make them stop whining to me.”

Sunset looked around. “By the way, why this this place more bare than usual? And your throne looks a little less impressive.”

“Oh,” said Chrysalis. “About that. Yeah, turns out bunnies are actually a lot more dangerous than one would think. After declaring war on them, we actually started losing and had to give them a bunch of reparations to make them stop attacking us. Kind of had to sell a bunch of stuff off to pay for it all.”

“Huh,” said Sunset.

“Oh yeah, speaking of which, with the war over, the draft’s done so you guys are all discharged from the military.”

“Do we at least get to keep the dental plan?” asked Flim.

“Actually, we had to cut that to pay off the bunnies. But don’t worry! You still get a small pension!”

“Darn it, there goes my gold teeth plans,” muttered Flam.

“You know what?” asked Trixie. “I’d like to think we all learned a valuable lesson from this.”

“What did we learn?” asked Sunset.

“Oh, we didn’t learn a darn thing. I’d just like to think we did.”

“I do wonder what happened to Celestia,” said Gilda.

Meanwhile…

“No,” said a heavily restrained Celestia, “I don’t care. You’re not going to convince me that everypony can’t get along.”

“Well,” said the guard, “I guess we have to resort to that.”

“To that?” asked the other one. “That seems extreme.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Celestia.

“Oh, just something that should convince you—and anypony else—that there isn’t actually an inner goodness and friendliness waiting to be awakened in every pony. It actually is from an alternate universe, but still works for some reason.”

“Ha! That’s impossible to convince me of!” declared Celestia.

“We’ll see. Celestia, let me introduce you to something called… XBox Live.”

Cutie Markless - Part 1

After a mostly unrelated adventure…

“I’m bored,” complained Gilda.

“Gilda,” said Sunset in a measured voice, “we very recently had a giant battle involving the fate of Equestria. How are you bored?”

“You were the one that got to do the actual fighting,” said Gilda. “All I did was record it. Which admittedly wasn’t boring, but I’m still frustrated there was never an opportunity to shoot the guy with a rocket launcher.”

“How many of those do you even have?”

“Enough to make you feel very uncomfortable,” said Gilda.

“Fine then!” snapped Sunset. “Just go on your own big adventure if you want one so much!”

“Maybe I will!” declared Gilda. “I mean, it feels like it’s been half a year since that Tirek incident.”

“I don’t think it’s even been a week,” said Sunset.

“Well, it sure feels like it’s been a long time,” said Gilda.

A ringing sound was suddenly heard. “That’s an obnoxious alarm clock,” said Gilda.

“It’s not an alarm clock; it’s this phone I got,” said Sunset. She pulled out a cell phone and opened it up. “Uh… is this Twilight?”

“Nope!” came Chrysalis’s voice.

Just great, thought Sunset to herself. “Wait, how did you even get this number? At least when that alternate Twilight called me, it was because she was the one who loaned me this phone.”

“Oh, I just looked it up in the phone book,” said Chrysalis.

“Phone books don’t exist in this universe,” said Sunset bluntly.

“What’s your point?” asked Chrysalis.

Life is pain, thought Sunset to herself. “The point is, how in Equestria did you manage to figure out a phone number using something that doesn’t exist? In fact, considering phones don’t exist either, how are you even calling?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what someone can do with a squirrel, some rope, and a megaphone,” said Chrysalis.

Quickly realizing that this conversation direction was not going to lead anywhere productive, Sunset relented. “Fine. What is it you want?”

“You know how I mentioned I loved ukuleles?” asked Chrysalis.

“Yes?” said Sunset.

“Well, it has nothing to do with that. It’s about that Tree of Whatever.”

“I thought its name was the Tree of Irony… or was it Tree of Harmony? We never did figure that out.”

“Exactly!” said Chrysalis. “Which is why to avoid any confusion, I’ve officially renamed it the Tree of Whatever. So, anyway, it made some kind of map or whatever—to clarify, I mean the ‘or whatever’ in the more colloquial sense, because the name of the map wasn’t the ‘Map or Whatever’ as is the case for the tree—and also some thrones that have the cutie marks of you and your compatriots. I’m guessing it was supposed to go to you, so I’m shipping it over.”

“Why would it end up where you are if it was supposed to go to us?”

“The tree was probably a bit dyslexic,” said Chrysalis. “It’s my understanding that’s a common problem for them.”

“Fine,” said Sunset. “We’ll take the stuff and put it somewhere in the castle.”

“Sounds good!” said Chrysalis. “In the meantime! When we plugged the thing in, it made this big map thing appear and then the cutie marks of you and your acquaintances—except for Gilda, who doesn’t have one and I assume the floating talon represented—appeared over some other place in Equestria. The map must be saying that you lot should all go over there to do something. Or at least I figure that’s it, as I don’t speak map particularly fluently. That correspondence course was a waste of money. The only thing I learned from it was how to say ‘I would like to jump into the water with my pants on.’”

“And why should we go all over there?” asked Sunset.

“What, you don’t think a map connected to a tree knows what’s best?”

“No!” said Sunset. “And I don’t want to go on an adventure anyway! Why not send the Royal Guard to investigate it?”

“They’re less expendable,” said Chrysalis. “Besides, you guys have a track record for dealing with dangerous things and implausibly coming out victorious.”

“Okay then, how about Discord? He’s rather powerful.”

“I haven’t been able to get ahold of him,” said Chrysalis. “Think of it as a vacation! An unpaid vacation to the middle of nowhere where there might be some kind of sinister danger that could kill you. That’s how most of my vacations tend to end up. Anyway, I have more important things to do than talk to you, like call people and ask if their refrigerator is running.”

“And then tell them to go out and catch it?” deadpanned Sunset.

“Huh?” asked Chrysalis. “No, I’m just doing it because I know how annoying it is when food goes bad due to a broken refrigerator. It’s a public service! And that’s how I keep my approval rating so high!” She hung up.

Sunset sighed. “Well, guess we all have to go on another stupid adventure.”

“You could just say no,” said Gilda.

“Chrysalis would just force draft us into the military again to make us do it,” said Sunset, “and then dump us before we get any chance to take advantage of the health benefits. Might as well skip the frustration. Anyway, I want to get this castle sold off, and that’d be a lot easier if it stays tax free, which not going along with her request would be in danger of revoking.”

“Uh-huh,” said Gilda. “And what’s your pitch to the rest of us to go, given that seems to largely benefit you?”

“Equal ownership in the castle so you’d all benefit from a sale?”

“Sold!” said Gilda. “Though whatever happened to you declaring we should all forget about that alternate universe adventure you went in on? You were just talking about it.”

“I blame that, like many of the annoying things in my life, squarely on Chrysalis,” said Sunset.

And so the group took the train to the middle of nowhere. One might ask why there would be a train leading to the middle of nowhere. But this question was never asked by any of them, and thus there was no opportunity to answer that question, though it did allow for this paragraph to be longer than it really needed to be. The group exited the train when it reached the destination.

“Did you know that all integers from one through nine hundred ninety-nine don’t have the letter ‘a’ in them?” asked Trixie.

“Uh… no?” asked an uncertain Flim.

“Oh, good,” said Trixie. “You guys are always getting annoyed at me for saying things you already know when we arrive somewhere, so I figured I should say something you didn’t know!”

“Makes sense to me!” said Lightning Dust.

Sunset pulled out a map. “So according to the map, we should go… that way. Let’s just get this over with.”

“You were the one who wanted us all to go so desperately,” said Suri as the group started walking.

“Just because I was trying to get you guys to come doesn’t mean I was that particularly fond of it myself,” said Sunset.

“Did you know that E is the most commonly used letter of the alphabet?” asked Trixie.

“This is going to be a long walk,” muttered Suri to herself.

The walk, as it turns out, was actually fairly short. Soon after walking over a nearby bridge they came upon a town.

“I guess this town is where we’re supposed to do whatever it is we’re supposed to do?” asked Flam.

“I hope so,” said Sunset, “because I don’t want to have to search the wilderness for… whatever it is we’re supposed to find. It would sure be useful if that tree’s map had given us more of a hint as to what we’re supposed to do!”

And so the group entered the town. “Well, this place looks boring,” said Gilda. “A bunch of nearly identical houses lined up in a row? With the only exception being the one at the other end, which presumably belongs to the mayor or whoever?”

“Greetings!” said one of the ponies in the town who had an equals sign for a cutie mark as well as an awkward-looking smile. “Welcome to Our Town!”

“Do you happen to know of any kind of major calamities or problems that we could have possibly been sent here to address?” asked Sunset.

“Um… no?” said the pony nervously despite retaining the awkward-looking smile.

“Ugh!” said Sunset. “Look, do you have a leader or something? Maybe they could help.”

“Oh, that would be Starlight Glimmer,” said the pony. “She lives in the house over at the end of the town.”

“I was right!” declared Gilda.

The group then followed the pony to the aforementioned house, passing by various other ponies who had just left their houses to look at the group, all of them with awkward-looking smiles and equal sign cutie marks.

“This place suddenly got really creepy,” muttered Lightning Dust. “Right, Trixie?” Lightning Dust turned to look at Trixie, whose teeth were chattering as she constantly gave paranoid glances in every direction while sweating profusely. “Uh, Trixie?”

“It’s still day… we’re fine… we’re safe…” muttered Trixie nervously as she continued to glance in every direction in a paranoid manner.

“Trixie?” asked Lightning Dust.

“Don’t let them know you’re scared… that’s the ticket…” continued Trixie to herself.

“Uh, okay,” said Lightning Dust.

The pony knocked on the door. “Starlight, we have some new visitors.”

A heliotrope-coated unicorn came out. “Welcome! I am Starlight Glimmer! I’m so pleased to have you here! But who are you?”

“Sunset Shimmer, Suri Polomare, Trixie, Flim and Flam, Lightning Dust, and Gilda,” said Sunset as she pointed to all of them.

“Wait,” said Starlight, “Lightning Dust? Trixie? The authors of Mare Do Well?”

“Indeed!” said Lightning Dust. There was an awkward pause as she looked over at Trixie who was still glancing everywhere in fear. “Uh, Trixie? Is there an issue?”

Trixie pointed a hoof towards Starlight. “You’re not really just a town of zombies that only look like regular ponies during the day, but then at night your true selves are revealed and can turn any of us into similar zombies by touch?” she asked in an alarmed tone.

“Er… no?” said a confused Starlight Glimmer.

“But that’s exactly what a zombie would say!” said Trixie. “And believe me, I don’t want to go through that again!”

“Wait, when did you come across a town of zombies that only looked like regular ponies during the day?” asked Sunset.

“It’s a long story,” said Trixie.

“How long?”

Trixie did some quick calculations. “About 12 minutes, not counting restarts.”

“Never mind,” said Sunset.

Starlight appeared perplexed by this digression but quickly recovered. “How did you hear of our little village?”

“That’s a long story,” said Sunset. “It involves a mystical and possibly dyslexic tree. Believe me, you’ll feel dumber if you hear it.”

“Well,” said Starlight, “however you found us, we’re happy to have anypony who wants to experience true friendship for the first time.”

“What an odd-sounding thing to say,” said Gilda. “Especially with that emphasis.”

“Yeah, it’d be great to experience ‘true friendship,’ unless ‘true friendship’ is just a code word for being a zombie,” muttered Trixie under her breath.

Starlight either ignored or didn’t hear Trixie’s comment. “Around here, we don’t flaunt our special talents because we don’t have any special talents to flaunt.”

“Is that the reason for the lack of cutie marks?” asked Sunset. “Or did you just happen to find a bunch of ponies with that equal sign cutie mark?”

“Perhaps it would be easier to understand if I gave you a tour of the village!” said Starlight.

“Why would we need a tour?” asked Lightning Dust. “It’s so small we already saw the whole thing! What, do you have some kind of underground basement where chocolate is created to show us?”

“I… what?” asked a confused Starlight. “Look, I’ll just start the tour! Let’s go!”

Starlight marched out of the house and the rest followed. An offscreen orchestra started up and the various other ponies in the town began a march.

“Here we go again…” muttered Sunset to herself as Starlight and the rest of the awkwardly smiling ponies started to sing.

”Life is so grand in Our Town
We’re always filled with cheer
We never have to look around
To know that we’re all here!

In Our Town, in Our Town
We don't have to wait
To find out that our destiny
Is just to emulate!”

“Let’s see those big, happy…” Starlight trailed off as she noticed Sunset and the others were paying no attention to them. “What are you doing?” asked Starlight indignantly as the music abruptly ended.

“I got bored so I figured I’d have some fun with this,” said Sunset, pointing to her cell phone. “And the rest of them were curious about it, so they were looking at it. Just go on and finish your song. We’ll get back to you when you’re done with it.”

“Do you know how many rehearsals this took to get right?” demanded Starlight. “You should pay attention to it!”

“Can you just summarize whatever information you wanted to convey without the need for a lengthy song and dance number?” asked Gilda. “It wasn’t even that particularly catchy. I’ve heard better. You’re no ‘Winter Wrap-Up,’ that’s for sure.”

Starlight growled. “Fine! All our cutie marks are the same because we’re all equal and no one competes or is superior in everything, and thus there’s also no strife or or arguments. Everything is perfect!”

“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” said Sunset. “Would’ve been much quicker.”

Starlight’s eye twitched. “Anyway,” she said in a strained voice, “what brought you here in the first place?”

“We got what seemed to be some kind of warning there was some kind of problem here, so we came over to see if we could stop it,” said Sunset. “But everything seems fine here. I mean, outside of the creepy smiles and the forced musical number and the questionable philosophy and the–”

“Have you considered perhaps that you might have been sent here so we could help you?” interrupted Starlight. “After all, no pony has ever come here and wanted to leave.”

“How would anypony come here anyway?” asked Lightning Dust. “You’re in the middle of nowhere! It’s not like anypony would stumble upon this place randomly.”

“Well–” started Starlight.

“By the way, what’s the name of this town anyway?” asked Flam.

“Oh, it’s just Our Town,” said Starlight.

“Yes, but what’s the name of your town?” asked Flam.

“I already told you. It’s Our Town.”

“But we already know it’s your town,” said Flim.

“No,” said Starlight, “of course it’s not your town. Our Town.”

“Yes, obviously it’s your town and not our town!”

“No, it’s Our Town, not your town.”

“Again, obviously, but you’re not answering the question! What is the name of this town?” asked a confused and frustrated Flim. “I’m so confused.”

“I think she’s saying the name of the town is ‘Our Town,’” said Suri.

“Yes!” said Starlight. “Finally somepony gets it.”

“Darn it, you ruined the gag, Suri,” said Trixie. “I was actually enjoying that.”

Starlight put on a clearly forced smile. “Well, whether you stay or not is entirely your choice. Please enjoy our little corner of Equestria. Double Diamond, please help our guests with whatever they might need.”

“Of course,” said another pony, presumably the Double Diamond mentioned in the previous paragraph but who shall disappear from the narrative entirely after the current paragraph concludes.

“Well,” said Starlight to herself as she walked off, “this will certainly provide a boost to our little community. Once Lightning Dust and Trixie have joined us, they’ll be sure to have Mare Do Well give up her cutie mark, so the rest of Equestria will finally understand what we’re trying to accomplish!”

“I’m just saying,” said Trixie as the group wandered around, “when it’s close to sunset, we should be on the outskirts of the village so that if they do turn out to be zombies, we can skedaddle right away.”

“Trixie, you have to get over this ridiculous zombie obsession,” said Gilda.

“Hey! It was a very traumatic experience!” said Trixie. “I saw things!”

“Trixie’s zombie paranoia aside,” said Suri, “does anypony have any idea where the big mysterious problem that we’re supposed to solve is? Because… what is that?!”

“What is what?” asked Flam.

Suri pointed to a building outside of which were very poorly made cloaks on racks.

“Welcome!” said a stallion in front of them. “Care to sample some local fashion? We’ve got cloaks this month!”

“Are you kidding?” asked Suri. “These things are a crime against fashion! The sewing pattern is completely off! And furthermore…”

“Eep!” said the stallion as Suri continued on her tirade. “Okay! I surrender!” He ran back into the building.

“I don’t know why you had to be so rude,” said Flim. “After all, these are just budget shirts, as can be seen on this price tag…” Flam paused as he read the price tag. “Wait, they cost that much?! What a rip-off! Even I haven’t overcharged this much on anything!”

“I think I might have, though,” said Flam. “I can’t remember. Were you with me during that whole rutabaga thing?”

“Look, none of this is getting us any closer to figuring out what it is we’re supposed to be doing here!” said Sunset. “I assume the Tree of Whatever wouldn’t have sent us here for nothing!”

“Maybe it was malfunctioning?” suggested Trixie.

“Maybe it was just pranking us?” said Lightning Dust.

“Maybe Chrysalis misinterpreted the whole thing, deliberately or accidentally, and sent us to the wrong place?” speculated Gilda.

Sunset sighed. “Great. So we might actually be spending all this time for nothing at all?”

“Well, there’s obviously something wrong here if they’re selling outfits at that kind of price,” said Suri. “At least make them look good, even if they’re actually really poorly made. That way you can sell low quality outfits for high prices. But nopony would fall for it if you go to this extreme!” Suri noticed the others were staring at her. “Not that, um, I’ve ever deliberately made low quality outfits that just happened to look good and sold them at inflated prices.”

“That sounds like exactly the kind of thing you’d do,” said Gilda.

“Well, I never!” said Suri in a put-upon voice. “I can’t believe you’d accuse me of something so nasty. Next you’ll be saying that I price gouge.”

At this statement, the others rolled their eyes. However, Trixie’s eyes rolled back so hard that Gilda had to smack her on the back of the head to send them back into place. “Thanks for that,” she muttered.

“Is there any food?” asked Flim. “I am feeling hungry. I just hope the food is better than the clothes.”

One jump cut later…

“I think the food might be even worse than the clothes,” said Flam as he spat the muffin out. “Bleh.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Suri. “But it’s still pretty bad.”

“So!” said Sugar Belle, the pony that had prepared the muffins. “What did you think?”

“I think it was one of the most disgusting bits of food I’ve ever eaten in my life,” said Gilda.

“Now, that’s not fair, Gilda,” said Suri. “It’s still better than that time Trixie made cupcakes.”

“Hey!” said Trixie. “I take offense to that!”

“You’re saying those cupcakes were good?” asked Suri.

“Well, no,” said Trixie. “But I still take offense to that!”

“Well, I admit I’m not a very good baker,” said Sugar Belle. “But I’m confused. A moment ago it sounded like you were disagreeing, and now it sounds like you’re… agreeing.”

“Part of the settlement for that whole mess was for me to have to admit my cupcakes were terrible whenever it’s brought up,” said Trixie.

“I’m still having a hard time understanding,” said Sugar Belle. “Different talents lead to different opinions, which leads to bitterness and misery. So… why aren’t you bitter and…?”

“Hey!” said Sunset. “I’ll have you know my bitterness and misery has nothing at all to do with these guys having different opinions. It has to do with them being annoying! Although, now that I think of it, most of the bitterness and misery in my life as of late has come from guys other than these six…”

“Wait, so you are bitter and miserable?”

“I think ‘pessimistic and annoyed’ is a more apt description of Sunset,” said Flam.

“Okay, this whole thing is stupid now,” said Sunset. “We’ve seen really bad clothes and eaten really bad food. Is the issue with this town lack of competition that thus leads to a stagnant economy and subpar products? Because that could be fixed by bringing in some new businesses to provide an impetus to improve the products.”

Everyone stared at Sunset in confusion.

“Look, I’m just trying to brainstorm here!” she said in exasperation. “But, whatever. Maybe it’s related to the missing cutie marks.”

“Well,” said Sugar Belle nervously, “maybe you could come downstairs soon? And we could talk?” She left.

“I guess we might as well?” said Flim. “Maybe she’s got some super great item to sell.”

“Like edible food, perhaps,” said Gilda.

And so the group went into the basement to find Sugar Belle.

“So why did you want us to come down here?” asked Sunset.

“Is it to sell a diamond?” asked Suri. “Because I love diamonds. As long as I’m buying them at a cheap cost.”

“So you can sell them at an inflated cost,” said Lightning Dust.

“It’s the cost of doing business!”

“To answer the question,” said Sugar Belle, “it’s so nopony can see what is about to happen.”

Two other ponies with creepy smiles who shall be referred to as Party Favor and Night Glider for simplicity walked into the room and approached the group. The group looked fearfully at them until they remembered they had actual combat skills, but shortly before they used any of them, the other ponies suddenly perked up into cheerfulness.

“Are you really the authors of Mare Do Well?” asked Party Favor asked Lightning Dust.

“I love your cutie mark!” said Sugar Belle as she grabbed Trixie. “Erm, in a completely platonic way,” she hastily added after getting a perturbed look.

“How are you friends with different cutie marks?” asked Night Glider.

“Ooh, this one’s also good!” said Sugar Belle as she pointed to Sunset’s before pointing to Lightning Dust and adding, “And this one! I’d love to have my special talent back even for just a day. Make something besides these disgusting muffins…”

“Wait,” said Trixie, “so you called us into the basement so you could become fangirls over our cutie marks?”

“Pretty much,” said Sugar Belle.

“Then why did you say ‘so nopony can see what is about to happen’ in such a sinister-sounding way?”

“Hrm, I suppose it did sound rather odd in retrospect,” mused Sugar Belle.

“But, how are you friends with different cutie marks?” repeated Night Glider. “Doesn’t it cause you to end up hating each other?”

“I don’t think ‘friends’ is the proper–” started Sunset.

“Just go with it,” whispered Flim to Sunset.

“Uh, sure!” said Sunset as she switched tacks. “Friends is the right word! We are friendly friends! The friendliest friendly friends who were ever friendly, and we share the friendliest friendly friendship!”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” said Night Glider.

“Maybe you just didn’t understand it,” said Sunset.

“No, I’m pretty sure it didn’t answer my question.”

“Um… er… well, us being different individuals allowed our own individual talents to combine in order to defeat Tirek and save Equestria.”

“Oh, so you all worked together to do that publicity stunt?” asked Night Glider.

“Um… publicity stunt?” said Sunset.

“Yeah! That was actually really cool to watch! Great special effects!”

“Er… yeah, totally great special effects,” said Lightning Dust. “Let’s get back to–”

“Speaking of Mare Do Well!” said Sugar Belle. “Are Carapace and her ever going to get together?”

“Or will she be with Dr. Film?” asked Night Glider. “Because I always thought even before he became a sort of good guy, they had great chemistry.”

“No way!” said Party Favor. “Didn’t you see the crossover with Power Ponies? Dr. Film and Mane-iac are a way better couple. Mare Do Well should be with that male version of herself from that alternate universe!”

As the three continued arguing, Lightning Dust sighed heavily. “Great. They’re not only fangirls for cutie marks; they’re also shippers.”

“Wait a minute!” said Night Glider in the middle of the argument. “We don’t have to argue! They can tell us!” She turned to Lightning Dust and Trixie. “So! Who will she end up with in the end? It’s Carapace, right? Tell me it’s Carapace.”

“Uh,” said Lightning Dust, “well, we didn’t really plan to introduce any real romantic elements into the story outside of the occasional joke. That would unduly change its tone, plus I don’t think either of us are good at writing romance.”

“Awwwww,” the three said in disappointment.

“Okay, enough about Mare Do Well,” said Sunset. “I really do need to know, how does anypony remove somepony’s cutie mark to begin with?”

“Oh, that?” said Sugar Belle. “Starlight Glimmer uses the Staff of Sameness to take away your Cutie Mark and puts it on a cavern wall. Which we can visit in order to remind ourselves of the heartache of a life with special talents.”

“That makes absolutely no sense, but whatever, let’s just visit it,” said Sunset.

“I’m delighted to learn you’re interested in our cutie mark vault,” said Starlight as she led the group along. “We hope someday every pony in Equestria will make a pilgrimage here to our little village to have theirs removed too, and our message of perfectly equal friendship can finally spread across the land.”

“Well, it might work as a tourist spot, I guess,” said Suri after they had arrived.

“And here is the Staff of Sameness!” said Starlight as she showed them the staff. “It was one of the great mage Meadowbrook’s nine enchanted items. We are incredibly fortunate to have it here. This is–”

“Wait, I thought Meadowbrook only had eight enchanted items,” said Sunset. “And I don’t think any of them were a staff.”

“Well, you should have paid more attention in school,” said Starlight. “Anyway, as I was saying–”

“No, I’m also pretty sure there were only eight,” said Trixie, “and that none of them were the Staff of Sameness. Let me see if I can remember them. The first was the Rod of Trap Detection, right?”

“I thought that belonged to Starswirl,” said Sunset.

“Wasn’t that the Rod of Invincibility?”

“It doesn’t matter!” said Starlight. “As I was saying–”

“Was Meadowbrook the one with the Mystical Dictionary o’ Mysticalness?” asked Trixie.

“No, that was the Magical Dictionary o’ Magicalness,” said Sunset. “And I don’t think it was Meadowbrook.”

“Shut up!” screamed Starlight. “I was in the middle of explaining something!”

“Well, somepony’s grumpy today,” said Flam.

“You know what? Forget the explanation! Just tell me how the topic of the vault came up.”

“Oh, I just asked,” said Sunset. “I was trying to figure out the mechanics of how this worked. Also, there were a few ponies who seemed to miss their marks. But seriously, I don’t think Meadowbrook had a Staff of Sameness. That thing doesn’t even look like a staff, more like a wooden tuning fork.”

“More importantly!” said Flim. “Any chance it’s for sale?”

“No,” said Starlight, “it’s not. So, are you ready to lose your cutie marks?”

“Not particularly,” said Flam.

“Oh, I think I can change your minds,” said Starlight. “Or rather… we can change your minds.”

Everyone looked around. “Who is ‘we’?” asked Gilda.

“Ugh!” said Starlight. “Guys! We rehearsed this! Grab them!”

A number of ponies with weird smiles all came into cavern and surrounded the group.

“Aaah!” screamed Trixie. “I was right! You’re going to turn us into zombies!”

“No, I’m not!” snapped Starlight. “I’m going to show you how much better life is without cutie marks.” Starlight used the staff to quickly remove the cutie marks of Flim, Flam, Sunset, Suri, Trixie, and Lightning Dust one by one and transfer them onto the wall, leaving the six all slightly grayer and groaning.

“Ha!” said Gilda. “I have no cutie mark! You can’t take me out like that!”

Starlight whacked Gilda in the head with the staff instead.

“That works,” muttered Gilda before falling unconscious.

“I don’t blame you for what you tried to do here today,” said Starlight. “You’ve spent your whole lives thinking those marks are a good thing.”

“So if we didn’t like cutie marks, you wouldn’t have blamed us?” asked Suri. “What kind of sense does that make?”

“Shut up,” said Starlight. “Anyway, we’ll teach you just how much better life can be without your cutie marks!”

“You know, I just realized,” said Trixie, “if my life were a film, this would be a really great place to flash up a ‘To Be Continued…’ note, don’t you think?”

The Last Chapter

“Twilight! Twilight!” shouted Discord excitedly as he ran into the throne room holding a large stack of papers.

Twilight looked up from the book she was reading. “What is it, Discord?”

“I’m glad to see you’re not busy!” said Discord. “I was worried maybe you were meeting with Lavender Dust or something. However, I’ve got something way more impressive! I wrote a story, and I think you should read it!”

Twilight looked at the very large stack of paper. “You really wrote all that?”

“Absolutely!” said Discord.

“That’s actually quite a bit. However, why didn’t you ask Fluttershy first?”

“That’s a very good question!” said Discord. “Anyway, this thing’s great! It’s about this alternate universe where everything is all crazy. So instead of you and your friends finding the Elements of Harmony, it’s about how Gilda, Trixie, and some others all got the Elements of Irony. And then they go off on really silly adventures. Oh, and in the story, I visit this place called Acapulco! Never heard of it, but sounds cool. I’ll admit the ending might have been a bit rushed, but on the whole I think the story is pretty good. I was so into it I even wrote three spin-off stories along the way, though in retrospect maybe I could’ve just included them as part of the main story. It was definitely a weird experience to basically write fan fiction for the real world, but it was really exciting.”

Twilight appeared perplexed at this description, but didn’t press the matter. “Did you give a name to it?” she asked.

“Oh, right!” said Discord. “I did come up with a name. It’s called ‘My Little Pony: Friendship Is Absurd.’”

“That sounds–”

“Yep!” said Discord as he broke the fourth wall and turned to look at the reader. “It was all just a story I wrote the entire time! Great twist, eh?”

Twilight stared blankly. “Discord, how is it being a story a twist? I already know it’s a story! You’ve been telling me that!”

“Okay, maybe that part wasn’t such a great twist,” admitted Discord. “I think I might be so excited by my accomplishment that I wasn’t thinking quite clearly.”

“Perhaps more importantly,” said Twilight, “why did you feel the need to break down a wall? That must have been the fifth wall you’ve broken this year!”

“No, I’m pretty sure it was the fourth wall this year,” said Discord. “The one in the kitchen was last year, right?”

“Whether it was the fourth wall or fifth wall you broke isn’t important! Why do you break it?”

“Oh, I just wanted to look at the painting that was in the next room,” said Discord as he gestured through the broken wall towards a painting of a pony in a library reading with the words The Reader written underneath it. “This seemed more efficient than actually going there. But now that I look at the painting, it’s kind of boring, both in name and title.” He snapped his fingers and the painting now had Discord in it about to dump a bucket of water on the pony.

“Discord…” said Twilight in a threatening voice.

“Oh, fine!” said Discord as he snapped his fingers again, restoring the painting to normal and repairing the wall. “There. Good as new.”

Twilight sighed. “While it’s great that you seem to have worked creatively in writing this story, I have to know. How did you get inspiration for all of this, anyway?”

“Actually, I had a major case of writer’s block!” said Discord. “But after I stole… um, borrowed this typewriter I found in the castle, it was as if a spigot opened in my mind! I just wrote and wrote and wrote and couldn’t stop! I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite like that, and before I knew it, it ended up being this long.”

“Wait, that’s where that typewriter went?”

“Well it’s not like anypony was using it,” said Discord.

“Discord,” said Twilight, “that’s a magic typewriter that chronicles what occurs in another universe. Everything you wrote actually happened, just in a different universe.”

Discord stared. “Wait, really?”

“Yes,” said Twilight, “though it picks different universes for each writer. Now, the personality of the writer does end up in the writing, so it would probably end up with some rather odd or chaotic things in the prose. It also would probably skip over things you weren’t particularly interesting. However, all of the events did occur. Given your personality, it probably picked a particularly chaotic universe for you to write about.”

“Huh,” said Discord. “Well, that would explain some odd bits in the narration that didn’t feel like the kind of thing that I would write, like apparent references to things I have never heard of. There were also points where the story seemed to be criticizing my ideas, even when they were actually great ones. I just assumed my writing inspiration was so strong it was overpowering my very mind. This universe sounds great! I should go and write some more and see what’s going on. Not counting the spin-offs, the story’s word count was just under 200,000, so if I make an epilogue or something, it would be able to go over that milestone.”

“You can, but remember it’ll only tell you things you’d find particularly interesting,” said Twilight.

“Oh, that universe was so crazy I’m sure there’s all sorts of things I’d be interested in!” said Discord as he threw his hands up in the air. This, however, had the effect of throwing the papers everywhere. “Um, I’ll leave that to the janitor,” he said before teleporting away.

A short time later…

“This is going to be great!” said Discord as he sat down in front of the typewriter. “I can’t wait to see what kind of crazy adventures they’ve gotten up to!”

Discord put his hands in front of the typewriter and began to type.

And they lived happily ever after.

Discord stopped writing. He stared at the typewriter and his hands, willing them to write more.

“Really? That’s it?”

Suddenly, Discord found inspiration. He wrote a little more.

Well, happily enough that there is no purpose to continue the story.

Discord stopped writing again. He stared at the typewriter and his hands, willing them again to move. Nothing happened. He willed harder. Still nothing happened. After more unsuccessful willing of his hands to write, Discord sighed, slouched back in his chair, and scowled.

“Phooey.”