The rising sun was shining in her good eye as Derpy angled her wings and descended below the rooftops of Ponyville. She had to fight not to close it. Her right eye was useless during a landing; if she closed her left, she knew from experience that she would promptly botch the landing and crash. She couldn’t afford to crash, not when her package was so important.

The word “package” here might be debatable.The brown paper bag carefully folded closed and hanging from her teeth technically qualified, and as packages went this was her favorite in weeks. She could smell its golden aroma as she descended, feel its fresh-from-the-oven warmth, and the struggle not to drool into the paper could not have been more real. So focused on that was she that her hooves hit the ground before she realized it was approaching and she almost crashed anyway. Her wings beat two short, flailing strokes as her hooves stumbled to a clumsy stop.

As landings went, a slightly clumsy one wasn’t bad. She smiled around the paper bag as she straightened her mailmare’s cap and looked up at the inn before her. A second-story window was hidden by a tarp, which she took as proof that this was where Peter was staying. The bell above the front door jingled as she pushed it open.

The pegasus mare at the front desk lifted her head slowly as Derpy stepped into the lobby and fixed her with eyes that wouldn’t fully open. Through some Herculean effort, she forced her mouth into a smile. “Good morning, Miss Mailmare,” she managed. “The boxes are right where they always are.”

“Huh?” It was a high-pitched grunt around the paper bag.

The receptionist’s brow furrowed. One eye closed completely, seizing the chance to rest. “…You are here to drop off some mail, right? The mailboxes are where they always are.”

Derpy’s hoof reached up to her head and found the cap she had straightened not thirty seconds before. “Oh!” she cried, dropping the bag, and snatched the hat off her straw-colored mane. “No, sorry! I’m actually looking for somepony. Could you tell me which room Peter Parker is in? Oh,” she added as she watched the receptionist’s smile collapse like a house of cards and her eye twitch involuntarily. “What’s wrong?”

The receptionist opened her mouth—the shape of her first word was a harsh, irritated one that already tugged at Derpy’s feathers—but the door to the stairwell creaked open and she stopped before she had begun. Both pegasai looked towards it as a beige Earth pony, head low, shoulders slumped, shambled into the room like a walking corpse. His mud-colored mane stuck up in the front as he carried a coffee mug between his teeth; his eyes were dead and sunken. Still, he stumbled a familiar route to the coffee machine and was starting to fiddle with it when a groan made his ears twitch and drew his eyes toward the front desk.

“Have you been there all night?” he asked the mare he found there in a slow, half-asleep voice.

She, apparently, was awake enough to glare. “I’m not allowed to turn in,” she said flatly, “while there’s still ponies coming into the lobby. I told you that the last time you came down here. And the time before that.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” cried Peter, and as he forced himself out of his stupor he sounded like he meant it. “You should’ve hit me or something! I—shvantz, I didn’t realize—it’s probably too late now, dammit. I—uh—you want me to make you a cup too?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned back to the coffeepot and pulled another mug in front of him; for a moment he worked with urgency, hooves shaking with sleeplessness, but his movement slowed and stopped as his nose caught an unfamiliar scent. He turned to the side. “What smells like muffins?” he asked the air, and then his gaze landed on his answer.

Derpy gave him an uncertain wave, standing at a cautious distance as though unsure he wouldn’t explode. “Good morning, Peter,” she said around the paper bag.

Peter’s eyes widened until the whites seemed pink with veins. He almost fell away from the coffee machine as his face broke into a grin. “Derpy!” he exclaimed, jolting forward to meet her. “What—it’s great to see you! G’morning! Wha, wha, what’re you doin’ here? I mean I’m glad you are, but what’s up?” Even as he spoke, his eyes drifted down towards the bag. The shine of drool appeared at the corner of his mouth; he paused to wipe at it with a hoof.

Derpy grinned at the action, setting the bag back down between them. “Timey and I thought you might want to have breakfast with us,” she said as she opened it. “I didn’t realize you had stayed up all night. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I do it all the time.”

If he had more to say--and judging by the look on his face, he did--he kept mum. Derpy leaned away, concerned at his casual tone of voice, but she considered and straightened uneasily. “Well…okay…then do you want to come anyway? We made muffins, see.” In demonstration, she pulled a single poppy seed muffin from the bag, the pastry warm on her hoof and the aroma filling the room. Peter took a deep breath as she held it out for him, and his eyes widened in longing.

“I…” He shook himself out of his trance even as she swayed the muffin back and forth like a pendulum. The receptionist leaned forward, unnoticed by all but waiting with bated breath for his answer. “I can’t. I’d love to, Derpy, but I’m onto something. With my studies, I mean. I’ve been working all night, I think I’m on the edge of something big, I need to write—“ He looked genuinely remorseful as she lowered the muffin an inch. His mouth kept going, trying to salvage the pleasantries. “Thank you, though. I’m really grateful you—“

But Derpy simply nodded, giving him a smile. “I understand,” she said. “We just thought you’d appreciate the gesture.”

“I do. I do! It’s just thaamph.”

Derpy had pushed the muffin an inch into his open mouth; he instinctively bit down on it, holding it there as she took her hoof away. “Well, take the muffin anyway,” she said, “and try to take a nap soon, okay? Even if you’re on fire. All-nighters are bad for you.” She gave him a last smile before starting for the door. It was best not to push it, she had decided. Bonnie had called him selfish, almost a week ago now, but between the way he had been implying self-contempt and the distance he had made between himself and them, she knew hurting when she saw it. Trying to force an issue would only make things worse for everyone; the best they could do was be there for him and let him open up on his own terms.

Peter watched her start to go, his eyes occasionally flickering down towards the pastry in his mouth as he tried not to melt in bliss at its taste. He reached up and pulled most of the muffin from his mouth, chewing on the first bite as he stared down at it. His eyes were wide, the pupils mere pinpricks in seas of hazel. His throat bobbed slowly as he swallowed.
His eyes flickered towards the receptionist, who was loudly and irritably straightening up her desk with a distinct air of Go AWAY. Wincing, he returned his attention to the muffin, then the mare who had given it to him. The door was closing behind her. His heart skipped a beat: he jerked forward. “Wait!”

The ticking of clocks almost silenced the sound of the door closing, but Dinky happened to be looking at the front door anyway. Her face split into the grin only kids have, the one that comes easily for lack of weathering. Derpy smiled back as Dinky waved.

“Morning, sweetie,” she called as she hung her hat by the door. She returned Dinky’s enthusiastic wave. “How’s breakfast coming?”

“Come see!” her daughter cried, dashing out of sight. There was the sound of magic and a confused noise before she returned, a tray of steaming muffins hovering above her head. “Daddy said we have to wait for them to finish cooling, but they smell so good! We made more poppy seed, and some blueberry, and—“ Her words caught in her throat as she finally noticed the beige Earth pony standing nervously just behind her mother. “…Um. Hello, who’re you?”

The young stallion gave her an awkward smile as a flour-stained Time-Turner appeared around the corner. “Hey. I’m a friend of your parents.” As Dinky blinked at this, Peter glanced away and leaned towards Derpy. “That’s right, right? We’re friends?”

Derpy lightly nudged him with a wing, bemused. “Well, duh,” she said; a smile crept into her face and voice. “Dinky, this is Peter. He just moved here a few days ago, so we’re trying to make him feel welcome. Peter, Dinky. I think you two will like each other; you both stay up too late reading.”

“’Too late reading?’ Blasphemy.” Peter managed to dig a spark of bravado out of that joke, and so when he stepped closer to Dinky and offered his hoof to shake he did so with his shoulders squared. “Nice to meet you, Dinky.”
The unicorn didn’t respond. She stared at the beige hoof with widening eyes and slow horror, and Peter winced and sighed as he realized it was recognition in her eyes. She looked up at him sharply as he lowered his hoof; she took rapid steps back and, in her panic, her horn flickered.

The family didn’t even see his hooves move, barely saw the tray start to fall; all they knew was that Peter was suddenly bouncing it between his forehooves with cries of “Ach—hot—hot!” He grabbed a short side of the tray, rotated it in midair, and shoved it forward. It soared through the air above Dinky’s head and landed on the counter between the front room and the kitchen, where it slid until Turner’s hoof stopped it from falling off the other side. Taking his hoof away and shaking away the heat, he looked up and gave his wife and friend a quick smile.

Dinky was still staring up at Peter. His actions with the tray had only compounded her fear; behind her eyes she could see the unnatural dodging of the cloaked pony that had crawled across her ceiling like a living nightmare. The quick and sticky hooves of the Spider were the same color as the Earth pony who stood in front of her now; as she continued backpedaling she managed, with a voice rapidly rising in pitch, “You’re the—Mommy, he’s—no no don’t come closer…!!”

And Peter stopped, setting those quick and sticky hooves down and standing as though on the edge of a precipice. He looked down at her with no malice, just a discomfort and helplessness. Slowly he turned around to face Derpy; he mouthed something apologetic before her hoof brushed his shoulder as she passed.

“Dinky,” she whispered, sweeping her daughter into a warm wing. “He’s our friend. This is the friend Daddy and I went back to help, remember?”

“He’s a spider,” Dinky hissed back, on the edge of tears. “He's—no—”
The look her mother aimed at her was the kind of calm but disappointed understanding that all children simultaneously crave and dread. “He’s not a spider,” she retorted, a little louder as she pulled Dinky closer. “He calls himself ‘the Spider’ when he’s trying to help ponies, and he doesn’t want to be recognized.”

“It’s working amazingly so far,” Peter butted in. “So far only like a gazllion peo—ponies have figured it out.”
Derpy glanced back at him with a quick, encouraging smile. Dinky had been taken off-guard by the joke and giggled. “See?” said the pegasus, looking down at her daughter, “he’s not so bad. Just a pony with powers. He’s basically a superhero, Dinky!”

“Nah, I got kicked out of the superhero club when I forgot to pay a parking ticket and got a bad haircut.”

“I don’t read superhero comics,” Dinky whispered, her face a hybrid of uncertainty and indignation.

Derpy sighed, slackening her wing. “Well, give him a chance anyway, okay? Just remember, he saved you a few days ago. And he’s our friend.”

Dinky nervously looked back at Peter, who gave her an awkward half-wave and equally awkward smile. “I guess,” she said eventually. Peter’s eyes lit up as he followed her around the counter and into the kitchen/dining room combo. She didn’t take her eyes off of him, not even as her dad took the tray off the counter with a potholder in his teeth and walked between them on his way to the table. “But—but he’s—you’re not sitting next to me,” she stammered out as Peter followed. “You’re sitting on the other side of the table…please?”

“Fine by me,” said Peter as he trotted past and towards the dining room table. “I prefer having a side to myself anyway. I like the elbow room.”

She sat stiffly along a long side of the rectangular table as her parents took either of the short sides. Derpy had snatched a muffin off the tray before her husband had set ti down and was already in the process of buttering it as Peter slid into place at the remaining free side of the table. He glanced at either of the other adults before he grabbed a blueberry muffin and ate it in two bites. Ardently he reached for another as Dinky slowly pulled a paperback with a cracked spine from the counter and propped it in front of her.

“Dinky,” said Turner, without looking up from the cup of steaming tea he poured, “what did we say about reading at the table?”

Dinky was chewing on a mouthful of poppy seed muffin as her eyes darted across the page. When she swallowed, she didn’t look up as she said, “I forget. Was it that it was good multitasking practice?”

As Peter snorted and almost choked on his bite, Derpy and Turner exchanged a look. “I think the exact phrase we used was ‘Don’t,’” smiled the pegasus. She slowly reached over and tried to take the book. Her daughter hissed and grabbed it with both hooves.

“ButI’monthebestpart!” she cried, fighting valiantly in her side of the tug-of-war. “Hazel Field just snuck into the bad guy’s mansion during a big party! She’s about to go into the basement! What if she’s captured?! What if—Mooommm!” she whined as it was finally wrested from her grip.

Derpy set the book on the ground and under her leg. “Hazel Field will still be there when breakfast is over,” she said firmly. “Right, Petey?”

Peter, who had leaned his chin on his forehoof and watched this struggle with a veiled smirk, immediately said, “Don’t call me Petey.” He held his mouth open as her question caught up with him. “Uh, actually, I’m on Dinky’s side here,” he said as his smirk renewed. “When I was a kid I used to read at the table all the time. My aunt used to get on my case every time, it was hilarious. I mean, I was usually reading a textbook or some pretentious novel like Dune, but—wait, what was that?”

Derpy looked up from her facehoof and Turner leaned forward with concern as Peter’s eyes swept over the table, the kitchen, the room. “What was what?” asked Turner, but Peter hadn't heard; he was listening for the muffled, high-pitched sound that his twitching ears had caught. The hair of his forelegs shifted like windswept grass as his eyes narrowed in concentration and settled on the back door, where he had heard the noise; he stared at it for a second, worry on the rise as he heard the sound again on the other side.

And then the doorknob glowed briefly and the lock turned open of its own accord.

Peter’s eyes snapped open; he launched himself over the table as spider-sense made a note like a unicorn horn. He turned a single front flip above the table, snatching a fork off of Dinky’s side as the filly shrieked and ducked in terror. His body was built now so he landed naturally in a crouch between the table and the back door, fork stuck to one hoof and ready as the door was thrown open. He tensed, ready to fight, no not these people you won't touch them don't you DARE—

Vinyl jerked backwards, almost falling on her butt before she had made it through the door. “GAH! Sweet Celestia, Peter! Gonna give me a heart attack, jeez.” As Peter blinked at her appearance and his fork hoof lowered, she got back to her hooves and gave him a weird look as she walked around him. “Nice to see you, tho. How’d the Applejack thing go? Oh, hey guys!”

Dinky’s wide eyes flickered from her to the awkwardly standing Peter a few times, her breathing still quick and frightened. Vinyl waved a hoof in front of her face as though attempting to break a trance, but it was less that than the way Peter stepped back, looking away. “Good morning, Aunt Vinyl,” she whispered eventually with a hesitant smile, and Vinyl’s widened a full inch when she heard the honorary title.

“Morning, Vinyl,” Turner said with a half-smile. “Do come in, no need to stand around outside.”

“Huh? Turner, I am ins—oh, I getcha. Whoops. Haha, should I go back out and knock? Morning, Derpster.” As Derpy gave her a smile and Turner began to reply, Peter looked down at the fork in his hoof and turned to the kitchen with a sickly feeling of shame.

His hooves were shaking as he plugged the sink and began filling it with warm water, pulling the batter-filled bowl closer on the counter. He took a deep breath and planted his hooves firmly on the edge. Peter focused on the sink so intently that, had a candle been behind his eyes, the water would’ve boiled. It almost did anyway.

When it was deep enough and soap suds swirled on its surface, Peter shut the faucet off and dropped the bowl into the sink, fishing the sponge out and beginning to scrub. He felt stupid. Spider-sense had barely gone off; he should've known it was just being weird when its tingling had brought to mind the sound of unicorn magic. Spider-sense was a twitchy bastard outside of actual combat, and sometimes even in it: it didn't like surprises, it wasn't fond of the unknown, and it didn't care what someone’s allegiance was if they were potentially dangerous. He’d understood that it reacted to anything that could maybe be a threat—hypervigilance did that to one's danger sense, apparently.

He had known all this. He understood his spider-sense. And yet he felt more absurdly sensitive to it than ever, the barest twinge sending him over the table and into a fighting stance, ready to maim whoever was about to threaten the Hooves family—he had been an inch away from stabbing Vinyl, another friend, with a fork. Peter's scrubbing slowed and stopped as it sank in how quickly he had become again the violent vigilante who had crippled Stan Carter.

“Our last fight. You b-broke my c-clavicle, my jaw, my inner ear…” It looked like he had broken far more than that. The man before him leaned heavily on a cane with one hand; his other held out an espresso and shook so violently that the steaming black inside the mug threatened to scald him. Carter's voice was louder than you'd think appropriate, but that was forgivable—he had gone partly deaf. “...oy, I was a wreck. B-but you d-d-did right. I d-deserved it. C-coffee?”

Peter clasped his hooves in front of him as he remembered the punches he had thrown that night. The sound of cracking bones echoed in his ears, and a broken voice begging him to stop that had—at the time—only enraged him further. If Daredevil hadn't been there, Peter was certain he would've beaten Carter to death. He felt sick to his stomach. Just as he had the first time he had seen his work.

“No. Don't you dare.” His jaw clenched under the mask; as much to steady his own aim as anything, he jabbed a finger forward. “Don't you dare lay a guilt trip on me. Not when you've got a manager ready to try making money for you—!”

“Still d-down there? He's no manager of mine. B-b-books. Talk shows. He won't g-go away.” His offering hand had lowered as Carter spoke. He rolled his jaw, as though testing if it still worked; Peter wanted to throw up. “He wants me to live off of the horrible things I d-d-did. When I think of those p-people. Of Jean…” DeWolff. Peter focused on the name, this man had murdered Jean DeWolff, but his building anger was snuffed out by the look of remorse on Carter’s face. “Oh, Spider-Man, d-don't feel guilty. I d-deserved what you did to me. Every c-cracked b-bone, every lost tooth, the internal b-bleeding, the—”

“Uh, Peter?”

Peter jumped as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn't, like looking at porn or cheating on his taxes. He turned halfway, forcing his face into a neutral expression, but the problem with a mask is that one has no need to practice a poker face, and he was sure his shame showed through like lantern light. “Yeah?” he said, keeping his voice steady.

Vinyl, Derpy, and Turner were all staring at him; Dinky, seizing upon her mother's distraction, was not-so-subtly stealing her book back with magic. Vinyl was standing at the counter several feet behind him, a cabinet above her open, and had apparently noticed him in the middle of fiddling with a coffee maker consisting of a glass flask topped with a funnel. Her head was tilted almost forty-five degrees. “What are you doing?” she said.

Peter forced a smile that didn't meet his eyes and stepped away from the sink. “Wallowing in embarrassment,” he said with a careful upbeat tone. “I wanted to get my daily angsting out of the way early.”

“Are you doing the dishes?” Derpy asked, standing. “Why? Breakfast isn’t even over yet. You barely ate.”

“Well…” Peter glanced back at the sink. “I mean, I wanted to be helpful…”

“That’s nice of you,” said Turner, but his face said it was more perplexing than anything. “...And, um, if you want to help after breakfast, we’d be glad to let you. But would you like to actually finish eating first?” Before Peter had actually answered Turner beckoned him with a hoof. “Vinyl, you too. Dinky and I made too many anyw—Oi! Dinky!”

As Peter sauntered back towards the table and Turner quietly urged his stepdaughter to put the book away, Vinyl dumped black grounds into the filter she had stuffed into the coffeemaker’s funnel and poured what was left in the teapot into it. “Anyone else want any?” she asked the room at large. “Derpy? No? How ‘bout you, Peter?”

Peter froze mid-step, but only for a second, as a wince shot up his face. The shaking, steaming mug of espresso flashed before his eyes again and his lips grew thin as piano wire. “Oy,” he breathed. “Y’know what, I think I’m good. Thanks anyway, Vinyl.”

Breakfast went well, or at least Peter thought so. Vinyl was sat on the other side of the table and she seemed to spit crumbs at him every time she spoke, and Derpy seemed to push a little too hard to involve Peter in the conversation, but he had enjoyed the meal, and being able to chat a little with a few of his—his friends. Normalcy had long left him; in the course of having plunged headfirst into the life of a superhero, of the daily patrols, of sprinting past the wheatcakes on the table and after the bus, of what few friendships he had being careful, spun-glass affairs and conversations often as not devolving into “Where have you been, why weren't you there, where did that bruise come from,” of the battles and blood and bodies at his feet, he had waved goodbye to normalcy years ago. But the illusion over these few hours was wonderful. Oh, and so was the food.

He might have caught Vinyl’s looks of contemplation had he not been deliberately trying to relax. She occasionally found herself staring at him thoughtfully. His movements were a little sharper, a little quicker than an ordinary pony’s, and he seemed uncomfortably conscious of this, but he masked it carefully (if not especially well) and put on a stiff upper lip. Every word out of his mouth during the meal seemed to be a wry remark, although never an attacking one—indeed, several times she had laughed at one of his comments hard enough to choke on her food.

The look of horrified concern that flashed across his face when this happened was cause for ponder as well. If it weren’t for the hoof she flung up to signal she was fine, she thought he would’ve sprinted around the table to administer the Heimlich maneuver. Altogether, she thought, what she had here was a stallion who would do the dishes, who was funny, apparently brilliant, maybe ~~a little~~ ~~somewhat~~ pretty awkward, but had repeatedly displayed a sense of compassion and altruism that he seemed to prioritize above all else. She hummed around a bite of baked breakfast with blueberry as she squinted one eye at him.

A little louder than she had intended, maybe. All heads turned towards her a few seconds before she realized. “Hmm?” repeated Derpy curiously. “What’s up, Vinyl?”

She didn’t seem to hear for a moment. Then her ears flicked and she swallowed her bite. “Huh? Oh, I was just thinking...Peter, can I do you a favor?”

“A favor? Well, if you must, I could probably endure it.” Peter considered that joke as he scooted forward. “...That sounded dumb. What d’ya need?”

“Well, it’s not what I need,” said Vinyl, and Derpy and Turner exchanged a worried look.

Piano music poured into the outside world as Vinyl stepped through the front door; she stood at the threshold, listening, swaying in place. The notes plinked like rain on a window, and she smiled and closed her eyes as the melody washed over her. Eyes still closed, she wandered left, into the living room, following the music.

She was finally forced to open her eyes upon reaching the piano, and the mare before her still hadn’t seemed to notice. Octavia had her back to Vinyl as she played, hooves stretching over the keys and producing a song almost two centuries old--Goronidey’s love letter to the moon. Vinyl listened in silence for a minute, but the piece was designed for a unicorn, and so Octavia’s recital could only be so complete. This needed remedied. “Tavi.”

There was no indication that Octavia had heard.

Vinyl squinted at this. Slowly a hoof reached out and tapped her friend’s side, just beneath the foreleg. “Tavi. Scootch.”

The mare glanced behind her when the hoof rapped her side, and when she saw Vinyl her brow rose in surprise. She scooched to the left on the piano bench, allowing Vinyl to sit to her right; the unicorn clambered into the seat, spread her hooves across the higher half of the keyboard, and lit her horn. Choice keys lit with it and she began to fill in where Octavia neglected.

They played in silence for a while; the piano spoke for both of them. The way the song was structured meant that the mares passed the melody back and forth like a volleyball. And while Vinyl had far more dexterity with which to play complex melodies, the cellest was in her element among the lower keys, and this genre of music was the one almost literally in her soul. The unicorn found herself struggling to match and keep up with her.

It was during one of the moments when Octavia had the melody that Vinyl chanced a look at her. The mare was focused completely on the filed hooves crawling along the keys before her, her eyes half-closed and her body swaying to the tune. Her ears, though, lay almost flat, as though held there by a hat or stupidly heavy earrings. Vinyl craned her neck when she noticed a hint of orange beneath the cupped organ; it started to glow as she focused on it, and then she pulled out a spongey earplug.

“...Well if it sounds that bad,” joked a puzzled Vinyl as Octavia’s head turned slightly towards her and the ear rose, “maybe you should consider not pushing any keys. 4’33” is nice. Why not.”

Octavia smiled at the joke, but it was a small one, just the barest tug at the lips. Her voice was soft, almost meditative as she said, “Beethoofen was deaf when he wrote his magnum opus. One of the greatest works of music in the history of our art, and its composer couldn’t hear a note he wrote.”

“Lucky guy,” Vinyl joked, and then the melody switched to her. “Whoops! Unlike him, I have heard it. A lot. Hours of my life I’m never gonna get back. Someday you’re gonna wear out that record, y’know—ow.”

Octavia withdrew her hoof from the back of Vinyl’s head and returned it to the keyboard in the exact moment it needed to catch the song’s momentum from the unicorn. “He must have felt the music. Maybe in the absence of the noise of everyday, he listened to the stirring in his soul and wrote what his magic told him.” She leaned over the keys, bringing her hooves together as a measure of lows shot through the piece like a shower of cold comets. “Could I do that? Without my hearing, could I write a song that means anything? I want to say yes. I want to be able to make music out of my heartbeat…”

Vinyl chewed her lips as the melody slept. Her own hooves rushed to the highest octaves and played two alternating, dancing notes, lone twinkling stars in a sky momentarily gone silent. Then Octavia dropped back into the piece, Vinyl’s hooves descended to midrange, and she said, “I take it things aren’t going well.”

“No.” The syllable sounded as flat as the lowest C. “I...I deafened myself, I sat down to create something, and all that's coming out is Goronidey’s Imperatritsa nochi.” The notes beneath Octavia’s hooves grew impatient as she muttered, half to herself, “This isn't composing, this is barely a recital. I’m nothing without my cello.”

Vinyl’s eyes slowly, deliberately, and pointedly rolled up and back. “No. No. Stop being stupid. You’re a talented pianist and excellent with the violin and guitar. You’re just more about accuracy than creativity when you’re using those because you’re a cellist first. And you only feel bad at these because you’re a genius with the cello. That's your outlet. When’s the new one supposed to get here, anyway?”

“Today or tomorrow, but—” Her hooves on the piano grew more frantic. The piece went into an unwritten accelerando as she continued, “What if, Vinyl, when the new cello finally gets here, and I just—the notes won't—ow!”

It was Vinyl’s turn to jump back to the piano after giving a much-needed dope slap. “Right,” she said. “Because your entire childhood of watching your dad play, all your years of training, your special talent are going to be completely nullified by like four days without practicing. Of course.” If she had been struggling to keep up before, it was almost impossible now; she focused on the piano desperately and skipped notes where she could. “Look, you're pent up. Not stuck. This happens every time you don't practice for a few days. Mark my words, when that new cello’s in your hooves,
all this is gonna--wait, have you been drinking?”

“I had a few shots of vodka, yes.” Octavia’s focus remained locked on the piano. “It’s not like I had a lot of alternatives. City hall turned off our water this morning, did you know that?”

“Yeah, I know. That's why I went out begging for coffee.” Vinyl’s voice was sour as she thought about it. This was a serious problem; the last of their savings had been spent on ordering Octavia’s replacement cello, and although Vinyl was expecting a check from their agent soon, it certainly wouldn’t be enough to pay the bill. “...Which is just horse apples. We’re only like a week overdue—gah. That isn’t the point.” She flashed Octavia a quick glare as she said, “You promised you weren’t gonna drink before noon anymore. If you keep this up you’re going to end up like your dad.”

“I will not. It takes effort to fail that utterly.” They were both silent for a moment before Octavia continued with a worried edge, “What are we going to do? I mean, seriously? We need water.”

“I dunno. Crash at Lyra and Bonnie’s? We could maybe borrow money from Turner to--”

“I am not. Borrowing money. From Time-Turner.” Each phrase was punctuated by a note that wasn't meant to be staccato.

Vinyl ground her teeth. “Come on. The minute,” she snarled, “the minute you realized who his parents were, you were trying to make him get back in contact with them!”

“That was two years ago!” Octavia snapped back. However, it was mostly to herself that she added, “I'm not that mare anymore.”

It was a back-and-forth argument, a cycle they had done many times before. Vinyl would argue that merely asking for help wasn't manipulation; Octavia would argue that Turner was too polite to ask for the money back, which in her mind blurred the line. Vinyl took a deep breath before deciding to skip it. “This is just what I wanted to talk to you about. You’re way too wound up, you’re upset, and you really need to do something fun. So I went and set you up on a date with—”

The wrong note made them both jump and cringe violently; Vinyl’s ears had gone flat like an angry cat’s as Octavia looked on the edge of a heart attack. She pulled her hooves away from the traitorous piano as though expecting it to bite. Then it was like she heard Vinyl’s casual declaration a second time, for she turned to her with an air of disbelief. “You what?” she demanded. Her practiced, Turner-coached Received Pronunciation had given way to her natural Baltimare accent. “Again?!”

“No, no, it's cool!” Vinyl held up her hooves defensively. “It's just Peter! I was chatting with him earlier, he seems like he’d be your type! So I went ahead and asked him to have dinner with ya. He said yes.”

“For the love of—you Nightmarish—I wish you would ask ME first! Aaggh!” Octavia slid off the seat and cantered away from her; for a second Vinyl thought she was going for the vodka again, but then the mare simply whirled and jabbed a hoof at her. “You always do this! You always just...go ahead and make plans for me!”

“Yeah, because if I didn’t, you’d never do anything!” Vinyl hopped off the seat as well and trotted to face Octavia. “Ever since the Gala you’ve been trying to go all ‘shut-in crazy composer’ on us! When was the last time you did something that, one, had nothing to do with finding new work, two, didn’t involve me or any of the others, and three, you decided to do of your own accord?” Octavia opened her mouth to reply, but stopped there. Her violet, slightly bloodshot eyes flickered down as her mind raced. At last she closed her mouth and Vinyl continued, “Exactly. So come on, have some fun tonight. You used to like going on dates, remember, and frankly Peter’s a pretty great guy. You could really do worse than him.”

“So why don’t you date him?” Octavia snapped, aggressive again.

“Well, for one, I get out and do stuff all the time. Also, he’s not my type at all. Also also, I'm not interested in finding lurve or whatever, and you kinda are.”

“...And?”

Vinyl pursed her lips. Octavia was good at realizing what hadn't been said, and now was no exception. She chewed on the sentence for a second before letting it out a bit at a time. “And I think he...might be...crazy.”

There it was, Octavia nodded. “You’re terrible,” she said as she sat down. “You're utterly terrible. Friends don't set friends up on dates with probably-crazy ponies.” A thought struck her. “And where exactly were you imagining this would take place? We don't have money!”

“No worries!” Vinyl put her hooves up in a pacifying gesture, before she walked forward until she was almost nose to nose with her roommate. “Soda Pop still owes me a solid, remember? I'll ask ‘er to let you guys eat free. And maybe-crazy, not probably. Come on, Tavi, just one date. And with a superhero! Even if it doesn't work out, or it goes fine but you two decide you're better as friends, you'll be able to say it for the rest of your life. ‘I dated a superhero.’”

Octavia’s shoulders rolled back as she blew out a slow breath. Looking away, towards the piano again, she chewed her lip in silent contemplation. It was true, she did enjoy dating, and it had been a while since she had done anything unrelated to music that she enjoyed. Maybe it would loosen up the pipes. “Alright,” she said. “Fine. One date. The next time you do this, you have to ask me first.”

“Pshaw. ‘Next time.’” Vinyl stood, trotting past Octavia and affectionately nudging her on the way past. “How do you know there’s gonna be a next time, Tavi? For all you know, he’s the one!”

Octavia cackled. Straight-up cackled.

“I’m being stupid. It’s not like I’ve never dated before.”

The wrought-iron frame of the carriage creaked above him.

“It’s not even like I’ve never been set up on a date before!” Peter cried, dropping his borrowed wrench. Spider-sense twinged and he turned his head, allowing it to land in the shaded grass next to him. “That’s how I met Mary-Jane, and that turned out great! I still don’t know if she got that jackpot line from somewhere…”

This time the broken carriage he was lying under had no reply. He puffed out a cheek absentmindedly as he considered the structure. The axle he had smashed in half—both sides of which now propped up the back of the cart—could be replaced pretty easily, as could the corner that had been grinding along the ground as a result. The braking system above him, however, was so old and damaged that he was amazed that it had worked as long as it had. It wouldn’t be enough to replace the wheel clamps; Filthy Rich would have to order replacements for the entire system. Better yet, Peter could design a more efficient version for him, although custom parts would probably be more expensive.

He was only half-focused on this, however. The other half of his brain was focused on the arrangement he had uncertainly agreed to that morning. And that half of his brain was apparently the one that controlled his mouth.

“And I mean, yeah, I tried to get out of that,” he said as he stared up at the bent, broken metal, front legs tucked up to his chest. “But once I met MJ, I was totally swept off my feet! I’ve got a pretty great track record where first dates are concerned, actually! Gwen didn’t blow up in my face until later, MJ was fantastic...so what’s up, Parker?”

A bit of dirt dropped off the bottom of the cart and fell into his eye. He hissed in pain, closing and rubbing at it, as he grabbed at the wrench with his other hoof. Returning to his work, he kept his eye squeezed tightly shut and pondered silently.

“Maybe that’s the problem,” he said eventually. “Mary-Jane was totally in charge for that date. ‘Hey, let’s dance, Petey!’ ‘Hey, the news says that Rhino guy is tearing up Manhattan, let’s go watch!’ ‘Oh, you have to go disappear and take photos? Tell him to say cheese!’ ‘Oh, you totally missed it, Spider-Man showed up. What a coincidence. And no, I’m not freaked out by all t-the people that that fight killed or-or injured. A-are you?’” He bit both lips as he loosened a bolt and pulled the broken brakes a little further away from the carriage bottom. “...You liar, MJ. You’re worse than me. But—but Octavia’s not MJ. Like, whoever she turns out to be when she turns the charm on, she’s not gonna be MJ.” Another bolt dropped out onto the grass. Peter squirmed closer to the next one. “...And I mean...I don’t think I want her to be?”

That. That was the problem, he realized. Peter slowly lowered the wrench as the image of the redhead danced out of his memories. They had broken up months ago, in the worst circumstances imaginable, but he still only had to think of the first night they danced--well, she danced, guiding his feet and laughing good-naturedly at every mistake--to turn into a swooning, lovestruck mess again. Her smile lit up her green eyes, but that beaming face couldn’t seem to separate itself in his mind’s eye from the sobbing girl who had held him in her shaking arms only a week ago, feeling his heart slow and stop. It beat fast now as he thought for long, difficult moments about the party girl, the girl who had known all along, and who had confided so much in him in return.

“Why would I want to replace Mary-Jane?” he whispered to the creaking carriage. The hair of his forelegs stood on end as grass crunched a few feet away. “She was wonderful.” His voice was weak as he repeated, “Dammit, she was wonderful.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Peter’s jaw snapped shut in embarrassment. “Myself,” he said. “It’s a guaranteed source of intelligent conversation. Plus it keeps my jaw in shape in case I find myself in a gum-chewing conte—JESU—!”

His hooves stuck to the carriage frame; in one motion he shot out from under it headfirst like from a slingshot; one hoof latched onto the wall of the carriage and his path curved upward as he swung over its side and onto the roof. All this took less than a fourth of a second; then he was standing on the roof with his legs tensed and peering down at the mint-green pony below, whose golden eyes had snapped up at the blindingly fast maneuver and stared in awe—

And his stance relaxed. “Oh,” he said, “hey Lyra.”

Her lips were pursed stupidly as she tried to process what she had just barely seen. Eventually they curled into an awestruck grin as she said, “That was awesome!”

But Peter was mortified, and he looked away as he lightly stepped off the roof and landed on the grass beside her. At least this one hadn’t been violent, but it was the second time that day that something sudden or unexpected had rocketed him into fight-or-flight mode. He stared down at his shuffling hooves as Lyra rambled about something. If his sensory perception was a little slower, he didn’t want to consider what might have happened before he had realized who he was threatening. The thought sent shivers through him...oh, Lyra had stopped talking. Peter hastily turned back in and looked up at her. “Crap, sorry, what? What was all that?”

Lyra blinked as she realized he hadn’t been listening. She gaped at him for a second, offended, before beginning with a sharp edge, “I saaaiiid it’s really cool how good you are with your powers. And I was asking how you got them. Again.”

“I thought we agreed not to talk about that in public.”

Lyra’s entire face furrowed. She gave a wild gesture to the carriage with both forehooves, as though yelling about his stunt immediately prior. Her face cleared as she added, in a far less aggressive tone, “And anyway, nopony’s around. We’re probably fifty meters away from the closest one. We could yell at each other that you’re the Spider and nopony would hear a thing.”

That was true, Peter realized as he looked around. He had left the cart where he had set it when saving Filthy Rich and co., and by and large the citizens of Ponyville were on the other side of the creek, in the town proper. “...Alright. Fine. What do you wanna know?”

“Like, anything!” She followed him back to the carriage and craned her neck as he crawled back under it and rolled onto his back. “Cuz all that stuff you said the other day made no sense. What do banners have to do with spider powers? Are they even actually spider powers, or are they something else entirely? I mean, I think that’s silly, because why would you name yourself after spiders if you didn’t get powers from spiders—”

“One spider, actually.”

“Okay, there we go! Yes! That’s the sort of stuff I wanted to know!” Lyra grinned down at Peter’s hind legs—all that poked out from under the cart—as he chewed his lip beneath. “...I kinda wanna know more, though…”

Peter sighed, letting his head fall onto the grass beneath it. He set down the wrench again and rolled back onto his chest, crawling back out into the open. As he stood up and Lyra dashed around the carriage to meet him, he stared at the sky and collected his thoughts with one eye closed. “A few years ago,” he began tentatively, “I went to this science exhibition near my high school. There was this demonstration in recent advances in, um, do you know what genetic engineering is?” When Lyra shook her head brightly, he huffed. “Right. Well, basically, sticking the traits of one plant or animal into another. The professor explained that they were using radiation to speed up its effects, control it ‘right there in the laboratory.’ So, as part of their demonstration, they’d made a really...really...special spider. It escaped. It bit me.”

He had stopped walking at the back of the carriage. His lips pursed as Lyra (who had kept trotting for several seconds before realizing) thought about his speech, eyes darting back and forth as if reading. At last she said, “You were bitten by a mutant spider?”

“Don’t use mutant like that!” Peter snapped suddenly, stomping a hoof that could crack a boulder in half. Lyra recoiled, eyes wide and surprised, as he continued, “They’ve reclaimed that word, you can’t throw it around willy-nilly! Use mutate, or mutated! Yes, I was bitten by a mutated spider. Mutated, irradiated, blah-de-blah, and the next day I woke up...like this. Well, not like this. Some of the changes were a little slower. Spider-sense was basically a no-show for about a week, it was a few months before I stopped needing glasses, that sort of thing, but the main parts were there. I’d changed.” He shrugged. “Look, I really need to get back to work. You can stick around if you want, but I’m gonna be a bit useless if you have questions.”

“Okay.” Lyra followed him a few more steps before he slid under the carriage once again, this time moving on his back like the world’s strangest crab. “…I do have questions, though. What’s radiation? And—and what do you mean, they’ve reclaimed the word ‘mutant’? Who’s they?”

“Oh, right, you guys don’t have—“

“And what’s spider-sense? I’ve never heard of that. Is it something to do with all their extra eyes? Or are you telling me spiders have ESP? Ooh, I hope they don’t, I’ve said a lot of weird stuff when cleaning under the couch. And, oh no, that’d mean they’d have known what Bonnie was up to when she got her hairspray and a match!”

“Even weirder than norma—Wait, what?!”

“Wait, did you say that the spider bite fixed your eyesight? How’d it do that? I thought spiders had terrible eyesigh—oh, somepony’s coming. Oh, Celestia, it’s Filthy Rich.”

Indeed it was. The groomed, suited pony made his leisurely way towards them from the bridge as Peter craned his neck for a good look from where he was. Quickly he slid back into the open and flipped onto his hooves. “Thanks for the warning, Lyra. We're gonna have to break this off here, though, so—”

“Wha—again?!”

He froze, looking at her and swallowing. The first few weeks of knowing Harry and Gwen had gone much the same way, a vicious cycle of ignoring and resent that he himself had set off through carelessness. He had resolved to never be caught in one of those cycles again, and now look at him. He chewed his tongue. “I'm not trying to blow you off here, Lyra, I promise. This timing just sucks. Look, how about you stop by tomorrow morning? Or noon or something, and we'll finish talking each other's ears off.”

“Why not tonight?” Lyra replied.

“Ah—not really an option. Vinyl set me up tonight for dinner with Octavia.” Now that he said it aloud, it felt like a betrayal, but he pushed it aside: MJ was gone. All he’d ever see of her again was memory, and thoughts of what might have been. He’d just have to live with one more regret.

Lyra’s brow jumped as she registered his words. “Really?!” she said. “Vinyl decided you—hmmm. I mean, maybe I could see it. In that case,” her jaw had switched to autopilot, “she’s probably gonna invite you to her place for the night, so you’ll probably be in a good mood tomorrow morning, but you’re probably gonna be tired and hungover too. Or it’ll go really badly and you’ll be grumpy, it could go either way with her. Maybe we should wait till afternoon.” The tone of her last sentence suggested a growing impatience.

Peter started to say something, stopped to stare at her bemusedly, and started again, but he was interrupted before he had finished the first word. “Well, I’m glad to see you got to work so quickly,” said Rich as he came to a stop in front of Peter. “Kind of pointless by now, I think, considering how badly it was damaged.”

“Ahm. Not necessarily, sir.” A suddenly-skittish Peter almost refused to meet his eyes as he spoke, glancing back at the carriage and his hooves. “Some of the paneling on the back needs replacing, and so do the axle and braking system, but it isn't totaled. Structurally speaking, I mean, it's still intact. Sir.”

“You think so?” said Rich, examining the cart again as Lyra stepped away grumpily. “...I think I see what you mean. The chassis is still functional then?”

“Completely!” Peter took a step towards the carriage, flashing Rich a smile. “Haha, that pony in the stupid tablecloth wasn’t a total disaster. I’m surprised.”

Rich blinked at him. His forehead wrinkled into a frown as he said firmly, “Have some respect, young colt. The Spider saved my life, and my family’s. If it weren’t for him you wouldn’t be getting paid to fix my cart.”

“I—right. I’m sorry.” Peter flashed him an apologetic look; by chance his eyes landed on Lyra, who had stood straight at his comment and whose face was a mask of utter bewilderment. He smirked at her, grinned for half a second, but then his face came down and he said, “Lyra, I really am sorry. Tomorrow. Morning, I promise. I’ll meet you for—for breakfast or something.” When she slowly, glumly nodded, he added, “Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not,” she said, but her face disagreed. “I’m just gonna go to the library. See ya, Peter.” She turned with a dramatic sharpness and began trudging dejectedly towards the bridge. Her exaggerated movements made it clear that she assumed he was watching her go—an accurate assumption—and was hamming it up.

“She’s mad,” Peter decided aloud, a wince creeping up his face.

“Indeed she is,” Rich agreed as he, too, stared after her as she crossed the bridge. “I don’t know what I walked in on, but you likely could have handled it better.”

Peter’s head turned towards him so fast it should’ve been accompanied by the sound of a whip crack. “Me?!” he snapped, “Oh, sure, and you were a totally neutral influen—”

And here he clamped down on his voice, his face morphing from indignance to horror as he realized he was snapping at his employer.

God damn it, Jameson; Peter had gotten so used to his outrage being shouted over that he had gone to protest angrily before realizing that there were no insults to bury his voice beneath. Rich’s eyebrows had slowly risen as he turned to look at a cringing Peter. He stared for a second before saying, “I what?”

The question hung in the air for several seconds before Peter said, in a pinched and still slightly ruffled voice, “You showed up in the middle of a private conversation. I was talking to her about personal stuff.”

“Well, I apologise for my intrusion. I realize I was partially at fault for her frustration.” Rich considered the Earth pony who was now staring at one of the cart’s intact wheels in chagrin. “You’ve got something of a temper in you, though, young colt. You’d best learn to control that before it comes around to bite you. Now show me what I need to order replacements for.”

“I thought I already had learned,” Peter murmured, half to himself. He ran a hoof through his mane with a steadying sigh. “...Alright, come on. It’s mostly on the other side.”

Vinyl had said that she’d ask Soda Pop to return a favor. That meant the Hay Barn, little more than a glorified fast-food restaurant, and hardly a place to make a good impression. It was with cross contempt, therefore, that Octavia shuffled through the hangers of her overstuffed closet searching for something slightly but not much nicer than her bow tie. More eye-catching, at least. Peter had spent roughly ten minutes around her in all, during which time she had, on reflection, done very little to stand out as somepony worth knowing.

This wasn’t entirely a problem, as it meant she could start nearly from a blank slate. There were parts of herself that she’d rather not show a suitor, that she had gradually revealed to her friends and now were acknowledged aspects of those bonds, that Peter may have noticed, but that she was fairly confident had been too subtle to really matter. She had drawn herself up several minutes ago, burying those parts and recalling the pony she presented to acquaintances. Prim, proper, confident and charismatic. There was a line of a song she liked to recite to herself, an affirmation: I’m the type of pony everypony should know. She murmured it under her breath as she flicked through dresses and coats.

At last she gingerly reached into the closet and brought out a charcoal-colored pea coat, draping it over her shoulders noncommittally. The satin lining slid across her fur and drew a pleasant shudder down her back as she pushed hangers aside in search of alternatives. None leapt out at her, but a supplement did, and she slid a dark pink scarf off the rod and pulled it across the back of her neck.

“Vinyl?” she called as she stepped out of her room, her Trottingham accent impeccable and melodious. When the unicorn poked her head into the hallway and peered at her over the top of her sunglasses, she added, “Could you come button me up, please?”

Vinyl slipped out of her own bedroom and into the hallway, coming close to the Earth mare as her horn glowed with the buttons of the pea coat. When Octavia stood with perfect posture as she did now, the height she had on Vinyl became blatantly obvious; they stood so close now that grey towered over white while Vinyl declined to meet her gaze. As the third button down slipped into its buttonhole she leaned a bit closer to Octavia and sniffed. “…I like your perfume.”

“Thank you,” Octavia replied with a stilted smile as she glanced down at the unicorn’s progress. “I don’t often wear this one, but my usual choice is almost out. You probably recognize it. Leave—leave the top two as they are.” She sat down as Vinyl stepped back, and began winding her scarf loosely around her neck.

“Kinda warm for that, isn’t it?” Vinyl pointed out with a cock of the head.

“Maybe,” said Octavia, not looking up. “It won’t be later tonight, though. I hardly think the Hay Barn is going to be the extent of our date, and I’m in something of a night-owl mood. Best be ready for the night chill.” She tucked the ends into her coat as a hum was given in reply. “Listen, Vinyl, thank you for this.”

Vinyl mirrored Octavia as she got to her hooves, a smirk darting up the unicorn’s cheek. “Ahh, warmed up to it, have ya? Did I mention that he stuck around to help Derpy and Turner with the cleanup after—“

“No, just—getting me out of the house, I mean.” She gave her a smile as she said, “I know you worry. I know I tend to shut myself away when I’m upset. A-and after the Gala...you know how much it hurts to go so long without work. It’s...it’s...aaaaggh.”

“Aaaaggh,” Vinyl agreed.

Octavia began to nod, but rather than finish the motion she looked down at herself again. “I think, heh, I think I forgot how much I enjoy having plans. Dressing myself up and being elegant. I missed this.”

“Feeling like yourself?”

“Hah. No, more like...the me I want to be. So…thank you for caring, I’m trying to say. I’d still like you to ask first, but I can’t thank you enough for making the effort for me.”

“That’s the closest to being sappy I’ve seen you get in a while,” Vinyl grinned. “Don’t mention it, Tavi. Just have a good time tonight. And if he’s not the one, don’t, like, actively push ‘im away, okay? I don’t want hanging out with him to be awkward from now on.”

“I’ll try.” The mares exchanged smiles for a minute before Octavia stepped away and down the stairs. “And if things do go well,” she called behind her, “we’ll try not to make too much noise when I bring him back.”

Peter had gone back to Derpy and Turner’s to ask the latter for a shirt to borrow; he wasn’t sure precisely how he had gone from that to standing in the master bathroom, staring down at the straight razor in his hoof with shaving cream smeared across his cheeks. Turner had said something about him getting ‘fuzzy’. That made no sense—he had fur—but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had seen a few stallions with mustaches or beards in passing. He looked up at his squinting reflection in the mirror, rubbed a hoof against the grain of his cheek. Okay, yeah, he could feel the stiff traces of the patchy stubble he had begun to develop in his last few months. He took a step closer to the mirror, leaned over the counter and on his left foreleg, and turned his face until his cheek was parallel to the glass.

The razor had a comb-like guard connected to the blade, presumably so its user wouldn’t take off more hair than they meant to. It also made it very difficult to cut oneself, which didn’t stop spider-sense from rising in the back of Peter’s mind like creaking steel as he raised it to his face. His hoof moved away from his cheek, surprised; he stared at the blade with one narrowed eye and gritted teeth.

He had done this before, dammit. Not very often, mind you—he had only started needing to shave a little under six months ago, and even then only once a week or so—but enough to be more or less used to it, and enough to expect spider-sense to know better. It certainly had before. If the fact that this was a straight razor and not a safety one was the only difference, it was a stupid one, for the way stick’em powers worked meant that it didn’t move an inch in his hoof. Spider-sense, of course, didn't care. Good lord, what had dying done to it?

He concentrated. His hoof steadied until still. Spider-sense whined again as he brought the razor to his cheek again, the steady, on-guard tingling that forced him to feel the edge of the blade half a millimeter from his skin, and he considered abandoning the task. The stubble was barely noticeable. He could put off shaving for probably a couple of days, maybe even a week. But that was a slippery slope—he could give himself a week and take two, or three. And it wasn’t just for the sake of tidiness that that thought made him wince. The idea of something so routine, so utterly mundane as needing to shave every few days gave him a focus and allowed him to shut down the uglier sides of his life for a while. As he forced himself through spider-sense and swept the razor across his cheek, held just barely above it by the guard, he felt, ironically, a little more human.

It was a few minutes later that he stepped out of the master bathroom, his face wet and in a few patches almost bald, and a starched shirt fell off the outside doorknob. It was two sizes too big, but he pulled it on anyway and rolled the sleeves up as he left the room and skipped down the stairs.

Turner sat at his counter, but he was fidgeting instead of really working on anything, and when he heard Peter’s hoofsteps he turned around awkwardly. An amused smile lit up his face at the sight of the shirt, much too long for Peter, but he quelled it and said, “Listen, are you sure you want to have dinner with her?”

“What, you think I can back out at this point?” Peter asked, with a quirked brow and a smirk. “Why? Lyra mentioned it could be a disaster; am I about to romance a serial heartbreaker?” This last question was accompanied by a half-laugh.

Turner slowly squeezed his eyes closed; under his breath he murmured, “Celestia’s sake, Lyra.” He opened his eyes again and said, “Not exactly. Her relationships usually end fairly well. But Octavia can be...temperamental’s the wrong word. She’s far more sensitive than she likes to pretend. Especially at the moment. I don’t mean erratically so, it’s just...I’m not quite sure where she is emotionally right now. Or where you are, for that matter.”

“You and me both, my dude.” Peter had begun to walk around the counter, but he stopped to face Turner once he was in the room proper. “And, y’know, that’s kinda the point. Vinyl said that she set us up at some restaurant called the Hay Burger? I don’t know what that is, but it’s sure not fancy. I could do with a casual hangout and some junk food.” He shrugged—a calm, strangely contented motion—as he turned away.

“She’s one of my best friends, Peter.” He didn’t turn back around proper when Turner spoke, but he turned his head to indicate he was listening. “If you bugger this up, I’m going to take her side, you should know that.” Turner’s face had been dead serious for this statement, but now he tilted his head, his brow rising as his lips formed a wince. “...So...don’t bugger it up, alright? I’ve rather taken a liking to you.” Peter’s heart skipped a beat at the last sentence. He gave Turner a genuine, but suddenly nervous, smile before stepping out the door.

Two ponies, one genuine and one something else beneath the skin, made their way towards a date in a cheap restaurant on the south edge of town. Neither had had any part in the organizing of this meeting, but both had managed to put a positive spin on it in their own minds. There was much that this meeting was going to reveal—a few ugly edges that neither of them had known of—but let's wait a bit before we get to it. Let's pursue instead the mint-green unicorn in the library nearby, whose golden eyes darted back and forth across the page of her book with gradually increasing irritation and stupor.

Spiders, spiders, spiders. The book’s introduction had told her that there were thousands of species, which while fascinating turned her research into a slog. She had gone right to the index with one possibly-discernable scrap of Peter’s earlier lecture in her ear, but no. Parasteatoda tepidariorum wasn’t any species of spider in the book. And the entries that were there were were obscured in the unreadable academese of a bored scholar with a thesaurus and hatred of clarity. It had been hard enough in school, when the reading had been on musical theory; if she had had to slog through stuff like this without the help of a natural gift, she likely would’ve dropped out of school.

A groan stretched through the other side of the library. Lyra’s head shot up and she stared at Princess Twilight Sparkle warily, worried that she had done something to upset her, but the princess wasn’t even looking her way. She was slamming a book shut, and Lyra silently agreed. She watched the alicorn heave the book across the room—it hit Spike’s feather duster—before pulling another book from her small pile of volumes, wedged between Princess Twilight’s much larger piles, and tuning out the discussion opposite her.

Genetic engineering, Peter had said. Lyra didn’t think she had ever heard those two words in relation before, and when she had gone looking for a book on it the library had been useless. But genetic had the same root as genealogy, which suggested it referred to family or something, but you couldn’t engineer a family tree, could you? She had set the question aside for now, and instead pored through a book about transmutation in alchemy. If this mutated spider bite had transformed an ordinary pony into whatever Peter was now, transmutation seemed like a good place to start.

But her ears seemed to perk up of their own accord as she read and Princess Twilight said something out loud. She looked up to see her reading from a letter, held aloft in her magenta glow. “‘...But if you look carefully,’” she read, “‘you may find a book that could prove helpful to your research, hidden somewhere in what’s left of the castle library. I must ask you to stay away from Luna’s and my personal diaries, but all other books there are open to your use. Celestia.’” The letter lowered, and the princess looked at her dragon excitedly. “...Spike, pack a bag! This is perfect!” She whirled towards the desk as she cried, “It never occurred to me that the Castle of the Two Sisters would retain its library over the years! If even one book in there is still intact, imagine how much we could learn from it!”

“Wait, go to the old castle now?” Spike sounded distinctly uneasy. “It’s almost evening, Twilight! By the time we get there, it’ll be almost nighttime!”

“Then we’ll have to be ready to stay the night there,” Twilight said with undeserved confidence. As she gathered together two notebooks and a collection of inkwells, she explained, “Sleeping in the castle for the night is safer than going back through the Everfree Forest when it’s dark. We’re gonna need two sleeping bags, blankets—”

“WHOA whoa whoawhoawaitwhoawait wait!” The words tripped over themselves and each other as they poured from Lyra’s mouth and she dashed into the center of the room, still leaning toward the princess even as she stopped and stood still. Twilight, only just remembering she was there, turned towards her and Lyra immediately regretted speaking up so rudely. She collected herself, straightened her posture. “I-I mean, excuse me, Princess, um, Your Majesty. Uh, did you say you’re going to the old castle? In the Everfree Forest?”

“Um,” said Twilight uncertainly, leaning away with confusion, “yes.”

The Everfree. The Castle of the Two Sisters. A few ridiculous, entire-paragraph sentences flashed through Lyra’s mind, all she really retained from the spider book. Star spiders. A species of spider that had only shown up in one place, that castle, and only after the banishment of Nightmare Moon. Special spiders. Mutated spiders.

“Well, anyway,” said the Princess, gradually leaning towards Spike. “Remember to pack your toothbrush. And some snacks and clean water. I’ll pack the notebooks—”

But Lyra interrupted again. “Can I come?”

Author's Note

You know, I'm really not that satisfied with this chapter. I just figured I didn't know how to improve it more than I have, and it's well past time to post the goddamn chapter. Ehh. Tell me what you think.