The sun was rising on yet another glorious day in the town of Shepton, unofficial capital city of the Domain of the Overlord.

A day that would normally see a certain pony, one Night Cap, inside of a deep cave, practicing his craft on whatever poor soul had happened across him the night before.

Night Cap was a necromancer, which boiled down to making dead things do the things he didn't want to. He had been at it for nearly forty years now, but thanks to the necromantic magic in him he didn't look a day over twenty, making sure the gray stayed out of his rusty red mane and keeping his yellow coat sleek and smooth. He was especially proud of the black silk cloak he had taken from his late teacher, it covered him completely and if he channeled magic into it while he ran it would turn him slightly invisible for a time. It had saved his neck more than once, and made it easier to get information from the ponies of the town he used to live near.

Such as the information of a new kingdom nearby that apparently saw his work for the art it was, not only allowing its practice within its borders but encouraging necromancers to emigrate so as to save the lives of guards, civilians and the necromancers themselves.

The idea had intrigued him, so after a few days of deliberation and packing he had made the move. All was going well, much better than he had anticipated in fact, until a guard had asked for his permit. After expressing his confusion, as no one had told him anything about a permit, the guard had been kind enough to explain that without a state permit any form of necromancy was highly illegal, punishable by death and subsequent experimentation by licenced necromancers. He had then pointed Night Cap to the proper office to acquire a state permit and told him he had one week to get one.

That was five days ago.

Though that wasn't to say that Night Cap was being lazy, he had entered the office as soon as his conversation with the guard was over. The problem was that due to the bureaucracy involved in getting licenced he had spent literally every day since he first entered the office filling out paperwork and forms and providing obscure personal information from sunrise to sunset. At this point tearing his hair out would be more enjoyable, he may have centuries left to live before deciding on lichdom or not but that didn't mean he wanted to spend it on paperwork!

The only thing that gave him any comfort in this situation was that the pretty receptionist seemed to understand his frustration and didn't mind helping him fill everything out correctly. That or she was just fed up with necromancers improperly filling out long forms that boil down to "I won't kill anybody unless the government says I can", forcing her to make them fill it out again.

"Hey Night! Here to fill out the last of the forms?" The secretary asked from behind her desk as Night Cap entered the pleasantly cool office.

"Yes, Finally! I can't wait to be done with this!" He cheered, pumping a hoof in celebration.

"Aww, but then we won't see each other as much! What, do you not like me or something?" She said while putting a hoof to her chest in mock-hurt.

"Please, it won't be the last time we'll see each other! I have to come in next year to renew this anyway?" Night Cap gulped and then nervously asked while shuffling, "Besides- Uh- Wh- well, uh, we could always hang out sometime? Right?"

"Oh, u-um, I'd like that, really, I would... It's just, umm..." She started

Night felt his stomach drop."You already have somepony. That's okay, I mean who wouldn't want you as their special somepony. I understand."

"No! No no no! Thats not it at all! I'm uh, single... It's just, well," she fidgeted with her hooves "I'm not actually a pony. I'm a Changeling. I guess I'm just more comfortable in my disguise than in my own skin. Chitin. Whatever."

"Aaaand?" Night asked after a few seconds of silence.

"And? And what?"

"Well I don't see a problem here, but apparently you do... so what's the problem?" Night answered.

"W-Well, It's just that, in the past when a pony found out that their loved one was a changeling they would leave them, so..."

"So you assumed that I would do the same?" Night asked, receiving a meek nod " Unless the last few days have been lost on you, and I doubt that they were, I'm a necromancer. We kind of have a bad reputation everywhere, worse than changelings at least. So you being one means literally nothing to me, If- If anything, it makes you more exotic and that's only ever a plus."

She blushed at his words, and agreed to a date later that day. Night also got his licence, which was good for wholly different reasons.

No more shame.

Flim was terrified.

He and his brother, Flam, had come to the Domain of the Overlord Nobody in order to have a better chance of con- ahem, selling perfectly legitimate contraptions of dubious quality. Mostly because they had been to most of the towns and cities of Equestria and due to their run in with a certain element of honesty, even the places they haddn't been too knew something of them.

Angry guards were not something that the duo were fond of, so what if they had provided faulty appliances and attempted to borderline coerce a land deed or two? None of it was, strictly speaking, illegal! Morally questionable? Yes. Scummy? Absolutely! But illegal? Absolutely Not! ...Well, mostly not.

They were supposed to have a clean start here! A place where they could start over (or not) at their leisure! If he was being completely honest with himself, Flim kinda wanted to settle down. Road life was fun, sure, but it also wore on you after a while and being known nationally as a slime ball wasn't exactly a goal most ponies had growing up. The only reason he didn't bring it up with his brother was because he seemed so enthralled by the life they had been living, claiming that while there were some downsides, the upsides more than made up for it.

"Brother, please tell me you have a plan to get us out of this!?" Flim asked his brother with no small amount of fear in his voice.

"I- Well- " Flam was silent for a moment before giving a deep sigh, "No, brother. No I do not."

Flim watched as a tear rolled down his brother's' face without so much as a sob.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this..." Flim said, more to himself than to anyone else.

"No... No it wasn't." Flam agreed.

It had started much the same as all of their other cons had, roll into town, show off some 'amazing' creation, get ponies to buy it and then scram before they realized that it was junk. It was at step two that they had run into problems, those problems being called licenses.

What they couldn't have known before this whole fiasco was of the inventor's guild, the registration required, the laws surrounding what was under their purview and the punishment for breaking those laws. By making and then attempting to sell their little doodad they had accidentally broken several high ranking and low ranking laws. The part that made Flim the most bitter about this was that the law allowed those outside of the guild to invent things, they just needed a proof of approval from the guild to sell it.

And so, now he and his brother were in a cell awaiting their execution.

It was due three days after their imprisonment, (in order to file all of the paperwork, inform the appropriate persons, ect.) and they had gotten no sleep at all last night, mostly from screaming their heads off about how they were innocent. The guards responded by telling them that if they had just said that they didn't know about the guild or the laws they would have been let go. Instead Flam had assured the officer that 'they indeed had their licence, and would you please just wait a moment for him to go and get it' then proceed to make a half assed fake that looked nothing like a real licence and hoof it to the officer with a shit eating grin.

It was the dawn of the final day, their execution was scheduled to happen at sundown. At this point they had given up hope of getting out of this, instead they spent their time reflecting on their lives. They had both found quite a few regrets... they had talked about a great many things together, many private, some known to both. They still weren't happy, but they were ready for tonight...

Until there was a clang and suddenly there was a diamond dog standing on the other side of the bars. He was holding their last 'invention', it was supposed to be something to chop things extremely quickly, which it did, it just also made an absolutely horrible mess.

"You two made this?" He asked while raising the device up a little to put focus on it.

Flim and Flam looked at each other in surprise, both thinking 'Could this be our chance?!' before vigorously nodding to the diamond dog.

"Hmm... well, I happen to be a member of the inventors guild, maybe you've heard of us?" he sarcastically asked with a cruel smile, "Anyway, as a member it is within my rights to offer others a position within the guild, and while I'm sure that you must have a rather busy schedule, I could be persuaded to induct you into the guild, clear up your little spat with the guards?"

"Yes!" Flam yelled, throwing himself at the bars of the cell.

"Anything we could give you, aside from our souls (we actually still need to pay off those iou's), but literally anything else!"

The dog's eyes flashed for a split second, before simply hissing out a "Yeeesssss..."

No more fear.

It was a normal day in ponyville, which of course meant that the town was under siege from some horrible, magic fueled monster from the everfree.

This time it was a magically animated ball of slimy green vines and flowers. No, not like that! Get your mind out of the gutter, the slime was a numbing agent and the flowers spewed acidic pollen. Honestly, poor Flitter had the same thought and now she needed to spend three weeks in the hospital, she was lucky anyone was able to save her at all!

Anyway, after the old song and dance the girls all went to the library to go over what had happened and see if there was a friendship lesson anywhere in there.

"Well, I mean now my head feels kinda funny, mostly 'cus I can't feel it anymore. And not funny haha, but funny weird, that kind of funny. My mane is still there right? It wasn't hit with one of those pollen clouds?"

"No, Pinks, your mane is fine. A little slimy, but all around okay." Rainbow said to the breaker of rules, both physical and metaphysical, that was also known as Pinkie Pie.

"Oh, good! I was afraid that my hammer would slip out and then we'd all be in trouble because I don't think there is enough space in here."

"What does a hammer have to do with there not being enough space in my library?" Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow.

"You need a hammer to have hammerspace silly! How else would I carry all my stuff?"

The rest of the girls looked at each other before AJ said, "To save all our sanity's, I'm just gonna change the subject. So Twi! How'd that Overlord and Celestia thing go!"

"Oooh, good choice!" Rarity murmured as she and Fluttershy sat down to watch what they assumed would be an entertaining, if long winded, conversation.

Instead all they got was a visibly upset Twilight who said "I don't know. The Princess went without me and I haven't heard back from her since."

"I'm sure everythings totally fine, it's Celestia for ponies sakes! She's probably just making sure those changelings know not to mess with Equestria anymore!" Rainbow said while showing off a few kung fu moves.

While AJ and Fluttershy chortled and giggled respectively Rarity chastised Rainbow, telling her "Now, now, darling! There is no reason to assume that the Princess or the Overlord resorted to violence! They very well could have just talked it out like the reasonable adults they are."

"Yea... But my idea is a lot cooler... So I win." Rainbow visibly thought out, crossing her front hooves from her perpetually hovering position above the others.

"This isn't a game Rainbow!" Twilight suddenly snapped, "The Overlord could be plotting the end of our world right now, the Princess could be in danger, or worse, and the worst part of all this is I can't even be fully angry at either of them, because the Princess just want's to protect us and the Overlord just want's to go home! Or not!! An even worse option is that I panicked and sent the Princess to cause a diplomatic incident for no reason!!!"

The inside of the library was silent... well, more so then it was supposed to be. The others had formed a half circle facing Twilight, all showing some amount of distress at their friends outburst.

"I-I... I'm sorry..." Twilight just managed to choke out before breaking down. Her friends were at her side before she could hit the ground, hugging, murmuring calming words and otherwise caring for their crying group leader.

"Sooo... Is this a bad time...?" They heard an unknown masculine voice ask.

The girls looked up as one, three of them gasped, two were confused and one had their pure white face scrunch up like they had just took a big bite out of a lemon.

"Prince Blueblood?" five of them asked with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Rarity just huffed an "Oh, it's you." and called it a day.

No more... Okay so some dread. What? Two out of three isn't that bad!

Author's Note

The song that I listened to for most of this chapter, and it's namesake

Sorry this took so long, but it went through a rewrite or two until I was happy with it.