From the day of his birth onward, Pitch Black, who later preferred just being called Pitch, had a hard life. This was for many reasons, few of witch were directly his fault, though it would effect both himself and his family and it would rarely be for the better.

To begin, his family was a noble one, low ranked but that didn't stop them from having both a small mansion as well as several serving ponies. Practically overnight two thirds of the staff were let go, (after being pointed towards a new job with a strong referral from the family) only retaining those that could be trusted with the knowledge of the young colts... 'defect'. There were some concerns at first, namely the loss of life and limb when the young master grew up. In the end, and after several good natured arguments regarding a pay raise, those that remained agreed to keep quiet and aid in the rearing of the new family member.

Things went quite well for a time after that, he had a fairly normal foal-hood complete with drool, stinky diapers and the embarrassingly cute photos of the first discovery of his own hoof, among other violently adorable things. Unfortunately the cuteness ended quite abruptly with the coming of the 'pops', the point in every unicorn's life when their magic starts to... shall we say, act up?

Now, normally with a unicorn's 'pops' it would be anything from actual pops, small amounts of magic bubbling on the surface of the horn with no real effect. There were some rare cases of more (and more different) varieties of 'pops', but those tended to be from chaos magic oriented ponies and could range from floating into/through walls, to random transmogrification, to the rare but always panic inducing sudden and instant teleportation.

There also seemed to be a connection between a ponies magical "limit" and how severe their pops were, though it was inconclusive due to several "exemptions of the rule".

Regardless, once his 'pops' began it changed the atmosphere of the home quite a bit, and not in a good way. Most parents would be worried about one or two things breaking as their bundle of joy erratically shot a bolt of high energy magical plasma, Pitch's parents on the other hand were more worried about several large pieces of furniture simply turning to dust while sitting on them.

Most parents would worry about their child squeezing the family pet too hard while trying to pick them up. Pitch's parents had to endure many sleepless nights with their colt between them after finding their three year old crying over the skeleton of the family cat.

Most parents had to tolerate their child struggling to get away from a dentist while strapped to the chair. Pitch's parents had to cry themselves to sleep for essentially torturing their four year old with a spell used on criminals in order to suppress his natural magic enough for him to go outside without drawing the guards attention.

Most parents would worry about their child's first day of school, if they would be bullied or how many friends they would make. Pitch's parents would have nightmares about their child having a surge of his own natural magic in public, promptly drawing the city guard and being executed.

After the "pops" passed and Pitch was old enough to safely interact with others outside of the family, so not everything was doom and gloom in the Black home, for which Pitch's parents were eternally grateful.

As was common in Canterlot, the maids, butlers and other servants lived either in or around the nobles manner. Similarly, it was common for them to make family's of their own, and for the children of said family's to spend a large amount of time together, drawing the families closer together.

Such it was that Pitch grew up with a golden coated Pegasus colt named Silver Lining. His father was the head butler of the family, his mom was a maid who regularly aided Pitch's mom so needless to say, the two families were close. Silver was one year older then Pitch and he never let that fact go, constantly getting the both of them in trouble because Pitch would go along with his "Obviously much better, well thought out plan that couldn't possibly go wrong! You'd understand if you were older." which would usually be accompanied by a self-confident grin.

Not to say that Silver would leave Pitch to take all the blame when something inevitably went wrong, quite the opposite. It was actually more common for neither of them to really be in trouble because they would essentially fight over who would take the blame for whatever had happened. Both of their parents couldn't help but find it both adorable and heartwarming that they would get into arguments over who would get in trouble for what they had both done.

Due to Silver being born at the end of the year he and Pitch ended up in the same grade. Neither of the colts were bothered much by this, other then that they weren't in the same class as well, limiting the amount of time they had together at school. Secretly the staff were relieved, they knew that the two were friends and while it was more that things just seemed to happen around Pitch, it was clear that Silver was a troublemaker. At least they weren't like the other noble children who would throw tantrums and threaten to "tell their Mommy/Daddy if they didn't" blankity blankity blank, which made the teachers much happier to help them.

Other then the odd plan gone awry by Silver, school life was quiet for Pitch. He took his tests, did his homework, ignored the class bully. He did have a few quirks that his classmates picked up on, like his distaste for cats (more like mortal fear, as when one of the fillies brought theirs for show and tell he almost had a panic attack and had to be taken out to the hallway, but they all agreed to not talk about that) or how he preferred to write with his mouth instead of his magic. (Or how he seemed to do most things without his magic, which was very weird for a unicorn)

But aside from those few things, life was fairly good to Pitch. Unfortunately all of those happy days full of boring school work wouldn't make a great story, nor would they have any more of an impact of Pitch then what has been told. This was how Pitch spent the first six years of his life.

It would not, could not last forever.

Author's Note

Merry X-Mas!

Soon we will go from setting the scene to actually telling the story.