Do Not Serve These Ponies

Chapters

Chapter 2: The Rift
Chapter 3: The Working
Chapter 4: The Alien
Chapter 5: The Prince
Chapter 6: The Conspiracy
Chapter 8: The End
Chapter 1: The Truth
Chapter 7: The Invasion

Chapter 2: The Rift

Chapter Two: The Rift

By Thanqol

Nothing cut short a tirade about the secret conspiracy to hide the origins of the world quite as effectively as the two words of power.

“Stop, thief!”

“I’m no thief!” Lyra said as she turned to face the incoming guards.

“You stole the Cape of the Horsferatu!” countered the lead guard. “You’re wearing it right now!”

“The Horsferatu are a myth propagated by the government to distract you from the true nature of our world!” Lyra said as she backed up against the balcony.

“That's what they all say,” said the guard

"Actually, I've never heard that one before," said his partner.

"Either way, that's museum property!" said the first, lunging for Lyra.

“Ownership is relative, man,” Lyra said, diving aside. Her horn crackled and sparked – and there was a flash of light of the screaming pyromaniac variety. She reappeared on the first floor amongst the school ponies, spinning and smouldering slightly from the transition.

“Oh hey, you’re that pony who was stuck in that window!” said Applebloom helpfully.

“I wasn’t stuck!” Lyra said. She put her hoof out to lean on Cheerilee while she recovered. Cheerilee was not remotely impressed by this. “I was learning.”

“Learning was what we were trying to do before you got here,” Cheerilee said, trying to move out of the unicorn’s way. Lyra somehow clung on to her and remained upright.

“I can prove it!” Lyra said, grabbing Cheerilee’s head and staring directly into her eyes.

“You can what?” Cheerilee said amidst a wave of nostalgia for the idea of personal space.

“This week. You know it as a meteor shower. It’s really the human space fleet, coming to check up on the progress of their planet. I’m going to capture one of their ships, and that way, everypony will know the truth.”

“Sure. Good luck with that,” Cheerilee said, still trying to escape.

The three doors to the room burst open, security guards in each one. The class was thoroughly surrounded. “Miss Heartstrings! Take off the cape and nopony gets hurt!” bellowed an earth pony with an impressive moustache. Genuinely impressive; Lyra wondered if carrying that much facial hair with your lips hurt at all.

“Miss Heartstrings!” repeated the guard. Lyra realised she’d zoned out for a bit.

“Oh right!” Lyra paused to get her thoughts in order. “I’ll never surrender to the gormless puppet-soldiers of a corrupt government imposed upon Equestria by the whim of hostile alien overlords.” She smiled at the end to show that there were no hard feelings.

It didn’t seem to work. Armed gormless puppet-etc closed in on her from all directions.

“You seem to think I wasn’t prepared for this,” Lyra said, “but you have overlooked one crucial detail.”

“And what’s that?” said the fascinating moustache.

“And what is that?” repeated the moustache pony when it became apparent Lyra had zoned out again.

“Oh! You assumed I came alone,” Lyra said.

There was silence in the hall. The children looked around in all directions. The security guards nervously adjusted their uniforms.

“That’s your cue, Bon Bon, dear,” Lyra said after a moment.

“What the chickenspit do you expect me to do against ten armed ponies?” came a slightly hysterical shout from the upper galleries.

“I don’t know. I thought you were good at planning?”

“Where in Equestria did you get that idea?”

“Because you were always talking about conspiracy?”

Imagine, if you will, a lioness with a stomach ulcer being smacked across the rump with a cattle prod and attempting with all her might to make no sound. Perhaps there was some kind of cash incentive involved, or maybe she did not wish her small cubs to pick up bad language this early. This was the not-sound that exuded from the upper gallery. If there was a dog in the museum have no doubt that it would be howling.

“So, you going to give it up, Heartstrings?” asked the moustache. Lyra thought about it. She had a few spells that came to mind but none which she particularly wanted to cast while standing in the centre of a crowd of small children.

“Well I suppose –“

It was at this precise moment that Bon Bon bucked the giant creepy monolith as hard as she could. It wobbled, toppled, and fell. As it fell, it screamed as only a stone that knew too much could scream. The screams of the flesh-and-blood ponies paled in comparison as they fled in all directions, leaving the monolith to fracture on the marble floor.

Lyra ran.

The museum distorted. Space stopped being a meaningful frame of reference. One step took Lyra through a gallery filled with pictures of the broken monolith as sad violin music played. Following this she found herself attending a wake full of enormous, creepy rune-carved monoliths wearing black suits. She was pretty sure that one was a hallucination. They were oddly cheerful about it, though – maybe the broken monolith was a bit of a jerk as monoliths went. And then she was running from the dimension of unending nightmares as it chased her on nine slender limbs, ninety-nine mouths chewing on concepts that Lyra was fairly sure she liked. Concepts like blood not being sentient.

And then they all piled out into the lobby in a tangled, terrified, garbled heap. Some of the ponies sported minor mutations. One of the security guards had snakes instead of hair, but she seemed oddly happy with this change. The schoolchildren seemed mostly all right.

Lyra straightened herself up. Cleared her throat. Picked up the rather stunned Bon Bon from the floor. “What’s a little cross-dimensional vandalism between friends?” she said cheerfully.

A camera flashed.

Lyra caught a glimpse of Bon Bon’s photograph being added to the DO NOT SERVE board just before the door slammed shut in their faces.

“I’m banned. I can’t believe it,” Bon Bon said, still stunned. Lyra found it puzzling how she was more concerned with being barred from the museum known to store arcane ur-horrors than the direct interaction with said arcane ur-horrors. Maybe she hadn’t seen the nightmare dimension thing. Maybe that had been just her.

“I’ve never been banned from anyplace before!” Bon Bon said. “What if... what if somepony asks me to go to the museum one day and I have to tell them I can’t because I... because I...”

“Damaged the fabric of spacetime,” Lyra supplied.

“What if I have to tell them I damaged the fabric of spacetime! What if I have to explain how? They’ll ask. I’m an earth pony, I have no business with spacetime!” Bon Bon cried. “No business whatsoever! Spacetime has its monoliths and I have candy and that’s the way I like it!”

Lyra tried to console her friend. “Don’t worry. There are plenty of other museums in Equestria! There’s a lot, actually. I’ve had to keep finding them because they keep banning me...”

“That’s not the point! I’m a criminal! I can’t believe I let you talk me into this! I’m going to be banished, I know it!”

“It’s only a little eensy-weensy fracture in the barrier between dimensions,” said Lyra. “I’m sure somepony is already on their way to clean it up.”

“What kind of pony... ‘cleans up’... something like that!?” Bon Bon asked in shock.

“Hello,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Ah. And the oppressor shows her true colours. And it’s all of them,” Lyra narrowed her eyes. “All the colours are oppression.”

“I’ll show you some oppression in a minute!” growled Rainbow Dash, surging forwards.

“Easy there, R-D,” said Applejack, yanking on her overzealous comrade’s tail. “You know as well as anypony that Lyra ain’t quite right.”

“Ah, Honesty. The greatest tragedy of them all that you truly believe what you are saying,” Lyra said.

“Look, sugarcube,” Applejack said to Lyra, “you got your beliefs an’ that’s fine, but you can’t use that as an excuse to go around kicking holes in the cosmos.”

“Yeah. We live in the cosmos,” Rainbow Dash growled.

“Actually, Lyra didn’t –“ Bon Bon started, but Lyra cut her off.

“You live in a cosmos. It is one limited by the boundaries of your perception.”

“Yeah but if I ain’t mistaking, a hole like this’un is present no matter which reality ya'll identify yourself as belonging to?” Applejack said, "Don't its transdimensional nature cause it to supersede your attempt at relativism?"

“The hole is omnipresent, the methods used to close it are likewise infinite. There is no need to rely on the tools of the enemy.”

“Yeah, yeah. Look, this is your last warning, okay?” Rainbow Dash said. “If I get dragged out of the bath one more time to deal with one of your freaky messes, I swear to Celestia –“

“I will not do it again,” Lyra said, putting a hoof over her heart. Rainbow Dash glowered, and then stormed off.

“Come on, Bon Bon. Let’s leave the Elements to their work,” Lyra said, ushering her away.

As they walked down the street, Rainbow Dash tentatively opened the door to the museum. Immediately a dozen black tendrils lashed out and dragged her through the threshold, leaving only a few blue feathers and a brief scream to mark her passage. Applejack stood in the doorway and shouted advice into the void – Lyra briefly heard “Ya'll can bite it but don’t swallow any! Remember what happened last time!”

“Thanks,” Bon Bon said to Lyra.

“Don’t mention it,” said Lyra.

“They didn’t seem all that bad, actually,” Bon Bon said after a moment.

“No they didn’t."

"Why'd they let us go so easily?" Bon Bon asked. "I was sure we were going to be -"

"We've got a system." Lyra shrugged.

"A system?"

"Yeah. I breach the dimensional veil and they mail me the details of my community service. Saves everypony time."

"How did you manage that?"

"You know, I used to be in the same school as Twilight Sparkle?” Lyra said dreamily. As her audience vanished she was returning to her normal unfocused self.

“You did?” Bon Bon wondered if her question was being answered or if Lyra was misdirecting. It was hard to tell.

“Yeah. She was really good at duck duck goose,” Lyra said. This earned a blank stare, so she added, “She learned how to teleport first. I thought it was cheating. Then everypony else started doing it.”

“But you only learned to teleport today.”

“Yeah, because back then I researched a spell to stop everypony else teleporting instead,” Lyra said.

They walked in silence for a little longer, and then Lyra said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bon Bon said, “I didn’t want to spend today on the couch anyway.”

They walked home in a content kind of silence.

Behind them, in the museum, Applejack was busy walking the path of broken distance backwards, which would help with closing the dimensional rift. Rainbow Dash had managed to hurt the Intruder so much that it decided that unity with the nightmare dimension was a preferable alternative to sustained existence in the presence of these technicolour ponies. The broken pieces of the monolith were gathered up, shipped to a secure facility, and then shipped to an arts and crafts workshop due to a clerical error. There they were carved into a set of extraordinarily possessed tupperware. It would take four horror novels and a Daring Do adventure to finally rid the world of it all. The fire in the museum bathroom burned down two toilet stalls before running out of combustible material and going out, quiet and forgotten.

The sun shined down on a world that may or may not have existed at the whims of omnipotent aliens. Life went on as if the question was irrelevant.

And as night came, Lyra went up to the abandoned observatory outside town to prepare her spell. She took an awful lot of magnets and coffee up with her. And, in a stunning lapse of judgement and pattern recognition, Bon Bon tagged along.

Chapter 3: The Working

Chapter Three: The Working

By Thanqol

Lyra examined the pitchfork stuck in the door of the abandoned observatory and wondered if she should be worried.

The observatory’s smooth white roof was blackened and scorched, like an egg hard boiled with a blowtorch. Just beyond the observatory was the beginnings of the Everfree, and notably the spot where the infamous tar pits of Reichenbach Falls flowed into Froggy Bottom Bog. The tarfalls didn’t carry the traditional roaring rush that most waterfalls did, instead producing a single, gloopy dripping splash every minute or so. Reichenbach tar was infamous for its stickiness; it was said that that the last pony who fell into the tar had to be shaved entirely bald to get it all out. Lyra imagined that would be chilly.

Normally, a pitchfork wasn’t much of an omen – its usual significance was that you had broken into a farmer’s shed. But when one was casting a spell as big as the one she would be casting tonight, time got a little fuzzy and Prophecy stepped up her game. A sharp object impaling a piece of wood wasn’t the most subtle or complex of prophetic metaphor but that was probably more reason to worry. “If I do this, I shall be stabbed by farm equipment?” Lyra mused aloud, “If I do this, I shall penetrate the barrier between me and my destination?” Neither seemed particularly resonant. “If I do this, I shall reap a delicious crop of victory?” She probably should have eaten before she came.

“Oh, I remember this place,” Bon Bon said, looking up at the partially burned and collapsed structure. A faint smile crossed her moonlit face.

“Oh? From where?” Lyra said. To tell the truth, she hadn’t done her research into the history of the place. She knew that observatories tended to be fantastic places for large-scale magic, and frequently abandoned because some fool actually tried to use one for some large-scale magic. She had just assumed that the previous occupant had tried to summon Thrackazod or some similarly inadvisable course of action.

“I was part of the mob that burned it down,” said Bon Bon.

“Ah,” Lyra said. Then, “What?”

Bon Bon seemed pleased with knowing something Lyra didn’t. “The last occupant was a total creeper. She turned all of her telescopes down to face the town and spied on everypony all the time. At first we just thought it was weird and tried to ignore it and remember to close our blinds, but then we found out that she was selling photos to the Foal Free Press.”

“Scandalous,” Lyra said, opening the door and looking around inside. Sure enough, the place was filled with dozens of small telescopes, all angled down at the town. The observatory’s main, massive telescope made of brass and gold was aimed up at the night sky. The fire damage was rather minimal, other than the roof being mostly gone. There were a lot of lewd photographs on the walls showing mares and stallions of Ponyville, often bathing. Lyra was surprised by some of the couples she saw together there. “Well, this will save me a lot of preparation,” she murmured, trying to keep her mind on the task at hoof.

“So we all got together to talk about what to do about her, and then somepony started singing and they were having a sale on pitchforks and – what?” While Bon Bon didn’t get a chance to tell stories very often with Lyra around, a deep-seated survival instinct stopped her from ignoring anything the unicorn said completely.

“The telescopes,” Lyra said, “they’re set up perfectly for the spell I had in mind.” Lyra peeked through one. “That’s Sparkle’s house. Perfect.”

“What is this spell? You’re going to grab a comet, right?” Bon Bon said. “I’ve never heard of magic to do something like that.”

“Oh, that type of working is very possible if you have the knack for it. You should see what the Captain of the Guard can do with shields,” Lyra said, going from telescope to telescope and making slight adjustments.

“And a lyre mark specialises you for snatching passing meteors?” Bon Bon asked.

“Oh, heavens no. I’d be completely useless at something like that.” Lyra smiled as she adjusted another telescope. “Why, you’d need a whole town of unicorns to pull something like that off.”

“Spike, take a note. Ten forty five, Tuesday afternoon. Subject is a live fragment of the Nightmare Dimension, recovered by Rainbow M. Dash during the intrusion earlier in the day.”

Twilight Sparkle levitated the glass jar closer to her eye. The black, amorphous entity trapped within grew a sequence of spidery legs and scrabbled at the glass like a silverfish trapped in a bathtub. Spike found the gesture slightly endearing until the creature transformed into a thrashing array of teeth, emitting a high-pitched keening sound. He held the jar as far away from him as he could.

“Subject is live and active,” Twilight noted, peering at it through her glasses. “Some teeth marks but it seems to be recovering. Rainbow Dash is expected to make a full recovery from having the subject extracted from her throat. Assuming she can stop scratching at the scar. I don’t want to make her wear the cone of shame but I will.”

“Twilight, are you sure it’s safe to be studying something like this?” Spike asked. He eyed the ferocious little sin against nature warily. It budded a cluster of additional eyes so it could return the glare.

“Don’t worry, Spike. Small scale intruders like this are extremely easy to contain with magic. As long as I maintain the ward on the jar we’ll be absolutely fine. In fact, Starswirl the Bearded had an Intruder just like this as a familiar!”

“Didn’t you tell me Starswirl the Bearded went insane and tried to teleport the entire planet closer to the sun?” Spike said. He had developed a rather good memory for names, substances and creatures that he didn’t want any part of.

“I didn’t say he went insane, Spike. He just took an unorthodox approach to his personal heating management,” Twilight said, voicing what was considered a fringe opinion amongst respectable academic circles. “Why, without his daring experiment we wouldn’t even know about the Collective Unconsciousness, let alone that a pony could get trapped in it eternally!”

“You’re just saying that because you totally crush on him,” Spike said.

“Spike! I do not crush on eternally imprisoned unicorn archmasters!” was what Twilight’s mouth said, while she mentally checked the wards on her diary. “Stop being gross and get to work. We’ve got an intruder to document.”

“Yeah, all right Twilight,” said Spike, smirking and picking up his pen. Twilight levitated the glass jar up to eye level and started her examination.

“You see, telescopes are magical conduits. In fact, in war-time, unicorns use massive artillery telescopes to apply long range firepower,” said Lyra dreamily, painting the floor with silver paint. An elaborate, circuit-like mural covered the majority of the floor, connecting all the small telescopes to the bag of magnets at the bottom of the massive one. “And these ones are already angled at all the unicorns in town. So all I have to do is borrow their magic using the little telescopes and channel it through the big one to grab the space ship.”

“You’re going to steal the magic of everypony in town?” Bon Bon said in shock. That was both incredibly smart and unutterably lazy.

... Perfect for Lyra, now that she thought about it.

“Borrow. It’s not a difficult thing to defend yourself against. They probably won’t even notice it’s happening,” said Lyra.

A very small part of Twilight’s brain, disconnected from the significantly larger part that was doing all the screaming, was quietly impressed that Rainbow Dash had managed to walk all the way to the library with that little horror in her throat. She was completely losing her mind with it just being in her hair.

“Hold still Twilight!” Spike said. He swung at the Nightmare Fragment on her head with the first thing that came to his claws.

It was a lantern.

“Bon Bon, dear?” Lyra said. She was surrounded by half a dozen floating magnets, each shining with a different colour. The massive primary telescope was starting to sway gently as prismatic magic ran along its length.

“Yes, Lyra?” Bon Bon said. She’d decided to occupy herself while Lyra was busy by cooking them both some dinner.

“Would you check the telescopes for me, make sure nopony in town is having any trouble with their magic gone?” Lyra said. “I wouldn’t want to cause a panic.”

“Sure. I’ll go take a look,” Bon Bon said, surprised and delighted that Lyra had made a suggestion that lowered the chance of them being imprisoned for... what was this? Was this even a crime? Mass Magical Misappropriation? Grand Theft Unicorn? She broke out in a cold sweat despite herself, wondering if she was a conspirator or if she was just aiding and abetting.

She looked through the telescope.

“Hold still, Twilight!” shouted Spike, chasing the galloping unicorn with a bucket of water.

Twilight wasn’t going to fall for that one again. She was going to stick with running and screaming where it was safe.

She was more than a little on fire right now. The Nightmare Fragment was still on her somewhere. In between the screaming and running she slammed herself against the walls hoping she’d squash or dislodge the little alien horror. She was aware that she had set a fair bit of the library on fire by this point, but if it got that thing out of her hair that was a price she was willing to pay.

“It looks like everypony’s going outside to watch the meteor shower,” Bon Bon reported. In her defence, the fire at the library was very small right now.

“Alien colonist fleet,” Lyra corrected.

“Whatever,” said Bon Bon. “Ooh, I think it’s starting.”

“Perfect,” said Lyra.

Outside, far above the clouds, two pegasus ponies soared, doing one final safety sweep to make sure nopony would be flying at this altitude during the storm. They hadn’t had to do this until somepony had decided that it would be “totally awesome” to try and dodge falling asteroids. Now it was an occupational health and safety issue for the entire weather team.

“I don’t see any sign of her, do you?” Shimmer Snowflake asked.

“You know, we’re supposed to be looking for anypony who might be up here, not just Rainbow Dash,” said Cloud Kicker.

“Yeah, but who else would be brave –“ she caught Kicker’s unimpressed stare - “dumb enough to be out here at a time like this?”

“I’m sure there are plenty of ponies who’d like to be Rainbow Dash,” said Cloud Kicker flatly.

“Well, there’s a difference between wanting to be like her and actually having the courage to stand up to a meteor shower,” Shimmer said, a little weakly.

“Shimmer, did you see the X-rays by any chance?” Kicker asked.

“Yep!” Said Shimmer cheerfully. “I’ve got copies on my bedroom wall!”

Cloud Kicker’s train of thought ran headlong into a passing whale, who had been briefly confused about what he was doing on the railroad tracks. “You... what?”

“Rainbow Dash has a really nice bone structure,” said Shimmer in a way that would be endearing if it wasn’t endlessly creepy.

Earnest smile met awkward flopsweat until the conversation was blessedly cut short by a small meteor falling out of the sky and passing Cloud Kicker by inches.

“Right, looks clear, let’s get out of here,” Cloud Kicker said hurriedly. She folded her wings and dove directly downwards.

Above them, the stars themselves began to fall. A distant, haunting sound began to fill the night-time air. Music. A song, sung for nopony. Smooth and sharp, like ice along a razorblade, soft and sweet, like moonlight on a dewdrop. A private song for the moon and stars.

In the library, Twilight sat, soaking wet and smouldering gently. Spike was pinning the little monstrosity underneath his bucket. Every few seconds there was a new dent on the inside of the bucket as the creature hammered itself against the metal. Parts of the library were still on fire.

Her magic was gone. Her home was on fire. She had been doused in ice water. At least this night couldn’t get any worse.

“Come on, Spike,” said Twilight, standing up.

“Where are we going?” Spike asked, clinging to the bucket.

“To blame somepony.”

“FIRE!” shouted Lyra.

The magnets flared. The telescope beamed. A huge line of rainbow light shot up into the heavens, cutting its way through the night time sky.

Bon Bon took her chocolate sauce off the stove top and sipped it calmly as she watched her best friend try to tear the stars from the sky.

“Look! It’s Rainbow Dash!” shouted Shimmer Snowflake, pointing her hoof at the spectacular night-time rainbow. “I knew she could do it!”

“Rainbow Dash is the best!” agreed Scootaloo. “I knew she wasn’t going to let those broken bones from last time stop her from doing this for real!”

“This is insane,” growled Cloud Kicker.

Everypony looked on in awe as the rainbow travelled further and further upwards. As it neared the first comet ponies started cheering. “Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!”

The rainbow hit the comet and exploded in a spectacular fireball. The comet started spiralling out of control, twisting and spinning down towards earth.

The crowd was stunned, silent, and horrified.

“Woo! Rainbow Dash!” said Cloud Kicker.

“What happened?” Bon Bon shrieked as the observatory shook wildly.

“Oh, right. Fire mana,” Lyra said vaguely, “I had a feeling this felt too safe.”

“Did you just blow up a human spaceship?” Bon Bon said in horror.

“No, I tested it on a real comet first,” said Lyra. “Now I know, I can adjust. I’ll call down the human space ship for real this time, and I’ll dump all the fire mana into the comet I’ve already knocked down. Should be perfectly safe.”

Twilight Sparkle stepped out of her house, sodden wet, freezing cold, badly burned, and entirely angry. She was followed by Spike, who had transferred the horror into a lidded kitchen pot and was struggling to keep it closed.

And then there was an enormous explosion as a meteor hit the roof of her house. It smashed branches to flinders, crashed through the roof, obliterated her bedroom, and then smashed down every floor of the library to leave a massive crater directly in the centre of the floor.

Twilight stared at the ruin in shock.

Then, almost as an afterthought, everything caught fire. All at once. Like somepony had thrown a switch and now her house was on fire.

Twilight only knew one pony who was so bad at dealing with fire mana.

She felt a calm come over her, the calm that came with rage so total that it was intelligent enough to save its strength until the subject of its fury was present to experience every second of it.

“Lyra Heartstrings,” she breathed.

“Take two... FIRE!” Lyra shouted.

The rainbow of light blasted from the lens of the struggling telescope and soared up into the sky, aiming at the very centre of the meteor storm.

It made contact. It wrapped all around the central object. And it pulled. The interstellar object began to accelerate, drawn by the power of those enchanted magnets and that massive telescope, directly towards the observatory.

“And this is the part where we run,” said Lyra.

In the sky above, the mysterious song came to an abrupt, confused halt. There was a second or two where it screamed, but that stopped just as quickly.

Lyra and Bon Bon managed to get a fair distance from the observatory before it, and the top of the hill, were demolished by a massive flaming meteor. Fountains of dirt and smoke exploded up into the air. The meteor had by no means spent all its momentum, and continued to roll down the hill – right into the Reichenbach tar pits. There was an enormous squelch sound as it hit the tar and started to sink. The smoke and fire and stink of burning tar were all far too thick to make out a clear shape of the alien spacecraft.

Lyra and Bon Bon stood and looked at the devastation they had wrought. Flaming fragments of lewd photographs rained down all around them.

After a few moments, there was a crackle of purple magic. Twilight Sparkle appeared directly in front of Lyra. She wore an expression that a sane pony would have started running from.

“Oh hey, Twilight. Long time no see. What happened to your mane?” Lyra asked. “It looks like it got set on f – mmph!”

Twilight shoved a letter wordlessly into Lyra’s open mouth. She held it there for a second, and then she vanished in a burst of magic identical to the one that had brought her there.

“Mph!” Lyra spat out the letter, lifted it up, and opened it. She seemed totally unsurprised by the visit.

“What is it?” Bon Bon asked, completely lost by the exchange.

“My community service,” said Lyra. “I have to build a new library for some reason.”

Bon Bon tried to get a look at what the letter said, but Lyra crumpled it up and threw it onto a pile of burning adult photography before she could see what was on it. “That can wait! We just shot down a human space ship!” Lyra said, as she grinned massively. “And they said I was crazy!”

“Well, what do they know?” said Bon Bon as alarms screamed in the distance.

Chapter 4: The Alien

Chapter Four: The Alien

By Thanqol

Lyra and Bon Bon walked along the path of devastation. Dirt kicked up by the passage of the space ship hung heavily in the air, making them cough and choke. Small fires burned to either side of them. Trees in the path of the crash had been obliterated, not even leaving stumps. Smoke poured from the tar fires. The Weather Ponies were going to have to schedule an emergency downpour to stop this from getting out of hoof.

Bon Bon had no idea how Lyra had gotten out of punishment for this. There was no way community service was enough. If anypony else had destroyed as much as she had tonight they’d be banished, or imprisoned, or turned to stone. Or something! Something more than a slap on the hoof and being told to clean up after yourself!

Maybe she had an excuse? She remembered looking up exemptions in her paranoia-fuelled investigation of the Equestrian legal system. You were immune to prosecution if you were a royal, a diplomat, a senior member of the government, or a member of an intelligence agency. She looked across at the happily trotting green unicorn. Lyra, a spy?

No. She was pretty sure that spies were meant to be subtle.

As they neared the tar pits, Lyra had to conjure a bubble of air to stop them choking to death on the fumes. Together they stood on the shores of the Reichenbach and stared at the huge, burning silhouette of the spaceship through the smoke. Every so often there was a plume of fire as a bubble of swamp gas breached the surface.

They just stood and watched it for a while.

And then, the tar near the shore began to bubble and froth. Step by step something began to emerge from the depths. Lyra stared in fascination, and Bon Bon retreated in horror. This was it. Lyra was right. This was the human.

It did not look like it did in the pictures.

The creature was coated head to toe in Reichenbach tar, obscuring any features beyond its outline. It had the general shape of a pony, though head and shoulders taller and with six thin legs. The middle set of legs were misshapen and stiff. The very bottom of its four good legs were metallic and gleaming, so smooth that not even the tar would stick to them. The long neck lead up to a strange muzzle, surrounded by writhing tentacles, below a large, balloon-shaped bulge. In the centre of this strange, spherical head was a single, crazed red eye. Here and there, around the creature’s neck and body, strange lights shined through the tar.

Lyra did not look remotely happy with this discovery. She turned to face Bon Bon and asked in a low, “What is it?”

“It’s a human?” Bon Bon said. She had no idea why Lyra was asking her.

“It’s not standing on two legs. It’s got metal legs instead of hands. And it’s only got one eye,” Lyra said. She glanced across at the alien again, which was blankly taking in its surroundings. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a human.”

“This is your speciality, Lyra,” Bon Bon said. “If you don’t know, I definitely don’t.”

Lyra paused for thought. “Maybe it’s a robot, made by humans? That would explain the lights...”

The alien finally seemed to notice them, and made its slow, clumsy way towards them. Its bulk heaved and stumbled over the rough stones, metal hooves clanking against the rock. It reached the two little ponies and gazed down at them with its single red eye.

“Robot!” said Lyra. She faced up to the monster without hesitation or fear. “I command you to tell me your robot name and robot purpose!”

+Young filly!+ thought the alien in words they could hear on the inside of their skulls. Its ‘voice’ was crisp, polite and remarkably cheerful. Bon Bon was reminded of the Flim Flam Brothers for some reason. +Do I look like a robot to you?+

“Well, er –“ Lyra faltered. Bon Bon wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting but was pretty sure that this hadn’t been it. “You’ve got flashing lights and metal hooves –“

+All a perfectly normal part of being a magical pony, my good filly. We’re all magical ponies here!+ the alien said happily.

“You just crawled from the burning wreckage of a spaceship!” Bon Bon said. She also resented the implication that she was a ‘magical’ pony.

+I actually live in the tar. Yep, whole life lived under the tar. I’m a tar pony, I guess you could say? Shoo be doo?+ thought the alien. It was starting to move around a lot more, and with more style and precision. +So, you fine, lovely fillies wouldn’t happen to be from around these parts, would you?+

“Yeah, we’re from Ponyville,” Bon Bon said without thinking.

+Ponyville! Are you saying that there is an entire town full of delicious ponies?+ thought the alien. +How swell is that!? You’ve even got a town nearby! We’ve been neighbours all this time and didn’t even know it!+

“Delicious?” Bon Bon asked. Lyra had more pressing questions.

“You really expect us to believe you’re a ‘tar pony’ and not a human?” Lyra looked like she was about to grab the alien by its sticky exterior, but thought better of it. “Or a human robot? Don’t lie to me, robot!”

+Honest, never met a human,+ thought the alien, +and if I’m not a pony then how am I speaking your language then, eh?+

“You’re not speaking at all!” Bon Bon said. Lyra, as usual, had other things on her mind.

“Because we don’t speak ‘Equestrian’. We speak Human because that’s what’s convenient for our secret masters!” said Lyra.

+Ladies! Ladies, please, we’re getting off on the wrong hoof!+ thought the alien. +Names! Introductions! Diplomatic relations! My name is Trustworthy McLegitimate. Nice to meet you!+

“Lyra Heartstrings,” said Lyra.

“’Trustworthy McLegitimate’?” Bon Bon repeated in disbelief.

+Well golly gosh! I thought I was the only one with that as a name, but I guess it isn’t that uncommon after all!+ thought Trustworthy, taking Bon Bon’s hoof with his metal one and shaking it. +Us McLegitimates have to stick together!+

“My name’s not –“ Bon Bon tried to extract herself, but Trustworthy wasn’t having any of it.

+Think about how this occurred! Thousands of years ago, half the McLegitimate family decided to live underneath the tar and half decided to stay above. We thought you were mad, and you were, but all that bad blood and tar is finally washed away in this beautiful reunion!+ Trustworthy seemed quite breathless at the wonder of the moment.

“Stop stalling and tell us the truth, robot!” Lyra demanded indignantly.

+Okay. Tell you what,+ thought Trustworthy, +I’ve had a long trip here and it’s late and I’ve been singing all day. So why don’t you take me to your town and once I’ve settled in a bit and had a bite to eat I’ll tell you everything I know. Sound fair?+

“How can we trust you?” Lyra demanded. Bon Bon facehoofed.

+Aw, you know us McLegitimates,+ thought the alien, +you can always count on us.+

“Lyra,” Bon Bon said.

“Mm?” Lyra said. She didn’t look around from glaring at the back of Trustworthy McLegitimate. Trustworthy was whistling merrily as they walked.

“Do you... get the feeling that this is a bad idea?” Bon Bon said.

“I’ve come this far. I’m not turning back now that I’m this close,” said Lyra.

“Are you sure? This guy doesn’t seem exactly...” Bon Bon didn’t want to say it. “Trustworthy.”

+My ears are burning,+ Trustworthy thought, turning around.

“You have ears?” Bon Bon asked. Amidst all the tentacles on its head she couldn’t tell.

+Probably! So many new things today, haven’t had time to catalogue them all!+

As they crested the hill that overlooked Ponyville, the first light of dawn broke over the horizon. It illuminated the shapes of the enormous stormclouds that were being manoeuvred over the Everfree like great ironclad battleships of the sky. It caught the shapes of the hills and mountains. The gold was tinted red by all the smoke in the air, but it spread across the landscape smoothly and gracefully.

But then it stopped. Like it ran into a wall. The light of day just couldn’t penetrate that solid barrier of moonlight and shadow.

The moon was still in the sky. It wasn’t moving. It wasn’t lowering. It wasn’t making way for the day.

+Is it meant to do that?+ Trustworthy asked as Lyra and Bon Bon stared at the sky in horror.

“Nopony panic! For Celestia’s sake, nopony panic!” shouted the mayor at the hall full of panicking ponies.

“Nightmare Moon is back!” cried one.

“She’s going to win this time for real!” screamed another.

“We’re never going to see the sun again!” wailed Rarity, who really should have known better.

“Ponies! Please!” the mayor banged on the podium until some measure of order established itself. “We have a lot of work to do! First, let us have a moment of silence to mourn the loss of Rainbow Miriam Dash who tragically exploded in last night’s meteor shower.”

A few ponies fainted at this news. A few more were confused because they’d seen Rainbow Dash working on the thunderstorm earlier this morning. The mayor saw that the moment’s silence thing wasn’t working out so moved to seize the initiative while it was still available.

“What’s more, there is no doubt that Nightmare Moon has returned! With Rainbow Dash dead, we need a new Element of Loyalty to replace her!”

+Oh! Oh! Pick me!+ thought Trustworthy from the back of the hall. Everypony looked around, confused by the strange thought that had drifted into their head. Some of them assumed it was one of their own thoughts and put their hooves up. In the back, Lyra and Bon Bon worked together to pull Trustworthy’s hoof back down.

Trustworthy McLegitimate didn’t exactly blend into a crowd. Not only was he massive, tentacled, and covered in tar but he’d been squeezed into a shady looking trenchcoat that didn’t do nearly enough to cover his unnatural appearance. Other ponies were giving him a wide berth.

“I’m going to turn the decision for who will be the next Rainbow Dash over to Ponyville’s finest farmhand, Applejack. Truly, nopony knew Rainbow Dash better,” the mayor, rather tastelessly, winked at the audience.

Applejack gave the mayor an unappreciative glare as she came up onto the stage. “I don’t know what ya’ll have heard, but Rainbow Dash ain’t dead. She’s working on that thunderstorm right now.”

“Oh Applejack!” said Roseluck in the audience. “We know how hard this must be for you!”

“No, I mean it. If you’d just angle your heads slightly to the right you’d be able to see her out the window,” Applejack went on stubbornly.

“We all knew how close the two of you were,” Berry Punch sobbed.

Applejack stared out at the crowd and sighed to herself. “Yeah, I got better things to do,” she said. She then turned and walked away.

“We should just... let her be alone with her grief right now,” said the mayor, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “I suppose if Applejack can’t bring herself to decide... eenie, meenie, you are the new Rainbow Dash,” she said, jabbing her hoof randomly at the crowd.

“YEAH!” roared Horse Power. Nopony objected to the decision.

“Now, Nightmare Moon has already burned down Twilight Sparkle’s house in a fit of evil revenge, so she might be dead too,” the mayor went on. “In that case we’ll need a new Element of Magic...”

“Why did we come to this meeting, again?” Bon Bon asked Lyra.

“To find out what was going on,” said Lyra.

“I think of all your plans this one was probably the least grounded in reality,” Bon Bon said.

+I think this meeting is delicious and informative. There’s over fifty, sixty ponies here!+ Trustworthy McLegitimate chipped in.

“I’m surprised that this many showed up given how useless these things are,” Bon Bon grumbled.

+Wow! So you’re saying there are even more ponies who aren’t here? You surface ponies are prolific!+ thought Trustworthy enthusiastically. +This is gonna be the best eternal night ever!+

“Lyra, can we go?” Bon Bon said. “Nothing’s happening here and McLegitimate is creeping me out.”

“Wait,” Lyra said, bouncing up and down to get a better view. “These meetings always go the same way. The mayor wastes time, bad decisions are made, and then just when you’re getting bored –“

The doors to the hall slammed open.

Royal guards poured into the hall, jostling the crowd aside and forming an corridor down the centre of the hall.

A red carpet rolled down the centre to the stage.

A booming voice announced loudly and clearly, “KNEEL BEFORE YOUR PRINCE, LOWLY COMMONERS!”

Shining Armour, Captain of the Royal Guard, came into the hall, closely escorting Prince Blueblood. Blueblood was wearing elaborate golden battle armour. His march was slow and stately, eyes closed, head high, not looking at any of the bowing peasants.

The Prince casually shunted the mayor out of the way. He stood atop the stage, taking a moment to let everyone just bask in the amazing that was him. And then, slowly and deliberately he announced, “By order of Princess Celestia, all of Equestria is now under martial law!”

“ – everything goes to Tartarus in a handbasket,” Lyra finished.

Chapter 5: The Prince

Chapter Five: The Prince

By Thanqol

“This is it,” said Lyra. “Canterlot is making its move.”

“What?” said Bon Bon. She pulled her eyes off the unicorns on stage to look at Lyra.

“They know I have the human... robot,” Lyra said. “And now they’re sending in the military to cover it up. They’re going to take Trustworthy back to the humans and pretend the entire thing never happened.”

“Lyra, if they were trying to do that then surely they would have seen Trustworthy already,” Bon Bon said. She turned to look at the empty space that had briefly housed Trustworthy McLegitimate.

“Lyra?” Bon Bon said. “He’s not here anymore.”

“I can see that, Bon Bon,” Lyra said.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know!”

“Are you saying he escaped!?”

“I don’t know!”

“Quiet in the back!” yelled one of the guards. Lyra and Bon Bon hurriedly shut up.

Shining Armour was speaking again. “I need everypony to remain calm, return to their houses, and co-operate with the investig –“

“A-hem.”

Shining turned, and bowed to the Prince in one smooth, practised movement.

“When speaking on behalf of royalty, it is customary for the Captain of the Guard to use the Royal Canterlot Voice,” Blueblood said.

Shining Armour grit his teeth. “I apologise, my Prince,” he said. He cleared his throat, turned around, and bellowed at the top of his lungs, “FLEE, LOWLY PEASANTS! COWER IN THY HOMES UNTIL WE HAVE NEED OF THEE!”

There was something of a stampede on the way out. When the dust settled, only Twilight and Rainbow Dash were left in the hall. Twilight was still frazzled and slightly burned from last night’s events, and there were sleepless hollows under her eyes.

Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, was wearing a bright orange Cone of Shame around her neck. To say that she did not look happy with this would be like saying that a snowball would not be entirely chuffed to go on a cycling tour of the City of Brass Fire. She was loathing the cone so much that it spilled over into hating the world and everything around it.

“Lowly peasants?” Twilight said.

“Twily!” Shining Armour said, bounding forwards and embracing his sister. “How have you been?”

“Awful,” she said, “but what are you doing? Martial law?”

“Celestia’s in a panic. It’ll only be until we find –“

“A-hem!”

Shining Armour rolled his eyes at Twilight, then turned and bowed to Blueblood. “Yes, my Prince?”

“Captain, the reason why we’re here is classified, if you do recall.”

“But this is my sister, Twilight!” Shining Armour protested.

“Who?” Blueblood said, arching a single golden eyebrow.

“Element of Magic? Defeated Discord?” Shining Armour said. He was trying quite hard to keep his tone level.

“Never heard of her,” Blueblood said. “And, more to the point, she is a potential suspect in the investigation. One trusts you will be able to stay objective about this and not let your personal feelings get in the way?”

“I – yes, my Prince,” Shining Armour said through grit teeth.

“Hey! You can’t talk about Twilight like that!” Rainbow Dash said, flying forwards and getting all up in Blueblood’s grill. The Cone of Shame was not particularly aerodynamic, causing her to stumble and spin a few times in mid air, which just made her snarl all the more into the Prince’s face.

“Ah. Rainbow Dash?” Blueblood said. “One has heard of you.”

“You have?” Rainbow Dash’s anger was instantly forgotten.

“Yes. Best Young Flyer and Captain of the Weather Team. Quite a set of achievements.” Blueblood said. Rainbow Dash preened. Twilight Sparkle fumed.

“Well, yeah, I am pretty amazing,” Rainbow Dash said. She blushed a little at the flattery.

“In fact, one has a special mission for you. One would trust nopony else with it,” Blueblood said. His eyes shined with his incredible charm.

Rainbow’s eyes lit up like stars. “You can count on me! What do you need me to do? Organise a search team? Deploy a hurricane? Fight a monster?”

“One notices that there is a thunderstorm brewing,” Blueblood observed.

“Yes?”

“It would be tragic if any rain were to stain one’s celestial battle armour.” Blueblood said with a smile.

Rainbow Dash’s own smile was now rather blank.

“One trusts there will be no issue?” Blueblood said.

Rainbow Dash snapped into a salute. Her hoof bounced off the rim of the Cone of Shame. “You can count on me, your Highness!”

“This is bad for so many reasons,” Bon Bon said. Lyra was inclined to agree.

“I always knew something like this would happen when I finally made contact, but I didn’t think Celestia would actually declare martial law,” Lyra said. “Now we’ve got the entire army standing between us and the Truth.”

“It’s really happening, isn’t it?” Bon Bon said. “You were right. You were right about everything. This is the cover up.”

“Yes. We can’t wait any more. We have to show Trustworthy to everypony and denounce Celestia’s tyrant reign. It’s the only way,” Lyra said.

“So what do we do?” Bon Bon said.

“We need to find Trustworthy. If the Guard gets him we’ll never see him again,” Lyra said. She watched the guard patrols as they began to spread out over Ponyville. “We need to split up. You check everything between here and Sweet Apple Acres, and I’ll see what I can do from my home. Meet me there.”

“All right,” Bon Bon said. She took a deep breath, and galloped towards Sweet Apple Acres. There was a flash of lightning and rain started to pour down. Thunder rolled in the distance, deep and throaty, like some ancient god clearing his throat.

“So, where to, your Highness?” Rainbow Dash said. She was trying her best to stay professional about this. Maybe celestial battle whatsist had exposed wiring that’d mess up if it got wet. Maybe it was a military decision. She could work with that.

“Do you happen to know where Lady d’Heartstrings lives?” Blueblood asked.

“Lyra?” Rainbow Dash said, confused. “Well yeah. Unfortunately. Why do you want to go to Creepy Town Central?”

“One has business,” Prince Blueblood said. He did not look to be in danger of elaborating on this.

“Your Highness, do you really think –“ Shining Armour started. Blueblood raised a single hoof to cut him off.

“This will take but a minute. I will not need you to accompany me, Captain. Run the search until I return.”

Shining Armour saluted. He could have questioned this but he was relieved to get even fifteen minutes to himself. “As you command, my Prince!”

Rainbow Dash flew up to the cloud layer and began to accelerate. In less than a minute she’d cleared a swathe of blue sky leading directly from the town hall to the house of Lyra Heartstrings. She zoomed back into place and landed proudly.

Prince Blueblood smiled, but he didn’t step out of the town hall.

“It’s... clear,” Rainbow Dash said. “No rain.” She waved a hoof as if to prove it.

“One notices that the ground is muddy,” Blueblood said gently.

“Uh, yeah?” Rainbow Dash looked down at the ground, and then back up at Blueblood.

“One trusts that there will be no issue?”

Something Rarity had once said echoed through Rainbow Dash’s head. Something about inflicting royal pain.

She saluted and got to work.

+She’s coming. Remember, just like we practised.+

Bon Bon heard the thought as if from a great distance as she galloped out over Sweet Apple Acres. On the front porch of the farmhouse, Trustworthy McLegitimate and Applejack were sitting over cider. Trustworthy waved as she approached. Applejack stared at Bon Bon with a blank zombie gaze.

Bon Bon had to stop to catch her breath as she arrived, and shook the rain off her coat as she stepped under cover. Trustworthy waved her over. +Hey, it’s my long-lost cousin! How are you doing, Trustworthy?+

“Where... did you get to?” Bon Bon gasped.

+Well, when that poor doll Applejack left in such distress I thought, ‘Why, Trustworthy! That pony obviously needs a shoulder to cry on! I should go and see what assistance I might render as a fellow, normal pony!’+

Applejack maintained a blank, empty-eyed zombie stare. Some drool emerged from the edge of her mouth. Bon Bon looked between her and Trustworthy uncertainly.

+Psst!+ Trustworthy jabbed Applejack in the side and thought to her in hushed tones. +That’s your cue.+

+Oh yes!+ Applejack said without her mouth moving. +Howdy... ya’ll. Ah like apples.+

“Applejack, are you feeling all right?” Bon Bon asked.

+Never better!+ thought Applejack.

+See! She’s fine. We’re all fine here!+ said Trustworthy. +Fine and dandy! Just two ponies having a nice cup of cider and watching the rain!+

“How are you drinking cider? You don’t have a mouth,” Bon Bon asked.

+Ancient tar pony secret!+ thought Trustworthy.

A blowfly landed on Applejack’s open eye. She didn’t even blink. Bon Bon’s skin crawled and she tried to wave it away. This didn’t cause a blink either.

“Uh. Applejack?” The drop of drool hanging from Applejack’s mouth dripped down onto the growing puddle at her hooves. “I’ve got to get Trustworthy away from here. Could you do a favour and not tell the Guards he was here?”

+Ah wasn’t planning to,+ Applejack thought.

“And, er... your mouth isn’t moving when you talk,” Bon Bon said, feeling like this wasn’t something she could just allow to pass by..

+I’ve been teaching her ventriloquism!+ Trustworthy McLegitimate said. +How else do you think I can talk through all this tar? But just to set your mind at rest, Applejack, say something normally would you?+

“Br...” Applejack’s throat coughed up the word in a low rasp, “Brai – Aaaaapples.”

“I see,” Bon Bon said, taking a single lengthy step back.

+Well, if you need me it’d be churlish of me to delay. I’m sorry, miss Applejack, but I seem to have business. I’ll see you again soon!+ Trustworthy McLegitimate thought. Applejack made a kind of gurgling sound.

+Sure thing. Thank you... ya’ll... for all ya’ll help, Trustworthy McLegitimate,+ Applejack thought over the gurgling. +You are the best friend a pony could hope for. And Ah say that as the Element of Trustworthyness.+

+Wow! Commended by the Element of Trustworthyness! Looks like I’m living up to my name!+ Trustworthy McLegitimate thought happily. He nudged Bon Bon in the side. +See? Even the Element of Trustworthyness vouches for me!+

“She’s the Element of Honesty,” Bon Bon said.

+Same thing,+ thought Applejack.

“Okay. Well, this has been,” Bon Bon groped for a family friendly way to say ‘unbearably horrifying’. “Nice! We should do this again. But we’ve got to get moving, Trustworthy, the Guard could be here any minute.”

+Sure thing! See you around, Applejack!+ Trustworthy thought.

+See ya’ll, Trustworthy!+ Applejack thought. Trustworthy patted her on the shoulder. She slumped to the side of her chair blankly. Trustworthy hurriedly straightened her back in place, and then started to follow Bon Bon. He broadcast a telepathic whistling sound as he walked.

Rainbow Dash landed just outside Lyra’s house, panting hard. She’d had to spin a whirlwind fast enough to suck all the water off the ground for the entire distance here, while at the same time keeping it small enough to not stray off the thin band of moonlight that lit up the clear path. Even though she was exhausted she was quietly proud in knowing that nopony else could have pulled that stunt off. It was like threading a needle with a cyclone, and she’d done it! With a cone on her head, no less!

Blueblood walked right past her and into the house without a second glance.

Why that no-good –

Inside the house, Blueblood stopped in the middle of the reading room. It was a place of... eclectic tastes. The windows were boarded up and armed with telescopes. Warding scrolls were nailed to the walls. A pony skull floated in a vat of ichor, slowly spinning clockwise. Shady magical tomes piled the table, along with a copy of ‘Controlling Your Inner Arsonist: A Guide To Magic For The Pyromantically Challenged’. To contrast it all there was a signed poster of Octavia on the wall, with the message, “Now please stop following me”.

“Honey,” he said. “I’m home.”

He was then immediately hit in the back of the head with something heavy and blacked out.

“Miss Applejack? Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” the Royal Guardspony said uncertainly. Applejack drooled slightly.

“Uh, is she all right?” asked his partner.

“I heard her girlfriend died,” said the first. “Could be grief.”

“Well, that’s no good,” said the guard, “chances are we’re going to need the Elements of Harmony before all this is through. I know for sure I don’t want to fight –“

+Can I help ya’ll?+ Applejack thought.

“Oh, there she goes,” said the Guard in relief. “Miss Applejack, we’re looking for somepony and we were wondering if you could help us at all?”

+Oh sure. But ya’ll have to obey the farm rules while ya’ll are here.+ Applejack thought.

“Farm rules?” said the Guard.

Applejack pointed at a pile of hats.

+Ya’ll have to wear a hat,+ she thought firmly.

When Bon Bon and Trustworthy McLegitimate entered Lyra’s house, they saw Lyra trying quite hard to stuff Blueblood into an oven.

It was a fairly big oven, with enough room to fit even a colt like Blueblood in if everything was cleared out. Still, the slot hadn’t been big enough to cram an unconscious pony through, meaning Lyra had been forced to unscrew a lot of the bolts in the oven to open it up wide enough. There currently wasn’t any fire underneath it but, Lyra being Lyra, that wasn’t inherently reassuring.

As Bon Bon and Trustworthy entered, Lyra looked around, eyes widened, and she pointlessly tried to hide the tableau behind her body.

“Lyra,” said Bon Bon. “When I came here, I came here under the mistaken belief that it’d be less creepy than spending more time with McLegitimate.”

“Oh, this?” said Lyra, laughing airily. “Oh, it’s cool. I know him. We’re old friends. It’s like a game we play! He shows up at my home, I bludgeon him into unconsciousness and stuff him in a stove. All in good fun!”

+Oh! I love that game!+ Trustworthy McLegitimate said.

“Lyra, assaulting a royal is treason,” Bon Bon said. There were a lot of bad things she’d done recently, but treason was where she drew the line. Conspiracy to commit treason also counted as treason. All the very worst punishments in the book were for treason. There was no way to get out of treason.

“No it’s not. It’s fine, I promise,” Lyra said. As she spoke, her horn started glowing and trying to contort Blueblood into a position where he’d fit into the oven. “I’ve got a system.”

“There is no community service in the whole wide world that’ll get you out of treason!” Bon Bon shrieked. “And treason during martial law no less! Do you know what that means? It means the army punishes you! It doesn’t even go to the Princess!”

“Bon Bon! It’s fine! I’ve done this before!” said Lyra, trying to cram Blueblood’s leg into the stove.

“How!? How!?” Bon Bon shrieked. “How can you possibly be getting away with this!?”

“Because I am Archduchess Lyra d’Heartstrings,” Lyra said. She slammed the oven shut and all the bolts spun into place. “And this is my fiancé, Prince Blueblood.”

Chapter 6: The Conspiracy

Chapter Six: The Conspiracy

By Thanqol

Shining Armour, Captain of the Royal Guard, was surrounded by more maps than a deranged cartographer. All of Equestria was illustrated in minute detail, covering the entire interior of Ponyville City Hall. Miniature statuettes of guardsponies were arrayed all over the floor. Cleared sectors were marked in red. Unexplored and dangerous locations were marked with large blue crosses. Every few minutes there was a burst of green fire and a scroll, which was snatched up by one of the ponies all around him. The note was read, processed, and pieces on the map were moved accordingly.

They could have, should have been doing this from Canterlot but orders were to try and keep the capital out of it for as long as possible. So they’d moved the command hub to Ponyville. Ponies ran in and out of the doors, soaking wet from the rainstorm outside.

“Captain Armour! Negatives from sector forty eight and forty nine!” came one shout.

“That’s all we can do on our own, co-opt the Fillydelphia Weather Team into the search,” he snapped back. The colt saluted and moved some pieces on the map.

“Captain Armour! We’ve secured the impact site at Reichenbach, we’re going over it now!”

“Excellent, keep me posted,” he said. The filly nodded and galloped away.

+Captain Armour!+ came a strange thought. Two guardsponies – one wearing a fez and the other wearing a fedora – came in through the door. Their eyes were blank and their jaws were slack. +We have those hats for the search parties!+

“What hats? I didn’t ask for any hats,” Shining Armour said.

+Direct orders from the Prince. Says everypony has to be wearing a hat,+ thought the guard.

“Urgh...” Shining Armour rubbed his eyes with the back of his hooves. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this is probably the least disruptive thing he could be doing right now. All right, hand out the hats, let’s pretend that our commanding officer knows what he’s doing.”

“HELP! SOMEPONY HELP ME!” screamed Prince Blueblood. Lyra kicked the iron oven, sending an echoing reverb through his body.

“Quiet you! I’ve finally got you where I want you,” Lyra said.

“You want me in a stove? You’re crazy! HELP!”

“Not until you confess!” Lyra shouted.

“Confess what?” shouted Blueblood back. “What do you want? Why are you doing this!?”

Bon Bon awkwardly raised a hoof. “I actually think that’s a fair question,” she said. Lyra looked at her as if she’d been betrayed, and then sighed.

“I’m talking about the conspiracy, you blackguard,” she said to the oven. “That’s right! I know all about your diabolical scheme!”

“What scheme?” shouted Blueblood.

“The humans!” Lyra shouted back. “Two years ago, remember? Your little conversation? I overheard it! I know everything!”

“START FROM THE BEGINNING!” Bon Bon shouted, so loudly that both of them went quiet. Lyra actually looked abashed.

“Sorry, Bon Bon,” she said.

“You say sorry to her!?” said Blueblood, imprisoned in a stove.

“Two years ago,” Lyra went on, ignoring him, “I was a carefree heiress in Canterlot, studying at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. My father is Archduke Chello d’Heartstrings, and he’d arranged me a marriage with a handsome prince. I was the luckiest filly in the world, or so I thought. And then I met him.” She glared at the stove.

“To my eternal regret,” Blueblood sighed.

“He was a ponce, a fop, a cad, and a churl,” Lyra said. “An insufferable, self-absorbed boor without a nice thing to say about anypony.”

“And she somehow knew both nothing and far too much!” Blueblood snapped. “Rambling endlessly about the origins of the universe and obscure magical theory, it was intolerable! Almost enough to turn a colt off fillies all together!”

“And moreover, he wouldn’t help me in the slightest when it came to accessing restricted archives and libraries,” Lyra said. “And the Royals have a lot of restricted archives. They have secret files on everything going back to the dawn of Equestria – imagine what we could learn if those weren’t kept secret!”

“You’re just addicted to black magic!” Blueblood said.

“And then I found out that Blueblood works for the Equestrian Intelligence Service. I started doing some research into his work, what he did with all his time,” Lyra went on doggedly. “He has a secret network of spies and informants spreading all across Equestria. They monitor everything. Dimensional breaches. The moment magical relics and knowledge surface. Monster attacks. If anything happens then they step in, confiscate the source and add it to their enormous vaults and cover it all up so nopony looks into what happened!”

“Well, obviously,” Prince Blueblood sneered from inside the stove. “If somepony discovers the secrets of black magic and causes an interdimensional Incident then we have to make sure that nopony looks into what they were researching. It’s for everypony’s protection.”

“And during the course of my investigation, I finally had a breakthrough. I followed him through the Canterlot gardens one night where he was meeting with one of his informers.And that’s when he talked about them. The humans.” Lyra said.

“Oh. That.” Blueblood said.

“Ponyville was to be the first place to be colonised, wasn’t it? That’s why you were building those strange park benches, isn’t it?”Lyra said, jabbing her hoof at the stove. “No pony can sit on those. I’ve tried,” Lyra rubbed her back. “I heard you talk about your colonisation timetable! I heard you talk about the human fleet disguised as a meteor storm. About the secret cameras all over Ponyville! Don’t even try to deny it! I heard everything!”

“You were supposed to!” shouted Prince Blueblood.

Elsewhere, Berry Punch was opening her door to face two zombie-eyed guards wearing white ten gallon hats.

“Can I help you?” Berry said nervously.

+Hat inspectors,+ thought the first guard.

+There is an eight hundred bit fine for not wearing a hat,+ thought the second guard.

“Eight hu – huhhh –“ The number reached an unreachable blur in Berry Punch’s mind.

+Don’t worry. We are prepared to issue every citizen of Ponyville with a single hat, free of charge,+ thought the guard, offering Berry Punch a baseball cap.

“What do you mean, ‘I was supposed to’?” Lyra said.

“You really thought I, as head of the Equestrian Intelligence Service, didn’t notice my blundering wife-to-be poking around my secrets? Please,” Blueblood’s haughty sniff echoed through the stove. “I was onto you from the beginning. So I decided to play a little prank on you. I made up some cockatrice-and-bull story about Canterlot being secretly run by bald minotaurs and had the conversation where I knew you’d overhear it. The hope was you’d waste your time researching a conspiracy that didn’t exist and stop bothering me.”

“Y-you’re lying!” Lyra said.

“Those park benches? I had them made specifically to get you out of Canterlot,” Blueblood said. “Worked better than I hoped, actually. I actually didn’t even think you’d still be looking into it two years later,” with a little more anger he added, “And I definitely didn’t think you’d be crazy enough to stuff me in a stove over it!”

“But – the origins of the universe! I’ve done the math; it all works out! Discord, the reduction of the Everfree, the extinction events of major monsters, the acculturation and terraforming of the landscape –“

“I don’t care two ponyfeathers for any of that nonsense!” Blueblood said. “I just wanted you gone!”

“The math pans out!” Lyra said.

“The math could say that the world was made out of peanut butter for all I care! And care, I do not! No, this has gone too far already. You will let me out of here immediately!”

“Ooh, love the hat,” said Rarity, following the crowd of zombified hat-wearing ponies. Never one to be left out she’d designed an elaborate masterpiece of her own, styled with feathers and glass. “Very chic.”

“Braaaaaaaaiiins,” gurgled the pony.

“Why yes, I suppose it does take brains to co-ordinate that stylishly,” Rarity agreed. “So many ponies in this town are happy walking around naked. It’s good to see a positive trend taking place. Ohh, maybe I’m rubbing off on them...”

Shining Armour, still unhatted, came up onto the podium in front of the crowd. He looked out over the blank stares and slack-jawed drool uneasily. “What’s up with the town?” he muttered to his lieutenant.

+It’s International Hat Appreciation Day,+ thought the lieutenant. The Lieutenant was wearing a large tricorn and holding an umbrella over Shining Armour’s head.

“I mean, like... the creepy stares. Are they sick?”

+Oh yes,+ nodded the lieutenant. +They have the Sick Plague. Very serious. Incurable.+

“The entire town?” Shining Armour said. “Incurable? What?”

+Don’t worry about it. It’s not contagious,+ thought the lieutenant.

“It looks pretty contagious!”

+No. It’s, um. Genetic,+

“Genetic? All these ponies at the same time?”

+Oh, well, you know how these small towns are, sir,+ thought the lieutenant. Shining Armour decided to give up. One problem at a time.

“Citizens of Ponyville!” he said, eschewing the use of the Royal Canterlot Voice. “Thank you all for coming! I need your help with an urgent matter!”

The crowd shuffled, moaned, and one or two let out a vague “Braaains”. Shining Armour regretted his decision to ask the civilians for help.

“Magical residue testing has confirmed that the pony who brought down the meteor last night was none other than...” his voice choked a little, “my sister, Twilight Sparkle. Now, I’m sure there’s a good explanation for this, but Twilight is nowhere to be found. We need to find Twilight Sparkle and take her in for questioning, and we need your help to find her.”

“Then why are you here, Blueblood!?” Lyra shouted into the oven. “I bring down a human spaceship and less than three hours later Celestia declares martial law? And you ride to town with an army?”

“That’s... classified,” Blueblood said sulkily.

“Ah! So you admit it!” Lyra said.

“We didn’t come because you shot down the damn meteor!” Blueblood said. “You could shoot down every meteor and we wouldn’t care!”

“Then why are you here!?” Lyra demanded.

“Well, did you suspect for a second that it might have something to do with this here eternal night we find ourselves in the middle of?” Blueblood said. “Princess Luna’s gone missing! There, I said it! And Celestia doesn’t want everypony to automatically assume she’s turned to evil again because that would destroy Luna’s credibility!”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense,” Lyra said, backing off from the stove a bit.

“There! The secret is out! Now let me go!”

“I... can’t, actually. I kind of fused the bolts in place,” Lyra said.

“You did WHAT?”

“You deserve it for the human thing!” Lyra retorted. “Somepony will cut you out eventually.”

“I can’t believe a second of this. I’m stuck in a greasy stove by my insane harpy of a fiancé during a major military operation and after that useless blue pegasus couldn’t even keep all the mud off my armour. Speaking of, where is Rainbow Dash and why isn’t she HELPING!?”

Rainbow Dash was outside the front door, scratching at the Cone of Shame with her hind leg, like a dog. It wasn’t working.

“C’mon, get off...” she muttered. It was too slippery to get a proper grip on and her throat was so itchy it was killing her.

“Rainbow Dash! Are you scratching at the Cone of Shame?”

Rainbow Dash jumped up straight and saluted. “No, sir, no I am not!”

“Good,” said Twilight Sparkle. “Come with me. I need your help.”

Shining Armour was walking down the street, followed by forty or so hatted ponies. He was going door to door, looking for any sign of Twilight, but his attention was really on the crowd following him.

He quickened his pace. The mob increased its speed to match.

On an impulse, he took a quick turn down an alleyway. He got halfway down when another five ponies appeared on the other side, blocking him in. He broke into a run, taking a hard right. More hat ponies appeared to cut him off, so he sparked his horn and conjured a bulldozer-shaped shield to knock them out of the way. He burst out onto a main street to see a herd of hat ponies bearing down on him.

“Guards? GUARDS!” Shining Armour shouted, running for the town square. More ponies stumbled into his path, converging on him from all directions. He used his dozer-blade to shove through them, heading for the town hall. “Guards! I am under attack! Respond!” shouted Shining Armour.

His guards poured out of the town hall towards him. He let himself smile in relief.

The herd of guards crashed into him and pulled him under. He yelled briefly, but was cut off.

When the dust cleared, all that was left was a blank-eyed Shining Armour wearing a pinwheel hat, spinning gently in the breeze.

“Auntie Celestia is not going to let you get away with this,” Blueblood said from inside the stove. The stove’s wheel went down a single step, causing a huge bump. “Ow! Watch where you’re going, you clumsy oaf!”

“Princess Celestia is probably glad that somepony decided to take you down a peg,” Lyra said to the stove. The two were followed closely by Trustworthy McLegitimate and Bon Bon.

“They deserve each other,” grumbled Bon Bon to Trustworthy.

+Aw, don’t say that!+ thought Trustworthy.

“Why not? It turns out my best friend is a black magic addict, and a soon-to-be-royal, and she didn’t tell me any of it. Why should I trust her?” Bon Bon said.

+Well, look at it this way,+ thought Trustworthy. +She’s obviously not proud of any of those things. If it was up to her, she wouldn’t be engaged to this Blueblood chap, and she wouldn’t be a boring sit-around royal in Canterlot. And when she got told this whole human thing she probably wanted to believe it so badly that she overlooked a lot of good logic in the hopes it might be true. So what you saw might not have been what Lyra was, but it was definitely what Lyra wanted to be. She wanted to be a hero so badly that she was prepared to run away from her life to do it. I bet you anything that she’d have given anything for her theories to have been true.+

“What are you saying?” Bon Bon asked.

+What I’m saying is that there’s a difference between what Lyra is and what Lyra wants to be. What she is now is a pony with a lot of secrets and a lot of bad history. What she wants to be is a pony who goes on adventures with her friends. And that means you. Look how upset she is right now.+

“Wow... that’s...” Bon Bon said. Sure enough, she could see the ashamed flush in Lyra’s cheeks, and tears in the corners of her eyes. “That’s really insightful, Trustworthy. Thank you.”

+Aw, no problem! What are friends for, right?+ thought Trustworthy McLegitimate. +Anyway, not like it matters because it looks like we’ve got a swarm of zombies coming right this way.+

Lyra brought the oven with Blueblood to a dead stop, eliciting cursing from the prisoner. Hundreds of ponies and guards were coming up the hill in an unending tide of hats. A swarm of hats. A plague of hats.

+Oh gee, there’s so many of them!+ said Trustworthy happily. +This looks hopeless. Why don’t we give up? Save ourselves the trouble?+

Chapter 8: The End

Chapter Eight: The End

By Thanqol

Fires were actually really, really hot. Bon Bon had previously been aware of fires as kind of warm, possibly unpleasant if you stood too close to one – but standing in a confined space with closed windows that was almost entirely on fire was an utterly different experience. It was like drowning in a solid blast of pure heat, breathing in smoke that scratched at her throat and filled her lungs with thick emptiness. She had resolved to take her chances with the zombies before Lyra conjured the protective bubble she’d used back at the swamp, blocking out the smoke and heat and letting Bon Bon catch her breath.

+My, that looks pleasant,+ thought Trustworthy, burning cheerfully. +Can I get some of that?+

Lyra’s horn started to glow again – but there was a shock of silent blue lightning and the spell fizzled and died. “My dear,” said the golden-armoured Blueblood from the stairs, “I believe you are forgetting something rather more important.”

“He’s on fire, Blueblood!” Lyra said, horn glowing again. Just as suddenly, it was cut off.

“Yes, my dear. And the detail you are forgetting is that it is your fire.”

“What?”

“I made mention of my earlier plan to toss the wretched corpse of your predecessor into the ruins of the fallen observatory,” Blueblood said, “but right now, you have presented me with a far better alternative. ‘Lyra d’Heartstrings botches a teleportation spell, causing a terrible fire that claims the life of a mysterious tar pony ambassador’. Not exactly an unbelievable headline?” Blueblood swatted away another of Lyra’s protection spells casually, “I don’t have to dirty my hooves dragging around a corpse or faking magical signatures or any such nonsense. All I have to do is cast a few counterspells and let nature take its course.”

Bon Bon was horrified. “What kind of Prince are you? What kind of pony are you?”

“Please. This ‘tar pony’ is doubtless associated with the takeover of my guard outside. I am treating him the same as I would any other monster that crawled out of the Everfree, as well as removing an unstable arsonist from Equestria.”

+Would it make any difference if I promised you, one pony to another, that I had nothing to do with that?+ thought Trustworthy McLegitimate. His calm thoughts were actually a little strained.

“Not even the slightest,” Blueblood affirmed.

Lyra’s next bolt of magic was aimed directly at Blueblood – and it sank into his golden armour with a slurping sound. “Oh please,” said Blueblood.

Bon Bon ran for the door. Blueblood snatched up the telescope with his horn and used it to conjure a shimmering barrier of force that Bon Bon ran smack into.

Lyra used the opportunity to run for the stairs and try the rather more direct approach of stabbing Blueblood with her horn. The Prince casually swatted her on the crown with the telescope, badly denting it in the process. Lyra stumbled back down the stairs. “Oh dear,” he said, holding it up, “that looked expensive.”

“You’re a maniac!” Lyra shouted.

“Me? Well I suppose I have been driven to it by the expectation that I am to marry somepony like you!” Blueblood said, tossing the telescope aside. “I am Prince Blueblood, heir to the Royal Princesses of Equestria themselves! I deserve only the greatest and most beautiful pony in all the land as my wife, not some incompetent musician! And if I am required to step over a few gullible failures and alien monsters to get what I want then that is a price I am willing to pay!”

+And that’s your final answer?+

“Rainbow Dash, knock off that pony’s hat.”

“You got it!”

Like an arrow of light across the night-time sky, Rainbow Dash surged into the face of Hoity Toity. Ineffable mirrored shades gazed impassively out from under a regal top hat and over a long blob of drool. With a single, casual wipe of her hoof the hat was knocked from the pony’s head.

+Hey! That’s rude!+ thought Hoity Toity.

“Just like I predicted,” said Twilight Sparkle happily, trotting over and looking at the fashion pony’s head. “Brain slugs.”

The bright green octopus-like creature atop Hoity Toity’s skull blinked innocently at them. +No. Not brain slugs. Haute Culture. Very modern.+

“What?” said Twilight. “You expect us to believe you’re a fashion accessory?”

“I’d believe it,” said Rainbow Dash. “Remember Fluttershy’s dress, with the bird eggs? This isn’t that much weirder.”

“Well, there’s a simple way to check.” Twilight said, levitating a salt shaker into the air and giving it three firm shakes over the octopus.

It made a hissing and bubbling sound, and almost immediately contracted into a small, dark green cube. The cube fell to the ground with a clink. There was no discernible change on Hoity Toity’s face, but he wiped away the line of drool with a handkerchief.

“Are you all right, sir?” asked Twilight Sparkle.

Hoity Toity shoved her out of the way to focus on Rainbow Dash. “My dear, you must tell me who designed your wonderful hat! So sleek, so understated, so eye-catching!”

“What, the Cone of Shame?” said Rainbow Dash. “It’s to stop me scratching myself.” She demonstrated by ineffectually pawing at the cone with her hind leg.

“Ah! Even the character is perfect! I see the fashion world opening up to the “Dirty Fillies” line! This could change the face of Equestrian fashion! Dear lady, would you be so kind as to visit my Best-of-the-Best Boutique in Canterlot?”

“Canterlot? Aw yeah, count me in!” said Rainbow Dash. Twilight unsteadily got to her feet.

“Rainbow! We’ve got to save Ponyville first!”

“But please! The fashion world moves so fast, if we do not act now you could miss your chance!” Hoity Toity protested.

“Don’t worry, I’m the fastest in Equestria,” Rainbow Dash bragged. “I’ll be done with this before you can dirty even one filly!”

“Of course it is my final answer,” said Prince Blueblood.

+No remorse? No repentance? No guilt in the slightest?+ Trustworthy thought. The blaze around him was intensifying; the tar pony was almost invisible behind the solid column of flame.

“I regret that it took so long to set into motion,” Blueblood said.

+All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,+

“Warn me of what?”

There was a sound like two wine bottles being uncorked.

“OF OUR FURY!”

“Auntie?” Blueblood said in a weak voice.

A silver horseshoe stepped out of the fire.

Trustworthy McLegitimate’s true features, finally revealed from the tar that had soaked him, shined outwards. His stiff middle set of legs were actually two graceful, sweeping wings. The strange lights that flashed along his head and neck were revealed as the light of thousands of stars. The grey metal hooves were delicate silver horseshoes. Green eyes that had seen the turn of ages flashed with wrath and starfire.

The fire did not touch him; he who had danced with stars had no fear of mere terrestrial flames.

Though the truth was that he was She; and She was the Princess of the Night.

Luna.

And on her head was a large, black, tentacled octopus with a single red eye. It waved cheerfully.

“THOU HAS PRIDE, BUT FOR WHAT WE HAVE YET TO DISCERN,” bellowed Luna in the traditional Royal Canterlot Voice. Her sheer volume blew out many of the smaller fires. “THY SOLE CLAIM TO GLORY IS THAT THY BLOOD IS DISTANTLY MINGLED WITH MINE. BUT THOU HAS NO IDEA HOW FAR THY LINE HAS FALLEN,”

“Now, auntie Luna,” Blueblood protested meekly, “I just wanted to avoid embarrassing –“

“THOU HAST EMBARASSED US ENOUGH! WE HEREBY STRIP YOU OF ALL ROYAL BLOOD AND PRIVILEGE!”

“Strip me of... my royal blood?”

“YES.”

“No!”

“BEHOLD.”

Luna’s horn alit with the light of stars and the deeper space between stars; a blue so deep and velvet it was far greater than any mere black. With a flick of her head, a single cut opened on Blueblood’s cheek and three small drops of blood fell to the ground.

“IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE THY HOUSE HAS KNOWN THE TOUCH OF ROYALTY THAT THIS IS ALL THE ROYAL BLOOD THAT REMAINED. THOU HAS LOST THY CLAIM EVEN TO THAT.”

“You can’t do that! That’s not how it works!”

“WHO REIGNS IN EQUESTRIA?”

“But –“

“BE SILENT!”

Blueblood closed his mouth.

+Wow, I should have done this way sooner!+ thought Trustworthy McLegitimate, sliding his tentacles back into Luna’s ears. The Princess’ jaw went slack. +Turns out I’m a Princess! I wonder what else I can do with this pony?+

It wasn’t often that Rainbow Dash got told explicitly that she was free to make the biggest hurricane she wanted and not have to clean it up afterwards. Normally a windstorm like this, especially during this rain, would send broken fragments of rainclouds scattering for miles and it’d take weeks to clean it all up. Right now she got to cut loose.

She herded the winds together and aimed them all at once at the house on the hill, surrounded by hundreds of hatted ponies.

“I can’t believe this? Trustworthy, how could you betray us?” Lyra asked. Bon Bon rolled her eyes.

+It was an accident! There I was, minding my own business in the bottom of a lake, and then BOOM! Pony Princess,+ Trustworthy thought.

“So you are responsible for everything weird that’s been happening to the town?” Bon Bon asked, because it counted to be certain.

+In my defence, I was really, really hungry,+ Trustworthy thought.

“So you, what, ate their brains?”

+Not at all! What do you take me for? I only ate their thoughts!+

“And the zombies?”

+Well, while their thoughts were recovering I called some of my family to take care of them while I was out and about. Think of it like a free vacation from having to live in your head!+

“And you’re going to give the Princess back now and go home, right?” Lyra asked.

+I was actually thinking I might stay. Me and Loony really hit it off up here. We’re like buddy cops! One’s a Princess, the other’s a parasitic brain slug. I mean, for our first adventure we stopped the evil plans of a rogue Prince and discovered the mystery of why the town was zombified.+

“You zombified the town!”

+Yes, we know that now. But before now it was a mystery, wasn’t it? And we solved that mystery. We’re just like real heroes! Imagine what we’ll do next week!+

“You don’t seriously believe what you’re saying.”

+We can call it “Trust Luna!”+

Lyra and Bon Bon exchanged looks.

And then the wind hit the building like the hoof of an angry god.

Rainbow Dash finished her pass over Lyra’s house, leaving an enormous shockwave of wind in her wake. Hundreds of hats soared up into the air, sucked along by her aftertrail.

And then an entire building – a salt saloon – soared overhead, lifted by the glow of purple magic, blocking out the moonlight, and sending a beautiful, snow-like rain of salt crystals pouring down onto the brain slugs below.

+What’s happening?+ Trustworthy asked, devoid of usual cheerfulness.

“You didn’t know it rains salt in Equestria?” Lyra asked.

+What?+

“Yep. Freak salt storms. All the time. Wouldn’t want to be a brain slug up here.” Bon Bon nodded.

+I – well, I suppose you’re a McLegitimate. What should I do?+

“Huh?” Bon Bon said.

+Us McLegitimates have to stick together!+ said Trustworthy with genuine conviction. +Surely you’re going to help me out of this jam? You’re not going to let me catch a face full of salt, right?+

“Uh. Sure,” Bon Bon said, still wondering as to Trustworthy’s thought processes. “First step is to get off Luna’s head,”

There was the sound of two corks popping as Trustworthy withdrew his tentacles from Luna’s ears. The Princess collapsed to the ground in a heap. +Done!+ thought Trustworthy.

“Step two of the plan is lock him in the oven, Lyra!”

Lyra lunged at the black octopus with both hooves.

Trustworthy moved like flaming grease, skidding across the room far more quickly than anypony expected. He made a lunge for Luna’s head but Bon Bon cut him off. He swarmed to the left, clambering over the screaming globe and up a wall and narrowly avoiding being caught in a bucket levitated by Lyra. He scrambled desperately up the stairs as the two ponies came after him.

And he jumped onto the head of Prince Blueblood, who screamed girlishly.

The tentacles slipped into his ears, and the Prince’s jaw went slack. +Alright. You and me. Let’s get out of here!+ Trustworthy thought.

“Stop, in the name of the Royal Guard” yelled somepony from outside. A blast of magic knocked most of the barricade loose.

+Oh darn. Darn darn darn. Oh, I know! Teleportation!+ Blueblood’s horn started to glow.

“No!” shouted Bon Bon, running forwards.

She lunged.

There was a flash of blue.

And she sailed directly into a wall.

As major disasters went, this one hadn’t really been all that bad.

Princess Luna regained consciousness in rather short order and proceeded to lower the moon, to the cheers of the townsfolk. The Ponyvillians didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects from their ‘vacation’, and indeed were mostly confused about the whole thing. No major buildings had been destroyed other than the observatory and library, and aside from a few broken windows and many, many lost hats the property damage had been fairly low. Ponyville took it in stride.

Twilight Sparkle was subsequently prosecuted for her role in magically calling a meteor down from the sky, hitting Princess Luna with it, and plunging her into a tar pit - possibly prompting a zombie apocalypse in the process. Twilight successfully defended herself on the grounds of there being a no-fly zone over Ponyville during a meteor storm and therefore having reasonable grounds to assume that there was nopony in the sky at the time. She comprehensively failed to prove that Lyra was to blame for any part of it, and wound up having to rebuild her own library as well as Ponyville Observatory to pay off her community service.

The Nightmare Fragment kept in Spike’s cook pot was forgotten about, and later sold in a yard sale. It waits there, in some poor pony’s kitchen cabinet, awaiting the moment it would again get the chance to terrorise innocent ponies.

Rainbow Dash spent about a week as the poster child of Canterlot Fashion, epitomising the ‘rough and tumble’ style, before being supplanted by ‘80’s Chic’. Rainbow Dash briefly wore the 80’s style before she tragically passed by a mirror and realised what she was doing with her life. The Cone of Shame wound up in a prop bin, where it eventually received a cameo as a traffic cone in a stage play.

And in a little cafe in Ponyville, on a sunny autumn afternoon, Lyra and Bon Bon were having tea together.

“I’ve been thinking, Lyra,” said Bon Bon, putting down her cup.

“About what?”

“You remember when Trustworthy escaped? How there was nothing we could do to stop him?”

“Yes. He could be anywhere by now.”

“Didn’t you tell me that you knew a spell to stop ponies from teleporting?”

Lyra was silent.

“I have a theory. I think that a rogue Unicorn Prince, in the service to an alien monster, at the heart of Canterlot’s government... I think that’s a big secret. A real secret. I think that that kind of thing doesn’t happen just every day. And I think that you couldn’t pass up that kind of perfect chance to be a hero.”

Lyra looked away.

“Lyra?”

“I’m sorry. I just thought... I wasn’t thinking... I didn’t know –“

“What are you sorry for? I said it was a perfect chance, didn’t I?”

Lyra looked at Bon Bon, eyes slightly red. “What?”

“Well, we can do it all again, except this time we’ll be chasing a real alien and a real conspiracy. Anypony could be a part of it.” Bon Bon said. “It could go all the way to the top.”

“You – but you hate conspiracies,”

“No. Conspiracy is a crime. Bringing down a conspiracy is whistleblowing. It’s heroic.”

“You mean it?”

“On one condition.”

“Anything.”

“When we catch up to Trustworthy, we bring him down. For real. No holding back.”

“Deal,” said Lyra, grinning like the dawn.

“There is one other complication...”

“What?”

“Princess Celestia’s always wearing a hat. Well, a crown thingy.”

“You think she –“

“Maybe.”

“We’re going to have to steal the crown of Princess Celestia off her head?”

“It seems like the only way.”

“I’ve actually had an idea for how I’d do something similar. I’m going to need some potato salad and a giant wooden alpaca...”

And the two friends discussed ways to break into Canterlot Castle and denude their immortal rulers of their headgear long into the night. Somewhere distant, Princess Celestia felt a strange chill run down her spine.

Life went on, as it had before. The sun still shined. The moon still glowed. One terrible lie was gone and there was a little bit more truth in Equestria. It was a small thing, but in the eyes of those two friends, it made all the difference in the world.

The End.

Chapter 1: The Truth

Do Not Serve These Ponies

Chapter One:The Truth

By Thanqol

Bon Bon had not heard of many museums that had a ‘Banned Ponies’ list. Lists like that were usually the province of convenience stores or salt bars, not high class repositories of the arts. A pony had to go pretty far, she imagined, before a museum was prepared to adopt a method normally used for dealing with drunks and petty thieves just to keep you out.

The photos were pinned to the corkboard next to the register alongside the bored looking cashier. Angry red letters above it said, “DO NOT SERVE THESE PONIES”. It was initially of some comfort to Bon Bon that Lyra’s grinning face was not the only one up there. That comfort diminished upon noticing that the other patrons who had been banned were Nightmare Moon and Ahuitzotl. Lyra wasn’t exactly in good company, she saw.

Not for the first time she wondered exactly what Lyra had done here.

“That’ll be eight bits,” said the museum pony in a dull voice, making her jump with fright. Bon Bon smiled nervously and grabbed for her purse. Every moment, visions of iron bars descending from the ceiling and guard ponies leaping out from behind potted plants flashed behind her eyes. She wished she didn’t know that conspiracy was a crime. She hadn’t been here before, but everypony knew that she spent all her time with Lyra, and this place was run by unicorns, so who knew what kind of security measures they had –

“You all right, ma’am?” asked the cashier, noticing her hyperventilation.

“I’m fine!” said Bon Bon. “I just forgot that I left my house on fire.”

The cashier stared at her. She felt the need to elaborate.

“Don’t worry. I have plenty of houses!” She grinned in what she theorised was a trustworthy manner.

Smooth, she thought, wincing, as the cashier slowly pressed the ticket button.

“Uh, welcome to the Royal Ponyville Museum of Art and History, I hope your stay is... worth it?”

“It already is!” she said with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary to maintain her cover as she snatched the ticket. “Which way to the bathroom?” she said, mouth full.

“End of the second corridor, ma’am,” said the museum pony. A blur of yellow and the scent of candy on the air were the only things that marked Bon Bon’s passage as she galloped down the hall.

“She must really like ancient pottery,” he murmured, picking up his newspaper.

Bon Bon edged into the bathroom sideways, letting the door fall shut on her tail to muffle the sound of her entrance. She immediately dropped to her stomach and scanned the stalls, looking for signs of hooves. Empty. She breathed a huge sigh of relief and made her nervous way over to the window. It was small and glazed, with some kind of switch-lever thing. She tried to press it as gently as she could, but the devilish artifice of its design caused it to slam instantly open with a loud BANG that made Bon Bon shriek involuntarily and spin to face the door, mind scrambling for an excuse. Her treacherous imagination was otherwise occupied, though, with wondering what featherbrain made a racing game out of window openers.

As her heart’s pounding slowed and she gradually caught her breath, Bon Bon finally came to terms with the fact that there were no armed guards closing in on her position. There was also a lack of Lyra. The lack of guards was fine, but it was on Lyra’s behalf that she was going through this ordeal in the first place. She stuck her head out the window and looked around. Sure enough, Lyra was standing outside, looking up at the morning sun and frowning in contemplation of some great thought. Or possibly daydreaming.

“Lyra!” Bon Bon hissed. “Lyra!” The green unicorn showed no sign of awareness. “Lyra! Over here!” The panic was starting again – why was she taking so long about this?

Lyra blinked. Relief flooded Bon Bon’s heart, but the unicorn didn’t look at her. Lyra began speaking vaguely to herself, “- it’s a pentiform, not a curassier. The entanglement of magical energies can be bypassed with appropriate...”

“LYRA!” Bon Bon half whispered half screamed.

Lyra looked around. “Oh hey Bon Bon! I didn’t hear you there.”

“You didn’t – you didn’t – “ Bon Bon frothed briefly. “I’m breaking you into a restricted building! Do you know what they’ll do to me if they catch me? Did you know that conspiracy is a crime?”

Lyra raised her hoof knowingly. “Is conspiracy to tell the truth a crime?”

“Probably!”

Lyra looked concerned at this. Bon Bon nearly had a panic attack when she sat down to think about it.

“Just get in here!” she pleaded.

“Okay!” Lyra said. She stretched, got up and walked over to the window. She pushed her head through the narrow gap and started to squeeze in. Bon Bon hurried over to the door and checked around outside to make sure nopony was coming. She was relieved to see that the coast was still clear.

And it was still clear a minute later. And another minute later. And then Bon Bon started to panic.

She turned around back into the bathroom where Lyra was still lodged in the window. “I think I’m stuck!” said Lyra with far less panic than the situation merited.

“You’re stuck!?” said Bon Bon. Her mind started reeling with the horror of it. “Security could be here any minute. You told me you’d done this before!”

“I told you I’d been here before,” Lyra corrected her.

“I thought you meant in a criminal capacity!”

“Do I look like a career criminal to you?” said Lyra, hanging from the bathroom window.

“This is because you can’t lay off the shakes!” Bon Bon said, “You’re getting fat in the flank!”

“Hey! My flank is lean and shapely!” Lyra complained. “And I earned those shakes. I went on the running of the leaves the other day!”

“It’s summer,” hissed Bon Bon.

“What, already?” Lyra said. “Then what have I been doing for the past eight months?”

“I would say that you had been planning crimes but this CLEARLY hasn’t been planned at all!” Bon Bon said. She grabbed Lyra by the hooves and started trying to pull her through the window. Lyra’s flank was wearing the window snugly and despite how she pulled it refused to leave. Lyra seemed rather nonplussed by the situation.

“It’s hopeless. We’re doomed,” Bon Bon said, collapsing in defeat.

“Maybe you should go around and push. You can get better leverage from that direction,” Lyra said without the faintest hint of worry.

“You really think that’ll work?” Bon Bon said, face lighting up.

“Can’t hurt.” Lyra shrugged from her windowy prison.

Bon Bon was already galloping.

“Uh, ma’am?” said the cashier as he saw Bon Bon racing past him in the other direction.

“I forgot that it was my good house that was on fire!” said Bon Bon as her hooves skidded across the marble.

Bon Bon galloped down the lane towards the flank and legs that were dangling from the bathroom window. She immediately began trying to headbutt Lyra’s behind through the window.

“Ow! Gently!” Lyra complained.

Bon Bon snarled in response.

“You know,” Lyra mused in between headbutts to the plot, “I was thinking of magic to assist with this kind of thing the other day. It’s all theory right now but this might be a good chance for a field test –“

“DO IT!” shrieked Bon Bon.

There was a flash of green light from the inside of the bathroom. Then there was a bang and some crackling.

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t try that on myself first,” Lyra said.

“What did you do,” Bon Bon said.

“Well, the spell was a combination of earth and water elements, designed to create a kind of extremely slippery grease that might expedite my entrance –“

“WHAT. DID. YOU. DO.”

“I started a fire.”

“You what!?”

“Just a little one!”

“Arson is a crime, Lyra! And so is conspiracy!”

“You didn’t know I was going to commit arson. That’s hardly a conspiracy.”

“That doesn’t mean they won’t banish me!”

“And what’s more, we’re doing this to bring down a conspiracy. That makes us reverse criminals!”

“That is NOT how it works!”

“Really? That’s a dumb rule,” Lyra said. “Anyway, I can put this out once I get free. Think of it like a time challenge!”

“Today is challenging enough!” Bon Bon cried, redoubling her efforts to shove Lyra’s behind through the window.

“Hold on, I think I’m getting something,” Lyra said. Her flank remained stubbornly stuck. “I was thinking about it before you distracted me. I’ve seen other ponies do it but I haven’t been able to figure out how to do it just by looking at it...”

“Lyra!” Bon Bon whimpered, “Somepony will see us!”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Two ponies have gone in and out of here already.”

Bon Bon made a sound reminiscent of an asthmatic weasel being strangled by a rat with claws too slippery to make a clean job of it.

“But they’re either very polite or my TransVisibility Screen spell works,” Lyra said. Bon Bon let out a sigh of relief, and gathered her strength for one final shove.

“Miss Cheerilee, what’s that pony doing to that other pony’s flank?” came a small voice from behind Bon Bon. The precise shade of grey that soaked into Bon Bon’s face had never before been seen in the colourful world of Equestria.

“She’s uh –“ Cheerilee’s voice came to a faltering stop.

“Helping me because I’m stuck!” Lyra shouted from the window. Bon Bon noted that there were giggles, plural. Plural as in entire classroom. She did not even dare to look around.

“She’s helping her,” Cheerilee said slowly.

“Can we help too?”

“NO!” shouted Cheerilee and Bon Bon at the same time.

“Oh hey, I think I figured this out!” Lyra said. There was another flash of green light, but while the earlier one had been a kind of sedate, easy-going flash of light this one was a screaming exploding pyromaniac. Birds fled nearby nests and the backwash ruffled everypony’s hair. Applebloom had to stomp on Sweetie Belle's tail to put out a small fire.

Lyra’s slightly scorched face emerged from the inside of the bathroom. “Teleportation! Not quite sure what to do with all the excess fire mana but that’s what practise is for!” She waved enthusiastically to what Bon Bon was pointlessly hoping was not a crowd of school children. She then said something quite unforgivable. “Hi! I’m Lyra and this is Bon Bon!”

“Nice to... meet you?” Cheerilee said in a tone of voice that made Bon Bon suspect she was trying to get the children to quietly edge away. “That was some... spell you cast there.”

“Oh you ain’t seen nothing yet!” Lyra said. “Come on! There’s truth afoot!” Mercifully, she vanished inside the window.

Bon Bon and Cheerilee managed to leave the scene in the same direction without making eye contact.

“How’s your house?” asked the cashier as Bon Bon hurried past him yet again.

“Not dead yet, but it will be,” said Bon Bon.

On the plus side, the fire in the bathroom was rather small. On the minus side, it looked like a flaming buffalo had struck the window. The scorch mark covered half the wall. Even if the teleportation hadn’t worked, enough damage had been inflicted to the window frame and surrounding wall to allow even Lyra’s behind safe passage. The accursed window-opener was springing open and shut in an endless, tortured cycle on the ground. Bon Bon was feeling just spiteful enough to put her hoof through it, ending its misery.

And of Lyra, there was no sign. Of course.

She ran back into the corridor and looked around. She thought she caught a glimpse of a green and white tail vanishing around the corner. She took a deep breath and ran after it.

“And these pots are direct relics from the Paleopony Period, and represent some of the very first known pony crafts. They were found around the Ponymids, which archaeologists think were built to house the remains of powerful rulers from even before the Royal Sisters!”

The Paleopony Exhibition was filled with exotic old stonework and ancient tools. There were crude bronze spears, rock paintings, skulls and a large rune-carved monolith that dominated the western wall. The eldritch carvings in the monolith spoke of things which one would not wish to see translated even if such a herculean endeavour were possible in the first place. A darkness misunderstood, forgotten, and archived where it could wait for the universe to die a natural death without needing to force the issue in accordance with it's malevolent design.

Everypony in the room was doing their best to pretend that the creepy monolith did not exist. The students were even feigning an interest in ancient architecture purely so they didn’t have to pay close attention to the creepy monolith. Cheerilee considered this a fortunate turn of events; hopefully they’d be intimidated enough by the ancient, sorcerous stonework to forget about what they’d seen on the way in and neglect to tell their parents about it once they got home. She didn’t want to have to deal with that particular PTA meeting.

“What’s this thing?” Scootaloo said, pointing at one of the pots with a particularly elaborate carving.

“That is Yggdrassil, the World Tree!” Cheerilee said brightly. “The ancient ponies believed that Equestria stood on the five branches of an ancient and massive tree. The five branches represent the five Elements of Harmony, while Equestria itself is the sixth that brings them all together!”

“And those things?” Applebloom said, pointing out an ancient mural.

“Those are the Minotaurs of the Early Days. Legend has it that in the days before the sun shined the minotaurs would light massive fires and use ancient sorcery to make teams of buffalo to pull them through the sky so that the world would be warmed and darkness defeated!”

“Wow,” Scootaloo said, “that’d be a lot of work.”

“Wait, buffalo can’t fly,” Applebloom said. “My sister went to Appaloosa an’ she’d for sure tell me if she saw buffalo flying around.”

“Well, today’s buffalo can’t fly, but the evidence suggests –“ Cheerilee started, but was cut off.

“The child makes a good point!” boomed a dramatic voice from the balcony above. “Respond to it truthfully if you would.”

“Who are you?” Cheerilee asked bluntly, images of being torn to pieces by ravenous PTA members flashing on the inside of her eyelids.

“I am but a humble servant of the truth!” cried Lyra, revealing herself dramatically. She was wearing a cape that looked suspiciously like it had been stolen from the Vamponies exhibit. “And if you children will listen to me I shall tell you the true history of Equestria. The history they don’t want you to hear! The history which they construct temples of lies, like this museum, to conceal from you!”

Cheerilee’s mind flicked back to the entrance of the museum, putting the voice to the picture on the ‘banned entrants’ photograph. Ah, she thought, so this is what is as bad as Nightmare Moon.

“All right class,” Cheerilee said in resignation, “let’s consider this a lesson in psychology.”

“I am not mad! I simply see with untroubled eyes!” announced Lyra, leaning over the railing. “Two thousand years ago there was not even an Equestria! There was simply an empty void through which they came. In their fleet of glowing starships they travelled through space and between the stars! They found this spot and decided it was right for their purposes, and they set to work building the world!”

“How’d they build the entire world?” asked one of the students.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Lyra said, voice slipping from her dramatic announcer tone to a much more casual, slightly dreamy one. “It’s all basic elemental magic underpinned by harmonics. First they created undirected change, or potentia terribilis, and unleashed it on the region of space. I think I know how they did it; I could probably reproduce it in laboratory conditions if I had enough mana to work with. The potentia is without limit, so it made a world – a rather terrible world ruled by chaos, but it counted as a world. And then the ancients created Celestia and Luna and armed them with the Elements of Harmony.”

At this point Lyra’s dramatic speech voice reasserted itself.

“The pony princesses made a deal with these ancients. They would wield the Elements and defeat the potentia – or Discord as they want you to believe his name is. And then they would spend the next several thousand years terraforming the blasted chaos-scape into something the ancients would find habitable. And then, when the world was finally refined into a sufficiently orderly state, the ancients would invade and claim it as their own! Ponies would be mere slaves and house pets to them! That is the true agenda of the pony princesses – to remove magic from this world on behalf of their terrible alien masters!”

There were shocked gasps from a lot of the schoolchildren and a solitary facehoof from Cheerilee.

“So what are these aliens?” Applebloom asked, wide eyed.

Lyra smirked. She had been waiting for that question.

“They are called humans.”

Chapter 7: The Invasion

Chapter Seven: The Invasion

By Thanqol

First had come the running.

There had been quite a bit of it, and mostly uphill. While their opposition had consisted mostly of shambling zombie ponies, neither Lyra and Bon Bon were particularly in shape and were carrying a heavy oven with entrapped pony along with them. Trustworthy wasn’t a huge amount of help, excusing himself +On account of my super-sticky tar coating! Sorry, don't want to be the second pony permanently bonded to an oven today!+. He strolled alongside the two regular ponies as they shoved the oven up the hill.

“Go faster, you ditchwater rubes! They’re gaining on us!” cried Blueblood.

“Lyra?” Bon Bon said.

“Yes?” Lyra said.

“Wouldn’t it be a “tragedy” if “something” were to “happen” to “Blueblood”?” Bon Bon said, using so many airquotes that Lyra wondered if the obvious guess was the wrong one. She decided to make the assumption anyway.

“No. They’d probably just let him out of the oven,” Lyra said. Bon Bon supposed that was a good enough case to keep him around.

Puffing and wheezing, the ponies managed to shove the oven back inside Lyra’s house and slam the doors just as the horde crested the hill. Bon Bon’s lungs felt like two puffer fish implanted in her torso by a maniacal deep-sea surgeon, who - prior to his mad experiment - had outfitted the puffer fish with electrodes and was sending them into repeated cardiac arrest. Lyra was afraid to talk lest she accidentally sever her panting tongue.

The horde reached the house.

Then came the fortification.

Blueblood had been knocked on his side and used to barricade the main door. A bookcase was shifted to cover one of the windows. The dinner table was upended to cover another one. And then they ran into a problem.

“Lyra,” said Bon Bon, “we’re out of non-creepy stuff to barricade the windows with.”

“What’s creepy about my stuff?” said Lyra.

“You’ve got a pony skeleton in a vat.”

“That was my great grandfather, Requiem d’Heartstrings. He was a necromancer. It was his dying wish that his remains would always be on hoof in case any of his descendents were necromancers and needed his help.”

“Like I said. Creepy.”

“Well, technically we’ll be fulfilling his dying wish if we use him to barricade that door.” Lyra said, wheeling her ancestor into place. “I think that’s the only dead ancestor I have around here, what’s so creepy about the rest of the place?”

“There’s that globe of the world that screams when you spin it,” Bon Bon said. She was quickly remembering why she hated coming to Lyra’s house.

“It gets motion sickness, that’s all!” Lyra said, grabbing the globe and throwing it onto the barricade. It screamed with a thousand tiny voices.

“That answers one question, but not the more important one which is why does that thing exist?”

“Housewarming gift,” Lyra said.

“From who?”

“Actually, it was for you,” Lyra admitted.

“I already have a house!” Bon Bon said. The followup question slithered into her mind like an oily cobra: “Were you planning to destroy my house?”

“I was gonna wait until it got destroyed by natural causes!”

By this point hooves were starting to pound on the doors. The impacts made the globe spin slowly, which made it scream quietly.

Focus, Bon Bon. “Don’t you have any weapons?”

“Weapons?” Lyra said, confused.

“Weren’t you planning to violently overthrow the government? Surely you have some weapons!”

“I thought you had taken care of the weapons!”

“How would I ‘take care of weapons’!?”

“You’re a baker, aren’t you?”

“Do you know that owning a military-grade oven is a crime?”

+Ladies. Ladies,+ thought Trustworthy, stepping between them. +You shouldn’t spend your last moments fighting. You should spend your last moments slathering this peanut butter behind your ears!+

Both mares turned to look at him.

+In tar pony culture, having peanut butter behind your ears when you die is good luck!+ Trustworthy thought.

There was a crash as a hoof broke through an unblocked window. Lyra pulled down the venetian blinds in the optimistic hope that it’d stop the attack.

“You know,” came Blueblood’s petulant voice from over by the door, “if I wasn’t trapped in an oven and still had my armour I would have been able to deal with this single-hoofed. Your petty vengeance has doomed us all.”

“Shut up!” shouted Lyra.

“What? I’m just pointing out how you’ve failed at yet another trivial task. The only thing you had to do to stop the world from ending was not get in my way.”

“Shut up!” repeated Lyra.

“Well, it’s some small consolation that I’ll be able to hear them kill you. I imagine I’ll be quite safe in here until this whole thing blows over.”

“SHUT UP!” shouted Lyra a third time, running over to the oven.

Bon Bon got in her way.

It was what Trustworthy had said before that motivated her. It was sickening to see Blueblood claim any moral high ground whatsoever, after everything he'd done. She wanted to put an end to it.

“Uh, Prince Blueblood?” Bon Bon asked.

“Yes, plebeian?”

“Why are you here?”

“As I said. Damage control.”

“No, I mean, why did you come to Lyra’s house in the first place?”

“I – “ Blueblood sniffed. “It was the polite thing to do.”

Bon Bon’s scepticism could be heard even through half an inch of cast iron.

“Fine! It’s not like it matters now anyway! I was here to frame you!”

“Frame me for what?” Lyra said in shock.

“The meteor, obviously,”

“But I actually did that.”

“You told me as much. But the magical resonance all over the meteor belongs to Twilight Sparkle, I don’t know why, and that’s what mattered to the investigators. I was not going to let auntie Celestia get into trouble over her favourite student demolishing the countryside so I decided to kill two pegasai with one telescope.” Blueblood said.

“But I’ve got royal immunity,” Lyra said.

“Not against murder. And you’re the only pony I know who keeps a disgusting corpse in her living room. All I had to do was move it to the crash site...”

“Don’t you dare insult grandpa Requiem!”

“What are you going to do? Lock me in a stove?” Blueblood sneered.

“I can still set the stove on fire!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

They were interrupted by some mild screaming

“What are you doing?” Bon Bon said to Trustworthy.

+Uh. Straightening the barricades,+ Trustworthy said, quickly shoving the screaming globe back into position. +Yep. Straight and tidy. Nopony’s getting through there.+

“You were trying to let the zombies in!” Bon Bon accused.

+No I wasn’t. Scout’s honour,+ Trustworthy thought.

“Are you even a scout?”

+No, but my cousin was. And I wouldn’t want to tarnish my cousin’s honour!+

“You’ve been weird from the moment we met you, Trustworthy,” Bon Bon said. “And I think it’s time you told us what’s really going –“

“Set the stove on fire!” Lyra said suddenly.

+That sounds important!+ Trustworthy thought.

“No more distractions!” Bon Bon said. "Tell us the truth!"

“I can get us out of here!” Lyra said. “I’ve got a telescope in the attic; we can try a long range teleportation!”

“It can wait until – “

There was a loud crash and the front door splintered partly off its hinges.

“- we’ve gotten to safety,” Bon Bon amended the thought.

Lyra galloped upstairs and angled the telescope so it focused on the demolished hill of the observatory. She quickly began sketching the silver arcane symbol necessary for the magic on the ground before them. For Lyra, unpractised at teleportation, this was going to be a big spell – moving four ponies and a stove across more than a mile.

To give an idea of the difficulty of this task, it was a matter of immolating yourself and your friends, hurtling them into the cosmic nether, curving it off the gravitational field of the Nightmare Dimension and slingshotting it back to land somewhere else in Equestria. At no point were those particle streams allowed to cross or she and Blueblood really would become ‘one flesh’, in a way that was almost as horrible to contemplate as the normal process.

The ease with which Twilight Sparkle could do magic like this was a sign of either deranged genius or glorious insanity.

She’d need all the time she could spare to get this perfect.

Speaking of Twilight Sparkle, the purple unicorn and her faithful companion, the Cone of Shame, had arrived alongside Rainbow Dash in Appleooza.

Twilight Sparkle made her way directly to the salt bar.

“Hey, uh, Twilight. You said that we’d come here to save Ponyville, not get salted,” Rainbow Dash said. “Not that you getting salted is a bad thing. I mean, you do need to loosen up a bit –“

“We’re not here to party,” said Twilight Sparkle. “We just need to borrow the bar.”

“The what?”

“The entire building. We’re going to teleport it back to Ponyville.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” said Rainbow Dash. “It wouldn’t be much of a party without Pinkie Pie –“

“Rainbow! We’re not going to party! Now wait here while I clear the building!”

Rainbow Dash obediently sat down while Twilight Sparkle walked into the bar. She overheard an “Excuse me everypony, could I please have your attention?”, followed by a shriek and Twilight Sparkle flying through the saloon doors to land in the dirt.

Twilight Sparkle, furious, got up and walked right back in. Rainbow Dash tried to straighten her feathers but the Cone of Shame was blocking her. It was really uncomfortable. Like having your teeth out of alignment.

There were flashes of purple magic from inside the building and muffled explosions.

Rainbow Dash approached a cute grey unicorn filly who was leaning against a fence post. “Hey there,” she said.

“Oh, hello there beautiful,” said the filly. “Looking for a good time?”

“Yeah, actually, could you help me out a bit? My feathers are all crooked,”

“My speciality,” she purred. “Right this way.”

There was the crash of broken glass and Twilight Sparkle, slightly scorched, landed outside the bar again just as Rainbow Dash started to leave with the grey. Twilight raised her head, focused, then yelled, “Rainbow Dash!”

“What?”

“I leave you alone for five minutes!”

“What!? She’s going to help me with my feathers!” Rainbow ruffled her wings uncomfortably. “They’re crooked.”

Twilight Sparkle walked over to Rainbow Dash, horn glowing. Rainbow’s wings were pulled to full extension and there were a few flashes as Twilight straightened the feathers with magic. “Now stay put,” she said, and stomped back towards the bar.

“My. Your girlfriend is so... rough!” said the grey pony.

“What, Twilight? Yeah. When I first met her I thought she was just an egghead,” Rainbow said, wincing.

“It’s always the ones you least suspect.”

“Yeah. She made me wear this cone too.”

“Really? Why?”

“I hurt my throat.”

“Goodness! How did you manage to do that?”

“I got something really big and nasty stuck in it.”

“I’ve never heard of that happening before,” said the grey pony, looking slightly dizzy.

“I had to walk like that halfway across town.”

“Oh my stars!”

“It was actually the second time that’s happened to me,” Rainbow Dash said. “so I kind of knew what to expect.”

“How... how did she get it out?”

“Oh, she cut it out with a knife.”

The grey pony raised a hoof to her forehead and daintily fainted. A moment later, there was a loud explosion and a dozen ponies were tossed out into the street. “Rainbow! We’re leaving!” shouted Twilight Sparkle.

“Okay!” Rainbow Dash said, trotting over to the saloon.

“Alright... I’m ready,” Lyra said. She took a deep breath. “When we arrive, there might be a little bit of fire. Just be ready for that.”

“I will do my best,” said Blueblood sarcastically.

Bon Bon and Trustworthy stepped into the circle, pushing the oven along with them. Without it blocking the door, the wood was starting to splinter much more rapidly. The hinges were getting weak and there’d be hat zombies inside any moment now.

Lyra closed her eyes. Her horn started to glow. She gathered the magic delicately, pulling it from the pages of books and from the breeze and the fireplace. She tasted it on her tongue, let it roll, and began to shape. It was like sculpting with her mind; taking all the raw potential in her horn and cutting away huge chunks of it. No, this spell would not be for healing. No, this spell would not be for control. Her horn cut the glowing potential like a knife, shaping it ever closer to what it had to be –

And then a bright blue light jabbed her in the eye and grabbed for the spell.

“What –“

She grabbed back at it with her mind, trying to get hold of the magic before it went out of control, but she was jabbed again and the magic pulled further away. Belatedly, Lyra realised what was happening – my magic is being stolen! Before she could react to it, the deed was done.

The stove imploded, crumpling like a tin can, crushing down to the size of a baseball.

Blue light bathed the entire room, burning away impurity.

Fires started by the dozen, immolating every book, table, and floorboard. Bon Bon’s tail burst into flames, as did Trustworthy McLegitimate’s entire body – that’s right, tar is flammable.

A single hoof in golden armour stepped down onto the stairs.

“I’m free!” said Prince Blueblood, emerging from the fire of teleportation. “I’m free! Ha! Haha! Ahaahahaha! AHAHAHAHA!”

His laugher settled into a malevolent grin. “And you, my beloved, are going to pay for this humiliation.”