My Little Proletariat

Chapters

The night after the day after the night
Everypony in this town is crazy
I can't hear you over the sound of approaching deadlines
Hey! Teacher!
Hang in there, little pony
Somepony comes to town, somepony leaves town
From Another Point of View
Exodus
Out of the frying pan...
...into the fire
Epilogue

The night after the day after the night

Equestria. The Magical Kingdom. Both a political entity and a span of land encompassing forest, hills, flat plains and desert, ruled over by the Princess Celestia, Regent of the Sun and Moon, who ensures that the cycle of day and night continues its thousand-year cycle - within the borders of her nation, anyway.

This is, after all, a magical kingdom.

It is here that the Unicorns and their brethren call home.

Snapshot.

The city of Canterlot and environs. It is from here that Celestia rules her land. The city itself barely clings to the edge of a great granite cliff-face, thrust out of the land, in some ways a relic from when the world was younger and the various sentient races vied for control on the battlefield rather than in the court room. It is not unheard of for vast mansions to extend from the mass of the city, projecting into thin air, held up by precisely-calculated magic, engineering, or a combination of both.

Beneath the city of Canterlot, forested hills stretch for miles in either direction. Lone huts and small villages dot the landscape. To the east, the ground cover grows ever denser until, at some undefined point, it becomes the western fringe of the Everfree Forest. Technically under the rule of Equestria, the Forest remains in reality a wilderness. Not even Celestia's rule extends beyond its borders: it is said by some that you truly know you are beyond her reach when the clouds start moving by themselves.

Snapshot.

Grazing the edge of a particularly eager peninsula of forest, a small semi-agrarian community sits, within eyesight of the royal city on a clear day. The first founders of this village looked around and, with an egocentricity that plagues even the lowest of the sentient races, thought, here is where ponies shall live. And thus they named it Ponyville.

Fields and orchards surround Ponyville, clustering around outlying farms and hemming the village in on two sides. To the north lies the road to Canterlot, and to the east, the edges of the Everfree Forest encroach on the land. The outskirts, at least, are navigable, and many a filly and colt have camped in its shadow as a coming-of-age rite.

Snapshot.

The village square. The sun has set, and a party has begun. To one side of Ponyville Town Hall, a bonfire sits. Ponies dance and gather around it, casting long, flickering shadows back into the first rows of houses. Tables set up around the edges of the light hold the remains of dinner, snacks and drinks.

To the northeast, outside the halo of the bonfire, a small light navigates its way up to the top of a gentle rise. The hillock is still part of the green, and offers a decent view down onto the festivities. A tree crouches on top of the hill, guarding it fiercely.

Snapshot.

The light is attached to a pony. A purple unicorn, horn aglow, has dumped her saddlebags under the tree and is sorting through them (the bags, not the tree). Her name is Twilight Sparkle, and she is new in town. She is muttering to herself under her breath, a habit she despises. She is looking for a clean sheet of paper.

Snapshot.

A thought. Due to the fact that it's fully contained in Twilight Sparkle's brain, we could say it's her thought. It keeps bouncing around, grabbing her attention. She keeps shoving it to the back of her mind, but within a few minutes it's back again, setting up shop and clamouring for her attention.

The thought is this:

I have friends now.

After an age, she found some paper.

It was a simple matter to turn her least favourite book into a portable desk, although preparing a quill took a bit more time. The ink was in its own special anti-spill carry case that she'd had commissioned in Canterlot. Still, she thought as she unpacked all this, it seemed like a lot of bother just to write something down.

Looking out over the party, she spotted a couple of ponies she'd been introduced to. They seemed to be having a good enough time without her, which gave her a chance to write her first letter.

Let's see...ah.

Dear Princess Celestia,

The quill hovered in mid-air, her horn glowing. Twilight frowned. Writing letters was harder than it looked. What should she say? Dear Princess Celestia, today I saved the world from your evil sister? Dear Princess Celestia, today I made some friends and they're all crazy?

Twilight Sparkle was not adept at people. It was one of the reasons she'd gone into studying magic. Magic (well, she thought, some magic) was repeatable and objective. It didn't vary depending on the time of day, or the weather. It could be written down, and later, referenced. And most importantly, it didn't throw parties for you.

Her parents hadn't been much into parties. Accountants, as a rule, didn't go in for shouting, drinking and dancing. Occasionally they'd have some friends over and they'd drink expensive drinks from fancy glasses and discuss the state of the global gemstone market, but even then Twilight was just as likely to retreat to her room and read.

Now she found herself on a mission to make friends. A mission. Which meant she could fail. And she had to write reports to Celestia.

Making friends, it turned out, was harder work than expected.

"Hey, what's that?"

Twilight whirled around. She hadn't heard anypony creeping up on her.

"Whoa, nervous much? Up here."

She looked up. A pegasus was hovering above her, wings essaying a complex figure-eight pattern in the air. She had a sky-blue coat, and a mane the colour of rainbow. Ah, which made her-

"Hello...Rainbow Dash?"

The pegasus grinned. Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned how to remember names using mnemonics and visual cues...

"So, what is that?"

"What's – oh." Twilight looked down at the sheet of paper she was supposed to be writing her letter on. Her mind had been wandering, and as a result her quill had started doodling on the letter. She was pleased to see her mind hadn't wandered enough to leave out the annotations.

Rainbow Dash alighted on the ground next to her and peered at the paper. "Is this some sort of torture device? What're the stretchy bits for?"

Twilight smoothed the edges of the paper out with her hooves, taking the opportunity to see exactly which thing she'd drawn this time. Ah, yes. "It's a reader," she said.

"A reader?"

"Well, how would you read a book normally?"

The pegasus snorted. "Why'd I want to read a book?"

"Well, let's say you did."

"I guess I'd get one of the unicorns to read it to me."

"Exactly."

"Exactly what?"

"There's no way for you to read a book. You can't physically turn the pages. Not without creasing them irreparably anyway."

"Irrep-...yeah yeah, not all of us have fancy magic like you, no need to rub it in."

"But look." Twilight took the quill up again and started to outline portions of the diagram. "You mount the book in here - you can even do it by mouth - and the articulating arms here and here grab the pages, and then you can use these two paddles here to cause the whole thing to operate, turning the pages."

"So....it's a hoof-operated page turner?"

"At its most basic level, yes."

"Huh." Rainbow stared at the page for a bit. "Aha! But," she said triumphantly, "I can't read."

"They didn't teach you to read?"

"Well, I can read hoofscript, but I never learned Equestrian. But look!" She dug her hoof into the ground, and tracked a line in the mud. Her eyes narrowed in concentration until she'd completed a crude "RD" in the dirt. "Those," said proudly, "are my initials. One stands for Rainbow, and…the other one…stands for Dash."

But Twilight wasn't paying attention. She was biting the edge of her hoof, staring at the paper. "Of course," she muttered to herself, "why should anyone in the villages read Equestrian?" She dipped the quill in her ink supply and started making frantic annotations around the outside of the diagram.

"So is this what they teach you at Pony Academy in Canterlot?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Well," Twilight replied, mind still half on her annotations, "Equestrian is a prerequisite for magic. Everything about magic is written in Equestrian. Hoofscript just doesn't have the complexity required for most rituals - did you know that there's only three tenses in even the most advanced hoofscript, and even then, one of them is only used by certain mountain tribes on the northeastern edge of Equestria? And don't get me started on declension - oh, bother." The unicorn hastily scrubbed at where her writing had overrun the page onto the title of the book below it.

"...yeah," said Rainbow Dash. "So, uh, how about that Celestia, huh? What's it like studying under her?"

"Uh, well, she knows an awful lot about magic," said Twilight, still hoofing at the ink smudge. "A lot more than me, at any rate. She's a very good teacher, and she understands what it's like to need to be challenged."

"Yeah? Hey, what're you writing on the cover of that book? I mean, I'm no expert, but usually the writing goes in the-"

"Nothing, nothing! It was a reprint anyway, no one will notice." Twilight pulled the book up to eye height, examining the mark. In this light it was impossible to see how bad it was. She sighed. There was nothing for it but to hope for the best. She slotted the books back in her bag, turning back to the strange pony. No, she thought, that's not how we do it. She turned back to her new friend Rainbow Dash. "Celestia is one of the wisest ponies I know, and it's a great honour that even with all the time she spends running the kingdom, she still finds time to teach me."

"Really?" Rainbow Dash glanced down the hill. "Does she ever talk to you about the kingdom? I mean, I know I talk about my job all the time."

"Not really...I- you have a job?"

"Hey, no need to take that tone." Dash lifted a hoof to her chest. "I'm a member of the weather team! I perform an important civic duty!"

"Of course."

"Sorry, you were saying? About Celesita?"

"Oh, right." Twilight paused to think. "No, she doesn't ever really talk about it. I mean, I don't think I ever professed an interest in her job, and she's never really volunteered much." Twilight shrugged. "I guess there's been the odd time where she couldn't make her regular lesson times because of some affair of state or other, but to me it was mainly free study time."

"Really? Not even..." The pegasus trailed off, looking down the hill. "Oh, hey!" She jumped, effortlessly hovering a foot from the ground. "Looks like a thing. I should probably see to that. Look, it was great talking to you, we should catch up some time!"

"I-uh, sure," said Twilight. "I-"

"Cool!" said the pegasus, already rising into the air. "Catch you later!" And then she disappeared into the darkness.

Twilight's eyes followed the rapidly-departing shape of Rainbow Dash. Her mind, still mid-conversation, ran for a few seconds, wondering where the pegasus was off to in such a hurry. Soon, however, she returned to the book. She was pretty sure she'd seen a copy at the library, in one of the back catalogues. Maybe she could swap them - after all, it looked like no one used the place, so no one would notice one tiny ink smudge. It can't have been that bad, right?

Horn glowing faintly, she pulled the book out of her saddlebag, just enough to see the ink stain on the cover.

"Twilight!"

Twilight slammed the book back in the saddlebag and latched it, spinning around. What was it about this hill?

"I saw you from down in the village green." It was the white unicorn with the gemstones. Precious. No. Demand. No. Something. She was still talking. "Was that Rainbow Dash I saw leaving just before?"

"Oh, yes." Twilight was just glad she hadn't seen the book. The last thing she needed was everyone knowing she was ruining the library's back-catalogue. That wouldn't make a good start. "Said she had something to take care of."

"Or someone," the unicorn said. Dropping her voice, she added, "She didn't, uh, she didn't try anything with you, did she?"

"Try anyth-oh! No, no, she was just asking about some...I didn't even know she, well, she uh-" Twilight waved her hoof in the air feebly. "Was that way inclined."

"Oh," the unicorn said, "once she gets a few drinks in her, she's any way inclined."

"I, uh, I guess that's good to know." Twilight's brain parsed that, and she blushed. "Not that - I mean I wouldn't - I mean I don't even - I mean I couldn't - " she gave up and looked at the other unicorn pleadingly.

"Oh, darling," she said, chuckling, "I know you have much better taste than that. It comes with the horn, don't you know. To be honest, I feel the same way often, around here."

"The same way?"

"Overwhelmed." She waved a hoof, managing to encompass the village, the partying, and presumably Rainbow Dash's nocturnal activities as well. "It's all very nice, but sometimes their celebrations can get a bit tiring, don't you agree? But of course, it's why you're up here, above them all."

"Them?"

She gestured to the celebrations on the green. "The, ah, earth ponies, as we call them these days."

"Oh, right."

"Tell me, what's it like living in Canterlot?" A note of whimsy entered her voice. "Is it everything they say it is? Are there really more dress shops than there are houses in Ponyville? Are the streets really paved with gold?"

"Well, last time I checked they were paved with stones, like normal streets," Twilight answered. Besides, she thought, if you paved them with gold they'd just deform. And somepony would probably end up stealing the road.

The unicorn let out a dramatic sigh. "Oh, I long to live there," she said. "My parents, you understand, they brought me up here, but this was as close as they ever got to the Royal City. 'Rarity', my mother said to me when I was but a filly, 'Rarity, we've done as much as we can, the rest is up to you.' And so I've tried, oh, how I've tried to ply my business, get my name mentioned, just to get one chance to sell my wares there..."

Rarity, Twilight thought, letting the words wash over her. That's her name. Rare, like gemstones, and silence, apparently. In her mind, she started to put together a matrix of reminders for the ponies she'd met so far, and then realised that pulling out a scroll in the middle of a conversation would look suspect, so next she worked out how to keep it hidden, and an unobtrusive method of reference during conversations.

Silence. Oh, right, Rarity had been talking at her. She was now looking at her expectantly. "Well," Twilight asked, "couldn't you just go visit? Surely it wouldn't be that much to go for a day."

"Oh," the unicorn wailed, "but I couldn't. What if I were recognised, walking in like I was some beggar? No, as much as it pains me, I simply must wait until I can present my work there. Then, I will wow them all with my poise, my designs." She stared off into space, and sighed. "It will be just the start of my meteoric rise."

"Ah, right. Well," said Twilight, sensing an opening. "I'd love to stay and talk about it, but I really should be getting back to the library. Somepony might want to, I don't know, get a book out or something, and I'm pretty sure I saw some sorting that needed doing."

"Oh, of course. These parties aren't really planned for ponies with delicate dispositions such as you and I." She stood up as Twilight did - she didn't know if it was out of politeness or if the white unicorn intended to follow her home, chatting all the way. Thankfully, it seemed it was the first. "Don't be a stranger now!" she called as Twilight made her way down the hill. "Us unicorns need to stick together, you know!"

"Spike? Spike!" The library was as messy as she'd left it, and it looked like her assistant was still at the party. She signed - that meant that not only would she not have help tonight, but she'd probably also spend tomorrow morning working alone as the dragon recovered from too much singing, too much dancing, and probably too much liquor as well.

She pulled the book out of her saddlebags, inspecting it critically in the light. Now that she could see it properly, it wasn't that bad a smudge. With a bit of work, she could probably remove even more of it. At least today hasn't been a total failure, she thought to herself.

Next to come out of the saddlebags was the letter-cum-blueprint. That's right, she thought, I was going to write that. Before everyone made my hill conversation central. Well, no time like the present.

She cleared some space on her work desk and laid out another piece of paper. This time she thought for a minute about how to start off rather than risk ruining another sheet.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I have discovered a new project to work on, now I have dealt with the problems of the Summer Sun Celebration. I was talking to one of the village ponies this evening and it turns out that she didn't even know how to read! I understand that hoofscript is passable for crop planting instructions or basic records, but if Equestria is going to have a strong technical workforce, we need to be teaching ponies how to read papers and textbooks - in Equestrian - from an early age. I've even worked out a basic design for a device that should allow any pegasus or earth pony-

-as we call them these days, her brain supplied. She shook her head. What did that even mean? She'd have to ask Spike.

-to read books without the need for a unicorn to turn pages and make notes. I call it a reader, and you can find a blueprint attached. There are still some hitches I can see in the design - particularly in the armature interface, which, if the user turns pages too fast, could clog and result in the operator (or worse, the book) being torn in half, but I figure that as long as we use sixteenth-hoof rejoinder in the connection body (labelled D) and possibly add some cantilever-action return mechanism it may be possible to increase the response time to as little as half a second, and if we further added a spring-buffered overflow stop on the forward-turn armature (assuming, of course, that the subject wishes to turn to the next page more often than the previous page)-

The quill sped up as Twilight's mind raced. There was a sudden tearing noise as it went through the page. Twilight's mind suddenly skipped back to the present as she looked down.

"Oh, double bother," she said to herself. This sort of thing happened far too often. A symptom, Celestia had told her, of an overactive imagination. This was why she got Spike to write the letters most of the time.

She left the letter on her desk as she climbed the stairs to bed. It would at least serve as notes for later. The letter itself, though, could wait until tomorrow.

Everypony in this town is crazy

Cherilee was Ponyville's only teacher. That was OK. She loved teaching children. Loved it. On a Thursday morning it was the sort of thing she'd repeat to herself, over and over, under her breath, so she didn't do anything she'd regret later.

So she wasn't particularly worried when Twilight Sparkle interrupted her class five minutes before she was supposed to let them out. She decided that she deserved five minutes of break time. It was that or alcohol again.

The kids were packing up and heading out, eager to enjoy the day. Twilight stood in the middle of the chaos, calmly looking around the room. Everpony knew, by now at least, that she was Princess Celestia's prize student. Everypony also knew that she didn't like being reminded of it, or at least, that she didn't like being reminded of it in the manner that most of Ponyville reminded her, that being excessive bowing and scraping and lots of "Yes Miss Sparkle" and "Of course, Miss Sparkle". So instead Cherilee stood nervously to one side, waiting to find out exactly what she was going to be called up on, quizzed about, or otherwise bothered into admitting.

"So, how many students do you have, Cherilee?" the unicorn asked finally, as the last of the students traipsed out.

"Twenty-seven, ma'am."

Twilight's eye twitched. "I'm just like everypony else," she said. "You don't have to call me ma'am."

"Of course not, ma'am."

Twilight sighed. She paced along one side of the classroom, browsing various colts' and fillies' attempts at artwork. In truth, she couldn't bear trying to make eye contact with the teacher, who was busy inspecting her forehooves and generally trying to look at meek and subservient as possible without actually prostrating herself. "So," she continued, "you teach...what, three classes?"

"Yes ma'am. Three lessons with each class per week."

"And you cover the whole town with that?"

"Of course, ma'am! Any filly or colt in the village without their cutie mark is welcome to sign up with us."

Twilight paused. "Without a cutie mark?"

"Well," Cherilee replied, "I guess you're allowed into school even when you have your cutie mark, but most families withdraw their children once they reach that age."

"Interesting..." said Twilight. Something was bothering her. She looked down.

A pair of eyes was looking up at her. They were attached to a pegasus.

"Scootaloo," Cherliee said, "run along now. Class is out early."

The pegasus ignored her. "You're Twilight Sparkle, aren't you?"

Twilight grinned. "That's me. You're Scootaloo?"

"You saved Ponyvile, didn't you?"

"Well, it wasn't just me," Twilight said. "I had the help of five other very special ponies, who all live here in Ponyville. Without them I couldn't have done any of it."

She'd lost the pegasus, who had a far-away look in her eyes. "I wish I'd get to save Ponyville," the filly said.

"Well, if you study hard, maybe one day you'll get to!" said Twilight. "Now, Cherilee and I need to discuss some things. Run along, I'll see you later."

"Yes ma'am!"

Cherilee watched her student trot out the door. Once she was out of earshot, the teacher turned to face Twilight. "Look," she said, "you know I'm a loyal subject of Celestia. I've done all she's asked me. Tell me what she requires, and I'll carry it out."

Silence. Outside, birds chirped. Twilight stood mouth half-open, trying to parse what the teacher had just said.

"I, uh," she began. "I didn't know you knew Celestia."

Cherilee blushed. "I didn't mean to imply familiarity! Of course I don't know her personally! I'm sure she's far too busy ruling Equestria to deal with one schoolteacher!"

"Look, I was here because I was talking with Rainbow Dash yesterday, and she said that no one here knew how to read. And I-"

"Ma'am, I try my best, honestly, I do, but I only know so much Equestrian myself, and-"

"Yes, well-"

"-get to read anything, and everyone always draws their children out once they have their cutie mark, they keep on saying-"

"That's nice, but-"

"-they need someone to work the farm or help mend shoes or-"

"Enough!"

Cherilee stopped talking, pawing the ground nervously. Twilight kept trying to catch her eye, but the teacher was busily inspecting everything in the room but her. She conteted herself with pacing up and down the classroom instead.

"All I wanted to say was that I'm concerned for the future of our foals when they can't read basic Equestrian by the time they leave school. I understand that you have difficulty with classes here, and frankly, I'm shocked that nothing has been done to remedy the fact that you're the only teacher in Ponyville. I'm sure Canterlot can spare the resources to bring somepony down here. In fact, I'll be informing Celestia of the problem as soon as I can."

"Oh, that really won't be-"

"Stop interrupting me when I'm fixing your problems. Now, as it turns out, Celestia has me currently employed at the Ponyville Library, althought given the state of the place I believe it's as a curator rather than a librarian. We have plenty of books, in both hoofscript and Equestrian, for the young foals to read." She smiled. "And if you want, I'm sure you can come along and I'll make sure we keep your Equestrian up to scratch."

"Oh." Cherilee looked up, smiling. "Thank you, ma'am."

"There is one condition, however."

"What would that be, ma'am?"

"Stop calling me ma'am. I'm just a regular pony."

"Of course, ma'- uh, Miss Sparkle."

Well, she thought, at least it was a start.

It was turning out to be a nice day. Later on it would probably get unbearably hot, bringing the entire village to its knees as mares and stallions alike took shelter in the shade, but right now it was merely a pleasant warmth.

There was a cloud over Twilight, however. She was still occupied with what Cherilee had said. Celestia had been giving Cherilee orders? Not personally, she'd said, but orders coming from Celestia. It was irregular, and more importantly, Celestia hadn't bothered to tell Twilight anything about it before stationing her here.

"Something is up," Twilight muttered to herself, "and I inted to get to the bottom of it!"

A bush squeaked.

Twilight stopped in her tracks. Birds chirped. Somewhere nearby, a cicada started its rhythmic whirr-whirr.

She shook her head. Bushes didn't squeak. She was just getting paranoid.

A twig snapped. Maybe she wasn't paranoid. Slowly, she turned to face the undergrowth. Now she thought about it, those bushes could hide a pony who wanted to watch the road. She crept, hoof-by-hoof, towards the offending plant-life.

Hold on. If they were watching the road, they already knew she was here. In which case, trying to creep up on them was silly.

She trotted towards the bush and peered around it. A yellow pegasus was hiding behind it, hooves covering her eyes. This one was called Fluttershy, Twilight recalled proudly. She was getting better with names.

"Good morning," she said cheerfully.

"G-good morning, Twilight," said Fluttershy, not removing her hooves from her eyes.

"Nice day, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Fluttershy.

"Usually I prefer the days leading up to Summer Sun - I think it's the humidity in the air or something. But now I come to think of it, if we had more days like this I could really get used to late summer as well."

Silence from the pegasus.

"You know, this'd be a whle heap easier if you just admitted you were spying on me and we could go from there."

Fluttershy started trembling.

"Look, at some point you'll get hungry, or need to go to the toilet or something. And I'm perfectly willing to wait until that happens, because as far as I can see, everypony I've talked to in the last day or so has been either high on something or has been hiding something from me, or possibly both, but we shouldn't judge Dash like that. So we can wait until you do something embarassing, or you can just break down and admit what you were doing here and we can proceed like rational creatures."

Fluttershy let our a squeak, but nothing else.

Twilight sighed. "OK, how about this. Where you spying on me? Nod for yes, shake for no."

She nodded.

"OK, great. Now we're getting somewhere. Were you spying on me for somepony else?"

Another nod.

"Dash?"

A shake.

"Rarity?"

A nod.

"You were spying on my for Rarity?"

A nod.

"Why would she want to spy on me? Is that why she was being so...well, weird, at Summer Sun last night?"

Without uncovering her eyes, Fluttershy mumbled, "...shesplanninga..."

Twilight leaned in. "She's what now?"

"She's....planning a party."

"A party? She asked you to spy on me because she's planning a party?"

The pegasus nodded.

"Why in the world would she want you to spy on me for a party? I thought she was the level-headed one!"

Silence.

"I'm not going to be able to get you to say anything else, am I?"

A shake of the head.

"Are you going to at least get up so we can walk down the road like regular ponies?"

Another shake.

"Well..uh...look." Twilight scratched her head. "I gotta go into town and deal with some things. So, I'm going to go now. And then I guess you can come out of hiding and continue doing whatever it is you were doing, OK?"

A nod.

"Well, uh, have a nice day!"

When she got back, Spike was awake. This was an improvement on when she left . She slammed the door to the library with her rear hoof (causing Spike to wince) and walked listlessly over to her study desk.

"Spike," she asked her servant, "why is everypony in this town crazy?"

"Maybe everyone is sane, and it's you who's gone crazy," the dragon replied. He had a hangover, and he'd be damned if anyone else got to enjoy the summer morning.

Twilight sighed, and rested her head on her desk. "Cherliee just treated me like I was going to throw her in prison for not knowing Equestrian, Fluttershy was spying on me for a party, Rainbow Dash was jumpy as all hell last night for no reason I can think of, and Rarity has been buddying up to me like she has a confession to make. Oh, and Spike, what does, "as we call them these days" mean?"

"Huh?"

"Last night, when Rarity was talking to me, she said something about earth ponies, and then said "as we call them these days.""

"Oh," said Spike. Then: "Ohhhhh."

"What? What?" Twilight perked up.

Spike scratched his head. "Well, how to put this," he started. "You know how Equestria is a wonderful utopia where earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns live in peace, harmony and equality?"

"Yes, yes, what about it?"

"You know how at one point it wasn't?"

"Well, yes," Twilight said. This was always uneasy territory for her. "But now we know that earth ponies are our brothers and sisters, and pegasi too! What we did back then were the acts of an uncivilised race, and we've more than made up for it now.'

"Well, yeah." Spike glanced around the room, looking at anything but the unicorn. "But at one point you kinda didn't know that." He finally focussed on his feet. "And you didn't call them earth ponies back then either."

"Are you seriously saying-" But Twilight paused. It did make sense, in a way. "Oh, this is just what I needed. First I end up stuck in Ponyville, then I have to research friendship, now one of these so-called "friends" is a horn supremecist!" She cleared the books off her desk and stood up.

"Well," Spike said, "at least Applejack and Pinkie Pie are acting normal, right?" He considered. "I mean, at least Applejack is acting normal, right?"

Twilight walked slowly to the stairs, somewhat mollified by Spike's words. "Yeah, at least Applejack...Applejack!"

"What?"

"I promised her I'd help out at Sweet Apple Acres this morning! I thought maybe I could find something worth writing to the Princess about for this friendship study thing she wants, so she doesn't just fail me on principle. And now I'm late!" Racing back down the stairs, she collected her saddlebags, dumped the remaining contents onto her desk, and put them on.

"Ohhhh, and on my first day as well! At this rate, Celestia will have me dropped before summer's even done! Oh, why couldn't I just have a normal study schedule like everypony else?" Pausing at the door, she turned back to Spike. "You'll be able to take care of yourself for the rest of the day?"

"I'll be fine, go on!" Spike shooed her out the door, then closed it behind her. He gave her a few minutes to leave, then checked at the window to make sure she was gone. Once he was sure he was alone, he wandered upstairs and collapsed into bed again. She wouldn't be back for a few hours at least, and that gave him time to recover from this viscious headache.

I can't hear you over the sound of approaching deadlines

Twilight Sparkle's first lesson about friendship was this:

Manual labour is hard.

After several muscle-wrenching attempts at tree-bucking, she'd resigned herself to cart-pulling. Cart-pulling was safe, easy, and she figured she probably wouldn't break anything important. Besides, ponies were naturally good at pulling things, right? Look at earth ponies - they could haul entire boxcars of goods! Hauling carts full of apples was practically in her blood!

"Awful nice of ya t'help me out an' all," said her friend, trotting along next to her. Applejack does this every day, Twilight reminded herself. She's working just as hard as me, she just doesn't show it. And besides, if I turn her into a potted plant now, Celestia will give me such a dressing down.

"Y'need a break?" Applejack asked. "We've only got the one orchard left to do, but we can take a breather fer five minutes if it'd help."

Twilight stopped the cart, slipped out of the harness, and slumped to the ground. It took her several minutes to get her breath back. Applejack watched her as she clambered back to her feet.

"Y'sure you wanna do that last orchard?" she asked finally.

"Yes, yes," said Twilight. "I'll be fine. I just need a moment to get my breath back." She grinned. "Books aren't usually this strenuous." An idea struck her. "Say, Applejack?"

"Yeah, Twi?"

"You know Rarity pretty well, don't you?"

"Ah know of Rarity, yeah."

"Recently, have you noticed her to be a bit..."

"Stuck up?"

"No, more like..."

"Pretentious?"

"I was going for 'distant'."

"Sugar cube, Rarity's got distant down to an art. Y'see how she runs that dress place o' hers! Those folks from Canterlot won't take her seriously 'less she makes 'em feel like they aren't welcome. It's just how she does business."

Twilight looked askance at the earth pony. "I thought you and Rarity didn't get along."

Applejack grinned. "Oh, we don't get along, girl. But that don't mean ah don't respect what she's built up. S'not easy, runnin' a business by yerself." She nodded to the main road. "Say, ain't that yer pet dragon?"

Twilight turned her head. Spike was indeed heading up the road into Sweet Apple Acres. She turned back to Applejack, grinning sheepishly. "Mind if we delay that last orchard for a bit?"

"Sure thing! Ah got a few chores need doin' 'round the barn anyway."

The two of them reached the farmhouse about the same time as Spike, who waved to them.

"Twilight!" he called out, "I came to tell you that Rarity's been looking all over for you."

"Rarity, eh?" said Applejack. "This ain't related to what y'were askin' about, is it?"

"I don't know," said Twilight. "Did she say what about, Spike?"

"I asked her," he said, "but she wouldn't tell me. She just- oh, not this..." The dragon broke into a spell of coughing, doubling over, and then suddenly expelled a burst of green-blue flame. When the smoke cleared, a scroll sat on the ground, displaying the wax seal of the Kingdom of Equestria.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. "That can't be hygenic. What's wrong with the mail service?"

Spike shot Applejack a you're-telling-me glance as Twilight broke the seal on the scroll and levitated it to reading height. As she did, two red slips of card slipped from the missive and dropped to the ground.

"Hear ye, hear ye," she read. "Her Grand Royal Highness Princess Celestia of Equestria, is pleased to announce The Grand Galloping Gala to be held in the magnificent capital city of Canterlot, on the 21st day, blah blah blah..." Scanning to the bottom, she finished: "cordially extends an invitation to Twilight Sparkle plus one guest."

Applejack's eyes lit up. "The Grand Galloping Gala?"

"Oh, yes," said Twilight. "Every year, the Princess holds-"

"Ah know what the Grand Galloping Gala is. Hell, everypony in Ponyville knows what the Gala is. We get a great an' wonderous firework show down here from you folk up on the hill if nothin' else. You an' a friend, huh? Does Celestia know somethin' we don't know? Y'got a special stallion you're inviting along?"

"No! I guess the Princess just thought I'd like to take...oh no!" The scroll and tickets dropped onto the road as Twilight's concentration broke. "It's a test!" she wailed, stamping each hoof in turn. "She's setting me a test already! And I haven't even had time to study!"

"A...test?" Applejack asked. She shot a look at Spike. "Is she reg'larly like this?"

"Only all the time," the dragon replied. To Twilight: "The Princess probably didn't mean it like that. C'mon, maybe she just wants you to relax a bit."

"Oh no!" Twilight responded. "That's how they fool you! They tell you it's just a casual talk, or a brief interview, and suddenly they're writing things on piece of paper and saying "I see" at you! And then there's no hope! My grant will be suspended, Celestia will expel me, and it'll be back to my parents' and being an administrative taxpony again!" She lashed out at a nearby apple-tree, connecting with a solid whunk of the hoof.

"Wha-hey!"

A pile of cyan pony landed on the ground between the two ponies, pulling Twilight out of her little misery-jaunt.

Applejack sighed. "Ah guess you have a perfectly good reason for why y'happen to be evesdroppin' on us, Dash?" she asked.

The pegasus untangled her legs and got up, looking sheepishly at Applejack and Twilight. "I wasn't evesdropping!" she said. "I was having a nap. Say, tickets!" She reached down to grab the momentarily-forgotten gala tickets, only to have them whisked away by Twilight.

Applejack narrowed her eyes. "An' somehow Twilight's belly-achin' here didn't wake you?"

"Hey, grant money is a legitimate-"

"Pfft," said Rainbow Dash, still trying to get a look at the tickets as Twilight stuffed them into the scroll. "I'm pretty sure I'm the heaviest sleeper in Ponyville. Gale-force winds can't wake me when I'm on form. Say, did those tickets say something about a Gala on them?"

"Yes," Twilight said, "They're part of a special project that the Princess has assigned me."

"Can I help?"

"No!"

"C'mon, Twilight! I've always wanted to go to the Gala!"

"Too bad! I need to study."

"But Twilight! You know who performs at the Gala?"

Applejack rolled her eyes. "Oh no, here we go..."

"Well, lots of people perform at the-"

"The Wonderbolts, Twilight." Dash's eyes glazed over slightly. "They'll be doing their annual fly-by, all their signature tricks, Spitfire'll be signing autographs." She grabbed Twilight's hooves with her own. "It's my dream come true, Twilight. You need to take me."

"No!" Twilight shook off the pegasus. "I'm not having either of you destroy my grades. Spike, collect our things. I'm headed back to the library, and I'm going to study this. I will work out the optimal guest to bring for maximum friendship and if," she stared at the two of them, "if it is one of you, I'll let you know."

And then she left.

Rarity was waiting outside the Library. By the time Twilight spotted her, it was too late.

"Twilight! I've been looking all over for you."

"Really." Twilight attempted to side-step her fellow unicorn. Rarity countered perfectly.

"I hear that you caught up with Fluttershy earlier today, and she, uh, spilled the beans on my little plan."

"Look, Rarity, I appreciate you coming clean with me on this, but right now is *not* a good time."

Rarity grinned nervously and tossed her head. "Oh, come on Twilight, it won't take that long. I just wanted to apologise for my past behaviour. I should have told you about the party, but we were busy planning it, and well, I wanted it to be a surprise." She glanced at the unicorn. "After all, you *do* like parties, don't you?"

Twilight sighed. "Apology accepted, but right now I just need to do some work. On my own."

Rarity's eyes narrowed. "But, you do like parties, don't you Twilight?"

Twilight stared at her.

"Parties. You like them."

"Look, Rarity, if you want to plan things, by all means plan them. But I have a special task given to me by the Princess Celestia, and I need to complete it as soon as possible."

"Oh," said Rarity, downcast. And then, "Oh! A special task! Of course! I couldn't keep you from that."

Twilight glared at the unicorn, who was still blocking the Library door.

"Ah," said Rarity, moving to one side. Twilight barged past her, and would have shut the door after her if Rarity hadn't managed to get a hoof in the way.

"Should we meet later? To discuss the party?"

"Do whatever you want with the party!" said Twilight.

"Really?"

"Yes. Just leave me alone!" Finally extricating Rarity's hoof from the door, she slammed it forcefully.

Rarity stood in front of the door for a few moments, lost in thought. Then she tossed her head and trotted, head held high, to a nearby alley.

"Is everything alright?" asked a voice from the alleyway.

"Everything is better than alright," Rarity said, smiling. "We've been given free reign, as it were."

"Really? Oh dear."

"Don't worry, Fluttershy. I know just what to do. Now, come on. We have a party to plan."

Hey! Teacher!

The first time Twilight woke, it was to the sound of Spike clattering around downstairs. When he wasn't drunk or hungover, he tended to get up before she did. She rolled over and went back to sleep.

The second time she awoke, it was to the sound of voices. Maybe Spike's opened up early, she thought. The sun was starting to shine into her bedroom, and she decided that was as good a sign as any to get up.

It took her five minutes to wash and brush her mane into something resembling tidiness. She was still half-asleep as she made her way down the stairs. Rationally, she trusted Spike with her books. Emotionally, she needed to make sure herself that whoever was visiting wasn't secretly desecrating her children.

Spike was sitting in the main room of the library, talking to Cheerliee. The teacher looked up when Twilight entered and bounced to her feet nervously.

"Good morning, ma-er, Miss Sparkle!" she said. Twilight groaned inwardly. When she eventually conquered the world, she thought to herself, there were three types of ponies she'd be sending to the moon: sociopaths, ponies who doodled in the margins of books, and morning people.

"Good morning, Cheerliee," she replied.

"Cheerliee was just telling me about what you were saying yesterday," said Spike.

"I've thought it over," Cheerliee added, "and I think that it's a very good idea!"

Twilight nodded, stifling a yawn. "Of course." She stumbled over to her desk and slumped in her chair. They both looked at her expectantly. "OK, look," she continued, "usually I'd try to work out what you were talking about, but I've only just got up. What did I say yesterday?"

"Why, about the children learning Equestrian, of course!" said Cheerliee.

"Oh," Twilight said, "yeah. I said that, didn't I?"

"Obviously not everypony in our classes is quite ready for an extension, but some of them would pick it up in no time, I'm sure!"

Twilight cleared the sleep out of her eyes, watching Cheerliee's grin intently. If it got any bigger, she'd swear the top of the teacher's head would fall off.

Silence. Cheerilee continued to look at Twilight expectantly.

"So," Twilight said finally. "How can I help?"

"I was wondering when we could start," Cheerilee replied.

Twilight blinked. Then she realised. "You already have the students picked out, don't you?" she asked.

Cheerliee nodded.

"...you already have a time picked out, don't you?"

Cheerliee nodded.

"...it's this morning, isn't it?"

At least they got some warning, Twilight thought. She'd considered saying no, but the little pony in the back of her head kept on whispering to her, what would a real friend do?

One of these days she was going to give that pony a nice big hug. Around the neck.

"Now, fillies," Cheerilee said, "this is Twilight Sparkle, and she's in charge of the library! What do we say?"

She'd brought three of her students along with her. Two of them were looking at the walls, at the books, anywhere but at Twilight. The third was Scootaloo, who was busy grinning at her. Between her and Cherliee, Twilight had already nearly filled her teeth exposure quota for the day, and it was barely ten o'clock.

"Thank-you Miss Spar-kle," they all chanted.

Twilight assayed a cautious grin. Enthusiasm, she thought, happiness. If Cheerilee can be this bright and early, so can I. "Right then," she said, "Spike will show you were all our reference books are. Remember, if you can't reach it, you can get him to get it for you. And no eating in the study room. Spike, care to lead the way?"

Spike climbed off his chair and led the trio into the study room. He didn't look entirely pleased by his new responsibility - he hadn't as much volunteered for this job as been cajoled into it. Twilight kept the grin on her face as the four of them trooped past.

The door closed. Twilight drooped. Happy was tiring.

Cheerliee was still grinning, but it was the grin of a shared burden. "Coffee?" the teacher asked.

"Coffee," Twilight confirmed.

Maybe this morning wasn't going to be quite so bad after all.

By lunchtime, they had gone through three books on basic grammar and several slightly more advanced texts on the use of Equestrian in everyday society. Cheerilee had even laughed at Twilight's joke about the pluperfect tense, and she couldn't remember the last person who'd done that. In fact, when the study door opened and three exhausted-looking fillies traipsed out, Twilight had to wonder where the time had gone.

Spike followed the three of them out, looking just as tired. "Learning's done," he said to Twilight. "Can I go to sleep now?"

Twilight gave him a tolerant look, but otherwise ignored him. "How did you research go?" she asked the fillies.

There was a chorus of noncommital sounds. Even Scootaloo looked tired out.

Cheerilee scrambled to her feet. "I think this is my cue to take them out of your hooves," she said. "Come on, girls! You'll want to get that report done for Monday! It's been wonderful, having access to all these books. Hasn't it, children?"

"Yes, Miss Cheerilee."

"Now, what do you say to Miss Sparkle for hosting us?"

"Thank-you Miss Spar-kle."

"Now, we'd best be getting you home."

Twilight saw the teacher and her students out to the door. Cheerile shephereded her charges in front of her, and turned back to Twilight once they were all outside.

"I wasn't just saying that to be polite," Cheerilee said. "It really was good to get some practice reading Equestrian. And, well," she gestured with a hoof, "Ponyville's not exactly endowed with academics. Every little bit helps. Thank you."

"It was no problem at all," Twilight replied. "In fact, if you want to bring your students back at some point, I'd be more than happy to help you again." She glanced upstairs. "I'm not so sure about Spike, but I can talk to him."

Cheerilee grinned. Twilight thought she was getting the hang of telling her teaching-grins from her actual grins, and she was pretty sure this was one of the latter. "I'd like that," she said. "Anyway, duty calls. I'll see you later, Miss Sparkle!"

The walk back to the school wasn't particularly hard, but then again, Scootaloo's legs weren't particularly long. Cheerilee had said they'd make their way too and from the Library like orderly ponies, which meant walking.

Sweetie Belle had their assignment. She tended to be the one to write things down, since Scootaloo's handwriting resembled chicken-scratch and Apple Bloom's was only legible to herself, doctors, and possibly forensic scientists.

Their assignment had been simple: names can give clues to cutie marks, so if they researched their names, they might find a clue as to their calling in life.

That was the plan, anyway. The results had been less than optimal.

"Ah can't believe mah family named me after a disease," Apple Bloom muttered to herself.

"I can't believe my family named me 'Pretty Girl'," Sweetie Belle complained.

"I can't believe I couldn't find anything about 'Scootaloo'," Scootaloo grumbled. "Looks like my parents just asked a Scrabble set. At least you guys got named after something."

"Ah got named after a disease!"

"Yeah, well, some ponies get all the luck."

Twilight watched the four of them head off back to school. She was already composing her next letter to the princess in her head. Today I made a friend, of my own accord, out of the goodness of my heart. And she's stopped calling me "ma'am".

Her rain barrel rattled. "I know what you're doing," it squeaked.

"I'm saying goodbye to my new friend." she replied. "And now I'm conversing with a rain barrel, and I didn't even need to switch mental gears. So either I'm getting used to recurrant madness, or I haven't been getting enough sleep lately."

The lid on the barrel lifted slowly, and a frizz of pink mane peaked out. Beneath it, a pink snout poked out over the lip of the barrel. Between them, a pair of eyes regarded Twilight intently.

It was Pinkie Pie, Ponyville's resident baker and three years running Donut Scoffing Champion of the Greater Canterlot Area. It told you a lot about earth ponies, Twilight thought, that they even started up a Donut Scoffing Championship.

As you call them these days. This whole conscience thing was starting to get on her nerves.

"Oh," Twilight said, "it's you, Pinkie. I guess 'sentient rain barrel' stays on my wishlist then."

"Good morning, Twilight!" Pinkie said.

"It's lunchtime."

"Good afternoon, Twilight!" Pinkie said.

"How're you doing today, Pinkie Pie?" Twilight asked. "How's my rain barrel? Roomy?"

"It's wet," said Pinkie, looking down at her hooves morosely. "I didn't really think this plan through too much."

"Did you decide that before or after you climbed in there? Actually, how long have you been hiding in there?"

Pinkie paused in thought. Then she remembered something. Her eyes narrowed. "I know what you're doing," she repeated.

"So you said. Look, are you going to get out of my rain barrel at any point? I'm sure it's comfortable, but I tend to use it for, you know, collecting rain. And I'm sure it's drier here. You know. Out of the rain barrel."

"Oh, don't worry," Pinkie said. "I'm onto your cunning plan to get me out of your rain barrel. It won't work!"

Twilight examined Pinkie. Even dampened by the condensation on the sides and lid of the barrel, her mane was a ball of frizz. If anything, the moisture had made it stick out more irregularly than normal. She was giving Twilight a viscious glare. It should have been disconcerting. Instead, it ended up being comical.

"So, did you want to talk to me about something," Twilight asked, "or are you just doing a spot of recreational spying?"

"Hmmm," said Pinkie Pie. "Oh! Yes!" She grinned. "I'm having a party at Sugarcube Corner tonight! Applejack is bringing her special cider and everypony who's anypony will be there! We're going to get druuuu-uuuunk!"

Twilight blinked. "Uh, that's...nice?"

"You're invited!" Pinkie grinned. Teeth... thought Twilight with a shudder, why is it everyone I meet today has so many teeth.

"...if I say 'yes', will you get out of my rain barrel?"

Pinkie jumped out of the rain barrel, bringing half the water with her onto the side of the library, the gravel path, and also Twilight. She grabbed Twilight's hoof and shook it vigorously. "Oh, I knew you'd come! This is going to be amazing! I'll see you tonight!"

"I haven't said 'yes' yet-"

"Oh, also! Rainbow Dash said you had some tickets! Some tickets to an extra-special event! An event that rhymes with 'Gala'!"

Twilight lowered her face into her forehooves. When was the world going to get less complicated? "Pinkie, 'Gala' doesn't rhyme with 'Gala'. They're the same word."

"So you admit you have tickets!"

"Yes, and before you ask, I can't take you to the Gala right yet. I need to do some study first."

"Study? Study sounds boring."

"Well, yes, but I've only got the one ticket to give away, and I think Celestia is testing me-"

At the Princess' name, Pinkie's face screwed up. "Ooooh," she said, "she's testing you? Testing your friendship? That's nasty."

"Well, she did give me this assignment to study friendship, so she's allowed to set tests. That's why she's my teacher."

"Twilight," said Pinkie Pie, deadly serious now. "No one should have to choose between their friends."

Twilight gave the earth pony a level look. "You know, Pinkie, I still can't tell when you're being serious and when you're joking."

And now the earth pony was grinning again. "That's the plan! Anyway, I've got to go tell everypony else about the party. See you tonight!"

"...see you later, Pinkie."

Pinkie Pie bounced down the path. At the edge of the road, she turned back to Twilight and waved, grinning. "If you don't come, I'll find you!" she said.

And then she was gone.

Was that a threat? Twilight thought, as she wandered inside.

Closing the door behind her, she surveyed the room. It was still a mess from the fillies this morning. Spike had brought some of the reference books out to the main room, and then there was the small fort of literature that she and Cheerilee had been constructing.

Walking over to her desk, she shifted those books onto the floor. She hated mess, but she needed to study this ticket problem first. Her horn glowed, and several books on calculus floating over from a nearby shelf. Unrolling a piece of clean paper, she started sketching. The morning has refreshed her, and she was ready to take on the problem of solving friendship once and for all.

Six hours later, Twilight had a series of seven differential equations and two circular dependencies. But that was OK, because it would all resolve itself once she found the exact curvature of Equestria.

She sighed, and stared at the sheet of paper in front of her. Alternatively, she could bundle the whole thing up in a matrix and try to diagonalise...no. No, that wouldn't work either.

Twilight shook her head. It was no good. If she wanted to distribute the remaning ticket properly, she was going to have to either make a minimum of three potentially erroneous assumptions, or invent a new field of sociology.

There was a knock at the door. "Thank Celestia!" she said, as she slid off her chair and went to answer it.

It was Applejack, accompanying a small cart with a keg on the back. "Evenin', Twi," she said. "Pinkie said you might have a wee bit of trouble getting out of your house, so I decided I'd stop buy and offer you some encouragement."

"Oh," Twilight said, "right, her party. I did say I'd come, well, I think I said I might come...or maybe she just-"

Applejack grinned. "Sometimes it's a mite hard t' say no to Pinkie, ain't it? Come on, I'm just about t' help her get set up."

Twilight looked back at her work - but she'd done a good deal of study on it already today. And she needed a break. And if she was really lucky, everyone would be enjoying themselves too much to ask favours of her.

"Let me get some things," she said to Applejack.

Sugarcube Corner was a five-minute walk away, if you galloped like hell. Which made it a pleasant evening stroll for Twilight and Applejack. Twilight had offered to pull the cart, but AJ was having none of it.

"So how's the study of friendship gettin' on?" the earth pony asked. Twilight watched her out of the corner of her eye - that cart had to weigh in at about a hundred pounds, and yet Applejack was pulling it like it weighed nothing. Is it just because she's used to it, she thought to herself, or are the earth ponies just suited to manual labour?

"Oh, you know," she said flippantly. "Still haven't solved it yet."

"Y'seemed a tiny bit stressed over it yesterday."

"Well, you know how it is. Everypony's been acting weird, and then Celestria had to go and give me an assignment on top of that. Sometimes things just pile up on you."

"Actin' weird? Everypony?"

"Well, there was the business with Rarity, and then I found Fluttershy spying on me-"

"Fluttershy? Spying?"

"Exactly. And then Rainbow Dash was being all...well, evasive, and Pinkie Pie is Pinkie PIe, and so far it seems you and Cheerilee are the only people I know in this town who're acting in any way normal."

"What about Spike?"

"Oh yeah, and Spike. Spike's being sullen and uncooperative, but I think that's just because he got up early this morning. I don't know," she said, "I feel like now I've got here and made all these new friends I'm finding out that they're just regular ponies!"

"Sugarcube, we are just regular ponies."

"Well, yes, but." Twilight sighed. "I don't know, when Celestia suggested I stay here and study friendship it sounded like it would be fun and happy and, well, a break from studying magic in Canterlot. Not that there's anything wrong with-"

"Twi, what I think you have is what Granny Smith used to call, 'a compulsion to over-think things'. Sometimes, things is just things."

Twilight stopped in middle of the road, looking at the ground in front of her. She sighed. "You know," she said, "you're probably right."

"Just go to this party, have a bit to drink, be silly with yer friends, and then in the morning you can keep goin' on all this study stuff."

"But I still wanted to talk to you about the farm and how-"

Applejack put a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "Tomorrow. Okay?"

"...sure. Tomorrow."

They got there just as the party was kicking off. Applejack was instantly mobbed, and had no end of helpers to unload the keg and bring it inside.

Twilight spent a minute or two just taking in the scene. Streamers and bunting were hung across the rafters of Sugarcube Corner, and the place was full enough that ponies were spilling out onto the road. Pinkie Pie could occasionally be seen to-ing and fro-ing amongst the guests, handing out hors d'oeuvres and making sure everyone was catered for. When she saw Twilight, she waved and bounced in the unicorn's direction.

"Twilight!" she exclaimed, "you made it!"

"You sent Applejack after me."

"Well, I had to be sure you made it! Would you like an olive with a thing in it? I call them Olives with Things in Them!"

"I, uh, I think I'll pass. How many ponies are here? Are you allowed to do this?"

"Of course! The Cakes don't mind as long as I clean up after, and the Mayor doesn't mind."

"Really?"

"Sure! Why d'you think Applejack only supplies us with one keg of cider?" The earth pony craned her neck over the crowd. "Ooooh, more guests! See you later, Twilight! Party hard!"

Twilight wandered through the throng. Occasionally, she saw a pony she vaguely knew, who would wave at her or greet her, but she really didn't know where she was going. She was about to call the party a bust and sneak out while no one was looking, when there was the pounding of a hoof on wood, silencing the crowd.

Applejack had positioned the keg against the side of Sugarcube Corner, and propped it in place with wedges of wood. Now she'd clambered up on top of the keg, and was balancing there while addressing the crowd.

"How y'all doin', everypony?" she cried. The crowd shouted and cat-called in response. "Here's the rules," she continued. "We won't be serving nopony who can't walk straight, we won't be serving nopony twice until we've served everypony once, and if you break it, y' pay for it. Got that?"

General shouting from the crowd again. Twilight could see Rainbow Dash hover above the throng, the pegasus' voice drowned out in the general hubub.

"Then let's open 'er up!" Applejack cried. She jumped down from the keg, and ponies converged upon her. Twilight hung at the back, not particularly willing to get caught up in the melee. Dash caught her eye and flitted over to hover beside her.

"Not much up for the scrum?" Dash said.

"They're very....enthusiastic," Twilight ventured.

"You ever been at the centre of a bunch of earth ponies, all eager to get their share of AJ's cider? I'm not keen on risking my wings, even for alcohol."

"It's good?"

"It's good?" Rainbow Dash asked. "This it the first batch of the season. It's been sitting in the Apples' cellars for nine months. She gets Big Mac to stand outside on Friday nights just in case someone tries to liberate it before it's ready. This stuff is as close as you'll get to liquid gold."

"So...it's good?"

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "Well, you don't have to have any."

"Pinkie Pie said some went to the Mayor."

"Oh, yeah, she always gets a barrel of the first harvest. She'll be holding her own little party in the town hall. Very important ponies only and all that. 'coure," Dash elbowed Twilight, "we all know the real reason the Mayor does it is so Big Mac will come deliver it to her. Not that AJ lets that happen any more."

Twilight shook her head. "Wait...Big Mac and the Mayor?"

Rainbow dash laughed. "Aw, hell," she said, "it's not like that. Big Mac just does it because it brings in the bits, and the Mayor just gets to make conversation with him and stare at his flank all night. Not that I think that's a bad way to-"

"OK, that's plenty of information."

"Awwww," said the Pegasus, landing next to Twilight and patting her on the head condescendingly. "Who's a likkle sheltered pony? Anyway, I hear you spent the whole morning shacked up with Cheerilee in the library. Seems you've become quite the teacher's pet."

"You know what? That alcohol's sounding better every minute." Twilight made her way towards the keg.

"Don't forget to do your homework!" the pegasus yelled after her. "I hear she has creative ways of giving extra credit!"

The crowd was thinning as Twilight joined. Say what you wanted about Applejack, she was able to get a lot of ponies merry very efficiently. Soon Twilight was standing in front of the keg as the earth pony filled a somewhat battered earthenware cup for her.

"Enjoyin' everything?" she asked. "Forgotten about all your problems yet?"

"Most of them," Twilight replied. "Rainbow Dash isn't helping."

"That figures," said Applejack, carefully balancing the cup between her hooves as she placed it on a nearby bench. "What's that busy-body been gossiping about today?"

"Well, uh, about Big Mac and the Mayor, actually."

Applejack's hooves slipped, the drink dropping to the ground. Applejack's eyes narrowed. "That no-good little....sorry 'bout your drink, Twi. Let me get you another." She grabbed the next cup in line and started to fill it. "There's a reason I always send Caramel with the keg, it keeps that cradle-snatching mare's eyes off my brother. And..."

"And what?" Twilight leaned forward. Applejack was standing stock-still. The cup had filled and excess cider was dripping onto the ground.

"Well, I'll be!" said Applejack angrily. "I wondered why Ditzy Doo was talking to Caramel this afternoon. I bet it's that good-for-nothing mayor making them switch places." She slammed the keg's tap closed with her hoof. "Twi, take over the drink. I need to keep my brother out of trouble. Reckon you can do that?"

"Well, I-"

"Good girl. Gotta dash!"

On the bright side, Twilight thought, this probably counts as work experience.

"Next!" she called, as a young earth pony walked away carefully balancing a mug of cider.

"Hello, darling!"

Twilight looked up. "Oh," she said. "Hello Rarity."

"I didn't know you were helping out with the festivities," Rarity said, as Twilight hovered another mug under the tap.

"Anything for a friend, right?"

"Well, I have to admit you're doing a cleaner job than Applejack does." She tossed her mane dismissively. "I guess there are some advantages to having a horn."

"Yeah, Rarity, about what you said to me before-"

"Not in front of everyone, Twilight." She motioned to the crowd around her, most of which were either ignoring her or impatiently waiting for her to stop holding up the drinks line. "How about after this is all after you come over to Carousel Boutique and we can discuss it like civilised ponies, hmmm?"

Twilight paused. Rarity wanted to discuss her own prejudice with Twilight? That wasn't how it was supposed to work.

"Anyway, better not hold everyone up," Rarity continued. A light-blue glow wrapped the mug as she drifted it over. "Have a nice night!" she said as she trotted off.

It took an hour to empty the barrel. Rainbow Dash got the last mug, which somehow didn't surprise Twilight.

The pegasus kicked the keg half-heartedly. "Man," she said. "It always runs out early." She took the mug in both hooves, and lifted it up to drink. It was then that Twilight realised: she hadn't actually got to try any of the drink she'd been vending all evening. She gave the keg a mournful look.

Rainbow Dash paused. "What's up?" she asked.

"I didn't actually have any of it..." Twilight said.

"You what? You were serving all night! You mean you didn't take a drink on the side every now and then? That's like, a right if you're serving."

"There were too many ponies in the line."

"Well, of course there were too many ponies in the line! Look, take this. I guess it's got me cooties now, but, you know, if you're fine with that..."

Twilight took the mug and raised it to her mouth. It smelled of...well....apples. "Thanks, Dash."

"Hey, no problem. Element of Loyalty, right? Gotta stick by your friends."

Twilight smiled, and took a sip. It wasn't bad at all - a pleasant blend of apples and spices, with a hint of-

And then it hit the back of Twilight's throat.

"Hah!" proclaimed Rainbow Dash, as Twilight tried to get her breath back. "Bottom of the barrel's always the best! Whaddaya think?"

"Well," said Twilight. "It's got character."

"C'mon! Let's head inside. Plenty of stuff with character in there!"

The problem, Twilight thought, when it came to drinking with Rainbow Dash, was that Rainbow Dash had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the various drinks, cocktails, punches and other liquid beverages at the party.

This isn't actually what Twilight thought. What Twilight thought was something more along these lines:

"Rainbow Dash, you know, you know, you're a good friend. A really good friend."

Dash was looking at Twilight with a concerned expression. So far she'd had three drinks, not including the cider, and one of those had been a glass of water.

"I wish I had more friends like you," continued Twilight, staring at her hooves. "I'm no good at making friends, Dash."

"Sure you are," said Dash. "You're...uh...very good at making friends! Look at how many friends you've made in Ponyville already!"

"But Dash, the only reason I met you guys is because Celestia forced me out here and told me to go meet you. I mean, and Pinkie Pie, but-"

"Did someone say my name?!"

Twilight whirled in her seat, lost her balance, and collapsed to the floor. Dash was less impressed. "Hey Pinkie," she said.

Pinkie extracted herself from under the table. "Hellooo Rainbow Dash!" she said. "Hello Twilight! The floor isn't that comfy, you know!"

Twilight glared at the pink pony before getting back to her feet. "I'm no good at making friends, Pinkie Pie," she said.

"Awww, don't be like that Twilight! Take a seat, and tell Uncle Pinkie Pie about it."

Rainbow Dash frowned. "Uncle?"

"Yeah! I always wanted to be an uncle."

"Sure."

Twilight regained her seat. "I'm no good at making friends!"

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.

"Dash," said Pinkie, "you know what her problem is?"

"Huh?"

"She doesn't have anything to drink! I think somepony needs to fix that!"

The pegasus sighed. "Yeah, fine," she said, trotting off to the nearest table.

"So," said Pinkie, turning back to Twilight, "why d'you think you can't make any friends, huh?"

"I can't!" Twilight wailed. "I've never been able to make friends. When I was in Canterlot I just used to spend all my time studying, and then Celestia basically forced me to come here to make some friends, and she even gave me a list of people to make friends with, and I've done that, but now everyone's acting strange and I don't know what anypony is doing, and I can't even make friends on my own and I keep on wondering if I only made friends with you guys so I wouldn't fail her assignment and Pinkie," she said, grasping the earth pony's hooves, "what if I'm the worst pony ever?"

"Don't be silly!" said Pinkie PIe. "You can't be the worst pony ever! And here's Rainbow with your drink!"

Dash nudged up to the table, sliding a tray from her back. There were three drinks on it, all pastel-coloured. Twilight grabbed the one closest to her, drinking half of it in one swallow.

"Hey! At least look like you're trying to enjoy it," said Dash. He turned to Pinkie. "Is she still worried about the whole friends thing?"

"You betcha!"

The pegasus sighed. "Look, Twi," she said. "You remember that bit where we defeated Nightmare Moon? You know, three days ago? We did that because we were friends. Celestia might have pushed us together, but we did that." She punched the unicorn lightly on her shoulder. "We did that, because we're friends, right? And you said yourself, you're the one who brought us all togther. What was it you said, friendship is magic, right? And you're, like, the best at magic!"

Twilight's head flopped to the table. She examined the pegasus morosely through her glass. "Magic is just lying to reality," she said, "and then sticking with that lie until reality is forced to accept that you're right. Friendship is like..." she waved a hoof, "talking to people, and caring about things, and remembering birthdays. I only remember my own birthday half the time."

"Awwww, don't be too hard on yourself Twilight!" said Pinkie PIe. She examined her drink - something light blue with bubbles - and downed it in one gulp. "Heehee, fizzy!"

"That's all you've got?" Twilight asked. "Don't be so hard on yourself?"

"You've been here three days! And you've made five friends already!"

"Six," sighed Twilight.

"Oh yeah," said Rainbow Dash. "Pinkie's told me about you and Cheerilee. Well, you made friends with her, didn't you?"

"I guess, but she knows Celestia anyway. Celestia's always involved!"

Twilight missed the look that passed between the other two ponies.

"She knows Celestia?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Or...or did some work for her, or something, I don't know!" Twilight finished her drink and slammed it on the table. "But Celestia's always involved! And now she wants me to solve friendship! And she's given me those stupid...stupid tickets! And she knows that I'll have to choose someone out of my friends to go with me!"

Twilight's voice had been gradually getting louder. Pinkie Pie looked at Rainbow Dash. "Hey," said the pegasus, "that thing was like, ten percent alcohol, max."

"Well," continued Twilight, speaking to the room in general, "you know what she can do with her tickets? She can have them back! You're right, Pinkie: no one should have to choose between their friends!" She stopped, struck by a thought. "I know what she can do!" The purple pony climbed onto her chair, and after a couple of attempts, onto the top of the table.

"Whoa!" said Rainbow Dash, steadying the table with her forehooves. "I think you've had enough." A small audience was gathering - everypony knew Twilight, but no one had seen her drunk before, and this was shaping up to be some quality entertainment.

"You know what?" said Twilight, addressing her new audience. "Celestia's had her way for too long! She's given me assignment after assignment, and now she wants me to ruin my friendship, just for grades! Well, I know what I can do for that!" She screwed up her face, and her horn was engulfed in purple light. Her chair lifted off the ground.

Twilight blinked, and the chair dropped to the floor again. Tilting her head to one side, she concentrated harder, and Pinkie Pie suddenly started to rise.

"Hey, Dashie!" she cried. "I'm fly-oof!"

Twilight squinted, and tried once again. This time, her saddlebags rustled, and the pair of gala tickets floated out. "Ha," said Twilight under her breath, "still got it." Turning back to the crowd (which had grown even in the last few minutes), she continued: "You know how I solve this problem! I solve it like this!"

She tensed, closed her eyes, and pushed her entire force of will into her magic.

Her horn glowed.

The tickets erupted in flame.

The crowd roared.

The sun was loud.

She knew it was silly. The sun gave you light. It didn't give you sound.

The sun was still loud. She groaned and rolled over, pulling the blankets over her head. Even that hurt.

There was a knock at her door.

"Go 'way," she mumbled.

She heard the door open. "It's me!" said Spike, far too cheerful. "I brought you breakfast."

Why did she have a headache? Yesterday she'd talked to Cheerilee, and she'd done some study, and then...

She remembered what she did last night.

She remembered the tickets.

She sat up, throwing off the blankets and clutching at her head. Spike was standing in the doorway, breakfast tray in one hand. "Spike," she asked, "there really was a party last night, wasn't there?"

"Yeah."

"And that means I did go to the party. And that means that Dash really did ply me with drinks. And that means that I really did...oh, I am in so much trouble."

She spotted her saddlebags, leaning against her bed where they'd been tossed the night before. She leaned down and rummaged through them.

No tickets.

"Oh....Spike, what's the worst word you know?"

The dragon looked embarassed. "For real?"

"Yes for real."

Spike told her.

Twilight said that. It made her feel a bit better.

There was a knocking from downstairs.

"I'll get that!" said Spike, running off. Twilight groaned. Her clock told her it was nearly noon. When did I get in last night? she tought to herself. And exactly how much did Dash get me to drink?

(It wasn't that Twilight hadn't got drunk before - she'd done it once, recorded the effects meticulously in her journal, and woken up the next morning and found that somepony had swapped her objective findings with a scrawled series of adventures of Mrs Buzzy, her pet stuffed bee, and a badly-drawn picture of Celestia riding a zebra. She'd filed them away and never tried it again.)

There was the sound of hooves on the stairs, and Applejack appeared at the door to her bedroom, out of breath. Spike was hovering behind her, obviously not so keen with his mentor being disturbed so soon after waking up.

"She just barged in," he said. "I couldn't-"

"Twilight," Applejack interrupted, "Twilight, ya gotta come quick!"

Something in the earth pony's voice suggested this wasn't time to fool around. Gritting her teeth against her hangover, Twilight followed Applejack down the stairs, out the door, then off at a canter towards Sweet Apple Acres.

It took them a good fifteen minutes, and by the time they arrived, Twilight was out of breath. As they entered Sweet Apple Acres, she couldn't help but notice that some of her hangover had cured. Maybe exercise helps them, she thought to herself. It was definitely something worth exploring, although next time she'd outsource the actual research.

"It's up at the barn," Applejack said, slowing to a walk. She led them up the hill, saying "I found it like this when I woke up this morning. I haven't touched a thing, I swear."

They crested the ridge, and Twilight got a good look down into the barn. It was big, big enough to store all the Apple clan's farm equipment, and the double doors were wide open. You could see right down into it, and what Twilight saw stopped her in her tracks.

Strung over one of the beams, clearly visible from the hilltop, was a hangman's noose.

And hanging from that noose, half-obscured by the shade of the barn's interior, was the sillhouette of a pony.

Hang in there, little pony

Twilight took off at a gallop towards the barn. Applejack was taken by surprise. "Hey," she yelled, "wait up! Y'don't actually think it's-oh, horseapples." She started after her friend.

They arrived at the barn about the same time. Twilight was panting, sweat covering her flanks. She looked up at the body, and then glared at Applejack from below her fringe.

"It's a model," she said.

"What the hell did you think it was? Y'think I'd drag you out here in secret if a real pony'd offed themselves in my barn? I'd be on the Mayor's doorstep in a heartbeat!"

"You could have said something!"

"Hey!" Applejack stomped a hoof. "Somepony is goin' around hangin' mannequins of ponies in my barn! It's not the sort of thing I want to make known!"

Twilight took a breath. "OK," she said. "OK. Blame later. Let's have a look at this."

"Can't we just, I dunno, take it down?" Applejack asked.

Twilight squinted up at the hanging body. "There could be clues. I've read about them." She turned to the earth pony. "When were you last in here?"

"Well, I ain't been in here for a few days, but Big Mac would've put his stuff away in here last night, an' he never mentioned anything."

"So whoever did this must have done it while the party was going on." She paused, thinking. "Where would you get a mannequin at short notice?"

"I.....dunno. Rarity's, I guess?"

"Well, it took quarter of an hour for us to run from the library to here, and I saw Rarity in the middle of the party. I guess she could have shown up, raced back to Carousel Boutique, grabbed the required mannequin, dashed over here and strung it up...but that doesn't sound like her."

"Can we just take the thing down, Twi?"

Twilight held out a hoof. "No, wait."

There was silence in the barn as Twilight examined the mannequin further. Applejack waited impatiently.

"How would you get this thing down?" Twilight asked.

Applejack looked at the unicorn. "Well, I'd get a crate and untie it."

"Hah! A crate!"

"That's...what I said."

"And where's the nearest crate?"

"Well, there's plenty in the corner over here..." said Applejack, trotting over.

Twilight beat her there. Holding out a hoof, she inspected the tops of the crates. "Ah, but these crates are all dusty!" she proclaimed.

Applejack blinked. "Yes," she said. "That's what happens when you put crates in a barn."

"But if someone had moved these crates, they wouldn't be dusty!"

"So you're saying whoever strung this up didn't use a crate?"

"Exactly! Oooh, this is like puzzles!"

Applejack glared at Twilight.

"...except much, much more serious. Of course."

Applejack sighed. "Yes, very good. Now, can we get 'round to taking it down?"

They dragged one of the old crates out to under the hanging mannequin. At one point, according to the faded paint on its side, it has contained "BRONCO SOAP", which it promised was "strong enough to clean the whole herd!" Twilight got the job of untying the pony, which mainly involved her balancing on top of the box while she attempted to untie the knots holding it up. It wasn't easy.

"Whoever tied this was using their hooves," she commented. "If you were using magic, you could knot this much tighter-"

"Twi, sweetie, could we not talk about the pony who's sending death threats to me an' mine?"

"Uh, sure, I guess!" Twilight was still focussed on getting the knots untied. "What do you want to talk about? How's Big Mac?"

The earth pony sighed. "Y'sure know how to pick your subjects, don't you?"

"...oh, right. I guess that's a touchy subject. Sorry. Ah, finally!" A purple glow enveloped the mannequin as it came free of the noose. Carefully, she lowered the model to the ground.

"Naw, I guess it's OK. I mean, it's not like it's a secret that they Mayor wants a piece o' my brother." Applejack sighed, guiding the mannequin onto the barn's floor. "She paid him extra to deliver that cider to her party, like I thought. The big lummox said it didn't matter much to him who looked at his behind, and we needed the bits. He's got a point, but that don't make me happy about it."

Twilight got down off the crate. "Why're you telling me this?" she asked. "I mean, I don't want to sound horrible or anything, but I've only been in town a few days and now you're telling me about...well, about family business that you probably don't want aired all over the town."

Applejack nudged the mannequin with a forehoof. "Well, y'seem like a trustworthy type, is all," she said. "Besides, I'm supposed t' be the Element of Honesty, right?

Twilight smiled. "And I guess there was also the time we saved the world from eternal night together. That's like a trust-building exercise."

"Yeah, and that."

Silence.

Twilight cleared her throat. "Well," she said, "we should probably check the body."

It didn't take them long to find the three-diamond mark of Rarity's Carousel Boutique on the inner leg of the mannequin. Applejack was all for confronting her right away before she could clear up the evidence, until Twilight pointed out that first, it would be rather stupid of Rarity to implicate herself by using her own mannequin to do the act, and second, they might want to remove the hangman's noose that still took pride of place in the barn.

"So," said Applejack, keeping her forehooves on the crate to keep it steady. "What was it you wanted to talk about yesterday?"

Twilight paused, hanging onto the noose with one hoof for balance. She kept having irrational thoughts about slipping and falling, the noose tightening around her fetlock until she was hanging from one forehoof, and then having to live with one unnaturally-stretched leg for the rest of her life. As irrational fears went, she'd had worse; it was still off-putting.

"Oh," she said. "I remember! Technology."

"Technology?"

"Yes!" Twilight turned back to the knots in the rope, horn glowing as she tried to unthread them. She'd never been really good at this sort of ultra-fine control, and something about this knot in particular bothered her. "You don't seem to have much machinery on the farm, which always confused me, because even if you got a relatively inexpensive tractor or something, Granny Smith could do the driving and you could probably increase your output about two-fold."

Applejack's eyes narrowed. "Twi, y'aren't seriously suggesting we start using technology on the farm, are you?"

"Why not?" The unicorn focussed, and the end of the rope came clear of the knot. She fell down onto all fours, grabbed the bottom of the noose in her teeth, and pulled. "Ick's erfecly afe."

"I guess y'don't understand, bein' a unicorn an' all," Applejack said. "Ponyville's an earth pony town, and we do things the earth pony way. That means no magic. It just causes problems, is all."

Twilight gave one last tug, and the rope came free. It dropped to the floor behind her. She turned to the earth pony. "I'm not saying you need to use magic. Tractors aren't magic. Tools aren't magic."

"Twi, I don't think-"

"I understand that you don't want to use magic. We don't need everypony to be dependent on unicorns. I don't want everypony to depend on the unicorns. We tried that, and it failed horribly! But we can make things now, things that don't need magic to function. Anypony can drive a tractor. Anypony can...I don't know, operate an apple-picker. The point is, you don't need us to live better lives!"

"Twi, just because you put some trappings and gears around it, don't stop it being magic."

Twilight stamped a hoof on the crate. "It's not magic! Magic is waving a hoof and suddenly your pumpkin is a carriage, or, or levitating things using the force of your mind. It doesn't make sense, that's why it's magic. If it were reasonable we'd be doing it all the time and wouldn't have vast libraries with books of spells and how to perform them and have ponies poring over them for years before they're allowed to do anything more complex than simple lifting and carrying, and, and-"

"Hey, hey, simmer down. I didn't mean anything by it. It's just that, well, magic, and its ilk-" she shot a glare at Twilight, silencing her before she could even start to interrupt, "- tends to make things more complicated than it need be."

"But technology isn't magic! You just observe what happens and you apply it to your life."

"But how d'you make all them parts for your technological devices?" Applejack asked, holding up a hoof.

"Well, we machine them-"

"And how d'you make those machines?"

"Some are made on other machines, and some of them are constructed by unicorns-"

"And what do the unicorns use to make those parts?"

Twilight sighed. "I suppose they use magic-"

Applejack shrugged. "See? It's magic at some point. And magic complicates things."

Twilight closed her eyes. Getting mad doesn't solve anything, she thought to herself, and I wouldn't know where to hide an earth pony body out here even if it did.

She opened her eyes. "Let's just get the mannequin back to Rarity's, shall we?"

Carousel Boutique was closed when they visited, but the door was unlocked.

"Rarity?" Applejack called. "Rarity, you 'round?"

"Coming!"

They waited nervously just inside the door. Applejack tried not to touch anything, in case Rarity charged her for it. Twilight mentally reorganised the bolts of cloth lying behind the counter. The mannqeuin just sat there.

Rarity appeared at the top of the stairs. "Applejack! Darling! And Twilight! How nice of you two to pop round." She started down the stairs. "You'll have to excuse me, there's been a small hiccup with some of my stock. I was just sorting things out."

"Missing a mannequin, are you?" asked Twilight.

Rarity paused. "Why, yes, as a matter of fact." She looked past them, to the model leaning against the door. "Oh, you found it! How wonderful." She trotted down the last few steps and started to inspect the dummy. "Simply ghastly," she continued as she looked it over. "Someone broke in last night while I was at the party. They left everything else alone, like this was all they were after. Most strange." Her horn glowed, and the mannequin gently lifted into the air, rotating slowly in front of her. "Oh dear, just look at these grass stains. Where was it?"

"Hangin' from a noose in my barn," said Applejack, pointedly.

Rarity's expression changed from concern to shock. "Oh, you poor dear! Someone put that in your barn? You-" she paused, looking out the window. She lowered her voice, "You don't think they meant it? As a threat?"

Applejack gave the unicorn a level look. "I'm willing to entertain that notion."

"But who would do such a thing? In Ponyville, of all places! I'd never expect that sort of barbarism this close to Canterlot."

"That's what I'd like to figure out," said Twilight. "I don't suppose we could see the scene of the break-in?"

Twilight Sparkle was living a scene from a book.

Rarity had brought them up to her "creative space", as she called it. The room was strewn with various dresses and other garments in mixed states of completion. The chaos of Rarity's design process contrasted in what was doubtlessly a thought-provoking manner with the chaos caused by a forced entry and the theft of a dressmaker's model from the middle of the room, which probably reflected on the inner brutatlity of the modern pony or possibly the animalism of the creative process or something like that.

"...didn't even pay attention to the quality of the ruffle," continued Rarity. "I mean, the train I could understand, I just used whatever's around, it's just a prototype you see, but really? I make a seven-fold ruffle and the ruffian just throws it to the ground?" She turned to Twilight. "You can see we're dealing with the lowest of the low here."

Twilight tuned her out (it was surprisingly easy to do) and examined the room. Glass littered the wooden floor near the wall. The intruder had broken a pane to lift the latch, obviously. Against the opposite wall, three mannequins stood side-by-side. There was space for another, but all that was left were a pile of clothes.

"And this was exactly how you found it?" Twilight asked.

"Yes," said Rarity scathingly, "I just left fine-grade raw silk to gather dust on the floor." She sniffed dismissively.

"You moved something? That could have been key evidence! The thief would have put their hoofprints all over that dress!"

Applejack scratched the back of her neck. "We all got hooves, darling. What of it?"

"Well, they'd....I....I don't know! But I feel it's important somehow." She sighed. This wasn't how it went. There should be a clue, something she could find.

She looked around the room. "OK," she said, "how about the window?"

She trotted over to the window and gave it an experimental push. It gave a creak as it opened.

Twilight craned her neck. "Ah! No roof below the window," she said. "Looks like our thief is a pegasus."

"Couldn't you magic your way up here?" Applejack asked, still standing by the door.

"There's a few things you definitely can't do with magic. One of them is lifting yourself up by your own horseshoes. I guess it could be two unicorns..."

Rarity looked up from the pile of clothes she was rearranging. "Dear, you don't really think unicorns would do this to poor Applejack, do you?"

Twilight flashed Rarity an annoyed glance. "I'm sure unicorns are as capable of threats as anyone," she said coldly.

"Really, sometimes I'm surprised-"

"So, uh, anyway," said Applejack. "I guess they'll be expecting me on the farm now, what with the rest of my family not knowing about the hanging pony in my barn."

"Oh, yeah," said Twilight. Rarity shot her a glare, obviously not finished. "Don't worry, I'll keep on the case. And, uh, what I said before about the farm..."

"Yeah?"

"...just have a think about it? Please?"

The earth pony gave Twilight a considering look. "I guess I can at least do that for you. But no promises, OK?"

"Sure!" said the unicorn with a grin.

Rarity and Twilight watched each other as Applejack clumped down the stairs and left the shop. The bell jangled as the front door swung closed.

"So," said Twilight.

"So," said Rarity. "You're not just here about the mannequin, are you?"

Twilight started to inspect the window again. "Well, I was planning on it only being about the mannequin, but apparently you want to make it about something else." That came out wrong. "I mean, there are other things I want to talk to you about, but I think finding the ponies who broke into your boutique and threatened Applejack is more important than personal matters."

"Of course," said Rarity. She started to move about the room, re-hanging garments. "How thoughtful of you."

Hold on, Twilight thought, moments ago she was glaring at me like I'd killed her cat. She continued to examine the glass. "So, uh, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

"You didn't come talk to me last night after the party," said Rarity. Twilight could tell she was pouting just from the voice. How did she do that?

"No," Twilight replied. "I had other things to deal with. And, to be honest, quite a bit of last night is still a bit fuzzy."

"Of course," said Rarity, "of course. Listen, Twilight, darling, I know it's difficult living in Ponyville, I mean, look at you, always so stressed." She walked over to the window, beside Twilight. "You need somewhere you can relax, somewhere you can...be yourself."

Twilight looked up. Rarity was looking straight at her. This was starting to get unnerving. "Be myself? I'm not quite-"

Rarity put a hoof against Twilight's mouth. She smiled. "Darling, being a unicorn isn't the only thing we have in common."

Twilight blinked. She narrowed her eyes and batted the hoof away. "Oh no," she said, "you don't get to do that. Of all ponies, you don't get to do that."

"I...what?"

"'Oh, I'm Rarity, I'm going to make intimations about who other ponies sleep with and gossip behind their backs, and it doesn't matter because they're not the superior race! And then I'm going to lure the new unicorn in town to my place and make advances on her!'"

"That's not at all-"

"Really, Rarity? Because that's alarmingly what it looks like from here. Why, what should it look like?"

"It's-" Rarity started, but even as she said it she changed her mind. She hung her head. "I'm sorry, Twilight. I've been...indelicate. I thought...coming from Canterlot and all, well, you hear what ponies who come from there think. I was hoping I could get on your good side." She looked up at Twilight. "I was hoping you'd notice me."

Her fellow unicorn refused to meet her gaze.

The two stood in silence. Minutes passed. The sun shone in through the window, illuminating the dust that drifted around the room.

Finally, Twilight turned. "Rarity," she said, "what you've done, I don't care why you did it, it was wrong. It was mean, it was hurtful, and it's not what a friend would do."

"I know."

"I have to go help Applejack with her problem," Twilight said, walking to the staircase. "I'm sure you'll be able to fix your window. I'll see you around."

Rarity waited until Twilight had reached the door at the bottom of the stairs before speaking. "Twilight?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"...are we still friends?"

Twilight sighed. "I don't know. I-" She paused, one hoof on the front door, and sighed. "I don't know."

A moment of silence. Then the bell jangled as Twilight opened the door and left. As soon as she left, Rarity looked up from the floor. She didn't look half as morose now as she had done moments before.

"Oh no," she said to herself, "oh no oh no oh no! Rarity, what have you doo-ooone?!"

And then there was a ring of the bell as she, too, exited the store as fast as she could, and galloped towards the edge of Ponyville.

Twilight Sparkle cantered away from Carousel Boutique, mind spinning. She'd gone there to investigate a crime, nothing more, and now Rarity had complicated things by well, by being Rarity. Now she had to worry about mixed signals and, well, whatever there was between Rarity and Rainbow Dash, and had everything Rarity had said to her since she'd met her been some sort of double-entendre?

And she still needed to work out who'd stolen the mannequin in the first place.

There was one pony who could help her with both these problems.

It took her a good half-hour of searching, but eventually she found what she was looking for. Just off the main squre of Ponyville was a wide avenue. If you followed it far enough, you'd reach Canterlot. At this point, however, it was merely one of the many roads that met at the town's centre. Trees lined its length, and halfway out of town, a particularly large oak dominated its siblings. It was tall and bushy, bedecked in the summer green of lush leaves and immature acorns. Most importantly for Twilight, there was a rustling coming from one of the lower branches.

"...so anyway," said the oak tree as she approached, "then they turn to the earth pony, and both of them are all, 'OK, show us what you've got!' So the earth pony picks up a third brick-"

"Oh my," replied the oak tree, in a different voice.

"Hey, this is my joke. So the earth pony picks up a brick and he bucks it as hard as he can, and they all watch it go up, up, into the clouds. And none of them see it land."

"...that's, that's a very good joke, Rainbow Dash."

"No it isn't!"

"Isn't it? I'm sorry."

Twilight gave the trunk a swift kick. "Hey!" she called out. "Anypony up there?"

There was a rustling, and a sky-blue head poked out from the leaves. "Oh," said Rainbow Dash, "hey Twilight! Have you heard my joke yet?"

There was a rustling further along the branch, and Fluttershy's head emerged from the foliage. "It's very good," she added.

"Maybe later. Look, you girls, you know Rarity, right?"

The two pegasi exchanged glances. "Yeah," said Rainbow Dash. "I guess we know her. What's up?"

"I think she just tried to proposition me."

In the end, the pegasi joined Twilight on the ground rather than have her try to climb the tree and risk all manner of falling injury. If ponies were meant to climb trees, Twilight figured, Celestia would have given them opposable thumbs.

"And she just asked you out of the blue?" Rainbow Dash asked her.

"Well, yes. It wasn't like we were there on a social visit."

"Why were you there?"

"AJ-" Twilight checked herself. "Well, it's Applejack's business, I probably shouldn't be the one talking about it."

"I didn't even know she...well, liked mares," said Fluttershy.

"Me neither," said Twilight. "Actually, I was kind of hoping you'd know something about it, Dash,"

"Huh? Why the hell would I know anything about it? Rarity and I hang out, like, once in forever."

"Well, ah..." Twilight looked at her hooves. Why was this so hard to say? "Rarity kind of let slip about, uh, who you like this one time, and I kind of assumed that-"

"Oh," said Rainbow Dash, looking at Twilight. She wasn't smiling any more. "I get it. Just because I like flying and sports and work out and because Rarity implies things, that means I must obviously fool with fillies in my spare time, huh?"

"What? No! But...wait, you don't?"

Dash stood up, wings flared. "One, since when has it been your business, and two, even if I was, you just assume I'd sleep with any mare in Ponyville who'd have me?"

"Dash-"

"No, I see you've got important work to do. I guess I better go and find someone to sleep with."

"Dash, I didn't mean-"

"I'm sure you didn't. See you 'round, Fluttershy." The pegasus launched off towards town.

Twilight stared after her.

"Bother," she said.

"Um, Twilight?"

Twilight turned back to the remaining pegasus. "Sorry for ruining your free time, Fluttershy."

"Oh, it's not your fault. You just hit a sore spot with Rainbow Dash. Lots of ponies think that when they meet her. I'm sure everything will be OK once she's calmed down."

Twilight sighed, sitting down against the base of the tree. "But Rarity all but said," she complained, half to herself.

"I'm sure Rarity's just mistaken like you."

"Maybe. I don't know. I don't seem to be doing so well at solving all my problems today," she said.

"What's wrong, Twilight?" Fluttershy walked over and sat down next to the unicorn. "Can I help?"

Twilight looked up. "Actually," she said. "You're a pegasus, you must know a bunch of other pegasi around Ponyville."

"Well," said Fluttershy, looking at the ground. "There's not a huge number of them who really live in Ponyville. And there's some who visit, but I don't know all of them."

"Do you know any who'd want to threaten Applejack?"

"Applejack?" Fluttershy looked up. "Is something wrong with her?"

"Don't go spreading this. Like I said, it's her story to tell. But someone...well, they gave her a bit of a shock. It's why I was at Rarity's - someone stole one of her mannequins for it. I'm pretty sure it was a pegasus. The theif, not the mannequin."

"Really?"

"Don't worry," said Twilight, chuckling, "I don't suspect you. But, well, do you know anypony it could be?"

"I can't think of anypony who'd do that sort of thing. But I guess I hang around with pretty quiet sorts. What makes you think it was a pegasus?"

"They got into Rarity's through the second-floor window. You couldn't have climbed up there, you'd have to fly or have a unicorn lift you."

"But how could a pegasus tie knots in the rope?"

"There's some you can do with you teeth, if you're good at it."

"I guess."

The two sat in silence for a minute.

Twilight sighed again, and got to her feet. "Sorry, but I need to get back to the library. Spike will be wondering where I got to." She looked back at the pegasus. "If you think of someone..."

"I'll let you know."

As Twilight trotted back to the library, her mind was roiling. If only she hadn't offended Rainbow Dash, she might have a list of suspects by now. Instead, she just had one more thing to do, and no idea how to go about it. Maybe if she wrote everything down, it might make more sense. Writing things down was always a good idea.

She was so engrossed in thought, it never occured to her that she'd never mentioned to Fluttershy that rope was involved. The pegasus had come up with that fact all on her own.

Cheerilee squared off the last set of lesson plans and shoved them in the drawer. She could have left this for later tonight, or even tomorrow morning, but she liked being organised. If you were organised, she figured, you were ready for anything.

She flipped closed her folder, revealing a small envelope. It was birthday-card sized and bleached pure white.

She glanced around the room. There was no one here, of course. The early afternoon sun slanted through the cheap wooden slat blinds, painting stripes of light and shadow around the room, illuminating the dust but leaving corners shadowed. Even in the middle of the day, the place felt...creepy. It didn't help with her current mood.

Eventually, she broke the seal. Inside was a small piece of card, cream-white. On one side was written, in a clear, bold script:

"Tonight

One hour after twilight

The hill beside the town hall"

Below this was a mark - a stylised horn, flanked by a pair of wings.

Cheerile balled the cardboard between her hooves, suppressing a groan. "Not now," she muttered to herself, "of all the things, not now."

She threw the card into the wastepaper basket. She did a circuit of the room, making sure the windows were closed, and surreptitiously peering under each desk. Finally, sighing, she left, locking the door behind her.

The room was silent.

One of the drawers to Cheerilee's desk rattled.

"Now I can't get out," it said.

Somepony comes to town, somepony leaves town

The following story may help explain some of Twilight's quirks.

Once, several years before Twilight discovered her calling as a sorcerer and perpetual student, her parents took her to the Carnival.

Carnivals in general weren't particularly rare. Itinerant troupes of earth ponies would wander from town to town, setting down wherever would have them. They'd put up rides for the locals, or shows, or whatever they could throw together.

But there was only one capital-C Carnival, and that was the annual meeting of three different troupes outside the gates of Canterlot. For three weeks, the residents of the Royal City could indulge in the many distractions offered by the showponies, whether it was the games (rigged), the food (generally incredibly unhealthy), or the breathtaking rides (which breached several bylaws involved hygiene, safety, and in one particular case, low-flying pegasi).

This particular year, Twilight's parents had decided to take Twilight to the Carnival as a belated birthday present. Her father had read that such outings were character-building, and explained at great length to Twilight that if there was one thing that she, Twilight, needed to build, character was it.

Twilight had responded that she had already built quite enough character, thank you, and that taking her to such events could precipitate a boycott of all future character-building.

Twilight's father had responded that that was all very well and good, but there were laws and these laws said that until she, Twilight, got her cutie mark, she, Twilight, would just have to do as her parents said, and if her parents told her that she, Twilight, should build character, then by Celestia that was what she, Twilight, was going to do.

Twilight responded by asking if that was what she was to him, his little slave. Her father told her that no, slaves contributed something of value to their masters.

Twilight's mother, meanwhile, wondered for the hundredth time why they couldn't just get her a dictionary for her birthday like they did every other year.

Nonetheless, they went, and as soon as they walked through the gate Twilight forgot her misgivings. She rode the ferris-wheel twice and the roller-coaster three times and her father had to actually pull her out of the bumper cars after half an hour. She spent three weeks' pocket money on the slingshot stall, found out the hard way that all the good prizes were glued to the shelves, and she kept playing. She also managed to add her name to the very short list of ponies who've been turned away from a candyfloss stall because "I think you've had too much, miss".

She was nursing her final candyfloss for the night when she got lost. A group of tourist pegasi, cameras slung around their necks, bustled past, and when they'd gone she was no longer tailing her parents. She craned her neck to see over the crowds, but she couldn't see them anywhere. Still, they'd told her what to do in this situation - she found a quiet corner, slightly out of the way, and sat down, waiting for her parents to work out she'd got lost and backtrack until they found her.

The first five minutes were OK. The second five minutes were a bit more nerve-wracking. By the fifteen minute mark, she was starting to have doubts if she'd ever see her parents again. Her over-active imagination was painting a scene where the now-destitute Twilight Sparkle would have to survive alone in the wasteland of the carnival, living off scraps discarded by visitors or hanging out underneath the roller-coasters, waiting for somepony to drop their wallet.

So she did the first thing that came into her head: she made a list. She unfolded the fold-up map they gave you and pulled a quill out of her saddlebag (because, her parents had told her, if there's one thing you'll continually be thankful for, it's that you happen to have a quill in your saddlebag), and she began to write:

REASONS WHY MY PARENTS WILL FIND ME

They are the sort of parents who always have quills in their saddlebags...

By the time her parents found her, Twilight had reached item number thirty-eight, and was debating whether "A foal is a considerable financial investment, and mother is always frugal" was item number thirty-nine, or whether it was simply an extension of item seventeen, "My parents have always told me they care for me and will look after me".

There were three things Twilight discovered that night:

First, that sometimes an overactive imagination is not the best thing to have.

Second, that she could indeed rely on her parents, even if her father had an odd way of building her character.

And third, if she ever felt that she was being overwhelmed, the best solution was to make a list.

Here was what her current list looked like:

TWILIGHT'S LIST OF PROBLEMS I NEED TO SOLVE

Who did the thing with Applejack's barn?
Patching things up with Rarity
Send Celestia a letter
Apologise to Rainbow Dash
Get Rainbow Dash to talk to other pegasi
Ask Pinkie Pie what I did last night
Research spells for un-burning gala tickets
Send Celestia a letter
Meet with Cheerilee. Loan her books.
Solve gala friendship problem.
SEND CELESTIA A LETTER

She stared at it. She felt she was missing at least five other problems. Still, she thought, it's a start. And that meant it was time for phase two.

On cue, Spike backed through the door, carrying an impressive pile of blank paper. "Here you go, Twilight," he said, placing it down carefully on the floor next to her desk. He stood up - the paper pile reached somewhere up to his shoulder. "What was this for again?"

"Brainstorming, Spike."

The dragon scratched his head. "I think most ponies only need a sheet or two for that, Twilight."

"Well," she said, tossing her head, "I guess most ponies are doing it wrong. Now, if there's nothing else, I have organising to do."

"Oh, yeah," said Spike, "there is something else. A letter came for you." He rummaged around on the bookshelf and pulled out an envelope, bound by a piece of string, a bit battered from being wedged in between two books. "No address or anything, somepony just slid it under the door."

Twilight sighed. She'd been looking forward to brainstorming. "Did you at least catch a glimpse of them?"

"I was cleaning upstairs," said Spike. "By the time I got to the door, they were gone."

Twilight took the letter from Spike, untied the string and opened it.

This is what the letter said:

Twilight

Something is rotten in the state of Equestria. Meet me behind Sugarcube Corner midnight tonight. Trust no one.

Yours,

An ally

The unicorn frowned. Then she passed the letter to Spike. The dragon read it, and then looked back up at her.

"Uh, Twilight, it says 'trust no one'."

"I know."

"Are you going to regularly start handing around messages people write to you which say 'trust no one' on them?"

"Spike, you aren't no one...or, you are anyone...or, uh." Twilight took a mental step back. "If I can't trust you, I'm dog food no matter what."

"Oh," said Spike. "Thanks. I guess."

Twilight returned to her list, her horn glowing as she picked up the quill once again. She played with the string in her hooves as she added:

Suspicious notes.

She stared at the piece of paper for a while. Something wasn't right.

"Uh, Twilight?" Spike asked.

Her hooves slowed down as she realized what she was doing. She was attempting to tie the knot she'd seen in the barn, it was a simple knot, ugly and effective like most pony knots.

And it was completely impossible to tie without magic, unless you had seven hooves.

Her quill floated into the air once again. She wrote at the end of her list:

KNOTS

She underlined it. Twice. Then she got up and walked out the door. As soon as she got onto the street, she set off towards town at a gallop.

Spike watched her go.

"I guess I'll clean up," he said.

Twilight finally found Fluttershy at Sugarcube Corner. Pinkie Pie was on shop again, and the pegasus had been roped into a discussion on sugar, demererra versus raw, the merits thereof. She looked rather relieved when Twilight opened the door.

"Twilight!" said Pinkie Pie by way of greeting. "You'll have an opinion on this!"

"On...what?" she asked.

Pinkie Pie huffed. "Well," she said, "if you're going to take that tone."

Twilight blinked. "I, uh, I need to talk to Fluttershy," she said.

Pinkie Pie's face fell. "But I made samples! To back up my arguments!" She ducked behind the counter.

"Samples?"

"Eff!" She reappeared, clutching an oven mitt. Held in the mitt was a tray of cupcakes. There were six cupcakes in total, three on either side, divided by...

"Pinkie, why is there a line of sugar down the centre of that tray?"

Pinkie placed the tray on the bench. "To keep them separate," the earth pony said, her eyes narrowing. "I'll have no common sugar cupcakes polluting my babies." She started to fawn over one side of the tray, pointedly ignoring the other.

"Well, looks like someone's playing favourites," Twilight muttered.

Pinkie Pie pushed a couple of the cupcakes towards Twilight and Fluttershy. "One each! Go on. Try them."

Twilight looked at them skeptically. Pinkie had offered them each one from her favoured batch. "I don't know, I didn't have breakfast that long ago." Her stomach informed her that actually, she'd skipped breakfast, what with the whole Applejack barn incident, and they were now coming up on lunch.

Fluttershy picked up one of the offered cupcakes, inspected it, sniffed it, and took a bite. Twilight looked on. It wasn't that there was anything inherently suspicious about Pinkie Pie's activity. It was just that Twilight had been subjected to enough in the past three days that her brain, faced with a problem like "Try one of Pinkie Pie's cupcakes", immediately started cataloguing every possible way in which the experience could go horrifically wrong.

"It's good," said Fluttershy.

"Tryyyyy iiiiiiit," said Pinkie Pie.

Twilight tried it.

It was good.

She tried the rest of it.

That was good too.

Then she was all out of cupcake.

She looked up. Pinkie Pie was watching her carefully, expectantly.

"That was...nice," Twilight managed.

"Sheeee liiiiked it!" exclaimed Pinkie Pie. "Now, try this one!" She spun the tray around and divvied up the remaining cupcakes - again, one for Twilight, one for Fluttershy, one for herself. The earth pony immediately rammed her cupcake into her mouth, crumbs flying everywhere as she pulled faces and made noises of disgust.

Twilight ate hers at a more sedate manner. It tasted exactly the same as the first. Fluttershy took a bite and put it back on the tray.

"Well?" said Pinkie.

"That was nice too," said Fluttershy.

"Nice? Nice?" Pinkie grimmaced. "Couldn't you taste the additives? The badness? The..." she gulped, suddenly looking green. "'scuse me." And she dashed through the door to the back room.

"So, Fluttershy," said Twilight, over the sounds of a frantic Pinkie Pie doing...something...with the remains of her inferior cupcake. "I had a look at the knot in the rope...you know the rope used in the...well....the thing." She gave the pegasus a conspiratorial stare.

"Oh," said Fluttershy.

Twilight's horn glowed as she absent-mindedly picked up one of the cupcakes Fluttershy had left on the tray. She took a bite as she continued. "It was a unicorn knot! But it looked like a pegasus knot!"

"Oh?"

"Yes! No one could have tied it but a unicorn! But whoever tied it, they wanted it to look like a Pegasus did it!"

"Oh!"

"Egshacly," said Twilight, cramming the last of the cupcake in her mouth. "And Rarity was so nice to me when she found I was investigating. I bet she thought it was clever, using her own mannequin. 'Oh'," Twilight mimed holding a hoof to her head, "'my dear, why would I incriminate myself so easily if I wanted to threaten Applejack?' It's her, it must be her." She grabbed Fluttershy's remaining cupcake from the tray and started to nibble on it. Her stomach was finally starting to settle down. "She could even stage the break-in to her own house," she muttered. "Open the window, reach around, bam, glass all over the floor. And I don't know about you, but I sure didn't see her sticking around at AJ's last night. Why, that-"

"Rarity was at my house last night," said Fluttershy.

Twilight coughed crumbs of sub-par cake over the counter. "She what?" She grabbed the pegasus by the shoulders. "When?"

"Around midnight. We were doing crochet."

"At midnight?"

Fluttershy looked at the ground. "It's hard to fit into my schedule."

"But Fluttershy, why didn't you say?"

"You seemed very excited."

"But...if she was at your place last night...then she can't have robbed her house...which means, if it wasn't her...it must have been someone else!"

"Yes, Twilight."

"But if it was somepony else, it must have been unicorns! Two of them!" Twilight looked around the room. "You know what this means?"

"...no?"

"Just one pony, that's, well, that's just a disgruntled pony. But two? Two, Fluttershy, is a conspiracy."

"Oh my."

"I need to tell Applejack about this. You've been very helpful." And she turned to leave.

Pinkie Pie emerged from the back room just then. "Twilight!" she called.

"Sorry, Pinkie," the unicorn said, "business calls!" And she dashed out the door.

The earth pony sighed. "And I'd just put another batch on to bake," she said.

"Oh," said Fluttershy, "I was wondering...Twilight was very hungry..."

Pinkie gasped. "Did she eat your cupcake? Did Twilight eat your cupcake? That's horrid! Don't worry, I'm sure we have something out back." And the back door slammed as Pinkie Pie once more exited the room.

There was (relative) silence in the room. Fluttershy looked around and, once she was sure she was alone, trotted over to a particularly ornate cake, sitting on display on the counter. It had a castle on top, complete with towers and minarets.

"Rarity?" Fluttershy whispered to the cake. "Are...are you all right?"

The cake shifted slightly. "There's icing in my mane," it said. The castle shifted, and the tallest tower shed its icing to reveal a horn. The horn glowed blue, and the cake started to liquify, pooling and revealing a unicorn, her coat an unappealing matte white.

Rarity examined herself, still sitting in the middle of a pool of molten cake. "Ugh," she said, "I'm going to have to take five showers just to start dealing with this."

"Did you hear what Twilight said?"

"Yes, and thank you for covering for me. Let her think it's a bunch of unicorns - it'll keep her off the trail. In the meantime, the party is off, understand? No more cunning plans from either of us until I get things sorted."

"But what went wrong?"

"I have no idea. I was told that somepony sympathetic to our cause would be arriving in Ponyville for the Summer Sun Celebration, and naturally I assumed it was Twilight. Either somepony got their wires crossed, or somepony is playing games with us." She tossed her main, horn glowing as particles of icing flung themselves at the wall. Inspecting herself in the window, Rarity stood up and sighed. "Now. I think it's best we both start hiding any evidence that just happens to be lying around. Put it somewhere secure, or get rid of it. I don't think Twilight's going to give up on this one."

"Sure."

"I'll meet up with you again tonight, next to the bridge. I might have an idea of what to do by then. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to clean up."

Rarity stalked out of the bakery, daring anypony to comment on her looks. A few minutes later, Fluttershy followed, still looking around in case anyone was watching.

Pinkie burst through from the back room, tray balanced on her head. "I found some, Fluttershy! I found..." She trailed off when she noticed she was alone.

"Oh," she said, placing the tray on the bench. "I guess I have to eat all the cupcakes. Again."

Applejack, it turned out, was harder to find than Twilight expected. Big Mac was the only pony working at Sweet Apple Acres, and he told Twilight that his sisters and grandmother had takens a day or so off work to head out to the old distillery, out in Everfree Forest. They'd be back sometime tomorrow, and he could leave a message if she wanted. As nice as Big Mac seeed, Twilight didn't trust anyone right now - instead, she told him, she'd be back tomorrow to talk to them.

Twilight's next task was to talk to Rainbow Dash. She knew she should probably leave it longer than a couple of hours, to let the pegasus' mood cool, but she wanted to set things straight.

Of course, finding Rainbow Dash was another thing entirely.

Twilight's current method went like this: she'd wander around town, eyes on the sky, looking for a suspiciously low and slow-moving cloud. Then she'd either throw things at it or shout at it until either (a) she'd worked out it didn't contain the sleeping form of Rainbow Dash, (b) it did and she woke the pegasus up, or (c) people started looking at her funny. If this didn't work, she'd start doing the shout/throw routine with convenient tree branches and rooftops, although it didn't usually come to that.

And so Twilight spent a good hour wandering around Ponyville, neck cricked at an awkward angle, watching every low-flying cloud in case it turned into a sleeping pegasus. And another half-hour throwing rocks at trees. And she would have spent a good twenty minutes or so scrambling up convenient drain-pipes and scaling walls in a manner quite unbecoming to the town librarian (and personal student of Princess Celestia) had she not rounded a corner, gaze fixed on the sky, and run smack-dab into another pony.

"Argh!" she cried, eyes still fixed on the sky. "I mean, oh! Sorry! Didn't see you there."

"Twilight!"

"Uh-huh."

"Twilight, it's me!"

"Huh?" She took her glance off of the sky for a moment. "Oh, hi Cheerilee! I, uh, I was busy watching the sky, you see, so I, uh, I guess I didn't notice it was you?"

Cheerilee gave her a level look.

"That didn't sound as good out loud as it did in my head, did it?"

"No, no it probably didn't."

What happened to grovelling and calling me ma'am? Twilight wondered. She didn't want to admit it, but it was kind of fun having people defer to you.

She sighed. "Can I start again?"

Cheerilee smiled. "It's OK," she said, "I wanted to talk to you anyway. About books."

"Oh!" said Twilight. "Books!" She knew books. "What about books?"

"Some of the ones in your library, the ones that might help an aging earth pony learn Equestrian. Are you busy right now?"

Here was the thing Twilight hadn't written to Celestial about regarding friendship: it's like a drug. It's happy and fun and when you're high on friendship you can do anything; when it leaves you, you want it back, like there's a hole in you that you didn't even know was there.

At least, that's what she told herself as her and Cheerilee made their way back to the library, chatting about school and Canterlot and everything in between. Part of her brain was yelling at her, telling her that she needed to fix problems like the whole thing with Rainbow Dash and the way Rarity had been acting and Applejack's barn incident and she hadn't even thought about how she'd explain the tickets thing to Celestia, but right now she was quite happy to deal with all those problems later.

Spike had just finished cleaning up when Twilight burst in the door. "Spike," she instructed. "We have a copy of My Little Reader still, yes?"

"Well, I've only just re-glued the spine on one of them. It really should dry for another-"

"Bring them out, please."

"Oh, honestly," said Cheerilee, "it isn't really that urgent-"

"Cheerilee, you know how long I've been in charge of this library?"

The schoolteacher counted under her breath. "Six days?"

"...yes. And you know how many ponies have been here to look at my books?"

"How many?"

"Four. You, and your three students."

"Don't be silly. There must be plenty of ponies in Ponvyille who want to get books out."

"Must there? Because I haven't seen them. If somepony wants to get a book out, especially if it means they'll read more, I don't see why anything should stand in their way."

Spike re-entered, carrying four matched booked in his arms. He placed them gently on the table. "Be careful with volume three," he said, keeping a protective claw on the corner of the pile. "It's still not really ready for public consumption." He shot Twilight a glare.

Cheerilee smiled at the dragon. "Thank you," she said, "I'll look after them like they're my own." She opened the top volume with a hoof, scanning the page. "'Yellow Star...chases...the ball. Chase the ball, Yellow Star.'" She looked back at Twilight. "This is a bit low-level, isn't it?"

Twilight gave a sheepish grin. "Well, no offence, but your reading age is only a bit higher than this. And, uh, we don't actually have that many books for young foals. Anyway, Yellow Star is a classic! I learned to read with it." When I was three, she didn't add.

The earth pony sighed. "I guess I have a long way to go." She shook her head. "Sorry," she said. "You're going to all this trouble to help me, and all I can do is complain." She carefully pushed the books into her saddlebag. "Thank you, both of you. I'll take good care of them."

"It's no problem," said Twilight, "honestly." Even Spike seemed mollified by Cheerilee's concern. The earth pony settled the saddlebags on her back, and made her way to the door. She paused in the doorway, hoof raised.

"Uh," she said, "Twilight."

"Yes?" The unicorn looked up.

"You've done some travelling, haven't you?"

"Well, a bit."

"...what's it like in Hoofington?"

"Hoofington?" Twilight thought. "A lot like here, I guess. It's a pretty small place, they're maybe a bit further from Everfree than we are."

"Do they....do they need teachers in Hoofington?"

"Cheerilee, everywhere needs teachers. Canterlot needs teachers." She frowned. "Why're you interested?"

"Oh," the earth pony said dismissively, "I was just thinking I needed a holiday soon, that's all."

"Oh, right!" Twilight grinned. "Well, I guess you deserve it. Must be tiring, teaching those foals all week."

Cheerilee nodded, distracted. "Anyway," she said, "thanks for the books. I'll see you around."

Spike watched the earth pony trot down the road. Twilight started to shift books around, humming to herself.

"What's got into you?" the dragon asked.

"I made a friend! And I just thought about how I'll write to Celestia and explain the ticket thing, and I don't even have to mention that I was....ah...inebriated."

"It's 'drunk', Twilight. What you were, was 'drunk'." Spike looked back at the door. "Did Cheerilee seem a little preoccupied to you, Twilight?"

"She's probably got a lot on her mind," Twilight said. "All those kids, plus she's trying to learn Equestrian now. Now, bring me some more paper. I'm going to write a letter, and it's going to be perfect. And nothing can possibly go wrong."

The sun was well down when Twilight finally set down the quill. Her fifth (and, she hoped, final) revision of the letter sat on the desk in front of her. Spike was curled up on a pile of particularly soft almanacs in the corner - his plans for a quiet evening had been thwarted by Twilight's constant demands for ink, paper, or reference materials, and in the end he'd given up and set up shop in the corner of her study.

Twilight reviewed the letter once again:

Dear Princess Celestia,

First, my greatest apologies for the tardiness of this letter, but I have had many matters weighing on my mind regarding the nature of friendship, and I wanted to make sure that I had my thoughts in order before I wrote to you. I felt that for such an important lesson as this, it were better that I leave this letter for a few days rather than make a rush job of it and perhaps leave you thinking I weren't taking this course as seriously as I am.

Friendship is about ponies, not about things. I see now why you sent me the tickets to the Gala - to test whether I was truly friends with these ponies, or whether I was willing to play favourites or give up a ticket for favours. I have to admit, the temptation was strong. In order to keep myself from giving in, I'm afraid I was forced to dispose of the tickets, preventing me from inviting anypony to the Gala with me. I'm sure you understand that the loss of two tickets is nothing - nothing - compared to the loss of a friend.

I hope I'm not laying it on too thick, she thought to herself. Nonetheless, the letter continued:

While I'm writing to you, I feel I should also mention a new friend I made here in Ponyville. While I'm very grateful to you for introducing me to my friends Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Fluttershy (and Pinkie Pie is friends with everypony), I can't help but feel that I was unfairly advantaged. Thus, I'm glad to say that I met and became friends with Cheerilee, the teacher here in Ponyville, of my own volition, without any outside help. The school here is in dire need of an upgrade - I'm frankly appalled at the literacy rates here - and I see it as my mission to bring magic and science to bear on the problem. I'm sure her and I will have a long and fruitful friendship as we seek to improve Equestria.

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle

She paused biting her lip. Then she lifted the quill and added:

P.S. Apparently you already know Cheerilee! She said she'd done some work for you in the past. I didn't know you were this heavily invested in Ponyville. We'll obviously have a lot to talk about when I see you next.

Sitting the quill down next to the parchment, letting the ink dry. She gave the letter another once-over, then a twice-over just to make sure.

"Well," she muttered to herself, "I should send it now or it'll never get done." She trotted over to Spike, who was snoring gently in the corner. She smiled. "Spike," she said, nudging the dragon gently, "Spike, that can't actually be comfortable."

Spike rolled over, still asleep, mumbling to himself. "Why, Rarity," he slurred, "fancy meeting you here..."

"Sorry," said Twilight with a grin, "I don't think you'll be having any meetings with..." her eyes widened as she remembered this morning's letter. "Meeting!" she half-shouted.

Spike's eyes flew open. "Fire!" he yelled.

"Spike, I'll be late for my meeting!"

"Oh," the dragon said.

The unicorn set off upstairs at a canter. Spike curled back up into a ball, and was busy getting back to sleep when Twilight clattered back down the stairs, dressed in a long cloak.

"Spike, can I get you to send that letter? The one on the writing desk. I need to get to this meeting. Do I like conspiratorial enough? Ooh, maybe I look too conspiratorial. Maybe I'll stand out. What if there's other ponies around there at this time? Do you think they'll think it's odd if I'm-"

"Twilight," Spike said. "Go."

"OK, bye!" Twilight said, and barged open the door. A few seconds later she returned. "Letter!" she said. "It's urgent."

"Sure, I'll get on it. Now go."

And Twilight went.

The lights were out at Sugarcube Corner. Nopony was around. Twilight slipped from shadow to shadow (or at least, she tried to slip from shadow to shadow, but since her reference for this was numerous spy novels, she mainly tiptoed from the lee of one wall to the next rather conspicuously). Soon she was plastered up against the side of the bakery, looking around nervously.

"Psst," she whispered into the darkness.

"I can see you," came a voice from the shadows. It was high and weedy, like nopony she'd heard before. She'd hoped she could work out who her co-conspirator was from the tone of their voice, but it seemed she'd have no luck on that account.

"I came, like you asked," Twilight said. "Now, what's this letter about?"

"Twilight," the voice said, "you're in grave danger."

The unicorn looked around nervously.

"Not right now," the voice continued. "In general. Here. In Ponyville."

"Is this about Pinkie Pie's baking? Because-"

"No! It's not about Pinkie Pie's baking. Well...it's probably not about Pinkie Pie's baking."

"Oooh, is it about Rarity and her complete inability to consider earth ponies as actual ponies? Because I'm already-"

"It's far worse than a bit of latent prejudice, Twilight."

"Oh, then it must be about-"

"Will you let me get a word in edgewise."

Twilight shut up.

The voice cleared its throat. "Twilight Sparkle, the town of Ponyville is compromised. Have you heard of the Party?"

Twilight blinked. "Are you sure this isn't about Pinkie Pie?"

"Not that party, Twilight. The Party."

Twilight ransacked her brain. "Um...pass?"

"Have you ever wondered why Celestia stayed in power all these years?"

"Well, duh, because she's a Princess. She has amazing magical powers! She moves the sun. What'd we do without her?"

"What would you do without her? Indulge me."

"Well..." Twilight fell silent for a moment or two. "The unicorns could handle the sun and moon, I guess. We're not as powerful as she and Luna are, but working together we could find some way of doing it. After all, we did it before Celestia and Luna came along. I guess the Pegasi would continue to control the weather, so we'd have that tied up." She looked up, into the darkness where she guessed the voice was coming from. "But what about the enemies of Equestria? What about, about the Ursa Maximus, or Discord, or the Beasts of Tartarus? They're more than a match for us ponies."

"Have you already forgotten what you did here, in Ponyville? Six ordinary ponies against Nightmare Moon. And you won."

"Well, yes, I guess, but that was one time. Celestia's done that over and over."

"And strangely enough every single story is well before living memory."

Twilight narrowed her eyes. "Just what are you implying?"

She could have coped if the voice sounded smug, or even angry. Instead it sounded...sympathetic. "Maybe none of these things happened. Or maybe Celestia's just spun them the right way. But she seems to be defending Equestria from evil an awful lot over the past millenium or two."

"What, and you think she'd do that just to stay in power?"

"Broadly, yes. Wouldn't you?"

Twilight sniffed. "This is treason."

"Yes, but that's not important. What's important is-"

"Not important?" Twilight said. She barely remembered to keep her voice below a whisper. "You're talking about why we should overthrow the Princess of Equestria and it's not important?"

"No! Well, yes, but it's not important now! What's important is-"

"I've a good mind to report you to the Mayor. Except I don't know who you are. But I know your voice now, traitor! And when I hear you in the street, I'm going to report you so hard!"

"Twilight-!"

"No. Spike's already sent my letter to Celestia this week, so this incident will have to wait. But she'll hear about it. And she'll not be happy about your lies."

"Twilight-!"

But the unicorn tossed her main and galloped out of the alleyway and down the street, heedless of any onlookers.

"...but Twi," the voice said, "you're in danger."

Twilight checked herself before letting the door to the library bang open. Spike was curled, alseep on the pile of manuscripts where Twilight had left him. The letter from her desk was gone, so at least he'd sent that first.

Twilight closed the door behind her and stood in the lobby, counting silently to ten. Then, somewhat calmer, she walked quietly into the main room.

She hadn't meant the voice to get to her like that. She didn't know what it was about his insinuations, but Celestia had been her teacher and mentor these last ten years. After that long, you developed a bond with someone, and when you heard them insulted in front of your face...well...

Spike turned over and yawned, not opening his eyes. Twilight smiled. At least there were some ponies - some people - she could rely on. Her horn glowed as she settled a blanket around the sleeping dragon.

"I'll let you rest," she said quietly. "Looks like we've both had a long day." And then, quietly, she climbed the stairs to bed.

Cheerilee locked the classroom door behind her. Her heart was racing, even now.

It wasn't that meeting a mysterious figure in the centre of Ponyville in the middle of the night was scary, per se. Nor did the content of his message frighten her. As much as she hated to admit it sometimes, she was a loyal Party member, and when something needed to be done in Ponyville, they came to her. She was used to their schemes.

No. What bothered her was Twilight.

The mysterious figure (they always wore cloaks, and they always kept to the shadows, and she could never work out who they were from their voices, either) had told her in no uncertan terms: Twilight's wheerabouts and activities were to be tracked, recorded, and reported. Anything she did, anyone she talked to, should be noted down. And anything she did that could indicate the presence of some sort of resistance group in Ponyville should be reported immediately. If the unicorn looked set to blow the Party's cover in Ponyville, Cheerilee was to deal with things her own way.

Which made Cheerilee's stomach crawl. She liked Twilight. Most of the ponies in Ponyville didn't get why Cheerilee was a teacher. She sure as hell didn't do it for the bits. Twilight understood and, more than that, encouraged her. And now she was forced to betray her new friend.

And then the figure had said: "In case you need it," and passed her a sheet of paper. It was a small sheet, but on it was listed the name of every Party member in Ponyville. There were five in all, but it was the two names at the top of the list that surprised Cheerilee the most.

She needed to talk to Twilight. The list was safely locked in her desk drawer, but they were going to be checking up on her, she knew it. Giving her the name of every Party pony in Ponyville? They were lining her up for a promotion, and the last thing she wanted to do was get more involved in this mess.

Yes, she thought to herself, Twilight's a smart pony. If I tell her, she'll know what to do. Her hooves trembled slightly as she locked the hallway door, her keys clunking together the only sound in the entire building.

A giggle came from the darkness, shrill and unnerving. Cherilee whipped around, but there was no one there.

She stood like that, frozen, for a full five minutes. It felt like an hour. After her meeting, she was on edge.

Finally, she let out a breath. "You're letting this get to you," she muttered. It was her imagination. It'd been a long day, and then, well, this...she was hearing things. She gave the hallway door a shove, just to make sure it was locked, and turned to leave.

"Snitching, are we?"

Cherilee whirled again. There was someone here! "Scootaloo, if this is you, you're getting detention. For a month."

Silence. That unnerved her more than anything. "This school is private property," she said, pawing at the ground. "You're trespassing right now. I've a good mind to call-"

"Call who?" the voice continued. "The Party? You've been reporting to them. Haven't you, Cherliee?"

She whipped her head back and forth. Where was the voice coming from? Backing towards the door, she replied, "They didn't give me any choice! They came and asked questions and they threatened to take away my licence! I'm the only one in Ponyville who can teach the foals!"

"And that was all it took for you to start ratting our your friends, Cherilee? A little bit of blackmail?"

"They threatened the school!" Cherilee called out. "They threatened the children!" She reached out with her hindhoof, and felt the wall against her. Almost there. Now to keep the voice talking for a bit longer... "The Party know everything anyway! They have ponies everywhere!" There, she felt the edge of the door behind her. Keeping a watch on the hallway, her hooves fumbled at the latch, opening it with a quiet snick.

And then she was outside. The moon was new tonight - only the stars lit up the scene. She tuned and closed the door behind her, as carefully as she could. She backed down the steps onto the grass of the front yard. Only then did she breathe out.

"Silly Cherilee," came the voice from right behind her. "I'm the only party pony in Ponyville."

From Another Point of View

Cirrus woke with a start. The room was bathed in a light-blue glow. Which mean the crystal next to her bed was probably going off.

She shut her eyes, tight, counted to five, opened them again. Nope. Still glowing.

Eventually she sighed and rolled over. Sure enough, the piece of rock sitting upright on her bedstand was pulsing with a faint blow light. It was buzzing faintly, too, but Cirrus had found that noises never woke her up. Benefits of growing up in a family of four siblings, she figured.

She blearily reached out a hoof and hit the button on the top of the rock. That stopped the buzzing, at least. A fuzzy face appeared in the middle of the crystal.

"Hey, Cirrus?" said the face. The sound was tinny and scratchy. Goddess-damned newfangled unicorn technology, the pegasus thought to herself.

"Yeah," she said, "what's up? You know this is my day off, right?"

"Yeah, sure," said the face on the other end of the connection. "Look, we've got reports of a body in one of the outlying towns. No police presence to speak of, so we need someone out there fast."

Which means the Flying Police, Cirrus thought. "And I'm the only pony you can call?"

"Well, uh, you are technically on call." The other pony had the decency to look vaguely embarassed. "And to be honest, most of our reserves are busy beefing up security for the Gala."

"Cirrus? What's that?"

The pegasus looked over he shoulder. The conversation had roused Morning Drizzle, who, despite her name, was not looking the most photogenic right now. "Work stuff," she said. "Don't worry, I'll deal with it." She turned back to the crystal. "Yeah, sure," she said, "get me directions and as much of a run-down as you can on the situation. I'll be at the station in...about five minutes?"

The pony nodded, and the connection went dead. The blue glow faded, and the room returned to its usual drab colours, illuminated by the early morning sun.

"Work stuff, huh?" said Drizzle. She reached a hoof around Cirrus' body, trying to pull her back into bed. "When does work stuff finish and play stuff start?"

"As soon as I can afford to pay rent in Canterlot without holding down a job, that's when." And that day, Drizzle, she thought, is the day I'll retire.

They'd already put a cordon up by the time she landed. They may be incredibly harsh task-masters who yanked you from your bed on your day off, but if there was one thing the Greater Canterlot Flying Police were good at, it was getting ponies on the ground as fast as possible.

She landed just down the road, adjusted her cap, made sure her lanyard was showing, and walked casually toward the school. No sense in alarming everyone by landing in their midst. The pony manning the cordon glanced at her badge and nodded, raising the tape for her.

She'd not got five feet inside when she was accosted by a young, forest-green pegasus stallion. His lanyard marked him as an officer - which probably meant he'd been in charge of this until she showed up.

"You're Cirrus?" he asked.

"The hat makes me Inspector Cirrus," she said. She still hadn't got over her morning wakeup.

"Sorry, Inspector Cirrus. I'm Treetop." He led the mare further into the school. She counted at least four other policeponies, all busy doing the various tasks that bureaucracy required of them before working out exactly what happened at a crime scene.

"Central said you'd want briefing?" Treetop asked.

"Sure. I got about five sentences from them. I'm assuming you have something more detailed."

"A wee bit. We got a call in this morning - apparently someone found the body before school started."

"Thank the Princess for small blessings," Cirrus muttered to herself. "Anything of interest?"

"It looks like she was beaten pretty bad before she died. We're still waiting for forensics to get here, so we're just leaving the scene be right now, and making sure no one messes it up."

Cirrus made a quick mental calculation. Forensics would be entirely unicorns, and even with a murder on their hands, they'd still not be able to requesition a flying chariot. Which meant: train. Which meant: a matter of hours before they found out anything.

"You got teams keeping the clouds away?" Cirrus asked, glancing at the sky. "Rain messes up a body something wicked, I'm told."

"I'll get right on it," said Treetop, "also-"

He broke off as shouting erupted at the cordon. The two pegasi exchanged looks, and set off for the edge of the school at a canter.

Two of the policeponies had a third in their hooves: a civilian, Cirrus noted. The civilian was the one doing the shouting - a purple-coated unicorn with a nerdy-looking fringe.

Cirrus looked at Treetop. "No idea, sir," the officer said.

The policemare stepped up to the cordon. The unicorn was berating her two captors. "I'll have you fired for this!" she said. "I know Princess Celestia! I'll send a letter! She might even read it! You'll be cleaning stables for the rest of your adult lives!" The policeponies, to their credit, hardly seemed to notice her outburtst. As Cirrus approached, the unicorn looked up. "You!" she said, "you're in charge here, aren't you? What's going on? Why is this school cordoned off? Why won't these two let me in?"

"Sorry, ma'am, school grounds are currently off-limited to non-authorised personell. This is a crime scene right now. Could I ask who you are and what you're doing here?"

"Crime scene? What happened? Is this about Sweetie Belle again? We know she doesn't mean to break things."

"Ma'am, please answer the question," Treetop said. He'd produced a notebook from somewhere and was busy writing down something in a jagged scrawl, brow furrowed with concentration. He was doing a very good job of talking while he wrote.

"My name is Twilight Sparkle, I'm the librarian. I'm here to drop off some books to Cheerilee."

"Is Cheerilee your daughter?" Cirrus asked.

"My...? Cheerilee's the teacher."

Cirrus and Treetop exchanged glances. "Cheerilee," Treetop said. "Earth pony? Purple coat? Sunflower cutie mark?"

"Yes, of...hold on. What happened? Why do you know who Cheerilee is?"

"We'll be holding a press briefing here later this afternoon," said Cirrus. "Until then, we're legally obliged not to disclose any further information."

"What? What happened to her? What happened to Cheerilee?" The unicorn threw herself forward. The two policeponies grabbed her, holding her back. Her horn glowed and one of the ponies found himself enveloped in a purple light. He found himself slowly drifting into the air. The unicorn slipped out of the second pony's grasp and made a bolt under the tape, into the school ground. Cirrus made a dive towards Twilight, catching her hind hoof and tripping her. Twilight's concentration broke as she hit the ground, and the momentarily levitating policepony dropped to the ground. The unicorn struggled, but Cirrus had restrained far bigger ponies than this one.

Treetop galloped over to help - more a show of support than a tactical move. "Treetop," Cirrus said, "get her back home, make sure someone's looking after her." The unicorn kept struggling under her, growling wordlessly. Her horn started to glow again, but Cirrus gave her a sharp rap on the end of her nose, extinguishing it. "None of that now," she said, "or we'll have to start charging you."

The unicorn looked up, met Cirrus' gaze, and then gave up, sullenly lying there on the ground. Treetop helped her up, muttering something about helping her home and asking her some questions. He guided Twilight back past the cordon and onto the road, although every few feet she glanced back behind her - whether to try to catch a glimpse of her friend, or to shoot a glare at Cirrus, she wasn't sure.

As soon as the pair were out of sight, Cirrus let out a breath. She looked up to find the rest of the squad watching her. "Well?" she snapped. "Don't you have things to do?"

Order restored itself around her, but Cirrus felt a weight on her shoulders already. It looked like today was going to e one of those days.

Everything was divided into one of three piles: Not Very Incriminating, Only Sightly Incriminating, and Very Incriminating. The third pile was depressingly large.

Rarity hadn't followed her own advice. After telling Fluttershy to make sure her house was clean of party-related materials, Rarity had gone home, planted the signal that meant "meet me tonight" to whoever it was who was her current Party handler, and then decided that rather than burn evidence, she should set up a number of intricate bells and whistles in case someone entered her house through unorthodox means, Unfortunately, Carousel Corner had been designed as a fahion boutique first, and a criminal safe-house second: there were a number of ground-floor windows that could easily be jimmied open from the outside, and there were at least three routes from the boutique proper to her room.

Which meant that she'd gone to the meeting with a sense of dread. All it would take is for Twilight to start talking to ponies about her suspicions, and for someone to think about searching the shop...

And the the meeting itself. Fluttershy was as nervous as ever, of course, but there was...something...about the way their contact talked, the way he phrased his sentences. Rarity couldn't help but feel like something was up, something he wouldn't tell them. And try as she might, she could only draw one conclusion from that:

They were going to cut her off.

Sure, it was mabe a bit paranoid, but she was working for a nation-wide conspiracy to keep the god-princess Celestia in power. She figured a bit of paranoia was a pretty good thing to have.

Which was why, right now, she was working out the best way to dispose of about two drawers' worth of documents that linked Rarity of Ponyville to the Party.

Fire, of course, was an old favourite. Fire fixed most things, in fact, but people would talk about a fire just past mid-summer, and there was just too much to burn discretely. She could always try shredding, but that still left a bunch of paper to dispose of.

No, she thought to herself, she'd have to dispose of the evidence the same way Ponyville got rid of most of its problems - by burying it somewhere in the Everfree.

She'd just finished packing her saddlebags when a bell rang downstairs. Rarity froze. That meant someone was trying to sneak in through the laundry window - which was, Rarity thought, the way she'd try to sneak into Carousel Corner if she was trying to ambush herself. It seemed the Party weren't going to let her make any more mistakes before the day was out.

The unicorn stuffed the last of the documents into her saddlebags. Was that the sound of hoofs on the stairs? She gave the room a quick once-over - grabbed a scarf and a cloak, because who knew what the weather would be like in the Everfree? - and slipped the saddlebags onto her back.

A floorboard creaked, somewhere in the house. She trotted nervously, quietly, to the window. She hadn't yet got around to repairing it from the break-in. As Twilight had noted, there was no ledge below the window to catch an escaping pony, but if one were desparate enough, there was a good thick tree-branch within leaping distance.

Rarity scrambled onto the sill, not bothering to open the smashed-out frame, and balanced precariously. She tried to judge the distance - feet? Yards? Her hooves shook. This plan has seemed a lot more robust when she was standing in her room gathering her things.

A door slammed somewhere downstairs.

Rarity jumped.

She landed, half-in, half-out of the tree, forehooves scrambling desparately for purchase. She secured her grip, managed a half-shimmy to the trunk, and somehow slide down the trunk, branches whipping her as sche descended. She hit the ground, green streaks covering her flanks, twigs in her hair, and her rear left hoof gave a twinge. Stifling a cry, she looked down - she'd caught herself on one of the shards of broken window and was now bleeding. It wasn't that serious - but she was going to have to do something about it.

"No time for field surgery," she muttered to herself. She glanced up nervously at the window of Carousel Boutique, and then up and down the street. Surpringly - amazingly - no one had seen her slap-dash escape. She might still get out of this.

Limping slightly, Rarity galloped towards the edge of town, and freedom.

Pinkie hadn't expected the wires. Who put tripwires in a laundry? It took her a good minute or two to untangle - a minute or two she was aware she couldn't afford to spend.

"Raaaaaaarity!" the earth pony called. She'd lost the element of surprise now, she figured, might as well try to spook the unicorn into giving her position away.

She crept up the stairs. A breeze stirred up, giving life to the veils and laces displayed on the shop floor. No sound in the house except for her muffled hoof-steps on the stairway.

"Rarity!" she called again. "Rarity! Are you hiding from me? You don't need to hide from me!"

She reached the top of the stairs, gently opened the door to Rarity's room, and peaked inside.

Empty.

"Well," Pinkie said, her body un-tensing. "Drat. And after I went to all that effort." She bounded around the room, humming to herself - examining the papers strewn on the unicorn's desk, lifting up discarded pieces of material.

She stopped when she got to the window. Blood glistened on the frame. The earth pony poked her head outside and surveyed the view. "Ah-ha!" she said quietly to herself. "You're running away! That's no good!"

Several minutes later, Pinkie Pie emerged from the ground floor of Carousel Boutique. She inspected an oak tree that grew close to the house, whose branches all but scraped the woodwork in some places. She sniffed at the ground.

Then, at an easy pace, she bounced off towards the Everfree Forest.

"But ah don't wanna stay here."

Applejack tilted her hat back. "Well, looks like y'ain't got no choice. Unless you like wandering the Everfree on your lonesome."

If Apple Bloom weren't in such a mood, she'd have had to admit that the place was amazing. The Apple family's old still - a relic from a parliament who'd been a touch stricter about Earth Pony discoveries like alcohol - stood in the middle of a clearing on a hill overlooking one of the tamer branches of the Everfree forest. The Dragonspine mountains rose up behind, sheltering it somewhat from the cold easterlies that would bring rain and show to Ponyville. The village itself was just visible, a day's travel away - and past that, the open plains of Equestria proper.

Which made it a breathtaking place to spend a day or two when you weren't secretly mad at your older sister.

Applejack grabbed the rake in her teeth and continued to clear the ground. Apple Bloom sighed.

"'ook," said Applejack around the rake. Thinking better of it, she dropped it to the ground. "Look," she repeated. "I don't know why Pinkie Pie said I should wander up here and took a look around, but, well, she's an Earth Pony, an' us Earth Ponies stick together. If she thinks somethin's happening up here, then I guess she thinks somethin's happening up here, an' you know what she's like with premonitions an' all."

"But-"

"An' while we're up here, I figure we can do a bit of cleanup. Celestia knows, the place needs it." She cast a judgemental eye over the ramshackle hut they'd slept in the night before, and the tarnished distillery kit.

Apple Bloom wasn't ready to back down yet. She stalked over to the rake. "But ah should be in school, learnin' numbers with Miss Cheerilee!" she said, before grabbing it and continuing her sister's work.

"Sure," said Applejack, "and it's good you're so dedicated. But what're you gonna do with numbers, Apple Bloom? You think they'll hire an Earth Pony to do their accounts in Canterlot? I hear even the ponies who muck out the stables in Canterlot are unicorns. 'sides, who's gonna run the farm when I get old an' tired?"

Apple Bloom dropped the rake, letting it fall in between the two of them. "That's all ah'm good for, is it? Runnin' the farm? Is that why you're so pleased you have a little sister, so one day you can pass the whole thing onto me?"

"Now, sugar, that's not-"

"Well," she continued, raising her voice, "maybe ah don't wanna run the farm! Maybe ah think ah can do somethin' better with mah life than muck out barns!"

"Oh, yeah?" said Applejack, rising to the bait. "An' where in tarnation you think you'll get a job in Equestria that ain't diggin' the ground? You think anypony'll hire you, an Earth Pony who talks like she's from out West?"

"At least ah can try!" A tear traced its way down Apple Bloom's cheek. "Ah'm not gonna spend the rest of my life pushin' dirt in Ponyville! What about Cheerilee? Or the Mayor? They're busy not pokin' around on some dumb farm!"

The door to the hut slammed closed as Granny Smith tottered out. She cast a wary eye over the clearing. "Was somepony shouting?" she asked. "I thought I heard somepony shouting."

Apple Bloom ran to Granny Smith's side, tears streaming down her face. "AJ won't let me go to school and ah don't know what ah want to do with mah life but ah don't want to spend it running Sweet Apple Acres but AJ says no one'll take me 'cause ah'm a hick and ah'm an Earth Pony an' they don't hire hicks an' Earth Ponies an' ah got named after a disease!" And then she collapsed into the old mare's side, nearly knocking her over.

"There there," said Granny Smith, somehow managing to both keep her balance and give the young filly a reassuring pat on the head. "Don't fret, I'm sure everything'll be peachy."

"Apple Bloom," her sister started, "you-wait. A disease?"

"Ah looked it up. Y'all named me after a disease!"

Applejack walked over to the pair of them. "You keep cleaning the shack," she said to Granny Smith, "I'll take care of her." She extricated the two and walked the old mare back to the hut. Apple Bloom stood where she'd been left, unsure of exactly what was happening, and whether she should continue to yell at her older sister or run off crying.

Applejack returned, walking right past Apple Bloom. The filly watched as she climbed the hill to its highest point, and sat down, looking out over the valley. She looked down at her sister.

"Well," she said, "you joining me?"

Apple Bloom hesitated, looked back at the hut, but finally followed her sister up the hill.

The view was amazing. You couldn't help but gawk. Apple Bloom's mood was forgotten as she paid attention, really paid attention, to what you could see from here.

"It looks even better in the fall," said Applejack. "The leaves all turn orange an' yellow, an' the sun catches on the river...sometimes I think they put Ponyville in the wrong place, down there on the plains."

Apple Bloom looked at her hooves. "Ah'm....ah'm sorry 'bout speaking to you like that."

"Aw, s'nothing," Applejack said, giving her sister a quick hug. "We all get the feeling Ponyville's a bit too small for us at some point in our lives. You think you're the first Apple who's run off t'seek her fortune?"

Apple Bloom looked up. "Wait..." she said. "You ran off from home?"

"Maybe I did once, back when I was young and foolish. Thought I was too big for this country life, thought the city would be a place I could grow."

The mare trailed off, eyes no longer focussed on the landscape in front of them. Apple Bloom waited patiently as silence descended over the pair, broken only by the sound of crickets from the forest proper.

"...and?" she said finally.

"Huh?"

"And then what? You headed off to the city, and then what?"

"Oh," said Applejack, "it wasn't really my thing. Turns out the ponies who live in Manehattan, well, they're just ponies, same as anywhere. It's no magical place where you suddenly become a starlet or anything."

"You lived in Manehattan?"

"Only for a month or two, sugar. But, well, Ponyville's in our blood. It'll take more'n a bit of teenage longing to make you stray from her, trust me."

Applejack tilted her hat forward. "Anyway," she continued, "weren't we gonna talk about you?"

Apple Bloom blinked. "We were?"

"You wanted to know about your name."

"Oh, right."

"To be honest, it's a mite embarassing. Y'see, yer ma - our ma - she'd told Granny Smith that she'd get to name one of her grandchildren. I think Aunt Orange moving out to Manehattan was a bit of a blow to Granny, actually. She wanted both her daughters here in Ponyville, see. Of course, her an' Uncle Orange have their own kids, but-"

"Uh," said Apple Bloom, "wasn't this story gonna be about me?"

"Oh," said Applejack, "right. Where was I?"

"Granny Smith naming one of us."

"Right. Well, see, Ma named me an' Big Mac, just like she wanted. Big Mac got named after the type of apple we grow up on the hills outside Ponyville, an', well, I kinda got named after what they used to put out of that contraption over there." She nodded towards the remains of the distillery proper. "Ma liked naming her kids after what the orchards made."

"So Granny Smith named me?"

Applejack snorted. "I'm gettin' there, settle down. Anyway, when you were born, well, Ma made good on her promise. Granny Smith got to name one child. Now, she wasn't much into the orchards herself, understand - she did running the business, of course, and keeping the place in order, but it was your parents - an' later on, Big Mac an' me - who actually did the plannin' and the plantin' and the harvestin'. So when she did the naming, she thought and thought about what me an' Mac and your parents would talk about, an' when she came up with the perfect name, she got the doctor to write it straight down on the birth certificate."

"And she picked a disease?"

"She thought it was the blossom, she really did. She said it sounded like such a nice name - like what you'd see in spring, when the apple trees were just starting to bud. Not, well, creepy or anything." Applejack sighed. "She really didn't know."

"Huh," said Apple Bloom. The two of them sat there, staring out at the landscape. A slight breeze picked up, rustling the trees.

"What d'you mean, creepy?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Well, it's how the disease works, right?" Applejack said. "There's this moth, see, it creeps into the apple when it's just a flower, and it lays an egg right in the middle. And then when the apple starts to grow, the egg ends up in the middle of it. An' then when the apple is ripe the egg hatches and this little bug crawls out and starts to eat away at the inside of the apple, but he doesn't break the skin, so all you know about it is if you look real hard you can see these yellow marks on the skin - that's why we call it Apple Bloom. But then, when you go to pick the apple, the whole thing crumples in your hoof, 'cause by then it's mainly skin and core and the grub at the centre."

Apple Bloom's eyes went wide. "Ah...ah'm not sure ah want ta be named after it now."

"Yeah, well, we had a look-see about what we could do about that, or at least, your ma did. Turns out if you want t'change a pony's name after they're born ya gotta fill in even more forms, an', well, your ma wasn't her best at readin' and writin' and such."

"But if ah learned how to read an' write proper, then ah could get mah name changed, right?"

Applejack scratched the back of her neck with her hoof, looking back down the valley. "I guess you could," she said. "But then there'd be nothing in this world makes the phrase "Apple Bloom" mean something nice."

Apple Bloom stared at her hooves. "Aw, sis," she muttered.

Applejack cleared her throat. "Anyway," she said, "I'd better check how Granny Smith's doin' inside the hut. You join us when you want."

The cowpony stood and walked down the rise to the hut. Apple Bloom sat on the hill, looking down at the valley in silence. It was so peaceful here - she could hear Applejack open the door to the hut and call out to Granny Smith, but apart from that, it was just her, the cicadas...and silence.

"Psst."

Apple Bloom's ear twitched. Obviously the silence was getting to her. It had sounded like one of the bushes, on the far side of the rise had gone-

"Pssssst."

Apple Bloom looked back to the hut. Then down the hill to the conspiratorial bush. Then she got up and walked cautiously towards it.

"What is it, bush?" she asked the bush.

"It's not a bush," the bush said, "it's me!"

"And me!" the bush said, in a different voice. "Is anypony watching?"

"Well, ah'm watching," said Apple Bloom.

"Is anypony else watching?" the bush asked.

"Nope."

The bush rustled, and disgorged two fillies. Scootaloo was smeared with mud and grass, while Sweetie Belle at least looked like she'd had a bath in the last month.

"Hah!" said Scootaloo, grinning wildly. "Toldja we could do it! Got within ten yards of her, no sweat." She turned to Apple Bloom. "If I was a real ninja, you'd be dead! Like that! Bam!"

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes, and continued combing sticks out of her mane.

"Hey girls!" Apple Bloom said. "What're you doing here?"

"I figured since my name didn't mean anything, that meant I could be anything I wanted!" Scootaloo replied, still grinning madly. "So I decided we should become ninjas."

"And also, it was more interesting than school," Sweetie Belle added.

"Ninjas?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Turns out Scootaloo's dad's got a bunch of trashy novels he got when he was serving abroad in the air force," Sweetie Belle said. "When Scootaloo said we were learning Equestrian-"

"They're not trashy!"

"That's not what Rarity says."

"Oh yeah? Well-"

"So!" said Apple Bloom, heading off any potential conflict. "What do ninjas do?"

"They sneak," said Scootaloo, "and they hide, and they have cool throwing stars and smoke bombs and they try to kill people!"

Sweetie Belle sniffed. "You'll never get your cutie mark in being a ninja," she said.

"Oh yeah? Why not?"

"If you have a cutie mark in being a ninja, everyone will know you're a ninja. That's not hiding."

"Huh," said Scootaloo. She sat down, thinking hard.

"So you followed us out here?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Like I said," Sweetie Belle said, "it had to be more interesting than school. I'm pretty sure Cheerilee's going to take us through geography again."

"Ah-ha!" said Scootaloo. "What if when you're a ninja, your cutie mark's hidden? Then no one could see it, and they couldn't tell you're a ninja." She blinked, then gasped. "I could have it already!" She craned around, inspecting her flank. "I can't see it! I can't see it! I'm a ninja!"

Sweeie Belle gave Apple Bloom a weary look. "She's been like this all day."

There was a call from up the hilltop. "Apple Bloom? Is that you?" It was Applejack, peering down into the undergrowth.

Scootaloo's eyes went wide. "We've been spotted!" she cried, as she dove into the nearest bush.

"It's OK, sis," Apple Bloomed called back. "It's Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. They followed us from Ponyville."

Applejack made her way down the slope. "They did what now? We're still in the Everfree here, you can't just-" She paused, staring down the valley.

"AJ?" Apple Bloom called.

"All of you," her sister called, "get up here."

Apple Bloom exchanged glances with Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, who was still hiding under a bush. Then she trotted up the slope, her two friends in tow.

Once she cleared the treeline, she saw what her sister was staring at. Circling Ponyville were dark smudges, several pony-sized, a couple somewhat larger.

"What're they?" she asked.

Applejack squinted. "Trouble," she said. "Grab your stuff, we're headed back to town."

"I'm a terrible pony, it's time I faced the facts."

Rainbow Dash was reclining on a low-flying tuft of cloud, balling up bits of moisture, shaping them with her hooves, and chucking them over the side. Occasionally she'd roll over to peer off the edge of the cloud, looking down on Ponyville. Fluttershy was sitting primly on the densest corner of the cloud, looking concerned. She was getting really good at looking concerned.

Dash tore off another piece of cloud, rolled it between her hooves. "I can't believe I just flew off like that! You don't do that to your friends."

"You could just apologise," offered Fluttershy.

"I mean, I could have just told her that she was wrong and at least give her a chance to correct herself, but nooooo, Rainbow Dash knows better than that, I should just make a scene about it all and then fly off in a huff, that'll fix things for sure!"

"Uh, you could apologise?"

Dash spun over and buried her face in the cloud. "Now she probably thinks I'm a monster or something!"

"Rainbow?"

The pegasus removed her head from the cloud. "Yeah?"

"You could, yknow, just apologise to her."

Rainbow Dash let out a sigh, her body going limp. "She won't take it," she said. "She's the personal student of Princess Celestia! She doesn't need a friend like me, somepony who ditches her just whenever she says something out-of-place." She batted the cloud-fragment between her hooves, before hurling it over the side.

"She was feeling bad about it too."

"Well, of course she was!" Dash pulled off another tuft of cloud with her teeth, and started pulling it to bits.

"I'm sure if you just found her and said sorry you could fix this whole thing."

Rainbow Dash glared at the yellow pegasus. "I'm not going to get you to leave me alone unless you see me say sorry in person, am I?" Then she blinked. "Argh, see? I'm horrible! Now you're trying to cheer me up and all I can do is be mean to you too!" She dove headfirst back into the cloud.

Fluttershy sighed. Sometimes, you needed to be assertive.

She stood up, picked up her friend by the shoulders, and dragged her off of the cloud. The two of them half-fell, half-flew, to the road below. They landed in a heap, but Rainbow Dash was soon back on her feet, looking bedraggled.

Fluttershy stood, brushing some dust out of her coat. "Sorry," she said, looking at her feet.

Rainbow Dash shook herself. "Nah, thanks," she said, "I kinda needed that, didn't I?"

The two surveyed the town. It was relatively quiet today - nopony was wandering between stores or watering the gardens. In fact, it was quiet enough to set Rainbow Dash on edge.

"And what're you two doing out?" said a voice behind them. Rainbow Dash jumped several feet in the air and spun around in place. A guard was standing behind them - full metal barding, with the sigil of Canterlot on his breast.

"We were...visiting a friend," said Rainbow Dash.

"Oh yeah?" the guard said, eyes narrowed. "And if I asked your friend, would they know about this visit?"

"It's, uh, it's a surprise visit," said Fluttershy.

"Huh," the guard said. "Funny that." He eyeballed the two of them. "Scram, both of you. If I see you round here again, I'm locking you up on principle."

The two pegasi trotted away in the direction of the library. As soon as they rounded a corner, Rainbow Dash let out a breath and collapsed against a nearby wall.

"They're after me," she said.

"They're what?" Fluttershy asked.

"They're after me! They've found out who's behind all the anti-Celestia propaganda in Ponyville and they're after me!"

Fluttershy looked around. "...what propaganda?" she asked.

"Well, OK, we never got around to the propaganda, but the protests!"

"Uh, we never had any protests."

"Oh, right, I guess we never got around to the protests either. But, well, you know how a few months back Celestia visited and the Cakes baked her that massive cake and then, mere minutes before it was about to be served to her, it disappeared?"

"Yes?"

"That was me."

"You?"

"Well, there's a couple of us. But I masterminded it."

"I bet that startled her."

"But see? They're after me! For being a resistance cell!"

"That's good?"

"No! It isn't! If they find me, I'm glue!" She grabbed fluttershy by the shoulders. "Somepony's sold me ut, Fluttershy."

"But if they knew it was you, why didn't that guard just arrest you on sight?"

Dash paused. "Huh," she said. "You're right. Maybe...maybe they know it's someone, but they don't know who yet." She straightened up. "This makes it even more important that we find Twilight! Come on!"

The Library was under guard. Two big burly pegasi in Canterlot guard barding lounged on either side of the door. Neither looked very receptive when Dash and Fluttershy trotted up.

"We're here to talk to Twilight Sparkle," Rainbow Dash said, in her best I-know-what-I'm-doing voice.

"No one's to interact with Miss Sparkle," said the guardpony on the left. "Captain's orders."

"Um," said Fluttershy.

"What?" said the guard on the right.

"I'm not sure you can just forbid ponies from talking to their friends."

"Sure can," said the one on the left. "She's under house arrest, and that means no outside contact."

"House arrest?" said Dash. "What's she under house arrest for?"

"Miss Twilight Sparkle is being held on suspicion of murder," said the one on the right.

"Murder?" said Rainbow Dash.

"Murder?" said Fluttershy.

"That's what he said," said Right.

"Could we talk to Spike, then?" asked Rainbow Dash. "He's her assistant."

"Spike the Dragon is also being held under house arrest, on suspicion of murder," said Left.

"The same murder?" asked Dash, "or a different one?"

"As per the Lawful Retainment Act of 873AC we are not required to give you any further information," said Right, reciting from memory.

"There's suddenly a lot of ponies around here who're under suspicion for murder," said Rainbow Dash, glaring at the two guards.

"Yup," said Left, "and there's about to be two more if you two don't clear off."

"Oh yeah?" said Dash, mane bristling, "I reckon that constitues abuse of police power. I know my rights!"

"Uh, Rainbow," said Fluttershy, trying to merge with the ground.

The two guards went tense. Their wings flared. "Hey, lookie here," said Right. "This pony knows her rights. You know what we do to pipsqueak pegasi who know their rights in Canterlot?"

Fluttershy grabbed her friend, yanking her out of the air. "We weren't looking for trouble," she said to the guards. "My friend here is just a bit enthusiastic, but she's really nice when you get to know her, honest!"

Rainbow Dash struggled half-heartedly against her bonds, glaring at the two guardponies. "I've been in protests before!" she shouted back the the guards. "I know what you brutes do when you think you can get away with it! I saw the crackdowns at Everfree Dam with my own eyes!"

Left growled, pawing the ground with his hoof. "Clear out, you two," he said. "If we see you again round here, we'll make sure you regret it."

She managed to get Rainbow Dash around the corner of the next building before the blue pegasus thought of anything particularly clever or vindictive to throw back at the guard.

"Rainbow," she said, quietly but urgently, "we're not going to help Twilight by getting arrested ourselves."

Rainbow Dash glared at her, but then she slumped. "You're right," she said. "They've got her well and good in there. But...murder? Twilight?"

"You're right," Fluttershy said, "Twilight wouldn't do that. They've got it wrong."

"Something's up," said Rainbow Dash. She stood up and started pacing, wings twitching. "Suddenly there's guards everywhere and Twilight's under arrest and so's Spike and, well, Rarity's been acting strange recently, and I know Pinkie's hiding something from me and I don't know what..."

"We need to rescue Twilight," Fluttershy said.

Rainbow Dash whirled to face her. "We need to what?"

"We need to rescue Twilight," Fluttershy repeated.

"But...but she's under arrest! They have guards watching her!"

"No they don't. They have guards watching the door. If we can get in through a window, they don't even need to know we're there." Fluttershy drew herself up, gathering speed. "And you said you wanted to do something, something important? How about this? You think this many guards just come by Ponyville every day? This is something to do with the Princess, and you know it is. Twilight's mixed up with it. But if they've put her under arrest it means she's on our side. If you can rescue her, imagine how that'll help your cause." She looked down at her feet. "Besides," she added, "Twilight's our friend, Rainbow. We should at least try to help her out."

Rainbow Dash sat down on the road with a quiet thump. After a moment, she looked up. "You're right," she said. "I've been trying to avoid it, but you're right. We do need to rescue her. Why couldn't I have gotten you on board with the resistance earlier on? That's the sort of spirit we've needed for ages."

"Oh, I don't think I'd be a very good-oof!" said Fluttershy, as Rainbow Dash physically lifted her fellow pegasus with her into the air. "Uh, Rainbow, what are we doing?"

"Bucking the system," said Rainbow Dash. There was a determined look in her eyes. "Come on," she said. "Let's be bad-asses."

Storm took a moment to survey the town.

An imposing pegasus in civvies, the regalia of Guard Captain made him all the more threatening. The two guard pegasi on either side of him seemed almost unnecessary. You had to wonder, if a fight broke out here, who would be protecting whom.

The raid had gone well - surprisingly well, as far as he was concerned. If it wasn't just a weekend milk-run at the command of the Princess, he'd have said: suspiciously well.

They'd landed on the outskirts first, and made their way inwards by hoof. Some of the outer farms were abandoned - maybe the workers had fled at the first sign of Canterlot forces, into the Everfree - but that simply a chance you had to take.

Anyway, they hadn't been after farmers.

One of the guard trotted up and sketched a hasty bow in front of Storm.

"What is it?" he snapped. He always snapped while on duty. He found it helped instill discipline.

"Perimeter secured, Captain, although we have reports of a unicorn seen escaping and entering the Everfree."

"A unicorn, eh? What colour?"

"Guard says white, purple mane, Captain."

"Send a couple of scouts after them. They might have information."

"Yes, Captain. Anything else?"

"As you were."

"Yes Captain."

The guard bowed again, and trotted off, issuing orders. Everything was going to plan. Or at least, everything involving his guard. Which just left...

"I'm afraid we can't take orders from the guard," Cirrus said. "Division of authority and all that."

...the other problem.

"Inspector Cirrus," Storm said. "I understand you have a crime scene on your hands here, but I've been ordered by Her Majesty to secure this area as a matter of national importance. A murder is nothing to sneeze at, but we have the whole of Equestria to worry about."

Cirrus remained silent. She was staring into the mid-distance. Goddess-dammit, Storm thought, we both know how this is going to end, do we have to keep dancing around each other like this?

"Inspector," he said, walking over to the policepony. He tried to look her in the eye, but she was having nothing of it. "You've got your orders, and I've got my orders, and the higher-ups probably don't give a flying damn how things go down on the ground as long as everything gets sorted out and the press doesn't get hold of the mixup.

"So here's what we need to do: we need to sort this mess out so they don't have to deal with any political fallout. Now, if you have any bright ideas, this would be your chance to air them." He paused, looking at her. "No? OK. Look, you need the school grounds, yes? I'll extend my cordon to include it. Nopony has to enter or leave, just as long as we have control over the area. You and your ponies can make sure we don't do anything that affects the crime scene. Then, once this is all done with, you can continue your investigation. Deal?"

Cirrus' mouth twisted. She knew she was being shoved aside in as diplomatic a manner as Storm could manage. But, she thought, orders are orders. Plus, it was still technically her day off.

"If you say so," she said.

Storm paused. "It'd help if I got a straight 'yes' or 'no' from you, Inspector."

"Yes," she sighed.

"Excellent. I'll have some of my ponies go with you. You can set the boundaries. If any of them set hoof inside, come see me."

Storm watched the policepony stalk off, flanked by guards. It was a problem - not one he really wanted to have to deal with - but with any luck, he'd managed to contain it.

Yet another guardpony trotted up. The good thing about being a Guard Captain was, you got lots of minions.

"Captain," the guard said, sketching a quick bow. "We're in position."

Storm smiled. He felt a Guard Captain shouldn't smile, but sometimes you just had to break protocol.

"Excellent," he said. "Start the roundup. And get me Sparkle."

Exodus

Most days, Twilight would be quite happy to spend her waking hours in the library, surrounded by her books. But now the place felt like a prison, closing in around her.

The morning had not gone to plan. She'd got up early (for her, anyway) and was ready to help Spike make breakfast before another bustling day in Ponyville -- except the dragon was nowhere to be found. Unpeturbed, she decided she'd pack up some books and deliver them to Cheerilee before class started. Only, something had happened down at the school, and nopony would tell her what. But it was bad, whatever it was, and her mind was connecting dots that she'd rather leave unconnected.

The nice young pegasus -- what did he say his name was? -- had brought her back to the library, asked if there was anypony he could call. (Which, she thought now, was another bad sign. You never asked someone if there was anypony you could call unless something serious was going down.) And then, when she said she'd be alright, he left her.

The next hour had been an ordeal. She'd paced back and forth, waiting for Cheerilee to burst through the door and say it had all been a terrible mistake, nothing was wrong, the police were just here on a formality. But when the door did open, it was a Canterlot guard (Royal guardponies? And flying police? In Ponyville?) telling her that she was under house arrest.

That was the point she knew -- really knew, beyond doubt -- that something terrible had happened to Cheerilee.

Whatever the guardpony had been told to expect, it appeared he hadn't expected her to break down into tears. He at least had the decency to look embarrassed as he told her if there was anything she needed, she should ask him, and closed the door again.

She'd spent the next few hours alternately crying, trying to read (anything to take her mind off of what was happening out there), and drafting letters to the Princess. None of them had helped. Occasionally she heard the guards talking, to each other, or to passers-by who wanted to know what was going on. Generally they said the same thing over and over: "Nothing to see here, keep moving." Sometimes she heard someone mention her name. Either way, no one got past them.

She was starting her fifth letter to the Princess, hoping this time she wouldn't drop tears into the ink and smudge it, when she heard the muffled click of her bedroom window opening. She paused, quill at the ready, listening.

No other sound.

She was sure she hadn't imagined it, though. She turned back to her letter, only to find that her quill had bled a spidery line of ink down the margin.

"Oh...oh dammit," she muttered, screwing it up and adding it to the pile of unfinished drafts in the corner. She stood, stretching, and made her way to the stairs. Her mind was frayed already, and she wouldn't be able to concentrate until she'd confirmed that she was the only pony in the building. Plus, the walk would do her good.

Hooves grabbed her before she reached the stairs. She drew breath to cry out, but someone covered her mouth.

"None of that," said Rainbow Dash. "This is supposed to be a stealthy rescue mission."

Twilight mumbled around the hoof in her mouth. The pegasus gave her a look, and withdrew it.

"Rainbow," Twilight whispered. "What're you doing here? Why are there guards on my door? Why're the police in town? *What happened to Cheerilee*?"

Rainbow Dash kept an eye on the front door. "Police, huh?" she asked. "That's news to me. All I know is that suddenly there's a lot of guards in town and they have you and Spike under house arrest."

"But I haven't seen Spike all morning. He wasn't here when I woke up."

Rainbow Dash scratched her head. "Huh," she said. "Weird. Well, anyway, both of you are apparently under wraps on suspicion of murder, of all things."

Twilight's eyes went wide. "Murd-mrph!"

Dash gave her a glare, removing her hoof from the unicorn's mouth a second time. "Stealthy, remember?"

There was a knock at the door. "Everything fine in there?" one of the guards called out.

"Uh, sure!" said Twilight, glancing nervously at Rainbow Dash. "Everything's good!"

"Come on," said Rainbow Dash, "we gotta scram before they work out what's up."

The two of them crept up the stairs to her bedroom. Fluttershy was flattened against the far wall, watching the street below through an open window.

"Fluttershy?" Twilight asked. "How did you guys even get in here?"

Fluttershy glanced at the two of them. "Rainbow Dash did it," she said. She looked at the ground. "I provided moral encouragement."

"I may once have been a teenage delinquent," Dash said, trying hard to sound modest.

"So you *broke into* my house?"

"Hey! We're rescuing you, aren't we?"

"I guess," said Twilight.

There was a shout from downstairs. "Too late," said Rainbow Dash. "Somepony had to investigate." She turned to Fluttershy. "How's the road outside?"

The pegasus risked a peek. "All clear," she said.

"Right," said Dash. "Twi, if you'll come with us," and she lifted the unicorn bodily by one forehoof.

"Hey!" said Twilight. "What're you-"

Fluttershy grabbed her other forehoof and she was half-carried over to the window. Hoofs clomped on the stairs behind.

"If I really wanted to get out-" started Twilight.

"No time!" said Rainbow Dash. "Explain later!" She exchanged looks with Fluttershy. "On three, OK? One...two..."

The door to the room flew open. An out-of-breath guardpony stood there, chest heaving. "In the name of the..." He took in the scene - two pegasi carrying Twilight out the window by her forehooves.

Two very familiar-looking pegasi.

His eyes narrowed. "You!"

"Three!"

And the three ponies leapt from the window.

"I still don't get why I couldn't have just used magic," Twilight muttered, as the three of them took shelter in a disused coal bin.

"They're Canterlot guards," Rainbow Dash whispered. "They're used to dealing with magic. They probably had wards all over that library, telling them if you used magic, or even preventing you doing it in the first place. Wings, though? Much harder to stop."

Fluttershy had the lid of the bin open a crack, watching the guards outside running back and forth. Several were up in the air or perched on rooftops, ready to intercept anyone attempting to fly out of the village. Rainbow Dash, on her own, would have stood a chance. Dash and Fluttershy, plus cargo: not so much.

"So what's the plan now?" Twilight asked.

Rainbow Dash had the decency to look embarrassed. "Really? I hadn't thought it through past the whole 'Rescue you from the Library' stage."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Fluttershy?"

"Hiding's good," the pegasus volunteered, eyes still on the street. "I like hiding."

"At some point they're going to work out we aren't running," Twilight said, "and then it's only a matter of time. Rainbow, you know a suspicious amount about what Canterlot guards can do -- would they detect my magic if I used it out here?"

"Maybe?" Dash said. "I don't know. This is just what I know from when I was in rallies and stuff as a filly. But they didn't seem to have any problem with catching unicorns, any more than they did with earth ponies or pegasi." She shrugged. "Your call."

"No magic, then," Twilight said. "And if Fluttershy says there's pegasi on the rooftops, no flying. No flying, no magic. And here we are, a unicorn and two pegasi."

"We could..." said Fluttershy. "We could make a run for the forest."

"For Everfree?" Twilight said.

"It's large enough. We could hide in there for months."

"And it's not like they could put a cordon around the whole thing," Rainbow Dash said.

"Could we get there without being spotted?" Twilight asked.

"We could get to my place," Fluttershy said. "From there it's not too far to run. We'd get spotted between there and the forest edge, but it'd probably be too late for them to catch us."

Twilight considered it.

"Anyone got any better ideas?" she asked.

Silence from the rest of the coal bin.

"OK," she said, "let's do this."

The three of them exited the coal bin as quietly as possible, keeping to whatever shadows they could in the early-afternoon sun. Rainbow Dash lead the way, behind bins and down side streets.

For a minute or two, Twilight really thought it was going to work.

"Hey, you!"

The three of them turned. A guard pony was looking at them out a window. He turned his head. "I found them!" he yelled.

"Change of plan!" said Rainbow Dash, bolting for an alleyway. "Hoof it!"

They almost made it.

Even Twilight knew Ponyville better than the guards, but the fact remained that there were three of them, and a lot of guard ponies. Halfway to the edge of town, dodging between trash cans and carts as they raced down narrow side-streets, she realised they weren't being chased.

They were being herded.

There was no one right on their tails, but they could hear the sounds of pursuit behind them. The guards were always a couple of streets back. Rainbow Dash tried to double-back twice, and both times she came face-to-face with guards and was forced onwards in a blur of sooty cyan. It was all Twilight and Fluttershy could do to keep up.

They managed to make it to one of the parks on the edge of the village, and by dashing from bush to bush they even got within sight of Fluttershy's house and the start of the Everfree. But the guards were prepared: four burly pegasi were standing at the edge of the Forest, scanning the village.

"We're done for," said Rainbow Dash. "They'll spot us if we bolt." There were shouts from back toward Ponyville proper, guard ponies calling out to each other.

"They're rounding us up," said Twilight, "they never meant to catch us in the first place. They just wanted to make us run until we couldn't run any further." Her eyes narrowed, judging the distance. "I might be able to get past them with my magic," she said. "It's a bit far...but they know we're here anyway..."

She closed her eyes. A glow enveloped her horn. Sputtered. Died.

"Hey!" she cried. "That's not supposed to happen."

"I told you," Rainbow said. "They're used to dealing with unicorns."

"Well," said Twilight, hanging her head, "I'm out of options."

Rainbow sighed. "We're done for."

"There…there is one way you could get out," Fluttershy said.

The two other ponies turned to look at her.

"If there's something to draw them away from the edge of the forest, you could make a run for it."

Twilight's brow furrowed. "What sort of...wait, what do you mean, we could make a run for it?"

"Oh no," said Rainbow Dash. "No no no. That's not happening."

Fluttershy stood up. "Rainbow? You know how you said somepony had sold you out?"

"Wait, what? I guess. What does this have to do with anything?"

"You were right."

"I...was? Who?"

Fluttershy looked at her hooves. "I did."

Twilight and Rainbow Dash exchanged looks of disbelief.

"You did?" Rainbow asked.

"Rarity...she said if I didn't do what she asked, she'd let them know I hadn't cooperated. They'd come, they'd kill the animals, they'd burn down my house." She looked up. She was crying. "I didn't know what else to do."

The two of them stared at her.

"I'm sorry," she said.

And then she burst out of the bushes and ran down the hill, parallel to the edge of the Everfree.

The guards at the forest edge shouted, and two took to the air. Several more charged from the village, all intent on the yellow pegasus.

"Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

"No time," Twilight said, grabbing the pegasus. "We've got to move."

"But we can't let them take her, Twilight!"

"We can't save her now, Dash! She knew what she was doing. If we don't go now, it's all for nothing."

There was a moment of silence, as she watched Fluttershy gallop down the hill. Then she turned to face Twilight. Her eyes were red.

“Fine,” she said.

The two of them bolted for the Everfree.

It was getting dark when they stopped running. Twilight was gasping for breath. Even Rainbow Dash looked somewhat puffed.

By Twilight's best estimate, they'd left the guards behind long ago. There were just too many places to hide in the Everfree Forest. Any number of dangerous beasts as well, yes, but beggars can't be choosers.

As she stood there, legs splayed and panting, she felt the adrenaline leave her. It had kept her going these past few hours as the two of them dodged tree branches and vaulted streams, with the sound of the Royal Guards behind them growing dimmer and dimmer, but now it flowed out of her body like water seeping out of a broken bottle.

She started to sob in between ragged breaths. Rainbow Dash, who'd been doing laps around the clearing and trying to work out their best route forward, looked over in concern. "Hey, Twi," she said. "You OK?"

Twilight staggered forward, found a convenient tree root, and collapsed against it, head in her hooves. The pegasus trotted over and wrapped her in a hug. "It's OK now, we lost them. We'll be fine," she said.

"F-..." Twilight drew a deep breath. "Fluttershy isn't fine," she managed. "Cheerilee isn't fine. Ponyville isn't fine."

Rainbow Dash patted her shoulder, staring off into the dark of the Everfree. "But *we're* fine. That's better than nothing, right?"

Twilight pushed her away. "It's not fine!" she said. "How come we get to get away, huh? Where's the justice in that? I turn up in Ponyville, I make some friends, and suddenly everything turns to crap! And do I do anything? No! I write a letter, because apparently that's all I'm good for, making lists and writing letters. And then when the guards decide to come and mess up everyone's lives and be dicks about it, I end up hiding in my library and it takes my friends to come and rescue me and then one of them sacrifices herself so I can get away and I don't even think about it twice and I just leave her there and *Cheerilee's dead Rainbow Dash!* Cheerilee's dead!" And the unicorn collapsed against Rainbow Dash in a fit of tears.

Dash thought quickly. She wasn't any good at this sort of thing. *This was...is...what Fluttershy was good at*, she thought. *She'd know what to do*.

"Hey," she managed. "Uh, look, what Fluttershy did for you, she wanted you to escape, right? She wanted somepony to get out. You said it yourself. If we hadn't run, it'd be all for nothing. Right?"

"But why, Rainbow? Why?"

"Because she was being blackmailed, Twilight. She was telling Celestia and her guards everything that was going on in Ponyville, because otherwise that stuck-up bitch of a unicorn would get her imprisoned or exiled or killed or worse-"

"Rainbow..."

"-and when I see Rarity again I'll take her self-righteous dress-making horn and shove it right up-"

"Rainbow!"

Dash looked down.

"My ribs."

"Oh. Ah, sorry." The pegasus loosened her grip on Twilight.

The two of them settled down on the edge of the clearing. The sun was going down over Ponyville (or, Twilight thought, where Ponyville would be if they could see further than twenty feet in this forest). Its last rays were spearing through the treetops, but down here at ground level it was already getting chilly.

"Well," Twilight said, smiling and wiping the tears from her eyes, "you sure now how to make a girl stop crying."

"Kinda hard to tear up and fight for breath at the same time, huh?" Dash grinned nervously. She kicked at the dust, unsure how to continue. Twilight stared into the forest, gaze lost in the branches.

“I, uh, I'm sorry to hear about Cheerilee,” said Rainbow. “We were never really close and all, but she was a good teacher, you know?"

"She was," Twilight said, eyes fixed on the middle distance. It was peaceful, sitting there. You could almost forget your worries.

Almost.

“You know how long it took her to work out teaching was her passion?" she asked Rainbow Dash.

"How long?"

"Years. She spent one summer convinced she was going to grow up to be a sunflower farmer."

"Seriously? Hold on, people farm sunflowers?"

"Sure. She ended up travelling all the way to Fillydelphia..."

As the two of them swapped stories, Twilight felt her heart lift slightly. It was cold, it was dark, they were on the run from the law, lost somewhere in the Everfree Forest with no food and no plan, but they had each other. And as they reminisced about Cheerilee, the bundle of knots that had been sitting in her stomach since that morning started to unravel. It didn't go away -- that would take weeks, she thought -- but it sat more comfortably than it had.

The sun gradually set as they talked. The moon was well risen when the stories ran out, and they trailed off into silence. Twilight looked up at it. Even now Luna had returned, you could still trace out the outline of a mare's head.

"You know," she said to Rainbow Dash, "'mare' used to mean 'sea', once upon a time..."

"Twi," said Dash. “Hey, Twilight, is there a glow over there in the forest?"

"Huh?"

Rainbow Dash pointed with her hoof. "Over there, behind that tree. I could swear there's a glow."

Twilight looked. A purplish after-image of the moon swam in front of her eyes, wavering and fading. As she grew accustomed to the darkness, she became aware of her surroundings: black branches and boughs overlaid on black undergrowth. And there, behind them...

It flickered, firelight diffused by the vegetation. Twilight looked at Rainbow Dash. "A traveller?" she asked.

"In the Everfree?" Rainbow Dash said.

"Ponies travel through the Everfree," said Twilight. "Some ponies live in the Everfree."

Rainbow Dash stood up. "Could be guards. We should investigate."

Twilight stood. "Dash," she said.

"Yeah?"

"....thanks."

The pegasus grinned. "No sweat," she said.

The two of them crept through the undergrowth. As they got closer, they heard a voice, somepony muttering to themselves. A row of brambles separated them from the fire, and Rainbow Dash hunkered down, crawling forward on her belly. Twilight followed suit, brambles and burrs catching in her coat. She pushed a branch or two gently out of her way with her forelimbs - the glow of her magic would give her away in the dark of the night. Then, in front of her, she heard a muffled gasp, and Dash moved to one side to let her see.

It was a fire, alright, a whole heaping of undergrowth and tree limbs, dried out by the long summer and crackling merrily. A unicorn was standing next to the fire, pulling bundles of papers and scrolls from a set of saddlebags and throwing them into the flames. With each mouthful, the fire shot up, lighting the clearing with a yellow-white light.

The unicorn was Rarity. She looked tattered and worn down, and there was a trail of blood running down one leg, but it was undoubtedly Rarity. And she was holding a decidedly heated conversation with herself.

"Blasted Party and their politics," she was muttering, in between mouthfuls of paper. "Why can't they keep their petty power struggles in Canterlot where they belong? I was doing so well down here, too, and they have to go and mess everything up. It's those Goddess-damned pegasi, I bet, hot-heads the lot of them. Probably got wind that some ponies in Ponyville didn't like the distribution of power or something and decided they needed some showing who's who. Honestly, the nerve. How they ever got considered a civilisation is anyone's guess."

There was a growl next to Twilight. Rainbow's wings were flared, her eyes narrowed. She laid a hoof on the pegasus' shoulder. This was starting to get interesting.

Rarity had finished with one bag and was opening the second. Scrolls and letters fell out onto the forest floor, and her horn glowed as she swept them into the fire. A shower of sparks shot out the other side as they caught.

"Don't know why I even bothered joining their stupid conspiracy," she muttered to herself. "I mean, honestly, what sort of secret society can't even keep its members in line? 'Oh no, Rarity, you should have received everything you need to know from our contact.'" A particularly large bundle of papers caught on one of the buckles, and Rarity braced her forehooves on the saddle-bag, ripping it in half. She spat them into the flames. "It probably was Twilight, and she just forgot. I guess it's hard to remember things if they don't have a Dewey Decimal number."

"Right, that's it!" said Twilight, standing up. Rarity spun around, a bunch of documents in her mouth. She back-pedalled towards the fire, horn glowing. Rainbow Dash emerged from the bushes like colourful greased lightning, barrelling into the unicorn in a shower of paper. The two rolled across the clearing, ending up against a tree root some yards away, with Rainbow Dash on top.

Twilight trotted over. Rarity looked up at the two of them. "Rainbow Dash! Twilight!" she said, trying to regain hold of the situation, "fancy meeting you out here!"

"Out hunting us, were you?" Rainbow Dash said, chest heaving. "Ready to turn in another pony to your masters?"

"I have no idea what you mean," Rarity replied. Her eyes darted to Twilight, latching on, begging her to intervene. Twilight, for her part, stood to one side. She was happy to let this play out.

"Oh yeah?" said the pegasus. "Did Fluttershy have any idea what you meant, or did she just get dragged into this whole mess because you thought it'd be fun having a pegasus do the dirty work for you?"

"My dear, the last time I saw Fluttershy, she was-"

"Last time I saw Fluttershy she was being dragged away by Palace guards, sacrificing herself so we could get away! Unless you saw her after that, I suggest you keep your mouth shut!"

Rarity's eyes widened. "They...Rainbow, I'm so sorry-"

Rainbow Dash struck her, a cuff with her forehoof, right across the jawline. "You used her!" she shouted, "you used her and then when she wasn't any use to you any more you *threw her away*! And now you've got the gall to say you're-"

Twilight laid a hoof on the pegasus' shoulder. Dash broke off, looking at her.

She held Dash's gaze for a long moment. The fire crackled, sending sparks into the sky.

The pegasus was the first to break off, lowering her head. "I'm gonna scout the perimeter," she said, "make sure, we uh...yeah." She trotted to the centre of the clearing, before turning back to Twilight.

"When I'm back," she said, "she'd better be gone." Then the pegasus sprang into the air. With a powerful downstroke of her wings, she flew into the night.

A semblance of silence returned to the clearing, marred by the quiet pop and hiss of burning paper. Twilight sat down, near enough to Rarity that the two could talk, but far enough that she was aware: Twilight was most definitely not on her side. Rarity shook herself and combed the worst of the undergrowth out of her coat, before settling down again.

The two of them stared into the fire. Now no one was feeding it, it had died down somewhat, but it still gave off more than enough light. Logs crackled and burned. Occasionally a pocket of sap would ignite with a pop.

Rarity sighed. "I really have stuffed this up, haven't I?" she asked.

Twilight kept silent.

"When I joined, you know," Rarity continued, tracing patterns in the dirt with her forehoof, "well, I though it'd be good. Constructive. Finding out what's happening in Canterlot, spreading the word for the Princess. Ahem. Princesses. I didn't know they'd be into...well..." she waved her hoof in the air. "Secret meetings. Death threats. Taking ponies away for questioning."

"Did you do the thing with the mannequin in the barn?" Twilight asked. "At Sweet Apple Acres?"

Rarity sighed. “Yes, that was me. Well, me and Fluttershy. I left the party early enough to stage the break in and set up the rope, and Fluttershy did the rest. I was going to come back and blend in with the crowd, make my alibi watertight, but I understand somepony caused a scene and made things end a little earlier than usual." She gave Twilight a level look.

Twilight refused to take the bait. "And Fluttershy just went along with this plan?"

Rarity dropped her gaze. "I did have to persuade her a little bit," she said.

"And the morning after? At Carousel? You were trying to work out if I was in on your little game, weren't you?"

"Twilight, you're Princess Celestia's personal student! I was certain you were one of us."

"And then when I wasn't, you lied to me and manipulated my feelings."

She looked up at that. "What would you have me do, tell you the truth? 'Oh, Twilight, I just thought you'd be in on this government conspiracy too.' I'm sure that'd have gone much better."

The fire had settled down properly now. The paper had finished burning and now it was content to slowly feed on the sun-dried wood that made up the pile proper. It'd take some time, sure, but if there was anything the fire had, it was time.

Twilight watched the flames, ignoring the pony to her right. One half of her was shocked that Rarity would be a part of something so...so coldly manipulative. One part of Twilight, however, merely whispered to her: *I told you so. This is where friends get you...*

She shook her head. "So," she said, breaking the silence. "The Party."

"Ugh, I hate that term," said Rarity.

"Well, what's it really called?"

The white unicorn paused.

"Oh, come on," said Twilight, "Ponyville's under martial law right now, there's guards probably going through my library, Fluttershy's been taken away for goddess-knows-what, Ch-" she paused, swallowed, continued, "Cheerilee's dead-"

"Cheerilee's dead?"

Twilight tried to speak. The words caught in her throat. If she opened her mouth now, she knew, she'd lose it. She couldn't lose it right now, not in front of Rarity, not like this.

She looked at the ground, and nodded.

"Oh, Twilight, I'm so sorry." Rarity got up, started to cross the distance between them, but Twilight held up a hoof. She sat back down. "That wasn't me, please, believe me. Whatever else happened in Ponyville, that wasn't me."

"Why-" Twilight swallowed again, took a deep breath. "Why do you care?" she asked. "She's only an *earth pony*." She glared at Rarity. *Come on,* she thought, *say the wrong thing, right now, I* dare *you.*

Rarity didn't say a thing. Tears were threatening Twilight's eyes. She blinked them away, looked up. Rarity was looking at the ground.

"Is that what you think I'm like?" the white unicorn said softly.

"You've been keeping secrets from us," Twilight said. "You've been trying to manipulate me. Even that first night, you were trying to get in my good books." *As we call them these days*. "Why *wouldn't* I think that's what you're like?"

Rarity sighed. "I guess...I guess I can see why. Why you think that. But it isn't me. I promise."

"It isn't?" Twilight asked, getting to her hooves and stalking over to her. "Then who is it, Rarity? Because from where I'm standing, it looks an awful lot like you! You lie! You blackmail! You cheat! You make wild accusations!" Her horn glowed, and Rarity found herself lifted off the ground, hanging in front of Twilight. As the purple unicorn stalked forward, she was pushed backwards, away from the fire, closer to the dark edge of the forest. "You think anypony without a horn might as well be corralled with the livestock! You're willing to bend over backwards just so we don't know what horrid things you're doing!"

"Fine!" Rarity cried. "I'm a bad pony! I admit it! I got into this mess and I was too weak to get out of it! I thought if I'd at least play along they'd leave me alone, but they just wanted me to do more for them! I'm sorry, *I'm sorry*!" She flailed, her hooves finding nothing but thin air. "I'll be a better pony, I promise, just don't kill me!"

The glow around Twilight's horn vanished. Rarity slumped to the ground. Twilight looked down at her, her face a mixture of pity and disgust. "Kill you?" she asked.

"They were going to," Rarity said. "The Party. They thought I was a liability. They sent someone into Carousel Boutique to take care of everything." She took a breath. "So I ran. I ran and now I don't know what to do."

Twilight looked at her, usually so composed, sitting there staring at her hooves and sniffing occasionally. Some part of her heart reached out to her, even now.

"Who are they?" she said quietly.

"They...they call themselves the Committee to Re-elect the Princess," Rarity said. "I don't know who's involved - I only know about Fluttershy and myself. There's a pony I can talk to in Ponyville, he takes messages to and from the higher-ups in Canterlot. That's all I know."

"Does Celestia know?"

"Twilight...Celestia runs the Committee."

Twilight shook her head. "No...the Princess wouldn't do something like that." She stood up and paced in front of the fire. "Celestia's nice, Rarity. She taught me how to do magic and how to sew and how to properly cite conference proceedings. When I was sick she'd sit and read to me rather than hold evening court. She wouldn't do this. Something's not right." She looked at Rarity. "I need to go to Canterlot. I need to find out what's happened."

"Didn't they put you under house arrest? They'll be looking for you."

"Well. I'll just have to be careful then."

"Twilight, you won't even be able to get into the city! They'll have guards on every gate."

Rarity paused, biting her lip.

Twilight waited.

"They'll kill me for telling you this." She looked around, just in case Party agents were spying on her here, in the middle of the Everfree. Then she leaned in closer.

"The Committee is always on the look-out for double agents. When I joined, they told me how to get in touch with Canterlot higher-ups. In case I had something I didn't want my handler to know. But...they'll watch you every step of the way. I don't know if it'll be of any use."

Twilight smiled. "Once I'm inside, I'm sure I can think of something." She trotted over to the unicorn and sat down - not right next to her, but closer than before.

"Tell me, Rarity," she said.

They knew they were approaching a band of ponies long before they saw them through the trees. Applejack noted that the birdsong had cut out ahead of them, and told Granny Smith and the fillies to get off the path.

A few minutes later, the refugees struggled into view. Big Macintosh took the lead, shouldering through undergrowth and blazing a trail for the ponies behind him. Some carried possessions in saddle-bags. Some, it seems, hadn't had the time to pack.

At the sight of her brother, Applejack let out a breath. She stepped out onto the path. "It's only us," she called.

Some of the ponies started, but Big Mac merely looked up and snorted. "Rest up," he called back. "We'll take a break for a bit." The group shuffled to a halt behind him, and ponies started to drift to the edges of the path, sitting down and talking in low voices.

Applejack trotted up to Big Mac. "What's the news?" she asked quietly.

He looked over the refugees behind him, then nodded further up the path. The two of them walked, talking quietly between themselves.

"What's up with them?" Apple Bloom asked as she sat down on the path.

"Probably discussing serious adult things," Sweetie Belle said, pulling at her mane with her hooves. They'd gone through a clearing full of lopseed five minutes ago, and she was still finding burrs in her fur.

"Yeah," added Scootaloo. "Boring adult things. Like...taxes, and, uh, politics."

Sweetie Belle paused in her combing to give the pegasus a glare. "Or maybe the whole whatever-it-was that Applejack was so concerned about?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah, that thing."

"But what're all these ponies doin' in the Everfree?" asked Apple Bloom.

"Guards!"

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle whirled around. Scootaloo made a beeline for a bush, relying on her newly-found powers of stealth to save her. Pinkie Pie emerged from the undergrowth behind them, pulling twigs from her mane.

"Pinkie Pie?" Sweetie Belle asked. "What're you doing here?"

"Oh, the usual," Pinkie Pie said. "There were guards all over Ponyville, so Big Macintosh started rounding up all the ponies on the outskirts and said he knew somewhere they could go, and I tagged along!"

"That's the usual?" asked Scootaloo, struggling out of a bush.

"Well, not really. But what're you up to? Did you get out too?"

"Nah," said Apple Bloom. "Ah was up at the old still with Applejack."

"We followed her!" volunteered Scootaloo.

"Why're there guards in Ponyville?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"I don't know," Pinkie Pie said. "Probably boring adult stuff."

"I told you!" said Scootaloo.

"Pinkie," Sweetie Belle said, "what were the guards doing?"

"Oh, rounding ponies up. Saying the whole place was cordoned off. Telling ponies they couldn't leave. Celestia's orders or something. Like I said: booooring." She pulled a face, illustrating exactly how boring she found the concept of a functional village-wide house arrest.

"Did you see Rarity?" Sweetie Belle asked. "Is Rarity alright?"

"Ooh! Rarity! I'd almost forgotten!" Pinkie grinned. "I did see her, don't worry! She got out, but now she might be lost. I should probably go find her."

Sweetie Belle's face lit up. "I could-"

"Nuh-uh!" Pinkie shook her head. "You fillies better stay right here with the grown-ups. We don't want you getting in any trouble, do we?"

Sweetie Belle's face fell. "Well, I guess...."

"And we definitely don't want you sneaking away and trying to infiltrate Canterlot to work out why this whole thing is happening. Because that would be bad. Very bad."

"Hold on," Scootaloo said, "you *don't* want us sneaking off-"

"Noooooo," said Pinkie. "That would be bad."

"You said that already," said Apple Bloom.

"Did I? Oh." The earth pony sat down, biting her lip. "Oh, right, Rarity! Don't worry," she said to Sweetie Belle, "I'll find your sister!" And she bounded off into the bushes.

The three of them sat in a circle. Applejack and Big Mac were still talking to each other. By the looks of it, they were having a disagreement that they wanted to keep as quiet as possible.

Sweetie Belle pulled at her fringe again, before sighing and letting it spring back. "I sure hope Rarity's OK," she said.

"She'll be fine," said Apple Bloom. "She's a grown-up mare. She can take care of herself."

"Hold on," said Scootaloo. "She said she *didn't* want us sneaking into Canterlot and finding out what this is about."

"Yup."

The pegasus scratched her head. "That's awfully specific."

Sweetie Belle shot Apple Bloom a worried glance. "So," she said hurriedly, "what do you think AJ and Big Mac are-"

"Hold on!" said Scootaloo, her eyes widening. Sweetie Belle winced. "Why don't we go to Canterlot and find out what's going on?"

Sweetie Belle closed her eyes. "That's a terrible idea."

"But we're ninjas! We can sneak in, unobserved!"

"Scootaloo," Apple Bloom said, "we ain't ninjas. We're a bunch of fillies, and if we try to sneak into Canterlot we'll be caught and tossed in the dungeon."

"But I got my cutie mark in not being seen!"

The two other fillies stared at her. Scootaloo's grin faded. "We can at least go have a look?" she asked.

"Hold on," said Apple Bloom. She trotted up the path, to where Applejack and Big Mac were still talking. "Hey, sis?" she asked.

"Busy now, Apple Bloom," she said. "Now," she said to Big Mac, "we can fit maybe ten in the old hut-"

"Uh, Sweetie Belle an' Scootaloo an' I are gonna sneak inta Canterlot and try an' solve this mystery ourselves, barrin' gettin' arrested an' probably charged with treason, if that's all right with you."

"Sure, whatever. So, like I said, ten in the old hut, plus however many can camp outside..."

"Uh...ok, sis!"

She trotted back to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. "I'm out of excuses," she said.

Sweetie Belle sighed. "We're really going through with this?"

"If you don't, I'll just do it on my own!" said Scootaloo with a grin.

"At least this way we can keep an eye on her," said Apple Bloom.

Sweetie Belle looked at the both of them. Scootaloo was staring at her and giving her what the pegasus thought was a winning smile. Apple Bloom was eyeing Scootaloo with a look of concern.

Without her, they'd last five minutes. Tops.

She rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine. Let's go get into trouble."

Out of the frying pan...

The thing about the Everfree that you always forgot, was how big it was.

Equestria was bigger, sure. But Equestria was just a line on a map. The Everfree Forest and the Dragonspine Mountains and the Great Plains were all parts of it, but they were at their heart different places, bound together by one name. You could look at them on the map and marvel how much paper they took up, but if you travelled by train from Canterlot all the way out to Appleoosa, well, you knew you’d gone from one neighbourhood to the other.

The Everfree, on the other hand, was one vast unknown country. Even Celestia’s power didn’t extend far into the undergrowth. The greater depths of the forest proper were truly unexplored territory - true “here be dragons” territory.

There was no better place to hide from the Princess and her guards.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash made their way north and east through the forest. They kept about half a day’s solid travel from the edge, which was plenty far enough into the forest for either of them. Dash would periodically take to the skies, to track their progress. To Twilight, stuck on the ground, it was monotonous, the endless hours of tramping through the undergrowth punctuated only by a seemingly endless progression of course changes and doublings-back as the pegasus guided them.

They didn’t encounter anypony - or anything - else. A couple of times, Dash rocketed to the ground and told Twilight to hide, minutes before one of the Everfree’s many inhabitants came blundering (or clattering, or buzzing) past. At night, they dared not risk a fire - smoke and flames could attract guards from one side - and worse from the other.

It was only an hour after sunrise on the third day of their exile (Twilight had counted their initial flight from Ponyville and the headlong dash through the outskirts of the Everfree as day one) that they got their first sight of Canterlot. They crested a hill that poked up baldly from the body of the Everfree to behold stone walls and houses in the middle distance. Smoke drifted lazily from chimneys, and ponies went about their everyday chores.

Rainbow Dash sat down beside her, shrugging to rearrange her saddle-bags. Late yesterday afternoon they’d stopped in a clearing, and the pegasus had rummaged about under a rotten old tree stump. She’d retrieved a few days’ worth of trail rations and some bedrolls, all held in a leather saddle bag and wrapped up in an oilcloth. She’d bragged about always being prepared until Twilight had stared her into submission, and finally admitted that her parents had mentioned the spot in passing when she was a filly.

One of these days, Twilight thought, she’d have to meet these parents.

“What’s the plan?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Unless they’re really paranoid, they’ll still let everyone into Canterlot proper.” Twilight squinted, trying to make out the town gates. “The Palace is a different story, but I have Rarity’s pass to let us in. We’ll go just before dinner time, around when they change shift. It should be busiest then - hopefully they don’t ask too many questions.”

“She gave that pass up voluntary?” Dash asked.

“She did.” Twilight gave the pegasus a level look. “She is sorry about what happened, you know.”

Rainbow Dash stared back, but in the end she was the first to drop her gaze. “Let’s just get this done,” she said. “So, what, we waltz up and say we’re two operatives and we need to get in quick fast?”

“One operative,” Twilight said. “The pass only works for one pony.”

“I know I’m not a math genius like you, Twi, but there’s two of us. What am I going to do while you wander around the palace?”

“Oh,” Twilight said, getting up. “Don't worry. I have a plan to get you in too...”

“You found her where, exactly?” the guard asked.

Twilight flipped her main. Rarity did that, right? “Oh, skulking around the edge of the forest, watching everything that was going on. She clearly knew what was happening, and we already have reports of her taking part in subversive activity.”

Rainbow Dash strained against her makeshift bonds. Between the outdoor equipment, some nearby vines, and Twilight’s considerable telekinetic fine motor skills, they’d managed to truss the pegasus up in a believably prisoner-esque manner. Twilight just hoped she hadn’t cut off blood flow to anywhere important.

The guard looked singularly unimpressed. His colleague didn’t seem particularly inclined to help out. And Twilight was aware of a small queue forming behind her. No one had recognised her yet - a few days’ worth of grime and the heavy saddlebags obscuring her cutie mark would help in that regard - but she was sure it was only a matter of time. Canterlot was only so big, after all.

The guard peered at her pass. He was an earth pony stallion, obviously hired for his intimidating looks and not his intellectual prowess. His burnt-orange coat clashed horridly with his armour, all gilt and stylised sunbursts, and his brown mane hung down over his eyes as he squinted at the writing.

Twilight tried not to appear nervous, and failed.

“Says here you’re supposed to be white,” he said finally.

Twilight gave a sigh. “I’m travelling incognito,” she said. “I don’t want everyone to know I’m here.”

“She’s not on the pass,” the guard said, nodding to Rainbow Dash.

Twilight attempted a withering glare. “When they issued me the pass, they didn’t know I’d get a captive, did they?”

“Let ‘em through," the other guard said, leaning against the palace wall. "We haven’t got all day.”

“Idunno,” said the first one. Twilight repressed an urge to yell at him. If this was the calibre of earth pony intellect in the Party, she could almost see why Rarity-

No, that’s a bad thought, and we’re not thinking bad thoughts.

OK, this guard was just a particularly stubborn, unkempt example of the probably proud and noble earth pony line, and it wasn’t his fault that luck or genetics played him a particularly-

“Nope, yer not getting in,” he said. “Now, shove off.”

OK, that’s it.

“Really?” Twilight advanced on him. “I have the pass,” her horn glowed as she yanked it from the guard’s hooves, “I have a captive, and I can’t even trust my handler. I’ve spent two days trekking through the wilderness to get here, just to make sure the Committee was informed of what happened at Ponyville. We have this sort of measure in place just to deal with situations like these, and you’re going to be the horse-shoe in the gears that stops this whole machine working?”

She was eye-to-eye with him now. Well. Eye-to-shoulder.

“Yup,” he said, glaring at her. “That’s me. Now, shove off.”

Her mind was racing. Usually, getting angry with other ponies worked. She could feel the glares of the growing queue of ponies behind her.

“Well,” she said quietly, “I guess you’ll just have to report to your superiors why you didn’t let a Committee operative into the palace to discuss vital and time-sensitive information with them.”

His gaze didn’t waver. “Sounds good to me,” he said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his companion open his mouth to say something, and then think better of it.

Celestia damn it, what’s it going to take to get him to crack? What would Rarity do?

Ah.

Her lip quivered slightly. She thought sad thoughts.

The guard stomped a hoof nervously.

Twilight thought about that one time as a filly, when she’d scrimped and saved enough to buy an icre-cream from the pony on the street corner a block down from her dad’s work. Then on the way back, someone had bumped into her and the ice-cream had gone flying off the cone, into the street.

She could feel tears threatening.

The guard looked nervously at his buddy, who gave a shrug.

She’d spent weeks saving up that money.

A single tear traced its way down her cheek.

“Fine!” the guard said, rolling his eyes. “You can go in. You!” he pointed a hoof accusingly at the other guard. “Take her to reception. Get her checked out.”

Twilight hid a smile as they proceeded through the gate. Rainbow Dash gave her a glower - she wasn’t sure if that was for getting the pegasus to stand out here tied up, or for her excellent acting job. Regardless, they were in.

One of the joys of youth is that afternoons tend to last forever. You can spend an eternity with just yourself and a stick, if you really put your mind to it.

Of course, this means that when you’re hunkered down under a bush watching guards do nothing much, each minute seems like a year.

“Can’t we ambush them or steal their stuff or tie them up or something?” Scootaloo asked.

“Nope,” said Sweetie Belle. “Because it doesn’t work like that in real life.”

“But I’m boooooored.”

Sweetie Belle cast an annoyed look the pegasus’ way. “Then you should’ve stayed behind with Applejack and Big Mac, rather than coming along with us. Now quiet, before they hear us.”

“They’re movin’,” said Apple Bloom, eyes fixed on the village.

The three of them were hunkered down just outside the village boundary, as close as they could get to the Town Square. While the Everfree didn’t extend right to Ponyville proper, you could still get pretty close if you didn’t mind darting from bush to bush. The three of them had a lifetime’s experience hiding from older sisters and teachers: evading the gazes of a couple of guards was no problem.

“They’ll be on rotation,” said Scootaloo, attention focussed once again. “At some point they’ll change over, and that’ll be our chance.”

“What,” Sweetie Belle asked, “when there’s twice as many milling around?”

“Their attention will be...” Scootaloo waved her hoof. “They won’t be paying attention.” She traced a line across the landscape. “We go one bush, two bush, chariot.”

Apple Bloom looked up. “One bush, two bush, what?”

“Chariot,” Scootaloo repeated. She pointed. Just behind the guards, parked up against someone’s house, was a chariot. It was a two-wheel affair, with enough room for two ponies to stand inside and a chest for luggage firmly attached to the back.

“How do you even know they’re on rotation?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Guards are always on rotation,” said Scootaloo.

“Says who?”

“Says books.”

“What’re we going to do with a chariot?” Apple Bloom asked in a hoarse whisper.

“We’re gonna climb into the chest on the back,” said Scootaloo, “and hitch a ride to Canterlot.” She grinned.

“Oh no,” said Sweetie Belle. “No way are we doing that.”

Scootaloo gave her a glare. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Too chicken to hitch a ride?”

“This isn’t a game. If they catch us, it’s not just early bed-times for a week.”

“Girls,” Apple Bloom said, “girls, they’re moving again!”

They piped down, eyes on the guards. The two guarding the town’s edge - both burly stallions in armour - where holding a conversation with two others, who’d just arrived.

“OK, fine,” said Sweetie Belle, “so they’re changing-“ she glanced in Scootaloo’s direction. The pegasus was gone. Apple Bloom pointed towards another bush, one that was rustling suspiciously. An orange hoof stuck out and waved them over.

Sweetie Belle exchanged glances with Apple Bloom. “She doesn’t actually think...”

Apple Bloom shrugged. “If she does it an’ gets caught,” she said, “we’ll hear no end of hell from Rarity an’ Applejack.”

Sweetie Belle gave the situation an appraising look.

“Ah reckon we could at least hold her down ’til they leave,” Apple Bloom volunteered.

It was sane. It was well-reasoned. And it would stop them having to deal with Canterlot guards and goodness-knows-what-else. So why wasn’t she immediately acting on it?

Oh, right. Some part of her wanted to stow away, infiltrate Canterlot, and save the day. Joy.

“Sweetie Belle?” Apple Bloom asked.

The unicorn sighed. “Come on, Apple Bloom,” she said. “Looks like I'm getting a cutie mark in really bad decision making.”

“You’re sure you can get in this way?” Dash asked. She was pacing nervously back and forth, occasionally running a hoof over her wings where her improvised bonds had cut her a bit too tight for comfort. Their escort was in some sheltered nook in the Palace gardens, sleeping off a telekinetic brick cocktail. On the one hand, Rainbow Dash was impressed with Twilight’s precision and control. On the other, her devotion to the task was just a bit unnerving.

“Sure,” said Twilight. “I used to sneak in this way heaps when I was a filly. The kitchen’s right next to it, and the cook used to cool apple turnovers overnight. All you’ve got to do,” she said, squinting as her horn glowed, “is lift the latch and also push on the corner...” There was a click, and the door swung open. “Presto,” Twilight said, giving a little bow.

“Huh,” said Rainbow Dash, refusing to be impressed. She trotted through, into the palace proper, glancing up and down the corridor nervously.

It was big, and wide, and Dash couldn’t help noticing that there was a severe lack of places to hide if guards came charging from elsewhere in the palace. The floor was covered in faded rugs, which at least muffled their hoof-steps, and the blue-grey stone of Canterlot Palace arced up over their heads, drawing the eye up, up.

Rainbow Dash launched off the ground and hovered a few feet in the air. It wouldn’t change much, but she felt more comfortable like this.

“Turnovers,” she said, as Twilight crept in behind her and closed the door quietly.

“Yeah,” said Twilight, “what about them?” She looked both ways down the corridor, paused for a moment, and then proceeded left.

Rainbow Dash followed, occasionally looking behind them. There was no sign of anypony else, but she wasn’t taking any chances. “You know, Applejack could make you as many turnovers as you wanted. All you have to do is ask her.”

“It’s not the same if someone just gives them to you,” said Twilight. “Hold on.”

They’d come to an intersection, where their corridor joined onto another. Twilight kept flattened against the wall while Rainbow gave a couple of solid wingbeats, rising into the air. Once she was near the ceiling, she poked her head around, before quickly pulling back and descending.

“Guard,” she whispered. “Headed this way.”

The two of them withdrew to a handy alcove, squeezing in alongside a life-size statue of some unicorn or other, cast in bronze and rearing on two feet. Twilight adjusted the pack - whatever Dash had in it, it was heavy.

The pegasus risked a peak out of the alcove. “He’s headed this way!” she whispered, torn between yelling in fear and clamming up. “What do we do what do we do what do we do?”

“I’ve got this,” said Twilight. She has an irrational urge to drop the saddlebags right now and itemise everything in them, but she pushed that thought to the back of her brain. Her horn glowed - just a little bit, just enough. “Stay very, very still,” she muttered.

The guard made his measured pace down the corridor. This was the cushy shift: no one was interested in this section of the palace, and they kept it patrolled more for policy’s sake than anything else. He paused for a break next to an alcove, and admired the statue someone had placed there. Three bronze figures looked out - a rearing unicorn, his companion, braced with horn presented, obviously ready to cast a spell, and a pegasus, cowering underneath the two of them.

He cast an eye over the figures. He wasn’t an afficionado of art, not by any stretch, but even he could appreciate the life the sculptor had managed to put into them. You could almost feel the determination radiating off the spell-casting mare, or the fear in the heart of the pegasus. It was like whichever pony had made this piece had really captured a piece of life in the bronze.

He let out a sigh. They kept an eye on how fast you did your rounds, these days. Maybe when he had time off, he could come back and find out who’d cast this particular piece. In the meantime, there was guard duty to do. He turned back and continued on his rounds.

Twilight waited a good twenty seconds before she let the spell drop. Rainbow Dash let out a ragged breath. “Let’s...” she said. “Let’s not try that again, shall we?”

Sundown meant their guard shift was over. They’d drawn lots and Storm Front and Jetstream had lost, so they got to pull the chariot.

“Don’t forget to give it a wash when you’re done!” one of the luckier ones called out, as they assembled in the town square. Storm Front considered giving him a rude gesture, and thought better of it. The last thing she’d need after hauling this thing back to Canterlot was half an hour’s physical as punishment for Disrespecting a Senior Officer.

One by one, the pegasi launched into the air, keeping a holding pattern once they were up. Jetstream shrugged into the harness and stretched his wings, giving the chariot an experimental pull.

“Jeez,” he said, “either I ate too many doughnuts again, or this thing is heavy.”

Storm Front rolled her eyes, ducking into the harness. “Stallions,” she muttered, as she took up the slack. The two of them tensed, and launched themselves into the air.

A pair of eyes peeked out of the luggage compartment.

“We’re fly-mph!”

“Quiet, Apple Bloom. It’s working!”

“Did you have to say that?”

“But it is!”

“But it only stops working after you say it’s working!”

“Shh! They’ll hear us!”

Up front, Storm Front gave a grunt. “Maybe you did eat too many doughnuts,” she said. “Feels like I’m having to lift the whole cart, plus you.”

“Hey,” Jetstream said, “you want to pull this thing by yourself?”

Grumbling all the way, front end and back, the chariot made its way toward Canterlot.

Their luck ran out about the same time they got to the front of the palace.

Dash was still flying point, trying to keep out of sight on the basis that guards never looked up. It was working quite well, until she and Twilight rounded a corner just as a squad of guards piled out of a room.

The one in the lead looked them over dismissively. "Shouldn't you be with the tour groups?" he asked.

"Uh, tour groups? Oh, yeah," Twilight said. Bouyed up by her recent success in bluffing, she continued. "I think we got lost? I was looking at this marvellous statue..."

She trailed off. The guard was looking above her, at Rainbow Dash - Twilight glanced up - strike that, to the spot of air that Rainbow Dash had until very recently been occupying.

Their eyes met. Twilight gave a sickly grin.

"Guards!" the stallion yelled. Twilight turned tail and bolted back around the corner.

"Dash!" she yelled, galloping down the hallway. Walls and windows blurred past her. Behind her, she could hear the sound of the squad giving chase.

The pegasus was streaking in front of her, a back-draft of disturbed air from her passage causing tapestries to billow and vases to rock on their stands. "Sorry!" she yelled over her shoulder. Then, "look out!"

Twilight looked behind her. The guards were gaining - even with her head-start, she figured they only had a minute or so before they got caught.

And it was going so well, too.

She looked ahead, and almost ran into another guard.

"Hey!" he yelled.

She dodged, almost ran into the wall, corrected, ducked, continued. Her lungs were started to burn. Unicorns weren't made for long-distance running.

"Hey, you!" the guard said. There was a clatter of hooves as he turned and started on her tail. She dare not look back.

"Dash," she said, "slow down!"

"Do what?" Rainbow Dash turned, mid-flight, to look at Twilight, and ran smack into an archway. The pegasus tumbled from the air, landing on the thick carpet with a grunt. Twilight's eyes narrowed. She could hear the guard on her heels, and behind him, the squad who'd originally been chasing them. They were bearing up on the pegasus, who was just getting to her hooves, when she closed her eyes, took a breath...and leaped.

She tackled Rainbow Dash just as the pegasus found her feet, and the two of them tumbled along the carpet like a pastel-coloured bowling ball. Twilight got a glimpse or two of the end of the corridor, where it turned ninety degreees. Occasionally she got a look behind her, at the cadre of angry guards chasing them. One of them was close - too close - and as she tumbled she saw him bunching his muscles, ready to leap on them.

No time. She closed her eyes. Her horn glowed. There was a pop.

The guard landed on thin air, tumbled a few feet along the carpet, and slammed into the wall.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash were nowhere to be found.

"Where are-"

"Shhh!"

There was a clatter of hooves as the rest of the guards arrived.

"Where did they go?" one asked. His voice was muffled.

"Damned if I know." A different voice. "One minute here, the next minute...poof."

"Damn unicorns. Snow, sound the alarm! The rest of you, start searching."

"Captain, she could be any-"

"Do I look like I care? Lock down the palace! Get the night shift up. And someone get me my armour!"

There was a chorus of acknowledgements, and the sound of retreating hoofsteps.

"Well, drat," said Twilight, eventually.

"Er, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked. "Where are we? And why's it so dark?"

"Well, if I fix the second problem," Twilight said, "it might help with the first."

She closed her eyes (not that it made much difference right now), and her horn glowed with a faint light. Just enough to see by - hopefully not enough to get noticed by.

They were in a corridor, although it was considerably less opulent than the one they'd come from. There were no statues, no tapestries, and definitely no carpet. There was also a notable lack of windows.

"Excellent!" Twilight said, pleased with herself.

"Excellent?"

"Well," she started, "I figured that since we spent so much effort getting into the palace we'd want to stay within the palace (not to mention that teleporting myself and another pony outside of the palace would probably put me out of action for days). Unfortunately, I need a good image of where I'm headed, and just before I didn't have anything like that, but I figured that where the corridor turned there should probably be something on the other side of it, like a room or another corridor or something, and I figured if I just put that image in my mind, with a strong association of where it was relative to us, it would work."

"But we're not in a corridor or-"

"A-ha! See, that's where the stroke of genius comes in. The guards would expect me to do that, and they'll be fanning out from where we vanished from."

"So...we didn't do that?"

"Nope!"

"So...uh," Rainbow Dash looked around again. "Where are we?"

"Down." Twilight grinned.

Rainbow Dash scratched her head. "Down?"

"I worked out we were headed down one of the sixteen main corridors in the central section of the palace: you can tell because of the archways and sometimes because of the carpeting, but mainly the archways. Under each of those there's a service tunnel, for the staff and for storage, but apparently they hardly ever get used any more."

"Apparently?"

"Well, I only know this from talking to some of the cleaning staff when I was here as a filly. Anyway, I figured that if the service tunnels were any good, they'd have to be at least two ponies high and probably three times that wide, and even given a pretty strong archway you need so much masonry and packed earth between levels to distribute stress, so I took what I knew of ancient Equestrian building practices and...well, guesstimated."

"Guesstimated?" Rainbow Dash was starting to feel well out of her depth, her only contributions to the conversation being parroting words back at Twilight.

"Well, how far down we needed to go."

"And if you got it wrong?"

"Oh," said Twilight, grinning, "you don't need to worry. If I teleported you into solid matter, death would be instantaneous. You wouldn't feel a thing!"

Rainbow Dash should be angry at that. She knew she should. It was the sort of thing you normally got angry about. But there were too many things happening right now, and at least Twilight seemed to know what she was doing.

"How did you figure all that out while we were being chased?" she asked.

Twilight gave her a look, and shrugged. "Well, you're not using your brain when you're running. And we needed to get out of there somehow."

Rainbow Dash shook her head. Unicorns, she thought. "OK," she said. "What's the plan now?"

"Well, I guess we try to find our way out of here. The guards'll be on the lookout for magic use now they know I'm here. But I figure that if the service tunnels all meet in the centre, there should be a way up there."

"So we walk?"

Twilight nodded. "We walk."

They set off, headed toward where Twilight reckoned the centre of the Palace was. Their hoofsteps echoed off the walls, up and down the corridor. The only thing lighting their way was Twilight's horn, which showed them about twenty feet up the corridor, twenty feet behind - and nothing more.

They walked in silence. Support beams, solid grey stone, the same colour at the mountain Canterlot was built into the side of, hugged the wall every ten feet or so. Rainbow Dash started counting them, trying to keep track of the distance they'd travelled, but lost count at either sixteen or seventeen, and gave up. Every minute or so she'd jump into the air, hover for a few feet, then come back down to earth.

The underground made her feel nervous.

Eventually, the pegasus looked over to Twilight. "So, ah," she said. "What's down here?"

"Well," said Twilight, "obviously they keep cleaning stuff down here - or, well, kept. Apparently they have three different sets of furniture down here for feasts too, and at least one set of ceremonial armour for the guard for parades. Although they'd have to clean the dust off of that. And, uh..."

"And what?"

"Well, there's always rumours that there's dungeons down here too."

"Dungeons?" said Rainbow Dash. This sounded less boring than furniture.

"Well, back from when Equestria wasn't quite as civilised. Apparently they used to keep prisoners in the lower levels of the basement, and sometimes they'd well..." Twilight swallowed. "They'd interrogate them down here."

"You mean torture?"

"But I'm sure that's all locked up!" Twilight added hurriedly. "I'm sure they haven't had to use the dungeons in...oh my."

They'd emerged into a room. It was circular, and big enough that they could only just see the far wall in the faint light of Twilight's horn. In the middle of the room was a pit, extending up ten feet and down as far as they could see. Around the edge ran a stone staircase, at least three ponies wide.

"Uh...Twi..." Dash said. "Did those cleaners ever mention a giant pit boring right into the centre of the earth when they were talking about the tunnels under the palace?"

"You'd expect that sort of thing would come up, wouldn't you." Twilight walked forward and peered over the edge of the staircase, acutely aware that there wasn't any railing or ledge or anything to stop her tripping and falling, falling for minutes, hours, days, down, down into the dark...

She felt dizzy, and took an uncertain step backward. "OK," she said to herself, "no more staring into the abyss."

"What's down there?" Dash asked.

"I don't know," Twilight replied. "It looks like the staircase keeps going, and I think I saw a door, but I can't see a bottom to the pit at all."

Rainbow Dash sprang into the air, hovering above the pit. She shuddered, landed back on next to Twilight.

"It makes me feel weird," she said, settling her wings back against her body.

"It makes you feel weird?" Twilight asked. "You regularly do nose-dives from the cloud layer."

"Yeah," said Rainbow Dash, looking anywhere but at Twilight. "Shut up." She paused. "Hey, Twi, did you say no one used these corridors?"

"As far as I know, yeah. Why?"

Rainbow Dash pointed with a hoof, silent.

The staircase was layered in a film of thin dust, fine and grey. There was a morass of hoofprints surrounding the two of them, where they'd walked back and forth. And leading down the staircase, further into the darkness, there were several more.

Twilight looked at the pegasus. "We've got a mission here, Rainbow," she said. "We can't just run off after everything."

"Twilight, you said this is where they threw prisoners, right?"

"Well, yes-"

"Prisoners like Fluttershy?"

"I...Rainbow, we don't even know if they took her back here! She could be anywhere in Equestria by now! They could have secret holding facilities off in the Griffon Islands or something for prisoners like her!"

Rainbow Dash's eyes narrowed. "What, and you're going to walk off without at least checking?"

Twilight stared at the pegasus in the light of her horn. The tunnels were silent, even after this time. She knew the search would get down here eventually, and their tracks in the dust would let the guards know right where they were - and where they'd gone. They needed to make the most of this advantage.

But Rainbow Dash was looking at her with her heart in her eyes. And worse, the pegasus was right.

Twilight sighed. "Fine," she said, "but after that - we're going straight to Celestia."

The staircase went down two full turns before they found the next door. Twilight was getting dizzy - from the downward spiral or the presence of that black pit, she wasn't sure. It had an effect on both of them, that was true enough. Rainbow Dash, who positively loved heights, was hugging the wall religiously. She was glad when they reached the door, and the hoofprints in the dust stopped.

The door was solid oak, almost black in the violet light of Twilight's horn. She pushed it open and it swung inward easily. Twilight didn't trust that - door this big should creak, or groan, or make some sound when they opened. A silent door was a well-maintained door, and Twilight didn't want to think why this door was well-maintained.

They emerged into a corridor, curving both ways around the Pit. (It didn't need a capital, she knew. Just "the pit" would do, but after so much exposure to it, the proper noun just slid into place, sitting there insolently in her thoughts like it had always been there, and meant to stay around just as long as it could.) Every fifty feet or so there was a door, thick wood, of the same material as the door they'd entered by. A tiny iron grille sat at head height, giving a brief glimpse into the cells beyond. For cells they were - tiny, just enough room for one pony, and bereft of comfort or convenience.

Worse, the corridor had been swept clean, and recently.

"We need to split up," Rainbow Dash said.

"That's a really bad idea," Twilight said, almost instinctively. She'd read books; she knew what happened when ponies split up.

"No, look, we need to split up," Rainbow Dash said. "If this thing runs all the way around the Pi-"

"Don't call it that."

Rainbow Dash shot her a glare. "Around...it. If the corridor runs all the way around, that's a lot of cells. The guards will get here eventually. We need to find Fluttershy and get out of here before that happens."

"But what about light?" Twilight asked.

"I'll be fine, don't worry." Rainbow Dash rested a hoof onher shoulder. "We'll find her, Twilight."

And the pegasus trotted off into the darkness, without a backward glance.

Twilight stared off after her for a good minute. She could hear the sound of hoof-steps echoing off the corridor, reverberating from wall to wall, and every so often the sound of Dash's voice as she called Fluttershy's name. Each time it was slightly fainter.

She shook her head. This place was getting to her. She turned and started checking the doors.

The first ten were empty. Each one the same as the last - a small bench of stone, for sleeping, a space maybe ten feet by ten feet, for pacing, and a hole in the corner of the cell, presumably for everything else that a pony needed to do. At each door, Twilight peered in, her horn pushing feeble light into the corners of the cell. Each time she found the cell empty, a combination of relief and growing anxiety coursed through her.

As she approached the eleventh, she heard weeping.

There was a figure in the corner of the cell. It was too dark to see anything else - the light from her horn didn't do much more than cast silhouettes and shadows.

"Hello?" Twilight whispered.

The sobbing stopped. The figure turned to look at Twilight, and she did so a pair of wings unfolded - deep, navy blue in the faint light. Their eyes met, and as they did, Twilight realised that she knew the pony in the cell.

"Luna?" she asked.

The pony galloped to the door and put her hooves on the grille. Her wings were twitching - Twilight wasn't sure if it was nerves or the terrible conditions. She kept looking at the Princess' forehead. She had no horn. She looked away, but her eyes crept back there.

She had no horn.

"You're not a guard!" Luna - or the Luna lookalike - was saying, quietly, hurriedly, "you're here to get me out, aren't you? Did my parents contact you? How did you get past the guard? Do you have a key?"

Twilight blinked. She looked so much like Luna...

"Luna?" she repeated. "Princess?"

"What? Who?" the pegasus asked. Adjusting to the light, she focussed on Twilight's face. "Wait, you're the purple one!"

"Twilight, Twilight Sparkle. I rescued you. It...is it you? What are you doing down here? Where's your horn?"

"Rescued me? You attacked me! Or...she attacked me. You're here to rescue me?"

Twilight banged the bars in frustration. "You're not listening to me!" she said. "Look, what happened-"

There was a clang further down the corridor. As one, both of them froze. The light from Twilight's horn winked out, replaced by the flickering glow of torchlight.

"...come down here if they wanted to," said a voice - somepony entering the corridor from the staircase, Twilight imagined. "The pit gives me the willies."

There was a clang as the door closed, then the muffled clop of hooves as a pony - no, two ponies - started walking down the corridor.

"Look, we got orders," said a voice, "just check, then we head back up."

Twilight glanced back at Luna - or the Luna-imposter, or whatever. The pegasus' eyes had gone wide. "Oh goddess," she whispered to herself. "Oh goddess oh goddess they're coming back you need to help me get me out get me out get me out!"

Twilight looked down at the door. It was thick, solid wood, with a large iron lock embedded in it. She'd never done this before, but, well, she'd read about locks...

What're you doing? part of her mind screamed. They're guards, they'll catch you, they'll ruin everything!

"Oh my goddess they're coming they're coming to take me away and then they're-"

"Shut up," said Twilight, her horn glowing again. She knew what locks looked like. She'd read books about them. It was a bunch of tumblers, one after the other. Assuming this one wasn't any different...

It's just like a series of linear equations, she thought to herself. I just have to make them all line up.

"Don't worry, girlie," came a voice from down the corridor. Twilight almost bolted. They must be talking about Lu- about the pegasus, she thought. Part of her was whimpering along with Luna, begging her to flee, to leave this pony to her fate. Twilight was ignoring that voice.

"Yeah," said the second voice, "just a routine checkup. Seems like one of Celestia's pets has got loose in the Palace, so we just need to hunt her down and bring her back to her owner."

That caused Twilight to flinch. Celestia knew it was her. Of course. A bunch of guards had seen her, someone would have passed her description up the chain. Which meant-

"Oh goddess get me out please, I'll do anything, just get me out of here," the pegasus whined.

Twilight frowned. Focus.

She could feel the tumblers in her mind, each one positioned differently, each one needing just the right amount of force to click into place. It was a bit more intricate than she'd predicted, keeping tabs on each, pressing and holding in the right locations.

She emptied her mind. No guards. No Luna-lookalike-pegasus. No Rainbow Dash running around here too. No Celestia, with whatever game she was playing. No friends back in Ponyville.

Just her, and the lock.

Everything faded out. She could still hear it, sure - the guards calling out in jest, Luna screaming at her now, the little voice in the back of her head telling her to run - but it wasn't as important. Not as important as a little magic here, a little magic there, and then...

...and then it clicked.

And the door creaked open, and time reasserted itself. The pegasus flung herself against the door, which flew open, slamming Twilight against the wall. Then she felt the weight of a pony's body against her - armoured, sweating. A guard's face leered at her. "Gotcha," he said in a whisper.

"She's free!" the other guard said, galloping past. "The prisoner's free!" The first guard looked up, hooves still pinning Twilight against the wall.

Twilight shook her head. Thoughts felt..fuzzy. She needed to get out. To safety. Where could she go that was safe? Her horn glowed.

The guard turned back to her. He saw the glow. "Hey," he said, raising his hoof, "none of tha-"

He was too late.

Silence.

Not the silence of the underground passages, where nopony ever went. Not the silence of the Everfree, where at least three different species were watching you, working out if you were lunch.

Instead, the silence of study. The silence of civilisation.

Twilight took a breath. Then she realised where she was. She kicked herself. This wasn't safe. She really must have taken a bang to the head if she thought-

A page turned behind her.

"Hello, my faithful student."

...into the fire

Twilight's horn glowed. She envisioned the tunnels under the palace, felt the magic well up inside her-

-and hit a wall.

Celestia stood up languidly. "Leaving so soon?" she said, a playful note in her voice. "But you've only just arrived! Tea?"

The Princess' horn glowed. To her left, a tea set was sitting on a sidebar: the teapot lifted and gently poured tea into two cups.

Two cups - Celestia had been expecting her. Twilight had hoped that her confrontation with her mentor would at least have been a little less one-sided.

The teaset floated piece-by-piece to the table where Celestia had been sitting. "Won't you join me?" she asked, smiling. "I think you have some questions to ask me."

Questions raced through Twilight's head. Why doesn't anyone in Ponyville trust technology? What happened to Cheerilee? Is Rarity really spying for you? Who did I talk to on my last night in Ponyville? She'd thought she'd have to force these out of Celestia. She felt she was missing something.

Celestia's brow creased. "Sit," she suggested. Twilight realised she'd been standing there, staring at the teaset. Mind still churning, she trotted over to the table and sat on one of the chairs.

"Now," the princess continued. "Go on, ask away."

"Why is Luna locked up downstairs? And what have you done to her horn?" It wasn't the question Twilight wanted to ask, but it was the one that slipped out first.

Celestia nodded, sipping her tea. "So. I see you got that far in the palace. I'd hoped that the guards would have enough tact to pull you in without causing too much of a ruckus." She waved a hoof absent-mindedly. "The Gala and all."

"The Gala's tonight?"

"Yes," Celestia said. "I sent you an invitation, you know."

Twilight shook her head. "Aren't you supposed to be telling me about Luna?"

Silence as Celestia took another sip of tea, and put the cup down. Twilight still hadn't touched hers.

"First," the Princess said, "how about you give me your latest report? I understand you're owing on a few lessons, and events have been somewhat...hectic, in Ponyville."

Twilight glared at the Princess. She was playing at something, the unicorn knew.

"Well?" Celestia asked.

Twilight sighed. She collected her thoughts. Celestia sat patiently, watching her student, waiting.

"The last time we talked," Twilight said, "was the day after Summer Sun, in Ponyville..."

She recounted the past days' events, in brief. Celestia listened, nodding occasionally but never interrupting. It was something they'd done every day, back when Twilight was still a filly and times were more innocent. She found herself slipping into the routine - then she'd notice, start, and glare at the Princess. If Celestia noticed these pauses, she didn't give any sign.

There was one thing different from usual - Twilight found herself scanning every sentence in advance, censoring herself. She still didn't know what Celestia was up to, but she didn't want to pull her friends into it.

"...closed my eyes, teleported away from there, and found myself in your study."

Silence resumed. Celestia gave no indication that she'd heard her student's report, or that she'd noticed it had finished. Twilight watched her her carefully: she was staring into the middle-distance, eyes fixed on something only she could see. Her horn glowed faintly, the only indication that her anti-magic shield - or whatever it was she was using to keep Twilight here - was still in effect.

The unicorn shifted nervously. "Well?" she asked.

"Hmm?"

"I've given you my report. Will you tell me what Luna's doing in your dungeon? If it is Luna and not a body double for some bizarre stunt."

"I'd have thought you'd ask about the rumours you've heard of me," Celestia mused. "About this Party, or the presence of the guards in Ponyville, or the unfortunate incident with the teacher."

Twilight glared at Celestia. "I was getting to those," she said.

Silence again.

"The fact is, Twilight," she said, finally, "I didn't really send you to Ponyville to make friends."

Twilight started. "This better get around to Luna eventually," she said.

"It will. Eventually. Do you know how hard it is to govern a nation?"

"I- uh, no? I mean, academically I can make a guess at it..."

"It's difficult, Twilight. Trying. Ponies - I hope you don't mind me saying - ponies are shocking at governing themselves. Without someone to hold them together, they'd have divided into squabbling villages long ago. The only reason Equestria has held together as long as it has, is because it's had one strong leader at its helm since the old days."

"You," Twilight said. The cup of tea next to her fore-hoof had gone cold.

"Yes, me. Oh, there've been times when some bleeding-heart unicorn liberals try to get together and form an opposition, push for a kingdom-wide election or some such." The Princess smiled. "Sometimes I even let them, take a break while they play at ruling. But soon enough, everything falls apart and they welcome me back to the fold - sometimes grudgingly, sometimes with open hooves."

Celestia stood up from her seat, started walking the room. The study was lined with bookshelves, and she ran the tip of her horn lightly along the books' spines, looking for a particular volume. "The problem, Twilight, is statistics. One day, someone else is going to be in power when a crisis hits. They'll panic. Equestria will fall. The forces arrayed against us, Twilight, they only have to be lucky once." She turned and fixed the unicorn with a stare. "I have to be lucky every time."

Twilight sat in silence as the Princess continued to walk the room. Something caught her eye - something near the high ceiling, where small, intricately-detailed windows opened to let air into the study. She scanned the ceiling, frowning - whatever it was, she'd only noticed it out of the corner of her eye, and now she was looking straight at it, she couldn't for the life of her work out what it was.

"So," Celestia said, returning to the desk. "What would you do, Twilight?" She sat back down, carefully arranging her wings so as not to knock anything over. "Your kingdom rebels against you periodically, and every time it could spell the end. Every generation has forgotten the lessons of the generation before. Each one makes the mistakes of their parents."

"Well..." said Twilight. She thought - and then remembered her conversation with the voice in the shadows. "You...you make crises," she said.

Celestia nodded, gravely.

She tried to recall what the shadowy figure had told her. "You make crises," she repeated slowly, "and you use them to make everypony think you're a hero. You make them think Equestria is constantly under threat from the outside, and you're the only thing stopping it from collapsing, so that when external threats do occur, everypony trusts you to deal with them. And if you live for far longer than everyone else, you can just insert legends and myths into the folklore so that if necessary you have some new beast out of old mare's tales to fight. And if you have ponies in every town who're secretly loyal to you, they can make sure that these tales persist, and that anypony who suggests maybe a republic is a good idea ends up silenced."

"Exactly." Celestia nodded, pleased - with herself or Twilight, the unicorn couldn't work out. She felt like she'd passed a test. "If I didn't know better, I'd suspect you'd read the answer sheet," the princess said with a wry smile.

"But what about me?" she asked. "Why do I fit into it?"

"Twilight," Celestia said, "I'm old. I've been ruling this nation for - even I forget exactly how long. But I'll be damned if I see it all go to waste the moment I step down. I need a successor, Twilight - and I was hoping that successor would be you."

Twilight opened her mouth. Closed it, swallowed, opened it again. "You, uh..." she said. "You want me to run Equestria?"

Celestia smiled. "The term, I believe, is 'rule'."

"But-but-but I'm just a pony! I'm not an alicorn like you, I was going to be an accountant when I grew up! My parents were shocked when I didn't end up with a checklist for a cutie mark! I don't know the first thing about ruling!"

Celestia stood up and walked languidly around the table to where Twilight was sitting. "And what do you think the last ten years have been, Twilight? Do you think most magical scholars get elocution lessons?"

"Mispronouncing the wrong syllable can leave you with a dud spell, or worse," said the unicorn as if by rote.

The alicorn wandered behind Twilight. "Posture and gait?"

Twilight unconsciously drew herself up in her chair. "Hours of study take their toll. If you don't sit right, you'll have rheumatism by age thirty."

There was a smile on Celestia's lips. "Strategic reasoning?"

"Essential for...uh..."

"Twilight, I picked you out as a filly. You were a pony with great potential. I trained you to fill this position. And, as much as possible, I kept you out of the politics that involve this nation." Twilight stared straight ahead, as if by avoiding her mentor's gaze she could avoid what she was saying as well. "But at some point," said Celestia, "you'd have to come of age. I did not want you to live in Canterlot. There are too many malcontents here, who'd try to sway you. But I needed you somewhere I could keep an eye on you. Ponyville was perfect."

Celestia turned and started to browse the shelves behind her. Twilight realised she was holding her breath, and let it out. The Princess had her on edge.

"What about Luna?" she asked. "This still doesn't explain the dungeons."

"Twilight," Celestia said. Twilight could hear the smile playing at her lips. The unicorn blinked. Had she seen a flash of orange out of the corner of her eye? She scratched the back of her neck, using the opportunity to glance over in...the same direction she thought she'd caught something before. Again: nothing. Nothing at all. Except - she blinked. There was a rope leading down from one of the windows...

"Twilight," Celestia said again, oblivious. "I needed some way to bring you onto the scene. Something to make you a hero. So I manufactured the best crisis yet."

Twilight's head snapped back. "You what?"

"It caught everyone's attention, you have to give me that. Endless night, warring siblings...a good old-fashioned story. It'll stay in everyone's hearts for milennia."

"Hold on - you made Nightmare Moon? I thought you had a sister!"

"Oh, Luna? She's just some poor pegasus pony who happened to have the wrong look at the wrong time. All it took was a couple of cosmetic changes - making her a bit taller, a bit darker - and she was the perfect villain." Celestia paused, glancing back at Twilight. "We can't let her go until we're sure everything's gone off without a hitch, you understand." The Princess chuckled at Twilight's expression. "Don't worry, her family will be quite handsomely compensated for their trouble. I might have to fix some things in her mind, of course - we don't want unwanted memories surfacing in twenty years."

"But ponies would notice-!"

"Hmm, maybe you're right." Celestia touched her hoof to her chin. "Maybe I should just keep her locked up. I can always use her if Luna needs to make another appearance." She turned back to the bookshelf. "You always made such a good schemer, Twilight."

Twilight blinked. "But I- that's not what I-"

"Oh, Twilight. Think of the big picture. We're saving ponies' lives here. Anyway, you really think if I had a sister whom I'd banished to the moon for a thousand years, I wouldn't at least hint of it to you? Especially one whose sentence was about to come up. I've been ruling this nation for a milennia or two, I'm sure I can keep track of one imprisoned sibling."

"But no one had looked at-"

"Ah, here we go." Celestia's horn glowed, and a book slid from the shelf next to her. It was a thick volume, leather-bound, with an stylised pony's head and five gems on the cover.

Twilight knew the cover of that book very well.

"The Elements of Harmony? You have a copy? You knew what was going on the whole time!"

"Of course I did," Celestia said. The book floated to the table and opened in front of the unicorn. "I wrote this, Twilight. This, the prophecy, all of it. A backup plan, depending on the circumstances a thousand years in the future."

"But the prophecy was for one particular day!" Hooves scrambling, Twilight leafed through the book. She could feel Celestia studying the book over her shoulder. "Here - 'the longest day of the thousandth year'. Even you can't predict this sort of thing to the day."

"Oh, sorry, did you think this was the only prophecy? The thing about prophecies, Twilight," the Princess said, lowering her voice, "is that if they don't come true, no one notices. But if they happen to work, well..." And she smiled again.

Twilight turned the pages frantically, as if somewhere in here would be the answer - the way out of this. One page caught her eye. Writing crammed the margins, but in the centre, spread across two pages, was a detailed illustration - five symbols, and in the middle, a sixth.

"But..." she said. "The Elements of Harmony!" She looked up at the Princess. "You're saying you just let six common ponies get hold of them? You just left them hanging around in the Everfree Forest? What if we'd decided to join with your malcontents? What if we'd wanted to take over Equestria?"

"Silly pony," Celestia said. Twilight could feel her breath, warm on the nape of her neck. "The Elements," the Princess whispered, "are just as real as Nightmare Moon."

"No!" Twilight slammed the book and whirled around. Celestia looked, if anything, taken aback. The unicorn's horn glowed - an instinctive gesture; the Princess' magic barrier still prevented her doing anything. "I felt their power when I was in the Castle, when I was facing down Nightmare Moon! I felt my friends coming! They gave me strength when I thought everything was lost!"

Celestia smirked. "Because you were meant to be together?" she asked, "because together you represented the Elements? Because that made the best story? Or because I just happened to set you up with the five most suitable ponies in Ponyville? Who do you think was controlling Nightmare Moon when you faced her, Twilight? Do you think a poor pegasus from Cloudsdale was going to stand up to you? She was playing a part, Twilight." The Princess stood up and walked toward the bookshelf, the Elements floating behind her. "As were you, as were your friends." The book slotted into place, Celestia casting a critical eye along the row. "The hero, the villain, and a bevy of witnesses to tell everyone what happened there. And if I happened to add a little...sparkle to the scene - no pun intended, Twilight - you'll have to forgive me. A thousand years ruling a kingdom can make one a bit bored of the everyday."

Twilight glared at the Princess. "That's all we are to you, isn't it?" she said. "Puppets. You've been ruling this kingdom so long, you've forgotten we're real ponies." She knew this was a bad idea - to face down the Princess here, in her study, without her magic. But something inside her had been waiting, had been ready to be angry at somepony for the last week. Finally, she'd found a chance. And if she spent the rest of her life rotting in the dungeons next to Luna - next to whoever Luna was in real life, anyway - that's just the price she'd have to pay.

Scootaloo ducked back down behind the bookshelf. "They're arguing," she said.

"I can tell they're arguing," Sweetie Belle said. She was hiding behind a particularly large volume of Equestrian history, and wondering how she'd go into this mess again.

"Maybe we can burst out and help them resolve it!" Apple Bloom suggested.

"I don't think this is the sort of argument that'll get wrapped up with tea and compliments," Sweetie Belle said.

"Hold on," said Scootaloo. She poked her head back around the corner. The Princess had her back to the trio - Scootaloo was incredibly glad of that - but Twilight was looking right in their direction.

"-forgotten we're really ponies!" she all but yelled at the Princess. Her ears were flat against her head, and her mane was all but bristling.

"Twilight Sparkle," Celestia said. You could have sharpened razors on her voice. "Maybe you forget that it's my job to keep Equestria running. One pony here, one pony there - if I allow myself to start feeling for my subjects..."

The unicorn panted as Celestia spoke, her eyes darting around the room. Then she saw Scootaloo, hiding behind the bookshelf.

In stories, Scootaloo knew, this was the moment when volumes of information passed between the two of them. Instead, Twilight just looked surprised, then resigned, and then her eyes lit up like she'd just thought of something. Then she cast her gaze back to the Princess.

Scootaloo ducked back behind the bookshelf.

"Well?" Sweetie Belle asked. "What was it you were looking for?"

"If we want to do it Apple Bloom's way," the pegasus said, "they've already got a tea set out there. If not, I think Twilight has a plan..."

Twilight's mind was racing. The past few days, she'd been kept in the dark. Ponies had been keeping secrets: she'd been acting the best she could, but she'd been making decisions without complete information. She'd felt like every three steps she'd learn something new and have to recalibrate. Now things were making sense - the way Cheerilee had been hinting at "knowing" Celestia, why Rarity had been acting the way she had, how everypony in Ponyville had been so nice to her even as they tried to shut her out from their lives - even how Applejack had frozen up when she mentioned technology.

Information was flowing in. But Twilight had grown up in a household of accountants, and then had got a job as a librarian. She was good at this.

Celestia was watching her. She was waiting for Twilight to make a move - and that didn't make sense to Twilight. The Princess held all the power in this room - she'd stopped Twilight's magic without even breaking a sweat, and the unicorn had nowhere to run.

"So," she asked, stalling for time, "what happens now?"

Celestia looked down her nose at the unicorn. Something was...wrong, Twilight thought. The Princess was acting all high-and-mighty at her, but that's what it was - an act.

"What happens now," Celestia said, "is that you choose. You know what I do to keep the peace in Equestria. You know what is required to keep everypony happy - or at least, keep most ponies happy. And you know you're next in line.

"So you have to choose: do you want to sacrifice this kingdom for your belief that everypony should tell me what to do, or do you want to help me, and keep Equestria strong for another thousand years?"

Twilight blinked. Was that it? Was this what Celestia was afraid of? Surely the Princess had a backup plan for if Twilight said "no". She must have.

Unless...

Celestia smiled. "You don't have to make your mind up right away. Take a few days if you want. I understand they haven't cleaned out your old rooms yet."

Twilight stood up. "You're afraid, aren't you?"

Celestia raised an eyebrow. Twilight took a step forward. "I've been trying to work out what's wrong, why you didn't just kill this plan when things started going wrong, and I think I've worked it out."

"Do tell," Celestia said. Was there a hint of a catch in her voice?

Twilight took another step towards the Princess. "You're afraid. Not of the plan failing, not of having to wait another hundred years to find another protégé to replace you on your throne, because I imagine you're tried this before, haven't you? No, you're afraid because you've spent all these years locked up in your palace, ruling Equestria as best you see fit, not feeling, just thinking, running scenarios and calculating odds and...and rationalising the death of ponies to keep the place running! And then along comes a bright student and you think 'Oh, she'll make a wonderful replacement!' And so you take her in - do you usually take them in as your personal students, Princess? Was that your mistake?"

Twilight took another step towards Celestia. The Princess took a step back, toward the bookshelves. The unicorn grinned. "When did it happen, Princess? Was it when I cast my first spell? When I first helped raise the sun with you? Or did it take longer? Was it when I graduated, when I was walking across that stage? Or maybe even - did it take my leaving to make you realise that you actually cared for sompony?"

"Twilight," Celestia said, horn flaring. "This is most unseemly-"

"Unseemly? Unseemly is keeping me in the dark! Unseemly is trying to protect me from everything that's happening back home! Unseemly is interfering with my friends because you don't think they're good for me, because you think they'll corrupt me! Unseemly is making me dance like a puppet just so I'll fulfill your little prophecy!"

Celestia took another step back, hit a bookshelf with her rear hoof. Light coalesced around her horn. "Twilight Sparkle, I think this has gone on long enough!"

"I think you're right, Princess," the unicorn replied. Her eyes were on Celestia's horn. "Girls!"

Scootaloo fairly flew over the bookshelf and landed, hooves around the Princess' neck. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle grabbed a couple of hooves each and hugged. The Princess staggered, but didn't fall.

But her horn did wink out.

Twilight lunged for the fillies. She gathered a unicorn one one hoof, an earth pony in another, and grabbed Scootaloo (fearlessly attempting a nerve pinch that he'd seen a hundred times in comics, which just wasn't working on Celestia) in her teeth. Purple light welled up in her horn as she felt her magic flow unimpeded.

"Alfo," she said around the pegasus in her mouth, "you fuck at teaching ftatifticf!"

Then there was a flash, and the four of them left.

"Twilight?"

She had a headache. She was looking up at the sky. She had trouble focussing, but the sky seemed so close, like she could reach out a hoof and-

The sky hit her.

"Twilight!"

The sky moved. Then it became the face of Rainbow Dash. The pegasus frowned down at her. "She's awake," she said.

Twilight could see the ceiling. They were in some sort of cupboard. It smelled of cleaning supplies, ponies - a number of ponies - and burnt hair.

Her horn hurt. She reached up and touched it, then flinched. "Ow," she said. Some hair had come off on her hoof. She squinted. The ends of the hairs had been charred.

"Yeah, you probably don't want to look in a mirror right now," said Rainbow Dash.

"Where is-" Twilight managed, raising her head. She took in the scene.

Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were arrayed along one side of the closet. Scootaloo was in the middle. Sweetie Belle was watching Scootaloo, her horn lighting the cupboard. Apple Bloom was trying to adjust the remaining half of her bow. On the other side were Rainbow Dash and-

"Hi," said Fluttershy, waving.

"Oh," Twilight said, "it's you. Hello."

She lowered her head back onto the stone floor. Nice, cool stone. She briefly considered surrendering to the guards on the condition that she get to keep her head in a bucket of ice-water between now and the execution, but dismissed it on the grounds of her horn felt far too hot and nopony had that much ice.

"So," she said. "Um. Mind filling me in?"

"You were awesome!" said Scootaloo. "We came in through the window because we figured something was up with the Palace when there were Palace guards in Ponyville and then we crawled up along the rooftop and Sweetie Belle found us an open window and we climbed in and then there you were talking to the Princess and you were talking about boring stuff about governing or something and then I took a peek and saw you and I thought you had a plan but we had not idea what it was and then you backed the Princess into a corner and you were like "girls!" and then we totally ambushed the Princess and then you grabbed me and there was a flash and-"

Scootaloo paused, to draw breath.

"Anyway," said Sweetie Belle, "you managed to get us out of the room, but you weren't looking so good. We got you into a closet before the guards found us."

Twilight frowned. Her horn still hurt - she hoped she hadn't done anything permanent. Two ponies was usually her maximum - four was well in excess of advised limits.

"What about Dash and Fluttershy?" she asked.

"We were scouting the closet!" Rainbow Dash said. "In advance."

"Rainbow Dash rescued me from the dungeons," said Fluttershy, "and then we followed the guards. We thought you might have been causing trouble."

"OK, well," Twilight said. "It's good to see you again. Sorry I'm not going to rush and give you a hug, but it still feels like I had a house land on my horn." She reached up and brushed the tip of it with her hoof. "Ow. Celestia, that hurts."

She got to her hooves. "OK," she said. "What's the plan?"

Five pairs of eyes looked expectantly at her.

"Oh," she said. "Right."

They got almost to the outer wall before they hit a snag. A colourful, many-pony, flower-toting snag.

"What're they doing?" asked Rainbow Dash as they watched a small army of servants deck out the main lobby.

"Oh," said Twilight, " of course. The Gala."

"Huh?"

"The Gala's on tonight. Remember, with the tickets?"

"What's a gala?" asked Scootaloo.

Twilight gave the fillies a glance. "Adult time," she said. "You three," she said to the fillies, "keep a lookout."

The two pegasi huddled next to Twilight. Rainbow Dash was still glancing down the corridors, expecting guards at any moment. "What do we do?" she whispered.

"We're doomed!" said Fluttershy.

"No, no we're not," said Twilight. "We just have to keep our heads is all. There must be a way we can get out, even if the guards will be on high alert checking everyone who goes in or out."

"Can't we slip out in the crowd?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"It doesn't work like that at the palace. They have all sorts of magical wards set up, they can have alarms go off if a pony with the right-colour coat walks through the gates, before anypony's even looked at them."

"Uh-" said Fluttershy.

"And, well, I don't know if Celestia knows you escaped, Fluttershy, or that she got a good look at the fillies, but they know me and Rainbow Dash are in here."

"Well-" said Fluttershy.

"So we fly out," said Rainbow Dash. "Bam, I can outfly them. I bet I can even outfly them carrying you." She socked Twilight in the shoulder.

"You won't outfly royal guards, especially not if they're on double-shifts already for the Gala," said Twilight. "There's too many, they're too well-trained. They'll have the Wonderbolts on standby, too. It's not worth even trying."

"I could-" said Fluttershy.

"Well, what, then?" asked Rainbow Dash, her voice starting to creep above a whisper. "Put on uniforms? Pretend we're flower-ponies? Hide our coats with a vast army of daffodils? What's your master plan if you're so smart, huh?"

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "I don't have one, OK?" she said heatedly. "Are you satisfied now? Is that what you want to hear? The great and powerful Twilight Sparkle doesn't have an answer for everything!"

"I can help!" said Fluttershy.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash glanced at one another. The fillies were staring at the three of them nervously.

Twilight took a breath, forced herself to calm down. Her horn was still hurting. "Go on," she said.

"I, uh, I'm good at not being noticed," said Fluttershy.

"Really," said Rainbow Dash.

"I could cause a distraction. Well, uh, me and the three fillies could cause a distraction." Fluttershy looked at her hooves. "And then we could slip away and we could get out through one of the main gates. If they're not looking for us, I'm sure we can manage with everyone else. And then while everypony's distracted, you could get out."

"I guess-" said Twilight

"No," said Rainbow Dash.

"Oh," said Fluttershy. "OK."

"No?" asked Twilight.

"We're not having Fluttershy sacrifice herself for us again," Rainbow Dash said. "She's done that once already." She grinned at her fellow pegasus. "And I'm not breaking you out a second time."

Twilight looked at the two of them. Rainbow Dash was looking at Fluttershy. Fluttershy was looking at her hooves again and blushing furiously. Twilight thought she caught a smile on the pegasus' face. She realised that Rainbow Dash was right: they couldn't let Fluttershy take another hit for them. She sighed.

"OK, no distractions. Fluttershy, you take the fillies and get out of here. We'll try to get out on our own. Once you've escaped, head back to Ponyville, and we'll meet you there."

"When ah left," said Apple Bloom, "everypony was headed to our old still. I think they're plannin' on hidin' out there for a bit, at least until it all settles down."

"OK, the still then. I guess they'll be looking for us around Ponyville anyway."

"What about you two?" asked Sweetie Belle. "How'll you get out?"

The two of them looked at each other. "We'll find a way," said Twilight.

Fluttershy ended up taking the saddlebags - Twilight still wasn't quite sure how she'd kept hold of them through the dungeons, and the chase, and Celestia's study. They covered Fluttershy's cutie mark too, in case the guards had been notified. They spent as little time as possible on goodbyes - Twilight was glad no one had stumbled on them as it was, and she didn't want to push their luck further. Then, Fluttershy and the fillies trotted out into the main foyer like they were supposed to be there.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash watched from the corridor as the three fillies followed in a single line behind the pegasus, surreptitiously grabbing bunches of flowers so as to fit in. Then they went through the main door and out of the palace.

"Do you think they'll get past the outer wall?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"They'll be fine," said Twilight, ducking back out of sight. "It's us I'm worried about."

"Can't you disguise us or something?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight brushed her hoof gently against the tip of her horn, and winced. "I don't know," she said. "Usually, yes. But if I have to keep a disguise up and walk around and answer questions from suspicious guards..."

Rainbow Dash put a hoof to her chin. "What if you didn't have to walk around?" she asked.

For the past four hours, flower-ponies had been bringing bouquets and vases and ribbons and other flower-arranging paraphernalia through Mustard Flower's post. Mustard Flower's superior had been very specific at lunch that everypony was to be extremely thorough when checking credentials - something about problems in Ponyville or something. And then half an hour ago a runner had come up to Mustard Flower and told him that not only did he have to check everypony coming in, he had to check everypony going out in case they were a violet unicorn or a cyan pegasus in disguise.

It was enough to make you want to join a union.

"And where, exactly, did you leave your pass?" he snarled at the earth pony in front of him.

"It's at home, I swear!" The pony was trying to make herself as small as possible, although the image wasn't helped by the bunch of foxgloves stowed in her saddlebags that towered over the both of them. "I was late already and I couldn't find it and I needed to get here and please don't tell Mrs Pansy or she'll dock my pay again!"

"Excuse me-"

Mustard Flower snarled. He didn't need this sort of thing clogging up his day, but orders was orders. "Empty your bags," he said.

"What? But there's just flowers in-"

"I said, empty your bags!" He could feel a sneeze coming on. Sneezes weren't intimidating, and he needed intimidating right now.

The pony in front of him shrugged off her saddlebags and started emptying them. Flowers, pruning shears, those little blocks of whatever-it-was they shoved roses into...

"Uh, sorry to be of-"

Mustard Flower poked at the shears with his hoof. Could you assassinate the Princess with pruning shears? Why was he even asking himself that sort of question?

"Uh, would it be possible to get through please?"

"Sure," said Mustard Flower. "Sure."

A butter-yellow pegasus and a team of fillies laden with flowers squeezed past, out of the palace. "Have a nice day!" one of the fillies called.

"Yeah," said Mustard Flower, "you too." He sighed. He wasn't paid enough to calculate the odds of an earth pony with pruning shears taking on Celestia. "Go on," he said to the earth pony, "you can go through."

About five seconds after she passed, the pollen got the better of him, and a whole-body sneeze left him leaning against the wall.

Mustard Flower thought he might be getting hayfever.

It might have helped Mustard Flower to know that he wasn't the only one having a bad day preparing for the Gala. Mrs Pansy was the Palace's Mistress of Celebrations, which meant that she was in charge of pretty much everything currently happening. Given her title, she spent very little time celebrating.

Right now, in fact, she was wondering if they could call the whole Gala off and be done with it.

"Who puts a statue in the middle of a corridor?" she yelled at a group of burly workponies. Everypony was busy looking at the floor, or out a window, or at a particularly interesting wall-hanging, or anywhere but Mrs Pansy.

She stalked around the group, forcing each pony to make eye contact with her, even for just a second. "Honestly, I don't expect any of you to have any actual taste, but I had hoped that working for Celestia herself, some of you would at least have the common decency to take a little pride in your work. And yet I walk into the main foyer, go down a side-corridor, and find that one of you has stashed this monstrosity down there like this is a common warehouse."

She gestured with a forehoof to the object of her ire - a stone statue of two ponies - a pegasus and a unicorn, standing side-by-side.

"So is anypony going to own up to bringing this monstrosity into the Palace and just leaving it lying around, waiting for somepony to trip over it?"

Silence, once again. Mrs Pansy sighed. "Fine. You know what? I don't care any more. I just don't care. You, and you! Shift this thing out of the palace. I don't want it in here. I don't want to see it."

"Uh," said one of the labourers she'd singled out. "Where do you want us to put-"

Mrs Pansy whirled and planted her feet. "I don't care!" she said, snorting. "Chuck it onto the side of the road! Just get it out of my sight."

"Yes, Mrs Pansy," the two labourers muttered.

"As for the rest of you," she shouted, "get back to work! I don't pay you to stand around and gawk. Go!"

Mrs Pansy stalked up the corridor. One of the advantages of being Mistress of Ceremonies was that she knew where they stored the alcohol around here. If the rest of the day was going to be like this, she thought she might have to leverage that knowledge a few times.

They had the decency to chuck Rainbow Dash and Twilight onto a bed of bracken. It took Rainbow Dash several minutes' frantic wriggling to free her forehoof, but after that she was able to half-chip, half-peel off the thin layer of stone around her.

Twilight still hadn't moved by the time she was free, but she was making muffled noises. Rainbow Dash managed to get rid of the stone around her mouth.

"My nose!" Twilight said urgently. "My nose, get it free."

Rainbow Dash started pulling flakes of stone off until the unicorn's muzzle was free.

"Now scratch it, please, for the love of Celestia scratch it."

Rainbow Dash sighed and scrubbed at Twilight's nose with her hoof.

"You're a saviour. It's been itching since we got onto the main road. It's one thing if you're not supposed to scratch it, but when you physically can't scratch it? I thought I was in hell."

"I'll make you a deal," said Rainbow Dash. "I'll get the rest of this stuff off of you if you just shut up for five minutes."

Twilight was soon free of her casing, and the two of them made for the edge of the Everfree Forest where, that morning, they had looked over the city and the Palace. The sun was setting as they climbed the hill. Rainbow Dash was about to continue into the Forest when Twilight stopped her.

"Let's sit here for a little bit," she said.

Rainbow Dash looked at the unicorn, then sat down and started combing the last of the masonry from her wings. Twilight looked down on Canterlot. Preparations had finished and ponies were streaming into the Palace grounds. She could see the queues at the gates, ponies in dresses and suits and hats and whatever this year's fashion was.

"I thought you were just going to make us look like statues," said Rainbow Dash, pulling at a particularly stubborn piece of cement.

"I don't even remember why I memorised that spell," Twilight said. "I think Spike and I were making statues out of eggs and bits of parsley and whatever we could get our hooves on. I thought it might make a good party trick at some point."

"Say," said Rainbow Dash, "what did happened to Spike?"

"I honestly don't know. I don't think Celestia got her hooves on him - she didn't even mention him. I know he's only a baby dragon, but I think he can take care of himself for the moment."

The Everfree Forest was a big place. There were plenty of spots to hide.

He'd found a cave. It was in his genes, he was sure - something about caves just felt right. He'd had to find a piece of wood large enough to burn for light - he missed having someone around who could magically cast a steady glow - but beggars couldn't be choosers.

He reviewed the letter in his claws. He'd kept it brief:

Celestia trusted me as you suspected. Keeping her Party in the dark sowed enough chaos to keep the Princess' eye off the Dragon Dutchies. Twilight still trusts me - I will stay by her and keep you informed of her actions.

He didn't bother to sign it - the recipient would know who'd sent it, and even though no one would intercept the letter, he still felt uncomfortable putting his name to the words.

He drew a breath, and bathed the letter in flame. As the paper burned, it gave off a blue glow. Once it had gone, Spike laid back. He'd be able to meet up with people tomorrow. In the meantime, he could spend a night in a proper cave.

They chased her forever, and then they kept on chasing her.

The sun had hardly moved from the sky. She cowered underneath an exposed tree root, trying for her life to keep from panting, afraid even that noise would give her away. Every so often she'd hear the sound of hooves in the undergrowth, as the guards searched.

There were three of them, or at least, three different guard ponies that she'd seen. There could be more, lying in wait, ready for her to make a mistake. She had no idea.

A twig snapped, not five feet away. She froze, not daring even to breathe. She couldn't work out where the noise had come from - she dare not move her head.

There was no birdsong, no wind in the trees. The forest watched.

The back of her throat tickled. She had to breathe. She knew it would give her away.

"Hey!" a guard called.

Reality restored itself. There was another crack, the opposite side of the tree root, as somepony moved. "Yeah?" the guard said. He was inches away. Rarity could have reached over and touched him.

"I spotted her! Over here!"

The guard let out a sigh. "Celestia-damned unicorns," he muttered. And then he was off.

Rarity let in a breath. It was the best feeling she'd ever felt, better than anything. She risked a peek out from her hiding place: all clear. Whatever they'd spotted, it had saved her life. She sent a silent prayer to Celestia (even as part of her thought that it was the Princess herself who must have sent these guards after her) and set off in the opposite direction.

The bushes rustled in front of her. She froze.

The bush sprouted a candy-cotton mane and pink hooves. "Ta-da!" said Pinkie Pie.

Rarity let out another breath. "That was you?" she said.

"Sure!" said Pinkie. Then, in a deep, gruff tone, "'Hey! I spotted her! Over here!'" She giggled.

In spite of herself, Rarity smiled.

"'I'm a guard! I eat pies! Look at me, I'm marching!'" Pinkie goose-stepped up and down in front of the unicorn, her expression deadly serious. Rarity let out a laugh of her own.

"'Hail Celestia! Halt! Who goes there!'" And then Pinkie's mask broke, and she joined in the laughter.

"Oh," said Rarity, "I needed that. You have no idea how-"

"I killed Cheerilee," said Pinkie Pie.

The smiled disappeared from Rarity's face. "You...what?"

"I killed Cheerilee. She was working for Celestia. She was spying on us." The earth pony wasn't smiling, but she wasn't...well, Rarity thought, she was confessing to her that she'd murdered somepony. She shouldn't look so nonchalant.

And then Rarity thought: what if Pinkie Pie knew other ponies who were working for Celestia?

"Pinkie Pie, that's, ah, that's a bit of a far-fetched-"

"You were working for Celestia too," said Pinkie PIe. And then Rarity knew why the earth pony had followed her out here. The bottom fell from her stomach. She started backing away, ready to run. "Now, Pinkie, that's not true-"

"Don't worry!" Pinkie said, grinning. "I'm not going to kill you."

"You...you aren't?"

"No, silly!"

She stopped backing away, still ready to run. "Uh...not to suggest I'm not grateful or anything, but...why?"

"Because you hid in a cake! That was hilarious!" And Pinkie bounced away, due south.

Rarity stood there for a minute, unsure of how to react. On the one hand, Pinkie PIe had apparently forgiven her for her misdeeds. On the other, now she was stuck out here, in the forest, with Ponyville's only sociopath.

But the guards would be back soon, she knew. And as much as she hated to admit it, the earth pony had just saved her life.

She trotted after Pinkie Pie. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"Why, to the super secret Apple Family hideout, of course!"

"Of course," Rarity said, wearily. "Where else?"

Occasionally Twilight would catch a couple of notes from the band, brought to them by the wind. Right now they were playing background music - later on in the night they'd start up jigs and square-dances and more lively music, before winding down with waltzes and slow dances.

"So," said Rainbow Dash. "What do we do now?"

"Now?" Twilight asked.

"Well, we can't go back to normal. I take it from the fact that you were running from Celestia that you...uh..."

"I don't think we'll be on speaking terms for a while," Twilight said. If ever.

"What did she talk to you about?"

Twilight sighed. "Oh, you know. Ruling Equestria. Pony rights." She shrugged. "Small talk."

"Ruling Equestria, huh?"

"Yeah. Apparently she wants me to do it or something."

"And what did you say?"

Twilight was silent for a moment. Then: "I declined."

"You told Celestia 'no'?" The pegasus blew an errant lock of mane from in front of her eye. "No wonder she's pissed at you."

A pair of voices carried up from the Gala. Some debutante in a dress, being pursued by a unicorn stallion in a dinner jacket. He called out something to her; she turned her head, as if consider his offer, then stalked away. The stallion dropped his head, walked back inside.

That could be me, Twilight thought. I could have just accepted what was happening, gone to the Gala, meeted and greeted or whatever it is you do. Eaten tiny pineapple chunks on sticks. Instead here I am, sitting on a hillside wondering if my teacher hates me.

"We could do it, you know," said Rainbow Dash.

"Huh?"

"Rule Equestria. Whether Celestia wants us to or not."

"Rainbow-"

"No, seriously. We could get rid of her conspiracies and her secret police and her...her everything. We could do it properly. We could care about Equestria. And we'd keep each other honest, the six of us."

Ponies were filing out onto the grounds. Twilight could see officials setting up the fireworks on the grass, well away from the guests. At least I get to see this bit, she thought.

"But Celestia-"

"Pah, Celestia. We took down her sister, remember? And we didn't even know what we were doing then. Now we're closer, stronger. We know what we can do! And we wouldn't be running! We'd be fighting." The pegasus settled down into the side of the hill. "We could take her on."

Twilight opened her mouth. She had so many things to tell Rainbow Dash. The truth about the Elements, about Nightmare Moon. How powerful Celestia really was. How complex the situation was. The politics of running a nation.

She glanced over at the pegasus. Her gaze was fixed on the scene below them, and she was grining like a maniac.

Twilight realised she didn't have the heart to tell the pegasus anything. Not now, anyway. Maybe tomorrow.

"Here," said Rainbow Dash, "watch this."

The first rocket went up, trailing white sparks into the sky. It vanished, then blossomed into a flower of pink and red. Moments later, the crack reached them on the hill.

The guests applauded. Twilight could see something falling down - something like a shower of white flakes, like snow, or-

"Is that paper?" she asked.

Fluttershy hopped from hoof to hoof. "Girls," she said, "we don't have time, we're supposed to be leaving."

"We'll be fine!" said Scootaloo as she stuffed more paper into the firework. "Somepony's got to prepare the fireworks for tonight, and it turns out that somepony is us!"

"Anyway," Apple Bloom said to Fluttershy, "Rainbow Dash said it was OK!"

Sweetie Belle pulled the last of the brochures from the bottom of the saddle-bags. "Maybe we'll get our cutie marks in political dissent!" she suggested.

"You what?" Twilight asked.

"Only if they happened to find the stores on the way out," Rainbow Dash said with a shrug. "I kinda told them it was extra credit."

"And what do your brochures say?" Twilight asked.

"Oh, just a few catchy phrases that'll stick in ponies' minds. You know, to help get the common ponies on our side."

"But I don't even know if we want the common ponies on our side! I don't even know what side I'm on!"

"Well, when you decide..." Rainbow Dash shrugged. "It's doesn't hurt, right?"

There was another crack above them, and the hillside was bathed in a light-blue glow. More paper fell towards the earth - onto the Palace, over the city. She could see guests picking up pieces of paper and looking at them. She saw guards rushing towards the staff lighting the fireworks, trying to stop them, even as three more went soaring into the sky.

They blossomed above her, and even weighed down by her thoughts, she felt a sense of wonder.

And she remembered talking to Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie at that party, not too long ago:

Magic is just lying to reality, and then sticking with that lie until reality is forced to accept that you're right.

Maybe it was possible, she thought. Maybe they did stand a chance, six little Ponies against one Princess. They didn't have magic, after all, but they did have each other, and friendship was kind of like magic, wasn't it?

Maybe they had a chance.

Another firework exploded above them, bathing them in bright light. Twilight put a forehoof around Rainbow Dash's shoulders.

"You know, Dashie," she said, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Epilogue

Two ponies sit on a hill. They haven't known each other a long time, but they're friends nonetheless. They've been through a lot in the last few days, and now, finally, they have a chance to sit down.

Soon they'll trek through wilderness, staying off the radar, hoping to meet up with their friends. It'll be a long journey - but they don't have to worry about that until tomorrow. Right now they're content to sit back, relax, and watch the show.

Snapshot.

A firework bursts above Canterlot, outlining the city for a moment in bas-relief yellows and browns, like someone put a sepia filter over the whole place. Tiny pieces of paper flutter to the ground. Some are singed, some are burned to a crisp, but enough remain.

Snapshot.

The party atmosphere of the Gala extends to the streets of Canterlot. There's a number of parties going on in the town proper, ponies wandering from house to house or street to street. And every so often, one will stop and look at one of the piece of paper on the ground.

They say things like:

THE VOICE OF THE COMMON PONY WILL NOT BE SILENCED

and:

WHY DOES THE SUN PRINCESS KEEP US IN THE DARK?

Most ponies ignore these. Some ponies don't. And some of those will remember the words tomorrow, and the day after. And every time they see Equestria's Princess, they'll wonder if she really is hiding something.

Snapshot.

The countryside around Canterlot. Some ponies don't get tonight off. Runners have been dispatched to all four corners of the kingdom. Twilight Sparkle is officially ponysona non grata: anyone seeing her should turn her in. The Princess has moved as fast as she is able, and she doesn't want another popular uprising on her hands.

Snapshot.

Equestria. The eastern edge of the kingdom is touched by dawn's light, as another day starts in the Magical Kingdom.

It's just like any other day. Ponies go about their lives. Some clean up after last night's party. Some sweep the burned and torn brochures from the street. Some wander through the Everfree Forest, towards home.

How likely is it they'll succeed? That six little ponies will defeat their despotic leader and usher in a golden age of propserity and wonder? That the power of friendship will overcome a thousand years of Machiavellian strategy?

Put it like this: it's liklier than you might think.

This is, after all, a magical kingdom.