But Wait...There's More!

by McPoodle

Rating: everyone
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Crossover, DJ P0N-3, Main 6, Princess Luna, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 36790

Vinyl Scratch braves Canterlot to try and save her CD business

Having formed a semi-secret business partnership with Twilight Sparkle to manufacture CDs and CD players, Vinyl Scratch finds herself in Canterlot fighting a wicked slander that threatens to bring Equestria Acoustics to its little pony knees--a slander apparently uttered by Princess Celestia herself!

Additional Tags: Old-Time Radio Drama, MLP: Explosions Are Awesome

Sequel to "Javelin".

About the AU Tag: This was mostly written back before Season 2 started.

About the Crossover Tag: Some Doctor Who, in addition to the utter insanity of Chapter 9.

Published 2012-07-23 11:14:02 UTC
Last updated 2012-08-04 23:25:01 UTC

Prologue

Betwixt Silver and Gold 2:

But Wait...There’s More!

Canterlot is a city set apart from every other in Equestria. This is not because it has such stunning open-air architecture, or because it has the highest concentration of unicorns of any city, or because it is where Equestria’s aristocracy live for half of every year, or because of its long pre-Unification history as the capital of a powerful kingdom. No, the reason why Canterlot stands alone is because it is the permanent place of residence of Princess Celestia. In other cities, the Princess visits for official occasions, planned far in advance, but in Canterlot, one is more likely to bump into Celestia during the course of an average day than a mail pony. Every day, the ponies of Canterlot must find new answers to the problem of living next door to an ageless goddess. As a result, life in Canterlot is nearly as fast-paced as in Manehatten, and far more unpredictable.

The adjective most-commonly applied to residents of Canterlot by outsiders is “cynical”. It would perhaps be more accurate to use the term “nimble”...

—from The Equestrian Handbook, 2nd Edition, by M.J.P., Chapter 4

- Prologue -

The Sun had set, the Moon had risen, and Princess Celestia decided she wanted to try curling her mane before getting her beauty sleep.

With great deliberation, a strand of the princess’ shimmering hair was separated from the rest and magically wrapped around a roller made from a sea sponge. A second strand of hair was wrapped, and then a third. Celestia used the large mirror in her bedroom to look over her work so far, and at her long flowing tresses still remaining, sighed. This is going to take a while, she thought.

“Tia,” a voice said quietly from the other side of the room’s door. “Tia, are you still awake? I am in need of your counsel.”

The goddess of the sun turned to face the door. “I’m awake. You can come in, Luna.”

The door was opened to reveal Princess Luna who, after making sure nopony was in the hallway, stepped inside her sister’s room and closed the door.

“I pray you do not consider me forward, sister, but there is something in your...” the younger princess began, gesturing with one hoof at her sister’s head. She was still more comfortable talking with the speech patterns of a millennium ago.

Celestia laughed. “I’m trying something new with my mane.” She then noticed the expression on her visitor’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you familiar with an interview featured upon the face of the daily news publication dubbed The Clarion?” Luna asked, magically waving one of the nearly one hundred different newspapers printed in Canterlot each week.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” Celestia answered with a touch of sadness in your voice.

“Said interview purports to be the result of a personal conversation between the writer and yourself conducted last Friday afternoon, but you and I both know you partook of no such converse.”

Celestia sighed. “Yes, it’s a rather nasty habit the papers have gotten into during your absence, of inventing things about me. I expect they’ll start doing the same to you before long, not unlike some of the stories and customs invented about Nightmare Moon in the last thousand years. This particular fabrication looked harmless to me, so I won’t bother to deny it. From what I skimmed, they were just repeating statements I had made in press statements over the last couple of years.”

“So you shall not refute the error?”

Celestia put a gentle hoof on her smaller sister’s shoulder. “Let me put it this way: if I were to ‘refute the error’, I’d have to tell the press where we actually were on Friday.”

“Is that such a daunting undertaking? All you need do is to inform the public that we were abroad visiting...visiting the...the...”

“See, you’re having so much trouble saying his name, and you’re a goddess. There are holes in our schedules that we simply cannot explain to the public. You could say that the press is helping to ease the minds of the populace, by filling those holes with activities of their own imagining.”

“Well, I suppose...” Luna suddenly shook her head in disagreement. “No! You cannot allow this particular lie to stand! Unlike you, I have read this article in detail, and the author uses part of it to slander a young inventor, and puts that slander in your mouth.”

Celestia frowned. “That changes things. Let me take a look.” Luna passed Celestia the paper and she started reading. At first she was smiling a little, noting how much her personality was being mangled by the author of the piece, a pony who clearly could not build a proper sentence if his life depended on it. But then she reached the section Luna was alarmed by, and her face fell. “Oh dear,” she muttered, “that poor unicorn. I’m so sorry.”

“So you will do something about it?”

“No, seeing this convinces me that I made absolutely the right decision not to stop this article from being printed. Thank you for pointing it out to me.”

“WHAT?!” Luna shouted, outshining even her Royal Voice. Birds from as far away as Ponyville suddenly took to the sky in alarm. “Will you do nothing to help a subject wronged?”

Celestia sighed. “I’m afraid my wings are tied, my horn is corked, my...the earth ponies were your department, Luna—do you remember the appropriate metaphor for them?”

“Celestia, please be serious! Why can’t you step forward and correct this injustice?”

“Luna, don’t you recognize who it is the article is slandering?”

“Should I?”

“Prophesy 3186,” Princess Celestia informed Luna, as she closed her eyes. “On the 7015th year of the Solar Alicorn’s reign, a blight upon the sun shall render the Princess powerless, and the claws of dragon armies shall trod upon the sacred steps of the palace. In this time of need, the tide will be turned by the sightless musical unicorn, a unicorn who will sacrifice all, despite having suffered nothing but indignity at the hooves of the Sovereign of Light. Thou shalt know this savior by her white rose coloration, the marks of music upon her flank, the cheap cyan coloring applied to her mane, and the personal music machine she invented.”

“Oh, yes,” remembered Luna, “3186. I always thought that one to be oddly specific. The solar minimum is next year, then?”

“Yes, and I am bound by that prophesy.”

“While I am not.”

“Luna, you’ve only been back for less than a year. Could you please put off undermining our united administration for at least the next decade?”

Luna shook her head. “Sometimes I cannot tell when you are joking, sister.”

Celestia smiled gently. “The prophesy said this unicorn would be my savior. I think she’s capable of taking care of herself; especially from what you have to admit is a very silly slander. Now be a dear and bring me the tax code revision you finished for the Port of Manehatten, so I’ll have something to look over while I continue the curling. I believe you had moved the property threshold down to the 23rd percentile?”

As always, the thought of numbers marching in geometric precision brought Princess Luna out of her funk. She produced the document in question and her trusty abacus and quickly flicked a few beads. “22nd percentile, actually. The distinction between shingle and thatch-roofed dwellings, of course, has become completely irrelevant...”

1: "Telegraphing Each Other All Over the Place!"

But Wait...There’s More!

- 1: "Telegraphing Each Other All Over the Place!" -

“Lies! Lies! Lies!”

So proclaimed the elder unicorn as he slammed down a copy of the Fillydelphia Courier. The headline read “Do EA Trottmans Cause Ponies to Grow a Third Eye?” The line underneath read “Princess Celestia Thinks So!” The newspaper joined a host of newspapers with similar headlines on a worktable located in an office overlooking the factory floor that made Equestria Acoustics’ exclusive personal music player, the Trottman. The floor was at a standstill and the workers were all home, because orders had ground to a halt. Only the two unicorns remained.

The speaker was Philo, also known as “Philo from Fillydelphia”, formerly known as “Philo the Filer from Fillydelphia”, from his former career as head mail sorter for the city. The listener was Vinyl Scratch, Equestria’s first-ever disk jockey under the alias of DJ Pon-3, and co-owner of Equestria Acoustics. The company’s only product was the Trottman, which had been a co-creation of Vinyl and her silent business partner, Twilight Sparkle. As for Philo, he was not only her uncle but also manager for Vinyl Scratch. To tell the truth, though, Vinyl managed herself—Uncle Philo’s true role was to keep other ponies from discovering Vinyl’s vision problem. Well, perhaps “vision problem” was the wrong term for it—Vinyl had no use for eyes, and she occasionally had trouble understanding why everypony else was so fond of theirs.

“You know,” Vinyl Scratch flippantly remarked, “I wouldn’t mind growing a third eye, if it actually worked.”

Vinyl’s income as DJ Pon-3 was the only thing keeping the factory from being liquidated by creditors. Vinyl also owned a second factory down the street that manufactured the compact discs used by the Trottman—that building had been converted back into its original function of manufacturing vinyl records.

Vinyl swung her head around slowly. If she had a working sense of vision, she could be said to be taking in the empty sight of the factory below, but in fact she was taking in the empty sound of the factory below. Her silent contemplation was interrupted by the sound of knocking.

“I’ll get it,” Uncle Philo said, walking over to the circular staircase that led to the ground level.

“Roof door, Unc,” Vinyl gently reminded him.

“Oh, right.” The old unicorn turned around and took a second circular staircase up to the roof.

There he found a trio of waiting ponies: Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and Vinyl’s childhood friend Rarity. The roads between Ponyville and Fillydelphia were a morass of mud this time of year, so Twilight and her party found it easier to travel between the two towns by using her personal hot air balloon. This also helped to keep their meetings relatively secret. Twilight had still not revealed to Vinyl the agenda that involved keeping a trove of recently-discovered Ancient artifacts secret from Princess Celestia, but apparently her “silent” partner status was part of that agenda, so Vinyl loyally remained silent about it.

“I hope you’ve brought good news,” Vinyl said once welcoming hugs were exchanged. She was rather surprised that Fluttershy, Applejack and Pinkie Pie didn’t accompany them—that group tended to be all six or none at all. Oh well, maybe it’ll only get half as crazy this time, she joked to herself.

“Well, it’s news, anyway,” Twilight said. “I’ve tracked down the source of the fake story.” Twilight didn’t believe for one second that the Princess would ever say something so outrageous about the Trottman, this despite the fact that the student had never informed her former teacher of her personal involvement in its creation. “The original story came from the Canterlot Clarion.”

“The personal newspaper of the Steadfast clan,” Uncle Philo grumbled. “I should have known!” Celestia’s distant cousin Prince Steadfast had a “hobby” of studying and then publicly destroying the reputation of any pony who his warped mind classified as an enemy—he had a display case filled with paired “before” and “after” photographs of his victims. At the moment, the hapless DJ was one of the few of his enemies that lacked an “after” photo.

“I was afraid of that,” Vinyl said, sitting down on a cushion in a corner to think.

“I’m sure the Princess would have gotten the truth out if was in her power to do so,” Twilight stated in a pleading tone. As the Princess’ personal representative in Ponyville, the article had made her life rather difficult, as everypony she met expected her to echo its sentiments.

Vinyl frowned. Unlike Twilight, the DJ had grown up among commoners, and had heard the rumors that had circulated over the years about her goddess’ true motives whenever something bad happened, including a certain nickname that no pony dared say out loud. If it wasn’t for Twilight Sparkle’s certainty, perhaps she would have believed that “Trollestia” was deliberately sabotaging her company to hold back the course of Pony Civilization. The Trottman after all was created to play CDs, and the original CDs Vinyl and Twilight used to create it were part of that secret trove of Ancient artifacts. Like all of the other artifacts in that trove, the Ancient CDs possessed strange powers—the songs on them, whether played on a Trottman or by the magic of Vinyl’s horn, appeared to have powerful emotional effects on the listener—a power that none of the CDs that Vinyl had later manufactured possessed. “I suppose the Prince has some kind of influence over her,” she said. Or she considers family harmony more important than the truth, she added mentally. “In any case, I plan to do something about it.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Rarity.

“The problem, as I see it,” said Vinyl, treating this business crisis like it was a short in her acoustical equipment, “is a breakdown in Princess-to-pony communication. I can fix this in one of two ways. Either I can determine what keeps Princess Celestia from speaking the truth, and remove the obstruction, or I work to figure out what would make a normally-rational pony believe that their Princess would say something so ridiculous, and help them to overcome their mental block. The first approach involves petitioning the Princess, and Prince Steadfast, as unobtrusively as possible. For the second approach, I’m taking my case to the people of Canterlot. DJ Pon-3 will be traveling to the capital tonight for a series of engagements. I’ll use the opportunity to try to convince as many of the rich and powerful of Canterlot as possible that my invention has no harmful side effects, except possibly the uncontrollable urge to dance in the streets, and really, I consider that more of a beneficial than a harmful side effect, don’t you?”

Twilight started to nod silently in agreement, before catching herself doing something that Vinyl couldn’t hear, so instead she said, “Alright. We’ll head over there as well, and take care of the Prince Steadfast part of your plan.”

“Are you involved in this plan as well, Dash?” Vinyl asked incredulously.

“Sure! I’m nearly as good a talker as I am a flyer!” Vinyl didn’t have to see the two pairs of eyes that were certainly rolling at that statement. “Besides, I owe you a favor after you helped me throw that javelin,” she said, referring to the part of the secret trove the pegasus had claimed for her own.

“We’ll have a much better chance at convincing the Prince than you could,” Rarity explained. “After all, he doesn’t know that we have any contact with you, and so might be more inclined to listen to our arguments with an impartial ear.”

“Yes,” Twilight declared, “and once that’s done, I’m sure that Celestia will straighten this whole mess out!”

Vinyl wished that she shared the magical unicorn’s sense of optimism on that last point.

The next Trans-Equestria Dirigible Service, or TEDS as it was known, run from Fillydelphia to Canterlot left at 9 pm, so the three visitors from Ponyville were able to help Vinyl and her uncle pack everything she would need on her trip: equipment and recordings that DJ Pon-3 would need for her gigs, and boxes of Trottmans and CDs to sell or if necessary give away to undo the effects of the bad publicity. After the cargo had been checked into the station, Uncle Philo excused himself and went home, equipped with a list of instructions to maintain Vinyl’s interests in town. Despite all that, Vinyl and her traveling companions still had time for dinner at a reasonably-priced restaurant located near the station.

“You know, I just realized,” Rainbow said during a lull in the dinner table conversation. “This will be the first time I’ll be heading to Canterlot without the need to rush right back. Maybe I’ll have some time for sightseeing. The Great Hall is a given. Twilight, you’re from Canterlot, and Rarity and Vinyl, you both spend a lot of time there on business, so where else do you think I should visit?”

“Oh, there’s dozens of different museums in the capitol, Rainbow,” said Twilight. “You’ll probably be interested in both the Flight Achievements Museum of Equestria and the Weather Museum.”

“Fashion Row, while certainly nothing to match Manehatten’s Garment District, is renowned for their dragon-inspired creations. Definitely a ‘must-see’,” gushed Rarity.

“I always try to find time for the Imaginarium every time I go,” Vinyl said absently.

“Oh, I haven’t been there in ages!” exclaimed Rarity. “Is there any chance you’ll have some time free in your schedule?”

“Probably around Tuesday or so.”

“Then it’s a date! Rainbow, you will not regret this!”

“I don’t know,” said Twilight. “All the exhibits are powered by magic; you know,” she hesitated, “the visitor’s horns. You might feel left out.”

“Naw, I don’t mind—I can just watch,” Rainbow said. “That reminds me though—Canterlot really is a unicorn city, isn’t it?”

“For the most part,” Vinyl said.

“If you don’t count the royal guard,” added Rarity.

“Or the princesses,” Twilight added with a grin. “There are more than just unicorns there, but they are the predominant residents.”

Rainbow sighed. “I guess I’ll have to get used to missing out on the conversations, then.”

“Oh, the inhabitants of Canterlot are pretty friendly,” Twilight assured the pegasus.

“That’s not it. I mean, it’s really nice of you three unicorns to talk to each other with me around, but we all know you could be using your telepathy instead, and I expect that’s what the unicorns in Canterlot do to each other all the time.”

This statement was met by a stunned silence by the three unicorns.

“I should hope not!” Vinyl finally exclaimed.

Twilight decided to get to the bottom of this. “Rainbow, what gave you the notion that unicorns use telepathy?”

“Spark Gap, the Telegraph operator closest to Cloudsdale. He was the only unicorn I saw on a regular basis growing up, so I learned most of what I know about unicorns from him. He was always telling me what the other members of the Telegraph family were up to. He also told me his family never needed to have a family reunion despite being scattered to the four corners of Equestria, because they were all ‘telegraphing’ each other constantly.”

This revelation was followed by another silence, this time of the awkward variety.

“Um, Rainbow,” Rarity said as delicately as she could, “did anypony actually tell you how telegraphy works?”

“What’s there to know?” the pegasus replied. “Say somepony wants to send a message from Cloudsdale to Fillydelphia, and they need it to get there now and can’t afford to pay the Dragon Messaging Service a silver chalice for every ten words. Spark Gap Telegraph at Cloudsdale thinks of Buzz Telegraph at Fillydelphia, and the message goes ‘zip’ between their brains. No problem! In fact, I don’t know why any other unicorns haven’t tried to break the Telegraph clan’s monopoly—it may be cheaper than the dragons, but it’s still a pretty big drain on the annual weather budget every time we need to coordinate cloud movements from opposite sides of the continent.”

“‘No problem,’ she says!” exclaimed Vinyl incredulously.

“Rainbow...” Twilight began, but then she stopped herself. “You know, on second thought, maybe you’re better off not knowing. You still have to use the telegraph as part of your job. I wouldn’t want you to get the Hebe GBs every time you have to send a message.”

Dash leaned forward eagerly. “This is going to be good, isn’t it? Some deep dark unicorn secret that you’re ready to share with me, isn’t it? Well come on, tell me!”

“You’re not going to like it,” Twilight warned her. “You’re going to wish we never told you...”

“I’m grown up!” Dash insisted, although the squeak in her voice sought to say otherwise. “Lay it on me!”

“All right...you two are witnesses that she did insist...”

“Twilight!” Rainbow exclaimed, not taking “no” for an answer.

“Alright. Well the fact of the matter is, unicorns can send thoughts out all right, but we’re not very good at receiving them. A thought after all isn’t just some words; it’s everything that those words mean to the pony who thought them. Just as no two ponies have the exact same definition of the color blue, so the same thought, made by two different ponies, are completely different in form.”

Rainbow Dash yawned. “Twi, if you’re trying to scare me, it isn’t working.”

“What I’m trying to get at,” Twilight continued, “is that to pick up somepony’s thought, you must have a similar mind to that pony. The Telegraph family has a monopoly on two-way thought transmission because they are a family. Every single Telegraph operator in Equestria is brother or sister with every other Telegraph operator in Equestria. Entire generations retire simultaneously so that the next generation can take over. Dozens of siblings are raised from birth on the family ranch, following a documented list of instructions that have been strictly followed for nearly a century. Everypony is treated exactly the same, and they all end up with nearly identical cutie marks.”

This got Rainbow’s attention. “Alright, that is a little creepy. What else?”

“Then there’s the act of telegraphy itself,” said Twilight. She didn’t notice that the sounds of the neigh-boring tables had died down, as everypony was listening intently to her story. “The sending and receiving unicorns precisely align their thought waves before transmitting, and each transmission has a cumulative effect. In short, every message a Telegraph brother or sister sends makes them more and more identical to each other.”

“And...” Dash prompted.

“That’s it,” Twilight replied. “You know, you’re taking this awfully well.”

“Well I don’t know why you three were so worked up—maybe it’s a unicorn thing,” said Dash. “I mean yeah, the stuff on the ranch and the cutie marks, but what’s so weird about getting more and more...wait. Are you saying they start thinking like each other?”

“Yes...” Twilight replied.

“...and they start liking and disliking the same things?”

“...yes...”

“You forgot the physical resemblances,” Rarity chimed in. “Powerful magic has an effect on unicorn physiology.”

“Oh, yes, thank you, Rarity,” said Twilight, a sinister smile on her lips. “Haven’t you ever noticed that every telegraph operator looks like every other telegraph operator? It gets so you can’t even tell which ones are colts and...”

Every non-unicorn in the restaurant groaned at once and tried to cover their ears with their hooves.

“Alright, I’ll stop,” Twilight announced, looking around at the other listeners in surprise.

“...Why did you tell me that, Twi?” Rainbow cried out. “Why?!”

“Well, I did warn you.”

2: The Etheric Connoisseur

But Wait...There’s More!

- 2: The Etheric Connoisseur -

From Fillydelphia to Canterlot by the TEDS was a long, comfortable trip, and the dirigible was rather large, so the group split up to follow their separate interests. After about an hour, Vinyl found Twilight Sparkle on the observation deck. From the lack of anypony else around, she was almost certainly stargazing. “Looking at the Clydesdales?” the DJ asked, as her horn began to glow a soft purple.

“Yes,” answered the unicorn mage after a moment. “I’ve seen brighter meteor showers than this one—Princess Luna put on an incredible show a few months back, but I’ve always felt a personal attachment to the Clydesdales as they return year after year. Seeing them was one of my first memories—the Clydesdales got me interested in astronomy, which made me want to see the Summer Sun Celebration, which got me interested in magic, so I don’t know what sort of pony I’d be if not for them.” She looked over at the sightless pony and sighed. “Of course, that probably doesn’t mean much to you. Let me try to describe them...”

Vinyl raised a hoof in irritation as her horn glowed even brighter. “You forget about my horn sight. I can see in perfect detail anything smaller than a grain of sand or larger than a city—it’s just the stuff in between that can be a bit troublesome.” She pointed her horn at an area in the sky where several small points of light were clustered inside a dim smudge—Comet Anheuser, the object which gave birth to the Clydesdales. “Fragment 7 of the comet has just finished splitting in half,” she informed Twilight. “The larger piece is rotating, and the inner surface has a much lower albedo than the outer, so I expect you should be able to see it twinkling a bit.”

“I’m sorry,” said Twilight. “My own experiments with horn sight have not gone very well, so I tend to forget what a unicorn that’s better at it is able to do.” She looked in the direction indicated and did see the twinkle, but was quite unable to resolve this to Vinyl’s level of detail. But as in every other academic discussion, Twilight felt she simply had to come out on top, and with a little reflection, she thought of the perfect retort. “Do you know the story of how the Clydesdales came to be?” she asked, and then prepared to recount the story she had learned from one of the Ancient books in her possession.

“No,” Vinyl swiftly interrupted her, “and neither do you. The princesses said it happened ‘before the beginning of time’, and refused to provide any details. Unless you’re claiming to know something denied to every mortal in Equestria?”

“No,” Twilight answered with a sigh.

Just then the door to the observation deck opened and an audible “click” accompanied the return of the lights Twilight had extinguished in order to watch the skies.

“Ah, there you are!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.

“We’re getting close to Canterlot Station,” added Rarity. “We’d better get inside.”

~ ~ ~

The ponies were walking down an aisle towards their seats when Rarity and Vinyl suddenly froze in place, while Twilight groaned in exasperation.

“The 9 PM TEDS flight from Fillydelphia will be delayed 15 minutes due to construction overruns at Canterlot Station. And whether you’re stuck in the air, or stuck at the station waiting for your loved ones to arrive, wouldn’t this be the perfect time for a Whinny’s Bar? Packed with peanuts and creamy nougat, nothing beats a Whinny’s Bar, available at fine confectioners and snack bars everywhere. This has been a traffic announcement from CEN.”

Rarity and Vinyl, along with the vast majority of the other unicorn passengers, shook their heads lightly to clear the spell, and then set out to find something to occupy the time.

“Fifteen minute delay,” Rarity explained to Rainbow Dash, who had been struck dumb by the sight of nearly everyone else’s eyes glazing over at the exact same moment.

“What just happened to you?” Rainbow asked.

“That was a broadcast from CEN, the Canterlot Etheric Network,” explained Twilight. “It’s a thought transmission system for the unicorns of Canterlot, the only such network of its kind in all of Equestria.”

“Ohhh,” said Rainbow. “Rarity told me about that. Wait, if everypony’s weirded out by telegraphy, why does Canterlot put up with thought transmission?”

The ponies had reached their seats by this point, so Twilight settled back in her chair to do what she loved doing: explaining. “Well, it’s the pegasi and earth ponies that really get ‘weirded out’ by the Telegraph family—we unicorns have to deal with all kinds of weird stuff thanks to our horns,” she began. “And so the population of Canterlot has been less adverse to the idea of thought transmission than most others. Forty one years ago, Professor Macaroni of Canterlot worked out that the etheric mode of thought transmission was ideal for creating a system that could transmit emergency instructions in audio form to every unicorn in the city. Since etheric thoughts are devoid of anything other than sounds, they don’t have the negative side effects of telegraph messages, and they can be picked up by any unicorn. The other advantages of etheric telepathy included the simplicity of the broadcasting spell, a range big enough to blanket the city, the fact that the recipients could never mistake an etheric thought for one of their own, and the additional fact that the recipient could never be forced to receive a transmission—you can sort of hear it in the background, but you’re free to ignore a transmission if you’ve got something better to do. Based on this research, he got a grant from the city council and set up the first transmission tower, nestled within the cliff wall.”

Twilight rather resembled an enthusiastic school teacher as she continued her lecture. “Funding from the city never extended beyond basic upkeep of equipment and the transmission of messages during times of emergency, but over time many were drawn to the system as a means of broadcasting their works to the masses. Experimental composers and theater troupes were quite willing to pay to broadcast their works to anypony who was willing to listen.”

Twilight sighed. “Unfortunately, the Golden Age of Etherics ended when I was eight. Some clever colt had the bright idea of raising the funds to pay for his broadcast by including advertising in the program. Within a matter of months, CEN had been transformed into a profit-making corporation, and I know I wasn’t the only unicorn to turn our non-emergency etheric reception off for good in response.”

There was an uncomfortable pause after Twilight finished her story, largely because every single unicorn who heard (or overheard) her story was a die-hard etheric junkie. Finally Rarity stepped forward to deliver the majority opinion. “I’d rather not correct you,” she said, “but in my opinion at least, the Golden Age of Etherics began with Puckish Peter’s Picked Peppers, rather than ended. Thanks to commercial sponsorship, etheric programs are written and acted by professionals, instead of the amateurs from before. The analysis from CEN News easily surpasses anything you’ll find in a Canterlot newspaper, while their drama shows, comedy shows, horror shows and especially adventure shows rival the best shows playing on Manehattan’s Musical Way. “

“I’ll say!” Rainbow Dash butted in. “Rarity acted a few of them out for me, and they were fantastic!”

“Acted?” Vinyl asked teasingly. “Didn’t you used to tell me that acting was beneath you?”

“Well,” Rarity sputtered, “it’s a rather useful skill for those occasions when Sweetie Belle is having trouble getting to sleep.”

3: My Little Pony: Explosions Are Awesome

But Wait...There’s More!

- 3: My Little Pony: Explosions Are Awesome -

From Canterlot Station, Rarity led the ponies to the penthouse apartment she used when entertaining guests. It had been a long day for Twilight and Rainbow Dash, and so they excused themselves for some well-earned shut-eye.

It was nearly midnight, and the two white unicorns, Rarity and Vinyl Scratch, stood outside the door of the apartment complex for a moment. Rarity’s saddlebag was full of sewing supplies, while Vinyl was hitched to a cart full of her audio equipment.

“There’s a client that needs a fitting,” the designer told the DJ, “and now is a good a time to do it as any. I seem to do my best work at night.”

“What a coincidence,” said Vinyl with a smirk. “So do I.”

As their paths were initially in the same direction, they walked together for a few blocks, reminding each other along the way of some of their adventures when they were fillies together in Ponyville.

“It was such a small basket,” Rarity recounted during one of these stories. “I don’t see how Big Macintosh could possibly have...oh you’ve got to be kidding me!”

“What is it?” asked Vinyl, backtracking to where Rarity had frozen in place.

Rarity responded by tearing a poster off of the wall and stuffing it into a trash bin. “If Twilight had seen this, it would have turned our trip into the worst excursion ever!”

“What was on it that could have such a bad effect on Twilight?” Vinyl asked. “Did the letterer split an infinitive?”

“Oh, grammar humor! Very funny. As a matter of fact, this poster advertised the upcoming season finale of the Risking It All Team program!”

“You mean My Little Pony: Explosions Are Awesome?” Vinyl replied with a smirk, using one of the less-reverent fan names of the show. “You did know that the season finale was airing this Monday, right? I don’t see why that would be such a big deal. After all, RIAT’s just an Etheric show...whose main character of Shrinking Violet is a blatant rip-off of Twilight Sparkle. I know Twilight said she never listens to the etheric, but surely she knows about the most popular series in the history of CEN. If she had a problem with it, she would have gotten it shut down a long time ago. Unless...”

“I’ve been conducting a massive conspiracy to keep Twilight Sparkle ignorant of my favorite Etheric show!” Rarity suddenly and loudly confessed to the universe at large.

Vinyl Scratch pointed her head at her friend and waited several seconds for Rarity’s hyperventilating to correct itself. “Is that all?” she said finally, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “You could save yourself a lot of trouble and tell her—”

“NO!”

“—or you can decide to maintain this charade. Very well, all we have to do is tear down every poster we find, steer her away from anypony who wants to ask her what she thinks will happen in the finale, and start singing random show tunes at the top of our lungs to drown out any pony who starts singing the show’s incredibly-addictive theme song. All without making the most paranoid pony in all of Equestria suspicious. You know how this is going to end, don’t you? Griffish Inquisition.”

Rarity forced out an insincere laugh. “That old game? You exaggerate! Twilight will handle the news calmly and rationally.”

“Then why don’t you tell...”

“NO!”

“Yup,” Vinyl concluded, “Griffish Inquisition, mark my words. And when Twilight Sparkle backs you into her imaginary witness stand and begins her interrogation, I’ll sit back in the spectator’s seats, and eat my popcorn.”

“It won’t come to that,” Rarity insisted. “One little weekend to get her back to Ponyville, and then I’ll explain everything. It’ll be easy!”

“Easy as p-p...something Pinkie would bake?”

Rarity laughed. “And you call Twilight paranoid! Do you honestly think that Pinkie P...Pinkie magically appears every time you say her last name? Even when you’re in an entirely different city than her?”

“I noticed you avoided saying her last name just now.”

“Force of habit,” Rarity admitted under her breath.

~ ~ ~

Back at Canterlot Station, a new arrival read the large type on a sign very, very carefully.

“Welcome to Canterlot!” Pinkie Pie read out loud. “See, ponies! I told you I’d get us there eventually! RIAT season finale, here we come!”

After splitting ways, Vinyl Scratch, or rather her alter ego of DJ Pon-3, set out to begin a long evening of entertaining the masses with her invention.

Or so she thought.

The DJ’s engagement was to take turns with the Octavia Ensemble playing for an exclusive upscale soirée. The piano quartet had already been playing from 7 pm, and Vinyl was now coming in for her turn. The requirement was for something down-tempo, which wasn’t her preference, but it did have the advantage of showing off the sonic advantages of CDs over vinyl records.

As she approached the lavish home being used for the occasion, Vinyl picked out the sound of a lone instrument competing with the voices of conversing ponies to be heard. It was Octavia, and as she often did during her breaks, she was taking some silly song that everypony knew and converting it into a thing of beauty.

As she was carefully skirting the crowd to reach the servant’s entrance (for in the end, that’s all a DJ or any other artist was in this society), Vinyl heard the music stop, followed by a pony’s hooves making a beeline straight for her. Vinyl stopped and waited patiently for the pony to reach her.

“So, Tavi, am I late?”

“Well, that depends,” said Octavia. “What’s in the cart?”

“Woofers, tweeters, equalizers, mixers, pedals, mics, stands, keyboards, and music. All the rest, ze magicks as it were, are in here.” And with this Vinyl lightly tapped the side of her head with one hoof.

Octavia sighed. “Yes, but is that music being played on records, or CDs? Please tell me you brought your record player?”

Vinyl raised her head. “I have a reputation to defend, Octavia. It’s CDs, or nothing.”

“Yes, I expected as much,” said Octavia. “They won’t have CDs playing at this function under any circumstances. If that is your position, then you are discharged.”

Vinyl slowly closed her gaping jaw. “You’re firing me, Tavi?”

“Trust me, Vinyl, I’m doing a lot better job than the butler would have done. Those lords and ladies lack the second stomachs for doing this sort of thing face-to-face.”

The DJ thought for a few seconds. “But if I go, who covers the rest of the party?”

“My group will.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that to you! Look, I can play the keyboards, do the whole thing live...”

Octavia gently put a hoof up to Vinyl’s muzzle. “Friend, if you do that, then you will compromise your cause. The press will surely report that you fell in lockstep with your employers in ‘abandoning the hated technology’. Be strong. I know you can pull through this. Now I have to get back to the others. Will you be alright?”

Vinyl nodded. “I’m not licked yet—you’ll see.”

“Good girl. Get some sleep. I get my best ideas when I sleep.”

4: Worst Excursion Ever

But Wait...There’s More!

- 4: Worst Excursion Ever -

Getting to sleep at a decent hour meant that Vinyl got up at a decent hour. That meant she actually had time to begin implementing the plan she had cooked up in her dreams.

The day was Friday, and DJ Pon-3 was scheduled to act as backup for Sapphire Shores at a cute-ceañera party at 7:30 that night. Thankfully, this group was more tolerant of modern music, increasing the chance that she might actually have a chance to use her equipment. Prince Steadfast was out on his luxury yacht most Fridays—Vinyl heard he brought his new friends out to see which ones got seasick—so that left the day open for the entire group. Vinyl was going to need the help of Rarity’s friends to pull off her plan, but there was enough time in the day to have some fun first. Soon, everypony began planning which sights Rainbow Dash “simply must see” in Canterlot. They eventually agreed to begin with the Farmer’s Market, as it was conveniently located near all of the other rival destinations.

Inside the building, Rarity had struck up a conversation with the apartment building’s day-shift security guard—she soon learned that he was a Canterlot Opera season-ticket holder, and they were now locked into a spirited discussion of whether or not the character of Red Letter deserved his fate at the end of The Scarlet Plague. It was just this sort of easy repartee with other ponies of quality, regardless of class, that had gotten Rarity use of the penthouse rent free when it wasn’t being used by its owners. While this was going on, Twilight, Vinyl and Rainbow waited for her outside. Playing in the street before them was a group of young fillies and colts. They separated into two groups, one made up of mostly colts, and the other of mostly fillies.

“Hmm...I don’t think I’ve ever seen this particular game before,” Twilight observed.

“I am the King of the Dark Kingdom!” announced one of the colts in a melodramatic style. “None may enter my kingdom and live! From the depths of my realm, I plot the overthrow of the Light Kingdom!”

Why does this sound familiar? Vinyl asked herself. Oh, that’s right, “worst excursion ever”. “Rainbow,” she addressed the pegasus, “did Rarity ever get around to telling you to do...or not do...anything important today?”

“Yeah, she did say something,” Rainbow replied, the emphasis somehow subtly pointing at Twilight. “Why do you ask?”

“I am the Queen of the Light Kingdom!” announced one of the fillies playing the game. She was valiantly attempting to match her rival in histrionics. “The safety of my subjects depends on my learning the evil plans of the Dark King. Shrinking Violet, take your team into the Dark Kingdom and trick the dark ponies into revealing their plans to you. Because of the delicate nature of this mission, if you are caught, I will be forced to pretend we never met. Do you accept this mission?”

“Uh-oh,” said Rainbow, suddenly remembering where she had heard those words before.

“I accept,” said another filly. She and her team of “covert operatives” then began to sneak into the territory controlled by the colts, loudly singing their highly-addictive theme song:

“Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN!”

“THE HILLS ARE ALIVE!” sang Rainbow as loudly as possible. “WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC!”

“Wow, I didn’t know you liked The Sound of Music!” exclaimed Twilight. “I’ll have to get us tickets to the Manehatten engagement.”

Rainbow Dash groaned loudly. “Thanks a lot, Rarity,” she muttered. “I’ll never live this one down!”

“What was that, Rainbow?” Rarity said as she exited the apartment’s office. “I almost thought I heard...”

“DO-do-do! DO-do-do! DO-do-do! Do-dat!” The fillies were still singing the Risking It All Team theme song, having completely abandoned the game as they got their musical groove on.

“Twilight!” Rarity exclaimed. “It’s time we get going, yes this is the perfect time that we, get going!”

“Aw, but this is such a cute game!” exclaimed Twilight as she was quickly dragged from the scene by a near-frantic team of Rarity and Rainbow Dash. “Who’s Shrinking Violet?”

“Oh look, a bookstore!” Dash exclaimed.

“Where?!” demanded Twilight, looking eagerly around her.

“Um...right around this corner!” Dash said before dragging the mage out of sight of the group of young ponies. “The door’s right here, past the...POSTER! No, on second thought, I meant ‘left’ when I said ‘right’!” She immediately turned Twilight around and practically shoved her across the intersection.

Vinyl stepped into the side street Dash had nearly pulled Twilight into, waiting until Rarity had torn the offending piece of paper to shreds before speaking. “Are you sure you don’t want to just tell her?”

Rarity hemmed. “You know I would have told her about the show eventually—honest! It’s just that, well, she does have a...smidge of a temper. And I know she’s not going to take the news well.”

“And by ‘not going to take it well’...”

“...she’ll demolish the etheric station,” Rarity concluded. “And you know, I really, really like that show.”

“Well, I like that show, too,” admitted Vinyl. “So I suppose this fandom includes Rainbow Dash?”

Rarity shifted a hoof in discomfort. Finally she corrected the DJ by saying “...and Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Spike. Oh, and Angel, Winona, Opalescence, Gummy and Owlowiscious.”

Vinyl allowed a full five seconds to elapse before stating her conclusion. “I’m living...in a soap opera.”

“I prefer to think of it as a sitcom.”

“FIGS! In the name of Celestia, FIGS!!!”

It was a very competitive farmer’s market. After nearly a minute of taking in the bustling flavor of the city square, the attention of the now-calmer group of ponies was finally drawn to one conversation out of dozens:

“Look, I can guarantee delivery of a hundred bushels of carrots a week,” declared the farmer. “Surely that’s enough for just one animal?”

“Actually,” replied the meek voice of his customer, “I’ll need just a little bit more than that.”

“More? More?! How much more?”

“Um, about two orders of magnitude more,” the customer admitted.

The farmer did the math. “Te...ten thousand bushels of carrots? A week?!!”

“At her present level of consumption, yes.”

The farmer sat down in shock. “That’s not an animal, that’s a walking matter compactor!”

“Fluttershy!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, uttering the name of the customer. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll take the one hundred bushels,” Fluttershy told the farmer to end their transaction, before turning to Rainbow Dash. “Well...we’re here on a certain business, and we did want to invite you, but you were always with a certain somepony...”

“Err...yeah, we just found about the season fin...”

“Fluttershy!” exclaimed Twilight as she entered the space around the farmer’s stall. “What are you doing here?”

Fluttershy looked up to see the gathering ponies. Rainbow and Rarity were behind Twilight’s back, wildly trying to signal something to the animal caretaker. “Um...getting some carrots for Rooky?” she finally answered. It may be strange to consider a living being to be an artifact, but nevertheless, Rooky was Fluttershy’s particular Ancient artifact.

“I thought Applejack was letting you use as much of her crop as you needed.”

“She is,” Fluttershy explained. “You see, Rooky has this neat little trick: she eats every carrot you give her, and I do mean every carrot, but never seems to gain any weight. I wonder if it has something to do with...” She stopped as she noticed Vinyl and the farmer listening in. “...with the way in which she became my pet.”

“I don’t think so,” said Twilight. “After all, we sort of went through the reverse process and while we were there we...never ate anything. The whole time. You might be onto something, Fluttershy.”

Vinyl took this moment to quietly slip away from the others. She made her way past the stalls, stopping to ask each of the vendors what they were selling, and seeking one item in particular.

~ ~ ~

“Fluttershy! Fluttershy! Where are ya, Fluttershy?”

Twilight looked in the direction of the voice. “Is that Applejack? What’s she doing in Canterlot? She told me she had important business this weekend!”

“Um...” began Fluttershy. She stopped upon seeing a pink mare’s head peek through a gap in the crowd of customers.

“I spy,” said the voice belonging to the head, “with my cartoonishly-large eye, something that begins with...I found her, Applejack!”

“And Pinkie Pie?!” demanded Twilight as the pony in question joined them.

“Um...” said Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash in unison.

“I’ve got good news and bad news, Fluttershy!” shouted Applejack, pushing her way through the crowd towards Fluttershy and the others. “They’re all out of tickets for the finale, but I did buy us tickets for a special encore performance of last week’s episode at noon today! How do ya like them app...eep!”

“What’s going on here?!” Twilight demanded.

“I wish you gals wouldn’t run so fast!” said a familiar voice. “I’ve still got these stubby little legs...which will now head in the opposite direction...”

“Spike? Get back here!”

Vinyl silently emerged from the crowd to sit down next to the carrot-seller’s stall. She pulled out the sack of popcorn she had just bought and started eating.

“Ooo, popcorn!” exclaimed Pinkie as she reached out a hoof for the tasty treat. “Can I have some?”

“Sorry,” Vinyl replied dryly as she levitated a mouthful of kernels out of the bag. “In the game of Griffish Inquisition, the snacks are for the spectators, not the defendants.”

“And Pinkie!” cried Twilight. “You told me you couldn’t come with me to Canterlot because you were going to a show, but now Applejack buys tickets for a show in Canterlot!”

“Um,” Pinkie replied, trying to come up with the least-insulting answer, “well, I said I couldn’t come with you because I was going to a show...I never said the show I was going to wasn’t in Canterlot!”

Twilight’s voice quivered. “And why didn’t you think to invite me?”

“Here it comes...” murmured Rainbow.

Pinkie sat up straight. This one was easy! “Well, it’s the recording of an etheric show, and everypony knows how much you hate those! Going to a recording is the only way for somepony who isn’t a unicorn to hear what all the unicorns are getting with their horns.”

“You were going to an etheric show? You were all going to an etheric show? How did you even know about this show?”

“Well, Rainbow and I weren’t going to go,” explained Rarity, answering the second question before she had processed the third. “We were with you the whole time when Pinkie had her little brainstorm about a show that I had told them all about, and she got everypony else organized for the trip, while we were regretfully far too close to you for her to tell us in any case, and...I may have said too much.”

“Wait, is this the same show that was on that poster?” Twilight asked. In an instant, her photographic memory brought the image before her. “A pony and a baby dragon, leading a group of ponies against a dark kingdom on behalf of a light kingdom? Is this a show designed to exploit the return of Nightmare Moon, for commercial purposes??”

“Um, kinda?” squeaked Pinkie.

“Ooo, wrong answer, Sugarcube,” muttered Applejack.

“WHAT?!?!”

5: Nopony Expects the Griffish Inquisition!

But Wait...There’s More!

- 5: Nopony Expects the Griffish Inquisition! -

Author's Note: This is the point where it becomes really obvious that I wrote this before Season 2 started.

Vinyl swung her head around to survey the sonic landscape after the sounds of the stampede had subsided. “How many ponies are left in the marketplace?” she asked.

“Counting you?” Pinkie asked. “Six.”

Vinyl sighed. “You forgot to count yourself, Pinkie.”

Pinkie giggled. “Oh, right. Seven. Make that eight—I like to count Spike as an honorary pony.”

“Aw, thank you, Pinkie Pie,” said Spike.

“Is something on fire?” asked Vinyl, sniffing the air after ensuring it wasn’t the popcorn.

“...not anymore,” answered Rarity.

“Why,” Twilight Sparkle asked in a dangerously-calm voice, “in the name of pony decency, was an etheric program, a fictional etheric program, allowed to be created based on something as serious as the Return of Nightmare Moon?”

“It served an emotional need,” Fluttershy stated with a surprising amount of confidence.

“It’s true,” added Rarity. “Fluttershy and I had a long discussion on the topic when I first learned that this show was going to be made, and we came to the conclusion that we simply had to stand aside and let it be broadcast.”

Twilight was at a loss for words.

Rarity unconsciously put on the airs of a defense attorney as she began to stroll around an imaginary courtroom. “I think Vinyl Scratch here can best demonstrate the point we are trying to make. Vinyl, can I ask you some questions about last year’s Summer Sun Celebration?”

Vinyl sighed and put down her bag. Witnesses are not allowed to eat popcorn either, she told herself. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, what was it like?”

The DJ took a deep breath as she thought back. “Equal parts terror and exhilaration. And then frustration.”

“Exhilaration?” asked Twilight. “Really? What about relief?”

“Nope.”

“Walk us through it, Vinyl,” urged Rarity.

“Well, the sun didn’t rise. On the one day of the entire year when everypony in Equestria stays up all night to watch it rise. And there were no explanations. The Princess has never delayed the sunrise without an explanation beforehand. So it stayed down...for hours. And the ponies of Fillydelphia panicked. It was a mad, unreasoning, undirected panic. And then somepony finally thought to look up and notice that the Moon was missing its Mare. So now we had a mad, unreasoning, directed panic. We had all heard what had happened last time, how near it was that Princess Celestia was completely defeated, and what Nightmare Moon had done to the part of Equestria under her control. We came to the only conclusion possible under the circumstances: Nightmare Moon had overthrown Princess Celestia, and that monster was now the sole ruler of Equestria.

“No. No, that would not stand,” Vinyl remembered, stamping one hoof into the dirt. “No pony would willingly accept the authority of the Queen of Darkness. For the first time in our lives, for the first time since we were created, we were free ponies. And in that moment we chose to arm ourselves and march on Ponyville, grabbing pointed sticks for swords and trash can lids for shields. And it wasn’t just us. As our rag-tag group approached Ponyville, we were joined by citizen armies from Hoofingdon and Trottingham. The spontaneous army from Canterlot could be seen approaching another corner of the town, and a pegasi squadron from Cloudsdale was already circling overhead; in another few hours we would have been joined by the forces of Manehattan and Stalliongrad. It appeared that the whole pony population of Equestria was marching on Ponyville, to liberate one goddess from the grip of another. It was an utterly mad quest; for there was no question whatsoever that Nightmare Moon would just obliterate us with the blink of an eye. But we would go down fighting! Never again would we bow our knees to the commands of a tyrant! Shouting half-remembered songs of war we had picked up from Equestria’s more barbarous neigh-bors, we reached the Ponyville city limits...

“...and found ourselves face to face with Celestia’s Royal Guard. For a while, we suspected that they had fallen under Nightmare Moon’s influence, and we tried to nerve ourselves to rush them. While we were thus pre-occupied, the sun suddenly rose! Princess Celestia appeared behind the guard and politely asked us to return home, promising us a complete explanation once we had done this. And so we returned home—our Princess was restored to us, of course we returned home. And Princess Celestia made her statement.”

“She told her subjects,” Vinyl continued, “that Nightmare Moon had been released after a thousand-year long imprisonment because of planetary forces beyond Celestia’s control. Now, every pony knows that there are things beyond even the power of the Princess, but it is not a fact that we like to dwell on. And then the Princess told us that Nightmare Moon’s curse was lifted, and she was restored to being Princess Luna, by the power of the Elements of Harmony. Sure, we knew how Princess Celestia had used them to imprison Nightmare Moon in the first place. She said that Princess Luna was completely restored, and that we could look forward to her resuming her place as co-ruler of Equestria in the near future.

“And then she said...and then she said nothing. That was all she told us. Nightmare Moon’s previous reign of terror was truly a thing of nightmares, even a millennium later. And this time she was defeated in a matter of hours, while the Princess whose immortal life was in jeopardy reveals absolutely no details to a public that was preparing to die for her, en masse. And what about Princess Luna? If we didn’t know how she was ‘restored’ (restored to what? her sanity?), then how could we be sure that Nightmare Moon was truly banished forever?”

“So you were frustrated,” asked Rarity.

“Yeah, a little,” Vinyl replied sarcastically.

“Princess Celestia promised to protect our privacy by not telling anypony that we were the ones that defeated Nightmare Moon,” said co-counsel Fluttershy.

“Wait...what?” said Vinyl, but everypony was paying attention to the cream-colored pegasus.

Fluttershy concluded her statement by saying, “She didn’t consider the result this would have on every Equestrian living outside of Ponyville.”

~ ~ ~

“We next turn our attention to Canterlot,” declared Rarity. “More than any other city, the inhabitants of Canterlot have always focused their curiosity upon the acts of the Royal Palace. They were also masters at interpreting their ruler’s statements. The exact wording of Princess Celestia’s statement was crucial: she did not say that she defeated Nightmare Moon, or that she used the Elements of Harmony. According to those who spent their lives parsing her every word, the Princess’s statement revealed that Celestia herself was rescued by an outside force, merely by the fact that she didn’t claim credit. If she didn’t defeat Nightmare Moon, who did? The ponies of Canterlot were now even more frustrated than anypony else, but at least they were in a position to do something about it.

“The city has a proud tradition of turning political controversy into drama, first upon the stage, and then over the etheric. The Princess had long since learned the wisdom of allowing the playwrights and ethericwrights to exercise their imaginations, because even when they got facts and motivations egregiously wrong, they had the salutary effect of relieving tension.

“Now Oars In Wells,” Rarity continued, “was already a legend among etheric producers, responsible for the first all-pegasi production of Hearts in the Clouds. He may have been at the back of the Canterlot army Vinyl spoke of, but that was only because that pony really loves his éclairs. But Mr. Wells thought hard the entire journey out and back, and even before Princess Celestia had made her statement he began his own investigation. Asking around the University, he uncovered a crucial fact: Twilight Sparkle, the Princess’ only personal student in the last hundred years, had left for Ponyville the day before the Summer Sun Celebration.”

“Well, that doesn’t really mean very much,” Twilight objected. “I mean, it actually does mean something, but when all you know is that I was sent to Ponyville, that fact by itself doesn’t automatically suggest that I would be involved.”

“Ah,” rebutted Rarity, “but this is a Canterlotian, neigh, a Canterlotian immigrant bound and determined to prove to long-time residents that he was more Canterlotian than any of them!”

“Objection! I move that ‘Canterlotian’ be officially put on the list of words that have been said way too many times in a row!” shouted Spike from the back of the crowd.

“Seconded!” cried Pinkie Pie, happily jumping into parliamentary procedure.

“As I was saying,” continued Rarity, trying to pretend that she hadn’t been so rudely interrupted, “Oars In Wells came to the natural conclusion, for a resident of Canterlot, that anypony from that great city who came to such a tiny and insignificant town as Ponyville...”

“Objection!” cried Pinkie Pie. “Ponyville is a great place!”

Rarity sighed. “May I draw the court’s attention to the fact that I have also expressed my admiration of Ponyville on numerous occasions? I was simply trying to acquaint your minds with the point of view of Mr. Wells.”

“Okey-dokey-lokey!” chirped Pinkie. “Or ‘objection withdrawn’. They mean the same thing.”

“Now then,” Rarity continued, “Mr. Wells came to the conclusion, from false premises, that Twilight Sparkle was intimately involved with Nightmare Moon. He happened to be correct, but that fact is immaterial. He came up with two possible scenarios. Either Ponyville was a sweet innocent little town corrupted by the evil influence of the dark sorceress Twilight Sparkle; Twilight Sparkle, who had tricked even the great and kind Princess Celestia into teaching her the secrets of her godmagic, and then used that power to liberate Nightmare Moon. Or, Ponyville was a dark corrupted cesspool of Nightmare Moon worshipers, who by some unspeakable ceremony managed to free Nightmare Moon, and only the powerful magic of Princess Celestia’s secret agent Twilight Sparkle was able to overthrow the evil town and free Princess Luna of her curse!”

“I don’t like either one of those scenarios!” declared Twilight Sparkle.

“Yes, it is rather unfortunate that these were the only two explanations that suggested themselves to the great producer. He eventually decided on the evil town, good Twilight scenario, but then decided that he had made Twilight too powerful if she could save Princess Celestia all by herself.”

Pinkie nodded. “Overpowered characters are the fastest way to ruin a good story...FOREVER!”

“Where was I?” asked Rarity.

“Super-Saiyan Twilight,” Pinkie told her.

“Err...right,” said Rarity, collecting her thoughts. “Mr. Wells decided to turn the Elements of Harmony into additional characters who would help Twilight in her quest. If Twilight was the queen of spies, sent into Ponyville to correct a great wrong, then these were the spies under her command. Once again, Mr. Wells stumbled upon a truth, but managed to mangle it anyway. He even decided to come up with a pleasing name for this group: the ‘Risking It All Team’, or RIAT. And that’s the name he gave to his completed ethericplay.”

Rarity took a drink of crystal spring water from a nearby trough before continuing. (If Princess Celestia could drop out of the sky in any part of the city to get a drink of water, then every source of water in the city had to be “Princess Quality”. Or else.) “To play the part of Twilight Sparkle, he hired Blue Bubbles, one of the most talented etheric actresses to have ever recorded.”

“I went to school with Blue Bubbles,” Twilight told the others. “There wasn’t a female teacher on campus she couldn’t mimic perfectly. It got her in a lot of trouble at the time.”

Rarity nodded. “Blue Bubbles had some qualms about turning one of her former classmates into an action heroine...”

“...into a what?” asked Twilight. She tried to imagine herself as a comic book character, and it nearly broke her brain.

“...but she was assured that this would be a one-time performance,” Rarity continued. “The other actors involved were all masters of their profession. Finally the day of the recording and live broadcast arrived. Mr. Wells peeked out of the curtain to see who was there to see his show in person, and he saw Princess Celestia, front and center.”

“Ooo...awkward!” exclaimed Pinkie.

Rarity nodded. “Now it was one thing to make a play about royalty when you could pretend they knew nothing about it, and quite another when said royalty is staring right at you with eyes that never needed to blink in ten thousand years. So of course Mr. Wells blinked first. Also, the actresses playing the parts of Princess Celestia and Nightmare Moon suddenly decided they needed to simplify their lives by changing their permanent place of residence to under their beds. The backstory of ‘The Risking It All Team’ was completely gutted. It was now a totally-fictional Kingdom of Light being menaced by a completely-imaginary Kingdom of Darkness. The Light Queen was kidnapped by the Dark King—see, Dark King, no relationship to Princess Luna at all!—and the character of Twilight Sparkle, who wasn’t even given a semi-transparent alias before, became Shrinking Violet. The voice was still awfully familiar, and she still had a pet dragon, but you can’t expect miracles from unicorns on short notice.”

“Nevertheless,” said Rarity, “a miracle was what Mr. Wells got, because not only did Princess Celestia leave the recording with a smile on her face, but the show became the most listened-to broadcast (non-emergency) in history, and the show’s sponsor, the Poul Mason Whinery, saw orders triple the following day. Mr. Wells could judge the success of the show just by walking down the street and hearing how many colts and fillies were singing the show’s theme song. Thanks to the changes to fictionalize the story, it was now possible to turn it into a series. The end of the original show saw the liberation of the Light Queen but rather cleverly, the Dark King (a part performed by Oars In Wells himself) was not brought to justice, leaving him as the main villain. And so it has remained for an entire season, as the RIAT has snuck into the Dark Kingdom again and again, uncovering plots and sowing dissention among the ranks of the darkponies.”

“So Celestia never changed her mind about revealing what really happened with Nightmare Moon?” Vinyl asked with some worry in her voice. The show should have made it clear to the Princess of the harm not revealing everything was having on the populace. Is she really that stubborn? Vinyl asked herself. Or did she do something sneaky like install a stained glass window revealing all in a part of the castle that nopony ever visits?

“It would appear not,” said Twilight. “Although to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t really mind all that much one way or the other. If Celestia thought it best to tell our story, then I for one would have no objection. As for the series...” She thought carefully for several moments before continuing. “you all made some very good points. I suppose I really should experience an episode of this show before making up my mind about it. Applejack, did you say there was a recording scheduled for today?”

“Did you hear that?” asked Pinkie Pie. “We get to see an Explosions Are Awesome episode!”

“YAY!” Twilight’s friends shouted, before exiting the market together.

Vinyl followed a short distance behind them, swiveling her ears in every direction. No freeze frame, and no canned laughter, she thought to herself. See, this is a soap opera!

6: Mr. Wells Isn't Feeling So Well

But Wait...There’s More!

- 6: Mr. Wells Isn't Feeling So Well -

“Four more tickets for the show, please,” Twilight said, sliding the bits across the counter to the clerk. “If you’re not sold out, that is.”

‎“Aw, tough luck, Miss...” the gangly colt started saying before looking up, seeing who was before him, and then quickly comparing that to a weathered newspaper photograph pinned to the inside of his booth. “Wait!” he cried as the dejected group started to turn away. “I...I was mistaken.” He pressed a button mounted under the photograph and gestured for an usher to approach. “Ralph, please take these ponies up to the Executive Suite.”

‎The usher in question did a double take so violent that he had to put a hoof to his mouth. “If...if you could follow me, please,” he finally managed to spit out before leading the group up a very narrow flight of stairs. They were passed on the way up by a group of well-dressed and grumpy businessponies going down and out.

‎“Oh, dear,” said Rarity to herself. “I hope we weren’t responsible for their forced expulsion.”

‎At the top of the stairs was a single door, which Ralph held open. “After you, Miss Sparkle,” he said, his head bowed.

‎Twilight raised one eyebrow when the pony said her name. “Thank you, Ralph.”

‎Beyond the door was a wide but not very deep room furnished with comfortable couches, seats and cushions. As they walked through the door, the ponies (and one dragon) saw on either side of them a large variety of food-preparation equipment, including a complete soda shop setup.

‎The most obvious feature of the room was the far wall, which wasn’t a wall at all but rather a window looking down on the studio audience and a stage with music stands and microphones for use of the voice actors. On one side of the stage was a piano, and on the other was a table covered and surrounded with a multitude of strange equipment. The lone pony on the stage was very carefully inspecting this equipment, frequently changing their arrangement. There were large, currently unlit signs located on either end of the stage, to prompt the audience to applaud, laugh, say “awww” at something cute, or to stop telekinetically lobbing tomatoes at the voice actors.

‎The second-most obvious feature of the room was the only pony to inhabit it when Twilight’s company arrived: sitting in a large, throne-like chair in the center of the room was a very rotund unicorn. He was sitting in the chair in the odd way that only Lyra was previously known for. This was probably because if he sat in the chair like a regular pony, his legs would be waving rather pathetically in the air. He was tan in color, with a dark brown mane. Etheric actors wear minimal bits of costume during public recording sessions to help them get into character and give the viewing audience something extra—this pony was wearing the short black cloak that identified his character as the Dark King, while still leaving visible the cutie mark of two poles sticking out of two hollow cylinders built of stones. In other words, this was Oars In Wells, legend not only in the world of etheric broadcasting, but in his own mind as well.

‎“Ah, Miss Twilight Sparkle,” the seated unicorn addressed her in a melodic basso voice, making a short bow to her with his head and one foreleg. “We meet at last! I was expecting your curiosity to bring you to my humble studio eventually. And I see you’ve brought your...seven friends with you. How interesting...” He took a special interest in Rarity.

‎“We are just here as spectators, Mr. Wells,” Twilight informed him in a curt voice. “For now.”

‎“Ah, spectators!” Mr. Wells exclaimed. “I could always use more of those.” He pressed a button on his chair. “Ralph, please come up here and run the popcorn machine for our honored guests.”

‎“I’d rather we had our privacy,” Twilight warned him gently.

‎“As you wish.” He pushed the button once again and told Ralph to stay put. With considerable help from his horn’s magic, the etheric producer then gracefully got off of his chair. “Well, I would love to meet you all and answer all of your questions, but I’m afraid I have a show to put on. I’ll be back as soon as it is over and if you’d like, I’ll introduce you to some of the cast and crew that make this little weekly game of ours possible. Until then, I bid you adieu.”

~ ~ ~

‎The ponies didn’t have any time to share their impressions of the departing Mr. Wells (or their guesses of how he could possibly get down that narrow staircase), because the lights on the sound stage below lit up, and the actors walked to their places, accompanied by the (prompted) applause of the studio audience. The ponies in the Executive Suite quickly took the cue to find someplace comfortable from which to watch the show. Twilight noticed that the sounds being transmitted from the microphones on stage were being played through nondescript speakers mounted in each corner of the room.

‎A stagehoof positioned a large circular flat prop labeled “BOMB” next to the piano, and unwound a thin white rope from the top of the prop across the stage to the other end, where it ended at the hooves of the pony with all the strange equipment.

‎“Alright, everypony,” Rarity addressed the others. “This first part is going to go by fast. What you’ll hear before the characters are introduced are random bits of dialog and sound effects that will be used later in the episode. There will also be one listener-submitted ‘ringer’, added to throw the audience off.”

‎“What’s the pony over there for?” Applejack asked, pointing at the unicorn at the table.

‎“That, dear, is the foley artist. She makes all of the sound effects for the show. Hush, it’s starting!”

~ ~ ~

‎The pianist was playing a trill in the high register. The guests in the Executive Suite looked in the direction Rarity was pointing, where the horn of Mr. Wells emerged from offstage and used his magic to dramatically light the “fuse”, which slowly and brightly burned across the stage.

‎The piano launched into the first and best-known part of the RIAT theme song: an urgent dynamic bass ostinato:

‎“Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN!”

‎This was soon joined by the part that was a little harder to sing, a sinewy, sneaking theme in the upper register:

‎“DO-do-do! DO-do-do! DO-do-do! Do-dat!”

‎Meanwhile, as promised, the actors and foley artist were providing brief clues to the episode to follow, timed to the staccato nature of the music:

‎“You will be coming with me, Miss...”

‎*CRASH*

‎“Thanks to this magnet, Time will now reverse itself!”

‎*SNIP*

‎“I wouldn’t pull that lever, if I were you.”

‎*BLAM*

‎“Only one of us is getting out of this room alive, Agent, and it’s not going to be you!”

‎*PLUNK*

‎“Two Deschaniels? But how?”

‎*WILHELM SCREAM*

‎“Just a few more seconds...”

‎*TICK-TICK-TICK*

‎“That’s not a nun!”

‎*FLUSH*

‎“They used my ringer!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie.

‎“The Risking It All Team!” said the on-stage announcer. “Starring Blue Bubbles as the unicorn Shrinking Violet, the Essence of Generosity!”

‎“Don’t worry, I have a plan...I think,” said an azure unicorn in a voice that could be mistaken for Twilight’s older sister’s, if she had one. She was wearing a modest little hat as part of her character.

‎“Starring Quentin as the unicorn Mysterio, the Essence of Magic!”

‎“It’s the perfect disguise!” exclaimed a light blue unicorn, one of the few male actors on stage. He was wearing a magician’s top hat.

‎“Also starring Blue Bubbles as the pegasus Soft Heart, the Essence of Compassion...”

‎“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime,” Blue Bubbles purred seductively, her voice nearly unrecognizable compared to that of Shrinking Violet. Amazingly, she actually sounded like a pegasus to Vinyl, who was usually able to distinguish pegasi from other ponies by a distinctive resonant timbre in their voices. Shrinking Violet’s little hat had been replaced by a large sun hat to cover her horn, as part of her transformation.

‎“...Lemon Meringue as the earth pony Fidelia, the Essence of Honesty...”

‎“This is all very illogical, Miss Violet,” said the serious voice of the light-yellow pony wearing a white lab coat. “Also, I should have that atom split for you by next Tuesday.”

‎“...Freezer as the dragon Spoke, the Essence of Loyalty...”

‎“I’ve come here to chew bubble gum and kick butt, and I’m all out of bubble gum!” exclaimed a light blue unicorn in a gruff voice, a prop cigar clamped between his teeth.

‎“...and Lemon Meringue as the griffon Wild Card, the Essence of Laughter!”

‎The music and sound effects suddenly cut out as a spotlight shone on Lemon Meringue, a red and black cap pulled tightly over the top of her head and a mad swirl in her eyes. “Did you ever think,” she observed about the world at large, “that to the nuts inside, the peanut is like their whole universe? I mean they could fall in love and never be together because the shell separates them. So close, but their cruel prison—the shell—keeps them apart. It’s so sad! How they must hate their cruel master, The Shell, uncaring despoiler of legume romance! And then one day, they’re free! And it’s like, ‘let’s dance, you hot salty nut!’” She shoved a handful of peanuts into her mouth and ate them...

‎“...Like Light eating a potato chip!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie.

‎The piano suddenly cut back in, bringing the theme song to a climax as the burning of the fuse reached the prop bomb. This caused it to topple over, revealing a card that read “Risking It All!”

‎The audience applauded wildly.

‎“The Risking It All Team is sponsored by the Poul Mason Whinery,” said the announcer.

‎Oars In Wells stepped out on stage and took his place before an unused microphone. “Everypony knows that a griffon, when in the proper mood, makes for the finest whiner in all of Equestria. Well my friend, the unicorn Poul Mason, was certain he could produce a whine to rival that of any griffon, and after years of effort, he finally succeeded. He begins each batch with only the finest sour grapes...”

‎Rarity used her magic to find the volume controls for the speakers and turned them down. “There. He’ll be going on like that for several minutes. Well, what do you think so far?”

‎“Hold on,” Twilight said with one hoof raised, as she performed her own magical examination of the room. “As I thought,” she concluded after a few seconds. “There, we should be able to talk freely now—if Mr. Wells or one of his ponies is listening in, there are now listening to an entirely different conversation.”

‎“He had this room bugged?” asked Pinkie Pie. “How rude!”

‎“Well?” Rarity prompted Twilight.

‎“Well, you were right, Rarity. He did manage to get everything possible wrong about us. He didn’t even make me the Element of Magic—how could he mess that up?”

‎At the back of the room, Vinyl Scratch was silently shaking her head. These ponies actually think that they, and not Princess Celestia, defeated Nightmare Moon, all by themselves! she thought to herself. Maybe Nightmare Moon cast a delusion spell, to get them out of her mane.

‎“Yeah, you ponies all got the short end of the stick in that intro,” observed Spike. “Me, on the other hand, they got completely right!”

‎“Yeah, sure, Spike,” Rainbow said between laughs. “But if you’re an ‘Essence of Harmony’, then I guess one of us ponies just got kicked to the curb.”

‎“That would be me,” admitted Rarity. “Mr. Wells and I were already acquainted, and he just couldn’t imagine me as a spy. He does have a doppelganger of me show up in a few episodes, as a helpless damsel in distress!” She seemed to be amused rather than upset that the etheric producer had so completely misjudged her.

‎“A damsel in distress—no way!” exclaimed Spike. “I bet you’d make the best spy out of all of us!”

‎“Hmm...perhaps,” mused Rarity.

‎“The rest of you are lucky,” observed Pinkie. “They turned me into a griffon! Although, come to think of it, if I weren’t a pony, I guess I could be OK with being a griffon. You can pull a lot better pranks with claws than with hooves, after all!”

‎“I noticed that the show’s Essence of Magic was a colt,” observed Twilight, quietly. “Why put a colt on the team at all?”

‎“To defy stereotypes,” Rarity explained. “It’s one of Mr. Wells’ specialties. Fidelia, the electromagical genius, is an earth pony instead of a unicorn. Soft Heart, who is the team’s muscle, is a pegasus instead of an earth pony. And Mysterio, the genius actor and master of disguise, is a colt instead of a mare.”

~ ~ ~

‎By this time the etheric play had already resumed, so Rarity turned up the volume and quickly filled the others in on what they had missed, while Twilight cautiously let drop her spell on the room’s microphones.

‎This episode was about the RIAT sneaking into a Dark Kingdom factory that was gearing up to produce a powerful brain-washing chemical. One by one, each of the quotes from the teaser at the beginning of the episode was used to ratchet up the tension or fool the villains (well, except for the “nun” line, of course). Just as the team was about to successfully sabotage the factory, they were suddenly surrounded by armed guards and forced to surrender. They were brought before a trumped-up court, with the Dark King himself as the judge, charged with all of the actual acts of sabotage they committed throughout the entire season, and then thrown together in a cell after the magical members of the team were neutralized and Spoke and Wild Card’s claws were blunted. As they began what could be their last night before facing a firing squad in the morning, Shrinking Violet came to a grim conclusion:

‎“Somepony in this cell...is a traitor!”

‎“Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN!...”

‎“Wow!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash. “Talk about a cliffhanger! Rarity, this show is even better than you made it out to be!”

‎“I know!” she squealed before controlling herself. “Of course, Mr. Wells has himself quite a challenge to get his characters out of this mess on Monday night.”

‎“Oh, I think I have something sufficiently clever in mind,” the large unicorn quipped from the doorway of the Executive Suite. He began to speak directly to Twilight, with a twinkle in his eye so bright Vinyl could hear it in his voice. “I believe I was most remiss with introductions when last we met. I am Mr. Oars In Wells. I say ‘Mister’, because my family, although once noble, no longer owns enough to meet the property requirement for a ‘Sir’ or ‘Your Graciousness’. My family made the mistake of staying with their holdings when all the other nobles moved to Canterlot to join the court of the recently-bereft Princess Celestia an even millennium ago. I finally acted to rectify that mistake by moving to Canterlot about twenty years ago, and I have done what little I can to restore the family’s fallen fortunes. As you have observed, I produce etheric entertainments for a living, if only for the opportunity to broadcast my voice to as many listeners as ponily possible.”

‎Vinyl silently sized him up. He’s always first to point out his own faults, she observed, before anypony has a chance to make a damaging remark.

‎“I also dabble in illusion,” Wells continued. “I’m curious to see what sort of wonders I can pull off, or appear to pull off, without ever having recourse to this rusty horn of mine. Many of my experiments in this line are technomagical in nature, which has occasionally been useful to me in my paying job. The speakers in this room are my own design.”

‎“As are the microphones?” asked Twilight, darkly.

‎“Ah, I should have known better than to have thought somepony of your talents would not have discovered that. Yes, I admit I was listening in a bit. You must know that I am as curious about you and your friends as you are about this yarn I spun from your life. As you may or may not know, I attempted to approach you for permission to broadcast your story for the edification of the public, but I was blocked from the very top of the Equestrian government, if you get my drift.”

‎“I noticed that didn’t stop you,” said Twilight, letting a bit more disapproval into her voice. “And before you ask: no, I am not interested in having you or any other pony dramatize my life story.”

‎Oars In Wells bowed deeply from his front knees. “As you wish, Madame. I completely misrepresented your activities in Ponyville, for which I humbly apologize. Although of course somepony managed to defeat Nightmare Moon, and as I don’t believe it was the Princess, it appears we will never know who operated the Elements of Loyalty, Generosity, Kindness, Honesty, Laughter and Magic. As for the Risking It All Team...”

‎Twilight sighed. “You’ve fictionalized it enough that ‘no reasonable pony’ would mistake it for my own life, and as we both know, that gives you the legal right to continue, regardless of my opinion on the subject.”

‎“I would still like that opinion to be a positive one,” said Wells.

‎“Well,” replied Twilight with some hesitation, “perhaps I can give you a more thoughtful opinion after I have heard some more episodes.”

‎“In other words, you’ll get back to me?”

‎“Yes.”

‎“That is enough for me,” said the producer. “I hope this experience has not been a waste of your time. It certainly wasn’t a waste of mine. I got to meet you, for one thing. For another, I learned a most interesting cupcake recipe from whoever was singing during my eloquent Poul Mason spiel.”

‎“Oh is that what we were talking about?” giggled Pinkie Pie. “I’m Pinkie Pie—I work with the Cakes at Sugarcube Corner in Ponyville!”

‎“Ah,” Wells replied, “then I’m sure that your recipe will bring smiles and laughter to the hearts of even the most downtrodden.”

‎It was too faint for any of the other ponies to hear, but Vinyl was quite sure she heard Oars In Wells whisper the word “one” to himself immediately afterwards.

‎“And I’m Applejack—I run Sweet Apple Acres just outside of town. I hope this don’t hurt your feelings or nothin’, but you really ham it up too much as that Dark King character.”

‎“Oh no, Applejack,” Wells replied, “a little honest criticism never did anypony any harm.” “Two,” he added under his breath.

‎“And I’m Rainbow Dash,” the pegasus in question confidently declared, “the greatest flier between here and Cloudsdale. Wait, where are the Wonderbolts touring this week? Stalliongrad? Then yup, that statement stands.”

‎Wells laughed jovially. “Well, then you’ll have to show me some of your tricks sometime, if you’ll let me show you some of mine!” He thought for a bit, and then a bit of sneakiness appeared in his voice. “There’s a little dog that acts as my assistant in the magic show. I call her Lucky. If I ever learn to speak Dog I’ll ask her what her name really is, and then learn what it is she calls me. I’d love to bring her to the etheric shows, as she loves meeting new ponies, but it wouldn’t be right to leave her in a room for an hour while we perform, don’t you think, Miss Dash?”

‎“I should say not!” exclaimed Fluttershy, surprising herself with the level of her indignation.

‎Wells turned his head to face the speaker. “Indeed, that would be a most unkind act, Miss...”

‎“Fluttershy. Just...Fluttershy.”

‎Mr. Wells put down the hoof he had offered in a shake. “And...three,” he added subaudibly.

‎By this point Twilight had figured out his game. “Let me introduce you to my friend Vinyl Scratch. She aims to generously share her great passion for music with all of Celestia, and thanks to her great magical skill, she has been able to translate that passion into her invention, the Trottman personal music player.”

‎“Ah, Miss Scratch,” Mr. Wells said, somewhat confused by this turn of events. “I’ve heard of your invention, and your music.”

‎“Are you a fan?” Vinyl asked innocently. “I’m extremely loyal to my fans.”

‎“Ah, oh, well, perhaps I wouldn’t go that far,” Wells said, his smooth polish wearing very thin.

‎“Oh, go ahead and tell me what kind of music you like,” Vinyl urged him. “Like I always say, ‘honesty is the best policy.’“

‎“And ‘laughter is the best medicine’?” asked Twilight.

‎“Ah, you heard me say that, too?” asked Vinyl.

‎“Ah, I think I’m coming down with a headache,” Oars In Wells complained.

‎“Oh, but we haven’t finished with the introductions!” Twilight exclaimed. “We’ll finish up with the ponies you already know. First, there’s Rarity. Say ‘eek’, Rarity.”

‎Rarity frowned. “Eek,” she deadpanned.

‎“And this is Spike, my pet dragon and personal assistant.”

‎“‘Sup,” said the diminutive dragon, trying to look cool.

‎Twilight pretended to think. “Let’s see who’s left...oh! There’s me! As you appear to already know, I am Twilight Sparkle, onetime student of Princess Celestia. I live in the library at Ponyville, but in reality I’m on a secret mission from the Princess!”

‎Mr. Wells did a double-take. “Wait...you are? Do you mind sharing that secret with me?”

‎“Oh, nothing’s a secret from you, Mr. Wells,” Twilight replied with a simple grin on her face. “Don’t tell anypony else,” she said, looking both ways and drawing close to the etheric producer to whisper in his ear, “but I was sent by the Queen of the Sun to the tiny, peaceful village of Ponyville...to learn the true value of friendship!” She stepped back and beamed at him. “Isn’t that the best secret ever?”

‎Oars In Wells stepped back in shock, looking wildly from one honest smiling pony to another. “Yes, yes, a very good secret! You have my word that I’ll never tell a soul! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few last-minute revisions to make to the script for Monday—the plot has gotten way too complicated, even for a genius like myself to follow. Um...feel free to ask Ralph to let you backstage...meet anypony you care to meet, and then have fun back in Ponyville, far, far away from here. I’m...going home now.”

‎Twilight leaned out the door with a crafty smile on her face, watching him stumble down the stairs and out the front door of the building. She turned back to face the others with a grin. “Like they say: honesty is the best policy!”

‎Applejack spent a few moments looking back and forth between Twilight and the empty doorway. “Waitaminute! Did you just trick him?”

‎“I did no such thing!” protested Twilight. “I told him I was sent to Ponyville to learn the true value of friendship! It’s not my fault if he thinks that’s a code phrase meaning ‘I had a complete mental breakdown and was sent to Middle-of-Nowhere Land to knit my brain back together while munching on lilies all day’!”

‎“And how do you know that’s what he thinks?” Dash asked.

‎“Because that’s exactly what I would have thought if anypony told me that exact same thing back before I met all of you!”

‎

Bubbles are probably the most common emblem to be found in cutie marks. It is popularly thought that bubbles are therefore a cutie mark’s way of saying “I have absolutely no idea how to pictorially represent what you just did, so I’ll give you some of these instead!”

—from The Equestrian Handbook, 2nd Edition, by M.J.P., Chapter 2

~ ~ ~

‎Since Mr. Wells had suggested it, the group went backstage and sought out Blue Bubbles, who had been patiently waiting after the show in hopes that Mr. Wells would keep his promise to introduce them.

‎After another series of introductions, these a bit more heartfelt than before, the group started quizzing the voice actress about her two very different roles in the show.

‎“You know,” Miss Bubbles told the crowd, “when Oars was originally assigning characteristics for the mane characters, he realized that he had a few more characteristics than he had characters. Shrinking Violet, or Twilight-Sparkle-clone, as she was then, was always meant to be the leader, and Soft Heart was to be the strongpony, but he was originally going to make Twilight the seductress! Can you imagine it?”

‎There was a moment of repressed silence, and then the whole group broke out into riotous laughter, save for the mage unicorn herself.

‎“I don’t see what’s so funny,” she complained.

‎“Yes...yes, I’m sure you’re right,” Rarity said, catching her breath.

‎“Noth...nothing funny at all,” said Rainbow.

‎“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?” beckoned Blue Bubbles, absolutely matching Twilight Sparkle’s voice.

‎It took a full ten minutes for the laughter to die down after that.

7: Daddy Issues

But Wait...There’s More!

- 7: Daddy Issues -

“Now that we’re all together,” said Spike as they were exiting the etheric recording studio, “where do you think we should go first?”

“How about the Great Hall?” Vinyl Scratch suggested. “We could tour the stained glass windows.” Vinyl thought she was very clever for coming up with this suggestion, and was gratified when the others quickly agreed to it. This was her chance to find out once and for all if Princess Celestia recorded the truth about the return of Nightmare Moon, and if so, what that truth was. Secondarily, she needed more data points in her mental chart of ways the Princess treated “her little ponies”.

The Great Hall of Canterlot Castle was designed as a place for petitioners to Princess Celestia (and later Princess Luna) to wait before being summoned into the audience chamber. It was very wide, with a resilient rose-bordered red carpet running down the middle under an arched ceiling supported by graceful pillars and hung with seasonally-appropriate banners. Tall clear windows provided adequate illumination during the day, and large chandeliers hung down for nighttime lighting. Between the windows were a variety of historically-significant objects, grouped by section. One end of the hall had a variety of suits of pony armor from a more violent past. Another section had tapestries depicting daily life from all over Equestria during the mid-Seventh Millennium. The hall branched off at seemingly-random points to lead off to the offices of important officials, ballrooms or in some cases nowhere at all. Some of the windows had been replaced with stained-glass representations of important events in Equestrian history.

The first place the Twilight insisted that the group visit was the Visitor’s Center. Here an illusion spell recreated Princess Celestia giving the same speech to anypony who stopped to listen. Celestia considered this speech to be the most important one of her entire life. She had given a version of it to the ponies of Equestria at the start of every century of her reign, nearly 70 times so far. The first edition of The Equestrian Handbook began with the text of the 6000 speech, and the second edition of the same book began with the version given one thousand years later, so important did the author consider the speech for any who would wish to truly understand Equestria and its ways. Here is a brief excerpt:

Seven thousand years ago, ponies set sight upon the land of Equestria for the first time. It was a land that had been laid waste by magic run amok, a world on the verge of complete and total collapse....

My sister Luna and I brought you to this place for the purpose of saving this land, of rehabilitating it, and of bringing it back to self-sustainability. Our goal is a world where the crops, the weather, and the heavens can mostly take care of themselves, where the bounties of earth, sea and sky reward the efforts of the ponies who work to sustain them. A world where, finally, my little ponies will be able to take care of themselves against all threats they may encounter....

I have never made a secret of the fact that my time on Equestria is limited. And when the day comes for me to leave, I want to be able to say that I left Equestria in the best possible hooves....

This is going to be a trying century for you, my little ponies, perhaps the most trying in your entire history. So make me proud, and justify the faith I have in all of you.

After hearing the speech, the group set out on their tour. At Vinyl’s prodding, they covered most of the Great Hall in a couple of hours. Some of the main hall couldn’t be accessed because the petitioners were waiting there, and some side-hallways were occupied by negotiating senators. There was also at least one hallway that Vinyl could hear faint echoes from, but that must have been an acoustical trick of some kind, because the others insisted they couldn’t see an opening in the wall in that direction.

Vinyl had last been in these halls during a school trip, back when she was a filly and still lived in Ponyville. Twilight was doing a much better job running the tour than her teacher had. For one thing, Twilight had only gotten them lost twice. And for another, she actually bothered to explain what everything looked like, instead of forgetting that not all of her students could see.

~ ~ ~

“...and that was the last that anypony has seen of him,” said the purple unicorn, standing before a stained glass window near the end of the hall. “There, that should be the entire collection—I hope I haven’t bored any of you.”

“No, you’re a good storyteller, Twilight,” said Rarity.

“Err...didn’t you miss one of the window displays?” asked Vinyl. “I distinctly remember one called The Fall of the Black King. I remember it because my teacher made us all pay it a ‘respectful silence’ while refusing to say anything else about it at all.”

“Oh,” said Twilight Sparkle, wishing that Vinyl hasn’t brought that up. “It’s just down this side passage. Walk carefully, as the way is rather narrow, and it’s in the shade of newer parts of the castle most hours of the day. Now then, this is the so-called Fall of the Black King window. It is the oldest-surviving stained-glass window in the history of Equestria, and was transferred to Canterlot from the Castle of the Two Sisters. It is so old in fact that what it depicts is not described by any history book known to ponykind, which is why the title is just a guess.”

“What about Princess Celestia?” asked Rainbow Dash. “She paid somepony to make the window, so she must know what it’s about.”

“Princess Celestia has never publicly told the story behind the window, so all we have to go on is wild speculation by art historians over the millennia.”

Vinyl Scratch took careful note of the word “publicly”. “Maybe you should just describe it, without interpretation,” she said.

“Alright,” Twilight replied, steeling her voice. “The display is made up of two tall narrow windows side by side, each divided into three panels from top to bottom. At the top of the left-hand window is a small field of random bits of colored glass—scholars are uncertain if this counts as a panel or not, so they call it ‘Panel Zero’.

“Panel One shows a field of dozens of alicorns. At least some of them appear to be arguing with each other.”

Rarity stepped forward to get a closer look. “My word, you’re right—they are alicorns! I never noticed that before—thought they were unicorns all this time. The lighting in this corner is most inadequate. Oh, um...carry on, Twilight.”

“That’s alright,” Twilight said. “It took me a long time to see that myself. Looking over the other alicorns are four more of their kind. On the right is a white alicorn filly with a pink mane, with the Sun over her head. On the left is a purple alicorn filly with a blue mane, with the Moon over her head. At the top is the figure identified as the ‘Black King’—a black alicorn stallion with a gray mane and a great glowing crown upon his head. Behind him are two enormous dragons, one green, one purple. Their heads would touch the sky if they held them up, but they are bowing to the black alicorn in respect. At the bottom is the ‘White Queen’, a white alicorn mare with a blue mane and a smaller glowing crown upon her head. She is either not shaped very well by the artist, or she is unsteady on her hooves.”

“The...” Twilight’s voice caught for a moment, but then she took a deep breath and continued as emotionlessly as she could. “The second panel shows the White Queen in a bed, her eyes closed. The two filly alicorns are at either side of the bed, their heads bowed. The Black King has dramatically burst into the room. Through the sundered door are seen two alicorns fighting—one of them is trying to hold the Black King back with one hoof.”

“This isn’t going to end well, is it?” Pinkie Pie asked in a small voice.

“The third panel,” Twilight continued, her voice even colder than before, “is a similar scene to the first panel. The White Queen has made her last appearance. The alicorns on the field are all lying down. The Black King stands in their midst. Something’s...wrong with his eyes. Beside him is a black device too complicated for stained glass to do justice to. It is enormous, and pointed towards the ground, and magic from his horn is charging it. The ground is cracked open in several places, and gouts of lava shoot up into a blackened sky. The two fillies are...well perhaps this is a failure of the artist once again, but even though they are standing, they appear lifeless...” She said nothing more for several seconds, her breathing slightly erratic.

Vinyl’s imagination completed the abandoned sentence: ...like they have seen something so horrible that their minds have shut down rather than acknowledge it as reality.

“Twilight, you don’t have to finish,” Applejack said gently.

“No, no, we’re halfway done, so we might as well finish,” said Twilight, obviously shaken. “Now, um, the fourth, fifth and sixth panels all have the same setting as the first and third panels. In the fourth one, most of the space is taken up by a group of giant glowing dragons. The machine from before is in pieces, and the ground is no longer cracked. The dragons are blocking our view of the Black King, but his crown is being crushed beneath a dragon foot. The alicorn fillies are still frozen.

“In the fifth panel, the dragons have left the field and are departing. They appear to be the normal size you’d expect dragons to be now. There is a black horn lying on the ground.”

“Oh my!” exclaimed Fluttershy. Vinyl noticed that all of these ponies, these supposedly battle-hardened saviors of Equestria, were similarly shocked, shifting their hooves uneasily.

Twilight continued. “The two fillies, once more looking lifelike, are standing on either side of the horn, heads bowed in the same relative positions as in Panel Two. The field is a big...empty...space.”

Twilight waited a few moments before concluding. “Panel Six shows the white filly on the right with the Sun, and the purple filly on the left with the Moon. In the field are earth ponies, unicorns and pegasi, laughing and playing. The end.”

Nopony said anything for several minutes.

Vinyl thought she had a good idea of what sort of events the windows described, and why Princess Celestia did not feel herself capable of telling that story to anypony who asked. Assuming that the black stallion alicorn in the window was in fact the original “Black King”, she also now knew why Celestia and Luna refused to take the title of Queen. A king driven mad by disobedient subjects, Vinyl reasoned. No wonder we were created to adore the Princesses. They may have said as they were creating us that they wanted ponies capable of handling any threat in their absence, and they have may even believed what they said. But deep down, they were never going to allow history to repeat itself.

8: The Tale of the Shining Prince

But Wait...There’s More!

- 8: The Tale of the Shining Prince -

The group left the castle and had a quick lunch at a nearby cafe.

“Thank you all very much for letting me spend the day with you,” Vinyl Scratch said as they looked at their empty plates. “I have to go back to the Royal Library and do some research to help me on my quest. I could always ask one of the staff to help me, but I think discretion is preferable. Would any of you be willing to miss what I’m sure will be a great trip to the Imaginarium in order to accompany me?”

“Vinyl, dear,” Rarity told her, “we promised we’d go with you to the Imaginarium on Tuesday, and that is a promise we will stick with. We’ll take Rainbow to see some of Canterlot’s other sights instead. Now precisely what kind of help do you require?”

“Well I guess I could use whichever of you is the fastest reader,” replied Vinyl. “Now which of you would that be?”

“Twilight,” answered four ponies and one dragon in unison.

“Um, yeah, I guess that would be me,” Twilight said. “We only have a couple hours before closing, so we better head right over. Goodbye, everypony! Have fun!”

“I’ll come with you, Twilight,” said Spike.

“No, Vinyl and I will be fine. Go have fun with the others.”

“But finding stuff in libraries is what I do best!” the young dragon protested.

“I’ll take care of him for you,” Rarity volunteered.

“OK-if-you-insist-I-guess-I-can-leave-you-for-one-day-bye-Twilight!” Spike gushed out before rushing to Rarity’s side.

Twilight thought back on the role of Spike’s doppelganger in the Etheric play. The ‘Essence of Loyalty’? she asked herself good-naturedly. I think not!

“It was great seeing you again, dear,” Rarity told Vinyl, “and we’ll try to get you some good news before we meet again tomorrow. Now assuming that poor Mr. Wells doesn’t invite us back to the Executive Suite on Monday to take another crack at us, you’re officially invited to my apartment Monday night for a RIAT finale party.”

“Woohoo!” cried Pinkie Pie. “You can make it, Vinyl, can’t you? You’re the only one of us that knows how to play records and CDs with her horn, and if you can do that, surely you can play the etheric over it as well, right?”

“Well, I taught Twilight that spell as well, but I should be able to make it. Nopony would dare schedule a party against an episode of Explosions Are Awesome.”

Vinyl Scratch and Twilight Sparkle entered the Royal Library and headed straight for the public records and archive section. As they walked down the aisles with a pile of books magically suspended between them, Vinyl suddenly stopped and pointed. “I never knew there was a door down there,” she told the magician, quietly.

Twilight looked in the direction indicated. “That’s the door to the royal archives,” she said, walking around the DJ and heading towards it. “It has a silence spell on it, so nopony can overhear what goes on in there when it’s closed. Whoever’s in there now must have left it ajar by accident.” With a gentle push, she closed the door, cutting off the muffled conversation in the room beyond that Vinyl was trying in vain to overhear. All she knew was that one of the two ponies speaking was Princess Luna—the former Nightmare Moon, and for all that Vinyl knew, a ticking time bomb poised to revert at any provocation.

The closing of the portal revealed something else to Vinyl. “What’s covering the door?” she asked. “I heard some paper crinkling.”

Twilight stepped back. “It’s a rice paper poster, with a multi-colored Neighponese woodcut on it. Mid-68th Century, I’d say. Floating World School.”

“What does it depict?” Vinyl asked.

“The title of the piece is ‘Faith’,” said Twilight. “A pale white mare with a long black mane that reaches down to her fetlocks sits on a porch at the edge of a lake. She is wearing a lavender-colored robe, its decoration extremely ancient. Before her is a table with writing paper. A pen is lightly gripped between her teeth, but her attention is instead on her muse: a translucent Moon hanging above the water.”

Unnoticed by either pony, Princess Luna had emerged from the door and was listening in on their conversation. Because if there’s anypony that can, by sheer willpower, stand right next to you without you noticing, it would be a Princess of Equestria.

“It sounds famous,” said Vinyl. “Should I recognize it?”

“I suppose not,” said Twilight. “It hasn’t been taught in school for several centuries. The print depicts an event from the night of August 12th in the Year 6000, if the legend is to be believed. It is Lady Lavender, inspired by Luna to begin writing The Tale of the Shining Prince.”

“The Tale is one of the greatest of all novels, or so I’ve heard,” said Vinyl. “I tried listening to an audiobook of it once, but like many so-called classics, I couldn’t get past the first chapter.”

“It was Princess Luna’s favorite work of literature,” said Twilight. “It is said that it was the only piece of Pony civilization that she brought with her to the Moon.”

“A beautiful story,” said Vinyl, “but I doubt that it was true. Nightmare Moon wasn’t exactly one to go in for fine literature.”

Luna nodded sadly to herself.

The character of Nightmare Moon was not a subject that Twilight was comfortable discussing, so she simply took the books from Vinyl’s telekinetic control and moved them over to a nearby reading table, Luna following silently behind them.

“I’ve learned a bit about pony-alicorn relations as they are today, and as they were before the dawn of history,” Vinyl said as she took a seat. “What does The Tale of the Shining Prince have to say about the relationship a thousand years ago?”

“Hmm...” said Twilight, reviewing her knowledge of a book she read a very long time ago. “Well back then the title of ‘princess’ was largely symbolic. No pony was officially their subjects. Instead, Equestria was divided into dozens of kingdoms, dukedoms, and other political units that spent all their time feuding and maneuvering for power, while Equestria’s neighbors claimed large territories for themselves. Most ponies had little respect for these petty governments, and devoted their lives to serving Princess Celestia. They exalted her far above themselves, to the point where they referred to themselves only by demeaning titles and teasing nicknames, so that only Celestia would have the honor of being referred to by her given name. The Sun Princess was surrounded by an elaborate court ceremonial, so that she would always look upon only the most deserving of ponies.”

“How was ‘deserving’ defined?” asked Vinyl darkly.

“Mostly by breeding,” Twilight replied, confirming Vinyl’s suspicions.

“And Princess Luna?”

“Completely ignored. The most tragic character in the novel is Duchess Dishabille, a pegasus who wishes to devote herself to Princess Luna, despite having never seen her. She accustoms herself by degrees to the night and discovers its quiet joys. But her servants cannot stand this breach of court protocol, so they arrange a public humiliation so great that she leaves the court for her home, never to return.”

“What is the main plot?” Vinyl asked.

“The ‘Shining Prince’ is a paragon of virtue,” Twilight replied, “but his parents dishonored themselves shortly after his birth, so he is forbidden by the court to have anything to do with them. He is desperately in love with a divorced older countess named Wisteria, but their social stations are so far apart that they are not even permitted to look at each other, so he befriends her daughter Lady Lavender, who is similarly dishonored by an act of her father after the parents had separated. And yes, the fictional Lady Lavender is so obviously the author’s self-insertion that the author herself became known to posterity as Lady Lavender.

“After a lifetime of heroic deeds, the Shining Prince sacrifices himself to intercept an assassin’s dart meant for Princess Celestia. Touched, the Princess declares that his mark of shame has been erased, and informs Countess Wisteria and Lady Lavender that they are permitted to be with him in his last moments.”

“Wow,” said Vinyl. “That was a happier ending than I expected.”

“No, your instincts were correct,” said Twilight. “By what the author darkly declares to be a ‘miracle’, no pony in the court is able to hear Celestia’s wishes. Wisteria and Lavender are kept out of the castle until the prince has died alone and his body had been dumped into a ravine. The end.”

“Ouch!” Vinyl exclaimed. “Some author was bitter. So that was Luna’s favorite book a thousand years ago?”

“Consider the turn her life took soon afterwards,” Twilight said as diplomatically as possible.

“Point taken.” It occurred to Vinyl that Celestia’s subjects in that story controlled her life far more completely than she had ever controlled any pony’s life, then or since. In the aftermath of banishing Nightmare Moon, Celestia made herself a princess in deed as well as in name, and paradoxically by assuming direct control of all ponies, made them all freer than they had ever been under the petty tyrannies of the pre-Unification Era. It was another paradox that, by cracking the public facade and letting the public see her grief and regret over the banishment, the public came to trust Celestia enough to relax their use of ceremony to control her.

~ ~ ~

Twilight began organizing the books they had brought to the study table. They detailed the annual budget last year of every pony in Equestria with a title—this was necessary because, since being deprived of their lands eight hundred years ago, the sole source of their wealth came from the royal treasury. “Now,” said the magician as she opened the first of the large volumes, “we have the spending records of the nobility for last year. What next?”

Vinyl reached for one of the books, and listened to the sound of the pages as she flipped them. “It should be a simple matter to determine each noblepony’s hobbies from those figures. When I meet them, I simply share my interest in those hobbies, and gain their trust. Then I can tell them about the virtues of compact disk technology.”

“Vinyl!” Twilight cried, punctuating her disapproval by slamming the book shut. “I will not have you lie in order to get even with Prince Steadfast. That makes you no better than him!”

“But Twilight, I can’t do this without you!” Vinyl put a hoof to her head to think. “How about this: I have lots of hobbies. If there’s a noblepony out there that just so happens to be interested in something I just so happen to be interested in as well, then there can’t be anything wrong in communicating that fact! After all, these are public records!”

Well...” said Twilight, her reservations fading, “if you put it that way, I guess this is alright.”

With a silent snort of disapproval, Princess Luna returned to her research in the Royal Archives, making sure to close the door completely this time. She sat down at a desk covered by hundreds of yellowed and crinkled scrolls, carefully organized into piles by millennium, with a pen and parchment nearby to record notes. The Archive’s loyal researcher, a middle-aged pegasus, mutely stood guard over the scrolls, her eyes following their every telekinetically-controlled motion like a hawk.

A couple of hours after closing time, the candles in the room suddenly flickered and went out. Annoyed, Luna lit her horn and tried to continue her work.

“Luuuuunnnaaaaaa...” a deep ghostly voice thundered down the halls.

The princess grimaced and poured her attention into the scroll before her. Given this example, the researcher remained standing where she was, trying in vain to keep her four knees from knocking.

“LuuuuNNNNAAAA!” the voice repeated, closer now. A violent wind began to whip about the manes of the terrified researcher and the nonchalant princess, but strangely the effect was restricted to animate objects: the delicate scrolls didn’t move by even a hoofs-width.

A bright, pale-blue light suddenly burst into being at the other end of the archives, illuminating a disembodied head twice the height of a pony. The visage was ancient, male, and a totally alien species to the researcher. If there had been no princesses, if the many species of intelligent life on Equestria had no idea what manner of supreme being had created them, this might have been the visage they would have carved into the side of the biggest mountain on the planet to do it homage. “Return the scrolls!” the “Supreme Being” declared with the same voice as before. “Return...what you have stolen from me!” As it said this it began to float down the hallway towards the two ponies. The poor researcher made a mad dash for the door out of the Archives, only to find it was locked from the outside...which shouldn’t be possible, as she possessed the only key. Of course, given the current scenario, a locked door was practically inevitable, like suddenly discovering you’re wearing high heels while trying to flee from a cerberus in the Everfree Forest. The pegasus wheeled about to face her doom. To her consternation, Princess Luna was still reading. “P...p...p...pprinncessss....” she sputtered. The giant floating head was less than a pony-length away from the table, and getting closer by the second.

With a sigh, and without even looking up, Luna reached up one hoof and allowed the head’s lower lip to bump into it. “Cease this foolishness, Sister,” she growled.

In an instant, the candles snapped back to life, the phantom spotlight winked out, and the giant head shrunk down into that of Princess Celestia, with a body fading into existence below. The Sun Princess’ head was surrounded by a halo of iridescent curls.

“Rule, Bri...” the researcher began singing, before the stress finally became too much for her and she fainted.

“I have no idea why they keep doing that,” Celestia muttered to herself.

“Bored much?” Luna asked. She smiled inwardly at what appeared to be the successful use of a modern phrase. She then put her current scroll down and picked up another. She turned to count off the scroll on her trusty abacus, only to find it missing. By the dint of constant repetition, this scenario no longer surprised her—Celestia and Abacus had become mortal enemies over the past few months, and poor Abacus never won any of their fights.

“You missed another council meeting,” Celestia told her, “and considering I was the butt of the joke this time around, you would have liked it.”

“I am busy,” Luna said.

“You’re hiding,” Celestia clarified. “It’s time for you to go out in the world again.”

“Yes, Tia,” Luna said through lidded eyes. She had tried to win this particular fight before, and had managed to succeed as often as Abacus had. “Big Sister knows best.”

9: "How Many Crossovers Is He Going to Cram Into This Thing, Anyway?"

But Wait...There’s More!

- 9: “How Many Crossovers Is He Going to Cram Into This Thing, Anyway?” -

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Trash it, change it, mail-upgrade it,
Charge it, pawn it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick-erase it.”

“There, see, the band’s started already,” declared the first of the three newcomers to the cute-ceañera party, an earth colt.

The party was taking place in the immense backyard of Kappa Cider, the immensely-rich unicorn manufacturer of magical storage batteries, and the most-probable model for the character of Fidelia in RIAT. She was also the Lady Neufrichfeld, but that was a side of her she rarely bothered to acknowledge, preferring the company of fellow entrepreneurs to the landed aristocracy.

“We’re not that late, Hoyden,” explained the second newcomer, an earth filly. “Besides, that’s Daft Buck, the warm-up band. Sapphire Shores will be on later.”

“Oh dear, it certainly is loud in here,” noted the third newcomer in a meek voice. “And do they have to have those lights flashing all over the place? Somepony could put their eye out.”

Vinyl Scratch, who was crossing the floor to fetch a few more power cables for her keyboards, had overheard the entire conversation thus far, as well as dozens of others going on at the same time.

It’s not like she could help it. As compensation for her blindness, she had developed the ability to hear and discriminate between different sounds to a nearly super-pony level. This along with a very-well organized memory did much to hide her condition from those who did not suspect otherwise.

So this particular group of three was filed into her memory just in case they proved important: Hoyden, the confident earth pony colt (perhaps too confident for his own good, judging by the sheer bravado in his voice), the as-yet unnamed but cheerful earth pony filly, and the also unnamed shy filly...

That’s funny, Vinyl thought to herself. I can always figure out the pony type from the voice, but this one has a bit of everything. It’s almost as if...naw, it couldn’t be.

Vinyl retrieved her cables and turned to return to the entrance to the offstage area. This just happened to put her behind the three newcomers.

“Come on, you two,” said Hoyden. “If we’re going to get a free concert, we might as well get the best view possible.”

Vinyl stayed in the wake produced by the three ponies, but not too close. She had learned from experience to never ignore the insistent “DANGER! DANGER!” signal that her subconscious was feeding her right now.

Finally they reached the point at which their paths diverged: Vinyl continued straight, while the three ponies turned right.

“Here we go. Sundance, Selene, we should be able to get a good look at the band now,” said Hoyden as they reached the edge of the crowd surrounding the stage. “Those two ponies with the EM bases must be Daft Buck, and the singer on that little pyramid is...Dear Sweet Celestia in the Sky, WHAT IS THAT THING?”

“Why, Hoyden!” exclaimed the cheerful filly with a smirk. “I do believe it’s one of the crash-test dummies that you put out of a job!”

Vinyl barely suppressed a loud laugh as she kept walking. She decided that this filly was Sundance, and the shy one was Selene. “Selene” of course was an extremely-old name for the Moon. This deduction caused a mental klaxon to be added to the “DANGER!” voice in her head.

Meanwhile a stray laser struck some pony in the retina.

“MY EYE!”

“Name it, rate it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax-rename it
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it,
Turn it, leave it, start-format it.

Technologic.
Technologic.
Technologic.
Technologic.”

~ ~ ~

After getting the power arrangements set so she could act as Sapphire Shores’ keyboardist, Vinyl got a progress report from the other performers, then worked her way through a large tent which had been cordoned off into a maze of rooms and hallways, finally arriving at the canvas door to Miss Shore’s room and scratched the rough fabric with her hoof (knocking on such a pliant surface was next to useless at catching the attention of any pony who wasn’t Vinyl Scratch).

“Yes?” answered the voice within after a pause. The singer liked to meditate before performances.

“Everypony is ready, Sapphire,” said Vinyl. “Mic check will be in thirty minutes.”

“Very good, Vinyl,” Sapphire replied, and then stuck her head out of the door. “Oh and Vinyl?”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you set up some sort of demonstration of your invention outside the tent so the guests can take it for a spin? You’ve been doing such a good job substituting for Teddy and helping me out in general, I feel it’s only right to help you out as well. You’ll have everypony’s attention during the time between sets.”

“Well, I have to get my keyboards out on the stage...” began Vinyl.

“Nonsense! That’s what the stagehooves are for, and nopony’s better than my stagehooves! Go out there and promote yourself, and with any luck the crowd will demand that you perform after me as an encore!”

“Thank you, Sapphire,” Vinyl said, turning to go. Just so long as they don’t demand that I be lynched instead, she added to herself.

~ ~ ~

The DJ found the box she had set aside with her CD-related equipment and dragged it out of the tent. She then found herself trying to work her way around two ponies who were standing on the path to the spot where she wanted to set up: an area at the far end of the tent where a stand would still be noticeable while not getting in anypony’s way.

“Let me know if you see an architrave somewhere,” said the first pony, a pegasus with a somewhat grand air to him.

“Does he wear a special type of hat?” asked the second pony, a unicorn with a smile in her voice.

“An architrave is not a person, Jo,” the pegasus gently corrected her. “Rather, it’s the beam that rests on the top of two columns. The senator we’re trying to meet is waiting for us under one.”

“Oh,” said Jo. “You know, Doctor, I still don’t feel comfortable about this whole business.”

“You mean the legs?” asked the doctor. “They are a bit of trouble at first...”

“No, not that. What we’re doing here tonight. Back on...back where I came from, this was unethical!”

The doctor shushed her. “Yes, it is a rather unsavory business, I’m afraid. But I assure you that we will be quite upfront with our motives. It is entirely up to the senator what he wishes to do with the information we provide him.”

“But we’re not real geologists!”

“Equestriasts, Jo Grant. The correct term is ‘equestriasts’. And I’ll make clear that we are amateurs in the field.”

Jo sighed. “I just can’t help feeling like we’re on the wrong side in this, Doctor. After all, we’re the ones trying to stir up the underground race this time.”

By this time, the two were out of Vinyl’s range of hearing. She didn’t quite understand what she had heard, but she filed it carefully away in her memory. For some reason, the one referred to as “Doctor” reminded her of a pony she had met at the Equestrian Museum several months ago, despite the voices being nothing alike.

~ ~ ~

As Vinyl Scratch started to set up her booth, she realized that she had not rehearsed any sort of spiel to sell the Trottman, so she desperately tried to remember any sort of sales slogan from the recent past that seemed to be effective to her.

“FIGS! In the name of Celestia, FIGS!!!” her memory helpfully suggested.

No, she told herself firmly. Not that one. Bad, Memory, bad!

At this point she was distracted by the sound of a number of ponies converging on her location. Vinyl lifted her head up uncertainly. Customers?

“Nomde! There you are!” said one of the ponies, a pegasus colt.

...or not, thought Vinyl.

“Hello, you three,” answered a unicorn filly.

Nomde, presumably. Vinyl vaguely remembered hearing about a bookstore in Canterlot owned by a Nomde somepony. Vinyl was an avid second-hand reader, but she rarely ventured into a bookstore. The chances for giving away the fact of her blindness were just too great.

As for the pegasus and the as-yet silent other two members of the group, Vinyl instantly realized that they were members of the Royal Guard, less than a year into their service. She knew this thanks to her heightened sense of smell, but as that particular chemical appeared to be a Royal Guard trade secret, she had never shared this particular insight with anypony else.

“Err...sorry about the mix-up. My bad.” This was a second pegasus colt. Vinyl decided to tag him as the “laid-back one”. She also realized that she was a little too obviously listening in if anypony happened to look her way, and set about arranging the Trottman and CD boxes in a pleasing arrangement on her table.

“That’s OK, Crack Shot,” replied Nomde. She paused for a moment, perhaps to look around. “Wow, I can’t believe we’re at a free Sapphire Shores concert.”

“Indeed!” chimed in the last member of the group, a unicorn colt, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

“Heh, sounds like Check Mate here is a bit of a Sapphire Shores fan himself!”

“Oh, I certainly wouldn’t claim that the label of ‘fan’, which after all is a euphonym of ‘fanatic’, would be at all applicable,” Check Mate backpedaled. “More like somepony with a casual appreciation of some of the more complex rhythmical combinations in the songs she chooses not to advance as singles for her albums. Plus, it is a virtual impossibility to spend any time in Canterlot without becoming acquainted with the existence of the unicorn with the appellation of ‘The Pony of Pop’, so to speak.”

Crack Shot whistled in wonderment. “Dude, it’s like I don’t even have to look at you anymore to see how much you’re blushing—I just need to count the syllables!”

This got a good laugh out of the rest of the group.

“Say Storm Stunner,” asked Nomde, “how did you ever manage to get us invitations to this party, anyway? You didn’t by any chance...”

“...single-hoofedly save Kappa Cider’s life while protecting the Princess?” asked Crack Shot rhetorically. “Yup, he did.”

“She wasn’t ever in any real danger,” answered Storm Stunner. “It was just in the call of duty.”

“I’d give at least part of the credit to Crack Shot here,” added Check Mate. “He talked the grateful industrialist into turning a vague promise of a favor into four invites.”

“Well, I’ll have to thank her in person if we ever meet her tonight,” said Nomde.

A second later the sound of the band’s latest song’s ending was replaced by cheering from the crowd.

“Oh look,” Nomde said, “I can see ponies leaving—that warm-up group must be nearing their last song. I’ll just find us a good place to watch the concert. Storm, could you be a dear and get me something to drink from that cart over there?”

“Sure thing, Nomde,” answered Storm.

“Wait, is that Daft Buck?” asked Check Mate as the unicorn filly walked away. “You never told me that Daft Buck was performing! I have no qualms with calling myself a fan of that group. Indeed, I would have insisted on arriving early enough to catch their entire performance.”

“Oh, I had no idea they were even here, Check Mate,” said Storm. “I’m sorry. Look, they’ll probably set up a booth for autographs or something while Sapphire performs. Let’s say the two of us set out to find it as soon as she starts singing, OK? Now if you’ll hold on a moment, I have to buy that drink for Nomde.”

“That can hold for a moment, Champ,” said Crack Shot, lowering his voice. “Now that the three of us are finally alone, what say you fill us in on what happened at the palace this afternoon?”

“Yes,” chimed in Check Mate. “I heard something extraordinary happened during the Grand Council session, but I haven’t been able to get a believable explanation from anypony!”

“That means they were probably telling you the truth,” Storm said with a sigh. “Look, I’ll tell it like I saw it: I was Number 3 pegasus on the Royal Chariot. At attention, head forward, eyes front—and blinkered. The Princess steps into the chariot, right on time, and tells us to take her to the Chamber of Deputies for the opening of the session. So we take her. She steps out of the chariot, and walks into the building. This is all with my ears, remember, because I’m still at attention.

“And then I start to hear it.” Storm paused for effect. “First one pony, and then a few. Over the sounds of the ponies, I can also hear the Princess’ voice, although it’s too far away to make out any words. She sounds confused at first, then insistent. And then she enters the chamber. Pause a few seconds for the deputies to turn their eyes in her direction, and BAM! A hundred-something ponies, all doing it.”

“Doing what?” asked Check Mate.

Crack Shot meanwhile was unsuccessfully trying to hold in the laughter.

“Singing!” replied Storm. “Every single one of them was singing! The exact same song, a song I’ve never heard before, although I certainly have it memorized now. It seemed like the moment any mortal pony came in contact with Princess Celestia that day, they would instantly start singing. The first few ponies were singing out of time with each other, as they didn’t meet Her Majesty all at the same time. But that chamber got whatever was going around all at once, so they turned themselves into a chorus. Bass, tenor, alto, soprano, the whole works!”

“So...so what did the Princess do?” asked Check Mate in wonderment.

“Well, I think she tried to wait it out,” answered Storm. “She must have thought, ‘This song has to end sometime. And then we can get on with the meeting.’ Well for one thing, there was both a chorus and a verse, although the spell or what-have-you began with the chorus. And there were six verses.”

“That must have been rough,” said Check Mate. “But at least they had a choral arrangement. So what happened after the sixth chorus?”

“Let me guess,” ventured Crack Shot. “Seventh verse: same as the first?”

“Exactly,” answered Storm. “They started repeating the whole thing all over again! Now this was not a trained group of singers...”

“...although you’d expect them to have more than enough hot air between them...” ad-libbed Crack Shot.

“...and you could tell that they were getting quite winded. Now all this time you could hear the Princess trying various things, from pleading to shouting to what I assume must have been spell-casting, but nothing worked. So she dismissed herself and rushed to the chariot. ‘To the Royal Apartment,’ she ordered, ‘and eyes front above all!’”

Storm chuckled a bit remembering the trip back. “I tell you, resisting the temptation to look at her was pretty hard. Now that we knew what to listen for, we could hear that song breaking out here and there around us, once for any time a loyal subject gazed up at their Princess being carried across the sky. But finally we arrived where we started, and the Princess stepped out of the chariot and made a dash for her private quarters. And...I looked.”

“You looked!” Check Mate and Crack Shot exclaimed simultaneously.

“I couldn’t help it! The crisis was past, and I just had to know what it was every other pony was seeing that made them start singing before the Princess fixed it. And I wasn’t the only one—we had ourselves a nice little barbershop quartet before the poor alicorn got out of sight. She was blushing up a storm, too.”

“So...?”

“It was her mane,” Storm explained. “She had it all up in curls. One look at them, and it was like your brain was suddenly rewired. After that, you just had to sing it.”

“Ooooh!” Check Mate exclaimed. “I think I understand.”

“You do?” Storm asked. “Then I wish you’d explain it to me.”

“Well think about it,” said Check Mate. “Princess Celestia’s mane is pretty magical, flowing and shimmering all the time like it does. Now imagine putting that in curls—all of that magic is now twisted around like mad, and the light it gives off now has a completely unpredictable effect!”

“So,” said Crack Shot slyly, “how does that song go? I wonder if we should sing it to her at her next birthday party...”

“Don’t you dare!” exclaimed Check Mate. “Besides, how do we know that the words of the song themselves aren’t magical? Just hearing them might make you sing it non-stop!”

“Well, I stopped,” replied Storm, “and the song didn’t seem magical to me:

“Rule, Britannia!
Britannia rule the waves.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!”

Storm had perhaps sung this a little too loud, as the noise of the crowd around them suddenly died.

“Oops.”

“You know, Storm,” Check Mate said with a smile in his voice, “I imagine that several of those council members are here at this party.”

“What a funny song,” observed Crack Shot. “What’s a ‘britannia’?”

“I don’t know!” exclaimed Storm, as the group walked out of Vinyl’s earshot.

The DJ had herself a good laugh, and added the overheard story to her pitifully-small collection of “Times Celestia Screwed Up and Didn’t Doom Us All to a Horrible Fate.”

~ ~ ~

Vinyl finally finished setting up her stand, just as Daft Buck launched into their finale, “Derezzed,” four minutes and eleven seconds of absolute musical perfection. She didn’t realize that she had been holding her breath until she suddenly let it out.

And just like that, it was time to close the stand back up until after the concert.

“Oh, that’s OK, Vinyl. I’ll take care of things while you’re performing!”

“Pinkie Pie?” Vinyl asked as she turned her head in the direction of the pony who had somehow materialized right beside her. Again. “How did you get an invite?”

“Well, duh! Do you know any major characters from Canterlot who haven’t shown up yet? And if they all get to come, then why can’t I? Besides, I’m scoping out my competition.”

“Wait...what...competition?”

“The Perturb family,” explained Pinkie. “Fire Engine, Eggplant, and their ‘little toady’ Zip.”

Vinyl raised an eyebrow. That sounded mean, and everypony knew that Pinkie Pie didn’t have a mean bone in her body. “‘Little toady’?” she questioned.

“Yeah, he actually likes being called a ‘little toady’ by his brothers. Weird. Anywhoey, those three have got a monopony on all big parties in Canterlot.”

“...so are you jealous?”

“Me, jealous? No, silly! Ponyville’s got all the party potential I could ever need! I’m just wondering if they might be willing to share some of their secrets with me! Like if maybe they’ve discovered the sixty-sixth rule of a good party!”

Vinyl thought back to where this conversation started. “But won’t you have trouble doing that if you’re stuck running this stand for me?”

“Do you have a permit to sell, display, or think about compact disks within thirty pony-lengths of a city-approved party?” Pinkie asked, her voice suddenly that of a Royal Road Patrol officer.

“Um...”

“There, see? That means that the Perturb family will be all over this stand in a matter of minutes! It will be the perfect opportunity for me!”

Vinyl uttered something that started with a sigh and ended with a groan. “In that case, could you please get everything packed up when you’re done?”

“Okie-dokey-Loki! Oops...lokey!”

Vinyl made the same sound for a second time as she walked away.

~ ~ ~

“I want to be rich and I want lots of money.
I don’t care about clever, I don’t care about funny.
I want loads of clothes and want loads of diamonds
I heard ponies die while they are trying to find them.”

Sapphire Shores’ concert began in rather uncharacteristic fashion. Instead of an explosion of pyrotechnics and plenty of dancing to one of her energetic pop singles, she was sitting calmly on a chair in the middle of the stage and singing a fairly quiet song most of the crowd had never heard of, doing a remarkably-good job of maintaining a Hackney accent the entire time. DJ Pon-3 was stationed at one side of the stage, using her keyboards to provide a light etheric atmosphere on top of the guitars and drums.

“I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore.
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel, anymore.
When do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cause I’m being taken over by the fear...”

~ ~ ~

The crowd didn’t quite know what to make of this song, and so the applause when it finished was a bit scattered. Sapphire didn’t seem to mind.

“That was a song by a friend of mine named Lily Rose,” she explained to them afterwards. “Mrs. Cider asked that I perform it for the benefit of our true guest of honor tonight, Miss Dielectric Cider. Dia, could you please come on stage?”

There was a squeal of excitement from one side of the crowd, and eventually a pony made her way beside the singer.

“Dia, do you forgive me for the lecture on the dangers of materialism in lyrical format?” Sapphire asked factiously.

“...yeah...” the overwhelmed young filly managed to get out.

“Would you like me to sing one of my songs now?”

“...yeah...”

The crowd laughed, Miss Cider was given the place of honor at the foot of the stage, and the long-expected high-energy concert began, complete with atmospheric amounts of smoke. Strike that, more like an incredibly over-the-top amount of smoke.

“MY LUNGS!” cried the poor pony who had just recovered sight in his lasered eye.

~ ~ ~

When the concert concluded, Vinyl got her own and everypony else’s equipment put away as fast as possible. She turned to go and bumped into another pony.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized.

“Think nothing of it, Miss Scratch,” Kappa Cider replied. “I heard you volunteered to help Miss Shores out with her concert, and I wanted to thank you in person. Also, there was a small business matter: my batteries are used in your Trottmans, yes?”

Vinyl Scratch panicked. Her mind quickly brought up Lady Neufrichfeld’s financial statement. “I donated to the Rabbit Preservation Fund last year!” she blurted out.

“...what a coincidence, so did I! I wasn’t aware that someone with such a technologically-oriented focus as your alter ego could find time to devote to the plight of wild animals.”

“Ah, well...it’s sort of an outlet,” said Vinyl. She hoped her own financial records were not as easy to check as the nobility’s.

“I understand perfectly!” Mrs. Cider replied. “Well, you appear to be rather busy, so I’ll get back to you about that little battery situation later!”

“O...OK!” Vinyl said to the retreating form of the industrialist.

She let out a big, nervous sigh...and then remembered about the legal status of her booth.

~ ~ ~

Vinyl made a fast dash straight for her CD stand.

How can I sell the merits of a Trottman if I can’t even display one! she thought to herself. I’ve heard that Prince Steadfast is not very popular in the capital, but I can’t simply rely on any sympathy drummed up by anypony hearing the story of our confrontation and his humiliation at the Equestrian Museum. Although...I wonder if that’s why everypony is making way for me?

And then Vinyl suddenly realized that if that particular story had spread around, then there was no possible way to tell it without the fact of her blindness being included. At this realization, she suddenly stopped in her tracks and swung her head around for a few seconds, before taking a deep breath and continuing on to her stand at a more sedate pace.

How can I talk to anypony now that they know? she asked herself in desperation. This is not how I wanted to win this feud! I swear, the first pony that says ‘You poor dear...’ will be the end of me! I’ll explode in a million pieces, and, if I’m lucky, the shrapnel will take out the speaker... This last thought cheered her up, a little.

She arrived at the stand to find it was still open, mostly because Pinkie had kept Fire Engine and Eggplant Perturb trapped under a constant barrage of words the entire time. It appeared to be mostly praise of their excellent party methods, although there appeared to be a digression that involved a scene from something called Sita Sings the Blues.

“...and finally, it seems to me that the two musical performances tonight had completely different looks! Is that true?”

There was a few seconds of silence before the crowd realized that Pinkie was actually allowing the two party planners to answer a question for once.

“Yes, that is quite perceptive, Miss Pie!” exclaimed one of the organizers. “Fire Engine here organized Daft Buck’s performance (using entirely too many lasers), while I took care of Miss Shore’s performance—”

“And ruined it with too many smoke pots!” interrupted the second of the Perturbs.

“I did not!” protested Eggplant Perturb. “My concert was much better than yours!”

“You know,” said Fire Engine, sounding thoughtful. “I think you’re right, Eggplant.”

“Y...you do?”

“Sapphire Shores’ concert performance may well have been much better than Daft Buck’s. But I’ll never know for sure, because I couldn’t see a thing through all that smoke!”

“You take that back!”

A vigorous shoving contest then followed.

Vinyl put a hoof to her forehead and sighed. From their voices alone, these two were a couple of bullies, if of two different types. Fire Engine was the type of bully who’d shove you to the ground and steal your lunch money while laughing at how funny you look sprawled out in the dust, while Eggplant would be the type to walk away from a runaway reaction in Alchemy class and then, when told the resulting explosion had totaled the building, would reply with a completely insincere “oops!”

“That’s funny,” Vinyl remarked to Pinkie. “I didn’t think the Canterlot city council would grant party planning licenses to dragons.”

“LIES!” shouted the surprisingly strong voice of the tiny Zip Perturb. “LLLIIIEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” He punctuated the “s”’s by pawing the air.

“What?” protested Vinyl. “You’re not dragons? I’m sorry, you sound just like them.”

“It’s...a throat condition!” said Zip.

“Well,” said Pinkie. “They are kinda scaley, and their manes are kinda platey, but otherwise they look like ponies to me! If Fire Engine and Eggplant are wearing disguises, they’re very good. Zip’s, on the other hand...”

“I’M A NORMAL EQUESTRIAN MAMMAL!!”

“...Zip’s is very...loud. Okay, Perturb, Perturb and Tiny Perturb, that’s all the questions I have! You can get back to what you came over here for!”

“What did we come over here for?” asked Fire Engine.

“Heck if I know,” replied Eggplant. “Hey look over there, soft pretzels!”

“Dibs!” cried Fire Engine, as the two elder Perturbs had a running/shoving match to the snack table.

“Dib?! Where?!” cried Zip, turning quickly in a circle before noticing that the other two were gone. “Coming, My Tallest!”

Vinyl waited until he was gone before asking, “Were they really that tall?”

“Oh yes,” replied Pinkie. “They were nearly as tall as Princess Celestia! Of course, they couldn’t be taller, because that would make them the Princesses! Or was that some other form of government I’m mixing up with Equestrian Principality?”

~ ~ ~

Vinyl took up her spot beside Pinkie behind the stand, and then on second thought sent Pinkie away on a break. She figured this move quintupled her chance of actually accomplishing anything productive.

Sure enough, before long somepony approached the stand, accompanied by the clicking sound of claws on pavement.

“An interesting invention you have here,” a smooth male voice said.

She was somewhat surprised to realize that this was a griffon. Griffons tended to have...much more obvious entrances.

“Ah, yes,” she replied after a moment. “The music is stored in digital form, thereby allowing a high-fidelity playback every time.” There, she told herself, that’s a good slogan! Isn’t it?

“Yes,” said the griffon, “that was precisely the aspect that caught my attention. Have you considered what else you might use the medium to store besides music?”

“Besides music?” the DJ asked. “No, it never occurred to me.”

“Digital storage means the sound was converted into numbers. Well anything can be converted into numbers, so your invention should be able to store any sort of data. Perhaps a great deal of data.”

“Hmm...” Vinyl calculated. “44.1 KHz, 74 minutes, carry the...about 5.4 billion bits, give or take.”

“...Billion bits!” the griffon exclaimed, his voice seeming to swim in greed for a moment. “Oh, you mean bits of information! Well, that is a large number in any case.”

“Yes,” said the unicorn, “you should be able to fit a good-sized encyclopedia on one of those, assuming you left out the pictures and just kept the text.”

“That could prove very useful for the secure storage of financial or...other types of data, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I imagine so,” said Vinyl. “Look, I hope you weren’t hoping for some kind of business partnership out of this idea of yours, especially if, to be somewhat blunt, you haven’t got any capital to bring into the arrangement. I’ve already got a corporation going already, albeit in a somewhat rocky shape at the moment and, when it comes right down to it, your idea is just that: a simple idea. I can already work out the technical details of how to read and write data all by myself. I hope I’m not coming off as being rude, sir.”

“The name’s Mentar,” said the griffon, sliding a card across the table towards her. “As a fellow business...creature, I am well aware of the relevant clause in Equestrian copyright law. It was simply an application of your technology that I, as a potential consumer, would be willing to...consume.” He picked up the business card that Vinyl had passed his way in exchange. “You work out of Fillydelphia? Nice city, lots of factories. I can see why you chose it.”

“It happens to be my home town,” Vinyl replied. “And it is pretty nice, except in the summer, when most ponies head north.”

“Ozone?” asked Mentar.

“Yes,” agreed Vinyl. “A small side effect of industrialization.”

“Ozone is a very interesting substance,” the griffon informed her confidentially. “It has an amazing effect on certain alchemical reactions. I’ve been toying with a method to extract large quantities of it from the air.”

“Well if you ever perfect your method, I’m sure the population of Fillydelphia would be most grateful,” Vinyl said.

“That would be a change,” muttered the griffon, low enough that he probably didn’t expect Vinyl to hear. “Well,” he addressed her, “the hour is getting late and, by the presence of iron rods where spines should go, I see a trio of off-service Royal Guards heading this way, so I believe I will take my leave of you, madam. As a final word of advice, may I suggest printing your business cards with a raised font, like I do? That way everypony will be able to read them. Good day!”

Vinyl experimentally raised Mentar’s card with her horn after he had left and lightly brushed it across her lip, which allowed her to easily read his name and address. She lowered the card gently and stood there for a while, lost in her thoughts.

~ ~ ~

“Excuse me, do you mind if we set up our stand next to yours...Miss Scratch! What a surprise to see you here!”

Vinyl shook herself out of her reverie and pointed her head in the direction of Oars in Wells, the pony who had just spoken. “Likewise!” she said. “If you wish to set up shop, go right ahead. Are you here to put on your illusionist act?”

“Only incidentally,” said Mr. Wells with a laugh in his voice. “This stand is for Daft Buck, to allow them to meet their fans.”

“Did you build their little ‘Technologic’ prop for them?” Vinyl guessed.

“That’s it exactly!” the etheric producer exclaimed. “The usual operator for this very unusual puppet seems to have the same bug that seems to be infecting everypony nowadays, so I was happy to step in and operate it for the concert. I use a special piece of equipment that I do believe you invented a couple of years back, to transform my voice into the rather disturbing cross of baby colt and century-old parrot that the band picked out. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to borrow a bit of the tent fabric to form a curtain to keep my presence a secret from the visitors, so I may continue to operate the little equunculus whilst maintaining the illusion that it is in fact alive.”

“Go right ahead,” said Vinyl. She had never heard the word “equunculus” before, but supposed it was just another word for “puppet”, for the use of ponies who wanted to feel intellectually superior.

~ ~ ~

At the same time as she was conversing with Mr. Wells, Vinyl was also listening in on a conversation between the same guard ponies and their filly friend that she had overheard earlier.

“Here’s your drinks,” said Nomde.

“What happened to the candy?” asked Crack Shot.

“It’s all gone,” the filly unicorn told them. “A tiny Day-Glo green diamond dog ate the whole lot in a matter of seconds, and then launched into a high-pitched duet with Pinkie Pie!”

“Wait, you know Pinkie Pie?” asked Storm.

“Doesn’t everypony?”

~ ~ ~

Vinyl had in fact heard that particular duet (about the addictive qualities of something called “high-fructose corn syrup”) during her conversation with Mentar, and had with some difficulty managed to block it out enough to carry on a rational discussion.

~ ~ ~

Finally, at the same time as the conversation with Mr. Wells and the overheard conversation with the guard ponies, her stand had been approached by a very stern pegasus who silently inspected her wares.

“Of what possible use is this infernal contraption to somepony who already owns the finest in vinyl reproduction?” he asked at last.

Vinyl repeated the line she had come up with about high-fidelity playback.

“And why should I trust a bit of my funds to you, Miss Scratch?”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Vinyl replied, trying to sound as genuinely humble as possible. “To which illustrious personage am I addressing?”

“I am the Right Honorable Judge and Lord Keen,” he informed her curtly. The “judge” part of the title was largely illusory, as the justice system was practically non-existent in Equestria.

Lord Keen was the most-powerful pony in Canterlot who didn’t have the word “Prince” or “Princess” in front of their name. If she brought him over to her side, this entire crisis was over. If on the other hand she failed to do so or worse, managed to insult him somehow, then she might as well give up on being a businesspony forever.

Vinyl bowed her head low as she remembered Lord Keen’s financial record. She knew exactly the one thing she needed to say to gain his support. Not only a lie, but a horrible monstrous lie.

If you say it, I’ll never respect you again, said the inner voice of DJ Pon-3.

Nopony respects me now anyway! Vinyl Scratch’s thoughts replied angrily. We’re just an entertainer to them! How many times have our employers mistaken us for one of our competitors, or vice versa? A DJ is just an ornament for their parties, like the firework display or the ice sculpture, and equally interchangeable.

We are artists!Pon-3 mentally proclaimed. Our works will live on for ages to come! Will anypony remember Lady Neufrichfeld a generation from now?

They may not remember her, Vinyl’s thoughts replied, but Kappa Cider and her batteries will be remembered forever and nopony, nopony whatsoever, would care at all if she had a disability, in fact they would applaud her even more! Would anypony say the same of a disabled artist, a disabled servant?

Pon-3’s inner voice was silent, for she knew her other self was right.

“Well?” said the judge, waiting to see what this businesspony before him was willing to do to make a sale.

The answer was: anything. “You may think this presumptuous,” she began in a trembling voice, “but I believe I may have encountered you before—on the Stalliongrad Chasing Grounds.”

“Ah!” the judge replied, allowing some warmth into his voice for the first time. “A fellow chaser! Well met! What is your favorite species to chase?”

“Rabbit.” It was the first thing that popped into Vinyl’s head, so she said it. She immediately began to feel sick to her stomach.

“Ah, that is my favorite as well!” Judge Keen exclaimed. “The sudden twists and turns, the sheer terror in their eyes when you have them cornered! Very good, Miss Scratch, very good! I’ll take one of these players of yours, and that collection of opera choruses over there to begin with. Now what do I owe you?”

“No charge,” she croaked out. “Special promotional offer.”

“I understand perfectly! A bit of bait to get them interested, and then you reel them in! You are most certainly a pony after my own heart! Good day to you, madam!”

“Good...day.”

~ ~ ~

“Miss Scratch!”

Vinyl suddenly jerked her head up in the presence of Kappa Cider.

“Did I just hear that conversation correctly?” the industrialist quizzed her. “A rabbit chaser? Really? From a pony who claimed to have contributed to the Fund for the Preservation of Rabbits from Chasing? Are there no depths to which you will not sink to sell your products? We entrepreneurs must be bound by a sense of obligation, to truthfully use our position of trust to benefit and not harm the communities that welcome us into their hearts! You know, I was intending to approach you tonight in hopes of donating my batteries to you, to help you through your crisis, but now that I see what manner of pony I am dealing with, I believe I will simply rescind my promotional rate and charge you the market price!”

“I...”

“No, I need no explanation from you, Miss Scratch. And don’t fear that I’ll cancel my contract—unlike some ponies, I am a mare of my word!” She then turned and stepped away from the very shocked DJ. “Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention, Selene,” she said before walking away.

“Selene?” Vinyl asked herself.

“Maybe next time you’ll think twice before exploiting public information and private trust for private gain,” Selene’s voice whispered in her ear, despite the fact that the pony was several body lengths away.

I have been rebuked by a goddess, Vinyl realized. And every word she speaks is the truth.

There was nothing more for Vinyl Scratch to do at that point but to pack up and try to get out of the party as quietly and quickly as possible. A small blessing was the fact that Pinkie never returned to the stand. She didn’t doubt for a second though that the party pony had heard everything, and would report it all to Twilight.

The only slight consolation came as she was leaving: Hoyden, Sundance and Selene visited the Daft Buck stand and once Selene had ascertained that there was no puppeteer above or below the little plastic horse figurine to operate it, she had playfully addressed it:

“So, Mr. Technologic, what kind of candy do you like the best?”

“I like the bones of day-old fillies,” answered Mr. Wells from behind his curtain.

Vinyl fled the scene faster than she ever thought possible, with the horrible thought of a goddess scared out of her wits propelling her onward.

10: Spare Pony

But Wait...There’s More!

- 10: Spare Pony -

“Vinyl, are you in here?” asked the voice of Octavia. “Vinyl, I’m coming in there. Comrade, do you have any idea what time it is? It’s past two in the afternoon! Get up, get up! Fix your...you know what, I’ll fix your mane...there! Trust me; it’s as good as you ever bother to fix it. I’ve got something to help you out on your quest—a booth in the city square! It’s the one I use to sell season tickets at the end of summer. I spent all yesterday filling out the paperwork, so it’s completely legal for you to use it to promote your righteous cause. Are you just going to stand there? Here, let’s get your things together...oh, they’re still in the cart. Well come on, let’s get out there. Wait, can’t forget the sunglasses. And...onward! It’s alright...little baby dragon whose name escapes me...I have things well in hand! Let your masters see this note when they come back. Now let’s get you out to that booth, Vinyl...and on to your destiny!”

The musician resumed speaking a few minutes later. “Now let’s see, how do I put this together again? Long walls, short wall, back wall, and...there! Now we’ll set up your boxes and...those other boxes...no, don’t bother to lift a hoof, I’ve got this! Yes, yes I do believe that will do nicely! Oh, you need a sign! I’ve got this covered, so don’t you move!”

Indeed, Vinyl had not moved of her own volition the entire time—she had just walked dumbly in whatever direction she was prodded. It seemed as if she was just one more part for Octavia to assemble. “Step 18: Balance Part P (pony) on top of Part S (stool)...”

In a few more minutes, Octavia returned with her sign, which she appeared to be quite proud of. She then excused herself to go give a demonstration for an elementary school class (and utterly failing to get Vinyl to repeat the name of the school in case anything came up), before finally leaving Vinyl to her thoughts.

Of which she had absolutely none. Vinyl just sat there in the booth, immobile. Seven hundred million years passed. Well, that’s what it felt like. Nopony approached the booth. Vinyl wouldn’t have noticed if one did—she experienced the world as a mish-mashed jumble of noise. She hoped that one of the ponies would take off her glasses. She hoped that they would start laughing at her blindness, that they would kick her to the ground and start tearing her slowly to pieces.

It was what she deserved.

Eventually, Octavia came back for her. “Oh, look!” she exclaimed. “You made a sale! See, you have one less box than when we set up!” It was almost certainly stolen. “That’s pretty good. I’m sure Sunday will be even better, especially if we get you up a little earlier. Well come on, this booth is not going to take itself down!” By which she meant that she was going to take the booth down by herself.

Vinyl Scratch was taken back to Rarity’s apartment and put back in her bed, and then Octavia left to cover for DJ Pon-3 at the party she was supposed to host that night.

And so ended Saturday.

11: Friendly Reckoning

But Wait...There’s More!

- 11: Friendly Reckoning -

On Sunday morning, Octavia found that Vinyl had locked her door. One interview with Twilight later, and she was politely sent on her way.

“Vinyl?” asked Twilight, gently knocking on the door. “Vinyl, are you in there?”

Silence.

“Vinyl, could you come out for a minute? We need to talk.”

“No,” said Vinyl.

“No, you’re not coming out, or no, you don’t need to talk?” joked Rainbow Dash.

“I’m never coming out of this room again for as long as I live,” Vinyl clarified.

“Oh dear,” Rarity commented. “I’m not sure what the landlord will have to say about that!”

“Ugh...fine. I’m going back to Fillydelphia, and then I’m locking myself in my own room and never coming out again for as long as I live! Oh, and Twilight?”

“Yes?”

“You owe me one ‘I told you so.’”

Twilight leaned her head against the door. She could hear the sounds of Vinyl packing. “I...this isn’t about right and wrong, Vinyl.”

“Yes, it is. I gave up my rights to everything at that party: the right to correct Prince Steadfast, the right to own a business or to be an artist, and most importantly of all, the right to friendship.” She did not state that she also gave up her right to exist. She figured that was obvious. “I release you all, ponies. Go back to Ponyville and get back to your lives without me.”

There was a long pause from the outside of the door. For a moment, Vinyl wondered if everypony else had taken her advice and abandoned her to her fate.

“Alright,” said the voice of Twilight at last. “This is about right and wrong. A terrible wrong has been committed. And I’m going to fix it. I’m going to tell Celestia about the Artifacts.”

There was a collective gasp of shock from the outside of the door.

Meanwhile, Vinyl was flabbergasted. “Wait, what?” she asked.

“You simply followed my bad example,” Twilight confessed. “I didn’t tell the truth about the Artifacts to Celestia, despite the grave danger they may well pose to the whole of Equestria. And I didn’t tell the truth about my part in Equestria Acoustics. And as my friend, you loyally supported these lies, even though they were eating you up inside...”

Wait, what are you doing? Vinyl’s heart demanded. Is...is Twilight Sparkle trying to take over the lead part in my life story? Nopony’s allowed to atone for my sins but me!

“...so what other choice did you have?” Twilight asked. “Of course you had to lie, to support my lies! But no longer! I swear to come clean to the Princess!”

“...just as soon as we get back to Ponyville...” Spike added in a small, nervous voice.

“...right,” Twilight agreed. “But it’s a promise none-the-less! Now, Rarity, Rainbow and I have an appointment to see the Prince, and we’re going to do everything in our power to fix this; because we are your friends. Not only in the good times, but even in the bad times, and especially when the bad times are all our fault. I hear you’re already going to be paying for your mistake, so that means it’s time to put it behind you. Now, will you please go out to the town square and use that booth that Octavia made available to you?”

There was a significant pause from the inside of the door. “Am I allowed to unpack, first?” Vinyl finally asked.

The group on the outside of the door laughed. “Sure!” exclaimed Twilight.

“And one more thing...” Vinyl said, sticking her head out of the door.

“What?” asked Twilight.

“Number eleven,” Vinyl replied, before popping back into her room.

“Number eleven?”

“Ah,” said Rarity. “Number eleven is one of my favorites: ‘We shall never speak of this matter...ever again!’”

That got another good laugh out of the ponies.

Vinyl sat down on the bed with a big grin before the following question occurred to her: What just happened? She suspected she still had a lot to learn about this “magic of friendship” business, because she was fairly certain she had just experienced it.

12: Free With Purchase

But Wait...There’s More!

- 12: Free With Purchase -

Before she set up her stall at the town square, Vinyl decided to walk around and observe how the other ponies hawked their wares. She walked past ponies that had no idea what they were talking about, and ponies that quite obviously despised their customers, their products, even themselves. Vinyl nodded grimly in self-recognition on the last point and kept walking.

“Come one, come all!” the voice of a stallion beckoned to her. “See the must-have toys of the gift-buying season! Shrinking Violet, Spoke, Soft Heart and all the rest of the cast of that hit etheric show, The Risking It All Team! Get them now before tomorrow night’s season finale!”

With a big grin on her face, the DJ joined the crowd in front of the booth. “Who’s the toypony?” she asked the mare next to her.

“That’s Kong Fun,” the stranger informed her. “He runs a tiny little shop off Colton. He made his name selling this cute little game where a monkey drops marbles down an angled chute that you have to jump your player over to rescue the Princess. Only game I know of where a donkey was the protagonist.”

While the mare was saying this, Kong had surrendered his place in the limelight to a couple of unicorn colts who were self-consciously playing with his toys.

“You’ll never win, Dark King!” said one of the colts in a high-pitched voice, waving one of the hollow wooden toys around.

“Oh yeah?” asked the other colt in a deep-pitched voice. “Let’s see how you do against my trained dragon—also sold separately by my dad!” This statement was accompanied by the revealing of a rattling figure that had only appeared on RIAT’s posters, never in the actual show. “GHAR!” he then proclaimed in his version of a dragon voice. “I’m going to eat you all up if you don’t give the Dark King the code phrase to get into the Light Queen’s castle!”

“While he’s talking, Fidelia tosses a lit match into his mouth, causing him to blow up!” exclaimed the first colt, waving a different toy around.

“Wait, I don’t think dragons work that—” the second colt began, dropping out of character.

“THERE’S NO TIME!” The first pony shouted the magical catchphrase for ignoring logic, grabbing the dragon toy and throwing it to the ground. It was a testament to Kong Fun’s craftponyship that the toy did not fall to pieces at this treatment. Nevertheless, the second pony started crying, loudly.

“Um, wasn’t that a great demonstration by little Mario and Junior?” said Mr. Fun, rushing on stage and passing the two colts into the arms of their mother.

“Excuse me!” said a voice from the crowd, as Eggplant Perturb pushed forward past Vinyl Scratch. “Mr. Fun Pony! Is this where I go for returns?”

“Ahhh...one moment, folks,” said an exasperated Kong. “I have to take care of this customer, and then I’ll get right back to you!” He dragged the professional party planner into a corner and attempted to get a confidential conversation out of him. What actually happened, however, is that he would whisper while Eggplant shouted.

“What can I do for you, dear sir?” Kong began.

“I wish to return this shoddy and unprofessional merchandise!” Eggplant replied.

“But these appear to be in perfect order. What do you find wrong with them?”

“Well for one thing, the three girl-horse toys all use the exact same model! Soft Heart should have a different eye shape than the others, and you can quite obviously feel the painted-over holes in Fidelia where you would insert a horn to turn her into Shrinking Violet or a pair of wings to turn her into Soft Heart! And making them all the same size is completely unrealistic! From certain remarks made by the others throughout the series, coupled with the backstory revealed in Episode 5, it is obvious that Shrinking Violet suffered from stunted growth, and therefore should be significantly smaller than Soft Heart! You should know that if you’re the show’s licensed toymaker...wait, are you the show’s licensed toymaker?”

“Shh...not so loud!” Kong took a moment, probably to see that yes, every single one of his potential customers did hear that. “As a matter of fact, RIAT does not have a licensed toy manufacturer at present. My application is still being processed. But the lack of action by Mr. Wells’ lawyers assures me that my work has not substantially hurt the spirit of the program. I also think you’re being a tad bit too judgmental about a fairly inexpensive toy designed to exercise a growing colt or filly’s imagination.”

“Oh, we don’t want to exercise Zip’s imagination!” exclaimed Eggplant. “The last time that happened was what landed us in Canterlot in the first place!”

“Look, I can issue you store credit, or you can exchange them for any one product, no matter the cost.”

“Anything?” asked Eggplant. “What’s your latest toy?”

“The Wild Card figure,” replied Kong. “She’s one of my finest creations. You have to admit, every colt and filly has pony and dragon toys, but how many of them have griffons? Wild Card comes with a day old baguette (for clobbering bad guys), a flute, and a bag of disguises for Mysterio, any of which she can hold in her claw.”

Eggplant spent a few moments inspecting the demonstration toy he had been handed. “Wow, she really can hold all of that stuff! That’s amazing!”

Kong beamed. “I call it the Kong Fun grip.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t get Wild Card—it will give Zip too many crazy ideas. What about that dragon toy? It looked really good.”

Kong dashed over and scooped up the fallen toy from before to pass over to Mr. Perturb. They soon had themselves a deal.

~ ~ ~

Vinyl eventually purchased a cheap educational toy from Mr. Fun—a flat version of Fidelia with a “math thingamajig” in its stomach. She then went to her appointed space and set up her booth.

To her regret, she discovered that she was more successful yesterday when her brain had been offline, because she made zero sales. In fact, most ponies fled the area as soon as she began her pitch. Nevertheless, she was certain that a few stayed to watch and listen from what they considered a safe distance. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

That night, Twilight took the group out to an all-you-can-eat buffet near the campus. There, stories of the various pony’s adventures were exchanged.

Vinyl was not surprised in the least that the interview with Prince Steadfast had not gone well. It turned out that Steadfast and Prince Blueblood were on the same bowling team. Rainbow Dash had shown remarkable restraint during the interview: she waited until after the Prince remarked about the inability of Rarity’s hips to fit through a pair of double-doors before using his head to put a new skylight in the greenhouse.

On Monday it rained.

With some effort, Vinyl maintained her enthusiasm, and yet she still didn’t make any sales. She suspected that at least three ponies snuck up on her when they thought she wouldn’t notice to see if she had a forehead-mounted eye hiding under her mane.

~ ~ ~

Late in the afternoon she overheard the following conversation. It was alright for her to spy on this particular conversation, because she was fairly sure that she was the topic being discussed.

“That poor thing! Aren’t we going to do anything for her?” asked a female earth pony.

“Her? She can take care of herself,” replied a male earth pony. “She got herself into this mess, after all.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but wasn’t it one of you who got her in this mess?”

“It was Ten, as a matter of fact,” replied the doctor. “I never did trust the evens.”

“But you’re Four!” the female protested.

“Ah, but Four is different, Romana. The smallest squared prime number. Somebody as smart as you ought to know that!”

“Somepony as smart, Doctor,” Romana corrected him. “Remember where we are.”

“How could I forget? At least they have proper sweets around here. I don’t think I could stand a diet of straight grasses. Now come along: to the observatory! We need to find out if this [something] is truly as illuminating as advertised!”

And then the two ponies left. Vinyl didn’t recognize the name of the object the doctor was referring to at the end, but she was coming to the conclusion that Canterlot was Equestria’s capital of suspicious happenings, and so-called “doctors” were at the bottom of all of them.

~ ~ ~

Nothing of note happened for the remainder of the afternoon. When the nearby clock tower rang six o’clock, Vinyl packed up and headed back to Rarity’s apartment. After all, she had the place of honor as a living etheric player.

13: Season Finale

But Wait...There’s More!

- 13: Season Finale -

“...and that is why at Poul Mason Whinery, we will sell no whine...before its time.”

The season finale of the Risking It All Team began with a quick recap of the team’s dilemma, and how they got there. As they were about to be led out of their prison cell to certain doom, Shrinking Violet suddenly grabbed Spoke and threw him at the guards. The ponies and griffon were now free to escape in the chaos, but the little dragon was in the clutches of the enemy.

“Surrender now or you’ll never see your dragon again!” shouted the Dark King.

“Do your worst!” taunted Shrinking Violet.

“I’ll do it! I’ll really kill him!” said the callous pony with a sneer.

“He’ll do it!” cried Soft Heart. “Oh, we must save him!”

“No!” shouted the leader of RIAT. “Dark King, I’m calling your bluff! I have in my hand a remote control to the explosive collar that Spoke always wears to prevent the secret of his mystical fire—given to him by the Light Queen—from falling in the hands of the enemy! You will call off your guards, immediately, or the dragon in your hooves will die!”

“Are you mad?!” cried Wild Card.

“Guards, eliminate RIAT!” shouted the King.

“I warned you!” yelled Shrinking Violet, accompanied by the sound of a button clicking.

“Gaggggg....Violet!” pleaded the dragon.

“No, anything but that!” yelled the King. “Guards, leave us at once!”

“What is going on here!” demanded Mysterio, along with the audience.

“I knew that you would never sacrifice the life of your best friend and top double agent,” declared Shrinking Violet.

“Fascinating. Most fascinating,” stated Fidelia.

“Will somepony explain what’s goin’ on around here?” demanded Wild Card. “Spoke? A double agent?”

“Yes,” explained the fearless leader, “we were betrayed by that dragon, but that dragon is not Spoke! Rather...”

“...it is me!” the dragon, completely changing his accent. “Spoke’s twin brother...Sprechen Zedeutche!” Somehow you just knew he was now sporting a monocle and a dueling scar.

There was a brief pause at this point, to allow everypony in the audience to stop their heads from spinning at so many plot twists in a row.

“But where is Spoke?” asked a bewildered Soft Heart.

“His fire is the active ingredient in the mind control gas!” gloated the King. “And with it...I will take over THE WORLD!”

“TO THE FACTORY!” proclaimed a vengeful Shrinking Violet.

“GUARDS!!!” shouted the king.

~ ~ ~

What followed was a scene almost too chaotic to follow, as the team split up to search the immense factory for Spoke. They all had their own run-ins with the guards, and each had a chance to shine.

But time was also running out, as the formulation of the gas was reaching a critical juncture. Shrinking Violet, winded from a series of running fights, burst into the cauldron room and scrambled up a circular stair, to find one dragon dangling his twin over the mystical fumes.

“...if you won’t breathe your flame willingly, then the mixture will just have to pull it from your bones!” the evil twin declared.

“SPRECHEN!!!” shouted Shrinking Violet in fear and outrage.

Spoke took this opportunity to turn his flame upon his brother.

“Aarrggghh! I can’t see! I can’t see!” Sprechen screamed.

“Oh, stop being melodramatic!” Spoke quipped. “It barely has an effect on dragons. I mean, unless you made a dark compact with an ifrit or something...”

“Curse you, Spoke! Curse you...” And with that he toppled into the vat.

“Sprechen, my brother! Noooooooooooo!!”

~ ~ ~

It is a little-known fact that adding an ifrit-enchanted dragon to a batch of mind-control gas will cause the entire factory to explode in slow motion.

The team only just managed to escape, now chased by the entire Dark Army for a hundred yards before they reached the border and the safety of the Light Army.

~ ~ ~

“The Dark King’s greatest plot has been defeated,” declared the Light Queen later over a spot of tea. “And he now knows all about the Risking It All Team. It appears that I have no choice but to disband you.”

“Yes, that is true, my foster mother,” said Shrinking Violet after daintily nibbling on a scone. “The team no longer has a reason to exist. But I must continue my quest, regardless, even if I do it alone.”

“And what is your quest?” asked Soft Heart.

“To find my family.”

There was a collective gasp of amazement from all of the other team members but Fidelia. “Of course,” she deduced. “How else could Spoke and Sprechen be brothers, unless they are both from the Dark Kingdom?”

“Exactly,” agreed Shrinking Violet with a heavy heart and a dollop of jam. “My mother died crossing the border so that Spoke and I could grow up in a land of happiness and friendship. And while I have served my queen and carried out her commands, I have also rescued those members of my family that I have come across.”

“Wait,” said Mysterio. “You mean Roof-Light, and Custard Cream and Spackle...they were all your—”

“Cousins and nieces, yes,” admitted the unicorn. “But I have plenty of other relatives, and I won’t stop until I have freed them all.”

“Well, I’m with you!” declared Spoke.

“And my disguises are at your service!” said Mysterio.

“I could never abandon a friend in need!” added Soft Heart.

“This is all most illogical,” said Fidelia in something resembling a pout. “But I shall assist you nonetheless.”

“That just leaves you, Wild Card,” said the Light Queen. “What say you?”

“All I’ve got to say is that I better be gettin’ a raise out of this!”

“Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Dun, dun, DUN-TUN!”

“Wow, what an episode!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie.

“I got to be the hero, and the villain!” proclaimed Spike proudly.

“Yes, nopony can pull a finale off better than Oars In Wells,” said Vinyl with satisfaction.

“You got that right!” Applejack exclaimed. “Not only did he tie up the loose ends, he also left ya wantin’ to come back in six months for t’second season premiere. I can’t wait!”

“I’m impressed by the way Mr. Wells addressed a complaint by the fans,” Fluttershy stated quietly. “They said that Blue Bubbles voiced the bit parts of Roof-Light, Custard Cream and Spackle too close to Shrinking Violet’s voice, and accused her of ‘slacking off’. But it turned out to be a clue all along.”

“If I know Mr. Wells,” Rarity commented, “he probably wrote that part in at the last minute precisely to silence his critics. That this circumstance revitalized the upcoming season was just a lucky accident.”

“You’re keeping pretty quiet, Rainbow,” said Twilight Sparkle. “What did you think?”

“Yeah, it was a great episode,” the weather pony said after a few moments. “But I just think it was missing something.”

“What do you think it was missing?” asked Pinkie.

“I dunno, but when I figure it out I’ll tell you.”

~ ~ ~

The group was still discussing the show when they were interrupted by a knock at the door, and the entrance of Octavia.

“Tavi!” cried Vinyl Scratch, pulling her aside. “Look, I need to thank you again for covering for me on Saturday night.”

“I saw the state you were in,” she said. “And besides, you were lucky. Those ravers were a tough crowd!”

Vinyl somehow suspected that DJ Pon-3 would have had a slightly better reception from that crowd than the classically-trained musician received. “Now tell me you’re here for the reason I think...”

“You mean the fact that I got you onto the performer’s list at Blue Bubble’s birthday party on Wednesday night? To quote a certain pony of few words: Eeyup.”

“Ah, Tavi, you’re too good to me, you know that?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Will you be prepared at such short notice?”

“Oh sure,” replied Vinyl. “I’ve got this really-neat arrangement of the RIAT theme using three CD players in tandem. It’ll knock their socks off!”

Octavia then turned to the waiting group. “Miss Bubble is also extending invitations to all of you,” she told them. “Given the short notice, she does not expect presents. Your presence is enough.”

“I wish she’d make up her mind,” Pinkie Pie said in a mock-serious tone. “Does she want presents, or doesn’t she?”

“No...wait...”

Cue another shared laugh amongst the ponies (and dragon).

The group disbanded and returned to the various rooms in the apartment that Rarity had arranged for them. All but Pinkie Pie, who waited outside Vinyl Scratch’s open door to be noticed.

“Still here, Pinkie?” Vinyl asked eventually. “Do we need to talk about something? Wait, I know. You feel guilty about telling the others what I did back at the party, don’t you? Well, don’t be. It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did, but that wasn’t it,” Pinkie said in a very quiet voice. Nearly Fluttershy-level quiet. “Your mind was in a bad place this weekend, and I haven’t had a chance before now to ask you about it.”

“Curious about a state of mind utterly foreign to you?” Vinyl joked.

Pinkie said nothing in response.

“Look, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve been to that dark little place before, and I’ll probably go there again, but I always get myself out eventually. This time I had a little help, for which I’m grateful. You don’t need to worry about me. I’d never take it so far as to...well, I just wouldn’t, OK? It’s just that...I worry too much about what total strangers think of me sometimes.”

“You wouldn’t be a pony if you didn’t worry about what everypony else thought about you,” Pinkie said sadly. “You don’t...you don’t have to tell me this,” she said, stumbling over her words for the first time in Vinyl’s recollection, “but how do you get out? When you don’t have any friends in the world that believe in you, how do you get out of the dark place?”

“Well!” exclaimed Vinyl, taken aback at how easily Pinkie got into the game of pretending to be a depressed pony. “I...well...in my case it’s DJ Pon-3. She’s always believed in me, even during the times when I stopped believing in myself.” She rubbed her neck nervously at revealing the fact that she treated her alter ego as something separate from herself, which some ponies might take as a sign of a less than stable mind. “It’s like she always tells me,” she joked. “‘Always have at least one head-voice on your side.’”

“That is good advice,” said Pinkie simply. “Thanks for satisfying my curiosity,” she said, turning to go.

“Wait!” exclaimed Vinyl, reaching out to her. “That thing with the head-voices, you’re not going to tell anypony about that, are you?”

The earth mare made a “Pinkie Promise” never to tell a soul, and then hopped off, her somber mood of a few minutes earlier instantly forgotten.

As she listened to the hoof-falls fading down the corridor, Vinyl Scratch wished she could just turn her emotions on and off so easily.

14: The Imaginarium

But Wait...There’s More!

- 14: The Imaginarium -

The Imaginarium was a grand collection of exhibits showing off everything that unicorn magic had achieved since Canterlot was converted into Celestia’s capital, with the purpose of inspiring the next generation. Some of the exhibits were hundreds of years old, and were extremely fragile. For this reason, Pinkie Pie was on a very short leash, and Rarity made it clear that the Cutie Mark Crusaders would only be brought here as a last resort.

“That reminds me,” Twilight said. “Who did you get to watch them this time?”

“Zecora,” answered Applejack. “We owe her big time for this.”

~ ~ ~

The group wandered slowly from one area of the great hall to another. Pinkie Pie ooh’d and ahh’d at several exhibits that would probably inspire future pranks and inventions. Finally at one of the light displays she excused herself from the rest of the group, rushing out to begin a mad purchasing spree “for the best prank ever!” Rainbow Dash was rather disappointed when Pinkie pointedly excluded her from this plan.

Vinyl’s attention was naturally drawn to the musical exhibits. One cleverly-designed machine took the base magical states of nearby unicorns and converted them into musical notes. By stepping closer or farther from the machine, each participant could control the volume of their contribution and in this way Vinyl, Twilight, Rarity and a couple of strangers started playing “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”.

The song was eventually cut short, though, by a short burst of feedback. An attendant put a rope around the exhibit while getting to work recalibrating it.

“What happened?” asked Fluttershy, noticing that several other exhibits had failed at the exact same time.

“One of the Princesses must have flown too close to the museum,” the attendant explained over her shoulder.

Rainbow Dash, who had been quiet for several minutes now, suddenly snapped her hoof to the ground in realization. “Vinyl, you know what would be really awesome for you to play for Blue Bubble’s party?” she asked. Leaning close, she whispered her idea to the DJ pony.

“You’re right!” Vinyl exclaimed. “Nopony could possibly top that! But there’s so little time—I’m sorry, gals, but I’ve got to meet up with Octavia right now so we can get this prepared by tomorrow night. Oh, and I’ll need to send a telegram to Uncle Phil to get me some equipment and recordings. Wish me luck!”

“Good luck!”

“...’telegram’?” Rainbow whispered to herself, as one eye twitched.

16: Vinyl on Trial

But Wait...There’s More!

- 16: Vinyl on Trial -

Several hours later, after all the congratulations had been delivered, and after she had told Oars In Wells that she and Octavia might consider his offer to make them co-composers for the second season of RIAT (“but don’t hold your breath”), Vinyl set up her stand in the park right outside the ballroom, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

She had just pulled off the third-best performance of her life, a performance that vitally depended on the acoustical qualities of her CD player, and still nopony was able to get past that silly story.

“Are you alright?” Twilight asked as she and her friends approached. It was probably closer to one a.m. than it was to midnight.

Vinyl shrugged. She was the only blind pony around, so she could get away with silent communication.

“I’m sorry my idea didn’t help you out,” said Rainbow Dash from the back of the group.

“That idea was awesome,” Vinyl told her. “And I don’t care if it didn’t translate into any sales.”

“Ooo! I know what will help you out!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, rushing forward and putting a small object on the table. “Just let your customers listen to this, and I’m sure they’ll change their minds!”

“Is...is that one of your presents, Pinkie?” Vinyl asked cautiously.

“Yup!” she exclaimed. “I always get so happy when I listen to it, and who would want to turn you down when they’re so happy?”

Vinyl slowly and unsteadily reached for the CD that Pinkie was offering her, but then with a grimace stopped herself, using one foreleg to drag the other away. “No! No, I can’t do that, Pinkie. That CD is enchanted to make anypony who listens to it feel whatever the performer was feeling when they recorded it. I can’t do that with the CDs I make. Perhaps I shouldn’t even if I knew how.”

“Why not?” the party pony asked.

“Because it’s a cheat!” Vinyl proclaimed. “At least I think so. If music cannot move you all by itself, then it has failed, and if all you want is an emotional state, there’s probably a spell out there that does that without wasting your time listening to anything. No, if I’m going to sell this invention, it will be on what it can and should do. I won’t be making promises I cannot keep.”

“...Okay, I understand,” Pinkie quietly replied, taking back the CD. “Well, I gotta go now!” she then exclaimed, her mood suddenly reverting to her usual cheerfulness. “Bu-bye!” And with that, she hopped off in the distance.

“I didn’t hurt her feelings, did I?” the DJ asked.

“No, that was just Pinkie being random,” said Rarity. “You know, there’s absolutely no other pony to be seen at this hour. Perhaps you should call it a night.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Vinyl replied. “Tomorrow morning I head back to Fillydelphia, so I think I’ll make this an all-nighter. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

Applejack yawned loudly. “Well, we would like to stay and all, but it’s mighty late, and our vacations end tomorrow morning as well. Good night, Vinyl Scratch, and good luck.”

The other ponies soon left, with one exception.

“Well, if I’m your active partner now, I might as well prove it!” declared Twilight Sparkle as she joined Vinyl inside the stand.

Two more hours passed. A few ponies had passed through the park, but they had altered their paths the moment they had spotted the big sign Octavia had put above the stand.

“You know, I had hoped there were more free-thinking ponies in Canterlot,” Twilight sighed.

Vinyl laughed. “Twilight, you are in a breed apart from the rest of us regular ponies,” she told her. “The rest of us are just sheep. No, worse than sheep—we’re all hypocrites, and I’m the biggest hypocrite of them all.

“Look at us going about our lives, telling ourselves that we are ‘modern ponies’, and that we live our lives independent of the Princesses, just the way they’ve told us they want us to be. We read the paper with glee every time one of them admits that they made a mistake or that they have a hobby, just like us regular ponies. But then comes something like this slander, and the true face of a ‘modern pony’ is revealed. We are so terrified of crossing them. Princess Celestia can tell us thousands and thousands of times that she is a benevolent ruler, that her few cases of severe retribution were only when the entirety of Equestria was in the balance, and yet we still imagine her banishing us to the moon of Pluto if we so much as mention the word ‘alfalfa’ where she can hear it.

“And what about me!” Vinyl continued. “Princess Luna just tried to give me constructive criticism. She handled what I did extremely fairly, and I responded by trying my best to will myself out of existence! Let’s just face facts: the compact disk as a pony invention is doomed. Whether the cause is a goddess restrained by forces impossible for us mortals to comprehend, or a feeling that we’re not ready doesn’t really make a difference in the end.”

“I don’t really know what to say to that,” responded Twilight, suddenly feeling very tired.

~ ~ ~

“Excuse me, could either of you ponies direct me to the Customer Service desk for Equestria Acoustics?” said the voice of a pony suddenly landing in front of the stand.

“Princess Luna!” Twilight exclaimed, bowing her head.

“What, did I name it wrong?” the Princess asked in confusion. “I was certain my research on the subject was correct. Customer Service desks are a remarkable invention—I can remember a war over three thousand years ago caused by the failure to fully refund a faulty ballista.”

“No, you have spoken correctly,” said Vinyl, bowing her head rather less than Luna was used to. “How may we be of service?”

“Well...how shall I put this?” asked Luna somewhat sheepishly. “I...obtained one of your playing devices on Saturday afternoon and was unable to render payment, because the pony responsible for sales was temporarily indisposed.”

More like zomponified, thought Vinyl to herself. “We are giving the units away as a promotional offer. There’s no need to pay.”

“Oh, but I insist,” declared the alicorn. “I was completely satisfied with this product, and I insist on compensating you at the fair market rate.”

“Very well,” said the DJ pony. “That will be 33 bits.” And that should be that, she thought to herself, just so long as nopony does something monumentally foalish like...

“Oh, can we calculate the optional sales tax?” asked an excited Twilight. “I’ve never done that before!”

~ ~ ~

In Equestria, it is said that there are only two things that can never be calculated exactly by a mortal pony: her own expiration date, and Luna’s taxes.

—from The Equestrian Handbook, 2nd Edition, by M.J.P., Chapter 3

At the sound of the fatal phrase “sales tax”, all of the lights in the park besides the one shining on the EA stand went out. Transient ponies fled for the hills. Mother ponies opened the front windows of their houses, just so they could melodramatically close them all in a row. In the distance, a lonely fanfare could be heard, accompanied by tumbling tumbleweed.

“Calculate the tax?” asked Princess Luna laconically after levitating three neat stacks of ten bits each followed by a fourth of three bits. “All right.”

“This is a manufactured good, so the rate is 6 %, for a total tax of 2 bits!” said Twilight proudly.

“That’s the base rate,” Luna corrected her softly. “You need to add 1.5 % for the Canterlot City Tax, subtract 0.875 % for the Urban Renewal Discount, add 2.75 % for the Parasprite Relief Fund...”

“...excuse me, but shouldn’t that last one be a subtraction?” asked Twilight, her mane already somewhat frazzled from keeping track of the numbers presented so far.

“It is a subtraction in Ponyville and other towns affected by the infestation,” Luna patiently explained. “It’s an addition in Canterlot and other towns not affected. It’s a self-cancelling tax, you see.” She appeared to be rather proud of that. “Now then, the Waterfall Tax is 6.5 thousands of a percent for every pony-height above sea level, rounded to the nearest eighth of a unit.”

“Um, hold on, I got this...” Twilight closed her eyes. As her horn lit up, she levitated a few hooves above the ground, and then gently lowered herself. “1868.75 pony-heights.” After running the figures through her head she smiled. “Wow, this is getting pretty big!” She looked over to Vinyl, and was confused to see her idly flicking one hoof in the air.

Luna continued her litany of taxes. “Next comes the Redevelopment Tax/Discount Factor, which you multiply against the aggregate tax rate so far. This is computed based on the date when the land under the shop was first claimed by the city. Do you happen to know what date this paving stone was laid?”

“Um...Vinyl?”

“I knew I should have had Octavia read the permit to me!”

“Well, let me look at it, then,” Twilight said, diving down under the stand and coming back up with a large stack of papers. About ten pages in she found what she was looking for. “835! And look, the Redevelopment Tax/Discount Factor is already computed: 13.6!...discount. Aww.”

“Minus an additional 12 % penalty for not having it memorized,” added Luna with a smirk.

“What?!” demanded Twilight.

“No, she’s right,” said Vinyl with a sigh. “It’s a mandatory deduction.”

“Now you take the amount of the tax at this point...” continued the Princess.

“...negative five,” Twilight grumbled.

“...and you apply the square root.”

“What?!” demanded Twilight for the second time.

“It’s an even-numbered millennium!” Luna exclaimed. “You must show proper respect to the number two thousand. Then add the current goddess count of 2...”

“That’s it, I’m done!” Twilight declared, raising her forehooves in the air. She had enough trouble with imaginary numbers; she wasn’t about to wrangle with their complex cousins as well.

“There’s a penalty for that as well,” Luna informed her.

“That’s only if all sales personal flee for their sanity,” said Vinyl firmly. “I haven’t given up yet.”

“Very well,” continued Luna. “In honor of the universe being made mostly of matter, you may now square the tax.”

“Wait, I choose to subtract two bits first in honor of the liberation of Stalliongrad in 1762.”

Luna tapped one hoof angrily on the pavement. “I knew I should have gotten that adjustment taken out!”

“And a 13.25 % Survivor’s Bonus for reaching the finish!” exclaimed Vinyl. “You owe me one bit.”

“Correction!” exclaimed Luna. “You owe me one bit.”

“Wait...” Vinyl said, continuing the strange motions with her forehoof that she had been performing the entire time. “Yes...right, I owe you one. And that’s why you never ask to calculate the tax, Twilight.”

“I’m going home now,” Twilight said with a very simple voice. “My head hurts.”

“Go to bed, Miss Sparkle,” Luna said gently. “I’d like a moment to speak with Miss Scratch here alone. But first, please give this CD back to Pinkie Pie. Tell her she was right...as usual.” Vinyl could practically hear the Princess roll her eyes as she said that last part.

~ ~ ~

“Do you care to tell me how you managed all that calculation in your head?” Princess Luna asked when they were alone.

“Imaginary abacus.”

“Imaginary abacus?” The Princess sounded truly awed. “You must teach me how you do it!”

“Alright,” Vinyl said with a smile. “But it takes a bit of practice.”

“You know, if we’re going to be meeting more often, I should tell you about your eyes...”

“Please don’t tell me,” Vinyl said very quietly. “I may have wanted to know earlier in my life, but my blindness is now a part of who I am. Don’t tell me there was a reason, and in your name please don’t tell me it was an accident.”

“But I would like to make it up to you,” Luna said.

All of Vinyl’s fur stood on end, but with a few slow breaths she managed to calm herself. As Pon-3 had so often told her, “One more sense would make Vinyl Scratch less, not more.” “If you would like to do something for me,” she finally said, “I’d like you to fix my friends.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You probably don’t remember,” said Vinyl. “Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rarity all tried to stand up to Nightmare Moon on the night of the Summer Sun Celebration in Ponyville. They obviously failed, and she obviously muddled their minds. I would like you to restore their true memories to them.”

“I still don’t understand,” said a confused alicorn, lowering her head.

“Look, they think they defeated you...er, her—Nightmare Moon. By themselves. Now we both know that is impossible. Celestia used so much magic to banish her the last time that she was close to death for weeks afterwards—”

“She never told me that!”

“Nevertheless, it is true,” Vinyl told her coldly. “And so Princess Celestia obviously defeated Nightmare Moon this time. Sure, those other ponies probably helped, but they did not do it single-hoofedly. I would like you to remove their delusion, before their overconfidence leads them to do something rash. Unless...” She put two hooves to her mouth in utter panic. “Ooh, wait, forget I said anything!” she exclaimed.

Inside Vinyl’s mind, Luna effortlessly saw her imagine a scenario of “Trollestia” implanting the false memories into the ponies herself; just to see how much trouble they could get into thinking they were more powerful than goddesses.

Luna shook her head to break the link. “I...I frankly don’t know which truth...or lie...I should be telling you. I’ll just have to get back to you. But I almost forgot the true reason why I am here.”

~ ~ ~

“I am here to judge you, Vinyl Scratch.”

~ ~ ~

It was a simple statement of fact, with no accusation behind it whatsoever. Precisely like you would hope that an all-powerful being would address you under the circumstances.

“What am I accused of?” Vinyl asked, head held high. The Princess had evidently moved on from her little slip-up, and so she would as well.

“You are accused of being in the right place at the right time. I can tell you no more than that.”

Vinyl smirked. “And you have already told me that being at the right place at the right time is an incredible inconvenience to you, just by being here,” she said. “What do you desire? Do you wish me to move, to give up, to go back home with my tail between my legs?”

“What I want is not in your power,” Luna told her. “It is up to me and me alone. That is why it is a judgment.”

Vinyl raised one eyebrow while she considered this. “You want me to help you decide one way or another, between two different fates for me, neither of which I am allowed to know about?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“What could I possibly tell you that you don’t already know? We ponies are open books to you. My innermost thoughts, my most shameful secrets are already laid bare before your all-seeing eyes. Including...yeah, the distrust. I can be a regular mule of a pony, Princess. If you need me to tell you that I trust you as much as I trust your sister to act in the best interests of Equestria, then you’re going to have to come back to me in ten years or so, when I have your actions to judge you by.”

“So!” Luna said with a lightly-mocking smile, raising her head. “You would dare to judge me?”

“By all means. I demand the right to judge my creators, the right to second-guess, the right to think I could have done things better. Why would you create us the way we are, with our flaws and tempers and our incredible powers of reasoning, if we are not allowed to exercise that power upon the very summit of Creation? If I cannot judge my goddesses, what use is it to judge which apple goes best in the cobbler, why even bother to get up in the morning, to face ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune’?”

“Indeed!” said the alicorn with pride. “Very well, Miss Scratch, I have decided. You are condemned to be free to live your life as you wish, and we Princesses are freed to do with you as we please. So be it!” And with these words she launched herself into the heavens, generating a fierce wind that battered the stand on all sides.

Vinyl scrambled out from inside the stand and craned her neck upwards, her horn glowing brightly as she tried to use her horn sight to see her.

She was therefore the only pony in all of Equestria who witnessed what Princess Luna did next: a true demonstration of the power of the Ruler of the Night Sky.

She didn’t know if she wanted to sing her goddess’ praises to the rooftops, or crack a sarcastic remark about the overwhelming pride of the same deity. She decided this indecision was a good thing, and turned to take down the stand.

Epilogue

But Wait...There’s More!

- Epilogue -

Another Sun had set, another Moon had risen, and Princess Celestia was trying to get the last of the curls out of her mane before getting a well-deserved beauty rest. She was also examining a spot next to her left eye that was irritating her for no good reason.

There was a knock at the door. “Tia, we need to talk.”

“Come in, Sister,” said Celestia, scratching absently at the spot next to her eye with the edge of one hoof.

She took one look at Princess Luna and fell to the floor, laughing out loud. From the ground she tried to point, and fell to laughing some more. “Wh...where did you get that thing?” she finally gasped.

“A present from Pinkie Pie,” said Luna. In the middle of her forehead, right beneath the horn, was the cutest little third eye that you could possibly imagine. Its iris was the exact same shade of rose-magenta as Pinkie Pie’s mane. “I wore it to the reading of my port tax bill. It’s too bad you weren’t there to see it.”

Celestia climbed to her hooves. “You didn’t!” she exclaimed in dismay.

“I did. I made sure to mention that I had computed my figures while under the influence of Miss Scratch’s invention. Then I started doing this to random senators...”

A beam of reddish light slowly emerged from the third eye and made its way to Celestia’s forehead, winking on and off to create a dotted-line effect. At the same time, the eye itself made the following noise: “Da-na-na-na-na-na!”

Celestia fell over and began laughing again. “You...you really shouldn’t have done that!” she managed to get out. “Defying me in public like that. But still...bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Luna used her magic to pop the fake eye off of her head and levitate it to a nearby table. “I then explained the device to them and told my so-called ‘victims’ to stop trying to scrub their foreheads with bleach. Afterwards, the press asked me about the story that started this mess. I told them I had recently discovered it. As for you, sister, I told them that you don’t have time to refute every statement a foalish editor might put in your mouth. After all, wasn’t modern society more knowing in these matters than the one I left behind so long ago? The next hour saw a mad run on Trottmans and compact discs, and I hear that a whole train is being commandeered to bring more product up from Fillydelphia.” The lunar princess sighed. “Of course, it now looks like our little ponies are trying to buy Trottmans to look good in our eyes, instead of shunning them to look good in our eyes. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever succeed in this ‘free will’ business after all.”

Celestia nodded. “Those Ponyville ponies are a bad influence on you, sister.”

“Tia,” Luna protested, “I was going to expose the truth today anyway. Pinkie Pie simply provided a humorous way for me to do it.”

“And what about the prophesy?” asked Tia, one hoof wandering up on its own accord to scratch near her eye again.

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore. I pushed Comet Anheuser into the Sun last night, moving the solar minimum out by three years and six months.”

Celestia looked between the raised hoof and her sister. “So that was you?”

Luna nodded.

“Do you realize what you have done?”

“I believe I just invalidated one inconvenient prophesy. Now anything can happen, and you’re free to do anything you want about Vinyl Scratch...and Prince Steadfast.”

Celestia sighed. “He has been incredibly annoying lately, hasn’t he? Oh, I know, I’ll make him our ambassador to the Northern Sea Dragon delegation. He’ll have to spend the next decade or so sailing that silly yacht of his back and forth in the icy wastes. We can let him stay in Castle by the Sea.”

“Do you think that’s safe?” Luna asked with some trepidation.

“That place has been abandoned for so long that it’s become suspicious. Some pony would have stumbled across it eventually. With Steadfast living there, there’s absolutely no chance that its secret will be revealed—that unicorn wouldn’t recognize a true mystery of the cosmos if it put extra cutie marks on both his shoulders.”

“I suppose that CD Pinkie Pie brought around earlier put the idea into your head?” asked Luna.

“Where else?” replied Celestia. “Now let’s get back on track. You don’t actually think you can overthrow a prophesy just by throwing a rock at it!”

“It’s not just a rock, it was your birthday present to me 4300 years ago! And yes, I do think you can overthrow a prophesy that easily, because it’s been done before.”

“It has?”

“What about the Hamite prophesy?” asked Luna, referring to a recently-completed and rather unfortunate piece of business from a month earlier. “That prophesy got one of the four ponies wrong.”

“That’s right!” exclaimed Celestia. “Why didn’t that ring any alarm bells at the time?”

“That’s not the only one,” Luna said, removing a scroll from her saddlebag. “I have a list of over fifty prophesies that have been altered in the last few decades. Most of the prophesies, and the changes, have been small enough for us to miss before now, but at least three were completely overturned.”

“Do you know when this started?” Celestia asked, the answer already suggesting itself to her.

“Well, the earliest I could find was in 6963.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed. “Sister, there is only one force other than ourselves that would dare to challenge a prophesy, and put the very fate of Equestria in jeopardy on little more than a whim.”

“Who, Sister? Who would dare to do this?”

“Time Ponies.”

T H E _ E N D

- Credits -

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is copyright Hasbro, with due respects to Lauren Faust for her brilliant re-imagining of the franchise. Most of the characters in the story are borrowed from that source. Doctors Three and Four and their companions are from the program Doctor Who and are the property of the BBC. The Perturb family are pastiches of characters from the series Invader Zim, created by Jhonen Vasquez and property of Nickelodeon. Sundance, Hoyden, Abacus and part of the character of Luna come from the Progress series of fanfictions by Andrew J. Talon. Crack Shot, Check Mate, Nomde Plume and Storm Stunner are from the fanfic “In Her Majesty’s Royal Service”, by Sagebrush. Mentar is from the Mentar the Magnificent Merchant of Magical Mixtures series by Quell (which really needs to be added to FimFiction.net someday). “The Hamite Prophesy” is a reference to the fanfiction “One Last Quest”, by Vanner. The phrase “THERE’S NO TIME” is 100 % owned by the fanfic series Michael Bay Presents: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic by Cold in Gardez. The fandom pretty much owns “Trollestia”. Finally, Uncle Philo, Prince Steadfast, the Telegraph family, Oars In Wells, Blue Bubbles and the rest of the RIAT cast, Kappa Cider, Judge Keen, Kong Fun, TEDS, and sundry company and etheric show names are my creations, as are the interpretations of everybody else’s intellectual properties (meaning it’s entirely my fault if I screwed them up). The songs “Technologic” and “Derezzed” are by Daft Punk (with PMV of the latter by Mr. Yaridovich), “The Fear” is by Lily Allen. The song played by Octavia (“Avast Octavia’s Plot”) is by makkon06, and DJ Pon-3’s big number is really by Danny Elfman, from the soundtrack of the first Mission: Impossible movie. “Da-na-na-na-na-na!” references Bill Cosby’s “Go Carts” skit.

And finally, anyone who hasn’t yet should watch Nina Paley’s excellent animated film Sita Sings the Blues.

15: Dun, dun, DUN-TUN...

But Wait...There’s More!

- 15: Dun, Dun, DUN-TUN... -

Author’s Note: Sadly, I lack the skills to reproduce the music described in this chapter. Please accept the piece linked below as an emotional analogue of my intended result instead.

Blue Bubble’s birthday party doubled as a celebration of Oars In Wells and the successful end of the season for RIAT. As expected, the ratings for the last episode were the best of the regular season, although nothing had approached the listenership figures for the pilot episode.

The Perturbs allowed Pinkie Pie to help run the party, “purely as an evaluation in case of future employment.” In other words, they were completely overwhelmed by the turnout, and they wanted to get away with not paying her. Of course, Pinkie would have done it for free even if every guest had been replaced by berserker clones of Sleipnir himself.

DJ Pon-3 had two tables for herself at the very back of the rented ballroom. It was not a very favorable spot, but she didn’t mind, because she was next to the table where Double Echo, the foley pony, was giving demonstrations on how she created the sound effects for the show. Other spots along the walls were taken up by over a dozen DJs, solo musicians, and a cappella singing groups. With a few poorly-received exceptions, all of them were using their moment in the limelight to play a unique rendition of the RIAT theme song.

Octavia was helping the DJ to set up her equipment, placing everything within easy reach. She then stepped around the table to judge the presentation. Although a CD player was prominently displayed on the right side, most of the two tables were taken up with three record players and their stacks of records.

Octavia sighed. “You know, to the outside observer, this looks a lot like selling out.”

“Tavi, you have to think of me as two ponies,” Pon-3 explained. “Vinyl Scratch the business pony lives and breathes on what everypony else thinks. But I’m also DJ Pon-3, and she has to express herself. I didn’t have the time to get all of these recordings burned to CDs (never mind the rights issues), and I’m still more comfortable mixing records than discs anyway. Tonight is for the music, not the cause.”

“Well I just hope they see that,” said Tavi. “I’ll be listening from right over here. And you better not mess up my arrangement!” That was Tavi-ese for “good luck”.

Pon-3 waited patiently for the eight-minute trance version of the RIAT theme to fade out from the other end of the ballroom. She heard the few ponies who were keeping track of the order of performances turn and walk in her direction. Then she calmly reached out and pressed the Loop Play button on the CD player.

The listeners were expecting one thing, and one thing only: Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Instead, they got BOOM! Crash! Scrape...whine!

The same four deliberately-paced mechanical noises repeated, again and again, drawing a greater and greater crowd, although they kept their distance from the infamous machine emitting it.

“What is she up to?” Blue Bubbles whispered to Mr. Wells.

As soon as she overheard that, Pon-3 smiled to herself and dropped the needle on the first record player. This added four ominous rising notes to the mix which then proceeded to go into a loop of its own. This excerpt was originally the bridge from a pretentious pop song of the last decade; only this brief snip survived on a remix disk that Pon-3 had created near the beginning of her career. Every other DJ in the room recognized it, because most of them had used it themselves.

On top of this were added the sound of a stopwatch, and then a sped-up and pitch-shifted fanfare, played only once, and then that was replaced with a chase theme cobbled together from two radically different interpretations of Trottington’s Victory. More themes were added, and more, but always the base sound of the CD recording was heard underneath. Mechanical sounds of doom.

It gradually dawned on the audience what this was: the musical soundtrack to the factory chase sequence from the season finale, a soundtrack nopony to that point had realized that scene had so desperately needed. With a smile, Double Echo began adding in the sound effects from memory. It wasn’t hard—the DJ appeared to have the timing of the scene down better than she did. She made sure to keep her effects quiet enough that the magic of the performance would not be lost.

The music was steadily building to a crescendo of tension, just as the scene had done. When it had nearly become nerve-breaking, the DJ suddenly cut all sound to the speakers and pointed at Blue Bubbles, who instantly recognized her cue.

“SPRECHEN!!!” she screamed in character.

The music returned with a vengeance, driving fast and still faster, for the chase to the border. On a lone keyboard, Pon-3 played a simple theme, drowned out at first by all the other sounds, but growing and growing in volume. Every local pony listening suddenly got a lump in their throat: this was the national anthem of the old Kingdom of Canterlot, now being re-purposed as the theme of the Kingdom of Light. The distorted fanfare from earlier returned, representing the theme of the Kingdom of Darkness, in close pursuit. The DJ very much doubted that anypony other than herself and Tavi knew that this fanfare had been composed by Reznicek, would-be Emperor of all Dragons, from the Third Century.

The chase theme returned, and morphed into a disguised version of the Light theme. But the Dark fanfare was now overwhelming, and the tempo was nearly unsustainable. Tension once more built to the breaking point, until...

Dun, dun, DUN-TUN...

~ ~ ~

And with that, the music suddenly ceased, not even completing the well-known musical phrase, because it wasn’t needed. What DJ Pon-3 had just performed was everything that RIAT at its best stood for, while making the theme song practically redundant. And all this purely through mixing—outside of the CD recording Uncle Phil had made for her from the record factory, nothing musically new had been created for the performance.

The crowd erupted into rapturous applause, soon joined by Pon-3’s reluctant fellow DJs, as they grudgingly acknowledged that hers was the best performance of the night.