"Now, everyone knows us as these real famous ponies, but we weren't always this way."

Clear Sight continued his monologue.

"At one point in my career," he scratched his chin, "or at least if you hazard to call it that, I was a low-life criminal. I unfortunately must admit that I used my intelligence for petty theft and black market schemes. But," he pointed at his gasping audience with a sly smile, "before you take this all out of context, let me tell you why."

He was just about to start talking again when Illesio jumped in her seat and looked around, quite clearly startled. "Did...did anypony say anything?" she asked nervously.

Every pair of eyes in the room looked at her in complete confusion.

"...No...there's been complete silence. Why do you ask?" Res warily responded.

"Nevermind," Illesio said, waving her hoof dismissively, "I just...thought I heard something, is all. Please continue."

Clear Sight gave a small puzzled smile and resumed his account. "As I was saying, I had a reason for it. I grew up in a family of scientists, a natural oddity in itself, at least in Equestria. My parents had died when I was at a young age, and thus I never knew them, my caretaker being instead my uncle Premonition. I also have one older brother, a bright, successful student of arcane magics, but he prefers to not be associated with me."

He turned toward the radio team, apparently realizing his slip: "I implore anyone listening at this moment to please respect his privacy and to not go looking for him. I cannot stress this enough."

"But I digress," he said, falling back into a reverie, "As a family, me, my uncle, and my brother were happy. Premonition's talents lay in...magical fields, but his passions lay in the development of technology. He was the one who invented the first non-magical camera, a creation still widely used today. And as his nephews, we were his pride and joy. He taught us everything he knew about machinery, physics, all the basic hard facts of life without magic. I took to the life immediately," Clear Sight gestured to his hornless forehead, "but my brother wanted to learn magic. He enrolled and was admitted into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, specifically its full-year apprenticeship program, and I never really saw him again for ages. I guess that me and my uncle were content to make our own way in pursuit of technological progress."

"Then one day in the summer, Premonition sat down and said to me out of the blue, 'My time has come, my child. I have forseen it.' Naturally, I was devastated, but he asked, 'Clear Sight?' I said 'yes?' and he told me one of the most frustrating things in my life: 'You will be a great pony, a giant among others. Just never forget the value...*wheeze*...of a well-tailored ensemble.' And he had a stroke and died right then and there, like he was just adding insult to injury."

Clear Sight was grinning good-naturedly, but the reporters looked a little put off by this turn. Res smothered a laugh in the background.

"That was his way," Clear Sight explained. "He was always one to make you find your own path through things. I really think that was the best way to do it, considering how I've turned out now. Premonition was true to his name, he could see the future, and I'm absolutely certain his actions were carefully crafted so that I would make my own way in the world."

"Wait, your uncle could see the future?" Illesio asked in disbelief.

"Oh, absolutely. Don't know how, or why, but hey, I'm not complaining."

"But then...did you inherit any of the traits?" There was a tint of hopefulness in Illesio's question.

"Nope. Totally a unicorn thing, 'cause you gotta have magic. And as you can see, I'm no unicorn." Clear Sight tapped his forehead again.

Illesio looked a little overwhelmed.

"But anyway, through an oversight in the familial guardianship system regarding the loss of my birth certificate and my brother's unfortunate, but altogether inadvertent, detachment from my life, I got taken in by the orphanage system," continued Clear Sight, "Proving to be a card to handle, eventually I just became a drifter, working off my own ingenuity and skill at gambling. I always was mad at my uncle for dying without so much as a good-bye. But that's when I met Res here. Re--"

"Whoa, wait a second. You said there was going to be a good reason for your criminal streak--what about that?" Illesio asked, waving her notepad.

"Oh, I did? Well, anybody who's ever been a teenager knows what it's like to harbor anger at that age. I was young, stupid, full of myself." Clear Sight coughed. "I really don't have an excuse for my actions, and I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to tell you I had a good reason for them. My apologies."

"Sorry," said Res, chuckling. "He gets a little caught up in the theatrics sometimes."

"I guess so..." Clear Sight trailed off and looked at Illesio again. After a few moments, he shook his head, and returned to the narrative.

"Res had a much different story, as he had grown up in a family of posh, disgustingly prim casual master racist unicorn nobility in an obscure corner of Equestria. Although he was educated in their ways, he always had a nagging feeling in the back of his head that his family weren't right about it."

"Exactly," Res interjected, "I knew something was off when I realized I didn't actually hold any attachment whatsoever to my family, and even at some of the most private schools in the kingdom, friendship was still a passing subject of study. Others would make small, insignificant remarks about their families, showing the bonds of love and trust between them, and this gave me a lot to think about."

He walked over to the window and stared into the woods beyond, his hoof resting on the sill. "I realized my family never meant anything to me, and from then on my goal was simply to get as far away from them as possible. I enrolled at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns apprenticeship program, which may sound a little familiar by now."

"Oh, let me guess," Illesio said exitedly. "You met Clear Sight's brother?"

"Sure thing," Clear Sight replied, chuckling. "The two of them immediately hit it off as fellow students of magic. They helped each other through some hard scrapes, and became best friends."

"Of course," he continued, "who should arrive in Canterlot two and a half years in but a certain familial criminal? I figured out pretty easily where my brother's dormitories were, and on a fine spring evening in a dash of rain, my brother walked by a sunglasses-wearing pony who wouldn't stop staring at him. He walked straight into his dorm, shut the door, locked it, walked upstairs, began to brush his teeth, and broke all the windows in the building when it finally clicked. The foundation of that particular apartment is still damaged."

"He rushed outside, but realized it was too late: I had already gone. Reeling at the implications of what he had just done-- particularly just walked past his own brother and apparently, unknowingly, and effectively shutting him out of his life--he began searching for me. He even tried sending mail home for the first time, but they all came back unopened."

Clear Sight cleared his throat. "Not to say that he was a terrible person, he was just forgetful, and I don't blame him for not sending word."

"It took three months of looking all over Canterlot before he found me," he continued, going to the window just as Res sat down, "he got Res to help too, and that's eventually how he did it. Res stumbled across me one day as I was packing some labor-saving devices of my own creation, which I had just signed a load off to a salesman brother duo for a good amount of cash. The conversation didn't go as he intended, however."

"No indeed," Res replied with a sad smile, "I recall a lot of expletives."

Clear Sight scratched the back of his head. "The conversation itself wasn't important, but the effect it had was. I went back to see my brother, and caught him up to speed with the death of our uncle and how life had treated me for the past two years. He, quite understandably, was absolutely flabbergasted at how he could have stayed away from home for nearly three years and managed not to hear this. I just chalked it up to his absent-mindedness and passion for his work."

"I also was introduced during that fateful encounter to Res, who would continue to be a good friend of my brothers, and in his own words, 'a friend of my friend is also my friend.'"

Clear Sight glared at Res. "I told him to get more creative with semantics or I'd revoke our friendship licence."

Res burst out laughing.

Meanwhile, Illesio wasn't sure what to make of this situation. These are the most eccentric (and handsome) (shut up, brain) ponies in all of Equestria, after all, but if the entire story is going to be like this, then I might be in over my head.

---------As the story gets more and more complicated---------/