Prologue

"From this day forth, I would like you all to report to me your findings on the magic of friendship when, and only when, you happen to discover them." A wave of relief washed over Twilight as she heard the Princess's words. She wasn't going to get an incomplete for her friendship report! The others all cheered as a non-psychotic, genuine smile formed on her face.

There was something strange about this perfect moment, however, the Princess's smile seemed... off. It was as if she were hesitant, like she wanted to say something but didn't. No, it was as if she wanted with all her heart to do something, to hug her, to say something but she just couldn't. It wasn't like Princess Celestia, in her regal virtue, to crack her motherly, princess-like mask in this way. To say the least, Twilight was... perturbed.

Twilight opened her mouth to speak but was silenced as Celestia stepped back and faced towards the open balcony. Another, slightly more urgent thought popped to the front of her mind.
"Princess Celestia! Wait, how did you know I was in trouble?" Twilight asked, a confused look on her face. The Princess had appeared out of practically nowhere...

The Princess simply smiled back. "Your friend Spike made me aware that you were letting your fears get the best of you. I commend him for taking your feelings seriously. Now, if you will all excuse me, I must return to Canterlot. I'm expecting some mail." the Princess grinned, spread her wings, and took flight for Canterlot. The lavender unicorn hesitated, considering calling out, but was again cut off by a conveniently timed rise to action from Applejack.

"Y'all! You heard the Princess! Spike, take a letter will ya?" said the industrious farm pony.

And so the friendship report was written, every mare in the group dictating a sentence for the letter as Spike wrote their speech with amazingly fast (if not a bit sloppy for Twilight's taste) penmareship. Twilight's mind never fully left that look on Celestia's face, that look of... of helplessness. Twilight looked around, to the laughs of her friends, as they summed up the craziness of the day and her misfired Want-it-Need-it spell. Their whimsical conversations wandered far and wide and by the time that it was all over and her friends had split up to head to their homes it had already turned nine o'clock.

Twilight Sparkle went to bed that night at about nine o'clock with little worry in her mind. Her brain had long filed away the anomalous look on the Princess's face as just a passing feeling of nostalgia or perhaps a vestige of a stressful day in the life of a princess. Without further a do, Twilight Sparkle swiftly drifted into the dream world.

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There she goes! Twilight Sparkle is asleep!

Aaand... Cut!

...

"What is wrong with you!?"

"W-what?"

"You slipped up! Again! For the second time this season! And this time it got caught in the shot!"

"But, I...

"Get your act together, literally. If you make another mistake, we're writing you off!"

"Y-you wouldn't, she would be devastated..."

"Look, I don't want to either, but these things are necessary sometimes. At least as it is now we can write your mistakes into an interesting season finale... or something..."

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Pinkie Pie bounced merrily away from the Golden Oaks library, humming a cheery tune as she did so. The night was fresh and crisp, and light glowed forth from the perfect little houses of Ponyville. Anypony who was still out-and-about waved good evening to Ponyville's Premier Party Pony. Pinkie raised an eyebrow as she looked around at the background ponies still walking in their formations. It was a little too late to be walking around, the Director was taking forever to cut the episode...

Aaand... Cut!

"Finally!" Pinkie said, a little too loudly. The other background ponies hissed at her to shut up as they split up their pairs and trios and went back to their various houses. She rolled her eyes. It wasn't as if Twilight was actually around to hear her shout, and even if she was she would most likely think of it just as "Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie."

Pinkie trotted quickly towards the bakery that she called home, happy to give her knees a break from a long day of bouncing at the work that her life had become. She shook herself, her tired mane succumbing a little to the forces of gravity as it drooped and sagged like the fluffy hanging branches of a weeping willow. The glow of the bakery came into sight, approaching quickly as Pinkie quickened her pace.

She walked up the stairs of Sugarcube Corner and nodded to Mr. Cake as he left to go to his actual residence for the night. It was really a shame that his and Mrs. Cake's relationship fell apart last season so soon after their relationship had started. The pink pony went up to her room, sighing and stretching as she closed the door to her private little space at the top of the building.

The shower felt good as it slowly rinsed the deadly chemicals from her mane and washed the general stench of baking sugar and bright pinkness from her body. She stepped out with her hair beautifully straight and walked up to her vanity mirror slowly and regretfully, as a lamb would go to the slaughterhouse. She looked up at the mirror and at the bottle of dreaded Mane-Poofer and petted her perfectly lovely straight mane. She looked up at the hidden camera that she knew was behind the mirror.

"Can't I just leave my mane straight, just for the night?" she pleaded with her off-set superiors.

To her surprise, somepony actually responded, "No," the male voice said firmly, "what if Twilight sees you at night? You can't let your act fall! She might think of you as some sort of a murdering psycho out to turn her into cupcakes!"
From the idiotic squawk in that voice, Pinkamena concluded that the voice on the end of the line was a flea-ridden sniffling griffon.

Pinkamena sighed in resignation. With tears running down her face, she unleashed the slaughter that was the Mane-Poofer on her treasured locks. As powder flew and toxic gel settled on her scalp, Pinkamena wondered just how much longer it would be until she either went bald or was stuck with perpetually physics-defying mutated poofy hair.

Then she went for her tail, the poor strands of pink hair curled and frizzed up into warped, unnatural versions of themselves as they formed the classic Pinkie Pie vector. She sighed at her otherworldly appearance in the mirror, she should've gone ahead and ignored her mother's advice to take the "accelerating" career in acting and followed her dreams in the realms of physics. It was what her mark was for, after all, the science of superlight gases as seen in the three multicolored balloons.

Oh well, she would hate to get written out of the show now, after all they had worked for. An entire year of meticulous planning, scripting, and a bit of improv acting scattered here and there for just one season of a show that had already gained millions, if not billions, of followers. Even more than a year if you consider the expensive and pain-staking construction of over fifteen sets in the land of "Equestria".

With a tired demeanor, Pinkie picked a book at random from the pathetically limited supply on her shelf. She wondered why the purple unicorn got the library-house, neither did she understand why the Director insisted on restricting the amount of shelf space. "The Science of Space and Time, By Dr DeLorean". Ahhh, a classic! With that, Pinkie Pie read her sorrows away and made sure to fall asleep in a way that kept her pumped-up hair from getting flattened or messed up. Without further a do, Pinkamena Diane Pie drifted off into the dream world.

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Rarity Belle was never in a good mood. As soon as she was out of Twilight's eyesight her acting mask shattered and a sneer spread across her face. Her "friends" bade her goodnight, she didn't bother with a response. Right now, all she wanted to do was get back to her boutique, get a drink, and try to shake off all the things that the Director put her through.

'I swear,' she thought, 'if I had to spend another minute with that blithering idiot I would have strangled her! Prison be damned!'

Twilight Sparkle thought of herself as the most powerful unicorn under Celestia's sun. Little did she know that she couldn't actually do much more than lift a plastic spoon with that pathetic little horn she had. Half of the crew of this cursed set had been devoted to special effects and had a hard time getting Twilight's "magic" to be somewhat believable. Even she could cast more complicated and powerful spells than Sparkle could.

Aaand... Cut!

The unicorn shook her head vigorously, now officially off-camera, as if trying to shake off some unseen grime. She quickened her pace, trying to get off the streets just that bit quicker. The Carousel Boutique loomed in the distance. Rarity had always admired the architecture of that building. While it didn't meet the extravagance or the scale of Canterlot, the crew still seemed to know better than the Director when they built that place for the true star of The Show.

She flung the front door open, a soft "ow" echoing from the hardwood. Rarity grimaced and pulled the door away from the wall, revealing a flattened Sweetie Belle. Rarity drew a worried breath.

"Are you okay?" she asked, shutting the door all the way and inspecting her little sister closely.

The unicorn filly sighed, '"Yeah, I'm fine..." Sweetie Belle swatted away Rarity's nursing hoof, and headed into the kitchen to fetch some ice for her concussed head.

"Are you sure?" Rarity asked with concern in her voice as she trotted her way across the room and pushed a specific painting aside. Yet another affirmative echoed from the kitchen, Rarity shrugged and opened the hidden cabinet, her hoof searching absently for her prize. Something rose in her, however, when her hoof found nothing, and her eyes confirmed the lack of alcohol in her locker. She stormed angrily into the kitchen, finding Sweetie Belle with a bag of ice pressed against her head.

Rarity pointed her most potent glare at the whelp, poison laced words coming from her lips.
"What. Happened. To. My. Booze." The words hit the poor little filly like an icy blast. Sweetie looked up at her sister, rage filling her eyes as she approached threateningly. She knew, but at least there wasn't anything that Rarity could do about it now, all the shops were closed and the emptied bottles were probably being cleaned up by the crew about now. She opted to remain silent.

Rarity narrowed her eyes, "Answer me!" she practically roared. Still hearing no response she gave Sweetie a backhoof, flinging her across the counter.

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Dispatch to Officer Blaze, we got a situation over at Carousel Boutique, domestic incident.

That's the fifth time this has happened!

...

*Sigh* On my way, Dispatch

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A bright orange pegasus threw open the door, he wore a neat and tidy police uniform with the addition of the set radio that all set staff had to be wearing at all times as well as a pair of generic sunglasses over his sea-blue eyes. He laid sight upon a marshmallow white unicorn, a crazed look in her eye as she battered around her little sister seemingly without too much care towards her actions.

The officer shook his head and ran over to the actress.
"Stop it. Now!" he commanded, his hoof grabbing Rarity's mid-strike. She struggled a bit more and Blaze jerked her back and shoved her down onto an awaiting fainting couch. He spread his wings and flew back, simply peering disappointingly over his sunglasses at the white unicorn in front of him.

Rarity snapped out of it, looking up at the policepony in shock. She looked at her hoof, and noticed blood on it.
"What have I done!" she shrieked in her usual dramatic fashion, Magma Blaze wondered if her statement was actually sincere or if the prissy unicorn was still acting as if a hidden camera were placed on her at all times.

He landed next to the shaking form of Sweetie Belle. Her nose was bleeding, and he saw a number of bruises covering her body, otherwise she was uninjured.

"Are you alright?" he asked, professional care flavoring his voice. Sweetie only looked at him, shaking and sobbing. He put his hoof to his radio's "Transmit" button.
"This is Blaze, get the paramedics, it... it looks like Sweetie has had another one of her bad falls." he sighed as his mouth dripped The Show's usual excuse to any injuries in Ponyville's townsfolk.

He glanced over at Rarity, who had streams of mascara running down her face as she broke down sobbing (dramatically wailing more like it, as she did both on-camera and off-camera) on the couch.
The wail of an ambulance's siren caught Blaze's ear as medical help drew near. The white motor driven truck (one of the few self-propelled cars in "Equestria") pulled up by the door, two ponies unloading from the cab.

As Nurse Redheart, another one of the Background Cast, tended to Sweetie's wounds on another non-fainting couch in the living room, Magma Blaze sauntered over to where Rarity was still wailing to heaven her exaggerated woes. The unicorn actress looked up at Blaze.

"You know you should quit," the police officer muttered to the actress. Rarity said nothing.

"You know that after this I can probably recommend that no alcohol gets to you on the set," Rarity remained silent.

"You know that you're hurting everypony else by doing this..." Blaze sighed. His radio beeped and the little blue light flashed, indicating that the Director was on the line.

"The Director wants you." Magma said, ending that conversation. He walked away as the nasal voice of The Twilight Sparkle Show's director berated the poor actress for the same mistake, for the same hurts, for the same reason for the fifth time since The Show started.

Honestly, a lot of the cast and crew wanted Rarity to be written out. They were tired of cleaning up her messes and they were tired of improvising for her missed lines and mistakes and simply wanted Rarity off the set. Many more, even the Director, wanted her off just to get Sweetie Belle out of an abusive home. The pony was a snobby aristocrat that really had the guts to think she was the actual star of The Twilight Sparkle Show! But Twilight had made friends with the well-concealed drunk, she was one of the main characters, and she held a lot of the male appeal for The Show. Therefore, the Director was just as likely to give her unlimited second chances. Oh well, Magma just hoped for something to eventually give and for Rarity to be ousted from the show's cast. And soon!

He walked out of the house, hitching himself back up to his patrol carriage and made haste for his bed in the Ponyville PD. Rarity fell asleep on her couch once everypony had left. Sweetie Belle eventually drifted into the drugged embrace of sleep having been given painkillers and placed in bed, and Magma Blaze drifted out into the dream world.

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Applejack trotted steadily back towards the homestead, away from "The Mane Character" and her home in the Golden Oaks Library. It had become a late night, and time had flown after the friendship report had simply "flown itself away to the Princess through Dragonfire". She was tired, and looked forward to the Director calling cut, she wanted to head to bed.

The branches of Sweet Apple Acres stretched out overhead, the stars twinkling like miniature little diamonds through the branches. The trees swayed and creaked as the crisp summer breeze rustled past through the orchards and blew AJ's mane and tail to the point where she had to put a hoof on her hat to keep it from flying off. The Director would kill her if she ever lost her hat. After all, she had begun to like the old Stetson and had gotten used to the feel of it atop her head.

She saw the trees, laden with fruit. She frowned, a sinking feeling forming in her chest. It had been a nightmare back when they had filmed Applebuck Season, she silently hoped that Twilight wouldn't be finding any friendship problems to solve that would require that she actually try to harvest them. She wished upon a star that the crew would be able to find a quiet enough night to buck the apples from the trees without Twilight noticing. Fat chance though, but maybe if Twilight found enough adventures to bring them on AJ could shirk her chores with excuses of Mane Cast business.

She would have to have a talk with the Director sometime later, maybe she would even be able to negotiate an episode where she was devastated by a permanent leg injury and she would never be able to continue the Apple family
applebucking legacy. That way, she would never have to lift a hoof again in her life, and instead just look busy when the cameras were watching. She smiled at the thought, maybe she would be able to find enough time to actually finish a marathon-length game of Stellaris!

Aaand... Cut!

She mopped her forehead and gave herself a mental pat on the back for a day's good work in entertaining the masses of the Confederacy. She made the final trot up to her front door, opening it and walking in, to find Granny Smith in the kitchen washing the dishes after supper.

"Is there not any dinner left for me Mrs. Smith?" Applejack asked in her casual, off-camera demeanor.

"Eh?" the elderly mare croaked, "What happened to yer voice AJ?"

Applejack rolled her eyes. Old, senile mare.
"Nothin' granny, is there any left for me?" she said in her on-camera accent. It seemed to be the only thing the poor, ancient fossil could recognize anymore.

"No there's nothin' te yer left but air silly filly, but there's a counter to yer right!" Granny Smith hobbled over to the cabinets to put the dried dishes away, "What's wrong youngin', you gone blind 'er somethin'?"

Applejack shook her head and grabbed some of the previous night's dinner. She sat herself down at the table and scarfed down the foodstuffs faster than a wood chipper could chomp through a tree. Granny Smith simply watched in disappointment as the orange "farmpony" skipped cleaning up after herself and trotted up the stairs towards her room. Granny Smith sighed again, picking up a cloth to wipe down the table.

"Bein' a Hollywood actress 'as really gottin' to her head, it has..." she mumbled while shakily cleaning up Applejack's mess.

"Heya Applejack!" A small voice greeted her from the hallway. Applejack's eyes found a little yellow filly with a red mane peeking out of her bedroom door. AJ trotted over to Apple Bloom and gave her a hug.

"You're late..." Apple Bloom muttered, looking up at Applejack.

"Yes, I am sorry, you do know how Twilight can ramble on and on... Oh! Did your brother help you with your homework?" Applejack asked.

"Yeah! But you've always been better with arithmetic..." the filly said, disappointment seasoning her voice.

"I am sorry, Apple Bloom, but you would not want me to be written out, would you? I simply cannot draw away from Twilight before my cue!" Applejack said with concern. "Now, is your brother asleep?" she continued.

"Don't keep calling Big Mac 'my brother', he's your brother too!" the filly said quietly.

"He is not my real brother, even though I do hold him close to my heart just as I do with you!" Applejack muttered soothingly.

"Yeah, but," Apple Bloom's eyes diverted towards the floor. "The Show's been confirmed all the way to Season Eight now! So we're here together for at least another seven years unless one of us gets written out, a-and I don't want anypony to get written out!"

Applejack resisted rolling her eyes, the filly was a fair bit delusional in thinking that this... "Equestria" was some sort of new life, like a new house that you could just move into and spend the rest of your life in. In the end, they were all actors and actresses and their world was a stage. Oh well, at least Apple Bloom was a good child actress, those were hard to find these days.

"Now, now, we must not think of such things," AJ stated, "if we follow our cues and pull off our lines we don't get written out. And I know that you are too good an actress to do that, am I right?"
The filly nodded, and Applejack smiled in satisfaction.

Applejack bid the yellow filly goodnight and walked through into her room, shutting the door behind her and pulling her curtains closed just in case something should go awry. She sat down at her "simple" desk, reaching down and pressing a button at the junction between the wall and the floor just under desk.

The prop setup of apples and pictures folded back into the wall and was quickly replaced with a professional desktop gaming machine. At the press of a button, the screen lit up with the wonders of the true modern age. It was a shame that The Show was set in some sort of mixed-up early-industrial era and that she could only use her computer when Twilight went to bed for the night.

Applejack looked at her games, considering which one she might want to play. Most of them were too energy-consuming, too long, or had too much action in them. She sighed and went for her alternative, navigating to PonyTube through her browser. She pulled open one of her favorite gameplay series and put on her headphones, leaning back in her chair. The video loaded up quickly, thanks to the high speed internet connections that permeated the set.

"Hello everybody, my name is Markipony and welcome to another episode of Subnautica..."

Applejack's eyes fell heavy as the butter-voiced PonyTuber ranted about how much he hated the ocean while raving about how beautiful it was. She leaned back in her chair as the video came to a close and her eyes slowly slid shut. Without further a do, Applejack drifted away into the dream world.

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Rainbow Dash flew away from the library at high speeds, the wind whistling past her ears and clouds whipping past her face. Sometimes it felt good to go above and beyond the restrictions of airspeed on a cool summer night, when the landscape below was nice, quiet, and at rest. Anywhere else besides the set and she would've gotten pulled over for speeding and had her wing clipped. Heh, all the set security could do was tell her off and watch as she tore through the skies. She spread her wings and came in for a perfect landing at the front door of her cloud-home. Twilight looked dead tired when they all had left the treebrary, it was only a matter of time until the Director cut the episode.

The door to her house was opened and shut by the cyan pegasus as she walked into the open-air lavish parlor of her cloud-mansion. She really couldn't boast all that much about the luxuriously large structure (although she would most definitely try). Cloud was a cheap building material and was easy to mold together and harden if you knew what you were doing.

Rainbow sighed and looked up at the clock, ticking away on the wall. She resorted to pacing around in the front room, simply waiting for her earpiece to tell her that another day of work was completed. The pack felt itchy on her back and she was desperate to pull out the augment and have a shower. She waited about twenty minutes, waiting, waiting for that stupid purple unicorn to fall asleep.

While yes, she could see her as being real friends with the poor mare, the circumstance of The Show forced her to treat Twilight Sparkle like some sort of little foal. Oh well, the job had to be one of the best paying acting gigs with the best benefits any actress could ever dream of. You got a free, well-built house with full medical care as well as food prepared either by yourself or by the vast catering service of Equestria. While sure, "Equestria" didn't have all the amenities and luxuries as the Confederacy had, it was still fairly idyllic and quaint.

Aaand... Cut!

Rainbow dashed over to the coat hangar and leaned up against it, pulling a specific hook as she did so. Electromagnets activated and the runic augment popped off and was immediately covered up by a standard-issue prop jacket to hide its glaring modern design from the rest of the house. She let out a sigh of relief and looked at the areas across the top of her barrel and around her wings. The skin there had been rubbed raw and some of her coat had begun to flake off from it. The areas where the pack's pincers were placed had almost become permanently scarred into her back, six little marks where needles carrying magical current had bitten into her body.

She did her best not to rub the burning rash-like sensation that blazed across her back, fearing that it might bleed if disturbed much more. She trotted away to one of her many showers, which were nothing much more than storm clouds fixed over shower drains behind foggy glass. The hot water did well to soothe the irritation that the augment's crystalline spines had wreaked on her back.

The magical devices were mostly deployed in the military, boosting pegasi magic to the point where ponies could fly beyond the speed of sound. It was modified to fit flush to Rainbow's back, and had an indistinguishable feel and texture to her coat. The gadget was definitely on the cutting edge of technology of, well, of the world outside of "Equestria".

The artificial boost took a lot of getting used to. Six months of training to be exact. The design was built to be as hardy and comfortable as possible. These devices, however, were not supposed to be worn around the clock, every day, all day. There were definite risks of permanent damage as well as a few reports of cancer manifesting through the overuse of magical augments. But nopony would dare report a breach of equine rights in this case. Neither would anypony dare shut down great and mighty Twilight Sparkle Show, would they? It's not like Rainbow really wanted to snitch anyway, the pay was way too good to risk getting written out. After this show was over, she could live in luxury for the rest of her life!

Exiting the shower, Rainbow Dash performed her standard minimalistic hygiene routine, taking some extra time to painstakingly rub some salve on her inflamed back (seriously, it was hard to do that by hoof if one wasn't a unicorn). She walked out of the bathroom whistling, and headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. While she waited for the coffee to percolate, she walked over to her writing desk, in the conservatory across from the kitchen, and grabbed some printing paper. A typewriter was pulled from a cupboard. While Rainbow would have liked an actual computer to type with, those items were restricted on-set and especially in Ponyville, where the mane character lived. Applejack had received an exception, but that was because the desktop was built so that it could be hidden remotely in an instant (not to mention the earth pony had begged for a computer like her life depended on it).

The coffee machine beeped and Rainbow poured herself a cup of hot, black liquid. A piece of partially written paper was inserted into the typewriter and Rainbow sat down in front of the machine, hitting the return bar as she did so. She donned her reading glasses and lost herself into the world of her imagination.

Daring Do ducked under the stallion's blow, rolling with the motion of the damaged airship...

After a good two hours of typing her life's work, Rainbow put down her reading glasses and headed up to bed. At about eleven o'clock at night, and without further a do, Rainbow Dash drifted off into the dream world.

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Fluttershy strolled through the plains back up to her cottage, the soothing sounds of the nighttime birds calmed the butter-yellow pegasus. Soon the moonlit glades turned into beautiful nighttime hollows, a quick turn off of the beaten path going east to her home. The cottage was more tree than house, with, unfortunately artificial, leaves covering the actual roof of the structure. Birdhouses littered the trees leading up to her abode, the birds already sleeping in their nests with their little ones close.

Fluttershy stopped at the entrance of the path surrounded by birdhouses, staring fearfully at the downy feathers littering the floor and ground beneath the bird houses. She really wished she had taken the time to grab her mask before she had run out the door to the picnic earlier that day. The prompt was just so sudden, and the crazed Twilight Sparkle hadn't even arrived until five minutes later than first thought and strategized by the writers. Fear rose in her chest, who knew what those fowl feathers held? So many ponies got sick and died from bird-borne disease!

Aaand... Cut!

The crackle of the Director's voice snapped Fluttershy out of her panic. She looked around, trying to collect herself a bit more, then held her breath and closed her eyes and galloped down the dreadful path and charged into her house. Still holding her breath, she grabbed her mask and gloves from a counter and only dared breath once the filtering fabric was over her mouth. She almost collapsed from the sudden intake of air and the drop in adrenaline that followed, staggering as she breathed deeply through the surgical mask.

A knock ran out on her door, and she trotted over to the entrance. She sighed in relief as three ponies in scrubs with the words "CLEANUP CREW" written on their shirts trotted in. They nodded at her, understanding their duty as they had for the past year. She smiled back. She stood back and watched as the elite professionals disinfected every inch of her cottage in record time, putting each and every animal that lived inside the cottage inside their "homes" (which were actually well disguised cages that could be closed up during the night) far away from all possessions that Fluttershy held dear.

Flutters didn't hate animals, in fact, she had considered becoming a veterinarian before she found that working in a completely environmentally-regulated set much more appealing to her irrational fear of disease. The weather was clear most of the time, and the atmosphere was completely clear of any smog or impurities that made up the cities of the outside world. It was an unfortunate paradox. She loved animals but couldn't stand to be around them!

It had been sheer luck that Twilight had found a friend in her, and it had required the crew and prop crafters to wing a lot of things such as reforging the element of kindness to match her cutie mark and changing a lot of future advertising to include her as one of the mane cast. It had also made her very nervous, she was never really trained in how to act in situations like these. It was why her acting on-camera didn't really vary from the way that she acted normally, aside from the fact that she tended to hide from the many strategically-placed cameras much more often than the Director would like.

It took some time for the entirety of the house to be cleaned, but Fluttershy was happy to rock back and forth nervously on her hooves while she waited for the crew to do their thing. Eventually the cleanup ponies left her alone in the house with nopony but herself, and a plethora of filthy animals rattling around in their various enclosures. Even after the cleaning, everything she looked at she gazed upon as a scared rabbit would upon a snake ready to strike. She took a deep breath, raising her head.
'C'mon Fluttershy, pony up!' she thought, her hooves steadying.

She walked briskly up the stairs, taking an extended shower and brushing her teeth for exactly two minutes. She then walked back down the stairs, figuring that she might read a little bit more from her books before heading to bed. She made some tea back down in the kitchen, making sure to boil the jug two times before daring to pour a cup. Some reading and drinking later, and she was ready to go to bed.

As she was heading up the stairs to the embrace of her covers, a rattle was heard from a cage underneath said stairs. Fluttershy peeked, terrified, at the caged and irate Angel Bunny. The rabbit gave her a look of utter rage, somehow telepathically communicating to the unfortunate pegasus that she would pay for the great wrongs done to him by his pony slaves.

Fluttershy practically crawled up to her bedroom in a fashion that would make mice sound like freight trains and jumped under the covers, desperately attempting to block Angel Bunny's telepathic threats with the cotton sheets. Eventually, it seemed, the distempered bunny fell asleep, and Fluttershy had the realm of rest within reach. Without further a do, Fluttershy drifted off into the nightmares of her dream world.

Author's Note

Big thanks to my mother for proofreading and editing.