Twilight stood frozen in shock. "Could you repeat that?"
"I said Tempest is coming, too." Cadence went back to lulling Flurry to sleep.
Twilight's right eyelid began to twitch.
"Is there a problem?" Cadence asked, looking back to her sister in law.
"A problem?" Twilight got up and began to look around. "No. Not at all. It's not like I only have until tomorrow morning to get her a present, with no idea of what to get her! Everything's fine, really."
Cadence placed Flurry back in her crib. "Actually, she'll be here for dinner and we were planning to spend the night with all of you, so you only have until this evening to get her something." She began to hang the remaining decorations around the room.
"Marvellous." Twilight smacked her own forehead with a hoof. "How much time do I have left?"
"About three hours," Cadence replied without looking back, still focused on the decorations.
Twilight groaned and teleported away.
She reappeared in the middle of the nearest market, much to the displeasure of the stallion she materialised in front of, who dropped the snow globe he'd just bought out of shock. "Okay, Twilight. Think. What do you know about Tempest? She likes adventure, and action, and hates things that are overly fluffy and cute. So what can I get her?" She looked around.
Starting from the far end of the marketplace, there was the pillow shop, a store selling plushes, a cotton candy stand, a small stall dedicated to selling replicas of the Crystal Heart of all sizes, an automated dispenser of Flurry Heart and Cadence posters, a shop selling heart-shaped picture frames, one dedicated to selling plushes of the royal family and Spike, one for heart-shaped pillows, a book store, a shop selling heart-shaped plushes decorated with pictures of Flurry Heart eating cotton candy, a-
"Wait!" Twilight zapped herself in front of the book store. She stared at the collection of books showcased, and one in particular caught her eye. Yes, that would be a perfect present for Tempest. She should have thought about it sooner. Quickly she went in and bought one of the last remaining copies of Daring Do and the Empress of the Veiled Isles, the newest book in the series. She opted to not get it gift-wrapped, wanting to do the packaging herself, and merrily walked out.
"Twilight!"
It was a good thing that the marketplace was out in the open, as she would have likely hit the ceiling had there been one to hit. Instead she just fell back down, still startled by the voice. "Hi Tempest!" she shakily replied, quickly trying to hide the book behind herself. "What brings you here?"
Tempest cocked her head to the side and quizzically looked at her. "I... live here now. You remember that, right? Cadence told me she'd told you about it."
Twilight bit her tongue. "Oh, of course! Of course... I knew that, I was just-" She glanced back at the book to make sure she hadn't accidentally damaged it by holding it too tightly in her magic. What she saw almost made her jump up in the air once again. "I was j-just trying to start a conversation, you know?" she said while looking away from the unicorn, still trying to figure out how her book had been replaced with a copy of 1229 ways to cook radishes.
"Twilight?" Tempest took a couple of steps towards the alicorn. "Are you alright?"
"Me? Oh, sure, never felt better!" She'd had to havemagically switched it with somepony else's book when she’d freaked out earlier. Now if only she could find out who’d gotten hers. She began to frantically look around.
"So... What are you doing here?" Tempest wore an expression of mild concern.
"I'm..." Everypony was going around with a bag. "I'm..." That wasn't good, she couldn't see where her book had ended up. "I'm..." If only she had a way to examine the contents of their-wait, that was it! "I'm here to examine what everypony is carrying in or out of the market! Cadence wants to make sure that nothing illegal is being sold."
"And she enlisted you to do it?" Tempest asked, perplexed.
Twilight wasn't listening to her any more. "Excuse me, could I see the contents of your bag?" she asked to the nearest stallion. It wasn't there.
"Twilight, are you sure-"
"Can I see the contents of your bag?" Not there.
"Twilight, I-"
"Excuse me, royal orders!" Twilight swept away the bags of all the nearby ponies and emptied their contents on the floor. The book was nowhere in sight. "Where could it-"
"Where's that book about radishes gone?" The voice came from the other side of the market, from an earth pony who'd just slipped over a small puddle of water and fake snowflakes, dropping his bag.
Twilight teleported towards him, Tempest trying to catch up to her by running.
There it was! Now she just had to grab it and-
"Twilight! What's gotten into you?" Tempest began to pant.
Twilight's eyes bounced between the book and the unicorn. She couldn't let her see her pick it up, it would ruin the surprise! She had to distract Tempest somehow. "Oh, I-"
"What's this thing?" the earth pony mumbled, picking up the book. "Bah!" he said as he threw it away, causing it to land on a nearby cart.
Twilight followed the book with her eyes as it was slowly carried away by the yellow unicorn pulling the cart. "I was just helping this pony," she said, passing the other book to the earth pony.
"Twilight, really, are you sure everything's alright?" Tempest asked, preoccupied, walking closer to the alicorn.
"Yeah, I'm..." Twilight started to chew her lip, staring at the cart as it moved further away. She had to calm down. Spend some time with Tempest, forget about that book, and come back to get a new copy later. After all, it wasn't like that was the only remaining co-
"We sure were lucky to pick up the last copy of the new Daring Do book for our daughter," a pegasus passing by said to his wife.
"True, dear. Especially now that that blizzard blocked the train, I don't think there will be a new one available until well after tomorrow," she replied.
"Worried about that cart!" Twilight blurted out, pointing with a wing. She'd had more than a few bad ideas in her life, enough to know that this was one of them. Maybe she could still stop and-"I recognized the pony pulling it, he gave us some problems back in Equestria and I think he might be up to something!" Or do nothing and let her mouth ramble on its own. Yeah, no way that was going to backfire.
Tempest craned her neck to get a better look at the pony. "Are you sure?" she asked, dubious.
Well, at that point she didn't really have a reason to not go with it. "I'm sure!" Twilight stated. "But even if I might be wrong we should still check, just in case," she added, realising the potential dangers of convincing the pony who'd singlehoofedly defeated all four princesses that she was chasing after a known criminal rather than an innocent passer-by. Not that she would have expected him to be in any condition to articulate any form of complaint, but his family would have likely found the situation somewhat unpleasant.
"Well it's no wonder you got taken over so easily if that's the most your guards are used to deal with." Tempest readied herself to run after the cart.
"Wait!"
Tempest stopped and turned back around towards Twilight. "What now?"
"We should try to follow him in secret to see where he's going," Twilight whispered. She then began to slowly move towards the side of the road, trying to produce as little noise as possible.
"Twilight, are you sure this is necessary?"
"Shh!" was the only reply she received from the other, who, having turned around to look at the unicorn, proceeded to bump into the side of the nearest building and fall to the ground.
Tempest walked up to her and helped her back to her hooves. "Twilight, seriously, there's nothing suspicious about the Prince's sister walking through the market with her friend. And we better get going, or we'll lose the cart."
Twilight followed the direction of Tempest's gaze. The cart was pretty far ahead already, and Tempest was right. No need to overplay her lie, or she would risk getting caught. Quietly she began to walk down the road, the other following behind.
It took a few minutes, but after a while the pony pulling the cart finally came to a stop in front of a large pale blue tent, and after a short conversation with another pony inside it he pulled the cart in, disappearing from the view.
Twilight had had more than enough time to plan things out, as she'd let her mouth go on autopilot after the first question Tempest had asked about how things were going. It would be easy, really. Get in, saying she needed to confirm that nothing illegal was happening, distract Tempest by telling her to check around the room, grab and hide the book while she wasn't looking, admit that she'd probably been wrong about who she'd seen and politely leave.
She was in the middle of recounting how she'd first met Cozy Glow, already prepared to mention how the pony didn't look like the one she'd been thinking about upon closer inspection, when the entrance to the tent slid open and-
"Flim?"
"Actually, it's Flam," the unicorn staring back at her replied.
"So you were right!" Tempest said.
Twilight found herself at a momentary loss for words. "I-I-I-I mean yes! We better check what they're up to!" she said, deciding to go with how things were turning out to be. After all, there was a real chance that the two brothers were up to something.
"I assume you want to see what we're doing here?" Flam said, moving out of the way to let the two inside. "Welcome to our newly established emporium," he announced.
Twilight walked in behind him, and Tempest behind her. The inside of the tent was what looked like a small shop still being set up, with a wooden counter and a couple of mostly empty shelves behind it, the only notable item on them a candle that illuminated the room. The cart with the book was nowhere in sight, and Twilight assumed it had been dragged behind the curtain hanging in the middle of the room, likely separating the shop itself from the storage room.
"We've been sent here under direct orders from Princess Cadence herself to make sure you aren't trying to sell anything illegal," Tempest said as she approached the yellow unicorn, "do you have anything to declare? It'll be much better for you if you say it now, we won't be as nice if we find something that's out of place. And believe me," she continued, taking another step towards him, "if there's something to find, we will find it."
Twilight was suddenly thankful that it had been Flim and Flam she'd run into.
Flam stared back at Tempest. "Nothing illegal here, ma'am. But please, don't take my word for it, feel free to see for yourselves. Flim? We got company."
The curtain shifted and Flim emerged from behind it. "Oh, greetings Princess. Would you like to inspect our warehouse?" he asked.
"Yes, we would." Twilight nodded to Tempest, and they followed Flim behind the curtain. The 'warehouse', as Flim had called it, only took up about half of the already small tent, so at least it wouldn't take lon-Oh. Right. Spatial expansion spells and portals were a thing. Twilight sighed at the sight of the many, many rows of what she could only define as 'stuff', objects of all shapes and sizes piled upon one another with no apparent logic to their disposition. "Do you have a list of everything you keep here?" she asked, disheartened.
"All here," Flam replied, producing a long roll of paper from his pocket and levitating it over to Twilight. "And this one's for the second floor," he added, giving her another, equally long one.
Twilight sighed again, and with a defeated expression she began to pick up the items one by one, making sure that they were on the list and that there was nothing wrong with them.
"So, any plans for the future?" Twilight asked, carefully repositioning a kettle where she'd found it, between a snow globe and a replica of the Crystal Heart. She'd found the book rather quickly, but she couldn't trust that Flim and Flam weren't up to something, and Tempest would have made her search the whole place anyway. They were almost done with the examination now, though it had taken a couple of hours, a non-insignificant part of which had been spent convincing Tempest that she didn't need to extensively test every weapon they found. The unicorn had reluctantly agreed, though she had livened up a bit when Twilight had given her permission to examine the top shelves by jumping between them.
Tempest's head poked out from a shelf above her, holding a toy version of Twilight's crown in her mouth. "Not really," she said, placing it down near a worn out green book, "I haven't really found a place where I fit in yet, and I've already seen a good chunk of Equestria. I guess I'll keep looking." She began to examine a small bottle filled with a bright blue liquid. "What's this thing?"
Twilight looked up, glancing away from the semi-translucent green tetragonal bipyramid floating in front of her. "That looks like liquid thunder. It's on the list." She quickly scanned the scattered pieces of a wristwatch. "So why haven't you found a place yet? What about your old home?"
Tempest placed a stone mask with long curved spikes coming out of the back down near an emerald sword. "I've been there, but really it's not for me. Too many memories of someone I'm not any more." A screwdriver was picked up, Tempest quickly ensuring that it was just an ordinary tool.
Twilight started at her missing reflection in the mirror before her. "What about your old friends? Have you seen them?" She briefly inspected a knife.
An egg wearing a pair of glasses rolled around in Tempest's hooves. "I have, actually." She let the conversation fall in favour of concentrating on a black briefcase.
Twilight tested the properties of the magical ring she was holding. "So... how did it go?"
Tempest looked away from three triangular pieces of floating gold and towards the alicorn. She stared confused for a moment, then Twilight removed the ring and returned visible. "It went... well, I would say. They're sorry for what happened, and I can't put all the blame of what I did on them. It's just... Equestria doesn't have much use for who I became while I was running away from here, it's going to take a while to adjust."
"We'll always be there for you if you need it." Twilight put down a weird statue of a crouching pony with dragon-like wings and a squid-shaped face and magically probed an old gramophone.
Tempest gave one final look to a painting of Flurry Heart, then jumped down. "Well, that should be the last one."
"I'm done too," Twilight answered, abandoning a love letter with a fabricated signature of Princess Celestia back where she'd found it, between a silver helmet and a golden one, over a large book entitled Mitternacht. She returned to the ground, carefully holding Tempest's present hidden under a wing.
Tempest began to walk towards the exit. "Honestly, Twilight, I'm surprised we found nothing, given what you told me about those two."
Twilight caught up to her. "I'm a bit surprised as well. But I think we should still keep an eye on them, they'll probably be up to something once they start to sell this stuff." She distractedly glanced at an onyx bust of Princess Luna. "Who would even want to buy half of the things in here?"
Tempest pushed a purple scooter to the side as she walked, sending it to gently bump against a basket full of wooden copies of Starlight's old staff. "I don't know. But I'm sure there's someone who will." Her eyes momentarily stopped over a stuffed life-size replica of Chrysalis with a sign that read 'HUG ME' hanging from its neck.
"You're probably right." Twilight looked for the final time at an orange coat hanger supporting both a Starswirl the Bearded costume and a weird black cape, coupled with a hood that sported a hole to allow a unicorn to wear it, then followed Tempest back into the shop.
Flim was walking in right at that moment, carrying another cart. "So, did you find anything?" Flam asked them.
"No. Everything's in order," Twilight replied, preparing to leave the shop. Finally she could go back to the castle. "Tempest, are you coming?"
"Just a second, Twi." The unicorn suspiciously stared at the wooden counter, and tentatively gave a knock on its side. "Twilight? Can you come here for a moment?"
Twilight walk back towards her, and the brothers nervously moved closer to the curtain. "What is it?" the alicorn asked.
Tempest suddenly kicked the top of the counter away with her back hooves.
"Tempest, what-"
"Ah!" the unicorn said, pointing at the hollow inside of the piece of furniture. "I knew it!"
Twilight walked up to her and stared inside.
"Abyssinian fireworks," Tempest explained, "they're illegal in the Crystal Empire."
Twilight stared at them. "They are? ...I mean, they are!" She turned towards Flim and Flam. "You stay right there, we're bringing you to the authorities!"
Tempest put some of the fireworks safely away inside a bag. "Twilight, I thought we were the authorities." She closed the bag.
"Of course!" Twilight somewhat nervously replied, remembering the details of the lie she'd told to Tempest. "You two! You're coming with us!" she said to Flim and Flam. "Why are these things illegal?" she silently whispered back to Tempest.
"They are magical in nature, and they-"
"Get overcharged by the lingering magic inside the Empire," Flam interrupted her.
"It makes for quite the amazing show," Flim added, firing a small spark of magic towards the candle.
As she understood what was happening, Tempest dashed towards Twilight, pushing her outside. Flim and Flam disappeared behind the curtain, then cut off the spell that connected the tent to the warehouse. Twilight fell backwards, pushed by Tempest, and lost her grip on the book. Flim's spell hit the candle, which fell over the fireworks. They immediately went off, and in a few moments the entire tent was enveloped in a very pretty light show of rainbow coloured flames, burning all its contents to ash.
Twilight watched as the fire rapidly dissipated. "Thank you, Tempest," she said to the pony still on top of her.
"No problem," the other replied, "but it's a shame that they got away." Tempest got up and walked towards the remains of the tent, searching for anything that might have survived the fire.
Twilight got up as well. She wiped away some dust from her side and back with her wings, stretched them a bit, then froze. She began to frantically look around for the book, but was unable to find it, and dreadfully realised that she'd dropped it inside the building. It was almost time for dinner, there were no copies left to buy, the one she had had just been burned, and Tempest would be following her for the rest of the day. Things couldn't be going any worse.
"This is the only thing I found," Tempest said, coming back towards Twilight with her charred book in hoof, the title the only thing still readable.
Twilight had to stop and wonder if it was Discord trying to pull pranks on her, or if the world simply liked to prove her wrong in the worst way possible.
"I’m Sorry it got caught in the explosion, it's my fault for making you drop it." Tempest looked at the title. "You know, I wanted to buy you a copy, but then I figured you'd be getting a signed one for free anyway. I should have known you would still have bought one before then, but at least you’ll get it eventually. Well, sorry that you won't get to read it as soon as you'd hoped."
Twilight meekly smiled. Then she realised something. "Wait, you said you wanted to get a copy for me?"
Tempest nodded, intent on checking if the fireworks she'd managed to grab were still intact.
"And did you buy one for yourself?"
"Oh, no." Tempest put her bag over her shoulder and began to walk away. "I don't really like reading. Not adventure books, anyway. I'll wait for you at the castle if you want to see if you can find something else there with your magic."
Twilight sat there. "You don't like... to read adventure books..." She began to giggle.
A few minutes later a rather concerned Shining Armor had to personally remove the alicorn from the middle of the street, after numerous complaints that a pony was blocking traffic while cackling maniacally.
"You really should have told me that you'd already gotten her a present." Twilight took another bite of her cake, looking at the centre of the room. It was now Sunburst's turn to open his presents, and he was somewhat reluctant to unwrap the package his mother had sent.
"You could have given me the time to tell you instead of teleporting away," Cadence replied, a devious smile forming on her lips, not entirely caused by the sweater the orange unicorn was now being forced to wear by her husband.
"Oh come on, you had all the time to"- Twilight turned around and noticed her ex-foalsitter's expression -"You did it on purpose!" She then had to suppress a giggle once she caught sight of Sunburst, blinded by the sweater that had gotten caught in his horn, accidentally knocking over Shining Armor by tripping on the discarded wrappings on the floor.
"Maybe," Cadence admitted with faux guilt. "Sorry, but at least I didn't have to deal with you while I finished with the decorations. Remember the time we had to buy new ones because the measures of the ones we had weren't proportional to those of the room?"
Twilight didn't answer, but the colour of her cheeks betrayed her.
Shining Armor got himself tangled up with Sunburst. "Oh dear, I think they need my help," Cadence said. "Could you hold Flurry for a while?" she asked, levitating a log of wood towards Twilight.
"Err... Cadence? I don't think-"
"Twilight?" came Tempest's voice from the other room, "Have you seen the fireworks we managed to save? I was thinking of putting them somewhere safer, but I can't find them any more."
With dreadful certainty, Twilight looked towards the fireplace. "FLURRY, NO!" she screamed.
Much to her surprise, the small alicorn did indeed stop, the fireworks hanging just high enough for the heat to not be enough to activate them, held in the bright yellow glow of her magic. Twilight gave a sigh of relief.
"Just a little to the left and... There we go!" Shining exclaimed. The sweater flew off of Sunburst's body-
"I heard you scream from outside, what's happening?" Tempest asked, rushing in.
-landing on Flurry, who lost her grip on the fireworks thanks to the small shock, dropping them in the fire.
