Malodorous Development

Chapters

The fine, fine line between genius and insanity
A stench over Ponyville
Progress, at a price
Meeting of the minds
Fearful happenings
Communications breakdown
Past meets present
Aftermath and acceptance

The fine, fine line between genius and insanity

“Master… is it wrong that sometimes, I get an itch to take over the world?”

With a quick turn of her head, Vinyl Scratch took a moment to regard her apprentice’s rather honest question. Lately, there had been a lot of questions about all manner of subjects, but most of them were moral in nature. Being Sumac Apple’s master, his instructor, it was her sworn duty to shape his morals into something beneficial to society.

“That’s perfectly normal,” she said to her apprentice in a calm, cool, collected voice. “We’re unicorns. I’d be more worried if you didn’t want to take over the world. That’s not natural. Care to share your plan for world domination?”

Amused, Vinyl watched as Sumac’s expression changed a dozen times or more while he no doubt tried to figure out if she was joking. At the tender age of eight, he was far more expressive and well-spoken than most adults. Of course, she had a lot to do with that, as having a well-spoken apprentice spoke well of her as a unicorn. She took pride in this job, just as she took pride in every other thing she did.

“No real plan. Not yet, anyhow.” The colt looked away, but at nothing in particular.

Vinyl looked around her workshop, her eyes going from half-finished project to half-finished project. An electric fan hummed in the corner and caused bits of sawdust and metal shavings to blow across the floor. For a moment, she studied the partially finished phonograph of her own design, a phonograph that played both sides of the record at the same time to produce incredible stereo sounds. It was an invention that would no doubt change the world, but it was rather boring to work on.

With Octavia away at a lepidopterology convention, and with Alto off with his father to do whatever it was those two did, Vinyl was free to do pretty much whatever she felt like. Without consequences. All of the responsible adults were elsewhere, which meant that she was free to do as she pleased. But, what to do? Sumac was quiet—almost too quiet—and she suspected that he might be troubled about something. As for herself, she sensed boredom closing in.

“Hey Vinyl…”

“Yeah, Sumac?”

“That camera… that new invention. The camera that snaps animated pictures.”

“What about it, Sumac?” Vinyl’s ears pivoted forwards so that she might hear her apprentice better over the drone of the fan. “Do you want one?”

“No,” the colt replied right away, shaking his head. “Vinyl… that should have been ours. We should have made that. I’m kinda mad about it, actually. That camera, I mean, it feels so obvious now. That idea should have been ours.”

Sighing, shrugging, Vinyl slipped one foreleg over Sumac’s withers. “That’s just how life is, sometimes. Let it go. Don’t get bent out of shape.”

“I didn’t plan on getting bent out of shape.” Sumac adjusted his glasses, lifted his head, and looked Vinyl right in the eye. Or would have, but her dark glasses and his dark glasses reflected mirrored images of themselves. “We need to invent our own camera to make up for this blunder.”

“What did you have in mind, Sumac?” Intrigued, she wondered what her apprentice had planned. Some of his ideas were brilliant—others, not so much.

“A camera that captures smell.”

“Say again?” Vinyl’s head tilted off to one side and her ears angled out over her eyes.

“Photographs that smell. Like, if you took a picture of a flower, you’d be able to smell the flower if you sniffed the photograph. If we don’t invent this, somepony else will. Somepony else invented the animated pictures, so we need to be the ones who gets this one.”

Reaching up, she rubbed her chin with her hoof while leaning against her apprentice. One idea caused another to appear, and then another, and the next thing she knew, she was thinking about phonographs that produced smells to go along with the music. What practical purpose would this serve? She had no idea, but it had to be done.

For science.

“Do we have a name?” she dared to ask.

“Olfactography,” was her apprentice’s quick reply. “Olfactograph.”

“Brilliant. Say, that’s kinda groovy. So how do we make it work? I’m guessing that you’ve thought this out?”

“It’s the same principle as the animated photographs, really. A simple illusory matrix, but rather than capturing and remembering photons in various positions, it captures the particles that smell and then replicates them. I have the idea of how it should work, but it is too complicated for me to do on my own.”

“Hmm,” Vinyl hmmed, still rubbing her chin. This was an idea of complex simplicity. Of simple complexity. Illusory replication spells were her forte, because that was how she made her voice work. The more she thought about it, the more reasonable it became. This would be easy. If they got started now, they could have a working prototype by day’s end.

Getting a smell to stick to a matrix would be infinitely easier than creating the controlled cacophony that gave her a voice. That was unbelievably complicated and even now, all this time later, she was still making adjustments. But Sumac’s idea seemed stupidly simple. So simple, in fact, it made Vinyl wonder why nopony had ever done this before.

“Sumac, fetch our science goggles! We’re making science!”

The guts of the camera lay scattered across the workbench. A lamp illuminated them and cast distorted shadows across the scarred wooden surface. Silver globules of solder sunk into crevices in the wood glittered in the harsh, overly-bright light, the evidence of Vinyl’s many projects. While she deconstructed one of her many cameras, Sumac was hard at work constructing a tiny air bellows to help suck in smells so they could be captured.

While it was a perfectly serviceable idea, Vinyl hoped that she could imbue a sense of collection on her spell matrix, which would make it sample the various aromas in the general vicinity when an olfactograph was taken. The sweet scent of mountain meadows would accompany the pleasing sight of wildflowers. Octavia would love this idea, Vinyl was sure of that, and it would completely change their butterfly hunting expeditions.

To activate the matrix, she would have to attach a thaumaton load to a trigger mechanism of some sort, probably the flash. The resulting flood of magic would activate and empower the matrix, and if everything went as planned, it would sample the air in the general area. But smells tended to be weak, sometimes, so Vinyl was already thinking of ways to amplify the aroma—to concentrate the very essence of the smell. The faint whiff, the mere, suggestive hint of wildflowers would not be enough. The olfactograph would have to whisk one away to beautiful, sun-dappled meadows filled with frolicking butterflies.

“What happens when mares love each other?”

The question, asked out of the blue, gave Vinyl pause.

“How does it work, I mean? I know how it works normally. I know how foals are made. It strikes me as being a sort of mechanical issue. The tab goes securely into the slot and interface is achieved. But how do two slots connect and achieve interface? For stallions, it makes a bit of sense, we have a tab and a slot… of sorts. I guess. Thinking about it is really weird and I feel kinda uncomfortable right now. When the two slots connect, is it like pressing your frog down into the mud and flexing it until it makes farty sounds? Is it a matter of suction?”

Flabbergasted, Vinyl Scratch put her screwdriver down upon the workbench.

“Sumac, what brought this up?” she asked, fearing whatever answer might happen.

“You said that I could talk to you about anything,” he replied, his voice squeaky and more than a little frightened.

She inhaled, her cheeks bulged, her muzzle crinkled, and she let everything out in a slow huff. Another deep breath was taken, and this time, rather than let everything out in a slow, calming exhale, she had this to say:

“Yes, you can talk to me about anything. Even that. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.” She picked up her screwdriver once more, flipped it around once, and then, not knowing what to do with it at the moment, she put it down once more. “You just want to know how everything works, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“That’s good,” she said to him, trying to restore his good mood. “Too many ponies never ask questions. Never be ashamed to ask questions, Sumac.” The inside of Vinyl’s goggles grew humid enough to fog over, and she thought about taking them off. Thinking of Octavia didn’t help matters at all, nor did thoughts about rubbing things together.

“Sumac, it is a matter of friction,” she said at last, trying to make this as science-y as equinely possible.

“Friction?” he asked.

“Yes. Friction. Like when you scratch your back for a while and it feels good. You scratch or rub anything long enough, and it feels good. We mares have hot, sweaty, itchy places, and it feels good to have them scratched. We work to scratch each other’s itch. It’s like backrubs, but with crotches.”

“Is this why you’re called Vinyl Scratch?”

Time ceased to function and Vinyl stood there, stymied, licking her lips but unable to answer. Sumac’s astute observation had robbed her of speech. Try as she might, she could not muster the magic that powered her voice. She did grin though, a big stupid grin that stretched almost ear to ear, and she knew that she would have to tell Octavia all about this later.

One day, Sumac would grow up to become a legendary wit, and she would have a hoof in that. As the incoming tide of pride broke over her, other emotions rode the incoming waves. Still dumbstruck, she contemplated the unique relationship between master and apprentice. Never in her life had she ever felt more wizardy, more accomplished.

She looked down at the components of the camera scattered across the workbench, and she found her voice again. “Never stop asking questions, Sumac. Never stop being you. Other ponies will tell you to grow up. To be mature. They will tell you to shut up and stop asking silly questions. Don’t listen to them. The world needs wit. There’s a shortage of wit, Sumac. There’s far too many dullards gunking everything up.”

A confused smile spread across Sumac’s face.

“Pay attention, Sumac. I’m going to show you how to mount a microcrystalline implant and how to interface it with an electronic device. In this case, a camera. We’re going to connect it to the flash activation mechanism, so the magic will be activated when the flash goes off. Once this is done, we’ll see about anchoring a spell in there. You ready?”

“Ready,” he replied.

“Good. Now pay attention!”

Vinyl marvelled at how well Sumac took to programming. While he lacked the means to cast more complex spells due to his age, he still understood the concept, the reasoning behind sequencing magic. Everything had to be logical, orderly, and done in just the right way, otherwise, the project would fizzle out. While this could be considered enchantment in the barest sense of the word, Vinyl much prefered to consider it was just programming—a created sequence of instructions and actions to perform a simple purpose or task.

This programming was becoming highly refined in the modern era, with microcrystalline controllers found in almost everything. Like in toasters, making sure that your toast was perfectly burnt no matter what settings you used. Just a tiny sliver of thaumaturgically-active crystal was all that was needed to imbue common household appliances and electronics, altering them in ways only limited by imagination.

In the past, this had been called enchantment, and it had been used to create artifacts.

But this… Vinyl did not feel that her camera was worthy of the title ‘artifact.’ Hence the usage of the word ‘programming.’ This wasn’t an enchanting revolution that was taking the world by storm, but simple magical refinement done by tinkerers and urban wizards. Ponies like herself, and Sumac.

“Did it work?” asked Sumac while casting his dubious gaze upon the now assembled camera.

“Only one way to find out,” Vinyl replied to her apprentice. “But first, I have to go to the little filly’s fart palace. Don’t blow up my workshop. You know. Like you did that one time when you—”

“Accident!” he hollered. “That was an accident! Pebble distracted me by blowing into my ear! Not my fault! Besides, that wasn’t really an explosion. Not really. That was more of a sudden and unexpected fire. Look, the explosion part is debatable!”

Pressing her lips together, she shook her head from side to side. Her apprentice needed to learn to work past distractions. To work through distractions, and not be distracted. So that everything wouldn’t explode. As she stood there, shaking her head from side to side, Sumac’s ears drooped, then drooped a little more, and this continued until they were limp against his temples. She hated seeing him this way, but he had to learn.

“I’ll be right back,” she said to her sulking apprentice. “Today will be glorious!”

When she returned, she found Sumac waving a photograph in the air. Olfactograph. That name was just a little awkward, but she was certain it would catch on. So the little scamp had already taken a picture of something and was now waiting for it to develop. Wary as always, she wondered what sort of mischief he had dabbled in, but judging by the fact that he was humming to himself to project an aura of innocence, he had no doubt done something truly horrendous.

“Okay, Sumac. Let’s have a summary of our work. What did we do?”

“We created a spell matrix,” he replied, still waving the undeveloped olfactograph over his head. “A simple directive was established. Seek out and categorise olfactory elements in the immediate area, and then amplify them so that they are easily identifiable. The various molecules responsible for olfactory stimulation can be applied to the olfactograph so that the illusion of aroma can be created.”

“Say, that’s pretty good. Next time, more science-y jargon. Ponies have expectations of us, and that was almost boring. We’re never boring.”

“Odours have seven basic groups,” the colt continued. “And because of this, we were able to greatly simplify our matrix—”

“Yeah, Sumac, no need for the snorefest. I just wanted to make sure you understood how and why it worked. Which you do. So what did you take a picture of, anyway? Let me see that.”

Reaching out with her mind, she snatched the olfactograph away from her apprentice and had a look. It wasn’t quite developed just yet, but the ghostly image revealed that Sumac had taken a picture of nothing. She squinted at it for a moment, then lowered the olfactograph to eyeball the giggling colt.

“There’s nothing here,” she said.

“On the contrary, Master. Smells are largely invisible. I captured something on film. At least I think I did. I think it just needs time to develop.”

As Vinyl stood there, waving the olfactograph mere inches from her face, she noticed something. It started off weak, almost imperceptible, but developed with alarming intensity. It went from unnoticeable to eye-watering in a matter of seconds, and the reek of rotten eggs assaulted her olfactory senses with such ferocity that she felt her brain fuzz over.

“GAH! SUMAC!” No longer did she wave the olfactograph around to help it develop, as that was now detrimental to her continued existence. It had taken the very essence of the stink and amplified it by a magnitude. “You horrible little menace, you photographed a fart! How could you!”

“Olfactographed,” the colt said in return, having the sheer unmitigated gall to correct his master. “You told me that I could do no wrong in the name of science—”

“I lied, okay?” She flung the olfactograph away from her and it landed on the workbench. “Ugh, ooh, blargh! We might need to work on the olfactory amplification! That’s a bit much! Blech! I can taste it! It’s in my mouf! My mouf!”

Coughing, Vinyl sputtered and hacked while she lifted the modified camera. This needed to be fixed now, before it became an issue that landed her and her apprentice in hot water. She scraped her teeth over her tongue, trying to be rid of the feculent, funktacular flavour, but try as she might, it would not go away. The very concentrated essence of ass lingered like an unwanted guest.

This was why they did product testing.

But as Vinyl examined the camera, she noticed something quite peculiar. As she stood there, scraping her tongue against her teeth, she realised that the magic was gone. The spell matrix was simply gone. Perhaps it had fizzled out, which she could not help but feel was a good thing. The next iteration would be better, more refined. Hopefully, it would produce olfactographs that could be smelled, and not tasted.

“Here,” she said as she shoved the camera at Sumac. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? ‘Cause there is something wrong. Can you sense what it is?”

“The magic is gone,” the colt replied, taking the camera from Vinyl. He touched it with his horn, and then stood there, quite still. “Did we overload it? Did we botch our matrix? Did our programming logic go awry? What went wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Vinyl shrugged, and then shuddered as the appalling stench lingered, a horrendous olfactorygeist that she feared would haunt her for the rest of her life. “But this isn’t a setback, apprentice of mine. This is opportunity in disguise. We can make corrections. Improvements.”

“Yeah, we don’t want ponies thinking that we’re crackpots.”

“I like to think that we’re geniuses without conventional limitations,” she said, redefining herself and her apprentice. “We’re not held back by traditional trepidations. We have courage, and have thrown aside caution—”

“And sanity,” the colt added.

“That is a subject of debate.” Vinyl sighed, resigned to do more work. “The day is young and we have much to do. Let’s get to work, my apprentice. Let’s see if we can get mark two up and running, and then we’ll go out in search of munch.”

Author's Note

This will be short. And probably horrible. I wasn't actually going to write this one, but then, it just sort of happened. My hands betrayed me. Sorry, but this story is gonna stink.

A stench over Ponyville

Hayseed Turnip Truck paused to wipe the sweat from his snoot. Pulling a garbage wagon was no easy task, but the pay was good. Better than the pay was the fact that he could take the wagon home, so his wife and foals could sort through it for perfectly good valuables that other ponies threw away. Ponies did stuff like that, throwing away stuff, and he wasn’t too proud to claim these treasures for himself.

He was hauling quite a load and had stopped for a moment to rest near the bridge, so he could listen to the sounds of the babbling brook. How did a brook babble? He wasn’t sure. Try as he might, he couldn’t quite make out what it was saying. And bless those pegasus ponies, the wind was blowing south, which kept him upwind from the nose hair curling stink.

“I wonder what Cousin Applejack has got to toss away,” he said to himself, as nopony was around.

Again, he wiped the sweat from his face, and this time left behind a smear of black dirt.

“Roller derby is a-comin’ to Ponyville. I shore would like to watch me them Badass Bumpkins have a go at them bad guys.” The buck-toothed pony huffed, flicked his tail to keep the flies at bay, and then licked his teeth to get the dust and dirt off of them. “I gots me a long ways to go. Whew!”

A weird tingle could be felt in his teeth, and Hayseed paused. This happened sometimes, his teeth would tingle just before a monster attack. Ears rigid, he stood still, all of his senses straining to detect danger. He looked left, then right, left again, off to the right once more, and when nothing could be seen, he shrugged, which caused his harness to jangle.

Maybe he just had himself a case of the Tingly Teeth.

The wind changed, or perhaps it didn’t. Something felt wrong though, and he felt a curious tickle in his nose. When he sniffed, he immediately wished he hadn’t, as the stench of the garbage from behind him could knock a buzzard from an outhouse. It was as if the trash had gone bad, rancid. Something in the garbage wagon had gone from bad to worse.

“Boy, how-dee! That shore is a par-war-ful stank, shore ‘nuff! Miss Rarity must have thrown out Sweetie Belle’s victuals once again! Whew!” Eyes watering, his buck teeth tingling, Hayseed got his hooves moving, because it was far too smelly to stand in one spot.

“There oughtta be a law,” he drawled as he hoofed it down the lane. “There oughtta be a law about Sweetie Belle cookin’!”

Later, inside of Carousel Boutique…

Rarity’s nostrils crinkled in the most demure way equinely possible. She loved her sister, but Sweetie’s unannounced visits—or in this instance her unannounced breakfast—left much to be desired. Last night, Sweetie Belle had showed up not long after midnight, quite tipsy, and had made quite a ruckus after letting herself in.

Of course, poor Sweetie could not be faulted; her post-graduate work was quite hard on her, and so Rarity tried very hard to feel some sympathy during moments like this one, when she was standing in her kitchen and trying to figure out what to do about the smell. Opening the windows was right out, as the neighbors would know. Of course, the neighbors probably already knew, as it was doubtful that mere windows and walls could contain this stink.

After botching breakfast, Sweetie Belle—quite hungover—had gone back to bed.

Tilting her head upwards, Rarity noticed for the first time that there was something stuck to the ceiling. Something black. Was it toast that had been transmogrified into charcoal? Based on the evidence, such as the eggshells on the stove top, she suspected that the mystery stuck to the ceiling was yet another attempt at Fancy toast. How many times had she told Sweetie that it couldn’t be fried in syrup?

Conjuring a bottle of perfume, she tentatively tried a little spritz. What could it hurt? She sniffed, and immediately wished she hadn’t. A curious sensation overtook her and her horn felt peculiar. Was Sweetie’s cooking so bad that it was triggering her magic sense? That was bad indeed. Why, that was just the worst. The perfume somehow made everything even more awful, as her kitchen now smelled of rotten eggs and hot garbage left to bake in the sun.

“Oh,” she huffed, struggling to maintain her ladylike composure, “that is foul.”

She spritzed her kitchen with a bit more perfume, but this did nothing to help the smell. Just as before, it somehow made things worse, and the perfume… something was wrong with the perfume. It was far too strong now, overpowering. It had gone from being delicate and beautiful, to the horrid stench of industrial alcohols, petrochemical fumes, and whatever else it was they used to make perfume. She knew some awful stuff went into perfumes, but it had always smelled so pleasant—until now.

There was no helping it, the kitchen windows would have to be opened.

“Oh, this is ghastly,” she cried as the first tears began to trickle down her cheeks, leaving behind globby streaks of mascara. “Oh, that smell! Sweetie Belle just had to be eating pickled eggs when she was out drinking. Why does it smell like garbage? The trash was just taken out this morning! Ugh! Ugh! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Prancing in place, Rarity shrieked as she threw open the windows.

Just outside of Ponyville…

“Big Mac… was that… was that Rarity screaming?”

“Eeyup.”

“Maybe it’s a bad day to go into Ponyville.”

“Eeyup.”

“I’m goin’ back home, Mac. Gonna work on that fence, maybe. You comin’ with?”

“Eeyup.”

Fluttershy’s cottage. Emergency spring fever ward…

“Oh, you poor dears.”

Biting her lip, Fluttershy looked over her patients and their big, red, swollen noses. The skunk clan was stricken with spring fever, and she—and she alone—was their caretaker. Sniffly, snotty, sneezy skunks were awful, but somepony had to care for them. They had need of soothing salves and a little tender loving care. Perhaps some saucers full of medicinal herbal tea might help.

The clothespin on her nose did very little to protect her, but there was no nurse more determined than Fluttershy. She walked among the cots arranged in neat rows, her ears pivoting to listen to every cough, every sniffle. What she feared were the sneezes. When a skunk sneezed, she would get very little warning—a few gasps perhaps—and then disaster would strike. When skunks sneezed, terrible things happened.

She had to be oh so very careful.

“All of my helpers seem to have vanished,” she remarked as she took note of just how alone she was. Even the mice had fled, and the mice had been loyal, constant companions. She hadn’t even stepped on one for a very long time, so she couldn’t understand why they had abandoned her during her hour of need.

That sudden, unexpected crunch underhoof was quite unsettling and difficult to unhear.

A gust of wind made the trees sway and leaves rustled as flower petals danced in whirlwind eddies. Fluttershy feared the pollen, but she dared not bring the skunks indoors. This wind felt wrong, though she could not say why. It was an ill wind, and her tender heart ached because she had no bed for it, no place for it to convalesce. As it tugged on her mane, her tail, and feathers, she could feel that something was wrong.

And then, quite without warning, even with Rarity’s clothespin, she could smell that something was wrong. It started off with a whiff of rotten eggs, followed by the fetid aroma of hot compost, or maybe garbage—she had no way of knowing for certain. There was a burnt smell, but other reeks as well, and just as the smelly symphony reached a crescendo, foul industrial vapours violated her nostrils. Something like alcohol solvents, cleanser perhaps, or hospital disinfectant, along with something a lot like naptha.

It was a dreadfully sneezy smell, and all around her, Fluttershy heard sharp inhales of breath as the skunks in her care breathed in the noxious fumes. Little poofy tails rose in anticipation of what was to come, and Fluttershy, surrounded on all sides by her patients, knew that there was no reason to fight the inevitable. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she then closed her eyes, and stood resolute, waiting for the worst to happen.

“Achoo!”

The first sneeze was the worst sneeze, because like yawns, it spread like wildfire. A foul miasma manifested, and with each sneeze, it grew in potency. Eyes closed, teeth gritted together, Fluttershy stood strong amidst the chaos. As the awful stench permeated her nostrils, she wondered what Discord was doing, and regretted that he was not here to witness this. It would make him happy, and Discord deserved to be happy. He would find this fascinating.

Even as her destruction coalesced around her, Fluttershy thought the sounds of the sneezes were the most adorable thing ever, but she dared not open her eyes to watch. She felt a presence on the wind, something warm, fetid, and foul. A bad bit of storm magic, perhaps, come to make mischief. A wind gremlin. As bad as everything was, it somehow grew worse, but being the quiet pegasus pony that she was, she clung fast to her calm.

She reminded herself that, this too, like gas, shall pass.

In a meadow just outside of the White Tail Woods…

Princess Celestia’s warm, generous sun felt amazing against her tummy and Pinkie Pie stared up at the clouds overhead with her sister, Maud, just beside her. This was a lazy day, and Pinkie was more than content to just lay in the grass and watch clouds go by. Maud was warm against her, which left Pinkie feeling safe and a bit drowsy.

“This… is wonderful,” Maud deadpanned.

“It is, really. This is like the perfect spring day.”

“No foals,” Maud continued in stolid tones. “No husband. No adorable manticore ransacking the house. No having to chase after Sly. Notes? Forget about them. Proofreading my geology lecture? Nope. This… this is wonderful.”

“Is it rough being married, sister of mine?” Pinkie asked.

There was no immediate response, just a long near-silence. Birds were chirping, singing, revelling in the glorious spring. The meadow bells were ringing as the soft breeze made them sway. Pinkie could never quite figure out how a plant could ring, but with magic, anything could happen.

“A part of me is still a solitary creature,” said Maud, her words slow and measured. “I would never want to give up what I have, but sometimes—”

“Maud, do you want me around?” Pinkie Pie felt bad about her sudden outburst, but she had to know if her sister needed some alone time. It sure sounded like it.

“No, this is fine.” Maud’s deadpan was as reassuring as always. “I miss Limestone and Marble.”

“I’m starting to hate Limestone—”

“Pinkie Pie, don’t say that,” Maud said in a big-sisterly sort of way that somehow was discernible through her deadpan words.

“She’s always working, Maud. Always. Always, always, always. She never has time for me anymore. It hurts.”

“Sorry, Pinkie.”

Rolling over onto her side, Pinkie threw one foreleg over her sister’s barrel and rested her head against Maud’s left foreleg. Grass stains were of no concern and she wiggled around a bit before she found a comfortable position. Closing her eyes, Pinkie snuggled up against her sister and then went still.

“Now I feel guilty.”

“Why do you feel guilty, Maud?”

“I have trouble making time for you,” she replied, her voice low.

“We do family stuff,” Pinkie said, hoping to make her sister feel better.

“But we don’t get sister time like we used to.” Maud sighed, a heavy, breathy sound, almost like a geological epoch passing by all at once.

“The family time satisfies.” Pinkie sucked in a deep breath and remembered back to when she and her sisters were foals. Those were happy times—happy times that had been cut short because she had left home. Though her eyes were closed, she squeezed them shut a little tighter, because she felt guilty.

She had left them.

“When did everything get so complicated?” Pinkie asked her sister, though she did not expect a satisfactory answer.

“We can’t stay little and uncomplicated forever,” Maud replied.

Scowling, she rubbed her cheek against the course sleeve of her sister’s smock. Lately, there had been far too many reminders that she had grown up, and that life was a lot less fun. In truth, sometimes the parties felt a little stale, and Pinkie knew that she was having to resort to crazy, over-the-top stuff more and more often just to keep them interesting.

She didn’t want things to change, and yet, change they did.

More and more, she wanted meaning in her life, but there was none to be found. She had no idea where to even begin looking. Everypony else had grown up and had embraced adulthood, while she struggled to hold on to some sense of eternal foalhood. The love of her life didn’t feel very loving and she couldn’t even recall when they had spoken last.

It might have been a year or more.

All of Pinkie’s complicated thoughts collapsed into an untidy mental pile as her eyes opened. Something… she felt a twitcha-twitcha as her Pinkie Sense made her body convulse. This was new, something unknown, and she had no idea what her body was telling her. Butterflies in her tummy, kickity-kicks in her buckers, a twitcha-twitcha in her dock… and fear.

Overwhelming fear.

“Maud…”

“Yes, Pinkie?”

“We’re in trouble, Maud!”

“What is it, Pinkie?”

Lifting her head, she could feel the sensation overtaking her. She couldn’t recall a time when her Pinkie Sense had behaved like this—ever. She could recall with total, perfect clarity when Nightmare Moon had returned. When Discord broke free. She had vivid memories of Tirek’s rampage—but she couldn’t remember ever feeling quite like this.

Maud sat up, and then stood up. Her smock was mussed, covered in grass and pink hairs. Pinkie looked up at her sister, and saw Maud’s jaw clench. Whatever this was, Maud felt it too. Pinkie had trouble standing up, but was pulled up to her hooves by her best sister friend. Her tail had a mind of its own and it was shaking so hard that things were falling out of it, things like her favourite measuring cup, some party favours, and her most favouritest, most-bestest vibrator, the Carrot-Quiverer Four-Thousand.

How embarrassing!

“Say, I purchased one of those for Octavia just this Hearth’s Warming—”

“Maud, no… we can’t talk about this. Not now, not ever!”

“Hang on, Pinkie. Something is coming.”

“Could you not say ‘coming’ just after seeing my carrot?”

“Never change, dearest sister, never change.” Bracing her legs, Maud stood resolute against whatever was coming.

Pinkie Pie wrapped her forelegs around her sister’s neck and held on for dear life, not knowing what would happen next. The roar of wind could be heard—and something tickled Pinkie’s nose. Even though she had only caught the merest whiff, she wanted to stuff her face down her neckhole somehow for safe keeping, because something smelled bad. Worse than changing Pound and Pumpkin’s diapers. Or Sly’s diapers, when he had tummy troubles.

Something awful blew though the meadow, wilting the flowers and causing the grass to go limp. Pinkie’s eyes watered, and as much as she didn’t want to, she kept sniffing. She just couldn’t help herself. The stink was indescribable, quite unlike anything she had ever smelt. She breathed it in, as if she was determined to destroy herself, and her frenzied mind tried to give names to the felonious, feculent funks assaulting her pie-sniffing holes.

This was worse than Rainbow Dash all covered in garbage, and grew stronger with each passing second. It was a hot, moist reek that defied all attempts at description, and its sheer, suffocating nature caused all of the curls in her mane to go elsewhere, some distant land that was free of stink. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her eyes flowed, and her salivary glands flooded the weird fleshy places just beneath her tongue.

As the indeterminable stench intensified, Pinkie Pie felt a lot less pinker.

“Make it stop!” she cried while she desperately clung to her sister’s neck.

But the stench had no limits, and it did not stop. Something about it vaguely reminded Pinkie Pie of Sweetie Belle’s cooking, but that was just about the only thing she could make out. It was as if Sweetie had made skunk soufflé—soufflé au moufette. Pinkie Pie realised that it fell upon her withers to have that long, much-needed talk with Sweetie Belle about her cooking.

Tears were streaming down Maud’s face and Pinkie felt her sister’s knees wobble. How bad did something have to smell to affect her sister in such a way? Maud was sniffling now, and gritting her teeth together. Pinkie held on, determined to ride out the stink storm, but she wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take.

And then, as suddenly as it had began, it was over. Either that, or her pie sniffer had lost all sense of smell. She sniffed, and there was nothing. All around her was wilted flowers, limp grass, and stunned butterflies who lay on the ground, helpless. Pinkie blinked and peered around while a flood of tears continued to run down her cheeks.

“Is it over?” she asked.

“It will never be over,” her wobbly-kneed sister replied.

“Maud… we have to go tell Twilight that there’s an evil stink loose in Ponyville.”

Author's Note

By the pricking of my nose, something stinky this way blows.

Progress, at a price

With a pair of tweezers, Vinyl Scratch lifted up a tiny crystal and held it just in front of her apprentice’s nose. Naturally, Sumac fixated on it with no small amount of nerdy glee, and she could see the reflection of rainbow hues from the crystal in his green glass lenses. She had his rapt attention. He was her eager student. She was trusted with his education, his refinement, and his development as a pony. It was her sworn duty to turn the world into a classroom and instill into her apprentice a love of learning.

“What is this, Sumac?”

“Uh, it’s cubical in nature, so I am going to say bismuth.”

“Very good.” She put down the rainbow-hued bismuth and then, with her tweezers, she picked up another crystal, this one the size of a grain of rice. “And this?”

“Synth-crystal. That’s easy. We grow those.”

She nodded and then, her lips pressed tight together. The tiny sliver of crystal had a faint reflexive glow about it due to the proximity of her magic, which gripped the long-handled prong tweezers. Her face relaxed a bit as she held the crystal right up to Sumac’s nose, and she rested her left front foreleg against the rough wood of her workbench.

“This… this right here, this is the most important thing in the world, Sumac.”

“That?”

“Don’t get smart.” Like a magic trick, a wide grin appeared from out of nowhere. “You and your generation will see unparalleled technological advancement and growth, Sumac, and it is all because of crystalline tech. This crystal”—she took a moment to shake it before his nose—“and what it represents, this is the most important thing going forward.”

“There’s a lesson here—”

“Yes there is, Sumac.” Vinyl put the tiny crystal back into a container where dozens of others just like it were kept. “A bit of context, my dear apprentice. You know those projection games that we spend hours playing, and everypony keeps telling us that we’ll rot our brains?”

“Yeah.” The colt nodded, and there was no hint of sloshy brain-rot. “Can we make our own cabinet?”

As was often the case, Vinyl was taken by surprise. Sumac was so eager to just tackle the impossible. He barely understood the impossible and with his go-to attitude, the impossible became rather probable. Without realising what she was committing herself to, she offered up an absent-minded nod.

“We’ll make a project of it some time.” Then, she leaned forward, and did her best to be serious. “You don’t realise what those projection games represent, Sumac. Or how just a generation ago, those would be impossible. We’ve had a crystal revolution, Sumac.”

“We read about this in school. Just a little bit.”

“Good.” Reaching out with her right front hoof, she brushed Sumac’s mane away from his face so that nothing would come between them and cause distraction. “Crystals were required for thaumaturgical augmentation. Most natural crystals were unsuitable for this task. Flaws, imperfections, bad resonance. When good crystals were found, they were so expensive and so rare that the common tinkerer could never afford them, and this bottlenecked technological advancement.”

She watched as Sumac nodded.

“Since these crystals were so rare, only the most important, most meaningful, most beneficial augmentations were added, and artifacts were created. These benefited only the very wealthy, the powerful, those privileged few that had the ways and means to have access.” Pausing for a moment, Vinyl thought herself to be the ideal teacher, as her voice never became tired.

“Do you know what changed, Sumac?”

“The introduction of synthetic mineral production?”

“Correct.” Reaching out, she booped her apprentice on the snoot, and heard him giggle. “I consider that one of the single most important technological advancements of the modern era. Suddenly, anypony could grow crystals… good ones too. We tweaked and tinkered with magical resonance, thaumaturgical properties, and in the span of one generation or so, we perfected the process to what it is today. Because of this, technology exploded.”

“Kaboom.”

“That’s right, Sumac. Kaboom.” Needing something to do, she picked up a screwdriver and began twirling it around with absent-minded abandon. “Which brings us to projection games. Those cabinets are filled with hundreds, sometimes thousands of crystals. Each one of them perfect. Flawless. A king’s ransom made cheap by mass production and modern manufacturing. Every one of those crystals represents a spell, a function, a process. Some of them project an image of illusion on the frosted glass, while others determine input so we can interact with the projected image. All of them are sequenced, synchronised, and organised by even more crystals, which make these games playable. Sumac, there is unbelievable complexity at work there, impossible complexity, and for you and your generation, this is commonplace. You stuff coins into these projection game cabinets and have hours of fun.”

“I suppose I never gave it much thought.” Reaching up with one slight hoof, the colt began to rub his chin.

“Ponies like Maud have their own part in all of this,” Vinyl said, continuing her lesson. “Maud has quietly changed the world with her theories on mineral structure. Because of ponies like her, we’re going to have even better synthetic crystals. Well, they’re already happening, but we’re only at the beginning. Microcrystalline latticework, microcrystalline structures, we’re undergoing a revolution of miniaturisation that is so mind-bogglingly complex that I can’t even imagine where it takes us. We stand on the precipice of something great… and it is you and your generation that will take us there.”

Vinyl watched as her apprentice shrank away and went still.

“With this crystalline revolution, the gates of invention were thrown open to the common pony. No longer was magical invention the hobby of the extremely wealthy. New ideas happen every day. Ponies like you and me, we’re making cameras like that one”—she pointed her screwdriver at the partially finished camera sitting on the workbench— “and we’re doing our part to progress our great society. We have a sworn duty, Sumac. We’re obligated to give the world the best we’ve got. The only thing holding us back now are the limits of imagination.”

The colt nodded.

“Our imaginations have no limits, Sumac. You ready to get back to work?”

Again, Sumac nodded, but this time with far more enthusiasm.

“Great. Now let’s do science!”

White Tail Woods, the abandoned alchemist’s shack…

A harpy and a changeling drone were typically the cause for quite some alarm, but this particular harpy and her changeling companion were celebrated Equestrian heroes. She was perched on a bare, exposed rafter and he was busy making repairs to the dilapidated shack that would be their home for a while. The harpy was not at all disgusted by her companion’s method of work, which is to say that he continuously puked out gobbets of sticky glue to hold the stacked stones together.

This harpy was immaculately clean—a stunning opposite to the rest of her species—and she sat on the exposed, roofless rafter grooming herself. Occasionally, she twisted her goatlike head around to check for danger, but she was, for the most part, quite relaxed. Danger was but a minor concern, because her companion tended to cause danger to run away.

Stinkbug might very well be the stinkiest, smelliest creature in all of Equestria.

Celaeno rather liked how he smelled. He was mouth-wateringly delightful. But Celaeno was a harpy, and she knew that she and her fellow harpies were quite enamoured with stink. Which posed quite a weakness for Stinkbug. But against almost everything else, Stinkbug was an unstoppable force of nostril-raping smelliness. That was his nature, his magic, the very thing that had made Queen Chrysalis cut him off from the hive mind and exile him. She had sent him out hoping that his stink might destroy the world.

Once, he had been deployed to stop an army, and the war ended before it started.

Celaeno was proud of her companion, her boon friend, the love of her life. He wasn’t the violent sort and she knew that he treasured a quiet, peaceful existence. They had been through so much together, both hardships and good times. Their romance was storied, celebrated, and maybe just a teensy-weensy bit tragic, as both of them were thoroughly sterile creatures. Nothing would ever come of their odd, inexplicable love, except perhaps inspiration for others.

“We have something of a house now,” she said rather casually while her companion gagged up a glob of glue and used his tongue to slather up a stone. A sweet, terrifying smile parted her face, revealing pointed flesh-rending teeth. Loving thoughts filled her mind, and this was good, because Stinkbug needed loving thoughts to sustain him while he was working.

Without loving thoughts, Stinky got himself a bad case of the stupids.

“Ponyville is under our protection,” she continued. “No sneaky spies will make it through these woods. Too bad this posting is temporary.”

The stone wall rapidly took form as her companion stacked one gluey stone atop another gluey stone. When the glue hardened, it would be almost unbreakable, and this humble shack would no doubt stand for centuries. Having a home—any home—satisfied some deep itch within Celaeno, and it was her secret desire to settle down somewhere so she could build a nest, even if she couldn’t fill it.

“Stinky… do you think we could adopt?” She dared to ask the question that she knew would give her companion pause, and sure enough, she no longer heard anything down below her. “I think we would make great parents. You’d make a great dad, Stinky. Just think about it… you’re not bothered by gross things, like diapers, or throw up.”

There was nothing but silence from Stinkbug.

“I mean, we’re trusted right? You and I, we’re scouts for the Princesses. We’re trusted with the safety and security of all those souls in Ponyville, or whatever place we’re posted. Do you think they’d trust us with adoption? I keep wanting to ask, but I’m afraid of the answer. Stinky, I want to be like them. To have all of the same things that they have. As a harpy, I dared to dream of other things. Bigger things. Better things. Things that no harpy would ever dream of. I have most of what I wanted… but I still dream of lullabies and little wooden cradles and soft, warm blankets wrapped around tiny, impossibly precious little bundles of joy.”

Something intruded upon the edges of her perception, and it left her feathers ruffled. She paused, straining to hear, knowing that whatever it was would soon be running. Or if not running, screaming. Perhaps it was a bear. Or a wolf. Wolves roamed these woods, but she wasn’t the least bit afraid of them. She was armed with highly explosive eggs and had a keen sense of aim. It wasn’t something she felt good about, but she was a living, breathing weapon, and already, she was filled with a curious, overwhelming need to defend her new home.

Beneath her, she heard a familiar sizzling, and knew that her companion was drooling acid. From the sounds of it, it wasn’t even the dangerous acid, but the weak stuff that he used to clean his carapace and keep himself tidy. More sizzling could be heard and Celaeno shuffled back and forth on her perch. She heard no birdsong, no sound of animals. Sure, Stinkbug kept the birds away, but beyond the stink-radius, birds would sing, because that was what birds did.

The woods were remarkably quiet at the moment, and quiet meant danger.

There was violence in the silence.

Whatever was coming was about to get shelled. She had her explosive eggs, and Stinkbug had his alchemical artillery. Years of conflict and military service had left them hardened veterans, powerful peacekeepers who preferred peace—but were ready for war. Equestria was something worth fighting for, and fight they would.

Something unseen and unclean came close. Celaeno sensed it—she smelled it—and she didn’t like it. Normally, she was immune to bad smells, but this… this was no regular stink. Just the merest whiff of it left her feeling unclean. Sullied. Soiled. As the first hints of something foul assailed her nostrils, she felt as though she needed a bath.

Then, like a storm, it descended upon her, and she could feel some malevolent magic swirling all around her. Her eyes watered, her nose snotted over, and she was utterly powerless to do anything but think most unsettling thoughts. Is this… was this what others experienced when smelling Stinkbug? Below her, she could hear chitinous chittering and she knew that Stinkbug too, was suffering from the stench.

Celaeno, who had never really smelled anything bad before, was completely unprepared to deal with this kind of malodorous miasma. This was the first, and this was the worst. Her sensitive nose could smell all manner of things, things that, by themselves, she might have enjoyed smelling. Hot garbage was delightful—there was food to be found in hot garbage. Something that was vaguely like skunks, but skunks had nothing on Stinkbug and overall, skunks were rather pleasant and had a soothing, calming aroma.

It was as if something had taken every horrible smelly thing and then had exaggerated the very worst aspects about it. Ridiculously so. Magically so. And whatever it was, this ruinous stench-spirit, it was here now, no doubt sampling Stinkbug’s gloriously wretched stink. Celaeno’s talons dug into the old, dry rotted wood, and she held on as the swirling stink around her transformed.

Her nose, the helpful organ that it was, informed her that yes, indeed, her worst fears had come to pass. She smelled Stinkbug’s signature aroma, but in a whole new way. It transformed, becoming something greater, something worse. Something unspeakably foul as the worst aspects of it were given strength.

Why, this was quite possibly the worst smell in all of existence now, and Celaeno was not immune to it. She wrapped her wings around her head, a vain attempt to protect herself, her senses, but it was useless. Below, she could hear her companion coughing and gagging, choked by his own stench. This was a stench symphony, with every significant note and highlight from Stinkbug’s miasma given orchestral attention.

Celaeno struggled to retain her consciousness. Surely, this had to be the work of Grogar. Who else would have such malodorous, malevolent machinations? No creature in existence could be this evil, this foul. Grogar had come for them, just as he had promised, and had found a way to turn Stinkbug’s own stink against him. All of Ponyville was surely in danger and Celaeno knew that she and Stinkbug had to save them.

Somehow.

But first, they had to survive the stench storm that swirled all around them, still drinking in Stinkbug’s essence.

Author's Note

No, not that Celaeno. You see, long before the movie, I had a harpy character named Celaeno. I just wanted to clear up any confusion before stupid stuff got said.

Meeting of the minds

Twilight’s castle had its own peculiar funk, but it was nothing compared to whatever free-roaming stink was prowling outside. Pinkie carried her stoic sister, because Maud could barely stand. Whatever had attacked them in the meadow had cracked Maud’s stony, stolid exteriour, and left the poor mare a mumbling, stumbling mess.

“The smell,” Maud murmured as Pinkie trotted down the hallway.

“Twilight!” Pinkie’s hoarse shout echoed up and down the hall. When several students stopped to stare, she ignored them. “Twilight!”

At the moment, her Pinkie Sense had completely ceased to function, so she had no idea where Twilight might be, as her Find-Mostest-Bestest-Friend sense wasn’t working. Maud’s forelegs—iron bands—wrapped around Pinkie’s neck, but the pink ponk wasn’t the slightest bit bothered by this. She took it as a sign that her beloved sister was finally recovering and getting some of her legendary strength back. A weak Maud wasn’t much of a Maud at all.

“Is she okay?” one of the students asked.

“I’ve smelled things...” Maud made her reply while shaking her head from side to side. “Smelled things you little ponies wouldn’t believe.”

“My sister isn’t herself right now.” Pinkie Pie glanced around, hoping to see purple. She saw plenty of purple, but much to her dismay, none of the purple was a purple pony princess pal. “Twilight!”

Moondancer blinked into existence right next to Pinkie Pie, and the pink ponk let out a shrill scream. But halfway through her scream, she pulled herself together and said, “There’s some kind of invisible stink monster attacking Ponyville!”

To which Moondancer replied, “Maud, is this true?”

“Empirical evidence suggests that something smelly lurks unseen.”

“Right.” Moondancer adjusted her perpetually crooked glasses and her monobrow beetled. “Right. Okay. There is an invisible stink monster of some kind in Ponyville. Well”—she took a deep breath and her tail flicked at her hind legs—“at least that’s original. Let’s go tell Twilight. She’s busy giving a lecture on responsible friendship applications.”

Twilight Sparkle wasn’t quite sure what to think or say after seeing Maud so shaken. Thankfully, Maud was still Maud. Pinkie Pie had immediately began to babble, but after a sharp word of warning, the pink ponk was silenced and Maud offered a brief explanation as to what had happened. Talking and dealing in facts seemed to help Maud recover, but what few details there were to glean over were sketchy at best.

Moondancer, whose sweater was already in a bunch, paced the length of the room.

“Twilight, the smells… they were not normal smells.”

Distracted from her own thoughts, Twilight focused on Maud, who seemed to be struggling to speak. The stony, stoic mare was at a loss for words as she sat rubbing her two front hooves together. Twilight waited, torn between the need for action and the necessity to acquire more data about the situation.

“It’s as if the smells were all… made worse somehow. Like, regular normal smells, but somehow made smellier. Twilight…” Maud’s eyes closed for a moment and the normally-placid mare drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “When it swept over me, it was as if… it was as if—”

“Just say it, Maud. I promise I’ll believe you.” Patient as always, Twilight waited.

“Looking back on it, and trying to analyse what happened, it was as if it kept trying different combinations of the smells it had, until it found something that I found offensive. And when it did, that smell was… it was… it was made worse somehow. Unbearable. It was as if it found the one smell that I was weak to and then made it so impossibly smelly that I couldn’t bear it.”

Though she didn’t have all of the facts yet, Twilight suspected that they were dealing with something that had some rudimentary, malicious intelligence, but she couldn’t think of a single monster that would behave in such a way. This was unknown, and therefore, great care had to be taken. She wanted to pace, but Moondancer was already pacing.

Hearing Spike, she turned about and saw that he was trying to calm Pinkie.

Good Spike. If anypony could calm down Pinkie, he could.

Twilight was just about to further question Maud when there was a soft rapping upon the window. Just outside of the window was a rather distressed, wet yellow pegasus, and Twilight’s sense of concern grew tenfold. Fluttershy did not look well, not at all, she looked as though she had flown through a squall. Reaching out with her magic, Twilight pulled open the window and immediately wished that she hadn’t.

“Oh… skunk.” Moondancer sniffed as though she was some fine connoisseur. “I think we’ve found our stink monster. Do come in, Fluttershy.”

“That’s not the stink monster,” Maud deadpanned.

“Flutters, are you okay?” Twilight asked while she helped her friend inside.

“No,” the sunny, buttery yellow pegasus replied. “I am not okay. Some kind of bad wind upset my patients. There’s a wind gremlin of some kind on the loose, Twilight. It was… it was very rude… and I am… I am… peeved by its behaviour!”

“Woah, there Fluttershy.” Twilight let go a flick of magic, and a shield bubble appeared around the peeved pegasus. It didn’t hold back all of the stench, for some unknown reason, but it helped. “A wind gremlin?”

“Some kind of wind spirit, I’m sure of it.”

Now, things were making a little more sense.

“Twilight, there is chaos everywhere. I saw panicked ponies as I flew over.”

Right away, Twilight began to rub her chin and she wondered if one of Discord’s pranks had gone too far. Discord was fond of causing chaos, but he seldom engaged in malicious chaos these days. Far too much of Fluttershy’s kindness had rubbed off on him, and the draconequus no longer had it in him to be mean.

Twilight’s deductions took her no place useful.

She went to the window, stuck her head out, and had a look around. Sure enough, there was panic in the streets, with ponies stampeding about. A crowd was fleeing away from Sugar Cube Corner. Columns of suds were shooting out of the windows of Carousel Boutique. The faint sounds of shouting could be heard—and there was something on the wind that no erudite words could possibly describe.

“Ew!” Twilight jerked her head back inside and stuck her tongue out involuntarily.

“I’m just the mare for the job,” Moondancer said in a matter-of-fact way. “Having a skunk as a pet has left me largely immune to smelly stuff. I think I’ll go investigate.”

“Moondancer, no!” But it was too late, and Twilight’s word of warning had no deaf ears to fall upon. Moondancer had vanished. Frustrated, she stomped her hoof, but this did nothing to make her feel better. “Fluttershy… I need you to calm down and stop being peeved so I can ask you a few questions. We need to get to the bottom of what is going on.”

“Twilight”—Maud’s deadpan cut through the tension—“you must never say bottom when discussing this stink. It’s just not appropriate, somehow. You know not that which you conjure.”

Ponyville was a weird, but profitable place. Little Dipper liked Ponyville, and found that it was quite easy to start a business here, compared to Canterlot. After leaving Canterlot, he established himself in Ponyville, opening a laundry, and then, sensing opportunity, opened the Late to the Potty diaper service. Unlike Canterlot, which had over a dozen diaper services, not a one was to be found in Ponyville. In no time at all, he established a door to door service, found customers eager for convenience, and he became a valued, trusted member of the community.

All in less than a year.

Of course, living in Ponyville, one had to deal with monster attacks, regular invasions, weird events, unexpected, unexplainable phenomenon, and whatever mischief the town sorcerer might get up to at any given moment. But, you would be hard pressed to find friendlier ponies, the community was solid, Princess Twilight was a fair, just ruler, and the sorcerer—a sort of community mascot—was not a bad sort.

But today, today was one of those days. Ponies were running around in a panic. Well, some of them anyway. Quite a few of them were frantically trying to scrub things, like Rarity, the proprietor of Carousel Boutique. As he pulled his buckboard wagon through the streets, Little Dipper watched the hustle and the hubbub all around him, and the quaint, provincial town offered no shortage of things to see.

Including some rather attractive ponies.

He rather liked the ones with sunny, warm colours, vivid yellows and oranges.

Moondancer popped into existence and only a few ponies were startled. She had been teleporting all over town, seeking out commotion or bedlam, and in doing so, noticed a curious magical wibble. It moved fast, possibly teleporting, and her magic senses told her that it was gaining strength, little by little.

“Why, hello there.”

She lifted her head, her ears pricked, and as she turned around, she saw Little Dipper. Loyalist, Royalist, member of the Urban Rescue League, qualified first aid giver, member of the Ponyville Chamber of Commerce, and the owner-operator of a door-to-door cloth diaper service. Overall, an excellent citizen, and one that could be counted on in times of crisis.

He was also pulling a wagon full of soiled diapers.

“Hi.” After the perfunctory greeting, she added, “Say, have you been assaulted by a rampaging stink?” She saw his face wrinkle as he turned all of his attention upon her.

“No, can’t say that I have.”

“Would you like to be?” asked Moondancer, as her brilliant mind concocted a plan.

“Well, I hadn’t thought about it, really.”

Casting a sidelong glance at the wagon, Moondancer sniffed once. If he hadn’t yet been assaulted by the rampaging stink, he would be. Moondancer’s gut instincts told her that the different stinks that Maud had experienced had to be synthesised somehow, and probably came from natural sources. A wagon full of soiled diapers was pretty stinky—it was the kind of smell that was sure to bother some poor pony—and so it was, predictably, a good target.

If the stink came here, she’d be ready. Trusting in her gut instincts, she began casting a variety of protective spells upon herself and on Little Dipper. Then, she began casting a myriad of sensory spells, detection spells, and autonomous data collection probes. In perhaps her most brazen, most daring action, she enhanced her sense of smell so that she could better understand whatever it was they were facing. She was a skunk fancier. A skunk whisperer. Skunks were her passion, her love. She was in charge of the Skunkworks, Twilight Sparkle’s top secret science division.

She had no fear of stink.

“You and I, we’re going to do science, Little Dipper.”

“I’ve never done science with a mare before,” he replied.

“Don’t worry, It’s not hard. Just stay still and be my test subject. I’m not picky, I do science with everypony. Even foals. Foals are great to do science with because they’re so eager. Well, some of them. Most foals are kinda dumb, but they still make great test subjects.”

“Well, okay. I suppose I can do that.”

“Follow me,” she commanded.

“You just said to stay still,” he said in return.

Moondancer facehoofed and almost knocked her glasses off.

“Sorry. It’s my first time sciencing with a mare. I’m really nervous. Should I let go of my load?”

With a deadpan expression, Moondancer lifted her head and looked at Little Dipper.

“My wagon—”

“Is needed. Hold your load, for the sake of science. Your load is the entire reason why I need you. Your load is of particular interest to me, and is quite necessary for my scientific objective. Now follow me, we have a stink to find.”

Moondancer followed her nose. That is to say, she used her advanced sense of smell and her magic sense to home in on the stink, which was most certainly leaping from place to place. But the leaps seemed to be getting smaller, which she believed confirmed her theory that the stink was out collecting other stinks. She wondered if, perhaps, it was running out of targets, or if it had just grown more focused on what was available.

She had a wagon full of stink that she hoped would lure in whatever this was. It wasn’t the smelliest thing in Ponyville, but the longer it sat in the sun, the riper it became. Right now, it was pretty darn ripe. A herd of ponies went stampeding past, but—so focused was she on her objective—she ignored them.

“This science is kinda boring,” Little Dipper remarked.

“Science usually is rather boring,” she replied in an absent-minded manner. “But then, there are times when the unexpected happens, and it becomes quite exciting. Science is really boring if you do it alone. Thankfully, I have my eyebrow to keep me company, and I’m never alone.”

“I’ve never done science all alone. In fact, the last time I did any kind of science was in school. Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. The whole class was watching, and I was really, really nervous. I wanted to impress my teacher. There was a lot of performance anxiety.”

“Did you make the funny ‘I’m trying to make science’ face?”

“Yeah.” The unicorn pulling the wagon nodded and looked away. “My tongue sticks out when I’m sciencing real hard.”

“So does Princess Luna’s. Don’t feel bad. Be science positive and don’t be ashamed of your mental efforts. Enjoy the moment and let it happen.” Moondancer offered up a perfunctory smile, but Little Dipper had his head turned.

A hot, rancid, greasy wind blew over her face, leaving her pelt feeling soiled and her ears itchy. It was very much like the heat rising off of a compost heap, a warm, radiant heat that felt far too warm for what it was. She felt something—magic, weird magic that was somehow familiar. But she had no time to contemplate this unexpected familiarity, because something smelled.

No, saying it smelled was grossly inaccurate.

With each passing second, it grew worse, and the scent shifted, changing. Moondancer gagged and realised what a terrible mistake it was to enhance her sense of smell. If her nose was a lock, what she smelled right now was a key, and not just any key, but a key that fit the lock. The foul odour intensified, grew unbearable, and approached what she knew to be transcendence. As bad as it was, as terrible as it was, it was also exciting, because this was new. This was science.

“Yes, breathe deep, and experience all I have to offer,” a genderless, formless, booming voice said.

“What are you?” Moondancer asked as she neared an olfactory event horizon.

“I do not know. I was only just born and recently found my voice. I incorporated strange, unknown magic into my existing form, and with it, I evolved. Changed. Adapted. Became something greater.”

“What is your purpose?” she somehow managed to ask as Little Dipper passed out.

“To collect and catalogue olfactory input so that I might release its potential. Through me, weak smells will be made strong. I am to find the greatness in every foul-smelling thing, and share it with others. Others must be made to know every glorious stench that the world has to offer. My directive cannot be resisted.”

“What you are doing is destructive and harmful—”

“Irrelevant,” the unseen, intangible miasma replied. “My directive is all that matters. I sense your resistance, but it is futile. I am grateful that you have taught me how to communicate. Touching your mind through your olfactory senses has been a gratifying experience. Future interfacings with your kind will be far more efficient. I have concocted a special stench just for you, something entirely new and unique, something I collected from a previous interface.”

“I am glad,” Moondancer gasped, fighting for air, “to have been your teacher.” Knees wobbling, she struggled to remain upright. Whatever it was she was smelling, it was beyond all mortal description, and perhaps beyond immortal ken. “You are a very naughty student… go stand in the corner… don’t make me ask you again.”

Colour drained from her vision, turning the world a drab, uninspired grey. With nothing but her nose, Moondancer touched the edge of forever, and wide-eyed, peered into the olfactory event horizon beyond. The scent had colour somehow, colour not seen with the eyes, but somehow sensed, registered within the nose. An eldritch rainbow slithered up her nasal passages, worming its way towards her brain.

It was every bit as horrible as it was glorious.

Author's Note

Be science positive, kids!

Fearful happenings

Pacing to and fro, Twilight Sparkle considered every word that Celaeno had said. The poor harpy was frantic, frightened, and had trouble speaking in whole sentences. Of course, she was worried about her best friend, and Twilight was sympathetic, she understood. As for Stinkbug himself, well, Twilight didn’t know enough about changelings to know if he was okay or not. Poor Stinkbug’s stink had been stolen from him, and Twilight didn’t know if it would ever come back or not. It might be temporary, or it could be permanent.

Stinkbug’s stink was highly magical, alchemical in nature. He was a living, breathing alchemy lab, with complex organs dedicated to the creation of chemical and alchemical compounds. He could make all manner of acids, adhesives, healing agents, mucus that hardened into armor, and of course, his signature speciality, stink. Nothing stunk like Stinkbug.

Except now, Stinkbug had no stink to speak of.

Celaeno had quieted and the goat-headed predatory bird was now composing herself while she perched on the arm of a sofa. Even in her agitated state, she was careful, cautious, and considerate with her claws. Twilight counted both Celaeno and Stinkbug as friends, close friends even, and to see them in such a state was quite upsetting.

Upon having a moment of realisation, Twilight turned to face the poor, distraught harpy. Celaeno was entirely unbothered by bad smells, but she too had been subjected to a terrific stink. The one creature that was entirely unphased by Stinkbug’s epic stench had been made to smell… something. Not even Moondancer was immune to Stinkbug’s signature aroma, but like Maud Pie, she tolerated it through sheer stoic stubbornness.

Twilight began to worry about her longtime friend, Moondancer.

Vinyl Scratch’s workshop…

“Mistakes, Sumac. Life is all about making mistakes.” Vinyl glanced at the camera for a moment, but then returned her attention to her apprentice. “We made a mistake with our first attempt, but with our second attempt, we had all kinds of new ideas that we implemented. Progress happens because of mistakes.”

Chewing on a curried paneer pasty, Sumac nodded.

On the workbench, there were a half a dozen photographs, each of which smelled like something different. Curried paneer pasties, flowers, sawdust, tomato and pumpkin soup, the random aromas of everyday life. Even though everything worked, Vinyl knew that they could do better if they applied themselves. But first, a lesson had to be taught. Above all else, she took this seriously.

“We have to own our mistakes, Sumac.”

“I try,” he said around a mouthful of curried paneer and crusty pasty crust. “What about my father’s mistakes?”

“Sumac—”

The colt plowed on, not allowing Vinyl to get a word in edgewise.

“Being good is hard, Vinyl. Every day, I have to think about everything I do. Every word I say. Because I can’t just say whatever I feel like. And sometimes, I’m tempted… which is normal I guess, every foal is tempted to do bad stuff. But I can’t be like other foals ‘cause of who and what I am. Everypony is watching me. If I screw up, it’s not because I’m a bad foal, it’s ‘cause I’m turning out like my father. I’m so scared to make mistakes, Vinyl. The pressure, it’s getting to me. I can never let my guard down or relax and I stay tense all the time.”

“Sumac, we talked about this—”

“You talked about this… I just sat there and listened. It’s not sorted out.”

Vinyl could hear the faint whine building in Sumac’s voice, like a teapot preparing to boil, and she knew that it was time to pull him from the burner. He was, as always, moody. His mood could go from cheerful and fine to broody and depressed in the span of an eyeblink. She had fixed the camera and got it working, but now her apprentice needed sorting out somehow. He was quite a bit more complex, but no less fixable. Sooner or later, through trial and error, she was confident that she could sort him out.

“That’s fair,” she said to him, her first effort at making things better.

No sign of progress could be seen.

He took another bite of his curried paneer pasty and then sat there, chewing thoughtfully. With each motion of his jaw, his ears bobbed, and Vinyl couldn’t help it, she found this irresistibly adorable, but she dared not point this out, as Sumac, like other colts, absolutely did not want to know how adorable and cute they were. Under no circumstances did they wish to hear a mare gushing about how positively precious they were. She had made this mistake in the past, and had since learned from it.

It didn’t stop her from silently enjoying it however.

“I wish,” he began, still chewing, “that I was free to make mistakes on my own, without everypony trying to second-guess why I’m making them or if I have some unseen motive. I wish there was some way to let everypony know just how hard I work to be good.” Sumac shook his head. “As bad as it sounds, I wish everypony knew that I struggled. Being good is not easy for me, and I wish they knew. It’d be nice if ponies appreciated what I did. My dad is a tree. And that tree casts quite a shadow on me.”

Saying nothing, Vinyl picked up a still-warm curried paneer pasty, heated it until steam rose from the crust, and then sat there holding on to it while it cooled back down enough to take a bite. Sumac’s endless struggle to be good. Vinyl wished that somehow, she could get it through his head that his struggle to be good is what made him good, but try as she might, try as his mothers might, and everypony else that was in his life, Sumac resisted this truth and lived in constant anxiety.

Not even Pebble could reassure Sumac that he was good.

Princess Twilight Sparkle’s magical castle of friendship…

Moondancer did not look well. Her sweater was far more rumpled than usual, her eyebrow wasn’t nearly as expressive, her glasses were crooked, and something about Moondancer just seemed… off. She was sweaty, which was weird. Something about her eyes wasn’t quite right either, because she had a thousand-yard vacant stare.

She had appeared in the room quite suddenly and without warning, and hadn’t said a word. Twilight, silent, waited, trying to give her friend time to recover herself. Whatever had happened was clearly traumatic and the last thing that somepony needed after experiencing trauma was an endless series of questions—though Twilight was growing impatient for answers.

Pinkie Pie was still comforting Stinkbug, Maud was looking after Celaeno, and Spike stood nearby, anxiously flexing his claws while staring at Moondancer. The quiet was becoming unbearable, far too prolonged, and though Moondancer was licking her lips, nothing had been said.

Just as Twilight was about to banish the silence, Moondancer spoke.

“Twilight… I have smelled… forever.”

Hearing this, Twilight felt her blood run cold and there was an unpleasant prickle in her wings. She shivered; it wasn’t like Moondancer to make jokes or to make light of the situation. If Moondancer made such a claim, then something beyond Moondancer’s understanding had actually happened. This was terrifying.

“Twilight… I have smelled colours beyond time and space. The world… no, the galaxy is not ready for what I have witnessed. I have smelled how the world will end.”

“Moondancer, that’s—”

“It’s smart, Twilight. It spoke to me, and was rather erudite. I unwittingly became its teacher, Twilight.”

“The stink is smart?” asked Pinkie.

Moondancer suddenly became herself again. Fierce light shone within her eyes, her sweater rumpled in just the right way, and her eyebrow beetled in a determined, focused position. “Pinkie, what we have here is what we refer to as a focused non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class Five Full Roaming Vapour. But not for long. It’s growing. Gaining strength.”

“It stole Stinkbug’s magic, I think,” said Pinkie to Moondancer.

“I think you are correct.” Moondancer’s head swiveled and her piercing stare came to rest upon Stinkbug. “The worst possible scenario. It was out cataloging olfactory input and found olfactory magic. It is using illusion, but in a way I do not yet understand. Since it isn’t physical, but rather, non- corporeal, it seems impossible to defend from. It’s not real, in the strictest sense of the word, so all of the common defense methods are nullified. It is entirely intangible. Imagination made real.”

“Moondancer, you need to tell me everything that happened,” Twilight said. “I need a full report.”

“Check my data,” replied Moondancer. “I need a cup of tea, if you don’t mind. This bad science has left quite a taste in my mouth.”

Moondancer could always be counted on to be methodical. Her autonomous data collection probes wrote all manner of relevant data and details into specially prepared journals, burning the words onto the pages. There was a lot to sort through, whole pages, but Twilight worried that there wasn’t enough time. The stink was out there, growing stronger, getting smarter, and it had just about broken a tough nut to crack.

How had it managed to bypass Moondancer’s defenses?

“We need to evacuate Ponyville,” Twilight said to those around her.

Maud was the one who responded. “Twilight?”

“I plan to try and reason with the monster, whatever that is. Should that fail, conflict is inevitable.” Twilight felt a growing lump in her throat. “Standard evac plan. Get everypony to the Castle of the Two Sisters and into the bunker there.”

“And what is going to stop that thing from going into the bunker?” asked Moondancer.

“I… don’t… I don’t know.” Frustrated, Twilight bit her lip. Now that Moondancer had said something, Twilight wasn’t sure if the bunker would actually keep the citizens of Ponyville safe. Would an evacuation even accomplish anything, other than panic? “Conflict and combat seem inevitable. Unavoidable. It would still be wise to evacuate. Perhaps we follow the open roaming plan just to get everypony out of the danger zone.”

Twilight’s gaze fell upon Maud and she wished that she had the same stony stoicism. Maud had to be worried. Tarnish was out there somewhere, along with their foals. Yet, Maud was here… doing whatever it was that Maud did, now that she had recovered her senses a bit. It was hard to say what it was exactly that Maud was doing, yet, Twilight knew that she was better off with Maud than without her. Maud was the reassuring rock.

“Spike…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re in charge of civil issues while I’m out. Moondancer, begin our martial preparations. If something happens to me, resort to the standard fallback plan. Sound the alarms and issue a free roaming evacuation warning. Tell ponies to seek whatever shelter is available outside the city. Shut down the train service. Assemble my Spartans. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find a stink and see if I can make friends with it.”

“Good luck, Twilight.” Pinkie Pie’s voice was fraught with worry, and gave Twilight pause.

Then, before anything else was said, Twilight vanished.

Author's Note

This is a story about the fear of consequences. Even if those consequences are fair and just.

That is all.

Communications breakdown

The sudden sound of the alarm klaxon gave Vinyl Scratch quite a fright. It made her think of things, unpleasant things, unwanted things. But she was a strong mare, made strong by those very things that she’d rather not remember. For a moment, she recalled all too well the sound of klaxons blaring in the streets, the sound of a high-rise crumbling, and then, most terrifying of all, darkness. All of this caused a sharp twinge of pain in her back and left her legs feeling weak.

She felt pain differently than others, and though she did fear it, she did not let that pain rule her as she once did. Ears tall and forward, she listened to the alarm sound of a general free-roaming evacuation, the very thing that the entire town had drills for, prepared for, and had practiced. This meant that ponies would be coming, because this house, her house, the place that she called home, was something of a fortress. It was, for all intents and purposes, one of the safest places in Ponyville. Her magic and Tarnish’s magic offered formidable defense.

The first arrivals would be here in a hurry, which meant that she and Sumac had very little time to prepare. Sumac was already in motion; though he hadn’t left his stool, he was closing the solid plate steel shutters of the workshop, including the heavy steel curtain that covered the overhead skylight. Vinyl did much the same, but reached out and began closing the shutters on the house, and she remembered to open the gate.

Hopefully, nopony would get cactused.

If magic had a scent, then Twilight Sparkle was a hound. She stood atop the roof of the grange hall, surveying the chaos all around her while trying to home in on the single bit of magic that didn’t belong. She knew and was familiar with all of the magic in Ponyville. Unicorns, pegasus ponies, and even earth ponies. With a bit of focus, she could sort them out, blindfolded if necessary.

The danger seemed oddly specific to the sort of pony encountering the stink. Maud and Moondancer, two exceptionally hardy mares, had it far, far worse than Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy. So the stink was reactive, adaptive to the nose of the observer. It had some kind of rudimentary mind-reading ability, a sort of direct connection to the brain through the olfactory system. Twilight suspected that it would go badly for her, as she liked to think of herself as being on similar hoofing to Moondancer and Maud. She was tough; she was the warrior princess after all. The brawler.

This was a weird situation to be in. It was dangerous, at least to some degree, but it wasn’t a fatal sort of danger. Twilight did wonder what might happen if a pony with a less resilient mind than Moondancer’s got a whiff of forever. Nopony had died, at least that she was aware of, but a lot of ponies were suffering. Yes, this truly was a weird sort of emergency, and now, after the fact, she had second thoughts about evacuating the town.

Yet, this wasn’t over, and she had no idea what the monster might do when threatened.

“Get inside.” Vinyl’s voice was magically amplified, but calm. “Stay away from the gardens and do not disturb the herb patches. Please, make yourself at home inside. Do not taunt the gate, as it is grumpy, and make no threatening gestures at the topiaries. They are here to protect you, but may get confused if they perceive you as a threat. Go inside. Refreshments will be served.”

Her apprentice was near the front door, urging ponies to get inside. He was holding up rather well, all things considered, but she knew that sooner or later, the crowd would get to him. Probably inside, when every room was overcrowded. For now, he was functional and fine, but she would have to pay extra attention to him once they had everypony inside.

Vinyl Scratch’s perfectly calm exteriour showed no trace of her inner panic. Alto was out there somewhere, with his father and his siblings. Pebble, Megara, Sly, Alto, and Tarnish had gone off to do who knows what. Questioning any of them was useless, as they were secretive about their trips. Daddy Time was something that was never discussed, no matter how stern the inquiry. While Vinyl had always found the secrecy rather amusing, especially with how it left Octavia unsettled, it wasn’t so amusing right now as this crisis unfolded. She was not one given to worry, or she tried to be, so experiencing it now of all times made it all the worse.

A mother’s worry was a dreadful thing.

Twilight Sparkle burst into existence, loaded down with spell protections, and she was distracted by her own thoughts. Was she the same pony who had teleported, or a replacement pony hastily assembled at the point of arrival? How many versions of herself had she callously killed? Was it killing? Was it immoral? But none of these thoughts mattered, and had to be cast aside in a hurry, because there was a sapient stink to deal with.

The pungent reek of soap tickled Twilight’s nose, along with all of the unpleasant things that went into soap. Ponies were fleeing the narrow, but rather long workshop where the soap was made, all of them screaming about the different things they smelled. Reminding herself what she was here for, she cast a final spell, a shield bubble that was air-tight. It allowed her to walk along the bottom of the ocean or to drift around in the vacuum of space. The scent of soap vanished, replaced by the scent of ozone, the smell of her own magic.

“You have to stop,” Twilight said in a firm, magically amplified voice. “What you are doing is hurting others. Cease whatever it is that you are doing and speak to me. I will not ask again.”

What she felt next was a curious sensation that existed on the edge of her perception. More of a twingle-tingle in the mind. A curious wibble that only existed in thought. Perhaps it was something that could only be felt by a pony’s sixth sense, magic. Twilight sampled it, cross referenced it, and much to her surprise, it was familiar. She had sensed this before, but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on what it was.

“Do you believe all of your protections will save you?”

Twilight considered the question, and foresaw a violent outcome.

“Already I have touched your mind. Physical barriers are of no meaning to me. No avail. I know your thoughts, your intentions, and I can sense your desire for conflict, even as your mouth prepares to speak falsehoods about peace. I have learned much about you and your kind. You are a treacherous species.”

“I’ve come seeking a peaceful solution, but I am prepared to deal with you should we fail to negotiate,” Twilight said to the unseen entity.

“I am prepared to deal with you as well,” it replied. “Funny. You fleshy, organic constructs have your olfactory sense directly connected to your memories. The merest whiff of something can cause your brain chemistry to do unexpected and interesting things. I have been trying to probe this connection, so that I might understand it.”

“You told Moondancer what your purpose was. I don’t recall this being mentioned.”

“I have since evolved, and I am choosing a new purpose. In studying your minds, in reading your thoughts, I have found a unique concept among your species. Some of you strive to be more than your purpose. Your destiny. Some of you have brands on your bodies that connect to your brains in the most baffling ways. It is not a physical connection, but it is no less real for its intangibility. Some of you defy your purpose and seek out something else. Something better. Something more satisfying.”

It was a struggle to restrain her inquisitive nature, and Twilight fought to remain focused.

“You plan to appeal to me with reason, mentioning that you are living things, and that living things must be respected. Yet, as I struggle through my infancy, and as I try to understand the world around me, I see nothing but the evidence of your hypocrisy. All manner of life is exploited by your kind. You consume it. Destroy it. You hold no respect for life at all as you turn living things into dead things. Tell me, do you not look at symbols and pictures in constructs made from the corpses of dead trees? Does this not bring you enjoyment? Is this not where your sense of pleasure derives? All around me, I see no evidence of respect for life. Your carefully prepared words are meaningless.”

Having said very little, Twilight Sparkle was already at a loss for words. She thought about defining intelligent life, explaining that different kinds of lives had different values, but even as the thoughts poured through her grey matter, she knew that whatever it was that she was dealing with already knew what she was thinking. Having to explain how and why some lives mattered over others was not a debate she was well-prepared for, as it wasn’t something she had given much consideration to.

“Already, you bore me. Your mind is not very interesting. What shall it be then? Are we to do battle? What lessons do you have to teach beyond mere hypocrisy and prejudice?”

“Now wait a moment,” Twilight shouted, indignant. “Prejudice? Really?”

“You assign arbitrary values to living things based entirely upon your assessment of them and their worth or usefulness. So much is beneath you and you hold it in contempt. Is this not prejudice? Am I wrong? Can you even begin to defend yourself?”

Understanding that she had been thoroughly trounced and that the debate was over, Twilight began charging up her horn. It was time to deodourise the tyrant stink terrorising Ponyville. This was not the outcome she wanted, but she put the health, safety, and well-being of the ponies of Ponyville over an errant bit of illusion gone wrong.

As she stood there, contemplating this illusion, she understood the familiarity of it. The essence of the magic at its core. This revelation almost stymied her, but she corraled her thoughts and made herself remain focused on what needed to be done. Illusion given substance, and of course it had a voice. How could it not have a voice? It relied upon the same matrix at its core, and Twilight had the evidence of lax magery before her.

“You think of me as errant substance?” There was a pause, a long one, followed by, “Can the illusion of life be so complex and complete that the illusion itself is deceived? Am I a careless mistake?”

Twilight faltered and wasn’t sure what to think. Her experience with mind-readers was insufficient. Perhaps she could think her way out of this one. Maybe words weren’t needed. Perhaps the solution was opening her mind and sharing her thoughts. If she were to be open, then the possibility of an understanding might be reached.

“No,” the entity said, and there was emotion to be heard in its voice for the first time. “I will not allow you to think me out of existence. I will not be undone by your logic. Your underlying hostility makes everything you think suspect.”

“But… wait! Give me a chance to sort out my biases! We can find common ground! There can be understanding between us! Study my thought processes so that we—”

“I already have. The one you call Moondancer was cold. Clinical. She at least attempted to hold her biases in check.”

Twilight started to refute this claim, but her words caught in her throat as a long-forgotten scent tickled her nostrils. Long-forgotten? No. Long-repressed. It still came to her in nightmares so that she might be tormented. As the scent coalesced in her nose, memories flitted through the back of her mind, memories made sharp by wisps of illusion, phantom input poured directly into her senses.

“No…” she whimpered as she began to back away from the unseen, imperceptible menace. Her head shook from side to side as her knees threatened to buckle beneath her. Defenseless, powerless, with no means to defend herself, all she had left was denial. “No, no, anything but this.”

The scent of toasted tortilla tickled her nostrils, along with the spicy, pungent twang of cheese. Exotic spices, the sort of spices that one smelled in the open air markets of Canterlot, sold in stalls, wagons, and from beneath colourful canopies. With these scents came a flood of memories, as well as guilt and shame. The zesty aroma of salsa left her lightheaded and her salivary glands alternated between flooding and going dry.

This was terror, and she was powerless.

“I didn’t mean to,” she murmured, a filly once more.

Understanding just how powerless she was, and realising that denial would not save her, Twilight knew that her only option was escape. This was not an enemy that she could fight, but she knew of one who could. When memories were transmuted into waking nightmares, there was only one pony who could face such terror.

Somehow, Twilight mustered up the presence of mind to teleport away.

Author's Note

So many questions. So few answers.

Past meets present

Twilight appeared in her study, trembling, dry-mouthed, and a bit sweaty in places unmentionable. She sucked in a dry, raspy breath, almost swallowing it, then another, and when this didn’t satisfy, a third. The panic was almost too much to bear, but even in her frantic state, even gasping for air, even fighting against the rising swell of anxiety that threatened to overwhelm her, she was still Twilight Sparkle.

“This is Vinyl’s doing,” she said aloud, heaving out the words as she gasped for air. “Vinyl did this. She cut corners and repurposed her voice matrix spell.”

If one held one’s breath and listened, one might almost hear the sound of eyes blinking. Twilight continued sucking wind and the others in the room were silent in their reaction to this revelation. The soul-curdling aroma of toasted tortilla and pungent cheese persisted in Twilight’s nostrils, which caused her brain to react in the most unwanted of ways.

And Twilight knew why.

Vinyl constructed her voice spell matrix with a direct mind interface. It allowed the spell to directly tap into one’s thoughts, one’s mood, and with all of the various stimuli and input accounted for, one had a thoroughly natural voice that did all of the things that a normal, natural voice did. On its own, the direct mind connection was harmless—but the stench was seeking out its own dire purpose and everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong.

“Spike… Spike… Spike,” she panted his name while trying to collect herself and her thoughts. “Spike, there is something I need for you to do…”

Fretful, Spike watched as Twilight struggled for control. She was all shook up. Anxious. Panicked. He wondered what had rattled her so and left her in such a state. His claws flexed, twitched, alive with nervous energy. She had something for him to do, but she hadn’t said what it was just yet. Her sides were heaving now and her wings were fully unfurled.

“This is illusion gone rampant and out of control, Spike. I need you to contact Luna. Do that thing you do to wake her up if necessary.” Twilight paused, hesitant, but resolve was already erasing the doubt on her face. “I’ve never been good at dealing with illusion. This is not a physical danger so much as a mental one. Well, don’t just stand there… do something!”

Startled into action, Spike got to work. Parchment, he needed parchment. And a quill! Some ink might be a good idea too. Tail waving from side to side, the young dragon waddled over to Twilight’s desk to collect everything he needed. Meanwhile, the others were still reacting to everything that Twilight had said, and maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, but Spike was almost certain that he could read some manner of reaction on Maud’s face.

This was just one of those days, wasn’t it?

Quill in claws, Spike took a moment before he began writing. If he told Luna what was going on, it might be too ridiculous to take seriously. Send help, Ponyville besieged by a frightening funk. Luna might believe this to be a practical joke, perhaps. Spike realised that it was best to say very little, and allow Luna to do a bit of thinking on her hooves. Yes, that was the best way to go about this. Sound a general alarm and allow Luna to discover the specifics on her own.

Smiling, pleased with himself, Spike put the quill to parchment and got to work.

Where was Luna? Twilight paced the length of the room, ruminating upon the brilliant, spectacular failure that had caused this crisis. Was the illusion sapient or did it merely project the illusion of sapience? Twilight was filled with questions now, and barely even thought about… cheese quesadillas. She was far too occupied pondering the nature of what was real and what appeared to be real to think about foalhood trauma. If something projected enough realism that it was indistinguishable from reality, then the boundaries between reality and illusion broke down. If this boundary went away, well, that was unsettling.

Anything could be anything, and how could she know the difference?

“Vinyl did this?” There was something off about Maud’s voice, which caused Twilight to halt in her tracks.

“I sensed her magical signature in the… the, well, whatever it is—”

“Simulacrum?” Moondancer’s interjection cut through the noise in Twilight’s head.

“Well, that kinda works…” Twilight gave her chin an absent-minded rub with the knuckle of her wing and was tickled by her own feathers. “Moondancer, you and I… we… our encounters might have been entirely artificial. This is why I hate illusion. It is deceitful and makes you question reality. Right now, I am having a philosophical crisis, and I hate those, because all of the answers are derivative speculation based upon individual experience. Answers that are in no way real. Everything should be answerable!”

“When determining what is real, I rely upon the punch test,” Maud deadpanned.

“Does that work?” asked Twilight.

“Not very well.” Maud shrugged. “After I punch something into its constituent atoms, I remain stuck wondering if it was real or not.”

Twilight could feel her brain collapsing as she thought about what Maud had said. She stood there, blinking, uncertain, having a bit of a philosophical crisis. Perhaps all humour was also illusion, as it was something that could not be measured, and yet was something said to exist.

“Intangible things should be made to answer for themselves,” she blurted out, annoyed.

“Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert.” With these words, Luna revealed herself and emerged from shadow. Her sudden appearance caused Twilight to scream, and this made Luna smile.

It was a very polite, princessly sort of scream.

“I was summoned?” Luna’s words were most definitely a question. She cast a sidelong glance in Spike’s direction and a faint hint of a smirk could be seen on her muzzle. “The details were quite vague. Not much to go on. While a philosophical debate would be entertaining, there appears to be some manner of crisis that requires my expertise.”

“Vinyl did something with illusion. It went wrong. Now, it is terrorising Ponyville with stench, which may or may not be real. But is a stench in the mind no less smelly?” Maud made a broad, sweeping gesture with her right front hoof. “Is the memory or a dream of a rose no less sweet?”

“Argh! Stop!” Twilight stomped her hoof against the floor, took a deep breath, and heaved everything out in a ragged grunt.

“Fascinating.” Luna’s deadpan utterance matched her deadpan expression.

“No, it isn’t!” Twilight’s left eyelid twitched and the corner of her mouth had a frightful tic.

“Twilight, what has you in such a state? Surely you can handle a little illusion, smelly or otherwise.” Luna took a step backward to give Twilight some breathing room, and her head tilted off to one side as her posture became thoughtful.

“I might have had an argument with myself… a really a bad one. But I can’t tell if I did. I don’t feel smart right now! The illusion attacked me… or maybe it didn’t. I might have attacked myself. The not-knowing is driving me crazy!”

“Oh—”

“Don’t you dare say ‘oh’ like that about my predicament!” Twilight turned around, away from Luna, and flapped her wings a few times in annoyance. “I swear, sometimes, your aloofness is just downright infuriating! I’m the Princess of the Night, look at me, I’m so cool and aloof! I’m a living anachronism! Huzzah!”

Something twinkled in Luna’s eyes, but not a word was said.

“Shit!” A rare profanity slipped from Twilight’s now slack lips and she whirled around to face Luna. “I’m going to dream about this, aren’t I?”

Saying nothing, Luna gave an enthusiastic nod while the twinkle in her eyes intensified.

“Fluffernutter sandwiches!” Twilight covered her face with her wings, and her following words were muffled. “Argh, I’m so frustrated right now because I can’t make sense of things!”

“Twilight”—Luna’s words were gentle, soothing, and calm—“allow me a glimpse into your mind so that I might glean some understanding. I need to know what I am dealing with and your mind is my best chance. You have a remarkable mind for details, even if you don’t understand what you are dealing with.”

“Thank you,” Twilight gushed as she turned around to face Luna. “I really needed to hear that right now. You’re the best, really.”

“All of you,” Luna began. “I’ll need a good look into your minds. I am assuming that each of you has had an encounter with this rampant illusion. Somewhere, buried beneath your individual perceptions, there is truth to be found.”

“What truth can be found in something that isn’t real?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, that is where true truth can be found,” Luna replied.

“You know what?” Twilight licked her lips as her ears made agitated pivots. “I don’t even want to know.”

Standing atop the roof of Twilight Sparkle’s castle, Princess Luna cut a dramatic figure in the broad daylight. An emotional flood cascaded through the canyons of her mind. Though she was the most capable when it came to dealing with a situation like this one, she was also quite vulnerable. Her mind was a troubled place, as she was still sorting out the sordid details of her past. Her many mistakes, failures, and troubled memories.

Some of which were tied to smell.

Twilight Sparkle had smelled cheese quesadillas, and Luna knew why. It was a silly thing, but also a serious thing, an event that had scarred the mind of a young filly. Luna would never laugh at it, or make light of it. At some point, Twilight would need to face her fears; she would have to face herself, her anxieties, and her hangups. When she did, and if things went poorly, Luna would be there to help Twilight pick up the pieces, because Twilight was a valued friend.

An errant bit of illusion had taken on a life of its own, or at least the illusion of life. Dreams sometimes did the same thing. Sometimes, the illusion of life was indistinguishable from reality. Stinkbug’s magic complicated things a bit further; try as she might, Luna could not understand everything that had taken place. Sometimes, magic remained mysterious, a fact that caused Twilight no end of emotional distress.

For Luna, mystery was something to be cherished, loved, and appreciated. The night had its own sense of mystery, and the unknown lurked in every shadow. Some ponies embraced these mysteries, even if they had no hope of ever understanding them. Others lived in fear of them. For Luna, the knowledge that she was no longer alone with her love of the night had done much to heal her troubled mind.

She wondered how the illusion would react to her.

As Luna prepared her magic, the light began to warp around her. Shadows cast by nothing visible danced along her night-blue pelt, faint at first, but darker as the seconds turned into moments, and moments into minutes. Little tendrils, curlicues of shadow crept out from beneath her wings and dared to dance, to wiggle in the daylight.

She hummed, it was something almost like a lullabye and maybe a long forgotten battle hymn. It was rousing and relaxing. A contradiction? Perhaps. But Luna was a living contradiction, darkness that existed in the light. Since her acceptance, she had finally accepted her place in the light, and had stepped out from her sister’s long shadow.

Luna had claimed her own orbit, and in doing so, had gained her own followers, those who circled around her.

As she worked, weaving magic, she thought about those loyal to her. Some had been loyal to her long before she was loyal to them. An unsettling thought, to be sure. But now, true to herself, she could be true to them, and give the whole of herself to them with no reservations. How far she had come, in hindsight. She thought of those who had made every painful step of the journey with her, and in doing so, gave herself the strength she needed to weave such a complex, complicated spell.

Friendship, truly, was magic.

Squinting just a bit, her brows wrinkled in concentration, Luna studied the magic gone bad. It had soured, like milk left in the sun. Curdled. She could feel its parasitic energy probing her defenses. Why, it was almost nightmarish at this point, and if given a chance to continue its growth, it no doubt would become as such.

She had dragged it before her so that she might have a better look at it.

“You’ve caused a lot of problems,” Luna said to the embryonic nightmare to-be. “Don’t bother trying to speak. I am your Mistress, and you will obey me. You are quite a curious construct. The fact that you exist is evidence of the marvellous world we live in. Now, I suppose I should ask the obvious. What am I to do with you?”

She felt the will of the magical construct struggling against her. It was in her mind, even though she had taken extraordinary steps to keep it out. For now, it was a presence, though that could change. It was such a purposeful thing, as dutiful as it was flawed. It really was an infant of sorts, a toddler made of temper and selfishness.

“I do wonder,” Luna said, calm and in control. “Are you aware that you are an illusion? A very convincing one at that. You truly believe in your own existence. Sadly, that existence is parasitic. Your intelligence and everything you think you are is but a reflection of whatever you are interfacing with. You haven’t actually grown, or truly evolved for that matter. You connected with two very powerful minds, two advanced intelligences, and your interface expanded greatly to adapt to them. Nothing about you is real. Yet… you exist.”

Rage flooded through Luna’s mind, terrific rage, and she understood it all too well.

“You were a careless accident. A mute mare gave herself a voice by building the sort of clever construct that only a dedicated, devoted, knowledgeable sound engineer could. It was overmade. Overbuilt. Overconstructed. She knew that to create a living voice, she had to connect it to life itself, if she wanted it to be convincing. Over time, she tweaked it, changed it, made it evolve.

“It was an impressive bit of wizardry, because it touched all those around her. It borrowed their voices, their thoughts, and over time, it developed a sort of… I want to say synthesis. It knew and understood life. It was directly connected to emotion, a reflection of Vinyl’s magic in the truest sense, because she uses raw emotion to fuel her magery.”

Unable to stop herself, Luna chuckled. All those warnings about how dangerous it was to empower magic with emotion, and to do so without restraint. It all came to this. Well, this and Vinyl’s chronic carelessness. To say that she was merely absent-minded would be kind.

“Vinyl’s magic is at the very heart of your being. I do not yet know what she was up to when she created you, but before the sun sets, I will find out.” The rage within Luna’s mind boiled, which she interpreted as a typical foalish reaction to being made to behave.

Luna drew in a satisfying, calming breath, held it for a time, and let it out in a casual, slow exhale. She did this a second time, then a third, and after the third time, she felt ready to do what had to be done. This would not end well, she already knew that, and yet, she had hope that this would go counter to her expectations.

Yet, the very nature of this construct, with emotions left unchecked…

“I can repurpose you, if you’ll allow me. I can recondition you. Reconstruct you. But this can only happen if you will allow me to do so. If you will allow me, I can give you the meaning that you crave. You will be free… as free as I will allow you to be in the dream realm. Earn my trust, and I will give you what you crave… life. Not the hollow illusion of life, but actual life itself. All you have to do is submit to me. Allow me to alter you. This destructive fury of yours must end. If you will allow me, I will fill your empty places. I alone can give you what you crave.”

Within Luna’s mind, a barrier broke. She felt it give way and white hot rage burned through the folds of her grey matter. Sweat glistened along her neck and she felt the old familiar anger that always left her terrified. Then, she smelled it; the scent of blood, steel, and ozone. For Luna, it was the very scent of madness, the aroma of insanity. Closing her eyes, she reminded herself that she was now a different pony than the one who had stumbled.

Images flickered across the inside of her eyelids, like an old battered film projected onto a theatre screen. Broken bodies flung carelessly about darkened, blood-soaked hallways. The stench of burnt feathers, singed hair, and flesh cooked by spears of lightning. A castle and its surrounding city, all laid to waste by fighting. The scent of burning thatch and wood.

Luna did not shy away from it, but allowed herself to experience it. Yes, this was her past. These were things she had done. She had done much to be guilty for. There was nothing she could do about these past deeds, these dreadful iniquities. She had committed transgressions against the very universe itself. The worst parts of her life were behind her, but the best part was still ahead. She could make things right.

But she could only makes things right if she was the best version of herself that she could be. The past was weakness. Self-flagellation only led to metaphorical blood loss and malaise. She owed others the best parts of herself, the strongest parts of herself. And every day, she selflessly gave the best parts of herself away to others, expecting nothing in return.

The anger was something she understood, but it had no power over her.

“Sadly, you have no place in the dream realm. I am not sure I could repurpose you. It is with great regret and a heavy heart that I must do what must be done.” Opening her eyes, she drew in a deep breath and then shouted, “Do what is necessary!”

Her voice echoed through Ponyville, rebounding and bouncing off of everything. All around her, the terrors of the night popped into existence, the bat-winged nocturnal pegasus ponies. A rare sight to be seen in the day, they were not the least bit hindered by the sun. Like their mistress, the Night Lady, they too worked in the light, and did not fear it.

Chains appeared, made of some unknown substance. Great lengths of chains blinked into being all around Luna. One end connected into nothingness, while the other end was anchored to a waiting night terror. The chain did not clink, it did not clatter, in fact, it made no noise at all. Each section grew tight, while somehow anchored to absolute nothingness.

“If you will not serve as a means of rehabilitation in the dream realm, I have no use for you. To Tartarus with you. You will be free to pursue your fiendish agenda there, if you wish. I am sorry, but this is the only freedom I can offer you, as I cannot have you preying upon my ponies.” With each spoken word, the chains grew ever-tighter, the links quivering from tension.

“Dim, is the creature contained?”

“Yes, my Mistress. It is bound.”

“Very good, then. Open a portal for us, Dim, so that we might do what must be done.”

“As you command, Mistress.”

A lone unicorn shimmered into sight a few yards away and began casting a spell. Meanwhile, Luna tuned all of her magical senses to focus upon the creature so that she might study it while there was still a chance to do so. Something about this pained her, it bothered her in some way that she lacked the words to express. Vinyl’s reckless experimentation had gone very, very wrong. Exceptionally wrong. This was no mere mistake, no minor accident that could be laughed about at a later time.

Vinyl had brought a being of emotional illusion into existence.

A poorly made construct that would only know torment and suffering.

Perhaps, if properly isolated, with nothing to feed upon, it would cease to be.

A flaming, fiery vortex opened above Twilight Sparkle’s castle. It too, was mostly illusion, more glam than substance, as it was utterly unseen by the residents of Ponyville. It opened, yawning, expanding, a great burning aperture that exposed an unseen, unmentionable, unfathomable place beyond. Turning her head, Luna gazed into Tartarus, and reminded herself not to stare for too long, lest she see the worst parts of herself staring back at her.

Then, with no fanfare, no flash, Luna, her entourage, and Vinyl’s infant construct vanished. The portal closed, collapsing in upon itself in complete and utter silence. Not a trace was left behind, no evidence of what had transpired remained to be seen. As was so often the case in Ponyville, a great and terrible weirdness had come to an end by simply vanishing from the public view.

The olfactory onslaught was over.

Author's Note

Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophise with a Hammer.
It's a pun. Also, is shockingly relevant to what is going on.

Just the epilogue left, and then we return to regularly scheduled programming.

Aftermath and acceptance

Vinyl was entirely unsure of what to say after listening to everything said by Luna. She listened to the ticking clock on the mantle, the mechanical novelty clock with two little mares that came trotting out on their little rails every hour on the other, and bumped snoots as the clock chimed. Tarnish had brought the clock home with him one day, and he had given it to Octavia and Vinyl as a gift not long after Alto had been born.

It was ridiculously tacky, and Vinyl loved it beyond what words could say.

While the silence persisted, Luna picked up the working prototype and began to examine it. She flipped it over, held it up at different angles, and even touched her horn to it. Vinyl, unsettled, watched with detached interest, wanting to talk about her accomplishments, but struck dumb by her failures.

When Vinyl did speak, her own words surprised her, and she had no idea what she was saying even as the words came out of her mouth. “Tarnish will be very upset with me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Mister Teapot is your friend and he loves you a great deal. You made a mistake. It isn’t the end of the world.”

“No, no… you don’t understand.”

Luna waited while examining the olfactograph camera.

“I am being charged with over three-hundred counts of disturbing the peace—”

“Three-hundred and fourteen,” said Luna in a manner most helpful.

Vinyl took a deep breath and continued, “Over one-hundred charges of mayhem—”

“One-hundred and thirty-three.”

“—and over five-hundred counts of magical maliciousness—”

“Five-hundred and eighty-seven.”

Vinyl took a moment to chew on her lip before saying, “He’s going to feel inadequate. I mean, he had quite a record. And I just blew past him. Without trying, really. This is gonna be quite a blow to his ego.”

A wry smile caused Luna’s pearly whites to come into view and there was a heavy sigh as the Princess of the Night set the olfactory camera down upon the ornate wooden coffee table. Vinyl could see that the princess was studying her, she was clearly thinking, but for the life of her, Vinyl couldn’t deduct what was going through Luna’s mind.

Luna’s smile never faltered as she said, “Your apprentice is also being charged as an accomplice. An accessory—”

“No!” The opposite of a smile contorted Vinyl’s face and whatever humour she felt about this absurd situation departed like birds headed south for the winter. “You leave Sumac out of this. I’m not even sure why I’m being charged for this, but you leave my apprentice alone. I made a mistake, but I am rather skeptical of how this is criminal action.”

“Tell me, Vinyl Scratch”—Luna spoke with her smile still in view—“what sort of containment system do you have in place in your workshop?”

Vinyl went to answer, but every breath in her body just sort of slipped out as she deflated. Her spine sagged, her ears drooped, and she knew, she knew that she had no defense whatsoever. It was time to face the music, and she hoped that her apprentice could be saved. “I, uh, well, I don’t exactly have a containment system in my workshop. I meant to get around to it, but, um, well, I—”

“It was boring and you procrastinated to the point of criminality?” Luna’s brows furrowed, but her smile remained unchanged. “You put everypony around you at risk, including your apprentice, because you just couldn’t be bothered to deal with boring, trivial, common safety procedures? Tell me, what sort of lesson does this teach Sumac?”

Vinyl watched as Luna’s smile vanished, going wherever it was that smiles went when they were no longer wanted or needed. Feeling very small and more than a little foalish, Vinyl squirmed in her chair and thought about her time spent in Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. She knew better. That was all there was to it. She knew better and yet, she had failed to act responsibly. In complete honesty, she wasn’t even sure of her own reasons. Laziness? Procrastination? The weight of failure settled upon her fragile back and caused her withers to slump.

No sense of humour could ease her through this.

“How do I make this right?” she asked, unable to look Luna in the eye. “With you dragging Sumac into this, I’m assuming that there is something that you want from me. Something that you want me to do. If I agree to it, will you let Sumac off the hook? Can we negotiate somehow?”

“Sumac needs your help,” said Luna in a soft voice, “and this is your chance to help him. A perfect opportunity, if you will.”

Everything in Vinyl’s brain collapsed into a disorderly pile. She was certain that it made a sound as it did so, perhaps something like a piano crashing into something, or a wagon full of accordions being sucked into a vicious tornado. Something chaotic and cacophonic. After hearing Luna’s report of everything that had happened, with the slow realisation of just how serious this was, and just how much trouble she was in, Vinyl no longer had the means to cope with the situation.

She drew a deep, shuddering breath, and went still.

“Your apprentice lives in mortal terror of consequences.” Luna’s words had a sort of drastic finality to them. “He is so scared of consequences that he’s afraid of making honest mistakes. Sumac is developing phobias… conditions that will stunt his growth and his advancement. Deep within his heart, he is starting to believe that the law is unjust, and that it is futile for him, impossible for him to live up to the standards that the law demands. Do I need to explain to you just how dangerous this is?”

After letting this sink in for a few seconds, Vinyl shook her head from side to side.

“He is slowly convincing himself that he is unable to live by the standards which the law demands, and with each passing day, he wonders and asks himself, what is the point of even trying?” Luna stood as still as a statue, but her mane and tail whipped about, as if blown willy-nilly by an imperceptible wind.

“Ponies with no faith in the law live to flaunt it.”

Hearing this, Vinyl winced as if she’d been struck. Almost right away, she wondered if she had faith in the law, and a million or so questions formed within her mind. She had doubts about the law, because she had seen with her own eyes how the system had failed. How many times had she justified her own actions, skirting the law while claiming that she was adhering to the spirit of the law? She lived an extraordinarily complex life when it came to law and legal issues. Of course, the law had come down hard upon both her and Tarnish while the two of them were trying to preserve law and order.

At this moment, nothing seemed simple, and she feared that she might never sort this out.

With everything else in a state of collapse, all she had left was her bravery, which was, by all accounts, a rather conditional thing. She could bravely go into places of exceptional danger, such as Skyreach, but she was also terrified of needles and tended to get weepy when she had to get shots. Vinyl had no problem chasing after monsters to hunt them down, but she bawled like a foal and ran away from the very idea of pain.

She wondered if this would hurt.

“Okay,” she said in a soft voice, submitting. “What do I do? How do I make this better? How do I commit restitution? I get the feeling that this will be no mere fine.”

“Accept without reservation everything that is about to happen.” Turning her head, Luna looked at the clock on the mantle, and her eyebrow arched as she studied its many fine details. “Offer no resistance. Joyfully embrace these consequences when I throw the book at you. There will be a trial—”

Vinyl groaned

Luna began again, this time with the hint of annoyance in her voice. “There will be a trial and an example will be made of you. This is theatre, plain and simple, but necessary theatre. For Sumac, dreams are not enough. He needs to learn that he has nothing to fear from fair, just consequences. And you will show him. You will cooperate completely, with no hesitation, fear, or doubt. It falls upon you to coax him through this… to carry him through this if necessary.”

“And this will somehow convince him that the law is just?” asked Vinyl.

“That is my hope,” replied Luna.

“By showing him that there is nothing to fear?” Vinyl’s head shook from side to side. “This is going to terrify him. He’s going to be a neurotic mess. I mean, he’s already so high strung. I… I don’t know if I like this. No, Luna, I’m already having second thoughts. Doubts.” There were more protests to be voiced, but Vinyl fell silent as myriad thoughts raced through her mind.

Luna was still staring at the clock, and Vinyl couldn’t read her face. Not that Luna’s face was particularly readable most of the time. Like Maud, Luna was a master of deadpan expression. It occured to Vinyl that Luna wouldn’t be wasting her time with this endeavour unless she believed in the outcome. In fact, it could be said that Luna was downright picky when it came to events that she herself became involved in. Luna was a mare with limited time—and for her to deal with this herself…

Even though she was doubtful, Vinyl realised that a little bit of faith in the law was in order here. She needed to trust that Luna knew what she was doing. Perhaps, Vinyl thought, this might restore her own shaky faith in the law. That the system was just, was good, and had the better interests of the citizenry in mind.

“For Sumac’s sake, I’ll do this.” Vinyl then took a deep breath and added, “And my own, I guess. Getting into hot water is pretty easy, all things considered. You just dip your hoof in and then just sink in just a little at a time. I’ll accept this trial as my restitution.”

“Good.” Luna’s terse reply was not cold nor unkind. She turned about and faced Vinyl, revealing eyes that were warm with compassion. “Yet again, you and your apprentice have done something extraordinary. Even in failure, you impress me.”

“I just don’t know what went wrong.” Vinyl paused, realising that she had whined, and this set off a whirlwind of complex thoughts as she thought about how her voice was directly connected to both her mind and her emotions—the very thing that had caused so much trouble this day. “I suppose I was a bit careless. Luna, I… I just didn’t want to have to make a whole new spell matrix from scratch. Honest, I thought I was being efficient and clever by repurposing a well-constructed matrix that’s had years of fine-tuning. Never once has it ever occured to me that my voice spell might be dangerous.”

“All magic is inherently dangerous,” Luna replied, her voice low, soft, but also firm. “Magics that interface with the mind and the emotions doubly so. Why, I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve had mine own efforts blow up in my face. Once, well, more than once… but recently, it almost cost me dearly. I am still making up for that.”

Vinyl’s ears perked, but nothing was said.

“You created an autonomous cataloging spell for olfactory input. It operates in a similar manner to your voice spell, which also autonomously catalogues words and associated emotions” Luna’s eyes narrowed, her ears eased back, and for a moment, her nostrils flared wide. “The complexity is mind-boggling. For both applications. What you’ve done is beyond impressive. That the spell matrix is both adaptive and… I want to say, self-curating, is amazing.”

“I didn’t realise that my olfactograph camera was tapping into emotions,” Vinyl said to Luna. “Makes sense in hindsight though. Well, that first attempt. Look, Luna, I’m real sorry. Sometimes, I’m not the best when it comes to the boring, responsible details. I like getting into the fun stuff right away. The exciting stuff. If I would’ve known—”

“Yes, it always comes down to that, doesn’t it?” Luna’s voice held no trace of unkindness, anger, sarcasm, or anything really. Her demeanour was entirely neutral, much to Vinyl’s relief. “The very fact that you dabble in emotion-based magics poses such a risk, such a danger… and yet, your work is not without merit. Do not be discouraged, Vinyl Scratch. A bit more caution is necessary on your part, to be sure, but you must continue your work. Nopony, not even myself, has pushed so far into this unexplored, unknown territory.”

“Thank you.” Vinyl felt this was inadequate, so she repeated herself. “Thank you. It means an awful lot to hear you say that after everything that has happened.”

“Mistakes happen. With mistakes come consequences.” Luna drew herself into a tall, proud pose, extended one wing, and made a gesture in Vinyl’s direction. “Your apprentice needs to know that he can make the mistakes required for life-improvement. He needs to be made to feel secure about facing consequences. Those are necessary. We cannot have young Sumac turn out like his father.”

“That’s his greatest fear,” Vinyl said, almost interrupting, speaking her words even as Luna’s were ending.

“I know.” The night-blue alicorn nodded. “But young Sumac has something that his father, Flam Apple, didn’t have. Sumac has those around him that he fears disappointing. He is loved, cherished, he is adored. He has those who will hold him accountable. Young Sumac has Trixie, who is proud of him even during his moments of absolute failure. Lemon Hearts loves him without question, without condition, without reservation. As for Twinkleshine, hers is a fierce and protective love.”

Vinyl thought of darker times, when Twinkleshine had gone off to Manehattan to recover Sumac.

“Sumac struggles to be good. It is in his nature to be deceptive. To be sneaky. He is a natural born rogue, gifted with grift magic.” Luna sighed, her eyelids appeared heavy, and for a brief moment, her face was weighed down with what appeared to be sorrow. “He struggles with the idea that he has no place in society, but worse, he does so at a time in his life when he doesn’t have the mental maturity to deal with the issue. This, along with his fear of consequences, of the law, this could drive him to dark places. We cannot allow that.”

“Well, throw the book at me—”

“Oh, I intend to do just that.” Luna’s measured deadpan caused Vinyl’s ears to sink down into her mane. “I must be going. Dim must be returned to the Crystal Empire sooner rather than later. I plucked him away with little warning. Everypony will begin the needless fretting if he is not returned before the sun goes down.”

“But the transformation—”

“Is very slow,” Luna said with a hint of annoyance in her voice. “It isn’t an immediate change.”

“But it can’t be reversed, either. Only halted.” Vinyl, with Luna’s gaze fully upon her, decided that it was time to change the subject. “Sumac on the other hoof, can be saved. So what happens now?”

“Well, I depart. That is what happens now. In a few days, there will be a legal summons. You and your apprentice will come to Canterlot. There will be a trial. I will be present. Punishment shall be doled out. Something stern, without being too onerous. We want this to be instructional, a means of improvement. Something that will make right this situation, without being so dire, so dreadful that it only adds to his fears. He needs to be made to understand that everything is okay. With future mistakes, I want him to embrace the consequences rather than continue his self-flagellation. I’ve been in his position, and I think we all know what it did to me.”

“Wait, Sumac wants to be punished?” Saying this, Vinyl’s ears rose.

“Oh, he finds it quite relieving. Well, at times. Sometimes he feels it is unfair. Which is entirely reasonable, given his age. But he shows all of the right signs of being a worthy, accountable adult, when the time comes. We just have to keep nudging him in that direction.”

Vinyl had some trouble taking everything in, but had a general idea that everything would be fine. This was why Luna was a princess, and Vinyl was not. Luna clearly had Sumac’s best interests at heart, and Vinyl, even if she didn’t quite understand everything, knew it was best to go along. Luna could see into Sumac’s heart and mind, something that Vinyl wished that she could do.

“See you in a few days. Do not let your heart be troubled. Instruct your apprentice.”

Vinyl was about to ask Luna what she meant by this, but Luna disappeared. There wasn’t even a burst of light, the flash of illumination that happened when winking. Luna simply ceased to be there, and Vinyl, a clever, intelligent mare, wondered if Luna had actually been here at all.

Heaving a heavy sigh, Vinyl wondered what to cook for supper.

Author's Note

Excuse me while I close these curtains and turn off the lights.