Shining Armor Saves Everyone

Chapters

A Real Dumpster of a Day
Oh Great, It's This Guy
I'm About to Get Kidnapped Again
As Important As It Is Uninteresting
Giant Two-Headed Fairies
Intermission: Tempest Shadow's On the Case!
He'd Somehow Failed at Failing
The Worst Place to Get Engaged
Mr. Hot-Take Galaxy Brain
Insane With Pasta Energy
Intermission: The School of Friendship Saves Some Face!
I Am Thinking About Doing Illegal Things
Where My Wonderful Boats Live
Nonesuch and Ballyhoo
The Pizza Guy Never Showed Up
A Real Dumpster of a Life
Epilogue: Where Are They Now?
Fate Conspires to Enable Your Idiocy

A Real Dumpster of a Day

Shining Armor was surprised by how quickly he’d gotten used to being Prince of the Crystal Empire.

It had only been a few years since Shining and Cadence had become the Empire’s rulers. A lot had happened in that time. Twilight had grown wings and become a princess. Shining and Cadence had had Flurry Heart. Twilight had apparently decided to open a school for reasons Shining still wasn’t sure of.

So much had changed in Shining Armor’s life that it was a little dizzying to think back on it all. But as Shining Armor laid in bed and stared up at the crystal ceiling of the palace’s royal bedchambers, the former Captain of the Royal Guard could only think of one thing:

His life had gotten really, really weird.

This was something that had occurred to Shining Armor during King Sombra’s return. While he and his family were held captive in the weird playpen Somra had set up in the throne room, it had suddenly struck Shining just how many crises Equestria had gone through in the last few years. Stranger than that, however, was the fact that these disasters kept getting Shiny and his family involved.

There were the two incidents with Chrysalis, for example. There was Sombra and the Crystal Empire. There was the Storm King, though Shining hadn’t actually been present for that particular disaster due to Flurry Heart having a cold. There was also that thing that had happened last Hearth’s Warming with the pudding and the giant rat-monster. And, of course, there was the time that a giant oyster had tried to take over Equestria.

When Shining Armor took a few steps back and looked back on the last few years, he couldn’t help but realize that his life had become like something out of a comic book. Implausible things just kept happening to him and his loved ones, and it was really starting to freak Shining out.

Shining couldn’t dwell on this, though. His train of thought was cut off by the sound of Cadence stirring beside him. Unlike Shining, whose thoughts were keeping him up all night, Cadence had been fast asleep. Shining looked over to watch his wife’s eyes flicker open briefly.

“You okay?” Shining whispered.

“Mmm.” Cadence looked at her husband with her face half-buried in her pillow. “You’re awake?”

Shining chuckled, trying to play off his sleeplessness. “I’m just having one of those nights, I guess. Just thinking about… y’know…”

“About how implausible things keep happening to you and your loved ones, and how it’s really starting to freak you out?” Cadence guessed.

Shining nodded. Cadence was always able to read him like an open book. If they weren’t married, it probably would have been a little creepy.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cadence asked sleepily.

“No, no,” Shining whispered. “It’s fine. We can talk about this later.”

The middle of the night wasn’t a great time to have heart-to-heart discussions about life. On top of that, Cadence sounded so sleepy that she was probably only half aware of what they were talking about. She’d probably fall asleep halfway through whatever talk they could have.

As Shining offered his wife a small smile, the sound of Flurry Heart’s crying echoed into their room. Shining looked towards the door and sighed a little. It looked like any hope of getting a decent night’s rest had just gone out the window. Even if he’d been fast asleep, Shining couldn’t just stay in bed while his baby girl was crying.

“Could you go to her?” Cadence asked groggily.

Shining was already getting up and out of bed. He rolled off of the mattress and his hooves came down onto the crystal floor. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

Cadence likely didn’t hear him, as she had already started drifting back to sleep. Shining didn’t mind. She needed her sleep so she could do all of her princess stuff in the morning, and it wasn’t like Shining was going to be sleeping anyway.

Already wishing he could head back to bed, Shining slowly trudged out of the bedroom and into the next room over. Cadence and Shining had set up Flurry Heart’s nursery room as closely as possible. They would have moved her crib into their own room, but Flurry kept blowing things up in her sleep. It was a real hassle.

Shining opened the door to the nursery and looked in to see Flurry Heart lying in her pink crystal crib. She was crying at the top of her lungs. Shining trotted slowly into the room, used his magic to close the door behind him, and walked to the side of Flurry’s crib.

The problem became apparent as soon as Shining looked down into the crib. Flurry Heart’s Whammy wasn’t in her crib with her. The stuffed snail had definitely been in there when he and Cadence had put Flurry to bed for the night. It must have fallen out somehow.

Shining looked around at the ground around Flurry’s crib while she continued her crying. Her father’s presence wasn’t doing anything to calm her down. Only Whammy could satisfy the Flurry Heart.

Unfortunately, Shining couldn’t see Whammy anywhere around Flurry Heart’s crib. That made sense—it seemed unlikely that the stuffed snail would have somehow squeezed through the bars. Flurry Heart must have done something to it with her magic.

Shining stifled a groan. The last time Flurry had used her magic on Whammy, the snail had wound up on the castle’s roof… Not their roof, though; Canterlot Castle’s. Luna had had to rush over to the Empire just to get Flurry to stop crying.

Hopefully this time, Flurry hadn’t teleported it to the moon or sent it to another dimension or something.

While Shining absent-mindedly looked around the room for the Precious Whammy, he reached a hoof down into Flurry’s crib. He rubbed his daughter’s head in an attempt to comfort her, and her crying did die down a little bit. Despite how tired he was, Shining found himself smiling.

Sometimes Shining thought about how Flurry Heart was probably powerful enough to kill him with her mind. He felt a strange mix of fear and pride at knowing that it would be super easy for his daughter to blow him up.

Shining continued looking around Flurry Heart’s spacious room to no avail. Whammy wasn’t anywhere among any of the other toys.

It was only when Shining remembered the way that Flurry had been flailing her hooves up at the ceiling that he thought to look up.

High above Flurry Heart’s crib, her stuffed snail was floating up against the ceiling like a balloon. Shining silently stared up at the Whammy, not really surprised. He was mostly just wondering why Flurry hadn’t flown up to get her Whammy herself. Maybe she’d really wanted to disturb her parents’ sleep or something.

Shining wasn’t about to start complaining, though. He instead reached out with his magic and pulled the gravity-defying Whammy down into Flurry’s crib.

Flurry Heart stopped her crying almost immediately. She flailed her hooves once the stuffed snail was within reach and tried to grab onto it. Whammy tried floating away, but Flurry Heart was able to grab onto her favorite toy and hugged it close to her.

Shining couldn’t help but smile as he watched his daughter snuggle with the stuffed snail she’d caused to float for some reason. Even though she was a hoof-full, Flurry Heart was still one of the best things in Shining’s life. It was enough to make Shining forget all about the thoughts that had been keeping him awake.

“Okay,” Shining whispered sleepily as he stroked his daughter’s mane. “You’ve got your Whammy. Now get back to sleep, huh?”

Flurry Heart stared up at her father with her huge, not-at-all-asleep eyes.

Shining frowned. “C’mon, Flurry. It’s time to sleep. Everyone else is asleep. Don’t you want to follow their lead?”

His attempts at peer pressure were incredibly ineffective on Flurry Heart. Babies generally didn’t worry about fitting in all that much. Shining would have to wait for her teenage years for that parenting strategy to work.

Shining was too tired to think about that, though. He rested his chin on the top of Flurry Heart’s crib and looked down at his daughter. She gurgled something unintelligible at him. Shining was just sleepy enough to think she was trying to say actual words. He responded by mumbling something equally unintelligible back at her.

The two of them carried on making vague noises at each other until Shining finally fell asleep five minutes later.

Shining didn’t know what time it was when he woke up. That was mostly because it didn’t make a lot of sense to put a clock in Flurry Heart’s nursery. After all, what did a baby need a clock for? What sort of schedule did a baby have to keep? What, did they need to know when it was 3 o’clock so they could start getting sick all over the place?

He’d fallen asleep standing up. Even though that was a totally normal thing for a pony to do, Shining was still a little weirded out when he realized he’d done it. Now his legs were all stiff, which was gross.

On the plus side, though, Flurry Heart had fallen asleep. She was snoring peacefully in her crib, cuddled up with her Whammy which was still trying to float away. So that was nice.

While Shining probably could have watched his daughter sleep for hours, he didn’t feel like just standing around doing nothing. He needed to head back to bed and give his aching legs a rest.

As Shining Armor left the nursery and began making his way back to the castle’s bedroom, he had no sense that something was wrong. If he had been able to look outside, he might have been able to notice that something was up. But the hallways of the castle had very few windows for some reason. All Shining could see were shiny rocks.

After a short walk down the glittery hallway, Shining reached and opened the doors to the royal bedroom. He did so quietly, peeking his head in to make sure he wasn’t waking Cadence.

Luckily, Shining didn’t need to worry about waking Cadence up, as she wasn’t in bed.

Shining opened the door the rest of the way and trotted into the room. He was a bit surprised to see that Cadence had gotten out of bed so early. Out of the two of them, Shining was usually the one who’d get up first. Cadence wouldn’t get going until well after the sun had risen. Outside the window of their room, however, Shining could see that it was still mostly dark out; the sun was only starting to peek out of the horizon.

Since Cadence wasn’t in bed, Shining felt weird about going back to sleep. If his wife was already getting her day started, Shining felt as if he might as well do the same. Cadence was probably getting coffee ready, and that would be enough to shake Shining out of his sleepiness.

After giving his legs a little bit of a stretch, Shining Armor walked back out of the royal bedroom and began to make his way to the royal kitchen. The royal kitchen was a lot like a normal kitchen, but it was inside of a castle and the stove had a crown on it. The crystal ponies had made some strange decorating decisions after Sombra’s defeat.

As Shining made his way towards the kitchen, where he assumed Cadence was already enjoying some coffee, he was surprised to see that all of the palace’s servants were already up and about. With each familiar face Shining passed, it gradually began to dawn on him that it was actually much later in the morning than he’d thought. Shining had really lost track of time after falling asleep next to Flurry Heart’s crib.

But wait. When Shining had looked out the window, the sun was only just starting to rise. Was Celestia having some difficulty raising the sun? Had the responsibility fallen to Twilight again?

Shining came to a gradual stop in the middle of the hallway. A feeling of unease was starting to come over him, like a blanket made of spiders. Shining tried to shake off the feeling and continued walking to the kitchen a little faster than before.

It was silly to assume something bad had happened; Shining Armor knew that. Just because the sun was a little slow rising into the sky didn’t mean that anything had happened, right? Shining was sure that when he reached the kitchen, Cadence would be making coffee and he’d feel much better.

When Shining pushed open the doors to the kitchen and looked inside, though, he was proven wrong on both counts. Cadence wasn’t in the kitchen, and he felt much worse.

Instead of Cadence, the kitchen was occupied by one of the crystal ponies who worked in the palace. Snowberry, one of the castle’s handyponies, was fumbling awkwardly with the blender that sat on the kitchen counter.

Shining knew for a fact that Snowberry didn’t know how the blender worked, so he really shouldn’t have been working on it. Shining was a bit too distracted to really think about that at the moment, though.

“Snowberry?” Shining tried to sound calm as he tried to get the stallion’s attention.

Snowberry quickly took his hooves off of the blender, as if he’d been caught doing something that might have gotten him into trouble. He turned to look at Shining and gave his prince a smile.

“Good morning, Prince Armor!” Snowberry exclaimed. “You’re up late today!”

Shining would have to take Snowberry’s word on that. He had absolutely no sense of what time it was, and likely wouldn’t until he saw a clock.

“Snowberry, have you seen Cadence?” Shining asked, unable to hide the anxiety in his voice.

“Yes!” Snowberry said. “Several times!”

Shining stared at Snowberry expectantly, waiting for the stallion to continue his train of thought. Snowberry just smiled back at his prince, giving no sign of actually understanding what Shining Armor had been asking. After a while, Shining got sick of waiting.

“I mean lately, Snowberry,” Shining said. “Have you seen her lately?”

Snowberry looked surprised by the clarification. Shining Armor had no idea how Snowberry was still working for them.

“Er, no,” Snowberry said. “I haven’t seen her since last night, when she helped me pull my tongue out of the whisk. Is something wrong?”

There were a couple of things wrong. For one thing, Snowberry kept getting his tongue stuck in the whisk. For another thing, it meant that nobody knew where Cadence was. Normally, Shining wouldn’t be too worried about his wife’s whereabouts… But Shining somehow couldn’t shake the feeling that something strange was going on.

“Thank you, Snowberry,” Shining said, rubbing the side of his head. “I should probably go wake Flurry Heart… Cadence probably just went out to fly for a bit; I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

“Yeah, sure,” Snowberry said as he searched through the cutlery drawer for a whisk to lick.

Shining Armor left before he could stop Snowberry from doing something really dumb. The prince had a lot on his mind, but he couldn’t let that distract him from his baby daughter. Flurry Heart needed to be taken care of, after all. Shining could figure out where Cadence had gone to afterwards.

Shining walked back down the hall, back to the nursery, doing his best to put aside his anxieties. It was a little difficult to dismiss all of this, though. Shining’s thoughts from the previous night came back to him—bad things just kept on happening. It was hard not to assume they had happened yet again.

And before Shining could even make it to the nursery, his suspicions were confirmed.

Out of nowhere, the scent of smoke tickled Shining Armor’s nostrils. He knew immediately where the smell was coming from. Right before his eyes, the air before Shining ignited in a spark of green flame. The fire quickly dispersed into nothingness, and in place of the flame was a single scroll. Shining caught the scroll in his hooves as it began to fall to the floor.

It was a message from Spike. Either that, or the young dragon had sneezed on a scroll again. Shining still didn’t know why Spike’s fire could send messages. Could other dragons do that? Was Spike some sort of mutant because of the way Twily had hatched him?

Shining wasn’t thinking about all of that, though. He opened up the scroll and took a look at it. The parchment had been covered in symbols arranged into patterns that formed words, and those words had been arranged into sentences.

Yes; this was definitely a message. No doubt about it. It would probably be a good idea to read it. Shining started doing that.

Dear Shining Armor and Princess Cadence,

Help! Twilight’s disappeared! I was talking to her and she just vanished! The girls think this might have something to do with how the sun and the moon are stuck in the sky! We’re heading to Canterlot to talk to the Princesses and try to figure out how to find Twilight!

Anyway, how are you doing? I’m doing okay, aside from Twilight vanishing. Write back soon!

Love, Spike

It was always nice to hear from Spike. Shining felt like he needed to spend more time with the little guy some time. The part about Twilight disappearing right before Spike’s eyes was pretty worrying, though. It made Cadence’s absence a lot more concerning.

Shining set the letter aside and tried to put all of the pieces together. Cadence was nowhere to be seen. Twilight had apparently disappeared right in front of Spike. And finally, the sun was stuck in the sky, casting a perpetual dawn.

After Shining had finished adding it all up, a pang of terror suddenly hit him. He galloped down the hall, towards the nursery where he’d left a sleeping Flurry Heart. When Shining flung open the nursery door and saw that Flurry was still sound asleep in her crib, he let loose a sigh of relief.

Still, even if Flurry Heart was apparently okay, something was definitely going on with the princesses. As the former Captain of the Equestrian Guard, Shining had a good sense for when things were wrong. He knew that something was up based on several subtle clues, like Twilight disappearing and the sky being all messed up.

Speculating would only make Shining feel worse, though. He was completely in the dark as to what was going on, and there was no point in trying to guess. If Shining let his imagination go wild, he’d wind up going Twily Nanners. He needed to take a deep breath and calm himself down.

Standing over his daughter’s crib, Shining closed his eyes and took a deep breath in.

Then a huge magical portal opened up behind him.

That wasn’t a part of the breathing process.

Shining turned away from Flurry’s crib to look at the swirling portal that had opened behind him. Almost instinctively, he tried to position himself to try and guard the sleeping Flurry Heart from whatever might emerge from the portal. Thankfully, it soon became apparent that such measures weren’t necessary.

The most sinister-looking unicorn stallion that Shining Armor had ever seen stepped out of the portal. He had sharp features, a robe, and the world’s most evil goatee. Despite the fact that he looked like a Dracula, though, the stallion had a concerned expression on his face.

The unicorn looked around the nursery for a moment, trying to figure out where he was, and then looked at Shining Armor. His worry turned into determination once he got his bearings.

“Prince Armor,” he said. “Is Princess Cadence here? Has she vanished as well?”

“Why did you open up a portal into my daughter’s nursery?” Shining Armor asked. “Why is the nursery the first place you decided to go looking for us?”

“I don’t have time to explain my search process,” the unicorn who was probably a supervillain said. “Is Princess Cadence here or isn’t she?”

Shining shook his head. “No. She’s gone… I’m guessing Celestia and Luna are gone too?”

The stallion nodded, a dire expression on his face. Great; this meant all of Shining’s worries hadn’t been unfounded. And that also meant that something had happened to Cadence. She wasn’t just out for a flight. Whatever had happened to Twily, Celestia, and Luna had happened to her, too.

“What about your daughter?” The unicorn asked, snapping Shining out of his train of thought. “Is Flurry Heart missing as well?”

Shining looked over his shoulder at his daughter’s crib, as if he needed to double-check. Sure enough, Flurry Heart was still fast asleep, snoring lightly. Somehow the giant magical portal hadn’t woken her up. Babies were weird.

“Flurry Heart’s okay,” Shining said as he turned back to the robed stallion. “Who are you, anyway? Why are you even here?”

The unicorn looked annoyed, as if he didn’t see what the point in making introductions even was. “My name is Chancellor Neighsay of the EEA. I came here to bring you and Princess Cadence to Canterlot… Obviously, though, that won’t be happening.”

Shining blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“With the princesses gone, Equestria is entering a state of emergency,” Neighsay said. “We need to gather our kingdom’s leaders in order to decide what—”

“No, I mean I don’t understand why a member of the EEA is the one doing this,” Shining clarified. “Isn’t this the job of a messenger, or a royal guard, or… Literally anypony else?”

“Nopony else had portal magic.” Neighsay tapped the golden badge on his robe. It shined a bit, and then the portal he had stepped out of flickered out of existence.

“Okay,” Shining said. “That just raises questions about why you even have that.”

Neighsay narrowed his eyes irritably at Shining Armor. It would have been intimidating if Shining hadn’t just found out that this scary-looking guy was basically just Equestria’s most powerful school superintendent. Now that Shining knew Neighsay worked for Equestria. though, he wasn’t anywhere near as anxious about the unicorn with a face like a funeral parlor.

“We can discuss why I have an incredibly powerful portal-opening badge later,” Neighsay said. “Right now, you and your daughter must are needed in Canterlot. We need you at this meeting, Shining Armor.”

He was right, of course. Shining knew that. If the princesses really were missing, this meeting in Canterlot absolutely needed to happen. And, as someone who was connected to pretty much all of the princesses in one way or another, Shining Armor would need to be there. It was all just a lot to take in.

Today was turning out to be a real dumpster of a day.

Shining looked over his shoulder once again. Flurry Heart was starting to wake up. Just seeing her made Shining feel better. If she’d gone missing too, he had no idea what he’d do.

“Right, right,” Shining said apologetically. “Give me a moment to talk to the palace staff. It won’t take long.”

Neighsay stamped his hoof impatiently.

“I still have to contact Equestria’s other leaders,” he said. “Make it quick.”

Shining nodded solemnly. He trotted towards the nursery door and opened it out into the hallway. Shining stuck his head out and looked both ways. There were no servants nearby to tell that he was leaving. Luckily, the acoustics in the palace were really good.

“HEY!” Shining Armor yelled as loudly as he could. “I’M GOING TO CANTERLOT! SUNBURST’S IN CHARGE ‘TILL I GET BACK!”

Shining’s voice echoed down the crystal hallways until it gradually faded into silence. He waited a moment for some kind of response.

“… ‘kay,” a quiet voice called out from somewhere in the distance.

Satisfied, Shining went back into the nursery and closed the door behind him. Flurry was peeking out of her crib. She was staring at Neighsay in confusion, clearly not knowing who this scary weirdo in her room was. Neighsay, meanwhile, was giving Shining the same look that Flurry was giving him.

“Okay,” Shining said. “We can get going.”

Oh Great, It's This Guy

Very few ponies knew that there was a crisis meeting room in the heart of Canterlot Castle. This was because, whenever there was an emergency, Celestia and Luna usually wound up just having meeting in their throne room. Since the princesses were missing, though, it felt weird to hold a meeting in front of their empty thrones. And so, Chancellor Neighsay wound up bringing Shining Armor and Flurry Heart to the underused meeting room.

“I still have several others to gather,” Neighsay said as they stepped through his portal. “I really probably could have planned this out better.”

Shining couldn’t disagree. When they stepped into the barebones conference room, it was only occupied by one other pony. Granted, that pony was Starswirl the Bearded, which was impressive, but it still wasn’t anywhere near enough people to hold a meeting over this.

Neighsay tapped his badge and the portal they had stepped through closed in on itself. Almost immediately, a second portal opened in its place.

“This should not take too long,” Neighsay said as he made his exit. “In the meantime, feel free to do whatever it is you’re supposed to do with babies. Feed them, I assume.”

Before Shining could point out that this conference room was woefully understocked on baby food, Neighay stepped through the portal. It quickly closed behind him, leaving Shining and Flurry Heart behind.

Holding Flurry Heart in the stylish front-slung baby carrier that he had gotten for Arbor Day, Shining turned around towards the large conference table where Starswirl was sat. The two stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Shining really had no idea what to say. He’d only ever spoken to Starswirl when he’d set up the castle’s new security system, and Starswirl had merged the pieces of Chrysalis’s throne into the castle walls.

A lot of good that had done, apparently. Looks like that had been a waste of a day.

“So…” Shining said slowly. “Princesses are missing.”

“Yes,” Starswirl said. “Indeed.”

Shining looked around, hoping that Neighsay would be returning soon. He wouldn’t be.

“Princesses are missing,” Shining repeated. “That’s… That’s pretty bad.”

Starswirl nodded in agreement.

“Indeed,” he said. “Pretty bad.”

This was torture. Shining wished he could explode. Thankfully, the awkward moment was cut short by an aristocrat bursting into the room.

“Pardon my tardiness,” Fancy Pants said as he barged into the room through its side door. The monocle-wearing stallion-about-town trotted promptly over to the meeting table and took a seat. “I hurried over as soon as I heard. Nast bit of business, all this.”

“I have no idea who you are,” Starswirl said.

Shining blinked in surprise. Flurry Heart, still in her sling, waved her hooves, presumably also surprised.

“Fancy Pants?” Shining said in disbelief. “What are you doing here? You’re just some rich guy.”

“I’m not just some rich guy,” Fancy Pants clarified. “I’m the rich guy. I’m involved in all manner of things in running Canterlot, and I’m here representing civilian interests. I assure you, Prince Armor, I have a great deal of resources to add to resolving this crisis.”

Shining thought about this. “I guess that makes sense. I’m sure you’ll be very helpful. I mean, it’s not like you could be as useless as Blueblood.”

Fancy Pants let out a good-natured laugh.

“Indeed!” He said. “What a tool!”

“I beg your pardon,” Starswirl interjected. “Who is Blueblood? I’ve never heard of them, but they sound like a complete chump.”

Oh, right. Shining Armor had forgotten that Starswirl had been trapped in another dimension for over a thousand years. That was kind of a weird detail to forget about someone. Shining had no clue why that fact had somehow slipped his mind.

“Blueblood is Celestia’s nephew,” Shining Armor said as he took a seat at the conference table. He pulled Flurry Heart out of her sling and set her in his horse-lap. “She adopted him, just like she adopted Cadence. He’s kind of a brat.”

Starswirl raised an eyebrow.

“If she adopted him, why is he her nephew?” Starswirl asked. “Wouldn’t she be her son?”

“Yes, nobody’s quite clear on how any of that works,” Fancy Pants said. “Sometimes Princess Celestia says things and we all just sort of roll with it. She’s been ruling Equestria for over a thousand years—she can use whatever terminology she wants.”

“I’ll have to ask her about all of this once she’s found,” Starswirl mused. “Maybe she just doesn’t know what parents are. I probably should have taught her and Luna that. Seems kind of obvious in hindsight.”

The portal opened again. Chancellor Neighsay stepped back into the room, this time joined by two more individuals. Shining Armor recognized one of them—it was Thorax. Shining was a little surprised to see the King of the Changelings, but he didn’t mind the help.

The other pony was a unicorn who Shining was unfamiliar with. Despite that, however, Shining Armor felt reasonably sure that he could guess who she was. The broken horn was a dead giveaway.

“Ah, Sir Pants,” Neighsay said as the portal closed behind him. “Good to see you. I’m sure you’re all familiar with Thorax and Tempest Shadow?”

“Yes, I was in Canterlot when she led the army that enslaved us,” Fancy Pants said cheerily. “Good to see you again, Miss Tempest!”

“Likewise.” Tempest Shadow gave Fancy Pants a courteous, yet awkward nod. She briefly scanned the table before taking the seat across from Shining Armor. Once she did, her attention immediately went to the winged baby Shining was holding in her lap.

“A baby alicorn?” Tempest mused. “Oh, you must be… uh… Prince…”

“Shining Armor,” Shining said. “We’ve never met. Flurry and I were in the Crystal Empire during your whole invasion thing.”

Tempest nodded. “That was probably for the best on your part. I would have turned your daughter to stone and used her to charge a superweapon.”

“Yeah, no, that would’ve been bad,” Shining agreed.

They were soon joined by Thorax, who took the seat immediately besides Shining. It was still a little strange to see Thorax with his bright-green carapace. He’d had it for a while, but Shining had gotten used to how Thorax had looked during the time he’d spent at the Crystal Palace. It was odd to think that the ruler of the Changelings had once basically just been a bum who’d lived with them.

While Shining wasn’t used to Thorax’s appearance, Flurry Heart certainly recognized him. Before Shining could stop her, the little alicorn flew out of her father’s lap and up to Thorax’s eye level, where she cooed adorably. Thorax looked like he was equally happy to see her.

“Hello, Flurry Heart!” Thorax said excitedly. He seemed to almost forget that anyone else was in the room. “Oh, she’s gotten so big!”

“She’s pretty much the same size,” Shining pointed out. He reached a hoof up and placed it on his daughter’s head, gently lowering her. “Sweetie, don’t distract the leader of our closes allied nation.”

“Now that everyone’s here, we can begin.” Neighsay said as he trotted to the head of the table.

“This is everyone?” Starswirl asked. “Shouldn’t we wait for Twilight Sparkle and her friends to arrive?”

Neighsay shook his head. “I want to begin discussing what to do immediately. They won’t arrive for several hours.”

“Why don’t you just use your portals to meet them while they’re taking the train to Canterlot?” Tempest asked.

“My magic doesn’t work on trains,” Neighsay said.

“Why don’t we go over what we know?” Fancy Pants asked. “We can find out how best to hold down the fort until the princesses are located. I can get the word around to the upper crust, as it were.”

“Yes,” Starswirl agreed. “And I can set up a system to move the sun and moon for the time being.”

“I can engage in black ops missions and wet-work assignments against enemies of the state,” Tempest offered. “I’m sure that will help somehow.”

“I don’t have anything to contribute,” Thorax suggested. “I’m honestly not sure why I’m here.”

Neighsay lifted a hoof to quiet everyone’s extremely helpful contributions to the meeting. “There will be time for all of that. First, though, we should ask Equestria’s temporary ruler how we should begin the proceedings.”

Shining couldn’t help but raise his brows as he pulled Flurry Heart back into his lap. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that Equestria would need a temporary ruler while the princesses were missing. Everything was happening so quickly, and it was all so surreal. It was difficult to think straight about how this emergency could be handled.

Who could be trusted to lead Equestria in the princesses’ absence, though? Who was wise enough and levelheaded enough to lead the ponies in this time of crisis? Shining hoped whoever was chosen would be able to handle the pressure. But what pony could possible fill those horseshoes?

The door to the meeting room once again swung open, this time much more loudly and obnoxiously. All eyes turned towards the stallion who was rudely intruding on the meeting that hadn’t actually really started yet.

“You can all relax!” Blueblood exclaimed as he trotted into the room. “I’m here now! We can finally get the meeting underway!”

A collective groan escaped from everypony else in the room. Even Flurry Heart seemed annoyed at Blueblood’s presence, which was surprising for a baby.

“Oh great!” Fancy Pants exclaimed. “It’s this guy!”

“Nopony asked you to be here, Prince Blueblood.” Chancellor Neighsay sounded as if he was trying to sound respectful, but the scorn in his voice was hard to mask. Luckily, Blueblood appeared not to notice it.

“How did you even find out about this meeting?” Neighsay asked. “The High Chancellors ordered everyone to keep this a secret!”

“I have my methods,” Blueblood said as he took a seat at the table. Once he was seated, he tried to lean back so he could hoist his hooves onto the table. He couldn’t manage it, though, so he just fidgeted around in his chair for a solid minute before finally giving up.

“You did an excellent job keeping this meeting a secret,” Blueblood said. “But, with my masterful skills of deduction, I was able to walk past the door and hear a bunch of people talking.”

Everyone stared at Blueblood in disbelief, except for Flurry Heart, who was staring at Thorax’s antlers. Blueblood looked to be oblivious to how much everyone was already fed up with him. He was generally oblivious to that sort of thing in Shining Armor’s experience.

“So what’s this meeting about?” Blueblood asked.

Neighsay sighed.

“We’re discussing how to handle the princesses’ disappearance. If you insist on being a part of—”

“The princesses have disappeared?” Blueblood asked, surprised.

Neighsay stammered, dumbfounded.

“Did you not notice the sun and moon aren’t moving?” He asked incredulously.

Blueblood scoffed.

“Of course not,” he said. “What reason could I possibly have to look outside? That’s where the dirt lives. I can’t be asked to look outside at all of that garbage until after I’ve had my morning tea.”

“Could we please get back on track?” Starswirl asked impatiently. “I’d like to meet Twilight’s friends at the train station so we can get to work solving this problem. Also so we can get lattes.”

“Yeah, I want a latte, too,” Thorax added.

“I’m still not sure why I was asked to come here,” Tempest added.

Neighsay cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course. Forgive me. I’ll get straight to the point so we can all get lattes. As I was saying, until the princesses are found, Equestria will need to appoint an interim ruler. Now, going by the Equestrian Government’s chain of command…”

“We have one of those?” Shining asked, baffled. He’d certainly never heard anything about a chain of command. You’d think that would have been something that would’ve come up when he became a prince.

Neighsay gave Shining an irritated glare, clearly unhappy about being constantly interrupted.

“Going by the chain of command…” Neighsay continued testily. “We have a clear idea of who Equestria’s interim ruler should be. The High Chancellors are all in agreement. By their authority, Equestria’s temporary ruler shall be—”

“Say no more!” Blueblood said loudly. “I accept the position of Equestria’s temporary ruler. You chancellors have made the right choice. I can assure you I’ll uphold the position with grace and aplomb. When do I get my diamond-encrusted crown and golden sword?”

“There’s a golden sword?” Tempest asked tentatively.

While Neighsay began to fume in silent fury, Fancy Pants sputtered indignantly.

“This is outrageous!” Fancy Pants said. “Neighsay, the aristocracy will not allow this buffoon to serve as Equestria’s ruler! He has no qualifications beyond riding on his aunt’s coattails and attending parties!”

“Oh, don’t be absurd!” Blueblood scoffed. “Auntie doesn’t even wear coattails!”

“Can I please see the golden sword?” Tempest asked.

Chancellor Neighsay noisily slammed his hoof onto the surface of the table, causing it to shake slightly. The unicorn looked positively furious, and was gritting his teeth as he looked at the other ponies. The sheer anger on the chancellor’s face more-or-less quieted everyone down, except for Flurry Heart, who had started crying.

Thorax kind of looked like he was going to cry, too. Shining ignored that and tried to quiet his daughter down.

“Enough!” Neighsay barked. “All of you need to be quiet! I was trying to be official here, but no! Everypony has to get a word in edgewise! Well, you know what? Fine! I don’t care! Shining Armor’s the one in charge! Whatever!”

Neighsay slumped back down into his chair and held his head in his hooves. Everyone else turned to stare at Shining Armor. Even Flurry Heart had stopped crying and was looking up at her father in surprise.

Shining almost couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He might have thought he’d just misheard what Neighsay had said, but the way everyone was staring at him told Shining that wasn’t the case. The Prince of the Crystal Empire looked around at everyone else sitting at the table.

“… Beg pardon?” Shining asked quietly.

“Yes, it’s you,” Neighsay groaned. He sounded like he had the mother of all migraines. “You’re already the prince of the Crystal Empire. You’re related to most of the princesses. You’re the interim ruler.”

A heavy silence hung in the room while Neighsay rubbed his temples. After a few moments, Fancy Pants finally spoke up.

“Well. That works out, then,” he said chipperly. “I’ve got no issues with this decision.”

“Agreed,” Starswirl said in his old-man voice. “Now we can focus on important things, like how we can go about finding the princesses.”

Shining blinked in disbelief. Everyone was accepting all of this way too easily! They didn’t have any hang-ups about Shining Armor ruling the entire nation while the princesses were gone?

“Now, hold up…” Shining said.

“And lattes,” Thorax said, not holding up. “We can focus on lattes, too, right?”

“Indeed,” Starswirl said with a wise nod.

“Guys, hang on…” Shining said.

“I have several more meetings I need to attend,” Neighsay said. “Later today, we’ll be holding a much larger strategic meeting with Princess Twilight’s compatriots. For the time being, Prince Armor, consider all of us your cabinet. We’re all at your disposal.”

“Wait, I’m the ruler of a sovereign nation,” Thorax pointed out. “I don’t… think I can be drafted into another leader’s cabinet? I’m pretty sure, at least.”

Shining Armor was getting a little annoyed at everyone ignoring his protests. He looked down at Flurry Heart, who he was cradling in his hooves. She gave her dad a look of sympathy. She was clearly on Shining’s side here.

With a sigh, Shining looked back up at those gathered around the table.

“Okay, seriously, you—”

“This is preposterous!” Blueblood yelled out. “There must be some sort of mistake here! Shining Armor can’t be in charge of Equestria; he’s only been a prince for a few years! He lacks the experience!”

Shining was absolutely horrified to realize that he actually agreed with what Blueblood was saying. He briefly considered changing his opinion, but decided it ultimately wouldn’t be worth it.

Neighsay leveled Blueblood with an irritable glare.

“With all due respect, Prince Blueblood, he has enough experience for what’s required,” Neighsay said with barely hidden contempt. “He actually has experience running a nation. What do you have experience in?”

“Going to galas!” Blueblood snapped proudly. “And being handsome!”

That didn’t prove anything, but Blueblood was acting like he’d made an incredibly good point. Everyone else looked around the table, unsure of what exactly to say or do. Shining looked down at Flurry Heart to see if she had any ideas, but she was a baby and only wanted to look at shiny things. She wouldn’t be any help.

“Look, I’m… flattered you think I’m up to the job,” Shining said, trying to be tactful. “But I… don’t think I have what it takes to substitute for the princesses.”

“Well, of course you don’t,” Neighsay said quickly. “Nopony does. But you’re the best option we have and the least likely to somehow get everyone killed.”

Blueblood scoffed. “I wouldn’t get everyone killed,” he muttered petulantly.

“Rest assured, Prince Armor, the princesses’ advisors and chancellors will help to lighten the load,” Neighsay continued. “Your number one duty is to help keep everypony calm. The ponies of Equestria will need someone trustworthy in power to look towards for guidance in these troubling times. They’ll need someone who can look them in the eyes and tell them everything is okay… You know, by lying to them.”

Shining still wasn’t completely convinced. He knew that Neighsay was trying to reassure him, but it was hard to take comfort in the unicorn’s words. The guy sounded like he constantly had some sort of sinister scheme going on. He sounded more villainous than some villains Shining had met.

“I’m sure you can handle the job, Shining,” Fancy Pants, who did not sound like the living embodiment of dread, said. “And besides, I’m sure Princess Twilight’s friends will find the missing princesses in no time.”

Starswirl nodded. “Yes. Going by how these things have gone in the past, it should only take about half an hour; maybe an hour at most.”

Something about that didn’t seem quite right to Shining. Sure, normally he’d trust Twilight’s friends to solve whatever world-ending calamity was facing Equestria all on their own. But this time was different; Shining’s wife and sister were missing. Not helping to look for Cadence and Twilight felt… wrong.

“So, what?” Shining asked. “I’m just supposed to sit around and do nothing while Twilight’s friends take care of everything?”

“Yes,” Neighsay said with a nod. “Just like the princesses.”

Shining shook his head, frustrated. He let go of Flurry Heart so that she could stretch her wings. The young princess floated beside her father as he stood up and gave everyone in the room a very serious look.

“Well, you know what I think of that?” Shining Armor asked. “I think that’s a load of mashed potatoes right there.”

Thorax and Blueblood both gasped in shock.

“Prince Armor!” Neighsay chastised. “I realize you’re frustrated, but there’s no need to say things like that! Please calm down!”

“To heck with calm!” Shining raised his hoof so he could slam the table with authority. He didn’t want to startle Flurry Heart, however, so instead he wound up just lightly patting the table. “My two best friends are missing! I’m not going to just sit on the sidelines for this; I’m going to help in any way I can!”

“I’m with Prince Armor.”

Tempest Shadow surprised Shining by standing up as well.

“The princesses are missing; we need all of the expertise we can get,” she continued. “Also, I’m still not sure why I was brought to this meeting. I don’t even work for Equestria, really. I just do favors for the princesses sometimes.”

“Now is not the time for this!” Neighsay exclaimed. “I brought you all here for a reason, and certainly didn’t choose your names out of a hat at random. Shining Armor needs to remain in Canterlot and act as temporary leader. If he goes running off in search of the missing princesses, we’ll have no choice but to fill the position with the next available prince!”

All eyes turned towards Prince Blueblood, whose eyes had lit up like a bonfire.

“Well, that works out then!” Blueblood said excitedly. “Armor gets to go searching for auntie and the other princesses, and I get to be Equestria’s temporary leader! That seems fair, doesn’t it, Shi—”

“Okay, I’ll stay,” Shining said quickly. “Anything to avoid having Blueblood on the throne.”

“Excellent.” Neighsay stood up from the table and pressed his hoof to his badge. A small portal opened up behind him. “I have more random ponies to gather. Once Princess Twilight’s friends arrive, we will hold a strategy meeting to tell them what we know.”

“Do… do any of us need to be here for that?” Thorax asked, confused. “I’m not 100% clear on what Tempest or I could add.”

Neighsay ignored Thorax’s very reasonable observation. He turned and walked through the portal, which promptly closed behind him.

“… It seems like there probably could have been a more efficient way to handle all of this,” Tempest pointed out.

I'm About to Get Kidnapped Again

It took about an hour for Twilight’s friends to show up at Canterlot Castle. In that period of time, the meeting room had gotten a lot more crowded.

Ponies had been coming and going through the meeting room’s door more times than Shining could count. Some were brought in by Neighsay. Some arrived on their own. Some of them were janitors who wanted to know if it was okay to clean up. Throughout all of it, the only ponies who hadn’t left once were Shining and Flurry.

Well, them and Blueblood.

It wasn’t hard for Shining to surmise what was going through Blueblood’s head. Judging from the dark expression on the other prince’s face, Blueblood was stewing about not being asked to rule while the princesses were missing. He didn’t say anything, or direct any scorn towards Shining. He just sat in his chair, hooves crossed, pouting like an angry child.

Shining would have felt bad if Blueblood didn’t look like he was about to have a tantrum.

Eventually, things settled down and all of the necessary ponies had been gathered. This included the ponies who had been present at Neighsay’s inexplicable earlier meeting; most of the high chancellors; the leadership of the royal guard; various dignitaries and government officials; and the janitor who was still waiting to clean the room. The room was filled with the cautious mumbling of politics.

Finally, after several minutes of old people using big words at each other, they arrived: Twilight’s friends. The Elements of Harmony. The mares who kept saving Equestria even though they never got a trophy for doing it.

Also, Spike was with them.

“Make way, everypony!” Pinkie exclaimed. She was the first one to enter the room, wheeling her Party Cannon™ in ahead of her. “The search party can begin!”

The rest of Twilight’s friends followed in after Pinkie. They all looked surprised to see all of the ponies gathered in the meeting room. Shining couldn’t blame them; whenever an emergency normally came up, Celestia would usually debrief the girls in the throne room. Neighsay, meanwhile, apparently wanted to handle things much more officially.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Neighsay said as he took his place at the front of the room. “Please, be seated. Prince Armor, would you kindly join me down here?”

Shining felt everyone turn to look at him… Everyone except Blueblood, who was still pouting off in a corner somewhere. Feeling self-conscious, Shining got up out of his seat. Flurry was hovering right by her father’s head. Shining reached up and took his daughter into his hooves, nestling her into his baby carrier as he made his way to the front of the room.

“As you all know,” Neighsay began, “Shining Armor has been chosen to act as Equestria’s temporary ruler while the princesses are missing.”

Applejack, who was sitting in the front like a nerd, raised her hoof.

“Uh, beg pardon,” she said. “None of us heard anything about that.”

“Neither did we,” said all of the government officials in unison.

“Well, you’ve all heard it now,” Neighsay said, doing his best to sound as calm and sinister as always. “While Princess Twilight’s friends search for the missing princesses, Shining Armor will fill in for them as leader. That’s why I asked him to lead this strategy meeting.”

Shining blinked and turned to Neighsay.

“You didn’t ask me to do that,” he whispered.

Neighsay turned to Shining Armor and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. For the first time, Shining saw there was genuine uncertainty in Neighsay’s eyes. It struck Shining Armor that Neighsay was at a complete loss of how to handle this situation with the princesses. Shining couldn’t blame him—after all, how could anyone know how to handle an emergency of this magnitude?

“Listen, I’m in over my head here,” Neighsay whispered. “We all are. None of us know how to handle this situation. Now, just… do whatever you did when you were Captain of the Guard.”

Shining wanted to argue, but Neighsay’s confession made him think twice. It was beginning to dawn on Shining that, without the princesses to oversee things, almost nopony in Equestria’s government seemed to know what to do. Refusing to go along with this meeting would only make things worse.

Defeated, Shining cleared his throat and looked around for something to use. There was a blackboard and chalk behind him.

“Okay,” Shining said as he lifted a piece of chalk up with his magic. “Let’s go over what we know.”

Nopony said anything. Evidently, they were expecting Shining Armor to offer up all of the info. But Shining really didn’t know anything. At a loss, he turned and began to write on the chalkboard in big, white letters.

PRINCESSES

Shining turned to see if that got any reaction out of the assembled ponies. Nope. Nothing. Shining paused for a moment before adding to his statement.

PRINCESSES
=
MISSING

Still nothing. Shining looked back to the chalkboard and tried to think of what to add. After a few moments, he decided to just underline the word ‘missing’ and add an exclamation point.

PRINCESSES
=
MISSING!

Several of the ponies began taking notes. Now they were getting somewhere!

“Okay,” Shining said as he set the chalk back down. “Does anyone know, um… anything?”

A single, scaly claw rose up among the crowd of heads. That purple claw rose up into the air as Spike used his wings to rise up into view. Shining was a little relieved that the first person to contribute to the conversation was someone he already knew. He didn’t know if he could stand taking questions from random strangers right off the bat.

It was still a little weird to see Spike with wings, but that wasn’t important at the moment. Shining could think about the unceasing passage of time some other day.

“Spike,” Shining said, pointing to the dragon even though he was the only one with his hand raised. “Your letter mentioned you were talking to Twilight when she disappeared. What can you tell us?”

Spike lowered his arm and tapped his chin. The little dragon looked like he was slowly starting to realize how many ponies were paying attention to him. Shining hoped he didn’t try to sing the national anthem or something, like during the Crystal Games. Then Shining realized that was a weird thing to hope for and silently chastised himself.

Meanwhile, Flurry Heart had picked up the chalk Shining had been using with her magic and was using it to draw indecipherable scribbles on the chalkboard behind him.

“Well,” Spike said, “it was just a few hours ago. Twilight was awake, and getting all anxious about something.”

“Okay,” Shining said. “So far, sounds normal. Continue.”

“Well, I went to talk to her about whatever it was she was upset about,” Spike continued. “We had a heartwarming moment where we both learned a valuable lesson about the importance of friendship and family and all that. Then she disappeared.”

Shining nodded, a smile forming on his face. It finally felt like progress was being made.

“Alright,” Shining said. “What else?”

Spike though about it for a moment. The longer he stayed silent, the more Shining felt his hopes dying down. Finally, after a solid minute of thinking it over, Spike shrugged.

“Uh, nothing,” he said. “That’s pretty much it.”

Shining sighed. So much for that lead. He’d really hoped Spike would have had more to go on.

“Alright,” Shining said. “Thank you, Spike. You can sit down.”

Spike looked a little sheepish. He was probably feeling guilty about not being able to offer more help. Slowly, the flying dragon lowered himself back down into his seat. Several of the government ponies applauded. Shining wasn’t sure why.

With that avenue explored, Shining wasn’t sure if anypony else would have anything else ton contribute. Just as he was wondering what the point of this meeting even was, though, another member of the audience raised their hoof. Shining didn’t quite recognize the hoof’s owner right away, but when he heard their voice he instantly knew who they were.

“Uh, hello?” Flash Sentry asked as he waved his raised hoof around. “Permission to speak, sir?”

“Granted,” Shining said without thinking about it. “I mean… I’m not your captain anymore, Flash. You don’t need to ask me.”

“Oh. Right.”

The yellow guardpony flew up and over the crowd before joining Shining Armor and Neighsay at the front of the room.

“I’m the one who reported Princess Celestia’s disappearance,” he said as he stood at attention. “I saw her vanish, just like Spike saw Princess Twilight. I don’t know how much information I can offer, but…”

“Any information at all would be helpful,” Shining said.

“Yes,” Neighsay agreed. “We’re really desperate here.”

Flash Sentry nodded and began recounting his story.

“Well… I had balcony duty this morning. That means it was my turn to guard Princess Celestia while she raised the sun. We walked out to the palace’s balcony, and I explained the different kinds of punk rock to her. Then she started to raise the sun.”

Flash Sentry paused as he tried to remember every little detail.

“Suddenly, she stopped,” he said. “She’d barely lifted the sun up over the horizon when she turned to me with this annoyed look on her face. She looked me dead in the eye, sighed, and said ‘Great. I’m about to get kidnapped again. What a day, am I right?’ Then she voiped.”

Neighsay sputtered in shock. “I beg your pardon?!”

“She voiped,” Flash clarified. “She disappeared… and she voiped. That’s the sound you make when you suddenly disappear. Voip.”

Neighsay stared at Flash Sentry as if he was insane… Not Neighsay, but Flash Sentry. Shining decided to intervene before this spiraled into some sort of long diatribe about sound effects.

“You’re saying Princess Celestia was abducted?” Shining asked.

Flash Sentry nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s what she said. She seemed really done with the whole thing, too. I really can’t get across in words how fed up she seemed to be with the whole situation.”

“Right.” Shining paused for a moment to consider what this meant. “Thank you, Flash. You can sit down now.”

“I don’t want to,” Flash Sentry said.

There wasn’t really anything Shining Armor could do about that, so he decided to just move on. Flurry Heart wiggled around in her baby carrier as Shining turned to address the crowd of ponies. She did not care at all about trying to piece together what had happened to the princesses. Shining wasn’t even sure she’d realized her mom was missing yet.

“Alright, um…” Shining ran his hoof through his mane. “I’m not… really sure where to go from here. We don’t really have any leads to where the princesses are.”

Pinkie Pie laughed dismissively from somewhere in the back of the room.

“Pfft!” Pinkie scoffed. “No big deal! We’ll just search everywhere on the planet until we find them!”

Shining pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“Okay,” Shining said. “I don’t want to say that’s a bad plan, but I can see a couple of issues with it. First of all, the planet’s… kind of big, Pinkie Pie. Secondly, um…” He paused.

“Well, no, the first issue is really all you need,” Shining decided. “Don’t try searching all over the world; it’ll take a while.”

Pinkie Pie, deflated, lowered herself back into her seat.

“The scope of our search need not be so vast,” Starswirl the Bearded said from somewhere among the crowd. He raised himself up to his full height, making his presence known. Shining Armor had honestly forgotten the old wizard was even there. Luckily, his pointy hat made him easy to spot in the crowd.

“Whatever magic was used to abduct the princesses, I can devise a way to trace it to its source. I know a needlessly long and complex ritual that can be used for such a purpose, but I will need specific ingredients to perform it. There are five ancient relics scattered all over Equestria, and somepony will have to go on a long, heart-warming adventure to find them.”

Shining Armor didn’t know why Starswirl hadn’t brought this up earlier in the meeting. It seemed kind of important. Nevertheless, they finally had something to go off of!

“That’s great news!” Shining exclaimed. “Where are these relics? We can rally together search parties and—”

As if she hadn’t even realized Shining Armor was speaking, Rainbow Dash suddenly spoke up.

“Five relics?” She said. “Easy! There’s five of us!”

“It is rather convenient,” Rarity said. She had been unable to find a seat, and was just sort of standing off to the side. “But it wouldn’t be the first time we did something like this. Remember when we gathered the Pillars’ artifacts to free them from Limbo?”

“No,” Starswirl said. “I was in Limbo. How would I remember that?”

The rest of Twilight’s friends began voicing their agreement. Shining felt a little disheartened to hear that they already had the situation figured out. The girls were probably more capable for this sort of ridiculous quest than a random search party; Shining knew that. But he couldn’t help but feel like he was being told he didn’t need to be involved in this.

“It’s good you all have this taken care of,” Neighsay said. “Isn’t that good, Prince Armor? You don’t need to be involved in the search for your wife and sister. You can focus on politics, like everyone wants to do anyway.”

Shining was too disappointed to question Neighsay’s priorities in life. He watched as Starswirl led Twilight’s friends out of the room, off to discuss his needlessly dramatic magic. The door swung shut behind them, leaving Shining Armor and his daughter behind.

“Well, that’s over and done with.” Neighsay said, sounding relieved. “Now we can focus on Equestria’s welfare. We need to discuss various policies to put into place while the princesses are away, and I’m sure everyone here has questions for Prince Armor. Would anyone like to make a statement?”

“I feel completely useless,” Shining stated quietly.

Neighsay looked back at Shining, a little surprised by the despair he no-doubt heard in the Prince’s voice. After a moment of consideration, the chancellor looked back at the assembled politicians and cleared his throat.

“On second thought, that concludes today’s business,” he said authoritatively. “Prince Armor will speak with you all one-on-one later. You can all leave.”

They did.

“Prince Armor, I realize you’re distraught,” Neighsay said once the room had been mostly cleared. “But you need to put on a strong face. The ponies of Equestria will begin to panic once they learn the princesses are missing. It will be up to you to ensure that the kingdom doesn’t tear itself apart!”

Shining sighed and hugged Flurry Heart to his chest. By this point, the little alicorn had completely covered the blackboard in scribbles. It looked like the work of a madman, even though Flurry was relatively well-balanced for a baby.

“I get that!” Shining said. “But Cadance and Twily are missing, and it feels like nopony wants me to be involved in the search efforts! Starswirl and Twilight’s friends just pranced out of here without even talking to me!”

Neighsay raised a hoof and gestured for Shining to calm down.

“Now, now,” he said. “I understand how you feel. But surely by now you must realize that this is how they do things, yes? They get told about what needs to be done, then they go and do it. Not a lot of beating around the bush with those girls.”

Now that Shining thought about it, Neighsay had a point. How many times had Twilight and her friends literally gone galloping off as soon as the princesses had told them what the problem was? On top of that, the girls were probably in just as much of a rush to find Twily as Shining was. She was their best friend, after all.

“I guess you’re right,” Shining sighed. “I suppose there’s… not really anything I could do, either.”

“That’s the spirit!” Neighsay said, sounding cheerful for the first time since Shining had met him. “It’s important to know what can and can’t be done. If there’s anything being overthrown and held captive by a little girl taught me, it’s that it’s best not to try and exceed your limitations.”

Shining nodded, despondent.

“Yeah…” He said. “Yeah, I—wait, you were held captive by a little girl?”

Before Neighsay could elucidate on what was probably a hilarious anecdote, someone who evidently hadn’t left the room spoke up.

“Um. Excuse me,” Thorax said from somewhere in the back. Somehow, Shining Armor hadn’t noticed that the pastel-colored bug with giant antlers was still in the room. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but… I just wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help.”

Shining looked at Thorax, and couldn’t really hide his surprise at the offer.

“Don’t you have a kingdom to run?” Shining asked.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Thorax said. “Phalanx is filling in for me.”

“That sounds worse than if you’d left no one in charge,” Shining pointed out. He said this despite never having met Phalanx.

“It’s fine,” Thorax repeated. “And I really do want to help! I know what it’s like to suddenly be made the leader of your people. It can be overwhelming! If there’s anything I can do to help you out, anything at all, I’m here to help. You can count on me, Shining.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Flash Sentry, who hadn’t left with the others.

“Egad!” screamed Neighsay, who had forgotten that Flash Sentry hadn’t left with the others.

Despite how awful he felt, Shining Armor felt a small smile forming on his big face. He was touched by the offer. He knew he could use the help. He already felt like he was in over his head, and all he’d really done so far was stand in front of a chalkboard.

“Thanks, guys,” Shining said. “I appreciate any help I can get. I’m already dreading whatever the next few days might bring. I hope the princesses will be found soon.”

Shining reached a hoof up onto Flurry Heart’s head and patted her incredibly fluffy mane. He was grateful that his little princess hadn’t disappeared as well. At least his daughter was safe; Shining needed to keep that in mind. No matter how bad he felt over the next few days, he needed to remember that Flurry Heart was safe.

Shining didn’t know how long that would help, though. All he could do was hope that the princesses would be found quickly… For everyone’s sake.

“Shining, how long are you going to keep petting Flurry Heart?” Thorax asked worriedly.

As Important As It Is Uninteresting

Shining Armor had a solid idea of the work it took to run a nation. The Crystal Empire, while small, had the same needs as any other kingdom. There was infrastructure, education, public works, defense spending, and the national pastry budget. Every country needed these things.

But, again, the Crystal Empire was small. Equestria, meanwhile, was big. And while Shining Armor had worked alongside Cadence in running the Empire, he was more or less on his own now.

So when Shining Armor was guided to the throne room and presented with the list of ponies he would be speaking with, he was very quickly overwhelmed. It looked like everypony in Equestria’s government needed to speak with him! The list was longer than the list of things Flurry Heart had destroyed with her magic, and that list was very long.

“Why do I need to talk to all of these ponies?” Shining Armor asked as he looked up from the list. He was sitting in Celestia’s throne, which felt a little weird. Flash Sentry and another guard both flanked the throne, standing at attention. Flurry Heart was hovering beside Shining’s head like some sort of grim familiar.

“Equestria’s various officials feel the need to bring you up to date with everything they’ve been doing,” Neighsay explained. He was standing at the other end of the throne room, by the entrance, and holding onto the other end of the scroll Shining was reading. “In addition, many different projects have recently reached the point where they need higher approval before moving forward. The princesses honestly chose a very inconvenient time to be abducted.”

Shining sighed and used his magic to help Neighsay roll up the massive scroll. “I just feel like I’ve been having a lot of meetings today.”

“Yeah,” Flash Sentry said. “And it’s still so early in the day!”

Flash Sentry pointed out of the nearby window at the dawn-colored sky. It had been several hours, but the sun and moon still hadn’t moved at all—it still looked like the early morning. Shining and Neighsay both looked back at Flash Sentry, who laughed sheepishly.

“That… That was a joke,” he said. “I don’t actually think that it’s still morning. I was trying to bring some levity to the situation.”

Neighsay narrowed his eyes disapprovingly at Flash Sentry.

“Try harder next time,” he said.

Flash Sentry hung his head in shame. This was the appropriate action to take, because he wasn’t funny and deserved to feel bad. Shining Armor felt sympathy for the young guard, but not too much.

“So when are ponies going to start coming in here?” Shining asked as he turned to face Neighsay. The chancellor had finished rolling the scroll back up into its original, log-sized state and was somehow tucking it under his cloak.

“I don’t know,” Neighsay said. “I’m not your secretary. I have to go and do my actual job. With Princess Celestia missing, I need to find someone who can run her magic school.”

“Hey, yeah, that reminds me…” Shining said. “Why was the head of the EEA organizing all of this anyway?”

Neighsay shrugged. “No one else wanted to.”

“Oh.” Shining frowned at that. “… I feel like that’s not a very satisfying explanation.”

Neighsay lifted his hoof up to his badge and gave it a quick tap. A pony-sized portal of crazy magic opened up behind the chancellor, bathing the throne room in eerie light. It was very neat.

“Nothing in life is satisfying,” Neighsay said dourly. “Now I have to go and gather five random ponies so I can tell one of them that they’re substituting at Celestia’s magic school. I’m very bad at telling people this sort of thing. I wish someone else would do it.”

“Yes,” Shining agreed. “Bye.”

Neighsay stepped through the portal, and it quickly disappeared behind him. Then he was gone. He continued to be gone for quite some time.

“Is it weird that I’m scared of that guy?” Shining Armor asked his two guards once he was certain Neighsay wouldn’t hear him. “Like, he seems like an okay guy, but for some reason I’m just terrified of him. He looks like the king of funerals.”

“I generally try to avoid judging folks based off of how spooky they are,” Flash Sentry said.

“I’m not supposed to talk,” the other guard said. He didn’t have a name.

The throne room soon grew quiet. This was despite all of nature’s alarms that were roosting up near the ceiling. Shining Armor was surprised by how much he valued the quiet. It felt like he hadn’t gotten a quiet moment at all since he woke up in Flurry Heart’s nursery. Everything had been happening so quickly, Shining needed a moment to just try and get his bearings.

Unfortunately, something awful happened that prevented Shining from relaxing.

“Good news, everypony!” Prince Blueblood said as the throne room doors flew open. He trotted on in, his head held high. “I’ve come to complain about things!”

Shining Armor groaned. The guards groaned. Flurry Heart made a little baby groan. If the walls could have groaned, they would have. Blueblood didn’t groan because he was the one who’d walked into the room.

“Blueblood, what do you want?” Shining Armor asked. “I thought you’d be off sulking in your luxury apartment, crying into your billion thread count sheets.”

“Oh, I already did all of that,” Blueblood said. “But now I’ve come to air my grievances, like my manservant airs my laundry out in the summer breeze.”

Shining Armor wasn’t sure what sort of imagery that was supposed to invoke. He was mostly just disgusted that Blueblood actually called someone who worked for him a ‘manservant’. Not only was it a weird thing to call somepony, it also wasn’t a horse-based pun! Blueblood had failed on multiple levels, and that was really something.

“I already know that you want to be temporary ruler instead, Blueblood.” Shining said while rubbing his temple in annoyance. “Believe me, if I wasn’t worried you’d somehow cause a civil war, I’d give you the position. Just count yourself lucky you’re not the one putting up with—”

“I’m not going to count anything!” Blueblood said defiantly. His anger went away, however, and he soon began pleading. “Look, Shining, just let me be in charge! You already get to rule over a nation! It’s not fair! When do I get my turn?”

Shining wondered if he could somehow get all of the nature’s alarms roosting up above to chase Blueblood out of the throne room. Nature’s alarms were scary birds. Shining Armor had no idea how he’d gotten them to go along with the security system he’d designed in the first place. This was just one of those things he’d never understand.

That was all beside the point, though. Shining almost sort of felt bad for Blueblood. The other prince clearly knew he had no actual authority. He was basically just a very handsome piece of furniture. Maybe if he was given something to keep him busy, he’d stay out of everyone’s manes.

“Blueblood, I’ll make a deal with you,” Shining said. “I’m not going to make you Equestria’s temporary ruler. But if you promise to stop whining, I’ll give you a job. You can be the one who… goes to… the griffon embassy and gets their ambassador.”

Blueblood blinked. “The griffons have an embassy?”

They very much didn’t. Shining Armor knew that griffons weren’t terribly interested in diplomacy. They were more interested in making money, being mean, and having the worst town in the world.

“Yeah, sure,” Shining Armor said. “Go… get their ambassador and bring them here. Go do diplomacy at the griffon embassy. Because you’re so likeable.”

At first, it looked like Blueblood hadn’t been buying Shining Armor’s bogus busywork. But as soon as Shining lied about Blueblood being likeable, the other prince’s face lit up. Once someone said something that fed into Blueblood’s haughty world view, he automatically assumed they were telling the truth.

“Well,” Blueblood said confidently, “I’m not surprised you need my help. I’m just the stallion to charm the whiskers right off of their faces.”

“They don’t have whiskers,” Flash pointed out. “They famously have bird heads.”

“I’ll charm them so much they’ll grow whiskers and immediately lose them,” Blueblood said. “I’ll be that good.”

Smiling smugly, Blueblood lifted his head back up in the air. Without even thinking to ask for directions to the fictional embassy, he turned and began trotting towards the open doors he’d entered from. He walked slowly and deliberately, as if he was trying to give photographers plenty of time to get good pictures of him. Eventually, though, he left, and that was good.

“Ugh,” Shining ughed. He raised his hooves up and pulled Flurry down into his lap. The baby cooed, folding her massive wings behind her as her father held her close.

“That should keep him busy for a while,” Shining groaned. “Now he won’t be around to get in the way of whatever serious business I have to do.”

As soon as Shining Armor said that, serious business started happening. The throne room’s doors, which had swung shut behind Blueblood, were flung open by a pair of guards standing just outside. A very small, very dull-looking unicorn stood in the doorway, and began trotting into the throne room.

“Presenting the High Chancellor of the Department of Health and Cleanliness,” one of the guards announced, “Chancellor Dynamite Dangerous.”

The doors once again swung shut as Dynamite Dangerous trotted further into the room. The High Chancellor was wearing a pair of saddlebags with several scrolls and clipboards sticking out of them. His mane was swept into a thinning comb-over, and a pair of rectangular glasses was balanced on the unicorn’s snout. The glasses didn’t have lenses.

“Princess Shining Armor,” Dynamite Dangerous said with a voice that sounded like a long wait in a doctor’s office. “I’ve come to present my twice-weekly report on Equestria’s health and cleanliness.”

Shining Armor tried to remember the list that Neighsay had showed him. Sure enough, he could recall seeing this pony’s name at the top. It was hard to forget a name like ‘Dynamite Dangerous’, after all. With a name like that, though, Shining had assumed he’d be speaking with a demolitions expert or hair-metal rocker.

“Should you really be doing this right now?” Shining Armor asked. “I literally just got put on the throne; I’m not up-to-date on everything that’s been going on in Equestria. I’m not sure how much you expect to actually get done, chancellor.”

“Princess, I can assure you that this report is vital,” Dynamite Dangerous said as he searched through his saddlebags. “In fact, it’s as important as it is uninteresting. Illness in Equestria is up 15% over the previous 12%, accounting for the 22% of the 30% who refuse to discuss 50% of their illnesses…”

“I’m not sure that’s how math works,” Shining said worriedly.

Dynamite answered Shining Armor’s question by not answering it at all. Instead, he pulled a clipboard out of his saddlebag and held it up to his face. The chancellor adjusted his glasses, squinted his eyes, and began to read whatever information had been written down,

“Now, to begin with,” Dynamite droned, “there’s a reported outbreak of gross-hoof in Cloudsdale. I advise sending a shipment of medicinal galoshes to the pegasi. These are galoshes that have been filled with a kind of special ointment that goes on gross hooves to make them wet and slippery. This does not benefit the pony wearing the galoshes in any way. Moving on, several ponies in the town of Seaweedattle claim to be suffering from various Vague Illnesses…”

On and on he went, dryly reading off of his clipboards and scrolls without even stopping to breathe. Shining Armor would have described it as ‘rambling’ but Dynamite was nowhere near emotive enough for that kind of descriptor. He made no effort to not be boring; in fact, Dynamite Dangerous almost seemed like he was trying to be as tedious as possible. He glossed over any interesting information and instead went into detail on all of the figures and fractions. It was awful.

Shining lost track of how much time Dynamite Dangerous spent talking about all of Equestria’s various illnesses. The sun and moon outside still hadn’t moved, and there were no clocks in the throne room. Shining briefly wondered if he could use any of nature’s alarms to tell the time, but then he realized that was stupid. Dynamite’s lecture was so boring it was making Shining stupid.

Everyone else in the room was being affected, too. Flurry Heart had fallen asleep in her father’s lap. The guard who wasn’t Flash was fidgeting anxiously. Flash Sentry himself, meanwhile, was listening politely to Dynamite’s speech, nodding every now and then. Did he think that he needed to take notes or something?

Wait. Were they supposed to be taking notes?

Shining’s boredom was replaced by panic. It was the same feeling he’d had back in the guard academy whenever he’d accidentally zoned out during a lecture, only to come back towards the end and realize he hadn’t been paying attention. The only difference was that Dynamite Dangerous wasn’t using slides on a projector. Also, Shining probably wasn’t going to have to pay student loans this time.

“… And so, in conclusion, diseases are bad.” Dynamite Dangerous finished his long, terrible presentation and looked up from his clipboard. “Thank you for coming to my brief summary of Equestria’s health situation. Do you have any questions?”

Shining blinked. “Uh, yeah, actually I—”

“I will not be answering any questions at this time,” Dynamite said.

The throne room doors opened up once again, momentarily breaking the spell of boredom that Dynamite Dangerous had cast. Thorax came galloping in, a distressed look on his face. Dynamite Dangerous made no attempt to get out of the Changeling’s way, because he was awful. Thorax wound up having to jump over the Chancellor before arriving at Shining’s throne.

“Shining, we kind of have a problem!” Thorax said.

“Yeah, the princesses are missing,” Shining pointed out.

Thorax’s face scrunched up.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Also, um… I think a lot of other ponies know now.”

It was at that moment that Shining became aware of a noise coming from outside. Dynamite Dangerous’s horrible droning had covered it up before, but it was clearly audible now that he’d shut up. The noise was vaguely familiar. It sounded sort of like a large crowd of ponies murmuring to themselves about missing princesses. Shining couldn’t be sure though.

Taking care not to wake Flurry Heart, Shining slipped his daughter into his chest-mounted baby-carrier. He got up off of the throne and began trotting towards the balcony that overlooked the royal gardens. Flash Sentry and Thorax both followed him. The other guard stayed behind, because he felt he had nothing to contribute.

When Shining stepped out onto the balcony, his suspicions were confirmed. A sea of ponies filled up the royal gardens. Unlike a normal sea, though, there were no fish. Instead, there was only panic and worry. Neither of those things were fish.

“Well,” Shining muttered. “Looks like the news about the princesses broke.”

“They seem to be taking it pretty well, actually,” Flash Sentry said. “Nopony’s screaming and running around.”

“That’s because there’s no room,” Shining said, gesturing down into the gardens. “They’re packed together like sardines, if sardines were kept out in the open instead of inside of tin cans.”

Sure enough, the countless ponies in the garden were crowded together shoulder-to-shoulder, with no room for any sort of running around like idiots. One pegasus tried to fly out of the crowd, but the sheer gravitational force of the gathered ponies pulled them back down. Or maybe they just fell. It was hard to tell.

“Hey, look!” A voice among the crowd rose up over the collective murmuring. Shining could see a hoof reaching up and pointing in his direction. “It’s an authority figure! Let’s all voice our fears!”

Suddenly, all eyes were on Shining. Every pony in the crowd looked up and at Shining Armor. Their voices rose in volume, some of them outright screaming at Shining. They wanted answers. They wanted to know what in the world was going on. They wanted to know where Shining had gotten his chest-mounted baby-carrier.

The massive crowd began to shimmy and shake in panic. Ponies started getting ready to trample each other in a frantic stampede of terror. Several mares and stallions were practicing shouting ‘We’re all gonna die!’ at the top of their lungs.

The panicking ponies were on the precipice of a riot. And it was going to be up to Shining Armor to try and calm them down.

“Oh boy,” Shining muttered.

Giant Two-Headed Fairies

The ponies of Canterlot were upset, and it was not pretty.

Shining, Thorax, and Flash Sentry looked down from the balcony of Canterlot Castle. The gardens that the balcony stood over had been filled with an ocean of panicked equines. There were too many of them to count, even if you could count really high. They were all yelling up at the balcony at once, their voices blending together into a chorus of bad sounds. Everypony was trying to talk over each other, and their words blurred together into indecipherable mush.

Shining had never seen so many upset ponies in one place at the same time. They looked like they were on the verge of a riot. Some ponies were so upset that they were even shaking their heads in disapproval. Other ponies were starting to wave around picket signs that said things like ‘WE DON’T LIKE THIS MUCH AT ALL’ or ‘THE CURRENT SITUATION IS BAD’.

It was terrifying.

“Everypony!” Shining tried to yell over all of their horrible voices. “Everypony, quiet down! Please, remain calm!”

It was no use. They couldn’t hear him. In fact, the noise actually got louder when several ponies in the crowd tried to politely ask Shining Armor what he said.

Shining looked at Thorax and Flash Sentry. “Can either of you quiet them down?”

Thorax tapped his chin with his hoof as he pondered Shining’s question over. Flash Sentry, meanwhile, didn’t tap anything with anything. He already had an answer.

“Yeah, sure.” Flash raised his hoof and pointed at Flurry Heart, sound asleep in her chest-mounted baby-carrier.

“Hey, guys?” He whispered to the crowd. “I know you’re scared, but the baby’s sleeping. Could you please quiet down?”

The crowd’s hysteria quickly died down into quiet mumbles.

That was better. If Shining were still Captain of the Guard, he would have given Flash Sentry a raise. But he wasn’t, so he didn’t. Instead, he decided to address the crowd.

“Okay,” Shining Armor said to the crowd. “I realize that you’re all scared. But we can’t let our fears get the better of us. We need to calm down and remember that we’ve already faced, like, a dozen world-ending catastrophes in the last few years. We made it through all of those, didn’t we?”

The mumbles of fear from the crowd turned into the mumbles of reluctant agreement.

“Now, my sister’s friends are already looking into all of this,” Shining said. “They’re going to find the princesses and bring them back.”

“Why aren’t you helping them?” Somepony in the crowd abruptly yelled.

Shining paused, his momentum suddenly swept out from under him. He looked down into the crowd and did his best to hide the irritation already bubbling up within him. The prince put on his best smile and chuckled politely.

“Well,” he said testily, “I… didn’t really have anything I could contribute to the search. More importantly, I—”

“And you’re okay with that?” The same pony yelled. “Like, your wife and sister are missing! Aren’t you upset? I’d be pretty upset! I bet you’re upset!”

Shining grimaced. He felt like his composure was about to go out the window. They were on a balcony, though, so they thankfully had no windows to worry about. Shining breathed in, breathed out, and gave the crowd his biggest insincere smile.

“As I was saying…” Shining said through gritted teeth. “I promise all of you that this is not the catastrophe it seems to be. Equestria’s best and brightest are working hard to keep the kingdom running despite the princesses’ absence. There’s no need to lose our heads.”

“Who’s going to move the sun and the moon?!” Somepony in the crowd shouted. “It’s been dawn for, like, six hours! I’m upset about that!”

“It’s perfectly natural to be upset about the fact that the sun and moon aren’t moving,” Shining said to the big baby who’d voiced their concerns. “Starswirl the Bearded is putting together a team to work together to raise the sun and moon. It’ll be up to a team of unicorns, just like in the old days.”

“What about our dreams?” Another pony asked. “If Luna’s gone, who’s going to make sure that we don’t dream anything that’s illegal?”

“We got along fine for a thousand moons without Luna monitoring our dreams,” Shining pointed out. “Also, I’m pretty sure that’s not why Luna keeps watch over our dreams.”

“But how can Equestria survive without Celestia and Luna?!” Another pony asked. “They’ve been around practically since the beginning! If they’re gone, Equestria’s doomed!”

Shining blinked. He was starting to realize something about the ponies who’d gathered in the garden.

“You… You all know the princesses have been planning on retiring, right?” He asked worriedly. “Like… They won’t be in charge for much longer. They’re stepping down. Did… Did you not know that?”

The awkward muttering from the crowd told Shining that they had known, but had forgotten. Shining sighed and shook his head. He understood that the ponies were worried, but he just didn’t have a lot of patience left after all the nonsense he’d already been through. His head was starting to hurt.

“Okay,” Shining said testily. “Equestria has been through tough times before. We’ve survived and persevered, even when things looked bad. Heck, this isn’t even the first time all of the princesses have gone missing. We’ve been through worse, and I promise all of you that we will see this through.”

The ponies in the crowd murmured and looked amongst each other. Some of the panic had left their voices. They were still uneasy, but it looked like they weren’t as close to freaking out as they had been. Shining felt like he was getting through to them.

“Just go back to your everyday lives,” Shining continued. “I promise you, the world’s not going to end because the princesses are missing. Equestria will be fine.”

The crowd seemed to be finally placated. Slowly, ponies began to leave the royal gardens. There was still a large crowd, but it was very slowly dispersing. As the numbers thinned, Shining Armor let loose a sigh of relief.

“Finally,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Flash Sentry nodded. “What a well-mannered and reasonable mob of panicked ponies.”

“I was worried we’d have to sing a musical number,” Thorax chuckled anxiously. “I’m no good at that; I’m terrible at improvising lyrics.”

Shining had to agree with the others; that had gone much better than he’d expected. It was a good thing that ponies were so easily-swayed. Otherwise, they might have been on that balcony for hours trying to get them to calm down. All things considered, it looked like everything had gone pretty well.

Just as Shining Armor, Thorax, and Flash Sentry were getting ready to head back into the throne room, however, a voice cried out for them to stop.

“Stop!” A voice cried out to them.

Shining Armor turned to see that an incredibly old pegasus had left the crowd and flown up to the balcony. He was panting from the exertion he appeared to be going through, his wings flapping rapidly as they attempted to carry him closer to Shining and the others. Eventually, after what felt like a lifetime, the pegasus’ hooves touched down on the balcony.

“Don’t you go trying to brush this off!” The pegasus said with a voice like a million cobwebs. “You think I don’t see what’s happenin’?! I was there when it happened the first time!”

Shining stared at the pegasus in silent confusion.

“I… beg your pardon?” Shining asked.

“You’re not getting any pardon from me!” The pegasus snapped. “I told you fools that this was gonna happen again, but nopony listens to Ol’ Dusty Draft!”

Shining blinked. “Well, I—”

“That’s me, by the way; I’m Dusty Draft,” the pegasus said quickly.

Dusty Draft. There was something familiar about that name, but Shining couldn’t put his hoof on it. He was too tired to put any real effort into remembering it. In any case, he couldn’t quite make sense of what this old guy was trying to say.

“What are you talking about, Mr. Draft?” Shining asked. “Do you have some sort of information?”

The tragically old pegasus scoffed. “Information? Information?! Sonny, I got a whole book’s worth of information! And here’s the first chapter: it’s called ‘The princesses disappearin’ is just the tip of the iceberg and things are only gonna get worse!’”

“Sir, please calm down!” Thorax said. “You need to think of a better title for the chapters in your book!”

“Don’t tell me how to handle the writin’ process!” Draft snapped, hovering up off the ground so he could look Thorax in the eye. “And I’ll calm down when Equestria ain’t headin’ to heck in a hoofbasket! We’ve got a genuine crisis on our hooves, and you brats aren’t making things better by tellin’ folks there’s nothing to worry about!”

Shining cast a worried glance out towards the ponies who were still in the garden. The crowd hadn’t completely dispersed, and there were still quite a lot of ponies crowded together. Thankfully, thought, it looked like they couldn’t quite hear what Draft was saying. That was good—Shining didn’t need everypony panicking again.

“Look, just… keep your voice down!” Shining whispered as he grabbed Draft and lowered him back down to the ground. “What do you know about what’s happened? It sounds like you’ve seen something like this before.”

Draft turned around and gave Shining Armor the grandfather of all stink-eyes.

“I told you all!” Draft whispered in a threatening tone. “I said it’d happen again! When powerful ponies start goin’ missing, it can only mean one thing…”

Shining leaned forward in suspense. Thorax and Flash both waited eagerly for Draft to fill them in, as well. Flurry Heart, who was somehow still asleep, did not care at all about this old man. Her apathy would have been palpable if she was a little bit older.

Draft’s eyes darted around at his audience. He gestured for them to lean in, which they were already doing, and then whispered conspiratorially.

“Evil fairies,” he said certainly.

Shining needed to take a moment to make sure he hadn’t misheard. Once that moment was passed, he still wasn’t positive what Dusty Draft had said. Not only had his answer been needlessly vague, it had also made no sense.

“F… Fairies?” Shining repeated.

“Evil fairies,” Draft emphasized manically. “Evil fairies with crazy magic that wanna wipe Equestria off the map!”

“Do you mean Breezies?” Thorax ventured. “Those little, er, butterly-looking things?”

Draft snapped his head around and glared at Thorax.

“Son, if I meant Breezies, I’d’ve said Breezies!” Draft said, jabbing his hoof at Thorax’s buggy chest. “I’m talking about giant, two-headed fairies that live deep beneath the sea!”

Draft looked around at the three stallions, waiting for their reaction. Nopony said anything. After a while, Shining exchanged a look with Thorax and Flash. They were just as much at a loss as Shining Armor was. With no idea of how to respond to this, Shining looked back down at the expectant pegasus.

“That’s a…”

Shining struggled to find a polite way to say ‘crazy’.

“… Unique theory,” he finally settled on. “What made you come to this conclusion?”

Draft narrowed his eyes at Shining.

“You don’t believe me,” he accused.

Shining rubbed the back of his neck. “It… is a little farfetched.”

“Maybe we’d be more likely to believe you if you made the effort to sound less like a crazy person,” Flash offered politely. “You’re kind of just screaming and rambling at us and it doesn’t really lend any credibility to your claims.”

“Bah!” Draft said, even though it wasn’t a word. “You kids today care too much about things like ‘proof’ and ‘things being real’! Just because the fairies I’m talking about might be imaginary, that doesn’t mean they didn’t abduct the princesses!”

“Sir, who even are you?” Shining asked dryly. “Are you just some random citizen? How did you reach this conclusion? Please show your credentials.”

Instead of citing his sources, Dusty Draft gave the prince an old-man scowl. His face was an angry raisin that nobody wanted in their cookie.

“Why is it nopony every listens to me anymore?!” Draft snapped. “Nopony listened to me when I said there was a cult of gazelle livin’ in the sewers! Nopony listened to me when I said that the griffons were tryin’ to steal our taffy recipes! And sure, I was wrong about both those things, but my point still stands!”

The migraine that had been threatening Shining all day was starting to come on. He raised a hoof to his temple as he felt the pain slowly beginning to build. He wanted to cuss, but couldn’t do that with a Flurry Heart strapped to his chest.

“Flash, please escort Mr. Draft off of the premises,” Shining said through clenched teeth.

Flash nodded. He put a hoof on Dusty Draft’s shoulder and then gently threw the elderly pegasus off of the balcony. He fell down to the crowd of ponies still gathered in the garden below. One pony managed to catch Dusty Draft, and everypony got very excited. They all waited eagerly to see if any more old men would be thrown for them to catch.

“Well, that was the opposite of helpful,” Thorax mused. The three stallions walked back into the throne room while Shining rubbed his head.

“We actually get people like that all the time whenever there’s an emergency,” Flash Sentry said embarrassedly. “A bunch of ponies who think they’ve stumbled onto the secret explanation for what’s really going on. They mean well, I guess, but they’re… kind of always wrong.”

“I agree,” Dynamite Dangerous said. “Also, I am still here in the throne room.”

As Flash Sentry carried Dynamite Dangerous to the balcony so he could be thrown to the crowd below, Shining Armor sat back down on Celestia’s throne. He felt awful, which wasn’t surprising considering how bad this day had been. And Shining knew he still had at least a dozen more meetings to get through before the day was done. It seemed like things would never end.

Just as Shining thought that, though, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Through the open balcony doors, Shining saw something changing outside. The navy-colored dawn sky that Equestria had been stuck with for the last few hours was starting to brighten. The moon was slowly, haltingly lowering in the sky, and the sun was rising up to take its place.

Starswirl had done it; he’d gotten together enough unicorns to raise the sun. Shining had started to worry that they’d never be able to get that problem fixed. He never should have doubted Starswirl, he knew that. The old wizard had literally moved the sun and moon for Equestria in the princesses’ absence.

And if Starswirl could do that, Shining could deal with a little frustration, right? Filling in for Celestia and Luna wasn’t the worst thing in the world—Shining was letting his worries get the better of him. He could do this. No matter how frustrating things got, or how worried he was about Cadance and Twily, Shining could do this.

Flurry Heart cooed, finally starting to wake up from her nap. Shining looked down at his daughter with a small smile and finally started to feel a little bit of hope. And as Shining took Flurry out of the chest-mounted baby-carrier, he allowed himself to think that maybe, just maybe, everything would work out for the best.

Three weeks later, the princesses still hadn’t been found.

Intermission: Tempest Shadow's On the Case!

The princesses were missing. And for once, it wasn’t because Tempest had kidnapped them or turned them to stone or whatever.

At least, Tempest was fairly certain that she hadn’t done that. She supposed it was always possible she was experiencing blackout due to her various mental traumas, but she didn’t think that was the case. Grubber would have said something.

“Grubber, you’d let me know if I was having blackouts and kidnapping people, right?” Tempest asked.

“I’unno. Probably not,” Grubber said. He was staring up at the ceiling of the shady motel room they had been staying in. He was lying back on the sofa, his quills digging into the cushions and no-doubt raising the price they’d have to pay when they finally checked out.

Tempest had only just gotten back to the hotel room. The scary-looking pony with the goatee had dropped her off just a few minutes ago. Tempest had no idea how that guy had known where to find her; she and Grubber were pretty far away from Equestria, after all. But somehow the unicorn had opened a portal into this motel in the middle of Diamond Dog territory in order to pick Tempest up. It was a mystery.

“This is serious, Grubber,” Tempest said seriously. “I need you to be serious.”

“’kay,” Grubber said.

“The princesses are missing,” Tempest said as she turned away from the mirror she’d been dramatically staring into. “We need to do everything possible to find them so we can make up for what we did under the Storm King.”

“I thought that was why we were out here,” Grubber said, “Y’know, solving friendship problems outside of Equestria to make up for how we used to be evil. That’s why we’re staying at this motel in the middle of Diamond Dog country.”

Tempest frowned. “Grubber, I already know all of that. Why did you feel the need to tell me why we’re here?”

Grubber sat up and shrugged. His quills had left very noticeable holes in the couch cushions. Tempest did not care about that. Couches had almost nothing to do with friendship.

After the incident with the Storm King, Tempest and Grubber had left Equestria in order to learn about friendship outside of its borders. Tempest didn’t know why they’d had to leave Equestria to do that, but she wasn’t complaining. After years serving the Storm King, she’d gotten used to life outside of Equestria, and it would be awkward to spend time around the ponies she’d helped enslave. All in all, this trip had been a good idea.

That didn’t mean Tempest had completely severed ties with her homeland, however. Tempest was still in contact with Twilight Sparkle, or at least had been until the princess had gone missing. Tempest had been sending Twilight status reports, friendship letters, and occasionally postcards with funny jokes on them.

Twilight was pretty much the first real friend Grubber had made in years, save possibly for Grubber. Tempest felt like she owed Twilight so much for her kindness. Unfortunately, most of Tempest’s skills revolved around combat, military tactics, and covert assassinations. Twilight usually didn’t need any of those things.

… Usually.

“We need to start making our way back to Equestria,” Tempest resolved. “If there’s anyone who knows the thought process of someone who kidnaps princesses, it’s us: the people who kidnapped a princess.”

“How’re we supposed to even get to Equestria?” Grubber asked as he hopped off of the couch. “It’d take half a day to get there on an airship, and we don’t even have one!”

Tempest was already aware of that. Why was Grubber telling her things she already knew so much today?

“We’ll have to commandeer an airship,” Tempest said. “The local Diamond Dogs must have someone with a ship, right?”

Grubber scoffed.

“Tempest, I dunno if you noticed all of the tunnels all over the place, but the Diamond Dogs mostly travel underground. Why would they have airships?”

Tempest shook her head. “I refuse to believe they don’t have any airships. They’re dogs. Dogs love sticking their heads out of vehicles. We just need to find the one who likes sticking their head out of an airship.”

This was flawless logic. Reasoning like that was why Tempest Shadow had risen so quickly in the Storm King’s army.

Tempest tossed a small bag at Grubber, who caught it in his chubby little paws. The bag was filled with the tiny gem fragments that the Diamond Dogs used for money. For some reason, the Diamond Dogs called this currency ‘crunchos’.

“You check us out of here,” Tempest ordered. “I’m going to find transportation back to Equestria. Then we’ll work together to try and find Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

“… And the other ones,” Grubber pointed out.

“Yeah, sure, them too,” Tempest said quickly. “Look, just pay the front desk, Grubber. And whatever you do, don’t use all of our money to buy several dozen churros again. I doubt that any airship pilot we find will let us use their ship for free, even if we ask very nicely.”

Tempest began gathering her supplies without waiting for a response from Grubber. She put on her saddle-bags and made her way to their hotel room’s door. The door was made of rocks. Everything was made of rocks. The Diamond Dogs were big on all kinds of rocks.

“Come find me when you’re done,” Tempest said as she looked over her shoulder at Grubber. “And remember… don’t waste all of our money on churros.”

Tempest opened the stone door and stepped out onto the stone street. The stone was made of rocks.

It didn’t take long for Tempest Shadow to find a Diamond Dog with an airship. The Diamond Dogs didn’t have many above-ground buildings. Out of the few they did have, only one was big enough to hold an airship, so it was easy enough to spot. That building was on the other side of town, and marked by a large sign that read ‘HAIRSHOP’.

When Tempest arrived at her destination, she spent a lot of time staring at that sign. Evidently, whoever owned the building had tried to write ‘airship’ and failed catastrophically. The word they’d wound up writing was deeply unsettling for reasons Tempest couldn’t adequately describe.

Once Tempest had overcome the vague horror that the sign had instilled in her, she opened the large stone doors and walked into the stone barn. Inside of the dimly-lit barn was an airship, floating at a pony’s height above the ground.

“… Hello?” Tempest called out into the seemingly-empty barn. “I… need to book passage to Equestria.”

The barn was silent save for the sound of Tempest’s own voice echoing off of the stone walls. Tempest, who had run away from her home as a child and thus never finished her education, wasn’t entirely certain how echoes worked. She did know, however, that the owner of this barn evidently wasn’t home.

Tempest waited another minute for some kind of reply, but the barn remained as quiet as a dead bird. In that silence, Tempest found herself staring at the airship in the middle of the big, empty room.

“It’s an emergency…” Tempest muttered. “I’m sure the owner wouldn’t mind if I… just borrowed their airship.”

Because Tempest was talking to herself, she instantly agreed with her own idea. She trotted slowly towards the airship, as if afraid that a loud noise might somehow spook it. All Tempest needed to do was unmoor the ship and figure out how to actually get it out of this huge barn. Then she just needed to find Grubber, who had probably wasted all of their money on churros by now.

Just as this plan was taking form inside of Tempest’s cool-looking head, however, it was instantly foiled.

“You stop!” A gruff, coarse voice barked out.

Tempest froze and looked around for where the voice could have come from. At first, she didn’t see anyone. Soon, though, Tempest saw that there was someone in the room with her.

Directly beneath the airship, a Diamond Dog’s head was poking out of a small hole in the ground. In the dark, Tempest had mistaken the head for a rock or something. Now that she was closer, however, she could clearly see that it was the head of a light-yellow Diamond Dog.

“I’m… Sorry?” Tempest said as she tried to figure out why the Diamond Dog was keeping everything below their chin underground. “Are you the owner of this airship? I need to travel to Equestria.”

“Airship is mine!” The dog snapped. “Not pony’s! I make funny delivery to pony-land! Pony not come!”

Tempest frowned. “I… only understood some of that. Did you say you’re making a delivery?”

The Diamond Dog nodded, or maybe it didn’t. It was hard to tell with just its head sticking out of the ground.

“I go pony-land!” The dog said. “Only me go! Take funny to pony! I—”

The Diamond Dog abruptly began coughing violently. Tempest watched with some concern, shocked a bit by the sudden outburst of noise. Just as Tempest was wondering if it would be morally acceptable to take the Dog’s airship if he died, the Diamond Dog hacked up what looked like several small pebbles.

“Ahem.” The Diamond Dog cleared his throat and sniffed. “Sorry about that; must’ve swallowed some dirt while I was digging. Anyway, what was I saying?”

Tempest stared at the Diamond Dog for a few seconds, more than a little confused by his sudden coherence.

“I’m honestly not sure,” she said. “Something about not taking me to—”

The Diamond Dog nodded again.

“Right, right,” he said. “I can’t take you to Equestria. I mean, this isn’t some fantastic voyage or brilliant adventure; it’s just a delivery. If my bosses found out I was giving rides to random ponies, it’s gonna be me who gets in trouble. I’d need to find a new career in a new town. They’re dead against it.”

“Please,” Tempest pleaded. “This is an emergency. A friend of mine has gone missing.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not my call,” the Dog apologized. “My big brother is the boss of me. If I took you to Equestria, he’d get real mad, and that’s nothing to be desired. And I’m not telling lies; I have to go without you.”

Tempest had to fight back the impulse to try and blast the Diamond Dog with her explosive magic. Even though it had been some time since she left the Storm King’s army, the way she’d done things back then hadn’t quite left her yet. Tempest knew she couldn’t just blow up and threaten her way to get the results she wanted.

Well, she could, but it would be rude.

Tempest Shadow reached her hooves out and gently grabbed the sides of the Diamond Dog’s head. Instead of snapping his neck, which would have been easy and very cool, Tempest instead lifted the Dog’s head to force him to look into her eyes.

“Listen to me… very closely,” Tempest whispered, sounding a good deal more threatening than she intended. “Trouble for Equestria means trouble for everyone. The sun and the moon have been completely messed up. My friend and I want to help solve this problem before everything goes wrong. Do you understand?”

The Diamond Dog’s face was squished between Tempest’s hooves, so it was hard to read his expression. Tempest hoped he was thinking about what she’d just said and not freaking out about being squished by a small horse.

“Okay,” the Dog said. “I’ll take you there.”

Tempest let go of the Diamond Dog’s fuzzy cheeks and let loose a sigh of relief. For a moment, she’d been worried she would have had to steal the Dog’s airship and abduct him so he couldn’t report her to the authorities. That would have been morally questionable, even if it would have been super easy.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t thank me; I’ll probably get fired,” the Dog said. “Let me just pull myself out of this hole in the ground.”

A pair of gangly paws burst out of the dirt in front of the Diamond Dog as he pulled himself out of the ground. He was much taller and skinnier than Tempest had expected. His height just made the fact that he’d been buried up to his neck much more confusing. How deep had he been?

“My name is Tempest, by the way,” Tempest said as the Diamond Dog dusted himself off. She wasn’t really comfortable telling a stranger her old name, especially a stranger who just stood around with most of his body hidden underground.

“I’m Ziggy,” the Diamond Dog said. “I’d shake your hoof, but I’m unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed.”

“That’s okay, my friend is the same way,” Tempest said. Nevertheless, she was fine with passing on a hoof-shake. “Speaking of which, he should hopefully be here soon.”

As if on cue, a shadow stepped into the open doorway of the barn. It was Grubber, carrying something at his side as he trod into the dimly lit room. The hedgehog’s gaze was quickly drawn to the airship in the middle of the barn. He looked impressed, and gave the ship an appreciative nod.

While Grubber was doing that, though, Tempest was looking at the object he was carrying under one arm. It was a paper bag filled with several dozen churros. Grubber had wasted all of their crunchos on fried dough again. Tempest was in no way surprised.

“Grubber,” Tempest said with restrained frustration. “I specifically told you not to buy several dozen churros.”

“Uh-huh.” Grubber barely paid Tempest any mind as he reached into the bag, pulled out a churro, and then shoved that stick of fried dough into his mouth.

Tempest sighed and turned back to face Ziggy the Diamond Dog, who looked like he didn’t care at all about churros.

“I… was going to pay you,” Tempest said slowly. “But it looks like my friend spent all of our money.”

“Yeah, it looks like he bought several dozen churros,” Ziggy said. “But don’t worry about it. Like I said, I’m not supposed to be doing this anyway; if I accepted payment for it, I’d probably get into even worse trouble. I’d be a dead man walking.”

Tempest blinked.

“Er… don’t you mean a dead ‘dog’ walking?” She asked. She wasn’t even sure what a ‘man’ was.

“No.” Ziggy smiled. “Anyway, I’m not leaving right away. It’s gonna be an Equestrian Night Flight. I hope you don’t mind killing a little time until this evening. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out how to get the ship out of this barn.”

Ziggy, the Diamond Dog who enjoyed being buried up to his neck, got down on all fours and ran towards the airship’s gangplank. He ascended up onto the ship’s deck, leaving Tempest and Grubber standing beneath the floating vessel.

“Is it me, or is there something weird about the way that guy talks?” Grubber asked, his mouth full of delicious fried dough. He was really going to town on those long boys. It made sense, of course. Aside from loving treasure and being dogs, the Diamond Dogs were famous for the quality of their churros.

But no amount of tasty street vendor food could make Tempest excuse what Grubber had done. She turned back towards her friend and gave him a look that she hoped made it clear just how let-down she was by his irresponsibility. Judging by the way he kept eating churros, though, Grubber wasn’t getting the message.

“Please tell me you at least used some of our money to check out of the hotel,” Tempest whispered.

Grubber stopped in the middle of hoisting another churro into his awful maw and blinked.

“Uh… I think I did?” He frowned. “To be honest, I’m still not used to, y’know, paying for things. Back when we worked for the Storm King, we used to be able to just take whatever we wanted. I keep thinking we can still do that.”

Tempest stopped herself from snapping at Grubber. She took a deep breath and did her very best to calm down. She and Grubber had been trying to leave their past behind them for over a year now, but Grubber still just didn’t have a solid grasp on the whole ‘good person’ thing. He was trying, Tempest knew that; but he kept doing things like this.

“Okay,” Tempest sighed. “This is another town we can never come back to, Grubber. Add it to the list later.”

Grubber scoffed. “Whatever. You could’ve payed the bill yourself if you weren’t in such a rush to impress Twilight Sparkle.”

Tempest Shadow’s ears stood upright in shock. Her eyes widened. Sparks of magic burst out of her broken horn and sizzled in the air. Her tail also somehow displayed signs of agitation.

“I am not trying to impress Twilight Sparkle,” Tempest hissed. “I am trying to save all of Equestria!”

“Right, right,” Grubber said as he fished another churro out of his bag. “You’re trying to save Equestria so you can impress Twilight Sparkle.”

Tempest sputtered in outrage.

“Why would I care about impressing Twilight Sparkle?!” She asked. “I don’t need to impress anyone!”

Grubber tossed an entire churro into his mouth and swallowed it whole. That was how eating worked.

“Look, I’m no shrink,” Grubber said. “But if you ask me, you have severe unresolved abandonment issues due to your friends casting you out as a child, coupled with being betrayed by the Storm King after spending years being nothing but loyal to him. You believe that by proving yourself useful to the people you associate with, you won’t be abandoned again, and thus won’t have to experience that pain again.”

Grubber scratched himself and then took a bite out of another churro.

“Or maybe you just have a crush on her,” he said. “I dunno.”

Tempest stammered, completely unsure of how to defend herself. She knew Grubber wasn’t right. He couldn’t have been right. Tempest just wanted to save Equestria. She didn’t care about impressing Twilight Sparkle. Tempest just wanted to save her, and also those other princesses. This had nothing to do with Tempest needing validation in some way.

After a few seconds, Tempest came up with the perfect response to counter Grubber’s claims.

“… Grubber, you’re grounded.”

Grubber was so shocked that he nearly dropped his several dozen churros onto the dirty dirt floor of the barn. Tempest knew that wouldn’t have stopped him from eating them.

“You can’t ground me!” Grubber pointed a churro at Tempest accusingly. “We’re about to go on an airship! I can’t go into the air if I’m grounded!”

“You’re double-grounded for making such an awful joke,” Tempest said confidently.

Grubber tried to protest, but it was clear he knew he’d been defeated. He hung his head in shame and sadly began eating another churro. For the time being, it looked like he hadn’t realized that Tempest really had no authority to ground him.

Tempest was fine with that.

It was night outside by the time Ziggy finally managed to somehow get the airship out of the barn. The ponies in Equestria had evidently gotten the whole ‘sun and moon’ thing sorted out. That was pretty cool, but it wasn’t really what Tempest was concerned with at the moment.

The wait to board the airship had passed without incident. Grubber had finished eating his several dozen churros, and Tempest had successfully put his little psychoanalysis behind her. She was standing on the deck of the ship, looking out over the railing as they rose into the air.

Ziggy’s airship wasn’t terribly fast. It was a bit of a clunker, honestly—much less sophisticated than the airships that had been used in the Storm King’s territories. It took the ship several minutes to rise up above the clouds that floated over the Diamond Dog settlement below them. This was possibly because of the heavy cargo Ziggy had loaded onboard weighing the ship down, but was most-likely caused by how garbage the airship was.

“How long is it going to take us to reach Equestria?” Tempest asked once Ziggy had returned from setting the airship’s course.

“Five years,” Ziggy said. “Nah, just kidding; we’ll reach Equestria by the next day. My first stop is Seaweedattle, and that’s right on the edge of Equestria. Time will crawl until then, though, so hang on to yourself.”

Tempest frowned. There was really a town called Seaweedattle? What kind of name was that? Tempest was glad she didn’t live in Equestria anymore.

“Thank you again for all of this,” Tempest said, allowing herself to sound just a bit relieved. “I know you might get in trouble for all of this, but…”

“Hey, I told you not to thank me.” Ziggy waved a paw dismissively. “I mean, it’s not like I’m afraid of Equestrians. And it’s not like this will be a difficult journey… Not unless we run into scary monsters and super freaks.”

Tempest stared at Ziggy in confusion. “I… suppose those would cause complications, yes.”

Ziggy nodded. “Okay, well, I’ve gotta get back to the wheel. I might need to raise the red sails if we need the wind’s help. Then we’ll travel at the speed of life. Fall dog bombs the moon.”

With that, Ziggy turned and headed back below deck. He left a very confused Tempest behind.

“Grubber was right; this guy is weird,” Tempest muttered to herself.

“Tell me about it,” Grubber said.

Tempest jumped a bit when she heard Grubber’s voice from beside her. She hadn’t noticed the little hedgehog approach her. Tempest didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed, considering that Grubber had all the stealth of a neon-colored wrecking ball. Nevertheless, though, she hadn’t.

The churros were all gone. Grubber was just standing beside Tempest with his arms folded over his chest. Neither of them spoke. The only noise was the sound of the airship’s propellers spinning, and the screams of the birds that kept flying into those same propellers. The clouds didn’t make any noises.

“I’m… sorry for snapping at you,” Tempest said finally.

“It’s fine,” Grubber said. He shrugged. “I’m sorry I spent all of our crunchos.”

“I still don’t know why they call their money that,” Tempest muttered.

With a sigh, Tempest leaned over the railing and looked at the clouds passing by below. Maybe Grubber was right when he’d said that all of this was because she needed to feel like she was useful to the pony who had saved her. Maybe Tempest really was embarking on this quest for the wrong reasons. But if she could help, did it really matter?

Tempest didn’t know, and she was too tired to really think about it. All that mattered was getting to Equestria and seeing what could be done. Regardless of how she felt, the princesses still needed to be found. That was all there was to it. And no matter what complications came their way, Tempest decided that she wouldn’t give up.

It was a good thing she made that decision, too, because the airship would wind up crashing as soon as they reached Equestria.

Author's Note

I was halfway through this chapter by the time I realized I wasn't sure if Diamond Dogs spoke normally or not. It's been years since I saw that episode, just like it's been years since Diamond Dogs have showed up in anything.

He'd Somehow Failed at Failing

Three weeks.

Equestria’s princesses had been missing for three weeks.

Twilight’s friends had gone off searching for them three weeks ago, but no one had heard from them since. That meant they had been missing for three weeks, too.

Nopony had seen Blueblood since Shining had sent him off looking for a griffon ambassador, so he’d also been missing for three weeks. Unlike the princesses or Twilight’s friends, however, literally no one cared that Blueblood was gone. Most ponies had barely even noticed.

Shining Armor, bucking the trend, had not been missing for three weeks. He had been in Canterlot castle, sitting around and being miserable with Flurry Heart. Every now and then, somepony thought he went missing, but then they checked inside the castle and found him. The fact that he was consistently still there was very popular with ponies who were not in favor of their rulers disappearing.

But Shining didn’t care about his popularity with the ponies of Equestria. He didn’t care about how the fact that he hadn’t vanished always made the front page of the daily newspaper. He especially didn’t care about the trophy he’d been given for being the ‘Least Kidnapped Ruler in Equestria’.

Shining was too stressed to care about most things. His wife was missing. His sister was missing. He had to take care of Flurry Heart alone, and the little princess was clearly starting to miss her mom. And to top it all off, Shining’s responsibilities as acting ruler of Equestria kept piling up. Equestria’s various legislative bodies had no end of work to give Shining Armor.

If there was any possible upside to this, it was that Shining was learning more about Equestria’s government. Indeed, there were more departments and branches than Shining had ever realized, and they all wanted Shining to do things for them.

To start things off, there was the Equestrian Treasury Association (ETA). They had been minting new coins in preparation for when Princess Twilight Sparkle ascended to the throne. They had just reached the point where they needed Twilight’s approval for the designs when the princesses went missing. With Twilight gone, it fell to Shining Armor to approve the coins.

So far, though, Shining had had to reject six different designs from the ETA. The coins were supposed to have Twilight’s face in profile on them, but the engravers kept depicting her as a shark with a crown. Shining didn’t know how they kept making that same mistake over and over.

Next, there was the Department of Equestrian Activities, Treats, and Holidays (DEATH). DEATH was very powerful in Equestria; almost everypony had to deal with it sooner or later. They helped with allocating funds to all of the parties and holidays that kept happening all over Equestria. If there was a festival or event somewhere in the kingdom, they were in some way involved.

There was a big holiday coming up, and naturally, that meant regular visits from DEATH. That holiday, Big Worm Day, was very popular. It was the anniversary of the time Celestia saw a big worm while on a picnic with Scorpan. Ponies celebrated by holding Worm Parties, where they’d play games like ‘Guess How Big the Worm Is’ and ‘Big Worm or Small Snake?’ With all of those festivities going on, Shining Armor had to approve of a lot of different things to make sure everypony got to enjoy the holiday.

And then there was the Equestrian Intelligence, Espionage, and Infiltration Organization (EIEIO). This was the shadowy organization that performed secret investigations into Equestria’s enemies, spied on them, and, if necessary, eliminated them. Their missions were top secret, and their deeds were completely off the books. They were willing to do terrible things for the sake of Equestria.

Since Equestria hadn’t really had any enemies in years, though, the EIEIO didn’t have anything to do. Mostly, the organization’s spymaster would show up and remind Shining that the group existed. It was kind of awkward, honestly.

Finally, there was the Bureau of Biting and Chomping. Nopony knew that this part of Equestria’s government was for or what it did. It had just always existed. Hundreds of years ago, when the ponies moved their capital to Canterlot, the Bureau of Biting and Chomping had already been established.

The Bureau was composed of one single pony. Nopony knew his name. Every day, he came into the throne room, chomped his teeth threateningly at Shining Armor, and left. Nopony knew where he went afterwards.

These four groups, along with the dozens of other administrative bodies that made up the Equestrian government, had begun to dominate Shining’s life.

Every day was exactly the same: Shining would wake up. He’d have breakfast and try to explain what crossword puzzles were to Flurry Heart. Somepony, usually Flash or Thorax, would take Shining and Flurry to the throne room. Shining would sit through countless boring presentations from various employees of the Equestrian government. Occasionally, Shining would meet with the Canterlot aristocracy so they could be rich at him. Then the day would end.

It was awful. And Flurry Heart, who was still a baby, just didn’t understand what crossword puzzles were.

“A crossword puzzle is a prison that you lock words inside of,” Shining explained to Flurry as Flash Sentry led them into the throne room. The only remaining princess in Equestria was strapped snugly into her chest-mounted baby-carrier. She made a sort of weird bubbly noise, clearly not understanding her father’s explanation.

Shining sighed wearily and sat upon his throne. Well, technically, it was Celestia’s throne. But after three weeks of having to sit in it, Shining was starting to get uncomfortably used to it.

“Thorax says you have a pretty heavy schedule today,” Flash Sentry said as he stood before the throne. “You’ve got to approve a lot of things for the Big Worm Day celebration next week. Starswirl wants to talk to you about something, too. Crossword puzzles are the only way to have fun with a newspaper.”

“Thanks, Flash,” Shining said as he leaned on one of his hooves.

Flash Sentry took his position flanking Shining’s throne. He stood opposite of the other guard, who still didn’t have a name. Shining settled into the same routine he’d gotten used to over the last three weeks and waited for the same old never-ending misery to begin.

But things would be different today. Shining Armor was in for a change of pace, and he’d get to experience an all new form of misery. The throne room doors swung open, filling the room with a deafening bang that seemed to make everything shake. Shining’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest. When he saw who was in the doorway, he almost wished it had.

“I’ve returned!”

It was Prince Blueblood, and he looked just as awful as ever. The unicorn trotted into the room with his head held high and a triumphant smile on his face. There were no words to properly describe just how proud of himself the Prince of Terrible looked.

Blueblood wasn’t alone, though. Trailing behind him was a pair of earth pony servants that were carrying a large cat carrier on their backs. They moved slowly under its weight, their knees trembling with each step. Blueblood continued on ahead of them, either oblivious or uncaring towards the effort they were going through.

“Yes, yes, you’re all welcome,” Blueblood said once he stood before Shining Armor’s throne. “I know you’re all happy to see me again.”

Flurry Heart began to whimper. Shining Armor removed her from the baby carrier and began to gently rock her back and forth in an attempt to comfort her. The sudden, booming sound of the doors being swung open had brought Flurry Heart close to tears. Blueblood’s presence only made things worse. His presence always did that.

Shining looked up from comforting his daughter and glared at Prince Blueblood angrily. “Blueblood, what are you doing here?! Don’t you have something else to do?!”

If Blueblood was aware of Flurry Heart’s frightened sniffling, he showed no signs of caring. He waved his hoof dismissively and scoffed at Shining’s anger.

“Scoff!” Blueblood scoffed. “Not anymore! I’ve finished your little task, Armor, and I have to say… it was foal’s play. It took me no time at all.”

“Little task…?” Shining needed a minute to figure out what Blueblood had been talking about. With all the tedium and stress of the last few weeks, Shining had completely forgotten about the wild goose chase he’d sent Blueblood out on. He honestly hadn’t expected that a search for a nonexistent griffon ambassador would keep Blueblood busy for three weeks.

“You’ve been looking for a griffon all this time?” Shining asked, stunned.

“Yes!” Blueblood said. “And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. A lesser stallion would’ve given up. I looked in all of the well-to-do neighborhoods; the theater district, the School of Magic, all the best shops… I couldn’t find a single griffon. I almost went looking in some of the poorer parts of Canterlot, but I wasn’t that desperate.”

“Way to dodge a bullet,” Shining said sarcastically.

Flurry Heart had stopped crying by now, and was instead staring at Blueblood with her weird big eyes. Even though she couldn’t speak and had trouble with object permanence, Shining could tell that his daughter was not impressed by her first cousin, once removed.

“Anyway,” Blueblood continued. “I kept searching for him nonstop, save for the frequent breaks I took. Truly, it was a heroic effort. But alas, after three hours of searching, I lost all hope. I gave up. I was so melancholy that I decided to take a little vacation, and went on a three-week spa vacation.”

“You’ve been at a spa this whole time?” Shining asked incredulously.

“Yes!” Blueblood said with a smile. “I would have invited you, but I knew you were busy. Anyway, I got back to town yesterday and found the griffon hanging out in a bistro nearby.”

The two servants who had come in with Blueblood sat the massive cat carrier they had been lifting down beside the prince. They were both exhausted, and were shooting Blueblood dirty looks. The prince didn’t appear to notice.

“And… you put the griffon in that thing?” Shining asked.

Blueblood slapped the top of the carrier like he was a used-carriage salesman. “Indeed! I went out and bought the largest cat carrier I could find. Then I lured the ambassador into it with a piece of cake.”

Blueblood’s horn and the latch on the carrier’s door both lit up with the prince’s golden magic. The latch that kept the door in place lifted up, and Blueblood posed dramatically beside the carrier. He soon began to use his golden magic to pull the door open.

“Now… behold!”

The metal screen door on the carrier jostled, but otherwise didn’t open. The latch mechanism was still somewhat in place. With all the air let out of his dramatic moment, Blueblood turned his magic onto the latch once again.

“Okay,” he said. “Hang on. Let me just…”

The door continued to rattle against its latch, but it wouldn’t swing out. Blueblood gritted his teeth and pulled harder.

“Ugh, I hate these things…” He grumbled. “This always happens…”

“You have to lift and pull the door,” Flash Sentry said.

Blueblood looked back at Flash Sentry. “What, like this?”

“No, pull harder.”

“I’m pulling harder! It’s stuck!”

“It’s not stuck, you’re just not lifting it enough!”

“I’m lifting it as much as I can! If I lifted it any higher, I’d be picking up the whole carrier!”

“You’re not—”

Flash was cut off by the cat carrier door suddenly swinging outward. This didn’t happen because of Blueblood’s magic, however; an orange talon had pushed the door open from inside. And as that orange talon emerged, it was followed by an equally orange body.

The griffon who strode out of the cat carrier had the hindquarters of a tiger, and the head and wings of an eagle owl. His black stripes were mostly faded, and his plumage was bright-orange. Two tufts of feathers stuck up off of the griffon’s head like ears, or horns, or ear-horns.

He was also the single largest griffon that Shining Armor had ever seen, and Shining Armor had seen six whole griffons.

“Hey.” The griffon spoke in the most mellow, calming voice Shining had ever heard. “I’m Garth. I’m an ambassador from the griffons. You got any coffee or something? Don’t even talk to me ‘till I’ve had my coffee.”

Shining stared at the fat griffon standing in the middle of the throne room. The fat griffon who claimed to be an ambassador and had just emerged from a giant cat carrier. While Shining Armor had witnessed those events, he still had a hard time acknowledging that they had actually happened.

“You’re… an ambassador?” Shining asked slowly. It was the only thing he could think to say at the moment.

“I mean, technically,” Garth said, scratching his chin. “I was the only griffon who was willing to come to Equestria for cheap. Everyone else wanted too much money.”

“See? He’s fully qualified,” said Prince Blueblood, who had never been fully qualified for anything in his life.

Shining Armor blinked. “… You’re an ambassador?”

It didn’t make sense. Griffons didn’t have ambassadors, at least not official ones. They were too antisocial to put any real effort into diplomacy. The whole reason Shining Armor had sent Blueblood off looking for a griffon ambassador was because he knew it was impossible busywork. Blueblood shouldn’t have been able to find one… And yet he had.

Blueblood was so incompetent that he’d somehow failed at failing.

“Look, I know griffons don’t usually send ambassadors, but this is kinda important,” Garth said as he sat down on his haunches. “Word’s reached us that your pony princesses are missing, including the ones who move the sun and the moon.”

Of course. If Shining wasn’t in shock from Blueblood somehow succeeding at his impossible task, he might have guessed that this was about the princesses. The other races had been bound to find out about the missing princesses sooner or later.

“We… appreciate Griffonstone’s concern,” Shining Armor said, still recovering. “Any aid you could possibly offer us is—”

“Oh, no, no,” Garth chuckled good-naturedly and shook his head. “Sorry, I probably should have been clearer. I’m not here to offer aid, Prince; I’m here to tell you that the griffons aren’t happy about the situation with the sun and moon.”

“… They aren’t?” Shining suddenly began to feel very nervous.

Starswirl and the group of unicorns he’d gathered to fill in for Celestia and Luna had been doing a decent job moving the sun and moon, but they were still clearly having trouble. The two celestial bodies were moving much slower than they normally did, and sometimes they flat out moved the wrong way. Three days ago, instead of setting, the sun had just sort of bobbed up and down in the sky for a few hours. Despite the unicorns’ best efforts, it was obvious their magic wasn’t up to the task.

“Yeah, they’re pretty upset,” Garth said calmly. “See, in the past, they were fine with letting you ponies handle the sun and moon. Now, though, they’re starting to think maybe Equestria shouldn’t be in charge of those big boys who live in the sky. I mean, over the last few years, how many times has something gone wrong with the sun and the moon?”

Shining had to admit that Garth had a point. Since the return of Nightmare Moon, there had been lots of slip-ups with the movement of the sun and moon. Those had all been small incidents that were quickly fixed, of course, but when you added them all together, it made things look like Equestria was starting to lose its touch.

“So here’s the deal,” Garth said. “Either you ponies get your act together and start flying right, or we’re going to have to take over for you. End of story.”

“What?!” Everypony in the throne room cried out. Everypony, that was, except for Flurry Heart, who, as a baby, was incapable of verbally asking for clarification. She just babbled happily.

“But the sun and the moon can only be moved with magic!” Shining Armor pointed out. “Griffons don’t have that kind of power!”

“That’s true,” Garth agreed. “But we’ve come up with an alternative. We think that by flying up to the sun and moon and tying ropes around them, we can get them moving using a complex series of pulleys and gears.”

Shining Armor’s eyes widened. The griffons had really thought this all through! They were serious!

“But we can’t just hand the sun and the moon over to another nation without consulting the other races!” Shining pointed out.

“That’s not our problem,” Garth said. “Look, all I know is, the griffons are demanding authority over day and night if you keep messing them up. And if you refuse… we’re prepared to go to war.”

The throne room fell silent.

“With you, I mean,” Garth clarified. “We’re prepared to go to war with you.”

The throne room erupted into gasps.

“War?!” Flash Sentry repeated. “Equestria hasn’t been at war in decades! My grandpa won’t shut up about it!”

“I’m not really invested in this at all,” said the other guard.

“This is absurd!” Shining Armor set Flurry Heart down on the floor and got up out of his seat. He was too outraged to continue sitting like some sort of calm person. “You can’t declare war on us while we’re in the middle of a crisis!”

“Well, you should have thought of that before your princesses went missing,” Garth said. “Us griffons haven’t gone to war in a long time, either, but we still remember how to do it. If our demands aren’t met, we will invade Equestria and throw rocks at everyone until you all just give up.”

This was bad. With how easily-influenced the ponies of Equestria were, they would almost certainly give up after getting only a few rocks thrown at them. And if Equestria went to war and lost, what diabolical purposes would the griffons use the sun and moon for? Would they try to dissect them? Use them for advertising? The possibilities were terrifying.

“Please,” Shining Armor pleaded. “We’re doing the best we can, but with the princesses missing…”

“Hey, it’s not up to me,” Garth interrupted. “I’m just an ambassador, remember? All I can say is you’ve got a week to get your act together. After that, rocks are gonna start being thrown. A crossword puzzle is like a maze that words keep getting lost in.”

His business done, Garth turned around and walked back into the giant cat carrier he’d emerged from. The two earth ponies closed the crate’s door, lifted it up onto their shoulders, and carried it back out of the throne room. Soon, they were gone and the doors shut behind them.

Blueblood turned to Shining Armor, a smug smile on his face.

“Well, I think I did a pretty good job finding that ambassador,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

Shining Armor collapsed back down onto Celestia’s throne and held his head in his hooves. He didn’t have the energy to yell at Blueblood. Flurry Heart attempted to comfort her father by floating up to his side and making amused, bubbly noises. It didn’t help.

Flash Sentry had been right when he said that Equestria hadn’t been to war in decades. The closest they’d come to war had been the Storm King’s invasion, but that conflict had been so one-sided that calling it a war seemed generous. Shining had very little confidence in how Equestria would fare in an actual, long-term conflict.

“We have to find some way to avoid this,” Shining said. “If we go to war, we’ll just wind up embarrassing ourselves. All of the other nations will make fun of us.”

“But we can’t just hand the sun and moon over to the griffons!” Flash Sentry exclaimed. “I mean, we literally can’t! How would letting them be in charge of the sun and moon even work? I’m confused.”

“I haven’t been paying attention,” the other guard said.

“I’m not saying we give them what they ask,” Shining Armor said. “It’d be kind of irresponsible of us to just give away the sun and the moon while the princesses are missing… If that’s even something we can do.”

Blueblood tapped his chin. “Couldn’t we simply hide the sun and moon somewhere that the griffons couldn’t find them?”

Blueblood’s suggestion, appropriately enough, was met with stunned silence by pretty much everypony. Nopony knew quite how to appropriately respond to such a stupid idea. The worst part was that Blueblood had a genuinely inquisitive look on his face, like he expected everypony to start building off of his idea. It was awful.

“… There are a million reasons why that plan wouldn’t work,” Shining finally said. “Later tonight, I’ll have the palace scribes list all of those reasons in detail, compile them into a collection of books, and publish them as ‘Blueblood’s Awful Plan: The Series’. That way, everypony can read them, and nopony will ever come up with such a terrible plan ever again. Okay?”

Blueblood tilted his head inquisitively.

“Are you… saying we can’t do that?” He asked slowly.

“No!” Shining snapped. “Of course we can’t! I have no idea what we can do! The only ponies who could possibly fix this situation are the princesses!”

Shining was a little surprised when he was done with his outburst. He certainly hadn’t expected to just let loose on Blueblood like that. Blueblood, Flash, and the other guy were all staring at Shining in surprise. Flurry Heart, thankfully, didn’t look like Shining’s yelling had upset her. Instead, she was staring at her father like he was insane.

As the anger inside of Shining began to abate, he fell back into the throne and let loose another sigh. Once again holding his head in his hooves, he said the thing that was probably on everypony’s minds.

“We need to find the princesses.”

The Worst Place to Get Engaged

Her name was Crystal Clear, and she was the best dang spymaster that the EIEIO had ever had.

Or at least Shining Armor assumed so. He hadn’t really met many spymasters in his life, and at this point he couldn’t really afford to be picky.

The way Shining Armor figured it, though, they needed more leads on where the princesses could have disappeared to. And if there was anypony who knew something that hadn’t come up in the investigation, it was the leader of Equestria’s largest intelligence organization.

Sure, it was a longshot, but Shining Armor had pretty much no leads. He told Crystal Clear as much when she arrived in the throne room for their daily meeting.

“I’m desperate and will take literally any leads you have,” Shining Armor said to Crystal after explaining the situation to her. “Seriously, I will cling to any false hope available as we slide inevitably towards our doom.”

Crystal Clear looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Okay,” she said. “I have some information that might help you, princess. But we can’t talk here.”

Crystal Clear’s eyes darted upwards, towards the rafters of the throne room. Shining Armor looked up at all of the nature’s alarms that the earth pony was indicating.

“The geese might be listening,” Crystal whispered. “Meet me on the corner of Firefly and Faust tonight at midnight. I’ll be wearing a super inconspicuous trench coat and standing in the lamplit fog.”

“It’s not going to be foggy tonight,” Shining pointed out. “The pegasi don’t do fog in the cities at this time of year.”

“I have a fog machine,” Crystal said. “If I need to, I’ll use it.”

And with that, Crystal Clear turned and walked out of the throne room.

That had been several hours ago. Since then, time had passed, which was what time normally did. It was nearly midnight now, and the sun had finally set just a few minutes ago. Canterlot Castle was quiet and peaceful. Flurry Heart was resting soundly in her crib. All of the guards had been tucked in for the night.

And Shining Armor was sneaking our through the castle’s front doors.

Shining wasn’t sure why he felt the need to be sneaky. It wasn’t like he was being held prisoner in the castle. The guards and castle staff were so paranoid about something happening to him, though, that they constantly wanted to know where he was going. Shining couldn’t even walk from one room to another without having guards trying to escort him. And as much as Shining appreciated the sentiment, he didn’t feel like Crystal Clear would appreciate him bringing a bunch of guards to their clandestine meeting.

That being said, Shining Armor wasn’t planning on going alone. He knew it would be smart to have at least one guard with him in case anything happened. He wasn’t sure anything would, but it was better to be safe than sorry. And at the moment, Shining felt like there was only one guard he could trust to keep this meeting as confidential as possible.

Over the last few weeks, Flash Sentry had proven to be a fairly level-headed stallion. Shining didn’t really know the young guard especially well (Flash Sentry had only entered active guard duty after Shining Armor had retired to the Crystal Empire) but he felt like Flash could be trusted. Or, at the very least, Flash wouldn’t freak out over Shining leaving the castle for a bit.

Flash Sentry was off-duty for the night, however, and had returned home just a couple of hours ago. It was a good thing Flash Sentry was constantly telling his home address to ponies, or Shining Armor wouldn’t have known where to find him.

Shining found Flash Sentry’s home in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood, nestled in along a row of rather fancy apartments. Each door helpfully had a picture of the resident’s cutie mark on it. This prevented the need to break into any of the apartments to see who lived in them.

Once Shining found the door that had Flash Sentry’s shield and lightning bolt on it, he reached up and knocked loudly with his hoof. He could hear footsteps coming towards him from within Flash’s apartment. Then, the door opened.

Flash Sentry was out of uniform, and his blue mane was unrestrained by his helmet. Despite being off-duty, however, the stallion had a rather intense look on his face. He stared at Shining Armor with a single eyebrow raised, clearly waiting for the prince to say why he was paying this late-night visit.

“Flash, I need you to come with me to meet with Crystal Clear,” Shining said. “I need somepony to have my back in case—”

“Are you asking me to march into battle with you?” Flash asked. “Who are you? And why should I lend my wings to whatever cause you fight for?”

Shining blinked.

“Flash, it’s me,” he said. “Shining Armor. The married guy. Did you hit your head? Or do you have face-blindness?”

“Shining Armor?” Flash lifted a hoof to his chin thoughtfully. “Your name rings familiar to me. I may have heard it in passing. Are you a stallion of battle? A commander of soldiers? Come inside and tell me the tales of your past glories.”

Just as Shining Armor was starting to worry that Flash Sentry was suffering from some kind of brain illness, a voice from within the apartment called out to them.

“Hang on! I’m coming!”

Soon, Flash was joined in the doorway by another Flash Sentry. The two nearly-identical stallions stood side-by-side, apparently oblivious to how confused they were making Shining Armor. The prince’s eyes darted back and forth between the two Flashes as he tried to put the puzzle pieces together.

Flash glared disapprovingly at the other Flash, who looked back at Flash in confusion. After a few moments, Flash and Flash stopped looking at Flash and Flash, respectively, and both turned to look at Shining Armor.

“Sorry, sir,” Flash said. “I keep telling him to let me know when somepony’s at the door, just so we can avoid confusion.”

Flash looked once more at Flash, clearly annoyed. “Go back inside, Magnus. This is my boss.”

“I am a grown stallion, descendant; I can open the door if I want.” Despite the irritation in his voice, Flash nevertheless complied and headed back inside of the apartment. Once he was gone, it only took Shining Armor a second to put two and two together.

“Is that… Flash Magnus?” Shining asked in disbelief. “Why is Flash Magnus living with you?”

Flash sighed and shrugged. “Yeah, the legendary folk hero and Pillar of Equestria; he’s been crashing here for a while now. Apparently I’m his direct descendant or something. It’s been a real mess.”

“… But why is he living with you?” Shining repeated emphatically.

“I think he just doesn’t want to look for a place on his own,” Flash said in a confidential whisper. “You know how much of a hassle it is finding an apartment in this town…”

Shining didn’t. After he’d moved out of his parents’ home, he’d just moved in with Cadence at the castle. Now that he thought about it, Shining really had no idea how living on your own actually worked.

“Forget all of that,” Shining said, whispering for some reason. “I need you to come with me to my meeting with Crystal Clear. That way you can have my back in case she tries to mug me or something. I don’t know if that’s something a spymaster would do or not, but better safe than sorry.”

Flash Sentry didn’t bother asking for clarification. He stepped out of the doorway and onto the front stoop, closing the door behind him.

“Do you really think Crystal Clear has any useful information?” Flash asked. “It’s been three weeks; why wouldn’t she have said something before now?”

Shining thought about it as he and Flash left the apartment complex.

“Maybe she had amnesia,” he suggested. “Or maybe she’s just really lazy. Either way, I’ll take anything I can get at this point.”

The streets of Canterlot were nearly empty as Shining and Flash made their way towards the street corner where Crystal Clear would be waiting. Most businesses were closed, save for the all-night donut shops and the 24/7 wig stores. Likewise, almost everypony in Canterlot had gone to bed for the night. Shining and Flash Sentry only passed by a few night-owls who paid little attention to them as they walked on by.

The corner of Firefly and Faust was a good distance away from the castle, on the very edge of the city. It wasn’t exactly a shady neighborhood, but it also wasn’t a place where some of Canterlot’s more respectable citizens would dare to tread. A solitary, flickering streetlamp illuminated the dusty pavement and the old laserdisc store that sat on the street corner.

Crystal Clear was already waiting for them, and so was her fog machine. The EIEIO’s spymaster stood under the streetlamp, a hat and trench coat obscuring her features. This was nullified a bit by the very noticeable nametag she wore on her coat. Her fog machine, which she apparently hadn’t been able to find an outlet for, stood menacingly at her side.

“You made it,” Crystal said when Shining and Flash joined her. “Do either of you have any dry ice?”

“Of course we do,” Shining said. “We didn’t bring any with us, though.”

“Darn,” Crystal said. Then she said it again for some reason. “Darn. In that case, we’ll have to make this quick.”

Crystal Clear reached into her jacket and pulled out a single Manilla folder. The EIEIO’s logo, a pony shrugging under the group’s acronym, had been stamped on the front. Crystal held it out in her hooves, and Shining Armor took it with his magic. He quickly opened the folder up and looked at its contents.

Inside of the folder was a single piece of paper. Printed on the paper, in bold type, were the words ‘I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN THINGS NOW’.

“Now that you’ve read that, I can begin,” Crystal said. “The EIEIO does have some information on what might have happened to the princesses, but it hasn’t been completely verified. I might be sending you on a wild goose chase, sir.”

“I don’t care,” Shining said. “I’ll chase as many of nature’s alarms as I need to if it helps me get my wife and Twily back. And the other two.”

Shining paused. “Er, I just realize that I made it sound like I don’t care about getting Celestia and Luna back as much as the others. I probably could have phrased that better. My point still stands, though. I’m prepared to pursue whatever nonsense lead you give me.”

“Alright, princess.” Crystal Clear looked around to make sure nopony was listening in on the conversation. Then, she leaned in closer to whisper. “Tell me, what do you know about the Canterlot sewer system?”

That was an odd question. Shining didn’t know if Crystal Clear was leading into something, or if she was just genuinely curious.

“I know about as much as anypony,” Shining said. “The sewers are the terrible pipes that all of the stinky water lives in.”

“Impressive,” Crystal said. “You’re correct; the sewers are awful, wet, and they hide underneath Canterlot. But we have reason to believe that whatever abducted the princesses might have done so from the sewers.”

Shining raised an eyebrow. This was certainly a useful clue, if it was true. But Shining Armor had been misled to by ponies with fog machines before. He needed to make sure that Crystal wasn’t just pulling leads out of thin air like some sort of detective/magician.

“How do I know you’re not full of bologna?” Shining asked, hoping nopony was offended by his rough language.

“Yeah,” Flash added. “Why would anyone be in the sewers? They’re bad and damp. The rats that live in the sewers are constantly sad because their home is so awful.”

Crystal Clear shrugged. “I don’t know why our kidnapper would have been in the sewers. Maybe they’re stupid, and think sewers are a good place to be. Maybe they’re some sort of sewer-goblin. But we received a report of unusual magical activity coming from the sewers at the exact time the princesses disappeared, and we just verified those reports today.”

“Who reported this?” Shining Armor asked suspiciously.

“Well, because the EIEIO doesn’t have any hostile nations to keep tabs on, we pass the time by constantly spying on our own citizens,” Crystal Clear explained. “It is a gross invasion of privacy, and also very illegal. We gain absolutely nothing by doing this.”

“I see,” Shining Armor said. “I am going to fire you.”

“That is a good decision,” Crystal Clear agreed. “Anyway, we became aware of the magical activity by chance while we were spying on a local pony who spends all day staring at sewer grates. Since then, our analysts have confirmed that the magical activity was from a spell being cast in the sewers at the same time the princesses vanished. But we don’t actually know if the spell had anything to do with their disappearance.”

“So it could just be an ordinary sewer spell?” Flash asked. “The kind that gets cast every day?”

“Exactly,” Crystal said. “That’s why I hadn’t brought it up before now. We wanted to make absolutely sure this lead is worthwhile before making somepony go down into the awful, awful sewers.”

Shining couldn’t disagree with Crystal’s hesitance. This wasn’t much to go on. What if they sent somepony own into the sewers and it turned out this was just a red herring? They would have ruined that pony’s day for no good reason. Was the slim possibility of finding a clue really worth sending somepony into the sewers?

It was a lot to think about. But then again, Shining missed his wife a lot, so whatever.

“We can’t afford to let this opportunity slip by,” Shining said. “But I can’t ask somepony to go into the sewers. If I did that, it would be seen as a terrifying abuse of power. So instead, I’ll…”

Shining shuddered. “I’ll go into the sewers myself.”

Flash Sentry and Crystal Clear both gasped. Well, actually, they yawned, but Shining thought that yawns and gasps were extremely similar. Despite the concern that he was sure they felt, Shining remained determined.

“Don’t try to stop me,” Shining said.

“I wasn’t going to,” Flash Sentry said.

“I’m legally not allowed to stop you,” Crystal said. “You’re basically an absolute monarch.”

“Okay, good,” Shining said. “Don’t.”

Since neither of them was willing to try and talk Shining out of this, the prince was left standing around awkwardly while Crystal Clear made her preparations to leave. The spymaster lifted her fog machine up over her head in the most awkward way possible and began to trot away. Before she could round the corner and disappear from sight, however, Crystal stopped and looked back at Flash and Shining.

“Before I go,” she said, “there’s one more thing I should probably mention.”

Shining and Flash Sentry both looked at Crystal expectantly. Once again, the EIEIO’s leader made sure to look around just in case someone was listening in. Then, once she was certain they were safe, Crystal Clear leaned in and whispered confidentially to the two stallions.

“If this mission fails, and you don’t find the princesses…” Crystal said in a hushed tone. “I want you to know that I hope we do go to war with the griffons. I want to be able to commit war crimes. That is the only dream I have ever had in my life.”

And with that, Crystal Clear disappeared into the nonexistent fog.

Sometime later, Shining Armor sat at the desk in Princess Celestia’s study, deep in thought. He hadn’t been able to sleep when he’d snuck back into the castle; he was far too restless. After checking up on Flurry Heart and trying to get some paperwork done, Shining had found himself doing research on Canterlot’s sewer system.

Much to Shining’s surprise, there were actually quite a few books about the subject in Celestia’s study. Shining supposed that made since; obviously, the princess would need to be well-informed regarding the functions of her capital city. She also owned several books on other important parts of Canterlot’s infrastructure, like public transit and those ponies who stood on street corners pretending to be statues.

After a bit of searching, Shining found the three most up-to-date books about sewers that Celestia had on her shelf. They were An Underground Guide to Equestria’s Sewers; How Canterlot’s Sewers Work When We Just Sort Of Hang Off Of a Mountain; and Sewers: The Worst Place to Get Engaged. All three were pop-up books, which was very helpful.

The information actually contained within the books, however, was much more of a mixed bag. Despite being about sewers, which are notoriously moist, all three books were incredibly dry. The content was so boring that Shining had difficulty powering through it. The books mostly went over what sewers were, how they worked, and what kinds of birds lived in them.

Not everything Shining found was stupid and useless, however. The books covered the history of Canterlot’s sewers, and how they had originally been a series of catacombs that the ancient Equestrians had used to bury expired leftovers. They ran all throughout Canterlot Mountain, occasionally crisscrossing with the old mines. Most experts agreed that Canterlot’s sewers were, quote, ‘Needlessly elaborate’.

Shining rubbed his chin with his hoof. If the sewers really were that complicated, it might help if he had some sort of map when he went down there. It might also help if he had wings, or a magic sword that could solve any problem. Shining felt like the map would be easier to get a hold of, though. He could probably just buy one at a gift shop.

“I can go down into the sewers tomorrow night…” Shining said to himself. “That’ll give me time to get everything I need…”

“Are you going to go alone?” Thorax asked.

Shining opened his mouth to respond, then stopped. He hadn’t heard Thorax enter the study. Shining looked around to find him, but Thorax was nowhere in sight. Where was he?

The stool Shining had been sitting on shifted a bit. Shining looked down and realized he’d been sitting on Thorax’s back the whole time he’d been reading.

“… Thorax?” Shining asked, puzzled. “What are you doing in here?”

“This is where I’ve been sleeping,” Thorax said. “The beds in the guest rooms are too uncomfortable. The floor in here feels really nice on my carapace. I’ve been in here every night since you became ruler.”

Shining blinked. “Wait, so… you just slept through me sitting on top of you for, like, two hours?”

“No, I’ve been awake the whole time,” Thorax said. “Hey, could you maybe stop sitting on me? You’re kind of crushing me, and I’ve been having trouble breathing. Everything’s a little fuzzy.”

Shining Armor got up off of Thorax’s back. He stood by and watched as the pastel king rose up off the floor and stretched. Shining had no idea why Thorax had antlers.

Once Thorax had finished popping his back into place, he turned towards Shining with a concerned look on his face. “Why do you need to go into the sewers anyway? Aren’t sewers supposed to be moist and terrible?”

“Crystal Clear gave me a lead on what might have happened to the princesses,” Shining said with a tired shrug. “I’d send somepony else, but the sewers are awful; I don’t want to have somepony go there in my stead. If I do this myself, nopony else has to.”

Thorax looked concerned.

“What if you run into some kind of trouble?” He asked worriedly. “What if you get lost, or see some graffiti that makes you so upset you go insane?”

Shining hadn’t thought of that. He’d been so busy thinking about how terrible sewers are in general that he hadn’t even considered the bad things that might happen in them. He could get attacked by sewer rats, or mugged by sewer rats, or captured and sold into slavery by sewer rats. Shining was confident in his ability to protect himself, but he had no idea what he could run into down there.

“Those words you said are making me concerned,” Shining said. “But who could I bring with me? I mean, I guess I could bring Flash, but… I don’t know if he could handle a sewer adventure. He might have a breakdown or something.”

“I could come with you!” Thorax chirped. “I’m used to traveling through miserable, damp, and complex systems of tunnels. The old Changeling Hive was basically an above-ground sewer!”

Shining blinked. He hadn’t expected Thorax to volunteer for this disgusting sewer mission. Now that he thought about it, though, Thorax had a point. From what Shining remembered, Chrysalis’s hive had been fairly sewer-like. Granted, Shining had only gotten brief glimpses of the hive during the moments when Chrysalis had pulled him out of his slime cocoon so she could hit on him.

“Well…” Shining thought it over. “I don’t know. What if you get grossed out and die because of how nasty things are?”

Thorax waved a hoof dismissively. “That won’t be a problem. Watch this.”

In an instant, Thorax’s body was engulfed in green flames that dissipated just as quickly. Shining recognized this as the Changeling’s shapeshifting magic. But when the fire vanished, Thorax looked pretty much exactly the same.

“See?” Thorax said, his voice sounding much more nasally. “I shapeshifted into a version of myself without nostrils.”

“Wow!” Shining yelled in amazement. “Incredible! I had no idea you had this kind of power! I'm freaking out a little over how impressive this is!”

Thorax chuckled awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. Okay. I didn’t expect you to be so impressed by this.”

“I am!” Shining yelled.

This settled it—Shining Armor wouldn’t be going into the sewers alone. He’d have the amazing nostrilless Thorax along with him. That alone gave Shining Armor more hope than he’d had going in. Even though he knew that there was a good chance this lead wouldn’t amount to anything, Shining now felt as if defeat was just a little less likely.

With renewed confidence, Shining wished Thorax good night and headed back to the bedchambers he’d been staying in. Flurry Heart was still sound asleep in her crib, and the sun wouldn’t rise for a few more hours.

Shining Armor tucked himself into bed and quickly fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. He needed to be well-rested for when night fell again.

Author's Note

Sewers

Mr. Hot-Take Galaxy Brain

Shining Armor didn’t know how long he and Thorax were inside of the kidnapping sack. It was probably less than a year, or maybe a little over half an hour; somewhere in that ballpark. It was hard to keep track of time whilst inside of a bag. Thorax had tried to help by turning into a clock, but every time he did he was set for Griffon Standard Time. That was no help at all.

As his and Thorax’s masked kidnappers carried them off to who-knows-where, Shining Armor tried to go over the facts.

Fact One: A gang of robe-wearing sewer-criminals were abducting Shining Armor, Thorax, and Blueblood. Said criminals claimed to not be involved in the princesses’ disappearance, but how much stock could you put in a kidnapper saying they hadn’t kidnapped someone?

Fact Two: Shining and Thorax were inside of a sack. That fact was pretty self-evident; Shining really didn’t need to think about it too long.

Fact Three: Shining couldn’t come up with a third fact. His mind was kind of preoccupied by the whole kidnapping thing.

None of these facts were very helpful. Shining hated all of them.

It didn’t take very long for their captors to arrive at whatever destination they were taking Shining and Thorax to. Shining heard their hoofsteps come to a stop. Then, there was the sound of a key unlocking a lock. A metal door swung open on rusty hinges.

Before Shining could figure out what this all meant, he could feel the bag he and Thorax were in being moved. Shining and Thorax were both abruptly dumped out of the sack and onto a cold, metallic floor. A third thud followed as Blueblood was dumped beside them, and before Shining could fully get his bearings he heard the metal door swinging shut behind them.

Shining hurried onto his hooves and looked around. Walls of metal bars surrounded Shining, Thorax, and the other one. They were in a small cage. Outside of the cage, Shining saw the flicker of torches mounted to walls a good distance away. The gray, mossy bricks told Shining they were still in the sewers. The giant banner hanging from the ceiling told Shining that they were in ‘The Slimey Zone’.

It took Shining a moment to realize they were being watched. The robed, masked figures were surrounding the cage, looking in on their captives. Shining had no idea why he hadn’t noticed them earlier. It wasn’t like they were hiding. That was kind of weird. A real brain-fart, right there.

“Well, well, well…” The robed figure standing in front of the cage’s door said. Shining recognized the voice; this was the figure who’d seemingly been in charge earlier. “This is so… deliciously ironic. Eqeustrian royalty has landed right in our laps.”

Shining took a moment to digest what he’d just heard before speaking.

“… How is that ironic?” He asked. “Did you not want us to land in your laps? Had you already tried to capture us and failed?”

“I…” The lead figure hesitated. Several of his comrades glanced at him in confusion. After a while, he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Don’t get clever with me, boy. You’re in far over your head.”

Behind him, Shining could hear Thorax getting back up onto his hooves. Blueblood was also conscious again, for some reason. While they put together the fact that they were indeed inside of a little cage, Shining narrowed his eyes at the masked figure that stood in front of the door.

“Where are we?” Shining asked angrily. “Why did you kidnap us? That was very rude.”

“This,” the masked figure said as he raised a hoof and gestured dramatically at the massive chamber they were in, “is an old, forgotten catacomb that was built centuries ago. When the Canterlot Sewer system was built, this room was incorporated into its design. All of the slime that builds up in the sewers flows here, where it is eaten by hungry slime-enthusiasts.

“Or, rather, that’s what this chamber used to be. Ever since eating slime fell out of fashion with ponies, this room has gone unused. Nopony comes down here anymore. No, instead, this slime-room now serves as our base of operations; our… cathedral.”

The lead figure reached a leg up and placed his hoof on the blank, white mask he wore under his robe. After a moment of hesitation, the figure gripped the mask and tore it off dramatically. As he did so, the hood of his robe fell back, and Shining could see what kind of creature his captor was.

“You’re an antelope?!” Shining gasped.

“Gazelle,” the figure corrected. His large, pointy ears, now free of the confines of his hood, flicked irritably. “We’re gazelles.”

“That explains the horns!” Thorax exclaimed, as if their horns had been some sort of big mystery. “It all makes sense now!”

“I am Raphael,” the now-unmasked gazelle said, bowing in mock politeness to his captives. “And we are the Cult of the Great Gazelle!”

One by one, the cultists surrounding the cage began to remove their masks. Sure enough, they were all gazelles, and not something else like cheetahs or giant skunks. Shining looked at all of their unfamiliar faces, and a question began to form in his mind.

“Wait, why were you wearing masks?” Shining asked.

Raphael’s dramatic smirk disappeared. “To… protect our identities.”

“From who?” Thorax asked. “You just said that nopony ever comes down here. Are you protecting your identities from yourselves? Who are these masks supposed to hide you from?”

Once again, the cultists all looked at each other uncertainly. Frustration built on Raphael’s face as he and his group slowly began to realize that there was no reason to hide their identities if nobody ever actually saw them.

“That’s enough out of you!” Raphael snapped. “I’m asking the questions here!”

“You haven’t asked a single question since you captured us,” Shining Armor pointed out.

“We’ve been captured?” Blueblood asked, confused.

Raphael stammered in impotent rage. His left eye twitched and his nostrils flared. His horns didn’t really do anything. For some reason, Raphael didn’t seem to like being made to look foolish in front of his cultists.

“Look, this is serious!” Raphael snapped. “We’re a cult! You’ve been captured by a cult! Why are you not taking this seriously?”

“Eh.” Shining Armor shrugged. “Cults are no big deal. I know a mare who used to run a cult. And my sister basically started a cult when she opened up her school.”

Raphael scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“Oh, wow,” he said. “Check out Mr. Hot-Take Galaxy Brain over here. ‘Oh, the education system is messed up.’ We all know that already, genius. Way to speak truth to power over here.”

Shining looked around, embarrassed. Thorax and Blueblood were both actively trying not to look at him. Evidently, they agreed with Raphael about Shining’s joke not being very original. Shining Armor felt deeply ashamed about their reaction, as he always tried to keep his material fresh.

“… Whatever,” Shining muttered. “You’re still not that scary.”

“Shut up!” Raphael snarled, grabbing onto the bars of the cage door. “Do you fools not understand what you’ve stumbled onto?! You came waltzing into our lair on the eve of our cult’s greatest triumph! The goal we’ve been working towards for over eighty-five years is finally within our reach!”

“What are you talking about?” Shining Armor asked. “Sir, please give us your motivation and backstory.”

Raphael appeared to calm down a bit. The anger gradually left his face as he took a step back and regained his composure.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “Alright. I have no reason to tell you anything, but I’ll do it anyway. Eighty-six years ago, my grandfather, Denzel, was a student of Gazelle History at an ancient community college. During his studies, he stumbled upon the legend of the Great Gazelle; a harbinger of mayhem and chaos that had made life really inconvenient for everyone many centuries ago. And so, he—”

“Wait.” Shining Armor held up a hoof for a moment. “Hang on; ‘harbinger of mayhem and chaos?’ Are you talking about Discord?”

“What?” Raphael did a double-take, incredulous. He looked practically offended by Shining Armor’s suggestion. “No! Of course not! They’re completely different!”

“How?” Thorax asked.

Raphael hesitated before giving an answer. His eyes darted off to the side for a second. Thorax’s question had apparently stumped him.

“Discord…” He said slowly. “Isn’t a gazelle!”

“He isn’t?” Blueblood asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

“No. He’s a draconequus.” Shining Armor didn’t bother looking over his shoulder when he spoke to Blueblood. He was so focused on Raphael that he wasn’t even angry at Blueblood’s idiocy.

“Pfft,” Blueblood scoffed. “Yeah. Okay. Sure. That’s a real species, alright.”

“ENOUGH!”

Raphael stamped one of his hooves onto the cold stone floor in a fit of rage. Then he did it again, but more softly. He got so angry that he took off his robe and then put it back on. It was deeply disturbing.

“I’ve had enough of your backtalk and jibber-jabber!” Raphael snarled. “Tonight is the night that we finally summon the Great Gazelle and bring about the end of Equestria, but you jerks aren’t taking it seriously! I was going to be nice and let you watch us do it, but now, ironically, I’m just going to leave you in your cage!”

“That’s not what irony means!” Shining said.

“Too bad!” Raphael said with a laugh. “Once we summon the Great Gazelle, nothing will mean anything anymore! We’ll destroy Equestria and finally have our revenge for… for, uh…”

Raphael trailed off uncertainly.

“I’m… actually not entirely sure why we want to destroy Equestria,” he confessed. “We’re still going to do it, though. It’s, like, my family’s whole thing—my dad was really insistent on doing it. I’ll have a lot of egg on my face if I can’t pull it off.”

Blueblood narrowed his eyes and stepped closer to the bars of the cage.

“And what nefarious scheme are you all cooking up, hmmmmm?” He asked.

The tense and awkward energy that had been building up in the Slimey Zone disappeared. It was like a balloon slowly deflating, or another thing doing something else. All eyes were on Blueblood as he stood there, eyeing Raphael suspiciously through the bars of the cage’s door.

“He… He just told us,” Shining pointed out.

“Yeah, you’re a bit late to the conversation, chief,” Raphael chided.

Blueblood looked between Shining and Raphael for a moment before taking a step back sheepishly. Thorax put a comforting hoof on Blueblood’s back, unintentionally getting sewer-dirt on the stallion’s white coat. It was what he deserved.

“Well, that killed the mood,” Raphael grumbled. He gestured to the rest of the gazelles surrounding the iron cage. “Come on, guys. Let’s leave them alone with their own stupidity while we summon the Great Gazelle.”

Raphael turned and walked away from the cage, vanishing in the darkness of the Slimey Zone. His followers did the same, disappearing from sight as the sound of their hooves on the stone floor gradually faded away. Soon, Shining Armor, Thorax, and Blueblood the Awful were all alone inside of their terrible cage.

It was definitely not a good thing.

“… We need to figure out a way out of here,” Shining said once he was certain that the gazelles were gone. “This cage is really boring. They didn’t even leave any magazines for us to read.”

“I agree,” Blueblood said. “This is easily the worst kidnapping I’ve ever been a part of, and I’ve been kidnapped twice.”

Shining Armor nodded. He turned to look at Thorax, who was already beginning to crack under the pressure of living behind bars.

“Thorax, you can turn into pretty much anything, right?” Shining asked.

Thorax shrugged. “Pretty much. I can’t turn into crocodiles, though; I’m allergic.”

“Okay.” Shining rubbed his hooves together conspiratorially. “I have an idea. What if you turned into a locksmith? If you did that, I could pay you to unlock the cage door. Then we could escape by walking out of the door, thus leaving the cage.”

Thorax rubbed his chin. “Hmm… It’s not a bad idea. But don’t locksmiths need special tools to do their job?”

“We have a special tool in here with us,” Shining said. “It’s called Blueblood.”

All three of the creatures inside the cage shared a good laugh over that fairly clever burn that Shining had just dished out. It was important to have fun, even in dire situations like these. They laughed for some time, coming close to tears, before eventually sighing contentedly and smiling amongst themselves.

“Okay, okay. I’ll go to work.” In an instant, Thorax changed into a copper-coated earth pony with a padlock cutie mark. He wore an apron, as well as a fancy sash with the word ‘LOCKSMITH’ written on it in gold font. These were the clothes that all locksmiths were required by law to wear under penalty of death.

“Well,” Thorax said in his normal dorky voice, “here goes nothing.” The disguised Changeling walked up to the cage door and began rubbing his hooves on the lock.

There was nothing Shining Armor could do but wait. He sat on his haunches and looked around, unsure of what else he could do. There was nothing to look at outside of the cage; the chamber was too darkly lit. And with Thorax busy trying to bust them out of idiot jail, the only creature Shining could really interact with was Blueblood.

Shining reluctantly turned to look at the other prince. Blueblood looked to be just as much at a loss for what to do as Shining was. He was absent-mindedly tapping his front hooves on the stone floor beneath them.

Thorax continued bothering the lock on the door. He worked quietly, like a mouse who was also a burglar, or a dead librarian. It was so quiet that the near-silence was beginning to get to Shining. As much as he hated to do it, the only thing he had to do was talk to Blueblood.

Shining Armor turned to the other stallion and tried to think of a polite conversation topic.

“So…” Shining Armor said. “How come you’re so terrible?”

Blueblood shrugged. “I come from a place of extreme privilege and was constantly spoiled as a child. I never had to learn how to do anything for myself because my parents constantly doted on me, and thus I have a very severe lack of understanding of how the world works. I also very rarely have to face consequences for my actions.”

“Oh.” Shining said, nodding. “That checks out.”

“Also, my parents were cursed by a witch,” Blueblood added.

Shining turned back to the cell door. Thorax looked like he was still trying to make the lock be bad at its job. It already felt like this was taking forever. Being around Blueblood caused some sort of time dilation effect.

This was torture. And it was only going to get worse, because more idiot-words started coming out of Blueblood’s awful mouth.

“What did you say you and your pet insect were doing in the sewers again?” Blueblood asked. “All of this craziness has made me forget.”

Shining sighed irritably. He really didn’t want to tell Blueblood about his and Thorax’s search for the princesses, but he supposed there was no point in avoiding it. Besides, Blueblood had already suffered from head injuries twice tonight; there was always the chance that he might get another one and forget all about this.

“We were following a lead,” Shining said. “The EIEIO’s spymaster said that a spell was cast in the sewers at the same time the princesses went missing.”

“Oh, you mean Crystal Clear?” Blueblood asked. “I know her. She spies on my house.”

“Yeah, she’s really terrible,” Shining said casually. “I’m going to fire her later. Anyway, we were hoping to find the princesses and settle this whole thing with the sun and the moon before the griffons declare war on us.”

Blueblood rubbed his chin. “Interesting. Do you think these antelopes had anything to do with it?”

“No.” Shining sighed and shook his head. “Despite their magnificent horns, gazelles can’t cast spells. Also, they told us that they didn’t have anything to do with the princesses going missing.”

“How do you know they aren’t lying?” Blueblood asked, for some reason deciding to actually use his brain for once.

“I thought of that,” Shining said. “But after talking to their leader, they honestly seem too stupid to pull off any kind of deception. I’m pretty sure they’re telling the truth.”

Blueblood nodded slowly in apparent understanding.

“I see,” he said. “In that case, why aren’t you still searching for clues?”

For a moment, Shining didn’t understand what Blueblood was asking. The question seemed almost too stupid, even for Blueblood and his tiny brain. But as Shining began to register that Blueblood was looking at him judgmentally, Shining realized that Blueblood really had asked what he’d thought.

“… Blueblood, we’ve been kidnapped,” Shining pointed out. “We’re in a cage?”

“And that means you can just take a break in your search for my auntie’s abductor?” Blueblood asked indignantly. “This is no time to be lazy, Armor! While you’re lollygagging about inside of this tiny cage, the perpetrator’s trail could be growing cold!”

Shining stared at Blueblood in disbelief. He hadn’t thought it was possible for Blueblood to stoop to such levels of infuriating stupidity. Shining’s eyebrows arched as his face scrunched up into a steadily-intensifying glare.

Before Shining could start vomiting angry words all over Blueblood’s face, however, something else happened.

“I got it!”

Thorax’s yell of triumph killed the tension building between Shining and Blueblood. The two princes turned towards the front of their cage. Thorax, now once again in his true form, pushed the door open. It swung outward on squeaky hinges. It was all just really great.

“Thorax, you’re incredible!” Shining Armor said, really overselling this whole lock-picking thing. “You managed to pick the door?!”

“No, it just wasn’t locked,” Thorax said.

The two cool guys and one Blueblood walked out of the cage. The massive chamber that housed the cage was no less dark from their new perspective. The only thing any of them could see was the massive banner hanging from the ceiling that had ‘THE SLIMEY ZONE!’ written on it in a wacky font. Shining didn’t know the name of the font, and that was terrifying.

“Now what?” Thorax asked as he desperately tried to locate the slime that this zone was known for.

“Well, we should probably keep looking for clues,” Shining Armor said. “Oh, and we should probably stop the cultists while we’re down here. We just need to find them.”

“They couldn’t have gotten far,” Thorax pointed out. “Unless they ran, or even sprinted lightly.”

Shining nodded. “Yeah, it’s a good thing gazelles aren’t known for their speed. We should find them in no time. Let’s head back into the sewers to look for them. We can try and ditch Blueblood while we search.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Blueblood said enthusiastically.

Shining, Thorax, and Blueblood used their legs to walk further into the darkness of the Slimey Zone. Shining and Blueblood used their magic to try and illuminate things. This helped a little, but it was still dark as heck. None of them could see more than a few feet ahead of them in any direction.

“We’re never going to beat up those gazelles at this rate,” Shining muttered under his breath. Then he said it again, but louder, so the others could hear him. “Thorax, can you shapeshift into anything that could give off light?”

Thorax grinned. “I think I know just the thing!”

Once again, Thorax’s body was engulfed by the flames of Changeling magic. In a flash, the fire disappeared, and Shining and Blueblood were both amazed to see that Thorax had turned into an ATV with power steering and front-mounted LED headlights.

“Wow!” Blueblood exclaimed, adding nothing interesting to the situation.

“Couldn’t you have just turned into the lights?” Shining asked. “Did you need to turn into the whole thing?”

“I have my reasons,” Thorax said, his voice for some reason emanating from the back of the vehicle. “Please don’t question me about this.”

Shining Armor got into the sparse interior of Thorax the ATV. There was no radio, which meant Thorax had not done a very good job of turning into a motor vehicle. Despite Shining’s anger over this, however, he was able to find the switch that turned on the ATV’s headlights.

The LED bulbs flicked on and the dark chamber was instantly filled with light. The parts of the chamber that were behind of Thorax weren’t lit up, though, because that’s not how light works. Duh.

“Now we can use our eyes to look for clues,” Shining Armor said as he began to scan the dank, stoney chamber.

Almost immediately, Shining found what he needed. On the other side of the Slimey Zone, next to a door that must have led back to the main sewer system, there was a large, stone altar. A gazelle skull sat upon a pyramid of rocks, and a crystal ball was nestled between its horns. Incense had been lit all around the altar, and the whole structure seemed to radiate a strange energy.

More importantly, however, the gazelles had left an important clue all around the altar. The clue was themselves. The gazelles hadn’t actually left the room; they’d just gone to the other end.

Thorax’s cool new headlight caught their attention. The gazelles were all staring at Shining’s group, clearly uncertain of what to do. Their leader, Raphael, looked shocked to see Blueblood, Shining, and an ATV.

“Oh, come on!” Raphael yelled, his voice echoing off of the Slimey Zone’s walls. “You were supposed to stay in the cage! Haven’t you ever heard of the honor system? This is so inconsiderate!”

Shining didn’t waste time apologizing for rudely breaking out of his prison. He put his hoof to the pedal of the ATV and pushed down, hard. He was going to drive this ATV over to the cultists and piledrive them onto the handlebars. But that didn’t happen; instead of moving, the ATV did the opposite of moving—it unmoved.

“Rngrngrngrng,” Thorax’s voice said from the back of the ATV. “That’s… that was supposed to be an engine stalling noise. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve got any gas.”

“Heck and darn! I’ll just have to use my legs, then!” Shining snapped. He hopped out of Thorax’s seat and started galloping towards the altar and the cultists surrounding it.

Raphael looked to his fellow cultists with a wild spark in his gazelle-eyes.

“Don’t let him distract you!” He said. “Begin the chant! We’ve nearly summoned the Great Gazelle!”

Raphael’s followers all linked their hooves and formed a ring around the altar. A sinister light began to emanate from the crystal bull atop the gazelle skull. The cultists raised their heads and united their voices into a single, powerful chant.

As Shining Armor continued his charge towards them, he could just barely make out the words…

Your time is up, my time is now…
You can’t see me, my time is now…
It’s the franchise, boy, I’m shining now…
You can’t see me, my time is now…

It was haunting. Shining could only imagine what deep, dark significance these alien words had. He couldn’t let that stop him, though. He continued his mad run towards the cultists, desperate to punch at least one of them before they could summon this ‘Great Gazelle’ and lay waste to all of Equestria.

The light from the crystal ball that sat on top of the altar had intensified. Shining couldn’t recognize the color of the light; it was indescribable, and also it was green. The smoke from the incense was pouring out of the altar, filling up the chamber. The strange light bounced off of the smoke, reminding Shining Armor of a rave Cadence had taken him to once.

“You’re too late! He’s coming! He’s really coming! Oh, this is so ironic!”

“THAT’S STILL NO IRONY!” Shining yelled angrily.

Raphael’s voice came from somewhere ahead of Shining, but by this point the smoke made it impossible to see. Shining was forced to stop mid-gallop, blinded by the light and smoke from the altar. He coughed as he put his hooves over his face, trying to clear his vision.

The cultists’ chant was increasing in volume. The light grew more and more intense, making the smoke glow like thunderclouds. There was something electric in the air that made all of Shining’s hairs stand on end. Everything seemed to be distorting, stretching, as the ritual reached its crescendo.

There was a blinding flash of light from the altar. The cultists’ voices reached a terrifying climax. And then, all at once, everything went black.

When Shining came to, he found himself lying on the stone floor of the Slimey Zone.

Shining Armor rose up onto his hooves. A terrible sense of vertigo was just beginning to die down in Shining’s head. For a moment, the prince had no idea what was happening.

Shining took in his surroundings in an attempt to steady himself. The chamber was completely cleared of smoke. Behind him, Thorax and Blueblood were also beginning to get back onto their hooves. Thorax was no longer an ATV, which was probably for the best. The light from his LED headlights was gone, and now the Slimey Zone was bathed in an eerie, yellow light.

It didn’t take long to find the source of the light. The altar at the end of the room was glowing with magical energy. It wasn’t just the crystal ball—the entire stone structure was giving off light. The cultists were still gathered around it, staring at the altar in mad delight. Apparently, they hadn’t been knocked down by whatever had happened.

Raphael worked his way back into his group, a look of shock on his face. “What’s happening? Did we do it? Have we summoned the Great Gazelle?”

The chamber remained silent, save for an electrical buzz hanging in the air. The excitement in the gazelles’ faces turned to confusion. They looked around them, evidently looking for the Great Gazelle. But the chamber was as empty as it had been. No one had arrived.

Hesitantly, Raphael approached the altar. He put his hooves onto the crystal ball uncertainly.

“Er… Great Gazelle?” He said. “Are you… Are you with us? Have we succeeded?”

Suddenly, a loud ringing noise filled the Slimey Zone. It was brief, only lasting for a second, and appeared to come from the altar. There was a brief moment of silence, and then the altar rang again. And again.

Then, Shining heard a very distinct clicking noise.

The cultists were all smiling again. They exchanged excited glances, clearly overjoyed with this sign that the ritual had worked.

Shining felt his chest fall. He hadn’t been able to stop them. They had been right in front of him, and Shining hadn’t been able to do anything. They’d succeeded in their ritual. Equestria was doomed. As Blueblood and Thorax joined him, Shining realized with horror that all he could do was stand there and watch as his home was destroyed.

Positively beaming, Raphael leaned forward to speak into the crystal ball.

“Great Gazelle,” he said. “We have toiled for years to summon you. We are your humble servants. And we eagerly await the destruction you will bring to—”

Before Raphael could finish the speech he no-doubt had been rehearsing since he was a child, a voice from within the crystal ball cut him off. Much to Shining’s surprise, it was a very, very familiar voice.

“Okay, listen up, you little fanboy,” the voice said irritably. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you right now. In case you haven’t heard, all of my friends have vanished. Fluttershy has been gone for three weeks and I’m worried sick! And Spike’s gone, so that means no Guys’ Nights… I really don’t have time to put up with your half-baked attempts at getting my attention—I’m incredibly distraught.”

Raphael and his cultists looked like the whole world had just come crashing down on top of them. Shining could actually see the moment that their happiness died in their faces. They had gone from malicious joy, to confusion, to horror.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Raphael said slowly. “This must be the wrong number. Is… Is this the Great Gazelle?”

“The what?!” The voice asked. “Did you say ‘Great Gazelle’? I haven’t used that nickname in over a thousand years! I called myself that, like, once! As a joke! There is no Great Gazelle!”

Shining really had no clue how to handle this situation. He looked to Blueblood and Thorax. They looked just as confused as he felt.

“… Discord?” Thorax asked, bewildered.

“… Who is that?” The voice asked. “Is that… Thorax? Am I on speaker right now?! I can’t believe you’d put me on speaker when you tried to summon me! I have no idea who’s with you right now; anypony could be listening! This is so rude!”

The cultists all shuffled awkwardly. They exchanged uncertain looks. One of them put on a t-shirt with an image of their own frowning face on the chest. Shining would have felt bad for them if they hadn’t actively been trying to bring about Equestria’s destruction. As such, they kind of had this humiliation coming.

“We… We were hoping you would destroy Equestria,” Raphael said hopelessly.

“Oh, why is that not a surprise?” Discord grumbled. “You chaos cults never care about what I want. It’s always ‘destroy this’, or ‘give power to them’. You never just want to talk! I am sick of it! In fact—you know what? Hang on…”

Discord’s voice turned distant, as if he was turning away and yelling at something in the distance.

“Hey! Get over here!” Discord yelled.

There was a momentary pause. Then, there was the sound of hoofsteps approaching. Finally, another familiar voice came out of the crystal ball.

“What’s up?” Flash Sentry’s voice asked.

Shining Armor’s eyes widened in surprise. “Flash?!”

“… Oh, hey, captain,” Flash Sentry said. “What’s going on?”

“Where are you right now?!” Shining asked.

“Discord’s house.” Flash Sentry gave his answer calmly, as if it was the most natural response in the world. “It’s fantasy hoofball season. We’re hanging out and watching the game.”

Shining felt like that only raised even more questions. “… You and Discord hang out?!”

“Yeah,” Flash said. “We’re friends.”

“That’s right!” Discord’s voice cut in suddenly, vocally pushing Flash aside. “I’m friends with a cop! So if you cultists try to summon me again, I’m going to have you arrested! Do you hear me?! Don’t call again!”

Discord’s angry demand was punctuated by another clicking noise. Then, the air was filled with a high-pitched drone. The light from the altar faded, and the noise stopped as the chamber was again bathed in complete darkness.

Shining lit up his horn once more. He was close enough that he could see the gazelle cultists and their altar in its illumination. The gazelles all looked stunned.

“… Well, great.” One of the cultists said. “What are we supposed to worship now?”

Raphael’s mouth moved wordlessly. “I… I guess we should just go to bed.”

The former cultists slowly began to walk away from the altar one by one. Their heads hung heavily as their awful gazelle legs carried them towards the exit of the Slimey Zone. Raphael was the last to remain at the stone pyramid, staring forlornly at it.

“I can’t believe it,” Raphael said, clearly speaking more to himself than to the three others still in the room. “I’ve been working towards this day my whole life. I… I’m a failure. My whole family is nothing but failures.”

Shining’s heart went out to the ugly gazelle. He, too, had been having serious issues with his sense of self-worth lately. The disappearance of the princesses and being forced to take up their responsibilities made Shining feel sort of… insignificant. And now this idiot Raphael was feeling the same way, like a big copycat.

Shining slowly approached Raphael and put a comforting hoof on his shoulder. Startled, the gazelle looked up into Shining’s comforting eyes.

“Listen,” Shining said gently. “You have to understand that none of us care about this. Tell me what happened to the princesses or I’ll tell Discord where you live.”

Raphael looked like he was still in shock over what had just happened. If he was in any way intimidated by Shining’s threat, he didn’t show it. He just shrugged helplessly.

“I… I don’t know,” he said lifelessly. “A few weeks ago, a stranger came into the sewers and cast some sort of spell. None of us saw them, though. We just know they were here because they left this behind.”

Raphael reached into the confines of his red robe and pulled out a large sweatshirt that had been folded up into a square. Intrigued by this ting, Shining wordlessly took the piece of clothing and unfolded it.

Emblazoned on the front of the sweatshirt was an image of a hippogriff’s face in profile. It didn’t take long to realize that this was some sports team’s logo.

Intrigued, Shining used both of his eyes to read the words on the sweater:

SEAWEEDATTLE SEAWEEDHAWKS
HOOFBALL

Shining pursed his lips. While it was certainly odd that somecreature had left a perfectly good sports-clothes in the sewers, there was no guarantee that this shirt belonged to the culprit. Shining didn’t know if this really counted as a clue.

That is, until Shining realized that something was written on the back of the shirt. Shining turned the sweatshirt over in his hooves. When he saw the back, his eyes widened.

Printed on the fabric, in sloppy quill-writing, was the clue they needed:

I AM WEARING THIS WHILE I KIDNAP THE PRINCESSES

“Bingo,” Shining whispered.

No one was actually playing bingo.

Author's Note

This took a long time to write because I couldn't get the rights to John Cena's theme song.

Insane With Pasta Energy

After returning to Canterlot Castle from his awful sewer escapades, Shining Armor wasted no time in trying to get himself clean. He only took a moment to check on Flurry Heart before making a beeline to the Royal Bathroom, where Princess Celestia kept all of her bathtubs. As soon as Shining Armor opened the door, he hopped into the first bathtub he saw and turned on the faucet.

It took five hours of soaking in lavender-scented waters for Shining to get the sewer smell off of his coat. He didn’t care, though; Shining just closed his weary eyes and tried to rest his aching body. He wound up staying in the warm water so long that he wound up falling asleep, and didn’t wake up until the morning sun was poking in through the bathroom window.

It wasn’t the sunlight that woke Shining Armor up, though. It was the sound of one of the palace staff loudly swinging the bathroom door open and screaming.

“PRINCESS ARMOR!” The mare (Whose name, incidentally, was Ol’ Lemon Tongue.) screamed.

“Ack!” Shining acked. He jolted awake, splashing around in the bathtub’s now-murky water. He looked around in confusion, not immediately remembering what had happened last night.

The mare standing in the doorframe sighed in relief. “Oh, thank goshness. The entire palace has been looking for you, princess. When we saw you weren’t in your bedroom, we all assumed you’d been kidnapped, just like those other princesses.”

Shining felt a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance. He’d planned on sneaking back into bed without anypony knowing he’d been gone. Shining knew how much everypony would worry if he wasn’t there when they checked up on him. Unfortunately, he’d been too tired to go through with that plan.

Shining opened his mouth to tell the mare (Whose name, incidentally, was still Ol’ Lemon Tongue.) that he had not been kidnapped. Then he remembered that technically wasn’t true; those antelopes or whatever they were had kidnapped him, Thorax, and Blueblood. They just hadn’t stayed kidnapped.

“Everything’s fine,” Shining Armor said. “I didn’t get thrown into a cage and forced to watch a cult try to destroy Equestria.”

“Okay, I didn’t ask for your life story.” The mare said impatiently. “I’m just here because you have a meeting with the head of the EIEIO. I don’t know what about. I wasn’t paying any attention. She’s waiting for you in the throne room.”

The mare walked away, closing the door behind her. Shining was once again all alone in the Fancy Castle Bathroom (FCB). Rather than hurrying to get out of the tub and meet with Crystal Clear, however, Shining took a moment to gather his thoughts.

Crystal Clear was most-likely checking in to see if her tip had paid off. Shining Armor supposed there was no harm in telling her that it had. The jersey that they’d found was, hopefully, a clue to the whereabouts of the princesses’ kidnapper. Shining just hoped this didn’t turn into a wild nature’s alarm chase.

“A bathtub is the opposite of a boat,” Shining Armor mused. No one was around to here this very great thought, however.

Shining climbed out of the tub, toweled off, ate breakfast, and then left the bathroom. He did all of those things. He then proceeded to do something else: Go to the throne room. He did it by using his legs.

He did it really well.

Shining arrived at the throne room shortly after stopping by his room to pick up Flurry Heart. The little princess was still half-asleep by the time they reached the big, dumb, golden doors that led into the place where the fancy chair lived. It looked as if Flurry was getting used to this routine, just like her father was.

The two guards who stood outside the throne room opened the doors when Shining and Flurry arrived. It was their job to stand beside those doors and pretend that their job mattered. They were national heroes.

“Presenting Princess Shining Armor, and all of his teeth!” The guards announced, speaking in perfect unity like a pair of creeps.

Flash Sentry was already at his post, standing at the base of the stairs that led to the thrones. The other guard was also there, and that wasn’t important. Crystal Clear was standing off to the side, dressed in a trench coat that she had probably brought from home. All three of them watched as Shining walked down the aisle, towards the throne.

“Sorry I’m a little late,” Shining said. “I hope I didn’t cause any inconvenience.” The prince took a seat in Celestia’s throne and began to unfasten Flurry Heart from her harness. The baby alicorn cooed as her father lifted her up and sat her down in Luna’s throne.

“It’s only been ten minutes,” Crystal Clear said as she stood before the throne. “I have nowhere else to be, so I really don’t mind.”

“That’s enough small-talk.” Shining swung his hoof in the air angrily. “Crystal Clear, I assume this is a follow-up on… what we discussed the other night?”

Shining tried to keep things as vague as possible. As a spymaster, Crystal Clear thrived on secrecy. Plus, she’d been unwilling to talk about what she knew in the throne room the last time she’d visited. Shining Armor wasn’t exactly a spy, but he was fairly confident he’d be able to talk about his sewer adventure without giving away too many details.

“You mean the clue I have you?” Crystal Clear asked. “The clue about the princesses’ kidnapping? I told you about how someone cast a spell in the sewers, and you decided to go down there?”

Shining Armor blinked. “What happened to not wanting to talk about this stuff?”

“There’s no point now.” Crystal Clear sighed and shook her head. “Garth, the ambassador from Griffonstone, found out that you and Thorax went into the sewers last night. He’s not happy.”

“What?!” Shining stood up out of the throne in shock. “How did he find out?”

Crystal Clear shrugged. “I’m not sure. Somehow, though, he found out that Equestria’s leader is the sort of pony who goes into the sewer. He’s disgusted in your style of leadership, Princess. He’s given us an ultimatum; either give him the sun and moon before the week is out, or our lands will be at war.”

Neither of those options was good. Shining held his hooves to his face and pulled down on his cheeks. These two bad options were making his brain do a stress, and it wasn’t very nice. Shining had become the Lord of Worry.

“Is there any way we can get more time?” Shining asked.

“Possibly,” Crystal Clear said. “Garth said he would be willing to give us a few more weeks if we gave him something.”

Shining raised one of his two eyebrows. “… What does he want?” He asked cautiously. Whatever it was, he doubted it would be easy to get ahold of. He braced himself for whatever ridiculous demand Garth had made.

“A tin of lasagna.” Crystal Clear said.

“Lasagna?” Shining repeated. He looked at Crystal Clear quizzically, taken aback by her answer. “Do you mean the good casserole that has cheese and sauce? The one that is usually shaped like a rectangle?”

“Yes,” Crystal Clear nodded. “He craves that sweet cake made out of noodles. He wants to go insane with pasta energy. Unfortunately, I checked, and no one in Equestria knows how to make lasagna.”

Shining’s eyes widened in surprise. “No one? Seriously?”

“Not a single pony.” Crystal Clear could only shrug her leg-shoulders at the prince. “Some of the chefs I spoke with didn’t even know what lasagna was. One chef thought he did, but he just kept making different types of flan. It’s truly a hopeless situation. I ate all of the flans and it made me sick.”

Shining Armor slumped back into his throne. “This is terrible. We don’t have nearly enough time to find the princesses or to find out how to make lasagna.”

The throne room grew silent. This was because nopony was talking. Up above, in the rafters, one of nature’s alarms honked. This was not talking. The silence returned, only to be cut short by Crystal Clear using her mouth to say words. This was definitely talking, unlike that terrible bird-noise.

“Well…” The spymaster said cautiously. “It’s true we don’t have many options… But there is one way to deal with Garth’s demands.”

Crystal Clear looked around, then leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. She was still standing several feet away, though, so she had to whisper loudly. This meant she basically just spoke at a normal volume, but in a sneaky way.

“Maybe we could disappear this little problem,” she suggested. “Maybe we just make sure Garth isn’t able to report back to the other griffons. How about that, huh?”

All eyes were on Crystal Clear, who had her eyebrows raised expectantly. The implications of what she was suggesting set in quickly. Shining exchanged a look of alarm with Flash Sentry, who looked just as taken aback as Shining felt. Flurry Heart, meanwhile, cooed and giggled happily, which was more than a little concerning.

“Are… Are you suggesting we murder Garth the Griffon?” Shining asked, horrified.

“No!” Crystal Clear exclaimed quickly. “No, no, no, no—of course not, of course not. Never.”

Crystal Clear paused for a moment and looked off to the side.

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “Yes, I was suggesting that. But if you’re not in favor of that plan, we do have a much more humane option. We could always just arrest Garth on false charges and imprison him forever in a prison no one will ever know about. Y’know, standard spy stuff.”

“Have I fired you yet?” Shining Armor asked.

“No,” Crystal Clear said. “For some reason, you didn’t fire me as soon as you met me.”

“Okay, well, I’m changing that.” Shining pointed a hoof at Crystal Clear. “I’m firing you. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.”

Crystal Clear nodded understandingly. “I completely understand. This was a good business decision on your part; I am constantly abusing my power to no real end or benefit. Frankly, I have no idea why Dusty Draft put me in charge when he retired from the EIEIO.”

Before Crystal Clear had even finished her sentence, Shining found himself sitting up in surprise. He didn’t immediately know what she’d said that caught his attention, but something was definitely setting off an alarm in Shining’s head. All of the alarms in Shining’s head sounded like birds, and they were constantly screaming.

“Hold on,” Shining said. “Crystal, say that again.”

“Okay,” Crystal Clear said. “I completely understand. This was a good business decision on your part; I am constantly abusing my power to no real end or benefit. Frankly, I have no idea why Dusty Draft put me in charge when he retired from the EIEIO.”

There it was. When Shining Armor heard the name ‘Dusty Draft’, his brain did a remembering. He flashbacked to his first day as Equestria’s interim ruler, and to that crazy old pegasus who’d started ranting at him on the balcony. The old stallion had seemed kind of nuts, so Shining had completely brushed him off and forgotten about him until that moment.

That awful old grandpa was the previous spymaster of the EIEIO?

“Your predecessor was Dusty Draft?” Shining Armor asked in disbelief. “Is this the same Dusty Draft who I spoke to on my first day in charge?”

“I have no clue who you spoke with on that day,” Crystal Clear pointed out. “But yes, that was him.”

Shining sat back in his throne. He exchanged a surprised look with Flurry Heart before turning his attention to Flash Sentry.

“Flash, did you know about this?” He asked.

“No, sir.” Flash Sentry said. “I always thought that Dusty Draft was just a crazy old pony. I had no idea he was actually a crazy old pony who also used to be a spy. I’m just as surprised as you are.”

Shining rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“No,” he said. “I’m definitely more surprised than you. I can’t believe that old guy used to be in charge of the EIEIO. He was, like… really crazy, and he smelled like pinecones. Crystal, are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

“Yup,” Crystal Clear said with a nod. “A crazy old man who claims his name is Dusty Draft? That definitely sounds like Dusty Draft. He used to be one of Princess Celestia’s best agents before he decided to retire and go insane. Now he spends all his days ranting, raving, and doing that thing where you pin photos to a wall and connect them with pieces of string. You know the thing I’m talking about?”

“I do!” Shining Armor said. He did.

“Okay, good,” Crystal Clear said. “I really didn’t want to try and describe it. Why are we talking about this again?”

That was a good question. Why were they talking about this? Shining had gotten distracted by the mention of Dusty Draft, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. After all, when they’d met, the old pegasus had seemed pretty out of it. He’d been ranting and raving about ridiculous things like griffons stealing taffy, or gazelle cultists living in the sewers.

Wait a minute.

Shining Armor practically leapt out of his seat. He didn’t actually, leap, though; he just stood up very quickly in alarm. Anyone who thought he actually leapt out of the throne he was sitting in was probably dumb.

“Sweet Celestia!” Shining Armor exclaimed. “The old man was right!”

“What?” Flash Sentry asked. “Which old man? I stopped paying attention.”

“I haven’t been paying attention for weeks,” the other guard said.

“Dusty Draft!” Shining looked at the ponies assembled in the throne room. None of them seemed to share in his shock at what he’d just realized. “He mentioned something about a cult of gazelles living in the sewers! And he was right! By Jove, he was right!”

“… So?” Flash Sentry asked. “So what if he was right about one thing? You talked to him, sir; you remember how crazy he sounded.”

“Yes,” Shining Armor agreed. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know things. He was the previous spymaster of the EIEIO, right? So even if he is all gross and crazy, he probably still knows plenty that he can tell us. Remember how he said that he had a whole book’s worth of information?”

Flash Sentry still looked uncertain. Before he could voice any more concerns, however, Crystal Clear spoke up.

“He mentioned having a book?” She asked. “Was it this one?”

Crystal Clear reached into the confines of her trench coat and produced a large, hardcover book. She held it up for Shining Armor to see, and then tossed it at the prince. Shining reached out and caught the book in his hooves like a real pro. Everypony applauded politely.

Shining looked over the book. On the front of the dust jacket, in large, golden print, was the title: ‘A Whole Book’s Worth of Information: Unlocking Your Potential After Retiring, by Dusty J. Draft’. On the back of the book was a glossy photo of the author, Dusty Draft, wearing a sweater and smiling pleasantly.

Shining looked at the book in amazement, but not because he’d never seen a book before. He was amazed because when Dusty had mentioned having enough information to fill a book, Shining had assumed the old man was just being metaphorical. But no; here was an actual book, with words and everything.

This all lent even more credibility to Dusty as a source of information. But there was one more thing Shining wanted to check out. The prince opened the book and began flipping through the pages. He went past the dedication, the table of contents, the forward that had been written by some Diamond Dog named Ziggy, and the prologue.

Finally, Shining arrived at the book’s first chapter. The chapter’s title was written in large print, and was so long that it took up an entire page. Sure enough, the chapter was called…

CHAPTER 1:
THE PRINCESSES DISAPPEARING
IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG
AND THINGS ARE ONLY GONNA GET WORSE

“My gosh,” Shining Armor said. “He wasn’t just a crazy old man… He was a crazy old man who might actually know something about what happened to the princesses!”

Flash Sentry looked at the prince in confusion. “What makes you say that, sir?”

“I know because that’s the first line of chapter one!” Shining explained. He looked down and began reading from the book. “It says, ‘If one day all of Equestria’s princesses magically disappear, I’m the only one with a good idea of what happened to them.’”

“Oh.” Flash Sentry blinked. “Okay, I guess. I can buy that.”

Shining flipped through the book. It was full of useful information, like where Dusty Draft lived and what times he was usually at home. There was no info about what had actually happened to the princesses, but Shining Armor supposed that would have been a little unrealistically convenient.

Shining Armor looked up from the book and looked at Crystal Clear irritably. “Why didn’t you tell us about this book earlier? This would have saved us the trouble of going into the sewers and getting held prisoner by those gazelles! I wouldn’t have had to associate with Blueblood!”

The EIEIO’s former spymaster could only shrug sheepishly.

“I didn’t know what was in the book,” Crystal Clear admitted. “Due to a unique brain injury I sustained early on in my career, I’m completely unable to read. I can write, but I can’t read. Sometimes I’ll write something down and then immediately get confused.”

“I don’t have time to tell you how much I hate everything you just said.” Shining Armor picked Flurry Heart up and began to put her into the baby carrier on his chest. “We need to speak with Dusty Draft. Where does he live?”

Crystal Clear pointed out one of the windows.

“Thanks.” Shining Armor walked down the steps, away from the throne. As he made his way towards the doors that led out into the castle, he gestured behind him towards Flash.

“Come on, Flash. I’ll need you and Thorax just in case I need to wrestle in a triple threat match. I don’t think I will, but you never know.”

Flash Sentry galloped after Shining Armor as the prince left the throne room. It was time to get answers. It was time to learn the truth.

It was time to find out where the dang princesses went.

They found Thorax in Celestia’s study. He had been staring at a lamp in amazement, occasionally butting his head against its bulb in an attempt to get inside of it. It took nearly an hour to pull him away from what he was doing, but eventually Shining and Flash were able to get Thorax to come with them on their trip to see Dusty Draft.

Draft’s home was right where Crystal Clear had said it was: Outside the castle. It was an upscale senior apartment building where old ponies went to live once they got sick of being around young people. It had an indoor pool, a spa, and a room that was just for screaming. Nobody knew what the building’s name was.

“Well, this is the place,” Shining Armor said five minutes after they arrived at the apartment building. They had been standing in the lobby, which smelled like oranges.

After a few more minute, the two stallions, one changeling, and one baby alicorn got into the apartment’s elevator. Shining pushed the special button that made the elevator go up to the third floor. According to Dusty Draft’s book, that was where his apartment was.

The elevator went up for a bit, and then came to a stop. With a coughing noise, the doors opened to the third floor. Shining’s group stepped out into the carpeted hallway and the elevator doors slid closed behind them.

“Well, this is the place,” Shining Armor said again.

There were only two apartments on the third floor—Apartment 3A, and Apartment 3A-1. Shining Armor led his group to the door for Apartment 3A. It didn’t matter which door they picked, because Dusty Draft lived in both of the apartments.

“Well, this is the place,” Shining Armor said as he gestured to the door.

“Boy, it sure is,” Flash Sentry said. “Sir, are you sure about all of this? You said that you found a jersey from Seaweedattle. Isn’t that enough of a clue? Do we really need to go into an old person’s apartment? It’ll smell weird.”

“What?” Shining Armor asked. “Sorry, Flash, I didn’t hear you; I kinda spaced out.”

Shining Armor raised his hoof up and knocked on the door of Apartment 3A. Then he did it again, exactly once. He stood back and waited for Dusty Draft to open the door. It would probably take a while, though, because he was so old.

From the other side of the door, Shining heard the sound of someone unfastening a lock. Then he heard it again. He heard it several more times as the pony inside of the apartment undid eight consecutive locks. Shining Armor didn’t know if Dusty Draft had so much home security because of his past as a spymaster, or because he was just crazy.

It didn’t matter, though. Shining Armor wanted answers, no matter who they came from. If Dusty Draft really knew something about where the princesses had gone, Shining didn’t care how crazy he was. He was prepared for anything.

But when the door of Apartment 3A opened, Shining had no way of being ready for what he saw on the other side.

Author's Note

If you have a crazy old man appear in Act 1, by Act 3 he has to be somehow relevant to the plot.

This is the literary principle of "Chekov's Grandpa".

Intermission: The School of Friendship Saves Some Face!

All of Equestria was suffering without the princesses. But in times of crisis, the ones who always suffer most are the children.

The students at Twilight Sparkle’s School of Friendship had gone without teachers for three weeks. Classes had been cancelled. Tests had been postponed. Substitutes had been tricked into giving easy assignments. The school was in complete chaos, except for the fact that everycreature was going about business as usual and no rules had been broken.

As the acting headmare, Starlight Glimmer had been doing her best to keep things on track. But finding steady substitutes for a school like the School of Friendship was tricky. Qualified ponies weren’t always available or even reliable. There were a lot of no-shows. When the students walked into a classroom, they had no way of knowing if a teacher would show up or not.

Such was the case on the day that Shining Armor paid his visit to Dusty Draft’s apartment. The students for Pinkie Pie’s second-period class on laughter were there, but no teacher had been waiting for them.

And so the students wound up spending several minutes in their seats, waiting to see if anycreature would show up to actually teach them. It was really dumb.

“This is really dumb,” Gallus said, resting his cheek on his claw. He sat in the middle of his group of friends, all gathered together in the center of the weird bleachers the class used for seating. There were other, less important students there, too.

Smolder sat with her arms propped up on her knees, holding her head in her claws. “How long do we have to wait again? When can we leave?”

“Fifteen minute rule,” Sandbar said from his seat beneath Gallus. “If the teacher’s a no-show by then, we can leave.”

“Well, how many minutes has it been?” Gallus asked.

Sandbar looked at his watch, which he did not have.

“Seven,” he said.

“Seven?” Smolder repeated. “Seven’s not fifteen!”

It was mathematical facts like those that the School of Friendship prided itself on teaching its students. Or it would, if a school could be proud of things. Or if there were any teachers around to actually teach things. Smolder was still right, though, and you couldn’t take that away from her.

“Yona tired of waiting!” Yona whined. “Classes boring without professors!”

The yak hung her head languidly, too bored and frustrated to bother sitting up straight.

Not everycreature was bored, though. In fact, only most of them were. Silverstream was the only student who looked at all eager for class to begin. She had a big, toothy smile on her face, which was unsettling to the classmates who had forgotten hippogriffs had teeth for some reason.

“This is so exciting!” Silverstream said, even though it wasn’t. “Who do you think we’re going to get as a substitute today? Ooh! Or do you think class will be cancelled? What if we do get a substitute, but they try to eat us?”

“That’s only happened once,” Gallus pointed out. “Look, I’m telling you guys, no one is going to show up. We should just leave.”

“We can’t leave!”

Everyone jumped a little when they heard Ocellus’s sudden outburst. The little Changeling was sitting in the front, eyes focused forward at the head of the class. Her whole body seemed tense, and there was a touch of madness in her voice when she spoke.

“The teacher will be here any minute,” Ocellus insisted, her voice shaky. She kept facing forward, staring at the empty space where a teacher should have been. She didn’t blink. The only movement on her face was the occasional twitching of her left eye.

“The professor will come,” Ocellus said, sounding more like she was talking to herself than any of her classmates. “Class won’t be cancelled. We’ll have a nice, quality day of education.”

Ocellus’s friends all exchanged a concerned look. The changeling had been acting like this for a few days now. The lack of reliable substitute teachers was really getting to her; it was like she was in some sort of nerd withdrawal. It had gotten to the point where she was going back and redoing old homework assignments.

Not taking his eyes off of Ocellus, Gallus leaned back in his seat to whisper to the others.

“Do you think she’s going to have some sort of breakdown if a sub doesn’t show up?” He asked as he watched Ocellus dissociate.

“I hope not,” Sandbar said, not bothering to keep quiet. “Our counselor’s really not qualified to offer any real psychological support.”

As soon as Sandbar said that, the classroom door was pulled open. As if she’d somehow been summoned by having her counseling skills called into question, Starlight Glimmer trotted into the music room.

The counselor looked frazzled. Granted, most of the school’s staff looked that way, but Starlight seemed particularly bad that day. Her mane was a tangled mess, and her whole body seemed jittery. She was trying to smile for the students, but the look of panic in her eyes just made her look like an even bigger mess. She wasn’t fooling anyone except for the kid sitting behind Yona who couldn’t see anything.

Starlight hurried to the front of the class and gave everycreature what she thought was probably a very reassuring smile.

“Okay, okay!” Starlight said. She raised a hoof to signal the students to settle down, even though literally no one was talking. “No need to panic! I managed to find a substitute for—”

Starlight froze, her smile disappearing as she looked around uncertainly.

“Which class is this again?” She asked.

“Professor Pinkie’s,” Sandbar said. He didn’t raise his hoof when he said this, which was improper classroom etiquette and a sign of severe moral decay.

“… Her class on Laughter, or her Pre-Calculus class?” Starlight asked.

“Laughter,” Gallus said. “Pre-calc is after lunch.”

Starlight nodded slowly. She looked like she was having trouble remembering that for herself. Clearly, the school’s hectic situation was doing a real number on her thought-brain.

“Right,” Starlight said, sounding like she was thinking about a million things at once. “Okay. Right. Sorry, I walked into the wrong classroom three times already; I’m not exactly on the ball today.”

The school’s counselor smiled and chuckled anxiously. It wasn’t exactly reassuring. It only served to make the atmosphere in the classroom even more awkward. No one smiled back except for the kid sitting behind Yona who couldn’t see anything. They all just waited for Starlight to say whatever she’d come in to say.

When she didn’t say anything and just kept smiling, Ocellus raised her hoof.

“Um… counselor?” She asked politely. “You said you found a substitute? Why isn’t a teacher happening in front of us?”

Starlight blinked. She slapped her forehead with her hoof and laughed.

“Oh, right! Right,” she said. “Sorry. I’ve been so busy lately; I haven’t had any time to rest. I haven’t slept in three days. If I close my eyes for too long I start falling asleep, but I can’t do that! If I do that, the stress nightmares will come. My mom is in all of them, but she doesn’t have a face and I know if I look at her for too long I’ll never wake up.”

Clearing her throat, Starlight Glimmer moved on from that boring bit of information.

“It took me some time, but I’ve found the perfect substitute for Pinkie Pie’s class on Laughter,” she said, beaming with pride. “After all, there aren’t many ponies in Equestria who truly understand humor enough to teach a class about it. But the substitute I found is an expert on the disgusting, wet sound you make whenever you hear a joke.”

“Who is it?” Sandbar asked. “Is it me? Am I the substitute?”

Starlight chuckled and shook her head. “No, Sandbar, it’s not you. It’s illegal for students to be their own teachers.”

“Who then?” Smolder asked. “Is it one of Professor Pie’s sisters?”

“Is it Sandbar?” Silverstream asked.

“Is it Cheese Sandwich?” Ocellus asked.

“Is it Sandbar?” Sandbar asked.

“Is it normal to feel like you want to crawl into bed and never leave?” Gallus asked. “Sometimes I feel like that.”

“Nope!” Starlight answered. “You’re all wrong, which will be reflected on your final grade. No, your substitute is somepony who’s an expert in laughter and cheer! The famous party-pony… Cheese Sandwich!”

Ocellus frowned. “But… Didn’t I ask if it was—”

Whatever hilarious question Ocellus had been about to ask was cut off by Silverstream gasping excitedly.

“Oh my gosh!” She exclaimed. “Cheese Sandwich? This is so exciting! I have no idea who that is! I’m their biggest fan!”

The entire classroom murmured with excitement. The only ones who were silent was everycreature who wasn’t Silverstream.

Starlight nodded, still smiling with her mouth and her teeth.

“Yup!” She said. “Cheese Sandwich! Unfortunately, however, he isn’t actually going to be able to make it, as he’s currently serving a prison sentence for committing accordion crimes. I had to settle with booking an acquaintance of his to serve as your substitute.”

This elicited confused murmurs from the class. Even the students who weren’t a part of Gallus’s circle of friends voiced their confusion, and they usually didn’t talk at all. Some of them didn’t even know how, and just made strange gurgling noises. Everyone knew what they were trying to say, though.

“Okay, calm down,” Starlight said, gesturing for everycreature to start stopping the noise. “Don’t worry; the substitute I wound up getting works very closely with Cheese Sandwich. They once spent six months wearing the same jacket, which is an incredibly long amount of time. So I hope you’ll all be respectful as I introduce your substitute teacher…”

Starlight gestured towards the classroom door, turning the students’ attention towards it. They could all see somepony was standing at the very edge of the doorframe, trying to remain out of sight until Starlight gave their introduction.

“Please welcome Mr. Sans Smirk!” Starlight commanded.

The pony who had been waiting outside the classroom strode in, and he was very Sans Smirk. He trotted up to Starlight’s side and looked at the students with a small, polite smile.

“Hello,” he said in a dry, almost-lifeless voice. “My name is Sans Smirk. I work with Mister Sandwich and run his gag factory while he travels around Equestria. My primary duties involve overseeing production of novelty items, testing them for humor, and drinking all of the leftover seltzer water. Every week, on payday, I pay myself exactly five bits and then fall asleep on the factory floor until the work week begins again.”

“As you can see, he’s very qualified,” Starlight said, clearly proud of herself for finding such a talented substitute. “I think you’re all in very capable hooves. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find a substitute for Fluttershy’s class on mollusks.”

Starlight sighed, relieved, and turned to walk out of the class. It took her three tries to find the exit, but eventually she was able to successfully leave. The students were all alone with Sans Smirk, who was still there.

“Alright,” Sans said as he stood before the students. “I was unable to find any kind of syllabus or lesson plan for this class. Nevertheless, I believe I have a good idea of where you are in regards to your education in Laughter and Cheer. As such, I have a lesson plan I believe you will find to be intellectually stimulating and also deeply amusing. It will be a blend of education and entertainment that I call… a chucklesson.”

Gallus raised a talon up into the air, like a proper gentleman.

Sans Smirk squinted when he saw one of the students was trying to get his attention. Not knowing any of the children’s names, he pointed at Gallus after doing some searching.

“Yes, the young griffon dressed like a Wonderbolt?” He said. “You have a question?”

Gallus, whose blue fur and plumage had gotten him mistaken for a Wonderbolt six times already, sat up straight so he was more clearly visible.

“Uh, Mr. Smirk?” He said, trying to sound casual. “Professor Pie doesn’t give us any assignments. She just lets us watch movies and we have all of our classes outside.”

The griffon smiled eagerly, hopefully waiting to see if Sans Smirk would believe his lie. So far, Gallus had been able to trick half of the substitutes they’d had into letting the students take things easy. Somehow, those teachers had wound up believing Gallus despite him not doing a very good job of acting like he was being honest.

Sans Smirk studied Gallus’s hopeful expression carefully for a moment before giving his response.

“Hmm. I believe this is an attempt at trickery,” he said. “I choose not to fall for it.”

Gallus hung his head in shame. His friends attempted to comfort him by giving him a soothing massage.

Sans Smirk turned to the front of the class and walked up to the blackboard. He picked up a permanent marker and began to write out his lesson plan.

“Now,” Sans said, “before we can learn how to incite laughter, we must learn what laughter is. Pony Webster’s defines laughter as ‘The disgusting, wet sound you make whenever you are amused by a joke’. But before jokes were invented, our ancestors were forced to make each other laugh through the use of pantomime routine. Naturally, this didn’t work because pantomime isn’t funny at all…”

The students all shifted in their seats uncomfortably. This was supposed to be a combination of education and entertainment? Gallus’s friends in particular all shared a look. It was a look that seemed to ask the question, this is supposed to be a combination of education and entertainment? It really made them wonder if this was really a combination of education and entertainment at all.

It wasn’t. In fact, it was barely either.

And the six friends were starting to realize that, if they didn’t do something soon, it was only going to get even more barely either.

The rest of the school day dragged on with as little education and entertainment as Sans Smirk’s lesson plan had contained. It was boring, and also dumb. The students of Princess Twilight’s School for Gifted Youngsters were forced to go through class after class of boring substitutes, no-shows, and no other third thing to round out the list. It seemed like the day would go on forever.

That’s not how time works, though, and eventually the school day did end. The school bell rang, signaling to the students that if they didn’t leave immediately they would be hunted throughout the halls of the school by the janitors. Tired and languid after a long, boring day, the students filed out the doors of the building.

Most of the students returned to their dorms to get started on their homework. Not everyone, though. Once school was out, Gallus and his group of friends went to hang out at the Treehouse of Harmony, which wasn’t their dorms. It was a treehouse.

Spirits weren’t exactly high when the six friends arrived at their clubhouse. Everyone felt drained after such a long, boring day. Every day had been like this for the last week or so, and it was really starting to add up.

“Oh man, you guys,” Sandbar said as he laid on a couch and stared up at the treehouse’s crystal ceiling. “We’ve gotta do something about this.”

“Yeah, I agree.” Gallus had for some reason decided to lie in a hammock that hung from the ceiling. It was not comfortable. “By the way, is it normal to feel lonely even when you’re surrounded by people?”

Not everycreature was onboard with Gallus and Sandbar. Smolder, who was lying face-down on the floor and struggling to work up the energy to do literally anything, scoffed.

“Great idea,” she said sarcastically. “Got any ideas how we’d do that? You want to start interviewing substitutes, Sandbar?”

Sandbar frowned. “… Kinda.”

“Where would we even find substitutes, though?” Silverstream asked. “At a café? In a barn? Under a lake? And once we find a substitute, how to we catch them? What kind of bait would we use?”

“We don’t even have a cage big enough for a substitute teacher,” Smolder pointed out. “How would we stop them from escaping and hurting somecreature? We don’t know anything about finding replacements for the professors.”

Yona crawled out from under the couch in order to join the conversation.

“Yona think, in times of great difficulty, it best make voices known. Discontent of youth often disregarded by grown-ups who not recognize youth’s problems. Adults not see that youth often first victims of these things. Must make adults see. Only by forcing adults to acknowledge youth can youth make them understand.”

Gallus rolled his eyes. “That’s what you always say, Yona.”

Yona shrugged.

Ocellus slammed her hooves on the table in the center of the room, a manic look in her eyes. She didn’t hit the table very hard, so no one heard her. Luckily, she spoke louder than she hit tables.

“We have to do something!” Ocellus insisted desperately. “Every day without the professors is another day of learning lost! Don’t you see how that’s terrible?! Our future is slipping through our hooves! If we don’t do something, who knows what will happen?!”

“Ocellus!” Sandbar sat up, alarmed by Ocellus’s behavior. “Calm down!”

“Oh, okay,” Ocellus said calmly.

Now that the room had calmed down a bit, the friends went back to thinking to themselves. Finally, after only a moment, Smolder spoke up.

“You know,” she said, “we could probably get this all sorted out if we could get in touch with Chancellor Neighsay.”

As soon as Smolder said that name, everycreature’s eyes widened in realization. They all sat up and looked at each other with their eyes, mutually coming to the same conclusion with their teen brains. Chancellor Neighsay, of course! The old elf who was the boss of all the schools! He was certainly a person that existed!

“Chancellor Neighsay could totally help us find better substitutes!” Sandbar said excitedly. “Why didn’t we think of this sooner?”

But just as all of the friends were starting to feel hopeful over this barely-a-plan, they once more realized something all at once.

“… Does anyone know how to contact him?” Sandbar asked, looking around at his friends in the hopes that one of them had the contact information of certain government officials.

As it turned out, several of the others did know how to get in touch with certain members of Equestria’s government. Ocellus, for some reason, knew the home address of Dynamite Dangerous. Silverstream had a private line to the head of DEATH. And Yona often saw the head of the Bureau of Chomping and Biting in her nightmares.

None of them knew how to get in contact with Chancellor Neighsay, though. That was disappointing, but literally nobody except them cared.

“Well, I guess we should just give up!” Sandbar said in a chipper tone.

But Gallus, who normally was all for giving up, wasn’t ready to agree with Sandbar just yet. The bright blue griffon rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he thought about something. As this thought took form inside of his weird brain, Gallus found himself looking in Smolder’s direction.

When Gallus laid eyes on Smolder, the thought struck him:

‘I would look really cool with horns.’

But as soon as Gallus had that very good idea, he came up with a plan to get in touch with Chancellor Neighsay.

Gallus didn’t bother telling the others the details of the idea that had been born inside of his head by his brain; he just gathered them around the desk, got a quill and ink, and started writing a letter to Chancellor Neighsay, the nasty goblin who wore a cape. His friends were all fairly confused about why Gallus was writing a letter to someone when they didn’t know how to get in touch with him. They didn’t care enough to ask questions, though, so they just watched Gallus go to work. It was very exciting.

“Alright,” Gallus said as he put quill to paper. “Dear Chancellor Neighsay… We need help. The School of Friendship—”

“Whoa, whoa, dude!” Sandbar interrupted. “You can’t just start a letter like that!”

Gallus looked up at Sandbar, an eyebrow quirked. “I can’t?”

“No!” Sandbar said. “It’s impolite! You should ask him how he is.”

“Tell Chancellor that Yona say hi!” Yona demanded.

Gallus stared at Sandbar for a moment before returning to the letter, sighing and shaking his head.

“Okay… Dear Chancellor Neighsay… How are you? We need help—”

“Ooh!” Silverstream grabbed the sides of Gallus’s head. This was apparently a signal for him to stop writing and listen to what she had to say. “Don’t forget to tell him how we’re doing! Tell him about the award I won at the science fair!”

As Gallus yanked his head out from between Silverstream’s talons, he leveled an irritated glare at his fellow beak-having friend.

“Silverstream, he’s not going to care about that,” Gallus chided, trying to restrain his unbridled rage.

“He might!” Silverstream pointed out, as chipper as ever.

“And tell Chancellor that Yona say hi!” Yona demanded once again.

Gallus groaned and went back to writing the letter. He formed words inside of his head which somehow traveled down into his quill and came out onto the piece of paper.

“Dear Chancellor Neighsay… How are you? We are fine. Silverstream won the ribbon for Best Grooming at our last science fair… Please help us… Our school is…”

“In this kind of letter, your language should be much more formal,” Ocellus interjected. “Try to be more official-sounding, Gallus.”

“Is Gallus going to tell Chancellor that Yona says hi, or what?” Yona asked impatiently.

Gallus slammed the quill down onto the desk in frustration. Since it was just a feather, it didn’t make much noise, but it still had the desired effect. The others flinched back sheepishly as Gallus glared at each of them in turn.

“I’m sorry, would you guys rather write the letter?” Gallus asked angrily.

No one said anything in response. Much like any school project, they would rather brainstorm than actually contribute to the work. Gallus didn’t exactly blame them for this mentality, though; if somecreature else was writing the letter, he’d have felt the same way.

Gallus took a breath and calmed down. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you guys. But we’re never going to finish writing this if you keep interrupting me.”

The others all nodded in agreement, apologetic expressions on their faces. There were no hard feelings; everycreature had been having a stressful time over the last few weeks. It was only natural for them to be a bit snappy.

“Alright, guys,” Sandbar said. “Let’s stop helping and let Gallus finish the letter. You know what they say about too many cooks.”

No one did. Nevertheless, Gallus’s friends stepped back and allowed him to finally get some gosh dang work done.

Dear Chancellor Neighsay,

How are you? We are fine. Silverstream won the ribbon for Best Grooming at our last science fair.

We are writing to you to ask for your help in a very important matter regarding the School of Friendship. Because of magical shenanigans, all of the teachers at our school are missing. We have had to rely on a chain of unreliable substitutes to keep the school running. None of these substitutes have worked out, and most of them are in jail now.

Could you possibly help us find more suitable teachers to fill in while our professors are missing? We would really appreciate it, and it would mean a lot to us. Please remember that we taught you how to stop being racist, which made you a better person. You should be nice enough to agree to help us.

Please do not eat this letter.

Signed,

The kids from school

P.S., Yona says ‘hi’.

Gallus looked at the words he had decided to use for the letter to Chancellor Neighsay. They were good words, Gallus thought, and he had put them all in the right places. He hadn’t just pretended to write, like he did when he took notes in class.

Yup. It was definitely a letter. It all looked good. For some reason, though, Gallus’s handwriting was completely identical to a font known as ‘Monotype Corsiva’.

The others were all gathered around Gallus, reading over his cat shoulders. They were also making sure that it was, in fact, a letter with words and stuff. In addition, they wanted to see if the letter was good enough to send to Chancellor Neighsay. Not all of them were convinced.

“You know, I still say it could use a musical number,” Sandbar suggested as he scrutinized the letter. “Maybe a car chase, just to ramp up the tension in the third act.”

“Definitely, definitely,” Silverstream agreed. “It needs some sort of hook, at least. It’s just way too dry as-is.”

“And we should probably make it clearer that the Chancellor shouldn’t eat this letter,” Ocellus said. “We only have that one sentence asking him not to eat it. He might try to eat it before he gets to that part.”

“You guys are being ridiculous,” Smolder said. “Chancellor Neighsay probably doesn’t even eat food. Have you seen how skinny he is? He’s like a mummy or something.”

“Yona thinks letter is okay,” Yona said. “But Yona thinks we should have custom stationary for future letters.”

Gallus rolled the letter up into a little tube and tied a ribbon around it. He didn’t care if the letter could be better; he’d just finished writing it and didn’t want to go back and start all over again. As far as he was concerned, they were good to go.

“We still don’t know the Chancellor’s address,” Sandbar pointed out. “How are we supposed to send it to him?”

Gallus turned to his friends and gave them a smug, secretive smirk. This meant that he had a plan. He lifted the letter up into the air and waved it teasingly. This meant that he had a letter.

“It’s simple,” he said. “Let me explain…”

Without bothering to actually explain anything, Gallus handed the letter to Smolder. The dragon didn’t know what to do at first; she stared at the piece of paper quizzically before reaching out and taking it.

“Smolder,” Gallus said, “do that fire thing.”

An expression of understanding appeared on Smolder’s face. She smiled and winked at Gallus before holding the letter up to her mouth and exhaling a small puff of flames onto the paper. The letter caught fire, and almost instantly it was reduced to nothing but ash and smoke.

The others looked at Gallus in confusion, but the griffon just kept on smirking.

“See? We didn’t need his address,” Gallus pointed out. “We have dragon magic.”

Slowly, the others all realized what he meant. They smiled and nodded understandingly. Of course, it was so simple! Why hadn’t any of them thought of using the magical breath that came out of dragon’s mouths? Huh? Why? But now that Gallus had spelled things out for them, everyone realized what a good plan this was.

Everyone except for Smolder.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

Gallus’s smirk faltered.

“You… You just used your dragon magic to send a letter to Chancellor Neighsay, right?” He asked. “You know, like Spike?”

Smolder shrugged. “I can’t do that. I just breathe normal fire, dude.”

All of the hope and enthusiasm that had been building up in the Treehouse of Harmony went away, like some sort of emotion-based air coming out of a tree-shaped balloon. The smiles on everycreature’s face went away as they took in what Smolder had said.

Gallus, in particular, took it the hardest. As his incredibly good plan fell to pieces right before his eyes, it was only now that he realized there had been several flaws. For one thing, Gallus had never actually checked that Smolder could use her fire to send messages like Spike could.

Actually, that was pretty much the only flaw. Just that. It was a pretty big one, though.

“If you can’t use your fire breath to send messages, why did you burn the letter?!” Gallus asked, at the end of his very short rope. The rope was made out of twine.

Smolder threw her hands up defensively. “I like to burn things! You know that by now, dude! If you ask me to burn something, I’m not going to stop and think about it! I’m just nuts for setting things on fire!”

“It’s true!” Silverstream contributed. “She sets our dorm on fire at least once a month! It’s so exciting! We had almost no fires when I lived under the sea!”

Even though it was great how much Smolder and Silverstream loved fire, Gallus let out a groan of frustration and despair. The young griffon fell to the floor of the treehouse and covered his face with his talons. All that work, down the drain. It wasn’t fair; Gallus’s plan had been perfect, except for the part where it wouldn’t have worked. Why did things like this always happen to plans that were guaranteed to not work?

The others all exchanged concerned glances as they gathered around Gallus. They weren’t sure what to say, or why Gallus was blue. Only one of those things was relevant at the moment, but nobody cared. Why was he blue?

After everyone got bored of wondering about those things, Ocellus finally spoke.

“… Now what?”

“We could write another letter,” Sandbar suggested. “Smolder can’t send letters with her breath, but maybe someone else can. Have any of you ever done it?”

“Yona have dream once her horns could send telegrams,” Yona said thoughtfully. “That good enough?”

It wasn’t.

“This is hopeless,” Gallus groaned. His voice was croaky, despite the fact he was not a frog. “We’re gonna have to keep dealing with lousy substitutes and boring classes… And Ocellus is going to die because she’s going into nerd withdrawal.”

“Actually, I’m over it now,” Ocellus said matter-of-factly. “I think I actually just had too much soda.”

“Oh, great!” Gallus said in a way that made it seem like he didn’t feel like it was actually that great. “Not only is the school in trouble, but Ocellus is drinking all of our soda! What are we supposed to do about this?”

Everycreature pondered this incredibly deep question. After a few moments of silence, Smolder, who was orange, spoke up.

“Maybe we’re overthinking this,” she said. “I mean, we’re just a bunch of kids. We can’t find substitutes, or organize classes. Maybe we need to focus on what we can do.”

“… What’s that?” Sandbar asked.

“Smolder shrugged Finding whoever kidnapped our professors and beating them up.”

Finally, somecreature had said something sensible! Everyone’s faces lit up as they took Smolder’s words in. Navigating the complex waters of the education system wasn’t something any of them were equipped to do. But finding someone and beating them up? That was definitely something they could probably do.

“Wow, yeah!” Sandbar exclaimed. “We can totally do that!”

“Alright!” Silverstream said excitedly. “We’ve got this!”

Then they all thought about it a little bit more.

“Wait, do we got this?” Silverstream asked, noticeably less excited. “Where is the kidnapper? How do we find them?”

Gallus groaned, frustrated. “Why do we not know where anyone is?! All of our plans are falling apart!”

Once again, hopelessness fell upon the six friends who hadn’t decided on an official name for themselves. Today was a real roller coaster, only not the fun kind with banks and loops and a video to keep you entertained while you waited in line for an hour. This was an emotional roller coaster, which only existed in their heads and was thus much less exciting.

But then, just when it seemed like the lame feelings roller coaster was going to come to an end after a boring downhill descent, it began to climb up another hill. The roller coaster was entering the tunnel of Gallus having an idea.

This metaphor was really getting out of control.

“Wait…” He said. “Maybe there’s someone who knows where the kidnapper is!”

“You mean like the kidnapper?” Ocellus asked.

“Yona not sure kidnapper would tell us where kidnapper is!” Yona protested.

Gallus shook his head, which was a bird head. He was still blue.

“No,” he said with his bird mouth. “But maybe we could ask the Spirit of Harmony to help us!”

The rest of the friends didn’t look quite as hopeful as Gallus had expected. They looked hesitant and confused, and maybe a little sleepy. One of them looked like a fish.

“Are you sure?” Smolder asked skeptically. “How would the Tree of Harmony know, anyway?”

Gallus shrugged.

“Look, I know it’s a longshot,” he said, “but it can’t hurt to try. The Tree of Harmony’s connected to all of the magic in Equestria. If anyone has a lead, it’ll be the magical tree we’re friends with that we turned into a clubhouse.”

Hearing the words come out of his beak gave Gallus pause. He stopped and thought about what he’d just said.

“You know, saying all that stuff out loud made me realize our lives are kind of weird.”

“Okay, but how do we get in touch with it?” Ocellus asked. “The Tree has only ever contacted us; we’ve never tried to get in touch with it. Do we just… start talking to the clubhouse until something happens?”

“Yes,” the ghostly illusion of Twilight Sparkle said.

Everyone jumped in surprise. Some of them were so surprised that they did it three or four times. The ethereal image of Twilight Sparkle that the Tree of Harmony used to communicate with the kids had just appeared out of nowhere. There had been no shimmer or light, or mystical twinkling noises as it manifested. It was just sort of… there.

“I am a tree,” the spirit said.

“The Tree of Harmony!” Sandbar exclaimed, as if it could have been anyone else.

“Were you… listening to us?” Smolder asked, sounding more than a little weirded out.

The ghostly version of Twilight Sparkle gave a small nod.

“Yes,” the Tree said. “I am constantly listening to you. I have no choice. The treehouse is made out of my old body.”

“Oh. Right.” Smolder chuckled sheepishly.

“Please stop singing karaoke inside of the treehouse,” The Tree pleaded, its voice remaining steady and pleasant. “It is bad to listen to.”

Sandbar, whose song of choice on karaoke night was ‘Love is My Girlfriend and a River for Heartbreak (Live Version)’ by the Trottingham Boys, stepped forward.

“If you’ve been listening, you know we need your help, right?” He asked. “The professors are missing. Equestria could be in danger, and also school is really boring without them.”

The Tree nodded its ghostly head.

“I am aware of what is happening,” it said. “I can feel Equestria’s magic being turned to sinister purposes. I have felt this before with my long tree fingers. If something is not done soon, it will be too late. But do you believe you will be able to defeat whoever is responsible for this danger?”

The six friends exchanged a look. They were all too tired to really care if their plans were bad or not.

“We do have a plan,” Ocellus said slowly.

“Yeah!” Smolder put her fists on her hips and grinned. “Our plan is to be real rowdy and beat the tar out of whoever kidnapped our professors. We’re gonna cause some real heck.”

“I can’t wait to cut loose and deal with all of my repressed anger,” Sandbar added cheerfully.

The Tree’s smile returned to its ghostly facsimile of a face.

“Very well,” the Tree said. “I believe that you have what it takes to be rowdy and nasty and beat someone up. This is a good plan that has my whole support. I shall create a path that will take you where you must go.”

To say that the friends were surprised to hear this would be an understatement. Actually, no, never mind. They were only mildly surprised. Actually, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. None of them were really surprised at all. At most, they were just sort of intrigued.

“Wait, really?” Gallus asked. “How are you going to do that?”

“Do not worry about it,” the Tree answered. It did not elaborate any further.

“So… you’re seriously just going to let us try and beat up whoever’s responsible for this?” Silverstream asked.

“Yes,” the Tree said. “Don’t worry— I got you, fam.”

The clubhouse began to glow, and a fierce rumbling sound filled the air. Before the six students’ eyes, the crystal floor beneath their hooves/talons/paws shimmered with light. Part of the floor shifted ever so slightly, and before they knew it there was a trapdoor in front of them.

“Okay, just go down there and follow the tunnel west,” the Tree said. “It should only take you a few days to get where you need to go. I’m out.”

Before any of the young six even had a chance to register what the Tree said, its spirit faded away.

“… So we have a basement now?” Sandbar asked, immediately forgetting why the trapdoor had been created in the first place. “What do you think we should keep down there? Bottles? Pianos?”

Gallus ignored Sandbar’s very sensible question and approached the new fixture of the clubhouse. He reached for the handle of the trapdoor and opened it to reveal a ladder that led straight down into the dark caverns beneath the Castle of the Two Sisters. It wasn’t a short ladder, either; it stretched so far down that Gallus couldn’t see the end of it. Presumably, though, it had an end; otherwise there wouldn’t be much point in its existing.

“… Who wants to go first?” Gallus asked. The way down looked a bit too narrow for his liking. He worried that this was another attempt by the Tree of Harmony to mess with him via his claustrophobia.

Yona answered his question by walking forward and falling down the open trapdoor, not even bothering to grab onto the ladder.

The others watched with mild concern as Yona plummeted and disappeared into the darkness below. They stood around the trapdoor, waiting for any sign that Yona reached the bottom. They eventually got one when they heard a heavy splash from the bottom of the ladder, followed by the sound of Yona cursing in her native language.

Sandpar peeked his head over the trapdoor and raised a hoof to his mouth.

“Yona!” He called down, trying to be heard over Yona’s echoing swears. “Are you alive?”

Yona gradually stopped her cursing. There was a moment of silence.

“Yona fine!” She yelled, her voice echoing up towards them. “Water break Yona’s fall!”

“Water doesn’t work like that!” Ocellus yelled down into the trapdoor. “Falling and hitting the surface of the water would hurt just as much as falling onto solid ground!”

“Oh.” Yona replied. “Yona not sure what happened, then!”

The rest of the young six followed Yona down the trapdoor. Unlike her, they used the ladder. This was a smarter decision, as it stopped them from plummeting into the pool of water that waited directly below. Once they reached the bottom of the ladder, they simply hopped off onto the rocky terrain that surrounded the water.

Since most of them could fly, this was especially easy.

Gallus was the last to join them. He flew down the trapdoor and quickly descended into the caverns beneath the Everfree forest. The others were all waiting for him, standing at the edge of the pool of water that Yona had fallen into.

The group looked around at the tunnel they now found themselves in. It was made out of rocks and ground. Luminous crystals poked out of the walls, keeping the entire area surprisingly well-lit. Somewhere, there was a mole.

“Wow, we sure are underground!” Silverstream exclaimed. She took in all of the sights around her. It didn’t take long, since it was mostly just rocks.

“These tunnels must have been created by the Tree of Harmony’s roots!” Ocellus said in awe.

“Really?” Sandbar asked, adding absolutely nothing constructive to the conversation.

Ocellus thought about it for a bit, then shook her head.

“No, probably not,” she admitted. “I have no way to back that up.”

Gallus looked around thoughtfully. Being underground was very boring, but he couldn’t let that distract him. The tunnel stretched on in two directions, much like tunnels are known to do, but there were no landmarks or information kiosks to indicate which way the group should go. Gallus needed to figure out which direction led west.

He accomplished this by guessing.

“Let’s go this way, I guess,” Gallus said confidently.

They wasted no time. They didn’t even stop for snacks. The six friends headed down the tunnel, venturing further and further through the stony halls. They were confident. They had a mission. It didn’t matter how long it took—they were going to save their teachers.

If the six kids had taken a little more time to think about things, though, they might have realized that walking halfway across the continent with no supplies was a bad idea. But that was just part of being young. Sometimes young people just didn’t think their plans for revenge through and wound up traveling underground for days without food or water. That’s just a part of life.

And that’s the moral of this entire chapter.

Author's Note

Initially Sans Smirk made a bunch of Undertale references, but I realized that if I made you read that it would count as a war crime.

I Am Thinking About Doing Illegal Things

Author's Note

Slight content warning: From here on out, the story is going to contain themes revolving around a contagious illness, which some people might find troubling due to current events.

I swear, I planned this plot point a long time ago. I didn't just turn on the news and decide to be topical.

I Am Thinking About Doing Illegal Things

The door to Dusty Draft’s apartment swung open quickly, but to Shining Armor it seemed to happen in slow motion. It swung back on its hinges interminably slow in his mind as the prince felt his heart beat faster and faster. Would he finally start getting the answers he sought? The tension was unbearable.

It didn’t help that Shining Armor was really, really tired. He’d been through a lot lately.

Finally, the door opened. There was a pony standing in the doorway— a unicorn. This wasn’t Dusty Draft. It was someone else. But Shining wasn’t exactly surprised to see this pony instead of Dusty Draft.

After all, Shining had been running into this pony constantly.

“Hello, how may I help you?” Prince Blueblood asked as he stood in the doorframe of an old man's apartment.

Shining sighed. He was too tired to be annoyed by Blueblood at this point. Maybe he'd started building up an immunity to Blueblood's idiocy over all of their recent interactions. It was like with how some ponies asked snakes to bite them until they were immune to venom.

“What are you doing here, Blueblood?” Shining asked with a heavy sigh.

“For your information, I own this apartment building,” Blueblood said, for some reason trying to sound dignified. “It’s filled with old people, and I hate that fact. Every day I have to check to make sure they’re still alive or else I’ll get charged with negligence again. In exchange, however, all of the old people have to pay me for letting them live in my big house, and I love that.”

“I didn’t know you were a landlord!” Flash Sentry said, sounding much more surprised than he should have been.

“Oh, but I am, yellow man.” Blueblood smiled. For some reason, he seemed to be proud of the fact that he was rich enough to own an apartment. “I own exactly three buildings; my house, this apartment, and the abandoned funhouse on the edge of town where the evil clown lives. I make the evil clown pay rent, too, but I never do anything to stop him from being evil. I could, but I don’t.”

Everyone was very happy about that story.

“Who’s that at the front door?!” A familiar voice from inside the apartment yelled. Shining recognized the voice at once—it was the crotchety throat-vibrations of Old Man Dusty Draft. He could tell because the pegasus's voice sounded like a skeleton shaking hands with a mummy.

It didn’t take very long for the nasty man to hobble his way to the door.

As soon as he saw Prince Shining Armor’s group, Dusty Draft narrowed his beady little eyes in recognition. Alternatively, his eyes were just covered up by his wrinkly, giant eyelids. Both were equally likely.

“Well, well, well, look who it is! Looks like the Three Dummies finally want to listen to Dusty Draft use all the words about the things he knows!”

The Three Dummies all looked around awkwardly, trying to avoid looking directly at Dusty Draft. It wasn’t easy to come asking for help from somepony that you’d dismissed as crazy, even if they were a nutty old weirdo. Shining Armor knew that he and Flash Sentry would need to swallow their pride and apologize.

Thorax didn’t have much pride, so he didn’t really have to swallow anything. He was just dealing with social anxiety.

Flurry Heart also didn’t need to apologize. She was a baby and could get away with anything, especially larceny.

“Dusty… we need your help,” Shining Armor said to the old pegasus. “We need you to tell us what you know about the princesses’ disappearance. We’re willing to listen to you this time.”

“Not that we didn’t listen to you last time,” Thorax added. “It’s just we didn’t take what you said seriously because of how awful and crazy you sounded.”

Shining nodded in agreement.

Dusty Draft took a moment to look over the creatures gathered in his doorway thoughtfully. After a few seconds of contemplation, Dusty gestured for the group to follow him as he walked back into his apartment. Shining shared a relieved look with Thorax and Flash Sentry before he carried Flurry Heart into Draft’s home, the others following after him.

Also, Blueblood was still there.

Dusty Draft led the group into what was probably the living room of his apartment. To say it was sparsely decorated would be an understatement; there was absolutely no furniture. The windows had been boarded up with boards, and the only light came from the miniature chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

The walls were covered with photographs, maps, and charts. Bits of string connected the various pictures, just like Crystal Clear had described. Shining couldn’t make out what the strings represented, though. For instance, Dusty Draft had used a piece of string to connect two identical pictures of himself. Some of the strings were only pinned to one picture, with their other ends dangling down onto the floor. One string connected a picture of a cat to a bowel of cereal sitting on the shelf in Dusty's apartment.

It was bizarre, to say the very least, and Shining understood immediately that Draft was a stallion who was consumed by his work. Even though he was retired, his old job still dominated his lifestyle and his living space. It was so bad that the only normal thing in the room was the life-sized sculpture of himself that Dusty kept in the corner.

Dusty Draft himself had wandered over to the far side of the room, examining a wall that was covered in more pictures than any other. Each of the pictures was of a different water park Dusty Draft had visited, and there were dozens of them. Shining Armor was extremely impressed.

“I always knew this day would come,” he said, keeping his back to his visitors. “Well, I mean, not this day. I mean the day when the princesses went missing. It’d be weird if I’d expected this day to come, you know? Why would I expect for this day to come? I’m not psychic.”

Dusty turned around.

“This almost happened once before,” he explained. “… Again, I’m talking about the princesses vanishing. It nearly happened years ago, when I was one of the EIEIO’s top agents. Of course, back then it was only Celestia who almost went missing. We knew it was going to happen in advance, though, so we were able to stop it. This time, though…”

Draft trailed off and shook his head, a bitter look on his face.

“I made a mistake putting Crystal Clear in charge of the EIEIO,” he grumbled. “I had meant to fire her, but I accidentally got the paperwork mixed up. By the time I’d caught my mistake, I was getting ready to retire and didn’t want to deal with it. But now I realize I should have actually put some effort into letting my successor know that this would happen again.”

“That would have been nice,” Flash Sentry agreed.

Draft simply shrugged, then shook his head again. All of his wrinkles made gross noises whenever he moved.

“I won’t make that mistake again,” Draft said. “I’ll tell you what I know, but I don’t know what good it will do at this point. Maybe if I tell you the story of how we foiled Celestia’s kidnapping last time, you’ll be able to come up with a plan for what to do.”

Dusty Draft wandered to the center of the room and pretended to sit in an imaginary chair. The others gathered around to hear his story. Including Blueblood, for some reason.

“It happened decades ago…” Draft began. “It was so long ago… I guess it must have happened in the past. I was younger then, and Equestria was different. The nightlife was booming like never before, and it felt like the party would never stop. I was out on the town, looking for Princess Celestia at one of her Canterlot hangouts…”

It was midnight in Canterlot, and the city was alive with the glow of neon lights and the funky rhythm of disco music pouring out of a dozen nightclubs. Cool cats and foxy mamas were all stepping out onto the dance floor to groove along to those hot, hot beats. Bellbottoms and bling reigned supreme and ponies were wearing sunglasses inside. It was total madness, and nopony had the common sense to put a stop to it.

The happeningest nightclub in Canterlot at the time was the Abattoir of Funk. It had three whole disco balls. Like on most nights, it was nearly full to capacity, and everything was copacetic. Outta sight.

When the clock struck midnight and the party started to get into full swing, who should walk into the Abattoir of Funk but the baddest secret agent to ever step his platform horseshoes onto the streets of Canterlot? The doors swung open and that young pegasus walked his medallion-wearing self into the club.

Everyone knew who he was. He was the pony who would risk his neck for his fellow pony. The cat who wouldn’t cop out when there was danger all about:

Draft. Darn right.

Draft scanned the club from behind his funky mirrored sunglasses. They were actually prescription mirrored sunglasses, and had been prescribed to him by a disco doctor. But whatever they were, they weren’t showing him what he wanted to see.

“Darn,” Draft muttered to himself funkily. “Not copacetic.”

“Dusty Draft, my man!”

Draft turned to see what brother was trying to chat with him. It was a real jive turkey by the name of Neighsay. Him and Draft were tight, but the Dust-man knew that his boy was a real fool.

“Neighsay,” Draft greeted with a very hip nod as the stallion approached him. “What it is?”

“Hang on.”

Shining Armor interrupted Dusty Draft’s scary story, a confused look on his face.

“Are you trying to tell me that Chancellor Neighsay was alive back then?” Shining asked. “That’s impossible. He’s, like, my dad’s age. Even if he was alive, he wouldn’t be your age. He’d be younger.”

Dusty Draft glared at Shining Armor. Obviously, the old geezer didn't like being interrupted while telling a story.

“Listen, boy,” he said, waving a hoof at the prince. “I can’t be bothered to remember the names and faces of everypony in this story. If I choose to replace someone with someone else, it’s for convenience’s sake!”

Blueblood nodded. “He has a point, Shining Armor. That’s just basic storytelling.”

Shining Armor hung his head in shame. Flurry Heart reached up and squeezed his nose. This did nothing to make him feel better.

“But fine,” Dusty Draft grumbled irritably. “If it really bothers you that much, I’ll replace him with someone more appropriate, then, Mr. Complainington.”

“Thorax,” Draft greeted with a very hip nod as the Changeling approached him. “What it is?”

“Ey, that’s what I’m talking about,” Thorax said. He and Draft slapped hooves. They were definitely with it.

“Dig this, my friend,” Draft said as the song playing switched from ‘Arrested for Dancing at the Post Office’ to ‘My Legs Have Been Cursed With Dancing Energy’. “I need the skinny on Princess Celestia. Some bad mamma-jammas are fixing to work some major mojo, and I need to let her know so she can outfox ‘em.”

Thorax could only shrug his funky shoulders in response.

“Sorry, my man. I ain’t seen her in a twinkling of the witching hour,” he said. “She usually shows up around this time, though. Stick around and you’ll probably see her.”

“Out of sight,” Draft said. “Thanks, Thorax. You’re a real ostrich.”

“I’m a what?” Thorax asked, confused.

Draft rolled his eyes in a way that was totally with it.

“Don’t you peep the lingo?” He asked. “It’s the latest slang. If you’re a real ostrich, it means you’re good at telling spies what they need to know about Princess Celestia.”

Thorax nodded in understanding. “Oh, I get it! Thanks, brother. You’re one hot kettle of soup.”

“I’m a what?” Draft asked, confused.

“It means you know what’s going on,” Thorax explained.

“Oh.” Draft smiled and nodded. “Right on.”

“Cool,” Thorax said. “Well, I gotta go. I'm gonna eat a hot kettle of soup.”

They slapped hooves again a few times in a way that was both funky and fresh. Then Thorax walked away, exiting the flashback.

Draft looked around and made his way to the Abbatoir of Funk’s snack bar. The dance floor was crowded with dancers who were vibrating and shrieking in time with the music, so the line for snacks was pretty much nonexistent. That meant that Draft didn’t need to wait at all to get a seat.

“Dusty Draft!” The pony in charge of the snack bar said when he looked up from the noodles he was tying together. “Haven’t seen you around here in a long time!”

Draft gave the snack barkeep a nod.

“What it is, Starswirl the Bearded?” He asked.

The friendly smile on Starswirl's face turned slowly into a worried frown. After glancing around to make sure he wouldn't be neglecting any customers, the snack-master leaned across the counter to speak quietly with Draft.

“Not so great!” He yelled. “My cousin, Rice Wind? He caught that bug that's been going around. Now he's in quarantine, and they've put him inside of a giant hamster ball. He loves it, but he's still really sick.”

“How unfunky,” Draft said sympathetically. “I'm sorry to hear that, Starswirl. I like your cousin more than you. I wish you were sick instead.”

For some reason, Starswirl looked hurt by that. Draft didn't know why. Maybe it was just because the bearded unicorn was so young. When he got to be Draft's age, maybe he'd understand how hip and with it his cousin was.

But before anypony could start aging, the doors to the Abattoir of Funk swung out onto the street. This was bad, because they were push doors. But the mare standing in the doorway made her own rules, and nopony was going to tell her how to open doors unless they felt like it.

It was Princess Celestia, in all her glory. Back in those days, she'd been big on hitting the discos and partying all night. She strode into the club, larger than life, her massive platform horseshoes adding to her already impressive height. For just a moment, the dancing and partying came to a halt as everypony stared at Celestia and her glorious, shimmering afro.

Dusty Draft wasn't starstruck, though. He worked for The Mare, and when you worked for The Mare, a lot of the glamour was wiped away. Draft knew that Celestia was a good leader, but she was no goddess. She put her bellbottoms on one leg at a time, just like everypony else who had more than one leg.

It didn't take long for Celestia to notice Draft sitting at the snack bar. Her eyes lit up when she recognized the spymaster of the EIEIO, and she made her way towards him as the music picked back up.

“Dusty Draft!” Celestia exclaimed cheerfully. “What's cracking, youngblood? Surprised to see you at this joint. You here for your gig, or is this strictly social?”

Draft looked for a drink to nonchalantly sip from while he spoke to Celestia. Unfortunately, he couldn't find anything. He settled instead for grabbing a pepper shaker, opening it up, and pouring all of its contents into his mouth at once. Then he wiped his mouth on the back of his hoof and looked Celestia in the eyes.

“I'm afraid I've got a real bummer for you, your highness,” he said. “You and me need to confab, 'cause things are getting real freaky-deaky.”

The seriousness of his words wiped the smile off of Celestia's face. She nodded understandingly and sat on the stool next to his.

“Lay it out for me, my corn pipe,” Celestia said solemnly. “What's the skinny?”

Dusty Draft proceeded to tell her what the skinny was.

“You're in danger,” he said. “We need to get you to safety, Princess Celestia. I have evidence that suggests someone might be planning to kidnap you, ya dig? This situation's a real turkey, my mango.”

Celestia's eyes widened, and did not stop widening for the next three minutes.

“Jeepers creepers!” She exclaimed in a shocked whisper. “Why would anyone want to kidnap me and my afro?”

“I've got my theories, but nothing concrete.” Draft said as he reached into his cool vest. “All I know is that, if it's going down, it's gonna go down tonight. We need to get you somewhere safe. Or at least safer than a disco, which is literally one of the most dangerous places you can be.”

Princess Celestia gave it some thought.

“Let's head back to my castle,” she said. “I can lock myself in my bathroom, and the kidnapper won't be able to get to me without seeming really gross.”

This was a great plan, and it would have totally worked. But when Celestia and Dusty Draft got up from their seats and began to walk away from the snack bar, they had no way of knowing it was already too late. Nevertheless, they sprinted quickly towards the door.

“Not so fast!” A pair of voices yelled from out on the dance floor.

Celestia and Dusty Draft slowed down to a leisurely trot.

“That's better!” The voices said. “You shouldn't run indoors! Also, I am a kidnapper!”

The music playing in the club came to a stop. This was because the DJ had fallen asleep. As the ponies who had been infected with dancing out on the floor came to a slow, confused stop, a single figure rose up from among the crowd.

It was a large, centaur-like creature with impossibly long arms. Its bulbous head hung languidly to the side, and there was an expression on its face that clearly indicated how much it loved abducting things. The creature's hooves made nasty squishing sounds as it approached Celestia and Dusty Draft, stepping into clearer view.

When Draft got a better look at the creature, though, he was horrified to realize that it was no centaur. Instead of just having the lower half of an equine, this creature had an entire pony, complete with neck and head. The ape-like body of the centaur sprouted out from the center of the pony's back, and its nasty arms dragged on the floor as its horse body carried it forward.

Draft looked at the creature's horse-head, and it stared back at him with a single, glowing red eye. Its bottom lip was pierced, and it was wearing a trucker hat on top of its horsey head. The trucker hat read 'I AM THINKING ABOUT DOING ILLEGAL THINGS AND I LOVE IT.' The hat also had a picture of a bass fish on it.

“Good gosh!” One of the dancers out on the floor exclaimed. “They're not wearing any bell-bottoms!”

The entire crowd gasped in terror. This included the two-headed monster, for some reason.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the creature's ape head said. It raised one of its long arms and pointed at itself with a pointy finger. “My name is Dennis.”

He pointed down at the horse creature that made up its lower half.

“And this,” he said, “is The Robert Bruce Experience.”

The horse head nodded. “Aye.”

“We are here to do a shoplifting of your person,” Dennis said to Princess Celestia with a lopsided grin. “We are going to take you from this place and put you in another place against your will. Then we won't let you leave, even if you ask us very nicely. It is very rude, this thing we're doing.”

“My name is The Robert Bruce Experience,” The Robert Bruce Experience said.

“He is! And you can't stop him!” Dennis tried to nod his over-sized head, but it just kind of fell forward and dangled there.

Everypony stared at the two-headed monster who was not funky at all, except for a couple of ponies in the back of the club who were having a very interesting conversation. No one had ever seen a monster like this before. If this bizarre mishmash of creatures had a name, there was no way of knowing it. It defied definition.

“Oh, a nuckelavee,” Shining said.

Dusty Draft was momentarily snapped out of his storytelling to stare at Shining in confusion.

“... A what?” He asked.

“You know, a nuckelavee,” Shining repeated. “The monster you're describing? A pony with, like, an ape's upper body growing out of its back? That's a nuckelavee. Everypony knows that. I read about them in my old O&O Monster Manual. How do you not know this?”

Draft glared at Shining Armor irritably.

“Look, sonny,” he growled. “Just because you know what that thing was called doesn't mean anyone else does. So why should I know anything about--?”

“Weren't the nuckelavee one of Grogar's last creations?” Blueblood asked, interrupting Draft. “I remember hearing that he made the nuckelavee right before Gusty the Great stole his magic bell and then beat him in a cage match.”

Draft stared at Blueblood in disbelief. If Blueblood knew something, Dusty Draft had no excuse for not knowing it. He was the true fool.

Utterly defeated, he cleared his throat and continued on with his boring story.

Draft looked at the two chuckleheads who were were the same chucklehead. He narrowed his eyes. These guys were bad news, but they were also very unhip. Also, they smelled like dead fish, which wasn't with it at all. Someone had to teach these jive turkeys a lesson, and that someone was Dusty Draft.

He didn't get a chance to, though; Celestia started talking before he could.

“You've got a lot of nerve to try and kidnap me in my favorite place to pretend I can dance!” Princess Celestia said, boldly taking a step forward. Then she boldly took a step sideways. “What makes you think I'll come along quietly?”

Dennis and the Robert Bruce Experience both laughed. It was very clear, however, that neither of them knew how to laugh, so they just made weird croaking noises. They made these noises for two minutes, then stopped.

“You don't have a choice!” Dennis said proudly. “We are going to cast a very good spell that will turn you into a kidnapping victim! It'll be great! Once you're trapped in our secret lair off the coast of Seaweedattle, we'll use your magic to spread a disease all across Equestria! We've already got a cool, like, magic battery thing that we're going to put you inside of!”

“I agree!” The Robert Bruce Experience added.

Dusty Draft narrowed his eyes even more. By this point, his eyes were completely closed.

“Why are you telling us all this?”

The smug, sinister smiles that Dennis and the Robert Bruce Experience had been sporting turned into confused frowns.

“I don't understand the question,” Dennis said.

“Wouldn't it have been better to keep this a secret, my man?” Draft asked. “Now that Princess Celestia knows your plan, she can, like... defend herself, or blast you with her magic. Really seems like you're shooting yourself in the hoof here.”

Dennis blinked. He looked down at the Robert Bruce Experience, who had the same confused expression as him. After a moment, Dennis looked back up, the confidence he'd previously had completely gone.

“Well... You see, the reason is...” He said slowly. “Uh... I mean... Well, it's... rude to keep secrets? I guess?”

Somepony out on the dance floor that Draft couldn't see laughed at the monster. They deserved it. Draft found himself chuckling, too He let out a small, very funky laugh under his breath.

Dennis and the Robert Bruce Experience whipped their heads around to glare at Draft furiously.

“This isn't funny!” Dennis snapped. “I'm going to kidnap your princess and give you all a very bad disease! I'm a very genuine threat! Take me serious, dad!”

The look of rage on Dennis's face turned into one of shock once he realized what he'd just said. He tried to look around, but since his head just sort of dangled off to the side, he wasn't able to check and see if anyone had noticed what he'd said. Regardless of whether or not his head could move, though, Dennis looked mortified.

“Hey!” A pony by the name of Funkenstein's Monster cried out. “That big guy who's two guys called Dusty Draft 'dad', even though he is in fact not his dad! What a humorous slip-up! Let's ridicule him!”

Soon, the Abattoir of Funk was filled with the wet gargling sounds that ponies made when they were amused. It was always funny when a monster made a verbal mistake like that, and everyone loved it. Even Princess Celestia, who was still slightly on-guard due to the threat of being kidnapped, found herself laughing.

Dennis scowled, furious about the fact that he was totally getting owned in this night club.

“Shut up!” He yelled. “We'll see how funny you think it is when I kidnap your dumb princess!”

Oh, right. Everypony had been so busy laughing at this monster's lameness that they'd forgotten what he was doing here. The laughter died down as Dennis lifted his hands into the air and began wiggling his fingers in a disgustingly magical way. A strange, orange aura enveloped the two-headed beast, and the air was filled with the mystical sounds of goats screaming.

“Oh no!” Dusty Draft exclaimed. “I should do something!”

Draft continued to watch as the two-headed monster that literally no one knew the name of cast its awful spell. Soon, Dennis flung his hands forward. The orange aura of magic surrounding him flew forward all at once, rushing through the air towards Celestia. Tendrils of hungry magic seemed to reach out for the Princess as the blob of energy raced towards her. The air howled as it flew towards her like a bolt of lightning. In less than a second, it was mere inches from ensnaring her.

Celestia blasted it out of the air with her magic and it disappeared.

Dennis slowly lowered his hands as the spell he'd cast faded away. For a moment, the nuckelavee was stunned. He and the Robert Bruce Experience stared at Celestia in disbelief.

“... Oh,” Dennis croaked. “Oh, you just... kinda ruined our whole plan.”

“I told you we should have brought a sack,” the Robert Bruce Experience grumbled. “Nopony can resist getting crammed into a kidnapping sack.”

Celestia took a single step forward, bringing her hoof down hard onto the stone floor of the Abattoir of Funk. The sound of her golden platform shoe stomping into the ground drew a worried look from both of the nuckelavee's heads. There was a serious expression on Celestia's face, unlike everyone else in the club, who was still quietly laughing at the nuckelavee.

“It's over, you turkeys.” Celestia said, using the most savage insult in the current parlance. “You tried to kidnap me, and you did a real bad job. Now it's time for you to boogey on down to the cooler. By which I mean jail. By which I mean Tartarus. And you can dig that.”

As it turned out, however, they couldn't dig it. Before Celestia could cast her own spell that would teleport the nuckelavee into Tartarus, the awful horse-ape scrambled and ran back towards the dance floor. They charged through the crowd of ponies who had been watching his terrible kidnapping attempt. Nopony tried to stop the nuckelavee because they didn't care.

Celestia squinted her eyes as the nuckelavee disappeared into the crowd of ponies. She was trying to get a clear shot at the monster, but Dusty Draft could tell she wouldn't be able to get it. There were just too many ponies out on the dance floor. Why were they still on the dance floor if they weren't dancing? That seemed like a bad decision.

While Celestia's horn crackled with magical energy, Draft took it upon himself to try and get a better view. Using his wings, he lifted himself up into the air until he could look down on the dance floor. From this vantage point, he could see that the nuckelavee was pushing their way to the very back of the crowd.

“They're going to come out on the other side!” Draft yelled down at Celestia.

The princess thought for a moment. Then, she gasped. “He must be trying to get to the bathrooms so he can escape!”

“Oh no!” Dusty Draft said in a way that made it very clear that this wasn't groovy. “You have to go through the dance floor to get to the bathrooms? That's inconvenient club design!”

“Go after him, Draft!” Celestia ordered. “If he goes into the stallions' restroom, I won't be able to follow him!”

Draft nodded. He looked back down at the crowd of dancing ponies. Unfortunately, while he and Celestia had been talking, the nuckelavee had made it into the stallion's bathroom.

“What a bummer!” Dusty Draft exclaimed.

There was no more time to waste. Draft soared over the dance floor, above the ponies who were still just standing around and watching what was happening. He barged into the stallions' bathroom, throwing his body into the door as he flew in.

Draft entered just in time to see one of the stall doors slam shut. Then, almost immediately, he heard the sound of a toilet flushing.

“No!” Draft exclaimed as he realized what was about to happen.

The pegasus raced to the stall with the closed door. Sure enough, the flushing sound was coming from inside. Thankfully, none of the bathroom stalls in the Abattoir of Funk had locks. Draft flung the door open and looked inside, only to discover he was too late.

The stall was empty. The only thing to look out was the toilet refilling with water after it finished its flushing. Draft roared in frustration as the water bubbled back up through the pipes.

The nuckelavee had escaped by flushing themselves down the toilet.

“Not dy-no-mite!” Draft swore. He ripped off his cool sunglasses and threw them to the linoleum floor in anger. Then he took out a second pair of sunglasses and did it again. Finally, after taking a moment to calm down and steal all of the paper towels, he left the bathroom.

Princess Celestia landed in front of the door just as Draft left. All she needed was to see the look on Draft's face to know the nuckelavee had escaped.

“This isn't outta sight at all,” Celestia grumbled. “Do you know where those pipes go?”

Draft shook his head. “No one does. No one has ever cared about the sewers. All I know is that all of our sewer water gets boxed and shipped off to Seaweedattle so it can be dumped into the ocean for no reason.”

Celestia sighed.

“This is so totally bogus,” she said sternly. “Oh, well. I don't think we'll need to worry about them for the time being. But we should be prepared for in case they ever try to make another kidnapping attempt. There's always a chance they could become powerful enough to successfully cast a kidnapping spell.”

Draft raised an eyebrow. “How long would that take?”

“Oh, I couldn't say for sure.” Celestia shrugged. “If I had to guess, though, I'd say it would take several decades for them to amass enough power. Heck, in that amount of time, they could learn to cast a spell that would kidnap four or five princesses, plus five non-alicorns and maybe a small dragon. This is all just a theory, though.”

“So we just have all of that useless guesswork?” Draft asked., already growing frustrated

Celestia nodded, an understanding look on her funky face.

“Unfortunately, yes,” she said. “But don't worry. We have plenty of time to find this nuckelavee. As long as you don't go insane and ponies stop taking you seriously, there shouldn't be any problems.”

“Yeah, sure,” Draft said. He wasn't really paying attention. He was thinking about how great it would be to go insane after he retired.

Celestia looked away from Draft as the music began to play. The DJ had woken up and started playing the number-one disco hit, 'Screaming Instead of Singing For Eight Solid Minutes.' Almost immediately, the mood in the Abattoir of Funk lightened. The ponies on the dance floor went back to trying to jump up and steal the disco ball.

A small smile formed on Celestia's face. She turned back to Draft and gave him a friendly nod.

“That's enough work, though,” she said. “I think it's time for you to go out on the dance floor and show off your famous dancing tricks. Come on, snake, let's rattle.”

Dusty Draft nodded. “I can dig it.”

Princess Celestia and her spymaster began to make their way out to the dance floor. But before Draft could show off any of his moves, like 'The Manehattan Splits' or 'The Trottingham Limb Devastation', the music once again came to a stop. Ponies looked around in unhip confusion as the club's lights all turned on.

At the very front of the club, the door to the manager's office opened up. The owner of the Abattoir of Funk stepped out of his office. It was Prince Blueblood, obviously, because he was definitely alive back then.

“Hey, guys, it's me; Prince Blueblood,” Prince Blueblood announced. “I'm in the flashback now. Dusty Draft definitely isn't misremembering anything. Anyway, I'm here to let you know that we're closing down. Disco is dead, so everyone has to go home.”

There were murmurs and groans of disappointment all throughout the club. Everypony took off their gold jewelery, platform horseshoes, and afros and left the club dejected. When they got home, they would all have to start dressing into bright clothes with big shoulders and get their manes permed.

It was the end of an era. The world would never be the same.

Literally nobody cared.

“That was the end for me being cool. I was never cool again,” Dusty Draft said with a tear in his eye. He shook his old head, shaking his dentures around noisily in his mouth as he did so. “All the cool detectives started wearing white suits and sunglasses, but I was never able to find any that fit me.”

The incredibly old, useless pegasus sighed.

“You're probably wondering why I told you all that,” Draft said as he looked up. “It's because I need you to understand how cool I used to be. I was really great. You should all feel sorry for me and stop being mean. I don't like young people, and I once punched a yak in the face. This is the end of my old man story. Thank you for coming. I--”

“Draft?” Blueblood interrupted. “They're all gone.”

Dusty Draft blinked. He looked around with his old, greasy eyeballs. Sure enough, Shining, Flash, Thorax, and Flurry weren't in his apartment anymore.

“... When did they leave?!” Draft asked in confusion.

“A while ago,” Blueblood said. “Right after you mentioned that the nuckelavee had a secret base near Seaweedattle. I think they left because you were so boring and terrible.”

Draft thought about this for a bit. It made sense. His story had been mostly an excuse to tell them that Celestia used to have an afro. Also, he had taken the time to hum all of the disco songs from the story in their entirety just to make things more boring.

“Why are you still here, then?” Draft asked, looking up at Blueblood.

“I'm still waiting to make sure you're still alive so I don't go to jail for negligence again,” Blueblood answered. “After listening to you talk for nearly an hour, I'm still not sure if you're dead or not. Are you dead?”

The many wrinkles in Dusty Draft's face contorted in such a way that attempted to convey anger.

“No, I'm not dead!” He snappped.

“Okay,” Blueblood said. “You owe me 800 bits in rent, then.”

With that, Blueblood left.

Dusty Draft immeditaely forgot everything that had just happened.

Where My Wonderful Boats Live

Seaweedattle: The Windy City. The Big Apple. The only city in Equestria with a name so dumb that it was embarrassing to say out loud. The coastal town was famous for its sports teams, iconic architecture, and for having been named by a pony who had just given up on everything.

Shining Armor had been to Seaweedattle once before. It had been years ago, after he had completed his basic training. He had dropped a piece of a model he had been working on, and while looking for it he wound up accidentally walking all the way to Seaweedattle. Once he was in the city, he had a cup of coffee, used the bathroom, and left. It had been a magical experience.

This upcoming trip to Seaweedattle promised to be less pleasant, however. Shining wasn't going to get any coffee or use the bathroom. He was going to find his wife, his sister, and those other ones who had gotten abducted. He was going to save everyone.

Before he could do any of that, though, Shining Armor needed to figure out a way to leave Canterlot without everypony freaking out. Everypony was so paranoid about their rulers disappearing lately. If they knew that Shining was planning on leaving Canterlot to go on a dangerous mission, they'd try to stop him.

And sure, he could use his authority to send a team of specialists to Seaweedattle, but Shining felt like he needed to do this personally. He needed to at least try to save Cadance and Twilight himself. After the embarrassing situation in the sewer, Shining felt like he needed to prove that he could actually save the day for once.

Deep down, of course, Shining Armor knew he didn't need to prove anything to anyone. He was aware of the fact that he was trying to make up for a perceived lack of importance in the face of the strange world he lived in. Shining Armor was only doing this because he felt like he came up short compared to his sister and his wife, and that wasn't healthy.

But brains are stupid. Even though Shining knew that this was a bad idea based entirely on his own insecurities, he was still going to do it. He wasn't proud of that fact, but, you know, whatever.

That brought Shining back to the problem of leaving Canterlot, however. Thankfully, after a long time thinking about it, Shining had come up with a simple solution. Using his skills, he could create something that would let him leave without anypony being the wiser. To do this, Shining Armor would need to use the talent he was most famous for:

Whittling.

In the span of a single afternoon, Shining Armor whittled a life-sized replica of himself using nothing but a knife and a chunk of flotsam he'd found floating in a bathtub. The result was a perfect, wooden replica of the pony who'd sculpted it. When no one was looking, Shining took his creation and set it up in the throne room, where anypony looking for him would find it. So long as nopony noticed that he was made of wood and didn't move, they'd never realize he was gone.

It was utterly foolproof.

Now that he was free to leave the palace, there was one last thing Shining needed to do before he left for Seaweedattle. And unfortunately, this wasn't something he could solve with his incredible whittling tricks. This task was slightly more difficult than creating a perfect replica of himself our of a small plank of wood.

Shining sneaked out of Canterlot Castle under the cover of midafternoon. Flurry Heart was strapped into the Cool Dad Baby Harness that hung from Shining's chest and made him impossible to take seriously. She cooed noisily as she and Shining traveled through Canterlot's streets. Despite that, Shining doubted anypony would notice them.

Canterlot was quiet. Shining Armor had noticed it on his way back from Dusty Draft's tomb, but hadn't really payed it much attention. Now, though, it was starting to sink in to him just how empty the city was. The streets, which were normally full of both hustle and bustle, were practically deserted.

Even though he was in a bit of a rush, Shining Armor found himself slowing down as he trotted through the empty roads. The shoppers and tourists who normally gave Canterlot its life were nowhere to be seen. The only ponies around were couriers and merchants going about their day.

Where was everypony? Did this have anything to do with the disease outbreak in Seaweedattle? And, more importantly, who cared?

Shining wasn't going to let something like the mysterious absence of most of the city's population slow him down. He continued galloping through the mostly empty streets, making his way past all the shops and into the residential district of Canterlot. The residential district was where most of Canterlot's citizens had to live, whether they liked it or not.

Shining carried Flurry past the cottages and duplex igloos that Canterlot's elite lived in. He ignored the mansions and apartments, the windmills and the big gingerbread houses. None of those were the place he was looking for.

In no time at all, however, Shining reached his destination: his parents' house.

The Sparkle Family household was much like the other houses in its neighborhood: it had walls, a door, and was not on fire. The front lawn was meticulously kept, the grass freshly cut. It was the kind of lawn that made it clear that whoever kept it didn't have a lot going on in their lives.

Seeing his childhood home always filled Shining Armor with a sense of nostalgia. This was the building he'd eaten breakfast cereal in when he was just a little colt. It was the building that he had nightmares about being trapped in.

But now wasn't the time to get stuck going down memory lane like a jogger who could only move forward because of a bomb strapped to them. Shining needed to talk to his parents, and they were both inside of their house for some reason.

Shining walked up to the door and rang the doorbell eighteen times. Then, he waited. He didn't need to wait very long, however.

After only a moment, the front door of the Sparkle Family was opened by Twilight Velvet and Nightlight.

“Hello!” They said. “We are your parents!”

“Hello,” Shining Armor said. “I'm your son. May I be inside of your house?”

Without waiting for an answer, he walked inside. His memory knew where the living room was, and his legs made his body go there. Once he arrived, he found his usual spot on the usual sofa. He sat down and held Flurry Heart into his lap as he waited for his parents.

While Shining was there, he looked around. The room looked almost the same as the last time Shining had seen it. Some of the furniture had been switched out, but it mostly had gone unchanged. There was the same old chair; the same pictures of him, Twilight, and Spike all on the walls; the same froggy statue in the corner.

There was something poignant about coming back home after a long time spent away. It was a little bittersweet.

Flurry Heart still was completely apathetic to her father's emotional state.

Nightlight and Twilight Velvet soon joined Shining in the living room. They sat across from him and Flurry Heart, who cooed when she recognized the two old ponies who were her grandparents.

“Shining, it's so nice to see you!” Twilight Velvet said. “I wish you'd told us you were coming. I would have made lemon bars!”

“We're glad you stopped by, though!” Nightlight said cheerily. “We needed a distraction from the intense feeling of dread we've had ever since your sister went missing!”

Shining's parents both laughed.

“So what brings you around?” Twilight Velvet asked. “Not that you need a reason. We're always happy to see you and Flurry Heart. Especially Flurry Heart. Doting on her and spoiling her lets us relive when you were a baby, before you learned to talk and be independent.”

Shining's polite smile became even smaller. His face was trying to broach a sensitive subject before his mouth could.

“Well, the thing is...” Shining sighed. “Mom, dad... I need you to look after Flurry Heart, who is my daughter, for a little while. I need to go somewhere dangerous, and I... I can't bring her with me.”

Now it was Shining's parents' turn to stop smiling. The seriousness of what Shining was requesting sunk in quickly.

“Shining, what are you planning on doing?” Velvet asked. “Do you need clean underwear? I'm your mom.”

Shining gave his parents a small smile. Then he winked at them. This did not make them feel better, so Shining decided to just start talking.

“I'm on the trail of Twily's kidnapper,” he explained. “I'm going to confront them, but I can't bring Flurry Heart with me. That would be like handing over a fifth princess for them to kidnap. Flurry's powerful, but she's still just a baby, and babies are notoriously easy to abduct. Any idiot could do it.”

Shining's parents both nodded. They knew how easy it was to steal a baby. Everyone did; it was common knowledge. Shining was stating the obvious, which was annoying.

“Also...” Shining hesitated. “If... if something happens to me, you'll need to look after Flurry Heart. She'll need someone to take care of her and make sure she doesn't melt too many ponies. You two have always been good at that.”

“Shining, please,” Nightlight chided. “Don't talk about this. Your sister and Spike are already missing. If something happened to you, your mother and I would be very annoyed. It would be a real hassle for all of our children to disappear.”

Shining shook his head.

“Mom, dad, I can't just... do nothing,” he said. “I'm Twilight's older brother; I'm supposed to look out for her! But whenever something bad happens, I'm always powerless to help. I just need to do something this time. I need to know that the ponies I care about can depend on me.”

Twilight Velvet frowned. “Shining, we understand how you feel. But you're our son. We need to know that you'll come back from this safe.”

Both of Shining's parents looked at him expectantly. Flurry Heart babbled as Shining faltered a bit under their pleading gazes.

“I... I'll try,” he said. “But just in case something does happen... I need you to look after Flurry Heart. Raise her to be filled with hate and a powerful thirst for vengeance, just like grandpa did with you, dad.”

Shining's parents exchanged a look. After a few wordless moments, they both finally nodded.

“Okay,” Nightlight said. “I'll do my best to fill her heart with hate, but... Please come back. And bring your family with you.”

Shining nodded. He did his best to look confident for his parents, but he messed up and wound up looking flirty instead. With a wink and a smile, he lifted Flurry Heart off of his lap and passed her to his parents. The little weapon of mass destruction cooed as she entered her grandmother's hooves.

There was a twinge of sadness in Shining's heart as he got up off the couch. He knew this was dangerous, and he dreaded the thought of Flurry Heart never seeing him again. But somepony needed to do something.

It was time to go to Seaweedattle.

“Sorry. No trains are going to Seaweedattle,” said the ticket-pony at the Canterlot train station.

Not much time had passed. Shining, Thorax, and Flash Sentry had all met up at the train station shortly after Shining left his parents' house. Shining had come up with an incredible plan where the three of them would buy tickets and then ride a train to Seaweedattle. Flash and Thorax had both been very impressed by this plan.

And even though Shining had mixed feelings about dragging the two of them into danger along with him, he knew he couldn't do this alone. He needed their help.

But with or without their help, Shining hadn't been prepared for this obstacle.

“What?!” He asked, shocked. “What to you mean, Ticket-Lord?! Why are you keeping your trains from us?!”

The pony behind the desk at the ticket stand, who had the incredible power to decide who was or was not on a train, shrugged.

“Sorry,” the master of tickets said. “Seaweedattle is under quarantine. No trains or airships can get in or out of the city. Apparently some sort of epidemic broke out over there, and Dynamite Dangerous ordered the place to be shut down.”

Dynamite Dangerous? The High Chancellor of the Department of Health and Cleanliness? Shining didn't remember him mentioning anything about Seaweedattle being under quarantine, but, to be fair, he kind of zoned out whenever that guy said anything. He was incredibly boring, and Shining Armor didn't regret not listening to him.

Regardless, this was a huge hurdle to overcome. Shining's plan of taking a train to Seaweedattle hinged entirely on being able to ride a train. Without a train, Shining didn't think his great plan could work.

“This is insane!” Shining exclaimed. “Can't you make an exception? I'm royalty!”

An angry, offended look appeared on the ticket-man's face. It was the fury of a righteous destroyer.

“I don't care who you are! I'm the Boss of the Tickets!” He snapped back. “Nopony gets to be inside of the very long train unless I say so! You have no power here!”

Severely reprimanded, Shining Armor flinched back. As the impassibility of this obstacle began to truly sink in, Shining felt a great weight in his heart, like a whale or a really heavy book. He hung his head, completely at a loss for what to do next. Despair and hopelessness both played jump-rope with his brain.

Thorax looked at Shining sympathetically before turning to face the unforgiving ticket-despot.

“Is there any other way we can get there?” He asked. “It's really important.”

The pony who was all about tickets opened his mouth, already looking like he was ready to tear into Thorax the same way he'd done to Shining. Soon, though, his expression turned thoughtful. The priest of the temple of tickets looked off to the side contemplatively, gears turning inside of his empty head.

“Well...” he mused, “all commercial travel to Seaweedattle has been shut down. But technically, I guess a private citizen with their own airship could fly into the city. They'd probably get in trouble for it, but they could do it. There's some bad weather over there, though, so they'd have to be a decent pilot. Or captain. Whichever.”

“I see,” Thorax said. “Thank you, ticket-father.”

The ticket pony nodded obligingly. Then Flash Sentry locked him in a cupboard.

Shining Armor lifted his head, feeling slightly hopeful. But he was still confused about where to go next.

“So... we need somepony with their own airship?” Shining asked. “There are probably plenty of ponies in Canterlot who qualify. But who would be a good enough pilot to fly through weather that's bad?”

“Maybe I could fly us,” Flash Sentry suggested. “Doesn't your sister have a hot-air balloon? I could use that.”

Shining shook his head.

“We don't talk about that balloon anymore,” he said. “It's a touchy subject. So we're going to have to find somepony else.”

Thorax, Flash, and Shining Armor all took a moment to think things over. Their brains grunted and groaned at the exertion of it. Sweat formed on their brows as they gritted their teeth, muscles in their faces tensing. Finally, after only fifty minutes of thinking, Flash Sentry's eyes lit up.

“I think I know who can help us,” he said.

Shining and Thorax both looked at Flash, startled by his claim.

“What?” Shining Armor asked. “Help us with with what? The airship thing? I lost track of things for a second.”

Flash Sentry nodded.

“As a pegasus guard, I run into airship owners a lot on the job,” he explained. “I constantly have to pull them over because they keep trying to use their airships to do sick tricks at the local skate park, which is illegal. I've pulled over pretty much every pony who owns an airship in this city for trying to take their flying boats out onto the half-pipe. That means I get a pretty good idea of who the best pilots are, and one stallion in particular stands out.”

Shining Armor hadn't really been listening. He'd been busy thinking about how cool skate parks are. He managed to tune back in towards the end of Flash Sentry's little story, though.

“Who is he?” Shining asked.

“Who is he?” Thorax asked as well for some reason.

Flash opened his mouth to speak, but the optimistic look on his face quickly changed. Something was occurring to him. It was as if he'd just realized a problem he hadn't taken into account when he started offering his help. The pegasus bit his bottom lip before looking up at Shining cautiously.

“Uh... You're not going to like it, sir,” he warned.

Shining raised his eyebrow, but his confusion didn't last long. Even though Flash hadn't said who the stallion was yet, Shining immediately realized who he was talking about. There was only one pony he could think of who Flash would warn him about like this.

“Oh, no...” Shining grumbled. “It's Prince Blueblood, isn't it?”

Flash nodded sheepishly.

Shining Armor covered his eyes with a hoof and groaned. He dragged his hoof down his face, a headache already starting to party it up inside of his head.

Of course it was Blueblood. Of course. Who else would it be?

While Shining had reluctantly accepted that terrible fact, Thorax looked more skeptical.

“You're joking, right?” Thorax asked. “Blueblood? Prince Blueblood is the best airship pilot in Canterlot?”

“Yup,” Flash said with a sigh. “Or at least the best non-professional.”

Thorax blinked. He was clearly struggling to wrap his head around the idea of Prince Blueblood being competent at anything. Shining Armor couldn't really blame him.

“But he's a complete buffoon!” Thorax exclaimed. “I barely know him, but even I can tell what a twit that guy is! Isn't piloting an airship really complicated or something? Aren't there a bunch of... levers and ropes and stuff?”

“Flash is right,” Shining said sadly. “Piloting ships is Blueblood's special talent. He wins the Annual Canterlot Airship Race for the Needlessly Wealthy pretty much every year. Heck, the guy owns, like, eight or nine different airships. That's not even counting his normal water-ships.”

“I think those are just called ships,” Flash gently interjected.

Shining ignored him. “As much as I hate to admit it, he's probably the best pony to fly us to Seaweedattle. He's got a ship, he can pilot it through a storm, and he's so rich that none of us will get in trouble for breaking the quarantine. We're going to need to ask Blueblood for help.”

As soon as Shining said that last sentence, everycreature in a two-mile radius felt an involuntary shiver of disgust. The idea of actually needing Prince Blueblood's assistance on a problem was so unnatural that even nature itself seemed to shudder. Or at least some bushes did. Also, one bird nearby was fairly surprised, but it didn't really care because it was a bird.

“Let's go find Blueblood,” Shining grumbled. “It shouldn't be too hard; I keep running into him lately.”

“He's probably at his house,” Flash Sentry suggested, clearly using all of his brain power to reach that conclusion. “Let's go to the Fancy Mansion District and talk to him about his wonderful sky boats.”

And so they did. Fortunately, the Fancy Mansion District was only a few blocks away.

Unfortunately, once Shining's company reached Blueblood's house, it was clear that the unicorn wasn't home. They wound up having to wait nine entire minutes for him to show up, and everyone hated it. The only bright side was that it gave them an opportunity to look at Blueblood's totally sweet house.

Blueblood's mansion was probably the most opulent in all of Canterlot. It was practically a mini-castle in its own right. It was four stories tall, and made out of only the finest ivory; the ivory came from sophisticated elephants who had all graduated from Ivy-league schools. A huge, neon sign on the front of the house spelled out 'BLUEBLOOD LIVES HERE' in flashing, red lights. The roof had been tiled with solid gold bars. And, to top it all off, there was a dead butler in the driveway.

“Jeez,” Shining muttered. “How do you get a place like this?”

“I know,” Flash said enviously. “I wish I had a dead butler.”

Thorax didn't say anything. He was busy trying to fly into the lights on the neon sign out front.

The sound of fancy hooves on cobblestones interrupted all the nothing that Shining's group was doing. Shining and Flash turned around to see Blueblood walking towards them. There was a surprised look on his face, and Shining really hated him.

“What are you all doing here?” Blueblood asked, an eyebrow raised.

“What are you doing here?” Shining snapped back reflexively.

Blueblood shrugged. “I'm Prince Blueblood. This is my house.”

Darn. He was right. Shining grimaced unhappily while Flash took over the conversation.

“We need your help, Prince Lou Blood,” Flash said. “The fate of Equestria might be at stake.”

“Did you just call me 'Lou Blood?'” Prince Lou Blood asked, looking at Flash Sentry strangely.

“No,” Flash said.

Shining shook his head. He didn't want to beat around the bush with Blueblood. He didn't want to do anything with Blueblood. But he needed the prince's help, and he didn't want to waste a lot of time with pointless chitchat. Mostly because he knew that, with Blueblood, the pointlessness would never stop.

“Look, Blueblood, we need someone to fly us to Seaweedattle,” he explained. “The city's under quarantine, and a storm's keeping airships from reaching the city. But I heard you're a good enough pilot to navigate that kind of weather.”

“I'm a good enough pilot to do a lot of things,” Blueblood said cryptically. “Why do you need to go to Seaweedattle? What's so important that you need help from Wonderful Blueblood?”

Shining almost told Wonderful Blueblood that it was none of his business, but he stopped himself. This wasn't the time for secrets. If they were going to have Prince Blueblood fly them into Seaweedattle, then the prince needed to be in the know. And even though nothing that Blueblood had done in the last few weeks had given Shining Armor any confidence in him at all, he needed to have some faith in his fellow prince.

“... We have a significant lead on what happened to the Princesses,” he said. “Do you remember the story that Draft told us?”

“No,” Blueblood said.

“In that case, I'll summarize,” Shining said. “Dusty Draft used to be young, and also, it was disco. A big monster with two heads wanted to use Celestia as a magical battery for some sort of super-disease. He tried to steal Celestia, but he didn't and so he left. The moral of the story is that a big monster lives off the coast of Seaweedattle. This concludes my book report. Thank you.”

Everyone clapped politely.

Once the applause died down, Shining looked at Blueblood as seriously as he could.

“Look, Blueblood. I wouldn't be asking if this wasn't serious,” he said quietly. “But piloting airships is literally the only thing you excel at. You have a chance to actually contribute to something positive for once in your life. And I know you want to save your aunt, because she's one of the only ponies who actually enjoys your company.”

Blueblood narrowed his wealthy eyes suspiciously.

“Hey, you know what?” He asked. “I'm starting to think that you might not like me very much.”

Shining Armor had no idea why Blueblood was only just now realizing that. He had never in his life made any effort to give Blueblood the impression that he respected him. Nevertheless, he ignored this moment and moved on.

“The point is that we need your help,” Shining sighed. “Will you do it? Will you fly us to Seaweedattle?”

Shining and Flash watched anxiously as Blueblood took in Shining Armor's words. Thorax continued to fly into the lit sign on Blueblood's house. It was all very tense and important.

Thankfully, Blueblood didn't keep Shining and Flash in suspense for long. After the briefest of moments, a look of resolve appeared on the prince's face. He looked up at Shining Armor, a steely look in his eyes and also his teeth.

“Follow me,” he said. “Let me show you where my wonderful boats live.

As it turned out, Blueblood kept all of his airships inside of a building that was named 'a hangar'. The hangar was just outside of Canterlot's city limits, on a spot of farmland that had once belonged to a farmer named Colonel Corn. Colonel Corn had willingly sold all of his property so that Blueblood could build his hangar because the old farmer thought that airships were really cool.

He was correct, of course. Also, he was now homeless. But that didn't matter.

Blueblood drove Shining's group out to the hangar in an ambulance carriage he had stolen. It took them only about fifteen minutes to reach the hangar, but once they arrived Blueblood insisted that they all watch him do sick donuts in the driveway for half an hour. Then he threw up and fell asleep.

Over an hour later, Blueblood woke up and led them inside.

“Well,” he said as the doors swung open. “Welcome to my hangar... Or, as I like to call it, 'Cool Boat Central'.”

Shining Armor, Flash, and Thorax followed Blueblood into the hangar. They were all surprised by how much it looked like they'd thought it would. There was nothing unusual or funny about the airship hangar. It would be pointless to dwell on it. Really, it looked pretty much like any other airship hangar, except maybe a little larger. The walls were exactly like any other hangar's walls. So was the ceiling and the roof. It smelled like a completely ordinary hangar, and was painted Hangar Colors. Everything was exceptionally normal, and there was no reason to give it more than a passing glance. Taking more than a few seconds to process what the hangar looked like would be a complete waste of time. It was a boring, ordinary airship hangar. Also, there was a bathroom.

In contrast or how unexceptional the hangar was, the airships inside of it were definitely impressive. There were at least a dozen of them in total, floating in the air like majestic sky-whales. Each ship had been painted in the colors of Blueblood's cutie mark, but this did little to hide how varied their shapes and sizes were. Some were opulently decorated, some sleek and stark. Each and every one of them shined and sparkled like new.

Blueblood smiled proudly as he watched Shining's group stare at his airships in awe.

“These are just the ships I use most often,” Blueblood said. “The rest are all in my duplex hangar I've got in Manehattan.”

This claim snapped Shining Armor out of his gawking. He looked at Blueblood in confusion.

“Hang on,” he said. “Earlier, you said you owned three buildings. You didn't mention having any hangars.”

Blueblood shrugged. “I don't really count hangars as buildings. They're like doghouses for ships.”

Everycreature agreed that this was a sensible opinion, and that Blueblood was completely correct. Once they'd all got done nodding, Blueblood began to smile once again.

“Come on,” he said. “Let me give you a tour.”

Without waiting for any sore of consent, Blueblood began walking into the hangar at a brisk pace. Shining, Flash, and Thorax all galloped after him, a little surprised by the prince's enthusiasm. It was clear that Blueblood was in his element, and that element was boats.

Blueblood led his three passengers along the aisles of the hangar, giving them a closer look at each and every one of his airships. He had all kinds of ships. He had sky-yachts, cloud-subs, and one airship which was very clearly just a Jeep with some balloons tied to it.

Along the way, Blueblood would list off facts and statistics about each airship. He talked about their construction and speed, about how much money each one cost. He'd also say things like, “This is the ship that's run into the most flocks of birds”, or “This airship is the one I have nightmares about it coming to life and eating me.”

Finally, Blueblood led them to the last ship in the hangar; a small, sophisticated-looking sky-yacht with a single balloon and rear propellers. Even to a layman like Shining Armor, it was clear that this boat was something special. It smelled like fresh pine, and it hurt to look directly at it. Those were probably both good things.

“This,” Blueblood said as he looked at the ship, “is my pride and joy. Ship-Shape's Express Cruiser Sky-Yacht 99. I had it specially commissioned by the finest shipwright in Equestria. There's no other airship like it. If you want me to fly you through a bad storm, this is the ship I'd use.”

Blueblood gave the ship's hull a few gentle pats. It made wet squishing sounds.

Shining didn't bother second-guessing Blueblood. He didn't have time to doubt the prince's claims; it was too late for that. He would take Blueblood's word that this airship wasn't a complete piece of garbage like its owner. But still, he needed to know more.

“How fast can she get us there?” Shining asked seriously.

“Who?” Blueblood asked.

“The airship.” Shining was too focused to be annoyed. He just pointed at the airship, his face betraying no anger.

Blueblood looked up at the airship, then back at Shining Armor. It took him a second to remember what they were talking about.

“It might take a day? A day-and-a-half?” Blueblood shrugged. “It depends on the wind and how many birds we run into. But even if everything goes our way, it could still be quite a trip.”

Shining Armor nodded.

“That's fine,” he said. He wished they could get there sooner, but it wasn't like they had a lot of options. Plus, airships weren't exactly built for speed. They were built for rich ponies who felt like they were too good for normal boats.

“How soon can we depart?” Shining asked.

“Give me at least an hour.” Blueblood began to lead Shining Armor's group back to the hangar's entrance. “I need time to fill up the tanks, patch the balloons, and prepare the onboard minibar.”

“Those are all very important,” Shining said with a nod.

Blueblood led Shining, Thorax, and Flash out of the hangar so he could get to work doing all the cool flight prep stuff that they weren't allowed to see. The door closed behind them as they stepped back outside. A cold breeze was starting to pick up. The air smelled like dramatic tension.

“I hope Blueblood knows what he's doing,” Thorax said as the group began to wait.

“I'm sure he does,” Shining Armor lied. “Either way, we're going to have to put our faith in him. Or not. I guess we could not put our faith in him and he'd still fly us to Seaweedattle. We'd probably be anxious about crashing the whole time. Then again, even if you have faith in your pilot, you might still get anxious about crashing. Anxiety's funny like that. Well, not funny. But you know what I mean. You know?”

Thorax and Flash Sentry had both walked away to get away from Shining Armor. He was alone now, with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. Unfortunately, all of his thoughts sucked.

Despite how resolute he was trying to be, Shining Armor found himself overcome with doubts. He really had no idea what he was doing. He barely had any sort of plan for what to do when they found this nuckelavee. As much as he wanted to prove that his loved ones could depend on him, Shining Armor was kind of out of his depth with all of this.

Maybe the nuckelavee would just give up? Dusty Draft's story had made it sound kind of pathetic. It had clearly gotten powerful enough to abduct four princesses at once using a spell cast in a sewer, though. That probably wasn't a good sign. Even if it was still pathetic, that was a lot of power.

Shining sighed. He could think about all of this on the trip to Seaweedattle. For now, all they could do was wait for Blueblood to get his flying airship ready.

Once they took off, there would be no turning back.

Unless they turned back.

Author's Note

Words.

Nonesuch and Ballyhoo

It hadn't taken Blueblood long to get his airship ready for departure. The prince was evidently in as much of a rush as Shining Armor. In a little less than an hour, the fancy sky-yacht was ready to set sail. Once the balloons were prepped and the engine revved, Blueblood took the roof off his hangar and they were ready to go.

Shining followed Thorax and Flash Sentry aboard Blueblood's ship, where the other prince was waiting at the wheel. Like most things, the airship was bigger on the inside than the outside. It was loaded with all sorts of maps and charts to help with setting a course to any destination. There was even a compass. No expense had been spared on this flying abomination.

It was all very impressive. It was no wonder that this ship was Blueblood's pride and joy. A lot of love had clearly gone into the ship. As Blueblood untethered the airship from its mooring, he told them that he had even named the airship after his mother.

The HMS Blueblood's Old Mom lifted off into the sky, because that's what airships do. Soon, the ground was a distant memory, and the only sound was the whistling of the wind and the thwump of countless birds intentionally flying into the propellers. Eventually, though, even that quieted down once they were above the clouds, flying at a steady pace towards Seaweedattle.

It was so majestic and awe-inspiring to be so high up. Shining Armor loved it.

He had already thrown up sixteen times.

“Uh-oh!” Blueblood said teasingly as Shining Armor puked into one of the airship's complimentary restrooms. “Looks like someone best be careful whence he upchucks!”

Shining didn't say anything. He glared irritably at Blueblood, who had gone back to steering the airship. Flying with Blueblood was just as terrible as Shining had thought it would be. They'd been in the air for a little over ten minutes, and Shining Armor already wanted to jump overboard and get eaten by a big bird.

Shining looked away from Blueblood and turned his attention to Thorax and Flash Sentry. They were both standing at a table, looking over maps and pretending they were doing something important. There wasn't really a lot else to do.

“How are you guys holding up?” Shining asked as he took a seat at the table Thorax and Flash were standing over. He felt confident that he wouldn't need to throw up again for at least another half hour.

“Nervous,” Thorax answered. “I've never been on an airship before. Is this really safe?”

“There's nothing to worry about.” Flash Sentry didn't look up from the map he was studying. It was a map of a hat store. “Airships are incredibly safe. Even if they crash, they move so slowly that it's unlikely anyone would get hurt. That's why airships are called 'the Zambonis of the sky' by me and no one else.”

Thorax didn't look like that had put his fears to rest. If anything, he looked even more anxious. Shining Armor knew this was because Thorax hated Zambonis, but didn't say anything to Flash about it. There was no need to let the pegasus know what an incredibly stupid faux pas he'd made.

As Flash and Thorax continued to pretend to be interested in maps, Shining settled into his seat and got as comfortable as he could. Now that he was no longer vomiting, he was starting to feel a little on-edge. He felt like he was in the calm before the storm. What would happen once they reached Seaweedattle?

Shining shook his head. He needed to calm down. Maybe a little bit of reading would calm his nerves. Thankfully, Shining was always prepared for such an occasion.

Shining reached into his secret pouch and pulled out a large, leather-bound tome. On the cover, printed in gold leaf, was the title and author: 'The Equestrian Monster Manual, by Equestrian Monster Manuel'. As a colossal nerd, Shining always had a copy of this book on him at all times. It was an encyclopedia of various monsters and creatures that inhabited Equestria, written by the most confusingly-named monster expert in the world.

Shining flipped the book open to the page he had bookmarked earlier in the day. It was an entry in the chapter on monsters that had been created by Grogar. This chapter had entries on such terrifying creatures as chimeras, basilisks, ducks, and, most horrifically, the legendary House That Ate Things.

None of those monsters were what interested Shining, however. Instead, his focus was on an entry that had been illustrated by a drawing of a giant, centaur-like monster that resembled a pony with an ape's body growing from its back: the nuckelavee.

The entry read as follows:

The Nuckelavee

Created in the last days of Grogar's reign, the nuckelavee can be considered the youngest of the Father of Monsters' children. It is also the rarest, as very few of these ocean-dwelling monstrosities were created before Grogar's downfall. Due to this scarcity, the nuckelavee has never been able to achieve the same level of infamy as its more noteworthy siblings. Regardless, over the centuries, there have been enough encounters with these strange creatures for us to piece together a fairly accurate profile.

Resembling a bizarre cross between a pony and a centaur, the nuckelavee is composed of two conjoined entities working in tandem. Its pony half is a one-eyed, slippery monster with webbed hooves, while its centaur half has arms that stretch down to the ground and a head that is too large for its neck to support. This mismatched appearance, in addition to the fact that Grogar apparently forgot to give the thing skin, can lead us to surmise that the Father of Monsters did not put very much effort into making this stupid freak.

In addition to being just the worst, the nuckelavee's most notable trait is the means it uses to torment the ponies of Equestria. The nuckelavee, despite being horrible, is able to spread a mystical plague called the mortasheen among ponies and other hooved creatures. In its early stages, the mortasheen can easily be mistaken for any number of Vague Illnesses. Over time, however, ponies can develop more dire symptoms, such as vomiting, mouth-hoof, wet ears, and dying.

Thankfully, the nuckelavee is such a huge waste of space that no outbreak of the mortasheen has ever been able to infect ponies at a rate where it becomes unmanageable. This is because, even though it has two heads, the nuckelavee is just a huge idiot. A real moron. The major king of the dumb-dumbs.

Another terrible thing about the nuckelavee is how it smells. It smells awful. And it's bad at math. If you ever get into a fight with one, you can beat it super easy because its whole body is a weak spot. The dumb idiots don't even have skin. They make me sick. Where do they get off not having skin? What, is skin not good enough for them?

In short, no nuckelavee will ever pose a threat to Equestria, because they're just horrible. The worst. They should all throw themselves into the trash. They should live in a toilet. They should be forced to wear t-shirts that let everypony know just how much better the universe would be without them. They are, quite simply, terrible.

The entry kept going on like that for a couple more pages. This was accompanied by some very mean and unflattering caricatures of the nuckelavee, including a series of doodles depicting the book's author flattening the nuckelavee with a steam-roller over and over again.

It was, to put it bluntly, not very helpful. Shining read the whole thing twice anyway. When he was finally done, he was no more prepared to face the nuckelavee than he had been before.

“What a wonderful waste of my dang time,” Shining happily sighed.

When Shining finally put the Monster Manuel by Monster Manual away, he saw that Thorax and Flash Sentry were no longer standing over the table, pretending to look at naps. They had both left the room while he'd been reading.

How much time had passed? Shining couldn't tell. There were no clocks on the airship, because when you're on a boat you're automatically on Island Time.

Shining looked out one of the airship windows. It was looking darker outside, but they were still only in the late-afternoon, most-likely. The sun bobbed up and down in the sky, so it was impossible to tell exactly how late it was. None of the birds were carrying clocks, either, which was pretty inconsiderate of them.

As he looked out at the endless expanse of sky that surrounded the airship, Shining Armor felt something in his stomach begin to churn. He should have known that looking out the window was a mistake. Shining never got airsick, of course; he just got sick whenever he was on an airship or some other high-flying vehicle that was moving through the sky. That wasn't getting airsick at all.

Shining Armor kept telling himself that as he sprinted back into airship's restroom. He ignored the complimentary mints and the bathroom attendant; Shining didn't have time to waste. He made a mad dash for one of the stalls and quickly barged in, shutting the door behind him.

Shining made it just in time to fall to his knees and start loudly groaning into the porcelain throne. His face felt hot, and he could already feel himself starting to gag.

This was going to be a long flight.

Twelve hours of puking later, Shining Armor felt much better. He strutted out of the bathroom with a winning smile. Once he was back in the cabin, he took a deep breath and sighed contentedly. The air smelled like not-barfing.

Shining didn't have very long to enjoy the fact that he was no longer throwing up, though. Almost as soon as he was done taking that breath, the HMS Blueblood's Old Mom began to shake violently. Shining stumbled as the floor shook beneath his hooves, and a thick rumbling reverberated through the ship. The maps and pictures hanging on the walls were jostled as if they were caught in an earthquake.

Once the shaking started to die down, Shining sprinted for the wheelhouse. Thorax and Flash Sentry were already there. They were standing beside Blueblood, who was sitting in a big office chair that was ONLY for the captain to sit in. His horn was aglow with golden magic as he tried to keep the wheel steady. Every now and then the boat shook, and Blueblood had to hurry to maintain his control of the wheel.

Ahead of them, through the captain's window, Shining saw what the problem was: Huge, dark storm clouds surrounded the airship. Monstrous winds blew against her hull, nearly sending them spiraling off-course. Albatrosses kept flying into the window and dying for literally no reason.

“What's going on?!” Shining yelled, even though he could clearly see that there was a storm.

“It's that storm!” Blueblood answered, trying to yell over the wind and thunder outside. “The bad weather you wanted me to fly us through! It's a little worse than I expected!”

The wheel began to jerk to the right. Thorax and Flash Sentry both grabbed onto it and helped Blueblood steady the course. They did a good job.

“I never should have come agreed to get on an airship!” Thorax panicked. “I knew it was a bad idea! If we were meant to fly, we'd have wings!”

The airship shook violently once again. Everycreature struggled to stay on their hooves as the ship lurched to the side for a moment.

Shining looked out the window again. It was getting hard to see past all the dead albatrosses stuck to the glass, but what Shining saw looked bad. Even bigger, meaner-looking storm clouds were coming towards them. One of the clouds looked like a big knife, and that probably wasn't good.

As turbulence once again shook the airship, Shining tried to think quickly. He told his brain to make an idea happen. His brain, recognizing the trouble he was in, agreed to help with no delay.

“Flash! Can you go out there and try to clear those clouds for us?”

Flash Sentry shook his head as he continued to help Thorax and Blueblood keep the wheel steady.

“It's too intense for one pegasus, sir. I'd need a whole team to even make a dent in it. Whoever whipped this storm up really doesn't want anycreature getting into Seaweedattle.”

Shining had been thinking that exact same thing. This wasn't just some freak storm. It was an obstacle; one that had been put in place deliberately to keep outsiders from getting into the city. Had the nuckelavee done this? Shining couldn't think of who else would benefit from a storm like this. Had this weather been whipped up using the stolen magic of the princesses?

A flash of lightning filled the sky, and deafening thunder reverberated all through the airship. The lights in the wheelhouse flickered and blacked out. Soon, though, the backup generator kicked in and they were no longer in the dark. So far, it looked like they were avoiding serious damage, but Shining didn't know how long that would last.

“We need to get out of this storm!” Shining said, once again saying the obvious. “Blueblood, can we go any higher? Elevate above the storm clouds?”

Blueblood kept staring ahead, trying to maintain vision through all the dead albatrosses and storm clouds blocking his view.

“Not without more balloons,” he said. “We can't lighten the load, either. There's nothing heavy enough to make a difference that we can throw overboard!”

“Dang it!” Shining angrily slammed a hoof against the grand piano that Blueblood kept in his airship's wheelhouse. He was running out of ideas, which wasn't very difficult since he hadn't had all that many ideas in the first place. His brain had really let him down on this one.

“What happens if we crash?” Thorax asked worriedly. “Flash, didn't you say that no one gets hurt in airship crashes?”

Flash looked puzzled. “I think so. Did I say that? I think I remember reading about it in a magazine once.”

“That's actually a common misconception!” Blueblood yelled over the raging storm. “A lot of ponies think that no one gets hurt in an airship crash, but they're actually getting their facts mixed up! In an airship crash, everyone gets hurt!”

“Oh, right!” Flash Sentry chuckled and shook his head. “I'm always getting those two things mixed up.”

Everyone had a good laugh about Flash's goof-up.

The ship lurched again. There was a terrible, crackling roar, followed by a loud snap as something heavy struck the hull. The windshield was now completely covered in dead albatrosses, and also one dead pelican that Shining hadn't noticed before. It was completely impossible to see what was ahead of them.

This wasn't good. In fact, Shining would go as far as to say that the situation was problematic.

But things were about to get worse.

Slowly, the HMS Blueblood's Old Mom started to tilt to the side.

“What's happening?!” Shining asked as the floor beneath them started to shift.

Flash Sentry and Thorax both used their wings to begin hovering in the air. The grand piano slid to the other side of the room and fell against the opposite wall. Blueblood's mane fell from his face as the wheelhouse's center of gravity slowly started to shift. A bunch of other stuff happened, too.

“One of the tethers connecting us to the balloons must have snapped!” Blueblood said. “This isn't good! At this rate, it's only a matter of time until we--”

Blueblood stopped, his eyes widening with a sort of manic realization. Shining recognized that look. He'd seen that look on his own face several times. Blueblood had just had an idea.

“I've got an idea!” Blueblood said once he had gotten an idea. “There might be a way to get out of this storm and get us back on course!”

Shining Armor was terrified of crashing, but he was almost as terrified of encouraging Blueblood's idiocy. But it wasn't like they had a lot of options.

“What's your idea?” Shining asked hesitantly.

Blueblood turned to him with a triumphant smile on his face.

“We just need to get out and push!”

Shining stared at Blueblood with all of his eyes, momentarily stunned. Flash Sentry and Thorax looked surprised, too. Even the storm outside seemed to stop for a moment out of sheer disbelief at what Blueblood had said.

“Blueblood... You...” Shining tried to make sense of the stupid words that had tied his brain into a knot. “That is the single dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life!”

“Nuh-uh,” Blueblood countered. It was hard to argue with such detailed reasoning.

The entire airship shook again as fierce storm winds blew against the hull. The cabin swayed, causing everyone who couldn't fly to stumble around as they lost their footing. Lightning flashed just outside the portside windows, dangerous close to striking the ship. Slowly, though, the ship stopped its violent swaying.

“It's getting worse!” Thorax yelled. “We need to do something!”

“Quick!” Shining said. “Someone think of a better idea than Blueblood's!”

Blueblood turned away from the wheel and glared at Shining Armor.

“There are no better ideas!” He snapped angrily. “I know what I'm talking about! We just need to get out and push the airship up above the storm clouds!”

The idea made even less sense now that Blueblood had explained it. There was something incredible about that.

“How would we even do that?!” He asked. “You and I can't fly, and even the four of us together wouldn't be strong enough to lift this whole airship! This is the dumbest idea you've ever come up with!”

“It definitely isn't!” Blueblood looked at Shining, a determined expression on his face. He stepped away from the wheel in order to better face the former captain. This really wasn't a good idea considering they were in the middle of a storm and Blueblood was the one piloting them.

“Now, listen; either we get out and push the ship to safety, or we crash and die. There's no time to come up with another plan. Now, you asked for my help because you know I'm good at piloting airships. So are you going to actually listen to what I have to say, or you going to stand around and wait for all of us to die?”

Shining was taken aback by how serious Blueblood looked. But he wasn't taken aback enough to forget how dumb this idea was.

“But we'll fall!” He pointed out. “How are we supposed to defy gravity?!”

Blueblood shrugged.

“We'll figure something out,” he said. He sounded so sincere and determined that Shining almost forgot how stupid this was.

Shining looked at Thorax and Flash in disbelief. His two sidekicks were just as stunned as he was. They were almost certainly going to die, and Blueblood was proposing an idea that would only get them killed even faster.

But with the storm raging outside, they were quickly running out of options. Shining needed to convince Blueblood that this plan was ridiculous.

“Blueblood,” Shining said pleadingly. “Please. Think about how dumb this is. Your plan makes absolutely no sense. We can't go out and push this thing up above the storm clouds. There's no way this idea will work.”

After a moment of contemplation, Blueblood just smiled.

“Oh, it'll work,” he said in a way that did nothing to boost Shining's confidence. “Trust me... it'll work.”

It worked and they were fine.

After Blueblood's plan managed to get the airship clear of the storm, it was pretty much smooth sailing all the way to Seaweedattle. They arrived in the early morning hours of the next day. The sun was only just starting to rise in the horizon and bother everyone with its stupid light. Blueblood landed the airship on top of a falafel stand, and all four passengers soon stepped out into the misty city streets.

Even though they were on serious business, Shining and company took a moment to look around at the sights of Seaweedattle. It was just like Canterlot, except different. The architecture was much more varied and experimental, and every store doubled as a coffee shop. A pack of wild dogs roamed the streets, eating everything they encountered. It was beautiful.

But despite how wonderful all of this infrastructure was, something was very wrong. The streets of the city were empty, just like they had been in Canterlot. Shining guessed he should have expected that; after all, Seaweedattle was under quarantine. But even in Canterlot, there had been a few ponies out in the street going about their various businesses.

But here? Seaweedattle's streets were completely devoid of ponies. Everything was eerily quiet and still, like a skeleton in a library. The city was like a ghost town. It almost felt... unnatural.

Shining shuddered. He didn't want to stick around in these empty streets for longer than normal. He turned to look at Blueblood and the others, who were all incredibly bored.

“Let's get going,” he said. “There's no time to lose. We need to find the nuckelavee and get things back to normal.”

“Where do we even start looking?” Thorax gestured vaguely with his hooves in a way that held little meaning to Shining. “This city is huge! The nuckelavee could be in any building!”

“Draft mentioned that the nuckelavee's lair was off the coast of Seaweedattle in his needlessly detailed story,” Shining screamed. “We need to make our way to the Seaweedattle Waterfront.”

Shining began walking in the direction of the city's waterfront, which, as everyone knows, was towards the west. The others quickly followed after him down the long, deserted streets of Seaweedattle.

As the group made their way towards the city's wharf, they saw more signs of how bad things were for Seaweedattle. Most of the shops were closed for business, with signs hung up saying that they didn't know when they'd be open. Every water fountain and public restroom was wrapped up in sanitary plastic wrap. The whole thing was bizarre.

And it was only going to get even more bizarrerer.

The Seaweedattle Waterfront wasn't abandoned like the rest of the city. When Shining's group reached the wharf district, it became evident where everypony had gone. Dozens of white medical tents had been set up in the downtown area. The streets and sidewalks were positively cluttered with them. Those dozens of tents had dozens of ponies coming and going through them. The air was filled with the sounds of nasty illness.

“Wow,” Shining said as he took in the scope of it. “This is... I mean, I thought things would be bad, but seeing all of this is pretty...”

“Pretty annoying, yeah,” Blueblood interrupted. “Look at all of these stupid tents. I have a much nicer duplex tent. Also, I don't like that they're sick. They shouldn't be.”

Shining gave Blueblood an annoyed glance. Even though he'd somehow managed to sail them through the storm, that didn't change the fact that Blueblood was awful. His sheer lack of empathy for the sick was almost impressive. Shining had no clue how the sight of all these tents and all of these sick ponies didn't evoke at least a little sympathy from Blueblood.

But then again, maybe it had something to do with how the ponies coming out of the tents were dressed. They all wore heavy black cloaks, wide-brimmed hats, and beaked plague masks that covered their entire faces. It was very creepy, but also practical and sensible clothing to be worn by somepony tending to the sick.

These ponies must be doctors, Shining thought.

“These ponies must be doctors,” he said out loud.

The second Shining said that wonderful sentence, all of the masked ponies out on the street froze and turned to look at him. It was only then that Shining remembered that doctors possess an incredible sense of hearing so that they can hear germs. In any case, the group had gotten the doctors' attention. That probably wasn't a good thing, since technically nopony was supposed to enter the city.

The masked doctors kept staring at Shining's group, like a bunch of weird squirrels looking at a noisy tree. Shining could feel their medical eyes scrutinizing them, trying to determine if they were a threat. If the group made one wrong move, he knew that those doctors would tear them limb from limb.

“What should we do?” Thorax asked, terrified.

“Just... stay still,” Shining whispered. “No sudden moves. Once they see we're not dangerous, they'll leave us alone.”

The two groups continued to stare each other down for what felt like seconds. Eventually, one of the masked ponies stepped forward from the crowd and began to approach Shining and company. As he did so, the other doctors all went back to tending to the ill ponies inside of the tents.

“Excuse me!” The pony approaching them called out, his voice muffled by his medical plague mask. “You can't be here! This is where we're making all of the sick ponies live so that the hospitals don't get clogged up!”

As the pony drew closer, Shining saw that he was dressed differently from all of the other masked ponies in the streets. In addition to his heavy plague doctor's garb, he also wore a silk sash over his black cloak. The words 'DOCTOR MAYOR' were emblazoned on the sash in bright-red print.

This was insane. A doctor who was also a mayor? What else would today throw at them?

The doctor mayor stopped in front of Shining and the others. He smelled like health and politics. It was a good smell.

“How did you even get into the city?” The mayor asked, bewildered. “There are checkpoints all around the town! Nothing nonessential is supposed to get in or out! You're putting yourselves in danger by being here!”

The mayor sounded fairly distressed. Shining had no idea why. But in any case, they needed to try and calm him down. Who knew what a mayor with all the powers of a doctor was capable of when he was this upset?

“We have a good reason to be here,” Shining explained. “We're here to help.”

Shining proceeded to tell the mayor everything. He told him about the princesses disappearing. He told him about the nuckelavee and the mortasheen. He told them about Garth, about the sun and moon, about Blueblood's airship. He told the mayor every little detail he could think of that was relevant to the situation.

He wasn't alone, either. Flash, Thorax, and even Blueblood all contributed. As they told their story, Shining found himself almost unable to believe that all of this had happened in such a short period of time.

Finally, when they were done, the four travelers looked at the mayor expectantly.

“So that's what's going on,” Shining sighed. “And that's why we need to get to the shore.”

The mayor tilted his masked head.

“I'm sorry, I didn't catch all of that,” he said. “It's a little hard to hear with this mask on. What did you say?”

They proceeded to tell the story again, but louder.

“Oh, okay,” the mayor said several minutes later. “Wow. That's a pretty crazy story. But do you have any proof? If you don't, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I can't let you through unless we're certain that this nuckelavee thing really is responsible for all of this 'disease' malarkey.”

Shining frowned. In his haste to leave Canterlot, he'd left what little evidence he'd had behind. He hadn't thought he'd need any, since ponies will usually just believe almost anything they hear. What were the chances that one of the few ponies in Equestria who wasn't a gullible sap would be in a position to stop them?

Just when it looked like Shining Armor was going to have to do a cool judo throw to get the mayor out of their way, Blueblood chimed in to help.

“You can't stop us,” he said. “I'm royalty. We can go wherever we want.”

“Well, I can't argue with that!” The mayor said cheerfully. “Okay, then! Follow me and I'll take you to the shore. Try not to bump into any sick ponies on the way!”

“Thank you so much,” Shining said as they began to follow the mayor through the tent-filled streets of the waterfront. “We really appreciate this, Mayor... uh...”

Shining chuckled sheepishly. “Sorry, what was your name again?”

“Oh, me?” The mayor glanced over his shoulder and gave Shining a brief glance. “My name's Craig! Nice to meet you!”

The group came to a dead stop in the middle of the tent filled streets. Dr. Mayor Craig went on a bit further before he realized they were no longer following him and turned to see what was the matter. Because of the mask on his face, it was impossible to tell if the stallion was annoyed or confused.

If he was confused, though, there was no way he was as confused as Shining and the others.

“I'm sorry, what?” Shining asked. “What did you say?”

“Craig,” the Dr. Mayor said. From the tone of his voice, he clearly wasn't seeing the problem with the nonsense word he'd just said.

Flash squinted at the so-called 'Craig' with a hint of disgust on his face.

“Is that... short for anything?” He asked hopefully.

“Nope.” The Dr. Mayor shook his head, causing the beak on his mask to wobble around. “Not that I know of.”

Shining exchanged a look with the others. They were all in agreement over how weird this was. Even Blueblood was smart enough to look uncomfortable about the name the mayor had given them. Not a single one of them knew what to make of a name like that.

“Well... do you have a last name?” Thorax ventured. “Or a family name.”

“No,” the mayor said. “Just Craig.”

Without another word, Dr. Mayor Craig turned around and continued leading Shining's group further towards the shore. Hesitantly, the four followed after him, still a bit thrown off.

The sooner they got out of Seaweedattle, the better.

As Dr. Mayor Craig led the Four Guys Without a Group Name to the shore of Seaweedattle, he also took them on a fun, educational tour of the makeshift hospital zone that had been set up in the Waterfront. He didn't really have a choice; the streets were completely filled with tents, and those tents were full of sick ponies who were full of illness. And although the shoreline was visible on the horizon, the streets were so cluttered that the trip was taking much longer than it should have.

The situation looked much worse now that Shining could see things up close. There were a lot more tents and a lot less doctors than Shining had initially thought. The only sound was the voices of ponies loudly complaining about how bad it is to be sick. The doctors were running low on important medical supplies like stethoscopes and those little rubber reflex hammers. They were forced to substitute the stethoscopes and rubber hammers with tin cans they'd hold up to the pony's chest and real, actual hammers.

It was a desperate situation. Shining felt sleepy.

“This all started around the time the princesses went missing,” Craig explained as they went on. “We thought that was just a coincidence. But since then, the disease has spread like wildfire if wildfire made ponies vomit. It only took a week for half the city to start showing symptoms. Now, though? Most of the population's got whatever this is.”

“Yeah,” Shining agreed. He wasn't really listening.

“We barely have enough doctors to get by,” Craig continued. “It's gotten to the point where we've started giving out free doctorates to anypony who's not infected. That's helped a little, but now for some reason it seems like a lot of the city's doctors don't have any medical training. No one can explain that.”

“Uh-huh.” Shining wondered how much it would cost to buy one of those beaked masks.

Dr. Mayor Craig stopped and turned to Shining's group.

“Say, any of you boys want a doctorate?” He asked. “Or two, maybe? We've got a bunch of diplomas lying around.”

Before he could start handing out any diplomas, Dr. Mayor Craig was interrupted by a creature emerging from one of the nearby tents and running up to him. It didn't take Shining very long to recognize the creature as a Diamond Dog. He could tell because the creature was a dog.

“Hello, spaceboy!” The Diamond Dog said to Dr. Mayor Craig, grabbing him by his cloaked shoulders. “I saw something in the air! It was a real space oddity! I don't know how they got here when the wind blows, because wild is the wind! Magic dance!”

“Calm down, Ziggy!” Dr. Mayor Craig gently pushed the Diamond Dog's paws off of him. “It wasn't anything dangerous; just some royals breaking quarantine so they can fight a monster. Don't freak out.”

Ziggy the Diamond Dog looked at Shining's group in surprise, seemingly only just realizing they were even there.

“Oh! You pretty things?” He asked. “What in the world? You guys don't look like the supermen. Sorry, I somehow have a sense of doubt that they can handle themselves under pressure.”

Shining was somewhat taken aback by that uncalled for sizing-up from Ziggy the Diamond Dog. So were the others, especially Thorax, who was sensitive. Shining glared at the big ol' dog irritably.

“Hey, we're gonna try our best!” He said defensively. “Who even are you, Ziggy? What gives you the right to judge us, Ziggy? Answer me that.”

Ziggy opened up his word hole to make an answer happen to Shining Armor. Before his voice could crawl out of him, however, somepony else's mouth-sounds entered Shining Armor's ears.

“I wouldn't take anything Ziggy says too seriously. He means well.”

One of the tents opened its flaps, and out stepped the one-horned mare who used to cause problems. It was Tempest Shadow, and she was definitely there. Since she wasn't a doctor, she wasn't wearing the full cloak, mask, and hat ensemble most of the other ponies had on. Instead, she just had an old-timey diving helmet on for protection.

Tempest nodded her helmeted head at the surprised Shining Armor by way of a greeting.

“Prince Armor,” she said curtly. She cast a momentarily glance at the others, who were all still there. “It's been some time. How goes the search for your sister?”

“Uh... It's winding down.” Shining took a moment to get over his surprise and confusion, which were his two primary emotions lately “What are you doing here, Tempest? Do you know about the nuckelavee, too?”

“I'm Tempest Shadow,” she said.

“She was on an airship that crashed here a few weeks ago,” Craig explained. He gestured to the Diamond Dog. “Ziggy here was making a delivery, but that was around the time the storm started up. He, Tempest, and that little goblin crashed in the middle of town and still haven't apologized for it.”

“We've been stuck here ever since,” Tempest added.

Shining Armor frowned thoughtfully once Tempest finished telling her wonderful story. What were the odds of her being here? They probably weren't very high. This was what some might call 'a coincidence'. Yes, these were all important facts.

“We came here on the trail of the princessnapper,” Thorax said, startling everyone who'd forgotten he was there. “We have reason to suspect that they're hiding out somewhere off the shore of Seaweedattle.”

“Really?!” Tempest's diving helmet looked surprised. “The whole reason Grubber and I rode along with Ziggy was because I wanted to look into Princess Twilight's disappearance. This kidnapper is really hiding somewhere off the coast?”

Shining Armor nodded. “That's what the evidence says.”

“And by 'evidence', we mean 'unreliable account from a senile old man,'” Flash Sentry added.

Tempest Shadow looked like she understood. She nodded her helmeted head slowly. The Mayor, however, was not so convinced.

“I'm the Mayor, and I'm not so convinced.” Dr. Mayor Craig shook his head. “There haven't been any reports of anything unusual in the city. I've yet to see any magical plague-spreaders menacing our city, and I'm particularly observant. Even if this monster is hiding off the coast of our city, where is he? How would you even find him in the big, wet ocean?”

The Mayor had a point. Shining Armor hadn't even thought of where to start looking when they got to the shoreline. He'd kind of hoped some locals could point them in the right direction, but most of the citizens were busy being incredibly sick.

“Do you have any idea of where the nuckelavee might be?” Shining asked the Mayor. “Any landmarks, or unusual spots on the beach?”

Once again, Mayor Dr. Craig shook his mayoral head.

“No,” he said with a shrug. “I can only wonder where he might be.”

“Yeah, we can only wonder.” Blueblood said in a flat, unamused tone. Everypony turned to the prince, who had his eyelids half-lowered in exasperation. “I mean, it's not like he could be hiding in that ominous cliff jutting out of the ocean like some sort of sinister talon, is it? There's no way he could be hiding there.”

Blueblood raised his hoof and pointed towards ocean on the horizon. Sure enough, there it was; a terrible, rocky spire rising out of the ocean. It was a good distance from the shore, but its mountainous size made it plain to see even to those who were still in the city. It was craggy and unnatural, curving to a sharp point. It was like the tip of the claw of some gigantic beast lurking below the waves, poking its claw out into the surface. Irregular caves covered its surface, and a strange, red miasma poured forth from within. The fog fell down to the water's surface, where it spread out and dispersed into invisibility.

Everycreature looked at the terrible spire for a moment before turning back to the conversation. It was very uninteresting.

“Huh. Always wondered about that thing,” Craig mused.

“... How long has that thing been there?” Shining asked. He was a little irritated at the Dr. Mayor. Mostly, though, Shining just felt like he wanted some chips. He was in the mood to snack.

“I dunno. A couple of decades.” Craig shrugged his cloaked shoulders. “I guess we probably should have noticed something weird about it, but, y'know, hindsight is 20-20. Now that I think about it, though, it's almost definitely an evil lair.”

Flash Sentry stepped forward and grabbed Dr. Mayor Craig by his collar. He glared into the lenses of the mayor's mask, clearly not happy with the mayor's nonesuch and ballyhoo. Shining couldn't really blame him; they'd been through a lot lately.

“We don't have time for this gobbeldygook,” he snarled politely. “Please continue to take us to the coast so we can make a boat take us to that bad mountain.”

“'Kay,” the mayor squeaked.

Dr. Mayor Craig turned and resumed leading the group towards the shoreline. Blueblood, Flash, and Thorax followed after him. Ziggy the Diamond Dog went back into the tent he'd emerged from, thus exiting the story.

Shining set out to follow them, but was stopped. The mare who was called 'Tempest Shadow' reached out and grabbed him with her mighty hoof. Shining turned to face her, looking her right in the diving helmet.

“Oh, right.” Shining said. He'd momentarily forgotten that Tempest mentioned she'd come here looking for the princesses' kidnapper. “Tempest, do you want to come along? We could use somepony with your military training, and I know you want to save my sister as much as I do. Will you help us?”

“No.” Tempest said. She promptly returned to the tent, following after Ziggy.

Shining Armor shrugged and walked away.

It was time to meet the nuckelavee.

Author's Note

I've been holding in this 'craig' joke for so long. So many years. And now you have to deal with it.

The Pizza Guy Never Showed Up

Boats: The swift birds of the ocean. The car that you can drive drive across a lake. The only vehicle in the world without wheels.

After traversing through the cluttered hospital zone of Seaweedattle's Waterfront District™, Dr. Mayor Craig led Shining Armor's rescue party down to wharf. All of the boats in Seaweedattle were required by law to be moored at the wharf when they weren't being used by ponies to illegally hunt whales. Of course, since most of the ponies in Seaweedattle were too sick to kill those mighty leviathans, every boat was currently docked.

There were exactly seven boats. Only two of them were on fire.

“I've never seen so many boats in my life!” Blueblood exclaimed.

The rescue party came to a stop. Shining Armor looked over the boats they had to choose from. All seven boats were exactly the same, just like all boats are. There were no differences in their appearance or their performance. Since all boats are completely identical, the group didn't need to waste any time weighing their options.

“Mayor Greg, which of these boats are for rental?” Shining asked Dr. Mayor Craig and his magnificent sash. “I will pay you five bits to let us take them out to the nuckelavee's lair.”

“How should I know? I'm a doctor-slash-mayor, not a boat rental agent.” Dr. Mayor Craig said. Even though his face was obscured by his beaky mask, Shining could tell that the mayor was glaring at him. He was angry at the prince's presumptuous questioning.

Shining, appropriately, was ashamed. He sighed and shook his head.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Well, do you know anypony who owns one of these boats? We're going to need to ask them to let us sail out to the nuckelavee's lair.”

The Mayor scoffed. “What, you need permission to take a boat?”

There were a few chuckles behind Shining Armor. He turned and saw, to his confusion, that Thorax, Flash Sentry, and Blueblood were all snickering to themselves. Much more confusingly, they were very clearly snickering at him.

At first Shining Armor assumed that the others were laughing because of his innate charisma and great sense of humor. But then he remembered that he wasn't funny at all, so that couldn't have been it.

“... What's so funny?” Shining asked.

“Dude, just take the boat,” Flash said with a smile.

Shining stared at Flash Sentry in bewilderment.

“We can't just steal a boat,” Shining pointed out. “I know this is a desperate situation, but we don't need to do this illegally. We can just find one of that boat owners. It would take, like, ten minutes, max.”

The others laughed. So did Mayor Craig. Shining looked back and forth between them.

“Oh, look who's too good to steal a boat!” Blueblood said, nudging Flash jokingly. The younger guard laughed and nodded.

“Don't be such a dork, Shining!” Thorax said. “Just steal a boat! It's not even hard!”

Shining felt like being called a dork by Thorax was a sort of 'pot calling the kettle a cooking implement' situation. That hurt a little. But more than that, why was everyone acting like stealing a boat was no big deal? It was a crime, and crimes were one of the most illegal things you could do.

“But we don't need to steal a boat!” Shining emphasized. “We can get someone to cast off for us! I actually think it would take more time to steal the boat than to just find the owner and ask him for help!”

“Ooh, you're so practical,” Dr. Mayor Craig said mockingly. “'Oh, I'm too scared to steal a boat. I'm not cool enough to break the law.'”

“You're the mayor!” Shining exclaimed, exasperated. “Why, of all people, are you telling me I should break the law?! You should be the most against this!”

The Mayor scoffed once again, and everyone laughed. They all talked over each other, laughing and joking about Shining's reluctance to steal a boat. Shining Armor felt like he was the Fool of All Clowns. It was just too much to take. He just couldn't handle the peer pressure.

“Alright, fine!” Shining shouted, silencing the laughter. “You want to steal a boat? Let's steal a boat! Can we just get a move on? This is kind of important!”

“Jeez, calm down, Shining,” said Thorax the Bug.

“Yeah,” Blueblood agreed. “Lighten up a little, will you? You've been such a downer lately; it's really annoying. Not everything is about you and your problems, you know. Stop being such a wet blanket.”

Shining looked at Flash Sentry. He was nodding solemnly in agreement.

Shining took a deep breath. They were right. He was being unreasonable. Just because everyone he loved had been kidnapped and a magical plague was threatening to devour the world, that was no reason to be so serious. He'd lost sight of how important it was to have fun every now and again.

“Okay.” Shining chuckled and shook his head. “Alright, you knuckleheads. I'll lighten up a little. Now what do you say we steal one of these boats and go beat up the nuckelavee?”

Everypony cheered.

“Why don't you steal my boat?” Dr. Mayor Craig offered. He fished around in his cloak and produced some Boat-Keys, which he tossed into Shining's hooves. “That should save you some time.”

Everypony cheered again. Then they sang a five-minute song about boats. It was a great and wonderful time.

Shining, Blueblood, Thorax, and Flashing Sentry all piled into Mayor Craig Doctor's boat. In no time at all, they were taking off. The boat began to drift towards the nuckelavee's mountain lair, sailing at the breakneck speed of 2 knots.

“Have fun, you crazy kids!” Dr. Mayor Craig waved the group off as they sailed away in his boat.

Nobody acknowledged him.

It took about an hour of sailing for the rescue party to reach the boat. The ocean was very slow, and there weren't any dolphins or whales to ride. Thankfully, they were able to speed things up a little by blowing into the sail really hard. This a was a very sophisticated sailing technique that Blueblood said was used only by the most experienced boat-ponies.

Eventually, the group reached their destination. The rocky spire rose out of the ocean like a big thing rising out of a different thing. A small stone landing jutted out of its front, extending from a large cave entrance like a tongue coming out of a mouth. The inside of the cave was dark and inscrutable, like a simile that was also a metaphor.

Shining wasn't going to let a spooky cave stop him, though. There was no way to go but forward. Once they had sailed close enough, the rescue party disembarked and climbed out onto the landing. Then, just to be safe, they scuttled the Mayor's boat.

Shining led the others into the cave and the spire's cavernous interior. A tunnel-like passage of porous stone stretched out in front of them. With the limited light of Shining's horn, there was no telling how far into the mountain this passage went. The group cautiously ventured forward.

The further into the cave the rescue party went, the more cavernous it became. Strange, rocky growths surrounded them, the result of untold centuries of erosion and condensation. This place, Shining realized, was old. Very old. There was no way the nuckelavee could have made it. Had they raised it up out of the very ocean itself?

Shining shuddered at how little he cared about where this mountain had come from.

“It's funny,” Blueblood said as they ventured further into the cavern. “I can never remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites.”

This wasn't actually funny at all. Nevertheless, the conversation continued.

“There's an easy way to tell them apart,” Thorax said. “A stalactite hangs on tight to the roof of the cave. A stalagmite, meanwhile, also hangs from the roof of the cave.”

“Oh, that's right. I remember now.” Blueblood cast a wary glance at the stalactites and stalagmites hanging up above.

It only took a few more minutes of walking to reach the back of the cave. There, they found a single panel door had been set into the rock wall that terminated their path. The door was white, with a shiny brass doorknob and knocker on it. A doormat set at the foot of the door read 'DOOM' in big, blue letters.

“This must be the door the nuckelavee has his pizza delivered to,” Flash Sentry mused.

“Do you think he's in?” Thorax asked, concerned. “What if he went out to buy groceries? Will we have to wait for him to show up?”

Shining Armor nodded.

“Yes. That would be the polite thing to do. We'd have to wait for the nuckelavee to come back and let us into their lair before we do anything else. It would be rude to do otherwise.”

“Let's break into his house to see if he's home,” Blueblood said.

Shining Armor nodded.

“Yes. That would be the polite thing to do.”

Shining tested the doorknob to see if it was locked. It wasn't. They could open the door easily. That was boring, though, so instead they all worked together to use Thorax as a battering ram. Thorax was not in favor of this plan, but the others chose to ignore his clearly biased opinion.

Thorax's mighty chitinous antlers slammed into the delightful panel door with as much force as the group could muster. The door buckled from the impact and swung open with little resistance. That wasn't enough for the rescue party, though. They needed to make sure this door understood that it had been beaten. They rammed Thorax's head into the now-open door a few more times, just to be safe.

“Good job being used as a blunt object, Thorax!” Shining said.

The rescue party set Thorax gently down onto his back. After a few seconds, the leader of the Changelings stood up on shaky legs. He looked a bit dazed for some reason. What was that about?”

“Alright, guys,” Shining said. “We should start looking for where the princesses are being kept. They could be anywhere in this place.”

Blueblood looked around the room they were now in and pointed at something behind Shining.

“Do you think they could be over there?”

Shining turned his head around like an owl to look behind him. Then he turned the rest of his body. What he saw made him gasp.

A massive bubble of pure magic occupied the center of the chamber. It floated ominously just a few feet above the stone floor, gently bobbing up and down. It gave off a cold, red light that bathed the entire chamber in a crimson glow. The air practically hummed from the magic that the thing was giving off.

It was definitely a surprise to see an orb. But as shocking as that was, Shining was more shocked by what was inside of the bubble.

Cadance. Twilight. Spike. Twilight's friends. The other two princesses. There they were, floating lifelessly in the center of the bubble. They looked like they were asleep. A dark aura of magic surrounded their bodies, outlining them against the red glow. Frequently, globs of dark magic would break off of them and drift away, gradually breaking apart. Whenever this happened, their dreaming faces would contort in discomfort.

“Sweet beans!” Shining screamed in horror. “My wife is inside of that sphere!”

Thorax and Flash turned to see what Shining was talking about.

“Oh, hey, yeah,” Flash said. “How about that?”

The rescue party galloped closer to the bubble. The atmosphere grew colder the closer they got, as if they were being submerged into the depths of the ocean. The air felt heavy and oppressive, and smelled faintly of salt water.

As soon as he was close enough to touch it, Shining pressed his hoof to the surface of the bubble. It felt firm; there was absolutely no give when Shining pushed against it. As something of an expert on magical barriers, Shining knew at once that this thing was practically impenetrable.

“What is this thing?” Thorax asked. His voice was quiet as he looked up at the floating princesses.

“I mean... I think this is what's draining their magic,” Shining said uncertainly. “Don't quote me on that, though. It just looks like the sort of thing that would do that, you know? It definitely looks like a big, evil battery.”

“Enough science.” Blueblood's face displayed a rare determination. He looked up and glared at the magic bubble that had dared to eat his aunt. “How do we get them out of this? I don't like that they're stuck in there.”

Shining didn't know. This was a strong shield, and he had no clue how it was being cast. There was no guarantee that taking down the nuckelavee would dispel this thing. It would probably take an incredible amount of magical force to crack it open.

But even if Shining did have a solution, it didn't matter. A voice from the darkness interrupted them.

“Hey, what are you doing in my house?”

Everypony froze. The voice was deep and powerful, like a bossy whale. It had come from behind them, from one of the numerous holes that lined the walls of the cavern. Slowly, Shining Armor and his recuse party turned around to come face-to-faces with the owner of this lair.

The nuckelavee was exactly as Draft and the Manuel had described them. A huge, skinless, two-headed combination of a centaur and a pony. Three red eyes glowed maliciously in the dark as the creature made their way closer towards the rescue party. Its hooves made a disgusting, moist sound with every step forward.

There was one significant detail that didn't line up with Dusty Draft's story, though: This creature was huge. The nuckelavee must have gone through a significant growth spurt in the years since its confrontation with Draft and Celestia. At its current size, Shining couldn't imagine this creature fitting inside of a trendy nightclub. It was easily as big as two or three elephants standing on top of each other and wearing a trench coat.

“Are you the pizza guy?” The nuckelavee's over-sized ape head asked. “Why did you come in here? Why are there four of you?”

Shining and the others remained frozen, staring at the nuckelavee apprehensively. But as the two-headed monster continued to ask whether or not they were the pizza guy, Shining felt his fear give way to something else: Anger. Pure, undiluted rage directed solely at the giant in front of him.

This nuckelavee was the creature responsible for all the hardships Shining had faced over these last few weeks. They were responsible for the political mess between Equestria and Griffonstone. All of the stress and absurdity was a direct result of the nuckelavee's scheming.

But more than anything else, Shining was angry because this two-headed beast had messed with his family. And that was something Shining just couldn't forgive.

“You!” Shining growled as he stepped forward, boldly interrupting the nuckelavee's pizza inquiries. “You're the one who's responsible for all of this garbage I've had to put up with, aren't you? You're the nuckelavee!”

The nuckelavee's two heads looked at each other, then turned back to Shining. Well, they tried to look at each other. The over-sized head on top of the ape torso jutting out of the pony-body's back couldn't move much.

“... Yeah?” The nuckelavee's ape head, Dennis, said uncertainly.

“I'm The Robert Bruce Experience,” the pony head said.

“My name is Shining Armor!” Shining said. He was angry, but he still needed to introduce himself. That was only polite. “I'm here to stop you!”

It was difficult to make out the expression on Dennis's face, since his oversized cranium caused his head to dangle to the side. Even at that awkward angle, though, Shining was fairly certain that the nuckelavee looked upset. Or sleepy.

“Aw, what?” Dennis asked. “C'mon, man. Don't be lame.”

“Don't listen to him, Shining!” Thorax said. “He's trying to trick you!”

Shining narrowed his eyes into a furious glare and stepped forward. Both of the nuckelavee's heads looked at him with something that might have been mild annoyance. They probably didn't take Shining very seriously as a threat. Shining didn't care. He was so angry that all of his previous doubts had more or less disappeared. Nothing else mattered.

This was the final confrontation.

“I'm going to give you one chance to resolve things peacefully,” Shining said. “Let everyone go and stop spreading the mortasheen.”

“That sounds really dumb. Why would I do that?” Dennis folded his arms over his chest disapprovingly.

It was clear that there was no reasoning with this guy. But Shining Armor had a thought. The nuckelavee had two heads, right? That was more than just one. Shining lowered his gaze to look at The Robert Bruce Experience's horsey face. Maybe he could reason with the nuckelavee's other brain.

“How about you?” Shining asked. “Do you want to stop being evil?”

“We're not evil,” The Robert Bruce Experience said. “We're doing good things.”

“Don't listen to him, Shining!” Thorax said. “He's trying to trick you!”

Regardless of if it was a trick or not, Shining was thrown by a loop by what he'd heard. Did the nuckelavee really think they were in the right? Did they not really grasp the moral repercussions of what they were doing? They were a creation of Grogar's; maybe their sense of good and evil were skewed slightly?

If that was the case, then maybe, just maybe, Shining could make them understand what they were doing was wrong.

It was time once again for Shining Armor to break down the walls of moral relativism.

“No,” Shining said patiently. “Unleashing this plague isn't a good thing. Ponies are getting sick. They're suffering. I don't know what Grogar taught you, but there's nothing good about this. I--”

“Grogar didn't teach me anything,” Dennis interrupted. “He took one look at me after I was created and then he threw me and the other nuckelavees into the ocean. That's why we've gotta... do plague stuff. Because he threw us in the ocean.”

That reasoning was incredibly flimsy. Were they trying to say that the mortasheen was some kind of attempt to earn Grogar's approval? Or that this was some way of proving they weren't worthless? If that was the case, Shining could emphasize. He supposed that having a bunch of amazing, super-powerful relatives wasn't a problem unique only to him.

“I understand,” Shining said, even though he really didn't. “I feel the same way. I feel like I was just a normal pony thrown into a bunch of crazy magic nonsense I don't understand. My wife or my sister are always the ones who save the day, and sometimes I just feel like I'm useless to them.

“But you can't use others to judge your self-worth. You can't keep trying to measure up to the creatures closest to you. If you do, then you'll wind up doing something dumb like... well, like marching into a super-monster's lair without any real plan. And even then, you'll feel like you still aren't good enough. You have to find your own worth. Do you understand?”

The nuckelavee's two heads stared at Shining Armor uncomprehendingly. They looked like Shining had just rattled off an incredibly complex math problem and asked them for the solution. Dennis was even drooling slightly. Shining was losing them.

“Guys, a little help?” Shining glanced over his shoulder to look at the others.

Blueblood just shrugged at Shining with an apologetic frown, looking to be just as lost as the nuckelavee. Thorax was busy staring at the Big Orb. Flash Sentry, though, stepped forward to join the conversation.

“Maybe you could... explain your motive?” Flash Sentry asked tentatively. “You know, help us understand why you think it's a good idea to unleash a devastating plague to wipe out most life on the planet?”

Dennis frowned. “What do you mean?”

There was a flicker of impatience on Flash Sentry's face. Shining Armor empathized.

“I mean, why are you doing this?” Flash asked. There was a hint of restrained frustration in his voice as he put the question forward as simply as possible.

Dennis's oversized head flopped forward a bit. It took a moment, but Shining realized that he was trying to exchange a look with his other head. The Robert Bruce Experience was looking up at Dennis blankly. After a moment of silence, they looked back at Flash and Shining.

“I don't understand the question,” Dennis said. “Why wouldn't I do this?”

“Yeah,” The Robert Bruce Experience added. “It's great.”

Shining Armor felt like he was hitting a brick wall, both because he wasn't getting anywhere in this conversation and because his head was starting to hurt. It was getting difficult to tell if the nuckelavee really did have some sort of different moral code of if they were just an evil idiot. He really should have listened when Monster Manuel's Monster Manual had called the nuckelavee an idiot. It turned out that hadn't just been the bizarre vitriol Shining had thought it was; it was pretty much the truth.

“Okay,” Shining said, sighing in defeat. “Okay. We're not going to be able to reason with you, are we?”

“Nope,” Dennis said.

“Nope,” The Robert Bruce Experience agreed.

Shining rubbed his temple.

“Alright.” He exhaled and opened his eyes. “In that case, we're going to have to fight. And I really don't think you stand much of a chance, just going off of what I've seen so far. So it's probably in your best interest to--”

“Wait, hold on.” Dennis said. “Hold on. I know you, don't I?”

The nuckelavee asked the question so casually that it was a little confusing. At first, Shining assumed the nuckelavee knew him from whatever research they had done on the princesses. But that didn't make sense; the nuckelavee definitely didn't seem like the type to do research. It was possible they knew Shining for his famous whittling tricks, but that probably wasn't likely.

“You should know me,” Shining Armor said. “You kidnapped my wife and my sister.”

“No, that's not it.” Dennis shook his head, eyes narrowing as he studied the Horse that as Shining. “You're the snoring guy! I remember you! You're the guy who snored, right?”

“Don't listen to him, Shining!” Thorax said. “He's trying to trick you!”

Now Shining was even more lost.

“I don't snore,” Shining said. A slightly defensive tone crept into his voice. “I've never snored. My breathing is super great.”

Dennis once again attempted to shake his over-sized head, but only succeeded in kind of rolling it off to the side. The Robert Bruce Experience picked up the slack for him by shaking his head. The light from his single eye left red trails in the air with every movement.

“Nah, man, nah,” Dennis said. “You totally snore. I remember it super well because you super messed up my plans. It put me in a really bad mood.”

A strange feeling came over Shining Armor. Something about the nuckelavee's nonsense was causing a gut reaction; an unpleasant feeling of foreboding. There was no logical reason for Shining to feel that way. But somehow, he knew that if he asked the nuckelavee for clarification, he wouldn't like the answer he got.

So, like a true brain champion, Shining asked for clarification.

“Give me clarification,” he asked.

“Oh, I'm sure you'd like that,” the nuckelavee growled.

“Yes, that is why I asked for it,” Shining said.

Dennis gave Shining and the rescue party a little sneer of derision. The Robert Bruce Experience blinked his one eye rapidly over and over again in a terrifying display of anger.

“Oh, I'll tell you,” Dennis said after five straight minutes of just sneering. “I'll tell you all about the first time we met. About how you ruined everything. About how all of this-- the mortasheen, the kidnapping, all of it-- is your fault!”

Shining blinked. He looked back to the others, who looked to be just as lost as he was. Confused, he turned back to the nuckelavee.

“... Wait, what?”

The nuckelavee lifted one of his hands up off the ground, his improperly long arms bending as he brought it to The Robert Bruce Experience's face. They began to stir their hand in the air, moving it in circles at the wrist. Small particles of red magic formed around the nuckelavee's fingers as it did this.

“It took me years to build up enough power to cast my kidnapping spell,” Dennis explained. “But it was worth it. By the time I was strong enough, Equestria had more princesses than ever before. So why settle for abducting just one? Why not kidnap all of them and put them inside of this cool magic-draining orb I bought?”

The nuckelavee gestured to the cool magic-draining orb he bought with his now-glowing hand. This was good, because if he hadn't indicated that the bubble in the room with them was what he was talking about, the rescue party might have gotten confused. They might have thought he was talking about some other giant orb.

“So I got to work,” Dennis said. “I infiltrated Canterlot's sewer system so I could use all of its slime to enhance my power.”

“I knew it!” Thorax exclaimed. “I knew that the slime would factor into things somehow!”

Dennis ignored Thorax's moment of triumph and continued.

“Then I cast a spell... A really, really good spell that makes kidnapping easy to do. With all of my magic, I was able to teleport the princesses, wherever they were, to my location. Then I put them inside of my duffel bag. A duffel bag, as I'm sure you know, is inescapable.”

“Of course we knew that,” Flash scoffed. “Everypony knows that.”

“What's a duffel bag?” Blueblood asked.

“I get it.” Shining nodded. “And to make sure you had room in your duffel bag, you had to get rid of the hoofball jersey you had in it.”

Dennis and The Robert Bruce Experience both let out a sinister chortle. Their laughter was extremely bad. It was an awful sound; like monkeys drowning.

“That's right,” Dennis said. “And to throw any investigators off my trail, I left a message on the jersey to confuse you. I made it seem like I was wearing the jersey, when really I hadn't been wearing it. I knew that would throw you off my trail.”

Ah, yes. Shining remembered it well; the jersey had had the words 'I AM WEARING THIS WHILE I KIDNAP THE PRINCESSES' written on it. Shining had thought it was a little strange that the kidnapper had left an entire jersey behind. He'd had a hunch that it had been done deliberately for some reason.

Unfortunately, any sense of triumph Shining might have felt at being right was sort of neutralized by the nuckelavee's reasoning.

“Wait, how would that throw us off?” Shining asked, completely lost.

“I just told you,” Dennis said. “I made you think I was wearing a jersey when I kidnapped the princesses. I wasn't, though.”

“But... that didn't factor into our investigation,” Thorax said. “Whether or not you were wearing a jersey didn't really matter to us. In fact, all you did was point us towards Seaweedattle.”

“That part was deliberate,” The Robert Bruce Experience said. “We knew that anyone who saw the jersey would suspect we were in Seaweedattle. We wanted you to know that.”

Flash Sentry frowned. “Why? How would that benefit you in any way?”

Both of the nuckelavee's heads were silent.

“... That's not important right now,” Dennis said. “We're getting off-track. The point is, I kidnapped the princesses. All of them... Except for one.”

As if to illustrate this point, the nuckelavee held up a single index finger. Then, to further illustrate it, they lifted their other hand and pointed at the finger.

It didn't take Shining Armor long to realize what the nuckelavee was referring to. It was a fact that he hadn't considered at all in the last few weeks. But now that the nuckelavee was pointing at their own finger, Shining was face-to-face with something that shook him.

“... You tried to kidnap Flurry Heart,” he whispered.

“Yes, I tried to kidnap Furry Dart,” Dennis said dismissively. “Look, if I'm going to kidnap the princesses, I'm not going to leave one out, alright? Did you expect me to not kidnap one just because she's a baby? What are you, ageist?”

“This has nothing to do with ageism!” Shining said. He was getting more and more impatient with this non-explanation. “You tried to abduct my daughter!”

“Yeah! And if you hadn't been there, I would have!” The way Dennis spoke made it sound like Shining had done something incredibly inconsiderate. Which, to be fair, he probably had from the perspective of the nuckelavee.

“I was doing great!” Dennis continued. “I'd abducted four out of five princesses! But then, when I tried to nab the fifth one, there was interference! The spell should have grabbed all the princesses at once, but the baby one wasn't showing up. So I decided to open up a viewing-portal to see what's going on. And you know what I see?”

“No,” Blueblood said. “But I don't know most things, so this isn't really that impressive.”

“I see... YOU.”

The nuckelavee pointed one of his long, sinewy fingers at Shining Armor accusingly. Both of the monster's faces glared at the prince, who could only blink back in surprise.

“You were sleeping over her crib, snoring away!” Dennis rambled. “Just draped over the crib like a creepy jacket, dangling your hoof down onto her head. Because you were so close, I couldn't abduct her! I had to make due with just four princesses!”

Had he? Shining thought back to the night that Cadance had disappeared. Hadn't he gone to check on Flurry Heart? He could vaguely remember falling asleep standing over Flurry's crib. It seemed so long ago that Shining couldn't remember it all that well.

Still, the nuckelavee's story wasn't exactly unbelievable. It more or less checked out.

“I didn't mean to ruin your plan,” Shining Armor said. “But if I did, then I'll gladly take credit for it. I'll count that as a minor victory.”

“Good job, Shining!” Thorax said. He gave the prince a congratulatory pat on the head.

The nuckelavee, who did not give Shining Armor a congratulatory pat on the head, snarled and scowled at the rescue party.

“I don't care about that anymore!” Dennis said. “I'm over it. I managed to nab the Elements of Harmony and a talking gecko, and together they more than make up for not having five princesses. That's not what I'm mad about. I'm more angry about the snoring thing.”

For a moment, Shining wondered if the nuckelavee was trying to play off not being able to kidnap Flurry Heart. But there was a stupid kind of earnestness in Dennis's voice that told Shining that wasn't the case. This two-headed giant, for some reason, was super upset about hearing Shining snore, like, a month ago.

“It was so awful!” Dennis continued. “Those nasty throat noises you made were so... ugh! They were terrible! You made The Robert Bruce Experience cry! And you know what I realized? I realized that any species that could produce such a nasty snoreboy needed to be eliminated! So I made a plan... a plan to kidnap the princesses and unleash my mystical plague; my mortasheen! All to make Equestria pay!”

Shining frowned.

“Wait. But...” He held a hoof to his throbbing head. “You were already kidnapping the princesses! You had already made your plan to unleash the mortasheen!”

“Yeah, so?” The Robert Bruce Experience asked.

“So... So my snoring couldn't have been what motivated you to do this!” Shining snapped. “Because... you... you were already doing it when you heard me snoring!”

Once again, the nuckelavee became very quiet. Shining couldn't tell if they were quiet because they were confused or because they were offended. Their expressions were just kind of blank. Finally, after a moment, they spoke again.

“... What?” Both heads asked.

Shining Armor could feel his brain imploding.

“Look, none of this matters!” Shining said impatiently. “We're here to rescue the princesses and stop your evil plague thing!”

Dennis scoffed. “You're just trying to stop me because you're mean. I'm the good guy here.”

That was it. Shining couldn't take it anymore. Over the last month, Shining's life had been filled with nothing but hardship and absurdity. All of the frustration he'd experienced had been building up inside of him like delicious soda pop, and now that soda was coming to a boil. It was time to unleash all of the rage and anger that had been building up over the last three weeks.

With a roar of frustration, Shining picked up a small rock and threw it at the nuckelavee. He threw it with all the force he could muster. He threw it like he was a talented baseball-boy trying to win the grand championship. All of his anger was channeled into the rock as it left his hoof and cut through the air like a bird through butter. This was Shining Armor's killing blow.

The rock flew forward, hit the nuckelavee in the shin, and then bounced harmlessly to the floor.

“I'm out of ideas!” Shining exclaimed. The nuckelavee was too powerful.

“Don't worry, sir!” Flash Sentry said. “I can help!”

Flash Sentry hoisted the crossbow that he had been carrying with him throughout this entire story and aimed it at the nuckelavee. With a pull of the trigger, the crossbow bolt was launched., forced to leave its home. It zoomed forward, faster than a fish, the air whistling as it traveled. Crossbow bolts are the world's fastest sticks.

The crossbow bolt hit the nuckelavee in the shin and then bounced harmlessly to the floor.

“Oh no!” Flash Sentry said. “That was my only crossbow bolt!”

It had been his only crossbow bolt.

The nuckelavee chuckled mockingly. They looked down at the rescue party in derisive amusement, arms folded over their chest. Both heads sneered as they contemplated the intruders in their smelly lair.

“You guys are really dumb,” Dennis said. “You can't hurt me. I've become so much more powerful ever since I started siphoning my prisoners' magic. My bones are incredibly strong. I am the King of Calcium.”

It was true. Shining hadn't noticed because he'd been so distracted by the nuckelavee's stupidity, but the creature was supercharged on princess magic. Pure power was coursing through their body, giving it a subtle, red glow. It had been hard to make out before, though, since the nuckelavee's whole body was kind of red. Also, the nuckelavee was super gross-looking and Shining hadn't wanted to stare at them for too long.

“We need a new plan, sir,” Flash Sentry said as he put his crossbow back in the crossbow-pouch he was always wearing at all times. “Or just, like, a plan in general.”

Shining nodded, not taking his eyes off of the nuckelavee. “Any ideas?”

Blueblood rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“If they were an airship, I could get inside and fly them away,” Blueblood mused. “Unfortunately, that's not an option.”

“Okay. Good.” Shining Armor nodded. “I'm pretty sure that was the opposite of an idea.”

Blueblood smiled proudly.

The nuckelavee was still just standing there, watching the rescue party in cruel amusement. Shining wished he had really long legs so he could kick them right in their bloated, misshapen head. But even if he had amazing, beautiful, long legs, Shining doubted he'd be able to hurt them.

Once again, Shining wondered what his sister would do in a situation like this. What would Twily do if she was facing a two-headed monster and didn't have legs long enough to kick it? Probably shoot it with a rainbow laser. But Shining didn't have one of those.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. He turned and looked at the others.

“Do any of you have a special rainbow laser?”

Flash Sentry, Thorax, and Blueblood all shook their heads.

“Darn,” Shining grumbled.

There weren't many options left to them. The magic being siphoned from the princesses had made the nuckelavee nigh-on invincible. But as soon as Shining thought that, an idea occurred to him. There was one possibility left.

“We must break the sphere.” Shining said.

That finally got a response from the nuckelavee. Dennis's eyes widened in alarm.

“Hey, what?” Dennis asked. “No, man, don't do that. That's wack.”

Even if it was wack, breaking the bubble that was holding everypony prisoner had to be done. Shining didn't know if it would immediately rob the nuckelavee of their stolen power or not, but it would at least set everycreature free. The problem was that Shining had no idea how to actually do it. The bubble had felt pretty sturdy when he'd examined it earlier.

Whatever. They couldn't keep standing around.

“Quick!” Shining exclaimed. “Start kicking the orb!”

Thorax, Flash Sentry, and that other one all nodded. They were ready to kick and kick with all their hearts in order to crack that bad old egg. But before any of them could start attacking the bubble with their legs, something bad and magic happened.

The nuckelavee extended one of their long, long arms and pointed their bony finger at the rescue party. Red magic enveloped Shining and the others, paralyzing them just as they were turning towards the bubble. With another motion of their finger, the nuckelavee lifted their captives up off the ground. They floated up and up until they were at the Robert Bruce Experience's eye level.

“Hello,” The Robert Bruce Experience said politely to their floating prisoners. “I'm Roger Bruceperience.”

Shining Armor struggled to move against the nuckelavee's restrictive magic. He tried to cast a spell or do anything that would be able to help. It was no good, though. The nuckelavee had completely overpowered them, which was sort of a setback in Shining's plan to stop them. This was a total bummer, bro!

Dennis once again tried to shake their head, but once again wasn't able to move it much. Their head just kind of rolled backwards, dangling down over their back. It took them a minute to get their head back into a position where they could look at their captives.

“You break into my house, you try to ruin my plans to destroy Equestria, and you threaten to break my personal property and free my prisoners,” they said irritably. “That's awful; that's what bad guys do. You guys are the bad guys. I'm totally justified in all of this.”

The nuckelavee clenched its nasty hand into an even nastier fist. Shining Armor and the others were soon pulled together, bunched up with their backs to each other. It felt like the nuckelavee had grabbed all of them with their big, sticky fist. Shining was being held so tight he felt like he was being crushed.

“Oh man!” Shining said with a smile. “Talk about being in a tight spot!”

Everyone laughed. They were having a lot of fun together.

“I should probably just shove you into the battery with the rest of those ponies,” Dennis mused. “But it's not like I'd get too much power out of it. And honestly, you guys have me in a really bad mood. So... I'm probably just gonna eat you.”

This elicited a gasp from the rescue party, who did not want to be eaten. Shining in particular was not a fan of the idea. To make things worse, the nuckelavee had mentioned that they'd ordered a pizza. So if they did eat Shining and the others, it would ruin their appetite. Shining didn't want to be a part of that.

“I'm starting to realize we probably should have told Starswirl or somepony about this!” Flash Sentry said. “We were not equipped for this at all!”

“Yeah, this isn't looking too good,” Thorax said. “I, uh... I think this might be it.”

Blueblood shrugged.

“Eh. I'll probably be fine. I'm too rich to die.”

The nuckelavee began to pull Shining's group closer and closer to The Robert Bruce Experience. The one-eyed horse head opened its waiting mouth, revealing a jaw full of sharp, crooked teeth. The words 'EAT GOOD, FEEL GOOD' had been tattooed on their tongue in a spiky, jagged font.

Shining could feel the nuckelavee's nasty breath wash over him as they neared the beast's mouth. In a matter of seconds, he would be eaten. Shining had always known that it would end this way. There wasn't really any use in struggling. Shining needed to do the heroic thing and give up completely. He could only hope that he'd get to haunt some cool places when he was a ghost.

Unfortunately, though, Shining wouldn't get the chance to die and become a ghost. The nuckelavee was distracted from eating their prisoners by something happening.

“Hey!” Dennis exclaimed. “Stop trying to eat our prisoners! Something's happening, and it's distracting me!”

The Robert Bruce Experience closed its mouth just as Shining and the rescue party were about to be eaten. The horse-head blinked its one eye in confusion as the air in the cavern started to shimmer.

Up in the air, high above both the nuckelavee and their captives, something was shining. Brief flashes of pink light twinkled in the aether; slowly at first, and then rapidly. With each spark, the light grew more and more intense as it flickered faster and faster. The light continued to build in speed and intensity, until...

In an intense flash of light, something teleported in. With its arrival, an explosion of light and magic filled the chamber, shockwaves shaking the entire lair down to its foundations. The nuckelavee was knocked off of their hooves and fell to the ground. The magic they had been using to hold the rescue party in the air dissipated, and Shining's group fell to the ground.

They fell to the ground very, very slowly.

Shining quickly realized that someone was using magic to gently lower them down. It certainly wasn't the nuckelavee; the magic felt less cold and clammy. In fact, the magic felt very familiar to Shining Armor.

Shining knew at once who it was who'd just teleported in. He didn't even need to look up to see. But he still did anyway. He wanted to be scientific about this whole thing.

Sure enough, when Shining looked up, he saw the pony he'd expected. He instantly recognized the big head and giant wings on the tiny alicorn who was flying up above them. Nevertheless, a small gasp of surprise escaped his princely face.

Princess Flurry Heart was floating high in the air, up near the ceiling of the chamber. And she looked mad as heck.

Author's Note

The penultimate chapter.

The penultimate pizza.

A Real Dumpster of a Life

The moments following Flurry Heart teleporting into the nuckelavee's lair felt unreal. Everything was quiet. Time seemed to slow down as Shining, Thorax, Blueblood and Flash all got back up onto their hooves. The air was gross and slippery like in a dream. It all felt like it wasn't really happening.

But it was happening. Shining Armor could tell that this was no dream because in all of his dreams there was a dog with his mother's face. But that dog wasn't anywhere nearby, so this was obviously real life.

The nuckelavee groaned in frustration. They had been knocked prone by Flurry's arrival and were laying laying on their side. They struggled to get back up onto their hooves, but Dennis's oversized head kept weighing them down. It was a real tragedy.

“What's going on?” Dennis asked. “Who let that little pigeon in here?!”

As Flurry Heart gently descended downwards, Shining almost instinctively reached his hooves out to catch her. As soon as she was in her father's grasp, Flurry Heart's angry expression became a bubbly smile. She reached her hooves out and grabbed Shining's snout, cooing adorably.

“Flurry, what are you doing here?” Shining asked.

“Ababa!” Flurry Heart babbled.

“Oh, right. I forgot you don't know how to talk yet,” Shining Armor said. “Did you teleport here all the way from Canterlot because you were worried about me?”

Flurry Heart's only reply was more cryptic babbling. Whatever reasons she had, she was keeping them to herself. She was truly a mysterious lady.

It was just as well. Shining realized now that he shouldn't have expected Flurry Heart to just stay with her grandparents while he went on a big adventure. After all, she probably wanted to save Cadance just as much as Shining did. Or maybe she just wanted to unleash her terrible destructive power on a worthy target. Either was likely.

Flash Sentry ran up to Shining from behind and looked down at Flurry Heart.

“Sir! Some sort of flying gnome came here to rescue us!” He screamed into Shining's ear.

Blueblood and Thorax joined them while the nuckelavee kept trying to get back up. It took a moment for Shining to overcome his paternal pride and realize that now was their chance to rescue the princesses. He snapped out of his fatherly stupor and quickly turned to the others.

“Thorax! Flash! Try to break down that barrier!” Shining ordered.

With a quick nod, both Thorax and Flash Sentry ran off. That just left Blueblood, who was looking down at Flurry Heart impassively. Shining couldn't really think of anything practical for the other prince to do. Part of him had already forgotten why Blueblood was there in the first place.

“Blueblood, could you maybe try distracting the nuckelavee? Or maybe just--”

“Your baby's pretty lame, Shining,” Blueblood said bluntly. “She can't even talk or cook or anything.”

Shining Armor stared at Blueblood for just a moment. The incredibly minuscule amount of respect Shining had developed for him after he'd sailed them through the storm died in that moment. It would never return again. With a sigh, Shining walked away from Blueblood to check on what Thorax and Flash were doing to free the princesses. Blueblood remained where he was for no reason Shining could think of.

Thorax and Flash Sentry were hard at work trying to shatter the magical bubble that the princesses, Spike, and Elements of Harmony were in. Flash was hitting the barrier as hard as he could with his trademark cricket bat. Thorax, meanwhile, was attempting to free the prisoners with discourse.

“Have you considered the fact that trapping someone inside of you and draining their magic is actually very problematic?” Thorax asked the bubble. “Think about how your actions affect others.”

The prison stubbornly continued existing.

“Good effort, guys!” Shining Armor did his best to be encouraging as his friends continued their efforts. He cradled Flurry Heart in a single foreleg, carefully supporting her massive noggin. “Keep at it! I'm sure you'll get there!”

Flash Sentry didn't respond. He kept furiously hitting the prison with his cricket bat. He had entered a beautiful fugue state where the only thing that existed was violence.

“I'm not sure we can do this,” Thorax said. “This barrier's, like... really hard! It's just really difficult, you know?”

“Yeah.” Shining chewed his lower lip and looked up at the prison. It looked like a snowglobe, only the snow was people. The princesses and Twilight's friends floated inside of it, their magic regularly being siphoned from them. Some of that magic must have been going towards keeping the magical barrier up. If that was the case, then this spell was effectively self-sustaining.

“Maybe we should just take this whole thing back to Canterlot and figure out how to free them later. Do you think we could do that?”

Flurry Heart cooed excitedly in approval of the plan. Thorax, who appeared to be more skeptical, was looking between the enormous magical bubble and the slightly larger-than-average door they had come in through.

“I don't think it'll fit,” Thorax finally said. Shining frowned in frustration at Thorax's stubborn adherence to what was physically possible. “Could Flurry Heart maybe teleport it out?”

Shining shook his head. “No. Flurry's teleports are like hiccups. They just sort of happen. I think we should go with my much better plan and roll this thing all the way to Canterlot.”

Thorax continued to look like he had doubts. Shining didn't really know why. It was a solid plan. Unfortunately, they wouldn't get a chance to put it into action.

A great wave of force swept through the chamber and knocked everycreature off their hooves. Shining was flipped over onto his back and landed with a thud. Flurry Heart, who he'd let go of in the process, safely flew up into the air and looked down at her father happily.

Shining's new perspective gave him a good view of what had happened. The wave of magic had come from the nuckelavee, who had partially lifted themselves off the ground. The hand they'd used to cast their spell was still outstretched while they leaned on their other arm, still mostly prone.

Struggling to recover, Shining rolled over onto his hooves. “Blueblood, why didn't you tell us they were getting back up?!”

Blueblood, who had been knocked face-down to the ground, looked up.

“Didn't feel like it,” he said with a small shrug.

Both of the nuckelavee's faces scowled.

“I've had it with intruders in my lair!” Dennis snarled. “None of you dummies get it! The amount of raw, destructive power you'd need to break that prison open is beyond anything a mere pony can muster! Even most alicorns wouldn't be able to cast a spell of that caliber!”

The nuckelavee grunted as they tried once again to heft themselves up, but their giant head was still too heavy.

“Just use your arms!” The Robert Bruce Experience said to themselves.

“What do you mean 'my' arms?!” Dennis asked themselves. Irritation was entering into their voice. “They're 'our' arms! You can move them too, idiot!”

The nuckelavee grumbled incoherently as they kept trying to push themselves up. They continued to make no progress. It was becoming quickly apparent to everyone that both of the nuckelavee's heads were trying to do different things with their arms.

Shining and the others gathered together by the prison as the nuckelavee talked to itself. Blueblood, Thorax, and Flash Sentry all looked to Shining worriedly. Shining knew what they were thinking: that they had no idea where they could get the destructive power that the nuckelavee had claimed they'd need. He knew this because they were telling him. They were telling him over and over in a hushed whisper.

But Shining Armor wasn't worried. He held his hooves out and Flurry Heart happily flew to her dad's embrace. She babbled adorable as Shining looked down at her with a smile. He knew he was holding the most powerful, destructive magical force in all of Equestria: Flurry Heart, the Great Destroyer.

“I've got an idea,” Shining Armor said, and for once he actually meant it. “I think I can destroy that prison, but I need time. Can you guys distract the nuckelavee for me?”

All three of Shining Armor's traveling companions shook their heads.

“... Okay,” Shining said after a moment. “I guess I'll have to hurry, then.”

Shining turned to face the gigantic bubble that contained the nuckelavee's prisoners. Somehow it looked bigger, more sinister. The ponies inside continued to float lifelessly as their magic was siphoned out towards the prison's shell. It seemed like they were in a completely other world, separated from the chaos in the nuckelavee's lair.

There was no time to sit and stare, however. Shining needed to get ready. He belched with confidence and narrowed his eyes. When he looked down, Shining saw that Flurry Heart had a serious expression on her face. Despite her tiny, undeveloped brain, she seemed to know what her father had planned. And she was ready.

Shining hoisted Flurry Heart up onto his shoulder in order to better brace her and pointed her horn at the nuckelavee's prison. He rose up onto his hind legs and closed one eye as he lined up her horn with the prison-bubble. Flurry Heart unfolded her winds for some reason the probably made sense to her.

Behind him, Shining could hear the nuckelavee's hooves on the cold stone floor. It was back on its gross feet. Thorax, Flash, and Blueblood were all bravely continuing to do nothing.

“Hey-- What are you doing?!” Dennis yelled at Shining. “Stop pointing that baby at my prison!”

Shining ignored the nuckelavee. He continued to point that baby at their prison. He steadied himself, one hoof raising up to Flurry Heart's face. It was time to push the firing mechanism.

“Wait! Stop!” The nuckelavee yelled. “You can't do this! It's nearly Big Worm Day! Where's your holiday spirit?!”

Shining Armor booped Flurry Heart right on the nose. The effect was immediate and devastating.

Flurry Heart fired a thunderous bolt of magic from her horn, illuminating the entire cavern in pink light. The sheer force of the beam being fired knocked Shining Armor backwards. Because he had stupidly decided to stand up on his hind hooves, he was knocked off-balance and fell to the ground with Flurry still in his hooves.

But it didn't matter. Flurry's magic hit the mark. The beam pierced through the bubble's surface and shot clean through the other side. As it did so, the sinister red glow of the prison began to brighten and intensify. It started to give off a blinding white light that filled the entire chamber.

Shining Armor squinted his eyes. It was getting too bright to see. But Shining didn't need his dumb old eyes.

The deafening sound of the nuckelavee's prison shattering was that last thing Shining heard before everything went white.

Then, there was only silence.

It took some time before Shining Armor's sight returned. It surely couldn't have been more than a minute, but it felt almost like hours. As the rumbling died down and Shining Armor blinked his eyes back into focus, the nuckelavee's lair came back into view. It was just as ugly as Shining remembered.

Shining was still holding Flurry to his chest. She was laughing excitedly, clearly not as shaken up as her father was. That was normal for her, though; nothing made Flurry happy like blowing something up. Shining wondered if he should worry about that kind of behavior in the future, but ultimately decided that his daughter's hunger for destruction was probably fine.

With a tired grunt, Shining Armor got up onto his hooves. He carefully placed Flurry Heart onto his back, where she was more than happy to be. The little princess continued to laugh as her father surveyed the aftermath of the destruction.

The prison was gone. In its place was empty air and clouds of dust. The hum of magic in the air was completely gone, replaced by the sound of the waves outside lapping against the cliffs. On the ground, below the space the prison had once occupied, ten figures were lying near-motionlessly on the cold, stone floor.

Shining felt as if his heart was going to pound out of his chest. He looked at them, but he didn't really see them. He was almost worried that if he really focused on the freed prisoners they'd somehow disappear, like a mirage or a very talented magician. But they were really there. Shining knew this was real. He could see each of their faces as they began to wake from their dreamless sleep.

And Cadance was right there.

At first, Shining only took a few hesitant steps closer. Then it was a full gallop. He nearly forgot about Flurry Heart clinging to his back. He completely forgot about Blueblood, Thorax, and Flash Sentry, who were only just now starting to pick themselves up off the ground. He retroactively forgot about the nuckelavee, who was screaming in furious defeat with both heads.

Shining forgot about everything until he was knelt down at his wife's side.

Cadance's eyes were shut tight, as if she had just woken up and was actively trying to stay asleep. When Shining put a hoof on the side of her head, her eyes flickered open ever-so-slightly. She looked up at Shining and Flurry Heart, still half-asleep.

“Shiny...?” She asked in a tired whisper. “Flubby?”

Shining nodded happily. “Yes, Cadance. It's Shining and Flubby. We're here.”

“I feel like I was kidnapped in my sleep by a nuckelavee and drained of my magic over a period of three weeks,” Cadance said as she slowly lifted herself up into a sitting position. Shining supported her as best he could.

All around them, the other prisoners were starting to wake up as well. Celestia and Luna were the first ones on their hooves. Luna looked around with visible confusion. Celestia, meanwhile, took a few seconds to survey her situation and then let loose a groan of irritation.

“Groan,” she groaned. “This sort of thing better not happen once I'm retired, I swear to me.”

“AUNTIE!”

Blueblood was sobbing as he sprinted to Celestia's side. He buried his face in his aunt's neck and made disgusting blubbering sounds that everyone hated. He sounded like a nasty tuba made of slime. He sounded like a depressed elephant with severe nasal problems.

“Auntie, it was terrible!” Blueblood said between choked sobs. “Y-You were missing, and they wouldn't put me in charge, and I talked to a griffon, and I was in the sewers, and-- and--”

Blueblood's words became more and more indecipherable as he recounted the last few weeks. Celestia, for her part, didn't look annoyed. She had a small, patient smile on her face as she gently patted her nephew's big head. The amount of patience Celestia had for Blueblood's nonsense was nothing short of saintly.

“I'm sure it was all very upsetting,” Celestia said comfortingly. “Definitely nothing compared to me being used as a magical battery and kept in a waking nightmare for weeks on end.”

Blueblood sniffled and nodded. “I'm the one who's suffered the most through all of this!”

Thorax and Flash Sentry had joined the group now, and they were helping Twilight's friends get back up onto their hooves. Seeing them reminded Shining that he had a few siblings he needed to help. He used all of his legs to rush to the side of the two purple ones, who were definitely Spike and Twilight.

Spike was already back on his feet. The little dragon seemed to be doing fine, so Shining checked on Twilight first. His little sister hadn't gotten up yet, but she was awake. She had her hoof held to her head and was wincing in pain. That made Shining happy.

“You okay, Twily?” Shining knelt down by his sister, getting his head down to ground-level so he could look her in the eye. She looked tired and stressed, but that was normal for Twilight.

“Ugh... Twilight Sparkle,” Twilight said intelligently. “Books.”

Shining sighed, relieved. Twilight was completely normal. Satisfied, he stood back up and looked around as the various creatures gathered together. Cadance joined Shining's side as their daughter roosted on top of his head. Thorax, Flash Sentry, and Blueblood all walked up to Shining with big smiles on their faces.

“Guys, I can't thank you enough for helping me with all of this,” Shining told them.

“No need to thank us,” Flash Sentry said. “We really didn't do that much.”

Thorax happily nodded in agreement. “I'm not entirely sure if I actually contributed anything.”

“I'm glad my boat-knowledge was able to help rescue my auntie,” Blueblood said. He sounded surprisingly gracious when he spoke; not at all like he was bragging. “Although I've only just realized that the airship I used to bring us here is kind of totalled now. That's going to make me sad later.”

Shining Armor burst out laughing, and soon everycreature else was joining in. Shining was laughing because of Blueblood's misfortune, but more than that, he was laughing because of how relieved he felt. All of the stress and anxiety from the last few weeks had completely disappeared.

But a loud groan cutting off everyone's laughter reminded Shining that not every problem had been solved.

The nuckelavee was sulking over at he other end of the cavern. They were finally back up on all four legs and had their arms folded dramatically over their chest. Both of the nuckelavee's faces were pouting petulantly. For some reason, they seemed to be upset.

“Oh, great! I guess I'm defeated!” Dennis said as they threw their hands up in the air. They leveled a scowl at the group of creatures, glaring at Shining Armor in particular. “Why couldn't you just let me have this, huh? I worked really hard on this plan. It was totally going to work, and Grogar would've been really proud of me. But you had to go and ruin that. You guys are jerks.”

Shining Armor stepped forward. He was still pretty darn miffed at this two-headed ne'er-do-well. He had been willing to let bygones be bygones, but this nuckelavee was being a real sore loser. Shining was going to give them several pieces of his mind.

“Look, I know what it's like to live in the shadow of someone more successful than you,” he said. “It can make you feel really bad, and sometimes that makes you want to use a disease to drive a species to extinction. But you can't live your life comparing yourself to the ponies you care about. It will lead you to do really dumb stuff, like--”

“Don't you go acting like there was some sort of moral to all of this!” Dennis snapped. “Look, I don't care what sort of self-doubt you've been going through since I kidnapped your wife or your mom or whatever. I have spent decades getting ready to put this plan into action! You keep your themes of self-worth to yourself!”

Shining flinched at that. He felt a little awkward now. Weren't you supposed to make some sort of big, theme-defining speech at the end of an adventure? He felt like that was a thing Twilight did. Shining turned to his sister, hoping to get some sort of advice or support.

“Twi, back me up here.”

“Friendship,” Twilight Sparkle said intelligently. “Twilight Sparkle.”

Shining nodded in agreement and turned back to the nuckelavee.

“Twilight's right,” Shining said. “Friendship. That's important.”

The nuckelavee drew themselves up to their full height and snarled down at Shining's group. There was anger in all three of the creature's eyes, and their nostrils also looked kind of upset.

“”This isn't over!” Dennis said. “I'm not letting any of you leave here alive! I'm going to grab you all and put you in a big stew, which I will eat!”

Everyone gasped at the exact same time. Getting cooked up in a tasty stew and then eaten sounded like a real bummer. Shining wanted no part in it. Unfortunately, when he looked back at the others, he saw that the princesses were in no condition to teleport everypony out of there. None of them had had any coffee in at least three weeks. And Flurry Heart had completely fallen asleep, which was not a helpful thing.

“Oh, great!” Shining said, throwing his hooves into the air. “After everything we've been through, we're going to get eaten. This is fantastic!” Shining Armor was being sarcastic. Actually, none of what he'd said was a good thing.

The nuckelavee's heads both smiled like a cat that was going to eat a mouse after the mouse had foiled the cat's plan to unleash a terrible disease on the world. The two-headed monster was clearly very excited to eat their big stew. The nuckelavee slowly trotted towards the ponies, confident that their victims couldn't escape.

“Once I'm done with you, I'll go out into Equestria,” Dennis said as they came nearer. “I'll eat every creature I find. I'll take my time doing it, too. I'll spread my mortasheen while I eat your kingdom alive. And there's nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Me too,” The Robert Bruce experience agreed.

Dennis chuckled. It was a very evil chuckle that a bad man would do.

“And do you know what?” They asked as he stepped closer and closer. “Before I eat them, I'll tell everypony I come across that their heroes are gone. I'll make sure they know that you failed; that there's no hope of anyone coming to save them. And when I let them know that, I'll look them right in the eyes and tell them--”

Off to the side, close to where the nuckelavee was standing, a section of the cavern wall loudly crumbled away. Everyone turned just in time to see six creatures emerge from the newly-created tunnel. They were young, covered in dirt, and multi-ethnically diverse.

The six creatures looked around as they stepped into the nuckelavee's lair. One of them, a blue griffon who looked like an orphan, stopped when they saw a nuckelavee. They raised a claw and pointed at the two-headed monster, who could only stare at the six children in confusion.

“There it is!” He yelled. “Get them!!”

With a mighty yell, the young six charged the nuckelavee. They began kicking and punching the nuckelavee's long legs. In no time at all, their combined power brought the monster down to the ground. The six youngsters continued to pummel their downed opponent, whose cries of pain were drowned out by the sounds of blows against their skinless body.

“Stop! Stop beating me up!” Dennis pleaded as the orange dragon repeatedly karate chopped them in the ear. “Being beaten up is secretly my greatest weakness!”

The group of youngsters ignored Dennis and just kept wailing on the nuckelavee. The kids performed all sorts of sick combat maneuvers and martial arts moves that were truly a treat to see. Every five minutes or so, the kids took a break to hydrate themselves before getting right back to the beat-down. It was very inspiring.

“I'm very happy about the violence our students are doing to the nuckelavee,” one of Twilight's friends said. Shining Armor didn't know which one.

Thorax shook his head. “I think it's very irresponsible for the school to let Ocellus miss her classes just so she can beat up a two-headed monster.”

Shining Armor had to agree. His sister was running a pretty shoddy school. He made a mental note to tell her all of that later, when things were back to normal.

“We should get out of here,” Shining Armor said. He turned to Cadance, who had taken Flurry Heart into her hooves. “Are you and the princesses okay to fly?”

Cadance tried to give her wings a few test flaps, but all her wings managed to do was shake uncontrollably.

“I don't think so,” she said with a sigh.

Shining Armor smiled. “That's okay. Flash Sentry can just pick us all up and fly us back to Seaweedattle one-by-one.”

Everypony agreed that this was a fantastic idea, except for Flash Sentry for some reason. They began to make their way to the tunnel that would take them out of the nuckelavee's lair. Halfway there, though, Thorax stopped them.

“Wait,” he said. “I just thought of something. Shouldn't we do something about, you know...” He pointed over his shoulder at the nuckelavee, who was still being beaten up by Twilight's students. Both heads were sobbing.

Shining rubbed his chin.

“Hmm. Okay. As my last act as Equestria's interim ruler, I'll send some guards over to take the nuckelavee to Tartarus,” he said after some thought. “They'll probably get here by tomorrow, but I don't think the nuckelavee will escape. Those kids look like they're gonna be at this for a while.”

Everyone agreed that this was a sensible plan. They said things like 'How sensible', and 'Yes, indeed' while nodding and politely clapping. The only ones who did not applaud the plan's sensibility were the students, who were busy beating up the nuckelavee; and the nuckelavee, who was busy being beaten up. The two-headed monster still heard Shining, though.

“Oh, what? I seriously have to face consequences for my plan to exterminate life in Equestria?” Dennis asked in disbelief. “This is so unfair! Why do things like this keep happening to me? Why is my life like this?”

The Robert Bruce Experience chuckled.

“Yup. This has been a real dumpster of a life, let me tell you.”

The kids continued to beat the nuckelavee up. Shining and the others left them to this and walked down the corridor that would lead them outside.

“Man. What a crazy couple of weeks,” Shining Armor said to Twilight as they walked through the tunnel. “On the plus side, though, this probably means you won't have any trouble leading up to your coronation, right? After all of that, I doubt any super-villains will cause any disruptions or invade Canterlot. Not unless they, like, teamed up or something.”

“I'm friendship,” Twilight Sparkle said intelligently. And not a single word was mispronounced.

And so, with everything taken care of, Flash Sentry went to work carrying evercreature individually from the nuckelavee's lair to the shore of Seaweedattle. It took several hours, but that wasn't entirely Flash's fault. It would not have taken so long if Twilight's friends hadn't kept wriggling out of Flash's hooves and jumping into the ocean. But because Twilight's friends kept trying to drown, it took a very long time. It took so long that, by the time Shining was the last one left, it was already the next day.

While Shining Armor was waiting on the rocky shore of the ncukelavee's lair, Twilight's students eventually got bored of beating the nuckelavee up. They came out of the cavern to relax and get some fresh air, joining Shining in front of the crashing waves.

With nothing better to do, Shining wound up socializing with the kids a little. As it turned out, they all had names, but Shining didn't bother trying to learn them.

“The nuckelavee fell asleep while we were beating them up,” the dragon named Smolder said. “We kept wailing on them for a while after that, but they didn't really react aside from snoring. In a few hours, when they wake up, we'll go beat them up again.”

“Uh-huh.” Shining said. He was looking out on the horizon, where Flash Sentry was desperately trying to stop Rarity from jumping into the ocean. She was giving Flash a really difficult time, and kept doing everything she could to get out of his hooves.

It was really boring. Shining turned away from the boring sight so he could talk with the less-boring kids.

“So, I guess Griffonstone's going to be pretty upset, huh?” Shining asked the group's leader, a griffon who was named Gallus for some reason.

Gallus shrugged his weird cat-bird shoulders. “Griffonstone is always upset. It's a terrible place.” He uncapped his bottle of water and took a drink. Beating up the nuckelavee was apparently thirsty work.

Shining shook his head.

“No, I mean about the sun and the moon,” he said. “I know that you guys were interested in being in charge of the sun and the moon while the princesses were missing. Now that they're back, though, I guess they won't be--”

“Whoa, whoa. Hang on.” Gallus raised one of his claws in a gesture indicating that he wanted Shining Armor to hang on. “Be in charge of the sun and moon? What are you talking about, Princess Shining Armor?”

Shining frowned.

“You... You were threatening to declare war on us,” Shining said. “Because the sun and moon were in disarray.”

Gallus raised an eyebrow, or whatever the bird equivalent of an eyebrow is.

“I never heard anything about that,” he said. “My guardian is the guy who practically runs Griffonstone, and he never mentioned anything about a war in any of his letters. I think you've got your facts mixed up.”

For a moment, Shining just stared at Gallus. In the distance, he could hear the sound of something splashing as it jumped into the ocean, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that Shining felt like he was having multiple rugs pulled out from under him.

“But your ambassador said--”

“Griffonstone doesn't have an ambassador,” Gallus interrupted.

Shining blinked. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it. After a few seconds, he remembered how to speak.

“W... What?” Shining asked eloquently.

“Yeah, we don't have an ambassador.” Gallus shrugged. “We're not terribly interested in diplomacy. We're more interested in making money, being mean, and having the worst town in the world. Whoever told you he's an ambassador was lying; he's probably just after your taffy recipes.”

It took Shining Armor a moment to figure out what to say to learning that information. On the one hoof, it was frustrating to know that he'd bought all of Garth's lies and taken his threats seriously. On the other hoof, it somehow wasn't all that surprising to learn that Garth had been lying. Either way, Shining was too tired to care. Besides, Garth wasn't even his problem anymore; Celestia had to deal with him now.

“Well,” Shining finally said, “I guess that doesn't matter now anyway.”

“Mhmm,” Gallus said. He gestured back to the cave entrance. “We're going to go back in there and start beating up the nuckelavee again.”

Shining nodded. That was probably the smart thing to do.

“You keep doing that until the guards get here,” he said. “I'm going to swim to the Crystal Empire.”

Gallus nodded, but he clearly wasn't paying attention.

“Alright,” Gallus said. “I have depression.”

The blue griffon went back into the nuckelavee's lair. Shining Armor smiled and nodded him off, along with the rest of the griffon's friends. Shining wasn't sure how old any of them were, and he never would be. But that was fine. Sometimes it was okay to not know things.

With that in mind, Shining Armor jumped into the ocean and started swimming to the Crystal Empire.

The Crystal Empire was a landlocked nation, so it was pretty difficult for Shining to swim all the way there. Shining Armor was a very good swimmer, though.. He took a shortcut and swam very vast, and was able to swim all the way to the Crystal Palace in less than ten minutes. When he arrived, he used the welcome mat in front of the palace doors to towel off.

It felt good to return to the Crystal Palace after spending such a long time in Canterlot. The Palace was exactly the same as when Shining had left it. Sure, everything was a little dusty (It looked like Sunburst hadn't dusted the entire palace at all during his time in charge of the Empire) but all in all, nothing had changed. Shining was home again.

It took Cadance and Flurry Heart two days to make their return from Canterlot. Shining Armor spent the whole time waiting for them in the castle's entrance hall. He did not move or sleep until the doors opened and his wife walked in with their daughter in her hooves.

Shining Armor hugged them both almost as soon as he saw them. He couldn't help it; he was so happy to have his family back. He was so happy, in fact, that water was starting to leak out of his eyes. Shining put a stop to that as soon as he was done hugging Flurry and Cadance. He wiped his face dry with the entrance mat that had been in front of the palace doors.

“I'm so glad you're back,” Shining said as he tossed the mat aside. “I've been miserable without you or Twily or Spike or those other ponies. Just me and Flurry... Cadance, I missed you so much.”

“Okay,” Cadance said. She picked Flurry back up and walked down the hall, into the throne room. Shining followed her as she took her seat on the throne.

“I still can't believe this is all over,” Shining Armor sighed. He was feeling exhausted. Mostly because he'd been awake for, like, three days straight or something. “I can't believe I managed to do everything I did. There were times when I didn't think I was up to it... But I was. I really did save everyone.”

Cadance looked at her husband. She smiled and raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“... But you didn't save everyone,” she said.

Shining's tired smile faltered just a bit.

“... What do you mean?” He asked. “Of course I did. I saved you, your aunts, Twilight and her friends...”

“I mean, if you think about it, Flurry Heart saved everyone,” Cadance pointed out. The baby alicorn in her lap cooed happily at the sound of her name. “She probably could have teleported in and freed us without you doing anything.”

Shining frowned. He didn't understand what Cadance was talking about. Sure, it had been Flurry's magic that had freed the princesses, but Shining had been the one to fire her. He'd pointed his daughter at the problem and activated her firing mechanism.

Except, now that Shining thought about it, babies didn't have firing mechanisms. He'd just booped his daughter's nose. That hadn't actually done anything. It had probably entertained Flurry a great deal, but it hadn't actually been what caused her to unleash her destructive power.

In fact, now that Shining thought about it, he probably hadn't needed to aim Flurry, either. The nuckelavee's prison bubble had been a big, obvious target. Flurry was smart enough that she could have figured out what she needed to destroy on her own. She probably hadn't even realized that Shining was trying to aim her when she flew into his hooves.

“Well... I figured out where the nuckelavee was, though.” Shining said quickly. “If I hadn't figured it out, nobody would have--”

“Those kids showed up on their own, though.” Cadance said. “Twilight's students broke into the nuckelavee's lair without ever talking to you. And they're technically the ones who beat the nuckelavee.”

Shining Armor laughed. Then he very quickly stopped. His brain replayed the events in Seaweedattle in 4K 60FPS HD. He went over everything he had done and tried to remember what those actions had actually accomplished in the fight against the nuckelavee. Surely, he must have done something consequential, right?

'No,” Shining Armor's Brain said. And it was right.

Shining Armor hadn't saved anyone.

“Oh my gosh,” Shining said as his world came crashing down.

Cadance stopped smiling and gave Shining a worried look.

“Sweetie? Are you okay? Is your brain talking to you again?”

“Play it cool,” Shining Armor's Brain advised. “Don't tell her I'm here if you know what's good for you.”

Shining Armor swallowed. His mouth felt dry and salty, like a very bad fish. It took some time for Shining to get the words he wanted to say out. It was like his entire psyche was trying to stop him from vocalizing what he had realized. If he said it out loud, it would feel much more real.

But eventually, Shining was able to make his mouth say words.

“Nothing I did actually helped in any significant way,” Shining said in a low, haunted tone. “None of my detective work or planning contributed to resolving the conflict. I didn't save you. Oh my gosh.”

Shining Armor held his head in his hooves and calmly began spiraling into despair.

“Oh, sweetie.” Cadance set Flurry Heart down and lifted her husband's head up. She looked into his eyes worriedly. “Does it really matter who saved us? What difference does it make how much you contributed to things? I still love you.”

Shining shook his head. This was difficult to do, as Cadance was still holding his head in her hooves.

“It makes a huge difference,” Shining said once Cadance finally let go. “Cadance, for the last few years, I've felt like a bystander in my life. Twily and her friends are always saving the day... I wanted to feel like I could save the day, too. I wanted to feel like my family could rely on me when there's trouble.”

Shining sighed. “But when I get a chance to prove myself, someone else winds up saving the day. What does that mean? Am I just... useless when it comes to saving the world? If something like this happens again, does this mean I shouldn't even bother trying to help?”

The question hung there as Shining once again shook his head. He felt completely deflated, like a balloon or one of those weird puffer fish. Despair and ennui both took turns slapping his brain.

But just when it felt like Shining Armor was going to have to buy a therapist, Cadance gently put her hoof on his shoulder. Shining looked up into his wife's eyes, and saw that Cadance was smiling at him comfortingly.

“Sweetie,” Cadance said softly. “None of that means anything.”

Shining blinked, taken aback.

“What are you saying?” He asked.

“I'm saying that the universe is inherently devoid of meaning,” Cadance explained. She reached a hoof out and rubbed Shining's shoulder soothingly. “There's no reason to attribute any sort of deep significance to random events. Everything that happens is the result of dozens of electrons whizzing around randomly a billion times a second. Existence is completely without meaning save for that which we apply to it ourselves.”

Cadance's words made Shining feel a little bit better. As Flurry Heart flapped her wings and nestled atop her father's head, a smile began to form on the prince's face.

“I never thought of it that way before!” Shining said happily. “When you put it like that, there's no reason for me to worry about my place in the universe, or how I compare to the ponies I love. Any anxiety I feel is caused by chemical reactions inside of the brain that pilots my animal body!”

Cadance and Shining both laughed. They leaned in to nuzzle each other for the first time in nearly a month. They were happy. The universe was nothing but atoms and the illusion of patterns, and they were happy. They had each other. They had their daughter. And no matter how they felt, or what problems came along, they knew they would be okay.

Everything would be okay.

Until the next day, when Cozy Glow, Chrysalis, and Tirek invaded Canterlot.

But that was someone else's problem.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading this terrible story I've somehow been working on for over a year.

Remember: Even if you write something stupid, you're still writing something. Flex your creative muscles, even if it's dumb. Just put a little thought into it and you'll create something.

Epilogue: Where Are They Now?

Twilight would go on to succeed Celestia and Luna as the ruler of Equestria. She would form the Council of Friendship with her friends and Spike. Historians would remember them as the only governing body that also doubled as an Ultimate Frisbee team.

Thorax worked out a deal with Canterlot where all of Equestria's slime would be sold to the Changeling Kingdom. He used this slime to create the first ever slime-only water park: 'Thorax's Slime Locale'. It closed down after two weeks.

Chancellor Neighsay was bitten by, and turned into, a vampire during the Great Monster Mash of '87. No one noticed any real change.

Starswirl the Bearded invented a spell that made crepes, eclipsing all of his previous creations and making him famous all around the world.

Celestia and Luna struggled with their retirement due to spending so much of their lives defining themselves by their duties and not having a solid identity outside of their jobs. Also, they got a cat.

Flash Sentry was never able to get his ancestor, Flash Magnus, to move out of his apartment.

Dusty Draft eventually got bored of being insane and decided to stop. He's now the head instructor at the EIEIO's training academy and still occasionally goes to discos.

Tempest Shadow and Grubber were never tried for the various war crimes they committed during their time working for the Storm King.

Crystal Clear was ousted from her position as the head of the EIEIO and brought up on stalking charges by Prince Blueblood. In response to these allegations, she is quoted saying, “Yeah, no, good call. Smart decision on your part.”

Raphael and his gazelles managed to pick themselves back up by turning their cult into a ska band. Their group, 'Gazelles With Horns', is currently on tour. Their manager is Ziggy the Diamond Dog, who continues to insert song titles into every sentence.

Dynamite Dangerous continued to be bland.

Sans Smirk fell into a hole and got stuck there for a week.

Upon returning to the School of Friendship, the Young Six went on to do their homework. Then they had dinner and went to bed.

Garth attempted to open a successful catering service called 'Garth Eats', where customers could pay for his old leftovers. He was later arrested for attempting to get rid of the owner of a rival company by putting them in a crate and mailing them to Abu Dhabi. He is currently at large.

Dr. Mayor Craig got stuck in his plague doctor's mask and was never able to take it off. He continued to serve his twelve consecutive terms as mayor while wearing the mask.

Blueblood would sell the wreckage of the HMS Blueblood's Old Mom to a group of rambunctious teenagers. Blueblood sold it for 17 bits. He got a good deal!

That one guard still doesn't have a name.

The nuckelavee was found guilty of committing multiple acts of evil by the Equestrian Circuit Court. However, due to a filing error, instead of being sent to Tartarus, they were mistakenly sent to a five-star resort and hotel on a tropical island. They are reportedly fairly happy with how things turned out.

Shining Armor, Cadance, and Flurry Heart continued to happily support each other, regardless of how much confidence they had in their ability to save their loved ones. Cadance and Shining went on to have two more children. None of them were ever kidnapped by a two-headed monster ever again.

Fate Conspires to Enable Your Idiocy

Under the cover of night, Shining Armor and Thorax descended into the canals of Canterlot’s sewers. They immediately hated it.

The sewers were very spacious. In fact, Shining would go as far as to call them needlessly large. A massive canal of ankle-deep sewer water ran through the sewers, slowly flowing towards an unknown destination. Thankfully, stone walkways ran along both sides of the waterway, so Shining and Thorax could keep their hooves dry as they made their way.

Unfortunately, this didn’t make their trek much better than it would have been if they had stepped into the bad toilet water. Traveling along the walkway meant Shining and Thorax had to share space with the rude animals who called the sewers their homes. Disgusting creatures like cockroaches and pelicans brushed past their hooves frequently, and big rats kept throwing themselves at Thorax’s head.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, it was also dark. The only light that Shining Armor and Thorax had available to them was whatever Shining could generate from his horn. It could only illuminate a few feet ahead of them, so they had to move slowly to make sure they stayed on the right path.

Finally, to top it all off, the sewers’ interior design was just awful. Everything else in Canterlot was adorable, but apparently the sewers were exempt from that design motif. The walls were unpainted, the architecture had no thematic consistency, and someone had hung up a bunch of very tacky paintings of sad clowns.

All in all, it was just terrible.

“You know, it actually smells better in here than I expected,” Thorax mused as he and Shining traveled along the walkway. “I didn’t even need to get rid of my nostrils.”

“It smells like corn,” Shining pointed out. He had a copy of the sewers’ blueprints open in front of him as he walked. He wanted to get to the area of the sewers that the unknown spell had been cast from. The walkway they were traveling along would eventually bring them there.

“I know, but… It just smells like corn,” Thorax pointed out. “Nothing else; just corn. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

Exasperated, Shining looked up from his blueprint and turned to face Thorax.

“Look, Thorax, I don’t know what ponies do with these sewers!” He said. “Maybe they store a lot of corn in here! How would I know?!”

Shining only realized how hostile he sounded when he was finished speaking. He immediately worried he might have upset Thorax with his little outburst. Thankfully, the Changeling King looked more confused than hurt.

“… Sorry,” Shining said sheepishly. “I guess I’m just a little on edge.”

Thorax gave the prince a reassuring smile. “Shining, half of your family is missing, you’re ruling one of the largest kingdoms in the world, and you’re walking through the sewers at night. It would be strange if you weren’t on edge.”

Shining felt himself begin to smile. While Thorax’s words hadn’t made him any less anxious, it was nice to hear that he wasn’t going insane. Shining sometimes forgot that somepony else in his situation might have cracked from the stress a long time ago. Really, when you thought about it, everything about this was perfectly normal.

The two continued on along the path that would take them to their destination. The walk was largely boring and uneventful. Both Shining and Thorax kept conversation to a minimum. The only noises were the sound of water slowly flowing through the canals, and the deep, beautiful crooning of the many alligators that lived in the sewers.

Eventually, Thorax and Shining had to come to a stop when they reached a t-intersection. The walkway they were on made a sharp turn to the right. Meanwhile, on the other side of the canal, the walkway opposite them went off towards the left. A small bridge connected the two walkways.

Shining checked his blueprints to see which direction they needed to go in. Then he double-checked it. Shining looked up from the blueprints and looked at the two diverging paths in front of them, as if to make sure he wasn’t making some sort of mistake.

But there was no mistake. When Shining looked back at the blueprints, the t-intersection they were standing at weren’t marked down at all. The walkway was supposed to continue straight ahead. In real life, however, there was a giant wall in front of them where an open path should have been.

“What in the hey-hey is going on around here?” Shining asked.

When Thorax approached to see what the matter was, Shining showed his friend the blueprints. Thorax looked back and forth between the plans and the branching path before them. Ultimately, he was just as stumped as Shining.

“Are the blueprints out of date?” Thorax asked.

Shining, still studying the prints in confusion, shook his head. “These are the most up-to-date plans for the sewers they had at the store. I don’t know what’s going on here.”

“Which way do we go now?” Thorax asked.

Shining looked up at the brick wall that stood in the direction they needed to go. There were two signs on the wall, each one pointing down one of the two paths. The signs read:

<-- THIS WAY: GALLOP STREET
THIS WAY: THE SLIMEY ZONE!!! -->

“’The Slimey Zone?’” Shining read out loud. “There’s no street in Canterlot called the Slimey Zone. There’s nothing in Canterlot called the Slimey Zone.”

“Why not?” Thorax asked worriedly. “What’s wrong with slime? Changelings love slime. It’s great.”

Shining very rudely ignored Thorax’s slime opinions and shook his head.

“Gallop Street isn’t where we need to go,” he sighed. “We’re going to have to take a detour towards the… the Slimey Zone.”

Shining looked over his shoulder at Thorax. The Changeling was visibly trying not to look excited about visiting a place called ‘The Slimey Zone’. Despite his best efforts, though, it looked like Thorax would break out into a huge, childlike smile at any moment. Shining found it a little endearing, and it made heading to the Slimey Zone feel just a little less awful.

Trying his best to remain positive, Shining Armor rounded the corner and began walking in the direction of the zone of slime. Thorax hurried to follow after him, and the sound their hooves trotting along the stone walkway echoed off the metallic pipes in the sewers.

The blueprints Shining Armor had brought with him became increasingly useless as he and Thorax trekked through Canterlot’s sewer system. The dimly-lit canals and their walkways continuously contradicted what had been put down on the official plans. There were detours where the path should have been straight, and spaces that should have been blocked off by walls were just out in the open. If it weren’t for the signs on the walls corresponding to the streets above, Shining and Thorax would have been completely lost.

The signs indicating where the Slimey Zone was could be found at every juncture. The signs appeared to be guiding Shining and Thorax to the area in the sewers where the spell had been cast. This was a little too convenient for Shining to dismiss it as a mere coincidence. Shining was too distracted trying to navigate the awful sewers to really think about what it could mean, though.

Each new sign had additional exclamation marks added on to its end. After just two or three of them, Shining counted eleven of the punctuation marks tacked onto the signs. Shining was starting to suspect these signs hadn’t been made by city officials.

“You know,” Shining said as he and Thorax rounded a corner, “I’m starting to suspect these signs haven’t been made by city officials.”

“Huh? What?” Thorax, clearly distracted by thoughts of slime, asked. “Sorry, I kind of spaced out.”

Shining continued trotting on ahead, squinting his eyes to try and see through the stinky darkness. The illumination from his horn helped a little, but Shining still couldn’t see very far ahead of him. Every now and then he’d try to amplify his horn’s brightness, but it wouldn’t amount to much of a difference.

This time, however, when Shining increased the magical glow from his horn, he saw something. In the canal beside them, brushing up against the walkway, a small shape was slowly drifting by on the sewer water below.

Shining stopped, and Thorax followed suit. As the object in the water drifted closer, Shining leaned forward a bit to try and get a better view. Gradually, the object came further into the light generated by Shining’s horn. When it was finally close enough, Shining could see that it was a small toy boat.

Confused, Shining used his magic to pick the boat up out of the water. He brought it closer to study it, trying to ignore how badly the boat smelled of corn. It was a very high-quality toy; the kind valued more by adult enthusiasts than by foals. What was something this nice doing in the sewers, the home of filth?

“Uh… Shining?”

The fear in Thorax’s voice snapped Shining out of his deep boat-contemplation. Shining looked over his shoulder at his traveling companion to see what the problem was. Thorax was trembling, a single hoof raised and pointing at something far ahead of them.

Shining turned to look and instantly saw what had Thorax so afraid. In the distance, barely noticeable in the darkness, a figure was slowly approaching them. It moved like a pony, but Shining couldn’t make out anything except a bulky silhouette hidden in the shadows. His light did little to reveal any details as the figure drew ever-closer.

“Who’s there?” Shining called out warningly. “Are you the kidnapper? Or a sewer-man?”

If the figure could speak, it didn’t reply to Shining’s question. Instead, it began to move faster. It was practically galloping towards Shining and Thorax, moving closer at an incredible speed.

Shining pointed his horn at the shadow and prepared to put up a shield to stop it from getting any nearer. The figure slowed down a great deal when it saw Shining’s horn aimed at it, eventually coming to a very hesitant stop.

Now that it was closer, Shining could see that it was a pony; a stallion, probably. Its body language was nervous and uncertain. Did it take Shining pointing his horn as some sort of threat? Had it forgotten how to walk? Those were definitely the only two options.

“Whoever you are, identify yourself,” Shining said warningly. He kept his horn aimed at the shadow, not wanting to give it an opening. “We don’t intend to hurt you if you’re not an enemy.”

The shadow was silent. It seemed to look from Shining to Thorax, who had calmed down a great deal. Finally, after what felt like forever, the shrouded figure spoke.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here, Armor!” Blueblood said as he stepped out of the shadows. “You’ve got to help me get out of this sewer-dungeon! I can only assume there are poor people nearby!”

Shining blinked. And stared. And balked at what he was seeing. He could feel his mouth moving, as if he was trying to speak, but Shining didn’t know what to say. Where to even start? He felt like he wanted to say a billion different things, but the words were all jumbled together and useless in his mind. All he could do was stand there dumbly while Blueblood looked at him expectantly.

After a few seconds of dumbfounded silence, Blueblood’s eyes traveled to the toy boat that Shining Armor was holding with his magic.

“Oh, there’s my boat!” Blueblood reached out and took the boat into his hooves. Shining Armor was too baffled to offer any resistance. “Ah, it seems none the worse for wear… Smells like corn, though. I’ll have to have my manservant give it a good scrubbing.”

“Why?” Shining asked, completely unable to keep the frustration he was feeling out of his voice. “Just… why?”

Blueblood scoffed. “Well, because it’s been in the sewers, obviously. I can’t put this on display if it’s all dirty!”

“Why are you in the sewers?!” Shining practically snapped.

Apparently oblivious to Shining Armor’s outrage, Prince Blueblood chuckled.

“Oh, that. Well, it’s a funny story. I was sitting in my diamond-encrusted ivory bathtub, testing my new toy boat’s buoyancy. I’m happy to say it remained afloat marvelously; tended to list a bit to the side, though. I imagine there’s some sort of weight discrepancy in the design, but I’ll need to take it apart to know for sure.”

“Get to the point, Blueblood,” Shining warned. He did not like all of the words that Blueblood’s mouth was creating.

“Ah, yes.” Blueblood tucked his toy boat away and dusted his hooves off. “Well, anyway, I was sitting there, minding my own business, when… And you’re not going to believe this… The floor gave out under my tub and I fell into the sewers. I passed out shortly thereafter.”

Blueblood smiled proudly. “This all happened three hours ago. I’ve only just woken up.”

The sheer stupidity of what he’d just heard caused Shining Armor to start to dissociate. He was distantly aware of Thorax expressing concern over the fact Blueblood might have a concussion, but Shining couldn’t really focus on the actual words. He was busy trying to wrap his head around the improbable idiocy of what was going on.

Of course Blueblood had fallen into the sewers on the one night Shining and Thorax were investigating them. Of course that’s what happened. None of this was surprising when Shining Armor thought about it.

Shining closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again to glare at Blueblood.

“You are… terrible,” Shining Armor said in a hoarse whisper. “You are the worst mistake I have ever met. You are society’s greatest burden. And, worst of all, it’s almost like fate conspires to enable your idiocy. I will never truly recover from the damage you have done to my mental wellbeing, and I curse you every day for it.”

Blueblood blinked. “Okay, but… Are you going to help me get out of the sewers, or…?”

“There are ladders to the surface all over,” Shining said as he pushed past Blueblood and continued on ahead. “You can get out on your own. Act your age for once, Blueblood.”

“Shining, wait!” Thorax galloped after Shining, circling around to his front and stopping him from moving forward. “We can’t just leave him here! He hit his head! He’s clearly suffering from some sort of brain injury!”

“No, he’s just like that,” Shining assured. “Trust me, Thorax, he can get out of here on his own. We don’t have time to worry about him. This lead on the princesses is more important.”

From behind them, Blueblood raised a hoof into the air and waved it to get Shining and Thorax’s attention. “Er, I can hear you. What’s this about a lead?”

Shining rolled his eyes before turning to look at Blueblood. The other prince looked genuinely curious, but Shining was certain that Blueblood didn’t actually care about the search for the missing princesses. If Blueblood wanted Celestia to return, then it was only because being her nephew afforded him some social clout. His oblivious, haughty body language practically said as much.

“It’s none of your business, Blueblood,” Shining said dismissively. “You see, Thorax and I are hard at work right now. And I know that work doesn’t interest you at all. So why don’t you just go back up to Canterlot and crawl into one of your solid-gold mansions?”

Thorax winced and inhaled sharply through his teeth. “Shining, you’re getting a little too real for me right now.”

“I do work!” Blueblood said, sounding slightly offended. His brow was furrowed angrily in Shining’s direction. “I do all kinds of work! I do work like you wouldn’t believe!”

Shining raised an eyebrow at the prince’s claims. “Oh yeah?” He asked. “Like what?”

Blueblood’s face softened. “Um. Well… Once, I did a crossword puzzle. Crossword puzzles, as you know, are the only part of the newspaper you are legally allowed to write on.”

That was actually more than Shining Armor had expected. He was slightly impressed by Blueblood’s ability to exceed Shining’s extremely low expectations. Granted, he was nowhere near impressed enough to stop being fed up with Blueblood, but Shining was willing to give credit where credit was do.

“I’m being serious, Blueblood. Leave. You’ll only get in the way of our investigation.”

“You don’t know that!” Blueblood said with a dismissive scoff. “Maybe I’ll be a great help. Maybe I’m the world’s greatest detective! I’ve never solved a mystery, so for all I know I could be amazing at it!”

“He’s got a point,” Thorax said, leaning in to whisper to Shining.

He absolutely did not have a point. Shining began to worry that Blueblood wasn’t the only creature who’d hit their head.

“This isn’t some game, Blueblood.” Shining Armor approached Blueblood and stared him right in the eyes. “If we don’t get the princesses back, the griffons will beat all of us up. I know you don’t care that the princesses are missing, but this is kind of important! Bad things are happening in the world that exists outside of the little bubble you live in!”

Blueblood looked back at Shining, seemingly taken aback by the intensity in the other prince’s voice. For a moment, Shining worried that Blueblood somehow still wasn’t getting it. But after just a few seconds, a deeply offended expression formed on Blueblood’s idiot face.

“How dare you!” Blueblood whispered. “Of course I care that my Aunty Celestia is missing! And I probably care about those other princesses, too! I will not stand for this malicious sewer-slander, Armor!”

Instead of stepping back in the face of Blueblood’s outrage, Shining doubled down. “Oh, you sure have been acting like you care! The first thing you did when you found out the princesses were missing was try to make yourself interim ruler! Clearly, you’re so worried about your aunt!”

“Why should I be worried?!” Blueblood snapped back. “This sort of thing happens to Aunty Celestia all the time!”

“I—”

Shining stopped, caught off-guard by Blueblood’s reasoning. “… What?”

“It does!” Blueblood pointed out. “She vanished when Nightmare Moon attacked. She’s been abducted by that bug lady. Tirek sent her to jail for a while. The Storm King turned her into tasteful art. Celestia is always going missing or getting captured, and she always turns out alright! It’s happened before, and it’s happened this time! Why should I be worried? We don’t need to do anything!”

Shining Armor had a hard time deciding if what Blueblood was saying was wise or stupid. On the one hoof, he was right that bad things kept happening to Equestria and its princesses. Shining supposed there was some sense in not getting too worried about these things. On the other hoof, however, Blueblood appeared to be forgetting one critical detail.

“Blueblood…” Shining said slowly. “You realize that the only reason Celestia turns out okay when those things happen is because my sister and her friends save her, right?”

Blueblood, who was clearly still angry, looked like he didn’t have the faintest idea what Shining’s question had to do with anything.

“Of course I do!” He said.

“Okay.” Shining nodded. “Now, you’re also aware that my sister and her friends have gone missing too, right?”

Blueblood nodded. “Yes, of course.”

It appeared that Blueblood still wasn’t getting it. Shining took a deep breath and put his hooves together.

“Alright, now think about that,” Shining said, trying to remain patient. “When there’s trouble, Celestia gets recused by Twilight and her friends. Twilight and her friends are currently missing. The ponies who always save your aunt in these kinds of situations… Can’t save her. Are you starting to see why we should be worried?”

Shining watched as Blueblood struggled to do the math in his head. The blonde stallion’s face scrunched up as he thought about what Shining had just said. He looked like he was attempting to solve a particularly complicated problem on a trigonometry test. Shining could actually see Blueblood’s lips moving as he silently talked the problem over.

“So…” Blueblood said slowly. “Hang on… Princess Twilight and her minions are usually the ones who save my Aunty… But they can’t do that this time…”

“He’s starting to get it!” Thorax whispered enthusiastically.

Shining ignored him and nodded at Blueblood. “That’s right. Keep going.”

Prince Blueblood’s brow furrowed as he kept working at the problem in his head. “So… if they can’t save her… Then… She might not get saved?”

Prince Blueblood’s eyes slowly widened as he realized what everypony else in Equestria had realized three weeks ago. The full gravity of the situation had finally settled in on Canterlot’s least favorite son. The look of dawning horror on his face made Shining immensely proud. For just a moment, Shining believed that Blueblood had seen the light and would leave Thorax and Shining Armor to their search.

Instead, he just started screaming.

“Oh, good heavens!” Blueblood screeched as he began pulling at his mane in a wild panic. “Oh no! Oh no! This is terrible! This is horrible! What can we do?! What can we do?! Aunty! Aunty!”

Blueblood’s terrible voice echoed off the cavernous walls of the Canterlot sewer. No one cared about that, though. Shining Armor and Thorax both covered their ears as Blueblood’s horrible wailing increased in volume.

“Blueblood!” Shining said, trying to speak over Blueblood’s yelling. “Calm down! No one likes to hear your voice!”

This fact did not make Blueblood quiet down any. If anything, he only got louder, which was the opposite of quiet. His screaming had devolved from words to incoherent gibberish, which was much worse than normal gibberish. The prince whipped his head back and forth, looking around him frantically.

“Aunty!” Blueblood screamed. “I’m coming, Aunty!”

Before anyone could stop him, Blueblood stepped off the stone walkway and galloped into the sewer’s murky canal. The bad sewer water splashed as Blueblood ran through it, and the prince appeared to be completely unaware of the fact that he was now hoof-deep in toilet liquid. Blueblood sprinted on ahead into the darkness, quickly disappearing from sight. The sound of water splashing under Blueblood’s every step echoed back through the canal.

Thorax and Shining stared in the direction Blueblood had galloped down. Neither knew quite what to make of what had just happened. They both exchanged a confused, wordless glance while they listened to Blueblood’s hoofsteps begin to fade away.

But before the sound of Blueblood’s hooves in the water could completely fade, it did something else. The sound abruptly stopped. There was a loud, heavy splash.

And instead of Blueblood’s hooftseps resuming, they were replaced by the sound of dozens of hooves walking through the water. And this sound wasn’t fading away; it was getting closer.

“Something’s coming,” Shining said in a cautious whisper.

“Should we do something?” Thorax whispered back.

“Probably,” Shining said.

Thorax and Shining Armor stood there doing nothing as the hoofsteps grew closer. Then, out of the darkness, they emerged; six masked figures wearing long, scarlet cloaks. Each one of the figures had a long pair of horns extending out from under their hood and pointing up at the ceiling. They were all taller than ponies, but not quite as tall as Thorax.

The figures came to a stop a short distance away. Shining could see the unconscious body of Blueblood being carried on the back of the cloaked stranger in front. Shining could tell right away that it probably hadn’t taken much to knock Blueblood out.

For a while, nocreature said anything. The two groups stared at each other uncertainly for what felt like minutes. As the tension slowly build, Shining began to work up the nerve to speak.

Shining Armor cleared his throat. “Who are—”

“No one.” The lead figure said quickly. His voice was shockingly normal-sounding; it kind of ruined how intimidating he looked. “We’re no one.”

“Yeah,” another one of the figures said. “We’re definitely not a cult.”

“And we don’t live down here,” another one added.

“Certainly not!” The lead figure laughed. “That would be weird, right?”

Shining and Thorax exchanged another look. The Changeling leader lifted a hoof and pointed at the unconscious body of Blueblood that the group’s leader was carrying.

“What’s that about?”

None of the masked figures spoke right away.

“… What’s what about?” The lead figure asked slowly. He lifted a foreleg up and tried to block Blueblood from sight with the long sleeve of his cloak. “I don’t know what you mean.”

It was becoming fairly obvious to Shining Armor that there was something suspicious about these guys. Wearing masks and robes was definitely a red flag. They were also very clearly kidnapping Blueblood, but that wasn’t really important. What was important was finding out if they had anything to do with the princesses disappearing.

These guys were on-guard, though. Shining would need to ask the right questions if he wanted to get them to talk.

“Hey,” Shining said. “Do you have anything to do with the princesses disappearing?”

“No,” one of the figures said.

“Yeah, sorry,” the leader added. “That wasn’t us. I mean, we’re working to bring about the downfall of Equestria, but we didn’t actually have anything to do with that.”

Thorax blinked. “… You’re working to do what to Equestria?”

“THEY’RE ONTO US!” The lead figure shrieked. He lifted a robed foreleg up and pointed a hoof at Shining and Thorax. “Marcel! Danielle! Get the kidnapping sack!”

As soon as the order was given, two of the robed figures stepped forward. They carried between them a large burlap sack, much like the kind that might be used for carrying potatoes or burying a body. The two figures began to ominously approach Shining and Thorax, pointing the opening of the bag at them menacingly.

“Uh… Shining?” Thorax whispered. “Should we do something?”

“No,” Shining said. “I want to see where they’re going with this.”

Marcel and Danielle continued to slowly walk towards Shining and Thorax. They moved so slowly that if Shining Armor or Thorax actually tried at all to run away, they definitely would have been able to avoid what happened next.

But they didn’t, and so they got shoved in a burlap bag. Absolutely no one was happy about this outcome.