Rainbow knew she had the best pet in the world. It was the only way she would allow herself to feel, in part because there was a basic requirement for adopter's remorse and she seldom found any reason to emotionally qualify for the second half. Tank was the single most awesome companion ever to come over a thunderhead: the most fundamental proof of that was that he'd wound up with Rainbow.
There was... just a little bit of difficulty in proving it to everypony else.
How did you make ponies see a tortoise's most positive qualities? It was true that Tank was the continental champion of leveraging fallen objects away from pinned wings, but how often was that situation going to come along? And when it came to the other aspects of living with him, things which only Rainbow got enough exposure to truly observe...
Tank was unstoppable in the same manner (and speed) as tectonic plate drift. Sure, it might not look as if anything was happening, but just come back in a few million years and you'd see how much had been accomplished.
He was an excellent listener. Ponies tended to head for the hills when Rainbow talked about herself for a few strictly-introductory hours: Tank just stayed in one place, blinking at her with rapt attention, and anypony who said it was because he knew he wouldn't be able to get away in time was just being cruel. He had ways of tilting his head which came so close to speech that it seemed as if he was talking back. And unlike her friends, he never used that communication to say something which disagreed with Rainbow. So there.
Tank was considerably smarter than he looked. Admittedly, there were ways in which that wasn't difficult because he usually looked like a mossy dome of rock and when it came to outsmarting a rock, there wasn't all that much effort required. But he'd readily taken to cloud edge training, because any pet who had the permanent version of the cloudwalking spell cast on them (something with a weight limit which left ponies out, and also a working which Twilight hadn't been able to learn in time to save Rainbow's pay voucher) still had to be kept away from any potential plummets. It had been easy to reroute Tank back to the safe center of Rainbow's porch, especially since she usually got about an hour of lead time from any casual glimpse at his current direction.
The tortoise had also readily taken to flying. One of Rainbow's strongest dreams was the hope that one day, all of her friends could know what it was likely to freely skim their bodies across the ocean of the sky: it was something which had readily shifted to her pet. But tortoise ownership wasn't all that common, and it had quickly started to feel like she was the only pegasus to shift someone so ground-bound towards soft vapor. There weren't any spells which could help: Twilight's wing-creation working didn't operate on shells, and the librarian only understood device enchantment as a casual experimenter who usually managed to find where most of the debris had landed. With no pet stores offering anything helpful and the best (only) researcher she knew unable to assist, Rainbow had been getting ready to explore the possibilities offered by some rather heavy-duty kites --
-- but then the Princess had stepped in.
Rainbow had spent a lot of time thinking about that. The Princess. The occupant of the Solar Throne wasn't exactly known for enchantments. But Twilight had apparently mentioned the problem in a scroll, the Princess had visited Rainbow's house, taken one look at Tank, smiled, gotten some measurements, and a few days later...
The rotor was a marvel. Because it channeled unicorn magic, it was also a device and because the Princess had been the one to construct it, there were ways in which it served as a wonder: invoking pegasus techniques upon the world when Tank needed them. It moved from the suggestions of his weight. It was capable of following limited verbal orders, which were keyed to Rainbow's voice alone. (She usually forgot about the 'limited' part.) If the power began to drop too low, it would automatically bring Tank to the nearest safe location and then send up a spray of sparks to signal for help. And to Rainbow, the sheer speed of the miracle's assembly suggested it was something the Princess had done before.
Rainbow had researched tortoise care just as thoroughly as she'd once learned Wonderbolt history. She'd learned just how long they could live. Some specimens could reach their second century. And it had occurred to her that an alicorn looking for a companion to cross the sea of time with, someone who would stay for a while -- if she hadn't had the (mis)fortune to encounter a phoenix yet, she could do a lot worse than a tortoise.
She had the same kind of pet which a Princess had obviously once traveled with. If that didn't prove Tank was the most awesome pet among the Bearers, then what did?
...well, obviously not a contest. Because there had been one, Bearers-only, and Fluttershy hadn't even tried to enter: she would have been limited to one pet and all things considered, she'd agreed that Angel was more of a menace. Stupid Opal had won it just from being soft and fluffy while sitting around doing nothing. Soft and fluffy wasn't a skill set, not like leveraging heavy things and listening and blinking. Tank was a world champion at blinking. It was possible to study every aspect of his style as if it was taking place in slow motion, mostly because it was.
Her chosen companion just wasn't appreciated, and that riled Rainbow on a soul-deep level. When your own life was largely about recognition and creating the kind of legacy ponies read about forever, you sort of wanted your eventual statue to have a lump of what would probably be mistaken for green rock next to the left forehoof. She was forever trying to think of a way to make others recognize his positive qualities, and -- well, she was sure something would turn up eventually. But until then, she simply enjoyed her time with him. She told him all about her dreams while knowing he agreed with everything she said. And because she didn't get as much time with him as she desired, with missions and her Bearer status regularly putting them in positions where he wound up with a petsitter for a week -- whenever possible, she took him along for the ride. Because he could keep up: she'd dreamed that it could be possible, and the Princess had made it so.
It was her first tour with the Wonderbolts, and their opening date was at the Trottingham fair. She'd missed more than half of the last moon with him because missions had kept coming in: the current spring was just a little crazy. But travel terrariums existed, and so the solution was obvious.
The Wonderbolts solution of what to do with a rookie squad member who, given the current state of magical tumult on the continent, could prospectively be summoned by the palace in the middle of a routine and would probably exit through the formation, was also obvious.
To everypony except Rainbow.
It was, in some ways, a very nice tent. It had turned out that the Wonderbolts often slept in personal tents just outside the main fairgrounds, especially when they arrived in the middle of the night to find that every hotel room had been completely booked for the fair and nopony who worked at Fawlty Stables could remember where their reservation was. That was the sort of detail you just didn't get in even the best of Wonderbolt guides, and Rainbow was trying to take it as a point of personal pride that she'd advanced far enough in her dream to learn about it the hard way. Really, when you looked at the situation from the proper angle, it was a good thing.
She wasn't quite managing to perceive her orders in the same way.
Rainbow's assigned position in the squad, for her very first fair show, as personally ordered by Spitfire herself -- was to be the sole weekend operator of the Meet A Wonderbolt booth. And that was completely unfair, because Rainbow knew that the booth was run by rookies who hadn't proven themselves during live routines and probably didn't even have their trading card back from the printer yet. (She was impatiently waiting to find out exactly which of the forty photographic attempts was going to be used. And honestly, none of that was her fault because when you reached the part of the lifelong dream where you actually had your rookie card picture being taken, how was anypony reasonably supposed to stay still?) They were performers that nopony knew and Rainbow had already grumpily decided that if she was being forced to do it, then the actual qualified booth occupant had to be out sick.
She wasn't going to be part of the routines. She was going to be dealing with fillies and colts all day, ones who just wanted to meet anypony who was wearing the uniform and were willing to stand in line for hours -- she'd waited for six -- just to accomplish that. They probably wouldn't even remember her name -- unlike Rainbow, who could still pick Skyliner out of a crowd from four stories up -- and most of them would lose the autograph on the way out. She wasn't even practicing with the team, who had gotten up early and flown half a gallop to the west, allowing them to run through final checks without an audience. Missing the review meant she couldn't even be part of the emergency glider squad.
Then again, every other Wonderbolt had to be awake. Just barely after Sun-raising on the first day of the fair, and Rainbow got to be tucked deep into her sleeping bag on a slowly-warming spring morning...
The sleeping bag was cozy. It was so cozy that there were whole seconds when Rainbow almost forgot about all the rocks under it, because she'd been too tired to clean them out before she'd tucked herself in and she sure wasn't going to start on that now. Rocks under a sleeping bag was the ground's fault, along with being one more demonstration for the inherent superiority of clouds. The stupid land was probably doing it on purpose. Losers were mean like that.
She wanted to stay inside the warm wrapping for as long as possible, especially since the booth didn't have to be opened for hours and smiling at an endless line of colts and fillies who'd endured through the wait on the power of The Dream was going to take all the strength she could muster. But for so many of them, she was going to be their first close-up impression of a Wonderbolt, and so she was going to smile. (Skyliner had possessed an exceptionally warm smile.) And she would sign autographs, no matter what happened to them afterwards. Besides, the more which got trampled into fair grass, the better the collector's value on the survivors.
Rainbow was determined to do all of it properly and, ideally, to do it after she got a lot more sleep. But there was a travel terrarium next to her pillow, small black eyes were slowly blinking at her, and she was a responsible pet owner.
"Morning, Tank..." The hard little head eventually gave the terrarium's inner glass surface an affectionate impact. "I'll feed you. Just a minute..."
Which was an actual minute spent wearily struggling her way out of the fabric, instead of the one-going-on-forty she would offer to her friends. Taking proper care of a pet was important.
Fresh water, then kale and grapes: the latter two were sprinkled with hay. (They both enjoyed hay, although Tank needed a lot less of it.) She watched him eat for a while, which made her hungry. And she'd only brought food for him, because being a responsible pet owner was important, but Rainbow's care of her own body tended to have a few turbulence bumps in the air path. Also a number of craters strewn across Ponyville or, as she too often thought of it, Practice Arena #1.
She was hungry, and so she wanted to get some food. She also wanted to get back into her sleeping bag and doze for two more hours. The goals seemed fundamentally incompatible.
There was food available at the fairgrounds, of course: the fair itself wouldn't start to open for a little while, but serving those putting it together meant the meal carts were set up before Sun-raising. It still meant leaving the tent and by the time she got back, the sleeping bag would have cooled --
-- why do I have to leave?
Her companion was with her, because they needed to spend more time together and she wanted to show him some of the world, ideally from more than a single hoof-height above it. And in Ponyville, she sent him on errands all the time. The rotor's enchantments included possessing a virtual map of the town and proximity sensors for large solids: this helped keep a flying tortoise from hitting troublesome buildings -- the same couldn't be said for his owner -- and the spells also recognized a limited degree of voice commands. She could tell it to have Tank follow her, or send him home when it seemed as if he was becoming tired. It also allowed her to do things like saying 'Barnyard Bargains' and know the tortoise would get there. So...
Sleepily, "Tank?" He eventually looked up at her. "Got a job for you..."
It took some time, and she had to rework the buckle after losing her jaw grip during the yawn. But eventually, she had the rotor on him, along with a small bag of bits hanging from the bit of strap which went under his plastron. "Okay. Listen."
He blinked at her, which provided plenty of time for Rainbow to not consider her words.
"Fly." The rotor lit up, glowing with a distinctive sunlight-yellow hue: one which was instantly recognizable to just about everypony in Equestria. "Get me some food. The carts are at the --" she'd been provided with a map of the fair, had noted where her booth was, and then dropped it somewhere over the Belmont River because it was just unnecessary weight "-- east end? West. Maybe west. South? Doesn't matter. Fly until you see food. Pony food. Not tortoise food."
The rotor's enchantments picked out the words they knew, then followed that up by struggling with everything they didn't. Sparks began to fly from the glow, with the largest going right under Rainbow's snout. She didn't notice.
"Unless it's one of those foods we both eat. Like melon. I could go for melon. Just thump it first. Highest point: I think that's what Pinkie said." She yawned again. "Sugarcube Corner would be nice right now..."
Spells which hadn't been designed to translate Sleepy back into a very limited amount of Equestrian, were incapable of true thought, and still knew they were nowhere near Sugarcube Corner tried to figure out what was going on. Portions of light near the rotor blades started to actively fizzle.
"...no, I can't afford to crash from a sugar high. Sugar low. Mr. Bunko's produce stand would -- nah, he'd see I'm hungry and just rip me off six ways to Hearth's Warming. Anyway, you've got the bits. And I'll give you a note." She wrote it out on autograph paper, tried to nudge it under the tightened strap. "So pay for whatever it is, then come back here."
The tortoise blinked. Rainbow took this for full and complete understanding, because her pet was just that smart and besides, anything else would mean staying awake.
"See you soon," she yawned as she began to crawl back into the sleeping bag, doing so snout-first because the morning wasn't warm enough yet and the enclosed part had probably retained the most heat.
Blades spun.
It could be said that the closed tent flap parted. There were ways in which rotor-induced shredding counted.
The note fell away.
It really wasn't a matter of what Tank thought. Anypony who wasn't Rainbow or Fluttershy had a hard time telling what Tank was thinking or, rather more often, if. When it came to magic, the instructions had been given to the rotor, and it had received too many of them.
So if anypony else had been left in the Wonderbolts encampment, they would have seen a rather mobile dome of green rock buzzing around. It went up, down, north and west, avoiding several large objects because that was what some of the enchantments were for. It was very easy to see where it had been, because the flight path left a glowing yellow trail behind for a few seconds after the actual tortoise had gone by.
The spells were trying to work out exactly what the pony operator wanted them to do. But there were too many instructions, the workings weren't capable of thought, and when it came to the desires of the creature wearing the rotor...
It was just about impossible to tell what Tank was thinking, and 'if' often came into question. But there were ways in which the tortoise was very much like his pony. Each of them was capable of setting a goal and, once they understood what it was, they would not stop.
So when the rotor's enchantments reached the point of struggle which had them mostly warring with each other, and stumpy clawed feet touched down on grass as blades weakly spun above the shell... the little legs picked a direction, and then they moved.
It took a while. It always did. But if the tortoise knew anything, it was that the journey of a million gallops (or in this case, less than an eightieth of one) was just a matter of dividing the distance by enough steps. Also, it helped if there was kale.
After a while, he crossed the line onto the fairgrounds. And by the time he did so, every part of his body was glowing with that distinctive yellow shade, because the struggling spells were shedding energy and it had to go somewhere.
It didn't bother him. Very little did. After all, he had a pony.
If it had happened in Ponyville in front of anypony who wasn't part of the Flower Trio, somepony probably would have summoned Twilight to diagnose the problem. In her absence, somepony else would have removed the rotor, multiple helpful hooves would have cleared the tortoise's path to wherever he needed to go, and there was just about an 80% chance of a unicorn carrying him back: the remainder came from rides in earth pony saddlebags or from pegasi who were being exceptionally careful about their pressure carry. Regular exposure to Ponyville's chaos didn't so much create herd immunity as it weeded out the weak, usually by sending them to Ryder's moving supply store at three in the morning. It never closed, and the prices were known to be variable by hour.
This, however, was Trottingham.
A glowing tortoise with a slowly-turning rotor on its shell in Trottingham has a chance to create several effects.
The most prominent among those ponies who were wandering the fairgrounds at that early hour was a spasm in what griffons would describe as the labium superius oris, followed by an ongoing period of increased tension. (It was generally agreed that the upper lips of those afflicted couldn't get much stiffer.) This was accompanied by selective blindness, a tendency to look slightly up, and the mental aspects of all this manifested as the ability to say "What tortoise?" with absolute sincerity. Those suffering from the syndrome known as Somepony's Else's Problem understood that to admit they'd noticed the thing was to risk having another ask them to do something about it. Their goal was to reach the next day in one piece, followed by reading all about the events they hadn't witnessed and writing to the editor with a complaint about how it had all been taken care of in exactly the wrong way. Having those letters being written by somepony else, about them, seemed to invalidate the point.
Another, somewhat more active group, decided the best thing to do was start on that part early, and so searched the fair until they found the quill-and-scroll sets which are epidemic to the area. After all, in their opinion, the first thing to do was write the editor and complain about the mere presence of a glowing tortoise: getting into the paper by ranting about how the matter wasn't resolved to their satisfaction then became the followup. Some of those with political ambitions targeted their missives at the mayor's office. Maximized efforts required carbon paper.
There were a few elderly ponies about, as official starting times only applied to those who both cared to wait and felt the rules applied to them. They tended to travel in pairs, and mostly watched the tortoise go by before beginning to groan about how in their day, a tortoise just meandered along without all of this modern glowing nonsense. For the most part, they had very little need to write the editor, especially as most of them were it.
And of course, you had fair security. You needed security at a fair, especially in Trottingham. The Trottingham fair had begun as a celebration of an ancient day when legendary ponies had driven Crystal Geese out of town. Security was mostly around because those ponies weren't, and somepony had better be prepared to act if the geese came back.
In the case of Cordon and Knobby, that would have been somepony else.
"Weird tortoises you get around here," the older and heavier of the two stallions observed as the glow began the very gradual process of ambling by. There was plenty of time in which to do so, as he wasn't doing anything other than watching. Cordon operated at the sort of speed which made the average tortoise check the possessor for a heartbeat before prescribing several energy drinks. He believed that security was a matter of observing that something strange was going on and if you were lucky, everything would then sort itself out.
"Sure are, Cordon," decided the shorter.
"Didn't use to glow like that in my day," Cordon concluded, doing so based on an unusually long evidence list: one which existed. "I don't know who told tortoises they could go around glowing. I'd like to have a Word."
Knobby squinted a little. The tortoise was about five body lengths away and for Knobby, this required both squinting and the facial rearrangement of several obstructive moles.
"Funny color, that," the small stallion decided. "That's a Princess color, in'it? Saw the Princess that one time, didn't we? Ten fairs ago. Came by to dedicate the pavilion."
"The one which went missing," Cordon unwisely remembered.
Automatically, "You can't prove I was anywhere near --"
"-- the whole pavilion, Knobby. Your tail was trailing streamers for days." It was Cordon's turn to squint. "But you're right, funnily enough. That is her color. Can't mistake it for anypony else's, especially when it's on a tortoise. Now why is a tortoise glowing with a Princess color?"
Knobby thought about it or rather, made something up and decided it was Logic, which was much easier.
"Because," he regally concluded, "that is a Tortoise Of Destiny."
Cordon hesitated.
"Don't take your meaning, Knobby."
The smaller pony grunted. It was his current destiny to be a security guard, because that was the best way to wander the fairgrounds for free and if small items happened to vanish into saddlebags, then nopony ever checked his unless they'd known him for five minutes. He didn't see this as Theft. All such acquisitions were filed under Salary and when he was challenged, he was happy to return whatever he'd recently confiscated from the true criminal, pity about their getting away, miss, but here's your quill-and-scroll set... But had he existed in a world with greater scientific advancement, his destiny would have been to serve as the greatest contributor to genetics which Equestria had ever seen.
It wasn't due to any latent talent or unsuspected surge of intellect. It was because Knobby had a snout which curved in three directions at once, withers which both understood and lived up to their vocabulary, tended to keep his spine somewhere around his belly and had combined being knock-kneed with four legs to musical effect. Genetically, there was such a thing as a disadvantageous recessive, and most researchers wouldn't have reasonably expected to find them all in one place.
"Think about it, Cordon!" Knobby insisted. "Something enchanted on his back! Glowing like Sun, like her Sun!" And with a suddenly-deep, impassioned tone, "So whoever is so brave as to pull the rotor from that tortoise's shell -- shall become Princess Of Equestria!"
Cordon thought about it. There was no other choice, because there was a chance Knobby was right and in that case, the only things which would save his life were Thought and Movement. Thought took less work or, in his case, pretty much none.
"Not for me, Knobby," he quickly decided. "Imagine having to get up that early every morning. Before Sun-raising, by definition."
"But you'd be an alicorn! Or I'll be!" There was a gleam in clouded eyes now, because the palace had a treasury and after it had Knobby, it would discover an unparalleled opportunity for cleaning exposed walls. "I'm going for it! Just tell me when to try taking it off. Give me a count. One, two, three. I'll go on three. Five is right out --"
The older stallion, whose imagination was just strong enough to picture a Princess Of Casual Absconding, stuck out a blocking foreleg: the rather unique mechanism of Knobby's trot meant the same three knees went into it twice. "-- forever, Knobby, which is going to feel a whole lot longer when you have to spend it never getting to sleep in." There was a brief empathetic pang for the true plight of a Princess: he immediately planned to write it down and even more immediately forgot about it. "Plus being a stallion is nice, thanks. I'd think you'd want to keep that. I remember what happened when you dressed up as a mare for Nightmare Night."
"It worked," the smaller pony huffily said. "Nopony mistook me for a pony all night."
"Generally have trouble with that when you're awake, Knobby. Look. That's a glowing tortoise. They shouldn't do that. Agreed?"
"Suppose so," muttered a guard who could feel the crown evaporating from his head before he'd had the chance to pawn it. "So what do we do about it?"
"We?" With open horror, "Tortoises aren't a security guard problem! We're here to protect the fair! We're doing our job, aren't we? Fair's still here, at least until you get five minutes alone with it. Tortoises are Somepony Else's Problem. Even when they're glowing."
The tortoise, unaware that it was any kind of problem at all, escalated the situation by raising its front right foot. Several seconds later, it came down again, and did so that much closer to imagined doom.
"So whose problem is it?"
The fatter pony was starting to sweat from the effort of thought. They didn't pay him to think, which also kept him from having to nose over refunds based on Quality Of Product.
"There's a pet show," he forced himself to remember. "At the fair, every year. Kids bring their pets and there's a ribbon for the best one."
"So?"
"What's a pet show got?"
The security guards had moved back, because that helped to establish the borders, showed nearly everypony else that the best thing to do was moving back, and incidentally put them a very long way off from whatever might happen next while turning them into part of the growing, watching crowd. The tortoise's passage had taken long enough that ticket-holders were starting to enter the fair, and the tortoise had several things to recommend it as an attraction. It was, for starters, glowing. There was no line to see it, and the formation of the living barrier had turned the viewing area into more of a curve. Everypony agreed that nopony had ever seen a glowing tortoise before and therefore, getting to see this one was clearly something you could write an editor about. From a distance.
The vets, however, had to get a little closer.
"I'm going to diagnose... tortoise," the somewhat younger one decided: an earth pony with a fairly stocky build, wearing a garment which had been designed to protect its wearer from claws, teeth, talons, and skunk spray alike, and so had an unique way of failing against each. "I'm undecided on the glowing. Other than that it's probably being produced by the rotor."
"Very healthy tortoise," the mildly-elder concluded: a tall, thin-legged unicorn with the sort of quillpoint-thin mustache so exquisite as to make river serpents weep. "I haven't seen one in that kind of condition all that often. No chips on the shell, and you can see where it's been polished. Claws are being trimmed regularly. Getting plenty of kale. Somepony is looking after that tortoise."
"Extremely healthy," the younger agreed. "So -- what do they expect us to do about it?"
The unicorn's corona adjusted the mustache. Two distant mares swooned.
"Hare --"
"-- Hareiot," the earth pony automatically corrected.
The tortoise began to take a step.
In a perfectly friendly, utterly authoritative, and only incidentally condescending tone, "-- when you've been vetting as long as I have, you'll understand these situations a little better. This is a glowing tortoise. Any vet of experience would recognize what to do immediately."
Hareiot looked at his partner in practice. It was the sort of look which, when made from less than a body length away, suggested an earth pony who had figured out every possible means of quickly dropping a unicorn over several long years and after that, it was really just a matter of waiting for the right moment.
"Do tell."
"You get a veterinary student to approach it first," the unicorn declared. "That way, if it's something exceptionally bad, nothing happens to us. We can always get another veterinary student to intern with us."
"He's your brother."
The unicorn rolled golden eyes. "My parents are still pretty young. I think I can get another one of those, too." A little more thoughtfully, "Admittedly, there would be something of a delay. Maybe we'd better give him something he can block with. Where is Tryst, anyway?"
"You know that rumor about how romancing the third vet judging the show is the best way to make sure your child's pet finishes first, because he'll break all ties between us in their favor?"
This triggered a frown. "No..."
It was possible to hear wingsbeats on the approach. Very fast wingbeats.
"That's because he started it. About an hour ago."
Along with hoofsteps. Grouped, solid hoofsteps. With echoes.
"Oh."
There was also some shouting.
"I think he was having some early success with it," Hareiot added. "But --"
Which was when a rather handsome, extremely panicked blonde pegasus flew past them at less than a hoofwidth away from their snouts, trailing a mist made of sweat, froth, and at least six howling stallions who were making game attempts to drag him out of the sky.
"Oh," the older brother repeated, some time after the sounds of screaming accusations had faded to the point where children could audibly repeat the interesting parts. "Pity about the lack of single parents in this area, I suppose. So asking purely as the senior partner who needs something to judge your work by: how would you approach this?"
"Carefully, Suede," Hareiot decided. "Very carefully. This is going to be tricky."
Suede nodded, and did so at the same moment the rotor tossed off more sparks: it made him exhale with worry. "Woo..."
Hareiot was still watching the animal. "The tortoise is fine, I'm sure of it. That thing he's wearing might not be, and that means we need to separate them. Can you counter the spells as we move in?"
"Suede?" one of the no-longer-swooning, rather nauseated mares asked. "How can anypony be named --"
"-- myfathergrewupwithgriffonsandlikedthesoundofitshutup. Hare, I'm a vet," Suede protested. "I know medical magic. I'm not even sure what that spell is. I don't even want to try lifting him in case my corona interferes with that in a way we're not expecting, and we need to keep every other caster from doing the same. That's going to mean removal by mandible --"
"NOT SO!"
It was the sort of voice which came with permanent capitals, it came from overhead, and it managed to be distractingly egotistical and grandiose for a crowd which already had a Suede on the scene.
Everypony looked up.
It was a basic fact: wherever you got fairgrounds, you had a good chance to get a carnival. You didn't get them at amusement parks like Horaceland, because Horaceland was constructed around a simple principle: the subtle removal of all misery from guests, followed by replacing it with joy. Fairgrounds were designed to extract bits, and so attracted those ponies who were fully prepared to spend bits on increasing their misery so they could later lie about having had a good time. And, because fairs were a traditional sort of thing, ponies who would plan on the day when they could bring their children because in Trottingham, misery was the sort of thing which worked best when inflicted across at least three generations.
If you wanted to tell yourself that you'd had a good time in spite of all available evidence, you needed a carnival. (And ideally, cotton candy, because the nausea which came from saying it would produce some interesting colors on the way out.) Where you had a carnival, you got carnies. And with the pegasus hovering some distance overhead, you got one of the performers for whom somepony would stand in front of a tent collecting bits while calling out "ONLY THE BRAVE MAY ENTER TO WITNESS SOMETHING NOPONY HAS EVER SEEN!" and when the muttering patrons exited, would very carefully not be there.
The vets had been working the fair for several years, because being screamed at by parents in a giant tent for not giving a pet first place was a pleasant diversion from being screamed at by parents in an office: for starters, there was much less echo. It meant they were familiar with some of the regulars.
Suede took the lead. "I don't think this is a good place for you, R --"
"NONSENSE!" declared the performer: the deep green and red body automatically performed a swoop over the crowd. "YOU NEED THAT REMOVED, DO YOU NOT? AND WHO BETTER TO DO SO THAN A MASTER OF WIND?"
"Just about anypony," Hareiot protested. "It's strapped on. Tightly."
From somewhere back in the crowd, "Do you see that? I just saw it. He's got a coin bag under his belly."
"I see it."
"So you get to be a Princess and you can nick some coins first thing? I'm going for --"
"-- shut up, Knobby."
"I AM AS I BILL MYSELF: A KNIGHT OF THE WIND! AN OUTLAW OF THE SKIES, FOR MY MERE EXISTENCE VIOLATES NATURAL LAW! I TAKE WIND SPEED AWAY FROM THE TORNADO AND GIVE IT TO THE BREEZE!"
"That's how all pegasus wind magic works," Suede groaned. "You shouldn't --"
"SO I SHALL BLOW YON TORTOISE FREE OF THAT ACCURSED DEVICE! WHEN NOPONY ELSE WOULD DARE!" One more swoop, for he hadn't had such an audience in years. "BEHOLD!"
And before anypony could stop him, the red wings flapped.
The pegasus was, in fact, very good with wind. The blast of air traveled straight and true, heading for the tortoise with the speed, force, and prospective impact of an arrow. But the tortoise (who was in the middle of another step, and had been for some time) was firmly strapped in. He had to be: following his pony around through what she treated as her daily routine meant that any chance of having centrifugal force fling him out of the strap had to be brought to zero. Under normal circumstances, any attempt to push him out of it with wind would mostly lead to his being knocked back by a variable distance. Even with his shell in play, the tumble could have done some harm. And a normal unicorn device would have no natural defense against wind.
The rotor, however, had been enchanted by a Princess.
The unicorn spells were unable to react. The still-perfectly-functional pegasus techniques, which had been placed by an alicorn who was fully familiar with what being around Rainbow's flying patterns tended to involve, took that blast of wind and flipped it by one hundred and eighty precise degrees.
The tortoise finished his unhurried, fully non-disrupted step, and did so at the same moment the pegasus found his back slamming into a tent.
Everypony watched as he slowly slid down the canvas wall. It was the largest audience he'd ever had for that too.
"i... um... i think..." the lightly-concussed pegasus softly said, and then surged into "THAT I MUST CONSIDER HOW TO BEST WORK PAST SUCH MAGIC! IN PRIVACY!"
Wings flared out and, on the third attempt, managed to hit something which wasn't the tent. The fifth put the crash into the center of an apple-kicking booth, whereupon the problem was considered solved.
"So," Hareiot eventually said. "Sir Robin bravely flew away. What's next?"
"We don't approach the tortoise," Suede immediately decided. "Whoever enchanted that thing put some defenses in. If we don't understand what they are, we shouldn't try to remove the rotor. We need --" he thought about it "-- MI-6."
His junior partner looked at him again.
"Who?"
"Magical Intelligence." The right forehoof began to gesture. "Six mares... get dispatched from Canterlot all the time to solve problems --"
"-- the Bearers?"
"Well," Suede sniffed, "maybe that's what they call the group in Canterlot. Can we get them?"
"No idea," declared a vet who really didn't pay the closest attention to world events and so had no concept of whose nearby dreams had now moved to the eradication of rocks. "Wouldn't know where to start."
"Letter to the editor?"
Tryst flew by again. Three rather shapely mares had joined the chase, along with an overweight elderly stallion who seemed to have joined just to watch them run from behind. There was also somepony playing a saxophone, but the vets were the only ones who paid any attention to that. If you had shapely mares involved in a chase anywhere near Trottingham, the saxophone player just showed up.
"You still owe us forty bits on your last bill, Yakety!" Hareiot shouted after him. "So what's the next thing to do?"
"I think we're pretty much out of this one," Suede admitted. "We need somepony who's better with magic than either of us. Until then, nopony tries to lift him or interfere in his path. No coronas, no pressure carries, nothing. We'll try to clear the way until an expert arrives. But..." He adjusted the mustache again. "...I'm not sure, because he's never brought it in, but... didn't the hotel owner have a tortoise once?"
"Before my time," Hareiot admitted. "Why?"
"They're not a common pet. Maybe we could use an expert on their behavior. Just in case we need to lure him in a different direction."
The exceptionally tall earth pony creased an extensive length of forehead.
"I still have a tortoise," he stated.
"Good," the junior vet exhaled. "So if we wanted to lure him off to where that glow couldn't hurt anything --"
"-- it belongs to my wife," the hotel owner huffily continued. "For years."
"They live a long time," the senior tried. "Back to the --"
"-- it may have," the tall pony declared. "Before it came to her. It was stuffed. I tried to return it to the shop, because I felt that she must have wanted a living tortoise. But I was unable to get the bits back. And after thinking about it for a while, I realized she liked things dead. Like my self-esteem. My hopes and dreams. Any chance I might have of getting through a day without wishing for death. So let me say this, gentlecolts: when it comes to that tortoise? He is joyful. He is just passing through. He is possibly on a search to find his favorite baker. He is rather flexible, operating in a state of visible restlessness, if you tried to nail him to the ground he would bite you, his metabolic processes are distinctly intact, he just stepped over that twig, he will soon be moving around the bucket and that coil of rope before he fails to run over the fallen curtain, and then he will eventually pass that very visible choir tent, possibly sometime around midsummer. He is a LIVING TORTOISE. As opposed to the only things I know how to deal with, which is a taxidermied specimen of the 'former' variety --"
Another, louder sniff, and he pulled himself up to that considerable height.
"-- and exquisitely-contrived plans which somehow end in my longing to join him. Good day, gentlecolts."
"...goodbye, Crease."
The hotel owner angrily strode away, and did so using what appeared to be three times the standard allotment of knees.
"Mommy, do you see that trot?" a filly asked. "Isn't it silly? That's the silliest trot --"
"-- SHUT UP!"
There had been an attempt made to summon MI-6, which had been done through sending somepony to the mayor's office and asking that the summoning be done. This was currently on hold, mostly because the mayor was still trying to figure out what they meant. And in the meantime, the tortoise just kept trudging unstoppably forward, largely because he was still glowing, stories about the wind backlash had already spread, and everypony was afraid to stop him.
If anypony had cared to draw a straight line between his path and the edge of the fair, they might have noticed that he was moving (more or less) towards the food carts. And they did -- but they never considered that he might be on his way to buy something. Instead, they had decided to progressively clear that trail, just in case the glow surged or the wind went off again or an unknown enchantment decided to do something letterworthy. Moving things out of the way ahead of him was also allowing construction of barricades off to the sides: the relocated material had to go somewhere and this way, there might be some protection if he turned. Desperate, nimble mouths and surging horns were engaging in a considerable amount of ongoing barrier improv and to every added piece, you could only say yes.
Nopony was sure where he was going. They also weren't sure how long it would take him to get there, especially if he somehow managed to slow down. There had been certain questions raised about the ground speed of a tortoise and as the glowing made it difficult to identify his exact species, the crowd's guesses had started with two categories: Equestrian or Protoceran. This had led the vets to ask about the latter, because neither had ever heard of a Protoceran tortoise. According to the wisdom of the gathered herd, the variety which lived among the griffons could be distinguished by its love for coconuts, which it generally balanced on its back. And since carrying a coconut meant bearing a weight, a Protoceran tortoise was obviously slower.
The vets had listened to all of this, then pointed out two things: a distinctive lack of coconut, plus how was a tortoise supposed to open the things anyway?
Well, that was where the eagles came in. Eagles were well-known for picking up tortoises and dropping them, right? So if you dropped the tortoise in such a way as to let the coconut hit first, the fruit would absorb all the impact, crack open, and then bird and reptile could enjoy the interior together. It was, you know, one of those symbiotic whatsits or something. Besides, the current tortoise was carrying a rotor, which meant it was used to carrying things and so that had to point to the Protoceran variety. So now it was just a matter of finding an eagle. But to get around the magic, they might need a giant eagle...
The vets had listened just long enough for the start of the debate on what the compensation was for rescuing adventurers out of nowhere and whether it went up based on how far they were carried, as expressed in broken coconuts. And then they gave up on the wisdom of the herd forever, although Hareiot did make silent plans to get a book or six out of it.
They moved tents. They moved exhibits. The barricades were piled high on the sides of the path. And all the time, the tortoise moved.
He wouldn't stop. He didn't even really look around. There were ponies doing things, but that wasn't important because none of them were his pony. He was a Tortoise On A Mission. He was licensed to pay up to seven bits. Other creatures might have seen the scrambling ponies and decided it was their view to a kill, but the upcoming food carts were for his eyes only. So he kept going forward, and they shifted the Royale Casino tent, made plans to reschedule the pegasi's new exhibition sport of Thunderball, and hoped that things would be over before Moon raked across the sky.
The tortoise kept moving, because it was what he had to do. He trudged on, while his pony steadily, predictably, and magnificently overslept. And the food carts were getting closer and closer --
-- which, because he was getting near them and MI-6 had yet to appear, were quickly attached to pony harnesses, had their wheels unblocked and within seconds, were pulled off to safety at the sides.
The tortoise -- stopped.
All four legs were planted in the fair's grass. Barely-visible glowing nostrils sniffed the air.
It didn't necessarily understand why the food had been moved. But it knew what its pony liked, and so it slowly began turning its head towards the left.
The fifty ponies watching from behind that barricade held their breath. And when the first clawed foot shifted in that direction, they screamed.
Legs kicked against the soil, trying to get a strong starting push to start the race for their lives. Wings flared out, and the wind backblast of multiple takeovers went into the makeshift barricade, which was made of exhibits and partial tents and supports and cheap carnival prizes and a complete lack of planning.
The whole thing shifted at once, and did so moving inward. There was more screaming, a flurry of movement, a single slow-motion crashing sound and then --
"-- HELP!"
There were ponies to hear that call. But they were only on the right, behind the intact barrier. Those on the left had fled. All but one.
"It's..." The teenage pegasus, alone and in pain, was starting to sob. "It's on top of my wing! I'm pinned! Please, please, somepony..."
Those on the right started to move.
So did the tortoise.
And the ponies couldn't do anything. The glowing creature was heading right for her, slowly, inexorably, unstoppably. They couldn't risk getting past it or around or over, not without knowing what the fizzling spells might do. To approach was to risk more lives, it was moving faster than they'd seen it move before and the filly just kept crying as it got closer and closer, its head going down and it was moving into the collapsed barricade --
-- it vanished. Rays of glow emitted from half-collapsed cracks.
Leverage happened.
The glow, which had been allowing the spells to harmlessly leak power for hours, winked out. And seconds later, a spray of sparks was hanging in the sky, so the tortoise's soon-to-wake owner would be able to find where he was.
"Autograph?" the shy filly softly asked.
Rainbow's mouth reached for the quill --
With abrupt, fully blunt offense, "-- his autograph."
The rookie Wonderbolt looked to the left of her booth table, to where a tortoise with a blue ribbon around his neck was proudly standing in wait. Or patiently. Or while on the verge of falling asleep. If you weren't Rainbow or Fluttershy, it could be rather hard to tell.
"All right," the pegasus said for the twenty-eighth time, and inked the bottom of Tank's right forefoot again before helping him step on the slip.
"Thank you!" the filly beamed. "This is the best fair ever!" With a decibel drop into the levels of privacy, "It's usually just bad food and rigged games and ponies watching for geese while they tremble a lot. But I never thought I'd meet a hero!"
"You're welcome," proudly stated one-sixth of the force which had restored both Sun and a throne --
"-- still him."
Rainbow watched the filly trot away, and did so from a bench-bound state of complete stillness. Given the Wonderbolts uniform she was wearing, it would have been a great time for somepony to get a picture for a rookie card.
The thing to say -- the only thing which wouldn't get her kicked out of the fair -- was 'Next', because there was a line to get through and it stretched out to the horizon. But she looked at her tortoise, and the Best Pet ribbon around his neck which had been awarded by unanimous (and, for the youngest judge, heavily bruised) decision.
With utter sincerity, "Nice work."
Tank blinked his agreement, which took a few seconds. And then Rainbow faced the line again.
If nopony knew who she was just yet... well, that was to be expected, because she was the one operating the booth. And it was possible that the most awesome pet ever would never reveal his full set of skills to anypony except her -- but at least he was being appreciated for one of them.
She was at the very start of her journey. He would live for more than a century, and be with her all the way.
They both had time.
