The Misfortune of Clover the Clever

"Just because you created something, does not make you responsible for how others may choose to use it. Not everyone may share in this belief and may instead choose to blame themselves when they believe they've created a monster."

Storm Chaser's parting words continued to sit with Twilight as she rode the train all the way to Canterlot. She hadn't quite expected the former soldier's story to take such a dark turn, and neither had her two friends who had decided to stay and listen. Unlike her, they hadn't already heard Clover's side of the story, leaving them ill-prepared to hear about events that took place during a less friendly time in pony history.

That wasn't to say that Twilight herself made it through completely unscathed. The very thought of a unicorn using their magic to act out such evils made her sick to her stomach.

Thoughts like this, and more, were interrupted as she stepped off the train. Shouts of "It's the princess!" and "We love you Twilight!" snapping her back to her current reality.

Princess Twilight had almost forgotten about the attention she received outside of Ponyville after her very recent coronation. It caught her off guard so badly that it took several minutes before she was able to escape the rampant kowtowing and excessive cheering, having to go so far as teleporting to a nearby rooftop after ducking around a corner in an attempt to evade her pursuers.

"Is it always going to be like this!?" Twilight asked no one in particular. Princess Celestia promised her that ponies would eventually get used to her new status, but as she struggled to catch her breath, she wished that day would come sooner rather than later.

There had to be a way to travel the streets unmolested if she was ever going to get where she was going. Whisper had mentioned the second pony she was looking for ran a shop somewhere in the market district. It wasn't far, but if she was going to be harassed every step of the way, it may as well be on the other side of Equestria. She might have an easier time if she moved under the cover of night, but she didn't want to wait that long.

Cover? An idle thought started to stir in the back of her head. The only thing that really made her stand out in a crowd were her wings. If she could hide those...

A flash of magic later, Twilight conjured a simple cloak to drape over herself. She hadn't ever tried covering her wings before, they tended to itch horribly any time she tried, but if Clover could do it and not let the added irritation bother him, then why couldn't she?

The plan worked just as she hoped. After hopping over several rooftops to make sure no one followed her, she made her way back down to the streets and was able to continue unmolested. Now all she had to do was find the place the alchemist called home.

It still took Twilight some time to find the place she was looking for. In fact, it wasn't until she decided to risk asking other ponies that she had any luck finding it. She was pretty sure they hadn't seen through her disguise, and even if they had, everyone was more than a little eager to talk about the place she was looking for. The shop, as it turned out, had been something of a source of recent gossip. Namely because the store had shown up seemingly overnight, and because it was run by an earth pony no one had ever heard of before.

Finally, after far too many twists and turns in the road, she arrived at her destination. A small hole-in-the-wall shop with a sign that read "Earthen Brews" adorning the front. Looking at it, it was pretty easy to see why it may have become a topic of discussion among the Canterlot ponies. It was plain. Most of the buildings in Equestria's capitol usually tried to outdo each other in their displays of opulence, where as Earthen Brews and its solid, yet simpler colors, actually made it stand out more.

Realizing she wasn't going to learn anything more by just standing outside the front door, Twilight reached for the door and pushed. It made a low, creaking noise as it opened. As she stepped inside, she saw the last pony she would've ever expected to find in a place like this.

"Rarity?" Twilight called out, shocked to see the fashion-savvy unicorn in a place void of exuberance.

Rarity's ears perked up upon hearing her name. She whipped her head around at the sudden noise, her perfectly groomed mane rippling as it followed the motion. Her big blue eyes widening as she took in Twilight's appearance.

"Twilight?" Rarity called back, sounding just as surprised to see Twilight as she was. "Good heavens, darling. What are you doing here and..." Her eye twitched a bit. "What are you wearing?"

"Oh this?" Twilight gestured at the dirty brown fabric draped over her back. "Some ponies in town were harassing me and I.."

Rarity tsked away her concern. "Darling," she said, "I know we talked about this before, but I still think you're going to have to get used to the royal treatment. You were crowned in front of all of Equestria after all."

"I know," Twilight lowered her head. "But I'm still just a pony. I..."

"And besides," Rarity winced as she grabbed at the edge of Twilight's cloak. "Brown is hardly your color, darling. If you still insist on going incognito, you should, at the very least, let me make something that goes better with your coat."

She would've kept going, but a door behind the counter picked that moment to open. A blonde stallion with dirty green coat peeking out from beneath a white lab coat stepped out from the back room. Twilight's purple eyes met his brown ones and she felt herself instinctively tense up at the indirect contact. Whisper hadn't named him, but she had met this pony before, and it hadn't been under the best circumstances.

"Smokey Vines," she said the name under her breath. She had dealt with a couple of bad dreams after meeting him for the first time and wouldn't be forgetting his face anytime soon.

"Twilight Sparkle," said the earth pony, not seeming overly perturbed by her guarded appearance. "Please, just call me Dr. Vines. My first name seems to make these Canterlot types a bit uncomfortable." He looked to Rarity and produced a small green vial from his coat pocket. Rarity, for her part, started to look all excited as she skipped up to the counter to claim the proffered vial. "Does this make us even, Miss Rarity?"

Rarity quickly had her countenance back under control as she pocketed the unusual concoction. "Not quite, dear, but it certainly will be a step in the right direction."

"Just promise me you're not going to do anything too bad with that," said Dr. Vines, a worried look on his face.

"I promise you, Darling, I shan't use it for anything unbecoming of a lady," she said, seeming to sidestep the topic a bit. "Rest assured that nopony will come to harm."

Rarity stepped away from the counter, stopping only to give Twilight a brief hug. "I'd love to stay and chat, darling, but I really should get back to the venue. I had to call in a few favors for the chance to show off my fall fashion line, and I'd be remiss if I missed the event."

And with that, she was gone. Leaving Twilight alone with the mild-mannered alchemist. They stared each other down for about a minute before Smokey chose to break the silence.

"I have a few guesses as to why you're here," he said curtly. "But we clearly can't move forward unless you ask the question."

Twilight had plenty she wanted to say to the pony, a lot of it wasn't very nice. Even though Clover had ultimately been behind everything that had happened, Smokey had still put her and her friends through hell. That said, she had a mission, and she wasn't about to let old scars keep her from finding out what she wanted to know.

"Elysium," she said as she swallowed her pride, it taking everything she had to say just that one word.

Smokey's eyes grew wide upon hearing that name, clearly not expecting to hear it from her. The gears in his head could clearly be seen turning as he analyzed the situation. He walked past Twilight, making her nervous until she saw that all he was doing was flipping the sign on the front door to "Closed."

He turned back to face her, seeming to have finished collecting his thoughts. "Come with me," he said, before leading her to the back room.

The back of Smokey's shop had very simple furnishings. Nothing too extravagant, just a couple shelves with very few personal effects outside of a couple portraits. A long table took up an entire wall of the room. Littered about it were innumerous finely crafted instruments, a good number of them currently in use. Glassware contained various concoctions that Twilight could only guess the purpose of; drying herbs hung along the wall, including one plant that looked suspiciously like poison joke; and the earth pony at the center of it all was currently using a mortar and pestle to turn some fragile leaves into a fine powder.

Smokey hadn't once said a single word since leading her to the small table where she now sat. However, Twilight would occasionally catch him stealing a glance in her direction, but for the most part he stayed focused on his work.

"So..." Twilight rubbed at the back of her head, the awkward silence feeling like it had gone on for a bit too long. "Dr. Vines. Do you actually have a doctorate, or is it just a formal title?"

He momentarily halted his labors, a smile cracking the side of his face. "That was actually a bit of an interesting story," he said. "Even though I had the approval of both princesses and, obviously, the new archmage, a certain Professor Litmus refused to let me claim the title as easy as that. She insisted on me proving what I claimed to know."

Twilight cringed a bit at the thought of her old chemistry teacher bringing her ire down on a single individual. She herself had never given the old unicorn any reason to turn her attention on her, but Twilight remembered a number of her classmates receiving grueling punishments for goofing around in her classes. "How did it go?" She asked once she had that image in her head.

"Better than I would've expected it to," the earth pony admitted. "Apparently, I impressed her so much that she ended up asking me out to dinner so we could keep talking."

"You went on a date with Professor Litmus?!" Twilight was having a really hard time picturing the two of them together. It just... didn't fit in her version of reality.

Smokey didn't answer right away, mostly because he was carrying a large teapot in his mouth, but once he set it down on the table and went about the task of pouring each of them sweet and fragrant tea, he just smiled at her response. "I guess it would look like that to an outside observer," he said. "Turns out she's actually a bit of a sweetheart outside of the lab. She didn't even seem to mind that my body is little more than a magical construct. Actually, she found that bit of information quite fascinating."

"Huh..." Twilight couldn't find herself saying anything more in response. She just reached out with her magic and took the cup Smokey offered her. It really did smell good.

"Sorry about before," he said as Twilight took a sip, "with what happened with you and your friends. Clover had convinced me there was no other way and we wanted to be ready in case we had to deal with a rogue alicorn on top of everything else. None of us imagined that you'd be the one we'd have to neutralize."

"You were worried about that other Celestia showing up, weren't you?" Twilight had gotten a bit of a peek at one of Clover memories from back a thousand years ago. She still had a really hard time believing there was another Princess Celestia out there, especially one that was so cruel.

"That would've been the worst case scenario," he said as he took a sip. "Unfortunately, we still don't have any idea where she came from or where she went after getting in the way of Clover and Sombra's duel." He lightly swirled the contents of his cup, regret clear on his face. "We'll find her. The trail may be cold, but now that Ret's been let out of her cage, it's only a matter of time before we learn something new. But anyway..."

Smokey set his cup back down and stared Twilight straight in the eye. "You didn't come here to hear about that. I assume that Whisper has set you on this path, and that you just came here from talking to that wild pegasus. You know, Clover isn't going to be happy about this when he finds out what the two of you are up to. He will find out. Make no mistake about that."

Twilight averted her eyes in shame. "I know..." she said. "But that look he had in his eyes. He's been hurting for so long, and I want to help him however I can."

The earth pony's stony gaze softened a bit in response. "Don't mistake my criticism, Twilight. Your heart's in the right place. Really, it is. I wish we would've had more ponies like you back then. Maybe then we could've avoided the rift that continued to grow between the pony tribes. Elysium's rise to power certainly didn't do anypony any favors."