It was a lovely day in Maretime Bay. The sun was shining. Birds were singing. A gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Sprout nodded to himself. Yep. Nice day. He narrowed his eyes. Granted, it could be better. The populace doesn’t call you Emperor Sprout anymore. Hay, they don’t even call you Deputy Sprout anymore. His eyes turned into angry slits until he could barely see the shop on the other side of the street anymore. And that shop window looked better when the anti-unicorn posters had still been up. And it has been weeks since our last pegasus attack drill. And-
A sharp pop made him blink. “You’re doing that thing again, boss,” Sweets quipped and started to chew her bubblegum again. “Y’know. The thing where you go all angry-eyes and reminisce about the good old days when you had an attack robot tank thingy and declared war on two pony races.”
He gave her a look.
She grinned.
“I was thinking that it was a nice day,” he finally said, being careful not to deny or confirm her guess.
“Mh, it is,” Sweets conceded and blew another bubble. After the inevitable pop, she shrugged. “Would be a much nicer day if our Unicorn Entrapment Devices in this part of the main street didn’t keep trapping curious unicorn visitors.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice. Canterlogic already has an uphill battle in the PR department without these malfunctions.” Sprout gave an inconspicuous part of the road a closer look. Even when knowing what to look for, it was tough to notice the outlines of the sliding mechanism hidden under the cobblestone. But at a moment’s notice, they could reveal the trap’s base plate. “Although, to be fair,” he muttered, “they actually do exactly what my mother designed them to do.”
“Miss Cloverleaf has always been enthusiastic when it came to activating machinery. Less so when it came to deactivating it.”
Sprout stepped onto the hidden mechanism. Then he jumped around on it. “It seems deactivated...”
“Must be some sort of loose wire,” Sweets mused gave the area around the mechanism a closer look. “I still say you should have lobbied harder to actually dig them out instead of just securing the activation buttons.”
He let out a sigh. “I tried, but at the end of the day, I’m just the junior product developer.”
“You are her son, and your position is made up,” she muttered.
He winced, but she was, of course, correct on both accounts. After he had resigned from the sheriff’s office in shame after demolishing Sunny’s home (and trying to start a race war, yes, yes), his mother had been kind enough to offer him a job at her factory. He did have a knack for coming up with ideas, so it wasn’t even the worst fit, but he indeed was the first “junior product developer” at Canterlogic. “Yeah, but she didn’t listen. At the end of the day, she looked at the cost of digging up all her gizmos and decided that it was cheaper to just maintain them.”
“Meh.” She chewed her gum this way and that. “I still say we should’ve done the right thing. It’d be a sign. We could’ve said that we do it the costlier way for the greater good.”
“The greater good?” He smirked. “Yeah, you go ahead and tell her that.”
“Well, then maybe she can come down here and be the trap test dummy instead of volunteering her son.” Sweets nudged a seemingly random part of the cobblestone before smiling. “I think I found the loose part!”
Sprout frowned - he was still parsing her first sentence. “Wait, what do you mean with trap test-”
Sweets stomped down hard, and Sprout felt the machinery directly below him come to life before he heard it.
“WAIT, LEMME-”
The sliding doors moved to the side with much more speed than he had anticipated, and he did a literal mid-air somersault before landing... on the metal plate of the Unicorn Entrapment Device.
“Ah, shoot,” he managed to mutter before the trap activated. The metal parts sprung free almost instantaneously, locking him in a dark box. Great. He rolled his eyes. My second time in one of these stupid boxes after that Izzy’s first visit. And I’m still wondering: why didn’t we install lights in these traps? I mean, sure, bwahaha, the evil unicorn got trapped, but then what? Just let them rot in a dark cell? He made a mental note to suggest some quality-of-life features for whatever next iteration of these traps there might be.
For the moment, though, he had more pressing concerns. Starting with number one: why am I still in here? He reached into the small bag hanging over his shoulder where his old badge used to be and fished out his cellphone. Phones and wireless communication via short-range radio were of course no alien concepts to him, but wireless phones had been news to the Earth pony populace. Granted, we don’t have quite as much of a pressing need for them, especially since there are so few of these antennas that they only work for calls within Maretime Bay and Zephyr Heights, respectively, but... He poked one of the speed dial contacts and could hear a faint ring coming from the other side of the metal wall in front of him.
“Good afternoon,” Sweets answered the phone in her best, mocking, sing-song voice, “you have reached the Canterlogic Field Office. This is Sweets-”
“Would you KINDLY push the button!?”
A groan. “You never let me have any fun, boss... Fine, lemme un... lock... this... the hay?”
Sprout blinked. This did not sound like her usual banter. “Um, what’s going on out there?”
Instead of answering him directly, Sweets finally pushed the button, causing the metal cage to retract back into the ground.
It took Sprout a few moments to get used to the sudden change in brightness. “Okay, what’s-...” He frowned when he realized that she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was looking past him. He turned around... and blinked when he saw two Earth ponies, a stallion and a mare, walking down the street in their general direction.
Except that they weren’t exactly Earth ponies in the strictest sense.
Because Earth ponies did not have glittering coats and manes that caused the sunlight to dance off their smooth bodies. In fact, the only things about them that were not glittering were their saddlebags. Although those were looking really expensive.
“...betcha ten bits that this is somehow Sunny’s doing,” Sprout muttered.
“...come to think of it, it would be nice if Sunny was in town right now,” Sweets answered without taking on the bet.
“CITIZENS OF CANTERLOT,” the stallion shouted when he apparently felt that he had the attention of every pony in a half-mile radius. “FEAR NOT; WE HAVE COME TO PUT AN END TO THIS TIME OF DREAD AND AGONY!”
“...that doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Sweets snarked. “Also... this is Maretime Bay.”
“...ah.” He frowned mildly at that. “CITIZENS OF MARETIME-”
“YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO SUFFER UNDER THE TYRANNY OF MAGIC FOR MUCH LONGER!” his companion cut him off to keep up the momentum.
Several ponies in Sprout’s vicinity slowly turned to look at him.
“Whoa, whoa!” Sprout snapped. “Way to jump to conclusions there! These folks have nothing to do with me, okay?” He huffed. “I swear, you try to keep things the way they are once, and you never live it down...”
“WE ONLY REQUEST A MEETING WITH THE DESCENDANT OF CLOVAH LEIF!”
Clovah Leif? I never heard of any- Sprout froze when he realized that he had heard a very similar name. Very, very often. And the ponies around him came to the same conclusion because now, all ponies were looking at him. And they were not looking pleased. As if my reputation wasn’t ruined enough already. I apologized! I resigned! I accepted that I’m not the hero! And now these two walking disco balls are trying to drag me through the mud again? He narrowed his eyes at them. “Sweets, why don’t you go back to the factory?”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather-”
“Now.”
“...fine,” she muttered and popped her gum one last time. “Call me if you need anything. Don’t call me if you get roped into another stupid plot to divide the pony races.”
He didn’t bother to reply and instead marched forward. “I am Sprout,” he announced. “And I am the son of Phyllis Cloverleaf, so you’re probably looking for me.”
The two strange ponies immediately focused their attention on him and hurried closer. “Greetings, Son of Phyllis!” The stallion stood half a head taller than Sprout, but that was the least of the latter’s worries right now. “Your time of destiny has come!”
“Right. Right.” Sprout forced a grin. “Why don’t we go to my place so you can tell me what’s going on? Also, my name is Sprout.”
The stallion’s smile faltered, but he quickly forced a grin of his own. “Certainly! Lead the way, Son of Phyllis!”
“Well,” the strange stallion announced after Sprout had led them into his room, “are you rich, or do all ponies live such a... comfortable life?” Somehow, he made it sound like an indictment.
“...a bit of column A, a bit of column B?” Sprout tried. He of course knew that the Cloverleaf home was more impressive than the average house in Maretime Bay, but he suspected that these strange ponies simply had different views of what “comfort” meant.
There was a long pause, and Sprout suspected that the other stallion had absolutely no idea what a column was. “I see,” the sparkling pony finally muttered. “Anyway, Son of Phyllis. Pack your bags. DESTINY AWAITS US!”
“...right,” Sprout said after a long pause of his own. “First of all, my name is still Sprout. And why don’t you start by explaining who you are, what you are, and what this is all about?”
The stallion snorted but then merely rolled his eyes. “I see that somebody down your line of ancestors screwed up somewhere. No fault of your own, but still aggravating. Let’s keep this brief.” He waved at the pony by his side.
The mare cleared her throat. “Very well,” she said. “My name is Cotton Gleam, and this is my brother, Brick Gleam. We are the children of Cedar Gleam. And as you have certainly deduced from our appearance, we are Crystal Ponies.”
“...Crystal Ponies? I never even heard of them.” He frowned. “And are those really your names? Because, uh, bricks and cotton don’t gleam.” The same goes for cedars, but I’m not here to badmouth your mother or father.
“They do in the Crystal Empire,” Cotton Gleam said. She seemed less annoyed by his question than he had feared, but her look told him not to make fun of their names. Ever.
“So... this Crystal Empire... is... an Earth pony... country...? Except... shinier?”
The siblings hesitated. “Few Crystal Ponies have a horn or wings,” Brick Gleam ended up answering the question. “And it’s not a country. More like... a kingdom.”
“Larger than Canterlot,” Cotton Gleam added, “but not larger than... what was it called again? Manehattan?”
“I’ve never heard of either of those, so I’ll just take your word for it.”
“Y-...” Brick Gleam shook his head. Despite being made of crystal, his mane still moved like real hair. Somehow. “You have never heard of Canterlot? But you are the descendant of Clovah Leif! Destined to accompany us to Canterlot and to take care of things after we destroyed magic and banished the Crystal Empire once more!”
“Wh-... what?” Sprout unceremoniously sat down on the floor. “I... I mean... what?”
Brick Gleam gave him a long and pointed look. “Which part of this was news to you?”
“ALL OF IT!” Sprout yelped, then thought about it. “Okay, you did hint at the magic part before, but... you actually want to destroy magic? And you want to banish the Crystal Empire? I thought that’s your home!”
“We do hail from the Crystal Empire,” Cotton Gleam quickly spoke up when she saw her brother’s angry expression. “However, the Crystal Empire in its current form is a mockery. A hollow echo of its former glory. A glorious utopia run by the immortal and kind Princess Flurry Heart. Disgusting. A caricature of what it used to be.”
Sprout gave her a puzzled look. One of these descriptions had not been quite like the others.
Cotton Gleam didn’t seem to notice, though. “Ah, if only you could have seen the old Crystal Empire. The proper Crystal Empire. A glorious people, benevolently enslaved by the cruel King Sombra.” She took a deep, dreamy breath, then sighed. “Granted, we did not, strictly speaking, see it ourselves. The wondrous age of King Sombra was cut short more than a thousand years before our time. All because of the vile diarchy.”
“Princess Celestia and Prince Tiberius,” Brick Gleam explained quietly, as if not to steal his sister’s thunder.
“They banished him!” Cotton Gleam shrieked. “BANISHED!” She took a moment to catch her breath. “At least he did the proper thing and took his rightful kingdom with him to a place where time stood still.”
“Wait, did he actually take the entire Crystal Emp-”
“King Sombra was trapped for a thousand years, but then he - and the Crystal Empire - returned.” Cotton Gleam nodded sagely. “All seemed well... at least until the sinister Princess Cadance and her husband, Prince Daki Makura, came along and savagely murdered him!”
“...you know, I always feel that somepony made a transliteration error with his name,” Brick Gleam mused quietly.
“He was foreign,” his sister hissed. “We’ve been over this!” She quickly cleared her throat. “Anyway. King Sombra’s tyranny ended, only to be replaced by love and kindness. The Crystal Empire grew soft. And then... do you know what happened then, Son of Phyllis?”
It’s still Sprout, Sprout thought but didn’t bother to point it out again. “Uh... something even worse? Like... free puppies for all?”
She gave him an open scowl. “And then they brought their spawn into this world. Princess Flurry Heart. And she was raised to be just and sweet.”
“How... horrible?” Sprout tried, but he had genuine trouble understanding how these ponies ticked. Even his most demented daydreams about evil pegasus ponies or unicorns had never come close to this warped view of the world.
“It was.” She huffed. “You wouldn’t have liked it.”
“Yeah, it sure sounds like a living nightmare,” he muttered and rolled his eyes when the siblings nodded in agreement.
“So we did what any sane pony would have done.”
He hesitated. “You... tried to destroy magic?”
Cotton Gleam blinked. “What? No, don’t be absurd.” She exchanged bewildered looks with her brother. “We tried to murder her first.”
“...ah.”
“When that did not work, the Spawn of Cadance exiled us from her little paradise.” She briefly gritted her teeth before shaking her head. “Anyway, then we destroyed magic.”
“Which is why we need you,” Brick Gleam added. “For you see-”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Sprout waved his hoof. “So far, you talked about wanting to destroy magic. But... you did it?” He thought about the implications of that sentence. “You two are the reason why nopony had magic for generations and lived in fear and distrust of the other pony races?”
“You’re welcome.” Brick Gleam seemed oddly proud.
This could have been me, Sprout suddenly realized. I had been like this. Not quite as insane and filled with the intent to murder somepony, mind you. But I had wanted to keep magic out of our lives. I had tried to keep up the fear of the other races. His mouth went dry. Is this what the other ponies saw when they looked at me? An insane pony who would brag about how he kept magic out of this world and waged war on the other races? Would I have been this proud if I had successfully stopped Sunny?
“And now the time has come to repeat our act of heroism!”
“Wait, wait, rewind a bit. Why did you destroy magic? What does that have to do with your home?”
“The Crystal Empire is anchored to this world by magic,” Cotton Gleam explained, even as her brother was looking increasingly impatient. “If this anchor is disrupted, the Crystal Empire returns to the void outside of time and space. That’s how King Sombra managed to take it with him when he had been banished.”
“...ah,” Sprout said, but he was still deep in thought. I had Sunny, her friends, and even Mommy to stop me. But who will stop them? He groaned quietly when the answer hit him.
“So there you have it,” Brick Gleam stated. “That’s why we need the Lämp.”
“...the lamp?”
“The Lämp.”
“Lamp?”
“Lämp!”
“...why are you pronouncing that so weirdly?”
“LÄMP!”
“WHAT LAMP?”
“LÄMP ÖV ÄL VÄNGEN!”
Sprout squinted at that. The more he heard, the less he understood. “Lamp... of... Al Wangen?” He frowned.
“DID THEY NOT TEACH YOU ONE BLASTED THING, YOU IMBECILE?” Brick Gleam roared. Then he reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a piece of paper.
Sprout looked at the drawing on it and frowned. It depicted... a desk lamp. Flat foot, thin neck, cone-shaped lamp shade. No cord, oddly enough. “Oh, that looks familiar,” he muttered and tried to remember where he had seen this design before. And then it hit him. “Alvangen! Of course!”
“PRAISE THE MAKERS!” Brick Gleam shouted, looking massively relieved. “Yes! The Lämp öv Äl Vängen.”
“Sure, that. ...but why do you need an ugly desk lamp?”
Brick Gleam seemingly went through the five stages of grief multiple times before taking a very deep breath. “Son of Phyllis, I need you to make a promise,” he finally whispered. “When you die and meet your ancestors... try to find out who failed their duties. And once you find that pony, slap them.”
“Right,” Sprout whispered back. “But my name is still Sprout.”
“Calling somepony by their first name is a sign of respect,” Brick Gleam hissed. “So maybe you should start earning it.”
Wow, guy’s got some nerve. So should I start calling him “Son of Cedar?” Sprout rolled his eyes.
Which, unlike his inner monologue, was something Brick Gleam noticed. “Is that your reaction to me telling you the ways of our people?” he snarled. And then, because being a jerk verbally wasn’t enough, he actually tackled Sprout.
“H-HEY HEY HEY WAIT A SECOND!” Sprout yelped even as he hit the ground.
He tried to scramble away, but the larger stallion placed a front hoof on his chest and applied just enough pressure to make his point. “Get. The. Lämp.” The pressure increased ever so slightly. “Now.”
“Yes, yes, yes, sorry,” Sprout whined. A part of him wanted to cry, not (only) because of the slight pain, but because everything about Brick Gleam made him feel like a foal by comparison. He’s stronger, he’s more determined, he’s angrier. What can I possibly do against him? How am I supposed to stop him? He sniffled. I’m not the hero! I’m just a brat! A screw-up! Not good enough for sheriff, not even good enough for deputy! An idiot! He froze when he saw the faintest hint of a chance. ...but this guy may just be an even bigger idiot than me.
Sprout almost laughed when he realized what he had to do. The fate of magic depends on me being the smartest pony in the room. “The lamp’s up in the attic,” he heard himself say. “I’ll get it.”
“Make haste, Son of Phyllis,” Brick Gleam intoned and removed his hoof. “And see if you can also find a map of Equestria that still shows where Canterlot is.”
Sprout opened the attic door and lowered the ladder attached to it. Then he climbed up. Much to his surprise, neither of the siblings followed him. Maybe I can just make a run for it from here? He frowned when he saw that the sole window allowing access to the roof would have been a tight fit for a medium-sized bird. Yeah, okay, no.
“Ah, quick question,” he shouted to buy himself some time. “What’s the deal with Canterlot again?”
Brick Gleam’s groan was audible even one floor up. “Canterlot. The capital of Equestria. Maybe it got renamed since we last went there.” A pause, followed by a sigh. “Go ahead. Ask.”
“...why do you want to go there?”
There was a quiet curse. “There is an ancient artifact that saturates Equestria with magic. It is so old that nopony knows its original name or if it even has a name. Some call it the Trinity Crystal, others the Heart of Magic. It’s a set of three crystals, and it’s kept at the School for Gifted Unicorns.”
That made Sprout blink, and he actually leaned down through the attic hatch. “...wait, the most important artifact in the history of this continent was kept at a school?”
Cotton Gleam gave him a genuine shrug. “We were as surprised as you are, Son of Phyllis. You would expect something like this to be in some sort of high-security vault, but it had been kept in the open, hanging proudly over a central arch in the main hallway. Princess Celestia either realized that the crystal set wouldn’t work in a vault or she tried to hide it in plain sight.”
Brick Gleam nodded slowly to himself. “As you will travel with us, you will come to realize that there are some truly odd ponies out there.”
“Yyyeah, I kinda noticed that,” Sprout muttered as he pulled his head back.
He started to shuffle through the boxes that had been stored up here before his birth. None of them had been meant for his eyes, of course. It had been pure coincidence that the hatch leading to the attic was in what later became his room.
When he had been a foal, he had regarded the boxed items as secret treasures, wondering what stories were behind them. As he got older, though, he had started to view them as old junk. Some old books (he wasn’t an avid reader), vinyl records (with music that had probably been old whenever his parents had been dating), and, well, assorted items. Discarded designs, spare parts, and... prototypes. Of course, nothing that could be weaponized. Canterlogic’s patented line of self-defense items was slightly too dangerous to be kept in an attic of the company founder’s home. However, Canterlogic did supply Maretime Bay with affordable, mass-produced consumer products. Kitchen appliances, DIY tools, and, well... desk lamps.
“Alvangen,” he whispered when he found the box he had first stumbled over years ago. The name had been scrawled onto a generic, white, slightly too large box. He flipped it open and saw the first iteration of the lamp that could still be found on the shelves of Maretime Bay’s Canterlogic shop to this day.
He had always assumed that the lamp in this box was a proof of concept or a design dummy. The lack of a cord was a dead giveaway that this lamp had probably never worked. But I thought that Mommy or maybe her parents had designed it. He narrowed his eyes. Not that it was named after somepony called... Al Vangen or whatever.
“SON OF PHYLLIS!?”
Oh, for the love of- “Yes, I got it!” Think, Sprout! What do you do? ...and why do these crazy ponies need this lamp, anyway? I suppose there is only one way to find out.
He climbed down carefully, holding the lamp in one hoof. “Here, this is probably what you’re-”
“YES!” Brick Gleam exclaimed, and his sister was beaming as well. “The sleek design! The black base! The white lampshade! Simplicity meets perfection!”
“...y’know,” Sprout said, “if this whole ‘banish the Crystal Empire’ gig doesn’t work out for you, we might hire you into the Canterlogic marketing team.”
Brick Gleam didn’t even seem to hear him. “Now... to see if this truly is the Lämp Öv Äl Vängen.” He put it on the floor and carefully poked the small on/off switch on the base.
The lamp did not do what Sprout expected it to not do. Or... maybe it did what he expected it to not do. Or maybe it didn’t do what he expected it to do... not. Sprout frowned briefly, then shook his head. The light did not go on. There.
However, something did happen.
Most noticeably, Sprout got a mild headache and started not feeling that great.
Then he gave the two Crystal Ponies a look and revised his assessment.
Most noticeably, the overall shine of the Gleam siblings had been replaced by a dull matte texture, making them still look impressive but... less impressive. Second most noticeably, Sprout got a mild headache and started not feeling that great.
Also, a pegasus literally dropped out of the sky, screaming as he fell past one of the windows.
Sprout groaned and adjusted the list of noticeable effects again.
Then he froze when he realized what he had just witnessed. That pegasus didn’t just fall - he could not fly anymore! He gave the window a wide-eyed look, even as the two Crystal Ponies were openly cheering. THIS STUPID DESK LAMP KILLED MAGIC NEARBY!?
“YES! YESSS!” Brick Gleam hugged his sister, looking more like a delighted foal than a lunatic who had just undone what Sunny and her friends had risked life and limb for. “IT STILL WORKS!” He finally leaned over and poked the lamp’s switch again.
Sprout’s headache vanished almost immediately, and the two Crystal Ponies regained their characteristic shine. And assuming that that poor guy outside didn’t flat out die, he can probably fly again. He gave the lamp a look through narrow eyes.
Many things could be said about Sprout. He wasn’t good with other ponies. He didn’t always consider the consequences of his actions. He was a sucker for power. But even his most prominent critics admitted two things: that he knew how to influence ponies and that he had inherited his knack for designs and machinery from his mother. And now, those two sides of him were desperately trying to hatch out a plan. Because one thing was for sure: even if all this talk about banishing some city was hogwash, those two lunatics could not be trusted with a device that could disable magic at the press of a button.
“So... now what?” Sprout asked, trying not to sound too unnerved.
“Actually, I have been thinking.” Brick Gleam frowned. “Our original plan had been for you to join us. We were supposed to travel to Canterlot, use the Lämp to destabilize the crystals - maybe after we murder whatever idiot had put them together again - and break them up again. Since we are Crystal Ponies native to the Crystal Empire, the end of magic would also banish us. Which in turn would leave you behind to secure the Lämp as your ancestor had done in the past. Then, if somepony restores magic again, we’d look for your descendant, get the Lämp back, yadda, yadda, yadda.” He took a deep breath. “However, I have come to the realization that - and please don’t take this personally - you are a moron. Again, please don’t take this personally! This is not your fault; you are the victim here! But I believe that it is for the greater good if you stay behind. We will recruit a new generational guardian for the Lämp once we arrive in Canterlot.”
Sprout was this close to complaining about his hurt pride, but something about Brick Gleam’s phrasing made him pause. The greater good. He was suddenly acutely aware of his shoulder bag and the cellphone in it. Then he gave the lamp another look. “Yeah... that’ll work,” he whispered.
“I knew you would understand, Son of Phyllis,” Brick Gleam said and smiled, unaware that Sprout hadn’t been talking to him. “Assuming that there is nothing you wish to add, we will get going, then.”
“Right!” Sprout said after hesitating just a moment too long. “Have a safe trip and all that!” He smiled widely and nodded as he led them through his room and towards the door, strategically walking past a window overlooking the street. Okay, Sprout. You once talked the entire town into joining a race war. Let’s see if you can fast-talk two idiots into doing what you want. “I hope that you-AUGH!”
Brick Gleam immediately dropped into a fighting pose. “What is it!?”
He started to move towards the window, but Sprout pushed him away. “Crystal Ponies!” he lied. “A dozen of them!”
“They must be aware of what we did!” Cotton Gleam yelped.
“We must fight!” Brick Gleam snapped, but he didn’t sound entirely convinced.
Really? I make up a dozen enemies, and he still wants to go out there? Sprout grimaced. “And there was another pony! I think it was Princess Fuzzy Heart!”
“Flurry Heart,” Brick Gleam corrected him even as he was giving him a panicked look.
“She had, like, four wings! And three horns! A hideous creature made of pure crystal!”
“By Sombra’s beard!” Brick Gleam exclaimed. “She must have evolved!”
Pretty sure that evolution does not work that way, but cool. “Yes! Quickly! You need to hide in there!” He shoved them out of his room and toward the bathroom. “I’ll try to lure them away! Then you make a break for it!”
Cotton Gleam went in first, but Brick Gleam stopped in the door and turned around. “You have our gratitude, Son of Phyllis,” he whispered.
“Yeah, you’re welcome!” Sprout hissed and closed the bathroom door.
Then he hurried back to his room and picked up the ancient artifact of doom that the siblings had forgotten to pick up in their panic.
“Good afternoon, you have reached Canterlogic, your one-stop shop for all pon-”
“SWEETS!” Sprout snapped into his cellphone’s headset even as he ran down the street. (Yes, the pegasus had been fine... ish.)
“No need to shout, boss, I’m not deaf... yet.”
“I need you to do me a massive favor!”
“...if those two ponies who rambled about the tyranny of magic talked you into another war, I’m going to hang up.”
Sprout rolled his eyes and ducked into a side street. “I need your help to prevent another war,” he hissed.
There was a long pause. Finally, he heard the soft pop of her gum. “...I’m listening.”
Okay, so far, so good, Sprout thought as he left the Canterlogic shop in the heart of Maretime Bay. All the prep work is done. Now I just need-
“THERE HE IS!” Brick Gleam roared.
Sprout glanced over his shoulder and saw the two enraged Crystal Ponies running towards him from the other end of the street. “Early, but that’ll do,” he muttered and slung the bag containing the lamp onto his back. Then he started to run away.
His plan was by no means foolproof. In fact, it was so shaky that he was surprised he had made it out of the door of his family’s home. But his streak of good luck seemingly was about to run out because the two Crystal Ponies were rapidly catching up with him. (Apparently, traveling all across the continent in the name of some bonkers mission built muscles and stamina a lot more than being a deputy in a small town. Go figure.)
Think, think, think! They can’t catch you now! Not this early! He was already starting to get winded, and the hoofsteps of the siblings were getting closer. I need to slow them down! Argh! Where’s a Splat-a-pult when you really need one? But nooo, let’s get rid of all our defenses the moment Sunny learns to fly! What’s the worst that could happen? OH WAIT, THIS! He gritted his teeth but then blinked when he realized that not all defenses had been dismantled.
He stopped abruptly and turned around to face the two ponies chasing him. Cotton Gleam was in the lead, but her brother was just a few steps behind her. “NICE TRY,” she snapped before stopping in front of him. “But this is the end of the road for-”
Sprout stepped on the part of the cobblestone Sweets had inspected earlier. He felt the click of the machinery more than he heard it, and a moment later, Cotton Gleam was thrown into the air by the sliding doors. Then she landed face-first on the pressure plate, and the metal box popped up like clockwork. Okay, I’m starting to understand why Sweets was so amused by this!
“What-...” Brick Gleam stared at the Unicorn Entrapment Device before giving Sprout a murderous look. “WHAT IS THAT!? RELEASE HER!”
“BRICK!” Cotton Gleam’s muffled shout came from within the box, making her brother look at it again. “HELP!”
Sprout used the momentary distraction to make a run for it. “HAVE FUN FIGURING IT OUT!” he shouted over his shoulder.
“SON OF PHYLLIS! COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!”
It’s still Sprout! he thought but didn’t waste his breath.
He had just reached the hill leading up to the Canterlogic factory when he heard the by now familiar cries of the Crystal Pony siblings behind him. But for once, they were exactly what he wanted to hear. “We ready?” he shouted before stopping next to Sweets, who was busy overseeing several ponies.
“Hey, boss,” she muttered, then raised an eyebrow at him. “You look out of breath.”
“Chased... by lunatics,” he wheezed. “I need to exercise more... or get chased less...”
She smirked at that but then looked past him and frowned. “We’re ready. Eleven units fully kitted out, twelfth one standing by.” She pointed at one of the twelve kits the Canterlogic workers had set up on the hillside.
“Perfect,” Sprout praised her and hurried over to it.
The Crystal Ponies skidded to a halt in front of him. “THERE IS NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN, SON OF-”
“-Phyllis, yes, I know, I know,” Sprout cut him off. Then he flashed them his best smile. “But I don’t intend to run any further today.”
“So hoof over the Lämp, and I may consider only punching you once for attempting to deceive us,” Brick Gleam snarled.
“You may wonder why I brought you here,” Sprout spoke loudly, slipping into his presentation mode and ignoring the other stallion.
“The. Lämp. Now.”
“I invited you here for a product demonstration!” Sprout waved at the assembled kits. The green metal backpacks looked unassuming... if one ignored the fact that they were metal backpacks and that wires were leading away from them to a central console staffed by a Canterlogic employee. “These are Canterlogic Earth Pony Balloon Escape Packs! Designed to allow for rapid take-off and extraction in case of a unicorn insurgency. Let the balloons take you where the evil horns can’t get you!”
The siblings exchanged startled looks. They were either confused by the sales pitch or his sudden lack of fear. Then, Cotton Gleam did a double-take. “Those are-...” She waved at the kits. Or rather, at the desk lamps that had been attached to the Escape Packs. “How can there be multiple copies of the Lämp?”
Sprout used that moment of confusion to fish the lamp from his backpack. He quickly slapped it onto the side of the last Escape Pack, which had been slathered up with glue by one of the Canterlogic ponies on site. “These are Canterlogic Alvangen Desk Lamps! They usually come with cords, but our people took the liberty of yanking them out.”
Brick Gleam looked at the lamps that had been prepared by the staff, then at the one Sprout had just glued to the side of the last Escape Pack. His eyes widened in horror when he realized that they looked absolutely identical. “What is the meaning of this, Son of Phyllis?” he whispered.
“You know... I used to think of myself as the hero,” Sprout told him, his smile fading slightly. “The brave pony who defends this town against the vile pegasus ponies and the despicable unicorns. But... as it turned out, I wasn’t the hero. And... I’m quite likely still not the hero. Prolly never gonna be the hero, really.”
He briefly looked down.
“But I can stop being the villain.”
Before Brick Gleam had a chance to comment on his little speech, Sprout raised his left foreleg, and the employee at the control terminal pushed a button. The metal hatches of the twelve Escape Packs popped open in perfect sync. Half a second later, dozens of colorful balloons in each Escape Pack inflated rapidly, lifting them - and the lamps - up in the air.
“NO!” Brick Gleam actually tried to jump after the closest backpack, but it was already way too far away. “NOOOOOOOO!” He gave Sprout a wide-eyed look. “Do you have any idea what you have done, Sprout?”
There we go! Sprout smiled. “I would say I finally earned your respect.”
Brick Gleam blinked, then reviewed his last sentence. His expression locked up somewhere between a smile and bloodthirsty rage. “We will search the lands,” he finally hissed. “We will find the real Lämp. And then we will move on to Canterlot.”
Sprout made a show of looking up. The sea breeze was spreading the lightweight Escape Packs far and wide. “Uhuh. Might wanna start moving, though. Would be a real shame if some other pony found one of them before you and took it home.” His smile widened. “Gosh, that would-”
In hindsight, he should have seen the punch coming. It... wouldn’t have done him any good, but then he would have been prepared for it, at least. Without any such preparation, he just hit the ground face-first and winced. Brick Gleam was towering above him even as Canterlogic security was moving in. “You have thrown away your legacy, Sprout,” Brick Gleam muttered. He sounded... tired. Defeated. “When Clovah Leif helped us, he assured us that his descendants would-”
“Clovah Leif was an idiot,” Sprout hissed. “And you already forgot the most important thing.” When Brick Gleam only raised a crystal eyebrow, Sprout allowed himself a grin. “Clock is ticking, Son of Cedar. Clock. Is. Ticking.”
Brick Gleam’s expression became openly hostile when he realized Sprout had chosen not to call him by his first name. “YOU LITTLE-”
Cotton Gleam pulled him away before he could trample Sprout. “Brick, we need to move!” she hissed.
“THE END OF MAGIC IS NIGH!” Brick Gleam roared even as he let his sister lead him back into the town, undoubtedly towards one of the exits leading into the wilderness. “MARK MY WORDS! THE END IS NIGH!”
“That went well,” Sprout muttered to himself as he struggled to get back to his hooves.
“What was that all about, boss?” Sweets asked and carefully helped him up.
My ancestor helped to destroy magic, and I just had to play keep-away with an anti-magic doomsday weapon. He gave her a long look. No, he decided. As much as I’d love to brag about this, I feel that this is one secret I literally have to take to my grave. The more ponies know about this, the more likely it is that some evil pony with more brain cells than these two goons will come to look for it. He frowned. Then again, she heard enough to not be satisfied by a blatant lie. “They’re lunatics who think they can start a war with the power of an old desk lamp,” he finally said, phrasing the truth in the most absurd way possible.
Sweets raised an eyebrow, then fished a pack of gum out of a small bag around her front leg. “Buncha nutcases,” she muttered and popped one stick into her mouth. “And your family actually kept that thing around?”
“Yeah, turns out that I’m not the dumbest pony in my family tree.”
She gave him a look, then smiled. “Far from it, it seems.” A pause. “I feel you handled this well. Nice speech, too. Dunno why you didn’t just give it to them, but I can appreciate some good trolling.”
“...thank you.”
“So...” Her head slowly turned to where the two Crystal Ponies had run off to. “Turns out that not everypony out there is friendly. Your mother will probably feel vindicated once she learns about this.”
“Likely.” He tilted his head slightly. “But you were right.”
“Mh?”
“I’ll tell her that we should dismantle the remaining traps.”
“...not what I expected, especially not after all of this.”
“I know, I know...” He shook his head. “But let’s just say that I want Canterlogic to get a fresh start. I learned a lot about my legacy today, and it’s time to get on the right side of history for once. If Sunny feels that we should work on something more offensive again, fine. But until then, let’s do away with all of these active reminders of how badly my family screwed up.”
“Look at you go! They should promote you to the PR department at this rate!” She got out a small notepad and a pen. “So, the first order of business, boss?”
He chuckled, but deep down, he was beaming with pride. “Tell everypony that they did an amazing job. Assign some ponies on clean-up duty as well. Then schedule another launch for tomorrow. Let’s keep those two loonies busy.” He hesitated. “Oh, and make the staff promise not to rat me out to Hitch. If he learns that I littered all over the continent, he will never get off my case.”
Sweets nearly choked on her gum but managed to compose herself after coughing violently for half a minute. “Gotcha,” she croaked. “And what will you do?”
I will return to the Canterlogic shop and pick up the real lamp I left there with the employee. Oh, and I should probably pay for the one I grabbed as a replacement to fool those two idiots. He shrugged. “Eh. Some shopping.”
It had been a delightfully uneventful week. No Crystal Ponies returning to Maretime Bay for vengeance, no sudden end of magic, no four-digit littering fine.
There had, however, been a long talk with his mother about their family. He hadn’t told her any critical details of what had happened, but he quickly realized that she had also not received any instructions regarding the lamp. Or Lämp, for that matter.
Thankfully, she had been quite open to his plans for a new era for Canterlogic, and now he was standing on the main street of Maretime Bay, overseeing the road works. “Great job, everypony!” he cheered as the workers poured cement into the hole left behind after the removal of the last remaining Unicorn Entrapment Device. Two unicorns were standing by to lift a commemorative plaque made of granite onto it. Each hole had been fitted with one, and each plaque contained a different, uplifting message.
He turned around and walked down the street, nodding to himself. Then he stopped briefly at one of the former trap locations. It was the one he had used to get rid of the ancient doomsday lamp before the team had poured in the cement. He gave the plaque a look and smiled to himself before moving on.
For a better future. For the greater good.
