The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

by McPoodle

Rating: everyone
Tags: Spike, Comedy, Adventure, DJ P0N-3, Main 6, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Nightmare Moon
Length: 35341

Vinyl Scratch is forced to take Twilight's place facing off against Nightmare Moon

Vinyl Scratch wakes up to find herself the personal student of Princess Celestia, sent to the obscure village of Ponyville to oversee preparations for the millennial Summer Sun Celebration.

Vinyl can only imagine two possible explanations for what has happened: she has tumbled into an alternate universe where she's Twilight Sparkle, or, after everypony telling her she'd do it eventually, she's finally gone and lost her mind.

Alternate Universe tag is obvious. Missing though, is the Drama tag (oh wait, they have that now--fixed!), and the "She's Finally Gone and Lost Her Mind" tag, which may be substituted by a CrazyPinkie emoticon.

Cover illustration based on a work by ThatsGrotesque. I'd love to see an artist include the versions of the Mane Six from this fanfic, though.

Published 2012-09-14 10:04:08 UTC
Last updated 2012-09-26 04:21:29 UTC

Chapter 1: A Mad, Unreasoning, Directed Panic

Thought Experiments 1:

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 1: A Mad, Unreasoning, Directed Panic

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there lived a unicorn named Vinyl Scratch.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! went the song in her mind...

Vinyl Scratch was a pony of extraordinary musical talent, and this talent had earned her the honor of being Princess Celestia’s personal student.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap...

For ten years Vinyl Scratch had devoted herself to her studies, sparing no time to socialize with her peers in Celestia’s School of Music.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

In this time, she grew from a shy filly into an opinionated young mare.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap...

Now she was being sent on the greatest test of her life, a test that began with a hot-air balloon trip from the royal capital of Canterlot to an insignificant little village called Ponyville.

The balloon floated gently on the pre-dawn breezes. Slowly, another sound grew to prominence over the whistling of the wind: a single violin playing a lonely tune. This sound seemed to emanate from the very heavens themselves.

Vinyl Scratch clambered up from her napping posture at the bottom of the basket. Her coat was the color of eggshells, and her mane and tail were equal parts blue and cyan in color. On her flank were two musical notes. Vinyl’s ears swiveled about as she sought in vain for the source of the music she was hearing. By now the violin had been joined by an entire heavenly ensemble of strings, playing a sweet song of ever rising notes. And then, it seemed by their bidding, the sun suddenly rose above the horizon.

A wave of yellow light washed out over the mountains and plains, illuminating an entire world of beauty. The pony witnessing this should have been awe-inspired, overwhelmed with thoughts of incredible well-being and love for all of the pony’s fellow creatures.

Instead, she was overcome with fear and horror. I am at a loss to explain why she felt that way. Perhaps this song reminded her that she would have to put on a performance for the inhabitants of Ponyville in less than twenty-four hours. In fact, I’m certain now that it was stage fright that caused the pony to dive back down into the basket in a panic.

It most certainly was not stage fright.

The unicorn had been struck by a fundamental contradiction, one that could not be resolved:

Vinyl Scratch was looking upon the most beautiful vista she had ever seen.

And Vinyl Scratch had been blind since birth.

She was confident that both of these facts were absolutely true. And yet they could not both be true at the same time.

Secondary to this was another, lesser mystery: She had woken up to the fading strains of a rock song with a persistent bass and drum line that had been replaced by the violin tune. The song was one that she knew she knew, and one that she somehow knew was vitally important to her, but she didn’t know where she had heard the song before.

Vinyl Scratch squeezed her face into the wall and wrapped her forelegs tightly around her head, as if she could somehow push the sunrise out of existence just by blocking it out of her vision.

“Vinyl?” asked a voice next to her. “Vinyl, what’s wrong?”

Vinyl knew that voice.

“S...Spike?” she asked, keeping her face hidden. “What’s going on?”

“It’s your arrangement, Vinyl,” the baby dragon replied. “Did you hear it? I know you told me to wake you when we landed at Ponyville, but I couldn’t let you sleep through the premiere.”

This statement made absolutely no sense to Vinyl, so she focused on her other senses besides hearing and the impossible sense of vision. In doing so, Vinyl realized that the sharp point poking into an elbow was her sunglasses. With her eyelids squeezed shut, she used her horn’s telekinesis to put them on. For some reason this act was accompanied by a sound like a note from a French horn. Regaining her glasses did a lot to calm Vinyl down, as she always got an extreme reaction from any pony who had ever seen her when she wasn’t wearing them. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

Her functional, completely normal pony eyes.

She focused on the crisscross pattern before her for several moments before realizing that it was the wall of the balloon’s basket, and that it was tinted purple because that was the color of her sunglasses’ lenses. She realized she was still hyperventilating, and took a few deep breaths. Finally she sat up, and looked around her.

Vinyl Scratch used her horn’s telekinesis to put on her large purple sunglasses. She didn’t really need to wear her sunglasses, but she found it a good way to distance herself from those that sought to get too close to her. After a few moments of controlling her breathing and staring at the walls of the basket, she looked up at the worried baby dragon standing beside her.

This didn’t make any sense. Even if by some miracle she had suddenly gained the ability to see, Vinyl had never been able to see before. She shouldn’t be able to tell what the color purple was, or what Spike looked like. She even remembered what his egg had looked like right before it hatched...

The brief mental image provoked a second panic attack in Vinyl Scratch. How could I know what it looked like? she asked herself. She replayed the image in her mind, an image from the most important day in Vinyl’s life: the day she became Princess Celestia’s prime student.

But I’m not! her mind screamed back. This in turn was refuted by more memories. The Princess had seen some kind of potential in her, and had worked diligently to encourage her musical studies, until her skill was second only to the Princess’.

This fact also distressed Vinyl. Not the fact that she was musically inclined, but that the Princess considered a musical talent so important. But it was music that put those glasses on your face, Vinyl’s mind answered her, and it was your arrangement of the Rising Song, sung by Celestia, that caused the sun to rise this morning.

“My...arrangement?” Vinyl said out loud.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” said Spike, who had indeed been trying to snap her out of her trance for the past five minutes. “She probably just wants you to feel better after that letter she sent you.” And with that he pointed at a scroll at his feet.

Vinyl levitated the scroll to her, accompanied by her characteristic French horn sound, and read the letter addressed to her from Princess Celestia. Then she examined the note itself to determine its authenticity: the way it was strangely warm to the touch, the embossed tangle of tiny cords embedded into the top of the page that represented the Draconic Bloodline Code of Spike and Spike alone, and finally the similar tangle of little threads at the bottom that acted as the Princess’ “return address” (don’t ask how an alicorn ends up with a Draconic Bloodline Code—it’s complicated). This was an official missive, no question about it.

And yet Vinyl felt that she had to read the note again, and again, and again, to make absolutely sure it said what she thought it said:

My dearest, most faithful student, Vinyl,

You know that I value your diligence and that I trust you completely, but you simply must stop reading those dusty old librettos.

There is more to a young pony’s life than studying, so I'm sending you to supervise the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration in this year’s location, Ponyville, and I have an even more essential task for you to complete: make some friends!

Yours,

Celestia

The reminder of the upcoming celebration must have brought Vinyl Scratch back into full-blown panic mode.

This was all dreadfully, dreadfully wrong, thought Vinyl. Perhaps even more so than the whole seeing business. She knew this letter, by heart, but it belonged to a story in which her part was entirely forgettable. The letter should never have been addressed to her, and it was never supposed to be Vinyl in this balloon. It was supposed to be...to be...

But the answer to that query eluded her. She was the chosen student of the Princess, in a world where music was magic, and Spike was her trusted assistant and conductor. Conductor, because Vinyl Scratch was frightfully awkward around others.

Wrong! cried a new voice in her head. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Vinyl was starting to hyperventilate again. She had no idea where this other voice came from, but she somehow knew that she should know, like this was the voice of her closest and best friend that she had somehow forgotten about. Whoever she was, she sounded a lot cooler than Vinyl Scratch.

Just then the basket set down on firm ground. The time for reflection was over.

Chapter 2: Just One Perfect Village

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 2: Just One Perfect Village

Vinyl Scratch carefully poked her head up over the edge of the basket and looked around.

The balloon had landed in a square in the center of town. Off to one side was a fountain with a statue of a frolicking earth pony. Standing around, staring politely at her, were a multitude of earth ponies and unicorns, many of them carrying baskets, as if the landing was a brief interruption for them. This was then proved when many of them turned their heads away after a moment and proceeded to walk down the street and into and out of the shops that lined it. Not a single pegasus was to be seen.

There was something off about this, but Vinyl couldn’t put a hoof on it. The buildings showed signs of meticulous cleaning and all the windows sparkled in the sunlight, but the ponies appeared to have atrocious grooming habits, as all of them were covered with a fine white dust or dirt, which was kicked up and circulated among them as they walked past each other. The ponies walked with perfectly even spacing between them, entering and exiting the shops at regularly spaced intervals. They always waited their turn when talking to each other, instead of trying to yell over each other as was common in the shops of Canterlot’s town square. When it seemed like two ponies carrying groceries were certain to crash into each other, they suddenly pirouetted around each other.

It’s like the entire square is some sort of clockwork toy, thought Vinyl. Dancing to a waltz that nopony but they can hear.

In response to this suggestion, the “cool” voice in Vinyl’s head began to sing precisely in beat to the movements of the ponies, accompanied by a Techno/Trance ensemble:

Dancing bears, painted wings,
Things I almost remember.
And a song someone sings,
Once upon a December.

Just as with the rock song earlier, this was a song that Vinyl knew, but didn’t know how she knew.

Someone holds me safe and warm.
Horses prance though a silver storm.
Figures dancing gracefully across my memory...

Who are you? Vinyl asked the voice.

How should I know? it answered with a smirk. I’m in your head, remember?

One of the buildings stood out from the others because of its height: the city hall. Standing in front of the hall was a small group of ponies in formal attire, led by a tan earth pony with a gray mane and wearing spectacles. There was an odd sort of grayness in their eyes, like they had let the dust settle even there.

The always-awkward Vinyl held back and waited for Spike to make the first...wait, no, she actually jumped out of the basket and approached the group by herself. A startled Spike quickly scrambled out of the basket and in front of her to introduce her: “Announcing the Princess’ representative for the Millennial Summer Sun Celebration: Vinyl Scratch.” He gave Vinyl a brief surprised glance before turning back to face the others.

The group all bowed their heads for a few seconds, all but a white unicorn in the back, who glared at her for the briefest of moments before joining the others. This motion also displaced a cloud of dust, revealing the dignitaries to be just as slovenly as the others.

The tan pony stepped forward. “Welcome to Ponyville,” she addressed Vinyl in a grand voice, sweeping a foreleg to encompass everything around them. “I am the mayor of this village, and all of our resources are dedicated to the service of the Princess.”

“The representative requests the opportunity to review the arrangements that have been made for tomorrow morning’s activities,” said Spike.

The mayor’s eyes had been on Vinyl, so she had to search around for a few seconds before finding the diminutive figure who had just spoken. “Oh! Yes, that is quite acceptable. You will need a liaison to show you around, and as I’m personally supervising the work in the Town Hall, I will not be able to perform that honor myself.”

“That’s alright,” said Vinyl. “We’ll be happy with whoever you are able to spare.”

“I do believe that I am available, your honor,” said the white unicorn from before. The crowd parted to let her pass. She seemed by far to be the dirtiest of the ponies, but as the dust was the same color as her coat, this was only apparent when she walked. Her mane and tail were two elaborately arranged geometrical arrays of purple, and her cutie mark, which was hard to make out, appeared to be a cloud of tiny sparkles.

Spike fell in love with her at first sight.

Well...I think he fell in love with her. He was supposed to, but...hmm.

The unicorn with the purple mane introduced herself. “My name is...”

“...Rarity!” exclaimed Vinyl Scratch.

What! How?

She had instantly recognized the voice of her fillyhood friend.

The moment she said this, Spike wheeled around and gave her a look of utter confusion. “How do you know...?”

Rarity in contrast drew back as if she had been attacked by a cobra. “I am going to have to echo your dragon friend’s question, Representative Scratch. If I am not mistaken, we have never met before.”

“We...” she began, putting a hoof to her forehead.

Vinyl thought back. Her memories told her that she had been born in Canterlot, and this was the first time she had ever left the capital. And she was certain that she had never seen this unicorn before this meeting. And yet she was equally certain that she did know Rarity.

Spike looked back and forth between the two unicorns with concern before stepping forward. “Obviously, Vinyl was briefed about every pony of importance she would meet in Ponyville. Including you, Miss...uh, Rarity.” It was obvious to anypony that Spike was not a very good liar.

“Oh yes,” said Rarity, recovering herself. “Obviously.” She glanced back at the mayor and nodded her head. In response the gray pony led the others back into the hall.

Rarity turned towards Vinyl and Spike and stepped forward, offering her hoof in greeting. “I am the village’s official clothier, and may I echo my mayor’s wish that you be embraced with open hooves by the citizens of Ponyville.”

Vinyl shook the offered hoof, and immediately sneezed as the ubiquitous dust got into her nose. “Oh dear!” exclaimed Rarity, using her upraised hoof to hide a sinister smile. “I hope you’re not coming down with something.”

“There’s something about this air...” muttered Vinyl. She suddenly felt unsteady on her feet. “Do you mind if I sit down for a bit?” she asked, gesturing towards an unoccupied table and three lounge chairs a few pony-lengths away. “This trip appears to have drained me.”

“Oh, certainly!” said Rarity, guiding Vinyl to a chair. “I must apologize for the climate here. Ponyville is naturally drier than Canterlot, and with the lack of pegasus attention, it has only gotten worse. Now I need to arrange to have your balloon stored somewhere where it will not be in the way. Is that alright?”

Vinyl nodded wearily.

“Excellent. You stay right there and I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

Vinyl took off her sunglasses and massaged her closed eyes for a minute.

As she did this, she tried to figure out how she could possibly know Rarity. Her mind then wandered over to the rock ‘n’ roll tune she heard just before hearing the Rising Song, and found that she was still completely unable to remember the name or performer of the song, or when in her life she could possibly have heard it before.

Spike climbed up onto the chair next to her and slid a bowl of ice water under her nose. “Drink this,” he told her, then watched her carefully as she did so. “Vinyl...?”

“I have red eyes,” she said in wonder, looking into the small pool of water left in the bowl.

“I’ve always thought that they were very pretty eyes,” he told her.

Vinyl replaced her sunglasses and self-consciously pushed them further up her muzzle as she looked down into the bowl. “Spike, do you remember a song that starts like this...” And she gently tapped the following rhythm on the tabletop as she watched the ripples in the water: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap...

Spike thought for a few seconds. “‘Gimme Some Lovin’? Wait, that would be more like this...” And he tapped out his own rhythm on the table with one claw: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, bam! tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, bam! tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, bam! tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, bam! “Naw, I’ve got nothin’. Where’d you hear it?”

“That’s the thing,” said Vinyl, “I don’t know where I heard it, but I think it’s really important. And...another thing. I...I think I’m losing my mind,” she said, raising her head to look at him. “I’ve got...it’s like...there’s these voices in my head. My voice, telling me things I should know. But I don’t know, Spike, because they’re not real. Nothing before the moment I woke up in that basket was real. And now everything is wrong. Everything but that song.”

Spike rested a clawed hand on Vinyl’s hoof. “I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he said softly, “but I’m here for you, no matter what.”

“Spike, do you think I’m the same pony you knew from before I woke up?” she asked.

“Yes! No...I dunno. I’ll tell you one thing, though: something is very wrong with this town, and that Rarity is in the center of it, I just know it! The moment I set eyes of her, I knew she was like the flaw that ruins an otherwise perfect gem.”

OK, scratch the “falling in love” thing. Wow. You think you know a dragon...

Vinyl’s brief illness was suddenly gone, replaced by outrage. “What are you talking about!” she exclaimed, jumping down from the chair. “This town is the most splendid place I have ever set eyes upon, and Rarity is a paragon of Truth, Justice, and the Equestrian Way!”

“Oh, I am most flattered to hear that,” said Rarity, settling into an available chair with an air of victory. “But of course it is the mayor who deserves the credit. I am merely her devoted assistant.” If she had overheard any of Spike’s opinion of her, she pretended otherwise.

“This is a most perfect little village, isn’t it?” the clothes-mare continued, craning her neck to take in its clockwork inhabitants. “The complete triumph of order over chaos! Every pony with a place, and a place for every pony! Did you know that five years ago Ponyville had the worst Winter Wrap-Up time in all of Equestria? Well those days are gone forever, and last year this town set the Equestrian record for shortest time with no mistakes. All thanks to m...my dear mayor, and her tireless quest to improve conditions for all who live here.”

Vinyl had spent the entire speech nodding rapturously, while Spike paced impatiently back and forth behind her. “A most perfect town indeed!” the musical pony exclaimed. “Although it is a pity about the weather.”

“Yes, well the Revolt has put the weather ponies out of the jurisdiction of the municipal government,” Rarity said sadly.

“‘The Revolt’?”

Rarity pointed upwards in reply.

Vinyl craned her head up to scan the air above them. A few small clouds dotted the sky. In the direction of Cloudsdale, she could see a couple of very high thin clouds, and she could just make out dark round shapes sticking out of them. The heads of pegasi, watching them.

The sky was a very light blue, darkening somewhat towards the horizon. Ringing the horizon at a height of five full moons was a band of rainbow color—the permanent symbol of The Revolt.

Vinyl’s memory dutifully informed her that this ring had been there, day and night, ever since the day the Pegasus Revolt against Equestria began ten years ago. That was the day that Rainbow Dash (now Empress Rainbow Dash) had created the Sonic Rainboom that had broken the sky forever. Since that day the weather ponies had performed their duties only to the bare minimum necessary to prevent the complete fall of pony civilization, and so things would remain, until Celestia agreed to surrender control of Equestria to the Rainbow Empress.

“Would you ever do that?” an anxious Vinyl Scratch had asked her mentor at the time.

“No,” said the Princess. “But neither will I provoke a war of pony against pony. I have never coerced any pony into obeying me, and I never will. As long as the earth ponies and unicorns wish me to be their ruler, then I have no choice but to resist the demands of the pegasi until they become reasonable.”

And so affairs have remained, for the past decade.

It was curious, though, that Vinyl had gained her cutie mark and hatched Spike on the exact same day as Skybreak...

“Vinyl,” said Rarity, looking up into the sky with Vinyl Scratch. “I have a question to ask, if I am not being too bold.”

“No, you can ask...anything,” Vinyl replied, her voice growing increasingly hazy with every word uttered.

“I was wondering why Ponyville was selected for the Summer Sun Celebration this year? Is it possible that word of our improved efficiency has reached the ears of the Princess? Does she harbor certain...suspicions? Because unlike a certain egotistical pegasus, I have...err...I mean the mayor, have no ambitions of extending our program. All we want is Ponyville. Just one perfect village in a world of pain and disappointment, is that so much to ask? Can’t you see how happy everypony is? I have provided for all of them! And in return I have given up my hopes and dreams of becoming a world-class designer. Surely the Princess has no need for one little village?”

“I...um...I’m not sure what exactly the question is,” mumbled Vinyl, still looking up. “The Princess picks the cities several hundred years in advance, but she felt it best to keep that fact a secret, because...because, I don’t think she ever told me the ‘because’...”

“So she is still ignorant of my accomplishments?” asked Rarity. “Interesting...somewhat disappointing, but interesting...”

While Vinyl and Rarity were busy staring at the sky and talking, Spike reached out a claw and plucked one of the numerous bits of dirt off of Vinyl’s hind leg for closer examination; the stuff had sort of spontaneously sprouted out of her coat all of a sudden. He squinted one eye to get a closer look at it, tried in vain to smell anything distinctive about it, and finally, with some reluctance, put it on his tongue. His closed eye sprung open in shock. “Diamond dust!”

Well, to be precise, it was a mixture of the dusts generated by grinding up seventeen different gems and precious stones, including diamonds, but certainly not entirely or even predominantly diamonds. The grinding process neutralized the effects the crystals had on the diffraction of light, resulting in a light-gray substance that one might be misled into thinking was purely the result of pulverizing crystalline carbon. But...for the sake of a more-streamlined narrative, I suppose I could be willing to live with the simplified term.

Rarity glared down at Spike upon hearing his deduction. “I had forgotten about you, reptile!” she hissed. With the sound of a snake-charmer’s flute, Rarity’s horn glowed, causing the fabric of a nearby awning to quickly unravel and bind itself around the body and snout of a very startled Spike. She then turned her attention back to Vinyl’s scan of the sky, changing her hateful expression to one of sweetness. “Oh Vinyl, darling!” she cooed.

“Yes, Mistress?” sighed Vinyl blissfully.

“We must hurry if we are to get through your inspection. Now with me to guide you, surely you won’t have any need for your assistant, correct?”

“Spike?” asked Vinyl weakly looking around. “What’s happened...?”

Rarity quickly stepped up to Vinyl and began speaking directly into her ear. “Why the poor dear has become so exhausted that he’s fallen asleep! That is what you see, is it not?”

Spike tried in vain to struggle against the magically enforced fabric. He attempted a desperate cry for help.

“Um...yes, yes of course that is what I see, my Mistress,” droned Vinyl.

“Excellent! Let me arrange accommodations for your friend here in town, while we continue on our way.”

“OK.”

“Now I believe the first pony you would need to meet would be Applejack, as she will be providing all of the food for tonight’s celebration. You just head down that road, and I’ll catch right up with you!”

“If you say so,” Vinyl said, wandering off.

Spike continued to try to attract attention, but no one in the entire town seemed to notice, except for Rarity.

Rarity tapped the table three times, and a group of police ponies, their uniforms thoroughly saturated in diamond dust, appeared before her. “We have here a spy of...the Dragon Emperor,” she coldly informed them. “Find me the evidence I need to convince the Princess of that fact. Oh, and lock him in the dungeon, first.”

The police saluted silently, then picked up the bound dragon and made their way to the town hall (which sat on top of the Ponyville Dungeon), the other ponies instantly parting way and then acting like nothing unusual had just happened.

Spike didn’t even resist his arrest. Instead he spent his time pondering...um, the injustice of the world? I swear I knew what he was thinking just a second ago! What happened?

Spike spent his time pondering the last words of Mistress Rarity. He was going to be framed for committing treason in the name of the Dragon Emperor. He knew for a fact that there had been no dragon emperor for nearly seven thousand years, and there certainly was no dragon emperor now. And yet his memory told him that he had been hatched as part of a mad plot by the Dragon Emperor’s chief spy, a plot foiled by Vinyl Scratch on the day of her testing before Princess Celestia. Her musical skills alone were enough to reverse his growth spurt and corruption.

The spy had been caught and convicted in the highest court in the land, but the Princess showed mercy. The culprit would be allowed to survive, with a magical brand that forever identified her. From that day forth, the pony behind the plot would be known as “The Traitor, Twilight Sparkle.”

Chapter 3: "Why Am I Surrounded by Idiots?"

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 3: “Why Am I Surrounded by Idiots?”

Once Rarity had caught up, Vinyl was led to a large tree at one end of town. A hard-carved sign declaring that the tree was the location of the town library had been knocked down and replaced with a flat board, with the following words stenciled upon it:

Temporary World Domination Headquarters of Apple, Inc.

After a sharp knock on the door by Rarity, the door attached to the front of the tree was opened by a dark gray unicorn colt.

“Apple Incorporated, what can I do for...oh, it’s you.” Upon saying this, the unicorn was instantly surrounded by a pale blue force field, accompanied by the sound of a harp glissando. “Boss, it’s Rarity again!” he shouted into the interior of the tree.

“Are you still mad at me for temporarily taking over your mind?” Rarity asked the unicorn in surprise while he awaited the arrival of his employer. “I had no idea you were off-limits!”

The unicorn responded by making his force field even stronger.

Stepping forward to join the unicorn was a blonde-maned earth pony with an orange coat and a black Stetson hat. Her cutie mark was a dense orchard of apple trees. She carried an air of authority with her, mixed with a good measure of annoyance. Upon setting eyes upon Vinyl Scratch, however, she did her best to replace this with an air of goodwill. “Miss Rarity!” she exclaimed in a smooth non-regional accent, the kind market research says inspires trustworthiness in 88% of Equestrian shoppers. “What a pleasure it is to see you on this fine morning. And who have you brought to...wait a minute! Wait an apple-pickin’ minute! That’s not the Princess’ representative, is it? Please tell me that you didn’t dust the representative?”

“Applejack...?” asked Vinyl with a faraway voice.

How does she keep recognizing these ponies?

“Be quiet while the grown-ups are speaking, dear,” Applejack replied.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Yes, but you see...” began Rarity.

“And here I was thinking you were ever so slightly less stupid than every other unicorn on the planet!” exclaimed Applejack. “At what point was it going to penetrate into your thick skull that you are completely out of your league?”

“Aw, but look how easily I can control her!” protested Rarity. “It’s like she had no grasp on reality for me to take from her!”

“And what happens tomorrow morning?”

“What?”

Applejack sighed loudly. “Tomorrow morning. You know, when the God Empress of Equestria makes her scheduled appearance?”

Rarity fumbled for an answer. “I...well, I guess I’ll wipe her memory, or something.”

The earth pony face-hoofed. “‘Or something’...Equestria help me, I’m surrounded by idiots! You need to come up with a cover story, and you need to do it now. Get upstairs and start studying that memory-rewriting spell I found for you. You are going to come up with the most airtight, ordinary and obviously believable story of all time by dawn tomorrow, or so help me...what is she doing?”

Unnoticed by the arguing ponies, Vinyl Scratch had begun absently tapping a rhythm into the cobblestone outside of the Temporary World Domination Headquarters: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap...

“Oh, that?” replied Rarity. “That’s just the drum part from some song she’s been humming to herself...”

Applejack’s response to this was to pop off her hat, grab it in midair with her teeth, and hit Vinyl’s head with it until she stopped tapping.

“What did you do that for?” Rarity asked. “It seemed harmless.”

“Sure, everything’s harmless to you!” said Applejack around the hat, her lack of accent slipping as she got more nervous. “But how do you know that ain’t some kinda universal counter-spell that Celestia imprinted in her mind just for this sorta circumstance!”

“Weeellll!” exclaimed Rarity, stretching the word out as a way to come up with a good response. In the end she failed. “That possibility never even occurred to me.”

Applejack dropped the hat onto an upraised forehoof. “That’s because you’re entirely too trusting,” she said. “I can assure you that you do not become matriarch of the Apple clan by charm alone. It takes strength, cunning, and the knowledge that everything can be a trap!”

“Can be a trap...” the words echoed inside Vinyl Scratch’s head. “Can be a trap...can be a trap...it’s a trap!”

“Aw, Applejack, you think everything’s a trap!”

Vinyl suddenly found herself plunged into a very familiar darkness, but her other senses quickly picked up the slack. She was standing in Celestia and Luna’s throne room in Canterlot, and the pony who had just spoken was Rainbow Dash. She wasn’t Empress of the Pegasi, she wasn’t even a Wonderbolt, but she was an Element of Harmony, and she was here with the other Elements to receive another mission from the Princess. As was becoming an increasingly-common occurrence, Vinyl Scratch had been dragged along with the rest of them, despite being nothing more than a disk jockey (under the alias of DJ Pon-3) and business-pony (co-owner of Equestria Acoustics with Twilight Sparkle). As always when finding herself beside her friends in their official capacities as Elements of Harmony, she felt completely out of her league.

“That’s because everything the Dragon Emperor sends us is a trap!” replied Applejack.

The problem facing them this time was to judge the sincerity of the peace offer given by the Emperor to the Princesses after what, for Equestria, had been a pretty long war, a grueling three months of waiting to see which supreme magic user would manage to outwit the other, while the Equestrian Army attempted to take Stalliongrad back from its own mesmerized inhabitants. Only a maniac with delusions of grandeur could possibly think that anypony other than the Princess had been the victor of that contest. Unfortunately, that was exactly what the Dragon Emperor was.

There was the sound of a large sheaf of paper being pulled from a saddlebag. “According to my calculations,” Twilight Sparkle said around a mouthful of parchment, “the Emperor has used up every possible attack spell in the dragon grimoire.” From the outbreak of hostilities, the Princess’ prized student had devoted herself to the study of both battlefield and mage war tactics. The computer in her basement had been repeatedly pushed well past the theoretical point of collapse, the result of a revolutionary technique she had invented based on a chance remark by the time pony Doctor Whooves (she called it “overclocking” in his honor), and the walls of the library had become covered with topographic maps and third-order thaumatical phase diagrams. “He has no choice but to surrender!” she concluded confidently.

“But maybe he has Princess Luna,” suggested a timid voice.

“Now Fluttershy,” replied Rarity, “we do not know for sure what has happened to Princess Luna. She was after all leading the troops in the field. She may have become lost.”

“...Or she might be leading a top-secret commando mission to take out the Emperor single-hoofedly!” proclaimed Rainbow Dash.

“Possible, but unlikely, Rainbow Dash,” said Princess Celestia from her throne. “I am currently unable to track my sister, but that simply means that she is in an area where magic use is so strong as to make it impossible to pick out a single signal clearly. Now as to the proposal, the Emperor is insisting that the Elements of Harmony, and one friend of Twilight’s choosing, be teleported to the coordinates I have been given. In return for meeting the ponies who have defeated him, he agrees to sign any terms we are prepared to offer.”

“Well if you ask me...” began Applejack.

“We don’t need to ask you, Applejack, as we already know what you’re going to say,” Dash complained.

“Of course it’s a trap,” said a new voice from next to the Princess. “The question is, how can we make it spring on him instead of on us?” The voice belonged to the Emperor’s “secret weapon”, Waking Terror, a corrupting spirit that had been implanted in Celestia’s mind at the moment of her birth many millennia ago, and had been meant to convert her into a twin of Nightmare Moon the instant war was declared. Instead, the Princesses and the Elements (with some technical assistance from Vinyl Scratch) had managed to redeem the spirit with the power of friendship. It was thanks to Miss Terror that the Princesses were able to anticipate almost all of the Emperor’s moves before he had even made them. In return, Celestia had created the form of a baby dragon for Miss Terror to live in.

“The invitation was for the Elements of Harmony and one friend,” said Celestia. “Now who would be your most obvious choice to invite, Twilight?”

“Well Spike has been getting interested in his heritage,” answered Twilight with some hesitation, “and he has been bugging me to take him to Draconia for quite some time before the war began, so he would be the most obvious.”

“Indeed,” replied Miss Terror, “and since the Emperor’s ability to control dragon minds is absolute, this would be an extremely unwise idea.”

“I didn’t say I was actually going to invite Spike,” Twilight muttered under her breath.

“Any choice of a guest would be dangerous,” said Celestia. “The Emperor’s bloodless takeover of Stalliongrad proves that his mind-control powers are nearly as effective on ponies as on dragons; so far, only the Elements, Luna and myself have proven completely resistant to his charms.”

“Maybe I should invite you, Princess?” asked Twilight. “After all, you’re my friend.”

“I’m afraid I must decline your kind invitation,” Celestia said with a warm smile in her voice. “With Luna gone, I must stay here to run affairs in Equestria. And I don’t think Miss Terror should go, as her magic is still rather weak.”

“Well, do you have any suggestions?” asked Twilight.

“Her,” said Miss Terror.

A sudden silence came over the room.

Vinyl Scratch began to fidget. “She’s pointing at me, isn’t she?” she finally asked.

“The Dragon Emperor knows nothing about you, Vinyl Scratch,” Miss Terror informed her coldly. “I have made very sure of that. You are different from every other pony in this room.”

“Because I can’t see?”

“That, but more importantly because you are the most stubborn pony I have ever encountered—a very useful trait under the circumstances.”

Vinyl Scratch opened her mouth for a few moments, but the scathing retort she had planned died on her lips. “I’ll just take that as a compliment and shut up now.”

“Fine, so we’re prepared for mind control,” said Dash, “but what if that’s not what he’s planning? What if those coordinates are for the middle of a volcano, or will drop us into a portal to a freaky alternate universe where I’m the only pony with one color in my mane?!”

“Ah...” said Miss Terror, stalling for time. “Well, in that case...you’ll have to improvise. You haven’t contributed to the conversation so far, Pinkie Pie. What do you think?”

“Me? Well personally, I think...that this pony needs to stop thinking!” said Pinkie, or rather Applejack, as that that was who Pinkie turned into halfway through. Also now Vinyl could see and several ponies were staring at her.

“Isn’t anypony paying attention to the ticking time bomb in our midst?” demanded Applejack, battering Vinyl’s head several times with the Stetson until the swirls settled back into her eyes. She passed the hat over to her gray-coated assistant, who then put it on. “Rarity,” she instructed, “tell the representative that Graphite here is me.”

Rarity leaned into Vinyl’s ear. “Vinyl, dear, this is Applejack.”

“Applejack?” asked Vinyl.

“Yes, Applejack,” insisted Rarity.

“Hello, Applejack,” said Vinyl to Graphite.

“Hello, um, Vinyl,” said Graphite.

“You’re a silly pony,” said Vinyl.

“Um...” said Graphite.

The real Applejack sighed, “Now ‘Applejack’,” she addressed her impersonator, “I expect you to take good care of our guest and give her the longest-possible tour of the Apple family holdings. Rarity and I will be busy upstairs fixing the mess she got us into.”

“What about the applebug?” Graphite said, using his horn to float a tiny yellow object into view.

“Pass it over,” Applejack said with a sigh.

Graphite flicked his head, which caused the “applebug” to fly into Applejack’s tail.

“I’m sure I’ll find somepony I want to listen in on soon enough,” she said.

“Any other instructions?” the unicorn asked.

“If you see any trace of that pesky free will, be sure to use that swell hat of yours to swat it away.”

Graphite nodded.

“Oh, and do remember only to swat her head,” added Rarity.

Applejack sighed in frustration. “Do you think, after all the time we’ve been doing business in this town, that we don’t know that?” She then turned her head to face Graphite. “Well go on, start the tour!”

“Oh!” exclaimed the false Applejack. “Yes, well over here is where we keep the copyright lawyers that come up with the names of our new Appletastic Treats©! Once we have a name, we can then head over to the chemistry department, where...”

“I swear,” Applejack said, shaking her head as she followed Rarity up the stairway built into the tree, “you just can’t get good slave labor anymore.”

Chapter 4: "Nopony Knows the Trouble I've Seen..."

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 4: “Nopony Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen...”

Spike stood in a cell in the underground dungeon, gripping the bars and shaking them. He’d been doing this for at least an hour. “Hey, where’s my trial?” he proclaimed to any guards who might be in earshot. “I know my rights! Where’s my lawyer?”

After several more minutes of this and no response, the baby dragon allowed his eyes to wander around, taking in the wall of the hallway outside of the bars. “It’s a funny-sounding word: ‘Obey’,” proclaimed one motivational poster posted there. “A word of kindness is better than a fat pie,” read another. A particularly ancient one read “KNEEL BEFORE ZO...”, but the last word was scratched out and replaced with “Your Mayor” in a purple curlicue font. There was also this:

REWARD!

10,000 Bits for the Capture of

The Dreaded P.D.P.

For Crimes Against Fashion

(also assault, battery, theft and violation of curfew)

A Word of Advice, Though:

Whatever You Do, Never Look Directly

At the Dreaded P.D.P.!

While he was studying this sign, he heard the sound of guards descending the stairs, along with a chained captive. The prisoner, an amber-colored earth colt with a brown mane and three horseshoes for his cutie mark, was quickly divested of his chains and locked into the cell with Spike and the other prisoners.

“Oh dear,” the pony said to the others in a melodramatic tone. “I sure have been a naughty pony!”

The other prisoners immediately turned away from the creepy newcomer and started pretending they had something better to do.

“Oh guards?” Spike called out to them sweetly as they began to leave.

“What do you want?” replied one of them, a slate-blue unicorn with a white mane. As was to be expected, he was heavily dosed with Rarity’s diamond dust.

“I was wondering if I could borrow some paper and a pencil—I’m trying to keep track of how many bits I’m winning from Poncho.” The pony Spike was referring to was indeed wrapped up in a plain brown poncho that completely covered his resting form, topped with a comically large sombrero. A worn guitar rested on the ground, with a long strap that wrapped around the pony’s neck. Set up next to him in a corner of the cell was a chessboard resting on a simple table, with an upended Apple Inc. cart for Spike to stand on.

“Well, I don’t see any harm in that,” said the guard in a slow drawl, “but let me check my instructions.” He pulled a small folded piece of paper out of a saddlebag using his magic (accompanied by the sound of a silver whistle) and started looking it over. The items at the bottom of the list caught his attention:

* I shouldn’t even have to tell this to you morons, but considering how incredibly dim you all are, do not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, give any writing materials to the sending dragon who possesses the power to send messages to our enemies. — Applejack

* P.S. Yes of course I mean Spike. Who else could I possibly mean? Idiots. — Applejack

“Hmm...I dunno...” the guard pondered. “I don’t have to do anything Applejack tells me to do...”

* P.P.S. Do it. — Rarity

“Yes, Mistress! I mean...no paper for you, foolish traitor dragon!”

Spike waited until the guards had left. “Well, I guess they aren’t as dumb as they look.” He turned around and walked back to the chessboard. “Now where were we?”

Poncho replied by slowly getting to his hooves. He casually picked up his guitar, looked it over carefully, then brought it down forcefully on the table, smashing the latter to bits and sending little tiny horse figures flying in every direction. “The time for playing games is over!” he announced in a deep voice. Somberly he announced, “This cell...is full.”

The other prisoners, who had acted like Poncho’s recent temper tantrum was a common occurrence, looked around and nodded as they confirmed that with the addition of the newest arrival, there were now ten occupants in the cell.

“It is now time,” Poncho then said, “for us to introduce ourselves.” The stallion brought every note of drama possible into this sentence, like he was announcing the start of gladiatorial combat instead of a simple meet-and-greet.

“What a lovely custom!” exclaimed the amber colt with a wide grin. “I suppose I’ll start. My name is Caramel, I enjoy goofing off when the boss isn’t looking, and I’m charged with disorderly conduct! Now how about you go next, little baby dragon?”

Spike looked at Caramel like he was a being from another planet.

“NO!” shouted Poncho. “That is not how you introduce yourself. In the dungeons, you introduce yourself by singing a little from the most depressing song you know. That tells the world all it needs to know about you. I will go first.” He tuned his instrument for a few seconds before suddenly belting out the following in a low baritone:

I keep laffin’
Instead of cryin’
I must keep fightin’
Until I’m dyin’
And Ol’ Mare River,
She just keep rollin’ along!

The other ponies applauded politely in appreciation.

Two things impressed Spike about this performance. First, the fact that this pony would use the word “laffin’” when it was obvious that laughter was his mortal enemy, and second that the word “Mare” could very well be “Mayor”, in which case the song doubled as political protest.

Poncho removed the guitar strap from his shoulder and reverently passed the instrument to Spike. Up close, the dragon could see that the instrument had been used for smashing things at least as often as it was used as musical accompaniment. Although it was large, there probably wasn’t an instrument in Equestria that he hadn’t trained himself to play in Vinyl Scratch’s service. Slowly, Spike began to sing, plucking a complicated accompaniment on the guitar:

Nopony knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nopony knows my sorrow
Nopony knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory hallelujah!

The guitar was passed from pony from pony, although most of them just sang a cappella. “Amazing Grace” was heard, as well as “Danny Colt”. Finally Caramel got the guitar, and he began to sing in a sweet tenor voice:

There is only one river. There is only one sea.
And it flows through you, and it flows through me!

“Come on, everypony!” he proclaimed, with a huge smile spread from ear to ear. He completely failed to notice the fact that in his enthusiastic playing he had knocked Spike over with the neck of the guitar.

“May I?” asked Poncho politely, reaching for the guitar.

“But of course!” replied Caramel. “After all, sharing is caring!”

Poncho then picked up the guitar, and with a loud “KABONG!” used it to knock Caramel unconscious.

The other prisoners nodded in approval.

“Not that he didn’t deserve it,” said Spike as he got up, rubbing the back of his neck, “But wasn’t that a bit of overkill?”

“You are new,” explained Poncho, as he turned towards the wall and examined his guitar for damage. “The mayor, she always plants one spy in every full cell, and the spy, he is always too happy.”

“Well, if you say so,” said Spike to Poncho’s back. “But what do we do now?”

“We escape,” announced the figure in the poncho, using a radically different voice from before.

“Ooh, this is my favorite part!” one prisoner whispered to another.

The pony turned and dramatically threw off the poncho, revealing a dark pink mare wearing an orange vest and flourescent-green bloomers, with a bright blue domino mask tied around her head. Her magenta-colored mane was long and straight. “Now who would like to ride to freedom...with the Dreaded Pinkamena Diane Pie?!” Her natural voice was at least two octaves higher than Poncho’s.

The prisoners all cheered wildly, pounding their hooves on the pavement.

“You’re the Dreaded P.D.P.?” Spike asked incredulously.

If “Poncho” was a disguise, thought Spike, it had been so convincing as to stretch credulity to the breaking point.

“The one and only,” Pinkamena replied, striding confidently over to the door of the cell and pulling a complete lockpick set out of her vest.

At that moment, half a dozen guards rushed down the stairs, alerted by the sounds of cheering earlier.

“Alright prisoners,” announced the slate-colored guardpony from before as he rounded the corner, “what do you think you’re doing with all this...the Dreaded P.D.P.!”

Pinkamena dropped her lockpicks and attempted to buck the door open. Thanks to the general incompetence of the guards in not closing the door all the way last time, this actually worked on the first try. She then reared up on her hind legs, and turned against the Rarity-controlled guards the most powerful weapon in her arsenal: her choice in clothing.

“The orange vest against the pink coat: it is wrong, so very, very wrong!” the chief guard cried out in agony.

“A contemporary Appleloosan vest with Fifth Millennium bloomers! Why, Sweet Celestia, why?!”

“Who would ever use that shade of green with anything???”

Within seconds, the guards were so busy trying to rub the horrendous sight out of their eyes that Pinkamena was easily able to sprint past them to the stairs, followed by Spike and the rest of the prisoners. They kept running until they had escaped from City Hall altogether and had gone several hundred pony-lengths beyond the town’s border before stopping.

Spike waited until all of the other escapees had thanked their rescuer and gone on their way before addressing her.

“Who are you?” he asked in awe.

“I am the enemy of all who would oppress the common pony!” she proclaimed proudly. “Wherever hungry ponies fight while the rich ones feast, I’ll be there! Wherever the police are beating a pony for saying things they don’t want to hear, I’ll be there! And especially, most especially, wherever one pony is telling another pony that they have to be happy even when they don’t wanna, I’ll be there! I stand for the right of every pony to be just as miserable as she wants to be!” As she said this, she removed the parts of her costume (except for the mask) and put them away in a sack she had grabbed from the hole in a nearby tree.

“Oooh!” exclaimed Spike. “So you’re a masked avenger of justice, like the great Toronado!”

“Something like that,” said Pinkamena.

A sudden look of craftiness crept into Spike’s eyes. “You know, Toronado had a sidekick named Zorro who was always getting him out of trouble. Maybe I can be your sidekick!”

The pony looked Spike over with a critical eye before turning away. “Sorry, kid. This masked avenger of justice fights alone.”

“Aww...” Spike pouted for a few moments, before a new thought caused him to practically jump. “But wait! There’s somepony you need to rescue: my boss, Vinyl Scratch!”

“Never heard of her,” said Pinkamena. “Has she fallen victim to the dust?”

“Yes.”

“She’s doomed. Better find yourself a new boss.” She turned to go.

“But she’s Celestia’s personal student!”

This caught Pinkamena’s attention. “Is that so? That changes things, that changes things a lot. I gotta warn you, though, she’s gonna be a regular bucking bronco from the moment we grab her until we hoof her over to the Princess.”

“So you’re going to save her?”

“Yup.”

“Wahoo!” Spike exclaimed, jumping up and wrapping his arms around the pink pony’s neck.

“No touching!” the pony yelled with a shrill voice, causing Spike to immediately spill onto the ground. She then sighed and reached out a hoof to him. “I’m sorry,” she told him as she helped him up, “I’m not used to the sorts of displays of affection everypony else uses.”

“Oh...OK,” Spike said. He watched as Pinkamena pulled a pair of saddlebags out of the same hole in the tree she had used earlier, and then filled them with the sack of clothing and several other items he could not identify.

“So do you have any idea where this Vinyl Scratch might be?” Pinkamena asked.

“I remember hearing that she was being taken to see some pony named Applejack.”

Pinkamena made a low whistle. “You sure know how to pick them, kid.” She quickly transferred some more items out of the tree. Spike could have sworn he saw a grenade or two.

“Now come on. If we’re lucky, we’ll arrive just as news of the escape hits them, and they’re at their maximum state of disorientation.”

“Can I ask you a question?” said Spike several minutes later as the lights of Ponyville started coming into view.

“Well you can ask, but I don’t guarantee an answer.”

“Why don’t you have a cutie mark?”

And indeed, the pink pony was completely lacking any mark on her flank.

Pinkamena snorted. “You sure know how to go straight for the jugular, don’t you, kid?” She walked on for a few moments before continuing. “I don’t have a cutie mark because I’m not following my true calling. My family...my family are rock farmers. They have a proud tradition of remaining apart from the world and never, ever laughing. According to them and the big book of theirs they had me memorize, Celestia doomed us all a long time ago, and they’re just waiting for the day of judgment, when they can point at all of the ponies who didn’t believe us and say, ‘I told you so!’ That’s where I came from, and that’s where I belong.

“I came to Ponyville because of some bad luck. A pony had managed to break free of the Mayor’s control and was trying to flee to Manehattan to reveal what was going on. She just happened to stumble upon our home when she was too weak to continue. We briefly sheltered her, until Ponyville’s guards arrived and burned our farm to the ground. They succeeded in recapturing their fugitive. We all survived, but the fire...” A look of the utmost horror flickered across her eyes. “I barely made it out alive. I left the farm for the first time in my life. I went to Manehattan, and tried to get the authorities to do something, but without that fugitive, I had no proof, and my family’s reputation as prophets of doom prevented anypony from believing me without that proof. So I journeyed to Ponyville, to correct this injustice all by myself! And just as soon as I’m done, I’ll head back to my farm to spend the rest of my days, and within a week I’ll have three rocks on my flank like my mother and her mother before her, mark my words!”

“And how long have you been fighting against Rarity?” he asked.

“A couple of years. Wait...Rarity? Rarity the costumer? She’s the pony behind all this?”

Spike laughed. “You didn’t think it was the Mayor all this time, did you?”

“Well...hmm...” Pinkamena thought back. “She was always there on those times I got closest to being defeated...and I have wondered why the bad fashion thing works so well...you might just have yourself a point, there.”

“See?” replied the dragon, “I’d make a great sidekick!”

“Don’t push your luck, kid.”

“And another thing: if you’re supposed to be a masked avenger of justice, why are you using your real name? Pinkamena Diane Pie is your real name, right?”

The pink pony held her head up high. “Well of course it is! Hiding behind a fake name is dishonest!”

“Then why do you wear a mask, if you’re not trying to hide something?”

“Because...well, because it’s expected, that’s why!”

Spike laughed. “If you say so, Pinkie Pie.”

“That’s the Dread Pinkamena Diane Pie! Or P.D.P. if you’re in a hurry. That other...name, is a silly filly name!”

Spike apologized for saying that name (which he had no business knowing!), and the pair continued on around the outskirts of the village.

Chapter 5: Fighting Off the Gladness

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 5: Fighting Off the Gladness

“...and that’s just some of the amazing uses of the common apple core,” Graphite told the mesmerized Vinyl Scratch as he turned to open the door to the treehouse. “Apple Incorporated, what can I do for...?” he started, staring out into the night to see who had knocked.

Stepping into his vision was a massive red earth pony with tired eyes. “Graphite, I need t’ speak with Applejack,” he said in a gruff voice.

Vinyl looked at him, confusion evident on her face. “Applejack?” she asked plaintively.

Graphite laughed nervously at the much larger pony. “Big Mac, you need to get your eyes checked,” he said cautiously, pointing at the hat on his head.

The pony looked wearily between Graphite and Vinyl. “Of course, ‘Applejack’,” he drawled with a touch of sarcasm. Evidently, this wasn’t the first time he had been asked to play this particular game. “Can I speak with ‘Graphite’ then? Or is she somepony else?”

“I’ll get her,” Graphite said, starting to head upstairs. He then stopped and looked back at a confused Vinyl. “I mean ‘him’!” he corrected himself.

Big Mac shook his head sadly then began to wait.

Vinyl Scratch studied him for a few moments. “You’re the same color as my eyes!” she finally concluded in a bubbly voice, lifting her sunglasses to show him.

Big Mac looked at the obviously mesmerized pony in pity for a few seconds. “Eeyup,” he finally said.

Neither pony said anything else for several minutes.

Finally, both Applejacks (the real and the fake) descended the stairs together. “I’ll leave her be,” Applejack told Graphite in her native accent (referring to Rarity). “I ‘spect she’ll work the rest out herself.”

“Eeyup,” said Graphite jokingly as they reached the ground floor.

Applejack turned her most devastating glare towards her underling. In response, Graphite grabbed Vinyl and fled for another room.

“It’s good to see you, brother,” Applejack said to Big Mac when they were alone.

“Likewise,” said the large pony.

“Well,” Applejack said sadly, “you wouldn’t have rushed to get here at this hour unless there was some bad news, so spill it.”

“It’s about Rarity,” Big Mac began.

The mare in question immediately stuck her head out of the door of the upstairs room.

“Yes?” asked Applejack.

“Badlands have been overrun by the Diamond Dogs. We tried a raid, but there were too many of them. T’would take an army to get any diamond dust out of there now.”

It’s not “diamond dust”! How many times to do I have to explain that...! No, I promised I’d let this go. “Diamond dust” it is...

“This is horrible!” exclaimed Rarity as she raced down the stairs. “Of all the bad things that could possibly happen, this is the worst...possible...”

“Now don’t you start!” warned Applejack, shutting Rarity up by shoving an apple into her mouth that seemed to have come from nowhere. “I can get us an army. Or better yet, arrange for the Senate in Canterlot to vote for an army and do the work for us. It’ll just take some time, that’s all.”

“But time is exactly what we do not have!” Rarity replied. “I’ve had to use my supply of dust a lot faster than usual as a result of this cursed Celebration tomorrow. I don’t think I have enough to last another month!”

This got a gasp out of Graphite, who had been trying to overhear the conversation from around the corner.

“I can’t possibly get Diamond Dogs out of the Badlands in a month without looking really obvious,” Applejack said, putting one hoof to her forehead in order to think. “Unless, perhaps...what if Vinyl’s reprogramming included a report about why it would be absolutely necessary for the Princess herself to intervene?”

Graphite whistled in admiration of how well his boss thought on her hooves.

Applejack in turn smiled to herself on hearing the obvious sign of her follower’s admiration. And I didn’t need to ‘dust’ him, neither! she thought.

Big Mac, walking around the corner to find the source of the sounds he heard, cleared his throat to get the attention of the two mares. “You might need to re-think your plans,” he informed them sadly, pointing to a spot behind Graphite.

Everypony looked to see that Vinyl Scratch had been replaced by a hay bale on stilts wearing a pair of cardboard sunglasses.

At the exact same moment, the chief of the dungeon guards skidded into the tree house. “The prisoners have escaped, including that little dragon fellow!”

“PINKAMENA!!!” exclaimed Rarity, shaking one hoof at the ceiling in exasperation. She wasn’t sure why precisely she was required to do this every time her arch-nemesis outsmarted her. She just knew it was the expected thing to do under the circumstances.

Spike crowed about the success of their deception all the way back to the abandoned warehouse that was the Dreaded P.D.P.’s headquarters, with Vinyl Scratch passively following where she was led. He was careful, though, not to say anything negative about Rarity to set off her programming.

“Well,” the always-morose Pinkamena said to him with what might almost be mistaken for a triumphal tone. “You wanted her, and now you’ve got her, and a great deal quieter than I expected her to be. But dusted is still dusted. What are you going to do with her?”

“Well first of all,” the worried dragon said as he started inspecting Vinyl from all sides, “I need a little more light.” With a bit of effort, he broke a wooden slat off of a nearby crate, and then lit it on fire with his breath.

“NOOO!!!” screamed Pinkamena, knocking Spike aside and stamping furiously on the torch until it was extinguished.

“What did you do that for?” Spike demanded as he got up.

“Well...uh, somepony could have seen the light!” Pinkamena explained.

Spike didn’t buy it. The only windows in the warehouse were mounted near the ceiling, making it highly unlikely that a tiny little torch would be visible from outside. It seemed more likely that the fire that had brought her to Ponyville had had some long-term effect on her.

“I’ve got to get her to snap out of this spell!” said Spike, looking at the unicorn. Vinyl in turn just stood there, her head and tail both drooping. “She told me that there’s something wrong with the world, something bigger than anything going on here in Ponyville,” he told Pinkamena.

Pinkamena walked by Vinyl slowly, lightly running one hoof through her coat and getting it coated with dust. “Well maybe getting this stuff off might make it easier. Although like I said, I’ve tried everything.” She fiddled with one of the crates in the warehouse, and returned with a large electromagical fan. Ten minutes of tinkering later, and it was now a mechanical fan powered by a long ripcord which was wound around it. Pinkamena tied the free end of the cord to a hind leg, and took off running a circuit of the warehouse.

The fan succeeded in blowing all of the diamond dust out of the coat of the passive unicorn, and into the air. Spike and Pinkamena sneezed simultaneously.

“Oh no!” Spike exclaimed, running up to the pink pony. “You gotta fight off of the gladness, Pinkamena!”

Pinkamena raised an eyebrow. “You’re strange, Spike,” she said. “And you don’t have to worry. I’m too messed up in the head for Rarity to ever get her hooks into me.”

Spike walked back to Vinyl Scratch and studied her closely once again.

“Vinyl, can you hear me?” he asked.

She did nothing.

“Rarity wants you to look at me.”

Still nothing.

Standing in front of her, he said, “I think Rarity is a big fat-head!” and then flinched in anticipation of a tirade.

And Vinyl remained motionless.

“Well that’s something,” admitted Pinkamena, trying (and failing) to comfort him. She looked out between the slats of a boarded-up window at the night sky. “You know, I always think better on a full stomach. How about some supper?” She opened up another crate and pulled out the straw used to pack it.

Spike made a face. “That’s OK, Vinyl brought me a snack,” he said, reaching up on tip-toe to open one of the unicorn’s saddlebags. Digging around for a few seconds, he triumphantly fished out a pale blue amethyst, but it slipped out of his claws and bounced from the top of one wooden crate to another: tink-tink-tink-tink-tink!

Vinyl’s ears instantly swiveled to follow the sound.

“Do that again,” Pinkamena told him.

Spike turned around and noticed the change in Vinyl’s ears. “The song!” he exclaimed. He backed up to the nearest crate, and started using his tail to start pounding out the rhythm she had taught him, over and over again:

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!
Thump-thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump-thump...

Chapter 6: The Room

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 6: The Room

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Vinyl Scratch was back in the world of darkness. Specifically, she was crammed into a very small room with the Elements of Harmony and Princess Celestia. The air inside was very stale; it appeared that the room only had a narrow door and no windows. The illumination for the others to see by was provided by magical burning torches, as her ears and nose informed her.

“Now I’d like to introduce you to Cecil, who will be performing the teleportation spell,” said the Princess with a very uncharacteristic note of shyness in her voice. “Say hello, Cecil.”

“Good morning, my little ponies,” a strange little voice said. Vinyl, who had developed the ability to distinguish between many different kinds of creatures based on the tone of their voice, was completely unable to classify it.

“Oh it’s the blue rock, isn’t it?” Twilight Sparkle said at last. The voice had appeared to have come from part of the circular wall of the room, so Vinyl supposed that it had been embedded there.

“That’s right,” said Celestia fondly. “Cecil was the first inanimate object I ever brought to life. He was my sounding board at the very beginning of our reign, for ideas I thought my sister would reject as too silly. Such games we played together! Leapfrog...hide and seek...”

The other ponies were torn between awe and laughter at considering the mental image of the Princess as a filly playing with a magic rock.

“...Cash register...” the voice of Cecil added.

“‘Cash register’?” asked Rainbow Dash. “What kind of silly game is that?”

Applejack and Rarity both started to object, and after a moment Applejack allowed Rarity to speak for both of them. “It’s a very fun game,” Rarity said simply, “and quite educational for a future tradespony.”

The Princess waited to hear if anypony else had anything to say before continuing. “Cecil had a room like this in the...um, old castle.” Vinyl suspected the momentary slip came from memories of how her time in that castle came to an end. “And I made a complete replica for Canterlot. You see, there are some forms of magic that are best performed in a simple constrained space like this, and that is the type of magic Cecil is best at. Today he will be performing a group teleportation spell for my friends. Here are the coordinates...”

“Um, Twilight...” said the quiet voice of Fluttershy while the Princess was busy. “I hope you’re not mad that we’re not having you teleport us.”

“Oh that’s all right,” Twilight said, only mostly enthusiastically. “This is the most rational course under the circumstances. You see, I’ve worked through the possible scenarios if I sent a few of us at a time, in all possible permutations, and the difference in safety vs. the ‘everypony together’ scenario is just too great. It has to be all of us at once. And if I was the one doing it, sending all of us at once would leave my magical reserves far too weak when we arrive.”

Nobody mentioned the real reason, of course. Or more precisely, reasons. Vinyl was rather amazed that the group had actually agreed to attempt a group teleport spell again, after the mind-swapping fiasco that had happened before. Of course it had been an accident. Both times. As usual with the group’s wilder adventures, Vinyl never learned precisely what had happened to them on either occasion (Rarity was quite fond of a phrase she called The Number 11: “We shall never speak of this again!”). That being said, there was probably a reason why they were all fluent in Camel now.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way you can see the destination you’re gonna send us to...uh, Cecil?” asked Applejack once the Princess was finished telling the coordinates to the rock.

“That location is in the far north, near the traditional border with Draconia...and Castle by the Sea.”

This was not good news. Castle by the Sea was Celestia and Luna’s ancestral home, and as Miss Terror had confided to Vinyl, it was also the source of the power which had transformed the two into almighty immortal beings. A lowly dragon had once stumbled upon the castle...and emerged as the Dragon Emperor.

“The location is enchanted to allow magic in, but not out.”

Which meant, of course, that it was a trap.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t have a bet against Applejack, huh?” joked Pinkie Pie. “That reminds me: just to be extra-sneaky, I’m giving my Gift of the Ancients to Vinyl here to hold. That way I can fit more pies in my saddlebags!”

The Elements of Harmony were not just equipped with their fancy jewels with rainbow powers. In a trip to a very strange place over a year ago, they had met a representative of the race of Ancients that had left Equestria long before it had even been called Equestria. This representative gave the ponies gifts, seemingly ordinary items in the Ancient’s world that assumed strange and wondrous powers in Equestria. Rainbow Dash had received a javelin capable of saving the world...or destroying it. Applejack received a lasso of truth. Twilight Sparkle got several books describing the history of the Ancients and their knowledge—these had no magical properties, but the truths they revealed were devastating enough all by themselves. Rarity’s gem was the most powerful source of electrical energy in the world, but only under the right circumstances. And Fluttershy’s gift, a small creature that resembled a cross between a bunny and a kitten, didn’t seem to have any special abilities...except for an appetite that was literally endless.

Pinkie Pie’s gift was a music collection, stored on objects known as “compact discs”. Vinyl Scratch’s first real encounter with the Elements of Harmony was when they asked her to create a device for reading these CDs. This had led to the creation of Equestria Acoustics, and an entirely new career for the DJ, selling music instead of just playing it. She had eventually manufactured many hundreds of new CDs, containing all sorts of pony-penned songs. But none of these CDs possessed the unique ability of the Ancient-made ones: the power to induce in the listener exactly the mood the performers possessed when they had recorded it.

“I believe in all of you,” Princess Celestia told the others as she prepared to leave the tiny room.

“And we’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” replied Applejack. “So don’t you worry about us none.”

Vinyl thought she heard two ponies nuzzling, and something whispered between the two.

“Farewell!” proclaimed the Princess, and then the door was closed.

“Well then,” said Cecil, breaking through the uncomfortable silence that followed, “if everyone will give me their undivided attention, we may begin.”

The ponies shuffled about to face the rock.

Nothing happened for several seconds.

“What happens...?” Rainbow Dash started saying. She never got to the word “next”.

“Surprise!” cried Cecil, accompanied by a faint crackling sound.

Vinyl Scratch realized that she was now the only pony in the room.

“Wait, what are you still doing here?” the magic rock asked her.

Vinyl walked right up to him. “You tell me,” she said darkly, having a very good suspicion of why this particular spell didn’t work on her.

“You blinked, didn’t you?”

Vinyl said nothing, letting the attitude of resentment that she radiated speak for her.

“I got this! It’s just a matter of...ha! Or...hoo! Or...hee!” This was accompanied by three more crackling sounds, each one sounding like a flashbulb going off.

Vinyl Scratch was still there.

“You’re still there,” said Cecil. “This is very disconcerting. This spell is supposed to be foolproof, just so long as the light completely illuminates the optic...oh. Oooohhhhh...”

Cecil wasn’t sure, but it appeared that the blind pony was growling at him.

“Explain how the spell works,” she said finally in a disgusted tone, “and maybe we can find a workaround.”

“Well, the point is to completely knock out the conscious mind for a brief instant,” he explained. “It’s absolutely essential that you remain in an unthinking but conscious state while passing through the astral plane, or you’ll lose your mind.”

“Maybe I could go to sleep?” Vinyl suggested.

“No, that wouldn’t do,” Cecil mused. “Your dreams could interact with the plane. That’s much worse than insanity. I could knock you out, but that would make you prone to possession by the Hounds...”

“Perfect...” groaned Vinyl, having no desire to learn about these “Hounds”. Then she remembered the CDs in her saddlebag. She levitated them out with her horn and pressed each case up to her lips to read the system of bumps painted on each one that Pinkie and she had devised as a means for her to distinguish them. She removed one of the shiny disks from its case and presented it to Cecil.

After teaching the blue rock the spell she used to play CDs, she instructed it in which track it should memorize, so she could reclaim the disk.

“So I know how to play a song now,” Cecil said hesitantly. “How does that help?”

“You’ll see.” She walked out into the middle of the room. “Start playing the song, as loud as I taught you. Say nothing. And as soon as you can tell that my mind is completely blank, send me to join the others.”

“Wait, what does the title even mean?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Play!”

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!
Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap...

The rhythm began first in the bass, and then moved to the drums, backed by a brass section worthy of a big band ensemble. The walls and floor shook in sympathy. After standing still for a few moments to absorb the rhythm, Vinyl started slowly pacing around the room, one hooffall for every four beats of music.

Waiting for the break of day!
Searching for something to say!
Flashing lights against the sky...
Giving up, I close my eyes.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor.
25 or 6 to 4!

Gradually, Vinyl developed the walk into a dance, making quick turns and changes of direction.

Staring blindly into space!
Getting up to splash my face!
Wanting just to stay awake...
Wondering how much I can take.
Should I try to do some more?
25 or 6 to 4!

The singer was replaced by a raucous electric guitar solo, and that’s when Vinyl went all out: accelerating to one hooffall every other beat, then one hooffall per beat. The unicorn panted, her coat saturated with perspiration, as she flipped and bucked the air again and again, but her expression was completely blank, and she never once bumped into a wall. As the song went completely insane, Vinyl reached an impossible two hooffalls per beat.

Cecil cast his spell at the terrifying blur, and the strange pony finally went away. He allowed the song to finish then played it again from beginning to end.

Feeling like I ought to sleep.
Spinning wheel is spinning deep.
Searching for something to say...
Waiting for the break of day.
25 or 6 to 4?
25 or 6 to 4!

“Wow...” he said at last. “I think I’m in love.”

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Chapter 7: Hey, Aren't We Forgetting Somepony?

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 7: Hey, Aren’t We Forgetting Somepony?

Welcome back, Vinyl Scratch, the voice said in her mind.

DJ Pon-3! she replied mentally, suddenly remembering the name of her alter ego, and closest friend.

The power of Rock ‘n’ Roll strikes again! the DJ joked.

Wait, I’ve got an extra voice in my head, Vinyl suddenly realized.

More than one, in fact, Pon-3 calmly informed her. I’m just the most talkative one.

Vinyl took a mental survey, and knew her friend was telling her the truth. The most powerful of those voices, that of The Critic, was locked inside a little mental hut behind the mental equivalent of an iron-bound door. The Critic was the most feared of all the voices, because she loved more than anything to explain in irrefutable detail just how worthless Vinyl was.

Am I crazy? she nervously asked.

There’s always hope for the ones who ask, Pon-3 replied.

When Vinyl Scratch woke up, she found herself lying flat on the pavement, with a pair of little scaly arms hugging her neck. She jerked her head up and looked around, her two eyes darting around in different directions for a few seconds before they became coordinated.

“This seeing business is weird!” she exclaimed.

“You did it!” Spike exclaimed, stepping back from her. “You broke Rarity’s spell!” He then turned away to try to wipe away the tears on his face before she noticed.

“Nice trick,” commented the voice of a pony.

The voice sounded familiar to Vinyl, but she couldn’t quite place it.

Vinyl scrambled up to her hooves, wobbling unsteadily for quite some time before stabilizing herself.

Spike stepped between herself and the new pony. “Vinyl, this is the Dreaded Pinkamena Diane Pie. She saved me from the dungeon, and then saved you from Rarity! Oh wait, do you remember what happened to you after you were hypnotized?”

“I remember everything,” she told him, before turning to her rescuer. “You have saved far more than just our two lives on this day,” she told her.

Pinkamena held up one forehoof. “There is no need to thank me,” she said. “Although...Spike here tells me that you’re out to fix a flaw in the very structure of reality?”

Vinyl looked at her closely. “Err...as a matter of fact...”

“I have had the same suspicion for all of my life!” the pink pony eagerly confided to her. “In fact, I once tried to get the entire universe to fade away by lying down in a field and wishing really hard, but alas, my will alone was not enough to pull it off!”

Unconsciously, Vinyl and Spike made one step backwards away from the demented pony before them.

“No,” corrected Vinyl, “what I meant to say is that that was what I thought earlier, but now that I have recovered my missing memories, I now believe I and my six friends have been projected into this world from another, a world similar to this one in many ways, yet different in others.

“My mind found itself in the body of the Vinyl Scratch of this world, and for a while that Vinyl’s memories were the only ones I had. My friends must be in the same state. I need to find them and bring them to their right minds, and then maybe we can find some way to get back before the Dragon Emperor takes advantage of our absence to attack Equestria once more.”

Spike took this all in, his eyes growing wider and wider. “Am...am I one of your friends, Vinyl?” he asked eagerly.

Vinyl Scratch looked down at him sadly. “You have been my closest friend in this world, Spike, and in my world there is another Spike that is also somewhat a friend of mine.”

She left herself a mental note to get to know the baby dragon a lot better whenever she got out of this mess.

“But that Spike didn’t come with us,” she finished.

“Oh,” said Spike, looking disappointed that he didn’t get to be a part of this great adventure.

“But don’t worry,” Vinyl said, getting down on her knees to get on the same eye level as Spike. “The Vinyl you know is in here, somewhere.” She tapped her head with one hoof for emphasis. “And I’m sure whenever I finally return to my world, you’ll get her back.”

Pinkamena thought this over for a few seconds. “Sure, why not? I’ve heard of stranger things. So who are these friends of yours, visitor from another world?”

Vinyl got back up to her hooves. “Rarity and Applejack you already know, as well as Rainbow Dash. Being this close to Canterlot, I don’t doubt that you know who Twilight Sparkle is. That just leaves Fluttershy and...say, you wouldn’t happen to have a sister named Pinkie, would you?”

Pinkamena snorted. “That’s the second time that somepony’s been waving that nickname around! As for the others, I gotta say, that Dragon Emperor must really hate you. Of all of the alternative Equestrias that could ever exist, he managed to find the one where five of you are complete scumbags.”

“They aren’t the way they are here in your world, are they?” asked Spike. “I can’t imagine how you could be friends with them if they were anything like they are here.”

“No,” said Vinyl, “they’re completely different. On my world, they are the champions of Equestria and the trusted confidantes of the Princesses.”

“Princesses, as in plural?” asked Pinkamena. “Who’s the other one?”

“Oh, no!” realized Vinyl, rushing to the nearest window and looking up at the pre-dawn sky. Not seeing what she was looking for, she dashed to another side of the warehouse to try another window. “I forgot that we have a time limit in this world as well as in the one we left behind!”

“What kind of time limit?” asked Pinkamena.

“We didn’t just move across dimensions, we moved back in time,” Vinyl explained, rushing to another window. “If our histories are anything alike, you’re about to face the greatest crisis of the past one thousand years! She’s gone, she’s gone!” This last part was referring to the Moon, which hung high in the sky with a mostly blank face. “Or maybe not...” she added. “I didn’t think to look at the Moon of this world before now. Did it used to have a face before?”

“Nightmare Moon!” exclaimed Spike, having climbed up a stack of crates to get a clear look. “You were right about the Millennial Celebration! Or rather, the old you was right, before the new you arrived. ‘On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape and she will bring about nighttime eternal!’ What do we do?”

Pinkamena suddenly sat down on her tail and laughed. It was a laugh utterly devoid of happiness, the laughter of insipient madness. “I told you so!” she cried. “I told you so, I told you so, I told you so!”

“Snap out of it!” Vinyl shouted, shaking Pinkamena by the shoulders. “I know how this story goes, and it has a happy ending.”

“On your world perhaps,” said a desperate Pinkamena, “but if that happy ending is thanks to the six ponies you named, then we are all doomed!”

“We’ve got to do something!” answered Vinyl, equally desperate. “Come with me to City Hall. That’s where Nightmare Moon is right now. She can be defeated, and I know how to do it!”

Pinkamena sighed, but then a look of fierce resolve came into her eyes. “Alright. If we’re all doomed, I want to go down looking my doom in the eyes.” The two ponies headed for the door of the warehouse.

“Hey, wait for me!” exclaimed Spike, climbing down from the crates.

Vinyl turned to face him. “No, Spike,” she said firmly. “This is going to get really dangerous, and the Spike on my world wasn’t involved. I don’t know what Twilight would have done if you had gotten hurt.”

“Twilight?” Spike asked, utterly bewildered.

“Stay here, Spike,” Vinyl instructed him. “The sun is going to rise in about three hours, and that’s how you’ll know that Nightmare Moon has been defeated. My Spike slept through the whole thing...”

She stopped for a moment, smiling at that dragon’s ability to sleep through anything.

“You on the other hoof can keep hysteria in Ponyville down,” Vinyl continued, “and maybe arrange for our victory parade when we get back. Promise me you’ll do this, Spike.”

Spike sighed. “Fine, I promise. But you gotta promise to say goodbye to me before you leave.”

“Alright Spike, I promise.” She looked over at the grim face of Pinkamena. “Let’s go.”

Spike watched from the doorway of the warehouse as the two ponies raced towards the center of town.

He opened his mouth to wish them luck, but didn’t feel that anything he could say would match the gravity of the situation, so he just sighed instead.

The pair of ponies spent the time walking through Ponyville covering many of the subjects Pinkamena and Spike had covered earlier, including the matter of the rock farm and the lack of a cutie mark. Vinyl for her part did far more listening than talking. She volunteered nothing more about her other life, and Pinkamena seemed disinclined to ask.

All the while, Vinyl’s mind was reeling over the situation she had found herself in.

Back in the world where she came from, Vinyl and Rarity had been friends for a few years in Ponyville before Vinyl had left to attend the musical academy at Fillydelphia. She had only the most casual acquaintance with Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie before she had left, and had never met Twilight Sparkle before the day she found out about the compact disks that the magician was attempting to decipher.

It wasn’t long after the group had befriended her that Vinyl learned that they had been the ones who had defeated Nightmare Moon. Or rather, she heard, and immediately decided that they were all crazy. The idea that mortal ponies could defeat a mad goddess was impossible to believe, and she had gone to rather extreme lengths to rationalize to herself how they might have been fooled into thinking they had done what they had claimed. Every time one of them would bring up the story, she’d try to change the subject.

But the more Vinyl learned about her six friends, the more it dawned on her that they were in fact telling the truth. Once she finally believed, she couldn’t hear the story enough, and asked each of them to tell it to her multiple times. The notion that six ponies could do something like that was incredibly inspiring to her, both in her life and in her compositions as DJ Pon-3.

And now, by some strange quirk of fate, she was being allowed to live that story. As Twilight Sparkle. It seemed too good to be true.

Finally, they reached the town square. The booming voice of Nightmare Moon could be heard before they even entered Town Hall itself.

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” said the voice in petulance. “Nightmare Moon. The name is Nightmare Moon. You’d think that somepony would have figured that out. The state of education has declined most precipitously in the past thousand years. And now we move on to the second item on the agenda, my little ponies: why I am here. I am here to correct a cosmic wrong. I am here to reclaim what is mine! I am here to teach you all a lesson, once and for all! Remember this day, little ponies, for it was your last. From this moment forth, the night will last forever!”

This was followed by much demonical cackling.

“Why do they always have to do that?” muttered Pinkamena to herself as the two of them entered the main hall unobserved.

Vinyl froze, staring at the impossibly tall black horse standing on the balcony above them. She was as tall, in fact, as Princess Celestia, her coat so dark as to absorb all light. Her wings were outstretched in defiance of the crowd below her, and her eyes, the slitted eyes of a dragon, stared defiantly down at the ponies who dared to stand up against her. She had an impossibly long horn and instead of a mane or tail, a thick blue mist floated around her. Through it, stars were visible. In fact, it appeared as if that mist was actually a window into the night sky that would be visible behind Nightmare Moon if the walls of City Hall did not exist.

The Mayor stepped forward with complete confidence, a confidence belied by the knocking knees of Rarity standing behind her. “Seize her!” the Mayor ordered her unicorn guards. “Only she knows where the Princess is!”

A net of magical force quickly wove itself between the horns of the guards to the sound of a warbling of flutes, and struck out at Nightmare Moon from three directions at once.

From Nightmare Moon’s horn, an inky darkness seeped out that soaked up the magic from the net, and then returned to her.

If a unicorn’s magic on this world manifested itself musically, then Nightmare’s Moon magic was a silence that sucked all melodies into it.

“How pitiful!” she exclaimed. “And yet...an impressive degree of coordination.” She closed her eyes, and the black magic from her horn swelled out once more, sweeping low over the backs of the panicked guards, and then sucking the “diamond dust” right out of them. “How very interesting!” she exclaimed.

Rarity turned to flee, but was caught in Nightmare Moon’s magic and floated over until they were face to face. “That’s a nice trick you have there,” the alicorn told her calmly. “For which I am most grateful. This will make my conquest of Equestria so much easier! Last time I had to pretend all sorts of things to build up an army, but with this I can have nearly any pony I choose join my side! Think of it: any pony that would dare to oppose me would have to fight their way through an army composed of their brothers and sisters, parents and children, all of whom would be willing to die to protect me!” Using her magic, Nightmare Moon floated Rarity above her and turned her upside-down, shaking her roughly until all of the dust in her coat had fallen into Nightmare Moon’s. Unlike the case with Rarity, every speck of the dust was completely absorbed into the alicorn’s infinite blackness, leaving her looking the same as she did before.

Her usefulness to the dark princess at an end, Rarity was tossed into a corner.

“Now then...” Nightmare Moon began.

She was interrupted by the sudden arrival of dozens of pegasi bursting through the skylights.

At the same moment, a light blue pegasus strode confidently into the room. She had a bright rainbow-colored mane and tail. On her flank was a black storm cloud out of which poured dozens of lightning bolts, and resting on her head was an enormous glittering crown. The proud pegasus shoved her way past Vinyl and Pinkamena into the center of the room, quickly followed by a team of pegasi operating a spotlight and another team with a wind machine.

“Seize her!” ordered Empress Rainbow Dash once she had reached her mark. She looked incredibly impressive with the proper lighting and with a wind blowing her mane back. “Only she knows where the Princess is!”

“What, again?” the alicorn deadpanned. She yawned theatrically as she used her magic to swat down the dozen pegasi soldiers that rushed at her. “You foals!” she then exclaimed in disgust. In an instant, there was a great cloud of night sky where Nightmare Moon had once stood. It spread out over the backs of all the ponies present, showering them with dust. Suddenly about half of the ponies present, of all three breeds, sneezed as one and then turned into blue clouds, which joined the main mass, along with the spotlight, the wind machine, and the gaudy crown on Rainbow Dash’s head. The massive cloud then swiftly flowed out through the busted skylight.

Everypony raced out of the building, to see the cloud heading out towards a distant forest. They were quietly joined by Applejack, who had been in the midst of escaping town when everything had started happening.

“Come back here!” the Empress exclaimed, shoving her way past everypony and flying after the cloud. Unfortunately, it blended completely into the night sky, making it impossible to see where precisely it entered the forest.

With a sigh, Rainbow Dash flew back and landed in the center of the city square. The battered pegasus guard organized themselves into a square surrounding her. They settled to the ground and all bowed low to her. The numerous gaps left by those Nightmare Moon had taken were painfully obvious.

Stepping out of the crowd was a pale blue pegasus stallion in a blue flightsuit with rainbow markings matching the Empress’ mane. He positioned himself to the side and a little back from Rainbow Dash then bowed down even lower than the others. “Your Most Exalted Majesty!” he exclaimed.

Rainbow Dash looked about her in fury. “I was going to crash this celebration in order to make the Princess look bad, but nopony takes my crown (and my pegasi) away from me and gets away with it! I want answers!!!”

“Yes, Empress!” exclaimed the pegasus in the flightsuit. He rushed out into the crowd. “Um, Empress...?” his voice floated back a few seconds later. “All the ponies of this town appear to be frozen.”

“What?!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, walking through a gap in her guard to examine an earth pony with a pink coat and blonde mane, her foreleg outstretched and mouth agape. A lily was tucked behind one ear. Rainbow Dash tapped the frozen pony lightly on the side, and got no reaction. She then pushed, and the pony toppled over, still frozen in position. This caused the pegasus to laugh out loud. She started rushing from pony to pony, knocking each of them over. “This is great!” she squealed.

“Is the Empress nothing but a bully?” demanded a voice.

“Who said that!” the Empress screamed, looking around her. “Show yourself, unless you’re a coward!”

Pinkamena stepped forward from the crowd of frozen ponies. “Has the Great and Powerful Rainbow Dash come down here merely to belittle us ground-based ponies, or will she join the fight to save us all from eternal night?”

“I’m going to save you all from whatever mess you got yourself into,” Rainbow Dash told her, “right after I clean your clock!” She quickly reared up on her hind legs and attempted to punch Pinkamena, but only connected with empty air. She flipped around to see the pink pony next to her and attempted to buck her, but again was unsuccessful. “Stand still so I can clobber you!” she exclaimed.

“Enough!” exclaimed Applejack, grabbing a bucket of ice-cold water that Graphite had passed to her and dumping it on both of them. (This had been used to keep the champagne cold, in case anypony was wondering).

“If you want answers, Empress,” said Vinyl Scratch, stepping forward to face the drenched pegasus, “I’ve got answers. What you just saw was Nightmare Moon, the possessed form of Princess Celestia’s sister Luna. She nearly destroyed Equestria a thousand years ago and was imprisoned in the Moon. That spell of imprisonment expired this morning, and Nightmare Moon has in turn imprisoned Princess Celestia in the sun and prevented it from rising. The only force that can stop her is the Elements of Harmony. And I know how to get them.”

Rainbow Dash sighed in exasperation. “Soarin’, get me a towel,” she said calmly to her flightsuited underling, who instantly produced one. “Now you, Unicorn...” she began as she dried her mane.

“Vinyl Scratch.”

“...Vinyl Scratch, that’s a pretty incredible story you’re telling me. I’m gonna have to see some proof.”

“Alright, the proof you need is in the library.” She rolled her eyes. “Strike that, the ‘Temporary World Domination Headquarters of Apple, Inc.’ Assuming they didn’t burn the books or something.”

“What kind of barbarian do you take me for?” asked Applejack rhetorically, walking past them in the direction of the tree house and swinging her tail from side to side. As she passed by, Vinyl Scratch felt a brief pain in her neck. Rather similar to the way she felt about the earth pony at that moment. “Follow me,” Applejack continued, “and I’ll take you to whatever book you need.”

“This is all my fault!” cried out a forlorn voice from inside City Hall.

“Oh for crying out loud!” exclaimed Applejack to herself. “Your most exalted majesty,” she said to the Empress, bowing. “Is it correct to assume that you’re taking over this town in response to the collapse of civil authority?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Then could you please send your security forces in there to arrest the miserable little unicorn who has been holding this town in a reign of terror for the past five years? As I believe you observed, she was also the means by which Nightmare Moon stole your pegasi away from you.”

“You lousy, slimy snake in the grass!” exclaimed Pinkamena. With her slicked-down mane, she looked exactly the same wet as dry, and didn’t seem to mind the dampness at all. “You couldn’t wait five minutes after your closest ally failed you before slipping the knife into her back!”

“You might want to arrest her, too,” Applejack stage-whispered in the Empress’ ear. “She’s crazy.”

“Celestia save us all!” Vinyl said quietly, walking past the others to take the lead.

Rainbow Dash looked about her for a few moments before making up her mind. “Soarin’, here’s your towel back. Now go back there and round up every non-pegasus that’s still moving, and bring them to wherever these other two are leading me.”

Soarin’ bowed briefly before flying off to carry out his orders.

Chapter 8: The Auto-Fetching Forehoof

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 8: The Auto-Fetching Forehoof

Applejack raced ahead of the others to have a talk with Big Mac, who was standing outside the tree house. Piles of paper with Apple, Inc.’s letterhead had been stacked all around the tree’s trunk, and something was smoldering from behind Big Mac’s back.

If Apple, Inc. had made itself rich off of illegal slave labor from Ponyville, then the moment when a rescued Princess’ representative was about to spill the beans was the perfect time for an evidence-eliminating “accident”.

Pinkamena walked right up to Big Mac, then reached around him and knocked his torch to the ground, quickly stomping the embers into charcoal. She then walked back around and looked him in the eye for a few seconds before turning her attention to Applejack. “‘Too civilized to burn the books’, huh?” she asked, before walking into the tree house. Although she was doing her best to hide it, inside Pinkamena was trembling in fear at the thought of the tree house burning around her.

Crammed into the room at the top of the stairs were Applejack, Graphite, Vinyl Scratch, Pinkamena, Rarity, the two pegasus guards assigned to watch her, Soarin’, the Empress Rainbow Dash, and the Empress’ enormous ego. Big Mac was relegated to peering in from the top of the stairs. All of the remaining space in the room was taken up with hundreds, if not thousands of books. They had originally been stacked into precarious towers, but those towers had long since collapsed, leaving books shoved into the spaces between the furniture, and covering said furniture to the point where that furniture became completely unusable. Rather like sand dunes, the chance of a further collapse, a “book avalanche”, or “book-alanche”, was a near certainty the moment anypony was foolish enough to attempt to remove just one of the books within a hoof’s reach.

The lack of space reminded Vinyl rather strongly of Celestia’s teleportation room.

“I’m ready for your proof, Miss Scratch,” said Rainbow Dash, climbing up on the bed so she could be higher than everypony else.

Vinyl Scratch looked around her at the haphazard piles of books and scrolls. She noticed that Pinkamena was in a sense of awe—with her sheltered upbringing it was possible that this room contained more books than she had ever known had existed before. “OK, Exhibit A. Let’s see...what was the name of that book...Predictions and...no wait, my world, here it would be...” By this time she was mumbling to herself.

“Speak up!” exclaimed the Empress.

“Songs of Things to Come!” Vinyl exclaimed. “Which...I brought with me!” She retrieved the libretto from her saddlebag and placed it on the table in the center of the room. As she did so, the letter from the Princess to herself fell unnoticed to the floor. “Canzone 42,” she read. The page the book was opened to was covered with sheet music and lyrics. “The Maa-aa-aaaayaa-aaaa-aaaaare ii-iii-iiiiiiinnnnn...” she attempted to sing. “Attempted”, because Canzone 42 was a baritone solo, and therefore a bit of a stretch for her. She turned the page. “Thhheeeee-eee...”

“GET ON WITH IT!” screamed Rainbow Dash.

“Right, I’ll paraphrase,” Vinyl said, flipping through the yellowed pages of the libretto. “The Mare in the Moon was once a rival to Princess Celestia, but was then banished to the Moon for a thousand years. She had been so powerful in fact that only the artifacts known as the ‘Elements of Harmony’ were able to do even that much to her.”

Soarin’ leaned over the pages then flipped a few of them back and forth to scan the lyrics within. He then turned and nodded up at the Empress.

Vinyl put the libretto carefully back into her saddlebag, then searched them in hopes that she’d find the other book she needed there. No such luck.

“Exhibit B?” prompted Applejack.

Vinyl sighed. “There’s a book all about the Elements in this room, I’m sure of it.”

The ponies looked around them, several of them twisting their heads around to read the titles of upside-down books. However, most of the books were inaccessible to all but mountain climbers.

“Missy, it looks like you done run outa luck,” said Applejack.

Vinyl Scratch froze for a second, then suddenly relaxed. With a suspiciously casual tone, she addressed a distracted Pinkamena from over her shoulder while reaching a forehoof back towards her. “Pinkie Pie, could you please get me The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide?” she said quietly.

“Here you go,” Pinkamena said, balancing the book on a forehoof. She then did a double take as Vinyl took it. “OK, two things,” Pinkamena then said. “First, don’t ever call me by that name again. And second, what kind of freaky powers does this Pinkie friend of yours have, anyway?!”

As she looked around her, Pinkamena suddenly realized that she saw little labels floating in front of every book with their titles and possible uses. Next to each earth pony and unicorn was an information box with their birthdays, likes and dislikes. As far as she could tell, the only reason the pegasi in the room lacked these boxes was because they hadn’t been around Ponyville long enough for her to suck the information out of their skulls.

“No!” Pinkamena exclaimed, slamming her head sideways into a nearby pillar. When her vision cleared, she nodded at what she was no longer seeing. “Much better.”

“Oo, I wanna try!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, hopping down from the bed to stand beside Pinkamena. “Pinkie Pie, could you please get me The Great Big Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind?”

“Here you go,” Pinkamena said automatically, then stared goggle-eyed at the book the Empress then took from her.

“Neat!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, putting the book down on the table and starting to flip through it. “I’m gonna look up exactly what kind of ‘crazy’ you are!”

“Oh yeah?!” exclaimed Pinkamena. “Pinkie Pie,” she ordered herself, “could-you-please-get-me Bigby’s Book of Non-Unicorn Mental Magic?” As she said this, she stared at her left forehoof. She saw it flick, so fast as to be nearly imperceptible, and come back into focus with a book balanced upon it. She couldn’t be sure, but in that split second she also thought she saw her foreleg stretch far more than should be physically possible. “Gah!!” she shouted, nearly dropping the book. Shaking her head to recover, she then slammed it down on the table and started looking for something nasty to do to the Empress.

Vinyl used her magic to pull both books roughly away from the two readers. “Ladies, ladies!” she pleaded. “We’re here for the Elements. Remember?”

“Fine!” the pink and blue ponies said in unison.

Vinyl glanced down at the reference book open before her to be sure it said what she already knew that it would say, and then recited the text from memory: “There are six Elements of Harmony, but only five are known: Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty and Loyalty. The sixth is a complete mystery. It is said the last known location of the five elements was in the ancient castle of the royal pony sisters.”

“But that’s in the Fluttershy Forest!” exclaimed Rarity.

“Exactly,” said Vinyl, before doing a double-take. “Wait, the Fluttershy Forest?”

“It used to be known as the Everfree Forest,” said Applejack, “until a day...”

“Wait, let me guess,” said Vinyl, putting a forehoof to her eyes in exasperation. “It was on Skybreak, wasn’t it?”

Applejack blinked in surprise. “As a matter of fact, yes, it was on that day.”

Pinkamena caught Rainbow Dash turning her head away in shame during this discussion.

Vinyl Scratch looked around the room. “I am going into that forest to get those Elements, all six of them.”

Rainbow Dash looked her in the eyes then walked over to stand beside her. “As am I,” she stated confidently.

Pinkamena took a deep breath, glanced briefly at her “auto-fetching forehoof”, and joined the other two. “I’m in,” she said quietly.

Vinyl looked her up and down. “Do you still need to wear the mask?” she asked.

“Oh, right,” replied Pinkamena. “‘My quest is at an end,’ and all of that. Here goes nothing...” She removed her mask, to absolutely no reaction from the others. “Well...that was disappointing. Of course, if I actually had a secret identity, the big reveal might have meant a bit more.”

Vinyl looked back and forth between the two ponies committed to this quest.

According to the script on her world, there should have been at least two more volunteers from among the ponies in this room.

“What are you looking at me for?” Applejack said in response to Vinyl’s baleful look. “I’m a rich businesspony. I pay other ponies to do the physical work.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I suppose you need brains as well as brawn. Very well.”

Rainbow Dash looked back and forth between Vinyl and the last pony she was looking at. “What are you looking at her for?” she asked. “She’s a suspected felon!”

Vinyl nodded. “You’re right—we should do something about that.”

Vinyl led the others back to City Hall, along the way spotting Spike watching their progress from a second-story shop window. Surrounding the building when they got there were several panicked unicorns and earth ponies, frozen in the act of fleeing for their lives; the hall itself contained dozens more.

Vinyl turned around and confronted Rarity at the entrance of the hall. The former Mistress of Ponyville looked awful. Her mane hung over her face like a tattered mop, and her tail resembled a rough purple rope. “Release them,” Vinyl ordered her. “I’m going to get us through this in one piece, but if I don’t, you owe it to them to release them before we go.”

Rarity nodded nervously, and then closed her eyes. As her horn started glowing, a single sweet-sounding note started building in volume around them, like each of the frozen ponies was blowing on identical flutes. As the volume swelled, the note developed into two notes an octave apart, then into a major chord, then a minor, then a minor seventh, then a diminished seventh, the sound becoming more and more discordant. As a music student, Vinyl could barely stand to listen to it, while Rarity was visibly gritting her teeth. Finally the sound broke into pure noise, and then faded away.

All of the frozen ponies swayed for a moment before collapsing to the ground. Rarity herself nearly lost her balance as her horn’s light went out, but was able to catch herself in time. Inside the hall, the sound of the Mayor crying uncontrollably could be heard.

Most of the ponies recovered rapidly, with Rainbow Dash’s guards helping the rest. The Empress made a speech about putting aside her differences with the ground-dwellers for the extent of the emergency, and extending all the resources of Cloudsdale to assist in their recovery. She then sent a guard back to her capital to make good on her word.

An earth stallion, faded scarlet in color, spotted Rarity and made his way straight to her. “You!” he exclaimed, pointing. “You ruined all our lives!”

“I only did what I thought was best!” Rarity pleaded.

“You made me break up with my fillyfriend!” he shouted.

“She was no good for you, I assure you!”

“But who gave you the right?”

This question was taken up by the others: “Who gave you the right? Who gave you the right?!”

Rarity hid her head under her forelegs and trembled.

The stallion stepped forward until he was towering over her. “Something needs to be done,” he proclaimed somberly.

The others nodded grimly to each other.

Vinyl Scratch shoved her way between them. “She’s coming with us,” she told the crowd defiantly.

“There’s more of us then there are of you!” the stallion shouted. “How are you going to prevent us giving her what she deserves?”

The ponies in the crowd murmured among themselves, trying to come up with an appropriately gruesome punishment.

The Empress, watching the confrontation, decided to stand back and see how this pony who had assumed a position of authority over her would handle this situation.

“I’m going to give you a choice!” Vinyl said loud enough for all to hear. “Either you can ‘give her what she deserves’, now in this square without a shred of legal authority to hide behind, or you can watch the sun come up tomorrow morning. Your call.” She then turned and walked away.

The self-appointed leader of the mob looked around him warily. “How do we know you’ll bring her back?” he asked at last.

“Cuff her,” Applejack told Rainbow Dash. After a moment’s thought, the Empress nodded, and Rarity was chained and shackled by the pegasus guards.

Rarity raised her head to look in the eyes of her accusers, her former victims. “I will return and do penance for what I have done. This I swear. Please don’t hurt the Mayor; she had no idea what she was doing.” Then she turned and shuffled her way out of town behind the departing group.

Chapter 9: Gut-Wrenching Truths

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 9: Gut-Wrenching Truths

“I think you can unchain her now,” said Applejack once they were beyond the town’s boundaries.

Rainbow Dash sighed theatrically. “I wish you’d make up your mind,” she joked.

They all knew that the chains were solely to calm the enraged populace, and that there was no way that the mournful unicorn walking behind them would ever think of fleeing. Besides, all of that weight was not only slowing her down, but the entire group, and it would be a long trek to the Fluttershy Forest.

This group included not only Vinyl Scratch and four of the six “Champions of Celestia” she had named to Pinkamena, but also Graphite, Big Mac, Soarin’, and four pegasus guards.

Vinyl would have complained at this, since it so clearly contradicted the story she was trying to follow so far, but this Nightmare Moon had herself an army already, so some sort of adjustment was required in any case.

But that didn’t mean she had to accept all of them.

Vinyl stepped in next to Applejack to ask her a question: “I can understand why you’d want to bring Big Mac, but why Graphite?”

The pony being asked looked coldly back at her. “First of all...” she started, before turning her head. “Graphite, could you please join us?” She turned back to face Vinyl as her assistant joined her. “I prefer not to discuss my employees behind their back,” she said politely. “Somehow, it always gets back to them in the end, and this way they have my exact words to judge me by instead of some second- or third-hoof account. And second, Miss Scratch,” she said, letting a veritable arctic storm of coldness into her voice, “could you kindly remove your eyewear and repeat the question? I’d like to know if you’re insulting me before I answer, and I’m a lot better at judging that when I can see the eyes of the pony I’m talkin’ to.”

Vinyl grudgingly accepted the reasonableness of the request, and removed her sunglasses. “I was just asking,” she said, “why you considered Graphite a necessary part of an expedition that I believe will probably not require his skillset. I’m thinking above all about the safety of this party, and what will be necessary to guarantee that safety. And I’m not sure how you could consider the question insulting,” she added, hoping what she said didn’t sound insulting.

“Well...” Applejack drawled, doing her impersonation of a much dumber pony, “you’re a unicorn, and I’m a earth pony...with a unicorn as an underling. You might have thought that against the natural order or somethin’.”

Vinyl pulled her head back. “Now I am the one who is insulted. Some of my best friends...”

“Oh!” Applejack quickly interrupted in anger. “So we’re going to play the ‘Some of My Best Friends’ game, unicorn from Canterlot? The same place where they still insist on calling our princess a ‘winged unicorn’, as if a particularly clever flying spell was the only thing that separated her from you and kept her forever separated from us? There’s no room in that little worldview for a rich and successful earth pony, is there? One rich enough to hire one of your own to do the things that I could do quite easily if I happened to be born with a silly horn putting a hole in this here hat. I pay Graphite here quite well. Enough to reward the versatility and creativity I demand of all of my top employees, and a bit extra for putting up with everything I have to say about unicorns. You see a bookish secretary, while I see at least three extra senses. I’d sooner dock my tail than go anywhere dangerous without Graphite.” She then changed her voice again, sounding a great deal like her sister Applebloom after finding a lizard. “So do I get to keep him or not?”

Vinyl Scratch seethed. There was a great deal she wanted to say.

And none of it will do a bit of good, will it? It was the internal voice of DJ Pon-3. Take my advice, and don’t feed the troll.

“He can stay,” Vinyl said curtly, and adjusted her pace to allow Applejack to pass her.

As she reviewed the strengths and weaknesses of the party in her mind, Vinyl briefly reconsidered her decision to leave Spike behind, but eventually concluded that he would be “more of a liability than an asset”, to use a phrase more expected from the mouth of this world’s Applejack than that of DJ Pon-3. She also decided that she might be seen as more accessible of a leader if she kept her sunglasses off, and so she tucked them into her saddlebags.

Vinyl was finding it difficult to keep her facts straight. Now that she had her original memories back, they were all that she could recall easily. It took great effort to remember the things that this world’s Vinyl knew and remembered. Considering which version of Vinyl commanded the more powerful magic, this could prove problematic.

“So,” said Pinkamena, sidling up to Vinyl and speaking low enough for them not to be overheard. “How are we doing so far?”

“Well,” said Vinyl, “two of the Elements are at least within the general ballpark. Rarity was criminally generous in forcing happiness upon every resident of Ponyville, and Rainbow Dash has been catastrophically loyal to her pegasi at the expense of every other pony in Equestria. The other two have a long way to go yet.”

Pinkamena, knowing that she was one of those two, smirked humorlessly. “So that’s how the Elements work,” she said. “And I suppose you’re the mysterious sixth Element?”

Vinyl nodded then grinned mischievously. “Promise you won’t tell anypony. It’s much more dramatic to realize the truth at the last possible second.”

Pinkamena raised one eyebrow. “Indubitably,” she said. “By the way, I’m Honesty, aren’t I? The teller of truths so painful they rip your guts out.”

“No,” said Vinyl with a grimace. “You’re not Honesty. Applejack is.”

Pinkamena pointed at the pony who was walking several paces ahead of them. “So why don’t you tell her?” she asked. “Tell her who she really is. Tell her who you really are.”

“I’ll never get through that granite skull of hers,” said Vinyl. “I mean, what am I going to say? ‘You’re living a life that doesn’t belong to you’? ‘You’re a stranger in your own head’? It was hard enough to get her to come along on this quest. She’d never accept something like that without proof. I’d never accept something like that before I had proof. You can’t get a pony to go in those sorts of directions just by telling it to them, believe me. You have to trick them into finding it themselves.”

Pinkamena poked Vinyl in the chest. “You are one stubborn pony. I on the other hoof think Applejack and I could take it.”

“You’re the Element of Laughter,” Vinyl told her.

“No. No, no, no. NO, NO, NO!” Pinkamena shouted, covering her ears with her forehooves and racing away past Applejack on her hind legs. “The last thirty seconds are officially NULL and VOID!”

“The prosecution rests,” Vinyl said to herself, shaking her head.

Applejack looked back at Vinyl and gave her a mysterious look. Vinyl noticed that Applejack was now wearing a pair of apple-ornamented earmuffs, a completely unneeded accessory on a warm morning like this.

Vinyl returned to the dilemma of keeping her memories straight, and came up with a solution that doubled as a way of resolving several other mysteries that had been bugging her.

“When I was a little filly,” Vinyl said loud enough for everypony to hear, “I saw the Princess raise the sun at a Summer Sun Celebration with her song. From that moment, I dreamed of being a magical musician. I devoted my every waking moment to that dream and finally on a day ten years ago, I had the chance to make that dream a reality.

“It was the day that would later be known as Skybreak. I was in Canterlot Castle to take part in the entrance examination for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. I had studied all of the classic compositions and memorized the complete life stories of dozens of famous mages, so naturally I aced the written portion of the examination. Unfortunately, this was followed by a challenge: each of us was placed in a room with a potted century plant and a trio of judges. We were asked to compose a new spell to make the plant bloom. In this task I completely and utterly failed. I could not come up with an original tune to save my life, and the School was for composition, not study. I had been fooling myself for all those years.

“As I was walking forlornly out of the castle,” Vinyl continued, “I heard screams of panic behind me. Suddenly, a room on the side of the castle burst open. That room was the hatchery, where dragon princes left the eggs that guaranteed their good behavior and where the next generation of dragon diplomats would be born. Out of the rubble of the demolished hatchery stepped a full-grown rampaging dragon. The dragon started stomping his way through the capital, toppling buildings left and right and trying to trample the fleeing ponies underfoot. The buildings he didn’t crush were soon set aflame from his fiery breath.”

Vinyl decided to leave out the part about the mad purple unicorn riding the dragon and screaming “VENGEANCE!” at the top of her lungs. Well, at least she’d leave out any obvious references to her.

After a moment, Vinyl continued. “Behind me,” she said, “I heard a tremendous ‘BOOM’ and saw a band of rainbow in the sky cross over my head. At that moment, I suddenly heard the harmony that exists between all creatures, and the melody of the Princess that subtly intertwines itself with the whole of creation, and behind that a song of sorrow for something lost so very long ago. I could hear the musical potential that hides in every silence, and I heard the furious solo from the vicinity of the dragon that struggled to be heard.

“And so I sang. I sang the song of forgiveness. I sang the song of balance, the song of goodness and love. And the rampaging dragon turned back into an egg.”

Vinyl stood there silently for a few seconds.

She soaked in this memory that was not really hers, as the others watched her.

“The Princess found me resting beside the egg,” she finally said. “I then stood up, looked her straight in the eye, and asked for a make-up on my earlier failure.

“Princess Celestia rested one hoof on the shell of the egg and concentrated for a few moments before smiling at me. ‘Hatch the egg of this innocent dragon,” she told me, ‘and that will be make-up enough.’”

“And did you hatch the egg?” asked Soarin’.

Vinyl nodded. “You can all meet Spike when we get back to Ponyville.”

“You can take this as the beginning of my confession,” began Rarity.

“In my fillyhood years, I suffered under the delusion that I was meant for something special. I had a unique vision, I told myself, a vision that must be shared with the world!

“Years passed, until I was the only member of my class without a cutie mark. We were putting on a school play. Having no skill in the realm of acting, I took it upon myself to design the costumes and scenery. What I came up with was adequate, perfectly adequate under the circumstances. But I would not allow myself to accept this. I told myself that I must create the most artistically pleasing setting for my fellow students’ performances. No, my silent work must utterly and completely eclipse anything they might attempt to do from within the strait-jacket of my clothing and the prison walls of my sets! And so I set up my own fall from grace.

“One day I let my magic run wild. ‘Do anything,’ I bid my horn, ‘just make this play into my triumph!’ Suddenly, my horn lit up, brighter than a thousand suns. It sought out a kindred source of magic, and then PULLED! My horn dragged me out of Equestria, through the fields, over mountains and across deserts. I crossed trackless wastes too numerous to count! But was I worried? Never! I was convinced I was being pulled towards MY DESTINY! And, as it turned out, that is exactly where I was headed.”

Rarity looked around her, to see how thoroughly she had drawn the other ponies into her tale. But then she shook her head violently, as it was just this sort of pride that had ruined her. “Now we come to the fatal moment of choice. My horn’s light went out, and with it the mysterious force that had been pulling me. Before me was a gigantic rock. This was the destiny I should have chosen, if only I hadn’t been such a fool. The rock was telling me that my life should be hard, that I should work myself to the bone in order to deserve the fruits of an honest day’s labor. That is what I should have seen. But instead my prideful heart only saw an ugly behemoth. ‘This is my destiny?’ I demanded of the rock, and the Fates. ‘This is just a stupid rock! I reject you!’ And I reached out a feeble forehoof and kicked it.

“At that exact moment, the sky burst into a rainbow, and my fate was sealed. The tremendous explosion caused the rock to vibrate extremely rapidly, then fall over, nearly killing me. Oh, if only it had! For when the rock fell a piece of it broke off, revealing that it was hollow inside. Originally, that rock was a geode full of precious gems, but that vibration was so strong as to shatter the gems inside into powder. What I pulled out of the hole in that rock was pure diamond dust.”

Even though it’s not strictly “diamond...” I’m sorry. I really should let this go.

“This I eagerly accepted as my fate,” said Rarity, referring to the gem-derived fragments. “I collected as much of the stuff up as I could fit in my saddlebags, and I made the long, arduous trip back to Ponyville. Several times I was tempted to leave the heavy bags behind to ease the suffering of my journey, but my greed and ego prevented me. When I returned home I sequined the dust liberally over all of the costumes. The result was a complete transformation. They were now utterly stunning to look upon, and completely stole attention away from the poor actors. But I didn’t care, because all of the attention was now focused upon me!

“There was one most disturbing incident during the performance of that play. A drunken pony wandered up onto the stage and began trying to push the actors around, getting covered with diamond dust as he did so. I was paralyzed with fear, so I wished with all my might that he would stop and go away. And...that is exactly what he did. That was my first inkling of the power of the dust.

“Five years later was the first Winter Wrap-Up that I was ever involved in. It was an utter catastrophe from the very start, and I became deeply ashamed, not only for my own failures, but for what the other towns would think of us. And so I ran back to my home and got my supply of diamond dust. I dusted every single pony, and although I could not salvage our town’s score, I at least rescued our dignity.

“But this was the birth of my crisis,” the bedraggled unicorn continued. “The next morning the ponies of Ponyville woke up, and knew that I had controlled them. They came to me; probably to offer a perfectly reasonable punishment after I promised to get rid of the corrupting dust, but instead I dusted all of them and kept them under my control, continuously, for five whole years.

“It was an incredibly exhausting ordeal. Every time I slept I lost control over the ponies that were furthest from me or most resistant to me, so I was forced to sleep in the close vicinity of those that would hate me the most, were they ever to break free during the night. The Dreaded P.D.P. arrived in town, to become a living symbol of my guilt. And certain individuals arrived to turn my dilemma into their own profit.” She did not name names. She didn’t need to. “The rest...you know.”

“Pass,” said Applejack.

Everypony stared at her.

“Ah, come on!” she exclaimed. “If you’ve heard one tycoon’s life story, you’ve heard them all. I started out dirt poor and alone in the city. I was inspired, as it appears so many others of you were, by Skybreak. And so I set out to create something as all-encompassing. A network of apple orchards that would supply the whole of Equestria. Run by one family, for the benefit of all.” She looked around in disgust at the faces of those who actually bought that last lie. “The maximum profit, for the fewest number,” she added spitefully, glad to see how many she disappointed.

“Next!”

“I can actually say pass and mean it,” Pinkamena said quietly, gesturing at her blank flank. “I remember Skybreak, though. You’ll probably say this is impossible, but as a tiny little filly looking up at the mid-day sky, it looked like the rainbow front actively bent around our farm. Just couldn’t handle the certainty of our misery, I guess.”

“My best friend at flight camp was this timid little filly who could barely hover off of the ground,” said Rainbow Dash. She seemed to be talking more to herself than to anypony else. “Fluttershy was her name. That name was a bit too ‘on the nose’, I’ve always thought. She was always teased, because she was the worst student there, because of her odd appearance, and because she wouldn’t stand up for herself. Bullies love nothing better than a victim who cannot defend herself. So one day I stepped forward to defend her. The bullies weren’t going to back down so easily, so it came down to a race.

“The moment it started, I knocked Fluttershy off of the cloud she was standing on to cheer me on. That was an accident. What wasn’t an accident was my decision to continue the race rather than see if she was alright. I told myself that I was doing it for her, and that surely she could catch herself. The guilt built up, but it made me fly even faster, like I was trying through sheer speed to escape my responsibilities. I kept pushing and pushing and pushing, until finally I didn’t just break the sound barrier, I utterly demolished it. Pegasi from all parts of Equestria saw what I did, and were inspired in all sorts of crazy ways. I was just trying to protect my friend from a beating. That’s all.” She looked utterly and completely lost.

“But what about the land-dweller spies? What about the bomb set to destroy the rainbow factory?” asked one of the guards in confusion.

Soarin’ got right in that guard’s face. “There’s the story for all of the pegasi everywhere,” he said very carefully, “and what you just heard was some story the Empress told for fun to relieve tensions on the way to fight against our foe. Do you think you can tell the difference?”

The intimidated guard nodded quickly.

“Good.”

Rainbow Dash sighed. The Elders had explained it all to her very carefully, why the official story needed to be the way it was for the good of the Pegasus Nation, but at least for once she was glad she had managed to tell the truth.

“What happened to Fluttershy?” asked Vinyl.

“She fell into the Everfree,” said Graphite. “She became one with the forest, and the forest became one with her. It speaks with her voice now, and none who persist in ignoring her warnings not to enter live to tell the tale.”

Chapter 10: Lights Out

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 10: Lights Out

Spike caught himself falling asleep.

With a jerk, he sprung to his feet, and looked around him.

Something was most definitely wrong.

Despite the blazing of all of the streetlights in town, the streets of Ponyville looked...dim.

Ponies and buildings were hard to make out in the gloom that seemed to envelop them. The pavement itself seemed to melt into a solid mass instead of being composed of distinguishable cobblestones. Even the ponies, with their bright coats and manes, seemed to fade into a gray sameness.

“Guard!” Spike cried out, approaching one of the ponies. At least, he thought this was one of the guards. It was getting so you couldn’t even tell the breeds apart.

The pony opened its mouth, and a slurred sort of mish-mash emerged.

“Speak up!” Spike shouted. “I can barely hear you!”

“Calm down,” the pony could be heard to say, faintly. “why are you so excited...”

“Can’t you see what’s happening?” Spike asked, gesturing around him.

The pony looked around, and then wandered off, having seemingly completely forgotten about Spike.

Now Spike had to put up with being overlooked on a regular basis. He was never named in the reviews of the concerts of Vinyl Scratch’s music that he had conducted, and that he had orchestrated. He had once written a dissertation on using the Draconic Bloodline Codes embedded in the collection of messages stored in the Royal Archives to reconstruct the genealogy of the messenger dragons. As near as he could tell, this was a completely original idea and, given the often-secret clan alliances of the various dragon tribes, a discovery that could have a strong impact on the future of pony-dragon diplomacy. Yet because the paper had been written by “just a baby dragon”, it had been ignored by everypony. Spike had put up with it. He was a diplomat dragon by breeding, even if one with a rather unusual occupation. He would take the higher ground.

But having a pony walk out on Spike mid-conversation without even an excuse was definitely crossing the line.

“Now see here!” the dragon exclaimed, trying to turn the pony his way.

Only to be met by a pair of totally dead eyes.

With a shout, Spike turned and fled aimlessly down the street, trying his best to avoid seeing any other pony’s eyes.

“What’s going on?” he asked himself fearfully.

He decided to head for the Apple, Inc. headquarters. First because he had seen Vinyl gather the other ponies there to make some sort of an important decision, and second because he had a feeling in his gut that the tree house was the place everypony in Ponyville went to for answers.

As he approached the tree house, he saw a pile of burning leaves a few pony-lengths away from the base of the tree. Or rather, he saw a pile of burning paper, covered with a rather thin layer of burning leaves. Whatever it was, it was burning at an unnaturally slow rate, and giving off next to no light or sound.

Creeped out even more by this sight, he walked into the tree house. The lower level he quickly found to be completely empty. Even the larder was empty, and Spike was getting hungry.

He hoped he would not have to resort to the last of the amethysts—he wanted to save that for the victory party.

Spike then headed upstairs. This room, strangely, seemed brighter than the street outside, despite not having an independent lighting source. Sticking out from under the bed he found the letter that the Princess had sent to Vinyl Scratch that morning. He picked it up and looked it over for a few moments.

Now there’s a pony who appreciates hard work, regardless of where it comes from, Spike thought with pride. Instead of Celestia’s return address, she had deliberately crafted a cord-address two base pairs off from her own that didn’t belong to anypony. It was her way of expressing her appreciation for his dissertation, while at the same time doubling as a rather subtle joke at her student’s expense: “Vinyl Scratch,” it seemed to say, “as Princess of Equestria I beg of you to go to Ponyville and make some friends, although I might as well be Princess Nopony, as there is absolutely no chance you will follow this advice.”

Spike took some time to look around in awe at all of the books, and then finally focused on the table in the center of the room with its three tomes. Whatever answers Vinyl and the rest found, it was in those books.

Unfortunately, the table was far too high for him to reach, and there was nothing for him to stand on. He might be able to stack up some of the other books into a suitable perch, but they looked so precarious that he might cause a book-alanche if he tried to remove the wrong volume.

Why do ponies always have to put everything so high? Spike asked himself in frustration.

Having no other recourse, he started tipping the table carefully so that one of the books could fall down to the floor, hopefully open to the same page the ponies had been consulting. Unfortunately, all three shifted at once, and he was instantly buried in books.

Spike slowly allowed his eyes to refocus. One of the books had fallen down so to form a tent over him.

He looked up wearily at the incomprehensible symbols of the pages above him. They had to translate them, too? he asked himself.

Pushing himself up, he flipped the book over so that the pages were facing up and gave them a scan.

“There are six Elements of Harmony,” he read effortlessly, “but only five are known...”

But those same words had been meaningless gibberish a few seconds ago.

He started reading again, but then realized that he wasn’t reading at all. He was looking at the book, and then the words appeared in his mind.

Spike jumped up in shock...

...a horrible suspicion occurring to him...

...and ran downstairs and out to the bonfire. Being fireproof, he easily retrieved a mostly unburnt piece of paper from the flames.

He played some sort of odd game with the piece of paper.

To be specific, he held the paper out before him with the hoof-written text and letterhead facing away from him. Then he flipped it around, for just an instant, and then closed his eyes, making a mental image of what he saw. Then he opened his eyes and looked with dismay at the rows of numbers he read. There was no way that the shapes of the blobs in his mind could fit the actual contents of that page.

He looked across the street at the signs above the shops, with lettering that was nearly faded into obscurity.

It was easy now to see the individual symbols that made up each sign. Meaningless squiggles having in no way a relationship to the Equestrian alphabet.

Spike turned wearily around and climbed back upstairs to look at the first of the other two books on the ground: The Big Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind.

It was exactly the book he needed to consult. How narratively convenient, he thought glumly.

He sought out the entry for Dreaming, with the air of one who had the text memorized:

In general, if you ask yourself if you are dreaming, you probably aren’t. However, there are those lucid dreamers who may find themselves stuck, in which case the following signs are useful to look for:

* Nothing makes any sense anymore.

* Alternatively, everything starts making sense.

* Memories no longer match knowledge.

* What was once impossible is now not only plausible, but boring.

* You find that seemingly random events have become narratively convenient to you.

* And, most obviously: written materials on close inspection are found to consist of nonsense symbols.

Once you know you are dreaming, you will then wake up. Unless this is no ordinary dream...

This would be the point when Spike would need to consult a second book: Bigby’s Book of Non-Unicorn Mental Magic. Which was sitting right next to The Big Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind. Of course.

The Dragon Emperor of Spike’s memories was apparently the same Dragon Emperor that had sent Vinyl Scratch into this “world”: a supreme manipulator of minds. And Bigby described that dragon’s favorite spell.

Spike opened up the last remaining book, and read the following entry out loud:

The Dream Trap is one of the most wicked uses of illusion magic imaginable, so you will certainly find no recipe for creating one here. However, in the unfortunate event that some poor soul finds themselves a victim of it, I shall describe its effects and vulnerabilities:

The wizard who cast this spell came upon his victim while she was sleeping, and stole her spirit into his dream. This means that the victim is utterly bound by the laws of whatever existence the wizard dreams up. Anything that happens to the mind and body of the victim in the dream will be visited upon her mind and body in real life, up to and including madness or death. The only escape is to force the dreaming wizard to wake up, either from within the dream, or by having an awake ally attack the sleeping wizard.

Since the wizard must be asleep during the dream trap spell, he leaves himself vulnerable in a number of ways. As mentioned, he can be physically attacked, unless he has set up proper defenses. And by the illogic of dreams, if he fails to maintain a lucid state, he may find himself under attack by the world he created. In the same way, a wizard who fails to maintain control of the dream will find himself exactly as vulnerable to mental and physical harm (and consequent damage to his real mind and body) as his would-be victim.

In fact, although the spell is rightfully dreaded and banned, the history of its use has shown the casting dreamer to have ended up suffering more than the victim in the majority of cases. Many an evil wizard has sought a way to overcome this limitation, to create a “dream trap chain” that would force multiple victims to serially inhabit each other’s dreams, in hopes that, unaware that their dreams are out of the ordinary, they might eventually kill each other off and so save the wizard the trouble.

Luckily, no wizard has yet succeeded in creating the Dream Trap Chain spell described above.

Spike turned back to The Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind, and flipped back a page:

The three methods for waking up from a dream, from least- to most effective:

Figure out that you’re dreaming.

Receive a persistent outside stimulus that cannot be incorporated into the dream. In other words, an alarm clock.

Falling. This one never fails.

As he finished the entry, Spike was suddenly overcome by a severe nausea. At the same time, everything went gray.

The dream, he realized, had suddenly reached a stage where the dreamer’s attention was completely focused on a scene far away. Ponyville wasn’t needed anymore.

I wonder what happens to fictional characters when nobody remembers them anymore?

Dream-Spike figured this would be as good an epitaph as any for himself as he dissolved into the grayness.

Chapter 11: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 11: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

The ponies entered the Fluttershy Forest.

Within a few hoofsteps, the dark canopy closed in around them and shut out what little light there was. The three unicorns lit their horns as the group gathered closer together.

“STOP!” cried a voice that echoed all around them. The voice of Fluttershy.

The ponies whirled about. Staring out of the darkness at them from every direction were dozens of pairs of glowing eyes, from the undergrowth to the tree branches above them.

“DO NOT MAKE ANOTHER STEP, OR YOU’LL BE SORRY!”

Vinyl noticed that the voice came from each pair of eyes, and also seemed to emerge from a rustling of the leaves of the trees, a rustling caused by no wind. Vinyl could make out that a pair of eyes near her belonged to a small songbird. The voice of Fluttershy was coming out of its beak as it clacked it open and shut. The same appeared to be the case of those other creatures in the dark that she could make out.

Fluttershy was literally the voice of the forest.

Vinyl stepped up where the bird could clearly see and hear her. “We are here to help,” she addressed the creatures, and by extension, the pony they were all linked to. “You sound frightened, Fluttershy. Are you afraid of us, or are you frightened of what your forest might do to keep us from you?”

“YOU WANT TO HELP US? MANY HAVE TOLD US THAT. THEY WERE ALL LIARS!!!” The pain and hatred poured into that last word were enough to make everypony wince.

“Step aside,” Rainbow Dash ordered her guards, stepping out from the center of the group to stand beside Vinyl Scratch.

“Your Majesty!” cried Soarin’, begging the Empress to return to safety.

“Don’t worry!” replied Dash. “If Fluttershy’s in her right mind, she’ll be sure to know who I am!”

“And if she’s not in her right mind, she’s even more likely to know who you are!” said Soarin’.

Seeing Rainbow Dash, several dozen pairs of glowing eyes blinked simultaneously, and then faded back into two columns. The branches of the trees pulled themselves back, revealing a path leading into the depths of the forest.

Rainbow Dash gulped nervously. “OK, Fluttershy, just show us where you want us to go.”

The group walked ever further into the forest. Vinyl dropped back until she was next to Applejack. She walked beside her but said nothing for several minutes.

“Take a look at the sky,” Applejack finally said.

Vinyl looked up. Above their heads, but below the forest canopy, floated the nighttime sky, shifting and reshaping itself constantly.

“Nightmare Moon!” Vinyl hissed in alarm.

As she watched, a tendril of the dark blue cloud formed itself into a column that descended down towards them. It was then attacked by several varieties of glowing-eyed birds until it retreated.

“Fluttershy’s a victimized pony with the power of an entire forest at her command,” said Applejack in an accusing tone. “And you want to ‘help’ her. Who says she wants to be helped? Isn’t it more likely that she’ll just smash the Empress into a pulp and then leave us all to the mercy of Nightmare Moon?”

Vinyl Scratch looked Applejack in the eye. “Against what I once thought to be my better judgment, I have learned to expect the best in every pony I meet. I learned this from the brightest, most hopeful, most powerful, and yet most ordinary and humble ponies in all of Equestria.”

“I’m not...!” snapped Applejack, before catching herself.

Vinyl nodded. “So you do have me bugged. I wonder: how many ponies, in your entire life, have you ever given your trust?”

“Big Mac,” Applejack replied coldly. “He’s the only one who deserves it.” She shook her head ruefully. “You seem plenty fond of makin’ judgments about me behind my back without knowin’ a thing about me. Like sayin’ I’m not honest.”

“You are honest?” Vinyl replied incredulously.

“My life is all about facts. Facts about the weather, about the soil, about roads for shipping, about local politics, about national politics. Who can be pushed, who needs their ego stroked, and who needs what form of ‘redirection’. In my position I control all of the facts.”

“...and keep them away from everypony else,” added Vinyl. “I’m sorry, in my book that’s the very opposite of honesty. Let me ask you something. Don’t answer me now—I want this one to fester for a while. Is it fun? The manipulation, watching your victims blunder around misled by your lies, the fact you can have anything you want. Is it fun? I bet it used it be. I bet it was the best thing ever. But then you woke up yesterday with a funny taste in your mouth. Like this wasn’t the right way to run a business at all. Like maybe you weren’t the same pony you were the night before. Mull that over for a bit and get back to me.”

From the quiet look in Applejack’s eyes, it appeared that Vinyl had succeeded in getting through to her.

Protected by Fluttershy’s creatures, the party was led through the forest until they came upon a tree house, considerably smaller than the one in Ponyville. A crude hoof-painted sign proclaimed the identity and current occupation of its lone occupant:

TWILIGHT SPARKLE,

Traitor.

Come right inside and pelt me with spoiled fruit.

It’s not like I care or anything.

Next to the sign was a covered wicker basket, with a large hollowed-out rock holding the lid down. Painted around the rim of the rock were the words “Spoiled Fruit, 2 bits each.” A few rusty bits rested in the rock.

The traitor was depending on the honor system.

Pinkamena approached another sign, which she read out loud: “Site of the World-Famous Mystery Spot, a Bottomless Pit Containing the Last Vestiges of Primal Madness in Equestria. Five bits a peek.” She walked back to Vinyl, clearly rattled. “Look, we don’t have to go in there, do we?” she asked.

“I’m with the ex-avenger,” said Applejack. “You want six Elements, all of which had some kind of connection with Skybreak. Well, here we are. Minus Fluttershy, who I’m darn sure isn’t Twilight Sparkle’s roomie. Excuse me if I’d prefer not to be in the same room as a dangerous threat to life and limb.”

“...and Twilight Sparkle,” Pinkamena added.

“...and Twilight Sparkle,” echoed Applejack. “Hey, that was almost a joke! There’s some hope for you yet!”

Pinkamena scowled.

Vinyl gestured at the creatures and forest surrounding them in every direction but that leading to the door of the tree house. “That is the direction Fluttershy needs us to go. Without Fluttershy, this mission fails.” She walked up to the door.

Applejack quickly stepped in front of her. “If we’re gonna do this,” she said, “let’s do it right.” Lifting one forehoof, she rapped the old familiar pattern into the wood: Shave and a haircut...

Two bits! rang the answering pattern from Pinkamena’s right hindhoof. The pink pony directed an infuriated glare at the offending body part. “Traitor!” she screamed at it.

“You called?” said Twilight Sparkle laconically, opening the door.

The purple pony looked like a complete and utter mess. She hadn’t properly groomed herself for what looked like years. Her fetlocks were long enough to trip over, and her tail was impossibly gnarled and clumped. Her mane stuck to her right side like it had been hastily ironed into that position. Her cutie mark of a bloody dagger had been partially obliterated by a branding of “TRAITOR” in Equestrian. She was bruised in numerous places, and marked with fruit juice stains in many others. A mottled neckerchief that once was white was tied around her head, completely obscuring her eyes and...horn? There should have been no way that the neckerchief could have covered the unicorn’s horn, and yet no horn was visible on Twilight’s head.

“So which will it be first?” she asked bitterly. “The personal abuse, or the gawking at the big hole in my floor?” And indeed, the center of the one-room house was dominated by a large hole carved into the ground, surrounded by a set of poles and velvet ropes. A wide viewing platform (ending in a depression for dropping bits into) extended over the hole from the side opposite the door, reaching almost all of the way across, and making the visible part of the hole look like three-quarters of a wheel in shape.

Pinkamena carefully positioned herself as far from that hole as possible. She also looked around carefully to confirm that the sources of light within the room were self-contained magical lanterns.

Meanwhile Rarity’s eyes, which had been glazed over from hours of mental self-abuse, slowly came into focus, and she looked about her in surprise. Long-dead emotions began to rise within her. “You poor dear,” she said hesitantly, addressing Twilight, “do the terms of your punishment require you to look like that? Surely if you have to put up with all of us invading your precious privacy like this, the least we can do is help you to tidy yourself and your place up. I can dust your...”

Rarity was going to say “furniture”, but upon looking around she saw one and only one item of furniture, a rolling-top desk. “...your desk?” she finally concluded.

“No, you cannot touch my desk, random pony I’ve never met before!” exclaimed Twilight. She then swatted a hoof at the magical field that the white unicorn was cautiously extending her way. “And keep your blasted magic away from me!”

“Yeah!” exclaimed Pinkamena, who stepped forward to be between Twilight and Rarity. “Haven’t you ruined enough lives with your meddling?”

“I...I’m sorry,” mewed Rarity. “I was only trying to help.”

“Well stop it,” said Applejack.

Vinyl sighed as she watched Rarity turn away, her eyes becoming unfocused once more.

The first time any of the future Bearers of Harmony had tried to express their chosen personality trait, Vinyl thought to herself bitterly, and it had been trampled to death by the others.

She then walked up to the sightless pony and examined her carefully. “We were sent here by Fluttershy,” she explained.

“Oho!” Twilight cried out in recognition at the voice she had just heard. “So you’ve finally come to visit, Vinyl Scratch? Even after I hid in the most inaccessible spot in Equestria, I knew that you’d show up here eventually. To look confused and sympathetic and ask me The Question. Well go ahead and ask me, student of Celestia. You know you want to.”

Vinyl sighed. “The answer to any one question is never enough to explain one pony’s life,” she said sadly.

“No,” Twilight eagerly agreed, “but you’re not supposed to reach that conclusion until after I’ve answered The Question! Now somepony, anypony, ask it!”

Rainbow Dash stepped forward. It began to dawn on her that she did that a lot: stepping forward. It was sort of her own personal idiom. Too bad that it required her to then retreat back into the crowd afterwards...oh wait, she was supposed to say something! “Well unlike the Philosopher here, I actually want to know: Why did you do it? What made you want to betray all ponykind to the Dragon Emperor?”

“What made me? What made me?” cackled Twilight Sparkle, falling back on her hindlegs as she reached up with her forelegs. “These made me!”

And with that, she dramatically pulled the neckerchief from off of her head.

Instantly, all of the other ponies turned away in horror from what they saw. All except Vinyl, who looked at her fixedly.

Twilight Sparkle was blind, and had always been blind. That much was obvious. She had also once had a horn, but it had been snapped off at the root in the recent past. Which meant that she could never cast a spell again without being overwhelmed by debilitating pain.

“Is that all?” Vinyl asked gently.

“Is that all? Is that all?!” Twilight asked incredulously. “LOOK AT ME! I was born a freak of nature, a unicorn whose specialty was magic, in a world where all magic is transmitted in written form!”

“No,” said Vinyl, “as a matter of fact, magic on this world is transmitted in musical form, which means as long as your ears are functioning, you should be alright.”

Wait, why didn’t I...

“That doesn’t matter!” Twilight shouted. “Princess Celestia made me this way! Nopony that sick should be allowed to rule Equestria.”

Vinyl sighed. How many times had she gone over these same questions herself when she was a young blind filly?

“The Princess doesn’t control everything,” Vinyl explained patiently. “Some things she can’t control, and others she refuses to control, to allow us to have our free will. And that is exactly what you had: free will.”

“Is it safe to look yet?” asked Applejack, her head averted.

“Nnope,” said Big Mac after a moment.

Vinyl ignored them. “You chose to wallow in your disability, instead of moving on with your life.”

“I did move on with my life,” insisted Twilight. “I moved on to the court of the Dragon Emperor, who taught me magic I never could have learned from my pitying teachers. It was he who offered me magical eyes once I had succeeded in discrediting the Princess and getting her overthrown by her subjects.”

“You didn’t do a very good job of it,” commented Applejack impartially.

“She did worse than that,” said Vinyl. “You were told repeatedly during your trial why you were being punished, but it never seemed to penetrate that thick skull of yours.”

Twilight picked up the fallen neckerchief and tied it back around her head. “I was still recovering from having my horn snapped off by the fall from a dragon that had suddenly reverted into an egg!” she protested. “But it’s not like I don’t know the truth. I was punished for making your ruler look less than perfect in her job of protecting Equestria from danger. I was punished for inconveniencing the rich ponies of Canterlot.”

“Wrong!” declared Vinyl, getting into Twilight’s face. “You were punished for the callous murder of six unborn dragons.”

Wait...what?

“I...I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Twilight protested, backing up.

Vinyl advanced on her. “Oh yes you do. Even blind you should have realized it. You turned an unhatched egg into a full-grown dragon. In the hatchery, Twilight. In the hatchery! Surely you didn’t think that Spike’s egg was the only one in there?”

Oh, Sweet Celestia.

Twilight blanched. “No,” she protested. “No, that’s impossible!” As she said this, she continued to back up, until she reached the velvet rope surrounding the Mystery Spot. She stumbled backwards, cartwheeling her forelegs in panic and screaming hysterically. Vinyl, Big Mac and Pinkamena rushed forward and pulled her from the brink.

For just an instant, Pinkamena got a glimpse down into that hole. She saw things floating in there that had no right to exist. Worse, her mind insisted on labeling them for her. She cried out, and now it was the turn of the other three to save her from falling in.

“Th...thank you,” Twilight Sparkle gasped out a few minutes later. “I have a phobia about falling. One more personality flaw to add to the list, yes?” Then her mouth formed into an “O”. “You saved me,” she said, astounded. “I didn’t deserve it, but you saved me.”

“Consider us even,” Vinyl said under her breath, referring to another Twilight on another world.

“You said Fluttershy sent you here?” Twilight suddenly remembered. She smiled then. Kindness without hope for reward seemed like a kind of madness to her, but the fact that these ponies were expecting something from her restored her lack of faith in ponykind. She walked over to a desk and pulled out her own personal musical instrument, a recorder. “I devised a spell for her to reverse her cutie mark.”

“‘Reverse her cutie mark’?” asked an awed Pinkamena. “You can do that?”

“If the pony truly wants it,” said Twilight. “Besides, it’s clear that her Cutification was artificially tampered with by her close proximity to Skybreak. I’m hoping that she will gain her proper cutie mark soon afterwards, an empathy for animal speech, perhaps, instead of this total identification. Of course, that’s assuming that she’s still sane.”

“Of course,” repeated Rainbow Dash, her eyes wide.

Twilight sat down and leaned against a wall, bringing all four hooves up to play the instrument. “This thing is a lot easier to play with a functioning horn,” she muttered to herself. She then started to play a strange tune that made all of the ponies but Pinkamena feel intensely uncomfortable. Even without magic behind it, the song was literally tugging at their reason for existence. “Owwww!” Twilight complained grimly as she finished, a dull red glow fading out from under the neckerchief.

Vinyl Scratch nodded, and then scowled for some inexplicable reason.

She had scowled because she had just caught herself doing exactly the thing that annoyed her so much when she was blind and other ponies did it: using silent gestures to communicate.

“Got it,” she said.

“Vinyl, we should probably get going,” said Applejack.

“Right,” Vinyl said, leading the others to the door. “Thank you for the spell, Twilight,” she said.

“It’s only right that I do something for the only fair pony in all of Equestria,” replied Twilight. “Good luck on your future endeavors, Vinyl. Considering what I’ve heard about your life compared to mine, I feel as if you were the pony fated to realize the potential that I have squandered, that in some way you are my replacement.”

“That is exactly what I am,” Vinyl said quietly. “And that is not right. I will return for you, Twilight Sparkle, when my mission here is complete. Your redemption will be my greatest challenge.”

Twilight laughed hollowly. “My redemption? You take after your mentor in your hopeless optimism. But my door will always remain open to you.”

Chapter 12: Elimination Round

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 12: Elimination Round

As they continued their long trot further and further into the eerily silent forest, the ponies began to get more and more nervous. It surely didn’t escape their notice that if Fluttershy truly were mad, then there was no possible way they would get out of here alive.

Vinyl Scratch began to wonder if she hadn’t just made a tremendous mistake in leaving Twilight Sparkle behind in her tree house. After all in the original version of the story, Twilight was the Element of Magic. What if she still was? What if the others somehow succeeded in summoning up their elements, but she failed to summon anything?

On the other hoof, the idea of somehow getting this Twilight Sparkle to make friends with this group of ponies utterly and completely boggled her mind. There was no way she could think of to pull this off.

So was this mission doomed to failure?

Soarin’ took this moment to speak up. “As this group’s self-appointed morale officer, I think this would be the perfect time for some group singing. How many of you know this one?

“Come on, everypony, smile, smile, smile!
Fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine!”

*KABONG!*

“I’m sorry,” Pinkamena said without a trace of remorse as she removed the guitar from Soarin’s cranium. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“W...where did that guitar come from?” asked Graphite.

Pinkamena casually swung the guitar so that it passed behind her body and out of sight of the other ponies for just a second, and then walked on, revealing the guitar to have completely vanished. “Do you really want to know?” she asked him sadly.

Graphite frantically shook his head.

“Smart pony,” said Pinkamena.

Soarin’, having been rather-lightly bonked, shook his head twice to clear it, gave Pinkamena a very nervous look, and decided to say nothing.

Vinyl quickly got within whispering range of the pink pony. “Are you alright?” she asked. “I notice you seem somewhat...”

“...unstable?” Pinkamena finished the question between gritted teeth. “Well, what do you expect, now that I know how this is going to end?”

“What do you mean?” asked Vinyl. “I thought you knew.”

“I knew what, but I didn’t know how until we visited that tree house. It’s the Mystery Spot, isn’t it? That’s how you’re going to do it. You’re going to push me into Twilight’s Tunnel of Terror, aren’t you?”

“What? I would never do that!”

“Wouldn’t you?” snarled Pinkamena. “It’s the last little nudge that I need, one last push to get rid of the only thing standing between me and your Pinkie Pie: my sanity. Did you see what was in that hole? Abstractions and horrible puns made into concrete reality! The ultimates in cruelty and genius locked into a battle to the death! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!”

“I’m not pushing you down the hole!”

This last sentence may have been said too loud, as everypony turned to look at Vinyl.

“I’m not!” she protested. She lowered her voice to address her companion once more. “And Pinkie Pie is not insane!”

“Isn’t she?” insisted Pinkamena. “Tell me, then, who is she?”

“She’s kind and sweet, and happy all the time. She’s a baker’s apprentice by trade, and organizes the most incredible parties at the drop of a hat. She’s very musical, and very perceptive.”

“You’re describing a stranger to me,” Pinkamena told her. “How she and I can have anything to do with each other is a complete impossibility. Unless she’s been lying to you all these years.”

“What do you mean?” asked Vinyl. “Pinkie Pie’s no liar.”

Pinkamena noted the slight doubt in that statement, and swept in for the kill. “But she is a liar, if she’s the one who told you she was happy all of the time. Nopony is like that. No sane pony, anyway. I’ll bet if you got a look into the depths of her soul, got a really good look, you’ll find me down there. Her true self exposed at last. All the rest, the parties and the pastries, are because she can’t handle the reality of emotional pain and suffering I endure on a constant basis. What do you have to say to that?”

“I...” Vinyl sighed. “I say that maybe you’re right. I know better than most ponies that we all have a darker side to our natures that we do not want others to see. But I am Pinkie Pie’s friend. And I would never pry into such things without her permission. Friendship means not only helping, but also knowing when not to help.”

Pinkamena turned up her nose and walked away. “Then keep your friendship with Pinkie Pie, by leaving me to be Pinkamena Diane Pie. With or without the ‘Dreaded’.”

Nothing more was said until the party was finally led through a dense series of bushes into a large clearing in the center of the forest. Here the canopy was thin enough to let in moonlight and the sight of the stars.

In the center of the clearing, lying asleep on a pile of pine needles, was the pegasus named Fluttershy. Her cutie mark consisted of a stampede of every possible animal.

Vinyl separated herself from the others and walked up to the sleeping pony, her horn gradually brightening as she prepared to cast the spell. “Fluttershy,” she announced, loud enough for all the watching creatures to hear, “I have come with a spell to separate you from the forest. Do you...” She looked down to see Applejack clutching one leg. “Do you mind?” she asked in annoyance.

“Is there any possible chance that we could maybe adjust the timing on this spell-casting business?” Applejack asked her earnestly. She pointed off to one side, where the animals of the forest were in a fierce fight with Nightmare Moon’s monstrous cloud. “You see if you free Fluttershy now, then maybe those critters might not care about defending us from Nightmare Moon anymore, or maybe they do, but they’ll lack the coordination to pull it off. And if they can’t protect us, how are we going to get to that castle of the two sisters? I know this is going to turn into a fight at some point, but I’d prefer it to be as little, and as effective, a fight as possible. At the very least, can we take Fluttershy to the castle, and then cast the spell that will leave us utterly helpless?”

Vinyl looked up at the animals surrounding them. “Is that alright with you?” she asked.

A few minutes later, the ponies had succeeded in creating a bier out of some fallen branches, and securing Fluttershy to it. They then lifted her upon their shoulders, and began walking, the glowing eyes of her subjects following her every step of the way. It was like a scene from some grim fairy tale.

As they continued, the fighting against Nightmare Moon’s cloud became more and more fierce. The ponies that were not carrying Fluttershy attempted to help, but there was no way to do so without hurting the creatures that protected them, so close did they gather together to protect their mistress from harm. Vinyl saw several animals knocked out of the trees by Nightmare Moon’s attacks, and she glimpsed one of them briefly glowing all over from Fluttershy’s magic before getting up to resume the fight.

After topping a hill, they got their first glimpse of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.

Matching the story that Vinyl had been told, the castle was in utter ruins. She looked back and forth between the two most intact parts of the complex. The stone Elements of Harmony had been in the hall on the right, and the final confrontation with Nightmare Moon had been in the hall on the left. As she pondered her course of action, she began charging her horn to cast Fluttershy’s spell. As she did so, she realized that the decision to move this ceremony here meant that she would be considerably weaker than she had expected when the time came to face her nemesis.

Vinyl Scratch had been awake for nearly twenty-four consecutive hours now. That might not seem like much for a studious pony like this world’s version of her, or for a hard-partying pony like she truly was, but she had also been subjected to a powerful psychotropic spell for several hours, and now had the constant challenge of keeping two entirely different lifetimes and accompanying sets of spells straight in her head. Her failure to get any of her former friends to break free of the mental prison that she had successfully escaped was causing her to lose confidence in a leadership ability that she had never really thought she had in the first place. She was cold, tired and scared, but wasn’t allowed to show any of that. Most of all, she was stressed by the responsibility of being Twilight Sparkle, of saving the whole world through a power of friendship that she couldn’t really feel.

Therefore, it might become understandable why she decided to skip to the chase and just lead the group to the entrance to the left-hoof hall.

The ponies put Fluttershy down at the leftmost of two entrances to the remains of the castle.

As the volume of the song being emitted by Vinyl Scratch’s horn began to grow, the other ponies began to feel an overwhelming compulsion to flee.

Rainbow Dash looked wildly around her for a few seconds before making up her mind. “After me!” she declared as she ran for the entrance to the ruins. “We’ll clear the way for Vinyl!”

First the pegasi rallied to her side, and then the others.

Vinyl heard a great clanging of bells in her head, a magical attempt by Nightmare Moon to interrupt the spell. She supposed this was cutting-edge magic a thousand years ago, but it was rather standard today, and she easily countered it with a mental exercise.

As the last note was sung, Fluttershy’s cutie mark faded away. “Wha...what happened?” she asked gently as she attempted to get to her hooves.

“I’m sure it will all come to you soon, Miss,” Vinyl said, herding her insistently towards the door. “We have to bring daylight back to Equestria.”

“Oh my, yes,” said Fluttershy, remembering.

It was a little easier to herd her after that.

The trip up the stairway to the second floor was easy. Too easy.

“Ugh,” groaned Applejack. “I just know this is going to be a trap!”

Vinyl grinned to herself despite the rather grim setting of that familiar phrase.

“Everypony,” Vinyl said as she caught up to them, “this is Fluttershy. Fluttershy, this is Applejack and Graphite and Big Mac and Empress Rainbow Dash and Soarin’ and Rarity and Pinkamena and four guards whose names I never quite caught.”

“Oh,” said Fluttershy, very quietly. “There’s...so many of you. I...I hope none of my animals hurt you in any way when they were trying to help me. They just get a little enthusiastic sometimes.”

Vinyl decided at that point that Fluttershy could be safely moved into the “cured” category in her mind, even though she had so far shown no signs of having recovered her true memories. Rarity, if her moment in Twilight’s cabin was not a fluke, also appeared to be ready to become her Element. That still left Rainbow Dash as “nearly there,” and Applejack and Pinkamena as “works in progress”.

As the lead ponies reached the door at the top of the stairs, Vinyl cleared her throat to get their attention. “Ponies,” she said as quietly as possible, “do you trust me?” The other ponies nodded. “And I trust you, with my very life. Do you trust each other?”

The ponies responded to this question with confusion. They looked at each other like they were meeting for the first time.

“I don’t see how that makes any difference,” said Applejack.

“It does,” she told them. “It means everything! Do you trust each other?”

“Um...sure!” said Applejack.

The others quickly chimed in.

Vinyl desperately tried to convince herself that they meant it.

With a nod to herself, she pushed past the others, and then confidently opened the door.

Before them stretched a long hall, presumably the throne room. The floor was littered with dozens of scrolls, some of them rolled up; others crumpled or even trampled under hoof. All of them looked rather recent compared to the furnishings in the hall. Lounging on the expected throne at the opposite end of the room was Nightmare Moon. She was wearing Rainbow Dash’s crown, and looked quite intimidating—it’s rather amazing what the proper lighting and a wind machine can accomplish.

“Give that back!” cried out Rainbow Dash, as she attempted to zip across the hall to confront her. Having anticipated this, Applejack was able to grab her by the tail with her mouth and force her down. “We’re doing this together, Empress, or not at all,” she said around a mouthful of hair.

“Welcome, challengers!” boomed the voice of Nightmare Moon. “I see more than the requisite six bearers of the Elements of Harmony, but you seem to be missing something. Did you perhaps forget to gather the equipment for this little game?”

A portion of the alicorn’s cloud-mane turned into a magical window, depicting the scene in the other part of the castle. The pedestal that held the stone Elements was visible, but the stones themselves were gathered in a circle. Standing with their hind hooves upon each one were the five biggest earth ponies in Ponyville.

“Now!” Nightmare Moon cried out before any of the ponies watching had a chance to react. Five pairs of hooves were quickly raised and lowered, and the stones crumbled.

All the ponies but one gasped. Vinyl smiled. Perhaps the shock of what she had seen had caused her to snap.

Vinyl smiled, because she knew the stone Elements were a dead end in this story. Except for the jewels that were formed out of them after Twilight Sparkle’s Friendship Speech, the voice of Vinyl’s inner Critic informed her gleefully.

Vinyl Scratch blanched. She had screwed up. She had screwed up big time.

“You little foals!” crowed the alicorn. “Thinking you could defeat me? Now you will never see your princess, or your sun! The night will last forever!”

“You’re wrong!” Vinyl declared...

...trying desperately to project the confidence that she was rapidly losing in herself.

Why did you ever think you’d be one-tenth of the leader that Twilight Sparkle was? The Critic demanded.

“The Elements of Harmony cannot be destroyed so easily!” Vinyl forced herself to say. “In fact, the Elements of Harmony are right here! The challenges you sent us revealed the truth!”

“What challenges?” asked Nightmare Moon, leaning her chin on one hoof.

There were no challenges, you idiot! proclaimed The Critic. Fluttershy’s animals protected you every step of the way! And without the challenges, the Elements would never have realized their true nature.

Vinyl decided to ignore the voice and press on. Put that stubbornness to use, for once, she told herself.

“I mean...the experience of going on this quest together,” Vinyl insisted. She decided to work from most- to least-obvious in her roll call, in hopes of pushing through by steamroller effect. “Rarity, for her willingness to help Twilight Sparkle regardless of her crime, represents the Element of Generosity!” She had to look back to be sure Rarity was even there. It seemed as though she was too absorbed in self-pity to even notice what was going on around her.

“But she didn’t actually give Twilight anything material,” noted Pinkamena. “I don’t think you can be generous without giving anything. Maybe she’s the Element of Kindness instead?”

“Pinkie!” hissed Vinyl.

“Don’t ever call me...!” began Pinkamena.

“Sorry,” Vinyl said. “That was just something that Pinkie would have said.”

“Oh don’t mind me,” interrupted Nightmare Moon sarcastically from the front of the room. “It’s not like this is a life or death situation here. Oh wait...it is. And Rarity’s contribution doesn’t count, not as Generosity or Kindness.”

“Why not?” objected Vinyl.

“You said she offered to help this Twilight Sparkle character. Did Twilight Sparkle accept this help?”

“...no.”

“Rejected! Next!”

Vinyl turned to the yellow pegasus. “Well, you certainly can’t deny that Fluttershy, who only thought of making the forest safe regardless of consequences, represents the Element of Kindness!”

“Actually,” piped up Fluttershy, “that wasn’t my decision at all. The animals felt that I had been coddling them too much, and so decided to dump me on the next pony brave enough to face them.” Rainbow Dash sat down hard at this news, looking at her friend with tears in her eyes.

Vinyl pretended she hadn’t heard that, or the voice of The Critic laughing at her.

“Rarity,” Vinyl insisted with a trembling voice.

“Her again?” Nightmare Moon asked with a wry smile.

“Yes!” said Vinyl, with a bit of a squeak she certainly didn’t want to have in her voice at that moment. “Rarity, who gave up her dreams to save her town, represents the Element of Generosity!”

Nightmare Moon laughed. “More like giving up her dreams to doom her town. But alright, I’ll give you that one.”

Vinyl pressed on. “Rainbow Dash, who forged her breed into a mighty nation, and, uh, embarked into the dangerous woods to save her friend, represents the Element of Loyalty!” She was rather proud of getting two reasons in on that one.

“I wish you’d make up your mind,” said Nightmare Moon nonchalantly. “Is the forest safe to help the case for Kindness, or is it dangerous to help out Loyalty?”

Rainbow Dash meanwhile had run over to Fluttershy, and was now proceeding to bawl her eyes out. “I totally abandoned you for ten years!” she cried out. “I’m the most faithless pony of all time!”

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! cackled The Critic.

“Um...” said Vinyl.

“Are you even going to bother to finish?” asked Nightmare Moon, almost sympathetically.

“Well...yes!” declared Vinyl. “The Element of Laughter is Pinkamena, because...because...a lot of what she does makes us laugh!”

“...at her expense,” muttered Applejack to herself.

“And Applejack!” said Vinyl, her voice breaking. “Applejack is...is the Element...the Element of...”

“You know,” offered Applejack sarcastically, “I’ve got a pill made from pure apple extract that will fix your elocution problems right up, Vinyl Scratch! All you need to do is send Apple, Inc. three easy monthly payments of 59 bits each, and once the third payment is received, the bottle’s yours! You also get a whole 30 day guarantee! That’s thirty days after making the first payment, of course, and no refunds after that.”

“...I CAN’T SAY IT!” Vinyl screamed.

“And...we’re done,” declared Nightmare Moon. “Well...that was awful. I mean really, really awful. It’s like you ponies have been spending the past millennium cross-breeding with monkeys or something.” She got up. “Now as I’m sure you realize, I can’t exactly let you have a second chance—you might get ridiculously lucky and actually come up with something effective. Time for your reward, ponies. Time for your Eternal rew...” At that moment, the alicorn came down with a tremendous coughing fit that ended with her spitting out a scroll and then screaming in frustration. “Enough of this! Army of Darkness, DESTROY THEM!”

From the darkness at the top of the throne room emerged a dozen pegasus ponies, their sharpened hooves aimed for their skulls.

“Tail twitch? Pinchy knee?” Pinkamena asked Vinyl. “What’s that supposed to...” At that moment, she was shoved out of the way by Big Mac, who was brutally knocked to the ground by a pegasus.

A second later, the door behind the ponies opened to admit a stream of earth ponies and unicorns, all of them screaming in fury.

Pinkamena’s left ear flopped, and without looking she immediately turned and bucked in that direction, knocking an attacker to the ground.

“All right!” she cried out. “Now this is a power I can use!”

The next several minutes were impossible to follow. Fights both individual and en masse ensued. Numerous enemy ponies were knocked out, but so were three of Rainbow Dash’s four guards. Big Mac fought on, despite a bloody lip, and easily proved himself the best close-up fighter of the group. Second best was Pinkamena, because she effectively had eyes in the back of her head now, and because she fought dirty. Nevertheless she was surprised by a unicorn using his horn as a weapon instead of as a magic wand. After knocking him out she had to continue the fight with a large gash above her right eye that was bleeding enough to nearly blind her.

At the other end of the hall, Nightmare Moon mentally commanded her forces with a nod, a glance, or by pointing a foreleg. She directed most of their energy towards those that fought back the hardest. As a result of this logic, the quivering Fluttershy and the nearly catatonic Rarity were completely ignored.

The alicorn was interrupted in her coordination work more and more frequently by her coughing up scrolls, scraps of paper, and even small objects. Finally she coughed up an entire book, which caused her crown to fall off her head and strike the ground, breaking into a million pieces. Luckily for Rainbow Dash, she was too busy fighting beside the others to notice.

The queen of the night raised her head high and screamed out her frustration at full volume. The fight stopped instantly. As they all watched, her horn’s magic caught up one of the scrolls and quickly unrolled to the end. Nightmare Moon looked at the “return address” on the scroll for a few seconds and then began blowing a small blue fireball around her upraised forehoof. Once enough fire had accumulated, it condensed down into a living form.

“What’s up, Toots?” it asked her.

“Spike!” exclaimed Vinyl Scratch.

The little dragon turned his head. “Oh, hi, Vinyl!” he exclaimed happily, seemingly ignoring all the signs of conflict around him. “You would be amazed at what a little willpower is capable of in this world! Also, Princess Celestia is like the chess-master extraordinaire! I mean, did you know that Black Snooty here is only two base pairs away from Princess Celestia in the Dragon Bloodline Code? Who knew, right?”

“THAT...IS...IT!” screamed Nightmare Moon, her eyes bloodshot and neck veins distended. “DIE!!!”

And with that, she shot Spike at the stone wall of the throne room at supersonic speed.

Everypony turned their heads, but there was no way not to hear the sickening sounds that followed.

“SPIKE!” exclaimed Vinyl Scratch, beginning to run down the hall.

“DIE! DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE!!!” screeched the maddened alicorn, firing spell after spell into the motionless lump on the ground.

Pinkamena and Applejack caught up with Vinyl, and started dragging her back.

“I have to do something!!” she yelled, fighting them.

“Live now, mourn later,” Applejack told her. “That’s what you’re going to do.”

“Retreat!” ordered Rainbow Dash. It was their only possible chance to do so, as the army of Nightmare Moon’s slaves waited patiently for her to finish annihilating Spike.

“Come on!” insisted Pinkamena. “He did this deliberately to save us!”

Vinyl froze, and then looked around her. “Get me those scrolls. We must take them with us!” Using her magic, she started gathering them quickly into her saddle bags, backing towards the doorway as she did so.

“We can’t possibly get all of them!” complained Applejack.

“Then focus on the crumpled and stomped ones,” answered Vinyl. “The angrier they got Nightmare Moon, the better!”

She spared one last look back into the hall as her friends dragged her out. “Goodbye, Spike,” she said in a voice choked with tears.

Chapter 13: Burn, Baby, Burn

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Chapter 13: Burn, Baby, Burn

Vinyl would have preferred a quiet and mournful walk to wherever they were going to go to regroup. It was only fair.

But Nightmare Moon wasn’t fair. She wasn’t fair at all.

It had been a fighting retreat. Rainbow Dash’s remaining guard was picked off, followed by Graphite. Big Mac became separated from the others—it was impossible to say if he had survived or not. Fluttershy had attempted to rouse the animals of the forest to help her, in so doing earning a new cutie mark of three rearing snakes. Unfortunately, as Applejack had predicted, her new power was not enough to really protect them.

Vinyl needed some time to think, some time to examine Spike’s messages and hope against hope that he had figured out something that could help them. For that she needed to bring the group somewhere safe.

She headed to the only safe place in the forest that she knew.

Twilight Sparkle, Traitor, waited outside the door of her tree house. “Welcome back,” she said in a bored voice. “I saw you coming. Oh, and that pink one owes me five bits for peeking into the pit.”

Vinyl raised her head when she heard Twilight’s second sentence, and she poured as much of her magic as her weakened frame could bear into a detailed examination of Twilight Sparkle. She saw that the unicorn was surrounded by an extremely powerful illusion. Unlike a normal illusion, this one was designed to fool its wearer even more than any ponies who looked upon it. Under the illusion, Twilight Sparkle wasn’t bruised, her cutie mark wasn’t branded, her horn wasn’t broken, and she wasn’t blind. But in her own mind she was all of these things.

This was very powerful magic. Celestia-level. Or, perhaps, Dragon Emperor-level. But solving that mystery would have to wait.

As soon as they were all inside, Twilight moved the desk over to barricade the door—it was the only furniture to be found in the entire house. Vinyl used her magic to reinforce it and the walls and ceiling.

She knew it wouldn’t last long.

She settled herself down next to the door and started poring over the scrolls and scraps of paper that Spike had used to distract Nightmare Moon. Soon she became so completely absorbed that she stopped paying attention to anything else.

The walls of the tree house started shaking from all of Nightmare Moon’s ground ponies bucking it and pegasi dive bombing it and unicorns generally using their telekinesis to throw things at it.

Then Nightmare Moon arrived. She was still not over the whole “thinking she was going to choke to death every five minutes” thing.

“That dragon was yours, wasn’t it?” she demanded.

Vinyl Scratch was too engrossed (in a lightly satirical version of Goodnight Moon that Spike had written as one of his messages) to reply.

“BURN THE TREE TO THE GROUND!” Nightmare Moon screamed.

“She sure likes screaming,” observed Applejack, desperately trying to hold back the panic in her voice.

“Can’t be good f..for her throat,” said Rainbow Dash, trying to match her tone.

“What about the forest?!” Fluttershy pleaded through the walls.

“How touching!” replied Nightmare Moon. “It will burn too, of course. Look on the bright side! You ponies are so desperate for light. Now you’re going to get it!”

This was followed by the obligatory evil laugh.

Pinkamena huddled against the wall not far from Vinyl Scratch, shivering despite the increasing heat, and rocking back and forth. “Not the fire! Not the fire!” she said to herself over and over again.

Twilight had given up her neckerchief for use as a bandage to finally stop the bleeding from the wound on Pinkamena’s forehead. This meant that now everypony was pretending that they couldn’t see Twilight, which didn’t make her happy. “You just ran?” she asked. “You could have at least split up! Here, let me draw up a diagram of at least seven different ways to pull victory out of a running retreat.”

Finally Vinyl’s protection over the tree house gave out and the thatched roof started burning.

Pinkamena’s eyes opened wide as she stared at the fire. Then her gaze wandered down to the black hole in the center of the room.

“It’s the only way,” she told herself, before making a break for the barriers at the center of the room.

Seeing this, Rainbow Dash and Applejack converged on her from both sides, wrestling her to the ground.

“No!” she screamed, madness evident in her eyes. “It’s the only way! Only Pinkie Pie can save us now!”

“You’re...wrong, Sugarcube!” Applejack grunted as the three ponies struggled at the edge of the pit. “Vinyl’s gonna...think of somethin’!” She allowed her eyes to be pulled into the abyss below her for a moment, before forcing herself to look away. “It’s...what...” she said, trying to comprehend just one of the impossible things she saw in that one second. “How can it be a cat...and a breakfast pastry...at the same time?”

The sound of a small musical ensemble started playing from Vinyl Scratch’s horn, causing everypony to look at her (and away from the other side of the tree house, which was now catching fire). Soggy and completely illegible pages torn from The Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind and Bigby’s Book of Non-Unicorn Mental Magic were at her hooves. Before her was a bound set of sheet music that Spike had sent, addressed “From one plot device to another,” a set that had been nearly destroyed by Nightmare Moon’s fury. After the musical introduction of the piece, she began to sing in a warbling alto:

Wake, awake, for night is flying,
The watchmen on the heights are crying,
“Awake, Jerusalem at last!”

She put down the sheet music, unable to continue. “Oh, Spike!” she said softly. “Clever, clever Spike!”

She used a hoof to wipe the tears from her eyes, and then composed herself as she looked around her at the burning building.

It was time for her to unleash the most powerful weapon in her arsenal. Pinkamena had an atrocious outfit, but Vinyl had something far more devastating: the voice of The Critic. She opened her mouth and allowed her to speak.

“It appears that this story has reached its conclusion,” Vinyl said, in an odd voice that was at the same time hers and not hers. “It’s now time to evaluate this dream and see how we did.”

“This what?” Pinkamena demanded. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were still holding her down. “Get off of me!” she demanded. “I’m alright now.”

After exchanging a glance, the other two reluctantly agreed, helping Pinkamena up, but then herding her back towards the wall.

“What are you talking about, Vinyl?” asked Pinkamena.

“This whole scenario,” answered Vinyl Scratch. “It’s all a dream, of course.” The whole time, she was keeping her eyes on Twilight Sparkle. “A proof of the concept that making the Elements of Harmony more powerful would in fact diminish their effectiveness, to the point where defeating Nightmare Moon becomes completely impossible.”

Twilight looked around. “Is she talking to me? She’s talking to me, isn’t she?”

“After the concept,” continued Vinyl in her cold merciless voice, “we have the characters. Nightmare Moon was good—I liked how you managed to recycle some of her lines. Rainbow I could buy. Fluttershy, although a minor part, worked well enough under the circumstances. Rarity was a complete triumph—she alone would make this a dream worth remembering when the dreamer awakens.

“Pinkamena is...a very good character. I have no idea if she represents some deeper aspect of Pinkie Pie I know nothing about, or is just some theory cooked up by the dreamer. In any case, well done.

“Vinyl Scratch, to speak of my character in the third person, was a little too...‘all things to all ponies’, if you get my drift. Instantly accepted everywhere she went. Is that what life’s like for you, Twilight?”

Well, I mean that’s a bit unfair, don’t you...I mean to say, Twilight shook her head in utter confusion.

“Spike...Spike was a real surprise, I think even more for you than anypony else. An honest-to-goodness character arc there, ending in a heart-breaking scene of self-sacrifice that still remained true to character. Good job there, Twilight, good job!”

What...what are you talking about?

“Ah,” continued Vinyl, completely ignoring her victim’s outburst, “but Spike is where you started to go astray. To keep him from derailing the plot, you brought in the Dragon Emperor. Big mistake, there. The dramatic contrast of a peaceful village attacked without provocation by the Queen of the Night loses its effect if the town is geared up for war. You brought in the Emperor, but you forgot about the war! To pick just one of several questions this raises: how is it that everypony accepted a dragon as my assistant without hesitation? Not one pony questioning his loyalties? Have you so completely forgotten how badly the real Spike was treated during the war?”

Now that’s just unfair!

“This now brings us to the most flawed performance by far in this dream,” said Vinyl, “the secondary antagonist after the end of the first act, Twilight Sparkle.” Vinyl began carefully herding me towards the center of the room as she continued her relentless verbal drilling. “This performance was a mess. First and most importantly: blindness as a character motivation. Do you honestly believe that it is that horrible? That the only two possible outcomes are me and ‘the Traitor, Twilight Sparkle?’ Because I’m going to be really disappointed in you if that is the case. There’s only one way that I can let you off the hook, and that’s if this part was improvised at the last minute. After all, the Dragon Emperor expected you to bring Spike, so when his dream trap chain spell gave your sleeping mind the parameters of the dream, there was no role for me to fill. At the last possible moment, I must have been shoved into your role, and you were forced to pull this role out of thin air.”

Vinyl looked hopefully around her. Outside of the six Elements and herself, the rest of the world was fading out of existence, leaving a featureless gray plain in its place.

A dream trap chain?

“Oh yes,” confirmed Vinyl. “Surely you remember. The Emperor’s chief magician tried to use a regular dream trap spell against both you and Princess Celestia a week before this all started, and you only just barely managed to escape, trapping the magician inside his own mind.

“After that defeat, the Emperor must have somehow succeeded in perfecting the chain version of the spell, and tricked us into stepping right into his trap. And that’s where we are, right now, until you wake up.”

“Me?” I asked, my rear legs up against the barrier.

“Yes, you. With your love of scenarios and war games, this is right up your alley! Do you need any more proof that this is a dream and not reality? Where’s the rest of your furniture, Twilight? Are you honestly telling me that you sleep on the ground? Not even as a hardened traitor would a pampered Canterlot unicorn like yourself put herself through that. Where’s your larder? Do you go out into the woods every time you need to eat? There were a couple of bits on your rotten fruit basket. If Fluttershy never lets anypony in, then where did they come from?”

“Oh, I can answer that one!” I replied with relief. “I put them there. I’ve got a book that says that a little money in the pot ‘primes the pump’ and makes strangers more likely to donate.”

“How did you read the book, Twilight?”

...horsefeathers.

“This blindness is a sham! You can see us all, admit it! You even said you could see us coming when we were retreating towards your house. The spell to make you seem blind has your signature on it!”

OK, that was a bluff, Vinyl commented from the sidelines of her own mind. I don’t know how to identify a spell’s signature, and neither did the Vinyl of this world.

Ah, but Twilight doesn’t know that, does she? The Critic replied slyly.

But you only speak the truth! Vinyl mentally exclaimed.

...and that was always her biggest lie, Pon-3 commented sadly.

My signature...could it be? No, no, I have to take command of this situation! I cannot allow the scenario to be aborted before Nightmare Moon achieves her final victory and I have a chance to tally the death toll! Focus...focus...

“It’s a trick!” Twilight proclaimed. “I don’t know how you’re doing this, but this is all a trick of some kind!”

Instantly the dream world snapped back into focus.

Vinyl sighed deeply as she resumed personal control of herself once more.

“Then I’m afraid you leave me no choice,” Vinyl said sadly. And with that she reared up and shoved Twilight over the railing and into the hole.

What have you done?!

The other ponies rushed forward to save me as they had saved every other pony to have nearly toppled, but found themselves just this once to be too late.

Vinyl winced as she saw me bounce off of a magical Liopleurodon and slam my hip hard against the side of the hole on the way down. The magical Liopleurodon responded to the impact by describing all the wonders of the number 9.

“Let me get this straight,” Pinkamena addressed Vinyl calmly. “This is a dream, and you just tossed the dreamer who controls the nature of this reality into the U-shaped tube of infinite madness. Have you lost your mind?!”

Vinyl continued to peer down the hole. “Wait for it...” she said.

I am falling, right? Falling...forever?

aaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Epilogue: Post-Mortem (and Credits)

The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

Epilogue: Post-Mortem of a Dream

Twilight Sparkle woke up.

She was back in the teleportation room in Canterlot Castle.

Waking up at the exact same instant was Vinyl Scratch.

No other ponies were in the room.

“Greetings, Twilight Sparkle,” said the voice of Cecil. “Welcome back, Vinyl.”

Twilight had no idea why the talking rock had poured so much more emotion into Vinyl’s salutation than into hers.

She tried to sit up, and immediately hissed in pain. She summoned an ice pack to wrap around her haunches.

Vinyl Scratch winced in sympathy. “I hope you’re not hurt too badly, Twilight.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s just a bruise,” said Twilight. “I’ll just be walking funny for a while. After all, I’m the one who almost killed you all.” The weight of what she said suddenly sunk in. “I am so sorry, Vinyl,” she pleaded.

“It’s alright,” Vinyl said, carefully adjusting her sunglasses. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to see.”

This wasn’t quite the response Twilight was expecting. “Um...and what did you think? Of seeing, that is.”

“You can keep it. I’m much more comfortable with my darkness.” Vinyl then got up and walked over to the wall, feeling her way around until she reached the door.

“So what happens now?” Twilight asked. “And where are the others? Are...are we awake?”

Vinyl Scratch tried to open the door, and failed, using both her hooves and her magic. She then pounded on it. “Do you hear that?” she asked. “No echo. There’s solid stone behind that door. I think that means that this isn’t the real room, just a dream version.”

Vinyl reached back with her mind, and realized that the details of the dream she had just experienced were fading, just like any other dream.

“Am I dreaming?” asked Cecil, unnoticed by the ponies. “It doesn’t feel like a dream...”

“I believe you, Vinyl,” Twilight said, nodding. “We’re in a dream trap chain. The only way out is through. If only we could control which pony’s dream we visit next...”

“Well, that depends,” said Vinyl. “What do you think of the song ‘25 or 6 to 4’, by Sheeka-Go? Or was it Chicago? I’m not quite sure how to pronounce it.”

“The group’s name is pronounced ‘Chicacolt’, and the song is my favorite one out of Pinkie Pie’s collection.”

Vinyl Scratch just had to know. “Does the title mean anything?”

Twilight scratched her head. “Well it’s about staying up late studying...I think,” she said. “So why did you ask about that song?”

“When Cecil’s spell failed to work on me, I used that song to dance my way in.”

“Dance your way...into my dream?” asked Twilight incredulously.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Cecil. “It was amazing!”

The sheer amount of passion the rock had put into that last word slightly unnerved Twilight.

Vinyl on the other hoof didn’t seem to notice. She said, “I think we can repeat that technique to target any pony’s dream we want, just so long as we know their favorite songs.”

“And this should get easier as we go on,” said Twilight, getting excited. “In my dream, only you knew that anything was wrong at the start, and you lacked your memories. Well next time, you’ll know who you are, and so will I. We wake that dreamer up, and there will be three of us in the next dream, and four in the next, and five in the final dream. And after that...the Dragon Emperor.”

“So whose dream do we invade first?” asked Vinyl.

“We’re going to be visiting the dark secrets and mad dreamscapes of each of our friends. Now who is the best possible navigator to bring along on our journey?”

“Pinkie Pie.”

“Exactly.”

Credits and Acknowledgements

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is copyright Hasbro, with extra credit given to Lauren Faust for the specifics of the series. The characters of DJ Pon-3 (aka Vinyl Scratch), Spike, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie/Pinkamena, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle, Nightmare Moon/Princess Luna/Black Snooty, Princess Celestia, Mayor Mare, Graphite (the fan name of a real background character from the show; he was officially named Dark Moon two years after I wrote this story), Doctor Whooves, Caramel, Big Mac, Soarin’, Applebloom, the Diamond Dogs, the locations of Equestria, Canterlot, Ponyville, Appleloosa, Manehattan, Fillydelphia, the Everfree Forest and the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, and the concepts of the Summer Sun Celebration, Winter Wrap-Up, and the Elements of Harmony (and their reference guide) are taken from that source, although the radically-different interpretations of all of these is my doing. Stalliongrad is a fan creation. The characters of the Dragon Emperor (both of them), Waking Terror and Cecil, and the concepts of the Draconic Bloodline Code, using “diamond dust” as a mind-control agent, “The Number 11”, the Gifts of the Ancients, Skybreak, the Dream Trap and Dream Trap Chain spells, the location of Castle by the Sea, and the company Equestria Acoustics are my creations. As for Apple Incorporated, their trademarked Applebug and their copywrited phrase “Appletastic Treats”...anybody wanna buy some stock in an imaginary pony fruit conglomerate?

“25 or 6 to 4” is a 1969 song by Chicago. The blistering performance used here is from the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert. The sunrise song is the first movement of Symphony No. 6 in D (1761) by Franz Joseph Haydn, nicknamed the “Morning” (performed by Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra). “Once Upon a December” is from the soundtrack of Anastasia (recording is a remix by D3Y Featuring Lauren). The songs sung in the prison are “Ol’ Man River” (from Show Boat, 1927—here’s one of Paul Robeson’s performances of the song), “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” (traditional—here’s a performance by Louis Armstrong), “Amazing Grace” (John Newton, 1779—here’s a performance by Nana Mouskouri), “Danny Boy” (Frederic Weatherly, 1913—here’s a performance by ~~the three least articulate characters ever~~ “The Leprechaun Brothers”...)

...and “River of Jordan” “There is only one river...”. “The Smile Song” is from the Friendship Is Magic episode “A Friend In Deed” (2012); it was written by Amy Keating Rogers and Daniel Ingram and was sung by Shannon Chan-Kent and Andrea Libman. “Wake, Awake” is the English translation of “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”, a chorale by Philipp Nicolai (1599). Here is a performance of the English chorale by the Wartburg Choir, and here is the fantastic Bach version of the second verse (1731) performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra led by Ton Koopman.

I probably forgot a lot of the inside jokes I snuck into this story, but here are the ones where I remember where they come from. “Who’s a silly pony” is the name of a Generation 1 My Little Pony song. “It’s a funny-sounding word: Obey” is from a Bill Cosby routine about marriage vows. “A word of kindness is better than a fat pie” is a Russian proverb (although I’m sure I got it from a movie or something...). “Kneel Before Zod” of course is from Superman (1978). “The Dreaded Pinkamena Diana Pie” has been said to have been inspired by “The Dread Pirate Roberts” from The Princess Bride (1987), but the characters differ from each other as much as they are similar—I just thought that “dread” went well with P.D.P.’s name. Her sign is an example of the “Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking” TV Trope (and yes, I was evil enough just now to drop a TV Tropes link in here to suck up all your free time). Poncho is more than a little inspired by the alter ego of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Quick Draw McGraw: El Kabong. Pinkamena’s manifesto is based on Tom Joad’s speech at the end of The Grapes of Wrath. Toronado is Zorro’s horse (character created by Johnston McCulley, 1919). The “Hounds” that Cecil says possess the unconscious in the Astral Planes were inspired by the short story “The Hounds of Tindalos” by Frank Belknap Long (1931). The idea that you can get anything you want by lying down in a field and wishing really hard is from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs . Each and every use of the number 42 ever are inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1978). The “Bigby” from Bigby’s Book of Non-Unicorn Mental Magic is a reference to the Dungeons & Dragons non-player character created by Rob Kurtz in 1973 and for whom so many wizard spells were named. The Mystery Spot is the name of several tourist attractions (I’ve been to the one in Santa Cruz, California) but is more memorably known from the PC game Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993)—of course in the end it turns out to be YouTube (2005-present; the cat/breakfast pastry is of course Nyan Cat, and the Liopleurodon was most-memorably from “Charlie the Unicorn”). The idea of “Shave and a Haircut” being irresistible for toons comes from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Pinkamena’s rant ending in “Mass hysteria!” is derived from Ghostbusters (1984). And talk of villains preparing to kill someone while offering to give them their “Eternal reward” always makes me think of Jafar from Aladdin (1992). The Army of Darkness is just an army of darkness—no relation to the 1992 Evil Dead sequel. Goodnight Moon is a children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown (1947).

Finally, compact discs were developed by the Philips and Sony companies in partnership in 1979.

Author's Note

So, did I miss any references?