After breakfast was done with, and other proceedings were done with, such as us discussing the day before us, we eventually went our separate ways. Sunny was right, you know; it's remarkable the psychological effect a good breakfast can have upon the mind. I was fully fuelled up and ready to go for the day.

Whatever that might entail.

Anyway, I relaxed a bit as I left the main kitchen area. The lack of obvious walls and doors in the house made this a bit more challenging to distinguish between rooms. I know some old cultures have no concept of doors, but how would one raise a family in a house like this? It'd make maintaining basic privacy a nightmare!

Yes, I know Sunny's living room and kitchen in the lighthouse are one room, but that's a surprisingly common arrangment in homes. At least her bedroom has a separate door, giving her an element of privacy. Nothing worse than nosy ponies turning up at the wrong time. I was only going off what I'd seen in the film as I hadn't physically been in there at the time the events I am currently narrating took place, but I can now confirm this from my physical observations of property I undertook at a later date.

Enough talking about architecture. It was a new day, and rather than fill it up with pointless things I needed to see if I could get something productive done. I grabbed some things and popped upstairs, looking out of the window and passing Pipp lying down.

"Why are you lying down, Pipp?" I asked. "I thought you only just got up!"

"I'm trying to get this app on my phone to work!" she pouted. "But I can't get a connection!"

"Does it need internet?" I asked.

"Canternet," Pipp replied. "Everything here is a horse pun, remember? And I don't have data out here either as there's no coverage. I can't access my progress on Mane Merge!"

"Perhaps try soaking up the world around you?" I suggested. "A while away from screens does help the mind."

"I've been off screens for several days now," Pipp said. "Sheesh, you're like mom sometimes."

I took that as a cue she wanted me to go away, so I did. I trotted over to the window and glanced out into the forest. This was the place that had been alluding me all this time.

Bridlewood. The landscape of trees and glens that formed the home of the unicorns. Or, at least one of the places where the unicorns lived according to that map. It couldn't be seen from here, but Vanhoover lay further away, glittering and glowing like a grea gem. Maybe I should visit one day now that hostilities have largely come to an end.

It was then I had a great idea. Seeing as I had disguised myself before, perhaps I could disguise myself again? After all, slapping a party cone on my head would be a considerably simpler exercise than building wings, right? I was pretty proud of that disguise, but unfortunately circumstances beyond my control had somewhat ruined it.

Oh well. I looked around for some card before I found some. A discarded cone with a headband fitted to it. If anything, it should have had plot convenience written on it. I picked it up and popped it on, before I headed for the door and out into the forest.

I still had to be careful where I went though. I knew my disguise would not hold up if apples started dropping from the air, and I was unable to sit them on a cardboard horn as it would fold under the weight.

As I made my way through the landscape, I stuck to the shadows to avoid being identified. I continued on my way, hiding behind trees and bushes in order to mask my approach towards the unicorn territory's middle. When I had progressed a certain distance, I suddenly heard voices up ahead and was forced to stop.

I hid behind another bush and tried to listen as best I could. I couldn't make out all of it as their speech was oddly muffled, but they seemed to be discussing something going on. Something about the pegasi being on the warpath?

One praised the possibility of a civil war. After all, if they wiped themselves out the unicorns would have one less enemy to worry about. Only the earth ponies, but their lack of intelligence would make them easy to beat.

I take offence to that one. I know I've said it lots of times, but that sort of casual racism is tough to remove from a society.

That, however, was as far as I could realistically proceed, and as such I turned back to the house. I'd be going to this part of town again anyway in the near future.

Izzy got back later that day, and after we all had dinner she got to work on the disguises. After a night's sleep, we had another bit of day whilst things kept going.

When downstairs, I suddenly noticed the basement door was open. That was odd. I thought Izzy said nothing was down there. But then again any horror movie protagonist worth their salt would know not to go into random places without backup or a properly maintained weapon. I looked down into it, noticing some strange lights in the distance. OK, so they had a TV down there. No doubt it played spooky VHS tapes. Not that most people younger than me would even know what a VHS was back in the human world, but the Earth Ponies are still changing over from one to the other.

Just then, I heard voices. "Hey Pipp! Whatcha doin' down here?" Well, that was Izzy, and that suggested Pipp was with her for some reason. I know Pipp likes scary stuff, but I thought she was savvy enough to not just wander into random rooms without backup.

"AHH!" another voice said. "Oh, it's just you, Izzy. Nothing to be worried about. I thought there was a monster down here with me- I've streamed enough horror games on my YouHoof channel to be familiar with the genre. But what is this place?"

Yep, it was Pipp, and now she waited for Izzy to speak.

"Oh, this? It's set up for Nightmare Night. I run a scare maze during that time and it gets a lot of business." There was then a noticable change in tone. "You know, Pipp, if you just wanted to come down here you only had to ask!"

"I know. Sorry, Izzy."

Luckily, it seemed all was forgiven. "No worries. Now then, let's go back to the top- unless you want the monster to get you!"

"What monster?"

"I have an animatronic monster chase the guests out of the exit. It took ages to rig up and program, but the results were pretty good if I do say so myself."

Just then, they both emerged from the basement. Izzy was first, looking a little dusty, whilst Pipp had acquired some cobwebs on her travels.

"You might want to wash before eating," I said. "What was down there exactly?"

Izzy grinned. "After we've reunified, you'll have to come to one of my Nightmare Night parties to find out!" She then bounced away, singing a silly tune.

I looked at Pipp. "Well?"

"Trust me, you want to save that for Nightmare Night," she said, peeling something sticky out of her fur. "It's way more fun when you don't know what's coming."

I nodded. Well, that was a bit strange.

Later on, things got even stranger. Izzy was staring at Sunny closely. "What's wrong, Sunny?"

Sunny glanced about, looking pretty agitated. "I can't help but feel we're running out of time!" she said. "I've completely lost track of what day it is, and we don't know how long we have left until shit hits the fan!"

"Language!" I said, looking at her quite coolly.

She didn't take this very well. "Hitch, this is a stressful situation. I think I can be allowed to curse every once in a while." She then looked back to Izzy. "Izzy, I'm serious. We don't know where or what Gulfstream and his goons are up to out there. They could be about to launch an attack on Bridlewood, and if that happens we've been cost our only chance at bringing back magic."

After a bit of bickering about inconsequential things, we finally got a bit of good news for once. Izzy was close to finishing the disguises, and just needed to fit them. As we sat there, we suddenly heard a familiar sound echoing through the airwaves.

Sprout was the first to express it. "Huh? There's an odd feeling on the tip of my tongue."

"A song's coming on!" Izzy said. "To your hooves, everypony!"

"Who's going to fill in Zipp's position in the dance choreography?" Pipp asked. "She's not here!"

"I can do that!" Misty said, jumping on a box. "Just let me know when I need to start with my moves and I'll get rolling along!"

I nodded internally. Here we go. Time to see if getting James Marsden's pipes paid off.

Author's Note

Mane Merge is an allusion to one of the G5 Mobile games. Frustratingly, it as only released on Apple Phones (which sucks if you're an Android user like me as it means you're stuck with Budge's MLP G5 Game, which is possibly the most blatant paywall game I have ever played).

Hitch briefly alludes to a common trope of anologue horror and recent horror games; the footage the player needing to view being stored on VHS tapes. The only major plot issue here is that most people these days lack VCRs and thus would have no way to play them, which is why this sort of media usually comes with the protagonist coming across a perfectly functional VCR to play the tapes on.

Finally, Hitch alludes to his voice actor. Marsden, as previously noted, is a highly experienced musical theatre actor; long before he was Tom Wachowski or Hitch Trailblazer, he was Comy Collins in the film adaptation of Hairspray and Prince Edward in Enchanted, both of which allowed him to show off his considerable singing skill.

But can he fit right in?