Prologue, 78 kilometers south
In the early morning hours before the first rays of sunlight had reached the horizon, a massive but elegant ship cut through the Celestial Sea's waves heading due west on a routine training mission. The eastern sea was good for such exercises due to it being utterly empty. Not even a single deserted island lay in its vast expanse. A blessing because it made run-ins with civilians or foreign powers near impossible.
The ship was a battleship. Built of steel and with cannons so large a pony could crawl through one, even if only barely. Hoisted on a high pole the flag of Grater Equestria flew meekly that windless morning, dragged along by the ship's movement.
The ship's deck had little action. The ponies in charge of the night watch were doing final inspections making sure everything was as it should be.
On the bridge the officers too were getting ready turn in after an uneventful night, except for one who bucked the trend. A blue pegasus with a light short cut mane was standing at the bridge's starboard window. He wore a dark navy blue officer's coat that covered his wings, two golden lines around the sleeves marking him as a lieutenant. The pegasus was tightly holding a pair of binoculars, intently staring out of the window into the northern horizon.
"Hey Seaspray, what's so interesting?" Asked a white mare gripping the ship's wheel.
"On the horizon there's a bluish green light," Seaspray responded from under the binoculars. He pondered for a few moments and guessed, "Aurora borealis?"
"Couldn't be," said the mare bluntly, "we're too far south."
An uneasy feeling tingled down Seaspray's spine. There hadn't supposed to have been anything in this portion of the Celestial Sea, and even if there had he didn't know what in Equestria could create such a light.
"I think it's growing" Remarked Seaspray as through the binoculars he could see the turquoise light that had only moments before been a speck became brighter and began to creep across more of the northern horizon. "somepony go get the captain," He ordered.
An ensign on the bridge saluted and hurriedly moved to the stairwell. The other ponies on the bridge began taking notice too, as the light was now bright enough to be seen clearly with the naked eye. Behind Seaspray a small crowd gathered at the starboard window.
He could now see that the light was not growing nor becoming larger, but instead moving closer to them. It advanced quickly as a front of turquoise a few hundred meters above the water, leaving behind it a transparent plane of dancing lights against the early morning sky.
As the front of light passed over the ship, the group of officers followed it's path. they bumped and clamored their way across the bridge to to the other side in a show of foal-like unprofessionalism that would have had the captain spinning with rage had she been there to observe it.
Seaspray stood still with his mouth slightly ajar, mesmerized by the sight of the light expanding into the southern horizon and the waves of magical colour it left behind. This wonder lasted a moment or maybe two, but was soon broken by a shout.
"Land directly ahead!" sounded the panicked voice of one of the navigators, "We'll run aground."
Seaspray turned with a bewildered look towards the navigator, then the ship's bow. He could not believe his eyes. Even though they were nearly a hundred nautical miles from even the nearest island, an entire continent of land now sprawled out before them. The first rays of sunlight shone across the landscape revealing a particularly nasty bit of cliffs that they were approaching at alarming speed.
There were a few seconds of silence as the officers remembered who they were and what their job on that bridge was. In what seemed like an instant as quickly as the room had fallen silent it soon filled with orders being shouted over eachother in fast succession.
"Rudder to port, engines full back!" came one of the first and loudest voices from the commander responsible for giving navigational orders.
"Sound the general alarm!" came another from a different officer.
"Aye aye sir rudder to port, engines full back," marked a response to the first order from the white mare holding the ship's wheel as she racked the engine order telegraph, leading it from "HALF AHEAD" to "FULL ASTERN" all the while turning the wheel as fast as it would allow her to.
Through the flurry of orders and responses Seaspray practically dove back into the chair of his post, keeping a keen ear for orders that would need him to act. He could hear and feel how the rhythmic humming of the engine stopped and started again. This meant that the propellers were now spinning the opposite way, slowing the ship down instead of driving it forward.
As the alarm bell rang, a steady stream of ponies emerged from under the main deck below them. It is at that moment the captain burst through a heavy steel door leading to the bridge. With her mane messy and navy coat half buttoned she took center stage.
"What's going on here? status report," she demanded.
The commander giving orders earlier was quick to respond "The land came from nowhere. We've already started changing course, but i don't know if it'll be enough."
"I have the deck and the conn," the captain stated to the bridge. Navy-talk for saying you are taking control of operations on the ship's deck and it's navigation.
"Aye aye" came a unanimous shout from the officers, now all more or less on in their proper stations.
Seaspray observed as the ship's bow slowly turned left away from the cliffs. He stood up and moved to the side of the bridge near a window to get a better viewpoint. He grabbed hold of a nearby desk as the entire ship listed starboard from the sheer momentum of the turn.
"We'll miss the shore but those cliffs look jagged," he said eventually, "there might be rocks under the surface."
The bridge was silent once more. As the ship turned for an agonizing minute, everypony expected at any moment to hear the sound of stone dragging against metal that would indicate they had run aground.
But it never came.
the ship made it's turn, and with a few sharp orders from the captain was now parallel to the shore.
"That does it, engines standby and drop anchor," came the last of her orders, disaster having been narrowly avoided.
Seaspray finally allowed himself to sigh from relief as he turned away from the window. He took off his navy officer's coat, throwing it onto the back of his seat. Before sitting down he performed a defiantly-celebratory flap of his wings, which brought about yet another unexpected problem.
While for his entire life before this moment his wings had offered only a token amount of lift, they now suddenly and without warning launched him headfirst into the bridge's low-lying metal roof.
Seaspray fell from the roof to the floor, feeling as if his head was going to split. He muttered curses while holding his temples. When he finally raised his gaze, he could see concerned comrades looking down at him.
"Wha- how?" He asked while squinting his eyes, adding "Yeah, yeah i'm fine," after noticing the question had not eased the looks of concern. A tad further away he saw unicorns with glowing horns and pegasi experimenting with their wings, though far more carefully than he had done.
As Seaspray got on his hooves he looked at first across the bridge, at the ponies and their newfound abilities. Next he turned to look out at the landmass that had suddenly appeared in their path. The waves crashed onto it's shores as if it had always been there. Green fields reached into the far distance and trees dotted the landscape. A sight too vivid to be an illusion.
"What is this place," he asked, "and why can we use magic?"
The captain trotted beside him, her jacket now fully buttoned and mane in acceptable condition.
"Magic isn't the only thing that has returned," she remarked while looking out of the window with him "That's Equestria, It's back."
Booksy Bits walked to work down the main street of Coltport as she did on most days. The early morning sun beamed down through the wooden old town buildings and made the waves on the island city's beach shine like gemstones. Coltport was the largest and most prosperous city in Greater Equestria, it was the capital after all. Well "temporary" capital, Canterlot was still the capital on paper, even though it hadn't exactly existed for the past five thousand moons.
Trotting through the early morning sun Booksy's mind was clouded from the chaotic events of the past few days. Magic returning at the start of the week had thrown everything off balance.
The morning magic returned she had picked up her bag full of books, documents and writing supplies she needed to do her job at the treasury ministry, only to find it light as a feather. She had spent the better part of half an hour trying to find what was missing from her bag, not for a moment suspecting that the seeming lightness was a result of earth pony magic making her stronger.
Booksy didn't find the whole deal to be entirely fair. Unicorns got real magic and pegasi flight, but all earth ponies got was a gym membership. Even her cutie mark hadn't given her some extraordinary ability as it had for some ponies.
She pondered what magic returning could mean. In school she was taught that thousands of moons ago it had disappeared along with Equestria In the closing weeks of the civil war. After the fall of Canterlot and the race to the sea where the loyalists had to flee the mainland, whatever took Equestria out of the world did not reach far enough to take their islands with it. Thus they were left adrift in the Celestial Sea with no way back home. Although accounts from back then contradicted each other more often than not those seemed to be the broad strokes.
Could it be that with the return of magic Equestria returned as well? No, of course not. The mainland returning was the realm of lunatic conspiracy theories. The only ones in Greater Equestria who had ever even seen the mainland firsthoof were the prince and his dragon friend.
Along the way to work, she came across a banner plastered to the side of one of the buildings. She always walked past this spot on her way to work but only today did it truly catch her attention. The banner was old and chipped off in the corners. It depicted a group of ponies, six in total, standing side by side along with "The council, Together into the future!" written in large text on the bottom.
If that banner was supposed to give faces to the ponies in power here, Booksy didn't think it did it's job very well. She only recognized a few of the ponies depicted on it, having to guess who the rest were from outfits alone.
Front and center stood the prince, unquestioned ruler of Greater Equestria. Learning about him in school he was said to be old enough to have seen Equestria fall thousands of moons ago, coming to power in that very crisis. If there ever was a symbol for Greater Equestria he was it. Fearless, strong, ever confident and always defiant in the face of overwhelming odds. Or at least that's what he appeared to be. Booksy had only ever heard him through the radio or seen him giving a speech. That was good enough to know somepony, wasn't it?
She also recognized the pony standing to the left of the banner as admiral Wavedancer, even if only because her friend Seaspray couldn't shut up about how she had shook his hoof at his promotion ceremony.
She worried about her friend. Seaspray should have been back from his training mission two days ago, but was nowhere to be found. He hadn't shown up to the picnic they had planned for yesterday. When she asked she was told that his training mission had been extended for a few days. Something like that had never happened before.
The only pony on the banner that Booksy had truly met in person was minister Goldwater, standing all the way to the right. As treasury minister he was her boss's boss, so she had spoken to him a few times at work. The entire ministry had been thrown into chaos a few weeks ago when out of the blue he had decided to retire and move to Griffonstone, leaving the ministry running around like headless chickens until the prince appointed a new pony in his stead. It was still up in the air as to who he would choose and that made for great office talk.
The ones she did not recognize were a dragon standing next to the prince, presumably the prince's good friend that she had learned of in history class, and two ponies standing on either side of the admiral. If the uniform was any indication, to her left stood her army counterpart. To her right next to the prince was a stallion in a black wool fiddler cap, indicating he had some affiliation to the security ministry.
She turned and kept walking on her way to work, leaving the banner behind her and seeing the treasury ministry building ahead. It was made of stone, having been built a long time ago.
Arriving at her destination Booksy pushed open the heavy glass door leading inside. The old stone rooms had been renovated multiple times, and it was clear which parts were new and which old. The new furniture didn't mesh well with the style of the carved stone and temporary walls blocked off some areas still under construction..
"Booksy, good you're here," said a blue unicorn from behind the reception desk, "The boss wants you to clean up a few of the chapters in your report. I left it on your desk."
"I'll get on it, thanks," Booksy replied and headed for the stairwell. The large stone spiral stairway was one of the few untouched areas of the building, it's original beauty still shining through in the paintings and carvings that lined the walls.
Arriving at the third floor she pushed through another set of doors into a hallway lined with offices. Before her own she stopped at one of her coworkers doors, knocked, and went inside after hearing a mumble she knew to mean "come in".
"Hey, I went through your response letter and marked a few errors," Booksy said to her coworker. She threw a file from her bag to his desk.
"Why don't you keep your nose out of my stuff Booksy? Focus on your own work," came the sharp but playful response from the coworker.
"Because my name is going to be on that letter and I know damn well they're going to make me rewrite it if it doesn't pass," Booksy hit back.
"Yeah yeah okay i'll take a look," Her coworker said, taking the file and putting it to the side.
"Thanks, you're the best," Booksy added, closing the door and heading for her own office down the hallway.
Getting inside Booksy threw her bag next to her desk and sat down. She picked up the report on her desk and opened it to the table of contents only to find nearly a third of the chapters drawn over with red highlighter.
"All right it's a bit messy i'll give you that but come on," she muttered to herself, turning in her chair to face the window. She started flipping through the pages trying to think of how to improve the text.
After a short time Booksy heard steps from the hallway approaching her office. Whomever this pony was stopped at her door and rudely barged in without knocking.
"I'll let you know that we have an always-knock policy at this office so I'd appre-" Booksy's passive aggressive remark was cut short as she turned her head to face the pony now in her office. What she saw startled her enough to almost make her fall out of her seat.
The pony at the door wore a pitch black wool fiddler cap, much like the one she had seen on the banner that morning. This meant he was an agent of the security ministry. He had a letter tucked under his wing as he stood in the doorway seemingly waiting to be acknowledged properly.
"I... I'm sorry I wasn't expecting..," Booksy was struggling to put together a sentence. She straightened her back as she spun in her chair to face the desk once more.
"Are you Booksy Bits?" Asked the stallion with the black cap, seemingly having gotten the response he had wanted.
"Yes," Booksy answered briefly, regaining some of her composure.
The pony walked to her desk and dropped the letter under his wing onto the table. Without saying a word he exited the office with as little fanfare as he had entered. A still slightly shaken Booksy was left alone with the letter.
Booksy picked the letter up. It was plain white and only had her name written on the bottom right corner in a blue cursive handwriting. She rummaged around her desk for a letter opener, not taking her eyes off the letter as if it was going to explode when she did.
She finally found what she was looking for in the second to last drawer on the right side, pulling out a long silver blade that looked something like a thin dagger without a guard. In the letter opener's reflection she noticed the yellow fur on her hooves still standing up.
Booksy slid the blade into the top of the letter and dragged it across, opening it. She put the opener aside and took out the single folded piece of paper contained within. Neatly unfolding it she began reading.
Dear Ms. Bits
I invite you to meet with me this evening to discuss the future of both you and this nation.
Should you so wish, the meeting shall take place half past eleven at Unicornia road 8.
With the most gracious of regards and apologetic at the sudden timeline
- Prince Rose Feathers
Booksy put the paper down. I had to be a joke. But if it was, why was the security ministry delivering prank letters?
Her head spun. "Should you so wish," could you even refuse a royal invitation? Considering there was no return address and the fact that the meeting was slated for that evening, she didn't think cancelling was on the table.
Booksy pondered for a moment. What if it was real? Pulling a no-show on the prince seemed to her to be a worst case outcome that would have repercussions beyond a simple social taboo. She had to go, there was no other way about it. Leaning her head on her elbow she checked her calendar to confirm that she hadn't promised to be anywhere else that day.
That evening Booksy approached the town center still wearing the same collar and tie she had on at work. She had gone through her entire wardrobe but hadn't found anything more fitting for a meeting with the prince.
As she came to the address mentioned in the letter, she saw a royal guard posted outside the door of a local restaurant. Wearing traditional armour they were a rare sight, usually only at parades and official events.
So the meeting was real. Booksy had expected to come across town only to arrive at some empty storefront closed for the night. The restaurant had it's lights on and curtains all drawn closed. Approaching the door she saw that it was two hours after closing.
"Ms. Bits?" inquired the guard upon her approach.
"Yes," Booksy answered knowing that she was specifically invited to be there, but still feeling like an intruder. She didn't see anypony else around outside nor did she see any movement inside. Was she late? No, she even triple-checked the time before leaving.
"wait by the table. Don't sit down," The guard said emphasising the don't. He then pushed open the door and waved her inside.
As the door closed behind her she saw that the the restaurant still had all it's decorations up. In the center only one of the tables had been set, the rest having been pushed to the sides of the room with their chairs sitting on them upside down.
Booksy walked through the empty room to the set table. She waited there for around five minutes that to her felt closer to fifteen. She had half a mind to go looking for somepony that could give her a timeline or further instructions, but decided against it.
Eventually the door at the back of the restaurant swung open. Through it Booksy could see the prince talking to other ponies. he had another royal guard with him, this one noticeably older than the one at the front door.
The prince was a head taller than everypony else, that was his most distinctive trait along with his sharp wings. Booksy was taught in school that he was two thirds of an alicorn, only missing a horn. Now for the first time she could see that they were not mere stories, he was the real deal.
The prince waved his wing to shoo off the ponies that had followed him there. Booksy recognized one of them to be the pony with the black wool cap in the council banner she had seen that morning. The prince and the royal guard entered through the door, the guard closing it behind them. They then went to move to the table she was still standing at.
Reaching the table the royal guard cleared his throat and began reading from a scroll "You now stand before his highness prince Rose Feathers, true ruler of Equestria and the Crystal Empire, firstborn of princess Flurry Heart, guardian of friendship and magic, knight o-"
"I'm on a time crunch here, save the titles," Said the prince interrupting the guard. He then turned toward Booksy.
"Ms. Bits, I presume? Please, sit down," he said with a much softer tone of voice, gesturing across the table and pulling out his own seat.
As Booksy sat down the royal guard ran his eyes across the scroll multiple times over what must have been an eye-watering number of titles and honors.
"By the power invested in me I now announce this royal meeting to be official," He stated after finding the right place to continue from. He bowed and left to the side of the room, leaving the the two of them alone at the table.
The prince up close did not give off the same feeling he did through the radio or up from a distant high balcony. Whether it was due to the late hour or another reason he didn't radiate the strongpony energy he was known for in public. For a pony who was supposedly thousands of moons old neither his white fur nor his mannerisms showed it. Although Booksy would not dare to say it to his face, sitting that close across the table she could tell his mane was dyed. Blonde strands gave way to light pink just at the roots.
"I'm so glad you could make it on such short notice," the prince reached across the table to shake her hoof, "Prince Rose Feathers," Booksy thought it was a little odd to introduce oneself after already being introduced by another. Maybe he did it to be polite.
"Booksy Bits," Booksy said while shaking his hoof, "It is my honor, your highness," Was she supposed to say your majesty instead? If she was prince Rose did not pay it any mind.
"Now as for the reason of this meeting," prince Rose said after finding a comfortable position on the chair that was slightly too small for him, "I'm here to offer you the position of treasury minister."
Booksy was taken aback. She knew that a meeting with the prince had to be something important, but never could she expect this. All the office bets about the issue were either on her boss or one of his coworkers.
The prince spent some time asking her questions about her political leanings and how she would handle different situations, turning the meeting into something that would equal an interview in a more professional environment.
"Your highness may I ask, why me?" Booksy asked after a moment of silence in the conversation, "Aren't there a lot of ponies more qualified?"
Prince Rose leaned on the table as if to answer, but then stopped for a moment to think. Finally he stated "I weighed the options and found you to be most suitable. There is more to filling a minister seat than just experience."
Booksy got the feeling that the answer was a dodge. Just a diplomatic way of dancing around the real reason. Talk like this was one of the multitude of reasons she didn't like politics. Booksy decided not to question further as she thought that would only produce equally uninformative results.
She had to think for a moment. Becoming treasury minister would mean leapfrogging her superiors to get the top job, and she thought that neither they nor her current coworkers would like that very much. Even though Booksy had sometimes daydreamed about what being a minister would be like, she hadn't given the idea very much real world weight.
The back door of the restaurant swung open once more. A third royal guard standing therein tapped his hoof as if he were wearing a watch and closed the door right after.
"It seems like time is becoming more and more of a luxury these days," prince Rose said with a sigh, "It's a very big ask I know, but i am going to need a yes or a no."
"Yes," Booksy said after a few moments, "I would be honored."
"Excellent," the prince said, Clapping his hooves together as he stood up from the table.
"And one more thing. As treasury minister you'll have a seat on the emergency war council. The next meeting is tomorrow at five p.m.," he added before leaving, "Royal palace, east wing, second floor. The guards will show you when you get there."
As the prince left through the same door he had arrived from, the group of ponies there to pester him with clipboards and documents had seemingly grown larger than it was when he had arrived. Booksy didn't know what was going on behind the scenes, but the urgency at which everything had happened signaled that something big was brewing.
Chapter One-and-a-half, Meanwhile in Maretime bay
Sunny Starscout hummed along to a tune she couldn't quite remember the origin of. She trotted along the dirt path to Maretime Bay, satchel over her shoulder heading to meet Pipp at the square
She had a sly grin on her orange face. Life in Maretime Bay had gotten a lot better after magic came back. It was as if she was a filly once more, anything in the world was possible and every day would be better than the last.
Sunny greeted ponies on her way. Some old friends, many new ones. As it turns out bringing back magic gets you the kind of attention standing around with a protest sign doesn't.
She had almost made it to the market square when Old pony Horseshoes came up to her. He had a scraggly white beard that stood apart from his brown fur.
"Sunny! Sunny! You have to see this. Radio messages! It's coming from out east, from the sea you see," The old pony waved around a handful of papers with lines and dashes haphazardly drawn onto them.
Horseshoes was a nice pony, really he was. It's just that he couldn't help but fall into conspiracy theories. On multiple occasions he'd been sure that one of the ponies in town was secretly a unicorn in disguise.
"From the sea? There's nothing out there but fish," sunny let out a giggle and tried to get a look at the papers but Horseshoes wouldn't stop flapping them about.
"There is, look," Horseshoes pushed a paper in Sunnys face, "It's old Equestrian morse code, ships talking to each other."
Sunny glanced at the paper. It was a collection of partial messages written down in all capital letters and spaced oddly. She had heard of morse code in school. An old kind of communication before proper radios became a thing.
But ships in the sea? Neither Bridlewood nor Zephyr Heights had any ships, or at least she assumed they didn't. Maretime Bay had only a few fishing boats and none of them had a radios. If these were real who was it?
Now Sunny had taken interest. "Could I come listen to these messages? I'd love to hear them," She took the page from Him to study it further
Horseshoes looked like he hadn't been expecting her to ask that. "Well you see-" he looked down "-the messages stopped... I... can't hear them anymore. But they were there! That i do promise you,"
Sunny let out a sigh and handed the page back to Horseshoes. She had gotten excited over one of the old ponies conspiracies. If she had to guess somepony was playing a prank on him, again.
Sunny regained her composure fast "Well I'll see you at the community garden for tea time tomorrow. We're having something from Bridlewood called 'crystal petals',"
Over horseshoes' shoulder Sunny saw her friend waiting for her beside the fountain, messages by mystery boats at sea already fading from her mind as she went over to her.
Author's Note
All right, real talk.
The reason for my moons long hiatus from writing the West sea crisis is because i was conflicted about what it even was.
Let me explain
This story, in the beginning was my headcanon for "Shadow alicorn" at the end of the first make your mark special.
The government-in-exile led by an alicorn that remembers the fall of Equestria and wants to return it to its glory days was a tale that lived in my head rent free for moons. Eventually I just had to get it written down somewhere.
So that's what this story really is. It's the headcanon villain arc of a season that never was.
But here's the problem. Is it even fanfiction anymore? Half the cast is my original creation and most of it takes place on a far-away island. Not to mention that the original characters won't appear before chapter 4 at the earliest.
And as time passed this distance between the source material and what I cooked up became even wider. When shadow alicorn turned into Opaline she got her own story and ideas, my version Instead morphing into prince Rose, and now even the villain of this fan-fic was an OC. Does it even belong here anymore?
So there's my thoughts. The mane 5 will join the adventure, but It'll be a while before they play a large part. I know that that makes it more original story than fanfic, and for that i am sorry.
If my crazy head-canon of political Intreague is something you would still like to read, I will be continuing from here on in. You can expect chapters 2 and 3 this summer and from there I'll update as often as i can.
-Lavender Shine
