Of Stones and Roots

Chapters

Family
Plans
Welcome to Fillydelphia
The Park
A Bit of Drama
Incognito
You're It!
Family Drama
Backstage
The Sentence of the Hooves Club
The Great Zap War
Emerald Rainbow
Ready to Fly
Epilogue
True Magic

Family

In an old dimly lit attic, a collection of unicorn stallions dropped index cards into a bowl, each card bearing a name. Another one, much older than the others, dropped in a card of his own and picked up the bowl in a levitation field.

“Alright. Who's going to do it this time?” He deftly launched the contents of the bowl into the air before catching them again. He tossed it up a couple more times before looking straight to the closest of the stallions before him.

“Now.”

As he tossed the cards one last time, the chosen unicorn snatched one up in his levitation field and unfolded it. He then passed it over to his younger brother.

“Looks like you won the toss this time,” he smiled. The others cheered as he accepted the card with a smile of his own.

After the annual ritual was completed, they all stepped downstairs and parted ways, one remaining behind, and the others each heading to their homes.

It was a dark evening, the end of a long day of travel, and the solitary stallion was tired and ready to be back home. As he arrived in Ponyville, his ears twitched. Something was moving in the shadows.

A pair of wings flapped behind him, and another pair approached before him. Just briefly, he caught a glimpse of a shadow peeking out from behind a rooftop. It disappeared just as he lit his horn to illuminate the area.

Something rattled in the street to his side. He turned to look at it, but saw nothing.

That was when they struck. With a flurry of wings, two forms tackled him, nearly knocking him to the ground. As they did, they both cried out in a single voice.

“DAAAAAAD!”

Quartz chuckled, still stumbling under the weight of both foals.

“You two just couldn't wait till I got home to do that, could you?”

Feldspar wrapped both hooves around him as she squeaked her response.

“Nope!”

By this point, Obsidian had already jumped off Quartz's back and landed in front of him.

“So where’s it gonna be this time?”

“Shouldn't we wait to get home so your mom can hear it too?”

“No need.”

All of them looked up to see Gneiss sitting on top of a cloud just above them.

“You two really thought you could sneak out of the house this late without my noticing, didn't you?” She fluttered down, landing next to her husband, and nuzzled him. “They were quite excited about the possibility that it might be here. The first time all day that they stopped talking about it was when they thought you'd gotten back.”

“Well, we won't be holding it here just yet.”

“Awwwwwww…”

He chuckled. “It's going to be in Fillydelphia this time, at Cor’s place, or at least the park right near his place.”

“Well, that'll be nice,” Gneiss smiled. “It's been a while since we've been there.”

“It's certainly not a bad place to go. Besides, regardless of where it is, it'll be good to see everypony again.”

“Don't forget your assignments for next week…”

Half the class had already galloped out the doors, with the other half flying, jumping, or trotting out instead.

“Hey Kind Face! What's up?”

The red earth pony looked up and stepped aside just in time for Feldspar to come in for a hard landing right in the spot where she had been standing.

The pegasus filly apparently made no notice of her near-collision, still grinning like a loon. Obsidian, meanwhile, silently stepped forward, displaying an apologetic face on his sister's behalf.

“Not much,” she replied. “What about you two?”

Feldspar pronked in place as she squealed.

“We're going to Fillydelphia this weekend!”

“Wait. What?”

As Feldspar bounced around, Obsidian explained. “We're going to a family reunion at Uncle Corundum’s place. We've been there a few times before. I was kinda hoping it would be here this time, but we didn't get picked.”

“Why?”

“It's sort of a tradition. We take the names of everypony who thinks they can host it and pick one at random. Corundum’s name came up first, so we're all going to his place.”

“So, you two are going off to see the rest of your family?”

“Pretty much.”

“Oh.” Kind Face's ears lowered slightly, then lifted again. She then turned in the direction of her house. “I thought we could hang out this weekend.”

“Well, we still have a few days.”

“Well yeah, but… I… I guess I oughtta go make sure I've got my homework ready. I'll see you later.”

Feldspar waved as Obsidian tilted his head.

“Um, okay. Bye?...”

Kind Face smiled at the ponies who saw her on the way back to her house. She smiled as her Aunt Masquerade asked her how her day went. She smiled as she went upstairs to her room.

Her smile disappeared as soon as she got into her room and closed the door.

“They're leaving?”

She thumped down on the floor, chin and all, and stared at nothing in particular as her ears fell.

Indeed, she was hoping to hang out with them again, but something about her mood didn't add up. She was too disappointed for it to have just been that.

Looking up, she saw an old picture on her bookshelf. It was just a picture of her and her aunt putting on a show together back in Canterlot. She had a few pictures like that, copied with permission from those taken by the tourists. She was a parody of a unicorn guard in that one, giving a hard time to a dimwitted would-be spy. In another, she was a thief who kept getting tricked into giving back everything she took. In yet another, she was a birdwatcher, trying to identify the species of a decoration on somepony's roof.

All their routines together, all of her memories of Canterlot, it was always her and her aunt.

She sighed. At least now she knew for sure what was eating at her.

She had had a few friends back in Canterlot, mostly among other performers who shared her aunt's territory. As far as family went however, real family at least, she only ever remembered her aunt.

It wasn't something she thought about often, but it was something she did occasionally wonder. What would it be like to have others in the family? Why couldn't she be like the Apples, with their roots running all over Equestria?

She sighed again.

It's not like she could change whatever had happened back before she could remember. Tartarus, she didn't even know what to change if she could. For all she knew she could be a long lost descendant of royalty in some country off Celestia-knows-where, or she could just as easily be a clump of dirt shaped like a pony and animated by some sort of advanced come-to-life spell.

What would it be like, though? What would it be like to belong somewhere?

“Kind Face. It's time for dinner.”

She jumped up and looked at the clock.

Yikes, how long was I up here?

She stepped downstairs to find her aunt waiting for her. Both of them sat down at the table and started eating the soup.

It was a good one, an old recipe Masquerade learned from who-knows-where. “Mixed with love,” she'd always said it was, although Kind Face was pretty sure it was tomato juice.

“Kind Face, what's the matter?”

She looked up to see her aunt watching her, concerned.

“I could tell something was off the moment you stepped in the front door. What is it?”

She hesitated a couple times, then finally asked.

“Do you remember my mom? Or my dad? Or… well… anypony?”

Masquerade paused, then sighed.

“They were good ponies, Kind, very good ponies. Wasn't a pony out there that your dad wouldn't stop to help, and your mom knew how to share a smile the same way Princess Cadence can share love.

“You take after them more than you realize. You've certainly got your mom's talent for characters, along with your dad's kindness towards ponies that are alone.”

She paused for a moment.

“What brings this up?”

“I… no, it's my friends from school, the ones who I went to Canterlot with that time. Their family's getting together and, well… that just got me thinking about my family and…”

Her ears gradually drooped lower.

“I see…”

Masquerade stepped around the table and enveloped Kind in an embrace.

“Kind, I can't say what happened to your parents. The details are too scarce… too distorted to make heads or tails of anything. All I can say for sure is that they loved you more than anything.”

They stayed that way for a while, neither knew how long, then separated and finished their soup. It had gotten cold, but it was somehow better now.

Kind Face then went upstairs to start her homework, as Masquerade silently stepped into her own room. She pulled out a wooden box and looked at it, then looked up at the calendar on the wall.

Soon. She would give it to her very soon.

As Kind Face was about to go to sleep, she saw the last picture on her shelf. It was one of her most recent pictures, also from Canterlot. The photo was taken on the roof of some building out in the commercial district, with Feldspar, still in her purple and green dye job, holding the camera at hoof’s length to capture the three of them together. She chuckled at the sight of herself as a blue, musically talented unicorn next to Obsidian who, unaware of the camera until just before the picture was snapped, had just taken off the saddlebags that he had used to conceal his wings.

An idea came into her head. It only popped in for a moment, but that was all it took to plant the seeds for a larger scheme.

She wanted to know what larger families were like, so why not see for herself? She already knew where one would be gathering after all. All she needed was a few supplies, some details of the location, and just a touch of her mother's special magic, just like in Canterlot.

She pulled open a drawer on her nightstand revealing bottles of dye and spare horns.

It was time for another road trip.

Plans

“Well there is certainly quite a bit of history in that city,” Cheerilee acknowledged, “although with the distance, a field trip there would take a bit of planning.”

Kind Face's ears fell again as yet another idea flew out the window.

It wasn't like she was running away again. That idea was scrapped before it even began. She was certain, after all, that grounding wasn't the worst punishment her aunt could come up with, and she wasn't particularly inclined to find out what was.

That left her sitting on the swings, trying to plot her next move. Unfortunately, she had exhausted her ideas, the best one being unlikely to get her to Fillydelphia earlier than a few weeks, meaning she would miss the reunion anyway.

As she pondered what to do next, a letter floated down in front of her.

“Oops. Sorry about that.”

Looking up, she saw Derpy hovering overhead. The mailmare dropped to the ground and picked up the letter, putting it back into her bags.

“I don't know why I keep dropping these.”

Kind Face got off the swings, and took a closer look at Derpy’s mail bag. “Looks like a button came loose. The flap's probably blowing open every time you turn.”

She looked at the bag herself, forcing both eyes to focus on it.

“Huh… I guess I should get that fixed. Thanks.” She dug around in her other bag, then tossed something to Kind Face. “Here, have a muffin.”

“Thanks.”

As Kind Face took a bite, she thought about the mailmare.

The mailmare…

The mail…

This just might work…

The next day was a fairly normal one…

“EVERYPONY DOWN OR I WILL DROP THIS JAR!!!”

… except for that one thing in the afternoon, at least.

Quartz returned home from work to find Gneiss getting things ready for the trip. Gneiss looked up as soon as she heard him come in the door.

“Hi honey. How was work today?”

“It was bizarre, to say the least. One of my new investigators charged in reporting that some lunatic threatened to release a jar full of parasprites inside Sugarcube Corner. Thankfully, Fluttershy was there and managed to talk her out of it. I sent a couple other guys to help interview Fluttershy and the police officers.”

He sat down and started levitating items into some of the saddlebags that were out.

“Well,” Gneiss commented, “at least it will make for some interesting headlines in tomorrow’s print.”

He nodded.

“It's certainly a change from covering weather patrol schedules.” He picked up a hat and looked at it. “Isn't it a bit early, by the way, to be packing?”

“Might as well save a bit of time. Besides, you already know Obsidian and Feldspar are going to wait until the very last minute, so we might as well have our own things ready so we can be free to help them.”

Quartz nodded, remembering packing for the move. He was quite glad that they didn't have to go through that again.

“Come to think of it, school should be out by now. What do you suppose they're up to?”

SPLASH!!!

Feldspar's head emerged from the creek, completely soaked.

“How far did I make it?”

“Five feet, but that one doesn't count.”

“Aw come on, why not?”

“I saw you using your wings.”

She climbed out and shook off, very deliberately spraying the other two.

“Hey!”

“Stop it!”

All three of them laughed.

Kind Face returned home dripping wet to find her aunt waiting for her.

“Welcome home, Kind. How was school today?”

“It was great. Well, school itself was about normal, but Obsidian and Feldspar and I all went out to the creek afterwards, and Feldspar tried to walk across it, but it didn't work, so she got soaked. Then we joined in with her. It was fun!”

Masquerade chuckled. “Sounds like fun, but why would anypony try to walk on water?”

“Well, clouds are made of water, and pegasi walk on clouds all the time, so we figured if Obsidian gave her enough of a boost with his magic, she'd be able to cloudwalk across the creek.”

“I see… I think. If it's the same as cloudwalking, shouldn't it work without the boost?”

“That's what she did first. Didn't work either. Of course, Pinkie Pie skipped across the creek just afterwards, but… well… she's Pinkie.”

“Of course.” Masquerade shook her head.

“Well I do have some news of my own for you. You got a letter in the mail today.”

“Really? From who?”

Masquerade pulled out the envelope and held it up. “I don't know. It just says ‘FPAC’ on it, but either way, it's addressed to you.”

Kind Face looked at the letter for a moment, then snatched it up and tore it open. After all, it wasn't too often that she got letters addressed specifically to her.

Dear miss Face,
We had heard of your adventure in Canterlot in the newspapers and were surprised that a filly of your age would be as adept at improvised character portrayals as what was reported. Since we are always seeking new talent, we desired to contact you to see your skills for ourselves.

If it is not too much inconvenience, we wish to meet with you this Friday at our performance center and perhaps see if you would like to audition for one of our upcoming performances.

We all hope to see you there.

Sincerely,
Casting Call
Director of the Fillydelphia Performing Art Center

“Woah! Check this out!”

She held up the letter for her aunt to read.

“What?... Fillydelphia? I didn't think news of your escapade spread outside Ponyville and Canterlot.”

“Ooh, could I go? Pleeeeeease? At least to audition?”

Masquerade looked over the letter again. “I don't know. Something about this seems fishy.”

“Please? I've even been practicing some new characters. Look!”

She rushed upstairs and closed the door behind her. A moment later, a yellow filly rushed back down.

“Can ah go there now? Maybe ah could get ma cutie mark up there.”

“Did you get Applebloom’s permission to use her as a character?”

Kind Face hesitated, then ran upstairs again. This time, she came back down looking roughly like Obsidian, but with red eyes, a red mane and tail, and black wings.

“I am Lord Edge! Ruler of the Shadows!”

“Kind Face, this isn't…”

Before Masquerade could finish her sentence, Kind Face was already back in and out of her room.

“Oh hello, my name is…”

“Kind Face, listen. I have no doubt you'd steal whatever show they're doing, but something seems odd about all this.”

The pink unicorn looked up at her aunt with sad puppy eyes.

Her aunt tried to resist the sad puppy eyes.

“The city's pretty far from here. Even if they like your performance…

“Oh would you cut that out? You know I can't think straight while you're looking at me like that.”

Ordinarily, earth ponies are not capable of telepathy, but this one particular instance was almost certainly an exception. Either that, or Kind Face was just really good at sad puppy eyes.

Masquerade sighed.

“Fine, but when we get there, I'm going in first to make sure it's really legitimate. Okay?”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. If nothing else, it'll at least be a chance to see you perform in person again instead of reading about it in the newspaper.”

Kind Face's grin stretched far wider than what should have been possible.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you…” She hugged her aunt, then took off up the stairs to remove her costume.

As soon as she got upstairs, she jumped in place.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! It worked! It worked!”

All that time convincing one of the colts at school to write that letter paid off wonderfully. It was certainly a good thing he had such neat hornwriting.

She laid down on her back and looked up at the ceiling, lost in a daydream.

“I get to go to Fillydelphia after all! I'll get to see what big families are like! And the only thing I have to worry about is my aunt coming along…”

Her smile shrank slightly.

“To make sure…”

Her eyes widened.

“That my made-up organization is real…”

She sat upright and stared ahead blankly.

“Horseapples…”

Welcome to Fillydelphia

An old green mare walked into the office, levitating some papers.

“I've found them.”

The orange stallion looked up from his work.

“Found who?”

“Those foals from the stories a few months ago.”

As she said that, she set down one of the papers, an old news article.

DISGUISED FOALS SNEAK INTO NEWSPAPER TO CLEAR FATHER'S NAME

He looked at the picture under the headline. It showed a colt and two fillies in the middle of a dirt road. The colt, for some reason, was trying to hide his face under his wing, while the two fillies glared at the camera.

“Oh, of course, the ones that showed some potential as actors. Well, whattaya know?”

“Well, first off, turns out they're from Ponyville, so it might be hard to convince their parents to come all the way here.

“Two of the foals credited Kind Face, that's the green one on the left, by the way, with their costumes, and she confirmed that she made them. Apparently her caretaker is a former actor, so we may want to contact her for a role as well.”

“Good idea.” He had already pulled out a paper and pen, but he put them back. “Come to think of it, perhaps we could visit the place ourselves. Might be easier than trying to find out their mailing addresses.”

As they both walked out the door, Casting Call held up the picture again.

“I wonder why this one's still in costume.”

“Who?” Curtain Call picked it up to look for herself.

“This one, the colt. We both know there aren't any alicorn foals in Equestria.”

Feldspar alternated between bouncing in place and hovering, a huge grin across her face.

“You're coming to Fillydelphia too? Cool! Maybe we can hang out there after the reunion.”

“Oh!” Kind Face turned to her Aunt. “Can we?”

“I don't see why not, but this time, I'm coming along too, if not the three of us.” She gestured to the Stones, who nodded in agreement.

“Oh come on! I only ran off in a big city one time!”

Masquerade shook her head.

“Well I think it's still gonna be great,” Obsidian chimed in. “We could go see the Millennial Bell, or we could all visit Harmony Hall, or we could see that theater together. Hey! Maybe if that audition's at the right time, we could all cheer you on!”

“Maybe,” Kind looked away for a moment, then back at him. “Auditions are usually closed though, so only the directors can see. It keeps outside stuff from influencing them.”

“Oh.” Obsidian’s ears and head lowered a little. “It would have been nice to see you on stage. You're really good. Maybe we could at least see you after you get in the play.”

“Thanks.”

Kind Face looked down a little, hoping that she could come up with a good reason to have not gotten in by the time it was over.

The call came for all to board the train, so they all climbed in. The parents all found seats where they could talk while the foals stayed in the aisle, too excited overall to sit down.

“Hey, come to think of it, what do you think I should look like?”

Obsidian raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. “Look like?”

“Yeah. I wanted to make an impression, so I brought along some of my stuff.”

As Kind Face pulled out a box and opened it to show him, Feldspar stood up and leaned over it as well.

“Ooh! Maybe you could be a zebra like Zecora! You could use these colors for that. Or you could be a unicorn pirate. Or you could be somepony you know like Applebloom!”

“I'll have to pass on that last one. My aunt said I can't be anypony that already exists without their permission.”

“Personally, I think you should just go as yourself,” Obsidian remarked. “I think you look nice as you are.”

“Thanks,” Kind replied, suddenly rather appreciative of the fact that her face was naturally red.

“Oh, I know!” Feldspar's head plunged into box and returned with a minor adjustment.

“Behold!” She flared her wings above her. “Princess Ice Heart of the frozen north!”

Obsidian rolled his eyes. “Feldspar, really?”

Meanwhile, Kind Face giggled. “Let it go, she's just having some fun.”

As the train rumbled along, a steward passed through the cars to make sure everything was in order. So far, it all was.

As he passed through the next car in the line, everything appeared to be in order there as well. There were a couple ponies working crossword puzzles, a few enjoying the view out the windows, a pegasus and unicorn chatting idly with an earth pony, three alicorns playing cards, a colt and a filly playing with Power Ponies figures…

He whipped his head around and stared at the three who were playing cards. After a round of guessing who had any eights, they all looked up at him. As the white one and black one smiled with obviously fake innocence, the red one looked up with a huge grin.

“G’day to you, good sir!”

With that, she picked up her horn and pulled it off as if tipping a hat, then put it back on. The other two fell over laughing.

As the train screeched to a stop, Quartz called over to the kids.

“Alright. We're here. You can put away those cards you brought.”

“Awwwww,” Feldspar whined, “but I'm winning.”

He looked over to them, only to find that Feldspar now had eight horns, one on her nose and the rest continuing up and over her head like a mohawk. Kind Face, meanwhile, had four horns arranged in a diamond pattern on her forehead and two pairs of wings, and Obsidian had two horns stuck to the tip of his real one and another stuck to the bottom of his chin.

“Come on. I thought you were all excited to be here.”

The kids were already packing away the cards and detaching Kind Face's props. Together they exited the train and stepped out into the city.

“I knew I'd seen them somewhere before.”

“What?”

Casting and Curtain both sat on the train waiting for it to depart. Casting was looking through the articles she had that were related to the foals. She didn't have much of course, as she'd thrown out most of them a long time ago. She’d finally found what she was looking for in an old tabloid that Lime Light enjoyed reading.

“Looks like that colt wasn't the one in costume.”

“Wait, are you saying he's…”

“‘Son Rejected by the Sun.’ Granted, I wouldn't exactly trust Lime Light’s choice of papers for even something as simple as a weather schedule, but at least now we have an idea what to look for. Also, it looks like Kind Face is supposed to be blue, not green… unless that's a dye job too…”

She paused and looked through the scant collection of papers.

“Great. How are we supposed to find a foal that keeps changing colors?”

The Park

“Sorry. I've never heard of that place.”

Masquerade frowned. She just knew it was a trick. Why else would a supposed professional neglect to leave an address on the letter? For that matter, how did she not catch that until now?

She made her way back to where the Stone family and her niece were all looking around at the buildings.

“Nopony here has ever heard of this place.”

As she frustratedly sat down on a bench, Quartz picked up her letter in a levitation field and looked at it.

“Hmm… I haven't heard of it either, but I'm not exactly from here. Let's go ask my brother. He’s been living here long enough; I bet he knows the area here like the back of his hoof.”

The park wasn't too far from where they were, so most of the time in the journey was spent keeping the sightseeing foals from wandering off.

When they arrived, the more local members of the family were finishing setting up.

“Hey, Corundum.”

The yellow unicorn looked up to see the two families approaching.

“Quartz.” He looked up at the clock on one of the nearby buildings and laughed. “And here I thought you'd show up before Zirc did, most of your family having wings and all.”

Quartz laughed a little himself as they shook hooves. “Well, you know how it goes. We all travel at the speed of the slowest member.”

“You're outnumbered, man, and they're growing up on you too.”

He bent down to Obsidian and Feldspar and held a hoof above the ground a bit below the height of Feldspar’s head. “Shooting up like bad weeds. I'm certain you two were just this tall last I saw you.” He tussled their manes, then looked up to the two newcomers.

“So who are these two?”

“These are some friends from Ponyville. This is Masquerade and her niece Kind Face.”

“Kind Face?” He stooped down to her level. “So you're the filly that ran off with these two that time.”

Kind Face blushed enough to see even through her fur color. “Um… maybe.”

The others laughed. “You three certainly caused a stir.” He got up and looked at his older brother.

“When the first few articles came out, Zirc and I joked about writing letters congratulating you on Obsidian’s 'ascension’. We never sent ‘em because we heard he'd run off over the matter.”

“Well it certainly was frightening for us,” Gneiss added. “What did you end to doing when you heard?”

“Well, our first wind of him running off was that ‘alicorn foal seen in Canterlot’ story, so we all sent letters to Thorite to see if he'd heard anything and if he could keep an eye out. We sent a few to some friends living down there as well.”

He stooped back down to address the foals again. “You three really did give us all a fright.”

They all lowered their heads, but Feldspar took a couple steps forward. “Sorry. It was my idea. I wasn't even thinking of all that.”

Corundum chuckled and tussled her mane again. “You always were the one with imaginative ideas. You should probably get some practice thinking them all the way through, though.”

As he was speaking, some other unicorns and an earth pony approached behind him. The pale blue one lifted a hoof to shake with Quartz.

“Hey Quartz. We were wondering when you'd show up here. How are things in Ponyville?”

“Going well, Zirc.” He turned to the Masquerade. “This is my older brother, Zircon, along with his wife, Pyrite and Corundum's wife, Agate.”

Turning back, he introduced Masquerade and Kind Face.

“Well, it's nice to meet you two. What brings you here to Filly?”

“We're looking for a place called the Fillydelphia Performing Arts Center. Have you heard of it?”

Corundum scratched his chin and looked up. “I don't recall a place like that.” He turned aside to Agate. “You?”

“She's probably thinking of the Fillydelphia Community Arts Center. Ponies get the name of that place mixed up all the time.” She turned to Masquerade.

“It’s not too far from here, just downtown about that way. You can't miss it; it's an older building from back when the architects tried to make things look nice.”

“Thank you. I suppose we should head off that way then. It was nice meeting all of you.”

“It was good to meet you too.”

As Masquerade and Kind Face headed off in the direction of the art center, Obsidian and Feldspar waved, then bounded off to go join the other foals.

“So, anything we can help set up?”

Corundum shook his head. “Not on my end,” he turned to Zircon, “you?”

“Just a few more tables over here. Come on.”

As the three brothers headed off to finish setting up, the sisters in law headed towards the pond to keep an eye on the foals.

“So what did happen, exactly?”

“Let's just say those two reporters won't be working in that particular industry anymore. Quartz made absolutely sure of that.”

“Well that's a relief to hear. If somepony did that to any of my foals, I don't know that I'd do.”

“Let me guess,” Agate grinned, “buck them straight through a wall?”

Pyrite feigned a grievous offense. “Oh dear, must you always assume earth ponies are so vulgar in their methods?...”. She looked around and leaned in closer. “I'd find where they live and plant a few of the more, shall we say, exotic seedlings from the nursery around their homes.”

They all chuckled briefly at the thought. After all, Pyrite did work at one of the few nurseries that cultivated Everfree seedlings.

“Well, she almost guessed right; just got the wrong mare. I did buck a pony across the room.”

“So what would you do, Agate? Shoot them with your horn?”

“Oh please, don't be so uncivilized… But yes I would. Repeatedly.”

They laughed a little again, then Gneiss sighed and looked over to see where the kids were playing.

“Well, on the bright side, nopony in town's called him an alicorn since. Celestia knows how much he hated that back in Manehatten.”

“And to think how little Rose wants to be an alicorn when she grows up.” Pyrite gestured to her youngest, who was showing off her rather unstable but, considering her age, still rather impressive shields to Obsidian.

Gneiss and Agate chuckled. “Let her dream,” Gneiss smiled. “Fillies that age need a dream. I’ll have to remind Obsidian not to make an issue of it if she calls him one. She's still young, after all. She wouldn't understand”

“Don't tell me he's still sensitive to that, is he?”

“He was nicknamed ‘prince’ and called an alicorn by ponies who only wanted to hurt him, then called the same by ponies who only did so because they wanted to hurt his father. How do you think he'd react?”

“Okay, fair point.” Pyrite looked back over at the foals.

Gneiss sighed and looked off in the same direction.

“It's a shame, really. When he was younger he used to enjoy the thought that he might be one. ‘Prince Stone Hoof’ he used to call himself. ‘Defender of the Downtrodden’.”

She smiled a little as the memories returned. “He and Feldspar used to run around the house ‘rescuing’ their toys from whatever evil monster they'd last read about.”

She sighed again and lowered her eyes. “Now I'm afraid that part of him might be gone forever.”

A Bit of Drama

Agate certainly wasn't kidding about the community art center being an older building. It was a style that hadn't been used in decades. It was a shame, really, as it was a rather nice style.

Masquerade and Kind Face stepped inside.

“Don't be nervous, dear. You'll do fine.”

Kind Face looked up at her aunt, wondering if she really was that bad at hiding how she felt or if her aunt could just tell because she was her aunt.

Granted, her aunt at least assumed she was only nervous because of her audition. If she knew the real reason for Kind Face's nerves, they never would have left Ponyville in the first place.

Just my luck. Just my luck she first had to come along and then find an actual performance center. How am I supposed to get out now?

They stepped inside to find a young mare who was trying to sort through some papers.

“Oh dear, oh dear, where did he put it this time?”

Masquerade stepped forward and cleared her throat. “Um, excuse me…”

The mare jumped back, scattering several papers. She tried to catch them with her hooves, mouth, and wings, only to fan them further away instead. Kind Face immediately bent down to help pick some of them up as Masquerade apologized.

“I'm sorry ma'am. I didn't mean to startle you.”

“Oh no, it's no matter. It wasn't you, really, it's just my boss asked me to find a few things while she was away. She and her husband went out to see if they could recruit an actor… oh… what was her name again?... Well, no matter.

“Anyway, nicest ponies you'd ever meet, but those two are terribly disorganized, so naturally, all the important papers are filed among old flyers and ads for the theater.

“Oh, I completely forgot. My name's Rising Star, by the way.”

“Masquerade, and this is my niece, Kind Face. It's nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too. Thanks for helping pick this stuff up, by the way.” She picked up the pile and set it on the table from which it came.

“So, what brings you two here?”

“This.” Masquerade reached into her saddlebags and pulled out the letter. Rising Star took it and looked it over.

“Hmm… I didn't think he'd taken to sending out letters, but then, auditions have been a bit slow lately.”

She looked over the letter again.

“... Wait a second. You're that filly from Canterlot?”

Kind Face shrunk away and bowed her head. “Umm…Maybe?”

“Kind…” Masquerade shook her head and looked to Rising Star. “Yes, she is.”

“Really?” Rising Star knelt down to Kind Face's level. “What was it like over there? Did you really camp out on the roof like in those articles? Are you really friends with an alien?”

“What? You mean Obsidian? He's not an alien, he's… what did he call it again? He explained it that day he was introduced to the class, but…” Kind Face scrunched her face trying to remember the term he'd used.

“Really? I could've sworn those papers said…”

“They also said I was a changeling. Do I look like a changeling to you?”

Rising Star almost asked if Kind Face was aware of exactly why changelings were called what they were, but she decided it wasn't worth it.

“Fine. I get your point. By Celestia, he did look like one in the pictures, though.

“So, I take it you two are here to audition?”

Masquerade nodded. “Kind is, or at least we're here to find out the times when auditions begin.”

“Ah, well they'll probably begin when my bosses get back. Until then, I can show you around the place.”

She stepped forwards and opened up the door before her. Beyond it was the seating for the audience, and beyond that, the stage.

“Whenever you do audition, this is where you'll be, just like in the performance. Come on, I think you'll like it up here.”

With that, she spread her wings and flew a short distance through the air, landing gracefully on the stage.

Kind Face stepped over to the side wall where the stairs were, but hesitated to go up.

“Go on,” Masquerade prodded, “go see what it's like.”

She climbed the steps and stood up beside Rising Star.

“Welcome to the stage, Kind. Best place a pony could be. Living as a new character in a world of imagination, all in front of an audience that loves you. This…” She spread her wings as if soaking up the love from the imagined audience, “this is the life.”

“Woah.”

As Kind Face looked up across the rows of seating, imagining them all filled with ponies, Masquerade snapped a photo of her and Rising Star together.

“Aunt Masquerade!…”

“What? You look adorable up there. Oh! Why don't you show off for Rising Star here so she can see what you can do?”

Rising Star smiled. “I would like to see that. Go on; it'll be good practice for later anyway.”

Kind Face hesitated, then jumped off the stage to her aunt, where she picked up her saddlebags. She then ran back up the stairs and disappeared backstage.

Rising Star turned to Masquerade, confused.

“What's she doing?”

Masquerade only chuckled. “Let's just say you're about to see how those newspapers gave her her nickname.”

Kind Face looked in the mirror.

She had actually been on a real stage for a moment, and next to an actor too! And the actor said that she might have an audience loving her again!

In her excitement, she'd almost forgotten about her plan.

By Luna's snot, the plan!

Her mind raced. She couldn't just leave them hanging, but this was the perfect opportunity to sneak out. She needed to do something…

Of course…

Hearing hoofsteps behind her, Rising Star turned around to see…

“What?!?”

She turned around to see herself walking up.

At least, a filly version of herself walked up.

“Welcome to the stage! Best place a pony could be. Living as a new character in a world of imagination, all in front of an audience that loves you. This… this is the life!”

“That's… you're…” Rising Star sat down on the stage and stared at the young duplicate. “Okay, that's not what I was expecting at all. You're a quick change artist?”

“Yup!”

“Well, that's certainly a change from the usual ponies that come in here.” She smiled. “So, what else can you do?”

Kind Face grinned, then took off, reappearing later as the blue unicorn character that she had used in Canterlot. She then went through a few more characters the same way, including, much to Masquerade's disappointment, Applebloom. Finally, she got to one last one.

“There is one more I've been wanting to try, but I'm still kinda practicing it. It may take a bit longer to get right.”

She ran backstage and pulled out her kit.

“Okay, what to do, what to do? Green. That's a good color. Green fur, what eyes? Red? Blue? Blue looks good. Something's missing… oh right, the horn. Can't be a unicorn without a horn.”

She looked up in the mirror.

“Okay. Gotta find a voice they won't recognize. Ahem… mi mi mi… Nah, that's no good. Mi mi… ugh, now I sound like Granny Smith. Hmm… there's got to be something… oh, I know!

“Ahem… ‘I'm sure you all thought this was funny, but impersonating an ESS agent is a serious offense! The only reason you three aren't in jail right now is because you're still foals.’

“Yeah, that'll work.”

She looked in the mirror again before turning to the door that would lead out the back of the building. Her ears fell a little.

“I'm gonna get in so much trouble for this.”

As she stepped outside and headed towards the park, she could already hear the more distant relatives of the Stone family arriving.

“It'll be worth it.”

Incognito

Casting Call and Curtain Call both walked through the town, enjoying the scenery. It was a kind of place they could stay a while if they had gone there on a vacation. Alas, they were visiting for business instead.

The first thing they needed to do was find that filly and her aunt, along with the others in the picture. Of course they weren't opposed to asking other ponies if they wanted to audition as well, but that could be later.

They decided to check the school first. If anypony could identify foals, it would be the local teacher.

“Um, excuse me. I'm Casting Call, and this is my wife, Curtain Call.”

“Nice to meet you. I'm miss Cheerilee.”

“We're looking for some ponies that we heard about recently. Specifically we're looking for the parents of the two fillies and the colt that went to Canterlot a while back...”

"Not again..."

The door slammed in their faces.

Simple. It's totally simple. Just go up. Act like you belong. You've always belonged. Yeah…

Naturally, Kind Face did her best acting when absolutely nothing was at stake, not when trying to sneak into her friend's family to pretend to be one of them.

How exactly did I think this was a good idea again?

“Well hello there. Are you lost, little one?”

Well, no going back now.

“Um, I think so. I'm looking for the Stone family gathering.”

“Well now, you're in luck, then. Welcome to the gathering,” the older stallion chuckled. “Nice to have a new pony joining us, although I can't quite say I've seen you before.”

“I haven't been here before. I found an old family photo album one time, and it mentioned a Stone family in it, so I went looking to see who they were.”

“Ah, gotcha. You must be from Little Rock's side, then. A lot of his records got lost in that house fire back… oh, how long ago was that again? No matter. It was ages ago.

“My name's Hard Place. What's yours, little filly?”

Horsefeathers. I knew I forgot something.

“Um, Emerald, sir. Emerald… Rainbow.”

Kind Face, you are an idiot.

Hard Place laughed. “Well now I know you're from his side. He was a lot more inventive with names than the rest of us. Come on. I'll introduce you.

“Oh hey, any others in your family come along?”

“Uh, no. It's just me. Nopony else could make it.”

He looked down at her, looking into her averted eyes, and paused. “I see. Very well, then. Come on. Let's go meet the others.”

It was just Casting and Curtain Call's perfect luck that, with the apparent exception of Cheerilee, none of the ponies had much information on any of the foals. Thus, their best strategy was simply asking all the locals they ran into and hoping one of them would know something. The next one they saw was a florist just outside her shop.

"Excuse me, I'm Curtain Call. Casting and I have been looking around for somepony we saw in the news."

"Oh. Fluttershy's probably in her cottage with her animals..."

Casting raised a hoof and shook his head. "No, we're looking for a filly who displayed potential talent as an actor."

"Oh... I'm not sure who that might be. What did she look like?"

Casting and Curtain looked at each other.

"Well, we're not sure. She's a different color in just about every picture we've found."

The florist's ears picked up. "Different colors?"

"Yes." Casting Call sorted through the newspaper pages he'd brought. "And I'm pretty sure she's an earth pony, but she does have a horn in a couple shots, and she has wings in this one."

"Are you sure that's the same pony? Does she at least have the same cutie mark between shots?"

"Positive... and she does go by the same name every time. According to this, her name is..."

They were interrupted by a loud shriek followed by the hoofsteps of the florist galloping away.

"CHANGELINGS! THE CHANGELINGS ARE INVADING AGAIN!!!"

“It sure has been taking a while.”

“Yes it has. She’s never taken anywhere near this long before. I'll go check on her.

“Of course.”

Masquerade stepped backstage while Rising Star waited. After several minutes and quite a few echoes of her voice calling for her niece, she returned with much wider eyes.

“I can't find her anywhere.”

“Tag! You're It!” Three steps into running away, the colt stopped and looked at his rather surprised target. “Hey, wait a second. Who are you?”

“I'm… I'm Emerald Rainbow. I just got here. Who are you?”

“Gold Leaf.”

Emerald Rainbow couldn't take her eyes off the one feature a colt in a unicorn family gathering seemed to be missing.

“You're an earth pony?”

“Yeah. I got that from mom.” He pointed to one of the mares that Obsidian's dad had introduced earlier, back when she was still Kind Face.

“My sister Silver's an earth pony too. She's over… oh there she is. And… oh, there's my other sister, over with one of my cousins.”

Emerald looked in the direction he was pointing to see a pink unicorn running around Obsidian.

“Come on, let's say hi.” Gold Leaf took a few steps forward, then stopped and turned back to Emerald. “Oh, but there is one thing about my cousin. Don't call him an alicorn. He doesn't like it for some reason.”

Emerald just barely suppressed a smirk, managing to replace it with a much more in-character eyebrow raise before Gold Leaf could notice.

As they made it over to the others, Gold Leaf spoke up again. “Hey guys! We've got a new pony!”

Emerald Rainbow now had to experience the joy of trying to introduce herself to ponies she already knew without letting them know that she already knew them.

Looking back, she really should have planned this out better.

“Hi. My name's Obsidian, and before you ask…”

“Let me guess, you're not really an alicorn?”

“How'd you know?”

She pointed to Gold Leaf. “He told me.”

That was when Gold Leaf's sister decided to introduce herself.

“Well I'm Princess Crystal Shield, Protector of Ponydom!” She stepped up closer and tried to whisper in Emerald's ear, “and I still think he is one.”

Judging by Obsidian's soured expression, Emerald guessed that he must have heard her remark anyway.

Meanwhile, Gold rolled his eyes and sighed with the air of somepony who had watched her introduce herself that way far too many times.

“This is my sister, Rose Quartz.”

Emerald giggled at the introduction. “Well it's nice to meet you two. I'm Emerald Rainbow, from Little Rock's side of the family.”

She bent down and grinned.

“So,” she turned to Rose Quartz. “Princess Crystal Shield?”

“Yep! Watch this!”

The unicorn closed her eyes and concentrated. Her horn started glowing a pale silver, and a series of matching transparent segmented plates materialized at the tip, expanding and repositioning themselves until they encompassed her, locking together at the edges. The barrier lasted about a second before disintegrating.

“Like it?”

Considering the filly looked quite a bit younger than Feldspar, Emerald was genuinely impressed that she managed to make a shield at all.

“That's cool!”

“Thanks! I've been practicing a lot at it!”

“So,” she grinned at Obsidian. “What are you? A unisus or a pegacorn?”

“A what?… I've never heard terms like that to describe it before. I'm a chimera, and before you ask, I'm not a monster; it's just a medical condition.”

Emerald giggled. The disguise was working well enough her own friend didn't recognize her. She just might be able to have some fun with this.

You're It!

Almost as soon as Emerald Rainbow had been introduced to Obsidian, Rose Quartz, and most of the rest of the cousins, the games resumed.

It started with a continuation of the game of tag. Naturally, Silver and Gold had the advantage of earth pony endurance. Feldspar and Obsidian took short flights whenever they were close to being tagged, leading to numerous accusations of cheating. Some of Corundum’s foals, meanwhile, introduced their own brand of cheating, using telekinesis to poke their quarry from behind with marbles they'd brought along, thus giving the impression that they had tagged them from farther away than was possible.

Really, everypony found some way to cheat eventually. According to Feldspar, that was part of the “Stone Family House Rules.” The specific rule under which it was covered was summed up as “nopony got hurt, and everypony’s having fun, so who cares? Just don't complain if somepony else does the same thing to you.”

While Feldspar was explaining, Rose Quartz bumped her with a shield.

“You're it!”

Feldspar turned to watch her run off, then turned back to Emerald.

“Hold on a sec.”

She then spread her wings and took off, dive-bombing one of Corundum’s colts a short distance away.

Emerald watched the whole thing, mouth agape, as the poor victim yelled in terror.

Yikes, this whole family is nuts!

The game of tag eventually transitioned into a full-on battle, with half the foals on one team and half on the other. Whoever got tagged became the other team's prisoner, who'd then need to be rescued by whoever was left.

As Obsidian dodged an attack from Gold Leaf, he was jumped from behind by one of his teammates.

“To battle!”

Obsidian stumbled a little, then twisted his head around to address the legged bowling ball. He certainly didn't remember her being this heavy last time.

“Rose Quartz, what are you doing on my back?”

“I'm Princess Crystal Shield, riding my alicorn steed to victory!”

“I'm not an alicorn…”

They both ducked as Rock Salt shot an itching spell over their heads.

“Well I haven't ascended yet, so somepony has to be one.”

“That doesn't even make any sense.”

“It does too make sense.”

She conjured up a flat hexagonal shield just in time to stop another itching spell.

“Hey, I think this'll work! I'll defend us with my shields, and you attack with your telephonesis!”

“I barely have any telekinesis.”

And if I did, I'd be using it to hold you up. Yeesh, what do earth pony families eat?

That was when a pair of mud balls splattered across both their faces.

“Yes! Two prisoners at once!”

Obsidian sighed and looked up at the filly on his back.

“When we get rescued, could you please team up with Feldspar for a while?”

Casting Call and Curtain Call both sat on a cold bench next to somepony who had obviously had way too much cider. Thankfully, the earth pony had ceased his rambling several minutes ago and had fallen into a slumber...

SNOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRK

...a very loud slumber...

As Casting and Curtain debated whether it was better to wake him and endure his rambling or let him sleep and endure his snoring, the door to the holding cell opened, and an earth pony officer walked in, followed by a unicorn mare.

"Thanks for coming on such short notice. The suspects are right here."

"No problem. It'll be a good chance to practice that changeling detection spell I read about."

SNOOOORRK... K... K...

The stallion picked up his head and looked around.

"I ain't no changelin'..."

"Not you, Moon Shine." The officer turned back to the unicorn. "Those two were the ones near the center of the panic."

Before, Casting or Curtain could protest, they were enveloped in a purple aura that made them feel as if their insides were being washed out with square wagon wheels that smelled like the color "textbook". After a few seconds, the aura disappeared and the feeling passed.

"Well, Officer Steel, it looks like they aren't changelings. They're just regular unicorns."

"You're sure?"

"Of course. Their pupils are still rectangular. If they were changelings, the pupils would have turned round again instantly."

The officer grunted, then glared at the two and opened the inner door to let them out.

"Go on, get out, and don't cause another panic when you do."

“So did you gain your horn or your wings?”

Obsidian looked over to his fellow prisoner. Like him, she was lying on her stomach with her forelegs under her, as instructed by their guard.

Naturally, the other team just had to bring in their much older once-removed cousin to fill that role, which meant escapes and rescues were both unlikely.

“What?”

“During your aploketis… apotofthis… phooey, what was that thing called again? When you ascended, did you grow your horn or your wings?”

“You asked me that last time we all got together.”

“But you didn't answer.”

He turned away for a rather annoyed exhale, then turned back to her.

“Neither. I never ascended, and I was born with both.”

“So you were born an…?”

“No. No, I wasn't, and would you please stop that?”

“Stop what?”

“Stop pretending I'm an alicorn.”

“I'm not pretending. You are.”

“Unnngggggh…”

“And I think you gained your wings. They're a different color than everything else.”

“Unnnnnnggggggggh…”

By this point, he was covering his ears with his hooves and his wings.

"But then again, most of your magic does seem kinda pegasus-y, so maybe you started with wings and grew your horn..."

Obsidian thumped his face into the ground and groaned yet again.

"I mean, you don't look like an earth pony that ascended. Can earth ponies ascend? 'Cause Gold and Silver are both earth ponies, and I've got a friend from down the street, and she's an earth pony too..."

“Hey Thor, is there any chance of being rescued?”

“Sure doesn't look like it, Sid.”

“Hmmph”

Obsidian was certain he could feel Thorite smirking. He couldn't see it, of course, as Thorite had his back turned to watch for potential rescuers, but he was almost certain he heard a chuckle.

“So what are you the prince of?”

“Nothing.”

“You can't be a prince of nothing. What would a prince of nothing even do?”

“I mean I'm not a prince at all.”

“I thought all alicorns were…”

“I am not an alicorn.”

“But you've got the…”

“Rose, just stop. Okay?” He sighed.

They both lay there in silence for a while, Rose Quartz looking at him and wondering why he'd suddenly gotten grouchy, and Obsidian resting his chin in the dirt and staring at nothing ahead of him.

For a moment, all was quiet.

It was a very brief moment.

“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!…”

They both looked up to see Feldspar homing in on Thorite with a literal flying tackle. A second later, somepony poked both of them from behind. Turning around, they saw Emerald's face sticking out of the bushes.

“If you two are waiting for a rescue, this is it.”

As Rose Quartz jumped into the bushes with Emerald, Obsidian flew up into a nearby tree and perched on a high branch. He needed to get away for a moment.

Family Drama

“Oh, you're looking for Kind Face and Masquerade? They just left. Headed out on the train just this morning.”

“What?!?”

“Yep. They said they got a letter in the mail from some theater in Fillydelphia. It's kinda weird though, ‘cause I don't remember delivering any letters from there.”

Casting and Curtain looked at each other.

“You don't suppose Rising Star or Lime Light got the same idea as us, do you?”

After an uncertain pause, they both turned back to the mailmare. “Thank you ma'am.”

As Masquerade and Rising Star were leaving the theater, a unicorn mare showed up.

“Oh good, you're back. Would you mind watching the building? Something came up. It's…”

“Rising”- she held up a hoof- “calm down. What's going on? Who is this?”

“Sorry, sorry. This is Masquerade. She and her niece came to audition, but her niece just disappeared. Red Fur, green mane… unless she changed those before she left. Oh dear, the girl's a costume artist; practically a changeling. She could look like any filly her age.”

The unicorn held up a hoof again.

“Masquerade, was it? It's nice to meet you. I'm Lime Light, one of the other regular actors here. Were there any signs that she was taken by force?” As Masquerade shook her head, she continued, “Is there any place you think she would have gone, then?”

Masquerade thought for a moment, then nodded.

“I have an idea.”

“Excuse me, excuse me…”

Casting Call and Curtain Call both panted as they made it to the station.

“Sir, when is the next train to Fillydelphia?”

The pony at the ticket window raised an eyebrow and pointed to a train pulling away.

“That one?”

After having practically run clear across the park and back more times than anypony cared to count, several of the kids sat in a circle with glasses of lemonade in their hooves, laughing.

“Did he really did say that?” Gold switched to a voice that sounded absolutely nothing like Obsidian's. “‘Princess, watch out! The toaster has spaghetti in it’?”

Obsidian glared at Feldspar, who was nodding enthusiastically.

“I don't know. I was burned out and barely conscious. I think I remember seeing the Princesses at some point, but I’m pretty sure that was just a couple of the police officers.”

Everypony else laughed again. When that died down, Silver raised her glass towards Emerald.

“Welcome to the Hooves Club, by the way.”

“Welcome to what?”

Everypony else responded by raising their glasses, all using their hooves.

“We started out as just us three,” she gestured to Gold and Feldspar, “‘cause we can't use magic to hold things up like the rest of the family.”

Obsidian nodded and pointed to Silver. “She let me in because I use my hooves for everything too.” He tapped the tip of his horn. “Weak magic.”

Rose Quartz took a drink of lemonade and looked up again.

“And I'm in ‘cause I'm just not that good at teleskitesis.”

“That's telekinesis.” Gold looked up at Emerald. “So, why aren't you using magic?”

“Oh…uhhh…”

It's a unicorn family, Kind! How'd you forget they can do magic?

“It's weak…” She tapped her own horn. “Like his.”

Needing a way to redirect the topic away from herself, she looked over at Rose Quartz.

“Wait a second. You can make shields around yourself, but you can't levitate things?”

“Yeah.” She looked down for a moment. “Shields are sorta the only thing I know.”

Emerald thought a moment, looking at the glass, the filly, and occasionally the other family members telekinetically holding things.

“Have you tried using shields to hold stuff up?”

She thought about it, then her face brightened as she finally understood what Emerald meant.

“Hey, I didn't think of that!”

She quickly scrunched her eyes closed, causing a hexagonal plate to appear before her. She opened them one at a time, then picked up her glass and carefully set it on the plate.

Her eyes immediately widened almost as much as her grin.

“It works! It works!”

Well, it did work for about two, maybe three seconds. However, in her excitement, she allowed the plate to disappear. Fortunately, Obsidian managed to catch the glass in a levitation field.

“Oh, so you do have magic.”

“Yeah.” He glanced to Emerald while waiting for Rose to pick up the glass again. “A little.”

“Why don't you try using pegasus magic to make stuff fly?” Rose Quartz finally picked up the glass out of his levitation field and took a sip again before looking at him. “I mean, if I can use shields to pick stuff up, maybe you can use pegasus magic.”

“I don't think that's how it works. I mean, maybe if I had a bit of cloud on hoof, I could make a cupholder, but I'm not sure how well it would work.”

“What about earth pony magic?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his head with a hoof. “I don't have any earth pony magic.”

“But I thought you were an…”

“I'm not…” He closed his eyes for a moment and paused before opening them again to continue. “I'm not an alicorn, and I never was. You'll understand when you're older.”

“What's there to understand when I'm older? You've got a horn, you've got wings, that makes you an alicorn.”

“No it doesn't.”

“Yes it does.”

“No, it doesn't…”

Emerald and the others watched them argue back and forth. She didn't want to get involved, but her friend was starting to look like a water heater with all the safety valves removed. She was really hoping it wouldn't turn out like it did in that Mythbuckers book.

“For the last time, I am not an alicorn! I don't even like alicorns. I'll never be one. If Celestia herself offered the chance to become one, Tartarus, if Faust herself came down and offered that chance, I'd reject it!

“Alicorns are stupid, and so is anypony who actually wants to be one!”

He stomped off, leaving the others behind.

Everypony who remained watched him leave, completely silent.

The silence was broken by the broken voice of a young filly.

“G… Gold? Am I stupid?”

Backstage

Masquerade, Rising Star, and Lime Light made it to the park as quickly as they could. Unfortunately, they had no idea which fillies to check. They could eliminate Feldspar, at least, as she was flying off away from everypony else at the moment, but unfortunately, the rest were all fair game as potential disguises for Kind Face.

“Come on. Let's go ask the parents here. See if there's any foals they don't know.”

“Go away.”

Obsidian didn't even look behind him as his sister landed in a run and trotted up behind him.

“What were you doing back there?”

“It was nothing, okay?”

“Obsidian, that wasn't nothing, and it definitely wasn't okay.”

That voice was different. Twisting his head around, he saw that Emerald Rainbow had for some reason accompanied her.

“You too?”

“Something wrong with that? Gold and Silver probably would have come too, but they're too busy comforting their crying sister right now. What happened?”

He grouched down to the ground and spoke to the dirt.

“I'm tired of being called stuff I'm not. I thought it was finally over with. I thought it would finally end.” He snorted.

“Now it's just happening all over again.”

“I thought he was cool!”

“I know…”

“Why'd he turn mean?”

“I don't know, Rose. I don't know.”

“Am I stupid?”

“No, Rose, you aren't.”

“Then why did he say I was?”

Gold and Silver looked at each other. “I… I don't know why. I don't know what got him all mad all of a sudden, but I don't think he was mad at you. Not really.”

She looked up, still sniffling.

“What do you mean?”

Silver looked off in the direction her cousins had gone, then back to Rose Quartz.

“I don't know for sure.” She looked up to Gold, who nodded. “But I think we can find out.”

The remaining members of the Hooves club reconvened by an old statue. Emerald was lying down prone with Rose Quartz, who had finally calmed down somewhat, resting on her back. Gold and Silver sat in front of her, while Feldspar lay with a hoof under her chin and her wings splayed on the ground.

“That's… He's never done that before.”

Emerald looked over to Silver. “Never?”

“No. He corrects her sometimes, but he usually at least tolerates it when she does that. He's never just blown up like that.”

Emerald looked down. “He has. Once.”

She looked up at Gold and Silver. “I'm from Ponyville, so I met him there. He did blow up like that once while I was there.”

Gold thought a while, then looked back up. “Did it have anything to do with that stuff in Canterlot?”

Emerald nodded.

“She did what?”

“She just took off. I was wondering if any new fillies showed up here, any that might be Kind Face in one of her disguises again.”

Quartz and Gneiss looked at each other.

“I could ask my brothers and cousins; see if they saw anypony.”

“And I could fly over the park for a quick scan.”

Gneiss was already spreading her wings for takeoff as Masquerade thanked them. As she did, Quartz asked if Masquerade had contacted the police. She nodded.

“Alright then. Let's go find our mystery filly.”

Obsidian rested in the dirt, chin on the ground, with a hundred thoughts racing through his head.

Was he mad?

Definitely. Oh so definitely.

He was mad at the reporters that had attacked his dad, mad at the kids in his old school, mad at the kids in the school before that, mad at his cousin…

Why did she still think he was an alicorn anyway? He'd corrected her at least a couple times every year.

She was just like all the others…

…

… No…

As he thought about it, she wasn't like the others. To the others, he was a freak. To her… to her… she'd been looking up to him, hadn't she?

He shook his head. She still called him…

No, she was barely a filly. He shouldn't expect her to understand.

Ugggggh…

What was it like for her, anyway? Imagining that some special creature was a member of your family?

She actually thought he was special, didn't she?

No mocking, no jokes, no attacks… she wasn't trying to hurt him like the others; she was just calling him what she thought he was.

He snorted again.

She'd been looking up to him this whole time, and he'd insulted her and taken off.

…

...

Horseapples…

…

...

His ears pricked upwards and swiveled around, and he lifted his head to see the source of the noise behind him.

“Mom?”

“Obsidian? What are you doing all the way out here?”

“Just… thinking. What are you doing?”

“I'm looking for Kind Face. She ran off, and Masquerade suspects that she might have come here.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I don't know, but we're just trying to be sure she's safe. Would you mind keeping an eye out?”

“Yeah, of course.”

As Gneiss was spreading her wings to take off again, Obsidian sat up.

“Mom?”

She folded her wings and stepped closer.

“What is it?”

“What if I did something, and if I ended up hurting somepony because of it, and she's…” He lowered his head, not sure of the right words to continue.

“Obsidian, what happened?”

“I… I don't know. Someone called me that thing again, and I know they didn't mean anything bad by it. I think they thought it was something good, but I still got all mad, and I think I hurt their feelings too, and it's all just…” He groaned and thumped back down to the ground. “What am I gonna do?”

Gneiss sighed. “Please don't tell me you blew up at Rose.”

Slowly he nodded, leading to another sigh.

“Obsidian, what am I going to do with you? You know she's just a foal.”

“I know…”

“And you know she doesn't mean any harm by it.”

“I know. I don't know why I did that. She's not even like the other ponies. She's… oh man, she was actually trying to be nice, and I…”. He shook his head to clear it out, then looked back up at his mom.

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“I think you already know. You're just hoping I'll tell you something else so you don't have to do it, aren't you?”

He lowered his eyes. “Maybe…”

“Obsidian.” She waited for him to look back up at her. “You were right about a minor detail that, in the grand scheme of things, is pointless. You won your little argument against a foal. Does that satisfy you?”

He slowly shook his head.

“Why not?”

“It's… it wasn't… I didn't want her to get upset or anything. I was just tired of being called stuff I'm not.”

“But you did upset her.”

“So I'm supposed to apologize for being right?”

“No, you're supposed to apologize for caring more about yourself than about somepony else. You know she's too young to understand, you know she doesn't mean any harm, and you still snapped at her.”

He looked down into the dirt.

“Obsidian, drop your pride. It's the only thing standing between you and making things right, and it will only make things worse down the road as long as you hold on to it.”

She prepared to take off again, turning back one last time.

“I won't make your decision for you. You're old enough to do that. But, I won't clean up the consequences for you either. You're old enough to do that too.”

She lifted her wings and took off to return to her search, leaving him to think.

The Sentence of the Hooves Club

Casting and Curtain ran to the theater after arriving at the city just behind the train to try to find the potential actors. Unfortunately what they found instead was the front door locked.

Casting Call fumbled with his keys before finally finding the right one and unlocking the door.

Inside, they found no sign of anypony. Indeed, the place seemed to have been abandoned in haste.

Casting checked the ticket window where Rising Star has been working, only to find a note scratched out in her hoofwriting.

Helping somepony find a missing filly. Probably at the park.
LL came with.

P. S. I still have no clue where those papers are.

Emerald Rainbow had gone off to find Obsidian and convince him to come back, but he wasn't in the same spot he'd been last. She checked all over the place, including in the trees, but didn't see him anywhere.

After hiding in a bush to avoid being spotted by his mom flying overhead, she gave up and decided to head back to the group.

When she returned, she found Obsidian sitting on the ground with Rose Quartz hanging from his neck by both forelegs and supported by his returned hug.

“What happened?”

Silver looked over at her, smiling. “He just showed up and apologized. Something about being mad at somepony else instead of her.”

“Ah man. I had this whole big speech planned that would get him to… oh well, at least they're not mad or sad anymore.”

Silver and Gold both snickered.

“Well,” Gold Leaf smiled, “at least the Hooves Club is back together again.”

“Yeah!” They all looked up to see Feldspar coming in for a hard landing. “So now that we're back together, what do we do?”

Gold put a hoof under his chin, then looked up at Obsidian.

“How about this?" He stood up straighter and assumed an air of authority, as if he was a judge presiding over a case. "On the charges of hurting our youngest member’s feelings, you are hereby sentenced to being forced to provide a bit of entertainment for the rest of us.”

“Okay, I suppose. What do you want me to do, sing a song?”

“Oh no. I've got something much more interesting than that. As the oldest unicorn in the group, you will try to teach our other two unicorn members magic while the rest of us watch.”

“What?! Come on! You know I'm not qualified for anything like that!”

“Exactly. And that's what’ll make it entertaining.”

The brothers convened with Masquerade, along with their father and a couple others.

“Well, we've all told our own families to keep an eye out, and Gneiss just finished her search pattern. From what she's described we've got a couple possibilities, no real way to know for sure.”

Corundum thought a while, then looked up at Masquerade.

“These fur dyes you say she uses, are they water soluble by any chance?”

“That's the only kind she uses. Why?”

“Oh, I just thought of a way to remove her disguise regardless of whether or not we know who she is.”

“Cor,” Zircon raised an eyebrow, “are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“Maybe…”

Quartz apparently was also thinking of the same thing.

“Are you two sure that's a good idea?”

Their father just chuckled. “Sounds like a good idea to me. It'll cover all the foals at the same time, and it'll give the rest of 'em a chance to practice intuitive magic. Much better than the stuff they teach in old dusty books anyhow. I say we go for it.”

“Fine. Who's starting it?”

“Here. I've got some straws.”

They all picked a straw, Quartz looking quite disappointed at his.

“Well, there you go,” Corundum laughed. “Now go out there and act natural. You'll know when to start it.”

Masquerade, who evidently didn't share the family's apparent telepathic link, raised an eyebrow.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh,” Zircon grinned, “just something we used to do back when we were colts.”

“Come on, you can do it!”

Gold, Silver, and Feldspar all sat together with snacks between them as Obsidian tried to explain to Emerald and Rose how to lift a rock.

Rose, of course, cheated a few times by generating shields just under the rock and using them to pick it up, but Emerald, strangely, couldn't even get her horn to glow.

“Try showing her something easier like a flashlight spell.”

Obsidian turned his head around and called back over his shoulder. “How am I supposed to show them anything when all anypony can see is my horn glowing?”

“Make your horn change colors then!”

“But that's pegasus magic. How is it supposed to help them?”

“It won't, but it'll be funny!”

Obsidian facehooved.

By Celestia, he wasn't insulting anypony again for as long as he lived.

The Great Zap War

Clueless as he was at teaching, they had to at least give him some credit for perseverance.

“You just have to sorta feel for it, like reaching out with your hooves, but… well… without your hooves.”

Emerald Rainbow pointed her horn directly at the rock, but nothing happened. She sighed.

“It's nice that you're trying to teach me, but I'm starting to think I don't have any magic.”

“Come on, everypony’s got some magic. It's in your blood.”

“Well maybe I've got the wrong sort of blood. Besides, they can't do magic.”

Obsidian turned to look in the direction she was pointing. “Well yeah, but they're earth ponies and a pegasus. Their magic's different from the rest of us.”

“Well maybe mine’s just different too.”

That was when they heard somepony trotting up from behind. Obsidian twisted his head around to see who it was.

“Hey Thor.”

“Hey kids. And, I guess you must be the Emerald Rainbow some of the others here have been talking about.” He stuck out a hoof as she nodded. “Thorite Stone, of Canterlot.”

She shook his hoof, silently wishing he could have been from anywhere else.

“So,” Obsidian asked, “what are you doing over here?”

“Zirc said he wanted all the kids together over by the pond. He said he had something fun planned.”

“Hey kids, you want to see a fun trick?”

All of them looked up at Zircon, who already had his horn glowing.

“Sure!”

Zircon touched his horn to the water in the pond and lifted it again, picking up a golf ball sized sphere with the tip.

“Did any of your dads ever tell you about the Great Zap Wars from when we were kids?”

“Yeah!” Feldspar excitedly hovered up to eye level with him. “He said he used to launch blobs of water up over the roof so nopony could get him back.”

“Oh, he didn't just do that. We called him ‘Icepony’ for a reason. He chilled the water just before launching it. But that's not the point. Did he tell you how often he missed his shots?”

Obsidian and Feldspar both shook their heads, while Emerald Rainbow and the other cousins looked up eagerly for an answer.

“Of course not.” He chuckled slightly, lowering himself into an attack stance until he was about eye level with the foals.

“You know what they called me during the Zap Wars?”

They all shook their heads.

“‘Sniper.’”

ZAP!

“It's a nice place. Everypony’s friendly, and there's a certain charm to rural communities that you just can't find in the…

“YAAAGH!”

Gneiss turned to her husband, alarmed.

“Dear!? What just happened?”

“Somepony just shot me in the plot with a…” He turned around to see his older brother and most of the foals looking away and whistling innocently.

“I knew it. I knew he'd start it early anyway.”

He put on an aggressive tone while trying to suppress a grin. “You want to declare war, Snipes? Here comes the Icepony!”

As he spoke, a volley of water blobs launched straight up from the fountain behind him. Zirc turned his head to the kids in fake terror.

“Run!”

They all scattered just before twenty blobs of water rained down on where they had been standing.

Gneiss tapped her husband on the shoulder.

“Did you really have to do that?”

“It was Cor’s idea, not mine. It's just a bit of fun, and he thinks it'll help expose our mystery filly. Besides, it's a great way for the kids to practice magic. The water won't hurt them, and it’ll let them get creative with new tricks.”

That was when another blob stung his backside.

“Yike…” He glared in the direction from which it had come. “Like electrifying the water to make it sting more.”

The kids regrouped behind the bushes with their uncle, trying to laugh as quietly as possible and failing at the “quietly” part.

“See, like I said. Missed almost every shot.”

That was when they were interrupted by another voice from behind.

“What are you all doing?”

Slowly, they all turned around to see another unicorn lowering his eyes at them.

“Corundum! How are you doing? We're just admiring the bushes here, right kids?”

All the foals nodded in agreement.

“You decided to start a zap war in my town?”

“Well, that all depends on your point of view…”

“Zirc, if you want a zap war at my place, you'd better be prepared” -a long rope of water wound its way around him, forming a complex weave that surrounded him- “for the Snake King!”

Everypony scattered, barely avoiding the torrent that followed.

The serpent of levitating water wrapped around Zircon and forced him down to the ground.

“Kids! Help! Quick, soak him back!”

Emerald Rainbow bolted through the park, laughing as all the cousins fired off shots at each other.

As the kids got pulled into the war, the parents who had instigated it surreptitiously backed off, amusedly watching them from the sidelines. Several of the foals had tried to imitate their parent's styles at first, but they soon ended up with rather distinct styles of their own.

Cor’s kids tried to mimic his signature “Snake King” attack, but they weren't nearly skilled enough yet in their telekinesis, so they opted instead to fire barrages of water in a manner somewhat between Zirc’s sniper shots and Quartz's mortar launches. They had quickly developed quite a bit of proficiency in time-on-target firing tactics.

Gold and Silver had found a hose and were spraying everypony who came within range while Rose Quartz defended them with flickering shields.

Feldspar had gathered enough mist from around the pond to form a small cloud and was sitting on top propelling it around the park while Obsidian and Thorite sat up with her, Thorite using his magic to water bomb everypony below, and Obsidian using his magic to keep his older cousin from falling through the cloud.

Emerald herself had taken to dodging the attacks with the younger foals who had wanted to join but didn't have enough skill yet to fight back.

It was a blast!

Then, the inevitable occurred.

One of the family's younger cousins pointed a hoof towards the sky.

“INCOMING!!!”

Before she could react, she, everypony, and everything else around her was pelted with a barrage of water blobs from Corundum’s foals. As she stood back up, the pony who had tried to warn her tilted her head.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a bit soaked. You?”

“I'm fine.” She stepped closer. “ Are you sure you're okay?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. Why?”

“You're not green anymore.”

Emerald Rainbow

“Kind Face?”

In his shock, Obsidian accidentally dropped Thorite, who thankfully landed safely in a water fountain. While Thorite stepped out and shook himself off, he and Feldspar both jumped down and ran over to her.

“You're Emerald Rainbow? Why? What are you doing here?”

Kind Face slowly took a few steps back, then turned around into a sprint, only to run face first into somepony else.

“Young lady. I've been looking all over for you.”

Kind Face looked up into the disappointed eyes for a few seconds, then down at the ground.

“Sorry, Aunt Masquerade.”

“Kind Face,” Masquerade sat down in front of her and looked her in the eyes. “What's gotten into you?”

“I… I… I wanted to see what it was like having others in the family. Having sisters… and brothers… and cousins and all and… I don't know… I guess I thought I saw theirs…”

Feldspar stepped around in front of Kind Face to look at her.

“What about the audition?”

“I made it up. I got one of the colts at school to write it; I told him it was for a prank. It was just an excuse to come here so I could join this."

She turned back to her Aunt Masquerade before continuing.

"I didn't want to sneak off and everything, cause I knew you'd worry, but I really wanted to come, and then you came along with me anyway, and then you found a real theater and... and..."

She sighed, having lost to strength to even hold her head up enough to look her aunt in the eyes.

"In sorry, Aunt Masquerade. I'm sorry."

"Kind Face..." Masquerade closed her eyes and sighed. "You really need to stop taking everything into your own hooves. I might not have all the answers you want, but I'm still there for you. If nothing else, you could have at least let me know of your plan so that I would know you're safe."

As Kind Face continued hanging her head, Obsidian stepped closer.

“You went through all that just to sneak into our reunion?”

She nodded, still looking towards the ground.

“Why didn't you just ask us?”

“Why didn't… what?”

She turned to him, unsure if she had just heard what she thought she'd heard.

“Why didn't you ask? I'm sure Mom and Dad would've said it's okay, and I don't think anypony here would be against you joining, but if they were, we'd all still be with you.” He looked over to his parents, who had stepped up being him. “Right?”

“Of course,” Gneiss replied. “We would have been glad to have you here just as yourself.”

“We've still got some daylight left,” Quartz added. “How'd you like to be a Stone for a day?”

“Really?”

By this point, most of the family had gotten there to see what had happened. All of them either smiled or nodded.

All of them agreed except one, at least.

“Hold it, hold it, we can't just bring her in. You're all forgetting something.”

Zircon, Quartz, and Corundum all turned around as the stallion approached. Zircon asked the question they all had.

“Dad? What are you talking about?”

“Quiet, son. It's part of the tradition.” He turned to Kind Face with a stern gaze.

“Sit up a bit straighter. I need to do something.”

Cautiously, she did as instructed. As soon as she was sitting up straight, Hard Place tapped her on each shoulder and on the top of her head with the tip of his horn.

“I hereby dub thee Lady Kind Face, honorary member of the Stone family, and grant you all the rights, privileges, and what-have-you that comes with being a member. Any family members among us who object to this can go stick their nose in Pyrite's poison joke patch and take a deep breath.”

As a couple of the other family members chuckled over the "ceremony," Hard Place's eyes lost their feigned sternness entirely, and he smiled.

“Welcome to the tribe.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Really... Provided your aunt's okay with it, of course. And forget that ‘for a day’ part. Your title lasts until you don't want it anymore or I deem fit to remove it, and in all my years, I've only ever had to do that once before.”

She turned to her aunt and very nearly engaged the sad puppy eyes again before her aunt sighed.

“We'll discuss your running away again later. Go on. There's not much daylight left.”

As she was standing up, Obsidian tapped her on the shoulder.

“While we're over here, you could remove the horn if you want. It's not like you need it anymore anyway. Besides,” he smiled, “you really do look better as yourself.”

Ready to Fly

The Hooves Club had reconvened, their first orders of business being to expel Emerald Rainbow on the charge of not existing and to induct their new decidedly not-a-unicorn friend Kind Face into her place.

“So, are we supposed to introduce each other all over again?” Feldspar asked.

“I've already met your cousins, well sorta, at least.”

“Yeah, but it's still part of the fun,” Obsidian added. "Everypony, meet Kind Face, a friend of ours from Ponyville."

As the others cheered for the not-quite-newcomer, Obsidian turned to Rose Quartz and chuckled. “Just when I thought we had another unicorn member too. I guess it's just the two of us again.”

He looked at her and paused for a moment.

"I'm sorry again about blowing up like that."

She tilted her head. "But I already forgave you."

"I know, and thanks for that... I just wish I never did that in the first place."

He sighed, then looked at her again.

"I used to be a lot like you."

"You were a unicorn?"

He chuckled. "No, but I did pretend I was a prince who'd go around rescuing everypony."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"What happened?"

He didn't answer at first, looking down at the ground instead.

"I don't know. I guess I kinda lost that dream."

Turning back to his cousin, he put a hoof on her shoulder.

"Don't lose yours."

Just before he took his hoof away, his eyes briefly flashed with a new thought, and a small grin developed on his face.

“Hold on a second. I've got an idea.”

With that, he bolted off towards the adults, leaving the others confused. After a minute, he returned with the wooden box from Kind Face's saddlebags.

“I just needed to borrow something from Masquerade.” He looked over to Kind Face. “Would you mind helping with this? You know how it works better than me.”

He then looked over at Rose Quartz. “Would you mind closing your eyes for a bit?”

Rose looked at him, confused, but hesitantly did so. Shortly afterwards, she felt a pair of hooves doing something to her back and attaching some sort of straps around her barrel. Another pair of hooves quickly joined in, along with Kind Face's voice.

“You're putting that part on backwards. Here it goes like… there, like that…”

After a moment, they finally stopped.

“Okay,” Obsidian said, “go ahead and open them.”

She opened her eyes and saw… nothing. There was absolutely nothing different except that her cousins and siblings were now grinning a lot wider and the wooden box was open.

“You're the one who wants to be an alicorn, so this was the closest I could get.”

Rose paused, then took off to the water fountain, jumped up on the edge, and looked at her reflection inside. Rising up from her back was a pair of wings.

“WOO-HOO!!!!”

She took off to show her parents as the others laughed.

"So, what's next?" Gold snorted between laughs, "a big hunt to see if we can make everypony else into alicorns?"

Everypony was still laughing when she got back, still grinning like a loon.

“So, how'd Uncle Zirc and Aunt Pyrite take your ascension?”

“I don't know. They haven't said anything yet. They just stared at me like this.”

She promptly displayed the most dumbfounded expression any of them had ever seen. All of them laughed again.

“Okay,” Obsidian was still chuckling at the filly’s imitation of her parents, “since you're now the alicorn of the group, that makes you our princess. Therefore, what is your first command?”

He bowed before her, with the others following suit.

Rose Quartz's dumbfounded expression suddenly went from acting to genuine, only to be replaced moments later by a grin.

“Quickly! The ponies of Thulcandra need rescuing from the White Witch of the West!”

“In that case, lead the way, Princess Rose!”

“Who's Princess Rose? I'm Princess Crystal Shield!”

“Ooh! We're using made-up names?” Feldspar dug around in Kind Face's box, returning with the same horn she'd worn on the train. “Then I'm Ice Heart of the Frozen North!”

As Crystal Shield beamed at having another princess beside her, Kind Face gestured towards the box while facing the other two earth ponies.

“Come on, if you want 'em. I think I've got enough props in here for all of us.”

In a short moment, Rose's two siblings joined her and Feldspar, ready to take on the White Witch of the West.

Feldspar looked at Obsidian, smirking as she watched him search the ground for a long stick to use as his sword.

“What?”

She just kept smirking.

“Fine.” He turned to the rest of the group and bowed before them. “I, Sir Stone Hoof, Defender of the Downtrodden, pledge my allegiance to this band of heroes.”

He looked to his sister. “There. Happy?”

As Feldspar grinned, Obsidian looked over to Kind Face.

“Not in character this time?”

“Nah. I've been somepony else all day. I think I'll be myself for a while.”

As his shift had finally ended for the day, Timely Manner hung up his steward's uniform at the station and headed back to his home. As usual, he walked through the park on the way back, the fresh air bringing a welcome relief from being cooped up in a train all day.

He always enjoyed it. The smell of the flowers, the sound of the water fountains, the sight of colts and fillies playing some game off to the side- all these were the perfect distraction from his day. As he walked along, enjoying the scenery, some of the foals ran past him across his path, led by a pink filly.

"The White Witch is hiding at Barad Dur! Let's go!"

The remaining foals joined in a battle cry and charged in behind her.

"FOR KING AND COUNTRY!"

Meanwhile, Timely Manner watched all of them, mouth agape.

"Um... are you okay, mister?"

He didn't look at the red earth filly, nor did he say anything.

He settled instead on collapsing into a faint.

After they had all finished defeating the White Witch of the West and taken off their horns and wings, Masquerade approached with Rising Star and a few unfamiliar ponies.

“So you're Kind Face?”

“Uhhh… yeah.”

As Kind Face shuffled her hooves, Masquerade stepped forward. “What's this about?”

“I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Casting Call, and this is my wife, Curtain Call. We heard rumors of a foal skilled in costume performance and a retired street actor who taught her everything she knows.”

“That would be me and Aunt Masquerade, but what’s going on?”

“We manage the community art center just downtown. Granted, it's not often that we go out recruiting for auditions, but we were curious about the foals that supposedly went around Canterlot acting as several different characters.”

Feldspar flapped up to them.

“Wait, you two really are real?”

“Yes. Why wouldn't we be?”

Kind Face glanced away. “It's kinda a long story.”

“Hmm… well I'm not sure what kind of story would lead to that, but…” Casting Call finally got a good look at Kind Face's friends. He and Curtain Call both stared.

“... You're…”

Not even needing to notice who they were staring at, Obsidian looked up at them and rolled his eyes.

“Oh just get it over with.”

“Son of Celestia, the kid's really an alicorn…”

“And there we go.” He snorted and turned to his sister. “Yeesh, you think anypony’s ever gonna get that right?”

Epilogue

Moonlight shined through the windows of the train back to Ponyville, and the wheels rumbled steadily along the track as the scenery outside blurred by.

“So, what was it like being a Stone?”

Kind Face turned away from the train window to her aunt.

“I dunno. It was fun, when I wasn't worried about getting caught at least, and I'm glad they let me call myself one of them, but I still wish I knew about Mom and Dad.”

Masquerade’s ears dropped a little, but she kept a small smile.

“Maybe one day we'll find out.”

After a moment is silence, Kind Face looked up again.

“Aunt Masquerade?”

She looked over to where Feldspar was sleeping on her mom's back and Obsidian was yawning beside his dad.

“Do families fight a lot?”

She put a hoof on Kind Face's shoulder and smiled again.

“No dear, not all the time. Everypony fights over something at some point, including family members; it's just part of our nature. I'm embarrassed to admit that I've gotten into fights with your mom more times than I can remember.

“A good sign of somepony that's better than their nature is when they forgive, and good families always forgive each other.”

“Did Mom forgive you?”

“Every time, dear. Every time.”

“Why don't you try using pegasus magic to make stuff fly?”

Obsidian sat in his room that night wondering about Rose Quartz's question. It seemed silly at the time, like the kind of thing a filly her age would say, but he couldn't help wondering about it. It was like an itch at this point.

He already knew his magic was a bit mixed up. Channeling pegasus magic through one's horn was not a normal ability, after all. Then again, how many pegasi even had horns in the first place? On that note, how many unicorns had wings?

Is it possible?

He didn't know exactly what he was trying to do, but he mentally reached out towards his pillow, only instead of reaching through his horn, he stretched out one of his wings.

Nothing happened. He tried again, this time stretching out the other wing. Still no luck.

Finally, he tried stretching both wings. As he did, one of them brushed against one of the records on his bookshelf. The record immediately stuck to his feathers and launched towards the opposite wall like a frisbee. A quick burst of magic from his horn just barely prevented one of his favorite Broken Microphone albums from shattering against the closed window. He carefully put it back, then looked at his wingtips.

They didn't look any different from before. Maybe he just flicked it out of the stand by accident?

He reached out to the disk, touching it gently with his wing again. As he lifted the wing, the disk lifted with it, seemingly weightless.

He carefully set it back, then jumped up to his bed and touched a pillow. It lifted with his wing too.

As he dropped the pillow, he examined his wings again to find a faint blue glow at the tips of his feathers, the exact same shade as what would normally be around his horn.

His eyes widened, and he once again tried lifting the pillow with his wing.

“...”

He grinned.

“YEAH!!!”

"Alright, get out, and please take it easy on the cider this time. I'm tired of keeping you here."

"Well, a-thank you Mr. Donut. Thank you kindly."

The officer rolled his eyes as the stallion stumbled out of the holding cell and back into Ponyville.

Moon Shine slowly made his way to the outskirts of the town, approaching the Everfree forest as if he had lost his direction again. He may have stumbled on a loose cobblestone once or twice, but he eventually made it to his destination.

As soon as he was a short distance into the forest, he straightened up, as sober as if he had never touched the cider in his life. He looked behind him, then around at his surroundings. He then pulled a pen, a piece of paper, and a few bottles of chorus fruit potion from his bags.

Location still secure. Cover nearly blown by local and two out-of-towners, but still intact. No apparent hostile intent.

Changing identity to ID#8 to avoid suspicion.

Requesting reassignment to Canterlot.

Agent 219

quaerite iustitiam, diligite misericordiam

He then checked the labels on the potion bottles, pulled the cork on the one addressed to the correct recipient, and spilled a drop onto his letter. The letter burst into flames, and he watched as the smoke flew towards its target.

After a few seconds of watching the sky where the message had disappeared, he dug a hole in the ground and pulled out a box. From that box, he pulled a wallet, and into it he dropped the one he carried. He then buried the box back in the same place as before.

He looked at the picture and name on the ID card in the wallet for several minutes, memorizing every detail he could.

In a burst of green fire, Moon Shine disappeared, never to be seen again.

“I'm grounded, aren't I?”

“Of course.”

“For how long?”

“Considering the last two times have been for running away from home, I'm inclined to think it should be until you're a full grown mare so I at least won't have to worry when you do it again.”

“Aunt Masquerade…”

“Kind, I'm worried about you. I understand the last time was just trying to help out a friend, but this time wasn't. You didn't just run away either this time; you actually lied just to ensure that you wouldn't be missed.

“Kind Face, what's gotten into you?”

“I… I don't know, Aunt Masquerade. It's like I had to go out in costume. Maybe I just missed the old days of street acting, but it's like I had to be a different character for a while.”

Masquerade sighed. “Sometimes I think you've got too much of your mother in you.”

Kind Face turned to walk up the stairs, but her aunt stopped her.

“Kind Face, before you go, there's something I've been meaning to give you. Just stay here for a moment, okay?”

Masquerade stood up and walked away towards her room, leaving Kind face slightly confused. After a few moments and more than a few sounds of objects being shuffled, she returned.

“I was supposed to give this to you on your next birthday, but all things considered, I think it's close enough. Would you mind closing your eyes?”

Hesitantly, she did as requested. She heard as her aunt stepped closer, then felt something cold and delicate drape across her neck. It pulled down with a small weight, and it warmed rather quickly against her skin. The footsteps receded, and her aunt spoke gently.

“Go ahead. Open them.”

She opened her eyes and turned to the framed picture on the wall, looking at her reflection in the glass. Around her neck was a thread of gold, and at the end was a small, heart-shaped locket with a tiny green jewel in the center. She looked down, picking it up in her hoof, and carefully opened it.

Inside on the left was a photo of two gently smiling earth ponies. On the right was a note, written in delicate cursive.

To our daughter, Kind Face.
You are a gift to two who could never deserve it, and the warmth you brought into our lives is beyond measure. No matter what comes, and no matter what you do, never forget who you are: our child, who we love more than we could ever hope to express.
We will always be with you.
With love,
“Eli” Shell and Silk Spinner.

True Magic

As the three siblings sat beside each other, another figure softly crept up behind.

“Rose?”

They all turned around to see Obsidian hesitantly approach with sagging ears and wings.

“Rose…” he sighed. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I said earlier. For what I did and… I'm sorry.”

“So, you weren't mad at me when I kept calling you an alicorn?”

“I was… I just shouldn't have been.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. That was wrong. I… I was mad at somepony else and took it out on you and… and I shouldn't have done that. Will… will you forgive me?”

Her answer was given in the form of a surprise hug, much to the amusement of the other two cousins sitting there.

“So, can I still call you an alicorn?”

His ears dropped a little again.

Really?

He sighed a little. He wasn't going to try to correct her, not this time anyway. He had to remember what things were like at that age.

He thought back to when he was that age. Definitely a long time a go, it was, back when things were simpler, back when he thought the same way she did.

He chuckled a little as a small grin finally returned to his face.

“Just you.”

Her grin brightened.

The Hooves Club was back together again.