From The Case Files Of Division Seven (Ersatz Element-Bearers Unit)

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: Narcotics, Main 6, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Original Character, Comedy, Anthology
Length: 14752

So you're the mysterious, previously-unsuspected seventh Element of Harmony? What a coincidence! So is everypony else in this holding cell! And for every fake, there's a story...

There are six pony virtues. Six. And fortunately for the pickup artists, confidence stallions, and desperate of the world, there's also a lot of sapients who can't count that high. Princess Luna's Return produced a few side effects, and one of the more consistently annoying is a never-ending parade of those who claim to be the hitherto-unknown virtue of This Is Worth Some Free Drinks. Others take it further.

Division Seven is an international, multispecies effort, created in an attempt to find and discipline those charlatans. And ideally, to do so before something... happens.

The planet has strange ways of reacting to the presence of true Bearers.

Imagine how it might deal with some of the fakes...

(Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.)

Cover art created by RamblingWriter.

Published 2023-12-31 04:40:02 UTC
Last updated 2024-07-10 23:42:02 UTC

Case 0: In which the latest Seventh Of Six potentially discovers the virtue of Consequences

Case 0: In which the latest Seventh Of Six potentially discovers the virtue of Consequences

When compared to the other nations, Eeyorus had a few claims to fame. Most of those were based in its majority population, because the native home of the donkeys ran thriving export businesses in Cynicism, Worst-Case Scenarios, and Teaching Others To Prepare For The Inevitable: the annoying part was that they were usually right. But if someone from outside the borders were to consider what the land itself had to offer...

'Weather' probably wasn't on the list. Eeyorus tended towards heavily-overcast dreary skies. Spring brought with it a constant threat of drizzle, winter loved to unleash snow without warning or ceasefire, and summer was mostly seen as the moons where hail really wanted to get a word in. Quite a bit of their nation had been established on a relatively narrow peninsula, and the frequent precipitation meant hoof-based travel to the capital spent a lot of time trotting across the decks of a ship. There was one low-lying access portion for the Tail Of Eeyorus, and it was forever being flooded out. And outside of a life-threatening emergency, the donkeys steadfastly refused to ask their few native pegasi to modify any of it, nor would they request the International Stormbreaker Team to be dispatched from the pony nation for anything less than potential catastrophe. Being a donkey was about survival, and the default species response to anything which didn't promise to immediately kill them was to lower their head a little more and continue plodding forward. Because most of the time, that would be the way through everything. (Truly major emergencies might require diverting slightly to the left.) Their philosophy stated that existence was suffering and as a corollary, recognized life was what happened when you came out the other side.

'Stunning architecture' was... debatable. Donkeys understood that just about every building was going to fall eventually, and had turned their collective design philosophy towards multi-century stall tactics. The results were exceptionally solid, possessed most of the charm for the average prison while subtracting half the comfort, could generally be described as 'colorful' in that grey was a color and there were numerous shades of it, plus they had been known to stun a few visitors. Anyone who accidentally collided with an Eeyorian building was, at a minimum, going to be stunned. The designer generally turned up one day later to make repairs and mutter about how having those tiny bits of fur embedded on impact was going to take at least six moons off the total lifespan. For the building, not whoever had recently gone into it. Whatever was happening to the less sturdy side of the meeting wasn't the designer's problem.

'Beautiful vistas' did apply, here and there. Every so often, the weather would clear just enough for Sun and Moon to shine down upon the sprawling greenery of the land, possibly as a means of reminding themselves that it was still present. The average donkey might respond to such a vision by glancing up slightly, feeling grateful for that cosmic presence, and immediately refining their ongoing plan regarding actions to take on the day when the orbs didn't show up. Just. In. Case.

Besides, there had already been that one incident. A wise donkey didn't rely on the numbers stopping there.

But when it came to specific things to see, appreciate, and experience in the capital city of Millacre... there were always the streets. And it wasn't just the many clubs which lined the major thoroughfares. A donkey knew how to have a good time, because how could you appreciate everything suffering taught you if you couldn't isolate the moments which weren't it? And they loved comedy. 'A pony flew into a building. Ow.' Classic.

The deep red pegasus, whose wings had been bound to her sides, with fore and hind legs roped in ways which forced her to hop along or fall as she was dragged through the rainy night, was currently getting some time to think about the actual street.

"This isn't fair!" screamed the mare.

The words had something of a liquid quality. Part of that was because they were moving through what was now a fairly steady rainfall: something which had droplets streaming down immobilized feathers. The rest came because every syllable had needed to force its way past what was, for a pegasus, a rather impressive amount of alcohol.

There were a few reasons for travelers to visit the donkey nation. Some of the vistas were beautiful, on the rare days when it became possible to clearly see them. Those who didn't like their current living conditions often found their mood improved after a few days of paying hotel prices for worse. And donkeys were very, very good at brewing alcohol. A substance which both served as a depressant and made everything worse after it wore off? Bring it.

The mare had already been through several drinks, and that was just on this night. She'd even found a way to make others pay for just about all of them. And then the large jack had entered the bar, roped her, bound...

He still had the rope's far end in his mouth. Plodding with his head down, moving forward because that was the way out of everything. Pulling her along without an earth pony's strength: just a donkey's endless endurance and insistence on moving forward, forcing her to hop or fall. And on some level, she understood why the rope was there. A metal cone over a unicorn's horn, a rope to bind wings. It was the same principle. For a pegasus, if you took away movement, you stopped the magic. So that was exactly what law enforcement had done.

She knew she was being arrested.
She didn't understand why.
The most she'd done was lie. Just a little one, the same lie she'd been telling for most of her time in the capital, and it wasn't as if anyone had gotten hurt! That couldn't be the reason why the law had come after her! Who could possibly get that upset about free drinks?

"HELP ME!" she shouted to the shaggy, dripping jacks and jennies who were moving along one of the capital's main thoroughfares. Placid eyes glanced at her, noted her suffering, collectively decided that meant life was normal, and then went on with their evening.

The rain came down faster.

I have to get out of this...

It had to be a mistake. There was no chance for her perfect little lie to be responsible for her situation. But...

Her drunken mind could find no way in which the falsehood had gotten her into this. But maybe it could get her out.

"DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" she demanded of the grey, moistened world. "I'M --"

Her hooves began to skid.

Donkeys didn't favor cobblestone. The national weather trends had led them to emphasize drainage above all else, creating mildly-humpbacked road surfaces which could stand up to the slow erosion from water (for a few centuries, anyway) while diverting the flow towards drains. The results were oddly smooth, had a strange way of retaining heat and, when the rain got heavy enough, couldn't quite send all of it into the sewers in time.

The mare had only been in Eeyorus for a few days: long enough for the lie to have taken her through multiple bars. She hadn't spent a lot of time on the streets themselves and since her wings had been free at the time, she'd preferred 'over'.

"-- oh no, oh no -- I'm sliding, I'm -- why am I sliding? How can I -- stop pulling me! I didn't do anything!"

Accordingly, it was her first introduction to hydroplaning.

"You can't arrest me when I didn't --"

But he just kept plodding onwards through the rainfall. He was a donkey, he had a destination, and mere assertions of reality weren't going to stop him from reaching it. And she could see lights up ahead, something stronger than the underpowered streetlamps (and that was part of what made it so easy to go into buildings), with a distant one shining on a dripping cloth banner of sky-blue with multiple white stars --

-- oh no.

He wasn't taking her to the police station.

The mare began to thrash, tested her wings against the strength of rope and knots, lost again and again. And the jack just kept pulling her along, because Millacre was the capital and if there was a capital city in a nation which was less than fully hostile to the outside world, that was going to be where you found the local version of Embassy Row.

She shouted. She screamed. Her foulest curses were reserved for the moment when they passed Mazein's flag, because she was fully willing to accept a minotaur charging to the rescue. But none of it did any good. The donkey pulled her past a partial map of the world writ large in windows and cornices, got up to the gate, a stern (and rather wet) earth pony opened it for him, and then he dragged her onto what passed for home soil. Heading directly for a large, hollow-seeming structure off to the side of the main building, as the earth pony followed, got ahead, opened the door --

-- it was hollow. Four walls, a ceiling, the floor had been claimed from the option list and when you were dealing with the teleport depart/receive buildings known as gatehouses, having a frustrated-looking black unicorn (whose horn was already lit, with frustrated spikes of cerise moving across its length) was just about mandatory.

"NO!" she tried one last time, as the donkey finally let go of the rope and the earth pony's hard head shoved inside. "YOU CAN'T! I'M --"

The lit horn touched her forehead.

There was a flash.

Donkey and earth pony were gone. The black unicorn stepped aside. And before she could do anything, the door to a different gatehouse opened, a green pony rushed inside, the horn touched her and --

-- she lost count after a while. The disorientation built up as, stage by stage, she was moved across borders until the final jump placed her within a cube which had been carved out of solid stone. And before she could regain any focus, force a thought to focus through a sea of drink, the door to that cube opened.

Which was when she got her minotaur. Just a little too late.

The ageláda gruffly reached out. Picked the pegasus up, draped her across the right sweater-clad shouder until the wet head was dripping down the back, then walked out of the stone room.

They went down busy hallways which looked like nothing so much as an office building which had gone multispecies. There were plenty of ponies, but zebras were sorting paperwork (and the writing told the pegasus she was back in Equestria), one yak pushed by and that one needed a lot of room, everyone was just ignoring everything the pegasus screamed as the female minotaur did nothing more than carry her along. All the way to the heavy door. The one which led into an occupied room with only three walls, because heavy iron bars substituted nicely for the fourth.

The last "NO!" was ignored.

The minotaur got the door open with her free hand. Carefully put the pegasus inside the room, turned the deep red body to face forward, and then closed the door in the mare's face.

The pegasus stared at the place where a keyhole wasn't, at least for her side. Thought about the indignity of the world, all of the suffering inflicted upon somepony who hadn't done anything wrong. Several consumed mugs briefly considered that the donkey worldview might have a point. And then she marshaled herself, fought past a blood alcohol level which could be accurately measured as Mistake, then decided once again that the lie had in no way gotten her into this and furthermore, might just be what she needed to get her out.

The pegasus took a breath.

"YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! I'M THE SEV --"

"-- seventh Element of Harmony?" asked a vaguely bemused female voice from somewhere behind her.

"What a coincidence, dear!" declared an older-sounding mare. "So are we!"

The pegasus froze.

Slowly, the deep red body turned. With the ropes in place, it was an action which required a lot of hopping.

There were three other mares in the cell. One was a steel-blue pegasus, and she probably hadn't said anything because she had been somewhat more professionally-bound: the jaw was available, but it would be understandable if it didn't want to do much. The other two were a dark brown unicorn with a horn restraint, and a bright green, fairly overweight earth pony wearing an elaborate golden necklace. Or at least, some of it looked elaborate. The majority of the neck band was hidden by bulging folds of pained-looking flesh.

"Will you look at that?" the bemused unicorn smiled. "Four Elements in the same room! And yet, each of us is still the seventh."

"I don't think that's right," the earth pony decided. "One of you should be the eighth." Rather more quickly, "If there were eight. There aren't. There's seven. And I'm the real seventh."

"Oh, really," the unicorn considered. (The immobile pegasus managed to roll her eyes.) "And what's your proof of that?"

The earth pony raised her left foreleg, nearly slumped to that side before managing to touch the necklace.

"I've got this," she said. "You can't be a proper Element without a necklace. So I had this one made. I think it matches very nicely, don't you?"

Nopony said anything.

"Except it's a little tight around the neck," she added. "Which is okay, because some of the other Bearers are svelte and naturally we should all match!"

She swayed a little. Lowered the foreleg.

"I do get dizzy sometimes," the earth pony admitted. "But that obviously comes from thinking about the dizzying scope of my duties to Equestria." Brightly, "But I'm a generous spirit, just like one of my dearest friends! And so I generously welcome the latest liar to our little abode. So how should we all pass the time? Since it may be a while before my true companions come to release me, and the rest of you are just waiting for the psychiatric evaluation."

The silence maintained. The earth pony frowned.

"It should be something we can all do," she considered as dark eyes regarded the two bound pegasi with open sympathy. "Eyebrow-raising contest?"

"...oh, shut up, Cosma..." grumbled the unicorn mare.

Eventually, they played a few rounds to keep her happy. The steel-blue pegasus won every time.

The newest arrival was kept in the cell until the alcohol had passed out of her system. Then she was granted two hours for the worst of the hangover to go away, because donkeys didn't believe it was a good night of drinking unless you got the full morning-after experience with it.

A cornflower pegasus trotted up to the cell door. Food was offered, and most of it stayed down.

"You," she told the deep red mare. "You're lucky."

"...I am," a considerably more sober pony failed to evaluate.

"The boss is going to speak with you personally. Because you're a first-timer. And maybe he can talk you out of visiting us again." Intelligent eyes took a long look at the rope bindings. "I'm going to free up your legs. Not the wings. I'd advise against galloping."

The mare managed a nod.

I didn't do anything...

The cell door was opened. Select ropes were removed. She was told to follow, and she did.

It was possible that Sun had been raised. She was led past what had to be offices, and there seemed to be somewhat more glow visible behind the window glass.

One room, where the door hadn't quite closed, had a kind-looking unicorn behind a paperwork-laden desk, and a shaken earth pony colt on the other side of it.

"...so I just decided," the youth forced out, "that if all the fillies in my class just thought I was... special... they'd look at me differently. They'd -- actually look..."

The unicorn gently nodded. "You know," the adult said, "Neighpon ponies have a word for that."

Hopefully, "Really?"

"Chūnibyō."

"What does it mean?"

Not without kindness, "'Moron'."

The pegasus mare was led past that. A colorful logo adorned one wall, and she dedicated herself to not working out what it meant. Her head hurt enough already.

Then she heard a tapping sound, coming through the open doorway up ahead on the left. Small, hard surfaces repeatedly hitting wood. Something which was counterpointed by a sort of -- clacking.

"That you, Accu?" It was a male voice.

The tapping didn't stop. The clacking existed as something between syllables --

"-- it's me, boss," the cornflower pegasus said. "With the import."

With a soft sigh (which had two embedded clacks), "Then let's honor her point of origin and make my day worse. Send her in."

The deep red pegasus was put through the door. It closed behind her, and talons drummed on the edge of the desk.

"Take a bench," the boss said. "There's water if you need it. A lot of it, given the state you were in when you arrived. Now. Your name is -- Carmina? Am I pronouncing that correctly? It's the first time I've come across it, so I wanted to be sure --"

"-- you're a griffon."

The tapping stopped.

An oversized bobcat body shifted somewhat on a non-standard bench. Talons were carefully raised in front of near-luminescent yellow owl eyes, and the twin feather ridges which rose from each side of the head vibrated with faint amusement.

"Huh," the boss considered. "Will you look at that? I am a griffon." With a faint shrug of feline shoulders, "I guess if I ever have any sudden urges to swoop down on ponies, that still won't explain it. But it does say something about why I can't get a hoof-smoothing cream to work for me. Anyway, thank you for telling me. I find that if ponies don't tell me every hour or so, I just lose track. So --"

"-- how can a griffon be in charge?"

She blinked. Her wings pushed against the rope, failed to break through, and thus prevented her feathers from slamming a protective shield in front of her blushing face.

"I travel," Carmina hastily said. "I like traveling. I'm not -- I mean, I'm just not used to -- this is Equestria, and I wouldn't expect --"

The yellow eyes didn't blink back. A griffon's body could display any combination of cat and hunting bird: the ones whose avian features came from great horned owls weren't going to blink much.

"Through getting hired," the griffon male calmly said. "Having birth citizenship helped there, at least in cutting down on the paperwork. And then I worked my way up the chain. I'm an Equestrian griffon, Carmina. We exist. I was born in Percheron, and that's most of what you need to know about me. The rest? My name is Septimus Venator. You can call me Sept, up until I tell you not to. I'm the head of Division Seven. And I thought, she's a first-time offender -- that we know of -- and maybe if she has a nice, long talk with someone reasonable --" the talons dipped below desk level, and the sleek body settled in "-- there just might be a chance of preventing her from reaching two and beyond --"

"I want a lawyer," felt like a somewhat more intelligent thing to say.

Peacefully, "You can't have one."

"I was just in a cell," Carmina frantically pushed. "I have rights! I want an attorney --"

"-- an attorney can represent you once charges are brought in," Septimus peacefully said. "There aren't any yet."

"But I was in a cell --"

"-- you were drunk and needed a safe place to sober up." Another shrug. "As for your legal status... right now, you're back in Equestria. After having been, let's say, 'aggressively deported'. That creates a certain obligation for your own government to find out the 'why'. Which gives me the right to interview you."

She tried to keep the fuming down to feather twitches. The rope helped.

"And we're still waiting on most of Eeyorus' paperwork," the griffon added. "Because they sent you back in such a hurry as to teleport you without it. So all I've really got is what the witnesses relayed to the embassy before Millacre's police went to fetch you. To keep it from getting any worse."

The pegasus carefully took stock.

"Deported," she said. "All of my luggage is still in --"

"-- it'll be sent back."

"I don't even know what this so-called 'Division Seven' is --"

"-- and you can't take a guess?" the griffon asked. "You've had a night with your cellmates. Didn't that give you a clue? Or -- seven?"

oh no

The griffon's forelegs came up, moved towards each other. Sharp claw tips steepled.

"Right now," he softly said, "you are what Division Seven calls an OC."

"A --"

"Offending Counterfeit." And his volume dropped a little more. "Go ahead, Carmina. Tell me why Eeyorus kicked you out. Why you're here."

She managed a shallow breath.

"It was just getting free drinks."

"I'd say," the griffon countered, "that the price might be on the high side."

"There's no crime in saying I'm a Bearer!"

The claws were now tapping against each other. "EQ 18:371:1, Carmina. Falsely claiming status as government personnel."

"I --" Which was when she realized that the hangover was clearing, and Logic was back. "-- I was in Eeyorus! Equestrian laws wouldn't apply!"

"Division Seven," its head told her, "is an international effort. It has to be, because some ponies decide their odds of selling the lie go up with increasing distance. And so every nation which participates has put similar laws on their own books. They apply to anyone who claims to be a Bearer and if there's any fight over jurisdiction, it gets resolved in international court. You said you like to travel? Have you ever been to the Beastriality? Because if you keep pretending --"

"-- there's an entire division of Equestrian law," she cut him off, "with international help -- dedicated to finding ponies who claim to be Bearers -- and arresting them?"

"No," the griffon calmly said.

"...no..." felt oddly like a lifeline.

"We've brought in sapients from just about every species when they falsely claimed to be Bearers," he shrugged, and the huge yellow eyes remained fixed on her features. "I did say 'anyone' back there."

"And there's an entire division," she softly said. "Just for that."

The griffon sighed.

"I know, right?" the beak clacked around and between the syllables. "You'd think there wouldn't have to be. That we wouldn't be getting at least a dozen offenders in every moon claiming that there's one more virtue than most ponies ever believed. Even if they can't agree on what it is. Unfortunately..."

The forelegs went down again, and he leaned forward as the fixed predatory stare continued to lance across the desk.

"-- the evidence proves you wrong. We had about two quiet weeks after Princess Luna came back, or at least two weeks where nopony thought to say anything in front of law enforcement. But once word of the Return fully spread... well, most of what everyone had picked out of the rumors was that there had been a group involved. Possibly six. And without knowing who those six were, pretending to be one of them felt -- chancy, I guess. Even when it came to the usual reasons for trying --"

Carmina wondered if the half-parted beak represented a smile. She really didn't want it to.

"-- it was so much easier for our first crop to set themselves up as seventh. Because if nopony knew exactly how it had happened, then maybe they had the count wrong too. And they all had their reasons for lying, Carmina. Free drinks, that was popular." The wings rustled. "Sex? In so many ways, it's almost always about sex -- oh, don't feel you have to blush for me: I'm Equestrian, but you are not my type. And there were those who tried for more. More and worse, Carmina." So much more softly, "Impersonation of government personnel. Fraud. Claiming power they didn't have, in order to get whatever they wanted. It went up from there. And it didn't take long before it was bad enough to require its own division. One which needed a little extra help from the rest of the world -- and because the lies had spread across the borders, we got it."

"I..." almost felt like all she had.

"They don't like having fake Bearers around, the other nations," he quietly told her. "Some of them have had a hard enough time dealing with the real ones. So when the ersatz drops by..."

"...free drinks," she just barely voiced. "I was... I was trying to save some money, and... they were talking about something which had happened here, they didn't have the whole story, and I thought --"

The tiny nod cut her off.

"As far as we know, you were just after free drinks last night." This time, the yellow eyes blinked, and the beak was briefly half-parted again. "And possibly sex. I'm told that a well-groomed donkey can have a lot of appeal -- hey, there's that blush again! And maybe you were planning to do more with it, but -- I can only work with the evidence I have. So let's say it was for free drinks, Carmina. And leave your sex life out of it. So we're going to talk. Talking helps me decide how to treat any possible charges. Whether to follow through, or seal them away. And maybe, after we're done, you'll never do this again."

I could get out of this...

The griffon nodded to the nearest guest bench. After a moment, she climbed up.

"A whole division," she said. "Just for this."

"It's necessary."

"Ponies lie about things all the time," Carmina reasonably pointed out.

"And I," the bemused griffon began, "was raised to treat honesty as a virtue. Did everypony else miss that part?"

"Especially when drinks and sex are involved," she pushed on. "And you're treating them all equally? Even when the lie isn't for anything more than that, it's a crime?"

"Lying to get sex," the griffon quietly said, "has its own problems. Most of which say a lot about the pony who told the tale. But we don't have a choice, Carmina. We have to bring in everyone we find. Because there's consequences if we don't."

"You won't make your monthly hunt quota?" suggested that some of the alcohol was still in play, and did so a mere two seconds before "I'm sorry! I have a headache, I get sarcastic when --"

"-- consequences for the Sevenths," he replied. "Bad ones."

"Worse than jail time?" still felt sardonic.

"Depends on your perspective," the griffon told her. "But if you need a little more perspective..."

The talons came up. Tapped out the beat.

"Want a story?" he offered. "Maybe a few stories, because that's what we do here. Gather Sevenths and stories. Maybe you'll learn something from the latter. I would have hoped on a few overnight cell tales from our most frequent visitor, but... until we bring in a professional metalworker to cut this latest necklace off, Cosma's mostly going to be good for Bearer trivia."

I could get out of this.

"Please." As many stories as it took, to let her fly free.

Claws steepled again. The beak half-parted.

"So let's see," the griffon considered. "A basic one, to start. About why claiming to be a Seventh is a bad idea, even without the potential jail time. Because honestly, Carmina -- you do remember about Honesty, don't you? Honestly, so much of the time, we just want to save them from themselves. Or the consequences. Because our Sevenths -- they don't always get there first..."

Case 1: In which a Seventh arrives just in time for the aftersmash

Case 1: In which a Seventh arrives just in time for the aftersmash

There was a certain trick to finding Drayton on a map. You had to move up a bit, staying roughly to the north of Canterlot. After a while, you ventured slightly to the east, tracing along the outlines of river and rails. And then you looked for a tiny speck of fly dirt, tried to wipe it off a few times and when it wouldn't budge, irritably wondered what idiot of an apprentice cartographer had accidentally placed the name for a town in the middle of bucking nowhere.

At some point, generally after the bookstore refused to make an exchange for the third time, most ponies were forced to acknowledge that they'd found Drayton. Actually going there took either a special level of commitment, a pressing emergency, or Government Business. The locals typically frowned on all three. This was occasionally hard to distinguish from the rest of the frowning.

Drayton was the smallest settled zone. There was just enough of a population to have a Town Hall. An educational system was theoretically present: however, due to the quality of the Day and Night Court representatives which Drayton regularly dispatched to Canterlot, there were some questions as to whether it was being used. The other option was that anypony of intelligence in the area had decided the smart choice was in staying out of politics.

It was a region of rough land and rougher ponies. The locals didn't trust easily. Anypony whose family had been in the area for three generations or less was a Newcomer: after that, it took another six before you could safely stop Keeping An Eye On Them.

The settled zone recognized that it was part of Equestria, because the government money had to come from somewhere. However, there was an ongoing question as to whether it would be possible to declare independence and continue to get more out of the system than they'd ever paid in. Regretfully, the answer seemed to be 'no'. This was put down to big city ponies not having any understanding of rural folk and, after the drinking had gone on for a while, was occasionally touted as a cause for revolution. Not that Drayton's drunks felt they could win -- they were severely outnumbered and, until recently, had been somewhat low on alicorns -- but some of them had dim schoolhouse memories about losing parties in wars being given rep-ar-a-tions for rebuilding. As several now had houses which required repairs, this was seen as a fine thing.

Drayton regularly produced artists, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and scientists. It also happened to do so as an export business, because those of creativity and drive quickly realized that the worst thing they could do with their lives was to stay in Drayton.

It was a town filled with those who'd taken their biology lessons to mean that thoughts formed within the folds on their brains, and so tried to drink things which would smooth the lines. They didn't want any genius ideas to get stuck.

The small stallion sitting among the rougher specimens at the town's fourth bar hadn't meant to be in Drayton. His presence was due to Pressing Emergency: in this case, that meant the rails which passed through the settled zone had taken some recent -- impacts... and while the last train out had done well enough, the conductor for his had wanted to make sure it was safe to leave. Multiple passenger protests hadn't convinced the mare that it was safer to risk potentially-faulty rails than Drayton, and she'd just told them all that if they were so worried, they should stay on the train.

The stallion hadn't. He'd never been to Drayton, had never anticipated experiencing it as anything more than a brief blur of buildings outside of speeding windows. The chance to look around -- that had felt like it was once in a lifetime. And he'd been surprised to see that it was so... damaged.

Most of the streets had been replaced with divots. The majority of divots had been filled in with mud.

Numerous businesses sported huge dents in their sides, with the impact zones looking almost exactly as if a giant hoof had kicked into the walls.

Several apex portions of various structures had gnaw marks. These exactly matched the ones typically left by an infant pony's mouth, if that foal had been roughly three stories high.

The bars were more or less intact, and the small stallion had been surprised to see that there were four of them in a settled zone so small. He was wrong. There were six. A community so confined had to get its extra layers of internal rivalry from somewhere.

He went inside. And he found himself among patrons who were much larger than he, suspicious of outsiders, and who didn't seem as if they'd be willing to accept 'the train broke down' any more than they accepted the presence of the train itself. Collectively, Drayton didn't know how it felt about the train. Not only had it been present for a mere few years, but so many of their newly-adult residents kept boarding the thing and not coming back.

The patrons were giving him Looks.

Then one of them asked what he was doing there. Who he was. And the small stallion tried to think of somepony he could be. A pony whom large, distrustful locals would never, ever hurt.

He thought it was a really good lie.

"Bearer," said the roughest of the patrons. He was a unicorn. At least, the usual presumption would have been 'unicorn'. There was also the possibility of a cone-shaped buildup of scabs and scar tissue on the forehead, because that would have gone a long way towards explaining the overall look.

"Yes!" the small stallion chirped. "That's me! Wander Trot! The Seventh Element of Harmony!" Thinking rather quickly, "Now, for the connected virtue -- well, so much came back when Princess Luna did, and so nopony realized how much had been lost in her absence. Until I got my role, nopony ever expected that modesty was a virtue! Well, not one of the the virtues. I mean, obviously it's always been --"

"-- we had Bearers," declared a grimy earth pony. "A few days ago."

Wander blinked. As outwardly-visible expressions of hard-surging panic went, he felt blinking was nicely understated.

"Because of the monster attacks," added the pegasus bartender.

Monsters? It explained some of the damage to the town, but... there was a galloping joke about Drayton, one which was based in a touch of truth. The settled zone was -- 'famed' -- for many things, and one of them was never having had any real problems with monsters. The theory was that there wasn't a monster alive who could be bothered with finding it.

"And we didn't see you here," the unicorn announced. "Would have stood out, wouldn't it? One stallion and six mares."

Wander thought fast.

"The palace doesn't always dispatch us as a full unit," he quickly said. "Especially when an individual virtue wouldn't be much good for a given crisis!" Hastily, "Not that I'm saying your problems didn't warrant intervention! Not when the others were told to come! But I was already busy in Baltimare." Which he could say with the full confidence of a stallion who knew that nopony in the bar had recently been to Baltimare. Based on the chalkboard price list for drinks, there were some doubts about the bartender's ability to spell it. "And it all got solved without Modesty having to step in, right?"

As silences went, it was a very loud one. It was the sort of silence which let Wander hear the little things. Like hooves grinding against the floor.

"And the others had to move on," he added. "Obviously. In fact, I'm on my way to join them for the next mission which-I-can't-talk-about-because-it's-classified. They're expecting me --"

"-- and you're stopping here," the bartender considered, "because the rails need to be checked."

"Well, yes." The most important thing was to keep the core of the story consistent. "But also because... well, I've hardly had a chance to speak with my friends yet! And the palace..." He could feel the sweat rising in his coat. "...they said... as long as I was passing through... you know, the palace really cares about citizens, in every settled zone, and they... wanted me to ask... what you all... thought?"

An entire bar tried to assemble a collective brain cell.

"Thought," the nearest earth pony contemplated.

"It's like a post-action report!" Wander desperately gushed. "Or a service review! Just tell me how you think my friends did!"

"Did," said the bartender and, in terms of accent, vocally misspelled it.

"Are you pleased with their service?" Wander tried. "Would you be happy to be saved again? I'll pass it all along!"

The part-time residents of a fume-soaked room took a moment.

"Never had monsters up here," the unicorn said. "Never that anypony could remember."

"And they came out of nowhere, didn't they?" the earth pony relayed. "These huge things..."

"Huge," the bartender grimly said, "but not solid."

"Not..." Wander valiantly attempted.

"Solid when they wanted to be," the unicorn clarified. "Solid enough to kick our homes. To bite. But if we tried to kick back, get spells and lightning and charge-downs going -- went through, all of it. Like we were fighting fog. Can't fight fog. We tried for weeks."

"Then the mayor sent for your friends," the bartender added.

"Weeks?" Wander tried to verify. "Why did you let it go for weeks --"

"-- mayor ain't getting reelected any time ever," the earth pony decided. "We would have figured out something if she'd just given us some more time."

"But the Bearers solved it, didn't they?" Wander checked. "They always --"

"-- they came in," the bartender bitterly announced. "Said they were going to deal with everything for us. For us. Like we hadn't done nothing the whole time."

"And the little purple one, the alicorn..." fumed the earth pony, "she decided she was in charge. Of us. Barely been here five minutes, wasn't she? Not even! Five minutes and she could just shove us around!"

"She didn't shove," the unicorn noted.

"Picking up all the ponies who wanted them to leave and dropping them on the other side of town counts!"

"She could have at least done two bubbles," somepony called out from the back. "For proper segregation! What kind of city pony does that, lifting stallions and mares together? It's just about a sin!"

Wander's eyes began to take a slow count of all available exits.

"Um," he said. It felt like a good way to buy time.

"We told them they could try," the bartender stated.

"Once we figured out that she was just going to keep moving ponies out of the way," another chimed in.

"Sinfully!" added a now-familiar voice.

"But they had to bring us the monsters when they were done," said the pegasus. "Show us how they beat mist."

"I kept birds," said a mare from somewhere behind them. "I liked keeping birds. They had a nice song. I gave them a good feed when I remembered. I had birds, and then I had this yellow pegasus with the crazy big city tail hovering outside the cage wire. Making bird noises. And on the day they left, I looked outside my house and I didn't have birds any more. How do you think that happened?"

He was now trying to remember if there was a yellow pegasus among the Bearers and, if so, what her name was.

"Better than the other one," announced an unseen stallion.

"The -- other..." Wander began, because it was something which needed narrowing down.

"I found her in my barn," somepony said.

"Sleeping in the rafters?" asked another.

"How did you know?"

"'cause she was in my rafters."

"And mine!"

"Those cradletree branches over by the other bar? Twice! What's wrong with our cradletree, I ask you?"

"Sleeping on the job!"

"It was an improvement, though," the first pony said. "She didn't talk when she was sleeping..."

Every set of eyes in the bar now seemed to be focused on Wander.

"You're Modesty, you said?" the bartender checked.

He managed a nod.

"She wasn't."

"Maybe do a better job keeping her in check," a mare muttered. "And roped. A rope which doesn't reach my house. Or the pasture."

"What -- what did she --" Wander began to ask.

"Said I'd never had a Wonderbolt practicing over my pasture."

She's a --

"Mare ain't good with Equestrian," the landowner lightly rumbled. "Should have said 'in'. Because once she lost it during that last loop, it was 'in' all the way to the grain silo."

"Um..." still wasn't helping.

"Can't forget the unicorn, can we?" the earth pony said.

"Pretty mare, I thought," the bartender offered. "Pretty right up until she opened her mouth."

"I'll decide when I take a bath, thank you!" declared the unicorn. "A healthy coating of dust and mud keeps the flies off, everypony knows that! And going around with that cloth all the time..."

"She does that," Wander frantically said. "Cloth. Known for it. Famed, really --"

"-- she's famed for levitating a loop of cloth over and around her body on the vertical, then stepping on that instead of healthy mud?"

"...yes?"

"So she also 'borrows' fresh cloth from everypony around her when hers gets too dirty," a mare asked.

"Constantly?" emerged as a squeak.

"She said the palace would compensate me for the curtains. Ain't seen no voucher for curtains."

"It's only been a few days," the most sober patron pointed out.

"You saw the dragon teleport paper?"

"No... I did see him get a sneezing fit over by the old Museum Of Dust, though. Where it used to be."

Dragon?

"He can teleport paper," the curtain-deprived said. "I saw it. So he can teleport me a voucher."

"You have -- a Museum Of Dust --" Wander belatedly considered.

"Somepony collected stuff from Drayton's history," the bartender told him. "The stuff collects dust. More ponies look at the dust. It was right colorful."

"And the alicorn! Wanted to do research!" a random pegasus protested. "In our museum! To see if there was anything there about where the monsters might be coming from! So she took it all out, and she started to -- what did she say she was doing!"

"Catalog," an earth pony supplied.

"Moving it is what got the dust going, of course," muttered a mare. "Stupid alicorn."

"The stuff was fine."

"Lost the dust, though."

"Still waiting on a voucher for the building."

"What I want to know," an angry senior half-hissed, "is when I can get all of the 'cataloged' stuff out of my living room!"

Wander's tail was now trying to subtly back up towards the door. He didn't really mind that part. He just wanted his tail to take him with it.

"I didn't mind the earth pony so much," the youngest drinker decided.

"Which?"

"The pink one. I mean, at least she knew she was a Newcomer, right? So that's why she tried to kick out a party. Get the town together with the Bearers."

"But nopony went."

"Of course not," the youngest pony said. "Who wants to go to a party with a Newcomer?"

"Heard the orange one muttering to herself when I went by," the bartender darkly commented. "Said if we'd all kicked up a loud enough fuss, it might have at least lured a few monsters in."

"Oh, don't even start on her," a distant earth pony moaned. "I didn't even know I had that cousin. Since going to the reunions means leaving here. And when she saw how I was running my, and I can't repeat this enough, my farm..."

"How you doing there?"

"It's been a few days since she took her 'work schedule' with her," the farmer observed. "I figure five more and my legs might stop trying to move without me."

"But at least the party looked nice. From a distance."

There was a long silence.

"Did they have that many party supplies when they got here?"

"I saw some saddlebags..."

"Where did she get the streamers?"

"Maybe she stole them."

"From where?"

"The party supply store!"

"Drayton," somepony confidently observed, "ain't got a party supply store."

"Then she stole that too! Same way they stole our Museum!"

"You've never been to the Museum."

"Ain't the point! I could've gone if I'd wanted! I just didn't want to! Now it's not there and I can't go if I want! Don't you see the difference?"

A tail was not capable of carrying a pony to safety, even if it was a crazy city one. However, it turned out that for a pony who was sitting normally, buttocks could sort of creep backwards.

"But the monsters!" Wander tried. "Surely once they beat --"

The room went silent again.

"Told them to bring the monsters back when they were done," the original unicorn said. "I remember that. I was there."

"They brought back," added a pile of growing rage in the rough shape of a pony, "some pieces of metal."

"Brass, mostly. Silver wire. Thought I saw platinum."

"They said..." the bartender slowly observed, "...that there was this old enchantment mentioned in the Museum. Lost device, which got stored about a quarter-gallop out. Something got it activated. And it made things from -- our fears."

"Like mine of losing my temper," said a very large, extremely angry pony. "And kicking out. I'm not scared of that!"

"I've never thought my newborn was going to just chew up my whole life!"

"And who had any fears about the streets?"

"I didn't want to look at the same streets my whole life..."

"What's that?"

"...nothing."

And then nopony was talking. Just breathing. Wander could hear them all breathing, and it was so loud as to drown out his own lungs. Not that it mattered, because he was fairly certain that the bar patrons had just claimed all of the oxygen for themselves.

"Our fears," the bartender spat. "It's big city ponies who get fear. If they weren't afraid, they'd live here. I don't know what they did to make the monsters go away. I just know they lied about how the things showed up in the first place. Maybe there was a deal. One of your friends said she was Honesty and she lied right to our faces. No monsters? No reason for that, neither."

"No pasture," said that one mare. "Not in one piece."

"No birds!"

"No sleep! And that's your Honesty at work! Work which never ends!"

"Ain't never gonna reject the Museum of my own free will again!"

"NO PARTY SUPPLY STORE!"

"We don't have --"

"I WANTED ONE!"

"Sin!"

"I've been looking for flames to explode in front of my face for days," the last mare calmly said. "And give me money. Where's my flame money?"

Every pair of bleary, angry, and mug-lensed eyes in the bar focused on Wander.

"So," the bartender slowly said as hooves began to lift all over the room, with wings flaring to full span and horns starting to ignite, "if you really want to pass on our feelings about their service, Modesty... I think we can give you something to take b --"

By the next morning, the rails were certified as safe for travel, and the train moved on.

It didn't catch up to Wander for another two days.

Case 2: In which briefly lowering the OC number to Sixth produces no moral improvements whatsoever

Case 2: In which briefly lowering the OC number to Sixth produces no moral improvements whatsoever

"Is it always a Seventh?" Carmina asked. "I mean..."

The trailoff was a rather awkward one, and represented the natural hesitation of a mare whose question had been honest -- and who, in the middle of asking it, had abruptly realized that the query could be perceived as Seeking Advice On How To Get Away With It Next Time. There was a line which could be drawn between those two states, but she wasn't entirely sure that the griffon knew where it was.

The pegasus was still trying to get out of this. She didn't need to look as if she was actually guilty of something.

Septimus simply looked her over, with those great yellow owl eyes. A certain tilt of the head suggested a reeve who was only temporarily keeping the preening on the inside.

"There's two ways to treat that, numerically," the division's head casually noted. "Up or down. Can I save some time by assuming you were asking about both?"

The pegasus managed a nod, and feathers rustled on both sides of the desk.

"For higher..." Septimus began, "yes. We've had people claiming to be Eighth on up. But from everything we've seen, most of the temporary successes for claiming to be a previously-unknown virtue come at Seven. Ponies -- and everyone else -- can sort of accept that there might have been one thing they missed. A book they didn't read, or forgetting to take a single note during a crucial class. And they want to believe in secrets. That there's great truths out there, hidden, and they get to be the first ones let in on the real. It's part of the reason conspiracy theories catch on: the most ridiculous explanation isn't going to automatically be the real one -- but don't you look smart for figuring it out before anyone else?" The owl head slowly shook and because griffons took a lot from their component parts, nearly completed the circle before coming back the other way. "There's sapients out there who want to believe in a Seventh. But as the numbers go up... maintaining belief gets harder. Okay, so you missed one detail. Two is harder to swallow, but a few people have managed to sell it. For a little while. Ninth on up is just about impossible. Keep raising the number, and you reach the point where you'd basically need an entire extra set. And once you're there..."

The tail lashed. Claws briefly extended, retracted again.

Neither action could be missed. "...what?" Carmina nervously inquired.

"Recurring problem," the griffon sighed. "One we haven't been able to catch yet. It's a six-pack of offenders, operating as a team. They call themselves Element-Bearers Dark, of all things. Each one claims to represent a pony vice -- only their fake necklaces somehow allow them to invert sins into virtue. And from all indications, they might actually believe in what they're saying..."

Another, faster head shake, and then the yellow eyes were fixed on Carmina again.

"But for lower numbers?" The beak clacked with amusement. "That's not claiming to be an unknown Bearer: that's impersonating a real one. And the answer is still 'yes'."

"They get away with that?" The pegasus was now wondering if rapid blinking came across as suspicious, especially when she was doing it in front of a reeve who barely seemed to blink at all. "I mean, everypony knows Princess Twilight --"

The right forepaw languidly lifted from the bench, waved back and forth a little: wait. "And that's the problem."

Personnel moved by in the hallway. A clock ticked.

"...I don't get it," Carmina finally admitted.

"They know Princess Twilight," Septimus agreed. "Now. That wasn't always the case. For the first couple of years after the Return, the average pony on the street could probably tell you that there were six Bearers, they were all mares, and there were two from each race -- if that pony paid a lot of attention to what little news we got. Learning anything else could require a very long hunt and unless they were doing it on Ponyville ground, they were probably going to fail. That didn't really change until after the wedding and even now, when someone thinks of the Bearers -- they think of the Princess. For the most part, the ponies who could pick all six out of a lineup either live in the same town or have personal experience with the group. It's why we can still get situations like the Maretha's Vineyard Incident."

"The what?" felt like a natural question.

Technically, the edges of a beak couldn't twitch with amusement, but this one gave it a go. "The real Bearers were arrested after crashing a Nightmare Night costume party."

"...they..." eventually made its way out between blinks.

"They were claiming to be disguised as themselves," the griffon lazily waved away. "And the guests believed them. After the fight broke out, so did the police. Six charges of Impersonating Government Personnel." He shrugged. "It's a long story, and the palace stepped in before we got involved. But that goes back to what I was saying. They know the Princess -- and with the Vineyard, they knew it was a rather small pegasus wearing a really good fake horn. Even in Equestria, you still won't find a lot of citizens who can reliably describe any of the other five. Go past the borders, and the recognition percentage drops off a cliff. And there are ways where having a little information can be worse than having none. If somepony looks like they're close enough..."

When it came to the act of assembling an unruly mob, Trottingham had certain requirements. The majority of them came from unwritten rules. Trottingham's residents loved unwritten rules, because not having any recorded proof of what they were made it so much easier to change a few things on the sly and then claim your neighbor had broken them anyway.

Under non-mob circumstances, 'neighbor' would have been part of the problem. Trottingham wasn't so much a settled zone as a bunch of districts forced into reluctant coexistence, and the only reason none of them had declared formal war against any of the others was because declarations of war had to be written down too. Instead, you had Rules. It was perfectly permissible to trot through enemy territory if you were on your way to work or planning to do some shopping: after all, one of the best victories possible in battle was confiscating opponent resources for your own -- but you did not cross that particular street while wearing that hoofball team's colors and reasonably expect to live. Anypony who did was either committing a rather exotic form of suicide or really, really, really good at fighting. Bleeding Heart Yard had its district name for a reason, and it could take newcomers a very long time to ask exactly who had been doing the bleeding.

(Tourists, who were universally understood by Trottingham residents to be idiots, were exempt. Unless they were wearing Canterlot Express gear, because who didn't loathe the Express?)

But mobs had their own rules. A mob could cross any border, just as long as it had just cause and had gathered a herd so large that nopony was willing to tell it 'No'. And in this case, the mob's target had managed to offend residents of multiple districts. This hadn't created a temporary truce so much as a silent agreement that much of Trottingham was now at war with a single party, and they weren't going to write that down either because some exceptionally stupid police officer might decide it was evidence.

There were just certain formalities which had to be followed.

A mob which was chasing a target would need a few ponies who lived in the districts involved. This was mostly for basic navigation. When it came to (lack of) street design, Trottingham didn't quite match the half-paved confusion of the Tangle within Canterlot's core -- but turning the wrong way would quickly put a stranger into a maze of twisty little passages, all very nearly alike because in Trottingham, you had a little windowsill garden and you made sure everyone else on the street had one too. It was very easy to get lost in Trottingham -- but if it happened while wearing the wrong colors, the experience was also rather brief. Those being chased had an unerring ability to center in on their own districts. Quickly.

A certain percentage of the mob was required to be carrying flaming torches. As this particular throng had assembled at night, the light provided some help in keeping up the chase. It still gave the non-unicorns some issues in holding the things, because a pony with a lit torch in their mouth is usually one bad move away from either setting somepony else alight or having a flame go into their own ear.

There were also farming implements. Most of them had been borrowed. Two pegasi had already come perilously close to harvesting their own tails.

You had to mutter darkly under your breath whenever possible. Anypony doing so was required to repeat "Watermelon rhubarb." Nopony understood why, but it was Traditional and in Trottingham, that was the important part.

(The fact that muttering earth ponies tended to have torches fall out of their mouths was a problem: getting the same result from any pegasus above you could create a rather immediate issue -- although the typical Trottingham fog stood some small chance to extinguish it on the way down. Still, how could you argue with Tradition? Without that, there wouldn't be any unwritten rules at all, and then what would the settled zone be? Manehattan, that's what. And nopony wanted that.)

Order had to be maintained. An unruly mob was required to be angry and violent in established ways, or why even bother having a mob in the first place? There were even assigned roles. Pegasi scouted, got storm clouds together and prepared the attack for when the target was cornered. Earth ponies dealt with the little barriers, such as when the target jumped a low fence and the mob's solution for following was to make sure there wasn't a fence any more. Unicorns spent a lot of time picking up fallen torches.

But they were united. They had a Cause.

"I saw her tail curls!" somepony yelped. "She just whipped around that corner!"

The mob followed. It gave chase. It howled with rage as the pursuit accelerated and purple twists of hair did their best to stay ahead.

It would have been instructive to note the exact composition of the mob. Those within it were either at the point in their lives where they'd just started into what they had hoped would be their first stable adult relationship, or had children of that age who still lived at home. A number of them had a slightly-discolored band of fur around one foreleg, as if they'd recently torn off something which had been there for a while.

There was also a second faction, which wasn't a true part of the horde at all. This group trailed well behind, as if hoping not to be noticed. It consisted of multiple young adults, mares and stallions alike, most of whom were moving with their heads down. Vague expressions of shame flooded out the streets.

But they all kept up the pursuit, and more districts were crossed. Mincing Lane was taken as a suggestion. Mare In Moon Passage hinted at a destination for the remains. There was also The Place Where The Thing Happened (You Know, The One We Don't Talk About) and because that was such a vague description, the residents had mastered the art of keeping up a near-constant flow of hints in order to let everypony know what they weren't talking about.

Hooves accelerated. Wings furiously beat at the air. One earth pony more or less casually trotted along, because she had a folding writing shelf attached to her neck, and was busy mouthwriting on the clip-attached paper in front of her jaw. She was a Trottingham resident in distress, and had reverted to her most basic instinct: the composition of a letter. Because the mob was going to win eventually and after that wrapped up, she had to post her results. The readers for all fourteen of the local papers were going to know about Why This Sort Of Thing Shouldn't Happen In Our Settled Zone And If It Does Anyway, Then Why Don't We Have Any Longer-Handled Torches?

The pegasus who was flying almost directly above her occasionally glanced down to read the latest words. She didn't consider this to be snooping. She was an editor for one of the local papers, and figured it just saved time.

They all pursued the target through the twisty streets and thickening fog. The mob nearly lost her a few times, because even a tourist could get lucky with how they decided to dodge. But she didn't know the districts, Hanging Whip Alley nearly tripped her up entirely, and when she went left instead of right...

Wardrobe Place, which had no way to experience the upcoming irony, was where the chase finally ended.

It was a dead-end street. There was an ancient door at the back and rather than offering access to a magical realm of talking hairless primates, the portal opened onto a brick wall.

The white unicorn mare slowly turned, moving at the speed of Drama. Elaborate purple curls flounced, and blue eyes stared down the world.

It almost worked. The mob, advancing through the twin hazes of fog and rage -- stopped. Just for a moment, they all stopped.

"Do you not understand what you are doing?" the unicorn mare demanded, and a new accent made itself known to a city which had about fifty of the things. "You are trying to punish me for going against my very nature! That which was recognized and enhanced by the Elements themselves! What sort of ponies would ask a mare to defy her core virtue?"

Nopony moved. The mare's head tossed, and her horn almost seemed to shake.

"I am Generosity!" she declared to mob, night, Moon, and planet. "I give of myself, for that is what the virtue requires! Demands!"

Nopony spoke. However, motionless torches were now sending plumes of smoke into pegasus snouts, so there was a lot of coughing.

"And in this case," the mare added in the face of torches and what might turn into two forms of hacking, "my Element demanded that I give of myself. Or rather, that I give my actual self. Freely." Paused. "Repeatedly. And also sexually. To those who were, I would like to point out, more than willing to receive my gifts. You are attempting to assault a virtue, for having been virtuous. And as the Elements do not particularly concern themselves with minor details like 'I'm already seeing somepony' or 'but we've been engaged for three moons', I see no reason why any of you should care --"

Which was when the lead pegasus decided she'd had enough, and blue forehooves slammed into the wrangled cloud.

The unicorn mare, who was rather quick on her hooves, dodged the little bolt: electricity grounded itself in the hinges of the useless door.

The followup downpour was decidedly harder to avoid.

Water soaked into mane and tail, straightened the curls. Touch-up patches of not-quite-dry dye were washed away in an instant, triggering one of the few times anypony in the mob could use 'virescence' as green came into the world.

The fake horn, with its binding glue soaked beyond endurance, simply fell off.

It clattered. Rolled along the street, and came to a stop against the right forehoof of the largest, angriest stallion.

"Er," the not-unicorn mare said.

The mob, which had a tremendous numerical advantage, every exit covered, and could afford to wait a little longer, was now vaguely -- curious. A multi-district herd waited to see if there was going to be a followup.

"Well, you can't blame a girl for trying," the Fillydelphia voice unabashedly decided. "And honestly, if they were that willing to hop into bed with me in the first place, then shouldn't you all be taking a really long look at your own relationships? Because I know I'm attractive -- seriously, I'm even better without the makeup -- you, back there, with the writing shelf, talk to me later -- but Loyalty is another virtue and it looks like none of you managed to inspire all that much of it. Why don't we consider this to be a learning experience all around? And a really good reason to start into couples therapy. Now I'm going to trot towards the mouth of this street, and you are all going to let me go. Except for Shelf Mare. You can come with. And also, if you don't want mares like me going for your stallions -- and mares -- and I almost got that one gorgeous zebra last night -- then work on your accents. Make them worse. Because those lovely sounds are half the reason I was drawn here to start with. And I'm saying that as a mare who had to do a lot of studying for an accent."

Case 3: In which two Seventh old dogs fail to get away with a new trick

Case 3: In which two Seventh old dogs fail to get away with a new trick

There were any number of ponies who would have wondered why a claimed financial institution would be operating out of a tent in one of San Dineighgo's more isolated outdoor sales areas, and the purpose in setting up there was to lower the odds on having any of them trot by.

Knabstrupper's wasn't even a proper market square. On its best days, it was more of a swap meet: ponies hauled any problematic material possessions into a rented space, then wandered the makeshift aisles until they found somepony who was willing to take on their issue in exchange for whatever complication was currently clogging up a different assigned section of cobblestone. The lone visible tent operator liked the general idea of exchanging issues, because his own minor hitch was 'We don't have enough money' and he was only too happy to make it somepony else's problem.

As for using the tent... yes, the ideal would have been to use a building. However, there were also certain minor ongoing obstacles in passing the background check necessary for signing a lease -- actually paying anything towards it was seen as a subject of some humor -- and so getting an official storefront was currently right out. It was generally so much easier to just find a building which had been vacant for a time and -- borrow it. Make a few alterations, preferably under Moon because you had to do it while absolutely no police officers or government officials were about: questions about constructions permits often annoyed, and learning how to forge the new city's seal onto counterfeit documents was a work in progress. And after Sun was raised, you set up a Grand Opening sign, you did as much as you possibly could in one day and once Moon was brought over the horizon, you took out everything which could be used as evidence and left the rest behind. After all, somepony had to clean up and since it wasn't your property, that was clearly the responsibility of the actual owner.

A building was the natural preference. The tent's visible operator often used borrowed buildings. It was just that during a previous stop, a number of ponies had dropped by. Locals who were very curious as to how the space was now being used, and one of them had been the landlord.

The tall, narrow-hipped stallion had a certain way of not answering direct questions, and it became decidedly harder to maintain after the fourth kick went into his ribs.

So the tent was a fallback position, or at least a way to shelter the newest operation without having to worry about the tactics necessary to keep Actually, I Do Own The Place from happening again. And there were things which could be done with a tent. For example, you could cast an illusion over it: something which turned drab canvas into soft gold, fluttering in the ocean breeze. Another light touch of magic covered the upper reaches of the interior in framed certificates, which spoke of Education and Rank while giving off an aura of Yes, I Am In Fact Better Than You, So Appreciating My Attempts To Help Is Simple Courtesy.

The unicorn stallion was very good with illusions, because personality traits were a major factor in magic and the joy in crafting lies was essentially built into his psyche.

The tent looked like fine-woven, rippling wealth, and continued to do so just as long as nopony touched it. Because illusions were purely visual in nature, and to make contact -- well, there had been some trouble taken to upgrade the tent's entrance flaps: ponies were going to be pushing those aside all the time and as long as you'd acquired a bolt of special fabric (simply keeping hooves in the game: revenge had nothing to do with it) a few stops back, then that brilliant weave could be repurposed for something and besides, he'd heard that the true golden color was just so hard to make. Besides, surely nopony was going to indulge in a cross-continent pursuit just for a single -- acquired -- roll.

Those who entered could touch the tent's flaps, and found them to be marvelously soft. But to make contact just about anywhere else might discover rough canvas. Or the absence of true frames around the certificates, because this was an operation which traveled light and forged documents could be rolled up: wood couldn't. And if you really wanted to get into the worst-case scenario, there was the possibility that somepony might discover one of two problems: the locations where the illusion was substituting for a lack of intact tent -- and the concealed fabric bulge at the back, where there was just a little too much tent for comfort.

There was paperwork involved in the current operation, in part because you always wanted to send ponies home with a fake receipt. San Dineighgo's ocean breezes, which had no respect for the small businesspony, tended to pass through the tent's hidden gaps and ruffle the sheets on the desk. The stallion, who felt the operation to be having a good day, had already created a lie about pegaus magic being used for air circulation. So far, he'd told it six times and after the second, had adjusted the illusion to have fine copper wires laced into the tent's interior. Pegasus soon-to-be-victims who were being lied to about climate control would reasonably expect to see the species' magic-conducting metal.

Not that the tent's visible operator wanted to provide too many details. He offered hints. Suggestions, both visual and audible. And then he let the listener's brain fill in the rest, confident that whatever they came up with had been very self-serving indeed. And once the mind had decided he was only there to serve them, they would get to the good part. The money.

The stallion, when in the presence of all but one other, didn't really see ponies. He didn't truly recognize griffons, zebras, donkeys, or any of the other sapients as sapients. At best, they were sheep. There was an obligation for the only two real people in the world to conduct regular shearing sessions. And once the wool grew back, you returned to do it again.

Of course, it made sense to return while bearing a fresh coating of fur dye. For some reason, those who couldn't truly think tended to possess rather long memories.

(Surely there wouldn't be any problems. It had only been one bolt of fabric, and the loss had obviously been her fault for leaving it outside to Sun-cure in the first place. A more security-conscious mare would have forced the energy expenditure of a break-in.)

The tent's visible unicorn operator was currently sporting strands of metallic silver. Metallic coats were the single rarest fur traits known to exist: roughly one in every five thousand ponies would possess those reflective properties. Such individuals stood out, and that could be bad. But when somepony came across a strange metallic -- then later on, if asked to describe the offender, all they would generally remember was that the stallion had been a metallic. And that was good.

There was a pegasus mare on the other side of the desk, and that didn't really matter to the stallion. As far as he was concerned, she existed as a living transport system. Bits had to get around somehow, and her only true purpose in existence was to make sure they got to him.

"A new bank," she carefully said. "Run by the Bearers."

"Yes!" he beamed, and the fur dye helped to make that somewhat more literal: the mare flinched as light reflected into her eyes. (He had to watch for that. Shaving the mustache, followed by adding the dye -- it had left that area exceptionally smooth, and the results were almost blinding.) "Because who can you trust more than the Bearers, customer o' mi --"

He briefly stopped, hoped she hadn't noticed. Conducting a successful operation required avoiding bad habits. The stallion had already found himself fighting off the urge to burst into song. Verbal tics could be equally recognizable, but -- he was almost sure he'd never dealt with this pegasus before.

Not that he was particularly good at picking out those who moved within the endless flock. Reliable identification of individuals usually began to register somewhere around the fourth kick.

"-- miss," the visible operator self-corrected. "And I, as the single most appropriate Element, the one who proposed that we all use our collective powers to benefit others, in a way which no single mission could ever do -- to help in the true way, not through battles or rainbow blasts, but the offering of money -- am quite naturally serving as the hopeful face of our great endeavor. The one who, more than anything else, only wishes to help."

Helping himself to her bits obviously counted.

"You're a Bearer," when it came to the stallion's tolerance for questions, generally would have been over the limit. He made himself keep smiling.

"Of course!"

"The seventh Bearer," she added. Coral eyes narrowed slightly.

"The palace," he smoothly said as his left back hoof began to softly tap out the standard signal, "has a habit of keeping certain resources hidden until needed. Just ask those who work in the armory." (There was much the stallion would have given to sell off the contents of the armory: for starters, the reputations and employment of those who guarded it were easy to dump. He seldom had trouble with pricing, just as long as somepony else paid.) "So it's not surprising that you would have initially believed the falsehood which was presented to the public. But of course, a mare like yourself... a little thought leads to the truth, doesn't it?"

It often did, and that was why the stallion was grateful for the lack of true thinking in the world. Honesty wasn't a virtue: it was a cruel universe striking back against the small businesspony. Based on personal experience, it preferred to initially strike with the powerful right hind leg. There was probably a full beatdown pattern after that, but he hadn't remained conscious long enough to memorize it.

She went back to looking at the paperwork. He wasn't sure whether to be offended by that. There had been some trouble taken to place exactly the right amount of doubletalk into the text. Inspecting it felt rather close to an insult.

"These interest rates look too good to be real," the pegasus half-decided -- but he knew that tone. It was the sound of a sheep who dearly wanted everything to be real and simply needed somepony of intellect to tell her so. After all, carrying bits -- wool around in early summer heat was just so tiring.

"They're magically good!" he assured her. "Because we're not basing our bank in the normal rules of finance! Those only go so far." Tap, tap, tap... "And you can always start small, you know. Obviously you get better rates if you invest higher amounts --" he nodded to the illustrated lies of the chart "-- but we understand if you just want to try things out before fully committing. A mere ten bits, if you came back and withdrew just six moons from now, would allow you to claim..."

She looked at that portion of the chart, and he watched piles of bits and smidgens grow within her eyes.

It was part of the key. It was possible to find a pony who would turn over a thousand bits in the hopes of a dream and the half-sapient sheep's eternal belief that they were actually stealing from him -- but it was a lot easier to have a hundred surrender ten bits each.

All of them were welcome to come back in six moons. The empty market space would have a lot to say. And should multiple sheep appear at the same time, they could swap stories.

"Magically good." Her eyes were bright. The words still had a few doubts. "Banks have rules. If this operates outside them --"

"-- and the magic," the stallion smiled, "is meant to help ponies. In the true way. Would you like a demonstration?"

With what was almost understandable doubt, "So you're just going to multiply my money in front of my eyes..."

*tap*

There was the sound of a very small explosion, followed by a huge puff of violet smoke because using a capsule filled with reactant chemicals saved a little casting energy for later. The sea breeze came in through illusion-hidden rents, swiftly cleared the visual obstruction.

And then there was a second stallion in the tent.

The pegasus yelped. Recoiled, nearly going off the folding bench. Her saddlebags jingled.

The new arrival was identical to the operator in every way -- well, almost every way. The upper lip, which hadn't needed any shaving at all, wasn't quite as shiny. But he smiled, he beamed, and he said "What is your desire, master?" in a truly friendly way.

Coral eyes blinked.

"...where..." the mare verbally stumbled. "It wasn't a teleport, I know that, the flash didn't -- where did he even come from...?"

The correct answer was He came through the flaps at the back of the tent, because that's where the illusion-hidden compartment is. The smoke covered for him. But of course, you never told the sheep how it was done.

"As everypony of education and intellect knows," the operator beamed, "the Elements grant new magic to those who bear them. It's taken a few years to figure out just a fraction of what we all can do, and fresh abilities are always emerging. But, as I can multiply myself for a time, and make that duplicate do my bidding... why, it was a natural thought to ask myself what else I could cause to increase. And when I turned the magic inherent in a virtue to money..."

The stallion was extremely good at sleight-of-mouth, and there was a hidden compartment in the desk. A demonstration of Instant Interest was ready to go. But as it might not be necessary at all, he simply gave her another smile. It was, when you discounted false promises and lies sold as dreams, just about the only thing he ever willingly gave anypony.

"The Bearers have decided that the time has come to truly help!" he declared. "And what better virtue than Parsimony to lead the way!"

"...par... parsimony..." represented the sound of a mare delving deep for vocabulary and hitting a mostly-empty mine shaft. Something just waiting to be filled, much as her saddlebags longed to be emptied.

"Or am I to serve the mistress?" asked the freshly-appeared unicorn. "She is rather fetching."

Saddlebags jingled again.

Then it turned into more of a rattling, as the mare's turned head tried to get the left lid open.

'Parsimony'.

They'd been looking for virtues, and there was a minor smidgen of irony in either sibling trying to do that. But it had been necessary. You couldn't sell a con without the full furnishings: a golden tent, the impressive-looking paperwork, and a title. Something better than that of a noble. (The main issue in pretending to be nobles was that books like Twerp's Peerage existed, which meant there were ponies who made a living off knowing the brothers were lying.) The title virtue of a Bearer. And when it came to the dictionary entry for 'parsimony'...

It was such a flexible word. In one definition -- the ironic one -- it was about being a little too willing to hold onto bits. Used carefully, it produced savings: take it to excess and it formed a new opposite side for Generosity's coin: miserliness. Hold on to everything, no matter what.

(Seriously, setting up a trot-by opportunity meant she'd practically wanted them to have the golden fabric.)

But if you were very careful about how you spent... then didn't it make sense that you would be rather good at investments? Everypony knew that.

The stallion who'd shaved his mustache for this was very good with things which everypony knew. In the best case, they knew those things because they were exactly what he'd just told them and, like the money which had been turned over to the false bank throughout the sunny summer day, he held all the best bits back.

'Parsimony'. It was truly a lovely word. Because it could mean being frugal, and didn't that sound like a virtue? But read further into the myriad definitions, and it could also mean the ability to choose the simplest solution: whatever happened to fit the current evidence. For example, if you heard approaching hoofsteps in Equestria, then the safe assumption was that they had been produced by a pony. Going to Pundamilia Makazi was required to change the default into 'zebra'.

And the simplest answer to 'What kind of bank would offer such wonderful interest rates?' was 'No bank at all.' Because it was a con, and anypony who fell for it deserved to.

There was also a parsimony-related theory which said that no entities should be multiplied beyond necessity. The brothers, as twins, had sensibly set their personal multiplication limit at a very necessary two.

They'd temporarily sealed the forward tent flaps. Hardworking small businessponies required breaks.

"And how are the numbers looking, brother?" asked the one who hadn't had to shave. They were both standing behind the desk, peering down at the paperwork.

"Rather good, brother o' mine," replied the stallion who was just waiting to get out of town so he could start growing his crowning glory back. "We're behind what I would have truly wanted, but..."

The mere lead-in to the old joke was enough to make the younger stallion laugh. "But what we truly want is everything. And that's just not realistic, is it?"

The older brother returned the grin. "'At this time'," he finished the lifelong jest. "Still... we were pretty depleted by the time we got here." Most of the sigh was repressed. "Bad luck, getting the one conductor who truly looks at the tickets."

"It was a good lie," the younger sibling mused. "Really. Telling him that we'd purchased from somepony who had to sell their own tickets because they were staying home to take care of a sick relative. And in retrospect, we'd been conned."

"I'd try it myself," the older brother admitted. "Only now we know how hard it is to forge a good ticket. And if he'd really been sorry about it, then he wouldn't have made us pay for our ride on the spot." His money pouch, which served as its own organ, sent up signals of slow-fading pain.

Two sets of dyed ears perked up. There were hoofsteps approaching the front of the tent and in San Dineighgo, it was safe to presume they were being produced by a pony: based on the sounds, a small, rather light one, whose wings were awkwardly rustling. Breaks were one thing, but to pass up on a shearing --

-- the hoofsteps moved away. Probably just admiring the fabric. An interested party would have poked a hoof into the soft golden flaps.

"The other option," pointed out the younger, "was getting kicked off the train. As it was passing through a wild zone. And we were coming here anyway, mostly because we've never been here and the scent of fresh wool in salt air felt enticing. So all things considered..."

Fabric briefly rustled, and air blew through the tent. Just the wind.

The elder nodded. "I'd wish to have a higher starting amount," he readily admitted. "And to know where the conductor lived, so we could get our own back. But we've already replaced a decent percentage of our losses. And if we stay on pace -- then by the end of the day, we just might have enough to fund the next operation."

The one which would kick off what was in no way a full revenge tour, because professionals didn't do that. But if you were going for wool, then there was a certain pleasure in taking it from the sheep who kept kicking you --

-- light flashed in the tent.

Illusions didn't really reflect light normally, not unless the caster was paying full attention, happened to be exceptionally quick-witted, and could adjust the spell at near-impossible speed. The flaps, which were real, bounced most of what hit them: the rest was relayed between dyed metallic fur until all the siblings could truly see through watering eyes was a kaleidoscope of drifting spots.

The first instinct was to run. (It was always to run, and that was why they were still alive.) But they were behind the desk, and they were unicorns. Tall, slender, narrow-hipped, and lacking the strength to hurdle the thing from a standing start. Neither one could open a portal into the between: if they had been capable of that, then train tickets would never come into play at all. And when it came to the one who had just teleported in...

Of course it had been a teleport. Something which she hadn't needed to do. She could have just pushed open the tent flaps, or torn the entire thing out of the ground. But she'd likely trotted around to one side. Inspected the illusion, found one of the very real rents, and then peeked within. Used that to spot her arrival point, and then she'd come in behind them.

It wasn't necessary. It was outright, deliberate drama. Going for style points, and neither brother understood why she would do that. This particular sheep hadn't been like that when they'd first tried to shear one of her companions. But the siblings only thought of each other as real, and so couldn't recognize the concept of learning from one's friends.

Projections of pinkish light flashed between the spots, moved around the tent. The lead burst hit the forward tent flaps and held them closed. The next went for them, and the merest fraction of that hideous, Tartarus-freed strength locked eight trembling legs in place.

She took a breath. Feathers rustled, and did so as the glow from her horn intensified all the more. Because in Equestria, it was both parsimonious and safe to assume the source of approaching hoofsteps was a pony -- but that was a definition with subcategories.

She spoke, and there was something about the way she used words. Syllables slotted into place like a minotaur loading a crossbow, only with the potential for doing a lot more damage.

"Oh," the little alicorn audibly smiled, and that was almost the worst offense at all. That she would willfully disrupt the lives of two businessponies for what was basically no reason, and be happy about it. "So this is where Rarity's fabric went..."