Author's Note

Huh, I've apparently done over 6700 words of these things, lol.

A Twilight's Enthusiastic Walk, part 1 (no spoilers)

Twilight Starshine idly wandered the streets of Manehattan. The city, it turned out, had been far less interesting than promised and the mare was regretting choosing it as her leave destination. The Museum of Equine History had been amusing for several hours, looking at the expert forgeries of dangerous magical artifacts that were safely stored in Twilight Manor, but, in the end, even that had grown boring.

And then there was the food, overpriced, under portioned, vegetarian slop, with an unfortunate amount of grass and flowers in their recipe. No she didn't want a quinoa and marigold soup or a kale and daffodil sandwich or a deep fried hayburger, especially not for upwards of a bit and a half.

Starshine had almost been bored enough to resort to rat-hunting, as foalish as that is. And she had smelled a lot of rats, which was strange. She recalled that rats carried a wide range of diseases that could be transmitted to the common pony; what possible reason could the locals have for maintaining such high populations of the rodents? It's not like Equestrian foals hunted them.

So, naturally, Starshine had opted to take a stroll through the streets. Heading directly into the portion of the city that the tourist guides had dubbed a 'no go zone'.

The streets were strange, the asphalt streets were broken and rough - as if they hadn't been maintained in a long time - and the buildings surrounding were even worse. The horrible grey concrete buildings were broken only by cracks and dents from which rust stains spilled, as if the very walls were bleeding.

The only splashes of colour in the streets were the strange abstract murals containing a strange mutated version of common Equish. Starshine had stopped on several occasions to decipher such finds, but they all contained such inscriptions as 'Buolder Smassh iz da bestest' and 'Brass Pear rulez dis hood', claims that she found herself doubting. Truly, the Equestrian education system has failed her pupils.

Even stranger, neither the streets nor the building were even that old, a series of divinations had revealed their age to vary between 60 and 80 years old. Not nearly old enough to be in this condition by Starshine's reckoning. House Twilight built their architecture to last hundreds if not thousands of years, yet this place was falling apart in less than a century. Clearly the Equestrian archetect lacked foresight.

The streets were strangely unpopulated for such a major metropolis, Starshine had only passed a couple hundred ponies, most of them mares: a mix of rough bandit types, the fearful destitute, the deathly ill and addicts to drugged up to care. But there were also a number of stallions dressed up in tight red clothing for whatever reason.

But worst of all was the smell, this part of the city stank, even more than the rest of it did. The air was a nasty cocktail of stale urine and faeces, of despair and disease, of filth and body odour, of death and rot, It was unpleasant, but it took more than unpleasantness to drive a bored Twilight away.

Starshine became aware of a group of mares following her - seven of those bandits, poorly attempting to be stealthy - and idly slipped into a narrow alley while using most of her strength to charge her tension latches.

"Hello, ladies," Starshine smirked as she turned around to face her pursuers, "can I help you?"

"Why, yes." the apparent leader said, "You on the turf of the Alley Hounds, an' ya haven't paid the toll."

Starshine tilted her head slightly, suppressing her excitement, "And this 'toll' is?"

The unicorn gazed greedily at Starshine's saddlebags and levitated a knife next to her, "How about everything yer carrying, and we'll let you live."

Five of the bandits - burly earth mares - stalked menacingly towards the Twilight.

Starshine gave a slight smile, "I'm sorry, but I have to decline your most generous offer."

"Um, boss, something's not right, this mare's not scared at all." Spoke the final bandit, a pegasus.

"I'm not asking." Snarled the unicorn as she moved the knife to be within striking distance of Starshine's chest.

Starshine stared at the knife slightly baffled, it was rule number one of telekinetic combat that you keep your weapons as close as possible to your body - preferably within your domain - and only send them out briefly to strike ones opponents. Yet, here this mare was levitating her knife within Starshine's expanded domain, seemingly without noticing. "I have a counteroffer ..." the Twilight lit her horn and violently crushed the unicorn's telekinetic aura with a combination of her own aura and domain.

The unicorn screamed, dropping to the ground and writhing in pain as her horn sparked erratically.

Amateur, Starshine scoffed before turning to the other mares, "... I keep my things and you, dear bandits, ..." she bared her lupine teeth in a manic smile, "... die."