Clickthrough

In Pipp's opinion, no proper princess should ever require saving.

Admittedly, there were times when it was something of a perk. So yes, as Pipp's mother had explained several times over the course of a young life, a true royal would simply arrange matters around her so that nothing resembling a heroic save would ever be required. But as Pipp had directly experienced since leaving the palace, the endless cruelty and rather odd misprioritizing of the 'real' world had an odd way of not caring about what a princess might want or, far better yet, deserved. So there might be times when somepony might in fact need to gallop in to help her and in those rare edge cases, such assistance had to be both appreciated and rewarded.

But it wasn't about counting on the random appearance of a Hero, especially when so few of them seemed to have considered stopping for a not-so-random Bath. It was more towards... having a good support staff set up and knowing when to rely on their talents. Which meant the pony who supervised that staff was clearly responsible for the whole thing, and therefore had taken over the responsibility for her own rescue. Because that supervisor happened to be Pipp. As a royal duty. So there.

(She didn't mind being saved, if such was strictly necessarily. Having it happen to her certainly saved some effort. But she resented the implication.)

A well-trained princess had many duties. Pipp also counted the following on that list: looking good, sounding good, speaking (and singing!) for the palace while sounding good, being the single most popular person in the known world and she was going to make sure that kept up no matter how much more world they found, plus protecting the citizens of her realm was absolutely somewhere in there and as long as she was at it, Pipp was very much about protecting herself. She had an image to maintain, after all. And any true princess would act as Warrior At The Gates against the prospect of invasion -- but on a day-to-day basis, that princess had better be willing to put in three times the combat work on zealously guarding her IP.

Personally.

And that was why she was in the Brighthouse's little recording studio. (Something which had been added during the original rebuild, and the facility wasn't quite up to Pipp's standards -- but the only way to make it any better would be through moving it to higher-tech ground. Earth ponies just didn't know how to work with vibration absorption in building foundations. Basics.) Because one of those who loved the royal family had told Pipp that the younger princess was under attack.

So it was time to save herself.

Again.

It had been happening a lot lately, and part of that was because of the various conflicts between the laws of the three cities. When it came to Pipp's problems, most of that centered around copyright. A trio of legal jurisdictions were trying to work out what belonged to whom, while each insisted that their own ownership stretched out to infinity and everypony else's was lucky to reach a town's borders.

When it came to The Second Age Of Unity, the state of copyright law wasn't. The palace held absolute dominion over the use of royal images -- in Zephyr Heights. But once you left the borders... well, three governments were trying to write laws which said they got all the money and all of the legal recourse required for keeping it. Something which was going to be rather difficult to hang onto with uniquely-written statutes because when it came to the gambits being used for this, they were mostly copying from each other.

In the current environment, a few seasons in... the court system wasn't anywhere close to shaking out into something which could handle matters on what had now technically turned into an international level. (The concept of 'international court' had been raised by Sunny, but the execution was still coming along: the delays were produced by the power brokers of three cities having realized they didn't want any legal authority having dominion over them.) Until then, the most anypony could do was trying to solve things on a personal basis. Because Zephyr Heights currently had no authority over anything stored on Maretime Bay servers, or vice-versa. And Bridlewood was probably -- printing more stuff. On actual paper. Illegally.

Pipp was still trying to deal with the results. Because Zephyr Heights possessed very strict laws about using images of the royals, and every enterprising copyright crook among the pegasi had recognized the solution as a herd: move. The unicorns and earth ponies hadn't even needed to do that much, and...

She'd now learned about the existence of 'knockoff merchandise', and was still mad. The audio reproduction on the unauthorized downloads was always poor. And when it came to plushies... okay, some of the craftwork wasn't bad, but others had the sort of button eyes which could be swallowed by a foal, she'd hated button eyes ever since that one stupid movie and not only that, but why was everypony making her plushies so short? She would have barely come up to Hitch's knee half the time! If Hitch had a plushie, which of course he didn't. You didn't make plushies of mere sheriffs or at least, nopony had rushed to make one of Hitch. Frankly, he was lucky to have the calendars. Pipp had seen Hitch and the calendars alike. She didn't get it.

The younger princess had also learned about fanfic. She left most of that alone. The bulk of it was being written by her fans and if they didn't know her well enough to get her dialogue right, then that was arguably Pipp's fault. But she hated the shipping. It was never with anypony she wanted to be with and besides, the meter on the fake love songs was pretty much always off.

And now there was this stupid game.

One of her favorites on the fan forums had alerted her to it. Some sort of match-three setup, where most of the thing was the standard mix of powerups and game store options: the only major question was whether you could get any variety into the symbol shapes, and the answer was always no. But supposedly, every ten levels, you got to Save The Princess. Whose fur was pinkish, with a purple mane, a rather distinctive thin golden band around that, and wings which had yet to lose their white down.

They'd seen it. A digital Pipp in some sort of horrible situation. Say, acid pouring down a funnel to flood the chamber she was trapped in. Lava, just for variety. An incoming dragon with visibly evil intent, and Pipp had already decided to pick a date on the calendar and call it Sparky's birthday: that way, she could finally gift him with his own attorney. But it would be this trembling and frightened and frankly way-too-small mare whose first solution to everything was to hurriedly mix some sort of mane tonic. This usually exploded, or made the dragon grow to six times the prior size and seriously, they could at least base it on the actual eyewitness accounts. And then the digital princess would need saving, mostly from herself.

Pipp really resented that implication. Especially the part with the mane tonic, because the resulting cloud had really been more of a fuchsia.

The Pippsqueaks had seen it. What they hadn't been able to do was capture it, because the app could detect when somepony was attempting a screenshot and blurred the images accordingly. Pipp, in her studio, had placed Bestie in a central elevated phone holder and could shoot the precisely-suspended screen from any outside angle she liked. There was also sound recording equipment ready to go, in case the game designers had attempted any travesties with her voice. Previous knockoffs had given her a sound which could supposedly shatter glass, and the audio engineer in her felt nopony understood how hard that actually was.

She turned on the phone.

The unit's coding noted the time, which was currently at what Pipp considered to be Too Early For Any Rational Pony To Deal with. (Any point between four a.m. and three hours past when Mane Melody usually opened.) Previous patterns suggested that the user 'liked' to start at this unholy hour by checking the local weather, and the phone automatically loaded that app first.

Pipp didn't mind. She'd once started the day by reviewing her overnight video play and stream download totals, but -- getting some extra people in the world meant those numbers went up faster now. All of the systems she'd set up were now working on more ponies than ever, and it reassured her. She didn't need the daily morning affirmation any more, and found it much more comforting to check in before going to bed. Besides, now that she was allowed to go outside, she needed to check the weather. It had turned out that the outside had a lot of weather. And very little of it seemed to like her. Just for starters, wind liked to blow through manes. After she'd finished styling them. The nerve!

So she watched the weather app come up. Or rather, she watched a huge video inset pop into existence, right above where the radar was about to be. There was a split-second during which a certain headband almost registered, and she wondered if it was a good time to review some of the note arrangements again --

-- a near-unique piece of coding detected the interaction, and did what virtually no other phone in the world could manage. The headband, and the video window, vanished.

A smaller one tried to pop into life over the ten-day forecast. The code acted again, then did so four more times before it was satisfied. Pipp reviewed the weather.

Not bad. And the radar sweep looks a lot better after the Bay's monitoring station finally switched over. On the whole, Zephyr Heights had somewhat more advanced electronics than the average earth pony enjoyed, and the weather tech was far superior. Zipp, who liked to look at Sunny's inherited notebook during slow days, had taken to calling that 'irony'. I should be okay in that much sunlight as long as I try out the new cream for anti-furfade. Ideally, on somepony else. So let's go to the app store...

She quickly found the download page and inspected the sample images. Nothing. Standard match-three drivel . Pick a powerup, then find a way to justify selling it at the cost of a meal. That was easy in Zephyr Heights, because her realm had turned out to be surprisingly expensive. (Pipp, who had spent most of a lifetime in not paying for anything, was still trying to work out why she was supposed to do so now. Didn't previous experience speak towards a need to maintain every aspect of her status?) And it was also easy because in the Heights, you could legally license royal images for games. All the palace asked for was complete control over all usage, plus what was technically a cut of the profits. Mathematically, if you took an extra virtual wedge of money and left one thin slice for the developers, then you'd taken 'a cut'. The majority of game designers had responded by muttering something about how flying characters were too hard to program anyway.

So it's like the Pippsqueaks said. I have to play my way down to it. And quickly, before they hear any rumors that I'm looking. Best-case is to get this done today...

She 'purchased' the game, which was free. The profits were in the powerup sales, plus Daily Extra Lives packages and, because it was a mobile game, ads. There were always ads, or so Pipp had been told. She understood how to sell a few, and Bestie's programming did its best to make sure she never saw the results --

-- if the server had the right host.

(There had once been a single source of server farms in the world. How much was a reasonable princess supposed to anticipate?)

But the game itself had no inherent startup cost. First samples of potentially-addictive substances were often free, which was why Pipp never charged for downloads of her public videos. Nopony should ever have to pay for the initial experience of coming to love her.

Install...

Another piece of near-unique code tried to interact as the app opened for the first time, and completely failed to find the secret lock awaiting what had once been a universal backdoor key.

No developer's console. Which told her the game hadn't been programmed or stored in Zephyr Heights. She was supposed to have coder-level access to any cheats for programs designed within her realm, because Pipp liked to stream games and if she was going to regularly and happily call out "First try!" with any semblance of faked honesty --

Which naturally means no level skip.

-- then she needed to see where all the shortcuts were.

So she had no choice but to play.

...seriously, no part of that fiasco had in any way been her fault. Yes, there was a certain amount of foresight and planning in a decent match-three game, but the starting arrangement of pieces was random and you couldn't control which new ones were going to drop in from the top! A bad run of luck could happen to anypony! Even princesses, because luck hadn't figured out whom to respect. So really, it would have been possible for anypony in the world to completely run out of daily lives at a mere six levels in. Which, according to the Pippsqueaks, was four short of where she needed to be.

Pipp had a few options. The first was to wait a full day until her 'free' attempt count recharged and she could try to get past Level Six again. A day during which her targets might learn she was after them, and scramble to save themselves. Not acceptable.

She could also spend money to get extra tries directly: the app's stores encouraged it, and did so with ever-increasing numbers. She'd spent nearly all of a lifetime in not paying for things, but Pipp certainly understood the basics. She didn't have to worry about limiting herself to the money earned by the stylist shop, because frankly earning money was extremely overrated and there really needed to be a law about dragging royalty into foreign courts for small-claims cases over a worked mane trying to eat somepony. And it wasn't as if she had a mere allowance, either. Pipp had what was, in theory, a fully-unlimited expense account, backed by the good faith and credit of an entire government. She could get whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it, and the fact that the records for all such digital purchases were sent directly to her mother for review and approval was no factor at all --

-- actually, her mother was really busy these days, and trying to sort out newly-international copyright law was only part of that. So in the name of giving her parent some peace, Pipp could just...

...watch some ads. Earning her way towards extra daily attempts/lives each time.

Normal ponies probably watched ads a lot.

(If somepony really wanted to rescue her, then being saved from Not Getting Treated Like A Princess was right there.)

The green Play Ad? button was a rather unfortunate, bilious shade of the overall hue. Pipp carefully examined the electronic rendition of the color, quickly raised her left forehoof for a peek at the smooth tones of the underside, then got a stylus and, without ceremony, stuck it in her mouth. The studio was private anyway and there were some sickly near-glows you just didn't want to touch.

She hit the button. Bestie seemed to jump slightly within the cradle, and then...

The ad's first little trick was to make her think the load had failed. There was a company name, and -- that was it. The thin blue progress bar along the lower edge of Bestie's screen would be completely frozen and still against the left side.

She could also tap the screen again. Nothing happened. Pipp patiently forced herself to wait out the full half-minute of what she felt to be an ad's normal running time, then tried tapping the upper right corner because that was the traditional place for a Close This option and surely the earth ponies hadn't gotten that much wrong --

-- the ad began to play.

It appeared to be a travel piece, which finally explained why the business venture was called HoofingIt and, for bonus lack of points, did so rather poorly because the ad had clearly been targeted at pegasi. Which had also been done rather poorly, because the ad mostly consisted of the most run-down shots available of the Heights, with pegasi moving through those streets while at less than their best. Nopony had been professionally groomed. The director hadn't tried to synchronize any part of the shot: in particular, there was no group rhythm to the movement. Oddly, there had been some care to mute the natural sounds. But no such effort had been made with the faces, and Pipp could see ponies laughing.

Then you had shots of pegasi at the Bay. Along the boardwalk, or down by the beach. Trying to figure out how feathers interacted with sand and, once they'd gotten some experience there, how to make it stop. And Pipp now could tell that every last shot had been an amateur capture, taken without the subject's knowledge. There was no cinematography. Nopony was trying to work with the lighting. You certainly couldn't find any professional actors or models on the set, because there wasn't a set. Just get video and stills of pegasi who were visiting the Bay, then and add in some poorly-written text which suggested they were somehow happier here. And to be fair, a few of the ones in the boardwalk shots might have also been laughing -- at their friend, who'd just learned what seagulls liked to do. While passing overhead, at high speed.

Pipp didn't love Maretime Bay. There were ways in which she was still learning to put up with it. (Dealing with some of the ponies there -- that was getting a little easier. And she deeply resented every piece of civil court testimony which swore, into the record, that it somehow wasn't very simple to put up with her.) But she knew it had a few points, especially when it came to variety of views: after all, she'd been looking at select portions of the Heights for years -- whatever was visible from windows, balconies, or traffic cameras -- and this was at least something different.

Ponies would go a long way for 'different': for starters, once some of them had learned 'different' existed, they'd gone there. But this didn't make the Bay look the least bit appealing. The hastily-constructed images mostly spoke of pegasi who were just... somewhere else. That was the whole of the draw.

And then they'd named the whole enterprise HoofingIt.

Because of course touring pegasi were going to trot everywhere.

The images stopped moving. A few tiny words showed up near a bottom corner, but Pipp ignored those because a small red icon had just appeared in the upper right of Bestie's screen. The little royal leaned in to tap it...

...and saw the blue progress bar hadn't moved.

Graphics error. Bay programmers just weren't good at their jobs. Well, at long as the Close Ad symbol was finally present...

Pipp tapped it.

The Close Ad icon vanished. The ad restarted itself from the beginning. And as Pipp watched in close-up horror, the progress bar crept halfway across the bottom of the screen before freezing again.

Those were some of the first tricks.
There were more.

At one point, the ad decided it was a miniseries. She had to tap out of each stage. Okay, we're done with the random shots of pegasi. Here's the first hired performer of the piece. In a talk which was clearly shot in his kitchen, he's going to discuss how his greatest ambition in life is to take his money to Maretime Bay. Also, the kitchen is pretending to be in the Heights, and is doing so when whoever put this together has no idea what a typical Heights kitchen looks like. The apparent solution is to use commemorative plates with her mother's face on them. Her mother's unauthorized, poorly-reproduced face. It looks like everypony in the house eats off an oddly-distorted (but regal) eggplant. Also, speaking of pretending, the pegasus who can't stay on his lines or speak with a normal equine cadence? Is an earth pony. The only thing flyaway here is the grey curls of the mane, especially once you notice that the camera never, ever dips below the absolute peak of his spine. However, in terms of acting talent, it is absolutely possible to believe he wants to get out of the kitchen.

Eventually, Pipp got to tap out of that. And because a miniseries absolutely needs a Previously On cel to start each installment, the ad looped back to the first stage.

How about... layering? A stage of the ad finishes. A white box comes in from the bottom of the screen. It's possible to close that. There's a link marked Done: that does the trick instantly. And sends you back to the base frozen screen.

So here's that red Close Ad icon. Now it wants aim. It hasn't exactly advertised this. There are two pixels which will close the ad, and it's a different two each time. They may or may not be touching. Hitting anything else flashes a blue filter layer over everything. Then you get the option to auto-replay the ad for more information, because clearly that's what was desired. It's technically an option because you can hit the following three unmarked invisible pixels within the next half-second to prevent this. In order. Getting it wrong brings up the mailing list screen, and please note how the code is desperately trying to fill information in. Bestie's firewall was blocking personal details and the app couldn't even seem to tell Pipp was in the Brighthouse, but just looking at the blank text spaces frantically trying to flicker...

One page was a quiz. Which Of These Mystical Dream Travel Destinations Will YOU Visit Next? You had a choice of three options, and all of them were the same picture.

She could get a fantastic last-minute deal for touring the Bay if she just clicked one more thing!

(She was staying in the Bay.)

Incredible discounts available for travel expenses! That's right: only we've figured out how to give you a price break on trotting! You do trot, right? Either way, Act Now!

Every fifth tap would count.
No others.
Also, the ad couldn't reliably count to five.

...and then the ad closed.

Pipp stared at the game's restored screen for a few seconds. Took in the no-longer-as-stupid icons waiting to be matched, her still-empty powerup count off to the side, and the score which had cruelly reset itself just because she'd run out of tries. But the next glance was meant for the recording studio's clock, and it was the first thing in some time to respect her enough for telling the truth. Eight minutes. She'd been trying to get out of that ad for eight minutes. And it wasn't poor programming, except that it was. Deliberately poor. An app which did everything it could to resist being closed, which lied about closing, which just bombarded her with the same stupid images and ad copy which she'd seen already and couldn't escape from no matter what she'd tried...

But she was free now. Safe. And she had her prize.

The stylus moved to the gameboard. Tapped a piece, slid it to the right --

-- nothing moved.
The game was frozen.
Did the ad's code corrupt it?
And then she saw, out of the corner of an eye, a small patch of bilious green.

Pipp slowly, reluctantly, inevitably looked down.

Play Ad?
Extra Life Available.
(1/5 ad plays complete.)

Pipp really didn't feel the Brighthouse studio was built to the same standards as the one in the palace. At least three decibels of the scream managed to escape.

Sunny was in the kitchen, and that wasn't the best possible result. Having a more generic 'somepony' in the kitchen usually meant there was a chance of a hot meal and, better yet, one which Pipp wouldn't need to make. Misty was the best for that, although -- it was hard to ask Misty to cook. Misty usually didn't hear requests, even non-royal ones, as somepony just asking, and --

-- you didn't ask Misty for something unless you were phrasing matters very carefully. And with Sunny... the earth pony could make smoothies. Reliably, consistently, and while using no more utensils and equipment than what was stored in the trailer: namely, All Of It. Beyond that, the act of boiling water required four pots, one ocean on standby, and a minimum of four mares for the cleanup crew. Pipp, who was still waiting for any portion of the palace staff to sensibly move in, felt that cleanup duty was best warranted as a punishment and, after careful review of her entire life, had yet to find anything she was being punished for.

When it came to getting any non-smoothie food from Sunny, the safest option was to go touch (and then eat) grass. The entertaining one was asking the earth pony to grow something. Preferably from a great distance.

But Sunny wasn't cooking. Her head was low over the familiar phone model on the serving table, and the tip of the braid swayed slightly with concentration.

"Just a minute, Pipp," the earth pony said, and did so without looking up. Sunny could identify Brighthouse residents on hoofsteps alone, and wingbeats hadn't come close to defeating her. "I'm just checking the weather..."

Ten seconds of familiar music played. Pipp, who occasionally caught herself off-guard, found herself thinking about future refinements to the next arrangement.

Another ten seconds of a different tune followed. Then another, and another...

"...and done," Sunny shrugged. "So it'll be a nice day." With a faint touch of mutter, "And I could get one of those bedside stations which just says that..."

"It's better on the phone," said the pegasus whose most important Number had just gone Up by six. "And that's a good phone."

"You'd know," Sunny smiled. "But we're grateful, Pipp."

Well, it had just made sense. There was only one Bestie -- at a time and retired ones had the special coding removed -- but it had been essential for everypony to be on good phones. And since Heights technology was superior, and all of the best companies sent their models in to Pipp for final review...

"It just takes a while to check the weather on the phone," Sunny added. "Longer than a bedside station."

"Because it's more detail," declared a mare who wanted Number to keep going Up.

"I guess..." the activist quasi-decided, and strong shoulders shifted with poorly repressed uncertainty before the earth pony finally looked up. "You're upset. What's wrong?"

That was one of the things about Sunny. She usually didn't guess, and she seldom led up to things. She judged how somepony felt and then just jumped right in. Anything which had been parked on her designated landing point was free to move on its own and if it didn't, would be considered as the first volunteer towards solving the problem.

"Stupid ads," Pipp immediately said, and then wished she'd given it the force of a true curse. "Stupid ads about the stupid Bay."

The earth pony hesitated.

"Are you saying the ads are stupid," she carefully proposed, "or that the Bay --"

"-- the ads. But they aren't doing the Bay any favors." Which hadn't emerged with the vehemence of a native, and Pipp was grateful for that. She stayed in the Bay. She still didn't feel as if she was truly living there. "Sunny, they're just so annoying! Unless you've seen one, you have no idea...!"

Sunny briefly glanced at her own phone's Heights-manufactured screen, and did so for no reason at all.

"Bad ads are part of life," the activist said.

"Not mine," Pipp declared. "And these are so bad...! I didn't even want to risk any more ads, just in case they'd bought all the time. Or in case it came back."

"Which one?" Sunny asked. "Maybe I've gotten it."

Pipp described. Sunny silently listened, nodding in all the right places. Sunny was actually a very good listener. Pipp had been wondering about putting an identical skill on palace retainer.

"I've gotten that one," the smoothie seller finally said. "A few times. I'm still trying to find a reliable skip pattern." With a sigh, "And I could go to the City Council if I wanted to. Kick them with somepony having broken the aggravation laws. Except they block me out whenever they can and when it comes to this ad, the Council won't care --"

Sunny listened. Pipp preferred to be near-constantly basking in truly intelligent speech. Such as, just for example...

"-- why would you get it?"

The older mare blinked.

"Huh?"

"It's a targeted ad, right? For pegasi, trying to make them go on a --" the term was still trying to catch on "-- 'travel vacation' here! So why is an earth pony getting it? You live here! Any decent coding should be able to screen you out --"

Sunny's right foreleg came up. The hoof tapped the phone on the table, adhered to the screen, raised the unit, and then carefully deposited the product of Heights manufacture again.

"-- oh," Pipp concluded, and reminded herself that royals only blushed artfully. Or with purpose. This didn't seem to be either one.

"I'm guessing the program detects the phone's model," Sunny decided. "And if it finds pegasus tech, it plays the ad. The number doesn't count, and location sure doesn't. It's probably just the model. But there isn't anything I can do about it right now." With a soft sigh, "I know. Because I'm always trying to find something I can do. Even the little stuff, in case that clears up something big along the way. Getting rid of an annoying ad, or making it play for just the amount of time it should... that can make somepony's day better, Pipp. They don't start the morning irritated. They don't pass that on to anypony else, or take it out on a target. Everything echoes. Frown a little less, smile a little more. But I tried on this one, and the Council already --"

"-- eight minutes," Pipp irritably interrupted. "And that's the average. I'm still trying to figure out if having that one segment run backwards was a code error or a random advanced stall. That ad, every time it plays, costs me an average of eight minutes. Of a royal life. If they get paid for ad views, then somepony needs to pay me for having wasted my time --"

Sunny really was a good listener: Pipp always acknowledged that. It was crucial in the activist's profession. You had to know what all the words were before you could decide on the craziest possible ways to misinterpret them.

"-- then when," the activist said (and the words were not unkind), "do you start paying back everypony for all the time you've taken?"

Pipp blinked.

It had to be blinking. She had a singer's awareness for the condition of her throat. There had already been a scream. For maximum recovery, she needed to allow for another two hours before the next.

"...time -- I've... 'taken'," wasn't a curse. Curses didn't get that foul. "How can you possibly accuse me --"

Sunny tapped the phone's screen.

The weather app tried to load. Then it remembered a more important piece of code, because prioritizing for that which had been paid for was always the right decision.

Pipp appeared.

It was a somewhat-younger Pipp. One of the videos which had been filmed inside the palace, because -- everything got filmed inside the palace. Some of her newest fans liked to go through those performances on a frame-by-frame basis. Pipp suspected at least two of them were looking for tiny reflections of light on harness wire.

The video insert began to autoplay. The very small Pipp sang, and did so expertly. The lifesized version once again wondered about automatically taking the images to fullscreen --

-- the Skip Ad option appeared. Sunny tapped out.

"You could have kept going," Pipp immediately said. "That's one of my better ones. And I'm saying that as the mare who recorded it and knows you didn't grow up with my catalog." It was still a strange thought. "Did you get the chance to finish catching up, by the way? Because most ponies in the Heights would kill for that many autographed editions. I can do the basic fan quiz whenever you're ready to --"

"-- ten seconds," Sunny cut in, and looked directly at Pipp. The earth pony sometimes displayed an oddly-piercing sort of gaze. It most often manifested when she was about to make a Point.

Pipp thought about the obvious important part.

"That's not the best ten seconds in the song. You didn't reach the bridge --"

"-- if I load the weather app," Sunny carefully said, "I get a music video. For you."

"Because the palace purchased ad space! That's money for the Bay's economy, Sunny. I don't know if this 'tourist' ad is doing anything, but royal purchases alone --"

"-- it plays for ten seconds before I can tap out. Then I get another video if I want to see the long-range forecast. Or review wind speed. Or if I want to get through to the news, or load an outside article starting from the app. And the outside article will probably have an embed from you. Somewhere in the middle. Which can't be skipped out until ten seconds have passed." The briefest of pauses, and the braid's tip twitched again. "Pipp, every time I want to know if there's a storm heading for the coast, you get a cumulative minute of my life. Just from your ads."

The princess stared at the activist.

Sunny. How were you supposed to deal with her, or the vast majority of the Bay's residents? Especially when they didn't understand something this basic? Because Pipp was the youngest mare in the Brighthouse, and hoped she always would be -- but explaining anything based in technological prowess and common sense to Sunny made the princess feel as if she was trying to educate a newborn foal. It was both frustrating and exhausting -- but it also had to be done, because that was the only means by which Pipp could make Sunny see things the proper way...

Zipp claimed Pipp was manipulative. Pipp couldn't figure out how to talk her sister into not believing that.

"Sunny," the little royal carefully began, "my videos have millions of views." (Which was an understatement and she hated using it for her own Number, but giving the true full count was effectively impossible. Saying the accurate live total for any given microsecond required a pony who could speak at the same fraction of lightspeed as the electrons were taking on their newest arrangement, and biology stupidly insisted that just wasn't possible. Pipp was hoping for magic to offer a few extra options.) "There aren't millions of ponies in the world. The only way I can get those totals is for every song to be offered up, in rotation, all the time. So the palace gets ad space everywhere. Any touch is an interaction and any interaction counts as a view. It's a perfect system --"

"-- it's ten seconds just about every time somepony wants to see or do something online," the activist gently said. "Each time."

"I'm their princess!" One of them. The younger. The one who technically isn't needed. "And as their princess, all I'm asking for is ten seconds of their lives, Sunny! Just ten seconds --"

"-- each."

"Because that's the official minimum time before you can tap out," Pipp huffily said. "That's universal for videos. Except your stupid HoofingIt ad would probably break that law too. If you even had the common sense to put in a law. What did the Council --"

"-- six videos for a kid to skip over, just to get a full weather forecast before they go to school," Sunny quietly finished. "That's a minute. And then it's ten seconds if their teacher asks them to read an article online for their homework. Or if they're shopping, or trying to reach their own email, or -- anything. Ten seconds, times however many ads the palace paid for." And, just barely above a whisper, as syllables landed in the soft register assigned to Attempted Infliction Of Guilt, "Pipp -- you're taking minutes of their lives every day. Cumulative hours. You're the youngest and you told me when you officially started performing, so it's less than half their lives of this -- but you aren't exactly stopping, are you? And there's always new songs, which I guess go into the rotation. And the older ones stick around, because you want the whole catalog in circulation. How many releases does it take before you've claimed a week of somepony's life? A season? A year? How much time do you expect ponies to burn through, just watching you and -- waiting for what they really wanted to do?"

A royal jaw opened.
A royal jaw closed.

"And most of your fans are so young," Sunny added. "It's time they need for other things. Homework. Playing. Being with their friends. Or, once they've finished -- listening to your songs. Whole ones. If they haven't burned out from all of the ten-second excerpts, and somepony must at least be tired of the opening notes, right?"

"I'M A GREAT COMPOSER --" more or less erupted on its own, and Pipp was glad for that. Silence didn't work for her. Find the right sound, enough of the right sounds, and Sunny would be drowned out. Would have to stop --

"-- repetition, Pipp," Suinny kindly said. "Just repetition. The most beautiful view in the world can lose some impact if you have to see it every day."

"If I'm the greatest singer in the world," began a celebrity's automatic takeaway, "they should be honored to hear me every day, even for ten seconds at a stretch, and maybe that needs to be longer --"

"-- centering on eight minutes?"

"NO!"

With an odd politeness, "Why not?"

"THE AVERAGE POP SONG IS THREE AND A QUARTER! BECAUSE AUDIENCE ATTENTION SPANS ARE REALLY, REALLY SHORT --"

The royal jaw closed again. Reopened.

"This is stupid," Pipp pushed out. "My songs are fantastic. My subjects, through living in Zephyr Heights, agree to the ads. It's part of the social contract. They get to see their princess in the heart of her talent, as a perk of citizenship --"

"-- which the Bay and Bridlewood residents don't have?"

"If they had taste --"

"Most beautiful view," Sunny sadly stated. "I feel that way about the ocean sometimes. Now. I did when I was a filly, too. Until I realized... it was the only thing I was ever going to see. And now that I can go somewhere else, see more -- it's beautiful again. Pipp, overexposure can ruin anything. How many ten-second forced viewings can ponies take before they just create ad blockers everywhere?"

"They can't," Pipp firmly said.

"Why not? The tech is there."

"Because blocking a royal video is clearly illegal," the little princess huffed. "Unless you're a royal. Only I can skip my own stuff. And I watch it sometimes anyway, to review and figure out how to get better. Anypony in Zephyr Heights would understand --"

"-- and," the gentle voice asked, because it cared about her, "where are you now?"

"Among new fans! Ponies who are still learning to love me, and some of the ones who already did and followed me here! Who don't listen to any stupid tales about bad mane tonics, who just love me and play my videos because the Number has to go Up, and unless they keep tapping in and then tapping out --"

-- and what happens when they stop tapping at all?
If they're afraid that going to a given page means they'll have to see me.
Hear me.
And they won't want to come back.

The palace was the most beautiful building in the world.
Even Izzy and Hitch had said so. Utterly beautiful.
Unless you lived there.
And then it was just a very ornate jail.

Overexposure did that.

"...Pipp?" With open (and true) concern, "You're quiet. You usually just don't go quiet like that, especially when you're in the middle of --"

"-- you were saying something about the City Council," an oddly hollow-feeling voice resumed. "And I interrupted you. What was it?"

"They won't enforce the rules on ad time and Right To Exit because it's their ad," Sunny carefully educated. "They've been going after the travel money from the start." With open disgust, "I think it's most of what they see when they think about the Second Age. Actual travelers and a larger tax base."

"No location cookies," Pipp considered. "They're looking for pegasus phone models. So the ad would activate for a pegasus who'd already traveled here. There probably isn't even a purchase marker to stop plays."

"Anypony with the right phone, really," the earth pony noted.

A lot of my fans buy their own Besties because it's the model I use.
Including the ones who live here.
Trying to sell travel packages to residents. And they can't tap out, and there was so much ad time purchased...

"It's a really bad ad," Pipp wearily observed. "A lot of really bad ads."

"Some ponies would say those are just a fact of everyday, normal life," Sunny reluctantly offered. "Even if they shouldn't be."

Everyday. Normal.

"It's not fair! It's so irritating! I shouldn't have to deal with this, ever --"

"-- then image how it feels for everypony else," Sunny said. "To deal with it every day."

Zipp said that coming here was our chance to finally be treated like everypony else.

Pipp wished her sister hadn't been right.

"I'll be in my studio," the little princess said as the small body turned towards the exit door. "I've got some stuff to work on."

Curiously, "Aren't you due to style Aquaria's mane at --"

"-- STUFF," Pipp explained in detail. "WORKING."

And then she left.

A day passed. It was mostly trying to get out of the way before anypony noticed.

Night descended.

And if it had been possible to listen in on the homes of several carefully-selected ponies, one might have heard familiar strains of music emerging from phone speakers. And desktop models, and tablets. For ten seconds at a time.

Eleven.
Fifteen.
Sixty.
One hundred and ninety-five...

"WHERE IS SHE?"

Pipp, who had been patiently waiting on the sleeping level for an outburst along those lines and was very good at analyzing harmonics, immediately detected an aggravated baritone. One who didn't have a strong natural sense of rhythm, because the forehooves pounding on the main Brighthouse door were keeping a rather uneven beat.

"I DEMAND TO BE SEEN --"

She heard the door being yanked open. The speed of the action suggested Sunny, and the prospect of having Sunny in close quarters with the freshly-arrived victim got Pipp's wings moving at high speed.

"Oh, hello, Mr. Order," the activist said with the hallmark too-calm of a mare who had just found a much-loathed lifelong enemy on her turf. "I wasn't expecting to see you. Ever, since you usually hide in your office when I come around and just send poor Rob out to deal with me. I always tell ponies. 'Look at Parliamentary Order's son. His name is Rob. And he shouldn't have to do this.' So who put the hot coals under your tail?" The pause went on for just a little too long. "And, just asking because we might need to start a fire somewhere, are there any more available?"

"I WANT THE LITTLE SO-CALLED ROYAL! THE MICRO-FILLY WITH MICRO-AUTHORITY!" All of which was getting louder as Pipp approached the source, white wings straining for a little more speed. "LET ME SEE HER OR --"

She didn't quite land. Hovering wasn't her strong point and she tended to bob all over the place, but it was better than being on the ground and having to look up at what technically wasn't a corpse. It was about as old as a corpse and the grooming matched, but a dead thing couldn't grow and the nostril hairs were obviously fresh. Landing would have given her a direct view from below on the nasal garden's source.

"-- is there some reason a member of the City Council wants to see me?" Pipp politely inquired.

The too-ancient stallion took a sharp breath. Portions of his lungs cooperated.

"So you know who I am," he hissed. Or maybe that was the air escaping through a hole. There was something vaguely punctured about him.

"I," Pipp majestically said, "know who all of you are. Because when we were all meeting up for the first time, talking about -- talking -- we had to figure out who the leaders were. And how to contact them. Which is why the Council can get through to the Palace. And it's also why I have the names of every councilor on my phone."

She smiled into the face of impotent fury, and then held it.

"Names," Pipp said, "and numbers."

"I can't click out of your stupid music," declared the stallion who'd just made things that much worse for himself. "Nothing works. The videos play one after the other."

On pure instinct, "So in All Of My Down Is Drifting, how did you feel about the second stanza bridge?"

"And you may be something special back home, but around here, the law --"

"-- doesn't touch anything in a Zephyr Heights server," Pipp smoothly cut in. "The same we can't legally access yours. Maybe because we don't know each other well enough yet, right? But I thought you should know me. Through my music. And when it comes to drawing the attention of a select group of ponies... well, do you know what's supposed to really work for that?"

The councilor froze.

"Targeted ads!" Pipp brightly finished. "So if there's anything else --"

"-- they don't stop --"

"I heard normal ponies have to deal with that sort of thing all the time," Pipp observed.

"I'm a City Councilor!" shouted a trotting argument for term limits. "I shouldn't have to deal with anything normal ponies do!"

Pipp quickly filed that one away before it had the chance to become a little too personally relevant.

"Then maybe you should appreciate that I'm trying to sell myself to the important ponies in the Bay --"

"-- the entire Council," Mr. Order tried to snarl, and didn't quite make it. "The entire Council, ever since last night. Powering down doesn't do it. Some of the phones are turning themselves back on. I can't conduct business if I can't use my own phone..."

You're a little behind us on most technology. Not all, but a lot of it.
We're better at coding.
...well, I'm not good. But I have a support staff. Most of them are in the Heights, but... I just have to call. Give them all the numbers, then ask them to make a little worm which only activates when it detects a councilor's personal phone on the other end.
And here you are.

"I'm just promoting my music to powerful individuals," Pipp smiled. "The ones who didn't get it for their whole lives, since they're outside the old broadcast range. But I'm trying not to discriminate. Based on location. Or age. And really, when it comes to views, what's wrong with some extra taps? And surely the more total viewing time, the better? So since your harassment laws don't cover this and I'll save you some time, councilor: I looked..."

Sunny was standing off to the side now. Just -- watching.

"Is this some kind of warfare?" the councilor finally said.

"That would be my mother's decision," Pipp calmly replied. "So no. It's not war. Or a punishment. Honestly, it's more like -- congratulations. On the new tourist division and inspirational HoofingIt campaign. So if we're done --"

"-- What. Do. You. Want?"

Pipp smiled again.

"They really are annoying ads," Sunny observed from her end of the kitchen, doing so as the stomping sounds of angry senior hooves on the departure finally began to fade.

"Were," Pipp corrected from her own side.

"Were," Sunny agreed. "Once the server farm finishes erasing the data, anyway. Like the Council agreed. What are you doing over there?"

"Playing that dumb game, since my lives finally recharged on their own." Paused. "I got to the bad part."

"Is it as bad as the Pippsqueaks said?"

"Worse," Pipp glumly announcement. "I think the game developers heard I was looking for them."

"Why?"

"Because the 'me' in the game is this hideous bilious green, talks in wingding fonts, and the only readable text says Parody Is Protected Speech."

"...oh."

"Who," the irritated little princess demanded to know, "was the local historical moron that gave direct attacks a free pass because somepony called one a parody?"

And that was ten minutes.

"It's still stupid," declared the recently-parodied.

Politely, "It's necessary for true freedom of expression. A musician should appreciate that."

Pipp, who didn't want any of her songs getting the historical -- what had been his name? Lactose Reuben? -- treatment, smoothly tabled that fight for later. "Are you going to work?"

"Are you?" came back a little too fast.

"When I'm ready. What about you?"

"Just checking the weather first." Tapping ensued. So did ten seconds of music. Then twenty...

"Pipp?"

"Have you tried looking out a window?"

"I got less of your ads today. A lot less."

A proper princess tried to avoid being saved. But you accepted it, should salvation be necessary. You just did your best to stay out of that situation in the first place. And if it took place...

...you remembered you had a staff.
Fans.
Those who cared about you for -- some reason.
A... home...?

And then you remembered to be grateful.

Protect yourself. (And your IP, zealously.) But when something happened, and subjects were threatened -- and really, some levels of annoyance were their own threat -- then be the Warrior At The Gates.

Rather placidly, "I told the palace staff to cut it back a bit."

With full neutrality, "Why?"

"I've already done a lot of saturation in this area. And overdoing it is worse than not doing it at all."

"I guess you'd know."

"Besides, my Number has a huge head start. I could retire tomorrow and the next pony would need at least five years just to get close."

"Are you going to --"

"-- no."

"Good. I like your music."

Instantly, "The quiz is upstairs under my --"

"-- I," Sunny repeated, "like your music."

The princess silently fumed for a while, then attempted to save her parody self. This was followed by deciding that the bilious green was far better off crushed.

"And," the little royal added, "when you get down to three cities of Pippsqueaks, it's ten more seconds a day for homework. Assuming they don't play the whole song." Fans did that sometimes, or they wouldn't be fans. And if you didn't abuse any of it, they might even stay that way.

"More like forty," Sunny observed. "At least for the weather forecast by itself."

"It's cumulative," Pipp said, because changes generally were. "I'll give it some time. We'll... see how it all goes."