Part one: The Nightmare Arc
Chapter 1, ~~The Saga Begins~~ Friendship Is Magic

“I ruined EVERYTHING!” Twilight wailed, hanging over the edge of the chariot. “I was too excited, I should have looked for more sources, cross-referenced them, and written at least an abstract before sending it to the Princess.”

“That's not true.” The young purple and green drake accompanying her spoke up from where he was sitting reading the latest Power Ponies comic. “You found two references, at least one was written by a primary or secondary source from the incident, and took initiative. If Celestia thought there was a problem she would have told you to do more research, not take a break and make friends.”

Twilight sniffed and looked at him, “But I have friends, I’m part of the Solar Sisters! Moon dancer invited me to her birthday party!”

Spike the dragon sighed, “Were you even going to show up?” he waited a few seconds before continuing. “Celestia is the Steward of the Sun, and a few minor things, and the daughter of Faust herself, so she’s been around forever, if Nightmare Moon was real and was The Mare on the Moon destined to come back tomorrow, I’m sure that she would be well aware of it and have the army mobilized or something.”

Twilight couldn’t find any fault in the young drake’s assessment. That's what I get for raising him to be the best assistant possible and maybe my only real friend. Letting out a sigh of defeat she rested her head on the side of the chariot. “I might as well be a good student then and complete the assignment she gave me. Let’s run over the list again Spike.”

“Alright, give me a moment.” Spike got up from where he was sitting, turned away from the front of the chariot and breathed a thin line of fire on the comic book he had been reading. The green flames ate away the paper in a flash of magic and it disappeared. After waiting a few seconds Spike breathed in, thumped his chest with his claw, and let out a burp of green ash and magic. The plume swirled and coalesced into a scroll which he grabbed out of the air and undid the ribbon holding it together holding it up to read. “Do you want the items in alphabetical order, chronological, or by color?”

“Just read them in the order they are written.” Twilight paused, her funk momentarily forgotten. “Did you say by color? How would you even list a series of actions by color?”

“The first thing on the list is to check the food,” Spike continued on without addressing the question. “It says here that it is being taken care of by the Apple clan at Sweet Apple Acres. The Apple clan is a large family that is spread across Equestria and provides most of our apple products and a few other goods. The next part of the list is to check on the decorations going on in the town hall. The list says that the decoration might take time to complete, as the overseer has a quote, unique fascination with perfection. Sounds like the two of you would get along quite well!” Spike glanced over the top of the scroll and was treated with a grumpy unicorn glare and decided to continue with the list before he could find out if he really could survive freefall.

“The princess wants a clear sky for the night and sunrise, so the Ponyville weather team is setting up cloud barriers just outside the valley and will be cloudbusting the clouds that are inside the area. The main worry is that some wild weather may blow in from the Everfree, but the lead buster Rainbow Dash is supposed to clear them up. And the last thing is that we need to check on the music. The location given is outside of town and there is a note here that says that we need to take care not to spook the choir director.” Spike rolled up the list. “It also reminds you at the bottom to make some friends. I think Celestia wants you to at least try on that part.”

The chariot dipped forward as the pegasus pulling it started their descent. “Landing soon,” one of the two called back to the passengers. “Please keep hooves and tails inside the chariot at all times until your captain has brought the vehicle to a complete stop. Thank you for flying Airquestria, we hope you enjoyed your flight.” The chariot rocked a little as the other pegasus lightly kicked him in the knee.

The descent was rather uneventful all things considered. As the chariot broke through the cloud cover Twilight got her first look at the town of Ponyville. It wasn’t very large all things considered, being in a valley and centered around a building that looked like a very large and enclosed gazebo. The streets were packed dirt and spread out in spokes from the center though it was obvious that once Ponyville had started growing properly this wheel vision was broken by new additions of a few small blocks encompassing a market square and a large tree that was surrounded by a large swath of road. Almost next door to the town, perched on the hills to the south and spreading out into the distance was a large dark green swath of trees and fauna. Higher up the valley the hills were covered with rows and rows of neatly planted apple trees in what Twilight guessed was Sweet Apple Acres. Neatly bisecting the town and flowing down the valley was a singular stream that fed into a small lake below the town before disappearing into another forest, this one seeming lighter and friendlier than the other that bordered it and the town.

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Pinkie Pie noticed the golden chariot descending towards the mainstreet of Ponyville, her errand to buy more nutmeg for Mrs. Pie completely forgotten. This wasn’t the usual mail chariot, this one was white with golden enlay trim and wheels pulled by two white pegasus with gold armor. “Huh,” she lifted a hoof to her chin. “I wonder if Mayor Mare is having visitors early for the Summer Sun celebration.” The Chariot set down rolling to a stop beside the main road to let its passengers off.

“Thank you again,” Twilight said to the drivers, as she stepped off the back. “I appreciate the offer but your job was to bring me to Ponyville, not be my chauffeur for the day.” She started to turn to face the town, “Ok Spike, we have a job to do, let's get it done and over wi-” and came face to face with the most pink pony that she had ever seen. From fetlock to nose the mare was solid light pink, only out done by a deeper somehow even more pink mane and tail that had more curls than the professional team from Vanhoover. “Uhh…. Hi?” Twilight nervously raised a hoof in greeting, “Can I hel-”

The pink pony jumped in the air letting out a large gasp that drew on as she hung mid air for what seemed like an eternity. “YEEEAAHHHHHHHHHH!” the pony let out a cry and finally touching down took off down the mainstreet away from Twilight.

“Wow, Twilight, what did you do?” Spike asked from beside her. “Did you brush your teeth?”

“I didn't do anything” Twilight stared in the direction the pony went. Before picking Spike up in her magic and placing him on her back. “Whatever, the ponies here must be really weird. All the more reason to not hang around too long. What direction is Sweet Apple Acres?”

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Applejack knew someone was coming, with the responsibility to feed so many hungry mouths during the Summer Sun Celebration it was obvious that there would be an inspection at some point. It was a little after noon when she saw a purple unicorn cresting the road near the entrance to the orchard. “Applebloom, I want you to keep an eye on those fritters, I gotta’ go talk to the overseer. I hope she is hungry.”

Twilight looked up from the road to see an orange mare approaching, a brown stetson perched on a braided straw colored mane. “Is this Sweet Apple Acres?” She asked cautiously.

“Sure as shooten’!” came the response. “My name is Applejack, but you can call me AJ, all my friends do, pleased to meetchya!” She grabbed Twilight’s hoof with both of her own and gave a very enthusiastic shaking. Before letting go and turning back towards the orchard, beaconing for Twilight to follow her. “We Apples were very excited when we were asked to take care of the catering for the Celebration. It means a lot to us, and we want everything to be perfect, so we are only cooking up the things that will keep now, we’ll bake up the rest at the Celebration so it's nice and fresh for everypony.”

Meanwhile Spike had to grab Twilight to stop her from continuing to shake even after Applejack had let go. She shot him a look that Spike knew meant Thanks, but if you tell anypony about this you are dead.

No problem, he returned with a slight head nod.

“...why when we realized the amount of ponies that were going to be here, we had to gather the entire family and that took some time. We live all over Equestria, but with ‘em all here we can manage. Of course you’ll probably want to make sure that the food is up to those fancy Canterlot standards of yours.” Applejack stopped by a bell attached to a rope. “I hope you are hungry.” She started yanking the bell. “SOOOUUP’S OOOOONNN!”

Twilight winced at the sudden noise of the bell which was replaced by a large rumbling noise as what seemed like an entire town of ponies converged on the three’s location carrying all manner of baked, fried, cooked, and roasted delights. She quickly found herself shoved into a sitting position behind a picnic table that was being piled high with food as Applejack introduced members of her family.

“...Honeycrisp, Gala, Apple Cobler, Jonagold, Cortland, Black Twig, Apple Strudel, Apple Dumplin and gang, Cosmic Crisp, Belle De Boskoop, Orange Pippin, Evercrisp, Applebloom, Big Macintosh, and Granny Smith.” The Applejack finished as the last Apple's placed their dishes on the massive mound and looked at Twilight expectantly.

“It looks delicious and all,” Twilight began, “but I have a lot of other ponies to check up on and I’m not really hungry at the moment.”

“Awww.” Twilight looked down to see the biggest set of eyes on a filly she had ever seen. “You ain't even going to try even a bite?” The orange eyes on the yellow filly got even bigger and were accompanied by a pouting lip. Twilight felt her heart twinge, it was so… so… heart wrenching.

She let out a sigh, “Oh, ok, I'll try some, I have to make sure everything is ready for the Celebration.” How bad could it be? Right?

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The food wasn't bad, but the stomach ache she had right now sure was. “These Ponies are crazy!” Twilight exclaimed between grimaces of pain, “One runs away from you if you look at them, and others will introduce you to everypony and their dog in their family!”

“You have to admit, the dog was very friendly.” Spike pointed out, still nibbling on an apple danish that he had snagged when they had finally managed to excuse themselves from the swarm of apple farmers.

“But I don't want to be friends, I have a job to -URP!” Twilight covered her mouth with a hoof as her stomach continued its rebellion for being overused as storage. “I just want to get these check in’s finished so I can do more research on Nightmare Moon. We need to check on the decorations in town hall then the weather team right?”

“Yup,” Spike replied, “then the final one is with the music and you can check out the place that Princess Celestia got for you to stay at.” He lowered his voice and whispered in a sing-song voice, “It's the town libraryyyyy.”

Twilight never had a chance to respond.

The nap had been wonderful, and Rainbow felt recharged and ready for some practice rounds of her planned routine for showing off to the Wonderbolts. Sure they had that young flyers competition in a month or two with the winners getting invited to audition for the Wonderbolts, but it was never too early to start training, and giving a private show without other competitors.

And then something went wrong during a loop-de-loop and Rainbow found herself sitting on top of a purple unicorn in a mudpuddle mixed with bits of apple pie and other baked goods. A quick self check confirmed no broken limbs or major bruises on herself. “Sorry about that,” She quickly got off the downed mare, “Are you alright?”

Twilight stood up despite feeling like Celestia had dropped Canterlot Castle on her from orbit, her stomach felt much better. Why does my stomach not…. oh. mud dripped off of her as she looked up at her assailant who was now hovering just overhead. “Well, I'm covered in mud and will be even more purple tomorrow, but just fine, Thank you.”Please just let me get my job done, you town of crazy ponies!

“Hold on, I'll be right back!” The cyan pegasus zipped off grabbing a dark cloud from the sky and placing it over Twilight. Twillight almost didn't hear her say “I’ll get you cleaned up in no time!” before a torrential downpour blasted her in the face effectively rinsing the mud off of Twilight. Spike had wisely gotten out of the way and onto a little higher ground. “Oops, guess I over did it with the water.” The mare looked down from the now white cloud at the very wet and now grumpy unicorn. “Don't worry, I’ll get you dry!”

Twilight wanted to say no, it seemed that no matter what this winged paint pallet did, it ended up failing at Twilight's expense. But before she could say a word the pegasus kicked the cloud away and dove into a tight spiral around twilight going faster and faster creating a high-pitched whining and a technicolored tornado around Twilight. She could feel the warm air pulled into the tornado and knew that the moisture was being blown off. But something was wrong.

Spike tried to keep it in, his clawed hand covering his mouth. “Twilight? Are you ok?” The tactless pegasus on the other hoof didn't bother and fell on her back in fits of laughter.

Twilight decided to ignore how ridiculous she must look at the moment and instead decided to get some work done. “You are Rainbow Dash, right?”

“Yup! That’s me!” Rainbow Dash wiped tears away from her eyes with a fetlock. “I assume you have heard of my amazing awesomeness and want a signature? No wait, you must be a press pony! Here for an interview with the future leader of the Wonderbolts?”

Twilight channeled her most disappointed teacher look she could muster. “No, I’m here to oversee the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration. One of which was a clear sky,” she made a point of levitating the list over to herself and reading it. “Which is not complete, and as the head cloud buster for Ponyville, failing to perform your job would definitely end up as a black mark on your career.” Pause for Dramatic effect™ “And would result in being removed from any lists for Wonderbolt candidates." She hoped that somepony would take her seriously, though her current manestyle probably was working against her.

“Oh, please, I could clear this whole sky in ten seconds flat.” Rainbow boasted.

“Prove it.” The challenge came.

There were many things that Rainbow Dash would refuse, a hooficure, reading books or those fancy horse doovers that fancy ponies served at ‘parties.’ But a challenge when her honor was on the line was something that Dash couldn't resist.

“You're on.” Dash proclaimed before disappearing faster than Twilight would have thought possible for a pegasus. She found that she was only able to follow the blur by following the rainbow contrail that was left behind by the speeding pegasus.

The rainbow blur danced in a maze of corners and corkscrews through the sky above Ponyville, the clouds disappearing as soon as they were touched. Then as suddenly as it had started Twilight found the blur coming to a stop right in front of her resolving into the cyan pegasus.

“You should see the look on your face right now! But as I was saying earlier, I'd never leave Ponyville hanging. Also you could loosen up a little, I don't know how it goes down in your high up committees or such, but you can have fun and still get the job done. Now I need to go take a nap. Bye!” Before Twilight could get a word in edge wise Dash was gone.

“I guess we should check on the decorations then.” Twilight sighed as Spike crossed off ‘Weather’ on the list.

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“We are currently 100 out of a 100 for crazy ponies, let's hope that the pony in charge of decorations is somewhat sane.” Twilight muttered as they pushed open the door to the town hall. To her surprise it looked… good. A tasteful amount of ribbons and streamers stretched from beam to beam. The wood floor had been polished to gleaming, the colors of the surprising amount of jewels attached to the walls and support columns made a color gradient around the large interior that matched Celestia's hair.

“Beautiful…” Spike muttered.

“Yeah,” Twilight agreed, ”It looks good.”

“Not the decorations Twi, her.” He pointed to a white unicorn with a purple mane that was giving instructions to two earth ponies that were both pink and light blue but inverted from each other.

“Spike, there are so many things wrong with that statement.” Twilight sighed and trotted forward. “Excuse me, are you the pony in charge of decorations?”

The unicorn stopped talking and started to turn, “Why yes darling, what can I help you wi… Dear Celestia! what happened to your mane!”

Twilight was taken back by the abrupt change in the unicorn's tone. The Unicorn reached Twilight and started tugging at her hair with a comb that Twilight hadn't seen her gather. “A crazy weather pony knocked me down and helped me clean up.” Twilight haistily tried to switch topics as her scalp screamed at the forces it was being subjected to. “I’m just here to make sure that all the preparations for tomorrow are going well.”

“You're the inspector!” The unicorn gasped, again “I’m so sorry for what Rainbow Dash did. Oh you probably think we are all backwater hicks that don't know how to be civilized. My name is Rarity and I'm in charge of the decorations, I can only hope they are up to your expectations. I would have done more, but I only found out about the job and took over a few days ago. I simply didn't have time to order better materials. It was the WORST. POSSIBLE. THING!” Rarity stopped her rambling to pull an ornate velvet covered couch from somewhere and fainted back on it.

Twilight and Spike looked at each other. Let's get out of here

Sure thing, I'll check decorations off of the list.

The two beat a hasty and silent retreat out the door of the town hall intent on finding the choir conductor.

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The instructions said that the conductor lived on the south side of Ponyville near the dark green forest which, according to the one local who seemed nice enough when Twilight asked for directions, was called the Forever Free Forest. Spike thought this was a weird name but said nothing.

It didn't take very long to find the conductor, there was a gap between Ponyville and the forest, but it was just a few hills of grassland with a few trees. As the duo caught sight of the cottage beside the forest, they heard the sound of music off to one side of the path.

Pushing the tall grass to the side Twilight and Spike were rewarded with the sight of a yellow pegasus with long pink hair gently waving a baton. The trees that she was facing were covered with every manner of song bird, each singing or chirping in time with the conductor. Except for the one large blue jay on the end which was tapping a triangle with a clear look of birdy disdain on its face.

Once the song ended Twilight stepped forward. “That sounded lovely.”

The effect was immediate. The pegasus let out an ‘eep!’ and jumped in the air to face Twilight.

“Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to startle you or anything. I'm Twilight Sparkle, and I'm here to check on the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration. What's your name? My list didn't give me a name.”

A soft whisper of sound escaped the pegasus’ lips as she tried to pull even farther into herself. A soft twittering started to rise from the birds. A few of them flitted over to the pegasus and landed on her back.

“I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that?” Twilight wanted to lean in, but she didn't want to startle the poor thing.

“I'm…” Came a little louder but faded into mumbles again.

“It's ok, if you don't want to I don't have to write your name down.” Twilight wasn't sure how to reassure her.

“Twi, it's getting late, we might want to head back to town to get some research done and maybe some sleep.” Spike spoke up from where he was beside Twilight. A soft gasp was all the warning he got before he was almost tackled by a pegasus.

“A baby dragon! Oh my Pan, you are so precious. I’ve never seen one of you before! I'm Fluttershy and I have so many questions. What do you eat? Where are your parents?”

Spike was initially taken aback by Fluttershy's sudden change. However, after a day of being stuck on the sidelines he was ready to interact with someone who was interested in him instead of Twilight. “I'm Spike! Best baby brother and assistant in ALL of Equestria!” He spread his arms wide at the proclamation.

Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes, another pony that was completely bonkers. She used her magic to lift Spike up and place him on her back. Spike didn’t stop or pause the whole walk back as he spun the story of his life to Fluttershy who followed them the entire walk back to town. Twilight had to figure out a way to get rid of her before they got to the library if she wanted to get any research done.

Author's Note

Alright first chapter break. At first this may seem like a ctrl+C and ctrl+V of the first part of the episode with minor changes. Yes and no. Those are huge changes, and are mainly for future reference (If I get there). As I write this I plan on posting this chapter right after the prologue so no character Q&A here, next chapter though.

The first big character change I want to address is Spike. For several reasons, I am channeling as much younger brother chaotic snark as I can into him. (for reference I am a younger brother with an older bookish sister, it comes easily. Yes she agreed to be my beta reader under duress.) The show often underplayed Spike and made him make stupid decisions. Yeah he's young, so street wise, he won't be very smart. But factually he is a huge nerd. You don't have an obsessed older sibling without naturally picking up on a few of those things that they are into.

Second, no Sparity, or Rarispike. I'm not a huge shipper or romance fan. And the thing was always played for laughs but it disturbed me. Don't worry they will still have some good interactions… I think. The final thing is Spike has a subspace pocket. He does something like this in the episode “Spike at your Service” where he makes a card appear from his breath without someone sending it. It will be used and I will set some usage rules. Don't you worry.

Also don't forget to ask the characters questions, if you want, thats fine if you don't. The 4th wall will be only slightly bruised.