Chapters Light shone into the Ponyville library through the windows, and a small beam of light hit Spike squarely in the face. This had the unfortunate side-effect of waking him up. He groaned as he realized that he was no longer asleep.
“Why can’t I ever reach my goal?” he muttered irritatedly. “Just once in my life, I’d like to be able to sleep for one full day. 24 hours of uninterrupted sleep…” He sighed. “I don’t see that ever happening, sadly.”
“You don’t see what happening?” Twilight asked as she came down the stairs from her upstairs bedroom. Her mane was perfectly combed, and a faint scent of flowers followed her as she passed by her number-one assistant.
“You remember my ultimate sleeping goal, don’t you?” Spike asked as he stretched. He was slowly but surely resigning himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be getting back to sleep.
“Oh yeah,” Twilight said with a laugh. “A whole day of being asleep. Sorry, but not today. We have to get everything ready for Winter Wrap-Up. It’s in a couple of days, you know.”
Suddenly, a knock came from the front door. “I’ll get it…” Spike groaned as he walked over to the door. When he opened it up, there was nopony standing there. However, there was a small package in front of the entrance.
“Hey, Twilight!” Spike called out, picking up the package. “Were you expecting a delivery?” As he shut the door, he saw the town mailmare flying away in her usual erratic manner.
“No…” Twilight responded, bringing out a cup of tea. “Why, did we get one?”
“Yep, and it’s addressed to you.”
Twilight got the box and brought it up to her study. She used her magic to open up the box, then looked inside it. What she saw surprised her.
“I- what?”
“What is it?” Spike asked. In response, he was shown a small plush toy that looked oddly familiar.
“Wait. Is that… is that you?”
“Sure looks like it…” Twilight responded warily. “But why on earth would somepony want to send me a stuffed animal of myself? That makes absolutely no sense.”
“Can I see it?” Twilight levitated it over to Spike, who took it into his scaly hands. “Hmm… it’s rather intricate. Someone really took the time to do this right.” He started playing with it, making the legs move about in rather erratic directions.
“Oof!” Spike looked up to find Twilight face-down on the ground, her legs splayed out in all different directions. He couldn’t help but laugh at this. Soon, his laughter was so much that he fell on the ground, rolling around.
“Oh come on, this is not funny! My legs just gave out on me for no reason at all!”
Spike got up, still laughing. “Okay, okay…” He set the doll down on the ground, and went to help Twilight up. When he had done so, he went back over and picked the doll back up, Twilight shaking herself off behind her.
He started to do other things to it, at first just making the forehooves clap. He was about to move on to something else, when he noticed what Twilight was doing. “Um, Twi…? Why are you clapping?”
Her attention, though, was fixated on the doll. “Oh no, Spike… You need to give that to me, now!” She used her magic to grab it out of Spike’s hands and bring it to her. Sure enough, when it left his hands, she stopped clapping her forehooves together.
“Why did you take it?” Spike demanded. “It wasn’t causing any harm!” Twilight wasn’t listening, though; she already had her nose buried in a book.
“Are you listening to me, even?”
She looked up after a minute. “Spike… I think this is a voodoo doll.”
“A what?” Spike was looking very confused at this.
“Come look.” Spike went over to the book and looked at it. “It says here that they’re dolls that can supposedly be used to control ponies. Whatever you do to the doll, the same things are done to the actual pony…”
“Whoa.” Twilight nodded and levitated the doll up to the highest shelf. “No one uses that for now. Not until we can figure out how to use it without activating it.”
They left the room, both unaware of a pony watching them from the window, a wide grin on her face.
“Well, now… Maybe Trixie isn’t the only Great and Powerful one…”
“What in tarnation have y’all been doin’ in here?”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders looked up from a stack of papers that they were all looking at. There in front of them, they saw the stern face of the older sister of one of the Crusaders’ roster members.
“This place is a darn mess!” Applejack declared. “How on Equestria can y’all stand ta live in such… substandard livin’ conditions?”
“It isn’t that messy in here!” Scootaloo proclaimed. “Sure, there are papers in here everywhere, and Sweetie’s got one of her fashion projects over there in the corner-“ She pointed to the back of the clubhouse where, sure enough, one of Rarity’s ponyquins sat with a few scraps of fabric tacked onto it here and there- “but it’s not like we don’t know where everything is! We can get around just fine!”
Applejack was about to respond when she sniffed the air. Her nose wrinkled up. “What… what is that smell? It smells like a week-old sandwich…”
“Oh, that?” Scootaloo pointed to the window- more specifically, a plate with a very moldy sandwich on it. “We’re trying to grow things! Maybe we can get our cutie marks as botanists!”
AJ looked at the three Crusaders. “Ah had no idea it was this bad in here… I tell ya what. If y’all don’t get this cleaned up by the end of the day… Ya can’t use the clubhouse to meet in anymore. Ya hear me?” She walked away before receiving anything close to a proper response.
Scootaloo and Sweetie looked at each other, then over to Applebloom. They put determined faces on.
“What has to be done, has to be done…” And thus, they set to work.
Applebloom went around back and pulled over a trash can. “First off, we need to throw everything away that we’re absolutely sure that we don’t need.”
They started to go through everything that they had in the clubhouse with them. As they sorted through all their various collections, they very quickly came to a realization: they could name potential future uses for just about everything that they had there.
“Like these drawings that Sweetie did for those wings,” Applebloom pointed out. “We might be able to use those if we have to do some stuff for Nightmare Night, like we did last year.”
“Or these old scraps of carpet and rugs that are over here,” replied Scootaloo. “Those could be used for when we have to do the set design for the big play again, later on this year.”
“So what are we going to do?” Sweetie asked. “Obviously, our former plan isn’t going to do us very well.”
They thought for a minute. “How’s about this,” Applebloom finally replied. “Let’s just keep the stuff we know we’re gonna need sometime in the next few months or so. The rest, we can just re-do if we decide that we’re going to need it again.” It sounded like a good enough plan to them, so they set off on it.
As they worked, the sun beat down hard upon them, as it was the middle of the day when it was the hottest. Sweat beaded off their faces, but still they kept on going. If it meant them being able to keep the official clubhouse of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, they were going to do anything in order to make that dream a reality.
It took them about three hours to get everything separated into piles. When they finally finished, they all collapsed onto the floor, breathing rather heavily.
“Can we please… take a break…” Applebloom gasped.
“Yeah… It’s really hot out here, and we’re all pretty tired…” Sweetie added.
Scootaloo was going to put on a bravado show and say something about how she was feeling just fine and she could keep working, but she just didn’t have the energy to do so. So, she simply replied, “Yeah, let’s rest a bit.”
They all closed their eyes and laid on the floor there. When next they opened their eyes-
“It’s night-time!” Applebloom exclaimed. “We slept through the whole afternoon!”
“Oh man, we gotta get everything done!” They started rushing around, only to find something wasn’t right about their clubhouse.
“Everything’s done already!” Scootaloo exclaimed when she finally figured it out. “Someone came in and cleaned for us!” Just then, Applejack came in.
“Wow, y’all really did a heck of a job on this place!” she said in awe. “I’m impressed. Come on, let’s go eat some dinner.”
Applejack led the way, and the Crusaders followed. As they walked, they made a solemn pact to each other: never would they tell Applejack about what really happened.
The Great Nap would be their own little secret.
Dear Rainbow Dash,
Hey! You remember me? I sincerely hope so, considering that it hasn’t really been all that long since I’ve left Ponyville. I was that little ball of orange fluff that followed you around everywhere… idolized you… even told some ponies that won’t be named at this particular time that I was in love with you. I wasn’t, mind you, not then anyways. I just wanted to make them jealous of me even more.
You know who I am, I think.
Anyways, that intro is long enough, so I’m just going to go ahead and get to the meat of this letter. It’s been almost two years since I’ve gone from Ponyville. I remember the reactions of Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, when I told them that I’d gotten a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a junior Wonderbolt.
They were… mixed, to say the least. I think they were happy for me deep down, but they couldn’t really show it. And honestly, I don’t blame them. We’d been through so much together, and they just couldn’t bear to part with me. They knew I had to go, though, which is why they didn’t put up too much of a fight- not in front of anyone, at least.
Truth be told, I almost didn’t go, because… well, I had those same feelings about you. I didn’t want to leave you. You were my inspiration, the reason why I decided to go out for that junior Wonderbolt position in the first place.
There’s something else I want to tell you, but I don’t think I can do it by myself… So I’ll tell you what. I heard this awesome song the other day and it’s got some really cool lyrics. I know it’ll be kinda cheesy, but I think it’ll help me tell you what I need to get out.
Here goes nothing…
Feeling the past moving in, letting a new day begin…
I can’t look back at the past, Rainbow Dash. As much as I want to look back, I have to look forward. Don’t take that as me saying that I’m going to forget about you. I never could do that… That simply means that I can’t keep looking back and thinking about how good everything was. If I do that, then I’ll never move forward. I’ll never leave Ponyville, never stop being that small filly that zips around on her scooter. As much as I hate it… I have to move on with my life.
Hold to the time that you know, you don’t have to move on to let go…
I know I just said what I said, but that doesn’t mean that either of us have to forget the awesome times that we had together. All the flying lessons that you gave me (and sometimes Fluttershy), the times where we just hung out at your place and played Call of Cutie or Haylo… They are all memories that I want to cherish forever, and honestly I hope you want that as well. I don’t want to ever forget you.
Add to the memory you keep, remember when you fall asleep…
Sometimes I know you’re going to miss me. You’ll never admit it to anyone, especially not that griffon you always hang around with. Gilda, was that her name? I’m glad, just on a brief tangent, that you two made up with each other. You’re cool friends, I can tell. Anyways, you can miss me all you want to, RD. I won’t tell anyone.
Besides, it’s natural to miss someone who’s as close as we’ve been these past few years. You helped me overcome a lot of my fears about the uncertainty of the future, and… well, I can never thank you enough for that.
Hold to the love that you know, you don’t have to give up to let go …
You’re a supremely awesome pony. I know that people tell you that all the time, and you really don’t believe it- aw man, I almost wrote that with a straight face. Who am I kidding; you know exactly how awesome you are, and you’re not afraid to let anyone know it. And that, I think, is the reason why I feel as strongly for you as I do. You’re just that awesome. I think deep down inside, too, you feel the same… At least, that’s what I hope.
Remember turning on the night, and moving through the morning light,
Remember how it was with you, remember how you pulled me through…
I’m going to say it flat-out, Rainbow: you are the reason why I am the pony I am today. Above all else, you are the reason. So I’m going to end this here by saying one more thing. I love you, Rainbow Dash. You’re my big sister, my hero, my guide… and at the same time, so much more than all those things.
I remember.
Yours forever,
Scootaloo
It was a warm spring day. The sun had just come up over the horizon, bathing Canterlot with its rays of pure light. Celestia smiled as she admired her handiwork, as she always did when she rose the morning sun.
“Today will be a beautiful day,” she said to herself. “Not only do I have the honor of having my parents over for a spot of afternoon tea, but they’re bringing some friends as well.” She laughed to herself. “I wonder how they will feel when they meet-“
“CELESTIA!! SISTER, PLEASE HELP!!!”
Immediately, her guard was up. She could recognize that voice anywhere.
“Luna?” she called out. “Luna, where are you? What’s wrong?”
The form of the dark-colored alicorn soon came up over the hilltop, running at a speed that Celestia had never even seen her run before. She had a fearful look on her face, and tears were streaming down from her close eyes.
“What is it, Luna? What’s got you so scared?”
“Out there… in the forest. I saw a beast so foul and murderous, it might as well have been a demon!”
Celestia’s mind immediately flashed to the Changelings, and her face paled. “We must act quickly!” She jumped down from the balcony to the ground below.
“Art thou crazy?!” Luna called out. “That beast shall surely slay you, if you were to go near it!” Nevertheless, as Celestia flew off toward the forest, Luna followed her. She couldn’t bear to see her sister come to any harm, but if it were to happen, she didn’t want to be anywhere else but by her side, defending her… maybe to the death.
As Luna caught up to Celestia, the ruler of the day turned to her and demanded, “Tell me as we go, Luna! What did this thing look like?”
“It had a pair of wings coming out of the back of it- not like our wings, but more rounded and small. It had the look of death itself upon its face!”
“How big was it?”
“Well, not very big… but still it was monstrous!”
This spurred Celestia on even more. To have such a small creature be able to invoke such a fearful response from the princess of the night- especially when she was not so far removed from being controlled by Nightmare Moon- Celestia knew that this creature had to be fearful and foul indeed.
As they flew, Celestia continued: “Where did you see it?”
“It was in an abandoned house. I merely was curious and wanted to see what was inside it, but when I went in… I was scared nearly to death by the beast!”
Celestia’s mind was whirring a million miles a minute, and in almost no time at all she’d figured out where it was that Luna had saw the creature. “Keep up!” she ordered as she flew on at speeds unlike any that had been seen in quite awhile.
“Why are we doing this?” Luna asked loudly, to carry her voice over the wind whipping past them as they flew. “Why dost thou not just send the royal guards to dispatch the foul thing?”
“This merits personal attention,” Celestia replied. “And besides… no creature messes with my younger sister and gets away with it!”
In a few moments, they had arrived at the dilapidated old wreck of a house. Celestia and Luna landed, and walked up to the doorway of the house- not that there was a door still standing there, mind you. It had been taken down long ago.
“My sister,” Luna whispered, “there is truly no need for this. I do not want you getting hurt, and-“
Celestia raised a hoof to silence her, and Luna fell quiet in spite of her wanting to keep on voicing her misgivings. Peering into the house, she surveyed her surroundings. Just then, something flew out of a shadowy corner at them.
“That is it!” Luna cried out, skittering backwards. “That is the foul beast! It needs to be destroyed before any more lives can fall to its predation!”
Celestia looked at Luna dumbfounded, then began to laugh uproariously, falling down onto the ground and rolling around.
“What is so amusing?!” Luna demanded. “That thing almost killed me!”
Celestia had to wait until her laughter had subsided enough for her to be able to speak, and when she did so, her flanks pained her from laughing so much: “Dear sister… there is truly nothing for you to worry about. Those creatures cannot harm you.”
“Are… are you sure?” Celestia nodded, and Luna relaxed a bit.
“Come on, Luna. Let’s go back to the castle and have ourselves some calming tea.” They flew away, Celestia still laughing. Inside the house, the creatures that Luna saw still flitted about elegantly in the sunlight.
The next time that she came out there- if she did at all- Luna would hopefully have learned that there is really nothing to fear... from the common butterfly.
“Are you sure, Miss Rarity? You’re really going to wait that long until your next appointment?”
Rarity looked at the twin spa ponies and smiled kindly. “I do not wish to do so,” she replied, “but business just isn’t at its peak lately… Neither I nor Fluttershy have had the bits to be able to come here and get our regular treatments.”
“We do miss her…” Aloe stated.
“I know you do, and she will be back soon, as will I. Until business picks up, though, I’m just going to have to wait.” She inclined her head respectfully, then opened the door and left.
As soon as the door shut behind her, Aloe looked at her sister and smiled. “She was the last appointment of the day, wasn’t she?”
Lotus went and checked the appointment book. “Why, as a matter of fact, she was!”
The two sisters grinned at each other. They could actually close early today! Days like this were rare, indeed, but when they came along the sisters jumped on the chance to actually take advantage of them. Every time.
Aloe quickly went to the door and flipped the sign over. It now read “Sorry, We Are Closed” to any curious outside passers-by. While she was doing this, Lotus swept up the front area and wiped down all the surfaces. They prided themselves on cleanliness; it was the most popular spa in Ponyville, after all, and one of the most popular in all of Equestria.
Once they were done with that, they looked at each other and smiled widely. The whole rest of the day was theirs and theirs alone.
“So what do you want to do?” Aloe asked as they made their way to the back of the spa. No one knew it, but the building that the spa was located in, was actually much bigger than the eye first recognized. The spa was just the part that everyone saw; very rarely was anyone ever actually allowed into the back part of the spa, which was actually Aloe and Lotus’ house.
Occasionally, they’d let someone go back there, but that was for more… personal massages.
“I do not know,” admitted Lotus. “This is always the problem when we actually get a short day. We get them so infrequently that when they do come, we never know what to do.”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll figure out something!” Aloe giggled. “Hey, maybe we could give each other makeovers! We do them for our customers all day long-“
“Which is precisely why I don’t want to do it on my off-time,” Lotus interjected. “It’s not you that I have a problem with doing it for, but simply that we’re already doing it for so long that it’s easy to get burn-out.”
“Ooh, okay. You’re probably right.”
Suddenly, Lotus got a mischievous idea. “Say, Aloe… How would you like to go see a movie? Nightmare Night is coming up soon, so there’s bound to be some good movies out in the theatre.”
Aloe looked at her sister warily. “Come on, Lotus… You know I don’t like scary movies, and those are all that’s playing when they’re doing their Nightmare Night lead-up.” She shivered. “You know I get nightmares whenever I see a horror movie.”
“What about A Knight-Mare on Sycamore Street? You seemed to like those movies well enough, and part VIII just released yesterday.” This got Aloe’s attention. What her sister was saying was true: she didn’t get as scared at the Knight-mare on Sycamore Street films than she did at most other horror films. In fact, she rather liked the main character.
“Okay,” she finally relented. “We can go to a movie, but on one condition. I get to pick the place where we go eat. Last time, that all-organic place you took us to, gave me the-“
“I know what it gave you…” Lotus groaned in remembrance. “Besides, that was just because the vegetables they used were bad, and that was just that one time.” She sighed. “But yes, you can pick where we eat.”
Aloe grinned. “Then let’s get going. We’re gonna have a blast!”
It was almost dark by the time the sisters made it back to their place. They were laughing together as they recollected their favorite scenes from the movie. Just as Lotus had thought, Aloe had no problem with that particular film; on the contrary, she loved it.
Lotus was a fan as well, so it wasn’t like she was being left out in any way.
When they got inside, Aloe yawned. “Man, I’m tired. I think it’s time to hit the hay.” Lotus agreed, and they went into their bedroom. After they’d gotten themselves ready for bed, they both snuggled up to each other under the covers.
Vinyl rolled over in her bed, startled awake by her alarm clock. She flailed a bit wildly at the time-box that was making all that racket. She didn’t really want to open her eyes, not yet anyways. That would mean that she would have to resign herself to being awake, and she never liked that.
Finally, her hoof found the alarm clock, and she shut it off.
She groaned and sat up in her bed. She looked at the empty bed beside her, and sighed in resignation. She needed to find herself a roommate, and quickly. Her DJ work just wasn’t paying the bits that it used to.
She stumbled groggily over to her laptop and fired it up, waiting for the password screen to come up. She typed it in- “octaviaisbestpony”- and upon pressing the enter key, smiled as her desktop wallpaper came up. It was a picture of her and her marefriend, Octavia, from when they had gone to Manehattan to do their first-ever mash-up performance.
To both their surprises, it had gone much better than either had expected.
Suddenly, Vinyl face-hoofed. “Oh damn. I forgot I promised my fans that I’d have a new song for the concert tonight! I’ve gotta come up with something, and quick!”
While her mind raced with possible synth lines and wub patterns, she checked into PonySpace, accepting her usual morning quota of friend requests and checking out the 15 or so messages that normally awaited her after a night of not having been on the site.
As she scrolled down through her new messages, she noticed one from Record Scratch, her older brother who was also a wildly popular DJ. She grinned as she clicked on the message; she always loved hearing from her older sibling.
“Hey, Vinyl!” the message started out. “I remembered that the last time we saw each other at the family reunion, you’d mentioned to me that you were looking for more artists to give you inspiration. Well, I found one that I think you might like. His name is Skrillex, and-“
She had to stop reading there and scratch her head. “Skrillex? What on earth kind of name is that?” She shrugged and kept reading.
“-And he’s gotten really popular in a pretty short period of time. I think his style might be right up your alley, Vinyl. You might want to give him a listen and see if maybe he could give you the inspiration you’ve been looking for. Love always, Your brother.”
Vinyl got up and went over to the coffee pot that sat on her bedside table- yes, that’s where she chose to keep her coffee maker- and turned it on, pouring the water and coffee grounds where they needed to go. After that was done, she went back over to her computer and started typing a reply to her brother.
“Hey, bro! Thanks for writing me; I miss you so much. Maybe the next time I’m up in Detrot, we can hang out for a minute. Anyways, thanks for the recommendation. I’m fixing to look him up on PonyTube and listen to some of his stuff. I’ll let you know what I think of him. All the love, Vinyl.”
With that done and over with, she pulled up a new tab and went to PonyTube, signing in under her regular username, ibringdawubz. After successfully doing this, she typed “skrillex dubstep” into the search bar and pressed Enter. A moment later, the search results filled the page.
“Huh. Interesting song titles… Which one do I want to listen to first? First of the Year? Kyoto? Or maybe Ruffneck…?”
After a moment, she remembered her coffee and levitated the pot over to her, pouring herself a cup. The aroma of gingerbread filled the room, and she closed her eyes and smiled before taking a sip.
“Oh, yeah… that hits the spot.” When she opened up her eyes, she clicked on the first track she saw. “Okay, here we go… Bangarang. Interesting title…”
The sounds coming out of her speakers intrigued her, and she kept listening. As she sat there and drank her first cup of coffee, though, she found her interest waning.
“Well…” she murmured to herself. “I’m not sure I like this too much. The beats are way too simplistic and repetitive, not to mention way too formulaic… Dubstep is supposed to be chaos refined, and this… well, this is just not good at all.”
She resolved to listen to the whole song, though, and she did. When it ended, she gazed at the computer screen. “Okay, one more song. Maybe that wasn’t one of his better tracks. It was the first one I clicked on, anyways.”
She listened to a few more songs before sighing in disgust. How on earth could anypony actually like this artist? She found nothing really redeeming about his music.
A small smile crept over her face. “Well, I guess it wasn’t a total waste… Now I know what not to make my music sound like.”
