Pathes Not Taken

This scene was something I had planned in the very early stages of SOS; discarded before I even got to the stage where the scene would fit, but still wrote because I found it amusing. Shining Armor and his party were going to have met Reaper and his Rangers, (though I hadn’t invented Reaper yet) earlier and traveled with them for some time. Also the flares were going to work more like fireworks/rockets once lit until I wondered if you needed magic to light them, why make them fly in one direction when you can use telekinesis to move them wherever you want? When they were camping; Twilight and another Ranger Sure Shot were on watch, heard strange noises and went to investigate. They crawl behind a log and then Sure Shot peaks over-

“What in the world?“ Sure Shot pulled out his cross bow and cocked it; Twilight looked over the log to see Pinkie Pie, using her party cannon to shoot all the trees around her, humming merrily to herself.

“Wait!"

“There's no way that this is real,” said Sure Shot, “It’s one of the most basic tricks there is. Cute mare, lost and confused in the woods, you go up and try to help her and things turn ugly.” Sure Shot aimed to fire; but Twilight quickly stood up and fired one of her flares towards what looked like Pinkie

“OOOOO;" squealed Pinkie with delight; “Fire works!" Pinkie Pie bounced in-place, open mouthed, until the flare shot into her mouth, causing her to double back, gagging and eventually sneezing twin jets of fire out her nostrils. “Yuck!” protested Pinkie, spitting out an empty husk.

“Pinkie?”

“Twilight!” yelled Pinkie angrily, bounding over as if to attack her, face red, “Twilight how could you!?”

“How did you get out here?”

“How could you betray me like this? I have always invited you to my parties. Always! Why didn’t you invite me to your party? Do you not want to be friends anymore?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just now?”  asked Pinkie; “I was setting up decorations for your party, the one you didn’t invite me to.“

“What party?”

“The search party!”

............................................................................................................................................................I had a LOT of trouble writing the Shining Armor/ Twilight fight scene in chapter 18; not knowing what was meant to happen, sometimes I just started writing and saw where it went. This was going to happen right after Shining Armor picked up the sword, I never really liked because even being exhausted, Shining Armor wouldn't be this stupid, but it still made an interesting read .

Shining Armor dropped and barrel rolled to the side, bringing one of the swords down on his abandoned position, slicing clean through a timber wolf which vanished upon impact. Shining Armor regained his hooves and began scanning the glade; looking not just for what he could see but what he couldn't. If the terrormongers were amateurs there may be a section of the forest that he'd have trouble focusing on, and their own shrouds would have given away their locations. They weren’t amateurs.

There was a hiss. Shining Armor saw too late the cobra about to strike. He lifted his hoof as fast as possible, but the cobra shot out like lightning, bit his hoof and vanished into thin air. The flapping of scaled wings aimed for the back of his head caused him to buckle, rolling onto his back as he brought both swords to slice through a cockatrice, bit it too vanished on the impact.

Several minutes of this had Shining Armor nervous; the terrormongers weren’t trying to hurt him. Terrormongers almost never killed their prey outright, but fed on them as long as possible, sometimes days, but they always started by hurting a prey just enough that they were no longer considered a threat. They were treating him as someone they didn't think was dangerous meaning he was either against some very powerful necromancers, or they were trying to scare him with false confidence.

It didn’t matter; the fact that they intended to take their time on him gave Shining Armor hope. It meant they didn't know that within striking distance was a Canterlot princess and a body which would soon have monolithic strength, who were momentarily defenseless. There was a pause of a few seconds, and then, everything changed as a hurricane seemed to explode from within the glade, and dozens of forest creeps rushed him from all sides.

What had he done!?

............................................................................................................................................................I had planned the last meeting between Rainbow Dash and Rarity long before I wrote it, but when I first tried to write it I got carried away and ended up writing this instead. The next day I looked it over, knew I‘d gone too far and decided to write the version I‘d planned. This cuts off when Rarity is trying to get Rainbow Dash to feel her cats

“Pet him Dash, feel how soft he is.”

Rainbow reached forth and stroked him twice. “Nice.”

“Oh, that wasn’t enough Rainbow Dash! You need to really feel him.” Rarity lifted Frazzles in her telekinesis and began rubbing him up and down Rainbow’s neck and wing.

“Very nice.” Complimented Rainbow slowly, more than a little uncomfortable with the weirdness of the situation.

“But how can you say that when you haven’t felt any of the others!?” Protested Rarity vehemently, “We define our quality by comparing ourselves to others, and cat’s must be no different!” Rarity immediately grabbed the cats Rainbow assumed to be Turquoise and Sapphire and began rubbing one of them on her neck and wing opposite to Frazzles, and the other she rubbed up and down her belly, tickling her mercilessly, as the three cats meowed incessantly. “See how Sapphire’s coat is grainy and stringy, while Turquoises fur sticks together like it hasn’t been washed? Now feel Frazzles perfect hide. Fit for a princess!” Rarity levitated Frazzles in front of her face, rubbing his belly with her hoof as she continues to abrade Dash with her other tom cats who seemed as uncomfortable as Dash was feeling. “Why you have such a nice coat Mr. Frazzles; why, I could just rip it right off of you and make you into a coat. Yes I could. Yes I could.”

Frazzles lashed out with a claw against Rarity’s forehoof causing her to draw back in horror. “Mr. Frazzles! How dare you!” Rarity dropped him onto the floor but didn’t let him go from her telekinesis, “After all the kindness I’ve shown you- you… you deserve to be punished!” The cat looked up at her and hissed, “OK fine, you can run an errand for me instead.” Rarity levitated over a blank piece of paper and put in on the ground in front of Frazzles, “Take this message to the palace and deliver it personally to Princess Celestia, just tell the guards at the gates that you’re from me and they’ll let you in. Oh and if you see Valor Hunk there, scratch him for me! He hasn’t been returning my love letters.” Frazzles looked at her and cocked his head, “Alright, Alright, you win. You can deliver the message after your music lesson.”

Rarity released Frazzles who walked to a corner of the room and began licking himself. Rainbow Dash crept a little bit closer to the fasionista, “Rarity, how about you sit down and have a drink of water.”

“Oh there’s no time for that Rainbow Dash! No time at all! I’ve just received word that somepony has been spreading the insidious rumor that you’re resigning from the Wonderbolts! Can you imagine! Now I suspect Spitfire is behind this attempted coup since she has the most to benefit from you gone, but I’ll bet we can trap the little fem fatal in her plot and get rid of her for once and for all! I, my ponies and my cats are at your command. Just say the word and we’ll-”

            “Rarity.” Interrupted Dash, hoping to derail the freight train of verbiage before it went too far, “It’s true. I am resigning.”

            “Oh.” Said Rarity quietly, “I’m sorry, I must have overreacted. It seems so obvious now that-” Rarity grabbed a water jug that was on the bench and hurled its contents at Dash, “Take that changeling!” she yelled; picking up another cat in her telekinesis, and hoisting it high above her head like she was about to hurl the cat at her as a weapon, but then stopped short; “You… you didn’t melt. That means… you really are Rainbow Dash! Oh Darling can you ever forgive me for accusing you of being a changeling.”

            Dash decided not to tell Rarity that water didn’t make changelings melt; “It’s... alright.”

            “No! No! It’s not alright!” yelled Rarity vehemently, “I’ve accused you, and here in Canterlot, even if we can prove the claim is false the accusation alone can be enough to ruin your reputation! I’ve ruined you!”

            “Settle down Rarity, We’ll figure something out.”

            “Yes, we will!” agreed Rarity as she fell to the ground hyperventilating. “She did it!” Screamed Rarity hysterically pointing as accusing hoof at Topaz who seemed unfazed, “She’s the one who sought to slander your reputation; she’s working for Spitfire! Traitor!”

            “Rarity-”

            “We can’t take back her words now that they’ve been spoken, but was can sue her; sue her for everything she’s worth! We can make sure that the case goes to a judge is a nice, elderly, lonely stallion, who we can seduce to make sure that he rules in our favor! Then we can overthrow the Princesses, and live happily ever after!”

            “Rarity; we can’t file a law suit against your cat!”

            Rarity looked at her and blinked; “Traitor!” she screamed, “You can’t pull out now Rainbow Dash, not on the eve of our final victory! You have to stick with me on this!”

            “OK, OK fine! The cat did it!”

            Rarity visibly relaxed and slumped back, resting her head against one of her mannequins, breathing deeply, “Thank you, Rainbow Dash.”

            “You stay here,” Ordered Dash, “I’ll go to Hoofington and start using my mind control powers to gather an army of followers to overthrow the Princesses.”

            “Alright,” breathed Rarity, almost dreamily, “That sounds like a good plan, oh I know that we will make such good Princesses. Tata for now.”

............................................................................................................................................In the first draft of Shining Armor meeting Pinkie Pie in chapter 3, I put in a food fight. The aim had been to show Shining Armor kicking back and letting himself relax and act silly so when the letter arrived from Celestia his instant transformation would be more dramatic.

Looking back however I’m thinking Shining Armor is meant to be like the joint head of military/ police/ CIA equivalent in Equestria and on a random whim he’s willing to trash a restaurant in a spontaneous food fight??????? For a while I had justified it of it could happen in Equestria, but even that was a little bit of a stretch. I tried rewriting the food fight but eventually took the whole thing out.

Version 1

After the cupcake eating contest (which Pinkie won) the three ponies fell to chatting until Shining Armor mentioned how strange it was suddenly having red fur instead of white. Twilight obliged by dumping a sack of flour over him, he laughed, and responded by dumping two sacks over her. Pinkie joined in and soon all three were fighting with whatever baking goods they could find. “Open the oven, Pinkie” Shining Armor called, lifting his sister (who was squealing too much to resist), almost to the ceiling and smearing her neck and mane with strawberry jam “this cake needs to bake about twenty minutes on high heat before she'll be ready to eat.” When Mr. and Mrs. Cake got home they found three white ponies rolling on the ground, laughing and sneezing hysterically. They made each of the three friends pay for a cake, saying they had chosen to wear their cakes instead of eat them, and then they were made to clean up the mess; but they made a game of it so nopony minded.

Cleaning up the hard wooden benches and floors of Sugar Cube Corner was fairly easy. Cleaning up three ponies covered in flour, jam, peanut butter, chocolate, custard, and sprinkles, on the other hoof; that was more difficult. Pinkie was somehow able to clean herself up in a few seconds with her tongue, and offered to clean Twilight and Shining Armor the same way... they refused. Instead the unicorn siblings opted for washing up in the river, which was harder than it sounded. The moving water was useful for wiping off loose bits of food, but it turned the flour to dough which got stuck deep in their manes and coats, making it more difficult to get off. Rolling in the long grass helped loosen the sticky bits, but only the top layer became loose enough to wash off, meaning both ponies had to complete four or five cycles of swimming in the river and rolling in the tall grass before they were clean.

Version 2

After the cupcake eating contest (which Pinkie won) the three ponies fell to casual talk until Shining Armor mentioned how he missed having white fur. Pinkie obliged by dumping a sack of flour over him. Having somehow concluded that a spontaneous food fight had begun, Pinkie bounced over to a cabinet for more supplies and began flinging them onto the table, back flipped back to the table, hoisted a jar of jam and flung its contents at Twilight only to have the jam caught in midair by Shining Armor’s telekinesis who was looking thoroughly confused. That’s when it hit Twilight; Shining Armor was here to relax from keeping the shield up, he was here to wind down, that meant he needed to do something fun.

Twilight picked the empty jar out of Pinkie’s hoof and held it under the jam, then gently took the jam out of Shining Armor’s grip, but instead of putting it back in the jar she proceeded to splatter it over his coat. Shining Armor looked at her like she’d gone mad, but by this time Pinkie was already coming at him with a carton of custard, singing something that sounded like a mixture between a war chant, a nursery rhyme and a goose beat boxing. It took them a few minutes, but eventually, something in Shining Armor snapped.

When Mr. and Mrs. Cake got home that day the store was… a mess, to say nothing of the three ponies who by now had learned that if most surfaces were covered in some sort of baking good, and if they were covered in the same, it was fairly easy to blend in to your surroundings in improvised urban camouflage. Then came the part where they told Shining Armor that Pinkie Pie didn’t actually own the store but just worked there, then came the task of cleaning the store up and paying for wasted product.

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Read this some time after I finished posting SOS and decided it needlessly slowed things down, so I shortened it while making it a bit more cryptic.

“So do we all slay the princess and save the dragon?” she asked with a smile.

“Yea; but after that we all have different ideas about how it should end?”

Rainbow thought, “Well how about you tell me the different endings and then I can pick the one I like. It is a story about me after all.”

“That's a great idea! Thanks, Rainbow Dash. OK, my idea was… ummmmm...” Apple Bloom started blushing beat red, “... Do you... do you think you might fall in love with a dragon like Ekips?”

“What?”

“Well, I just thought that cause he was cool and you were cool... nevermind” well at least Apple Bloom wasn't trying to make things get steamy between her and Spitfire, or one of the other Wonder-mares. Still; falling for some dragon, named after her friend's assistant... Rainbow reckoned she could do better.

“Do the other crusaders like your idea?”

“No.” sighed Apple Bloom “Scootaloo hates the idea. She says you're way too much of a free spirit to ever get bogged down in a relationship.” Good old Scoots. She got how Rainbow wouldn't... would she?

“I not sure I like the idea very much either, too predictable. What was Sweetie Bells idea?”

“She wants there ta be a unicorn singer mare who was at the Gala and took third place right behind the Wonderbolts. She comes with you to rescue Ekips and those two end up falling in love and becomen' a preformen' duo.” That was... interesting. The story idea wasn't bad either.

“And Scoots?”

“Oh, she had the stupidest idea ever! She wants a surprise ending where it turns out Ekips isn't really a dragon, but a giant magical chicken in disguise!” Again with the chickens? For years now, Scootaloo had had a fascination with chickens, and whatever the reason, it was bad enough that Rainbow was starting to think maybe… never mind.

“I think you'd better go with Sweetie Bell's idea.”

Apple Bloom thought for a minute, looking disappointed and excited at the same time. “OK Rainbow Dash, I'll tell the others that Sweetie Bell was right.”