Stories. We all have them. Stories are what drive a pony to do great things. Stories shape us, and teach us. "We are all stories in the end", my father used to tell me, "Live it so your reputation will always precede you." You see, stories hold a power. They cause fillies to lean into a campfire late at night, they are used to lighten a mood to a pony in need. Why do you think the Hearths Warming Eve play is put on so close to the Capital? Everywhere you go, there is a story to be told.
I lived in Ponyville for a spell. Stories abounded there. You might even know a few. Of the Elements and their triumphs over the Great Evils. There is power in those stories. A subtle magic, one that brings hope security across the land. After these events happened, the Princesses had heralds declare the victory from every belfry from Stalliongrad to Las Pegasus. This was no accident, mind you, there was purpose to every word.
My father would say that "Knowledge is power", and if a pony had the knowledge, they could do anything. Which leads me to why you are here. You are here for a story. Not the story that you will read about in the Equestria Daily, but a secret tale, told in whispers among the residents of Ponyville. You are here for the tale of Ed.
Nopony has the whole story, I doubt one even exists. I have, however, gathered as complete of a picture as one can have about the Stallion of Ponyville. This is not for the faint of heart, as it paints out Nation's heroines in a different light.
Stay a while, and Listen.
In a shack, just on the other side of a hill outside Ponyville lived a peculiar unicorn stallion. At a passing glance, this stallion had naught but one erroneous feature: the lack of a Cutie Mark. When asked about this, the stallion would give a knowing smile and say "It could be anything". Sometimes a pony could swear there was a canine in his smile.
The day of the stallions arrival was an auspicious one. For not one, but two unicorn stallions wandered into Ponyville that day. The first emerged from the Everfree carrying three small fillies on his back and thunder in his hoofsteps. His mane was golden and his coat a gleaming white. He had just saved the fillies from the treacherous Everfree and fending off the horrors that lied within. The town celebrated the coming of the stallion with open hooves. One Twilight Sparkle was even generous enough to give him a spare bed until he could find a place to stay.
The second, however, came later in the evening on unsteady hooves. His coat was a navy blue and matted in dry blood. His eyes were blue-shot and his horn scorched. At a passing glance, one would assume the stallion indulged a little too much.
The townspeople were celebrating the return of the lost fillies and the introduction of the savior stallion. Only a pink pony and a bartender saw him collapse on the road.
It was two years after the stallion's arrival and he was just finishing spinning a tale. The bartender named Stein appreciated this "bard" as he called himself. In exchange for a bit of food and drink, the Stallion would indulge the audience with strange stories, or a stranger song. The Stallion was never gifted in his singing. Sure the songs themselves were more catchy than some of Pinkie's, but vocal performance was not his strong suit. It was by no means bad, but he will not get his Cutie Mark in singing any time soon. However, the stories had a theme to all of them: humans. There were seldom ponies in his stories, and the more the bartender thought of it, the more he realized it was true.
The bartender once confronted the Stallion over this and got an overtly dramatic response of "These are the stories of the humans themselves!" Either the Stallion was crazy, or was staying true to his showmanship. And boy did the Stallion know showmanship. During a particularly dramatic rendition of "Tangled" as he called the story, the Stallion toppled over several tables in an attempt to convince the audience that they were grizzled mercenaries singing a show tune. Bless his heart if he didn't try his darnedest. To his credit, that story became one of the crowd favorites. Took Big Mac a good week to get that "Lights" song out of his head.
In any case, the stories started to draw a crowd, If you could consider two to be a company. It was not that the bar was unpopular, it was more that all bars were unpopular. The only crowd they attract is stallions, but short of having a local garrison, there were few patrons to speak of. So having the Stallion tell stories was a great boon.
The Stallion still had the glow of his performance in his gait, crooked as it may be. The bartender set out a mug of mead, and potatoes for the Stallion.
"Quite a story there Ed." The Stallion gave a winning smile.
"Thank you." His smile began turning placid. "Do you think it was too dark?"
"Perhaps a little bit. I don't think I am going to look at a statue the same way." The Stallion lifted his head back in a hearty roar.
"Just remember: Don't Blink." The stallion seemed to be the only pony laughing.
A bell chimed over the door, attracting the attention many patrons. It was a mare. Not just any mare, but Twilight Sparkle herself. Her entrance brought about an air of awkwardness that was two fold. Everypony in town knew who she was by the sound of her canter. National hero and apprentice to the Crown. None of the stallions there even had a chance with her. Twilight, on the other hand, found it embarrassing, and intimidating to even walk inside a bar. This was where stallions went. There was no place for a mare here in her mind. The only stallions she had experience talking to had some sort of business with her, be it sucking up, or academic.
Twilight walked over to the Stallion, ignoring the stares.
"I need to talk to you Ed." Twilight said tersely. Ed turned his head slowly, laughter gone from his face.
"Sparkle! A pleasure as always." Ed wore his smile as a mask. "Talk away!"
"Have you prepared your part of the Nightmare Night celebration?"
"My part?" The Stallion tilted his head.
"Yes yours. You are supposed to keep the Everfree trail safe from wild animals!"
"I never understood why you wanted me to do that. Isn't your friend Flutters the de facto Everfree person?"
"Pony and she doesn't do well with Nightmare Night." Ed took a sip of mead. Twilight's nose wrinkled as he spoke.
"What about Zecora? You'd never believe what she could do with a bo staff." The Stallion wiggled his eyebrows and attempted a sleazy smile. Twilight only tilted her head.
"Zecora is part of the festivities. She is leading the foals down the path you are protecting. And besides, you spend three days inside the Everfree every month." Ed frowned and ears in the bar twitched.
"It's for reagents."
"I never asked why." Twilight sighed and rubbed her temple. "Look, you are the only pony here who is willing to go into the Everfree. The Crown will pay you to do this." Twilight slid a scroll across the table. That got the attention of the Stallion.
"You see?" The Stallion exclaimed, a little too loudly. "Was it that hard?" Ed picked up the scroll with his mouth and tucked it in where he called his "armpit". "Oh Sparkle, You simply must have seen that coming." Twilight did not see it coming. "When was the last time I did something like this for free?"
"You only wanted to get paid!?"
" 'Course I did. A man needs to eat." The stallion got up and nodded to the bartender knowingly walked out of the bar with his head held high.
After Ed was gone, the bartender turned to Twilight and retrieved a scrap of paper and handed it to Twilight. "He wanted you to have this when he left."
The paper read:
One Step Ahead, Sparkle
-Mr. Ed
Twilight left in a huff. The bartender did not tell her that Ed gave that paper to him weeks ago stating, "One day, when Sparkle comes in here, I am going to outwit her. When that happens, give her this." Ed was very drunk at the time.
Needless to say Twilight was perturbed by the note that Ed had left her. She felt irritated whenever he was around. Twilight slammed the door to the library shut. She had almost had it with that stallion. He always asked the wrong question. He fixated on the small things, and insisted that they mattered the most! "If gravity affects this apple, shouldn't that mean that Celestia can't raise the sun?" Simply nonsense.
"Twilight? Are you ok?" Spike snapped Twilight from her stupor.
"Sorry Spike. I my mind was somewhere else."
"You're not thinking about him are you?" Spike asked, rolling his eyes.
"Who?" Twilight asked while grabbing a book on enchanting methods.
"You know, 'dreamy eyes'." Twilight spun around and glared at spike.
"I told you never to say that again!" She brought her tone down to a whisper. "What if he hears you say that?" Twilight spoke of the devil.
"What if who hears what?" Silver Tongue entered through the library door.
Silver Tongue was a stallion's stallion. His white coat and golden mane made him appear as royalty. He was quick witted, and had magic to back it up. A long horn protruded from his head to back up just how much of a stallion Silver Tongue was. Every bit of the Ponyville Welcome Wagon was given to him the day he brought the Cutie Mark Crusaders into town.
"N-nothing Silver! Why are you back so early?"
"I just got back from helping the Crusaders at the school house." Silver said, placing his saddle bags in front of the couch before laying down on it. "They seem convinced that the school is haunted."
"Haunted?" Twilight laughed at the thought. "Why in Equestria would they think that the schoolhouse is haunted?"
Silver shrugged. "Sweetie Belle recognized a rune. I took a look at it, but it was in the middle of gibberish. There were even parenthesis on the blackboard." That struck Twilight as odd. There was no real point to parenthesis in modern Equestrian. There was a certain spacing that accomplished the same thing. "There was also this strange character that looks like a colon, but with a comma."
Silver held up a picture of a blackboard sprawling with gibberish.
if (currentMana > (initMana/2)){
teleKen.cast(, currentMana);
}
printf(" init = %d", currentMana);
That was all she could make out. There was evidence of many little hooves trying to investigate the other nonsense.
"They think a ghost did this?" Twilight said. "None of this makes any sense at all." She turned to Spike. "Spike, get me the Comprehensive Guide to Equestrian Syntax volumes 3 through 9" Silver, who was already falling asleep mumbled in response. "This must have made sense to somepony."
//segue into schoolhouse
All of Twilights books and all of Twilights knowledge could not tell her quite what the "Ghost of the Schoolhouse" wrote. None of it made any sense to her. She saw the several times, but the rest was in plain equestrian. Well, perhaps plain equestrian is stretching it.
"What does it mean Twilight?" Spike asked in a worried voice, "It's not a m-message from b-beyond the g-grave is it?"
Twilight rolled her eyes. "No Spike, it is gibberish. They use the as if they are are about to use runic magic, but you can't do that with modern equestrian. It holds no power over magic."
"What if it is a magical ghost that knows dark and strange magic? What if it is the Nightmare given form? What if it is an evil magical ghost clown??" Spike cowered behind Twilight.
"Would you calm down, Spike? There is no such thing as ghosts, the Nightmare cannot have a corporeal form, and there are no evil magical ghost clowns." Spike did not calm down. "It is obvious that somepony broke into the school house and wrote something on the board." Twilight turned to Cheerilee. "Cheerilee, how often does this happen to the chalk board?"
"A few times a week. It seems to happen more often in the past few weeks."
"When do you think this will happen again"
"I don't know Twilight, thats why I asked you."
It was during this conversation that spike got the nerves to look at the board in detail. There was something strange about the jumbled words on the blackboard. Some pattern that made a strange sort of sense. They seemed to be abbreviated and smashed together at the capitalization. Spike began to read the gibberish quietly to himself.
"If current mana greater than init mana..." Spike stared at the squiggly lines. There were a few instances of them, two squiggly, and eight smooth. But every open on the left there was a close on the right. If this was modern Equestrian, then there shouldn't be these lines. Equestrian has something kind of similar... "Twilight, what do you call that thing in equestrian where you put curvy things around a word?"
Twilight, who was engaged in a low conversation with Cheerilee, responded on auto-pilot. "Parenthesis Spike"
"So this has parenthesis, "Spike thought aloud, "but why two kinds?"
The trap was set. Twilight was holding vigil over the schoolhouse. She had set up a ward inside of the classroom that would trap the culprit, corporeal or not. All she had to do was wait.
Twilight did not have to do this, but it was her duty to Ponyville to help out. At least she did not have to do this alone. She managed to wrangle Silver Tongue to join her.
"I don't see why I have to be here" Silver spoke through a yawn. "But I suppose if you are here, it can't be that bad." Twilight blushed furiously.
"S-stop that, we are on a mission!"
"Right. Forgot that."
Twilight tried as hard as she could to stick to the mission. Sure it was nice to have company on a stakeout like this. and maybe there was an ulterior motive for bringing Silver Tongue along. That doesnt make me a bad pony does it?
The two of them stayed and watched for what appeared to be an eternity and just a couple of minutes to Silver and Twilight respectively. The night was still and the streets were deserted. This made catching the culprit much easier. Nopony who had good intentions was ever out after dark.
Twilight was in the middle of scooting closer to Silver when they heard hoofsteps. uneven hoofsteps. They did not seem to be subtle at all.
clip clip-clop clip
The sound of hoof falls approached the school house and stopped at the door. Silver sat upright and stood more still that anypony Twilight had ever seen. Not even his ears moved as the wind rustled the branches of a nearby tree.
The stallion sat in front of the door for a few seconds and started mumbling to himself. He was clad in a dark green hooded cape, similar to the one Zecora had used. He picked out a small pouch from inside the cape and pulled two thin metal bars from the pouch and turned his attention to the lock on the door.
His muttering became marginally louder as he maneuvered the thin metal bars up and down. The stallion carefully pushed open the door and stared inside. He stood unearthly still.
"He knows its a trap." Silver said under his breath.
The stallion began to look around the doorframe, but never sticking his nose into the room. That is when Silver acted.
"Stop! Thief!" he shouted and bolted from the hiding place Twilight had set up. It was a dozen meters from the school.
The stallion acted quicker than Twilight gave him credit for. Silver was one of the faster ponies she knew, but Silver underestimated this stallion. There was a quiet thud of a book hitting the ground as the Silver chased the stallion off into the night.
Twilight approached the door of the school house a little disappointed that her clever trap failed. The first thing she wanted to look at was the small pouch and the thin metal bars. they appeared to be small hooks of various shapes. She hadn't seen something like them before. The strangest part of them was they they unlocked a magical lock. The magic on that door should have kept any enchanted object from entering the lock. The only lockpicks she knew of were the ones that would override the locking spell... unless...
Twilight's train of thought was interrupted by Silver dragging a stallion by his cloak.
"He trapped himself in an alleyway" Silver said, slightly out of breath. "Little bugger is quick" Silver jerked the stallions cloak causing him to stumble to the ground and revealing his face.
"Ed? I should have known you were up to no good!" Ed stood up clumsily, trying to stay on his hooves.
"I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids." He mumbled quietly as he sat on his hind legs. Silver stepped in front of Ed and brought his muzzle close to him.
"What were you doing trespassing in the schoolhouse?" Silver bared his teeth, but the gesture was wasted. Ed winced and took a deep breath.
"I pay taxes, I can use public buildings." It was about this time that Twilight found a book on the ground.
"Basic Runes and Runic Syntax: Volume 1? Isn't this book overdue?"
"I'm not done with it yet?"
Twilight sighed, but Silver spoke up.
"You know, breaking an entering is a serious crime here." Silver gave a devilish smile. "I should go get the constible. You are going to spend the night in a cell."
Twilight lifted up a hoof dismissively. "There is no need for that. But I have an idea..."
"Class! Settle down!" Cheerilee called. "Today we have a very special guest for you all!" The foals groaned loudly. "Come now, show this pony some respect. He is our new science teacher."
'
Nightmare Night was always a favorite holiday for Ponyville. All of the fillies and colts dressed up as monsters and paraded around gathering sweets a like their lives depended on it. As for the Stallion, he did not care much for it. Nightmare Night tended to land on a full moon meaning he would be in the depths of the Everfree, something that did not go unnoticed. This year, however, it appeared that Ed would not be in isolation, but instead be making the path through the Everfree to Nightmare Moon's statue safe.
In the center of town, around a campfire, The Bartender and several of the regulars including Big Mac were trading stories.
"Ah'm tellin ya ah saw it." Big Mac stated firmly.
"I don't believe you Mac. There is no way under Celestia's sun that you saw one of Ed's humans."
"But what 'bout Luna's moon?" Big Mac remained unmoved.
"What does that have to do with it?" asked Caramel.
"Strange things happen at night. It ain't natural."
"What did it do when you saw it?" Asked the bartender.
Big Mac shivered at the thought. "It was eatin' ah deer. Right off the bone. It picked up ah stick an' skittered off after I done spotted it."
The ponies around the campfire seemed to not believe the farmpony, but none of them disbelieved them. This was the reason that Twilight wanted Ed to protect the path to the Nightmare Moon statue. The Everfree contained many foul creatures. This, however, is where Ed's demeanor deviated from the stallions sitting around the campfire. Ed loved the Rverfree. He did not think anypony noticed, but a sigh would escape his lips whenever he entered the shade of the eldrtich forest. He would often be seen sitting just past the boarder of the forest staring into its depths. My father told me that he certainly saw the forest for the trees.
Not many ponies know of what happened to Princess Luna on her first Nightmare Night in Ponyville. Everypony has their own version of the story. Ask the elderly of Ponyville, and you hear a tale of fright. Ask one of the then foals and they will tell you of the thrilling game of cat and mouse they played. Ask Luna herself? Well, that would be something else now wouldn't it?
You see, Luna was not welcomed in Ponyville that night. As shocking as that may seem to you, our beloved princess had... issues fitting into Equestria. It wasn't that ponies hadn't changed since her exile, it was more that she hadn't changed. Lets just say that a gothic charriot pulled by bat-winged enchanted pegasi is not a good way to make a small rural town at ease. The night devolved from there into a comedy of errors that nopony but the ones involved know the full story. But fewer know what happened after Luna ran to the statue of the Nightmare.
Luna was a mess. More of a mess than you will ever hear her admit.
