There was a royal chariot waiting for them. The three of them piled aboard, and they went airborne. They cut through the sky, ascending rapidly on a course for the Thunderdome. The moment they were off the ground, Scootaloo pounced. "Uncle Fussbudget?" she yelped, all but leaping into Mach One's face. "That doofy mayor is your UNCLE?"

He pushed her back a bit, trying to get some space. "...I told you everypony has secrets," he said.

Scootaloo scowled, her lower lip pooching out and her cheeks puffing up. "Ohhhh no ya don't," she said. "You're not gonna pull that half-answer no-answer ca-ca on ME!" She pounced on him for real this time, leaping on his back and digging her forehooves into his ribs, tickling mercilessly. "Talk! Talk! We have ways to make you talk!"

"AAUGH! All right, all right, DOWN!" He shook her off and dumped her on the floor of the chariot. "Okay, so yeah, he's my uncle. By marriage, anyway."

"So why are you and him..." Scootaloo fished for the right words.

"At loggerheads? At war with each other? Ready to strangle each other?" Mach gave her a wry grin. "It's a little bit of a story."

"When I was about five my parents... passed away," he said. "It was a really sucky year; I'd just had my bad wing cut off, and then my Mom and Dad get caught in an accident in the weather factory... so, yeah, not my favorite year, that one. Anyway, Uncle Fussbudget took me in. For about six months." a faint sneer curled his lip." See, he was running for Mayor for the very first time, and he apparently figured that the voters would eat it up if he fostered a poor little crippled orphan." Mach snorted. "He dragged me around for his campaign meetings and rallies, fed me lines to say... when we were offstage I didn't even exist to him. Had one of his assistants look after me. I might as well have been a cardboard cutout, for all he really cared."

"Wow," was all Scootaloo could say.

He rolled his eyes and shrugged at her pitying look. "Anyway the breaking point was a few days before the election, on my birthday. It was craptacular... In two birthdays I'd gone from celebrating with my Mom and Dad at home, to having it in a hospital with a bandaged stump, to blowing out candles on a fake birthday cake- no lie, it was a prop made out of paper mache'- at a ten bit a plate fundraiser hosted by some "flightless pride" activist group.

"They drag me up front; I blow out the candles. The reporters start lobbing fluff questions at me, one of them asks me what I wished for... and I sort of... snapped." He looked a little sheepish. "I told them I wished my parents weren't dead, I wished that I wasn't a stupid cripple, and I wished I was living with anypony other than my stupid, butt kissing, vote-grubbing uncle."

He made a motion with his hooves like something exploding. "Boom. Uncle's campaign went into freefall. Damage control going ballistic, spin doctors flailing around like a skateboarder bailing down a staircase... he still got elected, but it was a close thing.

"About a week later he decided it was in my best interests if I went and lived with Great Granny Doppler out in Manehattan." he snickered. "Of course, as his rotten luck would have it, about a year she moved us back to Windy City. He never knew we moved back- he sorta broke off contact after that little fiasco. Can't imagine why." Scootaloo snickered. " We got a cheap little flat on the South Face, and it's been her, me, and fifteen cats ever since."

He smiled fondly. "Great Granny's okay. Lets me do my own thing. She sorta let me run wild though, and pretty soon I took up with a bunch of other no-accounts who hung out up on Scholar's Peak..."

"The Nobody's Fools," Scootaloo said with a smile.

"Yup. Unc was already on their crap list. He'd gotten reelected on a 'clean up the streets' campaign... where he basically scapegoated all the skate rats like me and the Fools as 'criminal hooligans' and 'gang members' dirtying up the city." He rolled his eyes. "I figured my being a relative meant my name was dirt with them too. But Lightning Gale was lead dawg back then; he thought the stunt I pulled on Unc was hilarious. When they found out about me they took me right in. We've been pranking him on and off ever since."

"That's kind of...vindictive, isn't it?" Scootaloo said. She was momentarily pleased that she remembered a two bit word like Sweetiebelle would use.

"Darn right it is. I was a good little foal, ate my alfalfa and did what I was told. What did I get? I got used. First as a poster boy, then as a scapegoat." His face grew fierce. Then he snickered. "The best part is that he never knew it was his own nephew doing it... till now." He cackled. "Ahh, that's rich."

"Besides, he ain't just picking on us," Mach went on soberly. "To ponies like my uncle, the rules are only for little ponies. Your rights? Life, liberty, property? Those are for sale to whoever can pay him or get him the most votes.

"His crony friends don't like street vendors competing with their stores? Suddenly the fee for a pushcart license goes through the roof. Some 'Concerned Parent' group he thinks will get him votes frets about little Precious getting a boo-boo? He'll be tearing down the monkey bars on the playground next week, and passing helmet laws for tricycles. Some health nut control freak complains ponies are getting fat? He outlaws Big Chug soda cups and makes it illegal to sell hayburgers after 6pm. "

"Really? He did all that?" Scootaloo said. Wow. If Rainbow Dash ever got told she couldn't get a hayburger after 6pm, there would be blood on the walls.

Mach nodded. "Yup, and even worse stuff. He's run ponies out of business by siccing inspectors on them. Used eminent domain to have entire streets bulldozed. Got rid of a political group that was protesting how high their taxes were by convincing the Academy student cause-heads that they were a hate group, and letting the cause-heads do his dirty work and harass them into oblivion.

"You know what the most pathetic thing is? Uncle is small potatoes. Career politicians are all the same. In front of the camera they kiss babies. Off camera they steal their candy." He looked over the side of the chariot, brooding. "Sometimes it seems like Nobody's Fools are the only ones with the guts to even give them grief about it."

He shook himself."Eh, don't let me get all grimdark on you, Rookie," he said, and shrugged. "It's just how I am. If Ponies want to push me around, try and make me obey all their little rules- well, then, I aim to misbehave." he smiled a little. "And if I can have a little fun along the way, hey..."

Scootaloo chuckled. "Giving a wedgie to the Powers that Be, huh?" Mach one stifled a snicker and nodded briefly.

"Well, Mister Mach One," came Harshwhinny's dry interjection, "One certainly hopes that you can suppress your natural animosity for authority figures during this coming little tete' a tete'."

Mach One was taken aback. "This what?" he said.

"A face to face," Harshwhinny said with exaggerated patience. The cloudy walls of the Thunderdome loomed before them. "This is the reason for all of this. Her Highness, Princess Rainbow Dash, wishes to speak to you. Face to face. Privately."

In the short time Scootaloo had known Mach One, she had never seen the one-winged pony look even remotely nervous. He was just too cool. To Scootaloo's surprise and amusement, he was seriously looking nervous now. He'd gone from looking too hip for the room to looking like a foal headed for the principal's office in a matter of seconds. "Well," he said, his voice cracking. "Ain't that just swell." He pulled the hood of his baggy sweatshirt up over his head till he almost disappeared into it.

Rather than parking in the cloud-lots slowly circling the Thunderdome (and weren't the ponies who parked there going to have fun finding their chariots after the show), they alighted at the top of the wall, next to the observation tower. She opened a door to the tower. "The Princess is waiting in the room right at the top of these stairs. Scootaloo started to follow as well. "No, not you, just him," Harshwhinny told her.

"Why not?" Scootaloo said, faintly worried.

Harshwhinny held out her watch. "I believe you have other obligations?" she said. "You have about thirty minutes to-"

"Omigosh omigosh omigosh!" Scootaloo squealed, dancing on her hooftips. "Sorry, Mach, I gotta go get ready-" she galloped off as fast as her little hooves would take her, her scooter bouncing between her shoulder blades.

"Follow me," Harshwhinny said to Mach. Mach hunched up defensively and obeyed.

---

The observation room... lounge, really... was a glassed-in chamber atop a short tower on the top tier of the Thunderdome, just under the announcer's booth. As the Thunderdome was a temporary structure, it was a bit spartan- just a wide room with a few shapeless cloud sofas, a couple of tables with refreshments, and little else. It was intended as a VIP lounge of some sort, though Dash was a little fuzzy as to why you needed a VIP lounge when you already had a royal box...

Out the window was a spectacular view of the olympian stadium below. It was enormous, with seating for tens of thousands, illuminated from above with enormous magic lantern arrays that flickered alight as the sun slowly crept to the horizon. It was already crowding with ponies, tiny flecks of color sprinkled along the white inner slopes; a vast dark chasm down below, flickering faintly with distant lightning.

As Wagnerian, if not outright Heavy Metal, as the view was, it wasn't holding Rainbow Dash's attention. She had gotten word back that the issue at the Watch Department had been more or less resolved, and that even now Harshwhinny was on her way back with the mystery stallion that had eluded them all this time. The mystery stallion who apparently led a band of back-alley rebels who had kept the Mayor and all his flunkies in a tailspin for years. Who had eluded the Watch and even her own Wonderbolts, effortlessly pulling off the sickest moves she'd ever seen, with one wing-

Her hooves were getting sweaty.

"Omigosh omigosh omigosh," she muttered to herself. She fanned herself with her wings trying to cool- to calm herself down. She checked her mane, checked to make sure the magically preserved rose he'd thrown to her ohhh that had been sooo hot WHOA rein it in, girl was still tucked behind her ear, checked her peytral, tiara and hoofshoes was the whole Princess regalia stuff too much? Not enough?...No, it's good, checked her reflection in the window for the hundredth time, and all but danced in place with nervousness as she waited for him to arrive.

A pony cleared their throat at the door (one could hardly KNOCK on a cloud door very easily, after all.) "Your Highness? I have returned with Mach One as you requested."

It's something of a truism that those who act bold and overconfident are often using that to bury their insecurities, and this situation was digging up parts of Dash that normally took a metaphorical bulldozer to unearth. For lack of any other frame of reference, she decided that her best approach with this was to (ugh) channel at least a little Rarity. She frantically brushed her mane over, trying to make it drape over her eye in a rogueish fashion, and leaned in a Rarity-like, seductive (she hoped) pose against the refreshment table. "Send him in," she called out- wincing as her voice cracked... suddenly and painfully aware of how silky and sultry her voice wasn't.

The door opened, and a pony sidled into the room. The room was growing dim as the sun outside slowly set, but he had a definitely masculine profile against the light from the door. He was covered from head to flank in a huge baggy blue hoody- my his shoulders must be broad under that- only his muzzle visible from under the hood.

Should she go with sultry? No. Husky. Her voice was already raspy; she could manage husky. "So, we finally meet," she purred, slipping around the end of the table- and, forgetting that she was leaning against it and thus was overbalanced, promptly fell over with a thud. He stood stock still, staring down at her in surprise.

"I'm up! I'm up! I'm okay," she said, leaping to her hooves, blowing her mane out of her face. "Pfew. So... we finally meet. Again." She coughed. Brush it off, brush it off... she stepped in closer, her eyes heavy lidded. "You wouldn't believe what we went through looking for you. I've been dying to meet you." She let a slow smile creep across her face.

"Uh, really?" the hooded pony said, pulling back a bit. His voice was unusually high. "...Why?"

"Well," Dash said. She pulled the rose from behind her ear with her wingtip and held it under her nose, fluttering her lashes at him. "You certainly know how to get... a girl's...attention." She stepped even closer.

"Uh, heh. Whoa..." he stammered, laughing nervously.

Hold up. His voice really was awful high. "Wait a minute-" she scowled. She lowered her head to peer under his baggy hood. "WHAT-?" She reached up, threw back his hood, and with a flick of her horn brought up the lights. Her screech of alarm nearly punctured his eardrums.

"OH TARTARUS, YOU'RE JUST A KID!"

---

The Royal Box was something of a misnomer. With the number of guests Dash had accrued, it would be more accurate to call it the Royal Seating Section. They had actually had to expand it out at the last minute (fortunately an easy proposition with cloud-crete. Huzzah for pegasus architecture.)

The first section was for the various nobility, nouveau riche and hob-nobbers which no royal appearance could seem to avoid. Dash had never quite forgiven the upper crust for looking at her like something stuck to the bottom of their hooves at the Grand Galloping Gala, and had taken great delight in moving their seating down in ranking, and away from herself. What made it better was that that they obviously knew they were being snubbed, and obviously knew they could never say a word about it, even behind the Princess' back- because they would look like absolute trolls, as their seats were being moved to make room for the handicapped children from the Windy City Foals' Clinic.

Of course, they might find the gumption to grind their teeth about being moved down another tier, at the very last minute no less, to make room for the Nobody's Fools and their families. They still didn't dare make a fuss; after all, they were still far higher up in the stadium seating and far closer to the Princess than anypony else, which was all that really mattered to most of them. So they ignored the rowdy rabble in the seats above them as best they could and bore up under their hardship like true Equestrian upperclass.(1)

If they had known who it was in the seats above them they might have been more grateful that they were merely being noisy. It was their good fortune that the skate-rat pranksters of Windy City were too excited and distracted to realize that they were sitting within quite literal spitting distance of the exact sort of ponies they normally considered prime pranking material. Giddy from their reversal of fortune and boggled with awe at the epic cloud coliseum all around them, they had dismounted from the sky-trolleys that had brought them there, gawking at everything. After a brief stampede on the nearest concession stand, they had thundered out into the stadium and piled into their seats, their somewhat confused families in tow, yelling, joking, waving Wonderbolt flags, chucking popcorn kernels at each other and annoying the upper class by mere proximity.

Of course, for some this impromptu family outing was a confounding situation. The Banana family in particular was, if not gored on the horns of a dilemma, then possibly snagged on the antlers of a cognitive dissonance. In less than an hour they had gone from descending en masse on Windy City(2) to retrieve what several regarded as the black sheep of the family from the clutches of the Law for actions that had surely shamed his aspiring, social-climbing clan, to receiving a royal invitation from the Princess of Loyalty herself to sit in the Royal Box among the very upper crust they aspired to- thanks, indirectly, to that very same black sheep of the family.

It was making things... awkward.

The only one who was oblivious to the awkwardness was Banana Puddin', who was sitting next to her favorite big brother and happily snarfing through a ball of cotton candy as large as her entire body. "I was right, this is even cooler than being a bank robber!" she said with her mouth full.

"So glad you approve," Foster said, amused. He looked over at the rest of the family, who were sitting in the row together, just a seat or two down, all looking vaguely uncomfortable. He prodded Puddin' and nodded towards the rest of the family. "Kinda look like they wanna fart but they're scared to risk it, don't they?" Puddin' snort-giggled into her cotton candy. "Think they'll stay mad long?"

"Gramma might," Puddin' said after a moment's thought.

"Nah, really?"

"Well... she's never happy about anything," Puddin' pointed out reasonably, "So how could anypony ever tell?" She was of course artlessly loud when she said it; Foster saw the family matriarch stiffen up at that proclamation. Puddin', oblivious to the hit she'd scored, scrutinized her big brother with a serious look on her face. "Foster?... You don't really hate bananas, do you?" She said it as if it were the most important question in the universe.

Foster chuckled. Puddin' was like his exact opposite; she was about everything Banana. She'd live on nothing but bananas if the family let her. But he didn't miss the way their mother's ears pricked up to catch the answer. He looked out over the stadium, watching the heat lightning flashing far down below, and made sure his voice carried. "Well, not exactly hate," he admitted. "They're... okay once in a while. I guess I just had too much of 'em all at once, got sick on 'em." He gave her a cockeyed grin. "But... I still like 'em. If they aren't pushed on me."

Nanner Puddin' shrugged at the answer. But Foster could tell his parents had heard what he was really saying. His mother slid over closer. "Foster," she said. "Did we really... over do it?"

Foster looked down at his hooves. "It wasn't anything you did wrong, Ma," he said. "I've always known I was meant for other things." His expression was wry. "I just kinda got tired of having my destiny dictated to me by a fruit."(3)

To his surprise, she chuckled. She looked at him with tired eyes. "Even if I can't understand all this-" she waved a hoof, wordlessly indicating the stadium, Windy City, the Nobody's Fools, her son's 'career' as an aspiring comedian, everything "-I guess I can understand that." She looked at him."Just tell me. Are you really happy?"

He smiled and shrugged. "It's touch and go and sometimes the audience loves you and sometimes it hates you and right now if I emptied out my bank account I could maybe buy you lunch," he confessed. "But- yeah. It makes me happy."

"Then I suppose there's not more than any of us can ask of it," Banana Creme' sighed with a laugh. She rested her head on her oldest child's shoulder.

"Thanks Ma."

Not every member of the clan was quite as ready to be accepting. Grandma Liqueur managed to look both sorrowful and offended at the same time. "All in vain," she said, as if she were in mourning. "To think that all that effort was in vain- all the money the family spent just on his tuition-"

"Ahh, shaddap, ya old BAT!" Her husband barked.

Everyone jumped in astonishment. The hoary old pegasus almost never spoke, and when he did it was always in a quiet mumble. He'd always given the impression, even to his own family, of a dozy, elderly stallion, off in his own little world. Apparently the old codger had decided to come out of that little world and speak his mind for once.

Banana Liqueur gaped at her husband in shock. "Supreme-?" she said, scandalized.

"You heard me, ya battlaxe!" he said. "You've had yer snoot stuck in the air for the past twenty years an' I'm sick of it! All yer time worried about what them Canterlot upper-crust types think of ye. Well here's a hint, woman: They DON'T. " He glared out from under his bushy white brows at her and shook his head. "Ever since we built the mansion..." he muttered to himself.

He harrumphed. "I didn't take our banana farm and a chain of little islands and turn it into the biggest fresh fruit producer in Equestria to start some dippity-do hoity toity DYNASTY, woman. I did it so our foals and grandfoals and great-grandfoals wouldn't want for anything. So they could choose their own way in life. Doctor or lawyer or artist or comedian... or heck, banana farmer." He sobered a bit. "So long as they make good use o' what I left 'em, that's all I care about."

Uncle Smoothie rolled his eyes. "Well, that's a few thousand bits in tuition wasted."

Banana Supreme reached over and clocked him on the back of the head with a hoof, making his second eldest son's eyes roll again, this time in opposite directions. "You hush up too, boy," the old stallion said. "I've wasted bigger wads o' dough on more foolish things. Seein' what snooty twits and brainless mush-heads that Academy turns out now, the boy probably saved us money by quittin' early." He raised his voice and looked down the row to where Foster sat. "You go on, grandson. You be the best dang comedian the Banana family ever had. You found yourself; far as I'm concerned that tuition was money well spent."

Banana crème chuckled and gave her son a hug. "Well, at least what's left of your tuition will give you a nice nest egg," she said.

Foster looks confused. "But I sent the tuition back!" he said. At his mother's confused look, he explained. "I quit after six months, Ma. I was so short-term that the financial office refunded me nearly all the money. But it didn't feel right keeping it, so I had them just send it back..."

"Send it back? To who?" his father said.

"Well, to whoever in the family handled the financial-" Foster stopped, an indescribable expression crossing his face. "Uncle Smoothie-!" As one, the entire family turned and glared at Banana Smoothie. Banana Smoothie gave a sickly smile back.

Nanner Puddin' didn't even look up from her cotton candy. "Uncle Smoothie's in trouble again, isn't he?" she said to Foster.

"Yep, looks like," Foster agreed.

---

Soft Touch sat, his sewing kit in his hand, looking sadly at his box of torn plushies. Those bullies at the Watch had torn them all open right in front of him. Looking for "contraband," they said. Then when they'd found nothing but stuffing they'd just tossed them all in a cardboard box. To his shame he'd cried a little when he'd seen the condition they were in. Not one of the Fools had teased him though.

Sniffling a little, he pulled his sewing kit out of his pannier, threaded a needle, picked up a doll and started sewing up the teddy bear's torn belly.

A moment later he felt somepony sit down next to him. It was his father, back from the concession stand with some snacks. Softy didn't look up at him. He could feel his father's eyes on him, but he couldn't bring himself to look up. He just tucked his head down and kept stitching away.

For the longest time they just sat there. Without a word, his father reached down, pulled a needle and thread out of the kit, picked up one of the damaged dolls and started quietly sewing.

Softy smiled quietly. Sometimes, the best things you can say don't use words.

---

Presto's parents were polite, clean cut, intellectual types. Which more than suited them, as they were both professors at the Academy. They were also both unicorns, while he was not. These things had always made things between them- complicated. From the moment their only son had been born, and they had realized that, like his paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother, he was an earth pony, they had resolved to be as understanding , supportive, and encouraging as two parents could be.

Unfortunately, in their case this meant that they understood that their earth pony son could never truly wield or understand magic, supported him in pursuing other interests, and encouraged him constantly that being a magicless earth pony was just as special as being a unicorn. They then found themselves rather perplexed in that the fruit of their loins persisted in doing the exact opposite of what they advised, what their education informed them was most emotionally healthy for 'differently tribed' children.

And... he seemed happier for it.

Presto's father looked askance at his son. The colt was still dressed in his "Starswirl" robe and hat... the one with the mercifully deadened bells...and was digging through his recently ransacked saddlebags, pouch belt, bandoleer of vials, robe pockets, hidden compartment in his hat... sakes the boy had a ton of places to stash things... "Ahem. Everything in order...?"

"Yeah," Presto grumbled. "Everything's intact- not for lack of trying on those thugs' part. They completely upended my lab as it is. Hundreds of bits worth of salvaged ingredients and bits of equipment and whatnot just trashed. I had to throw a screaming fit and threaten all sorts of legal action to keep them from doing the same with all my personal effects." He snorted. "Amazing how the threat of a lawsuit and lawyer suddenly makes law enforcement officers act respectable."

"A laboratory?" Professor Kazam said faintly.

Presto nodded absently. "You'd be amazed at what you can scavenge from the trash cans in the Academy," he said. He pulled a cracked crystal out of one of his pockets and looked at it in disgust. "Gah, they cracked it... meh." He cracked it in half; a small cloud of multicolored sparkles and translucent, slightly blurry butterflies swirled around them before spiraling into the sky and fading away.

"Was that a Gaskin's lesser illusion?" his mother exclaimed, staring into the sky.

"It was supposed to be a Gaskin's greater illusion," Presto grumbled. "But the crystal cracked and distorted the template, and the charge leaked out..."

"But... you managed to store it in a crystal?" his mother said faintly. He nodded. A certain Professor Bibbity found her thoughts tumbling quite rapidly at her son's words. "But how? It takes active concentration and thaumatic energy to even cast it, and holding the morphic resonance steady..." and you need a horn for that went unsaid.

"Not if you imprint the resonance into a crystal," Presto said off the cuff, still fishing around. "Earth pony rock farming trick. Picked it up from a book by somepony named Maud Pie. Man, DRY reading, that was- but it had a few tips and tricks in it. Anyway, it's a sort of a sloppy work-around... I use the crystal-etching to make a sort of animation, like a flipbook, and then infuse it with a thaumic charge by force-growing a typical garden-standard bean seedling around it. It takes hours, days really, but once it's done all I have to do is crush the crystal and it releases the image." He looked disappointed. "I really wish I could figure a way to use them more than once, though."

Gaskin's illusions. Pre-packaged. It was an odd, roundabout approach, but the sheer creativity to come up with that by oneself... Presto's parents looked at each other. Despite themselves they found themselves intrigued. Kazam cleared his throat. "You seem to be releasing it by triboluminescence," he noted. "Perhaps if you used a separate crystal for the morphic pattern, and stored the thaumic power in something else- something with piezoluminescent or piezoelectric qualities...?"

"Oooo, that'd work," Presto said. His face lit up. He pulled out a notepad and a pencil and started sketching. "Fill a tube with crystallized twittermite glands...put a button on the side so you can compress it... and cap it with a thaumically charged amethyst, and the morphic template on top of that-"

"But amethyst is terrible for magic," Bibbity protested. "Even a tiny static charge makes it release any magical energy and oooh I see what you're doing..." the two put their heads together over the crude pencil drawing.

Kazam saw another notepad peeking out of his son's pannier; he magically plucked it out and began flipping through it. Notes, formulae, mathematical notation, sketches of odd widgets and devices- he recognized one or two of them down in the depths of the saddlebag. He could see notation incorporating not just earth pony magic but zebra potions and herbs, pegasus weather magic, and other exotic things- broken down into bits and bobs, then reassembled into surprising, if somewhat crude, and daring new combinations. "You came up with all this?" he said, holding out the notebook.

Presto looked up and nodded briefly before returning to his sketch with is mother (Bibbity always had been more interested in the applied end of thaumatic sciences...) Leaving Kazam to peruse the notebook and think many long thoughts...

---

Fledge perched on the highest row of seats in between his parents. "So those crazy skate rat pranksters got you in with royalty," his father said. "One minute you're in hot water with the Law, the next you're up here eating Jujubees on the Princess' dime."

"Yup." Fledge popped another jujubee into his beak. "Ponies are crazy."

"Diamond dogs, gryphons and zonkeys don't seem much better off, but yeah." His father chuckled. He looked down; down in the lowest row of seats sat Bowser with his two Diamond Dog parents. The decidedly earthbound dogs were sitting there with their paws over their eyes, terrified out of their minds- but they had refused to stay behind regardless of how badly being up in the clouds clashed with their subterranean natures. Bowser, thanks to long exposure to the Nobody's Fools and their high flying antics, was doing far better, forehooves up on the rail, his tongue hanging out as he panted excitedly. What a town, Fledge's father thought.

He was about to say something else when the most unholy shriek imaginable echoed from the observation tower above and behind them.

All three of them looked up in the direction the yell had come from. "Case in point," Fledge's father said, cocking a feathered eyebrow.

---

Up in the final Royal box sat Ajax, accompanied by his royal guards. The seat next to him, Princess Dash's throne, was empty. He furrowed his brows in puzzlement. "The Princess," he said to the pony Guards flanking the royal throne. "Where is she? The show will be starting soon..."

"The Princess sends her apologies," her assistant- Miss Harshwhicker, was it?- said evenly. "An urgent matter of state came up that she must handle in private."

Ajax gave her an amused look. "If she had to go to the loo, all you had to do was say so," he said.

Harshwhinny actually managed to look stuffier. "I assure you that this..."

Ajax chortled. "Relax, Madam," he said. "I was aware already that the Princess would be participating in the air show herself, so she wouldn't exactly be keeping me company." He chuckled. "No need to get wound up over it."

"...Understood," Harshwhinny said. "Your graciousness in the matter is commenda-" From the observation tower rang a loud, if distant scream in a familiar voice. Ajax and the guards leapt to their feet, wings flared in alarm, but Harshwhinny merely looked up with a glare that was somehow both alarmed and utterly unsurprised. "Oh Tartarus, what nowwwwwoooooOOOOOP!" Before she could even finish her thought a glow of magic surrounded her and she was dragged, rump first, up into the air and through the wall of the observation lounge.

Ajax blinked. "Well," he said after a moment. "I think I shall leave this to the Princess of Loyalty to handle..."

---

1)Pouting like infants.

2)They had been on a junket to examine their newest acquisition, a Banana Split stand called "Dairy Princess."

3)Somewhere over Baltimare, Applebloom sneezed.