Glitterdust trotted up to Fizzlespark's lab, where the rest of the group was waiting for the mad scientist to get his gear together.

"Congratulations on your promotion, Postmare General," Sunnyside said, in greeting.

"A royal decree can do wonders for your career," Glitterdust replied, modestly.

"What's Ditzy Doo up to now that you've replaced her?" Sugar Scoop asked.

"I think she got promoted, too. She said she's 'supervisor of all the mails!' now." Glitterdust shrugged.

"Glitterdust!" Fizzlespark shouted, raising a sliding door to reveal a huge cart piled high with equipment. "Thank Celestia you're here!" His horn glowed and the other ponies instinctively cringed, but all that happened was that a harness levitated through the air and attached to Glitterdust's sturdy, earth pony body. "We're going to be late to the Magic Fair. Hurry, hurry!"

With effort, Glitterdust pulled the huge cart out of its garage and into the streets. Fizzlespark shut his shop and caught up, leaping on top of the cart and gazing towards the fairgrounds. Sugar and Sunny flew up to speak with him.

"Did you actually get an invitation this year?" Sugar asked.

"Sure did!" Fizzlespark produced a purple envelope labeled "Magic Fair Invitation" and stamped with Princess Luna's royal seal.

Long Tail gestured for the pegasi to come back down to the ground.

"Princess Luna probably wants to talk to Fizzlespark and the rest of us about the plot against her sister," Long Tail said.

The pegasi agreed that this made sense.

The cart arrived with the fair in full swing. Everywhere, unicorns were displaying their special talents and swapping spells. Important pegasi had also come to observe the festivities, and the noble houses had set up refreshment stands with ice cream, fried dough, and other treats. Far off, at the other side of the fairground, the Royal Sisters presided from their Royal Booth.

"They don't seem to have reserved a spot for me," Fizzlespark said in disbelief. The cart was now blocking the main entrance and overhanging the booths of two irritated unicorns.

"Never mind your booth," Sunny said. "We should go talk to Princess Luna."

"The cart's not going to fit further in, so... Sorry, what was that, Sunnyside?"

"I was saying, forget the booth-"

"Right! Setting up the booth!"

"-and let's talk to the Princess."

"So you're going to get crepes, while I set up the booth. Okay, good plan."

Sunnyside just cocked his head and blinked in confusion at the unicorn.

Fizzlespark spoke again. "No time to waste!" His horn glowed and components began flying about the area. The other ponies scattered and regrouped down the lane a short ways.

"I don't know if there are any crepes," Sunny said. "Do you think fried dough would be okay?"

"Luna!" the others cried, in unison. Sunny covered his face with one foreleg.

"Well, yes, of course," he said, lowering his foreleg. "But Fizzlespark is counting on me to find him a snack, too."

Sugar Scoop rolled her eyes.

"Let's split up and look for clues, and meet up at the Royal Booth," Glitterdust suggested. The ponies all nodded and trotted off down different paths.

***

"Long Tail? Is that you?"

Long Tail turned, and her ears tilted down. "Twilight Sparkle. Hi."

"Isn't this fun?" Twilight bubbled.

Long Tail looked over her shoulder, scanning for an exit.

"There are so many spells to learn!" Twilight continued. "Have you learned anything new today?"

"No."

"Oh. Well, do you think you could teach me your weird prediction spell?"

"Probably not."

Twilight frowned, but was undeterred. "You know, Long Tail, I've been learning about the Magic of Friendship at Princess Celestia's orders and-"

Something caught her eye. "-what in Equestria is that?"

Probably Fizzlespark's fault. Longtail turned to look, and saw a bulky object the size of a small building that was hopping erratically across the fair, gradually growing closer.

Yep.

***

Glitterdust stumbled across the judging booth. At present, the judges were out among the tents, choosing the few competitors who would appear on stage at the highlight of the event. One judge was nearby, a blue unicorn with a sky-blue mane, critiquing a unicorn juggler.

"So us all a favor and stop before we pass out from boredom," she said to the crestfallen performer. "The Great and Powerful Trixie was more entertained by the contents of her kerchief the last time she sneezed."

There was one on every panel. That judge who couldn't find anything to like, and tore apart even the most talented performers. Glitterdust didn't know where the Great and Powerful Trixie had come from, but she had a fearsome reputation. Evidently she'd gone up against Twilight Sparkle and come away unscathed.

Circling the judges' table, Glitterdust noticed strange patterns in the earth under most of the chairs. All but one, in fact. She pulled aside one of the chairs to get a better look. Sniffing the ground, she could tell it had been disturbed. With one hoof, she started digging at the suspicious earth. Clearing some of the soil away, she found a seam, which came to a corner. She realized what it was, moments before it became obvious.

Trapdoor!

The earth quickly swallowed Glitterdust up and the door closed itself behind her and she was lost in darkness.

***

Sunnyside was chatting with Pancake at the fried dough stand, hoping Sprinklebelle wouldn't think he was playing favorites by getting the fried dough instead of an ice cream cone. His ears perked up when he heard some panicked screams from nearby and a heavy thud shook the ground. He started taking to the sky, but was interrupted by a great, metallic mass that was tossing booths and fair projects through the air in all directions.

The dough stand collapsed on top of the pegasus, and the contents of another booth were tossed on top. Sunnyside popped his head up through the mess and spotted Sugar Scoop talking urgently with Sunny's brother Scrambler, captain of the Benedict Bombers, the elite flying force of the Equestrian Military.

"Scramble the Bombers!" he shouted, voice carrying across the fair. He gained some altitude and then swooped down for a run at the rampaging contraption, his bright orange mane trailing like fire behind his white-and-gold dappled body. He wasn't afraid of anything.

Sunny's gaze turned downward, but what he saw captured his full attention. An ice cream stand had been hurled on top of the dough stand, and sitting before him, on a plate like a pedestal, was a delicious, hot piece of fried dough with a glob of fresh chocolate ice cream melting on top of it. Sunny's eyes widened and he took the treat in both hooves.

Cakey. Ice creamy. Hot. Cold. The flavors galloped back and forth across his tongue, stamping out the din of the chaos unfolding all around. He closed his eyes and savored it. He might be the first pony ever, in the history of Equestria, to taste something so delicious: the forbidden union of cake and ice cream.

Gradually he realized that it actually had gotten quiet all around him. He swallowed – a gulp, really – and opened his eyes.

Red Velvet and Sprinklebelle had come to see if he was alright, and were staring with twin expressions of horror at the half-eaten, hybrid treat monstrosity he held in his hooves. He looked back and forth between them, and they met his gaze with the same look of shock and reproach. His cheeks burned and turned bright pink. Red Velvet seemed about to speak, but Sunny pre-empted her.

"I'd better go help Scrambler with that thing!" he belted out, as fast as his mouth could work, before erupting out of the wreckage and racing into the sky in a random direction.

***

Fizzlespark wandered nonchalantly through the fair, eventually bumping into Long Tail. She gave him a warning look, which he ignored.

"There was no room on the ground level, so I figured I'd build up and put my booth on top of some others," he explained. "But I probably shouldn't have reused my pogo-sticks as the structural supports."

"I could have told you that," Long Tail said. "But we should go. You-know-who is here."

"Fizzlespark!" Twilight shouted. "What do you know about that out-of-control bouncing booth?"

The science pony turned slowly to regard the contraption as if it were the first time he was seeing it. The Benedict Bombers were slowly weighing it down with shattered egg mass, but in the meantime it was careening through the fair, dropping mysterious alchemical concoctions that burst into multicolored smoke. He turned back to the purple unicorn with a thoughtful, cornered expression, which eventually relaxed into an unconcerned one.

"Ah, Twilight, it's been too short a time since last we met."

"Don't change the subject. Turn that thing off!"

"Why don't you just stop it with a giant blast of magic, hmm? Miss 'my special talent is magic so I can do anything better than anypony else."

Twilight's little dragon butted in. "Jealous, much?"

Spring hissed and locked eyes with Spike.

Long Tail interjected. "There's no point berating Fizzlespark now. It's out of his control. Anyway, Scrambler should be able to take it down with that giant banner he's got."

Twilight groaned in exasperation. "I can't believe you're defending him when this is all his fault." A flash of realization hit her. "Wait, does this mean- I can't believe it. Long Tail, are you Fizzlespark's friend? You have a friend? That's so nice." Twilight seemed sincere, but realized she had put her hoof in her mouth. "I don't mean- It's just- you never had any friends, so- and I'm not one to talk, but- and friendship is so important-"

"Hey, what's that?" Fizzlespark was looking up at the top of a stone column nearby, where a gemstone had just started pulsing with magic, sending out little waves that dripped sparkling motes of starlight.

The other unicorns looked. Long Tail answered. "Probably the Nightmare Moon plot."

Twilight's jaw dropped. "The what!?"

***

Scrambler had an idea. This four-legged, bouncing monstrosity couldn't stay standing if he bound those spindly legs. It'd be just like hog-tying womp rats in Egger's Canyon. Grasping the longest banner he could find between his teeth, he sped around the contraption, banner streaming behind.

"One... more... pass..." he said through gritted teeth.

Out of no where, Sunnyside popped up. "Hey, I'm here to hel-"

Scrambler tried to veer out of the way, but his momentum was to great. He crashed into Sunnyside and the two of them tumbled into a pile of debris. The bouncing platform burst free of the banner and hopped off.

"Y'all awright, cuz?" Yolkel asked, hovering over his Egg family cousins and chewing on the stem of a plant.

"Fine," Scrambler said, his voice carefully level. He extricated himself, frowned at Sunny, then took to the air without another word.

Sunny slumped in the wreckage as the others rejoined the rest of the Bombers.

***

Princess Celestia peered out over the fair. It seemed things had gotten out of control. Should she intervene?

A sniffling sound disturbed her thoughts, and she regarded her sister.

"What's troubling you, little sister?"

"It is nothing." Luna turned away and crossed her forelegs over her chest, extending her wings as a screen. Celestia craned around them.

"You can talk to me. What's the matter?"

Luna hesitated another moment, then relented.

"I was expecting somepony to come and visit me here, but he- er, nopony did." Luna glanced furtively at her sister, who caught the look and smiled knowingly.

"Remind me to show you those friendship reports Twilight Sparkle is sending. 'Never lose faith in a friend,' she wrote."

Luna nodded, but didn't seem convinced. Did she even have any friends, really?

***

Glitterdust tumbled down a chute into a heavy iron cage, which clanged shut once she was inside.

"Ho ho ho. Ah ha ha!" The chuckle of an older male pony echoed in the darkness. "Welcome, postmare general. We knew you couldn't resist a trap door!"

A grey light twinkled in the darkness, and the wizened Arch-dean of the magic school was thrown into stark relief. Glitterdust glared through the bars.

"So it was you, Fizzy Wizard! Wait... it was you?"

"You haven't begun to see the fiendishness of my plan! But with you trapped here, your bumbling compatriots pose no obstacle to my masterstroke."

"You don't mean..." Glitterdust egged the villain on.

"Yes! The entire fairground is circumscribed with a transformation ring. In mere minutes, every unicorn in Canterlot will be mine!"

***

Above, Long Tail, Fizzlespark, and Twilight had reached a similar conclusion. Sunnyside and Sugar Scoop rejoined them, and were soon put to work. Working from Fizzlespark's calculations, Twilight devised a counterspell that could drain the power from the magic gems, but they'd need to deactivate all of them before noon. A single one left active could re-ignite the rest and trigger the spell. The unicorns whipped up the draining tools and passed them out.

"Sunnyside," Long Tail said. "If you could get some help from your pegasus friends, that would greatly increase the odds of getting this done before noon."

Sunny grimaced, not wanting to face his friends or his brother after the day's events. "I'll fly as fast as I can," he said.

And he did. The small team managed to very nearly do the rounds of the pillars before noon. But not quite.

All around the circumference of the fairground, the pillars flared to life, spewing motes of colored energy into the assembly of unicorn ponies. The unicorns cried out in pain and terror, some collapsing, others running blindly. The pegasi just tried to stay out of the way of the rampant magic, a few motes clinging to them as well, no matter how they tried to brush them away.

For a moment, everything stopped. The flow of the motes halted, then they started to drift upward. Slowly at first, then like a torrent. The pillars were emptied, and the motes were drawn back out of the ponies below. Up they traveled, into the sky, seemingly into the Sun itself, for Princess Celestia was overhead, delivering the ponies from the evil magic.

The streams of motes stopped, the last of them devoured by the light of the Sun, and Princess Celestia hung in the sky for one glorious moment before she crashed down to earth.

"Princess!" Twilight galloped to her mentor's side. Princess Celestia seemed badly injured. Clouds gathered overhead, blocking the Sun, and Princess Luna advanced through the gloom to her sister's side.

Fizzlespark, Long Tail, Sugar Scoop, and Sunnyside approached from the other direction, but stopped and Twilight cried out. "Don't let them near her! They're responsible for this all!"

Princess Luna gazed intently at Fizzlespark, then let roar in her royal voice.

"WHAT HAST THOU DONE?" Thunder and lightning erupted from the clouds that had gathered overhead.

Twilight answered for him. "I had a plan to stop the ritual. It should have worked. They must have sabotaged it."

Betrayal and hurt showed in Princess Luna's eyes. "SEIZE THEM!"

Bedlam broke out once again. Fizzlespark and his friends dove into a nearby cloud of smoke and ran for the twisting alleyways of the city, pursued by the royal guard and, hesitantly, the Benedict Bombers. When they caught a moment to breath, Fizzlespark shoved some papers into Spring.

"Bring those to Princess Luna," he said, sending the clockwork dragon off on its own.

The group had reached the outskirts of the city and stood at the top of a tall cliff when the Bombers caught up with them.

"Turn yourselves in," shouted Scrambler. "It will go over easier for you."

Everyone looked to Sunnyside, whose mouth was working, but no sound was coming out. He turned away from his brother to gaze out at the horizon. At freedom.

A sproinging noise interrupted the standoff. The bouncing booth landed squarely overtop of the escaping ponies, who grasped its underside as it continued bouncing. Quickly, they were carried down the mountain and away from the city, to safety and exile.

***

Glitterdust heard the commotion overhead, then quiet. Fizzy Wizard left briefly, then returned and opened Glitterdust's cage. He led the mail pony to the stairs leading back to the surface.

"You're letting me go?" Glitterdust asked.

"Your friends are on the run," Fizzy Wizard gloated. "And Princess Celestia will awaken as Daystar Nova. There's nothing you can do but drink the cool, refreshing draught of defeat!"

"Daystar Nova?"

"A wicked mare of burning flame. There's no reason to hold you any longer. You can't stop it."

Glitterdust turned to face the exit. "But I can stop you."

She reared up and delivered a solid kick to the wizard's smug face. He crumpled like a sack of mail.

"By the power vested in me as Postmare General, I place you under arrest for conspiring against the crown, and obstructing a postal officer in the course of her duty." No one could hear, but Glitterdust felt good saying it. She tossed the traitor over her back and ascended to the fairground.

Princess Celestia was beginning to stir. Glitterdust approached warily, but the Princess seemed herself. The same flowing mane, pinkish white coat... not a wicked mare of flame at all.

"Your Highness," Glitterdust said. "I've captured one of the ponies responsible. He admitted it to me himself."

The Princess opened her eyes, and Glitterdust was startled by the red iris.

Twilight Sparkle spoke. "Fizzy Wizard ... Fizzlespark. I should have known they'd be working together. But thanks to the Princess, their scheme fizzled out! Ha!"

Princess Luna made an indistinct noise, then closed her eyes and walked slowly away. Ponies parted for her, of course. Twilight cast a suspicious glance after her. Long Tail had let slip some comment about Nightmare Moon's plot, something Twilight couldn't stop thinking about.

The clouds parted and the Sun beat down on the fairgrounds, particularly on Glitterdust and Fizzy Wizard. The unicorn stirred and seemed quickly to grasp the situation.

"Your Highness-"

"SILENCE." The Princess paused to make sure her command was obeyed. "THOU HAST SINNED AGAINST THY LIEGE. THOU ART SENTENCED TO BANISHMENT, AND IMPRISONMENT IN THY PLACE OF BANISHMENT, AND ONE THING FURTHER."

The alicorn's horn ignited with orange flame, and the wizard's horn did the same. He cried out as his horn was pulled forcibly from his skull, leaving a smooth forehead in its place. The onlookers gasped, some clutching their horns reflexively. The Princess shifted the gaze of her red eyes to Glitterdust.

Oh no. No no no n-

With a thud, the Princess planted the horn in Glitterdust's head. It burned, and the pain spread throughout Glitterdust's body along with dancing ribbons of flame. Her legs trembled, but she remained standing. Her new horn tingled with sensation.

"For your loyalty," the Princess said, sweetly. "Now come, we have matters to discuss."

Swirling flame enveloped the Princess, Glitterdust, and Fizzy Wizard, and they vanished from the field, reappearing with a whiff of sulphur inside the Castle.

"It occurs to me, dear Glitterdust, that your talents have been under-utilized." The Princess walked onto a balcony and looked out over the city. "Treachery hangs over Canterlot like a stinking cloud." She turned to the postmare. "I want you to serve me as Agent Cloudkill."

Glitterdust gulped. "Of course, Princess." The horn weighed strangely on her head when she lowered it, but she hoped the discomfort didn't show.

"I'm assigning you a team of... inspectors. Postal inspectors, officially." The Princess grinned. "For starters, find out what this ex-wizard knows."

Fizzy Wizard was curled into a ball on the palace floor, hooves grasping his bare forehead and body shaking.

"I'll expect your report in the morning. Now go."

There was another flash of heat, and Glitterdust found herself and the prisoner in a dungeon beneath the castle. It was equipped with a comfy chair, a soft cushion... everything Glitterdust needed.