A trio of scrolls flashed into being in front of Celestia, each paired with a quill and ink pot. Each began writing independently, laying a practiced flowing script onto each parchment.

"According to the testimony of several, you have saved lives and prevented many injuries in this town. In deference to your position, even though it means little in this land as of yet, I will give you these three choices. You will have three days to make your choice. Commit a crime, and I will know and these deals will be forfeit. I will find you, and when I do, you will be banished from my lands one way or another."

Celestia walked past the flabbergasted Iroh, who was certain he was about to need to defend himself, and towards the door back into the spa lobby.

"Make your mark on the scroll of your choice when you have chosen. I judge you a potential friend to my ponies. Don't make me regret this decision."

The four mares in the tub slumped in various states of relief. They looked up again as Lyra first started snickering, then laughing out loud.

"Bwahaha-ha! The look on your faces! That's what you get for trying to prank me!"

As Lyra threw her head back and howled her mirth to the ceiling. Vinyl looked back at the Earth ponies, of whom only Bon Bon seemed to realize what was going on. With a smirk, she gathered a ball of water about the size of a beach ball in her telekinetic grip and floated it to a place above Lyra.

"Your sense of humor is all wet!" she declared as she canceled her spell, allowing the ball of water to fall directly into Lyra's laughing face.

"Blub!" Lyra sputtered ineffectually as she choked and coughed.

Three of the mares in the tub tittered, either in relief that the tense situation was over or at poor Lyra's situation. The fourth, however was focused on Iroh as he stood there frowning at the three scrolls in his hands.

"Iroh?" Octavia called softly, before clearing her throat and trying again. "Iroh? What did the Princess mean by your position?"

Iroh didn't even seem to notice as he wandered into the next room and towards his pile of clothes.

"All right everypony, let's keep it together. We gotta get those shelters up before sundown, ya hear?" Applejack hollered over the hubbub of ponies working to clear up debris or to shore up homes that were made unsound by Spike's rampage.

*CRASH*

Everypony winced at the sound of a partially collapsed roof falling the rest of the way in, a gray pegasus sat in the middle of it, unscathed but for her dazed expression. "Ugh. I just don't know what went wrong..." she lamented quietly.

A filly standing on the end of a line of four unicorn foals rolled her eyes as she turned her head slightly from her task. "Mommeeeee...." she moaned in the general direction of the pegasus in the wreckage.

"Dinky! Pay attention!" Cried out the filly next to her. Dinky's eyes snapped back to the beam that she and her two filly compatriots were holding steady with their magic. The colt of their quartet was getting a workout of his talent by cutting the splintered beam into smaller, more manageable pieces.

"How much longer, Snips?" asked Sweetie Belle from the middle of the trio, " Tootsie and I are getting tired, and it looks like Dinky is already there."

"Almost there, Sweetie." Came the reply in Snips' high scratchy voice, his bushy eyebrows bunching together as he furrowed his brow and poured more power into his sawing spell. Moments later, the cut was complete, and Snips added his magic to that of his friends so that the beam could be lowered to the ground safely.

Snips nodded with satisfaction before calling out to his father that the cut was finished. He turned his plump body in a half circle before plopping down on the ground and looking over at the three unicorn fillies he had managed to recruit to help him out. Tootsie Flute had sunk gratefully to her haunches, sweat dripping from her face. Being the eldest of the trio of fillies, she had taken control of half of the broken beam herself. Sweetie Belle and Dinky Doo had taken the section that was a bit smaller, but was also completely unsupported by the wall it had once sat upon. She brushed her lavender mane away from her equally lavender eyes just in time to see Snails deposit a tankard of water in front of her.

Tootsie looked up to the lanky colt to give her thanks, which he just returned with a lazy nod, his eyes half-lidded in seeming boredom. Snails' magic sputtered to life again to withdraw another wooden tankard from his saddlebag and fill it with water from the barrel he had balanced on his back.

"Good stuff!" Snips exclaimed as he perked up at the thought of a cool drink.

"Ladies first, eh?" his friend drawled as he passed the next mug on to Dinky, much to her tired delight.

Snails was just about to turn and fill a third mug when a stallion bellowed over the din of ponies working.

"SNAILS!" the thickly mustachioed stallion roared, "What in the name of Celestia's Wonderful Withers are you doing, lad? There's too much kerfuffle around here for you to be eyeing the chesterfield!"

The lanky foal looked back and blinked, apparently unshaken by his agitated father. "I'm working the tap, just as you said. I wanna get this water off my back before it drowns me, you know."

"Well then hurry up about it. There're more ponies that'll be needing drinks by the south side of town."

His piece said, the stallion turned and stomped away from the foals.

"He's scary!" squeaked Dinky, poking the top of her head out from her hiding place behind some rubble.

"Meh. He's not so bad," said Sweetie Belle. "I mean, we saw worse last fall when Apple Bloom used his tennis racket to hit apples. Come to think of it, that was the same day that Scootaloo and I first met Apple Bloom."

"HA!" laughed Tootsie. "I remember that! The three of you practically stole Diamond Tiara's cute cenera out from under her hooves."

Sweetie Belle grinned in remembrance. "Yeah. You know she went and did it before the three of us really met for the first time. You can imagine our surprise when we were walking together after the party only for mister Ace to come storming down on the three of us like a herd of angry weathermares."

"Dad's been like that as long as I can remember," Snails said as he started pouring their last drink. "He's always pent up about being the perfect sports stallion but he keeps getting totally overshadowed in just about everything but tennis. Then when Apple Bloom went and almost wrecked his favorite racket..."

Snails shuddered, causing the barrel on his back to wobble a bit before he could re-balance it.

"He spent a week inventing a filly proof racket case after that, you know?"

"Really?" Sweetie and Dinky asked at the same time.

"Yup." Snails popped his 'p' as his eyes unfocused while he thought of the event. "It looked like the kind of mad contraption you see miss Bon Bon come up with every now and then. Only trouble was... he couldn't open it."

As the fillies burst into laughter, Snails handed over the last drink and collected up those tankards that were already empty. He quickly wiped each with a rag before returning it to one of his saddlebags.

"Wow, Snails, you look like a real bartender when you do that." Commented Tootsie as she eyed him cleaning her now empty tankard.

"That's the plan," he said, smiling back at her. " I want to get a job as a bartender when I'm older, maybe even open a bar of my own. Got to get the practice in now though, eh?"

"But - but what about your talent? Come to think of it, what is your talent?" Sweetie Belle looked slightly frazzled as she peered at the frowning snail adorning the colt's flank.

Snips burst out laughing, while Snails blushed furiously and tried to pull himself further under his barrel, increasing the image of his namesake in his embarrassment.

"Let me tell this one!" Snips piped up, his eyes sparkling in amusement.

"Snails and me are cousins, see? We actually got our cutie marks at the same time! It was about a year ago, and we were at Auntie Roma's tomato farm for the weekend when Auntie Roma discovered she had a really bad snail infestation. When she freaked out and ran to go get help, we decided we would help her out. I just went and started zapping the snails with my magic to get rid of them, while snails here decided he liked how they looked, so he grabbed an empty barrel and started collecting them. By the time Auntie Roma had come back, about a quarter of her field was in ruins, and I had a snazzy pair of scissors on my flank - what can I say? Cutting stuff down was just too much fun."

Snails raised his nose into the air a little and smiled. "My section of the field was perfectly unharmed and all the snails were in the barrel except for one big snail which was sitting on my head. I didn't even realize it at the time, but I got my cutie mark right when I tamed Shelly. Matter of fact, my cutie mark is Shelly."

Sweetie Belle tilted her head. "So your talent is taming snails?"

She blushed furiously when Snips started laughing, pounding one of his hooves on the ground in merriment.

"Nope," Snails said as he shook his head. "My talent is carrying and balancing heavy loads, just like a snail carries its shell on its back."

As the fillies nodded their heads in understanding, Snails retrieved the last of their now empty cups.

"Welp, I've got to get back to it. Lotsa thirsty ponies around."

Snails turned to leave and then paused. "Oh yeah, Snips? Mom says you're bunking with me tonight since your house isn't safe."

"Right-o. I kinda figured that would happen."

It was rapidly approaching sunset as a mare with a small filly on her back walked down the path towards their home. The filly who had been mostly drowsing after the excitement of the day perked up when she saw an unusual yet slightly familiar shape seated on the edge of the porch in front of old miss Matilda's home.

"Iroh!" she shouted with glee as she sprang from her mother's back and bounded towards the old man.

Iroh looked up from the scroll he had been pondering to see the filly from the day before rushing towards him. He wracked his brain for her name, knowing that she had introduced herself to him just a day before.

"Aura!" the mare following her called out in concern, marking her as the young one's mother and accidentally reminding him of her name.

Iroh smiled broadly as the filly skidded to a stop before him. "Good evening, miss Aura. You look like you have had quite the busy day."

"Uh huh!" Aura agreed; her lavender coat was covered with patches of soot and dirt, a large mark prominent above the tip of her nose.

"We got to see a real dragon! Not a cute baby dragon like belongs to the pretty white lady but a real huge dragon! But he was mean, and he was roaring and stomping and taking stuff and eek! SO SCARY!"

Iroh laughed as he nodded amiably to Aura's mother, who was trotting after her daughter, weariness etched on her face after such a stressful day.

"Indeed it was. In fact, it was quite possibly the scariest dragon I have ever seen, but that is a story for another time. I imagine your mother is eager to get home and clean."

Aura pounced on his phrasing with the alacrity and adorableness of an owl-kitten chasing a mouse toy. "Does that mean you'll tell me the story later? Oh please, oh please of pleeease!"

Iroh's smile softened, and the laughter left his eyes as he looked towards the horizon. "Yes, young Aura, I am likely to be here for quite some time."

As Aura cheered and bounded in a circle with renewed energy, her mother stepped forward to take her in hoof. "Thank you for being so patient with her. Come on now, grubby snout, it's bath time for you."

"Awwww," Aura whined. "Buh bye Mister Iroh. See you soon!"

Aura waved as she was led away to her nearby home, smiling brightly as Iroh waved absentmindedly back at her.

Iroh tore his eyes away from the rising moon to look mournfully back at the scrolls in his hand.

"Quite some time indeed..."

Author's Notes:

Wow, it's been a while. Work and family had me completely swamped for the longest time followed by a major bout of writers' block. I'm back now and trying to get back into the swing of things.

I had a lot of fun working on developing Snails outside of what was shown in the series as 'stereotypical boy' and 'vaguely Canadian'. I'm personally sticking him in the 'not very smart, but fairly wise' category - ie. much like Applejack he knows he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he makes up for that by being patient, observant and, hopefully, wise.

Corrections supplied by the greatly helpful and plot bunny inflicting Nyerguds.