“Oh dear God this place is boring.”

Eris yawned and sprawled out over the park bench upside down, her tail lolling over the back and trailing on the ground. William shifted awkwardly beside her, continuously looking back and forth down the little path in the park as a couple of chatting elderly ponies passed, the only other sign of sentient life around.

“Maybe she’s just held up a little,” William fiddled with his fingertips. “Scootaloo shouldn’t be much longer, I think.”

“Whoop de frick,” the draconequus refrained from yawning again. “Is your little girlfriend always late?”

“Mifflapth!”

Of course, this was all that William could manage to sputter with Eris’s fuzzy tail tip poking him playfully in the nose again. He swiped her away, glowering at her as his cheeks grew pinker.

“She is not my girlfriend, thank you,” William straightened his small black tailored shirt a little tighter around himself. “And Scootaloo is generally very punctual, for your information.”

“Oh?” Eris twirled around, sitting up straight and kicking her feet up on dead air. “Guess that means you’re available, huh, tiny?”

“Please stop calling me that,” he muttered, turning away from her hungry gaze awkwardly.

“Wh~y?” she asked in a singsong voice, tickling him in the rib with one talon. “Is somebody a little self-conscious?”

“No,” William pushed her paw away slowly. “Quit trying, I’m not ticklish.”

“Bull~shit!” Eris giggled, her tail wriggling around behind William and tickling the opposite side of his neck as she poked his belly. “I know you’ve got a ticklish spot some~whe~re…!”

“I do not,” he deadpanned, seemingly oblivious to her attempts. “I have no ‘ticklish spots’, thank you.”

“… Uh-hrmm,” the draconequus purred, drawing him in with her tail and wrapping it around his waist. “I’m sure I could find a ticklish spot… somewhere.”

His face burned as the implication finally set in, her sly wink only causing the heat to rise.

“Heyya, Will!”

Eris cackled maniacally as William fell unceremoniously to the ground, desperately struggling to explain the situation in any possible way except for what it looked like. Instead, William only found himself sputtering and spouting gibberish.

“Waiting for – late – need the – tail in my – I am not ticklish!” William shouted red faced, hands clenching and unclenching rapidly as his heart raced so quickly he thought it would explode.

“… O-kay…?” the bright orange pegasus stepped off of her scooter slowly, warily watching the twitching boy and the hysterically laughing draconequus. “Sorry I’m late – had to dodge Dee Tee again today.”

“Dee Tee?” Eris leaned forward, mildly interested. She did have the courtesy to offer a paw to William to help him to his feet, but he stood angrily on his own, violently dusting himself.

“Oh, it’s just Diamond Tiara,” Scootaloo rolled her eyes, hopping up onto the empty space beside Eris. “She’s the ‘sort of’ Cutie Mark Crusader. Real clingy, ya know?”

“Is she ‘sort of’ cute?” she raised an eyebrow slowly.

“What?” the pegasus blinked. “I dunno. I guess a colt would think so, maybe. Will, is Diamond Tiara cute?”

And although William had finally found his voice, he sincerely wished that he could have a skill somewhat useful in those particular situations, such as the ability to remain silent when he really wanted to instead of when he needed to speak.

This was most definitely one of those situations.

“Oh, well, you know,” William jabbered uneasily, stepping back and forth as he realized that the staring pegasus had taken his spot on the bench. “Sure, she is. I mean, well, I could see why-why somebody might think she is – Diamond Tiara, I mean, that she might be cute – not that I think that, of course, that would be ridiculous – I mean, not that I have anything against Miss Tiara, for being cute – I mean, if one could define cute, then-”

For some reason, Eris only struggled to contain her powerful giggling the redder and more flustered William became.

“So…” Scootaloo fiddled with her scooter, sliding off the bench. “You do think she’s, uh… pretty.”

“Of course not!” William blurted defensively, secretly wishing that he could dig down a few yards and bury himself from her bizarrely piercing stare. “I-I mean, I wouldn’t want to dismiss her behind her back, that would be rude – I mean, not that I do it to her face – she is, but I don’t think so – I-I-I…!”

Eris had to stuff her knuckles in her mouth to stifle her hysterical giggling, and she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“Well, you guys look like you’re pretty busy,” Scootaloo said distractedly as she hopped onto her scooter and the familiar buzzing of her wings powered her along. “Later, Will!” she half waved at him without looking back, and sped down the path until she began to fade from view.

William simply stood twitching slightly on the spot for what felt like an eternity.

“… Huh,” Eris grinned at him, sprawling back in relaxation. “So, Willy, got a thing for the munchkin, eh?”

“Damn it!” William pounded his forehead with his fist angrily, thumping himself between the eyes. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it,” she joked, earning her an angry glare from the boy. “You’ll get the courage to ask her out, you just need a montage.”

“I am not asking – HORSEAPPLES!” he bellowed, head whipping back around toward the last direction Scootaloo left in. “I was supposed to check if she was coming!”

“Kinky.”

“I – what?” William balked. “I forgot to invite her – we have to go catch up!”

“Invite her to what?” Eris asked, turning herself upside down again for her own amusement and poking at the park bench’s leg. It mysteriously began wiggling like rubber, jiggling whenever she poked it.

“Have you been paying attention at all?” he began stomping after Scootaloo, thinking ahead to where she might have gone. “The Summer Sun Celebration is tonight!”

Eris shrugged halfheartedly, and gradually pulled herself away from the now quite floppy park bench and began trudging after the furious boy.

“I don’t even know what that is,” she admitted, scratching a spot behind her short antler. “The big shebang going on?”

William almost stopped midstride, but plowed on ahead steadily.

“Eris,” he calmed himself after a moment. “Precisely what do you know about Equestrian history?”

“Dude,” Eris rubbed her temples. “Listen, I just moved here. As in, to this dimension. I don’t know, and I don’t really care.”

That caused William to stop midstride.

“Dimension?” he asked, suddenly much more interested. It occurred to him that he really knew nothing about his adopted sister, aside from the fact that she looked somewhat similar to Discord.

“Eeh-yah,” she rolled her eyes, and William had to pick up the pace to keep up with her strides. “Again, Dad said you were supposed to be smart. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in your brainage, Willy.”

“Brainage is not a word,” William stated flatly. “And how could I have possibly known that you come from a different world altogether unless someone implicitly told me so?”

“Keep your filthy logic out of my argument!” Eris crossed her arms grumpily, hiding a half grin.

“Tell me about the place you come from,” he demanded, desperate to keep from devolving into more nonsense. “What kind of place is it?”

Eris started to speak, but quickly clamped her mouth shut. She furrowed her brows deeply, folding her arms in tightly and clutching her sides, her vision narrowing in on something far ahead in the distance.

“… Bad.”

“That was painfully vague,” William said snarkily and started to continue, but held himself in check when he saw Eris shaking a pained look from her face.

“It was just bad,” she said darkly. “That’s all you need to know. Dad found me, and it’s been good since-”

She paused once again, and shook her head.

“… Huh. Can’t seem to… remember. What were we doing again?”

“I need to find Scootaloo,” William sped up once again, determination returning. “In all likelihood, she has returned to the clubhouse, and at that point I can properly invite her to the celebrations in Canterlot.”

“Where?”

“Canterlot,” William repeated himself wearily. “I have never actually been there myself, as the last Summer Sun Celebration I had a ‘sitter’ because I was ‘ill’,” he spat contemptuously, making air quotes and nearly clawing the empty space before him as he walked.

“Hoo, where did that come from?” Eris cocked an eyebrow at his sudden burst of venomousness.

“It was just an excuse,” he cleared his throat and jammed his hands in his pockets grumpily. “It was because Mother and Miss Pie didn’t want me along for the party. They were gone until four in the morning!”

“Sounds tragic,” Eris mumbled sarcastically. “Really.”

“I’m old enough to stay up that late!” he demanded somewhat childishly. “Regardless, history shall not repeat itself.”

“Because you get to go to this shindig?” she asked with utter disinterest, eyeing a pair of bluebirds singing cheerfully in a tree above them.

“No,” William grinned in a manner that almost made Eris feel slightly uncomfortable. “Because they’re never getting another sitter.”

Eris couldn’t quite bring herself to ask why.

By the time that they finally reached the ‘headquarters’ of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, William was thoroughly certain that Eris was determined to talk his ears off. It was an entirely one sided conversation, with no semblance of logic or reason – merely rambling, pointless story after story, most of which involved explosions.

He was nearly ready to jam his fingers in his ears when he spotted Scootaloo’s trademark scooter sitting just beside the old treehouse, and he elatedly darted up the ramp as Eris groaned.

“Seriously, here again?” she rolled her shoulders. “If ‘show Eris the sights’ means ‘the same frickin’ thing over and over’, then I think I’d rather go back to napping.”

William refrained from making any snide remarks and repeated the ‘secret knock’ of the CMC.

Which, essentially, was just knocking three times.

“Password?” he heard Sweetie Belle’s familiar voice from within.

“There is no password,” William deadpanned, and the wooden door swung open swiftly.

“That’s the password!” the unicorn greeted him cheerfully. William welcomed the cool shade, and was eventually followed by Eris.

“… Where’s Scootaloo?” he asked, Apple Bloom turning away from the map she was struggling to pin to one of the walls to answer.

“Efth thethle ‘thi whi eeh,” she said through a mouthful of tacks, and William cringed and flinched with every word. Miraculously, she managed to spit them out without harming herself, and William allowed himself to breathe again.

“She was outside with Diamond Tiara,” Sweetie explained, helping Apple Bloom with the last corner of the map of a place William had never seen, that looked as if it had all been done with cheap paint. “Did she leave?”

“I don’t think so,” Apple Bloom peered out the window, but William didn’t hear her. He was already starting back for the door when a surprisingly pink cheeked Scootaloo shuffled in, nearly bowling him over.

“Oh, there you are!” William perked up immediately, barely registering the smirking filly behind Scootaloo. “I’m glad we caught up, the Summer Sun Celeb-”

“Hey, are you Diamond Tiara?” Eris butted in before he could finish, draping her tail over William’s shoulder and pushing him a little out of the way. The filly behind Scootaloo stared long and hard at the draconequus, and frowned.

“Who’s asking?” she blew a tuft of light purple and white mane from her face haughtily, and Scootaloo swiftly ducked out of the way.

“Willy’s sister!” Eris stuck out a paw genially with a huge smile. “He says you’re cute.”

“Eris!”

William threw off the unexpectedly heavy draconequus, his face growing as red as Scootaloo’s was. Determined not to allow Eris to repeat her stunt from before, William quickly tried to take control.

“Ignore her,” William straightened his shirt. “She’s quoting out of context, Eris is my apparently adopted sister, don’t trust anything she says.”

“Hey!”

“I’m only here to cordially invite Miss Scootaloo to the Summer Sun Celebration,” he carried on as if he hadn’t heard Eris’s exclamation, turning to the pegasus. “I merely wished to ask if you would care to attend the festivities this evening in Canterlot. Transportation has already been arranged-”

“O-oh…” Scootaloo shifted somewhat guiltily, rubbing her foreleg uncomfortably. “Um… well-well, you see, I, uh…”

“Scootaloo is already going with somepony,” Diamond Tiara snickered, earning a couple of level glares from Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.

And just like that, the bottom dropped out of William’s stomach. It was like he had been gut punched, turning in a startlingly painful knot that was difficult to ignore.

“Completely understandable.” William nodded a single time and left without another word. The door quietly latched shut behind him, before he reopened it and asked “Wait, how are you getting to Canterlot?”

“Because she’s going with me and daddy,” Diamond Tiara smirked, which only caused William’s gawking of confusion to melt into one of expressionless, empty stare.

“… Right, then. Leaving now.”

The train whistle pierced the air, shrieking like a wild bird as William was once again tempted to plug his ears. The hustle and bustle of ponies milling about for entry to the long metal serpent quickly rose again as the whistling died, painted carriages along the tracks gradually being filled by passengers.

William was swiftly jostled along by Pinkie Pie, and he nearly tripped on the steps onto the train as Rainbow Dash presented tickets.

“I call a window seat!” Eris shouted, nearly clambering over William in the process of boarding the train.

Although William felt like he should have been looking forward to the festivities, he couldn’t quite seem to shake off the gloomy air that hung over him. It seemed so utterly outlandish to him, that Scootaloo wouldn’t be attending with him – he had everything planned out to the letter, was so sure that everything would go exactly as planned that he couldn’t really comprehend it when it so obviously failed.

And it might not have, if it hadn’t been for Eris.

A lowly roiling anger began bubbling up inside of him, which he was distracted from by none other than Twilight Sparkle.

“All in one carriage?” the violet mare asked him cheerfully, looking about at her friends as they chattered and settled in. “Hello, William. Anticipating the Summer Sun Celebration, I presume?”

“Positively, Miss Sparkle,” William answered completely joylessly, forcing himself not to stare at her wings. It didn’t matter what any of the others told him, the fact that any pony could simply attain extra body parts seemed absolutely horrifying to him.

“Oh, I’m sure that you’re going to have a great time!” Twilight said chipperly as she shifted into a seat next to Spike, the small drake that served as her ‘number one assistant’. “It’s a shame that you missed the last one; you look to be pretty healthy this year!”

If anything, William resembled a pale spider, decked in black with a horrendously spotted blue tie that Pinkie Pie had forced him to wear. ‘Healthy’ was usually one of the last things anyone could think when looking at William, probably right before ‘pleasant’ or ‘cheerful’. Twilight was distracted before long by the seemingly overexcited draconequus shimmying about the cabin, nosing her way into everyone’s business. It was almost amusing, watching Twilight trying and failing to glean any information from Eris for nearly a full ten minutes before giving up on the impossible.

It was a tortuously long ride to Canterlot, William found. The train chugged along with a steady speed, powering through tunnels and further up the mountainside toward the capital city, and William silently watched trees and homes pass by without a word. It was almost peaceful, he thought vaguely to himself as he lost himself in thought. Therapeutic, in a strange way, watching the entire world go by piece by piece.

Eris plopped into the empty seat behind him, leaning forward and whispering into his ear and causing him to jump.

“What’cha thinkin’ about?”

“Don’t do that,” William grumbled, rubbing his ear. He almost turned to Rainbow Dash, but she was fast asleep next to a drowsily content Pinkie Pie.

“Yeesh,” Eris tittered. “Who stuck a bee in your undies?”

“Nothing.” He resumed staring out the window as they passed into another tunnel, darkness overtaking the cabin once more as the sun vanished from view. “There are no bees in my underpants.”

“Hmm. Mind if I check?” she responded coyly into his ear, and when the train left the tunnel, one would have guessed that William were sunburned for the redness on his face.

“Almost there, almost there, almost there…!” Pinkie Pie pranced back and forth excitedly, watching the stage set up in the center of the city’s square where the princesses would soon kick off the celebrations.

“Christ, save if for the bedroom.” Eris rolled her eyes, but went unheard by all but William and Rainbow Dash.

“And the kitchen table,” Dash snickered quietly behind her hoof.

“Dude, ew!”

William ignored them all, sticking close to Rainbow Dash’s side and watching for when the princesses would inevitably set upon the stage, which was easily twice as high as a standard pony. It bore numerous slits in the sides, each darkened vertical slot hiding something that shimmered slightly within. From what he could see of the three opulently decorated pillars on the stage, decorated with a sun, a moon, and a single star, William guessed that each one was reminiscent of each princess.

He still thought it odd that any princess would continue to literally live in a tree, but that was Twilight’s prerogative. Ponies of all sorts milled about, eagerly gathering around the stage.

“Citizens of Equestria,” William spotted Twilight Sparkle trotting cheerfully up to the center of the stage, her magically amplified voice covering a much larger portion of the area. “We are proud to announce the annual Summer Sun Celebration…”

William tried his best to listen to Twilight’s obviously planned speech, but was continuously distracted by Eris, who drew his attention from the corner of his eye. It took him a moment to realize that she had been slowly inching away the entire time, and he blinked in surprise.

“Psst!” she hissed at him while the attention of the crowd was elsewhere. She beckoned him forward, whispering “Come on!”

“Where are you going?” William whispered back, and she feigned deafness by cupping a paw over one ear. William tentatively looked back to Pinkie and Dash, who were absorbed in the display where another figure was approaching the stage. She was one that William had never personally seen, a deep cobalt alicorn with a shining black tiara and elegantly waving mane that almost seemed as if stars were hiding in it. He tore his gaze away, frantically trying to usher Eris back before anything drastic occurred.

“Eris!” William hissed, slipping past a couple of disgruntled stallions to catch up to her. “Eris, come back! We’re going to get in trouble!”

“Aw, come on!” the draconequus giggled as she approached a small side entrance to the stage, ducking down and slithering in before he could stop her. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I don’t have a sense of adventure!” William retorted angrily as he trailed after her, and she stayed constantly out of his reach with her tail tip bobbing maddeningly before him like a fishing lure. He ducked beneath a couple of hanging beams that supported the stage as he anxiously tried to convince her to return. “What are you even doing?”

It took William nearly a full beat to realize that it was remarkably similar to a fishing lure, and that she had just outwitted him apparently without effort.

“Doing?” Eris grinned mischievously. “Playing with fireworks, of course!”

“There aren’t any fireworks, let’s get out before we get in trouble!” he shot back, the sound above them nearly drowning out his words.

Eris smiled wider, alighting a single solitary spark above one talon and revealing what were indeed a large supply of fireworks, all lined up before the slits in the stage and angled to go upwards at some point.

“… Why on earth isn’t anyone guarding these?” William stared at the impressive collection in genuine shock.

“They’re probably all set to go off magically,” the draconequus scratched her chin, nearly setting her face on fire in the process. She quickly flicked the tiny blue flame into the air, where it hung innocently. “That way they can ensure the timing.”

“That’s not important,” William threw a look over his shoulder nervously, almost positive that at any moment someone would reprimand him for sneaking beneath the stage. “We need to go, we need to go now!”

Eris snorted, and said “Or what? Are you chicken now?”

“What? No, these are highly explosive!” William pointed to one of the particularly large rockets, worriedly glancing back to the little blue flame. “There’s probably nobody under here because someone could get hurt when these go –”

William never got to finish his sentence, as every single firework around them spontaneously went off with deafening roars. William was blinded by flaring light and couldn’t hear anything except the earsplitting boom of dozens upon dozens of bulbous fireworks blasting off and exploding around him. He was thrown violently to the ground by a force from his side, and could only cover his head and instinctively curl up into a ball before the world went black.

“That was awesome!” Eris cheered jubilantly as she erupted from the rubble, William clinging in terror to her stomach.

“… I’m-I’m alive?” he released her swiftly, his shaking hands as much as the rest of his body, patting himself down as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “We’re alive! I’m alive!”

And it was then that William’s overjoyed shouts of elation from merely being alive left him when he finally realized that he and Eris were the sole focus of thousands of ponies, all of which held them in a spotlight as gunpowder fogged the air around them.

“… We’re so dead,” Eris breathed as they were rapidly drawn from the debris by unseen hands, dropping them both rather brusquely before someone that William had only met once before, and very briefly. However, she still remained just as impressive, and seemed even more towering and significantly more terrifying this time around.

“My, my. It would appear that Discord has been entertaining some rather exotic tastes,” Princess Celestia gave a level glare at the stunned draconequus.