January 13, 3316, Friday

First entry in Rainbow Dash’s diary. Hi Diary! These notes are dictated by Rainbow Dash and written down by a nifty bit of magic Twilight showed me. Luna wants Twilight to start logging what her team’s doing, and she never has time, so she put me in charge of recording our daily activities. I figured, I’ve been thinking about making a diary for a while now, what better time to start. When it became obvious we were gonna be on our adventure for longer than we thought, I wanted to do a diary then, but I never got around to it.

Pinkie and the five actual diplomats landed in the changeling island chain yesterday, The Hive. They met Queen Chrysalis, but it didn’t go great. They’ve got nothing to report because Twilight’s team isn’t ready yet, but Pinkie says Celestia was supposedly in talks with Chrysalis about this stuff last month. If we go back, we’ll remember that Celestia was stuck in Moondrop around that time, so it looks like Celestia lied to her own diplomats. Why? I asked Twilight but she doesn’t know, too distracted to worry about it.

We have until tomorrow to get something we can report to the queen, and if we don’t, she didn’t say. We’ll find out, cause I don’t think Twilight has anything yet. Her map of the country’s coming along, but it’ll be a week at least until it’s ready, she still has to do the underground stuff.

January 14, 3316, Saturday

So we didn’t have anything for Chrysalis, which is bad. Pinkie said she (the queen) was told we already had most of this done before the diplomats flew out there, so again, it looks like Celestia was blowing smoke the whole time. I think Celestia told the changelings we were farther ahead than we were to ease off tension, and then told her diplomats that she had been talking with Chrysalis to make them try to skip ahead past the part we’re at now. But that’s stupid cause it puts all of this on Twilight to come up with something in like no time at all. Maybe Celestia assumed Twilight would just create a solution out of thin air? If so, she was badly mistaken.

Chrysalis is preparing to put embargoes on all the trade routes with Equestria. It’s not that big a deal right now, since trade has slacked off recently, but once we get back down it’ll be a problem. Plus Twilight says it basically means “an atrophy of changeling-pony relations.” We’ve never been on the best terms with them, so if we’re not careful, things might turn nasty.

January 17, 3316, Tuesday

Today’s Octavia’s birthday. I met her for lunch and we actually had a good time. She cut her mane almost to the scalp, but I guess it looks okay on her. She’s not as moody as before, says she’s getting help. She didn’t want to go into detail, which I respect, but I’m glad she’s finally facing her problems. That mare, I’m amazed she made it all the way with us, looking back. I remember when she stopped eating, for a while there it looked like she was gonna go to sleep one night and not wake up. Scary.

Great, now I’ve bummed myself out.

January 20, 3316, Friday

Twilight’s done with her map of Equestria. She showed it to me today, and I didn’t understand it, but it sure looked cool. She has the whole thing set up in the attic with all that divination stuff around the walls, like all around. Crystal balls, those hanging weights on strings, chalk designs everywhere, bowls of oil and water, smoke and electricity, it’s like a mad science lab, and then she’s got the map floating in the middle. I thought it was gonna be like a big book that you can flip through, but she has it like a huge cube of pure magic—bigger than me!—and it can expand and show details on any small part she wants. That’s one thing, and then she can explode it and push the pieces around and see how Equestria would fit together and all that.

Cause here’s the problem, it’s not just putting the pieces back like a puzzle. That’s her favorite saying, it’s not like a puzzle. She must have told Pinkie that a hundred times already. The diplomats have been having a hard time of it in The Hive with Chrysalis bugging them constantly. I feel for them, I wouldn’t want to be put in that situation either. If Celestia had just been honest from the start… But I guess she wanted to look like she had everything under control.

Anyway, the puzzle. You can’t just push everything back together willy-nilly or else the continent could drift off center. Every time you push pieces together, the space between those pieces and the ones you leave alone grows, and so on and so on until you have half a country of empty space between where you started and the pieces you saved for last. Starting in the middle and moving outward would be easiest, but we have to get the high-priority places first, like the places on top of big oil deposits or where there’s a lot of train tracks or phone lines. Twilight’s been playing with it all afternoon, and she even let me mess with it a little, but she got sick of explaining everything and told me to take the rest of the day off. I’m meeting Vinyl and Colgate for drinks in an hour, so I need to wrap this up.

January 25, 3316, Wednesday

Business first, then the news. Twilight’s got the plan of restoration, it’s a checklist longer than my tail. Now the other team leads get to start doing stuff, so I’m hoping that’ll let Twilight take a break. The other one, Leaf Blower, she’s in charge of moving ponies and securing buildings and junk, and she gets to fly out to Manehattan first. I remember Manehattan, those crazy towers that we had to secure, and that Strawberry pony, and Lacey, and all them. They’re going to repair everything between Manehattan and the north coast, that’s all the inlets and naval trade routes and important stuff like that. It makes sense that we’d do that first, since it’s the changelings we’re trying to appease, and we pretty much only use those inlets to trade with them. Estimate until project completion: February 15.

Pinkie and her friends are hanging in there. Chrysalis said she’d want to move them to the capital island if this is gonna take a lot longer, which it is. Pinkie tried to sound all “no big deal” about it on the sigil, but I can tell she’s excited. I’m happy for her. It’s not final yet, they’ll let me know when it is. Twilight hopes Celestia doesn’t make a stink about them moving deeper into The Hive.

Aloe and Lotus got back on the first but they finally said hi today. Well, Twilight wasn’t very surprised to see them, but I sure was. Lotus has… seen better days. I’m glad I don’t work for her.

Okay, news. Vinyl’s almost done with her new album! It’s called “The Quest,” and it has a song named after yours truly! Actually it has a song for each of us, but mine’s the best. She brought me into the studio today and showed me a couple songs (Oh, and she was right, Colgate has no idea how to play the saxophone). It’s gonna drop late February and then she’s going on tour. How cool is that? I don’t get out much, but when I was heading back from the studio, I saw a couple advertisements for it, like on billboards. She’s super excited, and she said me and anyone else can get front-row seats when she plays in Canterlot. I have to make sure to get a pair of tickets when the time comes.

January 30, Monday

What an awesome weekend! All us girls (even Twilight and Octy) saw the Wonderbolts on Saturday and then had lunch at this cute little place on the mountainside. Octy’s been taking a month off on Luna’s orders, and then she’s gonna try to join, uh… Colgate’s friends. You know who I mean. If she gets in, I bet Colgate rejoins them too, you can tell she’s got a thing for Octy.

Twilight went back to the palace after lunch, but the rest of us stayed in town. We went to the botanical gardens, Vinyl dragged us to her favorite petting zoo, and there was plenty of drinking in between, her and Cole mostly. Rarity says a lady never drinks before six, and she has a point.

Leaf Blower set out for Manehattan today with her team of magicians and all that. Not much to report there, they’re expected to arrive in six or seven days. I met her for a couple minutes before she left, nice mare.

January 31, Tuesday

Twilight’s talking with Versus now, the Snowdrift hotel pony; apparently she and AJ have kept in touch. It’s not good, though. We left Snowdrift in a pretty dramatic way, and the authorities there aren’t happy, specifically with how Twilight “borrowed” all that magic from the Tartarus gateway. We’re safe right now, being saviors of the country and all that, but Versus isn’t, and she was involved a lot at the end—not to mention the whole thing with Peaceful Meadows and the Mansels, but that hasn’t come up yet. Hoping it stays that way.

The hotel let Versus go, and she says she’s been blacklisted, that no one wants to tell her anything, and she’s even been interviewed by the police a couple times. She sounded really upset when she was talking to Twilight about all this.

Restoration news. I thought all the divination stuff was done already, but Twilight said those were just preliminaries, and now she has to make a whole batch of new ones so she can watch some different places around the country. She was low on oil for those weird enchanted bowls she uses, so I had to lug twenty gallons of cooking oil from the pantry all the way up to the library tower. Now the whole tower smells like a grease fire, and we found out the stupid windows in our office are just for show, they don’t open. It’s already in my fur, I smell it wherever I go.

February 5, Sunday

Pinkie and her friends are officially relocated to the capital island, Closed Eye of the Ocean it’s called. Celestia is in fact upset about it, but she’s keeping quiet about it for now. Leaf Blower and her team are north of Manehattan at the moment, getting ready to bring all the land back together up there. Plenty of tiny villages by the rivers to secure, and radio towers and train stations and blah blah blah.

Twilight now has two tiers of divination stuff in the attic, she says she’s starting to get headaches from being up there too long, with all that magic. I don’t know how she keeps it all straight in her mind, I can barely remember what’s what when she tells me. She’s got her eyes on an oil deposit southeast of Ponyville that looks like it had a bunch of groundwater spilled into it some time after the Crumbling, and she sent the science team out there to study it. That’s taking a lot of her time, but she’s also starting to think about how to get us reattached to the planet. Too early to think about that, I think, but she says we should have been thinking about it before Discord got put away, so what do I know?

On a lighter note, Rarity moved back down to Ponyville today. Her boutique is finished at last, and it has a phone so she can talk to us whenever she wants. Twilight disagrees, but I say give me phones any day of the week. Those communication sigils are a pain in the flank, and they take up so much space.

February 16, Thursday

Manehattan’s looking good! Twilight showed me in one of her spells, and everything from Manehattan to the coast is all one big piece. She even zoomed in on Leaf Blower and her teams so we could watch them for a minute. It’s like a tiny city of tents and airships just up there in the wilderness, and there’s all these big, glowing poles they put in the ground to mark fault lines. Isn’t it creepy how Twilight can just cast a little magic and get a bird’s eye view of them like that, though? Celestia told her it was fine to use this magic, so I guess it is, but I still always get this weird vibe when Twilight just calls up images of the country like it’s nothing.

Everyone in Ponyville is doing good. I talked with Rarity and Fluttershy last night, they’re both a lot better. AJ wasn’t there, but she’s chugging along. In other news, Luna let Octy join her “team” last Friday. I’m so happy for her, I bet she does great. She was always a stand-up mare, and from what Cole says, that’s the sort they look for. She’s just learning the basics right now, they’re not letting her out to kick monsters in the butt yet. Cole said there’s plenty of that to be done still, lots of Tartarus activity in the aftermath of Discord and Vanilla, but I don’t know if that’s true. You know how Colgate is.

February 25, Saturday

Leaf Blower’s back and heading out again later tonight, but she wanted to meet with me and Twilight for lunch. Twilight’s got this stupid, ugly polo shirt that she picked up cause it was on sale, and it’s always wrinkled and it always smells like cooking oil, and she actually wore it to our meeting. I took the time to dress semi-formal, and here comes Twilight stinking of oil in her nasty green polo… Anyway, I felt a lot like Rarity during lunch.

I don’t know why Leaf wanted me to come along, she was just talking shop with Twilight the whole time, I couldn’t follow it—but I’m glad I went anyway, cause Leaf and I really hit it off during dessert. We talked about the Wonderbolts, racing, hiking, everything. She’s even been to Cloudsdale, which is pretty rare for an earth pony. Spent a week there once for a project with the government there, years ago. Hearing her talk about Cloudsdale got me really nostalgic. We could’ve talked all afternoon, but she had to catch an airship. She’ll be back in about a month.

Lunch was great, but dinner sucked. Rarity and Fluttershy met us at this super fancy place called “99^th Street” (give me a break with these artsy names) so we could talk to a lot of other fancy ponies and generally bask in each other’s fanciness. I get that we don’t want to seem out of touch with the city ponies, but I’ve had enough fancy dinners to last a lifetime. I can actually distinguish between the different forks and spoons now, that’s how bad it is! So at this fancy place, like us four and five rich snobs, we were talking about life in Canterlot, when out of the blue one of them asks what happened with Pinkie in Applewood. Suffice it to say, we didn’t know what to say, but she heard it from a friend that Pinkie had been involved with the Applewood thing somehow. I asked who told her—it was that big mouth bastard Dr. Whooves! Luna knows how many other ponies he told before he, uh, passed on. Rarity said it was no one’s fault specifically, we were all disorganized and overwhelmed, but that was after a bunch of uhhhhs and ahhhs and hemming and hawing. Oh, and they all loved Whooves too, he made himself quite a comfy spot up here it seems. That prick probably gossiped about us to everyone who’d listen, ugh.

There wasn’t anyone relevant at the dinner, but the lady who asked about Pinkie was some super thin model by the name of Burgundy Briefcase. Rarity knew her a little, and you could tell she wasn’t happy to see BB there. We all talked after dinner, like what to do, but what can we do? If the cat’s out of the bag, it’s out, we just have to hope Whooves didn’t give anyone any details. If he was here, I’d kick him right in the guts.

February 28, Tuesday

Fluttershy went back to Ponyville, but Rarity has to spend all night at an art gallery with some up-and-comer, so she leaves first thing tomorrow morning. Big Mac’s coming up tomorrow, though, they want him to give a motivational speech to some office types next Monday. I can only imagine how nervous he is! I shouldn’t laugh, but you gotta admit…

Nothing much to report with Twilight. While Leaf is out in the boonies, Twilight’s job is to feed her information on local geography and weather and stuff, just to keep things running smoothly. Now that the map is done and her divination spells are all in place, Twilight’s a lot more relaxed. So’s Pinkie and her team; now that they’re able to report actual progress to Chrysalis, things are a lot calmer across the water. Not everything is rosy, though. Chrysalis offered to help us make a map of the Equestrian underside and the ocean floor, for when it comes time to lower the continent, but Celestia rejected it today. It makes sense for the changelings to do it, they can just send some ships down there and look at everything, no fancy magical viewing spells, but I get where Celestia’s coming from too, you don’t want a whole fleet of changeling ships so close to us. Of course, this means more work for Twilight, and you can bet she was bitching all day about it. I spent the last half of today, and probably a lot of tomorrow, helping her research Equestrian territory laws and colonial practices. We need to figure out if the hole we left behind is part of Equestrian space or if it counts as international land. Boring.

March 1, Wednesday

Yep, boring. Twilight scheduled a meeting with Celestia to discuss this hole-territory thing more, and I’m just glad I don’t have to be there for it. The only cool thing that happened today is Vinyl’s album came out. I listened to it twice, it’s really awesome. My favorite song is “Headlong,” which it says was inspired by all the fast flight we did between cities. Really awesome, I hope I can hang out with her soon.

March 3, Friday

What a shit day. What an absolutely, positively, horrible, stupid, shit day.

Versus called Twilight in a panic this morning, and Twilight only got off the sigil at ten, she was so upset. When we were going through the window from Passage Town to Snowdrift, Twilight had to make a diversion for the “park rangers” there, so we could get into Snowdrift undetected. For that, she guided Versus through making this fake magic thing that would apparently scare everyone, but that was actually harmless. Well, somehow the cops there figured out that Versus had made it and planted it in the woods, and now… Well, they arrested her this morning. She’s just at the police station for now, for questioning, no idea how long though, or even if they’ll let her out. Twilight says they can’t keep her there, that Versus did nothing illegal and that she, Twilight, tricked her. So if anyone is in trouble, it should be Twilight, but that sucks too! So now we have to find a lawyer in Snowdrift or fly a good lawyer down there to get Versus out of trouble, and that’s not gonna be cheap. Twilight’s still in her office now (it’s nine at night, by the way) trying to figure out how she’s gonna pay for this without having to ask Celestia for money.

March 6, Monday

Big Mac and I had an… intense lunch today. I’ve never seen him so agitated, it was like he was a totally different guy. He was all nervy from his motivational speech (it went okay, he couldn’t stop sweating though), but it’s this Versus thing that really had him bent out of shape. He wouldn’t stop asking me questions about her, about what Twilight was gonna do, and it’s like, I don’t know! I kept telling him, I barely know anything about it. I think he’s pissed at Twilight, I don’t blame him.

March 13, Monday

Twilight had her meeting with Celestia today, finally. She requested it on the first, that’s almost two weeks ago. So yes, the hole underneath Equestria counts as part of Equestrian territory, as well as the ocean that rushed in to fill it, but anything outside the hole is still international waters, and then once the ocean is back out of the hole, it’ll go back to being the changelings’. It’s the most roundabout way of acquiring territory in history, Twilight told me.

With the Versus thing, Twilight managed to scrape up enough money to pay her legal fees out of pocket, so the princess didn’t have to be told about Twilight’s diversion stunt. If you ask me, this isn’t the last we hear of it, and I think Twilight knows it. Guess time will tell. In other news, Chrysalis is starting to pressure our diplomats again. The restoration is going good, but the changelings think it’s too slow, they’re starting to get impatient and nervous. What about the ocean, that’s what they keep asking. Will they just need to get used to it being lower, or are they gonna get their water back? If so, when and how, and who’s gonna pay for it? Twilight hasn’t even thought about the ocean yet, but the diplomats want an answer now, so she’s scrambling to figure something out to appease Chrysalis. Celestia had an idea, but Twilight said it wasn’t very good, and it didn’t factor in a lot of the problems that are gonna come up when we get reattached, so I don’t know. I think I have a lot of library digging in my future.

I was able to meet Vinyl for brunch yesterday, which is good, cause she left to go on tour this afternoon. Headed for Manehattan first, I told her to be sure to check out Rose Tower, and she said that’s where her first show’s gonna be. I’m not really jealous, though; I’ve traveled enough.

March 18, Saturday

In response to increased pressure from the changeling nation to figure out what we’re gonna do about their lost ocean, Celestia has decided to increase the defenses around our borders, “just in case.” I’m just a simple mare, but doesn’t that sound like an overreaction? Twilight said it’s not what she would do either, but hey, it ain’t our call.

Leaf Blower’s back in town, though, that’s one good thing. She was way southeast of Ponyville and Cloudsdale working on a big wooded area with lots of groundwater and oil deposits in it, real tricky stuff. She wanted to meet for lunch again, but Twilight was too busy. I almost said I’d meet her myself, but if Twilight’s not there, what good is it? I don’t know, maybe I should have.

Octy’s doing fine, she’s still in the classroom with the other newbies. I’m actually meeting her for drinks in a couple hours. After all the changeling shit, and Versus, and everything, I need it. I asked if Cole was gonna be with us, but apparently she’s headed down to Lower Canterlot. I really hope Octy has some details for me, these special missions are so cool. It’s nice to hear about them without actually having to go yourself, you know?

March 19, Sunday

Cole’s in Lower Canterlot to follow up on some magical contraband that got released into the public, she and some others are trying to figure out where it came from and if there’s more. It’s funny in kind of a crappy way, someone else was supposed to have done this already, but she screwed it up so bad that they had to wipe her memory and send her packing. As with everything Colgate says, Octavia said to take it with a grain of salt.

Speaking of Octavia’s special coworkers, Twilight’s got a meeting with one of them tomorrow afternoon. Versus got released today, but not before implicating Twilight in all the crap that went down, so now… Well, we’re still the princess’ special ponies, so it’s not like we’re gonna go to prison or anything, but Twilight needs to ace this meeting tomorrow or she’s in some serious shit. She’s calm, she’s collected, but she told me to get ready cause they’re probably gonna want to talk to all of us individually.

Shit, how much does Applejack know? If she knows what Twilight actually did, Twilight’s screwed already. I know she was talking a little about giving AJ false information back in Snowdrift, just in case something like this happened, but what exactly did she say? And who knows what AJ could’ve figured out on her own, or what Versus could have told her. Shit, Diary, this doesn’t look good.

Oh, and Vinyl made it to Manehattan safe and sound.

March 20, Monday

Twilight got in contact with everyone else in Ponyville and told them the Snowdrift story. Her interview went good today, they believed her, but now we need to keep that story straight. I still have no idea what she’s gonna do about AJ, but the story is, Discord was the one who contacted Versus in the disguise of Twilight. He imitated her voice, but also was smart enough to imitate the sound of airship noise and also us in the background. Then Twilight found out and opportunistically used it to divert their attention so we could slip into town undetected—but it was a lucky thing, that’s the big point. She was actually planning on just going through and trying to pull rank on the window ponies, and she told me that that detail should be the key to making her story credible, since it’s so in-character. I asked how she knew about the diversion if Discord had set it, and she said she had a spell up to tell her if someone else was trying to steal her appearance or voice. I asked if a spell like that actually exists, and she sneered at me.

So that’s the news. Crisis averted for the time, but when they ask AJ… No, if Twilight was worried about it, she’d let me know, and she didn’t. She probably has a plan.

March 21, Tuesday

Twilight and I had that lunch with Leaf Blower today. She’s headed for Trottingham next, just has to get some stuff taken care of first. Like last time, she and Twilight talked shop most of the time, and I didn’t have much reason to be there. Payroll this, micro-enchantments that, I don’t even want to know if I don’t have to. Unlike last time, though, she ran off back to the office as soon as she was done, no dessert, no time to chat. I’m not bothered by it, I get it, we’re all busy ponies.

March 24, Friday

The whole team of restoration ponies got together after work today in the palace bar. That’s me, Twi, Leaf Blower, big Caramel, and two others, the lawyer and the scientist. I asked Twilight if she talked to our lawyer about the Versus situation, and she told me no, that—Curlicue, that’s it! She told me Curlicue didn’t know anything, and it was gonna stay that way. He reports to Celestia herself, and Twilight’s trying to keep this under wraps as much as she can—though if the secret agents report to Luna, then wouldn’t Celestia find out anyway? I don’t know, maybe Twilight thinks Luna will be nicer about it.

Leaf and I sat next to each other and talked pretty much all night, she was the only fun thing about this get-together. Twilight ditched me to talk politics with Curlicue and science with the other pony, all professional-like, and then there’s me and Leaf on the other side talking about movies. She’s big into that film noir stuff. Like if it’s got a detective with an alcohol problem and a dark past, she’s there for it. We must’ve talked for half the night, I lost track honestly, and when Twilight got my attention to head out, the other two were already gone. Leaf has to leave on the sixth, and I almost asked her if she wanted to get together again, but Twilight was giving me one of those looks, you know the one, so I dropped it.

April 6, Thursday

Vinyl made it to Fillydelphia, tour’s going great. She sent us all postcards from Manehattan. I kind of wish I could go back there and actually experience the city instead of running around doing errands for psychos all day. Leaf’s on an airship for Trottingham, meanwhile, but I got to say goodbye, so it’s all good. I went down to her office this morning and we talked for a couple minutes, work stuff. She’ll be in and around Trottingham for another month or so, she’s got like three hundred ponies heading over with her. Twilight showed me the airship fleet today, and it was so wild, I’ve never seen so many airships flying together like that.

We’ve got defenses at the borders now, nothing serious, but nothing trivial either, and now Celestia’s trying to watch the changelings in Equestria. I didn’t think it was a big deal, cause it’s like, you already have to sign onto a list to live here if you’re a changeling, just so you can’t go around shapeshifting with impunity. But this, apparently, it way more invasive; Twilight said that Celestia wants every registered changeling to have a “handler,” like someone who logs their weekly activities and basically makes sure they’re not doing anything bad—and when she put it that way, yeah, that’s dumb. They’re Equestrian citizens too, and now she wants to spy on them? I talked with Pinkie a little about it and she said the diplomats are losing their minds trying to figure out how to spin this so Chrysalis doesn’t freak out.

April 7, Friday

I’m all alone tonight, no one to hang out with. Twilight’s working late again, Cole’s still gone, and Octavia got sent out on her first assignment this morning.

I had my interview with our friends from Snowdrift today, and I told them just what Twilight told me. I must’ve been with ‘em for three hours, they kept making me wait only to ask me the same sets of questions over and over again. I told ‘em exactly what I needed to, and I think I’m okay now, but like… I still don’t know what happened with AJ, and I can’t ask her cause if she doesn’t know what really happened, then me asking her will totally blow it apart. It’s been a while since they talked to Twilight, so maybe I was the last, maybe now they’re gonna leave us alone.

April 9, Sunday

I just got off the sigil with AJ. I don’t know if we’re in the clear. She did have her interview already, but she didn’t have any details for ‘em. Seems Twilight had given her bad information first, but then told her like some weak, vague version of the truth later, when she thought we were safe. It took all of me to not grill her on what she told the… special ponies. She asked me what I told ‘em, and I gave her Twilight’s version of the story. Big mistake. She told me Twilight was lying a blue streak, and asked if I knew, and I… I’m not gonna lie to my best friend, so I ‘fessed up, told her that Twilight’s covering her ass. I mean, I feel like AJ already sorta knew that, right? She knows Twilight, she knows there were some seedy things in Snowdrift. So now I’m gonna have to tell Twilight that AJ knows she’s up to no good, and then Twi’s probably gonna freak out on me, and… All I want is for us to go back to normal. That’s all I want.

April 10, Monday

And here again, AJ just called me to let me know that Pinkie’s secret is out. It’s been going around now, rumors, but both princesses contacted her early this morning and asked what happened in Applewood. So now they know why we weren’t so fond of Pinkie when we got back, and I’m sure there’s gonna be a meeting about it, and I’m sure everyone’ll get all worked up again. However, no one seems to know about Applejack’s death, neither princess has said anything about it.

I’m still not even over her, Pinkie I mean. I keep saying she’s dead to me hoping that if I say it enough times, it’ll be true, but I don’t think it ever will be. It should be true, though! It’s not like she doesn’t deserve it; I keep remembering Fluttershy’s words on the deck, “she killed us,” and it’s true, true in a—what’s the word?—metaphysical way. I just want to forget her, forget she ever existed, forget we were ever friends. Better that than me moping around for something I’m never getting back.

April 16, Sunday

Today marks the one-year anniversary of The Crumbling. Everyone in Ponyville came up and stood with us next to Celestia while she and Luna gave a speech. Only Fluttershy’s staying, and she’s just got one extra day here, some author wants to take her out to brunch tomorrow.

Twilight offered to take Applejack out for lunch after the speech, I’m sure they were discussing Snowdrift. I’m not about to ask what’s going on, Twilight’ll tell me when she’s good and ready, or else Applejack’ll let me know the truth. I mean, I do trust Twilight to a certain extent, but… I don’t know.

Neither princess has said anything about meeting to discuss the Pinkie incident, so I guess we’re all just supposed to be honest when ponies ask us about it? No one’s said anything yet, but if the rich folks are talking, sooner or later the reporters are gonna come in and ask for our take on what happened. And I mean, if they’re gonna be possibly talking to Applejack about it, then we all have to be honest, cause otherwise she’ll undermine anything else we say.

April 20, Thursday

Things are getting weirder. The attic above Twilight’s office is so full of magical crap that she had to expand to the roof. That was most of this afternoon, moving more supplies out there. She brought some of her underlings out too, to have them hang a safety net all around the tower—cause here’s the thing, the library tower is one of those onion-looking things, so the roof is sloping in all sorts of crazy ways. Naturally, Twilight already worked out a magical solution, but I was still relieved when she had ‘em bring that net out. She threw down a little spell to let her stand on the slope, said it was strong enough to stick her to the ceiling if she needed to, and now she just walks all around the onion roof like a mountain goat, and her books and things, those don’t slide off either. Luna came up and saw her and had a good laugh.

That’s not the weird thing. So Vinyl’s in Hoofington right now, and Leaf Blower’s down in the Trottingham area, and Chrysalis is pressuring us to move faster; and you can tell Twilight wants to speed it up too, not just for the changelings’ sake, but in general. So once she had her roof thing set up, she had me bring up a book and a clipboard, some chalk, a bunch of junk from the alchemy tower, and then drew a chain of four sigils along the roof’s outer edge. When she was done, she activated them, found Hoofington, zoomed in and out until she found Vinyl, and then—this is the wildest thing I’ve ever seen, I had no idea this was possible. When Vinyl got back to her hotel, Twilight casts this spell, and the whole room lights up in blue, and Twilight just speaks through the sigil to Vinyl on the other side. Vinyl practically hit the ceiling, she jumped so much! It was funny, but can you imagine? You just got back from signing autographs or whatever she was doing, you wanna take a load off, and as soon as you sit down, the room lights up and your friend’s voice starts booming at you from all four walls. She chewed Twilight out for that pretty good, told her she almost had a heart attack. Yeah, Twilight’s gonna need to find a better way to do that from now on.

Anyway, I won’t go into the details (basically, Celestia’s not giving us the resources to do as much as we’d like), so Twilight wants to start taking matters into her own hooves. Since Vinyl’s touring all over the place, Twilight figured she’d contact her and have her help out. The conversation went on for a while, and Twilight had to explain her plan a couple times (Vinyl seemed a little tipsy), but basically we’re gonna start getting in touch with city officials and city secret agents on our own, without waiting for Leaf Blower to fly out. Twilight needs Vinyl to tell the appropriate officials what to expect, and to carve some sigils in places, like in trees and statues and things—more permanent than drawing with ink. Vinyl was a little reluctant at first, but she warmed up pretty quick when Twilight explained how it would hasten the restoration process.

I didn’t stick around after that, but Twilight’s gonna reach out again after Vinyl’s show and tell her who exactly she needs to contact and where exactly she needs to place these sigils. I don’t think it’s actually a big deal, but it feels kinda skeezy, you know? But if it helps us get back down faster, I’m all for it.

April 22, Saturday

Quick entry before I head out, I’m meeting Octy and Rarity for dinner and a show in half an hour. Twilight was hard at work with a bunch of ponies from Hoofington today, she had ‘em all lined up with their own sigils on the roof, very official-looking. There was the mayor, the city treasurer, a couple police chiefs, one of the big Astras, and a few others, I assume secret agents. How she found them in the city, I have no idea. Instructed ‘em on how to bring the ground back together, where they needed to go, what sorts of magicians they needed, and told ‘em to remit any expenses directly to her, Twilight—not the Equestrian government.

After that, she told me to find her a book about clouds of thoughts. I asked if she was sure and she snapped at me. Sooooo, guess we’re doing this now.

April 30, Sunday

Vinyl hit Canterlot with her tour, just got back from the show, me and Twilight and the gals from Ponyville (Big Mac couldn’t make it, he’s got a cold). Front row seats, backstage passes, the whole shebang, and it was all so awesome. I know Vinyl supposedly has some sort of incredible skill with light magic, but I’d only really seen her screwing around with it before; tonight was totally different. They’ve got lights and pyrotechnics and stuff, for like the ponies who can’t sit close enough, but where we were, Vinyl did pretty much all the lights and special effects herself. There was this one, it was so cool, where she doused the stadium in this dusty sepia light and then had little sparkles trickle down and gradually build up until it was like we were surrounded by fish scales, all reflective and everything—then bam! Color explosion, song climax, timed so perfectly, I’m still kinda speechless. We adventured with this lady for months, and I had no idea she could do half the stuff we saw tonight.

Backstage, we just hung out, had some wine coolers, talked about the show. She and Twilight talked for a little bit one-on-one and then hugged it out, which I was glad to see. That was the rest of the night, just chilling and catching up in her dressing room. She’s here until the fourth, so if I want to catch another concert, I can.

May 2, Tuesday

Well, I was gonna go to Vinyl’s show tonight, but I pulled a twelve-hour workday with Twilight instead. How do I put this? The city of Snowdrift is fucking suing her for stealing all that Tartarus magic. Oh, she was pissed all right. She’s gonna ask Luna to help her with a lawyer tomorrow, but all day today, it was just research on Equestrian law, natural resource theft, prosecution procedures, and so much other boring, legal crap. I feel like my eyes are gonna dry up and fall out. And I have no idea how she’s gonna pay for all this, if it’s gonna come out of the palace’s budget or if Twilight’s gonna try to do this out of pocket again, like with Versus. I told her she’d better talk with Caramel too, cause as soon as this hits the news, ponies are gonna go crazy. The Element of Magic, prosecuted by the entire city of Snowdrift? It’ll be a fucking field day.

And that’s the news! Happy Tuesday everypony!

May 11, Thursday

All right, the lawsuit isn’t gonna be as bad as we both thought. Twilight talked with her lawyer, and she just has to prove that her way allowed us to defeat Discord quicker than any other way. It’s like something about exigent need, or something, like there was an extreme threat so taking extreme action to face it isn’t illegal. She still has to get all this in writing and send it back to Snowdrift, and there’s all these non-disclosure agreements to be signed so the press doesn’t get a hold of anything, but other than that, she said we should be okay. We’ll probably end up settling out of court.

Talk about a weight off her chest. Twilight was practically floating when she told me what her lawyer said. I still don’t know how she’s gonna pay for it, but one thing at a time. Oh, and I found out what she put in her cloud of thoughts today: the entire map of Equestria, that huge thing we made in January. Probably gonna put all the city officials in there too, she said. Hoofington’s coming along great, though, that’s the other nice thing. She’s paying for this out of her own paycheck, plus I think the cash reward we got when we came back. I have no idea how long that’s gonna last, though, and I don’t really want to ask.

Actually, there’s a third thing: Leaf Blower got back today. I went by her office and said hi, and we talked some more. I want to tell her about the lawsuit, but I know I shouldn’t. Or maybe I should? I don’t know if it’ll ever affect her.

Last piece of news. The princesses officially stated today that everything that happened in Moondrop was Discord’s doing, and that the area is not habitable anymore. They lifted the veil off the area, so now anyone with divination can look at it again, and Twilight showed me what it looked like during lunch. The crater is gone, the little town gone, it’s been replaced with a hole straight through the countryside, with the desert around reduced to this weird looking black glass. It’s all sloping down like a funnel, and it goes on like that for just miles all around. It’s freaking scary, and then I remember that Princess Celestia did all that on her own; not only that, but she was trapped at the time. That giant hole, most of that’s not even from her magic directly hitting it, that’s from the magic that leaked out around her prison. Twilight’s gone on about the princesses’ power a few times, but this really put it in perspective for me. Twilight said, if Celestia wanted to, she could vaporize a couple thousand square miles of countryside. Thousand. Like Twilight says, Celestia’s not a goddess in name only, and I believe it.

May 14, Sunday

Leaf’s already gone, she’s headed for Fillydelphia. We had to skip Saturday lunch this time, Twilight took an airship and flew off to who-knows-where, she’ll be back later today, and then she’s working with Vinyl in Trottingham. Leaf just came from there, but apparently she only covered the areas directly north of town; the east and west are lower priority, so she had to pass them over. So that’s what Twilight’s up to, and here I am, still grabbing books and magical equipment. I want to help her more, but I don’t know what to do. She finalized her response to the prosecution yesterday, so now we have to wait for Snowdrift’s response on that. The others know about it, they’re none too happy, but it could be so much worse.

Octavia had her first encounter with a reporter about the Pinkie thing. I’ll bet they loved that, Octavia told ‘em the truth, and she didn’t mince words either, that’s what she told me. You can tell she got a thrill out of denouncing her sister publicly like that, it kind of made me sick.

May 19, Friday

Applejack’s in town until next Friday, she’s been asked to do a round of graduation speeches in Lower Canterlot. She and Twilight talked a ton more about Pinkie and about the lawsuit too. I was expecting Twilight to try to shut AJ out as much as she could, but they seem perfectly friendly still. I’m sure AJ’s giving Twilight the third degree about the ethics of all this, and let me tell you, I’m not jealous of Twilight one bit.

Celestia made the news by rejecting another changeling offer to help map the seafloor and country underside. They’re pleased with our progress, but Twilight’s projecting this to be all finished by sometime in the middle of next year, and that’s a long time still to go, so… Pinkie and her diplomats are just hanging out on the island for all this time, just waiting for us. I wonder if it’s like a tropical vacation, or if they’re even allowed to leave their little hotel.

May 20, Saturday

So those enchantments Twilight has on the roof, the ones that let her walk on the slopes. I’ve seen her testing them a few times, like seeing how much they can hold, seeing how much she can erase before they stop working, and stuff like that. Why? She took me out to one of the balconies and told me to fly down and look below, and what do you know, there’s half a ton of loose masonry hanging off the underside, stuck to one of those sigils. She’s been stress-testing these things because she’s gonna start sending airships over the edge and under the continent, and they’re supposed to use her sigils to stick to it so they don’t have to carry so much fuel to keep themselves constantly aloft. After that, she took me down to one of the big guest pools, pulled out a dinner plate with a different sigil drawn on, and threw it in. Splash! Half the pool flew up and out of its hole, we were drenched.

Basically, her ponies are gonna fly down under the country, apply their sticky sigils just so the airships have somewhere to land, and then go about drawing on all these water sigils, “hydrophobic” she called them. This way, when we go back down to reconnect, any ocean below will be pushed out by the magic, and we won’t be settling into a big soggy mess. And yes, I asked if they’ll push out water that’s seeped into the ground, and she said they will. The dinner plate was just a demonstration; the actual sigils are gonna have an area of effect of something like three hundred square miles. No normal unicorn could even try to activate one of those, but she said she’s got a plan for that too, so we’ll see. It’s impressive, but a little scary too, especially the part when she told me not to tell the princesses what I saw today.

I did tell Octy, though, over lunch. She was pretty moody today, but still, compared to how she was half a year ago, it’s like night and day. She’s keeping her mane real short, it’s starting to grow on me.

Someone real interesting showed up today in her secret agent class. Some lady named Cork, said they shipped her over from Manehattan, and she was asking about us—Rarity and Fluttershy specifically. I’m gonna have to remember to ask Rarity if she recognizes the name next time we talk. Octy said Cork was all over her, real friendly, like “won’t shut up for two seconds” friendly.

May 24, Wednesday

The first set of airships is out and heading for the country’s edge. It has to be over the edge, and not through the faults in the middle, cause those are gonna be closed off before everyone can get back through. I can’t imagine relying on magic like this, like just sticking your airship to a sigil on the underside and turning off the engine every night. Twilight says she can activate the hydrophobic ones remotely, and I mean… sure? If she says so. I’m just glad it’s not me down there.

I talked to Rarity about this Cork pony in Octavia’s class; she’s the one they met in Passage Town who told them all about the underground chamber. Now it makes sense: Cork walked to Manehattan, the secret agents nabbed her, and instead of doing whatever they do to troublesome ponies, they sent her to Canterlot to learn how to be one of them. Octavia said Cork was over the moon about all of it, so I guess it all works out.

May 30, Tuesday

Vinyl’s in Applewood doing a ton of benefit concerts, and when she’s not performing, Twilight has her rounding up authorities and putting down sigils and who knows what else. I heard them arguing this afternoon, and Twilight was in a nasty mood all the rest of the day. She doesn’t talk to me much anymore, I’ve been noticing, not even lectures on how her magic works. She has a lot on her plate, I know, and I want to help, but most of the time I’m just fetching books or magical supplies. Celestia isn’t much help either, from what I can tell. She’s in meetings most of the time with representatives and delegations. I think she reads my status reports, but I don’t even know that, I might just be doing it for record keeping at this point. I haven’t actually talked to her in weeks, and Luna, she’s busy with her own stuff, she really doesn’t have a place in the restoration project. I asked Twilight how she feels about it, expecting her to get mad at the princesses and maybe agree with me, but she said she gets it, that what they’re doing is a lot more important than the nitty-gritty stuff she’s taking on. Like Celestia and Luna being in meetings with “important” ponies is somehow more valuable than the magic and labor that’s going into putting our country back where it’s supposed to be. Maybe it’s for the best that the princesses aren’t getting involved, though. Twilight said we’re about halfway done with the sigils on Equestria’s underside, and it should be a little more than a month until we’re ready to start sinking back down. I forgot to ask her how she’s activating these giant sigils. It’s weird, the more I work with Twilight, even though I don’t pay a lot of attention to her magic-talk, I think some of it’s getting through to me anyway.

June 3, Saturday

No lunch with Octavia today, she’s got another assignment. I wonder how Colgate’s doing, I haven’t seen her in forever. Knowing her, it could be next year before she shows up, all wide-eyed and crazy. I still can’t believe that stunt she pulled with the extra Element of Harmony, and that it worked, too! Oh, speaking of the Elements, Luna said that Vinyl’s skunk Element is ready to be destroyed, but she and Celestia are gonna have to go way far away from town to do it. It’s dangerous, I guess; might explode.

Snowdrift agreed to settle out of court today, so that’s the end of the lawsuit. We all have to sign something saying we agree to their version of the story, which Twilight said is basically the truth, just worded a little friendlier. I hope Applejack doesn’t make a fuss about signing it, and we can just put this stupid headache behind us.

Not much news from Ponyville, just Rarity, she released her summer line. All the top fashion magazines are going crazy about it, her schedule pretty much got obliterated because of it. She’s back in Canterlot tomorrow, but she’s gonna be so busy, I don’t think we’ll be able to hang out. Fluttershy’s coming up next week for an appearance at some muckety-muck’s garden party, though, so I’ll catch up with her if nothing else.

June 9, Friday

Huge argument between Twilight and Vinyl today. She’s down in Roan, and a lot of that area is back together, so I don’t know what Twilight was having her do exactly, but it had both of ‘em pretty hot under the collar. Twilight’s always in the other room for these, and I can never hear what Vinyl’s saying, but Twilight got pretty intense this time. She said later that Vinyl’s just dragging her hooves on stuff, and it’s really getting in Twilight’s way. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t wanna press it.

June 17, Saturday

Another argument today, Twilight and Leaf Blower this time. Leaf gets back from Fillydelphia and what does she do? Marches straight up to our office and dresses down Twilight for going behind her back on restoration. Twilight shouldn’t have been so surprised, it’s not like she’s the only one with access to divination magic. Frankly, I think she should have told Leaf right away, I don’t see what keeping her in the dark accomplished. The Hoofington area is done all the way up to the coast, and the Trottingham areas are coming along good, so all we really need to focus on now are the northeast and northwest corners, and the area between Appleloosa and Snowdrift.

I’m kinda pissed too cause it totally screwed up our work lunch. We were actually gonna do it this time, but it was just all tension between Twilight and Leaf, so it sucked. I couldn’t even ask Leaf if she wanted to get together later, she left too fast.

June 25, Sunday

The airships are on their way out from under Equestria, and Twilight has this weird potion thing that she’s gonna use to activate the hydrophobic sigils remotely. It’s… I don’t remember how she explained it, but if you take a lot of magic and concentrate it into a sigil and then do something else to it, you can put it into water or something, and then… some other science stuff, and you’ve got a potion that’ll temporarily enhance your own magical potential. All I know is that it’s super dangerous, that she has to keep it at the right temperature, locked away so no one can mess with it, and she can only take it in tiny doses or it’ll backfire and overwhelm her. But, if she’s careful, she can use it to give herself enough magic to activate the sigils down below. Now we just need to figure out how to get us back down.

Leaf left for Appleloosa today, I didn’t get to say goodbye or anything. I don’t know how long she’ll be gone.

July 10, Monday

The airships are all out from underneath us, safe and sound. I expected Twilight to be happy about it, but she’s even worse than before. Spent an hour today bitching about Celestia, how she’s being questioned for requisitioning all the airships on the borders like that. Now Twilight thinks it’s gonna be the end of the world cause she has to tell Celestia that she put sigils on the country’s butt without permission, but I thought this whole thing was Twilight’s project anyway, so like, why should Celestia care? If it works, it works, and that’s the important thing, but Twilight’s so high-strung, it doesn’t matter what I say.

It’s not in the news yet, but Celestia sent a lone airship down to the Hive today. Officially, it’s to “evaluate oceanographic data,” but it’s totally to spy on the changelings. I obviously have no idea how the average Equestrian is gonna take it, I guess if the changeling citizen monitoring thing went through then this could be okay too. Twilight warned Pinkie this time, so the diplomats at least have a little notice before Chrysalis completely freaks out on them.

July 11, Tuesday

Vinyl’s in Snowdrift now, said she’s been hanging out with Versus a lot. I’m glad to hear Versus is doing better after her scare with the police. I don’t know if she’s still mad at Twilight for it, I know I would be. Anyway, Vinyl. She’s down there for just a couple shows, and Twilight’s bugging her about sigils and stuff there too, even though there’s no restoration to be done. The argument this afternoon sounded worse than the last couple, I think Twilight’s gonna lose it here soon. I asked her what the deal was, but she just says Vinyl’s being a pain in the flank and doesn’t want to be a team player. Twilight doesn’t want to have to figure out a way to do all this stuff herself, remotely, but she thinks it might come to that if Vinyl keeps resisting.

July 18, Tuesday

Guess what, Celestia’s stupid spy ship got intercepted a couple miles inside the changeling border. Yes, Chrysalis is furious, and Pinkie’s friends are taking the heat. They can’t say Celestia’s doing this without telling ponies because it’ll make it look like we have a lunatic running our country, and then The Hive will cut ties with us for sure; and when we get back down, we’re gonna have to rely on changeling and griffon imports like never before. Some really crucial times are coming up, and Celestia’s acting like a… I don’t know, I don’t want to say “idiot,” but kind of an idiot. You gotta ask yourself, though, do we really trust the changelings? If we’re gonna be so vulnerable, then they have a great opportunity to pull some funny business of their own. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done something sneaky, Twilight said; they claimed most of the northern oceans for just that reason, cause they’re opportunistic little shitheads. Maybe Celestia does have the right idea.

July 20, Thursday

Today, Twilight and I had a press conference about our restoration progress—and for the record, we are making great progress. Leaf Blower’s still out west, or she’d have been with us too. Most of the country is back in one piece, and we’re in a good position over the planet, and we’ve got the right magic in the right places underneath, but there’s still a lot of work to be done and Twilight doesn’t have a timetable on it. She was good for most of the conference, but then someone asked her something that she did not like, and before I knew it, she was standing up in her seat and just unloading on these ponies. I was speechless, Twilight just cut loose on them, calling everyone worthless and weak and I don’t know what else. It’s all over the news, but I can’t bring myself to watch it. She’s been in her office since then.

July 22, Saturday

Celestia and Twilight had a long talk this morning about her outburst at the press conference, and I don’t know what they said exactly, but Twilight unloaded on me right after. I’m not even supposed to be working on the weekend, this was supposed to be a stupid forty-hour week only, and Twilight has me in the library with these ridiculous lists and finding obscure articles and bits and pieces of information in dusty old books, it’s such bullshit, and then she yells at me? I told her to shove it, I’m not gonna take this crap from her, and you know what she said? That bitch said, I quote, “you’ll take whatever I tell you, Loyalty.” I was so mad, I flew out the window; it was either that or take a swing at her stupid, smug face right there in the office. Like, what right does she have to take out her problems on me? I don’t see anywhere in my employment agreement that I have to take verbal abuse from anyone. What a bitch, an absolute nag of a pony. You know, I see her every day, that’s probably why it took so long to notice how toxic she’s becoming. She’s controlling, she doesn’t tell anyone anything, she’s angry, she’s… Still my stupid friend, too. That’s the worst part, I’m gonna go back in on Monday and just take whatever comes my way. I know this isn’t the real Twilight.

August 9, Tuesday

Today’s the day. The last pieces came together today, and we are officially whole. Well, not officially, Twilight’s doing a final check, but once she’s done, it’ll be official. Celestia’s giving a speech in an hour, and Twilight’s going to give her apology right after. That Caramel, he’s been invaluable. Thanks to him, Twilight hardly suffered any negative publicity.

She’s been a little better, and I’m not mad at her anymore, but I wish she’d talk to me more about what’s bothering her. She shuts up about anything relating to Celestia now, it’s like she’s holding onto a ball of anger and hoping it goes away on its own. She expects to feel better once we’re reattached to the planet, according to Rarity; she gets the same way when a tough fashion project is looming. I always ask Twilight if I can help her out at all, but she just has me do the regular stuff, so it’s like, do I push harder and risk upsetting her, or do I trust that she’ll open up when she really needs to?

On a happier note, Colgate’s back! She and Octavia and me went out for, you guessed it, drinks last night. She has that look about her again, that nervousness, like she expects someone to jump out at her from the shadows. It’s got me nervous just to hang out with her, no matter how many times Octy says to ignore it. Other than that, Cole seems fine. She couldn’t say a lot about what she did down there, but there was a lot of poking around in bad neighborhoods, creeping around crime scenes, and that sort of thing. She seems to enjoy it, so I’m happy for her. Octy, she just keeps going on boring assignments, like stakeouts for magical phenomena and stuff like that. This most recent time, her and a teammate followed a will o’ the wisp deep into the forest, where it led them to—ready for this?—more forest. You spend a lot of time doing small, pointless-feeling crap like that, Luna told her, it’s not like the wild stuff we were getting up to on our adventure. Which, yeah, that’s obvious if you think about it, but it looks all cool and glamorous when you’re signing up. Hey, that’s how it goes, I’m just glad they’re both doing okay.

August 11, Thursday

Big Mac and Fluttershy are in town; he’s making an appearance at some shows, and she’s gonna be in a commercial for air filters. I am so stoked to be able to hang out with someone other than Octavia and Colgate right now—nothing against them, you get it.

Work news. Leaf Blower’s back again, and we’re on for lunch this Saturday, so hopefully Twilight doesn’t screw it up. She’s got a whole new problem coming now, what to do with the ocean. When we lifted off in the beginning, it’s not like there was just a flat floor where we used to be, there were all sorts of crevasses and holes and stuff, so when the ocean flooded in, it didn’t just stay there, a lot of it seeped into the ground. That means that if we get back in place as we are now, even with her hydrophobic sigils pushing the water out, we’re gonna be missing like forty percent of all the water that should be there. So now, Twilight’s gotta figure out where all that water went, and how to get it back—or replace it. For my job, it hardly matters, I’m still just dragging books back and forth.

August 13, Saturday

Chrysalis isn’t slacking off on the pressure, no chance of that anymore after they caught Celestia’s spy. We’re all whole, whoop-de-doo, so put yourselves back right this instant. Twilight was up all night working on a map of the planet. That’s not Equestria, not Equestria and the Hive, but the entire planet; its water, anyway. Every river, ocean, lake, iceberg, reservoir, sewer system, bit of groundwater, and cloud, all of it moving and changing in real time, and all of it rated as best as she can for how salty it is, so we can figure out exactly where this lost seawater went. This is all going in her cloud of thoughts too, she’s not even trying to make a map that me or Celestia or anyone can look at, “a waste of time” she said it is. You know what that means? All the information needed to complete this project is gonna be in one pony, and if something happens to Twilight, then no one will be able to take over for her. And how long is this gonna take, I wonder. Twilight’s already getting impatient, she said as much over lunch today, but she thinks she has a plan for how to get it done faster. Trust Twilight to always have a plan; I don’t know what it is, she hasn’t told me yet. Who knows, maybe she won’t ever, and I’ll just clock in one day and find out that the water’s been returned somehow.

I finally asked Leaf Blower if she wanted to get together later, just her and me, and she said yes! We’re hanging out on Wednesday after work. I wish Rarity was in town, I could use some help figuring out what to wear.

August 17, Wednesday

If I understood half of what Twilight’s doing before she actually did it, I’d have tried to stop her like fifty times by now. I swear, she is gonna blow up the whole palace with all the magic bullshit she’s getting into. Check this out, so on Saturday I said she was getting impatient with her water map. Today, she took a drop of that magic potion she made and shut herself up in the office, and then there was this light for like an hour, just this constant, blinding light, it gave me a headache just to see it from the crack under the door. Luna came up (Celestia was somewhere else, who knows with her) but said it was better not to interrupt, that Twilight was doing something big in there. I asked Luna, straight up, if she thought Twilight was gonna be okay.

Luna, I don’t give her enough credit. She definitely knows that Twilight’s getting up to a lot of iffy magical stuff, but she told me that she and Celestia were getting into the same kind of thing when they were young—that that’s how you start. She also told me there was no stifling someone’s passion, only directing it. I told her that no one’s directing Twilight, that Celestia’s barely around, and Luna said she knows, and she’ll intervene if she ever thinks Twilight really needs it. Then I asked her how Twilight’s magic compares to like, a goddess’, and Luna said that Twilight needs to learn how to work smarter, not harder. She said it like it was no big deal, like the light of the friggin’ sun under the door was nothing special. I guess to her, it isn’t.

So two hours later, Twilight comes out in a haze of smoke; she’d freaking burned the paint off the office walls with the heat from her dang spell. And she tells me it’s done, the map of the planet’s water. How did she do it so fast? Why, by enhancing her own magic and then casting a dangerous, super-advanced spell over all her divination bowls. It identified all the water it found and just filled the information straight into her cloud of thoughts, but she had to be sure not to go fast, or her brain would have literally exploded. Then she went on about how the cloud works, how it absorbs magical information, but I stopped listening at “exploded.” This freaking mare… and Luna’s just letting her pull these sorts of experiments in the palace? Am I the only one who thinks this is way too much?

In a really weird way, though, it was good cause I had my date—whatever it is, not a date, but—anyway—my thing with Leaf Blower, and it was really weird. I was like kind of shaken still, but she was super cool about it. We caught a movie and then decided to get dinner, and we talked. I didn’t tell her the details about Twilight, I feel like I shouldn’t, but I told her that I’m generally worried about her, and we just talked. And laughed, lots of that going on too. Leaf puts me at ease way better than Octavia, and definitely better than Colgate. I’m not gonna tell them that. But yeah, we had a great time, we’re gonna get together on Saturday, she wants to meet the other two. Should be interesting.

August 20, Saturday

I feel bad for hanging out with my friends while Twilight was in her office getting it from Pinkie and the diplomats. Only a little bad, though; this is what Twilight gets for being such a pain in the ass. Now she has to be all meek and just take what they’re dishing out to her, serves her right.

It was a pretty good day, though. Leaf got along with Octy and Cole just fine. We couldn’t talk about any secret agent stuff with her along, but Octy told her how it was to play in an orchestra and Cole went on about being a surgeon. Pretty wild stuff, by the sound of it, and I don’t know how much of it she made up on the spot, so that’s always interesting to try to figure out. Cole still acts all nervous, and she was stinking of alcohol when we met up today, but she seemed lucid, so I don’t know what to think.

August 22, Monday

Another thing Twilight made me swear I wouldn’t tell the princesses. Today, using that same magic she used to contact Vinyl remotely, she reached out to Queen Chrysalis. No diplomats, I don’t think Pinkie’s crew knows what she’s doing either. I got in this morning, and there she was, divination bowl somewhere in the changeling capital island. Chrysalis’ whole palace is protected from viewing magic, so Twilight had to make some kind of commotion outside to get her attention. I know I’ve said it before, but seeing her doing all this from the safety of her office above the library, it boggles the mind.

Anyway, Chrysalis eventually got the hint and started talking to Twilight, and the two had themselves a nice little conversation about restoration. I heard Chrysalis asking about Celestia and Luna a bunch, but Twilight kept quiet about them. What she needs, she needs Chrysalis to get a team together on her end to drill for water. From the sound of it, Twilight found some good sources of groundwater that can be used to replace what the ocean lost, if they can just get at them. Once she said that, Chrysalis changed her tune real fast; she was all smiles and good humor. She’s just happy someone in Equestria is taking action, I’m sure, cause from what Twilight tells me, Celestia has our diplomats just talking in circles. That’s what they were going on about on Saturday; the diplomats expect Twilight to work faster, and Twilight wants them to get Chrysalis to let up, and nobody’s willing to compromise on anything—so it was good to hear Twilight and Chrysalis speaking nicely today.

The only problem is that some of the places Twilight wants to drill are in international waters, and given our current standing with The Hive, the princesses might freak out if Chrysalis sent ships of her own that close. Twilight’s gonna have to chew on that one for a while longer, but I’m sure she can figure something out.

August 27, Saturday

I got to see how Twilight makes that crazy potion of hers today. She clears out the royal ballroom and locks the doors, and then she draws that sigil that Celestia showed her, the one we used to use on Pinkie to bring land pieces back together. She draws that, and then a ring of smaller sigils on its edge, and then rings of even smaller sigils on all those edges. Then she takes a bunch of science stuff, like beakers and copper pipes and all that, and then she covers the whole thing with a giant glass dome that she said catches the condensation, and then she activates the main sigil and lets it sit for a couple hours. When it’s all done, you’ve got a quarter teaspoon of oily, brown liquid: pure, concentrated magic. I asked if the princesses gave her permission to do this in their palace, and she said no one had come around to ask her to stop.

August 30, Tuesday

All right, this one’s gonna suck. So we spent about nine hours yesterday just setting up the attic for what we’re doing these next days. I have to dictate this diary entry like first thing in the morning, cause I’m not gonna be home until Thursday, and I gotta admit, I’m scared.

Twilight’s gonna take a couple drops of that magic potion, which will give her like triple the capacity she has now, and then we’re gonna start drilling. There’s thirty-two spots in the waters between here and The Hive that we need to get freshwater out of, and we have to get it now cause a lot of it’s exposed. If we wait until Equestria is back down, there’s gonna be ocean on top of these spots again, and it’s gonna be that much harder.

Where are we gonna put the water when we have it out? How is she even going to drill, and what am I supposed to do? She hasn’t told me yet, we’re gonna go over that this morning. Like I said, I’m scared; Twilight said this is the most complicated thing she’s ever attempted, and if she screws it up, we could do some serious damage to the planet. Why not just ask Celestia to help? Because she’s not here! Celestia left for the minotaurs yesterday and we have no idea how long she’ll be. She left a note on Twilight’s desk saying that she had “urgent business,” and that she has total faith in us. What a crock of shit! She has been so useless during this whole thing, and Luna too—I love Luna, don’t get me wrong, she’s super busy with secret agent stuff, but still, I cannot believe all of this is on Twilight right now. The sick thing is, Twilight seemed happy that Celestia’s gone, like good, now there’s one less pony to barge in on us.

All right, it’s almost time to get up there. Wish me luck, I’ll be back in two days.

September 2, Friday

I wanted to make the entry yesterday, but I basically got into my room and passed out for twelve hours. Neither of us had any sleep since Monday night, that’s how ridiculous this thing is. Let me try to describe it.

She had all her divination stuff set up first, like usual, all thirty-two drilling sites in their bowls on the room’s edge. In order to actually send magic over there, though, she had to cast it from the tower and bounce it off the atmosphere, so it would land somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Spells weaken the more time they spend in the open, so Twilight had to throw this humongous bolt of magic up into the sky, like I couldn’t even look at it. Probably scared the city half to death. When that spell got to the ocean, she used it to sort of… She described it like she was projecting a piece of herself into the magic on the other side, so she could control it and cast spells through it. I was gonna have to run between all thirty-two drill sites and just keep her updated on everything, like on which spells are looking good, which ones need her attention, that sort of thing. Cause if you know Twilight, she didn’t want to drill these things one by one, that would take forever, so she just did ‘em all at once.

I don’t understand most of this, but basically, she needed to take her one remote spell and split it into thirty-two pieces, one for each site. To do that, she had to remotely draw another mess of sigils—but her thing was floating on the ocean, and there’s no surfaces there to draw on, so she spent like two hours pulling water off the ocean, freezing it, and shaping the ice into huge rafts of geometric ice. Then she activated those with her projection, and she was able to get thirty-two little remote spells of herself all at once. There’s like five or six spells she had to cast on herself so that she could keep track of all this, too, plus whatever was going on in her cloud of thoughts.

So once the projections were ready, she found the drilling spots and threw down spells to mark them, then we were ready to start. This whole setup took six hours, and we hadn’t even drilled yet.

Actually boring through the ground wasn’t too bad, but I had to keep running around the room, making sure nothing went too deep and started boiling off water—one major disadvantage to doing this with magic and not technology, magic gets super hot at this level, where a machine can be kept cool. Then it was just a matter of drilling to the right depth, getting a bunch of tube-like shields in there, capping ‘em with some extra hot magic to turn the groundwater into clouds when it got high enough, and giving the water a good enough suck to get it going. It’s called “capillarity,” Twilight kept saying. If the tubes are narrow enough, then the water will pump itself if we get it started.

And that’s where it got seriously scary. We couldn’t use one tube per drill site, we had to use thousands—like how trees can’t have one huge root, they need to have a ton of tiny ones, that’s how she explained it. And how do we get so many tubes quickly? The most dangerous (and illegal) thing in magic, exponential growth. Twilight refused to tell me the exact spells she used, but she basically wrapped a tiny tube of magic around a grain of sand, made it replicate into two, two into four, four into eight, you get it. She had this going automatically, relying on her cloud to do the math fast enough to keep up so she could know to stop it at three million tubes. Three million! But these things were all the width of a grain of sand, so in reality, it was a bundle you could wrap your hooves around. Still… It only took thirty seconds for her magic to bust out that many tubes, can you imagine if something weird happened and she couldn’t stop it? We’d be swimming in tubes by now. And for all of these… She had some whole other group of sigils at the bottoms of the drill sites to keep the tubes intact after she disengaged, cause if she didn’t, then all our hard work would just fall apart and probably burn a hole through the sea floor. I, uh, don’t know if she was exaggerating when she told me that.

Anyway, once the tubes were ready, she inserted them all into the different drill sites, and the water was able to seep upwards. Ugh. And all this had to be maintained until it was stable. She had to make another batch of projections somewhere in there (like thirty-two wasn’t way too many to begin with), and she put up shields in other places so sand and stuff couldn’t slide in and clog the tubes, and on and on and on, all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday, and all yesterday morning. She enchanted us both so we wouldn’t feel hungry or thirsty, or sleepy, or like we had to go to the bathroom, so that was nice—what sucked was how all those feelings hit you at once the second the enchantment is broken. I don’t want to be graphic, but let’s just say, Twilight had covered the floor with a couple layers of tarp, and now I know why.

September 3, Saturday

Luna came by today and caught us turning off our water pumps. At first, she just watched, but then she told me to take a break and helped Twilight herself. Hey, it was fine by me, but Twilight said later that she wished the princess didn’t meddle in her work. Luna was just being nice, she even showed Twilight a better way to do that remote spell so she doesn’t have to bounce magic off the atmosphere. Anyway, long story short, we got all the groundwater we wanted, and Twilight filled the drill holes back in, and now we have it all in these gigantic clouds over the ocean—and yeah, she enchanted them earlier so they won’t dump their rain prematurely. As for the salt, we took a ton out of our part of the ocean when we were using it for the cloud convoy, so Twilight’s just gonna help herself to that. It’s not like we were doing anything with it anyway. It won’t be enough, she said, but it’ll be a start. She’s working on finding other salt deposits now.

I wanted to talk to Princess Luna, but she left after Twilight was done, and I didn’t get the chance. I don’t know what I was gonna ask her, just—I don’t know.

September 6, Tuesday

After a long and weirdly emotional conversation with Pinkie yesterday, Twilight got set up to start taking us back down today. Still no word on Celestia’s whereabouts, but I think Luna’s starting to get a clue on how bad Twilight’s been getting it, cause she was hanging around some more today, and she helped set up the magic to lower our country. It’s a delicate balance, cause we want to go down slow enough that we just, like, settle in, but we also need to make sure we don’t have any residual magic pushing up against us once we’re down there. Those two talking magic together is like a whole ‘nother language to me.

Applejack’s in town for a cider convention, they want her to be a guest judge. It’s next week, I’m gonna see if Leaf wants to go with me, that’s if I can get the time away. I sure hope so; we’ve got this one last step, and then we should be done. Twilight hasn’t said anything about it, but I’m starting to think about Ponyville again, figuring out how I want to get my cloud house looking, where I want it, and all that good stuff. It’ll be sad to say goodbye to Octavia and Colgate, but I get everyone else just a quick fly away, so I think I’ll be okay. Not sure about Leaf, though.

September 11, Sunday

Very weird day yesterday. For starters, I had to ditch Octy and Leaf at lunch because there was an emergency in Snowdrift. The glacier just outside town was wobbling on the edge, and Twilight was scared it might fall off, so I had to get in there and watch her divination while she scrambled to get another projection over to Snowdrift. She was able to stabilize the glacier, but before we were done, she spent like an hour with the Snowdrift secret agents, telling them to watch their glacier and what to do if it starts moving again. It was kinda funny hearing Twilight reprimand them like that. And since she was in the neighborhood, she checked up on Versus, who’s still not doing great. She got a job at a coffee shop, but it doesn’t pay the bills, and a lot of ponies look at her sideways now. Twilight offered to send her some royal money, but Versus said to save it. So even after saving us from the stupid glacier falling off, Twilight was in a pissy mood the rest of the day cause Versus was snippy with her. I didn’t say anything, but it’s like, Twilight did kind of put her in this situation, so…

Leaf is so sweet, she was asking about me when I was with Twilight, making sure I was all right. We wound up getting together for dinner, just her and me, and it was great. We’re really meshing, and she’s down to go to the cider convention, which’ll be awesome. I don’t think she’s met Applejack yet, so that’ll be cool too; I think they’ll like each other.

Anyway, we were just finishing dinner, and who walks in but the gruesome twosome themselves, Octy and Cole. And they had a third this time, too, that mare Cork that got flown in from Manehattan. Leaf and I didn’t have anywhere to be, so we joined ‘em and made it a… five-some? Cork is a hoot, an absolute blast to hang around with, I can totally see having her along for drinks more often. Octavia was right, she talks a mile a minute. Reminds me a little of Versus, but maybe that’s just cause I had Versus on my mind at the time. I know Applejack said something once about Versus wishing she’d have come with us after all, but I don’t know if that was a joke or what. Hm.

Leaf left early, but me and the other girls stayed out until like two or three. I don’t usually drink that much, but last night I must’ve been six sails to the wind, and I gotta say, it was pretty fun to cut loose like that. Octavia got a little weird, I remember that distinctly, but it seems like Cole just has to put a hoof on her back or whisper something in her ear, and she calms right back down. Those two, they’re not together or anything, I know that, I’ve asked Octavia a few times, but I think they’re a little more than friends. Me and Cork talked for a while, and she told me what happened to her in Manehattan, but I forgot most of it. Like she walked all the way from Passage Town when we went down there to use the window to Snowdrift, and she got to Manehattan and started sniffing around for weird shit there too, and it found her, or they found her, or something like that. She kept saying how proud she was of talking her way into their team instead of having her memory wiped, which is what usually happens. Hey, good for her, she clearly loves it. I remember loving my job.

September 18, Sunday

We’re back on the planet! Like, officially, reconnected! Twilight and I had to spend a good ten hours in the office, more divination bowls, more magic potion, more projections, but we did it. The water’s been pushed out, the clouds we set up are finally raining and filling up the ocean, the salt’s pouring in… It looks good. Twilight tested for the magic that brought us up in the first place, didn’t find any. Pinkie and Chrysalis and all them are delighted, and Luna gave a speech and gave us all medals, all us on the restoration committee. We’ve been working in the palace for about ten months now, and for the first time, I feel like I can relax.

But I know we’re not quite done. The changelings, for instance, they don’t have access to the same magic Twilight used to drill, so they’re still working on getting their portions of the ocean, and we still have to get the rest of the salt so the marine ecosystem doesn’t get screwed up. Luna worked something out with the dragons to have a couple hundred tons of salt shipped over, so that’ll help, but I don’t know how much. Twilight has the numbers, she’s working on it.

Notice how I said Luna’s the one doing all this stuff? Celestia’s still down with the minotaurs, she missed her own country’s return. Twilight played it off, but you can tell her feelings are hurt pretty bad. Celestia was like a second mother to Twilight when she was young, but she barely helped her clean up the Crumbling, and now she misses the culmination of all our efforts? I can’t say I’m really surprised, that’s the shitty thing. Like, shouldn’t both rulers be there for something like this? Shouldn’t Celestia have zipped back here, at least to make an appearance or something? She could have spared the time to give her “star pupil” a little recognition or a word of thanks. You know what really sucks, what the very worst of this is, is Twilight defends her still. “She’s really busy, Dash,” she says, sounding the most miserable I’ve ever heard her. I know me and Twilight have had our differences, but she's still my friend, dammit, and what Celestia did today was just low. I almost wanna give her a piece of my mind when she gets back, whenever that is.

In other news, Rarity’s about ready to put out a winter line. The summer one took off like crazy, like crazy, like “multi-million bits” crazy. I mean, I knew she was doing well, but I didn’t know it was blowing up like it was. She was in town today to celebrate with us, and she cut me and Twilight a check for a million bits, each. Just like that, like it was nothing, a million bits paid to the order of Twilight Sparkle, a million bits paid to the order of Rainbow Dash. Can you believe that? Wouldn’t take no for an answer, so… uh, well, I guess I’ve got a little spending money now. Did this for everyone down in Ponyville already, apparently AJ cried. She said she was gonna give a check to Octavia and Cole too, and maybe even a little one for Versus; she feels awful for what happened to her, and we didn’t really get to thank her properly for all the help she gave us. So at least that’s some good news. It’s funny, Rarity was out with us this evening, and once she had a couple drinks in her, she was going on and on about how the rest of us won’t have to work if we don’t want to, that she can easily provide for all of us, and all that—like the throne isn’t doing that already. Geez, that sounded shitty, didn’t it? I’m just glad Rarity was able to get back to her career.

September 24, Saturday

Leaf and I are together now. I snuck a kiss in after dinner tonight, and well, that was all it took. It’s nothing like with Trixie. This is slow and steady, we’re gonna take it a day at a time and see how we feel. I hope… anyway.

September 25, Sunday

That bitch! Celestia is such a—she—today she—ach! She summed me and Twilight for a meeting today, I didn’t even know she was back yet, it’s not like she announced it. She brought us into the boardroom and it’s like, didn’t even say hi, didn’t even congratulate Twilight on putting us back down on the planet (and like a year earlier than expected, too), she chewed us out instead. I’ve never heard the princess raise her voice ever, but she was furious, she told us that we could’ve caused an international incident, that we totally undermined Equestria’s good name and the throne’s authority—basically, that we did everything wrong. It’s cause Twilight contacted Chrysalis behind Celestia’s back and worked with the changelings directly, like she’s not authorized to speak directly with The Hive about anything. Celestia asked if we “are aware that there is a team of Equestrian diplomats already stationed in The Hive” like we’re both stupid. I was ready to unleash on her, I really was, like it would have been another year setting all this shit up if we went through the diplomats and through all the official royal channels, and all that… Twilight, though, Twilight… She just took it, all of it, she apologized for everything. She said she didn’t know why she did it that way, which is such a lie, she knows exactly why she did it and it’s cause the princess couldn’t get her own shit together. Like I said, the official channels are so inefficient and slow, and expensive too—I was thinking Twilight would at least bring that up, that she saved the throne who knows how much money, but nothing, Twilight just apologized and said it would never happen again. That calmed the royal bitch down, at least, and then Celestia got back to normal, all motherly and crap, and she hugged Twilight and said it was okay, that nothing serious happened—then why’d you yell at us in the first place? I was so mad, I wanted to throw my name badge in her face and say “fuck it, I’m going back to Ponyville.” If I can get Twilight to do it with me, I might still, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. After the meeting, Twilight went into her office and locked the door. She told me to go do my own thing, that she still had some work to do. Typical.

September 26, Monday

I thought we were gonna wrap up here and then go home, that’s what Twilight said after we were back down. We were gonna finish with the ocean, do some final checks, make sure nothing weird was going on, and then shove off to Ponyville sometime mid-October. But now it looks like we’re here until November at least. Twilight and Celestia had another meeting today, just them, and Celestia wants Twilight to use her divination magic to spy on Chrysalis. See, this is super weird and backwards, cause Twilight and Chrysalis have been working together, but officially, Equestria and The Hive are not on the best terms still; everything Twilight did might amount to nothing if either country doesn’t behave in these coming months. Since now we’re back on the planet and filling in the oceans, we have to start talking about reopening trade lines and stuff, but meanwhile, Equestria still has its changeling population under watch, and don’t forget that spy ship Celestia sent over. They don’t trust us, and we sure don’t trust them, and it’s a standoff to see who eases off the defenses first.

Twilight’s gonna do it. She doesn’t like it, but she’s gonna do it. We’re researching changeling politics and society now, and she’s gonna start probing them soon.

September 30, Friday

Well, they caught her. The changelings have secret agents too, just like us, and they know how to catch someone trying to view them remotely. Twilight was trying to find her way around their counter-surveillance magic, but who do you think is gonna win that one, Twilight Sparkle or an advanced team of government officials whose specific job is to protect their country from magical spying? The diplomats are freaking out, as well they should be, cause now they are in some really hot water. Their country violated the truce between them and The Hive, with the diplomats in the changeling capital city. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, Twilight tried to get a hold of Celestia all day, but Celestia’s off on another errand somewhere. Luna’s trying to help, but there isn’t a lot she can do since this changeling mess doesn’t belong to her.

October 1, Saturday

Twilight was on the sigil with Chrysalis herself this morning, this time it was Chrysalis who reached out to Twilight. Celestia’s still missing, and everything Luna says is falling on deaf ears, so it’s up to Twilight to explain all this. We’re not at war, that’s the important thing, but Chrysalis isn’t going to back down. Twilight tried (and failed, she told me) to explain what was going on without implicating Celestia. I really, really hope Celestia gets back soon to sort this out.

October 3, Monday

Celestia’s in Applewood, we found out, overseeing some of the big businesses there, helping them get back on their hooves. She promised to be back in Canterlot as soon as possible to help with the Chrysalis thing, and meanwhile, the changeling navy is heading for our international waters, and they are armed. Chrysalis promised they’re not gonna come into Equestrian space, but do we trust that? They’re just gonna park on our doorstep and wait. Luna keeps appealing to them, but they don’t trust her, and why should they? Stupid Celestia is the one who’s behind all this, and she won’t show—of course it seems suspicious. I don’t know how much of this Twilight is supposed to be handling on her own, Celestia hasn’t deigned to tell us, so we’re just… Working on re-salting the ocean. That job’s almost done, but we’ll be out of neutral things soon. We’re waiting for Celestia, who’s proving herself to be the least reliable pony in the palace right now. So, uh, yeah. That’s the news.