I was kept overnight for observation... or, possibly, to sate the morbid curiosity of the pony medical professionals. I shan't venture a wager as to which. Button Mash and I got along famously, I must say. At least after he got over his nervousness a la celebrity shock at sharing a room with me.  Like most foals who'd met me for the first time he had a thousand questions about my world, and I, being a complete attention hog, delighted in regaling him with tales from earth. He had a surprising number of questions about human video games. I suppose all young boys... er, colts.... get fixated on the things at that age. We prattled about video games, comics (I understand the mane six are getting a small royalty check from the Mare Do Well series) sports (there I was at almost a complete loss-- I am functionally illiterate in the language of sports in both worlds) and other such things. He was champing at the bit (pardon the joke) to see that computer and game display in the Museum of the Humanities.

I did tease him a bit about Sweetie Belle. What can I say, I'm only human. It did seem the feelings were reciprocated a bit; his blush was adorable. Ahh, puppy love.

Being an insider in the royal court gave me quite a few Equestrian stories to tell, no less.

"Yes, I was there for the wedding of Shining Armor and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," I told him. "And for the Battle of Equestria, naturally. I'm afraid I spent most of that one out of commission."

"Really?" he said. I chuckled at his disappointment at my lack of war stories.  

I nodded. "For most of the battle I was hiding under a bench in the wedding cathedral. Sorry, kiddo, I didn't exactly cover myself in glory there." I grinned.  "Though I did manage to annoy Chrysalis a bit...."

 

---

 

The six Bearers had run from the hall, cutting a path through the enemy on a quest to retrieve the Elements. Great God, why did Celestia ever separate them from those things in the first place?

This looked bad. Celestia was knocked cold; any illusions anypony retained of godhead on her part were pretty well shattered. The changelings quickly overwhelmed the few guards present; everyone else was too intimidated to resist. "Round them up, put everypony against the wall!" the Queen ordered her soldiers. "Pick out the strongest ones; we will drain them first!" She moved toward Celestia; I saw glowing mucus dripping from her lip like saliva. "I will secure their pathetic princess first," she said, leering.

"You really are a prat, aren't you."

That certainly got her attention. Her skull-like head whipped around, her green eyes blazing. "What? Who dares?"

 

...I suppose I was hoping to distract the cackling villainness, to stall for time or something. I lumbered to my feet from my hiding place under a pew and stepped out into the center aisle. "I said, you are a PRAT," I said, planting my cane on the floor and leaning on it. "Did you conceive this idiotic invasion plan on your own or did you have your minions clip it out of the sunday funnies for you?" I was desperately trying to pull off the cool, deadpan action hero snark; my voice was a bit too high and my words a bit too hastily spoken to pull that off. I prayed, quite literally prayed, she was too ignorant of human mannerisms to pick it up.

The corner of her mouth curled up. "Ah, Celestia's pet space monkey," she said. "Still your tongue, monkey; your gabble may have amused Celestia, with me it will only get your tongue cut out." With her face being mostly hard carapace it was a bit hard to read her facial expressions, but her words conveyed all the meaning she needed.

I told my quivering cowardly guts to shut up and pressed my luck. My panicked hindbrain had seized on the idea that the only way I'd only stay alive was if I kept on talking. It was like a nightmare where I was facing a horrible monster and trying to banish it by mouthing off to it. "Well then take this as free counsel," said, slowly stepping towards her, thumping my cane into the floor, playing up my age and sedentary nature. "Think of it as my last act as an advisor to royalty. I'd take whichever changeling counseled this little venture and execute them for betrayal. Assuming your own followers don't kill you FIRST."

She scoffed.

I went on. "Oh yes, it will happen. There's an old saying amongst us talking space monkeys, Chrysalis. 'You can shear a sheep a thousand times, but you can only skin it once.' " I gave her my best gallows grin.

She actually grimaced at the turn of phrase. Then again, maybe she thought my slasher smile meant I had bad gas. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Let me guess; your grand plan consists of conquering Equestria, sticking us all in pods and sucking all the love out of us till we're nothing but empty husks. Right?" I stumped a little closer.

"Look around you," I said waving my arm around. "How much love are you feeling in this room right now? How much love will you harvest when the Equestrians all go down seething with fear, rage, and hate for your kind? And what happens after you've drained the last pony to a husk? Will you do this all over again? With the minotaurs? The gryphons? The dragons? You'll either run out of realms to conquer or you'll run into a race that isn't such a pushover, and squashes you like the bugs you are.

I raised my voice to make sure every Changeling in the room heard my voice. "You're a parasite. What happens to a parasite that kills its host?"

The silence was brief but thunderous.

I pressed on. "This isn't necessary. Think of the ponies out there who are showered with adoration by thousands, freely. Singers, movie stars, authors, actors--- not to mention rescue workers, philanthropists, caretakers---  you could make a positive contribution---"

I never finished my rant. I had gotten within ten paces of her. Through my entire spiel she had stood there, staring at me impassively, her hollow-cheeked face frozen and unchanging. Then in the middle of my sentence she spat an enormous gob of fluorescent green mucous at my face.

The world went dark, smothered in bilious green.

 

 

---

 

"...I spent the rest of the battle hanging upside down in a pod like a fruit bat," I finished. "The next thing I recall was them peeling the wax off like a banana and pulling me out of the slime. So much for talking through your problems, I suppose." I smirked. " I like to think that wherever she is she's still seething over what I said to her. Nice wedding afterward though."

"Wow," was all Button Mash ventured. "...Did you meet Prince Shining Armor? He's cool."

"Yes, and Princess Cadence too, of course," I said. I didn't bother mentioning that Shining Armor and I played poker together all the time.

"I heard Princess Twilight helped save the Crystal Empire from a bad guy," Button said. "Did you go too?"

I laughed. "No, no, I'm afraid not," I said. "I've not even been to the Crystal Empire."

"Why not? I mean, why didn't you go and help the Elements with your cool human super powers?"

I nearly fell out of my hospital bed laughing. "Human super powers??" I hooted. "Where did you get the idea I have super powers?"

"You don't?" He sounded so disappointed that I actually felt bad that I didn't. "But you're an alien from another world. They always have super powers in the movies."

I sighed. "To my immense regret, real life isn't like the movies," I said. "If anything, I have even less super powers than you do."

"Than me?"

"You're an Earth pony," I said. "From what I've seen, when you grow up you'll be stronger than ten full grown human men. At least." I shrugged. "I didn't go along because I would have been no use. Unless they needed someone to tie their shoe laces." I wiggled my fingers at him.

"That's kind of a superpower," Button Mash pointed out, pointing his good hoof at my hands.

I looked at them. I supposed it would be, to a species who had to manipulate everything with blunt hooves. I shrugged. "Still not much good against something like King Sombra," I said. I sighed and lay back. "Besides, Celestia, Luna and I sort of had a falling-out round about that time." I grimaced as I reflected on how I reacted upon hearing the news of Celestia's little 'test'...

 

---

 

"Celestia, this is unconscionable!" I said, banging my cane on the floor for emphasis. To my irritation the rubber grommet on the tip kept it from making the sort of stone-cracking rap I wanted. "Putting that much of a burden on that poor filly--"

"I do not usually have people question my decisions so vociferously," Celestia said in a tone that made clear she didn't like it in the least.

"I'm your ADVISOR, that's how I make the big bucks," I said scathingly. " And now I'm ADVISING you that putting the fate of an entire empire of innocent ponies on your protege's shoulders is absolutely indecent!"

"So you don't think Twilight is capable of handling the crisis?" Celestia said.

"Of course she's capable of handling it!" I said, throwing my arms in the air. "She shouldn't have to, is my point! She's a young mare just barely into her majority, she shouldn't be doing YOUR job or the job of your ARMIES for you!"

"We do not care for thy tone, human," Luna said, scowling. "Do not presume to tell us our duties--"

"Tell me again, Princess," I said, wheeling on her. "Who is more powerful, you, Celestia or Twilight Sparkle? Who was  needed to handle Sombra the last time? How long did it take for you two to actually depose him? He had an entire empire in chains by the time you defeated him and I'm pretty sure that's not an overnight task.

"Capable or not, who should handle a threat that size? The thousand year old alicorn princess or the nineteen year old child?" Luna gaped at me, then closed her mouth, fuming.

I felt Celestia's wing over my shoulder. "Arcturus, please," she said gently. "I assure you, I would never set a test on Twilight she could not handle. This is necessary. She needs to be tested for what we have planned for her..."

Tested. For what we have planned for her. My temper went from red hot to icy cold. I shoved her wing aside. "Tested.  She defeated Nightmare Moon, when you couldn't. She faced down a Changeling army while you were hanging in a pod from the ceiling like a Christmas ham. She's battled hydras, Ursa Minors, dragons. Tell me, Princess," I spat, "When exactly is she going to finally earn your approval? When are you going to stop sabotaging her?"

"I would never--" she shouted in the Royal Canterlot Voice.

"You already DID!" I roared back, my jaw cracking from the strain. I was long past controlled and rational; I was in full raging jackass mode. "YOU TOLD HER IT WAS A TEST!"

"What dost thou mean that--- oh buck me running," Luna said, cringing. She closed her eyes and grimaced, facehoofing.

"And so the light dawns," I said sarcastically. To Celestia's exasperated and confused expression I said, "You told the most Obsessive Compulsive unicorn in Equestria that her mission was a TEST! Are you that oblivious to what your own student is like? How desperate she is for your approval? How terrified she is of your disappointment? ARE YOU THAT DETERMINED TO MAKE HER FAIL?

"She was convinced you were going to exile her or throw her in a dungeon because her friend tried to care for your pet Phoenix. She went spastic because Ponyville was being attacked by parasprites just before your arrival. She's the most capable unicorn in Equestria and she comes apart at the seams if she thinks you're involved..Why? because she's convinced you'll destroy her life on a whim---and by the way I would love to know what the HELL you did to her to make her that neurotic!

"Now the fate of thousands of innocent ponies is in the hooves of a unicorn mare--- one who would stick her leg in a running wood chipper if you told her to, one who has already proven herself to you a thousand times over, one whom any SANE mentor would say had nothing to prove, one who thinks her life is going to be utterly destroyed if she fails you doing something that you should have sent an ARMY to do.

"Worst of all, you've told her to do it in a way that contradicts every Friendship lesson she's had since the day Nightmare Moon fell, and do it all on her own. You told the Element of Harmony to push her friends away. Either she'll disobey you and save the Empire, and then snap from the strain of disobeying her Mother-Goddess figure, or she'll ignore everything she's learned, do exactly what you told her-- and snap when she sees her mission FAIL and the Crystal Empire FALL. Does this AMUSE you, mare? Are you not ENTERTAINED by her SUFFERING?

"Tell me Princess, whatever are you going to do with your time when your little dolly finally BREAKS?"

That was cruel. I knew it was. I said it anyway. I could see the hurt in Celestia's eyes. The hurt and the anger that I would accuse her of treating Twilight like a toy.  "You know that I love Twilight dearly, Arthur Arcturus," she said. Her voice was carefully controlled, but I could hear the tearful tremble in it. Celestia, the royal sphinx, the pony Mona Lisa, showing actual emotion? "I would never do anything to hurt her. You know that."

"Then how do you justify doing this to her?" I demanded to know.

Celestia turned away. She seemed to compose herself, and looked around at the guards in the room. "Leave us," she said.

One made the mistake of hesitating. "But your maj--"

"LEAVE US!" Celestia barked, the Royal Voice making the curtains billow. The guards departed so quickly that their hooves skidded on the marble floor. More than one had his tail tucked between his legs. Celestia and Luna used their magic to close and bar the door, and pulled the curtains shut. My hand trembled on my cane; my fear was finally eating through my anger, reminding me that I was alone in a room with two beings who could incinerate me instantly and then teleport the dust to the moon-- I tamped down and stoked my anger, keeping the flame bright and hot. NO. I was not going to be a hypocritical puss. I was not going to let these two intimidate me no matter how powerful they were! My hand steadied.

"What we say here must not leave this room, save between the three of us," Celestia said. Luna continued casting spells about the room; anti-eavesdropping spells I supposed. "You are right, Arcturus. I told her deliberately."

I motioned for her to go on.

"That IS the test. I had to... I must see if she can overcome her fear of failure. She has to. She must." Her tone became earnest. "I have to know if she is ready for what comes next..."

 

 

---

 

"And then she revealed to me what it was all about. It seems they were going to give her a special book, one with a, a broken spell in it. If she managed to fix it, make it work, she would have unlocked a whole new kind of magic. That would trigger a metamorphosis in Twilight Sparkle. She would ascend..."

"And she would turn into an alicorn princess!" Button Mash finished for me eagerly.  I nodded. "Wow, so that's how it happened. I mean, I knew Princess Twilight made some sort of new magic, but I didn't really know how it worked... So once they told you that, it made everything better, right?"

I chuckled ruefully. "Actually..."

 

---

 

I stood for a minute, silently digesting what the two princesses had just told me. Inside I was in turmoil. I think what decided it for me was looking over at Celestia in my confusion and seeing that smile.

That damned serene, confident, smug, self-assured smile.

"Your Highnesses," I said as calmly as I could manage, "I must regretfully inform you that I must resign my post."

 

---

 

"You quit?" Button Mash gaped. "But why?"

"I'm getting to that, I'm getting to that," I said.

"What did the princesses do? Where did you go? Why are you working for them now if you quit?"

"Ah, therein lies the heart of the matter..."