Now that Ebony was finally awake, and more importantly; okay, my spirits had been substantially lifted. Or rather, returned to their previous state, before my quite depressing meeting with Luna. I'll give her something, she did try to cheer me up as we flew about, asking questions and reminding me of happy times... But I don't think I was ready to see the place I had been 'stolen' from just then.

I licked the inside of my teeth as I stood from the bed. I met a horrible taste and an unpleasant texture. Oh yeah, I didn't brush last night in my rush to get to sleep. I walked into the on-suite bathroom and gave them a quick scrub. No paste, just enough to keep them feeling nice until I could brush them properly after breakfast. After what must have only been a couple seconds, I left the small room and re-entered the bedroom.

"Who'd you want to tell first, hm?" I asked as I put the scattered clothing from yesterday back on. They were not that bad.

Ebony slowly sat up in the bed. Scrunching up his face and extending his hooves, he performed possibly the cutest possible yawn. He rolled his shoulders around and stretched himself about a bit. "As much as I want to see everyone, I really need to see Queen Vicissit." He said, in a slightly strained voice as he popped his back.

I nodded and laughed slightly. "Yeah, okay. I would come along, but that would be a rather awkward conversation; You, Me and a Queen I can't see." He grinned as he stiffly left the bed, shaking his head. "Plus, I think I have a Princess to brag to. Good luck with the Queen and stuff." He rolled his eyes as I left the bedroom. I felt really bad leaving him like that, just after he woke up, but I could tell he really didn't want the extra attention, he barely handles regular attention.

Instead of making pancakes, I decided to have something more healthy. I headed down to the cafeteria and got myself some typical pony food, though I topped it with some berries, I had been craving those for a while. Need to find a place that sells these, so I can put them on my pancakes...

Once that was done I walked back to our room, finding Ebony already gone. I finally brushed my teeth properly and washed my face. I left our room feeling a lot more awake and headed for the throne room. When the guards saw me coming they just rolled their eyes. Nah not this time. I pushed the door open like a normal person for once, I am pretty sure the guards either side of the door dropped their weapons and stared in shook.

There was a line of ponies in front of Celestia again. When dismissing a pony, Celestia caught sight of my bored expression at the end of the line. She smirked and raised a hoof slightly, stopping the pony who was next in line in her tracks.

"It seems the victor has returned." She called from across the room. I smiled proudly as the entire line of ponies turned around to look at me, with confused faces. "Luna tells me that your two had a victory lap of sorts after our little duel." The ponies gasped. Celestia chuckled and indicated to the ponies with a head-movement. "Tell me, what are your thought's?"

I smiled, getting the message. These ponies didn't have to know it was a dream duel. "You were a worthy opponent. But I would recommend a faster dragon next time. Maybe a tougher one too, considering it was like, the size of this room three-times-over; it was pretty easy to kill." The ponies all stared at me in dis-belief.

Celestia grinned at the shocked ponies. "I will be sure to mix-up my techniques next time. Also, my defeat was not entirely fair there, towards the end."

I shrugged. "Shouldn't have let your guard down. I had to replace my clothes afterwards, I was covered in chunks of alicorn."

The ponies all turned to Celestia, perhaps looking for a way out of the madness they were hearing. Celestia did not help them one bit. "Luna says she's gotten used to it, I am sure you will too, after a couple more duels." She said, smirking at the ponies sickened faces. "Now, what did you need? I have ponies to tend to."

"Just wanted to check you took your defeat well." I said, She smiled and rolled her eyes. "Also, Ebony's awake. Just thought you'd want to know."

She nodded. "Yes, it's about time he recovered. Get him to practice his magic, he's rather inexperienced considering his age."

"I already am." I said, shrugging.

"I expect he is still feeling rather stiff from being in-active for so long. Go easy on him for a while." She said, giving me a wink.

Oh god it's worse than having a mother. "Yeah, sure, whatever." I said as I walked back out of the doors. The guards gave me strange looks. "What are you two looking at?" I said, in mock aggression once the doors had closed.

They flinched, the one left of the door answered. "You dueled the Princess?"

I snorted. "Yeah. Blew her head off."

He blinked. "Then how does she still..."

"She's an alicorn. She does whatever she wants." I said, shrugging. "Remember, I killed her a while ago." Referencing the time Celestia framed me for her own assassination. I'm still not completely over that.

And neither was he apparently, as he gave me a rather angry look. "Yes... I think we would all of us like to... 'speak' to you about that."

I snorted. "But you can't. She punished me personally. Though... I've never fought a pony without one of us having an unfair advantage." I said, eyeing the spear over his shoulder. He eyed my knives.

He narrowed his eyes. "Is that a threat?"

I shook my head. "More of a challenge if anything. Just thinking out loud really. Like, I wonder, how many of you guys would it take to take me down? If you all came at me one by one, I recon I could take out at least... what... five or so?" My gaze had drifted upwards as I thought, when I brought it back down, I was greeted with a much closer face than before.

"You're lucky you rank higher than us, or I would have you in chains by now." I rolled my eyes. "Or the hospital." I returned his narrowed eyes.

"And you're lucky I have not looked into the specifics of what I can do to you guys, or I would do the worst, possible, thing to you I could. Right now." I said, pressing my nose closer to his, towering over him. A pony exited the throne room, looked at us, then quickly went back in, joining the back of the line again.

"That would be to dismiss me from the force entirely sir." He said, looking up at me. I smirked and raised my eyebrows, pulling myself back into a normal stance and crossing my arms. His eyes widened and he blinked at me. "No... nonono Sir! I have a wife! And two b-beautiful children!" He yelled as he flung himself at my feet. "If I lost my job I'd... they'd..."

I turned an unimpressed look to the other guard, to the right of the door. He looked at me in shock. "You think I should let him go?" I asked him.

He turned his expression into typical royal-guard-mode and said, "I agree with whatever you choose to do Sir."

I looked down to the pony sobbing into my feet, he looked up at me and I rolled my eyes. "You're lucky I'm a nice person." I said, pulling my legs out of his hooves. "Get back to your post." I pointed to his spot by the door. He rushed back to his previous position. I never would have fired him, I just liked making a scene. Got to keep my rep with the guards. You know, they've already chased me twice.

Wiping his nose with a hoof as he attempted to compose himself. "Yes, Sir. Thank you Sir."

I rolled my eyes as I left without a word. I heard the two guards talking in hushed voices once I was a decent distance away. I wanted to turn around, just to see their faces, but I think I had traumatized them enough as it was. Plus I genuinely felt kinda bad for doing that to him.

I was walking back up to my room when something hit the back of my shoulder. I turned around, only to see an empty hallway... and a floating notepad.

I laughed. "Oh, sorry, didn't see you there. What do you need?"

The note pad flipped a couple pages. Each page seemed to have a common response already written on it. She flicked through the small book, before stopping and turning it towards me. "My scout, Ebony, came to see me earlier and instructed me to tell you that 'everyone' was meeting at 'The Shadey' at eight, today. He wishes for you to be there."

I shook my head, smiling. "Typical Ebony, first time awake in days, and already drinking..." I looked back up to... oh... I looked in her general direction. "Sure, I'll be there. You going too Vicissit?" I asked.

The note flipped to the first page. "No."

"Why not?" I said, slightly disappointed.

The note flipped to the back and opened on a blank page. A pencil appeared and wrote for a second or two. It turned to me. "Both me and Celestia agree that I have not stayed here long enough to go outside without causing too much of a scene."

I snorted slightly. "If Celestia thinks that... Wow, you really must be something! I mean, all I know is that you're tall."

The pencil scribbled again. "Celestia has admitted, upon my questioning, that she and ponies in general find my appearance... unsettling. Though she says you are a lot more accepting in terms of appearance."

I smiled. "That's what they said about Ebony." I shrugged. "They just find changelings creepy. Personally, I think they're rather cute to be honest. I mean, yeah, Ebony has his creepy and odd moments, but I'm not doing much better myself. Look at me! I'm the only human these ponies will ever see. Probably."

She wrote out another response. "You 'pull it off' a lot better than I do. It is strange being in the capital of a nation that I once called my enemy."

I rolled my eyes. "These guys are harmless. I was talking to a guard just now, about how I've killed Celestia twice now."

"Celestia told me she framed you." She wrote.

"Oh, well, I've killed her once then." I said, shrugging. The note didn't move and I got rather nervous, since I could not see her expression. "In a dream-duel, of course. But they don't need to know that." I quickly added.

The pencil continued. "Ah, you had me worried there, I have not seen her today."

"She's tending to her ponies in the throne room. Or whatever she does in there. Thanks for letting me know about tonight." I said.

The note turned to a pre-written page. "No problem."

"I won't ware out you pencil any more, I've got to get some lunch or something."

The pages flipped a couple times. "Bye." There was a picture of a waving hoof.

I laughed slightly. "Hey, that's an idea. Why not get a pony to draw you? Then I could now what you look like." I shrugged. "But Celestia said whatever's causing this will ware off in a week or so, so... ah, just an idea. Seeya." Could have used better wording.

I continued walking back to my room, but knocked on Chrome's door while I was there. There was no response. Either he's out, or he took my advice on what to do when he and Luna don't want to be interrupted.

I got to my room and walked in. Ebony was still gone. I opened the fridge and selected a couple treats as my lunch. There was still a large amount of food left in there from Hearth's warming, and I had a feeling some of it was about to spoil. I was doing my best to eat through it as fast as possible. I sat on the sofa with a couple items of food and looked at the clock. 12:30-ish. Great.

I ended up spending most of the day practicing with the piano and the acoustic Ebony now kept under his side of the bed. As much as I like to think of it as 'his', I still made it. I had the right to use it if I wanted to. After I got bored of those two things, I decided to mess about with the music-magic a little. Humming tunes until the instruments came in, then changing songs. Most of the time the sounds stopped abruptly, but sometimes they would try their best to faze into the next song, some of their attempts were pretty funny. And some of the song-fusions I made were pretty cool too, by swapping out choruses and verses from other songs, I was able to create a Frankenstein's monster of sorts. A bunch of genres mixed together in one big, ever-changing mess.

I stopped when I heard a hoof on my door.

"Come in. It's open." I called.

To my surprise, it was Alloy. The earth pony quietly made his way into my room.

"I just... wanted to check on how things were going." He said in his usual timidness.

I smiled. "Me, Dawn, Steve and Ebony are making a band soon and I want you to make the records for it."

He beamed. "That's great news!" His expression faltered. "Not... me making the records... the band bit... not that I mind making the records!...I just..." He trailed off.

"It's fine. It's fine. Now, do you have any recommendations on what kind of music to make? With what we have, we could do all-sorts of stuff, but I don't know what ponies like in terms of music."

He waved a hoof. "Oh ponies like anything that conveys emotion, I recommend using that 'Electric guitar' as much as possible, maybe make another one. I think it's wonderful." He said. It seems that he can talk about music completely fine, but as soon as you change the subject, he becomes distant and shy again. Pfff, ponies sometimes.

"Yeah," I responded, "I like it too. Steve's getting rather good at it. I just need a real drum-set for Dawn and to figure out a way for Steve to use the guitar without having to sit down..."

He hummed. "Yeah... I can see that being a problem on a stage...I'll figure something out. I'll let you handle the drums..." His eyes widened. "Oh... I didn't mean... I mean... you can do the drums if you want..."

I sighed. "Alloy, you're hard to love. But you're harder to hate. Now, get going and keep doing what you're doing."

He nodded and stood. "Yes Sir." He began to leave.

"And stop with this 'Sir' stuff!" I called as he closed the door. I received no response.

I went back to messing with music. Sometimes, once it starts, it's just like listening to the song, just as I did back on earth. It was nice to just sit there and try to remember as many of my favorite songs as I could. Just listening to them play out. I kept an eye on the clock, still eagerly awaiting 8 o'clock. It had been a while since I had had a drink, so I was looking forward to it. I'm sure whoever 'everyone' included was too.

Updated: 12/11/15
-Fixed grammar
-Added some stuff where needed.
-These later chapters have a lot less errors than the early ones, since I actually had spellcheck by this point. Chapter 31 will be out in a couple days, probably.

...4am...This fic man, it's ruining my sleep schedule. And my brain apparently, I just tried to spell "ruining" with an F.

Welp, I kinda have nothing to say about this chapter... I can't even remember what happened in it... probably not a good sign, either it was a boring chapter or my brain is completely fried right now. Both of those are bad for the fic in general.

I swear I will try to start the writing process earlier in the day, so I don't end up writing till the early morning like I usually do. Sorry a couple of the last chapters have been so short, I just don't like leaving chapters half-finished over-night and stuff, so I try to wrap them up when I start feeling too tired. Like I am right now.