“Now remember,” Twilight lectured as she paced on the platform of Ponyville’s train station, her eyes closed as she recited her premade speech. The sun had just started peeking over the horizon in the early hours of the morning. “Nix is still new to Equestria, so he might be a bit...rough around the edges. But Princess Celestia has entrusted us with teaching him the magic of friendship, and I’m sure with our combined efforts, we’ll all be the greatest of friends in no time at all!”

“Heck, yeah,” Rainbow Dash mumbled with a slur, desperately straining enthusiasm through her sleep-addled voice. The sound of a distant train horn’s keening roused her from her drowsy stupor, and she forced a façade of alertness. “We reformed Discord in, like, two days! This new pony won’t know what hit ‘im!” Twilight spared the blue pegasus an optimistic smile as her friend’s eyelids slowly began to droop again. After receiving the princess’s package last night, she had been too excited to sleep herself, but she knew just how well her friend handled waking early. Shaking her head sympathetically, she swept her gaze beyond Rainbow to the crowd that had gathered to greet the honored guest.

A large assortment of ponies had congregated to the train station to welcome their new arrival. A very large assortment. Twilight’s mouth pursed in mild annoyance as she realized most were here to shirk work duties. A request by Princess Celestia herself made the perfect excuse to skip out on their daily tasks so they could instead “warmly welcome this new being with Ponyville hospitality”, as the royal decree had put it. She quelled the cynical thought and refocused on her own task.

“Alright, girls,” Twilight said, levitating a scroll in a purple field of magic. “We need to make sure his welcome goes off without a hitch. First off, banner?”

“Check!” Pinkie Pie chirped, a pair of townsponies behind her raising a sign that read “Welcome Nyxxy” in a poorly scrawled script. A quill appeared in Twilight’s hoof from seemingly nowhere and flicked across the checkbox on her scroll.

“Welcoming gifts?”

“But of course,” Rarity’s voice sounded sonorously. “Although I do still question your judgment on the fashion tastes of this ‘Nix’,” she added skeptically. “The shirt design you gave me in Canterlot was, honestly, quite dreadful...” Twilight eyed her marshmallow-colored friend flatly. “Although I’m quite sure he’ll be enamored with the ten new shirts I made him, based off your extensive cross-studies of primates and, erm, fire?” the mare offered tentatively, flashing a conciliatory smile towards the purple unicorn. Twilight narrowed her eyes, her quill slowly dragging across the checkbox with dubious lethargy.

“Fireworks?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie will bedazzle him with a show the likes of which he has never-”

“Right! Check!” Twilight interrupted brusquely, smiling sheepishly at the frowning townsfolk who were glaring daggers poisoned by manticore venom at the blue unicorn’s sudden vocal reminder of her own existence. Twilight had found her at the edge of the Everfree Forest, sleep-deprived, ragged, and weeping. Her heart had twisted at the showpony’s wrenching sobs over the fact that, even though she regretted her actions, she had no way of making a living outside of rock farms—after her second embarrassment before Twilight, she had stealthily lingered around the outskirts of Ponyville, raiding dumpsters and even venturing into the dangerous Everfree Forest for food. The violet unicorn was beginning to wonder whether the reassuring hoof she had placed on Trixie’s shoulder at that moment, with a promise that she’d help the mare, was a misstep of cosmic proportions.

As the baritone caterwaul of the train’s horn sounded through the chill morning air again, this time much closer, Twilight was reminded of the task at hand. Her eyebrows furrowed in the effort of her renewed focus.

“Relax, Sparky-warky!” Pinkie warbled cheerily. “Nix is really nice!”

Twilight cocked a dubious eyebrow at her pink friend, who merely smiled more widely at the attention. “That’s not...uh, how I would-”

“Pinkie’s right, Twah,” Applejack twanged as she approached the nervous unicorn, pausing briefly to adjust the brim of her hat. “If anypony’d know how hard it is ta’ make new friends, it’d be you. And yer an expert, now.” She placed a reassuring hoof on Twilight’s shoulder and smiled warmly.

“Yeah, Twi, you got this, no problem!” Rainbow exclaimed, having sloughed off the shackles of sleep-deprivation now that the train was on its final approach.

“If...if you’d like, I can cheer for you?” Fluttershy offered. She had rejoined her friends after abandoning her efforts to quietly stamp her hoof on the ground at the edge of the platform, uncomfortable near the large throng of townsfolk.

“That won’t be necessary, Fluttershy,” Twilight assured sweetly, a warm smile suddenly flashing across her face. “You all have been cheering for me, for us, since I first came here.” She closed her eyes suddenly in thought, a mild break entering the conversation, before inhaling slightly.

”If any search for joy’s behest,” she began singing, opening her eyes and angling them skyward in sudden reverence. ”For those who long for friendship’s quest-”

Nix swung his legs against the side of the train as he sat on the side of the traincar’s roof. He hoped the muffled impact of his shoes against the car’s windows unnerved the passengers inside. He was bored. Bored out of his mind. The initial rush of the cool mountain air buffeting his face at high speed had worn off after he remembered that he could usually move close to the speed of light. Granted, when he did that he had to take certain precautions to ensure that the force of friction between the air and his body didn’t ignite the entire atmosphere of the planet in a genocidal explosion. Still, he wondered why he had enjoyed the start of the journey so much.

It was probably the intermittent thuds of Dancie’s head as he slammed it into the roof. Obviously, he had done it to prevent her untimely death, as he didn’t particularly desire a stint on the moon when he wasn’t sure if he could escape. On the off chance Celestia’s words rang true, being imprisoned on the moon would allow him precious little chance to, ugh, ‘make friends’. He was, understandably, none too keen on a lunar vacation simply because the Sun Goddess had to inconvenience herself with scraping the chunks of Dancie’s skull off the lip of a train tunnel.

It was also for that reason that he had taken to gently holding her in place on some of the sharper curves; she had passed out from exhaustion halfway through the night and could no longer stick to the roof with her magic. He had made doubly sure that his light touch hadn’t stirred the sleeping mare, as she probably would’ve freaked out over the physical contact and introduced his terribly handsome face to many large, hard, painful fucking rocks. He frowned at the lightly snoring mare, curled up next to him like a cat. He consoled himself by again remembering the satisfying smack of her cheek against metal before turning his attention to the approaching town.

As the train rounded one final bend, he elbowed the bright green mare in her ribs. Her head jerked up even as she began to slide across the roof. Nix quickly grabbed her tail before she sailed off the edge behind him, and she let out a pained yelp as the hair drew taut. Nix rolled his eyes and released her as she stood up, one hoof rubbing the back of her neck in embarrassment.

“Sleep well?” he asked flatly.

“I, uh, yes. Thank you,” she replied, missing the sarcasm in his voice. His attempt to be annoyed was interrupted by the sounds of singing coming from the platform as the train rolled to a stop with a final hiss of its brakes. There appeared to be a mob of brightly colored, smiling ponies on the platform with their voices raised in song. Dancie plopped down next to him.

“What the Hell are they doing?” he muttered to her under his breath.

“I...I don’t know,” she replied, matching his subdued tone.

“If your princess exiled me to a broadway musical, I fucking swear to Me that I’m going turn her country into a glass crater.” Ridge Dancer’s shoulders slumped slightly at the threat.

”As friendship’s magic shines through darkest night! We hope Nix finds his warming liiiiiiiiiight!” the mob of ponies finished, all leveling welcoming hooves towards Nix as a brilliant display of fireworks shot into the air over the train station.

He stared mutely at them while they held position, their eyebrows raised expectantly. It was with no small expression of self-control that he avoided finding them a warming ball of explosions and fire. In spite of his violent urges, the human managed to remain still as the ensuing silence wore painfully into the cheery expressions of the ponies below him. After about a minute, a multitude of the gathered ponies began trading nervous glances with one another, their outstretched hooves beginning to tremble in anxiety over his refusal to acknowledge their presence. A few toothy grins started to falter as the gravity of the silence tugged at the corners of their mouths. A single cough echoed through the station from somewhere near the back.

Nix hopped up and turned his back to the ponies. “Come on, Dancie. This place is fucking dumb, we’re going back to Canterlot so I can get my weapons.” The fiery maned unicorn flitted a worried gaze between the clearly confused townsponies and his back as he began to saunter down the roof of the train, away from the platform.

“Nix, wait!” The familiar voice halted his lazy exit and he sighed, raising his face to the sky in exasperation. “I know this is a little hard for you, but I just want you to know that we’re-”

“Sparky!” he exclaimed cheerfully, backflipping off the train and twisting in the air before landing deftly in front of the purple unicorn. “Long time no see! I trust you haven’t killed anypony lately?” He ruffled her mane playfully as her pupils shrunk in shock.

“‘Killin’ anypony?’ Twah, what in the hay is he talkin’ about?” an orange pony in a cowboy hat asked Sparky.

“Well, she introduced herself to me by ruthlessly slaying my good friend and loyal upper torso garment, Rocky,” Nix explained as Twilight’s head began tremoring rapidly back and forth, in refusal of the current situation. A nearby unicorn with a purple mane gasped.

“He ain’t lyin’,” the cowgirl mare breathed out in quiet alarm. Twilight’s eyes debated furiously whether to focus their pinprick pupils on Nix or her friends. The eyes of the gathered ponies were pregnant with shock, spiced liberally with disbelief and a dash of horror.

“I- It’s just that- I didn’t-” Twilight rushed out in a confused jumble, before Nix cut her off by resting a hand on her back.

“Hey, don’t kill yourself over it, okay? It’s not like I stayed dead after you killed me, too. If you hadn’t been there I’d still be dying of boredom in some dungeon, a bunch of annoying ponies butchering me with their nonsensical language, right?” Her dark violet eyes seemed to draw back from some distant precipice as she refocused on the present situation. “Now that I can actually understand everypony, I’m simply slain by the cheerful antics of you all. Better that than to succumb to loneliness. That’d just be murder.” Nix chuckled exaggeratedly as Twilight swung her face towards his and her eyes narrowed.

“That isn’t funny, Nix,” she told him with a reproachful tinge in her voice.

He stroked his chin thoughtfully, his mouth pursed in thought. “Yeah, you’re right, Sparky. I’m gonna have to work on my material before I go on my comedy-slash-destroy everything tour. But my humor can’t be as bad as that banner over there. ‘Welcome Nyxxy’? What is that, my porn name?”

Twilight’s dissatisfaction was suddenly displaced by her scholarly curiosity. “Porn? I don’t recognize that word...” she implied questioningly.

The bottom of Nix’s jaw dropped. “You don’t have porn here?! As in pornography?”

A knowing snicker poured from the light blue lips of a nearby pegasus, her wild, rainbow-streaked mane dancing in tune with her scratchy laughter. “I think he means ‘ponyography’, Twi.”

“Huh. Wonder why that wasn’t part of your lexicon when I absorbed-”

“Like I would know what ponyography is!” Twilight blurted suddenly, her cheeks trading their purple tinge for a deep scarlet.

“Ah. You must have that filed in a different part of your brain, then. Perhaps the area dealing with shame?” Nix mused. “If you’d like, I could check,” he offered, stretching his palm towards her forehead. She flinched away from the contact, zipping with surprising speed between the orange cowgirl pony and the blue pegasus, the latter of whom was still taken by a fit of giggling.

“Hmm, fair enough. But I appear to have forgotten your manners. Fancy Pa—err, Mr. Tuxedo would no doubt gawk at your gaff. I trust introductions are in order?” He smiled curtly. “You go first.”

“But, you already know-” the purple unicorn started.

“Not you, Sparky,” Nix said, taking great pains to emphasize the dull apathy in his voice. “Your friends.”

“I’M PINKIE PIE!”

Nix stared at the pink thing like she had the same memory issues he did—clearly retarded. “Ms. Pinkamena, have I ever told you I hated you?”

“Nope! And even if you did I wouldn’t believe you!” she tweeted. “Oh, hey, look! A bird!” She zipped out of sight around the edge of the platform faster than even Nix’s eyes could follow. His brow adopted a form of unyielding perplexity at her escape. ’How in the Hell did she move that fast?’ he wondered to himself. His ruminations were interrupted by the aghast huff of a white unicorn.

“Well, all manners aside,” the mare with the huffing problem snorted, her nose aimed skyward even as her voice took on a conciliatory tone, “we have been a bit rude in delaying our introductions.” She summoned one hoof to her forehead, surgically displacing a few locks of her perfectly maintained purple mane, and closed her eyes theatrically. “I am Rarity.” She held the position for a few seconds, basking in the tepid light of Nix’s annoyed glare.

“Really?” the human uttered dryly.

“What?” Rarity responded innocently, removing her hoof and meeting the human’s eyes.

“Canary yellow and lace?” The intonation of his voice had done its best impression of sulfuric acid. But he did cheer inwardly at his successful recall of Twilight’s letter and this unicorn’s terrible creation.

Rarity laughed nervously even as the light blue glow of her magic enveloped the ten parcels behind her and forced them unceremoniously into the nearest trash bin. “Yes, well-” she stuttered, “I didn’t really have a lot to work with, what with you being my first bipedal customer and...Twilight’s recommendations. What did you do with that shirt?” She had noted the absence of her and Twilight’s fashion abomination the second she saw him oddly perched atop the train.

“Burned it,” the human responded listlessly. She let out a sigh of relief before a logical thought burgeoned rudely through her consciousness.

“That...that shirt was supposed to be fire resistant,” she forced out. The human merely grinned in response.

Twilight regarded this exchange with growing worry. The nagging thought that itched at the back of her mind was less concerned with the dissonance between the human and her friend than it was with the deviation of her scheduled introductions. She was summoned from her compulsive neurosis by a single yellow hoof placed gently on her shoulder. She turned towards the owner of the limb, and was greeted by benign teal eyes.

“Yay?” the yellow pegasus whispered with a slight smile. She nodded once slowly to her unicorn friend before turning towards Nix. She planted her hooves firmly on the ground as she steeled herself for social interaction with a complete stranger.

“Hi, I’m...Fluttershy,” she breathed out mildy.

“What?” Nix asked, cupping a hand behind his ear in the universal geriatric sign of annoyed deafness.

“Oh, um, Fluttershy. It’s my name. If that’s okay?” she offered meekly.

“I can’t hear a damn word you’re saying,” he clarified. “Up until they were eaten by a pack of Mauthe Doogs a coupla centuries ago, I always went into battle with heavy metal blaring over a pair of enchanted headphones. It’s really done a number on my hearing.” He left out the part where the headphones were just the appetizer before the main course of his head. He’d save that bit for later, if he remembered.

“Oh, dear!” Fluttershy exclaimed with the force of a ladybug’s legs impacting a leaf at no velocity. “I’m so sorry about your hearing!”

“Huh?”

“Her name is ‘Fluttershy’,” Twilight interjected, leveling a skeptical glare his way, “and don’t you have regenerative capabilities? What’s wrong with your hearing?”

“Psh, no one likes a cynic, Sparky. And her name is ‘Bob’ from now on.” Nix redirected his attention to the pink-maned pegasus. “Got that, Bob?”

“I, oh, yes, I guess Bob is okay.” She smiled innocently at him.

“So yer hearing’s bad, is it?” the orange earth pony with the Stetson interjected.

“Oh, I dunno,” Nix replied ambiguously. “It has it’s good days and its bad.”

“Yeah, Ah bet,” she replied, a puddle of doubt forming at her hooves as it dripped off her voice. “Ah’m Applejack, bah the way.”

“Darn tootin’, Hillbilly,” Nix responded sarcastically.

“Whoo-ee, Ah’ll say!” she responded, suddenly lurching forward and grasping his hand with her hoof and shaking it vigorously. His eyes goggled as he felt the base of her hoof attach to his palm before jerking it up and down.

Managing to control his gaping mouth for a few seconds, Nix was able to force between his lips an awed, “How did you do that?!”

“Aww, shucks, that’s just a bit o’ the ol’ Apple family hospitality, sugarcube!” she replied, stifling her natural aptitude for veracity and feigning ignorance at his confusion. He jerked his hand away.

“Right, Sparky, this is getting old. For the love of Celes- Gaw- Gawhd-.” Nix scowled. “Just...tell me you don’t have anymo-”

“NOT SO FAST!” a boyish voice cracked from overhead. Nix looked up, trying to trace the source of the noise that had just annoyed his perfectly functional ears. His eyes naturally targeted the rainbow trail that severed the middling blue of the early morning sky. Following the prominent urging of its polychromatic pathway, his eyes focused on the cyan blue pegasus at its head. He watched with reluctant awe at her amazing display of dexterity and speed as the blue pegasus from earlier twirled and flipped in the sky overhead in a hair-raising choreography of aerial technique, her impassioned flight arrogantly trampling upon the common sense of g-forces and wind resistance. After a particularly beautiful maneuver that sent her twirling towards the earth at mind-numbing speeds, a blinding rainbow continuing to splay behind her as she blazed a furious trail through the early morning light, she landed suddenly on the train platform with a flair of her wings. A small shockwave shuddered through the air with her landing and several old wooden boards cracked beneath her hooves. She smiled smugly at Nix, her magenta eyes ablaze with unspoken challenge. “I’m Rainbow Dash, fastest flier in all Equestria!” Her grin deepened even as the glint behind her eyes hardened.

Nix stared at her blankly for a second, before turning to Twilight. “You know,” he intoned matter-of-factly, motioning to the planks of the train platform, “you should get these examined. It’d be tragic if a pony fell through a few because some of them were cracked or old. Or because some of your flying ponies couldn’t make a landing to save their own life.” The speed with which Rainbow Dash’s grin was replaced with a dismayed jaw-drop was a damning disservice to her normal physical alacrity—the expression’s manifestation was much faster than her normal speed.

“Hey! You can’t just show up here and-”

“Right,” the human continued, interrupting the clearly flustered pegasus with a wave of his hand. “So, Bob, Snob, and Hillbilly,” he said, pointing to Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack to punctuate each of their newly assigned misnomers. “Now that I’ve got names to match the faces of ponies that are sort of important-”

“Hey!” Rainbow shouted.

“-AND I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE! Few can comprehend the arcane magics behind my amazing abilities.” The dark blue unicorn’s interruption struck with all the aplomb of a homeless pony begging for spare bits so they wouldn’t starve, to the apathetic dismissal of passing working ponies. Nix leveled his upturned fist at Trixie and began snapping his fingers. Her cape and hat made several shifts through cloth varieties with each salvo of the human’s animated fingers, finally settling on a nice plain burlap. The show unicorn gawked in horror at the plainness of her new garb. Nix just frowned at his outstretched finger-snapper.

“Damn, I was trying to set you on fire. Welp, guess I’ll just have to use the old fashioned way,” he said in defeat. His outstretched forearm was immediately consumed in flame, and a small ball of blue flame began whirring loudly in the palm of his summoned fiery talon. As he grinned mirthlessly and leveled his phoenix talon towards Trixie, the spinning ball of fire in its palm whining hungrily for its target as it picked up rotational speed, his concentration was interrupted by a light brown pony with a grey mane. She had stepped between the two of them and adjusted her small glasses subtly before shooting a hard glare towards the human.

“I’m Mayor Mare, steward of this town. I will brook no harm upon the ponies within its boundaries, regardless of their past actions.”

“Is that so?” Nix lilted insultingly. He suddenly drew the fiery claw to his chin to scratch it ponderously, hovering the whining ball of blue flame over his head as he smiled and examined the light brown mare. Mayor Mare lowered her head as she took on a defensive stance and stamped her hoof challengingly. Nix’s smug smile deepened, before he suddenly uttered, “Oh, dear, where are my manners?”

The ball of flame above his head exploded with a loud boom, causing the ponies on the platform to cringe and shield themselves from the rush of heated air. As they recovered, they noticed that where Nix had stood was instead a burning white tornado of fire, which emanated a loud roaring as it increased in speed with every passing second. Its waves of oppressive heat forced the closest ponies back even as it throbbed with increasing intensity, every new wave of its destructive throes blackening and cracking the wood at its base with its destructive force. As the roar reached a crescendo, the tornado suddenly hitched and exploded outward in a harsh rush of searing heat, knocking several hundred ponies off their hooves and making the train shudder violently on the tracks.

Twilight picked herself up off the ground slowly, her face twisted in desperation and horror; how could she report to the princess that the Mayor was crumpled in a pile near a platform bench, dumbly searching for her dislodged glasses? Or that Nix was...hovering in the center of the platform, his arms crossed imperiously as his brightly flaming eyes cast a disapproving glare across the mob of ponies around her?

“I have many titles,” his voice boomed suddenly as he floated slightly forward, his mouth glowing with the seething intensity of an erupting volcano. The crowd of gathered ponies cowered at his slow advance. “Substitute Aesir of the All-Father, Odin. Slayer of the Head of Heaven’s Armory, and Swordmaster, Gilgamesh.” His eyes began to grow brighter with every word even as licks of flames appeared on his shoulders, and the wind picked up in a swirl a yard beneath his levitating feet. “Inheritor of the Kingsword, and Wielder of the Blade of 10,000 Cold Nights! Devastator of Hell, and Liberator of the Goddess Lucifer!” He was shouting, now, his commanding voice reverberating with minor shockwaves that shot up tufts of dust between the planks of the station’s platform. Dark thunderheads had begun gathering overhead and shot out threatening fingers of lightning with every one of his words. The whirlwind of heat at the base of his floating feet had burst into flame and begun to spin wildly even as tendrils of fire exploded from his shoulders and took on the form of wings, each of its feathers a blazing inferno unto itself. “I am the Traverser of Universes, the Arbiter of Aeons! I am the Destroyer of Worlds! I am the Slayer of Gods!”

The tempest of flame and wind seemed to calm for a second as the glowing fire in his eyes and open mouth dimmed. “I. Am. Phoenix!” At this, his mouth and eyes flared brightly and a violent torrent of heat and force exploded from behind him as the whirlwind at his feet twisted skyward, banishing the storm clouds over head as it impacted the heavens. He brandished his flaming wings, thrusting them out to their full length and cowing all the gathered ponies. He hovered audaciously before the mob, crossing his arms and regarding them as a God does the insolent ants of his own creation even as they tremored violently in terror at the force of his dissatisfaction. As he swept the glowing orbs of blue flame that had replaced his eyes over the crowd, he made a point to pause for a second as he met the mayor’s eyes, and grinned widely. His arrogant glare had missed Twilight Sparkle in the crowd, whose eyes merely regarded the human with pity.

As abruptly as they appeared, the pyre surrounding Nix and the painful pressure of his manifested magical energy disappeared with a muffled whump!, and he plopped to the ground, grinning wildly at the terrified ponies before him. He half-heartedly searched for a cigarette in his trenchcoat’s breast pocket, and after errantly producing one of the white cylinders, he bowed his head to meet the butt and summoned a tiny ball of flame to light its tip. His head unmoving, he glanced lazily at the terrified mob of ponies through the corner of his eyes as the flame caught purchase on his smoke, and he took a deep drag before raising himself up and exhaling a cloud of carcinogens into the air.

“Most just call me ‘Nix’, though,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk, the last tendrils of smoke laconically seeping through his split grin. He was interrupted from his boorish satisfaction by a subdued whimpering from behind him. He promised inwardly that he would not get angry and set the interruption on fire and get banished to the moon for all eternity before turning around. The fearful mewling appeared to be coming from a terribly familiar orange filly with a blonde mane. All cruelty in Nix’s grin suddenly evaporated.

“Princess Petal! At your request, I’ve made haste to the seat of your kingdom! I calmly await your-” His words slammed abruptly into an anxious embankment as he noticed the filly cowering at his every word.

“Whoa, hey, Princess Petal.” Nix suddenly knelt, doing his very best to appear unthreatening. He hadn’t expected her to catch wind of his theatrics. “Sometimes knights have to-”

Wind Petal’s eyes twisted in terror at the human before cowering behind the hind legs of what he could only assume was her mother. The dark yellow mare’s violet eyes stared at him with a curious mixture of anger and fear before she set herself defensively before the human and her filly.

“Aww, come on, Wind Petal, I was only-”

With every word that escaped his mouth, a fearful whine escaped the young filly’s mouth, and she redoubled her terrified efforts to hide behind her mother. Nix stood suddenly and turned away from the young pony, thrusting his hands into the front pockets of his dark grey duster with a scowl. Twilight moved to intercept the human, her eyes bearing a confused maelstrom of fear, disappointment, and, oddly, sympathy.

“Nix, you-” she started.

“Come on, Sparky,” the human interrupted in a subdued, deadened tone that was so low she and her friends could barely make it out. He kept staring straight ahead as he trudged past her. “Show me your stupid fucking town.” Twilight and her friends followed as he disappeared around the corner of the train station.

The mass of townsponies stared blankly at the rude creature’s exit, not a one paying attention to the train behind them. A pair of light green fore-hooves suddenly appeared over the edge of the train’s roof.

“Umm, c-can somepony get me down?” Ridge Dancer asked meekly. “Please?” The townsponies seemed too distracted by the weird alien’s outburst, and subsequent exit, to bother hearing the mare’s pleas.

Her heart leapt in her chest as the train’s whistle rang out and the train started moving.

Author's Notes:

Oh, God, I’m gonna have to do the obligatory “Pinkie Pie Introductory Party” next chapter, aren’t I? I think I’m gonna just take the cheap way out and get every character drunk. Maybe. (I don’t have Nix’s antics in Ponyville nearly as well-planned as some of his other scenes...so chapter updates might be a bit slow as I churn through them.)

J/K I know exactly what I’m doing. (As I utter an anxious whimper only nervous writers are allowed to utter, as per union rules. We’re also the only ones allowed to use parentheses, so if you catch someone using them who isn’t part of the union...well, they don’t really need kneecaps if they’re sitting in computer chairs abusing parentheses, do they? And so, on the 8th day, God created Louisville sluggers for the blasphemous kneecaps of dissenters, shortly before Nix killed the everloving shit out of Him.) I’m just kind of wondering how I just wrote 5k words and Nix is still at the train station...succinctness is not my strong suit.

I’m always receptive to constructive criticism, so don’t worry about angering me if you find a flaw or something that can be done better. Honestly, as much fun as I have writing this story, ultimately I’m writing it for everyone’s enjoyment, not just my own. A story that’s only enjoyed by the one who writes it is...depressing, to say the least, and I say this as an introverted cynic who will probably end up alone in a cabin in Montana somewhere before the end of my life. If you’ve got an idea, let me know what I can do to make the story more fun for you guys and gals.