Sunset Shimmer caught the high winds, soaring skyward as she flew over the Foal Mountains. She tossed her mane in the icy air, euphoric. Flying, actually flying! With wings! Her own wings, not some magical constructs either. She didn't think she'd ever get over the thrill.

It had been a busy time since her reconciliation, and her ascension. There had been more than a few fences to mend, and the ones with Celestia were only the first. Her first order of business had been to return to the Human world on the other side of the magic mirror, and try to undo the harm she'd caused. That had been... awkward. In the other world she'd been a high school student--- one with a grown mare's cunning and experience, and a ruthless streak a mile wide. She had tied the student body in knots, exercising a campaign of divide and conquer: wrapping several popular boys around her finger before discarding them, ingratiating herself to the school authority figures, setting her most likely female rivals--- the counterparts of the Element Bearers no less; what were the odds?--- at one another's throats with bits of gossip and carefully targeted emails, making the social rejects and outcasts like Snips and Snails and Button Mash into her personal flunkies... She'd had a lot to make amends for.

It had taken several days of apologies and painful confrontations, and at least one catfight... but in the end after all the tears, it had been worth it. She had returned to Equestria with her load greatly lightened.

She shook her head as she reflected on it. What in Equestria had she been thinking? That she was going to conquer the world by becoming prom queen? Sure, she would have had the Element of Magic. She'd learned of the existence of the Elements long before leaving Equestria, and she'd used advanced arithmancy to figure out that the Elements-- even the Element of Magic--- could be used independently. (and hadn't that been some clever magic work.... ) and , while trapped in the Human world, sensed its presence through the Mirror...  She'd known that with its power she'd have increased her magic tenfold or more, and become obsessed with obtaining it.

She snorted. Celestia was right; she was an idiot when it came to planning out the next step. As if Celestia (or Luna, she reminded herself) would have just rolled over for a tiara-wearing alicorn wannabee and an army of high schoolers. There were more soldiers guarding the royal wine cellars than Sunset Shimmer would have had in her entire teenybopper army. Shoot, Celestia and Luna barely ranked a distant third in raw power in Equestria, maybe even lower if you took into account some of the entities imprisoned in Tartarus. At the very least it would have been Sunset Shimmer versus the other five Element Bearers-- and after what happened to Luna nee Nightmare Moon, it wasn't hard to guess which way that would have gone.

And as for conquest in the human world...? Sunset Shimmer shuddered. She hadn't slept through all of her classes in that dismal human high school. She'd learned enough human history to know just how bad an idea attempted conquest was. She would have stood a snowball's chance in hell of taking over that world, even with the Element's power. Humans were helpless-looking things with no magic, with no fangs or talons, no scales or fiery breath, no monstrous strength, no hooves, horns, or wings, nothing but soft helpless monkey things. Soft helpless monkey things  who leveled their own cities with a push of a button when they got angry enough. She was sure they would have had a colorful and historically memorable name for the crater left behind, had she tried to march up and claim a throne anywhere in their world.

Maybe it was the hormones. Being trapped in a pseudo-adolescent body had probably made her "go native" for a while, start actually thinking like a short-sighted little dimwitted teenage girl. She'd probably been within a few months of spending all her free time at the mall and making duckfaces at her iPhone. She shuddered again.

It was at that moment that the alicorn-seeking spell lying dormant at the base of her horn blared like a klaxon. "WAUGH!" she yelped, her eyes crossing as she tumbled through the air. It took her several seconds to reorient herself; the moment she did she landed on a cloud and whipped out her compact. "Celestia!" she said into the tiny magic mirror. "Celestia, Luna-- oh shoot, what's the thingy for--- oh right, Conference Call!"

A moment later the tiny mirror was crowded with ghostly, overlapping faces, and a tumult of voices rose from the glass. "Everypony, everypony," Sunset said. The queries died down. "This is Sunset Shimmer. I just got a hit!"

Another tumult started-- surprise, elation and more. This time it was Celestia who managed to be heard over the clamor. "Wonderful!" The sun princess said. "Where were you when it happened?"

"Over the Foal Mountains," Sunset said. She turned her head as she talked, trying to sense if the 'tone' of the spell waxed or waned. "Did any of you sense anything? I was hoping if you did I could triangulate with you..."

Everypony on the conference call shook their heads. "I'm afraid not, Sunset," Twilight said. "The spell is too short range for that."

"Right, right," Sunset said, annoyed. She'd forgotten that little drawback of the alicorn detection spell. The spell was, depending on the user, only good for a few hundred feet to a few miles. The only reason Celestia had been able to detect the ascension of the Bearers all the way to Canterlot was because it was six alicorns ascending simultaneously, with a massive magical boost from the Elements to boot.

"Was it an ascension?" Twilight asked, curious.

"I dunno, it was certainly loud and sudden enough," Sunset said, rubbing her head. "You really need to tone down the resonances in the matrix on this spell, Twilight; It felt like someone used my horn for an air horn nozzle." Twilight winced and giggled awkwardly. "Wait..." Sunny blinked. The tone was gone. "It's gone!"

"What?"

"It... it just shut off! Like someone turning off a light switch!" Sunset turned around on her cloud, baffled.

"That's... baffling," Twilight said.

"Do you think they saw you coming and decided to hide?" Pinkie Pie said.

"Tis a possibility," Luna said. "Little Princess Necturus wast hidden from us as well, after all, and by naught but instinct. A more puissant and skilled alicorn might hide more effectively.... save for a brief gaffe or slip..."

"I'm going to investigate," Sunset said decisively. She shut the compact with a snap and dove off the cloud, sweeping down low over the treetops in a widening spiral, horn gleaming....

...nothing. She swept an area nearly a mile in diameter, and didn't pick up so much as a peep. Vexed, she dove below the canopy; under the trees she found a wagon trail. She followed it to where it split off into three different directions. No sign of anypony, not even wagon tracks. Sunset stamped in frustration. She'd been told that an alicorn's magic would instinctively hide their trail if they didn't wish to be found, but it was another thing to witness it. This trail looked like it hadn't been passed in months.

She back-tracked, and found, at long last, signs of ponies; there was a small campsite by the road, abandoned (she estimated) about the time she'd been knocked for a loop by the alicorn detection spell, at this point over an hour ago. Whoever had been here had apparently tried to wipe away any traces of the camp before beating a hasty retreat. She nosed around, hoping to find some indication of which direction they went... the only thing she uncovered were the remains of a runic circle scratched out in the dirt. The physical scratches had been hastily scuffed over but with her alicorn eyes she could still see the quintessence lines glimmering faintly in the dirt. She pulled out her compact again. "I think I found something," she said.  "Somepony was trying a rather complex spell..."

"What sort?" Twilight asked.

"Something complicated enough to need a binding circle," Sunset said. "It's hard to tell, but it looks like..." she squinted at the rapidly fading remains of the runes. "Like a transmogrification reversal?" Reversal spells--- or "Un-dos" as most unicorns called them-- were part of the standard curriculum for unicorns. They were actually fairly simple and most unicorns knew two or three one-size-fits-all variants. It was very unusual to see one this involved and complex. Rarer still to find one, to judge by the burnt look of the end-loop runes, that had failed...

"Any sign of which way they went?" Twilight interrupted Sunset's thoughts. "It sounds like they might have botched a spell and need help undoing it."

"We can send help--" Celestia said.

"No no, that's no good," Sunset said. "They'll see guardsmen hunting for them and they'll panic, disappear for good." She chewed her lip. "Darn it. It's getting late-- I'm coming back to the castle, I'll re-start the search in the morning when I think up a plan."

It was two days later, but it was a really good plan. At least Sunset thought so. Alicorn magic or no, tracking an alicorn that didn't want to be found required something better than powerful spells; it required some really lateral thinking. The alicorn self-hiding aura was... rather capricious. Each alicorn's hiding aura was unique; it could operate in rather peculiar ways, and fail in myriad ways, too. It almost seemed to be a sort of karmic backlash. In Celestia and Luna's case, their aura had kept them hidden and safe during Discord's reign, and had worked perfectly, right up to the point they had confronted him... then it had blown out spectacularly. For centuries afterward it had been effectively impossible to hide from their little ponies, almost as if the spell was compensating for centuries of concealing them from the world. It had taken ages for them to devise workarounds, such as the notice-me-not spell, that would give them a moment's privacy again.

In other cases, the aura could... pop up in odd quirks. Twilight Sparkle had been initially very uncomfortable with the attention she got from other ponies as a Princess. Not enough to drive her into Reclusion (her own term for the Alicorn-in-Hiding scenario), but enough that the common pony would often spontaneously fail to notice that they were dealing with an alicorn princess-- generally at inconvenient or embarrassing times. It's not normal for an alicorn princess to hail a cab only to be flipped the bird and driven past, after all. After the third pony pushed ahead of her in line at the grocery story, she got over it and started wearing her royal finery in public deliberately.

Sunset's reasoning was this: Whoever this alicorn was, they were pushing their find-me-not field as hard as they could. Unconsciously, most likely, but still. The aura would erase footprints, hide trails, blur memories, misdirect attention. There was bound to be a backlash effect. Or, more likely, the effect would come full circle: they were pushing it so far in one direction that it was bound to come all the way around from the other side, to the point that they left behind a sort of hole where they should have been, becoming noticeable by their very absence.

So, Sunset reasoned, the answer was simple. She returned to the abandoned campsite two days later: enough time to let the elusive alicorn believe they were no longer pursued. Then she carefully covered her wings with a pair of oversized panniers, and set out down the road on hoof... and every time the road forked, she took the road that looked less traveled by. She knew she was on the right trail when she passed through a little whistle stop (three houses, a dry goods store and a rain barrel) and not only could the old coot in a rocker on the dry goods front porch not remember anypony passing by, but the main route out of town had no wheel ruts. At all.

It was five miles after that when Sunset Shimmer finally caught up to her quarry. In fact, she nearly passed them right by. It was only a hundred feet down the road that she realized the totally unobtrusive, surely long abandoned gypsy caravan wagon by the roadside had a campfire smoldering beside it. She backtracked, deliberately not taking her eyes off the wagon as she cast every illusion dispelling charm she knew. Sakes, but the alicorn aura was just the first part; there were half a dozen illusions, misdirections and no-see-ums layered on top.

She was barely ten yards away before she even "noticed" the colt sitting by the campfire, tending the stew pot. The illusion was impressive; one moment he wasn't there, then he seemed to fade in out of the forest background, like an image in one of those paintings that changed depending on where you stood. If Sunset Shimmer had been surprised, the poor colt looked absolutely panicked. He'd frozen, stew ladle in hoof, his eyes fixed on hers as she approached. He was a lanky thing, just barely older than the Cutie Mark Crusaders by Sunset's estimation, with a reddish brown coat and a tousled purple mane that poked out from under the hood of his traveling cloak. He stared at her with wide golden eyes. "Hello," Sunset said cautiously. "I am Sunset Shimmer. I'm... looking for somepony...?"

The colt let out a squeak and bolted for the wagon, ladle spinning to the ground behind him. He threw the door open and dove inside. "Trixie!" He yelled. "They found us!"

"What??" a feminine voice inside shrilled. The door slammed shut, and Sunset Shimmer heard the sound of bolts being drawn. Well, that wasn't good. She sighed and facehoofed. The Princesses (and Prince) really needed to sit down and work out some sort of protocol for approaching hiding, paranoid alicorns. In fact Prince Shining Armor was probably a good pony to talk to; he was military, wasn't he? He probably had a few ideas.

She crept closer, ears pricked. As she circled the wagon the multi-layered illusion fell away. It was rather clever, she had to admit: simple camouflage, underneath two or three types of optical illusion--she blinked, dispelling the odd blind spots that were floating over her eyes-- and add to that a spell that induced entoptic effects for good measure. Mix in a notice-me-not spell to direct her attention elsewhere, and throw the blanket alicorn aura over top of it...  sakes alive this alicorn was paranoid.

Of course, the drawback to using such stealth and illusion spells is that, once you recognized them for what they were, they almost instantly stopped working on you. And the more effects you added on, the faster it fell apart. Once Sunset had squinted her way past the camouflage illusion, the rest of it had come apart like a house of cards. Of course it helped that Sunset knew she was looking for something, and she was very persistent....

If there had been any doubt she was on the right track, it faded the moment she stepped to the front door. The alicorn detection spell was going off again, a choral drone that throbbed in time with her pulse.

She got to the door of the gaily colored wagon as the last of the illusions around it unraveled. There was a bit of ruckus going on inside, a lot of things banging around and frantic whispers. Sunset cocked an ear and leaned in, listening.

"I thought you said nopony would look twice at us!"

"Nopony should even look twice at us! Trixie used her finest illusions! It was a masterpiece of thaumaturgical stealth!"

"Well she's looking, and a lot more than twice! She's right outside! She said she's looking for somepony, too."

"What did she look like?"

"Unicorn, yellow with red hair. High class looks. Canterlot accent."

"Looked a bit out of place did she?"

"Like a peacock in a penguin farm."

Hmph, Sunset thought, miffed. I thought I'd gotten more in touch with the common pony. I guess you can take the filly out of Canterlot...

The female said a few uncouth words. "That wretched Brass must have gone to the Capital and tipped off more of his rotten 'friends.' If she's not from the government I'll eat my hat!"

"What do we do?" The colt sounded more and more upset. "I-- I don't wanna go back--"

Curiouser and curiouser, Sunset thought. She decided to take the minotaur by the horns and rapped firmly on the door. "Hello in there?" she said. "I mean no harm. Please, may I speak to you?"

There was a brief clatter, followed by the sound of a bolt sliding back. "Er, come in dearie, the door's open," the mare said-- in a high, reedy, elderly voice.

Sunset pushed the door open and stepped inside. The interior was quite nice; well furnished, if rather cozy. Two bunks, a couple of stools, a small stove for heat, a pair of steamer trunks for private possessions. Every spare inch of the caravan was accounted for; packed with home comforts and bric-a-brac of all variety. A lot of it, Sunset noted, seemed to be the sort of things one used for stagecraft or street performance.

The colt was in the back of the caravan, mucking about with a few stack of books and trying desperately to not look scared out of his wits. In the middle of the room, fuddling about with something on the floor, was a mare in an enormous baggy dress and a voluminous shawl that nearly buried her from sight. She was stooped down, wiping away at some stray chalk marks... "Hello, dearie," she croaked, her voice coming out of the depths of her shawl. "How can an old granny and her son help out a fellow traveler?"

Sunset Shimmer rolled her eyes. The performance was passable, but this close she could clearly see the mare's muscle tone under her cloak was too good and her chalk hoof too steady and smooth.  "You know, if you're trying to hide who you are, it's not particularly clever to leave magic inscriptions anywhere somepony can see them."

The mare froze. "I don't know what you're talking about, dearie," she said, frantically scrubbing. "This is just a-- a good luck charm, for travelers---"

"I can see the runes from here, Trixie," Sunset said, amused.

Trixie stopped writing and dropped the chalk. "Fine," she said, her voice clear, and stood up. She shucked off the shawl and the bag dress, revealing a blue unicorn mare with a pale mane wearing a star spangled cape. "So one of Sheriff Brass' buffoons tracked us down," she snapped, whipping a star spangled hat off a nearby peg and jamming it down on her head. "Well you can tell Brass that the Great and Powerful Trixie doesn't give up without a fight!" She whipped something out of her cape and flung it to the floorboards at Sunset's feet.

Clouds of smoke filled the tiny wagon, blinding Sunset. "Run, Jasper!" she heard Trixie yell. There was a sound of scurrying hooves, followed by a loud double thump and groans of pain. Sunset waved her horn, sending the purple smoke swirling up the stove chimney and revealing Trixie and Jasper piled up against the back of the wagon, moaning.

"By the way, I blocked the back door from the outside," Sunset said. "So could we please stop with this now and--"

"Never!" Trixie got up and stood on wobbly hooves, horn flaring. "Let us go or face my magical wrath!" The fact that she was trying to uncross her eyes from whacking headlong into her back door made the threat a great deal less intimidating.

Sunset decided she'd had enough. "Oh really?" she said, annoyed. She shrugged off her panniers and flared her wings.  For an added flourish she pulled her tiara (custom made by the royal jeweler) and plunked it on her head. "If you think you got a shot, feel free to take it."

Trixie and Jasper gaped at her wings, then her horn, then her tiara in horror. "She's a princess," Jasper squeaked. "Oh we are so boned."

They held that tableau for a heartbeat. "Very well," Trixie said, grimly. "You leave me no choice." With that she flung herself at Sunset Shimmer's hooves, wrapping her forelegs around Sunset's ankle and began howling like a distraught diamond dog. "Oh please have mercy your great and anonymous highness we swear to you it was unintentional Trixie pleads for mercy or at least for you to not send the colt to the moon he's only a child and---"

"AUGH! WHAT WHAT what WHAT???" Sunset tried to yank her hoof away, to no avail. Trixie clung like a limpet, blubbering for mercy. Jasper had fallen to the floor as well, kowtowing in terror. "What are you talking about? Get to your hooves, you two!" Slowly, reluctantly, the two got up in a cringing crouch. "What the heck is this all about?"

Jasper huddled next to Trixie. "We know you're all hunting for us because of Sheriff Brass," he said. His lower lip trembled and his golden eyes turned wet. "And after what happened last month he's got us dead to rights... we never meant to commit treason, we swear--"

"Treason??" Sunset shimmer gawped. The more they talked, the more baffled she got.

"For... for impersonating royalty," Jasper said.

At Sunset's increasingly baffled expression, Jasper got to his feet. Trixie followed. Silently they shucked their cloaks.

And slowly spread their wings.

Sunset, of course, had promptly scanned them both. Status confirmed. Congratulations, everypony, it's alicorns. One mare, one colt. After a lot of talking, and a LOT of repeated promises that no, she wasn't there to arrest them or send them to the moon or turn them into statues (where DID these horrific rumors get started? Discord and Nightmare Moon were god-tier menaces; why would Celestia ever resort to such things otherwise? Ponies really didn't know Celestia like they thought they did), she got them to start talking.

It was one hell of a story.

Some short while after a rather embarrassing run in with Twilight Sparkle involving a magic duel and a cursed artifact known as the Alicorn Amulet, The Great and Powerful Trixie, showmare extraordinaire, had gone back on the road-- as far as she could get from Ponyville. In the course of touring the hinterlands she had apparently run afoul of an earth pony village named Promise, which was basically run by the Filii Terram, a group of earth pony supremacists and pure-blood bigots. It seems an orphan had gone missing in their town, and nopony gave a rat's behind... but another foal belonging to a pegasus mailmare passing through had gone missing as well and Sheriff Brass had to put in a pretense of looking. So he'd basically blackmailed Trixie into doing his dirty work for him. After considerable risk and danger, Trixie and the traveling mailmare had found the missing foals in a dangerous wood known as Dusky Dale and rescued them... at which point Trixie had found out that both the missing foals were unicorns.

"Those miserable turf-herders were willing to let two foals die in a forest full of timberwolves for the "sin" of being crossbreeds," Trixie snorted. She ladled some of the potato soup from the kettle and passed it to Jasper. "Care for some?" Sunset nodded, and received a bowl. "Naturally, Trixie returned to town, and made a point of letting the entire sorry town know precisely what had happened, and precisely she thought of them-- and that she was taking Jasper with her, whether they liked it or not." She smiled briefly at the colt. "We have been... family... ever since."

Jasper smiled. He turned out to be a handsome colt under that baggy cloak, with a cutie mark of a purple and red gemstone crossed with a bolt of flame. "Best day of my life," he said softly. His smile turned into a frown. "Too bad Brass-ass didn't like it that way---"

"Jasper! Language." Trixie smirked. "He's SHERIFF Brass-ass, young colt, remember that." Jasper snickered. "Alas, tis true," Trixie continued. "The snivelling bully finally decided his bloated ego was stronger than his cowardice, and set out to pursue us. Probably afraid somepony important will find out what an incompetent boob he is."

"Cowardice?" Sunset asked, sipping her soup.

Trixie looked embarrassed. "In her righteous anger Trixie may have... implied... that she had the power to erase Promise from the map for their wickedness, if she so wished. Ahem." She shuffled. "Trixie hoped to keep them from trying to cause trouble for us. It seems to have backfired rather dramatically."

Sunset shook her head. "Coulda seen that coming," she said.

"Sheriff Brass has been hounding us ever since," Jasper said. His expression could have curdled the soup in his bowl. "He's got himself a whole network of good ol' stallions, other Sheriffs, members of the Filii Terram... he's been sending out letters ahead of us telling the law in every two bit town that we're fugitives, or thieves, or bunko artists or worse. Claiming Trixie's a kidnapper-- telling them to arrest us and hold us till he can come drag us back to Promise."

"I don't know what the dullard expects to do once he has us," Trixie said. "He's a two-bit sheriff from a one-bit town run by him, the mayor and the deputy, and one testicle between the three of them." Sunset nearly snorted her soup out her nose. "But I don't intend to find out. With our luck he has a good ol' stallion friend who can get us dumped in an oubliette someplace and nopony the wiser."

"Thus far we've stayed a couple of hoofsteps ahead of him," Trixie said. "We spent most of last year outside of Equestria, touring the gryphon and minotaur lands. And I thought pony hecklers were tough." Jasper giggled. "I'd hoped the heat would be off by now, but--" she shrugged. "Brass is stubborn.

"Then last week--" Her wings rustled under her spangled cape. She looked back at them with tooth-grinding anger. "Then last week I really screwed things up for both of us." She waved a wing. "With this!"

"I don't understand?" Sunset said.

Trixie sighed. "Ever since Trixie's little... um... incident with the Alicorn Amulet, she's noticed her magic being a bit sub-par," she said. " Hiccuping a bit. So she's been studying, trying to, well, spruce up around the edges a bit." She sniffed loftily. "About a week ago, in a town just outside Hollow Shades, She got... overconfident and decided to spruce up our usual performance with some minor transmogrification. The spell was supposed to give Jasper and Trixie butterfly wings, but..." she cringed. "It... I don't know. I had a spell surge-- the first I've had since I was four years old!-- and the spell ran away with me..."

"I tried to use the spell-stopper Trixie taught me," Jasper threw in. "But the spell just started arcing back and forth between our horns. We're hanging in the air, light spiraling around us, sparks and explosions everywhere..." he grinned. "It was kind of cool, actually. Too bad we couldn't do a light show like that on our regular performance..."

"And when the spell completed with an almighty BANG, and the stars finally cleared from Trixie's eyes---" Trixie threw out her  forehooves dramatically. "There we were. With these." She raised her wings from under her cape and fluttered them. She sighed wistfully. "Jasper's right, it did get a good bit of applause... then," she grimaced, "who should come striding up through the cheering crowd but Sheriff Brass, his dipstick deputy in tow, bellowing about how he had caught us in a further act of criminal malfeasance, and he was going to arrest us for defaming and impersonating royalty." Trixie looked horrified at the very thought. She held her hoof to her head. "If Jasper hadn't been as quick-thinking as he was, we would have been in hoofcuffs on the spot."

Jasper ducked his head and blushed, grinning. "I, uh, set off our fireworks display. All of 'em at once."

"Remember the first rule of performance, Jasper," Trixie chided," Never undersell yourself. His special talent is fire magic," Trixie tipped her hoof at Jasper's cutie mark. "His magic boosted the firework display tenfold with a wave of his horn. In the ensuing confusion, we made our escape with a hasty come-to-life spell on our wagon. It was twenty miles before we could get the dratted thing to stop.

"But Brass cut us off again. He's hit the grapevine again, telling everypony about a pair of 'criminal con ponies' who are roaming the countryside, swindling people by 'impersonating royalty' and who are clearly up to no good.... he's got every lawpony from here to Promise hunting for us...." she fanned her wings again, distressed. "We've been on the lam ever since. I've had to keep us behind so many hiding spells that one morning I spent all day trying to find my own hooves!

"And I can't dispel this stupid transmogrification!" She clutched her hat to her chest and began chewing on the brim. "I've tried every detransmogrification, spell-interrupt and reversal I know, I've dug through every book I can lay hoof on, nothing works..." she grabbed Sunset's arm. "You have to believe us, your Highness. We would never insult the princesses by impersonating them---!"

Sunset Shimmer couldn't help it. She started to laugh. Trixie's baffled expression only made her laugh harder.

After a minute she finally caught her breath. "Well, first off, the reason the detransmogrification didn't work is because neither of you is under a transmogrifying spell," she said. Oh Maker, she thought gleefully as she watched their eyes go round, those looks of dawning wonder. "And as to impersonating royalty... "

Sheriff Brass sidled his way through the throng, Deputy Flute close behind him. "This is it, boy," he said with smug satisfaction, using his weight to shoulder past the mob of prissy Canterlot unicorns. "That no-account mare finally slipped up."

"How so, Sheriff?" Flute said, his voice cracking. He hustled to stay in Brass' wake, flashing his badge at the ponies glaring at him and the Sheriff.

Brass rolled his eyes. "'Cause she blew her cover, dimwit," he said. "A 'grand performance,' right here in the middle of Canterlot. All I can figger is she thought she was safe from us right here in yew-ni-corn central." He hawked and spat, barely missing a fancy-dressed mare's hoof. He ignored her yelp of outrage and kept edging forward through the crowd. "Spotlight-crazy dimwit musta forgot we're stallions o' the law. This badge don't stop at the edge o' Promise, no sir."

"No sir," Deputy Flute agreed.

"Now you're here, I'm here, and so's every pony I deputized," Brass went on. He looked around and was mighty proud to see earth ponies with badges and hats edging through the crowd towards the stage. It went without saying they were all members of the Filii Terram. "Fool nag set up this little show right in the middle of Canterlot Park. We got her surrounded, and soon we'll have her in cuffs. That nag will be wearin' stripes and bustin' rocks till cows have the vote. "

"What about the colt?" Flute asked.

"Meh; let th' guard dump him in some orphanage here," Brass said. "Better'n he deserves. Ah, here we are, front row--- Mayor Granite? What're you doin' here?" To his astonishment, the belligerent sheriff found himself elbow-to-elbow with the Mayor of Promise and the head of their local branch of the Order.

Mayor Granite looked at him in surprise. "Me? I received a royal invitation to Canterlot. What are YOU doing here, Sheriff?"

"Royal invite?" Brass was a bigoted dullard, but something about that phrase made the rusted gears in his mind turn in directions he didn't find happy. But before he could figure out why, his attention was yanked back to the wooden stage at the center of the park.

"FILLIES AND GENTLECOLTS OF CANTERLOT!!" a mare's magically amplified voice boomed out. "WELCOME ONE AND ALL TO THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY SHOW HAPPENING IN ALL OF EQUESTRIA!" Fireworks shot off in every direction.

Brass snorted and rolled his eyes. It was the loudmouth showmare all right.

"WE PRESENT TO YOU A ROYAL COMMAND PERFORMANCE--"

Royal Command? Something funny was going on here...

"--THE GRAND EQUESTRIAN PREMIERE...FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE.... "  In a flurry of fireworks and showers of fire fountains, the wooden stage unfolded like an origami swan. Standing in the middle were Trixie and Jasper.

"THE GREAT AND POWERFUL..." The showmare was wearing a brand new spangled robe and hat. She whipped them aside to reveal her blazing horn and fanning wings. She was resplendant in a translucent, star spangled cape, a tiara on her silky hair and glitter flashing on her wings. "PRINCESS TRIXIE LULAMOON, ALICORN OF ILLUSION!" Starbursts and splashes of rainbow light fountained from her horn, out-dazzling the fireworks of just a moment before.

Sheriff Brass' jaw dropped. The sheer audacity of it.... "She's gonna be buried UNDER her jail cell," he said, almost too astonished to be outraged.

"ALSO FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE..." Trixie made a gesture to her sidekick. The colt kicked aside his robes. He spread his wings; they'd been lightly airbrushed to suggest flames at the edge of the feathers. His purple mane was sleeked back from his horn in a proud pompadour, revealing a small gold coronet. He reared up, letting his dark purple cape flutter to best effect. "PRINCE JASPER LULAMOON, ALICORN OF FLAME!!" Jasper tossed his head; a half-dozen birds of multicolored flames spouted from his horn and spiraled around him, showering sparks. Several fillies in the front row squealed and swooned.

If Sheriff Brass had been slackjawed before, now he was practically purple with rage. "That's it," he bellowed, waving his hoof to give the signal. All around the stage, deputies began moving in---

And were pinned in place by blinding white spotlights. "BUT BEFORE WE GET OUR SHOW UNDERWAY," Trixie went on. "LET ME TAKE A MOMENT TO RECOGNIZE SOME SPECIAL GUESTS IN OUR AUDIENCE!"

"Allow me to introduce Brass, of Promise Town," she said. "Sheriff, prominent member of the Filii Terram--" Brass went 'urk'; the Filii Terram were not the sort of club one openly admitted to belonging to-- "And a world class boob in his own right!" this elicited a good bit of laughter. "This, Fillies and Gentlecolts, along with his Deputy Flute--" Flute cringed under his own spotlight-- "And the NOBLE Mayor Granite, Elder of the Filii Terram--" It was hard to tell in the glare but one could guess that the blood was draining from Mayor Granite's face--- "Yes, these three gentleponies led the way for their entire town...

"Abandoning two foals to their deaths in timberwolf-infested woods," Trixie continued, her amplified voice suddenly dropping to a chilly monotone. "Because, after all, they were just worthless half-bloods. " Trixie strutted across the stage. "Oh yes. Dear Jasper here, before his ascension, was a unicorn orphan in the Sheriff's racist little mudhole in the road. He-- and a unicorn filly, the daughter of a traveling mailmare--" she waved to a grey pegasus hovering in the back with her daughter on her back--"were abandoned to their doom by these, brave, heroic, stallionly stallions for the crime of being... well, anything but an earth pony." She leaned down over the edge of the stage, staring Brass in the eye. "Were it not for him blackmailing me into doing his job for him, they would have died. I took the orphan his town despised under my wing, and left his wretched hive of bigots. In vengeance he has pursued me across the length and breadth of Equestria, hounding me... for fear that I might reveal the unsavory truth about him."

She smiled. "Whoops."

"YOU SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE, YOU NO-ACCOUNT FRAUD!" Brass bellowed. "You're going away for so long you'll be an old mare by the time you see daylight again! Arrest her, you idiots!" The deputies found their nerve again and started moving again. But before any of them could reach the stage, there was a sound of hundreds of beating wings. Out of the sky dropped dozens of royal guards, their armor gleaming in the sun. They landed with a clash of armor, taking positions around the crowd and in front of the stage.

"Halt!" one of them said. "Day Watch. What goes on here?"

Sheriff Brass went from seething to smug. Now this nag would see what it meant to mess with an officer of the law! "Officer, I am Sheriff Brass of Promise Town. Arrest this no-account! She is a wanted criminal! A fugitive from justice all over Equestria!"

"My that is a serious charge," said a voice from above. Startled, everypony looked up. It was Celestia's chariot, hovering above the crowd, Celestia herself reclining within. The crowd parted, opening a landing space. Everypony bowed hastily. She regarded the portly sheriff. "You were saying?" Only those that knew her well would know there was something off about her Pony Lisa smile at the moment.

Sheriff Brass got to his hooves and stuck his chest out. "Ma'am, er, Your Majesty, this mare is a wanted felon, a fugitive from justice. She is guilty of breach of contract, illegal performance, transport of illegal goods-- them fireworks-- across county lines... slander..." he gave Trixie a hateful glare from the corner of his eye. "abducting a foal, corruption of minors--and that colt is an accomplice..."

Celestia held up a hoof. "You need say no more." She looked to the guard, her smile gone. "Officer, do your duty and arrest the miscreants."

"Hah!" Brass crowed... just as the hoofcuffs locked around his cannons. "What?!" He looked around; his deputies and the good Mayor as well were being cuffed.

Celestia leaned toward him. She was no longer smiling. "Sheriff, I already have spoken with Trixie Lulamoon and her ward. And I have by my own means confirmed her version of what happened in the little town of Promise. So let me give you the short list," she said. "Dereliction of duty--- you've abandoned your post for most of a YEAR, Sheriff--- child endangerment, libel, slander, swearing out false arrest warrants, filing false charges, exercising your civil authority outside your jurisdiction, harassment of a private citizen... interfering with the mail..." she waved to Derpy, who waved back. "Oh my, I do believe you, FORMER Sheriff of Promise, are going to be spending a great deal of time in the legal system on the other side of the bars."

Sheriff Brass gaped at her. He started gibbering. "This, but this this this is ridiculous! She's a criminal! I know her background-- she's guilty of unleashing an Ursa Major on a civilian population center--"

"Actually it was two local colts who did that," Celestia said, idly examining a hoof. "She was exonerated."

"She used an illegal dark magic artifact.. nearly destroyed a town..."

"The Alicorn Amulet was not, at the time, illegal," Celestia retorted, buffing her hoof and examining it again. "And as she was not in her right mind under its influence. She was given a full pardon by the Crown."

Ex-Sheriff Brass gabbled. He pointed at Trixie and Jasper with his cuffed hooves. "They're standing right there impersonating royalty!!!"

It was Celestia's next word that dropped the world out from under his hooves. She looked up from her hoof, feigning surprise.

"...Impersonating?"

"Ah, that's right, Sheriff," Trixie chipped in from the stage. "Tested, and confirmed. Jasper and I ascended. We really are an alicorn Princess and Prince. "

"Oh, Princess Lulamoon," Celestia said as Sheriff Brass went eeeeeeeeee. "I'm sorry I arrived late. I did want to be on time for such a novel and entertaining royal coming out."

"Think nothing of it, Prin-- ahem, Celestia," Trixie said loftily. Celestia chuckled and nodded in approval. "If anypony knows the value of a fashionably late and stylish entrance, it is the Great and Powerful Trixie. Princess. Princess Trixie. Oh poo," she said, sticking out her tongue. "It just doesn't rrrrrroll quite right anymore..."

Celestia laughed at the new Princess' antics, then turned her attention back to the cuffed and bewildered ponies being lined up before her. "Sheriff, Mayor, it's basically like this," she said gently. "You've both been sacked. Canned. Deep Sixed. Fired with extreme prejudice. You are no longer civil servants, and are probably going to jail. I will be appointing a new interim Mayor for your town, along with Sheriff, Secretary, Treasurer, and any other office I deem fit all the way down to street sweeper and dog catcher. After, oh, five years, we'll see if your town of Promise is capable of handling electing new town officials.

"All ponies have the inalienable right to freedom of association--- to buy, sell, trade, neighbor, fellowship, or NOT do those things, with any pony they wish, and no matter what anyone else thinks of their reasons for doing so. You were perfectly in your rights to go off and make your own little community for yourself and likeminded ponies, and to insist that you not be bothered by those who were not. But your right to swing your hoof ends where other ponies' noses begin. You violated countless laws to persecute two innocent ponies, and your racially motivated dereliction of duty nearly cost two foals their lives. The Filii Terram is a foalish hate group filled with bitter racist ponies too stupid to grasp basic pony genetics, and I won't tolerate any town in Equestria being run by them."

Flute spoke up, cowering. "Bu-- but why? What do you have against ponies who just want to keep their blood lines pure?"

She gently pulled the Mayor, the Sheriff, and the Deputy in close with one wing. "You silly, silly ponies," she said, pityingly, with the air of someone explaining something to a very simpleminded child. "You despise innocent ponies for having a mixed heritage. What do you suppose MY parentage was?"

The very emotionally bedraggled criminals were finally dragged away. Celestia was speaking quietly with her two new little alicorns off to one side. Trixie.... was shaking with silent laughter. "Whatever is wrong, Trixie?" Celestia said, puzzled.

"I know I'm an alicorn now," Trixie sniggered hysterically, her eyes squeezed shut and her face frozen in an absolutely villainous grin as she relived the expression on Sheriff Brass' face. "But I feel like such a little weasel...!"

Celestia started giggling herself. The expressions on their faces when she told them she was from a mixed heritage... Common sense would tell you that any alicorn alive came from a different parentage than their race. Were ponies truly so simple? "Well, I do hope you feel up to continuing with the performance," Celestia said, "as unconventional as it is, as a coming out party it certainly beats yet another coronation." There were surely nobles throwing a screaming fit elsewhere of course, but they were few and far between. After coronating six princesses simultaneously, even the most devout traditionalist in Canterlot was kind of sick of the whole thing.

"The Fabulous Princess Trixie--- oo that one works--- and her illustrious assistant, passing up a stage?" Trixie said. "Haha! It is to laugh. Come, Jasper!" She leapt back onto the stage... then she and her adopted son turned and bowed to the reclining Sun Princess, glitter-dusted wings spread and horns lowered. "And... thank you."

"No," Celestia said softly. "Thank you." She sat back in her chariot as Prince Jasper and Princess Lulamoon took the center stage.

Softly, Sunset Shimmer crept up beside her. "So, teach," she said shyly, "How'd I do?"

Celestia chuckled and motioned for her erstwhile pupil to join her in the chariot. "Very good," she said. "-- for your first outing," she added with a wink.

"AND NOW, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, THE GREATEST MAGIC SHOW IN EQUESTRIA--- WITH PRINCE JASPER AND PRINCESS LULAMOOOOOON!"

Next Chapter: Chapter 30 Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes