Bad News

Like the pegasi had planned, the violent storm eventually subsided, allowing them to make the following morning just as beautiful as they were used to. By the time the sun had begun to creep over the horizon, there was nary a hint that the storm had existed at all - especially in the small, earth pony-founded town of Ponyville, which had barely even been hit by the bad weather; the local pegasi had been feeling especially lazy, and hadn't bothered to fill up the sky with the necessary amount of clouds that night.

One resident of Ponyville might have had an issue with such lacklustre workmanship; Twilight Sparkle, Student of Princess Celestia and Ponyville's very own egghead. So book-smart was she, the young unicorn had actually taken to living inside the town's library alongside her companion and friend, Spike; there she'd be able to study to her hearts content without fear of disturbance. She was also Ponyville's best planer, and would've had a few words to say to anypony who was doing their job half-heartedly, up to and including any lazy pegasi, but thoughts of the storm were about to vanish from her, when her friends came knockin' that morning.

A sequence of fierce knocks suddenly assaulted Twilight's door. A highly energetic voice followed soon after:

"Twilight! Open up!" Still asleep in her bed, Twilight was obviously unable to respond.

"Yeah Twah! Are you awake?" A second, more southern-sounding voice followed.

"It's really important." said a third voice, which sounded a lot more tomboyish than the other two.

"Huge! mind-bogglingly important!" The first voice added, child like glee oozing out of her vocal chords. "Wait. Why is it important again?"

All this talk, and further discussions shared by the three were still all but meaningless to Twilight, who continued to sleep like a coma patient. So did Spike, who was curled up in his mattress at the bottom of the stairs.

Suddenly, a blue Pegasus with rainbow-coloured hair barged into Twilight's window, startling the young unicorn out of her bed. She gave a high-pitched yelp as she fell. The pegasus refrained from further attempts at Breaking & Entering, as soon as she saw her friend glare up at her from the floor. Though Twilight's eyes were still heavy and filled with sleep, she wrestled with her weary legs until she was standing again, whereupon she opened the window and let the eager pegasus fly into her house.

"Twilight!" The pegasus yelled, sending a shock down Twilight's spine that made her mane stand on end.

'Today's gonna be one of those days,' She correctly thought to herself, as Rainbow Dash continued to hover in the air, an eager smile clinging to her face.

"We have something cool to tell ya. Hold on, I'll let the others in." With that Rainbow Dash flew for Twilight's front door, barely allowing the exasperated unicorn time to gather her thoughts. Before Twilight could raise an objection, Rainbow had already managed to fling the door open, wordlessly welcoming both Pinkie Pie and Applejack into Twilight's sanctum. The two earth ponies looked up at Twilight, both of them infinitely more awake than their unicorn friend.

"Wah, mornin' Twahlaiht." Applejack said warmly, noticing Twilight's groggy condition as her friend struggled to descend the stairs.

"Yeah. Hi guys." Twilight's vocal cords strained to produce even that minimalistic reply, but nevertheless she still felt happy to see her friends, and put more effort into articulating her followup: "What was it you needed to tell me?" Her friends lit up.

"Well, Rainbow just got word from some outa town Pegasuses. They say some place got ransacked las' night." As Applejack explained, Twilight tilted her head in fascination, and rubbed a large chunk of sleep out of her eye as well. "Y'know, during that big ol' thunderstorm we were all tryin' to ignore?"

"It was someplace called The Library of Power. We thought you'd know it, what with you being Queen Brainiac and all." Rainbow Dash added, unable to refrain from her long-standing habit of peppering her tone with condescension when referring to academic matters. Twilight knew and accepted this particular personality quirk of Rainbow Dash's, and wasn't nearly as annoyed by it as she would've been before moving to Ponyville. Not that Twilight would've cared at this point anyway. For regardless of the tone in which it was said, "Library of Power", and a synonym for "stealing" had been used in the same string of sentences. That alone would be enough to terrify one of Celestia's pupils. Not that her friends knew any of this of course, which in turn lead to them mistaking her awestruck silence for a mere lack of understanding.

"You love books almost as much as I love parties, and the thought of some mean old Pony stealing my favourite decorations is horrible. Why if I ever got my hooves on a streamer picking meanie like that, I'd give 'im a hoof, right in the nose. I'd give him two hooves, no, three hooves, no four hooves, no I'd invite a friend over, and give him five hooves." Pinkie, though she always meant well, was unfortunately prone to going off on wild tangents - a habit that Applejack and Rainbow Dash were more than aware of.

"Pinkie. Focus. We're s'posetuh be talkin' about the Lahbrary o' power, remember?" Applejack's words came out nice and slow, trying to guide Pinkie back to the topic at hand... and failing, unfortunately.

"But that's boring. My imaginary thief is much more interesting." Scatterbrained as ever, Pinkie made an attempt to think things over for a second, before reaching the apex of her tangent. "At least I hope he's imaginary. Rainbow Dash, was my thief imaginary?" Without pause for contemplation, Rainbow Dash responded:

"No, he wasn't. He's still there now, Pinkie. You better run if you wanna catch him." Her squinted eyes and bitter tone of voice quickly betrayed Dash's weariness over needing to put up with Pinkie, and her desire to trick the pink pony away. Applejack swiftly noticed, and gripped Pinkie by the tail as soon as she started running full pelt for the door, trying to pursue a criminal who didn't exist.

"Woah there, pardner!" Applejack cried as she pulled on Pinkie's cotton candy-esque tail. She continued to gallop in place for a short while before she realised Rainbow Dash's deception. Both she and Applejack collectively scowled at Rainbow, who could only chuckle sheepishly in reply. Applejack turned her gaze back to the still-catatonic Twilight, slightly concerned by her friend's new-found quietness, but not enough to think that it was anything too serious.

"Apparently, the only thing stolen was some book called The Unicorn's Guide to Ultimate Power." Applejack's sentence was suddenly interrupted by Rainbow Dash's scoff:

"Hehe. What a corny title," Rainbow Dash wheezed out between her snickers. Applejack ignored her friend and continued: "Well, Twahlaiht? Y'heard of a book like that?" The three friends waited in anticipation for Twilight's reply, and so were noticeably disheartened when none came. Staring at the motionless unicorn, the three silently decided that leaving would be the best option, if only to give Twilight a proper chance to wake up. "Huh, guess an egghead can't know everythin'. Let's go, girls." They started to leave.

'Maybe later.' That's what they were thinking.

They didn't get more than a few steps, however, as Twilight's front door suddenly took on a life of it's own and slammed itself in their faces with considerable force, almost enough to crack the door frame. All three of them tumbled onto their backs in surprise. Upside down, they saw a glow coming from Twilight's horn; with that, they instantly knew what happened. Maybe they were going to get a response after all.

"Unicorn's Guide... Ultimate Power?" Was all Twilight could say in her state. For the situation had become infinitely worse than she had first feared. Once again, Applejack mistook Twilight's demeanour as being something completely different.

"Hehehe. Yeah. That title's pretty silly, innit?" Applejack chuckled warmly.

"No. Oh no. Oh nonononononono. This is bad." Twilight, her fear having reached critical mass, could no longer remain frozen when there was work to do, so she freed herself with a spontaneous declaration of pure negativity. She glared at Applejack: "Did you just say The Unicorn's Guide To Ultimate Power? That it's been stolen?"

"W-well yeah. Twah? What's wrong-"

"Spike!" Twilight ignored her friend and made a loud call for her dragon compatriot. Her assertive voice quickly managed to wake Spike up.

"Wha? Y-yes Twilght?" Confused, but dutiful, Spike drowzily asked for his command.

"I need you to take a message." Twilight said quickly; like time was of the utmost importance. "Get your best quill."

"Oh what? I just got up here." Spike whined. Just because he would follow her orders didn't mean that he wouldn't complain about or try to delay them from time to time, especially when he wanted a bit of extra sleep.

"Just do it, Spike!" Twilight snapped at her faithful dragon, causing him to make a hasty retreat from his bed. He picked up a roll of aged-looking parchment and a fine quill before going back to Twilight.

"Are you okay, Twi?" Dash asked concernedly.

"Yeah, you've been acting a little... on edge this mornin', pardner." Applejack firmly stated the obvious.

"Oh? Have I?" Was all the reply they got from her, and it was said as dismissively as she could manage. "Now Spike, write this down:

Dear Princess Celestia,
I hope you're feeling well in spite of the dark times you must be facing. I have just heard news that the Library of Power has been broken into, and that "The Unicorn's Guide to Ultimate Power" was the only item that got stolen. I greatly wish to aid her majesty in the retrieval of the guide. If there's any way I can be of some assistance to you, please don't hesitate to ask me.

Your most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.

Did you get all that, Spike? Spike?" Twilight looked down at her assistant, who was now lying on the floor. She realized that he'd fallen asleep whilst transcribing. After a brief flash of annoyance, she looked over what he'd managed to transcribe. "Phew. At least he managed to finish it," Twilight said relieved. She then firmly stomped on Spike's tail. It didn't hurt him significantly, but nonetheless it caused him to cry out in surprise; said surprise escaped from his mouth in the form of light green fire that engulfed Twilight's letter. Spike sat up and began to rub his tail.

"What was that fo-" Spike started, before he noticed the flaming parchment laying in front of him. "Oh." He finished, sounding both dejected and understanding.

Anypony else might've feared for the document's safety. Not Twilight. She understood the magic that existed within Spike's fire, and how it reacted to the parchment he was using. Rather than burning to ash, the letter instead disintegrated. The ball of green flame then flew into the air, and left via the upstairs window. That was the method Twilight usually used to send letters to Princess Celestia. That ball of fire would fly over to the palace in the Equestrian capital of Canterlot, and reform into the letter once it found the Princess.

'Please Princess, let me help.' Twilight thought to herself, watching as the sickly green orb finally vanished from her sight.

"Yeah, um, Twi?" Rainbow Dash's impatient voice caught Twilight's attention. The three fillies were still lying down on the floor, upside-down and looking at Twilight. "If it's not too much trouble, do you think you could maybe try keeping us in the loop on this one?"

"She's right Twahlaiht. At the moment we're seeming about ten chapters away from the same page here." Applejack spoke up as well, expressing her own irritation alongside Rainbow Dash. "Shoot, I'm feelin' about as clueless as Pinkie Pie."

"Don't be sad, Applejack. Being clueless is fun. Those pesky clues take the fun out of everything." Pinkie said, overjoyed as ever. Applejack could only stare at the pink pony in exasperation.

Twilight ran to one of her numerous bookshelves, where she began scanning the dozens of books within. Her sudden burst of energy also perked up her friends some, and they finally decided to get back on their feet.

"You girls are right. You all do deserve an explanation." Twilight once again spoke as quickly as she could. "That goes for Rarity and Fluttershy too." Twilight levitated a few of the books she'd been looking at out of the shelf, and put them in a stack in front of her. "Go find Rarity and Fluttershy for me. I'll meet you all at Sugar Cube Corner in exactly 1 hour. I just need to research a few things first," Twilight finished, having never once looked at her friends throughout the entire explanation. Spike walked over to them, and began to escort the three towards the front door. Over their shoulders, they could see Twilight pulling even more books off the shelf.

"You girls better go. Even though she hasn't said it yet; the Library of Power is a massive deal for Twilight," Spike said gently. The three looked at him curiously as they left the house. Spike placed a claw on the front door.

"What d'you mean Spike?" Applejack asked.

"Well, Twilight's wanted to go there ever since she was a little filly. In fact; for as long as I've known her she's been the same. It's just one of her dreams." Spike answered, reminiscing. The three looked intrigued, but Spike started to close the door. "I think it'd be best if Twilight told you the full story. You girls find Fluttershy and Rarity, I'll make sure that she meets ya." Spike closed the door, Leaving Twilight's friends with a multitude of unanswered questions - all of which would have to wait for a whole hour. They sighed and turned away from the door, setting off to find their friends.