CoCoBA Episode 9: Bring on the Dancing Horses

The house strolled like something in a cartoon, like a smiling bucket of popcorn walking across the screen before a movie, but with so many more legs. Standing with the mare she admired and the filly she absolutely didn’t, she tried to count them. At one moment there were thirty-two, at the next eighteen, each one only existing to strike the ground once and then withdraw into some unseen underbelly. The whole effect was unseemly the closer it came.

And there was no mistake, it was approaching them. Coco weighed their chances of hiding, but there were only hills and grass this far out from the town. Even a grass-colored blanket might pop out to this Stand.

This was significant. Already assumptions were being made in the dressmaker’s mind, constraining possibilities. “This was a Stand, and possibly unfriendly.” “There is no way to hide.” These were the markings of her previous skirmishes, the grooves worn by experience. She expected to see another pony-who-was-not-a-pony within the building, staring out with ill intent, marching the way they came to take on Ponyville.

Because of this, she didn’t wait for it to come any closer.

“Stand back, girls,” she said, and then started her slide downwards.

Only to stop completely a moment later, as if she’d been stapled to the hillside.

She looked around swiftly, checking for a hint of the change’s source, before finally passing her eyes over Scootaloo, and ｢Go Zone｣ floating beside her. The filly was shaking her head back and forth minutely, a stony look on her face.

Coco smiled back at her sheepishly.

When all three of them had descended the hill, the house had reached its base. Coco tensed, preparing to move her companions out of the way before it trampled them, when the strange building finally stopped. Before the three, it withdrew all of its legs at once, and crashed to the ground, suddenly becoming a regular house again. Inside, the noise became muted, distant, but failed to disappear completely.

Diamond called out her Stand, looking for some errant thoughts coming from the building. Her subtitles were gibberish.

“Well, howdy there!” a voice called from the vicinity. Each pony looked in a different direction, and none saw the owner.

Then he appeared on the roof, hanging onto the chimney with his forehooves. Tan coat and frizzy brown mane, tall and lanky and wearing a good-natured smile. As soon as they noticed him, he was already sliding down the roof and landing in the grass with them.

“What brings you mares out here?” he asked.

Coco didn’t know how to answer the stallion, and Diamond looked suspicious more than anything, but Scootaloo marveled at him.

“Cheese Sandwich?!” She put her hooves to her cheeks and stared up at him.

He smiled wider at her acknowledgement, and swept a bow. “The one and only!”

By the time they’d all exchanged names, Coco thought of something to say. “We’re, uh, heading to Canterlot. Is...” she gestured with a foreleg at the building, “Is this your Stand?”

He shook his head. “Ms. Lemongrass is her own pony, through and through. Do you have a Stand?”

Coco nodded, and in a gesture of goodwill, ｢Something for Nothing｣ floated in the air beside her. Cheese Sandwich looked it up and down, eyes lingering on the sharper bits. After a while it faded back into her, and he let go of his inspection.

“Well, I’m heading to Ponyville, personally. Canterlot’s been pretty exciting, but my Cheesy Sense has been telling me there’s some real cause for partying down over there. Do you fine mares know anything about that?”

“Cheesy Sense?” Diamond muttered to herself.

“It tells Cheese when there’s a party that needs planning!” Scootaloo hissed, loudly enough for all three of the others to hear.

Coco relaxed. “There was an incursion of Stand users, and all of them were agents of King Sombra. When they were all defeated, and their Stands stopped working, a lot of missing ponies were found again.”

“Well, that sounds like a match!” he said.

“There’s something you’re not telling us.” Diamond said.

He turned to her, his expression clouding, as she came to the forefront. Coco stepped back a couple of hooves, and Scootaloo crossed her forelegs. A few seconds later, she threw them up.

“What’s it matter?” she asked, ready to summon her Stand and settle the chain of command in their squad once and for all. But Diamond made no sudden movements, and held no violence in her expression; no, it was only frustration that crossed her face as she turned to the pegasus.

“How do we know that this is the real Cheese Sandwich and not another one brought in by Sombra?”

Scootaloo blanched with alarm, and then took a step back of her own, more hesitant than Coco’s.

“No way, no how. There’s no party pony like Cheese,” Cheese said, and shook his head emphatically, like a young foal swatting away broccoli.

Diamond’s eyes scanned over words that only she could see. “What about the house?”

“Ms. Lemongrass? We met each other a couple of days ago on the way to Canterlot.” Then, sotto voce, behind a fetlock, “Don’t worry. She’ll warm up to you when you get to know her.”

Diamond struggled. There was something wrong with Cheese, but it was more difficult than usual to pull out. Was it the power of his Stand, or his own nature? “But you’re not heading to Ponyville to throw a party.”

“Of course I am! Why else would I go there, you silly-filly?” he asked, and mussed her mane.

Diamond looked and looked, concentrating, and then her ears fell back. “To take the foals. You want to use the house to collect all of the foals in Ponyville.”

Cheese, a little more nervous, was about to say something when Scootaloo beat him to the punch. “You can’t throw around accusations like that! What do you mean? What would Equestria’s super duper party pony want to foalnap anypony for?” Her words directed his thoughts, and the thoughts he tried hiding, and Diamond saw through.

“He wants to protect them from Sombra, and wait for all of this to blow over.” Diamond said, shaking a little despite herself. “Once a pony goes inside of that house, they don’t come back out until he lets them. He’s stealing foals to make sure they sleep through the catastrophe.”

Diamond felt the blood rushing throughout her body with the intensity of the accusation. And then she raised her hoof, turned in a circle, and pointed at herself.

Coco and Scootaloo watched her, looking for some sign of what she was indicating. She stared down at the hoof herself, numbly, as if it were some intruder into the conversation.

And then her back leg kicked out too, and she almost fell over.

“Are you sure your friend’s alright?” Cheese asked Coco in a stage whisper. A look of concern had been plastered on his face since Diamond had started talking, and now it only increased.

“What are you doing now?” Scootaloo asked Diamond, truly uncertain.

“I… I’m not doing anything!” Diamond said, and then her body shook and she started to trot in place. As her breathing increased, it became harder and harder to talk. “He doesn’t want us, leaving with his secret, he’ll want to, to fight us. His Stand is… it’s... guh! I can’t concentrate!” She was spinning around now, aggressively.

Scootaloo assessed the situation, grit her teeth and slid between Diamond and Cheese. Without moving from the spot, the friction beneath the stallion disappeared, and he tripped over himself, toppling to the ground.

She looked at him with something like betrayal. “You can see Stands. There’s no way that you don’t have one. And if there are any foals in that house, you’re going to have to give them back.”

At the same time, Coco summoned up ｢Something for Nothing｣, wrapping a leg-warmer on each of Diamond’s limbs and holding all four steady with her magic. It was an effort to maintain all four, especially with enough room for Diamond to move, but she managed.

The filly only started to headbang.

“This is, a Stand attack! I know it!”

Scootaloo agreed. “There’s no point hiding it, Cheese. But I don’t want to hurt the stallion who threw Rainbow Dash’s birthday party. That’s going too far! So just stop your Stand, before I have to force you!”

From his low angle on the ground, Cheese smirked.

And then the front door of the house swung open, and it clambered up to its disposable legs. Lumbering, it scooped down to grab Scootaloo, and she slid herself backwards away from it. Now that the ground under him had friction again, he sprang up and shook off the grass in mid-air, landing on his hooves automatically.

And just as quickly, the house was between him and the three Stand users, stomping imposingly toward all of them.

Coco tried to hold Diamond’s head still, worried that there was some risk to her skull, and finally conjuring a headband around her. The filly’s head swam, her eyes adjusting, and her muscles ached from the sudden exertion. She felt her own lack of sleep, and the looming figure of the house hardly entered her consciousness.

As the house dipped closer, Scootaloo froze its legs to the ground and tried to force air resistance against it. Surely enough, within a five-meter bubble of the filly, the building was held in place. She wiped some sweat off of her brow as she held it there.

“Wuh…?” she heard Coco’s voice behind her, and turned. The mare was drawing her hoof over her eye, and then shaking her withers back and forth, standing on her hind legs briefly before toppling backwards.

“It’s in you too!” Diamond said, and at that moment Scootaloo’s shock overtook her! The force of a whole building crashed against her defenses, and she was snatched up, still staring at Coco in horror.

On reflex, she pushed against it, and lodged herself in the doorway, pressing herself to one side. Diamond, for her part, brought out ｢Misery Business｣ and flung it forward at the doorway, hoping to pry Scootaloo off. The house stepped forward for her, preparing a lunge, and she struggled to move out of the way. The bands that stopped her from dancing also held her in place!

Coco felt Diamond trying to move, and loosened her own magic further, only to find herself backtrotting away from the fillies. Was he testing her range?

“It’s a disease!” Diamond shouted to Coco, struggling to strafe rightward. “His Stand makes ponies sick with something!”

Those words clearing her thoughts, Coco shook her head and threw out a hoof. She cast out a line of fabric in of the air, ready to wrap around Diamond and pull her to safety.

Only for her hoof to wave a rainbow-arc over her head, and the fabric to go flying, uselessly, to the ground.

Diamond’s Stand leveled several close-range shots at the house, enough to hear some groaning, but not enough to slow it down. Without any further ado, it swept down and caught her, leaving her hanging in the doorway with the sharp hooves of her Stand.

Coco could only watch as both fillies struggled in the doorway, trying to think of something to pull them out with. And then the door slammed shut, smacking both of them further inside, and they were beyond Coco’s help.

With a sense of satisfaction, the house turned away from the mare, and Cheese stepped out from behind it, looking conciliatory, but mostly pleased with himself. “I’m not going to hurt them, I promise, but I can’t have you following me. ｢Feel Good Inc｣ will wear off once you pass out, or sooner if you have some first aid. Until then...”

He concentrated, sticking his tongue out, and then, somehow, snapped his hoof.

“That should do the trick!”

Coco felt her Stand appear next to her as she stood up on her hind legs, and they clasped forehooves. Together, they began to box-step.

Cheese turned to leave, waving goodbye and beginning to climb the house. A glowing piece of cloth, the one Coco had missed with, trailed after him, coiling for his leg.

“Ah ah ah!” he said, turning to look down at it, and then Coco started headbanging until her brain rattled. The fabric fell away.

With that, he headed on his way.

* * *

Diamond and Scootaloo picked themselves up inside of the house. It was a cozy affair, not occupied for a while but still definitively lived-in, with pictures over the mantle and everything done in finished wood. It was the sort of house a mare bought when she never expected to buy another one.

Scootaloo’s first instinct was to pull and bang on the door, and she followed it while Diamond caught her breath. She slammed against it, standing on the wood and tugging the handle with both hooves. ｢Go Zone｣ removed the friction from underneath of the door, and she still couldn’t open it. It was not friction keeping the door closed, but willpower!

She sighed, and tried to collect her bearings, only for the house to start shaking. Crashing sounds echoed throughout it, turning into an aggressive, banging beat. Cringing, she covered her head and waited for the house to attack.

After a few moments, she raised it again, and behaved like nothing had happened.

“What’s that noise?” she asked.

“We’re walking.” Diamond said, monotonously, now taking heavy steps toward another doorway. She kept casting glances at the bands on her legs, knowing that unless Coco did something, they would wear off soon enough, and the Stand would work her to exhaustion.

“No, it doesn’t match up.” Scootaloo said, and put an ear to the floor. Diamond listened herself, still making her way to the next room, and heard two patterns distinctly, the freestyle footsteps below and the continuous thumping. Then, as soon as it came, it faded away.

“There must be somepony else trapped here!” Scootaloo said. “They’re trying to tell us to find them!”

“I don’t think so.” Diamond said, now in the doorway.

Scootaloo came over, more casually. “Why’s th-”

And she saw. Stacked next to each other like sardines, forty foals their age, each asleep and expressionless, none squirming or adjusting, none on the verge of waking. Scootaloo rushed toward the nearest one, a yellow filly, and shook her. There was no response. Breathing harder, she tried the next one, and the next.

“It’s useless. We can’t wake anypony up inside of this house, it’s part of how it works.” Diamond said.

“Then I’d better go check out the noise and investigate,” Scootaloo said, not making eye contact. “I’ll be upstairs.”

“Wait, don’t-”

But Scootaloo was already gone.

* * *

Cheese rode atop Ms. Lemongrass, looking out onto the horizon. Ponyville wasn’t very distant, he knew from his own travels, but the hills made it harder to see in the short term.

So many things conspired to cloud the mind in the short term, he knew from experience. If not for happenstance and its long consequences, he never would’ve gained his cutie mark and become the super duper party pony planner premiere of the land. He wouldn’t have survived the vision of himself, alone without a crowd of ponies to make smile, trotting without a destination, and come back with the power of a Stand in his grasp.

No, Cheese Sandwich believed in a very simple philosophy: if willed by fate, a stupid plan could work! Strange chances and long odds existed in every life, but only those with the right drives could take them and bear the risks that they came with. To progress, one must throw caution to the wind, strike at random, behave indiscriminately! A true pony must dare to be stupid!

And so many things had nibbled at him lately, driving him towards a party planning project bigger than any other. If Sombra was defeated, or even if he wasn’t and they all had to wait a gazillion years, Ms. Lemongrass would probably keep a whole mess of kids sleeping like logs through the whole thing.

He lost his Sense the night it happened, and only gained it back several hours earlier. This was a sign, he was certain, that he was trotting on the right path! One day the foals would reinhabit Equestria, or even be returned to their families, but for now they had to be gathered like streamers or confetti, or treasure. It was their existence that decided the outcome of this giant mess!

And they’d continue to be later today, probably in mid-afternoon. No matter how the town had changed, he’d be ready to sift through the rubble and rescue the future.

He settled in for the wait.

Then something appeared around his barrel and pulled, and he slid backwards off the roof.

* * *

Scootaloo flew up the stairs, looking through the tight rooms lousy with bric-a-brac and old pony stuff. It took less than two minutes to confirm that the only ponies in the building were in the kitchen, but she searched for a little longer just to keep her distance from Diamond. There had to be some way to escape, Coco was in danger!

Suddenly, a picture-frame flew off of its perch on a shelf and smashed against a wall. Scootaloo almost suspected an attack, except it wasn’t anywhere near her. An imprecise aim, maybe?

Then a clock she’d half-registered flung itself off of the upper wall, clanging to the floor. A couple of stone pony figurines knocked together, spun, and then hit the wall again. More noises came from the rest of the upstairs, each slowly gaining in volume. Amid this sudden movement, a rhythm started to establish itself, and she stepped back and out of the room as errant paperweights and dull coverless books cascaded to carpet.

Under the rickety, jangling beat building around her, rattling the thin bones of her pegasus wings like electric toothbrushes, she could make out an epicenter. It was back the way she’d come, below her. The kitchen?

She dashed back down, finding relative peace on the plain, plush stairs, and then reemerging into a great mass-clattering. Diamond was still in the kitchen, still covered in bands and not far from where she’d been left alone, only now her Stand was stiffly throwing silverware at a single, circular window.

She noticed Scootaloo. “Good of you to come back. Anything upstairs?”

“No, but you’re setting this whole house on edge!”

“So?” Diamond asked, hurling another spoon at the glass, which rebuffed the blow without cracking. She grunted, and then her Stand started striking at it, ineffectually. “Isn’t the point to make it spit us back out somehow? We have to try something, or else we’ll end up just like them!” She pointed to the multitude of sleepers without actually looking at them.

“Not something that’ll make it try to kill us instead of putting us to sleep! If ponies could just break through a window to get out, don’t you think they’d have tried it already?!”

Around them, the crashing became more enthusiastic, more relished. Things broke in distant rooms, leaving only the winceworthy impression of damage.

“I have to try something, even if it’s something dumb! Time’s running out!”

“What do you mean?” Scootaloo asked.

Diamond waved her fetlock in the filly’s face, slowly. It glowed a faint blue, like the magic was sewn in. “｢Something for Nothing｣ is going to wear off if Coco gets too far away! Even if she’s following us and staying in range, these are going to go away sooner than later. Then only one of us will be left!“

Scootaloo saw that there was a point to this, which is why it puzzled even her when she next shouted, above the increasing noise around them, “Yeah? Well, why are you so interested in helping Coco anyway?!”

Diamond stopped, her Stand withdrawing a little, still facing away toward the window. She turned to look at Scootaloo, surprised. “What?”

“You heard me! What are you really out to do here? Because I know you aren’t in it to save the world, or for friendship, or Coco, or any of that crap!”

Diamond blanched. “Sh-she saved my life. I don’t have anywhere else to go...”

Scootaloo acted like she hadn’t heard. “Wasn’t it enough that you tried to mess up everything that the Cutie Mark Crusaders ever did, without also trying to screw with the mission to stop the evil overlord of the Crystal Empire?!”

“Well, I can’t change what I did in the past, okay?! The world was a different place then! My parents didn’t care about me, and neither did anypony else, even Silver Spoon!” With that out, Diamond calmed a little. “Coco showed me that ponies really could care about each other, even if they’d never met! And that’s the truth!”

Scootaloo nearly spat on the kitchen floor. “I don’t believe that for a second! There’s no way that a pony like you could mean something like that! Coco’s my friend, do you get that? And you’re not going to manipulate her just because she doesn’t know what you are!”

Diamond looked at her, and after a few seconds she responded, voice quieter. “What am I?”

Scootaloo yelled as much as Diamond had hushed. “A bully, a wannabe tyrant, a downright evil filly, and a spoiled BRAT!”

Around them, the sounds of the house pounded toward a breakbeat crescendo, like a hundred hooves stomping in sequence, like the entirety was tearing itself apart around them in one single, violent act. Scootaloo realized that she hadn’t been breathing, and took a deep inhale, readying another thesis. Ponies didn’t really change overnight! Diamond wasn’t something completely different just because she was making nice all of a sudden to an adult. That was how she acted all of the time, and she just needed to drop the act! Drop it!

Finally, Diamond said, “I’m sorry.”

Scootaloo’s eyes tightened. “That’s not gonna-”

“No, I mean it! I’m sorry! I know I treated you horribly, and I wish I hadn’t done it! I don’t want you to hate me for it, or think that I’m trying to sabotage your plans, or Coco’s, or- or anything! I just want to help her! I want to do something with my power that actually matters!”

After the shout, neither said anything. Scootaloo’s gaze stayed level, shook with a breath, and then relented. Diamond rubbed the inside of her foreleg back and forth against her eyes, swallowing words.

“Alright. Sorry.” Scootaloo said. “Maybe I shouldn’t hold everything against you, if you’re trying to help save Equestria. But we’re not friends. I’m not forgiving you for all of the stuff you did.”

Diamond understood. “Yeah.” She blinked a few times, looking away, nodding softly. “Okay.”

Scootaloo found it hard to keep her expression static. In her mind she imagined Rainbow Dash, but she couldn’t fully make out an expression. Were her forelegs folded? Was that a line of disapproval, the motion of a head shake, a frown on her hero’s face?

And why, then, was her own conjured-up image of Coco as passively benevolent as before? And why did that pleasant, almost placid look cut into her just as much?

Diamond’s ears perked up. “Did you hear that?”

Scootaloo shook her head. “What?”

“The noise. It’s died down.” She was right. As Scootaloo listened, it faded away completely.

“Do you think… we did that?” she asked.

Worry entered Diamond’s face.

* * *

Cheese landed on the ground on his head, but was no worse for the wear. His hooves were under him from a lifetime of well-executed pratfalls and recoveries, and he was back up before he could inspect the white sheet tied around him like a longer version of his vest. His eyes ran up its length to the Stand holding it, and the user still attached.

Locked together, they continued to boxstep, as best as they could. But now they were in mid-air, bouncing. Beneath them was a minimalist, one-color trampoline, and several more beyond, each quickly dissolving into the air.

“You should really learn how to cut loose and just let yourself dance already,” he said, and then took a deep preparatory breath.

“I’m not going to stop until you give back my friends, and I stop what you’re doing to Equestria!” Geez Louise, this one was as serious as a heart attack and twice as shrill. He’d met a fair share of fuddy-duddies, stuffed shirts and sticks in the mud in your travels, but never somepony who would build a series of magic trampolines just to ruin somepony else’s party.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said, as politely as he could while he was limbering up, taking a few different stretches.

“If this were really about helping the foals, why wouldn’t you take their families with them? Why take ones who don’t want to go, but leave me outside?” she asked, and then, harder, “Or is there something my Stand can do that could stop your house?”

Cheese sighed. “Ms. Lemongrass isn’t mine. I found her, but she’s a sovereign pony. And no, she just doesn’t get along well with adults. It winds up hurting them to stay very long.”

Coco looked at him, levelly. “You’re still not going to get away with this.”

“Oh? What about Ms. Lemongrass?” he smiled. And Coco saw the house, still moving, a good distance away already. The enchantments she’d cast before, on Diamond, flickered.

She grit her teeth and focused more energy onto them, sapping away the rest of the trampolines except the one bouncing her into the air. It was pointless to keep the others around anyway; there would be no retreating from this position. Especially not since she’d caught him.

“In fact, I can make it even trickier!” Having cracked his neck and stretched out, he spun in a chestnut whirlwind, and suddenly he and the white fabric were separate, the latter drifting to the ground like a handkerchief. “Dojyaaan!”

Coco stared.

“You should’ve seen me do that for a wedding table. It was a smash!” Cheese said, and then tapped into ｢Feel Good Inc｣ again.

The mare and her Stand both kicked out back hooves the next time they landed, spinning at an angle away from their little platform of safety.

* * *

“A house that works on emotions?” Scootaloo asked, mulling the idea over in her head.

“No. It’s not just doing that. It was causing damage when we tried to damage it, but not to us. It was just…” Diamond trailed off.

“Making a bigger version play out.”

“Yeah. Amplifying us.”

“So, what, if we do anything to hurt the house or get upset, the whole thing starts turning into dance music?” Scootaloo glanced at the ceiling.

Diamond put a hoof to her muzzle, thinking. “You’re right, it’s like it’s turning what we do into a party. It would make sense why it would get along with a pony who’s devoted to parties.”

“But how do we use that to escape?” Scootaloo asked. “I mean, if we just stay calm, we’ll just last a little longer, not get outside!”

“Well, breaking things doesn’t work, and neither does panicking. Maybe if we’re really nice, it’ll let us back out.”

“I think we’re a little late there.”

Diamond scowled to herself. “But there must be some way...”

Scootaloo felt herself starting to panic, her blood pressure increasing, her heartbeat becoming more noticeable and her wings eager to flap and fidget away from their tucked-in position. She was about ready to throw herself into a wall to get out, and she had to resist the need.

“Maybe we should try… a tea party, or something like that. Make it calm enough that it’ll just open the door for us,” she said.

｢Misery Business｣ tore open cabinets, revealing dust. “There’s no tea around here.”

Scootaloo, who had never participated in a tea party in her life, opened some nearby cabinets of her own and produced a pair of small china cups. “We can pretend. That’s what tea parties are all about, right?”

And then her hooves flung themselves upwards, and the cups went flying. They crashed, pulverizing themselves on impact with the floor.

“Uh, alright, I can still-” Scootaloo turned toward the cabinet again, and found herself backing away from it even as her hooves moved forward. She looked down at them in horror, then at Diamond, and then back. “But - but I didn’t touch you!”

“His Stand must be airborne!” Diamond said, only just realizing it herself. “It got to you because we were close together for so long!”

Scootaloo’s wings flapped, and she started to drift out of the room and away from her ally, but in the doorway she stopped. The not-very-reassuring but sturdy pincers of ｢Misery Business｣ held her tightly and deposited her back on the ground, keeping her in place for a while longer.

It didn’t stop her hooves from moving against the floor, kicking and trotting in revolving patterns. Behind her, the sound of hoofbeats echoed through the house, and began to coalesce into a rising melody.

Diamond struggled to keep her still, and then stared, shocked, at her own fetlock.

The white band was disintegrating right in front of her.

* * *

Coco rolled with the punch in mid-air, generating a long rolling handle of fabric and a triangular kite atop it, curling up under her hooves, with her Stand clutching below like a spider. The hang-glider took her closer to Cheese, until he forced her to throw her front hooves into the air, and it fell away. She made a parachute, and he kept his distance.

When she landed, she threw out a hoof to point at him, still mirrored by ｢Something for Nothing｣. “Your Stand doesn’t have any defensive capabilities. If I can hit you just one, you’ll be finished for good!”

He smirked, and then jumped out of the way of the hangglider as it spun in the air and crashed where he’d been standing. She said nothing as it shredded itself back into oxygen.

She and her Stand continued the box-step, now that they were on the ground, but the parachute began to blanket over them, providing cover. Before it obscured her vision she saw Cheese pulling out a small cannon from nowhere, and then everything was cream.

From underneath the lumpy fabric, Coco came quickly galloping into the open air and towards Cheese. Behind, he could still make out the lump of her Stand in the parachute, standing still and waiting for orders. Coco’s body was covered with yet more fabric, an opaque hazmat suit without a single flaw or opening, encasing the entire body except for some sort of combination helmet and mourning veil.

As if a measure like that would help an infection that was already present!  He fired his party cannon, blasting her backwards in her tracks with an explosive burst of confetti, and then forced her to start doing the macarena.

Back under the parachute, her Stand followed through the motions with her. She tried to inch closer to him between the motions, and then he forced her to do the worm, and she wriggled against the ground at his hooves.

There. That was the final trap he would need to set, the final position he needed to shove her into so that she wouldn’t come up with some new way to throw a wrench in his plans. He’d be able to catch up to the house in due time, and then he’d move on to greener pastures and brighter hopes for the future.

Now, just to finish her…

Cheese picked up the party cannon and held it overhead, trotting to her on his hind legs and keeping an eye on her Stand. It still squirmed pointlessly under the parachute.

“Looks like this is your canon ending,” he said.

Then, without further ado, he brought it down onto her head.

* * *

Scootaloo struggled to stop moving as Diamond’s strong Stand kept her pinned. Even it was starting to twitch as the bands flaked away into air, returning to dust.

Desperately she searched for something happy, something that wasn’t just noise or shouting or fear or sickness, and her eyes were drawn only to the sleeping foals they’d shouted in the company of.

She summoned ｢Go Zone｣ to hold her own hooves to the ground, and Diamond’s too. It worked, for a moment, before it started to twitch too, and then it was beginning to pose and step in mid-air, the uninhibited version of Scootaloo’s willing imprisonment. The friction became harder to hold with so much movement, and with the range bobbing up and down weirdly she lost her concentration.

Okay, then, a party. Not a tea party. A birthday party? What kind of parties even were there? She hadn’t realized that her life was going to depend on this information one day, or she might have asked Pinkie for some pointers.

With one band gone, and the others slipping away, Diamond’s hoof started tapping. Scootaloo felt the corresponding hoof of the Stand squeezing against her wing involuntary, and she closed her eyes.

While she waited for motion and exhaustion, she heard the breathy, measured sounds of crying. Even as the music returned, Diamond was making small staccato sobs under her breath.

Scootaloo shut her eyes tighter, and tensed up for the moment she lost control completely.

* * *

Cheese felt a mix of satisfaction and revulsion when the veiled head of the suit wrinkled at the edges and fell inwards. Either way, he was finished with the cannon, and he junked it, tossing it in a random direction.

Then he prepared to play a grand game of tag with Ms. Lemongrass. Surely he’d need to do some serious hopping to get to Ponyville at the same time, but there was always the option to launch himself in something. Not to mention the incredible potential of those trampolines, if they didn’t all vanish back into thin air!

Just then, something closed around his whole back left leg! Until then, he hadn’t felt or noticed it, so clouded with his feeling of victory! His way forward had been overtaken by a single, determined dressmaker!

The hazmat suit had an opening freshly made on the veil, and it was slowly swallowing him. The interior was, in actuality, empty!

“Th-that’s impossible!” he said, and he felt silly for the words as soon as they arrived. “But how!?” He rolled it over for a moment, and then it came to him. “Under the parachute!”

In that moment, Coco had the opportunity to create confusion about which was the real pony and which was the Stand! If she or her Stand had run out, they would’ve been ineffectually trapped by their dancing. The hazmat suit which seemed to have Coco in it was really empty, a simple trap. What he’d thought was her Stand was really her, truly being affected, while the suit did its best impression through her magic.

He turned as it absorbed another leg, taking full form around him. Panicking, he tried to tear at it, to think of some way to break her concentration, but it was too late. He spun again, and it spun with him the whole way.

It swiftly enveloped his head, and then shut completely, and there was no outside air. He tried to force Coco to headbang against the ground, to simply smash her skull, but each hit she made landed on a plush cushion.

Eventually, breathing harder, sweating and overall woozy, he gave up. “F-｢Feel Good Inc｣...”

The Stand retracted, and Coco found herself able to stand up again. She did so, emerging from the fabric above her, which began to fray immediately without her touch. She made her way over to the stallion, hovering an inch off the ground under her pseudo-telekinesis, and she took a deep breath.

“｢SOMETHING FOR NOTHING｣!” she cried out, and the Stand was next to her, already lashing out with its hooves. Its kicks careened him through the plate-glass window of consciousness, and only with him out for the count did she let her creations fully diminish.

Then, for a minute, she stood looking down at his prone form. Sighing at herself, she increased her concentration and wrapped him in a sheet she could levitate.

Then, she went back towards Ponyville, in the direction of her wards.

* * *

...

No, Scootaloo knew in her gut that something wasn’t right. What was it…?

The noise. Not the sound getting louder behind them, which was different than before, not swelling up to full volume like earlier. The sound of Diamond crying.

It wasn’t that.

Scootaloo opened her eyes and read her expression. Relaxed, open-eyed, even smug.

Diamond Tiara was looking at the disintegrating band on her forehead and laughing as her hooves began to kick around. No fear or despair existed in her features!

“What? What is it?!” she asked, and then as the music grew quieter and quieter, she realized. Then she couldn’t help but snort herself. Was it really that stupid?

As ｢Misery Business｣ let up, she let the dance carry her away.

And the two fillies celebrated, fervently and honestly, the gradual deactivation of a Stand.

Throughout the house, the music died down. The legs roving on their way suddenly wobbled, and then retracted like snails to electric fences. The house’s magic was disrupted, its Stand powers diminishing, if only temporarily.

The two took their opportunity, moving whatever hooves they had available toward the door. Scootaloo slid both of them along, and Diamond used her Stand to pull at it. This time, it opened with a minimum of complaint.

Then, before their good luck could run out, Scootaloo froze the door in place and leapt out into the grass. Diamond followed her close behind, the last of the bands now truly gone. The two rolled into the grass, still pirouetting, but in a good mood despite their exhaustion.

Then, the disease disappeared from them, and the world seemed to clear as they were capable of stillness once again.

After a while sitting in the grass, missing their sleeping bags and the night sky, Scootaloo smile and said, “That was a pretty smart move back there.” She said it only because she felt somepony needed to.

Diamond smiled herself. “Well, without you, I never would’ve seen that chance.”

Scootaloo nodded, mostly to herself. It felt good to be an instrumental part in saving somepony’s life, she really had to admit it. And maybe, if she could admit that, then she could also admit that Diamond Tiara could have something noble and self-sacrificing in her after all.

Maybe.

When Coco arrived, with Cheese in tow, they’d all gotten a good walk further away from Canterlot. Removing the foals, still sleeping, was another task altogether, but accomplished succintly and simply.

Behind them all, for a few minutes at least, the house sat peaceably.

* * *

Deep in the Royal Archives, a single student still studied, searching like a lighthouse in long sweeping motions as she rambled down the shelves. She would run, but that would be loud, and she was trying to avoid that more than anything.

So much had happened recently that she hadn’t been able to document, analyze, graph, report. She was an important member of unicorn academia, a prodigy for her age to be sure, and yet this had thrown her completely for a loop!

Star-Swirl would’ve known how to react to all of this. But then again, Sombra and Star-Swirl were contemporaries, so he probably had a better sense of the tyrant’s history. Deep time had already conspired to take away most of that sort of information, and despite her attempts to learn Pony Latin, Griffon Latin and even the much-simplified Dragon Latin, she was still stuck with the same run-of-the-mill vocabularies as all of the other day-to-day metropolitan ponies.

But, but! There! She saw what she was looking for, finally, recognizing it from the long-ago week spent reading the table of contents of every unforbidden book in the Archives. It was bound in black, but the spine was special, fluctuating in and out with ruffled edges like some kind of deep-ocean worm.

She looked at the gold-embossed font of the cover, which had no art on it. This was a serious book, with a serious three-line title like Relic Hoarder's An Esotericist’s Guidebook to Those Things Which Must Never Be Bargained For or Won. She cracked it open, flipping fussily and looking to reawaken old memories.

There! She found it, overshot it, cut back a sheaf of pages to find it again. One of the only illustratiions, an odd-looking piece of jewelry forged in the same colors as the dark King himself. An artifact of incredible power, without which he could never be complete.

“The Alicorn Amulet,” Moondancer read aloud, and shuddered.

｢To Be Continued｣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yioWJhUJA [Rush - Something for Nothing]

Stand Name: Feel Good Inc
User: Cheese Sandwich
Stats
Power: E
Speed: D
Range: A
Durability: E
Precision: D -> B
Potential: D
Abilities: A microscopic disease which temporarily invigorates its carriers and causes dancing mania. The disease spreads through the air or by touch, but is susceptible to antibiotics, the immune system, and other diseases. Concentrated in a small area, it becomes more resistant, and can contaminate a particular surface or pony. The dancing can be optionally controlled by the user, and ends only when the infected lose consciousness or the Stand is withdrawn.

Stand Name: All Tomorrow’s Parties
User: 176 Lemongrass Ct, West Mustangia
Stats
Power: E
Speed: C
Range: C
Durability: A
Precision: E
Potential: E
Abilities: A Stand born of the memories of joy within the house, allowing it to travel the landscape. Inside its walls, any emotionally powerful event becomes a celebration. Ponies who lose consciousness inside the house can only awaken outside of its walls.