The Strange and Secret Life of Lumen Sky

Chapter 6- The Amphitheater

-Twilight-

      After we got back into the control room, Lumen started walking everypony through how to run their tests while monitoring the accelerator at the same time. After he had finished running Applejack though her duties when we were all greeted with a large tremor.

"What the hey was that?" We all flocked to the window and watched the beam in the accelerator shift a little.

"I don't know but what ever it was there is something wrong." He ran over to his station and started the read off of the data. His face was neutral so I couldn't tell if anything was wrong even when he started running us through how to shut the accelerator down.

"What time is it?" I looked over at him.

" It's, " he looked over at the clock on the dashboard, " oh wow. It's almost five o'clock." I almost instantly looked over to where Luna was standing, relieved that she had gone outside to make way for the sun.

"I'm hungry. Who wants pancakes?" Pinkie said as she hopped towards the door.

"Sure. Let's go get something to eat." Dash followed and we had no choice to go to the dining room while Pinkie was in the kitchen cooking. Lumen had a huge kitchen that resembled that of a large scale bakery. When she had finished we were greeted by a large stack of pancakes and we all started eating. We were all a little cautious because the last time we had pancakes made by Pinkie was a little... traumatic. How one could bake something that big into a pancake, I will never know, be we all thoroughly chewed our food.

"Why are you eating like that?" I had noticed how Lumen was starting to rip his pancakes apart and eat them in an unusual manner.

"Oh. My teeth hurt because I had my braces adjusted a few days ago. Since a few of my teeth are a little offset they bent my wire in two places so they will move. The only problem is how I end up in a decent amount of pain." We all just looked at him and almost wondered the same thing.

"Well, have you taken any pain killers?"

"Sometimes. My teeth will hurt a little when I am not eating but a majority is when I am eating. Don't worry, they only hurt a little as long as I am not biting anything with them." I could see him trying not to sound all "woe is me" in front of us. Now that the social ice was broken we started asking him questions. He had determined that he had lived in Canterlot when he went to school. He had apparently started his education at one of the public schools and then had been asked to come to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. He had passed his entrance exam with a few hiccups but nothing major. He said he vaguely remembered having me in a few of his classes but he never talked to me, even when we were in the library. He was actually younger than me by two years but still had me in a few of his classes when he was first starting out at the school like arithmetic and science. After that he can not remember me except the very big things I did after I left the school, but after he left the school he opened his shop and started working on his lab.

"Wow. When you lived in Canterlot did you live with your parents?" Fluttershy was sitting there looking across the table at him.

"Umm... well... errrr..."

"Oh darling. He has been asked enough questions."

"Oh, okay." She shrunk back.

"Here let me get those for you." He got up and started whisking dishes into the kitchen where I am sure he was cleaning them after he left.

"I still find him strange. There is something... off about him."

"Why do you think so?" I said, waiting for him to come out of the kitchen.

"He just acts... different."

"Oh that is probably just because he doesn't socialize as much as we do." Rarity was looking around the very bleak dinning room.

"I dunno, but there is something that he ain't tellin' us." Applejack was leaning back in her chair.

"Wait, why is the kitchen so quiet." We all listened and sure enough, the kitchen was silent.

"Suspicious, very suspicious." Luna had spoken for the first time all night.

"Let me go check on him." I got up and went into the kitchen and nopony there.

"He's not in here," I called. That was when they all came in and we saw that the back door was just barely ajar. We all looked at each other and I pushed the door open and we walked into a hallway. We heard noises coming from a doorway a little way down. We all walked in and the room was painted black, had huge vaulted ceilings, a few rows of seats, and a stage where Lumen sat staring at a grand piano. Then he started playing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgFNf4nLGNk]

      As more instruments joined they emerged from the darkness enveloped in his magic he sang and his voice rang though everypony in the room. We stood there and when he started the verse about the moon, Luna winced. After that we stood there and listened until he had finished.

[song: end]

Lumen sat back in his bench and stare at the piano.

"Yay! Play something else!" Pinkie shouted and Lumen jumped out of his chair and looked over in horror as we all walked up to the stage.

"W-what are you doing here?!" He was still standing behind the bench as he watched us.

"Looking for you of course silly!" Pinkie walked up to the stage and put her forelegs on the wooden surface.

"Why didn't you tell us about this?" I took a step forwards.

"Because, I was embarrassed. When I was still at the public school my peers gave me a hard time because I had showed them what I could do, music wide. I took it too hard and this is what happened. I lied, I haven't been completely honest with any of you." He walked to the edge of the stage and sat down with his hind legs hanging off. "You may want to take a seat." After we all had sat down he started.

"I may start with what I know, I am an orphan." Rarity gasped and we all glared at her. "I lived in an orphanage almost my entire life and knew almost nothing about everything outside its walls and boundaries. I had no friends because I knew nothing towards making any. They though I was weird because I was talking to the adults more than I was to anypony else my age." His voice faltered. "I was considered an outcast. I also had one of the strangest cutie marks. None of my caretakers or teachers knew what it meant. I-I'm also not who I say I am. My name is Night, Night Sky. I was called Lumen by all the other fillies and colts as part of a gag after the whole music fiasco and it stuck. I never left it because it was the only name I was noticed for. I really have no idea where it came from but it may have something to do with my choice of reading." He stopped and sighed. "That's everything." We all just looked at each other. I decided to break the ice again.

"Did you write that song?"

"No, an author by the name of Mandopony wrote it. He is one of the ponies that I look up to. I can make music but I can't write it very well."

"Cool, how many instruments can you play?"

"Almost anything in a normal orchestra. Individually, I really stink at brass instruemts, they make my lips swell and sometimes bleed. Anything else I enjoy playing."

"Woah. Do you know of any really cool songs?" Dash was leaning really far back in her chair.

"You have no idea how many songs I know." With that he started playing songs we might have heard of once or twice. Many of which required almost every instrument he had on stage behind the huge curtain. Most of the time he would switch between playing different instruments and others he would just stand up in front of the assembly and conducted them with a white stained baton. When he was done he closed the curtain and led us back to the hall.

"Well then, after that little thing, let's go see the thing I am most proud of." He led us back down the hall and all the way down to the Jet Propulsion and Flight Center.