//------------------------------// // 9 - The Prelude // Story: The Lost Connection // by A bag of plums //------------------------------// “Well, this is it,” the other Celestia said as she flipped a pancake over the stove. “The Valentine’s Day dance is tonight. I’m thrilled.” “Did you ask anyone to the dance?” Celestia asked her doppelganger. Where there had been a clawed, blackened hand the previous night was now back to its normal skin color, with neatly trimmed nails. “Pft, no. I have to be prepared for my queen’s arrival.” “Just make sure you keep my students and staff safe,” Celestia reminded her. “I can’t have them injured. Please, just promise that to me.” “I don’t make promises that I can’t keep,” the other Celestia said, pouring more batter into the pan. “Come on, what do I have to do to get you to follow that?” Celestia balled her hands. “If my students were harmed during this dance… I-I can’t… What good will I be as their principal?” “Well it’s not like I’m orchestrating a shooting.” The other Celestia pointed out. “All I need is their delicious love energy to lure my queen in. They shouldn’t be in harm’s way at all.” “Al-alright…” Celestia leaned back. “I’m sorry. I’m just afraid of the possibilities.” “That being said, I still can’t promise you they’ll be unharmed…” Celestia’s doppelganger angled her head back and breathed in deep. “I have a strange feeling about tonight. Something will happen at the dance, and I hope it’s my queen. But if not… my intuition is never wrong, Celestia. Something will happen tonight. I just don’t know what.” “Something will happen?” Celestia tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?” “It’s as if the strings of fate have all been leading up to this night. All I can say is that something will happen this night at the dance, but I can’t tell you more than that.” “That’s some intuition you have there.” “It’s intuition, not fortune telling,” the other Celestia protested. “Besides. One way or another, after tonight, I will either be doomed or free, so that’s something.” “So if you’re free, does that mean we’re free too? Pierce and I.” “Hmm…” The other Celestia mused as she dribbled some maple syrup on a plate of pancakes. “I honestly don’t know…” “Why not?” Celestia watched the syrup slowly spread across the pancakes. “If you find your sister, um, queen, you won’t need me here anymore, would you? Nor would you need Pierce’s help.” “It’s not just a matter of needing you around or not,” the other Celestia said, bringing both plates to the table. “It’s a matter of both of you knowing too much. Pierce especially. If he can hack my possessions back into my grasp, then there’s always the chance he might attempt something stupid like taking them away from me, or revealing my true identity. Now I’m quite sure you wouldn’t be so foolish as to try blabbing, but one can never be quite too certain, eh?” “What?” Celestia was taken aback. “But you said you’d let us both go when you’re done! You lied?” “I don’t recall saying that I’d let you both go.” The other Celestia stared into Celestia’s eyes, and she could see the madness contained within. “Only that I might, might, not kill Pierce once this is all over. And it all hangs on tonight. You, me, him, our fates will be determined on whether my queen appears this night.” Celestia couldn’t keep her mouth from dropping open and staying open. Everything she heard from her captor right now was too much for her mind to take in. She should’ve known from the start that there was no way this person would ever let her go. That’s why she told her about her life and all. You could give all the secrets you wanted to someone if you knew they were never going to be able to tell anyone. “As for you, I’ve already thought of a solution for that. You see, I’ve brewed up an amnesiac that will make you forget… the past three weeks or so. I have no intention of replacing you forever, so I’ll just return you to your school, with you none the wiser.” “But what about Pierce? Can’t you just do that to him as well?” “I could, but I won’t. Not yet, anyway. His fate hangs in the balance of tonight.” Celestia looked down at her hands. “I thought I was getting somewhere with you, you know? You didn’t seem like a bad person. Please. No one has to die. Not you, not him.” “I told you I’ll think about it,” the other Celestia repeated sternly. “Drop it. I’m already working at my limit here. I don’t have time for all this.” Celestia looked away, unsure of what she could say to fight for their lives. “Ah… the only thing that would make tonight better is if I could meet them at the same time. I wonder if my sister will bring them along?” “Who’s them?” “The rest of my family. Three young girls with outstanding voices and vision. I left them with my queen when… when we split up. I suppose she has them now.” “Are they-are they your daughters?” Celestia asked. “Or perhaps your queen’s daughters? I didn’t know you had any kids.” “They’re not related to me by blood, but through circumstance. We met over a thousand years ago and have since then been together. Look, I’ll show you a picture.” The other Celestia reached into her jacket pocket and drew out an old, black and white photograph. It was rumpled, as if it had been folded and unfolded many times, but there, captured by the camera, were three teenage girls, one with poofy hair, one with twin tails, and one with a ponytail. They were all wearing late renaissance dresses, and were smiling or smirking at the camera with various degrees of smugness. Celestia instantly recognized their faces. In fact, they had tried to take over CHS once before and if it were not for Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer and the others, they might have succeeded. The picture she was looking at was a picture of the sirens, Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze and Sonata Dusk. “No way, these are the girls?” Celestia asked her captor. “Why, do you know something about them?” the other Celestia asked curiously. “N-No…” Celestia said. This piece of information might come in useful later, so she tucked it away in the corner of her mind. The principal tried her best to think of other things, not wanting to let her doppelganger find out she was hiding something through her emotions. Celestia calmed herself and thought about the pancakes on the table. Even if she had been upset about their conversation, her body couldn’t deny that it was hungry. Stabbing her fork into one of the pancakes, Celestia took a bite out of it and tried to fill her mind with the taste instead. “I see you’ve taken a liking to your food.” The other Celestia sat down and rested her head on her hands. “What can I say.” Celestia shrugged. “You can cook.” “That I can, Celestia,” her doppelganger smirked. “It’s with the experience. It comes to you when your sister simply fails at it.” “You’ve told me a lot about your sister and queen,” Celestia said with a half-full mouth. “But what about these girls? You said they’re daughters by circumstance? How did that come to be?” “We met a little over a thousand years ago in some village in Maretania, just a little before the start of what you call the Middle Ages. The queen wanted to know what was disrupting the flow of positive energy in that place. So I went there and found those three little rascals using their magic and stirring up trouble. We had a bit of a scuffle, but in the end I decided to take them back to the queen, and we decided it would be better if we worked together rather than against each other.” The other Celestia chewed a bit of pancake before continuing, “Changelings feed off positive energy. Sirens feed off negative energy. You’d think that would make us natural enemies, but working together has proven far more prosperous than if we went separately. Of course, when the queen and I split up, they went with her rather than with me.” “So they were closer to your queen than to you?” Celestia was curious as to what happened. “The queen is the queen. It was their duty to go with her rather than with me.” “You didn’t care if they didn’t want to go with you?” “My… My preferences didn’t matter. Two of them prefer being with the queen anyway.” “How about the third?” The other Celestia seemed to have a slight motion in her eyes and quickly looked away. “She wanted to come with me. I told her… I told her not to. She and her sisters were meant to be together. I didn’t want to ruin their relationship too.” “That mustn’t have been easy.” Celestia understood having to let someone go down their own path. She had to send Luna away all those years ago. “No. It wasn’t. But if the queen shows tonight, I’ll be able to see them all again. Which is why I hope the advertisements have reached her. That Pierce better have done his job properly… or I’ll have his head on a plate.” “I’m sure he has.” Celestia tried to defend him again. “He’s never performed badly in his work at CHS, with the exception of his attitude and, um, problems. I’m sure he did his best of what you asked him.” The other Celestia snorted. “Yeah. Sure. We’ll find out tonight, won’t we?” Celestia folded her arms and took a deep breath. Her doppelganger was right. Everything hinged on the Valentine’s Day dance tonight. Her freedom, Pierce’s life, her captor’s chance to see her sister and the sirens once again… There was nothing Principal Celestia could do but hope everything went well. If Pierce had indeed circulated enough adverts on the dance around to the other cities as well, then there was definitely a high chance that her doppelganger’s queen would show up. Right? Celestia thought to herself. There was no way things wouldn’t go the way they were planned to go. The only problem she could see was that the queen was no longer alive. If that were the case, then all three of their lives were likely done for. Celestia hoped that she was still out there somewhere. “We will,” Celestia nodded after a long moment of silence. “I wish you all the best and that you reunite with your queen once more.” Then another question surfaced in her mind. An important one. “What will you do once you find her again?” “Ask for forgiveness for leaving her, and hopefully be re-instated as reaper. The act of meeting her will most likely stop my queen evolution, and with that out of the way, I’ll be able to resume my duties once more,” the other Celestia sighed. “I have much to answer for.” “You’re not going back to killing are you?” The other Celestia shrugged. “Depends on what the queen wants. I’m just her hands and feet.” Celestia sighed. She held onto the tiny sliver of hope that perhaps her queen had changed, if she were still around. She couldn’t possibly have survived this long if she killed a lot of people. Maybe she’d learnt to bunker down and play it safe after all these years. It would explain why her doppelganger had failed to find her all this time. “Well…” the other Celestia looked at her watch. “I really should be getting home to get ready. Don’t want to be going to the dance not all fancy and stuff, right?” The Canterlot High principal could only sit back and nod. There was nothing she could do but hope for the best. If it all went well, she would have nothing to worry about. Her doppelganger picked up her things and opened the front door. “Whatever happens after this, Celestia, know that I have cherished your company here. I’ll be seeing you later with the news.” And then she was gone, closing the door and locking it behind her.