“Twilight!” Cadance greeted her sister in law, “It’s so great to see you again!”
Both alicorns approached each other and then playfully sang their little routine, ending up with the usual little shake. Then, Cadance dismissed the guards to allow them both to talk privately.
“So, what brought you here? A new adventure? Can I come with you for this one?”
Twilight laughed. She had almost forgotten how prone to action Cadance could be.
“I’m sorry.” She replied. “I fear there is nothing going on in Ponyville just as in the crystal empire. No, I came because, well… it’s kind of difficult to say. I mean, it’s very personal and I’m a bit ashamed to bother you with such thing. It’s kind of ridiculous when you think about it…”
Cadance smiled and put her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder.
“Would it, by any chance, be about a stallion?”
“No, yes, I mean I don’t really know…”
“You’re in love!” Cadance exulted and kept repeating while jumping around the room. “You’re in love. You’re in love. Twilight has a special somepony.”
“Stop it! It’s not like that. Well, it is exactly like that, but… you know what I mean.”
Cadance stopped her teasing and came back to comfort Twilight.
“Please excuse my behavior. I do not want to make you feel bad. I just wanted to release the tension. Ponies think love is something that must be taken very seriously and they forget to smile and become ashamed of their own feelings.”
Twilight smiled. She was feeling a bit better. Those were the kind of words she had wanted to hear without even knowing it. Suddenly, being in love felt like a very simple matter.
“Do not worry.” Cadance said. “I know exactly what to do in such circumstances.”
A grin had appeared on her face and for a moment, probably due to a reflection of the outside light, her eyes had turned sort of green.
“Really?” Twilight replied. “That’s great! So what, should I do? Do I go speak to him?”
But Cadance interrupted her by putting her hoof on her mouth. She went to a closet and grabbed a red robe with white fluffy trims that she put on, then came back to Twilight.
“First, you will tell me the name of the one you love.”
For a second, but a second only, Twilight saw two magical violet flames coming out from Cadance’s eyes. The illusion, of course, didn’t last.
“His name if Flash Sentry. He is one of your palace’s guards.”
Cadance’s grin widened. And illusion or not, her eyes were definitely green.
“One last thing before I solve this situation: does he love you too?”
That question had been bugging Twilight since so long. She remembered the first time she had bumped into him and how gently he had been looking at her. Still, that didn’t mean he was in love. Or her whole adventure in the human world, and how he had accepted to dance with her, but still, she didn’t know if it meant he was in love with her. Or the second time she had bumped into him in the palace, and he had just walked away. How does one know if somepony else is in love?
She had no idea.
“Well…” Twilight began.
The rest of her sentence got covered by a huge explosion that blew a huge hole in the wall and a series of smaller explosions that filled the room with smoke.
Twilight felt a hoof grabbing her own and a voice said:
“Come with me if you want to love.”
Twilight never really decided whether she would follow that new pony of not. She got pulled away through the hole in the wall and found herself in a free fall on the outside, before bumping into the surface of the crystal palace and sliding on its surface at an ever increasing speed.
She saw a pony on her right, probably the one who had grabbed her, but also another one on her left.
“What are you waiting to shoot the zipline? We are going to crash!” yelled one of the two ponies.
“Because the damn thing doesn’t work, that’s why. I told you it was a bad idea!” The other one responded.
“I can’t believe this! Just give it to me.”
Twilight saw one of the ponies throwing some sort of machine to the other one, but kept being preoccupied by the ground that was approaching way too fast in her opinion.
“There!” shouted the first pony.
Both ponies suddenly grabbed onto Twilight and the three of them escaped the surface of the crystal palace to fly through the air on a zipline, only to crash onto and into some building in the city.
Twilight emerged from the wreckage and the dust. She quickly heard a pony sarcastically laugh near her.
“Ah ah ah… “come with me if you want to love”… You seriously couldn’t think of anything better?”
“Oh give me a break!”
Twilight saw them emerge from the wreckage too, yell at each other a bit and suddenly grabbing her once again and dragging her through the streets of the city, left, right, left, then left again, to finish into some basement in which the three mares disappeared.
Only then did the running stopped and Twilight could take a good look at the two other mares who had… kidnapped her for lack of a better word.
“Excuse me, but… would you mind explaining to me what is happening here?” Twilight asked.
“I’m so sorry Twilight.” one of the ponies replied to her. “But my friend here has simply decided to be paranoid and we are all paying the price…”
“Lyra!” the other pony shouted. “I am not being paranoid. Aren’t you supposed to support me?”
“And what did I just do? If I remember correctly, I was the one who helped you break into the crystal palace and kidnap my childhood friend…”
“Lyra?” Twilight asked.
She looked at the mare, but she looked nothing like her old friend. And Twilight had made sure to memorize photographs from her childhood for exactly such a situation.
“Oh right.” The mare who was naming herself Lyra said. “Wait just a second Twilight.”
And then both mares opened their pony costumes and came out of them, revealing their true identities, one of them being the Lyra Twilight could now recognize.
“Special pony suits.” The other mare said. “Only special agents from the former royal undercover specialists unit have access to them. It can be pretty surprising, I know.”
Twilight wasn’t so surprised. She had already seen one of her friend use such a suit, which seemed weird for some reason.
“Sorry Twilight.” Lyra said. “That’s Bon Bon, she is my best friend in the world and the reason you are here. Also, she likes to show off.”
“I do not show off!” Bon Bon complained back before turning to Twilight. “But the important thing is, your majesty, that we just saved you. We wouldn’t have had too if you had gone directly to Flash Sentry as I had told you to, so we weren’t quite prepared and have had to improvise.”
Twilight looked at the two mares and still couldn’t believe her eyes. She had to accept the fact she was in a basement. She had to accept the fact those two mares had dragged her there against her will and that one of those mares was one of her childhood’s friends and the other was… she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be.
“Let me present myself your majesty.” Bon Bon said. “Special agent Sweetie Drops, at your service.”
Alright. So the other mare was a special agent. It still wasn’t making any sense for Twilight. But at least it had become pretty clear she wasn’t under any threat of any sort. Those two were probably just fooling around in some crazy scheme of the sort that only ponies can come up with.
“Pleased to meet you.” Twilight finally replied. “I’m Twilight Sparkle. I imagine Lyra has told you about me. So now that we all know each other, could you, please, tell me why you brought me here?”
Lyra sighed and went upstairs, telling that she wanted to prepare some teas and cookies to apologize.
“We are the Resistance!” Sweetie Drops triumphantly explained.
“The Resistance?” Twilight asked, raising her right eyebrow to heights she would have never guessed possible.
“We are an organization dedicated to stopping the tyrannical rule of princess Mi Amore Cadenza, also known as princess Cadance. We have discovered her plans to rid Equestria of love and we have made a vow to thwart them or die trying.”
How Twilight found the strength not to burst out laughing, she would never know, but it was hard.
“So you are saying that Cadance is evil and wants to destroy… love itself.” She giggled.
“It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?” Lyra rhetorically asked, coming back with the tea and cookies. “But here we are and Bon Bon is convinced there is a conspiracy going on, so she decided to form the Resistance and like the stupid mare I am, I accepted to follow her in this stupid adventure.”
“And how many of you are there in this Resistance organization?” Twilight asked.
Lyra laughed and answered:
“You are looking at the whole organization. Some sugar with your tea?”
“The conspiracy is real!” Bon Bon shouted. “I have an eyewitness in the palace. He saw the princess, Cadance that is, take the love out of several ponies. He told me everything and asked for my help.”
“Sure, of course.” Lyra responded, clearly used to ignore those remarks from her friend.
“Are you calling me a liar?” Bon Bon asked, grabbing Lyra and almost pressing her muzzle against hers out of anger.
“And why would I do that?” Lyra asked, caressing Bon Bon’s mane to tease her and show she wasn’t afraid. “So that you would show how childish you can be? I guess I succeeded.”
“Are you sure you two are friends?” Twilight asked.
The two mares looked at Twilight, and then at each other, only to have their faces turn red as tomatoes and quickly create distance between them.
“Of course. Lyra is my best friend. We just happen to fight from times to times, nothing serious.”
“Bon Bon is my best friend. She can be very frustrating, but I will always be her friend.”
Twilight would have pressed the issue further, but the three mares had to stop as they heard noise coming from upstairs.
And even more, Twilight recognized, in the middle of that noise, the voices of two ponies she knew pretty well.
One was nopony else but her big brother, Shining Armor.
And the other one was Flash Sentry.