• Published 31st May 2013
  • 12,075 Views, 786 Comments

Sugarfree - Wade



Something is very, very wrong with Equestria's sugar. Ponies with sugary diets have been sleepwalking, sleepeating, and sleep-staging a Canterlot coup d'etat. It falls to the city's most devoted insomniacs to find out why. (Joelestia)

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The Royal Snogging

The Royal Snogging
• • • •

Princess Luna let out an exasperated snort as she trotted down the cavernous hallway adjacent to the throne room, shaking bits of confetti and glitter from her frazzled mane. By the stars, she was tired. The night had been long, and it had been loud, and it had been thoroughly exhausting. And not in the fun way.

Her ears twitched at the echoing rancor of Oni’s birthday celebration, swiveling one way, then the other, as if trying to escape the unrelenting walla that coursed through the windows and the open ceiling above. Regal and deliberate, Luna strode forth, her head held high, her lips pursed tight, and her eyes ever-so-gently lain shut. Any passing noblemare or guardpony would be hard-pressed to find a single betraying hint that their princess was at all affected by the thundering commotion that flooded the air around her. Indeed, few knew what Princess Luna looked like when she was anxious, or uncomfortable, or strained. To anypony’s recollection, three years after her return, it had not happened yet. Perhaps she never felt that way. Perhaps their new, slightly creepy co-ruler didn’t feel, period. It was anypony’s guess. They certainly weren’t going to ask her.

Luna rounded the corner with a light flick of the mane, starting down the moonlit passage to the royal bedchambers. Several dozen hooffalls in, her eyes crept open, and she slowed. She took a slight, subtle look over her shoulder, then glanced about about the empty hallway, before silently drawing to a stop.

With a sigh, her face fell, and her side leaned against the wall. She lowered her head, letting her twinkling celestial mane fall around her face, enveloping the mare in a dark, empty world of shimmering stars. She could feel her heart beating out of her chest, her body weak with anxious fatigue. At last, in here, she had silence. At last she was alone. She pulled in a deep, calming breath, and felt herself relax.

Luna was never one for parties. The endless performance of polite conversation, the constant expectation of manner and poise, the bothersome, burdensome attention. The strange way in which silence seemed a sordid disrespect. She blinked, sensing a subtle drift in the stars about her. Drunk already. One glass seemed to fade into the other as she skirted conversation with every strategic sip. The wine helped loosen the tight knot that wound about her chest, but its comfort was an empty, artificial thing. She was a thousand years removed from every living soul in Equestria. No amount of loosening up was going to change the fact that she could not even begin to relate to them, on seemingly any level. It was like she was from another planet.

The night had been spent passively humoring Oni as he trolloped about the courtyard bloc party, ‘twerking’ with mortifying immodesty to the shrilling caterwaul of a feral, bespeckled songstress. Her only distraction from the pounding noise had been bouts of strained, overforward conversation put forth by scores of inebriated ponies gyrating around their table. She had been… surprised, to say the least, to find her subjects so very open with her all of the sudden. Luna was quite sure she had not been prior engaged in a single conversation with her ponies since her return. Nothing unrelated to the crown, at the least. A flutter or two perhaps with her new, delightfully unrefined moori hoofmaiden, but nary an unexpected word besides. The question of the night had been, consistently, repeatedly, 'what it was like on the moon?' As if a thousand years on a distant rock with an ancient dragon god could be summarized in a single response. “It was rather odd,” was all that had come to mind.

Three years it had been, since her return, and still she found herself regularly baffled by their odd ambitions and their absurd problems, by the arbitrary concerns they drew from a long history she only understood in the abstract. She found herself scrambling to cobble together some context for every tiny little thing they said, or did, or asked of her. She felt like a foal, wholly and hopelessly ignorant of the ways and workings of the world. It was spectacularly frustrating. She had not felt this out of her element since she and her sister had first taken the unified races under their wing, in the years of confusion following Discord’s defeat. She was overwhelmed, and underprepared, and… and if she was honest… in the most oddly marvelous way... hopelessly enthralled.

There was a brilliant wonder in it, she had found. A youth, a newness, a riveting cascade of discovery. Everything old was new again, as the saying went. New foods, new cities, new songs, and most blessed of all, a thousand-year backlog of freshly-penned books. A seemingly infinite number of thoughts and ideas and worlds stretched before her, waiting to be plunged into with foal-like delight.

Every night, and every morning, and every adoring moment between, Luna had voraciously devoured every tome and textbook she could get her hooves on. Locomotives! Transmutation! Audio recording! Weather control! Like a filly in a candy store, Luna’s appetite was insatiable, her mind always at work ruminating over the lives and the loves and the passions of her little ponies. Every little factoid was a piece of the dizzying puzzle that was the modern, and the now. A window through which she might see the world as they did.

It was work, certainly. It was an immense, exhausting amount of work. But it was not without its delights.

The novels — the fiction and the fantasy and the scandalous romance and deliciously absurd ‘science fiction’ — these were hearts and the souls of her ponies. Luna absolutely adored such stories. Unlike her studies into history or magical science, each novel could be savored, like the choicest cut of Molochi moon dust. She could take her time, nibble teensy, dainty little bites, and truly enjoy every last wonderful word. A good book was to be danced about the tongue, to be prodded and pulled and chewed into sets and phrases that stuck in your mind like the warm finish of a good wine. Her room, her library, was a place she delighted to return to every morning. It had been the greatest gift her sister had ever given her.

Luna closed her eyes as strangely distant memories began popping into place, coloring an odd emptiness within she only now began to notice. There was a curious lightness in her right eye, and in a blink, she could recall, with crystal clarity, the Elements casting Oni’s magic from her body, three years ago. Twilight Sparkle, and… and Pinkie Pie, and fair Applejack, and all the others. Her face tensed as she strained at the memory. There had been a blast of… heaviness, of seemingly empty weight, and then, immense loss. Oni’s magic, his power, driven apart, leaving her as frail and fragile as a foal. Her mind had became clear, and sharp, for the first time in centuries. In her sister’s embrace she had felt, quite powerfully, love, once more. Complete, unconditional love.

Tia had embraced her with such deep certainty. She had never once doubted they would become sisters again. Luna rose her head, looking to the oaken bedroom door before her. In this vast, sunning new city of Canterlot, her sister had built her a bedroom within a library. A silent oasis, stocked to the brim with every last book she could ever want. Everything new, everything exciting or fascinating or heartwarming, or some blessed combination of the three. When she had first walked through that doorway, on that very first day, Tia’s favorite novel of the last thousand years had sat, wrapped in paper, on her desk. The Sweetest Sound. For three years Luna had savored every blessed page. She neared its end only now.

Luna blinked. Tia. Of course, she should just talk to Tia. Where… where had…? She felt a dull, heavy warmth around her right eye, and the thought seemed to just… end. It was the oddest sensation. It was as if she passed over it, or through it, leaving the thought far behind. One moment, she would have it. She and her sister, embracing in the ruins of their old home. Then, like awakening from a dream, it became abstract, then it became nothing. It... must’ve been idle fantasy. She must’ve been mistaken. Tia was… gone. Defeated. Vanquished. Banished to the sun, for a thousand years. Just as she and Oni had planned, in those earlier, angrier years on the moon.

Without a thought, she slid a glass horseshoe to the toe of her forehoof and poised herself to spider-fling the ornate glassware on top of the bureau, as she had every morning. A flash of yellow caught her attention, halting her in place. Two unicorns, laying on her bed, side by side, reading a book. She gawked in surprise for a moment, rather disbelieving her eyes. Neither were moori, meaning neither were guards, or servants. They were just... two unicorns, off the street.

Luna turned back to the doorway, taking notice, for the first time, of the almost imperceptible scorchmarking of a magic circle along the ground. Such a spell was awfully advanced, and certainly not well-known beyond the palace staff. She returned her gaze to the bed, catching the side of the stallion’s face in the white-pink moonlight. Her heart stirred as a pang of vague familiarity crystallized into certainty. By the stars, it was him. The roguish purveyor of the local dining tavern, whose backside she had so callously begobbled not but a fortnight hence.

A slight blush settled across Luna’s muzzle as she eyed the red arc of teethmarks peppering the oblivious baker’s tight rear. Luna was not one to hide her affections, certainly, but something feral, and foalish, and oddly powerful, had taken hold of her that night. Perhaps it had been the fever, or the stresses of the crown. More likely, it had been the overwhelming urging of a raw, carnal lust. She could not deny that she felt such desire for the stallion.

Indeed, it had been a mixture of curiosity and outright guilt that had led her into his dreams, the night following the stallion’s Royal Snogging. She had found him paralyzed before a strange, surreal nightmare of her wicked sister, the Tyrant Celestia, and had freed him of the imagined tormentor. Luna well knew that he would likely awake to dismiss her presence as the muddling of an odd dream, but it was enough for Luna that the baker had passed through his fear, and his despair, into a softer, warmer realm that night.

And how warm it had been.

For longer than she should have, Luna had stayed, and watched as his dreams blossomed into the most delightfully absurd fantasy. She half believed it to be but riotous fancy before things took a most... erotic turn, in an odd, fun little scenario involving a promiscuous vision of herself, and the unkempt, sleep-starved white mare that now lay beside him. The memory of that fantasy had held fresh in Luna’s mind, throughout the day, and throughout the party, in the most doggedly tantalizing way. She had escaped to it often, as Oni’s exhausting, unremitting birthday celebration bore on.

The princess smiled, drawing her eye across the stallion’s broad backside, along the gentle hints of muscle that gripped around his shoulders and slightly bulged from his legs. There was a thin, loose strip of bandaging around the top of his hind leg. Like a bow tied around a present, waiting to be pulled free. She could not fathom why she had not pursued this delicious specimen previous. The whole unkempt streetpony look was doing it for her.

Holding a hoof to her mouth, she smiled, and wondered. Had he journeyed to his princess’ bedchambers this night, with his delicate companion in tow, in a show of presentation? It was a powerfully bold gesture. Perhaps he had remembered her presence, in his dreams. Perhaps he desired to enjoy her company once more.

"My my, what have we here?"

The scruffy stallion tensed up as she drew closer, his wide eyes locking forward with an adorably rigid skittishness. She felt a devious stir, at the sight. Still so nervous before his princess. There was an air of vulnerability to the baker she utterly adored — it wasn't the practiced subservience she saw with many of her guards, it was a true and unmetered fear of her power. There was most certainly a part of her that quite appreciated a healthy respect of one’s goddess. It felt… quite pleasing.

“The handsome little baker.”

Slowly and deliberately, Princess Luna rounded the side of the bed, never once taking her eyes from the stallion before her. There were a thousand and one things she might order of her subject, if he wished to play this game. He had given himself to her, laid himself bare across her bed in bold presentation. She decided to start slow, and small, and work her way up to the juicier indulgences. There was an art to such seduction, after all. Though a thousand years had passed since last she had braved the tempestuous waters of The Royal Canterlot Lust, such was no excuse for crass impropriety.

With a huff, she held her head high, and raised her forehoof before the strapping stallion with regal candor. His mouth fell open as he eyed her hoof, visibly flabbergasted.

Luna pursed her lips, allowing a teensy peek of the eye, “Thine swaggartly air hath enticed our favor, little one. We bequeath unto you the honor of disrobing thine princess.” She made a little wave with her hoof, gesturing her horseshoe toward the wide-eyed baker. “Let thine seduction commence!

The trembling stallion reeled against the power of The Royal Canterlot Voice, glancing to her eyes for a weighted moment before immediately casting his gaze back down to her hoof. The quiet pink mare to his side startled, and reared to face her princess with blusterous intent, but quickly found herself pushed back into the bedding by her mortified consort. He looked to his princess with a nervous, toothy smile, “Iiiyyyahh... wo— yyeeaaoff course! Princess!! L-let me j-just...”

• • • •

Joe's hooves rattled with complete, unimpeachable terror as he brought his forelegs up to the waiting hoof of Princess Luna, gingerly lifting off her ornate glass horseshoe like it was made out of acid-coated fire-breathing lava snakes. Was this what she did? Did Nightmare Moon toy with her food like some vindictive manticub, before swallowing them whole?

He remembered this story Dive had told him once, when Joe’s family had gone camping with he and his wife. On nights such as these, when the moon was at its brightest, Nightmare Moon would stalk the forests, and the caves, and the dark places the moonlight wouldn’t dare touch. She would spring out from the shadows to pluck little colts and fillies from their tents, swift and silent as the wind. Scary ol’ Uncle Dive had always left it to young Joe’s imagination what the boogymare did with them once she had them in her hooves, but he’d felt it a safe bet that it was something spectacularly evil. The kind of evil you only imagine when you’re too young to know that there’s an upper limit to evil. Little Seraph had, of course, leapt upon the opportunity to relentlessly tease her older brother with sounds and whispers about their tent, as the night grew loud with the calls and cackles of hidden, fearsome nocturnal beasts. Her kind lived and thrived in the dark, after all. She found it all quite a bit funnier than he had.

Joe chanced a peek into his princess’ piercing eyes as he tapped loose her second shoe, surgically lifting it free and placing it neatly on the bed. She seemed to tower over him, like some celestial demoness from beyond the stars. She held a small, unsettling grin, and a devious stare through half-lidded eyes. Like his sister, and everypony they’d seen during the night, her left eye twinkled with a striking ring of brilliant pink. Joe’s breaths were shallow, and ragged. He kept telling himself that it was fine, that Celestia had made it clear her returning sister could be trusted, that she was one of them. Celestia didn’t often lie. Joe knew that. But old fears ran deep, and teethmarks… they ran deeper.

With a surging, dramatic flare of Luna’s wings, her cloak evaporated into a frigging cloud of bats, which frantically scampered about Joe’s mane before squeaking into the open skies above. Joe’s jaw clenched tight as he held in a foalish yelp, his body rigid as his mouth quivered with strain. He desperately gazed into Luna’s eyes as he held firm. She gave a subtle curl of the eyebrow, and a decidedly less-subtle curl of the lip. It was the oddest mixture of titillation and disappointment. He didn’t doubt that she’d been anticipating a scream, or a least a startle, but it was a simple point of fact that Joe had gotten every iota of bat-related fear out of his system that weekend he shared a tent with his sister. Seraph was an enormous, pony-sized bat monster with razor-sharp fangs and dragon eyes. She had set an unrealistic standard of hellborne creepiness that regular bats frankly could not hope to live up to.

Luna briskly turned, and matter-of-factly presented her hind leg. Joe’s gaze subconsciously darted to that godlike royal derriere as he shakily removed both horseshoes, an affixion that did not escape his princess' subtle eye. With a flick of the mane, she spun around once more, and thrust her chest at the quivering baker. Joe gazed at his pale expression in the reflection of her elegant chest plate, and audibly swallowed, before leaning forward to wrap his forelegs around the back of her neck, fumbling for the latch. He turned his head to the side with a deep blush as his cheek brushed against her chest. Her heart was racing, and by the stars, so was his.

Okay Joe. You can do this.

Clasp is on the back, just… there it is. Okay. Press innn… aaandd WOW there is a lot going on back there. A hook! Okay maybe ifff IIII twist like thiis it wiiillllnope no it is definitely not one of those.

He felt what seemed to be a coil of tiny, winding chainmail loops, around which even smaller hooks had intertwined themselves. At this point, at least three classic nightmares of Joe’s were conveniently swirling into one unholy incubus: He had moments to undo history’s most unfathomably intricate formalwear and probably satisfy the millennia-old living queen of darkness, or Nightmare Moon would likely finish what she had started in the diner.

With a ragged tug along the lip of the coil, Joe felt the first of three hooks come loose. His heart leapt at the sensation.

You got this, Joey Boy. Just gotta… gotta hold this claspy whatsit in place, and press this winding coil whajigger iinnn aaanndd…

“Art thou quite all right, down there?” Luna mused, leaning in to take a slow, satisfied sniff along the back of his mane.

Joe’s ear flicked at the touch of her snout, startling him to reality. “Ahah! J-ju— ha— d-doing just peachy! Your Ladyship! B-be done in a jiff!”

By Celestia what buckery is this WHO PUTS WOVEN CHAINMAIL STRAPPING ON A BRASSIERE?!

With a measured quarter twist, Joe felt the second and third latches give way. To his horror, the plate remained taut. His tongue ran along the bottom of his lip as he brought his full attention to the task. It barely registered that his face was half-sunk into her fur at this point, every ounce of conscious thought devoted to releasing this CELESTIA-DAMNED THIN—

With an almost inaudible ping!, the metallic strap fell loose, and the chest piece came free. Joe let out a breath of overwhelming relief, before almost immediately sucking it back in as he felt the chestplate jolt, and drop. His hooves were still around her back, and there was most certainly nothing holding up the priceless, ageless artefact as it unbuckled from her breast. Joe’s pupils turned to pinpricks as the stunning, gem-encrusted piece plummeted sharply to the floor, slamming into its side and skittering under the princess’ bed. His eyes shot to hers'.

Ohhh crap.

Luna turned up her head, casting upon the mortified baker a glare burning with white-hot infernal wrath. Joe braced himself against the bedpost, pulled in a steady, full-body breath, and brought to bear the single most desperate, weapons-grade Joe Maneuver he had ever attempted.

Luna’s expression held firm as Joe’s strained, cutesy smile curled ever-so-slightly, walking a perilous tightrope between roguish mischief and suicidal disrespect. Her eyes betrayed an almost imperceptible softening as they beheld Joe’s innocuous lift of the brow, centimeter by centimeter, inward and upward, ascending to a height of such heart-rending devilry that only the most callous heart in all of Equestria could possibly stand chilled before its charm.

Princess Luna held such a heart.

Oh my dear sweet Celestia it isn’t working how is this possible oh stars this is a nightmare wake up Joe wake up wake up wake uuaaaaaaahhhhh

With a lazy blink of the eye, Joe gave the slightest, most imperceptibly effortless of shrugs. His confident smile grew just a quarter-inch higher as he drew open his eyes with a piercing, puckish grin.

Luna lowered her head slightly. She blinked, as if suddenly free from a trance, her eyes no longer brilliant white. With a most subtle fluster, she glanced away. A deep blush grew across her dark blue muzzle, and continued to darken, with no end in sight. She batted a pink-ringed eye at Joe, and gave a relenting smile.

“Oh… very well then. Your princess shall continue whilst you… retrieve what you hath lost.”

• • • •

Sunny watched with detached horror as Joe snapped an awkward salute and scrambled under the bed to find her sister’s garment. Luna held a lingering moment’s glance upon his flank before turning to her desk, levitating away various medicine bottles and balled tissues, and retrieving a small container of sugar from a spent tea set. With casual disinterest, she took small mindfulls of the white crystals and spread them about the floor, then the bed. Overturning the container, she gently poured a large amount of the remaining sugar over Sunny’s head, then turned the rest along her own shimmering mane.

Sunny stammered, positively dumbfounded by the act. Her eyes crossed to stare at the pile of sugar atop her snout before turning back to her sister, and rising to her hooves.

"Lulu!" she whispered, sharply. "Lulu it's me!"

Luna gave her a surprised glance as she floated over a small cup of sugar cubes, crushing them with her magic. She held an odd look on Sunny, her left eye touched with a bright pink light. Just as with Joe’s sister, and the nobleponies loitering about her lawn. It seemed to fade, just a bit, as Luna thought, before returning in full between a blink. The expression quickly fell from Luna’s face, and she turned her attention back to her sugar cubes, "Our sister may encourage such casual address, little one, but we do not. Thou art to speak to thy princess properly."

Sunny's eyes widened, "Y-you don't understand! It’s me! It’s Tia!" Luna returned a baffled stare. Sunny flustered "Celly!” Nothing. “Your sister!

Luna held a hoof to her chin for a moment, before shaking her head with a bewildered shrug. “That is... a truly absurd assertation, my subject.” She gave a concerned look. “Is this some manner of roleplay?”

“This is my unicorn form, remember? For the party?! For my..." She lowered her voice a little more, leaning inward with a blush, "F-for my 'hot, steamy date?' "

Luna was silent as she floated the now-powdered sugar into the air and shook it about the bed. Her brow curled as she considered Sunny’s words, "We most certainly remember thee, if that is thy question."

Sunny’s ears perked up, her expression beaming with hope. “Really?”

“Of course! We could scarcely attempt our stalwart companion’s fantasy without thee.”

Sunny wrapped a hoof behind the back of her neck. "F... fantasy?"

"Verily!" Luna gently floated the empty container to her desk, and turned toward Sunny, straightening her posture and placing a hoof against her chest. Sunny’s ears fell flat against her head as she braced herself against the sugar-dusted sheets. "Your princess has seen firsthoof the saccharine depravity thine baker hath envisioned for our ecstasy!" her eyes were cast skyward in confident delight as a cloud of magic stretched out from her horn, pooling into the air above her head to form a shimmering vision cloud. "Behold the sticky-sweet fate that is soon upon us!" she bellowed, casting Sunny’s eyes to the crystal-clear vision of Joe’s Diner that faded into being among the cloud.

It looked to be sundown, at the Diner, and both Sunny and Luna had taken stools at the front counter. They appeared to be… squabbling, over a lone donut, perched atop an ornate serving platter heavy with remnant crumbs and powdered sugar. The delicious pastry trembled in place, its tray shuddering in the air amid a heated tug-of-war between two competing magical auras.

Dream Luna licked her lips, targeting the crispy, powdered donut with eager eyes. Dream Sunny pulled tightly with her magic, a defiant look writ across her impeccable flowing mane and spotless fur. Her long eyelashes held a heated, combative, and... oddly seductive look. Indeed, almost every element of her figure seemed softened, and curved, and… not-so-subtly enhanced, in a strikingly erotic fashioooohhh horseapples this is one of those dreams, isn’t it.

Sunny's face grew dark with fluster as she took in her dreamworld likeness in all its impossible, indulgent beauty. Sunny was quite sure she had never been remotely so presentable at Joe’s Diner previous; always exhausted, and haggard, and ghastly with the stresses of the day. She supposed one took a few... liberties, in such flights of fancy. Still. Did her rump always look that large from behind?

Dream Sunny grasped at the tray with a greedy tug of her magic, jostling the donut ever-so-slightly closer toward her end. “Ohhhh no you don’t! Joey Buns made that creamy delight just for me! You keep those sexy, velvet-soft hooves to yourself!”

Dream Luna stuck out her tongue in foalish defiance, waving a dismissive hoof in Dream Sunny’s direction, “Pah! Such masterful culinary perfection is much too refined for the untrained tongue of the commonpony!”

“Uah!” Dream Sunny squeaked in rather exaggerated offense, curling her lip in an adorable gesture Sunny was quite sure she had never once implied she would ever make. “I could do more with this tongue than you could do with your whole body!”

With a flare of the eye, Dream Luna leapt toward the donut, spearing through the hole and coiling it around her horn. She moved her head one way, then the other, as Sunny leapt toward the prize like a kitten batting a toy. The platter, released of Sunny’s hold, rocketed into the air, dousing the two in a plume of powdered sugar.

Dream Sunny lowered herself to the ground with a sultry shake of the rear, and made one, last, valiant leap for the prized pastry. Her teeth clacked together as she missed her prize by inches, coming down hard on Dream Luna’s heaving chest. The two tumbled to the diner floor, into a cloud of pillow-soft sweetness. They locked eyes for a long, rapacious moment.

Dream Luna beckoned her mouth closer with an eager grin. “We shall see how talented thine tongue truly is...”

Sunny cringed with horror as their quivering lips pressed against each other with a hunger. In the throes of a desperate passion, their bodies intertwined amid the sugar, rolling about as they lost themselves in lust, their coats quickly saturated with a clinging candied sweetness. Sunny felt a bracing cascade of second-hoof shame and pale-faced nausea as Dream Sunny began a trail of eager kisses down her sister’s giggling body, lips puckered with powdered sugar. Sunny’s tongue involuntarily stuck out of her mouth in squeamish revolt, running against her upper teeth as if trying to rub clean a dreadful taste. She found herself utterly incapable of tearing her eyes away from the mortifying trainwreck that stretched before her. Here she was, foolishly thinking that two millennia of her ponies’ recurrent princess-on-princess fixation had helped steel her stomach against its extravagant shame. Truly, the fantasy would outlive them both.

With a triumphant “Hah!”, Joe appeared from under the bed, Luna’s chestplate clenched gently within a proud, confident grin.

“Found it! IIII found it, Your Highness, not to worry. And not a scratch on it!” He beamed, gazing expectantly at his princess. He stared for a moment, holding on Luna’s stoic expression, before his eyes were drawn upwards, to the shimmering cloud of magic above her head.

Never in her three thousand years of life had Sunny seen a face fall so quickly, so deeply. Joe made an indecipherable wheezing sound as his jaw fell open, Luna’s chest plate falling once more to the ground and clattering under the bed. He blinked, hard, in stuttered horror, before slowly, morbidly, turning to look at Sunny.

“Well well,” Dream Joe’s voice boomed as a muscular unicorn stallion with a flowing mane and a long, proud, unfractured horn sauntered onto the scene. In the grasp of his orange magic aura were two cups of coffee, in two featureless ceramic mugs. With a chuckle, he placed the two mugs on the counter, and stood over the writhing mares. "Looks like you two could do with a piping hot cup of Joe..."

Sunny turned an aghast look on the real Joe as he bounded onto the bed, scrambled onto his hind legs, and frantically attempted to wave away Luna’s cloud of magic. With a smile, Luna rose to stand, moving the cloud just out of Joe’s reach. Joe spun around, trying in vain to hold his body between Sunny and the spectacularly lewd vision above.

“Sunny?! Sunny... wh— I can explain!” His mouth contorted into a mixture of pale-faced terror and hysterical amusement. “Th— I was— this?” he gestured broadly to the vision cloud as Dream Joe leapt into the sugar-sweet wrestling ring, to the delighted giggles of the two awaiting mares. “This just happened in my brain, when I was sleeping! I didn’t— oh Celestia— I wasn’t planning this, Sunny, I swear, or anything! I just… this just popped in there—”

“Goodness gracious, Joey Buns, you’ve got sugar allll over!

Sunny’s eyes widened as the last lingering munchkin of shame was promptly rolled in powdered sugar and seductively licked clean. Joe wheezed, the blood draining from his face as his eyes darted frantically between Sunny and the increasingly steamy vision above. She could tell, by the look on his face, that the worst was yet to come. He took in a sharp breath.

Swiveling to face his princess, Joe reared his hind legs, and leapt, tackling Luna to the bed. Her horn flickered, but remained active as an excited giggle escaped her lips at the perceived horseplay. The vision cloud held, but blessedly, faded, into another dream. One that seemed quite a bit clearer, and more vivid, and... real.

Sunny gasped as the image took shape. She held a hoof to her mouth, her eyes growing wide with shock. It was her. It was the real her.

It was Princess Celestia.

Author's Note:

Split this chapter into two, due to length. Second part will go up in just a bit.

You can all thank djthomp for the proper use of the word "snogging." So good.

Ginormous thank-you to Luminary and Brawny for pre-reading and editing this ghastly thing. This chapter was a bit over 10,000 words, and I am mighty, mighty grateful to you both.