Cadance

by GJT_Productions

Nightmares

"There can only be one princess in Equestria! And that princess... will be me!"

"Luna! Cadance is not your enemy! Think of how long you were banished to the moon! You'll give us no choice but to send you back there if you don't stop!"

"Luna, I will not fight you! You must lower the moon! It is your duty!"

"Luna? I am... Nightmare Moon! I have but one royal duty now... to destroy you! And that enchantress called Cadance too!"

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The relative luxury of a Lieutenant Captain's quarters and furnishings could not stop Shining Armor from tossing and turning in his sleep as the voices echoed through his head. He recognized the voices - Luna's, then Twilight's, then Celestia's and then Luna's again - and the accompanying scene was horrific, him along with Celestia, Cadance and Twilight watching Princess Luna once again becoming "Nightmare Moon". Reflexively, Shining's dream self casts his barrier magic around "Nightmare Moon", but the evil alicorn shatters it with a mocking laugh and then she leaps at him, wings flared and fanged jaws opened wide.

As "Nightmare Moon" zooms closer, Shining awakes tumbling out of the cot, cold sweat dripping from his forehead. Dazed and staring up at the room's ceiling, he hears the door to his darkened room opened and sunlight streaming in from the outside. Two stallion heads - the guards assigned to make sure Shining wasn't disturbed in his sleep - are heard walking in and then pop into his field of view, looking down at the upside-down Shining Armor.

"Sir, what happened?" one of them asks.

"Ugh, some kind of nightmare - help me up." Shining answers, woozy and slightly dazed by the tumble.

As he is helped up, Shining contemplates what exactly the nightmare he just had was. Even years later, after his younger sister had a very similar vision, it was still a mystery. Luna wouldn't have been awake to "plant" the vision, and her powers hadn't recovered enough yet to do any kind of remote influencing. Considering it was so similar to Twilight Sparkle's later experience, Celestia later claimed the vision Twilight saw produced a magical "ripple effect" that travelled backward in time and influenced Shining's anxious sleep that night.

All that was in the far future, though, and at the time Shining just took it as a foreboding sign of major trouble to come. And indeed, trouble was soon in coming...

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SEVERAL HOURS LATER...

After Shining's shock, he had fallen back into an uneasy sleep, then awoke again to prepare for his shift and received news both of the meeting attempt to explain the forged documents and the issued royal warrant. During the assignment lottery process, Shining Armor pulled aside the bat pony Lieutenant Vesper.

"Don't take a lottery ball. Take this instead." Shining whispers out, producing the royal warrant for searching the Weather Ministry.

"...A royal warrant, sir?" Lieutenant Vesper replies after seeing Celestia's seal on the rolled-up parchment. A royal warrant was a virtual "blank check" - the holder was to be given the same access as Princess Celestia herself. A classic "cutting the knot" solution - but one sparingly used, and only in the greatest of emergencies.

"I need you to go the Weather Ministry and get to the bottom of what is going on. I've already given Lieutenant Stratocumulus instructions to assist you with his squad. Both of you go and don't stop searching until you've found the truth! Princess Cadance and I are going to try to talk to Luna about the forgeries as soon as I'm done with the assignments." Shining explains.

"Both of you together, sir?" Vesper replies, a skeptical look passing across his face.

"I know it's not the best idea in the world, but the clock is ticking and we can't do nothing anymore. I'll take the chance, regardless of how things turn out." Shining continues, the nervous expression indication he knew things could go very wrong indeed.

"I understand, sir. Good luck, sir."

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ABOUT 30 MINUTES LATER...

"You know, Cadance, I'm amazed you managed to get Celestia to agree to this." Shining Armor says as he and Princess Cadance make the walk toward Princess Luna's suite, escorted by a single Upper Class guard.

"The only reason she agreed to it was because doing nothing would've been worse. But she didn't think this would work. And, to be honest, neither do I." Cadance replies with blunt honesty. Shining has no good answer to that argument, so he just remains silent and says nothing more for the rest of the walk.

As they round the last corner toward Luna's bedroom suite, however, they come across an anxious throng of ponies near the door. All of them are Luna's servants, an about equal mix of bat ponies and unicorns. Shining and Cadance stop at the sight of this and exchange glances, then Shining runs ahead to the throng, kept away from the door by the crossed pikes of the unicorn guards in front of it.

"What's going on here?!" Shining exclaims.

"They won't let us in." one of the group explains, pointing a forehoof toward the guards.

"Guards, I'm sure Her Highness is awake by now. These ponies have work to do, let them in." Shining states toward the pair of unicorn guards, one white and one gray.

"Sorry sir, absolutely no admittance permitted. We have orders." the white unicorn guard at the door replies.

"I'd like to see your orders, if you don't mind Guard." Shining continues, a suspicious eyebrow going up as he speaks.

"Right here, sir." the gray unicorn guard answers, telekinetically opening his sidebag and levitating out a sheet of parchment. Shining Armor "takes it" telekinetically, indicated by the changing magic colors, and studies the parchment carefully.

"What's going on?" Princess Cadance asks as she approaches Shining's location, but he holds up a forehoof to indicate her to hold questions for the moment.

The parchment does indeed indicate, in no uncertain terms, that there was to be no admittance to Luna's chambers, not even by those normally entitled to be automatically admitted by virtue of rank or duty. The parchment was both stamped with Captain Gibraltar's stamp and sealed with the new design seal of Princess Luna.

Or at least, it looked like the new Princess Luna seal. The actual design had been both tweaked at least once and used sparingly over the few days it had actually been in existence - Shining himself wasn't familiar with the final design yet, and the lower ranks certainly wouldn't be familiar with it either. It also didn't make sense for Captain Gibraltar to support such a blanket order, Luna's temper aside, as it would cause great inconvenience to his subordinates, the civilian staff and Luna herself. The Captain would've at least tried to talk Luna out of such an order, or told Celestia to have her try the same thing.

It went against his military training and proper protocol, but Shining was convinced by the pricking of his conscience, particularly in light of the fraudulent Cadance order for the cloudbank the previous night, that this no admittance order could be forged as well. Because of the double authorization and the lack of familiarity with the new Luna stamp design, the ordinary guard ranks would not question whether the order was legit or not. But Shining Armor, both because of the stakes involved and the awareness of the previous forging, had to.

"Shining?" Cadance asks again.

"I'll explain in a minute. Guard?" Shining answers, both to the princess and her Upper Class Guard escort that had come up beside her.

"Yes, sir?" the escort guard answers.

"Fetch the Captain here. Wake him if necessary. Tell him it's an emergency and that he is needed immediately." Shining orders.

"Yes, sir."

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MEANWHILE...

The two Guard Lieutenants, bat pony Vesper and pegasus Stratocumulus, marched into the Weather Ministry offices. Each Lieutenant lead a squad of four other Guard stallions, Vesper all bat ponies and Stratocumulus a mix of pegasi and unicorns. Their objective: locate any evidence of possible forging operations and, if it occurred, arrest any perpetrators they ran into. As the two squads marched into the offices, they noticed the eerie quiet - normally there was at least a skeleton staff working at night, but right now there didn't seem to be a pony in the place.

"It's too quiet in here." Stratocumulus comments to Vesper as the two Lieutenants observe the dimly-lit and quiet office hallways leading from the entrance.

"I agree, Stratocumulus. Take your team, start on the east side. We'll take the west side." Vesper orders. Stratocumulus nods, and the two teams quickly go their separate ways, marching in threatening cadence as they proceed two-by-two behind the Lieutenant down the hallways.

Vesper's group quickly happens upon a closed office door. One of the Guards tries the door and finds it locked, so on Vesper's orders he turns his back to the door and bashes it open with a hind leg bucking. Inside the office is a mess - the desk overturned, various papers and other items scattered across the floor, a coffee pot shattered with its dark liquid contents spreading in a puddle as the guards watched.

"Goodness, was this place vandalized?" one of the guards asks as Lieutenant Vesper carefully steps into the trashed office. The bat pony Lieutenant works one of his armor pieces off a forehoof and holds the bare hoof over the coffee spill for a few moments.

"The spilled coffee is still warm. Whatever happened in here must've been just minutes ago." Vesper concludes as the armor piece is worked back on.

"Is it possible somepony warned whoever was in here we were coming?" one of the guards asks.

"I'm beginning to think so now. This place is full of such crooked figures that they would rather destroy their own property and hightail it out as fast as their wings can carry them rather than face justice." Vesper grimly answers.

"So what do we do, sir?"

"Nothing here. It'll take too long to clean up this mess, and we don't have any idea what we're looking for anyway. We need to keep checking offices, find something that's not a mess."

Vesper and his team moved onto the next door office and repeated the break and enter procedure, only to find the same trashed condition in that office as well. Vesper, now concerned that he wouldn't be able to get anything, tried a third office only to find it had been trashed as well. Whatever had happened in these offices, it was a systemically conducted and through attempt to prevent the finding of incriminating evidence...

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On the east side of the Weather Ministry offices, Lieutenant Stratocumulus and his team were finding the same trashed offices as Vesper were. After analyzing several offices and coming to the same conclusion Vesper had come to, he decided to pause and determine whether to continue searching or report back to Vesper about their findings and determine what further productive efforts would be possible.

While in his speculations, his team hears a pair of voices giving mocking laughter coming from somewhere out of sight. When the team looks up and down the hallway and around the corner of adjacent hallways, they see nothing, but the voices continue to mock them nonetheless.

Eventually the Lieutenant loses his patience and issues a direct, loud challenge: "Show yourselves, craven cowards!"

"You'll never catch us. We're always one hoofstep ahead of you." the male voice mocks before it and the other female voice join in further mocking laughter.

At that point, Lieutenant Stratocumulus had enough: "The unicorn with me, we'll try to catch whoever's doing this. The rest of you find Lieutenant Vesper and report what's happened so far."

There is a chorus of acknowledgement, and the unicorn guard sets off with the Lieutenant while the rest of his team goes to report to Lieutenant Vesper their findings so far. The Lieutenant and unicorn Upper Class guard with him spot a pair of shadowy figures down a hallway, and the chase is on, the figures always stopping long enough to taught the two guards before taking off again.

The chase goes through several twisting and turning hallways before stopping at a dead-end with the only way out through an unassuming maintenance closet door. The figures, remaining unidentifiable in the shadows, defiantly stand their ground at the end of the hallway as the Lieutenant and his unicorn companion slowly close the distance, hoping to at least get an identification.

"Surely you realize you're trapped. That maintenance closet doesn't have an exit away." Lieutenant Stratocumulus points out.

"What happens to us in the end does not matter. Protecting our fellow Agents is our utmost concern and duty." the male voice answers.

"What are you even talking about?!" the Lieutenant challenges.

"Some ponies... just want to watch Equestria burn." the male voice replies in a sinister tone.

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A click noise follows just a moment later, and then a boom as a fireball blasts out from the wall to the right of the shadowy figures. The two figures disappear into the flames as the explosion spread down the hallway toward the Lieutenant and his unicorn companion. Reflexively, the two guards turn away from the blast of heat and light coming toward them.

The fireball stops short of the location of the two guards about halfway down the hallway, and when the scene clears the end of the hallway is both aflame and blown apart, the fire beginning to spread down the hallway. Lieutenant Stratocumulus and his unicorn companion advance as close to the edge of the flames as they dare and look through the gaping hole the explosion left in the wall.

Immediately, three things are obvious. One is that the two shadowy figures that started the explosion are nowhere to be seen in the flames. The second is an obvious casualty - a now-unconscious pony that was inside the maintenance closet when the explosion occurred and blasted against an opposing wall. The third - and most important - is the enormous tank labeled "natural gas" visible through the breach. A fire, possibly deliberately set, was already burning right under the tank!

The Lieutenant looks around for firefighting options - and finds none. Pegasi communities were generally made of non-flammable materials, and so firefighting measures such as sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers were not required to be present in most buildings. There had been several attempts to get those measures installed in Weather Ministry offices, but all got caught up in the reform-fighting attempts and ultimately went nowhere. All this meant that the Lieutenant and his comrades had no way to fight the fire themselves - the only option was to evacuate and call a "bucket brigade" from the adjacent pegasi community.

"That tank is enormous!" the Lieutenant exclaims as a fire alarm starts ringing, triggered by the telekinetic pulling of an alarm handle nearby by the unicorn guard with him.

"Sir, we need everypony to evac this building! That tank is big enough to destroy this whole building if it goes up!" the unicorn guard exclaims over the crackling of the nearby flames.

"There's a casualty - I have to go check to see if they're still alive. If I don't get that pony out, they won't survive the tank going up!" the Lieutenant shouts back, pointing to inside the closet.

"Sir, there's going to be compromised gas lines! Any blowout would incinerate you in an instant!" his unicorn subordinate objects.

"A risk I have to take to save lives. Go warn Lieutenant Vesper! I'll catch up later."

"But Sir..."

"That was an order! Go!"

The unicorn guard reluctantly turns away, and as he sprints down he sees the pegasus Lieutenant plunging right into the flames...

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MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE CASTLE...

"Confound it Shining, there'd better a really good reason for this!" a tired and cranky Captain Gibraltar exclaims as he's escorted by the guard previously carrying out Shining's orders to the entrance of Luna's suite, where the throng of denied access servants buzzed in confusion and nervousness and Princess Cadance looked worriedly at the entrance door. Cadance has the servants clear away from the door as the Captain approaches.

"What are all these ponies doing out here? Don't they have work to do?" Gibraltar exclaims, pointing toward the servant ponies.

"That's why I called you, sir. The guards claim no access under your orders." Shining cautiously answers.

"My orders?! Is it in writing?" Gibraltar continues to exclaim.

"Right here, sir." one of the door guards answers, telekinetically holding out the parchment with the Captain's stamp and Luna's seal. The Captain telekinetically takes it, the parchment hovering in a light gray magic glow. After a moment of studying the parchment, an eyebrow goes up on the Captain's face.

"I don't remember signing off on this. How did you get this?" the Captain asks the door guards with a skeptical look on his face.

"The afternoon shift handed it to us when we relieved them for the night." the dark-coated unicorn guard replies, him and his white-coated counterpart exchanging nervous sidelong looks.

Captain Gibraltar looks down at puzzlement at the parchment, and Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor exchanges a concerned look with Princess Cadance. The Guard Captain looks like he's about to speak again when noise is suddenly heard coming from within Luna's suite.

"What was that?" the Captain asks the door guards, his ears perked up in listening attention.

"What was what, sir? I didn't hear anything." the dark-coated unicorn guard again speaks, also again exchanging a nervous sidelong looks with his white-coated counterpart stationed on the other side of the door.

The noises come again within the suite, this time unquestionably audible through the walls. One female and two male voices arguing, then some scuffling noises and shouting. Something bad was obviously going on in there, and a shout by the female voice followed by a hard "thwack" and cries of agony by one of the male voices indicate nothing good.

"That's Princess Luna's voice!" Shining Armor exclaims, recognizing the female voice.

"Open those doors!" Captain Gibraltar roars out at the door guards, switched into full action mode by the commotion going on inside Luna's suite.

"But sir, your orders..." one of the guards tries to object.

"Are countermanded! Open those doors!" Gibraltar cuts off, again at a loud volume. The guards look at each other, apparently hesitant to immediately respond - a tense few seconds as the male voices speak again, followed by more scuffling... and then silence.

"Guards, that was a direct order. If you do not open those doors in the next ten seconds, you both will be subject to immediate court-martial!" Gibraltar roars out again. This seems to produce the desired effect, as the two unicorn guards scramble to telekinetically open the doors to Luna's suite.

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Princess Cadance holds the confused, concerned servants back as first Captain of the Guard Gibraltar and then Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor rush into Luna's royal suite. Inside... a mess. The obvious signs of a struggle include rumpled sheets on the bed, a toppled sidetable with several shattered objects and both Luna's crown and light-blue shoes scattered across the room. In a far corner is Luna herself, curled up in a ball and weakly crying.

"Princess? What in the name of sanity happened in here?!" the Captain exclaims upon seeing Luna.

"Sir, look over here!" Shining exclaims, pointing off to one of the windows. Gibraltar follows the pointed forehoof to see a small trail of crimson-colored drops (from a broken snout?) leading toward an opened window with a large burlap sack snagged on the sill.

"An abduction attempt! Lockdown Canterlot airspace, don't let the criminals escape the city!" Gibraltar orders, and his escort unicorn acknowledges the order as he rushes away.

"Shining! The door guards!" Cadance exclaims, and Shining exits the royal suite to see the two unicorn door guards telekinetically dropping their pikes and shedding armor as they make a break for it!

Despite being in full armor himself, Shining chases after them, his horn glowing with magenta-colored magic. The two unicorn door guards don't get far before slamming headlong into a semi-circle magic barrier the Lieutenant Captain had cast in their path, stopping them cold. That barrier breaks, but it slows the other two long enough for Shining to cast a barrier "bubble" which encased them completely. The two other unicorns tumble inside helplessly as Shining telekinetically rolls the "bubble" back toward the royal suite and whatever else was going on there...

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BACK AT THE WEATHER MINISTRY...

Alarms were blaring throughout the offices as Lieutenant Vesper issues the evacuation order - he had heard of the fire and immediately realized nothing could be done to save the building if the fire was already at the natural gas tank. As the rest of the guards scramble out of the building to a safe distance, Vesper goes back to determine the fate of fellow Guard Lieutenant Stratocumulus.

In the face of the intense and growing flames of the east side of the building, Vesper finds the pegasus Lieutenant Startocumulus, singed but otherwise OK, carrying some other pony on his back - a young pegasus mare, judging from the face and splayed out wings. The face of the Lieutenant is weary but triumphant.

"Any other casualties?" Vesper asks over the roaring flames.

"No sir, just this one. We need to go now!" Stratocumulus shouts back.

"Don't need to tell me twice!" Vesper replies. He shares the burden of the unconscious mare - Sprinkle Medley, as it turned out to be - and both stallions race out of the building at top speed. The smoke makes navigating the building difficult, and both stallions choke on it, but they know they must escape before the tank blows.

Outside the subordinates of both Lieutenants are waiting anxiously at a safe distance. Firecrews are arriving but direct their efforts to keep innocents out of harm's way - the fire emerging out the office building windows is already indication of how rapidly the fire is spreading and a concerned crowd is beginning to gather. One anxious minute passes, then another. Finally, the inevitable - an enormous KABOOM that blows out the entire space in the mountain in which the Weather Ministry Offices sit in a wave of fire.

Some flaming debris tumbles down the mountainside of Canterlot - it won't directly threaten the city or castle but instead the valley below - and the mountain rumbles slightly as the newly created cavern partly collapses, leaving the former offices partly buried in rock and partly on fire. The party of guards feared for the fate of their commanding Lieutenants as the offices burned and firecrews rushed in to the blown open cavern...

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AT CANTERLOT CASTLE...

Shining Armor returns with his two shield bubble "prisoners" back toward Luna's suite. Other guards that had been posted nearby had taken over the duty of keeping the servants at bay from what was now a crime scene, and Princess Cadance had joined Captain Gibraltar in listening to a distressed Princess Luna explain what had happened in the suite.

"They said they would make her go away. They never said anything about us being stuffed in a burlap sack!" Princess Luna was exclaiming through her distressed tears, pointing toward Cadance.

"Your Highness, you should never have listened to them in the first place!" Captain Gibraltar exclaims in exasperation. "They could not have made Cadance 'go away', but they could make Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor 'go away', and there would have been no choice but to make him 'go away' if you were abducted. You've been told who he is - did you not think he would have enemies that would not want him so close to you?!"

Normally, the Captain would've been out of line, but here Luna simply winced and curled up in guilt - she knew he was right. She had been warned repeatedly by both Celestia and Shining Armor that there would be those who would want to take him down simply out of envy, but not unlike what happened a thousand years ago Luna had let her emotions drown out any rational thinking. Back then, it drove her into evil and exile - now, it had nearly gotten her tied up in a burlap sack and abducted from Canterlot!

Princess Luna is allowed to cry for a few seconds - and then stops as she hears somepony speaking to her again. Her eyes are closed, but she recognizes the words spoken by the voice: "Sunshine, moonshine, all Equestria awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake! Sunshine, moonshine, all Equestria awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake! Sunshine, moonshine..."

Luna opens her eyes to see Cadance smiling and repeating the old phrase from her youngest days - an echo of far more innocent and happier times - and immediately her emotional barriers fall, grasping Cadance in a full hug and repeatedly asking for forgiveness. Captain Gibraltar is looking down with a small smile on the scene when he hears Shining speak again.

"I hate to interrupt this touching moment, Sir, but I need you to see this." Shining Armor was saying. The Captain reluctantly pulls himself away from the scene to observe what Shining is telling him.

He arrives at the door to the royal suite, and eyebrows go up in surprise as the Captain observes the two former door guards suspended helplessly in Shining's magic spell bubble. He notices both the missing armor pieces on the guards and the same pieces scattered down the hallway and immediately jumps to the right conclusion.

"So you two are in on this, hmm? I bet that no admittance parchment you showed me was forged, wasn't it? Who gave it to you?! SPEAK!" Gibraltar roars out again. The guards remain silent, but the nervous uncomfortable grins on their faces indicate it wouldn't take much to crack them.

"Speak, or I shall have Celestia herself extract the information from you!" Gibraltar warns with an unusual look of rage on his face.

"Sir, if you'll have the Lieutenant Captain put us down, we'll tell you everything we know." the dark coated unicorn stallion trapped in the bubble meekly offers.

Shining Armor looks over at Captain Gibraltar, who gives a firm nod as he telekinetically pulls out a pair of metallic rings from his sidebag. Shining Armor makes the bubble disappear, which unceremoniously dumps the two unicorn stallions on the floor, and Gibraltar telekinetically slides on a ring onto the horn of each stallion. These rings were designed to "short" any attempt at using magic, making them essentially the unicorn equivalent of handcuffs.

"Well sir, it went something like this..." the white-coated unicorn begins speaking to both Captain Gibraltar and Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor...

Author's Note:

TO BE CONCLUDED IN 'Agents of Chaos'...!

Comments

[MegAnimefreakx3]

"Some ponies... just want to watch Equestria burn."

I see what you did there

weknowgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/i-understood-that-reference.gif

[Iron Comet]

Princess Luna in a burlap sack, even weakened that would have been a fight I would think.