Guard duty in Canterlot, even for Captain Shining Armour, sways between mind numbing monotony and terminal excitement with alarming speed. But there's always something happening, even on a slow day; it just doesn't always get noticed...
Having a pair of benevolent god-monarchs as the ruling powers in Equestria has worked for thousands of years, but there are some ponies, particularly those sitting one step from the top of the ladder, who feel that having the top of the ladder permanently occupied by all-powerful and, more annoyingly, immortal rulers is violating some unwritten rule somewhere.
And there are always those on the bottom who figure that a little social reshuffle might be in order.
Fancy Pants tipped his chair back and gazed up lovingly at the document in his hoof: it'd taken him years to obtain. The stallion could still barely believe that it was real, but Princess Celestia's signature was as clear as her day, and the bearer's, "Right to repair the magical wards of The Royal Palace of Canterlot" was even clearer.
The hoops they made me jump through... Fancy Pants had promised to make them pay for them: every meaningless party, every petty comment, every torturous moment of inane chatter that he'd had to endure; once the Princesses were out of the way the nobles were definitely next.
He sipped his tea, and grimaced.
Well. After his cook, but honestly, who could blame him?
He'd truly expected Shining Armor to be more cautious than this; it'd take an Arcanum mage to read the Palace's ward runes, and no guard would notice a tiny change in the pattern; a ward to keep things out could so easily become a trap to keep things in.
He wasn't a criminal, certainly not; criminals skulked around in dark alleys doing devious and villainous things under cover of night. He was serving The Public Interest. To anypony else, the capital letters would've been a sure sign of insanity.
Fancy Pants permitted himself a smile and placed the contract gently on his desk, as if afraid that it might evaporate at a moment's notice. A bell chord was pulled; a clerk stepped into the office.
"Fetch Cut Glass would you? I've got a little job for him."
"Yes, Mr Pants."
The clerk left with haste, and Fancy Pants's eyes wandered the room impatiently. It was an impressive room, and Fancy was proud of it: a single ancient desk, mahogany or something similar, dominated one end of the room. The three grand windows that looked out over Canterlot on one side and the fireplace on the other gave the whole office the air of a mansion's study rather than a place of business, but it was a place of business and, as always, Cut Glass's presence reminded Fancy that even the most unpleasant business needed doing.
The bulky stallion let himself into the office through a cloud of clerical protests. Fancy Pants watched him.
It'd all be worth it, eventually.
----<<<<>>>>----
It is at this stage that some distinctions should be made: Nobles coup; it suits their purposes better. Moving the top of the ladder out of the way as quietly as possible makes room for everypony else (or at least everypony else that the nobles care about) to slide upwards by one rung. Commoners, on the other hoof, hold not coups but Revolutions, which are fully deserving of the capital letter. Revolutions, unlike coups, are anything but quiet; the more anarchy, the better the odds are of the Revolutionaries winding up on the top of the massive pile-up that society becomes. The problem with Revolutions is that they tend to be rather self perpetuating; they come around again, as the name suggests. Nevertheless, the age-old goal of an end to oppression (or at least and end to the oppression of the Revolutionaries) has led generations of ponies to cast off the shackles of law, order, and common sense in favour of beating their social superiors with blunt objects.
The presence of Celestia and Luna had done away with the vast majority of unrest for hundreds of years, but as always there can be found some ponies willing to take up arms against the "tyrants", whoever they might be. They tend to be found at the bottom of the popcorn bag of society; hard, hateful, and with very little to lose.
Devious plotting aside, Fancy Pants could be considered to set a bad example: any self respecting conspirator just wouldn't feel at home outside of a cellar, hooded robes are a must, anonymity essential. That being said, the professional touch can be hard to achieve: some cellars are simply too dark.
"Grey? Grey, are you there?" Willow Leaves felt about blindly in the darkness for any signs of her friends.
An irritated voice emerged from the gloom. "For buck's sake, Sister Leaves; you have to call me "Lord Chancellor" while we're here; what's the point in doing this if you wont take it seriously?"
"Er, sorry Gr- Lord Chancellor."
"Brother Marble even found us proper robes to use, good cloth too. Where'd you get them?"
"Shop on Guard's Avenue, Lord Chancellor." The third voice in the murk made Willow jump; she realised that she had no idea how many ponies were crammed into the tavern's cellar. "Twelve bits each they cost me. Twelve each! That's oppression that is."
"Fear not, Brother Marble. All oppression will be ended with the coming of The Revolution!" As with Fancy Pants, the capital letters slotted audibly into place.
"Lord Chancellor?" Brother Marble's voice was hesitant.
"Yes, Brother Marble?"
"I don't want to seem ungrateful, I mean, I know meeting in a cellar's important and all, but maybe a candle would-"
"No!" The self styled Lord Chancellor interrupted him. "We must rely on our own to provide; The Revolution is only as strong as every brother and sister. Sister Starlight, would you light the room for us; that we might be about our righteous business?"
There was silence. Eventually, the Lord Chancellor coughed, politely.
"Sister Leaves?"
"Yes, Lord Chancellor?"
"Where is Sister Starlight?"
"She has a bit of a cold, Lord Chancellor. I took her some soup yesterday; she'll be up and about soon."
The darkness of the cellar did nothing to hide the sound of a forehead being rubbed, nor did it mask the "Lord Chancellor's" exasperated sigh. "A cold?"
"Sort of a cold, Lord Chancellor. She's very sorry that she couldn't make it."
"Oh she's sorry is she? Oh well that's all fine and dandy then! Never mind that we're going to overthrow the bucking monarchs! I'll just put all our plans on hold until she gets better, how about that?"
Marble's near terminal inability to recognise sarcasm kicked in on queue. "We could just recruit some more uni-"
"Oh just... shut up or something will you." Even in the darkness, both subordinates could visualize their leader rubbing at his forehead. "Fine" He said at length. "Fine, I can work with this. Everypony present, raise one hoof."
There was silence.
"Scratch that. Roll call: Sister Leaves?"
"Here, Lord Chancellor."
"Sister Skydust."
"She couldn't get off work, Lord Chancellor. Apparently there's some big storm due; all the weather ponies are on overtime trying to-"
"Thank you, Sister Leaves. Brother Tome?"
"He's stuck in his library, Lord Chancellor."
"What do you mean "stuck"?" Asked the Lord Chancellor, automatically.
"Well. Apparently-"
"No, forget I asked. Are there any other brothers or sisters missing tonight, Sister Leaves?"
"Umm... That would be Bark, Heart, Glaze, Link, Rabbit and Tea."
The Lord Chancellor crossed off the names mentally and read through the remaining list.
It was a very short list.
"So that leaves me, you, and Brother Marble?"
"A perfect summation, Lord Chancellor." Replied Willow Leaves. She was feeling rather guilty about the whole thing and had resorted to being extra deferential in an effort to placate Grey Streak. Skydust really did have a cold, but she knew that ever since Grey had started insisting on cellars, robes and magelight Dusty Tome had had an uncanny knack for locking himself in his library and losing the key. The other six conspirators had also developed cases of acute situational incompetence which had kept them from regular meetings, and Rabbit had had to dart off half way through last week when Starlight had "accidentally" set fire to her mane with an incorrect light spell.
It was just as well that she'd brought that bucket of water with her in the first place, really.
Willow Leaves was not stupid. She just didn't like the idea of anypony being deliberately untruthful. Her friend from Ponyville, Fluttershy, had once posted her a Stetson; she'd never found out why.
The Lord Chancellor considered his options. "Three out of eleven. Right. I suppose, that in the circumstances, a candle would be acceptable." A match was struck; Willow could just make out Grey feeling about in a set of crates for a candle and muttering under his breath. An vaguely approving sound passed Grey's lips as his hoof closed around a candle, followed immediately by a yelp, and a clatter, as the match burned his hoof and he dropped the stick of wax. "Blast it. Brother Marble, find the candle would you?"
After much scrabbling in the dark the candle was found, lit, and secured in a candlestick on a central table. Grey beckoned the other two over to the table, and placed both of his forehooves on it. The candlelight cast eerie shadows on his features as he spoke.
"They bled us white, the traitors; they've taken everything we had! And not just from us, but from our parents, and from our parent's parents! And what have the Sisters ever given us in return?"
Willow and Marble listened to the Lord Chancellor's tirade from the other end of the table. Neither were quite sure what he meant, but unlike Brother Marble, Willow had seen the salmon of rhetoric in his river of thought. Her eyes widened as her fellow under-conspirator replied.
"Well what about the seasons, Lord Chancellor?"
River of thought temporarily dammed, the Lord Chancellor looked at the other stallion in confusion.
"What?"
"The seasons, Lord Chancellor; I mean, they do keep the sun and the moon in order and everything."
"Oh. Oh yes, I suppose they did do that yes."
If the Lord Chancellor's thoughts were a stream, then Brother Marble's were an avalanche: they picked up speed as they moved, and rarely changed direction. Willow Leaves looked on; she didn't dare to move.
"And the tides, Lord Chancellor."
"Well yes, I'll grant you, the seasons and the tides are two things The Sisters have done for us."
"What about the order? After all, they did defeat Discord and everything."
"Well obviously the order, I mean the order goes without saying d-"
"Education?"
"Well-"
"Equality?"
"I supp-"
"Freedom?"
"Look! Just... Do you want to overthrow the Sisters or not?"
Marble seemed to ponder this for a while. Willow, still standing perfectly still, fancied that she could hear the thoughts ticking about in his head. At length, he answered.
"No."
A muscle twitched on Grey Streak's face. "Brother Marble... Why are you here?"
"My mam always said that every good house should have a conspiracy."
Willow's mouth moved as she worked this one out. "Is it possible that she meant conservatory?"
Marble turned to look at her. "What's that?"
"It's sort of a room, made of glass. They sell them at the West Street Market."
"Oh."
Thoughts ticking over slowly in his head, Marble looked up at the Lord Chancellor and smiled. "Sorry to have bothered you."
And with that, he climbed the steps into the alley behind the tavern, and out of the lives of the remaining conspirators.
Grey Streak sunk his head into his hooves and sniffled quietly. Willow walked around the table and patted him on the shoulder.
"There there." She offered. It felt like the right thing to do.
----<<<<>>>>----
In the military wing of the Royal Palace there is a tower. Its various uses serve as a great help to the Palace Guard; every lee and archway becoming shelter in a storm, shade from the sun, or cover in a fight. But one room has always, by tradition, been the captain's office. Shining Armor reflected on the stupidity of this as the night wind blew in through the room's window and scattered the papers on his desk. Private Tome's report had just come in and he'd seemed rather frantic. Ignoring the errant paperwork, at least for the time-being, Shining began to read through the stallion's archaically punctuated message.
Half way through, he stopped. He moved up the page and re-read it. Towards the end, the shadow of a smile began to form on his lips.
His job didn't provide many opportunities for laughter.
Willow had never liked the dark; the Revolution's constant cellar meetings had been hard to endure. That said, she knew that the water trickling around her hooves and the nameless noises from the shadows would've been enough to drive anypony to frightened glances and timidity.
Canterlot's sewers were not a welcoming place; why should they be? They were cold, dark, and filled with an air of squishiness that would be impossibly hard for even the best of Equestria's poets to describe to anypony who hadn't spent at least one night sleeping underground in a peat-bog. Willow walked through the underground world slowly, because the noise her hooves made on the cobbled floor scared her.
She imagined Grey Streak sitting at home with a blanket. Sore back or not, when she got out of this there would be words.
A scratching in the darkness made her jump. She amended that last thought to "if I get out of this", then wished that she hadn't.
Willow raised Grey's instruction map and squinted at it, but the firefly jar on her back provided only enough light to make the sewer's shadows visible. She was probably going the right way. It had yet to cross Willow's mind that she had no idea what she was meant to do once she got into the Palace. She'd always understood the general principles of the Revolution: overthrow the Princesses, establish a free and fair government (or, as Grey would've said, a Free and Fair government) and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity for all of Equestria, but she'd never been sure, from one day to the next, quite how this was meant to happen; the Royal Sisters were, for all intents and purposes, goddesses. Willow pushed her doubts aside and her chest swelled determinedly: she couldn't let Grey down now; he was counting on her to do the work that he, in his infirmity, couldn't.
She strode a few steps further down the passage confidently, then returned too her cautious gait as the echoes of her hoof-falls made her jump.
Nevertheless, she mused. Words will be had.
----<<<<>>>>----
Grey Streak's traditional methods were carved deeply into the weathered stone tablet of his soul; robes, sewers, capital letters, the whole boiling. It was a method that had always worked, at least when it didn't fail, and neither he nor any of his hypothetical comrades would consider any other plan; this was a gentleman's game, after all: if they hit you with a stick of rhubarb, you stayed hit.
Otherwise everypony'll start using swords or something; somepony could get hurt. No. Far safer to play by the rules.
Fancy Pants was more than twice Grey Streak's age, and in his time he'd learnt many things. First and foremost was that most rules, however obvious, only applied if he wanted them to. This unreasonable line of thought meant that while Willow Leaves was dragging her way cautiously through Canterlot's sewers, Cut Glass and a dozen other unicorns were walking through the Palace's gates with all the self-assurance of born con-artists.
Cut Glass waved the warding document at a guard on the doors as the squad approached. The stallion on gate duty knew thugs when he saw them, but also knew Celestia's signature. Reluctantly, he opened the doors.
Far warmer, drier, and cleaner than Willow, Glass and his team stepped inside the Palace.
----<<<<>>>>----
Willow Leaves had spent the last half-hour desperately attempting to deny the obvious fact that she was lost. It wasn't hard to become lost in a network of homogeneous tunnels that stretched the length and breadth of Canterlot, and when a sewer grate far above her had allowed a brief view of the sun, Willow had noticed that Grey's, "map" bore some remarkable similarities to a "McDashie's" colt's and filly's puzzlemat, logo and all. The need for words was becoming clearer and clearer.
The need for fresh air was not inconsiderable too.
Willow had stuffed her saddlebags with all manner of potentially useful tools; and given that she'd planned for a stone tunnel a hammer and chisel had found their way into the mix. Pulling both out, she held the chisel against the tunnel roof in her mouth and struck it.
Once she'd stopped seeing stars, she dropped the chisel into her other hoof and tried again.
It took less than a minute for the stone to give way; it was well made, but not designed to withstand assault from anypony, let alone one so desperate to leave as Willow Leaves. Willow gave a small shriek and jumped backwards as a pile of cobbles fell into the sewer with a crash. Opening one eye slowly, she peered into the space she had opened up.
It is well known that dumb luck can sometimes accomplish feats that would otherwise take a considerable amount of skill and preparation to achieve. Perhaps this was one such time, or perhaps Grey Streak's map was more useful than it appeared.
Or perhaps the whole thing was some sort of plot-hole in a poorly planned comedy fanfiction.
Whatever the reason, when Willow found herself staring into a cellar, her firefly illuminated the crest of the royal pony sisters on the wall. Curious, she pulled herself from the sewer and stood up. Deep in the back of her mind Willow knew that there would be rats, or something equally unpleasant, but her urge to run and hide was suppressed. It wasn't like she had anywhere to go anyway. By the light of her firefly, she explored the room; it was made of the same dark masonry as the sewer, and must've been about as old. Clusters of cobwebs filled every corner and crevice of the cellar, and stacks of ancient crates and chests were strewn haphazardly across the floor. The room had clearly been empty for some time; a single door, at the top of a broken staircase, had been boarded up.
Right. Willow mused. What would Daring Do do?
She wouldn't be trying to overthrow the Princesses.
Willow bit her lip; she hadn't planned for a rebellious subconscious. Well, just suppose that she was.
Well in that case, there'd probably be a handy rope that she could turn into a grappling hook. Or something.
Ten minutes inspection revealed that, against all narrative reason, the multitude of containers in the cellar were completely empty.
She frowned. Fine then, forget Daring Do.
It didn't take Willow a great deal of thought to calculate a route to the door; it wasn't as flashy as A. K. Yearling's, but it did have the benefit of being possible. It only took half an hour for Willow to stack the cellar's crates into a makeshift pyramid bellow the boarded-up doorway, and she was soon sitting atop the highest crate with a smug expression on her face. The effect was spoiled slightly when she realised that nopony else would ever see the fruits of her genius. Frustratedly, Willow bucked at the sealed door; it exploded outwards in a splintery cascade and scattered into the newly b'cellared space beyond.
Once the dust had settled, Willow opened her eyes. Her kick had opened up a long, opulent corridor to the thrills of Canterlot's Sewer Smell. (In this case, insanity would not be a necessary precursor to capitalisation. That said, extended exposure to the Smell would cause at least some level of mental issues with the smeller anyway.) The corridor was lavishly decorated with portraits of nobles long past, and Grey's words on the vanity of the noble classes came back to Willow with the same fervour, if not the same spittle, with which they had been delivered. She winced at the awkward memory. A large, ornamental fountain occupied one edge of the corridor, and it made Willow realise just how caked with mud her coat had become, she briefly considered washing herself off quickly, but froze when she noticed the ponies.
There were two in the corridor, but despite her swamp-monster-esque appearance only one, some sort of clerk, had turned to look at her. The other was a guard; he was lying, out cold, under the pile of splintered wooden planks that were all that remained of the cellar's obstructive door. The clerk was shaking visibly; Willow got the impression that shock was all that was keeping her in place.
"Um. Hi?" Willow ventured.
With a scream, the terrified pony vanished down a passageway in a trail of paper.
Willow Leaves secretly suspected that her "Lord Chancellor" hadn't really expected her to get this far. Either way, she was operating on intuition. She prodded the recumbent guard with a hoof and, satisfied that he was truly unconscious, dragged him back through the broken door and into the cellar. Five minutes, a wash, and a muttered apology later, a guard clambered awkwardly from the darkness and into the brightness of the corridor.
Helmets are so damn heavy these days. Willow mused.
----<<<<>>>>----
Cut Glass didn't much care for helmets either, but unlike Willow he had no need to wear one. His team had split silently into pairs as they'd entered the palace and insinuated themselves throughout the labyrinth of rooms; Glass himself had made his way to the throne room doors where, under the uneasy eyes of a pair of guards, he and his subordinate were slowly re-fabricating the warding spells into something infinitely more malicious. Glass knew that all across the palace similar traps would be being cast. He stepped cautiously around the ward circle; the spells were unfinished and he didn't dare to touch them: anything could happen.
As now, in fact.
It started as a distant scream, but got louder gradually and soon both the guards and conspirators had stopped their work to listen. After several minutes, and many more pauses for breath, the noise resolved itself into a pony, clearly exhausted, who ran up the length of the corridor towards the throne room doors. The badge on the terrified clerk's neck was enough authorisation for the guardsponies, who had chalked her madness up to some sort of mathematical error, or at least something not relevant to themselves, but Glass knew that, in their present state, the trap spells would make no such deductions.
Unfortunately, both for himself and the clerk, Glass wasn't the swiftest pony ever born.
Just as Glass's forehoof closed on the clerk's leg, there was a flash and a surge of white light as the already panicked pony stepped into the circle of spells. In their unfinished state, they drew what raw magic they needed straight from Glass and his subordinate who grunted in unison at the sudden drain of power.
When the guards opened their eyes, what they saw was a diorama painted in various intensities of guilt and anger; the warding unicorns' horns glowed faintly with the residue from the explosion and the stunned clerk was lying concussedly, still mumbling faint screams, at the warders' hooves. Following years of training, and an ingrained dislike of private buisnessponies, the guards leapt.
----<<<<>>>>----
Shining Armor slotted the last plank into place over his office's shutterless window; he'd grown tired of picking up his paperwork from the floorboards. A keen observer, if not sufficiently unnerved by the captain's presence, might've noticed the chessboard on his desk; if they had, then they'd probably have noticed that, owing to Shining's lack of chess knowledge, every piece was a knight. A really keen observer might even have seen that one of the grey pieces, of which there were only two, and one of the many white pieces wore tiny crowns. Both crowned knights sat at opposite corners of the board, apparently watching the carnage of the game.
Shining Armor might not care for chess, but he knew how the world worked. There was always somepony in charge.
And when their apples went pear-shaped, they'd never be sitting on the same branch.
Fancy Pants did not take kindly to failure. Nevertheless, he always made sure to have a selection of both metaphorical and literal back doors to choose from should his plan turn metaphorically (or, once, literally) pear shaped.
Concerned by the sudden materialisation of Glass's, "Run For It" note, Fancy Pants had rapidly gathered up necessities, such as his butler, and made to quit the building. Finding every trap-door barred, portal broken, and super-secret hoofglider mysteriously and inexplicably "out for cleaning", whatever that meant, had only worried him more. It was as if Shining Armor was competent.
That just wasn't fair.
Shining Armor was much younger than Fancy Pants, but in his youth he'd had time to learn from the Princesses themselves, who were hundreds of times older than either of the unicorns and certainly knew a trick or two about life. They'd taught him that the rules apply to everypony equally regardless of race, age, or social status. But they'd also taught him that most ponies, however common or noble, forget to read the fine print.
As such, when Fancy Pants finally set aside his misgivings and stepped out of his front door, Shining Armor took great satisfaction in striking him on the head with a stick of rhubarb.
In deference to the fact that he wasn't stupid, Shining had put the rhubarb, some hours before, in a very deep, very cold freezer.
The icy rhubarb shattered into jagged shards, and Fancy Pants collapsed like a very expensively dressed puppet, sans strings.
The arcanum mages in the castle had confirmed his suspicion that the "warding spells" were fake. Shining had waited a long time for Fancy Pants to make a mistake; he intended to savour it. Whistling to himself quietly, Shining Armor walked calmly into Fancy's manor.
He had a lot of investigating to do.
----<<<<>>>>----
Willow's timorous voice echoed down the corridor. "Hello? Is anypony there?"
Despite the weight of her (borrowed) armour, Willow had been keeping up a reasonable pace through the palace's winding passages. She had, in fact, arrived at the throne room's entrance just as a pair of guards, with three unconscious unicorns between them (one carried on a back, two being dragged by their hooves), had passed her in the opposite direction. Willow had ducked into an alcove to avoid them; it wasn't until after they'd passed that she'd remembered her disguise. She hadn't felt too bright, but at least there'd been nopony around to notice.
There was no response to her inquiry either.
Cautiously, expecting at any minuite that guards would leap out of the woodwork and devour her, Willow made her way up to the throne room doors. Then she paused.
She considered just going inside, but she doubted that any of Celestia's guards would be so brazen and she did have a cover to maintain. Besides, it would be rude not to knock. Treason was one thing, impoliteness simply would not be, well, polite.
Like Grey, Willow had an unshakable set of values that she would not revoke for love nor money. Thankfully, that was more or less where the similarities stopped.
She knocked, then listened.
She tried again, a little more forcefully.
Finally, Willow decided that a revolutionary deserved some greater degree of respect. The doors were pushed, very carefully, open.
Willow froze, halfway through the door, as she caught Celestia's eye. The alicorn smiled and motioned for Willow to join her.
"I was beginning to wonder," Celestia purred. "if you'd ever come in at all." The sun-goddess nodded to a bench. "Do sit down, My Little Pony. Shining Armor tells me that you have something to say."
Willow just stared, mouth agape. Celestia smiled back. Suddenly, Willow slammed the door closed and pressed her back against it; she was breathing heavily and her eyes darted up and down the corridor, searching for danger. A moment later, a faint golden aura pushed at the door and it slid, despite Willow's best efforts, open. With a yelp, Willow was lifted into the air by the aura and floated, gently, into the throne room.
She scrabbled at the doorframe with her hooves as she drifted past; it didn't seem to do any good. The doors closed, not with a bang, but with a click.
It was just as final, nevertheless.
----<<<<>>>>----
For Celestia, nervous subjects were an everyday issue; it'd become something of a trend, these past centuries. Gone, regrettably, were the days when handsome knights in shining armour would presume to kiss her hoof or to grin roguishly in her presence; now, the most she could expect from anypony but her sister or niece was Twilight's gleeful chatter whenever the little unicorn became excited enough to forget her mentor's status. That said, she knew why Willow Leaves was here; it was understandable that she would be more apprehensive than most.
It didn't help that she'd been forcefully granted an audience either. Both ponies had been sat in silence for some minuites, and the growing awkwardness had finally moved Celestia to speak.
"Would you care for some tea, Willow Leaves?" Willow appeared at first not to have heard - she just kept wringing her hooves nervously - but after a moment she looked up in a panic.
"U- um..." She stuttered. "Yes- yes please."
Celestia levitated a kettle onto a small hearth on the other side of the throne room; it'd taken her years to convince her staff to let her make her own tea: in the end she'd had to pass several decrees on the subject. With the noise of the kettle drowning out the silence of the hall, Willow appeared to steel herself.
"I- er..." Willow wasn't feeling overconfident. "I... I demand to be released... Please." She chided herself for asking permission, but she'd never been well suited to Grey's cadre. Having screwed her eyes shut as she made her demand, she cracked one open at the sound of laughter.
It was Celestia: to her credit she had made some effort to suppress it.
Between her fading giggles, she replied. "I thought you wanted to find me, Miss Leaves."
"I guess I hadn't really planned to, well, get this far." Willow was finding it hard to be intimidated by the laughing, motherly figure on the other chair. Her self-styled, "Lord Chancellor's" vehement, rage-driven speeches about the Royal Sister's evil and heartless manipulation of innocent ponies had been hard enough to believe at the best of times; they were rapidly fading into the realm of utter nonsense in the presence of Celestia, who was doing nothing more evil than adding milk to her earl grey tea. She even seemed a little guilty about that.
"I have lemon, if you'd rather." Celestia offered.
Shining Armor lifted his helmet from his head and shook his mane out gratefully, azure strands clinging to the sweat on his brow. Hard earned sweat. By long standing tradition, the sergeants of the Palace Guard took great pains to creatively misunderstand every order given by their captain. (Shining understood that there was some small prize in place, nowadays, for the most inventive disobedience.) He encouraged it, on the whole: independent thought was important. Either way, some pony hadn't had the time to avoid following his last orders, and a messenger pigeon was perching on the edge of his desk, beside a blank roll of parchment, as he sat down. It eyed him, warily.
Levitating a quill, Shining wrote carefully on the tiny scrap of pre-cut paper.
Pri. C Plotters captured, mission successful. Coming to Empire 2nd day 3rd moon Summer. Love - S. A.
It was short, but it would do; the pigeon couldn't carry too much more anyway. Shining slipped the paper into the pigeon's wax tube and affixed it to the clasp on the bird's leg. Stepping onto the battlements, he lifted the pigeon in one hoof; the bird glared at him suspiciously, then jumped.
Perhaps out of some logical consideration of weight, or perhaps out of sheer bloody-mindedness, it made sure to relieve itself on Shining's hoof as it took off.
Scowling, the unicorn wiped the worst of the droppings on the rampart and trotted back to his office.
There was some work to be done before he could leave: a chessboard to set up, for example.
----<<<<>>>>----
Grey Streak awoke, as he did every day, to the light of Celestia's sun. He frowned at the sight.
It'd been a long shot, he knew, a long shot to hope that one earth pony might infiltrate the palace and capture the Princesses, but he'd had no choice; the others had betrayed them. Starlight, Tome, Rabbit, all traitors to The Revolution. He lit a candle by his ragged bed.
"Sister Maple Leaves, may your name never be forgotten."
The stubs of half a dozen candles littered the bedside, each a memory of a True Revolutionary. Grey wondered how many more would join them before justice was served. Standing slowly, Grey pulled on his cloak and grabbed a stack of leaflets from the cabinet by his bed; each was cheaply printed, and bore the slogan "End Oppression Now!!!!!" in bold lettering across the top of the page. There were always more Brothers and Sisters to be found, he wasn't finished yet.
----<<<<>>>>----
Celestia stood on the Palace's balcony and the morning air of Canterlot filled her lungs. She smiled, contentedly. It'd been a welcome surprise to find one of Grey Streak's "Revolutionaries" who didn't need a slap on the wrist by the city guard.
Well obviously Miss Leaves was due some form of punishment after breaking into the Palace, incapacitating a guard, and judging her, Princess Celestia, for putting milk in her tea, but Celestia had known at first sight that Willow, in whatever circumstances, was only as harmful as she was incompetent.
Which, as the smell of the garden's roses showed, was not very harmful at all.
Deprived of her old job by the closing of Crescent Park's rose garden, Willow Leaves had been all too happy to tend the Palace's greenery. She'd developed a habit of constantly apologising for her attempt to overthrow the Princesses that no amount of reassurance seemed to quell, but apart from that she seemed happy. Celestia smiled at the thought: Grey Streak, an unwitting engine of social rehabilitation.
You send 'em to me sad, Grey Streak and I'll send 'em back grinning.
Celestia chuckled, and sipped at her tea. Maybe she'd have to visit the old stallion himself some day; she owed him a thank you at least. It was blissful, really, knowing that she could help all of them, every one:
