A Twilight Princess

by Mekon


Realization

Last Time:

“I go now. Know that I will forever be your brother and that I will always love you. Farewell my dearest sisters. I will see you again someday...”

And with that said, the image was gone.

“Caesius!” Luna nearly screamed, launching herself forward, only to collide with a lavender pony.

“Ow.....my head...” Twilight groaned, and slowly opened her eyes to find them staring directly into Princess Luna's azure eyes, a bit red from the crying she had been doing. “Um...Princess Luna? Are you okay?” Luna opened her mouth to speak, but was suddenly cut off by a voice from the door.

“Is everything alright in here? We could not help but overhear some sort of trouble coming from this room. Is Twilight alright?” Rarity asked, noticing a rather distraught Celestia and an....interesting spectacle on the bed. “Um....are we interrupting?” Pinkie unfortunately had no qualms about interrupting and zipped right up to the side of the bed, noticing that Twilight was pinned underneath Luna, awake.

“Twilight! You're finally awake!!! Now I can throw a TWILIGHT'S STILL ALIVE AND IS NOW A PRINCESS AFTER ONE WEEK IN BED PARTY!”

Twilight visibly twitched. “ONE WEEK!!?!!??!”

Α~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω

Chapter Four: Realization

So many things happened at once.

Luna blushed hotly as she noticed the compromising position she had been caught in and clumsily climbed off of Twilight, muttering about out of context scenes and conveniently interrupting ponies. Excusing herself, Luna left them to wallow in her own thoughts in her room alone. She had much to think about.

Twilight continued to flip out, saying that everything in her 'lenient' schedule was even messed up, pondering if she was malnourished now due to a week of being asleep, and altogether wondering what in Equestria's name was Pinkie talking about. Her a princess?

Her thought processes weren't helped by the fact that all of her friends were now crowding her bed, rambling and chattering amongst themselves regarding Twilight's current condition and new appearance.

"Oh Luna's stars...Look at you Twi!" Applejack exclaimed, "Who'd a thought the princess look would work so well fer ya. Lookin' purtier than a glistenin' apple on the first day o'harvest."

"For once, I actually have to agree with Applejack on a matter of fashion. You look absolutely marvelous dear!" Rarity admitted, "Oh you must tell me how you get your new mane to look that way!"

"You gotta come flying with me sometime Twilight! I'll teach you all the cool tricks and everything! Sure you won't look as awesome as I am, but you'll still look pretty sweet," Rainbow gushed, thinking about all of the new possibilities.

"You look really nice Twilight," Fluttershy said quietly, but with no amount of lesser meaning, "I really think that crown suits you."

"Sooooooo? Can I? Can I pleasseeeeee? I really really really really realllllllyyyy want to throw you a party!" Pinkie asked hopping up and down in place, positively shaking with uncontainable joy.

Spike didn't say a word and instead started his morning routine, feeling a bit sorry for Twilight who was currently under heavy verbal bombardment. He left the room to fetch Twilight's morning ritual, coffee and a piece of toast with some butter. Within five minutes, the royal chef had whipped up a large pot of premium brand coffee, apple juice and a large stack of buttered toast, sending it up with two extra servants and Spike.

When he returned, he could tell Twilight was at her breaking point. Coming to her rescue, Spike quickly deposited a hot and fresh cup of coffee into Twilight's hooves.

"Thanks Spike," Twilight sighed, patting him on the head gratefully. She waited a moment for the coffee to cool and then downed the glorious, black liquid. She felt so much better now. However, much to her chagrin, the five other ponies continued to chatter, oblivious to their friends increasing headache.

"Girls!" Twilight exclaimed as she attempted to get the situation under control. No such luck. "GIRLS!" she tried again, exponentially louder than last time. This time the five other mares stopped talking and faced their weary friend.

"Yes dear?" Rarity asked out of politeness and concern.

Twilight rubbed her face stressfully. "I have no idea what's going on here! I've been asleep for nearly a week apparently, and all of a sudden a million things have apparently happened over that time. What happened to me?" Twilight demanded, knowing her mind would never stop bugging her if she never found out, "And what in Equestria are you all talking about? Flying?New Mane? Crown? Princess!?"

"Well that's easy!" Pinkie said as she began to recall the tale in quite vivid detail.

Α~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω

One Week Earlier

"What in Celestia's name was that!?" Rainbow yelled as she turned towards the Everfree Forest, the remnants of a strange explosion lingering in the air. Dash shook her head lightly to clear her ears. Crashing into the pressure wave at high altitude was not pleasant.

"Oooo! I know! I know! I felt a back scratch, itchy nose, belly rumble combo! Twilight was doing some experiment again!" Pinkie declared.

"Well let's go check it out. I don't think most of Twilight's experiments include a violent explosion. C'mon Pinks," Rainbow said, cutting their pranking session a bit short, but Pinkie didn't mind.

"Okie dokie lokie!"

The one great thing about being with Pinkie meant that Rainbow didn't have to hold back on her speed. No matter how fast she went, Pinkie would find someway to appear there before her no matter how fast or how far.

So literally, Rainbow was able to get to the edge of the Everfree Forest in ten seconds flat, only to find Pinkie was already there, popping her head out of a nearby bush. Dash rolled her eyes, but shuddered at the thought of Pinkie somehow becoming a unicorn or pegasus somehow one day.

"Rainbow Dash! What impeccable timing!" a recognizably lofty voice praised.

"Oh hey Rarity! Fluttershy! What's going on?" the cyan mare asked. She highly doubted that they knew anything seeing as they had arrived as the same time as them. "Pinkie said that it has something to do with Twilight."

As if on cue, Spike came running from further down the forest, yelling and frantic.

"Help! Help! Something happened to Twilight!" Spike yelled at the top of his lungs, the worry easily filtering through his rapid speech.

“Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” Fluttershy squeaked, her maternal instincts instantly flaring.

"Where is she?" Dash asked immediately, taking control of the situation. As head of the weather department, she had been trained to deal with emergencies. Sure it may have only dealt with wild tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards and a couple other unwanted weather anomalies, but the leadership required was the same.

"Just over there in that grove of trees!" Spike said pointing further down the edge of the Everfree. Rainbow nodded, understanding why they couldn't see her in the first place.

"Come on everypony!"

The four friends rushed to the little inlet of trees and gasped at what they found. The ground, charred and scarred, had been warped into a huge crater and in the center lay an unconscious lavender unicorn, unmoving and seemingly unalive, with a crown on her head, surrounded by smashed jewel bits of black and white color.

"Twilight!" Fluttershy said rushing forward to see if her friend was okay. She checked to see if Twilight was breathing still and if she had a pulse. Fluttershy sighed with relief as she found that her friend was indeed still alive, but worried as she noticed nothing she did seemed to do affect her unicorn friend.

"What happened here Spike?" Rarity asked immediately, turning towards the small purple and green dragon.

So Spike told them everything he knew. He recalled how they had appeared there at some special time when the moon and sun aligned to test some magical theory that Twilight had come up with a couple months ago.

"Then she started talking about this crazy magical eth....etheresomthing through magical...well something that made her magic more powerful, " Spike continued, "I don't know if it worked or not, but out of nowhere she just exploded and disappeared! One second she was there....about a minute or so later she reappeared, completely knocked out." He simply put it that they should know the rest from there.

"Okay! First! We gotta get Twilight to the hospital," the rainbow colored mare commanded, "When she wakes up, we can figure out what happened then. So who want's to carry her?”

The circle of friends answered with a resolute and rather pronounced silence. Suddenly, a sharp voice broke through the forest.

"What in the hay is goin' on here!"

“Perfect!”

Α~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω

"Anddddddd then you wouldn't wake up, and then we all started worrying lots, and then Spike sent a letter to the princess, and then they sent a carriage to bring us up here where you were seen by like a bazilllion doctors and nurses, and then you finally woke up!" Pinkie concluded in one big gulp of air, having said the entire sentence non-stop. Twilight's face was blank as she attempted to process the entire story.

"Um...well that's...informative Pinkie," Twilight slowly stated. Bits and pieces were slowly starting to make sense.

"Well?" Rainbow Dash said expectantly, crossing her hooves

"Well what?" Twilight responded cluelessly. Rainbow facehoofed.

"What happened to you before we got there?!?" Dash practically shouted, gritting her teeth. “Honestly Twilight, what did you expect? We've been worried sick for a week wondering what in the hay happened to you!”

"Oh..Right," the lavender librarian said sheepishly.

She started, telling them how she had been planning to test her theory of magical tracing for over three months, perfectly calibrating the time and date of the optimal testing time. Adding onto her tale, Twilight recalled how, after successfully etherealizing, she had traced and decomposed Luna's and Celestia's spells, much to her embarrassment and to the utter confusion of her friends. She squeaked an apology to Celestia who readily accepted, urging her to finish.

Next she came to the exciting stuff. Her friends were literally on the edge of the bed as they listened to Twilight tell her story, soaking in every word. Not a single syllable was said as she went from discovering the twilight, finding and talking to the gray alicorn, Caesius, and escaping from Umbra.

"That sounds like a lot to do in only a minute Twilight," Spike said skeptically.

“A minute?” she asked, giving her assistant a confusing stare, “I was in there for at least an hour!”

“Well it definitely didn't seem like it..out here anyway,” the green and purple dragon said, scratching his head in confusion.

Twilight didn't quite know how to respond to that, but luckily Celestia, who had been listening and watching the entire exchange, stepped in to help.

"The twilight runs on a time much faster than ours. A minute here translates to roughly an hour there," Celestia said, her voice a bit heavy as she thought of the time her brother had to spend in there.

Twilight paled, thinking along the same lines. Her own lifetime would have translated to at least a millennium!

"No wonder he said it had been many millenniums since he had seen another pony's face. I thought he had simply lost track of time.... How did he not go insane?" Twilight said to herself, feeling an immense amount of guilt and sorrow for the gray alicorn.

"Caesius was always remarkably strong, but even I do not know how he managed," the sun goddess said, also feeling a crushing guilt on her heart and soul.

"What about how you became a princess?" Fluttershy interjected bravely, wanting to change the subject.

"Now that, I still don't understand," Twilight said, "You guys keep going on and on about how I'm a princess, but I'm not.”

"Ohm but you are darling!" Rarity claimed, "And a rather beautiful one if I might shamelessly add."

"Here see for yourself!" Rainbow Dash said as she flew into the nearby closet, the sounds of her crashing into things resounding through the room,causing Twilight to wince with each crash. She would have to clean that later.

Rainbow floated out with a rolling, full body mirror that had obviously not been used, ever. "This should be pretty clear," Rainbow said as she deposited the reflection device in front of the bed. The effect was instantaneous.

Twilight's eyes became as wide as saucers, almost popping out of her now regally shaped skull. It couldn't be....

She waved her hoof at the mirror only to find the lavender alicorn waving back. Twilight blinked; she blinked. Twilight opened her mouth; she opened her mouth. Twilight pinched herself; she pinched herself. Twilight fainted; she fainted.

"Rainbow. Ah don't think that was the best way to go 'bout telling her," Applejack said with a frown as she poked the unconscious alicorn.

"She had to find out one way or another," the cyan pegasus said, rolling her eyes.

“Perhaps it would be best to not be so blunt next time Rainbow Dash and handle the situation with some iota of tact,” Rarity suggested, “I would imagine finding yourself a member of a different species would shock anypony.”

"She isn't going to be all sleepy for another week is she?" Pinkie asked sadly, her hair slightly deflating, "She's going to miss her party if she does!"

"She is going to be fine my little ponies," Celestia said, rising from the corner of the room, "I suggest that we give her some time to process this. She has undergone much for one day alone.”

They nodded and headed out the door, followed by the regal sun sister who lightly closed the door on her way out and levitated the mirror back to it's place in the closet.

Α~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω

An hour or so later

"Ugh...what a crazzzzyyy dream," Twilight murmured turning towards the window, finding that she was a bit late in waking, but she decided that it wasn't a total waste. "Sleep is very important after all.”

Swinging herself out of bed, she found it strange that the floor seemed to be closer than she expected. Her sleep boggled mind didn't think much of it, however, and she pressed on.

Trotting sluggishly to her bathroom, she magically grasped for the comb lying on the sink, intent on brushing her mane. She heard a snap and looked at the comb, noticing that it now lay in a couple pieces. "Tsk tsk. You would think they would make these things better. I must really talk to Princess Celestia about selecting better quality brushes."

She decided on just taking a bath. Moving to the double alicorn-sized tub, which Celestia had insisted be installed, Twilight's mind continued in its state of denial. For now, she was just plain old Twilight Sparkle, a perfectly normal unicorn awakening in her room in the castle. Nothing was amiss at all.

Humming a familiar tune in her head that had something to do with wrapping, she began washing herself. Hair check. Hooves check. Face check. Body check. Horn, a bit longer than she remembered, but check. Wings...

"Wings?" she blinked looking down at herself. "WINGS?"

She rocketed out of the tub, carelessly flinging water all over the floor. Moving to the sink, she dared a look in the mirror.

"Flowing hair? Longer horn? Wings? Taller? Oh dear Celestia...." Twilight said, her eyes impossibly wide. Everything came back. "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no!"

Casting a drying spell on herself, she escaped the bathroom, only to run into Spike.

"Oh hey Twilight! I thought you'd be up about now," her number one assistant said, “Are you hungry?”

"Spike! Oh thank Luna! You have to help me!" Twilight gasped, rushing to close the doors and curtains.

"With what?" Spike asked, extremely confused by Twilight's frantic actions.

"Hide me! I'm a princess!" Twilight said, "Oh what will Celestia and Luna think?"

The baby dragon shrugged. "They already know," Spike said nonchalantly, "And it's about time you came to terms with the fact that you somehow magically became a princess. You fainted right away when Rainbow placed that mirror in front of your bed."

Unfortunately, Twilight wasn't paying attention and lost the end of Spike's sentence. The only thing going through her mind over and over again was "They already know..."

"Eeek! They know? Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! I have got to get out of here!"

Ignoring Spike's protests, she opened the door and peaked outside the door, finding no guards. "Coast is clear." Tiphoofing out of the room for a moment, she looked left and made a mad dash for it. If she could somehow make it to the main gate, she could escape.

"Hey! There she goes!" a couple of guards said as the speeding blur of lavender whisked past them. "Do not let her escape!”

To say Twilight was freaking out now would have been an understatement. She was in all out, 'my next assignment is going to be tardy!', panic mode.

Looking up ahead, a whole row of guards were waiting for her, blocking her way. Screeching to a stop, Twilight ducked into a nearby side-passage, the day-guards following just behind.

She found herself in another long hallway, adjacent to the main throne room. Twilight didn't have time to think about it and instead kept running, her hoofsteps echoing loudly across the tiled floor of the castle.

"Twilight Sparkle! Stop!" a guard yelled as he charged. Twilight quickly teleported out-of-the-way, but had misjudged just how much power was needed and instead ended up in the royal kitchens.

Nopony was around; it was just her, pots, pans and large amounts of cake. This was her chance to escape.

She could hear guardponies coming and looked around for an escape route. There was only one other way out of the kitchen to escape the storming guardponies, the garbage hatch.

"Ugh...it stinks in there," Twilight said, nearly puking as she undid the latch, "Brilliant plan Sparkle." Moving back she prepared to dive in, but suddenly, the hatch closed, a pure white aura surrounding it as it did.

"Twilight, Twilight, Twilight," a soft regal voice said while shaking her head.

"Ce..Celestia! I um.." the lavender alicorn choked out, while simultaneously backing up until her backside hit the wall. There was no where to go. She gulped.

Celestia was getting closer. What was she going to do? Twilight shut her eyes tight and held her breath. This was the end!

…......

If the end felt like gentle nuzzling, it wasn't so bad.

"Um...Princess?" Twilight asked as she opened her eyes, a bit unsure as to what was going on, "Aren't you going to punish me or banish me or something?”

Celestia chuckled as she pulled back. "For what my prized pupil?"

"Um....Uh..." Twilight stammered, "For...being a princess?"

"Now why would I punish you for that?" Celestia asked, smiling down at her faithful student.

"Right. What was I thinking. It's not like you're some tyrant that eliminates all threats to the throne or anything like that," the lavender alicorn said, chuckling nervously, “Right?”

"Or am I?" Celestia said, drawing up her full height and smiling madly, “Twilight Sparkle! It is time to pay for your crimes against the royal throne!” Twilight looked on in horror. This was it; she really was a goner. "Kidding!" Celestia laughed as she toned down her aura to regular levels. Twilight looked like she was about to have a heart attack. "Oh dear. Luna always said that I should work on my delivery. I'm sorry about that Twilight."

Taking large gulps of air to make sure she was still alive, Twilight finally felt her heart rate return to normal levels. "It's okay Princess Celestia. I forgive you." Celestia smiled.

"Come. It is not best to stay in the royal kitchens for too long, lest my craving for cake come back to bite me," Celestia said, her eyes staring wistfully at a simply divine piece of chocolate crumb cheesecake. Well, it wasn't so much as a piece as it was a whole cake.

"Oh, right," the lavender alicorn answered, quite aware of her mentor's strong penchant for sweets and confectioneries.

Celestia lead her student out of the kitchens, but not before ordering one of her servants to bring them each a slice of that cheesecake and some tea.

"We have much to talk about... Princess Twilight."