When the lovesplosion engulfed the Empire, Celestia knew it was her time to strike. With Discord at her side, the army of Equestria had stormed the newly-vacant walls, hoping to occupy the city before the changelings could rally elsewhere and reclaim it. Except the walls weren’t entirely vacant, and now that she had time to slow down and think, she had to ponder that.
“Report.” She hissed, glaring up at the Crystal Palace with a level of hatred usually reserved for pedophiles and rapists.
The Guardspony at her side held a scroll up to the Princess's face, his breath fogging the air around his head. “As you can see, even more changelings were spared from the blast than we thought. The vast majority of those in and around the city appear to have gone into hiding with local ponies,” he announced with a tiny sniffle in his voice.
“Hostages?” Celestia asked, eyebrow rising in concern.
“That’s what we thought too, ma’am,” the Guard said, shaking his head. “But they surrendered the moment our Guards showed up, complying with all orders and releasing any ponies they had a hold on. What’s more, some of the ponies tried to prevent the changelings from being taken away!”
She shook her head and snorted in frustration. “None of this makes any sense! Sure, changeling hypnosis could explain why some ponies would try to defend them, but their surrendering so easily? Changeling doctrine dictates that survival depends on staying out of custody! They would do anything to avoid capture, even putting ponies in harm’s way! What is going on!?”
“I wish I knew, ma’am," the guard said with a shrug.
“Tia!” Discord suddenly appeared, swooping into sight from on high, his bread helmet and stale-cake armor raining crumbs on every pony he flew over. “The guards in the palace say they’re almost into the throne room!”
“Good, good, thanks sweets,” she said, giving the draconequus a quick peck on the cheek before taking to the air in the direction of the palace. “Maybe we’ll find the answers we’re looking for in there.”
“Wait Princess, there’s more!” The guard said hurriedly. “We’ve done some flyovers of the area around the Empire, but Queen Chrysalis doesn’t appear to be among the changelings blasted away by the spell!”
“Which means she’s still in the city,” the Princess growled. She was afraid of this. She gazed up at the massive structure where she knew her sister, her niece, her protégé, and so many others were being held. Chrysalis would have a lot of explaining to do when this was all over, but no matter what, Celestia vowed the Queen would do so from the inside of a prison cell, with her beloved Luna, her student, her niece, and every other pony safely out of reach.
Swooping in through an open window, she found a large cluster of guards in the main hallway just outside the tall, magically-sealed doors leading into the throne room. The pegasi and earth ponies all stood back, weapons at the ready and leveled on the doors, while the unicorns rammed a massive support beam against the barrier, using it as a makeshift battering ram. The Princess strode up to the unicorns’ leader. “Report!” She barked.
“PUSH!” He ordered before turning to her. His eyes instantly widening as he bowed, surprise on his face. “Princess! What are you doing here!? This is no place for…”
“Seriously?” Discord said, deadpanning at the guard while he strode up to his marefriend’s side, his armor clucking. “Please don’t tell me you were seriously about to say this was no place for a princess, because in case you haven’t noticed, she’s been doing a better job of fighting the changelings than your entire Guard combined!”
“I…yes, sir,” the unicorn bowed again. “My apologies, Princess, I was just surprised by your appearance here.”
“What, did you think these were just for decoration?” Discord asked dryly, holding one of Celestia’s wings up in his claws.
She pulled away from him and turned back to the unicorn. “Think nothing of it, Guard. Now, report.”
“We’ve secured the rest of the palace, Princess: the throne room’s all that’s left.”
“Any signs of my sister and niece? Or the Element bearers?”
“No, but…” the stallion gnawed at his lip. “We found traces of high-level containment pods in the caverns beneath the palace. At least one of them looks large enough to hold an Alicorn.”
Though the white-hot fury of the sun itself instantly blazed in her eyes, Celestia’s voice was completely calm and composed, as though she were reviewing a daily report on some province’s fiscal situation. “Keep up the good work, commander. Alert me once we’re through those doors.”
“Yes, ma’am!” He saluted and turned back to the unicorns as the battering ram fell against the door with another deep thud. “Alright, stallions! You heard your Princess! Put yer backs into it, I wanna have hooves on the ground in there five minutes ago!”
“Celestia…” Discord whispered into her ear, keeping his distance as her anger died down from a raging inferno to a deep-rooted coal fire, simmering just beneath the surface.
She inhaled slowly, and then exhaled. “I didn’t need you to do that, I am more than capable of fighting my own battles.”
His eyebrows arched in surprise, but then he smiled. “I know you can, Tia, but I wanted to.”
She smiled weakly at him, and though no other pony could see it, he knew she was on the verge of tears. Something always shimmered in her eyes when she was about to cry. It was small; the sort of thing anypony could miss even if they were looking right at her, but it was there. Slowly, cautiously, his eagle’s talon rose and came to a rest on her back. She didn’t look at him, though that shimmer in her eye intensified. “She’s broken my sister, Dissy,” she said after a while had passed.
“What!?” He gasped, barely remembering to keep his voice down so nopony could hear.
“The magic over the door?” She motioned towards the massive doors as they finally began to buckle against the unicorns’ assault. “It’s Luna’s. I knew it the moment I saw it. I don't know how, but Chrysalis has my sister under her control, and is using her own magic to keep us at bay.”
“I’m sure there’s some other explanation,” he said, but from his tone of voice she could tell not even he believed that.
Celestia just shook her head sadly. “I can’t fight Luna again, Discord. Not after last time. Not after I finally got her back after a thousand years. If Chrysalis has her under her power, I could just…I might just…”
The eagle’s talon stroked across her back. The Princess sighed and leaned against the draconequus, allowing just one, solitary tear to roll down her cheek.
WAM! The doorframe buckled. “That’s it! A couple more hits should do it!” The leader of the unicorn guards roared, eyes gleaming beneath his golden helmet.
WAM! A single crack traced up the crystalline door’s structure. “C’mon! Putcher backs into it!”
WAM! The crack was now a hole, giving everypony a peek at a few colorful bodies interspaced within a crowd of black. “One more! Just one more, and we’re through!”
At that, Celestia could wait no more. She swooped into the air, forcing her own guards to duck as she rocketed overhead. She landed with all hooves braced, then flitted off, swooping around to give it a full charge.
A talon wrapped around her barrel and she flinched in surprise, until she looked over her shoulder to find Discord grinning down at her, a striped shirt materializing on his frame. “For Le Revolucion, mademoiselle, we must storm Le Bastille!”
“You goof!” She laughed, but immediately whipped around to focus on the door, Discord’s strength joining with her own as they slammed full force into it, shattering it into little shards and splinters.
“Vive la France!” Discord screamed.
“Chrysalis!” Celestia bellowed. “Your reign of terror is at an…end?”
In a flash, the mustache, shirt, beret, and white flag disappeared from Discord’s body as he landed besides Celestia, a rare surprised expression matching her own. Before them, the changelings all sat in chains, all being embraced by a random assortment of ponies. On the dais, Luna was putting the finishing touch to a series of enchantments around Chrysalis’s legs, hogtying her before throwing her over her own back.
“Well…” Discord remarked. “Never thought I’d say this, but…this is unexpected.”
After a moment, the ponies all stood with the changelings, chains rattling and shackles clanking as they filed out the door, into the hooves of the stunned guards waiting outside.
“I...what?” Celestia turned to Discord, who in a rare display, also looked like they’d broken in to find Luna engaged in an S&M session with half the changeling swarm. Which based on the gag shoved into Chrysalis’s mouth and the sheer amount of chains wrapped around her, wasn’t too far from the truth. She glared at them as Luna approached.
“It’s a long story,” Luna said, trotting up to her with a still-glaring Chrsyalis trussed-up and thrown over her back. “But let me start by saying on behalf of the Changeling Kingdom, the Swarm hereby surrenders to Equestria.”
“On behalf of--” Celestia paused, and slowly but cautiously nodded. “We...accept your surrender. Let us go back and...discuss things, then.”
Nodding, Luna fanned her wings out, covering the large changeling in her wingspan as she trotted on, heading out the door at long last. Nopony said a word for a second, until Discord finally announced: “Okay, anypony have any idea what in the halibut is going on!?”
“No,” Celestia admitted, watching her sister leave with the changeling still on her back. “But we’re going to find out soon enough.”
Both princesses had thought this would be a happier occasion: being able to sit down to dinner with as sisters for the first time in ages. The setting was the same as all those dream-dinners they had, but now it was all real. She even made all of Lulu’s favorites! Mooncakes and Moonpies, piled up in a bowl to shimmer with their odd, starry glow. Nightcorn on a platter, still steaming with a sound like crickets. And red wine, fermented as dark as blood spilled on a moonlit night.
And yet, there was something between them. A massive elephant in the room that only got bigger and bigger the more they tried to ignore it.
“Discord, please put that away.”
“Awww...but I was about to take her for walkies!” He moaned from his spot sitting atop the elephant’s head. Said elephant let out a sad honk from its trunk, but Discord did as he was told, sliding to the tile and sending it away with a snap of his fingers. Finally taking his seat in his Burger King Kid’s Klub Throne™, Celestia nodded and smiled to her sister.
“It is wonderful to know you’re back and safe, sister,” she said.
Luna, for her part, smiled from over a barely-touched plate of Nightcorn. “It’s good to be back, sister, really. To see your face and see Canterlot again.”
Celestia nodded, her smile straining. “I...take it there’s more to it than that?”
Settling back in her chair, Luna sighed. “Plenty.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
So Luna did. And ever the perfect diplomat, Celestia listened. She didn’t interrupt, though she dearly wanted to at points. Fortunately, Luna was nearly her equal in diplomacy, and could tell when a question had appeared in her sister’s eyes, giving frequent pause for her to ask them. Finally, as things wore down and the bowl of Moonpies had shrunken to half its previous size, they had made it through the final battle with Chickit.
“So it was that villain who’s manipulations saw you reimprisoned.” Celestia said curtly. “And...very narrowly killed you.”
Luna raised her hoof, already seeing the way Celestia’s grip had mangled her fork. “Don’t waste any energy on self-loathing, sister. Yon villain is gone, and you’d do him a favor by focusing on self-pity and what could have been.”
Celestia’s grip loosened. She inhaled, and let out a long breath. “So you disposed of Chickit, and then?”
“There’s really not much else to tell,” Luna shrugged. “With Chickit gone, the Praetorians scattered by Cadence and Shining Armor, and the curse purged of Chrysalis’s body, the battle was won. Yon changelings that remained were now restrained, and Chrysalis was brought to us in the throne room, where we held them to keep them together. And that’s where we made the discovery.”
“Discovery?” Celestia said, her anger forgotten as she leaned forward.
Luna only smiled, eyes glittering like a clear night sky. “We know why some changelings were spared and others were not. It’s love. They had fallen for some citizens of the Empire, and that love anchored them down.”
Celestia and Discord were quiet for a beat, only to be interrupted when he bolted up with a loud cough. “You’re se-hee-rious!?” He shouted, coughing up a rubber ducky with a squeak. “You think they actually loved ponies back!?”
“That’s quite an observation there, Luna,” Celestia said, giving off a calm aura even as her hooves shook. “You don’t suppose your conclusions might be...skewed?”
“I don’t have Stocksholm syndrome,” she grumbled, hooves crossing stubbornly.
“Spoken like somepony who totally has Stocksholm syndrome!” Discord shouted, leveling a talon accusingly.
“I don’t!” Luna barked, voice booming, causing the other immortals to bolt and knocking Discord’s Kids Klub Crown (Definitely Not Krown Please Stop Asking)™ askew. That made sure they would listen, or at least, gave her a second to breathe. “Listen, we know how this sounds, considering we were at war with this race up until yesterday, but stranger things have happened, have they not? Has love not flourished in odder circumstances?” She punctuated her sentence with a pointed glance to her sister.
“It has,” Celestia admitted, leaning back with a sip of her wine, a hoof subconsciously running under the table to reach for Discord’s talon. “The only part that makes this so unbelievable is that you would be lumping Chrysalis into that group.”
Luna blushed. “The Queen is...complicated.” She admitted. “She’s led a rough life.”
“That doesn’t excuse her crimes.”
“No, it doesn’t, but instead of simply punishing them, could we not see this as an opportunity?” Luna stood, walking around the table to the royal couple. “Tia, you’ve said before that Friendship and Harmony can turn even the blackest of souls.”
“Yes,” Celestia held up a hoof. “But with the Queen, we need to be more cautious than that. She is the ruler of a race built around deceit.”
“Yes, we do need to be cautious,” Luna finally admitted, taking a seat at Celestia’s side. “But simply locking them all up isn’t the solution either. The seed of Love and Friendship has been planted, but without care, it will wilt.”
Leaning towards her, Celestia couldn’t help a tiny smile. She knew what this meant. “I take it you have an idea?”
Luna couldn’t help but return the smile. “Inclusion.”