“And this one?”
Trixie flipped a card and Celestia stared at the picture she held in her magic.
“Coco Pommel, Rarity’s friend.”
“Correct.” Trixie flipped. “And this one?”
“Junebug.”
“Correct. This one?”
“Thunderlane.”
“Correct. This one?”
“Twinkleshine.”
“Correct. This one?”
“Blossomforth.”
“Correct. And this one?”
“Fluttershy.”
“Correct. And this one?”
Celestia looked at the picture. “That’s you. Trixie.”
“Incorrect!”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “The Great and Powerful Trixie?”
“CORRECT!”
Trixie flipped again.
“That’s...the Great and Powerful Trixie. Again.”
“Correct! And this one?”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie.”
Trixie flipped the next flashcard and reveled yet another version of her face, crudely scrawled in crayon.
“Trixie!” snapped Starlight. “Stop messing with the flashcards!”
“But Trixie likes it when the Princess says her name! Who’s this?”
Starlight knocked the deck of poorly-drawn Trixie cards out of Trixie’s magic. Trixie squealed. “My selves! No, I need those! What if I forget who I am?!”
“You’ll be fine. That's only happened, what, four times? Six?” Starlight shrugged and approached Celestia with a measuring tape. “Raise your left leg.”
Celestia did so.
“Right wing, adducted.”
Celestia did so.
“Right wing abducted, left wing adducted.”
“Is this really necessary?
“Left leg. Yes.” Starlight frowned and looked to Twilight. “Motor control functions are at eighty one point six percent normal parameters.”
“Is that bad?” asked Celestia.
Twilight looked up from her notebook. She was wearing a set of broad glasses that made her look absolutely adorable. “We don’t really expect to see a decrease in motor control with this type of problem, but I’ll make a note of it. I can work on calibrations later.”
Celestia sighed. “Never had I ever thought the day would come when my own student would be giving me calibrations.”
Twilight blushed. “I—I didn’t mean like that! Like physical therapy!”
“Are you saying I’m old and arthritic?” Celestia frowned. “Wait a minute...what did you think I meant by ‘calibrations’?”
Twilight’s shade deepened and her wings extended suddenly.
“N...nothing?”
Celestia laughed. “Twilight, I’m joking. You know I was once the Element of Laughter, don’t you? Just because I’m dying doesn’t mean I can’t make a joke or two.”
“You’re not dying,” insisted Twilight. “You’re sick, and I’m going to cure you.”
“Trixie can cure you faster,” said Trixie. “If SOMEPONY would just return Trixie’s beet.”
“I will not tolerate herbal medicine! It has not been systematically validated! It's just magical thinking! And not the effective kind!” snapped Twilight. She turned to Celestia. “Princess, could you take a seat?”
Celestia did so. She was once again in Twilight’s basement laboratory, and the room seemed to have grown—in fact, it almost seemed to grow to whatever size it needed to be to accommodate the battery of tests. Strangely, the artifact section had been relocated to somewhere where she could no longer see it. Which was probably a good thing. It gave Celestia the proverbial willies.
“Okay.” Twilight flipped through her notes. “Facial recognition is good. Motor control is decreased but acceptable.”
“Pending calibrations.”
Twilight’s wings twitched. “Neural scans have detected nothing out of the ordinary, and the electrocardiogram was normal.”
“Proving that you do, in fact, have a heart,” said Trixie. “After what you did to Cozy Glow, we were not actually sure on that.”
Celestia tilted her head. “Who is Cozy Glow?”
Twilight, Starlight, and Trixie looked at each other. Twilight’s violet quill flicked on the page.
“No one,” said Twilight. “No one at all. Not a real pony. It’s fine. It’s fine, isn’t it Starlight?”
“It’s fine,” agreed Starlight. “Totally fine.”
“Totes malotes,” added Trixie.”Also, good chance you’re totally out of your solar gourd.”
Starlight inverted Trixie, and Twilight cleared her throat.
“For the next test, I’m going to ask a few questions, okay? And you just need to answer them honestly.”
“What will this test do?”
“Science!”
Celestia sighed. “Then go ahead, Twilight.” She curled up to a more comfortable position. “Let’s see what you have to ask.”
“Okay. First. What is your name?”
Celestia stared for a moment, then sighed. “Twilight...”
“No. That’s not correct,” said Trixie, crossing her arms. “Even Trixie knows that. Most of the time.”
“It’s just part of the test,” asked Twilight. “Please?”
Celestia sighed again. “Celestia. I don’t have a surname.”
Twilight wrote it down. “And your exact age?”
Starlight winced. “Twilight—”
“I don’t know exactly,” said Celestia, “you lose count after a while. Somewhere around one thousand twenty I suppose.”
“What is your favorite food?”
“Broccoli.”
Twilight looked up. “Wait, what?”
“Twilight. Are you asking me on a date or what? Stop asking questions you already know the answer to.”
“Right, right...” Twilight cleared her throat. “Scenario one: you are walking down the street and you find an abandoned puppy in the park. It’s rainy and the puppy is sad. It looks injured. What do you do?”
“I take it with me. Once we get home, I deploy a healing spell and make sure it’s warm and fed. Then I’d let Luna play with it until I can have the royal dogcatcher find its family.”
“And if you can’t find its family?”
“Then I have a puppy.”
“Scenario two: you are in the castle basement and move a box and a massive centipede comes out. Like, a truly massive one. Borderline monster size. What do you do?”
“Is it injured?”
“What?”
“Is the centipede injured?”
“No, it’s a centipede.”
“I catch it and take it upstairs. I make sure it is warm and fed. Then I’d let Luna play with it until I can have the royal centipedecatcher find its family.”
Twilight frowned, and Celestia was not sure why.
“O...kay. Scenerio three. Changelings are invading. What do you do?”
“Considering that has happened twice already, I sound the alarm and try to avoid getting captured this time. I still can’t get that goo out of my mane. And my mane is plasma.”
“It IS plasma,” admitted Trixie, reaching out to stroke it. “Oh, she’s good.”
“Scenerio four,” continued Twilight, slapping away Trixie's hooves. “Something’s happening and the castle is invaded. The guards are overwhelmed and you can’t escape. They have you cornered and they attack Luna. What do you do?”
“Defend Luna. At any cost.”
“I see. Even if you could get hurt?”
“Of course.”
Trixie, who had been barely paying attention, suddenly leaned forward. A strange smile crossed her face. Celestia had never seen one quite like it, and for a brief moment she could have sworn that she saw sharp points on the ends of Trixie’s teeth.
“What if you had to kill somepony?”
Twilight and Starlight gasped, with Twilight going so far as to almost squeak.
Trixie’s smile grew. “If there was no other way. No alternative. Luna’s life is on the line, and you have a clear shot right to the heart. What do you do, Celestia? Do you take the shot?”
“TRIXIE! You can’t just ask a question like that! Ponies don’t kill, not ever—”
“I would do whatever it takes,” said Celestia. Without hesitation.
Twilight and Starlight froze, and turned back to Celestia slowly.
“P...Princess?”
“If it comes down to it, I will do whatever is required to protect the ponies I care about. If there is no other way...well...” Celestia sighed. “This is something you will come to understand some day, Twilight. A princess must sometimes make hard decisions. I just hope you never have to make that one.”
Starlight looked down at the ground, and Twilight looked like she was about to vomit.
“Of...course.”
“Do you have any other questions?”
“No. Not...not anymore.” Twilight led the papers on her clipboard close. She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “The last part of the day is the stress test. There will be running on the laboratory track. Starlight already prepared the lure.”
Starlight held up what looked like a poorly sewn and excessively fluffy version of a raccoon, hanging by a string attached to where its head would ostensibly be.
“I appreciate the thought,” lied Celestia. “I need to change. And so does Trixie.”
Trixie’s eyes widened. “Wait, why me?”
“Because a race is no fun if I don’t have somepony to race with. Even if I get to chase...that. And you seem especially energetic today. Why not go for a run?”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t like to...sweat.”
“You’re young and fresh. You’ll be fine.”
“Do it Trixie,” said Starlight, chuckling to herself—or pretending to. “Race the princess.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“Because Twilight and I need to keep an eye on the observations for anomalies.”
“You do, yes,” said Celestia. “But Twilight will be participating in the flight component.”
“I will be—wait, what?”
Celestia pointed. “Anypony with wings, raise your hoof?”
She raised her own hoof, and Twilight did as well, looking at Starlight. Starlight just shrugged.
“Road apples,” swore Twilight. “I need shorts.”
“You can borrow Trixie’s,” said Trixie. “They’re extra tight. Trixie shall go bottomless, as per usual.”
Twilight shuddered. “Trixie, stop making it weird!”
“You’re the one who wants to get into Trixie’s shorts, Twilight.”
Twilight became flustered, and Celestia pretended to laugh sincerely.
Celestia stepped out of the steamy bathroom, patting down her prismatic mane with a towel before wrapping the towel around her head. Her naked body was still supple and damp, but otherwise moist, and she took a breath as she felt the cold air of Twilight’s castle flowing over her warm and hairless body.
Luna was waiting for her outside.
“I suppose I will not be receiving any hot water, then?”
“Since when do you bathe in the middle of the day?”
“Since when do I even bathe?”
“Eew, Luna!”
Luna smiled. “I am of course joking, I am scented of lavender and valerian. Such is the floral musk of a princess.”
Celestia chuckled. "You do have a lot of musk."
“So,” said Luna. “How did your test go? Hopefully better than when were foals and Starswirl sprung one of his infamous pop-quizzes upon ourselves. Especially the ones with the atronachs.”
Celestia paused. “I’m not sure. They’re being...secretive.”
“Secretive?" Luna raised an eyebrow. "How so?”
“I’m not sure.” Celestia paused, rubbing water out of her mane with the towel. “But...I did realize something.”
“Something? What manner of something?”
“Just a thought. A weird thing. Something that doesn’t quite make sense.”
Luna raised the other eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“I tried to take a look back at my life. Because, as you are aware, the dying.”
“You’re not dying.”
“So I’m told, but that’s not the point. I tried to look back at everything I’ve done and...I can’t remember any of it.”
Luna seemed confused by this. “This is indeed a problem—”
“No, I don’t think so.” Celestia shook her head. “It’s the strangest thing. It doesn’t quite bother me. Not like...her.” She shivered, thinking of Fluttershy’s plastic face and empty eyes. “But it’s not normal either. For example. I can’t remember my birthday.”
“It’s in the middle of summer.”
“No. As in, a celebration. A party. Not a quasi-religious festival.”
“You have led a very busy life, sister.”
“But not one birthday. Not even feeling sad because I had to work on it. I’m over a thousand years old, and I can’t remember a single birthday?” Celestia felt her pulse quicken. “In fact, I can’t remember ANYTHING over the past thousand years. That’s ten centuries I can’t even recall. I remember a thousand years ago, fighting Discord and Sombra and...well...”
“Me.”
Celestia nodded. “And I remember the day you came back, when Twilight first wrote me about the prophecy. But there are ten centuries in between where I cannot recall a single event. Not one.”
“You need to report this to Twilight. Immediately.”
“It goes deeper than that,” said Celestia, ignoring her sister’s concern. “I remember...snippets. Events. I remember the Summer Sun Festival in Ponyville, and judging a dessert contest, or trusting Philomena with Fluttershy and for some reason not telling her that phoenixes regenerate by self-immolation...I remember Cadence’s wedding, and Twilight getting her cutie mark...”
“That would have happened before.”
“Except that’s not how I remember it. But the point is, what else was I doing? Why don’t I have any memory of my daily life? Why do all my memories have Twilight in them?”
Luna stared at her, then shrugged. “That is much above my pay grade, sister. But I am concerned. This may be an aspect of your condition.”
Celestia smiled. This seemed to confuse Luna.
“What it sounds like to me,” said Celestia, “is a mystery.”
Luna seemed exceedingly confused. This state, it seemed, was rather persistant. “Sister?”
“What better to take my mind off this whole dying business than uncovering a plot?” Celestia began to trot off. “This is so exciting!”
She trotted off, and Luna watched her go—along with Twilight, standing beside her, dressed in black and watching in silence.
“То не иесть добрей,” she said, slowly.
“No,” replied Luna. “It is most certainly not.”