Escape 1.3
"Hurry, Sister! I do not know how much longer I can hold your devotees at bay!" Luna scrambled her hind hooves against the marble tiles of Celestia's apartment and planted her forehooves a little harder as the battering ram on the other side of the ironwood door swung again.
"Keep holding them off, I'm trying to find my normal clothes!" Celestia shot back as she tossed yet another set of seasonally-themed golden horseshoes out from her closet. Everything else essential like writing instruments, and two suitcases dedicated to exotic teas had already been packed. She was not about to let her sacrilegious servants commit the heresy of throwing out her good teas, after all! It had taken her centuries to smuggle it all in.
"Thou doeth not have normal clothes, thou forgetful boob! Gyah! Hurry, they art pouring some form of slime through the gap! Oh, ick! Ick-ick-icky-ICK!" Luna shook her head wildly as the amber syrup was poured through the small gap the servants had opened in the doorway. While an alicorn's strength was immense, enough ponies with a good sized jar of syrup could move one eventually.
Celestia rushed out of her closet with her favorite towels and snapped her third and final suitcase shut. "Okay, Luna!" She started to rush over, only for her sister to shoot her a look of utter loathing and shout a warning.
"Nay, thoust foal! Fly, FLY THOU FOAL! Fly thy bum to thy freedom!" Luna was scooted forwards another few inches by a wild press at the door. Hooves squeezed and pried through the gap, grabbing at Luna wherever they could find purchase as the lunar alicorn wriggled and squirmed. "We know how to findeth thee, run!"
Celestia risked the chance and rushed over to kiss Luna affectionately on the cheek. Mmm, maple syrup! A waste of the good stuff, though. "Thank you, Luna! I'll write!" Pulling her head back before the staff could grab her mane, Celestia grabbed her luggage and ran for the balcony.
"That mar-aaaiiiieeeeee!" Luna's expletive was cut short as she was hauled through the door, squealing all the way as the hooves handling her reduced her to a slimy mess.
"Luna!"
"Save thyself!"
Celestia turned back to her balcony, where a herd of pegasi now awote her outside of her magically enhanced doors. Behind her, the castle servants were pushing aside the barricade that she and Luna had erected after the relatively disastrous second half of the broadcast. No way forward, no way back, she- oh. The two groups broke through their respective barriers just in time to witness Celestia vanishing within a glint of teleportation magic.
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"Note to self, just RUN next time, even if it does get Luna accused of treason!" Celestia banked through a tight turn around the castle with her luggage attached as a lance of her finest guards chased her throughout the grounds while begging her to come back.
Sweeping down, she ducked under the main gate and peeled off to her left over the castle moat to lose more of her pursuers as they chased after her with reckless abandon. Ahead, she spotted the facade of the first branch store of Pony Joe's by one of the secondary entrances to the castle. Perfect timing, it seemed. She swooped in low, letting contrails form at the tips of her wing as the air was disturbed by the extreme speed of her passage. In a moment, a ludicrous number of bits borrowed without official permission found themselves teleported onto the front counter as she made off with a large portion of their stock.
Mmm, tasty, tasty ammu- No! No eating her weapons!
"Princess Celestia, stop! Please come back, we're sorry, we're-"
"PIE!"
Cream pie hit hapless guards-pony at the speed of ouch, sending him spiraling out of control with a wail. Streamers of filling sprayed out in a splash pattern, splashing the nobles and sycophants nearby with white ooze as they ran for their lives to escape the high-speed chase. The others in the group attempted to avoid the wildly flailing pie'd to deliciousness guard, but most were unsuccessful and crashed into him and with him into a pillow stand, sending a cloud of feathery chaff into the air behind the ivory diarch. Celestia looked back, wincing as she watched with a vague feeling of feeling sorry for him until the feeling of donuts beginning to slide off of her horn with the wind took back the brunch of her attention. "Not my lunch!"
"Princess! Cease and desist, or we will have to bring you gently back to the-" SPLAT! "-Auuuugh! Why does failure taste so delicious!" Cherry pie was a wonderful weapon when properly accelerated. No hard feelings all around. Except for the ground, it always took things hard.
Celestia recounted her ammunition, and the guards behind her as she ducked beneath a low-hanging arch over the street. She only had enough for a proper serving of humble pie for half of her pursuers. There had to be a way to get rid of them all, but for the life of her she could not see a way other than hoping that she could out fly them. It wasn't like she could just- of course!
Looking back, Celestia wriggled her tail and stuck her tongue out at her pursuers before turning her head back into the wind to save her donuts once more after successfully goading them on. They poured on the speed, approaching her somewhat out of shape form just in time for her to lurch over hard into a nearly impassable alleyway. Shouts of alarm followed her as the guards-ponies swarmed about trying to decelerate and turn into the alley, swerving and doing everything they could to avoid crashing. Pursuit soon followed into the space, running single file in the tight corridor just barely wide enough for Celestia to fly within. She knew just the spell to confound them long enough to lose them.
Swerving around a corner tightly enough to scrape her shins upon the brickwork, she cast the 'Mirror Mirror' spell upon herself the instant she was out of their sight and duplicated her image. Quick wing-beats and carefully angling her wings straightened her out once more as she wove through the maze of fire escapes, laundry lines, and lost and abandoned boxes stacked high up into the alley towards the street ahead. Hauling up from behind her came the twenty remaining guards of her pursuit force, who quickly closed the gap in the tight space with their more maneuverable frames. She didn't have much time left, hopefully- Ah. There was Main Street, and the way out of Canterlot.
The loyal guards-ponies of the Solar Praetorians almost had their sovereign back and in hoof. Their lead flier had her ever-waving tail almost within his grasp and they would soon find out what had distressed her enough to try and run away. Except for that small, slight problem of the way that she miraculously doubled into twin copies of herself that flew in opposite directions down the street. Dumbfounded wings froze up in midair as the guards minds collectively slipped a gear at how remarkably unfair alicorn magic was. A midair pileup was only narrowly averted as the guards tried to figure out which one to chase.
Guards Captain Stiff Resistance was not so easily wowed by the illusion, having encountered something similar from Princess Luna the year before. He organized the response in seconds, straightening back his helmet as she watched the Celestia heading for the train station. "Ten to each! Equal odds on either being the real Princess! One is heading for the train station, the other is heading for the falls. MOVE IT!" He peeled off after his target, letting his Lt., Sunshine, rush after the one heading towards the falls.
The chase rocketed low over the streets, bowling over ponies just ahead of it from the bow-shock of Celestia's passage. They shot over the merchant stalls with reckless abandon as the alicorn of the day avoided the guards with a sudden grace and agility that would impress Rainbow Dash. Each look back with anxious worry over her shoulder only showed them slowly growing closer and closer to her tail as they sprinted all out for her. She poured on the speed, seemingly losing several of her pies as the acceleration jolted her, though no shouts or splats could be heard.
"Princess, stop! We love you, come back!"
"You love me too much!"
"That's a good thing! We need you to be treated right!"
"Who says that's RIGHT for me!? Maybe I want to work for a living!"
The guards glanced at each other in horror before settling back on the pursuit, losing precious seconds. A princess WANTING to work? What madness was that? Celestia did plenty in all of her meetings, and was perfectly pampered to compensate for her meager dealings! Certainly, Twilight Sparkle was new to her duties and thus didn't know, and Cadance was being properly pampered by her guard captain cu-err slash husband and had finally been weaned from her crazy need to foal-sit, and Luna was... Luna, but it just wasn't right! Wait! LUNA! She was in constant close contact with Celestia, oftentimes unsupervised! And she wanted power, and had the power to match Celestia and had the crazy attitude to try! She had brainwashed her sister in order to take over Equestria!
"Princess, wait! You're under the control of an evil spell that makes you want to work!" Stiff Resistance poured on the speed as he realized the incredible danger that Celestia was within. He caught up to her misguided charge, grabbing at her lower hind-legs like a remora.
"How can I be under a spell when I don't exist?"
"What."
POP!
The 'Celestia' popped like a soap bubble, causing Stiff Resistance to sail through the air and crash into a briar bush in the park they had been passing through at high speeds. His detachment swooped in, preparing to extract their captain from the briars before he used one of her hind-legs to wave them off furiously. From somewhere deep inside the bush, Resistance cried out his orders even as he uselessly kicked his legs. "Our princess is under a spell and brainwashed! Catching her is more vital than ever, catch up with Sunshine!"
With that, his detachment peeled off, leaving her to sulk in the bush. The thorns had caught up on his armor, and screeched against metal with each movement. Kicking again only confirmed what he had feared; his crash had left her suspended in a thick briar bush without leverage, and only through somepony rescuing him would he escape. Wonderful. The only way he could fail harder would be if Celestia herself saved him.
"Oh my goodness! Are you alright?" The sweet, saccharine voice sounded disturbingly familiar to the guard captain as the mare somewhere behind her sing-song'd her concerns.
"No. I'm just relaxing here in this patch of thorns because I'm into bloodletting. YES! I'm stuck and I need help! If you're a pegasus or unicorn, could you pull me out by my hooves?"
"Oh, there's no need to shout! Just a second." The voice sing-song'd once more before an immensely strong grip took ahold of his legs in a crushing vice of hooves and fluffy fur before forcibly yanking him free. Yelping, Resistance swung free and shook back and forth suspended from the grip of the largest pegasus- no, the largest mortal mare he had ever seen. The words 'built like a brick outhouse' came to mind from his frontier deployments as he looked up at the massively built mare. Orange coated, with a flowing pink mane and tail matching a set of unkempt fetlocks, the timidly hovering pegasus mare was the size of a draft stallion. "I do hope you're alright now."
"No, no I'm not still! Citizen, you must go and warn everypony to be on the lookout for Princess Celestia! An evil spell has been cast upon her, and she is not in her right mind!" Resistance warned as he was released to drop to the ground.
"Oh my! How horrible, I'll be sure to let everypony know." The mare hovered in place, seemingly unburdened by her rather large saddlebags.
"Hurry! I must go." Resistance took off after his detachment without further delay, zooming away without ever looking back.
If he had, he might have spotted the slow, sly smile upon the mare's face for a moment. Or perhaps the chocolate-frosted donut she pulled from thin air above her head as she trotted away for the train station while ruefully lamenting the guard's inobservance. "Oh, my silly little pony. Why would I need to be under a spell to want a nice, LONG vacation? Mmm. Mmmm-mmph!"