Intermission 1.Luna
Luna Morningstar could be swayed physically. Moved emotionally. Perhaps even now broken mentally. But never would she back down on an oath, no matter how Celestia's captain vexed her so. She would likely break the seal upon her stomach and release it before much longer, however, if Stiff Resistance would not stop with the infernal swaying that she was subjecting her to. "Do you expect me to talk, Captain?"
"No, Princess! I expect you to slime. Your stubbornness is legendary, and no matter how much I ask you you I know that you shall not reveal the secret location to which your devious plan has dispatched Princess Celestia to." Stiff Resistance (now self-appointed 'Lady Protector of Canterlot') nodded to her henchponies manning The Lever. Saluting valiantly, they yanked it once more and sent Luna plunging six hooves down into the glowing lime green gelatinous anti-magic slime. "My only hope is that the gel will weaken your magic sufficiently enough to release her from your fiendish brainwashing spell!"
Luna coughed as she was lifted free and set to swinging once more. Her hooves burned with the tangy taste of lime; her fur clammily clung to her skin as it was weighed down by multiple coats of discoloring green. Burning lungs once more took a breath of air as she cleared her airways of the slime she had inadvertently inhaled in her most assuredly not panicked yelp. It was, after all, a warning to release her immediately or face her wrath. Luna raspily spoke as she coughed, wishing that she was not hogtied upside down within adamantite chains. "And if she convinced herself of her own accord that ponies were better off without her for a time?"
Gurrrgle-blorp! Oh, how she wished her stomach would cease its incessant griping. She was the Princess of the Night, not some poncy easily nauseated weakling like Cadenza or Sparkle!
"Impossible!" Stiff Resistance proclaimed with all due melodramatics. She stomped her hooves and paced around to Luna's backside to give her an unpredictable lurch in her random swings. "Our Princess loved us! Surely, she would not wish to willingly leave!"
Rolling her eyes, Luna began to scan the small chamber as the light of her moon began to slowly filter in through a series of windows sealed with iron bars on the eastern wall. Yet another mistake made, as the creatures of her night could see what she wished beneath the light of her moon. Tightly fitted black marble bricks lined the walls, the cracks between them filled with green moss. The subtle pattern of bronze and iron binding on the door along with the polished brass lock. The trail of glowing green hoofprints left by those stupid enough to walk in the puddles that lead to the door, and presumably down the halls.
Ameture foals, the lot of them. No idea of how to properly interrogate a prisoner or manage operational security on a black mission. Certainly, they were the best guards, engineers, and line soldiers; but that did not make for good special missions officers. They would fail miserably at most of her children's tasks, if the day guard's current poor showing was any indication. Torturing a prisoner through cruel and unusual punishment, however, they seem to have grasped completely by accident.
Moooan... The churning of her gut made Luna wish that they had not, though.
"A gift to you, then. Take it as you will. But, We Swear on Our Honor as a Morningstar, a Bearer of Honesty and our Loyalty to Equestria that we have no knowledge of our sister's current whereabouts, nor her current plans. We do believe that she may wish to teach sometime within the next year or two. So We Swear by Our Honor and Life." Luna solemnly said, placing a hoof upon her chest as proof of her seriousness.
Stiff Resistance's heavy hoofsteps seemed to grow a multitude of echoes as she clomped laps around Luna's new swimming hole. "Oh, but of course you don't right this second. You're using legal technicalities to keep your 'oath' without telling the actual truth." She turned back to Luna, bending down so that the now thoroughly green alicorn could look her in the eyes. "I know you. You cannot lie, so you omit the truth. Where is she going? Tell me on your word!"
Luna smiled, holding back a strangled choking sound as she swallowed back the bile trying to run down her throat. Stupid heavy breakfast. She made a few more calculations in her head, judging her location from the angle of light and the species of moss she knew they were subsurface; east facing in a Lunar Tower, most likely on the grounds. Bronze and brass fixtures meant it was likely in one of the first wave towers. Perfect. Nopony knew she had reclaimed most of them for her headquarters.
"Clever deductions, Captain of the Light. Thoust are indeed right, we do know more. But we know things thou doth not, and thoust hath not been nearly clever enough." Luna pulled her forehoof out once more and poked Resistance on the nose and held it there long enough to scruntch.
Resistance wrinked and flexed her nose as she hopped back, trying to escape the pungent smell of anti-magic gel that was launching a full frontal assault on her nasal cavity. She should have known better than to get close enough for the cheeky alicorn to boop her-....... Crap. "How in the hay did you get out of your bonds? Guards! Guards!" Nopony from outside answered her, while the small detail within the chamber nervously stepped away from the alicorn. ".... Guards?"
Luna gave her foe the world's best Pie-Eating grin before singing the verse that would end Stiff Resistance's carefully built little world. "Come now, my children, let us fly them away; take them into a land of dreams this day!"
The door splintered wide open beneath the frog of a size 15 combat boot while she sang and snaking tendrils of bluish magic coiled through the gap like writhing pythons to strike at the day guards before they could react. Each of them found themselves trapped within a cocoon of the Sweet Dreams spell, and swiftly swept off into a wondrous magical garden of the night within their dreaming minds. Stiff Resistance was tackled to the ground by five massive stallions in even more massive armor whose grasp nearly squished her as she went down kicking and screaming. "Traitors! Your miserable traitors!"
Luna calmly undid the locks of the chains and shackles with a cheating cheater's display of unicorn magic somehow being cast through her hooves. After mentally noting to ensure that she did so over solid ground the next time she was tied up so, she climbed back out of the gel pool while resisting the urge to shake off like a dog as she came up to her sister's captain. "We are no traitor, Captain. Aye, we have some knowledge of our sister's whereabouts. But, we honor our loyalty and oath to HER that we swore to keep our knowledge of her location hidden until she so wishes."
Stiff Resistance snarled at Luna from beneath her pony pile, wishing that the hoof over her mouth would move away so she could say what she really thought.
"We can read thy mind, Captain. Doth thou thinkest that WE wanted this? Nay, we argued with her long and hard against her mad notion, fighting her foalish self-image. Thou cannot imagine the argument that raged within her quarters. And thoust knoweth that we hate ruling as she did prefer. Thoust was there last year when our sister swapped duties with us for a day." Luna caressed the captain's cheek with a hoof before teleporting her guards away from Resistance so she could offer the well-intentioned captain a hoof up. "We wish for this madness to be done just as soon as thou doth. And while we swore not to reveal her location, we said nothing about assisting in a campeign to convince her to return. If thoust doth let us."
"Why are you speaking in old Equish? I thought you kicked the habit."
"We do slip into it when irritated enough to consider turning ponies into potatoes."
Ulp. "Um, how?"
"Did we escape? A magician must never reveal her secrets."
Stiff Resistance glowered up at her while fishing her helmet back up off the pavers to messily plant firmly back on her head. "So you'll help me. Just like that."
"Well, perhaps if thou had just ASKED us to start with instead of kidnapping us from a flash mob! Yes, we would have immediately helped thee." Luna stomped her hoof, splattering streamers of green slime all around as her coating slowly ran off. And immediately regretted it as the sound hit her ears. Uuurrgl.
"So, despite hating the whole idea yourself, you still accepted. Why?" Resistance picked herself up and slowly backed away from Luna, warily watching her as they both checked on their respective guards.
"Accept implies that we had a choice in the matter. Nay, avoiding Tia's will once she has made it up? What an excellent idea! Oh, wait!" Luna sarcastically replied to her self-proclaimed nemesis as she helped a guard up. "It would be as if a mortal pony tried to command the tides for me to do so. I should know, I move them each night."
"I take it that you have a plan, then?"
"Oh, yes. Share power, with the right to retake it should those I delegate it to be a bunch of dockheads? Oh, yes. Much preferable to the madness of having a personal hoof in nearly every affair of this country as Tia did."
"What."
Luna wriggled her rump and tail towards Stiff Resistance, taking care to show the little nub of her tail base. "The dock. You know, the name of the base of our tails, thus implying the part directly underneath it? I will unfortunately have to be immaculate in word and deed in public now. ugh. No more swearing, so I must come up with ways of doing so without doing so. Hmm, no wonder Tia ran away." Luna mused, tapping her chin for just a moment. She began her own laps of the room as she pondered, unaware of her surroundings and how close she was coming to the pool and its slippery edge.
"You know, I like the sound of that. Be polite, be efficient, and have a plan for every dockhead and situation one shall meet! I wonder if Twilight would be proud of the progress I've-aaah-aaah-aaaaaauuugaiiie!"
Without her attention focusing on the floor, Luna stepped onto a crooked old paver that sloped downwards into the pool. While that alone normally would not be enough to capsize her into the drink, her other three hooves were still slimed and slippery. Not even panicked flaps of her wings could save Luna from planting herself face first back into the pool. Her hind legs twitched as she struggled to right herself and sank deeper into the viscous gel. The Lunar and reawoken Solar Guards combined efforts took them almost half a minute to pull out an alicorn who was distinctly green in more than one way.
Stiff Resistance was not one to put a gift back and took the chance to gloat, ignoring the unusual gurgles and alarming churning noises coming from within Luna's barrel as she did. "Well, well. I guess pride goes WITH-"
Heeeeork! Urg! Gurrgh-BLOOOORGAH!
"-The fall." Resistance finished as Luna horked and hurled up her breakfast and lunch all over their necks and chests.
"Somepony get a mop!"
Luna whimpered, dry heaving as she pulled herself away from the sticky, cloying mess of slime using Stiff Resistance as a lever. Her Tummytopia had decided to secede from Happyland inside of her, and the war was continuing to rage upon the Esophagus Riverway. "Y-you realize that this insult shall be repaid in full, do you not?"
"Hey! I have your chunks blown all over me!"
"Repaid. In. Full."
"Just help me find my princess, and we'll forget this ever happened." Resistance shot back as she disgustingly dripped.
"Well, if- uuuurg- I have any guess in the matter, I would know one thing for certain. If she has any notions about staying uncaught, she shall not go to Ponyville. Only a stupid, foalish, dock-headed madmare would do something so incompetent as to go straight into the lair of her flighty and obsessive-compulsive former student who is almost certainly hunting down everypony she meets for random 'Celestia Checks' even as we speak."