//------------------------------//
// I Canter a Lot With Some Princesses 
// Story: I Am The Night(mare)! And so is Luna? 
// by LordBrony2040 
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	When one goes to Equestria, one expects certain things. To make friends. To have adventures. To end up the center point of some special destiny. And to save Equestria while uh…finding love…with a pony.

While I wasn’t all that disappointed on not getting that last one, after being in Equestria for five weeks, the epic most thing that I managed to be a part of only happened the few hours after Celestia dragged me back to the castle…

    



I stood behind Celestia as the irate alicorn looked through the numerous books in her castle’s library. Her rather grumpy personality was probably thanks to the fact that she had left Twilight back in Ponyville after the girls had tried to blow me away with the Elements for a THIRD time and only managed to knock the dirt that had collected on my hooves off. And that her eye-candy guards weren’t around to see her be all PMS. Gods couldn’t look upset in front of the mortals after all.

After she snatched the twentieth book from the shelf and put it into the floating pile that she was keeping over our heads, I finally got the nerve to…hide behind Luna’s question. “Sister, why do you pilfer half the tomes from the shelves?”

“Looking for a spell to get me out of Luna?” I asked a second after Luna relaxed our mouth.

The tiniest of shivers ran through Celestia’s body, and she looked back at me with a frown. “If an exorcism existed powerful enough to force you from my sister, I assure you I would have used it the moment you returned and freed her from you without putting my student’s life in danger. These books are for something else.”

I flinched at Celestia’s tone and drew in on myself a bit. “Hey, it’s not like I want to be in here either you know. You think I like taking away Luna’s freedom? If I could leave this body, I would. Trust me on that one.”

A tingle in my mouth was the only warning I had before the speech patterns coming out of Luna’s lips changed. “She tells the truth Sister. We tried to separate during your imprisonment to no avail. I can neither fight her off, nor can she un-sink whatever of hers has managed to dig into me.”

Celestia glared at us for a few more moments, then let out a long sigh and lowered her head. “Luna, I have waited for your return for a thousand winters, crying, and planning, and even daring to hope I might be with you again for these past few years in friendship like we used to have before our duties over night and day came between us. And now I get…this,” she said before lifting her head to look at us.

The frown was still there. “So please understand that it will take me some time to…get used to seeing this. The one creature in all of Equestria that I have actually hated, walking around using your body without wanting to pound it into the ground,” Celestia said, grumbling towards the end.

As Celestia finished putting even the possibility I had of having a good mood in its coffin, Luna took over our mouth again.  “Sister, things may not be perfect, but what we have now is better than what has been for the past millennium. Is this not enough until a true solution can be found? Or better than another thousand years apart?”

Tia held Luna’s gaze for a few more seconds, and then sighed. “Agreed,” she said before holding out a hoof. “Come here. Let me give you a hug.”

Since Luna’s ability to control the body we shared was rather limited, I was the one who did all the walking while she ran her mouth. “Tell me Sister. Why do you take the older books from the shelves if not to try another means of separation between myself and the Nightmare?”

Celestia drew us into a hug, wrapping around ours until her muzzle rested on the back of the opposite shoulder from which it started. “Luna, you’ve been absent from Equestria for a thousand years. You’re going to need to do a lot of studying in order to catch up on things.”

I tensed and frowned. “Wait a second,” I asked. The change in our speech pattern from Luna to mine was followed by Celestia tensing. “Luna comes back after a thousand years…and the first thing you do is give her homework?”

And I was supposed to be the evil one.





Thankfully, our ‘homework’ wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Mostly due to the fact Luna and I could cheat our way out of anything doing with technology since I already possessed a pretty good idea of how most of the things in Equestria worked. So, Luna didn’t cry witchcraft at light bulbs and claimed that cameras stole her soul.

Although, I think my ineptitude with magic may have balanced things out. Even with an unofficial tutor to help me along, it took me a week before I managed to surround anything with my magic. Then another week to keep from crushing the object with my magic. Five more days until I could move something around at a speed that didn’t put eggs through brick walls, and two days after that until a relaxed hold on my magic became more natural. After that, it was just practice, practice practice.

Luna tried to console me with the fact that most ponies started out with barely any horsepower in their horns while I was running on something approaching a NASCAR level of a magical engine, but I still felt pretty stupid. Not to mention nowhere near confident enough to try levitating living creatures. As for Luna, she got a bit better when it came to working magical spells with me and guiding me through them, but the alicorn was still stuck with basic levitation when it came to using her horn on her own.

Then there were all the other things that we had to do that weren’t nearly as time consuming as reading everything on our to-do list. The first thing was raising the moon. It was…an interesting experience. As Luna guided us through the process, I felt a weird power flowing through me that filled me with all these weird…squishy feelings.

If that was how ponies felt while expressing their talents, it was no wonder they tended to go nuts when things blew up in their face in relation to stuff that had to do with their tramp stamps.

After that, Luna had to reassemble the Night Guard that had fallen into a bit of disrepair when she left. The ‘Lunar Pegasi’ were apparently a rare breed of pony that came about before the banishment thanks to some big pro-Luna unicorn coming up with an enchantment to help like-minded ponies serve their princess better. The end result was a pegasus with eyes that could see in the dark and wings that had less speed, but greater mobility. And ever since that unicorn died off and Luna vanished, the bat-ponies had been hanging out in a subterranean castle while sending a token force to Canterlot for night patrols around the capital. They apparently didn’t like the fact that their monster fighting duties had been usurped by the EUP.

Celestia had countered with the argument that without Luna to lead them into battle, the lunar pegasi would had taken too many losses when it came to fighting monsters. So she allowed their sub-tribe to retire and pass on the magic that made them different from generation to generation through their genes instead of slowly dying out over one-thousand years.

Now that she was back, Luna had wanted to bring her minions out of their little caves and back into the service of Equestria. Of course with most of the Night Guard having near zero real world combat experience, I had a feeling it was going to be awhile before Luna had her personal hit squad back up to where she wanted it.

Hell, the Captain of the Night Guard had only gotten the job after Luna learned he was responsible for stopping two muggers and discovering some punk thief that was responsible for a couple of gem store robberies. But that beat the runner-up. He only managed to apprehend a jaywalker and held the record for most kittens saved from trees in Canterlot.

As for my dream guarding duties…Luna had decided to keep those on hold until I could actually cast the spells needed to go into the dream realm. Not to mention the rest of the spells needed to deal with dream constructs, sooth minds, and all that other junk she did on a nightly basis. While I was feeling pretty bad about leaving Equestria to the mercy of its own subconscious, Luna told me that with Nightmare Moon being ‘reformed’ the dreams of the little ponies would be much more peaceful.

Apparently, the Mare in the Moon had still done her best to terrorize everypony even after being locked away.

As for the possession problem, I...wasn’t really trying my best to get the heck out of Dodge. Without Luna’s body, I really didn’t know what would happen to me. Sure it was cowardly, but I managed to sucker punch my scruples by letting Luna make all the decisions on what we did with her time. 

But, as I awakened to my usual early to rise time of noon, none of that was on my mind. No, what mattered to me at the moment was breakfast. And as my body took a second to remind me, the need to take care of morning necessities.

After…taking care of business in the extra luxurious bathroom Celestia had provided Luna with, I walked up to look in the mirror. For some reason, talking to Luna felt less weird when I could see our face. “So remind me, what’s on the agenda for today?” I asked my reflection before grabbing the tooth brush. As per our deal, I took care of the daily hygiene while Luna dealt with…other business.

“I was thinking we could work on your side-cantering today, then we can try galloping around the castle a few times,” Luna replied in ‘mental speak’ as our horn shoved a plastic rod with bristles around my mouth rather roughly. While I could move things around, the rough control I had of my magic was hardly gentle. Luna considered the discomfort a good teaching tool.

I just made sure not to shove something too hard. Being in the same body meant we shared the same tastes, ticklish spots, and sores. If I got us hurt, she would lay into me for hours. And as Luna could only move one appendage at  time, it was usually my fault when we ended up on our face.

After I spit out the mouth cleaning material, I looked back up at the mirror and frowned. “Ugh. You want me to spend the whole day just walking around?”

“There will of course be time for our studies,” Luna tried to console me.

Which didn’t do all that much. Okay yeah, I had been pretty excited to learn about Equestrian history for about the first ten days that I was here. But after getting the gist of things, everything kind of got boring. Magic was also pretty cool, but I had already learned how to move things with my horn after so many weeks and figured out how to blow shit up on my first day here. Now Luna was just going over basic theory over the feel of magic instead of spells to teleport, turn things into oranges, time travel, or any of the fun stuff.

With my teeth brushed, I took a moment to take a look at my free flowing hair. I hadn’t replaced the old Nightmare Moon regalia since the Elements apparently blew it all up and wasn’t planning to beyond the lunar chest piece we’d already gotten, although having to take care of bed mane was making me seriously reconsider putting a helmet back on.

One gargle of mouthwash and attachment of lunar regalia later, and I moved us out of Luna’s bedroom and into the main room of her apartment. Yeah, Luna didn’t just have her own little bedroom in the palace, she got a whole apartment that was divided into five rooms: bed, bath, living, private dining, and a spare room that I’m pretty sure would end up being a mare-cave.

I thought about just heading to the royal dining room by myself, but decided to wait for the usual company before I took a look around Luna’s living room for something to do. The whole place had been decorated with the alicorn in mind…after she had resumed her larger, dark blue size. In other words, it clashed with our black coat and helped to remind me that I didn’t really belong here.

As in the bedroom, the rest of Equestria was still kind of inviting…

…as long as I ignored the fear in the eyes of practically every pony that saw Nightmare Moon. Even five weeks in the castle hadn’t gotten the majority of the staff to stop shaking when I was around.

In fact, in all of Canterlot, the only ponies who didn’t go into ‘when’s she gonna eat us?’ mode were Tia, Luna’s Night Guard, the personal non-night guard escort that Celestia had assigned to look after me, and my babysitter.

Which, if the daily routine continued, would be at Luna’s door in five, four, three, two, one…

A knock on the door at exactly twelve-thirty was followed by Luna’s guard captain poking his head in. “Princess, your company is here.”

The telltale feeling of Luna taking control of our mouth accompanied my motion of looking at the exit. “Excellent Captain Nightwing. You may show them in.”

At Luna’s command, the door opened all the way to admit three ponies. The first of which being Nightwing. Being a bat-pony, he of course had wings that matched the flying rodent the first part of his species was named for, and his ears were a bit bigger than the average talking horse. As it was still day out, the not-thestral had on a pair of sunglasses to keep from going blind despite the fact we were indoors and Luna’s rooms were about as dark as you could get.

But it was the pair of ponies that entered after him that held my attention. I had already milked Nightwing for all the MLP trivia he had during our first week together anyway, and his extremely business-like demeanor had kind of gotten old real fast. Especially with Luna telling me to halt my attempts to make him crack a joke or smile.

No, the pony that held all my attention for the few seconds that it took her to walk in was my magic tutor and…babysitter: an extremely tall, mostly pink mare that was of equal height with even Canterlot stallions, who also happened to possess a pair of wings to go along with her horn.

Cadance was…exactly what I needed to stay sane in the world of candy colored ponies. She was smart, funny, kind, patient and understanding. From the very first moment we met on my third day in Equestria, she had done nothing but follow me around and help with everything from getting settled to learning magic. Something she was able to help me with just as much as Luna thanks to her late start in the horn-head society and the perspective it gave.

The second she was within range, I reached out and snatched up the smaller alicorn into a hug that was only slightly less than bone shattering before falling back my rear cushioning. “Cadance!”

She just giggled at the affection, and nuzzled me lightly on the neck as I continued with our customary greeting. “Good morning to you too Moony.”

Of course I would have loved to do the song and dance routine that Cadance did with Twilight, or at least a version more towards Luna’s taste like…

‘Moonshine moonshine stars everywhere, now turn around and put your ass in the air’. 

But…me actually knowing that little song and dance would have raised too many questions. I had to keep things like that to myself...unfortunately. 

Luna took command of our mouth, and I took that as my cue to let Cadance go before our body’s rightful owner spoke. “Greetings niece. I trust you and your future consort are here to accompany us once again?”

“Fiancé,” Cadance corrected Luna with her nearly ever present smile. “And yes, I thought we could all spend the day together again. You and Moony are much better company than the usual ponies Shiny and have to deal with in Canterlot.”

I gave the littlest alicorn a good-natured frown while I whined. “Cadance! Stop calling me Moony! It’s Nightmare! Nightmare sounds cooler.”

To which Cadance only smiled at me for. “But Moony is cuter,” she said before her face became slightly more serious. “And I thought you wanted to come off as more approachable to the palace staff.”

“Pffft. That’s Luna,” I informed her. I quit frankly couldn’t give a fuck what a bunch of background ponies that weren’t from Ponyville thought about me. Although it did kind of piss me off how they made Luna feel with their nervousness whenever we walked by. Although the old-fashioned mare claimed the opinions of the servants to be beneath her concern, I could tell she didn’t like being feared. “And it’s not my fault if they’re still holding on to a bunch of old stupid stories that Tia let circulate to completely destroy my reputation. Hay, I’m the friendliest mare in Canterlot!”

Luna made us sigh she said as we turned our head to the right. “I believe the title thou doth search for is most embarrassing mare in all of Canterlot.”

Like usual when it came to Luna, I looked over to the left as I toned down my retort a bit by putting a little humor in it. “Oh come on Luna. Having ponies worried about the hug monster is way better than them getting worried about something that’s going to eat them.” Once again, I had to wonder how in the hell Celestia let a rumor like that run wild. Sure, it was about Nightmare Moon and not Luna, but did she not get that ponies would see the connection and jump to conclusions?

Right. “Royalty must always act with grace and restraint.”

I looked left, and smirked. “You remember how I could barely do more than walk when we first got here right? I think my hopes of being thought of as graceful died a quick and painful death after I fell over my own four hooves in the first hour.” And how a mare who talked with the Royal Canterlot Voice when we were in public could even use a word like restraint without the irony of the statement crushing her was beyond me.

Luna made us look right again. “Even if a group of nobles should see a princess descend from her dais and roll in the mud with pigs, what they shall always remember is that she descended from a throne to do so.”

Left, with a raised eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Luna rolled her eyes as she turned our head right. “Ponies shall always think first and foremost of the glories of their princesses, long as we actually perform acts worth such praise,” she explained. “Now enough with this conversation. We are becoming dizzy.”

That, I couldn’t argue. So instead, I finally turned towards our third guest for brunch. He was a stallion with a bright white coat and blue mane. The guard training had obviously helped in making the male pony a thick example of his race, with a strong legs, back, and hindquarters. Although any manliness vibes that such a stallion could have pulled off were ruined by the fact he was wearing the most adorable suit of purple and gold armor that incorporated a saddle, with a sigil showing off a hot pink star that matched the one on his butt tattoo. Which also made me wonder how in the hell Shining Armor wasn’t picked by Celestia to train before Twilight ever even came along since he also had the Element of Magic displayed on his rear. Something I really needed to ask about how he got.

As for personality…

I reached out to the big, strong stallion with extended pony-arms. “Hey Shiny, give me a hug.”

To which he backed away from a little. “Um…no thank you.”

…he was a bit…standoffish.

Don’t get me wrong. Shining Armor was perfectly respectable towards me and Luna. Not to mention nice, and even known to crack a joke from time to time, unlike Luna’s captain of the guard who was apparently moonlighting as a guard for Buckingham Palace. It just would have been nice for the one guy I knew around town to be a little bit more buddy-buddy with me.

Of course, I couldn’t really fault Shiny for being a little on edge around me considering the real reason him and Cadance were in town.

“So, shall we meet Auntie in the dining hall?”

“Yes,“ Luna said. “Let us break our fast…and hear Sister drone on about how inane most of her petitioners have become.”

I laughed at that one while we started heading down the hall. “What did she say her most important case the other day was?” I remembered it had to do with something so stupid that had I been the one with her rear on the throne, I probably would have had the pony tossed out on his rump. On the other hand, it was good to know 'Princess Spike' inane junk. Ponies were just that in need of the nanny.

It was my stoic bodyguard who answered. “A petition from one of the older neighborhoods to create a citywide ordinance to make it illegal for colts to spit on the sidewalk. Apparently, it is the latest craze amongst Canterlot’s more rebellious youth.”

I giggled and rolled my eyes. Those evil pony teenagers, what dastardly act of vile villainy would they think of next?

“Hehehe,” I laughed as we came to the end of the hallway and moved out onto the walkway that connected the top of Luna’s tower with the rest of the castle. “If that’s the biggest problem Celestia’s having then…”

Out of the sheer need to torture myself, I looked in a generally westward direction toward a certain settlement of sapient equines. Despite my five weeks in Equestria, I had not attempted to set a single hoof in Ponyville. To be honest, it was slowly driving me crazy with the need for more pony better than any hiatus the show had ever did.

Sure I was surrounded by ponies, but...they weren’t Ponyville ponies! There was a difference!

But…I couldn’t just rush over there. I wanted to make absolutely sure I got things right the first time around. Which meant I needed to be sure that I could do more than just walk. That meant magical training, some background history of Equestria so I didn’t just stare blankly when everyone talked about something like Sir Gallophad and Princess Platinum, and getting Luna enthused about the whole thing with a casual wondering of how the first six friends she made after busting out of the moon were doing every few days.

Sure, we had access to Tia’s friendship reports, but that just increased my appetite for pony!

But instead of wondering what shenanigans Pinkie was up to, trying to see if I could spot Dash’s rainbow trail, making sure Twilight Sparkle hadn’t summoned an eldritch abomination to devour us all, trying to get an accurate measurement of the size of Applejack’s farm, trying to catch a glimpse of Fluttershy at her end of the town with Luna’s rather amazing eyes, or checking to see if Sweetie Belle had set Rarity’s house on fire yet, my attention was drawn to something else. There was big ominous cloud of black smoke was coming out of the mountain above Ponyville.

Luna retook control of our right hoof, raised it, and then jacked the mouth of our body. “Pray tell niece, what is that?”

“Oh, I asked about that this morning,” Cadence replied. “Apparently a dragon began nesting up there an hour after dawn. Don’t worry, Princess Celestia assured me that she has her best ponies on it.”

That got a little frown from me. “Aren’t the two of you, an alicorn and a captain of the guard, her best ponies?”

Cadance blinked at the question. “Well…yes, but…we…uh…”

As much as I liked the idea that Cadance was trying to spare my feelings, I knew she was just trying her best to not let the truth out about the real reason a freaking alicorn was following me around all day. And after five weeks, I was done letting things just go on as they were when the was probably better off elsewhere.

I gave her a half-lidded look. “Cadance, just because I act immature half the time doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I know the two of you are keeping an eye on me.”

The pink alicorn stood motionless at my declaration.

“What do you speak of?” Luna asked as I thought about how obvious everything was. While I might have bought the whole ‘hey meet my sister’ line that Celestia had given to all of us when we were introduced, having important ponies like the two of them constantly follow me around made it pretty clear as to what was really going on.

If I did turn out to be evil and had some great big long con going on, it was a pretty good guess that Celestia had called in her two biggest heavy hitters in order to restrain me without causing too much damage to Luna. It was a bit of an insult after I had worked to let her out the same day the old Nightmare shut her away, but considering that Cadance had pretty much became my bestie after her original apprehension was worn down, I was willing to let it slide.

“Cadance and Shining Armor are here to watch me and do something if I end up turning evil again,” I said as calmly as I could. Although I’ll admit, saying it out loud made me frown just a bit.

The pink alicorn let out a groaning sigh. “Maybe that was the case for the first week, but-”

Luna cut her off. “Deception or not, I would hope that my other has managed to show her lack of a threat,” she grumbled.

“Princess Luna,” Shining Armor spoke up. “You have to admit that simply letting the Nightmare into our trust right after it came back would have been a bit much.”

Luna snorted. “You speak of the mare I share every second of my life with from the moment we leave the bed until the second we return to it to sleep together,” she replied, getting an odd look from the pair of ponies. Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice and went on. “If there was any animosity in her heart, it would have shown when she had Twilight Sparkle helpless at her hooves, and my own sister still imprisoned, would it not?”

The disgruntled tone coming out of our mouth made Shining Armor wince. “Look, I said right after it came back. After so many weeks, I’m pretty sure Nightmare Moon is not going to be the threat that Princess Celestia thought it might.”

“Excellent!” Luna said with a nod. “Although, twould be better to refer to my other as she captain, not it.”

If Shining was willing to give, I was too. So before he could say anything, I cleared our throat and looked back towards my shoulder like Luna and I always did when addressing myself. “Actually Luna, Shining’s more on the mark here than you or Cadance. I don’t really have a gender, so…I technically am an it.”

The owner of my body let out a little sigh and looked the other way back towards us. “Very well, I shall capitulate on that front my other,” she replied. “Now, let us continue on to more pressing matters.”





For the sake of theatricality, and because Luna told me to, I slammed open the door leading into the dining hall, where we found Celestia sitting at the table with the plates for the rest of us sat out in front of her. As usual, everypony but me and Luna had what was the normal thing for ponies to eat for lunch sitting in front of their usual places, while we ended up with an omelet that consisted of egg, oats and  few other things that I allowed the chef to throw in like parsley. Just because I lived in Equestria didn’t mean I was going to eat hay, no matter how they fixed it.

But that wasn’t important at the moment, what had all of our attention was the mare sitting at the middle of the table. Something I had to give Tia props for instead of taking a spot at the head of the indoor wooden runway.

Anyway, Shining and Cadance followed me in while maintaining a respectful distance as I marched me and Luna into the room and up to the opposite end of the table from Tia while she did all the talking. “SISTER! RALLY THE TROOPS AND PREPARE TO MARCH! WE MUST STRIKE AT…” Luna paused as I stood across from Celestia. “Nightmare?”

“Yeah Luna?” I replied after wrestling control of our mouth away from her.

“How are we to convince Celestia of the righteousness of our cause if you are unable to add proper action to our words?” Luna demanded. “Now strike the table!”

I put out hoof up on the table.

“Harder!”

I tapped the table.

“HARDER!”

I hit my hoof on the top of the table.

“For the love of the moon! Would you slam our hoof down upon the wood hard enough to split the table in half already?” she demanded.

Thankfully, before I could actually cause any property damage, Celestia surrounded our hoof in a golden light and gave the two of us an even look. “Is something wrong Luna?”

“Indeed! A cowardly serpent sleeps within the borders of our Equestria, filling our skies with its foul breath right over the home of the only six mares to call themselves my companions since my return! I demand we show this wyrm what happens to those of its kind that attempt to disrupt the harmony of our little ponies!” Luna exclaimed before she became a little hesitant. “It can be the start of my…what was the phrasing you used Nightmare?”

I looked back at us. “Comeback tour.”

Celestia let out a long sigh. “Luna, while I am glad to see you wish to resume your place as a guardian of Equestria, things aren’t the way they used to be when you were last here.”

“Yes Sister,” Luna agreed. “The guard has become useless, the nobles a court of foals, and the horrors of the outside world now believe that they can trot all over us! Tis time that we dissuade such things by action! Not…what exactly are you doing to remove this creature anyway?”

Celestia looked down at the hoof that I had rested on the dinning table and raised an eyebrow. Then, after I removed it, she took a sip of water from her glass, and finally addressed Luna. “I sent Twilight and her friend to try and convince the dragon to next elsewhere. I am more than confident that they are up for the task.”

“Well…as long as they have the Elements…” Cadance mumbled.

“Right!” Shining agreed nervously. “The Elements. They defeated Nightmare Moon with them…uh, no offense…”

I gave him a little smirk. “None taken.”

“Then they should be alright,” he finished, albeit a little nervously.

Celestia looked over to Shining Armor. “Actually, the Elements are still locked away here in Canterlot.” The fact that she managed to say that with a straight face was probably what terrified him the most.

I know it did me.

After standing there for a few seconds, Shining Armor slowly looked over to the door. “Um, your highness…permission to be excused for…uh, family business.”

“Shining Armor…” Celestia began as she went off on some big speech about how he needed to trust in his sister and all that junk.

I didn’t pay that much attention to it beyond noticing that Cadance was also looking a little iffy when it came to ‘trusting’ the little filly she sat for and probably considered a baby sister not to get hurt when facing what were generally thought to be biggest douchebags in the world both in size and assholery. I had seen the show, which was apparently pretty accurate considering an actual dragon had shown up and took a nap exactly where the all-knowing television said it was going to be. I knew how it was going to turn out, so I wasn’t all that worried about the girls being eaten.

However, I also saw this for was it really was: the chance to finally get out of this fucking castle, and into Ponyville where I belonged! Hanging with Cadance and Shining Armor had been nice, but I wanted some Mane Six interaction damnit!

“…so you see Shining Armor. Twilight and her friends are the perfect ponies for this task,” Celestia said as she finished spinning her complicated explanation so well, I’m not even sure Shining Armor knew what he was agreeing with anymore.

As for me, I did the smart thing when it came to combating Celestia’s sensible logic. 

I didn’t listen!

So in response to Tia’s carefully drawn out explanation of the situation that also might have mentioned by the time we got to Ponyville, everything would be over with, I stomped Luna’s hoof on the floor. “Oh yeah? Well We say to thee neigh! You can sit on your oversized plot and stuff yourself with cake if you want Tia. We shall go forth and save our friends from this greatest of calamities!”

Celestia…blinked as her face became confused. “Luna…is that you or the Nightmare talking? I can’t tell when you’re using both olden and modern vernacular in the same sentence.”

“Agreed my partner!” Luna…well, agreed without paying Celestia any mind. “Let us be off to the hamlet of Ponyville! Post haste!”

A groan from the table followed us as I trotted away as fast as I dared. “Luna, Nightmare, Like I just said, it’s already past noon. By the time a chariot is prepared, Twilight should have already finished her and-”

“To the balcony then! We shall away to Ponyville through the sky under our own power and get some much needed flying in!” my boss commanded while Celestia groaned and face-hoofed.

I had a bit of apprehension for that idea, but…Luna knew what she was doing. So I quickly horse-walked us out onto the balcony, spread our wings, managed to push down that ingrained fear that all people had about jumping off high places without a parachute, bungee cord, or any other device that would let me avoid becoming a smear on the ground, and leapt off the edge after going through the rather awkward process of climbing over the railing.

Flying as a pony was an…interesting experience. As I had never really done it before beyond a few test flaps to get me off the ground and see what it felt like to lift myself up with my wings, I found just letting the wind fill my wings to be pretty exhilarating.

Or maybe that was just the terrifying realization that there was nothing between me and the ground aside from Luna’s ability to flap our wings.

“Very good. Now, you need to begin flapping our wings to gain some altitude, and readjust yourself to the right in order to compensate for the changing airflow,” Luna explained with our voice.

The command made me go rigid. Luna giving me instruction on how to fly was NOT how I was expecting this thing to go. “W-What do you mean flap our wings? Just take over and start flying us around!”

“Need I remind you that I may only control one part of our shared body at a time?” Luna replied. “Attempting to fly in such a manner would be most idiotic.”

And as it turns out, getting super stiff while trying to fly around was a VERY bad idea. The wind changed direction, and I felt one of my wings catch it to blow me off balance. Which I then tried to compensate for by flapping my wings like crazy as I kicked my legs around as if I could run on air or something. This turned out to be yet another bad idea, as I actually ended up flipping upside down, and going into a tailspin not fifty feet from where Luna and I had first taken flight before I voiced my distress at the situation. “AAAAAAAHHHHH!”

Luna took over our voice and stopped me from screaming uncontrollably. Her screams had much more structure to them. “WHAT THE BUCK WHERE YOU THINKING, JUMPING OFF THE BALCONY IF YOU CAN’T FLY ?”

“YOU TOLD ME TO DO IT!” I countered as we continued to spiral. “AND I THINK IT WAS PRETTY OBVIOUS THAT I COULDN’T FLY! YOU’VE BEEN WITH ME EVERY DAY SINCE I GOT HERE, AND WE HAVEN’T HAD ONE FLYING LESSON!” It was all legs, and then magic, magic, magic. The pegasus part of our pony body got royally screwed when it came to lessons.

“WELL IF I TOLD YOU TO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE, WOULD YOU ACTUALLY DO IT?” she demanded.

“DID YOU SERIOUSLY JUST ASK ME THAT?”

Luna groaned, and I felt her take control of our horn for some reason. As I was pretty certain she wasn’t about to pull off a teleportation or anything, I went about doing my best to save our collective ass. I sucked in as much air as I could, and did something I had been wanting to do for a second time since I got to Equestria and found out how easy it was.

“SAVE ME TIA!”

The Royal Canterlot Voice probably got heard throughout all of the castle, but the telltale sound of a teleportation before me and Luna just stopped falling made me open my eyes, and frown at the odd bluish tint that the world had taken rather than the gold I had been expecting.

As I hung upside down in the air, with Celestia looking down at me with her that disapproving frown I had gotten to know rather intimately over the past several weeks, I gave a nervous laugh. “Ehehehe, I forgot that Luna could levitate us. Uh…sorry about the windows…again.”

Celestia just looked down at me, closed her eyes for a few seconds in what had to be a control exercise, and sighed. “Are you alright?”

“Um…you know Luna can’t talk while she’s using magic, right?” I asked.

The goddess sighed and rubbed her head. “I know. I was asking you.”

I blinked as Luna moved us right side up. “Yeah um…we’re okay,” I told her. “Uh…physically anyway.”

“Just physically?” Celestia asked with a raised eyebrow.

With Celestia looking at me, I kind of felt like one of those kids that had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. It was as if she had seen right through my masterful deception for what it was. So, I just let out a defeated whine and followed it up with some words. “Tia I’m grateful all the hospitality and stuff and getting Cadance to make sure I wasn’t some sort of evil monster instead of somepony like Blueblood,” I told her while shuddering at the memory of meeting that whiny jackass. “But I’m booooooored! I wanna go see those six mares that blasted me with the Elements and talk to them again! And do something other than just sitting around here reading a bunch of books and getting nowhere with my magic.”

Then something else came to mind. “Oh, and get some flying lessons. Because I think I need them too.”

Luna took over the vocal output as soon as I stopped for more than a few seconds. “She has a point Sister. It is rather boring just sitting around the castle, receiving tutoring on subjects we already have knowledge of,” she agreed as we stood up to our full height and met Celestia eye to eye. “And…the health of those six little ponies does concern me. I would like to meet with them again to see how they fare.”

The goddess continued to meet our eyes, although she untensed just the tiniest bit. “Very well. I will clear a day up next week for us to visit Ponyville and see my student and her friends.”

As we reached a happy ending for…whatever the hell had just transpired, I had to resist the urge to tell Celestia that I learned if you needed to make the leader of a government change her mind, jumping off the nearest balcony was the way to get her attention.

“And now, we should probably head over to the chariot garage before Cadance and Shining Armor take off,” she said before turning around to walk back towards the castle.

I quickly caught up and looked over to Celestia while Luna spoke. “Care to explain Sister?”

Celestia giggled. “Oh come now Luna, you don’t think you’re the only pony to try and rush to Twilight’s rescue, are you?” she asked with a smile. “The two of them were probably out the door the second I teleported away. If they manage to get to Ponyville, Twilight will probably be embarrassed to death.”

Since it didn’t seem Luna wasn’t going to respond, I talked instead. “Well, it’s good you’re at least protecting her from something.”

“Oh you misunderstand,” Celestia told me as she looked over with a devilish smile. “If we are going to Ponyville next week, Cadance and Shining Armor will be coming with us, and I don’t want to miss a second of that little reunion. And everypony knows all the good embarrassing stories only happen during the first visit after such a long absence, right Sister?”

If Luna had bothered to take control of her eyes, I’m pretty sure she would have rolled them.