//------------------------------// // 10: Scum and Villainy // Story: Principal of Equestria // by MareDoVVell //------------------------------// Celestia signed the budget report in front of her with a flourish and set down her favorite pen, sighing contentedly. After a moment she leaned back in her chair and held her hand out in front of her, wiggling her fingers as a goofy smile crossed her face. She wasn't sure why but something about looking at her hand was extremely comforting. With a small giggle she sat forward again and pulled the next bit of clerical work from the stack on her desk before snatching back up her pen. As she was about to press the pen to paper, her office door suddenly flew open, slamming loudly against the wall as a navy blue pony with a silvery swirling mane strode casually into the small room. "Huh, so that's what you really look like, how strange," Luna muttered as she observed the pale woman across from her. "Lu-Princess Luna? What are you doing here?" Celestia blurted, not really sure why she immediately recognized the strange creature. Luna gave her a questioning look. "Does your sister not pop into your dreams now and again to chat?" "This is a dream? Why would I dream about being in my offi...awwwwwwwwwwwwwww fuck! I'm still a pony aren't I?" Celestia asked, her head sinking into her hands as the memories came flooding back. Luna simply nodded. "Indeed, that's why I figured I'd stop by and see how you were doing. My sister tends to have a very hooves off approach to any problem where the consequences aren't dire." "Makes sense," Celestia grumbled, "when I asked her how to get home she basically told me to enjoy my vacation and stop thinking about it." Suppressing yet another long-suffering sigh, Celestia's mind wandered back to what Luna had previously said. "Wait, you can just jump into people's, er, ponies' dreams?" "Of course. As Princess of the Night, guarding the realm of sleep is the lion's share of my duties...your sister doesn't do the same?" Luna asked, giving her a quizzical glance. "Not really, no. Her duties mostly involve doing paperwork that I don't want to do and scaring misbehaving teenagers, mostly because I'm really bad at being intimidating." Celestia explained with a shrug. "That...actually does sound a lot like what I do for my sister outside of the dream thing..." Luna admitted, causing Celestia to chuckle lightly. "At least we're the same where it counts," Celestia joked as she pushed herself up from the desk and sat back upright in her chair. She had realized there was little point in moping about being tricked by a dream, figuring she might as well enjoy it instead. As such, a rather luxurious looking tea tray appeared on the desk a moment later. "Would you like some?" She asked, wrapping her technically non-existent fingers around one of the pre-filled cups. "Thank you but I think I'll pass, I have many more dreams to visit tonight, though..." Luna hesitated briefly. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you possibly bring a figment of your sister into this dream?" she asked with a hopeful, if slightly embarrassed smile. "I find myself just the tiniest bit curious at the prospect of another Luna." Celestia simply shrugged before briefly closing her eyes in concentration. A moment later, a small side door, presumably leading to an adjacent office, slammed open in a manner eerily similar to Luna's original entrance. "Tia? Did you finish that form yet?" asked a tall, slender woman sporting natural colors very similar to those of the wide-eyed pony princess staring at her across the office. Finally noticing the unusual visitor, Vice-Principal Luna was stopped in her tracks. "Tia...Is that a pony? A navy blue pony?" "Mmhmm" "Oh. Dear, God...IT'S SOOOOO CUTE!" the school administrator squealed as she flew across the room towards Luna. "I should have expected this..." Was all Luna managed to say, before she found herself tackled to the ground. Meanwhile, Celestia was busy trying to hold back laughter long enough to apologize to the Princess, but before she had a chance, she felt a rather unpleasant jerking sensation as her office seemed to be swept away by a flood of darkness. It took a few confused blinks for Celestia to realize that the darkness was just her dark room in Twilight's palace, and she was still curled up in bed, staring at the unlit ceiling. She was about to close her eyes and drift back to sleep when she heard a rather unsettling and buzzy sounding voice from the darkness next to her bed. "Jeez lady, would you get up already! If we don't round up everyone in this stupidly big place we'll never hear the end of it." Celestia looked to where the voice was coming from to find two large, softly glowing, green-ish blue, pupil-less eyes. Needless to say it was extremely unsettling. "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU-ooooooooooooooooooooh!" she yelped as she was unceremoniously yanked off the bed and dragged towards the door. As she was pulled out into the dimly lit hallway, she could finally see two bizarre bug-pony looking things with the same eerie eyes dragging her by her hind legs, a sight which made all her fur stand on end, which is a very weird feeling for someone still unused to having fur at all. Seeing her look of terrified shock, the first set of eyes, now attached to another bug-pony walking beside her as she was dragged, turned and gave her a somewhat guilty looking smile. "Look it's nothing personal lady, the boss said round everyone up and bring em to the main hall, we're just doin our jobs." Celestia gave a quick, wide-eyed nod as she struggled against the urge to start screaming. The creature's reassurance was strangely calming, if only because it showed they were intelligent and not mindless, bloodthirsty beasts, but she still felt chilled to the bone at the prospect of being dragged from her bed and carted off to who knows where. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Twenty minutes later, all fear had fled from Celestia, and was replaced by mild annoyance as the creatures dragged her down the same hallway for the fifth time. "Look, I understand you guys are trying to be professional about kidnapping me, but you're obviously lost." she quipped, causing all three of the creatures to look at her with annoyed glares. "I get it, trust me, you wanna do your job right and all that, but if you just let me stand up I can lead you there, besides I think that high pitched squeaking noise my coat makes when dragged across the crystal floors is driving us all a little insane." At this, the creatures looked at each other questioningly before giving her a slight nod, one of them even sighing with relief as she stood up properly. "Much better." Celestia muttered with a sigh of her own. "Alright, just follow me, and stay close, this place is a bit of a maze, as I'm sure you've noticed." As she began to trot towards the main hall, she briefly considered trying to lose them, or tricking them somehow, but frankly, after getting past their alien appearance, they didn't really seem so bad, well other than the home invasion and kidnapping thing. More than that though, Celestia was now far too curious to see what the hell was going on to back out now. Five minutes later, after a somewhat awkwardly silent journey, the four of them trotted into the main hall just in time to see a very annoyed looking Twilight Sparkle being hoisted up into the air, hanging upside down from the ceiling, bound in ropes of what looked like glowing green goo. "Hey boss, we're back, and we found one more in a bedroom. Place otherwise seems empty besides that little dragon that refuses to wake up." One of her captors called, seemingly into empty space. The illusion was shattered immediately as a rather obnoxiously loud cackling boomed out from a dark corner. From the shadows loomed a bug-pony much larger than ones that had interrupted her sleep, similar in size and shape to Princess Luna and Celestia. "Good, gooood, then we can finally move forward with the plan. Who would ever expect Equestria's newest Princess, the one who thwarted us changelings in the first place, to herself be replaced by one!" she cheered, rather overly theatrically in Celestia's opinion. "Twilight, who are these weirdos?" Celestia asked as she walked over to where Twilight was tied up. The bug-ponies seemed too wrapped up in reveling in their leader's speech to really notice. "Changelings, they can change their appearance to that of other ponies and they feed off positive emotions." Twilight huffed, shuffling irritatedly against her bonds. "Huh, that's creepy." Celestia mused. Twilight sighed and gave up struggling. "Not really, they are mostly just misunderstood. This one leading them though has been a real pain in the flank lately. She almost took over the country once, but she got blasted so hard with magic when she failed, her own magic never fully recovered. These days a unicorn filly could probably knock her out cold with a quick blast of magic, but it hasn't seemed to stop her from attempting any harebrained scheme she can come up with. I usually just let it play out til the end then send her home to preserve her pride." "SILENCE! I won't have you two conspiring against me!" The large changeling suddenly shouted, apparently finally noticing the two of them. As she approached them, her look of rage rapidly changed into one of confusion. "Why does this one look like a punier version of Celestia? Ignoring her question, Celestia suddenly noticed something peculiar about the would-be villain as she came closer. "Wait a minute, I know you! You look a lot like that girl who ends up in my office on an almost daily basis," she said with a roll of her eyes. "What was her name...oh, I remember, Chrysi, that's what everyone calls her, though she seems to hate that name." Celestia went on, ignoring the increasingly embarrassed look and light flush that had crept onto the otherwise imposing Queen's face. "Always wearing torn stockings to class even though I keep telling her it's not appropriate, and trying to intimidate other students, I keep telling her she just needs to find a real friend." At this point Chrysalis was staring daggers at Celestia, as a few of the drones behind her struggled against the urge to fall over laughing. "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME THAT WAY WORM, I AM QUEEN CHRYSALIS AND YOU WILL REGRET YOUR FEEBLE ATTEMPTS AT MOCKING ME!" she bellowed, her face now inches from Celestia's, her fangs shining through a furious sneer. Celestia gently used her magic to pick the changeling up and set her down a few feet away to regain her personal space, setting her down in a casual seated position, something Chrysalis did not seem to appreciate. "Come on now, this exactly what I'm talking about. You don't need to prove anything to anyone here. What's the real problem, come on, you can talk to me." Celestia said calmly, giving her a serene smile. Chrysalis found herself caught halfway between boiling rage and absolute bafflement as she stared at the tiny white pony before her. Hundreds of venomous insults and threats flew through her head, but for whatever reason they just didn't seem worth it anymore as clearly they wouldn't work on the seemingly unflappable unicorn. It was a very distressing experience for the ageless changeling, and finally she just gave up, slumping onto the ground and letting out a frustrated wail. "HOW ARE YOU EVEN WORSE THAN THE REAL CELESTIA!?"