"Is that Silver?" Penny tried to poke her head around the group of ponies in the hall to see her friend but by the time she got in a position to see, his tail was heading up the stairs. A moment later Stick came down them at a trot.
Luna stepped forward. "Are we needed?"
Stick shook her head, grinning. "They are talking, like, really talking. Princess Cadance and Shining Armor are both there, and a strange crystal unicorn I never met. There is one of those shadow ponies and another odd-looking unicorn, I assume he is Sombra?"
Twilight began describing him. "Tall, angry-looking eyes, curved horn, all dark and broody…"
The changeling nodded to this. "That's the one. I didn't want to interrupt them." She had moved into the group of colorful mares, carefully trying to get through them to Penny.
Stick's target, too, was trying to shimmy her way through until everypony realized what they were doing and parted for them. It was only a kiss, but it meant everything to the pair.
"Aw come on guys…" Rainbow Dash sounded both bored and put out by the show of affection.
Rarity and Fluttershy, however, were both grinning at the pair.
"We need to have a talk." It was Luna, however, that cut in on them. But far from the serious face she had shown everything so far, this was a smile.
Penny looked up at the alicorn, a silly smile on her own snout. "Maybe when this is all over?"
Luna gave her a nod.
There was a sudden drawing of air, up that passage. It was like the whole universe drew a deep breath. Then there were suddenly other ponies pouring down. Luna began channeling her magic, preparing for the battle she believed was starting. "Behind me!"
The ponies of Ponyville did just that, drawing in tightly behind the princess of the night.
Penny and Stick were both still in front of Luna, however, and even as Penny froze in fright, Stick stepped in front of her and stood her ground.
It was like a wave, a torrent of the creatures that Stick had seen with Cadance. The changeling's magic began to rush and with all her heart, Stick wove the symbols on her horn and a green shimmering ball of force formed around her and Penny. Unlike a normal shield this one seemed mostly opaque, like a flashing wall of jade.
"That… that is amazing, will it last?" Penny's resolve grew as she discovered the creatures had not the motivations of the last of their kind she had met.
"It drains me, and the more they push the more it drains." Stick was working as hard as she could to keep the barrier in place.
Penny nodded and started to channel herself, feeding Stick more energy. The problem for the unicorn, however, was that she was a little drained still. Why did everything have to happen on the way to getting food?
Stick held her place for what felt like minutes, the two sitting in relative silence. "Do you think Luna and her friends are okay?" Penny's words came just as Stick grunted, the bubble flickering now.
"I need to drop this, if I keep it up I will just pass out here and then I really can't defend you."
The Unicorn got up to her hooves, steeling herself and the green wall was gone just as two umbrum were trying to batter it. They were as surprised as Penny and Stick were at the drop and although the two aborted their attack, they still made contact with the pair and all four fell to the floor in a heap.
To the side, Luna, Twilight and her friends were seething. They had fought as much as they could, but even the might of two alicorns was not enough, tempered as it was with their instinct not to kill. Surrounded in a cage of dark bars of shadow, Luna noticed the pair come from their protective bubble. "Stay yourselves, we beg. That mare is pregnant." The words sounded like they cost Luna some pride.
Another umbrum, not the ones who had crashed into Stick and Penny, looked from Luna to the pair. "Into the cage with the others!"
Penny was a little dazed but regained her hooves. "Please, we won't hurt you."
Stick got up next, moving quickly to be between Penny and any of the umbrum. "I will, though, if you hurt her or our foal." There was a lot of chitter in her voice, Penny was shocked at it, it had been quite a while since her marefriend had slipped that much.
The leader of the group of umbrum that still surrounded them seemed to soften a bit. "It is true? I am sorry, you must go in the cage but… but I will make sure your foal takes no harm."
Pacified a little by the words, Stick urged Penny toward the cage. An opening just barely large enough for the two mares opened and they squeezed in.
"What's up with all this crazy magic? Twilight, can't you do anything about this?" Rainbow Dash was still full of vim, it seemed.
Twilight looked quite vexed. "I don't understand it, what they are doing with magic shouldn't be possible…"
"It is their own magic, it twists what we see, what we feel." Luna sounded like she spoke from experience. "I can fight them, but I have been informed," the alicorn looked down to Stick and smiled softly, "that things might not be as they seem here. I will await proof that this is not a misunderstanding before my justice will be loosed."
Penny's attention was grabbed by Luna, pressing in tight against her. She had learned, during her times in Equestria, that she wasn't a fighter, by any stretch of the word. Stick moved in on her other flank and Penny felt herself relax a little. Surely nothing bad could happen, not with Luna and Stick here?
Perfect Poise was waiting. This didn't sit right with the mare, waiting meant time was wasted. Time was bits and she quite disliked wasted bits and waste in general. "When will court be out of recess?"
The guard at the door shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry ma'am, we can't continue until the princess is ready."
Turning to look at the larger grumbling mass of ponies with business for the court she made a quick decision. Stepping away, she made for a room down the hall and around a less-traveled staircase. Knocking with a hoof there was a quick reply. "Come in."
She mouthed open the door and entered Articulate's office. The stallion was at a typewriter, hooves working on that while his horn was making more notes on a page beside him. All this action halted, though, when Perfect entered.
"Art?" Perfect made her way over to his desk and sat down.
"Perfect." He put confusion and more than a little desire into her name. "You vex me, you really do. When you enter the same room as me I lose all ability to focus on anything else."
She had to take it as more of a statement of fact than a silly thing a stallion would say to woo a mare. Perfect knew many such stallions, but Art was not one of them. "Some mares would take that as a compliment. I am one of them."
He blushed at the twisting of his words, it wasn't what he intended them to mean and that was all the worse for him. He liked numbers, they didn't change. Nor did legal documents. All were rigid and well defined. So why was it every time he tried to talk about Perfect all his careful designs failed him and he reacted like a colt? "Well… I have the forms ready, for the business." He floated some over, little tags of paper in each folder showing where ponies would need to sign.
"Very good." She was tapping a hoof. It was mildly distracting to him. "There will be more, there are forms for the formation of a bank and lending organization?"
Articulate found those and started adding them to the pile. "Any others?" That tapping kept breaking his lines of thought in an odd way and he fought to not be distracted by it.
"This should be it." Perfect kept up her tapping, knowing fairly well now how to trap this smart stallion.
Tap, tap, tap-tap.
"Could you please sto-" Art had been halfway through losing his cool at her when he finally spared his thoughts toward the pattern.
Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap…
"Fiboneighcci…" He looked at her eyes in shock and saw recognition there.
"There is the stallion I know." Perfect loved maths too, it had been one thing that had cemented her firmly in economics. She didn't stop her tapping, even as he joined in and caught the next number in the sequence.
"What about this one…"
Tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap…" Art had started his own and Perfect tilted her head, listening as seven taps sounded next.
"Easy one, Prime numbers."
It became a game and the pair worked through the basics and some more advanced series. Perfect left her more physical passions aside as they shared in their love for the immutable. Art had climbed down from his chair and they ended up leaning against each other in the corner, the tapping now needing more focus because each was tapping it out on the other's shoulder.
"Art, this is moving fast." Perfect tried to still his hoof as it beat out a more odd pattern.
The stallion, still caught up in their shared game lifted his head. "Oh, sorry, I will go slower." He began the sequence again.
"No, I meant us." Perfect felt the tapping slow and stop. "I don't feel trapped but… I want to make sure we do this right." She spoke from her heart.
"You distract me to pieces, even without tapping. Every time I had to type your name on those documents I paused and thought of you." The unicorn took a deep breath. "It feels so right though. The feeling I get is that a part of me that was missing is there, right before me."
Perfect nodded to this, it was a fair assessment of her own feelings. Love at first sight couldn't be a thing, not between two such logical ponies. "It almost scares me how good it feels, to be beside you, talking with you, thinking about you."
Both sighed at once, their feelings bared to each other. "Slow." The word came from both at once and they smiled.
"You first." Perfect nosed at his hoof, where it was resting on her shoulder and not tapping.
"Slow. It is how we should proceed, how society would want us to proceed." Art got a nod for his assessment. "My heart says to gallop."
Perfect stared into his eyes, felt the tapping start again and her own words trapped in her throat. She could either focus on the tapping or her emotions, to do both would be to deny either had real importance. She chose the numbers. The pattern this time was strange. One. Four. Six. Eight. Nine...
"Non primes?"
She got a kiss on the lips in reply, Art drawing back quickly to let her continue.
But the unicorn had started a kiss and one was never truly over until the mare deemed it so. Leaning in as he pulled back, Perfect closed her eyes and relaxed more against him.