Part Three: Canterlot, to Reduit (Shining Armor)
* * *
The First Time You See Her
Part Three
Jeffrey C. Wells
www.scrivnarium.net
* * *
The promised reassignment in the Legion never came.
Shortly before the end of my three-day pass, a uniformed courier arrived at the front door of my parents' home and passed me a missive that put me on temporary duty assignment to the office of the Legion's military attaché to the Canterlot Household Regiments. It further instructed me to stay within the city and wait for further instructions. Deadline after deadline passed with little more than the occasional hoof-delivered dispatch from higher and higher up telling me to remain exactly where I was. I won't lie to you: drawing full officer's pay for days spent lying on the living room rug playing Find-a-Word with my baby sister was not exactly an unwelcome development (despite my miserable win/loss record). But after a while, it started to get pretty unnerving.
It didn't help that House Shine is full of neurotic worriers. Me, Mom, Dad... we're all profoundly lawful and organized people with an impressive ability to imagine worst-case scenarios whenever anything deviates even a little from the norm. If Twiley's lucky, she'll end up escaping the family curse, but I kinda doubt it. The playroom upstairs has the most neatly-arranged toybox I've ever seen, and let's just say that it isn't my mom you have to thank for that.
"Do you think they've forgotten about you?" my mother would ask, over the last of my macaroni and cheese with carrot pieces.
"They keep sending me directives," I'd reply. "And they keep paying me."
"It just seems a little odd that they've got you bivying with us instead of the barracks," my dad would say, sitting back in his chair letting out a long string of postprandial bubbles from his pipe.
"Not that you aren't welcome to stay here at any time," my mom would add, while shooting Dad a tiny glance. Mom is always a little bit irritated when my father bubbles in the house, privately confessing to me that she dislikes the smell of glycerin in the curtains. "But what if it's just a clerical error and they end up making you pay back all the salary you're accruing while you're staying here?"
"It's not a clerical error, Mom. I keep on checking with them." And I did in fact keep checking, because I am my parents' son. "For whatever strange reason, this really is my assignment for now."
"This is the best assignment!" said Twiley, bouncing up and down on her little booster cushion. "I want all Shiny's assignments to be this one!"
"I don't know," I said, adopting a mock-pensive tone. "The food's nice, but the commanding officers are mean. Lieutenant Colonel Twilight Sparkle is particularly harsh."
"You bet I am, soldier!" shouted Twilight, causing my mom to snort grape juice into her sinuses. "And just for that, you're on bedtime reading duty tonight!"
And so my posting went. I helped out around the house, indulged in a few daylong trotabouts taking in the splendors of the capital city, spent more uninterrupted quality time with my sister than I literally ever had before, and waited. It would have been heaven, but for three little things.
One, I am a creature of worry and duty. While this pampered assignment was nice for a little while, the irrational gnawing guilt at getting away with something I was convinced I shouldn't quickly became an almost-physical directive. I reported worry #1 to my ostensible commanding officer in the attaché, and he responded by posting me to a series of increasingly chicken-guano assignments around Canterlot Town just to keep my hooves and horn busy. That helped point one.
There was no helping point two: the sense, absolutely unshakable, that I had attracted somepony's attention. Somepony who was watching me, assessing me, judging me, all unseen. It eventually got so bad that I would gather extra fireflies for the lamps at night to keep the shadows at bay, just to stop myself from imagining hidden observers lurking there. This wasn't a thing I could comfortably report to my C.O., as I wasn't entirely sure where the line between "reasonable paranoia" and "mentally unfit for service" was drawn.
And three, I could no longer even close my eyes without seeing a pair of pink wings and a matching pink horn. For better or for worse—mostly for worse—my brief encounter with Princess Cadence had apparently carved grooves into my brain. Faced with a real alicorn, living and breathing before me rather than glimpsed at a distance on a balcony somewhere, I had become twelve years old again, all jitters and fixations and more hormones than I knew what to do with. When I slept, she was there with me in my dreams. Not angry and scared and lashing out. Smiling. At me. With half-lidded eyes.
There was no helping point three, either. All the cold showers in the world couldn't dispel it.
So it was that I whiled away my days eating home cooking, getting my rump kicked at word games, and angsting profoundly. The last day of my plum posting, and indeed, the last day I ever spent in the Princess's Legion, dawned as any other. On assignment again to the Household Regiments, I found myself posted to a civil engineering crew stacking sandbags and erecting force barriers in front of a clerical office somewhere in the government district, which, despite the fact of being thousands of feet above the valley floor and well away from the artesian Canter River, had mysteriously decided that today was a good day to become flooded. With seawater, no less. Canterlot is a unicorn town, brimming with magic, and we get this sort of thing from time to time. At any rate, the mundanity of the task and the repetitiveness of the labor gave us a lot of time for conversation; and the topic of conversation for the day was—unfortunately for me—H.R.H. Cadence, the alicorn Princess of Love.
"...iron hoof!" declared Lieutenant Hot-Button, the eldest son of old Lord Trottingham. "It's positively unnatural for Princess Celestia to be harboring a second alicorn within these walls! This is all merely a devious scheme to have this 'Princess Cadence,' if that is her real name, ascend to power and rule over us with an iron hoof!" He stomped decisively at the ground as he levitated a sandbag into place. "And another thing! Why in Equestria are we here doing enlisted-pony work? When I was promised a lieutenancy, I was assured I would be above this sort of thing."
"The Princess needs all hooves on board with this," replied Captain Barrelwright, dragging in another enormous pallet of sandbags. "Apparently, we have to act quickly to save all this valuable uptown paperwork."
"Paperwork," snorted Hot-Button. "We're being mobilized to save paperwork."
"Don't let the fussy little gray thing over there hear you talking like that," drawled Barrelwright, inclining his blocky earth pony muzzle in the direction of a tiny soaking-wet unicorn bureaucrat who sat huddled beneath a crackling emergency blanket as he blearily surveyed our containment area. The little stallion clutched a thermos of tea tight to his brisket as though he was hoping to absorb its contents directly into his bloodstream through his hide. "I may have mentioned something to that effect as I was walkin' past and he nearly brained me with his little bottle there. Goin' on and on about how if we didn't know the mass of a kilogram we'd overload all our barges and cause millions of bits of property damage and I guess cause the end of Equestria or something. He's a worrier, all right."
"Sounds sensible enough to me," I said, distantly, adding a little aetheric reinforcement to a buckling segment of my magical retaining-wall and trying to ignore the faint twinge of migraine that sparked inside my skull as I did so. In magic as in all things, I've got more power than I do endurance.
"You would think so, Armor," said Lt. Weaselface, whose pegasus mother did not love him at all.
"No, Big White over there is absolutely correct to worry," said Hot-Button. "Inexplicable floods? Plagues of frogs? These are clear signs of Heaven's displeasure with Canterlot in general, and Celestia in particular, for breaching the Covenants and encouraging this 'Cadence' to exercise dominion over us all!"
"With an iron hoof?" said Barrelwright.
"Exactly!" replied Button, nodding sharply. "Iron hoof!"
"When exactly was the frog-plague again?"
"Well, it was just the one frog," said Weaselface. "In his bed. Actually, I put it there."
"Plague," insisted Button, leveraging another sandbag into place. "Iron hoof."
"Got anything to add to this discussion, Armor?" said Weaselface, turning to me, sniggering a little. "Seems to me that exactly one of us here has had intimate experience with H.R.H. Cadence's hooves, what with your getting trod on by her." (The incident had not exactly remained confidential within the ranks of the Guard.) "So, whaddaya think? Is Button here right? Are they really hooves of iron?"
"I do find myself wondering about her hooves," I said, glancing upward at the towering spires of Canterlot Castle, not so far distant.
"O... kay?" said Weaselface, frowning.
"It's just... you only ever see her with those golden boots on," I continued, leaning my elbows against the wall of sandbags. My glance up at the castle unexpectedly settled in and became a full-on longing gaze. Damnit, she had been in casual attire the night we met, the night she foalsat my sister. Why hadn't I paid attention?
"Uh..."
"Makes a guy wonder what the hooves underneath look like," I said, beginning to wax dreamy. "I mean, yes, they're pink, of course, but does she paint the tips? Are they little and dainty, or more regular-sized? Is there any feathering? Does she shear her fetlocks?"
"Hey, Equestria to Shining Armor?" said Weaselface, waving a hoof in front of my eyes. "Come in, Shining Armor?"
"Looks like somepony is gunning for a promotion to the Princesses' farrying corps," said Barrelwright. "I never took you for a hooves man, Armor."
I shook my head. "I'm not," I said, inwardly cursing how completely for a loop I had been thrown by this entire stupid affair. "I mean... I don't know what I am. Princess Cadence makes me think weird things, okay?"
This elicited a loud laugh from Barrelwright and a long, swoony cry from Weaselface. Even Button forgot his umbrage for a moment and contributed a wolf-whistle to the din. "Shut up," I muttered, returning to my work and firing off a few quick reinforcement spells with more intensity than was strictly required.
"Uh oh, look out," said Weaselface. "Better leave Second Lieutenant Armor alone, guys. He'll outrank all of us once he musters up the courage to propose to Celestia's little pink niece." More laughter from the group.
"That's Prince Second Lieutenant Armor to you," I said, summoning a grin and rising to the jest in the hope of dispelling it. "And I don't forget faces. So, yes, when I become the third-most important pony in Equestria, you all better bucking watch out."
A round of feigned "ooh"s and "aah"s ensued. Blushing, I turned and ducked my head with the superficial intent of getting my muzzle under another sandbag, and in doing so came snoutfirst up against an unyielding dark iron breastplate.
Startled, I backed away a step or two. With a little distance I could see that the breastplate was attached to a grizzled sand-colored unicorn maybe thirty years my senior. The newcomer's storm-gray armor was emblazoned at the breast with a Master Sergeant's star, and beneath his ceremonial saddle he wore the olive-drab saddle blanket of two decades' faithful service. Per practices, he fired off an altogether too perfect salute. "Sir, Master Sergeant Thunderous reports."
An irrational pulse of dread crackled across my brain, nearly causing me to lose focus on my half-finished aetheric retaining walls. They've discovered their error! insisted the annoying part of my brain. The top brass have finally found out you've been getting paid all this time for sitting at home with your family and they're going to make you reimburse it or throw you in detention or...
With force of will, I stuffed a sock into my stupid inner voice. Having worrier genes can be really tiresome at times. "Good evening, Sergeant," I said, concealing my flusterment as best as possible. "What seems to be the trouble?"
"You're coming with me, sir," said the sergeant.
"Now hold on just one minute," said Button, striding forward. "It's bad enough that they've got the lot of us doing the equivalent of entrenching work. Now we've got enlisted ponies barking orders at us? What was that name again, Sergeant?"
"Master Sergeant Thunderous, sir," said the sergeant.
"Well, Master Sergeant Thunderous," said Button, "I will remind you that, our rather rude assignment notwithstanding, we are the lot of us commissioned officers in the Household Regiments, and Lieutenant Armor here is on temporary duty assignment from the Legion. As such, we all outrank you. To a pony."
Thunderous's eyes narrowed, microscopically. "Yes, sir," he said.
"I think the lot of us would like to hear you rephrase that request of yours to something that sounds a bit less like an order, right?" continued Button, heedless of my subtle attempt at a cut-it-off-at-the-throat gesture with my hoof. Button glanced over his shoulder at the others for support, only to find that Barrelwright had developed an intense newfound interest in his pallet of sandbags and that Weaselface was simply staring at him in naked, abject horror.
"Yes, sir," said Thunderous, barely missing a beat in turning back to me. "Lieutenant Armor," he said, "according to an explicit directive from the Colonel of the Regiments, the commanding officer of every pony here present and also a close personal friend of mine since before the Lieutenant over there was a glimmer in his sire's eye, you are ordered to come with me."
"Glad to oblige," I said, practically cutting the sergeant off. "Very, very glad to oblige."
"Yes, that's... better," said Button, distantly.
"I hope the record will reflect my immediate compliance with the Colonel's directive," I added.
"No need for you to worry, sir," said Thunderous. "Am I dismissed?"
"Of course," I said. With that, Thunderous saluted again, turned, and weaved his way into the crowd.
"Tough break, Button," I murmured, patting the poor stallion on one shoulder. To the noise of Barrelwright and Weaselface's snickering at their doomed comrade, I followed Thunderous into an uncertain future.
* * *
"All right, sir, this is how it's going to go," said Thunderous, as he lead me through the crowd of the flood zone toward an impromptu command tent. "Your transfer paperwork has finally come through, and I have been instructed to inform you that your association with the Legion is at an end and that you are now a full Lieutenant in the Household Regiments, with commensurate pay grade and clearance increases. Congratulations."
"...Thank you?"
"I have been further instructed to sketch out your new job duties, which can be summed up as follows: the horse apples fall from the princesses, who are far too busy to clean up their own horse apples. They fall down on the Colonel of the Regiments, who is also too busy to clean up his own horse apples, much less the princesses' on top of that. As a result, the whole lot of it falls down on me, and what I do is pass a certain number of the aforementioned horse apples on to you, and I try not to make it sound like I'm giving you orders while I'm doing so, because that would be a clear violation of military protocol despite the fact that I was drawing soldier's pay while you and your friends were drawing milk from your mothers' dugs. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," I lied, ducking into the tent after Thunderous. Once we were safely inside, Thunderous lifted a heavy-looking brown-paper-and-twine parcel in his slate-colored telekinetic aura and deposited it on a folding table in front of me.
"This here is horse apple number one," he said. "It's a brass artifact belonging to Her Royal Highness Junior Grade Cadence, who as of this morning spells her name with an 'a' instead of an 'e,' and I don't mind telling you how pleased I am that this is the most pressing concern of the young mare who's probably going to be responsible for all life on the planet someday."
"Princess Cadance?" I said, my heart skipping a tiny beat. Damnit, I thought. There it goes again. "I'm actually on direct assignment to the princesses?"
"No, sir," said Thunderous. "You're on direct assignment to the princesses' horse apples. Do I need to spell it out for you again?"
"No, Sergeant."
"Good. Now, according to the brains over at Mythica, the artifact inside this package is responsible for today's flooding events. It needs to be back in the princesses' hooves before we can all head home for the evening and forget that today ever happened, and you are the stallion who's going to take it there."
"Sounds... simple enough," I said, hefting the package in my own aura. Heavy, like I thought. Somewhere deep behind my eyes, I could feel the arcane migraine start to build again.
"That's because you don't know the rest of it!" bellowed Thunderous, who did not know and would probably not in any case care about my headache. "The princesses are currently at High Tea in the windowless interior private dining hall of Canterlot Castle. Per royal habit, the guards outside the door will have been informed to admit absolutely nopony to the princesses' tea. Despite this, I've got a letter here saying that this task is rated something called 'Harmony Priority.'" Thunderous indicated a bit of parchment on the table which was decorated with an unfamiliar device of a circle of five colored gems surrounding a sixth.
"'Harmony... Priority'? I haven't heard of that before."
"Neither have I," said Thunderous. "Apparently, it means that you must let nothing stand in the way of completing this assignment, and the icing on the cake is that the guards outside the door don't have the clearance to even know what Harmony Priority is and as therefore will not admit you."
"Wait," I said, baffled. "You're telling me that I'm going to have to force my way through the princesses' honor guard because they won't have sufficient clearance for me to explain my authorization to them?"
"With the caveat that you may choose whatever definition of 'force' you like, that sounds about right."
"This is crazy," I said.
"Welcome to the Regiments," said Thunderous, mirthlessly. "Everything comes down from the princesses, eventually, and since in my very humble opinion they are the both of them nuttier than hamsters, this is what it's like around here."
"Can't I just wait for them to come out of the dining room?"
"Not according to this little piece of paper, sir."
I stiffened my lip. "You do realize that it's possible that I could get killed doing this."
"In which case it's been a pleasure serving under you, sir, however briefly. Now, since I can't give you the order, I am going to simply make the observation that you should get your sorry flank out of this tent posthaste, soldier, and deliver that package."
I hoisted the parcel into my inventory field. "Observation received," I said. Thunderous saluted, I dismissed him, and then I was hustled, blinking, back into the sunlight. For a moment, I oriented myself, glancing up at the towers and turrets of the castle above me. Then I set my jaw, squared the package on my back, and began trotting off toward the mountain, off to interrupt the Princesses' tea.
It wasn't anything they taught me in basic training, it was dangerous for the most ridiculous of reasons, and it certainly wasn't what I expected to be doing when I woke up this morning, but as I trotted along, head high, I found that it all mattered remarkably little. For one brief shining moment, I was being both paid and ordered to walk straight into a room with Princess Cadence (Cadance?) and to impress her by being of service. She would give me a little smile and maybe even fondly remember me as "that one sharp-looking officer with the parcel," which was a darn sight better than "that one colt I yelled at and stepped on a while back."
I'd take it. The very thought of her thinking fondly of me in any way made my heart flutter.
Sop, I said to myself. This is beginning to smack of infatuation, Armor.
I didn't grace myself with a reply. Instead, I focused on telekinetically straightening my perpetually-messy blue mane. I was being given a chance to make a second impression after a woefully poor first one, and I didn't intend to mess it up.
Sop, I repeated.
I trotted on.
* * *
In the fullness of time, Canterlot Castle rose up before me, a dream of marble and gold clinging to the side of the Mountain like a cluster of icicles growing the wrong way 'round. The structure is omnipresent, iconic, visible from virtually every corner of the Hegemony and from many points beyond, and this sometimes disguises the fact that it actually isn't all that big of a place. The Princess—and when we say "The Princess," we always mean Celestia of the Sun and Moon—lives here and moves the heavens here and metes out the highest justice from these halls, but the actual machinery of government, the stuff that takes up space, is all nestled back in Canterlot Town, now some distance below me. The hoofprint of the structure is only a bit more than a city block, and let's just say that the building doesn't exactly make efficient use of the space allotted to it. A hundred different towers and minarets and observatory domes and achingly-delicate lattice bridges rise from its foundation and for the most part none of them actually seem to do anything except aspire toward the heavens. Which is an okay sort of goal, I guess but it's not the way I would have planned it. But then again, nopony asked me. I'm not exactly a stallion of consequence in this city.
At any rate. Canterlot Castle's delicate, fairytale beauty belied a certain amount of physical strength, but for the most part its power lay in charms and enchantments and the blisteringly potent alicorn goddess-queen it housed, rather than in earth and stone and locks. Equestria as a whole was also at peace, and the populace, pony and otherwise, flowed freely in and out of gates that could be, but were not, secured. I even caught a glimpse of a big gray yellow-eyed griffon in the milling crowds, and it was a testament to the relaxed nature of the Hegemony as a whole that even the carnivores in the crowd were being treated with cheerful equanimity.
What that meant to me personally was that a stallion in proper military uniform walking quickly and purposefully could penetrate surprisingly far into the inner bailey without even being so much as questioned, even while lugging a mysterious package. When the questions eventually did begin, a rapid explanation of my purpose and its relative urgency was typically enough to secure my passage. Even the most dedicated of the household guard relented when I specifically referenced the flooding going on in the government quarter and the package's connection to it. It was all very believable, and why should they doubt me, after all?
The trip to the innermost dining hall was distressingly easy. Had I been a simple miscreant with an improvised explosive device, I would have gotten as far as the last door without any special preparation other than a credible cover story. The fact worried me, and as I progressed I found myself making obsessive little notes about the things I would change if by some fluke I ever found myself in a position of any influence over the Household Regiments.
My idle list-making ceased as soon as I reached the front doors of the dining hall.
As portals went, it was pretty dread. The doors were fully four ponies high and covered in hammered gold. Intricate bas-relief carvings on their surfaces depicted happy earth ponies bringing forth and harvesting the good things of the land under the ever-loving and ever-watchful gaze of Celestia herself, who hovered above them, the sun cradled in her upstretched wings. This was the pony whose dining room I was supposed to be violating, on her own order: She-Who-Moves-the-Sky.
I glanced to the left and to the right at the unsmiling pegasus centurions to either side of the massive doors. For one brief moment I considered ducking around to the servants' entrance to avoid them; it was inconceivable, after all, that the food came and went through the high entrance, and than meant that there had to be at least one additional, less ostentatious way into the dining hall... but then again, there would be servants there. My plan, petty as it was, kind of depended on there being fewer ponies about rather than more. It didn't matter what type they were; royal guards were the equal of servants. For the sake of my aching head, I simply needed there to be two or fewer of them, and that's just what fate had given me here at the front doors.
No time like the present. I stepped forward.
"Lieutenant Shining Armor," I said. "Household Regiments. I need access to the this room on a matter of civic security."
"Nopony enters the dining hall," grunted the left-side centurion.
"C'mon, guys," I said, trying to be ingratiating. "Civic security. Master Sergeant Thunderous sent me. It's very important."
"Nopony enters the dining hall," grunted the right-side centurion, hefting his spear slightly in order to wordlessly communicate the phrase "I have a spear." "Also, you're not in Regimental regalia. You're wearing Legion colors."
"The colors of an officer cadet in the Legion, no less," added Lefty.
"I've just been field-promoted," I said.
"I don't believe you," said Lefty.
I sighed.
"Yeah," I said, lowering the package gently to the floor. "I guess I wouldn't believe me either. Good work, guys, and sorry about this."
Righty frowned. "Sorry about wha—"
I am a barrier specialist. It's what I do. Some unicorns can make flowers grow, some can find gems, some can call down lightning and some can conjure wild beasts out of the thin air. My talents are nothing so exotic or refined. All I wield, all I have ever been able to wield, is basic aetheric force. It's the first sort of energy that any unicorn learns to manipulate, the same energy that powers the telekinesis charms that we've all taken for granted ever since magic kindergarten. Aetheric force moves things, pushes things, keeps things in, keeps things out... and that's it. Think of it this way: if magic were art, while other ponies of my tribe would have long since moved on to charcoal or acrylic or oil paints, here I'd be still doodling around with my faithful crayons because of my profound incapacity to pick up and learn any other medium.
Because of this, however, I am damn good with crayons.
My horn flashed to life and in an instant the three of us were surrounded by a soundproof barrier. It was elliptical in shape, which is always going to be more difficult than a sphere of equivalent size, but I didn't want the envelope to intersect the plane of the doors if possible in case they happened to be appropriately counterspelled, which would kill this little maneuver before it even began. Lefty, who in that moment did not yet realize that any noise he made here was not getting out, went for his alarm whistle first, which bought me the fraction of a second of attention I needed to focus a second, retaining barrier between myself and Righty, who (as anticipated, based on his earlier body-language) thought first of his spear. A force barrier, once fully established, doesn't require constant concentration to maintain, so finishing that one freed up space in my aetheric map to grab Lefty, quickly invert him, and drop him on his plumed helmet before he had a chance to get his wings under him. Darting forward toward the doors, I focused my concentration on the lock, drilling a pencil-thin wedge of force into the mechanism and then mushrooming it out into a gear-disrupting blob. I threw another, smaller soundproof barrier around the lock mechanism as I did; I doubted anypony would respond to the single dull crunch of the lock alone given that all the rest of our ruckus was already contained by the first barrier, but I didn't want to take any chances.
It took about two seconds to break the innards of the lock plate, and by then, Lefty had recovered and was going for his spear as well. I had two intersecting soundproof barriers up, with a third nested force barrier keeping Righty's spear off my flank, and at this point the pain in my head was like a white-hot butter knife. Nested barriers are a real foal-of-a-mule to keep sorted, and as I said earlier, my endurance is not terribly great. Conscious of my weakness, I didn't exactly want to risk the integrity of any of my three running barriers with another force wall, so I disrupted Lefty's charge with a salvo of force chaff, just a little something to turn his charge without requiring a lot of care or craftsponyship. That done, I shouldered open the doors, dragging my parcel behind me. Once past the threshold, I gave the doors a mighty heave, at the last instant ballooning the second soundproof barrier to encompass the entire space between the doors. They slammed shut without a sound, I threw a waiting bar across, and as simple as that, I was inside.
Then the headache took me, and I spent about three seconds wincing and trying not to lose my breakfast all over the polished flagstone. Once I had mastered myself, I dusted myself off, picked up the package, and strode forward into...
...an unexpected scene.
Here in this high-ceilinged windowless hall, on either end of a long formal table, sat the two reigning Princesses of Equestria, in the middle of what could only be described as a feast of epic proportions. Cadance sat with her back to me, while Celestia faced my position, and every inch of the table between was filled with either food or the trappings of food. A pyramid of tall glass dishes, each containing a party table's worth of strawberry and angel food trifle, sat half-finished near the monarch of the realm's cushion. On the other side of the table, Cadance was working her way through a ploughpony's lunch of hard white cheese and shockingly purple relish, and it was clear from the plates surrounding her that she had already eaten enough to satisfy several ploughponies and was not letting this fact slow her down at all. A small mountain of fresh blackcurrant scones sat near two tureens containing strawberry jam and clotted cream. Piles of mixed fruit tarts anchored one whole wing of the table, and a great dish of curried egg salad occupied another. The tea samovar alone was large enough to drown an adult mountain lion.
I looked on, my jaw falling slightly slack, as the white princess of the heavens finished off the last of a strawberry trifle, sticking her muzzle straight into the dish like a beast and cleaning the last bits of syrup and pudding out of the corners of the bowl with her long, horsey tongue. Then, she carefully set the empty dish aside and picked up another. Meanwhile, Cadance had begun assaulting a plate of watercress sandwiches with furious intensity. The poor things didn't stand a chance.
I am not certain what I did at this point, how long I watched this go on. Looking back on it, it couldn't have been more than a half a minute or so, because I refuse to believe that the palace guard was so incompetent that it would have taken them more time than that to mobilize and sound the general alarm. From my perspective, however, the moment stretched out practically to eternity. The sight of Equestria's dignified, demure, ladylike rulers in the midst of what I only later understood to be a fairly typical alicorn gorging, was bizarre enough that it briefly broke my brain.
I think I made a little squeaking noise after thirty seconds had passed. At this, the two of them looked up at me, Cadance in particular whipping around so quickly and startling so profoundly that she literally fell off her cushion. She stared at me, wide-eyed, her slightly jam-smeared features frozen in a mask of guilt and fear, looking for all the world like a tiny foal caught with her hoof stuck in the cookie jar.
"But the—" she began. "How did—"
"Oh, dear," said Celestia, setting down her trifle dish with the softest of "clink"s. "It looks like I may have forgotten to throw the bar across the door today."
Meanwhile, Cadance was scrabbling backward, as though trying to position herself between me and the table and thus conceal it from me. "You're— you're that same colt from— Knight Light and Twilight Velvet's son!"
I could not tell which of the two of us was more discomfited in that moment. "Lieutenant Shining Armor, Household Regiments," I said, finally remembering to bow properly. "Your Highnesses."
"What are you doing here?" demanded Cadance. "This is my and my Aunty's private tea!"
I stammered something incomprehensible, then tried again. "Job," I said, lifting the practically-forgotten package off the floor. "Harmony Priority. Nothing... was to, er, stand in the way of... completing it."
"Sorry?" said Princess Celestia, shaking her head, a small smile crossing her features.
"Harmony... Priority?" I said again, terror gripping at my stomach.
"Haven't heard of it," said Celestia, her eyes sparkling.
Seconds ticked by. Somewhere, a thousand miles distant, the Royal Guard re-achieved the dining room through the servants' entrance whose existence I'd predicted earlier, and were dismissed with a wave of Celestia's hoof. All the while, she never stopped looking at me, smiling an enigmatic little smile that dared me to go ahead and say whatever it was I was going to say next.
It was an odd and not very enviable position, being looked at by the queen of all the land in this way. Despite her feigned innocence, it was clear to me now how completely I had been set up. Horrified, I realized that the good, the wise, the bringer of night and day, the keeper of the eternal sun, Princess Celestia Sol Invicta, was actually messing with me...
...and I had no idea why. It was profoundly unnerving.
As Cadance stared at me, her wrath melting to shame, my own eyes were locked on the terrifying face of Princess Celestia. I wished desperately in that moment that I had mastered the art of teleportation so that—through force of will alone—I could be anywhere other than where I was.
There were a number of things I could have said at that point. I picked one that sounded good and cast my fate to the winds. "I'm deeply sorry, Your Highnesses," I said, bowing muzzle-to-floor. "There appears to have been some terrible misunderstanding."
"I should say so," said Cadance, her voice quavering. She steadied herself, breathing deeply in while lifting her hoof to her breast and then letting both go. "Rise, Lieutenant Armor," she said. "I'm... sorry you had to see us like this."
"What?" I said, laughing in what I hoped was a congenial way. It came out sounding a little crazed instead. "Like what? Nothing out-of-the-ordinary here!"
"That's sweet of you to say, Lieutenant," said Cadance. "I think you and I both know full well what I mean. We... keep meeting under awkward circumstances, don't we?"
"A bit, Your Highness," I admitted, fighting the urge to grovel a bit.
"Well, in the end, no real harm done," said Celestia, musically. "What is it that brought you here, Lieutenant Armor?"
"Right," I said quickly, snatching up the package in a magenta tendril of magic and floating it over to the princess's position. A sense of profound relief washed over me as Celestia's golden magic overtook my own. All business now, Celestia telekinetically plucked up a serviette from the table and dabbed the trifle from her muzzle while simultaneously unwrapping the paper packaging, revealing a gleaming codex of unnerving brass plates beneath it. The world began to fall into place: this had to be the artifact responsible for the flooding in the government quarter. It certainly looked the part, for one thing. I could only imagine what sort of deep and twisted arcane history a relic like this possessed, what legacy of madness must follow it wherever it—
"Oh, look," said Celestia. "It's your baby book, Mi Amore."
Cadance winced, looking apologetic. "Ooh, right," she said. "I left that with nice Mister Line when I was filling out my name-change forms. Thank you for returning it, Lieutenant Armor."
"You're very welcome," I managed.
Princess Cadance smiled at me, and at that moment, my heart gave up the ghost and melted. Not two hours ago I had been doing flood control down in Canterlot Town and fantasizing about the inapproachable, incomprehensible Princess of Love; and now, here she was, thanking me for a job well done with chutney all over her face, the remnants of a meal whose scope I was still unable to process. I had been promoted, reassigned, and then relegated to delivering magical baby books. I had functionally broken into Canterlot Castle and subdued a pair of royal guards using the power of my mind, my migraine was absolutely killing me as a result, and it was all just too much. I felt like a prizefighter who'd been asked to absorb one too many blows to the head. I was completely punch-drunk.
I no longer remember what it was I said to dismiss myself from the dining room. I barely remember the walk back down to Canterlot Town as the sun set behind the mountain, the perfunctory debriefing by Master Sergeant Thunderous. I barely remember walking to my parents' home—still my official barracks, until I heard otherwise—and crawling into bed.
Some days are good. Some days are bad. And some days are just too much to categorize. This had been one of those.
The very next day, I received a letter via an official courier dressed in the livery of Canterlot. It was sealed with bright blue wax and stamped with the image of a faceted crystal heart. My horn flickering nervously in the diffuse light of my parents' front hall, I broke the seal and read the note. The strong, flowing black script read as follows:
From: Her Excellency Cadance, Princess of Equestria, Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Minister Extraordinary to the City-State of Cloudsdale
To: First Lieutenant Shining Armor, Canterlot Household Regiments
Dear Lieutenant Armor,
As you may already know if you have been following the business of the Court, I will shortly be taking up the mantle of Canterlot's Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the City-State of Cloudsdale (even if you did not already know this, I suppose my putting the title in my from-line was a bit of a giveaway!)
I will be brief: my Aunty and I have disagreed sharply about the nature of the diplomatic retinue that should accompany me from Canterlot as I venture outside the Hegemony proper, especially considering that the embassy in Cloudsdale is (reportedly) already sufficiently appointed with all necessary staff in residence. I have managed to argue her down to a single military retainer. Given the occasionally-insubstantial nature of Cloudsdale's firmament, my shortlist of candidates formerly consisted of Regimental officers of the pegasus tribe only. But then, I was pleased to find out from my Aunty that your great-uncle Templar was granted a rare cloud-walking breastcollar for services rendered to the pegasi during the Sky Kingdom conflicts, and that this device remains in your House's possession. While I suppose it would be more seemly for me to simply give you the directive to accompany me, I am very much interested in a fresh start from all this "Yes, Princess" and "No, Princess" business as I begin to make my way in this world. This is, after all, the Tenth Century, is it not? Therefore, I will ask, rather than order:
Would you like to be my personal retainer?
Think about it, and then please make your intentions known to your commanding officer.
Her signature was an illegible mass of curls.
I sunk against the banister of the staircase leading up from the front hall, clutching the letter to my chest with one hoof.
"I," I said, "am so confused right now."
* * *
"So you're going away tomorrow?" asked my sister, as I tucked her in.
"In the real early morning. I'll be at the airship-port by the time you wake up. Cadance and I are going to be spending the afternoon at Cadance's old castle at Reduit when we go to give her baby book to the nuns who used to take care of her. Back when she was little, like you." I ruffled up my baby sister's mane. She giggled in response, giving me a big gap-toothed grin. "And then by the next morning," I finished, "we should be settling into our new home in Cloudsdale."
"I hope you take good care of the Princess."
"Hey," I said, laughing with an easy confidence that I totally did not feel. "That's my job! Keeping her safe, I mean. But it'll be interesting. My commanding officers tell me that things are different outside the Hegemony. Ponies don't bow to alicorns like they do here. Princess ponies just aren't as special to them as they are to us."
"How can princess ponies not be special?" asked Twiley. "There's only two of them! At all!"
"Pegasi are very independent ponies," I said. "Very headstrong. They care less about what your title is and more about what you do. But don't worry, I'm sure Princess Cadance'll wow 'em on that front too. She's an impressive mare."
"Mm," my sister agreed. "Yeah. She is." Her eyes took on a dreamy cast. "Is it really true that you met Princess Celestia?"
"Yep! Right in the same room with her and everything."
Twiley gave me a mischievous little smile. "Whenever I ask Cadance about her, she just laughs and says something about not wanting to 'disabuse' me of my 'notions' and then she gives me cookies so I'll stop asking. What's she like?"
I took a deep breath.
Strange, I almost said. Ancient. Palpably different from anypony you've ever met. I now suspected that Celestia was the one who'd been watching me ever since I stepped off the airship from Vanhoover. She'd probably been grooming me for this specific assignment for weeks. I figured that she herself had been the one to send the bogus "Harmony Priority" letter to Sergeant Thunderous, just to see how far I would go to obey a dictum that made no logical sense. And then she lied about it in the presence of her niece so Cadance wouldn't suspect that the entire scenario with the baby book had been engineered, just so that I could... what? See Princess Cadance in a compromising position so I would start to think of her as a pony rather than as a demigoddess prospective head of the Equestrian state? To what end?
I had no clue. And I realized at that moment that I truly had no idea what to make of Princess Celestia, and neither did Cadance, and this simple fact alone gave the two of us something profoundly in common.
I glanced at my sister's novelty Princess Celestia alarm clock, the framed poster of Princess Celestia on her wall, the Princess Celestia comforter on her bed. I looked at her big, purple, hopeful eyes.
I let out my breath.
Then I started over.
"She's tall and beautiful and white," I said. Then I leaned in close and put on a wicked grin. "But she's got terrible table manners. She ate an entire cake, right while I was standing there, by sticking her face right into it! Just like that. Narm narm narm."
Twiley's mouth made a little "o" of surprise, and then she busted out laughing. When her giggle-fit was over, she wiped a little tear from the corner of her eye. "I guess it makes sense," she said, dropping into her analytical mode with an adorable suddenness that made me bite my lip. "She's got all three types of magic, not just one. Doing all that magic must make her hungry."
"I'm sure it does."
She sighed, snuggling down under her comforter. "Okay," she said, her eyes falling half-shut. "Time for you to read to me."
Bedtime reading duty was always a bit of a challenge, with my sister, but I did the best I could. Gingerly, I picked up her favorite dog-eared and well-worn copy of Sparkthrower's Elementary Quantum Mechanics and flipped through it for a second. "Should I start from the beginning, or...?"
"Somewhere in the middle," said Twiley, sinking into her pillow. "I know the beginning real well already."
I picked a page at random and began reading. "'Coherent quantum superpositions can only exist, and persist, if they remain secret from the rest of the world. Interactions with even so much as an air molecule or a photon will have the net result of destroying the superposition and thus rendering the ambiguity unobservable. This phenomenon is known as Dec—Deco—'"
"'Decoherence,'" murmured Twiley, closing her eyes.
"Yeah. That. Decoherence. Makes sense."
A beat. I rotated the book to the left, and then back to the right, just in case I was reading it sideways or something. "Actually it doesn't," I said, eventually. "I can't make heads or tails of this, Twiley."
Twilight sighed, smiled, and opened one eye at me. "Decoherence means that things are mysterious, on a fundamental level, but this only lasts until they are observed. When you see them they change into something new. Something you can understand." She sleepily waved one hoof, settling back down. "A gross oversimplification but it'll do for now. Continue."
"'Because it is virtually impossible to keep a macroscopic object isolated to the extent needed to prevent decoherence, we cannot casually observe quantum superpositions in the world surrounding us,'" I said, watching my sister's breathing grow deep and slow. "'Therefore, while it is tempting to draw the conclusion that quantum mechanics simply ceases to function for objects above a certain size, this assumption is in error. We are all of us subject to the principles of quantum mechanics, but it is only through profound isolation that an object's unusual quantum behavior can be maintained. Once observed, the uncertainty waveform collapses and the macroscopic object and the microscopic one will exist on the same fundamental level.'" I frowned at the book and closed it halfway. "Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, here, but is this a fancy way of saying that there's no difference between big things and little things once you really look at them?"
Silence, from the bed, save for the noise of deep breathing. A tiny little snore.
I smiled. One last unanswered question, but this time, I didn't mind. With as little noise as possible, I shut the book all the way, set it gently on the bedside table, and released the fireflies from my sister's lamp. It was just as well I called it a night. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.
I tiphoofed out of the room, leaving my sister alone in the quiet dark.
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I was pretty shocked to see the new chapter go up right in the middle of me reading chapter 2! I definitely have a better understanding of what you were saying about where you wanted to get to now, but my earlier assessment is unchanged. And I really do enjoy this chapter, probably more than chapter 2 to be honest (though I haven't gone back through to read anything before the capstone at the end).
Anyway, you've already gotten pretty extensive thoughts from me about this, so I don't know that I've got a whole lot more to say, except that I'm really looking forward to seeing more. Oh, and I really need to learn to drop story updates at night like this so I can just go to sleep and not sit around all day waiting to see what people think. Far better to wake up to it, and not get caught in the lack-of-productivity trap there.
Bubble pipe!
Oh, Twilight.
Huh, I was thinking the artifact was going to turn out to be a spare teapot, or something.
It's back. :D
I really, really enjoyed both the inventive combat scene, and all the events that transpire in the tea room. :P
Shining Armor has the best crayons!
This chapter was great. I really like your portrayal of Shining Armor
Glad to see this story have a update. Has my favorite characterization of Cadance (A Bratty Teen Immortal Goddess which I find quite refreshing.)
Also this latest chapter had an excellent look into Shining's personality I felt like.
All around good job, Would love to see how this little arc resolves itself!
What nicely polished and well-considered stories you tell, with interesting details and clever insights about well known characters. I've enjoyed all of your Cada(e)nce stories, and this is no exception. Kudos to you, Skywriter.
BLARG AN UPDATE!!!
Huzzah!
Glad to see this updated. I really enjoy your Cadance stories :)
Good to see Dotted Line make a (understandably) brief cameo. Poor fellow must be stressed out of his mind with his paperwork threatened.
I look forward to your next chapter! Shining is developing well, and almost gives me a "Dresden" vibe.
... And the Twiley scenes are just soooo adorable (all additional o's required)
~Shaiden
Well this a nice chaptOHMYGODTWILYIJUSTDIEDWARNMENEXTTIME!!!! Also, is the physics principle supposed to be an allegory for Cadance, and her reaction to changes in her environment?
Ooh, this was very good! I very much like your Shining Armor, and it's nice to see that Celestia has relented on forcing the proper table manners on Cadence all the time (albeit with ulterior motives!).
3968944
I have to admit, I did really love Cadance's moment of: "Noooo, the pretty stallion must not be permitted to observe my shame!"
That sad, the real reason I'm coming back for another comment is just so I can second something 3752050 said a while ago, because I think it was well-said and I think it bears repeating.
...which would kinda suck for me, since it'd mean abandoning my actual-canon Cadance for well-developed semi-canon Cadance. Mais c'est la vie.
This may not be as packed as some of your stories, but the Cadance of Cloudsdale Cycle is right up there with Contraptionology on my list of favorite things by you, simply because it's got so much going on, so much to love, and so much more room for large-scale wonderfulness, even if it doesn't have some of the small-scale wonderfulness of Luna's first experience with living statues, or Luna's desperate and undignified rush for vendor-cart food, or... well... anything with Luna, really. Luna's like filly Twilight. She makes everything amazing.
Oh goodness, I wonder if there's a way to justify doing a "Luna foalsitting filly Twilight" fic...
Yes, yes I think there is...
Yeah, that's where I lost it. The whole sandbagging scene was awesome.
Oh my gawd. Dotted Line's terrible flooding, that thermos from TtPWD, scheming Celestia and Shining Armor contemplating the feasibility of terrorism within Canterlot. References to anything and everything alicorn.
I barely remember deciding to start reading this story. It just kinda went straight from "new feed item" to "I'm a dozen paragraphs in and totally not counting". From lieutenant Weaselface to Shining's impression of Celestia's cake eating, I giggled my way through a tale that could have, in other hands, been a far less comedic escapade. The fact that Shiny's internal monologue spent the entire time lampooning the ridiculousness of his situation made it feel very much like Ghost's 'verse to me, so it's fitting that it spent so much time crossing over with it.
The one thing that I didn't feel quite satisfied with is the ending bit. It was awesome to see the artifacts of Twilight's early obsession with Celestia, (Who knew there would be so much princess themed merchandise in Equestria! Can you get comforters with the Queen of England on them in England?) and Shiny's reluctance to disabuse her of her notions is adorable, but I got the nagging feeling that the Quantum Mechanics passage was trying to tell me something on a meta-story level, and it leaves me feeling faintly frustrated that I didn't quite get it. I mean, sure, I know a bit about the actual physical phenomena it's describing, but that's not the point. I keep trying to relate superposition and decoherence to the princesses somehow. Like, y'know, she's been observed now, so she can no longer exist in a state of both being an incredible glutton and not.
Yeah. Maybe it's just the mental detritus from prereading that thing where Bradel was all like, everything is important and has symbolic purpose and whatnot, and now I strain to see it in everything.
I dunno where I was going with that. Thanks for being awesome. Keep it up, please.
3969037
I have ruined a perfectly good reader!
Damn... guess you could say they were as hungry as a horse!!!
Hmm... why does she suddenly want Armor go with her? Wait... he saw her eating habits!
She's going to cancel the enchantment and push him from the clouds to keep her secret.
No wonder Armor threw her from the balcony in The Crystal Empire!!
This was worth staying up until 3 am to finish.
Now I want to know what Lt. Weaselface's cutie mark is.
3969037
Oh good, I'm not the only one who kept racking their brains to see if there was some symbolism in that passage about quantum superposition!
It strikes me that it must be very useful for Celestia to cultivate the image of a hapless eccentric. Can't very well have your orders second-guessed if the ponies carrying them out are too jaded to make a first guess.
3969291, 3969037
There was a symbolic purpose there. It was already half-baked, and still is, but at least now I've highlighted it a little better so that maybe it'll seem less obtuse. See if the passage works better for you now.
3969208
I believe it literally is the face of a weasel. Some destinies are with you from birth.
3969168
<M.A. Larson>
And she's dead! The end!
</M.A. Larson>
3969001
Thanks. I didn't plan Lt. Weaselface. He was just there.
3968984
One of the great regrets of this project is that Luna is perforce not in it at all. It's a shame, since I do love writing Season 2 Luna.
3968944
It is now clear that Celestia was merely saying that you shouldn't eat like that where other ponies can see you. There are two alicorn worlds, the observed and the unobserved.
3968801
Yup. It's now edited to make this more clear.
3968768
Unfortunately, save for a pivotal moment very late in the series, this is the last we see of little Twiley.
3968512
This whole scene was inspired by the flashback moment in "A Canterlot Wedding" when Shining tears an apple in two with the power of his mind and I was like, you know, that's pretty fscking terrifying.
To everyone else (to keep this comment string from going wat too long): Thank you so much for reading and responding!
3969516
Yes, I think it's clearer now. And the Princesses are in superposition between a wondrous divine alicorn, and a flesh-and-blood pony mare.
3969549
Per-zactly.
EDIT: Or at least, the image of them is in that superposition. If that makes sense. Like I said, it's not my finest metaphor.
3969516 It is indeed much more... Blatant now. In a way that I don't feel I was terribly off the mark with my original guesses, which I suppose is good, on a fundamental level, but now that I've apparently altered the story by whining about it, I feel kinda bad. I've been pandered to, I tell you!
I think I'd have to call it an improvement though. As much as I like ambiguity and trusting the reader to form their own conclusions, and if I'd been presented with two options as a prereader I might well have recommended the first, I have to admit I probably wouldn't have complained about it if this was the original passage. There's something about me hoarding privileged information in there.
So good. The narration throughout really captures the feel of a young, inexperienced but highly observant and intelligent officer who's just been transferred into the weirdest military unit in existence. It also makes his realisation that Celestia had engineered the whole situation believable; it might have been jarring otherwise, but you set it up perfectly.
I have to say, several elements of your presentation of Shining Armor and the Sparkles (can I use that as a family name? Never mind, I'm using that as a family name) have worked their way into my head-canon. House Shine is now a thing in my brain. I offer you my apologies should this, and others, eventually work their way into my snail-pace writing here.
3969569
If it makes you feel any better, I like this version better, so think of it as your feedback facilitating the creation of the definitive version rather than as "mucking about with the original."
3969655
The future is mysterious!
3969637
Thanks. This is really good to hear as I had eight kinds of trouble getting Shiny's voice down.
This story is just every possible level of adorable and further proof you belong chained to a desk writing all day.
Okay, maybe not the chains, but definitely writing
Firstly, the mental image of Knight Light with a bubble pipe is magnificent and I thank you for it.
Oh, this is intriguing. Covenants? An established Heaven which isn't assumed to be under Celestia's direct command? Very interesting...
But can he explain that they aren't cleared for an explanation?
And equine amity.
I'm sorry, but probably not as sorry as I should be.
This is a fantastic analogy and you should feel very good about having written it. Especially since it feels completely in character for Shining Armor.
Also, that ending. Adorable symbolism through quantum mechanics. (I love the Internet; it gives me an excuse to write phrases that would never see the light of day in any sane universe.)
Eagerly looking forward to more.
3969679
Personally, I saw it as a reference to how Cadence was an infant for something like a thousand years specifically because the nuns refused to allow her to be seen, and how she only started to grow up when she was able to be observed by the wider world. I suppose that was a bit more metatextual than what you were going for, though. Stupid human brain and its propensity for forming patterns and connections where there aren't any.
3970017
This is also a good metaphor!
3970013
Thanks, FOME. Button's rant is yet another sidelong reference to Ghost of Heraclitus's Civil Service stories and is not to be taken too seriously. For the purposes of this story, let it suffice that House Trottingham has got some weird ideas in their heads.
The crayon metaphor will be totally wrecked if and when Shiny does anything more than lift stuff, blast stuff, or make force fields in the canon, but for now, we are treating him magically-wise-speaking as a practitioner of really really advanced arithmetic.
3970059
New headcanon: Shiny is a Guild Navigator. A little later, in a moment of panic, we will see him fold space to save Cadance from an assassin. They'll both wind up on Arrakis and Shiny will become the pony Kwisatz Haderach, with the ability to see time unfolding before him. Shiny and Cadance return to Equestria, but now Shiny knows everything Celestia's doing.
The whole MLP:FiM series is actually a secret war between Shining Armor (and Cadance) and Celestia (and Luna, who Celestia manipulated Twilight into bringing back, because she needs the help now). Twilight is the wild card.
MLP:FiM will end with Twilight choosing to side with her brother and her foalsitter and overthrow Celestia and Luna. There will be epic, epic battle scenes.
Oh. Uh. Nevermind.
3970059
Pony religion is one of those things that especially piques my interest. Yeah, I know, it's weird. I mean, who'd want to see how a society with an immortal, cosmos-moving god-queen approaches spirituality?
3970117
The whites of his eyes are a little blue...
3970252
More specifically, her power and place in the world, not just knowledge of it. And obviously, there are going to be upper limits, otherwise I suppose we'd have the Attack of the Three-Hundred Foot Celestia going on all the time.
3970252 3970274
i1278.photobucket.com/albums/y513/bradelbound/Twilactus_zpsfea1d9c8.jpg
(This is what happens when I'm supposed to be working and don't want to do so, some mornings...)
Okay, okay, I'll stop... (u_u);
3968984
No, you fool, you'll destroy us all! Nobody can handle that much d'awwwww!
3969679
Yeah, it's a little more obvious now. I kinda liked "Would you like me to show you Figure 3?", though.
3970307
I am perfectly okay with this.
3970177
I would.
Much like her hair during her sister-in-law's coronation.
3970307
3970274
What I thought of
th06.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2013/233/f/a/sketch21321375_by_nadnerbd-d6j69fg.png
3970013
What I thought of
th05.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2014/050/d/f/equine_amity_by_nadnerbd-d7767h6.png
... okay, I'm done.
Well maybe Cadence will be able to do something about that, practise makes perfect after all. Lots and lots of practice.
Well in anything practical a Sergeant outranks all of you added together.
Is that what they call coltfriend now a days?
3970274
"Attack of the 300-Foot Celestia" is my Megadeth lounge cover band.
Actually, that would make for a quite featurebox-able fanfic name …
3970117
DAMMIT BRADEL STOP REPLACING MY HEADCANON
That guy is back I see. This can only end
poorlywith wives being tossed at the enemy.Reads...
I like your take on Shining. He responds about how I would most of the time, namely, being very confused. A very everypony take on him. And your own take on the Sun Nag continues to fascinate me. She continues to in control to a ridiculous degree and at the same time I want to see her stumble. Be humbled by something. It's really hard to put into words my feelings on her. I don't like her (that is, in character. As I reader I love reading about her), exactly, but at the same time it's not that I dislike her. It's... I have no idea.
Remain in secret? That's a very pony way to put it, actually.
"'Because it is virtually impossible to keep a macroscopic object isolated to the extent needed to prevent decoherence, we cannot casually observe quantum superpositions in the world surrounding us,'"
Sounds like a challenge. I'm sure I can think of a few. I don't suppose you'll accept the ground state of benzine? Nope. Radioactive decay? Maybe you'd count that. How about metals? If you do the maths, the valence electrons in metals are actually delocalised across the entire metal crystal and all mixed up with each other. So next time you look at a metal spoon and note how shiny it is, remember that you're looking at a superposition.[1]
Bah, I'll just leave a link to the quantum bomb tester as it's really interesting.
[1] Except technically spoons are rarely made of single crystals of metal. Jet engine blades, however...
3968984
You could do it in the Twisted Tales universe, though that Luna is probably a little better adjusted that our Luna. Alternatively, just read Night's Favoured Child for a similar effect.
3970013
I actually read that as the ravings of conspiracy ponies, and thus to be taken with a huge bolder of salt. What we do know that her father is still alive in Eohippus but he may be close to death... though this depends on how much of Skywriter's earlier works are canon with his later works.