5.2
5.2
Dawn crept down upon the City on the Mountain, guided by its rightful mistress once more as she rested patiently far below in Ponyvile. It crept down upon the city, insidious and vile in its cheer and rousing call to wakefulness that it inflicted upon the sleeping inhabitants. Balefully did its gaze descend upon the highest room of the tallest tower in the grand castle of Canterlot, pressing its light through the thick blue curtains hung to block such a vile cheerfulness. Concentrating, piercing, intruding upon the room; the beams of light slowly tracking across the room to converge upon the sleeping figure wrapped up in blankets upon the dais bed.
Whining rather like a petulant foal told to take a bath, Luna curled over and stuffed a pillow over her head. Between the endless debates with governmental officials trying to make them stop running the country as Celestia would have, the negotiations with foreign governments, the general fight against the inertia of a thousand year government, and her own duties she had been going all but sleepless for the past month and wished to take an actual day off for once. They could all wait a day for all that she cared. But the worst part of her pain was the pounding caffeine headache caused by her stupid sampling of the sludge that was supposedly coffee after depositing Berry upon his couch and dutifully had seen him tucked back in rather than left in the cold.
Heartbeats rattled in her chest, head pounding the steady beat of a row-drum, fur crawling with the menacing squirm of an army of ants, wings twitching madly with nervous energy. She could not sleep, could not rest, she could not stow away quietly in some forgotten warehouse to burn away the energy. Truly, she was an utter wretch of a mare, a miserable pile of pony who knew no equal in her inequine suffering. Squirming once more with a fitful twist of motion, she pulled her blankets about herself by another turn to protect her poor head from the burning light of the sun by taking away from her hooves. She would not need them after they fizzled off from the terrible interaction of coffee concentrate squirms and sunlight, for she would metamorphose into a form most terrible in her silk blanket cocoon!
Birds gathered at her balcony, singing a song of greeting and cheer as they called for her. One pillow flew to the glass door, slamming against it. The other pressed Luna’s head down so that she might smother herself and save the universe from her migraine to come. No more, not that day! She was not going to emerge until no-
The midnight black door to her chambers creaked open and closed back with a resounding squeak of badly oiled hinges and the thunderous slam of the gates to Tartarus. Why had she ever found the sound satisfying? Her poor tummy churned with an ache from the caffeine withdrawal as she moaned once more and twisted tighter into her blanket and pillows. Come to think of it, she was frequently wrought with suffering from its supposed grandeur—it rendered her head just as cracked and jumbled with pain whether hung-over or overdosing on caffeine.
Tiny scampering paws clicked against the marble of her suite’s foyer, the sound disappearing into the thick throw rugs of her bedroom as Tiberius approached. Luna’s cocoon shuddered as the shadow possum’s clamber up the side disturbed the strange gel-like substrate of her bed and rippled it. He stood up by a pillow-covered lump that was wrapped like he thought was her head and saluted sharply with a squeak, holding his roll of gathered intelligence in his other paw.
Luna’s tail slowly snaked out from through the twisting maze of covers whilst her horn turned up at the other end of the bed. Well, that was rather embarrassing. Tiberius turned around, saluting once more. Slithering her muzzle free of the whirlpool of covers she had slowly wrapped around it in her hours of restless turning, Luna glared at him tiredly with utterly bloodshot eyes as Tiberius delivered all of his terrible news. “Dook! Squee-squeak-dook-ee! Squeak!”
Her eyes blinked out of synch from her befuddled mental state, processing the statement back into equine. Whining again, she slowly stood upon jellied, hissing as the sun warmed more of her body and stabbed her light-sensitive eyes with pain. “Truly, they are coming?” Nod-nod-shiver. “We must flee!”
“Good Morning, Princess!” The maids chorused as one upon entering the room, the sing-song of their voice rattling the glass knick-knacks and sensitive telescopes. It had taken them forever to find Princess Luna’s room, since she had hidden it behind charms and obscurity far, far above the royal suites of her sister. It was a good thing that they had their own set of mages for handling the worst of Princess Celestia’s messes, or they would have never found it. Their cleaning carts and breakfast tray-tables, and their mobile bookshelves filled to the brim with the news and intelligence from around the realm all rattled frightfully until the carpet bogged them down.
Oh, well. It would need adjusting.
Their leader nodded to the bath squad, who broke out the scrub brushes to drag Luna in for a proper scrubbing. Lemon and lavender scented oils were broken out from the carts to cover the musty smell of ancient tomes and a thousand years of saved memorabilia. Princess Celestia’s breakfast fare of orange juice, frosted donuts from Pony Joe’s, and various sides was brought forth from the rear for lack of better information on Luna’s diet.
Dutifully marching to the bedside, the head maid held a rolled newspaper beneath her wing to present to Luna in offering. “Princess? Please wake up, you really need to start being seen by the public before three, or we will never get your image corrected.” She poked the great lump of coiled blankets, hoping to nudge Luna gently to wakefulness.
A muffled reply was mumbled into the pile of pillows atop the head. Looking over her shoulder, the head maid gave the nod to her squad leaders. Chorusing as one, they tried again. “Princess! You really should wake up! We miss you!” Mumbles again, this time with a faint movement.
Enough of that. She ripped off the covers in a single jerk, scowling as a life-sized bean-filled plushy of Princess Celestia flipped into the air from the motion and landed upside down on the blue-sheeted bed. It chanted a pre-recorded message about pretty pony princesses as the head maid scowled in delight at the challenge awaited. She knew the object, it had been stolen from Princess Twilight’s tower. Very well. The game was joined, afoot even.
Marching meticulously back to her cart, the pink and white mare prepared for a war she had long heard of but had not experienced in her time. So too had Princess Celestia once fought against her daily wakeup call. So too would the call not be denied. Reaching under the pristine white sheet, she pulled forth a two-horned helmet and sat it cocked upon her head. Her fellow maids cheered as they realized what was to come, pulling out similar helmets from hidden places as she cried the ancient war-cry of the legions of cleaning. “And so it begins again! Find her! Prepare her for the courts!”
Ulp.
Wielding pastries like missiles, newspapers like swords, and scrub brushes like war hammers, the maids of Celestia marched forth to find their new patron who had taken up Celestia’s forgotten habit of trying to shirk work to snooze in some distant part of the castle. Luna blinked wildly against both the light and also the madness she had just witnessed. Her place upon the ceiling, standing upside down and adhered to the surface via the application of a spider spell had gone unnoticed by the maids. ‘Sister was most disturbed indeed, to have such beings as her maids.’ She thought as Tiberius clutched to her horn against gravity. Not nuts, of course. Celestia hated most nuts other than pecans.
Crawling across the ceiling with a tread that would leave cats envious, Luna slowly made her way to the balcony doors and the freedom to escape of the outside. Clawing to her mane, Tiberius finally got a good grip with all four paws so he wouldn’t fall away to be cuddled half to death by a mad maid. His tiny messenger pouch bounced between him and his mistress’s neck quietly as she slunk to the windows. Slinking across the smooth ceiling was slowly scraping her delicate and ticklish belly against the cold blue marble, rustling the tufts of fur.
The hinges of her balcony door creaked ominously, threatening to give her away as she remotely opened them. She breathed deep, trying to calm her head and stomach for the torture to come as she tensed. Flipping like a slinky, she rolled herself around the top frame, planting her hind-hooves through the curtain and curling back like a cat until they pressed against the crown of the arched frame. Using the momentum, she flipped about again, shutting her eyes against the pain as she exposed herself to the light and practically glued herself flat against the upper wall by her hooves. Jagged spikes of pain rushed into her head from the blinding light of the sun, unhelped by her slow twist about until she had her back to the wall.
Whining himself in the much-reduced fluff of his mistress’s mane, poor half-blinded Tiberius found himself squished between Luna and the wall of the castle by the move. Luna pulled her head back from the wall, panting heavily against the suffering until she looked down into the gardens. Still filled with the shadows from before dawn, they were a dark void that left Luna with more than a small case of vertigo. Terrible idea, as it turned out. She shut her eyes and squished poor Tiberius with her head again as she tried to calm her heartrate.
Glancing left and right in short blinks, Luna spotted a nice shadow in which to crawl down the exterior of her tower, and more importantly, a narrow ledge to shimmy across until she reached it. Tiny hoof-shuffles moved her along the exterior, unwilling to fly just yet. She dropped beneath a disused gallery window, then carefully arched her leg over a stairwell window next, hooves dancing atop the crown of its molding.
Flapping wings accelerated Luna’s heartbeat again, and she plastered herself tighter to the wall as an unknown flier approached from around the tower. Short huffs of breath snorted through her nose as she calmed down with the sight of the guard coming down from above. “Princess, uh—what are you doing out here, ma’am?”
“Celestia’s maids have gone mad!”
“What?” His head jerked. “Oh, did you challenge them to a game of scrubs by trying to avoid them? They’re part of the royal guard; its female component.” The gold-armored guard explained as Luna shimmied over the rest of the way into the dark corner of shadow. Watching her, he winced as she let herself flip around her hind hooves to land against her belly facing down the wall as she started crawling through the darkened corner.
“What ‘Game of Scrubs’?” Luna demanded of him. Quietly.
“Back a few hundred years ago, when Celestia added female guards hidden as her maid service, she started trying to skip work some days out of tiredness. They started trying to catch her to make her go to court. Scrubbing her up, feeding her, then dumping her in the throne room and sticking up a shield to keep her from running away.” The guard explained for Luna, shivering with each slow step she took. “She gave up trying about three decades back, I don’t know why. But all the maids occasionally talk about it.”
“Wonderful.” Luna moaned as poor, flattened Tiberius meekly chirped his agreement from her neck.
The guard would have stayed and listened to her rant, but the faint calls of female voices caught his attention. Flinching at the thought of getting caught up in the game, he flew off before Luna could get fully into her rant.
“Equal opportunity, but quite mad, wouldn’t you say?” Luna grumbled to Tiberius as she kept crawling down the wall. He nodded and clung tighter to her neck in complaint. Her sedate and careful climb stopped as giggles echoed above her once again. She looked up, and gaped ass three of the ‘maids’ descended down from the roof in rappel slings. “Strewth.”
Ow, that glimpse had been bright. Reality trembled about Luna as she gathered her power, dimming the light as it filtered through the concentration of shadows. Launching herself across the courtyard in a thick burst of night magic, Luna conjured a pair of nearly blacked out sunglasses to withstand the morning light as she flew. Tibbles squeaked against her mane as he flapped against her with the force of her flight.
Three more of the guards-maids swooped over the spire, giving chase as Luna let gravity tug her down for a moment, corkscrewing through her dive to emerge at the bottom with a snap opening of her wings and the continuation of her flight. They cried out to her, giving chase with surprising speed for supposed maids. The fastest swept in from her right, panting with exertion as Luna turned away and let the energy twitching in her veins work. Angling away from her pursuers, Luna dropped down a little, letting her hooves touch against the ramparts to kick off and shoot away in an upwards arc.
They kept calling to her as she flew for cover, catching up again and practically nipping at her hooves with their speed and furious grasps. Swooping down into the gardens against Tiberius’s furious chittering protests, she slipped from their grasp, swooping down into the maze and the tightly packed hedges. Unused to the rather rapid pace and the idea of trying to navigate such tight spaces, the trio swept upwards rather than follow Luna in to crash into a hedge. One peeled off as the other two pressed Luna down, keeping her from escaping as the alicorn churned through the tiny gaps towards the Water Gate. If she could escape the city, she could rest.
“Tia is a madmare! She encouraged this to fight her sloth?” Luna screamed to no-pony in particular as she flew out the other side of the maze. Her two remaining pursuers took up flanking positions as she poured on the speed. The flower beds were ripped up into storms of petals by her passage, then drenched as she swooped even lower as she rolled over them and swooped lower over the canal. Her hooves kicked up a set of fantail wakes as they skimmed the surface, spraying her pursuers madly.
Banking tightly around the ninety degree curve of the canal in a maneuver no mortal could hope to match, she sprayed a grove of willows with a sideswipe of water that bent their branches deep with force. Her wings slapped against the air with a thunderclap, shooting her away again on a shockwave of compressed air. Before her loomed the gatehouse, and the grant waterfall off of Canterlot; a freedom gate to escape the latest madness her sister had left behind.
The pulsations of her head had dimmed with the thumping of her heart, all of it matching the beat of her wings as she tucked herself into a smooth dart of motion between her grand displays of feathers. Tiberius squeaked into her ears once more, trying to tell her something as she poured on the speed and left him clutching tighter for dear life. Oddly, the maids who had been pacing her fell back despite their previous nearly supernatural speed, pulling back and upwards.
Luna winced as a spike of pain drilled into her head from a reflection off of a gold-plated spire tip. No more glances back, then. Concentrating on the permanently affixed grating of the gate, she prepared to loop over it when she finally saw the ambush. Hastily rolled in catapults in the lawns to either side, armed with nets.
Her poor possum found himself pressed into a particularly prone pose against the petrel wrapped around her neck as she swooped upwards to escape the trap. Her bangs whipped against her ears as she coasted through the apex of her half-loop, the scream of air half blocked from her ears as she rolled out of her inverted state to rush back to the castle. The mines would protect her until she could recover.
Catapults fired beneath her, nets flapping as they twisted and corkscrewed to her left and right. Her powerful thrust took her past their effective range before the artillery could fire another shot, but the satisfying sound of rope wrapping around flesh slapped behind her as her pursuers were accidentally caught by their own ambush. Luna turned her head back to watch as the pair dropped into the bush line—her stuck out tongue and boos were most assuredly called for as she did.
Ground rushed beneath her as she swept back down to nearly pavement level. Her wingtips clipped the shrubberies lining the garden path she was taking with each bit, cutting divots from their tops with the movement of her steel-like wings whilst the wind from the wings flattened them with each flap. She was fast approaching an intersection between paths, a shady four-way that marked the center of one of the garden wings. From behind the trunks of the shade trees came two of the earth pony maids, who both clutched their crooked helmets in one hoof while they stumbled backwards into the pathway. Having wrapped the corners of their net around the trees they had hidden behind, they flopped down back to back while pulling the tall net tight between them.
Luna came upon them before a moment had time to pass, hopping upwards as she reached them. Planting her hind-hooves against their helmets, she leapt using their heads as springboards. Tucking her hooves tight against her frame, she cleared the net easily, hanging in midair as the combination of the tail end of a stimulant high and her own adrenaline slowed time to a crawl for her. She was off again in a flash; landing, rolling, and righting herself back to her hooves and galloping away towards the gala ballroom where there was still a secret entrance to the deep mines beneath the castle. Tiberius was flapping once more, squeaking a continuous stream of terror as his mistress galloped down the pathway hard enough to leave hoofprint divots in granite cobblestones.
Shouts from the apparently mad maids of mayhem could be heard behind them, egging Luna on and herding her towards the doors. A few lobbed bars of soap bounced off of the pavement from somewhere far behind, likely the two maids who had been bounced upon. Flick to the left, flick to the right, Luna could spot none in sight from the corners of her eyes as she kept an eye on her surroundings despite her head-long run and commanding lead on them. The clatter of her hooves against cobble turned into the resounding, ringing clacks of shod adamantite hoof-shoes against flagstone pavers. Fore-hooves raised up, she let herself skid on her hind-hooves in a scattered spray of sparks as her shoes grated against flagstones until she could slam her full weight against the doors, rocking them open.
“FIRE!”
In retrospect, she should have made certain to look through the windows beside the doors before breaking through them. If she had been paying attention, she might have wondered where that last maid had gone. Certainly not to the Water Gate.
Weighted nets slammed into the alicorn of the night, tying her into a pretzel of pain with the interaction between her motion and theirs. She flipped, tumbled, and skidded to an out-of-control halt halfway across the ballroom. She dazedly moaned from the jarring impact, twitching quietly as the maids pounced upon her, burying her beneath bodies to prevent her escape. They lifted her up as they took control, hoisting her over their heads as they carried her away at the direction of their leader.
Tiberius squeezed through the coarse loops of rope, wriggling through the layers to bounce off of one of the maids’ heads and plop to the floor. The maid fell out of the back of the formation, shaking her head as she tried to clear the odd fuzziness from the thump. A small squeak of terror crept into her ears, and she turned around to check.
Nothing. Wait…
She looked down at the strange patch of shadow on the floor of the ballroom, wondering what it could be. Glance. The window was fine. It could use some cleaning, but there wasn’t a big grease spot on it. Outside was fine, the sun shone brightly into the easterly-facing window. What would happen if she poked i-
“Flowerbelle!” Oh no!
Sighing softly with relief that his distraction had called off the guardsmaid, Tiberius let his eyeshine emerge from the depths of his shadow form once again so he could watch her scurry back to the formation carrying away his mistress to answer the supposed call. Luna had taught him well. He oozed back up from his form as a shadowy patch on the floor, squeaking annoyedly as Luna disappeared behind the shutting ballroom doors, protesting all the way over to the royal baths.
Drat. He was going to have to find Stiff Resistance, wasn’t he?
With a sullen squeak, Tiberius set off to find the captain of the guard. He hoped the stubborn stallion would pay attention. He, maybe the report he had would catch Stiffy’s eye long enough to pounce him and write down a warning. Then again, he might just laugh and pass off a kritter treat. Mmmm. Maybe Luna could wait just a little, it’s only a bath.
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well i got to say this is a great read
i really really want to say it...
like really...
FIRST!
5617942 I REGRET EVERYTHING IVE EVER DONE!
5617944 You should. You really should.
But really... with maids this competent, how did Chrysalis win?
5617972
Well, uh, the same way she took out the guards.
5617984
Disguised as a hot hunky stallion with a couple of roofies stowed away?Great cunning and an impressive song to distract them?Oh you Magnificent Bastard. All my yes, you referenced Sherlock Holmes.
Gasped AS, not ass.
This was pretty fun for a chapter consisting mostly of a chase scene, but oh well.
5617972 the shaaaaame!
Thank you, Author's Note, for re-affirming that Richardson is my favorite comedy writer of all time.
5618024
Thought of changing my name!
Oh, what's in a name?!
5618207
Come to think of it, Author's Note wouldn't be a bad pony name.
5618455 That's true, but the temptation to make nonstop meta jokes would be unbearable to most writers
So, I'm guessing Pinkie also has some Song-Spell powers, possibly related to parties or smiles.
I thought Cadence and Celestia weren't actually related.
5619260
*Whistles innocently, slowly shuffling the plans for the long-in-the-future finale under the biggest, scariest stack of dictionaries he can find. The ones involving quantum mechanics terms to scare away Twilight.*
5619166 well, it's unclear in canon, so you could go whichever way with it. Also, the story took the liberty of changing it from "mi" to "tia"
5620750
I haven't actually read any of the books, so this is news to me.
Yes, Luna! Tia did go mad for a while there without you. Nice to know, in a way, isn't it?
This chapter was hilarious from beginning to end. It was made all the funnier by the simple silliness of it. It's just a bath and Luna is acting like a 5-year-old!
5621267
Well, not really that silly. She's spent at least one all-nighter doing shit for the land, and is sick to her stomach from a mild (for an alicorn) case of poisoning. And the maids... are a set of vikings.
Well, that was entertaining. Luna can struggle all she likes, but it seems a millennium of political momentum is just too much for one alicorn. Still, much more of this, and I wouldn't be surprised if she Royally Voices her displeasure and disbands the government in its entirety. Celestia's staff isn't playing with fire anymore. They're playing with a singularity. And if they keep insisting on dressing up Luna... well, a clothed singularity is also known as a black hole.
That said, I love the explanation for why we never see female guards.
5620754 Well, neither have I. Her name is mentioned in the show, and Celestia calls her "Niece", but we never see her parents (even in the comics) and her childhood is never elaborated on. She did live at the castle when she was in school though. (that's from the comics). My personal theory is that there is a third, unmentioned sibling to Celestia and Luna who is the father/mother of both Cadance and Blueblood.
5627917
How can you tell, given she's had... what, three interactions total?
Mi
vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/mylittleponyccg/images/4/41/CanterlotNights_156.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140708212523
________
Cap
________
Okay have to say it. When I read the author's note at the start there is only one phrase that kept running through my mind in a horrid fake french accent. "NOT NOW CATO!!!"
(couldn't find a good short youtube clip of just that line darn it... 
)
5797598