I Dash Through the Air Full of Unease
I stirred in my sleep.
“You do it.”
As the voices called to me.
“I did it yesterday.”
Rousing me from my slumber.
“Yeah well, I think she likes you better.”
Focusing my consciousness.
“That’s the problem!”
Drawing my attention.
Pleeeeeeeeease? Besides, I'm carrying the coffee."
“Fine, but you owe me lunch, and dinner!”
Giving me a reason to get up in the morning.
A pony cleared her throat. Judging by the nose, she was much closer, and in range of my hooves. “Princess, it’s time to-”
So I reached out to ensnare my prey.
The little blue pony with the wavy white in her hair let out a quick but sharp scream as I grabbed her and pulled Colgate deeper onto the sleeping platform of softness. My other foreleg reached out around her, and my wings practically turned into a feathered cocoon as I finished drawing Colgate into my snuggling hug, rubbing my face up against her soft fur while I let out a little moan of having my little cuddle pony in my equine-arms again. I had to say, best thing about being a big princess pony in Equestria was definitely the fact there were plenty of ponies on hand to serve as plushy replacements.
“Good morning your Highness,” Colgate greeted me with a bit of unease making its way into her voice. She was getting better at hiding it.
“Good morning my snuggly wuggly little pony,” I told Colgate before giving her another nuzzle. Which I think I was getting good at. As always, the softness of her coat felt heavenly, and made me wish I could just sleep with her all morning long.
In one of those non-sexual ways. I had my limits in how much love I was willing to give a pony after all. Snuggles, cuddles, nuzzles, smooches, and whatever they called that thing where you suction onto a pony's belly to tickle her with your mouth's expulsion of air were one thing, but that was were the line was drawn. Especially since I wasn't even in a body I owned.
As for the nuzzling itself, it was received well enough. In pony society, the act was something between a hug and a kiss as far as human affection went. It basically said ‘I love you’ but without the romantic connotations. Unless of course it was done between an actual couple, then it meant ‘I love you but let’s not get too physical right now’.
Pony society was big on the whole important gestures thing.
Twinkie cleared her throat. “I have your morning report and coffee your highness.”
I opened one of my serpentine eyes to look at the pony that had dared to interrupt my morning cuddle with Colgate. And of course, Princess I Want to be all Serious took over our mouth. “Is the coffee still freshly heated?”
“Yes Princess,” Twinkie replied respectfully with a little bow of her head.
“Give us the morning report while it cools then Twinkleshine, how are the state of things in the kingdom?” Princess Luna asked, making me have to just settle for holding the blue little pony so she could focus on what Twinkie was saying. Didn't mean I was letting my little Colgate go though.
The light unicorn cleared her throat, and acted as if I didn't have her best friend in what was a pretty embarrassing position. “Captain Nightwing reports that the guard training is continuing as scheduled. Also, as per Nightmare’s request, he has dispatched a pair of guards to provide watch over the homes of each of your friends and their families during the night, with orders to report any major changes back to you both,” she said before moving on to the next page. “As for your schedule for today, I’m to remind you that Rainbow Dash will be here at one to instruct Nightmare in flying lessons.”
That one got my attention. I sat up just a bit with my Colgate snuggle-pony in my forelegs and frowned. “That’s today?”
Twinkie nodded. “Yes your highness,” she said before looking back to her clipboard. “Also, Princess Celestia’s scheduling adviser wanted me to remind you that she has cleared up her day after morning court to have some sisterly bonding time with Princess Luna.”
“In other words-”
“-she wishes to watch us crash and burn-” Luna spoke.
“-and laugh her big plot off about it,” I finished. Although, perhaps that was an unfair assessment of Celestia. Being Nightmare Moon, my ass looked just about as big as Tia’s.
Which also reminded me we needed to have Rarity measure our figures. We never did figure out which princess had the superior posterior. Next time we were in Ponyville, I needed to see about having a 'Who's Got the Bigger Butt' contest, with my perfectly plump royal rear set up against Celestia's overly hyped hips. Or perhaps a 'Better Butt' contest, with the determining factors including size, jiggle, wiggle, and plushness.
“Verily,” the possessed goddess went on before she let out a sigh. “Oh Nightmare, I am inclined to agree with thine earlier assessment about having a centuries old sister with such a twisted sense of humor. It doth suck greatly.”
Don’t get me wrong, Tia was nice and all, but…for a solar-powered pony princess, she seemed to enjoy the suffering of her subjects a whole lot. Especially those related to her. Which weren’t really her subjects, but still…the point was the same.
I let out a sigh. “Well then, we’d better get cleaned up,” I said before releasing my little pony and giving her time to scramble free before I rolled over onto Luna’s stomach and addressed our servants.
“Twinkie, Colgate,” I said, it came out sounding more like ‘Coltgate’ but…that was what happened when one lived in the magical land of Equestria.
The pony that could have been a mortal Celestia stunt double sighed. “I-It’s Twinkleshine, your majesty.”
As for my dentist, she let out an indignant cry. “AHHH! I keep telling you! I AM NOT A TOOTHPASTE! Minuette, it’s Minuette! Men-Yu-Et!” she shouted right in front of my face. Apparently, the little pony had reached her limit and finally let her anger override her sense of decorum. Or fear of the Nightmare. Either way, she had finally snapped.
I smirked. “Well…I’m pretty sure a princess can get it changed.” Which brought about a look of horror on Minuette’s face that had me snickering a few seconds later.
And then I just snatched her back up in a hug and nuzzled her cheek in apology. “Awww I’m just kidding girl,” I told her before letting her fall back so we could see each other. “I know your name’s Minuette, my little pony.”
“Wah…it…you…you’ve been calling me that for three days!” the unicorn shouted in my face...again. If the irate creature in front of me hadn’t been a pony, I might have been a little peeved. But adorable things were just too cute when they were angry to get upset at.
So instead, I just laughed. “Well you do have to admit, the coloration does kind of favor the name,” I said with a guilty little smile that she didn’t share. I got a half-smirk, but it ended with that. “Okay, okay I’m sorry. Forgive me?” I even added a puppy dog out to help show my sincerity.
Minuette sighed and rolled her eyes. “Well, okay,” she agreed before I set the little pony down after giving her another hug for good measure. “It’s not like it’s anything new anyway. Plenty of ponies have called me that over the years.”
And that…kind of killed the joke for me. Sure Minuette was an adult and all…as much as that meant for a pony, but mean childhood nicknames tended to leave a sore spot that managed to stick around for years. “Oh…um…sorry,” I said again in a much more apologetic matter. Not that I hadn’t meant it the first time.
Then, my mouth started to move on its own. “Are’t thou done with thy mocking of the maidens Nightmare?” Luna asked me.
I sighed and slumped. Minuette’s name thing still distressed me, but if Luna needed to move on, then we would be moving on. “Yes Luna,” I replied while trying to think of a way to make it up to my new gal-pal. I needed some big gesture to show Minuette that I really did adore her as more than just a background servant pony.
We turned our head back to the blue unicorn. “Now Menu, go and see what choices we have to break our fast,” Luna commanded.
Which in turn got an eye-twitch from Minuette before she went into a bow. While I was apparently a princess to be yelled at, Luna got blind obedience. Lucky horse. “S-Sure thing, your Highness.”
As she left, Luna ordered me to take the coffee in our magic, and a technique born from many hours of practice allowed me to tilt it just enough for her to sip some without it burning our nose. When she was done with the potion of alertness, Luna had me look over to the other unicorn. “Let us be off to the bath. We will also need to apply proper cosmetics with our friend in attendance.”
I didn’t move from the spot, and looked back to my shoulder. “Uh Luna, considering what’s going to be happening today, I don’t think wearing makeup would be a good idea.”
“Humph!” the alicorn replied, taking an extra second to add the upturned nose to complete the subbing action. “Even if we shall be covered with sweat, grime, dust, mud, grass, shards of glass and become tangled in whatever drapes you happen to crash us into, we shall at least arrive in a presentable manner.”
I put our face back down and headed for the bathroom. “Ugh. Fine. But no eyeliner!”
Minuette made it back in time with a list of foods from the kitchen that told us what was freshly picked from the farms that sat in the shadow of Canterlot. The cooks wouldn’t let royalty eat anything less…which made me wonder what would happen when Winter rolled around. Or was Equestria big enough to have some of its lands in a tropical climate? I really needed to look into that.
After Luna picked out what we would eat, I had a brilliant idea and made the girls select something for themselves as well. Twinkleshine got a little put off by the offer, but Minuette didn’t seem to mind the news that the evil entity that was possessing a princess wanted them to sit down with her at lunch as an apology to the three day gag that might have been teensiest tiniest bit over the top.
Although when we actually went through with sitting down to brunch, Minuette looked a little nervous when I threw my wings around the two of them and kept the feathery appendages there in a permanent hug. Celestia just giggled at the sight, while Shining Armor didn’t think much of it, and Cadence had a tiny smile on her face at the cuteness of it all.
“So I see that you have started being more friendly with ponies Luna. It makes me happy to see you opening yourself up again,” Celestia said between bites of the food on her plate that looked like gelatinous mesh of seaweed, broccoli, chopped tomatoes, and cheese. Either Celestia was a health nut, or the castle cooks were just too damn snooty not to cook anything that at least looked appetizing.
Luna took over our mouth. “Neigh sister. Tis all Nightmare’s doing with these two. In all honesty, I am still most against fraternizing in such a way with our lessers.”
The statement had Celestia in a state of wide-eyed shock for a few seconds. “Luna! That’s rather...callous of you.”
“I am merely following thine own example Celestia,” she replied before taking a second to look around the long table that the six of us were sitting at. I didn't see what caught her eye though. The room was just about as empty as it always was. A pair of identical guards in golden armor stood back towards the wall, and a stallion with a large mustache and pocket watch cutie mark waited for us to finish out meal near the door.
A frown appeared on the face of the other goddess. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Luna raised one of our eyebrows. “I see not a single servant sitting on thy side of the table, Sister. Nor have I glimpsed one given such privilege since my return. You speak of me making friends with the common pony, yet as usual, I do not see ye following thine own advice.”
“That’s…” Celestia stopped to clear her throat. “That is hardly true Luna. I happen to have several friends, like…” She looked around for a few seconds before her gaze settled on the older pony with a mustache and a pocket watch cutie mark standing next to one of Celestia’s big royal guards in gold armor and a white coat. “Kibitz and Swift Wing over there,” she said while pointing to the pair of ponies that were waiting for us to finish lunch by the door with a hoof.
The older stallion cleared his throat. “Pardon your majesty, but I must beg to differ. While I am honored you would think to put us on such terms, it would not be proper for one such as myself to be friends with the immortal ruler of our land that raises the sun and has guided us through one-thousand years of harmony…aside from the occasional hiccup now and then,” he told her in a gruff voice that was more to to age than attitude.
Celestia visibly tensed and her wings rustled at the comment. But the alicorn was able to recover a few seconds later. “Well that’s…understandable,” she admitted before turning to the pegasus. “But, Swift Wing and I are very good friends. Aren’t we Swift Wing?”
The pegasus, who had been standing as still as a statue up until that moment, finally looked over to the goddess. “Wait, you’re talking to me Highness?”
“Well I don’t see anypony else here with that name, do you?” she asked in a sweet tone.
After a few seconds of having the princess look at him with a brighter than usual expression, the stallion made like he was trying to collapse in on himself. “I’m sorry to tell you this highness, but I’m Northern Gale,” he said in a worried tone. “Swift Wing retired five weeks ago.”
Celestia stared at the stallion for a bit longer…and then blinked. “Oh…I see,” she mumbled before an obviously false smile appeared on her face. “Well, a mistake anypony can make when you all wear magical armor that makes you look so much alike. Ehehe. Although, why didn’t you ever correct me?”
The guard’s eyes widened in what I would have called terror if he weren’t a pony. “Oh! we could never do that your Highness!”
“We? What do you mean we?” Celestia asked with a frown at the end. “Are you telling me that there are more guards that I’ve been mistaken about?”
Kibitz and the guard shared a worried look. Sweat started to appear on their faces as Celestia continued to glare at the two of them. Then, the older stallion looked over to the younger pony. “Run.”
As the two ponies beat a hasty retreat, Celestia looked over to her other honor guard that was standing on the far side of the room looking around frantically at the walls without any doors before he turned around and jumped through the window situated behind him rather than try to get across the room without talking to the Alicorn of the Sun.
Celestia gapped at her guard’s retreat. “Well that’s…disturbing,” she said before looking over to Cadance. “However…Shining Armor and Cadance-”
“A fellow princess and her consort do not count,” Luna told her before she could finish. “We are counting friends among our lessers, not equals.”
A thoughtful expression crossed Celestia’s face for a few seconds, and then she looked over to the blue pony sitting on my right. “Minuette!”
“Oh no you don’t!” I said before pulling the little pony closer to me in a hug that had her face pressed up against my coat. “You can’t have my hoofmaidens, they’re my friends. Go hire some of your own!”
After we finished brunch and dismissed my unicorns since they were only supposed to be helping Luna when she woke up and went to bed on top of a few minor jobs, us three alicorns (or would that be four alicorns counting me?) headed up to the roof to wait on Rainbow Dash to show up while Shining went off to do whatever guard captains in Canterlot did. Celestia conjured a cloud that took the shape of a couch that she began to lounge on with a rather dejected expression on her face.
“I used to think of myself as so approachable,” she mumbled as the horse goddess lounged on her stomach. “Hay, we used to be so approachable. There was a time when ponies walked up to us on the street to discuss their problems and criticize my decisions. And now, they don’t even tell me when I get their names wrong.”
I shared a worried look with Cadance, who motioned for me or Luna to say something. “Well uh…” I began while trying to think of something to say. “With you being all old and everything, it’s pretty understandable that nopony thinks it’s a good idea to contradict-urk!”
Cadance groaned as I frowned at the magic surrounding my mouth. “Well Auntie, you have to admit that things might have changed a bit since the old days,” she said. “And…maybe it’s for the better! Being such a larger than life figure means that the ponies of Equestria can feel safe and secure that such a pony is watching over them…right?”
“What you say makes sense Cadance,” she mumbled. “But…it doesn’t help me feel that much better. After all, friendship is not just the strongest source of magic, but it is also the founding philosophy of Equestria. Yet here I am, with only a hooffull of ponies I could call companions.”
The pink pony princess and I shared another look of unease, and I quickly looked around for something…anything to distract Celestia from her melancholy. But with the guards absent at Tia’s order and Cadance failing to cheer up the goddess as well, I found nothing until I looked up to see something careening through the air with as much style as it could, with a little rainbow trail flowing behind it.
“Huh, hey Tia, what’s that in the sky?” I asked while pointing my hoof at the obvious object in question.
As the big alicorn lazily moved her eyes, Cadance walked up beside me to squint in the general direction of where I was pointing. “Is that a bird?” she asked as we tried to keep sight of the prismatic flying object.
Which I’ll admit, was pretty freaking hard. Even if she hadn’t archived Rainboom speeds as of yet, Rainbow Dash was still impossibly fast for a flying animal. Not to mention how she could just give the middle finger to the laws of motion by doing ninety degree turns on top of all her other loops, barrel rolls, and corkscrews. The only reason I think I was even able to follow her movements was because she was over a mile away while doing everything, which gave me a pretty wide view of the show.
Luna took over our mouth after a few seconds of watching the pegasus zip and juke around. “Nay dear niece. Tis plane to see the spectacle before us doth not come from an avian.”
Just then, it seemed the pegasus had gotten tired of just playing around, and turned to head straight towards Canterlot at what was probably her maximum speed. Which was fast. Really fast. In fact, by the time Celestia finally got around to raising her head up to see just what me and Cadance were talking about, the blue blur had just about reached the castle. “No it’s,” she said half a second before the pony slowed down to where I could actually make out her features. “Rainbow Dash!”
The pegasus in question landed uneasily and stumbled forward just a little bit at hearing her name called. Then, she looked at the giant white alicorn getting off her cloud couch with wide eyes and tense muscles as Tia practically leaped over to where Dash was standing. “P-Princess Celestia! What’re-oh! Uh…”
Celestia smiled down at the little pony and reached down with her hoof to stop her from bowing. “Rainbow Dash, there is no need for that outside of court,” she said in a tone that I would almost call maniacal. “Please, call me Tia.”
“Tia?” Dash asked with a confused look on her face.
After a few seconds, the goddess shrugged and turned until she was standing beside Rainbow Dash to reach down and put a wing around the smaller pony. “Well, you did save Luna from Nightmare Moon, so I feel more than a bit indebted to you and the others. Great friendships have spring from much less. And the last time I was in Ponyville, both Rarity and Applejack were quite the joy to spend time with, so I see something wrong with approaching you along the same vein,” she said before turning her head just a bit and raising an eyebrow. “Is being so informal with you a problem?”
Rainbow blinked at the question, and then smiled before she got into the air to look at Celestia with a bright smile. “Hey no it isn’t! Put her there Princess!” she said while extending her hoof.
“You can forget the title as well Rainbow,” the goddess corrected her before raising one of her golden covered appendages for a bro-hoof. “Just Tia will do.”
I could only look upon the horror in front of me with a great deal of dread. As far as I knew, Celestia had always kept the Mane Six at a respectful distance, with the exception of Twilight once she had gained a pair of wings. And once she did, the girls had pretty much been tossed aside like garbage when it came to the big white alicorn. No more friendship reports, no more meetings involving the safety of the country, and Celestia had even told Twilight to keep them out of the loop when Discord revealed his true colors to team up with Tirek!
The sleepover was…fixable, but not this! Celestia wasn’t supposed to be getting all buddy-buddy with any of the girls!
Yet there it was in front of me, Celestia telling Rainbow Dash about how much she loved to fly before launching into a story about how she once raced Commander Hurricane across Equestria and finished it with a question if Rainbow wanted to do the same some day!
All my knowledge of MLP could say was: THAT’S NOT CANON!
“So wait…you made the first Sonic Rainboom?” Rainbow Dash exclaimed.
Celestia shrugged. “Well, back then we called it the Celestial Aurora Burst,” she replied a little nonchalantly like it was no big deal. “And the coloration was a little different. But yes, I was the first pony to perform such an act. But you would be the first pegasus to perform it. Not to mention the rainbow you crafted by yourself after the explosion.”
I cleared my throat to get the attention of the winged ponies, and frowned as they both looked my way. “Well as interesting as that is, not to mention the questions that arise from the fact that Rainbow’s did something no pegasus has been able to do before without getting a horn out of it, aren’t you here to do a job Rainbow Dash?” I asked with a frown as I turned my attention on the little pony.
My little mention of alicorn ascension made Celestia’s feathers ruffle just a bit. “Ahem, yes that is a good point,” she said before looking down at Rainbow Dash with a little smile. “Well Rainbow, I hope you can help to show my sister’s…driver how to use her wings better than Cadence has been able to thus far. As enjoyable as it is to see Nightmare try to fly, she really must learn to get off the ground without coming back down ten seconds later.”
As Rainbow got a slightly worried look on her face at the news that a princess hadn’t been able to show me how to use my wings properly, Celestia cleaned in close. “If you want to talk about the intricacies of ascension, it will have to wait for when nopony is around to overhear.”
Luna frowned. “What dost thou mean Sister? When I last walked Equestria, the heights anypony worthy enough could aspire to were well known,” she told Celestia as I followed the alicorn passing us by. “Is this no longer the case?”
“Luna please,” Celestia actually pleaded. “Can we not talk about this in front of other ponies?”
The younger alicorn made us let out a loud groan of a sigh. “Very well Sister,” she said before having us look over to Rainbow Dash. “Now my little pony, are you prepared to show my rather thick other-half how to fly?”
Rainbow jumped a little at the unfriendly tone of Luna’s voice. “Uh yeah…Twilight even had me up late last night reading a book on teaching late learner fliers,” she told us as her confidence slowly built back up to the levels I was used to seeing Rainbow Dash use. “Don’t worry Princess, I’ll show Nightmare how a pony flies! But um…if Princess Cadance hasn’t been able to do it-”
Before Rainbow could get any further, the pink pony princess walked up to her. “Ah-heh, about that,” she said nervously. “I’m afraid that I’m not that good a flier either Rainbow Dash. I was found and raised in an earth pony village. Nopony around to show me the ropes. I can fly, but…I’m not really up to par with expert fliers.”
“…oh,” Rainbow said after moment’s pause. Then, she shook off the stunned silence completely and smiled. “Well don’t worry Princess Luna! You’re in good hooves. I’m the best flier in Ponyville after all! If there’s anypony who can teach Nightmare how to fly, it’s me!”
Luna studied the pegasus for a few more moments before she made us nod. “Very well. You may begin.”
The command had Rainbow Dash assuming what was obviously a practiced pose, with her head up, legs straight, and wings out. “Okay, first thing you need to know about flying especially if you’re late to the start, is…you’re going to crash. You’re going to crash a lot.”
All of a sudden, I found myself wishing I had picked Spitfire to teach me how to fly. At least then I could have been pissed off at her without feeling weird about it.
My flight training started off with me standing on a cloud, overlooking Canterlot. As I was even higher up than a freaking mountain and standing on something that really wasn’t supposed to be a viable platform, my hesitation to simply move was pretty understandable. The fact that I was holding it hard enough to squeeze water out of the thing was just...to ensure safety.
The way Rainbow was giving me a frown…not so understandable. “Wait, you’re scared of heights?” she asked, as if it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.
Of course, I felt the need to correct her. “No! I’m just…freaked out by the fact I’m standing on something that I’m not supposed to, way higher up than I should be!”
What with her genius IQ of nineteen, I could tell that Dash didn’t pick up on the reference to the cloud, and just gave me a roll of the eyes for all my terror. Then she flew down until she was even with my little patch of cloud that she had pushed up into the stratosphere with me on it.
“Yeah well, that just gives you more time to figure things out before you hit the ground is all,” she said before moving her legs in a way that made me as uncomfortable as fuck.
My eyes widened as Rainbow Dash faced her ass towards the cloud, and drew her legs back for a buck. “No. No! Don’t you dare-”
Rainbow Dash kicked my white and fluffy proverbial safety blanket, and all of a sudden, I was tumbling through the air.
“I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS DASHIE!”
Now, I wasn’t a complete loss when it came to flying. I knew how to flap my wings, and Cadance had at least taught me enough about the process to get me off the ground. So, I flapped my wings like she had told me to do, going as hard as I could…and might have flipped upside down when I pulled up too much by leaning back with my body. The end result was me falling with my back towards the ground, and my wings tucking back in on instinct after I failed to right myself several times. Fear tended to do that.
“Okay, here’s your problem,” Rainbow told me as we missed the edge of Canterlot by a few feet and just continued to fall.
I glared at the little pegasus. “I know what my problem is! It’s called gravity!” I shouted before preparing to meet the ground by tucking in on myself a bit more.
In the last few seconds that I saw her, Rainbow shook her head. “Nah, it’s those fat wings of yours,” she corrected me. “See, you’re flapping them way too hard when you shouldn’t be, and-just a sec.”
The pegasus disappeared from my view, and then I felt a hard tug on the back of my mane that flipped me back over right side up. A weight settled on my back, and I felt Rainbow clutch onto me with both pairs of her legs, one on my back, and the other on my neck. “Okay now, spread your wings and hold them out.”
Even though I had my reservations, I did as instructed.
“And hold them there, even with the tug.”
I frowned at the command, and turned my head back to Rainbow as I fully extended my feathery appendages. “The wha-” The rest of my comment ended when I felt a hard, arm wrenching, shoulder dislocating, just pull your limb out of its socket force grab at my wings to try and pull them upward.
“GHAAAAAAAAAA!” Which they halfway succeeded in doing.
Through the pain, I felt a little pony nose press up against my ears. “Now flap ‘em once and hold them out!”
Once again, I managed to follow Rainbow’s commands, if only so I could survive to murder her later. Still, the action made me lurch upwards for a second rather than continue the downward motion I had been going.
And then…
“Hey check it out Princess, you’re flying!” Rainbow said as she continued to ride my back.
I…opened my eyes and looked below me to see the ground pass by at a quick pace. The ground that wasn’t getting closer by the second. I could feel the wind on my face an instant before it also passed through my feathers and left the hair on my tail whipping behind me. It was…kind of indescribable actually.
There was a slight tug as I turned my head to keep a cart on the road from Canterlot to Ponyville in sight, and then I looked behind me to see Rainbow still hugging onto my back. Her wings were extended just a little bit, although she would put them out just a little bit more every few seconds to pull me just a little to the left or right.
“Eyes on the sky Princess!” my instructor ordered.
I looked back ahead and…actually managed a little laugh.
Sure, I needed Rainbow to act like one of those swimming instructors that put their hands underneath the kid as he got used to kicking around in the water, but who dives a damn? I was still in the air and flying! In the fucking sky! With a pair of wings!
“Okay, let’s work on getting some altitude,” she said before launching into some instructions about using my wings that had me thinking I was going to be pretty sore by the time our training was done.
Two hours later, I proved myself right. By the time Rainbow had decided our little practice session over, I was able to flap my wings around without going out of control, but she told me I needed practice before attempting things like riding thermals for an extra boost of lift. So I was left to gain altitude the hard way.
Of course, the little horse didn’t ride my back during the whole lesson. After getting the hang of flying right side up, she jumped off to give some tips and generally coach me through the process of defying gravity while buzzing around, doing the odd rainbow loop, and pretty much performing an audition for the Wonderbolts once we had made it back into Canterlot airspace.
Thankfully, Luna was able to tell me what to do in order to keep steady once I had some experience in not falling. So I could excuse Rainbow Dash for pretty much abandoning me to the merciless skies in lieu of showing off to Tia.
Although…I will admit to having a few evil fantasies that involved her crashing in front of Celestia and ruining her chances of ever joining the prodigious flying team. But those didn’t have any real desire for Rainbow’s dreams to be crushed behind them.
“Okay Luna, I think that’s enough…how do I land this thing?” I asked her.
“Glide towards the ground with your wings at a low angle, and flap them when you get close to the ground to slow your descent,” the disembodied voice in my head instructed.
I nodded, and went into a rather poor dive-bomb that might have been way too fast for a landing before flapping my wings a little too far away from the ground, which in turn had me kicking in the air for several seconds before I actually touched silver horseshoe to ground, and had to run off my extra momentum. Which in turn sent me galloping past Celestia and pulling up just a few inches short of the wall.
On the plus side, I didn’t actually run into the damn thing, and managed to get back on the ground without sliding my face on it. “Well…that went…okay.”
A tiny snort from right behind my head made me look back to see the rainbow pony floating there with a smirk on her face. “Okay? That was…” For once it seemed like Rainbow’s sense of tact reared its sensible head and she shut her mouth before she could piss off the goddess of darkness I was riding inside.
But being Rainbow Dash, she wasn’t going to let it just end there either. She got this cocky smile on her face. “Let me show how to really do that move.”
And just like that, I was looking at a rainbow contrail. It was…really weird to just see her there one second, and gone the next. I didn’t even see her start to dash off.
I groaned, and walked up to where Celestia was sitting on her cloud couch. Cadance had made her own to hover next to the larger alicorn. I just parked my moon butt on the nice and solid stone between them as Rainbow Dash climbed much higher than I had been when I came in for a landing.
“What is she doing?” Celestia asked with a frown.
Dash began her descent, and I sighed at the pegasus’s need to show off. “Showing me how it's done, apparently.”
On the other side of me, Cadance giggled. “Well I have to admit, she is fun to watch.” The pink pretty pony princess turned her head towards me and smirked. “Especially since I didn’t get the show I was hoping to see from you.”
Luna took over our mouth to groan. “Pardon us if we both do not feel remorse over not giving you the sight of my body be made a foal of dear Cadance,” she said to the alicorn while I kept our eyes on Rainbow Dash. While we had a bit of an unspoken agreement to look at whomever Luna was addressing, I really didn’t want to miss the show. “Sister, is it just my opinion, or is Rainbow Dash coming down a bit too fast?”
“Oh that’s right, I haven’t had you look into stunt fliers yet,” Celestia replied. “Do not worry Luna. Twilight informs me that Rainbow Dash is a Wonderbolt hopeful. She knows what she is-”
Before Celestia could finish, Rainbow Dash sped into the ground hooves first to touch down right where she dropped from the sky.
And it was at that point that everything went wrong.
I’m not exactly sure what happened.
Maybe Rainbow didn’t take the landing right, or maybe there was some secret to the trick that she wasn’t aware of. But when she landed front hooves first, I definitely heard the sound of something going crunch. Time seemed to slow down at the noise, and her eyes widened a second before she bounced off the ground in an odd way and spun in the air until her side was facing the hard stone roof of Canterlot. Only then did the touch down, scraping her right wing for a good ten feet before a golden glow surrounded her body and brought the pegasus’s crash landing to an abrupt end.
Cadance let out a terrified shriek that had the little pony’s name in it somewhere while Celestia bolted off her cushioned seat to practically teleported to the pegasus’s side. “Rainbow Dash! Rainbow, are you alright?”
There was nothing but the sound of Rainbow’s too quick breathing in the air as I looked at the trail of blood and broken feathers that to the blue pony. And then…she screamed.
“Luna! Nightmare! Get over here NOW!” Celestia shrieked in what was the closest to panic I had ever heard her.
The command shocked me off my butt and made me gallop so fast I barely avoided tripping over my own hooves. When I got next to Celestia, I looked down at the little pegasus that was writhing in her magical grip, and winced.
Rainbow Dash’s hooves had been practically shattered. There were so many breaks, it looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to a mirror. Blood was pooling around some of the cracks closest to the top from where it was leaking out where hoof met coat.
“Do you know the spell to put her into a deep sleep?” Celestia demanded.
I looked up at Celestia in surprise. “Well…yeah. Don’t you?” I would have thought a pony like Celestia would have known something as simple as that!
“Luna was always better as such things than me. My version of the spell wouldn’t give Rainbow a restful slumber with as much pain as she is in,” she told me harshly. “Now put her under!”
As I moved my eyes up towards the tip of my horn, I could feel Luna guiding me through the motions for the spell. While I got ready to dose Dash with magical anesthesia, Celestia looked up and back to Cadance. “Fly to Canterlot Hospital and bring back the top hoof experts working there, and have them make a list of whatever equipment they need to determine the extent of Rainbow’s injuries! I will have it brought to us after you teleport it to me.”
Cadance nodded and ran for the edge of the roof before she leapt off to fly away.
I touched my horn to Rainbow’s forehead. A second later, the little pegasus stopped struggling and closed her eyes to exchange painful reality for a pleasant dream. “Okay now what?” I asked Celestia before I looked at her a second to see the illumination around the alicorn’s horn actually increasing instead of winking out.
The world disappeared in a bright flash, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in room that was decked out in bright golden décor. Nothing but bookshelves were visible instead of walls to my left and right while a larger than average door was behind me, and an extra large bed with a sun motif sat up against the wall in front of me. With that big a hint, it took me all of half a second to figure out where Tia had brought us.
“You teleported us to your bedroom?” I asked in disbelief as Celestia laid Rainbow Dash down on the bed and tucked her in with the front legs sticking out above the sheets. She didn't even seem to care about Rainbow's blood staining the golden silk. “Not that I’m telling you how to use your stuff. But…don’t you have a ton of spare rooms in this castle?”
Once Rainbow Dash was down, the goddess turned around and headed towards her bedroom’s exit. “Come with me,” she said before the door opened with her magic. As I followed her out, Celestia kept talking. “While Rainbow will of course be given her own room during her recovery, I do not know every single room of my castle to risk a blind teleport when carrying another pony. And…”
She turned and headed for the spare room in her royal apartments to open it a second later. Inside was…not what I was expecting. Instead of another miniature library, I was treated to the sight of a table the length of the wall that had half a dozen beakers, a Bunsen burner, and some other things that looked taken from a dark ages chemistry set.
I followed Tia inside as Luna spoke. “So, you still dabble with your concoctions I see. Do they still distract you as much as they used to Sister?”
“Yes, although I would hardly call my alchemical skills a hobby anymore Luna,” Celestia said before several of the bowls and beakers were surrounded by her magic to float up in the air on their own before she started grinding, boiling, and mixing little bits of this and that. “And as I was saying, an alchemy lab is not within any of their immediate vicinities. Now, about your alicorn question.”
Despite the temptation, I frowned and kept Luna away from our mouth. “I’d rather know just what it is you're mixing up there.”
Celestia paused for a moment, and then nodded. “I know how to create some potions that will increase the speed Rainbow’s wings and hooves heal, and a protective covering for her hooves. Once we have a doctor examine her to make sure she will not need any precise attention, I can administer the potions and give her a speedy recovery with no risk of infection,” she told me before taking a deep breath and letting out long exhale.
“Sister, you seem a bit more…disturbed than usual,” Luna said as she took over control of that part of our body.
After a few more seconds of silence, Celestia hung her head. “It’s…nothing,” she obviously lied before turning her attention back to her potions. “Now, about your alicorn question.”
The immediate change made me a bit worried, but I kept my mouth shut as Celestia went on. “After you…left Luna, I took on many unicorns that had powerful magic as we did before in order to try and find those that were worthy of ascension,” she said as a beaker was placed on the burner to heat.
Celestia turned away from the alchemy table for a moment, a deep frown on her face. “And every single student I found with the potential had a single question on their lips. They wanted to know when I’d make them your replacement,” she explained as he mood darkened. “I think it’s obvious that none of them had what it took to become a princess.”
I blinked at Celestia’s grumbling. “So…then what?”
“So I took the temptation away,” Celestia went on. “I stopped taking students for two hundred years, went through the history books and edited out any references to how our personal students eventually gained wings or a horn. I wasn’t able to get everything, but a few vague mentions about things like the couple responsible for our holiday dedicated to love and other things are hardly proof of little ponies becoming alicorns.
“And when I started taking students again, the unicorns that I taught simply thought they would be groomed for a high place in the magical order, or become the next Starswirl. Twilight has no idea as to what I have planned for her,” she finished with a smile. “And I find it better this way. Ambition…” Celestia lowered her head and shook it. “Letting a pony know that I can put them on the path to becoming an alicorn has only ever led to disaster when I was the one doing the instructing.”
While Luna seemed placated by the answer, I frowned at something Celestia had left out, aside from the fact that Twilight probably already knew about alicorns from Cadance. “You kept saying unicorns this and unicorns that, but…what about pegasi and earth ponies?” I asked. “You can’t tell me they don’t rate some leadership positions too. From the way you’re talking, it's only the ponies with a horn that get taught.”
Celestia looked away from me for a minute to mess with her alchemy stuff some more, and then turned back once she had mixed the boiling stuff in the beaker on the burner with some powder that turned it into a blueish gak substance. “It’s ready,” she told me before turning off the burner and blowing off the question entirely. “Now come along.”
“Well Princess, I have some good news and some…odd news,” the doctor with the white coat of hair and blue mane said as he looked at what I could only guess was some kind of hoof X-ray.
Cadance had taken Celestia’s orders to heart, and had the servants bring up enough medical junk to fill Celestia’s living room. Aside from a thing that looked way too small to be an X-ray machine and worked without the need to plug it in, the pink princess had also brought in gauze, bottles of antiseptic, a bag of surgical tools, and half a dozen other little things I had no identification for.
Of course there were also the two doctors. One had a bright white coat, and the other one that was more gray. Both of them unicorns of course. Wing injury or no, we were still in Canterlot after all. After Celestia’s ‘I don’t train pegasi to be princesses’ reveal, I would have been surprised to find a pegasus outside of the royal guard, or an earth pony that did anything beyond washing windows in Canterlot.
“How is she doctor?” the princess asked with a concerned voice. “Will there be anything to complicate her healing process?”
Dr White Coat moved the X-ray away from his face. “This the good news. Nothing I see here indicates the need for surgery or any other major procedure. Her legs are probably a bit sore, but otherwise undamaged.”
“I believe the same goes for the wing, your Highness,” Dr Gray Coat added as he gave the X-ray in his magic a studying, but questionable look, as if it were written in some kind of code. “Nothing’s strained or broken. She just needs a few damaged feathers removed and her cuts treated, and she’ll probably be flying just fine when her replacements grow in.”
Celestia let out a loud sigh of relief. “And the…odd news?”
Dr White Coat cleared his throat and looked back to his X-Ray. “Yes well…from what I can tell, a good deal of the damage to this filly’s hooves wasn’t caused by the impact you describe Princess. It looks more like they were…exasperated by it.”
I took a second to let that run through my head. “Are you telling us that Rainbow’s hooves were always that torn up?” I demanded with a frown. Both of the doctors flinched at my tone as I walked up to them, but I was a little too upset with Rainbow being unconscious at the moment to care if they found big bad Nightmare Moon all scary. “Because they looked just fine when I was flying with her barely an hour ago!”
The white unicorn looked away from me and over to his chart. “Y-Yes well, that would explain the bits of polish and lacquer we found in some of the cracks.”
Celestia walked up next to me to put a wing on my back, and the little doctor ponies calmed down considerably. “You’re saying that she simply painted over her injuries and went about as normal?”
“Well…I wouldn’t exactly call them injuries your Highness,” he said. “Everypony cracks their hooves from time to time after all. But it’s common knowledge not to let anything seep into the cracks if you don’t want them getting worse while new hoof is grown to replace it. Of course this probably made it hard for her to trot, but being a pegasus…I suppose she could have supplemented her travel with flying around to the point nopony noticed how much she tiptoes.”
“I don’t like ponies touching my hooves,” a memory of Rainbow Dash said in my head before she flew out of the spa and full speed. And now that I thought about it…Rainbow seemed to fly more and more as the show had gone on. How in the hell had none of her friends noticed her hoof problem?
The goddess nodded. “Thank you for your help doctor. When you return to the hospital, I want a private room prepared for her while she’s undergoing recovery within the hour so that there will be a place available when we move her.”
Apparently taking that as their dismissal, the two stallions bowed and quickly headed outside of Celestia’s private quarters. The goddess took an extra second to stick her head out and give commands to the maid in the hallway to get some ponies to help move the equipment.
Once they were gone, Celestia headed back inside her bedroom, where Cadance was standing over the sleeping pegasus and putting the finishing touches on her cleaning of Rainbow wing. More than a dozen broken feathers laid on the ground from the former pink pegasus’s preening job, and the blood had been cleared away as well to reveal bits of bare skin with little tufts of pony coat here and there. There weren’t any visible injuries though, Cadance had probably taken care of the scrapes with her magic the second she was able to.
“What’s the word Auntie?” she asked with a worried expression.
Celestia let out a loud sigh at the question, and put on a little smirk as she shook her head. “Rainbow Dash will be fine with a little rest. It seems that this was all because she refused to take proper care of herself beforehoof,” she said after shaking her head. The goddess walked over to look over the little pegasus and frowned. “I’ll be sure to give this little pony a stern talking to when she wakes up about proper hoof care. But until then, help me cover her hooves in this ointment.”
I frowned at the bowl of blue goop that Celestia took from her bedside. “I thought we weren’t supposed to let anything get inside those cracks.”
“You have no need to fear Nightmare,” Celestia assured me before her magic pulled the blue gak out of its container. The stuff fought her at first, sticking to the bottom before it finally gave way and jiggled a little when the last bit caught up to the main mass. Then she pulled the gunk in half and moved it to surround Rainbow’s front hooves. “This will keep her hooves properly moisturized and protected without seeping down into the cracks and causing further damage.”
After Celestia finished applying the gak, I watched as the outer covering solidified into something that looked like a thin layer of translucent stone. But I could see the inside still had a gel-like appearance. Once it finished hardening, Celestia examined her work and nodded. “Now, I need to prepare a potion that will speed the regeneration of her hooves, and another for her feathers for Rainbow to drink when she awakens. We’ll wait until then to move her.”
It took a lot longer for Celestia to brew her healing potion than it did for her to cook up her gelatinous goo. Which was a good thing I suppose. Rainbow at least got a fair amount of rest out of the deal. Nothing sucks more than laying down to sleep and only being allowed an hour of it.
The three hours she got made a decent nap.
When Celestia made it back into her room, she was carrying a red and an orange potion in her magic that she set down on her nightstand. A few moments later, she lit up her horn and touched Rainbow Dash’s head with the tip of it. “Wake up, my little pony.”
The effect wasn’t instantaneous. Rainbow laid there for a few extra seconds, then her face got all cute and scrunched up before the reached up to run her fetlock across her nose and opened her mouth for a loud yawn that showed off all of her teeth. It was only after all of that Rainbow opened her eyes while smacking her lips to see Celestia at the foot of her own bed, with me on the right side and Cadance on the left that she apparently realized where she was.
She stared at us for a few seconds before Celestia broke the silence. “Good evening Rainbow Dash. Did you have a pleasant nap?”
Tia’s little comment had its desired effect, and Rainbow jumped up out from under the sheets. “P-Princess Celestia!”
Unfortunately, it also made Rainbow try and fly, which didn’t go so well with her right wing wrapped in a bandage. She got about half a flap out of it before her body was surrounded by a golden glow. “Rainbow Dash, calm down,” she told the pony as her expression became one of concern. “Do you remember what happened?”
Rainbow blinked at the question an looked down at her hooves, and then her wing. “Ugh…I crashed.”
Luna cleared our throat. “Quite spectacularly I might add.”
“We healed the damage your wing and fetlock, and I removed the feathers,” Cadance told her sympathetically. “But it's going to take some time for your hooves to heal and your feathers to regrow. You’ll be staying at the Canterlot General Hospital until then to make sure everything goes well.”
And of course I had to add my two bits. “Translation, we want to make sure you don’t buck things up until your recovered,” I said with a little frown before my expression deepened. “And now that you’ve got the three rulers of your bucking country looking over you to help you understand just how worried your little stunt made us…” I reached over and grabbed the pegasus’s coat in my hooves to yank her towards me and press my muzzle against her smaller one. “WHAT THE BUCK WERE YOU THINKING?”
As the little pony’s eyes went all wide, I backed her away from me just a little bit, but kept hold of her coat. “Do you have any idea how bucking stupid that was? You literally just crashed your hooves into solid bucking stone! And for what? To show off?” I demanded.
I think the fact that Rainbow was trying to back away allowed me to let up on the angry shouting. That, and what came out of Celestia’s mouth. “Nightmare, she’ll be okay.”
Celestia reached forward with a hoof, and I stopped her with a glare. “Yeah, this time!” I told her before looking back down at the nervous pegasus. “Look…I get you want to be a daredevil, and there’s a certain amount of risk to that. But there’s a huge difference between crashing because you flew off course during a trick and flying full speed into solid stone!” And with that, my anger was pretty spent. “It…just…please be more careful Dash. Seeing you hurt…it kills me Rainbow.”
The pegasus dropped back on the bed butt first, and looked away as my vision started to get a little watery.
“Sorry,” she mumbled in a depressed tone.
That just made me feel even worse. “No, I…I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that,” I also apologized. “You just…you scared me so much Rainbow.”
“And me as well,” Celestia added, making Rainbow look up at her with wide eyes. “I forgot the terror of seeing a friend becoming injured.”
“W-What?” she got out. “What’d you just call me?”
Celestia cocked her head to the side just a bit. “After everything you’ve done for my sister, and our pleasant conversations, do you really think that I would consider you anything less than a friend, Rainbow Dash?” she asked. “I’ll admit that we haven’t had time to bond over a few flights like I mentioned before, I do possesses a fondness for you and all of your friends. Is it so surprising that I would want to grow a little closer to all of you?”
Luna had us look up at Celestia and frown before she talked. “Sister, does thy mind still linger upon what transpired at brunch?”
In response, Celestia turned her head towards us and frowned. “While that did bring certain facts to light Luna, I am not so desperate and petty as to force my companionship on others,” said the horse that dragged Rainbow Dash into her bed. “And do you honestly have any objections in me getting to know the ponies who command the Elements of Harmony a little better beyond some letters that Twilight sends and whatever our intelligence service can discern from their work histories or dig out of their garbage?”
“I have no problems…but I hardly consider the ponies chosen to wield an incarnation of Harmony as common,” Luna replied evenly. So, Tia was still an elitist pig with a fat butt.
Celestia apparently took that as an end to their conversation, and looked back to Rainbow Dash as the pegasus examined her front hooves. “Don’t disturb the salve,” she said before surrounding her hooves in a golden glow and helped Rainbow move up to the headboard.
The pegasus looked around at us three goddesses and lowered her head back to the her hooves. “So how long is this going to take?”
“With the daily administration of these healing potions,” Celestia said as she took the two bottles in her magic to hold them up. “I’d estimate…three days. Until then, you’ll have to stay off those hooves and in bed.”
Rainbow…reacted much in the same manner that I had expected of her. “Three days? I’ve got to stay in bed for three days? That might as well be three weeks normal time, or even three months!”
Celestia rolled her eyes at the pegasus’s response. “Oh please, it’s hardly as bad as you make it seem,” she told the pony acting like a little girl. “Now open your mouth so you can take your medicine.”
It took a few seconds, but Rainbow did as instructed and gulped down each potion that Tia fed her. After it was done, she let out a little burp that Tia giggled at, and looked down at her hooves. “Huh, tingles.”
“That tells you it's working,” Celestia told her. “Now, it’s been more than long enough. If the hospital doesn’t have Rainbow’s room ready by now, then it should be ready by the time we get there. So, who wants to take her?”
I shrugged. “I guess I will.”
“Huh?” Rainbow asked as she was once again surrounded by Celestia’s magic and got floated into the air. The pegasus was turned right side up, and slowly came down towards my back. When it became obvious what was going on, she began struggling in the alicorn’s magical grip. “Whoa, whoa! Hold on a second! What’re you doing?”
Celestia finished placing the pegasus down on me before she replied. “Well I’m hardly going to risk you breaking the containment seal on your hooves by letting you trot all around the city Rainbow Dash,” she said before turning to Cadance. “That reminds me. Cadance, go ahead of us and make sure they give Rainbow some kind of covering over the floor like a cushion so she can have a little bit of mobility.”
“Um…P-Princess Luna, can you, like…not carry me around like a foal?” she asked as soon as the white goddess was done talking. An embarrassed blush covered Rainbow’s face. It took all of my newly acquired pony-cuteness immunity power not to daaaaw at the embarrassed little Dashie. It was just that cute.
Luna gave the pegasus a smirk. “Neigh little Rainbow. Nightmare was not the only one you terrified with your actions after all. While I shall not berate you as my other-half has done, consider this a reminder not to act with such foalish abandon next time you get it in your head to pull a trick you are not properly prepared for.”
“And didn’t you ride our back when we were flying?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
Rainbow’s blush only got worse after hearing that. “T-That was just flight training! This is different!”
I trotted out of the room with the little pony riding on my back, smirking at the odd reversal that the presence of the prismatic pegasus provided. Apparently, what the Russians say about MLP was true.
In friendly Equestria, pony rides you!
By the time we got to the hospital, after a rather lengthily trip along the streets of Canterlot, Rainbow Dash was so embarrassed by the whole thing that I doubted she would ever try pulling off any stunts in front of any of us alicorns in the near future. As for me, I kind of liked ponies looking at me in confusion instead of barely contained terror.
And the blush on Dashie’s face was just freaking adorable. If Canterlot had any princess paparazzi around, I was so going to try and get their film rolls developed.
Either we had good timing, or Cadance going to the hospital ahead of us had all the staff work double time to get everything ready for the little pony riding me around Canterlot. When we got there, I set the girl down in her bed with my horn and checked out the room. It was what most would expect from a recovery room. Rainbow didn’t have a heart monitors, IV drips, or anything else like that, but the place was clean with a window big enough to take up the majority of a wall. The only carpet in the place was a little strip that led from her bed to the bathroom. But it was enough as far as Celestia was concerned.
“But what am I supposed to do?” Rainbow whined as we all turned to leave.
I looked up at the clock on the wall and saw it was only a quarter past five. “Well, I could keep her company until sundown.” Ever since I had gotten my maids, Nightwing had been given the days off to get a full day of sleep. While he still was about as lively as a cardboard cutout, the lunar pegasus did have more energy to do his job. “If uh…that’s okay with you Luna.”
“I find the idea agreeable,” she said.
Celestia nodded. “I should also go and mix the other potions Rainbow will be needing to speed her recovery, and Twilight will need to be informed about what happened to her friend,” she told me before looking back to the door.
A few seconds later, Celestia headed out, leaving me and Dash alone together…as long as you didn’t count Luna.
“So…what now?” Rainbow asked.
We chatted for a bit, and I got to fill some of the gaps in my knowledge when it came to all things pony, like information about Rainbows parents…both of whom had Rainbow in their names. The Wonderbolts also came up of course, which Luna had very little knowledge about since the team was founded after her banishment.
Rainbow didn’t know too much about their history either, she just cared that they were awesome fliers, and everyone in Equestria would acknowledge her as the best if she could join them. It actually made me wonder what would happen if she managed to show them up a time or two. Would she think joining the Wonderbolts was all that awesome if she turned out to be better than them?
But eventually, the sun set and the moon needed to be brought up. We were able to do it in the hospital room, but everything else that needed to be done tonight meant having to leave.
“Wait,” Rainbow said as we headed towards the door. I turned around to see a hesitant look on her face. “Uh…you’re just gonna…leave me all alone here?”
Luna hijacked our mouth. “Apologies Rainbow. But with the rise of the moon, my nightly duties begin. I allow Nightmare to talk me into indulging in frivolities while my sister has command of Equestria, but now it is time for us to go to work,” she told the pony in the bed. “And there is still much training to do for both my guard and my…driver, if Equestria is to once again be safe after dark. Now sleep my little pony, we shall return at dawn to check on you, and visit at the hour of one tomorrow if you wish.”
Although Luna apparently expected that to be the end of the conversation, I saw Rainbow was mulling something over in her head. Since she didn’t want to go out and say it, I let out a sigh and decided to try ripping it out of her. “What’s wrong Rainbow?”
“Well it’s just…I just woke up from a nap,” she complained. “I’m not sleepy, and…this place is boring without anypony to at least talk to!”
I had to admit, she had a point. Hospital rooms without television were boring as hell. “Well…uh…”
My head swiveled back towards my left. “While I of all ponies can sympathize with her distress. We have more important duties to attend to.”
I moved our head back around. “”Oh come on, those bat ponies-”
Luna swung us around. “Lunar pegasi!”
“-take an hour to get up and assembled anyway,” I went on after looking to the right. “We can stick around for at least an hour.”
And once again, Luna jerked us over too fast for my liking, and probably hers too since we shared the same sensations. “We must provide proper example to our minions, lest they also become slovenly.”
The fact Luna had a good point didn’t deter me from not giving in. After all, Nightwing was there to oversee everything, and…well shit, it was Rainbow Dash. Even if she hadn’t been a cute little pony in a hospital bed, I couldn’t just abandon her. “Like leaving somepony we care about all alone when she’s asking for help?”
“Why do you do that?”
Rainbow’s question put an end to our argument, and had me looking over to her. “Do what?”
“The double-talking…thing,” she got out after making a circle with one of her gakked hooves. “Back when we were at the castle the two of you didn’t, well…I’m pretty sure you talked to each other, but not…talked, talked…ya know?”
Luna nodded before taking our voice again. “Ah yes, that. I simply found it is less unnerving when ponies hear both sides of our conversation rather than one. Of course, tis also rude to speak in a way that hides my words from others whilst they are in the room as well. And...I have kept my mouth shut for nigh on one-thousand years my little pony. It feels good to move it, whatever the reason.”
The explanation only seemed to make Rainbow more confused, but I didn’t have my mind on that at the moment. While Luna had been distracted in explaining things to Rainbow, I had been thinking.
Mostly about what we could do to solve Rainbow’s boredom problem. I knew staying with her all night wasn’t really any option. An hour was fine, two was…doable, but anything more and even I was agreeing with Luna that we had other things to do.
So we needed to find something that would keep her busy before we left. And with Rainbow Dash being laid up with a bad wing…there was only one thing that really came to mind.
The problem was…could I risk doing it?
If I messed with the prognostication I had of the pony timeline, it could really do some major damage to what was supposed to happen. But at the same time…Celestia had never gotten all buddy-buddy with the Mane Six like she was apparently doing now. So wasn’t the timeline I knew of already screwed?
If that was the case, I needed to take steps to make sure the stuff that needed to happen actually happened! Which meant if I didn’t put up the time table with Rainbow Dash, she might get a little more cautious in her flying, and completely miss one of the most important developments of her entire life!
With that as a possibility, I had no choice but to intervene!
“Hey Rainbow, how about this,” I spoke up after Luna explained our double-talk to Dash. “We find something to keep you busy while you’re here recovering, and we’ll leave in under an hour. Sound good to you two?”
After Rainbow agreed, Luna made us sigh. “I suppose we can be an hour late to running drill if it means aiding one of our friends,” she relented. “But only an hour!”
I nodded in agreement, and then magicked Rainbow into the air to place her down on my back.
“Do you have to carry me like this?” she whined.
The question made me giggle at the pegasus, and turn my head around enough to rub my nose on her cheek. “Sorry Rainbow Dash, but you’re just too adorable not to,” I told her while I used all my willpower to resist kissing the little pony on the forehead.
We found a map of the hospital easily enough. Divided into four floors, the place seemed to be made out like the kinds of hospitals I was familiar with, only more…pony. Meaning that most of the stuff was from a different era, except for the medical technology.
They had a game room on the third floor, which Rainbow thought we were going to until I walked us into the small library across from it. I did my best to hide my smirk at her disappointment. Not that I was happy about her being disappointed you understand, but how Rainbow thought I was going to let her play ping pong, or something else in her condition…I had to smirk at that.
If anybody had a problem with me walking around at eight, they didn’t say anything. Being Nightmare Moon had finally paid off when it seemed nobody was going to stop me from doing whatever the hell I wanted.
So, I got our book easily enough and began our trek back to Rainbow’s room. The three of us got two feet out of the library before we ran into a distressed pony turning a corner in a gallop. She skidded to a stop, and looked up at ‘Nightmare Moon’ with wide eyes.
I froze. It was a reasonable reaction when confronted with a panicked pony. While seeing ponies afraid of me didn’t kick my mood in the balls like it did Luna, I was hardly unfazed by it.
Luna took the initiative and spoke. “Is there something amiss my little pony?”
The mystery mare cringed just a little bit. “Um…you’re the new princess…P-Princess Luna?”
I nodded. Luna talked. “Indeed I am. Is there something I might be able to assist you with?”
“Um…my son, Princess. I’m staying overnight in the children’s ward, and he awoke complaining of a stomach ache, and the call button for the doctors was out, so I ran to-”
“Ah,” Luna interrupted. “Lead on then my little pony. I shall see what is to be done for thy foal’s ailment.”
“And according to the parents of the foals staying with their children in the foal's ward, Princess Luna stopped reading after the foals fell asleep, and took the snoring pegasus who she had brought in with her back to wherever they came,” Princess Celestia read aloud as we sat around the breakfast table while she floated the newspaper in the air with her magic.
Compared to our usual amount of follower ponies, the royal dinning room seemed almost empty. Minuette and Twinkeshine had declined an offer to eat with us in order to get an early start on the bedsheets, and even Celestia’s customary honor guard was missing. Continuing the trend, Cadance sat next to Celestia, with a noticeably absent Shining Armor that was apparently finishing reports or something. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the excuse.
So it was just we three or four princesses, depending on how you counted me, alone together with Tia reading the morning paper. And by morning I actually meant when the sun rises morning, not when Luna gets up morning. Celestia’s look of smug happiness told me she already knew the whole thing word for word, and just wanted to show Luna how proud she was of her little sister, or something.
Maybe she was just happy for Luna getting some good press.
But then, her face turned a little sour. “After which, the princess reportedly brought up numerous concerns regarding the inadequate quality of pegasi care and credentials of the ponies treating patients with damaged wings.”
Pausing before she got to the end of the article, Princess Celestia looked up at us while the newspaper depicting a picture of Princess Luna carrying an injured Rainbow Dash through the streets of Canterlot was floated to the side for Cadance to get a better look at. “Luna, what’s all of this about?”
The Lunar Princess cleared our throat and frowned. “It is as the Times of Canterlot says Sister,” Luna told Celestia while raising our head up just a bit to give that morally superior view that came from looking down our nose. “Admittedly, twas Nightmare that asked most of the questions regarding the level of care received by our flying subjects, but from my understanding of things, the pegasi of Canterlot have not anywhere near the options for treatment and medical aid that the unicorns receive for their special needs!”
I let the understatement go rather than correct it. It wasn’t that the unicorn’s had it better off than the pegasi as far as specialized medical care went. The fact of the matter was, the unicorns had special medical care when it came to treating damage to their horns, and the pegasi had…basic healing spells and potions applied to their wings. Although I was hardly an expert on the subject, Luna had explained to me that when it came to flying limb repair, just using magic to sew broken bones and muscles back together wasn’t usually the only thing to be done. Like healing limbs and such when it came to humans, fixing something the wrong way could do just as much long-term harm as the injury itself did in the short-term.
“Well…” Celestia said with the tiniest bit of hesitation in her voice. “Canterlot is primarily a unicorn city Luna. They most likely don’t need to have such specialists for whatever problems arise in that small percentages of pegasi injuries. After all, I doubt there are any horn specialists in Cloudsdale.”
That one, I couldn’t just keep my mouth shut about.
But before I could fire off my building righteous indignation, Celestia gave me one of her motherly smiles and talked again. “You have been gone for some time Luna. You really should become more used to the new era before making any judgments about it.”
While Luna’s lack of response to Celestia’s roundabout insult to her ability to judge anything disturbed me, the fact that the white pony just blew off her sister’s concerns were what really set me off. “Are you kidding me?” I demanded while smacking my hoof against the table in a way that would make the owner of our body proud. “She just told you there’s an inadequacy in your own bucking city, and you just blow it off? There are injured pegasi that are all but being outright ignored by the medical community here in Canterlot, and you just shrug? What the hay Celestia?”
Celestia let out a tiny sigh. “Nightmare, I can assure you, nopony is being ignored in Canterlot. The pegasi have excellent medical care. I can introduce you to the medico here in the castle if you wish so that you can go over her credentials yourself.”
I frowned at the location and title Celestia strapped onto the doctor. If there was a pegasi specialist in Canterlot, then why hadn’t Rainbow been sent to her instead of Canterlot General? Although, if she was in the castle…
The information clicked in my head. “You mean the army doctor?” I asked indecorously, I was still pretty peeved off after all. Plus, Celestia’s answer hadn’t done much to dowse my anger, only feed it. “I’m not talking about soldiers Celestia! These are foals that need care!” Then I turned my frown into an outright glare. “Oh, but I guess you don’t care about pegasi unless they can do something for you, huh?”
Celestia recoiled as if I had reached across the table and slapped the bitch. Which I kind of felt like doing to be honest. But those plans were put on hold when Luna seized control of our mouth and turned our head to shout at me. “NIGHTMARE!”
I flinched the parts of our body under my control, but didn’t back down and wrestled verbal control from my landlord. “Oh come on Luna, look around! You heard her yesterday, and now this? Tia’s horned pony favoritism is so bucking obvious that it makes me want to tear our mane out!”
“Nightmare,” Celestia said with a sterner than usual voice. My words had apparently lit a fire under her fat butt. “I care for all my little ponies equally. But even I cannot be everywhere at-”
Ignoring Celestia’s attempts to try and reason her way out of all of this, I didn’t even let her finish before speaking again. “Oh yeah Ms Equal Opportunity Princess? Well then what was your last student like?” I demanded, stopping Celestia in her tracks. “And I don’t mean Cadance, who got her horn without any help from you! I mean the one before that! You did have one, right?” I was betting the physical description involved pointy thing on her head!
As soon as the words left my mouth, I watched as Celestia’s face went ashen, and her whole body drooped much more than she usually allowed herself to whenever something got her down. “I would rather not speak of Sunset.”
That…more than took the wind out of my anger sails. It was only when I was done that I realized what I had said and…saw that I had really hit Celestia below the belt with that one.
With a sledgehammer.
Although I gave Tia the best apologetic ‘sorry I fucked up like that’ wince and look in all of history, Cadance still glared at me hard enough to make Fluttershy’s stare seem tame. “Nightmare!”
“N-No,” Celestia said as she raised a hoof before Cadance could shout me to death. “She doesn’t know.” A sigh escaped her lips, and she looked back at me and Luna with eyes that were one hundred times more tired than I had ever seen her have before. “Yes Nightmare, I have had nothing but unicorns since Luna and I were separated. But in that time, only two of my students have managed to gain ascension. And…one…the last one, I failed her completely.”
The goddesses sadly shook her head. “Nightmare, I don’t know why you think I shun the pegasi.”
I couldn’t resist an opening like that. Even if I couldn’t add much heat to it. “Well you live in Canterlot, you don’t have any pegasus students on the road to becoming a princess, and the name of your school is for gifted unicorns, as if no other kind of pony matters when it comes to a higher education.” There were other things I could have pulled from as well, like the gross lack of pegasus ponies in contrast to the other two kinds at the Gala, but as that hadn’t happened yet, I couldn’t really offer it as proof. “Plus there’s the fact that unicorns are what control the weather here in Canterlot when the pegasi are supposed to be the ones doing that, and apparently the only real way to get proper medical care if you’re a pegasus in this town is to join the military!”
As a combination of memories of Sunset Shimmer, who was apparently around somewhere after all, and my words kept Celestia silent, I decided to throw her a bone. “Look Celestia, I know you love all your ponies and all that,” I told her. “But as the outsider looking in…it sure as hay looks like you love a certain type of pony a lot more than others. Hay, when was the last time you helped an earth pony or a pegasus get some extra parts?”
Celestia remained silent for a few more moments, and I found myself talking again. But it was Luna who was putting the words into our mouth.
“Sister, are you alright?” she asked.
I started to get that feeling that I may have gone a bit too far, and then Celestia let out a long sigh before she shook her head. “No, it’s fine Luna. I just…thoughts of my former pupil distracted me,” she said before her expression hardened and forced its way into an even look. “And…getting back to our main topic. I’ll admit, you interpretation of things makes me seem overly favorable to one tribe, but I tell you again Nightmare, I love pegasi as much as I do earth ponies and unicorns. But I can see how an outsider, or even a pony, might think otherwise. So I guess it’s time we continue our discussion about alicorn ascension that was brought to a halt the other day.”
The fact that we had gotten off track from what really mattered took a back seat as Celestia held out that particular carrot.
Luna on the other hand, didn’t seem to care for it. “Ugh! This is preposterous,” she grumbled. “Nightmare, Celestia and myself trained many wonderful ponies in the generations before I was sent away with you, and I can assure you that there were just as many in need of horns as there were ones that required wings, or in some cases both. I’ll admit that this…Unicorn School is new to me, but there is most definitely one in Cloudsdale for pegasi, and another for earth ponies over in Trottingham that she also founded. My sister would never be so unfair as to offer such advantages to only one group of ponies.”
On the other side of the table Celestia winced. “Actually…no, I haven’t,” she said, drawing Luna’s attention. “And while the pegasi have their own special…institution, I have seen that it actually brings ponies further away from many of the attributes that are required for a proper ascension. And as for a crown candidate from the pegasi or earth pony tribes…I haven’t had a single one of those since you were banished.”
Cadence’s ear’s twitched, and I frowned at Celestia.
“…what?” Luna asked after she recovered from that little bombshell.
“Luna, I’m an academic. Pegasi and earth ponies are intuitive, and I’m terrible at teaching them!” she exclaimed before swiping a hoof to the side in a gesture. “Buck, I’m not even all that good with unicorns! One thousand years, and I’ve managed to get a pair of students to be considered worthy for a crown! Before you went away, we worked together to help ponies realize their full potential, and with you gone…I had twice the workload and half of the royalty. And no matter how much effort I put into things, I just don’t have the way you do with ponies.”
I had the strangest feeling that Luna wanted us to wear a confused face.
Luckily, I had beaten her unasked desire to the punch and put it on halfway through Celestia’s confession.
“What way do I possess with ponies that you do not?” Luna asked in a tone that matched our face. “The little ones adore you!”
Celestia shook her head and gave a lot breath of air out from her nostrils. “They adored a crown Luna. Even Twilight Sparkle, all she has ever seen of me is…Princess,” the goddess spat. “Not Celestia.”
She took in a deep breath, and gave a half-hearted shrug. “I have never been good at connecting with ponies on a personal level Luna. That was always you, despite your attempts to remain aloof. And without that…I could dictate lessons on magic, morality, and a dozen other things…but such things usually fell on deaf ears without a more personal connection. The thing you provided when it came time to teach our little ponies.”
“Sister…”
The heavy word had Celestia raising a hoof to stop us before Luna could tell me to go give Tia a hug or something. “No…I’m fine. It’s just…” she let out another long sigh, and smiled at me.
Or…well, Luna at least.
“Sister, I know you had felt unappreciated and unnecessary towards the end, and…some of the less reputable journals have voiced such questions since your return when I have ruled alone for one-thousand years, but…Equestria has felt your loss Luna,” she told the dark alicorn. “I may have been the princess that everypony cheered and gave their admiration to, but you were the one that kept them safe at night, you comforted them when they were afraid, you were the one that showed our students that they could still be themselves even after becoming an alicorn. You were the princess they needed, I was just…some kind of example for them to live up to…even if it was a lie that they invented.”
At that, I felt the need to do some damage control. So I wrestled control of our mouth away from Luna. “Tia…I’m sorry if I upset you. You’re an amazing pony. And what you are is not a lie,” I told her. “You’ve kept Equestria together on your own for a thousand years. You’re amazing!”
Celestia smiled a little at the compliment, and gave me the slightest nod of her head. “Thank you Nightmare, but I know there has been several things that fell through the cracks these past thousand years,” she admitted.
Luna took control of our mouth again. “Then perhaps it is time that we halt our lament over such things, and set about to fixing them,” she announced. “Nightmare, we have broken our fast and need not tarry if we are to keep our appointments and right this error at the hospital. If you would excuse us Sister, we have to find our hoof maidens and bid them instruct us on how to go about correcting this error on the part of Canterlot’s healers.” Then the goddess had me look over to the clock. “And we must not tarry long…we gave an oath to Rainbow Dash and several foals that we would return after midday meal so that Nightmare might finish the tale of Daring Do. Although why she would search for our old phonetic toy Mother left to instruct us in arithmetic as if it was something important is beyond me. Tis merely an old toy.”
“She does that a lot actually,” Celestia told us with a little smile. “I didn’t have the heart to tell the poor mare she’s spent her life chasing trinkets from our foalhood as if they were important. Apart from the Rings of Scorchera, I mean.”
The truth about Daring Do’s stuff being the ancient junk of the gods had been a bit of a letdown for me when Luna informed me that most of the things DD went after were just old trinkets they played with during the Ice Age while in the Valley of the Sun that had been untouched by Winter due to some magic. Although the fact something she was after might have been worth something did peak my interest. “What’s so important about the Rings?”
Celestia’s face actually turned red, and she looked away from Luna and me. “Let’s just say…it is best if the seal involving them remain unbroken. If it did…things would become very…uncomfortable around the castle for most of the ponies near me.”
I frowned at the odd warning, but shrugged it off. There was no time to worry about the maybes of things that were due to happen a year from now. Although…what the hell did those things have to do with Celestia? I thought they had to do with the sun or something.
As I got up to leave, something about the whole hospital thing struck me as odd. So I turned back to the white goddess and gave her a little frown. “Hey Tia…if you’ve got the best pegasus doctor in Canterlot here in the castle, then why did you send Cadance to the hospital to get ponies that weren’t as good, and put Rainbow up there in the first place?” They had to have enough medical personnel laying around to help Dash out where we were after all.
Celestia gave me a wide-eyed look that last a fraction of a second, and then it turned into a little smile. “I’ll admit, I panicked when I saw Dash laying on the ground as she was, and as for her room...I needed to leave her in the care of the attending physician. It was her hooves that had the worst damage after all.”
Before I could press her on the issue, Luna demanded that we ‘halt our prattling and be off’ to get me moving.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder. Even though Celestia’s explanation made sense, there was the fact that she panicked. That...didn’t sound very Tia.
Had she taken advantage of Rainbow’s injury to bring the inadequacies of Canterlot General to light to me and Luna?
Or was it all just a crazy set of coincidences brought about because Celestia panicked at seeing her friend hurt? Something she had not had in quite some time, and forgot how to deal with.
And then there was the sleepover thing that had happened with the princess slumber party. Now that I actually thought about it in the light of Celestia having trouble connecting with other ponies on a personal level…was she following me and Luna around to use us to try and make friends with the Mane Six?
I groaned and shook my head to try and clear it. Thinking about stuff like that was going to drive me crazy.
Hell, some of them didn't even make sense!
Plus, manipulator or not, it was still Celestia after all. The day she got an evil bone in her body was the day the sun rose in the west.
Which...considering we were in Equestria...was entirely possible at her whim.
And so, I actually managed to think myself into needing some Tylenol.
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I'll be looking to the west for that sunrise now.
And once again we run up against the ethical paradox.
If Celestia is actually responsible for creating alicorns, and she is DELIBERATELY REFUSING to grant alicornhood to other ponies--- she is committing a terrible act of evil. It is the equivalent of withholding life saving medicine from those who are dying of cancer because you don't think them "worthy" to live. Even if you insist that other alicorns are still mortal, she is still committing an evil deed, because every pony is then essentially a caterpillar, waiting for their metamorphosis to full maturity--- and she is denying them out of judgmentalism. She is letting every single pony live, grow old, and die without ever reaching their deserved full potential.
Censoring history books--- that is a straight up evil deed in and of itself.
And now unicorn supremacy.... Celestia you racist bitch. It's looking more and more like the wrong pony went to the moon.
Huzzah, yet another excellent chapter! And We will do away with these foul tribalist notions posthaste!
6315333
Well I was going to raise this point later in the story, but...
Within this story the alicorination spell is going to work like an amplifier for what's in a pony's heart. If they're good and pure and all that, you get an alicorn. But if they have even the slightest trace of selfish thoughts, those are what become magnified and you get Satan Shimmer (remember she went from 'not being a monster' when she didn't hurt Spike, to trying to KILL six people and enslaving more, you can't tell me there wasn't some mind whammying being done to her) and all the darkness that comes with it. So anypony powerful enough could become an alicorn, only those that are moral paragons wouldn't turn evil. And the reason there haven't been many alicorns is because Celestia just sucks at making the connections needed to teach other ponies morality.
MOAR!
Kidding! This chapter was awesome.
It's not dead! AWESOME! I enjoyed this chapter greatly, particular that one moment of "Oh crap" on Rainbow's face as she had her landing.
Also, I kinda love the idea of Nightmare just... glomping ponies on occasion.
... I actually liked Minuet's name of Colgate more. I actually think they wanted to name her that but... Y'know. Copyrights, trademarks, legal issues, etc.
And finally, I recall several of the fics that address Chessmaster Celestia and reveal she's... absolutely just making this crap up as she goes along aside from a few well defined milestones. Often to the absolute consternation of Twilight Sparkle, and I like to think the world at large wondering just how sodding lucky Tia is.
Good stuff! Your writing is really good at making me laugh at one bit and feel bad for characters a few paragraphs later.
6315333 Assuming you ignore the risk, and probably power cost of granting every single pony, in addition to longevity or immortality (which, admittedly, has a few problems itself) a massive power boost. Now, admittedly, if everypony was alicorn tier powerful, civilization would eventually stablize. After a few cities get vaporized, at least partly from arcane overloads. Also, as a person with power, like literally every single other person with power in the world, is reluctant to elevate everyone else to her level. At least partly because they would fear the results of people with what would be thought of as inferior judgement to them.
That said, Immortality is a really touchy subject, and I would prefer this story not go into that direction.
6315333 You can't compare Alicornhood and cancer.
Granting Alicornhood is giving to a pony great power, the title of ruler, and a long lifespan.
So, you need to be sure that the pony won't be corrupted by power (we don't need another Vilain), care for the others, have the qualities of a ruler, And can deal with the loss of the one they care about.
And with that, we can think about Twilight, She didn't receive any form of training about politics, economy, and everything (I don't know what you need to study when you rule a country), and we don't know how she deal about losses. So if we are using this logic (mlp is still a kid show) Twilight isn't "worthy" for alicornhood .... Yet.
Not sure if the "it is plane to see" thing was a typo or a continuation of the superman joke... Still loved it, gg author
The fact that we get to watch supposed canon being destroyed and see the protagonist freak out about it makes this an awesome story. I'm curious to see if the past will ever rear its ugly head (old nightmare, human instead of old nightmare, etc) but until then I am content to wait and enjoy the ride. Another great chapter.
6315493
6315333
Normally I'd agree with the point on withholding alicornhood. However, apparently they've done this a lot before nmm, celestia's done two since luna's banishment. I'd wager ascended alicorns are NOT immortal, so she's not actually withholding a cure to death, she's just withholding a power boost.
Edit: At least in this story's continuity.
we headed
achieved
6315333 It actually makes sense from the potential side of things. After all, not every last pony has the potential to become an alicorn, or else some of them would reach it by accident on their own. Plus, checking their morality, mental and physical flexibility, confirming whether or not they could endure loss on a comparable scale to Celestia, and so on probably limits those with the potential to those that she knows can handle it. Though I do agree with altering history, but humanity does it regularly after a war. Erasure of history however, only happened one recorded time in human history.
6315765
Um... What?
If it was erased, how was it recorded? Or if it happened more than once, how would we know?
I think you mean leaned.
6315765 And I repeat--- how would you feel if this was the standard used to screen people for a cure for cancer? Or a cure for hormonal failure that left them trapped in an infant body? Or perhaps you think like those who believe we should put aboriginal tribes in a nature preserve, abolish any contact with the outside world, so they aren't "corrupted" by the influence of modern civilization? Knowledge is power, and power corrupts, after all...
Does that comparison offend you? It should; it's the same kind of thinking.
She not only quit teaching prospectives, she destroyed the knowledge necessary for others to pursue their own ascendance. She has conspired to leave countless ponies who are more than worthy of alicornhood, as worthy as she and her sister ever were, trapped forever in a state of perpetual infancy, blinded and robbed of their birthright, robbed even of the knowledge of their potential.... out of fear, selfish arrogance, and racist prejudice. Don't want them to be a princess? Don't give them a crown! But to deny them ascendance for such petty and hypocritical reasons.... TO destroy knowledge because you do not wish to share your uplifted status with others....
That is an act of evil.
Small wonder the Elements ditched her.
"Bit no eyeliner"
"But"?
"Tis plane to see"
...I'd say that that ought to be "plain", but I suspect that you did this one deliberately. :)
"that Rainbow’s did"
"that Rainbow did"?
"exasperated by it"
"exacerbated"?
"until your recovered"
"you're"
"a rather lengthily trip"
"lengthy"?
I get that this is a joke and all, but why would the size of butts matter with horses? Unlike humans, horses don't even have butts, they have flanks, and that is pretty much just thighs. We are weird animals in that we evolved big ass, well, asses.
6315977
Well, there's tales of how Hitler tried burning away some things from human knowledge. Most Germans do their best these days to busy that era of their history. The fires in the great library, and so many other things. A lot of knowledge gets lost, either on accident or intentionally... And that saying "History is written by the victor." is extremely true. I hate to use Germany again, but when you were growing up, when WWII was covered in school, we painted Hitler to be this absolutely ruthless dictator with no redeeming qualities... Not saying he wasn't, but we ignore that the man loved his dogs, wanted to be an artist, and so many other things that made him human. Barely any of that is covered in education. You have to dig to learn stuff about one of the most important pariahs in history because most of the world wants to focus entirely on painting him to be a monster entirely.
Probably not the best example, but I hope I got my point across... And gods, I sound like a Nazi... I'm not. Beyond grammar anyways... But you'd have to admit, Hitler wasn't a bad artist. >_>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler see for yourselves. Dunno why they turned the guy away from art school.
Didn't, at the beginning of the story, nightmare my know who or what she is, besides a strange feeling of wrongness? I mean, sure it was implied she was a human and/or a bring, and probably a he too, but it was never outright said until now, and it seems she's just gotten more and more info over time about the mlpverse.
It kinda seems like you're changing your mind on what she is halfway through. Not that it makes the story bad, far from it, it's just confusing.
Aaaaaand another story where Rainbow ends up as a relative of Celestia.
At least I think so, cause there are way to much pointers in the chapter to be simply coincidence.
Awesome story as always
I can't wait for the next chapter which might be released next month
6316135 whoah whoah whoah wait just a moment here
Since when does cancer and hormonal imbalance equal in severity to not being a leader? Are you suggesting that the cure for cancer and hormonal imbalance is to be granted immortality and leadership of the country?
6316869
Don't even ask. Trust me, you'll be happier for it.
You know, your idea that Luna helped develop the personalities of ascendant hopefuls has some interesting implications when applied to the canon events...
Though three of those implications are a bit more so...
CMC ALICORN APPRENTICES YAY!
6316135
Are you comparing perfectly healthy pony , be it Earth, Pegasus or Unicorn tribe, to sick weaklings? Because they are not. Alicornhood is like being made simultaneously a president, fit like an Olympic games champion, and being given ability to destroy buildings with thought. It is not a cure for sickness. Being alicorn is a privilege, responsibility and burden.
6316913
Nah I knew this guy was erectin' a strawman.
Nightmare and Luna reading Daring Do to sick foals and an injured Rainbow Dash is great. I hope Rainbow Dash recovers soon and can continue giving Nightmare flying lessons. I also hope Nightmare's efforts to promote equality between the pony tribes goes well. And as for the ring seal thing on Celestia... Wooo boy.... you'd think she'd tell Daring just what the rings do and take the most easily hidden one and seal it in a box at the bottom of the ocean.
So that explains why Dashie did not ascend.
Still, the fact that she was not offered a scholarship for doing the Sonic Rainbow...
6316931
It's worse. He means that.
I can't tell if it is a mistake or a pun. Apparently there is a plane one as well...
Moonie, you are an entity sharing a body with Luna that is still in Nightmare form. You can pretty much throw canon out the window.
Cute that she uses colgate as a plushie
6316590
I think it was said explicitly that 'Nightmare' was a human. They have been stripped of their personal memories by actual Nightmare Moon when she switched bodies with them, but kept their knowledge of our world (including MLP) more or less intact.
Being Russian myself, I did enjoy that joke ^^
I only consider racism wrong and illogical when other races are little to no different from each other, like in humans, but in ponies... Well, let's face it; Unicorns are superior in that they can directly manipulated the world around them. While earth ponies and pegasi both use magic, their magic is very narrow and limmited, while unicorns have almost unlimited potential.
Unicorns can pick things up with magic, while earth ponies and pegasi have to use their mouths or their freaky hoof magnets to move things. That in of itself is a tremendous advantage that already makes them more useful. If ponies get more advanced they could nost likely figure out earth pony magic and pegasi magic and replicate it in spells, which would make the other tribes obsolete.
where? when? since when did we said that?
6315333 Well, making everyone biologically immortal might do much more harm than good. Population would boom, and civilization would run out of resources. It's an unsustainable situation. One that humanity might be in in only another century given our research into aging, and advances in molecular technology. I truly do give it a hundred years until molecular technology is advanced, and small, enough to go into everyone of an adult's cells and 'fix' them all. We truly will need to populate other planets when that happens. Deaths will still happen, but all genetic diseases, which is what aging technically is, will be gone. Including cancer. The price for this will most likely only be immense when it first comes out, but then it will get cheaper l, like all things do.
6315977 The Library of Alexandria.
6316135 Okay, odds are, the population of ponies out stripped any reasonable degree to teach all of them after a mere ten generations, or before Celestia and Luna were around. Also, statistics says there should be about a half dozen alicorns popping up every century or so, completely on their own and by sheer coincidence. The limiting factor then must be something else. The history erasure was largely an emotional protection reaction, which limited those in the know, but otherwise the potential was still very much there in all those who had a chance to achieve it. Also, when did the aboriginals and hormone therapy enter the discussion?
i hate you... I wasted three hours reading this
6315333 Riddle me this: What would happen if everybody lived forever? What would happen if you introduced outright communism on the pony races by forcing them all to be alicorns and said fuck all to Thestrals, Changelings, Zebras, and every other race on the planet? What would ALL of their reactions be? Some wouldn't want it, some would hate Celestia for it, if she did it only to those who asked then you know that it would start a cult... In some ways, its best to limit making everypony into an alicorn.
I love these long chapters. They are full of content without much unnecessary fluff in them.
That heart to heart... Celestia must have been really broken when she heard what Nightmare was saying.
But yeah, it's going to be interesting to find out (if we ever do find out) if all that came out as genuine reactions, Celestia's long-term (or quick-thinking) plotting, or both.
Those rings...
Tia...surely, you didn't...
Oh, my...
Please tell me that's going to be a thing later.
Ascension for a Pegasus or earth pony, please!
I assume there's more to ascension than getting a horn and wings, otherwise Twilight could modify the "Flutterbat" spell to transform ponies.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/34622/earth-sky
P.S. Speaking of alicorn ascension, if Nightmare decides to jump the rails and not care about canon, she might take an interest in the flight spell Rarity used in Cloudsdale. Something that'd allow unicorns and earth ponies to fly, even temporarily, has world-changing implications that MLP overlooked.
In "Earth and Sky" by Warren Hutch, Twilight and Rarity applied the flight spell to an Icarus-like winged harness (instead of "gossamer and morning dew") so Pumpkin Cake wouldn't feel left behind by her brother Pound Cake, and later decided to commercially market the flight suits. Many antagonists felt the invention disrupted the status quo but in the end it promoted greater equality among ponies and revolutionized transportation, tourism, emergency preparedness, and the study of non-unicorn magic.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/34622/earth-sky
Wait
if Luna tried to take over the brain instead of the other body parts would she be able to control everything?
There have been many little typos and I am finding them all funny. Like Celestia cleans instead of leans and other things.
Why don't they do this more often? Luna is just saying things aloud to tell Nightmare what to do instead of thinking it.
I don't even know what hove means in this context.
Luna is alwaus better at everthung!
I guess these alicorns did not live forever.
Celestia can turn her head into water!
"it's"
Cadance will die of old age.
Here cums Molestia!
6318017
Three weeks and running and nobody has noticed the difference yet.
Wait...
If the Rings of Scorchera are for Celestia...
What's Luna's equivalent?
My god, the rise of Wet Dreamare and Lunaughty is upon us.
Actually, I'm curious if stallions would still run away in terror in that situation. That would be a hell of a new image.
6318504
Pretty sure that was, you know, intentional. What kind of person could possibly find suddenly being stuck as a horse of the opposite sex the best thing that has ever happened to them? That kind of person.