11. It Was a Tuesday
Equestria : 1940
Tuesday 18 June - Canterlot, Equestria
“Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. Be not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.”
— Psalm 32:7
Jon’s feet were cold.
It was an odd thing to wake up to, particularly after a few moments of drowsy thought made him realize that he had gone to bed with two batpony mares last night, one of them curled around his feet and the other willing to go further between the sheets than any human female had gone with him.
Never going to tell my parents, never going to tell my parents…
At least he was still wearing his boxer shorts. A little blinking and squinting in the dim light of the electric night light revealed no fuzzy grey pony-sized lumps in his large bed, but also no warm quilted duvet at the foot end. It took a few moments for Jon to stagger out of bed and find where it had gone (kicked over the edge as he expected), but after looking at the alarm clock, he decided his morning would start anyway the moment he tried to crawl back under the covers.
“You up?” The front door of the suite creaked open a crack and a pegasus guard poked his nose in. Well, her nose if Jon was guessing the identity of the disguised batpony in question. “Second post reports Egghead is en route here. Thought you might want to meet her wearing pants for a change.”
“Thanks, Nightshade,” said Jon, trying not to be distracted by the way her nose was twitching and wrinkling up. “I’ll just go wash up and shave before—”
Nightshade flew into the room and fairly bounced across the suite floor as Laminia slammed into her from the rear, then they both shook their heads with the servant recovering first.
“Come on!” Laminia bolted forward and began shoving Jon in the direction of the bathroom. “You’ve got to get into the tub right now!” With one swift motion, she stripped off his boxer shorts and tossed them over her shoulder without skipping one step in their progress toward the bathtub.
“What do you think you’re—” The disguised guard stopped a step away from a naked Jon, who had managed to get braced in the bathroom doorway, and gave him a long sniff. “Whew! That’s what stinks.” She then sniffed her own forelegs. “Oh! Buck!”
Golden guard armor scattered in all directions as Nightshade shed out of her work clothes, revealing her tousled grey coat and tangled mane. With one swift motion across the floor, she added her force to shove Jon into the bathroom.
“Into the tub, Studly! Now! You stink!”
“But I had a bath last night at the hospital,” protested Jon in what sounded like a terribly juvenile excuse.
“Then we put that zebra goop all over you,” said Nightshade, who had turned both faucets on full and was dumping bubble bath into the resulting churning water. “You reek like… Well, let’s just say it smells like the three of us spent all last night in bed having messy—”
“Eww!” declared Laminia through her firm grip on the long-handled bath brush. “Less talking, more scrubbing. To think we almost let you walk through the whole castle stinking like that. Into the suds, monkey boy!”
At least the foaming suds gave Jon a token cover for modesty, although the probing he received from the bristled brush and plentiful amounts of soap made him miss bathing alone. Soap was going everywhere, and both batponies were scrubbing with skin-tingling intensity, making it very difficult to keep track of time.
Until he heard the astonished gasp at the bathroom doorway.
Twilight Sparkle had the biggest eyes. Well, the second biggest eyes, when compared to the shocked look on Spike’s face. The two of them, dragon and unicorn, were standing in a thin haze of suds in the doorway, one with a checklist on a clipboard and the other with a wrinkled up nose much like Nightshade had looked when she smelled what Jon had smelled like. Twilight’s eyes went from the three suds-covered creatures, to the messy bed, and back, with disbelieving sniffs between.
“I was going to take you on a trip around the school to visit my friends,” said Twilight Sparkle slowly as if her mouth was working independent of her brain. “But if you’re busy…”
“I’ll be out shortly.” Jon spit out some suds. “Just have to clean up first.”
- - Ω - -
By the time Jon fell into step alongside Twilight Sparkle and her dragon, he was fairly sure he had left a layer of skin behind in the tub. To make matters worse, Twilight looked barely changed from last night, carrying almost as much dirt and oil in her coat as when she had come out from underneath Blueblood’s Cord roadster.
“I’ve got a full day planned,” said Twilight. “I thought taking you to the school and introducing you to all of my friends would make you see that I’m just fine, and don’t need help making friends. Then you could go home and I could go back to studying.”
Until the world ends.
“Let’s see about today first,” said Jon once he had bitten down on his tongue to prevent any other words from leaking out. The snark was getting harder to hold back the longer he spent in Twilight’s presence.
“The schedule has us visiting the alchemy lab—” Spike caught Jon’s wrist for a moment and read his watch “—a half-hour ago, so if we skip that and go on to the history and relativity research center, we might be able to have them throw us back in time.”
“Spike,” chided Twilight. “Time travel spells are strictly forbidden. We’ll just have to trim a few minutes off each visit to make up time without making any in the lab. Heheh. Not that I ever did that to get more studying time. Ever.” Her brisk hoofsteps sped up until Jon was nearly jogging alongside, with a panting dragon flanking her other side. They went up several sets of stairs and down others with Twilight demonstrating her extensive knowledge of the castle by wandering into dead ends or observation balconies several times before doubling back and doubling her velocity.
“Alchemy!” she declared, stopping in front of a door with a sign that said ‘Caution - Class in Session - Do Not Enter Under Any Circumstances.’
- - Ω - -
Many, many hours later, Jon had determined that Celestia’s school was secretly some sort of munitions plant specializing in explosives, or perhaps camouflage. Even their short break at the cafeteria for lunch had something back in the kitchens that kept banging and crackling, most likely because the cooks used student⁽*⁾ assistants.
(*) There was no problem with student obesity. They ran fast or wound up eating hospital food.
The only class that they visited which did not have something blow up was Ancient History, and that had a Roman aeolipile happily leaving a trail of steam while spinning around in the middle of a table with students gathered all around, most likely waiting for it to blow up too. Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration caused by one too many times diving for cover, mostly by observing Spike’s well-honed survival skills and following suit before the bang.
In any case, the search for Twilight Sparkle’s school friends was… somewhat lacking. That’s not to say there was not a search by any means. Twilight interrupted all classes with equal impudence, strolling through alchemy experiments, correcting chalkboards, and even looking under tables when the ponies she wanted were not in sight. Jon was starting to get an idea of just how much the slightly built unicorn was an unstoppable force of nature by the way the teachers reacted, each one tensing up like a guitar string when she strolled through the classroom doorway, and doing anything they possibly could to see her gone in as short a period as possible. In the end, and after walking through enough smoke that Jon’s suit was going to need a full cleaning or burning, Twilight managed to find one of the ponies she had gone to school with. Of course, locating her friend would have been more friendly if she had not cornered Twinkleshine like a rat in her office and refused to let her get away.
“Twilight!” The pale unicorn gave a weak smile, her eyes flickering up to Jon and back down to her former classmate while backing up a step inside her office. “You did Moony a one-up, I see. She went out to work with the humans, but you checked one out of the library.”
“Jon Walthers,” said Jon with his hand stuck out to shake. “Celestia brought me here to help teach her student.”
“Oh,” said Twinkleshine. Her nervous smile was quickly replaced by a real one as her words sped up. “What subjects do you teach? Do you know anything about the theatre? I saw you at the Wizard of Oz with Twilight’s parents, but the whole place was a zoo and I didn’t want to disturb you. Oh, and I heard you visited our zoo! Have you met Lyra yet? Don’t let her lick your fingers.”
Jon paused for Twilight Sparkle to say something, but his student had ‘borrowed’ two of the books in Twinkleshine’s office and was reading, with a third book floating behind her in line for her perusal. If left un-nudged, she would probably stand there for hours.
“Princess Celestia says Doctor Walthers is an instructor in pony-human relations,” said Spike, filling in the conversation for his owner/sister/whatever relationship he had with Twilight.
“Oh!” Twinkleshine’s smile suddenly became frantic, and she blushed as bright as her pink hair. “Ooooooh!”
“Not those kind of relations,” cautioned Jon, but Spike was still happily digging his hole.
“In fact, when we picked him up this morning,” said Spike with the guileless expression of the young, “he was teaching two of the batpony servants how to give him a bath.”
“Twilight was wanting to introduce me to her friends,” said Jon rapidly. “So we’ve been running around Celestia’s school, looking for them.”
“Oh. Well.” Twinkleshine looked back at her clean white coat. “I don’t think I really need a bath, but if you want—”
“To talk with them,” corrected Jon. “Twilight wanted me to see what good friends you all are.”
“Really?” Twinkleshine blinked her big blue eyes while undoubtedly human-embarrassing ideas churned behind them. “I actually haven’t talked to her in the last two or three years, other than spotting her in the cafeteria or at some sort of event.”
“How about Moon… Prancer?” Jon checked the note he had tucked into his leather satchel. “Moon Dancer, Minuette, Lyra, and Lemon Hearts, that is.”
“Oh, them?” Twinkleshine stuck her tongue in her cheek while thinking. “They’ve all gone on to other things, really. I mean I’m only still here for the theatre department while the rest of them scattered at graduation. Minuette works at a dentist practice in Ponyville, Moon Dancer is chasing neutrons in some chemical plant in Germany, Lemon is working in the castle’s public events office, and Lyra is doing whatever she does.”
“Lyra’s weird,” muttered Twilight as she floated a third book over next to her.
“But fun,” added Twinkleshine with a bright smile. “We meet up in Ponyville every so often, have a few laughs, talk about things. It’s not the same without Lemon Hearts, lately.”
“She’s tied up at work in the castle?” asked Jon.
“No, she’s off with Moon Dancer in Germany,” said Twinkleshine. “Lemon Hearts is working at the castle.”
“She’s working at the castle and in Germany?” asked Jon, trying not to sound confused.
“No, Lemon Hearts is working in Germany. Lemon Hearts is still here in the castle, handling events for Princess Celestia.” Twinkleshine frowned at him. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Uh…” Jon thought about it for a short time before Spike interrupted his broken chain of thought.
“I thought Lemon Hearts worked in Princess Cadence’s office, keeping her schedule?”
“Oh, she does,” said Twinkleshine. “It keeps her close to her mother.”
The light glimmered dimly in Jon’s head. “Is her name Lemon Hearts too?”
Twinkleshine nodded while Jon thought about how many Jon’s were in his own family tree.
“Um, Spike?” Twinkleshine bobbed her head at where Twilight Sparkle had settled in behind the office desk with several books floating around her. “Could you watch her and tidy up a tad? I’ve got something I’d like to ask Doctor Walthers. In private.”
“No problem.” Spike promptly scooped a discarded book from a nearby chair and started to climb a bookcase to replace it, a task that seemed a little dangerous for a baby dragon, even if he bragged about being so tough. He was on his way down to retrieve a second book when the door swung closed under the influence of Twinkleshine’s magic and cut off Jon’s view.
“She’s good for a few minutes,” said Twinkleshine, nudging Jon down the hallway a few yards. “Twilight always has to check every book she finds to make sure she’s already read it. So…” The pale white unicorn looked up at Jon from under a poofy curl of pink mane over her horn, preparing obvious questions which he felt an obligation to squelch first.
“I have a very professional relationship with my student,” said Jon. “Princess Celestia would have nothing less. My goal is to help her find friends.”
“So… a labor of Hēraklês, then.” Twinkleshine rolled her eyes and let out her breath in a huff. “You’d think she’d have you clean the house regiment’s barracks, or something a little more probable.”
“Helping her make friends has been… difficult, I’ll admit.” Jon cast a quick glance back at the closed office door and lowered his voice. “It’s still very important. Princess Celestia has made it the highest priority.”
“Oh. The Princess.” Twinkleshine’s tongue emerged just enough to run around the edges of her lips. “I suppose… You know, the girls are having a little get together for Moondancer tomorrow morning.”
“I thought she was in Germany?” Jon thought back. “With Lemon Hearts.”
“She is.” Twinkleshine ground the tip of one hoof into the corridor tiles. “We were going to box up a present for her, since she’s been stuck in Europe. A few things to remind them of home, some photographs. A box of Lemon Hearts’ lemon cookies. It would be nice, I suppose, to have Twilight there. If she can make it, of course. Without you dragging her there by the tail.”
Jon slowly nodded his head. “I assure you, no tail dragging. Also, I have a camera and a movie camera, so you can send a roll of film for their projector.”
Twinkleshine perked up. “We could make humorous placards showing how much we missed them.”
“It would be a good opportunity for Twilight to reconnect with her friends, both here and abroad,” added Jon.
“If you can get her there,” cautioned Twinkleshine with a twinkle in her eyes. “She can show off her new coltfriend.”
“Not a coltfriend,” cautioned Jon. “Just a friend. Celestia brought me here.”
Twinkleshine shook her head. “Celestia has her own ways of dealing with heat, but Twilight?” She clucked her tongue. “She needs serious help. It’s pretty obvious.”
“Not from here!” objected Jon, although with his voice held low as not to carry down the corridor to any curious ears.
“Look, we tried to set up Twilight with some stallions from school, but the ones who knew her stayed away, and the ones who didn’t, ran away afterward.”
Jon could not really argue with that statement of historical fact.
“So Celestia got her a human,” concluded Twinkleshine.
Now that was something he could argue about. “Our relationship is strictly platonic. Plato, even. Teacher and student.”
“Hey, we know all about humans,” said Twinkleshine with a girlish giggle. “All of the fun, none of the foals.”
Backed into a logical corner, Jon grabbed for his only available lifeline. “I’m actually in a relationship. A weird relationship, I suppose,” he added without really thinking about it.
“Just one?” Twinkleshine nudged him in the thigh with one elbow. “You know, friends share.”
“An exclusive relationship,” added Jon rapidly. “Very special. And she’s very protective.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying. With all the guards out of the castle, the nights are getting long and cold.” Twinkleshine shrugged and turned back to walk down the corridor again. “Anyway, see if you can get Twilight and Spike out in the west castle courtyard around mid-morning tomorrow, and we’ll kick up one heck of a party, Canterlot style.”
- - Ω - -
“I told you I had friends,” declared Twilight Sparkle in a near squeal as she trotted down the corridor with Jon striding along beside her. “I can hardly wait for you to tell Princess Celestia! Straight-A’s all the way!”
“Yeah, as in ‘A’ friend,” said Spike, who was holding onto Twilight’s bouncing back with all four limbs. “One who you haven’t talked to in a few years.”
“We talked!” protested Twilight Sparkle. “Right there in her office. You saw us, Spike.”
“Can I have my book back, Twilight? But I’m not done with it yet! That’s fine, Twilight. You can bring it to Moondancer’s party tomorrow morning. But…” Spike coughed and resumed his normal voice. “True friends indeed.”
Jon eyed the book in question, sticking out of Twilight’s saddlebag, a thick tome regarding the use of stage lighting spells and dramatic motion that had a number of char marks on the cover and a blue crayon scribble that resembled ‘Prop. TGAPT’ across the bottom. “Trust is an element of friendship,” said Jon carefully. “It goes by many names: care, faith, loyalty, and family. Princess Celestia trusts that you will make friends, because she cares about you.”
“I don’t know why you keep bringing that up,” grumbled Twilight.
“Because I’m your… friend,” said Jon. “Friends help each other be better by encouraging our good parts and discouraging our bad parts.”
“That’s a teacher’s job,” said Twilight, turning down a familiar corridor. Jon could not help but notice how clueless she was blundering around the whole complex castle, but when it came time to return to Celestia’s location for praise, she was a homing pigeon of exceptional accuracy without a single misstep or wrong turn. “Teachers mark off points when we do things wrong and give us high scores when we’re right. And I’m always right,” she added.
- - Ω - -
Jon had some time to consider Twilight’s words at the private dinner they shared with Princess Celestia and Princess Cadence. At least in the small dining room, Twilight Sparkle was far more outgoing and friendly, detailing their tour through the castle and school with meticulous accuracy, or in the way she saw the trip. It was a declaration of her right-ness, a triumphant point-by-point defense of the thesis “Twilight Sparkle is a Wonderful Friend” between the caesar’s salad and the mashed potatoes, with the summation during the yogurt sorbet.
Both Cadence and Spike were exchanging meaningful glances with eye-rolls by the time Twilight was finished, but Princess Celestia remained her usual stoic self, merely nodding and asking the occasional insightful question. After dessert, the conversation turned to lighter and darker topics, like the ongoing war in Europe and the resulting impact it would have on the island nation, such as petrol shortages and reduced coal delivery.
“Although the fighting continues, France is certainly lost already. It was such a wonderful place,” mused Cadence. “Perhaps the Germans can be persuaded to leave it after a year or two. They seem determined to take the country over, but I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for them to rule over it.”
“They will,” said Celestia, her eyes dark and distant. “There are always those who value their position of power over others, regardless of their right, and the Germans will find them in abundance. Already Monsignor Pétain has made an accomodation with the wolves to rule in their stead before his country has even been totally overwhelmed, and Admiral Darlan is making secret arrangements to turn over the French fleet to German control.”
“Well…” Cadence nervously rearranged her silverware on her plate. “If it prevents any more violence, their actions should save many lives.”
“What if it were here, Mi Amore? What if the Germans swept across our peaceful land, killing who they wished and subjugating the rest to their purposes?” Celestia raised her dinner knife with a few flecks of avocado still on it and floated it over to the younger princess. “Would you take up the sword of war to defend our little ponies to your dying breath, sacrificing your own self in order to preserve their freedom?”
To her credit, Cadence did not wince, but wrapped her blue magic around the dinner knife and placed it down on the table next to her own silverware. “Yes. You know I would.”
“To your last breath, to the last spark of life, even though you may have to do terrible things to save them?” asked Celestia in a low, sharp tone that ripped through Jon’s heart like a knife.
“I see your point.” Cadence floated the knife off the table, and for one terrifying instance, Jon thought she was going to make a dramatic gesture like turning it into a sword or plunging it into the table, but instead she merely floated it back over to her aunt and deposited it with the rest of the place setting. She pushed her cushion back from the table and rose at the same time Celestia did, giving the elder alicorn a brief bob of her head. “Thank you, Auntie Celestia. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice that spell you wanted me to learn.”
“A new spell?” Twilight was on her hooves so fast the dirty plates at her place setting nearly tumbled onto the ground. “Can I learn it with you, Cadence? Please?”
It was the first time today that Jon could recall hearing ‘please’ from his student, and with enough force to melt a heart of steel. Cadence was obviously moved, but still shook her head. “I’m sorry, Twilight. This is a special spell that can only be cast by an alicorn.”
“But you know I’m very strong,” insisted Twilight, although her drooping ears and the hunch to her back indicated this was an argument she was destined to lose.
“Maybe I can show you in a few days,” said Cadence. “Until then, I need to practice.” She gave Twilight a kiss on the forehead before strolling out of the room, which gave Twilight the opportunity to do exactly what Jon expected.
“Princess Celestia, can you teach me that spell?”
“In a few days, perhaps.” Celestia shook herself out of whatever dark place she had been thinking about and used her magic to open the door. “Until then, I expect you to follow Doctor Walthers’ instructions. Now go take a bath and off to bed for the both of you, and don’t stay up late studying.”
“I will.” The door thumped behind them and Jon listened to the clatter of departing shoes, waiting until they had gotten all the way out of earshot before he cracked open the door and looked into Twilight’s eyes, where she was still standing.
“Ventriloquism spell of some sort?” he asked.
“I… better be going,” said Twilight Sparkle. She sprinted down the corridor with Spike holding on for dear life, vanishing around the corner and continuing until the last thing Jon could hear was Spike’s voice drifting back.
“I told you so, Twilight.”
Jon closed the door quietly and turned to the vast bulk of Celestia brooding on the other side of the table. “Other than Spike, your student has one friend in the castle, and that’s because they haven’t spoken in years. She’s headstrong, stubborn, egotistical—”
“And determined enough to save my sister,” completed Celestia. “She will not back down, no matter the cost.”
“Because you would,” continued Jon rapidly. “You can’t face your sister, so you found the most pigheaded unicorn in the world to do what you can’t.”
Well, it was what he should have said instead of meekly bowing his head and waiting for the princess to continue.
“She is far too much like Luna,” admitted Celestia after a time spent brooding. “Without friends, she would find the darkness appealing. The power over others, the ability to be right even when she is wrong.”
“I was wrong,” said Jon abruptly. “The three most important words in the universe, and right now, I have to admit that I was just wrong. I said Spike was Twilight’s only close friend in the castle. She has one other. You.”
“I am not her friend, I am her teacher,” Celestia said at a measured pace. “Her princess, her ruler, the one whom she obeys. The only one she obeys, other than her parents,” corrected Celestia.
“So why hasn’t she taken a bath like you told her?” asked Jon reflexively. “Friends help each other become better, like I’ve said before.”
Celestia made as if she were going to reply, then settled back down on her cushion and lifted the top from the cover over their dessert cake, which was only half consumed.
“I trust my student, Doctor Walthers. And I trust you can find your way back to your rooms unaccompanied.”
- - Ω - -
Either the castle was getting smaller or Jon was getting better at finding his way around the dark nighttime corridors. He only had to double-back twice to find his room in the fairly empty corridor of the visitors wing. Presumably there were other times when the castle was host to diplomatic events where the rooms would all be full and the castle staff bustling back and forth, but the shadowed halls just echoed, empty and forlorn to the scuffing sounds of his worn leather shoes.
There were two guards standing stalwart and brave outside of his door, which made it easy to identify which of the rooms was his, although he wondered at times if the guards would occasionally scoot their position one door down the corridor to confuse guests.
“Good evening, gentlecolts,” said Jon. The guards did not respond, of course, but after a brief inspection Jon determined that one of them was just ever so slightly shorter than the other, and held his… that is her wings far too rigidly for them to be the feathery appendages they were supposed to be.
Ah. Nightshade. This time for sure.
He slipped one hand under the thin steel plates that were supposed to protect the guard’s neck and rubbed up against the knots concealed beneath. The familiar motion helped him think, and Nightshade gave a quiet grunt while he massaged the knots into submission.
“I think I figured it out,” he mused half to himself. “Celestia never had children. If so, she would have spanked Twilight the first time she refused to take a bath, and that would have been the end of it.”
The guard let out a low chuckle, closer to a masculine rumble, and Jon gave him a skeptical look. “Nightshade?”
“Over here,” said the other guard with a carefully suppressed smile. The guard he was in the middle of giving a neck rub shook his head and shifted positions to keep Jon from moving, which probably signified a desire for him to keep going, which Jon did. It seemed Jon had made another friend out of Green Mountain, if only for neck rubs.
“Anyway,” continued Jon. “Twilight thinks I’m a pervert for getting dragged into the bathtub by two frisky batponies, the entire school thinks I’m a bad luck charm that causes experiments to explode, and Twilight Sparkle’s oldest friend in her peer group thinks I’m having sex with her. Twilight, that is,” he clarified.
Green Mountain wrinkled up his nose and sniffed. “I thought I could smell some hanky-panky last night, but all I can smell is burning chemicals now. Is there anything we can do to help?”
Jon sniffed his tweed jacket. “No, this is never coming out. Might as well burn it and run around naked.”
Nightshade snorted and tapped one hoof against her armor.
“It wouldn’t fit,” said Jon. “Just like my bathtub.”
He eyed Green Mountain, and the book bag the friendly stallion had shoved behind him. That peculiarity made fair sense, because the suite had a light in front of it, but reading while on duty did not seem to be something an alert sentry would do.
Then again, a reading student outside his door was far better than a dozing or absent guard.
The student seemed to be relatively intelligent, and must have known his way around the castle or they would not have hired him to act as a Royal Guard in name only. Nightshade would only try something sneaky if he asked her, but if he knew where things were in the castle too…
“Actually, there is something you can do to help,” said Jon slowly. “Do you know where there’s a bigger bathtub than the little thing in my room?”
“You could say that,” admitted Green Mountain with a smile.
“Great!” Jon slipped into his room, calling back over his shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”
- - ☾ - -
Five minutes later, Jon slipped back out of his room and closed the door. He made an odd figure because he was wearing the brand new bathrobe he had found in his room, had slipped into a matching pair of fuzzy pink bedroom slippers, and was carrying a basket of shampoo bottles, a large towel, a washcloth, a fresh set of casual clothes, and a hairbrush clenched in his teeth so he would have his hands free. After a little bit of rearranging to put the brush in a pocket and hooking an arm through the basket to make it easier to carry, he nodded at Green Mountain, who promptly began trotting down the corridor.
The guest corridor fell behind them at a rapid clip, because the guard did not seem to have a speed between Stationary and Brisk Jog. There was a bath at the end of their path, so Jon did not want to raise a fuss, even when their path moved to an interior, very plain stairwell and they began descending, the pony by the deceptively casual method of a long, slow, spiral glide and the human by a brisk skipping motion that made his bath slippers give out sharp flapping noises with every step. They had just gotten far enough down that air pressure made his ears pop when the guard slipped through the door at the (thankfully) bottom of the stairwell and into a more decorated hallway, ending in a broad double-door.
He took a moment to catch his breath and consider how many flights of stairs up he was going to have to climb just to get a bath in a tub where his knees were not going to stick out. If nothing else, the baths behind the door had to be impressive if they were going to top the decor.
A thick weave of carved plum leaves encompassed the hallway and the doorframe, blooming and coiling to the point where Jon could swear there were real insects chirping in the stone crevices. The doors were likewise adorned with a pair of alicorns rearing up under their respective waterfalls, surrounded by clouds of happy birds and curious bunny rabbits. It was so beautiful that Jon had to stop and admire the craftsponyship, as well as run his fingers along the carvings and marvel at how many centuries ago they must have been created by an equine sculptor who could have given Michelangelo a run for his money. It was as if the artist had seen the beauty of the work and simply set it free from the marble.
His fascinated inspection lasted long enough for the guard to poke his nose back out the beautiful doors and jolt him out of his introspective analysis. “All right, all right, I’m coming,” murmured Jon as he swept through the doors and stopped cold at the natural vista spread out in front of him.
‘Cave’ did not do the place justice. Cavern, maybe. Awesome, most certainly. One thing for absolute certain was that the Rockefellers or the Carnegies did not have anything like this in their houses, and it made the doors he had just been admiring seem small and trivial by comparison.
The cavern spread out and below him with the roar of a distant waterfall coursing down the far wall and an honest-to-God volcano rising up to one side of the resulting lake. Brilliant starlight spilled down on the sight from above, radiating from clusters of brilliant crystals that must have been transmitting and amplifying the light from the night sky. During the day, the entire place would blaze with warm sunlight, but in the brilliant silver moonlight, it felt as if he were entering some sort of magical grotto where seaponies frolicked and pixies danced among the sparkling water droplets
At the moment it was empty of any creature except for the guard, who was strolling casually down the path leading to the huge pool. As they descended and approached the shore, a series of dividers became apparent, breaking the one huge lake into a large series of relatively smaller pools, some bubbling from below, while others were tranquil and still. The pathways between the pools were smooth and warm, most likely from the nearby volcano rumbling quietly in counterpoint to the rush of the waterfall. A quick sampling of the crystal clear water showed the pools warmed closer to the volcano, as expected, and Jon picked a prospective bathing area that would be a little hot until he got used to it.
Jon turned to the only other living creature in the immense bath cavern and tried to phrase his words carefully. “Thank you, sir. If you want to… guard in a different direction while I… um… This is okay, right? I mean I’m not going to get into trouble for bathing in…”
Green Mountain shook his head, but kept a perfectly straight face.
“And this is Celestia’s bath, isn’t it?”
The guard nodded, then rolled his eyes and turned to watch the distant doorway into the cavern. Jon took the opportunity to strip and slip into the hot water a little faster than he had expected, shot back out most of the way to recover, then began to ease his way back in. “Oh, that’s good,” he moaned.
The pony soap and the hot water did an amazing job of rinsing away his stress, relaxing him enough so that he called out to the guard while he was shampooing. “Hey, do you guys ever sneak down here after hours and borrow the Princess’ bath?”
“Oh, once in a while,” came a female voice that was most certainly not Green Mountain. The guard turned around slowly with a predatory smile and began to strip off her armor as she strolled forward. As each piece came off, the dark coat and mischievous golden eyes of Nightshade emerged until she was standing by the edge of Jon’s pool, wearing nothing but a grin. “I swapped places with Greenie. Scrub your back?”
Jon was beyond words, but not above stammering and stuttering when Nightshade stretched her wings and soared almost straight up, did a flip, then a plummeting splash into the middle of the hot water pool. Skimming underwater like some equine torpedo, she shot in Jon’s direction and emerged directly in front of him, with her hind legs wrapped around his waist and both water-filled wings sweeping up to dump over his head and rinse the shampoo off of his head.
“That’s better,” she purred, dumping some more water over his head and brushing back his dark brown hair. Nightshade threw her forelegs over his shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes with a wink. “Now this is more like it. Just you and me and—” she wriggled her hips, still locked around him “—baby makes three.”
“Remember what we talked about before?” managed Jon.
“No taking advantage of your involuntary physical reactions for immoral purposes?” asked Nightshade while wrapping her hind legs even tighter around his hips. “Relax, lovercolt. As long as I stay like this, we can’t. Nothing lines up right, and don’t ask how I know,” she added with a little of her mischievous manner fading. “I mean really, if I want to have my way with you the right way, I need your full and enthusiastic support.” The dark pegasus folded her bottom lip over and gave Jon a heart-piercing mournful look. “All you have to do is say no, and I’ll go get Green Mountain.”
“Um… Not that,” he managed. “And not yes either. Although I could use somebody to wash my back.”
“Ooo, and mine too. I still smell a little like that potion. Turn around,” said Nightshade even as she wriggled in a delightful way to his back, still keeping her hindquarters wrapped around his waist like some warm affectionate backpack. “Let me get you all sudsed up.”
It was a little like and considerably unlike having a self-motivated, giggling loofah. And educational.
Nightshade did not want shampoo on her membranous wings because it dried them out too much and she had not brought a bottle of preening oil, or at least that was her excuse for keeping Jon’s curious hands off her wings. There was plenty of pegasus to wash anyway, from nose to almost-tail, with suds and unstoppable giggles on both of their behalfs. And a little more than giggling when she was floating on her back so he could scrub her tummy.
Somewhere in the washing process, he forgot that she was in fact an equine, and as such had her tiny mammary glands at the other end. He had found the little nubs buried in the suds and first thought they might be ticks of some sort, but when he pinched them to get them between his fingernails, Nightshade doubled over and sank like a rock.
Before Jon could reach underwater to grab her, Nightshade surfaced like a broaching whale. Water went flying in all directions as she duck-splashed on the surface with her wings beating a rapid tattoo until she straightened out with a shudder.
“Don’t do that,” she gasped, still treading water.
“I’m sorry?” Jon had backed up to the edge of the pool with his hands in front of him to block the water spray, only to have Nightshade lunge forward, grab his outstretched hand, and nibble on one finger.
“Don’t apologize either,” she managed through her heavy breathing. “Just… if you’re going to do this chaste hero thing, you need to stay away from there. For another three weeks or so, unless you want to be chased around the pool.”
Taking a deep breath and looking Jon straight in the eyes, she then proceeded to lick her eyebrows, first left, then right, before ending with a solid smack of her lips. Whatever she planned on doing next to rattle Jon’s wits was interrupted by the sound of a distant door opening with a loud clunk, and the sound of a unicorn’s whining.
“...don’t see why I need to take a bath down here, Princess Celestia, when I have a perfectly good bathtub up in my room. I promise I’ll use more water this time and not just get my hooves damp even though I really don’t need to wash more than three times a month because water is a precious resource as you’ve said before, and too much soap dries up the skin and causes all kinds of dry, flaky issues with a healthy coat. Oh! There’s somepony down here already, Princess. We should come back later.”
Nightshade had vanished under the surface of the water before the first words, and Jon could feel her clinging to one of his legs. In all odds, she was supposed to be on duty. If Twilight’s human friendship tutor got caught with a guard in Celestia’s private bath, he might get into trouble, but it could wreck Nightshade’s career.
“Hello, Princess,” called out Jon. “Twilight. Spike. I hope you don’t mind me using your tub. I don’t fit all the way inside mine.”
Celestia laughed and continued to walk down the long sloping path, even though Twilight had stopped behind her and was gesticulating frantically in the direction of the door. “Why, Doctor Walthers. You are an invited guest. I’m delighted to share my home and all of its amenities with you.”
One of the aforementioned amenities gave Jon a not so subtle underwater nip on the leg, obviously encouraging him to hurry things up while she was holding her breath.
“Last one in is a rotten egg!” called out Spike, taking a dramatic leap off Twilight Sparkle’s back and racing in the direction of the bubbling volcano. He scurried fast as lightning up to the lip of the magma pool and jumped, descending beyond Jon’s line of sight but with a mighty splash. It had to be safe for the little dragon, but Jon still winced.
“Since the events of the day have left me feeling a little sweaty, I believe I will bathe this evening too,” said Celestia, still proceeding regally in Jon’s direction with her crown and peytral floating off to land behind her path. Stepping out of her golden shoes the way a person would step out of fuzzy bathroom slippers, she paused a few pools away and cocked up an inquisitory eyebrow. “Unless, of course, you would rather have us bathe together.”
“I’m naked,” blurted out Jon, even though that was the same condition that all three ponies in the huge cavern shared with him, including the underwater one clinging to his leg.
“In Japan, I bathed naked with Emperor Meiji and his daughters. In Sweden we soaked in the same sauna with their royal families, and Ukko-Pekka, the President of Finland found my student to be quite the entertainment for his girls during our sauna visit. However since she is older now, I believe Twilight prefers a cooler temperature. This way, please.”
Twilight Sparkle followed along reluctantly, whining under her breath. “I can’t believe you mentioned the sauna, Princess. You don’t remember how embarrassed I was there? That child kept trying to see under my tail! And I don’t need a cooler pool! Just because I fainted in the sauna when I was adding water to the hot rocks and almost knocked it over and it was only a little fire, after all…”
The polite complaints continued, giving Jon a distinctly ignored feeling now that he was not a working excuse for Twilight Sparkle to bail on her princess-level bath. The comments did not stop when Celestia eased slowly into a different bubbling pool away from her human bathing companion.
The whining did stop when Celestia turned her disapproving gaze on her stinky student. With ears flattened and tail drooping, Twilight trudged into the water, one slow step at a time as if she were hoping that a wet knee would be enough to assuage her monarch’s divine disapproval. She paused, looked up, then eased her belly into the water. Then dampened her sides. Until finally only her nose and horn stuck out above the water, similar to the way Nightshade had just managed by crawling up Jon’s front until she could get short, frantic pants of breaths with her nose pressed against his chest to avoid being spotted by her liege.
Celestia accepted her student’s situation in good humor, and soaped up a long-handled brush with her magic. The twinkle of amused joy in her eyes was matched by a dreadful longing that tugged at Jon’s heart, the sorrow of an older sister who had bathed her baby sister so long ago when they were still inseparable. And now after a thousand years of separation, her only chance of seeing her sister again was a socially maladroit unicorn with bathing issues who could not make friends with other ponies if they were covered in books.
Hm. Maybe if I used glue…
“I must confess, Twilight, that I did not realize you were quite this dirty since you told me you were bathing every night.” The Royal Magic levitated her soggy subject up and applied the scrub brush vigorously across Twilight’s back. Even from Jon’s distance, he could see the discoloring of the suds that boiled up at her brisk contact with the bristles.
Inspired into sharing by the sight, Jon spoke up. “When I was young, my mother used to send me upstairs to take a bath. I’d crawl into the empty tub still dressed, then crawl back out and use a washcloth on any spot that looked too bad.”
“Interesting lesson, Doctor Walthers.” Celestia continued to scrub her involuntary subject, making little ‘tch, tch’ noises when she found particularly productive places to apply soap and magical elbow grease. “I take it you were unsuccessful in your ruse?”
“No, it worked for a while. Eventually, she caught on.” Jon rested his arms on the side of the pool and watched Twilight get her just soapy desserts, with Nightshade’s tickling nose breathing damply under his armpit so she could remain concealed.
“And were you punished? Perhaps some sort of dessert restrictions? Additional reading homework?”
“No, she just scrubbed me twice as hard until my skin was pink,” admitted Jon.
“Remarkable concept,” said Celestia. Twilight looked as if she were about to add her opinion when Celestia’s magic cut off abruptly and the soapy unicorn vanished under the bubbling water in a brief splash. Moments later, Celestia’s magic caused her to broach the surface like a spluttering submarine, and a second sudsing began. “Perhaps I should assign this task to you, Doctor.”
“NooOOoo!” said Jon abruptly, his voice change driven by the coiling of Nightshade’s wet tail somewhere it should not have been exploring. “Ahem. No, Your Highness,” he managed with a weak recovery. “She is your student first.”
He watched in relative silence, taking in the educational experience of just how a dirty unicorn was properly bathed while keeping Nightshade’s playful underwater groping discreetly at bay. Twilight was not having nearly as much fun as Celestia, who could not help giggling when her student would blow bubbles out of her nose or swish her soggy tail around and accidentally spray water over Her Divinity, Goddess of the Sun.
It could have proven a humiliating experience for Twilight Sparkle, except for the guiding hoof of her experienced instructor. Apparently, goddess and student had not bathed together in years, and from the delighted shrieks and splashes of Spike playing in the small volcano, all of them had missed it. Within the matter of a few minutes—once Twilight had been adequately laundered—her demeanor lightened into giggles when Celestia would prod ticklish spots with expertly driven feathery pokes, or serious thought when asked about the heat dispersion patterns of the multiple pools. It seemed as if the two of them would interact this way for hours, but it had to have only been about a half-hour or so before Twilight dragged herself out of the water and gave herself a vigorous shake.
“Thank you, Princess,” she said once she had draped a dry towel around her neck. “You were completely right. I was slacking off on my hygiene in order to get more studying done. I promise, it won’t happen again.”
Jon was watching, so he saw the flicker of sorrow sweep across Celestia’s face, but there was no regret in her voice when the sun-princess dismissed her student with the lesson well-learned, and promised to bring Spike up to her bedchambers once he was done playing in the lava.
The two of them watched Twilight trot away, up the long ramp and out the double-doors at the top while using her magic to keep the towel drying her wet coat. Just by itself the action showed the unicorn’s magical talent, because Twilight Sparkle was obviously distracted by some thought, although the towel never stopped its brisk calculated path to remove the maximum amount of water from her purple pelt.
“She is really amazing, Your Highness,” admitted Jon once the doors had closed. “She bounces right back like a rubber ball, but twice as hard.”
“But no friends.” Celestia let out a long, deep breath and picked up her back brush, giving it a good coating of soap while looking at nothing in particular. “Even if there were no other problems in all of Equestria, I think I would still wish with all of my heart for her to unlock that one final lesson.”
“She will. She has an impressive role model, after all. Twilight wants to be like you in every way.” Jon considered the way the alicorn was still slowly soaping her wings. “Well, as much as she can. You deal with ponies and people from above all the time. You declare from a civil position of authority, while Twilight attempts to emulate you and declare from a scholarly position of authority. What she doesn’t need is similar scholarly peers, because she would try to monopolize their interactions.”
There was another happy shout from inside the volcano, and Jon snickered. “Spike is a good example, because he’s so much different than she is. What your student needs is more dissimilar peers, just as different from her as possible so she can learn how to change her own behavior while she tries to change others for the better. Friends help each other be better friends, and the best way of doing that is from a different perspective.”
Celestia gave out an encouraging ‘hmm’ and slowly nodded while continuing to brush. “There must be some ponies around who would fit that description. I remember her describing her friend at dinner this evening. Something about a party, I believe.”
“Tomorrow morning, some of Twilight’s classmates are planning on throwing a party for Moondancer.” Jon stretched his arms out across the edge of the pool and luxuriated in the warmth of the rough stone. Watching Celestia bathe in the world’s largest birdbath was inspirational, because his busy mind was trying its best to think of anything other than the parallel of watching any other naked human head of state in the tub, even the Finns or Swedes. There was a lot of alicorn to wash, with her ducking under the water to rinse out the shampoo and stretching her wet wings out for a few goose-like trial flaps to dry, so Jon had a lot of time to think.
Nothing really came to mind, other than the playful underwater touches of his soaking guard, who would probably be all wrinkly after keeping only her nose above the water for so long. It probably would not help friendship-wise to introduce Twilight to Nightshade, because there was no real peer to peer relationship there. Guards had been part of her life for a long time. Heck, even her brother was a guard, so if she was interested in a friendly… or more than friendly relationship with one of the more militant castle staff, Shining Armor would have already introduced them. Or maybe that was why she was not friends with any of the guards.
“Thank you for the pleasant company, Doctor Walthers. I believe I shall retire for the evening.” Celestia rose up out of the water with long, slow beats of her broad wings, surrounded in a haze of water droplets that turned the silver starlight filling the cavern into soft rainbows all around her. “Spike, it is past your bedtime also.”
The alicorn swept up through the air with a graceful fluidity that belied description, making one slow circle around the bubbling pint-size volcano before lifting the little dragon out of the lava with her magic. They swooped up the ramp to the doors and came to a gentle and more dignified landing before Celestia turned, looking down into the cavern with what looked like the hint of a mischievous smile, even though it was difficult to make out her expression at this distance. Although there was no mistaking her words.
“Pass along my admiration for Nightshade’s lung capacity, and we shall see you tomorrow, Doctor Walters. Try not to stay up too late.”
It took nearly a minute after the doors had closed before Jon gave the soggy batpony a boost so she could get above the water’s surface. Nightshade coughed quietly while taking a long look over the edge of the pool, then straightened up a little more as the lack of a solar monarch gave her confidence.
“Whew,” she whispered. “I thought I was sunk for sure.”
“She knows,” said Jon simply.
“Whatsat?” Nightshade tilted her head and bonked her head with one hoof. “Sorry, got some water in my ears because I was down there so long.”
“I should have seen it earlier,” he admitted. “You left your armor scattered by my bathrobe.”
Nightshade pivoted to look at the Royal Guard armor next to the towels, then turned her big golden eyes on him.
“Her Highness, Princess Celestia, ruling monarch of this land and your direct and ultimate superior knows you were in this pool with me,” said Jon just as calmly as he could, mostly for his own nerves. However, at that moment he was the the second most unerved creature in the pool.
And to add to her utter humiliation, it was possible that Nightshade had just peed herself in the bathwater.
“Me?” she squeaked.
Those wide eyes could not have gotten larger, making Jon reflexively reach out and touch her gently on the nose, pressing against the prickly warmth. It seemed to relax her slightly as he had hoped, and Jon left his fingers move upwards to her damp furry ears, giving them a soft scratching until her breathing evened out and he could not feel her tremble under his touch.
He moved his hands to the back of her neck and collected some shampoo from the nearby bottle, working it into the deeper mane knots, then used the brush that Celestia had dropped suspiciously close to him in order to give Nightshade a proper detangling. Although it would have been a lot easier to give her mane the attention it needed without having to discourage a mischievous tail groping around his underwater parts in return.
“Not that, not here, not now,” said Jon. “I was thinking we need to talk some more.”
Nightshade winced and her tail quit exploring up his leg. “Oh, nuts. That’s never a good sign.”
“If it was a bad sign, I’d quit brushing you,” countered Jon. “While naked, in Princess Celestia’s private bath, and… um… Yeah, I’ll stop there. Except to talk about things we can’t talk about to anypony else.”
“I am a slave to your will, Master,” said Nightshade, who had extended her wings in a fashion to catch a bubble of air under each of them and thereby float higher for more brushing. “Might as well, since I’m so getting kicked out of the guard for this. You don’t need an exotic bodyguard when you go back to the Washington, do you?”
“No, right now I need a friend to talk with. And so do you.” He floated the air-buoyed batpony over to the edge of the pool where the ramp came in so she would not have to hold her head up while he brushed. “There. This may be a while, and I don’t want you to drown.”
“It would be too easy, anyway.” Nightshade rested her chin on the ramp’s ledge and let out a deep breath with her flanks still bobbing in the water. “Yes, I’ve thought about that, and no, I’m not doing it. The proper reaction to what those human parasprites did to Root Stock is murder, not surrender.”
After more brushing that nudged Nightshade further out of the water, she gave out an aggravated grunt and looked back at Jon along her flank. “You know all this brushing is going to be for naught once I start toweling off.”
Jon shrugged. “It’s the brushing that’s important, not the results. That’s life. And speaking of life, I’m willing to listen.”
She gave out a grunt, then stood up to wade the rest of the way out of the water and grabbed her towel. “Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate this, because I do, but if I want to talk about Root Stock—not that I do—I’ll find another pony. I’m having a little trouble separating out the humans who did this from you. Unless I’m flirting, of course.”
“I understand.” Jon reached for a nearby towel, which was just close enough he could have grabbed it from the cover of the pool ledge, if not for Nightshade using her wing to give it a subtle nudge away from him.
“That helps,” admitted Nightshade with the hint of an honest smile for a change. “Come to think of it, what would you do if I took all of your clothes and ran? I mean I’m going to get kicked out of the guard anyway, so why not go out in a way that ponies will be talking about for years?”
Jon considered his situation while bobbing in the hot water, getting more wrinkled by the minute. “Celestia wants me… I mean you need… If it will help you deal with Root Stock’s death, I’ll chase you naked and dripping all the way through the castle, and through Celestia’s bedchambers too,” he said in a burst of words.
A dripping Nightshade stopped with the dry towel dangling from the tip of her wing. “Really? What if I said that the only way to deal with my suppressed anger would be to pin you down and have my way with you?”
“That’s not much of a threat,” he admitted.
“In Celestia’s bedchambers,” said Nightshade with a twinkle in her golden eyes.
“Now you’re just pulling on my leg,” said Jon.
“I was pulling on your leg before,” said Nightshade with a shrug that dropped the dry towel in front of Jon.
“I wasn’t.” Jon scooped up the towel and emerged out of the water, not quite as wrinkly as he had feared. “Right now I’ve got you, Twilight, and Spike as my three best friends. And maybe Laminia, if she’s in a rare good mood. And I suppose I should count Green Mountain for neck rubs. I’ve only been here a week, and I’ve got more ponies I can call friends than humans. What’s that make me?”
“Desperate,” said Nightshade with a wink. She rubbed the towel over her neck, working her violet mane back into a series of tangles, then dried her head. “Not desperate enough to dry off by the volcano, though. You’d smell like sulfur all night.”
She managed to cock her head to one side while using the towel to dry her rear, catching Jon in a curious look of his own. “I just don’t understand one thing. Why is this friendship thing so important to you? I mean you’re treating it like a race. And why did Celestia drag you of all ponies out to deal with my Big Brothers?”
“She assigned you also,” retorted Jon. “A traumatized mare with a secret that probably no more than a half-dozen ponies in Equestria know.”
“They can’t all be tied together,” said Nightshade, who held the damp towel over one leg but had quit trying to dry. “The German special projects, the volcanic eruptions that will cover the sky with ash, whatever she was negotiating with the Dragonlord, the way all the guards are out on a special training assignment, and Celestia all tied up in knots like…” She hesitated, then turned to Jon and blurted out, “It all has something to do with Nightmare Moon returning. She really is. And Celestia won’t be able to beat her.”
“Why would you think—” started Jon, but the batpony guard was on a roll.
“The Germans are building rockets to reach the moon. Ian showed me the pictures. They must have fired one already in secret that hit the moon and released Nightmare Moon, it’s just that she hasn’t made it to Earth yet. Celestia’s going to lose, so that’s why she’s got the guard and the dragons and the—”
Jon reached out and held a hand over Nightshade’s mouth, then picked her towel up and started rubbing down her flanks with one arm. By the time he was done drying her legs, the batpony guard had settled down into a tense alertness, which remained while she wordlessly shrugged into her armor and took her place by his side. It felt like an even odder pairing now, her in the armor which made her look like a male pegasus guard, and him in a bathrobe and slippers that made him look like a housewife of some sort.
“Operational security,” she said tersely. “I can see it now. If she wanted me to know what’s behind it all, she would have told me.” Nightshade gave him a cautious eye and continued, “And you didn’t twitch a muscle, so she must have told you. No, don’t say anything,” she added. “Blasted operational security. I know neither of you told Twilight about Nightmare Moon, or she’d be researching all over it, and this has to be even bigger. Buck it to hell, why doesn’t she trust me, Jon? Why doesn’t she trust her student? She loves that filly like her own daughter!”
“Celestia lets people know just what she thinks they need to know. And you know the hell of it?” Jon put the last bottle of shampoo into his basket and tossed the damp towel over his back regardless of the thin grey hairs on it. “She’s probably right.”
They did not talk about the fate of Root Stock that evening. But they did talk.
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I want this bathtub
Also, tick, tick.
You are a good writer.
Wow, just wow. Well we are just a few days away from the appearance of Nightmare Moon.
It does kinda scare me that Luna and Twilight could have been so much alike. I wonder if this is what all alicorns somewhat go through?
Celestia the mother bird bathing her young rambunctious chick*.
*Wings not yet included.
So Moon Dancer is working on nuclear physics and possibly a nuclear bomb. I sure hope the Nazi nuclear program doesn't progress so far as to produce an actual weapon.
‘Prop. TGAPT’
Lol, she has her own movie eh? Or at least, she's trying to make her own movie........lol. Lots of fireworks!!!
9285874
At least in this timeline, she's probably not going to make the horrible error of getting pictures with Adolf.
Oh dear. The mushroom cloud will have lovely sparkles in its bloom.
Finland did not have a royal family... ever...
though our presidents have a habit of going to the sauna with foreign delegates and leaders.
Nightmare being a doomsday thing? Nothing a good bullet between the eyes couldn't fix if all else failed.
If it came down to it we would win a war with equestria, thier magic will be deadly but nothing our numbers and technology couldn't overcome, so a short but bloody war.
Also time travel is only limited to 10 days and only for 10 sec if you think back to that one episode.
The only reason starlight was able to do that was because of the map, which doesint exist yet.
9286716 Well, a little bit of one, to be honest, but I'll switch it to President to be far more accurate.
9286278 Can the development of the Atomic Party Cannon be far behind?
9286107 She could always wind up getting her book signed:
9285771 Whenever Luna is driving Celestia younger-sister crazy, I'm sure Celestia goes and talks with Shining Armor to make herself feel better. :)
9285861 Twilight always struck me as trying so hard to be like her mentor that when she got wings, she was baffled like a dog chasing a car that caught one.
9286982
The hell of that? Did Twilight ever really know what Celestia was like? Does she know in this particular universe?
This chapter provides still more evidence that the key to defeating Nightmare Moon is not Twilight Sparkle.
Amending Fences was the best episode.
I have concerns that are distinct and numerous.
Makes me wonder what Celestia may be expecting to have to do to defend Equestria.
Oh, of course.
Of course she knew.
Talking is good.
So...Celestia is talking big about laying down your life to protect your country from the Germans, but where her sister is involved she's going to throw a completely unprepared and unworthy unicorn who's ABSOLUTELY wrong for the job at her despite all her delusions telling herself otherwise?
Alondro hmphs. "Nice try, Twilight. But you're nowhere near my level of absolute perfection."
9290909
There was an obvious subtext you're missing there.
Clue is the repetition of "a few days" in that convo.
Celestia is not talking about the Germans in that particular conversation, but Nightmare Moon.
Ha, I knew it. Nothing gets by ole Celly.
(spit take)
Looks like you have an extra carriage-return/line-feed: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lnQHgrpuCWsq3bRmnYk_ybbEujk70KRb/view?usp=sharing
9695344 Yes, but... I copy/paste these out of a source Gdoc with all the [ b ] type tags manually put in. When I paste in the text, it's fine. When I hit save in FimFiction, *poof* There's something in Knightly's HTML/BBS Code parser that does odd things at times, and I know he's been working on it over the last year because it *used* to do odd things with WORD italics WORD pairs where the spaces on either side of the italics became non-breaking spaces, but it don't do that no mo. It made converting some of the documents for the Bronycon Bookstore a little more manual than I liked, but it still beat the holy heck out of manually converting everything so I can't complain at all. As somebody who used to program massive character string manipulation scripts, I can testify that sometimes things deep inside the libraries code out as DoThisNearlyAllOfTheTimeExceptOnAlternateThursdays.
Peytral
9927052 I swear I double check every time I use that and miss it every time.
Whenever the story sidetracks onto secondary romance, my brain just shuts off.
10146555 Note that I don't do any Twilight shipping in this story (although Naughty Bits has more shipping than the Titanic). There's this terrible urge to ship any main POV character with the Mane 6 somewhere when you're writing, and I knew better than to run a human POV character and even try a romantic relationship with Twi.
Now Nightshade on the other hoof, the flirting is an inescapable part of her character that she's using to cope with the stress from her detail with the British MI6 and subsequent fatalities. (And poor Jon is just so much darned fun to tease, because his anti-flirting is a core part of his character too.)
Well, that looks promising already!
Spike saves the day again!
Oh no
Jon, you studly man
Oh dear
Laminia begs to differ on that detail. You preen two mares, pal.
Aha.
Well, clearly you can't trust her, because she still hasn't taken that bath
Nope. Still Greenie. But don't worry, he appreciates it too
He just peeved off Celestia, and now he's going to use her bathtub, isn't he?
Oh my. She's getting serious!
Whoops. How hard did he pinch?
Aaahahahaha! Yes!
Come now. She's sticking about as close to her target as she possibly could
Honestly, does she underestimate Celestia that much? I'm fairly sure she already knows.
I don't think anyone present is going to follow you there, Spike
Hands up, everyone who didn't see that coming.
No one?
Yea, that's what I thought.
Oh, that's hardly subtle
Well, good, you can start with working on that then, you massive racist
You were pulling on some more than just his leg when you were underwater
A lot better at it than Twilight
9285681
No, no, they were nipples, not ticks