A Question of Succession
Okay, so. I was having just the worst day. Philomena had decided – rather dramatically – to die just before my wakeup alarm was due to ring. The fire consumed the entire East Tower where I used to sleep, and cost me a solid hour of shut-eye, which may not sound like a lot until you’ve spent a thousand years on a regimented sleep schedule so you don’t accidentally plunge the world into a new ice age…
“Celestia, are you drunk?”
“That’s entirely beshide the point…”
“For fu—it’s not even noon!”
The former princess waved her head once, her horn flashing briefly with golden magic.
“Now it is,” she smirked.
The current princess frowned. Then, she sighed. “Continue…”
Celestia grinned.
Next, my dearest nephew Blueblood tried to pull a little prank on me at breakfast. He told me he’d drunk the very last cup of tea in Canterlot, and said all that was left was some coffee.
“Are you kidding me?!” Twilight fumed. “Is that why I found a half-finished declaration of war in your desk drawer when I took over!?”
Celestia huffed. “Don’t interrupt… but yes. Trottingham had my black gold, and Equestria needs a good crusade every century or two to shake out the cobwebs and give my little ponies’ sociopathic tendencies a constructive avenue…”
“By annihilating one of Equestria’s constituent parts?”
“Worked with Gnashville.”
“… Point.”
“Now, where was I…?”
So that’s why Blueblood was always so scared of the statue garden.
Anywhoo, that was also the day Sunset Shimmer left for the human world. Truly a heartbreaking day. A painful day. Painful more specifically because the little hussy shot me in the plot on her way out. The ungrateful little…
So, I was tired, frustrated, wearing an oversized cast on my butt and worrying about finding another patsy… I mean, potential successor! Yes, that’s what I meant. I totally wasn’t constantly raising ponies in order to find an alicorn to either help me fight Luna or wear a costume and take my place when she came back to beat me up. Nope. Not what it was…
“You’re not buying this, are you?”
“Sunset already told me that part,” Twilight smirked, despite herself.“Don’t worry, I’m chalking most of this up to the alcohol – which you must have drunk a lot of, considering alicorn healing – and what Pinkie calls ‘Narrative Dissonance’. I suspect neither of us will remember this conversation by tomorrow.”
“Uh…? Okay?”
“Please continue…”
When, suddenly, the most amazing news showed up!
A message popped into existence right above my head during some sort of boring budget meeting or whatever. Apparently, we were broke or something. And we were being invaded. That was a rough decade, now that I think about it.
I didn’t care. Because that one message could have saved my millennia!
“Come and see me,” it said. And it was signed by Plan D himself!
Plan D being Doctor Frankenstallion, one of the greatest minds I had ever taught!
“Didn’t he perform all sorts of medically unethical–?”
“Hush!”
I was practically skipping down the halls towards his office. Well, “office”. I personally don’t consider a bunker six stories deep into Canterlot’s cavern-system an office. It was honestly more of a lab. Or lair, I suppose.
Anyway, I dismissed the guards and staff from the second corridor bathroom, where the secret door to his lab used to be, and I headed down lightning quick! The traps and monsters on guard were, naturally, all of my own design, so I wasn’t worried about them or about snooping ponies following me down there.
Once past the outer defenses, I reached Frankenstallion’s office.
Okay, so it was an office. I’d installed some wood paneling and tasteful decorations the century beforehoof.
But here was a curious sight. Frankenstallion – green coat, white mane, red eyes, if you need a visual – was sitting at his desk with a couple of heavy glass bottles, and a crib, of all things at his side. And there was a dour look on his face. I’d never seen his toothbrush mustache droop so much.
I had a bad feeling about this.
“Herr Doctor?” I asked, “Is there good news?”
In response, he reached out a hoof, and tipped over one of the bottles. It clattered on the desk, revealing how empty it currently was.
“Well. Ponyfeathers,” I sighed.
“Did you actually say ‘ponyfeathers’?”
“No, but even drunk, I’m classy.”
Celestia snorted, then laughed, “Classy as fu–!”
He offered one of the other, fuller bottles, and I took a long, hard slug. Of the eight or so bottles out, two were merely hard cider and whiskey. The ones clearly meant for me and my stupid liver-healing alicorn biology were little more than paint thinner.
Oh, but I knew I needed it.
“What happened?”
Frank (I call him Frank) sighed, then used his magic to hit the little switch beneath his desk. One of the side walls slid open, revealing the rest of the laboratory. A whole hoofball stadium could have fit in that cave, and the space was almost entirely used up by row after row of pony-sized crystal pods.
The doctor got up, a little wobbly, from his chair, and walked with me over to the pods. I brought two of the bottles with me.
“What about the crib? Why…?”
“I’m getting there!”
“Sorry to say, Your Highness,” he said, sipping at another whiskey bottle, “that Operation Clone-lestia is a complete failure.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I quickly looked from pod to pod, looking for any sign that maybe Frank had missed. But all I saw were pristinely white earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn foals drifting in the embryonic fluids. It seemed…
There was one!
“What about this one?” I pointed with my horn to a little white colt with a pair of wings and a horn. “I may not be a scientist, but that looks like an Alicorn to me!”
“’Fraid not,” he said, shaking his stupid head at me, “About a third of the fetuses wound up with mixed genetics. That one’s a Pegacorn.”
“A… pegacorn?”
“A PEGACORN!?”
Frank nodded. “Yup. Pegacorn.”
“Okay… but, like, there’s only two pony types mixed in there,” I reasoned out, “Surely that means more unicorn and pegasus magic?”
“Less, actually,” he shrugged and pointed to what appeared to be a normal unicorn’s pod, “This one’s half earth pony. Will probably never grow a single crop or cast anything more complex than telekinesis. If that.”
Well. Shoot. There went yet another plan.
“Doctor, I don’t need this today,” I groaned, after downing one of the bottles completely, “There’s maybe ten years before Nightmare Moon returns, and I have no plan! Blueblood’s worthless as a potential heir. Sunset walked out on me this morning…”
“Oh? What a shame. Who’s going to foalsit my granddaughter now?”
“… Lyra can get a better foalsitter, you know?”
“Lyra.”
“Yes.”
“Lyra Heartstrings was foalsat by Sunset Shimmer?”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “Actually, we found out later that Sunset would just hit Lyra with a sleeping spell and go clubbing.”
“Of course, she did,” Twilight sighed, then motioned for her mentor to continue.
“Oh,” Frank said, frowning, “And, um… most of the clones also show signs of… let’s be nice and say ‘below-average’ intelligence.”
“What am I going to do!?” I fell onto Frank’s desk and grabbed for another bottle, “Luna’s going to beat me up!” I actually started crying, if you can believe that.
“And plunge the world into eternal night,” Frank hummed to himself, thinking I couldn’t hear him.
It was over, I thought. I’d tried for almost a millennium to find a way out of my predicament. An heir, a patsy, ninjas… nothing seemed to work. And now, the army of cloned alicorns I’d hoped for was a complete and utter…
I looked up from the mucus-covered desk. There was a sound coming from that crib.
“Uh… Frank?”
He seemed to notice where I was staring.
“Ah, you noticed. Finally,” he said, trotting back over to the ‘office’ part of his office, “Yes. It would seem that there was at least one interesting result from the experiment. I took some DNA from Lyra and mixed it with your own sample…”
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
“Just proving a theory,” he said. Then, he sighed, “Trouble is, I can’t seem to find an easy way to move my brain into the resulting body, so…”
I reached out, and took hold of the creature in my magic. Strangely, what I held wasn’t like any of the other clones at all! It was a girl, for one thing. A giggling little ball of filly. And for another, she had a little tuft of brown mane on top of her head.
Too bad she was just an earth pony.
“I… don’t get it,” I said to Frank, “How is a brown-maned earth pony any more interesting than a mutant pegacorn?”
He chuckled, and pointed towards the foal.
“Poke her in the belly button,” he said, giving me a wink.
Well, I did as he asked, a little disappointed that Stallionzeihmers had finally gotten to him.
I poked the filly’s belly button, and got a stream of adorable giggles out of her.
Oh, and a horn.
“A horn?”
A horn! It just… popped out of her forehead! I almost dropped her; I was so shocked!
“Doctor!” I cried, “How…?”
“Her horn!” he laughed again, “Poke her horn!”
Well, I wasn’t about to ignore a doctor’s orders. I tapped the little one’s horn, right at the tip, and watched as it got sucked back into her head. It was amazing!
Almost as amazing as watching little wings pop out her sides.
“Wings!?”
“I know!!!”
It was amazing! It was astounding! I almost sobered up on the spot when I saw that.
Frank sniffed, rather proud of himself, and declared, “I call it a Quanticorn!”
“A Quanticorn?” I asked, still staring at the filly herself.
“Yes, a Quanticorn,” Frank said again, trotting around to my side again, “She has all the magic of all three tribes. Just… not at the same time.”
My enthusiasm sank. For just a moment, I thought I had the answer to all my problems in my hooves.
I sighed. “Well, that’s a waste of genetic material and time I’m never getting back…”
And then, her little hoof reached out. And do you know what she did?
She booped me. Right in the nose!
It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. At least as cute as Sunset on one of her good days.
“Okay,” I smiled, “I guess she’s cute.”
It was at that moment, I remember thinking clearly, that perhaps things weren’t as bad as I thought they could be. That maybe, just maybe, I’d get out of this mess alright.
“Did I ever teach you that you should never tempt fate like that, Twilight?”
The door to the lab burst open, and an even stranger sight than clones or Quanticorns or whatever else had happened yet greeted me. A tiny unicorn colt, dressed in armor that was clearly three sizes too large for him, came tumbling into the room.
I guess he was too short for all the defenses to notice, since he didn’t look any more dinged up than if he’d walked into a wall.
“Ow,” he said, scrambling to get back up. It was kind of adorable, honestly.
“Uh, guard?” I asked, just a bit flummoxed by this… child wearing armor, “Are you lost?”
“No, Your Highness!” he squeaked, “I actually came looking for you!”
I asked, again, “And… how did you find me?”
“Candy… I, uh, I mean…”
He practically turned red, blushing so hard the little thing was.
Finally, he seemed to find his voice again. “P-princess Cadance said you’d be down here.”
Oh, great, I thought. One of Cadance’s toys. The main reason I’d never even thought of Cadance taking over from me, or being the Element of Magic. That filly was too much for her own good.
“Well, what do you want?” I sighed, “I am sort of busy at the moment, uh…?”
“Private Armor!” He saluted. “Shining Armor, at your service…!”
“Shining’s involved in this ridiculous story?”
“Of course, he is! It’s not like he just popped into existence right before his wedding!”
“What?”
“… and we have problems, Your Highness!”
He saluted again.
I sighed, again. This was rich. I sort of wondered if Cadance had sent him down as a prank on me, or hoping I’d incinerate him so she didn’t have to dump another one.
“Continue,” I said, rocking the baby in my aura some more while Frank found himself another bottle, “What’s the situation?”
“Um,” he squirmed. “There’s been a rainbow-colored explosion across the sky. It looks like Cloudsdale, but initial reports are sketchy. And a gigantic purple dragon has appeared in the university amid a magical catastrophe…”
“Tell the guards to contain the threat!” I ordered, slipping instantly back into my royal command mindset, “And have a…”
“Um…” Shining Armor squirmed some more, “Actually, they… can’t.”
I was shocked.
“Did the dragon…?”
Shining shook his head. “Uh, the whole guard force just quit. Or, went on strike. I’m… sort of the only one who wasn’t Union, so…”
I snorted, and shook my head.
“Are you fu–?”
And then, I stopped. I’m still not sure if I had an epiphany, or if I just went insane. Either way…
“Congratulations, Shining Armor,” I said, quickly, “You’re now the Captain of the Guard.”
“Wh—really!?” he cried, eyes wide as saucers.
“Oh, this’ll be good,” Frank snarked. Which was impressive, considering how much of his mouth was currently preoccupied guzzling down my best whiskey reserves.
I nodded in as regal a manner as I could. “Yes, really. And these will be your first recruits!”
Shining took in the sight of the cloning vats, and nearly fell over right then and there. I think he managed to whisper something about it being “just like my comic books,” before he passed out completely.
“Right,” I said, already thinking ahead, “Frank, get these vats emptied, and their contents prepped for field training as soon as possible. I’ve got a dragon to deal with, apparently.”
“Uh, sure,” he giggled into his drink, “I’ll get right on that. What are you gonna do about that rainbow-explosion?”
“Who cares? I’ll deal with it later.”
I paused, halfway to the door. Realizing I still had the filly with me, I carefully placed her in between my withers. I can remember almost melting as she nuzzled down for a nap instantly.
“I’mma call you… Raven!” I decided. Then, looking back at Frank, I added, “Make sure you erase your memories of all this as soon as Captain Armor and his new recruits are ready.”
Frank held up a half-finished bottle. “Way ahead of you…”
“And that was that,” Celestia smiled and sipped her ‘tea’, “I hope I’ve answered all your…”
She paused.
“Huh… what was the question again?”
Twilight rubbed her temple with one hoof, and said, “All I asked was how your day was, and whether or not you’d heard from Raven Inkwell since she started working here again.”
“Ah,” Celestia sipped again, “I suppose I’m just a chatterbox when I’ve got my tea…”
The purple alicorn glanced up towards the ceiling of her office.
“Well, I suppose that does explain why so many of the Royal Guard were white stallions, growing up.”
Her face settled into a grimace.
“And… now I remember more than one guard calling you ‘Mommy’, back when I was your student…”
“Yes, they were… simple,” Celestia conceded, pouring herself another shot of ‘tea’.
“But… wow!” Twilight said, coming to rest her head on her forehooves, “Raven Inkwell? A clone? I can’t believe it. And a Quanticorn…”
“Yes, I’m very happy with how she turned out,” Celestia responded.
Princess Twilight shook her head. “No, I mean I can’t believe it. You’re full of it! You’re clearly drunk and screwing around with me.”
“Oh? Am I?” Celestia smiled in that annoyingly all-knowing way she did.
Just then, the door to Twilight’s private office opened up, allowing a familiar white unicorn mare entrance.
“Got those figures you wanted, Princess,” Raven Inkwell said, eyes still fixed on the paperwork held in her aura, “It looks like Flim and Flam actually are related to Apple…”
Raven lifted her head as she reached the desk, and her eyes swiveled around to the large white Alicorn sitting in the guest chair, several empty glass ‘tea’ bottles strewn about.
“C-celestia?” she stammered, though not without a genuine smile, “What are you doing…?”
The Princess took that momentary pause to reach out with one hoof, and tap the smaller unicorn directly on the tip of her horn.
“Boop!” the ancient monarch giggled.
Twilight watched, awe-struck, as Raven’s horn deflated instantly, and a pair of fluffy white wings popped out her side.
The dedicated bureaupony blinked, shocked. She looked to her left and right, taking in the sight of her additional appendages.
Then, she groaned.
“Mo-om!!!”
“Sorry, dear,” Celestia laughed, sliding her successor some ‘tea’, which Twilight seemed to greatly need at the moment.
“Just proving a point.”
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I, too, now require some of that tea.
I do like a story about canon inconsistencies.
Best explanation of the guard that I’ve heard of. Barring all ponies being idiots.
This explains a terrifying amount terrifyingly well. And as a fan of "mad biologist" Lyra, I appreciate her relationship to the good doctor.
This explains so much and makes about just as much sense.
Okay, first off: this was hilarious.
Second, “quanticorn”? You totally stole that from Estee, didn’t you?
And third: I need a fyaying drink.
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Ah, crap. Did Estee do a Quanticorn thing? Dangit, I never get to be original...
What happened to the giant purple dragon?
Written off as a mass hallucination due to a mistake in the Rainbow Factory production plant leading to multicoloured gaseous emmisions crossig over the Everfree becoming mixed with chaotic effluuvium?
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(To the tune of The U.S.S. Make Sh
t Up by Aurelio Voltaire)
Well Ponyville is quite grim
For a show for little kids.
With ravenous little parasprites
And stampeding leporids,
And monstrous Ursas Major,
Timberwolves, and basilisks,
And cockatrice, and hydras
All thrown into the mix.
And now then there was Twilight's
Purple lizard son
He wasn't a meanie dragon
But his greed made him one.
The efforts of the Wonderbolts
He easily ignored
As he rampaged through Ponyville
To add it to his horde.
And I said,
"Send a scroll to Celestia!
Everypony run and flee!
The situation's going south,
We need the help of Harmony!"
I know that I'm a grown mare,
And I must do my part
But this is way
Above my pay
Please save us Purple Smart!
The chaos trickster god Discord
was locked up all in stone
'Till he was freed by fillies who
Di'nt leave well enough alone
He cackled with a flourish,
Snapped the talons on his hand
And then set about to spreading
Chaos magic 'cross the land.
And then there was the wedding,
All Equestria was in bliss
'Till it was crashed by changelings
And their bug-queen Chrysalis
She took out all the Royal Guard
And mind-controlled the groom
Then captured all of Canterlot
And stuffed them cocoons.
And I said,
"Send a scroll to Celestia!
Everypony run and flee!
The situation's going south,
We need the help of Harmony!"
I know that I'm a grown mare,
And I must do my part
But this is way
Above my pay
Please save us Purple Smart!
The boastful showmare Trixie
Challenged Twilight on a dare
Wreaking havoc on the town
With a stellar bear.
Twilight sent her packing,
But she was not finished yet
She returned and enslaved the town
With the Amulet.
Well Cerebus was distracted
Now Tirek's on the loose
He's scooping up the unicorns
And draining all their juice.
Nopony could hope stop him,
Their plans were doomed to fail
It has been exacerbated
By Discord's betrayal
And I said,
"Send a scroll to Celestia!
Everypony run and flee!
The situation's going south,
We need the help of Harmony!"
I know that I'm a grown mare,
And I must do my part
But this is way
Above my pay
Please save us Purple Smart!
10625937
Three tribes in one body, but only one expressed at a time? Yeah, that was one of the central characters of Triptych. Except, you know, with more tribalism and foalhood trauma.
10626584
Also, extremely unstable as they had to cycle through their tribal forms almost constantly. Estee's version didn't come with booplocks.
10626584
Well.... crap.
Still, if I had to accidentally steal an idea from someone, I'm glad it was someone as talented as Estee.
10626659
I probably should check that one out.
10626837
Naw, it's parallel evolution.
Like pyramids
I once read a story with a very similar plot.
Look forward to seeing more of this someday.
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All those missed y'all's...
I am a sham...