Chapter 14 Part 3
Moon Dancer jerked awake. "What time is it? Where's Luna? Is everything—?"
"Not so loud, please?" Shining Armor was laying in the darkest corner of the room, hiding under a dozen blankets, with his horn glowing pink.
Blinking away at the grit in her eyes, Moon stood slowly and approached Shining. Softly, she asked, "Can I help with anything?"
It was hard to think about anything but the pounding his shield was taking far above the city of Canterlot. "If you can get me another juice, it'd be great."
The pain in Shining's voice was enough to spur Moon into action. Disregarding her own sour feeling, she used the bare minimum of magic to lift the pitcher of juice from the table in the room and brought it over. Setting it down before him, she lifted the straw from his empty glass and into the pitcher. "Here."
"Mmm…" The flare of energy from the sugar helped Shining's magic output, but the effort of moving—even just to drink—was taking its toll. "I can't hold it much longer."
"Is it magical energy you need? I can help with that." Moon watched Shining shake his head the tiniest amount. "Uh, what else… You have a migraine headache, so it means extreme disruption to normal spellcasting. Oh, right, you got a head full of changeling mind-control. I don't exactly know of a cure for that kind of hangover, sorry."
"Princess Luna asked me to hold it as long as I could." Speaking helped him focus on something other the skull-crushing pain in his head. "It was easy until the attacks started. Emergency reinforcements were already en-route. She said you were responsible for getting us the information."
"I guess I was. Really, though, it was Lyra, Minuette, and Twinkleshine. They visited me with their heads full of that mind-control magic, and still managed to get me the information I needed." Just thinking of the previous day made Moon shiver. "I guess everypony played their part."
Shining smiled and looked up at Moon. "I can't hold it much longer. I can feel every time one of them collides with the shield."
"A lot of them?"
"Probably thousands."
"Then I better get ready to defend this place. It's not easy to find, but it is part of Luna's private quarters." Moon looked back at the door, and as she cast her eyes around she spotted Sweetie—still asleep.
"Two bat pony guards at the door. I think we're safe." Shining let out a sigh as things seemed to ease for a moment—until over five thousand changeling hooves collided with the shield at once.
The sharp intake of breath from Shining got Moon's full attention. She looked at him just as the magic around his horn started to dim. It was probably the stupidest thing she could have done, but she had to try. Reaching out with her own magic, Moon Dancer gripped the spell Shining had built and held it—until the next strike of the changelings connected.
The cry of pain woke Sweetie Drops from her sleep. Looking around, she spotted Moon and Shining unconscious and laying nose to nose. Further investigation of the room revealed Luna hiding under a pile of midnight blue cushions—likewise asleep. Getting her hooves under her, she looked around for something to kick-start her metabolism.
All she could find was the empty pitcher and the coffee equipment that Moon and Luna preferred. "Well, it's not the best fuel, but it will get me going." Grabbing up the sugar bowl, Sweetie tipped it into her mouth, topped it up with water from the tap, and chased her sweet breakfast down with the liquid.
It was like lighting a fuse. Sweetie knew she needed more energy to face any fighting at all. Walking for the door, she opened it slowly to find two bat ponies outside.
"If you leave our sight and the room, we can't let you back in until the princess is awake."
Sweetie just nodded. "That sounds smart. Who gave you that order?"
"You did, just before you dragged an unconscious unicorn, an alicorn, and a member of the Royal Guard into the room." Fire Blossom smirked. "It sounded good enough for us, but that counts for you too."
"Yeah, yeah. Just keep them all safe." Sweetie walked out and past the two bat ponies and started toward what she hoped was the kitchen. Swinging the doors open, Sweetie tensed at the sounds of combat. Looking around the castle kitchen, she spotted several pony-like creatures that seemed to have a lot of bug influence. She didn't hold back for an instant, locking her focus on the black changeling nearest the line of chefs, Sweetie charged the creature, shrugging off a green blast from another in the room by grounding it out into the castle's old stones.
Gretchen watched the thunderous mare shrugging off magical blasts only to slam into the lead monster. She'd seen Sweetie Drops before when Celestia had invited her and her family to cook for the evening, but she could also see that the Guardpony was far outnumbered. In all griffons, despite their upbringing or the softness of their professions, there was a sharp-clawed predator. Gretchen was already upset at having her kitchen interrupted during preparations for a wedding.
When Gretchen pounced on the next changeling trying to come up on Sweetie's flank, she shoved that conflict to the side—she'd back a griffon over one a changeling any day. With her attention on the enemy, she started charging down the line of stove-tops and letting her armor's solidness deal with any changeling stupid enough not to get out of the way.
Several more green blasts were loosed, but they were no longer the targeted strikes of aggressors—they were used as a covering screen while the last few changelings fled from the kitchen.
Blowing an annoyed snort out of her nose, Sweetie started dragging the changelings together into one corner. "Do you have anywhere you can secure these?"
"Apart from the freezer, no."
"We'll just drag them outside, then. I don't want you risking yourselves guarding them. I don't suppose I could trouble you for a sandwich?" Sweetie started grabbing the changelings and dragging them to the doorway of the kitchen.
"A sandwich?" The request was not what Gretchen was expecting.
Sweetie could feel the sugar starting to boil off—used up in her fight. "Yeah. Haven't eaten in about a day. If I'm going to keep fighting today, I'm going to need—"
"Right. A sandwich." Turning to her brigade, Gretchen looked to her sous chef. "Sandwiches. She won't be the only pony who needs fuel. Everyone, we have an order to fulfill!"
While the kitchen started making bread and preparing fillings, Sweetie hauled the changelings outside the exterior doors of the kitchen and then barricaded them closed. She was just turning around from her task to find Gretchen herself passing her a plate piled with sandwiches. "Thanks."
"How bad is this? I saw a lot of those things raining from the sky." Gretchen tried to keep her edge of worry out of her voice, but she couldn't manage it entirely. A griffon was more than a match for one or two of them, but a hundred was going to drag her down eventually.
"We had warning. Most of the city has been evacuated to the E.U.P. Guard quarter, while we have Guardponies spread out all over the city. More coming in from outside if needed. The only threat we are not sure of is their leader, something I'm going to see about now." Sweetie spoke between bites of sandwich, a trick she'd learned in the Guard.
"There anything else I should know about them?" Gretchen asked.
Sweetie gulped down the last of her sandwich and nodded. "They can use magic to appear like anypony, possibly even griffons too. Stay safe and come up with a way to identify yourselves to each other." Grabbing another sandwich, her body working like an engine to break the egg and lettuce mix down into fuel for her muscles, Sweetie started toward the door. "I'll be seeing you when we have all this cleaned up."
The walk to the banquet hall—where the wedding had been planned for—was devoid of any contact for Sweetie. She saw nopony and no changeling either. Of course, she'd taken a different path to the most direct, not wanting to announce her presence. When she rounded the final corner, she watched as Twilight Sparkle and a very disheveled Cadance rushed into the banquet hall.
Sweetie's walk sped up into a trot on her way to the door, and she reached it just in time to hear the action start.
"Because it's not your special day! It's mine!"
When Sweetie leaned around the corner and looked, the Cadance standing on the dais with the disguised Blue Blood changed her demeanor completely. It didn't take a sharp mind to tell the difference between the two.
About to charge in, Sweetie froze at one sight in the audience—herself. Her eyes widened as she picked out a Sweetie Drops standing beside a Lyra Heartstrings, neither of which looked to be under the changeling queen's mind-control. She'd been so caught up that she barely registered the accusations flying—but she did see when the Cadance on the dais suddenly erupted with green fire and turned into a monster.
Glaring at Chrysalis, Cadance's vehemence rose. "They'll never get the chance! Shining Armor's protection spell will keep them from ever even reaching us!" She didn't expect the laughter from the monster in front of her. When she looked to Shining Armor, she realized there was no sense of magic output coming from him—then she looked out the window and gasped.
"Way too late. He lost the last shreds of his power minutes ago. Even now my minions are attacking the city." Chrysalis like gloating and she liked monologuing. Now, with her victory cemented in place by her careful planning, she felt confident enough to indulge in both. Turning, she looked at Shining Armor. "He may not be my husband, but he is under my total control now."
Cadance turned her full attention on Shining Armor and tried to reach for his love—and got confused. Her talent was not pointing at the stallion on the dais, but behind her somewhere in the castle. What she did realize was she'd had enough of this monster. Taking a step forward, Cadance started to draw on her magic.
"Ah, ah, ah. Don't want to go back to the caves, now do you? Ever since I took your place, I've been feeding off Shining Armor's love for you. Every moment he grows weaker and I grow stronger." Pulsing her horn with power, Chrysalis made to take a long drink of magic to refill her reserves—and got nothing. "What's this? A husk already?"
"No." Celestia stepped forward to put herself between Shining Armor and Chrysalis. "You won't be feeding from him or anypony else. You've revealed yourself, changeling, and that's always when you're most weak!"
Sweetie, peeking around the corner still, watched as Celestia started a magic duel with Chrysalis. She stared, dumbfounded, as Chrysalis' magic slowly overwhelmed Celestia. For a panicked moment she didn't know what to do, but as if on cue, Twilight and her friends led a charge from the room.
When the six bolted past her, Sweetie headed in the opposite direction. She galloped past the audience as they flared with green fire one by one. She raced all the way up to the dais and planted herself between Chrysalis and Cadance. "Take him and get out of here, Cadance."
"You!" Chrysalis' attention narrowed onto Sweetie. "You were the one last night interrupting my sleep! For that you will pay in equal measure to your former princ—" Forced to cut short her accusation, mostly because the mare she was monologuing at was charging at her, Chrysalis sent a blast of destructive energy at Sweetie.
Grounding magic was one of Sweetie's specialties. She timed her gait just right to plant all four hooves on the stone as the beam of green magic hit her. The stone itself reached up through her to soak away the dangerous magic, but it wasn't enough.
Even Celestia hadn't been able to deflect all of Chrysalis' magic, and as Sweetie stared at the changeling in shock, she felt the raw power overwhelm her and felt darkness close in around her head.
"Stop!" Cadance stepped forward and stood over Sweetie, glaring at Chrysalis. "What do you want?!"
The sound of defeat in Cadance's voice warmed Chrysalis' narcissistic nature. She cut off her beam and let Sweetie lie where she'd blasted her. "That's easy. I want every single pony wrapped up in a pod and used for food. I want to wipe out Equestria and use its every resource to build my hive bigger."
Sweetie, who had been struggling to hold onto her consciousness, finally lost that battle.
Green. Everything around Sweetie was green. Worse, she felt herself floating in something and was completely unable to feel the ground. Looking around the scene before her, she spotted Twilight Sparkle, her friends, Shining Armor, and a squad of E.U.P. Guard (a mixture of Royal Guard and Monster Hunters) standing at one end of the room while Chrysalis, Cadance, and the false Shining Armor stood at the other.
The thing that made Sweetie's heart soar was seeing Shining Armor fully clad in his namesake. She well knew how effective a big pony in heavy armor could be, and Royal Guard armor was only a notch below her own.
Looking a bit further to her side, she spotted Celestia—likewise floating in some kind of goop pod. A struggle broke out, pulling Sweetie's attention back to the room at large as the Guardponies started to engage the changelings. The most wonderful sight, though, was the look of confusion on Chrysalis' face and the look of realization on Cadance's.
Sweetie also noticed that Twilight had used a covert shot of magic to remove the goo that seemed to be binding Cadance's hooves to the floor.
Chrysalis shouted at her changelings to intercept the real Shining Armor, but now he had armor on, there was nothing they could do to stop his flying hooves as he broke through their ranks.
That's when somepony flushed Sweetie's pod by jamming a spear into the bottom of it. The din of combat finally reached her, though the pony who'd freed her had moved on to Celestia's pod. Without any changelings nearby, Sweetie didn't hesitate to get back on her hooves and start to gallop.
"No!" Chrysalis' full attention was on Cadance. She charged up her horn to blast the pink menace, when a freight train—or at least an angry earth pony—crashed into her side.
Cadance barely recognized the assistance she'd gotten—she only had eyes for her heart's desire, Shining Armor. He slowed, but she didn't. Crashing together, she pressed her cheek to his and tried to hold back tears of joy. "Shiny…"
"You're safe now," Shining Armor felt his own tears leaking down his cheeks and mixing with Cadance's. "I'm pretty much tapped out. Can you take this monster down?"
"Shining! Use your spell!" Twilight called.
For a moment Shining questioned Twilight's choice, but if there was one thing he trusted his little sister with, it was magic. He backed up a little and tried to cast, but even with the rocket fuel that'd gotten him up and mobile and the sandwich he'd gotten from the kitchen, he could barely produce more than a sputtering pink glow.
Unsure why she did it, Cadance leaned toward Shining until their horns almost touched. First a spark, then a rush of magic flowed from her to him. It was like their very hearts linked as their horns did touch, and power started to lift them both into the air.
Shining had no clue exactly what was happening except that Cadance's love was all around him and he was no longer too weak to cast the spell.
For Sweetie, who was wrestling with Chrysalis on the floor, the shock wave hitting her was less like a hammer and more like rejuvenation. All her hurts, all her pain, was blown away in that one instant as Shining and Cadance's magic combined in a blast of love.
The effect on Chrysalis was far different. "No. No!" She felt the wave of pure love like a spear in her side and a hammer in her face at the same time. The worst part was she couldn't feed off it—this love was weaponized.
Sweetie let go of Chrysalis the moment it clicked the magic was doing a number on her. Closing her eyes a moment, she felt safe and protected by the magic, but more intensely she felt a connection to a mare that was somewhere below her—Lyra.
All around the room ponies were thinking warm thoughts of those they loved while changelings were being revealed and catapulted out the windows. The sphere spread through the city, instantly halting all the fighting that was going on between invaders and Guardponies.
For the first time in his life, Shining Armor shared Cadance's magic. They were at the center of the burst, but even as he focused as much as he could on Cadance, he could feel the love in the hearts of every pony in the city.
The heat of all that love made Shining realize how important it was to protect and fight for. With their own magics swirling around them—a combination of his shield and her love—he felt at once whole and perfect.
"Shiny?"
He had to open his eyes to look at Cadance, but Shining immediately felt doubly blessed for doing so. "Cady?"
Cadance had an idea and was not going to let herself be dissuaded. "I want us to get married by the end of the day."
"You're not going to budge, are you?" When Cadance shook her head a little, Shining chuckled. "Yeah, didn't think so. Uh, how do we get back to the floor?"
"You think I know how this works?" Tilting her head forward, Cadance kissed Shining. "Oh, that got it."
"So we can fly by kissing?" Shining asked. "I think I could learn to appreciate this new skill."
Cadance, her heart now reinforced by the presence of Shining, took this moment to take stock of the room. There was still a second Shining Armor on the dais, looking a little confused. Twilight and her friends were cheering with a bunch of Guardponies. Beside her and Shining, Sweetie Drops was getting up from where she'd been wrestling Chrysalis, still with some traces of green changeling slime on her. Finally, though, was the big green pony who was doing a very good job of trying to look regal despite being covered in slime.
Realizing who the big green pony was, Cadance felt secure enough in the situation to inject a little levity. "Will anypony explain to me what happened here?"
Celestia opened her mouth to reply, but realized Sweetie probably had a better grip on the full topic. It would also give her a chance to get cleaned up. "Excuse me, niece, I'm sure you can keep Equestria together for an hour?"
Everyone paused their own conversations to watch as Celestia—bedecked with a mane and tail that drooped around her—left the room. Then all eyes turned to Cadance.
"Your Highness," Sweetie Drops said, "do you have any orders?"
Caught in a moment of surprise, Cadance turned to look at Sweetie in complete confusion.
"Cady, this is the moment where you get them to clean the hall up and get ready for your wedding," Shining said, gently bumping Cadance with his foreleg.
Eyes widening, Cadance's smile grew wide enough to scare everyone in the hall—even Sweetie. "Alright. Everypony, I want you to all check for residual injuries and magical effects, then I need somepony to organize this hall to be cleaned up and prepared. There needs to be a wedding here in exactly thirty minutes."
Looking up at Cadance, Sweetie gathered herself up and raised her voice. "Listen up! I want anypony medically trained on my right. We need to triage everypony. Any unicorns, once you are cleared, I want you straightening the room up! Do you understand me?!"
It took every ounce of Shining's willpower to resist the voice of a sergeant at full bellow—though he did indulge in mouthing the Yes sir! everypony shouted in answer. When everypony started scurrying around, Shining approached Sweetie. "There's somepony we need to find, isn't there?"
Emotion flooded into Sweetie, and despite all the chemicals she'd abused to perform at her best, there were cracks appearing in her solidity. "Lyra—"
"Wait." Cadance looked from Shining to Sweetie. "When Twilight and I came up from the caverns, there was—I thought they were more changelings."
"Cady?" Shining barely got the word out before he was forced to canter after his wife-to-be. "What's wrong?"
"Lyra, Minuette, and Twinkleshine are still down there!" Cadance's heart felt heavy. To guide her back to the staircase that led underground, she reached to Sweetie's heart and traced the direction of her love down to the depths.
"She's definitely safe," Lyra said. "She had Twilight Sparkle with her. I don't think anything could stand against those two."
"How's your magic, Lyra?" Minuette asked. "Magic returning yet?"
"If she's like me, she'll be about as drained as a unicorn can get. And, what's worse, these crystals are blocking any magic from getting in." Twinkleshine nonetheless had her horn lit—casting reflections and refracted reflections into the crystal around them.
"Yeah. Even with that gunk out of my head, no magic seems to move down here. This is weird. It's almost like Earth before it got magic." Walking around the odd room again, Lyra reached a hoof out to touch the crystal to find where the opening was. She got three-quarters around the chamber before she found the gap. "Here."
"They won then, right?" Minuette asked, walking over to the gap with Twinkleshine and slipping through it behind Lyra. "I mean, that's what it means that we can think again."
Twinkleshine struggled not to shake her head since she was the one providing light. "Not exactly. She could have just discarded us as no longer useful. If she won—and I hate thinking it—but if she did, we're no longer a threat to her."
"She won't win." Lyra tried to remember how they'd wound up in the chamber, though her memory of the fall was a bit hazy. "She can't, not so long as Bonny, Cadance, and Twilight are free."
"I wish I could find somepony I could trust as much as you trust Sweetie."
"You'll find somepony, Minuette. Just keep looking," Lyra said, navigating among crystal pillars and myriad images of Twinkleshine's horn. "Hold on."
"What is it?" Twinkleshine asked, approaching on Lyra's right flank while Minuette was on her left.
Blue. There was a blue glow in the crystal of the next chamber. Lyra had become so used to seeing Twinkleshine's pink/purple glow that she almost hadn't noticed it. "Something's coming. Get behind me, girls, and if it attacks me, try to help."
The three repositioned themselves. Lyra flattened against the wall beside the opening while both her friends found stalagmites to hide behind.
As the sound of hooves could be heard in the next chamber, Twinkleshine dimmed her light down and finally snuffed it out. Now that it was dark, and the creature bearing it had come closer, Twinkleshine could see the blue glow carried by dozens of crystals on thousands of facets.
Sweetie, still wearing her armor and serving as Cadance's vanguard, bore the brunt of Lyra's tackle well. She turned her head to assess her attacker, but had two more unicorns pounce.
Hearing the scuffle, Cadance poured a flood of magic into her horn's light and lit the scene ahead as if it were in broad (blue) daylight. Relief filled her. "Lyra!"
Eyes wide, Lyra stopped struggling with the behemoth she'd tackled and blinked before Cadance's light. "Uh"—she looked down and saw her wife still struggling with the wild attacks of Twinkleshine and Minuette—"Bonny!"
It wasn't that much of a shock to Sweetie to have Lyra hugging her, but at least now her wife wasn't trying to crush her windpipe. Rearing up—dumping Twinkleshine and Minuette on the ground—she wrapped her forelegs around Lyra and hugged her close.
Cadance felt the startlingly potent rush of her own magic in sympathy to Lyra and Sweetie's love for each other. As a result of that, her magic flared and she realized she had the opportunity to try a special kind of healing she'd been practicing. Tilting her head forward, Cadance aimed at the four ponies and let loose with her power.
It should have hurt. It should have at least gotten all three of them magic-drunk. Having her magic reserves go from nothing to boiling over, however, just seemed to invigorate Lyra excessively. She looked up from Sweetie to Cadance and couldn't help but smile at her friend. "Wow. So, uh, did we win?"
"We did," Sweetie said, "but only with you three raising the alarm."
"Us?" Minuette asked.
Twinkleshine let loose with her own light, happy to burn up a little magic to banish the dark further. "It was Moon Dancer, right? She figured out what we were saying?"
Sweetie nodded. "She contacted the Guard, then got Princess Luna involved, and helped us distract Chrysalis."
"Woo!" Lyra let go of Sweetie to hug her friends. Her energy was practically bubbling over and she wanted to hug everypony. "Hey, who wants a quick ride up?"
Sweetie put a hoof on Lyra's back to pin her down. "Lyra, you've never been able to move this many ponies at once. You can't—"
"Just, buckin', watch me. With all this magic, I could teleport Canterlot down just as easily!" Lyra was already building a spell matrix when Twinkleshine tapped her shoulder. "What?"
"Don't teleport us all up. Show me the pattern with the coordinates and I can teleport Minuette up with myself," Twinkleshine said.
Grinning like a maniac, Lyra pushed enough magic into the matrix to make a glowing gold-and-blue version of it hover in the air. "Wait, blue?"
"Cadance, remember? Pew-pew, magic for everypony," Sweetie said.
"Huh, right. Okay." Lyra held the pattern in place while she set about calculating the followups. "You know how to bounce, right? Or, uh, catch yourselves?"
Committing the pattern to memory, Twinkleshine looked a little confused. "Huh?"
"This spell puts you about two-hundred ponylengths above Canterlot. Ugh, forget it. Just cast that twenty seconds after I've gone up, okay?" Lyra was already working on calculations to save her friends. "Alright, one, two, th—"
"Wait!" Minuette reached a hoof up and poked Lyra's horn. "Twinkleshine, you have memorized it, right?" She waited for Twinkleshine to nod. "Okay. Good. I thought we were about to do something really stupid."
Walking into the chamber, Shining looked around at all the mares. "Uh, is everypony okay? What's all the shouting about?"
"Grab on, captain, we're going up! Express ride! Come on!" The moment Lyra felt three ponies touching her—Cadance, Shining, and Sweetie—she said, "Threetwoonego!" and teleported through the crystal, rock, ground, and into the air. "Weee!"
They weren't quite as high up as Lyra had calculated, but that's why she always worked with margins of error. From the moment she appeared above Canterlot, she could feel magic rushing into her again. Of course, having the very firm ground of Canterlot rushing up to meet her was a problem, but it was one she'd long-since solved. When she triggered another teleport, though, it was just her and Sweetie. "Where'd they go?" she managed to shout above the air rushing past them.
"Cadance spread her wings and grabbed"—Sweetie cut short as another teleport spell brought them to just a hoof's width above the ground at the peak of their parabola—"Shining. They're gliding down."
"AHHHHHH!"
Looking up, Lyra spotted Twinkleshine and Minuette. Still filled with magic, she teleported up beside them and juggled the three of them through a double-teleport-landing. Ignoring her friends' continued shouts, Lyra rushed back over to Sweetie and hugged her again.
Setting Shining down, Cadance alighted on the ground beside him and grabbed him up with both forelegs and her wings. "We have to hurry and get everything ready before Auntie can put it off again."
"Do you think she will"—Shining paused speaking to kiss Cadance—"officiate, or should we get somepony else?"
"We'd need a princess, a captain in the Guard or higher, or a city official." When Shining stared at her, Cadance followed up with, "What? I keep track of these things. Technically, it's my job to."
"Sure you do, Cady, sure you do. Okay, so we don't want to talk to Princess Celestia, since she might put it off. Most of the Guard are working in the city right now helping put things back to rights, and city officials are likely all hiding in their bedrooms." Shining mentally ticked off the options. "So, the only other princess is Princess Luna, and last I saw she had a sign beside her that read 'Disturb Me And Feel My Wrath' and I'm the only captain or higher rank in the castle."
Sweetie could feel the weight of a mountain descend upon her. She froze, the fear of some coming event now more serious than when she'd tried to wrestle a queen changeling. "Wha—?"
"Sergeant Sweetie Drops!" Cadance had done her best to sneak over to Sweetie, but as high-strung as the situation was, she doubted her target was surprised. "I hereby grant to you a field promotion to—"
"Jump-step field promotion," Shining said hastily.
"… a jump-step field promotion," Cadance said, picking up the new language with ease, "to captain. This will be a temporary promotion to fulfill a particular duty that only you are capable of."
Staring between Cadance and Shining, Sweetie turned and whispered to Lyra. "Can they do this?"
"Yeah. You, uh, I mean, Captain Sweetie Drops, ma'am, you might want to ask them what they want you to do." Lyra had to struggle not to break into a gale of laughter. She failed after only a few seconds.
Shining created a pink bubble that blocked the sound of Lyra's mirth. "What we need you to do, captain, is to marry us. As a captain of the E.U.P. Guard, you have the ability to marry two willing ponies—"
Cadance continued, "… and we'd rather not wait for Celestia to be free to do it—"
"… in case she says no again?" Sweetie tried to ignore the crazed, silent ball of unicorn rolling around. "Sure. Let's go."
Running inside what amounted to a hamster ball, Lyra tried to keep up with her friends—only to have Shining pop the bubble when she wasn't ready for it. Barely catching herself, Lyra looked around to see if anyone had noticed. "Okay, so what did you need her for?"
"How long will it take you to organize a wedding?" Sweetie asked.
Snapping to attention, Lyra saluted her wife. "Sir! About twenty seconds after I enter the hall, sir!"
"Good, but keep that up and you'll go back in the bubble." Sweetie kissed Lyra's cheek and set off toward the entrance of the castle at a trot. She looked around at the few Royal Guard standing in the entrance, and gave them a nod as she passed.
Minuette and Twinkleshine caught up with Lyra, and the three of them followed after Cadance and Shining—who were themselves following Sweetie. Door after door was thrown open before they reached it until they were at the open doors of the hall again.
"Excuse me, everypony, but if you know anypony who wants to stand witness to this wedding, you better hurry up and get them here. You have—" Turning to Cadance, Sweetie asked, "How long do we have?"
"About twenty minutes," Cadance said, struggling not to be distracted by Shining nibbling her neck.
"You have ten minutes!" Sweetie didn't care who rushed out or in now, she'd been given a mission from a princess, and that meant it would be carried out. Then she spotted Twilight and her friends. "Could you help get everypony seated in time?"
"Do you require the assistance of a seamstress? Those dresses don't exactly look their best." Rarity was on the edge of galloping forward already, and when she got a nod from Sweetie she did just that.
Ponies started making their way inside. None were nobility, though Twilight Velvet and Night Light filed all the way up and were directed to sit in the first row on the groom's side.
In her head, Sweetie counted off seconds for the ten minute deadline. She was at six minutes elapsed when she realized that there was nopony in the front row on Cadance's side. "Twilight, Pinkie?"
Pinkie, as she usually did, almost-but-not-quite teleported over in front of Sweetie, saluting with her left hoof. "Leftenant Pie, reporting for duty!" As she finished the salute, she managed to cross her eyes.
Arriving a moment later, Twilight noticed that Sweetie seemed to be fighting a case of the giggles. "What's the matter?"
"We need some ponies to sit on Cadance's family side in the front row." Sweetie gestured to the empty row. "I know you'd normally be on your brother's side, but—"
Shaking her head, eyes beaming with excitement, Twilight said, "No. It's perfectly fine. I used to think of her as my big sister, when she foalsat me. Besides, Shining Armor has Mom and Dad."
"Cadance and me go waaaaay back. I was planning on sitting there anyway," Pinkie Pie said.
"Wait, what?" Twilight had been mentally shifting gears to get her other friends to sit on the front row when Pinkie's words tossed a spanner into the fine-meshing gears in her head. "You know Cadance?"
"Of course I do, silly. Back when I was living in Canterlot, Lyra, Cadance, Trixie, and me would put on shows. I'm surprised you didn't see—" Pinkie had a moment of flashback, remembering that Twilight had been probably a little young for such things at the time. Not that Pinkie thought she had been too young—she'd been performing after all. "Why don't we get everypony settled and take our seats?"
"O-Of course." Grasping at straws, Twilight let herself be led to the seats and was parked there in no time.
Cadance stood as still as possible for Rarity. The mare worked around her in a hurricane of pins and blue magic to assemble the magically restored dress in place so that it would last for at least ten minutes. When Sweetie cleared her throat, Cadance felt like a billion butterflies had taken up residence in her tummy.
Having just counted off ten minutes, Sweetie was ready. "Everypony, on this most auspicious of days, we are gathered here in the warmth of the sun and everypony who lives under it, to begin and celebrate a new era for Equestria.
"We were gathered here today to defend Equestria, but now are here to celebrate the union of Princess Cadance and Shining Armor." Sweetie Drops paused a moment and looked around. "The rings?"
The doors at the end of the hall flew open, crashing against the walls as three little fillies poked their heads into the room. Scootaloo was wearing her armor—and it was scuffed up like she'd been in a fight. Apple Bloom had a look of determination that could have parted a mountain. Sweetie Belle, more importantly, had a little pillow with two rings sewn to it. "Cutie Mark Crusaders, wedding saviors!"
Giggles followed the fillies up the aisle. Sweetie Belle was prancing, completely lost in her role, while at her flanks Scootaloo and Apple Bloom looked like trained bodyguards—except they sometimes broke into the same prancing gait as Sweetie Belle before slowing down again.
When she reached the dais, Sweetie Belle held up the cushion with her only-slightly-wobbly magic. "We kept them safe!"
It was hard for Sweetie Drops not to fawn at how adorable the trio were, but she promised herself she'd have a long chat with them after making some treats. "Good work." Taking the cushion, Sweetie Drops turned to Shining Armor. "Do you—?"
A shout came from the doorway. Firelance poked his head in and shouted, "Princess Celestia's coming!"
The look of panic on Cadance's face cemented Sweetie Drops' resolve. "Well, do you? Put the ring on her horn."
Shining didn't waste time. Sweetie Drops' tone, as a sergeant-slash-captain, was not one any soldier could ignore. "I do!"
"Cadance, do you?" Sweetie Drops asked.
Grabbing the second ring in her blue magic, Cadance dropped it down on Shining's horn. "Absolutely!"
"Then, as an acting captain of the E.U.P. Guard, I now pronounce you mare and stallion." Sweetie Drops watched the relief in both their eyes melt into pure love as they looked to one another. She was sure they didn't see the shocked expression on Celestia at the doorway, hear the cheer of everypony present, or even notice that the world existed anymore.
Looking into the room, Celestia raised her one visible eyebrow in Sweetie Drops' direction. She'd heard the final speech, including the acting captain part, and could imagine what had gone through Cadance's head and how quickly she'd moved in an hour. Smiling, she stomped her hooves along with everypony else present in celebration.
By the time the party had slowed down it was well past midnight. All the returning civilians and all the Guardponies had joined in with a wedding party that had become a double-celebration.
"How are you feeling now?" Sweetie asked Moon.
Moon Dancer's eye-roll was very nearly audible. "I slept all day and I could probably sleep all night, too. We did it, didn't we?"
"Yeah. This is the kind of madness that I imagine Twilight and her friends go through all the time." The way Moon froze caught Sweetie's attention. "Something wrong?"
"Twilight Sparkle. It's hard to imagine she's the same pony who skipped my birthday party two years back. I found out why she did, in the end. Turns out she had to save the world."
"Ouch. No warning, no apology?" Sweetie asked.
Moon shook her head. "Nope. I keep telling myself that one day she'll remember and come say something. I don't even know how I'd react if she did." She paused, took a sip of her drink, and leaned back a bit to look into the sky. "Can we change the topic from that?"
"Hrmm, what about Stiff Peaks?"
Almost coughing up her drink, Moon Dancer sat upright and looked at Sweetie with accusation in her eyes. "How'd you find out about—?"
"He's a smart stallion, Moon. Once everything was secure again, he started right in on finding out about you. He stopped and grilled me for nearly twenty minutes earlier. In the end I had to order him to dance with you."
"You ordered him? Oh, right, that silly field promotion thing. He was grumbling about that when he asked me." Moon didn't care that she was blushing. Just thinking back to that dance had her feeling excited for their date. "I've never met a stallion who is so quick to learn. I gave him a serve of every obscure topic I know, and somehow he knew a little about each."
"So you're going to date him based on his extensive general knowledge?" Sweetie asked.
"He's also cute."
"You're a better judge of that than me, so I'll take your word for it. As far as I know him, Stiff is a good stallion." Though she remembered how he'd pressure herself and Lyra, Sweetie knew that was part of his job. "What about Princess Luna?"
"I prefer stallions." Delivered with her driest tone, Moon stuck out her tongue at Sweetie. "But what about her?"
"I didn't get a chance to see how she'd fared. Her guards were quite adamant that once I left her rooms, I would not get back in. Apparently I'd told them to do that." Sweetie shrugged. "You woke up along with her, right?"
Moon remembered back to that. Waking up with Luna spreading her magic out to feel what was going on in the castle before the look of the wary warrior left her face. "She was ready for war when she woke up. I think she checked the castle with her magic, then relaxed into just being Princess Luna again."
Pausing to take-in everything, Sweetie finally just nodded. "Princess Luna has a lot going on. She seems to compartmentalize well. Most ponies only see the caring dream Luna, or the nervous new-ruler Luna. Showing a less—a less friendly side of herself says more about how serious she took this."
"And how much she cares. She was ready for war for us." Sweetie looked into the bottom of her glass and drank what was left. "You should find Stiff and dance with him again. He looked like he was a bit rusty."
"Is that an order?" Moon asked, grinning a lot more than she intended to.
"Sure, why not? It's not like you're a member of the Guard or that my rank is a pile of horse apples made up by a princess so she could get married." Standing up, Sweetie started walking back toward the party. "Now, this captain is going to go and break several standing orders with a sergeant."
Stats
Page generated in 0.023 seconds
Total duration
739 users online
882,044 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Well that arc ended well. I can't wait to see what happens next. I am excited for when we get to the point where the Crystal Empire returns.
So this is one of those iterations where no changelings wound up as chunky relish because they happened to be in a windowless room, or a narrow alley, or just anywhere with a solid wall between them and the horizon?
So Shining, (or whoever's in charge of after action review) any prisoners taken?
During clean up, will this be the first timeLyra and or Sweetie meet Thorax or Kevin?
Whew. That chapter hurt so much. I couldn't stop laughing. Fim's notification system is sketchy at best, so I didn't see an update to tracking till I checked my tracker manually.
Reactions:
UPDATE! WOO!
Changeling Wedding! (forgot where we were in timeline) Woo!
Pre-battle shenanigans!
Post-battle butt-kickery and wedding plans!
Lyra going from crushing windpipe to hugs. lol!
CAPTAIN! ROFLMAO! (at this point I stopped cuz I couldn't breathe anymore)
CMC wedding saviors!
Post-Wedding talks and Stiff getting ordered!
And now I need to go lay down. I pulled something in my side, and it hurts.
10892408
Probably, after all, once that bubble starts moving, physics trumps all ...
This was a good chapter and it's nice to see that things are finished with the changelings. I wonder what is next but given the story it's probably going to be good.
Woot! Glad to see this finished. The wait was… oy!
Well, I’d hardly call that exactly the same. I am surprised that Chrysalis was still able to overpower Celestia after switching out her host, but it was only a day or two later. In any case, a messy but undeniably happy ending. Let’s see how long that field promotion holds. I get the feeling it may be longer than Sweetie would prefer.
10898817
Things will be moving on with near-term effects explored. There will be a consequence to Chrysalis having her sippy-cup swapped for a fresh one halfway through her drink.
A new age dawned—an angry age where one mare tries to find somepony she can foist responsibility on. A dark age. A wolf age. Ragnar—Wait, wrong story.
Fun!
"Celestia is coming!" that's what he said. 🙃😂 speaking of all the couples, how is she and Joe coming along?
Sounds like Scootaloo held her own. Nice.