Twilight arranged her first stargazing session with Luna shortly after the near-disaster of the princess's first Nightmare Night. They agreed to meet the next moon to appreciate Luna's craft. In the wee hours of the late autumn darkness, they made a similar arrangement for a moon after that. Then again and again until the sessions became another treasured part of both mares' social calendars. After Twilight got wings of her own, those moonly meetups became a much-needed way for each alicorn to spend a little time as just a pony.
As with so many other things throughout the multiverse, the real problem came when tequila got involved.
A shot glass danced like a concussed housefly wearing a spent lime wedge, wrapped in swaying, flickering magenta magic until it eventually found the side table. Twilight brought her focus back to the stars laid out above Namepending Castle's air chariot platform, sighing as she lay back in her lounge chair. “You know, I’ve come to an important conclusion tonight.”
“Oh?” Luna held back a grin. A drunken Twilight Sparkle was a delight on a number of levels, most stemming from how she refused to admit she was drunk. The exacting care she took not to slur her words, the devastating wit she could not hold back, the tendency to treat anything and everything as though the fate of the world hung in the balance, all of it and more combined to make her as treasured a drinking partner as she was a friend.
“I tried to put it off as long as I could. Deny it, spin it, rationalize it…" Twilight turned to face Luna with a serious expression that usually foretold the doom of some ancient evil. "I just can’t keep up the charade anymore.”
Luna tried to look sufficiently awed and just managed to avoid bursting into laughter. “This sounds quite momentous. Would you rather share it with your friends first?”
“First off, you’re one of my friends." Twilight thrust a hoof at Luna with such intensity that she nearly fell out of her lounge chair. "I don’t want you to feel any differently.”
“You honor me Twilight," Luna said, dipping her head in sincere appreciation. "Truly you do.”
“But I think it’s time to face facts; we need to kill the Sun.”
Luna blinked, stared at Twilight for a time, then slowly panned her head to one of several bottles of Cabrón they’d emptied over the course of the night. The worm seemed to look back sympathetically. “I admit, I am a poor judge of potent drink given my prodigious tolerance. But I believe you have had enough.”
“Hey, hear me out.”
That got a flat look and an equally deadpan response. “I remind you that I have a thousand years of experience in why this is a fool’s errand.”
“I’m not saying we kill Celestia. Just the sun.” Twilight nodded at whatever agave-soaked logic she had yet to share.
“Ah. Well." Luna held back an "of course" for fear that Twilight might see it as permission. "And your reasoning for this vastly saner proposal?”
Twilight pointed up to the star-strewn sky. “Look. Just… just look." She lay back, spreading her forelegs to encompass the night's splendor. "How anypony could see that and fail to appreciate you, I’ll never understand.”
“Would that there had more ponies like you in those days." Luna's smile slipped as she shook her head. "But trying to force them to appreciate does not end well.”
“So we just kill the sun a little.”
Luna sighed. It was so easy to forget how young Twilight was. “You have been fortunate, my friend. Your foes have all been felled by harmony and guile; your hooves remain unbloodied."
"I punched a changeling at the wedding," Twilight said, shaking out a forehoof. "Mostly blasted them, but one got close enough to bite."
"Even so, trust me when I say that death does not come in installments. One slays irrevocably or not at all. It is a line I hope you will not need to cross any time soon.” Luna sighed. Perhaps it was the drink making her melancholy. Perhaps it was the thought of what defending the realm would do to the gentle mare by her side.
“See, that’s where the medically induced coma comes in.”
Luna blinked and chided herself. She really should just stop having any expectations when it came to Twilight. Maybe then that not-as-gentle-as-previously-thought mare would stop surprising her. “The what?”
Twilight beamed and woozily got to her hooves. “The miracle of modern medicine!" She began to pace, picking up speed with every word. "We put the sun in a quiescent state, and just like that, ponies can properly appreciate your work without making it seem like you’re trying for another coup!”
“I see." She didn't, but telling Twilight that couldn't possibly end well. "And how, pray tell, do we put a star into this medical coma?”
“Oh." Twilight came to halt midstride, looking like she'd walked into a wall before turning to Luna. "I figured you’d know.”
“Did you.”
That got a shrug. “It seems like the kind of thing you’d just happen to know off-hoof.”
“Hmph." Luna's lip twitched, but she refused to smile at this particular folly. "I do not know if I am more flattered or concerned by that statement. Regardless, your confidence is, in this case, misplaced. Ne’er have I had cause to send a star into dormancy.”
“Oh.”
"Indeed."
And for a moment, all seemed well.
Then Twilight grinned and lit her horn. “Wanna find out?”
Luna rose, moved to loom over the younger princess—something which was getting less effective with every moon as Twilight's literal growth into her new power continued—and made a point of quashing the younger pony's magic with her own. That too was getting harder. Thankfully, employing an unquestionable tone of voice was not. “Twilight, I say this with all the authority afforded to me: We are not killing the sun.”
Twilight pouted,. “I already—”
“Nor performing any magical experiments on it in the hopes of turning it off, leaving the question of turning it back on entirely unresolved.”
“Fiiiine.” Twilight rolled her eyes, turning away and sulking in a way uncomfortably reminiscent of Luna's own youth.
However, that reminder also served as inspiration for distracting her from the drunken madness. “Would you like to hear embarrassing stories about Star Swirl the Bearded?”
Twilight perked up like a filly being offered a cupcake. “Would I!”
Laughter filled the night. And, blessedly enough, beams of ill-advised magic aimed at the celestial sphere did not.
To me, that combination of prompts screams "video game crossover" but I respect you for going somewhere more clever.
"Well I was going to suggest some potential methods right up until the end there."
"We all know you were going to suggest banishing the sun to another dimension, Professor."
"Genius is never appreciated."
This line made me do a legit double-take at the screen. Seriously, my brain tripped over itself. It was established that Twilight was drunk, but not THAT drunk
Fun fact I’ve had a scene in my head for a while now but alas no coherent story to go with it.
All the reformed villains are having a get together hosted at Twilight’s castle. Discord sets off a running joke about how Twilight isn’t evil enough to be there and she really should go spend the night at one of her friends. Eventually Trixie who has had one too many ciders takes the joke a little too far. An annoyed Twilight lays out her Plan: Eternal Harmony where she lays out several oversights and inefficiencies she spotted in Discord’s, Chrysalis’s and Sombra’s forms of mind control and her own ideas for perfecting the process and turning the entire world into peaceful, strife-less, organized puppets. At the sea of gobsmacked expressions her parting shot is how she’s the one who introduced Oubliettes and Orges to Spike and her friends, and you can’t be a good OM unless you can think like a megalomaniac.
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I stand corrected on D&D lore.
Dweezil.
That is all.
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"How long have they been planning this behind my back, and what do they know? Who was sheltering them? Who are they working for? Maybe Common Foe, I never believed Panopticon really shut him down. It can't be the Witch Finder. Unless he's in on it! Okay breath. Hold it together Cycle, think. Think! The pieces are all there if you can just find the hidden connections... "
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I thought it was shipping. And indeed, it it's crazy-logic way, it was probably flirting. But that gave me a double take.
I thought it was shipping too.
Wow, that second prompt is weird. I guess it's sorta like the sun-killer tales of Aztec myth, or something... I think there's multiple mythologies that involve multiple suns and the killing there of?
I guess it's sorta the thing you say if you're drunk enough to know you're gonna have a hangover, and yet you're still drunk. Trying to avoid the solar wake pain.
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Given all of his contributions to magic, one could never call Star Swirl a one-trick pony, but he definitely had his favorite methods.
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"I'm not nearly as think as you crazy I am!"
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Oh, Twilight's always had the potential to be one of the most terrifying villains Equestria's ever faced. Even putting aside the incident in the comics, she could probably call in her counterpart as proof by association.
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The shiptease was deliberate. There has to be bait before a switch, after all.
Also, regarding Aztec mythology and suns, Malandy's close:
It's clever little things like this that make me love you're writing so much.