The second anniversary of the Return is approaching, and all Luna wants for the celebration is one thing -- something Equestria hasn't seen in more than a thousand years. This could be a problem.
Sun comes down, Moon goes up. Moon is lowered, Sun is raised. Ever since Discord was originally defeated, that has been the pattern, the heart of stability for life in Equestria, a celestial sign that ponies retain the helm.
But Luna remembers what life was like before, and the shards of beauty which could be found in chaos.
With the second anniversary of the Return approaching along with the associated holiday, Celestia wants to know if there's anything Luna would like to do in marking the occasion. And all Luna wants -- is an eclipse.
Other than Celestia and Luna, nopony has seen an eclipse in more than a thousand years.
This could be a problem.
(This story takes place along the general Triptych timeline, several moons before Luna's Lottery Lunacy.)
Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group. New members and trope edits welcome.
It was called brinner, or perhaps dinfast. It depended on which half of the palace staff you asked.
Celestia had carefully dealt with the issues which had arisen from Luna's return, and most of them had been tackled with at least initial joy. Parts of the castle had required redivision or assignment back to their proper owner, while much newer portions, added during the abeyance, needed to be gifted over. Some of the oldest sections wound up being reactivated, rooms nearly buried under a millennium of dust finding their purpose at last. Most of that part had been easy, at least once the sneezing fits finally stopped echoing across Canterlot.
Hiring... that had been considerably harder. Celestia had searched the entire continent in order to find those ponies who could form the new core of the Lunar Guards and staff, ponies who would -- and this had been essential -- be loyal to Luna first. Those intelligent enough to see if anything was wrong with the junior Princess and report to Celestia if they were truly concerned -- but also ponies who would not fall sway to paranoia or internally-sounded false alarms. And that included Celestia's own: she had easily guessed that she herself might be all too prone to take things in the worst possible light for any event with the slightest resemblance to those which had come just before -- it happened. Luna's staff needed the ability to question their leader and determine if all was truly well -- but also to tell Celestia that in their frank opinion, the older sister was being a jittery fool and needed to back off now. Such ponies had been almost impossible to find and Celestia had nearly reached the point where she would have been thankful for a single dedicated companion possessing extraordinary empathy, not to mention reaction time -- but eventually, they had come. They loved their younger Princess -- and loved her more than they did the older one. Luna was surrounded by those who truly cared about her and wanted nothing but the best for that member of the Diarchy. Fifteen moons of interviews to assemble the full staff, and Celestia had collapsed into a single-pony pile of exhausted triumph the night after signing the last employment papers.
But there were smaller problems, and many of those were ongoing. The simple fact that a thousand years had been more than enough time for her to forget what had happened to Luna's internal clock at the moment when before turned into after: that was almost a daily struggle. One sister nocturnal, the other locked into day. Oh, there was overlap to their schedules -- but too much time under Sun made Luna jittery, extra hours beneath Moon put Celestia's teeth on edge. (There had been several factors involved in coordinating the final battle against Discord, and trying to make it happen at a point when they were both fully awake, alert, and could operate near their peaks had not been the least of them.) Only a little time existed when they could truly talk in comfort during each day: beyond that, one had to miss sleep, and that in itself could put a certain tension in their meetings.
Trust. The struggle for Celestia to make herself remember that ultimately, the Nightmare had not been Luna. That she not only loved her sister, forever and always, but could have faith in her. That internal battle was day to day. Sometimes it was minute to minute.
Turning over the Night Court to Luna's charge. It had been a worry. Then a relief, because at least she was rid of the poseurs. Frantic pacing set in when she found out what Luna's distinct lack of public relations skills was doing to the sessions. Occasionally laughter. Mostly pacing.
And at the absolute bottom of a list which, written down, would stretch to Trottingham, one her most devoted student would have far too much fun (as in 'any at all') examining, making more efficient, and aiming for a complete, final, and hopefully not impossible assembly of check marks, was brinner. Or perhaps dinfast.
The sisters had their respective hours naturally intersect for two of their meals. A shared lunch required far too much in the way of lost sleep -- but the first meal for one could easily be the last for the other, and so they spent many of those times sharing a table. However -- Luna's staff insisted on cooking for their own Princess, while Celestia's angrily argued that the Lunar chefs were lacking in experience and would get their hooves and fields nowhere near the Royal China: after all, the sheer presence of so many rookies might be enough to crack it. And since the sisters shared a dining room and neither crew was willing to trek halfway across the castle with food cooling all the way, they used the same kitchen. For those members of their staffs, 'sharing' didn't apply.
The two staffs generally cooperated -- most of the time, at least for those outside the kitchens. But they didn't always particularly like each other. Devotion to one Princess was not loathing of the other -- but their respective loyalties occasionally went to war, and when that battlefield moved across stoves and the typically-short tempers of professional cooks got involved... Well, it was a rare meal when the sisters didn't hear crockery being kicked or pots field-tossed at opposing non-soldiers. The Solar and Lunar chefs didn't share the kitchen: they simply conducted long-term sieges to see who would dominate. Sometimes the Solar forces would advance a few body lengths and get the sauce station back. The next meal would see the Lunar army take command of the garnishes. Trenches hadn't been dug, but it was only a matter of time.
Both Princesses had spoken to their respective staffs about the problem. They had both been ignored. After all, nopony outranked a head chef.
So Celestia's staff, on the occasions when she shared the dining room with Luna, called that first/last meal of the day 'brinner'. Luna's referred to that last/first serving as 'dinfast'. And then everypony ducked.
Celestia tried not to look at the kitchen doors as her ears twitched at the latest crash. Heavy thud. Echo. Lid following. Lots of wong-wong-wong... okay, let's say that was the big pasta boiler. No, having them pay for their own replacements clearly isn't doing a thing...
Luna wasn't quite as devoted to feigning disinterest. "I would say mine are making a push for the pastries."
That got Celestia's attention. "They'd better not..."
Teasing, just a little, "And why not? Follow the clues of your ears, sister -- given the amount of flour used at both, the pasta and pastry stations are sensibly placed rather close together, near the access for that part of the pantry. Take one, and it is but a simple surge to seize the other. I'm certain my crew is capable of following one bold move with another. Unless, of course, you would like to take a personal interest...?"
It was pastries: therefore, it was tempting. But Celestia had somewhat less authority in her own kitchen than she did in the Griffon Republic: the title was largely a courtesy in both, but the cooks were much more likely to laugh in her face, especially given their awareness of her own skills. No amount of time had served to bring Celestia's cooking over the level of the most basic trail food: get a little further down the road, get to another town and most importantly, find somepony to cook for the group who wasn't her. "One supposedly-accidental batch of dough to the face per moon is enough, thank you."
"But they did apologize," Luna pointed out.
"Eventually... once the laughing stopped..." They both listened to an even larger crash, debated for half a minute on what the source had been before finally settling on stand mixer. "Luna -- the second anniversary is coming up in a few weeks."
"I am aware," her younger sister told her. The Summer Sun Celebration was certainly easy enough to track on the calendar -- although it was not the day on which The Return was celebrated. Celestia had decided to create a separate holiday, one Luna could have all to herself -- and so despite the actual timing of the events, the national festivals were held three days after the older scheduled rejoicing. Nopony had exactly complained and Luna had dryly noted that the citizens were generally willing to celebrate anything if they got time off work out of it, openly wondering how long Discord Day would require to find its own greeting cards. "My own staff has been trying to find ways in which ponies might do something other than simply visit parks and have picnics while perhaps one in five hundred at most casually mentions my name in relation to their fun. I have rather frankly advised them to give up. The Ponyville festival will have some sincerity to it and I am certain Canterlot will kiss up to the best of its collective ability, but the rest of the continent will be more concerned with using the time to visit post-Celebration clearance sales."
Celestia sighed. "Luna -- I know it's hard, but we both understood it wouldn't all come back in even two years..."
"We make progress," Luna quietly replied. "At this time last year, for even Ponyville to be somewhat sincere... in all truth, sister, we are farther along than I had believed we would be, at least for that aspect." There was a small smile, and it seemed to be a real one. "I am doing my best not to rush."
Celestia smiled back. "Still, I wanted to ask you... do you have any ideas for this year's celebrations? I know your staff suggested you put in some daylight hours here and there as we got closer to it, get a town or two used to having you around as something more than a distant name or invocation during their vows... but is there anything you personally wanted to do?"
Luna went silent for several seconds, some of which Celestia used for tracking The Siege Of Custard Deep on audio.
Finally, "There is -- something." Luna poked at her sugared hay twists with her right front hoof, not quite making eye contact with Celestia. "Something I have not seen for a very long time... yes, I am aware that is a vast category. But -- something I wish I could see again, even though enjoying it at all in the first place might have been perceived by some as wrong..."
It was hard, watching her sister reminisce about something. It was even more difficult when the words were coming out like that.
Trust. I have to try and trust.
"And -- what's that?" Had the hesitation been too long? Unnatural-feeling? Was there any perceptible hint of worry in it?
Luna looked up from the hay twists, and this smile was a little smaller. "I will show you -- after we eat. Let us not give them extra battlecries based in whose consumer sent away more leftovers..."
They ate. Celestia did her best not to worry. The Lunar kitchen platoon nearly discovered the full range of horrible things which could be done with a mandolin before rallying back onto the offensive with their crème brûlée torches.
Once the plates were taken away and the wounded tended to, Celestia followed Luna through the palace until they wound up in --
"-- the Lunar Courtyard?" Celestia tried not to frown and did about as well with that as her efforts not to worry. "Why here?"
"It is the best place to show you."
The open-air Courtyard was one of those portions of the palace which had been reactivated after the Return. Celestia had never used it during the abeyance and, as with the other areas which had truly belonged to her sister, done everything she could to avoid entering the lost realm. The Solar Courtyard... it had started as a gathering place for festivals, back when Canterlot was so very much smaller and she could get the entire population into the thing without having to worry about any flank bumping against another. These days, it was her press conference area: the gathered corps sat in the perpetual dawnlight and carefully ignored half her words while distorting the rest as Celestia forced herself to only imagine what it would look like if a number of them were to spontaneously catch fire. Luna used her own restored Courtyard for the same function, although she was still getting used to the press. Not as quickly as she insisted they get used to her and Celestia tried to have at least one member of her own staff present at the infrequent gatherings just in case it seemed as if Luna was about to insist somepony go through a very sudden change of address...
It looked strange under Sun. The silver inlays seemed to reflect oddly, and the marble felt too cool beneath her hooves.
Celestia looked up. Yes, there was the Sun in its natural position for the hour. And -- lingering magic, uninvoked for a thousand years and more, traces somehow holding -- producing the faintest poor-quality afterimage of a daylight Moon, nearly lost in the blue of the sky. The former celestial body was real, the latter illusion. Also embarrassing, and Celestia tried to push a number of memories back.
Unfortunately, Luna wouldn't let her. "I have already seen it," her younger sister told her, smiling a little again. "I came into the Courtyard one morning shortly after I was freed. I was curious as what you had done with the place -- it is one of the oldest portions of the castle, and one of the few I had memories for. I had been expecting you to use it for some level of storage. It was pleasant to find it empty and waiting -- but then I saw that." She nodded towards the illusionary moon, no more than a silvery-grey haze in the sky. "I believe the term Rainbow Dash would be all-too eager to use if not in your presence would be 'lame'?"
Celestia decided she was more than entitled to a groan. "The Courtyard needed some way it could be active under Sun, and... while you were --" she always found herself hesitating before adding the word "-- away... I tried out a few things. Some of them were just from boredom. Every forty years or so, I would try out a daylight Moon. Put it in the sky shortly after raising the Sun and see how it turned out. Most ponies never even noticed -- and when I say most, I mean all but a very few. The vast majority of those who even bothered looking up kept thinking it was pegasi playing tricks with clouds. It never looked good and I kept trying it every forty years or so anyway, because that was how much time it took to forget how lame --" the word was accurate "-- the last one was and convince myself that if I tried it again, this attempt would turn out better. I think the residual workings in the Courtyard just picked up on the resonance and planted the illusion by themselves. I came in here when I was getting everything ready again and found it like this." And she couldn't get rid of it. With Luna returned, her always-tenuous attunement to this Courtyard had vanished. "This can't be what you're referring to -- right?" Oh, she hoped not...
Luna shook her head: the stars in her mane twinkled. "Hardly. I remember daylight Moon, Tia. I remember Discord putting both Sun and Moon in the sky at the same time during those years when everypony would look up -- not just to see the state of those two, but in fear of what might fall. He amused himself with destroying any pattern we might have anticipated or hoped for, even the most basic ones which could be used to anchor oneself to sanity. I remember all of that -- but I also remember something else."
Celestia braced herself, hoped it didn't show physically, wished she hadn't done it at all. "And what's that?"
Softly, with more than a trace of shame, "How beautiful some of it was."
Celestia tried to find words.
There was no horror within her at having heard that sentence -- tension still, always that worry she could never completely dismiss, but somehow, the horror had stayed home. And she knew why. It was because the shame which had been in her sister's voice was also in Celestia's heart.
Discord's rule of the land... the only thing it could have been: chaos. Warping. Terror. Endless nightmare. A call to war, a battle for the sanity of everypony there was or ever would be. Something they would have given their lives to stop. More than a few had, and the two of them had emerged in a state of after which could never be taken back.
But there were times...
Random bursts of color across the sky, and hadn't Celestia herself labored to invent and thus bring back fireworks? Waterfalls which flowed uphill. Clouds that chased them without malice, vapor playing tag: touch and then scoot away, all of them laughing as they temporarily gave up the stress of endless battle for a few precious seconds of joy, the pursuit on. Plants which whispered secrets to each other: listen and who knew what might be heard? Sounds coming from no source, but sounds which turned into music -- and some of that music still haunted her own nightscape, even in this age. Symphonies half-caught and never completed, imaginary orchestras playing compositions which she would have given much to hear in a finished state, even just once.
...there were times when the chaos had included in its infinite variety more than a touch of purest beauty.
And all she could do with her sister -- was be honest. Tell the truth about something she could never have admitted to any other pony. "There were moments," she gently said, "when I would just stop and stare at what he had made. I hated living in his world, we all gave so much to take it back for ponies and all the other races he tormented, including the ones he created. But days and nights when I understood that the source of truest creativity and invention might have always been chaos -- the randomness of ideas, elements of thought coming together with no prior connections... I can't say I miss him, Luna --" or at least, she would not "-- especially after what happened some moons ago -- but yes... there were times..."
Her sister pressed against her and they stood together, staring at the half-illusion sky.
"We shall never repeat this to him, correct?" Luna softly asked.
Celestia softly laughed. "I generally don't hold conversations with statuary. And if we're lucky, he's not listening... All right, Luna, I confess: I brought back fireworks myself and -- I learned musical notation just so I could try to capture some of what the Singing Shores had to say. You want to revisit something of his for your anniversary, and you can show it to me here. I'm not upset." And it was a truth. "But honestly -- I don't know which part of his chaos you mean. There was so much..."
Luna smiled, inclined her horn towards the very real Sun. "Watch."
Celestia looked up, stared directly at the Sun, something she'd been able to do since the moment her own after began.
And so at first, she did not see it, because she was looking at the wrong thing --
-- initially.
The Sun lost a bit of itself at the edge.
Celestia jumped, nearly a half of her body length straight back. Luna, laughing, truly laughing, jumped backwards with her. And more of the Sun went away...
There was a shadow pressing in from the side.
Celestia wrenched her gaze in that direction and found -- the Moon. Illusion still, but made so much more real-seeming by her sister's magic, no longer looking like nothing so much as severely-misplaced fog, but true to the eyes: craters, hue, reflection, mass, no detail overlooked. She had to tell herself it wasn't real. She had to keep telling herself that Sun was not in the middle of being eaten, that it was an illusion moving in front of the real and changing as it did so, creating the mirage of shadow, of blockage. And that illusion was spreading throughout the Courtyard as well, the quality of the light shifting, becoming dimmer, enhancing the shadows...
I -- I remember...
The Moon (imagination manifested through Luna's field, she had to keep telling herself that -- and then stopped) kept moving in front of the Sun. The missing edge slice of solar disc grew larger, became majority as the light continued to march towards a strange variety of dusk. The corona of her beloved Sun was becoming visible, an aspect she only knew from science, the most formerly distant of memories, all rushing forward and gathering speed, and her own feel for the orb. She knew the corona was there the same way she knew her own horn and wings -- but --
-- I haven't seen it, not since before...
More and more blocked out. The corona blazing bright and beautiful as Celestia stared at the emerging aura and felt the tears come from her eyes as she finally greeted a friend she hadn't even known she'd been missing. And then -- occultation.
Syzygy.
Totality.
"Oh, Luna," she whispered, not caring about the tears, drops of liquid celebration at a beauty recovered, something she never would have realized she was missing until this miraculous moment. Nearly two years after recovering her sister, the one she had bled for across an ocean of time, and her sibling had given her back something far less precious than presence -- but something that never would have been possible at all without Luna. One more gift found within the worries and concerns and tensions and endless joy which had been the Return. "I had forgotten..."
"This is what I wish for the anniversary," Luna whispered back. "Something neither of us has truly seen since before the war ended, a beauty we lost -- but for it to be real. A celestial representation of the restored Diarchy. For Equestria to look up and see the two of us in the sky together, united, Tia -- brought together as one and merged into a single new creation. And perhaps your very few of ages past will have their descendants look up and understand that -- I have no real hopes for more than a small number -- but the rest will enjoy a moment no pony in a thousand years and more ever had the chance to appreciate. For the second marking of my return, I ask only for this. Will you give it to me?"
And Celestia remembered.
Remembered trotting alongside the others, moving across seemingly endless terrain (and some of that chaos terrain, more dangerous than any wild zone). A shout towards the back, a hoof pointed towards the sky. Bells momentarily jingling as one lost focus at the sight, one of the few things that could do it to him at all. And if it was at all possible, they would stop. They would watch. Somehow, Discord never figured that out, never took advantage.
It had not always happened in relative peace: it had turned up during battles, and the darkening had sometimes helped them. It had occurred while they had rested. During meals. In those moments when they had somehow been led to joy by the one who did it best, those desperate seconds when they'd needed beauty more than anything. Together, they had been through an easy dozen just during the war, far more before they had come together.
But on the day Discord had been defeated, in the earliest part of after -- it had stopped.
She remembered the before, when she had been watching with her friends...
...and for a single priceless moment, then became now.
She heard their voices. She saw them gathered around her. There was generosity and honesty, laughter and kindness and magic. Loyalty, always. And love.
A single moment, no more, where she had them all back again...
...gone.
Then left her. The true now returned, the one which held but two survivors, and the older felt the renewed pain in her heart override the ache which had never truly faded. But it was a welcome pain. The moment had been worth that hurt, and so much more.
Celestia stared at the eclipse, and said the only thing she could have.
Luna regarded Math as her oldest and dearest companion, the friend who would never abandon her, one who had in fact followed her into abeyance to return at her side. Celestia rather more sensibly treated it as an enemy nation which she had waged seemingly endless war against for centuries before reaching what wasn't even remotely a state of truce, where suspect goods would be sent across her borders and every last one had to be relentlessly inspected for taint lest a stealthy strike from the evil which had never surrendered get past her and start the killing again. And worse, Luna knew it -- which meant she would hover (sometimes literally) over her sister during anything which might threaten to erupt into a border skirmish or worse, like a teacher who claimed to be certain that a recalcitrant student had finally come to grips with the subject matter... but it still wouldn't hurt to check the work.
"I work better without you watching me."
She could feel the smirk from overhead. "You have never proven that." The clicks of abacus beads added extra punctuation to the sentence. "Let us review while I still can -- if we push this much further into the day, I will be in lesser shape to begin again just before sunset. We know Sun and Moon can share a sky together without doing harm: Discord proved that himself time and time again, and your own experiments with a daylight Moon showed it was not his influence keeping damage from being done."
Celestia nodded. "The tides are thrown off somewhat, but that seems to be it. And we've never exactly been a seafaring species -- but I did post warnings to the few who venture out after the first time. At least those weren't ignored..."
More beads clicked, and Luna frowned at a scale model of the continent she'd had brought in for the occasion, an ancient battle-map which was occasionally updated for new settlements and failed ones reverted back to wild zones. Her field shifted a single golden bit which she had been using as a substitute for Sun. "Viewing angle is going to be an issue. Totality will only be visible along this path." A glow highlighted a width of ceramic land. "Discord may have felt content with allowing Sun and Moon to careen about the sky like unbalanced hoofballs, but you have kept a single trail consistent since you took your half of the throne. As much as I would wish all of Equestria to enjoy the spectacle, this does not seem to be the time for disrupting that level of constant..."
Celestia glanced at the model and allowed her own field to move the ancient silver piece (a metal memory from the first postwar days of after, when the coin had been struck for each ruler) which she was using for Moon. "Agreed -- and it brings up a problem. Most of our efforts are in raising and lowering: the motion itself maintains on its own once that's done. I ran a few very mild experiments in acceleration and holding back over the centuries... it's possible, but doing it for too long... I think that has a good chance to exhaust us. And we're agreed that we just can't raise them at the same time and let the eclipse travel across Equestria in constant totality -- half the fun is in watching the stages of approach and departure."
Luna nodded. "And having to repeat the eclipse in each place would leave at least one of us almost constantly speeding and braking. You could keep the Sun steady while I did the work with the Moon -- but to do so throughout a full day of waking -- no, I do not feel I would reach sunset on my hooves. We would need to switch off every so often. And even if that did not leave us both half-collapsed among the citizenry while covered in froth, it could render the eclipse into more of a back-and-forth stuttering. That seems to sacrifice some of the majesty..." She sighed. "My grandiose dream is being rather limited by reality. I can envision us doing it in a few places along the band of best sighting, but not all." Her little substitute Sun moved again, spinning from heads to tails as it shifted across the false continent, coming to a stop over the tiny Canterlot, which was well within the band of glow. "With your normal route... yes, the path of visibility certainly comes here: the capital will get to enjoy it. And of course if Canterlot can see, then Ponyville shall as well. The seats of power and the first place I came to after the Return... appropriate. But where else should we --" She yawned, then looked embarrassed for having done so. "-- my apologies. We have been working on this for some time."
"I'll put some more work into it during the Day Court break," Celestia promised. And then she would hide her scratchpaper so Luna wouldn't make any attempt to grade it. "Go ahead and --" she paused as another memory tried to come forward "-- actually, wait... Luna, maybe it's just me, but before, weren't they a lot -- harder to look at?"
Her younger sister frowned again. "Yes, they were... oh, what was that thing we used to use..." Her front hooves clapped together: the little burst of thunder was almost coincidental. "Yes! Quartz! Smoke-ensorcelled quartz! I am certain we can find the method for manufacturing the lenses somewhere in the Canterlot Archives! There would have been no reason to --" and all of her enthusiasm nearly vanished into the gap between words "-- misplace it."
There was a brief silence while they both pushed those memories back into the abyss where they belonged.
"It's in there," Celestia assured her. "We just haven't had need of it -- and that brings up another problem, Luna." She sighed. "Even if you and I spend our spare time working the enchantment ourselves and recruit virtually everypony who can learn it to assist us... well, quartz is common enough, but quartz appropriate for those glasses isn't, and I haven't exactly had a reason to stockpile it. Given the deadline, I know we can't make enough of the things for all of Equestria. One city -- and if that city isn't too large, we might be able to include a town -- best-case." Another sigh. "I'm sorry. I asked you this question too late."
"I could have brought it up earlier," Luna told the older sibling. "No blame, sister, for either of us. Ideas come when they come. All right -- so it will not be a nationwide spectacle, not for this holiday. Only a select group shall see the first eclipse in more than a thousand years -- and given that, I choose that it will be Ponyville and Canterlot."
"Agreed," Celestia said, and was glad it hadn't been Manehattan. "Now go to bed?"
"Not quite... I do want to schedule one more thing."
Celestia glanced up. "Which is?" And was glad to hear no worry riding within the words.
"You and I are the only ponies who remember them at all, Tia -- Cadance is too young. Nopony else knows what they look like. Given that we will be distributing the glasses first, it is not as if we can spring it as a complete surprise on both regions. And the two of us remember them as special: something we could use for heart's relief during the war -- but nor do any other ponies have recollections of the battle or knowledge of how desperately we needed even the smallest of rests."
"True..." Celestia mused, and there was much in the slow exhalation which ended the word. "So?"
"Let us conduct -- I believe the term is 'a sneak preview'. You locate the appropriate notes in the Archives, learn the proper feel, and work on a few of the glasses during your spare time today. Leave the papers for me, and I will do the same overnight. That should give us enough stock to gather some from both our staffs and let them watch an illusionary eclipse in the Lunar Courtyard. But there will be no explanation of what is happening -- just that we have a surprise for them and the glasses are part of it. Once we know how they will react to an eclipse which they were not prepared for in any way other than protection of sight, we may know what we have to do with the rest of the viewing populace."
Celestia tried not to shrug and nearly made it. She didn't see the point of the experiment. Eclipses were beautiful. Anypony would recognize that on first sight, even when that sight truly was the first. But a small portion of bringing it back at all was to allow her sister the indulgence, and giving over a simple first test easily became part of that. "Well, swearing them to secrecy will be easy enough. All right -- shall we say tomorrow after breakfast?"
"Assuming there is enough left of the kitchen to create breakfast, yes," Luna dryly replied. "Until tomorrow, sister --" Stopped. Looked down. Smiled. "-- and thank you."
"Thank you, Luna. For the memory, and all that came with it..."
They nuzzled. Luna left. Celestia began to put the model away.
Trial run... it still felt like unveiling a masterpiece before the official gallery opening. But really, what harm could it do?
The sisters looked over the wreckage in the Lunar Courtyard.
'Scattered' seemed like too weak a word for what had happened to the benches. Celestia would have liked to go with 'decimated', except that Luna had a virtual allergy to the word and would huffily insist that since far less than nine in ten remained upright, it didn't apply here.
They could still pick up the echoes of the screams and shouts moving back into the castle. Those who had made a break for the outside were now mostly beyond hearing, although hopefully not past being intercepted.
Celestia sighed. "I am so sorry."
"Sister, it is not your fault..."
"I should have seen it coming."
"We both should have. We were so focused on the beauty..."
They simultaneously looked up at the illusionary eclipse. It had not achieved totality. Luna had halted progress at the moment the riot began, which had been a mere six percent in.
A long silence rested on one of the few upright benches and patiently waited for something to happen.
"However," Luna added, "I do feel that the screams of 'She's trying to take over again!' were rather hurtful."
Celestia did everything she could not to grind her teeth and still failed. "They are so fired."
A long sigh. "Sister, ultimately, it was only a few among your staff."
"I don't care. They're still fired. I never should have brought in the chefs."
"A reward for not fighting over the duration of a single meal did seem to make sense at the time."
"But they set some of the others off! I didn't think any of them would react like that! And when they scrambled for the exits to 'Spread the word! She's enthralled the Princess! Summon the Element-Bearers! Get an army!'..."
The sounds of distant shouting within the palace seemed to be growing louder.
"The others did make a valiant attempt to stop them before they escaped to begin the counter-revolution."
Wearily, "That they did."
"A pity that it failed."
"Yes."
"I had no idea mere chefs could break an emergency shield so well."
"I'm going to blame the placement of the garnish station."
Much louder.
"So," Luna said, "do you also think that what we are now hearing is the approach of the very slightly more prone to panic breed of Guard?"
"Oh, yes. Given the hour, more likely mine than yours."
"And they will attempt to arrest me."
"Us, actually. Since I'm enthralled. And an attempt to arrest would be for starters..."
And closer.
Celestia took a deep breath. "Any ideas on how we're going to talk our way out of this?"
"Given that you are supposedly enthralled and would thus support my suit no matter what? Not a one, sister. I am somewhat in favor of rendering them all unconscious and then sorting it out."
"How long do you think we have to come up with another option?"
Luna's ears twisted, oriented on the largest crashes. "About fifty seconds."
Fifteen of them passed.
"Luna?"
"Yes?"
"I still want to do this."
"As do I."
"We just need to make sure ponies are -- educated."
"That may be what you and your staff claim, Princess Luna -- but can you prove for the innocent victims --" The reporter stopped herself, indulged in a slight chuckle which made the broken scales on her flanks quiver. "I'm sorry," she lied, "I meant innocent citizens of Equestria that you do not in fact have the power to enthrall a pony?"
It was the next day, and less than an hour away from becoming next night. The sisters had chosen to use the Lunar Courtyard for this press conference, marking one of the very few times they'd faced the hordes together. (Luna had put a first-class imaginary Moon in the day sky, one that looked exactly as it should for the largest and fullest Moon in Equestria's history. Perhaps six reporters had bothered to notice, and only two had written anything down.) Celestia was doing her best to remain silent during Luna's answers, not wanting to create any public impression of her overriding half the throne's words -- or authority. Not that some of the ponies in front of them wouldn't make it up anyway, but... when the questions came like this, she wound up perilously close to biting her own tongue. Celestia was all too aware that her sister, when under pressure, was capable of saying anything -- along with the fact that 'saying' could be the least of it.
And it really wasn't a good time to imagine field-clutched (and generally ignored) notepads catching on fire either. Just in case her subconscious suddenly decided to take her seriously.
The tension was visible in Luna's body: the planting of her hooves and width of the stance, the way the stars in her mane grew brighter while the borders twisted more rapidly. She still hadn't calmed down completely from the previous morning's fight -- which had been quick: the Guards had, even with their training, still made the same mistake most combatants did. They saw horns and moved in to stop magic first and foremost -- which in this case had left them rapidly defeated by an arsenal of pegasus techniques. A quick battle -- but not yet even remotely forgotten, and the cries which had led to it might have still been echoing in her ears. Celestia had tried to tell her that they had been stupid words spoken by extremely stupid ponies. ('Extremely' had been understated by several magnitudes.) It hadn't helped as much as she'd hoped.
"I have already told you: I cannot," Luna made herself continue. "As with all who work unicorn magic, my signature is unique and cannot be replicated." A minor lie: there were ways to distort a signature, but it required the caster to possess a field dexterity score at the outermost range of the Luna Meter (Adjusted) chart -- which both sisters did. However, a distorted signature, even combined with a field hidden from sight, still left behind traces for feel to pick up, and so... "Princess Celestia was examined by the best magic detectors Canterlot had to offer -- and thus, the best in the realm. They did not record so much as a single thaum of my workings upon her."
Celestia forced herself not to sigh. That process had not been fun. In order for her to truly be inspected, she'd had to bring herself down to a personal state of magic-null so as to avoid any chance of confusing the reading. (No matter how the visuals might appear, as siblings, their signatures were very close.) Going null was an easy process for most unicorns: just cancel any workings that might have been in place, then leave the field off for a few minutes. But in their mutual after, magic rode with them in casual manifest at nearly all times: only total exhaustion or a very deliberate, extraordinarily difficult effort could temporarily negate it. An effort she hadn't had a reason to make for generations.
The inspectors had been the first ponies in over two centuries to see her actual mane and tail. If she'd had any personal power to enthrall, she would have considered using it on the spot to make them keep their silence. As it was, a glare -- one that was, in retrospect, somewhat harsher than it should have been -- had been enough.
"So you could have stopped doing it long enough for the inspection and then resumed!" the reporter challenged, clearly enjoying herself just a little too much. "Still not proof, Princess!"
Luna took a very slow breath. Several ponies around that one quasi-journalist automatically moved in such a way as to create a blast zone radius. "Very well. Apart from assuming that in such a ridiculous scenario, my residual traces were somehow not detected and Princess Celestia would not use her moment of freedom to alert everypony around her --"
"-- all of whom you might have enthralled right then and there to stop her!"
"...may I have your name, please?"
"...come again?"
"Your name. I am aware that you are from the Murdocks Press Corps. With your mark, you could hardly be associated with anypony else. But this is your first time at a royal press conference, is it not? At least for one where I am in attendance?"
The mare smiled. There should have been points on her teeth, and it was a pity that there were not. "I do generally go to the Solar Courtyard, yes. My name is Wordia Spinner, Princess Luna, and it is a pleasure to introduce myself to the junior throne. Now -- if you would provide the proof I had asked for?"
"Actually," Luna slowly said --
She's smiling. I know that smile. One dragon had that smile as the last thing she ever saw. Celestia prepared to counter.
"-- now that I think about it, I rather agree with you, at least in part."
Ms. Spinner blinked. "I'm -- not sure I understand you, Princess." Certainly not in that Luna might be about to agree with her, much less admit to having enthralled Celestia -- and the later would have emptied the Courtyard in seconds, not so much from ponies rushing to file stories as a desperate attempt to flee for their lives while trampling as many rivals as they could along the way.
"You clearly believe the power to enthrall would be a danger. Now, such a personal spell has never been recorded in the Canterlot Archives. It is generally only found in the realm of fiction, although I believe it makes the occasional break for it and takes a vacation in the lands of conspiracy theory. But if such a spell did exist, a danger is exactly what it would be. And so I will not release a single pony from this Courtyard tonight until every last one of you has proven that you cannot enthrall anypony. Ms. Spinner, you shall go first."
More blinking. It seemed to be the only way of indicating desperation she had. "But -- how do I do that?"
"An interesting question," Luna allowed. "So to help answer it, I will sacrifice -- at least potentially -- the safety of my own mind, knowing Princess Celestia is standing by to help me should all else fail. You shall attempt to enthrall me. If you cannot, you may leave the Courtyard once the conference ends."
"Wait..." Ms. Spinner was having some trouble with the concept. "I can't enthrall anypony..."
"Prove it."
"...how?"
"You are a unicorn. Use your field on me. See if enthralling occurs. If it does not, I would simply say 'I am not enthralled' and release you." Luna's smile grew slightly wider as she tilted her head slightly to the right, much as if greeting an idea which had just arrived. "Of course -- if you could enthrall me, that would be the very first thing you should make me say..."
The logic bomb landed in the direct center of the theoretical blast radius and detonated, taking out the query and every member of the variation family, leaving behind only an orphaned ellipsis to carry on.
"...withdrawn."
Luna nodded, granting permission for the virtual corpse to be removed from the battlefield. "If you must. Incidentally, if I could enthrall ponies and make them do whatever I wished, a number of you would be asking much more intelligent questions..." And looked to Celestia.
The older sister took the helm and was thankful for the chance to speak, as it kept her from publicly applauding. "Other than explaining yesterday's events --" the non-summary nearly stuck in her throat "-- we asked you all here tonight to attend a demonstration and serve the public in the typical manner of your profession." She was going to be washing the taste of that sentence off her tongue for days. "We are going to show you an illusionary version of what the true eclipse will look like. As this still involves manipulation of light, you'll all need to put the glasses we provided for you on and yes, we're going to collect them again afterwards. After that, we'll explain everything the eclipse will and will not do. There are effects: tides will be slightly altered and may be slightly higher in some regions. The glasses are essential to protect vision, and I certainly hope you will convey the absolute necessity of wearing them for all observers. But as for what it does not do... it does not permanently block or excise Sun. It is fully incapable of damaging plants or animals: there's less loss of light than would be experienced during the harshest thunderstorm, and animals won't look at it on their own." A distant memory recaptured. "If you'll take a quick look at the one-sheet you were given when you entered..."
Celestia counted the ones who did. About twenty percent. Down from her last solo press conference and sure to drop further in the moons to come.
"...you'll see that the period of totality will only last about eight minutes. Long enough to appreciate and record... then gone until the next anniversary celebration, by which time we should have enough glasses to bring it into more of the settled zones. Now, I do ask that you describe the eclipse for your readers in the strongest detail I know you're capable of giving." Cleansing her tongue with sorbets for moons. "You may take pictures as well to show the stages, but I'm asking you not to do a frame-by-frame photo spread -- let the full process come as a surprise to the viewers. Ultimately, fillies and gentlecolts, what we're asking you to do is spread the word. We want everypony in the realm to know exactly what an eclipse is. You'll do what you do best -- convey the news in truth and accuracy."
There might not have been enough sorbet in all the world.
Celestia nodded to Luna, needing a break before the words turned any fouler in her mouth.
Luna's field exerted, surrounded and moved the model of the continent they'd been using during their calculations. "The demonstration will be in two stages. First, a miniature, which will leave the ceramic as unharmed as the land will be during the real. Something small, to allow you that first glimpse of the concept in action. After that, the Courtyard itself shall experience the illusion. We will take more questions -- and then to your printing presses for the fulfillment of your duties." A reporter from the Trottingham Gazette flashed his field twice: Luna nodded to him. "Speak."
"Princess Luna -- it says here on the one-sheet that you and Princess Celestia went through eclipses yourselves, correct?" the member of the for-now twenty percent asked.
"Many," Luna confirmed.
"What was the general time of separation between the events?"
That got a small frown from Luna. "It was the age of Discord's rule, citizen... he was not one for reliable schedules. Sometimes there would be several moons between them. Three in a day was the most we ever saw. The reason for your question?"
"Just wondering about recovery time for any of those small effects -- but if they were that frequent at any point and we're here to listen, I think we're okay. Thank you."
Another horn flashed: Luna inclined her own towards it. "Garoun Charger, your Highnesses, Canterlot News Networkers." One of those who attended Luna's conferences: Celestia hadn't seen him before, and thus the introduction. She would have remembered the frazzled grey-white mane and hangdog eyes. "How are ponies supposed to get used to this idea? Even a temporary blockage of Sun... the concept itself might be enough to do harm for a very few."
Celestia and Luna exchanged a subtle side glance mastered over decades, unnoticed by all spectators: Celestia won. "We have ponies faint when bunnies stampede through the streets, Mister Charger. There will always be ponies who panic no matter how harmless things are -- once the glasses are donned -- or how well we explain things to them. It's their first resort and for some, nearly the only way they deal with things at all. I haven't allowed Equestria to sit in eternal stasis for more than a thousand years because somepony would always be terrified of the new. We're always going to try the different when we can: it's how we advance as a nation. For those who are scared no matter what we do -- all I can say is 'Please don't be'. And if you still don't feel you can take the stress of the eclipse, remain indoors. Nopony has to look if they don't want to. But they will miss something special."
The reporter nodded. "Still -- if this is going to be an annual event on any level -- getting used to it..."
Another glance: Luna took the skirmish. "You wish for ponies to become accustomed to eclipses?" Another nod. "Very well -- then I give you the chance, Mister Charger. Starting now, should I need to host a press conference during the day, the Lunar Courtyard will exist in a state of eclipse throughout that gathering -- and that will continue from this point forward. We may hold a few between now and the holiday simply to update you on the state of glasses inventory, along with allowing you that opportunity."
Garoun Charger swallowed. Three times. "...Princess Celestia?"
"It's not my Courtyard," Celestia smiled. "Actually, Mister Charger, we're going to let you keep your glasses. I think you're going to need them. Now if everypony will direct their gazes and cameras at the model -- no need to shield your eyes for this scale, my little ponies -- we'll begin."
Most newspapers labored throughout the night and published their editions just before the Sun was raised. Celestia generally managed to get the first copies off the press, nearly all of which had to be paid for out of the palace budget. Only a few publications bothered to send her free ones and the Murdocks Press Corps, asked about a special delivery for the Princesses, had printed them their very own edition -- one where the only difference between theirs and the standard was the price. Regular pony: four-tenths of a bit. Celestia or Luna: five thousand, payment in advance, no Royal Vouchers. She'd teleported the delivery pony back herself along with a note reading Delivery Refused which came with seven pounds of legal notation attached.
(Celestia had never seen Murdocks himself. She knew how old he was, where he had been born, the fact that 'he' was the right pronoun to use -- basics. Beyond that, the publisher hid from all inquiries, sent ponies to speak for him in legal matters, and bribed others not to speak, mostly with counterfeit bits which he always claimed had been passed into his possession without knowledge. She was becoming very curious for a look at his face, mostly so she could put it on a dartboard.)
She'd sent a member of her staff out to gather as many different publications as could be found, and to preferably do so before the Luna-sent counterpart finished the job. And now she was speed-reading. Also speed-tooth-grinding, speed-sighing, and speed-dartboard-trajectory-plotting...
...and there was the scream.
Too late.
Luna flew into the room. She had flown into a rage before ever getting there. "What is wrong with them?"
"Luna..."
"I was there! You were there! I had two of my staff write down every word everypony said so that there would be no chance of error in the record for what had truly happened!"
Celestia sighed. "Luna, it's about sales..."
Her sister wasn't going to be slowed down by four words any more than she had by one. "We told them it might have some small effect on the tides! Raise the water by an extra amount which would perhaps cover me from hoof to ankle! And what do I read? 'Both thrones admitted there was a measurable chance of having the seas rise and flood the coasts'! Yes, it is a measurable chance! I am perfectly capable of measuring zero!"
"...I can probably get them to print a retraction..." In small print. Microscopic. Perhaps with one tiny letter inside the loops of every other larger one. In reverse order. Read the entire paper backwards under the strongest magnifiers available and discover nopony had bothered to sign the non-apology.
Nine didn't stand a chance either. "'With the so-called protective glasses only tested by a few, the real safety granted by the Discord-inspired devices is unknown...' They tested them! None of them were hurt! You even caught the one who tried to take them off halfway through just so he could undoubtedly sue the thrones for his self-inflicted injury! And then we get into more invocations of Discord and chaos and the implication that surely we have fallen to his influence in order to bring forth such madness! It must be him, since we did at least manage to prove that we have no capacity to enthrall each other... He is laughing within his stone shell, sister: I can almost hear him now. Or perhaps he has placed at least some part of himself outside it, let that portion form a pony body, and named it Murdocks!"
At which point even Luna needed to take a breath.
Celestia flew up a few feet, gently placed her right front hoof on her sister's right shoulder. "Luna, some of them feel fear will sell better than calm for every edition. I made the press free and several immediately assumed that included the freedom to purposefully distort -- a number which only increased over the years. But not everypony takes them seriously."
Luna sighed, hovered in place, let the paper drop from her field. Several pages were coated in thin layers of ice. "A more than sufficient number do. One is too great a tally..." Downcast in midair. "Explain to me again why a free press is a good idea?"
"I would if I could remember," Celestia dryly replied. "And no -- no matter how much you insist, we still can't have a government-sponsored newspaper: the mere idea makes me feel like we'd be doing something wrong. They watch each other, Luna. Some distort, some at least try to tell the truth, and a very few are nearly readable, at least for short stretches before the editorial corruption sets in."
They both took a moment for not thinking about a certain Gabby Gums. (Luna had escaped that one. Celestia was still trying to get her field on the entire print run.)
Another sigh. "Then why even have the press conference, if the distortions were the inevitable result?"
Celestia smiled at her, went back to floor level: her sister reluctantly followed. "Because it's the only way to find out what the distortions would be. We have the lies -- and that means we can answer them. I can't think about having my own newspaper without feeling as if I'm about to develop a very unique facial tic -- but the government does publish. All we need now is a more comprehensive one-sheet -- something that answers all of these charges and gives out the truth. And then we run off enough for everypony in the realm and make sure they all at least pretend to read them. For Canterlot and Ponyville, we add public meetings. Maybe revive the post of town crier: at least they were somewhat accurate... It'll be fixed in time for the eclipse, Luna. We won't get everypony: we never can. Some will refuse to read, or listen, and all they'll ultimately pay attention to is the voice in their head. But even those are going to be wearing glasses. If the Guards have to strap them on... well, I can put up with a few accusations of cruelty from having the horrible pressure of the bridge over a snout in exchange for not having any ponies blinded, even for the ones who did it to their willingness for seeing the real before we ever reached them."
Luna took another breath, a much slower one, settled her feathers back into place and waited for her tail to stop twisting. "We proceed?"
Celestia closed her eyes and thought about the upcoming eclipse -- but only for a second. Ever since Luna had made the demonstration, Celestia had found herself thinking about eclipses in general. Ones in that distant before, receding more with every passing year.
A before which seemed so much closer now.
As did those who'd watched them with her.
"Just try and stop me." Celestia deliberately stepped on the Princess Plot: Equestria At Risk headline as she headed for the door. "We've seen the worst of it now, Luna..."
And with the majority of her attention on before, she never stopped to question whether she should have said that aloud.
There were three to five of them. They refused to count themselves. It was more secure that way.
It may be best to describe them by what they would, should they be so unfortunate as to be captured by what was now clearly completely untrustworthy authority, insist they were not. They were certainly not former employees of the palace who had worked as head chef and line cooks. They had not been fired by a very tight-lipped Princess Celestia for inciting a riot during the first eclipse demonstration. Surely the ponies who had tried to escape and warn the populace before the Guards caught up and dragged them back were coincidental near-twins: it was a big continent and there were only so many color combinations possible, right? Or there were enemy agents operating in disguise in order to ruin the good names of completely innocent ponies. But those ponies were not them. However many of them there actually were.
Yes, they were most certainly not former line cooks and a head chef. They could see no way for others to prove that they ever had been, at least not if the group was careful. In their minds, the fact that they referred to each other by code names like Saucier and Chef were no clues at all, which should tell you rather a lot about their minds.
And surely nopony in the world would understand why they were certainly not referring to the group as -- well, we'll get there. Nopony except -- the enemy.
"So we're agreed?" said the one who was not Chef, at least not in a way that still had a royal pay stub attached.
"Of course," said one who was not even remotely (truly, at all, in any way) a pony called Saucier and therefore established the minimum number. "Me, I never thought she changed at all. She proved she had evil left in her the first time she came into the kitchen."
"She did? Why didn't you say anything about it?"
Another -- fortunately, nopony else was listening to start an outside count, because that would have brought them to four -- snorted. "Because every time he says anything that isn't 'Yes, Chef!', you scream at him for twenty minutes."
"Shut up, Sous."
"Yes, Chef."
"So how did you know she was still evil, Meat?" (Incidentally, holding on four.)
"Because she came up to me and directly asked why we had a meat station."
"And what did you tell her?" emerged once the group gasps of horror and shock had died away.
"That we had visitors who were carnivores and omnivores. Delegations from some of the other nations and intelligent races. And that as a pony with the unique mark for preparing and serving meat --"
"A mark you should have covered before you came here tonight! You're too distinctive! There's one pony in Equestria with a sizzling steak on their flanks, and he's standing right in front of me!"
"-- oh, but I can always claim somepony else painted that mark on themselves..."
"No, you can't," said the youngest, who might or might not have been the actual Saucier. "Attempts to cover marks with anything except clothing always wear off quickly."
"What do you know? If you knew anything real, you'd be on another station!"
"I know about concealing marks. And why you can't."
"Fine. Just to shut you up, I'll wear -- pants."
"You don't own pants."
"Then I'll wear my cook's uniform!"
Calmly, "But I thought we can't afford to go around looking like we're cooks."
"...look, she's evil because when I told her why we had a meat station, she said 'Very well, but I do not have to like it'! She doesn't like meat!"
"You don't like meat. Nopony likes meat," pointed out Saucier, who certainly would have been recorded at the bottom of the counter-revolution's rankings if only anypony in the world outside their circle had been privy to such secret information. (To their leader, the rankings were obvious: there was a Chef and there was Scum. Scum did the vast majority of the actual cooking.) "You can't even taste your own dishes."
"How is that even a point? She doesn't fully accept the meat station! How is that not evil?"
"And not only that," said Chef, who had fifteen years of cooking qualifications in order to not have that name and had dropped out of real school in his third year because he had convinced himself no other form of knowledge was important, "she's -- a mare."
The group went silent for a moment.
"Mares are weak," said Sous, who hadn't made it through his fourth year.
"Mares mess everything up," claimed Meat, who had walked by a school once, right up until the moment he'd realized what he was passing and accelerated into full gallop before any of the evil learning could get him.
"Mares can't cook," declared Chef with the confidence of a stallion whose typical response to being questioned about anything was the permanent removal of that doubt from his life, generally without bothering to open the door first. "And that makes them weak ponies who mess everything up. They will never be true chefs. Everypony knows that."
"My mother cooked for me," Saucier said.
Chef glared at him. Normally, Saucier would have been out the door by now, even if doing so left a pony-shaped hole. But there were so few of them (however many there were), and they couldn't afford to lose a single pony, no matter how blatantly stupid and corrupted by non-cooking knowledge he was. Assuming he was a 'he'. Which they all were. Because mares self-evidently shouldn't be in professional kitchens. "That's not real cooking."
Saucier took a deep breath. "The head of the Lunar brigade is a mare."
"Yes, and that's my point!" Chef shouted. "A mare was hired! To cook! Ahead of qualified stallions! How does that not prove evil in every way? We were all there when it happened and we let it happen just because she's in charge of -- things which aren't important!" (Any part of existence which wasn't a kitchen.) "We should have seen it coming before that -- eclipse..."
A brief, intense moment of silent horror was interrupted only by Saucier, who had said more words in this single meeting (which was in no way taking place) than he had during his entire employment. "Didn't Princess Celestia hire her?"
"Clearly she was already enthralled. Those fools in the press just can't see it. But we -- we are chefs. Well -- I am. And the rest of you never will be, because you're not competent enough and it's only my leadership that keeps you from burning everything in sight. You can't even hold a pasta station without my help."
Pasta (that's five now, right?) thought about just who had been the only pony to flee from the stand mixer and rather sensibly said nothing.
"But you're all I have. And we're battle-trained," Chef said with a coating of self-satisfaction that needed about two tablespoons of salt and one giant dose of reality. "We've been fighting the Lunar forces for so long..." Of course, it went without saying that all the losses were somepony else's fault. "...and they didn't know they were getting us ready for the real war. We know Princess Celestia is enthralled: we're the only ponies who do know it, and we can't tell anypony else. Not even those who might be on our side in the press -- I'm betting the usurper has spies there, just in case. But there's -- enough of us..." (Everypony tried not to automatically count.) "...and we can get the job done. It can't be natural, making this -- thing -- happen. She'll have to use a lot of power to do it. When she's in the middle of it, that's when she's weakest. We'll strike -- and we'll free our Princess."
"Who's a mare," Saucier noted with what might have been a slight suicidal streak. "We've been ruled by a weak mare who messes everything up for more than a thousand years."
"Right! Because she can't cook! We all know she can't cook! But --" suddenly aware that blasphemy wasn't so much around the corner as currently adding a prospective sixth member to a group where everypony might not be able to count that high "-- she's our weak mare who can't cook! We won't accept any other!"
Sous raised a rallying hoof. "Our helpless mess-up mare!"
Meat touched his own left front hoof to his former coworkers' (not that anypony could prove that last part). "Accept no substitutes!"
They rallied around that for a while, then paused while the fifth course was served. You couldn't have a splinter resistance counter-revolution cell without a proper menu and Royal China confiscated in the name of revolt and keeping it away from Lunar hooves. After all, an army traveled on its stomach. Chef was wondering if that would make certain tactical approaches easier since the Guards might not be looking that low to the ground.
He spent a good five minutes lecturing them on the seasoning before resuming, as there was still such a thing as proper priorities even in a land under internal siege. "We won't kill her, of course," he reassured them. "Just knock her out. I'm betting she can't enthrall when she's unconscious."
"Then how is she keeping Princess Celestia enthralled when she's asleep –"
"-- sleep is different, Saucier! Everypony knows that! So no killing. After all, she's just a weak mare who can't cook any more than her sister can. Even if she somehow wasn't evil when she got back -- shut up, Meat -- maybe she fell to the Nightmare again and just kept it less visible this time. But we know the truth, don't we? She'll bring that -- thing -- over the land, and it'll never end. Eternal darkness? Not on my watch! And since I'm in charge of you incompetents, my watch is your watch and you do what I say! And set! And I say we will strike -- and we will win!"
More cheering. Also sorbets, which Celestia would have very badly needed if she'd known anything about this.
"But," Chef added, his voice dropping to a whisper, "we'll have to be -- careful. We know the usurper can -- enter dreams. And if we dream about our plans... Can anypony here shield their dreams?"
"Pegasus."
"Earth pony."
"I flip meat."
"Right," Chef said. "So -- we'll just have to sleep as little as possible. In shifts. While somepony is watching the one who's resting. And if you see a dream starting, you wake that pony up. Got it?"
"So..." Saucier slowly proposed, "we're going to be taking on one of the two most powerful ponies in Equestria. By ourselves. After barely sleeping for weeks. With the possibility that Princess Celestia, enthralled, would also fight us. Do I have all that right?"
"You left one part out," Chef told him.
"Which was...?"
"And we will win! For Equestria!"
"And we are totally not doing this because we're mostly drunk and angry about being fired and not even remotely thinking straight!"
They all cheered that, although one did it much more softly.
"Because we are --" Sous began -- and couldn't complete. "Um.... what should we call ourselves? Because when they summon us into the Hall Of Legends as heroes to see our portrait unveiled, they'll need to call us something."
Chef, who was already seeing it (although the portrait contained himself, nopony else, and came with a lifetime supply of replacement equipment plus the permanent banishment of the Lunar head -- he couldn't even think the last word), said "Chef."
"But that's just you."
"So? I do all the work."
Pasta cleared his throat. They all looked at him.
After several flour-coated coughs, three dusty words floated across the food-covered table.
"The Brinner Brigade."
They all thought about it.
"Right!" cried Meat.
"What else!" screamed Sous.
"Until I change it to Chef!" declared Chef.
"Because there's no way anypony would associate the name for a group of cooks working together and a term for a meal which only we use with a certain group of recently fired palace staff!" called out Saucier.
"The Brinner Brigade!" they all chorused.
They opened another wine bottle and toasted the name.
Then they complained about the vintage for two hours.
Celestia allowed herself the indulgence of a very frustrated groan, which seemed like a very small thing when compared to the pleasure of dunking her sister in the nearest ice water pond. "Fine..." The digit was herded to its proper place, where it promptly convinced its fellows to engage in revolution. "And there goes my total. Luna, can I ask you a math question?"
Her sister smiled. It had to be a smile. Smirks generally didn't show that much in the way of teeth. "Of course."
"We have four legs. The pegasi have a total of six limbs and even those unicorns who openly count their horn as a separate manipulator have to stop at five -- or six if they remember to add their mouth. Nopony has claws, talons, fingers, or any representative from the host of grasping digits to use. Feather counts are somewhat variable by the individual. Why do we work in Base Ten?"
The smile vanished. Luna blinked several times. "...I have absolutely no idea."
"Oh, good. Then it's not just me." Celestia finished the recalculation. "Well?"
Beads clicked. "You have it -- this time." There would have been more emphasis on the last two words, but the younger sibling was still battling with the earlier question. "We were taught that way, our parents learned it to teach us... how did that system reach ponies in the first place...?" Her head shook hard enough to create new constellations within the mane. "And thank you very much for something which will be haunting me for at least the remainder of the week. Back to the main problems before I can no longer resist the urge to vanish into the Archives in quest of an answer which I already know I am not going to find. With our forces marshaled and populations known, plus a rather substantial margin of error for those who might travel to both sites and observe... I still wonder if we are allowing for too many there."
"I'm erring on the side of caution," Celestia admitted after putting her own not-smirk (the strength of which was also measured in Base Ten, and not in single digits) away. "I expect every amateur astronomer and most of the professionals, at least." A very few of the last were denying this was possible, even with news of the demonstration and testimony from both sisters about the times it had happened before. After all, what was a mere pair of eyewitness accounts against the thought-dispelling word of a college degree? "Beyond that, I know a large number of citizens are..." and couldn't finish the sentence, not in front of Luna.
Her sister took the burden. "'Skittish' would be fair," Luna wearily admitted. "Still, once we break ground, I remain hopeful that next year's building can hold a larger population. Once they know it is safe from more than the word of whatever honest reporters still remain to speak and mostly be drowned out... Very well. Even allowing for some microscopic fraction of those to get over their fears -- somehow -- at the last minute and travel in, we will collectively be able to make enough glasses for all. Including those who refuse to venture outdoors while it is happening, in the event they happen to accidentally peek out a window at the height of the event and then have no difficulty in overcoming nerves before contacting a lawyer."
Celestia stretched, unfurled her wings to their full span, allowed the muscles along back and legs to extend as she arched and leaned forward. "Good... and that brings us back to the one-sheet."
Which made Luna groan and gave Celestia another non-smirk of her own. What the younger sibling possessed in numerical acumen was counterbalanced by a certain lack of facility with the written word, at least for those to be found outside her diary. (Despite what her sister sometimes insisted, Celestia hadn't read any of what Luna had recorded there since the Return. Looking at old entries during the abeyance had simply hurt too much.) Luna could write -- but for anything other than private thoughts, it tended to come out as either a series of legal proclamations meant to be spoken VERY LOUDLY or a rather dry textbook with equations and diagrams attached. The idea of 'connecting with the general audience', also known as 'dumbing it down', hadn't quite sunk in -- or rather, was still floating on the surface because the bulk of the ocean wanted nothing to do with the toxic concept. "Why do we have to write it? Another cannot take this task?"
"We're the witnesses," Celestia reminded her. "The only ones for the true."
"But -- we could describe it to another, yes?" Luna's head tilted up slightly as the sudden hope negated a little of the weight inflicted by writing. Her hooves pushed away several stomped-on rejected drafts, along with those she'd ice-coated in frustration and a few which had just been chewed. "Somepony versed in the sciences who is used to writing! Somepony like... your student!"
Celestia blinked. "...Twilight?"
"You have another student in this current age?"
"...you want Twilight Sparkle to write the one-sheet?"
"She writes you all the time, sister. She even writes me on occasion, although I suspect the subjects are somewhat different."
Celestia knew they were -- and had to repress both her jealousy and a touch of sadness. Celestia got the lessons. Luna received the personal. And never the topics were mixed. Twilight didn't think of Celestia that way, not yet -- and there were days when Celestia wondered if she ever would. "Yes, but --"
Luna, undeterred, continued the string of hopeful musing. "Surely her facility with words must be improving through the near-constant practice, yes? And I certainly trust her to comprehend the science behind what we are doing, let alone the thaumaturgy. Let her take it! She will be thrilled for the chance to assist the throne --" a pause, and then, because her sister knew more than a little about Twilight "-- not to mention an opportunity to effectively lecture every pony in the realm at once!"
Celestia groaned, and everything accomplished by the stretch was undone in the single breath. "Luna -- there's a certain problem in asking Twilight to do this sort of thing..."
"Ooooh, and then there's the gravitational lensing! With both of them in the sky at the same time and right in front of each other -- which is attracting the other more? I've never had to try and calculate their respective relative masses! How much do they weigh? Because obviously the one with more mass will have the extra weight, please excuse my pun, it was completely unintentional, in the equation. You remember that equation, don't you, Luna? If not, I can write it out for you... in fact, I'd better because that's going to need to go in this too. Are we using the standard government font? Because if we are... let me think -- I can probably shift the tidal columns over to an index because so few ponies ever go out on the ocean and everypony is hit by gravity, even if Rainbow Dash keeps saying it wouldn't do so much if we could just get everypony to stop believing in it all the time. I don't get that. Reality is not consensual -- you know, that would be a really good thing to stick in Chapter Four..."
Both sisters left the Ponyville library about seventy minutes later. Celestia trotted. Luna staggered.
"Apparently," the younger just barely managed after they crossed the third block, "she has yet to investigate any lesson in dumbing it down. Not to mention the difficulties one can create when deciding to go with the exact opposite of that concept."
With gentle bemusement, not a little of which was at her sister's belated acceptance of Lowest Common Reading Denominator, "And when did you catch onto that?"
"When the migraine set in. If you remain curious, I believe that was somewhere around Chapter Four. I did my best to track her beyond that, but then she began to shift particles which might or might not exist and the uncertainty of that state was actually exciting her... Celestia, what in the realm and beyond is 'quantum'?"
"Nopony's sure. Which seems to be most of the point."
"Well. Then, I would say task accomplished, for now I am certain that I will never be sure. Of anything. Ever again. Except that I would very much like to lie down for a while now."
"It's ten at night."
"I do not care. Besides, somewhere in that quantum universe, it is eleven in the morning. Let quantum pretend I am there... no, I will take that back. Let it be here and ten at night. Very few bars are open at eleven in the morning."
"You are not drinking this off."
"And why not?"
"Other than the way you usually get when you consume? Because I've been through this with Twilight before and trust me, drinking makes it worse. We'll stop by Fluttershy's and grab you a mild painkiller plus the company of about eight kittens. That'll take care of everything."
"Oh." A long pause. "With quantum, do kittens still exist?"
A week had passed. Luna had required four days before she'd felt capable of going into the Archives and examining tomes on quantum. Celestia had only needed two minutes to talk her out of destroying them, mostly through pointing out that under the theory, there would probably still be another reality somewhere in which the resident Luna had made the opposite decision, or possibly millions of realities, and her own version couldn't possibly find a way to track all of them down and yell in their faces. Luna had glared at her before declaring her intent to stay in a single universe where one plus one equaled common sense no matter what some ponies tried to insist on, and all that had done was get them back to the Base Ten problem again.
The one-sheets (which would have remained so in any Base except Zero, which Luna refused to discuss) had been printed and distributed across the continent. Celestia felt they were comprehensible, in large part because Twilight had not been allowed to participate in so much as a single sentence. (In compensation, she had assigned her student the task of writing the more extensive guide for visiting scientists, with explicit instructions to keep it down to something most ponies could still lift.) But that brought up the next problem, which was one she'd dealt with too many times before. The government could print something -- but it couldn't make ponies read it, much less think enough about the dumbed-down contents to have any chance at understanding them. And that eventually led to another issue entirely, one Celestia had been dealing with for more than a thousand years.
Her height.
In the before, she had been on the tall side, enough so that she looked down at least slightly on the majority of ponies -- but there had been some on her eye level, and others she'd had to look up to even when all hooves were planted on level ground. When after had happened... well, that part hadn't been all at once. She'd found herself somewhat taller immediately and thought that was the end of it: what else could she have thought? But her height and overall size had continued to increase over the next one hundred and forty years before stabilizing at the current level, with her silently begging for it to stop already all the while.
Celestia had issues with her height. Oh, there were advantages: she could intimidate very easily just by looming and for most of the other species, she took the high ground in a debate simply through existing. But it had taken decades for her to get a grip on the art of not looming, and she still sometimes did it by accident.
Clothing... the fact that anything made for her, even the most basic pieces, cost at least five times the amount for anypony else... annoying, and one of the central reasons she seldom dressed up at all. It was typically coupled with another basic truth: very few designers, no matter how much they might boast about the elegance of Princessly proportions, had any idea what to do upon being confronted with them in a fitting room. Celestia had hopes that Rarity might be one of the ridiculously few who were actually able to accomplish something with her, although she suspected the first thing the designer would do if given an Official Royal Commission would be to faint on the spot.
Speaking to somepony as an equal -- that was difficult at best. If it wasn't her position or the sheer weight of her age interfering, then height did its best to get in the way. Even when she lay down on the floor, many ponies -- and others -- still subconsciously felt as if they were being talked to by a parent, and that was the lowest point she could generally bring her perceived authority to for any who respected her at all.
And then there was just having to look down nearly all the time.
The government could print whatever it liked -- but it couldn't make anypony read the words. But there was a way around that. Celestia wasn't worried about the rest of the realm, not yet -- but Ponyville and Canterlot had to be as informed as possible. And while even the lectures of Guards and town criers (the post had been revived for the occasion and found employment for bellows-lunged ponies while creating floods of complaint-filled letters from those who did not understand why they were being assaulted with words they had no intention of listening to) could go ignored, the direct speech and presence of a Princess was considerably harder to dismiss.
With the eclipse growing closer, town meetings were being held. (For Canterlot, it was more neighborhood by neighborhood, or sometimes even block by block.) Celestia and Luna were dividing them up. A personal appearance at each, speaking to ponies and giving words to be taken as an order: Wear The Glasses On Return Day Or Else, with 'else' frequently taken over by the pony's imagination. (The real 'else' was 'or risk permanent damage to your eyesight', which both sisters explained. However, many listening ponies mentally locked up at 'else'.) But even those visits couldn't get everypony.
So Celestia had asked ponies familiar with their local residents to make lists of those who did not attend. Those names had been linked to addresses. And now she was in the middle of something she hadn't done in centuries -- going door-to-door to personally explain the details to the last of the holdouts.
Which created still more problems.
Ponies didn't always know how to deal with her: she internally sighed and tried to help them through it, generally with no success. She would watch them scramble to make tea: she couldn't always stop them in time and she tried not to drink it -- or at least, to drink just enough to make them happy while not consuming so much that her body revolted: tannic acid remained just that, and her stomach could only take so much in a single day. Many would try to clean their entire residence within a single minute: they would beg for a little time, the door would close, the sound of a miniature tornado would erupt -- for some pegasi residences, this was literal -- and then the door would open again to show how much worse things had become. While it hadn't happened to Celestia yet, Luna had reported one who had asked for a moment and closed the door -- then fled out the window while carrying an assortment of illegal field booster drugs. Unfortunately for the dealer, Luna had taken the moment to pace back and forth in front of the house -- and thus had both seen the felon exiting the window and smelled the distinctive tang of crushed amaryllis petals carried on the backdraft. Everything after that had been taken as a chance for Fun, at least for Luna.
Celestia would have welcomed such an event. Not just to clean up the streets, but for the distraction. Her own chief source of entertainment for the Canterlot shifts was visiting the homes of Murdocks' most devoted followers. Doors hadn't been slammed in her face yet, but they had been opened as slightly as possible. Sometimes she would just barely see an eye. There had been no greetings, just demands to know if she understood the privacy laws (which she had written) or had a search warrant. She would patiently and politely greet those ponies, mostly because it got on their nerves. To them, she would emphasize that any pony caught outside or looking at same without glasses on Return Day would face a fine equaling one-twelfth of their yearly income. No exceptions. No excuses. No kidding. And when the screaming stopped, she would have a Guard give them the glasses, record the acceptance on several copies of the most legal and binding document she'd been able to create -- a millennium-plus of rulership = very -- listen to the renewed screaming and, smiling all the while, politely close the door in their face.
But now she had a Ponyville segment. And Ponyville tended not to have many Murdocks supporters, because they felt the risk was so much higher. The Princesses, even when Luna's temper grew short, had protocols and standards and ways in which they were at least supposed to act (although her sister often skirted the absolute edge while considering whether to push others over it). The Bearers... didn't. Offend Rainbow Dash with an ill-placed remark and continual lightning strikes around your home would be the least of your problems. It encouraged a certain amount of relocation.
She was spending hours trudging through Ponyville to reach those last few residents. And ponies who loved her would go down to front knees in the Official Royal Greeting Stance which she'd never been able to permanently excise from Equestria's culture, shyly invite her in, share their problems, talk about issues they had with family and neighbors, ask for advice, politely request the indulgence of a picture. Sometimes she would meet children and get to play with them for a while: that was always the best part, even if it could feel far too short for her true liking: more homes to visit ahead. (The youngest looked at her height as an additional plaything, and shocked parents often watched as a laughing Celestia lay down and allowed foals to literally climb all over her.) But some ponies would nearly beg for blessing, and there were very few words which had the power to make her as heartsick as that accursed utterance made in sincerity and faith.
Celestia was lucky to get through such a visit in twelve minutes. Some of them threatened to reach half an hour: others went over. And the whole time, she would be looking down.
The amount of work involved in getting it all set up was starting to become ridiculous. She and Luna were both losing hours they needed for other things. But Celestia would go through every last moment of it and take on every burden necessary. She had to. And part of her had been trying very hard to keep the rest from thinking too much about why.
Still... after a while, the words of greeting became monotonous to her ears. Her neck started to crick from the constant assumption of what it insisted was an unnatural angle. Centuries of training kept her voice pleasant and the opening sentences sincere -- but internally, she did get tired. And so at this most recent home on a door-to-door tour that was far longer than she felt it should have been, she finally slipped up and kept her gaze level instead of gently looking down towards the sound of the opening door.
"Hello, my little pony," she gently began, addressing a point somewhere near the top of the frame. "If it's not too much trouble, I'd like to ask for a few minutes of your time so that we might discuss the upcoming eclipse --"
There was a gasp.
This was followed by a thud.
Celestia closed her eyes for a precious half-second, then opened them and looked at the field-held list of names. Noted the one whose home she had reached. Forced her sore neck to bend and wearily regarded the pony in question.
Of course.
"Hello, Roseluck," she told the fainted mare before surrounding the earth pony with her field and gently lifting her off the stoop. "Let's get you inside and try this again..."
The Brinner Brigade had encountered many of the problems specific to being a splinter resistance counter-revolution cell.
With training... they no longer had the Lunar crew battling against them for control of the never-shared kitchen. None of them would admit to missing their counterparts: they would have rather confessed to trying some of Meat's concoctions while the line cook wasn't looking (which none of them ever had, although Pasta had successfully managed to fake it after a dare). But the advantage of near-daily practice with actual ponies to battle against who weren't themselves was gone. They couldn't join combat sports leagues: Chef felt it would look too suspicious. Hanging around bars after dark and hoping to pick fights with departing drunks was somewhat effective, mostly when it came to getting into fights -- but it also tended to summon police and Guards. It left them practicing on each other, and the injuries were beginning to add up.
They were trying to stay informed about the eclipse itself, which wasn't easy given that the majority of the group didn't believe most of it and didn't understand any. They'd seen the photo layouts, of course. There had been mutual agreement on Luna (or whatever was in her skin) having either deliberately presented the wrong illusion or enthralled ponies into printing the false images. After all, Eternal Night was clearly going to be considerably darker than that.
They were working on very little sleep. It made it difficult to gauge just how much force was going into a kick. Among other things.
They weren't particularly well-financed, especially since they had allotted forty percent of their available resources to the food budget. Fifty percent was going to wake-up juice. Blended with wine. After all, there remained a certain need to remember what they were fighting for, and wine helped with that. Or at least, it helped to keep them in a place where fighting continued to seem like a really good idea which had no chance whatsoever of failing for three to five -- oh, let's face it: five -- stallions who were assuredly in the right because they were Scum led by a Chef and of course, stallions! Always stallions! No mares in professional kitchens and when they saved their own Princess and became the power behind the throne -- well, one spokespony and four whom he would ignore -- that would be the first law they asked her to pass!
But that left very little money in the pool for things like rent and bills and buying pants -- and information-gathering. Surprisingly few members of the still-employed Solar staff would speak to them, especially when they kept blinking at odd moments, maintaining those blinks for far too long, and occasionally doing something which was certainly not falling asleep on the spot, at least not if Chef asked about it and any such moments they caught him in was classified as Just Resting My Eyes Because I'm Tired Of Looking At You Losers All The Time. They were out of the gossip flow. And that meant they were missing a key piece of the plan.
"Where are we going to strike?" Chef demanded. "How are we supposed to free Equestria from the encroachment of mares in my kitchen --" he paused before adding the lesser offense "-- and the tyranny of the Nightmare -- if we don't know which place she's going to be in? Can't any of you get a word from anypony?"
Sous sighed, as it was the best way to cover up a yawn. "I can't even get close to the palace. The Guards might ask why I was hanging around so much."
"Well, don't you know where any of the staff ponies live? Can't you just drop by and gossip?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because when we were still working for the castle, you told us to only associate with other cooks so as to protect the purity of our outlooks and keep lesser talents from intruding on our lives."
"I did?"
"Just about every night before we went off-shift, yes."
"I don't remember that."
"You followed me home."
"Or that."
"On random days. Including peeking in my bedroom window to make sure I was home on time. For the entire time I worked with you."
"You worked for me! Come on -- surely one of you must have had a contact!"
"Don't you?" asked Saucier, whose suicidal streak hadn't diminished with lack of sleep. "You ranked higher than we did and that should have let you meet more ponies. Haven't you been making tries yourself?"
Chef's mind automatically wiped away all memories of the approaches he had made, practically every one of which had ended with the other pony saying "I don't have to put up with you any more and there's no longer any chance of your being able to poison me."
There had been surprisingly little variation on those words.
"I'm in charge here!" Chef roared -- or would have if he'd had enough rest to get that much volume going. Wake-up juice didn't seem to be doing as much as it had a week ago. He was making tentative plans to sue the manufacturer for creating inferior batches, as far as thoughts which only held together for two minutes at a time could be called 'plans'. "My job as Chef is to take your horrible efforts and make them worthy of a Princess, even when she's a weak mess-up mare -- our weak mess-up mare! Meat, what's the word from you?"
"Most ponies won't talk to me."
"Why not?"
"They say I smell like meat."
"Oh, for... Pasta?"
Pasta, who was trying not to go into his boss-enforced lack of social life, coughed twice.
Chef really didn't want to say the next word, as to even remotely imply you needed help from the lowliest of inferiors was to -- well, see slightly earlier part of the sentence. "Saucier?"
"I have some friends outside the kitchen," the youngest cook said.
"AND THAT WAS AGAINST MY ORDERS!" Well, there was clearly one juice seller he didn't need to drag into court. "HOW DID YOU KEEP ME FROM CATCHING YOU WITH THEM? WHEN WE GET BACK IN THERE, I'M GOING TO FIRE --"
The very few functioning neurons remaining in his mind tossed off the concept that losing one-third -- fifth? -- how did one work non-measurement numbers again? -- of their forces at this time just might be, if not an error because he wasn't capable of making those, then at least a tactical hiccup.
"-- you one of Meat's steaks to prove I can exceed the puny talent of his supposedly-special mark! And then I'll -- make you not eat it! So what are you hearing?"
"Not much," Saucier admitted. "The Princesses have been traveling a lot to make sure ponies know to wear the glasses. I did manage to get enough of them for all of us." Everypony avoided counting. "I felt it would be best if we didn't go blind during the attack."
"Good thinking, that," Chef grudgingly allowed. "We're fortunate I thought of it in time." (Five long seconds after the end of Saucier's partially-understood sentence.) "But what about where they'll be? They could be in Canterlot, they could be in -- oh, what's the name of that place -- little town... most of our apple shipments come in from there and about half the carrots... it's... Appcarrville! Right! Okay, Canterlot or Appcarrville! Which is it?"
"They haven't decided," Saucier calmly said. "The Day and Night Courts want it in Canterlot. Rumor says the Princesses prefer Appcarrville because Princess Luna feels more comfortable doing it there. The papers feel the Courts will win."
"Well, of course they will!" Chef insisted. "I've heard about Appcarrville's restaurants! Worst fake Saddle Arabian grass on the continent!" Which was very nearly the sum total of all he knew about the place. Chef knew everything there was to know about every place in Equestria and beyond, as long as that knowledge was important: i.e. about food. (Baking, however, was mere chemistry and barely had a place in a proper kitchen. But as long as their very own weak mess-up mare had such a devotion for stupid pastries...) "Keep tracking the papers, Saucier."
"I could use some money to buy a few of them. Can we take a little out of the juice and wine budget?"
The table went silent at the blasphemy.
"You should have been a mare," Chef snarled. "How any pony who wants to be a cook and just barely has enough lack of skill to wind up as scum could think there's a need to... Steal them if you're a stallion! You're just taking supplies from the enemy!"
"The enemy? I have to steal Princess Luna's copies?"
"...no," said the last of Chef's alcohol-riddled survival instinct with its final breath, "that would seem too suspicious. There's this place... big building... they keep old cookbooks there along with worthless pieces of paper trash..."
"A library?"
"Exactly! Go steal their papers! And I'll even ignore any reasons you might know that word!"
"As you like," said the only pony who still retained a concept of how libraries worked, or indeed ever had a real understanding in the first place. "Or I could just read articles there and sneak out with the enemy none the wiser."
"Good. Good. You might make stallion after all. Eventually. If I ever decide you're ready." Which would be never. "So we'll get their Eternal Night Day location pinned down. We've still got time. And then -- we will strike. For getting mares out of professional kitchens! For my having the largest portrait ever placed in the Hall Of Legends! At least twice as big as that one of the six -- six... whoever they are..."
"And for Equestria!" Sous declared.
Chef blearily glared at him. "For my portrait!" insisted far too many tankards of wine.
You couldn't argue with tankards. "For Chef's portrait!" chorused the group.
"Right! Now, we're going to do some more training. Everypony with a horn, more shield-breaking. We've got a pegasus, so I want to see lightning. A few well-placed bolts might just do the trick, assuming you can aim better than you can spice and it would be hard for you to be worse. Earth ponies... earth ponies..." He squinted. "Is that a horn?"
"...yes?"
"Well, get back to shield-breaking! Whoever here is an earth pony, hoof-to-hoof! And biting. You taste-test enough, your teeth should be your best weapons, at least since you can't overspice anypony to death. We train until we drop!"
"And then we sleep?" proposed an extremely wine-and-sleeplessness-delusional Sous.
Both Courts argued. Which neighborhood should have the honor of hosting royalty. Where the Princesses would stand. Which Court members would be standing close by. Closest. There was fighting over what they presumed would be the best benches, even though just sitting arguably put one among the leftovers. Generally idle nobles considered calling in favors in order to get closer than anypony, just because they could. Celebriponies thought about the same -- or at least having others do so on their behalf: like a few of the nobles, some felt making personal requests diminished them -- while wondering what the eclipse light would do to their clothing, makeup, and future photo spreads. Most of the Canterlot elite debated and discussed and got ready to discriminate against each other and everypony else while coming nearly as close as they ever did to acting.
The actual decision went like this:
"Luna?"
"Yes, Tia?"
"It's your party. Where are we having it?"
"Ponyville. It is more -- comfortable."
With a smile, "Done."
And just like that, most of the Canterlot elite decided to stay home, because no matter what some ponies might openly believe and they all agreed on as long as they were in that presence, Ponyville, rural and slightly odd and chaos-prone and home to Element-Bearers who did not have to operate by royal protocol, just wasn't worth the risk.
Yes, the Canterlot personal visits were almost over. Some of them had been beneficial in more ways than simply getting the word out and making certain no pony suffered vision damage because of her desire to relive memory: the home-to-home tour had allowed her to meet ponies on a more personal level than she normally got to experience with the citizenry, and she felt it had brought several of them that much closer to accepting her as something more than a distant sighting, misapplied headline, or angry vocalization after dropping something on their own right front hoof. But for the capital, those moments had been eddies in a current of monotonous hoof-kissing, and she found herself longing for another drug dealer in order to liven up the last of her early evening.
Only a few left, though. Five full nights remained before the eclipse (with Return Day now feeling more like an excuse for it than anything else) and she only had a scant number of ponies remaining on the Did Not Show Up At Any Meeting list. She almost had a grasp on why Twilight Sparkle loved to check the things off so much: she herself had reached the point of more than merely wanting to see the thing finished already nights ago, which would be quickly followed by the non-librarian satisfaction of seeing it destroyed.
She was tired of going over the opening words on the memorized script. She was tired of moving through what seemed to be far too many neighborhoods in a city which had been magnitudes smaller when she left and hadn't even truly deserved the title of 'city' at all. She was very tired of making those who followed Murdocks sign every last copy of the glasses acceptance forms -- although sometimes she got the fun of pointing out that she knew their real names and falsifying documents was a charge she was personally more than willing to follow up on.
But now there were only a few left. And so she pushed on to the next door, which was within an 'apartment building' -- she kept thinking of them as inns where the rooms rented by the moon -- and had a rather strange odor just barely wafting from it. Something -- odd. She had scented that odor before, Luna was sure of it. She didn't like it in the least. But it didn't remind her of any drugs or their manufacturing techniques, and so her weary mind put it aside (while wishing her nostrils could do the same) as she knocked.
The door opened.
The unicorn stallion on the side looked somewhat familiar. Coat of a slightly strange red which almost seemed to glisten, deeper red in the eyes and a bleached bone-white for the unkempt mane. A very short horn. The weary, head-down, floor-regarding posture of a pony who hadn't slept well in some time, complete with layered bags under the eyes and more red shot through the whites of both orbs. His last bath might have been well over a week ago, which still didn't account for the totality of the smell.
Luna was almost sure she'd met him. But ponies had begun to blend together nights ago, and she couldn't be completely certain. If she could just get a look at the mark -- but his was on the portion of his body which remained within the shadows of the apartment: this stallion had just barely poked enough of himself out the gap to work with at all.
Well, as long as she had the eyes and ears paying some level of attention, all was vaguely briefing-well -- although she was wondering if she should be offering him the chance to get wake-up juice first: he still hadn't looked up. "Greetings, citizen," she told him, and tried not to yawn from boredom: sympathetic vibrations might have made him fall asleep on the spot. "As you are among those who have missed the town meetings concerning the eclipse on Return Day, I felt I should come to your residence in person and discuss it with thee --" oops "-- you, along with personally presenting your eclipse glasses. Do you have a minute or more to speak?" Generously, "Or would you wish to drink a portion of wake-up juice before we proceed?"
The weary stallion finally forced his eyes up and looked directly at Luna.
He blinked twice.
The scream was not a surprise. It could have been, but Luna had met too many of Murdocks since the preparations began and screaming generally came into their half of the dialogue somewhere. So did the slamming of the door, although this was the first to catch his own front right hoof with the first attempt, not to mention the repeat performance on the second. The third led to the sound of a full-scale gallop, or at least as much as it could have been with the freshly-added limp.
Luna sighed. It was nearly all she had strength left for. "Well..." She extended her senses, tried to feel. "...he is not teleporting, I hear no windows opening, we are on the fifth floor of this edifice and self-levitation is far more rare than the ability to go between..." She glanced back at the Guard on her left flank. Hoping she was wrong, "I am assuming that does not constitute sufficient suspicions of criminal activity for us to enter immediately?" Because that would take care of the boredom.
Unfortunately, the Guard -- Nightwatch, one of the first hires -- shook her head. "Sorry, Princess -- we've had worse from the ones in the 'loyal opposition'." The quotes were appropriately vicious and slashed the words away from the rest of the sentence, along with quarantining them from common sense lest they infect anything.
"I had guessed," Luna carefully did not sigh again: recreation -- well, perhaps only postponed. "But we certainly are entitled to knock a second time, and as we must deliver the glasses no matter what..."
More galloping, this time getting closer. The Guards tensed, moved into defensive positions.
The door flew open.
"Got glasses!" the unicorn gasped, and the almost liquid red field held them up. "Friend -- picked them up for me! Read papers! Read sheet! Got glasses! Won't go blind!"
Which removed most of Luna's prospective fun -- but still not all. "Yes, I can see them -- but citizen, with the exception of parents gathering for colts and fillies, other ponies were not permitted to take extras --"
"-- sick! Very sick! Couldn't go! Didn't know if I'd recover in time! Feeling much better now!" The unkempt mane went everywhere as the pony vigorously shook his head, setting bloodshot eyes to vibrating. "Got glasses! Promise to wear them! Swear!"
The hardest part to believe was the 'much better now'. "Very well," Luna frowned. "But I will still need your fieldwriting on the forms..."
The unicorn's field grabbed the paperwork and quill. He signed them. Repeatedly. Threw them back: her stallion Guard intercepted.
"Okay?" the resident gasped. "All good?"
Luna took the paperwork. The pony had signed the forms, all right. About thirty times. Everywhere. Some of them had even fallen on the right places, although she suspected that had been by accident. "It would not be legally adequate --" she squinted at the horrible fieldwriting "-- Sizzler? You missed this place, and this one --"
The papers were snatched back. Thirty more signatures were added.
"-- and now you have not," Luna noted. "Very well, legally, you have signified your understanding, whether or not you truly possess it --"
"-- good! All good! Got glasses! Goodbye!"
The door slammed again, at least on the fourth attempt. The receding sound of limping was considerably more pronounced.
Luna looked to each of her Guards in turn. "That was odd, was it not? It is not just me?" There were still times when she felt she had to check. She was almost certain this wasn't really one of them.
Nightwatch sighed. "It would have been odd if it was anypony but him, Princess. I didn't recognize him at first... But I've only seen him a couple of times, and hardly ever away from his -- station."
Cluster shuddered as his own memory was jogged. "Oh, him... I should have known that coat, not to mention the smell..."
Luna frowned. "I almost felt I knew him, but the memory would not come. Too many nights and days of this... well, you two clearly have the advantage of me in recollection. Who is this Sizzler?"
"He worked in the Solar kitchen," Nightwatch explained. "One of those whom Princess Celestia fired. He had the --" a instinctive, revolted shudder of her own, one which had no chance of staying locked within the practiced mien of Guard alertness "-- meat station."
Which got Luna to blink. "Oh... yes, now I recall him. Not a memory I wished to have, especially given that smell..." No wonder he hadn't wanted to speak with her: in his mind, he probably saw her as the one who'd gotten him fired, never mind that it had all been Celestia's decision and Luna had actually asked her sister not to be quite so defensive, noting that they'd both overlooked the obvious and if that reaction had been inevitable, at least they'd seen it well before the thing could have echoed through a few hundred more throats (minimum) and caused actual damage. Celestia hadn't wanted to hear it. There were very few things which could move her older sister to cold fury, and false accusations against Luna were high on that short list. In a way, it was comforting. In other aspects...
Luna was planning on waiting until after the eclipse so that her sister, relaxed and still basking in the warmth of memory, could be approached regarding rehire. She was willing to give second chances here and there. After all, one had been granted to her.
"...still, he has a place," the younger Princess concluded. "Even if that place might be somewhat more suitable in the Griffon Republic. Well, he has his glasses and we have his signed forms: the minimum is satisfied. Perhaps we should be as well and move on. How many more?"
"Fourteen," Cluster checked. "And then we're done -- assuming we can find all of them. Some of these ponies are on repeat visits, Princess -- between both sets of Guards and Princess Celestia, we've made multiple trips to a few homes with no results. We've confirmed some who are going to be absolute no-shows. I've spoken to enough neighbors: there are some visiting family, or on vacation, or just a couple who moved and haven't had it show up in the census data yet... but that still leaves us with fourteen ponies who haven't been contacted. Less than I thought we'd have, honestly -- but for the sake of keeping the lawsuits down, we've got to reach zero if we can."
Luna nodded. "Should all else fail, we can at least plant a few glasses where they will be found, but... yes, we need to try and complete this checklist." There was no thrill in merely speaking the word, and how Twilight Sparkle managed to get visible excitement into the writing of it remained a mystery. "To the next, then."
They moved on.
Within the tiny apartment -- now almost empty of furnishings after Chef had ordered the personal belongings of all others sold in order to finance the battle -- the pony who was even starting to think of himself as Meat trembled and waited for the Nightmare to go away.
"No. Not on first sight. We were only formally introduced once. I heard the Guards talking about me, but she didn't react. I think -- we're actually safe, Chef. She was just -- dropping off the glasses. With two Guards alongside her -- if they'd known anything about what we were doing, they would have arrested me on the spot."
"Naturally. Good job keeping it calm and collected there. The way you described yourself as holding steady in the face of Nightmare, not to mention what must have been so many thoughts of a mare taking your station... you almost performed at a level equal to a tiny fraction of a real chef. Almost. BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T TAKE THE CHANCE TO STRIKE! She was right there! You could have ended this once and for all! One simple move, and --"
"-- outnumbered!" Meat protested. "Three to one! Two Guards and one Princess!"
"She was holding the papers! You should have just hit her horn!"
"All she was doing was holding the papers! The most I could have done was make her drop them!"
"He's right," Saucier noted. The line cooks were familiar with backlash in the low stages, as they had to be careful not to inflict it on the unicorns among them while they moved about the kitchen -- and needed to guard Solar horns from the Lunar brigade, who were all too aware of the weakness common to every pony who could work that form of magic and loved demonstrating it. "Stage Zero, tops -- and some ponies say the Princesses can ignore that."
"...fine," muttered Chef. "Cowardice in the face of the enemy, fine... making excuses... one more failure like that, Meat, and you'll wish you were being cooked on your own station..." He blinked. Two minutes later, his eyes opened again. The others had held their positions exactly, just in case he came out of it before they could catch their own short naps. "...so we can probably expect more visits as they drop off our glasses, right?"
"Not me," Sous noted. "I had Princess Celestia visit me three days ago. She -- well, she just asked me if I'd found another job yet, told me to write her if I needed any references, got my signature, and left." He hadn't been able to detect any signs of enthrallment during the exchange, which just showed how subtle and complete the process truly was.
"Not me," Saucier said. "I attended a meeting and signed in there."
Pasta silently held up his copies of the forms.
"Fools!" Chef declared. "What if there's some kind of magic which can detect you by your signature? Like -- like being able to taste something and know just who cooked it by the flavors! Or in your case, by how underdone it is! It's the doctrinyabob -- thingasignature -- something or other of magical tracking! It could be anything!" His bloodshot eyes stared at them, or at least the point halfway up the wall where he currently wanted them to be. "Well, I won't fall for it," he whispered. "I won't go home. She won't get me. Won't sign anything. Ever. Maybe she gets your soul in your signature. Maybe you all gave them up in exchange for the glasses."
The other four exchanged glances while managing not to count just how many were being transferred. "Chef," Sous carefully began, "that doesn't make any sense..."
"Shut up, Sous."
"Yes, Chef."
"I won't let her get me," Chef insisted to the wall. "I won't sign anything and she can't get my soul. I won't sleep and she can't get my mind. She's weak. Once you know what her weaknesses are, you're safe. I'm going to stay safe forever. The rest of you might fall, but not me. Never me. Because you're just Scum and I... I'm a Chef..."
The ceiling, which his gaze had drifted to during the last burst of italics, agreed with him completely. He added it to his forces and promoted it over Sous. Then he drank another quart of wake-up juice.
Truly, it was amazing how poor the quality control on the last few batches was.
The Summer Sun Celebration came and went. Celestia noted the continuing shift in numbers from those who attended the festivals to those who used their time to attend sales which could only pass as such because the prices had been artificially inflated two moons prior just so they could be dropped again on the holiday. Part of her wanted ponies to honor the Celebration as just that. Another was proud that they felt free enough not to attend. And still more was thinking about other, more distant things.
Glasses had been given to virtually everypony. There remained a few they simply hadn't been able to find, but she suspected at least one of them had left Canterlot in search of new employment, presuming he could find anypony who would be able to stand the interview, especially the part when he told them what an honor it would be for them to give over their bits into his possession. If they got past that, dealing with the open statement that he now pretty much owned the new place should be simple...
With no real time to locate fresh hires during the eclipse planning, the head of the Lunar brigade and her sous had been given temporary charge of both kitchens, along with plenty of paid overtime. The primary result seemed to be a considerable lessening of damage tallies, which had the added benefit of giving Luna one less thing to check her math on. The secondary was a distinct improvement in Celestia's food.
Eclipse Day -- no, Return Day -- was less than two days away. The eclipse itself was scheduled to center around noon. Luna had offered a mandatory grumble when they'd agreed on that, but they'd both seen it as the single best time for display, even if it required her younger sister to put in some very awkward hours during the holiday. And with that festival so close to commencement, Celestia had gone back to Ponyville for a check on how things were coming along.
The answer, much to her happy surprise, was 'very well'.
Solar colors, hung in every home and shop for the Celebration, had already vanished. Luna's dark blue and silver dominated the local color wheel, and it lightened Celestia's heart to see ponies smiling while they worked on putting up the fresh set of decorations -- ponies who didn't know she was watching at all, at least during those moments of first approach. Luna had been right: Ponyville took Return Day with some sincerity, and virtually none of it was because they were kissing up to the junior Princess. Luna had Returned in the town's nearby wild zone. She had first reentered the settled zones here. This was where she had personally visited on that one Nightmare Night, the place she had begun to truly reconnect with the citizenry -- and where they had returned the feeling to her. Of all the towns, cities, and settlements in Equestria, Ponyville loved Luna most -- and so her sibling felt most at home here.
In retrospect, the question of where to have the first restored eclipse had been a somewhat stupid one with an incredibly obvious answer.
Banners were being hung, and all had enough room for every required star-flooded letter. Schoolchildren had drawn posters showing what they imagined the eclipse to be, and proud parents had hung them in windows.
The Cakes were trying out Eclipse Cookies: a chocolate icing Moon over a butter creme Sun. Celestia had delicately sampled two. And then it had taken everything she'd had not to hoard another twenty. For Pinkie's sake -- and by extension, that of the Bearers -- she had to let the Cakes stay in Ponyville. But not hiring them to take over the castle's pastry duties was so hard...
Rarity was supposedly working on ways to make the glasses more fashionable. (Celestia wished her luck: the quartz had to be a certain (very blocky) shape and consistency in order for the smoke enscorcelling to be most effective, and there hadn't been enough time to refine that aspect of the spell.) The designer had also been putting in unpaid overtime trying to create an outfit which would look its best under eclipse light -- just a sample one, mind you, there was just enough time for Rarity to try making something for the unicorn's own build and in case it went horribly wrong, she insisted that no pony other than herself suffer the public humiliation which would be all her fault... Celestia loved listening to Rarity speak and often played a silent game of guessing which word would be emphasized next: it added a musical rhythm to the dramatics which even the Singing Shores might have paused for.
However, at the moment, the designer, moving up the street towards her and taking no notice of anything to the front, was -- distracted. Happily so. And Celestia had nothing to do with it.
"...and this is Mister Flankington's establishment. I must caution you: no matter what he says, no matter what he offers, do not eat there. Not even free samples. I am sadly familiar with the recovery times and you do not want to be stuck in a hospital bed when the eclipse begins." She stopped dead in the street, looked at her companion -- and then squealed, the sound of a happy filly who had just tasted her first-ever piece of candy, complete with the full-body wriggle of delight. "I cannot believe you are here!"
A wry, dignified chuckle came from her companion. "Neither can most of my compatriots, my dear. Which, quite frankly, was all the more reason to come here, hmmm?"
Rarity's smile had a touch of confusion to it. "I'm afraid I don't quite take your meaning..."
"Do you know the way to remain the best at dealing with the nobles of Canterlot? Taking some time every so often for not dealing with them. My job, such as it is, can often be described as one familiar to Miss Applejack: herding. The central difference is that the majority of those she and Winona corral can, to some degree, potentially stop their charge and think for themselves. Mine? Often cannot. No, wait -- there is another difference: many animals and sapients care whether their presence fouls the environment... At best, I try to keep them moving in a direction where the stampede does as little damage as possible and sometimes even brings some good, if I can but convince them that doing so either means potential elevation to a level above mine or that it was all their idea to begin with..."
Celestia did her best not to giggle as she trotted closer, the locally awed ponies beginning to fade into background awareness.
"But -- they're the upper class! They're the elite! Surely some of what rises to the top has to be the cream, yes?"
"Some," the older stallion agreed. "But the rest is the pond scum." He laughed, and the mustache vibrated in true joy. "Oh, the freedom, Rarity! The joy of being able to say that in the open, without concern as to who would gossip the words back! You will never truly appreciate it until you lose it -- and therefore, I hope you never truly appreciate it." He inclined his horn towards an approaching Celestia. "I believe you have the sense of it, though?"
Celestia laughed. This was one of the ponies she felt fully comfortable casually laughing around, even with this topic -- and it didn't hurt that the press had received no notice of this trip and was thus at least a full gallop behind. "Also the aftertaste on my tongue." (Which really confused Rarity, who had yet to give up on that dream. Celestia wanted to tell the designer that Generosity was best off in the place she knew and letting her garments be the ambassador to other social worlds -- but some lessons had to be learned for oneself.) "Hello, Fancypants. I should have known you would make the journey even if no others would. Perhaps especially when no others would. But -- where's Fleur?"
"One of those who refused to do so much as get within ten blocks of the train, let alone hire a private carriage or simply enjoy the gallop," Fancypants grumbled, with only forty percent of it being sincere. "She has yet to see the benefits of spending some time 'out in the sticks'... well, you're undoubtedly making more progress with your student than I am with mine."
"Don't be so sure," Celestia smiled. "I remember what she was like before you took her into your classes... Better be careful, old friend. Once the reporters arrive, there are going to be those who see you with Rarity and put a few assumptions in print."
"They already did," Fancypants told her. "After the first time she and I met. The central effects were making it much easier to introduce Rarity among my circle and putting Fleur into a two-week pout over whether my tastes would have changed that much." (Which in turn put Rarity into a four-second snit.) "Let them renew their tales: I only ask that some of them be vaguely amusing... This is a lovely town, Princess. I would put a summer home here if I wasn't so afraid that such would somehow cause the herd to mindlessly follow and completely ruin the poor place."
Celestia silently considered how much of the national budget's disaster relief fund had gone to Ponyville over the last two years, added an estimate for how much more would be required after an invasion of nobles and made a mental note to, for a very rare once, ask Luna for a check on her math because she was hoping that infinity symbol wasn't really supposed to be there. "The Hampiltionians suffer enough..."
There was a shout. It came from about two blocks away. It had an accent attached and hauled ten tons of pure rage along via sturdy rope.
Rarity's ears twisted in that direction. "Applejack?" She glanced at companion and Princess. "My apologies, but if she's yelling like that... she's too angry for it to be even Scootaloo, not unless somepony's hurt..." Thoughts of sisters were visible in the tensed posture.
"Go," Fancypants told her, and the white mare galloped away. He looked up at Celestia, and it was a knack of his for doing so in such a way that made her feel as though they were very nearly the same height. "And I'm guessing we're going to follow, yes?"
"Yes," Celestia confirmed. "I've hardly ever heard her that angry myself."
Hearing was the least of their problems. It only took a few steps for words to become distinct, especially as Applejack's were all being yelled and those of the ponies she was yelling at tended to carry rather well.
"...gonna get y'outta here! Jus' see if Ah don't! Ah know yer up t' somethin'!"
"My dear lady..." A stallion voice, smooth as cream -- or lightly-skimmed pond scum. "...I certainly have no idea what you could be talking about..."
"Nor do I!" proclaimed a second stallion, whose vocal tones came across as being from somepony a little younger. "We are simple honest traveling salesponies, in Ponyville for the unique business opportunity afforded by Return Day and the first eclipse in more than a thousand years, and I am frankly offended at the way you're disparaging our fantastic product!"
"Ah know you!"
"No, you don't!" declared the elder. "You've never seen us before in your life! We would have remembered such a distinctive voice!"
"Yes, Ah have! For three days! Two of which y'spent knockin' over mah fence an' the last which me an' mah friends used t' prove y'have no right t' sell anythin' 'cause yer ideas may sound good at first, but somethin' always goes wrong! Ah'm givin' you the count of ten t' get out..."
"Madame," said the younger, "we are simple sellers of eclipse glasses."
"We already got 'em! For free!"
"Not these!" the elder happily declared. "Ours capture the process of what you're looking at! Forever after, when you wish to relive the eclipse, you simply don them and watch it happen all over again! No need to wait for next year, folks! You just step right up and get a pair of these, only twenty bits each, and have the memory become real whenever you like! Yes, that's right, form a line..."
"They're clear!" Applejack screamed. "Anypony lookin' at the thing through these won't be seein' the pictures! Or anythin' else ever again!"
"I assure you, the glasses are simply transparent as a side effect of the image-capturing enchantment and will still protect," the younger vocally slithered. "Everypony is perfectly safe."
"Fine? Y'say so? Then put a pair on an' stare at the Sun! Right now!"
Silence.
Rarity had just caught up. "I feel she has rather a point, gentlecolts." The last word came out as the single biggest lie anypony had ever heard the unicorn utter. "Oh, and while I am here, I would like to speak on the matter of your fur dyes. They are inferior. Not only is the blending rather poor, but I can see more than a hint of your true color at the roots. Also, the theatrical contact lenses to change the hue of your eyes? Have very distinct visible edges along the whites. And then we have your pants. They are completely unfashionable. They are hideously striped. They are out of season, not that your style was ever in. They do horrible things to the appearance of your hips, and those were rather distinctively narrow to begin with. But most of all, they are the only item you can use to cover your cutie marks which will not wear away or be automatically dispelled within seconds."
More silence. It seemed to be going around.
"Dear lady," the elder protested to Applejack as if the farmer was the only other pony present, his voice about ten percent weaker than before, "the spells only activate during the eclipse, so --"
"Take 'em off," Applejack said. It was a no-arguing voice. It was a voice that had a lasso twirling above it looking for targets.
"...take what off?" the younger asked, far too innocent and just a little bit desperate.
"The pants. Take 'em off. Rarity's right. Can't use spells, can't use dyes, not for long. Jus' clothin'. Which you're wearin' full-body in the summer. Wanna prove you're for real? Don't wanna be run outta town? Take. 'Em. Off."
"After all, you are honest stallions with nothing to hide, are you not?" asked Rarity, pretending towards rhetorically. "Honest stallions whose voices and cadence of speech only happen to resemble those of ponies we have met before, especially when you become upset or worked up? Ones whose resemblance in feature underneath their addiction to inferior dyes is pure coincidence? Let us see your marks. If they are not what we believe them to be, then you might just be salesponies in the ideal market for their new product and the mistake could easily be ours: I will be the first to apologize. If they are not..."
The elder went exactly where Celestia had expected him to go. "You're not the law," he said, and there was still a jovial note to it. "You have no authority to conduct a mark inspection --"
-- and stopped talking as the shadow fell over him.
"Oh?" Celestia asked. "Are we in need of authority?"
A very tall, extremely distinctive shadow.
He slowly looked up, as did his brother. It took some time to cross the full distance.
They froze. They did not move. (Those were the most intelligent things they had done in several moons.) And they paled, which looked really bad against the horrible chartreuse dye.
"The ponies you are perhaps being mistaken for..." Celestia continued. "Well, the most common alias I have on file for them is 'Flim and Flam Fields', although I've managed to assemble two dozen others -- each. They are brothers. Inventors of either inherently flawed devices or ones whose faults show when inevitably pushed too far. Con artists. They are not stallions anypony wishing to make an honest living would ever wish to be confused with, gentlecolts. And so, in the interest of helping you along in your chosen profession, I'm going to clear this up for all of Ponyville right now. Under the authority of the Solar Throne, in the name of Equestria, and for the benefit of your business..." she smiled reassuringly, tilted her head slightly to the right, and let her horn's field corona go to the absolute limits of a primary as she momentarily adopted Applejack's accent for her own "...drop 'em."
The entire Brinner Brigade got off the train on the third attempt. One was limping rather badly. The unfamiliar binding of pants hadn't helped.
They had chosen to take the cheapest route -- well, not quite that, as they had not trotted. Chef had felt that his position as leader placed him above moving on hoof from one place to another, even though Appcarrville (regardless of what the ignorant and very confused ticket seller had tried to call it) was a single gallop from Canterlot, with safe roads linking city and town, and could be visited with a somewhat casual effort for anypony with four working legs (which left Meat out), much less operational wings. And while the others were more than lowly enough to go along that way, the group should not be separated, at least not by more than standards, skill, and inherent class differences. So it had been the train, and many of the scum's nearly-worthless possessions had been sold to finance the trip. Except for their cooking equipment, as some things were sacred, if substandard.
But there were many trains. The most expensive ran directly between capital and town with no other stops. One special transport, which Chef would have avoided in order to stay away from the presence of so much stupid chemistry, ran but once a year for the National Dessert Competition, stabilized by dozens of vibration-absorbing spells and still moving along very slowly so as not to force the issue. But for ponies on a budget -- well, for those, there was the Extreme Local, which made stops along the way at various farms next to the track and picked up shipments. Those shipments took hours to load and unload. Sometimes the shipments got away and ran up and down the passenger aisles, shedding feathers everywhere. Sometimes they sat in the middle of the free lettuce leaves which was the only thing the Brigade had to eat for the entire journey -- well, four of them: Chef had taken a meal in the sort-of-first-class car, courtesy of Sous' bed -- and laid eggs.
That train got to Appcarrville. Eventually. The longest 'eventually' on their personal record, barring every minute between two and four at night when they still weren't allowed to sleep.
Weary, carried along only by patriotic fervor and the dreams of banishing mares from professional kitchens forever, moving ahead of any prospective signature-tracking magics, four of their number covered in feathers and one now smelling like the griffon delicacy known as Steak N' Eggs -- they entered Appcarrville.
In the name of Freedom.
In the name of Celestia.
In the name of The Biggest Portrait The Hall Of Legends Had Ever Seen.
But for the moment, in the name of Finding Enough Wine To Make All Of The Above Feel Like It Couldn't Fail.
The Nightmare would be stopped. By them. Or they would die trying.
Well, everypony except Chef would die trying, and any number necessary would die trying to save him. Those were Chef's orders. He could give no others. In fact, he'd spent four hours repeating them without being fully aware that he was doing so. He was entering a realm beyond wake-up juice (and was also running out of prospective lawsuits to file). So he'd gotten ahold of something -- stronger. Much stronger. He was holding it back until they all truly needed it and for this and this alone, he was going to -- share. The thought was disgusting, but necessity dictated it that it have twenty times the voice Saucier did, even at a hundredth of the intellect.
It was in his left saddlebag. It was rattling around inside a Fawkes Vial. Every so often, it made a sound like an Ursa Minor being burped.
They greeted ponies as they staggered through the streets, as that was what normal ponies who were no part of any splinter resistance counter-revolution cell did. Some of the ponies they spoke to gazed after them, as the presence of strangers who appeared to be speaking in foreign tongues was made possible by the eclipse, but words which matched up with no known language seemed more unlikely, especially when spoken with Canterlot accents. Other ponies waved at them and cheered, stomped applause against the ground and wished them success in their noble quest. Given that the later category of ponies were mere hallucinations conjured by sleep and dream-deprived minds, it was awfully nice of them to do so.
The Brinner Brigade would fight.
They would win.
And then they would sleep for a week.
Unless Chef said they couldn't.
Which he would.
After all, somepony had to lead the applause at the Hall's ceremony.
Oh, and before that, Saucier had to be fired.
Again.
Several ponies applauded that. None of them existed either, which might have been taken by a slightly more sane pony as a discourtesy.
Instead, Chef spent twenty minutes interrogating the hotel's bedside lamp to find out how it had learned about their strike force.
Celestia turned the clear lenses over in her field, then allowed just enough of the yellow glow to recede for Luna to get a grip. "The same thing most of their inventions do, Luna -- they almost work, at least under certain conditions. If you tweak your way around the conditional invocations and trigger them, they capture a short series of images for whatever you're staring at. Not exactly film quality -- more of a stuttering transition. So to that degree, they managed at least a limited success. But as for Sun-shielding kicking in... the spell holds for about a minute -- and then it subtly starts to weaken. The pony wearing these might escape permanent damage -- after spending a few weeks with their eyes covered by bandages. I'm just glad we intercepted those two in time. If Applejack hadn't recognized them..."
Luna sighed. "Now that would have given the papers something to report on, and some undoubtedly would have invented ways to blame it on us. How did the brothers react?"
"Badly." Especially in the initial stages. (The removed pants had been burned after Rarity confirmed that given the rather uncommon build possessed by the pair, it was unlikely that anypony else could use them -- and given what had happened just before that removal, it was even more unlikely that anypony would ever want to. Cleaning could only do so much.) "The protests were creative, I'll give them that. If it wasn't for -- personal interests -- I actually would have enjoyed the story about some mysterious super-powerful unicorn using magic to switch their marks with those of known criminals so that the actual con artists could establish a new career under false colors. And they tried to keep from using magic in order to prevent anypony from getting their signature, claiming a sudden attack of Rhynorn's Flu -- but they slipped after I asked Applejack to kick in some dinner." Celestia shrugged. "Not my fault that they reacted to the apples as missiles on the attack... But honestly, Luna? I think they knew all along that the image recording was faulty and didn't care. But their shock upon learning that the Sun-blocking aspects had failed? That was honest. The younger one --" she was still trying to pin down their actual names "-- was horrified."
"You are claiming ethics for them?" Luna asked, more than slightly disbelieving. Her own field rotated the clear quartz, bent the elastic band, twisted it in and out.
"Of a sort," Celestia admitted. "They're con artists, Luna. Ponies robbed of twenty bits for a product which doesn't quite work as advertised are unlikely to seek a physical sort of revenge, at least not if the sellers are out of immediate range: the majority mutter darkly for a few minutes, try to forget they were ever taken, and move on. Ones who've had a family member lose their sight are considerably more likely to go on the warpath. A good con artist will do anything to avoid causing permanent injury, because that stands a good chance of ending their careers -- or worse. So yes -- they were shocked, dismayed, and almost got within three gallops of repentant. Of course, then they immediately switched to claiming they'd been sold the goods by a pony who is going to do a spectacularly good job of never being found, which is one of the many benefits from not actually existing. Frankly, at this point, I'll settle for them picking one defense by the time this comes to trial, along with getting a judge who'll forbid them to sing."
Her sister smiled, tried not to yawn, partially succeeded. "Then we are ready?"
Celestia looked at the clock on the Mayor's office wall. One hour before noon on the second annual Return Day. "We are."
It had been one of the stranger days in Equestria's astronomical history, at least in the era when observations of the sky had become consistent enough to allow any degree of science to exist at all. The Sun had been raised as it always was. (Temporary escape of Discord and a one-extended-night performance from Nightmare excepted.) About ten minutes had passed -- and then the Moon had come up right behind it.
Ponies had been alerted. The entire continent had been told what was going on, and Celestia had been sure to send messages and envoys who could explain them to the other nations. Everyone -- given the sheer number of non-ponies involved, the word had to be used -- possessed at least some awareness of what was taking place. And naturally, many of the leaders for those distant countries had contacted Celestia and yelled at her using the most formal language available while enjoying the benefit of being dozens of gallops or more away and hoping she had no personal teleport arrival site for their residences. They had told her she was tampering with nature. She had very politely informed them that in this aspect, she was Nature and if any one of them felt they could do a better job, they only had to present their credentials for handling the Sun. This had effectively knocked the screaming down to a mere background mutter, but she knew there had been offense taken by those forever looking for excuses to grab ever more of the foul stuff. She didn't care. The eclipse was going to happen, and mildly strained diplomatic relationships with those who treated their embassies as places for spies to get some sleep simply found itself filed under 'Inevitable, Don't Care' and stuck in a drawer which was to remain locked until well after Return Day ended.
But still, there were ponies outside of Canterlot and Ponyville who had done their typically-unintentional best to remain uninformed. Some of them happened to look up and see the two celestial bodies sharing a sky. A number of those had fainted. Others had flown into their local town hall screaming about the return of Discord and won the chance for a very belated education. Still more had felt content to scream in the privacy of their own homes before rushing their entire family into the basement in order to await the inevitable. At least one Manehattanite had decided the world was ending and the best thing she could do with her remaining seconds was to let her neighbors know exactly what she thought of them. In detail, with references backed up by the occasional hastily-drawn chart. That fight had expanded to include most of a city block and when Celestia finally learned of it two days later, her first (later regretted) thought had been to wonder if any raggedy dolls had been at the center. And those were just some of the things she found out about afterwards: Celestia (correctly) suspected most of the incidents outside the nation's borders were being held back until such time as they could be thrown directly in her face.
But through incredible government effort, the exhausted voices of town criers (due to be discharged with honors the next day), plus successful infliction of the feeling that there would be a test later and everypony had better pass, the vast majority of Equestria knew and at least partially understood what was going on, at least in the sense that this was a joint working by the Diarchy and any panic was not only pointless, but made them appear willfully illiterate. And so most of those who looked up simply stared. A very few thought about the power of their Princesses and used a moment for reflection on how lucky they were to be citizens of such a nation. And there were even some who even guessed at a part of what was behind it all: the desire to create a new symbol, one which would show the Diarchy united. Those ponies were the easiest to spot, because they all had one thing in common.
"Why are you smiling?" Not offended in any way and hardly could be -- simply curious.
Fancypants did not take his gaze off the Moon as it moved through the day sky, but simply gave his head a polite tilt towards Rarity in order to show he was listening. "Because Return Day is a time for happiness, Rarity."
She smiled as well. "I suppose it is at that." The designer looked around at the town square. "And for beauty."
Dark blue fabric hangings, silver buntings, and graceful two-toned draperies covered the large wooden stage which had been erected near the back edge of the square, right about where Snowflake generally placed his one-pony Day And Night Labor business tent on market days. (The huge pegasus was about ten rows back and quite some distance overhead, having considerately placed himself where he wouldn't block anypony's view.) The fountain had been temporarily enchanted so that the water turned the deep purple-black of a new moon sky -- while sparkling like stars. Representations of Luna's mark were everywhere: some ponies wore necklaces showing the symbol, others had scarves. Even Zecora had decided to get in on the act, wearing a single earring in the shape of the crescent moon. The zebra had been given a position close to the stage: she had asked for a good view to help her send a personal report on events back to her homeland, and the Princesses had been glad to oblige. Rarity and Fancypants were on the stage itself, at the left edge, with him outermost: it was understood that Celestia didn't mind having her old friend up there with the sisters, and Rarity was more than welcome to accompany him.
The other Bearers were spread about the area. Fluttershy had taken a place near Snowflake: it was unusual for her to stay in the air, but there were just too many ponies around for her to be truly comfortable on the ground and in an emergency, he gave her something more than large enough to hide behind. The two pegasi got along: Snowflake was Fluttershy's current first resort for substitute animal caretaker when missions came calling -- if she could scrape the bits to hire him, and Rarity knew he was giving her a very quiet and rather substantial discount to begin with.
Rainbow was also in the air, just behind the stage: she'd expressed a desire to witness things from something close to the angle being used by the Princesses. The Guards hadn't liked her taking a position slightly out of casual sight. She had declared Bearer, they had declared Royal Authority, she had countered with So What?, they had offered Detainment, and then she'd shot back a definitive So Go Ask Them! Which they had. And so she was in her chosen position and they were in theirs, with the Guards decidedly the more unhappy about it.
Applejack, torn between the little benefits which very rarely (as in 'hardly ever') came from being a Bearer and her occasional nerves about "puttin' mahself forward," had compromised with a place in the second row. She didn't exactly object to being honored when she'd just finished doing something, but taking a small form of reward just for existing could still feel unnatural to the farmer -- at least for those times when direct bit-earning wasn't involved. She had used her minimal pull to set up a concession stand at the largest entrance to the town square and Big Mac was still there, carefully collecting bits. (She hadn't been able to come up with anything both eclipse and apple-themed in time for Return Day, which openly rankled her -- but she'd told Rarity she had another year to work on it.) With extra money earned, Applejack could relax and enjoy the holiday -- especially since nopony was doing anything with her other than allowing her to be part of the crowd.
Pinkie was actually at the library. Twilight had been torn between making astronomical observations of the eclipse or magical ones of the workings which allowed it to happen -- and lacking the ability to be in two places at once or hopes of teleporting back and forth quickly enough not to miss anything, she'd groaned, sighed, spent two days trying to figure out something which would allow it to happen anyway, and finally just given Pinkie a three-hour crash course in data recording. The baker still didn't grasp all the science behind what she was supposed to be taking down, but her memory now included details on the actual process of recalibrating telescope apertures and how to call off the resulting numbers, with Spike standing by to record them all. She'd told the others the view was just fine and then added something about azimuth in a way which suggested she was still trying to work out what it meant and was going to stick the word in as many sentences as she could until she found one where it fit.
Twilight herself was easy to find. Rarity just had to follow the sounds of the fight.
"How can you say this isn't happening? You're looking at it! That's the Moon, right up there! And there's the Sun a little distance away from it!"
"Because it is patently impossible," said a male griffon voice so dry as to force the Weather Bureau into scheduling an immediate downpour just to make up for the damage he was doing to the environment. "Sun and Moon cannot share the sky. It has never happened. It never will happen. Therefore, this is illusion from your leaders and delusion from all who believe it -- including you."
"But --" It was rare to hear Twilight audibly swallowing back words, but she had a tendency to respect authority -- especially when that authority was held by those at the top of their fields. The fact that Rarity could hear the librarian internally starting to question whether that authority was justified hadn't completely negated the trend yet. "Professor Skywise, Sun and Moon shared the sky all the time during Discord's era! It's in the one-sheet and extended briefing! The Princesses confirmed it!"
"Yes, they did," the voice commented, negating another five percent of the humidity from the air. "And how old are they?"
Confused by the change in direction, "I don't know exactly -- something over a thousand -- actually, Princess Luna could be biologically younger, I don't know what was happening while she was in abeyance..."
"And you trust memory to remain clear after so much time?"
It would have been close to blasphemy had it been coming from a pony. Twilight treated it as such regardless. "YES!" And there went the last of it. "Because they're the Princesses! They're the living record! If they say Sun and Moon shared the sky, I believe them! If they told me there was a second moon and some kind of flying device blew it up before it could fire a giant beam of heat at the world, I'd listen!"
Nineteen percent moisture and dropping. "You are a rather naive thing, aren't you? Or would the personal student of a senile Princess prefer 'stupid'?"
Rarity checked the availability of all emergency exits and found them more than willing to accommodate her for an unexpected lunch date.
A little too slowly, "So you're going to believe that's an illusion no matter what happens?"
"Correct."
With just a touch of challenge, "So why did you come at all? The Griffon Republic isn't exactly close. Why travel all that way just to witness something you don't believe in?"
"So I can write a paper proving it false and you ponies all the more fools for believing in it."
The challenge became softer. "You don't have any instruments. You didn't even bring a single telescope. And griffons can't feel magic that way, so you won't be able to tell exactly what kind of working the Princesses are doing and I know you're not going to take the word of anypony here for it. How are you going to prove something you haven't measured?"
"It is a thought experiment."
"And that is...?"
"I think it is not actually happening. Therefore, it did not."
There was a very long pause. Empires had died in that kind of pause. Some of them had committed suicide as a final desperate means of escape.
Twilight's tones were just barely on the edge of hearing, and a disturbing level of politeness had returned to every last word. "I know one form of proof you would have to accept, sir."
Disdainful, "And what would that be?"
Complete and utter calm. "Having the Princesses send you to the Moon. Then all you have to do is look down. If you can see Ponyville, I win."
Rarity waited.
"...you are a very rude young mare."
"Thank you. And you are a very stupid griffon. Or would a supposed professor prefer 'willfully ignorant'?"
"I'm leaving."
"So soon?"
"I have seen your papers. Shoddy less-than-amateur work in my opinion, and once I finish writing my fellows concerning you, no astronomer in the Republic will ever feel any other way!"
"You're the top astronomer in your homeland, right?"
"Yes!"
"The single most skilled and knowledgeable by magnitudes?"
"Correct!"
"Good. Then my reputation is perfectly safe because none of the others will be intelligent enough to read."
There was a sharp intake of breath. This was followed by the sound of wings. And then there was somewhat more room on the stage.
Fancypants gave Rarity the most subtle of side glances. "A delicate and proper lady, is she not?"
The Brinner Brigade looked over the crowd from the balcony of Chef's hotel room. They were having some trouble counting the attendance, especially when they couldn't be sure which attendees actually existed.
In reality, the town square was packed about fourteen rows deep in the ground and four in the cloudless sky. This did not represent the totality of Appcarrville's native population plus the visitors who had come in to witness the birth of Eternal Darkness -- but as Saucier had heard some ponies discussing, the most desirable viewpoints weren't necessarily considered to be in the center of town. Many ponies had decided to watch from the dam, while others were going partway up the recently-renamed Dragon Mountain. A few owned telescopes of their own and wanted to make personal observations. A number had simply chosen to huddle indoors until it all Went Away, and three of those were currently wrapped around each other in the desperate hope that the dream would end any minute now. But for those less terrified by the new (or returned), there were high points available around the area, both for the settled region plus what was considered to be the fringe part of the wild zone, and rather than risk overcrowding to the point where ponies would barely have room to look up and (for two of the races) only have their gazes fall upon a cloud of pegasi, everypony had spread out.
But in the world they were seeing... well, there were variations. Eight-legged earth ponies were the least of it.
Chef had been the only one with a bed. The others, being Scum, had been snuck into the hotel room and given floor, bath, and so on down the line -- with the exception of the couch. Not only was it too good for them, but it meant an increased risk of falling asleep. Chef had not slept, not even after the pony who had not been a lamp managed a miraculous escape which their self-determined leader forgot about five minutes after it didn't happen, not to mention mentally dismissing the interrogation itself and everything which had come with it. He had been mostly awake for weeks now, had barely dreamed at all -- at least, not that he could remember, and memory itself had turned unreliable some time ago. He didn't remember that, of course, which made it all the easier not to admit.
"All right..." he mumbled to the others. If he still could have counted what he was seeing, he would have come up with twelve. Triple vision wasn't only entertaining, it was an ally which provided reinforcements. Sadly, all of them remained Scum, but what could he do? "Got the vial..."
Saucier (all three of him) rocked a little from side to side. "Vial?" He seemed somewhat fresher than the others, but not by much. "What's -- in it?"
"Exam Crystal," Chef told him. "Couldn't tell you on the train -- prohibited..."
All of them managed blinks and four came a little further into awareness, at least for a few seconds. A mention of Exam Crystal could do that. It was a little like mentioning a high explosive which knew your name, had the keys to your residence, and mistakenly thought you owed it money.
Exam Crystal was the street name for a semi-refined substance which could be harvested from the plants which were the base of wake-up juice -- if those plants grew in the deepest parts of a wild zone, in the heart of ungrounded magic looking for the worst possible ways to express itself. It was wake-up juice gone tesseract. Let a bit of it dissolve under your tongue -- never on -- and no matter how tired you had been, no matter how many weeks had gone by with insomnia or spent in exhaustive study during that pre-finals push, even with the strain of being a splinter resistance counter-revolution cell which was afraid to sleep or at least under orders not to -- you would be awake. Any pony taking Exam Crystal would be more awake than they had ever been in their life, and would remain so -- right up until the moment it wore off.
If it was one of the good batches, if the pony risking their future on it was lucky, they would simply find themselves just as tired as they'd been before they took it -- plus about thirty percent. Given that the Brinner Brigade had been steadily foraging into lands of self-exhaustion seldom explored by ponies, thirty percent was theoretically enough to place them in something close to a waking coma, and 'waking' might have been the crueler option.
But if it was one of the bad batches... then nearly every bit of sleep postponed would sneak up behind them, gently tap a shoulder, and then drop a piano on their heads. They would be out cold until virtually every missed moment had been made up for, and there would be no way of waking them for more than a second or two until the books had been balanced.
There was no true means to tell how long Exam Crystal would last. It was a matter of quality, metabolism (and that last could be a major factor), the plant's exact location in the wild zone and how much magic it had truly absorbed. A strong dose might take the user through six hours. A weak one could buy a minute or two. And you could have a strong dose with the bad batch aftereffect, a weak one with the good...
...and there was exactly one way to tell exactly which kind you had.
You took a piece. You put it under your tongue. Waited twenty seconds. And if your heart didn't get slammed backwards into your large intestine, you assumed it was a positive sign.
"This could kill us... couldn't it?" asked Sous, who was still capable of understanding that.
"Not... by itself," Chef just got out. "Can't die from it. Just sleep. Took it -- chef training -- last year. Got a good batch. Made it all the way to bed. But... Worst-case... short-term, bad batch. Fall asleep -- middle of the fight. And then we're dead. Nightmare -- easy targets."
"We don't do this..." Meat barely breathed, "...dead anyway. Rather go down... fighting... than live under Nightmare... in the dark."
Saucier blearily looked at all of them. Took a slow breath. Seemed to be as deep in thought as he could still manage. And finally said "Open it."
Chef took the Fawkes Vial out, removed the jade stopper from the hematite cylinder, and let the contents slowly slide onto the hotel's balcony. The yellow crystal pulsed, rumbled, vibrated a little and shook itself two inches to the right. Saucier reached a hoof towards it.
"No!" Chef blurted, swatting the hoof away. "You -- don't touch. I touch. You're -- just scum. I break it. Know how to do it. Got it before. Back alley. Very high quality back alley. Behind great restaurant. Best-smelling trash..." Pasta moved in front of Saucier, staring at the crystal. Chef's eyes were doing the same -- but now there was confusion in his face. "How -- how do you break it again?"
Pasta sighed. Well, there was no help for it now. He squinted, forced mind and memory into the best focus he had left, counted -- and then his hoof gently tapped the crystal. "Five," he whispered.
And before Chef could at least try to scream at him about declaring their numbers to the world, the pulsating yellow broke into five equal semi-translucent pieces.
Chef stared down at it some more.
"Stupid thing."
"Why?" Meat asked with what was nearly the last of his undrugged strength.
"Should have given me a bigger piece." He kept staring. "Not yet," he told the Scum. "In case... bad batch, short term... not yet..."
There were Solar Guards in the air. There were Lunar Guards on the stage. There was a very empty space where a griffon had once been, and nopony had tried to fill it. And there were two alicorns trotting through the aisle which had been left in the middle of the crowd.
Showtime, Celestia thought, and glanced down at Luna, who was walking exactly by her side, neither the least bit in front of the other. Her sister smiled up at her, then looked back towards the crowd. Several of the visitors stomped politely on the ground, others planted their hooves with more devotion. The Ponyville natives cheered. The press, which Celestia had very deliberately assigned to the absolute back of the gathering, remained quiet under the lie of neutrality.
Celestia didn't care. It was almost time. She had been aching for this since the moment she'd realized what Luna wanted. The last few minutes of pacing about the Mayor's office had been almost unendurable. She had briefly thought about moving Return Day up on the calendar as they'd so very slowly approached the date, had used part of the last eternal dragging seconds to wonder if there was any way to advance noon. But they were so close now, they could begin in a few minutes, they were moments away from --
back
-- and she did not think about where the word had come from, or why, or what it meant at all.
They climbed the stairs to the stage. Two Bearers, one old friend, several Guards, three visiting dignitaries, and -- one empty space which had previously been filled courtesy of angrily-written words sent in a diplomatic pouch, all of which called in so many favors as to wipe her IOU slate with the Republic clean. Celestia glanced at Twilight, gave her student a slightly raised eyebrow which the press wouldn't catch.
Twilight winced.
Celestia smiled. Finding out exactly what Twilight had said could wait until after the eclipse: it had been enough to realize that adjacent seating was guaranteed to create words. All she needed to do for the last bit of magic in that vanishing trick was write the Claw Observatory and ask whose contributions they'd rather have, his or hers -- plus those of her student. For now...
The sisters took their places: younger on the left, older on the right. Luna looked over the cheering, stomping crowd.
"Greetings, Ponyville!" she called out, and the joy in the younger's voice was as real as the happiness which called back. (Celestia basked in the twin sounds, and they were warmer than Sun had ever been.) "Welcome to the second Return Day!"
They cheered again. Luna almost glowed. Celestia had seldom seen her that happy, not in the days since the Return. It had been a state most common in the earliest part of after, satisfaction at jobs well-done and delight at the acceptance of what was truly becoming their nation --
further back
-- and it was wonderful to see.
And then Luna yawned -- theatrically, exaggerated, adding a smile to the end. "My apologies," she said. "As most of you know, I seldom see this hour..." Laughter. "...so if none of you mind, I would like to make it a little more -- comfortable."
Still more cheering. They'd been briefed. They understood. They welcomed her. And for those who had chosen to attend and were not carrying press credentials, there was no fear at all. Celestia couldn't even find doubt. They believed in the eclipse. They believed in Luna. Perhaps only here, and possibly most at this moment simply because she was standing beside her sister and that was a silent reassurance that all would go well -- but still, they believed...
And now it was her turn.
"Our little ponies," she smiled to the crowd, and her own magic made the words sound in every part of Ponyville, with some of the extra Guards, brought in excess numbers just for this, streaking off to provide warning for all the local major observation sites, "glasses on."
There was a great shuffling. There was also a mild confusion, as some ponies had never actually donned the things before that moment. Sets of friends helped each other with the elastic. Celestia waited through all of it, then resumed.
"I am, as the saying goes, just here to observe," she told them. "The Moon is Princess Luna's domain, and I'm not going to intrude on it. I will, however, along with her, provide one last set of reminders -- and yes, everypony, I know you've been lectured and educated and drilled over the last few weeks. This is the end of it, I promise -- and it concerns what happens after the eclipse."
before
She ignored that internal word as well. "It'll take a few minutes for totality to be achieved. Princess Luna will gradually accelerate the Moon until first contact is made, then let the faster pace proceed steadily until we do have totality -- again, which will last a little under eight minutes." A subtle nod to Luna.
Her sister took the cue. "The eclipse will not be held for longer than that -- not on a first Return for something other than myself. We have had comments that it is too brief, and others claim it is too long. We are compromising on what we had originally intended in the first place." Several reporters muttered to themselves. "Once the Moon is completely away from the Sun, I will accelerate its motion somewhat more. This will allow it to return to its proper position in time for a normal raising." Which was actually the trickiest part of the process and the one which would require the most energy to enact: the sisters were planning on doing the bulk of it together once they reached privacy again. "The night will not be disrupted in any way because of this. Do not worry -- we will have the appropriate phase and place when the evening festivities begin."
Celestia waited for the renewed cheering to subside, then resumed. "Which of course is when the bulk of any Return Day -- or Return Night -- events should take place anyway. I'm told the rides are ready to go, the concert will begin on schedule, and we are running the fireworks." Which got nearly as big a cheer as Luna's first words. "Yes, that means we'll be in Ponyville for the majority of the festivities. We won't be around at every minute, however: we will both need to spend a little time in Canterlot before Return Day ends." And they also needed to reach a bed so Luna could at least nap for a few hours. "But as Princess Luna specifically requested that this be the heart of the party --" pause for happy acknowledgments and praise of her little sister "-- it will remain so."
"But before we reach night," Luna told the crowd, her tones solemn, "there is something to be done."
The audience went quiet as Luna's horn ignited, the corona reaching the primary limit in less than a second.
Her sister's voice was serious. Not booming: that had slowly faded after that special Nightmare Night, and she now only reverted to it under stress -- or when she wanted the dramatic effort. But the emotion ran deep, and any darkness in it offered only the promise of protection for those seeking safety beneath the shadow of spread wings.
"Return..." Luna began. "I was brought back to myself by the Bearers, some of whom are here tonight." She smiled at all she could find. "I understand that Laughter is helping Magic to study our little trick: do not think ill of her absence. She was there at the most crucial moment -- the one where she became part of that..."
She stopped, and Celestia knew what was happening. Luna had spoken of it -- but only to her. Submergence. Drowning. Internal burial. But to others -- nothing. For the story of what had happened and how, for any ears other than hers -- the words would not come, and perhaps never would. She could not speak of it: only around.
"...which told me Laughter still existed," came the soft continuation. "Along with Magic to direct that joy. Kindness to let me know why the attempt had been made. Loyalty said there was still somepony waiting for me. Honesty proved all of it true. And Generosity to offer me a place in the world again. All of it together let me hear that offer -- and believe for a single crucial moment that there was a chance I was worthy to accept it."
Even the reporters had fallen silent.
"One moment was enough. I returned," Luna said. "And there was a place for me. Not merely in the castle. Not simply in Equestria itself. And not even just in Ponyville -- although this has become my second-favorite place." The crowd remained silent, let her speak. "The one I love most, though... is the one I am in at this very moment. A here and now where all of the pony virtues are true. The place where I truly belong -- at my sister's side."
Celestia would not cry in front of the crowd. She would not...
"And so I wished to return here again for the holiday," Luna told them all. "Because in this age, Ponyville is the place I love second-most. Because in so many ways, you were the second ponies to take me back -- all of you together." She left no doubt as to who the first had been. "But also because I wished for all of you to witness something. That we --" a look at Celestia "-- are truly together once again, as the Diarchy. Two acting as one. Two almost being one. And when two truly come together -- it creates something new."
She looked up.
"She is Sun," Luna said simply, "and I am Moon. This -- is unity."
Her corona went double, the energy around the base of her horn getting closer to blue-white. The Moon accelerated.
The eclipse began.
Celestia watched, one of only two ponies there who could do it without the glasses. And she could have listened to the cries of delight around her, the shouts of purest wonder -- but they were hard to hear. There were other words in her ears. Not echoes: words. And as the shadow began to block Sun, they became louder. Closer. More real.
(A quarter gone now)
"You seem to be a reasonable pony."
"You seem to be the world's worst judge of character."
And with sound so close, could vision be coming behind it?
(Half blocked)
"You have no experience. You have no chance. You're a fool chasing a fool's dream, too stupid to know it's impossible and too determined to stop. And the only thing I can do in the face of such idiocy -- is come with you and make sure you don't kill too many other ponies along the way."
Right behind vision...
"Stay down."
"If they find out you're hiding us --"
"-- then use the time they spend killing me to escape. Stay down."
Everypony below them was watching the eclipse. And that was all they were doing. They did not risk whispers. Some of them might have been blinking: it was hard to tell through the magic-infused quartz. They simply started up at the sky and drank in the shadows.
Wonder. Awe. Minds locked into doing nothing which was not spectating.
Even the Guards had been caught staring.
And it made them all idiots.
They could not see that this was the beginning of Nightmare. That what they thought was the end of the darkening was just the beginning. Yes, it was just shadowed, the strangest of dusklight, and it made the complicated dress on the white unicorn, the one near the left edge of the stage, shimmer and half-glow. But this was clearly meant to fool the crowd, lull them into half-awareness and leave them defenseless when the horror began.
Or perhaps this was part of the horror, right here. The eclipse might not be true Eternal Night after all, not by itself...
Chef felt those thoughts speeding through his mind, which felt as if it was working better than it ever had. (In this case, 'faster' did not even remotely equal 'better'. It couldn't even make a gallop at 'sane'.) Yes, that made sense. It all made so much sense...
"It's enthralling!" he told them. "They're all caught! Something about that thing is getting every pony at once!" He spoke very quickly. Was there any other way?
"But how are we immune?" Meat asked, faintly vibrating in place.
"It's our training!" Chef insisted. "Plus we're not looking the same way! But mostly training! My leadership! Maybe a little from the Exam Crystal, but that's all my leadership because I got it!" He looked down at the usurper. "Double corona, what does that do...?" His mind raced, which it could do very easily given that nearly all the roads were empty. "If we hit her horn, backlash her right now, what's it do..."
And he looked at Saucier. There would be plenty of time to claim he had never done so later, but right now, they couldn't rely on the drug's duration.
"It won't kill her," Saucier sped through. "But it will hurt her. It could knock her out. Some ponies say the Princesses can work through it, but..."
Chef automatically ignored that part. "Right! Can't try to hit her from here -- too much distance, too easy to miss! Let's get down there! Sous -- get in the air! Get over the stage, make it look like you're just trying for a better view -- but not too close! Wait for the rest of us!"
Sous took off. The other four (because there was no more time for denying it) charged off the balcony, through the hotel room which none of them had been capable of keeping clean, nearly went through the door because there was barely any point to wasting time in opening the thing and Chef was used to making that sort of hole anyway. Down two flights of stairs in seconds. Through the empty lobby. Outside, heading for the town square, and that was taking more than a little of their unreliable time...
Ponies were frozen. The enthrallment was that complete. Those in the crowd weren't moving. The ones in the streets who had decided to stay out of the morass or simply shown up too late to get a bench were staring up through their glasses. Chef briefly wondered if the glasses were part of it, but they were wearing the things and they were still okay. It was clearly the passed-along strength of his will which none of them were worthy of and had better give back the instant this was over. It was the same will which had kept him from losing his soul through signing the hotel registry and they couldn't keep it.
They moved around the perimeter of the crowd, nopony visibly watching them. The town square had been set up as a rough amphitheater and in this case, that meant all the pony spectators on ground level were to the front and sides. There was a little open space left to stand near the back: they'd seen that from the balcony, and all Chef needed was one clear shot from close range. And he'd brought the perfect weapon. The ideal sacrifice. He'd miss it more than he would any of the Scum, but whatever remained of his mind felt it was somehow appropriate. A single moment of hard contact with his chosen weapon, and backlash would hit. The usurper would be knocked out. And then it would be portraits and bits and firings and perpetually-banned mares from professional kitchens for the rest of his life, which would be so very long because their own weak mess-up would of course reward him by turning him into an alicorn and then retiring, handing over the thrones, and then there would be some changes made...
They ran, and it seemed that they were moving so very quickly. Chef looked up, saw Sous checking their position, getting closer to the stage himself, and Chef briefly wondered if Sous would try to get there first and take all the glory and portraits and power for himself... Well, not on his watch! He galloped faster, was getting closer to the crucial point, and now it seemed as if ponies were looking around, just a few, because the noise of movement was strange in this frozen Tartarus of a Nightmare-enthralled world, some of those who were nearly a third as strong-willed as he (once he pulled all his will back into his own body) might have stolen more of his strength. Were any of those Guards? Yes, a couple of them had started to follow the pounding hoofsteps. He was coming around the perimeter, the view of the usurper becoming more clear with every step, he just needed one clear shot --
-- the world opened up.
There was the left edge of the stage. That odd half-glowing dress. Some overdressed jerk with a mustache. Some Guards, all in the service of the faker, a few just beginning to move. And there was the Nightmare, the corona still double, eyes half-faded to white, getting that much closer to revealing herself as the monster she truly was -- and there was nothing but open space between he and her lit horn.
He shouted the battlecry, the one he had worked on for the entire run down the stairs.
"FOR MY PORTRAIT!" he screamed, and let the Royal China fly.
Celestia's head wrenched around, moving faster than most other ponies could, moving faster than she should have -- but it still wasn't fast enough. Even she couldn't turn completely in the amount of the time she had to use. All it did was bring eyes losing the last mists of past into a position to see present.
There was a unicorn stallion, very late middle-age, an ash-blonde mane and dark-brown body failing to distract from maddened yellow eyes which were just barely visible behind the quartz. He was far too overdressed for summer heat. There was a field like boiling water insanely sparking around his horn. And it was irregularly surrounding a plate. A very familiar-looking plate. One which had just been launched towards Luna. At her horn.
Backlash! was the first word in the internal scream, an automatic reaction which couldn't be stopped. Luna, focused on keeping the eclipse steady, hadn't started to turn yet. Hadn't and possibly couldn't drop the field. No matter what Celestia's knowledge of the situation was (and there was a chance, always that nightmare of being wrong), the thought of a Stage Two backlash, even with Luna's resistance should the worst somehow pass, was a horror.
Her own field began to come up, Celestia intending to block, deflect, anything --
-- but it wouldn't be fast enough...
...and the plate hit.
It hit the body of a similarly-overdressed young earth pony stallion, whose eyes had also turned yellow. He had thrown himself in front of it. The glass shattered, some of it cutting through cloth.
The wind was just right for Celestia to smell the blood before she saw it. The cuts weren't deep: just scratches. But still, there was blood.
"TRAITOR!" the crazed unicorn screamed. "I"M GOING TO --!"
Exactly what he was going to do, nopony ever found out.
There was a cough. A rather dignified one, a sound which somehow cut through the world and got everypony's attention, even in the face of the eclipse and the madness taking place beneath it.
The overdressed stallion stopped in midscream, looked at the stage. Fancypants was gazing down at him. And the aristocrat calmly pointed his left front hoof straight up.
The maddened unicorn, too crazed to think, glanced in that direction.
Which meant he got to see the equally overdressed pegasus fall on top of him.
The collision was heard across the town square. The scream of frustration carried for some distance beyond that.
Another cloth-covered unicorn stallion, younger with a coat of oddly glistening red, froze in his charge so quickly as to stumble for several hoofsteps -- before being caught in Celestia's field. His yellow eyes blinked in dull surprise -- then closed, and did not open again. A second earth pony with similar non-taste in clothes rather more sensibly dropped to the ground and put his front hooves over his head. He stopped moving. A few seconds later, he began snoring.
Celestia charged off the stage, flinging the familiar red-coated unicorn into the hooves of the Lunar Guards, getting in front of her sister just in case anything else happened --
-- but it was over.
She looked down at the younger of the earth ponies, the one who had taken the plate for Luna, who was now lying between a Guard and Rainbow Dash, who had swooped in to help. His yellow eyes were beginning to phase back into green.
"Princess," he breathed, and that word along with the ones that followed it made up the most exhausted sentence she had ever heard. "My apologies for letting them ruin the party..." And then he passed out.
Luna had gotten her attention on the scene now -- but her field remained at the double corona level. Still managing the eclipse.
Celestia looked down at the fallen pegasus. Also familiar. And young.
The crazed (and now injured) unicorn pinned underneath (with the force of Twilight's field now added to that), so much older... all the yellow eyes...
"YOU FOOLS!" the unicorn stallion screamed as Applejack pushed her way in, lasso out to tie them up for good measure. "Don't you see what you've allowed to happen? We were your only chance! She's taken over! The Sun is gone! She'll keep it blocked forever and leave us in Eternal Night! Or she'll enthrall everypony in Equestria, everypony but me! She already got all of you -- but I'm too strong! I'll fight to the last! You fools let her seize power and she'll never give it back! The Sun will never return, it'll be like this for a thousand years or more unless you help me right now, you have to listen to me, I'm a Chef...!"
There was another light cough.
Fancypants pointed up a second time.
The first glimmer of Sun returned as the Moon began to move past it.
Then more Sun streamed through.
And still more.
"...oh...."
But that lasted only a second.
"She's been discovered!" the unicorn ranted, swinging back into madness with the skill of the most practiced motion. "She's just pretending to let you all go in order to trick me! She'll bide her time, she'll wait a year, and then when the next Return Of Nightmare Day comes --!"
He didn't really stop yelling. He tried to keep going well beyond that, even with Celestia's right front hoof jammed into his mouth.
"Exam Crystals," she told him, looking down at the maddened yellow eyes. "A very bad batch. The average pegasus has a faster metabolism than a pony from the other two races. Your companions are younger than you: theirs are fairly quick. And as for you, older and slower -- I give you until just about -- shall we say -- now?"
And that was the last thing he knew for some time.
It was five days later. It had taken that long for Canterlot's best physicians to wake them up for more than a few seconds at a time. Once the group was proven capable of keeping their eyes open and understanding things (as well as they ever had) plus had gone through a series of primary interrogations, they were put under heavy guard, confirmed as immobilized (heavier on the pegasus) and restrained (devices over the horns of the two unicorns), then brought into Celestia's private judicial chambers and abandoned there.
In this case, those chambers were the room on the right.
Of all the duties she had as the holder of the Solar Throne, 'judge' was one of those which she tried to use the least. Oh, she would overhear disputes now and again -- but that was mere arbitration. The trying of criminal cases was generally left to the courts. Celestia believed in trial by jury for the majority of offenses, and she also believed that her typical place was staying out of it.
But there were cases which still found her playing a personal part. There were even a very few charges where what were very nearly the oldest of laws under her tenure said she had to take up the role. And so she maintained a pair of judicial chambers. One was soft, comfortable, welcoming, designed to put ponies at their ease when she knew innocence was on the horizon and those terrified of false accusations leading to real results needed every bit of reassurance they could find.
This one was cold marble with gold inlays, all furniture blocky without a single soft edge in the entire room, everything designed to discomfort and intimidate with overscale layouts that made other ponies feel so much smaller than they already were compared to her, sunlight magically altered to harshen at her command. It was not for pleasant discussions. It was for anything but.
She felt the dust was taking something away from the ambiance, although certain perspectives might have thought it added a bit to the sunlight.
Celestia glared down at the bound ponies and for the first time in decades, wished she was taller.
"I'm going to remove your gags," she told them. "But not just yet. I don't want to hear you talk until after I finish. Believe me, from what I've been told by the ponies who gave you the first rounds of questioning, nopony wants to hear you talk any more, Garleek Ramshead." Her gaze did its best to transfix the one who now only answered to Chef: he glared at her in return. And then she began pacing back and forth in front of them, hooves clicking against the marble.
She'd worn her best shoes. Extra-loud clicks had seemed necessary.
"First, I want to congratulate you -- as a group." Ten eyes, all returned to their normal hues, stared rather far up at her. "Since the end of the war against Discord, my sister and I have faced many conspiracies. When we were trying to unite the continent, there were those who tried to divide it again and profit from the imbalance, or simply grab the whole realm for themselves. Once we'd established ourselves, it changed into those who would splinter their own nations away from ours -- or just seize the thrones and remake Equestria in their own images. Smear campaigns. Assassination attempts. Legal tricks woven into bills they hoped nopony would truly read. It's been over a thousand years, and in that time, I thought I'd seen every kind of conspiracy there was. Until I found yours. Because it is the single stupidest thing I've ever heard of."
(It wasn't: she merely wanted them to feel they'd achieved that much. It was, however, in the top fifteen.)
"Your reactions at the demonstration... well, I'm not above admitting I became angry," Celestia told them. "Accusations against my sister, especially baseless ones with no proof at all behind them... I don't react well to that. So yes -- you were fired. The amusing thing here is that Princess Luna approached me while you were still sleeping off your not particularly creative attempt to take her out -- oh, and incidentally, she does not invade dreams casually. Unless there's something specific she has to look for or somepony she has to contact, she normally lets herself be drawn to nightmares -- so she can help whoever's going through them. And with all the dreaming ponies in Equestria every night, the chances of her coming to one of you -- even if you'd panicked and had your nightscape turn into a vision of her supposed takeover -- let's just say the odds are rather long. Since the Return, numerous ponies shield their dreams: she's quite aware of that. She lets them. You might be surprised to hear she values privacy quite highly. I suspect you're surprised by a lot of things. Like reality, if you only ever let it get close enough to see..."
She stopped for a moment. Resumed pacing, forcing her hooves into the marble with added impact. Watched the clicking beat against fragile minds.
"But I'm getting off topic," she allowed. "The amusing thing -- is that Princess Luna told me she was going to approach me after the eclipse, when she presumed I'd be in the best of moods. She feels that ponies are still trying to adjust in the aftermath of the Return. That it's natural for some to be scared -- and, given that we gave you no warning for the demonstration, that your reaction was -- understandable. And should she have found me in such great humor, she was going to ask for your reinstatement."
Four pairs of eyes blinked. The remainder disbelieved.
"I saw the joke in that," Celestia admitted. Looked down again. "But I didn't laugh. And I am not laughing now. I do have a question, however. You see -- I distinctly remember firing you. And having that memory be so clear, I can also do what the interrogators were told you were so afraid of -- count. I fired one -- two -- three -- four. Not five. One of you quit."
Her field reached out, surrounded the gag of the youngest earth pony, removed it.
"So, Blending Stock -- or do you prefer Saucier? Why did you quit?"
"Stock is all right, Princess." The large bright green eyes blinked up at her. They were set in a pleasant face, strong features which had a humble cast to them. An off-white coat, topped by a light yellow mane cut extra-short, and his mark showed a mixing bowl and ladle. "I thought -- I'd better keep an eye on them."
"Because?"
"Because -- they're stupid, Princess." Chef writhed within his bonds. "Some more than others. Rigatoni's just inhaled too much suspect flour over the years. Sizzler's fine as long as he stays at his station, but he's rubbish with anything away from it. Passer's sort of okay, but he lets Ramshead get in his ears and -- they're all like that, really. As long as he's yelling, all that goes through their brains are the echoes of his words. And he's an idiot." The writhing got faster. "I heard him when he was on his way to clean out his things, and some of the stuff he was muttering... I knew he'd drink. I know that when he drinks, his intelligence goes lower than what you'd find in a mushroom. And the others would get drunk, and angrier, and let him lead them in stupidity. When he thinks for them, nopony thinks at all. So I had to keep an eye on them, and I couldn't do that while I was in the palace, I had a really bad feeling -- so I quit."
She let the clicking become a little faster, and was not displeased to see Chef twitching in rhythm. "And why didn't you just tell me about it? Once you knew what they planned..."
He sighed. "At first, I never thought they'd get that far. Stupidity, exhaustion, hurt themselves in training -- and they weren't sleeping. I was hoping the other three would come to their senses and just quit. But I was hoping for a little too much. And as for reporting to you -- Princess, Ramshead followed us in order to prevent any social lives outside the kitchen. I know he followed me back from the meetings a few times, and it's one of the few things he's sort of good at. I couldn't always be sure I was alone, and if I'd betrayed..."
Chef writhed so hard as to nearly throw himself across a half body length of marble. His personal answer for 'if' was very obvious.
"But they were getting more and more tired," the young line cook sighed. "Admittedly, so was I. And Chef kept us all drinking so much... I got some sleep whenever I could and I even tried to dream about what was going on in hopes that Princess Luna would hear me and come -- but it didn't happen. Honestly, by the time we got to Ponyville, I wasn't thinking all that well myself. But it still felt like I had a good chance to stop them just by either tripping them on their way out the door or waiting for them to pass out in the middle of the stairs. I didn't think Chef would get an Exam Crystal -- and I got blocked before I could 'accidentally' knock it off the balcony."
"So instead -- you used the crystal to be awake as long as they were, and still be able to try. And then you took a plate for Princess Luna."
He nodded.
"Stock," she said, "you do realize that when my sister and I are working magic in public above the most basic levels, the Guards will raise a hidden shield spell and place it around us? To prevent backlash attempts from making horn contact?"
His eyes slowly closed. "No. I didn't."
"They do," Celestia told him. "Princess Luna was in no danger." And Celestia had still reacted as if it was all real, because the instinct could not be made to go away -- and there had still been the risk of other ponies getting hurt from the idiocy. "It's not something we make particularly public. Few ponies know shield spells can be hidden, and they generally have to be kept fairly small when they're in that state or the energy overwhelms the concealment. But every unicorn and a number of other ponies know about backlash. Stop magic by making hard contact with the horn. Four stages. First -- known as Stage Zero for whatever reason-- inconvenient, Stage One painful, Stage Two injurious, and Stage Three -- the triple corona infliction -- fatal. That knowledge is out there. And so many try to take advantage of it -- and we know to block those attempts before they begin. The shield is hidden, but attempts to break it would be visible -- and of course, things bouncing off are easy to pick up on."
"So she was safe all along," the young stallion said. "I'm thankful..."
"I know. Stock -- would you like to be head of the Solar Kitchen?"
About ten percent of Chef's scream got through the gag. It was still enough to leave five sets of ears flattened.
It took a few seconds before Stock could make himself reply. "No, Princess."
Celestia blinked. "...no?"
"I'm not ready. I know about things which aren't food -- but I don't know enough about food itself yet. I'm a good saucier. But I wouldn't be a very good chef."
She smiled. "In that case... I'm offering you a job in the Lunar Kitchen. Junior sous chef. You'll float about the various stations and take instruction. When Anise feels you're ready, you'll be moved back to the Solar as full sous, with her own promoted to lead that kitchen. And one day, you might take over from there. If you're willing to work under a mare...?"
"Yes," he simply said.
Her field undid his bonds. "Behind me for a moment, please." He stood up, arched his back and stretched out muscles, then moved to the place she'd requested. "Now, the rest of you -- are rather stupid ponies. Three of you fairly so. One -- we'll come to that. But the fact remains that none of you hurt anypony except each other, and three didn't even get to make an attempt. However, Rigatoni, Sizzler, and Passer... you are not getting off so easy. Think of this as my offering you a chance to be smart, or at least more so than you are now. If you accept my offer, you'll receive community service. Enough of it that your social lives will suffer without Ramshead following you for years to come. But eventually, it will end. You'll also be assigned to the Lunar Kitchen. You'll work under the direction of a mare -- and Stock. You will report directly to Princess Luna and if she says one word against you, the probation will be revoked -- and then some. Take this deal and you'll avoid trial and have a chance -- but if you go against it in any way... well, let's just say you'll be wishing for the Moon."
She released their gags.
"What's -- what's the community service?" a dry-voiced Passer gasped.
"That's for Princess Luna to decide."
"So -- it could be anything."
"True."
He glanced over at Chef, who was writhing in such a way as to be facing away from both -- then looked up at Celestia again. She shook her head.
"I'll take it."
The other two agreed in quick turn.
"And that brings us to you." Her field seized Ramshead, rotated him, forced him to face her without any movement possible. "The lead idiot. A shining source of stupidity who blocks out all light of intelligence and believes any thinking not his own to be the highest of crimes -- which makes just about everything into a crime, because he can barely think at all. I kept you on the staff because you had some talent for coordinating cooks, although that now seems to have been a skill for taking most of the credit. I read the transcripts of what you told the interrogators, which is why I now have a whole new vocabulary list of things to call female chefs and -- oh yes -- am led to understand that I am yourweak mess-up mare." The words hit hard enough to crack the marble. "By all rights, I should put you on trial. The other four will testify: I'm making that part of the legal paperwork for their deals with the court. I should throw you on display in front of all Equestria just to see how Murdocks could possibly render you into a hero, simply for the humor of it: I got a good enough laugh when your coup attempt was described as a kitchen prank. And given that the charge is striking against a Princess, I get to be the judge. It's an old law, it's unfair in many ways -- but it's still on the books. You'd have a jury of your peers, of course, assuming we can find twelve other ponies that idiotic. But even so, I don't like your odds."
He blinked. It was all she was allowing him to do.
"So your deal -- is quite different," she told him. "If you take it -- probation for life. Community service for same. Extensive psychiatric evaluations before any of the former can proceed and unless you can talk your brain into operating soundly for a while, you may be spending some time in an asylum. In the event that you are somehow deemed fit to enter society, you will be given employment as a cook -- at the lowest level, somewhere which is not the palace. You will work under the direction of mares. There will be nopony you can claim superiority over. You will attend remedial classes until you gain a standard school diploma. Princess Luna will speak with you at regular intervals to see if you're learning anything. If she feels you're hopeless -- well, the others will be wishing for the Moon, and you? Will be wishing you were them. There's more to it, but -- those are the basics. I can show you all the terms before you sign off on them, or have somepony read them to you. You have thirty seconds to make a decision."
Celestia did what she hated most and removed the gag. She also loosened her field, enough to allow jaw movement.
He blinked a few more times.
"I -- would be working -- under a mare?"
"Correct."
"PUT ME ON TRIAL!"
He would have screamed more, but Celestia replaced the gag.
Later, after the Sun had been lowered, she sat down to dinner with Luna -- which, for her sister, was breakfast. There was no discussion of a joined name for the meal, and the kitchen was much quieter.
She told her sister about everything.
Finally, she finished with "Any ideas for their community service?"
"Something to do with education, I suspect, in the faint hopes that they might gain one. Possibly still more time spent with mares in charge of their lives. Or perhaps Sizzler can cook for the griffon embassy, but I would have concerns that they would try to recruit him as a singularly inept spy... I had hoped you would smile when I said that."
Celestia sighed. "I may need a few days. It's -- not funny yet. I know you were safe, Luna, but I still reacted as if you weren't. And that's natural, but... I reacted slowly. Because I wasn't completely paying attention..."
"Nopony was, sister. They were watching the eclipse. Even our Guards were caught by the moment."
"Which is a problem we should have seen coming." Another sigh. "I should have seen it. I should have guessed that there was at least a chance that anypony I fired over what happened at the demonstration would do something stupid -- especially for those who were idiots to begin with. I knew some of the Royal China was missing: Anise mentioned it. But I thought it had been deliberately broken on their way out in petty revenge and didn't want to waste time proving it over a pattern I never liked. I spent my time jotting down notes on which of Murdocks had asked whether I had a search warrant after a mere knock and didn't see the danger closer to you."
"Despite any appearances you may try to enforce to the contrary, you are not omniscient," Luna dryly noted. "Even if you sometimes briefly manage to make me fall for it. You anticipate, you plan, you expect and counter -- but precognition is not among your talents, Tia. You had no way to see this coming."
"I should have seen more."
"I was not hurt --"
"-- I was looking in the wrong direction!"
"Forward instead of left?"
"Past instead of present!"
And they had to wait for the rumbles of thunder to die away.
"You -- do not lose control like that," Luna slowly said. "I have always been the one who let that aspect slip under stress. Never you -- well, never since I returned."
Celestia stared at her plates, which had been vibrated a hoof width out of position.
"Sister...?"
A whisper which hit harder than the thunder. "...I was waiting for them."
Luna said nothing, because nothing was all that needed to be said.
"When you showed me that first illusion -- I thought of them. I saw them, just for a moment. Like it used to be before. I even saw you that way, and I felt -- like I used to. It only lasted a second, but -- in that second, everything was back. Everypony. All of us. It hurt, Luna, it hurt -- and it felt better than anything since the moment you returned. Because I got you back after a thousand years, when I'd tried so hard not to give up hope -- and then, in that one second, I had everypony else..."
Still no vocal response.
"I would have done anything to make the eclipse happen. I would have overruled both Courts. Personally spoken to every pony in Equestria. Made deals with the other nations. Because nostalgia makes you stupid, Luna, stupider than Ramshead ever was. Part of me believed -- truly believed -- that at the moment the eclipse became totally real... they would come back to me..."
And now there were words "You told me you thought --"
"-- I can't be sure. I'll never be sure. And so I thought I could get them back -- as they were. Everything as it was... even if it was just for the eclipse... to see them again, to talk, to touch..."
"Stand." It was an order.
Celestia wasn't used to orders from her little sister -- but her legs were straightening even as she softly asked, "Why?"
"Because I am taking you between. Because you should arrive on your hooves. And --" the dark eyes closed "-- because the staff should not see us cry."
Four places, meaningless to anypony else. There would be no trace of bodies, not after so much time. Four locations where friends had been lost. None of them held memorial markers and in three cases, those symbols would have meant nothing to the citizens of the present day. History cared to remember Celestia, for it seemed as if Celestia had always been there. With Luna returned, questions about her exact part in the war were slowly beginning to emerge, even if the answers weren't being provided -- not yet. But the other four... lost. History had become legend, and in turn, legend had become history. She had tried to preserve their names, desperately attempted to keep some form of the record intact -- but ponies believed what they wished. That she could bless. That she'd had no before, and that was a delusion she'd ultimately encouraged. And that there had been but one -- and now, just two.
There was a pair of intact records for what had truly happened, and both went to each site in turn. They talked. They remembered, including those things they tried to keep buried within themselves, because that too was part of the story. And they did so throughout the night.
The others had not come back. They could not, never as they had been. But on a new kind of Return Day, Celestia and Luna awoke them in memory, let them live in story and jokes retold and songs rendered deliberately off-key.
It ached. It hurt.
It helped.
And at the last site, they stood under the waving branches of the willow.
"Tia?"
"Yes?"
"I should have asked when I returned, but it had been so long and paper does not last..." Softly, with just the faintest trace of hope, "Do you still have the picture?"
"Luna -- you don't want to know how many spells I invented to make sure I still had that picture." With the last of the tears for the night, "I should have told you... right after you returned, I should have shown it to you..."
Gently, "And I should have asked. Ideas come -- when they come, sister. May we go see it?"
"In a minute..." Celestia trotted forward, settled down in the grass next to the trunk.
A willow. He would have said the world was playing a joke on him. Too sad a tree...
Celestia, the Princess, the legend, the subject of tales which had only grown more distorted over centuries until all hope of making ponies believe the true had been lost. One. Luna, restored, her last connection to the pony Celestia had once been. Two. And there, for all but the survivors, the count stopped.
"We were six..." she whispered.
She felt the body press against her, the wing draped across her back. For a moment, she didn't know whose it was.
"We are six," Luna whispered back.
And they stayed there until it was time to raise the Sun.
Both returned to the castle. Both canceled everything they had for the day, for both horribly needed sleep. And they trotted together to the midpoint of the structure, where Solar and Lunar wings diverged, and made ready to head for their own beds.
And both paused.
"Tia -- next year? Another?"
"Oh, yes. And -- what comes after."
"Agreed. However -- let us make two other agreements before we rest."
"Which are?"
"First -- it will take time. Too much of it. But even if nopony else ever reads the words -- and I know we will have trouble finding any to believe -- we write it down. All of it. We cannot spread too much word of before, I know that -- but what was should exist somewhere outside our heads, even if it is only within private texts. They deserve so much more than that -- but let us begin there."
"I can't argue... any of it. But -- it's going to hurt."
"I am aware."
"All right -- but give me a few moons. I think things are about to get a little more intense..."
Luna raised an eyebrow -- but let it go. "Very well."
